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chimivx · 11 months ago

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That one fucked you over last year, this one is fucking you over this year, you had no idea she was involved with him, someone over here has been lying to you, you didn't mean to end up in that ones bed, he told you he loved you... Does anyone even trust anyone anymore?

👫 -> college!teez x fem!reader/oc {frat/sorority} #️⃣ -> 9.9k (part NINE of ten) ‼️ -> 18+, sexual content, drugs/alcohol, college life, all the drama, heavy angst, infidelity adjacent moments, mean boys, mean girls, mentions of anxiety/depression… IF I MISSED ANYTHING PLEASE LET ME KNOW!

{ there are names & faces in here that come from NMWID <3 }

october 7th ~ monday ~ 9:58 a.m.

“Three, probably,” Wooyoung said, turning the wheel in his hands, parking along the side of the quiet street in front of Blend. Unbuckling yourself, you make a face and scoff.

“Three?” Sarcasm dripped from your lips. “You slut!”

Wooyoung turned the car off and glared at you. “You were on Yunho’s dick all summer, what the hell was I supposed to do?”

Grabbing the door handle you pursed your lips. “Fair enough.” The two of you popped the doors to the BMW open, but you reached a hand over the center console to grab his sweatshirt, yanking him back into his seat. With raised brows and attentive eyes he looked at you. Your words made him laugh. “Were they pretty?” “So pretty,” he whispered, narrowing his eyes. The same sarcasm you gave him, he handed right back.

“Really?” He nodded after your whisper.

His eyes flickered down to your lips. “They certainly were not as hot as you, though.”

Heat rose to your cheeks, Wooyoung giggling at the way you shoved his shoulder and dashed out of the car. Fixing the hoodie you wore, adjusting your jeans before he circled the car, you were able to tuck your hair behind your ears by the time he joined your side. Maybe you should’ve dressed a bit better, not only were you going to speak to a professor about his own daughter, you were spending the day with Wooyoung, and you were wearing a hoodie and jeans.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice gentle. With a nod you smiled and led the way, Wooyoung hanging close behind you.

He wore the same, so you shouldn’t be too panicked about your appearance, a black zip up hoodie on his top and baggy black denim jeans on his bottom. You were his colorful counterpart, two sides of the same coin. Plus, he was here with you, skipping classes to drive you around so the two of you could face some type of justice. He’s seen what's beneath the clothes anyway, nothing about them should bother you.

Keeping your gaze locked on the door to Blend, Wooyoung flashed his from side to side, surveilling the premises, like he was on watch, on alert.

The clothes worry most likely stemmed from last semester, when you caught him with Yeji. Aside from shattering your heart into a trillion pieces, it made you question a lot about yourself. You’ve been over this before, Yeji is the complete opposite of you. At the time, Wooyoung, alleged slut, would seem like he’d go after anything, but finding him with Yeji sparked an entirely different insecurity.

They would be the couple to rise to absolute fame and fortune entirely too fast, and then, like you’d hope and envision over many nights before bed, their Camelot would burst into flames and they’d both crash and burn. Entirely too dramatic. Wooyoung was right about the situation fucking with your brain scientifically. You’d have to tell him what you planned out for him and his alleged lover's future later.

Then you’d have to ask him about this emotional maturity stuff. The emotional intelligence thing. What was it, how did you get it, and when were you supposed to use it?

Stepping into Blend, into the air that was cooler than the outside, you look hopefully toward the counter for Theo, but freeze immediately. Wooyoung, unsuspecting behind you, let the door shut and bumped into your back, bringing a hand to your shoulder, standing directly behind you.

For the most part, the typical Monday morning, Blend was empty. A student sat by the windows working vigorously on her laptop, but aside from her the cafe was empty. Save for the two boys standing at the counter. Well, one leaning on the tallest part of the counter, the other sitting on the counter with his knees tucked into his chest, his gangly legs poking out of the rips in his jeans. Theo, behind it, speaking with both of them, looked straight at you as you walked inside, glanced at the boy behind you, and froze, just as you had.

Your knees turned into jelly, and Wooyoung tightened his hand on your shoulder as if he could feel it.

“Let’s go,” he said to you. Judging by his tone, you know his eyes were hot on the three of them. “We’ll go somewhere else.”

Seonghwa and Soul, they both wore some type of remorseful look, the younger boys lips in a pout while the older boys brows were flipped over. You haven’t seen either of them since last Saturday, Soul when Tori pulled you away from him and his friends, and Seonghwa when you watched him battle with himself internally as Wooyoung smuggled you out of the ATZ house.

Interesting, really, how he could play the part of inconspicuous let me help you lover boy, seem so genuine, then turn out to be another player in the game of your life. That night, walking, or stumbling really, out of the house you never planned on setting foot in again, the way he looked at you… Shock, pain and confusion all wrapped into one cryptically beautiful face, it made you sick.

How could he possibly feel bad?

The other one, Soul. The freshman. The nineteen year old with a crush on you, he wore that face now. Pain, like he was holding something within that he needed to get out or he’d implode. The two of them here together, talking to Theo, who’s brother hated him a few weeks ago, it was all the more strange. It wasn’t until shit started hitting the fan that these boys started following you around.

“You’re here early,” Theo said.

Pointing your eyes at him directly, trying your hardest to not look at either babe to his left or his right, you clenched your jaw and tilted your head the slightest. “Not going to classes today,” you mumbled. When Seonghwa’s gaze traveled behind you, you swore he sighed as he turned away, facing the counter so he wouldn’t have to look at the two of you for any longer.

“Come on,” Wooyoung said, coming closer to your ear. “I don’t want to be here.”

An anger lived beneath the surface of your being. The feeling you had Saturday night when you unloaded onto Mina, and it was growing, it had been growing since that night. Face to face with them now, it was uncontrollable, you couldn’t hold it back.

Turning around, you put a hand to Wooyoung's cheek. Your whisper had his expression shift into something harder, understanding you within seconds. “Then you can go outside, and I’ll be out in a minute.”

“I’m not gonna leave you alone with them,” he said.

Your smile was slightly sadistic. “I was raised by Choi Yeonjun, I can handle myself.”

Wooyoung bit back his smile. He gave you a tiny nod. “Then, I’ll stay for the show.” His eyes did the thing again, they flickered to your lips. “Go get ‘em.”

Whirling around, you bounded for the coffee counter, all three boys caving within themselves more and more the closer you got. The space tightened, and nerves infected your veins, but your rage overpowered all.

Theo, standing up straight, glanced at his brother who sucked in a breath when you reached his side. “Hey, Ror,” he mumbled. “What can I-”

Facing Soul, looking him in the eye, you straightened your brows. “I want the same damn thing you’ve been making me for the last three weeks.” Soul was most definitely shaking, if you reached out to touch him you’d be able to feel it. “And, considering I have an allowance, I don’t think it’d be too much to get that Wednesday night Chai Tea now, would it?” Theo looked at Wooyoung, but Soul could barely give him a glance.

“No problem,” Theo said, and got to work.

Snapping your eyes to the boy behind the counter, you said, “Extra honey.” Turning back to the freshman who hadn’t moved an inch, you smiled at him. “What’s the matter, Soul? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Leaning on the counter, tipping your chin back a bit, you pouted. “You look like you’re a part of something you don’t really want to be a part of.” They boy gulped, his black eyes blinking feverishly. “What’d they do to you?” His eyes pointed behind you, at Seonghwa, but you put a hand on his thigh and he loosed a breath, coming back to you. “Don’t look at him, I’m right here.”

“Shota,” Theo spoke up, and you know he gave his brother a disapproving look.

“They made me do it, Aurora, I swear,” he breathed. Soul grasped his cheeks and inhaled. “He made me do it, Seonghwa, it was the initiation, I had to do something for each of them, his was you.” A rock formed in your gut, furthering the urge to clench your fist and launch it into Seonghwa’s jaw. “I had to get upperclassman attention from ITZ, and if I did, I passed, ‘cause I was desirable.”

A chill ran over your skin. Knowing what he’s been through, you shot a glare behind you at Seonghwa, one he shied away from. “You guys are disgusting.”

“He picked you, even though I wasn’t sure why, ‘cause you guys were a thing,” Soul continued on, the word vomit filling in some blanks you didn’t even know were blanks. “He had your location on his phone, you shared it with him or something, and he would be able to tell me where you were, where you were going, and I’d be able to find you.”

That made sense.

“I had to collect things for proof, or none of it counted,” Soul sucked in a breath, “You always wear lipgloss,” he glanced to your lips and scrunched up his face, “Except now, apparently, shit, and I’d walk you to class and take your straws from these cups, god.” Hiding his face in his hands now, he groaned and shook his head. “It sounds horrible like this,” he looked up and searched for his brother who bobbed his head, not looking up from his work.

“Keep going,” Theo said. “Tell her everything you told me.” He broke his fixed gaze on his work this time, shooting a glare at Seonghwa.

Soul, heartbroken, turned to you. “I recorded conversations… our conversations. For proof.” Your body went rigid. Standing up, you took a hand to your neck, grasping the collar of your hoodie for comfort.

“All of those times,” you whispered, and he pressed his lips together. His eyes were shining, like he was moments away from tears. “You… pestering me for attention, flirting with me like you couldn’t care less I told you I liked him,” you threw a hand back toward Seonghwa, then clasped that hand over your mouth, “I told you I liked him,” you whispered. Soul waited, flinching as you put the same hang on one of his knees. “Soul,” you said, and he nodded. There was no use in holding it all back now. What more did you have to lose? “I told you I had feelings for Seonghwa because I was hiding… a relationship, I guess I could call it, with Yunho.”

Theo, at the counter with your drinks, appeared just as shocked as his brother. “I knew you guys were up to something,” he muttered, sparing a look back at Wooyoung who perched himself up against the wall, his arms folded over his chest.

Waving Theo off, you only spoke to Soul. “It looked like he was with Mina, right?” The freshman nodded again. “I was… the sidepiece… who thought she was the main piece. He made it really convincing, that he loved me, and he told me that. I was keeping him and I a secret in hopes that he’d break it off with her, like he said he would, but he never did, and he continuously lied to me about it.”

Soul thought to himself, then said, “I mean, I figured something was up at some point when…”

“Tell her,” Theo’s tone went stern as his brother's voice trailed off.

“I had to get you to come to ATZ, that was the final thing,” he whispered. “If I could convince you to come to the house, by my invitation, I was in the clear.” His voice regained some strength. “You wouldn’t do it, I couldn’t get you to come, so he had me do something else.”

Soul's hand retreated into the pocket of his jeans. Pulling it out, his fingers in a fist, he offered it to you and you opened your hand. Discreetly, he dropped something soft in your palm and used his fingers to close yours. You didn’t even have to look, the feel of the lacy fabric told you enough.

“He told me that Yunho had something of yours,” Soul spoke above a whisper. If your blood wasn’t already running cold, it would be now. “If I could find it without him knowing I took it, I was in.” He gulped. “So, I did. It was easy, he never locks his door.”

“Where was it?” you whispered, your voice starting to shake.

Soul blinked. “In a drawer, next to his bed.” Squeezing your hand into a fist, you plunged it into your hoodie pocket and left the lace there. “Aurora?” When your eyes were back on him, he took a preparative breath. “Even though it looks like you aren’t with him anymore, I guess, I have to tell you…”

“Soul,” your voice wavered.

“They weren’t the only ones in there,” he whispered.

Jaw falling open, your knees really wobbled this time, like the earth had shook. Raking your hands through your hair, tugging at the strands, you took a step backward and fell into a pair of arms that secured your balance, wrapping around your waist. Dropping your hands to his, you gripped the sleeves of his sweatshirt. Wooyoung.

“Who the fuck?” you gasped.

“Mina,” Seonghwa said, and you dropped your head back onto Wooyoung's shoulder. A tear slipped down your cheek, one the boy holding you took from you with his cheek.

A singular horrid laugh came from your chest. “I don’t believe you,” you said, lifting your head to look at him, twisting in Wooyoung's arms. “You��re a fucking liar, Seonghwa. You knew what they were all doing the entire time, you preyed on my feelings, you had your little shadow stalk me and feed me more lies, how am I supposed to believe anything you say?”

“It wasn’t all lies,” Soul offered, taking your attention back. “I do like you, Aurora, but I remember what you said. That part wasn’t a lie.” Wooyoung's arms tensed around you.

“You can believe me because I had to hear all about it,” Seonghwa said, turning around so that his back was leaning on the counter. Looking down at you, that face he gave you Saturday night appeared. “And not from Yunho. From Mina.”

“What?” you sighed.

Seonghwa let his shoulders speak for him for a second, giving you half a shrug that also put emphasis on his own personal disappointment. “I’m risking a lot here, Ror, can we just acknowledge that first? I am the Vice President.” Your fingers dug into Wooyoung’s arms at his audacity. “What Wooyoung did Saturday night? What happened to him? That could happen to me, but here I am risking it all to tell you the truth.”

Rolling your eyes, where more tears had fallen from, you mumbled, “My hero,” and Theo chuckled to himself.

Ignoring you, Seonghwa continued. “Mina knew about you and Yunho. At first she had her strong suspicions, but after you ended up in my bed and confirmed it, I was able to put her theories to rest, because they were real. She and I were already wrapped up in Yeji’s presidential era thing, so she leaned on me for help. I was supposed to distract you, keep you away from Yunho so she could secure him, but she wasn’t able to do it.” He shrugged. “Neither of you have been able to do it.”

“Her telling you that she’s never been with anyone before? It was all an act. She wanted you to think you had the upper hand because you could get him in bed, and she knew he wouldn’t tell you if they were hooking up because he hadn’t told you anything about them at all. You were so worried about keeping your own secret, and then our secret, that she knew you weren’t going to notice if he was fucking you both. At the party, when you popped off on her, your confession as she called it? That was supposed to get you in huge trouble with Yeji and the other girls, Mina was going to keep playing along like she didn’t know about you and Yunho.”

“If I did find out,” you whispered, unable to feel anything save for Wooyoung’s grip around you, “I would most likely come to you, I would tell you, ‘cause I trusted you. You would tell her I knew, wouldn’t you?”

Seonghwa swallowed, hard, then nodded. “I would’ve, yeah.” Whatever was left of the goodness you held for this boy crumbled to pieces. “This deal between us, it was included in the Yeji deal, the president deal. If either was… is broken, then we’re…” he glanced up at Wooyoung.

“Is that why you’re telling me this now?” you asked, the words harsh behind your teeth. “Here, in a place where they can’t hear you?” Wriggling around in Wooyoung’s arms he kept his hold around you tight, not knowing what the hell you would do if he let you go. “So your precious Vice President role isn’t taken away from you?”

“No, Ror, this is just where we’ve caught you,” he said, his voice falling quiet. “Soul and I, we’ve been speaking since Wooyoung moved out, the entire house is whispering to each other. It’s fucked up. All of it is fucked up. Realizing what’s happened, what it’s done to you, to him, to the rest of us… But, mainly you? Ror, you were one of the first students I met here, one of the first friends I made while everyone else looked at me like some sort of disgusting nepo-baby snob.”

“Nepo-baby?” Settling in Wooyoung’s arms, you rested your body against his. Even Soul looked at his senior with curiosity. Theo though, he hung his head.

“Yeah,” Seonghwa rolled his eyes, taking a breath. “My uncle’s the dean,” he nearly whispered. The shock that flashed over your face made him huff a laugh. “Easy for me to be Vice President.”

“Easy for you to spill all of this and have no consequences,” you grit your teeth. “No way in hell Hongjoong would kick you out, he’ll keep you close, won’t he?”

“I guess, I…” Seonghwa scoffed, pushing off of the counter to take a few steps around himself. “That’s why I’m telling you this, because of my uncle.” He gestured a hand toward Wooyoung. “He could reinstate you. Hongjoong expelled you for disruption, didn’t he? I watched him sign the notice. Disruption of the rules, disruption of the mission. If you get enough of us to come forward to speak for you, to vouch for you, you can submit an appeal. I’ll help.”

“Why?” Wooyoung’s tone was hot, sharp to the touch if it took physical form.

Seonghwa flashed him sorry eyes. “Because what the fuck are we letting them get away with? We joined these groups because we wanted to be around people like ourselves, people to trust, people to lean on, people to get through these four years with. Our freshman year, amazing. Sophomore year, amazing,” he glanced at you, “For the most part. That’s when it got screwy, in the end. It started to turn into a money grab for most of us. We all saw what it was doing to us on social media, we all experienced the Yeji tag follower rush. It was so easy to fall into her game, her plan.”

“Why’d you do it, Hwa?” you whispered, and he softened.

“Reputations are built fast,” he said, sharing a look with Wooyoung, “You know that all too well.” He returned his eyes to you. “Yeji knew of my uncle and what power he had. She offered me money, like she did with all of us, and then she threatened me. Ror, you already told me what you heard about me, what I liked to do to girls I sleep with? How everyone spun it into this thing, that it made you mine? She said…” he paused, sucking in a breath, “She said that if I didn’t help her she would tell the entire school board, including my uncle… That I…”

He couldn’t even get the words out. Clenching his jaw he tipped his chin back and blinked too many times, showing too much emotion for Park Seonghwa.

“I had to help Mina, I had to make Yeji president, I had to make Soul do what he did, or she would ruin my life,” he whispered, looking back at you. “That doesn’t make anything between us better, and I understand that. I understand if you never forgive me, ever. I don’t deserve it.” A part of your heart felt for him, as much as your anger was fueled by his presence. “But, she deserves to pay.” He hesitated, then his following words made you all crack a soft laugh. “More than she already has.”

After a breath, you shook your head, praying you were able to process and remember everything he’s told you. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he sighed. “Just promise me you’ll bring me with you if you do anything about this, and I’ll tell you anything you want, Ror.”

Turning your head to peek up at Wooyoung, you waited for his blessing.

“Don’t look at me,” he said, shaking his head.

“If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it together,” you said. “I need you to be okay with it, too.”

He thought to himself, and shrugged, glancing away from you a couple times. “I mean, from what I know, he’s telling the truth,” he said quietly, letting his eyes travel to Seonghwa. “I didn’t know about Yeji threatening him with all of that, I thought it was just the whole kicked out of the frat thing.” The boys stared each other down, something unspoken happening in between it all. “She’s fucked up for that, Hwa,” he whispered, then held up a hand, “As much as you suck for doing all of this, much like myself… She’s fucked up, and deserves to pay.”

Looking at Seonghwa, the pain in his face somewhat resolved, he gulped and bobbed his head. He turned his gaze down to you. “As much as I want to tell you to go fuck off,” you began, and he tensed, “I unfortunately trust this guy,” you nodded back to Wooyoung, “So if he says you’re telling the truth, I think I have to believe you, too.” A small smile broke onto his lips. “It feels stupid as hell though,” you held up a hand, “I just said this to Wooyo, Hwa. Please, for the love of god, don’t fucking embarrass me. Again.”

“I won’t,” he said, tone hurried and rushed. “Aurora, I won’t.”

Taking a steadying deep breath for yourself, and what you’re about to agree to, you tell him what you have planned for the day. That Soobin finished his lecture around one o’clock, and that you and Wooyoung were going to go in and speak with him. About what, though, you still weren’t sure. Walking into his classroom guns blazing didn’t seem ideal, and Seonghwa agreed with you.

“You know, Soobin is friends with my uncle,” Seonghwa said, like it were everyday information. Eyes shooting open wide, standing firmly on your own two feet now, you spun toward Wooyoung and wacked his arm. Cringing, he covered the spot with his hand and muttered a joke about you beating him again.

“Chan said this,” you restated, bringing up what the boy had said to you Friday night. “Soobin has a friend of importance, holy shit.”

“So we go to Soobin, then we take it to my uncle,” Seonghwa said, laying out the plan. He glanced at Soul, still sitting on the counter, watching you all with admirable patience. “I think you’re stuck with us, kid.”

Soul sat up tall, averting his gaze over to you, knowing it was your call. A smile snuck onto his lips when you nodded toward him. “Come with us,” you said gently. “You have four years in that house, it’s better to make a change now.” The boy jumped off the counter and tucked his hands behind his back, ready for the next call to action. Theo smiled at you and it told you plenty. He didn’t need to say anything to express his thanks and his apologies, he was able to wrap it all up in the curve of his cheeks.

“Crushes only,” Wooyoung said to Soul, motioning toward you, and the freshman widened his eyes and nodded, bowing his head in understanding.

“Four of us could be enough,” Seonghwa said, scanning the group before him. Looking at you he asked, “Should we get Tori, too? Make it five? The more, the better.” The weight of the plethora of unread messages and missed calls living on your phone made it onto your face. Pulling his lips into a frown, Seonghwa said, “Or… not?”

“I haven’t spoken to her since the party,” you mumbled. “Which makes me want to ask you, what I wanted to ask you before,” you paused and he nodded, “Did she know?”

“No,” Seonghwa sighed, answering you as fast as he possibly could. “She didn’t know anything, she and Yuna weren’t involved. They were too close to you, Yeji knew better than to involve them. They found out everything in real time with you, last week.”

Damn. Which meant she was going through this alone.

“What about Mingi?” you asked, biting your tongue, praying to a god your father never taught you about. If he knew, and Tori found out he knew, and he didn’t tell her anything… Almost three years of her life would be torn apart. Almost three years with the love of her life.

Seonghwa shook his head. “Mingi wasn’t in on it either.” Thank god. Hesitating, he glanced away for a moment. “Yunho didn’t know anything either, for what it’s worth.”

You started to laugh, all of the boys looking to you with worry. “Of course he didn’t,” you laughed even louder, smacking a hand to your thigh. Wooyoung slid a hand over your shoulder. “That just means he was playing his own damn game. A little side quest. How long can I keep fucking both these girls before one of them finds out?”

Yes, him.

Yes, Yunho.

You knew this. You’ve always known this. It shouldn’t hurt this bad.

You just feel stupid for falling for it.

You feel stupid for thinking this entire time, since May, that you had the one up on Mina with Yunho. That you were winning the game, that he was yours. But, while you and Mina played cops and robbers, chasing after one another every other night, unknowingly tossing Yunho back and forth, you had no idea he was the one holding the gun.

Digging for your phone in your back pocket, you swiped open to your messages.

You needed her.

You needed Tori.

Ignoring the paragraphs you’d read later now that you know she’s really on your side, you opt for a phone call, tapping the button in the corner. Pressing it to your ear, you wandered away from the boys, praying that they wouldn’t annihilate each other while you weren’t there to referee. It took two rings, but she answered with a heave of a breath.

“Aurora?” Half panicked, half shocked, either way, her voice was the greatest comfort.

“Torilynn?” Hitting her with her full, birth given name, you braced yourself for her shriek. And, oh, did she shriek.

“I can’t even be mad at you for saying that,” she said. “Why are you calling me, holy shit, where the fuck have you been?”

“At home,” you said. “Dad’s been driving me back and forth everyday. I can’t be in that house. I don’t even know how you can be in that house.”

“Ror, we’re falling apart,” she lowered her voice. “We told Ryujin, me and Yuna, and she lost her shit. It’s like a battlefield up in here, Yeji won’t show her face. Mina and Chaeryeong are speaking for her, but even then, no one knows who to believe. I want to say we’re on the winning side though, ‘cause it’s pretty much all of us against Yeji. What’s she gonna do, expel us all?”

“Tor,” you said, putting an end to her ramble. “We have more to tell you.”

“We?”

“Me, Wooyoung, Seonghwa-”

“Seonghwa?!” she shouted.

Closing your eyes, you sighed. “And, Soul.”

“How the… What the fuck?” The line went quiet, then she uttered another, “What… the fuck?!”

“I’m at Blend. Its operation take down Yeji and Mina in a few hours. How fast can you get here?”

You heard her take a breath, then move around wherever she was. “Getting ready now, I’m at the house.” Something was dropped on her end, it sounded like a hairbrush. “And Mina?”

“Yeah,” you started to smile. “Guess who hung out with her big brother Chan Friday night?”

“ROR!”

“Guess who was right about her being a big, fat, liar?”

Tori, silent for a few seconds, came back with the sound of an echo, like she’d put the phone on speaker. “You,” she mumbled. “Ror, I’m sorry.”

You were on apology overload for the day. “Don’t be, we were all being deceived. Just get here as soon as you can. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, not even Yuna, unless she asks.”

“Holy shit, okay,” she breathed, the sound of her makeup clicking open and closed sounding through the phone. “Okay, okay. I’ll see you soon.”

october 7th ~ monday ~ 12:23 p.m.

It took Tori a half hour to get to Blend, longer than any of you anticipated, but when she arrived, hair done, makeup done, dressed to impress, you couldn’t blame her. Where there were nerves, there was an exquisite, done up appearance. Admitting she got carried away the second she stepped into the cafe, she bustled over to where you were sitting at a booth beside Wooyoung, Seonghwa and Soul across from you. Leaping from your seat, outstretching your arms, she fell into them, squeezing you into oblivion.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” she muttered into your hair, rocking you back and forth. “Choi Aurora, don’t you ever ghost me again.” When she pulled back she used her baby purse for ammo and knocked it against your arm. Glancing at Wooyoung who met you with a small smile, you couldn’t help but laugh. Looking at him, too, Tori shook her head. “What the fuck is going on?” She took in Seonghwa, and Soul. “How are you not doxxed? Either of you?” Putting a hand on her shoulder, her light colored sweater matching the weather outside, you pulled her attention back to you and smiled. “I’ll update you in the car. We need to go now. It takes a half hour to get to the law side of the school, we need to leave.”

The boys all rose from the booth, heading toward the door as Tori asked, “What, who’s driving?”

Wooyoung gave her a smirk and spun his key on his finger. “I am,” he sang as he passed by her, and the three filed out the door.

Walking side by side with her, she linked her elbow with yours and leaned closer to you. “Did you guys-“

“No,” you huffed, pulling your brows together.

Tori, shocked, asked, “But, you’re back on? You two?”

Outside of the cafe now, watching him circle around his BMW, taking his time, waiting for you, you looked at your best friend without an inkling on your face. “I don’t know. We’ll see once this shitstorm is over.” Unlinking your arms you hurried for the passenger door and slid into your seat the same as Wooyoung, who met you inside with a smile.

Soul ended up in the middle of the backseat, both Seonghwa and Tori squishing against him to lean forward toward the front seats. Tori sat behind you, while Seonghwa sat behind Wooyoung. The two glanced at one another. If looks could kill, Seonghwa would be done for.

“I don’t think I like that you’re coming with us,” she grilled.

Wooyoung looked through the rearview mirror as he manipulated the car out of the tight, parallel park job. “Tori, he’s okay.”

“Yeah, okay, Yeji fucker,” she said, and you laughed. Wooyoung, offended as ever, twisted his face up and shot you both a look. “She might be able to forgive you faster, but I’m best friend, ain’t no way in hell you’re living that shit down, Wooyoung, I won’t let you. This girl was messed up for months.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “Fair enough.”

Putting your hand over his on the shifter, where it lived all morning, you shared a smile with him, one that made Tori whine.

“Somebody tell me everything right now or I’m going to lose my mind.”

And so, you filled her in.

For thirty minutes the boys sat in silence while you and Tori yapped endlessly back and forth. Seonghwa popped in occasionally to give his input, or when you’d ask him if you were telling the story right, you know, the one he just told you, but other than that he let you take the reins. Not one of them dared to get between two best friends, not one wanted to feel the wrath of interrupting you two.

She heard about the bar with Chan, you heard about her solemn time spent with Mingi trying to work things out amidst the chaos. You told her how your dad has been, she told you what it’s been like in the house this week. Spoiler: hell. Filling her in on Souls purpose here, she told you about Jongseob and how he still wouldn’t leave her alone.

For thirty minutes, you wouldn’t shut up. Not until Wooyoung pulled up in front of some architectural masterpieces, buildings stretching into the sky for miles. Beiges, tans, sparks of earthy orange, the law side of Nasara was breathtaking. It was like the Conoscenza on steroids.

“Holy shit, they get it good over here,” you whispered within the quiet air, and four hums agreed with you. Nerves shot down into your gut as Wooyoung pulled into a parking spot, the lines of white in a row along the center median of the wide road, the median covered in green grass and delicately manicured bushes and shrubs.

“Which building is he in?” Tori asked, and you answered with the press of your finger onto the glass window.

“That one,” you said, finger in the direction of the largest building to your left. “He’s on the fifth floor. We have to hurry, he might leave right after he’s done.”

The five of you yanked off your seatbelts and threw the doors open, but Tori stopped you before you could get out. “What are we going to say to him?” She waited, and when you couldn’t answer she asked, “What are you going to say to him?”

Flickering your eyes between hers, you gulped and tried to smile. “Honesty. The truth. Even if he doesn’t believe it.”

She took your words, and lowered her chin, signifying her support. “Let’s go, Choi.”

Waiting for you outside of your door, Wooyoung pushed it shut once you stepped out, Seonghwa and Soul a few steps ahead of everyone. Tori flashed you a look before she followed the boys, letting you know she was on your side, that she would have your back no matter what happened inside of this classroom.

“You gonna be okay?” Wooyoung asked quietly once Tori turned to follow the other two.

With a slight shrug, you tightened your lips. “I think so.” He waited for you to say more, knowing that you were going to say more. “It’s all too much, it’s overwhelming. Like, none of it feels like it should be real.”

“But it is,” he added, agreeing with you.

“It is,” you sighed.

He held open his hand, offering it to you. He wore a ring on his middle finger, a skinny silver band, and when you placed your palm over his and laced your fingers together, it was cool to the touch.

“I got you,” he said, meeting your eyes, calmness becoming him. “No matter what happens, with any of this, with us, I got you. I’m here for you.”

A breath corrupted your lungs, forcing you to look away from him. Wanting to ignore how your heart started to beat fast, how he suddenly had the ability to become a rock for you, part of you didn’t want to. You wanted to feel excited, you wanted someone like this, someone genuine. And, if you thought back on it, like really thought back on it, he’s always been someone for you to lean on. You just never allowed yourself to.

Squeezing his hand, you dropped them between your bodies and pulled him along, walking faster than any of them, you and Wooyoung taking the lead. Seonghwa and Soul were talking about some anime the freshman was into, an old one that you’re certain your father watched as a kid. Up on the sidewalk now, turning to question him with a brow, you ignored Tori smiling at you and Wooyoung's intertwined hands.

Soul laughed at something Hwa said, then once he stepped up on the sidewalk he looked around at the five of you. “Hey,” he said, serious as he was the day he told you he fucked Theo’s girlfriend. “It’s us,” he laughed between his words, “They’re us.”

“Are you talking about Avatar?” you asked, and he nodded, proud. “Avatar the Last Airbender? That’s not anime, did Theo teach you nothing?”

Soul shoved his hands in his back pockets and cocked his head to the side, his blonde hair brushing over his forehead. “Damn, and all this time I thought you were Aang.”

Holding up your hand, the one Wooyoung wasn’t clinging to, you motioned with one finger around the group. “We are Team Avatar?” Soul’s cheeks broke out into a grin. “I am Aang, Soulie.”

Wooyoung nodded, rubbing a hand over his chin. “She is,” he uttered under his breath.

Seonghwa snickered. “That makes you Katara.”

“What?” The hand dropped quickly, his brows furrowing tight above his eyes, nestling right into the center of his forehead. “I would not be Katara.” Moving your other hand over the one you were holding, you tapped it twice.

“It’s okay,” you whispered, and the boys laughed together. “You’re Katara, it’s okay.”

“What does that make me?” Tori’s face read that she wanted no part of this, but equally wanted all the parts of this. “I’m not Zuko, nor am I Sokka.”

“That’s why you’re Toph,” Soul said without missing a beat, and you and Wooyoung lost it. Weighing her options, she glanced about the trees and shrugged.

“She’s badass, I’ll take it,” she said, then sent a look toward Soul and Seonghwa. “You’re definitely Zuko,” she pointed at Hwa, then Soul, “Which makes you Sokka.”

Everyone narrowed their eyes at him, the freshman stuck with four juniors. His silly little smile lit up his face as he took each one of you in.

He shrugged. “Only Sokka would be able to force you into choosing which character you are.” Tori had something smart to say to him, something that Seonghwa bounced off of, the three of them bickering with one another like their new aliases would. You thought of Sokka’s other charm and how it related to Soul, one you weren’t too keen on sharing amongst the group right now, so you would save it for later.

Here’s hoping he’d make it to stick around for later.

Their bickering continued into the building, their whispers echoing off the sculpted walls and ceilings, all the way up to the fifth floor. Five stories of listening to their pointless arguments of which episode was the best, and was Avatar really an anime or not? Five flights of stairs, and by the time you had reached the landing of number five, they still hadn’t figured it out.

“Guys, shut up,” you hissed, turning to them once they made it up behind you. Like children, they snapped into place. “It’s that room,” you pointed a finger to the third metal door down the hallway to the right. “When I looked up his lecture it said floor five, room eight.”

The man was there. Mina's father was in that room, and you were here in the hall of a building you’ve never once set foot in so that you could tattle to a girl's daddy about how she hurt your feelings.

Your friends were quiet.

They were quiet until you turned to face them and said, “Maybe we should just leave.” Audible groans and protests came out of each one of them. Looking down at the floor, your legs like lead, not even Wooyoung’s hand over your shoulder could soothe the feeling.

“We’re so close, Ror,” Seonghwa said.

Tori nodded profusely. “After all of this, you can do it. You said it, go speak your truth.”

Truth. Your perception of truth is so distorted at this point, how were you so sure that the four of them weren’t lying to you right now in this moment? Convincing you that it was alright to confront this innocent man, persuading you to walk into his classroom and shame him for the daughter he raised. What if it was all a lie?

You should’ve dropped out when you had the chance.

“Ro,” Wooyoung whispered. He took both hands to your shoulders and walked you backward, away from the others who took the cue to wander down the other side of the hall. Looking into his eyes, his wide, sparkling, empathetic eyes, you took a breath to ease your pounding heart. “You’re okay. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, no matter what any of them say. No one is forcing you to do this.” He nodded, making sure you nodded along with him. “This isn’t me trying to talk you into it, but you’ve come this far. If anyone has the capability of going in there and talking to this Soobin guy, it’s you.” You tried to look away, but he took a finger to your chin, keeping your eyes on his. “You’re Aang,” he whispered, and it made you both laugh.

After a long deep breath, you whispered, “And you’re Katara,” just to laugh all over again. His toothy smile flushed your cheeks pink. “Only if you want to be,” you added, and he rolled his eyes.

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t want to be your Katara.”

Standing within the world's biggest hallway, the space seemed to close in on you, the air growing tighter, and that feeling from the car ride this morning came back. Butterflies filled your belly. His finger on your chin, frozen in place, didn’t dare to move. Only his eyes shifted to your lips, and just as you were both about to bite the bullet and close the inches between you, the doors to four different classrooms flew open.

Jumping apart, rejoining reality, you both turned away from one another for a few seconds as students poured out into the hall. Your friends down the other end blended in with everyone else, you couldn’t spot them as you faced Wooyoung. When his eyes found you again, he gave you a smile, then nodded toward the classroom that was nearing empty.

“I got you,” he said, holding up a pinky finger.

He’s got you.

You’ve got you.

You could do this.

Tiptoeing toward the classroom, Wooyoung getting lost in the crowds that washed him down the hall, you hovered a few feet from the door that was now closed. Students were either filing into other rooms or trekking down the mile long staircases. It would just be you and Soobin. If he allowed you to speak.

Just you and Soobin. You would speak your truth.

After a breath that ended with the heaviest sigh, you threw away your inhibitions and grabbed the doorknob, pushing the heavy metal open with a creak. The lecture room was like any other, numerous rows of chairs behind long tables all facing a large desk toward the corner of the room in front of a chalkboard and a tall projector and screen. Like the rest of the building it smelled of books and old paper, like school.

The man standing behind his desk gathering his things into a bag looked like school.

Tall, a stretched out type of stocky, Soobin had dark hair with a few strands of pepper streaking through it. Glasses perched on his nose, he used the knuckle of a finger to push them back after shoving a few leather bound books into his bag. You wouldn’t lie, he was stunning, you cursed yourself for not considering law as an option for a major. Tori was going to eat this up.

He didn’t hear you until you took a couple steps toward him, and still, there were feet upon feet of space between you. His head popped up, his hair parted to the side somewhat gracing his forehead ever so slightly.

“Hi,” he said, his voice clear, and so deep. “Can I help you?” Looking at your trembling fingers folded in front of your middle, Soobin’s brows dipped. “Is everything alright? Were you just in my lecture?”

“No,” you said, then cleared your throat, feeling the tightening begin already. “I, uh, I wasn’t, I just… Was hoping you’d have a few minutes to talk?”

Glancing about his empty room, he peered at his things, then back to you. “If this is about the practice, I’ll have to send you to enrollment, I’m not-”

“It’s about Mina,” you pushed from your lips, cutting him straight off. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Mr. Choi, but I could really use your help.”

Setting his jaw straight, his lips that always seemed to rest in a smile pointed down. Looking in front of him, at the rows of tables and chairs, he sighed, then nodded once. He stepped around his desk, leaving his things behind. Motioning for you to follow him, he sat on the table of the first row, letting his longer than life legs hang off the edge. His feet were almost touching the floor.

“Is she okay?” he asked, not giving away anything with an inflection in his tone. He was a lawyer, he was going to be good at this.

Sitting beside him, using your hands to help you up onto the table, you left ample space between you and Soobin. “Uh, she’s okay,” you said, folding your hands in your lap. “I’m not.”

He released a breath, letting his head shake, pointing his focus forward. “One good year,” he mumbled to himself. “What’d she do?”

Taken aback, you stuttered a few times before you were able to say, “A lot. She was involved with… a lot. I felt bad coming here, you don’t know me, I don’t know you, but I’m at a loss of where to go, or what to do.”

Soobin leaned back on his hands, his wide chest curving inward, his light blue button down clinging to his muscle. “Your feelings are valid, Aurora.” The way your eyes shot open made him smile, his lips pulling to the side. “You’ve met Chan, kid. The only boy in the world who cannot keep his mouth shut. I was fully prepared for you to come in here today, he gave me the rundown. Usually I walk out with my class so I can get home as fast as I can to my wife.”

“Faden,” you said, and his smile grew.

“Chan ran you through our family tree, I heard,” Soobin said. “Always some type of excited, that one is,” he glanced away from you, “Funny, too,” he looked back at you, “But, not as funny as my Wonwoo.” A snicker passed through his lips, one you joined in on. “Don’t know why I felt the need to share that with you. Probably has to do with the fact that you share no relation with my family in any way, yet our history cannot help itself. Our lives are still intertwined.”

“You mean,” you cleared your throat, “My dad?”

Soobin pressed his lips into a flat smile and raised his brows. “Your dad, Aurora.”

“Chan told me he was… an asshole to Faden,” you said, then shook your head quickly, “Mrs. Choi, sorry.” He huffed a laugh.

“Soobin and Faden,” he assured you. “Don’t stress it.”

“What happened between them?” you whispered your question, and for the first time it seems you’ve struck him with the unknown.

Taking his time to think, the process happening all over his face, he tilted his head. “How new is this for you? Chan, and this?”

Toying with your fingers, you said, “Very new. I didn’t know any of you existed until a week or so ago.”

“Right,” Soobin said, his tone always breathless, yet on point. “I’m not sure it’s my place to tell you what happened between them, Aurora.” Pointing his brows, he shook his head. “If you asked your father, would he talk about it with you?”

“I dunno,” you muttered, glancing down at your hands. “We talk about a lot, but he’s never brought up his past like that. It’s always vague, he likes to start from when I was born. He said that’s when his life began, or something.”

His smile triggered yours. “That’s beautiful,” he said. “I know how he feels.” There’s a few seconds of quiet before Soobin sat himself up and sighed. “Now, speaking of children, let’s get to Mina, shall we?” He gave you a look that told you you must’ve physically turned green. “It’s alright, Aurora, Chan spoke with me. I’ve been debriefed,” he laughed, “Don’t hold back on me, I know my daughter, I can handle it.”

“I’m just going to tell you everything I know,” you whispered, and he smiled with his nod. “All of it, Soobin.”

Twisting on the table, trying to break some type of ice, he folded his long legs beneath him and motioned for you to do the same. “Hit me,” he said, his chin low and his gaze on focus mode.

Every nerve you felt out in the hallway had vanished. Something about this man, about Soobin, made it entirely too easy to speak to him. He listened, he took in every word, every sentence, no matter how clinically insane it sounded, and he digested it. Processing in real time, the man, a certified genius allegedly, dots were being connected and ties were being tied.

Though most of what you told him was you accusing his daughter of being a liar, and a manipulative bitch, he took it all like you were talking to him about the shoes you had bought for the school year. Not one thing that came out of your mouth made him flinch, made him itch, made him stop you out of fear of blowing his top.

How crazy was this chick?

Unsure of how long it actually took to tell him everything, you were almost near tears twice, something he took into account.

“I swear to you,” you whispered by the end of it all. Glancing about the room, you held one hand on your heart and the other in the air. “Whatever the hell it is they do in court,” you said, and he laughed. “I solemnly swear. I”ve spoken the truth. My truth. I’m not here to accuse your daughter, I am not here to get her into trouble, I am not here to make her out to be a bad person, because believe me, Soobin. Aside from this shit, I know she could be a really good person.”

Dropping his eyes, Soobin bobbed his head and shot you a half smile. “First of all, thank you for coming to me. I appreciate you coming here, telling me all of this.” Taking a needed deep breath, you popped your brows. “Second of all,” he started, sitting forward, placing his elbows on his knees, “I am so sorry.” His pause held power, a lawyer's choreographed moment of silence. “This is not me apologizing for her, or because of her. This is me apologizing to you as a person on the outside. You didn’t deserve any of that, no person does.”

“Thank you,” you whispered.

Soobin glanced at the door. “Your friends that you said came with you, are they okay?”

Following his line of sight, not a soul seen from the tiny window on the door, you said, “I think so, for now.” Whipping your head back to him, your wide eyes excited his own. “Seonghwa, Park Seonghwa. He’s here with me. The Vice President of the fraternity.”

Soobins cheeks broke out into a knowing smile. “Jimins nephew,” he said with a chuckle.

Energy surged through your body. “Yes,” your whisper was breathless. “Him. He said he could help us. That you guys… You could help us. All things with Mina aside, the wench sitting on the throne in my sorority needs to be taken care of.” Soobin considered his options. “I know, your daughter is involved, I can understand if you won’t. Either way, we’re going to go to the dean's office and do this all over again, except it will be five of us in that room with him. Maybe more if we can get my best friend's boyfriend to join us, and knowing him and her, it won’t take much convincing. Trust me.”

Soobin rolled his eyes playfully and looked down to the table beneath him. “Oh, don’t worry, I remember my twenties.” Sharing a laugh with him, he reached over to you when it got quiet, placing a firm hand to your shoulder. A fatherly hand. “Like I said, thank you for coming here first. Trust me when I say, that when the time comes, I’ll stand with you and your friends.”

Holy shit.

You could’ve jumped out of your skin. Tossing your head backward with the loudest sigh, a tear seemed to slip out at the same time. Unable to help yourself, you launched yourself forward and hugged him. Returning it, his arms firm and strong, Soobin let go when you did, letting you hug him for as long as you needed.

Pulling away from him you touched your cheeks and let out a laugh. More tears were falling. “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

Soobin put his hand back on your shoulder. “That’s okay, let it out. You just revisited some traumas, it’s heavy to talk about, but the more we do, the lighter it gets.”

Wiping your cheeks clean, you sniffled. “You should be a therapist.”

Soobin breathed through a laugh. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“I mean it,” you said. “You seem like a good dad, too. I’m sorry this is all happening with Mina.”

He brushed the matter off, then hopped from the table, offering you his hand to help you down safely. When you looked up at him, he smiled and said, “Your dad seems like a good dad, too.” The words brought the tears back to your eyes. “Learn about his past, but don’t hold it against him. People can learn, people can change. I’ve watched it happen, in three different people.”

Out of all the names you’ve learned, you couldn’t place who he was talking about, but figured it must’ve meant the world to him.

“Mina can, too,” you offered, and he smiled, grabbing your shoulder once more before he walked to his desk.

“Thank you, Aurora, but now I have to go home to my wife.”

Heading for the door, you waved at him and flashed him a genuine smile. “Thanks, Soobin. I appreciated your time.”

Hitting you with one last lazy smile, he propped his phone up to his ear, and just as you were walking through the doorway, you heard him say, “Hi, my love. We’re going to need to come up here together within the next couple of days, can Kai take the store for a day or two?”

The hallway was silent.

Pulling the door closed behind you, you stepped away from it and ran your hand through your hair.

You’d done it. You had spoken to Soobin, you told him everything, every detail down to his daughter lying about his son. He heard all about Yunho, all about how he teetered back and forth between you and Mina, and she knew about it, but you didn’t make her out to be the complete villain there, Yunho easily fit the mold as well.

A grown adult, one who works at the college, now knew about Yeji’s scheme. It was out there. It was no longer a petty thing for your make believe hierarchy shit.

He believed you. He believed it all.

The truth, your truth.

Facing the end of the hall your friends were sitting around, you watched as their heads perked up.

Their truth.

Our truth.

Your steps started out light, the dizziness you felt since stepping out of Soobins presence intoxicating, but the closer you got to them, the more they came into view, their beautiful faces and their anxious anticipation, your steps turned into strides, which then turned into a run as a smile and a ragged laugh graced your lips. Their murmurs could be heard, flowing in one ear and out the other, their excited energy influencing your own.

Wooyoung leapt to his feet, the others rising with a hesitance, not wanting to get their hopes up too high before you had the chance to spill the news, but the boy couldn’t hold himself back. Walking toward you, knowing you weren’t going to slow down he opened his arms, throwing them around you as you launched yourself onto his chest, arms tightening around his neck. With your feet off the floor, he laughed and stumbled backward at the impact.

Catching your breath, your shoes found the tile. Tangling your hands within his hair, his dark waves framing his face, you pulled back from him and pressed your noses together. One of his hands took to your cheek, brushing away tears that lingered and new ones that fell. Heart pounding between your lungs, you loosed a laugh with him and pressed your hands to his cheeks.

“I did it,” you whispered, and he smiled, his gaze full of pride.

“You did it,” he whispered back, and then he lost himself in you, your lips finally meeting. A kiss way overdue, yet so perfectly timed you couldn’t even bring yourself to reprimand your heart that reached out toward him.

You’d done it. Soobin knew, and he was willing to help you.

And, as much as it was a relief to have gotten past this first step, knowing what was to come did nothing but scare you shitless.

NU home ✧ nice for what masterlist ✧ talk to me ✧ thank you for reading <3

you do not have permission to copy or translate my works without my consent.

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miss-tc-nova · 7 months ago

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With Reckless Choices - Leona Kingscholar x Reader Pt 8

Now we're getting to a turning point. It's a little short, but would've been too long if combined with part 9 so, here are.

Premise: Conversations before the wedding

Words: 888

Music Inspiration: Dangerously - Charlie Puth

~~~Disclosure~~~

White fabric cascades around me, embroidery patterned to mimic scales. The capelet stretches across my back, stitched to silver bangles at my wrists. Atop my head rests a tiara, silver prongs pointed upward as does a dragon’s horns. I’ve been dressed as an homage to the man I’m meant to marry—a symbol of my life made in offering to him. In only a few hours’ time, I will pledge myself to him and serve the future king of Briar Valley until my last breath.

It breaks my heart.

Staring into the mirror, I struggle to clamp down on the emotions welling in my heart lest I ruin the perfection created for this day. Though my face remains stoic, I’m losing the battle while tears well in my eyes.

“And here I thought the wedding was supposed to be a couple’s happiest day.”

With a gasp, I whirl back.

He looks impeccable—imposing. His long, black tuxedo coat has extravagant designs seen only in certain light, silver accents lining the edges. Beneath it rests a black vest with silver buttons, holding down the black cravat. His clean black pants are about the only thing plain about his attire, though his heeled boots made his already towering height even more so. Latched across his shoulders is a long, trailing cape lined in silver. His long hair is slicked back, exposing me to the full effect of his scrutiny.

Thinking fast, I reply, “It’s bad luck for the couple to see each other before the ceremony.”

“But to you, this day is already the worst day of your life, is it not?” he hums. “What worse could a little bad luck do?”

I can feel the fear prickling at the back of my neck. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Today’s going to be marvelous—your family ensured it would be. How could I be any happier.” Turning back towards the mirror, I straighten out my clothes in an attempt to calm my nerves. “The entire world has its eyes on us; you’re not getting cold feet now, are you?”

My heart skips when a chilled finger slips under my chin. Nearly paralyzed, I stare into the mirror where our eyes meet as he leans over my shoulder. There’s disdain swirling in those green eyes.

“Projection doesn’t suit a Draconia, my derolyle.” That grip under my chin tightens. “Are you going to leave me standing at the alter on my own?”

“No.” The word leaves me without hesitation. “Never.”

Deep, his voice crawls with traces of malevolence. “Then why do I find my beautiful fiancé—mere hours before our own matrimony—mourning an adulterous relationship?”

Ice floods my veins, fear piercing my heart. As my fiancé strolls around me, I might die of anticipation waiting for his lethal strike.

“You were impressively discreet in your deceptions, especially concerning the status of those involved. I certainly hope you enjoyed your little outings.”

An instinctive flinch overcomes me as his hand flies forward, but rather than the feeling of pain, I hear a flutter of paper. Daring to peek, I find a flurry of photos drifting ominously towards the floor. Each and every one of them are of me where I should not have been. At first glance, it would be nigh impossible to determine that I’m the subject of those pictures, but whoever collected them clearly knew. I was not as careful as I thought.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” he asks.

I wish I could choke on my own voice. “P-Please…”

“Please what?”

It’s the only thing I want. “Don’t hurt him.”

“How peculiar.” Returning to my field of vision, he peers down at me, eyes seething with malice. “Even in the face of the man you scorned, you only think of your lover.”

“He…” I’m going to regret this. “He doesn’t mean anything to me. He was a toy I could have some fun with. Everything that happened was my choice. Burning bridges with another country for such reasons would be silly.”

The smile that curves his lips tightens the chains—he’s not fooled for even a second. “What a lucky man he was.” From the inside pocket of his jacket, the man draws the phone facilitating our rendezvous. “But I’m afraid that all ends here.”

A swift clench of his fist crushes the phone to pieces, causing me to flinch. The dragon’s eyes seem to glow as his serious expression turns on me.

“Love me or not, this infidelity will not continue. The moment you step into that hall, you belong to me. Am I clear?”

As does this conversation, the draw of air to my lungs shakes my chest.

“Yes, my liege.”

“Good.”

Atop my head, the powerful prince presses a kiss.

“And I noticed that you added him to the guest list. How cruel of you.”

My eyes divert.

“I expect you to break the news to him tonight.” His heels click sharply against the tile, though there’s a pause at the door. “I shall see you at the alter, my derolyle.”

At the click of the door, my knees give. He did well in shredding my heart. A mixture of terror and despair washes over me.

And it takes my full effort to contain said grief and compose myself before the cursed hour.

~~~~~

Part 9

Nova’s Twisted Wonderland Masterlist

#gender neutral reader #twisted wonderland leona #leona kingscholar x reader #leona x reader #leona kingscholar #with reckless choices #twst leona

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lizzybeth1986 · 2 years ago

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Liam and Olivia: When You Prefer The Side Character To The Main

Series - TRR's Alternative LIs: The Romances that Didn't Happen

Previous: A Brief History of Alternative Romances in Choices

A/N1: My apologies for the length of this one! There was a LOT to explore, and even more that I had cut out from my initial draft.

A/N2: This essay operates on the premise that Liam is not the "favoured LI"/"golden boy" of the team - an argument I have made in detail in other Liam-centric essays. I am not interested in arguing those same points in my comment box/reblogs. Visit the Liam section of my meta masterlist if you want to learn more about that.

CW: Mentions of non-consensual kissing. Mentions of the plot against the MC in TRR1. Very fleeting mention of the "infertility subplot" TRH pushed onto Hana.

(Screenshot from HIMEME's YouTube channel)

As I mentioned in the previous essay, TRR (along with ES, to a far smaller extent) was the only series that seemed to make an attempt to pair even their popular LIs with another character. It also was (along with TCaTF) one of the very few books that hinted at an alternative romance in the first book itself.

This section of the essay series will perhaps be the longest, since Liam x Olivia got the earliest hints, and was built up first. While the other three pairings were introduced or hinted at in Books 2 and 3, the reader got to see glimpses of a possible Liam x Olivia pairing from the finale of Book 1 onwards.

Why An Alternative LI?

TRR is, essentially, a story that hinges on the likelihood of an arranged marriage. The character that makes this entire story possible, Liam, is expected to pick a bride by the end of his social season, whether he is ready for marriage or not. The ending of Book 1 itself ties his ascension as a king to marriage.

(Screenshot from Skylia's YouTube channel)

To prove Madeleine's point, the finale actually shows us that until he picks a fiancèe, he literally won't be addressed as king, but still as Prince Liam. So while this point does get heavily retconned later on in the series, the original story itself required Liam to be married sooner than any of the other LIs.

But Liam's story doesn't just hinge on needing a good Queen for his kingdom. His arc - at least in Book 1 - involved learning that being a good king doesn't mean he needs to sacrifice his own desires or romantic sensibilities. If that were the case, he could have just been stuck with Madeleine. No - the story was supposed to be about Liam learning to validate his personal aspirations without hurting his political position. It was essential then that the woman he picked was someone he either was already in love with (the MC), or someone he grew to love over the course of the series.

When you take this context into account, having an alternative romance becomes not only convenient, but essential.

And if the MC doesn't choose Liam as her endgame...who better for this "romance" than an old friend who has always held a torch for him?

A Romantic Rival

(Screenshots from Skylia's YouTube channel)

As most of the fandom remembers the first book and the trajectory of the Liam and Olivia relationship in it pretty well, I'll try not to go into too much detail. The Olivia of Book 1 has two parallel storylines: the one with the MC, where they first start out hating and then learn to like each other...and the one with Liam, which begins with Olivia assuming she will win the social season, but becoming more and more resigned to the MC's chances of winning as her position in the competition declines.

There is obviously a lot more focus on her dynamic with the MC, for two reasons:

1. Until the MC chooses an endgame, an LI will never show more interest in another person. It will always be the alternative LI whose interest initially drives that side-story. Making an LI reciprocate that interest can result in a negative impression of them, as fans could potentially believe that their love for the MC is not genuine or special. This is the case for all LIs in the series, not just Liam.

2. Narratively, the first book wants to make Olivia's love for Liam their big character reveal. It is the first time Olivia actively opens up to the MC, and is canonically the beginning of their "friendship". So very little emphasis is placed on her emotional attachment to Liam until the Coronation (with her cactus gift and her confession to the MC before leaving), and even less on how Liam feels about her.

Whatever little we do get of Liam and Olivia's dynamic before the finale is focused on their childhood friendship. We learn from Liam that she was a sad, lonely child when they met, heartbroken by her parents' death and the negligence of the aunt who was supposed to raise her. Her attachment to Liam emerges from his support of her when they were children, and we later learn in TRH that he not only supported her, but often empathized with young Olivia and comforted her in ways that didn't give away her vulnerabilities.

Olivia claims at the beginning of TRR1 that "everyone just assumed Liam and [Olivia] would get married one day". Given what we learn later about Constantine and the Nevrakis family (and the fact that no one backs Olivia's claim at any point in the book), it is possible she was exaggerating. But it is also true that until the MC gains more popularity and Madeleine makes her entrance, Olivia is assumed to win the social season quite easily. In the same way that Madeleine is positioned as the "political" rival in Book 1's story, Olivia is viewed as the "romantic" counterpoint to the MC.

From Liam's end, there is actually very little shown about his thoughts on Olivia. It is clear that he cares for her, wants the MC to think well of her and understand her circumstances. While as a child, he comforted her when she was called a cactus by reminding her that they were tough plants that no one messed with; as an adult he is pained by her vindictiveness towards people who haven't even harmed her. There is plenty of grounds here for some sort of relationship, but enough there that shows why the MC who will marry him would be a slightly better fit.

The second half of TRR1 focuses on softening Olivia to an extent - having her and the MC optionally bond over their dislike for Madeleine (who is viewed as the "bigger bad" at this point) and having her only occasionally approach Liam for his company. Her feelings for him come to the forefront only during his Coronation, around the time she withdraws due to the blackmail exposing her parents' attempts to assassinate King Constantine.

This moment in the series completes Olivia's transition from antagonist to a possible friend. The reveal that Olivia loved Liam all along ensures that the MC can sympathize with her for not getting the man she loves, and allows the reader to envision her as a future ally.

To some who already vouched for a Liam-Olivia endgame before the finale, this moment was a confirmation. To others who didn't exactly see Olivia's actions towards Liam as rooted in affection, this moment was a revelation. Whatever it was, this moment made her extremely popular in the fandom.

But this scene also had a more important purpose - it provided players not interested in Liam, a possible out from the situation. The ending of TRR1 hinged on Liam choosing the MC as his future bride, then being forced to accept someone else when the scandal broke out. Book 2 allows the MC to explore what she wants without the expectations of a social season. The prospect of a titled lady who genuinely loved Liam being his potential endgame would make it easier for fans of other LIs. It sounded like a perfect ending for everyone.

The (Unwanted) Kiss, and What It Says About the Fandom

(Screenshots from Danni Stone's YouTube channel)

A scene that often gets ignored (or conveniently forgotten) when discussing Liam x Olivia in TRR1, is the kiss in Lythikos.

The Lythikos Ball in Ch 8 is already a social battleground of sorts for Olivia. She wields her power as hostess here - monopolising Prince Liam's company, and humiliating the MC and her friends with the worst seating and ice-cold food. Things come to a head when - while dancing the Cordonian Waltz with Liam - she forces a kiss on him, completely disregarding his ability to consent.

I use these precise words to describe this incident for two reasons. First, because canon refused to do so. Second, because most of the fandom refused to do so.

Different characters in the story respond to this incident in different ways. A shocked "what a bold play!", a sarcastic "Olivia's growing up, how sweet", and an enraged "she's gone mad with power here!" emerge from the ladies of the court - all focused on Olivia's intentions and actions. None of these responses ever address Liam's end of this situation.

Even more interesting are the options the MC is given to address the situation when Liam speaks to her later.

(Screenshots from Danni Stone's YouTube channel. This is the second dialogue option)

She either speaks to Liam like nothing happened, or engages in victim blaming. Personally I think both options are as bad as each other. Neither of these options include "are you okay?" or "were you comfortable with that?".

Liam's answer to the MC's (optional) accusations is perhaps the only time the issue of consent is even barely addressed (and even here Liam is duty-bound to think of Olivia's welfare over his own comfort). It is appalling that it takes the MC practically victim blaming this man for that to happen. And it is equally disturbing that Liam's response is so apologetic, so contrite, as if this entire situation was his fault.

The kiss is viewed as a number of things in the book: an affront to the suitors who have no power in Olivia's estate, or a political blunder. But what does it mean to the man who had this kiss forced upon him? Would he really feel comfortable or safe around her again after that? The writers clearly didn't know, nor did they care. And most of the fandom was only too happy to follow suit.

The few times this kiss was spoken about amongst the fandom, the question of consent was barely ever addressed. The kiss was either brushed aside as unimportant, seen as an indication of the "love and passion" Olivia had for Liam, or viewed as a manifestation of her jealousy towards the MC. Liam is sometimes seen as "clueless" for not "noticing Olivia's feelings...I mean, she literally kissed him!!" All of which could be true, but it doesn't erase the fact that his consent was never given, nor his comfort with the situation ever considered.

It is doubly ironic given the fandom reaction to the MC's plight in Applewood, after Tariq attempts to kiss her without her consent (though this situation involves significant privacy violations and dark conspiracies, and Liam's does not). The MC's situation was (rightfully) viewed as horrible and potentially traumatising, and many were upset that the emotional impact of it wasn't adequately addressed in the story. It wouldn't be surprising if Liam's situation wasn't viewed on the same level - given the difference in contexts - but the fandom and canon rarely saw this as something that happened to him, without his consent.

Ironically, the fandom never really considered Olivia planting a whole smacker on Liam's mouth as possible "proof" that she could engage in creepy, entitled behaviour...but they did often view Liam as "creepy" for...complimenting diamond-option outfits, or saying romantic-coded dialogues that the MC would reciprocate by default (again - I don't deny this is a problem and those lines should have been coded properly. However one cannot deny the doubt standards here). Olivia was the one who forced a kiss on the object of her affection in canon, but Liam was the one who got so many "abuser" and "harrasser" (and worse!) depictions in fanfic when TRR2 and 3 were out.

I will be addressing this particular scene again in another context, in a later essay in the series. I would like my readers here to not forget this scene, or the (lack of) outrage around it. It would be helpful to ponder over why Olivia's behaviour here is largely viewed as no big deal, especially when other side characters (and at least one main character) could be villainized for far, far less.

Olivia and Liam in TRR2 and 3

(Screenshots from Skylia's YouTube channel)

TRR1's finale and TRR2 show a small shift in Liam and Olivia's dynamic. Now that he is engaged, and in love with a woman who isn't Olivia, their interactions become sporadic and awkward. To ensure that Liam won't be viewed as a cassanova, the narrative keeps their interactions to a minimum. Group scenes that involve Liam often leave Olivia out, and group scenes that involve Olivia exclude Liam.

However, to address the "romantic potential" from TRR1's finale, the book shows Liam and Olivia interact in at least one scene in Ch 10. Here, they have a short, stilted conversation that leaves Liam concerned about Olivia's well-being, and that makes Olivia grieve over her unrequited love for him to an equally concerned MC.

Olivia's story in TRR2 largely centers around establishing her character (snarky, prickly, warriorlike. Much of this is actually a deviation from her writing in TRR1), strengthening her relationship with the MC, and integrating her into the core group.

Olivia's feelings for Liam get addressed again after the MC makes her final choice of LI. The MC's acceptance or rejection of Liam's proposal results in a bit of tension between the two women. If Liam is the MC's choice, Olivia admits to her heartbreak despite being truly happy that Liam has found love. If not, she reveals a slight resentment that the MC could so easily throw away the love that Olivia so badly wanted. The narrative allows Olivia her complicated, ambivalent feelings towards the Liam x MC match, and expects the MC to understand and sympathize. By default.

If you don't choose Liam in TRR3, his romance with Olivia does start here. And by this I mean that Liam is now allowed to reciprocate her affections.

(Screenshots from the Skylia YouTube channel (Drake playthrough). The screenshots aren't in order. 1st Liam x Olivia scene is the handholding at Applewood (5), 2nd is dancing at Vegas (1st two), 3rd is Liam asking Olivia for a dance at the finale ball (middle two), and the last is Liam asking Olivia out (6))

Even in the playthrough where Liam is marrying the MC, his default is to trust Olivia, show her kindness and staunchly defend her to people who suspect her motives. Liam advocates for her innocence in TRR3 Ch 2, even as her family becomes one of the prime suspects. The MC may vouch for her by choice...but if she does choose to suspect Olivia, it is Liam who pushes back against the idea.

By this point, the MC and Olivia can cement their friendship if the former has worked on gaining her trust. If not - the book has already created an inbuilt mechanism to ensure Olivia's loyalty anyway. It is tied to her gratitude and affection for Liam, the one person who consistently believed in her from childhood. Whether the MC makes an effort to win her approval or not, Olivia respects her. Her emotional attachment to Liam as an old friend, and loyalty to her king, ensures that her support is gained by default throughout.

Outside of his own playthrough, though, the narrative does slip in a few extra scenes where Liam shows an obvious romantic interest in Olivia. It's small - he isn't exactly yelling from the rooftops that he loves her - but it is definite progress where he seeks her out for support, dances with her and eventually asks her out to dinner at the finale. The scenes are few but prominent, and leave no doubt to the reader that Liam fully intends to court her.

So...why is Liam still single in the Drake, Hana and Maxwell playthroughs of TRH?

Writer Bias

When you read enough interviews and watch enough livestreams from the TRR team, one thing becomes very, very clear. They love their TCaTF callbacks. And no callback is more beloved to the writers than the repurposing of Zenobia Nevrakis' sprite to create her descendant, Olivia.

In this section, I will focus in particular on Kara Loo, COO of Pixelberry and one of the head writers of the TRR/H/F series. Going by several interviews and social media posts, Kara wrote most of Olivia and Drake's scenes and dialogues (along with "some of the Prince's speeches"), and was in fact the driving force behind how Olivia's character came to be, in the original series.

"...when we were creating Book 1, we wanted an evil redhead to be your antagonist, and Kara said, "Oh, what if we used Zenobia, but the twist is she's a Nevrakis descendant?"" - Jennifer Young, Looking Back on The Royal Romance (Sept 2018)

Kara has openly admitted before to having a fondness for Olivia's particular character type. In an interview with Daily Dahlia, she spoke of Val, one of the TCaTF LIs, in glowing terms that perfectly fit the way Olivia has been written as well:

"I love writing Val Greaves in The Crown & The Flame. I love writing for characters that are a little meaner and will really just say what they’re thinking, even if it isn’t exactly tactful." - Daily Dahlia's Interview with the Pixelberry Crew (Sept 2016).

The love for mean (and white! Don't forget white) women among the team, is pretty clear when you look at the kind of reception TRR's mean white women get.

Notably, Kara does have the occasional nice thing to say about Liam too. In an interview before the release of TRR2, she spoke of how "considerate and loving he is", how "there is nothing mean or selfish about him". As a Liam fan who kept seeing him bashed left and right after the TRR1 finale, those words initially felt like a massive relief.

But now, seeing the way the team treats nicer and more diplomacy-oriented characters in the series, this fulsome praise for Liam's selflessness gives me pause. It reminds me too much of how most of the team swore up and down that Hana would be their choice of LI to marry in a livestream, at the same time that they were slamming an infertility subplot on her in the books. Looking back with the knowledge of how the writers would treat Liam later, praise like this seemed less focused on finding him lovable, and more on ensuring that he gave constantly to the MC without ever getting much in return.

While Liam's treatment is not as bad as Hana or Kiara's, one must take note that the team - esp the head writers - have never really hesitated to throw Liam under the bus or retcon entire chapters and backstories to make characters like Drake seem better than him (eg. The narrative choice to have Drake claim Liam was leading the MC on when they first met in TRR3, which has led to more than one attempt to rewrite the bachelor party).

Part of this could be attributed to just the fondness for a specific character type. But I do think that with Kara in particular, ideology also plays a role in her preferences. There are at least two interviews from the team where her liking for darker, more violent storylines has been mentioned. In TRR3 the team affectionately called some of their brainstorming sessions with Kara as "Kara's trail of bodies" (one idea was to kill off Madeleine in Lythikos), and in the TRF livestream they mention that she initially wanted a war storyline.

This leaning towards a more militaristic mindset shows...in the care that Kara takes for Olivia's dialogues and especially her spy scenes (tho such scenes actually don't contribute much to the plot). In contrast there is a subtle disdain for the more diplomacy-minded characters shown in scenes where Olivia's ideologies are measured up against theirs (eg. Any scene where Hana and Olivia are supposed to work together, or the vast difference between the "valiant" Lythikos tournament and the "ridiculous" Castelserraillan flower competition in TRH3).

Even though it is often the diplomacy that saves the day at the end, the framing always highlights the militaristic way of thinking more positively. Given that Kara writes a lot of Olivia, and a fair amount of Liam, it's pretty obvious now where her (and the team's) particular bias may lie.

Because of this bias, it became far easier for TRR's writers to lean into popular fandom myths when it suited them, or pander to a particular section of the fandom. Which is the subject of my next section.

Fandom Entitlement

Olivia often has two types of fans - the ones who wanted to ship her with their MCs in canon (and couldn't), and the ones who wanted to be "bestieeeees!" with her. The frustration of the former was rooted in the fact that wlw had only one romantic option, but I will not be talking about them.

The latter were found in plenty among the Liam, Drake and Maxwell stans - all of whom either viewed her as an ally to win over (Liam), or as someone to push onto Liam, so they could romance the men they preferred in peace (mostly Drake and Maxwell. Some Hana stans but not as many).

As I'd mentioned in an earlier section, Olivia's final scene in TRR1 allowed people who didn't want to romance Liam, to envision a narrative 'out' for themselves. By the time Olivia reappeared in TRR2 Ch 5, she'd gained a cult following among many, many fans. A lot of them were actively rooting for the start of a romance between Liam and Olivia, and very few resented her for her feelings or begrudged her past actions.

But there was one downside. The intent among the majority who rooted for this pairing, was more about "getting Liam out of the way", than any actual romantic potential. Because of this, certain Liam x Olivia stans (ironically, the Drake romancers were the loudest voices in this group) felt a ridiculous level of entitlement towards this pairing.

A number of readers insisted on having Liam fall for Olivia immediately, wanted him to show feelings for her instantly, and complained when he didn't do so while his (optional) romance with the MC was still on.

Olivia's sad, longing gazes in TRR2 propelled many a reader to complain about what an awful situation poor Olivia was in and how insensitive and uncaring Liam was (even in the face of screenshots that clearly showed him worrying about her desolate mood). One of many examples comes from a post in Feb 2018 - a Drake stan's written walkthrough of TRR2 Ch 10, and ironically the following lines were made above a screenshot set that clearly showed Liam noticing how sad she was and worriedly asking the MC about that:

Liam finds you and as always, can’t help fawning over you. This time Olivia is right there and he is like, Oh yeah, Olivia, you are too here, hi. She definitely notices, gets upset, and leaves because she really does love him and she is third choice at best.

This was not the only one. There were multiple posts like these, and they often positioned Olivia as a figure of sympathy, yearning for a love that would never be hers. Liam in these readings was always positioned as someone who "didn't care" and later, "didn't deserve Olivia".

When he did start showing an interest in Olivia in Book 3, it went largely unnoticed by most of the fandom, even though he was romancing her in at least 3 out of 4 playthroughs. There were very, very few posts made about any of these romantic moments. Instead, from Chapters 3 to 10 of TRR3 - where Liam didn't show any indications of heartbreak re: the MC - certain Drake/Maxwell fans made posts complaining over his not pining over the MC, or theorizing that some of his friendly attempts to educate the MC about the country had to have been done with more than friendship in mind.

This section of the fandom often got insane amounts of pandering from the writers themselves. When TRR3 returned from a hiatus post Ch 9, we were suddenly hit with more scenes involving Liam's "heartbreak" (it featured sporadically in all three of the other playthroughs, but you could tell it was tailor-made for the Drake one because it got referenced there waaaay more) before the big battle with Anton. Fandom spoke far more on these scenes than on the ones they got for Liam x Olivia.

What was completely missed was that such "heartbreak" scenes happened because there was a demand from readers who weren't even Liam stans in the first place, and the same stans didn't hesitate to flip and label him "desparate" or "pining" or write fanfic where he was an absolute creep in response to a thing they asked for!

As for talk of the Liam x Olivia ship post TRR3, the phrase "sloppy seconds" started to be used often to address the pair after the series ended, and there were quite a few posts claiming that Liam didn't deserve such an incredible woman like Olivia.

(Edit Source: the playchoicesconfessions Tumblr blog)

Using the pining subplot that nonLiam stans had asked for, some of the same people would insist that Olivia "deserved better than to be sloppy seconds" (at some point after TRR3, I noticed that even some Liam stans would say the same!). This argument often came hand-in-hand with the lie that Liam never cared for Olivia enough (as one can see in the edit above). It also often hinged on the premise that the MC was Liam's first love, that he wouldn't (and shouldn't!) ever get over her, and that anyone else would rank as second best to him. And while I agree that Olivia deserves a partner who would wholeheartedly love her, this argument seemed to come from people who were eerily reluctant to imagine Liam leading a happy life without the MC.

Tbh, the fandom at large has always had a very confusing relationship with Liam as a character. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that from TRR2 onwards, making Liam a scapegoat was a very popular reading from the fandom. He was often expected to live up to impossible standards - way more than the other male LIs - and criticized incessantly for dialogues and action that the other two could easily get away with.

Many fans were (rightfully) frustrated by how Liam could have romantic lines by default (which the MC would by default reciprocate, to their chagrin) all through TRR1 - while ignoring romantic default dialogues from Drake - but also complained when Liam responded more calmly than expected to her rejection of his proposal. They also didn't like that he could be largely neutral/merely friendly towards the MC for most of TRR3. Damned if he didn't, damned if he did.

I'm not saying that this was the viewpoint of the entire fandom. There were people - yours truly included - who pushed back against such a biased view of this pairing. Against a view that insisted on centering only Olivia's feelings, while either badmouthing Liam for not returning her love, or ignoring the times when he did. There were people who pointed to canon for proof that he cared.

But enough voices vouched for this other, more unsavoury reading that "Olivia deserves better than to be Liam's sloppy seconds", that it became quite popular. That it became the accepted view in canon too, when the writers began work on TRH.

Olivia x Liam (not), TRH and Beyond

As we all know by now, Liam x Olivia did not happen in TRH. After a dance and an invitation to a date in the finale, Liam was back to being single and uninterested in any romantic relationships (like all the other LIs). It went to the point where he was ready to appoint the MC's future child as his heir (heir apparent, not presumptive. The fandom mockingly dubbed him "Rumpelstiltskin" for this). At the time, I imagined that perhaps the narrative was trying to erase the pair altogether, since no other LI got paired up either. It would be fair.

This wasn't exactly the case. In fact, in my opinion, what they managed to do was much worse.

(Screenshots from the HR Gameplay YouTube channel. Liam is renamed "Rayden" here)

Savannah's bachelorette (TRH1 Ch 7) has the MC and the ladies "address" certain pairings that were hinted at in TRR3. One doesn't get addressed at all, one addresses the LI by name only if the playthrough isn't the one where the MC is married to him.

Olivia's is the only one that got addressed regardless of whether the MC was married to the man she had wanted or not. And looking at the scene now, I really, really wish they didn't write it at all.

If the MC encourages Olivia to talk about her feelings for Liam, the latter shows anger and resentment over Liam not choosing her twice over. This, despite the fact that he did attempt to date her the previous book. This, despite the fact that he never indicated interest until he actually felt it. This... despite the fact that not returning the feelings of someone who likes you romantically is a normal, natural thing that said someone should accept without judging other person!

In fact, the fandom was more than willing to view other LIs "not returning feelings" as normal, natural and blameless...so why did only Olivia get sympathy and praise for her unrequited love, and why did only Liam have to be criticised for the same?? Even in THIS scene??

Liam x Olivia would not be referenced for 3-and-a-half books after this, until the very end of TRF. Over the course of the series, the team tested her compatibility and possible chemistry with at least two side characters. One was Jin, the Auvernese spy that Olivia fights with in TRH1 Ch 19. While they did seem to have some banter in the first book and a smattering of scenes in the second, interest quickly died down and Jin was written out of the story once the Auvernese royals' scandals were exposed.

TRH3 then hinted at Amalas x Olivia as a pair, peppering hints as early as the introductory chapters. There had been a few murmurings among the fandom for the same, since a number of wlw were fond of Olivia, and people liked headcanoning her as bi or lesbian (in fact, when the team claimed in a TRH1 livestream that having Olivia as an LI would "soften her" too much, the fandom protested). Amalas x Olivia was met with more approval than Jin x Olivia, and in TRF you could encourage Olivia to ask either Liam or Amalas for a dance.

Liam himself never got any other options for romance (understandable, none of the LIs did), and in fact had several aspects of his story chipped away, chunk by chunk, to benefit other characters. In the end, Liam is treated like Olivia's "alternative LI" than the other way around.

It was a pretty ironic ending for a pairing that people felt so entitled over in the beginning. After years of protests against Olivia being Liam's "sloppy seconds" just because he chose her after being rejected by their MCs... the narrative didn't mind treating him like some sort of "consolation prize" (one of two) for Olivia. And as expected, nor did the fandom.

Conclusion: Could This Pairing Have Worked?

Much as I dislike it now, I did think Liam x Olivia had some potential back then. Politically and emotionally, Liam and Olivia were opposites in many ways. There was a lot you could explore. Their background history and the sweetness of their childhood story had the potential to add layers to their dynamic.

But for a pair like Liam x Olivia to work, romantically, some things would need to change:

1. Respect in the writing room for both their ideologies, not just Olivia's. If you view one with adulation and the other with disdain, that will eventually show in the writing. These two could have been a solid power couple if the team could just set aside their boners for violence and knives once in a fucking while.

2. THE KISS. If you're going to have that kind of a scene around, especially in the context of TRR1's larger story, it needs to be addressed. From Liam's point of view. With Olivia openly regretting it and atoning for it, and Liam getting to choose how to handle that. It isn't just enough to assume they spoke offscreen, and then pretend the forced kiss never happened or that that violation meant nothing.

Olivia was wrong. Olivia crossed boundaries. Olivia disregarded Liam's consent. Liam was the victim here, not the person the MC should be shouting at - even by option.

If a romance should proceed between the two, that kiss deserves to be addressed with a lot of sensitivity and respect to Liam's own experience.

3. BALANCE! Between their perspectives, their viewpoints, their beliefs. Which would only be possible if you equally valued both characters.

4. Respect for Liam's feelings and his romantic choices, whatever they may be. Liam knows what he likes best. Him not returning Olivia's feelings is not a crime, nor does it make him any less of a caring person. Him falling in love a second time, seeing an old friend in a new light, should have been embraced as a concept.

Loving someone else deeply in the past shouldn't make his feelings for his second love any less genuine. But most of the fandom adopted such a way of viewing the Liam x Olivia relationship because it allowed them to pity Olivia and blame Liam (again) - and the team validated those sentiments out of excessive care for one character, and a lack of it for another.

Changes like these four would have definitely made for a better-written alternative romance. But given the kind of team and the fanbase TRR had, none of the changes I mention here would ever have a hope of becoming a reality. Olivia is too popular, too beloved to her writers and fandom, (and too white!) to be viewed with even this much of a critical eye. And tbh, once the fandom has marked a character (esp a character of colour - customizable or not) as a scapegoat, they would enjoy bashing them too much to stop. From then on, it would only be a matter of which excuse, which nitpick, which set of double standards, would work best.

Liam and Olivia had potential. And the narrative was able to get that story to the point where the two could at least have a first date. But team TRR squandered all its future possibilities in the mad rush to pander to a portion of their fandom, with a clear bias for the side character...and so we will never know how a more balanced portrayal would've looked like.

A/N3: I have quoted posts that have actually appeared on Tumblr, but without any identification marks. All of them are one among many such posts - either lost to digital decay or hard to find. I do not want to call out any of the individual posters - I want to make it clear that many of these posts are indicative of a fandom-wide problem. Do not try to find out, or harrass, these posters.

Next - Maxwell and Penelope: When You Like the Side Character So Much, You Gift Her A Shiny New LI

#essay series: trr's alternative LIs #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #king liam #liam rys #olivia nevrakis #trr meta

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ms-scarletwings · 2 years ago

Text

We gotta start accurately calling Sly Cooper a low fantasy universe at some point. It’s retrospectively wild how much supernatural shit is going on in front of your face that you don’t think about because it’s like… nothing to the characters that it’s happening to. People who have never played Sly Cooper have no clue how nonchalantly it grinds this rail between just “real world noire but furries” and straight up DC superpowers stuff.

• The surprising amount of undead, in hindsight

Black magic is just, you know, a thing…. and outside of when it’s the weapon of choice of the villain of the week, it’s not even really brought up. Tsao was building an army of honest to god vampires and Mz.Ruby has been fraternizing with homemade ghouls since she was a child. A second-game side quest involves descetrating a tomb, kidnapping a bunch of restless ghosts, and then unleashing them on the cops for a good prank. For Pete’s sake, Clockwerk, biggest bad of the franchise, is basically an eldritch machine possessed by the vengeful spirit of someone who became too petty and angry to die.

• There are people born with innate superpowers

So, there is no debate going on with the deal about Cooper abilities and this point, right? Sure, the Theivious Raccoonus has a lot of good pointers any thief worth their salt could gain from, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say somethings along the lines of gliding down lasers or turning invisible on command are a bit out of most readers’ capabilities. The 1st game’s humor in explaining off gameplay mechanics as in-universe phenomena had the unintended consequence of establishing that the Cooper clan members literally have a criminally inclined sort of spidey sense- literally hallucinating glowing auras and blue sparkles around anything both valuable and not nailed down. I think I also awkward appreciated the parallel to be spotted between the Cooper honer code and the self imposed limitations other media supers live by. That idea of “you have the gift of amazing power and you will choose to use it responsibly”, all the better here for the ways in which the clan’s premise subverts classic hero/villain dynamics.

• Ancient techniques of sorcery

run right alongside conventional weaponry

Some supers are born in this world, a lot of them are made. As if anyone with the time to practice and learn can just pick it up like karate. Religion has to be crazy in Sly Cooper considering there’s entire spiritualisms given demonstrable and epic power in what their followers are capable of. Murray literally can do some degree of magic from the third game and onward and there’s no telling what else he learned over the course of his Dreamtime training. Anyone with the wits and resources of the Contessa can figure out how to toy around with freaking mind controlling dark arts. Don’t get me started again on the whole “army of undead” thing which gets even weirder by the implication that the world does nothing to regulate these kind of abilities UP AND UNTIL the user starts to roleplay a cocky little warlord with their zombie friends. And Flame Fu is right there. A lot of what the panda king can do is closer to Bentley’s realm- very complicated and meticulous works of pyrotechnics, but Flame Fu is a whole something else that belongs in this discussion.

• Magical items and mythical beasts

The Mask of Dark Earth, the guru’s special stone, an entire kraken, a whole laundry list of things in The Contessa’s possession, an enormous swamp serpent, haunted trees, whatever the hell kind of ring Dimitri was wearing in the second game, a giant stone dragon statue that turns out to be AN ACTUAL FREAKING DRAGON in dormancy, a supercharged ancient bamboo forest, potentially the Cooper cane itself, and the not-to-be-overlooked every single piece of Clockwerk’s cursed body. I know I’m probably forgetting something because that was just off the cuff. It’s kind of wild that most of what we watch the Coopers focus on stealing can be stuff like museum paintings in a world where magic flying carpets are confirmed to exist. The hell. Why was I ever mocking the pirates in Bloodbath Bay for their paranoia and superstition?? Best part was always that basically none of it phased the resident smarty pants nerd character like it usually would anyone who fills that trope. Because of magic is just an accepted and normalized thing in the world, why WOULD Bentley talk about it any different than he would the history of lumberjacks or combustion physics? Instead of conflicting against his understanding of science, it just tacks onto it as more additional info, you know… the way it would if magic was just another set of rules to study and understand.

#sly cooper #sly cooper analysis #sly cooper and the thievius raccoonus #sly 2 band of thieves #sly 3 honor among thieves #scarlet talks about things

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lordgrimwing · 2 years ago

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20 questions for fic writers

tagged by @zannolin. Not tagging anyone but never let that stop you from doing something.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

98 (100 by early next week. the wonders of posting two short stories a week)

2. What's your total A03 word count?

274,925 (over 100,000 from works posted this year. Again, the wonders of posting two little things every week)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

The exhaustive list (but only what I've posted to public places), in no particular order

The Transformers

Brave Police (Mostly just a beta reader on that one, though)

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Star Trek/Enterprise

The Expanse

Inheritance Cycle

Torchwood

Rowland Sinclair Series (by Sulari Gentill - yes, I will encourage you to read/listen to the series! Also, the smallest fandom for which I write, ie. I created the tags and it's basically mine to control. Gosh, I should really finish my current WIP so the characters don't feel abandoned.)

Redwall (technically, the only things I've posted in a podfic of someone else's story)

Sherlock Holms

Temeraire

Detroit: Become Human

Beyonders (Another WIP I should finish so I can once again say I own more than 10% of the fandom)

Rings of Power (I'll separate it from the works that Tolkien was actually involved in)

Lord of the Rings/The Silmarillion (the source of the 2 stories per week)

-I sure hope that's everything-

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

In order of greatest to least

It Started With A Fever (Detroit: Become Human)

Interruptions (Transformers)

Checking Samples In Real Time (Detroit: Become Human)

Dawson's Christiana (Temeraire)

Scavenging More Than Parts (Transformers)

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I respond to every comment. Why? Because I like it when authors respond to my comments and I want readers to know that I see and appreciate that they not only took time to read my story but also to say something kind about it.

Admittedly, I am sometimes very late to responding when I'm busy or the comment left me very flustered (because how do I adequately convey how wonderful the reader made me feel?)

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably, It Started With A Fever. It's a sickfic and the sick character isn't better by the end but there is a plan for diagnostic testing and treatment. So, more open ending than angsty.

Actually, I looked back and realized that Spy in the DMD (Transformers) is angsty because readers don't know what will happen to the characters at the end (live? die? etc). Yeah, so that's probably my angstiest ending.

Though now that I'm thinking about it, Negligence (Silmarillion) is also a but angsty and certainly more likely to actually get people to have feeling over the characters and want a good ending than Spy in the DMD.

Okay, okay, I'll stop thinking about it and just move on (but Dawson's Christiana is--)

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Home (Inheritance). Ok also a little angsty, but the entire purpose is saving a character who died in canon and at the end he finally gets to go home with his best friend, even if he isn't totally healed from everything.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope. Most I've had is someone taking the time to comment about how they disagree with the premise of a story/how I interpreted why the directors/designers of a TV show did what they did.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Awkward smut? Like, I've only written it a little so it's probably still pretty clunky for people to read.

But in all seriousness, I write enthusiastically consensual slash and het smut. Basically, I want everyone to be happy and have a good time while I use them as writing guinea pigs. I'm sure that the more I write, the more I'll branch out into trying various things.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

I have not written a crossover (beyond crossovers between various series/universes in the Transformers franchise. Does that count? Like, it's canonically established that that's a thing that can happen).

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope (when your writing is only so-so, you fly under a lot of radars)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope again (see above)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I am a co-author on two stories (Transformers and Brave Police). For both of those, I was mostly just a beta reader but I did end up writing 2 chapters for the Transformers story when the author wanted a different POV (most of the story was first person and then I did more of an omnipresent third person).

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Across all fandoms? That's actually very hard. I'm not a huge ship person, like, let everyone be with whoever they want to be with. BUT, if we're going based on ships I've written and that I enjoy writing, Celebrían x [loving and devoted person, usually Elrond] is pretty high up there (Silmarillion). It's good soup.

But also, Carn x consequences of his actions and pinning for Roran is near and dear to my heart (Inheritance).

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The sequel to It Started With A Fever. I would love to explore how my medical and scientific training could fit with android diagnostics/medicine, and you know I love me some good angst and hurt/comfort with a happy ending. However, I just don't really see it happening because of how much work it will require and the fact that I'm not even reading fics in that fandom now and have my writing time filled to bursting with LOTR/Silm stuff.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I'm reasonably good with grammar? Like, I passed all my English courses and writing classes? I write what I want to read so at least one (1) person enjoys it.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I spend too much time working out exactly how I want to say something and end up not actually writing very much. I'm not very confidence with figurative language, so my writing tends to be quite straightforward and literal (which isn't bad, but I WANT to use more figurative language). Editing, my nemesis.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I'm not opposed to it and I've seen it done very well with non-sense languages from Transformers. If someone does it, I prefer that the narration indicates at least the general idea/mood of what was said so that I don't have to translate it. Also, it feels clunky when the author just writes the direct translation after what is said (if it's important enough that you want the readers to know exactly what is said, why are you using a different language in the first place?).

So, that's my two cents.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Publicly? Transformers.

But way back in the distant years of my youth, before I knew what fanfiction was, I did a lot of fanfiction and story planning for Redwall.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

I am very proud of It Started With A Fever. I put a lot of time into writing the story and even worked with a wonderful beta reader. In the end, I think it really improved my capacity as an author.

On the other hand, I love Home because I SAVED CARN!!! My sweet, pathetic little spellcaster who gave it his best and had a death that was at both times thematically appropriate and sadder the longer I thought about it. *gently hugs him so he doesn't break before passing him back to Katrina and Roran*

#ah yes very fun #tag. I'm it #grimwing gripes #I'm remembering how much I love Carn now...

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johaerys-writes · 2 years ago

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For the ficwriter asks! 💫🎀🎈💞

[Writing asks]

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

Honestly any kind of (positive) feedback is good feedback in my book, I just love to know that readers are enjoying what I've written even if it’s a small comment. I love when someone tells me how the chapter/work has impacted them, what sort of emotions it gave them or when they point out something that I hadn't even realised myself when I was writing lol-- sometimes there are themes or motifs or other small details that pop out over the course of sharing a longer work and I love when readers pick that up and tell me about it. It’s almost like seeing the work through someone else's eyes which as a writer it isn’t easy to do! Mainly, I just like talking about the characters that I spend so long thinking about and writing about and being obsessed with lol.

🎀give yourself a compliment about your own writing

Aah I didn't think this was going to be this hard!! 😅 Okay so... I think that my writing is quite immersive? I love creating a lush and vivid picture whenever I can, or delving deep into a character's emotions and thoughts, and I feel like that is something that comes across to the reader as well.

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

I'm not sure if what is meant here is the way someone writes (whether someone is a pantser or a planner) or if it's about the writing/prose itself? In this case, I feel like both of those things have sort of changed over the years, or depending on what I'm working on.... In some works I feel like I am more verbose than others for instance. Like whenever I'm writing Patroclus POV my mind often goes into overdrive describing how gorgeous Achilles is LOL he just does that 😂 I also think that my writing becomes less lyrical as time goes on but maybe that's my insecurities creeping in about it being a little flat lately lmaooo. Another thing that has changed is that I used to be able to write somewhat complex and involved plots but for some reason I don't feel like I can do that anymore 😭 it's all vibes man

As for my writing process, I feel like I started mainly as a pantser/planner hybrid, in the sense that I always had an idea of the ending I was writing towards but would make up a lot as I went, but as I gained more experience and figured out an outlining process that works for me, I've become mainly a planner. I still don't often write detailed outlines down, I mostly have it all in my head but it tends to be very clearly laid out before I even start writing.

💞what's the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

Oooh good question. Honestly, I think it’s the plot, with the worldbuilding a close second. I have read entire books or fics where the writing was very mediocre and even had many mistakes just because the premise was interesting and the story kept being interesting, or because the worldbuilding was very engaging. On the other hand, I have abandoned stories where the prose itself was good just because the story was awful lol. As for the characters, I still feel like a strong plot can carry along even a character that isn't as strongly written. However, an interesting character in an uninteresting plot will just get lost regardless.

#johaerys answers #on writing

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construingseacats · 2 years ago

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Umireread: Legend of the Golden Witch - Chapter 12: Occult

Sun, Oct 5 1986 - 1:00PM

The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.

Off to an interesting start here. No-one put up a stink about this? After we spent so long talking about how the servants are some of the most likely culprits, and potentially in on it together, we just let the 3 of them go off by themselves to make food?

I suppose there’s a mix of “we’re hungry and we want to eat” and no-one wanting to be left alone with them, but still, it kind of feels like we skipped over a scene here. If you’re going to be thorough everywhere else, it feels weird to not be thorough here.

Funny to see Kumasawa drop the mask here. Yeah, the two of them were real busy last night, in the early hours of the morning. Honestly this is one of the most incriminating things we’ve seen so far, I’m surprised more people don’t pick up on it. Does the given story of what they’ve been doing this morning really justify how tired Genji and Kanon are?

This is actually a weird scene as well - after the nods to their part in the first twilight, they start talking about the case as if they weren’t involved? They don’t really have a reason to have this discussion in reality, and it’s also weird to think of it as a fantasy scene, since it’s just pure misdirection for the sake of it.

Ah, okay, Battler shows up - so we’re firmly in reality, and this was a conversation they were indeed having. I don’t know, this still feels really off to me - either they were doing this on the chance that someone showed up, which seems overly orchestrated, or they somehow heard someone coming, which wasn’t particularly choreographed to us. Like, I suppose the former could apply - there’s no downside to not doing it, in the same way that you have nothing to lose by shouting “I know you can hear me” while in an empty room - but the whole thing just feels too contrived to me.

Just highlighting this before I put it in a nice box and leave it to the side for one moment. Don’t worry about it.

(While I can scroll back the text when I want to revisit something, I sure can’t do the same for portraits. Apologies - maybe I’ll go back and re-grab all these screens once I unlock chapter select after Episode 4, but no promises.)

This is quite the line for Battler to be saying while standing next to Kanon.

I like this little ploy here - even if it doesn’t really amount to anything, especially since Battler can’t actually die until the end, it would be startlingly effective otherwise in disproving the omniscience of the culprit. If Natsuhi hadn’t left the charm in such an obvious place that it was discovered upon entering the room, Episode 1 would have fallen apart (although I suppose then you could make the argument that the charm had to be left on the door to work, but at that point you’re stuck on the defensive).

Another one of the big lines from Episode 1 I’d say - heavy statement of the premise. I’d say this is like a rallying cry of arguments across the entire internet, but let’s be real, most arguments are about trying to force your beliefs on someone else.

So I haven’t really talked about “The North Wind and the Sun” yet, even though it’s been alluded to a few times. Umineko does draw on it quite a bit, pushing the parable and the moral of… Well, what’s written above.

At this point, I’m wondering if the main significance of the parable’s presence is a reflection of the writing itself. The North Wind and the Sun are not blowing and shining on any characters, but on the reader themselves. Because of how Umineko layers the deductive reasoning from the characters, letting you walk alongside them and be guided by their thoughts, you’re more likely to go along with the misdirection than challenge it when it’s given to you as immutable fact. I suppose in that sense, removing the coat in the parable is a negative thing - a sign that you’ve been influenced by others to do what you otherwise wouldn’t. There’s probably a little more to this line of thinking that would be best suited to having a proper reflection and rumination about it rather than pseudo-ramblings resulting from a live commentary.

I read this line, moved on, then immediately started making whooping noises and had to go back immediately.

Are we going into the gender commentary this early? Glad to see Umineko saying trans rights already.

Anyway - this section isn’t a perfect 1:1 reflection of transgender topics and growing up with a desire to be different from what you were born as, but the seeds are absolutely here, primed for nurturing later down the line. Having been almost entirely oblivious to the gender dialogue on my initial readthrough, I’m very excited to see it explored this time around, given how personal the topic is to me now.

The section talking about adults looking down on kids because of their lack of experience is very fun. At 17, I remember reading this and going “Yeah! That’s exactly right!”, while still viewing myself through the lens of being so intelligent and mature for my age. At 27, it still holds up entirely accurately, and I can confidently look at my 17 year old self and call them an idiot.

The conversation at large does seem to mostly be an exposition dump trying to justify Maria’s identity split, but it’s not too bad since Ryukishi’s done a good job of giving all the cousins some lines that carry the conversation while also clearly representing their personality. Like, George definitely leans the most into textbook regurgitation, but it’s still done in a way that feels natural for him. I’m still not entirely convinced on the justification of Maria switching to creepy girl on a dime, but it doesn’t necessarily ruin the story for me at this point.

There’s the social worker side of Ryukishi coming out. Mildly ironic to say given the conversation we’ve just had, but that’s absolutely spoken from experience.

Eva once again going heavy on the offensive.

I do wonder if Eva and Hideyoshi were filled in on Kinzo being dead, or whether they’re just doing this on their own whims. I could see either being the case, depending on how much Yasu wanted to reveal to them.

Okay yeah, as this scene goes on, definitely leaning towards them having been informed of Kinzo’s prior death. Pretty clever gambit to implicate Natsuhi outright - although, of course, the whole thing falls foul of Eva being trustworthy here. She could easily be lying about seeing the receipt fall from the same place (or falling at all - I’d have to double check Natsuhi’s exact words to see how much leeway Eva has here).

Chalk another one up for the Natsuhi suffering arc. She’s not even allowed to keep her pep talk that she gave herself in the study.

Yeah that seals the deal, Eva absolutely knows about Kinzo dying a couple years ago.

I do have a morbid curiosity to see the fragment where the answer to this question is “yes”, immediately followed by gunfire.

The overly aggressive strategy starts to backfire here. Again, if this were a social deduction game, Eva would be ridiculously suspicious from how hard she’s trying to pin it on other people.

And scene.

Despite being one of the longer chapters, there’s not an awful lot to analyse here honestly - this chapter leans a lot more into the mystery side of things, and while that’s still interesting to read (and what first time readers are mostly here for), there’s not a lot of points worth dissecting and delving deeper into. Of course, that’s just from my perspective - I have no doubt that other people have dug deep into this and found interesting nuggets of subtext that I can’t even conceive of.

#umireread #umineko #umineko spoilers

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tiredgamergirl · 7 months ago

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There is something about old manors, ghost stories, and a good mystery that captivates the imagination of readers, a thrilling story that is at the same time haunting and cozy due to its familiarity, almost formulaic setup. Hidden object games are often considered part of the “cozy” genre, as they are simple to play and the plot is a series of light brainteasers to take someone from one scene to the next until the story ends. So, it is no surprise that Ms. Holmes would find herself in one of such plots at one point or another. A mysterious ghost has been spotted in the McKirk manor and the lady of the state, Mallory McKirk, comes to the upcoming private detective to figure out the case along with missing jewels and unravel a grave conspiracy.

Many of the stronger beats that made the two previous games stand out were mostly gone, like the connecting the dots mechanic and only the superficial aspects remained – it was closer to a June’s Journey segment than a Ms Holmes, which isn’t entirely bad but it was a little underwhelming. Even the story has some points that weren’t properly connected or left in the air to be brushed over. In some cases the game would expand some of the plot points in the bonus chapter, which didn’t happen here – it was one brand new story involving Jane and it was abrupt, short, and with barely any setup. It does feel like the story missed a few drafts and revisions to tighten up the narrative, focusing more on some scenes than properly tying everything together. In the end, there were many gaps and even a character changing names at a point. It is hard to say if the game was rushed out the door or if there was some other factor at play, like something changing in the script that wasn’t properly addressed.

There isn’t anything to write home about the puzzles or hidden object scenes. Some still have small puzzles that can be completed by dragging objects or interacting but everything is still intuitive and doesn’t require a jump of logic or talks down to the player.

In the end, The Adventure of the McKirk Ritual is a very forgettable hidden object game. If you are looking for a simple, yet cozy game that can be a good call for you. But if you were expecting something to be done with the interesting, albeit cliché, premise then maybe you should wait for sales.

#game reviews #hidden object #hidden object game #hidden objects reviews #steam games #Ms Holmes

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m1ckeyb3rry · 9 months ago

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LMAOOOOO honestly spontaneous plans are so nice sometimes but also that’s so me always ended up hanging out for longer than we intend just yapping there’s one time I think I just sat on a random bench with a friend talking for like five hours but WELCOME BACK AGAIN LMFAOO and will do…..I’ll start searching because PEARL AND ALPHA SAPPHIRE WERE MY SHIT!!! Funny you mention that because my first game was actually Pearl (I went back and played HGSS after) so it holds a very special place in my heart LOL and also I just love alpha sapphire because it also had megas but I also love kyogre LMAO (I couldn’t even finish sun I’m ngl I got bored of the trials or whatever the non-gym mechanic was oops)

I can’t even tell if it’s just my standards for raised and it’s always been like that or if it’s really is just getting worse (haven’t been on that site in like years LMAO) but wait nooooo bruh I hate how so many companies are adding like paywalls and premium restrictions like hello??? Wattpad readers especially the ones who comment are actually insane like no wonder it has the reputation it does….

LMAOO honestly I see a good enough amount of people liking him now I wouldn’t be surprised if he did blow up as you predict when s3 arrives! but SIDE CHARACTER SUPREMACY FR

NO FR HE WAS FEELING HIMSELF??? THAT POSE WAS INSANE LMAOOOO the nel additional times are actually gonna be too funny (yk they used to be based off little bonus scenes that were actually printed in the manga but we like never get those anymore??? Sad.) but UBERS AT IS JUST GONNA BE OAEU BAROU INTRO LMFAOOOOO I can see it now ok wait im also not in they cut out a LOT of scenes including isagi sleeping for an entire day THE ENTIRE CAFETERIA SCENE WHERE KARASU EATS LIKE A SKEWER AND OTOYA EATS CHERRIES and some interaction scenes before the starting members are announced im lowk so mad like I NEEDED THOSE LITTLE INTERACTIONS AND I WANTED TO SEE KARASUS SQUIRREL CHEEKS REIDJDSKDKHDH sorry im like crashing out over this but of COURSE they animated the rin isagi interaction just NOTHING ELSE DJDHDHDISDJD

LMAO real your characterizations are the best though also wdym I think your diagrams are fire you’re just kaneshiro and nomura merged into one person

FR matches the typical teenage boy energy that Id expect from him so props to them!! Also I’m crying I think because geographically Kyoto and Osaka are south of Tokyo they typically just translate it as a southern accent which is why we got the heavy Texas I’m crying though between just how he sounds plus the fact that I recognize the vas voice from other works that don’t involve and accent

I NEEEEEDD THAT ADDITIONAL TIME RIGHT. NOW. it’s literally so perfect for the premises of additional time someone PLEASEEE like Shidou would totally use the last of the hair wax and not gaf or tell anyone (which forces Karasu to go the entire day with his hair down) cmon Shidou take one for the team please…..its ok we have this out and posted on your blog it’s definitely working into the manifestation circles now….

Yeahhh I assumed it was some sort of effect like that but some panels still have me reeling a bit because of the angles LMAO someone just get isagi off the page I wish we’d see more of other matches where isagi isn’t present (assuming eventually episode nagi will get there though so manifesting??? Also hoping we get to see PxG vs mc then too?????)

LMAOAAOA the way that it’s not out of the question is the best part time skip otoya with the half troll looking hair would be hilarious

SHSHSHS YEAHH I think also for me at least I’m getting really thrown off by how vibrant his colors are tbh it’s not my favorite duo either with the like green and purple and then adding the stubble on top of that eugh also SAME LMAO Aiku got sidelined so bad I forgot he really actually did shit in the u20 match which explains all his promo too…I wonder how that’s working for the marketing team though because I remember awhile ago reading someone post about how they got like mad fun of for being an Aiku fan when they went to the bllk exhibition because no one really likes him (which is also insane like why does it matter to you what character someone else likes you aren’t even interaction with each other??? Insane but anyways)

YAYYY but also LMAOOOO ACCIDENTALLY but omg encounter with two hot guys?? This is just setting the plot imagine you run into them again somewhere somehow and turns into fwtkac Karasu and otoya (except presumably one of the dudes isn’t a cheater like otoya LMAO) glad you didn’t have to deal with anything too insane though!!!

NO LITERALLY like Kaiser fans need to get some glasses like you’re out here talking shit when your man looks like he fell into a paper shredder….? I guess that just matches the Kaiser vibes so I can’t be too surprised

LMAOO I think it is the first one focusing on chigiri more!! Also I’m ngl I don’t enjoy the song as a song either LMFAOOOOO guess we’re twinning again I think it’s just really easy to make angst edits or like animations too because of the content but musically it’s not something that would land in my playlist personally

- Karasu anon

SPONTANEOUS PLANS ARE SOOO FUN omg it was so silly we were in her apartment for sooo long the time literally changed (daylights saving #americacore) i was like wow i can’t believe it’s only 2am!! meanwhile it was actually 3am so by the time i got home to my body it was like 4ish SDFKS but it was definitely worth it we had the best time

my first game was x!! but i got alpha sapphire right after so it’s kind of in the same place in my mind…i’ve never restarted my x game because nostalgia but i’ve restarted alpha sapphire a few times!! agreed the island trials or whatever weren’t as fun as gyms for some reason so i didn’t really enjoy moon or ultra moon that much unfortunately but pearl was cool too!! definitely keep me posted hehe

i feel like i was always lowkey a hater of wattpad but back in the day i used to read on it because i had gone through everything on ao3 and i was desperate LMAOOO the last time i truly read a fic on wattpad was for attack on titan in like 2021 though now i just don’t even bother because i know what quality i can expect and i’d rather spend that time reading an actual book, writing, or (most likely) scrolling through tik tok 😩 but yeah wattpad comments are always crazy i think part of it is that after seeing so many tropey stories on the app they assume all stories will fall into those tropes and don’t bother to stop and think before commenting that maybe that’s actually not the case?? anyways

HELP i lowkey have seen a lot of people starting to like him already ngl half of them don’t deserve my kashimo fic though that one is very unhinged and odd and the plot is kinda fucked up…okay i already tell you the endings for everything i’ve written so i’ll tell you about this one as well HAHA idk how much if any of it you’ve read but basically what you need to know is that the main character’s cursed technique is that she has like. hummingbird powers?? basically if it’s related to hummingbirds or the mythology around them she can do it but only for a limited amount of time (for example at one point she runs from nyc to tokyo including over water in like 30 minutes or something due to her technique because hummingbirds are super fast) and in the present timeline she also has this sword (the sword of syrinx) which helps her focus her technique and lends her energy when she’s running low etc etc but anyways after her technique runs out of energy she enters torpor (which is based on irl hummingbirds’ torpor) where’s she’s basically in a super deep motionless sleep recovering her energy?? and she stays like that until she’s recovered her cursed technique ANYWAYS after haibara’s death and geto’s betrayal (she’s in nanami’s year) she enters a very deep depression (she compares it to a torpor settling over her whole life) because she realizes she has zero purpose in life and she thinks that there might be someone who can help her find it but she doesn’t know who

THEN the culling games start and she comes back (this is when she runs from the east coast of the us to tokyo) and meets kashimo before getting in a fight with him however for obvious reasons she’s exhausted so she eventually gives up and offers him her sword but instead of just being a form of surrender the sword makes her and kashimo remember the past?? since kashimo in this au doesn’t remember why he reincarnated or much about who he used to be…anyways so then we get thrown into the perspective of the first user of the main character’s technique who coincidentally has the same name as the main character!! and it turns out that in this past timeline she was actually selected by the hummingbird deity to be its champion and defeat its mortal enemy ten, who is the lord of the sky and storms and who no one believes in

past y/n is the strongest sorcerer of her time barring kashimo and kashimo is OBSESSED with this fact. all he wants is to fight and kill her (fairly, he’s not about to kill her in cold blood because it doesn’t prove anything) and he even threatens the big three clans (she is engaged to gojo’s ancestor) so she has to intervene and tells him that she’ll fight him just as soon as she defeats ten, which makes him be like ok i’ll help you with that!! she unlocks the vision of the hummingbird based on a story she reads in a book given to her by the man who gave her to the gojos after her parents’ death (the man is kenjaku) and is able to find ten in a dream, realizing that he resides in a domain (he’s implied to be another disaster curse kinda like jogo) and challenges him to a fight, after which she goes and finds kashimo and he takes her to his childhood “friend” because the friend (who i made up but is named daisuke) can forge the best weapons (he forged kashimo’s staff)…daisuke agrees but under the condition that y/n erases him from history completely and finds a girl that he and kashimo used to know who ran away one day and they never saw again

y/n and kashimo set off in search of the girl and we get a reveal of kashimo’s past where it’s seen that he was orphaned at a young age and saved by the gojos but instead of being taken in like y/n was he was taken to an orphanage run by a woman who absolutely hated children and was basically neglected for his entire life (this is where he met daisuke and the two became friends as well as where daisuke taught kashimo about sorcery and stuff) eventually one day daisuke and kashimo sneak out to a village using daisuke’s technique (which allows him and anyone he includes to become invisible) and there they see y/n passing by in a procession with the gojos and kashimo is IMMEDIATELY convinced that he needs to fight her and if he cannot defeat her as he is now he will become someone who can…essentially defeating her becomes his purpose for living and becoming as strong as he has

then some stuff happens and it’s revealed that before she can fight ten y/n has to defeat his twelve beasts (it’s never outright stated but the twelve beasts are the animals of the japanese zodiac!! to fit w the sky theme) so while they continue on this journey to find the girl she fights and kills a few of them…she meets kenjaku at one point and he tells her that he saved her when she was a kid in exchange for her father’s life (as in he became a reincarnated sorcerer) before telling her that he can make the same deal with her and give her what she most desires (a life without the constraints of the hummingbird and ten) she basically tells him to fuck off though and he does so but says she’ll need him eventually…anyways then she and kashimo eventually find the girl (who is none other than tullia ofc) locked in an attic and they managed to rescue her before tullia and kashimo team up to kill the lady who ran the orphanage and sold tullia to the man who hurt her ☝🏻 meanwhile y/n continues to fight more of the beasts but it’s revealed that if she doesn’t get a proper sword she’s in trouble because the amounts of cursed energy she’s using to fight the beasts cannot be handled by a normal weapon (hence why she needs one of daisuke’s swords) so they return to daisuke and he forges the sword of syrinx for her!! she fights off the rest of the beasts in succession (kashimo is in and out of the story at this point) before she defeats the final one and is granted access to ten’s domain which is a field with a massive tornado in it. she tells kashimo that she’s going to fight ten and he makes her promise to fight him afterwards which she agrees to and she tells him to find her once the domain collapses

she gets to the domain and realizes that the reason why ten’s voice always seemed to come from nowhere is because the tornado itself is ten; there’s a whole fight sequence and she’s holding her own but obviously struggling and eventually she’s on her last legs before she remembers a story that will basically put her in an eternal torpor/kill her if she uses it however it’s what she was made for — to defeat ten — so she calls on the story where the hummingbird is the sun in disguise and even though the sword of syrinx breaks in the process she manages to exorcise ten before falling into torpor. ten’s domain collapses and kashimo finds her and thinks she’s dead before realizing it’s just the torpor; using his electricity basically as a defibrillator he shocks her back awake but it’s way too late and she’s barely able to stay up; she tells him about kenjaku and tells him to reincarnate and face off against someone even stronger than her, like sukuna, and also asks him to fix the sword of syrinx for her because she can’t bear the thought of it being ruined. kashimo says he will and then asks what will happen to her; she says she isn’t sure but right before she dies she is prompted to use her technique one final time, this time in the form of the “reincarnation of the hummingbird” (as hummingbirds symbolize reincarnation) and so her heart transforms into a hummingbird and she is reincarnated

returning to the present, the current y/n realizes that all of this has transpired between her past life and kashimo, but while kashimo is still the same person, she wasn’t reborn with all of her memories and she’s actually entirely different person now, so she can’t be with him, even though she suspects that her past life was in love with kashimo despite kashimo never outright reciprocating. before the final confrontation with sukuna happens, kashimo reveals to current y/n that the reason why the sword of syrinx is so strong is that (in keeping with jjk nonsense) in order to reforge the steel, he had daisuke smelt past y/n’s body (specifically her bones) into it, making it much stronger and imbuing residuals of her technique and spirit into it (hence why it only works for her and is so helpful to her). kashimo then goes to fight sukuna as he wished and dies, whereupon y/n retrieves his body and once again reforges the sword of syrinx so that whatever is left of him can be whatever is left of her past life; once the sword is done, she takes it and leaves japan behind for good. one of the students or someone asks what she will do now and she says she will do nothing because that is what she reincarnated for — to have no purpose except finding happiness

that’s the end of y/n’s story, but then we return to the past and see kashimo meeting with kenjaku. kenjaku seems to pity kashimo and mourns y/n’s loss (mostly because now he won’t get to have her in the culling games) but before he can say anything kashimo tells him that he knows that kenjaku can give him another chance at life. kenjaku warns him that there will be stipulations, but kashimo says that he doesn’t care, because (this is the last line) “there is still someone left that he has to fight” — basically, he reincarnated for the chance to see y/n again, just because he trusted that she would somehow come back even though there was no reason for her to

LMAOOOO THAT WAS A LOT to be fair there was a lot of context needed for me to explain the ending considering only the first third of the story alone is 80k words that one is another doozy but yeah basically throughout the entire story “fighting” and “killing” are meant to represent the love that kashimo feels for y/n?? like he is genuinely MADLY in love with her but as someone who’s only ever loved fighting and feeling powerful he equates that feeling with wanting to kill her hence why he says the most INSANE things to her absolutely casually…killing her is just the only way he understands how to love her 😭 y/n is no better either there’s an entire sequence in the beginning of one of the chapters in her past life that’s describing her dreaming of “fighting kashimo” but those dreams are in fact meant to represent uhhh. sex dreams. LMAO. let me include a screenshot so you can see what i mean because it’s one of those things that makes ZERO sense until you read it

so as you can see the themes in this one are insane and weird and probably would be misinterpreted by a larger audience SKDJHF kashimo and reader are very dear to me in all their insanity because the way they love one another is unparalleled and the angst is off the charts like this story puts everything i have ever written to SHAME LMAOO long story short yeah i feel like kashimo will definitely blow up but do i want him to?? NO

BACK TO YOUR ASK anyways yeah niko’s pose was CRAZYYY bro was fr getting into it LMAOAOOA omg i need aiku to drop the “he’s italian, it’s part of his culture” line in an additional time because idc that’s canon aiku to me HAHA but noooo i saw they skipped out on that scene ik the bachira fans are pressed too because the panel of bachira eating pasta is so iconic and they skipped it?? UGH i wanted to see angry chipmunk karasu so badly too especially if they made him look all soft and cute like how he did in the first additional time 🥹

HELP nomura wishes his art was as good as my diagrams /j okay ngl as someone who once lived further south than i do rn and had a southern accent as a young child the southern accent that they use on tv is so forced and not even accurate?? like people from the south don’t sound like that SDKJHFS i think a proper southern accent would’ve sounded…better…but whatever they have got going on just feels kinda awkward imo

SHIDOU PLEASE PLEASEEE omg actually speaking of shidou i was talking to jeirin about this but i am once again fascinated by the karasu x shidou dynamic there is something so puzzling about it…like why is karasu completely unafraid of him?? not just in the additional time for s2e1 but literally all of their interactions karasu is either shit talking shidou or bossing him around (like in bm vs pxg right after kaiser scores and shidou…is being shidou…karasu literally tells shidou to stfu and listen to his plan) which is crazy enough but what’s even crazier is shidou actually listens to him??? which is very out of character for him lowkey he always beefs with people who try to tell him what to do (aka rin) but when it comes to karasu he’s just like “ok” and does it?? also shidou is known for hyping everyone up during games but he was EXTRAAA with it when karasu scored on them in third selection LMAOAOAO my conclusion is that they somehow bonded over hair wax and being basically the same exact age (shidou is like a month older or smth) and karasu is probably shidou’s only actual friend (not counting wtvr tf he has going on with sae) HAHAH now does karasu consider shidou to be HIS friend?? absolutely not…i hope we get to see more of them as a duo though they’re kinda funny together actually

LMAOOO WAIT AIKU HATE??? i was under the impression that he was one of the most popular characters huh that’s kinda odd…ig people irl and people online must differ or smth but yeah his color palette has never appealed to me much either and the stubble is much more prominent and his teeth are super defined for some reason?? idk maybe he’ll be redeemed in the u20 game but anime aiku isn’t doing it for me the way manga aiku almost did

HELPP KSJDHFS ngl given the types of things they were saying they were sadly giving more aiku and otoya than karasu and otoya i fear…hot man whores who wanted to hook up most likely 😰 OH WELL maybe i will be proven wrong who knows or maybe i’ll have my otoya bfb moment and not-fix one of them 😭 only time will tell

kaiser fans always talking the most shit as if their man doesn’t literally read psychology books to manipulate people instead of making friends LMAOOOO i once saw someone hating on nagi for being a selfish cowardly manipulator (because of the “nagireo breakup” naturally 😒) clicked on their profile and THEY WERE A MICHAEL KAISER FAN???? THEY LITERALLYYY HAD A MICHAEL KAISER THEME?????? i was like um the call is coming from inside the house my friend 😭 keep nagi’s name OUTTA YOUR MOUTH 🗣️

LMAOOO we’re just always in sync like that and okay yeah that’s what i thought!! today i only have two vids to offer that you’ve probably already seen before but WHATEVER

tabieita the sillies side note this song is so 2021/2022 nostalgic somehow??

karasu if shidou steps up to the plate for us LMAOOO SHIDOU PLS YOU’RE OUR ONLY HOPE never been a shidou stan but i’ll literally convert if he does this for us 😭🙏🏻

#answered asks

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a-very-fond-farewell · 2 years ago

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Ok, new profile picture new me I guess! so here I am considering to make a list of all the wips I have under my belt just to hold myself accountable (while simultaneously convincing my stupid brain I have no time to join a new fandom... I’m looking at you Evilive):

Let’s split this between fandoms shall we?:

Word of Honor:

- Children of the Red Dust: the modern!au where ZZS is trying to adopt ZCL but WKX’s job as a Mergers & Acquisitions lawyer gets in the way, with a sprinkle of traditional chinese opera on top

20/33 chapters already done, a new one on the way. I feel vaguely positive about this and I think I can manage updating before the end of the year or the beginning of the next. I’ve updated very little this year, compared to 2022 but.. I do love the story and I want to see it through;

- They Got Exits Covered: the sci-fi!au where the author knows nothing about omegaverse trope etiquette and rolls with it anyway

2/3 chapters already done......... fellas is is bad that I can’t bring myself to finish this one? I have re-written the last chapter at least 5 times, I discovered that I hate writing smut (unfathomable, ik, considering I have written even 45k of dirty sex in the past) if it involves baby-making (??), and I hate myself every minute that I have to sit and work on this project so.......... it will take some more time I fear. the premise was good, we stan a good premise and I love the vibe I got going on but.. meh. we will see;

- (unnamed project 1): aka the noir!au that I really want to bring to the surface but currently have no energy to plan out

0/0 done, none, nada. this one is fun bc I really want to write it and I got at least two chapters done in my drafts already. I wanted shorter chapters for this one, little to no dialogue, more ambiance and vibes than plot.. it’s so close to get started...! but I want to PLAN this right. never been much of a planner tho. idk where to start. does anyone know how to go beyond the ‘plot-points checklist’ phase? bc that’s honestly all I can muster for this one and it frustrates me to no end.

Winter Begonia:

- The Way Home: which is the retelling of the entire drama, episode by episode, through the lenses of a heavier, more overt romantic vibe between the leads (basically a drama retelling with additional historical context from the novel and my own research)

14/49 chapters done and I have already drafted most plot points up to the 25th.. but see my issue here. I love this fic. I. Love. This. Fic. but I cannot focus on it until Children of the Red Dust is done, bc I need multiple steps to get this over with:

need to rewatch the drama diligently, while taking notes (would really like a dvd set of this one, but subs alas..);

need to use the existing dialogue of the show and put it on the page, describing how characters move and react on screen;

add my own new fresh scenes to the already existing plot, which takes a lot of time;

research the hell of the time period and the details of the traditional opera technicalities (bc I’m not very smart, I love to suffer and I love this stuff too much to care);

come up with ways to tie everything up nicely without it sounding cringe;

read the actual novel to tweak things and fill up details from side characters’ lives and.. if you know the original story you probably know how annoying some of the characters are, which makes it difficult to handle at times.

so....l..........I need me time to mentally prepare for that ok? but it’s a long term project and I don’t care if I have no readers. I’m cool;

- Everything will Bloom: aka the follow-up to The Way Home............so it means I have to finish that one first

2 drafted chapters done already. but I need me TONS of research for this baby. it will be set in the early 50’s so I want to get this right. which means that I am reading everything I can and sourcing everything I come across as I go and I’ve been doing this for almost 3 years now. I’m not messing around. I want these characters to have a life after the epilogue!

MDZS:

- necRomance: the crack au people still reblog from my tumblr, the idiotic one, you know the gist

80/100 chapters done, not picking it back up. I don’t care for it anymore, it was a crack project anyway. also, not a fan of receiving comments and get excited to open the inbox just to be told to go fuck myself for not finishing this one. so uncool mate! totally got me out of the fandom. I don’t think I’ll ever get back to it so.. yeah. pick your battles folks *shrugs emoji*

STUFF I AM TOTALLY NOT PLANNING DESPITE BEING BUSY WITH IRL STUFF/RESEARCHING/WORKING ON WIPS:

that one Good Omens human!au inspired by an Italian comedy I am not writing;

that one Evilive fix-it I am not fantasizing about on the daily and I really want to dig my teeth into rn;

that one (extremely unnecessary) [insert classic Victorian novel title] epilogue retelling I’ve not lost sleep researching for;

(3 hypothetical original works that will definitely never see the light of day)

———

and that shall be all folks :D please admire my new profile picture, which I took from the manga She loves to cook and She loves to eat and edited to have a sense of continuity with my previous one (which was Jin Ling from the MDZS manhua). please get yourself a treat after reading this! and check out any of my current projects on ao3 if you’d like but please read the tags! most of my stuff is pretty heavy and at times either obscenely long or dead-dove-ish so.. please be careful!

- Niki (they/them) on my way to 30. can I get a wahoo??

my AO3: humble_prompt_machine

#sneaky niki #pinned post?#maybe #niki writes

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perpetual-stories · 4 years ago

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Story Structures for your Next WIP

hello, hello. this post will be mostly for my notes. this is something I need in to be reminded of for my business, but it can also be very useful and beneficial for you guys as well.

everything in life has structure and storytelling is no different, so let’s dive right in :)

First off let’s just review what a story structure is :

a story is the backbone of the story, the skeleton if you will. It hold the entire story together.

the structure in which you choose your story will effectively determine how you create drama and depending on the structure you choose it should help you align your story and sequence it with the conflict, climax, and resolution.

1. Freytag's Pyramid

this first story structure i will be talking about was named after 19th century German novelist and playwright.

it is a five point structure that is based off classical Greek tragedies such as Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripedes.

Freytag's Pyramid structure consists of:

Introduction: the status quo has been established and an inciting incident occurs.

Rise or rising action: the protagonist will search and try to achieve their goal, heightening the stakes,

Climax: the protagonist can no longer go back, the point of no return if you will.

Return or fall: after the climax of the story, tension builds and the story inevitably heads towards...

Catastrophe: the main character has reached their lowest point and their greatest fears have come into fruition.

this structure is used less and less nowadays in modern storytelling mainly due to readers lack of appetite for tragic narratives.

2. The Hero's Journey

the hero's journey is a very well known and popular form of storytelling.

it is very popular in modern stories such as Star Wars, and movies in the MCU.

although the hero's journey was inspired by Joseph Campbell's concept, a Disney executive Christopher Vogler has created a simplified version:

The Ordinary World: The hero's everyday routine and life is established.

The Call of Adventure: the inciting incident.

Refusal of the Call: the hero / protagonist is hesitant or reluctant to take on the challenges.

Meeting the Mentor: the hero meets someone who will help them and prepare them for the dangers ahead.

Crossing the First Threshold: first steps out of the comfort zone are taken.

Tests, Allie, Enemies: new challenges occur, and maybe new friends or enemies.

Approach to the Inmost Cave: hero approaches goal.

The Ordeal: the hero faces their biggest challenge.

Reward (Seizing the Sword): the hero manages to get ahold of what they were after.

The Road Back: they realize that their goal was not the final hurdle, but may have actually caused a bigger problem than before.

Resurrection: a final challenge, testing them on everything they've learned.

Return with the Elixir: after succeeding they return to their old life.

the hero's journey can be applied to any genre of fiction.

3. Three Act Structure:

this structure splits the story into the 'beginning, middle and end' but with in-depth components for each act.

Act 1: Setup:

exposition: the status quo or the ordinary life is established.

inciting incident: an event sets the whole story into motion.

plot point one: the main character decided to take on the challenge head on and she crosses the threshold and the story is now progressing forward.

Act 2: Confrontation:

rising action: the stakes are clearer and the hero has started to become familiar with the new world and begins to encounter enemies, allies and tests.

midpoint: an event that derails the protagonists mission.

plot point two: the hero is tested and fails, and begins to doubt themselves.

Act 3: Resolution:

pre-climax: the hero must chose between acting or failing.

climax: they fights against the antagonist or danger one last time, but will they succeed?

Denouement: loose ends are tied up and the reader discovers the consequences of the climax, and return to ordinary life.

4. Dan Harmon's Story Circle

it surprised me to know the creator of Rick and Morty had their own variation of Campbell's hero's journey.

the benefit of Harmon's approach is that is focuses on the main character's arc.

it makes sense that he has such a successful structure, after all the show has multiple seasons, five or six seasons? i don't know not a fan of the show.

the character is in their comfort zone: also known as the status quo or ordinary life.

they want something: this is a longing and it can be brought forth by an inciting incident.

the character enters and unfamiliar situation: they must take action and do something new to pursue what they want.

adapt to it: of course there are challenges, there is struggle and begin to succeed.

they get what they want: often a false victory.

a heavy price is paid: a realization of what they wanted isn't what they needed.

back to the good old ways: they return to their familiar situation yet with a new truth.

having changed: was it for the better or worse?

i might actually make a operate post going more in depth about dan harmon's story circle.

5. Fichtean Curve:

the fichtean curve places the main character in a series of obstacles in order to achieve their goal.

this structure encourages writers to write a story packed with tension and mini-crises to keep the reader engaged.

The Rising Action

the story must start with an inciting indecent.

then a series of crisis arise.

there are often four crises.

2. The Climax:

3. Falling Action

this type of story telling structure goes very well with flash-back structured story as well as in theatre.

6. Save the Cat Beat Sheet:

this is another variation of a three act structure created by screenwriter Blake Snyder, and is praised widely by champion storytellers.

Structure for Save the Cat is as follows: (the numbers in the brackets are for the number of pages required, assuming you're writing a 110 page screenplay)

Opening Image [1]: The first shot of the film. If you’re starting a novel, this would be an opening paragraph or scene that sucks readers into the world of your story.

Set-up [1-10]. Establishing the ‘ordinary world’ of your protagonist. What does he want? What is he missing out on?

Theme Stated [5]. During the setup, hint at what your story is really about — the truth that your protagonist will discover by the end.

Catalyst [12]. The inciting incident!

Debate [12-25]. The hero refuses the call to adventure. He tries to avoid the conflict before they are forced into action.

Break into Two [25]. The protagonist makes an active choice and the journey begins in earnest.

B Story [30]. A subplot kicks in. Often romantic in nature, the protagonist’s subplot should serve to highlight the theme.

The Promise of the Premise [30-55]. Often called the ‘fun and games’ stage, this is usually a highly entertaining section where the writer delivers the goods. If you promised an exciting detective story, we’d see the detective in action. If you promised a goofy story of people falling in love, let’s go on some charmingly awkward dates.

Midpoint [55]. A plot twist occurs that ups the stakes and makes the hero’s goal harder to achieve — or makes them focus on a new, more important goal.

Bad Guys Close In [55-75]. The tension ratchets up. The hero’s obstacles become greater, his plan falls apart, and he is on the back foot.

All is Lost [75]. The hero hits rock bottom. He loses everything he’s gained so far, and things are looking bleak. The hero is overpowered by the villain; a mentor dies; our lovebirds have an argument and break up.

Dark Night of the Soul [75-85-ish]. Having just lost everything, the hero shambles around the city in a minor-key musical montage before discovering some “new information” that reveals exactly what he needs to do if he wants to take another crack at success. (This new information is often delivered through the B-Story)

Break into Three [85]. Armed with this new information, our protagonist decides to try once more!

Finale [85-110]. The hero confronts the antagonist or whatever the source of the primary conflict is. The truth that eluded him at the start of the story (established in step three and accentuated by the B Story) is now clear, allowing him to resolve their story.

Final Image [110]. A final moment or scene that crystallizes how the character has changed. It’s a reflection, in some way, of the opening image.

(all information regarding the save the cat beat sheet was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

7. Seven Point Story Structure:

this structure encourages writers to start with the at the end, with the resolution, and work their way back to the starting point.

this structure is about dramatic changes from beginning to end

The Hook. Draw readers in by explaining the protagonist’s current situation. Their state of being at the beginning of the novel should be in direct contrast to what it will be at the end of the novel.

Plot Point 1. Whether it’s a person, an idea, an inciting incident, or something else — there should be a "Call to Adventure" of sorts that sets the narrative and character development in motion.

Pinch Point 1. Things can’t be all sunshine and roses for your protagonist. Something should go wrong here that applies pressure to the main character, forcing them to step up and solve the problem.

Midpoint. A “Turning Point” wherein the main character changes from a passive force to an active force in the story. Whatever the narrative’s main conflict is, the protagonist decides to start meeting it head-on.

Pinch Point 2. The second pinch point involves another blow to the protagonist — things go even more awry than they did during the first pinch point. This might involve the passing of a mentor, the failure of a plan, the reveal of a traitor, etc.

Plot Point 2. After the calamity of Pinch Point 2, the protagonist learns that they’ve actually had the key to solving the conflict the whole time.

Resolution. The story’s primary conflict is resolved — and the character goes through the final bit of development necessary to transform them from who they were at the start of the novel.

(all information regarding the seven point story structure was copy and pasted directly from reedsy!)

i decided to fit all of them in one post instead of making it a two part post.

i hope you all enjoy this post and feel free to comment or reblog which structure you use the most, or if you have your own you prefer to use! please share with me!

if you find this useful feel free to reblog on instagram and tag me at perpetualstories

Follow my tumblr and instagram for more writing and grammar tips and more!

#writing #writing advice #writing tips #original writing #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writersconnection #writersofig #writersofinstagram #writings

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lietogirlsss · 2 years ago

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SPEAKING SONAR !

ao'nung x fem!sully reader

✷ premise : as tensions rise and your family is forced out of the only home you've ever known, fish boy meets forest girl and the rest is history (tragedy)

✷ warnings : kidnapping, swearing, injury, blood, violence, and death

✷ author's note : gotta have ya'lls parents' povs here hehe, also some spider content if ur an anti dni I'm a spider defender 4 lyfe.

✷ trigger warning : THERE'S GUNNA BE A KINDA GRAPHIC SCENE LATER IN THE CHAPTER ABOUT THE SULLYS AND QUARITCH, IT INVOLVES BLOOD AND MORE BLOOD so be advised... but it's short dw dw

part 4 of the SOLD OUT OF LOVE series

When you'd be confined to the lab because of influenza which you caught often, Spider would risk the possibility of infection and stay in your room all day because unlike you, your germs feared Spider. You'd close all the lights and the both of you would lay on your bed and look at the glowing solar system Max and Norm had painted on your ceiling. It was a moment of peace he wouldn't exchange for the world, just lying next to his sister in the dark, basking in the silence.

Until he speaks. "Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we lived on Earth?"

You turn to him. "I'd always be in the hospital"

"Yeah, well what's different now?" He bit back.

You chewed on your lower lip, he was right. "We'd be going to school, we'd have friends-"

"-that are not giant blue aliens" He adds, the both of you laughing.

"You think if we were on Earth we wouldn't be orphans?"

He shifts, and the bed bounces underneath you. "Maybe" Spider replied cautiously. "If my mom hadn't been flying that gunship she'd probably still be here... not sure about my dad though"

"You're lucky you knew your dad"

He shook his head adamantly. "No I'm not"

"Fine, then you're not" you say, giving up.

"Would we even know eachother if our moms weren't brought here? If they hadn't met our dads?"

This made Spider think hard. "We still would, my mom knows your aunt Trudy"

"No, they met at that flight school, if they weren't chosen, they wouldn't know eachother, we wouldn't know eachother"

This made him tuck his lips together. "I guess you're right"

"I am right" You tell him, propping yourself up by your forearm, Spider mirroring your action. "But what does it matter anyway? We're stuck here, there's no life for us back in Earth cuz it's dying, we've got nowhere else to go"

"Then I guess we gotta stick together don't we?" He replies, poking your shoulder. "Us outsiders gotta stick together, Spider and Firefly, that way nothing can tear us apart"

You grinned, your teeth lighting up in the darkness. "Nothing" You echoed, twirling your pinky over his, breathy giggles taking over you both.

You were the first to pull away, lying flat down on your back, using the same hand to scratch at your IV taped to your wrist used to replenish your dehydrated body. That was several months before the accident, where it changed your lives forever. It was never Spider and Firefly against the world anymore, it was just Spider.

Because the promise you had made to eachother, the promise of the two children orphaned by war initiated in a dark room lit up with neon stars and planets was forever broken.

The both of you grew up in Pandora, took your first steps on Pandora, spoke your first words on Pandora, you had Spider, Spider had you, he didn't care that he could spend most of everyday outside when you were stuck in your room. He'd tell you everything and spare no detail, the speeches, plays, and presentations you two had made to convince Max and Norm to let you out for 3 hours were the highlights of your life, especially when they'd agree.

He lost his mom, his dad, and when they pulled you out of that river unresponsive he thought he might as well lost you too.

2 months ago he had been bragging to the Sully children that he could palace his chin on top of your head without even standing on his tip toes, he blinked and suddenly you could place your entire forearm on top of his head without even trying. He stayed silent, knowing he should be grateful you weren't so sick anymore- but at what cost? He had been more alone now since before you were born, you had been alone together, now he was just alone.

But he wasn't the only one feeling what he was feeling, you were battling your own surges of loneliness trying to grab hold of you. It was a hard change, human food started to taste like paste, you weren't used to being a tug away from being naked, your skin being so blue. It was weird.

You shared a bond with Spider not even the other Sully kids could replicate, now he was gone, and you didn't know when you'd get him back, if you'd get him back.

Lo'ak snapped his fingers in front of you. "Baby sis, you good?"

You blinked. "Uh-huh" You mutter unconvincingly, standing up with a basket you dug against your hip, making your way down to the fish nets to retrieve your lunch for the day.

"What's up?"

"Missing Spider"

"Oh" He says. "He's a tough guy, he'll be fine"

Even Lo'ak didn't believe his words, and so you nodded along. "Yeah, I know"

He crouches beside you, grabbing the pesky fish that fought back and dropping them into the basket. "I've seen him chug Whiskey with a straight face, and, get a scolding from our parents for letting us take a sip, if he can survive that he can survive anything"

"I know he can" You tell him, sliding a fish into the hole of your basket. "Sometimes I just wonder if it's enough"

"It is" He assured you, placing a wet hand on your shoulder. You appreciated the gesture but pried his hand off of you moments later.

Lessons that afternoon were interesting, it was the only word that could sum up the entirety of what had awaited you after lunchtime. The moment you saw Ao'nubg across the beach with your siblings you turned your heel and bolted the other way, you hid in your Marui, helping your mother with repurposing old clothes, chopping fruit for dinner that night.

1, 2, 3, 4 Sullys on the beach, yet one was missing.

He itched to ask them, your brothers, it practically consumed him, knawed at him on the inside to ask your brothers where you were and why you missed your lessons.

Only at the end of the day did he finally give in. "Where is she?"

"Where is who?" Neteyam wonders.

"Your beloved sister?"

"Kiri? Tuk? They're right over there with Tsireya and Rotxo" Lo'ak butts in, pointing his thumb at the secondary group floating on their backs in the water, giggling and gliding.

He rolled his eyes. "No genius, your other one, Y/N?"

Lo'ak shrugged. "Dunno, she says she was dizzy, Mom didn't wanna let her swim in her state"

He hummed. "I see"

But for the past week, it was almost as if you hadn't run out of excuses to miss lessons. They'd wait half an hour for you to come out only for one of your siblings to tell the rest of your friends that you weren't coming. Ao'nung never bothered to come anymore, claiming that he himself wasn't feeling well and that he must have gotten what you've caught all the while having no interactions this past week.

After lessons, Tsireya would catch him hanging out with his other friends or if not then lying on his hammock throwing a woven grass ball in the air, but when his grating mother couldn't leave him alone for two seconds then he'd be riding his ilu on the other side of the island for some peace and quiet.

It was the 4th day of you purposely evading lessons, you sat in your Marui with your mother while she braided your hair. "When will you start attending lessons again Ma'íte?"

"When I feel better" You reply.

"There is this boy that keeps coming to our hut, he says he misses your presence in lessons" You practically froze on the spot as your heartbeat began to rise in a cresendo.

"What was his name?" Your mother asked to herself while you sat there and apprehensively awaited for her next words. "Ahh yes, Rotxo"

Either she knew what she was doing or she had no clue at all- but you wouldn't put it past her. "Yeah, Rotxo's a sweetheart"

Your mother hummed in agreement. "Yes, such a sweet boy, very polite" She stopped, tying off the braid she had previously been working with and starting on another one. "although you were never really drawn to the sweet ones, were you Ma'íte?"

This woman was sick.

"I don't know what you mean" You lie.

She giggles. "You might not be my child by blood but we are more alike than you thought" She asks you for one of the shells you were holding and you hand it to her, feeling her thread it into your locks. "Just say it, sweet girl"

"Say what?" You managed, ignoring the warmth that plagued your cheeks as you straightened your posture.

"That you thought I was talking about somebody else"

You needed to get out of here, she's practically nipping at your heels. Your sweet mother, bringing you in for slaughter. You remaining silent only made her laugh.

"So there is someone?"

"No" you replied a little too quickly. "No, there is no one"

"Then I believe you"

"Good, then we'll just chalk this conversation up to finished"

"Maybe we will" She tells you to stand up and look at yourself in the mirror, admiring the beads, shells, and hair cuffs you told her to put in, turning your head so that the sunlight reflected onto them.

"You did amazing mom, it looks beautiful" you grinned.

She smiles, placing her hands on your shoulders. "I did nothing sweet girl, the beauty is all yours"

"How's she feeling?" You both turn your heads to see your father walking in the Marui. "Still lightheaded?"

"She's feeling fine, aren't you Ma'íte?"

You nod.

He took one good look at your face and turns to your mother. "Neytiri, her face is all flushed, is she coming down on a fever?"

Your eyes widen as you whirl your head towards the mirror. Goddamnit.

You mother pretends to be shocked, turning you to face her. "Your father is right, maybe you should stay home today afterall"

You shook your head. "No I think I'll go out today, it's been long enough"

Jake frowned. "Is she sure? Are you sure? "

You nodded. "Mm-hm" already making your way across the Marui.

"No funny business alright???"

"Alright! Alright!"

"Y/N!" Your father called out.

"I got it!" Was all you said before you jogging down the steps and onto the beach.

Neytiri approached Jake by the mouth of the Marui, the pair of them watching as you ran up to your other siblings and your friends splashing eachother with water by the coastline.

"Ma Jake" Neytiri began.

"Mm"

"It may have escaped your notice but no matter how much you deny it, she is her own woman now, not the little girl we have taken under our wing so many years ago"

Jake sighed, his ears flattening against the sides of his skull as he turns his head towards Neytiri. "I know that"

"I know you do, and yet you refuse to acknowledge it"

"She's got too much fire in her"

"That is a good thing"

"Come on, you knew Betty, cross her one time she'll cross your heart out" He exclaimed, trying to prove his point.

"Ma Jake, believe me when I say that you cannot keep protecting her forever, someday you have to let her go"

"I made a promise to her mother that I'll keep her safe, with everything she's done for me in the past I owe her that much" He explained, Neytiri places a hand on his cheek in the process. "I'm too scared of screwing this up, I try and limit her, and what is she doing? She's going against me, fooling around"

They watched as you joined in on the fight, cringing and screaming when Kiri sent a huge wave your way. "Go easy on her, if you restraint her too much she will drift farther and farther away from us"

"I haven't been living up to my promise like I wanted, I've almost lost her once, I'm not about to let that happen again"

They turn to the beach again and watch as You and Tuk harshly tackle Neteyam, Rotxo and Kiri throwing fistfuls of sand at eachother, and Tsireya giggling her head off as Lo'ak tried pulling off a piece of seaweed that had gotten stuck on his tail but ended up spinning around like a top.

"Stay down!" Tuk screamed at Neteyam floating in the water pretending to be dead and even sticking his tongue out for effect.

You grab her waist and placed her on your shoulders. "The mighty warriror Tuktirey has defeated the fearsome wildebeest, she knows nothing! only rage!"

She let's out a war cry, everyone else in the group started doing the same causing passersby to look at what was causing the sudden ruckus on the shoreline She then leaps off of you and into Neteyam causing a huge splash, she pretends to wrestle with his body while your oldest brother tried his hardest to contain his giggles. All of you began chanting Tuk's name as she managed to stand on Neteyam's chest (with him holding her by her ankles of course) banging her fists on her chest as you all started hooting and cheering for her.

Since you were so close to your Marui, Neteyam (who you were sure had a bruised lung at this point) got word from your father that you were allowed to stay out a little later than usual.

Lo'ak was with Tsireya somewhere, Neteyam and Kiri were riding their íkrans above the islands, which left you and Tuk collecting shells on the beach.

"This one! This one!" She says, pointing a finger at a shell that looked similar to one she picked earlier.

"You already have one that looks like that" You say, holding a bucket already half-full of shells.

"Yeah but now I have two of these, so if I lose the other one I got this one" She explained whilst dropping it in the bucket, joining the other shells.

You laughed, shaking your head. "Can't argue with that logic"

All of a sudden you hear Tuk gasp, you turn around just in time before you see her bolt into the forest. Abandoning the bucket you run after her, calling her name, firing threats at her until you reach a clearing and you realize you lost sight of her.

"Tuk!" You shout. "Dad will skin you alive!"

No response, only the breeze and the chirping of insects in the distance mocking you.

"Come out! Come on! " You say, looking behind trees and bushes, behind rocks and shrubs. "Tuktirey Te Suli Neytiri'ite this is not funny!"

"Kinda is"

Your head snaps up at the voice, but you don't turn around.

"chilly night tonight, isn't it Forest Girl?"

At that you finally turn around to see Ao'nung, leaning against a tree, sporting a devilish smirk.

You feel your hands ball up into fists, your nails creating crescent shaped dents onto your palm. "What did you do to my sister"

His eyes widen, he shows you his palms, chuckling raucously. "If my calculations are correct she might be running into your brother and my sister any minute now" He steps forward. "Listen, I asked her to lead you into the forest so that I could talk to you, alone" He states, aquamarine eyes scanning your face. "I only wanted to talk to you"

You prayed to Eywa to give you the strength to not punch the lights out of this boy. "You were in cahoots with my sister??" You practically shrieked.

"Well-" He began, trying to think of a statement that he could use to defend himself but sighed when he realized his mind was blank. "Yes, that is exactly what it is"

"I can't believe you!" You spat, narrowing your eyes into slits.

"Y/N I just wanted to say sorry, please" He begs, the fact that this was the first time he used your actual name in front of you and not some derogatory nickname did not go unnoticed by you or him.

"You fuck up, you apologise, you trick me into trusting you and then what? You fuck up again?" You wonder. "Is this a part of your golden boy routine? Get some praise for admitting to your mistakes?"

"No" He proclaimed steadfast, walking up to you again so now there were only a handful of inches in between you. "I am the son of the Olo'eyktan, I should have been treating you with more respect, I have been stupid, an-and selfish and I have let arrogance and conceit take over me"

He stops to take a breath, wetting his lips before he continued. "I want you to see that I do not want my past behavior to define me, if you will accept my apology and let me make it up to you it would mean the world to me... but if you don't, just say the word and I will never show my face to you again"

An ultimatum. You shouldn't have expected less from him. You found yourself scanning his face for any weak points, any tell tale signs that might tell you he was lying and was only doing this as a dare or if his parents promised him a grave punishment when he came home unsuccessful. You hated it when you realized he was telling the truth.

As much as you would have loved walking the shores of Awa'atlu knowing that Ao'nung would never show you his putrescent face again- you couldn't help but succumbing to his words, his promises, you were fighting with yourself, telling your other half to turn heel and sprint, sprint, and never look back but you were falling, he was using his tricks against you, letting his big blue eyes do all the work.

That was when you felt it, a little flame, bursting to life inside of you, warm, unfamiliar, questionable, lighting up the dark caverns of your chest, flooding it with an obscure sensation.

"Why did you want to talk to me all the way out here? In the forest?"

He sighs. "My father encourages me to maintain good relationships with all the Sully children, he says that it is most vital to have connections once I become chief..."

You cock your head to the side a little. "...but?"

"My mother says that I do not need to see you more than I have to"

And there it was.

"Why?" You implore.

"She thinks you're the one that is causing me to skip lessons and my training-"

"-You've been skipping lessons?" Was what left your mouth.

"Admittedly, yes, I have been skipping lessons"

"Why?"

"I didn't feel like attending them"

You gave him a genuine look of disbelief. "That's it?"

"What about you?" He evades. "I heard you have not been keeping up on appearances either"

"Yeah, I wasn't feeling all that great the past few days" you confessed, crossing your arms over your chest. "But I guess I'm feeling better now"

He nods languidly, taking in the situation. "So will you be coming tomorrow?"

You look at the ground then up at Ao'nung. "maybe"

"Good" He says with a smile, you almost wondered why it was so good to him but he squashes your assumptions when he opened his mouth again. "I might have to teach you how to swim all over again"

You flick your finger against his toned forearm, making him look at it and let out a scoff of objection. "Don't get ahead of yourself"

The silence that followed after was evident, your eyes travel up to the sky and realize that it might be around dinner time, mere seconds before your Dad starts ringing the dinner bell and all 5 of you scurry back to the pod like a bunch of sows.

"I guess I'll see you around?" You spoke up, making his head turn to you again. "I gotta go find my sister before she makes Awa'atlu falls to its knees"

"Wait" says he, making you stop. "You never answered me"

You exhaled through your mouth. "Fine you skxawng, I forgive you" you see him grin, ducking his head. "What will the nation do if you never show your face to anyone ever again?"

"I agree, pretty things should be enjoyed"

You involuntarily gagged, earning a loud chuckle from him. "Come on, you like looking at my face"

You remain quiet as he chuckles to his own joke, you roll your eyes and turn around. "Goodnight jackass"

He collects himself. "Goodnight tree hugger"

"Keep 'em coming" you taunt, hurriedly making your way out of the forest as he stays and watches you leave. Only when he was sure you were out of earshot was when he punches a fist in the air and whoops in glee.

"The ocean blessed you with a gift, brother "

Ao'nung stirred. "The Tulkun have not returned yet, and anyway no Tulkun is ever alone"

"This one was" You turn to your brother, sat across from you. "He had a- a missing fin, like a stump, on the left side"

Tsireya's expression changes. "Payakan"

"Who's Payakan?" Kiri wonders.

"A young bull who went rogue, he's outcast, alone, and has a missing fin" says Rotxo.

Tsireya turns to Lo'ak, taking his arm. "They say he is a killer"

"He killed Na'vi," Ao'nung butts in. "And other Tulkun" He says, leaning forward, his eyes meeting yours before it lands to Lo'ak. "Not here, but far, to the South" He adds.

Lo'ak shook his head, intent on proving his point. "He's not a killer"

Tsireya purses her lips beside you. "Lo'ak, you are lucky to be alive"

"I'm telling you guys, he saved my life, he's my friend!"

"My baby bro!" Neteyam crooned. "Who faced the killer Tulkun, and lived to tell about it" Lo'ak shrugged Neteyam's arm away, standing up to face all of you. "You guys aren't listening"

"Lo'ak I'm listening!"

"Lo'ak come back, you skxawng"

Neteyam runs off to follow him, Tuk dragging Tsireya and Kiri off to the ilu pen, Rotxo following them just for the sake of Kiri, leaving Ao'nung and you behind.

"And then there were two" He beamed, following you as you walked down the steps of the platform and onto the beach. You couldn't help but notice the slight bounce to Ao'nung's steps when he started walking in front of you "You were a whole lot quieter today, Forest Girl, is there something you'd like to share with the class?"

You shook your head at him, biting down on a smile. "You're baiting me, no thank you"

"I am doing nothing of the sort!" He exclaims, giving you a playful frown. "You wound me, Forest Girl"

"Good, somebody's gotta keep you on your toes"

He gave you an unsatisfied hum. "Thank Eywa for you then"

"Damn right, you should be" You replied, approaching the trees that lined the beach, hearing the creaking of the branches only to see Ao'nung already 3 feet above you. "Get down from there, I don't wanna have to carry you all the way home just because you broke something"

"I think I'll risk it," He says. "That way you've got a better of view of me from up here" He begins flexing his muscles in front of you and you shot him a look of disgust, gritting your teeth to keep you from giggling. You failed.

What was happenning?

Ao'nung finally hops down, landing on the sand beside you. "We have got plenty of time to kill before eclipse, what do you suggest we do?"

You begin walking again, Ao'nung following you. "We sit and watch the water"

"Boring" He droned.

You look at him with eyes wide. "You were the one who asked"

"Clearly my mistake, I did not realize how utterly dull you are"

You stopped walking and turned to him, raising a quizzical brow. "What about you smart guy? What do you suggest we do?" You wonder.

He shrugged, a sly smirk playing at his face. "I was thinking we just go to the cave and-"

You stop him from talking by placing a finger over his mouth. "Nuh-uh, the last time we went there I practically got my ass beat because of it, I am literally an arguement away from my Dad chaining me to our Marui"

He compromised. "Fine, we could go to the other side of the island and visit the waterfalls?"

"I'm not allowed to go to the other side of the island"

"Your father won't know"

"No means no, Ao'nung" You insist.

He threads his fingers together, cracking his knuckles. "You wanna go to the diving rock? It's got a killer drop, 30 feet"

You shook your head. "No, no more swimming"

"Then I have got nothing" He confessed, placing his hands on his hips and facing the water.

"Look, you don't need to push it, bro" You tell him, placing a hand on his shoulder. It was like he took a punch to the gut. "You can go do all that stuff without me, I'll just hold you down"

"You wouldn't" He says, making your ears flick upwards. "I just wanted to..."

"Wanted what?"

His eyes meet yours, turning his body away. "It's- nevermind that now, it is stupid"

You slap his shoulder. "No it won't, tell me"

He keeps his eyes down, only meeting your gaze every now and then just to catch a glimpse of your face, how the setting sun casted a syrupy glow onto your face, how it only made him want to look at you longer. It was like an anvil had been tied to his ankles, pulling him down to the seabed, down, down, down until he finally allows it.

"I wanted you to stay a bit longer" He concedes.

"Why?" You teased. "All you gotta do is ask"

He looked unsure, hesitant but scans your face nonetheless, after a moment of standing, the setting sun a witness to Ao'nung's diffident self, he sighs. "Will you stay?" He finally asks.

You considered it, turning to the water as you felt your lips curling up into a mischeivous grin. "Fine, only because you begged" You said. "Desperation is a good look on you, you know" Ao'nung shoves you again and you stagger back cackling, letting your laughter rip.

You see him grinning too, pointing at you as you kept on laughing. "Foul play, you do not get to word it that way"

"I was telling the truth!"

"You were twisting my words" He insists, giving you a shrewd smile.

"Only a little bit" you admit, pushing your hair away from your face and sitting down on the sand

He props his leg up, placing his elbow over his knee while you sat cross legged. "I hope your father didn't reprimand you any more than what I have seen two days ago"

"No, he just gave me the silent treatment, he always does it"

"Now why would he do that?"

"He dosen't want to fight with me anymore than he already does, that's why he stays quiet"

He lets out a condescending scoff. "Dosen't look like it"

You half-shrugged. "I'm used to it, it's no big deal"

A moment of silence settles.

"Open out your hand" Ao'nung says oh so suddenly.

You turn to him, your interest piqued. "Why?"

"Just do it" He says, pointing his chin at your hand. "And look the other way"

You sighed, opening your palm and keeping your eyes away until he dropped something in the middle of your hand, something cold, something hard. You finally look down and you couldn't help the gasp that escaped your lips.

It was a necklace. Held together by golden twine with clay beads and pearls strung a centimeter away from the others, then, a pearlescent conch shell as big as your thumb in the very middle.

It looked amazing.

You hated it.

"I asked Tuk for the beads you managed to gather, wasn't hard, all I had to do was bribe her with some candied fruit" He surmised like it was something to be proud of.

"You've got to stop using my sister for your stunts" You say, placing the necklace against the light, your smile widening to an O as it glimmered.

He smirked, ducking his head. "She's the only Sully who truly likes me"

"That's not true" You tell the boy, waiting for him to look up to you, and when he does you continue. "Not really"

And this boy blushes.

"Hah! 14 different shades of purple!" You shout.

He dosen't say anything, only letting you make fun of him, prodding at his forearms, giggling when he averts his face.

"Are you done?" He asks after a while, failing at stifling a grin.

You shrugged, lifting your hair up to tie the necklace together. "Maybe" you laughed, patting your hair down and raising your eyebrows at him. "So, how's it look?"

"Uhh, it looks- it looks great" He responds, feeling the unfamiliar warmth blossom beneath your ribs. "Now you'll have something to draw attention away from your frightening face"

You click your tongue at him, hearing his infectious laugh and watching as he shields his face away from the beating that was about to come.

"Y/N"

The laughter stops. The both of you whirl around to see Neteyam donning his signature stony expression, you stand up straighter, distancing yourself from Ao'nung.

"Come on" says Neteyam, his gaze switching to you, then to Ao'nung, then the necklace. "Mom's calling you, she needs help with dinner"

"Can't you help her?" You can't help but wonder. That was probably too mean.

"She wasn't calling me was she?" He retorted, ice running through your veins. "And anyway, i'm not interrupting anything here, am I?"

"No" You tell him.

"Then let's go" He says, you reluctantly walk towards him, he takes your shoulder, leading you out of there as he looks at Ao'nung whose eyes followed you away a little too long for his liking.

"Ao'nung" Neteyam acknowledges.

He nods. "Neteyam" says Ao'nung.

You both arrived at the Marui, your mood souring by the second. "Explain yourself" Neteyam demands.

You spun around. "What is there to explain? you saw us, we were just talking"

"I mean if you know the way he looks at you or you're just pretending to be blind"

"What are you talking about?" You almost screeched, your eyebrows knitting.

"I don't like you hanging around him," Neteyam tells you, pointing back at the beach. "he's bad news"

You hiss at him but what came out was a groan of annoyance, walking deeper into your pod. "Just butt out of my business"

"Your business is my business!" He tells you pointing at his chest.

"That is not true"

Neteyam groans. "It's Ao'nung, Y/N" He emphasized.

"I am perfectly aware of his name" You sassed.

"He's too old for you" Neteyam insists. "He'll break your heart"

You let out an incredulous laugh, as you turned around. you couldn't believe what he was saying, what he thought was happenning. "That is not what was happenning back there, alright?"

"Why'd he give you that then??"

You don't answer him, instead you scoffed, rolling your honey color eyes. "You are way off-base"

"No," He insisted, stopping you from walking out of the Marui. "what I am is right"

You throw your hand in the air as you walked passed your oldest brother, silencing him. "Whatever, I'm done here"

"I'm still talking to you"

"Well I'm not" You yelled back, running down to the beach, your anger simmering.

In an attempt to avoid your big brother you decide to join both your sisters, Rotxo, and Tsireya to visit the Cove of the Ancestors, hastily agreeing and in a hurry to hop up on your ilu, your brother decided that he would not let you go away so easily and insists that he joined too.

"We have to be there before eclipse settles, it's better that way" Rotxo appends with a grin, before his ilu splashes him in the face, Kiri laughing at his misfortune.

And Rotxo was right. It did look better after eclipse.

The sky may have darkened into a deep prussian blue but the water hadn't, it glowed several different shades of purple, you look down and see a warped image of their spirit tree, your siblings oohing and ahhing beside you.

All of you swim downwards, Rotxo instructing you to connect your queue to one of the bright purple margins of the leaves and you do, once you had linked your queue it felt as though you were being pulled through a blinding white tunnel, until it stops, and you land on all fours like you had been thrown out of there by some disembodied force.

You look up, you were back in the lab.

Your bare feet on the cold obsidian like tiles giving you fleeting flashbacks of what it was like to be standing back here, your first home. You look down, your hands were smaller, you weren't blue anymore, you adjust your focus to your reflection on the tiles and there it was.

You were a human again.

The sound of arguing catches your attention, it was coming from a few doors down and so you stood up, feeling the weight of your bones pulling you down, the world spun you around and you grab the nearest object to steady yourself, blinking until the world stopped spinning. You slowly made your way across the lab, the familiar mess of papers, the coffee stained tables, holograms of different insects, different plants propped up, books open to pages booked marked with sticky notes, the familiar intricate yet haphazard scrawl of Norm's handwriting, how his t's had a little tail.

"I trusted you! I trusted all of you!" The voice was a woman's, loud, piercing, she was definitely angry, but about what?

"Look, listen to us, all we wanted, all I wanted was to keep her safe, I tried my best Betty, believe me"

Betty?

There was no way.

"Don't try and kiss my ass Sully, do you think I believe the shit you're tryna feed me?" She shouts, followed by a few words in some foreign language where she rolled her r's a lot. "I told you to take care of her, then I come back 8 years later because she cracked her skull open because you- you! " You heard a tussle, like she had pushed someone into a wall. "You let her out at night in this cesspool! In the pouring rain!"

"Betty, we didn't know it was going to rain, alright?"

"Shit excuse, you have trackers in their exopacks don't you?"

"We do but- but Spider and Y/N managed to bypass it without us knowing, we had a hard time locating them and when we did-"

"-My baby's been bleeding out for 20 minutes" She says as you her tired voice turn brittle. "20 minutes" She repeats.

You finally see the door at the end of the hallway, its hinges eased open letting out a ray of periwinkle light on the floor. You walk up to it, standing on your toes and you see a woman, her thick wavy locks looked more puffed up when she was angry, her hickory brown eyes practically piercing needles onto Jake's face, Jake, who was also human, who was standing on his own two feet.

"That's 20 minutes too long Sully"

"Betty, we can't count our losses in this scenario" Jake tells her. "Look, her conditions stable-"

"-Yeah her conditions stable but she's damn lucky she didn't suffer any permanent neurotrauma"

"Betty "

"You're done Jake" says your mother, prodding a finger at his chest, you watch him raise his palms and cringe. "I'm taking her back"

Jake's eyes widen. "You can't do that"

"She's my daughter"

"I raised her! " Jake snapped.

" She was never yours! " Your mother retaliated.

You feel Jake's heart rip at the seams just by the look of his face. "Betty, you can't do this" He says weakly.

"Tough luck Sully, I can"

"What if we all just take a breather-"

"-Up your ass Norm" with that the door sprang wide open and you truly see what was going on, there was Jake, there was your Mom, there was Norm, there was Max.

And they were all looking at you.

"Luz, Míja, what are you doing up??"

Who the hell was Luz?

Was that supposed to be you? The name she gave you before she died? Before Neytiri came in and gave you a new one? One that stuck so well that even Norm and Max started using it?

You don't answer, still shell-shocked from taking all of this in for the first time.

"Come on, we have to go," She says, grabbing your hand and leading you out of there.

She pulls you out of there, further out of the lab and you pass by a mirror, you see a fleeting image of yourself, you were 8 again, practically skin and bone, fresh and healed bruises everywhere, knobby knees, and sallow skin. How the hell?

"You can't take her away!" Jake yelled. "Please, Betty! you're not thinking this through! Please! " The desperation in his voice was evident, it almost tugged at your heartstrings before you remembered how he treated you, how he snapped at you and yelled at you, restricted you, and berated you.

She keeps pulling you, pulling you out of the lab, your eyes widen as you remember you didn't have an exopack, nothing happens, you didn't choke on the spot, you see the Sully kids the way you remembered them that night- scared, shaken, dejected, calling out your name as you were pulled away by your mother, Neytiri holding all of them back.

You turn to Betty Chacon and the woman she was, your mother, the one who birthed you, and gave you life.

You couldn't believe she was here. You gripped around her hand tightly, following her into the forest where you walked through the trees. Until you hit a branch and your vision turns black.

Your eyes snapped open, realizing you had been pulled out of your encounter with your mother, at first you were angry, it was too short, you wanted her back, until you realize the spirit tree blinked like a lightbulb going haywire, you see your sister convulsing beside you. Anxiety floods your nerves as you jolt her awake, realizing you needed to pull her braid out but when you did it felt like your whole body was on fire.

TRIGGER WARNING !

Fire.

You open your eyes again and you see fire festering all around you.

You see blurry, fleeting images of Quaritch, you hear guttural screams, shrill screams, knife tearing through flesh, splattering, it was blood splattering on the stones. You blinked hard and see your family all lined up in front of you, impaled by sticks, you could hear blood splattering on the floor like you had just hung the washing and not wringing it dry, you run to help them, making a beeline towards Neteyam who was in front of you, but you screamed, realizing he had no face, like somebody has ripped it off his head.

"You're next" And it was Quaritch who was standing behind you, throwing Neteyam's face onto the rock like a slab of wet cloth, right beside the others, whose expressions of terror were imprinted on their faces forever.

END !

You feel your world jolt, when in reality it had been Rotxo shaking you out of your reverie, asking if you were okay or not answer you didn't think of answering back, only swimming up to the surface because you remembered your sister shaking violently.

You and Rotxo resurface to see Neteyam giving Kiri CPR atop his ilu, she gasps, and the next thing you knew Neteyam zooms out of there, Tsireya calling for Tuk to ride with her, leaving you with Rotxo who places a hand on your shoulder.

"Y/N! Y/N are you alright???" He practically demands, his wide eyes full of worry.

You blinked, almost having to untie your mouth open to speak. "We need to go back, my- Kiri- she's-"

"And we will," Rotxo assures you. "Hinewai is here already, see? Do you need a moment?"

You shook your head, propping yourself up on Hinewai's back. "No"

You and Rotxo speed through the waters to make it back to the village where you see throngs of village gathering around the beach, seeing your sister being transferred onto a bamboo gurney, hearing your mother's inconsolable wails wracking her body as Jake held her in his arms, barking orders left and right, Neteyam making sure they were being carried out, Tuk was sobbing, Tsireya stood close by in order to calm her, you couldn't find Lo'ak anywhere, there were too. much. people.

Your chest tightens again.

#ao'nung x fem!reader #metkayina #omatikaya #jake sully #neytiri #ao'nung fic #ao'nung x reader #ao'nung x you #tsireya #neteyam #spider #lo'ak #kiri #tuk #rotxo #atwow ao'nung #atwow #avatar the way of water #sold out of love ao'nung

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masterghandalf · 2 years ago

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Embers by Vathara: A Too-Long Review

Embers is one of the most famous – perhaps the most famous – fanfics in the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom. It’s also one of the most controversial, prone to creating very strong, very polarized opinions among its readers. The fic’s fans call it an incredible piece of worldbuilding that turns aspects of the original show on its head and enriches others with a darker, more morally complex plotline and sophisticated themes. Detractors call it blatant Fire Nation propaganda that worships at Zuko’s feet and demonizes everyone who ever slightly disagreed with him. The fact that both sides of the debate can get very… heated, to put it mildly, only furthers the controversy. At the risk of igniting old flame wars (pun very much intended😉) I thought I’d step in and offer my own thoughts on things. In brief, I think there’s a lot of positive things to be said about Embers, and I can see why it has the fandom it does… but at the same time, for a number of I reasons, some major, some nitpicky, I personally cannot bring myself to embrace it. Let’s take a look behind the cut to talk about why!

What is Embers?

First off… what’s this about, anyway? Embers is an Avatar: The Last Airbender AU fic, diverging from canon early in Book Two, written by Vathara (a rather famous fanfic writer active in multiple fandoms, and IIRC has also published original fiction under her own name) from 2009-2014. Its basic premise involves Zuko, while on the run with Iroh in the Earth Kingdom, rediscovering, based on things his mother had taught him, a lost firebending technique- fire-healing. From there it snowballs massively as Zuko gets caught up in spirit shenanigans, becomes a yaoren (two-element bender) who can also bend water, wrestles with his own legacy, and ultimately explores finds himself caught up in an ancient struggle involving spirits and dragons with more at stake than anyone has realized. The story begins in a one-shot, “Theft Absolute,” and then continues in Embers proper, and it is long – 91 chapters (not counting “Theft Absolute”) and more than 700,000 words even discounting author notes, making it longer than the entirety of The Lord of the Rings (even if you include The Hobbit too), longer than freaking War and Peace, and roughly comparable to all three volumes of Brandon Sanderson’s original Mistborn trilogy together. Woof. In other words, there’s a lot to dig into here. Though the fic itself (at least the FF.net version) does not internally divide itself in any way other than chapters, its TVTropes page splits it up into twelve discrete story arcs, which I may bring up occasionally for ease of reference. Anyway, the sheer size and complexity of the fic means there’s a lot to discuss, so with the basic intro out of the way, let’s get to it.

What’s Good About Embers?

Before we begin, I’d like to say that while my ultimate feelings about the fic are largely negative, I can absolutely see why it got popular and why its fandom has generally been so devoted to it (and since I will be talking about a lot of negative things, I did want to go ahead and put this part first, to make it clear that I do have aspects I like, and the things I don’t like should be understood in that context). For one, it’s very long, very detailed, and as of 2014 it’s complete. As a fic writer myself who has written some very long fics (none this long, though!) I have an inkling of how difficult a feat this is to pull off and can absolutely salute Vathara for the achievement. As for the writing itself, I wouldn’t call Vathara a great wordsmith, but she is, generally speaking, a solid one, with prose that feels professional-novel-quality; considering what a lot of fic (especially from a fandom that skews young, particularly at the time of the show’s original airing and the time Embers got started) is like, that’s yet another breath of fresh air. While I have some issues with the plot itself (more on that later) it nonetheless has a clear plot, one with lots of moving parts, and pulls it together generally well. In short, as a literary achievement Embers is already head-and-shoulders above a lot of fic, and not a few published novels. It also uses a lot of tropes and plot points that have a lot of appeal in the fandom. Zuko is the hero! Multi-element benders who aren’t the Avatar! Fire healing! Zuko is the reincarnation of an important historical figure! Aang’s Fire Nation friend Kuzon is an important historical figure! Ty Lee is a secret airbender! Koh the Face-Stealer is the big bad and was all along! Spirit stuff! Dragons! Any of these are things the Avatar fandom tends to eat up; Embers has all of them. At the same time, it also avoids a lot of the common pitfalls; in particular, it mostly doesn’t focus on issues of romance at all and thus neatly sidesteps the fandom’s infamous shipping wars, which is both rare and a relief, especially for a Zuko-centric story. It also has a lot of worldbuilding of Vathara’s own devising that’s extremely complex and detailed; said worldbuilding is controversial, and I can say I’m one it doesn’t really work for (again, more on that later) but there clearly was a lot of effort put into it, Vathara did her homework, and if you do like it, it’s one of the fic’s major selling points. She also includes a number of OCs from various walks of life that offer different perspectives and flesh things out more. And, of course, deconstruction fics that seek to problematize the canon and/or offer darker, more “mature” takes on the source material are always going to have a following in any fandom. Regardless of what you think, it makes you think (as the fact that I felt compelled to write this review, something I don’t normally do, should attest… I certainly wouldn’t put this level of thought and effort into a fic I just thought was bad). In short, I can absolutely respect Embers as a piece of writing and as a rare achievement in fandom, and I can also see a lot of reasons why it has the appeal it does for people.

But in the end, the story doesn’t work for me. Some of the reasons why are obvious; some are more subtle; some are more nitpicky issues of personal taste. But I’d like to take a while to discuss why, despite everything I do think there is to like or appreciate about the fic, it rubs me the wrong way. First off, I think it’s best before anything else to discuss the lion-turtle in the room.

Is Embers Fire Nation Apologism?

This is perhaps the most common accusation levelled at the fic by its detractors; that Vathara loves the Fire Nation, presents them as being in the right and the war as justified and everyone who opposes them as being evil. In fact, Embers’s tropes page used to (it’s since been removed) compare the fic directly to The Last Ringbearer, an (in)famous LotR fic (actually a published novel in Russian, its original language, but a free fanfic in English) that flipped the tale’s original morality, presenting the elves and wizards as evil, Gondor and Rohan as their dupes, and Mordor and Umbar as innocent victims of bigoted imperialism. The fic’s fans, meanwhile, says that this is a surface-level reading that completely misses the story’s nuances and ignores its actual messages. So, what’s my take? Is Embers pro-Fire Nation apologism? My answer is… no. And also, yes. Let me explain.

First off, the fic’s reputation as Fire Nation apologism has undeniably been exaggerated by its hatedom. It presents the Hundred-Year War as being wrong. The genocide of the Air Nomads was wrong. Characters like Ozai and Azula (and, posthumously, Sozin and Zhao) who were villainous in canon remain villainous in Embers. Stopping the War and overthrowing Ozai remains a goal of all sympathetic characters in the story. That Last Ringbearer comparison is, I think, unfair (and, honestly, regardless of my issues with Embers, I think it’s a superior work to Last Ringbearer in every way… but that’s beyond the scope of this review). Vathara does not try to paint Hundred Year War-era Fire Nation as being in the right or “the real good guys.”

But. But.

Embers doesn’t try to paint the Fire Nation under Ozai as heroic, true enough. What Embers does do, however, is prioritize Fire Nation POVs and Fire Nation concerns. You might argue that this is a natural side-effect of the fic’s POV centering on Zuko, but I think it goes beyond that. Cultural clash is a major theme in the fic, and this is where a lot of Vathara’s worldbuilding goes is in exploring the worldviews and practices of the four nations in much more depth than the show does (more on that in the next section). But practically any time a Fire Nation character gets into an argument with a person from another nation, the Fire Nation character’s POV gets prioritized and they’re the one the narrative wants us to side with. Characters are frequently lambasted for not understanding the Fire Nation and Fire Nation values, and if they don’t that’s their fault, but the reverse is almost never true, with almost any conflict presenting the Fire Nation character as being in the right. The Fire Nation are literally descended from dragons, it’s eventually revealed (all Fire Nationals seem to have a little dragon ancestry; a few have a lot of it); none of the other nations have anything like this going on. Fire is consistently treated as a “special” element unlike any of the others, and firebenders get to do things like keep volcanoes from erupting to protect everyone else in the world and no other nation has anything comparable going on; we also get a lot of info on how unique the Fire Nation ecology is and the specialized management it requires. The war is mostly understood through the lens of how it affects the Fire Nation, with a lot more time given to how it’s warped Fire Nation culture than the harm they’ve done to the rest of the world (indeed, a big deal is made at various points about how once the Fire Nation conquers territory, they view it as just another part of the Fire Nation and its people as their people, to be treated as such, and those who don’t follow that ideal are presented as aberrations, which is… not how empires actually work). And so on.

But the biggest issue… Kyoshi. Embershas a really weird take on Kyoshi and her role in the Fire Nation’s history that hangs over the entire fic, and not in a good way. See, in Embers-verse the Fire Nation in Kyoshi’s time was a bunch of independent islands ruled by feudal lords (who fought each other all the time but apparently never tried to take more territory than they could control or unify the islands because they knew they couldn’t hold it, because that’s clearly how aggressive warlords think *rolls eyes*). But the Earth Kingdom was attacked by Fire Nation pirates, and none of the local “Great Names” could stop them because hey, the pirates weren’t their subjects. So Kyoshi committed genocide on half the Fire Nation and forced the survivors to swear allegiance to the Fire Lord, and in Embers if you swear loyalty to a firebender, you can’t break it without dying or nearly dying (more on that when we get to the worldbuilding). So, yeah, the political structure of the Fire Nation is presented as being an unnatural imposition and it’s all the Avatar’s fault, with the war being a direct consequence of this. Yeesh. This backstory ends up pervading the Fire Nation’s characterization, providing justification for why no firebender will ever trust the Avatar and why they’re convinced the other nations want to wipe them out and will if the war turns against them or if they try to make peace. It doesn’t justify the war… but it is used to present the imperialist conquerors as victims themselves, doing something they’d never have done if an outside force hadn’t mauled them and rearranged their political system first (all that pent up aggression they used to work out fighting each other had to go somewhere, apparently…). And that… really makes me uncomfortable, not least because of how it takes the onus for starting the conflict off the Fire Nation and puts it on someone else (not the only way the fic does this, as Ozai ends up overshadowed by the real villains too) while also creating a scenario where it feels like the world revolves around the Fire Nation and the Fire Nation’s issues, with the rest of the world as supporting players. In short, while it doesn’t try to justify the Fire Nation’s actions in the present, it goes to great length to make sure those actions are understandable and Fire Nation voices and Fire Nation concerns are prioritized by the narrative while those of other nations are generally marginalized.

It gets especially obvious when you see the treatment Vathara gives the other nations. So, let’s take a look at the fic’s worldbuilding in general.

The Worldbuilding of Embers

One of the most talked about aspects of Embers is its worldbuilding; Vathara takes what’s established in canon and adds a lot of detail and complexity to it. Like most aspects of the fic, however, said worldbuilding can be very controversial; fans love how detailed it is and how it reframes their understanding of canon, while critics tend to think it doesn’t fit well with what canon establishes about the world. Personally, I tend to fall into “the worldbuilding is really interesting and compelling, but I’d like it a lot better if it was an original setting rather than trying to shoehorn it into the Avatar world,” but there are a few cases where I do think it has very profound issues of its own. So, let’s dig into it, shall we?

Bending: I’m going to address Vathara’s take on bending first, because it influences almost everything else she does with the setting. Bending in Embers works quite differently from how it does in canon. Most obviously, not only does every element have its own sub-school of healing (instead of just water), but every element has mind control powers of a different sort. Yes, really. I’ll discuss each of them in turn as I get to each nation specifically, but in general for a fic that prides itself on realistic consequences for actions and well-researched worldbuilding it's a rather... striking choice to throw in “but literal mind control” as an explanation for peoples’ actions. Also, benders (and non-benders, to a lesser degree) are often depicted as being under their element’s direct influence much more obviously than in canon, to the extent that it’s treated as genuinely surprising when someone does something opposed to their element’s philosophy; despite the work Vathara does to flesh out her various cultures, this ends up making them feel rather “planet of hats-y” at times. Ultimately, I kind of like Vathara’s bending as a magic system, creepy stuff and all, but I do think she adds so many elemental bells and whistles to things that the basic idea of magical elemental martial arts gets kind of muddled.

The Fire Nation (and dragons): I’m going to start with the Fire Nation, because it’s clearly Vathara’s favorite culture and the one where the dragon’s share of the worldbuilding goes to. And, okay, I’m a bit torn. Because on the one hand, Vathara’s Fire Nation is genuinely interesting. On the other hand, it ends up diverging significantly from the show’s Fire Nation, to a level beyond what I think Vathara intended or realized; for another, I think there’s some very problematic aspects of this society that go uninterrogated because Vathara is too busy squeeing over how awesome they are. I’m also including dragons in this section because they’re intimately (in some cases very intimately) tied with the Fire Nation, and because Vathara clearly really likes them and changes them significantly from canon.

To start with, let’s look at the political system. I’m honestly not sure Vathara realizes this because she doesn’t really discuss in in her author notes, but she somehow ends up giving the Fire Nation an entirely different form of government than they had in canon. The canon Fire Nation is clearly a centralized absolute monarchy; everything we see seems to be run by a centralized bureaucracy, its military force is a centralized, professional military, and the chain of command for both culminates in the Fire Lord, who has absolute legal, military and (implicitly) religious authority over everyone. Vathara’s Fire Nation is still a monarchy, but instead of a top-down absolute monarchy it's a bottom-up feudal monarchy where, instead of one centralized country, it’s made up of a bunch of local fiefdoms where people are loyal first and foremost to whoever their local “Great Name” is, that person has authority over the domain and then in turn swears loyalty to the Fire Lord. Needless to say, this is a completely different form of government and would produce a completely different social and especially military structure from the one we see in the show. Indeed, in the fic said social structure is greatly explored and becomes plot-critical, but it doesn’t really jive with other aspects ported over from the show’s version (such as why Embers’s Fire Nation still has a centralized professional military instead of each domain providing their own troops separately when called on, as would be the case in an actual feudal system). Unfortunately, I think a lot of the detail also comes at the expense of the other nations, with a lot of aspects of Vathara’s Fire Nation being held up as unusually awesome in-universe, whether explicitly or implicitly. Most obviously, Great Names (which, considering the Fire Nation’s Japanese influences, is a pretty clear equivalent of historical daimyo) and their heirs are awesome and Vathara really, really wants to make sure we know that. The fic makes it clear that to be a Great Name you have to be a badass, and you have to hold yourself to certain standards of behavior (even a Great Name as tyrannical as Ozai seems to have to have some standards at least where his subjects – ie, the Caldera specifically in his case – are concerned) and have to keep all the volcanoes in their territory under control so everyone should be grateful to them, and have their special court language based on Sanskrit that only they speak, and if you’re a real Great Name everyone will respect you and think you’re wonderful because you’re just. That. Awesome. Even Earth Kingdom characters are impressed when realizing that Zuko (or "Lee”) is probably a Great Name’s son and think that must make him a badass! It gets a little wearying after a while, to be honest, especially since the other nations have nothing comparable (titled Earth Kingdom nobles don’t get nearly as much focus, with a few exceptions, and the Water Tribes and Air Nomads obviously have completely different systems). At the same time, the Fire Nation is also apparently the only country that regularly fields female soldiers (this one does have some basis in canon – they certainly seem to have more of them, at the very least) and also the only country where a commoner can become a high-ranking officer, even though the sorts of feudal societies Vathara’s Fire Nation is modeled on tend to not have much room for social mobility, to put it mildly (military aristocrats are an elitist bunch, as a rule, and tend to guard their prerogatives jealously!).

Oh, and this is all held together by the Fire Nation’s version of mind control – loyalty. Basically, anyone who swears allegiance to a firebender can’t break it without resulting in severe illness or death, and powerful firebenders can even attract the loyalty of people around them and make them want to serve them, even if said people don’t want to or even know what’s happening (in some cases, like Azula with the Dai Li, even if they’re not Fire Nation!). Every Fire Nation citizen (except exiles) owe loyalty to someone, and again, can’t break it or disobey an order without potentially fatal consequences. And this is where I have my real problem with Vathara’s Fire Nation. This system as a whole is never criticized or problematized. Oh, sure, loyalty to the Fire Lord specifically is a bad thing… because it was imposed from outside by Kyoshi. In the natural state of things, every domain would be independent – but still under the control of their Great Name, still with their own little loyalty pyramid, just without the Fire Lord at the top over everyone. And, indeed, at the end of the fic, the solution to the war is… to dissolve the Fire Lord’s throne and return every domain to self-rule but keeping the Great Name/loyalty system intact. This is uncritically presented as a good thing, because this way the Fire Nation will police itself by means of domains fighting each other (and it’s made clear Fire Nationals always want to fight, and it’s a dreadful imposition to try and make them live peacefully) keeping any one of them from getting too powerful. What’s never addressed is the way this would logically lock a quarter of the world into perpetual conflict with itself, driven by the personal honor of feudal warlords whose people are essentially powerless to disobey them (and again, it’s made clear Fire Nation clans have to have conflict; we’re explicitly told Sozin’s father trying to mediate them all was doomed to failure and drove him to die young, and this was crucial for shaping Sozin’s outlook on life, his resentment of the Avatar, and his desire to redirect his people’s aggression outward). And despite Vathara’s insistence that a proper Great Name doesn’t take more territory than they know they can hold, I’m still not sure what’s stopping a particularly ambitious lord from conquering neighboring domains, forcing their lords to swear loyalty, and eventually building up enough of a powerbase to start the whole mess over again. I don’t think Vathara’s intention was for her Fire Nation to be read this dystopian, but personally, I find it very hard to read it any other way (it doesn’t help that almost all our major Fire Nation POVs are nobility, military, or both; we don’t really get the common person’s take on all this, but I somehow doubt they’re all that enthused). It does remind me a bit of PC Hodgell’s Kencyrath series (enough that I wonder if Vathara’s read it…) where the Kencyr also have a feudal society driven by magically binding loyalty to the ruling class and strict, arcane codes of honorable behavior, except that society is portrayed as deeply, profoundly messed up in ways that Vathara’s Fire Nation isn’t. Also, one last word on the concept of loyalty… it pretty much creates a society where the “I was just following orders!” defense is actually valid (yes, you can disobey orders in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but the consequences are bad enough it’s clear people generally don’t, and Fire Nationals in-fic tend to treat “I had orders” as a justification for most things) and… I really, really hope that was unintentional. Because if not… damn.

In hindsight, this may have sounded harsher than I meant it to. I really do find the concept of Vathara’s Fire Nation interesting, and “decadent empire run by corrupt, backstabbing sorcerer-aristocrats” is one of my favorite setting types, but I really wish she’d taken the very problematic aspects of this society and, well, problematized them instead of going all in on “clans and domains are awesome and Great Names are awesome and everyone wants a good Great Name to pledge loyalty to.” It’s not that Vathara’s Fire Nation doesn’t have problems, but said problems are mostly presented as being imposed from outside (the entire office of the Fire Lord, for one…) and the ideal solution is to essentially revert back to the pre-Kyoshi status quo. It plays into the overall theme, which I’ll get to at the end of the review, that yes, the war is wrong, and Ozai was wrong… but the Fire Nation itself is the real victim here instead of the people they were, you know, trying to conquer, or at least as much of a victim as they are. And, well, I don’t like the implications of that very much (and I’m less sympathetic to this sort of thing than usual this past year, considering certain current events), especially when you consider Vathara’s takes on the other nations.

Before we go on, one last word I’d like to have is on dragons. Vathara clearly likes dragons a lot. I don’t blame her – I went through a big phase of dragon-loving in my teenage years, and they still remain one of my favorite fictional creatures. In a broad sense, I really like Vathara’s take on dragons. Unfortunately, she’s shoehorned them into a setting where they don’t fit, and it makes a mess. Canon’s dragons are “the original firebenders,” fire’s equivalent to sky bison for air or badgermoles for earth. They’re powerful, wise, ancient creatures, sure, but still essentially animals. And I really think Vathara didn’t like that, because her dragons are sapient, nigh-immortal shapeshifters who can and do often interbreed with humans. On its own, none of that’s bad – I like most of those traits in dragons, and there’s mythological basis for most of it. But where Vathara tries to jam them into the place of canon’s dragons is where it gets awkward. In particular, she seems to have an axe to grind with canon’s take on dragons, at several points actively mocking how dragons are often considered animals by humans, people who don’t realize dragons are sapient, or how they are regarded as no more than sky bison (which in canon I’d say is no insult at all, but, well, I don’t think Vathara likes sky bison very much). That “can breed with humans” bit becomes particularly important, because it turns out all Fire Nation people are descended from dragons. Most of them very distantly, of course, but some much more closely, including (of course) Zuko. And we get treated to a lot of exposition on how this directly influences Fire Nation people’s psychology and culture and makes them different from other humans, especially “dragon-children” with close draconic ancestry. So basically, what it boils down to is Vathara’s favorite nation having literally superhuman ancestry (I count “being a dragon” as superhuman) something none of the other nations do (it also adds another layer to fic!Fire Nation’s persecution complex, since they think if the other nations find out they’d consider them subhuman). Normally, I’d love to read about a culture of dragon-people, but it’s just so incredibly out of place in the Avatarverse that I can’t really connect with it there, especially since I feel like it just serves to underscore that Vathara’s favorite culture is special, everyone!

Basically, there’s a lot I find conceptually interesting in Vathara’s Fire Nation, but I don’t like it as written. Personally, I’d emphasize the self-destructive nature of their feudal honor culture more, play loyalty for horror in general (not just if you’ve got a bad lord), and move it out of the Avatarverse entirely into another setting where the dragon stuff could be made to actually fit, or at least into a fic where it’s a full AU from the start in a sort of “Avatar: The Last Airbender reimagined, ultimate universe style” rather than a canon divergence AU that still accepts large swaths of the show as having happened. This is something I’ll be coming back to quite a bit, actually, since I think Vathara’s Fire Nation really highlights how much of this stuff I’d find much more palatable as original fic (or, again, full AU) rather than fanfic.

The Air Nomads: Okay, this is where I think real problems lie. Because even if I unironically loved everything else about the fic… I still wouldn’t be able to rec it unreservedly if it had Vathara’s take on the Air Nomads in it. Whereas most of my other issues with the fic are about context and execution, its take on the Air Nomads is something I find inherently irresponsible and indefensible on its own merits. Vathara’s Air Nomads disturb me – not their activities in the fic, but the meta fact that this portrayal exists at all. What am I talking about, you ask? Well, first off, there’s a running theme that starts in the fic early any time the Air Nomad genocide is mentioned talking about how it actually makes perfect sense that everyone in the world secretly hated and resented the Air Nomads and weren’t that sad to see them go. To the point that it starts getting uncomfortably victim-blamey. Then we later learn that in the distant past the Air Nomads used to be Mongol-like warlike conquerors. Okay, that’s not as bonkers as it seems on the surface (real-world Tibet did have its imperial age, and there are some interesting historical connections between Tibet and Mongolia) but considering the earlier portrayal, I still side-eye it. And then, we get the big reveal – the Air Nomads, or at least the Air Monk elders, were evil. See, the airbenders’ version of mind control is something called “Harmonious Accord” that is never really explained in detail but is apparently just flat-out brainwashing. And the Temple Elders used it to force all their people to agree on everything and to use the Air Nuns as baby factories then force them to give up their children to be raised communally. Anyone who dissented, and anyone who wasn’t a bender (canonically, all Air Nomads were benders, but clearly Vathara knows better) were kicked out and forced to live among the other nations, which boiled down to the Air Nomads inflicting their criminals on everyone else. Since they were all conditioned to not be attached to anything, the Air Nomads wandered around the world, causing disruption and refusing to deal with the consequences of their actions. Oh, and little things like “compassion” were brainwashed away too, apparently (which is, like, the antithesis of actual Buddhist belief – hey, Vathara, compassion’s the whole point). And it turns out that their pacifism was a hypocritical sham, forced on them by one bitter old monk (who started the temple system) who was jealous of the warlords and seized power during a power vacuum and remade the whole culture in his image (and apparently by forcing the airbenders to be peaceful, he somehow locked them out of most of their powers, including healing… somehow). Yeah, so basically, Vathara’s Air Nomads were a literal brainwashing cult created by an evil old man bitter because he wasn’t a good warrior as a form of revenge, and everything Aang knew about his people was a lie! I can get trying to grey up the Air Nomads a bit, break a few of Aang’s pedestals, but this is just excessive. And, sort of as the antithesis of how it seems like nobody can ever get a word in edgewise arguing with a Fire Nation character, any time Aang tries to defend his people, he’s met with evidence of some new horrible thing they did.

Now, like I said, Embers doesn’t try to justify the genocide itself. The mass murder is clearly portrayed as wrong (though it also has some of the edge taken off – a lot of the kids got out, with help, and there are enclaves of surviving airbenders around the world, including in the Fire Nation, so Aang’s not really the Last Airbender). But at the same time, the destruction of the Temples themselves and the culture that was based there… Vathara seems to think that was good, or at least necessary? She even has Gyatso, or at least his ghost, seem to agree with her on that. And, okay, I hate it. I hate that Vathara took a peaceful, monastic people from canon and turned them into evil baby stealers, for reasons I’m not entirely sure on (partially, I feel this may be to punish Aang specifically – more on that when we get to characters – but I also can’t help but wonder if a Buddhist monk wronged Vathara somehow in real life, because it’s sort of… weirdly personal). But I especially hate it because the Air Nomads are a stand-in for people groups who have faced genocide in real life – Tibetan Buddhists most obviously, of course, but others as well. And while Vathara did say in some of her ANs that she wanted to engage with the sort of propaganda that makes genocide possible… what she honestly ended up doing, IMO, was creating a culture where that propaganda is true (they’re not like us! They don’t think like us! They don’t value our culture! They don’t care about family or loyalty! Peaceful coexistence with them just isn’t possible!). And, well, by about the dozenth chapter where I feel like I’m being treated to the Protocols of the Air Temple Elders (seriously, the only thing that saves the fic from flat-out slandering the Air Nomads with blood libel is that they don’t seem to steal other nations’ children – though honestly, I wouldn’t put it past Embers’s Air Nomads) I just feel angry. Even Yangchen gets reduced to having been a brainwashed nun who had to be saved by the yaoren before she could realize her destiny as the Avatar. I just… am deeply disturbed Vathara thought going this far was okay, and desperately hope the unfortunate implications here were unintentional. Desperately.

The Water Tribes: Vathara’s take on the Water Tribes has me torn. On the one hand, she does go into a lot of detail about what the lives and customs of an actual Arctic tribal people might entail, in particular how their wars and raiding work, how their chiefs lead and gain honor, the role of women elders in the tribe as peacemakers, negotiators and sources of wisdom and authority, etc. I like all that stuff a lot. But there’s also some problems. The biggest problem, as I’ll get to when we talk about characters, is Katara. Vathara openly hates Katara, and a lot of what we learn about the Water Tribes is filtered through her take on Katara, which ends up painting a lot of it in a bad light. Furthermore, a lot of the comments Vathara makes about the research she did for the worldbuilding here comes across as, well, pretty condescending in the way she explains how “tribes” have to prioritize survival above all else (as if “tribes” are some sort of unified phenomenon), using the “E word” unironically when talking about real-life Inuit peoples, and the hopefully unintentional implication that anyone who lives in the Arctic is definitionally driven insane by the lack of a regular day-night cycle. Ultimately, this ends up painting a picture of the Water Tribes (especially the Southern Tribe; the Northern and Foggy Swamp tribes don’t get as much focus) as backwards and parochial, focused on their own communities above all else and not really caring about the rest of the world except as it affects them; also, they’re seemingly obsessed with revenge, to the point that it’s treated as fact that if a Water Tribe Avatar is born while the Hundred Years’ War is still ongoing, it will almost certainly end with said Avatar leading their people to commit genocide on the Fire Nation as “enemies of the tribe” (which also serves to feed the fic’s ideas about Fire Nation victimhood, and is part of a general trend where the fic equates “the desire to see the Fire Nation as a state and military power defeated” with “virulent racism against the Fire Nation as a people”). Also, Vathara’s waterbenders have the power to control other peoples’ emotions and bind them together towards common attitudes and goals; it’s very telling that unlike Fire Nation loyalty, this is called out as being creepy and dangerous, and Katara gets portrayed as a terrible person for doing it, albeit subconsciously. It’s not all bad – Water Tribe warriors, including Sokka, Hakoda, and Bato, tend to get fairly sympathetic portrayals (even though they do sometimes need other characters to explain things to them that I really think they shouldn’t) but then you also get weird asides like the implication that Gran Gran is apparently into murder and eugenics(!) on rather spurious reasoning. So, all in all, it’s a mixed bag, with some genuinely interesting worldbuilding I actually really like, that unfortunately often gets filtered through a seeming need to make Katara look bad that negatively impacts the portrayal of the whole culture.

The Earth Kingdom: This will be the shortest section, as Vathara’s Earth Kingdom feels very close to the canon Earth Kingdom. Even earthbenders’ form of mind control apparently just involves binding people to honor contracts and agreements, which is pretty straightforward and doesn’t get much focus. The biggest issue is the Dai Li. Honestly, I think Vathara gives the Dai Li more overt whitewashing than she does the Fire Nation. Vathara’s Dai Li are actually supposed to be an order of badass spirit-fighters, protecting the people from dangerous spirit world threats, which they apparently still do most of the time, with the whole "secret police” thing being more of a sideline. While Long Feng is still presented as evil, the overall vibe is more that the Dai Li are only corrupt because he’s in charge, rather than the whole organization being rotten (and we’re treated to a number of sympathetic Dai Li characters, most obviously Shirong, while the Gaang get called out for assuming the Dai Li are evil, even though none of their interactions with them have given them any reason to think otherwise). And even Long Feng gets a war hero backstory he didn’t have in canon. I assume this is more of Vathara’s desire to add moral greyness to the setting, but, well, I don’t think that the creepy authoritarian secret police were a group that really needed a sympathetic POV showing that they’re mostly a bunch of honorable men who just want what’s best for their city and it’s just the guy in charge who’s a bad apple, honest! She also gives Kuei a bunch of superpowers for being Earth King, which I’ll discuss when I get to the fic’s themes since I view it as part of a larger trend.

Spirits: Embers uses spirits a lot; it also really plays up the blue and orange morality of spirits in a way I genuinely like and appreciate (though Vathara seems weirdly defensive about this, like she expects her readers to assume that all spirits must be “good guys” and she has to defend a different portrayal, despite the fact that in my experience most of the Avatar fandom considers spirits to be assholes and thinks the world would be better off without them). I do have one particular issue, though. Maybe no one else cares, but as a grad student in religious studies it bugs me so much. That’s Vathara’s use of real-world deities. Agni as the Fire Nation’s patron god has some slight basis in canon, since Fire Nation honor duels are called Agni Kais (Agni is the name of the Vedic fire god… but it’s also literally just the word for “fire” in Vedic Sanskrit) but then out of nowhere partway through the fic she throws in Guanyin as a deity worshipped in the Earh Kingdom, and Tengri as the deity of the Air Nomads. Tengri, in real life, is the chief deity of Tengrism, a traditional religion of Mongolia (which ties back to the connection between the historical Air Nomads as fantasy Mongols from the fic’s history) while Guanyin is indeed venerated in China – but she’s a Buddhist bodhisattva, which is especially weird because the Earth Kingdom isn’t really coded Buddhist in either the show or Embers (shouldn’t the Air Nomads be the ones revering a bodhisattva? And this one really gets me in particular; for some reason, likely Guanyin’s comparative real-life prominence, it feels as immersion-breaking as if it turned out one of the Air Temples was now home to a sect of Christian or Manichaean monks). It’s especially jarring because the Water Tribes still revere the Moon and Ocean Spirits rather than real-world deities (and Vathara gets their names backwards – the Moon is Tui and the Ocean is La, but she flips them for some reason). Honestly, I wouldn’t use real-world deities in the Avatarverse in the first place (I have referenced Agni in some of my old fanfics, following fanon at the time, and I now consider that something of an old shame, fwiw) and if I did, I’d stick with a unified theme of Vedic deities (going off of Agni) rather than taking a grab bag of different traditions and trying to weld them into one cosmology.

The Avatar and Yaoren: Vathara’s take on the Avatar is… interesting. On the one hand, she does have a running theme of each Avatar having to wrestle with their predecessor’s mistakes which I like, and which basically became canon as we got more stories focused on different Avatars (though I do think Vathara sometimes takes it a bit too far, making it seem like the Avatar has caused more problems than they’ve solved; seriously, what did Kyoshi do to you?). On the other hand, she for some reason feels the need to retcon that the Avatar is not actually the reincarnation of their predecessors, but the World Spirit (this fic being mostly written before the introduction of Raava) choosing a new, different human host each time. And I absolutely don’t get the point to this (conceptually, the Avatar is basically a cross between the Dalai Lama and the Avatars of Vishnu, and in traditional interpretations that’s not how either of those work) and it mostly just seems to be thrown in to give Aang something else to be wrong about. Yaoren, on the other hand, Vathara loves; they’re her own creation and as two-element benders are basically mini-avatars (though they’re actually older than the Avatar) and of course Zuko gets to be one. And while the fic goes into a lot of detail about how traumatic the experience of becoming a yaoren is, the way it also lays on thick how important yaoren are and how the Avatar needs them as advisors and how the world falling out of balance is partially due to their decline and how her yaoren characters (especially Langxue) seem to have a better idea of what’s going on and how to fix it than everyone else just oftentimes makes it feel like she’s really laying it on thick regarding how amazing this creation of hers is, with the traumatic aspect being more about milking more sympathy for Zuko than something that actually affects the plot (ie, being a yaoren supposedly cuts Zuko out of the line of succession for good, since he’s now technically a waterbender… but that ends up not mattering because the position of Fire Lord is abolished anyway, and it doesn’t stop him from becoming the Great Name of Dragons’ Wings once it’s established).

Well, this is all getting a little long, so I think I’ll stop here for now and split my overall review into two parts (at least). I hope you’ll join us next time, as we dig into characters, plot, theme, and the fic’s relationship to canon. And if you’re reading this and do like Embers, please keep in mind that I’m not trying to attack you for liking it, and all of this is just my own opinion, no more, and no less. Otherwise, see you soon (fingers crossed!) for part two!

#critical #embers #embers critical #fanfic review #reviews #avatar the last airbender #long post

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jeskoholic · 3 years ago

Text

More Than Human (Part 2)

TWICE Sana x Male Reader

Authornim: Part 2 of 2. Long story

Read Part 1 here.

Contains: Harsh Language, Extreme Violence. Enjoy!

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After that fateful night, Sana and I went home walking the entire way. It took us a lot of time but with each other’s company two hours felt like it was longer. The private time between me and her also opened a lot of time to talk about our future, as it was a relationship with a very unusual premise. I like the set up anyway and the way I see it, there’s nothing wrong about it.

We went home that night and everything felt completely merry and happy. Sana and I continued just how we left off, only that time we were notably more attached to each other with the newfound relationship. It was so simple and innocent, and it fit my idea of a good relationship perfectly. There were no other thoughts, no other buts, no other interference; it’s me and Sana and that’s enough for the both of us.

That set up continued for a month, and it involved the usual routine of going to school and home and I’ve never been happier to see Sana’s welcoming hug and amazingly cooked cuisine greet me as soon as I open the door. We remained the initial respect of privacy we had for each other of course, as I was already happy with the current status of our relationship that I don’t want to ask for anything to mess up the good rhythm just to satisfy my own desires. I’m just concerned for Sana’s safety and happiness because of my love for her.

Well, granted she could protect herself well enough but it’s the thought that counts.

Besides, it had been a good while before I had courage to finally ask her the million dollar question and thankfully she answered ‘yes’.

Yup, at about one month or so since we confessed to each other it’s been official. Sana and I are already formally dating.

I never let the idea of her being an android go up to my head anymore. I personally don’t think there’s anything positive I could get out of that. Sana wasn’t even bothered with it and honestly she’s just happy that she could openly display her feelings now without even restricting it for the sake of protocol. In my head too, I think she’s really struggling internally on what she wants to feel and what her systems are telling her to. That’s why I always want to appreciate everything she does because I know her emotional layout is a lot more complicated than mine.

I think.

Everything was going well. I have a very beautiful girlfriend, I’m living in a perfect apartment with her, I’m nailing robotics test here and there, my project with Shingo and Hiro’s shaping up to be a beast primarily thanks to Yuto’s voluntary help; what else could go wrong right?

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It was a good two weeks after Sana and I have celebrated our first month of officially being together, and I was home in a quiet Saturday morning for the weekend. Sana and I decided to spend it watching a good movie together in my dad’s old analog flatscreen TV, and it was primarily to her insistence. It was supposed to be a horror movie that she won’t shut up about and I’m more than willing to watch it with her (I low-key want to know how she responds to horror scenes) but before it could even start we were interrupted with a soft knock on our door.

“Wow, a knock on the door. We don’t usually get visitors this time of the day, right?” Sana expressed.

“I don’t think so. Maybe Mr Tochigi wanted to collect the rent early. He did say he’s working afterhours excessively. Can you see who it is?”

Sana paused for a while and her eyes lit blue briefly. “I just scanned through the door and it’s my first time to see him here. It’s a male, dressed in rather corporate attire and his body signs indicate that he’s in his early thirties, and a definite stranger to my sensors.”

Wait… late thirties, corporate attire, male…

Oh I think I have a good idea on who it is.

“Sana, turn the TV down and relax. Don’t do anything robotic… you know It already right?”

She nodded in agreement. “Hai~”

I walked towards the door as I heard Sana clean up our set up, then as I grasped the knob of the door I felt a weird jolt of nervousness run through my body.

I opened it partially to check who it was, and upon realizing that I was right I opened it just enough for me to talk to him.

“Mr Avarice! It’s been a long time since the last time. I’m surprised you still know the way back here.”

“Jeez, Y/N. Would it actually hurt to call me Jesko? I’m your uncle after all, and by the way your dad sent me in.”

“My dad…?”

“Yeah… I got a lot of matters to discuss to you in his name. You know the usual corporate stuff and the obligatory visit. Can I come in?”

Oh shit, Mr Avarice certainly won’t be bothered by Sana won’t he?

Well, if I play it naturally like I would maybe it would play out fine. It’s not weird to have a girlfriend living with you, right?

I unlocked the door by removing all the chains and locks it had as restraint, before I finally opened it and let him in.

My uncle, or as I call him Mr Avarice so as to remain the sort of corporate formality, was exactly like what Sana described him to be. He was a tall man in his early thirties with a well-built body, a fair skin complementing his clean black hair, and usually dressed in a blue corporate suit that I always saw him in. He always had this air of respect around him, which was expected coming from a person who’s positioned really high in the corporate hierarchy. Despite being my uncle, he’s not fully Japanese.

“You know Y/N, I still don’t understand why you’re staying at a really remote apartment far from you university,” he said as he scanned the surroundings our little apartment. “You know far well you could easily sleep in a five star hotel-“

I heard Mr Avarice stop mid-sentence as he noticed Sana standing on the corner, an innocent expression plastered on her face.

“Oh, I’m… who are you?”

“Mr Avarice… uncle… umm, this is Sana. And umm… she’s my girlfriend.”

His eyes widened in shock.

Damn that came out a lot awkward than I intended it to be.

“Hello, Mr Avarice, my name is Minatozaki Sana” Sana said as she bowed towards him. “. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Your girlfriend…?” he repeated.

“Mr Avarice, I know this is weird and you just got here for a surprise visit so why don’t you sit for a moment and let me catch you up with things. It’s been a while too, right?”

“Well, I guess I’m to blame for that,” he replied as he sat on the chair I gestured to. “I haven’t been visiting you for the past months and of course something is bound to happen in between and things are supposed to change. When was the last time I went here?”

“I think almost a year ago,” I replied as I too sat opposite her. Sana then moved and sat next to me.

“I’ve been so absorbed with work. Well, for starters, Ms Minatozaki. I am Jesko Avarice, and as he said I am Y/N’s uncle. Though I’m not fully his relative considering I’m his dad’s step-brother, but then I volunteered to watch over Y/N here. I work under our company somewhere in the complex corporate hierarchy, and this is a personal business entrusted to me by the big man himself.”

Sana nodded in his direction. “That’s nice to know, Mr Avarice.”

“You’re really polite and not to mention, really good looking,” he then turned towards me. “You have amazing taste, I’ll give you that. Anyway, let’s talk about what I came here for. I just want to get updated on you.”

“Well, as I’ve been doing really well in school if you’re worried about that. I mean, I get that it looks weird that you saw Sana here so I just want to remove all doubt in your head. Besides-“

“Oh no, no, Y/N; I’m all good with that. You’re young, and having a girlfriend is normal so I’m out of that. It’s your life to live anyway. Besides you’re already in a legal age so I’m pretty sure you’re aware of what’s good for you and what’s not. I’m more concerned of your well-being to be honest.”

That’s weird how he phrased that out but okay.

“I’m fine. Everything’s going really well to be honest. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“It is my job to be worried for you, man. You may be my step-nephew or something but you can’t remove the fact that you’re the sole heir of your father’s robotics corporation. Your life is wealth in its own right that’s why I’m checking on you regularly. You know your dad’s not exactly that… friendly with his competitors. You’re an easy target for your dad’s enemies, you know.”

“I-I’m well aware of that. It’s the reason why I chose to stay low-key and live my young adult life on my own and away from dad’s clutches. The apartment and the entire environment really help. No one would think that I’m here. Also, I’ve said it before and I’m saying it again: I don’t think I’m up for the mantle. Money and the small politics of the company don’t interest me, Mr Avarice, and you know that. I’m more satisfied staying behind and doing all the projects out of the lime light.”

Mr Avarice sighed. “I wish I had the same mind set as you. You know how much resources you have at your disposal and yet you still want to do things from the bottom up. That’s commending already in its own right.”

“I just don’t want to rob myself of the experience. I think it would build my skills more if I remove myself of my father’s wealth and just be like everyone else.”

“What would you do when your dad steps down of the position? I’m sure someone else in the family should take his position after him, right? With his age I’m sure he’s already considering his retirement plans. Has he not contacted you about it yet?”

“He did actually. He sent me credit funds last month and asked how I was doing, but there’s nothing else after that. You know, I’ll be honest if there’s one person who I think is qualified to be the CEO of the robotics company it should be you. You’ve worked really hard for your position and your way more skilled than I am. Not to mention you’re literally made for it. I don’t understand why they force me into it.”

“‘Currently’, is I believe the point here. I’m sure at some point you’ll surpass me and eventually be CEO-worthy like your father.”

“But I told you I’m not interested, Mr Avarice.”

“Things can change. I still believe in your capabilities. Oh by the way Ms Minatozaki,” he turned towards Sana and she seemed to have been startled at the sudden announcement of her name. “I’m sorry if I’m talking to Y/N here too much. I need to catch up on him. I hope you understand

“Oh no, it’s totally fine Mr Avarice. I was actually wondering if I could get you something to drink,” she said softly.

“That’s nice of you! Well then since you offered nicely I’ll ask for an orange juice if you have those. The travel here at your place isn’t exactly commuter-friendly. I wanted to bring the chopper but it won’t be low profile.”

Sana nodded and stood up, walking past the small living room and disappearing into the kitchen.

“I haven’t asked you, Y/N,” Mr Avarice continued once again. “How did you and Sana meet?”

“Oh, that…umm… Sana was a…”

Shoot, I forgot what I was rehearsing in my head. I came up with a good story about how we met as I can’t tell about the scrapyard obviously.

How did it go again?

What was my cover-up story?

“Well, Sana was a schoolmate of mine back at the robotics school. We sort of crossed each other’s paths during lunch time and would often share tables which began the whole talking thing. We hung out a couple of times and we eventually went dating.”

He nodded.

“So when did she move here? Were you two already dating since I last came here?”

“She moved about ten months ago, when we decided that we’re better off knowing each other more.”

Holy shit I’m going all blind here. I hope I’m not saying anything inappropriate and suspicious.

“Why haven’t you told me about her before? You know you can trust me, right?”

“Well, of course I’m shy too. I mean, I’m not that open about her because I wanted to be sure before I told you personally, so…”

“Excuse me,” Sana’s signature high-pitched voice came echoing from our kitchen as she made her way to the living room while holding a single glass of orange juice on her left hand. “Here’s your drink Mr Avarice.”

“Oh, just in time Ms Minatozaki. I was just talking to Y/N here how you met. I’m quite thirsty for—“

As Sana held out to give him his orange drink, I could see from my spot that Sana let go of the glass too early before Mr Avarice could even wrap his fingers around it. The glass fell in mid-air, spilling some of its contents on its downward trail. But then Sana’s right arm was quick enough to snatch it as it fell, catching it within a split second of its fall at the cost of a few drops of orange that fell down towards the floor and Mr Avarice’s hand. It all happened within a second that it’s hard to believe I managed to see all of that in real time.

Then it just hit me:

Oh God Sana just caught that glass with her robotic reflexes!

The entire living room was held in utter silence for what felt like minutes, and it was only broken when Sana managed to get grasp of the situation and attempted to wiggle her way out of it.

“S-Sorry Mr Jesko, I’m really clumsy sometimes,” she explained with a trembling voice.

“Oh my, you have amazing reflexes! That’s something I don’t see every day!”

The entire situation was so quick I could’ve sworn my heart just leapt out of its place.

I hope Mr Avarice doesn’t notice it. That was way too quick of a response to be human.

“I-I figure it would fall so I just … anticipated it,” Sana explained. “Let me get a tissue for your hand.”

“Thank you,” then I saw my own uncle staring at Sana as she disappeared off towards the kitchen one again.

“Mr Avarice, are you okay?”

“Oh, sorry I didn’t mean to stare at her,” he explained quite nonchalant. “I was just amazed at that reflex. I’ve never met a human with skills such as her.”

“Well, Sana’s really damn clumsy at times and I think she learned to compensate for that by having such reflex. I can’t even tell you how much she knocked over things when we first lived here together. You know broken glasses and all. Time came and she managed to prepare herself to act almost immediately in case her clumsiness took over.”

“That’s cool. She has to stay alert almost all the time though, and doing so puts her in a state of constant alertness and her senses would heighten.”

Sana came back a few seconds later and gave Mr Avarice his tissue, before excusing herself out of the living room to clean the supposed mess of the kitchen.

If I didn’t know more she went off to remove herself of attention. I totally understand that.

“By the way, how’s work going on for you?” I asked as to maintain conversation yet change the topic. “You mentioned you’ve been working hard these past months. Is it a new project?”

“Ah, about that; well yes, I have been really busy for the rest of the previous months. The company’s doing really well and in fact, it’s doing so well that all of us upper class men in the corporate ladder have to work hard to make ends meet. Not to mention, there are also a lot of personal stuff I have hanging around.”

“What personal stuff? I might help you out on that. I mean, maybe I can’t but maybe I have something I could do.”

Mr Avarice sighed. “It’s nothing. It’s just, I thought that I was at a dead end but now I have a good hint on how I’m going to do it.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’m following.”

“Oh don’t worry about it. I’m beginning to blabber about work stuff and that’s not what I came here for.”

“That’s exactly why I believe you should succeed dad as the CEO. I’m certainly nothing of your calibre for that. I don’t know what dad doesn’t see on you. I personally think you’re more than enough for the position, Mr Avarice.”

“Those words really mean a lot, Y/N. Thank you. If only you share the same mentality as your father. He still thinks I’m a rookie, but don’t tell him that. I don’t him to think that I’m whining.”

Well, I can’t blame him. Dad really has a stubborn head and he’s not easily impressed. I can’t even count the number of times he wanted to disown me just because I have no interest in such corporate business.

“Well, I think we had this conversation for so long and I think you’ve got what you came for. Do you want to spend the lunch here? We could prepare a lunch for you.”

“Sorry for my sudden disappearance,” Sana said as she returned from the kitchen. “But if Mr Avarice wants to eat I can make lunch for all three of us and share a meal together.”

“That’s really kind of you two. Well then, I can’t refuse your kind offer if you put it that way. Oh actually, Y/N, I have a few documents for you to sign. You know the usual. I’m sorry in advance; since I was absent for a lot of time the papers got stacked and you have to sign a lot of them now. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh right, it’s that time again…I forgot that our meetings usually ended this way. I guess we should start again to finish early.”

I gazed towards Sana’s direction and she nodded in response.

“I will make. Is there anything you want?”

“Hmmm…”

I paused for a while as I thought of something I was craving, perhaps even Mr Avarice was thinking of it as well.

I want something delicious but I also don’t want Sana to be too stacked with kitchen work that it would feel like I’m treating her as my servant. I don’t really know.

“Sana,” Mr Avarice said. “Do you perhaps know how to make a Cheese Kimbap?”

---

Sana froze on the spot upon hearing the word. Normally, she’d respond automatically to the input, but this time her bodily functions were simply not listening to her anymore. It felt as if the two words that Mr Avarice had said, in his own tone, caused something inside Sana to lose focus. It was the first time that she felt it, and so dismissed it as simply a weird, awkward sensation. Perhaps a microcell inside her head had malfunctioned.

“Okay, I’ll make it for the two of you,” she said in return, quite still bedazzled by what just happened.

“Sana, please make it three and join us. I’m sure Y/N here wants you to eat with us. I’m really looking forward to your cheese kimbap. I’m craving for it,” Mr Avarice added.

“I’ll make it three,” she said before bowing in courtesy and heading towards the kitchen.

It was very strange. She had heard Y/N say ‘cheese kimbap’ before, but with the way that Mr Avarice said it to her caused a lot of her internal programming to get overloaded for some unknown reason. Upon hearing it the second time with the same monotonous tone send shivers down her spine like it was something scary to say.

What’s happening? Sana thought to herself as she seemed to have had a mild headache, but with that most of her bodily functions are being crazy. Luckily, after a few minutes it disappeared and she was able to cook the kimbap once again.

But still, the sudden electromagnetic overload she experienced and the subsequent headache was an odd event. Perhaps her body was beginning to simulate the feeling of exhaustion amongst humans, as headache is one of the immediate signs of exhaustion.

Maybe I should power down and charge earlier today.

---

Y/N and Mr Avarice spent their time signing different stacks of paperwork, and they switched over towards the dining table with how many papers there were. They were primarily consisted of university deals, in-company regulations, and board-member problems. Y/N found the activity to be really odd, considering he was supposedly a high-ranking board member as well and his signature was what the majority of their employees needed to get their salary. It was also fascinating how they still use pen and paper for documents despite being so technologically advanced, as their security managers prefer handwritten signatures than digital ones because they were a lot easier to fake.

Y/N had barely finished half of the stack of papers when Sana came from the kitchen with a large pan, holding what appeared to be the cheese kimbap that Mr Avarice had requested previously. Its aroma wafted through the air and immediately filled the airspace inside the small apartment.

“That looks amazing, Ms Minatozaki. I can’t wait to dig in!” Mr Avarice said as soon as the kimbap was placed on the dining table. “Why don’t you skip that stack for now, Y/N? A dish at this calibre definitely doesn’t deserve to be kept waiting.”

“I’ll just continue this later. I don’t want the food wait as well,” Y/N agreed. “Itadakimasu~”

The three of them each took a kimbap with their respective chopsticks, and equally began to stuff themselves of Sana’s cooking. The one who was the most enthusiastic of them was of course, Mr Avarice. He did say that he was craving for it so it was predicted that he’ll really enjoy it.

“This is really good! You did a good job Ms Minatozaki. These cheese kimbaps are the best I’ve ever tasted, and mind you I’ve already had a good trip around Japan to find something as good as these. This chees kimbap is to die for!”

Sana then simply smiled and bowed her head down, not really feeling up to eat the rest of the kimbap she’d bitten.

“So, by the way, where are you heading after here,” Y/N asked after swallowing a handful of kimbap he just chewed. “After we’re done with the signatures, you’re going back to the building?”

“I was planning to,” Mr Avarice replied after biting a large portion of the cheese kimbap. “But there’s some urgent business this morning that I need to head to Osaka to clear things up. I have some business to clear there.”

“Oh, Osaka I see. You’re really working hard, Jesko-san; you should treat yourself every once a while. I heard there are good shops there?”

“There is actually. That’s one thing I’m favouring for my visit there. I know a good shop where they serve a good blend of green tea that I’m looking forward to it’s very of value, especially with all of the amounts of carbonated water we’ve been having around recently.”

“That’s true. I’m not a fan of-“

Y/N was cut mid-sentence as Sana suddenly stood up her chair, her face covered with her lengthy black hair and her hand clutching the majority of her forehead.

“I’m sorry. I need to go to the bedroom and drink my medicine. I think I’m having a migraine,” she said and Y/N’s expression became confused.

‘Migraine’…? But I thought androids don’t get human problems like that?

Y/N stood up and assisted Sana as she was barely even keeping her balance. In his head, maybe Sana was telling him between the lines that she was already tired and that it was time for her to recharge, which is why she’s making such excuses to get him out off the table.

“Oh, migraine, I see?” Mr Avarice said. “Y/N, you should attend to her. She doesn’t look really good.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Avarice. This came really unexpected, and I don’t think I can continue signing the papers if Sana remains like this. I-“

“Oh don’t mind me, Y/N! Go and take care of your girlfriend. I’ll just make a good excuse for the unsigned ones so leave that to me. Worry about nothing else but Ms Minatozaki for now.”

“Thank you for understanding; I’m really sorry.”

“It is fine. This is urgent. I’ll also excuse myself with that. You two need rest, obviously, and with that I’m heading out already.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m more concerned towards Ms Minatozaki’s welfare. Go and make sure she goes well.”

Y/N nodded as Mr Avarice piled the papers and stuffed them all inside his suitcase.

“Let’s just continue this some time, then!”

“Okay!” Mr Avarice stood on the door and waved to Y/N before closing. “If you need me, call me! I’ll be at Osaka!”

At that moment, Sana almost completely fell out of Y/N’s hand. The Japanese android’s slender frame lopped all over the place with Y/N only supporting her by her waist. Sana entered a brief state of sleep, and it wasn’t anything foreign to Y/N as she always does this whenever she’s depleted of spare power. He just didn’t expect her to experience it in the middle of the day.

Y/N then carefully moved Sana and escorted her limp body over her bedroom, where her capsule-like stasis pod lay on the far corner of the room. Slowly and limb for limb he placed Sana inside the pod, her back against the pod’s bed and he made sure that her arms are laid side by side as the glass covering of the pod slid over Sana’s seemingly sleeping body before its sides lit up with a bright blue, although the mere sight of her laid down in a glass capsule felt like he was looking at her, dead inside a coffin.

“Sheesh Sana, I think you overworked yourself today,” He said unto the sleeping figure of Sana. “You forgot to monitor your power level again. It’s amazing that you managed to hold yourself that long but please don’t do it again. It scares the living shit out of me.”

Y/N stared at Sana’s perfectly asleep face.

“Rest for now and recover strength. I’ll wait for you outside.”

---

“Y/N…”

Sana’s voice jolted through me like a lightning bolt. She had been asleep for a couple of hours since she powered down, and in her sleep I have managed to do a lot of stuff, and that includes telling Mr Jesko about the re-scheduling of the signing. But my concern for today was Sana, and the sight of her waking up was relieving to say the least.

“Sana, hello; you’ve been asleep for almost three hours,” I informed her as the glass capsule of her stasis pod slid up to let her out. “You must’ve been really low for a couple of hours that your body gave up and lost energy.”

“Y/N… I… “

“Calm down. You just woke up and your mind’s not properly synced. Get used to it for now. You looked really bad a while back.”

I moved closer to her and knelt beside her pod before giving her a tight hug.

“How are you feeling?”

“Y/N… the migraine back then… I wasn’t lying about it…”

I withdrew from the hug and looked at her straight in the eye.

“What do you mean? There’s no way you felt that all of a sudden. I don’t even know you could experience such.”

“I know… which is why it’s a lot more confusing. I’ve been experiencing a lot of human sensations lately and all of those things are normal… the migraine wasn’t. It was an electromagnetic overload from my cranial cells that manifested as a headache. It was far too painful to be bearable and it felt really serious… Y/N, this is something I never felt before.”

She stared back at me with her deadpan eyes. Her sheer expression alone told me that this was no passing matter. Whatever was happening inside her head was something to be alarmed of.

“Sana, do you remember anything that might’ve caused the headache? Are you 100% sure you’re not just low on power?”

“Y/N, I know my power level because I feel it. I’m way over half capacity when I passed out… but before I began feeling really compromised my head’s beginning to get fried already.”

“When did you feel it, Sana?”

She gazed back at me and frowned.

“I felt it when Mr Avarice came here.”

What?

“Sana, what do you mean? Are you telling me that Mr Jesko Avarice is the reason why you malfunctioned and overloaded? How is that even possible? We were just signing papers and exchanging stories all lunch.”

I felt her hand grip mine as I continue to kneel beside her, and her hand was so damn cold. It was like ice. Sana then sat up and rested her back against the panel of the stasis pod.

“I can’t explain, and for me to not be able to do that it means something’s wrong with it already. When he arrived here it was perfectly normal, but before I went to cook the kimbap that was when I felt something was off. My head began to feel pain, and it is its response whenever there’s something wrong. I just can’t pinpoint it…”

That’s weird. Sana has complete control over her body and its vitals, so hearing this from her is definitely odd. I can’t see what could Mr Avarice’s connection to that headache might be. I honestly think that she might’ve just feeling something else.

“Sana, maybe you’re feeling ill because you’re processing a lot of human emotion recently. I don’t know how, but human emotion is very complex and I think your system’s taking time to process everything. I don’t think Mr Avarice has anything to do with this. It’s just a coincidence.”

“I’m not convinced Y/N…” Her voice trailed off. I could sense the shake on her voice already. “I don’t mean to be rude to your relative, Y/N, but his vitals were weird a while back.”

“You read his vitals?”

“I needed to… when I began to feel the headache I automatically scanned the surroundings for the cause, and that inevitably goes with you and Mr Avarice’s vitals too. His body was producing hormones at certain parts of the conversation, including a subsequent increase in heart rate. It could only mean one thing: he’s getting really excited and happy at certain points of the conversation, and it doesn’t make me comfortable.”

Sana then projected a graph on her forearm of Mr Avarice’s hormone count and heart rate with respect to time, and true enough they do spike at certain points of the conversation. They even spike really high.

What the heck? What is she implying that Mr Avarice is… interested in Sana?

That would be really damn twisted. I still don’t think…

Fuck. I want to defend him based on how I knew him but Sana’s statistics don’t lie. He really does get excited, and I don’t even know if that’s just a fascination or something else.

“Y/N… I don’t want to see him again,” Sana said as I felt her ice-cold grip grasp firmly on my hand. “It’s not right to feel this… there’s something wrong… Please Y/N… I don’t want to see your uncle ever again…”

I need to protect Sana. If she’s saying she’s not comfortable then I should act accordingly, not only as a boyfriend but also as her protector.

I think I can work this out.

“Okay Sana, calm down. I won’t let him go here anymore, just calm down. I’ll meet up at a public place for the next series of signings, and I won’t tell him about you. I’ll do it Sana.”

“T-Thank you Y/N… It really means a lot.”

“I’ll do anything to keep you safe Sana, even if it means keeping you away from my relatives. Calm down. You should rest for tonight. I’ll do the housekeeping for now.”

Her grip strengthened around my hand.

“Thank you Y/N… I love you.”

I felt myself blush. I don’t normally hear that from her. Sana often saves that at really perfect moments.

Every time she says it I just… go crazy.

“I love you too, Sana. Take all the rest you need. I’ll be going to the kitchen,” I told her before I planted a soft kiss on her forehead.

Y/N did what Sana requested him to do, and offered a good alternative for Mr Avarice to no longer visit the apartment if he wants to contact him directly. Despite possibly thousands of unanswered questions going around his uncle’s head, Y/N’s love of Sana weighed more than his uncle’s interests, and thus he chose the person he knew needed a lot more attention and understanding.

However, after that unfortunate encounter Y/N never asked Sana to explain the weird sensation ever again aside from her initial story. Yes, he did pulled Mr Avarice out of Sana’s way but in reality he was still on the fence about the real reason. It was weird that Sana made assumptions solely on pure vital signs, but he also had a hint that perhaps Mr Avarice had a suspicion that Sana was an android based on that one catch reflex alone, and all subsequent actions made by Sana perhaps satisfied his assumptions. If he thought it that way everything made sense. Perhaps Mr Avarice was solely interested on Sana being an android.

He simply just didn’t buy the fact that Mr Avarice might’ve been interested in Sana as a woman. It was also perhaps due to him knowing what Sana really was and thinking that there was someone else interested in her romantically felt weird. Sana was attractive as hell and even dangerously cute at certain times, sometimes even effortlessly, but that alone could not convince him that it was true.

Whatever his intentions with Sana were, the fact that it made Sana uncomfortable is the best sign to yield against him.

---THREE WEEKS LATER---

There was no sign of Mr Avarice after Y/N’s request. Even through the phone call, he could hear his uncle’s confusion and disappointment on his statement, but he agreed otherwise. Up at that point, they were well of without him and everything was just going smoothly. Y/N and Sana focused more on their ever blossoming relationship as they became a lot more in love with each other. Things went back to normal.

So far, that is to say the least.

It was a quiet Friday afternoon and Y/N was just resting on the couch, in the middle of watching a short game commentary on the TV after a long and tiring day from school. Sana entered the living room wearing a black, long-sleeved floral dress and belt. Her dress reached right above her knee and was finished with a pair of knee-high brown boots; the bright orange hair she decided to go with was wet from her shower.

And by bath, it really meant going to the shower and washing herself. Sana had been adjusting to the social norms and such activities like showering; brushing the teeth, going on manicures, and the like had all been under her itinerary.

“I didn’t expect you to be so early Y/N. I thought you have an internship today? I can’t answer the door because I’m at the bathroom” Sana informed him.

“Oh well I did have. It just got finished early. Maybe I just overestimated the time it’ll take. Shingo even laughed at me when I was so puzzled that it was finished so early. By the way Sana, you’re dressed amazingly. Is this an outfit test like before? Because if it is, you’re really killing it; you look definitely amazing in that.

Sana smirked before nodding towards him. The tall Japanese woman then walked towards Y/N with her slender legs in display, all before collapsing down on the couch beside him. Y/N then instinctively placed his arm around her while Sana planted a soft, welcoming kiss on his left cheek then proceeding to rest her head over his shoulder.

“Aren’t you hungry? I can make a meal for you if you want~” Sana offered with a sweet and soft voice.

“Oh thanks for the offer, Sana, but the internship gave us snacks and I ate it on the way here. They even gave potatoes, and you know how heavy potatoes are, right?”

“That’s good to know then. At least you’re stuffed,” she then gazed towards the screen. “What are you watching? I don’t think I’ve seen this before.”

“It’s just a playthrough. I’ve watched it before but I always play it because I enjoy watching it for entertainment. Somehow it relaxes me.”

Sana pouted. “It relaxes you better than I do?”

“Sana, nothing else can make me more relaxed than hearing your voice. I’m addicted to it, really; especially when you do that cute thing we saw on the TV. What was that again?”

“Ehh, Y/N; please do not make me do that. It’s already embarrassing the first time I did it.”

“But it’s cute!”

Sana blushed in embarrassment.

“Nooooo, I’m not doing that ‘Shy, shy, shy’ thing again! It’s so embarrassing!”

Y/N chuckled.

“Okay, okay then. How about you tell me how your day went?”

“It was very boring. Aside from the occasional trip to the market for our supplies, I spent the rest of the day waiting for you, you know.”

“Come on, Sana, I know that’s not the only thing you’re doing. I know you’re in front of the mirror and testing out various outfits. I just know you so much.”

Sana blushed. “Why does it sound so bad when you put it out that way?”

“Oh, it’s not actually. I find it really cute that you’re busying yourself here. I mean, there is a lot of stuff to do outside and yet you choose to stay here and take care of the house until I get back. That’s really amazing how you manage to make that work for yourself. Normal people would get really bored staying inside for most of the time.”

“Outside’s pretty much the same, you know. There’s nothing much happening aside from a lot of people walking here and there. I just go and do what I need to do and go home. I’d rather stay here and wait for you; at least that is a lot more rewarding for me once you knock on my door.”

“You’re really sweet, Sana. You’re getting really good at that. Are you reading guides on how to compliment guys again? I remember you mentioning that before when we were just newly dating. You’re doing it again?”

Sana grinned.

“No of course not, those things are really hard to understand! I’d rather read the one that teaches you how to flirt with girls. At least that makes things a lot more clear in my head than the guides for men. You know, I’d even bet I could flirt all the girls I want if I wanted to.”

Y/N chuckled at Sana’s innocence, and apparently she too understood what she just said and managed to give a little chuckle as well.

The pair of then sat in silence for a moment as they cuddled on the couch and watched the small show that Y/N was watching. After a few minutes of utter quietness, it was Sana who first broke the silence once more.

“You know what, Y/N, now that I think of it… The way that I’m taking care of the house; maintaining it until you get home, running errands, doing all sorts of household chores; I kinda feel like your wife now. ”

“Hmmm…?”

“Maybe we should get married already, you know.”

What?

“Sana, you know we’re still too young to get married right? I still need to finish college and get a decent job before we do that. I need to get stable financially too now that I want to be completely independent of dad and his funds.”

“Should we buy a dog then?”

Where on earth are these questions coming from?

“Why?”

“So that I have someone here with me while I wait for you. Like a companion, someone I can talk to.”

“Am I not enough for that?”

Sana pouted, and doing so emphasized her really chewable cheeks. She then reached towards Y/N’s nose and pinched it lightly so as to tease him.

“Of course you are, Y/N. There’s nothing more I could ask myself for aside from you. I’m just saying, well sometimes I get lonely here. I want a dog.”

“Hmmm… let’s say that you do get a dog. What are you going to name it?”

“’Boo’ sounds cute, right?”

“’Boo’… huh… well it does sound cute it just doesn’t feel like you, you know. It’s not very Sana-y, if you know what I mean.”

Sana pouted.

“Do you have an idea then? It’s going to be our dog anyway, and I’ll begin to treat it as our child and raise it with love and care.”

“Hmmm…”

However, before Y/N could give a good suggestion of a name, Sana suddenly sat straight up and stared towards the door with a rather fearful expression. Her sudden action caused Y/N to jump in his seat and look at her girlfriend too.

“Why, what happened? Is there something wrong?”

“Y/N, he’s here… he’s back,” Sana said softly, not removing her deathly stare at the door.

“Who…?”

“Mr Jesko Avarice…”

Y/N’s eyes widened in shock; he was well aware that Mr Avarice had left the two of them alone and respected Sana’s discomfort towards him during their previous encounter. His presence on their doorstep now just defied the agreement they had.

“Sana, calm down,” Y/N said towards her. “If he’s here, maybe there’s just some emergency at the company. Don’t worry. I got this. I won’t let him in unless necessary.”

Y/N stood up and approached the door while Sana followed him, stopping just a few feet from the Y/N but stood guard quite attentively with her arms balled into firm fists. A series of soft knocks were then heard from the opposite of the door, followed by the voice that Sana recognized all too perfectly.

“Y/N, I know you’re in there. I’m sorry if I came at such a short notice but I have an emergency. Can I come in?”

“Mr Avarice, I thought it was someone else,” Y/N answered although not opening the door. He projected his voice through the small hole on the surface of the metal door. “Is it really urgent? I mean, I can’t really take in you in. We talked about this already.”

“That’s unfortunate. I thought you’d make it easier. Is Sana there, Y/N?”

Y/N knit his eyebrows. “What does Sana have to do with this?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d let me in. It’s Sana who I came here for after all. I wanted to ask you nicely.”

Y/N felt his ears go hot. Sana on the other hand, glared in fury at the door. She ran a short x-ray scan and saw him all alone at the opposite side of the door and surprisingly, unarmed. With that info, she was confident that she could take him in the case that he busts in the house.

“What the hell? I told you, Mr Avarice: Sana’s really uncomfortable with you here and there’s no way I’m letting you in in that premise. Please just leave. Whatever urgency made you come here, just leave it. You’re not getting anything. So please leave before I lose the remaining respect I have for you as my uncle.”

Mr Avarice chucked on the other side of the door and spoke, his tone definitely changed as it became a lot more sinister. “Oh god Y/N, I don’t even care even an ounce for your respect towards me. I’d even care less for whatever you think of me. As far as I’m concerned I’m here to take your precious Minatozaki Sana home, or should I say…

“… JA122996-001”

Y/N froze on the spot upon hearing the series of numbers.

What the hell? How did he know about Sana’s serial number designation?

Don’t tell me that he knows that she’s…!

He glanced towards Sana and saw her as equally confused as he was. Sana eyes changed then from a look of confusion to anger, followed by both of her hands morphing to turn two large plasma cannons aimed at the door.

“Oh come on, you’re seriously pointing those against me?” Mr Avarice said from the other door, apparently aware of the situation inside. “You’re being rude; Ms Minatozaki, but I’ll allow it. After all, you can’t remember a thing so I’ll remind you of everything. It’s like I said: I’m taking you back home.”

“WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!” Y/N roared at the other side of the door while Sana began to charge her cannons as they lit up with a pair of teal energy.

“Allow me to show you, Y/N. It all begins with a single word… like Cheese Kimbap.”

A moment of silence occurred, and Y/N turned towards Sana. She began to shiver upon hearing Mr Jesko, and her hands powered down before morphing back to her normal ones.

“Agh…!” Sana let out a very agonizing scream as she sat crouch down on the floor with her hands all over her head. Y/N realized what was happening and immediately rushed to her aid.

“Sana! What’s happening? What is he doing?!”

“I-I don’t k-know… My head… it hurts…It’s just like before…” she replied, barely even able to speak.

“See, it still works like a charm,” Mr Avarice spoke once again. “I told you she’ll yield.”

“WHAT THE HELL! Sana, no… don’t listen to him… Please…”

“Oh she will. After all, it’s what she’s programmed to. It’s what I programmed her to. Green Tea…”

“NO!” Sana yelled back, still shivering as she crouched.

“…Heart Shaker…”

“STOP…!”

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MR AVARICE!?”

Y/N attempted to cover Sana’s ears, so as to prevent whatever the words did to her. She was in a pretty bad shape already; her screams were so painful to hear and very unbearable as it frequently filled the apartment the more that Mr Avarice spoke the weird series of words. It was like the combination of a cry of pain and a scream for help, and it certainly did no good to Y/N. Sana was in pain, and what hurts the most is there’s nothing he could do to ease it.

However, despite her status and her cries, Mr Avarice continued to recite the words; still with held in a neutral trance that it was already on the borderline between hypnotic and creepy.

“Carbonated Water… Body Mist…”

“Please stop…” Sana pleaded, and this time she already had her head on the floor, with both her hands grasping for her ears.

Her entire body continued to shiver and tremble uncontrollably, with Y/N attempting to lift her up and pull her out of the living room. It was to no avail. Whatever those words did to Sana, it sure did engage her robotic body as she was as stiff as a board, yielding to nothing but the movements of her own. However, with how it looks it doesn’t look like she’s barely in control of her own body. It looked like her very senses were defying her.

“Osaka… Shiba Inu… Snake… Harry Potter…”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO HER!?” Y/N yelled towards the locked door in panic, desperate as he is for he has nothing to do but hug the crippled body of Sana as she continued to whimper and scream every time she heard the words.

Mr Avarice, however, remained unconcerned. With the same haunting he continued to recite the words again.

“Cheese Kimbap… Green Tea… Heart Shaker… Carbonated Water… Body Mist… Osaka… Shiba Inu… Snake…”

Sana let out a really horrifying scream.

“SANA!!!!!”

Y/N was unable to react as the locks of door began to explode and send debris of shattered chains and locks going inside the apartment. The subsequent smoky remains were then followed by a pair of robotic droids with skeletal bodies and a large metal box for a head infiltrated the once peaceful home of Sana and Y/N. The two robots them immediately grabbed Y/N and yanked him off of Sana’s curled body and held him by the shoulders, their inhuman force was so strong Y/N felt welded inside their grip despite squirming for freedom.

A tall figure then entered the door. It was the similar well-built body, the clean hair, and the fair skin finished with a tidy black trenchcoat over a black turtleneck; Mr Avarice stepped inside of the broken and smoking door like it was nothing, and proceeded to gaze with pity over Sana’s curled body as she still trembled and shivered on the floor.

“WHO ARE YOU!?” Y/N yelled at the man he called his uncle. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT WITH SANA?”

“You know what, Y/N,” Mr Avarice continued in a very calm pace. “I was this close to giving up on this prototype. I thought I lost 001 when she got shot on the scrapyard, but thankfully you found her and even raised her like your own. You even called her a girlfriend right? Damn…”

“I’m not listening to your bullshit! Leave Sana alone! She’s not your goddamn prototype!” Y/N said as he attempted to wiggle out of the two droids once more, but to no avail. They were far more superior thanks to their robotic physique.

Mr Avarice approached him just right before he gave Y/N a very heavy slap across his face. He then proceeded to grip Y/N’s face by the chin.

“You goddamn disgrace of an heir better keep your mouth shut before you talk shit to me, okay? I’m going to tell you the story of the prototype you harboured, and after that I’m going to make her kill you. So if anything else, you should be thankful. I’m telling you everything before I end your damn miserable life. I’ll make sure every word will hurt, because I know how much you’ve grown attached to her. That attachment will be your demise.”

He let go of Y/N’s face with a vigorous force before turning his back and walking straight towards a chair. Y/N then felt the two robots place a silencing module over her mouth and expanded across towards the back of his head, binding his lips together and preventing him to speak.

“But then maybe I should thank you too. You took care of her, and even gave her a nice looking home. For that, I owe you one. So I consider us even, to say the least. Now…”

Mr Avarice proceeded to take one chair from the kitchen and sat between Sana’s still-trembling body and the dumbstruck Y/N, who glared at him with all his might and still continued to struggle at the grip of the two robots without even the ability to speak.

“You know what; I’ve always hated your father, for the record. I never wanted him especially when he got tied to my family thanks to my mother. Just like that I had an older brother who was just so perfect. In fact, he was so perfect that my own damn mother gave her the company before she died because in her eyes he’s more worthy than I was. Do you know how that felt like? Do you know how it feels to get snagged of something that was meant for you just because they found a better suited person just like that? I’ve been training myself to run the family all my life and he just goes there and takes the thunder off of me. I knew that day I had a mission: I wanted to destroy your father in the most painful way ever.

“Hell knows I tried everything to do everything legally; from working inside his company and proving myself worthy in his eyes, but he remained stoic. There was nothing I did that got his attention, no matter how big or how grand and ground breaking my projects was there was no praise. I spent half my life proving my worth inside the company that it began to hurt so badly, and I could even prove myself more than worthy to be CEO. There was nothing else I was looking forward to but to get my hands on my mother’s own company as it was meant for me before, and I began to formulate project Synthesis.

“My original plan was to use 001 to kill your father, until he revealed to me that he had you, Y/N.”

Y/N felt his mouth’s grip on the towel loosen, but he remained his glare on his so-called uncle.

“You see when he told me that he had a son who’s supposed to be his heir, my entire world crumbled. I was back at that day again when mother rejected my management for his, and with you in tow it would end the company’s line on my mother and would totally be absorbed by your family’s bloodline. That was the time I decided to attack your old man where it hurts the most and in turn ending his decrepit reign over MY company; I’ll use the product of project Synthesis to kill his only son, and hoping that the following trauma would destroy him psychologically to the extent that he’ll have no other choice but to give up the company to me. My family’s generation of robotic domination would be handed down to the only worthy successor at last.”

He gazed back at Y/N’s glaring eyes.

“You remember that time at the scrapyard? 001 was supposed to kill you then and there, like I said. It was the perfect cover: the great Y/N, the heir to a large robotics company killed by an isolated android malfunction in a scrapyard while searching parts for his pathetic school project. It was so good if only one security droid didn’t mistake her camouflage for a plane and shot a good aimed missile on her head. I thought she was gone for good when I couldn’t even recover a single panel from her body, and thus I dismissed the project as a failure for the next months to follow.

“I spent many sleepless nights attempting to replicate 001’s design, but its designation was far too complex for me to replicate from scratch, not when I’ve placed all my blueprints inside her memory. After all, most of her systems were stolen from your father’s company, and none of your bright scholars even thought of putting her up despite having the resources. It was the result of poor leadership, and thus your dad would be stabbed by the own weapon he never intended to create.”

Mr Avarice then turned to Sana.

“Thanks to your little show at the Fanfare Carnival not so long ago, I got a new lead on my lost prototype. Something that wild and powerful that it managed to evade the patrolling security force and even went far as to drop an entire billboard on them ought to be big on the news. Especially when you thought you could escape it by flying away with her. One of my associate drones managed to take a picture of the two of you going to Kanagawa, and the sight of the thrusters alone was more than enough for a confirmation. 001 was still active, and is hidden somewhere in Japan specifically around the vicinity of Mt. Haruna and her neighbouring cities.”

Y/N’s eyes widened in shock

“Taking the videos off of other people’s radar was quite tedious, but I managed to narrow down the search on my own. Luckily your friends Shingo and Hiro were more reliable than you, and not to mention that one grease head Yuto spilled information about you after I promised him that I was on your side. After I offered a promotion he can’t resist he told me about everything like the greedy bastard he is. Well, what can I say; money is a powerful weapon.”

Y/N attempted to move in anger, quite flustered that Mr Avarice even used his friends to find him and Sana.

“If you’re worried about them, they’re fine. I see no point spilling unnecessary blood when I already got what I need. You’re my only target and I want to keep it that way. Besides, the company is my ultimate goal. Killing you is the reward that comes with it.

“You see, Y/N, that little visit here did more than enough to confirm me that your so-called girlfriend is the android I was looking for. I hated going here; it just disgusts me to see you in line as the next CEO when you literally have no balls to handle the job, let alone have an interest in it. The moment your precious Sana responded to my calls in that manner confirmed that she was indeed 001.

“Funny, isn’t it? You spent almost a year nursing her and treating her as your own but it only takes nine words to reprogram her to my will. It may sound silly, but I chose those words carefully that I could definitely slip it in a normal conversation and activate her without notice. All I need to do is to repeat the same nine words TWICE.”

Shit!

“Now watch how I’ll turn the very person that you loved and cared for the past months into your executioner. It will be my courtesy to you for taking care of it for such a long time while I was gone…

“… Harry Potter.”

The moment Mr Avarice spoke the name; Sana stopped trembling and began to stand in a very stiff manner that removed any traces of humanity inside her. A few moments later Sana stood up like nothing happened, wearing an expression that was so devoid of any humanity. It was so cold that it sent shivers down his spine, but his heart nearly leapt out of his ribcage when she finally spoke.

“001 online; emergency memory recovery protocol initiated”

Y/N could not believe what he just heard; Sana was back to how he found her almost a year ago. He heard the same robotic voice filter of Sana’s AI mode. It felt haunting; the voice alone sent the hairs on the back of his neck to stand with how scary they sounded, and at that moment he can’t do anything with his restraints.

A sly grin etched on the face of Mr Avarice.

“I’ll have your Minatozaki Sana here to deal the final blow to you. There’s no need for me to get my hands dirty for unworthy people like you, and it also helps that it pains you to see what she had become, or rather who she truly is.”

He then turned towards Sana. “Engage Destructive mode.”

“Voice command recognized,” she replied in the same, shrill robotic tone. “Destructive mode initiated.”

“I bet you didn’t even notice that the ‘JA’ on her designation stands for Jesko Avarice. You’re a dimwit, Y/N.”

At that moment, Sana’s orange shaded hair transitioned to a black silky shade as the pupils of her eyes became a glowing shade of bright purple before the rest of the exposed skin on her thighs and arms glowed with similarly shaded panel lines. The sleeves of her black floral dress then became torn and singed after she morphed her entire forearm into a much complex looking plasma cannon, now beginning to charge itself as it faintly had the same shade of purple like her eyes.

It was definitely her scariest side that Y/N had ever seen. Aside from the exposed weaponry and the change of her body form, Sana’s face was as expressionless as ever. To him, it felt like she just died and Mr Avarice brought her back to life and turned her to a mindless puppet because it was exactly what Sana looked like; a hollow, soulless automaton waiting for orders.

“Acquire target: Organic human named Y/N,” Mr Avarice ordered. “Aim but hold fire upon my command.”

Sana raised her right plasma cannon arm and aimed mindlessly towards Y/N, her face devoid of any recognition or memories of him for the past ten months.

“Release him. I want him to see how his beloved girlfriend would kill him. I want him to see who she really is.”

The two droids removed his silencing module and threw him forcefully on the ground just in front of Sana, and the first thing he did was look up to her, hoping to appeal to the human Sana overridden by the 001 programming that was activated.

“Sana… I know you remember me… It’s me, Y/N… please put the gun down…” he pleaded with his voice beginning to crack from all the contained emotions.

But it was to no avail. Sana’s face was completely nil of any expression aside from the flare and glow coming from her pupils as she stared down against Y/N’s begging figure with her right cannon aimed at him.

“I can make this quick for you Y/N, but there won’t be any fun in that,” Mr Avarice said as the two droids walked towards his side. “Now let’s see if this so-called girlfriend of yours did love you. Come on Y/N. Beg. Appeal to the human you’ve seen in my prototype. I want to hear it.”

Y/N’s heart pounded so hard against his ribcage. He only had one desperate plan on that minute: escape. As he lay on the floor, his eyes scanned around the place for something do distract Mr Avarice and contribute to his momentary escape. Of course with Sana watching over him he’s entirely not convinced how long he could use the small window to live, but then it was his only chance to get out and hopefully pull things off after.

How to revert 001 to the Sana he knew was something else as well.

“Come on, Y/N. You’re not going to say something? That’s disappointing.”

Y/N saw the small opportunity and despite feeling the heat from Sana’s charged cannon warming the top of his head with the proximity, it somehow gave him the motivation to restore him back to normal. Sana and the droids needed a specific command to kill him, and yet with Mr Avarice’s pride and air headedness he forgot to say the specific instructions and left a hole in the system.

Y/N immediately yanked the carpet that Mr Avarice and his droids were stepping on, causing the three to lose balance and fall to the floor after getting caught off guard. The pulled carpet was then thrown over the three toppled bodies and Y/N executed his escape plan. Sana, lacking further orders than to simply aim at Y/N and wait, did nothing as the young man ran past his covered uncle and darted towards the open doorway and the terrace beyond.

Mr Avarice chuckled as soon as he got the carpet off of him.

“Just like Y/N. He’ll disappoint me if he won’t even do something like this. Sana…”

Sana stopped and turned towards her newfound master.

“… Your target is Y/N; the man who you were just aiming at moments ago. My order is for you to injure him in the most painful and torturous way possible, but to the point that you won’t kill him until I say so. Pursue him and use everything in your arsenal to incapacitate him.”

The glowing eyes of the gynoid flared as she nodded in approval. Sana then walked out of the open doorway and began to pursue her target.

“This is one moment I don’t want to miss. Prepare the chopper. I want to see the light leave his eyes.”

---

I can’t believe I pulled that off. It was a last-ditch effort I wanted to go with and thankfully it went really well.

Now I just have to survive.

Somehow the theory in my head worked. I thought Sana was going to blast me the moment I made an action against Mr Avarice, but then she just stood and stared with just the limited order she was given. I even managed to get out of the apartment and towards the hallway terrace, but this battle was far from over. In fact, I already feel something’s happening behind me with the sound of thrusters beginning to get deployed.

It was Sana who was instructed to kill me, after all; of course she’ll do anything to execute her mission.

There was a short explosion and I could only assume that it was her blasting the apartment to pieces, and together with our memories with it.

I looked back just in time as I set my legs to run forward. Sana was standing amidst the smoke and rubble, in the small terrace hallway with both her arm cannons aimed at me charged and ready to blast. I think I only have a few moments to live, and my actions for the next seconds would decide if I’ll live or I’ll die.

Screw it.

I dove face first in front like the pavement was a swimming pool, and almost at the same moment I heard a loud whooshing sound pass me then hit the terrace wall overhead. I then immediately got up to my feet as I heard Sana’s cannons began to charge up once again.

Her cannons combined with the sound of a helicopter’s propellers were the very sounds that pumped the heck out of my adrenaline. However, despite the initial charging sounds of her cannon it soon died down as if Sana called the blast off. I ran down the hallway and upon glancing towards her direction, Sana was floating in mi-air by her back and thigh thrusters while aiming both of her closed fists towards my direction. For that split second I managed to reach the descending staircase and immediately I ran down the first steps.

The next thing I heard was a loud crash just where the wall of the stairwell was. Both of Sana’s forearms were buried in the rubble of the broken wall, their ends housing a rocket booster. Afterwards, I heard both her severed forearms shift and fly back towards her direction. I was amazed there for a split second, but with the threat against my life I decided against admiring her. I just ran and ran until I was cleanly out of the apartment and into the streets of Kanagawa’s late afternoon.

I could hear Sana’s consecutive blasts hit the ground behind me but this time I didn’t even dare to look back. I know I won’t get anything from that but her nightmarish image that’s about to kill me. Thankfully, it was already late afternoon that the streets were relatively empty save for a few people who were unfortunate to have witnessed Sana’s rampage. The onlookers screamed in terror as Sana began blasting behind me with her energy cannons.

I wanted to draw her attention far from the common-goers as much as I could, and thus I remembered a nearby abandoned building. I’m not keeping my hopes up that I could lose here there, but in the case she manages to kill me I don’t want to take innocent bystanders with me.

But then again, I’m not planning to die just yet. I know I could fix Sana out of this.

It may just be a desperate call, but it’s all I have. I’ll think about fixing her later after I sort this shit out.

I honestly don’t have a concrete plan but just run.

My running eventually reached the abandoned building. It used to be a six floor commercial establishment until an unfortunate fire caused its glory to go up in flames, with its remains left to rot in the public eye. Now, it’s just an empty, dilapidated building in the middle of a grassy parking lot with nothing else but barbed wires, trash, and graffiti lining its perimeters. The night was also quick to come as the twilight made its conclusion and I could already see the sky darkening to a deep blue hue as I heard Sana’s thrusters following me suit.

I jumped over a large trashcan and vaulted my body over the fenced gate and fell inside the grassy lot. I managed to find my way around it despite the scraps and rubble lying around thanks to the small trail pathway in the middle.

BOOM

I felt myself thrown sideways with a couple of debris, and as soon as I hit the ground I forced myself to run and get up, not allowing myself to feel the pain from the impact. I glanced momentarily behind and saw a flash of light followed by the sound of wrecked concrete. Sana just attempted to kamikaze herself towards me, but she missed and hit a pile of rubble instead. That was the moment I needed and I ran as fast as I could towards the inside of the building.

Should I enter it? I haven’t given this much of a thought. I needed to stop at its entrance and gaze towards the towering pile of burnt concrete. I knew I had no choice but this would be a one way trip. I doubt I’ll even make it out alive.

The sound of Sana rebooting with her thrusters were the sign to move on and without another second thought I ploughed through the pile of metal scraps as I made my way into the empty building; its stillness and void was so unnervingly haunting. If it wasn’t for Sana pursuing me relentlessly I would be afraid to enter it alone.

I’m pretty sure Sana knew where I was but there was still a part of me that wanted to lose her despite the odds. That crash looked really hard considering she boosted straight towards a concrete wall, and I can’t help but look at her direction while praying that she doesn’t pull off a split-second attack I cannot evade.

I had a feeling she could do that.

True enough, as I peered through the gaps of the scraps I saw her slowly emerging from the dust and rubble. All I could see was her black, shadowy silhouette as her figure was obscured with the bright light from behind her, although the purple panel lines she had all over her body and her eyes glowed dangerously and menacingly in the distance. Sana then withdrew her twin blades on both her arms before waving her head from side to side as if looking for me.

I have no time to admire her pretty upgrades. She’s going to kill me.

I ran towards the nearby staircase and I could barely even see anything due to the impending darkness. As soon as I reached the second floor, I peered through a small open gap and Sana had just busted her way through the doorway and sent debris flying in all directions. I continued to run and eventually reached the next set of stairs to the third floor, and I never stopped running. Things just felt awfully quiet that I began to question whether she’s still pursuing me or not.

But of course, she IS still pursuing me. Whatever was happening in the background was a dead-certain trap. She’s probably—

I felt myself getting thrown from below followed by the sound of the floor being ripped open by none-other than Sana herself. I got thrown across the hallway to the nearest wall, and damn that impact flew me so hard that it stung a lot on my shoulders. I could even barely move on the floor as I watched Sana literally emerged from the crevice of her own making.

Her stare; it was the same emotionless and ghastly stare with the flaring purple eyes that pierced mine as I attempted to stand.

I forced myself to stand despite the pain on my shoulder taking its toll on a sensory level, and I managed to bring myself up on my legs before Sana’s entire body could enter through the gap.

“I’m sorry Sana. I love you,” I told her as I pulled an exposed beam I saw earlier, causing the suspended wooden, steel and concrete of the roof to collapse and fall on top of her.

I’m pretty sure she’s fine. I’m just stalling for whatever’s going to happen to me even though I’m sure it would barely even do much.

I resumed running again to the point that I was literally hurting myself from sprinting. For some reason, Sana stopped going after me until I reached the topmost floor and even managed to sneak up to the rooftop. I was beginning to worry that I collapsed too much weight onto her that I might’ve had destroyed her completely.

The rooftop was an open space. Small concrete lifts lined the rectangular perimeter under the indigo-red twilight sky that was already inhabited by the first batch of stars welcoming the night. I saw a small clearing ahead; if I managed to get enough speed I think I can clear the jump to the next building. If I want to live I’m sure that’s the only way to go.

With all the energy I could muster, and even through the stinging sensation of the injuries of my shoulder and the rest of I body, I sprinted as hard as I could towards the other side of the rooftop. I was hoping to reach the end before Sana could even show up from below. I then reached the end and began to jump in mid-air (and the painful impact I might have to deal with afterwards) when Sana showed up hovering in front of me right on the trajectory of the jump.

Shit

The next thing I felt was like being struck by a solid wall as I saw her fist hit me. I felt a really solid impact on my stomach that sent me flying back a few feet from where I jumped off, stumbling towards the cold pavement of the rooftop with the painful sensation getting to my head. I immediately coughed blood as soon as I stopped rolling, and I barely even stood up as Sana finally landed on the other side of the roof and walked slowly towards me. I then heard a helicopter on my right, and upon turning I saw Mr Avarice going out of it and into the same rooftop, a sinister smile plastered on his face.

---

“Looks like you’re out of luck,” Mr Avarice declared in triumph as he approached his injured nephew. “That’s one hell of an escape attempt, I’ll give you that; but it all ends now. No more games.”

Sana utilized her thrusters to place her right in front of Y/N, and then moving to aim her left arm cannon towards him as she stared at her dead on.

Y/N, helpless and full of pain from all his subsequent injuries, lay on the roof and stared towards Sana’s emotionless face. It was just as Mr Avarice ordered: he was sure his body was incapacitated with his sustained injuries.

“Target sighted; preparing for elimination,” she said on that haunting robotic voice.

“Say your last words, Y/N.”

“Sana… please…”

Mr Avarice smirked. “Kill him.”

In a last, desperate attempt to hopefully bring her back and also the last thing he thought of that very moment, Y/N used all his remaining strength to fling himself towards Sana, giving her a very tight hug that would quite possibly the last thing he’d ever do in this world.

“I love you no matter what, Sana.”

Sana stood in silence, although his action obviously caused her face to draw a small reaction: Sana looked as if she just escaped her trance and was confused on what her supposed target had done. On her Destructive Mode’s protocol, a target wasn’t supposed to do that.

“That’s sweet; giving one last hug to your girlfriend. A wise choice, Y/N. Now, kill her. 001, eliminate your target at once,” Mr Avarice ordered.

Sana regained composure and pushed him back towards the floor and readied her arm cannon once again. She was ready to eliminate him and fulfil the mission she was given, although the sight of him caused a random string of memories to flood her and temporarily disable her logical processors followed by a ringing voice inside her head she clearly recognized to be from Y/N.

I love you Sana…

What If I told you I like you Sana?

Alright Sana, let’s bring you home.

There’s nothing more I could ask in this world aside from you, Sana.

She looked down on him only to see his eyes wet.

Tears

Y/N was crying. The man whom she was supposed to kill sat on the floor with tears flooding his eyes; his bloody mouth etched in a sad, desperate smile.

“It’s okay Sana. I love you. Do what you have to do,” he said as he closed his eyes, apparently accepting his fate.

Sana paused and her face changed to a look of concern, the sinister purple hue was gone and her eyes were back to the same eyes Y/N knew and loved. He opened his eyes just in time to see it and at that moment his heart pounded heavily against his chest again; not of fear, but of triumph.

“What are you doing?” Mr Avarice exclaimed. “You have your damn orders! Kill him now, 001! Blast the life out of his eyes.”

There was nothing.

“001, you have your fucking orders! Eliminate Y/N now!”

Y/N closed his eyes and anticipated for his death, but Sana remained standing despite the orders of her master.

“001! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? KILL HIM NOW!”

Sana closed her eyes.

“KILL HIM NOW! ELIMINA—“

BOOM

It had been done and Y/N heard it. Sana just used her cannon and the job was done and he was enjoying the final moments his body could give him before he was finally dead. However, he was confused. There was no pain or anything and he felt alive. He then dared to open his eyes and it was the sight he didn’t expect.

Mr Avarice was standing mere feet away from him; right on the edge of the roof with a horrified expression frozen on his face, and on his chest was a large gaping hole that was blasted through his entire body.

“001… What…?”

Y/N heard Sana load another blast from her cannon and shot another energy beam aimed at Mr Avarice and it hit him right in the face. The force from the blast was so strong that it sent his body falling off from the edge of the rooftop and towards the pavement below.

Sana launched another series of energy shots, this time aimed at the flying helicopter. It blasted right through its propeller and at the cockpit, destroying the droid piloting it and sending the wreckage of the broken chopper hurtling down towards where Mr Avarice’s body had disappeared seconds ago.

“Y/N…!” Sana exclaimed as she morphed back to her normal human self, assisting her boyfriend whose injuries were primarily caused by her. “I’m so sorry… I’m sorry!”

“Sana… I’m glad you’re back,” he replied with a bloody smile. “Seeing you human again made me a lot stronger… you got through his control…”

“I’m so sorry,” Sana’s face began to stream with tears; real, genuine tears of sorrow. “You’re hurt and it’s because of me… “

“It’s okay Sana… I’m just glad you’re back. I’m fine.”

He smiled back at her concerned expression with a bloody grin.

“We need to get your injuries-AH!”

Sana fell backwards, holding her head and screaming. Her body was enveloped with jolts of electricity that ran throughout her entire body. Some sections of her skin began to burn with the overload of energy and exposed the metal robotic detail she had underneath. Half of her face was already ripped off of her organic projection and revealing the blue optic sensor she had underneath along with the metal endoskeleton of her cheek. Y/N attempted to calm her, but as soon as his skin got in contact with her body, he got briefly shocked. Apparently Sana was covered with so much electrical energy that she’s overloading, but after a few seconds she stabilized and got back but with a concerned and sad expression on her face.

“Sana… Sana… what happened…?”

“Y/N… I-I need to get out of here,” she replied as she began to stand. “I need to get out of here, now…”

She turned and projected her thrusters once again, but before she could even fly Y/N held her hand.

“Sana, please… what’s happening? Don’t leave me again please… I just got you back, why do you need to leave so soon? Mr Avarice is no more. No one can harm us now, Sana.”

“Y/N, I don’t want you to get hurt. Mr Avarice installed a failsafe inside my body which would detonate my core in the moment his heart stops beating. It was supposed to explode a second ago but I managed to stop it. I didn’t prevent it from detonating, but I just delayed it. I don’t have much time, Y/N.”

“Sana…”

Y/N pulled her down towards him and hugged her despite the rising temperature of her body.

“Y/N… I’m sorry but this has to happen… we only have less than a minute…”

Sana then withdrew from the hug and held his face, staring at him eye to eye.

“No matter what happens in the future, Y/N, I will forever be grateful that it was you who found me. You taught me to be human, and there’s nothing more I could ask for. You made me feel the best I could ever feel, and even in my short life I lived a life fulfilled, thanks to you.”

Sana’s left eye, the one that was still perfectly human, began to flood with tears.

“Sana, no… please don’t say that,” Y/N’s eyes began to water as well.

“There’s no other way… I’m sorry that it has to end like this, but this is the least I could do to save you. Live for me, Y/N. Live your dreams for me.”

Sana pulled Y/N close and kissed him tenderly, and it was the first time they each felt the other’s lips on their own. It was so simple, so perfect, but with the situation, it was all but tragic.

Y/N was crying on her face and Sana did the same thing as well.

“I love you, Y/N. I love you so much.”

Sana began to glide backwards slowly and not taking her eyes off of him. Y/N held the hand on his face until it was gone, as Sana hovered away from him with a satisfied look on her face.

“SANA…!” He screamed at her figure as Sana boosted upwards the night sky.

It was the best life she could’ve asked for, and there was no changing it. Sana loved Y/N with all her heart, a feat that was initially proved to be impossible but she defied the very programming she was made to execute. It lacked explanation, but it was exactly why she treasured it so much.

She never even knew that she could even love. Y/N taught her that. She knew the true meaning of love thanks to him. It was just her deepest regret of the injuries he sustained because of her and staying away from her was just one thing she could do to prevent him from being caught in the blast.

Sana hovered high up the night clouds and looked back on the earth. She then used her enhanced optics to zoom towards Y/N’s standing figure on rooftop and she was able to hear his last message as the countdown wounded down.

“I LOVE YOU SANA!” Y/N yelled towards the sky, and despite being so far she heard it clearly.

Sana smiled as she gazed towards Y/N’s face through her optics, and after a few moments her core began to overload.

3…

2…

1….

Y/N stared teary-eyed towards the spot where Sana flew off too after shouting. A few seconds later, a large explosion was seen on the sky quite similar to a firework, with its flares lighting the evening sky with a beautiful light show. It was Sana’s final transformation, and even in her last moments she wanted to show how much he loved Y/N as she exploded in the mix of his favourite colours.

---TWO WEEKS LATER---

Y/N had spent the previous weeks on Yuto’s lab, salvaging on whatever was left of his hardware from his computer with his blasted apartment. He was trying his best to divert his attention out of Sana’s demise, living his life as he could possibly do and as normal as he could possibly be.

Yuto, quite driven by regret of the role he played on Sana’s activation, allowed Y/N to use his own personal computer as to find other useful files from Y/N’s burned apartment. Everything was reduced to ashes, but luckily he was able to retrieve the single hard drive that was still intact inside his computer.

It also helped to remove his attention from Sana. He just didn’t want to think about her just yet. It has been two weeks and yet he’s still mourning at her loss.

Y/N was lazily open each and every folder and checking its contents in the hopes that all his files were still accessible.

However, there was one folder he never came to recognize: ‘ME’.

He then checked the folders properties, and was surprised that it was a compressed folder that had terabytes of information inside. He clicked the author of the folder and it displayed the name: JA122996

Sana…?

He immediately opened the compressed folder. Thousands of pages of blueprints and instructions were readily accessible and included everything about android building, synthetic organic projection method, emotion programming, required equipment, everything.

But what caught his attention was the folder at the very end. It was a man-made folder different from everything else, and also it had the largest space occupied inside the disk. His hear nearly leapt out of his chest as soon as he realized what the name of the folder was:

Minatozaki Sana’s memories

---END---

#kpop gg #jyp sana #male reader #minatozaki sana #girl group #fanfic #twice sana #kpop #reading

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