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witch-hazels-musings · 1 year

Text

so long, loneliness

warning: hurt/comfort - (reader is ignored, talked over, feeling alienated by friends)

includes: Childe, Diluc, Thoma

character x gn reader | anthology

Childe

he notices ...

the energetic way you were talking has fizzled to nothing, like a sparkler whose flame was doused in a puddle

the power of your laugh has faded, been replaced the the obnoxious cadence of those around you

the way you try to interject, only for the opportunity to be stolen by another

he notices ... and he won’t stand for it

Group outings were not your jam. You knew this, and yet you convinced yourself to go out with your friends, and their friends, because, well, it had been a while and it was good for you to get out of your house sometimes. Still, you wished it wasn’t such an exposed place, and that you’d chosen a spot more in the middle so it wasn’t easier for you to be left out of the conversation.

The group had been talking about their jobs for some time now and though you worked in a similar field, it was hard to interject with so much going on. Not to mention you kept feeling like someone was trying to get your attention, but maybe that was your imagination.

“Oh yeah- I’ve had customers like th-” you started, only to get nowhere.

“Ugh, one time this lady came in a few minutes before we closed and wanted to order like seven things off the menu!” One of the others in the party interjected, pulling the attention away from you and back toward them. At this point, you felt like it was on purpose, but you had to remind yourself they’d done that to everyone, you were the only one that stopped trying.

The edge started to feel lonelier and lonelier. The bustling harbor drew your attention since the conversation wasn’t worth your time anymore. You watched citizens pass underneath on the main strip. They seemed to be enjoying themselves as they stopped by the vendors to peruse their wares, or follow the tantalizing scent of freshly cooked food. If you could have it your way, that’s what you’d be doing - at least then you could more easily slip away.

There was a crash behind you, another table knocked a cup onto the ground but when you looked past them you saw a familiar face leaning against one of the decorated railings. Shooting a quick look at your table you realized you were the only person who noticed him but when you waved he didn’t respond. Instead, he looked upset, though you couldn’t figure out why.

“Um, I’ll be back,” you said to the person sitting next to you. You didn’t really know them, but at least they nodded to show they heard you before returning loudly to the conversation at the table.

You grabbed your stuff and carefully made your way toward the brooding man standing in the darkness. “This is why people don’t like you,” you teased once you got near enough. The tall ginger took a moment to react to you being there, but when he did his eyes seemed to finally find color.

“What?” he looked confused, but unlike what you’d experienced all night, at least he looked at you.

“You’re standing in the shadows with a murderous look on your face; it’s why people find it hard to approach you.”

“Now hold on, I have plenty of friends,” he shot back as he pushed himself away from the beam and placed his hands on his hips.

“Sure,” you rolled your eyes but laughed at the shift in his behavior. You weren’t sure how Childe came into your life - it was like one moment he just ‘poof’d’ into existence and never left. The amount of times you stumbled across him was strange, considering how mysterious he made his life out to be. “Anyway, is there something bothering you? You’re face looks --” you asked, mimicking the expression you saw on him before taking a look across the scene as if seeing it from his perspective would give you insight into what made him scowl like that. From what you could tell, the only things visible were patrons of the restaurant, and the tops of buildings.

“Not anymore,” he responded and took a step between you and what you were looking at, “Come hang out with me.”

“W-What? Right now?”

“What better time than right now?”

“Childe, I’m with people. I can’t just go.”

“Yes you can. This place is dead. Besides, I’m way more fun,” he winked and took a step closer to you. It made your stomach flip, especially because he seemed to be boxing you in with little room to escape. This was another reason he had so many few friends - the intensity.

“Maybe -- but --” looking back to the group, you thought about what they’d say if you just left. It didn’t seem right to just dip out ... but ... you did consider doing just that a few minutes ago so ...

“Mmm, okay, I see where I stand. I get it, leave me here all by my lonesome ...” Childe bent toward the railing, his body crumbling as if the thought of your rejection physically hurt him.

“Ah! Hold on a second -” you pushed his chest to try and keep him from falling over and making an even bigger scene than his ‘despair’ was already causing, “archons, you know I like you! Now stand up, we’re in public,” you couldn’t help but laugh at the puppy-dog like expression he had, but as soon as he shifted back to the intense Childe, it was your turn to avoid crumbling to the floor.

“Hah,” he moved so fast. In an instant he pinned you in the corner, his hands gripping the railing to keep you in place while he closed the distance between the two of you, “so you do like me.”

Blinking, taken-aback, you stammered, unable to form a sentence. The sharp grin creeping across his lips made your skin burn; why was it so hard to breathe?

“And you said no one liked me.”

“I - wha-?”

Childe continued to look at you until his face became unreadable. He was looking at you, but it was ... more than that. It was like whiplash, and you weren’t sure how to survive it. Luckily, the group you came with erupted in noise and, in an instant, Childe moved giving you much needed space to breathe.

“Hey, come on! Don’t keep me waiting!” he shouted, already half-way down the stairs, hand extended, beckoning you to take it. Biting your lip, you contemplated where you wanted to be. Option one would lead you back to the edge of the table where you had to scramble to be heard, while option two ensured you’d be at the top right next to someone who actually wanted you there.

Rocking your head back and forth you gave it some more thought until your uncertainties turned into a nod. With a giddy smile on your face, you dashed toward him and grabbed his hand.

You couldn’t feel it, it was hard to tell, but when you smiled at him he felt a wave of relief because this time it was real, this time, you gave it to no one but him.

“Try and keep up!” he exclaimed but never ran faster than you could manage.

Diluc

he notices ...

the smile you had when you first arrived is hidden, is fake and doesn’t look like you

the way you fidget, leg bouncing, head down, nails pushing back the cuticles that have seen many stressors

the glances to the tavern entrance, your mind plotting the path to your escape

he notices ... and he won’t stand for it

The tavern was always loud but for some reason it seemed louder today. Perhaps that’s why they couldn’t hear you when you spoke up, that makes sense? Right?

Your friends burst into laughter and you appeased them by participating even though you missed what was so funny.

“How can someone be so hot and so stupid at the same time” you heard as you took a sip of the drink you didn’t want in the first place. It tasted bitter, leaving an unpleasant tang in your mouth.

“This is why getting to know someone first is important. Ugh, and he thinks he’s all that. You should just break up with him.”

“Yeah -- but I like him,” the boy lamented across from you, his head dipping toward the wooden table in despair. In the back of your mind you knew this conversation wouldn’t go anywhere. How many times had you tried to convince him to break it off, and how many times did your suggestions go unheard?

Still, there was a lull, perhaps you could interject, “I know you like him, but maybe this is your sig-”

“Friend, he literally can’t find his way around Mond,” your other friend interjected, cutting you off. If anyone were looking, they would have seen how much you deflated when the two of them kept talking, unaware you were there at all.

“It’s a hard to remember!”

“He’s lived here all his life!”

“So?”

“AND ITS A CIRCLE!” they shouted as they threw their arms in the air. The sudden loud outburst drew the attention of by-standards and you felt an uncomfortable amount of eyes on you.

“See, that’s hard to remember.”

“Honey, no,” they laughed and brought out a laugh from your friend sitting across from them before dropping their head in disbelief. “I can’t with you, hah.”

“I’m - um - going to go get more drinks --” you said but were cut off, ignored, again. Normally you didn’t mind. The three of you had been friends for so long and they were both a lot more energetic than you so even though it looked like they were alienating you, they really weren’t. It’s just how they were -- there were plenty of times you got the chance to talk -- at least for a bit -- sometimes. With a sigh, you turned toward the bar, their conversation fading the further away you got.

Most of the tables were filled so only a few spots were left open at the bar-top. A couple here, several loners there, and then you, sliding in between knowing you wouldn’t be here long enough to take one.

“I’ll be right with you,” the bartender said while you pulled out your money to settle the bill. This was your chance to leave - it was getting late, you had things to do tomorrow - your friends wouldn’t notice if you left anyway. Glancing back at them you saw they were in a heated conversation, unaware you weren’t still with them. Yup, they wouldn’t even notice. “What can I get for you?”

“Oh, nothing I just-” you looked up and saw Diluc Ragnvindr standing on the other side of the bar. He tugged at his glove before resting it on the counter and you lost your train of thought. If anyone thought Diluc was unattractive, they’d be lying. “Sorry I -” Fumbling with your money, you took longer than you wanted in opening the small bag, “I just want to pay my tab.”

“Alright,” he left for a moment before returning with a small slip of paper. “That’ll be 400 mora.”

“Wh-Wait? Really?” You counted the drinks in your head and, based on what you could calculate, that didn’t add up.

“The last drink you had you didn’t like it, so I excluded it from your bill.”

How did he know you didn’t like it? Was he ...? “Oh no, you don’t have to do that, Diluc. I don’t mind,” you fingered through the change in your pouch fully intending to pay more than he requested. It would be wasteful otherwise.

“It’s no problem,” he reiterated and glanced at the table you came from, “Headed out for the night?”

“Yeah -- I um -- I have to get up early,” you lied.

“It’s late. Are your friends not going with you?” Diluc placed his hand back on the bar top. If you were looking at him, you might of noticed the way he stared down the loners within earshot of your conversation.

“No,” you answered with a sad smile, “they’re distracted, and I don’t want to shorten their fun so -- anyway, besides, I’m used to walking by myself,” you added and placed your mora on the counter, putting a few extra coins down as a ‘tip’. Diluc groaned, but didn’t say much else.

“Charles,” Diluc called out while you put your bag away and turned toward the door. There were a few people standing behind you, waiting to get close enough to order a drink; so you apologized as you pushed through them. When you reached the front entrance, you looked back to your friends to wave goodbye but they didn’t look up.

Suddenly, a hand appeared on the doorknob. You stepped back to move out of their way but were shocked to see it was Diluc. The look on your face was enough for him to answer the question floating in your head.

“I’ll walk you home,” he explained so matter-of-factly like it was expected of him to do so.

Throwing up your hands, you shook your head, “That’s really not necessary. Besides it’s so busy right now ...”

He opened the door and a wave of fresh nighttime washed over you. It mixed with the smell of cedar and wine, a somehow comforting scent. When he called your name you listened, “It’s late and would be unsafe for you to walk by yourself. I’ll ensure you get home safely.”

The noise from the tavern seemed so distant now that the outside world was welcoming you. It was like everything paused. Normally you had to jump at the change to interject, but Diluc wasn’t like that. He waited; with his hand on the door and the other extended toward your back but never touching. He waited.

“If you’re sure,” you hummed, a little overwhelmed from the intensity of him.

“I am,” he replied and though you couldn’t feel it, though it was hard to tell, when you smiled at him he felt a wave of relief because this time it was real, this time, you gave it to no one but him. “Shall we?” he asked and willed his heart to slow at the sound of your gentle laugh and a soft, ‘okay.’

Thoma

he notices ...

the way you stand to the side as those around you block you out; you’re kind, and they’ve taken advantage

the way you shake your head, say ‘go ahead,’ when you clearly wished they would have let you have it - at least once

the smile you hold when you speak up and the frown it turns into when you’re left with no reaction

he notices ... and he won’t stand for it

The shops always had the best things. Lately they’d gotten even better; mostly likely due to the lifting of the vision hunt decree that kept the islands isolated from the rest of the world. With less restrictions, the vendors and merchants were finally able to bring in new wares which made the shopping districts boom with business.

You were excited to go with your friends, especially since you’d had to pick up extra shifts lately. It felt like eons since you last did something fun, something for you, so you made sure to take your time getting ready.

At first, things were normal, lively, inclusive, but as the evening went on you started to feel left out of the group. While you were still looking at a shop, everyone else was rushing down the packed street to see the next thing. The amount of times you turned to share what you found with a complete stranger, or find yourself scanning the crowd for your group would have been enough to pay for all the items you found.

Considering it had been a while for everyone to get together you tried your best to satiate the turmoil rising in your chest. It hurt to be left out, but would it hurt more to go home knowing you’d be left alone anyway? At least out here it seemed like you were a part of something.

“Oh! Look at how pretty! Let’s check it out!” Your friend shouted, her hands wrapped around two other friends as she pulled them after her. You all had agreed to hold onto each other so you wouldn’t get lost in the crowd but as several people separated you from the rest of your group, you realized they had forgotten about it.

You didn’t recall eating anything, so why did your stomach hurt and your throat feel clogged? Frustrated, you pinched the bridge of your nose only to be knocked to the side by some kids rushing through the bustle. You stumbled into a group of older gentlemen who asked if you were okay. Embarrassed, you bowed in apologies only to bump into some woman who was less accepting of your ‘I’m so sorry.’ All you wanted was to have a good time and, right now, you were doing everything you could not crumble.

“Padron us,” someone interrupted your swirling thoughts as they grabbed your wrist and began to pull you through the crowd. You looked to see who it was but could only make out their bright red jacket and blonde, bouncing ponytail. “Oops - sorry about that,” he chuckled as he knocked into a group not paying attention to their surroundings, “almost through,” he said, seemingly, to you.

When the two of you were finally free, Thoma made sure you were safely out of the way before letting you go.

“Woah, that was wild wasn’t it?!” he chuckled and dusted himself off. He took note of his surroundings and you noted how he stood in front as if to shield you from the crowd.

It was hard to catch you breath, but you did what you could in the safety of the space Thoma created. “Thank you, Thoma.”

“No problem! It’s dangerous to be in a crowd like that alone.”

“Yeah, well I was-- yeah, super dangerous,” you said, biting back the comment you wanted to say, i wasn’t alone, or at least, wasn’t supposed to be. “What brings you here on such a busy day?”

Thoma ran his hands over his hair, the action pulled on the short red jacket he always wore, “Running some errands. I just needed to grab a few things, that’s all.”

“You always work so hard. You need a day off,” you commented while your eyes scanned the crowd for your friends. It was a small hope that you’d find them, but it was worth a shot.

“Haha, I don’t mind. Plus, if I hadn’t been out here I wouldn’t have stumbled across you. So, I’d call this a good day.”

You turned your attention back to Thoma who was rubbing the back of his neck and sending you a kind smile. You liked Thoma, of course you did. He was always so warm, thoughtful, and capable, it was impossible not to like him. And here he went out of his way to save you from the crowd. Add this to the reasons why you had such strong feelings for him.

“I guess I do owe you one for saving me.”

He threw up his hands, “Its no trouble-”

“Nope. It is. You’re super busy and I took some of your time. So, how can I help?” He seemed a bit shocked by your comment but after a moment he relaxed into soft laughter and resigned himself to accept he couldn’t wiggle his way out of it.

“If you want to come help me run some errands ... maybe?”

He looked so cute asking and you could already see his brain working on a way to convince you it was really alright. In the end, there was only one answer you could give him.

“Absolutely. I’m ready to work!” You rolled up your sleeves and moved next to him, ready to dive back into the crowd for Thoma.

He chuckled again as he turned about-face toward the slew of people. “Alright then. With two of us we’ll get it done in no time.”

You beamed, excited and ready to go. “Mmhm!”

With confidence, you took a step forward only to be stopped by Thoma’s hand around your wrist, “ah, maybe it’s better if I go first and you -- ahem -- hold onto me so we don’t get separated.” His cheeks looked a little red, and he could only manage to glance at you. Considering he was asking someone who wasn’t his partner to have prolonged physical contact with him, you understood how embarrassing the situation was (and hoped he couldn’t tell you thought the same).

“A-alright,” you agreed and watched as he guided your hand to red fabric that stuck out above his belt.

“Here we go, ready?” You nodded and took a step closer to him. The two of you shared flickering glances before he steadied himself and pushed forward, “P-Pardon us!”

You couldn’t feel it, it was hard to tell, but when you smiled at him he felt a wave of relief because this time it was real, this time, you gave it to no one but him.

Tomorrow, you’d tell your friends something came up and to not feel bad about being separated because, even if you weren’t with them, you didn’t end your night feeling lonely.

#hazels works #genshin #genshin impact #genshin impact x reader #childe x reader #childe x gn reader #diluc x reader #diluc x gn reader #thoma x gn reader #thoma x reader #genshin hurt/comfort

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drdemonprince · 2 months

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Do you worry about being so open about your sex life under the same name you use professionally? How did you settle on your current approach to talking about kink/fetishism publicly?

That's my question. Below is some background but feel free to ignore it.

I'm asking because, like many people, my kinks are integral to my sense of self and engaging in BDSM has been significant for my psychological wellbeing. I don't like keeping these important aspects of myself separate from the rest of my life and I'm jealous of the people I meet at munches who share openly kinky stuff on their regular Instagrams. But I also have relatives on all of my socials, including a few adult family members who take any opportunity to create drama or get on their high horses, and teenage cousins who obviously shouldn't be given information about my sex life.

I like using social media to connect with people, and it feels harder to do that when big parts of me are walled off. I'm so worried about sharing anything 'inappropriate' that I'm only presenting this bland, watered down version of myself and it makes me feel alienated. Making side accounts is one option, but it feels like compartmentalising and involves more 'personal brand' management than I care to juggle.

That's without even touching on in-person disclosures. How do I embrace these aspects of myself without acting like they're shameful, but also without being obnoxious or unfair on other people who might not want to know?

I know "authenticity" can be an unattainable ideal, especially on social media platforms that necessitate curation, but I do want to stop tying myself in so many knots over this (in the figurative, unsexy way).

Sorry for venting in your askbox.

Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on this.

I don't worry about the potential of my speaking openly about my sex life ruining my professional life because I hate my professional life and professionalism in nearly all forms. I have nothing but contempt for the academy, social psychology, my employer, the publishing industry, 99% of the organizations that hire me to provide workshops, and a decent-sized subset of my readers who are of the more liberal end of things. Alienating myself from these institutions and people and making myself incompatible with their viewpoints feels as necessary to me as breathing air.

when I was very young I was concerned with making myself palatable to academia and shucking off everything that was unprofessional and hillbillyish and childish and weird about me, but then I learned what success within the academy really entailed. I heard faculty members shrug and say they "didn't really care" about the topics they were studying (topics like racism, sexism, transphobia, etc) and were just publishing work on these subjects to further their own careers. I was trained to use questionable research protocols that generated false positives and specious results. Nearly all the research that I worked on for three years of undergrad and five years of graduate school would eventually be discredited due to failure to replicate. And I realized that I was being taken advantage of all the while, mined for cheap labor on meaningless projects that meant nothing scientifically, making $14k a year in a field where there were no future job prospects.

by the time i finished my PhD I knew that I wanted to be nothing like the people that had trained me and taken advantage of me, and that I had useless skills in a dying field. I was plenty happy to cut the shit by then and be real about who I was, what I believed, and what was and wasn't a virtuous use of my time. This only became more pronounced after I was screwed over by even more employers as a part-time instructor, and then finally hired full-time in a department that was doing good work, but which was constantly getting undercut by those in higher up administrative positions.

My entire career I have essentially been daring people to fire me and they never seem to do it. No matter how much shit I talk about the university and my profession and no matter how much I bear about myself, I just keep getting rewarded for it and allowed to float along relatively unbothered. There's a power in having a lot of audacity. I am not ashamed of who I am and I don't worry about how my employer and colleagues see me because as a whole I have zero respect for any of them or their opinions. (I have some individual coworkers who are great! but they dont represent Psychology or Academia as a whole or its values. my coworker friends are supportive of my freaky trans kinky self).

It's much the same dynamic in my family. I have no respect for the majority of people in my family and I don't concern myself with how they might react to the things I have to say. When I first started writing openly about Autism some relatives found it deeply offensive and talked a lot of shit about me behind my back, saying that I was embarassing all of them by associating us with a disability they found shameful, but my mom communicated to those relatives in no uncertain terms that I was gonna just keep doing whatever the fuck I wanted and they'd have to find some way to deal with it.

My mom had already learned that about me firsthand. I complain about her sometimes but I do have immense gratitude to her for just accepting who I am, even if there are elements of it she can't understand and probably does not feel good about. She learned a long long time ago that I was on my own separate planet and that there was nothing she could do to stop me from running my mouth and living my life, and I'm thankful to her for that. My actions have set the tone with my family pretty clearly: i came out as trans publicly before I told them, I started hormones and changed my name/gender marker without consulting them and then told them it was a fact already and they'd need to get in line. I approach most things about myself that others might take issue with in the same way: it's a fact, it's fucking happening, and you can't tell me shit about it that is going to keep me from doing it. and if you're too much of a dick about it I might end up writing about you in a book or essay so watch out, I guess.

That sounds more vindicitive than how I actually feel most of the time, of course. I just don't think about the opinions of people I don't respect. I care about what my friends think of me, and the people I look up to, and I try to rise to a level that is worthy of them. And of course I do experience fear of ostacism and failure in those respects and have not always coped with it in a confident, principled way. But with my aunts and uncles or my boss? Fuck them. I have no desire to win their approval because I've seen what they approve of and it sucks.

All of this is possible because I am not financially reliant upon my family, of course, and because if I lose my job I would have a back-up plan. I've always done freelancing and side writing gigs, even back when I was a part-timer with really insecure teaching jobs, and so the loss of any one position has never felt that catastrophic to me. I was already released by my PhD program into economically shaky ground and I never had a prayer of having a successful tenure track academic "career", so I'm not afraid of losing that. that's already gone. I feel generally pretty confident in my ability to scratch by making a living doing this or that even if somebody fires me, and I won't have to ask relatives for money so it really does not matter if I alienate any of them. that is an IMMENSE PRIVILEGE and someone not in that position shouldn't compare themselves to me or expect themselves to have that same degree of confidence. sometimes you have to just keep your head down to survive and there's no shame in that either.

as for the question about "authenticity" as an idealized end state and how to reconcile it with social media, here are some of my thoughts: it's not authenticity if it is focused on how other people interpret you. authenticity is letting go of trying to manage what other people think about you. that means you dont ever have to broadcast everything about yourself to the public or on social media, you dont ever have to share something that you dont want to, the pursuit of being perfectly understood is one that will never be fulfilled and there is no need to make oneself unnecessarily vulnerable just for the sake of appealing to people who might not ever understand and accept you anyway. authenticity is more about an energy than about revealment. it's an energy of self acceptance, not necessarily self love, and it's not something that one broadcasts, it's something one cultivates by developing secure, supportive relationships, improving one's self knowledge, and by working through one's baggage.

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kiss-theggoat · 9 months

Text

The Boogeyman Pt. 1

Corey Cunningham x F!Reader

Word Count: 2.3k

Summary: You finally meet Corey, the guy who has been alienated from Haddonfield completely. You find out he isn’t so bad.

Warnings: none, fluffy for now

If you’d imagined that you’d be here right now, you would’ve taken infinitely better care of your poor old Toyota. Your lungs were screaming at you to stop, chest burning and you felt like you might cough up blood every single time you took a breath. The muscles in your thighs flexed and contracted in the most painful ways, and you could not for the life of you figure out how people rode bikes for fun.

You’d been riding uphill over the freeway for what felt like hours, cheeks flushed and mouth open to suck in breaths of cool fall air. Up ahead, you saw a familiar sign that gave you hope. Your salvation. A gas station you frequented where you knew that you’d be able to get water, a break, anything to help your aching bones.

You’d been without a car for a few weeks now and riding the bike this way hadn’t gotten easier. It was fine around your neighborhood but uphill to this side of town was brutal. You finally reached the downhill portion, a sigh of relief escaping you as you immediately felt yourself begin to catch your breath.

As you rode up towards the gas station, expecting a calm and easy visit like usual, excited to get your drink and maybe a few snacks, but the first thing you noticed was the yelling. It sounded like a group of kids were yelling, but you stared and could only see a line of teenagers, four or so of them standing around something. As you got closer, you saw the something.

A man sat on the ground, head down and cradling his hand next to his chest. You got a sinking feeling when you looked at him. Something was wrong. You rode up to the group of kids, finally hopping off of your bike and walking closer to inspect the scene. As you approached, you saw blood, lots of it, trickling down the man’s hand. Glasses, presumably his, were on the ground beside him, cracked and crooked. You found the source of the cut, a shattered bottle of chocolate milk a few feet behind him.

Another thing your proximity revealed was that those kids weren’t here to help him. They were the ones that caused it. You dropped your bike to the ground about ten feet behind them, causing them to turn around and face you. You usually weren’t one to confront people, but this felt different.

“Hey!” You shouted, walking towards them angrily. You had no intention of stopping, expecting them to move out of your way. You walked right down the middle of them, hitting two of their shoulders as you parted the group. The man looked up at you and you felt your breath hitch, momentarily yanked from your confident strut.

You immediately recognized him as Corey Cunningham. The man who was dubbed “The Babysitter Killer” and cast from the town completely. What you didn’t expect was for him to have such beautiful, big, brown puppy dog eyes that stared up at you like you were his lord and savior. His plump lips were slightly parted, and he sat up a little taller in your presence.

“Are…are you okay?” you asked softly, kneeling down in front of him. You were definitely flustered by how handsome and strong he looked, but the blood flowing from the gash in his hand forced you to focus.

“Aweeee! The psycho’s got a babysitter!” One of the kids yelled, laughing obnoxiously as if anything they just did was funny.

One of the other ones bumped their shoulders together. “Hey, let’s hope she kills him!” They all cackled and stared down at you both, glares full of judgment.

You couldn’t believe what you were hearing. From what you could remember, the case about the dead kid was dismissed. Ruled an accident. The way Corey was treated was unfair, but this was extreme. You decided to ignore it. That’s what you’d always been told, if you stop giving bullies a reaction, they stop having fun.

You smile at Corey, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Can I see your hand? I have some first aid stuff back at my house but it might need stitches.”

He looked at you, confusion evident on his pretty face. He was confused as to why you were even helping him. Why weren't you ridiculing him like everyone else? He slowly held his hand out to you, he could feel how deep the cut was and how the skin spread apart to make way for the blood, exposing tissue beneath. He knew he needed stitches, but he wanted you to take care of him instead.

He watched you wince. He felt your soft hands on his calloused one, gently holding it as if it were cracked porcelain. Corey didn’t care about his hand at that moment, in fact, he barely felt it. Instead, all he could focus on was the way that you immediately jumped in to help him. You touched him so gingerly, like you really cared if he was in pain or not. He hadn’t felt like this in years.

You stared into the wound, a little bit woozy from just how deep it was. “I’m sorry…you’ll probably need stitches. I don’t have a car.”

He spoke for the first time, voice soft but raspy with emotion. “Me either.”

“Is there someone I can call?”

He shook his head. You could call his mom, but he’d rather bleed out on the pavement than listen to her cry and gush over him for the next six hours.

“Okay…uhm…” you looked around, trying to find some sort of solution, but all you could think of was the pegs on your bike. “Do you think you’d be okay to stand on those? I can take you to the ER.”

Corey nodded quickly, wanting to spend as much time with you as possible. He was a little embarrassed that he was only riding his bike and didn’t have his motorcycle up and running yet, but if it meant he got to hold onto you, it was okay with him.

“Okay let’s go.” You held out a hand for him, which he gladly took. Blood didn’t make him woozy or anything, but he liked the fact that you seemed to want to help him, no matter the circumstance. You hopped on your bike and honestly, you were dreading having to ride over that hill to the ER with someone on the back but Corey needed your help, and he seemed really sweet. Poor guy deserved to have at least one person on his side.

You tried so hard to keep your huffing and puffing to a minimum, but obviously you failed.

“Don’t ride your bike much?” Corey asked with a small smile on his face, non injured hand placed on your shoulder to keep him steady.

You let out a breathy laugh, shaking your head. “No.” You pant. “My car just recently broke down and I can't afford to get it fixed. So bike it is.”

“I can fix it.”

You turned back a little bit enough to see him in your peripheral vision. “You can?”

“Yeah, I work at a mechanic shop. I can see what’s wrong with it.”

“That’s not fair. I’d like to pay you for your work. Besides, if I hadn’t been riding my bike today, I wouldn’t have run into you, so I guess it’s a good thing.”

Corey smiled. You liked the fact you met him? His heart could burst. He liked how hard you were working just to get him help, when he knew it might be faster to just walk or ride himself to the ER. He couldn’t get off this bike, he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

You felt like you’d been kissed by an angel when you finally pulled up to the ER and Corey hopped off the back of your bike. Your legs were aching and trembling, but you played it pretty cool. You watched him walk towards the doors, turning back to look at you. “Thank you. For bringing me.”

“No problem. I’ll wait for you, okay? I want to make sure you're okay.”

Corey could cry. No one other than his mom has shown him this much attention. “That’s okay. I can call someone to pick me up. Really, don’t worry about it.”

“What kind of chauffeur would I be if I didn’t offer a ride home?” You smiled, leaning your bike against the side of the ER. You wanted to make it clear you weren’t going anywhere. Corey heard you loud and clear, nodding with a small grin. He walked inside, not even caring about the sting in his palm.

Corey exited the ER, seven fresh stitches and some fancy gauze, but he couldn’t care less about any of that. All he could think about in there was you. Sitting out here on your bike, patiently waiting to ride home with him standing on your pegs even though you hated riding your bike. He found you leaning against the wall, staring up at the fading sunlight.

“Pretty sunset.” He said, mentally smacking himself upside the head. Pretty sunset? That’s all he says.

“Yeah. How’s your hand?” You asked, walking closer to him.

“It’s okay. They gave me some stitches and some of this numbing stuff. I can barely feel it.” He gave you that goofy smile of his, wiggling his fingers.

You laughed, nodding. “Good, cause we got quite a ride home. Where do you live, Corey?”

He could’ve combusted when you said his name. Your voice sounded so sweet and to hear his name on your lips was heaven. He stared at you for a moment before finally snapping out of it. “Oh. On first.”

You felt a weight off your shoulders. “Thank god. I live on the corner of first and elm. Let’s go.” You got on your bike and savored the weight of Corey standing on your pegs, even though you knew he’d make it harder to pedal. This time, he placed both hands on your shoulders and stared up at the sky as you began to pedal. The ride to his house wasn’t so difficult, no crazy hills or anything.

You rolled into his driveway and placed a foot onto the concrete. “Home sweet home.”

Corey hopped off your bike, but stayed beside you. You looked up at him. You realized now, even more so than before, how pretty he was. His beautiful, silky brown curls with just a hint of blue light from the sky on them. His brown puppy dog eyes are accentuated by the glasses with a cute clumsy crack in the corner. Plump lips outlined by a faint dusting of five o'clock shadow. Everything about him seemed perfect, and that was just his face, not to mention his large hands, broad shoulders, muscular thighs. You wondered why the hell you’d never approached him before.

You stared at one another for a moment before he finally spoke up. “I really want to work on your car. Consider it payment for making you haul me around on your bike.”

“You didn’t make me do anything. I wanted to.”

He rolled his eyes a little, that boyish smile gracing his face. “Okay well…consider it a favor then.”

You bit your lip a little bit. You needed to be bold. You really liked Corey, even though you’d only known him for a short time. As you toyed with the rubber on your bike handle, you decided to just go for it. “Consider it a date then.”

The expression on Corey’s face could only be described as flabbergasted. His mouth opened a few times but nothing came out. You began to get nervous. Did you come on too strong? Did you misread the situation? What if he was genuinely just trying to be kind and you went ahead and made it all awkward by being-

“Okay…a date…” Corey stuttered out, cheeks pink and eyes focused on you.

You smiled so wide your cheeks hurt. “Okay! Uhm…when do you think you’ll be okay to work…y’know…because of your hand?”

He looked down at the wrapped appendage and suddenly wanted to strangle every single person who’d ever bullied him before. Yes, the broken glass is how he’d met you. But this is going to keep him from being able to work on your car. I.e, keep him from your date.

“Maybe we will take a rain check on your car…I’m sorry.”

“That's okay! We can have a movie night or something instead. My house, tomorrow.” You said, feet already on your pedals. “Grey house on the corner!” You reminded him. “8 o'clock!”

He laughed as he watched you ride away, finally with some enthusiasm. His heart was so full. He couldn’t believe that you’d asked him out first and that you wanted him to come over. As he began to walk into his own house, cheeks red and aching from his grin, he realized that he’ll have to work through the pain anyways. There’s absolutely no way that he’s going to your house on his bike. He needs his motorcycle fixed, ASAP.

#slasher x reader #slashers #horror movies #horror fanfiction #slasher x y/n #corey cunningham #corey cunningham x reader #halloween ends

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mellotronmkll · 26 days

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Okay like idk how to explain it but I'm just so frustrated because I feel like when it comes to like ummmm realizing im autistic/unmasking its so hard for me and it feels so black and white like because I was definitely told as a kid/teenager that I was annoying repeatedly obviously and just like was bullied for being autistic and like for me I reacted by basically completely suppressing everything so much that I ended up basically becoming extremely alienated from myself and my own interests and passions and feeling very hollow for years lol because I was trying desperately to appease the people around me and be Not annoying as much as I could and obviously I hit extreme burnout and so yeah now that you know I'm recovering from that and over the last few years have finally started to unmask and actually find joy in my interests again and am working on being able to share them with other people without embarrassment it's just so frustrating because sometimes I feel like I just go too far and am just like. Super super annoying and I'm just so terrified people aren't gonna want to be around me and idk how to explain it but it's just like the fine line between masking so much that I suppress my own personality and just going full no holds barred autist on everyone and then you know being rejected because of that well it shouldn't be a fine line right like I have learned social skills I should be able to practice those while also not hiding my personality from everyone and being embarrassed by my interests. But figuring out how to do that is so hard like and it just drives me crazy because I want to be a likeable person and I don't want to be told I'm annoying and weird and rejected by everyone but if I'm being true to myself like really that's just gonna happen 😭 and there must be a happy medium but idk how to find it. Like I feel like the answer is probably a mix of. Of course I need to observe those social mores and keep practicing the social skills that are important for me to be like a good friend etc but i also need to get more okay with being a little unlikeable like people are going to think im weird and obnoxious especially neurotypical people and I have to accept that if I want to be happy but I also don't want to because I want everyone to like me. BUT like I also have to navigate like not being unintentionally rude especially to the people close to me because sometimes I suck at that. But that also doesn't mean I have to please everyone All of the time. But my brain cannot handle that nuance it's like I'm either doing one or the other and it drives me insane does this make any sense

#Like I should be able to casually mention things I like without obnoxiously infodumpung but since I find that extremely difficult my default #Is deny that I have any interests and just be like :) I'm a blank slate #And that's what I did for years basically . But now I'm just back to being kind of insufferable

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anons-has-hlvrai-aus · 25 days

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The Metamorphosis of Gordon Freeman [Chapter 1]

Summary: Gordon finds out four years too late that not wearing your helmet into a chamber filled with otherworldly radiation is going to have some strange effects on the human body. Luckily for him, there’s somebody that can help him accommodate to his new alien powers…unluckily for him, that somebody happens to be a certain former security guard that can’t seem to stay dead.

Chapter Summary: Gordon receives an unwanted visit from somebody he hasn’t seen in a long time.

Word Count: 4,406

Notes: So originally this chapter was much longer, and included Movie Night, but I realized it was getting REALLY long and I thought the initial conversation between Gordon and Benrey acted as a good introduction of things to come. The start of things getting jostled up in Gordon’s life.

Black Mesa had been busy for a while when it came to Xen. The details were of a need-to-know basis, and not everybody in Black Mesa had those qualifications, but that didn’t change the fact that the survey team’s most recent yield of specimens came with an unexpected addition.

Could they call it a man?

It looked like a man.

Correction, it almost looked like a man: average height, a slightly notable stomach, some dark and greasy hair…perfectly normal from a glance.

This wasn’t a normal man.

Normal men don’t bare razor sharp teeth.

Normal men didn’t tank loads of bullets with anything less than a few bruises.

Normal men didn’t come back from the dead.

Normal men don’t spew orbs of color from their snarling mouth.

Normal men don’t have scleras the color of honey and irises that were some sort of horrible color out of space.

Normal men don’t scale walls and ceilings completely nude, their eyes, fingertips, feet mysteriously concealed by shadows with no discernible source.

This wasn’t a normal man.

This wasn’t even a human, masculine or otherwise.

This was something else.

This was something unworldly.

This was something familiar to Black Mesa, despite the shape it currently took.

This was something Black Mesa’s scientists hadn’t seen for a long, long time, and they were going to take advantage of that.

SUBJECT: Gordon Freeman, PhD.

CURRENT LOCATION:

Random County Middle School

Poastgame, New Mexico

TIME: Containment Failure + 1491 days, 5 hours

EMPLOYMENT STATUS: It’s complicated

Gordon sat in front of a desk, a stern, withered figure staring back at him from the opposite side. Both were obnoxiously business casual, although his interviewer clearly had something a bit out of date. He grinned at the older gentleman, who simply maintained his analytical glare.

“You say you want to be a… science teacher… Dr. Freeman?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s why I’m uh… that’s why I applied for the job here, yeah.” He nodded.

“It says here you graduated from MIT, very impressive.”

“Thank you” spills from Gordon’s lips without a second thought, his scrutinizing assessor briefly redirects his gaze from the paper back to him. It feels like an eternity before he switches focus once more.

“I am very curious about your previous employment, as well as the noticeable gap in your resume.”

Shit. Fuck. Damnit.

What could he even bring up as an excuse that didn’t break his confidentiality agreement?

There was so much shit that went on in Black Mesa: the shady business practices were just the start, the blatant coverup of alien lifeforms wasn’t exactly a reasonable excuse either, nor the multitudes of identical human men that were apparently illegal and wanted by the state of New Mexico, and he was pretty sure so much as whispering about the experiment that destroyed his workplace would paint a target on his back. Again. And he really didn’t need a repeat of last year’s ‘Ed Balls Day Celebration’.

That wasn’t even mentioning the complete disregard for OSHA safety regulations (he didn’t care if Tommy said it had been up to code, it most certainly was NOT in his eyes), the medical malpractice (he was pretty sure what happened in the mixology department counted as this, but he really didn’t want to throw Darnold under the bus considering how nice and genuinely helpful the guy was), the clear disregard of human decency that was the accursed laundry room and it’s wretched coin-guzzling dryers, the-

“Doctor Freeman, I am waiting for you to answer my question.”

Gordon stuttered, suddenly his train of thought failed to provide any sort of plausible answer. He deployed his most reliable excuse. “I’m uh, I’m kinda not supposed to say anything? Kinda supposed to keep quiet about what happened to the place. As for the gap… well…” Most people don’t like it when you tell them the reason you have a gap in your employment is because you spent two years attempting to mentally recover from the trauma of your last workplace, and even more people dislike when you tell them the rest of your gap has been from you trying to get a job and then failing, because the idea of anybody having such a long gap in employment is an enigma to anybody trying to hire, at least as far as Poastgame, New Mexico was concerned. Still, he couldn’t exactly lie about what he’d been doing for the past four years, so he told them exactly what was up with the gap in his resume.

As expected, it did not please the other man in the slightest.

Gordon looked deflated by the end of the interview, looking much like one of the numerous tweens currently outside the office, waiting to hear about their grade-school criminal records.

“Doctor Freeman,” the interviewer started, “this is a middle school, as you are clearly aware. You, good Doctor, are an MIT graduate. As far as I’m concerned, this job is way below your paygrade, and even if it weren’t-“

Gordon zoned out, replaying the interview in his head. He was doing everything right: the right clothes, a nice resume, being totally honest with the guy, didn’t accidentally swear like he did at his previous interview…What sort of arbitrary rules could he have been forgetting?

For a guy that had once ragged on his former co-workers, both living and deceased, about not being able to act like normal people, he was starting to feel like maybe he was a hypocrite with how much he struggled to follow basic etiquette.

Surely, the Resonance Cascade hadn’t ruined his social skills that much in just a week, but who was he to judge? This was the same guy that got nervous about making phone calls (It’s not even that hard! It’s talking to people! You love to talk to people!). Even then, he probably shouldn’t judge, Tommy got nervous about phone calls too, but Tommy seemed a bit more justified given his tendency to change his words mid-sentence.

If there was any factor of justification for Gordon’s awkwardness (and this was a pretty big one that even HE forgot about sometimes), then it was the additional matter that he was a video game character, one whose entire personality and backstory had been sculpted together by some person bumbling around their room in a VR headset for several hours. Now that the video game was over, Gordon had to rely on what was “taught” to him by the player, and that was more than enough to make him feel like a badly rolled DND character. He couldn’t even air his grievances to the Player, they had left not long after exporting their save file to whatever server was housing the Post Game. He did have an opportunity to talk to them, once, but trying to remember too many details of the conversation hurt his head; if he had any chance to tweak or change himself, it was that conversation, and clearly he had wasted it.

So, yeah, Gordon didn’t have an excuse. He was kinda stuck being the prime antithesis of a normal person, it seemed.

He nodded at the interviewer when he seemed to finish his speal, shook the man’s sweaty hand, and gave his empty thanks for the “opportunity” to speak to the man at all before making the drive back home. He couldn’t recall the details between when he left the school and when he got home, his memories always got fuzzy when he was driving by himself. He had enough video game knowledge to suspect it was Fast Travel. For a moment, he wondered if it was possible to turn off, but knowing his luck his attempt to do so would just end up turning his prosthetic arm back into a mini-gun, and then he’d have to figure out how to switch it back to normal.

He should have just asked the rest of the Science Team about the car thing years ago, but he had been putting it off after he decided it was preferable to being left to stew in his thoughts for the entire drive. And now he was suffering the consequences of his inaction, wondering only now if he could toggle Fast Travel and Mini-Gun Hand. Hell, maybe he had the power to toggle game difficulty this entire time and he wasn’t utilizing it, he would really like to switch Job Hunting to “easy mode.”

Whatever. Too late to find out now.

Gordon didn’t really need a job, anyways, given the hush money and all, he just needed some form of normalcy to keep himself from focusing on the events that got him here, thinking about that stuff for too long got him stressed, and bad things tended to happen when Gordon got stressed.

Needless to say, he was pretty sure the horrid little man sitting in the middle of his lawn was not a good omen of things to come, both for his stress levels and his attempts at normalcy.

He let out a long, irritated sound, similar to when one needed to be vocal about an upset stomach, and stepped out of the car. Benrey didn’t seem to notice Gordon quite yet, but he knew better than to let the smaller man be left unattended outside. He could call the police but… he’d really rather not on principle alone. He and the Science Team had all agreed that in case of emergencies, they would call each other first (against Gordon’s better judgment), and then either an ambulance or the fire department second.

Benrey… technically wasn’t an emergency right now. He was just a minor annoyance at best, and if for some reason the man did escalate into a greater problem, Gordon had the benefit of it being movie night at his place tonight. If something went wrong, and he couldn’t contact the Science Team for whatever reason, they would know, and they would raise hell at whatever was causing the problem, because at this point not even a second Resonance Cascade (god hope no such a thing occurs) would be able to stop those people from executing their weekly plans after four years of proper bonding time.

Gordon moved between his house and Benrey, keeping a good distance as he did so before engaging in any sort of conversation. He wanted to be as close to the front door as possible in case the non-human gave chase…not that it meant much since Benrey could noclip, but the idea of safety gave him comfort, even if it wasn’t ensured.

“What are you doing here?” He asked a bit too casually. He was sure his voice would better convey the confusion and dread he was feeling once his brain snapped out of what he could only best describe as a new stage of grief dedicated solely for rediscovering somebody who really should have stayed dead.

Bafflement, he was pretty sure what he was experiencing was bafflement. He wasn’t sure why, though. He’d seen Benrey come back from the dead quite a few times, but that all been four years and 31 days ago (and still counting). At that point you can’t help but reasonably assume somebody like that is going to stay dead this time, but apparently that was not the case for Benrey. That also wasn’t surprising, when he thought about it; the cheapest way to create a threat in a sequel is to just bring back the final boss from the first game.

Oh god, was Benrey going to be his Dr. Wily? Was Gordon going to be stuck defeating the same creep over and over and over again for the next 30-something years? He couldn’t do that, his body still hadn’t recovered from the first time he fought Benrey.

The other man tilted his head slightly to Gordon, as if wanting to acknowledge him but not quite processing he was there. “mm…ding dong…” He poked at Gordon’s thrift store garden gnome, its cheeky smile and unbroken gaze were something Gordon had looked deeply into a few times too many since he got it. He wanted to think the longing it exuded wasn’t just his imagination, but he had accepted by now that it was probably his lonely mind playing tricks on him. He was more willing to accept this as imaginary compared to the skeletons.

“Hey,” Gordon spoke up, “Hey man, I asked you a question.”

“…what?” Benrey looked around again, less sluggish than before, this time locking eyes with Gordon. The smaller man’s face was almost an inverse of the gnome’s, they shared the same vacant stare, but the rest of his expression gave him a more pensive look.

Unlike the gnome, however, Benrey’s face could actually change, albeit subtly, such was the case when it morphed into a small smile upon recognizing Gordon. “Yooo! What’s up! Been a while, man. Been like…” He stared directly at the sun, or at least appeared to do so, his eyes squinting not from the glare but from his trying to process something. “…four years, and a month! That one month is pretty, uh, important.”

Gordon exhaled slowly. It sounded like one of those terrible, pig-shaped noise makers Tommy and Dr. Coomer had bought at the Dollar Store last week. “Whyyyyyy? Why now? Why are you-?” He felt a familiar anger boil over, and suddenly his tone and body language had gone from exhausted to brimming with rage. The edges of his vision went slightly red. “Okay! Okay, I’m going to disregard the fact that you can apparently tell how long it’s been since you last harassed me simply by looking at the position of the stars in broad-fucking-daylight, WHY, OF ALL TIMES, ARE YOU BACK? RIGHT FUCKING NOW?!?!”

He could swear he saw Benrey flinch slightly at his outburst, but he wasn’t sure. The man almost immediately responded with his usual calm.

“I told you man, that one month was important. I got, uh, my PS+ renewed. Played the whole time.”

Okay, that…sorta explained where he’d been for the past month, at least.

“Let me guess, Heavenly Sword?”

“Yeah!!!”

Gordon had the displeasure of witnessing the familiar sight of Sweet Voice spewing from Benrey’s lips. The man’s joy seemed to overflow at him remembering such a basic detail from his nonsensical monologue.

“It was so fun!” Benrey continued. “I got to play on a full server, throwing frags and shit at other people, really great cool stuff.”

The red faded from his vision. Despite wanting to so badly…Gordon simply could not stay mad at him. He was just sitting there, in the grass, blabbering on about Heavenly Sword like an excited child. Damnit, the man was even fidgeting with the hem of his shirt while he talked. Was Benrey even a threat, now? Did four years of whatever he was doing mellow him out?

Gordon’s brows furrowed, he should have been focused on the how and why of Benrey being in his front lawn like a sad dog, but for some reason his mind was derailed to the point of fascination by Benrey’s Adventures in Free PlayStation Plus.

“So you got PS Plus, were you, were you just doing that for four years? Were you just gaming the entire time?”

“Nah man, I was…sleep.”

“For four years? You slept for four entire years?”

“Yeah I got really tired after the uh, the heist. So I had a big sleep. I woke up though. That was kinda sucks.” That checked out, considering what happened after they had their heist in another world, but now Gordon was concerned about how Benrey remembered the heist; nobody was supposed to remember the heist except for Gordon, he vaguely recalls that he and the Player agreed to the Science Team forgetting the heist. Tommy kinda remembered, but only the parts where he had asbestos poisoning. Well, he supposed since Benrey didn’t count as a member of the Science Team, maybe him remembering wasn’t a problem, for now.

“They gave me one month of PS Plus after I woke up and came back. I like video games…can’t play video games in the other place though, so I agreed to the free month.” Benrey continued. He nodded and shook his head while explaining his story, always at the appropriate times where a head movement seemed necessary, almost like it was practiced.

“So you…” Gordon continued the conversation, trying to feel out if maybe he was being led into a false sense of security. “You played Heavenly Sword for a whole month without eating or sleeping?”

“Yea-no?? I ate…pigeons and…” He looked directly at Gordon, he was processing something again, “…tree rats.”

“Squirrels?”

“Yeah those.” His scrunched face changed to a neutral-looking smile.

He had seen Benrey eat pigeons back in Black Mesa, so he wasn’t too surprised the man had eaten squirrels; it seemed like a logical next step. It made sense, Gordon was pretty sure a diet consisting solely of cheese puffs and 7Up (he was pretty sure that’s what gamers ate) could kill even the hardiest of immortals.

Actually, Benrey didn’t mention eating any sort of fruit just now, did he just leave them out on purpose or, was he some sort of obligate carnivore? He probably should have focused on that more than on what he asked next.

“You cooked those before you ate them, right?”

“No. Sorry, I don’t have uh…microbe-wave.”

Gordon just stared at him. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.

“Tastes better with the hair on ‘em anyways.”

“I’m not a medical doctor, but I’m pretty sure…that you’re gonna get a disease…” Gordon tried to choose his next words carefully. He really, really tried. But his brain was fried from the interview and the exhaustion was starting to catch up. “…Salmonella. You’re gonna get salmonella if you keep eating raw meat like that.”

It was Benrey’s turn to stare again.

“Oh, who am I fucking kidding?” Gordon threw his hands in the air, “You’re some sort of thing from another world, the bacteria probably just goes right through you!”

“There are…” Benrey paused, his face morphed into a mischievous, shark-toothed grin. “…yo there’s Bakugan in my meat?”

He laughed. Gordon laughed and laughed and laughed until he fell over drunk from the shock of Benrey’s statement, and then laughed until the tap ran dry and he was sober enough to wheeze a response. “No! That’s not-Benrey that’s not what I said at all. I expect that kind of joke from Tommy! Oh my god…”

All of the neighbors peaked over or around to see the commotion at this point. Gordon didn’t feel any need to acknowledge them any as he shakily pushed himself upright, they were used to the bullshit that followed him around by this point, they were just really nosy. They were gone as quickly as they arrived, by which point he was now sitting on the opposite side of his gnome. “Do…Do you wanna like…come inside or something, man?”

“No, I don’t like the color beige.”

In his hysterical drunkenness, Gordon had almost been willing to invite Benrey into his refuge, but the hospitality had now been lost.

He was seeing red again. “How did you know my walls were-? Did you noclip into my house?!” He took his glasses off and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Fucking-! I keep getting fucking distracted! Dude!!!!”

Benrey watched Gordon gesture wildly with the hand not carrying his glasses around, directing every movement towards him.

“Why are you HERE?!” He screamed.

Benrey looked at the ground. “That’s uh, private information.” Slowly his head drifted towards Gordon again, he could faintly see the man’s creepy eyes follow the seams of his suit. “…Yo, we dressing up for movie night tonight?”

Gordon stiffened, standing back up. “How do you know about movie night?”

If Benrey knew about movie night, then either somebody told him, or…

“Tommy told me.” Benrey answered quickly, “Well, uh…he told his dad, and his dad told me. Mister Coolguy, Mister Govern-Mant, he got me the free month of PS Plus.”

Benrey fidgeted with the hem of his shirt again, sort of messing with it like he was messing around with a game controller while his mouth bubbled Sweet Voice and word salad.

“Like…he said he was going to buy more when it ran out, and now it’s been a month and my PS Plus ran out…twenty minutes ago.”

“We’ve been talking for about five minutes or something,” Gordon looked at his wrists. There wasn’t a watch on either of them, but it felt important to visually convey the flow of time. “So you’re telling me that your PS Plus ran out fifteen minutes before you got here, and you couldn’t wait another five or so for Mister Coolatta, for Tommy’s dad to renew it again? The PlayStation has games that aren’t multiplayer, you couldn’t play any of those for a while?”

Benrey averted his gaze. “I could but…”

He waited, but Benrey didn’t continue his statement. He was starting to consider the possibility that Benrey was lying out of his ass right now and that he had simply stolen enough information from the Science Team to keep Gordon preoccupied while they all died a slow, painful and permanent death before killing Gordon himself. He waited another two minutes before breaking the silence, hoping maybe that Benrey didn’t know that Gordon knew what he was planning. “But what? Why won’t you play single player games?”

Benrey looked at the ground again. “…I’d like to go inside the house now please?”

“Uh-?”

“WAIT! Can we go to my house instead? Pretty please?” He asked in earnest, pulling off a fucked-up alien version of ‘sad anime eyes’.

Well, if Benrey really was distracting Gordon to leave the Science Team dying somewhere, he did a scarily good job at hiding that fact. He must have been trying to get him into a secondary location to finish the job.

Hastily, Gordon tried to come up with an excuse while he put his glasses back on.

“Uh, sorry man. I wish I could, but uh, the guys are gonna be here in about…an hour, and I still need to change into some normal clothes and figure out what we’re eating for movie night. So-“ He twisted away from Benrey pulling something out and trying to force it into his line of sight, reminding Gordon of his various intrusive thoughts of being kidnapped in the past few years.

Benrey frowned. “Bro it’s paper.” He shook the parchment around for demonstration.

Through a partially-covered mouth, Gordon asked “Can you please not shove paper in my face?”

Benrey responded by wobbling the paper more until Gordon finally accepted it.

“Fine, what is this?”

“Mm…list. Food list.”

“Food list?”

“Food list.”

The paper that the list was written on had been improperly torn from a spiral notebook; you could easily see where the lower half of the page was simply ripped instead of following the tear-away lines. The handwriting on it, by contrast, looked incredibly clean, almost like it was typed out aside from a few blemishes of human error like scribbles over spelling mistakes or a long line from where somebody had made an order and then at the last minute asked for something completely different, much to the chagrin of the transcriber.

“…This is really nice handwriting.” Gordon admitted.

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket, prompting him to look over his messages.

One of them was an unflattering picture of him from a few minutes ago, dying of laughter in his front yard, sent by his neighbors from across the street to the neighborhood group chat.

‘This idiot can’t even comprehend the true form of Gnome Chompski’s attack. XD Ignore the guy in the back dunno who he is.’

Thanks Gina and Colette, very cool.

The other message was from Bubby, so maybe the rest of the Science Team wasn’t dead after all. At the very least, Bubby wasn’t dead.

‘You’d better be goddamn home by now. I’m changing my order again. I want a Sausage Melt, and I want my hash browns smothered and diced. Also, Harold wanted to make sure you added pecans to his chocolate chip waffles. If you forget those nuts again and he cries, I WILL make it your problem.’

“Did Bubby change his order again?” Benrey asked, his expression dead serious. He didn’t wait for an answer, apparently he could just tell from Gordon’s expression and considered that enough to snatch the paper from his hands and scratch out one of the orders with a pen he pulled out from hammerspace. “This fuckin’ guy, I can’t believe it. This is the THIRD time man.”

“I think I can handle the orders from here.” Gordon said. He got the list back without much of a fight, which was preferable to getting into a tug-of-war over a piece of paper.

“I will…see you later?” He slowly backed away from Benrey to get inside his house, tripping as the terrain switched from grass to concrete beneath his feet. “I’m going to go inside now and…do the stuff I said I needed to do!” His hand clutched the door knob, and immediately Gordon turned around to wiggle it open. His face paled with realization that his initial plans to bolt at the first sign of a threat would not have worked anyways, not solely because Benrey could noclip through objects, but also because Gordon would not have had the time to unlock his front door before Benrey did…whatever the fuck he had planned.

Just like in the horror movies.

Shit.

Gordon was a fucking horror movie protagonist and he wasn’t even one of the long-lasting ones. He was the final girl from the first movie that they kill off at the start of the second to make a point.

“Hey man, you dropped this.”

A key ring appeared in his peripheral vision. Gordon strained his eyes to meet Benrey’s line of sight, the man had that deceptively innocent smile from before as he held the keys out like a joy-buzzer.

He took his keys back with the speed and grace of a claw machine, unlocked the door, and just stared longingly at the interior for a minute.

“Inside? Inside for Benrey?”

“Yeah, sure thing man…” Gordon sighed and walked inside, letting Benrey follow behind. If he was going to die, might as well get comfortable first.

#hlvrai metamorphosis au #metamorphosis au #hlvrai #hlvrai au #fanfic

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prettysymbiosis · 11 months

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I’ve been trying to get these thoughts out for days but basically I feel like the unifying theory of s16 (as I see it) is a conscious exploration of the dichotomy between sunny as a classically bold and brash pee pee poo poo comedy and sunny as a thoughtful, nuanced and subtle show about flawed people and also about itself, at times (by that I mean the meta isn’t always about macdennis or the other characters but about sunny itself - win an award, clip show, big mo, etc). the trailer actually captures this dichotomy well through the dialogue clips and animations, as well as the pinned comment which said “get ready for a whole lot of subtlety.” it’s still so baffling to me that sunny can simultaneously read as one of the most loud, obnoxious, unsubtle shows ever on television, OR it can be so subtle and allegorical in the writing of later seasons that most viewers would think people like us are crazy for reading so much into it even though we’re really not. this kind of self-reflective flavor is another product of the rewatch/podcast project which has been almost universally agreed to have had a very positive effect on the writing.

anyway having said that, I want to just share my notes on the first two episodes without trying to edit them too much. I’m bolding the points that I personally haven’t seen anyone else mention yet and putting a 😎 next to ones that evoke a Classic Sunny VibeTM because that’s important to the experiment of this season.

the gang inflates

macden fun/domestic/DUMB again 😎

something something never committing to the couch when it was absurd not to and it ended up costing them so much macdennis blah blah

dennis hanging up on dee was so funny to me oops 😎

and the WHOLE dee (as a character and specifically the female character) thing about being minimized to an absurd degree. I like to think the bog was a turning point for dee and the show is gonna do better by her now hopefully by recognizing her plight in a more serious way, like the way the guys have been doing?

are mac and dennis…… you know…… like for real??? as many have said, it could totally be revealed kind of retroactively to undercut the shock and be like “honestly we’re surprised you didn’t notice sooner” I feel like that is something rcg would do. suggestive clues:

“I don’t wanna talk to you about–” “a TON”

or is dennis like well that’s news to me jealous vibes??

“I figured you were man” ??

“I’m getting a little concerned about our nut”

“you truly have no reason to be sleeping with frank”

they specifically put a lil reaction shot of dennis after mac says “that’s a lotta blowin” a la the lil grin in gets romantic and, well, I just think that’s a choice that was made

“it’s not homophobic” is that so?????

when mac is like “you think we got rid of our furniture too soon/that the business plan won’t work” it’s kinda like no it’s not the committing to what they have, it’s that mac still has big denial problems and dennis can’t work with that… maybe? but so does dennis tbh

in a show-meta sense it’s like, we should be less worried about whether the gay gay-ass love story will alienate people and more worried about how these characters are too ridiculous to even let the love story play out effectively. they need mental health days if we are ever to have nice things

it’s possible mac denying his reaction to the allergy has to do with his body dysmorphia?

also it occurred to me that maybe part of why rob is clean-shaven this season is so they could do those prosthetics more easily?

those handprints though…. I hate everything

oh also just the bed scene. its existence

the zoomed in neck touch of course

“I’m not going to do it!” “..okay” dennis keepin his cool :)

mac’s shirt! COOLER HEADS PREVAIL

just the sheer silliness of inflatable furniture - is there some metaphor here lol?

in a general sense could inflates be taken to mean flanderizes? also maybe it’s just implied but I noticed I hadn’t actually seen anyone mention inflation as a sexual kink and like, that was part of the intention right? if so, 😎

charlie “uhhhhhhhh… yep.” poor charlie :( he doesn’t want to live in a maze (like a rat)

“well then you’re just like being a predator” :( so here for charlie calling out bullshit with frank and mrs. mac and even his own mom so far in these first two eps

charlie just giving up and yelling in frustration which is kinda what bonnie does in ep2 (and ep3 based on trailer)

the gross horny male objectifying thing 😎

rob put his whole pussy into this episode

charlie saying “I don’t get why he doesn’t take me seriously” and dee saying “that’s gotta be maddening” 🙃

cats in the alley my loves 😎

gluing dee a pillow on the wall <3

“consider it an offering” “of war??” this says so much. must everything be a conflict?

charlie’s hair looks so crazy and good in the sleepover scene and also he’s so smart

charlie asks frank to “return everything to the status quo” by the end of the episode, sitcom style. full reset, no progression. except charlie is asking that frank not endlessly take advantage of the fact that mac and den can’t figure their shit out, not totally push dee out just because it’s easy, not make light of the trauma charlie has from what happened to him. all that stuff IS the status quo! so what is he really asking for? this is one of the bits of writing that I think is also about the show as a show, and how they’ve approached these dynamics forever.

it’s funny that people are saying this season is such a return to form because it is, but it’s also so much more self-aware of what that form is/was and how deeper elements can coexist within it. they’re really walking with a foot in both worlds here and they’re doing it well. love this for them and for us, the people who know what it’s always sunny in philadelphia is REALLY about

“we’ll take you to the hospital, and they’ll have nuts. and you can– you can die there.” hahahah

#sunny #iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia #S16 #sunny meta #s16 meta #s16 e1 #the gang inflates #macdennis #charlie #dee #I hate this show bc every time I'm like whoa this writing is so complex and then I immediately feel ridiculous for thinking that #even though I KNOW I'm right and you guys get it too..... I still feel like a tinhat :( I blame misogyny #well I'm exhausted goodnight

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autumnbrambleagain · 3 months

Note

Is there a lore primer for your work on FA? Your worldbuilding is fascinating. Also, proselytize is so good, please write 5000 more chapters

first off thank you proselytize is really fun even if fanfiction is not normally my jam. proselytize has been planned out mostly unchanged for a long time now and it's just the matter of oh my god romance scenes are fucking hard people wanting to kiss is weird and that's the hold up in writing more chapters right now

i have a lot of settings i do stuff with on FA ngl. one of my most obnoxious inspirations was Dune, and one of my worst traits as a person in this world is creating content with 0 effort to explain itself and it's on the reader to figure things out through context because that is, personally, my nonsexual fetish and i am subjecting everyone to it constantly

my most stable and prolific settings are Under Watchful Is and Auroral Oceans and if anyone's visiting my gallery those are the folders i suggest you poke into primarily

there used to be a pastebin for Under Watchful Is setting document but pastebin apparently banned like all its content so uhhh fuck it HERE'S A DROPBOX of the UWi setting notes

UWi is a world that largely knows it's a story and it began as a tumblr game that died off really fast due to player derails. it's where knicknacks (the giant cotton beast guys) are from! there's like ten kinds of magic and you can alter reality just by trying hard enough and that's normal for everyone there. it remains one of my favorite settings to draw little snippets of life from

to get a good sense of UWi i would recommend Yhelm's story , just, just kinda go into her gallery and start from the back and work your way up. a lot of the context of her story explains a lot of the setting, and her story is super situated in how her setting works b/c honestly worldbuilding should exist to serve the story mostly i think personally

note that a lot of the posts are images WITH text stories beneath so look at the description in the image pages for like the majority of the actual stories

i'm SLOW in working on Yhelm's stuff but i'm not given up on it! it's an awkward journey of romance and family relationships and race and identity and magic and poly romance and crime

Auroral Oceans is going through a ton of reworks because it's my most granular highly-detailed setting with very specific rules. so far the only real kinda-ongoing story is Sasfsets' but heyyo content warning there's a lot of bad people in that story and there's a lot of full on sexual abuse and murder. her story's kinda stuck because i wanted to redo some of the visual style of the setting to move away from them feeling like furries and making them feel more like weird aliens in a world of endless rainbow and void

these are ALL part of a giant fucking metasetting linked to the City in the Middle, with each of the settings and worlds all having the same kind of lifespan and reproductive system and underlying fundamental rules, and there are drifts like Tabrix and Sabhaxlia who can go between worlds or who are worlds

Sabhaxlia herself also started life as a tgchan quest

#autumn says things #lowlevelpsion #answer

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kiljoius-writes · 7 months

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Sun Rising

Ao3 Link

Pairing: Minato Namikaze/Kushina Uzumaki

Summary: Kushina Uzumaki is alone in the world.

A classroom full of bug-eyed kids stare at her and she stares back. She has to wonder if this village has no concept of color. Her eyes flicker to the only bright thing in the room: obnoxious, spiky, blond hair. Not even blond, just straight up yellow. This boy is actually too bright, if you ask her.

It's a lonely world for a jinchūriki, especially a foreign one with wild red hair and a temper.

For motroshell, part of the 2023 Fest no Jutsu. Prompt: Uzumaki Kushina does make it to Hokage and fulfils her childhood dream. Minato has been supporting her every step of the way. How did it happen?

Kushina Uzumaki is alone in the world.

That became overwhelmingly evident when a Konoha jōnin swept her from her home at the tender age of 9.

She remembers begging her grandmother to come with her.

“Don’t make me go alone! Grandma, I don’t want to leave you!”

Life is unfair and that was simply a fact that she got to learn early in her life.

Lucky her.

Kushina Uzumaki is alone in the world.

A classroom full of bug-eyed kids stare at her and she stares back. There’s a lot of black- and brown-haired and eyed children here. All dull pastels with their boring gray and tan jackets and fatigues. They look at her like she’s the alien, but she can’t possibly be. They’re the ones who look like they crawled out from a cave with zero sunshine and no concept of color. At least she has a reason for wearing pale yellow and brown: it compliments her hair!

Her eyes flicker to the only bright thing in the room: obnoxious, spiky, blond hair. Not even blond, just straight up yellow. This boy is actually too bright, if you ask her. His eyes are startlingly blue, his jacket is a crisp white, the only dark thing about him are the blue of his fatigues. Those electrifying blue eyes are locked on her and she feels a shiver up her spine, immediately averts her eyes to the rest of the class.

She inhales deeply.

“I’m Kushina Uzumaki y’know!”

Embarrassment seeps out of her at the way her voice sounds. She hasn’t spoken much in the last few weeks during her travel, and immediately, giggles spread over the classroom. She covers her mouth as one of those dumb, drab boys points at her and immediately insults her hair.

“I’m gonna…”

Another inhale as she clutches her fists.

“I’m going to become the first female Hokage of Konohagakure!”

Then, that boy. That alarmingly bright boy stands up and declares his intention to become Hokage, too. Looking so, so happy about it, too! Like he didn’t just steal her thunder! Like a little bolt of lightning, zapping all the energy out of her.

“Tomato!”

That dumb blond kid just stares at her, and she tries not to let tears sting her eyes.

Kushina Uzumaki is alone in the world.

A shiny new headband with a leaf symbol greets her, handed to her by their sensei who looks like he’s bored. She takes it in her hands and feels the cool touch of metal against her fingertips.

She is a kunoichi of Konoha. One that smashes the faces in of all the dumb, drab boys around her.

It should have been no surprise to her that once she graduated, the teasing only got worse. 8 others join her, only 4 of which she bothered to learn the names of. Inoichi Yamanaka, Shikaku Nara, Chouza Akimichi, and of course that weak blond and blue boy. The one she sees looking at her too often, the one who has a never-ceasing smile on his face, the one who travels this world without anything troubling him.

Her first C-Rank mission accompanies a group of chūnin. She resents that she’s not being trusted to take on a C-Rank herself but looks at the snot-nosed boys with her and figures it’s only natural they wouldn’t trust them with anything important.

“Thought you’d grow out of those chubby cheeks by now, but you just look even more like a ripe tomato.”

Kushina wants to rip her hair straight out of her skull. Instead, she whips around, reels back a fist, all while the boy guffaws and holds his arms in front of his face to prepare for impact. Her fist connects with the top of his head and he crashes into the ground.

One of the chūnin hollers at them and rushes up to pull Kushina by the armpits off of her dumb, drab boy teammate. From behind, deep, obsidian eyes crinkle with a smile. One of the first genuine smiles she’s received in ages.

“Certainly not a tomato.”

The older girl approaches her, ignoring the wailing of her boy teammate, and holds out her hand to Kushina. She eyes it with suspicion.

“I’m Mikoto.”

Carefully, she takes the hand.

“I think red-hot habanero is more appropriate, don’t you think?”

Kushina Uzumaki doesn’t feel quite as lone in the world.

They tried to keep the news from her, but she would inevitably hear the whispers.

“Did you hear? Uzushiogakure destroyed overnight.”

“I heard it was to wipe out that Uzumaki clan.”

“Isn’t that the one that little girl came here from?”

Kushina ran, and ran, and ran. She didn’t stop running, even when her feet went bloody.

It couldn’t be true. There was absolutely no conceivable way it could be true. Her home, her people, her grandmother. It couldn’t be that they were all just gone.

She had to see for herself. She paid enough attention in school to know which way Uzushio was, and she bolted. No thoughts occupied her mind except the overwhelming need to see it. See what they did to the place she held so dear. Find her grandmother and bring her to safety. She couldn’t be dead. There was no way.

“Grandma.”

She huffs and puffs as she pounds the ground with her heels, sweat dripping from her hairline, hair everywhere. If someone were looking on, they’d just see a red streak tearing through the mountain side.

Suddenly, she feels her body crashing to the ground.

“Kushina!”

Immediately, she fights back. Screams at the top of her lungs, tries to swipe at whoever is pinning her to the ground. Yells at them to let go of her, that she has to get home, that she’ll tear their eyes out if they don’t stop. In the flurry of it all, she can’t make out who her captor is, until she manages to slip out of their grip. Her eyes pop open to meet spinning red ones staring back at her, eyes she’s only seen once before on another teams sensei. Then she measures the rest and sees Mikoto staring back at her, heaving.

“You can’t leave the village.”

Kushina feels her insides get fiery, doesn’t even register the tears streaming down her face. She tells her she has to, that she has to save her family and her home. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. She tells Mikoto that she’s not afraid to knock her out if she has to. She expects Mikoto to laugh at her like anyone else would, a little genin threatening a chūnin, a Uchiha of all people, but she does not laugh.

Instead, she relaxes her stance and steps towards Kushina. Instinctively, she steps backwards, but stops with her next steps. Arms encircle her and pull her body in. And she realizes that her world is crashing around her, so her body gives out and heaves with trembling sobs. Her cries fill the forest air.

Kushina Uzumaki is alone in the world.

For her 12th birthday, she is gifted with the Kyūbi.

Mito Uzumaki tells her that it’s her destiny, to absorb the Konoha bijū, become it’s jinchūriki. That special, beautiful, bright chakra flows through her. That only her chakra can possibly handle the beast. That only her heart could possibly take the burden on.

For the last year, she had grown closer and closer to Mito. It was a special kind of pain to become attached to someone you knew for a fact would inevitably die quite soon. One that would die on a schedule, to ensure that damn bijū would successfully transfer to Kushina. One that she would have to watch die with her own two eyes.

When Kushina looks into Mito’s eyes, she thinks of her grandma. She learned shortly after her village was destroyed that crying about her grandma would only invite more mocking. That the tomato is broken and leaking. No matter how often she proved herself strong, not matter how many faces she smashed into the ground, no matter how brightly her chakra flashed, she was always simply that chubby cheeked tomato. Some days, she contemplates shaving her head.

But when she looks into Mito’s eyes, she feels tears sting her eyes, and lets it happen. It’s the only time she feels like she can cry in front of someone else. Mito just pats her hands, doesn’t ask why she’s crying. Just seems to understand, and Kushina is grateful for it.

One day, on a day she doesn’t cry, Mito has biscuits and tea waiting for her when she arrives. As her time grows near, she’s being treated more and more like royalty. It’s a bittersweet thing. One in which she wishes she could tell certain people to shove it, but grins and bears it instead. Just like she must.

Today, Mito tells her about Uzushiogakure. It’s the first time it’s been brought up in conversation. Of course, Kushina has wanted to ask her about it for a long time, but also has resisted doing so because she’s not quite sure she wants to tear open those wounds.

Speaks of all the great clans that lived there, including their own. Talks about her life there before being whisked to Konohagakure. Tells her how frightened she had been, too, but was doing it for her people.

Then she drops a bomb on Kushina.

“Many of our people escaped during the destruction of our home.”

Kushina hangs onto every word, thinks of her grandma. Could she have escaped…?

Mito goes on to talk about their clan, their strength, their power, their unique ability. Their crest, the meaning of rasen, all while making the long climb up the spiral staircase to the top of the Hokage tower.

As she looks out to the Hokage mountain, she envisions her face on those rocks.

Thinks maybe it’s possible. Then she wouldn’t be some outsider.

And when she does, she’ll find her grandma.

Kushina Uzumaki decides maybe she’s not so alone in the world.

As soon as she starts to feel better, something is right around the corner to knock her right back down. Peace isn’t something Kushina’s known in a very long time, so she just expects it to be ripped away from her at this point. So when she enters her home and finds her caretaker missing, it’s expected. Then, they come for her. It’s dead night, so it’s quiet and she can hear them before she sees them. It’s too little, too late, and she’s snatched up. She cries out in vain, because she’s in a desolate part of the village where few people reside, and those that do would never respond to screams in the night.

A few hours later, and her hands are tied behind her back while she’s marched through the thicket of the forest outside of the village. While she indeed holds the Kyūbi inside of her, she doubts anyone will notice she’s gone until tomorrow when she doesn’t arrive for her daily training sessions. Nobody ever visits her in the night. And by tomorrow, it will likely be too late. She’ll be very far away in Kumogakure, where she assumes they’ll attempt to take the Kyūbi, resulting in her death.

Still, she has to try something. She can’t go out without even a little fight from her.

She’s not naïve. There’s no way she can overpower three men, likely jōnin or higher, no matter how powerful she thinks she is. That would probably just result in them knocking her out, leaving her no way to try to escape. No, she has to be sneaky. Trying to get out of her restraints would likely be too noticeable.

She tugs at her hair behind her, and the light bulb goes off.

If she can leave a trail behind her, it would result in whoever comes to look for her finding her quicker. They’d probably even be able to figure out she’s in Kumo based on the path.

One hair is plucked, and she doesn’t wince, keeps a stoic face. Releases it, lets it travel the ground.

A few seconds later, another hair or two.

She continues like this for a full hour, purposefully walking slower to delay. One of them shoves at her back, so she picks up the pace, then slows again. The cycle repeats.

Exhaustion begins to take hold. No matter how tired she is, she continues the process of slowly removing her hair. Wonders if she’ll have a bald spot after this. Hopes she’ll live to find out. Still, she barely registers her surroundings.

Her eyes drift shut, and her legs keep moving on instinct.

She doesn’t even hear the chaos around her.

Only when she hears a familiar voice.

“Are you okay?”

Slowly, she stops, struggles to lift her head, and sees someone she never thought she’d be so happy to see.

The moon illuminates that blond hair and his shiny headband that she knows for a fact he polishes daily.

“I came to rescue you.”

Me…?

Her brain is fuzzy. The joy that overcomes her is the last straw. All she can manage is a smile before her body gives out for good. She falls to her knees, and before she can face plant, he’s there in a flash to catch her and keep her body up. She struggles to look at him.

“Everything’s going to be fine.”

When he slides his arms under her back and legs and hoists her up, she starts to protest, but she can’t even get her arms wrapped around him before he takes off with her held to him. Her eyes find his face, perfectly framed by a full moon, and then they fall to his hand and she sees it: her hair between his fingers.

It worked?

He tells her that her hair is beautiful, that he realized straight away it had to be hers. Her protective instinct over her own emotions kicks in, and she asks him why he ignores her if that’s the case. His response catches her off guard, telling her she’s always been able to take care of herself, that she’s strong.

“Both in body and in spirit.”

Tells her he doesn’t want to lose her. Tells her she’s not an outsider. Tells her she lives in Konoha.

“You’re one of us.”

Never once had Kushina Uzumaki wanted to kiss a boy.

Thought it’d be impossible for her to ever find love, ever since she came to this damn village.

Suddenly, she looks at that brat, the one she thought was another weak, dumb little boy, and everything has changed in her eyes.

That blond hair doesn’t look so obnoxious anymore, those eyes so piercing. He glows like he’s her sun in the midst of night. Now she thinks that maybe he is her sun.

Kushina Uzumaki isn’t alone in the world.

It’s amidst the Third Shinobi War that she’s taken on as an apprentice to one of the Legendary Sannin. Tsunade Senju ensures that no one will ever be able to kill Kushina, no matter how hard they try. By her side is Minato, but even so, he gets sent out to battle. It’s a miserable spot she’s in, constantly thinking of the love of her life possibly being killed in action every moment he’s gone.

It happened so quickly, but Kushina can’t begin to fathom her existence without Minato. Out of nowhere, that blond brat became her whole world, and he’s not much of a brat anymore. He’s getting tall – taller than her, and they’re not technically together. He’s held her in his arms and she’s given him a cheek kiss out of gratitude, but Kushina’s already decided he’s her one true person. The only person she can trust, she can be vulnerable with, she can love.

When he’s gone, it hurts.

It only strengthens her resolve. To become stronger, to become faster, to master the Kyūbi, so that when she’s needed, she’ll be there. She’ll make sure no one else dies, least of all Minato Namikaze.

Her will is no longer made up of spite. Instead, it’s fueled by love. Desire to live, desire to protect.

She has no idea just how long this damn war would actually last.

The Second Shinobi war lasted barely 3 years. Their lives would be plagued in battle for half a decade.

For two years, she’s kept from the front lines. She spends every waking hour training under Tsunade, mastering chakra control, pushing her stamina to its limits, and bringing her healing powers to new heights. Whenever Minato returns home, the first thing they do is spar, so she can show him just how far she’s come. He shows her, too, and it brings her some relief to see him grow stronger, even if it’s apart from her.

The day he revealed to her what he had been working on with Jiraiya for so long is a day that will be carved into her memory her entire life. Told her it was a jutsu created to battle bijū and jinchūriki, but also to work with her chakra. That it was all done to make sure he wouldn’t lose her.

She remembers blacking out, the monster living inside of her flashing through her mind in a blind rage, then her knees meeting the ground. Minato’s voice fights to overpower that of the Kyūbi’s, a voice that she hears every night in her dreams, for better or worse. Seeing Minato fly into the air and crash land is the last thing she remembers before hearing those words.

“That’s why I love Kushina.”

The rest happens so fast, but she remembers it all so clearly. Thinking back to her conversation with Mito. The Adamantine Sealing Chains being released to keep the Kyūbi back. One of those claws going straight through Minato’s side. Her pleading with him to run, to leave her, all for nothing, because that was never an option he’d consider. Finally, that big, bright ball of what looked like pure energy, flying straight into the Kyūbi’s chakra sphere.

Once he recovers, she spend the next three days in his hospital bed, eating the dry rice balls and cups of sugary pudding they bring them, drinking soda and juice while watching old movies on the new T.V.’s the hospital had installed. Honestly, for as terrified as she was of what possible grave injuries he had endured, she finds the time she spends with him so…nice. They’d never been able to just chill for so long together. Be in each other company and really get to know each other’s laughs, be present and also mindless.

She knows it can’t last. They both know it. Besides, she doesn’t want to become out of practice.

Still, she savors this little moment she gets with him.

“C’mon Namikaze!” she shouts at him one day, when he barely puts up a fight. Her heel lands in his chest, and they both come crashing down. She quickly wraps her arms around him so that he’ll roll with her, rather than be flung into a nearby tree, and they come to a stop with her on top of him. She huffs, annoyed, pushing her hair from her face as she glares down at him, unimpressed. Asks him what the hell he’s doing.

He apologizes, rubbing at his face with a sigh. “Just a little tired.”

She laughs, shaking her head. “The great Minato doesn’t get tired.”

His hand slides off his face and he gives her a smile. It makes her smile, too, so she presses a kiss to his nose, deciding to lay off him a little. “No, no, you’re right. An entire war shouldn’t be trying me out.”

She giggles, softly, presses her forehead to his. Then, her smile falls as she thinks about him on the battlefield. Almost makes her eyes water – almost. “I hate it when you’re gone.”

“Awh.” He reaches up to cup one of her cheeks in his dirty palm, and she doesn’t even mind. “I do, too.”

Her eyes flutter shut as she leans into his hold.

“That’s why…I decided to take the Third up on becoming a jōnin sensei.”

Kushina collapses on top of him, unaware of just how tired she really was. He holds her for a good 20 minutes before they peel away, and she’s crying. Mostly from relief. But some of it is worry.

Part of being kept back in the village while the rest go to war has made her especially soft for the children. Every few days, she witnesses a sweet little face burst into tears when they’re told mommy or daddy, brother or sister, auntie or uncle, are gone now. She’s watched them grow from little soppy toddlers to rambunctious kids to rowdy genin.

Thinking of them being the next soldiers makes her maternal instincts churn.

But…Minato will be home.

He will be with her. For at least a little while.

She wonders which of these anxious little kiddos will end up in his care.

It’s hard to think of any of them as lucky, but if they’re all destined to work for the war machine, at least some of them will be taught by Minato. A man she admires with her entire soul, one who she thinks will do right by them, someone who wouldn’t ever purposefully mess up a kid’s life.

Kushina stands in the shadows as she watches Minato greet three little babies she knows.

Rin Nohara. A spritely girl who greets Minato with enthusiasm, yet determination. She lets him know she’s not to be reckoned with, but that she’s eager awaiting their assignments.

Obito Uchiha. Kushina thinks of her pregnant friend, Mikoto. He’s even more wiley than Rin, with a wide grin and bright eyes, despite their dark shade. The grin makes her smile, even. His determination shines through his goggles.

Then there’s Kakashi Hatake. A boy Kushina’s heart is soft for, despite it all. Just a baby when his mother died, and still just a baby when his father took his own. The boy is aloof, but dangerous. Watching him hurts her insides, makes her eyes burn.

Kushina Uzumaki feels that her world is full.

Whenever she has spare time, she’s training with the three newly minted chūnin, or bringing them back to the apartment her and Minato bought with their measly earnings. When they were moving, Team 7 spent the whole day helping them. Minato made cookies and Kushina made sure the fridge was packed with sugary drinks. Kakashi even took a few cookies home, wherever home was for him.

It’s the closest to normalcy Kushina’s ever felt in her life, and she’s desperate not to let it slip away. Seeing three little faces sitting on the carpet, munching on treats and excitedly talking about their next mission, shoving each other’s faces and shooting jabs at one another. It’s something she realizes she wants in life, to be surrounded by people she loves.

She loves Minato. She loves Rin, and Obito, and Kakashi. Thinks that when she becomes Hokage, she’ll be able to show the whole village how much love she has to give.

When the day was over, and she was helping Minato clean up the kitchen, surrounded in boxes and stray utensils and blankets and tools, he spoke words that propelled her.

“You’re going to be the best Hokage Konoha’s ever seen, you know that?”

They’re the last words she expects to hear while drying a plate, so predictably, she drops it.

Minato, living up to his renown nickname, catches it before it shatters on the counter.

“What…did you say Hokage?”

He doesn’t skip a beat when he confirms, smiling up at her. Sets the plate where it goes and lets her grab him by the cheeks.

Let’s her pull him down to the kitchen floor and devour him.

“Gods, I love you.”

Kushina can’t even deny how perfect it is for him to say it to her here and now. Feels full of love and happiness, despite everything. Can’t believe that a war happens right outside of their tiny village while she confesses right back to him. It’s just so perfect, somehow, she’s not even sure why. The way he looks over her, happy and sweet and genuine, it makes her really believe.

She says “I love you” back, with just as much passion as he does to her.

They say it over, and over, and over again.

On top of each other, next to each other, in their ears, inside their mouths, in notes and through looks.

Kushina Uzumaki is madly in love with Minato Namikaze.

After a lethal mission that brings both boys back to her, missing eyes, Kushina feels her entire body lit on fire.

It’s a normal day, as Minato told her, a fairly light mission they go on. But she stands outside of her home, watching her fiancé and his team slug up to her.

Rin is in quiet tears, but she feels it, worse than ever. Kyūbi makes sure of it. Kakashi breathes heavier than normal, but isn’t disabled, just covers one eye. Finally, Obito has an arm slung over Minato’s neck.

When they come into full view, her heart drops further than it ever has in her entire life. Breath caught in her throat, tingles on the back of her skull and neck, tears already stinging the bottoms of her eyes.

She bursts through the front door, aiming for Rin, who looks the least likely to be injured by a hug.

“Why are you not all at the hospital?!”

“I need help.”

She stops for only a moment, just a sliver of a second to collect herself, before she lifts the worst looking one into her arms: Obito. Like a baby, she holds him to her chest, looks at Minato, who sighs in relief and nods, then takes off to the hospital, all the while letting healing chakra seep from her pores directly into him.

They all recover.

It’s some of the best news she’s ever heard in her entire gods-forsaken life.

Obito and Kakashi both missing an eye, but they are opposite. They learn to cover each other, whilst Rin covers the rest. Keeps them safe and sound. Kushina helps on the upcoming missions after they’re released back to ninja duty, makes sure that whatever Minato misses, she catches.

She knows Minato is strong and capable. Doesn’t make her lose her entire sense of self whenever he comes back, looking worse than before. Now, the village elders have no choice but to allow her to participate in the war. The power was always in her hands, but now she really feels it when she looks the Third right in the eye and dares him to try to make her stay. Let’s the fire of the Kyūbi in her palms burn a little brighter just to make sure the point sticks.

Kushina Uzumaki wants to make sure she’ll never be alone, ever.

Just when they think they’ve seen the worst of the worst, something hits them harder than before. Being on the front lines is terrifying, but it’s the only place she thinks she belongs right now. Tuning out the Kyūbi from poisoning her thoughts becomes easier and easier, day by day. Mito prepared her well, made sure she could remain collected no matter what sort of vile thoughts they tried to implant in her head. Still, there were times she would look on the battlefield, see the lifeless bodies, and listen.

Listen to the sounds of heartbreak, sounds of pain, sounds of despair that she could not soothe.

Those were some of the rare moments the Kyūbi would weasel their way in.

Couldn’t save them, girl.

Kushina rubs at her crusty, tired eyes as she turns her head from the gruesome scene.

By yourself, you’re weak.

With a sigh, she reaches back to tighten her ponytail before getting to her knees.

With me, you could do more.

Gently, she turns the dog tag over from the deceased in front of her. Notes the name and rank on a pad of paper.

You’ll regret the day that boy dies because you didn’t care enough.

The pen between her fingers snaps and the growl in the back of her throat sounds too much like the Kyūbi’s.

Didn’t care enough to make sure you protected him.

“SHUT UP!”

Her fingernails elongate, her jaw becomes stiff, her skin feels like it’s lit on fire.

It happens so quickly, the throaty scream that leaves her feeling so foreign. Before it can go any further, she stabs her fingernails into her stomach, clawing at the skin around the seal. Squeezes her eyes shut, willing the mocking laugh away by pressing her forehead into the wet grass below.

The Kyūbi doesn’t escape that day, and Kushina finally thinks that maybe, now, it never will.

Kushina Uzumaki wants to make sure no one is alone in the world.

Early in her pregnancy, she decides it’ll be her last chance for a while to go back to her homeland. Look upon it with her own eyes. See her old home and what remains. Minato and team 7 join her, keep her spirits up and make sure she’s well protected. No one besides Minato knows of her pregnancy, and she prefers to keep it that way until she absolutely cannot keep it a secret any longer.

Once Uzushiogakure came into view, Kushina steeled her gaze, made sure no one could see her break.

It wasn’t anything she wasn’t expecting. She had heard stories and seen drawings depicting what remained of the land. The broken pillars and overgrown foliage didn’t bother her so much. It had been over ten years since the news reached her ears, it was enough time for her to adjust to the reality that her village was gone. All that remained was the hope that some of her people made it out alive.

Even seeing her childhood home flattened didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would. She stands in the middle of it and closes her eyes, thinks of her grandmother. Hugs her own middle and bows her head.

The part that hurt the most was going to the cemetery.

Her feet carry her to where she knows her parents are buried, and her heart sinks at an additional tombstone. She stops before she can get close enough to read it, but already knows what she’s going to see. Swallows down the sob that threatens to escape her and just kneels in front of it, blinking bleary eyes.

Yukina Uzumaki

“I did it, grandma…”

She feels Minato’s eyes on her back as she slides a hand over her stomach, rubbing circles into the seal there.

With a longing sigh, she begins her tale to a ghost. She wonders if he thinks she looks crazy, talking to a stone, recounting her life’s adventures. Arriving in Konoha, her bond with Mito, little boys yanking her hair and teasing her face. Receiving the Kyūbi, being kidnapped by Kumo, a bright eyed blond boy saving her. That bright-eyed blond boy being her entire world for now.

“Until…until this one gets here.”

Finally, she smiles, with watery eyes and a stuffy nose, looking down at her lap.

“After that, they’ll both be my whole world.”

Kushina Uzumaki refuses to let her child be alone in the world.

When a masked man plucks her child and the love of her life chases after him, she feels the Kyūbi push against her insides. Her own screams deafen herself and everyone around her as she clutches at her stomach.

How?

After everything she’s gone through, this couldn’t be how it ended. Her newborn baby kidnapped, her husband fighting for his life, and the Kyūbi escaping her, to leave her lifeless. Leave her child alone in the world, just like she was. For just a few seconds, she got to look at the chubby, crying face of her son. Lightning blond hair and big, blue eyes, just like the man she loved. All that flashes through her mind is that blond little boy without his parents who so desperately loved him, alone.

With every breath, she feels them getting further and further away from her. The man returns, without Minato or Naruto, and she feels like her insides are lava. The seal strains, twists and burns her skin as she cries. The chakra chains she’s spent the last decade of her life training with strap in, and she sees the masked man return. She tries to yell at him, tries to ask him what he’s done, tries to do something, but she can’t let the Kyūbi escape. He walks to her, and she glares at him, feels the Kyūbi’s power flow through her arms and legs, her fingertips and toes. Then she sees it behind the mask – the sharingan.

“No - !”

Before he can come any closer, she summons every last shred of chakra from inside of her and holds one hand over the seal and faces her other palm towards the man.

It all happens so fast, chakra flares, the building they’re in cracks under the force, everything around her is hot and dry. Adrenaline courses through her veins, the only thing she can feel is the pressure from inside. The only thing that runs through her mind is that chubby faced baby and how desperately she wants to make sure she gets to see him again. She yells for him, and for Minato before she buckles to her knees, both hands working to maintain her seal.

It feels like hours that she’s done this, but at most, it had to have only been a minute. Just as the man steps to her, reaches out to restrain her, a flash of powerful blue chakra appears next to him. It takes everything she has not to give up, to keep doing her part while Minato takes care of the man.

Blood pours from her mouth as she coughs, doubling over onto herself before she finally blacks out.

When it is that she wakes up, she’s not sure, but the first thing she does is tumble out of bed, frantically searching for Naruto.

“He’s safe, Ms. Kushina!”

“They both are.”

Her vision is blurry as she tries to look for the source of the voices.

“Rin’s with Naruto.”

Two smaller shoulders lift her up on either side, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She blinks her bleary eyes, tries to focus them, then her heart sinks at an unfortunately familiar sight. Minato in a hospital bed, again.

She whispers his name, limps to his bed, carefully pulls her body into it. Hears Obito’s voice say that he’ll go get Rin and the med nin.

When they bring him in, her eyes immediately burn with tears, the happiest tears she’s ever had the fortune of shedding. As they nestle a sleeping baby between them, she feels Minato stir next to her, a little grumble and cough. His eyes peel open and they find hers immediately and she gives him a weak smile. He blinks, slowly, looks from her to Naruto, and she sees tears pool in his eyes, too.

Kakashi crouches on his haunches against the wall while Obito and Rin carefully sit on the end of the bed, looking at them with concern.

That all of them are safe and relatively healthy in the confines of the hospital, Kushina can’t justify anything other than unabashed relief.

With one arm under Naruto and the other over Minato’s chest, she gently nestles into them.

Kushina Uzumaki is not alone in the world.

The day it’s announced that the Third is stepping down, everyone looks to Kushina.

“My official recommendation…is Minato Namikaze.”

Hushed whispers fall over the room and she feels Minato freeze next to her. Kushina holds her gaze forward, lips thinned to a harsh line.

Immediately, debate breaks out within the space. After a moment, Minato clears his throat and voices his rejection of the nomination.

“He doesn’t want it?”

“Bullshit, he’s always talked about it.”

“Can he even reject the nomination anyway?”

Kushina grits her teeth, shifting her eyes slightly. It’s not like this wasn’t what she had always expected, anyway. It was always going to be Minato. She knew it back then, she knows it now. There was no way they’d ever let a woman hold the position, let alone the jinchūriki of the village. Even if she never asked to be, she was.

“If I’m appointed Hokage, I’ll immediately step down and nominate Kushina Uzumaki.”

Silence coats the room for a moment, and Kushina just sighs. She’s tired of people looking down on her after everything she’s gone through. Maybe it would just be easier…

“I’m in favor of Kushina Uzumaki as well, Lord Third.”

They both stop to look at the stony face of Fugaku Uchiha, who doesn’t look back at them.

Then another voices their agreement, Hiashi Hyūga. Then another, and another.

“She fought on the front lines in the war, saved my son.”

“Also protected the village from the Kyūbi.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen such powerful chakra.”

Soon, what starts as murmured agreement turns into full blown encouragement. Her hands fall to her sides as she scans the room, feeling a rush of excitement hit her heart. His hand slides into hers and squeezes.

Kushina Uzumaki will never be alone in the world.

For the first time, she truly believes it.

It’s a quiet Tuesday when she climbs the spiraling steps of the Hokage tower, like she did so many years ago with Mito. Takes her time, plants her foot firmly on each one, like showing her intention as she ascends. Recalls all of the conversations, big and small, she had on these steps. With Mito. With Mikoto. With Minato. Dreams of becoming Hokage, protecting the ones she loves, and loving them and being loved.

A slow push of double doors reveals a clear day to greet her. The village is sleepy with peace. Foliage blooms, little birds and critters chirp, and the sun is warm on her face. The same spot she had looked at for so many years now adorns her face. It looks ridiculous, but she thinks that’s part of the deal. Can’t look too nice on the side of a mountain, she supposes. The face looks serious and stern like the others, but it’s her face.

On top of it, like a cute little bow, sits her son and his friends. The only noise in the village is his loud laughter. It’s the only noise in the world she’ll never get tired of. A sight she never gets tired of is her husband appearing behind him and scaring the daylight out of him.

Carefully, she runs her fingertips over the cord of her Hokage robes, twisting it between them.

Kushina Uzumaki has the love and support of an entire village.

Never will she feel alone again.

#naruto fanfic #minakushi #minato namikaze #kushina uzumaki #minato #kushina #minakushi fanfic #my writing #sun rising

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trashogram · 9 months

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Lord Stingray/Reader drabble because I have no shame and don’t care.

Warning: You‘re a smoker.

———————————————————————— “So, what would you say to being one of my concubines?”

You took your time taking a drag from your cigarette, relishing the burning sensation in your throat, before side-eying your companion.

You wanted to laugh at the anticipatory smirk on his unusual face. It didn’t take a genius to figure what must be going on inside his head. Regardless of the title he literally lorded over everyone’s head, Stingray was just as much a narcissistic, over-confident chauvinist as the rest of them.

You managed to refrain, save for a tiny smile. “I think that title’s a little too fancy for me, hun.”

You watched as his eyes rolled behind his red lenses, claws up as he made a shooing gesture as if her words were an annoying gnat. Still, the corners of his bizarre mouth remained upturned.

“Oh come now, I would never bed someone not worth such an illustrious title.” He schmoozed. “Besides, this position comes with plenty of benefits only an idiot would turn down.”

The alien overlord emphasized ‘position’ and ‘benefits’ by wrapping an arm around your waist and pulling you closer, then fondling your chest rather presumptuously. You let yourself be manhandled, simply so you could roll your eyes as you feigned hiding your face against his bare chest.

You exhaled more smoke before gazing at the bright yellow skin of your companion, garish in the mood-lighting. The sight was still interesting, and the feel of him was only somewhat softer than the rubber latex he preferred to wear now that he was technically no longer just another inmate.

Obnoxious, conceited pig that he was, at least the weirdo was fun to look at.

“Maybe…” You peered up at the stingray-shaped mask. “If you explain those benefits a little more.”

Like clockwork, Lord Stingray’s uncanny mask stretched to reveal lascivious glee.

#superjail #lord stingray #proof I have no shame anymore #Lord stingray x Reader #I made him an actual alien bc that’s more fun

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dailyfigures · 8 months

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Lum ; Those Obnoxious Aliens ☆ FREEing

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ecoamerica · 25 days

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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thecleverqueer · 1 year

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Random Thoughts during The Clone Wars Movie:

*Full discretion: I’ve never watched this before. I’ve watched the series (some arcs I’ve watched an embarrassing number of times). I’ve heard people bitch about this being terrible, so I’m excited about it! Here we go!

*Clone radio chatter… Hmm…

*I find it odd that the Jedi would help Jabba the Hutt, but I’ll let it pass. Oh, but of course it’s Palpatine’s idea. Oh, trade routes, blah, blah, blah. Of course, it’s political.

*Wullf Yularen looks so young. Wow. All that dark brown hair and lack of wrinkles (or maybe the lack of wrinkles has to do with the primitive CGI).

*I love how Anakin and Obi-Wan argue like an old married couple. Like, dude… you’re being very, VERY passive aggressive. “Well, it wasn’t MY idea!”

*I’ve never really understood why folks always pet R2-D2’s head. Everyone does it. Literally everyone. Is it because he’s cute, or does he have some sort of circuitry up there that allows him to feel? Both?

*Through all my Ahsoka simping, I don’t talk enough about how much I truly love, LOVE Obi-Wan Kenobi. I adore Obi-Wan Kenobi. He’s such a bad ass. He seems like a guy that should be reading a book quietly in private library some place while sipping tea, and yet here he is out in the galaxy just slaying.

*Why is Anakin being the voice of reason here!? No! He’s right. It absolutely isn’t a good idea to bring a padawan learner into battle like that. It’s war. They’re literally children. You’re making them child soldiers. Stop it! Quit being crazy!

*Holy shit! Ahsoka is so tiny! Obi-Wan is like, “A youngling!?” Oh! Squee! She’s so ridiculously small! Ugh, they should have given the little thing Jedi robes... Poor little ‘Soka!

*Ooo! I didn’t know Ventress was in this. Maybe I did? I don’t know.

*I love Rex. When referring to Ahsoka for the first time, he’s like, “who is this child?”

*Hey! Rex and Ahsoka are having that same conversation from Rebels almost:

Rex says, “In my book, experience outranks everything.” Then Ahsoka goes, “Well if experience outranks everything, then I better start getting some.” Cute. For the record, Rex, she’s definitely going to outrank you… later.

*Obi-Wan is always so quick to surrender. He’s going to choose to charm/ sweet-talk/whore his way out of violence and/ or buy time every time.

*Yikes! Ahsoka f*^%s up royally when attempting to set those charges on that shield generator. She’s just a baby, so you can’t be too mad at her for f*^%ing up like that as she’s really got no business on a battlefield in the first place honestly. “Sorry!” Don’t be sorry, Ahsoka. It’s not your fault.

*Obi-Wan sipping tea. I love to see it.

*That conversation that Anakin has with Ahsoka about her making it as his padawan is so sweet. Then, they start playing Ahsoka’s theme… how adorable!

*Yoda says, “To let go of his pupil, a greater challenge this will be. Master this, Skywalker must.” I get Yoda’s angle here. Anakin’s arduous issues with attachment need to be addressed. It didn’t seem to matter much in the end though. I’d say he did let go of Ahsoka. It was his irrational fear of losing Padme that got him (that and old Palpatine being a manipulative cocksplat).

*The council sending Obi-Wan to make a deal with Jabba because he’s such a smooth talker.

*Wow. A bunch of alien heads on a gurney… This is a kids’ movie.

*Jabba calls his child a “punky muffin.” Interesting. What do the Hutts know of muffins?

*Do monasteries usually have detention levels?

*Holy shit, Ahsoka! A protocol droid calls her a servant girl, and she nearly slices it in half! Not that I don’t appreciate the moment of feminist rage, I do, but, hey, it’s okay there, spunky! Chill. You’ll be a Jedi… well, maybe… jury is still out on that one.

*So, I am 40 minutes in, and I’m trying to figure out why Ahsoka got so much vitriolic hate when people first watched this. She’s clearly stubborn, impatient, reckless, slightly obnoxious and a little arrogant, but she’s just a baby. She’s like 14 here, right? I think? She’s no more annoying than any other teenager would be.

I’m assuming that I’m not being bias here because I fell in love with Ahsoka in Rebels and she can do no wrong in my eyes, but I don’t think that I am? So, what was it? Did folks just have their drawers bunched up so tight about canon breaking or whatever? Could they not overlook her being a typical teenaged turd in this? Was it just because she is a girl?

*Ahsoka already has auntie vibes at 14. IYKYK.

*How dare Ventress force choke Rex! I love his resolve to not do what she says. Oh. Jedi mind trick… never mind.

*OMG! Ahsoka called the droidekas “Rolling death balls.” I can’t.

*Um… aside from “Ahsoka’s Theme” which always brings me joy when I hear it because… Ahsoka… this soundtrack leaves A LOT to be desired. What is this? This kind of reminds me of something I might have heard in The Power Rangers or that X-Men cartoon from the 90s.

*Obi-Wan flirts with everyone. This flirting with Ventress is cracking me up. Now Ventress is flirting back. Is this a ship!? It isn’t as fun as Codywan to me, but hey. Straight ships never are.

*I feel like everyone ends up on Tatooine at some point or another. It’s like a dust-bowl fly trap.

*Yeah. The soundtrack is f*^%ing awful.*Grits teeth*

*Bith Bands on Tatooine > Bith Bands on Coruscant.

*This queer-coded Hutt bothers me. I know I’ve seen him in The Clone Wars, and I know that Filoni tried to sell me on the fact that he was with Sy Snootles, but he’s clearly meant to be a flamboyantly queer, and I’m miffed.

The one constant with homosexual/ queer-coded characters is that we’re ALWAYS the f*^%ing bad guy. Do we make great bad guys? Compelling bad guys? Probably. Gays will go scorched-earth if the occasion warrants it. But, why?! Why must we always be bad? We’re not all bad! Most of us are awesome.

*He’s a southern gay, too. Damn. I just picture him in a swanky gay bar in Atlanta some place hitting on, like, the youngest twink in the room. He probably drives a luxury sedan and is paying for all of the twink’s drinks. Somebody’s getting laid tonight!

*What is up with that feather hat on this queer Hutt’s head? Oh, honey, no…. Why? Why? Why? Filoni should feel shame for this.

*And, what’s going on with that Twi-lek dancer back behind him to the left all but twerking? Get it, girl! Get it! Twerk it!

*Padme getting herself into some shit.

*Okay, Ahsoka calling R2 “artooey” is a little annoying… still not annoying enough to hate her guts.

*I can’t get over this stupid Hutt! Goddammit. Why doesn’t he gurgle and speak Huttese like the rest of the Hutts? Why does he sound like a giant slug from Georgia?! Why, Filoni, why!?

*Awww! Anakin putting his hand on Ahsoka’s shoulder at sunset, and she so stinking cute and small!

*There goes Count Dooku with his force lightning. Force lightning is one of those powers that I wish I had. No. I’d want force storm. To hell with playing around, I want to just lift my hand up and an entire room of enemies drop dead… that was always my favorite power in KOTOR. Just brutal. But, I need to stop. I’m being an evil gay.

*Hold up! Is this Hutt RUNNING a swanky gay bar on Coruscant!? FFS… Ziro shame. Absolutely none….

*Sigh* The luxury sedan is the Star Wars version of a black Cadillac CT5 with white leather interior and a wood grained trim, by the way. He barely fits into it because he’s a goddamned space slug, but he manages. He smokes cheap cigarettes, but only drinks from the top shelf. He has an army of twinks… he won’t remember the name of the one he’s getting wasted tonight... Dammit!

*Dude! Anakin! SMH. He just waltzes into Jabba’s palace and goes, “where’s Ahsoka?” You literally JUST SAW DOOKU’S HOLO OF HER ASS GETTING KICKED BY THREE DROIDS! So… you should have found her before you did anything else. Goddammit man, don’t be an idiot!

*You bring back the slugglet, but Jabba is going to kill your asses anyway (no, not really, we know y’all survive).

*Padme saving the day through diplomacy as Padme does.

*Final thought: it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared.

#star wars #ahsoka tano #the clone wars #count dooku #anakin skywalker #padme amidala #chancellor palpatine #obi wan kenobi #captain rex #asajj ventress #wullf yularen #r2d2 #tatooine #jabba the hutt

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