#the one who was ostensibly good in that way children hope their lost loved ones to be (or at least not full ham evil) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nanistar · 1 year

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may i ask why you hate mapleshade? like is it more of a fandom thing/author thing or do you just not like her character? sorry if thats a weird question lol

i think the idea behind her character is cool but the erins are the erins and they fucked it up imo. also the way the fandom treats any discussion about her and other characters in her book is so annoying i cannot stand going into the mapleshade tag on tumblr

which is a shame cause like i said, i really like the concept of her character and i feel like it had alot of potentional

not a weird question, i get it. i gotta start by saying i have no ill will against people who like mapleshade or even like the points i'm about to say. btw! sorry this is long i got really into it

starting chronologically (according to canon, not publication)(publication order is: all ivypool darkforest books (2011 and prev) crookeds promise (2011), great battle (last hope 2012, she permadies here) and maples vengeance (2015)

i actually really liked mapleshade's vengeance, all things considered. it comes last in the mapleshade storyline according to publication date, and up until then we really didn't know much about her, and i believe this is where she gets a personality other than "random DF lady" and "rude ghost villain". the erins are not good writers by any means, but i felt that mapleshade's internal monologue and the way she saw the world was genuinely pretty decent. they portrayed her as obsessive and manipulative and as an unreliable narrator. it was one of the first books i read upon returning to the fandom in 2018 and it was a thrill to read, because i hadn't been spoiled on it.

the erins have a habit of writing surprise/accidental pregnancies as plot points, which has the implication of like… flings/one night stands. it's best not to think about it. it's pretty obvious upfront that appledusk is not as in to her as she is in to him, but she doesn't see it. she talks about him in her narrations as a sweet and loving man and talks about their family and future together, but when we the readers finally see him, he's calloused and doesn't really care about her. i think she even sees him with reedshine at a gathering and gets mad before she thinks "oh he's just doing that so no one gets suspicious" (not quoting or anything, i havent read the novel since 2018) girl. their relationship was obviously just a fling to him, but to her they were in love. i liked the way this was written as opposed to all the other times in warriors weve seen a man have a hissy fit because a girl rejected him. (ashfur is the glaring example but also crowfeather, brambleclaw) her denial and refusal to accept what she was seeing (that she was the side piece) was the interesting part.

she has her children and then ravenwing spills the beans. why on earth would he do that? why would it benefit the clan or anyone? from a logistical standpoint, thunderclan lost 3 potential new warriors and mapleshade never implied she was going to riverclan. anyway, he didn't even have proof. he just assumed. i think he rightfully got what was coming for him, since if he would have kept his mouth shut, 7 cats including himself wouldn't have died. sorry mini rant i don't like him. anyway we know the rest of the story. kits die, maple kills ravenwing for telling her secret, she kills frecklewish for not helping (no, she couldn't have jumped in to save the kits without probably dying herself but she COULD have stood up for maple in thunderclan, and she was upstream so she could have yelled out and warned maple of the flood but im NOT getting into that and i dont care) and then she goes to kill reedshine but kills appledusk instead. did he deserve it? he was kinda a dick but mapleshade was like stalker-obsessed with him (i think she uses the phrase "my appledusk" in her narration but i might be wrong) after what was ostensibly a one night stand. perchpaw wounds mapleshade to the point where once she flees the scene, she dies of blood loss. cool

the story of a mothers love (and a mother's loss) is an age-old tale. in a franchise where all female characters are doomed to become boring cookie-cutter mothers, this loss and violent rage was awesome.

everyone told me to read crookedstar's promise, because it was the best super edition. i.. do not agree with that. tbh i thought it was long and boring and went nowhere. crookedstar suffered many tragedies in his life, and he lost everyone he loved, and then the book suddenly ends with him going "im ok (:" and dying. (i was reading a pdf and not a physical copy so it was VERY abrupt for me. i legit sat there like.. so that's it? i read 500+ pages for that?) i can't really blame mapleshade for this (since shes not real) but it does factor in. her idea of revenge against appledusk was to torture an injured baby? who then grew up and had no idea who the fuck appledusk was? why not raise him and give him the love he craved so that when the time came, he would be more likely to do her bidding?? her motives here make no sense. not super important. anyway.

and then she's seen occasionally in the dark forest and she tries to drown ivypaw for no reason once. idk she was obviously just a background character in these scenes (since they came first) but the fans saw a female in the dark forest and were like. thank god a woman. can you blame them. then the erins built her up from that.

anyway mapleshade has this generations long story of manipulating younger cats, and a POV book where she's obviously obsessive, controlling, stalkerish and chooses brutally uncommon violence as a way to get back at those who wrong her. (she unburies ravenwing's body so crows can eat it, and she uses adders to kill frecklewish, despite the fact the snakes could easily go for her.) she puts HERSELF in danger to do these things because she's impulsive, she justifies all her actions to herself by saying its revenge for her children and in the end, she pushes the last remnants of the kittens she thinks she's fighting for away. this is a cool story about a woman who's pushed to the edge and takes everyone down with her. for ONCE its not a man with deadwifepain.

and what does the fandom do

they girlbossify her. they fight over if she's in the wrong or not (she is. she killed people.) they take everything about her that made her compelling and turn her into "grr my husband cheated on me and me kids are dead. sad." she gets turned into the most basic, boring, cookie cutter "evil" lady. she kills people for fun and not because she had a reason to or a goal (in her mind). she suffers the most tragic kind of loss that there is and gets no time to grieve before she is run out of her home, and her reaction to this is pure RAGE, and the fandom turns her into this boring, slay QUEEN!!! (not the pregnant cat kind), always been evil, always been hardcore, ~So CrAzY~, "my eyeliner is sharp to stab men" girlboss. where's the nuance. where's the passion!!? she's a miserable, impulsive, manipulating failure. she blames others for her mistakes and bad judgment and punishes others for her shortfallings. she can't be vulnerable and broken, she can only cry because dead kids and then kill evil husband and evil husbands wife. she's even sometimes portrayed as like "boss" of the dark forest, wrangling all the men. barf.

so to answer your question, it's the general fandom* portrayal that i hate, but i honestly wouldn't trust the erins with her at this point. (the erins are influenced by their fans, for example (old person voice) back in my day, firestar and scourge being brothers was just a fan theory.) i'm glad they permakilled her in the great battle so they cant bring her back to ruin anything. actually thinking about her to write this out and reflect on why i don't like her made me sympathize for her. i like text mapleshade with a little bit of fanon sprinkled in for flavor.

and hey. usually when the fandom adopts a character, they're right. the fandom likes to get really in to random bg/side characters and give them lives they would never have in canon. but sadly (or not, depending on your opinion), when those get popular and breach containment, they spread everywhere and suddenly people think this IS canon. look at how many of us thought that brambleclaw killed hawkfrost directly after he killed hollyleaf, because that was the easy way to portray the great battle in MAPs, only to have someone point out, years after this has become the common sequence of events, that brambleclaw actually hunts him down, brings him back to camp, and then murders him POW style!!!

*btw. im in no way saying that all mapleshade-based projects or aus or whatever are bad, even if she is sexy girlboss in them. some of my favorite maps portray her like that.

anyway. TLDR:

everyone say "i'm sorry mapleshade"

#mapleshade #sorry this is long and if i got facts incorrect i dont really care #apologize to mapleshade for what weve done

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weasleyswizardpleases · 3 years

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And the Living is Easy (Fred x reader)

Summary: You spend the first night of summer vacation getting into trouble with the Weasleys + Harry and Hermione. Fred x reader. Fluffy mischief mostly, but sex is discussed and implied.

Warnings/Notes: Light sexual content but not all out smut, alcohol, heights, language. I wrote this to be a stand alone, but I enjoyed it so much that it might become part of a loose series of slice of life-y reader x twins fics set at the burrow over the summer! ps i did not edit this at all after writing it at 2am so. uh

Summer at the Weasley’s is my favorite time of year. After my mother passed, you were tossed around from boarding school to boarding school, relative to relative, never really having a say in where you went, or with whom. But ever since becoming fast friends with Fred and George while repairing brooms for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, you’ve pretty much been considered an honorary Weasley.

You stow your suitcases in the overhead and squeeze into a seat next to Fred and George. Across from you, Ron, Lee, and Harry are packed in.

“Do you reckon you’ll ever make it out to the burrow, Lee?” asks George pointedly.

“Yeah, you don’t know what you’re missing out on. Mrs. Weasley’s hotcakes are out of this world.” Harry says.

“And there’s loads of space to play quidditch.” you say.

“And loads of secret spots not even Mum knows about where we can basically do whatever we like.” adds Fred.

“You know my mum will hardly let me out of her sight for a day. Merlin’s sake, she’s practically ass to elbow on me all summer.” Lee says, faking a pout. “Quit ribbing at me, would you? Or I’ll spend the summer in my room coming up with derogatory names to call you on the Quidditch pitch.”

Murmurs of “Come on, we’re only joking.” and “Fine, fine.” fill the packed compartment. You lift your rat Pansy up to the window to show him the scenery.

“Bet you’ve never seen the fine English countryside like this, eh Pansy?” you baby-talk at him, scratching his little noggin.

“You know that thing is never gonna talk back at you, right Y/N?” says Fred, rolling his eyes.

“You never know. Look what happened to Scabbers.” you say, wiggling you eyebrows. “This rat could also secretly be a creepy little pervert who watches me undress at night.”

“I suppose it isn’t unprecedented in the rat community,” agrees George. Ron scowls in disdain.

“That’s my pet we’re talking about!” he says, causing everyone to burst into laughter.

“Yeah, fine pet he was.” says Harry, grinning.

“I will say, Ron-” Fred begins, clearing his throat. “You’ll never find another like him.” He claps his little brother on the back and stands up, peering down the hallway. “Oi, it’s the trolley, look alive Georgie.” George rises and straightens his coat. The boys have been planning for ages to charm the trolley witch into selling their skiving snackboxes. They run off down the car towards her. You tuck Pansy back into his cage and watch the scenery go by yourself. Before you know it, you’re being shaken awake by Fred and George.

“C’mon, Dad is waiting!” says George.

“Got you some chocolate frogs, but that means you owe us one.” says Fred, shoving a wriggling paper bag into your hands. Delighted, you expertly open the bag, catch a frog, and slurp it up before it manages to escape.

“Tank -ou” you mumble, your mouth still full. Lugging your trunks over to meet Mr. Weasley, you smile with excitement. Every summer with the Weasleys is a blast, but you know this one will start off with a bang because last week Fred absconded with a jug of top shelf mead from Filch’s office. You’d all agreed that you needed it more, since you want to have fun and have no money, while Filch obviously dislikes fun and ostensibly has some amount of money squirreled away from all his groundskeeping or lurking or whatever his job is.

After greeting Molly, you and the twins bound up to their room- and, when you’re here, your room- pushing and shoving your way up the narrow stairwell. You toss your things down and throw yourself onto a bed, spreading your arms as if making a snow angel.

“Oh, boys, it is good to be home!” you say, laughing. Fred and George always joke that their mother likes you, Harry, and Hermione better than any of her own actual children, and you love teasing them about it.

“Speak for yourself, she’s already got that sending-us-to-de-gnome-the-

garden-while-hungover gleam in her eyes,” retorts George good-naturedly.

“And get your shoes off my bed! Mum will have all three of us beating out the rugs if she sees that.” says Fred. You close your eyes and pretend to be asleep, baiting the boys into attempting to push you off the bed. You wind up making such a ruckus roughhousing that Hermione comes in looking concerned, seemingly appearing out of nowhere. You all three pause from your compromised position to look at her, you releasing a vise grip on Fred, George dropping your left leg, which he had been twisting violently.

“When did you get here?” you ask, running to hug her.

“Just apparated over, my parents would never forgive me if I didn’t at least drop by for dinner before practically moving here for the summer!” she replies, turning to greet the twins.

“Are you going to be participating in our little soiree tonight, ‘Mione?” asks George, raising an eyebrow.

“What are you three planning?” she asks sternly, stifling an excited smile.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” you say.

“But don’t wear white shoes.” warns Fred. Hermione gives you all a funny look before running off to finish her greetings.

“Where are we going tonight, Freddie?” you ask, looking up at your tall friend. He gives you a cheeky glance.

“Oh, out by the bog. There’s a huge hill between there and the house, so we can make a fire and nobody will see.”

“And there’s a huge stand of trees and a pond between that spot and the neighbors’,” says George.

“You two have got it all figured out. And you’ve got the firewhiskey! What a night, what a night it shall be.” you say, your voice singsonging as you dance exaggeratedly.

“Too bad nobody invited any girls.” says Ron from the doorway. He’s been standing in the hallway looking in the mirror for some time now, fussing with his hair.

“What am I, chopped liver?” Ginny shouts from her open door down the hall.

“YOU don’t count!” Ron replies.

“We know you’ve got someone else in mind, little brother.” George says, flicking Ron in the ear.

“It’s pretty obvious,” Fred agrees.

“You get all flustered when she corrects your grammar,” you say.

“And you let her braid your hair.” says Fred.

“And you-” begins George, but Ron interrupts, his face beet red.

“Shhhh! Buzz off you two, or I’ll start blabbing on about who you’re interested in as well.”

The twins exchange a somewhat threatened glance, but say nothing.

“That’s right, I’m not as dull as you lot like to think, thank you very much. I notice things. So let me alone or I’ll sing like a canary!” Ron finishes, turning back to the mirror for a final glance at his hair before trotting downstairs.

“You two have crushes?” you demand, turning to stare down the twins. Fred shrugs with his usual attitude but you notice a light blush spreading across each of their cheeks. You swat him across the chest. “Why didn’t you tell me? Who is it? You motherfuckers.” You grab George by the collar. “George, tell me who it is! A crush, my god.” You throw your hands up in the air. They’re being super weird, so you decide to drop the subject. “When you snog every girl and half the boys in the school, between the two of you, you practically hold us all down to tell us the details but now you’ve got a crush and suddenly you’re like a couple of mimes.” You look each of them in the eyes, and both avoid your stare. “Fine! Don’t tell me.” You throw your hands up in mock anger and lead the charge downstairs to begin setting the table for dinner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~After dinner, you pass the evening playing cards and chatting until Mr. and Mrs. Weasley retire for the night. Then, you’re left with all your friends and Percy, who it has been agreed simply cannot know you’re sneaking out to drink in the woods, because he is a killjoy. Using a previously discussed maneuver, Hermione attempts to trick him into believing that she and Ginny are going to bed, hoping that he will get nervous about being bullied if left alone with you and the twins, and elect to follow them to bed soon after. However, Percy is in an unusually jovial mood, and so Ron and Harry are forced to retreat as well. As a last line of defense, you pretend to fall asleep on George’s shoulder, nuzzling into his sweater. When Percy gets up to go to the bathroom, you dash outside into the moonlit yard, covering your mouth so your giggles don’t give you away. You run to crouch behind the garden shed, doubled over with laughter.

“I thought he would never stop yapping.”

“God, how are you two related to that bore?”

“We can’t help it.” Fred says, bending to gather rocks from the ground.

“What are you doing?” you ask.

“Watch!” he raises his hand to throw a pebble at Ginny’s window, but you grab his wrist.

“Have you lost the plot? Percy will hear! And probably your mum too, with your aim. I’ve got a better idea,” you say, peeking around the garden shed while gesturing for the boys to stay put. You pop out of the shed with a dusty, rickety broom.

“Does this thing still work?” you ask.

“Well enough,” says Fred, getting a running start and jumping on the broom. Wobbling a bit, he sails up to Ginny’s window and confers with the girls, then moves on to Ron’s window, where he perches on the sill, one foot dangling out the window.

Beside you, you’re aware of George’s presence beside you in the cool, sticky night.

“Bloody brilliant,” he murmurs, elbowing you gently. “How’d you even know that thing was in there?”

“Lucky guess. I mean, with a family full of Quidditch players, there’s bound to be a broom lying about someplace.”

Fred jumps down onto the broom and turns a few experimental loop de loops overhead before nearly falling and coming to a shaky landing near your feet.

“That one belongs on the rubbish heap, honestly,” he says, laughing as he tosses the old thing aside.

“Oh, sure, blame it on the broom,” you tease.

He’s soon followed by Ginny and Hermione on Ginny’s broom. They glide down and come to a halt next to you, stepping down gracefully.

“How are Harry and Ron going to get out? They’d have to go right by Mr. and Mrs. Weasley’s room, unless Harry has his broom up there with him, but I think I saw it in the foyer.” says Hermione, looking at Fred worriedly.

“Well, err, I told them to climb down,” says Fred earnestly.

“What?!” says Hermione. “They’ll be loud as bison, besides probably breaking their necks.”

“It’s not my fault they’re too dumb to pass their apparation O.W.L.S! They’ll be fine.”

As he finishes his sentence, Ron’s window slides open and Harry’s head pops out. He lowers what appears to be a rope made of sheets and blankets tied together. Hermione’s brow furrows as she watches, helpless, while Ron artlessly slips one leg out the window, before even checking to see that the “rope” is nowhere near long enough to reach the ground. Ginny giggles, biting her lip when she sees Hermione’s distress.

“Do something!” Hermione hisses, nudging her. Ginny groans and soars over to boost Ron onto the back of her broom, going back to do the same for Harry.

“Shite! The firewhiskey,” you whisper, smacking your forehead. Everyone lets out a collective groan, but before you can send someone back up to hunt down the alcohol, Ginny opens her backpack, revealing the gleaming jug. Everyone cheers, but then quickly realizes that loudly cheering may have blown your cover. Fred and George scurry off into the brush and you all follow them down a lightly trod path through the countryside, eventually reaching the open bank of a large, murky pond. This is a spot you’ve never been to before, probably because it’s a fair stretch away from the house, and apparently from any civilization at all.

Hermione quickly conjures a large fire, creating a pocket of warmth in the chilly night air. You lean against a large rock and shiver when the cool stone brushes the back of your neck. Ginny pulls out the firewhiskey and hands it to Fred, who pops the cork, shouting with glee before knocking back a sip and passing it to George, who passes it to you. The familiar sickly sweet liquid burns your throat and warms your stomach, and you feel your (already barely existent) inhibitions begin melting away.

Before long, Ron suggests that you all play a game, and you run through your options: truth or dare, spin the bottle, a wizarding game you’ve never heard of, and hide and go seek. Hermione refutes hide and go seek on the basis of safety, and Fred refutes spin the bottle on the basis of the fact that four out of six of you are siblings. Not everyone brought their wands, so you can’t play the magic game, and you’re left with truth or dare as the apparent winner, which you were rooting for anyway, because you want to see what you can get the twins to do. It almost makes you wish Percy was here so you could put him in a compromising position, but knowing him, he’d find a way to make walking on hot coals boring.

“I’ll start, I’ll start!” you volunteer, looking around the circle. “My first victim will beeeee…” you look at Hermione, who cringes nervously, then spin around to point at Harry. “Harry Potter. What will it be, Mr. Potter, truth or dare?” you ask.

Harry shrugs. “Hmm.. I’ll do.. Dare, why not?” he replies.

“Alright Harry, I dare you tooooo.... Oh, easy. I dare you to smack Ron every time he says something you think is stupid tonight. And be honest, or we’ll smack you,” you say. The twins nod in agreement.

“That’s not fair! That’s barely a real dare!” protests Ron. You raise an eyebrow at Harry, who turns and gives his friend a good wallop.

“Alright Harry, your turn.”

You play for nearly an hour, all the while passing the bottle lazily between you, until everyone’s good and tipsy on the strong liquor. Several good dares are exchanged: Fred is dared to give you a lap dance, which he does with gusto and an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. You dare Ginny to race you across the pond and back, and you both strip down to your skivvies and plunge into the chilly water. Ginny wins, of course, but you just wanted an excuse for a swim. Fred lends you his cloak, patting it onto your shoulders to dry them before you pull your pants back on. George dares Ron to walk back to the house and get food, which he reluctantly agrees to after everyone bullies him into it. By the time he gets back with a basket of pastries and jam, you’ve transitioned to mainly truths, because the well of dares has run dry.

When it’s Hermione’s turn to ask Fred, she blushingly asks if he’s lost his virginity.

“What, do you all think I’ve snogged every girl we know without scaring? Have a little faith, please.”

“Clever, but that’s not an answer!” slurs Hermione, pointing at him and grinning. “Have you actually had sex before, or do you just talk a big game?”

“Well, have you?” you ask, laughing as he tries to bluster out an answer.

“”Course I have. Ask anybody. Everybody must think George and I are the male sluts of the century, the way you people talk.”

“Still not an answer!” you say, looking at him mischievously.

“How’s this for an answer, then?” he retorts, pulling you to his waist and kissing you on the lips melodramatically, throwing you up against the rock, practically fucking but for the clothes. What’s probably thirty seconds of kissing at most feels like an hour. Everyone goes “Oooooh!” and when he finally lets you go you’re flabbergasted, but you recover your senses.

“Point taken, then. Alright Freddie, your turn,” you say, straightening your clothes and trying not to look like you enjoyed that.

“I dare Hermione to let us play hide and seek, for fuck’s sake,” he says, lazily.

“Ugh! I might be drunk but I’m not letting anyone stumble around alone in the pitch black plastered out of your mind. Ask me a real question!”

“What if we weren’t alone?” Harry asks, looking around. “I mean, we could go in pairs or little groups. Like team hide and seek, basically.”

“I call Fred and George!” you cry, throwing your arms around their sweaty necks.

“Fine, but please be careful. And everyone should be on a team with at least one person with a wand,” says Hermione, who teams up with Ron. That leaves Harry and Ginny on the last team.

George produces his wand and casts an illumination spell.

“Not it!” You shout, immediately echoed by Ginny.

“Alright, we’ll count to 50” says Hermione, but Harry and George protest until they finally agree to 3 minutes.

Fred tears off into the woods and you and George follow, bushes thwacking you in the face, vines snagging at your ankles. You break through the brush into a field, panting, and stop for a break.

“Where are we going?” you ask, looking around. “And where are we?”

“No idea!” Fred says gleefully.

“What about over there?” George nods towards a patch of grass and trees down in a glenn. You lope down hill through high grass and crash to a halt in the stand of trees, crouching low. Fred huddles next to you and George clambers clumsily into one of the trees, flattening himself into one of its crooks.

You can feel your stomach churning after your run, but you manage to successfully push down the acrid taste rising in your throat. Above you, you hear George belch, and just manage to slip out of the way as he spits a pitiful glob of vomit to the ground.

“Oi, we’re down here, you lout,” hisses Fred, ducking.

“Look at the state of you,” you drawl, bumping into Fred as you readjust around George’s vomit. He groans from his spot up in the tree and lies back down sleepily. To your surprise, you feel the urge to pull Fred closer rather than pushing him away. The earthy smell of the forest floor calms your stomach, and you find your mind wandering to his lips, his hands on your waist and neck. Buzzing with drunken impulsivity, you wrap your arms around his slender waist and pull him to sit beside you. He looks surprised, but readily slouches against the tree trunk next to you. You can feel his chest rising and falling with each breath. The air is still and cool in that settled way characteristic of the night.

Overhead, you think you can hear George beginning to snore.

“Freddie-” you begin, but before you can say a word, his lips are on yours, his hands tangled in your hair. You push him down and roll over so that you’re straddling him, gripping his jaw in one hand as you kiss him, hard, then gently. His lips are softer and more relaxed than they were when he kissed you earlier, and his body less certain. There’s no false bravado in him now, and you bite his lip gently, your tongues barely batting together. You reach down to unzip his pants but he pulls back.

“Y/N- I- Look, I may have lied earlier,” he says, his face flush with desire and embarrassment. You look at him quizzically, your drunken mind not connecting all the dots.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I haven’t… done this before. I’ve only ever kissed. Although I’ve done quite a lot of that.” he says quietly. You blink.

“Oh. Oh! You total freak. Why go to all that trouble to convince everyone you have?”

“Have you considered that maybe I just wanted to kiss you?”

This shuts you up. He pulls you back down to kiss you again, this time on the cheek, on the forehead, the neck.

“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do,” you say carefully, brushing a bead of sweat from his forehead.

“No… no, I’m ready. I want this now,” he says, tugging at your shirt. You pull it off over your head and toss it into the grass, the game of hide and seek forgotten. Let the shirt be a warning flag to any nosy passerby. Fred kisses across your chest.

“Freddie, we’re drunk,” you remind him, your breathing growing heavier as his tongue flicks across your nipple.

“I want you,” he mumbles into the crook of your neck in between kisses. “I want you, I want you, I want you,” he says. You kiss him in reply, and move again to unzip his pants. You feel his hard member ready to burst out of his jeans, and it sends a thrill through you.

You had considered that you might one day wind up with Fred or George, and honestly, you had figured it would be on some less-than-sober whim like this, but you never really pictured it. You certainly never imagined Fred like this, innocent and tame, hoping for someone else to take the lead.

“Will you show me how?”

“Yes,” you breathe your reply into his mouth.

“Will you go slow?” he asks sweetly, his coy submissiveness sending tremors through your body.

“Yes. Come closer.”

In the morning, you groggily open your eyes at the sound of birds chirping. You sit up, your head throbbing, and look around. Above you and a few feet to your right, George is sleeping soundly on his belly in the flat convergence of an oak tree’s branches. To your left, shirtless and smeared with dirt, is Fred curled on top of his cloak, also fast asleep.

“Guess they gave up on finding us,” you mutter, running a hand through your hair to smooth it into place. You remember what happened last night well enough, although some parts are cloudier than others, and you don’t remember deciding to fall asleep at all. You suppose it just happened at some point. Your heart beats faster, wondering if you and Fred will be an item after this, or if he’ll want to keep it quiet, or if you just won’t talk about it. You’re not sure what you want, yet. It’s still purple pre-dawn in the countryside, the sun not quite peeking over the horizon yet.

You know you enjoyed yourself, and you adore Fred- as a friend, certainly. As something more? Maybe. You brush away your anxieties and trust that you’ll settle things when you’re less groggy. Suddenly, it dawns on you that you’ve got to get back to the house before Mr. and Mrs. Weasley wake up and notice your absence. You stand up as though the ground caught fire, kicking at Fred and shouting at George to get down.

You fetch your shirt from a nearby bush, and pluck a twig from Fred’s hair as he looks up, dazed.

“God, my head,” he says, squinting up at you. “What the hell time is it?”

“Never mind that, you’ll have worse than a headache if we don’t get back to the house by like, yesterday.”

“Merlin!” George exclaims, perking up and basically falling from his perch to the ground. Recovering he stands up, taking his surroundings in. “Hold on, what the hell happened to you, Fred? Where’s your shirt?”

“No time for all that, go!” you say, shoving George in the direction you suppose the house is in. You muster as fast a pace as you can and follow him, Fred scrambling to gather his cloak and tee shirt before catching up with you. With George’s back to both of you, you exchange a goofy grin and a wave of relief runs through you. He obviously doesn’t consider last night a mistake, either. You slip your hand into his and make your way into the breaking dawn.

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novelconcepts · 3 years

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prompt from @alominific: a snapshot from FWB ‘verse, in which everybody absolutely, without a doubt, knows what color Jamie’s eyes are

“Dani?”

She raises her head, fingers sliding between the pages of her book to mark her place. “Yeah?”

“Got a weird question for you.” Jamie is leaning against the kitchen counter, frowning at her phone. Dani would best categorize her expression as gently perplexed--not the first time something on the internet has sparked such a look, though the inciting incident could be anything from an odd social media message to a truly bizarre animal photo.

“Shoot,” Dani says, when it becomes apparent Jamie is lost in whatever has plucked up her puzzlement. “Though if it’s about the mating rituals of ducks again, I really don’t think I’m the person--”

“What color are my eyes?”

Not what I expected. “Um. Do you...not know?”

Jamie gesticulates with the phone as though it’s just insulted her family name, shaking her head. “No, look--stop laughing, there’s a goddamn debate raging over on my most recent photo. Which, honestly, how bored do you have to be? Eye color doesn’t spark debate.”

“Evidently, it does.” Dani grins. "Your fan club never ceases finding new ways to stay busy, huh?”

Jamie squints at her. “Are you stalling?”

“No!” Why stall? This is an easy question. Barely a question at all, really. A nice-straightforward-- “Your eyes are definitely--I mean, they’re--”

“You have to look?” Jamie sounds scandalized, squeezing her eyes shut and clapping her free hand over her face for good measure. “Jesus, Dani. You’ve only been starin’ into ‘em for a year.”

“No, it’s not--” Dani flops back in her chair, closing her own eyes and casting back. The memories spill over, neat as Saturday morning: Jamie, grinning from across the table; Jamie, glancing up in the supermarket; Jamie, gazing down at her in bed.

Jamie, whose eyes are definitely, absolutely--

“Blue?” Dani asks hesitantly. Jamie makes an undignified noise.

“That was a question. You just answered a question with a question.”

“Brown,” Dani says, with as much certainty as she can muster. “They’re definitely--”

"Brown?” Jamie sounds vaguely outraged. “You think they’re brown?”

“Well,” Dani says, a bit peevishly, “what color do you think my--”

“Blue.” Jamie doesn’t even wait for her to finish. Her mouth is working, the way it does when she’s trying desperately to hang on to a grumpy mood even as it’s slipping away. “Blue as a fuckin’ summer sky. Blue as the songs say. Blue as--”

“All right! Point made.” Dani leans over the kitchen table, book forgotten, hands reaching hopefully toward Jamie’s hunched frame. “C’mere, let me look. We’ll settle this.”

“Oh, settle it, will we?” Jamie grumbles. “Sure, right, you’re doin’ me a favor.”

Now she’s just being childish. Dani raises an eyebrow.

“Would you say keeping the upper hand in this conversation is more important than sleeping in my bed tonight, or...?”

“Valid.” Tossing herself moodily into the next chair, Jamie shakes the hair from her face, leans in, opens her eyes comically wide. “Right. Settle it, then.”

Dani leans close.

Dani looks.

Dani keeps looking.

“Seriously?” Jamie blinks rapidly, scrubbing a hand across her face. “Practically half a goddamn hour, you still don’t have an answer?”

“They’re--” Dani makes a helpless gesture. “They’re--very pretty.”

“That is not,” Jamie says, clearly fighting a grin now, “what I asked.”

“So pretty,” Dani repeats. “Gorgeous, really. Best eyes I’ve ever--”

“Dani Clayton, do you legitimately not know what color my eyes are?”

“Well, they’re like a--I don’t know, a sunbeam.”

“A sunbeam,” Jamie repeats, like Dani has started speaking French mid-conversation. Dani winces.

“Sure. Beautiful. And, um. Unknowable.”

“This is ridiculous.” Jamie flips her phone in her hand, taps the screen several times. “We’re getting a professional opinion.”

“I’m not a professional opinion?”

“You just told me my eyes are sunbeams. All rights to a career as number one Jamie enthusiast have gone out the door for the foreseeable.” Jamie punches something on the screen and folds her arms on the table as the phone begins to ring.

“So, who are you,” Dani begins, cutting herself off when a voice on the other end of the phone says pleasantly, “Wingrave residence, Mrs. Grose speaking.”

“Hannah,” Jamie sighs. “Dire question for you. What color would you say my eyes are?”

There is, Dani is amused to note, an extremely long beat of silence, after which Hannah’s voice--hesitant, and not the least bit formal now--pipes back up.

“Um...blue?”

“This is ridiculous,” Jamie repeats, sounding as though she has no idea how she’s ended up surrounded by such lunacy. “Ask Flora. Flora will know.”

“You’re outsourcing to the children now?” Dani is mildly insulted.

A scuffling sound, as Hannah covers the phone and calls for the kids. Another, as tiny feet skitter over tile. Breathless, and no less excited for it, Flora’s voice filters through the speaker.

“Jamie!”

“Flora,” Jamie says, narrowing her eyes at Dani with a grim little smile. “Important question for you. What color are my eyes?”

“Well,” Flora’s tiny voice comes back without missing a beat. “They’re definitely not blue--” Jamie makes a vindicated little motion in Dani’s direction at this. “--because Miles has blue eyes. And they’re definitely not brown, because mine are brown.” A pause, as Jamie leans back in her chair and smirks. “I think they’re...green.”

“Green,” Jamie repeats. Dani takes her by the chin, twisting her jaw left and right in an effort to coax the poor kitchen lighting to reveal hidden secrets. “You think so?”

“They’re not,” Dani mouths. Green, she feels, is a very straightforward color. Jamie’s are anything but straightforward.

“Yes,” Flora says with all the certainty of a child who rarely believes herself to be wrong. “Definitely. Except for the days when they’re not.”

“Oh,” says Jamie in a rather distant tone. “Well, clears it right up then, doesn’t it?”

“You’re welcome!”

“Well.” Dani taps the table once. “That’s--who are you calling now?”

Jamie mutters something that sounds just a little too much like last hope for Dani to take seriously. She shakes her head.

“I’m really starting to think--”

“Owen,” Jamie says, hefting the phone to her ear. “Oi. Quick question--no, everything’s fine. Yeah. Yeah, I’ll tell her. Okay. Look, question: you’ve been looking at my face for a while, yeah?” A pause, as Owen ostensibly agrees. “Great. What color are my eyes?”

Dani watches, amused, as the determination slowly drains from Jamie’s face. It is replaced by something very much like defeat, her head slumping onto her arms; by the time she’s saying, “Right. Uh huh. You really think so?”, her face is almost completely barricaded in the sleeve of her flannel.

“He said blue, didn’t he?” Dani asks, when Jamie hangs up and slides her phone so forcefully across the table, it nearly spills onto the floor. “You know, there are many shades of--”

“Gray,” Jamie says into the hollow of her arm. “He seemed very sure they’re gray.”

“Gray is,” Dani says helpfully, “sort of like blue.”

Jamie makes a noise a little like a growl. Dani swallows the impulse to laugh.

“Jamie.”

“Mm.”

“You don’t actually know the answer, do you?”

Jamie raises her head, hilariously morose. “I honestly write a different fuckin’ answer on every form.”

The giggles are going to make it out of her, Dani recognizes; it’s just a matter of fending them off long enough to get Jamie grinning, too. “What, um. What does the fan club have to say about it?”

Without looking, Jamie fumbles for her phone. Takes a deep breath. Flicks it open.

“There is,” she says dryly, “a dead tie between gray, green, and fuck all knows, she’s hot.”

“That settles it, then.” Dani slips out of her chair, resting her chin gently on Jamie’s shoulder. “Next time you have to fill out a form, just write in fuck all, she’s hot, and you’re golden.”

Jamie snorts, dropping the phone and leaning back into the embrace. “Really think they’re pretty, at least?”

“None prettier.”

"Maybe I’ll just start putting that.” Jamie shakes her head. “Prettier than yours. Think that’d go over all right?”

“Think they’d stop arguing the minute they saw your face,” Dani says, and finds herself meaning it with no shame at all. Jamie turns, nuzzling into her hair.

“You’re just saying that to distract from how you defaulted to brown.”

“Okay, literally everyone said a different color, you’re still going to tease me for brown?”

“Dani.” To punctuate the imminent point, Jamie widens her eyes again--as far as she can manage, at least, while dissolving into laughter. “Of all the fuckin’ colors. You picked the one I have never once seen in the mirror.”

“Well, someone wouldn’t let me look.”

Still laughing, Jamie shifts in her seat, catches her around the waist, pulls her down into her lap. “You,” she says fondly, “are the smartest person I know. And, if I’m being honest, the love of my life.”

“And?” Her hands are warm, slipping under Dani’s shirt, her mouth soft on Dani’s neck. It’s almost pleasant enough to forget Jamie is about to say--

“And your observation skills are, and I mean this with boundless affection: non-existent. I mean. Brown?”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dani takes her face between gentle hands, gazing at her with all the seriousness she can muster. “Let me get this right. Your eyes are...a perfect green-gray-gold-hazel. In this light. Tomorrow, I’ll provide an update out in the sun.”

Jamie’s entire body is shuddering with laughter, her head falling forward until Dani releases and allows her to lean into her collar. “Best stick to pretty, I think.”

“I thought you’d say that. But if you want me to drop a comment tomorrow, resolving the issue once and for--” She cuts herself off with a shriek as Jamie stands abruptly, hoisting her with a sharp motion onto the table. “You’re about to pretend we never had this conversation, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” Jamie says pleasantly, brushing a kiss against her lips. Her hands are sliding up Dani’s thighs, squeezing just hard enough to distract from the issue. “Unless you’d say keeping the upper hand is more important...”

Dani sees no reason to dignify this with a response.

#fanfiction #ficlet #the haunting of bly manor #dani x jamie #damie #AU one-shot #this is possibly the most self-indulgent prompt I've ever filled barring Walking With the Lady #but it was short and sweet and made me laugh so here we are #turns out I really like playing in this 'verse with small plot-light additions. hope everyone's chill with that #it'll be on AO3 too in a sec if that's your jam

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westernwoods · 4 years

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i got fed up with “the problem of susan” and wrote an entire esay about it underneath the cut. if you’re into very long discussions of fictional characters and their biblical archetypes, this one’s for you!

i’m so tired of the “problem of susan” nonsense. anyone who truly understands lewis’ writing - especially christian readers - can never come to the conclusion that he shut susan out of heaven because she liked to wear makeup and flirted with boys, or that lewis wasn’t a “feminist” so all of his writing is Problematic™. the point of susan’s character arc is not so that lewis can flagrantly disenfranchise women from salvation; the point of susan is to represent the story of every person who forgets who they really are.

peter, edmund, and lucy all remember who they are: they are kings and queens of narnia, brave and beloved by aslan. susan’s gravest mistake is chosing to forget this identity - because, really, it’s her own choice that leads her to “forget”. in truth, she didn’t forget at all; she chose to write narnia and aslan off as a silly game she played as a child, not the very essence of her entire being. this leads her to lose confidence in who she truly is, because she has no grasp of it; this in turn leads her to scramble to find identity and confidence in “nylons and lipstick”. those things aren’t bad, but they’re not her identity. used as an indentity, they’re flimsy; they feed into that familiar fear that creeps in whenever it gets the chance, the fear that the queen she had once been and could be again was no more than a dream. susan’s sin is chosing to forget how brave and beloved she is.

but the story doesn’t end there. the way susan is portrayed in the books illustrates this idea so simply that i can’t believe anyone who’s read the books could give credit to the “problem of susan” waffling. though susan ends the lion, the witch, and wardrobe a queen of narnia, and confident in that identity, we see in prince caspian that she’s the one out of the siblings who most quickly forgot her identity back in england, her identity as a queen who sees aslan in everything and welcomes his presence in her life. she’s the one who most continually brushes off lucy’s claims of seeing aslan. and yet, when they meet aslan again for the first time in prince caspian, susan immediately rights her wrongs, and realizes that she did truly believe he was there all along.

“I see him now. I’m sorry... But I’ve been far worse than you know. I really believed it was him—he, I mean—yesterday. When he warned us not to go down to the fir wood. And I really believed it was him to-night, when you woke us up. I mean, deep down inside. Or I could have, if I'd let myself. But I just wanted to get out of the woods and—and—oh, I don't know. And what ever am I to say to him?”

susan realizes that it would have been better for her to have not believed at all than to have truly believed and still chosen to ignore it, and she’s right. she recognizes the depth of her error and offense towards aslan; she realizes that her sin lies in not allowing herself to remember and believe in aslan’s goodness and presence. inside susan is a radiant, gentle queen beloved by aslan, but she chose to let go of that identity. she chose fear and doubt instead.

aslan echoes this in his greeting to susan, his beloved and chosen queen of narnia. he greets her siblings first: peter is bestowed the affection of “dear son”; edmund is praised in a manner reminiscent of the biblical “well done, my good and faithful servant”; lucy is celebrated as a lioness. susan, however, is greeted with her name.

Then, after an awful pause, the deep voice said, "Susan." Susan made no answer but the others thought she was crying.

"You have listened to fears, child," said Aslan. "Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?"

aslan gently exposes susan’s decision to listen to her fears and doubts, her conscious choice to forget her identity as a brave queen. his rebuke is not left to bruise her long; aslan knows that susan believed he was there, deep down, and he knows her heart. he calls her child, and offers to help her forget those fears that latched on to her as soon as she gave them room. “are you brave again?” aslan asks. do you remember who you are, beloved child, queen of narnia?

for the rest of the book, susan rests easy in her identity as queen, her identity as a dear one to aslan. we see that after the events of prince caspian, after aslan has told susan and peter they may not return to narnia - ostensibly giving them the same promise he gives lucy and edmund later, that they made know him even more deeply in their world - that susan soon falls into her same fears and doubts again. readers may ask why susan falls so quickly from her resolve to rest in her identity, and if she can so easily fall back into her old habits, how can she ever be redeemed? she seems doomed to chose fear over her true self, a queen dearly beloved to aslan, over and over again until it is all she has left.

in answer to these questions, i submit that susan is a st. peter archetype. over and over again in the bible, peter falls into doubt and fear about who he is and who jesus is. peter lived with jesus and learned from him; everything about jesus told peter that he was good and trustworthy and present. and yet, peter stumbles, again and again.

“Come,” Jesus said.

Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!”

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?” (Matthew 14:29-31)

this passage reads almost identically to the scene in prince caspian where susan, drowning in fear and doubt, is called by aslan to come near to him so that she may be chastised but immediately restored and saved from her fear. like peter, susan choses fear. like peter, susan choses to forget and deny the core of her identity.

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. And a servant girl came up to him and said, “You also were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I do not know what you mean.” (Matthew 26:69-70)

"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'" (The Last Battle)

again, the similarities are obvious: when asked to recall and claim jesus or aslan, peter and susan deny them in front of everyone who knows they’re lying. after peter realizes what he’s done, he weeps bitterly, and though we’re not given a glimpse at susan’s reaction, i think it’s safe to assume that she feels guilty and saddened by it too. susan knows deep down how loved she is by aslan and how eager he is to be reunited with her, but as she says in prince caspian, she can only know it if she allows herself to.

because susan is a st. peter archetype, all hope is not lost for her. indeed, her redemption story is beautiful and comforting. despite the times peter doubted jesus, gave into fear, and denied ever even knowing jesus at all, jesus still makes peter the foundation of the church. he still calls him beloved. he still extends the invitation to love and be loved, to be reconciled and to accept his glorious joy and responsibility. i believe that this reconciliation is extended to susan as well, after she loses her siblings and perhaps toward the end of her own life. aslan’s offer always stands, no matter how many times susan denies him: “come, forget your fears, grow brave again, know how much i love you. accept your crown again, along with everything it brings.”

i firmly believe that through all the similarities between susan’s story and st. peter’s, lewis intended for peter’s reconciliation and glorification in jesus to be indicative of susan’s reconciliation and glorification in aslan. as peter is forgiven and made the rock of jesus’ church, susan is forgiven and made queen of aslan’s country. the fact that this is not in the books makes it no less explicit, i think. susan’s story, and st. peter’s story, is remarkably like the story of many christians, and we would do well to remember who we are: kings and queens, brave and beloved, sons and daughters who can be the most glorious of beings if only we allow ourselves to.

#i wrote this mostly to get it off my chest but perhps i had some meaningful thoughts.... perhaps #i just have a lot of feelings about susan!!!!#susan pevensie #the problem of susan #c. s. lewis #st. peter #the chronicles of narnia #queen susan #maddie.txt #the susan essay #christianity #theology #maddie writes stuff!

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mst3kproject · 3 years

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Voodoo Island

Leonard Maltin thought this movie was boring, which is, honestly, kind of terrifying. Its ostensible star is Boris Karloff, who somehow managed to avoid ever being on MST3K, but it was produced by Howard Koch, the director of Untamed Youth, and was written by Richard Laundau, who did the same for Lost Continent (uhoh). It’s also got Jean Engstrom from The Space Children, and if the voice of the radio operator sounds familiar that’s because it’s 🎶 Adam Weeeeeest.

A hotel company wants to build a resort on a tropical island, but the scouting party they sent never came back – except for one guy, Mitchell, who has been reduced to a catatonic state by whatever it was he saw there. Worried, the hotelier sends renowned skeptic Mr. Knight to find out if it’s true that the island is under some kind of voodoo curse. After much wasting of the audience’s time, Knight’s party reaches the island and finds it infested with man-eating plants, coconut crabs, and unfriendly natives. I wish I could tell you more of the plot, but that’s basically all there is.

Voodoo Island is unusual as bad movies go, in that you don’t actually realize how bad it is until it’s over. Things that seem to be the plot move merrily along, always feeling like it’s building up to something cool… and then at the last moment it just deflates like a gas station tube man with his fan turned off. In hindsight, the audience realizes that very little of what they just saw had anything to do with what was supposedly going on. In many ways, you never do find out what was going on at all!

The middle section of this movie is not quite as obviously padded as Lost Continent with its endless rock climbing, but almost all of it is, retrospectively, pointless. On the first leg of their journey to the island, the party’s plane is caught in a storm and forced to make an emergency landing – only to find that the weather has mysteriously cleared right up! After repairing their radio they set off again, and nothing much comes of the incident. They stop on another island where they have trouble hiring a boat, and where somebody puts a curse of some sort on them. Nothing comes of this. Later still, their boat stalls out and refuses to start again, even after they’ve cleared a blocked fuel line. This has no real consequences, because the tide carries them in anyway, and the movie never deals with what happens when they try to leave the island again.

Along for the ride is Mitchell, the guy who was so terrified by what he saw on the island that he hasn’t moved or spoken since. He has a couple of medical emergencies that resolve themselves without long-term consequences, and then simply drops dead before they ever reach the island. They don’t learn anything from him or his condition. A similar fate later befalls another character, Finch, but this time the movie ends before he has a chance to either die or snap out of it. Mitchell is only in this movie to make it longer, and possibly so it could claim it had a zombie.

With the movie already half-over, we finally reach this mysterious island. The group are greeted by a trail of clues that make Knight thing somebody is trying to lead them somewhere… perhaps to answers, perhaps to a trap. Eventually they’re captured by the natives, but there’s no reason they had to be in a particular place for this to happen – the natives have been following them the whole time and could have intervened at any point. None of this stuff reads as padding because it feels like it’s going to lead to something. Again, it’s only when the credits unexpectedly start to roll that you realize almost the whole movie was irrelevant.

Padding is not Voodoo Island’s only problem – the dialogue is awkward at best. Most of it is on a Revenge of the Sith level, where characters just say exactly what they’re thinking in a way that might have sounded poetic on paper but just doesn’t work out loud. The boat captain, Gunn, gets a Gunslinger moment in which he narrates his traumatic backstory in a single talking head shot. Knight is forever going on about Rational Explanations and then suddenly declares his change of heart when confronted with a voodoo doll. There’s no meat to this arc at all, no sense of Knight questioning his worldview or coming to terms with anything – he just says I do believe! like he’s in a Santa Claus movie and then it’s over.

The worst of both the dialogue and the supposed character arcs occur in the love story. There are girls in this movie, so of course there has to be a love story, and it’s terrible. The lady half of this one is Knight’s assistant Miss Adams, who is very poised and professional and doesn’t smoke or drink, and spends the first half of the movie being tutted at by just about everybody. The other woman in the group, Claire, tells her she could just be so pretty if she’d only change the way she did her hair. Gunn calls her a ‘machine’ and asks if she even knows how to be a woman. This raises some hackles in the modern viewer, who wants to see Adams appreciated for what she is rather than what she has the potential to be if she changes everything about herself.

But Voodoo Island was made in the fifties, when changing yourself to please a man was what women aspired to! Miss Adams therefore swears off being a nerd and kisses Gunn, whose main personality trait is being a stunning asshole. He’s drunk and bitter, and earlier in the movie he tried to hit on Claire, who had to tell him to fuck off about four times before he got the idea. Later he insults and threatens Adams because her intelligence makes him feel like less of a man. Apparently one kiss from her completely undoes his PTSD and he’s a better person now.

These two getting together also totally dismisses the healthy and supportive friendship Adams has with Knight, who is not only her boss but has some fatherly affection for her. He praises her work ethic and tells her that she shouldn’t listen to people who think she’s boring. I guess we’re supposed to think it’s good that she quits working for him so she can run off with a drunk who’s threatened to slap her, because Gunn will make her life more exciting.

At the supposed climax, the natives (an assortment of ethnic-looking extras who never speak) take the group prisoner, and they are brought before the chief (a white guy in dark makeup), who tells them why outsiders aren’t allowed on the island. The prisoners are taken to a hut where they are tied up. One of them is possibly murdered by voodoo, and then the chief… just lets the rest of them leave. No conditions specified, although it’s implied that the islanders have more voodoo dolls and plenty of pins. We don’t even find out if they actually made it back. To get to their boat, the party will have to pass back through the carnivorous jungle without a guide, and once they reach the beach, they’ll have to fix their engine. It really feels like there ought to have been more of a climax, never mind a denouement. As the credits begin, I was just going, “that’s it?”

The actors are mostly mediocre. Boris Karloff tries really hard to rise above the material but never gets there, which is understandable when his lines are things like, “no, you fool, they’ll slaughter us to bits!”. All this badness really is a terrible shame, too, because Voodoo Island’s setpiece monsters, the man-eating plants, are actually incredibly cool. They never look real, but they’re much more creative than the standard giant Venus’ flytrap. There’s a thing that wraps long bean-like leaves around a swimmer and drowns her, another than catches its victims with a sticky bulbous stem, and yet a third that folds ferny fronds around prey and digests it! A movie that made proper use of these monsters would be a great time. I hope the prop people went on to the better things they deserved.

(At the other end of the effects scale are the coconut crabs I mentioned. These are not actual coconut crabs, but dead specimens of some other, much more gracile species. This, too, is unfortunate, because coconut crabs are living crustacean nightmares capable of killing and eating seagulls. One theory about Amelia Earhart’s ultimate fate is that she was devoured by coconut crabs.)

As for Voodoo Island having anything to say… it has some kind of muddled point about not dismissing the supernatural out of hand, but its ‘magic’ is pretty lame, and Knight’s arc is handled so badly that it passes by without making much of an impression. The story does seem to have another possible theme, though. As usual I can’t tell if this is intentional or not, but Voodoo Island seems to have something to say about concepts of ownership.

The hotelier has taken an interest in the island because he did an inventory of his properties and discovered he owned it. How he came to do so, we have no idea… it must have been sold to him by somebody else who’d likewise never been there, since the tribal chief tells us that Mitchell and his companions were the first white men to ever go there. What made that person think they owned it? Does the concept of ownership even mean anything when you don’t know that you own something? Does owning something entitle you to destroy it?

The natives own the island in the much less abstract sense that they live there. The chief tells the party that his people went to this island on purpose, because they thought its nasty flora would keep white people from following them there. They want no part of modern civilization, and seem completely unaware that somebody outside their community is claiming he owns this land. Whether the idea of ‘owning’ land is even a meaningful one to them, we can’t tell. When the Lenape allowed the Dutch to live on Manhattan Island, they probably had no idea the settlers would consider the land exclusively theirs.

These are some things that still need thinking about in the twenty-first century, and if you’re going to watch Voodoo Island do it for that and for the fun monsters. Even then, you’re likely to be disappointed.

#mst3k #reviews #episodes that never were #voodoo island #tw: abuse #humanitarian vegetables #50s

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angstidote · 4 years

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Shadowbringers Theory Time

FFXIV 5.2 spoilers below the cut, but like, THE IMPLICATIONS !!!

This is totally just a theory, but I feel like I have a good idea of what caused the end of Amaurot in the first place, the why of Zodiark and Hydaelyn, how the WoL is not in fact tempered as has been implied, why Emet-Selch felt justified in extending his faith to us, what Elidibus is working at with this seemingly empowering angle, and what we can expect to see in the upcoming story arc.

It’s a lot, I know, but hear me out:

So like, first off we know now that “the defector” was not part of summoning Zodiark OR Hydaelyn, and we’re pretty sure we were the defector because in Hythlodeus’s speech about that person, the gender of the 14th changes with your gender–implying he’s likely speaking of us. This means that WE were not necessarily tempered by Hydaelyn, because we were likely not there for her summoning in the first place:

We knew why the original convocation created Zodiark–to stop the world from self-destructing. But they have not yet explained why it was falling apart in the first place.

I’m seriously wondering if somewhere along the way someone realized that the source of the problem was the Amaurotians themselves. After all, we know that magic takes aether, and that the Amaurotians were crazy powerful mages. To not have made this connection themselves is totally unrealistic, given how advanced they were with regard to their knowledge of magic.

My theory is that they realized they were responsible, but no one wanted to admit that they were at fault. Or more than that, no one wanted to, well, stop using magic, so they started grasping at straws for what to do…and Zodiark was one such attempt. By giving the planet a will of its own they hoped that IT would moderate them as necessary, no muss no fuss.

However, to summon Zodiark took a tremendous amount of aether as we know, and after that he basically demanded that the Amaurotians pay the cost of any further large magic expenditures. My feeling is that they gave the star a will, but did so specifically so it would save itself. We know how sensitive creation magic was, so surely someone wrote this intention into it–but they probably didn’t realize what that implied for those who lived on the planet. Accordingly, it willed that people stop using its magic, and die en masse if that’s what it took.

We see only a part of the ancient ones’ conversation, but it seems like they knew this. If Zodiark stayed, eventually he was either going to kill everyone directly or allow them to kill themselves by sacrificing themselves for every expenditure:

Now, as for Emet-Selch–he made it seem like whatever was causing the end of days was a mystery, but he was one of the convocation members and he would have at least heard evidence for why Zodiark would and wouldn’t work.

It could be that the council had other reasons to believe Zodiark wouldn’t fix the problem–but considering Emet’s obvious and understandable adoration for his lost people, I’m wondering if perhaps time changed his perceptions of how the sacrificing of half the population went down in the first place.

It may not have been quite as voluntary as he remembers it–especially considering the populations of the 14 dimensions are made of the same souls as the ones who lived in Amaurot! He said as much himself. But given what we’ve seen in the comparison between us and Aldelbert, souls tend to live out their natural tendencies no matter how many times they’re rejoined. As the WoL we’re nearly half our original strength thanks to all the rejoinings, but Adelbert ran the same endless errand chains and then sacrificed everything just as we would, even though he had only 1/14th of our soul in him. This tells us that souls behave like themselves no matter how strong or weak they are.

By Emet’s estimation, the fragmented incarnations are weak and selfish and scared, but I’d put money on the fact that they were like that to begin with, and here’s why:

This was the theme of this whole expansion: selfless acts may be remembered as selfish. And I’m thinking this is likely a set up for the reverse being true as well (since all of Shadowbringers has been about the importance of understanding the other side of the story): that selfish acts can get mis-remembered as more selfless than they were.

Emet lauded the selflessness of Amaurotians being willing to sacrifice one half their community to save the other half. But if they were somehow to blame for what was happening–due to how much aether they were depleting from the earth itself by using their creation magics so much–their sacrifice may have been necessary just to stem the depletion causing the chaos.

Which is why Hydaelyn may have manifested the way she did. They probably realized that Zodiark got accidentally made to save himself at any cost, so they had to create a will of the planet that cared about its populace as much or more, to keep him in check. But knowing the source of the problem, they had to make her able to kill both birds with the same stone. By splitting everything up as she did, she both stemmed Zodiark’s power and also dramatically reduced everyone else’s power as well, which stopped the hemorrhaging of energy without everyone having to pay for it with their lives.

Note the distinct need for a permanent solution.

It sounds to me like they knew they would be dis-empowering everyone by summoning her. That everyone would be split into pieces and forced into the reincarnation cycle. Yet they seemed to feel like it was the only choice, given the circumstances–circumstances that Emet may have omitted from his 12,000 year old memory bank due to his conflicting desires to both save everyone and serve Zodiark faithfully.

Ultimately, it’s likely that he extended his olive branch to the WoL because he knew we were not involved in summoning Zodiark OR Hydaelyn, and that we genuinely cared about people no matter who they were--like he did. It’s implied that we were on good terms or even close to him before the sundering. But while we didn’t think Zodiark was a good plan, he went with it because he was desperate to save everyone. Just like Adelbert, he was manipulated into making a horrible mistake because his love was so blinding he couldn’t see what he was doing. That’s why he was able to convince you as Adelbert, and why he knew you (”that soul”) were worth trying to win over. He knew we were capable of hearing him (Adelbert already had) and of giving him a chance when no one else could.

Again, we see the idea that because love was the motivating factor for the crime, his selfish acts got mis-remembered by him as more selfless than they were. Instead of recognizing that Zodiark killed half the population, he just blindly believed on some level that they made the sacrifice voluntarily. And I’m sure this will come up in the story again because we already see it happening with all the guards of the Crystarium quitting “to be helpful” when it’s actually the opposite of helpful, because it leaves the city unguarded.

But back on the topic of Emet, he’s incredibly sympathetic to the scions--both eventually eliciting their respect as the story progressed, and subtly supporting them (for example, by bringing Y’shitola back from the life stream). You can tell he genuinely wants to see eye to eye, and not just for the purpose of manipulation. But as a result of his tempering he’s ultimately unable to separate his will from Zodiark’s. This made him the enemy of the Scions and ostensibly the WoL as well, something which has clearly tormented him ever since (after all, he clearly tried to make it work, as “he had children with us, grew old and died with us,” etc.) and has driven him to endlessly try to rejoin everything so we would all be on the same page again.

But in the end we couldn’t go with Zodiark for the same reason we couldn’t go with the idea in the first place–which is probably why he flew into a rage and remembered us as our Amaurotian selves. But despite this, Emet still died having placed his hopes for the future on us…his hopes that we would honor the lives that were lost in the ancients’ misguided attempts to save everyone. And I think this is significant because it tells us that on some level his love for his people overpowered his tempering.

Elidibus remarks that Emet didn’t have the stomach to do what was necessary to follow through on Zodiark’s orders. I suspect that Elidibus is indeed the Oracle of Darkness and equivalent in rank to Oracle Minfilia, and that as a result he agrees unyieldingly with Zodiark that people are the problem and are therefore irrelevant. Emet, on the other hand, did not feel this way. And though he was unable to act in opposition to Zodiark--having been tempered by him--it’s pretty clear that the only reason he supported summoning Zodiark at all was the one implied in his memories--he loved the people of Amaurot and wanted to save them. This is why all his memories of Amaurot are favorable, all the people kind and considerate and lovely...because that’s how he always perceived them. But this created a permanent splintering of his loyalties (which is tragic but cool in the sense that the title of Angel of Truth/Emet-Selch is associated with the sign Gemini).

Sorry, I got off topic there but I just really love Emet-Selch.

Anyway, as for the ancients we saw in the Anamnesis Anyder…I gotta assume we were looking at The Scions 1.0. Particularly with Venat being linked as Minfilia because of this little bit of data:

…and we know who consistently looks the same in all her incarnations on the first: the Oracle of Light. She’s probably talking to Thancred there, since he implores that anyone but her do it, then accepts her will even though he’s sad about it, which is…like, the story of Thancred’s life, the poor dude.

But I mean, what we’re seeing with Elidibus wandering around as Adelbert seems to be a new approach. To put it simply, if everyone awakens to their original power, they’ll all start draining the shards just as they did with the Source. Ultimately, this will bring about the same calamities everyone faced back in Amaurot and once again people will look for a savior…and maybe, just maybe, we’ll get the whole Zodiark thing this time (doubtful, bro, but you do you). After all, blind desire to help is exactly how he got created in the first place.

In the end, we may all find ourselves repeating the forgotten history.

This expansion is so freakin’ elegant. I’m just obsessed!

#ffxiv #5.2 spoilers #meta #theories #emet selch #i'm so in love with him i cannot continue living i'm sorry #ascians

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judesstfrancis · 4 years

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Hope you don’t mind me asking but you are well versed in horror films. What would you recommend as a good place to start for someone who is not comfortable with demons or jumpscares? (Ghosts are fine but there’s something about demons that really unsettle me for some reason) thanks!!!

I don’t mind at all!! honestly I love answering questions like these, I grew up with horror so I love helping other people figure out what they might like.

before I start, I do wanna note that jumpscares have a very broad, kinda vague definition. it really all depends on your personal sensitivity! so while some of these movies have scenes that are technically labeled as jumpscares, they may not actually read like that onscreen. a good resource I think is wheresthejump.com, and I’ll be providing links for each movie that has a profile on the website. regardless, I’ll make sure to only rec movies that I don’t consider to have blatant jumpscares and that only have minor jumpscare ratings on the site. and bc I’ll be linking you to the profiles directly, you’ll be able to decide for yourself if it’s something you want to actually consume. the profiles will both describe what the jumpscares are, how major or minor they are, and the exact time stamps they occur at. if the movie doesn’t have a profile on the website, u should ostensibly be safe!

here we go!

my personal first introduction to horror was the lost boys (1987) and I cannot recommend it enough. really classic 80s horror, vampires, extremely Gender and extremely Homosexual Subtext. a young boy and his family move to santa carla and his older brother accidentally gets turned into a vampire bc he’s trying to impress the local hot boys! he’s technically trying to impress literally the only woman his age in the movie, but look. the vampire men look Like That, he was trying to impress the local hot boys. (no profile on wheresthejump)

I also have to rec scream (1996) bc it is my absolute favorite horror film. this movie is like a really classic teen slasher but, and I’m sure u already know what I’m about to say if you’ve followed this blog for more than 24 hours, it is full of incredible twists. absolutely deconstructed the entire slasher subgenre and is the reason the Film Nerd Who Knows Everything About Horror trope was popularized. it absolutely does not take itself seriously and there’s a lot of outside references to other horror projects the director was involved in and honestly that’s what makes it genius. it thinks its a joke! it treats itself like a joke, but it’s not. also sidney prescott is like THE horror franchise frontwoman, thank u miss neve campbell (wheresthejump profile)

okay other recs that I’m hopefully gonna not talk as long about since I’m trying not to make this Super Long:

us (2019) everything jordan peele has ever done, horror wise, is a masterpiece. the man simply knows what he’s doing. this one has a family vacation gone wrong, dopplegangers, and an overall amazing narrative. (wheresthejump profile)

van helsing (2004) this may perhaps be way too cheesy to label as a horror movie but look I love it and it’s been a favorite of mine for a very long time so I’m including it. hugh jackman plays van helsing! real fun vampire hunting. (wheresthejump profile)

when a stranger calls (1979) the call is coming from inside the house! your classic babysitter horror but like. it was the Blueprint for classic babysitter horror, u know? absolutely amazing, one of my favorites. (wheresthejump profile)

the raven (2012) one of my favorite movies, even outside of horror! it’s actually labeled as a crime mystery/thriller but we all know how I feel about thrillers being horror. also it’s a serial killer so like. horror film. anyway it’s based on edgar allan poe and he has to help solve murders based on his own stories! really neat premise! (no profile on wheresthejump)

coraline (2009) technically marketed as a fantasy kid’s film but look shit is SCARY. I watched it for the first time when I was 18 and I was spooked. really cool kinda adventure-y thing where she finds a portal to an alternate universe and hangs out with her Other Family and has fun initially but then things get Weird. (no profile on wheresthejump)

don’t look under the bed (1999) this shit was apparently so scary that disney had to take it off the air for a Very Long Time after it was first released on the channel. what happens when u forget your imaginary friends? apparently boogeymen! one of my absolute favorite movies in the entire world, I was always so excited when it actually was on tv (no profile on wheresthejump)

lady in white (1988) ghosts! this one’s just really neat. narrated story about a little boy in the 60s who sees a murder and gets haunted afterwards. but like in a cool way!! he helps the ghosts it's neat (no profile on wheresthejump) (no demons)

the frighteners (1996) another favorite of mine that I just love to death. this one’s part comedy! michael j fox gets into a car accident that kills his wife and can talk to spirits after that so he makes friends with them to stage hauntings and scam people out of money by pretending to get rid of them. things get wild tho when he finds an evil ghost pretending to be the grim reaper that is actually the ghost of a serial killer from however long ago and is now marking victims to kill them later. (no profile on wheresthejump) (evil spirits but no demons, it is very clear that he is just a regular, human serial murderer turned ghost)

hope this was helpful! I tried to give a good little sample mix of some of my favorites that weren’t Too Gross and didn’t rely on just blaring loud music and shoving a scary picture in your face for no reason. overall I’d say probably creature features and slashers might be your best bet for avoiding jumpscares and demonic narratives? older movies as well will rely on jumpscares less so that’s something to keep in mind. if you’re ever unsure, make sure to use wheresthejump.com for descriptions/time stamps/ratings of jumpscares and check out doesthedogdie.com as well! doesthedogdie originated to warn about animal death in horror, but it has a wide array of phobias and potential triggers that it tracks too, so it’s good for a number of things.

also delving into horror that’s marketed for kids slaps. there’s a lot less possibility that it’s gonna be gross just for the sake of it and those usually don’t have jumpscares. they’re also a lot more creative! it’s why I added coraline and don’t look under the bed to the list, I truly just think horror that’s marketed for children is amazing bc it doesn’t have the ability to rely on tired, cheap gimmicks to get their scares. I hope this doesn’t come off as me being like patronizing or anything bc I truly am being genuine, like as a fan of the genre I just love children’s horror. I recommend that everyone checks it out bc it is absolutely unparalleled, so like definitely delve into that a little, too.

#thanks for asking!!! hmu if u have more questions or anything #long post #asks #anon #horror tag

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martykatewrites · 3 years

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The Mummy

Tomb robbing has been a tradition in Egypt since time immemorial. Not just the tombs in the Valley of the Kings or the Pyramids, even the tombs of the pre-dynastic rulers fell victim, much to the dismay of archaeologists who found them empty. Only Tutankhamen's contained most of its contents and there was evidence that the tomb had been broken into.

The sentences for robbing the pharaohs' graves were harsh and carried out without mercy. No wonder some resorted to dropping their plundered treasures when they heard the sound of the guards at their heels. Some loot was retrieved by the guards but some enterprising thieves were able to hide their spoils with the intention of returning at a later date to retrieve them. Some did, but archaeologists theorized that hidden in the valley lay caches of precious materials that had lain untouched for centuries. All that remained was finding the way to bring them to light.

Archaeologists occasionally stumbled onto these caches, not realizing what they had found. It wasn't until Carter found five gold rings tied up in a scarf that thieves had dropped that it became evident that some loot was either deliberately or inadvertently left behind.

It was thought that such caches were exclusive to the Valley of the Kings until a stash of jewelry and unguents was found in the lost workers' village of Deir el Medina. The village had been walled and was guarded night and day by the guards of the Valley, the Medjay would search each worker as they entered and exited the village. But the prospect of ill-gotten gold surely had tempted the guards just as easily as it tempted the workers who were responsible for placing the dead pharaohs grave goods into their tombs.

Though the theory was widely dismissed, certain archaeologists gave it credence, it was more than likely than the stolen treasures did not all make it to their destinations. Perhaps of necessity it had been dropped or hidden, but some surely had been deliberately stashed away in the hopes of the thief finding a better price. The most likely recipients of the goods had been the priests or the officials in charge of the valley.

After much research, Professor Thomas Wilkes-Emberly believed that the caches not only existed, but he believed he had stumbled upon one and was convinced there were more to be found if one was only patient enough to take the time to look.

Ostensibly he was an expert on identifying royal mummies, one cache having been found near the village of Qurna and guarded and exploited by the infamous Rassul family, and the other in the tomb of Amenhotep II. Every king of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasty was accounted for, save one, but there were unknown bodies also laying in the tomb. Wilkes-Emberly was not so sure that all the kings were correctly identified, all he could do was assist the Egyptian authorities in arranging them in a display in the Egyptian Museum.

His daughter, Roma, was his assistant and right-hand man. She had obtained a masters in Egyptology at the Sorbonne in Paris and was hoping to publish the history of her and her father's work over the years and obtain her doctorate. She was fluent in several languages besides her native English and could converse in fluent Arabic and French which helped greatly in her father's dealing with the head of antiquities. She could read heiroglyphics and heiratic, as well as ancient Greek and Latin.

She had grown up in Egypt, along with her father and mother. When her mother died during a cholera epidemic, she had accompanied her body to France and stayed with relatives for a few years, attending a Jesuit school in Paris. At her father's request she had returned to Egypt and worked with him until it was time for her to enter the Sorbonne at the request of her mother's family.

He couldn't have asked for a better partner. She got along well with the diggers, knew their families and the names of their wives and children. It was she who decided that they were badly underpaid and insisted that her father pay them a fair wage, resulting in his having the best diggers in Egypt.

He could not do without her but he had begun to worry for her. Roma was a lovely young woman but she had cut her hair fashionably, though shockingly, short and he did not remember the last time he had seen her in a dress. She had recently turned twenty-five and he was beginning to grow nostalgic over the thought of grandchildren, but she had had only one brief romance with an official at the museum, and he had been Egyptian.

Roma thought there was nothing wrong with her life, she was doing what she loved best. If there were one thorn in her side it was Ardeth-Bey, a member of the Bedoin tribe who often did work for her father. Ardeth was the son of the tribe's sheikh and clearly thought she was above herself. She remembered the day she came to the camp with her newly shorn hair and the look of outrage on his face at what she had done.

It was bad enough, in Ardeth's opinion, that she dressed like a man, supervised the workers as if it were her right, but now when she should be married and having children—the sacred duty of a woman—she showed no inclination. She was a hard worker and of much help to her father, but it was time she outgrew her hoydenish ways.

"He fancies you, you know," her father had told her, "But he knows of no other way to show it."

"Ha!" she replied, "He fancies only himself. Just wait, in a few years he'll have his four wives allowed by the Quran and lord it over them which he could never do to me. He resents the fact that I am a liberated woman and I do exactly as I like. That does not suit Ardeth-Bey at all, and he'll become even more unbearable when he succeeds his father as sheikh."

She had taken the boat to Cairo to obtain the concession for her father to continue digging in Deir El Medina. They had wanted to obtain permission to dig in the Valley of the Kings but Howard Carter had somehow managed to tie it up yet again. She had heard strange rumors about Carter and his patron Lord Carnarvon. They had been digging in the valley for six years with no results, and it was rumored that Carnarvon had wanted to quit. Carter had offered to fund the excavation himself but out of friendship Carnarvon had insisted on paying for this one last season.

Rumors had drifted up to the worker's village. The diggers were expected to be tight lipped about their employers but she had heard that Carter had indeed found something. Some steps had been discovered and now gossip was spreading about how they had found a sealed door and were in the process of clearing a corridor.

She didn't like Carter; he was a cold unfriendly man but under the tutelage of Flinders Petrie had become a more than competent archaeologist. It was highly likely that he had found a tomb, and if he had she wished him well. He had worked seven years for this, and if he had found the long-lost tomb of Tutankhamen that he sought, more power to him.

After obtaining her father's concession she spent the day wandering around Cairo. The lines to the museum were long but whenever she visited Cairo she always went to the museum, the market, and the Coptic church. After that she would go to their Cairo residence to determine that the servants were keeping it cleaned and aired out for when she and her father returned after digging season. She would spend the night in her room then catch the boat back to Luxor.

She never tired of taking the boat up and down the Nile. She loved to watch the feluccas skimming their way across the Nile. There were birds and the occasional crocodile or even hippo if she was lucky. Fishermen would toss their nets, an enterprising boatman or two would ferry tourists. The Nile was a thing alive and full of wonder.

She was tired when she reached their house in Luxor. "Father, I have it, we're cleared to dig for next year," she called but he did not answer. "Father?" she asked, then heard voices outside on the patio.

#the mummy #Egypt #Rick O'Connell #Evelyn Carnahan #Valley of the Kings #Cairo #Luxor #Ardeth-bey #Nile #Villa #mummy #curse

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firstpuffin · 5 years

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Smitten with the concept, not with the execution.

I want to start things off with a question: have you ever been invested in something, a television show, movie, video game or other, and not known why? Something like “this is boring, why do I continue with it?” I absolutely do and want to explore this with you.

See, I have a whole shed-load of things that I “enjoy” despite the execution not being to my taste. The horror video game series “Five Nights at Freddie’s” is not at all my normal cup of tea, the final chapters of the pseudo-horror game “Bendy and the Ink Machine” were disappointing and sci-fi game “Nier: Automata” is not what I like in my gameplay; but I bloody love them.

Same with the “The Flash” television show, the “RWBY” web-animation and even the “Star Wars” universe as a whole. I continue to persist with The Flash despite being pretty sure that my brother dreads my running commentary of its flaws every week; I may not keep up with it but I do eventually catch up with RWBY despite its execution being…lacking, and I feel that nothing in the Star Wars franchise quite lives up to what exists in my head, although it stands head, shoulder and even waist above the others in this paragraph. So why do I keep up with these stories that I apparently can’t talk badly enough about?

Cause I do love them.

As the title says, I love the concepts behind these stories. Five Nights at Freddie’s (frequently shortened to FNAF because, let’s face it, the title is a pain) is a game where you do the same few things again and again, all to try and prevent being scared; the gameplay is far too tedious for me to play myself and honestly, I’m too much of a coward to actually do so. But the lore woven into the games has captured my heart: murdered childrens’ souls stuck in animatronic bodies that are protective of other children and incredibly violent to adults? It’s so sad, largely because it’s so terrifying and there is more added to the story with each game, cumulating in a sad tale that actually doesn’t quite compare to that in my head (although put that down to preference). It captured my heart, and more importantly my mind.

Bendy and the Ink Machine starts with a man returning to the animation studio where he used to work, where he helped to bring to life the game’s equivalent of Mickey Mouse (the titular Bendy) only to find that Bendy may have literally been brought to life by ink and madness (and magic). The game is beautifully unique in its design, with backgrounds and items and everything seemingly having been hand-drawn. There are tapes to be found that tell the individual stories of animators, voice actors and even caretakers who were caught up in the chaos, tapes to be collected while avoiding the demonic and malformed beast that was supposed to be Bendy.

I’ll be brief with Nier: Automata, but this beautiful game with beautiful music explores ideas of machines and emotions and life, at least within my own mind (I never finished watching someone else play the game so I can’t say for sure). The Flash had my heart from the beginning, all through the boring soap opera drama and plot contrivances, just because I love the concept behind the world that it was set in. RWBY is much the same, although it didn’t have me from the beginning; there are little details in RWBY that could become something amazing, but that are unfortunately overshadowed by poor dialogue, trite characters and unfulfilling season-long “stories”.

And you all at least know vaguely about Star Wars, but it’s the idea of the prequel’s Jedi Order that has me enthralled. I love the idea of an order of warriors, so feared for their combat prowess that they don’t actually need to fight; warriors who could kill you with a telekinetic thought and yet refuse to on principle, yet have enemies who share this power but without the same scruples. And Lightsabers. Lightsabers are cool.

There is so much to love about Star Wars that unfortunately a lot of the media never seems to embrace, instead erring on the side of convenience.

As an aspiring author I find all of this fascinating. FNAF and Nier Automata are examples of fascinating stories locked behind gameplay that I’m not interested in, although in the case of the former I do believe that the head-cannon that I developed was actually better than the real story (both of which I have forgotten by now). Nier Automata’s story may be better than my own ideas but as I said, I never finished watching the story.

Bendy, Flash, RWBY and Star Wars are cases of poor execution though. Spread over five chapters, Bendy started strong but lost what it was that made the early chapters good, going from tense atmosphere to just hit everything with a pipe. The Flash tv show is a victim to its medium: it’s meant to be something for people to watch as they relax in the afternoon with drama, relationships and just a hint of excitement; it was never meant to be a superhero show like the early seasons of Arrow and they are so focused on what I just mentioned that they didn’t put the same effort into being consistent or even all that compelling to someone like me. Not saying that I’m a higher quality viewer, just that I want different things.

RWBY is a real disappointment to me though, with the most important flaw being the forced climaxes without any real story. I’m not interested in the action when the season doesn’t seem to have led up to it and the best thing I can say for it is that each finale at least feels like a mid-season finale. But I will give it this: season three started (started) to change this for the better.

Finally, Star Wars (primarily the cartoons) is a problem because it ignores its own rules. Jedi are supposed to be reverent towards the Force, not using it trivially and never to injure; watch any Star Wars cartoon that follows the Jedi and you will see them regularly and callously attacking with the Force. Another weakness would be the lack of rules regulating the Force.

Any good magic/superpower system has rules or else there is nothing it can’t do and it would seem that there is nothing the Force can’t do. So, if the Jedi apparently don’t follow their own rules on using the Force then what’s the point of lightsabers other than as a symbol? They could crush armies with a wave of the hand; weapons can be torn out of one’s grip and enemy Jedi thrown through walls.

Imagine a completely independent group who are such capable warriors that they never need to fight. They stroll forward and armies give up. So much can be done with a concept like this and to a writer like myself I would love to have free reign with it.

And that’s that. So what would I do with these series if I had the power? FNAF is a hard one for me to give suggestions for because as I said, I’ve forgotten, but Bendy and the Ink Machine is easier. As I said the later parts became an action game with fetch quests that nobody asked for, so get rid of the quests, reduce the enemies and retain the disconcerting atmosphere. I’m not asking for anything the creators haven’t proven themselves capable of. Nier is another one that’s hard to give suggestions for as, as I said, I don’t yet know the whole story; what I can say is that it’s the androids and the possible exploration of their humanity (and why they are designed to be so- and I can’t believe I’m using this word- “thicc”) that has me so fascinated.

The Flash is a victim to its audience so rather than an improvement, I’ll mention what I’d like to see instead: a superhero show. This may seem like an odd thing to say about what is ostensibly a superhero show but it’s really more of a soap opera (which, btw, got it’s name from radio operas being sponsored by soap manufacturers); a real superhero show wouldn’t defeat the best one episode villain yet off camera while instead focusing on character relationships. I mean, way to give a side-character the chance to prove themselves, but at least let us see it. RWBY needs to either give up the idea of series long storylines and slowly build a larger story up, or to better plan each series so that it naturally leads to a climax.

And finally, Star Wars needs to set and explain the limitations of the Force; doesn’t need to tell us everything, just what it can’t do or if there are means of defending against it. If a Force user can block another Force user, then we need to know that so we don’t just complain about Jedi battles not being who can put the other through a wall first. And finally, I’d love to see people treat the Jedi appropriately, with respect and fear.

So that’s it. I love these stories for what I think they could be, but what they are honestly puts me off. It’s a shame, but as an (aspiring) author I’m hoping that I can somehow use these as inspiration for my own (and most importantly unique) stories.

-Note= And no, inspired by does not mean ripped off; break any story down to its bare bones and it will look identical to (and stolen from) almost every other story.

#first puffin #opinion #web series #rwby #television #dc television universe #the flash #cartoon #star wars #movies #video games #fnaf #five nights at freddy's #nier automata #bendy and the ink machine #fiction #stories #storytelling #thosetagswilldofornow

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aboutcaseyaffleck · 3 years

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Casey Affleck Gets Philosophical About Life, Time & The Whole Damn Thing

“Time,” reflects Casey Affleck, “is something I have been thinking about lately. It is ironic how the older you get, the better you are at being patient. With less time left, people become better at waiting. But this year, I feel much older and a lot less patient. I guess you’ve got to accept that time is never wasted? That doing is no different than not doing? That you can’t kill time no matter what you do, and that no matter what you do you can’t prevent the opposite from happening either? I don’t know. It’s a double-edged sword.”

It’s a Wednesday afternoon in early January, and Affleck and I are doing the Zoom thing, ostensibly to discuss his two new movies, the recently released indie Our Friend and the upcoming 19th-century period drama The World to Come. Yet our virtual tête-à-tête has become far more interesting, jumping wildly from his love of trains and travel to weightier topics like family, the future and the search for something more, something meaningful.

“I like the idea that time is an illusion. That past, present and future are all happening at once. I like it even though I can’t totally get my head around it. But either way, the me in the mirror gets older every day.”

Like most of us, he’s not only had plenty of time on his hands in recent months, housebound in L.A., but he’s tried to use his downtime wisely. “I tried to use this year of quarantine constructively,” the 45-year-old Oscar winner says. “I tried to see it as a winter season for shutting down and restoring something inside, but I just couldn’t. I’m not that evolved, I guess. I didn’t take up a new hobby or learn an instrument or get better at ‘self-care.’ If anything, I let my better habits and routines fall off. It was all I could do to keep my head above water and help buoy my friends and children when I could.”

As a guy with two teenagers at home — Indiana, 16, and Atticus, 13 — it hasn’t been easy, but he’s doing his best. He tried taking his sons on their annual camping road trip over the summer, but it was short-lived. Instead, he’s been focusing on making a happy home. “My kids don’t get to see their friends a lot, so I’m doing a lot more stuff with them, coming up with activities for the three of us, which they mostly hate, and I mostly let drop. And then I try again with the same outcome 90 percent of the time.”

While trying to create innovative plans to sustain his boys, he came up with one he thought might do some good, too. In June, he launched Stories from Tomorrow, a social-media initiative focused on creative writing by kids.

“At the beginning of all this last March, the first thing that occurred to me was that the quarantine would have a big impact on young people’s emotional well-being — the disruption they’re going to feel is really going to affect their mental health more than anyone else,” he says. “When I would sit down to write creatively, I felt better. But I couldn’t get my sons to journal or do creative writing much. I didn’t want to twist their arms about it. So I was like, ‘I’ll make a social media platform that inspires young people to write creatively, because it is such a good way of working out difficult feelings. And the way I will do that is have well-known people read the kids’ writing publicly.’ I knew that hearing your own writing read was exciting. I thought it would be really inspiring, that creative writing would be a great outlet for kids stuck at home.”

He enlisted some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including Robert Redford, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Jon Hamm, Matthew Broderick, Kyle Chandler and Danny Glover, as well as two current costars, Vanessa Kirby and Jason Segel, and arranged for donations made through the program to go to children’s hunger nonprofit Feeding America and Room to Read, which supports female education. He reached out to schools in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Haiti, hoping to create a global community.

Affleck was excited to make progress, to have done some good, but the initiative didn’t take off as planned. “In the end, an Instagram account for creative writing by tweens just couldn’t possibly compete with the quintillion bytes of daily data generated online. I don’t know. But I tried! And anyway, since then lots of other organizations started doing basically the same thing, and they are more organized than I am, and they have done a better job. So be it.”

Yet, adults have been disrupted, too, including Affleck himself, who is aware that, relatively speaking, he has gotten through mostly unscathed. “Am I happy? I mean, I’m relatively okay. It’s been a hard time to find balance and to keep it. I would say it’s been a hard time in my life, but I know that it’s been harder for other folks. So far we haven’t lost anyone, and we haven’t lost our house. And I rediscovered that when you’re feeling bad, there’s nothing better to do than to try to help other people. Being of service not only helps others but is a great way of getting outside of yourself. Also — and I really believe this — I think this time will be remembered as one when our country made leaps and bounds in the right direction; we are changing and growing and it’s uncomfortable, but we will be much, much better. I wish I could see the next couple hundred years. It’s going to be amazing.”

At the end of the day, it’s family that’s keeping him going. “Having my kids around and being able to spend so much time with them has been amazing. It is the brightest silver lining in all of this. They are what gives me the most joy. They are funny and smart and interesting and interested. They are just the best company ever,” he says. “Anytime I try to parent out some ‘teaching moment,’ I find they are two steps ahead. They help me make sense of stuff just as much I help them, if not more. I don’t have any answers, but batting the questions around, back and forth, is a good way of coping.”

CALEB CASEY MCGUIRE AFFLECK-BOLDT feels he is luckier than most. Although he and many of his peers have gone jobless for a full year, he spent 2019 working hard. He had not one but three films done and dusted prior to the start of the pandemic; the last one wrapped a week before mandatory quarantine. Two of these have back-to-back release dates: the tearjerker indie Our Friend came out in January, and sweeping period drama The World to Come will be released February 12. Thriller Every Breath You Take is slated for later this year. “I am so, so, so glad I spent 2019 working that much. It is what kept us afloat all through 2020,” he says.

The films themselves are radically different, but there are a few common threads. In both of his winter releases, Affleck plays a man who has lost a family member and whose marriage is in shambles. In both, he is a man in pain.

In the LGBTQ masterpiece The World to Come, which revolves around the love that blossoms between two married women on the mid-19th-century American frontier, his character, Dyer, says very little but manages to convey a wealth of emotion with his eyes alone. He may seem stoic, but he is suffering.

“The World to Come is a story about a couple who have lost a baby. They’re dealing with the grief in totally different ways and having a very hard time coming together again,” he explains. “My character wants to heal that by having another, but his wife [played by Katherine Waterson] is coping in a different way. She is severing all emotional attachment to him because it triggers more and more grief. She [only] seems to come alive when she is with their neighbor, a woman on the next farm [played by Vanessa Kirby]. He wants his wife happy, but he also would like her to love him. To me, this is the story of how couples can have their relationship shattered by a sudden loss. And it’s definitely a beautiful story about two women who feel that they have to hide their love and find the courage to love each other anyway.”

Affleck likes layers. He himself has many, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s drawn to roles written as fully formed characters, not caricatures. With Dyer, that’s abundantly clear. “Crisis is fun to play, [and Dyer] is in an interesting crisis,” he says. “I think he’s a really good person — a really decent, solid, loving person — which is what I loved so much about playing him and what I love so much about the writing. It’s more interesting when there’s no bad guy, just a conflict of circumstances and feelings that get so complicated that it drives two people apart.”

In Our Friend, a different set of circumstances drives the leads apart. Affleck and Dakota Johnson take on the true story of Matthew and Nicole Teague, whose imperfect marriage was strained by his long absences and her affair, neither of which seem at all important when she’s diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“To me, Our Friend is really a story about how petty grievances between people can divide them and then be forgotten when a gigantic tragedy is dropped in their laps. [Matthew] was wronged, it’s true — his wife cheated on him. On the other hand, he wronged her in a bunch of ways; [they] were just more passive and not quite so salacious. He wasn’t around. Matt got to be a dad and he got to travel the world as a journalist. He left her to take care of the kids. She wanted to have a life too, she had dreams of her own — she wanted to be a singer, she wanted to work — but she didn’t get to do that. She just got to be a mom. She was left holding the bag, and it wasn’t fair.”

He spent a fair amount of time immersing himself in the journalist’s life while filming in Fairhope, Ala., in 2019. (The film’s title is taken from Teague’s award-winning Esquire essay, “The Friend: Love Is Not a Big Enough Word.” The friend in question — played by Jason Segel — is a man who puts his life on hold to help the family during their darkest days.) But he did not become Matt Teague, which is an important distinction. “[Director] Gabriella Cowperthwaite asked that we not portray the personality traits of the real people. No accents, no mannerisms. [But] I did steal his style, because I had never seen someone nail the dad look any better than Matt. I say that with affection.”

As for the dreams Nicole gave up for her family, Affleck says, “If you were to ask Matt, I’m sure he would acknowledge that he was neglecting his role. He was neglecting her dreams, and that is a part of marriage, supporting what the other person wants. Like all relationships, it was complicated.”

Like life itself, really. This is why he can identify with both sides. He understands Nicole’s pain about the deference of her dreams as well as Matt’s desire to escape through travel — especially now, when Affleck himself has been completely grounded. Since the age of 17 he’s taken 20 cross-country road trips. His love of driving is secondary only to his enthusiasm for trains: Amtrak is his jam. He even fantasizes about owning his own train car one day.

Immersing himself in each location — whether it’s the sleepy Alabama town of Fairhope or the more exotic locale of Romania, which served as a stand-in for the East Coast of the U.S. in The World to Come — is actually one of the most desirable parts of the acting life, he says. “One of the things I love about working as an actor is that you go to some brand-new place and the community invites you in in a way that they don’t usually if you’re a tourist,” he confides. “You get to see what it’s like to really be there and imagine yourself living there.”

And he has — over the past ten years he’s spent so much time in cities including his hometown of Boston; Vancouver, British Columbia, the location of Light of My Life; Atlanta, where he shot the 2016 action flick Triple 9; Argentina, where he made Gerry; Dallas, for A Ghost Story; Calgary, Alberta, where much of the epic western The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was filmed; Our Friend’s Fairhope set; Cincinnati, for The Old Man and the Gun; and Braddock, Pa., where he filmed the 2013 drama Out of the Furnace. “I have loved moving in and settling down and living a character’s life and then moving on. But I feel most at home in places that are struggling to get by. It reminds me of the neighborhood I grew up in. I feel lighter in those places, more relaxed. I feel like myself. I fit in.”

For him, the where is almost as important as the who — immersing himself in the place is imperative to understanding his character. This is part of what makes him such an accomplished actor — he and most of the parts he plays merge. I draw a crappy analogy about how the characters are like a coat, which he very obligingly works with. “You have to build the coat from all of the scraps and pieces of yourself; all these characters are made up of little pieces of me,” he says, noting, “Obviously, sometimes they can’t be. Sometimes I have no connection whatsoever, and those are the jobs I look back on and I either feel nothing for, or worse. But sometimes you have to take the job that is available, like most people in the world. You know? I don’t think my dad wanted to be a janitor. But he did it.”

He’s won an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Critics’ Choice Award, a Golden Globe and an Independent Spirit Award, among others, and appeared in films that run the gamut from box-office juggernauts like the Ocean’s 11 franchise and Tower Heist to indie darlings like brother Ben’s directorial debut Gone Baby Gone and Manchester by the Sea. He has even written and directed, most recently 2019’s Light of My Life, a bizarrely prescient movie about raising children in a pandemic. At this point in his career, he should have his pick of parts. “Not really,” he says. “There are a lot of people out there who have done good work, who are driven, and who have something to share. I have never been someone studios embraced as a ‘movie star,’ never knighted. I have always had to fight for the parts I have gotten. And you know what? That’s fine. Let me fight. It’s how I cut my teeth, and it is how I will keep them sharp. You can’t ask for more than a chance to be in the ring. Also, movies and TV aren’t all I care about. Sometimes I think, ‘Well, jeez, I have to work, and there are two jobs available to me, and the one that isn’t as good is the one that is close to home and I can see the kids, so I guess I am doing that.’ I love movies and really try hard to make them good. I really bust my ass every day when I get the chance to make one. I care more about my family than any movie. It’s not [always] the job I love, but this is the reality of my life. But maybe life will be long enough for a few more chapters.

The forward momentum of his future is an interesting topic. At the moment, he isn’t so much planning for the future as he is exploring it, because Affleck is not someone who likes to live with regret.

“I guess [at the end of the day], regret should be reframed as a reminder to be different,” he observes. And so, with this in mind, he embarked on a personal journey several years ago and decided to go back to college (at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia). He had completed two years at Columbia University, but he never graduated — his film career kept getting in the way.

“I went back to school because I hadn’t finished, and I wanted to think about new things in a way that school can help you do,” he says. “I couldn’t go in person, so I found a strong online school and got started. You know, I’m 45, and I just thought, ’This is halftime. This is where you hit the locker room and think about how you want the rest of the game to go.’ You know what I mean? Like, ‘Okay, we went out, we played our best, we didn’t know what the other team was going to be like, we made some mistakes, we are in the game, so let’s adjust like this.’ Also, I’m not sure I want to be an actor forever. I had made a small pivot from acting into directing, and into producing more. And I like to direct movies. The most satisfying creative experience I’ve had in a long time was being a director. But ultimately it wasn’t quite enough. So I wanted to go study some of the things I was interested in. I wanted to do more with my life.”

Although he needed general credits to graduate, he found an unexpected passion for juvenile justice along the way, with a particular focus on alternative accountability programs. “I don’t know where this will lead me, or why I am so interested in it, but finding and implementing better systems for addressing harm and conflict among kids, adults too, but mostly young people, is something I care about. And the work that I have done so far has been fascinating and deeply rewarding.”

When I ask if this stems from his own experiences as a troubled kid growing up in Cambridge, Mass., with Christine, a single mom — his parents divorced when he was 9; his father, Timothy, an alcoholic tradesman, checked into a rehab facility in Indio, Calif., when Affleck was just 14 — he muses thoughtfully, “I love my parents and think they both did the very best they could and cared a lot. Period. Did I get into some trouble as a teenager? I got into some trouble when I was a kid, and I struggled a lot through high school with depression and substances, yes. Much of it I didn’t even know wasn’t normal. I don’t know if I was ‘troubled.’ Either way, as an adult, I’ve come to see that, regardless of how I compare to anyone else, I want less conflict in my life. That might be part of the reason why I’ve been so interested in learning about better ways of resolving conflicts, both with children and with grown-ups. It isn’t something they teach in school for some reason. Man, there is a lot they don’t teach you in school, huh? A lot you’ve got to learn on your own.”

And on this journey, mistakes will be made. That’s par for the course, and Affleck is no exception. “I have made so many mistakes, but life is the time for mistakes. I do believe people should hold themselves accountable and repair harm they have caused. That is important to me, and I try hard to do that whenever it is called for: apologize for mistakes and repair them,” he admits.

This is when our conversation, as such conversations are wont to do, comes full circle. Before we say goodbye, Affleck remarks, “You know, I heard Bono talking on Howard Stern’s show, and he said something about Frank Sinatra that was interesting. He said that he heard two versions of Frank singing ‘My Way.’ One version was recorded when Frank was young, and the other version was recorded when Frank was old. Each had the exact same words, same arrangement, same everything. But when Frank was young the line ‘I did it my way’ sounded proud, and when Frank was old it sounded humble. Whatever else time does to a person, I think it also does that.”

[source]

#casey affleck #interview #photoshoot #photo #quote

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teamoliv-archive · 4 years

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Cutscene: The Consecration

Onyx lost count on how long he had spent pouring over these letters between his mother and grandfather. The more he read them, the more he had felt that he had been lied to. He tried to focus on the ones that pertained to the time he came into the Cheshire household and the years following. There were talks of what were to become of him after being given to them by Leroux, ostensibly to be a spy alongside Ivory. This, of course, hadn’t happened. He had been raised as one of their own children. It was never a warm household, he knew, but something still felt off.

Tyrael’s words, words he repeated more than once during their less civil encounters, still bothered him. Your mother loved you.

Why was he demanding confirmation of this? He had been scouring these letters for something, anything positive or warm concerning him. Nothing. He refused to believe that even as harsh a man as Dunstan Baskerville was, his own daughter would lie or cover up her feelings in these letters. Nothing else about them seemed like she did. Still, it was all about how useful he would be and how damaging the situation would be to Jade’s plans. Jade Leroux was dead now, so was Cassandra Cheshire. It didn’t matter anymore, did it? But what did that leave him?

A light shone through the dimly lit office as the door opened. Violet saw Onyx still there, still reading those old letters. Outside of training and missions, this was where he’d been spending all his time. Every day- for hours. She saw a half-eaten meal on a small table that had since grown cold from their breakfast earlier today. Had he even eaten anything since? “Onyx...? Come on, the rest of us are heading out today.” She was still a little shocked they were allowed outside at all, but perhaps that was just for appearances so no one would assume nothing was wrong. “You can’t keep doing this, it’s not good for you.”

Onyx lifted his head silently turned to the bright beam of light from the door. He set his jaw and rubbed his neck. It looked like he hadn’t slept well in days and his once near perfect grooming had begun to fall short. “I will stay here.” He forces out in his now usual harsh whisper.

“No you won’t.” Ivory came in through the door, opening it the rest of the way. Lapis also stood in the hallway with his arms crossed and waiting. “You need to go outside for a change. Listen, did you hear was Lapis and Violet told us about that altar girl? We’re going to go check it out, see what’s going on. We’re not letting you stay here like this. Those letters aren’t going anywhere and if you don’t start eating and sleeping right, you won’t be able to handle yourself on missions anymore. Then what?”

Onyx sucked in a breath and set the pages down. He hated that she had a point. They also weren’t going to just allow him to read in peace. “Fine...” He scoops up the papers and stacks them gently before going to put them back where they belonged, locking the drawer to his mother’s old desk again. “We had better not be gone all day.”

-----------------------

The four stared at the large archway and heavy wooden double doors to the church entrance. A full, unbroken moon with a chain around the edges was embossed in the center of the doors, split in half perfectly. Reliefs depicted mankind on one side, both human and faunus, fighting Grimm on the other door. Behind both were depictions of the religion’s gods of Creation and Destruction.

“I don’t want to feel like I have to say this, but please remember this is a church- my church. No one’s going to expect you to know the rules or taboos or anything like that since you’re just visitors, but be respectful.”

Ivory stared up at the lofty building and its carvings. It was probably more elaborate than anywhere else in Mantle. It looked old, too; pre-war old. “We won’t try to break anything or attack anyone if that’s what you’re worried about. Don’t worry, we’ll behave.”

Entering into the church, the plain white stone of the main sanctuary was nearly devoid of decoration. There were a few old tapestries, wooden benches, a few pamphlets left on a table, the altar at the back, and a few simple doors that lead to places only Violet knew about. It was empty for the most part. A small handful of people sat at some of the benches speaking to a priestess at the far corner while another figure in a simple white and blue robe was sweeping.

Sapir paused from her duties and gave the group a small bow and a smile, focusing mostly on Violet. She beckoned them closer, noting that Violet had brought two more with her. She offered a simple curtsy as greeting.

“Let’s start here. Sapir, this is Team OLIV, the ones I went to Atlas Academy with. I don’t think I actually introduced Lapis the first time. He was my partner at the academy. This is Ivory, and our team leader Onyx.”

Ivory stood as tall as she could, monitoring the girl. If Lapis and Violet were to be believed, this little silent altar girl took down an alpha Grimm with Auburn. “So does everyone in this church get taught how to fight?” She opens immediately, “I heard some pretty impressive things about you.”

Sapir shakes her head. She held up a hand and flashed a series of numbers with her fingers.

Lapis stared at Ivory’s confused state. She didn’t have any exposure to Violet’s silent friend and her bizarre way of “talking”. “Goodfellow, translate.”

“Allow me.” The woman from the back, wearing yellow on her robe instead of Sapir’s blue and wearing a matching miter stepped forward. “The call of the huntsmen is one of holiness. We must all of us prepare for the coming enemy. The Gift of Creation Book 1, Chapter 2, Verse 16.”

Violet stared at the woman for longer than was probably comfortable. She didn’t recognize her at all but here she was, wearing the high priest’s robes. “I... Who are you?”

“You must be Sister Violet. Your family has told me a great deal about you. I am Sister Lucianna. I have been the head priestess of the church for a few years now.”

Violet had a lot of questions. “Wait... What happened to Father Benjamin? And, you don’t have to call me Sister. I’m not ordained like Sap is.”

Sapir shrunk into her robes and set her jaw the mention of the old priest. Unlike many of the others of the church who merely looked up to and respected him, he and the other clergy were the closest thing to family she had. She saw Violet’s sad reaction and knew she had figured it out.

Lapis had hung back from the conversation for the time being, but this sounded fairly familiar. This was the kind of reactions he’d seen on the faces of Pineyard’s villagers whenever one of the elders passed from old age or illness. “I’m sorry.” He offers.

“It is alright. Hurt and loss are natural. Love leaving the soul can be damaging if you do not remind yourself of those you still have around you.” The high priestess offers a comforting smile and a change of subject.

“As for you, Sister Violet, you were once of the choir, weren’t you? I do not believe that the members of the church clergy should hold themselves above our parishioners. I did not take the title of Mother when I was placed in charge nor will I restrict our togetherness to simply those of us in robes.

Ivory listened to the small story. The fact that this woman was newer to this place’s inner workings might explain a few things. “So was her taking up fighting your idea then?”

Sapir stared at Ivory with a stern look, seemingly daring her to continue questioning them the way she was. She takes a few steps forward in a challenging manner before Lucianna holds an arm out in front of her.

“It was.” She answers simply, “Huntsmen do not take all jobs that show up in Mantle and we have a holy duty to fight the forces of Destruction. The Grimm are an unholy blight that must be destroyed. We may not have been in the age of templars for nearly a century and the Atlas council has forbidden non-licensed huntsmen from operating, so I have elected to train Sister Sapir myself and have her take the exam to allow the church to more properly play its part in our struggles against evil.”

Lapis paused for a moment, “That means you’re a huntress, aren’t you?”

Lucianna shrugs slightly and turns around as another visitor comes in and heads to a seat. “A story for another time, I think. Sister Sapir, please see to your duties. You are after all the one who greeted them.” She gives one final smile to the group. “I am glad to have finally met you and your team, Sister Violet. I hope I can look forward to seeing you all again. These are dark times and we must all band together for the coming of Destruction whenever it shows its face.”

Sapir makes a circle gesture with her hands and nods her head as Lucianna passes before turning back to the group. She fixates her gaze on Onyx, who had been standing behind the group silently the entire time. He was dressed well, if slightly disheveled, but more importantly she had caught herself staring at the gnarled scar that made up the base of his left ear where it no longer attached to his head. She snapped her eyes to his when she realized he had noticed.

Onyx stared back for a few tense moments, having not decided to simply glare at the girl. The cold air of Mantle made it more difficult for him to speak than normal and this church didn’t seem to do much with its heating outside of what the city itself provided, so he kept silent and his hands in his pockets. For now, he just kept contact to gauge her intentions. He might have been looking too much into someone staring at an old ugly scar, but it still bothered him.

Ivory reflexively placed her hand on Isengrim’s handle, but didn’t grab it. She knew Onyx wouldn’t do anything too problematic here, but she found the sudden stare down worrying. Then it hit her. This was Onyx’s first time outdoors within Atlas borders with his faunus ears in plain view. He already didn’t like people asking about his ear. She hoped nothing bad would spring from something so petty.

Violet gave a nod to Lapis who was ready to be a big body in the way of a possible issue while she paid attention to Sapir. She knew her friend’s facial expressions by this point, but this was a new one. She watched Sapir slowly walk forward.

Her step was less confident and serene than normal and she withdrew as she moved. There was a hesitance that Violet had never seen before. Then she flushed slightly as Onyx took a step back and Violet couldn’t help but burst out laughing which caught everyone’s attention.

Violet tried her best to stop her giggling but instead was forced to cut her words into her laughter. “O-Oh my goodness... I... I can’t believe...” She continued her laughing before smiling brightly at Sapir. “You know if you wanted me to introduce you earlier, you could have just asked. Come on! We’re about to head out to eat anyway. See you can come with us! We’ll get a table for you two.”

Sapir froze and cursed herself for being so transparent. She turned around to hide her face and prayed to God it would fade by the time she reached Sister Lucianna. She had never asked for time to herself before like this. She marched away from the others and hoped this wasn’t about to be a terrible mistake.

“I did not agree to this.” Onyx chokes out to Violet, his dry voice causing him to groan in frustration. This was far from healing fast enough for his liking.

“Oh, come on, it’ll be fun! I get to hang out with an old friend, you get a date out of it...” She trailed off with a sigh.

“And maybe I can ask Sapir what else that Sister Lucianna had changed here since I left. I’ll explain after we eat, but let’s wait for Sap and get going. Ivory, can you pick out a place for us?”

---------

“And what sort of question is this? ‘Do not stray from your duties, but know the difference between idleness and caring for yourself.’? You want a break then, Sister Sapir?” Lucianna looked down the large room at the team still waiting by the door and seemingly arguing over a scroll. “I see... Of course you can. However, might I ask a favor?

“While you are with them, discover what their connection is to Cheshire’s unholy experiment. We may be able to convince Sister Violet and her team to join us in the coming conflict. Destruction approaches and we must be ready. Evil needs to be exorcised from our home sooner rather than later.”

Sapir nods firmly before returning a small smile to her face and rushing back off to where Team OLIV was waiting for her. Once she seemed to have what few things she actually owned with her, they departed. A voice came from the darkness of the small preparation area behind the wall of the altar.

“Is this wise, Sister Lucianna? One of them is from the Cheshire line, the other Reynard. They are evil people and should be excised. Corruption comes in many forms.”

“I think it is good to see Sister Sapir reconnect and find some new friends. Besides, the Cheshire boy is a faunus- not of Tyrael’s blood. He has likely lead a dark life, but I do not believe that they are beyond salvation. As for the Reynard daughter, corrupt though they may be, with effort even the naturally wicked can be brought to see Creation’s holy mission.

“I do not trust this. We must prepare for the battles ahead.”

“And for that we will need allies, Brother Castor. We will see where their hearts lie. If they are good and true, we will have valuable potential templars for the coming struggles against Destruction’s monsters. If they are false, they will be destroyed with the rest of their wicked ilk. Trust Sister Sapir. They do not know it yet, but she will be their judge.”

#teamoliv #Onyx Cheshire - Cutscene #Lapis Hamelin - Cutscene #Ivory Reynard - Cutscene #Violet Goodfellow - Cutscene #Sapir Antiny - Cutscene #Lucianna Markella - Cutscene #Castor Lucan - Cutscene #Team OLIV - Project Borealis

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aggresivelyfriendly · 6 years

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~Who Names The Colors~

Chapter 29-Willa and the Magic Hour

Hi Lovely People! I broke my laptop yesterday(I swear I’m clumsier than Mr. Styles, yikes) so today’s chapter is late! I hope it’s worth the long wait....

I am so grateful to @dirtystyles for lots of things, the beautiful banners and this week especially the youtube playlist of a live Harry Styles by Harry Styles in HQ.

@nocontrolforlouis makes these bitches comprehensible!

And last, but never least @bleedinglove4h is today’s kween-she knows why(WHO THE FUCK IS KAREN)!

Also-thanks @gucci

"Harry!" She stage whispered. Jo needed enough volume to get him to look up, but was afraid to disturb his visitor.

He was seated on the steps of a country estate that had been converted to some sort of museum. They were both such dorks, that the thought of living out some Austen fantasy appealed to them. Must be why they worked so well. It was why they had chosen to make their way there on day three of Lake Country life.

Zoe had had different ideas. When she had zoomed through the art hall, the official gallery, like a Tasmanian devil, or at least, like a child whose mother had never taken her to a museum, Jo decided they had better try out of doors until she was a little more tuckered out; and that they should take Zoe to a museum. She was a bloody artist for fuck's sake, as was her boyfriend, and her daughter had never been into a museum, gallery, or even her studio very often. Zoe was only 3, but it still seemed a huge oversight. One to be remedied. Once they let her run wild they could try the gallery again. Hopefully she would let Harry carry her.

Outside, Harry had encouraged Zoe to play a game of tag with him, which had turned into hide and seek. From the smoothness of the transition, Jo suspected their outings to the park went similarly. She was behind a pillar when she heard an excited high-pitched squeal.

"Look at the tiny piggies mummy!" The noise might have been the animal, but Jo suspected it was her kid. Not the goats nearby. Zoe was beside herself and had no concept of her own volume. So the piggies in question had quickly scuttled off to their unhappy, grunting mother.

It was funny, or it seemed to be to the man accompanying them, who was bent over at the waist cracking up at Zoe chasing the piglets and then being chased by the mother pig. Zoe found it funny too, and had giggled then about faced and chased down the pig who squealed and ran away. It looked like an innocent version of Benny Hill, without all the misogyny. Jo's smile was unsinkable.

Zoe had set off to find the scuttling pig and babies and Harry had gone the other direction. Since her boyfriend was ostensibly an adult, Jo want after Zoe.

The duo had subsequently found the lambs and spent a good deal of time watching them. Jo then found out how to get Zoe to calm. Holding little ewes on her lap. She held still and whispered. It seemed to have a compounding effect. As Zoe sat with the lamb on her lap trying to be calm for it, she got calmer and calmer.

That seemed to be the effect this little escape to the Lake Country was having on all of them.

Harry certainly looked calm.

He was lounging in baggy trousers on some steps near a fountain. The day was sunny with that cool warmth of early summer, hinting at heat, but only flirting with discomfort. Harry looked like the daydream he was. His head was cast back and his eyes were closed, sun woshipping. This was probably why he didn't seem to notice the kid, the literal baby goat at his elbow. The sun on his face and the kid at his elbow was too bucolic to miss.

Jo had snapped a picture and then immediately tried to quietly get his attention. She imagined the picture would be cute, but that Harry would actually like to experience the magic moment for himself.

He needed it, he had been off since Jo got home on Sunday evening.

When she and Zoe got back from Bath almost a week ago, Jo'd texted Harry to let him know they were nearly home and safe.

He'd been in the kitchen when they got in. The kettle was bubbling and he had a piece of toast out for Zoe. Jo tried not to give her fruit this late in the evening due to the sugar and had recently had to slow down her cheese consumption. Otherwise, her Stilton bill would be ridiculous. Toast it was lately. Harry had adopted the new rule, because he used to have strawberries out for her. Zoe's favorite.

"Hey baby. Tea?" Harry had greeted her with the question. She expected him to hoist the kettle and grin, but instead he walked over to her and wrapped a hand around her and buried his face in her neck.

He breathed her in and held on. "Miss me?" was what she asked. Jo figured she'd get the actual reason for his affection soon. Once they were ready for bed, and wrapped around each other and the few fetters he kept on his tongue were loosed. He loved to whisper in the dark.

He just nodded into her neck and held her tighter. Her arms came up around him in response. Shoe would wait him out. That night though, he hadn't been chatty. The love he'd made to her had been slow, reverent and almost nostalgic, which troubled her. Harry'd insisted they lay on their side, and he'd held her hands the whole time. He'd spoke I love you's against her skin until she couldn't keep her eyes open.

The next day, Harry and Jo hurried about to get the car packed and ready for their trip. The night before, cuddles and a movie on the couch had seemed a wonderful idea, until the morning presented all the things left to do. The small tent, one of Zoe's very own, for the second half of the trip, after Jo had her fill of room service, was easy to pack. Getting the two-person she had stashed in the attic, was not the same. She'd fought the spiders and won though.

It was still one in the afternoon before they got on the road, and stopping for lunch and later, ice cream, meant they had an hour to get in their hotel room, get dressed and deliver Zoe to the in-house babysitters the inn had, to make their reservations. Jo was nervous, but Harry reminded her of all the reviews she'd read. Plus, it was her idea, a date, out in the world, for his graduation.

Harry loved to have her on his arm, and the black dress she'd surprised him with was cut lower than usual, and his eyes lingered and loved the extra inches all night. He'd been more interested in visually devouring her than the French food on his plate.

The lucky thing was that Zoe was asleep when they went to pick her up. And she'd stayed like that on Harry's shoulder up the stairs. The little girl had stirred when she was laid down, "Mummy!" had been called and feet kicked, but Jo only had to lay with her for ten minutes to get her back to dreamland.

His touches had lingered that night too, she was wondering if he should take a picture of her collarbone for all the studying of it he'd done.

"Are you going to paint it?" She'd asked when she couldn't stand his pace any more, was rubbing her thighs together and pulling his hair at the roots.

"I might, but I think I've just decided it's my favorite part of you.

Jo was still deciding her favorite parts of him when they settled in at the lake. It had taken hours to make camp and Zoe was invigorated by the air. She may as well have wings.

It was really late by the time the three year old fell asleep. The moon was full and brilliant overhead, so bright it kept her up. Zoe had been riled beyond belief. Harry had spent much of the day bear hunting with her and Jo found that she just had to sit back and laugh as they re-enacted the song several times over. Zoe delighted in the tunnels they found and that Harry would slither under fallen trees with her, no matter how dirty he got.

They were such a sight, and the facilities so far away, Jo was at a loss.

"You're such messes! How will we ever get you clean?" She picked through Zoe's ever growing hair. It was thick and growing in waves, her baby curls cut, but the texture still gorgeous and thickly wavy. The color has changed too, darkening. It would lighten with the summer sun though. Jo recalled Harry's baby picture from his senior year of college slideshow. He'd once been a blonde too. Jo sighed wistfully at the similarity and then laughed at herself for even considering such a thing.

If they found a surrogate, in a few years, what would their children look like? How long would they stay blonde? Or would genetics surprise them both. Her wandering mind was called back to Harry answering her question.

Harry laughed at her, "That's easy enough to fix!" And he shucked off his t-shirt and Zoe's dress and carried her down to the water. They splashed and Harry threw her over and over.

Zoe's giggles were fitful and loud and carried. They sailed on the air straight to Jo's heart.

Before she could help herself, She took of her own cover up and ran down to meet them.

Zoe swam back and forth between them until Harry declared her proficient in freestyle, backstroke, and improving on her breath stroke.

Then they had had foil packed potatoes and roast. The energy Zoe took out of the s'mores Harry made them had her bouncing for several hours. "Mummy dance with me!" She'd called as she flitted like a nymph around the fire and Jo had got up and ran to her.

They fire danced like lost boys.

Zoe had dropped 20 minutes ago. Talking a mile a minute then not at all. Jo was sure she was just as tired, and she was laying in the sleeping bags Harry had zipped together when she heard him calling her.

"Jo, c'mere, I want to show you something." He sounded like he was near the water, his voice echoed off and bounced like waves.

She realized why when she got outside- he was exactly as she expected him to be, his feet being lapped at by the gentle lake waves. Jo was just in hi cuts and a plaid, so she followed suit and came to him on the shore, she needed his body heat anyway.

"What did you want to show me?"

"The moon, my Eve." He circled behind her, hooking his chin over her shoulder and pointing to it. "Do you feel the pull?" He looked at her sideways.

Jo looked from the alabaster orb in the sky to the pearls of his teeth. "Yes, but not to the moon." Harry was her little bit of Eden.

"Good." He smiled and walked her to where her knees were just covered before sitting at her feet.

He mouthed over the cotton of her underpants until she squirmed before pulling them to the side. It was almost better through the fabric, almost.

"Harry," her neck was already rolling back from the licks he was giving her lingual crease, he'd switched between the two. And despite her words, her feet had widened to accommodate him and her swelling center's attraction.

"What if Zoe comes out?" She found the power to say. Protest was too big a word.

"Let's turn around. You can tell her you were bathing. But she'll sleep."

And he gripped her ass and bathed her with his tongue, and she was baptized by the moon and his love more than the water.

She still bit her palms to stem her cries, even if the woods and water would be the only ones to hear them. He dove deep into her and drew out her happiness. When he told her she gave him a taste of Eden too, she believed it. This was paradise. And it might be where she got to stay. She'd sacrifice to do so. The cost wasn't counted yet.

It was the most carefree he had been since they arrived. The weight he wore cast off into the lake like a net.

The next morning, she woke up to chirping birds and Harry awake and smoothing hair off her forehead. She'd nodded off the night long before she heard the scruff of his feet together. Jo was tired from camping and romancing. From a family vacation; the first she'd ever had like it.

Times were lean when she and Ethan had been alone against the world. They had mostly only gone to London or to the sea if she could scrimp together the funds. Then, she took him to Spain once. To Barcelona and Madrid and finally Mallorca the first summer she was at the university. His eyes liked to bug out of his head at the girls on Spanish beaches. He was in his first flush of manhood.

He was a real man now. Or so she told herself when she had moments of concern about her relationship with Harry. It scared her still that being with her was giving something up. For both of them. We're you o my doing something right if in love if you were scared out of your wits sometimes?

He looked like he thought so too this morning. His tender brow was creased and he had weights on his tongue. But love filled his eyes.

"What's it, lover?" She scrapped together her courage and asked for the first time. She'd been hoping to stay in Nirvana, but avoiding a thing didn't make it go away. The morning light was soft, light and he was beautiful. It wasn't harsh or abrasive. That would have been more fitting.

Jo had been letting herself believe. The fall for him had been undeniable. She hadn't so much let that happened as been unable to stop it, like stemming a tide. Believing in their future though, against all of their obstacles, that she had let happen. As each dominos stacked against them had fallen away instead of on top of them and he had thrust more options into her hands, made more promises, shared more hope, she'd decided they may be able to do it. That people would accept them, even Ethan, if they saw them together. They were at their best when loving each other. Jo liked herself better with him.

Even as she opened herself up and ran into possibility, she'd always been waiting for a stone to fall the other way though, on top of them, or between them to divide.

Harry's face looked like he had the stone to drop. It was especially cruel today. After the week in the Lake District. She knew something was wrong when he had come to her after she got back from Ethan's, but she hadn't pushed and was excited about the trip she had planned for his graduation celebration. She wanted to have the escape with him.

But pretend time looked over.

He waited a long beat to answer and traced her face with his eyes.

"I got into a fight with my mum." He swallowed, "A few hours before you came home on Sunday."

"What about?" Jo asked, though she knew the answer.

He swallowed.

"About me?" She supplied and he nodded.

He sat up and pinched his lip. Jo took it as a good sign that he didn't turn completely away from her. "She asked me flat out. I'd gotten into it with Gemma and was talking about her boyfriend being a wanker when they left. I don't like him. He's not good enough for her. That is so clear to me. It's also why she missed my graduation." He swallowed.

"It hurt your feelings?" She put her hand on his arm.

"Yeah, she didn't want to come without him. So she missed my graduation. And I told her I was disappointed and she told me I was spoilt and didn't know what it was like to be in a relationship, so I couldn't know why she wanted him to come with her. And that she came later." He sighed. "I told her I did know what it was like. And that it would have meant a lot to me." Harry picked up her hand. "They left when I said I didn't like him, in front of him. My mum looked so frustrated at me."

"I'm sorry you fought with your sister, but you said you fought with your mum?" She was a little confused.

He bit his lip. "I was ranting a bit, about Gemma and Kip, stupid name, and how Gemma made horrible choices in men. And my mum said something, under her breath like, about me not having the right to criticize someone's love life." He breathed loud. "So I asked her what that meant, and she point blank asked me if I was sleeping with you."

Jo's breath caught. She knew Anne knew. The way she was, so guarded and watchful, it was clear-plus, mum's intuition.

"And I, well, I'm." He tried to get out.

"You're a terrible liar." Jo admitted.

"I tried, a bit, but she didn't believe me. I didn't want to lie anyway. And then she, well she started in on you. And how she couldn't believe that you'd be so predatory. And I...." he hung his head. "I told her it wasn't like that. That we weren't sleeping together, but in love and that I chased you and you tried really hard to leave the attraction be. Ran like the wind, but that we were like magnets, or the moon and tide or something and she scoffed."

Jo felt miserable for him and her. "How'd you leave it then?" She was wondering how long until he chose his relationship with his mum. Like he should. They were so foolish to think they had a chance if anybody knew about them.

Harry was nothing if not a surprise.

"I told her I didn't want to fight. And that she didn't know about us, but that I was serious about you." He looked at Jo then. "I kissed her head and told her I loved her and respected her but that you were my choice, and she could accept it, or not, but I'd appreciate the chance. And I left."

Jo rubbed his shoulders. He loved his mum. Was a mumma's boy. "Have you, have you spoken to her?"

"No, I wanted to talk to you." He turned to her. "I'm not sure you are ready, but can we please," he blew out a breath. "Can we please go talk to her when we get back?"

"How long have you been waiting to ask me about this?" She squeezed his shoulder. "All week? Love, we're supposed to share things that are heavy, the load is lighter across two backs."

"I, I know, I just thought." He looked down then up. "You had these plans, for us, for me." He bit his lips into his mouth like he was trying to button the truth in. "And you're always so scared, of just this, and it's like you thought. Not like I did. I thought my mum would trust me."

"She does Harry." Jo put her head on his collarbone. "She doesn't trust me."

"She will, when she sees us together. I know it." He was hurt, but always so certain. "On the way home, I'll text to ask if we can have a meal together." He rubbed his hands up and down her back to comfort them both. "Where would be best love? Our place, a restaurant? Neutral ground?"

Jo thought about it, "I want to say in public, so emotions won't get too strong. But, maybe we should give her home pitch?" Jo bit her lip. Harry must have been able to feel it, because he pulled back and looked at her and used a thumb to release the tortured flesh.

"She just needs to see that you're what makes my world spin round and round." Jo gulped. Yeah, he made her twirl madly.

"For how long?" Jo croaked. This was the part that made her heart sink to her belly and beat fast at the same time. When, where, what would be too much?

"What do you mean?" He smoothed her hair back.

"How long until people staring at us, and your mom being mad, or not having a relationship with her, or me wrinkling up, how long until I fall off your axis?" Jo, well, she'd recovered before, but wasn't sure she could this time. Just 17 days felt like torture.

"Jo!" He breathed and wrapped his thumbs around her ears, lifted her head to him. "I love my mother, but you are my choice. And she loves me, and we want a relationship, so she will have to learn to respect us, our future." He looked frustrated but cracked a grin, "and has anybody looked sideways at us this week?"

"No, I guess not." She cocked a glance at him. "Harry, I don't want to ruin your relationship with your mother." Jo shook her head. "I don't want to even change it!"

"Change is..." he rubbed his forehead against hers. "Like time, it's not going away. She and I will be ok. I will be ok if we are." He sighed. "And you act like this is temporary for me, but I've told you. Right, I want your tomorrows. Stop waiting for me to leave and be with me!" It was one of the most brutal tones he had ever taken with her. "Do you want me?"

"Yes, you know I do." Jo closed her eyes and sealed her promise with a breathy kiss.

"Then let's enjoy this day in the sun." They both looked at the muted light through the tent. "Or the mist, and go home."

"Ok. When will you talk to your mum?" Jo untangled herself from him and stood. Zoe was quiet in her tiny tent, but Jo wanted to see her face.

"When we get home. I'll call her." He sighed and then found a well of happiness she supposed. "I'd really like to spend a day with you ladies here, where it's beautiful and not worry about anything." He dimpled at Jo and she loved all of his parts, even the ones he didn't like so much, the ones that needed attention and validation frequently.

"I think that sounds lovely. How do you want to start, graduate?" She scrunched her nose at their inside joke.

"Well, Mrs. Robinson," they both laughed under their breath at the joke she'd started the day they got to the country. "Since there is no pool for me to lounge in, I think I'd like to just lay here with you and stay warm until the nymph comes to find us."

"Done." She lay down and opened her arms to him. His hair lay in curls on her chest and the color was similar enough to her own that could see herself as lady Godiva, hair to cover her revelations. That would be a funny picture, maybe she'd pitch it to Harry when he was stuck next time. The joke painting prompts usually led to something amazing.

"One more serious question?" It was easier with his face buried in her armpit. "How long will you be able to go without talking to your mum?" She wondered how Ethan would fair in this scenario.

"Not long, and she probably won't cut off communication, it's not her style. But she will be quietly disapproving and you'll be uncomfortable when we see her, maybe always." He nuzzled in. "So I'm hoping we win her over. You're charming." It tickled when he talked there. "See, I've got you giggling!" He looked at her and smoothed her hair back while she smiled at him. He just kissed her sweet and lay back on her chest and wrapped his arms around her. They stayed like that until the light brightened.

Jo looked out across the field to where Harry and Zoe were playing tag and finished setting up the drinks they'd gotten from the only grocery store seemingly for 20 miles. She was amazed that Zoe was in such a mood. She'd woken up grumpy, harrumphing into their tent complaining about being hungry and cold. Jo had pulled her into her arms and used her hands to create friction on her miniature biceps.

Then they had gotten up and around and made a store run. Zoe was not excited about hanging nearby her mother and kept taking off for the end of the aisle, the next aisle, the meat counter. Thankfully, the store was small, a collection of seven aisles and Zoe was loud, plus there were two of them to keep track of her. She was constantly afraid of the looks she and Hary may garner. In such a public place, but both here and at the restaurant the first two nights, when they'd stayed in town, there had been none. Harry's 'I told you so' smile could only be kissed off his face.

In any case, she and Harry were able to keep Zoe in eyeline, and get the picnic shopping. Jo had been sad it was their last day, well sad about reality intruding, mostly.

It felt like time though, when Zoe had a fit in the middle of the tiny grocery store because there was no Tesco brand juice. It wasn't Tesco, so of course there wasn't, but that was not a sufficient reason for Zoe. Jo loved her tenacity, but somethings were simply not possible right in the moment. When she was like this, there was no comforting her. In a few minutes, she would pick herself up, fold into Jo and in an hour she'd say sorry. But right now her emotions were too big for her little body and surely her vocabulary.

Her fits had gotten better as she got older once they had rounded the six month mark on three. That stopped Jo cold. Then so had she and Harry. Six months. That was both a tiny amount of time, and a life changing chunk.

She walked over to Harry then. He was a few feet away, and Zoe was not quite finished Jo could tell by the tenor of her cries. He rose his eyebrows at her.

"We've been together six months." Jo looked up at him, in a day old t-shirt because he hadn't packed adequately and his skinny jeans, hair scraped up in a bun.

"I know." Harry looked confused by her outburst, and she glanced round. People were probably staring, the five people in the general store. Maybe at Zoe, maybe at her, usually at Harry.

She didn't care.

Jo planted her mouth against him and kissed him for god and Cumbria to see.

His smiles for the rest of the day shone like a mega watt bulb, Like the ones the photography students used for over exposure. Made sense, that's what he wanted and what they would get, exposure, openness. It was a desire he alluded to or named often. The first dinner they went to her held her hand conspicuously and sat next to her. Mine.

The food was ready, and she was just about to call them to eat the picnic, but when Jo looked up, Harry was looking back at her. The hills around him were bright green, and his eyes were glowing kelly at her. The food would wait.

Jo got her legs under her and the feeling of the wind rushing passed her face, Zoe's fleece slipping through her fingers, and Harry catching her when she thought she'd gotten away was like freedom. Being let out of a gilded cage. One she had put herself in.

It would be alright. They'd make it, she told herself, while she watched him drive them home. Home he called it. She wasn't ready to move him in, but, "Will you keep your place while you're abroad?"

"Haven't 100% decided I'm going abroad." He glanced at her before checking Zoe in the backseat where she colored, and then back to the road.

"What percent are you at?" Jo missed him already, and they had six weeks to fill if he went. He had to go.

"Odds are 85 in favor."

What's the other 15?" She knew the answer.

"The other 15 will miss the creases on your face in the morning so much that I'll get kicked out for painting only them." He reached for her hand. "But I was going to move my stuff to mum's. Figure it out later, might as well save the money, or use it to see Canada, ya know."

"What if you moved it into my place? And we figured it out when you got back, if it and you should stay there." Jo lurched forward. "What are you doing?"

The car pulled onto the slim shoulder and he put the car in park and liked to pull her over the gear shift with his hands on her face.

"Are you asking me to move in with you?" He spoke against her mouth.

"Sort of. In 8 months time." She tried to shrug, but he kissed her again. Fill of emotion, but no tongue until Zoe laughed and a car honked.

"Then yes, I'll shack up with you." He was giddy.

"After Montreal!" She said

"Or Venice."

They were both so excited they were vibrating. The hours until Zoe went down felt long and Jo put lavender oil in the bath and on the soles of her feet to gentle her to sleep.

Harry was waiting at the foot of the stairs. "Harr-" he cut her off with a lip lock that felt like he'd thrown away the key and jumped her onto his hips. He was full of desire, but not the kind she was used to, the charge that made it nearly impossible to stay away from him, or not kiss him, or stop watching him work his hand over his cock.

This felt like a brimming, an effervescence, where champagne spills over the lip of a beautiful piece of glass because someone was too excited to pour carefully.

Her bedding wrapped around her and she sighed at the soft landing. His naked chest rolled her t-shirt against her stomach and his hands pulled it over her head. She'd quit her bra when they got home and he quit working her neck when he got her breasts free. He was moving fast and she expected him to keep at it. But then, he stopped. His hurry evaporated in the warm room and he inched up the temperature by slowing his pace to a snail's crawl. Not an inch of her bust or belly or pelvis went untouched. The soft trials of his fingertips, the touch that made her gasp every time, was enough to set her skin on edge and her pores to open. She was sweaty by the time she was begging.

He started to move lower, pulled her plaid pants from her hips and mouth descending into the v her legs made.

"No, need you inside, Harry!" She'd reached between their damp skins and clutched his velvety cock. Too ansty to please, she stroked once and collected the precum, before notching him into the seam of her body.

"Fuck!" They both gasped and her hand slicked the cum onto his bottom lip to lick off with him a moment later.

The rock and rock roll of him into her was giving her a fever. "I'm burning up, lover." She swore repeatedly.

"I'll cool you down, baby. Just hold on." Harry trailed a hand up her hip to grasp her shoulder underneath. The round roll of his hips had her reeling like a topspun ball.

Jo cast her head back, the first time she had broken eye contact with him since they began it seemed and called his name. "Har-Harry!" He groaned in response and when she opened her eyes again, his green didn't catch her focus, not like it did always, but the yellow light near her door.

There stood her son. And his body was backlit, like he was a ghost.

"Ethan!" Jo startled.

Harry must not have heard her where his head was buried in her neck.

'You're fucking my mum?' she expected Ethan to yell, but instead his voice was wet and thin, it amazed her she could hear it over Harry's groan of completion.

"Har-Harry," his voice hit a familiar hitch, "how could you do this to me?"

#harry styles #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles smut #wntc #who names the colors #one direction #one direction fanfiction #painter fic #harry styles alternative universe #harry styles au

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sigritandtheelves · 6 years

Text

Shipwreck

Timeline: Post-breakup, around s10 Rating: R

A big thank you to @contrivedcoincidences6 and @peacenik0 for suggestions to get me out of my fluffy funk and back into some decent angst. I tried to combine your suggestions. Also, I wrote this all in one sitting, so it is what it is. Mild cw for depression/mental illness.

To the two anons who suggested very dirty prompts… I’m thinking about those too. ;)

_+_

The hairbrush snagged in her wet hair and she made a face. Scully stared into the mirror, poked at the lines around her eyes, knew for certain she was doing absolutely the wrong thing. Still, she put on makeup and checked her phone for messages. The apartment was silent and cold, uncluttered, bare. Everything was in its perfect, terrible place. She didn’t know how to dress for this. She hadn’t been on a date since 1993, unless you included whatever the fuck that had been with Jerse. She and Mulder hadn’t dated. They’d gone straight from friendly-professional to absolute, life-swallowing entanglement. They were only ever suits or pajamas, never the awkward, performative display of courtship. They were corpses and danger and then raw, crushing fervor, together-alone contra the blood-smeared world.

She tried not to think of him, but each swipe of mascara, the spritz of perfume, the tug of her sweater over her head—every action was a betrayal. She felt it in her bones. Where was he now? Alone in their house, drowning in newspaper clippings, unshowered and unshaved, severed from the world of the living by obsession and shadow. And she had left him there.

She straightened herself against this thinking, told herself that she needed this, that it wasn’t a cruelty. It was dinner with a man, a fellow doctor. It’s a knife in the guts, Dana.

Dinner was fine. The conversation was fine. She ate pasta and green beans, smiled agreeably, made occasional jokes (nothing too funny, nothing crass, nothing interesting) and clamped down the feeling that she was a traitorous wretch.

“So, what about you, Dana?”

Dana. Dana Dana Dana Dana. Fuck.

“Do you have any kids?”

His name was Jason, and he was a middle-aged divorcé who probably shared a comfortable, if emotionally distant, relationship with his two children. Somewhere in the world was a fourteen-year-old boy with her eyes and Mulder’s soft brown hair, probably his penchant for baseball, self-absorption, and overwrought language, too: an awkward, gangly comingling of their DNA—sharp insight and dangerous credulity—who would never know this disastrous state of things.

“I, um…” Jesus, how to answer a question like that? “It’s complicated. I have a son, but he doesn’t live with me.”

“Ah,” Jason nodded, probably imagining some reasonable story about a nasty divorce and an estrangement. It was easier that way, she supposed.

The conversation slumped along, ostensibly pleasant but as flat as that evening two decades ago that had convinced her only to dive deeper into that basement office and all its maddening, impossible adventures. She probably wasn’t being fair to this man, but she hadn’t really expected this to go anywhere. She wasn’t sure, really, what she had expected.

Their conversation was cut short by a buzz from her phone.

“Sorry, excuse me,” she said. “Could be the hospital.”

But it wasn’t. It was him. She read his manic jumble of words, heart in her throat and panic rising:

“Hey, Scully, do you remember the case in Green Bank, WV where the teenagers were disappearing in the forest and coming out comatose? I know you said it was different from the Bellefleur case, but I was thinking it was 17 years ago and maybe there’s some connection—“

A second text followed: “to that other cyclical case, not Tooms, but the one with the masks in Kentucky? Maybe it’s connected to this Appalachian folklore about death in threes and a miner’s curse, but I was hoping you could come and take a look at some of these stories before I send out a few emails since it’s not far away.“

“Everything okay?” The man was looking at her, but she hardly noticed.

Oh, Mulder, she thought. She looked up at John or Jim or whatever his name was. Jason. “I’m sorry, I—“ Just then, another text popped up: “Can you come?”

“I think I’m going to have to cut the night short. It looks like there’s an emergency.”

Disappointment on his face. “Oh.”

She could be angry at this interruption. She could be annoyed at the way Mulder intruded on every attempt she made to extricate herself from what had seemed so toxic six months ago. But she wasn’t. He’d texted her. He’d reached a hand out, even a manic, desperate, digital hand. She was so, so grateful.

She texted back: “I’m on my way.”

_+_

An hour later she was in front of the house taking deep breaths in her car, still in what passed for a “date” outfit. He needed her and she’d come.

She found him where she expected to, in roughly the state she’d imagined. “Oh, Mulder, oh—“ she said when she saw him there, disheveled and dirty, the room so cluttered she could barely find him. “Mulder, what—“

His eyes moved up to hers, full of ghosts and glassy like fever. He was on the floor cross-legged, surrounded by open books and stacks of papers. She fell to her knees beside him and touched his forehead, ran her fingers through sweaty, greasy hair.

“You look so good, Scully,” he rasped.

There were tears pushing at her eyelids now. She took his hand and pulled him up. “Come here, Mulder, you need to get cleaned up.”

In the bathroom, she ran the shower hot and helped him with his clothes. “Will you be okay, or do you need help?” she asked as she nudged him toward the spray.

She could tell he wanted to make a joke, but he didn’t seem to have the energy. “I’ll be okay.”

Afterward, when he was toweled and dressed in a clean tee and flannel pants, she ran her hand along his jaw—he had almost a full beard again. “Mulder, have you shaved since I saw you last?”

“When was that?” He asked, innocent, oblivious.

“Three weeks ago,” she said. He frowned and shook his head. “Do you want to shave?”

He seemed a bit confused. “You don’t like it.”

She held both hands up to his beard now, letting the small, stiff hairs tickle her fingers. “I like it.”

He bent and rubbed his cheek against hers, which made her laugh like always. “You smell so fucking good, Scully.” His hands were under her sweater, and she knew she should pull away. She should check his medication, get him into bed, then get in her car and drive home where she could call him in the morning from a saner, more rational place. But she could feel herself pulled to him like a helpless magnet, caught in his gravitational pull, yoked like subatomic particles. He was all the forces at once, her unifying theory. She let him touch her breasts, let him bury his face against her neck and place hot, wet kisses there. When his hand went to her fly, though, she squeezed his forearm.

“Mulder,” she said, a warning.

“Please, Scully,” he growled. He pulled back to look at her, hooded eyes so full of anguish, so lost. “Stay.”

They were going about this the wrong way. This wasn’t any path to healing, only to desperate, short-lived comfort and a balm on the shame she’d been tamping down all night. But the way his hands felt on her skin was like rain on sun-parched grass and she was drinking him in against her better judgment. She pulled his mouth against hers and whispered into him, “Just tonight.”

He pulled her to their bed, and she caught herself thinking of it that way still—theirs. It would always be theirs. She couldn’t imagine that this separation would be permanent, and yet she could not be the one to fix it. She couldn’t demand that he love her as she needed to be loved. She couldn’t will him to choose her over the shadows. But all that was a conversation they’d already had, and one they would surely have again. For now she only wanted to feel him on her skin, inside her and surrounding every part of her. She needed him to wash away her guilt for leaving, even if it didn’t last. They writhed together in the cool of their bedroom, familiar hands and mouths finding well-known secret places. He filled her body and her senses. They claimed each other with every grip, every thrust, every groan muffled against a hot shoulder.

“Oh God, Scully, I love you,” he mumbled into her neck as he came, and she hitched a sob into the darkness at the unfairness of it all. Her tears wetted his chest and she came around him as he softened. They clung to each other like castaways on a life-raft, bucking against a storm.

In the morning, she left without a word.

#xf fanfic #my fanfic #angst #post-breakup #msr

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devilsofficialfanfic · 6 years

Text

The Purple Flame

Chapter 23: Dramatic Irony Continues To Be A Bitch; More At Eleven

A/N: I’m vibrating with excitement. The next few chapters.... So many of the tropes that I love and also angst. So... *Jeb Bush Voice*: Please Comment

Content Warnings: People Who Are Jerks, Lying & Manipulation, I Don’t Have Strong Feelings About Sendak But I Needed A Convienent Villain

Keith tugged at the restraints again, despite knowing that it would do no good. The magnetic handcuffs were stronger than he was, and unless he wanted to dislocate his thumbs -something he was not entirely sure he could do on purpose -there was no getting out of them.

Not that there was a point to it. Sendak hadn’t thrown him in a cell. Instead, he had taken Keith to the bridge, to be displayed like some kind of trophy.

In addition to the regular bridge crew, Sendak had posted extra guards, presumably to discourage Keith from trying anything.

Keith might have been reckless -sometimes -but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he couldn’t fight through them all.

That’s why he’d sent Urvok away. By now, Urvok had surely gotten to the castle-ship, and they were no doubt making plans for his rescue.

He’d prefer it if he didn’t have to be rescued, but some things couldn’t be helped.

“Commander?” one of the bridge crew asked.

“What?” Sendak’s temper seemed shorter than usual. A side-effect of over a year in the cryopod? His distaste for having to work with the witch? Hard to tell.

“We’re being hailed. It, uh… It’s Prince Lotor.”

Keith fought to keep the surprise off his face. Lotor? But…

“Patch it through.”

The crewperson did, and a second later, Lotor appeared on screen.

He looked terrible, but anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. He slouched diffidently in the chair of his Sincline ship. “Sendak, a pleasure as always.”

“Lotor. What do you want?”

“I want nothing. I’m merely contacting you out of professional courtesy. By now, Voltron knows that you have one of their former paladins, and they are quite loyal, these humans. I suggest you let him go.”

Sendak laughed. “Let him go? Just like that? Have you been drinking?”

Lotor smiled, all fang and no humor. “Unfortunately, no. You, on the other hand, seem quite sure that you can defeat Voltron, despite having lost once already, in a disaster that cost you your entire crew. The worst part of your failure is that they were just children then, Sendak. Two years later, and you think you can defeat them when one of their own is on the line? Would that I had half the confidence in my abilities that you have in yours; perhaps I would have killed my father millenia ago, and saved us all this mess.”

“What. Do. You Want.” Sendak ground out.

Lotor shrugged. “Let my husband go, and I’ll take his place. Voltron won’t come after me, and the witch has been interested in me for some time now.”

“But what’s in it for you?”

Keith had kind of been wondering the same thing. On the one hand, he didn’t want to believe Lotor would betray him. On the other, Lotor was quite protective of his own skin.

“I have been thinking about what you said to me while we fought at the Kral Zera,” Lotor began. “But I think you won’t need to resort to keeping me as you slave, when I could choose to serve you. A strong commander like you, with me at your side? This rebellion would not last the year.”

“I can’t become the emperor until the old one is dead.”

Lotor shrugged again. “Accidents can be arranged. It would be best not to implicate yourself; I would not wish to risk Voltron’s vengeance.”

Keith gritted his teeth. Lotor wasn’t looking at him; Keith wasn’t entirely sure Lotor could see him from where he was.

The words, though? They made sense. They sounded sincere.

Keith didn’t want to believe it. Had everything been a lie? Had Lotor actually been using him?

A small movement drew Keith’s eyes to Lotor’s hand. He wore gloves, as always, so it was difficult to tell, but Keith thought…

Well, it looked like he was rubbing at the spot where his ring was. The ring Keith had given him, the night before their wedding.

If it all meant nothing to Lotor, wouldn’t he have removed it as soon as Keith told him to get out?

It all fell into place then. Lotor had a plan. Keith just had to trust him, and he did. He trusted Lotor. He only hoped his instincts were right.

“There is still the matter of Haggar,” Sendak said. “And your former companions.”

“Don’t worry about that, Sendak. I will handle it.”

“Very well.” Sendak gave Lotor instructions for boarding, as if Lotor needed them, and then the screen went dark.

“Nothing to say, Your Majesty?” Sendak asked with a mocking bow. “Not even to defend your honor? What kind of husband must you be, that yours feels the need to seek out better companionship?”

Keith did not have Lotor’s way with words, so he kept silent. He wouldn’t have to put up with this much longer. Lotor was going to do something -presumably involving Voltron, because he’d been right; Voltron wouldn’t just leave him here -and they were going to get out of this, and then-

Then, he’d apologize to Lotor, because he’d been kind of a dick, and maybe they’d talk about it, and everything would be alright again. There would probably be some make-up sex in there somewhere, and that would probably be pretty good, too, because Keith hadn’t gotten laid in a month. Lotor (hopefully) hadn’t either.

But Keith really couldn’t let that last comment go. “If he wanted better companionship,” Keith said quietly, “he wouldn’t have come to you.”

That earned him a blow across his mouth, but it was worth it. He grinned, bloody, up at Sendak. “That’s the best you can do?”

Maybe Sendak could have done better, except that, at that moment, Lotor was led into the bridge. “Commander. It would be best if you left your prisoner unharmed. The paladins’ sensibilities are different from ours.”

In person, Lotor was as imperious as only the son of one emperor and the husband of another could be. He was shorter than everyone in the room, except Keith, but he still seemed to tower. Keith was going to have to ask him how he did that.

“In fact, I believe I know more about human physiology than you do, Sendak. Let me examine him to ensure he will survive his journey back to Voltron.”

Sendak crossed his arms. “He wasn’t harmed. Much.”

“Nevertheless.”

Sendak hesitated, then nodded. “Fine. But be quick about it.”

Lotor crouched down in front of Keith. He smiled, a small smile, but genuine. “I’m sorry,” he said in an undertone, so his voice wouldn’t carry.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Keith replied. “What’s the plan?”

“This is the plan.” Lotor patted the outside of Keith’s legs, ostensibly to make sure his bones weren’t broken. Maybe. Keith didn’t know. “I just wanted to tell you that I meant what I said, that last night.”

“That’s a terrible plan. I’m not leaving without you. Voltron should be here soon, right? So let’s…”

Lotor shook his head. “I tried, Keith, I really did, but they aren’t coming.”

Keith’s mind went blank. “But-”

“It’s just us, so you should go. Don’t worry about me.”

“Give me that,” Keith said, nodding to his knife in Lotor’s belt. “Can you get me out of these cuffs?”

“Keith-”

“I’m not leaving without you,” Keith hissed.

“Stubborn. Can you fight?”

“If you get me out of these cuffs.”

“Alright,” Lotor said after a moment of study, “I have a plan. When I signal, get your hands above your head, as far apart as you can.”

“What’s the signal?”

Lotor tucked the knife up Keith’s sleeve. “You’ll know.”

It was at that moment that Sendak growled, “Well?”

“I suppose you have left him in fair enough condition,” Lotor said smoothly, rising. He sauntered over to Sendak, so slowly that Keith felt his own impatience like a tangible thing. He said something to Sendak, low and sultry, and Keith was glad he couldn’t make out the words. Maybe he didn’t want to think about his feelings, but he knew that he didn’t like his husband flirting with someone else.

For that was surely what Lotor was doing: flirting to get Sendak’s guard down, distract him, whatever. And it was working, a least a little, Keith thought.

Lotor laughed in response to something Sendak said -using his fake laugh -and casually, smoothly, unhooked a small blaster from a passing guard’s belt, then brought it up in one motion.

Keith got his arms up, and Lotor managed to shoot directly at the force-field between the cuffs.

The shot left Keith’s hands tingly, but the energy of the blast must have disrupted the magnetic field, or short-circuited the cuffs, or something. Pidge would know, but she wasn’t here, and Keith didn’t care.

Lotor had his sword unsheathed just as Keith activated his blade.

Across the room, their eyes locked, and they nodded -acknowledgement of something connecting them, deeper than the ties of marriage- and then the fight began.

#the purple flame #keitor #vld keith #vld lotor #sendak #why yes i am leaving u with this cliffhanger #ur gonna prefer this cliffhanger to the other one i could have done #and youll see what i mean next week

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