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glassartpeasants · 4 years

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Dead to Me

Neito Monoma x Reader

Warnings: Angst, suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, this gets dark so read at your own risk guys

A/N: Like i said this is one of the darker things iv’e wrote on this so blog so far. Not for the faint of heart.

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You sat in the cafeteria looking across the head of your fellow classmates to see your boyfriend Monoma sitting with his own class. You tried to catch his attention but it proved to be a failure.

“Well that didnt work...” You saw with a grumpy look on your face.

“Man how did you even end up dating him (y/n)? He’s an asshole to the entire Class of 1A!” Your friend Mina said as she gave you a little pout.

“I dont know he just ended up asking me out and now we’re dating!” You said happily. Even though Monoma could be a bit much sometimes you still loved him with your entire being.

You turn your head again to see to bright baby blue eyes looking at you. You smile and wave at him waiting for him to wave back. You hand slowly went down as you saw him laughing and pointing at you.

You never head good self esteem so your mind immediately went to thinking that he was making fun of you. Your cheeky smile turning into a small frown as you glanced again to see him still laughing.

‘Maybe he’s just laughing at someone else?’ You thought to yourself, trying to convince your mind that he wouldnt make fun of you. He loved you...

Right?

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A few days after the cafeteria incident you had begun to notice that Monoma was starting to hang out with you less and less. You wanted to ask him about it but you didnt want to be seen as clingy. So you just suffered in silence as you watched him slowly drift away from you. Your head sending you all the signals to ask him, but your heart wanted to believe that there was a good reason to why he was doing it.

You were walking towards the 1A Class when some upperclassman decided it would be funny to pick on you.

“Wow would you look at this little baby! How did someone so usless get into a school such as UA?” Him and his buddies only laughed as you try to stutter out an insult. You turn your head towards the door and see Monoma walking out, you tried to get his attention, which worked this time but instead of helping you he only turned his head and walked towards his classroom. You turn your gaze back to the upperclassman before getting a quick slap to the face by one of them.

“Speak when spoken to bitch.”

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The bullying from the upperclassman had started to really take a toll on your mental health. You would try to do anything in your power to avoid them but they always found you. You wanted to tell the teachers but you were afraid they would believe you. They planted that thought in your brain as you slowly believed them.

You begged Monoma to walk you to class, hoping if he saw the fear in your eyes he would listen. Much to your dismay he didn’t.

You would always come to class with some sort of new bruise on your body. Everyone started to worry about you, they slowly started to think Monoma was abusing you. Which you said wasn’t the case. When asked who did it, you tensed up and froze in fear, worrying that they may be near.

You finally told someone about it when you were hanging out with Jirou. She had asked you what was going and you finally told her what was happening. And everything that has been happening with Monoma. She looked at you and gave you a nice bone crushing hug as she asked you why you didnt tell anyone.

“I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me..”

“Oh (v/n)...were going to report them. Im not standing by and watch as you get hurt!”

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A few weeks have passed since then and things were finally starting to be looking up! The upperclassmen who were bullying you had gotten expelled since, ‘bullying is not what hero’s do’. You were finally able to walk the halls with being in constant fear again. Your mental health still wasnt at its peak but it was slowly getting better!

But only one more thing still wasn’t looking brighter. And that was your relationship with Monoma. He kept on acting the same way, maybe even worse then before! As much as you hated the feeling you had started to grow bitter. Why was he ignoring you? What did you do to make him pissed at you?

You finally swallowed your anxiety and went up to talk to him. Taking a deep breath as you went up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. You were the only one’s in the hallway.

“Hey Monoma..did i..did i do something wrong?” You said trying to sound confident.

“What do you mean?” He asked. You sense a hint of smugness in his voice.

“Like you’ve been ignoring me all this week...what happened i thought we were doing-”

“Ah ah ah ah, im going to stop your right there. You see my dear our little ‘relationship’ was all but a dare.” Your eyes widen as sadness washed over you like a tidal wave. That couldn’t be tu\rue he said that he had loved you..was it all just a lie?

“W-what? B-b-but i thought y-you-”

“Well you thought wrong dear (y/n).” A snicker after his words. Your eyes swelled up with tears before pushing away from Monoma and running back to the dorms. Not caring if you missed class.

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You sat in your dorm, crying your soul out. You had loved him and told him secrets that no one else knew. You thought he truly loved you. The more you thought about it the more it hurt. You felt like your whole world came crashing down. Your tears burning your face as they kept coming.

Ding!

You looked down at your phone to see a text from Kirishima asking why you weren’t in class today. You could see the text message with it counting as reading it. You have to click on the app to do that. You throw your phone to the other side of your bed before laying back down and crying some more.

Once you woke up from your nap, the thoughts came rushing back again. What if they were just like Monoma? What if they were only your friends because of a dare too?

All those thoughts running through your head at inhumane speeds, until one stayed still.

What if you just ended it?

Your heart stopped at the thought. Why would your brain even think about that? But no matter how hard you tried to forget the said thought more and more voices plowed there way through your head filling it with horrible thoughts. Slowly picking at your insecurities. Feasting on your every flaw. You slowly get up from your tear stained bed. And you look at yourself in the mirror.

Fat

Ugly

Worthless

All but a dare

The last thought hit you like a brick as you fall to the floor with your head in your knees.

Your quirk was called Frost. You pretty much had the power to manipulate Frost. Meaning everything you touched would become covered in an a sheet of ice. That why you had to wear gloves, kinda like Shigaraki you needed to have all five fingers on said target for your power to work.

You just stared at your hand, tracing over every curve and looking at it with deep intensity. Before you could do anything else you put all five fingers on your ankle, causing your ankle begin to have a sheet of ice covering it. The frost started to quickly spread around your body and onto the floor. You head you head in your knees as you felt your body heat lower, the Ice completely claiming your body as one. A single tear slipped down your face before your entire body and room was covered in a layer of ice. Your phone buzzing with texts from worried classmates.

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After class had ended practically the entire class of 1A ran to their dorms to find you. You never missed a class.

As soon as they entire the dorms they all shivered. It had to be below zero in there. As they hugged themselves tightly they walked up to your room. As the tried to knock and upon the door they had realized the handle had been frozen solid. Bakugo having enough time worrying blasted the door open with his quirk. Everyone gasped as they saw your frozen form on the other side of the wall. They were quick to grab you out of the ice and bring you to Mr. Aizawa.

Once they reached him, he asked what happened. Which they all replied with i dont know. You were quickly taken to the nearest hospital everyone doing their best to thaw you out of your frozen cocoon.

Once at the hospital your body had been completely thawed out and was ready to be put in EC unit. You body temp was so low that they put every heater they had in the room.

The nurse looked at the class and told them that if they were a minute later you would have died from hypothermia.

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Monoma walked into school the next and was met with angry and ugly looks the entire time.

‘They hell did i do?’ He thought to himself. You never once crossed his mind.

Liar

After he said those things to you the look of betrayal and sadness in your eyes shot a spike of guilt through his chest. Before he could say anything you had run out of the building.

Now here he was the day after you got put in the hospital reciving ugly looks from everyone.

“Hey Kendo do you know what everyone is talking about?” The blonde boy asked his ginger friend.

“Wait, you didnt hear? (y/n) is in the hospital. Apparently they tried to commit suicide. Sad right?” A wave of guilt, sadness, and disgust completely takes over his body.

How could he live with himself knowing what he did to you? That he made you take that dark path.

News Flash he couldn’t.

The next day the blonde boy walked up the he hospital you resided at and getting ready to see you.

Once he saw your lifeless form he dashed his way to the bed to slowly stroke your hair. Sitting on a chair to get closer to you before hearing you wake up.

You slowly turn to Monoma, your eyes once filled with happiness was now full of hate and disgust.

“What are you doing here?” You snapped at the boy. Disgust evident in your voice.

“i just came to say-”

“Leave.”

“What?” Your words shushed him as he looked at you with wide eyes was he tried to grab your cheek to make you look at him.

“You heard me leave. I never want to see you again you understand Neito Monoma?” You looked him right in those blue eyes you use to love so much and said something you could never go back on.

“Your dead to me.”

#monoma neito #mha angst #bnha angst #neito x reader #monoma x reader #mha monoma #mha x reader #mha #dark theme #bnha

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albino-whumpee · 3 years

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Nightmare 3

Previous |

Just one more. Hope you like it~

CW// Graphic content, death, vore, dream whump, emeto, blood, situational whump, creepy whumpers, guns, monsters, body horror, flesh, failed escape attempt, horror and demons. CANT STRESS ENOUGH THIS ONE IS VERY GRAPHIC. Ask to tag

Someone´s view was filled with neon colors and black.

Someone looked around.

And Someone thought it was a busy street with lots of people wearing black.

Wait.

Someone heard a muffled voice nearby.

Someone turned to their right and saw a freckled boy with a heavy looking armor.

He was screaming something at Someone.

“I…I can´t hear you…” tried saying Someone.

They boy apparently heard them and showed surprise in his gray eyes. Then the boy shooked Someone without ceasing the screaming.

He looked so worried about something.

But there was many people in the street just walking.

What was he so worried about?

“…un! …urry…we…ne…ind..t…EXIT!” Finally, Someone could hear everything. Inhuman screeches flooded the air. War cries trying to overthrow them.

“Hurry, Someone! we need to go! they found us! We need to find the exit now!” He screamed with desesparation on his voice.

“What´s…?” Someone started.

“Now run! RUN!” The boy grabbed Someone´s hand and sprinted across the carpet of people.

What Someone thought was people just walking, were actually humans with the same black armor of the boy.

The neon lights were not just lights. But some kind of fleshy mass with bat wings, whose screeches were making a hole on Someone´s head.

The sound of shotguns and the ground filled with corpses, made very difficult to keep up with the boy.

“WHAT´S HAPPENING?! WHERE ARE WE?!” Yelled Someone at the boy.

“Why? Why did this had to happen on the second floor? We are not even close!” Someone heard say the boy, completely ignoring Someone.

“HEY! WHAT´S HAPPENING!” Someone yelled again. The boy still didn´t listen.

Someone heard a screech too close. And when they turned around, one of the creatures was flying in their direction with its mouth completely open.

Someone saw its fangs were the size of a grown adult.

It was moving too fast, and they didn´t have anything at hand.

So, Someone jumped at the boy making him trip.

Someone felt how the creature passed above them at full speed.

Someone looked on the sea of corpses trying to find a gun.

There was one covered in blood a few feet apart.

“IT´S COMING BACK!” The boy yelled unable to move.

Someone had never hold a gun on their hands. But the movement they used to recharge and aim at the creature, came out as natural as breathing.

As if they had used it their whole life.

Without even falling over the hit of the gun on their shoulder, it shoot with a deafining sound.

The creature took all of it and exploded in a rain of yellow water.

Only for more to appear right behind it.

Someone wouldn´t be able to take them all at once.

Someone ran towards the boy and grabbed his hand while they hurried to get away.

“WHERE CAN WE HIDE?” Someone screamed at the boy, behind them.

“THE ELEVATOR IS THAT WAY. FOLLOW ME!”

The boy sprinted beyond Someone. The place they were in looked like a street in the middle of the night.

But it was all fake.

The stars don´t move at the speed the ones in the ceiling did. Neither the sky suddenly opened in a horizontal line for other set of horrendous creatures to come out of it.

The boy kept running and took a fallen person´s gun, pointing at the newly emerged creatures with fearing accuracy.

Someone tried to help him.

The boy, having cleared the path from monsters, ran towards a control panel and attacked the keyboard.

Soon enough the wall that looked like a real city, cracked on a horizontal line, allowing to see a little metal room with tackles in each point.

“GO!”

The boy´s scream fell in some of the closest people ears. And with a tremendous sound of their boots crushing the bodies below them, they dashed to the elevator.

Someone saw themselves inmersed on a sea of people that didn´t care about pushing or hurting each other.

“GET US OUT KID” Someone heard someone yell.

The boy who was just beside Someone, slammed a botton just moments before another swarm of people jumped into the elevator.

The metal system, dropped to the ground like if gravity was even heavier than normal.

They went so fast.

Too fast.

“WE ARE GOING TO CRASH” Someone told the boy beside them.

“WHAT?”

Oh how the tables turn.

“WE MUST STOP THIS!” yelled Someone back.

“NO! WE NEED TO GET TO THE FOURTH FLOOR AT LEAST!”

“DO YOU WANT TO DIE SO MUCH?” Someone screamed trying to reach the keyboard of inside the elevator.

“NO!” The boy screamed too late. Someone had pressed the stop button.

The sudden cease on falling made everyone fly a little bit on the air before crushing their skulls into the ground.

Some quicker people, had put their hands or arms before their heads just a second before touching the floor.

But that couldn´t help them escape the great pain it caused.

Someone was quicker than half of them and had put their hand.

Someone was not as affected as the half that broke their skulls even with their hand cushioning the fall.

Someone was of the few who survived the interrupted fall.

And Someone had the fault of all that.

But Someone didn´t care a single bit.

Because Someone knew all of them would have died if they didn´t had stopped it.

However, other people weren´t as understanding.

And as soon as they could stand up, they started crying their partners deaths.

Someone felt how they were grabbed and pinned to the wall.

“WHAT WERE YOU EVEN THINKING?!” the boy punched Someone in the face. “We don´t have time for this nonsense! We NEED to get to the 5th floor if we want to survive” Someone felt their nose bleeding uncontrollably.

And Someone squeezed the boy´s hand until he let them go.

“I don´t think you understand what was going to happen if I didn´t stop it” Someone said looking at the boy from above. “I saved your sorry ass. A thank you would be nice, don´t you think?”

Someone was enraged.

And so was the boy.

“Do you know how hard we worked to get to the second floor in this six months? No, of course not. Why would the captain know how their underlings suffer and die in this hellish place” his teeth were clenched so hard Someone feared he would break them at any second.

“ok darling but haven´t you seen that little number on the monitor? We are on the 4th floor” The boy´s look immediatly fell on the big “4” the monitor showed. “We got this far, and all of this people died, and we´re finally here?”

A silent response.

The boy looked at Someone perplexed. And then started laughing histerically. Putting every survivor eyes on them.

“Okay, that´s just… whatever we didn´t need at this exact moment” tears started to flow from the boy´s eyes. “great. Just… GREAT”.

Someone felt sorry for him.

“We shouldn´t chant victory yet” A man´s voice resonated “Whatever is in the other side of this gates, is certainly going to kill us before we can even yelp for help” he aggravated.

“We are screwed then” the juvenile voice exclaimed. “There´s not enough of us”

“Not necessarily” Someone blasted out without thinking. Making every eye go on their direction “I-I mean, we can do it! we have the guns and this armors. We just need to think positively!”

The survivors looked at each other.

“We have tried making something that would get us out of the view of the demons to not make our numbers decrease, but…” the man looked away, disgusted by the very words he wanted to say.

“It didn´t work” Someone finished.

“It failed miserably”

“Then we could…” Someone started.

“STOP!” the boy screamed making everyone jump. “We are on the fourth floor right? We did it! Even tho, the fall from the second to this one, made half of us die, maybe we can actually get out of here”.

Everyone dripped a single tear of sweat.

Someone felt uneasy, but it was the only option they had at the moment.

“Let´s do this” Someone talked. “But we gotta prepare for the fall. We need to lay down while we´re at it. That way the impact won´t be as big”

“Alright, I will push the button and let you know” The boy confirmed approaching the keyboard.

Not a second after, the walls, just like a piece of paper, were teared apart.

The monster who came out of the hole, was an enourmous black mass with one eye and lots of teeth. So big, that they could only see its face. If that could be considered a face.

“HELL NO!” Someone yelled aiming the gun at the thing´s eye. As Someone shoot, Someone felt how, suddenly, the ground pulled them as strong as before.

Someone fell into their backs only to see the monster´s eye getting crushed between the elevator and the wall.

Someone felt so heavy.

Someone threw up turning their head to the sides in the fall.

It was too much to handle.

But finally they had reached the bottom.

The last floor.

Miracously the elevator had decelerated before reaching it.

Allowing a somehow soft landing.

Nevertheless, only courses vent out Someone´s mouth.

“Is everyone ok?” They asked grabbing their bloody head.

There was no response.

“Hey, I said…” Someone looked up.

There was not even one person alive.

The freckled boy´s head was smashed against the button he had pressed before.

The others…

Someone threw up once again.

Someone panted in horror.

But Someone wasn´t going to die.

Someone wouldn´t allow their body to die.

So Someone grabbed all the guns they could carry and strapped two of them together. Someone noticed how they merged to their hand,as if it was skin trying to cover a wound.

Someone´s new weapon was attached to their hand, but it didn´t hurt.

Someone was ready to fight whatever there was passing the closed doors of the fifth floor.

They opened.

And Someone saw hell.

These weren´t normal walls.

These were walls made of Flesh.

Adornated with skulls and black ropes forming beautiful patterns.

These weren´t shapeless monsters.

These were demons.

Elegant and deathly with their white skin covered in red tatoos and golden eyes.

Thousands of them.

Thousands of eye pairs locked on Someone.

But not Someone, nor the demons, attacked.

They quietly grinned. And the most close to the elevator, stood up showing the glowing white and toned naked body.

Its claws beautifully gloved with glowing scarlet.

They stood in front of a freezed Someone.

And then bowed before them.

The others followed it.

“My highness” the demon hissed. “You have done a great job. You promised us with new flesh to eat. And we´re glad your highness could accomplish the floor trials succesfully to bring the best of the best to us”

Someone was speechless.

Someone felt how the weapons attached to their hand turned into a snowy white.

Little by little covering Someone´s body.

Someone´s skin transformed into a toned white with golden tattoos.

Someone couldn´t move an inch.

“Don´t fret my highness” the same demon who bowed at first finally stood up. “for us to not die of starvation. For us, you decided to become the best meat we would ever taste by completing the floors trial made by our merciless god”

“THANKS YOUR HIGHNESS!” the demons acclaimed.

But Someone´s now elongated ears wouldn´t be fooled.

Someone´s new eyes, could perfectly see the hungry looks the demons threw at them.

“And now, would your highness allow me to take the first bite?” The demon asked Someone.

Unable to move.

Unable to think.

Someone could just tremble.

“OH! Thanks your highness!” The demon acclaimed smiling with his pointy teeth. Someone hadn´t said anything.

And in a second the demon sprinted towards Someone.

Someone moved in the last second.

Someone wasn´t going to be eaten.

Someone ran for their life.

But the demon´s tail captured them and threw them to the soft and fleshy ground.

Someone screamed as they felt the demon´s teeth ripping a piece of their body.

Then every single demon took a bite.

It must had been a delight as they went for more after tasting it first.

Millions of teeth.

Thousend of delighted moans.

And one single being screaming in pain as they were torn apart.

After some time, Someone started to not feel anything at all.

Someone´s head was all there was.

Someone´s eyes finally let go of the last teardrop.

But Someone isn´t dead.

As Someone is still dreaming.

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katsidhe · 3 years

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Hello as a long time silent lurker with post notifications on, and someone who has been very into the minecraft roleplay for about 9 months, I am oh so incredibly intrigued on your thoughts! I hope you don't mind if I ramble a little. Sam (both minecraft and spn, but in this context the minecraft one) is one of my favourite characters because he's so incredibly complex. The prison story has sparked so much discussion and conflict in this fandom, so I would love to hear your thoughts if you want to share!

oh noooooooooooo don’t enable me. (Jk <3)

I’m putting this under a read more for those of you who don’t want to be inflicted with my minecraft roleplay brain worms. I would apologize but I think we’re well past that.

So, like, full disclosure that I am pretty new to dsmp and am surely missing out on big ol swathes of Essential Character Content, etc etc. But I do know the basics, and I’ve (naturally) watched all the Torture Box Content, because I mean come on, that’s my brand.

k so First of all, THE most essential part of any media: x-coded y girl. Dream is a textbook Cas-coded Sam girl. Sam (Minecraft) is a Cas-coded Dean girl. Quackity is a Dean-coded Sam girl. I’d say Tommy is Dean-Dean. Techno is, hmm, Cas-Cas. Okay, important part done.

Minecraft Sam is very fun! I find it absolutely delightful that he clings to moral high ground while torturing and starving a prisoner. And at least from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of room for interpretation as to the level of guilt and involvement he actually feels about what’s being done to Dream. He goes back and forth between justifying the treatment as something Dream categorically deserves, and justifying it as a means to an end. Whether that end is the book itself, or whether it’s Quackity’s cooperation/satisfaction, or whether it’s some twisted and bloody sense of justice and duty, seems to vary wildly. On top of that, of course, is the irony that Dream was the one to give him this commission and this job in the first place: in every respect, it’s a duty to Dream (to punish him; to secure him; to uphold his rules) that Sam’s fulfilling. Dream isn’t the only one to suffer from Sam’s inflexibility surrounding the entire concept of Dream: Tommy and Ponk do too.

And yet it’s not the inflexibility that ends up hurting Dream the worst: it’s the gaps in that rigidity. If Sam had kept the prison operating as apparently originally commissioned, it would be inhumane but just about bearable: hardly the level of absurd, over-the-top war crime that it’s reached by now. His choice to begin starving Dream in earnest seems to have been mostly an emotional reaction, after Tommy’s death. (Ironic, too, that Tommy also suffered the result of this choice.) And this is fine, because it’s not active: it’s passive, something that’s happening by inaction. Same with giving Quackity specially made weapons and total carte blanche.

The level of trust that Dream has in Sam’s sense of duty is also fascinating. Even as late as the most recent stream, after the guy’s been permitting him to be tortured for months, Dream appeals to Sam’s need to keep Dream static, in one place as his prisoner, in order to save his life. Incidentally, I do think that convincing Sam to keep Quackity from straight-up murdering him is the only concession Dream was actually hoping to win with that conversation. because like, food and a courtyard visit? after a jail break? Like hell is Sam going to grant that, even before the stunt he and Techno pulled, and Dream knows it. I think that the rest of that conversation was just to deflect, and keep Sam from questioning Dream more sharply about whatever he and Techno have planned. Bringing up Tommy and letting Sam go off on his predictable diatribe about morality and just desserts seemed similarly strategic: Dream knows what Sam thinks about what kind of treatment he deserves. He’s had months to figure it out, and it wasn’t exactly rocket science to begin with.

Anyway, that trust is the same reason Dream appealed (unsuccessfully) to Sam when Quackity first showed up: it devastated him to realize that he’d miscalculated the degree of Sam’s willingness to set aside his duty in this one particular way. Quackity in general represents a HUGE blind spot in Sam’s otherwise completely rigid inflexibility: so huge it’s almost baffling, given what Sam was ready to do to Tommy and Ponk and Ghostbur. But Quackity represents a loophole Sam badly wants. He badly, badly wants some good old-fashioned vengeance, without dressing it up with any pretensions of procedure or justice, but he can’t allow himself to actively act on those impulses—or else he would be Bad, and he can’t have that. He has to believe himself to be Good, and he wants to indulge himself with Dream’s suffering anyway. So he explains that, actually, Dream’s treatment is Dream’s own fault. It’s hilariously deluded.

Which brings me to Quackity, because what makes Quackity fun is that he’s actually NOT hilariously deluded—not about this, at least. Unlike Sam, he’s not laboring under the insane mental acrobatics necessary to convince himself that torture is Good Actually. He knows that what he’s doing is terrible, but he owns it: he’s fine admitting that he enjoys it, that he’s doing this for personal gain and personal vengeance and not for reasons of high-minded civic duty. He’s justifying the torture with brutal simplicity: Dream has hurt him and Dream has something he needs, done and done. He seems to be a firm believer in vengeful and disproportionate retribution, just as with his whole Butcher Army thing. To which I say, neat and fun! I also really really enjoy the power dynamic between him and Dream. Dream is someone who commands respect and fear and power, who could murder Quackity with one hand tied behind his back if they were on equal footing, and who probably barely spared him a thought as a threat. Quackity lives in terror of the thought of Dream escaping and wreaking his vengeance. And Quackity is trying his very best to wrestle that power away from him.

He seems to be pretty unpracticed and ineffective at torture, too—like, yeah, I get this is Minecraft and props are limited, but torturing someone long-term with an ax and a sword is going to be more than a bit unwieldy. and did he even bring in health potions his first day? It’s pretty telling and hilarious that Sam is the one who offers the shears, a far more practical choice of tool. Not to mention that the entire premise of his interrogation gives Dream massive, massive incentive to never give Quackity anything. Quackity straight up admits to Dream that the information he wants is the only reason he’s letting Dream live, which is utterly counterproductive if he wants the book sometime this year. Functionally, he needs to torture Dream not merely into admission, but into suicide. And as the days and weeks and months pass, he’s still got nothing to show for it but growing vindictiveness, paranoia, and frustration. By the time of the latest stream, he’s completely lost the plot—his threats don’t even make sense, his violence is ineffective and unhinged and indiscriminate. He’s lost all leverage and he’s needlessly (re)made a powerful enemy in Technoblade.

So, like, characters like Lucifer are fun because they’re good at torture. Characters like Quackity are fun because they’re bad at torture. But that doesn’t much matter. He doesn’t need to be particularly talented, or strong, or skilled to make Dream’s existence hell: the bare facts of the situation are more than enough for that. What does he learn, over the course of these visits—what skills does he hone, what kinds of violence does he discover that he can stomach? What depths of ruthlessness and creativity and hatred does he discover within himself? What threats does he make that he finds himself following through on before he’s even thought through the implications? It’s a learning curve, for him and Dream both. They’re learning each other, they’re learning the corners of this little hell together. Dream wasn’t expecting him to be capable of this degree of hostility or violence. Quackity is sick of being underestimated.

Which brings me finally to Dream. My general and hastily-gleaned impression of the fandom gives me the distinct impression that there is somehow a school of thought convinced Dream’s earned this treatment? Which baffles me. not only in how its absurd extremity (daily torture in a tiny box for literal months, jesus fucking christ) isn’t something even the most terrible villain could earn, but also in how Dream himself strikes me more as a morally gray fallen/falling antihero type than anything else. I was honestly completely prepared to find him to be a straightforward Bad Guy pre-prison, but that’s not at all my impression. He’s clearly got people and things he cares about and wants to protect, and big picture goals he’ll ruthlessly sacrifice anything to advance (ahem Cas-coded Sam girl). Really, it’s more that roleplays don’t tend to lend themselves easily to those types of narrative classification: nearly every character is a POV character; consuming the content from every perspective is nearly impossible. There aren’t super neat ways to sort antagonists and protagonists in essential terms, only in their relationships to one another. In terms of manipulation, war crimes, power-grabbing, and general destruction, practically everyone on the server is guilty to some degree or another. Dream’s treated Tommy pretty damn terribly, but that hardly makes him unique. What does make Dream unique is that he’s been singled out for near-universally-agreed-upon confinement (which oh so conveniently aligns with him being held as a tool, for information). And that’s neat!

…Look, tldr I just like it when people are in torture boxes. more media should have torture boxes, they are good and fun.

#not spn #anyway nonny I would LOVE to chat more about this tbh #suicide mention #torture #dsmp for ts

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leviackermanscleaningbuddy · 4 years

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BTS DRABBLE-Kim Taehyung 🎃

Halloween Series: Demon Kim Taehyung

A lonely queen with a lust for revenge. An unpredictable demon who is bound to her side. The only thing keeping them together? A few summoning symbols, a dark and bloody common goal, and a single, red thread of fate.

Tags: BTS, Bangtan Boys, Bangtan Seonyendan, Bulletproof Boy Scouts, Beyond the Scene, BTS Drabble, Halloween, Spooky Season, Kim Taehyung, Taehyung, V, Taehyung x you, Taehyung x reader, Demon Taehyung

Genre: Dark Fluff/Suggestive, Angst if you squint

Warning: Mentions of death and past child abuse

Title: Bound to Me

(image credit: https://twitter.com/kanux4)

“Will you leave today?”

It is the same question that has left your lips every day since you met him.

And when he answers, it is the same answer he has given you every day in return.

“My darling, why would I ever leave you?”

Some days, that is all he offers you. Other days, like today, he gives you more.

Tossing aside his book and leaving the comfort of the fire, Taehyung crosses the room to where you stand-staring out the window at the barren, snow covered garden-and sliding his arms around your waist to rest at your hips, he leans in, pressing his lips to the juncture of your neck, in a lingering, gentle kiss.

“Our contract is not yet met, darling. I have no desire to leave until it is paid in full.” His lips run a path along your bare shoulder, and you feel him smirk slightly against your skin, as he speaks again, a hint of amusement in his tone, “Besides, if I left, heaven knows who or what would take advantage of your empty summoning circle.”

“And what would you know about heaven, demon?” You quip back almost instantly-though there is no bite to your tone-and he chuckles softly against your skin, where his lips still rest, warm and moist, at the crest of your shoulder.

“Not much.” Taehyung admits lightly, as he nips at your flesh once more, the feeling of his pointed teeth sending a slight shiver up your spine, as he pulls away from you, and sits back down once more before the fireplace, reaching for his book as he glances over at your form, still beside the window. “Come on, sweetheart. Stop being moody and let me enjoy your company.”

You glance over your shoulder at him, and he grins wickedly at you, fingers held out as they beckon for you to come to him, black nail polish and the tattoos that adorn his knuckles flashing in the dim light. “Don’t be stubborn, darling.” He tilts his head-dark purple hair falling over ebony irises-and his grin widens into something a little dangerous and boxy and carefree. “Come over here this instant, or I’ll be forced to come and get you myself.”

You sigh, hiding the smile that suddenly plays at your lips, and cross the room to do what he asks.

Because Kim Taehyung may be a demon-bound to you heart and soul until you complete your task-but you are just as much under his control as he is yours, though you’ll never admit it.

Because Kim Taehyung is heady and intoxicating and everything you could ever imagine and you hope-one day-that you’re ready when he answers your reoccurring question with the words you dread to hear.

*******

The feel of Taehyung’s long fingers-rings cold against your bare skin-running methodically up the length of the scars on your back, tracing them like maps, makes you shiver in a pleasant way, face buried in the pillow so you cannot see him.

“Tell me again, darling,” He suddenly murmurs, voice low and dangerous, bordering on a growl, close to your ear, making you jump. “What you want me to say to that bastard right before I slit his throat.”

“You already know.” You reply, slightly breathless, as you turn your head to the side to glance up at him, raising a brow in his direction, as his fingers curl into the fabric of the pillow on either side of your head and he towers over you. “I don’t care what you say to him. As long as you make him suffer.”

“Hmmm.” The demon hums in low satisfaction under his breath, as he reaches up to brush your hair out of the way, baring your neck, before he leans over and runs his tongue-hot and wet and dexterous-up over the revealed flesh of your throat, to the juncture of your ear, nibbling on the lobe there for a moment with the feel of sharp teeth and a smirk.

“You do know how to drive a demon crazy, sweetheart. And besides-” He pulls back from you, gripping your chin in his fingers to make you look at him. “Pain and suffering are my forte. So rest easy, knowing that that son of a bitch who hurt you will plead and beg for every last, pathetic, drawn out moment of his life.”

You roll over onto your back, locking your gaze with his, his hands still denting the pillow on either side of your head, and you can’t help but feel a small twinge of satisfaction, as Taehyung’s eyes rove down the length of your naked body with something shamelessly akin to insane hunger and desire washing over his dark irises.

You reach up, letting your hands trace over the hard planes of his chiseled stomach and chest, driving him crazy for just a moment longer, before you say with a twist of your lips, “Now you’re catering to my taste, demon. Your words are making me want to beg-which is truly unbecoming of a queen-for you to take me here and now.”

The corner of Taehyung’s full mouth twitches upward into the beginning of a self satisfied smirk. “Really. Well,” His tongue darts out to sweep slowly across his lips, and he’s staring at your exposed flesh like a dangerous animal who is ready to devour his prey. “You know what I always say, sweetheart.” He reaches out, lightly resting his fingers around the base of your throat.

“You can be the queen in every other aspect of your life, but in our bed?” His long fingers, the charcoal nails dark against your skin, tighten slightly at the column of your throat, and your heart pounds wildly in your chest in response, making him flash pointed teeth at you and lean down, the intense hunger in his eyes now swirling dangerously. “I’m the king.”

*******

You’re sitting in the garden a few weeks later, bundled in a cloak and hat and gloves against the cold, when everything finally comes out into the open.

You’re getting so close to finishing your father, to finding the ending of the revenge you’ve carried close to your heart for so long, and with that, the empty feeling in the pit of your stomach-that has been slowly growing day by day, ever since Taehyung entered your life-has suddenly become too much to bear.

Flipping a page in the novel you are halfheartedly reading, you let out a sigh, your breath freezing in the cold winter air even before it can leave your lips.

The garden is desolate and empty this time of year-the cobbles covered in a crunchy layer of snow, the trees nothing but dark branches against a gray sky-but winter has always been your favorite, because it is quiet and serene and everyone leaves you alone.

Everyone except Kim Taehyung, apparently.

“What are you doing out here?” The demon appears in one of the archways that surround the garden, and as he approaches you, you can already tell he is shivering violently beneath the coat he has thrown on. “Shit, sweetheart, you’re gonna freeze out here. Are you crazy?”

You don’t look up at him, instead, choosing to turn another page in your book, before you reply casually, “I forgot, demon, that you’re not used to the cold, being from such a hot place.”

“Hey.” He replies in a wounded tone, making you smirk slightly, as you keep your head bent to your book. “That’s a rumor, okay? Hell can actually be quite icy, especially if you get on the big guy’s bad side.”

He sits down beside you, rubbing his hands together for warmth, as you finally close the book and glance over at him.

You had always been told that demons were to be feared-dark, inhumane, cruel beings who simply did what you asked and then killed you when they had the chance-but Kim Taehyung is dangerous and dark and cruel in another way, and your heart thuds painfully in your chest just thinking about it.

He notices you staring, and turning his head to you, he asks, “What?”

You clear your throat, glancing back down at the book that is now closed in your lap, as you smooth your fingers over the gilded letters of the title. Finally, you manage to query in a small voice, “Will you leave today, Kim Taehyung?”

He sighs from beside you-though it is lighthearted-and leaning back on his hands on the cold, stone bench, he tilts his head back to look up at the sky, violet locks hanging down the collar of the coat he wears, as he ponders your question silently for several moments.

Finally, he quips back, “Is your father dead at your feet, darling?” He waits for you to answer, brow cocked, stunningly sharp and beautiful profile outlined against the winter sky, and when you finally shake your head, he nods, grinning at you, before he says, “Then no. I’m not leaving today. I still have work to do.”

You swallow hard at his words, your mouth suddenly dry, and your fingers grow still on the pages of the book in your lap.

Taehyung doesn’t seem to notice.

Standing up, once again vigorously rubbing his hands together, his breath coming in bright bursts of steam from his mouth, he looks down at you, offering a hand, as he exclaims, “Now come on. Let’s go warm up inside.” He tilts his head and offers you a slightly smug smirk. “Either by the fire or by our own methods.”

You don’t look at him, and you don’t take his offered hand.

Instead, there are several seconds of tense silence between the two of you, and then you suddenly let the words slip from your lips, quiet and fervent and cold, “I know everything, Taehyung.”

You don’t look at him, but you feel the pause in the air around you, as he considers your words.

“What are you talking about?” He asks, and there is a shake to his voice, though you are sure it’s just from the cold.

You finally manage to look up at him, your eyes meeting his own, and your fingers clench into the material of your overcoat, as you take in a shaky breath of your own and push forward, “I know everything.”

Recognition dawns across the demon’s ethereal features, but you do not stop, coming to your feet before him, the book tumbling to the cobblestones, suddenly forgotten in the moment. “When I summoned you,” You stumble over the words, as they all fight their way to the tip of your tongue, ready to be released, to be free. “I made a mistake.”

Taehyung’s eyes darken slightly, and his voice is slightly dangerous, as he murmurs in a low tone, “(Y/N)-”

You speak over him, hands now twisting into the fabric of your skirt feverishly. “I made a mistake. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I visited the summoning circle on a whim last night, and I saw-I saw what I had done wrong.”

His lips part, as if he’s going to try to speak again, exhale emerging on a cloud of frost from between the gap, and he steps toward you, reaching out to touch you, but you back away from him, almost stumbling over the bench you had been sitting on in your haste to put space between the two of you.

“You lied to me.” You point a trembling finger in his direction, and the words, and the look on his face, make a bitter taste flood into your mouth, but you cannot stop now. “You were never bound to me. I summoned you, and I messed up, and you’ve always been free.”

He sighs, heavy this time, something unreadable crossing his eyes, and then says gently, “(Y/N), I can explain-”

“Why are you still here?” You blurt out before you can stop yourself, the words seeming to hang in the crisp air between the two of you. “Why didn’t you leave? You’re not bound to me, Kim Taehyung. So why have you stuck around?”

Your body is trembling and your knees feel weak, but you have to hear his answer. You need to know.

When he looks at you, his dark irises are swirling, and his features are set, normally full lips pressed into a thin line, and when he speaks, his voice is hoarse and truthful, “I stayed because of you.”

Your mouth drops open, and the only thing you can manage to say is, “What?”

He steps toward you once more, and this time, you do not push away from him, your knees resting against the cold stone of the bench at your back. He reaches out, lightly brushing a strand of hair from your forehead, and his ungloved hands are cold against the rosy skin of your cheeks, as he runs a finger down to your jawline. “I stayed because of you, sweetheart.”

“Why?” You ask next, feeling suddenly and completely out of your depth.

“Because-” He sighs, and the pad of his finger goes across the skin of your lips like a feather, as his gaze holds yours. “Like an idiot, I fell for you the moment you summoned me into existence.”

You swallow, and your sure the demon standing before you can hear how loudly your heart is pounding.

“You were dramatic beauty and bloody revenge and sharp edges hiding an incredible soul and an even more beautiful heart, and I didn’t care that you had screwed up and I was technically free.” Taehyung continues, his voice a low murmur in the close space between the two of you, warmed by your shared breaths in the cold air. “All I wanted was to stay at your side and do anything you asked of me. For the rest of your life.”

“But you-” You began to say, and then stopped yourself, at the look on his face.

“I was never bound to you, darling.” He breathes out, letting his hand drop the base of your throat, where the pounding of your pulse could be felt easily beneath his fingers at the hollow of your collarbone. His eyes trace up the length of your neck, back to your eyes. “Not by magic. But absolutely by choice. And every day, every single day,” He lets out a heavy breath through his nose, followed by a slightly humorless chuckle. “You asked me if I was going to leave, and if I’d had a heart, it would have broken it every single time.”

“I’m sorry.” You manage to say on a whisper, reaching out to cup his face in your hands, the fabric of your gloves sliding over the flawless smooth skin that stretches across his perfect cheekbones. “I’m sorry for asking you that. And I’m sorry I never believed you when you told me no.”

The corners of his lips turn upward, and his fingers thread through your own, where they still rest on the planes of his face. “Now you know, sweetheart.” He shivered beneath your touch. “Damn it. Can we please get out of this cold?”

********

The door to the bedroom creaks open, and you stand from your seat beside the fire, anticipation and nervousness and hopefulness swirling, all at the same time, in the pit of your stomach.

You wait for a breathless moment, and then Taehyung appears in the darkened doorway, shutting the heavy door behind him silently, as you hurry across the floor on stockinged feet to his side.

“Well?” You ask breathlessly, as he turns to face you, and you meet his unreadable gaze.

He grins boxily, sharpened teeth flashing bright white in the dim light from the fire, and holds up a knife, dried blood marking the blade a deep maroon. “He’s dead, sweetheart. Just like you wanted.”

You feel as if a weight has been lifted from your shoulders, and you let out a sigh of relief through your teeth, as you manage to return his smile. “Thank you, Taehyung.”

Tossing the knife onto the chest of drawers beside the door, the demon cocks his head as he looks at you, a slightly mischievous look coming across his features, as he reaches out, hands going around your waist, to tug you to him. “Don’t you wanna know the details, darling?”

You reach up, pushing purple locks back from his forehead, and run a finger across a splash of blood that has marked the flawless skin above his dark brow. It is slightly congealed, but still liquid, and when you pull your finger away, the vivid crimson shines dark in the firelight on your fingertip as you admire the sight.

“No.” You reply simply, glancing up from the blood to meet his gaze once more as he watches you, body pressed against your own. “I trust you made his last moments a living hell. That’s good enough for me.”

You reach for a handkerchief, and swipe the blood-the last physical piece of your father-onto the crisp, clean white surface.

“Shit, you’re terrifying.” Taehyung growls out, pulling you back flush against him, as he bends his head to nip the skin playfully along the side of your neck. “I love it.”

You laugh, his breath tickling your ear, as he presses a sloppy kiss to the juncture of your throat, and pulling back from him slightly, so that you can look up at him, you ask seriously, “Are you ever going to leave, demon?”

The corner of his mouth tugs upward into a smirk. “Never.”

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mimosaeyes · 4 years

Text

Jon still gets nightmares.

Set in a post-canon ‘verse where they save the world, build a life together, and adopt a cat. It’s a series now! This fic (2.7k) works standalone, but is best read after the others, especially I Was Found (13.2k of softness). Everything below the cut will spoil you for the end of that fic.

Beta-ed by @emberidzae. Thank you for telling me it’s probably fine.

There is a special kind of quiet that occupies a room near two in the morning. The refrigerator hums, the water pipes whine, sirens go off in the distance — this is London, after all. But beneath that lies stillness, elusive like the space between breaths.

Jon sits on the sofa, rocking ever so slightly and waiting for... he doesn’t even know what. For peace to slip into his lungs. Be carried along in his blood, spread throughout his brain. Every time he blinks, he thinks he sees horrific afterimages on the backs of his eyelids. Tonight, his dreams have been full of bodies: burning, running, festering, falling, twisting, crying, choking. Closing in on all sides of him, until his sight was completely obscured.

Out of that apparent void, a single, all-encompassing eye mired in spiderwebs had opened, and looked directly at him. Under its scrutiny, it was as if he and Martin had never fixed the world he’d broken. Never torn themselves out of the Mother of Puppets’ plots, or away from the Ceaseless Watcher.

He exhales slowly, burying his face in his hands. Surely he should be used to nightmares by now. He’s had a long history with them, between statement givers and his own encounters with entities and avatars. The dreams were always vivid and hallucinatory, clinging to him as he struggled toward consciousness and woke gasping, often clutching the arms of the office chair he’d dozed off in. Later, after he ended the world, he’d stopped sleeping entirely. Slumber no longer carried the promise of rest.

No one remembers clearly what happened to them in the domains during the apocalypse. That collective, polyphonic torment now lives on only in Jon’s mind. He may not be affiliated with the Beholding anymore, but some part of him will always be the Archive.

The frustrating thing is that over the last year and a bit, the nightmares have been happening less and less frequently. He’d actually thought they were going away, but all week now, Jon’s been waking up screaming or sobbing, tangled in the sheets, his pyjamas soaked through with cold sweat. Martin hasn’t gotten through a night undisturbed, either. They’re both exhausted; that’s probably why he managed to slip out of bed without alerting him initially.

Just then, a slight sound makes him look to his left. What he sees is so incongruous to his mood that he begins huffing in silent laughter.

Boo, the smaller of their two cats, is using one front paw to bat at his ear, on which a large dust bunny appears to be stuck. It’s a slightly lighter grey than his fur, else Jon may not have even seen it.

Jon knows the exact moment Boo notices him looking, because he stiffens for a second. He’s been with them for a little over a month now, and while their efforts to make him feel at ease in their home have paid off somewhat, he remains jumpy.

Jon holds perfectly still. After a few seconds, Boo returns to his scratching, but to no avail. The dust bunny somehow ends up entangled in his whiskers, stretching between them and the tip of his ear. Boo shakes his head once, twice. Then he sneezes — and arches his back, his fur standing on end.

He had actually startled himself with his own sneeze. Jon can’t help cracking a smile, endeared and grateful for the distraction, inadvertent though it may be.

Clearing his throat quietly, he asks, “Would you like some help with that?”

Boo ignores him, which is ideal. It takes a certain amount of trust on this cat’s part to be considered beneath notice — meaning, not a threat. When Jon gets off the sofa and tries to approach, though, Boo freezes and watches him warily. So he sits down on the floor instead, thinking.

After a while, he begins softly singing the alphabet.

Immediately, Boo’s look changes from alert to curious. Whenever Jon has had the opportunity to do so, he’s been reading aloud to get Boo used to hearing his voice. Assembly instructions for a new shelf, dubious job listings he finds online, the weekly shopping list. At first, this strategy had been very successful. Boo learned to stop diving for cover every time Jon or Martin called for each other from another room. Then came the day Jon paused midway through washing up after dinner, to find Boo sitting not two metres away from his feet. It had been a crowning moment of triumph until Martin said, “You hum songs when you do the dishes, did you know? I think he likes it.”

Jon had somehow not been aware of this habit. He was instantly embarrassed.

Not that he’s stopped since it was pointed out to him. He’s actually been experimenting. Boo may have a certain fondness for ‘90s power ballads.

Which he is hardly going to attempt at this time of night. Instead, Jon cycles through the rainbow song and that one about the teapot, making no move as Boo cautiously approaches, blue eyes huge and unblinking. When he’s within an arm’s length, Jon stops singing and offers his hand for Boo to sniff at.

Purring now, Boo lets himself be pet. Jon seizes his chance and gently pulls off the dust bunny. “Now where did you even get this?” he wonders aloud. They’re generally diligent about household chores, especially keeping the place clean. Martin has allergies, and Jon likes the routine.

Boo nudges up into his fingers and leaves a smudge of fine dust on them.

A sneaking suspicion enters Jon’s mind. He narrows his eyes at the cat. “You’ve been in the study all day,” he says. “I saw you go in. And the desk has that jammed drawer, doesn’t it?”

They’ve been meaning to fix that. The drawer is stuck just wide open enough for dust to collect on the inside. And apparently, for a skinny, timid cat to make his hiding place.

“Well, that’s one mystery solved,” Jon muses, continuing to pet Boo despite the dirt. “Filthy boy,” he says affectionately. “Scruffy. Crumpet will refuse to cuddle with you.”

Mrow, Boo protests in his low, bullfrog-like way. He’s much less vocal than his calico counterpart, so Jon doesn’t get to hear this often.

“I suppose you’re right. She’ll probably just try to clean all this off you. She dotes on you, doesn’t she?”

He falls silent for a while, until Boo indicates with a flick of his tail that he’s had enough. Jon lets him wander some distance off and begin grooming.

In the lull of activity, the memory of his nightmare comes back with a vengeance, screaming in his brain and making him suck a breath in through his teeth. He had known their names as they struggled in their personal hells at the end of the world, had drunk his fill of their suffering and felt sated in that most inhuman side of himself.

It’s since been ripped away, of course, taking with it the voyeuristic detachment that had, in a perverse way, protected him from the distress his nightmares now cause him. Yet it scares Jon that that had ever been a part of him. Ever found suitable soil and taken root.

He’s fine, though. Or so he keeps telling himself. These aren’t the worst dreams, after all. No, those are the ones where he loses Martin. In the Panopticon. In the house on Hill Top Road. To the call of the Lonely. To the slip of a knife in the Hunt. There were so many ways one or both of them could have not survived. Not gotten to have everything they now have together.

Jon swallows and massages his temples. “Boo,” he says, “you’re afraid of everything. Any tips?”

Boo looks at him for a long moment, then yawns.

“I see,” Jon starts to say, just as a strangled cry comes from the street below. One of London’s many foxes, probably. Jon has learned to tune out this sort of thing, but the sound sends Boo scrambling for shelter.

And he runs to Jon.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Jon murmurs. “Just a fox. It’s over now. It’s okay.” After hesitating a moment, he picks Boo up and deposits him on his lap, then encircles the cat loosely with his arms. He doesn’t squish him — it’s Crumpet who likes to be bundled up and snuggled. He just sort of surrounds Boo, letting him mash his face into the crook of Jon’s elbow.

It takes a long time for Boo’s fur to settle back down. Jon starts stroking him after a minute, keeping his movements soothingly slow. “You’re safe here,” he tells him.

Then he sighs and repeats quietly, to himself, “You’re safe. You’re here. It’s over.”

Boo leaps off his lap, rumbles at him, then darts back into the study. Jon watches him go, shaking his head. A problem for tomorrow.

He sighs, then pauses and deliberately takes a deep breath. He holds it for a count of five before releasing the air. He imagines tension bleeding away as he does.

Martin had taught him this technique back in the safehouse in Scotland — far from the first time Jon had had nightmares, but certainly the first time anyone had been there to comfort him when he woke up. Progressive muscle relaxation, Martin said it was called. He’d used it himself during his stay in the Archives, whenever those thirteen days he spent trapped in his flat by Jane Prentiss came back to haunt him.

“Breathe in, tense? Okay, now hold,” he murmured, sitting up in bed next to Jon, his silhouette familiar and comforting against the yellow glow cast by the bedside light. It had been on by the time Jon surfaced into consciousness, still panting and crying.

“One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three, four, five,” Martin counted for him. “Release, breathe out.” His hands ran over Jon’s shoulders, warm and soothing. “Better?”

Jon nodded. “A bit,” he said, his voice a little hoarse. He must have yelled in his sleep before Martin managed to rouse him. “Listen, you... you don’t have to do this. I can go sleep on the couch.”

Martin went silent for a moment. “The other day, when I dreamt I was back in the Lonely. Did it cross your mind to kick me out, even for a second?”

“No,” Jon said at once, shocked. “Of course not.”

“Then that’s settled,” Martin said firmly. “You’re not okay, and I can help. That’s all there is to it. On to your arms next, ready? Breathe in, tense...”

Alone in their living room, but following Martin’s instructions from before, Jon works his way through various muscle groups until he gets to his hands, at which point he clenches his fists and presses his knuckles down against the floor on either side of his thighs. That probably isn’t recommended. He hasn’t done it hard enough to hurt, though, and he needs the sensation, he thinks, to ground himself in reality. To remind himself that he’s here in their tiny apartment, and if he goes to peer out the window, the sky will not look back at him.

He’s here and it’s long past midnight, but if he texts Daisy, she will grouse good-naturedly, then call him to ramble about how the new podcast she’s started listening to is pretty good, but could never measure up to The Archers. If he goes back to the bedroom and tells his husband he needs him, Martin will rub his eyes and get up to make Jon some tea. He’ll put in milk and sugar, which always seems too indulgent for Jon to do himself, and they’ll cuddle up with a book, or in front of the telly with the volume turned way down.

The people he loves, who love him in return, are within reach. Even when they’re not there next to him. Jon knows this in a way that has nothing to do with the Beholding. It’s just hard to remember sometimes.

He exhales one final time, and that’s when Martin appears in the doorway to their bedroom.

“Hey,” he says quietly, looking soft and rumpled in his pyjamas. His voice is rough with sleep, low with concern. “I woke up and you weren’t there. Is this a bad night?”

Another one, you mean? Jon wants to say bitterly. He bites it back; it’s only the sleep deprivation talking. “I just needed a moment to clear my head,” he says, clambering to his feet. “Let’s go back to bed.”

He honestly feels a lot better, and he thinks he’s done a decent job of sounding normal. He must still look like a mess, though, because Martin frowns and stops him from squeezing past. “Wait. Do you want to talk about it?”

Jon’s already shaking his head. “No. It was just... more of the same.” The first few times, Martin had stayed up with him while Jon stammered out the things he’d seen in his dreams. He listened and tried to reassure him, and it had helped to an extent. But the more Jon spoke, the harder Martin’s lips pressed together in that way that meant he was horrified and trying to hide it. Jon had grown all too familiar with that expression during their walk through the domains.

He clears his throat. “Really, Martin. Everything’s fine.”

“Then why’d you come out here by yourself? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Well, I thought one of us should get some sleep,” Jon says drily, only he’s tired, so it comes out rather snappy.

Martin cants his head at him, his brows pinching together. Jon can practically hear the gears whirring in his mind. He shifts uncomfortably.

“I know it’s been a bad week,” Martin says at last, softly, “but please don’t shut me out.”

As soon as he says it, Jon knows that that’s what he’d been trying to do tonight. Keep his nightmares and guilt to himself, protect Martin from the horrors he knows about anyway. At least, that was his excuse. It’s not that Jon didn’t want his help; he did. It had simply felt too selfish to ask for it.

Jon watches him for a long moment. He thinks about fear, and love, and self-isolation. He thinks about Martin waking up in the safehouse smelling like sea spray; about telling him to Breathe, just breathe. You’re not alone. Not anymore. He thinks about a little grey scaredy-cat who feels safe with Jon, of all people.

“I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”

Martin gives him a small smile. “Okay. How can I help?”

Jon bites his lip. “Would you... would you just hold me, please?”

“Oh, Jon.” Weary though he is, Martin’s look is full of sympathy. “Of course.”

Jon follows him back to bed. As he lifts his side of the covers, Martin says, “Ah, careful. I think Crumpet’s settled in the warm spot you left.”

He peers in the darkness. Indeed she has. “Your Royal Highness,” he greets her, bowing slightly. That’s the appropriate form of address for a princess. It doesn’t roll off the tongue very easily, but Martin groans and rolls his eyes whenever Jon says it, so he keeps doing the bit.

He can never bear to move either of their cats if they look comfy, so he gets into bed gingerly and ends up pressed close to Martin, who loops an arm over him. They’re face to face, with mere inches separating them.

“Hi,” Jon says, somewhere between shy and pleased.

“Hi,” Martin says back at him, his smile colouring the word. Jon thinks they could be seventy years old and still greet each other like that, bashful and sweet as teenagers with a crush.

Jon tucks his face against Martin’s shoulder, humming in contentment at the warmth and solidity of him. After a while, he mumbles, “By the way. Boo needs a bath.”

Martin laughs. “That’ll be an adventure. Why?”

His voice is light, but betrays how tired he is. Jon shifts and presses a kiss to his cheek. “Tell you in the morning. Go to sleep.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yes,” Jon says slowly. “I think I will be.”

[my TMA fic on AO3]

#the magnus archives #jonmartin #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #mimofic

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friendlyfrat-boy · 4 years

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The Straw-Hat Among Us, Ch.8

White: Smoker

This was it, then.

Smoker had actually insisted that they just do a double-kill once he picked off that slow-talking fellow, but apparently the Red-nose wanted to do this in a… different way. “Let’s get the second last guy voted off,” he’d said. “Having only one guy left to kill would be much easier than two.” Smoker never should’a taken advice from that clown. He was the sneaky sort, not the… murdering kind.

He’d done a good enough job on Sheep-horn, perhaps a bit too emotional, but it had certainly been a close one. If Green-hair hadn’t outed himself…

Oh well. That was over now. A single human left.

Judging by how Long-nose’s human face paled, he must have understood his situation quite well. “I-, uh, um… P-, please…”

Smoker really didn't care for talking to his victim. “Be quiet and you won’t suffer.” As Smoker reached for a hidden pocket in his own flesh, he soon realized he’d left the knife in the monkey-man. Damn it, Flamingo had really taken him by surprise there. Left with no other choice, Smoker let parts of his human form dissolve. After all, keeping up this form was… draining.

It was like holding your breath for a very long time, going beyond that moment where your chest hurt and your head started pounding. It felt natural, to simply release that breath, let his right arm open up into fleshy tendrils of teeth and claws and whatnot. If he were human in any way, this is the point where his white suit would get ripped apart, but not so, especially since the suit is also part of his body. In human terms, he was naked. But also not.

Bah, humans and their arbitrary terms.

The Long-nose quivered, eyes widening at the sight of Smoker’s arm opening up like a blooming flower of teeth and flesh. Unlike Red-nose, Smoker wasn’t about to go around biting people. Well, he was about to bite the Long-nose, but using his arm. As confusing as human terms were, their own terms were hardly any better.

“H-, hiiiii!” Long-nose whimpered, taking a step back from Smoker and the pool of lava. A rational move, according to Smoker himse-,

A hand was placed on his shoulder. Turning his head only slightly, he saw Red-nose, an odd look in his eye. “Smoker,” he said, voice distorted somewhat as his human form changed slightly. “Hold on a moment.”

“The hell do you want?” Smoker asked back, his own vocal cords deepening as he no longer cared to keep his human form entirely maintained.

Red-nose glanced away, every facet of his human face showcasing doubt and confliction. “I just think-”

And then, Long-nose ran. He turned his back on the two killers, turned tail, and sprinted off into the darkness. Smoker cursed under his breath. He only had so much vision, he was only so fast, and right now, Long-nose had almost gotten too far. “Shit, Buggy, get to the cams, find him!”

Smoker couldn’t catch if Red-nose nodded or not, but he had to assume that he did. Left with no other choice, Smoker dove into a nearby tunnel, right beside a weather node and a forgotten snowman, letting the majority of his human form dissolve. Small, bony protrusions blossomed across his body, digging into the rocky tunnel, forcing his compressed body forwards at speeds far quicker than human running would allow.

His first destination was also the closest one. The chances of Long-nose running in here were low, but even then, he popped out into the Laboratory. Right in the stalls. Going by the placement, it seems one of the toilets collapsed into the tunnel.

The tunnel he was using.

...He’d chosen to ignore that long ago. A quick peek into the rest of the Laboratory ensured that the young boy hadn’t emerged here.

He hopped back into the tunnel. This trip would take a bit longer, but not enough to be a detriment.

Less than a minute later and he crawled out of the Tunnel inside the Office, the southern one through a little hallway of bookshelves. He couldn’t remember using this one. No, wait, he’d used it back then, to kill the Chief. It almost felt like a lifetime ago. It would all be over soon.

Smoker quickly made his way through the Office, barely stopping to check anything before he hopped into the tunnel right in front of the Meeting room.

Although this hadn’t been the primary vent he’d used a mere hour ago to kill monkey-man, he’d used it in combination with another tunnel and Red-nose’s expert distraction to complete the kill. Flamingo had been an unexpected but somewhat welcome change in plans. To Smoker, it didn’t really matter if the final human was Flamingo or Long-nose. It shouldn’t matter to Red-nose either, but somehow, Smoker could tell things weren’t quite so simple.

Either way, Smoker popped out of the tunnel beside Communications, took a quick look inside the mentioned cabin as well as Weapons and promptly returned to the tunnel.

His final stop for this tunnel would be the Storage. He didn’t expect Long-nose to be in here, and he wasn’t. Just a bunch of useless human trinkets. Smoker quickly exited the room. He’d assume for the moment that Long-nose hadn’t chosen to hang about in the Specimen room, meaning that he just had to check the West Wing.

Electrical was empty. Blood littered the floor in various places, most obviously in the Security Room, where blood still splattered the screen. Green-hair had left a rather impressive trail from O2 to the outside of Electrical. Smoker followed it into O2, but before he could open the door leading to (Red-nose really liked keeping all the doors closed for some damn reason), he noticed that he could hear something.

“I-, I don’t want to die-,”

“Shh, keep it down, idiot! He’ll hear us!”

“I-, um, sorry.”

“Look. We can just-, I’ll get you out of this. You don’t deserve this, okay? You’re a good kid. I’ve done bad things, I don’t care if you hate me for it, but I don’t want you to die for it. I want you to live. Our species might never get along, but we two, you and me, we can get along. If only for tonight.”

“Buggy, that’s… you are Buggy, right? I can’t-, I just-,” There was a quick sniffle.

“Hey, hey, cool it! Don’t cry now, man!” A slap. “Keep it together! I’m going to need you to-,”

Smoker stepped through the door. “To do what, exactly?” The two scheming bastards jerked around, Long-nose growing paler yet, his eyes as white and terrified as a rabbit could be, while Red-nose obviously struggled to keep his human form in the best shape it could be. Making an effort to look normal in front of the human. Pah. “Buggy, why don’t you dispose of the final human?”

He didn’t move. Neither did Long-nose for that matter.

Very well. If he wouldn’t, then Smoker had no choice but to do it himself. He bared his biological weapon of choice.

Red-nose grit his teeth, grabbed Long-nose and ran for it. Is that how they’d do it? Very well. Smoker didn’t mind being the last man standing. If winning meant taking out his fellow imposter, so be it. With that vow in mind, Smoker pursued.

It was a rather short run, ending where it had started. Right by that pool of magma.

Usopp stood huddled by it, Buggy situated right in front of him, clawed, alien arms stretched out to protect him. A pathetic display of solidarity between opposing species. He’d always been the emotional sort. He simply wasn’t suited for this sort of situation. Not to murder, and not to pretend, either.

Apparently, he couldn’t even pretend to like a human. He had to go and get personal about it. “If you do not step aside, I will assume you have chosen to betray me.”

“N-, no, I haven’t chosen to betray you! I just-, we can figure something out! We don’t have to kill all of them, do we?” Red-nose weakly defended.

Smoker let his human form dissolve fully. “So you have chosen death.” His voice was a bellow. A gravelly, inhuman sound that he couldn’t imagine the human could understand at all. His body, fleshy and restless with energy, heaving and moving and barely resembling anything human as he prepared to do away with a truly unwelcome surprise.

Red-nose growled. It wasn’t a human sound, but it didn’t quite line up with anything Smoker could understand either. It was simply a sound.

The right side of Red-nose’s body opened up, revealing jagged teeth and bloody bone. Long-nose whimpered, and in that short moment where Red-nosed glanced back, concerned and foolish, Smoker struck. A tendril, the tip of it crowned with a sharp tooth, shot out at Red-nose’s face, missing it by a mere inch when the face parted. Smoker pulled back his arm.

It started. The battle was no longer between human and alien. Smoker knew this and had to adjust his strategy accordingly. Flesh no longer bled, instead twisting and changing to avoid his projectiles, malleable as clay. The moon stood high, their battle painted red with both the little wounds they took and the luminous magma they battled beside. Their prize, the one to be spared or slain by the winner stood aside, watching with trembling limbs and trembling gaze as two monsters fought.

Smoker hated to admit it, but it was a standstill.

Smoker had the upper hand in strength and defence, but Red-nose was quicker. He easily evaded Smoker’s strong attacks, landing little ones that left Smoker with the tiniest of scratches. In turn, Smoker gave Red-nose a few wounds of his own, nothing big, nothing that could end this battle once and for all.

No, Smoker knew that if he wished to win, he would need to do something new. Something unexpected. Something… cunning.

He glanced at Long-nose, an idea flitting through his head. It was his only choice.

Red-nose seemed too absorbed in the battle to even consider the possibility. Smoker’s eyes sharpened. He watched for a misstep, a stumble, a moment of respite where he couldn’t act. It didn’t come naturally. And so, Smoker chose to create it.

He let Red-nose get a hit in. A row of sharp teeth sunk into his back, surprise painting Red-nose’s features.

In this moment of surprise, Smoker struck.

Long-nose hadn’t seen it coming, either.

One moment he’d been standing in front of the lava, and the next…

He was missing an arm and a good part of his chest. Smoker grinned. A fatal wound. With this, Red-nose would be forced to submit himself, to agree to the death of the human, to-,

Something sharp punctured Smoker’s chest. He looked down, and found a bony spear lodged deep in his heart. Blood seeped from it. Was it human, or alien? Smoker couldn’t know. He coughed, red blood staining his white suit. Stumbled a bit. Passed by the stunned-silent Long-nose.

And fell into the lava.

His last thoughts lingered on the irony of it all.

#one piece #fanfic #among us #kizaru #smoker #buggy the clown #marco the phoenix #shanks #zoro #caesar clown #marshall d teach #usopp #doflamingo

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thatkinkytrashcan · 4 years

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Broken Blades

Summary: After a moment of desperate passion between brothers, Vergil falls into the hands of their father's greatest enemy. With his very mind and soul stolen by Mundus, Vergil knows nothing but the want to fulfill his Master's every desire. And to protect their precious son, Nero.

Pairings: Dante/Vergil, Vergil/Mundus, Vergil & Nero, Dante & Nero

Warnings/Tags: Sibling incest, DT sex, knotting, cum inflation, m-preg, Vergil is Nero’s mom, rape/dub-con, mental and emotional manipulation, brainwashing, amnesia and identity issues, forced c-section without anesthesia, child abuse, threat of future sexual violence made to a child, Mundus is a really bad parent, rampant speculation on demon/half-demon biology

(Please let me know if I missed anything you think I should add! I’d rather not surprise anyone with this stuff.)

I.Forging

Dodging Dante's attacks was considerably harder this time around. Vergil teleported back a few steps to avoid the sweeping arc of Cerberus as his brother spun through the air. Dante was off balance because he was frustrated, but his rapid mastering of Devil Trigger more than made up for the shallow openings in his stances. Vergil felt a brief twinge of jealousy at the progress Dante had made in only a single day, reaching a level that had taken him months of careful training and constant combat.

But now they were evenly matched, and Vergil was startled by how much that pleased him. He liked to think that was why he didn't evade Dante's sudden charge.

Vergil grunted when his back hit the wall, but Dante didn't give him any time to recover before his supernaturally sharp teeth sank into his older brother’s shoulder, almost to the bone. The enhanced aggression wasn't a surprise since Vergil had experienced the same delirious haze during his first few transformations. The naked desire in Dante’s burning red eyes was unexpected, however.

"Mine," Dante hissed, hiking Vergil's scaly thighs over his elbows and forcing him to lean into the wall for support. "Mine, mine, mine, mine…"

"Foolish," Vergil replied, but an answering thrum of hunger rolled through him. He hooked his legs around his little brother's waist without even thinking about it, pulling Dante into the soft place within the sanctuary of his thighs. Being beaten, even momentarily, was provoking a need to expose himself that Vergil couldn't quantify.

For all the research and exploration, there were still things about their devil biology that caught him off guard. He knew that submission and dominance was an important part of some demons’ social hierarchies and mating rituals, but he had thought himself above such base inclinations. Apparently he’d been wrong.

He arched in invitation, and Dante didn't disappoint.

His twin surged forward until they were flush against each other, grinding that vulnerable area of their groins together. "So stupid," Dante hissed. "Why can't you just stop all this?"

"You know why," Vergil returned, digging into Dante's back with his claws. The smell of blood was an aphrodisiac, stirring up their lust even further.

"It's just so… stupid."

His head spinning from want, Vergil shifted his heels so they sat under Dante’s ass, giving him a bit more leverage to coax them even closer together. “You never did understand,” he said. But this was no time to lament.

“Vergil, please, I need… I need!” That whine in his brother's voice sounded like begging, and Vergil felt the strangest impression of armored plates shifting and a warm, wet space between his thighs opening in consent.

He hadn't bothered to fuck in this form before, but he had experimented on his own a bit, intrigued by the mutability of devilish bodies. Or at least their devilish bodies; he hadn't taken the time to see if he could force other demons to change their shapes to suit him. Still, he couldn't stop his own flesh from creating a void to welcome Dante's strength into it, and he didn't want to.

A sigh of satisfaction escaped him when Vergil felt something hard and heavy and ridged pushing into him, a slow moving, inevitable force stretching him open until he spread his legs wider to receive it fully. His aching center suddenly needed to be filled by Dante’s massive cock more than he needed air.

With a snap of his hips, his twin was seated deep inside, and Vergil moaned long and low at the sensation. Thick, hot, powerful. The fullness was alien and sublime, like nothing he could hope to experience in his limited human shape. It was completion in its purest form.

"I-I can't…" Dante groaned, struggling to hold himself still.

"Then don't," Vergil said and gasped when Dante withdrew only to slam home again.

Their coupling was frenzied and clumsy, driven by long buried need. Dante tried to kiss him but gave up when it became clear that their Devil Triggers didn't mesh together as elegantly with their mouths as they did elsewhere. He buried his face into Vergil's collarbone instead, but that wasn't what Vergil wanted, so he grabbed Dante's horns and forced his head up.

"Don't look away," he insisted. "I want to see you--!"

His words were broken by the furious thrust that felt like it would push him through the wall at his back. The indecent sounds their bodies made only served to heighten his ardor, leaving Vergil to roll his hips to meet each delicious lunge.

“I love you, dumbass. Why isn’t that enough?” Dante growled. He was still staring up at Vergil thanks to the hands holding his horns in place.

It was. And it wasn’t. Dante’s love had always formed a part of Vergil’s core, and losing him was like having a vital organ torn out. He had spent the intervening years wandering the world with a gaping hole in his heart. All he had cared about was protecting what little he had left: himself.

But then he learned Dante was alive, and he was still trying to recalibrate his soul to account for it. He had no way of making Dante understand just what that meant for him, no safe way to show that raw part of himself that he’d been trying hard to shield for so long.

“Because it’s not,” Vergil answered instead. Because he couldn’t let it be, or every terrible thing he’d done and suffered would have been for nothing.

“Then I’ll make it enough,” Dante said, and Vergil realized he very much wanted him to try.

His claws raked against his little brother’s demonic hide with a clatter, and Dante dug his fingers into the underside of Vergil’s legs to ground them both. An inhuman heat throbbed within Vergil, pistoning into a soft, new place inside him that sparked across his pleasure drenched nerves. It was overwhelming and made more so by the fact it was his beloved twin. Dante’s cock speared him over and over until he could finally stop thinking and just let himself feel.

This… This was right. Whatever their current conflict, they were always meant to be together, to be one. Vergil's body knew this instinctively, he decided, giving him the means to take Dante into himself and join them together. As Dante's motions became erratic, Vergil knew he wanted even more, everything he could get from this fleeting moment.

He tilted his hips and spread his thighs as wide as he could, using his shoulders braced against the wall to push himself rhythmically against his twin. Vergil could feel the broad bulb at the root of Dante's dick thumping against his entrance and instinct demanded he take it all.

The bulb sank part way into his opening, dragging a moan from Dante and sending a spike of frantic lust straight through Vergil's groin. If he didn’t have everything now, he might just lose his mind.

"Vergil, I'm gonna… Shit!" Dante bit him again, on the throat this time, and Vergil purred in delight.

"Do it. I want this," Vergil insisted. And, oh how he did.

Dante shoved forward, and Vergil howled when the knot drove past his edges and fully into him. His body spasmed in devastating pleasure, stealing away anything else he could say in encouragement, but the pulsing of his brother's cock inside him was just as transcendent as he’d known it would be.

He could feel the jets of hot seed, sealed in by Dante's swollen knot that closed any gaps between them, filling him until his stomach rounded slightly. It was a part of his twin, his other half, some of Dante's very life that Vergil accepted as deeply inside as he could manage to gather it. It was the distilled essence of his boundless brother melding with himself.

Vergil lay a hand on his distended belly and let the euphoria of their consummation sweep him away. His eyes fluttered closed, wanting this unity to thrive and grow into something tangible that would bind them permanently because, all too soon, they would be at odds again. No matter Dante's wish that he abandon his quest, Vergil would gain the power he needed to defend himself and everything that he cared for.

He couldn’t live without his brother again.

"Next time..." Dante panted. "Next time you'll be inside me, yeah?"

The glowing eyes searched his face, and Vergil traced clawed fingers along his brother's cheek. He knew what Dante was really asking, why he'd been so desperate in their mating. He'd wanted this to be forever, and Vergil wanted that too even if his brother was incapable of understanding or accepting his methods.

"Next time," Vergil promised. “Next time.”

Next: https://thatkinkytrashcan.tumblr.com/post/631365074601279488/broken-blades-pt-2

#Devil May Cry #Dante/Vergil #Spardacest #Vergil/Mundus #Please read the warnings

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ghostmartyr · 5 years

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SnK 119 Thoughts

In the next thrilling episode of things going much worse than they needed to, all my fake internet money is going towards Historia actually incubating Eren’s missing leg under her shirt.

Through the power of Paths he rips his way out of Historia’s stomach while NPC Farmer Guy watches in complete horror and Levi bleeds out on the kitchen table because everyone is too distracted by the latest bloody mess.

The rest of the manga is just devoted to extreme Biblical discourse over who is playing which part in the story, and how many ways can they be Frankensteined together.

With bonus points going to Levi sharing Jesus’ birthday.

Christ Bowl: Resurrection.

Like Serum Bowl only somehow worse for everyone.

Okay so a lot happened.

I wanna make sure I’ve got it.

Lessee.

Yeah.

So.

A bunch of people died.

Reiner was not one of them, because death would impede the manga’s one constant of Reiner suffering.

That’s it, that’s the chapter.

Geez, okay. So in one corner we’ve got all of the folks who Zeke turned into titans. And Zeke actually made that cog of the plot spin forward. So we’ve got a city full of titans. In previous times this was undesired and bad, and it still sort of is, but the people these titans will eat are Marleyan soldiers, so it’s a lot easier to not feel so bad about the cannibalism.

Then we’ve got Porco Galliard.

Who is apparently dead now.

Falco, who is not dead, no longer has a brother. Because Colt wanted to hug his baby brother during his time of need more than he wanted to live. So Colt’s dead too.

Zeke is somehow not dead. Still.

Gabi is keeping up the Braun tradition of living to survive further trauma.

Mikasa, Armin, Jean, and Connie continue to be good children who deserve only nice things as they try to clean up the mess their one friend has managed to create around them.

And Eren’s head gets blown off.

Which it’s sort of hard to argue he doesn’t deserve, all things considered. ‘All things’ including the part where he’s probably not going to stay dead if he even reaches that point.

...

Okay.

My main desire with this post is really just to scribble red marker everywhere and draw tiny explosions with the footnote, “things went wrong,” and leave it at that. This is very much one of this series’ chapters where I’d prefer to simply wait for what’s coming than to try to produce something meaningful over what we have.

The temptation to say this is all very rushed is very present, but I think that’s just because two characters with names die and the entire upper brass turns into titans in the space of forty pages.

Galliard’s been getting the crap beaten out of him every single fight. The impressive part is that he stays alive long enough to do something with his death instead of just getting killed.

Colt... yeah, people in hysterics don’t make good choices. I’ll come back to him with kinder words later, but mainly that.

I think I’m just a little in shock that the plot actually moved. While it’s gotten better over the years, the manga is still very much designed around paving a foundation with exposition, then hitting every single relevant beat of said exposition without pausing for air.

The threat of the military turning into titans has been around for months. It just. Finally really happened.

...Look, the manga might not want to take a breather, but I sure do. This is a lot of action dropping a lot of seeds, and part of me is still stuck on the fact that the grand titanization actually happened, and Galliard actually gets nommed.

Oki doki then.

Yay for fewer swords dangling over everyone?

Probably also a no on Jaws breaking Annie out? Falco won’t have the control to do it gently any time soon, and Falco, being a precious beacon of goodness, is not going to feel comfortable just cracking Annie open.

Hell. Some months I think would really go better without a post. With monthly series, there’s usually something each month that’s worth words, and I do think this still qualifies, but this really could use the cushioning of its future chapters. So many boxes got checked off for things happening so fast that it’s hard to gauge their impact. The smoke’s still clearing, and detailing the quality of the rising dust and ashes is not high on entertainment.

Oh well, into the cloud we go.

This month brought to you by brothers!

Colt and Falco; Porco and Marcel; Eren and Zeke. Brothers! Brothers feeling brotherly feelings and relating to each other through said feelings!

Or a series of older brothers severely traumatizing their younger siblings and making everything much worse by trying to be good big brothers in ways that lead to dead bodies littering the streets.

Reiner’s entire post-Warrior Candidate life happens because Marcel wants to keep his little brother safe.

It’s Zeke’s fault, but Colt hugging Falco means that Falco’s transformation kill Colt.

Zeke and Eren. Uh.

Bring out the red marker, because I think it would take less time to outline what area of the plot their grand plan hasn’t rained destruction all over.

This isn’t Evangelion, but good grief, if ever you wanted examples of people caring for each other as badly as they possibly can while maintaining vaguely good intentions, the sibling relationships covered in this chapter have your back.

Colt, to his credit, really is trying to be a good big brother, but. On the list of things Falco did not need, burning his brother to death is pretty high up there.

I’m going to try to stop being stunned by the fact this chapter really did happen now.

Colt, Gabi, and Falco have all been raised in an environment that encouraged hating themselves. The pinnacle of achievement in their lives is to be honored sacrifices for a country who doesn’t think they deserve life.

Gabi's been the star player in that show. Her innocence shatters with her psyche, and this arc has not been gentle in detailing that. She goes from being proud of her status and blowing things up with a laugh to shooting her greatest enemy in tears.

Falco’s been the precious cinnamon roll. He’s unfailingly kind. His goal has always been small: protect Gabi. He adjust to what he sees in front of him, and if it completely changes his worldview, that’s only the background. He’s still here for Gabi.

Colt, from the moment we meet him, is protecting his little brother. He picks Falco up and drags him away from trouble.

He’s Zeke’s successor, in theory. He doesn’t want Falco to ever inherit a Titan. That’s his role in the family. Their entire family is protected from the shame of his uncle’s rebellion through Colt volunteering.

Colt’s just a boy too.

Canon’s very familiar with child soldiers. Our cast is full of them. The land inside the walls has always been presented as a cruel world, and the fact that children regularly die training to become soldiers is their standard.

Warrior Candidates train so they will die.

Colt doesn’t join up because it’s better than working in the fields. It isn’t about saving face. His family’s quality of life is dependent on him doing everything he can to be the shiniest sacrifice of his age group.

It isn’t surprising that Marley uses children for their Warriors.

They’re eager to please and haven’t learned that they have personal agency. With the way Marley raises them, the goal is keeping them from ever learning that lesson to any functional degree. They obey and obey and obey until they die or their sanity snaps.

Because maybe it’ll get better. This small ray of hope is the only way out for their people or their families. Maybe.

Colt’s young. His mentor betrays his country, and now Zeke is the only thing standing between his little brother being okay or an inhuman monster.

The logical thing for Colt is to run straight up to Zeke, the leading spear of the enemy offensive, and beg him to wait for a little while so that Falco can get out of the line of fire. That’s what he has to work with. His love for his little brother and his confidence that the man he’s trained under doesn’t really want to hurt children.

Colt doesn’t understand the world any better than Gabi does, really.

He thinks, because he has a good heart, that that’s how people are. He thinks that the man who set up an entire plan based around robbing people of their autonomy will care more about a little boy than seeing that plan bear fruit.

He thinks it’s enough to argue that he loves his little brother.

Marleyans, Eldians. Those are just lines in the sand. They don’t really mean anything next to something like family. Colt’s little brother is right here, and Zeke can protect him.

So instead of running as far away from Zeke as possible from the start, Colt runs toward him and begs him for just a little time.

That was never going to work.

Colt thought it was worth the chance.

Much like every single Warrior Candidate since the program began.

Maybe it will work. Maybe this will save everyone.

Colt dies holding his little brother. There’s no point to it. It makes Falco more panicked than what’s already about to happen to him. It puts both of them at risk instead of just one.

Because Colt’s just a dumb kid, and he thinks that the most important thing he can do in his last moments of life is let his little brother know that he’s there.

He could have lived if he let Falco be on his own, but his life wasn’t what Colt cared about. So he dies.

He dies, and Porco spends his last moments making sure that Falco still has a chance to live.

Marcel hides his brother away from the supposed honor he’s earned to keep him safe. Marcel never wanted Porco to be a Titan. He wanted his kid brother safe, even if it meant never seeing him again.

Porco finally has the truth, and then he spots these two dumb kids running into a warzone for the same reason.

Marcel tried so hard to spare Porco this hell. It didn’t work. Porco found his way there anyway. And if he’s dying anyway, he’s going to die for something that can actually do some good.

Way to follow your big brother’s example, Pock.

None of this is going to help Reiner in any section of his life. At this point you have to hope the guy lives, just so surviving all of this can be something more than a trauma conga line. I could say something about how the most actively suicidal character of the present manga is continually denied death, and I’m sure it would be profound, but really by now I just feel bad for the guy.

I’m not sure any of these people want to be here, come to think of it.

I’m even less clear on why all of them being here is according to keikaku.

In other news, Eren gets shot.

After all his friends, once again, do their damnedest to keep him alive through his complete lack of regard for them. Without their help, Eren’s dead long before Gabi steps in.

Say thanks, Eren.

Gabi shooting people even after she’s learned that the world is horrifying and complicated should probably elicit something from me, but I’ve long been in the mode of wanting the kid to be left alone with a warm blanket and a hug. Add one more reason to the list.

Plus, there’s shooting people, then there’s shooting Eren.

Knowing far more about Eren than Gabi ever will, I’m not sure I’d want him to make contact with Zeke either. Gabi has made a trillion worse judgment calls.

It’s also somewhat appropriate.

Gabi is only there because Eren destroyed her home. She’s only alive because Sasha cared about letting a little girl live when Eren didn’t. Sasha was only there because Eren manipulated all of his friends into a combat situation none of them wanted.

I’m sure Eren has his reasons, and I’m sure when he inevitably dies for real I’ll have all kinds of emotions about it, but this is a case of him reaping what he sowed.

Hell, the gun’s got a scope and everything. The scene is crying out for a ghost of Sasha superimposed over Gabi.

Sorry your head got fucking blown off, Eren, maybe you should make better life choices.

Because what I keep ending up stuck on is why this is all happening. Clearly, now that this road has been chosen, there are a few things that demand attention, but this is such a finicky, overwrought way of trying to get two bros to hold hands.

“Let’s start a war!”

“Cool!”

Would it have been so hard to just kidnap Zeke.

I’m sure it would have raised some flags.

But.

-gestures to entire chapter-

I just feel like most of this could have been easily avoided by. you know. doing literally anything else. The exact trajectory of this plan can’t possibly be necessary. It isn’t even going well. Eren’s missing his head, Zeke is approaching Reiner levels of plot armor to keep him breathing, and all that’s really been achieved is creating a bunch of new titans and killing some people they could have killed anywhere else.

The plan itself is fundamentally destructive, yet they’ve still managed to make it destructive in a way that actively interferes with the plan going anywhere.

Congrats, gents.

Some random eight-year-old with a sniper rifle destroyed all your hard work.

Much surprise. Very wow.

The explanation for all of this is going to be something incredible.

Either because it’ll be brilliant or because it will continue the downward spiral into the chaotic groupthink of the Yeager Bros and their one brain cell.

I’m okay with whichever the story wants to go with.

#Shingeki no Kyojin #SnK 119 #shingeki no spoilers #SnK spoilers #spoilers #chapter post #tl;dr

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imagitory · 5 years

Text

Review: The Lion King (2019) [spoilers]

NAAAAAANTS IGONYAMA BAGITI BABA -- !

Ahem. So...I just got back from seeing the new Lion King remake, and I guess it’s time to talk about it. For those of you who wish to avoid spoilers... *exhales heavily* how do I say this kindly, um -- you don’t need to go see this. Like, really, you don’t. Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but you would miss absolutely nothing watching the original instead of this one, and honestly, I think it’s fair to say you’ll have much more fun watching the original too. As much as I haven’t loved Disney’s line of recent remakes, I at least found something in most of the films I saw that I could praise, but with this one? I don’t recall ever being so utterly bored sitting in a movie theater in my life.

If you would like a more detailed opinion, here’s a cut!

The Good!

+For once, Disney decided to hire a cast full of singers that don’t require autotune, including Donald Glover, Billy Eichner, and of course Beyonce, as well as quite a few lovely people in the chorus like Brown Lidiwe Mkhize (who sang The Circle of Life). Even some of the performers with weaker singing voices like John Oliver were able to hold their own well enough.

+The voice acting overall wasn’t bad. I’ll have to leave it at that, though, since this is supposed to be the positive section.

+The Circle of Life and Can You Feel the Love Tonight? were well-performed, though I will be getting to other issues I had with them later.

+Zazu was actually given a bit more pathos rather than just exclusively being comic relief. He not only tries to protect Nala and Simba from the hyenas, but he also rushes to go get the lionesses when Simba’s in trouble, makes a distraction for Nala so she doesn’t get caught by Scar, and even helps a little more in the final battle. I won’t act like he was an improvement on the orginal exactly, as the best compromise would’ve been to have him be both funny and supportive, but at least there was an attempt to give him some depth.

+As much as I’ll critique the animation further down, I will give the animators credit for its realism. A lot of hard work was obviously put in, and it shows.

The Not-So-Good...

+The number one problem with this movie is, as I feared, the animation. I can respect that this is my opinion and many others might find some charm in how “real” everything looks, but I’m sorry -- musicals =/= realistic . Musicals are supposed to be over-the-top. They are supposed to be theatrical. Hell, even the Broadway production of The Lion King understood that to tell this story without animated lions, you had to treat it like a folktale. The story was never about lions -- it was a human story told with lions. The ideas of family -- responsibility -- duty -- leadership -- grief -- hope -- these are human values. The Lion King was inspired by Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It also has ripples of the Moses story, given that it revolves around someone running away from their home and responsibility, only to realize their true calling and go back to save their people. And you know something? I am positive that the filmmakers knew full well how ridiculous these National-Geographic-esque animated creatures would look suddenly bursting into song -- that’s why they tried at every single opportunity to depict the musical sequences in wide, impersonal shots that barely correspond to the rhythm or mood of the song at all. Unless it’s The Circle of Life, which is literally a shot-for-shot recreation of the original sequence accompanied by a song sung by none of the characters on screen, the only way that these supposedly “realistic” creatures could communicate energy or emotion during the song sequences was by running and climbing things. And in the end, it just looks lazy and dull. There’s no energy in either the shots or the editing. Hakuna Matata and I Just Can’t Wait to Be King suffer the most because of this, as those songs were so dependent on bright colors, spontaneity, and enthusiasm, but none of the songs are done justice with this animation.

+Another issue with the animation is in the characters themselves. As realistic as it looks in the textures of the fur and the way the animals move, it is utterly lifeless in practice. I swear to God, there are points where these animals looked stuffed, they’re so blank and hollow. You know those live action movies, like Cats and Dogs, where they would have real dogs and cats play the characters and then just “fix” their mouths with post-production CGI to make it look like they’re talking, even if their eyes and faces still end up looking so blank that it never looks like they’re saying what’s coming out of their mouths? THAT’S THE ENTIRE MOVIE. It didn’t matter how good the voice acting was, because it was invalidated by the lack of expression of the characters who were supposedly saying the lines. The only character in this movie who seemed to have any emotion in his eyes was Scar, and that was because his animated model was apparently given permission to narrow his eyes more, presumably to look more “eeeeeviiiiiiil~.” Even the hyenas were just given hollow black eyes that only ever looked alien and inhuman most of the time (clearly to remind you that they’re the bad guys) -- there were no emotions other than “mwehehehe we’re gonna eat you” on their faces the entire movie. But yeah, think of all the really emotional scenes in this movie. Think of Mufasa seeing Simba hanging on that tree -- the fear in his face as Simba almost loses his grip on the branch -- the pain and fear in Simba’s expression when Mufasa puts him up on a small ledge, only to get yanked backward by the wildebeest and disappear from view -- the struggle in Mufasa’s body language as he tries to climb up the edge of the gorge -- the betrayal and horror in Mufasa’s expression when Scar reveals his true colors -- the desperation, disbelief, horror, and grief in Simba’s face when he finds his father and screams at the open air for help. ...Yeah. Now imagine all of those scenes being acted out by EMOTIONLESS PUPPETS. That’s even what Mufasa looks like when he’s thrown backwards off the cliff -- a puppet. A scene that has left people in tears almost made me snort with laughter because of how bad it looked!

+The animation’s realism also, as others pointed out when the trailers first came out, made it very difficult to pick out individual characters. When Nala grew up, there wasn’t even a way to tell that she was the youngest of the lionesses -- they all looked like clones of each other. There’s a bit where one of the hyenas (I guess he’s supposed to be Banzai, but I guess he’s been renamed something else?) confuses Scar for Mufasa at a distance and I almost burst out laughing because it was like the movie characters themselves even realized how identical all of the lions look. Simba’s face “turning into Mufasa’s” in the water had no emotional impact at all because you could barely tell that anything had just happened.

+Geezus, and I thought that Beauty and the Beast took too many ideas from the original? Oh boy. This movie took so much from the original, it was like the filmmakers copied something they found on the Internet for a school assignment and then added and switched around a couple of lines just so they wouldn’t be accused of plagiarism. There were quite a few points while watching this where I was going, “Oooookay, and this is where Simba sees a lizard. ...Yup, there it is. He’s gonna try to roar twice. ...Yup, and...yup. And on the third try, he’s going to roar loud enough for it to echo, and we’ll cut to the top of the gorge. ...Called it. And wildebeest in three, two, one...” Now, of course, knowing what’s going to happen shouldn’t reduce suspense -- if anything, when something suspenseful is done well, it doesn’t matter if you know what happens, because now you’re excited to see those things happen. But in this? How could I be excited when they recycled almost every joke, almost every shot, almost every scene, only with half the energy and sincerity? Even Beauty and the Beast tried to throw in some twists now and again, even if I didn’t end up liking most of them...the only things I can think of in regards to “changes” were some extra scenes that didn’t add much of anything, such as Scar leaning even more into his “Claudius” role and trying to court Simba’s mother Sarabi. Oh, and on that note...

+...The original movie was about an hour and a half long. This one was two hours. You want to know how they stretched that run-time out? Largely by adding in extended nature sequences. Perhaps if you really like the “realistic” animation, you might enjoy the gratuity of it, but some of them just got ridiculous. Remember how in the original, Scar caught a mouse and kind of taunted it? Now we get almost a whole minute just watching the mouse running around and doing nothing before Scar even shows up. Remember how we got a short, smooth transition from Pride Rock to Rafiki’s tree with a rainfall and soothing music? Have one that’s twice as long and is devoid of any of the epic, solemn atmosphere. Remember how we got a cute little giggle when Timon and Pumbaa sang The Lion Sleeps Tonight, only for it to get interrupted by Nala’s arrival? Now that song is treated like a full musical number with lots of danc -- sorry, walking around aimlessly, because it’d be stupid if animals actually danced or something. Remember how Simba collapses into some leaves, which sets loose some dust which in a ten-second-long cut scene is blown through the wind into Rafiki’s hand? Now it lasts almost two whole minutes and involves a tuft of Simba’s fur landing in a river, being picked up by a bird, becoming stuffing in a nest, being tossed out of the nest, being accidentally eaten by a giraffe, being shat out by that giraffe, being picked up by a dung beetle -- OH, COME ON. NOW YOU’RE JUST SEARCHING FOR EXCUSES TO DRAG THIS MOVIE OUT.

+I love James Earl Jones, but he should not have reprised his role as Mufasa. I’m sorry, but the man is 88 years old now, and he just sounded so tired. He didn’t show even half of the energy and enthusiasm he had playing the part the first time. If he was Simba’s grandfather, that’d be one thing, but he’s not. Half of what makes Mufasa’s death so tragic is how alive and young he seemed and how close his bond was with his friends Rafiki and Zazu and his family Simba and Sarabi, but thanks to Jones’s low-key performance and the lack of emotion in Mufasa’s animation, all of that is lost.

+Just like with Jafar in the recent Aladdin remake, this movie tries to give Scar some depth, but the halfhearted attempt only serves to take away what made Scar a great villain in the first place -- namely, his dry wit, ruthlessness, talent for manipulation, dynamic attitude, arrogance, immaturity, and most of all passion. Combine this not-deliciously-evil-but-definitely-not-sympathetic characterization with such bland animation that neither conveys energy or intrigue, and we’re once again left with a very forgettable, uninteresting villain. Come on, Disney, you used to be so good at writing villains -- just because you’re trying to make a more “realistic” story doesn’t mean your villain can’t crack a smile every-so-often, geezus!

+If Sarabi was chasing off hyenas with the lionesses, how in the world did she and the lionesses get back to Pride Rock fast enough for them to be lounging around when Simba came to get Nala? Scar and Simba’s interaction isn’t nearly long enough to encompass Sarabi finishing up with the hyenas and returning home. This is a problem that comes from how much this remake copies from the original -- because it wants so many scenes to play out identically to the original, it gives any subtle line changes the writers do make the potential to create plot holes.

+Oh yeah, and the joke of Simba pouncing on Zazu really doesn’t work if we see Simba getting ready the entire time and Zazu makes it easy for Simba by spinning around in circles looking at nothing. One would think Zazu was trying to let Simba pounce on him.

+There’s no kind way to put this -- Timon and Pumbaa were just flat-out INSUFFERABLE in this. Not only were their deliveries of lines from the original movie pretty awful, but they also added in a bunch of new, often fourth-wall-breaking jokes that just made me hide my face in my hands and groan. In Hakuna Matata in particular, they act offended by Simba not being more excited when they first say the phrase, ruin the joke of Pumbaa farting by having him say it and Pumbaa then being upset that Timon didn’t interrupt him, AND give Simba a hard time for continuing the song until it fades out by saying that Simba’s “gained 400 pounds” since they started it! This isn’t even touching on how TERRIBLE Seth Rogen was as Pumbaa while singing -- like, I know that’s supposed to be part of the joke, but Ernie Sabella was “a bad singer” by being over-the-top, not by being off-pitch and painful to listen to! Not to mention that Sabella packed so much more characterization into his line deliveries -- the chasm of quality between Sabella and Rogen’s performances all the more highlighted to me the difference between an actor and a voice actor. You can’t just get away with speaking your lines in an ordinary voice when you’re voice acting -- you need to emote solely with your voice, as your face is not doing any of the work, and with animation this emotionless and bland, one really needed to have given 120% in their voice work for it to be even passable. (And honestly, none of the actors stood out well performance-wise...not that they should have to singlehandedly bear the burden of depicting their characters’ emotions just with their voices: this is an animated movie, not a radio drama!) As if breaking the fourth wall for no reason, telling bad jokes, and singing poorly wasn’t enough, Timon and Pumbaa also come across as infinitely more selfish and mean-spirited. They say they’re outcasts, and yet there’s a whole friggin’ community of animals in their jungle home. Simba actually hears Timon and Pumbaa selfishly decide to “keep him” because having a creature bigger than them around might help them out. Timon flat-out tells Simba to only look after himself and no one else. Whereas in the original film, Timon and Pumbaa almost raise Simba like adopted parents, having fun with him and genuinely showing concern for him -- here, Timon and Pumbaa act more like a pair of frat boys who adopted the “new kid” in college and induct him into their friend circle, even though, yeah, Simba first meets them as a cub and they’re already adults. Rather than just laugh at the thought of “royal dead guys watching them” for a quick moment, they openly roar with laughter at Simba, dragging it out even when it’s very clear Simba is hurt by their amusement and not even bothering to apologize. At least in the original, Simba acted like it was funny and then left abruptly, but here? Simba never laughed or showed any amusement, so it came across as Timon and Pumbaa bullying him. Oh yeah, and speaking of bullying, remember how there was that one-off pop culture reference where Pumbaa gets mad at being called a pig? Now that’s been replaced with Pumbaa saying he doesn’t like bullies -- seems like that would’ve been a lovely thing to set up earlier, maybe to give that line some emotional pay-off, but nope! There’s no joke AND there’s no point. But you want to know what made me hate these two beyond reason in this movie? You want to know what finally pushed me over the edge? They broke the fourth wall beyond repair by -- rather than randomly putting on a hula skirt and dancing goofily, because of course we’re a SERIOUS animated movie, one that’s so REAL -- singing Be Our Guest from Beauty and the Beast, French accent and all. ...Excuse me for a minute. *buries her face into a pillow and screams in rage*

+By the way, those other animals who live in the jungle Timon and Pumbaa are from and therefore invalidate their assertion of being “outcasts”? Completely pointless. They don’t even come with Timon and Pumbaa and fight for the Pridelands! You could have cut them completely and lost nothing.

+As much as Hakuna Matata was the most irritating of the numbers, I Just Can’t Wait to Be King and especially Be Prepared were just pathetic. I Just Can’t Wait to Be King largely suffered, again, due to the “realism” of the animation, but the slow editing and even the vocals slowed the whole sequence down and sucked out any energy or excitement from the piece. I’ll give credit to Nala and Simba’s voice actors for their vocal quality, but there was still none of the spontaneity and recklessness in their voices that the song requires, so it just came across as Disney karaoke, rather than anything professional. But Be Prepared was easily the worst of the lot. It would be a challenge to try to evoke the level of dread and demented thrill you get from the original song sequence, but here, the filmmakers didn’t even try. Not only do we only get part of the song, but Scar’s voice actor Chitwetel Ejiofor barely sings a word of it and brings none of the dynamic, power-hungry, conniving, almost hypnotic mania that’s supposed to define Scar in that moment. He’s mostly just shouting like an old man yelling at a kid to get off his lawn -- there’s no attempt at persuasion or temptation in his voice at all. And just like in most of the other musical numbers, the only way Scar’s character model can emote during his song is to climb on things. Even in songs that were performed well, there were notable problems. The Circle of Life was basically animated on autopilot, replicating every single shot without taking any time to show any genuine emotion anywhere, whether when Zazu and Rafiki greeted Mufasa or when Simba sneezed away the dust in his face...and Can You Feel the Love Tonight? Haha, yeah, right -- more like “Can You Feel the Love in the Mid-Afternoon”! It was absolutely comical, hearing them sing “tonight” when the entire sequence was done in daylight!

+I’ve always liked The Lion King, but...wow, after seeing this remake and how much they tried to lean into the “hyenas as outsiders” idea in this, I have to acknowledge that there are some uncomfortable elements to this story. In the original, we solely focus on Shenzi, Banzai, and Ed with other hyenas in the background, so them being outside the Pridelands could just be seen as the case of a few bad apples, rather than it being an indictment on an entire group. But here, in this version, Shenzi is depicted more seriously as the leader of all the hyenas and it’s established that the war between lions and hyenas has gone on for a long time. Basically this movie turns Shenzi into Zira from The Lion King 2...and yeah, that makes it so that the hyenas -- as the outsiders -- should theoretically be slightly sympathetic, right? You know, to show that it’s wrong to cast others out because they look or act different from you? Nope! Nope, they’re all just evil! They’re manifestations of greed and hunger with no potential for redemption whatsoever. They’re not like our good, pale-colored lionesses who all look the same -- they’re dirty, and conniving, and they seek to creep out of the shadows and leech on everything the lions hold dear. I could very, very easily see how some vile, disgusting people could embrace such a narrative in this current climate, seeing themselves in the lions trying to “take their land back” from the shadowy, evil hoard of creatures who have come from outside to tear down their way of life. I can’t act like this adaptation added something that wasn’t at all in the original movie, as, let’s be honest, it plagiarized most of it...but perhaps because of how they reused this story and in some cases leaned into some elements of that story, this remake has very, very bad timing in when it was released. Those elements of the story probably wouldn’t have been read into it back in the 90′s, given the relative stability of the political landscape, but now? Now I could see how people could read it that way. It’d be like trying to make a movie like Independence Day, where national monuments get blown up, right after 9/11.

Looking back on what I just saw, I’m still absolutely stunned. Never before have I felt like my time has been more wasted than when I decided to sit down and watch this movie. I’ve tried to find shreds of praise, but whenever I try, it feels like I’m grasping at straws, only to fall back into a big pool of “blah.” I have never been so bored by a movie in my life -- and if there’s anything Disney, and especially Disney musicals, should never be, it’s boring. I would still say Maleficent makes me the most angry of Disney’s recent remakes, considering that that one openly insulted the original it was based off and this one is just clearly so up the original’s ass that it’s obnoxious...but this one was easily the biggest disappointment. I went in with almost no expectations, and yet still came out disappointed in the result. That, I think, says a lot. I could see someone who simply wants to see some cute animals and ride a bit on the nostalgia train enjoying this...but forgive me, but that bar is way too low. Disney is capable of doing so much better -- the true Lion King, the 1994 classic that broke records and surpassed all audience expectation, is more than enough evidence of that.

Overall Grade: D-

#the lion king (2019)#the lion king #disney #the lion king spoilers #opinion #oh boy here i go #reviews #disney remakes #remakes

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pickalilywrites · 5 years

Note

if your taking requests again could you do rivetra got or medieval au?

asoiaf au is so juicy

When Winter Comes

Rivetra. ASOIAF AU.

2120 words.

Buy me a ko-fi!

Petra shivers as she climbs up the Wall’s stone steps. Even the thick fur coat wrapped around her shoulders cannot protect her from the harsh, wintry winds. Her short ginger hair, which had been braided and wound tightly against her head, has come undone from the wind. She wishes to reach up and tuck her hair behind her ears at the very least, but that would require her hands to leave the warmth of her pockets and she’d rather keep them where they are. Instead, she bears with the terrible cold, keeping her gaze on the ground so that she need not face the wind head-on. She walks up the steps, making sure to avoid the black patches of ice that have formed on the stairs, but it’s difficult to see in the dark of night. She tells herself that it will soon be over—all she must do is deliver a letter to the man on the top of the Wall and she can return to the warmth of her room—but she’s uncertain whether she’ll be able to finish her task without freezing to death first.

When she reaches the top, she sees the man she is looking for immediately. He stands a distance away. He stands so still that he could be a statue. For a moment, Petra is afraid that he has frozen to death standing up here, but when she comes closer, she sees the clouds of white that escape his lips when he breathes. She wonders why he isn’t frozen over from standing out on the Wall. He must be unbothered by the cold, she thinks, because he hasn’t even bothered to shake off the frost that has formed on his winter coat. He must be inhuman to be able to withstand such brutal weather. She has only been up here a moment, but she cannot stand being here another second. The walk up here should have warmed her up a little, but Petra feels colder than ever since reaching the top.

Petra approaches the captain of the Night’s Watch, reaching into her coat and clutching the letter that was kept in the inside pocket. As she nears him, she shouts so that she can be heard over the howling wind. “Captain Ackerman!” she calls. She tries to stop her shivering, but it’s impossible with the wind and snow. “Commander Zackly requested that I deliver this letter to you, sir.”

In the few months that she has been a part of the Night’s Watch, Petra has never seen the captain up close. When she had first enlisted, she had thought it was strange that the others looked at the short, dark-haired man with such respect. It was only when she heard that his name was Ackerman—not just Ackerman, but Levi Ackerman, the very same one that had once served in the Kingsguard five years ago—that she understood why others stared at him in awe and fear. Now he turns to her, his gray eyes even harsher and colder than the winter wind, and she finds herself trembling beneath his intense stare, the cold forgotten.

She holds out the letter to him, her hand shaking as she does so. He continues to look at her, his gaze never breaking even as he takes the envelope from her.

It’s only after the captain has received his letter that he turns away from the soldier. He returns his gaze back to where it was—staring out past the Wall towards the direction of the kingdom Paradis—and snaps open the wax seal without looking. He looks down to read the cursive script written on the page, reading slowly as if not to miss any details.

Petra watches as he reads, wondering how he can be comfortable out here in the freezing cold. All of the other guards on the Night’s Watch are tucked away in their rooms, taking advantage of the warm fires burning in the fireplaces as the snowstorm rages on. Even the captains, save for Captain Ackerman, have retreated to their offices. In truth, there really is no need for anyone to patrol the Walls, especially at this time of night. The last time the Walls had been breached had been a few hundred years ago, although all tales of it are only told by word of mouth or in songs. It may as well be a legend at this point, which makes patrolling the Walls even more unnecessary. However, Petra finds it even stranger that the captain keeps his gaze towards the kingdom rather than the land beyond the Walls. Should there be any danger to the kingdom, it would most likely come from the outside, not within Paradis itself. She has noticed him gazing towards the kingdom more than once when she was doing her own patrols. She had simply thought he was bored at staring at a barren wasteland of ice, preferring to gaze upon the distant kingdom at the edge of the horizon, but now that she has been able to observe him up alone and up close, it doesn’t look as if he’s watching the kingdom. It’s as if he’s waiting for something to happen.

“You’re excused.” His voice, deep and rough, startles Petra. When she looks up, she sees that he has finished reading the letter and has tucked it away in his coat pocket.

“Thank you, Captain,” Petra says, giving her superior a quick bow. She raises her head and is about to turn, eager to return to her room, but she stops to look back at the captain. He’s gone back to staring back at the kingdom, his body as still as a statue, and she can’t stop herself from asking, “Sir, what is it that you’re looking at?”

The captain turns his head, looking at her with his cool, gray eyes and she finds herself shivering once more. After a moment, he asks, “What is your name?”

“M-my name is Ral, sir,” Petra says, her lip quivering. She hopes that it’s not apparent that she is intimidated by his glare. She tries to disguise her fear by holding her head up high and meeting his gaze, but every second she stares into his eyes makes her want to look away. “Petra Ral, a ranger on the Night’s Watch. I enlisted a few months ago.”

“You’re quite young,” he says, never looking away. He looks her up and down, from her frosted-tipped boots to her ginger hair coming loose from her braids. “Are you a summer child, Ral?”

The phrase surprises her, for it is one she has not heard in a long time. The last time she had heard anyone utter the words “summer child” was when she as a but a girl herself. The old folk had used it to describe the children who had not yet experienced war, famine, or any such tragedy. Some that had suffered during the Little Rebellion are occasionally referred to as children of winter, the name used to refer to those less fortunate than those blessed with summer, but the event had been so brief and meaningless that those few are oft forgotten. Petra herself had not been born when the events of the Little Rebellion had transpired—in fact, her family had remained relatively untouched during the events of the rebellion—but she feels strange at being referred to as a child.

“I assure you, sir, that I am not a child, summer or otherwise,” she replies a little indignantly. “I am a woman of the Night’s Watch. I have held a sword in my hand, have pledged my life for the kingdom, and have endured this cruel and harsh winter. I am not a child of any sort.” She knows better than to let her temper get the best of her, but she dislikes being thought of as a child. There is no doubt that the captain will scold her for her insolence, she thinks, but she’s surprised when his face breaks out in a smile.

“The cruel and harsh winter?” the captain repeats, amused. He must be mocking her with his smile, but she can’t help but be captivated by it. Somehow, he looks less frightening when he smiles. “This is not winter, but a small bout of wind. If you believe this little storm difficult to bear, will you be ready when winter comes?”

She feels her cheeks flush red with embarrassment, but she knows the captain is correct. Now that she thinks about it, she hasn’t seen a single snowflake fall since she had arrived up North. The wind, blowing the snow and ice every which way, only gives the illusion of snow falling. If this is merely a windstorm, she hates to imagine what a real snowstorm would be like on the Walls.

The captain has already turned back to his watch, looking out at the kingdom. Any trace of his smile is now gone, replaced with a pensive frown. Petra remains beside him, wondering what it is he watches so carefully, and he speaks again. “Do not take my words as an insult, Ral. There are things that summer children are not aware of simply because they have not experienced it,” he says. “Sometimes it is even the case that a summer child knows even less than they had when they were younger, but that is because the world has led them to believe such lies. Lies like monsters no longer exist beyond the Walls, or that harsh winds are the same as winter itself. Or the belief that danger only comes from outside the Walls.”

It takes her a moment to understand what he’s saying, but her eyes widen as she realizes what he’s suggesting. Had he said this within Paradis, he might have been arrested for treason, but she can’t imagine repeating his words to anyone else. She wonders why it is he is this way—cautious and careful, always watching the kingdom. It feels as if he’s been waiting for something to happen for a while. Yet when Petra looks at the kingdom herself, she cannot see anything that would signal an oncoming storm. She had been a part of that kingdom only a few months before, and the captain had not stepped foot from the Walls in ten years, but why is he so confident that he knows more about it than she does? Is it that she is too naive and inexperienced to know better? Is she really the summer child that he believes her to be?

“You should go back,” the captain tells her. His voice is so quiet that she almost doesn’t hear it over the howling of the wind. “It’s warmer inside.”

Petra purses her lips. “It’s fine,” she tells him. She takes her place beside him, facing forward towards Paradis. “It’s just a little wind. If I can’t handle this, then how will I be prepared for when winter comes?” The guard looks over at the captain, and she sees the corner of his mouth curl upward.

“Then brace yourself, Ral,” he says, “for the winters up North are especially cruel.”

They say nothing more. Instead, they watch the distant Paradis sitting on the horizon. If Petra concentrates, she can see past the flurry of snow and make out the little shadow of the grand Tybur castle, which is far larger and grandiose up close. It’s difficult to imagine anything ominous happening behind the walls of such a beautiful and extravagant building. Had someone suggested this to her earlier, Petra would have trembled, but now she stands still as she gazes upon the distant palace. She prays that whatever darkness the captain believes lurks inside the castle never sees the light of day.

She’s unsure when she had fallen asleep. She hadn’t even been aware that her eyes were closing or that drowsiness was overtaking her. All Petra knows is that one moment she was gazing upon the Tybur castle one moment and the next she was waking in one of the chambers within the Walls, a fire crackling in the fireplace nearby. She is also unaware of how she had moved from the top of the Wall to this chamber, although she has a vague idea from the extra coat that has been draped around her.

Petra sits up, wrapping the coat around her. When she brings it closer, it smells of frost and snow and ice, but it’s warm to the touch. She digs her fingers into it and buries her face in the thick fur coat, breathing in the scent. Somehow, it’s so much warmer than her own coat, but she can’t help wondering if it will be able to keep her warm when the winter comes.

#rivetra #petra ral #levi ackerman #snk #asoiaf au #anon #anonymous #asks #answered #requests #i need to think of a name for this series haha

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storytime-hoe · 5 years

Text

Tough Love Ch.7

Pairing: Daryl Dixon x O/C

Summary: Story picks up during season three as the group goes into Woodbury to rescue Glenn and Maggie from the Governor. However, they pick up another prisoner of Woodbury, Emma (O/C). She is a thief who fears friendships after her hard losses. She stays on the move, studying communities from afar and then robbing them blind. She has stayed alive this way for a while until the Governor catches her in the act. Now she finds herself with the group from the prison in a mission to kill the Governor for what he has done to her. She plans on stealing supplies from the prison group after the Governor is killed, but she might be growing a little too close to the groups members, especially one man in particular: Daryl Dixon.

Warnings: Slow burn, language, usual twd violence, mentions of abuse/rape

Authors Note: This one was really difficult for me to write because I wanted it to be so fucking perfect. I wrote it and re-wrote it about a thousand times and I am so drained that I just can’t get it to a place that I am 100% happy with. But it isn’t too terrible so here it is folks. Enjoy!

Previously: Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6

I had run for what felt like ages. My wild hair was pasted to my neck and bare arms with the sweat that dripped from me. Every heartbeat pounded in my ears along with the painful reminder that the Governor might be killing the Dixon's at any second now. I couldn't stop for a break, not when their lives could be at risk.

I had told myself, ever since my little brother died, that I would never care for people again in order to save myself the pain and possibility of loosing them. But, the Dixon boys were a different case. I didn't really care about them like I had my brother. They were just a couple of nincompoops who I was willing to help this one time. Daryl was someone important to the prison group and after the way they reacted when he ran off for a few hours, I knew none of them would function if he actually died. And that would mean the whole killing the Governor plan would be fucked.

Down the road I spotted a figure that I had mindlessly assumed to be another Walker limping it’s way to me. It was not until I was closer that I realized that it was no Walker but Michonne.

I slowed to a jog as I neared her, scanning her from head to toe. She looked a little rough around the edges, meaning she put up a fight with Merle no doubt. I had a sick thought that she might have killed him, she was fully capable. But would she?

"Where's Merle?"

She leaned her weight onto one leg, resting her hand on her hip. "He let me go. Said he had something to do."

I shook my head knowingly, looking passed her farther down the road. "He'll be at the Governor's outpost," I thought aloud. "Dumbass is going to get himself killed."

"Why do you care? Thought you only worried about yourself.”

That wasn’t exactly it, but I couldn’t let her know that. “I like to mix it up. Keeps people on their toes.”

I started up into a jog before she could say anything else to me. The outpost was where Rick was going to meet the Governor for the exchanging of Michonne. Merle would beat the Governor there probably. But what the hell was he planning? Why did he let Michonne go? The Governor would kill him on sight if he showed up with nothing to offer him, I was sure of it, and I knew he wasn't stupid enough to think any differently.

The sudden jar of loud music interrupted my thoughts. The music blared so loud that I pressed my hands to my ears out of instinct. I was positive every Walker in the area would be drawn to it something as loud as that. I ran from the road and towards the noise as well, even though every part in me was screaming for me not to.

I came to the opening that was the outpost and slowly crept up along the run down buildings where I spotted several men from Woodbury holding their guns up to examine the source of the God awful noise. A car with its radio on full blast was the cause, and I had no doubt that it was planted there by Merle. This was his plan. What the actual fuck was he thinking?

When a gun shot came from a nearby window, picking the Governor's men off one by one, I knew Merle was behind that too. That fucker was still here and I needed to get to him before the Governor did. Once I pinpointed where the shots were coming from it was easy enough to slip into the building where Merle was perched with his gun propped on top of his metal covered hand.

"Merle, what the hell are you doing?"

He didn't look away from his gun and the targets he was picking off. "You shouldn't be here," he hissed back.

Before I could tell him to come back with me or that we needed him back at the prison alive, two men entered behind me. One of them knocked away my knife that I had in my hand and grabbed my arms, twisting them in an unnatural position. I puled against his hold with a growl of frustration, but I froze in place when the second guy raised his gun to my head. His cold eyes told me he had every intention of shooting me dead right then and there, which I actually preferred if it meant the Governor wouldn’t be getting his hands on me. But Merle had apparently grown a pair of balls, deciding to do something for someone other than himself, and jumped in the way, knocking the gun up just as the shot went off. My heart hammered in my chest as pieces of ceiling rained down from where the bullet had split through it.

I didn't miss a beat after the blast went off to head-butt my captor so I could rip free from his grasp. His nose made a sickening crack against my skull, but I didn’t dwell on it. Instead I went to lunge after my knife, wanting to have something to give me a sense of protection. But just as my hand went to close around it, something solid hit me in the stomach and knocked me to the dusty ground of the shitty building.

"You leave him to me," the Governor hissed out the command to his man who was probably itching to put a bullet in Merle.

His voice sent shivers down my spine and every hair on my body bristled to stand on end, which distracted from the way my insides felt like they were exploding after the kick I had taken. I turned my head towards the door to see him lingering there with his gun in hand. His deadly look was set on Merle and every muscle in me seized with the images of how he might kill him.

I think that is what gave me enough courage to scramble off of the floor and put myself between him and Merle. I had to stand my ground against him, no matter how weak he made me feel. I could not show him that he still had effect on me and that no matter how far away from him I got, he would still always control me.

The Governor was not intimidated by me in the slightest, however. I was dumb to think that I could protect Merle from this monster. He didn’t hesitate to throw his arm towards me, using the end of his gun the slap me across the face. The momentum sent me flying across the floor. He stood over me, his gaze raking up and down my body.

I thought for sure he would command his men to toss me into their truck and haul my ass back off to jolly Woodbury. But he didn't say anything at all. He was an unrecognizable man. His eye was glazed over with a darkness that I hadn’t seen in him before. He aimed his gun at me with a steady hand. When he pulled the trigger I was sure I yelp, thinking the target was going to be my heart. However, he went with shooting me in the thigh as to insure I wouldn't stand up again and get in his way, but still making it so I was alive to watch him fuck up Merle.

My adrenaline was so high I almost didn’t even feel that much pain at first. I wasn't planning on letting the wound stop me from jumping between them again until I felt the cool tip of a gun press to my fevered temple by one of his men. I froze, not doubting that this guy would be happy to blow my brains out if I gave him the chance.

I gnawed on my lip uselessly, watching the Governor wrestle with Merle who was never one to go down without a good fight. The worry that ate me up distracted me from the blood oozing out fast from my leg. I gulped when Merle was overtaken for a moment, the Governor pressing him against a wall, guttural yells of effort coming from both of them. Merle was pushing against him to free himself and I suppose the Governor was taking pointers from Walkers now because he crunched down hard on Merle's fingers, biting them clean off. My stomach lurched at the sight of the fingers being spit onto the ground where I sat.

My throat closed up when the Governor threw Merle onto a busted up table. He sported a venomous look as he hovered above Merle with his gun pointed down at him.

"I ain't gonna beg," Merle yelled at him in a raspy voice. "I ain't beggin' you."

There was no mistaking the finality in his voice. Merle knew this was it. I felt it in the air and so did he, turning his head ever so slightly to catch my eye. He didn’t say anything, but I could heard all his single look told me a million different things. I saw how sorry he was for everything he has done. We both regretted so many things. We both had a lot to be sorry for when it came down to each other and the things we had said and done. We really were sorry too, no bullshit. Even though we never said it to each other, we knew.

An eerie darkness washed over the room. Death himself had entered the room.

The Governor simply ground out a, "No," and the bullet was fired through Merle’s heart.

I was half aware of the inhuman sound that released from my throat. I fell forward and watched Merle fall to the ground in a lifeless heap. My hands shook violently and hot tears rolled down my face before I realized I had even started to cry.

"Leave her," the Governor ordered without sparing me another look. "Merle will take care of her."

Bastard. He couldn’t even kill me himself. That was too easy for him. He wanted me to suffer watching Merle change. I wasn’t even thinking about the change though as the men all left the building and I became vaguely aware of their cars driving away. All I felt was an overwhelming force of such sadness that fell onto me like a wet blanket. I could hardly breath it was suffocating me so much. I thought after my brother died that I would never feel that again, never get attached to people. I tried to make it that way. I really fucking did. But it was fucking no use. I wanted to stop feeling this hurt, but who was I without the pain.

I sat in silence with the tears sticking my hair to the side of my face which was throbbing from where the Governor had bitch slapped me. My knife was clutched in my hand once more. I tried to bring myself to plunge it into Merle's head, but I couldn't. After all Merle had done to me: beat me, whip me, spit on me, curse at me, threaten me. Why couldn't I do it? Why couldn't I kill him before he turned? I sat beside him helplessly sobbing. Maybe because I really didn't hate Merle as much as I wanted to. He was a piece of worthless shit, but we had been through so much he sort of felt like family.

There it was again. The fucking family thing. And the fucking hurt that came along with it. A cute package deal. I thought my family was all gone from the world, or at least that is what I wanted. But who would have thought that the world's biggest douchebag would be the one to put my heart through a fucking blender.

The growls of the newborn Walker that was once Merle perked me up from my stupor. I used the bench and wall beside me to pull myself to my feet and hobble out of the door. The Walker followed after me, growling louder and louder with each step he took.

A new round of tears returned to my eyes and before I knew it Merle was snapping in my face with his foul teeth. I screamed and pushed him away, still not wanting to kill him. Eventually, my leg became too much to limp on and I collapsed to the ground with Merle ready to take advantage of the situation.

I held my knife up and mumbled, "Please," under my breath a million times. I didn't want to do this. I had wanted to kill Merle a thousand times before, but this was different. He died saving my life. He died while helping us all by killing all those men. Merle Dixon, believe it or not, died a hero.

I waited for Merle to reach out for me, to take a chunk out of my leg and rip my skin from the bones. It never happened though. A whir of white wings on a leather vest zipped by me, my guardian angel, pushing the Walker to the ground.

Daryl held his crossbow down at his side as he took in the sight of his brother. I saw the moment reality hit him as his shoulders slumped and he let his crossbow slip from his hand and clatter to the ground. There was no mistaking the tears that gushed from his eyes as well while Merle slowly got to his feet again and stumbled at Daryl with his hand outstretched to him. I thought Daryl might let the Walker bite into him at first, but then the rage swept over him like a curtain.

He took out his knife and pushed Merle down to pin him against the dirt. He let the knife soar above his head before he brought it down into the skull of the Walker. The form went limp but Daryl wasn't done yet. Over and over and over again he brought the knife in and out of Merle's skull. Blood splattered all over him and all over myself as he continually stabbed the body angrily. My heart broke at the sight of him. He was so utterly consumed by the hurt and was dealing with it like he dealt with most things: with an unnatural amount of rage.

I couldn’t watch him be like that any longer. My hands started shaking again as crawled over and reached out for Daryl, knowing good and well that there was a possibility this unstable man could turn on me with the knife next. Too bad he didn’t.

"It's over," I whimpered, swiping away my tears with the back of my hand. Then, more loudly, "Daryl! Stop it. It's over. Enough."

I pulled at his shoulders and he finally let me drag him off of the bloody mess that was once Merle. He laid back on the ground, propped up on his elbows. He didn't hold back his loud sobs, his shoulders shaking with an overwhelming amount of grief. Neither of us paid any attention to the other Walkers that were closing in on us. We needed a minute to process I think.

I sat on the ground behind Daryl with my leg getting worse by the second. He let me keep my arms wrapped around his chest, holding his back against me. He needed some sort of comfort right now, and I was all there was to give it. Even if he did hate me, someone had to get him through this. I lost a brother once too and God knows I could've used someone to hold to back then.

Within a minute though Daryl furiously wiped away at his face and grabbed his crossbow. He forced himself to his feet and away from me. When he looked back down at me he noticed my leg for the first time. I knew he would be angry about it because I came out here when he specifically told me not to, but he didn't say anything. If anything I thought he wavered with a look of guilt. Like this could have been was his fault it any way. Dumbass.

He reached his hand out to me wordlessly and pulled me to my feet. He laced my arm around his neck and took most of my weight off of my leg, holding me across the waist, leading me back into the trees.

Walking all the way back to the prison was not an option with the state that I was in. So, we stopped at the first little town we came upon where I was set down a little too roughly onto the ground. I hissed through my teeth, but Daryl didn't notice. He tossed things out of his way and kicked trash that littered his path like a tempered child. He reached his target finally, a car with a busted out window, and started to get to work at making it run again.

"He saved my life, you know," I said, not knowing if he was really listening to me or not, but I couldn't sit in silence. I needed to talk about it, and he needed to know about it. "The Governor was there," I explained what he probably already knew. "Merle took out a dozen men on his own. I came in and found him and just as someone was about to shoot me dead he stopped it from happening."

"Is that how he died?" Daryl's voice was a little hoarse from crying, which broke my heart just a little more.

"No. The Governor wanted him to himself. He shot me in the leg to stop me from helping Merle. Then he shot him like it was nothing." I shook my head still processing what happened. "He left me there to be killed once Merle turned. I nearly was." I looked up at Daryl and silently thanked him for showing up to save me.

He paused what he was doing under the hood of the car for a moment to hold my gaze. His squinted eyes were brimmed red from mourning for Merle. He chewed at his bottom lip. “Why did you even come?”

I shrugged, really not wanting to explain myself to him. “Sometimes I give a damn,” was all I offered him.

Daryl kept his eyes on mine for a long time. I could see the battle happening in his head, him deciding if he should say what he was thinking or not. I guess he decided to go with the “not” option as he came back over to lift me off of the ground. "C'mon," he mumbled and brought me to the passenger seat. His coarse hands slid up under my shirt unintentionally as he was helping me, causing me to suck in a breath. I reddened immediately and mentally kicked myself for doing it. How could I be so childish at a time like this?

Once he was in the driver seat and had the car started, I got up the courage to talk again. "I'm sorry I couldn't save him."

Daryl's swallow was audible. "Ain't nothin' ya coulda done."

I tried to blink back the fresh tears but it was no use. "That asshole was right, though. I couldn't save my brother and... I'm just sorry I couldn't save yours either. Death just follows me." I swallowed thickly at the haunting memories. “Some people are just born with tragedy in their blood”

Daryl looked at me and bit at the skin around his thumb, something I noticed was a nervous habit. "What happened to your brother?"

I could tell he was sorry he asked it almost as soon as he did. I was shocked he was even curious about my life. Usually he kept to himself. But he was hurting, and he knew I could relate to it. Anything to help him cope.

"I was with my brother through most of this shit." I swallowed hard at his memory, a momentary distraction for the pain in my leg. "Our mom was at work and we were home alone at the trailer park. We managed to get out of there when everything happened, but our mom didn't make it. She turned. And I was the one to put her down."

"M'sorry," he muttered quietly, speeding towards the prison to get me to Hershel as soon as he could.

I shook my head. "I'm not. A hoard came by when I was with my brother and he was ripped right out of my hands. I watched them tear his flesh apart. I tried to hold onto his hand... I looked into his eyes as his blood covered hand slipped right out of mine. I made sure my mom was peaceful in the end. But his death. His death was a fucking nightmare."

Daryl pursed his lips and shook his head. "That ain't your fault either."

It felt weird talking to someone about this stuff again. The only other person who knew these things about me was Merle and that all died with him.

"I tried to stay away from groups for a long time," I admitted quietly, my voice growing weaker from the blood loss. "I don't want to get close to anyone else when I know I'll just end up loosing them too." My mind must really be fucked up right now. I was only partially aware of what I was saying anymore and I can assure you I would not have told anyone that weakness of mine under normal circumstances.

He scoffed. "That's bullshit. Ya can't live without people no more. We all need people to survive now. It's how it is."

"I'm sticking around until the Governor is dead. Then I'm out." It was the only option Rick had given me anyway, but I still felt a pang of guilt at only being half honest with Daryl. I'll stick around until the Governor is dead... then I'm robbing you blind. That is what I really meant.

I could see the disappointment he wore on his face at my decision. He wasn't my friend, so I didn't quite understand why he even cared that I leave. I really fucking wish I could read his mind sometimes. I suppose our relationship was sort of like his and Merle's was. We had our fights and did our damage to each other, but at the end of the day, whether we liked it or not, we couldn't keep from being drawn to each other.

He bit his lip and focused on the road as he drove. His grip on the wheel tightened and he wanted to argue with me as usual, but he didn't. "Okay. It's not my place to stop you."

"Damn straight."

"But Merle refused to believe that he needed anyone and look where it got him."

I clenched my jaw and glowered out the window, praying that we were almost there. My leg was getting worse by the second and my vision was starting to darken around the edges. I swayed in my seat a little and felt Daryl put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.

By the time we got back to the prison we had both cried our tears for Merle Dixon and helped each other get over it because we both knew that was how it had to be. The world really sucked sometimes, but you had to keep going.

I was too weak to step out of the car, but Daryl effortlessly scooped me out of the seat and cradled me in his arms. I didn't like needing help, but I was not about to complain about being pressed against him like this.

"My hero," I teased, trying my very best not to show how much my leg was actually bothering me or how my the world was spinning around me now.

"Don't make me drop your ass on the pavement," he grumbled back as he placed me onto a bed in one of the cell rooms. People we gathered around me to look at what had happened and I soon lost sight of Daryl.

I was relieved to find Hershel's somber face in the mix of everything but when he said, "I'm going to have to get the bullet out," my heart dropped down to my toes.

"Can you do it?" Someone asked.

"I can try. She is going to need medicine. We don't have a lot to spare. If someone else gets sick or injured during this war, then we won't have anything to help."

Rick was leaned against the doorway with his arms crossed. Carl was peaking in from behind him with his brow furrowed. I think I could've guessed how he wanted this to go. "Give her what she needs," Rick said. "If we need more later we can figure it out then."

The rest of their conversation went passed me without being heard. I blacked in and out of consciousness. Sweat ran down the sides of my face, coating the pillow I laid on. When they started to touch the wound on my leg I can remember screaming bloody murder. Glenn said something about the Walkers in the courtyard stacking up against the fence in one place, being drawn to my screams.

"She has to stay quiet," Rick warned and left with Glenn and Carl to take care of the fence.

A pair of strong arms held me down across the bed. I could tell it was Daryl by the way his long hair dripped sweat onto my chest every now and again. I tried my best to stay focused on him and not the pain. I reigned in on how he felt pressing me down and how he smelled like sweat and cigarettes and how he still managed to look attractive even when he looked worried as hell.

I would have liked to take more time taking in every part of him, but I thanked God when I finally passed out from it all.

***

Taglist:

@daryldixonandfrogs @jodiereedus22

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paladin-andric · 5 years

Text

WIP Prep Tag Game

Tagged by @corishadowfang! Thank you, this is pretty big, but I liked it a lot!

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag as many people as there are questions (or as many as you can).

As usual, I’ll be doing Blackheart.

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

Demons invade the world, decimating a city and casting the land around it in a dark fog. A knight pierces through the blanket of darkness, in an effort to find the demons’ source and destroy it.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

Single book. The ending’s VERY conclusive. Though the world itself? I think we’ll be seeing more of it...

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Oppressive fog, monsters, lone figures walking down the road, ruined cities

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The game Demon’s Souls inspired a lot of the setting (a ruined city full of demons wrapped in a fog), while D&D inspiring much of the world, with the various fantasy races throughout.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

Once again, inspirations make themselves apparent.

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

Sir Alexander, of House Angelus. The youngest child of a large family, estranged from his noble family, who has forsaken any possible rulership for a life of knighthood. While he has prepared well for his mission, he still struggles. He’s not superhuman, nor does he know any magic, which puts him at a disadvanage against inhumanly powerful demons, well versed in unholy arts of magic. He IS determined, however. He can take a lot of punishment, and he never gives up.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Since he doesn’t really favor one of his group majorly over the others, I’ll just put the rest of the heroes.

Senci, an excitable young kobold raised by humans. He dreams of becoming a famous hero one day, and traveling the land to help people in need.

Leianna, a cleric who tends to stir up trouble. She always speaks her mind and throws jabs, even when not wholly appropriate. Despite this she cares deeply for others, it’s why she volunteered to journey to the shrouded city, and risked her life saving Tourthun.

Lexius, a quiet and unassuming priest. Unable to stand by and watch people vanish into the fog, never to be seen again, he used the last bit of money he had on basic equipment and set out, leaving only a note explaining himself to the rest of the monastery. His powers may seem lacking at the moment, but he’ll be pushed to his limits down the line...

Tourthun, a young, red dragon who was nearly captured by the demons. Borderline pacifistic and bitter over his past, the fall of Palethorn, the city covered by fog was an extremely trying time for him. Finally forced to fight, he finds himself lacking in this respect, his own disdain towards killing making it even more challenging. While he carries a deep love for humanity and the rest of the small races, his inexperience makes his support less decisive than it might normally be. Still he fights on, driven by a desire to save the others...

Razorwing, a birdman archer. Very much a classical hero, he is famous and beloved for his various exploits throughout his life of adventure. His ability to fly and pinpoint accuracy makes him a deadly adversary.

Paul, a bounty hunter. Cold, calculating and decisive, he is well versed in the art of killing, though demonslaying is something he’ll need to adjust to, his usual target being man. He hides both his face and his emotions behind a mask.

Charles, a young half-dragon magician. Most unusual for his kind, he’s shy, timid and often easily flustered. He shows extraordinary potential for magic, and already is quite strong. He has a ways to go before he’s a master sorcerer, however.

Andric, an aging paladin. Having raised Senci, he’s become something of a tutor in his older age, though he’s still incredibly powerful from decades of battle and honing his holy powers. Extraordinarily powerful, and a huge boon to the heroes’ efforts.

8. Who is their enemy?

Demonkind at large. Several demons, varying in power, have entered through the portal to the underworld. They have left corrupted in their wake, those who have fallen to demonic corruption and lost their minds, becoming thoughtless beasts bent on slaughter. They have to destroy the portal, no matter the cost.

9. What do they want more than anything?

To be left in peace, able to relax at his manor inbetween military campaigns.

10. Why can’t they have it?

Alexander has been honored as “Geralthin’s Finest Knight” for his heroics in war. As such, whenever a problem arises, or a crisis is revealed, the kingdom always sends for him right away. He’s constantly pulled from his quaint homestead out in the countryside, and thrown at the head of an army. He just wants a bit more time to himself, and slightly less overwhelming responsibilities.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Alexander thinks of himself as bland, plain, boring and uninspiring. He doesn’t understand why he’s so often wanted to lead armies, seeing as zealous speeches and raw charisma aren’t his forte. The truth is that his unshakable courage and willingness to always be in the thick of the fight with his men is why the soldiers flock to him. He fights and risks dying alongside them, as opposed to most generals who lead from the back lines...and while he may order a retreat, he’ll always be the last to pull back, to ensure no one else is left behind.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

This is technically cheating, as my friend drew this, but I can’t draw for the life of me. He’s gonna refine this and color it at some point, but he’s a very busy man.

Ah, and here’s a version done by the wonderful @paper-shield-and-wooden-sword!

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

While the story’s mainly focused on the actual conflict, there’s some growth and character development throughout.

Alexander learns that non-humans aren’t as wild, barbaric and evil as he’s been led to believe, and understands that he has to trust his new, inhuman teammates.

Senci, for the first time, gets into real, actual fights. While he’s always wanted to be a hero, he is quickly forced to learn just what that entails.

Leianna is fairly static, though she does learn that there’s a time and place for jesting. While she may use humor to hide anger or fear, she eventually understand that it’s time to get serious, and that it’s okay to show those feelings sometimes.

Lexius is just a priest. He’s a weak and outmatched in almost every respect. Over time, he will find his courage and resolve when he needs it most.

Tourthun has to forgive the most grievous of crimes, and is forced to come to terms with the horrors of his past. In addition, a final enemy within himself will be the final challenge...

Razorwing overcomes the one part of his past that fills him with anger, hatred and fear.

Paul learns how to express his feelings, and that not everyone is out to get him.

Charles, timid and self-doubting, sees that he’s more valuable than he thought.

Andric is forced to trust Senci on his own, and see just how well he’s prepared his protege...

14. What is the external conflict?

The heroes journey through the ruined city of Palethorn, and seek out the source of the demons, the Blackheart, a great portal that allows demons to travel to the world. Along the way, many corrupted stand in their way, and demons plot against them. Finding the source of the Blackheart itself proves a challenge...

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Failing his quest, unable to destroy the Blackheart, until demons overwhelm Geralthin and plunge the entire world into darkness. Just like the city, the entire would would be destroyed, the last specs of humanity surviving by hiding deep underground, praying that the demons above don’t find them.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

A twist I’d rather not reveal. I think it’s going to hit you VERY hard, though.

17. Do you know how it ends?

Yes, and once again I’d rather not spoil it.

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?

Trust and understanding. In the human realm, many non-humans are looked upon with suspicion, disdain, fear, hatred, or sometimes several at once. Notable examples are the wolfmen, feared and loathed for their violent tendencies, kobolds, looked down on with disgust for their pathetic and barbaric actions, and half-dragons, feared and hated for their frightening appearance and their great strength. In this ruined city full of corrupted beasts however, Alexander is forced into an alliance with the survivors, nearly all of them non-human, as this city is where the kingdom had exiled them to. Over time though living among these creatures, the knight learns that these preconceptions are very often wrong, and that just like humans, they’re not some predictable hivemind.

Forgiveness and redemption. Through several revelations, Tourthun has to make peace with his past, and though he’s been so horribly wronged, and he would be completely justified in never forgiving those that wronged him, he comes to understand hatred is a repeating, unending cycle of misery, sending suffering unto another, and making them hate and cause suffering to other innocents in return. He thus decides to break the cycle. In addition, corruption, no matter how powerful, is not all-encompassing. Not all who fall to the demons are lost forever...

Determination and hope. Though things are so horrible, the heroes seem so outmatched, and the end of the world looks to be drawing near, everyone works hard against the demons’ plot, never falling to apathy or stoic acceptance of the end. Every person that falls to the demons only furthers the convictions of the heroes. It can’t happen to the rest of the world. No more must die. This far, and no farther!

19. What is a recurring symbol?

Ruin. The city, unmaintained due to the crisis, is starting to fall apart. It serves to emphasize how horrid the demons are, and just what’s in store for the rest of the world if the heroes fail.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

The Kingdom of Geralthin, ancestral homeland of humanity, once the heart of an empire that sprawled across all of the continent of Deaco. Through destruction at the hands of dragonkind, the empire was destroyed, and collapsed into city-states while the other races reclaimed their independence. Centuries of struggle, advancement and the discovery of magic allowed humanity to cast the dragons out of their cities, though many still roam the countryside. Afterwards Geralthin unified and become a powerful kingdom. Once a melting pot and the heart of trade in all the known world, Geralthin has become homogeneous as the most recent king decided to outlaw non-humans from the kingdom, rounding them up and forcing them into the city of Palethorn. This was a wildly unpopular move and led to uprisings, riots, and traitorous sentiment in many corners of the kingdom.

In the city, all was finally starting to calm down when the demons arrived. Now cut off from the outside world through the dark fog, no one knows what goes on inside, for all who enter the fog never come back. This dark, corrupted city is crumbling and abandoned, filled only with the husks of creatures that were once citizens, stumbling through the streets, seeking out any survivors to kill for their masters. Deep in the sewer systems that were never finished before the attack, the last remnants of the city hide out in an underground encampment, a few scavengers often traveling to the surface in a desperate bit to gather what the group needs to stay alive. It is here the heroes plot out their mission, and bring their wounded to rest and recover.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Yes. I’m pretty interested to see what I can do with them.

22. What excited you about this story?

Mixing dark fantasy with high fantasy, knights and dragons with evil and darkness. I’ve always been massively interested in fantasy, particularly magic and monsters, and how they effect what would otherwise be a mundane medieval world. How does castle design and city defenses have to adapt when you need to account for dragons? How much do numbers count for in armies when the opposition can call down lightning, or teleport? How do monsters like griffins and drakes affect hunters, and villages out in the deep wilds? How would society see people who exchange their humanity for power?

Seeing this new, strange world, and forces like dragons and demons clashing is incredibly interesting to me, which is why I enjoy writing about it so much.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Eh. I put on some music and just...go, I guess. I have a basic framework for the plot, and I know the ending, but aside from that I just...write. I guess I’ll look more into the flow of everything after I’m done, editing and altering from there. Also upon rereading the chapter after I post I notice like 20 typos, whoops.

WOW. This was really long and tiring, but I really enjoyed blabbering about my book. Thanks again!

I’ll be tagging @oceanwriter, @lady-redshield-writes, @homesteadhorner and @sheralynnramsey. Honestly this is pretty insane, I’m not gonna tag that many people, and if you don’t want to do this I totally understand.

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uncanny8ellen · 5 years

Text

Short break

As he was sitting on a bench, waiting(half sleeping), he thought of all the possibilities of this peaceful moment turning into the craziest nightmare of his life. Because, well, it wasn't like they knew the exact whereabouts of this next target, also he had a feeling this might be some kind of ominous massage from somewhere to warn him that he's going to die. For real, this time.

But clara, his fourth partner assistance (had to lose 3 just last year. For fuck's sake...), wouldn't let him dive straight into self-destructive, workaholic mode, so he might as well just enjoy this rare occasion while he can.

Ha, yeah. Enjoy. As if he's even capable of doing that. It has been a long time since he's ever felt safe enough to sleep more than 3 hours a day, much less enjoy a simple break, of all things.

God, he's going to die here, isn't he? He'll die as a nameless, disposable part of this horribly messed up organization and soon will be forgotten by every member in this team, because apparently that's just everyday life for everyone here, and his whole existence won't leave even a speck of something, because that, too, is what happens right from the very moment you sign up for this whole......crap. It wasn't like he had any other option, though. It was typical 'now or never' kind of situation, and he certainly didn't feel like being crushed under all those rubbles at the time. So contracts deals mistakes were made, and now he's here being the witness of all sorts of death from numerous kinds of stupid fucking reasons, wondering why he bothered to survive all those years ago.

Their leader always seemed to be a bit out of it, and now he understood why. There's absolutely no way anyone who's perfectly normal and is in their right mind can endure this much stress. It just had to be already fxxked up ones, because they can keep going even if they are literally thrown straight into hell. Because even if you break further what's already broken, the dust still stubbornly remains. And that's what this was all about. Keep being chipped away until there was nothing left to be erased.

But clara was different.

And he truly hoped she'll stay much longer than her countless predecessors, because-

Because...

......The vivid, yet familiar sensation of wrongness suddenly washed over him like a blanket made out of liquid nitrogen and the sheer pressure of void in his chest was enough to freeze him to the spot.

He opened his eyes, and sure enough, standing only a few feet away from where he sits is that wretched creature from recent briefing, 'avoid at all cost' and all that, and...has it been watching him sleep this whole time? With those too-many eyes on its body?

Wow. Okay. So, creepy and unsettling as usual. Hmm. No head. Basically it has mouth on where it's neck was supposed to be and it's fingers are like long beaks. What the hell. Dripping blood, as expected. Approachong without making a single noise? Check. Looks like it wants to kill you? Check.

..........And looks....amused? For some reason? No...maybe delighted is more like it.

And on it's right hand...

It's holding something.

So all that blood came from that in its hand?

What is-

~~~~~

John held up a hand to interrupt.

"So...let me get this straight." He quietly lit his fifth cig and continued. "First of all, you were sleeping during your mission. And before anyone tries to protest, yes, I am well aware of his sleep-deprived state at the time, but I'll have you know that that can't justify anything in this situation. Second, because of the reason I just stated, you let her go alone. Even when I specifically told all of you that there is a highly dangerous creature at large in this specific layer of reality."

John stopped briefly and simply observed in silence. He gazed into the vacant eyes on the other side of table with intensity.

There was nothing.

"And finally......albeit understandable.....you lost yourself. And I think you know more than anyone that something like that is unacceptable in our line of work." John finished and took a long drag from his cig.

The other side of table was still quiet, not a single movement being detected. As if there was no one.

Like it was just an empty seat.

Deep wrinkles slowly etched on john's forehead and he ordered others to leave the room. He pulled the last drag from his cigarette and put it off completely. Now only silence stretched further and further, until john finally snapped.

"Why don't you actually start explaining the rest instead of dodging the subject whenever possible? You'll have to tell me eventually. So you better say something right now before things go out of hands! Just let it out so I can see if I can help you at all, Eric!"

All of a sudden something inhuman flashed in two previously vacant eyes. His eyes zeroed in on the only other person in the room and he started whispering in almost incomprehensible words.

"What did you say?" John strained to catch any words, but it was too small to even notice that he was saying something.

"......I said tHAT FUCKING BASTARD HAD CLARA'S HEAD!!!!!" eric screamed, not giving any thoughts about how his voice sounded like wailing maniac in the end. He was standing now, but even that simple action was draining his energy rather quickly.

"That Thing was covered in her blood, and I didn't even realize...I-I..." he swallowed, and slowly exhaled through his nose. But that wasn't enough. He tried to slow his breathing like he'd done for past 4 years. It didn't work. He clenched his eyes shut but image of clara's bloody, lifeless, dismembered head was already branded inside his mind.

John noticed the obvious struggle and quickly grabbed both of eric's trembling hands with his own.

"Breathe. Remember the training. Come on, eric, try to mimic my breathing speed."

John gave him a knowing look. Almost every member in organization went through the same thing at least once a month, and it became a norm at this point.

Eventually eric's breathing started to slow down.After a pause, john slowly asked, "You looked down, didn't you?"

Single nod.

"We tried, but...couldn't salvage her body." John said lowly.

Eric nodded again, still feeling numb.

John hesitated for a second, then added, "She survived for the longest...also she had great personality, no wonder you were so deeply attached to her unlike all the other partners you met. You couldn't have known something like this was to happen....so.....just know that personally, I don't blame you. But since you eliminated the creature and tried to break the rule......I can't just let this pass. Also your full mental breakdown after that didn't help much, either. Again, I'm not blaming you for that. But we are all in the same boat. You know our sole purpose of existance relies on NOT going crazy, even just for a second. Our duty is to make the residence of particular reality to be happy, not ourselves. We can't live for that anymore, remember? We deal with extremely dangerous things so they don't have to. We lose our loved ones so they don't have to."

Eric simply stared into the distance. Then, he opened his mouth. "For a moment I thought.....that I could finally hope. That at least I'd get a chance to get to know her. That.....I'd have someone by my side. I guess being T.H.E.M means not hoping for anything. Funny, that. For someone who make so called "happy endings"...we aren't even allowed to get our own."

"And that's how we exist." said john. He brushed dust from old memory and cited the words he'd heard when he was still a little kid "The more we crave, the less we actually get. The Happy Ending Makers don't get to have their own happy ending. And you should always keep that in mind."

~~~~~

If you call THEM, they will come.

They will give you the happy ending you wanted by taking tragedies with them.

No one remembers them because happy ever after is the only thing people want to see.

Too captivated to the beauty of red rose to realize a nightingale sacrificed its life to dye the rose with its blood.

Until this day undercover agents of THEM suffer to lessen the pain of those who are in need of desperate help.

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

Wow that was, like, really long and confusing. By the way, english is not my first language so there will be many errors. Also I'd like to hear you feedback. I will appreciate your criticism as long as you don't be a jerk about it. Just be polite, please.

#them #writing practice #my writing

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

Text

Viscountess Belladonna Parvus

Basic Concept: Recurring bad guy human antagonist, an absolutely useless wanna-be military commander who fancies herself a patriot and is obsessed with beating the heroines, and just will not go away! She is literally the Worst.

Appearance: Imagining herself the greatest beauty of the Imperial Commonwealth, she stands about 5’9, reasonably slender for her height though very fit from a lifetime of active training. Her psychic powers clearly assist with her strength, as her body has telltale glowy bits on her veins; these flare whenever she loses her temper, which is about once every few hours.

She seems made in the image of one of the Commonwealth’s three great founding ur-societies, and are modeled after Victorian England. She wouldn’t be out of place as the heroine of an old novel: so pale that her skin might be made of porcelain, and in fact some of her limbs are made of a material that is like porcelain but suitable for prosthetics. Her blonde hair is so light as to be nearly platinum-colored, and is cut fairly short. She tries to maintain an air of disdainful haughtiness, but she’s too hot blooded to keep it up for long and her mannerisms tend towards the flamboyant.

Parvus likes to wear the latest fashions, or what she assumes is the latest fashions; as she spends much of her time far from high society, she is largely clueless and can come off as an arrogant blowhard to those in the know, and she certainly likes her outfits overdesigned. Even her porcelain prosthetics are ostentatious, inlaid with elaborate gold patterns and clockwork that tunes out her name whenever she enters a room. (This is SUPER annoying.) Everything about her appearance screams ‘PAY ATTENTION TO ME’. In general she has the look of a Disney villainess, but one that isn’t self-aware enough to realize she’s invoking the image.

Backstory: To understand this egomaniacal bundle of pride and obliviousness, you must know that the Imperial Commonwealth is divided into strict social classes; the dregs of society who labor in virtual slavery, a lower class who maintain the day to day works, several other groups who do similar jobs in different capacities, and above them all stand the warrior aristocracy, who operate the military as officers and do every job of any significance. As the Commonwealth is a heavily militaristic one, this means the aristocrats effectively run their society. However, they do little training and simply do as they please, believing that their breeding alone promises them all the competence they require, and laze about.

On the outer parts of the Commonwealth it's a little different, and the aristocracy is expected to perform well and consistently. Viscountess Belladonna Parvus, the crown jewel of a long line of military officers mostly known for their inability to stop killing their own men in political wars, won a prestigious duty in pacifying the frontier. She was excellent at courtly manners, wowing her fellow socialites and otherwise navigating the fraught political difficulties of home, but was absolutely incompetent at actual warfare. She became less liked as she kept wiping out her own armies through extremely bad tactics meant to earn herself glory and a fine reputation, and grew desperate to bolster her career.

Now entered the Endowed Nomad Fleet, and she saw an opportunity in ridding the multiverse of dangerous mutants and aliens (as she thought it). She attacked them with her entire army, and lost all of them. Many of them were devoured by the hungry MILFs of the fleet and later spat out as tasting too sour, and others defected once they saw the fleet had it pretty good. She herself was apparently killed when a ship fell on her by accident.

Less than a few weeks later, though, she was alive again, in a new cloned body, and seething at this loss ,she sought to avenge herself. She fought them again, and failed. She challenged them again, and failed too.

Since then, she has recklessly pursued them, gathering together the populations of entire worlds and forcing them into service, leaving Commonwealth worlds totally unpopulated, her eyes fixed on the goal of destroying the Endowed Nomad Fleet once and for all, and no matter how many time she has been incinerated, exploded, digested, or point-blank annihilated, she shows up again in a new body, vowing yet MORE revenge.

To this day, they barely remember her name and for some reason that REALLY pisses her off. She attacks them almost constantly, endlessly hunting them down and pausing only to entertain other little rivalries or moments for her to get some glory. The Fleet still tends to interfere for moral reasons, but find her so irrelevant they still don’t realize its her, over and over again.

Personality: Egotistical, arrogant, prideful; if there’s a synonym for ‘smug jerkface’, she fits the bill. A fairly standard member of the Commonwealth aristocracy (and unaware of the irony in the term there), she’s a conceited bundle of social prejudices, anti-intellectual snobbery, obsession with purity and essentialism, and generally being an absolute pain in the neck to everyone around her. She’s so bad, she even goes beyond hating anything that isn’t strictly baseline human to looking down upon the working classes of her homeworlds. A snob of the highest degree, she firmly believes that she is the cream of the crop, and better than everyone else by virtue of her lineage. By definition, every other being in the universe is beneath her, and that she owns everything by default. All things, to her, are hers to take or destroy as she wants.

A bombastic, loud and extremely dramatic personality, she’s used to treating all life as a performance and even seems genuinely unaware that actions have consequences. She doesn’t seem to understand the impact of people dying, and its implied that she views her military failures as test runs to figuring out what works; that her own men die by the thousands just doesn’t seem real to her, or relevant.

While she’s a complete failure as a military officer, this has little impediment to her career; among her society, anyone born to her rank will succeed regardless of their failures, simply because of their social standing. However she constantly worries about that standing falling, a consequence of her time at being a socialite. To her credit, she was a genuinely skilled and cunning master of politics, but that simply doesn’t transfer to the complexities of military work. She is, in the end, someone who thinks that brave charges are the same thing as strategy and that shouting at people will make them surrender. And, apparently, that constantly screaming at robots that they are soulless machines or that aliens are inhuman monsters will make them not squash you into a flat smear.

Incredibly vain, she regards her permanent injuries as honor marks. This is why she retains prosthetics despite being able to have her limbs regrown, as they are a point of pride to her. Ironically, she tends to get extremely angry over tiny wounds to her face, since they’re not too impressive and throw off her fabulous looks. She’s prone to complaining about the oversexed and hypersized attributes of her foes; she’s not jealous at all, she genuinely dislikes them being that big. She’s one of those kind of people who think that being anything besides super skinny and petite is a sign of personal failure.

She is a patriot, but this isn’t a good thing in her case; she is a blindly loyal devotee of her people’s unofficial reverence of the human form, and has a convoluted philosophy mixing social darwinism and romanticism that is tied into her beliefs about human supremacism. Everything she does, she believes, is for humanity. Or at least a very tiny section that she believes counts as human; anyone beneath her extremely specific standards is a sub-human animal fit only to be a tool or to be destroyed.

Species: Human; technically a metahuman, as she is a powerful psyker. This would probably annoy her, too.

Fandom: Original character.

Abilities: She’s actually a pretty skilled combatant one-on-one, making use of a ceremonial power blade to cut through enemies, in conjunction with a style of swordplay incorporating ballet-like movements and extreme agility into a rapid attack. This, combined with her deeply intimate understanding of her society’s rules of high society and political intrigue, has created an assumption by herself and her rivals that she is a cunning and skilful elite.

Her actual military skills, particularly in terms of tactics and logistics, are completely incompetent. She is much like Yatruiga in this respect, but where Yatruiga is oblivious, Parvus is genuinely cruel and indifferent to the suffering she causes, regarding feeding her men to her enemies as a way of making them useful. Perhaps, she fancies, the bloated bellies will slow them down. She is unaware of the digested men being reborn as children, and thus she is expanding their numbers. If she did know, it wouldn’t stop her, because she’s just… not very good at her job like that.

She is a genuinely powerful psyker; she has considerable influence over the minds of organics, and is something of a brain torturer, breaking into minds to force information and take what she wants without caring about the damage she causes. She is more fond of her telekinetic powers, augmenting her sword strikes into flying cuts that open wounds a dozen feet away, or crush enemies beneath nearby rubble. She is very strong psychically, able to go toe to toe with a giantess with her mind powers alone.

Problem is, she’s likely to be killed in a single hit, and she’s so foolhardy she often ends up being accidentally swallowed through sheer incomprehensibly bad foresight. Jumping into an enemies mouth to stab them in the throat, that sort of thing.

She has access to a war idol; the disturbingly realistic tributes to her people’s obsession with the human form. Her’s resembles herself, but on a very large frame and made of delicate-looking porcelain and enough gold to fund a medium-sized country. About seventy feet tall, it amplifies her powers to the point that she can rip hills out of the ground to use as melee weapons. Interestingly enough, it is somewhat hyper curvy, in the hourglass style. No one knows why, it just has done that on its own. Possibly she is becoming affected by the very powers she so disdains?

Relationships: She does not have friends. At all. She might have allies who respect her station, she might have soldiers who revere her as a living embodiment of humanity’s will, but no one who knows her personally likes her very much. She doesn’t care, being too much of a conceited twerp to think about anything but what SHE likes, which is herself. She might have a snarky manservant who mouths off to her, but that’s as close as it gets.

As rivalries go, she has one with the entire Endowed Nomad Fleet, but it's one sided. Despite her forces constantly harassing them for a long time, they barely know who she is and haven’t really made the connection that the human forces constantly pestering them are all led by the same woman, who just will not stay dead. In particular she resents Sierra, whom she sees as an uneducated barbarian who has abandoned her humanity in favor of monstrosity, and is obsessed with defeating her. Sierra has accidentally digested her and otherwise slain her on dozens of occasions, and still has no idea who she is. Her resentment of Sierra existing is largely classist, not just personal.

She and Yatruiga have come into conflict on many occasions, and they have a great resentment for one another; they’re notable for being some of the only military conflict that resulted in complete annihilation on both sides.

She might have something of an Ahab-ish thing for killing Mama Defleini, viewing her as a great and terrible foe to be vanquished on behalf of humanity.

Sekhma considers her an… interesting case study in how terrible a person can be, but the two otherwise have no real interaction. She and Pavumi have met, and Parvus still wakes up sweating at the memory; she has seen Pavumi’s true nature, and was horrified at the unthinkable reality.

In general, she detests all of my OCs on the grounds of… well, because she’s a terribly unpleasant person, really.

Pred Level: Absolute zero. She has no devouring abilities or interest in getting them, and would find the idea gross. She’s kinda boring like that.

Prey Level: Extremely high! She’s so foolhardy she charges right into the mouths of preds, daring them to stop her, and completely fails to realize when she is swallowed up and melted on the spot. She’s apparently super tasty, and many long-time preds seek her out to have another sample of her; pure nastiness has a special flavor, and while its an acquired taste, she is soaked with it. If someone has a predator rating above zero, she is almost certainly destined for their belly.

Relevant Kink Material: She’s a target of predator-types, as mentioned above, but she isn’t so much intended for these things in general as she is an antagonist and source of ‘bad guy of the week’. Someone to be constantly digested, over and over, and pop up again having learned nothing from the experience. She is different from Yatruiga, even though both have ‘incompetent military commander’ as a theme, because she is intended to be an unpleasant monster with zero redeeming features, present solely as someone you really wanted to see get whupped.

#/#//#///#////#/////#queued #she is just the worst and exists only to be punched constantly in the face #or exploded #or whatever else LOOK SHE SUCKS FOREVER AND IS A PERSONIFICATION OF HOW TERRIBLE THE IMPERIAL COMMONWEALTH IS #annoying her is like annoying them so do it fast and do it intense #my OCs #oc refs #belladonna parvus #i might portray her in actual fics as an OHOHOHO noble lady #a super obnoxious bad guy but not a realistically written one #someone whos fun to hate #look i find writing realistic villains Not Fun to do #basically use this gal as a villain of the week!#character refs

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corellian-smuggler · 6 years

Text

Princess Leia’s planet literally blew up and she had to watch.

How do you even process that kind of loss? In a split second she lost her entire family, her home, her culture, her language, her history, every single person she’d ever met, every place she’d ever been.

Imagine if Earth was destroyed, and you spent the rest of your life displaced. Imagine your childhood. Now imagine that every single place you ever went as a child—the beach where you went with your family, the playground you loved, the toys that you played with, the shows that you watched, your elementary school, your favorite candy bar—imagine that all of that was just lost forever, and not only is it lost forever, but you spend your whole life surrounded by people from other planets who wouldn’t even know what you were talking about if you mentioned those things to them. Imagine if not only were Earth to be destroyed but if also almost every single person from the earth was gone too—hardly anyone, if anyone at all—left in the whole universe to preserve the history of the Earth, from the dinosaurs to Ancient Rome to the moon landing. No one but you who knew what Christmas was. Literally your whole world just gone.

Now imagine if you felt responsible for it—if the world was blown up because you were trying to free it from tyrannical control. Imagine if you got caught being a “traitor” because you were trying to help your planet and every person in the galaxy, and because of YOU they blew up the earth. Or because YOU named a planet that was “too remote” when they asked you for an alternative.

I just. It’s glossed over in the movies, but how do you even begin to cope with that? With just such utter desolation and loss and grief and guilt? Have you ever lost someone you love—a grandparent or sibling or even a pet—and dreamt about them for weeks after the fact, hoping it’s all just a terrible nightmare—that you’ll wake up and they’ll still be there? Have you ever felt that terrible, surreal anguish of just wishing you could go back in time, fix it, get them back, make it as before?? Like your brain can’t process or accept it??? Can you imagine that on the scale of losing your entire planet???

I can’t. It’s just so awful and unfair. And there’s still people who try to justify the actions of the Empire. It just is beyond comprehension to me.

But the thing was that this was horrible and unspeakable but in the end Leia took down the Empire, won the war, freed the galaxy so that Alderaan wasn’t lost in vain, and she found healing and refuge and happiness and belonging in Han and Luke and Chewie. She suffered to such a degree that it’s sickening to even think about, but she got a happy ending.

Except for now, that her own son evidently grew up and willingly JOINED the remnants of the regime that destroyed her planet and actively participated in the destruction of even MORE planets himself. How perverse and painful and twisted—how much that must have hurt her. And apparently her husband left her, and the government that SHE helped create and which wouldn’t exist if SHE hadn’t defeated the Empire doesn’t take her seriously, and her brother left her to go hide on an island when she needed him. She was in danger and fighting a war all by herself, DESPERATE to get her brother back, and Han knew it and he wouldn’t even go to her when he HAD the map to Luke. Luke wouldn’t even go to her when she was begging for his help. Her own son MURDERED her husband in cold blood, and then to top it off her brother couldn’t even get his ass off exile island to go help her when he learned of this. All that pain, and abandonment, and betrayal.

It just disgusts me. This is a character who had to watch her entire planet be obliterated, who fought for YEARS in a war and risked her own life for every citizen in the galaxy, she was tortured and interrogated and had to watch the love of her life be tortured and interrogated, and then she had to watch as before her eyes the same man that made her watch Alderaan be blown up FROZE him in a slab of metal and sent him to his death.

Leia went through so terribly much—way more than I think some people even pause to consider—and then decades after the fact they decide to heap even more misery onto her? They think it’s acceptable, after everything she went through in the OT, to strip away the happy ending they gave her and bury her in such insurmountable, irrevocable suffering? They thought it was in the spirit of Star Wars—“protecting Star Wars”—to make her watch her own child grow up into a monster, to have that fact tear her husband away from her, to make every single person that was supposed to love her and stand by her leave her side—even the ENTIRE galaxy she’s saved countless times, who wouldn’t go to her aid or respond to her personal distress signal. They had to take away EVERYTHING from her until she had NOTHING, and then they had to tell the audience that she MEANT nothing, either—that she couldn’t even get the rest of the galaxy to stand up beside her or care enough to help her.

But no, we’re supposed to laud this plot!!! It’s so feminist!!! After all, she’s a GENERAL now and she never stopped fighting!!

Forgive me if I don’t see the appeal in a story that completely decimated a female character that has meant so much to women and to the world as a whole for decades. Forgive me if I don’t feel that inflicting such inhuman and endless pain and suffering upon her for the sake of propping up the villain should be celebrated.

It makes me sick.

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