#over a decade and a half of off. and ive lived this game from the moment i learned about it. i was just a Baby then. damn. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tigerdrop · 4 years ago

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hey i just wanna say the long posts genuinely make my day. also can you talk more about gordon freeman character because the way you write him makes me quake in my gay little boots

i would love to talk about gordon freeman. thank u for the opportunity

the first thing i need to communicate about gordon is that this dude sucks. and i say this in the fondest way possible. he is a bitch from the moment he drops into the world until the moment he goes out. if you dont believe me, give it another watch! gordons mouthy and rude for no real reason, at least so far as “being a regular dude on his way into work” goes, and this dude goes around calling his coworkers names with zero provocation. (of course, we all know that the reason is because its a funny guy improv stream that borrows a bit from freemans mind, but im talkin from a character sense.)

but my argument isnt just that gordon freeman sucks. its that he sucks in a very specific way that i find insanely endearing. i love this dude. i love to hate him. hes awful in a very mundane sense - weve all known a guy like this, at least if youve spent too much time online - and its cathartic to watch him suffer because of it.

gordons a smart guy. as written, hes gotta be - hes a recent MIT grad, on his way to work at a top-secret research facility to do weird shit with crystals and theoretical physics. but the thing about smart guys is that theyre often......selectively intelligent. we can see this in the way that he has a hard time navigating his surroundings, and needs the science crew to guide him through it and keep him alive.

this is one of those things that is a natural consequence of somebody going through the game for the first time, but that i am interpreting as “gordon is kind of stupid sometimes”. its uncharitable but its not like he doesnt deserve it. he likes to boss around the crew as if he knows what hes doing, when he often very much does not, and is fond of demeaning their intelligence. hes real bad about this with tommy in particular, treating him like hes a kid whos playing at being a scientist when tommy is actually a decade older than him. all i am saying is that gordon ought to stay humble. hes awful cocky when he perceives himself as better than others.

which, i think, tracks with how cocky he gets when he gives up on the whole “well-meaning citizen” thing and just unloads bullets into people. he puts up a front of being a Nice Guy, you know, just some dude caught in a bad situation who doesnt like seeing his companions obliterate every NPC they come across, but that doesnt stop him from cackling like a fucking madman and mowing down aliens (and soldiers) every once in awhile. when he stops seeing himself as helpless and starts seeing himself as the one in control, the gloves come off. he gets mean. and i think thats very sexy of him

this, among other things, is why i am insistent that gordon freeman is a control freak. he desperately wants to be in control of the situation at all times, shepherding around the science crew primarily by bitching at them, but its of limited success. its futile. sisyphean. tommy, coomer, bubby, and benrey exist almost to torment him with exactly the thing that would make him suffer the most: a gaggle of people running around causing problems for him, but he cant go anywhere without them b/c hes reliant on them to make it out alive.

its perpetual suffering, and its cathartic to watch. and funny, too. and if youre a little weirdo like me, its very, very enjoyable. how twisted up he gets when nobodys listening to him! how sweaty and frazzled he must look. its cute, and it also makes me want to reach through the screen and shake him and tell him to just be a little nicer. he wants control but he doesnt know how to attain it, he doesnt know how to play nice like a real leader. i think its a neat contrast to gordon freeman as we know him in HL2, where he literally is the leader of the resistance and has to live up to it. this is gordon freeman but if he was moe through helplessness.

“helpless” is, i think, a great way to describe him. a core bit of imagery in half life is this sense of railroadedness and helplessness, with gordon freeman being put into play like a chess piece and having no choice but to move forward. and this iteration of gordon leans into that by being totally dependent on the science crew in order to make progress and Not Die. and hes also subject to the whims of benrey, local eldritch weirdo who has basically made it his life mission to fuck with gordon.

gordons anxieties dont help with that. if he wasnt so fun to stress out and fuck with, the science crew probably wouldnt do it so much! too bad for him that they like fucking with him so much that he was driven into a panic attack (multiple times, even, depending on your interpretation). hes got that real neurotic mindset. always worrying about shit that could go wrong, and attempting to exert control over his surroundings in an effort to control the anxiety.

IMO the real way to nail the Neurotic Gordon Freeman Experience is to combine the ever-present anxiety with his pervasive sense of self-loathing. he openly states that he has no friends and nobody seems to like him, and to that, i really gotta say, i wonder why. he doesnt really seem to factor in that hes kind of a bitch, and has way too high an estimation of his own intelligence relative to everybody elses. its really one of the worst ways to be: aware that people dont like you, but unaware of exactly why. if he was like, 10% nicer, he probably wouldnt have had half as many issues getting through black mesa, but also, its funny to see him squawking his way through the game. so, you know.

its stuff like that that makes me headcanon him as a dude with low self-esteem in general. convinced that hes not likable, not attractive, out of his element......impostor syndrome, except that theres some truth to it. this is a guy who truly does not realize how good he has it: he really is just an average shitty dude, and yet, somehow, benrey took a shine to him. some poor motherfucker out there actually likes him and wants to suck his dick. thats dedication

also, i keep bringing up “repression” when i talk about gordon. and hopefully, what ive been talking about helps explain why. he has a strong desire to be a regular dude, not just murdering his way through black mesa, but if hes pushed hard enough he leans into it. gets bossy. picks up a cigar off a dead soldier and takes a long drag, before smacking forzen around with a pistol and ordering him around. gordon freeman is a regular, kind of anxious guy who likes competitive swimming and streaming on justin.tv and making anime references, and he is also a guy who takes a filthy pleasure in making a trained soldier his bitch. and i didnt make up any of this shit - this is purestrain canon, baby. this is a guy with problems

to me, this screams the kind of guy who represses a lot of shit b/c he doesnt feel like its morally decent. you run into this guy a lot online: the wokeboy, the online leftist, the guy who spends too much time on social media websites. (like reddit. i think he would actively use reddit and he would never get any appreciable amount of karma but he never stops posting. its sisyphean! cathartic.) from the way he talks about “bootboys”, i think it tracks. he knows about imperialism, he knows about feminism, but at the end of the day hes your average american white dude who struggles with internalizing it.

a lot of those dudes struggle with sex and gender issues. (dont we all.) when youre trying to be a Good Person(tm), you spend a lot of time thinking about your own relationship to sex and kink and all that shit. and i maintain that a too-online dude who buries a lot of his control freak tendencies would also try to bury a lot of weird sexual shit in an attempt to seem Normal and Well-Adjusted and not like a little freak. i justify this by the sheer number of times gordon blurts out weird sex shit as a joke. there are only two outcomes to making that many piss jokes: either youre secretly a piss guy, or you lathe-of-heaven yourself into becoming one. i will stand by this

ive talked a lot about why this dude sucks. now, let me talk to you about what makes gordon so much fun to write. first things first: hes funny! a subjective evaluation, yeah, but both in- and out-of-character, hes aiming to be funny. and being the straight man to everybody else plays into that whole “helplessness” thing.

secondly: underneath it all, there is a good dude under there. gordon worries when his companions get hurt, he tries to clean them off and patch them up, and hes got his lil leftist heart in the right place. you could even read a lot of his bossy, bitchy demeanor as him wanting to make sure everyone gets out okay and doesnt hurt themselves. when it comes to animals and anti-imperialist sentiment, gordons a pretty good guy.

hes the kind of guy who would probably see a dog on the street and get excited and play with it, but would get really prickly about the correct way to put dishes in the dishwasher. control freak tendencies.

finally, subjecting such a miserable, tormented guy to even more psychological anguish is really, really fun. you feel a little bad for him, but he kind of deserves it. so many problems he goes through are purely of his own making, and if gordon would just relax and quit trying to hard to maintain control - of himself, of the people around him - and own up to having Problems and Issues, he would be a happier guy. but thats why its fun to bend him until he breaks. being a little control freak myself, putting gordon freeman thru psychosexual torment is cathartic.

when it comes to writing his thought processes, the fact that he is canonically some kind of psychotic (yes, i am boldly claiming this. suck me) and i am also canonically some kind of psychotic makes it easier to write what i think his thought processes are. i just give him my brain issues of “getting lost in thought” and “overthinking fucking everything”. a touch of paranoia helps. even if i dont explicitly label him as schizophrenic please know that i am writing him as a paranoid little nutcase at all times because, uh, you write what you know.

paranoid. anxious. of the mindset that everyones out to get him (which isnt helpful when everyone is out to get him). repressed and deeply Not Normal but trying so very fucking hard to be normal and well-adjusted. a control freak with sadistic tendencies who also really, really likes getting bullied by his best frenemy. a hapless little nerd who sounds really cute when his voice starts to break from nerves. and, most importantly, a dumb jock. do not ever forget this.

thats gordon freeman, babey. hope that helps

#asky #careposting

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aerugonian · 5 years ago

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what are some of your fav kakashi centric fics?? ive never been too into naruto but kakashi??? i love him

You’re in luck because the only Naruto fics I read are Kakashi-centric, lmao. Here are some of my favorites (strap in because this is gonna be long – and I hope you like time travel, because there’s a lot of that here.) Fics are listed in no particular order.

Just the Usual Habits by Applepie (G / gen / 3.9k words / completed / no warnings)

Sakumo has no idea where all of these habits of Kakashi's are coming from. In which five-year-old Kakashi forgets the existence of his left eye, loses his ability to lie believably, and is a little too knowledgeable about the Birds and Bees. Still, no matter what oddities went on in Kakashi's head, one thing is certain – the boy will always love his father, through thick and thin.

Nukenin by WhisperingDarkness (T / gen / 17k words / completed / no warnings)

In the sealed scroll he finds a Bingo Book – his own page marking him as an S-class nukenin with flee-on-sight orders.

“Ok. That is definitely different.”

In his head he blames Naruto – even if his number one unpredictable student had been nowhere near him on this mission. When things go this stupidly impossibly wrong it must somehow be the future Hokage’s fault.

Once More with Feeling by Chicken_Train_And_Laser_Beam (M / gen / 137k words / wip / violence)

After an unexpected turn on a mission with Team Seven, Kakashi Hatake wakes up in the past, trapped in the body of his thirteen-year-old self. Despite being torn away from his own, familiar world, Kakashi resolves to change the future to better the lives of those he loves. Yet, fate is not so easily mastered, and he's not the only one playing the game.

Reversal of Roles by Ranowa Hikura (T / gen / 112,510 words / completed / violence)

Obito didn't push Kakashi out of the way during the Battle at Kannabi Bridge. This one change eventually leads to Godaime Naruto being sent back in time with the leader of the Akatsuki- Kakashi. They arrive at the day of Naruto's Academy graduation, and Naruto must work with the man he hates the most to stop war from happening. Time travel, AU, Kakanaru friendship.

Branches by Mockingone (T / gen / 55k words / completed / no warnings)

Kakashi falls off a tree and lands in a different world. Literally. Now he's in a dimension where nothing makes sense—but he's used to that. Kakashi plans to wreak as much havoc as he can and find his way home... if he can.

What You Knead by AgentMalkere (G / gen / 38k words / wip / no warnings)

It started, as most things did in Kakashi’s life, with a mission gone wrong.

(In which Kakashi accidentally acquires an emotionally healthy coping technique.)

Ear to the Wall by Vodkassassin (NR / gen / 84k words / wip / chose not to warn)

The Minato-sensei beams at him, and replies, “Kakashi! I’m glad you’re awake,” and, yup, that’s Minato-sensei’s voice.

Kakashi falls back down against the bed, closing his eyes. It’s too short of a way down, and he clenches hands that are too tiny and feeble and not his in dog-print sheets he hasn’t owned for decades.

Wolves of Fire Country by Midnite_Republic (T / Kakashi/Izuna / 51k words / wip / chose not to warn)

Wave changed a lot about Team 7, but not enough to make them entirely functional. Also someone should have really reminded Kakashi to pay attention to that tiny part of his genius brain that recognises random patterns, before he called a rest stop on the way home on top of an old, decayed Uzushio travel seal with an over-chakra-charged Uzumaki.

And he thought the month of the Wave mission was long, now he's stuck with the team, in a place he never expected to have anything to do with, with no way back.

Maybe he should have paid more attention to history, or stayed in the academy long enough to have history classes.

Why we build the wall by Dissenter (NR / gen / 49k words / wip / mcd & violence)

A Kiri nin gets trapped in a cave with a Konoha nin near Kannabi bridge. Some things are inevitable.

Or the AU where Kakashi is born in Kiri but still somehow ends up as team seven's teacher.

Outrunning Karma by Anjelle (T / gen / 52k words / wip / no warnings)

Kakashi was forty-two and the world ended in a sea of smoke and ash. Kakashi was forty-two and there stood a man in the carnage, untouched and unfazed as the village burned around him.

Kakashi is nineteen and the world ends tomorrow, and he will do everything he can to make it right. Even if it means making friends of his enemies. Even if it means erasing everything.

Even if it means staring into the face of all that he hates and smiling.

Kakashi is nineteen and Naruto is five and there is still time. Instead of counting his losses, he'll make the most of it.

komorebi by tomorrowsrain (T / Kakashi/Obito / 80k words / wip / no warnings)

In which Kakashi and Obito survive the Kyuubi attack, get exiled from Konoha, learn how to survive, and still manage to become legends along the way.

(The bratty genin are unexpected, though.)

The Hidden Prodigy by Applepie (T / gen / 106k words / wip / chose not to warn)

Somehow sent back into the past, Kakashi is given a second chance to relive his childhood. He is determined to make the most of everyday and to fix the horrors of the future, but sometimes simple determination is not enough to save everyone.

Change Fills My Time by 100demons (M / gen / 73k words / completed / mcd & violence)

Thirty year old Kakashi was supposed to have been killed by Pein during the Invasion. Instead, he wakes up in the body of his twenty year old self.

(It gets a lot more complicated.)

Nidaime Otokage by DuskBeforeDawn (M / gen / 30k words / wip / violence)

No one knew him.

His father was still alive.

His Sharingan acted like it had always been his.

Kakashi was twenty-two years in the past of a different world.

a heap of details, uncatalogued, illogical by 100demons (T / gen / 8k words / completed / no warnings)

Oh,” she says, white hands clenched into tight fists. “I’m-- I was your student. Haruno Sakura.”

Kakashi tilts his head, gray eye analyzing her carefully for tells. He finds nothing. “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” he says flatly.

(Kakashi wakes up fourteen years old.)

Lost on the road of life by RavenShira (M / gen / 80k words / wip / violence)

Kakashi had everything well in hand. He had stepped down from his reign as Rokudaime Hokage, his porn collection was as well worn as should be and his free time was spend with either Gai's challenges or helping out on various tasks while trying to make it seem like he wasn't there to help out. Annoying the hell out of everyone that crosses his path was as easy as breathing – easier now that he didn't have to be polite and diplomatic about it anymore.

So what if he agreed to a teeny-tiny favour of his once student and now successor? Not even Naruto could mess up just scribbling down a fuinjutsu for Kakashi to check over before he got back to his own, very busy life.

… Right?

Or: The one where Kakashi travels back in time, thinks he can fix stuff but clearly gets in over his head.

What’s the Worst That Can Happen? by Applepie (T / gen / 90k words / wip / no warnings)

Life was going quite well, if you asked Naruto Uzumaki. So why did he have to listen to Kakashi of all people? Now, they've time traveled to the past, smack dab in Minato's era, when the soon-to-be Hokage was sporting a team seven of his own. Let history run its course? Never! Kakashi-centric.

Wanted by Anjelle (T / gen / 17k words / wip / no warnings)

Kakashi is your run-of-the-mill hand for hire, except that he's not. Boasting a spotless record with the skills and name to back it up, he's one of the most highly sought after mercenaries in the Land of Fire. He has just one rule:

No Leaf missions.

Unfortunately, his latest client, Tobi, is looking for just that. And there's no doubt in Tobi's mind that Kakashi will accept.

It's only a matter of time.

(and a bonus crossover section!!)

Silver-Haired Stranger by TheSimplestWriter (T / gen / 34k words / wip / violence / ATLA)

Kakashi dies protecting his village fighting against Pein... Except he actually didn't and is now in the middle of a desert. Great. [Kakashi swaps one war for another, but he only wants to get back home. Things happen along the way.]

Copy That, Copycat by Nakashira (G / gen / 19k words / wip / violence / BNHA)

Kakashi Hatake dies the Copycat-nin and is reborn with a copycat quirk.

Everything becomes a disaster, and Monoma is tired.

Wonderboy by Tsume_Yuki (T / gen / 19k words / wip / chose not to warn / BNHA)

Who knew some dimensions had actual child labour laws?

In which Kakashi is reborn, the Hero Commission doesn’t put all their eggs in one Hawks shaped basket and Shouta isn't getting paid enough to deal with this shit.

Otherwise known as Kakashi in 1A.

CCG Public Enemy No 1 by euphoric image (T / gen / 19k words / wip / no warnings / Tokyo Ghoul)

Kakashi had a single red-and-black eye for more than half his life. Now, he has two.

Victory Series by ewfte (T / gen / 96k words / wip / violence / BNHA)

A fact about Todoroki Shouto: that is not his name.

#hatake kakashi #fic rec list #naruto #i only read naruto because of kakashi #if this list doesn't tell you that he's my fav lmao #aeru.post #asks #this is LONG #and there were a lot that i didn't include too #sorry it took a while to get this out #crossover section at the end for people who enjoy those!!!! i know i do

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macneiceisms · 4 years ago

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A Grate Full of Ash?

a grate full of ash is a 100k+ draco/ginny harry potter fic that ive been writing for the last decade and will one day hopefully see the light of day lmao. draco and ginny try to break a curse about five years after the end of the war.

Ginny sighed and opened the drawer by the sink to look for the tub of Erase Paste for her bruise in a mess of forgotten combs, takeout menus, and half broken broom clippers.

“…back to the crime report, Ministry officials are still investigating the raid on a residence in Bath earlier this week that led to the seizure of items…”

Ginny’s hand found something sticky at the bottom of the drawer. With a grimace, she removed her arm and cast a summoning charm on the bruise paste. The pile of old Daily Prophets on the kitchen table whooshed to the ground, scattering on the linoleum. Ginny quickly caught the chartreuse tub in her hand. She cracked open the lid and a foul smell wafted out, somewhere between vomit and spun sugar. Every time she opened the noxious tub, she thought the smell could not get any worse, and every time she swore solemnly that she would take it straight back to George and demand a reformulation.

Ginny turned her head from the stench. She pulled off her sweaty jumper, cold air biting her damp skin. Her right shoulder sported a red lump roughly the size and shape of a bludger. Gingerly, she patted the edge of her bruise with chartreuse paste. Relief came at once, and Ginny — as she did every time — forgot the smell.

The red edge of her bruise receded, and she dabbed more paste on. Sweat cooled on her skin, and Ginny shivered in just her undershirt. She sealed the tub of bruise paste, set it back in its drawer, and pulled the jumper back on to warm up. It still felt damp.

Ginny sat on the kitchen chair, ready to put her feet up on the warm radiator, only to freeze at the front-page headline of the Prophet at her feet.

Lucius Malfoy Passes Away, Leaving Estate, Son, and Wife Behind.

Lucius Malfoy’s picture smiled up at her tiredly from the corner of the front page.

Lucius Malfoy Passes Away.

Lucius Malfoy was dead.

She picked the paper off the floor, scanning yesterday’s date in the top and the words passed away the evening of October 3rd, 2004. Lucius Malfoy had been dead three days.

A man who valued his family despite the costs, Ginny read.

He will be remembered for his part in the war as a bigot, a terrorist, and a close supporter of Tom Riddle, but also for his public remorse for those actions. He will have a lasting contribution in the Ministry’s numerous public works projects, including the Percival Home for Magical Orphans. These were and are complicated times, and good deeds are not negated by bad ones, as is true vice versa.

It sounded like something Harry would have written, if Harry had any real talent with words.

She flipped the Prophet to the second page where the story continued. She read on about Lucius Malfoy’s crimes, and the names he gave up, his endeavors to charity, and then the turn in his health.

Following a year-long battle with the long-term effects of cursing, the late Mr. Malfoy died peacefully with his wife and son at his side.

Ginny read that sentence again, then another time. His son. She searched the page, and there it was: a photograph of Draco Malfoy and his mother at the end of the Summer of Trials. Both stood blinking, with apparent boredom, in front of the doors of a courtroom. He looked more like Lucius in this photo than he had as a boy.

Ginny traced her finger across the photograph, so different from the Draco Malfoy seared into her head all these years — a thin, sick boy, crying on a conjured imitation of a hospital wing cot, put there by her own hand. Where had he been? What was he doing with his life? Had he moved on, forgotten the war, all scars healed over?

Lucius Malfoy, dead. And, apparently Draco Malfoy was still alive. Maybe he was murdered, Ron liked to whisper conspiratorially the first couple years after Malfoy’s vanishing act. Enough people hate his family for getting off with no punishment. Ginny scanned the article again, but it said nothing about where he worked, or where he might live, or where he’d been.

Almost six years since she’d glimpsed him leaving the room for the Wizengamot shrouded by reporters and photographers and ministry officials. Less than a year after that photograph, the Holyhead Harpies played their fateful game against Puddlemere United in Ilkley Moor that put Gwenog in custody. Less than a year after that photograph, Ginny got all her N.E.W.T.s.

Less than a year after that photograph, Draco Malfoy disappeared from Wizarding Britain. No familiar blonde head at the memorials, nor even at the Ministry event unveiling of the Percival Home for Magical Orphans, funded by Malfoy’s own exonerated father.

Streams of rain splattered the window above the sink. Through the small window, the tips of her neighbor’s roofs peeked out through the fog. Every gust of wind rattled the windowpanes, muffling the sound of the terrier yapping next door. The radio droned on.

“…if anyone sees any suspicious or unidentified items, report this to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement…”

#my writing #drinny #wip ask game #fic: a grate full of ash

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carolinesiede · 4 years ago

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Reflecting on 2020

The strangest thing about 2020 was how familiar much of it felt: Working from home, extended periods of isolation, weeks and months blending together. To a much lesser degree, those are things I experience each year as a freelancer. And while I suspect it will take awhile before the full extent of the trauma we’ve all lived through this year fully sets in, right now I’m mostly focused on gratitude. I’m grateful for the health of my loved ones. Grateful I already had a work-from-home routine to maintain during the pandemic. And grateful that I was able to quarantine with my family for much of the year—which had its challenges but also its rewards too.

In my 2019 year-end post I wrote about feeling like my career was finally on an upward trajectory after several years of plateauing. This year obviously offered some new wrinkles in that regard. I made significantly less money and felt familiar fears about how sustainable this career actually is. But having less work also gave me more time to focus on the actual craft of writing. I feel like I reached a new level in terms of voice, clarity, and the ability to self-edit. I'm the sort of person who constantly (arguably, obsessively) strives to be better, and it’s rewarding to feel like that hard work is finally slowly starting to pay off.

In addition to devoting my quarantine time to mastering a favorite curry recipe, getting really into the Enneagram, finally learning to French braid hair, and rewatching all of New Girl, I also had some really cool opportunities scattered throughout the year. I interviewed John Barrowman about his surprise return to Doctor Who, which felt like a real milestone for me. I also contributed to the Los Angeles Times’ list of TV shows to binge-watch during quarantine, which appeared both online and in print. And thanks to everything going virtual this year, I was able to attend a press panel for the fifth season of This Is Us, which is the sort of thing I’m not usually able to do as a Chicago-based critic.

My career is always a juggling act between film and TV, and this year made me appreciate how valuable it is to be able to move seamlessly between both worlds. I took on new TV assignments covering the first season of Stargirl and the second season of The Umbrella Academy, both of which were a blast to write about. And while I didn’t watch quite as many films as I did in my insane catch-up year last year, I did fill in some more major blindspots. I also contributed to The A.V. Club’s list of the best films of 2000 and shared my own ballot over on Letterboxd. Oh, and I set up a Letterboxd this year too!

Elsewhere, I made my debut on Bustle and The Takeout, and ended the year with a Polygon article about “Kind Movies” that pretty much sums up my entire ethos on storytelling. I was also named a Top Critic by Rotten Tomatoes, which was a real honor. But the pride and joy of my career remains my rom-com column, When Romance Met Comedy. I devoted a whopping 49,000 words to analyzing 25 different romantic comedies this year. And I’m really pleased with how the column has grown and with the positive feedback I’ve received.

I have to admit, I sometimes worry that year-end highlight reels like this one can make my life seem easy or glamorous in a way that doesn’t reflect what it’s like to actually live through it. I'm tremendously lucky to get to do what I do, but I also struggle a lot—both with the logistics of this career and with bigger questions about what value it brings to the world. My goal is to approach 2021 with a greater sense of intentionality. I want to be more thoughtful in my career choices, more purposeful in how I use social media, and more active in my activism and politics. I’d also like to do 20 push-ups a day everyday for the whole year, but we’ll see how long that resolution actually lasts.

Finally, on a sadder note, one other defining experience of the year was the loss of my dear internet friend Seb Patrick, who I’ve known for years through the Cinematic Universe podcast. Seb created a wonderfully positive nerd space online, and was a big part of my early quarantine experience thanks to the Avengers watchalongs I did with the CU gang in the spring. I’m so grateful for all the fun pop culture chats we got to have throughout the years, several of which are linked below. Seb is tremendously missed, and there’s a fund for his family here.

As we head into 2021, I’ll leave you with wishes for a Happy New Year and a roundup of all the major writing and podcasts I did in 2020. If you enjoyed my work, you can support me on Kofi or PayPal. Or you can just share some of your favorite pieces with your friends! That really means a lot.

My 15 favorite films of 2020

My 15 favorite TV shows of 2020

Op-eds, Features, and Interviews

Women Pioneered The Film Industry 100 Years Ago. Why Aren’t We Talking About Them? [Bustle]

2020 is the year of the Kind Movie — and it couldn’t have come at a better time [Polygon]

Make a grocery store game plan for stress-free shopping [The Takeout]

What’s Going On: A primer on the call to defund the police [Medium]

Doctor Who’s John Barrowman on the return of Captain Jack Harkness [The A.V. Club]

Episodic TV Coverage

Doctor Who S12

This Is Us S4 and S5

Supergirl S5

Stargirl S1

The Umbrella Academy S2

The Crown S4

NBC’s Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch Musical!

When Romance Met Comedy

Is The Ugly Truth the worst romantic comedy ever made?

Working Girl’s message is timeless, even if the hair and the shoulder pads aren’t

You’ve Got Mail and the power of the written (well, typed) word

Love & Basketball was a romantic slam dunk

How did My Big Fat Greek Wedding make so much money?

America eased into the ’60s with the bedroom comedies of Doris Day and Rock Hudson

I can’t stop watching Made Of Honor

Notting Hill brought two rom-com titans together

It’s time to rediscover one of Denzel Washington’s loveliest and most under-seen romances

Something’s Gotta Give is the ultimate quarantine rom-com

20 years ago, But I’m A Cheerleader reclaimed camp for queer women

On its 60th anniversary, Billy Wilder’s The Apartment looks like an indictment of toxic masculinity

The Wedding Planner made rom-com stars out of Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey

After 25 years, Clueless is still our cleverest Jane Austen adaptation

William Shakespeare invented every romantic comedy trope we love today

Edward Norton made his directorial debut by walking a priest, a rabbi, and a Dharma into a Y2K rom-com

The forgotten 1970s romantic comedy that raged against our broken, racist system

His Girl Friday redefined the screwball comedy at 240 words per minute

Before Wonder Woman soared into theaters, the hacky My Super Ex-Girlfriend plummeted to Earth

Dirty Dancing spoke its conscience with its hips

The rise of Practical Magic as a spooky season classic

In a dire decade for the genre, Queen Latifah became a new kind of rom-com star

Years before Elsa and Anna, Tangled reinvigorated the Disney princess tradition

Palm Springs is the definitive 2020 rom-com

Celebrate Christmas with the subversive 1940s rom-com that turned gender roles on their head

The A.V. Club Film & TV Reviews

Netflix’s To All The Boys sequel charms, though not quite as much as the original

The Photograph only occasionally snaps into focus

Jane Austen's Emma gets an oddball, sumptuous, and smart new adaptation

Pete Davidson delivers small-time charms in Big Time Adolescence

Council Of Dads crams a season of schmaltzy storytelling into its premiere

In Belgravia, Downton Abbey’s creator emulates Dickens to limited success

Netflix’s Love Wedding Repeat adds some cringe to the rom-com

Netflix takes another shot at Cyrano de Bergerac with queer love triangle The Half Of It

We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a feel-good origin story for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s first troupe

Sara Bareilles’ melodic Apple TV+ series Little Voice is still finding itself

Netflix’s sexist rom-com sensation gets a minor upgrade in The Kissing Booth 2

With Howard, Disney+ movingly honors the lyricist who gave the Little Mermaid her voice

The Broken Hearts Gallery tries to find catharsis in heartbreak

Netflix’s ghostly musical series Julie And The Phantoms hits some charming tween high notes

After We Collided slides toward R-rated camp—but not far enough

Holidate is a bawdy start to Netflix’s holiday rom-com slate

Kristen Stewart celebrates the Happiest Season in a pioneering queer Christmas rom-com

Isla Fisher gets her own Enchanted in the Disney Plus fairy tale Godmothered

Podcast Appearances

Debating Doctor Who: “Orphan 55”

It Pod To Be You: The Wedding Singer

Reality Bomb: Defending Doctor Who’s “Closing Time”

The Televerse: Spotlight on Doctor Who Season 12

You Should See The Other Guy: The Ugly Truth

Only Stupid Answers: Stargirl’s season finale

Motherfoclóir: Ireland and the Hollywood Rom-Com

Called in to Nerdette’s Clueless retrospective episode

Cinematic Universe Appearances

Cinematic Universe: Superman IV: The Quest For Peace

Cinematic Universe: Birds of Prey

Cinematic Universe: Infinity War watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Endgame watchalong

Cinematic Universe: Terminator 2

Cinematic Universe: Josie and the Pussycats

Cinematic Universe: The Cuppies 2020 (Cuppies of Cuppies)

And here are similar year-end wrap-ups I did in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, and 2013.

#Best Of #Year End #2020

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let-it-raines · 6 years ago

Text

Catch Me If You Can (30/40)

298 days. That’s how long Killian Jones was away from a baseball field. It’s less than a year, only part of a season for him, but it might as well have lasted a decade as he alternated between physical therapy and spending an excessive amount of time sitting on his couch.

But then he came back and won the World Series.

It’s something no one saw coming, and it’s certainly not something anyone who knows about his arm would predict. Now it’s a new season with new possibilities, and anything could happen. On-field reporter Emma Swan will be there to cover it all even if she is not his biggest fan right now.

Asking her out live on-air will do that.

Rating: Mature

a/n: I am not a fan of the fact that there are only 10 chapters left. Like, not at all. Where did all of this time go? How are we at this point in the story? I feel like I was just writing it!

Anyway, it seems fitting that this chapter posts in a week where a lot of us have gone home to see family because Killian is going home with Emma to meet Ruth😘 Thanks to you all for being you and thanks to @resident-of-storybrooke for reading these words for me and checking my facts!

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-/-

“Did you know that it’s Friday the thirteenth and a full moon?”

“Thank you, Alec Trebek.”

“No, seriously. That’s what it says on my phone.”

“Love, I know the date.”

“But did you know about the moon thing?”

“I did,” Killian sighs, picking his suitcase up off of the security belt and placing it on the ground while Emma grabs her sneakers. “I read about it the other day, and I am prepared for all of the haunted werewolves to come out to play.”

“Shut up,” Emma laughs before she plops herself down on a bench to tie her shoes.

It’s a little past four thirty in the morning, and JFK is nearly empty of anyone who isn’t traveling in some kind of suit. He and Emma are surrounded by people in black blazers and tailored trousers only traveling with a sleek black suitcase and their briefcase. He and Emma, meanwhile, are both in joggers with t-shirts on (Emma has on his Vandy sweatshirt over hers) and their hair tucked underneath baseball caps.

Emma got in from Detroit late last night, only taking five minutes to kiss him hello and take a quick shower before collapsing on his bed on top of the covers. The only flight they could get so last minute that wasn’t an exuberant amount of money is at the ungodly hour of six in the morning, so Killian insisted that she just stay at his place last night so that they could leave from the same place and save time. Considering they woke up ten minutes before their Uber arrived and could barely brush their teeth before they left, that didn’t exactly work in the whole saving time department.

It doesn’t help that Emma has pretty much been deadweight this entire morning until she started to wake up right before they went through security.

He, on the other hand, is wide awake. Nervous jitters run through his body, his stomach twisting in knots, and for someone who doesn’t get nervous for many things other than baseball, Killian is pretty much a wreck when it comes to meeting Emma’s family. Ruth is the last one, the final piece of the puzzle, and as intimidating as David was to meet, his mother might outrank her.

Killian both wants to spend the entire weekend sucking up to her and thanking her for taking Emma in and giving her the love she’s never had but has always deserved, but that could prove to be a bit much.

Then again, if Ruth hadn’t taken Emma in thirteen years ago, Emma would have never met David. If Emma hadn’t met David, David would have never taken her to the baseball game that truly allowed Emma to fall in love with sports. And if Emma hadn’t done that, he doubts she’d have ever gotten into broadcasting and found her passion there that makes her so damn happy.

The two of them also would never have met, and that thought sends a shiver down his spine.

It’s funny how such little things can change absolutely everything.

Everything.

So, yeah, Killian is most definitely a little nervous to meet Ruth.

“You want to go find some coffee, Swan?” Killian asks Emma as he props his foot up to tie his own sneaker. “I think the two of us are in some desperate need of caffeine.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll be able to find a coffee shop in an airport. There are never any coffee places here.”

“I don’t appreciate all of this sarcasm so early this morning.”

She pokes his stomach. “You’re the one who woke me up.”

“We’re going home to meet your family.”

“I don’t see your point.”

“You should.”

“Well,” Emma huffs, standing up and pulling up her pants so that he sees a flash of tanned skin on her stomach, “you should. Onto coffee we go.”

They both grab onto their bags and start walking down the terminal, passing gate after gate and store after store, but everything is black with the lights turned off and bars pulled over the stores. Nothing is open, not even the convenience stores, and the moment Emma realizes this, she stops walking and buries her face in his shoulder.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“There are vending machines,” he soothes. “I think they have coffee.”

“But it’s gross coffee,” she wines before wrapping her arms around his stomach. At first, Killian thinks that she’s being affectionate, but then he realizes that she’s using him so that she doesn’t have to stand on her own. He’s not sure he minds either way. “I need real coffee, and I need it in an IV.”

“Okay, Lorelai Gilmore.”

Emma laughs into his shoulder, the vibrations working through his shoulder. “You’re learning. I’m so proud, babe.”

“I might have watched an episode or two.”

Emma’s head pops up then, the bill of her cap hitting him in the chin. “When?”

“While you were gone. It was on Netflix, and it just kind of happened.”

“Good choice, twenty-nine. Good choice.” Emma’s lips brush against the corner of his jaw, and he tugs her a little closer as his hand runs up and down her back while she presses up on her toes to make contact with his lips. “I need a diet coke or something, and then when the stores open, I’m buying the biggest damn cup of coffee in this entire airport.”

“Whatever your heart desires.”

-/-

The flight is only an hour and a half, Emma sleeps the entire time despite them getting her the biggest damn cup of coffee in the airport right before they boarded, and Killian spends his time answering emails before closing out the app so that he won’t see anything else work-related for this entire weekend. It’s a conscious decision, one he’s happy to make, and it’s almost refreshing to know that he doesn’t have anything to worry about for at least a few days.

Well, anything to worry about except for Ruth Nolan and making sure that he can impress her.

-/-

The taxi they get from the airport takes them directly to Ruth’s house, so Emma doesn’t get much time to show him around, only pointing out a few landmarks. They pass the minor league baseball stadium here, the Portland Sea Dogs, and Emma tells him that she’s never actually been despite having such easy access. She was too caught up in everything having to do with New York and getting there that she never really thought about it. He teases her and tells her they’ll have to go to a game, but Emma turns him down by saying that she needs a break from baseball.

He does too.

So that’ll probably be knocked off the itinerary that Killian is sure Mary Margaret has made. Luckily, though, she and David won’t be here until early evening since they both had to be at work and school for half a day, so they’re pretty much free to do whatever they want with Ruth today.

He’s still slightly reeling from his injury and their fight and everything that came from that. He’s not angry or upset, but this is all still such an adjustment. He should be playing. He shouldn’t be here, but it’s his own damn fault that he is. He screwed up on so many levels, and owning up to it all has been a tough pill to swallow.

Hurting the people he loved nearly killed him, and he doesn’t want anyone to hurt because of him ever again.

In the blink of a bleary eye, they’re pulling up to a quaint two-story Victorian home with brown and white details and bright green bushes lining the brick-paved walkway to the front door. It’s a home, undoubtedly, one much the same as all of the ones in the city and yet entirely different in that he can see vibrant green grass and flushed trees that spread out all over the neighborhood. It reminds him of growing up in Ohio, even if they were not the ones to have the spaciously fenced-in backyard, and a little fluttering of his heart takes place as Killian takes it all in.

He’s always kind of wanted a place like this – away from everything.

“So, this is the place?”

“This is the place.”

“It’s nice.”

“Yeah, I’ve always thought so.” Emma hikes her bag up a little higher on her shoulder and turns to look at him, trepidation written across her face. “We can still turn around if you want to. There are hotels around here.”

“We’re going inside, love.” He leans down and quickly brushes his lips over hers. She tastes strongly of coffee just from the little taste that he got. He’d like to kiss her more, to have the privacy of the hotel so he can show her just how much he’s missed her the past few days of her being gone, but they’re not doing that. “Besides, I believe I just saw Ruth peeking her head through the window looking at us, so it’s too late to turn around now.”

“Yeah,” Emma sighs, “I guess it is.”

Emma steps forward and begins moving up the path, Killian following right behind her, and Emma barely gets a chance to knock on the door before it’s swinging open and Ruth is lunging forward to practically smother Emma with a hug.

Damn. Ruth Nolan is a force of nature.

Then again, she was already for being a single mom most of her life and still taking in foster children, especially one as stubborn as Emma. He can’t even begin to imagine.

He fully intends on finding out this weekend. There are a million questions running around in his mind.

“Oh,” Ruth coos, shaking Emma in her embrace. A dog escapes the front door and comes to sniff at Killian’s feet. This must be Wilby. “I have missed you so much. I think I’m going to have to move to New York so I can see you more often. Do you have room in that apartment of yours?”

“Only if the couch is comfortable for you.”

“I think it may kill my back.”

“No, it’ll definitely kill your back. I have no doubt. It kills my back. Killian’s couch is super comfortable, though.”

“Well, I hardly know the man. I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to sleep over in his apartment.”

“Who cares about proper, love?” Killian teases. “I would be remiss to not let a beautiful woman sleep over at my apartment.”

The words slip out of his mouth before he’s able to stop them, and he immediately regrets them. Ruth may not be Emma’s mom, the title something that Emma still struggles with no matter how much she loves Ruth, but she’s very much a mother figure. Yet here he is spewing words that pretty much scream in her face that he doesn’t care about proper and has been fucking Emma for months now. What a smooth start.

The pit in his stomach becomes a heavy, solid weight, one that’s going to have him breaking the wood of the wraparound front porch.

Shit.

But then Ruth is leaning her head back in laughter, her eyes shining brightly as her hair falls off of her shoulders, and that weight lessens a little bit.

“I’m not much of one for proper either,” Ruth says with laughter still on her lips. She releases Emma and steps toward him, wrapping him in a hug as well, even if this one isn’t quite as smothering. It likely helps that he’s larger than Emma. “Hello, sweetie. SoSo, you’re the infamous Killian Jones I’ve been hearing about?”

“From Emma?”

“No, my grandson. He loves you. I think he was probably more devastated about your arm than Emma was.”

“How did you know I was devastated?”

Ruth pulls back from him to look at Emma. “Intuition told me that you’d be upset over the fact that your boyfriend is injured. Mary Margaret gave me all of the other details.”

Emma’s eyes roll. “Of course she did.”

“You know she can’t keep a secret.”

Killian looks over to Emma to see what she’s got to say, thinking that this first meeting is going rather smoothly, but then Ruth’s eyes are snapping back to him and looking him up and down in a way that has him feeling rather naked under her scrutiny.

Obviously, it was wishful thinking for him to assume he was quite out of the woods.

“You’re much more handsome in person than on TV.”

“Thanks,” Killian laughs awkwardly as he reaches up to scratch behind his ear. “I, uh, appreciate that.”

Emma looks over to him with raised brows that are pinched together, probably wondering when he turned into a stumbling fool instead of someone who can charm anyone, and all he can do is shrug is shoulders at her. She shrugs back before squatting down on the porch to scratch behind the dog’s ears.

“Have you eaten breakfast yet, Ruth?” Emma asks, obviously trying to save him. “We’ve had coffee but not food, and we’d love to take you out to breakfast.”

Ruth waves her away. “Nonsense. I’ll cook breakfast for all of us.”

“You really don’t have to do that, Mrs. Nolan.”

She smiles at him. “It’s Ruth, and yes I do. I hear you’re quite the baker, so you can help.”

“Well, who told you that?”

“Mary Margaret. She’s where I get all of my information, don’t you know? Emma and David don’t give me nearly enough.”

“You know, Ruth,” Killian smiles, “I have heard a little bit about the two of them not sharing a lot of information. You practically have to drag it out of them. I would never do such a thing as keeping secrets.”

Emma scoffs but there’s that loving, playful smile. “Too soon, twenty-nine. Too soon.”

Ruth guides them inside and sends Emma off to take their bags to her old room. Killian raises his brow in question to make sure it’s okay for them to share a room, and Emma simply rolls her eyes before taking both of their bags up the stairs while Ruth ushers him into the living room.

It’s just as homey as the outside. Everything is covered in warm colors from the deep brown of the leather couch to the inviting green of the wall. Two windows sit on either side of the stone fireplace where the television is mounted, and that’s when Killian spots the myriad of picture frames on the mantel, as well as on the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

This is exactly what he’s been so excited about.

(Besides getting to spend a weekend away with Emma where she spent the last of her teenager years.)

There are a few photos of David as a child, ones of him alone and then ones of him with both of his parents. Most of them, however, everyone is a tad bit older. Killian knows that it’s so Emma can be included in all of the photos, and his heart swells a bit at the thought of Ruth being that thoughtful so that Emma doesn’t have to feel left out in any way.

A picture of David, Mary Margaret, and Emma sits in the middle of the mantle. David and Mary Margaret look much the same, if not younger than they look now, but with different hairstyles. Killian makes a mental note to tease David about his shoulder-length hair. Emma, though, is definitely a teenager here. Her face is rounder, far less angled, and he can see the tepidness of her smile as she leans into David in the picture.

“Are you looking at how cute I am?” Emma questions as she walks into the room.

Killian turns to look at her and at the shy smile on her face now, and he opens up his arm to let her walk into him so that her arm can wrap around his back while her head rests on his shoulder.

“How old are you here, love?”

“Um, that’s a question I don’t know the answer to.”

“Sixteen,” Ruth supplies, and Killian doesn’t miss the way she’s smiling at the two of them standing there. “That’s from Thanksgiving. Emma still wasn’t too sure about us.”

“I’m still not.”

Killian squeezes her hip. “Liar.”

“Nope, I’m serious. You’ve only just met Ruth, so I don’t think you can judge her character yet.”

“Oh no, darling, I can. She’s promised to tell me stories about you while we cook breakfast, and that’s good enough for me to love her forever.”

Emma groans and dips her head down. “Just let me sulk, and I’ll come to the kitchen when breakfast is ready.”

“Just like when you were a teenager,” Ruth teases.

The morning is mostly spent in the kitchen where they eat waffles and bacon, which is definitely not on his diet but he’s not playing right now anyways, and he gets to listen to Ruth tease Emma all about what she was like as a teenager. Emma’s cheeks are painted red, the embarrassment very clearly there, but she takes it like a champ and smiles and laughs along even when Ruth tells a story about Emma nearly breaking her arm while trying to sneak back into the house after meeting a guy who she wasn’t supposed to be meeting.

“Not my finest moment,” Emma admits as she bites into a piece of bacon. “And definitely not my finest boyfriend.”

The stories continue, and as the day passes on, Killian’s stomach hurts from all of the laughter. Everything about his time here just seems so…perfect. And he knows that there is no such thing as perfect, but the crisp breeze of the air with the sunshine filtering through the leaves of the trees tells him otherwise as the two of them help Ruth with some of her yardwork. Of course, he hasn’t done yardwork in over a decade, so he’s a little rusty. Ruth and Emma make sure to point that out to him every time he cuts a shrub in the wrong way or manages to screw up turning on the lawnmower.

It was complicated, okay?

And Killian definitely wasn’t aware that this is how they’d be spending the first part of their afternoon. It was not at all mentioned in Emma’s pitch of asking him to come here.

Not that he would have ever said no to helping. It’s good to feel useful when he’s been feeling a little useless lately no matter how well he thinks that he’s handling his injury layoff.

It’s decidedly different than the first time around. It likely helps that the injury isn’t as serious and that Killian knows that the end of it is in sight, even if there’s still bits of uncertainty that no one can answer and predict for him. Yet, it also has everything to do with the fact that the people closest to him know exactly what’s going on instead of him letting it all fester inside of him. Honesty is the better policy this time, even if his hand was the slightest bit forced.

Watching Emma easily guide him through Old Port with a beatific smile on her face may help as well.

No, it definitely helps.

She’s such a force of light in his life, even if she doesn’t like admitting that sometimes, but the fact almost seems reinforced after having been apart from her and facing the thoughts of what his life may be like without her in it outside of being someone who he works with.

Frankly, it would be kind of dim. She’s integrated herself so easily into every aspect of his daily routine, and while at first, he thought it really only had to do with her clothes in his closet and her shampoo bottles littering his shower, it’s more in the way that he’ll be sitting with Elsa and look over to see her texting Emma or the way that whenever he wakes up in the morning and she’s not in bed with him, his first thought is to check his phone for a text from her. It’s ridiculous and yet also…not.

She annoys him more than anything or anyone in the world, but he also loves her more than anything. It’s easy in a way that it’s never been before, and Killian wonders if this feeling of fluttering deep in his belly is what he was missing in the past.

They grab a late lunch at a quaint little seafood place, one he can tell is family-owned simply from the atmosphere, and instead of sitting inside, they settle down at one of the umbrella-covered tables outside so that they can have a view of the ocean with the salt-water breeze wafting over them.

He’s missed the water.

Of course, he’s been around it living in Manhattan and traveling to several places around the country that are surrounded by water. Hell, he’s even been back in it in the three years since the accident with Liam. But it’s been a long damn time since he’s sat and simply enjoyed getting to spend time near the water.

During the off-season, he and Emma are going somewhere that’s surrounded by water for at least a week, and they’re not going to let any outside distractions get to them. It’s making plans for the future, and that’s all that he wants right now.

(Some would call it baseball mating season, and while he doesn’t plan on them reproducing anytime soon, they can sure as hell practice.)

They get a call that David and Mary Margaret are nearly there when Emma is showing him some of the lighthouses while using a ridiculous voice that she calls her “tour guide” voice, so they quickly gather their things and start walking back to Ruth’s car since she absolutely cannot wait to see the rest of her family and refuses to have them be at her house before she can get back to her house.

David and Mary Margaret get there first because they are apparently the fastest drivers on the planet today.

And Leo practically tackles Ruth in all of his ten-year-old glory when he sees her.

That’s how Addy and Lucy are with Elsa’s parents too, and Killian imagines that being a grandparent is a hell of a lot of fun since you aren’t in charge of molding a little person into a functioning human being. You just have to give them candy and all of the things their parents don’t want them to have.

Or, at least, that’s what he thinks Ruth does.

(That’s what he does as an uncle and wishes his mom could have done as a grandmother.)

They all eat takeout dinner together from an Italian place that Emma and David swear by, and while it’s certainly not the best thing he’s ever had to eat, it’s pretty damn good. Then again, he’s had so much to eat today that his stomach very well may explode soon. He’ll have to get up and go for a jog in the morning.

But right now, it’s a little past ten at night, he’s been up for over eighteen hours, and all he really wants is to sleep. His body is dragging enough that he imagines he’ll have no trouble falling into a slumber as soon as his head hits the pillow.

He’s wrong.

Because then he sees Emma’s teenage bedroom and sees just how empty it is. It’s absolutely nothing like her apartment in New York full of throw pillows and blankets and every artificial plant known to man with a colorful paintings above her headboard. Everything here is rather…beige.

Emma walks out of the bathroom where she’s been getting ready for bed, and he watches as she rubs lotion up and down her hands and her forearms. “Why that glum look on your face? Are you still trying to figure out better ways to argue with David over soccer? Because that dinner conversation is long over. I thought Leo was going to climb on top of the table and start beating on his chest or something equally ridiculous.”

“Hm, no,” Killian chuckles, opening his knees so that Emma can step into them and his hands can find their spots on her waist, warm flesh against his fingertips.

“Then what?”

He blinks up at her, not entirely sure if now is the right time to ask, but then he sees the glint of his mom’s ring falling against Emma’s chest and is reassured in who he is to Emma. “I can’t help but notice that your room here is not quite as colorful as your room at home.”

Emma sighs, and he squeezes her hip in response so that she looks down at him and smile. “It’s kind of a stupid reason. You don’t want to hear about it.”

“I’d love to know more of your beginnings, Swan.”

“Haven’t you heard enough about them today?”

“There is never enough information, love.”

She smiles and reaches to push his hair back off of his head, her hands a magic touch as they move through the strands there. “I’m not a sentimental person. Or, I wasn’t.” Her right hand leaves his hair to find the chain around her neck. Killian’s heart stutters at that movement. “And I never trusted that I was going to stay in one place for very long, so if I had the chance to decorate my room, I didn’t. I kept everything I owned in a little box that was always ready to go.”

His heart may actually break for Emma in this moment, the sad reality of what she’s telling him something that’s hard for him to take in. He can’t imagine what it must be like for her to have lived that way.

“I think this place worked out for you, though.”

“Yeah, it did.” She smiles again, but Killian can see the twinge of sadness in the corners of her lips. “You sure you still want to know about these beginnings of mine when they’re a little bit sad?”

“Like I’ve said before, love, we make quite the team, sad backstories and all. I do, however, think that you need a little something on these walls of yours.”

“I think all of the home décor stores may be closed.”

Killian winks. “Well, I think I’ll just have to get a little creative then.”

His hand slides around her back to squeeze her ass before he’s pushing Emma back from him and getting up from the bed to walk out the door. Everything is darkened with the lights turned off, and since he doesn’t want to wake up everyone else in the house, he uses the flashlight on his phone and quietly walks down the stairs to find his way to the kitchen where he knows there were sheets of paper in the printer as well as a few pens in a cup right behind it. Emma is on his heels, questioning what the hell it is he’s doing, but he doesn’t tell her until he’s grabbing the paper and a thick blue marker.

“What are you doing?” Emma hisses.

“I’m making you some artwork for your wall.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s endearing.”

“You say that about every weird thing that you do.”

“Because the weird things are endearing,” he corrects, looking back at her and smiling. “What kind of drawing do you want? I’m pretty talented, if I do say so myself, but it’s been awhile since I’ve drawn anything.”

“Just…do whatever you want. I’m going to fix myself a hot chocolate. Do you want one?”

“Does Ruth have any tea?”

“I’m going to make you the hot chocolate. It’s better than tea.”

Killian rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t protest as he starts sketching out what he can remember of the view of the lighthouse today. It’s rough, definitely not his best work, but considering his original plan was simply going to be writing her name out, it’ll have to do for quick work.

Strange things happen when he’s far past tired.

“Milady,” Killian sighs, picking up the paper as well as a bit of tape before walking the few steps toward Emma as she sits on a barstool at the island with two cups of hot chocolate, her mug piled up with whipped cream and sprinkles of cinnamon, “I present to you your artwork for your wall.”

Emma’s eyes glance over it before glancing up at him with a slight smile on her face. “You’ve got to sign it.”

He taps the corner of the paper where he’s scribbled in his number. “Already done.”

“Ah,” Emma laughs, “how could I have missed that?”

“You were distracted by the beauty of the picture.”

“Exactly.” Emma presses up over the countertop and leans forward to quickly brush her lips over Killian’s, and while a part of him wants to deepen it, he doesn’t want to get carried awhile while here. “Thank you. That is very sweet of you to do.”

“Endearing, right?”

“Sure.” She shakes her head and slides his mug over to him so that he can have some of his hot chocolate. “I hope today hasn’t scarred you for life, especially since you still have to survive tomorrow.”

“It’s been fun, Swan. I’ve been…I think it’s gotten me majorly out of my own head. I needed that. And I liked getting to see you be so happy. My only complaint is that I’m under strict instructions not to make your bed squeak. I don’t like that rule.”

Emma reaches over to slap his shoulder, but he moves it out of the way quick enough that she doesn’t get it. It also causes a slight twinge in his shoulder that reminds him that he needs an ice pack for tonight. He hasn’t gotten to put ice on it all day. So, he turns toward the fridge and opens up the freezer, grabbing one of Ruth’s ice packs, and placing it on top of his shoulder before turning back to Emma whose fingers are tracing over the drawing.

Emotion lodges in his throat again, something that’s been happening quite a lot tonight, and it’s what propels him forward to step behind Emma’s back and wrap his arms around her stomach before resting his chin on top of her head.

“I’m not going anywhere, Emma,” he promises, meaning every word. “Not unless you tell me to go. So, you can plan on hanging paintings and making plans and keeping little trinkets in more places than a box. I love you more than I know how to tell you. That’s not going to change.”

Emma audibly sighs, something that he feels under the palms of his hands, before leaning back into Killian and simply staying in that spot so that he can breathe her in.

“I love you,” she breathes out as her head tilts up so that her lips can move across the underside of his jaw. “Let’s take the hot chocolate upstairs and go to bed.”

“And your picture?”

“Yeah, that too.”

-/-

Killian’s arm tingles, the feeling nearly gone, when he wakes up in the morning and finds Emma’s body pressed around it. This isn’t how they fell asleep, not even close, and he’ll probably never have use of his arm again. It doesn’t seem to matter, though, and he flexes his fingers a bit before nuzzling his nose into the back of Emma’s head in an attempt to get to go back to sleep.

They were up until maybe two in the morning talking, sleep never really coming to either of them no matter how much they both wanted it, and judging from the dim light coming through the blinds on the window, it’s still early yet.

He desperately needs coffee. He’s probably not going to be able to go back to sleep, and he desperately needs coffee.

Slowly, Killian begins to extract his arm from Emma’s grip, stopping when she flinches, and after several careful minutes, he’s able to quietly get off the bed and step out of the room, leaving her door cracked so as not to make any kind of noise. He walks down the hallway and uses the guest bathroom before walking down the stairs and wandering to the kitchen in search of coffee.

To his surprise, David is already there sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop open and a cup of coffee sitting next to him, the smell wafting toward Killian.

“Hey,” Killian greets. David nearly jumps out of his chair and knocks everything over, and Killian can’t help but laugh at the shock on his face. “Did you really not hear me coming down the stairs?”

“I, uh, I – ” David is stuttering, obviously at a loss for words, and Killian can’t quite figure out what’s going on. He doesn’t think Dave is usually this flustered in the mornings. “I wasn’t expecting you or Emma to be up this early.”

Killian shakes out his arm, still trying to wake it up. “Believe me. I wish I wasn’t up. Do you always work this early in the morning on a Saturday?”

“No, I don’t, but my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing with emails this morning, so I came downstairs to see so it wouldn’t wake Mary Margaret up.”

“Ah, I turned off my emails this weekend for that exact reason.”

“You probably shouldn’t have done that.”

“What’s that, mate?” David coughs in response, and Killian steps forward to the table and sits down across from David, confusion running through him as his stomach twists and turns. “Seriously. What?”

David can’t look at him, not really, and that doesn’t help calm any of Killian’s nerves as he tries to figure out what in the world is going on with him this morning.

“I didn’t know this was happening, I swear. I’d have stopped it if I got one whiff of it, but there’s been an article.”

“An article?”

David turns his computer around, and Killian reads a headline that he’s always expected to see and yet has always hoped to avoid.

The Truth Behind Killian Jones: A Story Told by His Father.

“Fucking hell,” he murmurs, his eyes taking in the picture of his father that’s plastered on the screen. Killian hasn’t seen him in years, actual years, and yet he looks exactly the same. “What kind of shit is this?”

“It gets worse.”

“How could it possibly get worse?”

“Look at the journalist.”

Killian’s eyes glance toward the screen again, his gaze finding more words he didn’t want to see.

Walsh Osborne.

As in Emma’s ex, Walsh Osborne who she still works with at ESPN. Though, this article is decidedly not on ESPN’s website.

Holy fucking shit.

Killian’s got to go back to bed. This isn’t real. This is all some kind of messed up nightmare that he’s experiencing, and soon, he’ll wake up and none of it will be real. And yet Killian keeps scrolling through the article, skipping the words to instead look at pictures of himself that Killian hasn’t seen in years. His father shouldn’t have these pictures. Liam should have all of them. And yet, somehow, he doesn’t.

Childhood pictures are nothing, though, at least for right now, when at the bottom of the article are pictures of Killian and Emma standing in the airport yesterday with Emma’s arms wrapped around his waist as well as a picture of them kissing in his car from who knows when. Then there’s one that he knows is from the hallways of Yankee stadium in what was supposed to be a private room.

“Everyone knows about you and Emma,” David tells him.

This is too much. It’s all too much, and he doesn’t know how to handle the reappearance of his father and the very public reveal of his private relationship.

Fuck.

#catch me if you can #cs fic #cs ff #captain swan fic #captain swan

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lotus0kid · 5 years ago

Text

LoBT/OUaT: That Familiar Sunrise

((400th follower fic prompt from @woobienation: Could I talk you into a bit of Barnelle, Nostelle, or Macelle? Perhaps a chance encounter at a party, since we’re heading into that season?

Well, not exactly that, but kinda close! Based on a spoilery idea I got after watching the movie.))

Barney Thomson likes the quiet. It’s safe, it’s familiar. At his best, he’s a quiet man. Francis Ives is not quiet. That’s not to call him loud. Oh no. But the air seems to vibrate around him in a way that’s hard to explain, and impossible to ignore. He can say a lot with just the angle of a smile. He’s the kind of man who could ride into town on a black horse, save the villagers, and ride off with no one ever learning his name. He’s in every way Barney’s opposite. Which made it totally inexplicable from top to bottom when he introduced himself quite cheerfully as Barney’s father.

“It’s really rather embarrassing that she slipped my mind for so long. But I was walking in a market in Bangalore when I caught a whiff of some delicious rava idli, and it all came back in a flash. More than two hundred years on God’s Earth and she’s the first and last Cemolina that ever crossed my path. Lovely woman- well, perhaps not quite… But we had fun. Condolences, of course, though I suppose we can bless her memory for finally bringing us together.” He paused, gazing at Barney with a look far warmer than anything he’d ever experienced. “My own son.”

So, clearly Ives is barking mad. But Barney’s found that doesn’t make him bad company. He’s in every few days for a shave, and always stays for a wee chat. It doesn’t take long before he times his appointments to just before Barney’s lunch break, so there’s really not much excuse not to spend time with the man. Even if he’s fucking certifiable.

One such day, they’re leaving the chips shop around the corner when a feminine voice with an Aussie lilt floats over Barney’s shoulder, “Um, excuse me.” Assuming he likely dropped some change, Barney pauses and turns, and finds the most beautiful woman in the world looking straight at him. “Sorry, I know this is rude, but I just had to ask, is it true you’re the man who survived the Bridgeton Butcher?”

Barney gawps at her for a moment like a landed fish, his gaze darting to Ives, who simply raises a brow. “I, ah, survived maybe isn’t the right word. He never came after me, he just… Was just a coworker.” Barney’s glad for the business his wholly unexpected legend brought to the shop, but these days he prefers not to think about the string of dark days in which he learned about the startling fragility of the human body. And how monsters can hide under familiar faces.

The woman lets out a soft laugh, “I’m sure that was well close enough. Anyway, sorry again. Um, I’m Belle French. I’m over at Game of Thorns.”

She extends a perfect hand. Barney hastily wipes the sweat off his own before daring to perform a business-like shake. “Barney Thomson, Henderson’s Barbers- but,” he winces, “I suppose you know that.”

“I gathered, yes,” Belle replies lightly.

Her smile is like sunshine, dazzling Barney until he feels a nudge at his side. “Right, and this is Francis Ives.”

“Barney’s father,” Ives says with a short bow, hand placed on his chest.

Belle nods, then frowns, her gaze jumping between the two men, her fully functional brain drawing the obvious conclusions. Panic swirls in Barney. “Right, well!” he cries, voice jumping to a reedy register, “Very nice to meet you, Miss French, very nice indeed, but we need to be going.”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll- I’ll see you around then.”

He’s already grasped Ives’s elbow and is towing him away. Still the madman calls over his shoulder, “I guarantee it, Miss French! Au revoir!”

“You cannae say that to people,” Barney hisses in Ives’s ear.

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because it’s-” He bites back the word insane as he spots a cold, hard glint in eyes that are undeniably similar to his own. “Look, just… give it a rest, will ya’?”

Ives sighs, and the glint melts into the usual soft warmth. “I shouldn’t have left for so long. But you know how it is, time gets away from you. Especially when so much has gone before. And it only picks up speed, you know. Decades pass like weeks to me now. Perhaps you’ll understand someday. But… I don’t think you’re ready. Not yet.”

The race is neck-and-neck over what’s more discomfiting, Ives’s talk of being Barney’s father, or his talk of living far beyond any normal human lifespan.

“Anyway, Belle French is beautiful as the reddest rose, isn’t she?”

And a new challenger comes from behind to win it all! “I hadn’t noticed,” Barney says, lying more extravagantly in three words than all his babble to the cops.

Ives is quiet for a beat before murmuring, “Perhaps you should, lad. Perhaps you should.”

Barney rolls his eyes, and they continue their walk back to the shop.

---

Time carries on, and Francis Ives carries on his presence in Barney’s life. It’s not very long before the other barbers decide Ives is all right despite his peculiarities, and soon he’s gotten himself (and by convenient extension, Barney) invited to football and boxing matches, happy hours and birthday parties. Not long ago Barney might have proclaimed he had no interest in such frivolous social engagements. But that’s easier to say when you’ve never been invited.

A little voice in Barney insists this will all come to an end somehow, whether with a bang or a whimper, though preferably not in a literal sense. However, when his thoughts turn in that gloomy direction, Ives always seems to turn up. He’s said he intends to stay as long as he can. Which, according to him, is when people start to notice he isn’t aging.

“Or, if you feel I must leave…” Ives prompted, still with that now familiar soft warmth in his eyes. “No!” Barney hears himself blurt out, “No, no, it’s- you’re fine.”

When he can pry his mind away from bleak pessimism, the real trick is keeping it from wandering to Belle French. It’s bloody embarrassing, honestly, him thinking on a lovely, intelligent young woman like her. She’s kind too, often popping her head out of Game of Thorns for a short chat when Barney and Ives pass on their walks. He might assume it’s just Ives’s undeniable charm that wins her attention, but oddly the man stands by mostly silent while she and Barney catch up. Or maybe Barney just doesn’t notice him the way he usually does. Everything seems to fade into the background when Belle’s there to look at, and talk to, and make smile.

One day, an aspect of Barney’s most pathetic dreams comes true when Belle shoves her way out of Game of Thorns and runs down the street toward him with an absolutely radiant beam spread across her face.

“Barney, I closed the deal!” she cries, grasping his forearms when she’s close enough and all but dancing on the spot.

He barely manages to look over to the empty shop that’s been gathering dust beside Game of Thorns for ages. “So, you’ll be able to expand?”

“Yes! French’s Flowers, Tea, and Books will be open for business in a matter of months. You’ll come to the grand opening, won’t you?” She blinks, and glances to Barney’s right, “Oh, and you, Francis?”

“We wouldn’t miss it,” Ives answers, draping an arm around Barney’s shoulders, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks. I’m so excited I can barely see straight. But there’s so much to do, I don’t have a minute to spare if I want to open at the start of the next fiscal year. I’ll see you both later, okay? Bye!”

She lets go of Barney to whip around and dart back inside, and he immediately wills his memory to record exactly what the sweet pressure of her hands on him felt like. Meanwhile, Ives leans close to murmur, “What wonderful news. We need to get you a new suit.”

If Barney sees almost nothing of Belle in the coming months, he consoles himself with the knowledge that it’s because she’s busy becoming a permanent fixture on his street. When the day of the grand opening finally comes, he manages to resist Ives’ orders to buy roses, though he quails under his stern warning, “Don’t you dare buy her carnations, lad. She’s not a granny on her death bed.” They settle on two dozen white and yellow daisies.

While Barney’s stomach twists itself into knots as they walk, Ives’s lets out a long, low growl. Barney shoots a glance toward him as he pats his abdomen with a pained look. “You okay? You dinnae have lunch today. Your supper disagree with you?”

Ives’s gaze wanders skyward. “It disagreed most vehemently, I’m afraid. But now my stomach’s remembered how to be hungry.”

“Well, let’s hurry on then, before the nibbles are gone.” If Barney wasn’t so nervous about seeing Belle on her big day, he might have realized that Ives never takes more than a few bites when they go to lunch.

Balloons and streamers decorate the face of the newly-minted French’s Flowers, Tea, and Books, a charming florist-café-bookstore filled with color and air and light. Barney actually feels able to take a calming breath when he’s stepped inside from the outdoor patio, despite the number of people packed in among the shelves and displays. He still takes a moment to run a palm down his suit and over his hair.

“You’re going to be fine,” Ives says.

“Right, thanks, Dad- Francis- Mr. Ives.”

It’s too late. Ives beams like the sun, both hands pressing over his heart.

Barney gives him a feeble glare and turns away to look for Belle. His heart jumps when he spots her by the till, but just as quickly sinks when he sees the strapping man leaning over her, his chiseled face executing a cinema-perfect smile. Barney has never felt older or uglier or more pathetic in his life, which is a hard record to beat. Clearly if he has any sense he’ll stick the daisies in one of the vases for sale and scarper. If Belle sees him and this man side-by-side, she won’t be able to contain her laughter. Like an imp standing next to a knight, hardly recognizable as the same species.

He’s half-turned to make good his escape when Ives strides forward, leaving Barney to scuttle along behind and pray he doesn’t say anything insane. “Ah, Miss Belle, what a fabulous event this is!”

“Hiya, Francis, thanks,” Belle replies, then tilts her head slightly to peer around him, “Barney? Oh, I’m so glad you made it!”

Barney barely manages to contain the “Why?!” begging to explode from his lips, and instead thrusts the daisies in Belle’s general direction. “Ah, for you.”

“Oh, they’re lovely!” she exclaims while taking from the bouquet from his limp, damp, trembling hand, “Daisies for new beginnings, right?”

“Naturally,” Ives says, “We wish you all the luck as you begin this exciting business venture, not that I think you’ll need it. The interior design is absolutely stunning. Just walking in is like traveling from Glasgow to Paris in a single step.”

As if Belle could get more beautiful, a pink flush blooms on her round cheeks as she breathes in the scent of the daisies. “Thanks, again. Actually I based it on the shops I saw in Paris. Traveling there was a dream come true for me.”

The Adonis hovering nearby coughs and says, “You know, I would’ve brought flowers, I just thought they’d get in the way of- of the other flowers.”

“Of course, Gaston,” Belle assures him, “Francis, Barney, this is Gaston Muscat, a friend of my father’s.”

Gaston blinks, “A friend of yours, you mean. A close friend. We’ve known each other for…”

“How wonderful to meet you, Gaston,” Ives declares, grabbing his hand and pumping it enthusiastically. He hangs on, and actually reaches with his free hand to clasp Gaston’s elbow while leaning away from Belle. “My, what a grip you’ve got. What line of work are you in? Please, tell me everything.”

Barney quite suddenly finds himself face-to-face with Belle while Gaston and Ives move a few steps off. She smiles, and the entire English language deserts him. He slowly cobbles together a few halting statements, “It, uh, seems to be going well. The event. The opening. Here.”

Far from bursting into laughter, a nervous look passes over Belle’s face, “Seems so. You don’t think it’s… too much?”

“No, no. It’s…” He can’t conjure any bits of poetry like Ives did, so he goes with the truth, “I feel like I can breathe here. Which can be difficult. For me. Sometimes.”

Her smile returns, wider and warmer than before. Barney feels it down to his toes. She takes him on a tour of the whole shop, barely pausing to acknowledge other guests and customers and always returning swiftly to him. Barney asks every question he can, if only for the pure pleasure of hearing her voice and witnessing the workings of her mind. The existence of Gaston and even of Ives drifts far away.

Quite suddenly it seems he and Belle are among the last few people in the shop. Belle slips her arm free from where she looped it around Barney’s at some point. He feels at least ten degrees colder with its absence. “Well, I should probably help with the till, see how much we made on our opening day.”

“Right, of course.”

“I’m so glad you came.”

“I’m glad I stayed- that is, I mean, I enjoyed… being here. Spending time, with you.”

Somehow he has managed to bring that rosy blush to her cheeks all on his own. “Yeah, same. Um, do you want to get dinner sometime, with me?”

His entire throat seizes up with shock, so all he can do is nod.

“Great! Tomorrow, at eight? We can meet here, and just wander until we find something good?”

“Y-yes. Definitely. I would love to.” “Okay. Until then, Barney.” She reaches out and scoops up his hand, giving it a squeeze before letting go.

Barney floats from the shop, and down the street, and all the way back to his flat.

There he finds Ives. And Gaston. Or, what remains of Gaston. The rest is being sliced up into neat, meal-sized portions by Ives. Barney’s feet feel nailed to the floor as waves of cold horror wash over him.

Ives, meanwhile, looks up with an apologetic grin through the blood. “Oh dear, I really thought you’d be- well, occupied with Miss Belle tonight. Not to worry though. I’ll have this cleaned up in no time, son. Promise.”

#woobienation #anyelle #barnelle #the legend of barney thomson #once upon a time #ravenous

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for-peace-war · 6 years ago

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art by @idrawbuffgirls

Part VI is the final part of this series prior to its in-game conclusion. It was a lot of fun doing it... thought his one went to an hour and a half because I had to look up a lot of information. All the same, thank everyone that followed the story to this point. It means a lot to me that people found it worth looking at in any regard.

This follows @iamreinhardt‘s Valenso the Zingaran. And as always, thanks Kelzack for the awesome art!

THE GREAT WINGED ONE.

Follows Part I.

Follows Part II.

Follows Part III

Follows Part IV.

Follows Part V.

Part VI.

VALENSO THE ZINGARAN vantage of the vivacious Vendhyan vixen enveloped in velvet violated what vaunted virtues he envisioned for himself. She was an exotic acquisition—black hair that fell like a funeral pall along her lightly toasted features. In motion her body was a series of quiet seductions, which the Zingaran had enjoyed many, many times the nights prior. She claimed that her father was a brahmin of the priestly varna. He informed her that if that was the case, then her father had sinned mightily—for to steal a piece of the heavens and offer it to infidels, now could that be anything short of sacrilege? And then he had sinned mightily with her.

Oh, what a time it had been.

“You do not sleep?” She asked. Her voice was quiet and husky, the sort that made bedroom chatter incline toward bedroom play. Though he spoke enough Vendhyan to get around when needed, Valenso did not care to engage her in the tongue; he much preferred to hear her stumble over Iranistani. It was cute—in a way.

But she was correct in her inquiry—he did not sleep. The air was perfumed not merely in the fading notions of their congress, but spices and the heavy scent of the oils she had placed upon him. Though that haze had seen him clearly to the point of exhaustion, it had not prevented his mind from remaining fixed on one truth: one unmistakable truth. It was not that he had lost Zaliki—it was that he had never had her at all.

The Zingaran moved a hand to slap the girl’s bottom, which clapped to a sound nearly as delightful as that which came of her mouth. She pulled away, the velvet sheets upon her drawn like a whorl in her wake, and revealed more of him to the warm air that infiltrated the ship at its mooring. She looked back at him playful; he ran a hand through his hair and allowed his amber eyes to take in not merely what was before him, but what was not. There was no small wonder why he had picked the girl, of course. She was shapely, with the body of a dancer and the large, heavy breasts of a matron-to-be. Her hips jutted out into vase-like curvature that placed to shape the pottery of the greatest Corinthian kiln master. Along the tops of her breasts and around her midsection, thin lines of a softer shade appeared where her skin had stretched along itself, painting those areas in a pale, though vibrant wave of hues not at all dissimilar from the orange glow of the setting sun. And her eyes—the one that had not been concealed by the sea of black that she swam within, were a brilliant blue so fine that sapphire might well have been carved from them.

No, it was no wonder at all that he had chosen her.

But she was not the wonder that he had chosen.

“I am going to go for a walk,” the Zingaran said. “Try to pretty yourself up a bit for me before I return, yes?” He winked devilishly at her. She blushed a fine color along her brown cheeks. When he drew himself out of bed, he knew that her eyes followed him with admiration. There were few men that could command enough physical beauty to deny a woman’s inclination for wealth, and few men that commanded enough wealth to make a woman forget how hideous he had become in its acquisition. Fortunately for her—and more importantly, every woman that had ever crossed paths with him—he was the possessor of the better part of both qualities. He was born into beauty the same as he was born into wealth. When one was a noble, what else could they expect to know?

She mewled after him. “You do not like what you see?”

His response was to draw her closer by her hair, so that she winced a playful protest, and then kiss her. It was not the manner of kiss that was intended to claim souls—it was the kind that was meant to stoke a fire and keep it well tended in his absence. She warmed against him and her hand, covered in golden ringlets, found his strong jaw and stroked the hair upon his chin. His hand moved from the gentle slope of her neck, down to the full, hanging breasts he had favored with so many affections before, and he carefully squeezed upon nipples as dark as earth, and twisted tenderly until she moaned against his lips. She was heated by his presence, he could feel. If he wanted, it would have taken him no time at all to slip into bed and back into her in an instant. Even had he been a pauper—and perish that thought!—he would have been faced with no great resistance. As a man of the sea, he had learned to navigate all manners of wetness and opened legs were no less wonderful to sail than the open sea.

But, alas, he had business elsewhere—business, and a mind, that though piqued knew it would not be sated on her for the time being. He drew his hand away from her breast and brought it to her chin, where he pressed his thumb against the side of it and his other fingers claimed portions of her jaw. She was made to look at him directly then. He spoke to her, in the slow and patient way a man might have a mule, a child, or any other simple creature not fit to stand as his equal.

“Do not ask whether or not I like what I see, little girl,” he told her. “Pray that I do.”

He did not hurry away from her, but rather dressed slowly in the wake of his command. Her attention was wholly devoted to him and in those moments, the Zingaran allowed himself to become what he knew he never could truly be: free of worry, of the burden of concern. The masks he wore would always prevent him from needing to delve deeper into what pressed against him, and just as he slipped back into his fine clothing he could place on more to protect him from the elements that surrounded him. The warmer climes of Iranistan had made his attire less suitable than it had been previously, so he adopted their garb—a sirwal and a silken coat that followed him as loyally as the Vendhyan girl’s eyes did.

What was her name again? As he snatched a pear up off the table he reminded himself to ask, but had forgotten his interest in the matter by the time he was tossing it away.

Zariba was a lively city. Deeper within Iranistan, near Anshan, he knew that Zaliki had claimed to have a need to speak with someone and though he had been inclined to accompany her there were ways in which the Stygian could make a man forget what his true intentions were. After all, she had convinced him—a proud son of the sea—to make a journey to Iranistan of all places. The coastal condition had made it slightly less daunting to consider, but some part of him knew that even if she had asked to be deposited in the heart of Drujistan, then he would have carried her there.

The streets were filled with the exotic enticements of a decadent world—a world so decadent that even he had made a vow not to enjoy any more of it before he had learned something of what had become of his companion. What had begun as a vigil, set by himself in her name, had devolved into a torrid series of vices that ranged from beauties to brawn to the bestial things that came between them. He had no reservations in most cases when it came to taking what he wanted, but when what he wanted could not be taken, it was a hollowing experience. What was the use of all of his skill, coin, and bravado if he could not acquire that which was on his mind?

Why had he allowed her to leave without much protest?

There were times when Valenso thought that he might have seen her in the streets. At the corner of his eyes, perhaps behind a snake charmer or a rug merchant he thought he saw her, nearly fair despite her heritage and draped along the arm of some rich aristocrat. But each time they turned out to be nothing more than voluptuous mirages, and after he had sampled their wares he always came away feeling as if he had wasted even more of his time. But wasn’t it all just a waste of time?

Wasn’t he being an immense fool, in the end?

Marioso, his first mate, had been as clear as his cordiality permitted him. “If she remains, my lord, then she does not wish to be seen.” Darmino, a cocksure sailor with a golden tooth, had offered his agreement in the form of a muttered vow that his ‘jigglestick’ was sore from its stay in port for so long. “Me sores is sore,” he declared. Valenso had considered their words and with the aplomb of a man that knew his place in the world, promptly ignored them. For what did either know of what they had seen in the Accursed Lands? What did either know of what it meant to survive through determination alone?

It was not merely the entertainment of their voyage that kept him so devoted to his post, he knew. Perhaps in passing when he recounted the tale to another he would say how the temptress, when astride any man on a ship, made the whole world seem a tumult that threatened to swallow him in passions only she could produce—and truthfully, the sight of her ply that secret and dark talent of that came of Luxor’s bosom and undulated as mightily as her own was a sight to behold—but it would have been false. Time spent with Zaliki was less a matter of what one desired, and more one of what could not be obtained. Perhaps they had fucked—and yet, they had not fucked each other.

She fucked him.

He fucked himself.

“What the fuck am I doing here,” the Zingaran said to himself as he strode the streets further. The arming sword at his side, a masterwork of crafting, felt the only thing that belonged to the man that he was. It was not love that bade him, he realized with each step that he took. Nor was it even the devotion of one friend to another. It was something more, something more personal and intimate than even that.

It was that she had promised to return—promised in a way that he knew she could never break. As childish as it may have been, the Zingaran realized that it was belief in another that had kept him in place!

Gods, had he ever fucked himself!

There were more beauties that met the eyes; delicate creatures, draped in fine fabrics that revealed only their eyes to the passing man. Daughters of great men, surely, with big eunuch guardsmen that blocked the way of any that would have arrived at their bedchambers. As he watched one of the women guiding her sisters along the street in detail with her guards, his mind shifted from the sway of her hips to a distant enchantment. He recalled his adventure with Zaliki when they had arrived in Sabeaa, to the south, and provisioned themselves for the final leg of the trip. The portside town was of little interest, but it was a tale that two fishermen had shared with the Stygian—informing her of how her beauty would be appreciated by Mirza Hashem, that their interest was piqued.

“The mirza’s palace,” one of the fishermen said, “is a sea of beautiful flowers surrounded by walls of ivory. Anything that a man could desire can be found within it: wine, women, work—so long as Mirza Hashem has turned his favor upon you, there is no place better to be.”

His friend added, “And considering your beauty, my dear, I do believe you would be right at home among the clouds.”

Valenso had learned long ago how the Stygian’s voice changed when she had something on her mind. She perfumed her words in a sort of trance that made men sway in the wake of her every word. “Does this palace have mangos?”

“I think so,” one of them said.

She turned back to him and offered him a Shemite’s smile.

“I suppose we are going to get a few mangos, eh?” He grinned.

The fishermen had not been lying. In fact, they had undersold what awaited them. In the middle of what should have been desert stood ivory walls that were so pale they made the surrounding sands seem as though mud. Fine music coated the air about them, and the glittering golden armor of the guardsmen at the gate shone with enough brilliance to make him squint. There were any number of reasons not to go into the garden—for a mango, no less—yet Zaliki’s prodding made him feel it was worthwhile.

Oh, how right that feeling had been.

An adventure including an enraged Mirza Hashem, a vow to see them dead, the echoes of pleasure from the mirza’s finest concubine in his mind, several rings that then coated his fingers—and one mango later, they had retreated with laughter back to his ship and enjoyed the spoils of an evening well won. It had been a glorious moment, indeed.

“It is rare you smile so openly,” a woman said to his right. She was tall and golden-hued, shaped as if Ishtar herself, with regal cheekbones and a head of brown hair that fell gently past her shoulders. The turquoise green of her eyes and the way her full lips formed into a familiar smile were unforgettable.

“Zaliki.”

“Valenso.” She stood before him in the flesh—flesh as lovely and pure as it had been when last he saw her. Daylight had begun to retreat from the pale walls of the city and those within it began to retreat into their homes. Zaliki, dressed as a local townswoman, offered him a smile. In some strange way, the cotton seemed far more exotic upon her than the silks he had last seen her in. She was almost normal—and that made some part of his mind want to see the creature inside of her all the more. The smile she offered him was greedily accepted; he devoured her with his eyes.

“I was only thinking of—”

“Mangos,” she finished for him.

He smiled. “Yes, mangos.”

But there was something about the air that was different. Valenso eyed her more carefully. Had she been injured—was she being used as a trap of some kind? Danger did not escape her, neither did a reason for sympathy. She was not the same woman, though. “Are you ready to leave?”

“I am,” she said.

“Thank the gods. I could not suffer much more of this place.”

“Thank you for enduring it as long as you have.”

They walked back to his ship in relative silence, chatting as if she had not vanished off into the darkness one night and returned with the arrival of another ominous might. Reminiscing became a protection against the moment they were in: it was a mask, that allowed them to delight in the off-putting of a heartbreak that he had not yet felt and yet had already experienced a thousand times in a thousand different ways. The moon described a path for them, but where it led was a mystery to Valenso. He could still feel how soft her skin was; knew that her thews were silken sheaths over sturdier stuff. The body of the woman beside him was not one he would ever forget, and yet what was within it—that was what confused him.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Part of it,” she said.

“You should see the woman I found to pass time with in your absence. Your Derketo would find no reason to complain of her.” He thought to compare her to her directly—to perhaps draw a bit of jealousy out of her so that when they fell to play upon the girl, she would be as mean as she was invigorating. Yet that idea felt like an aborted dream, divided by a chasm that denied what was—and what could ever be.

A phantom’s romance floated off of Zaliki’s voice when she spoke. “Did she satisfy you?”

He found that question surprisingly difficult to answer. “In a way,” he said. The Zingaran looked at her and noted her eyes were turned toward the distance as they walked. He looked to the starry sky. “I have had better, I suppose.”

“And worse,” she said.

“And worse.”

“It is always good to remember that. Better—and worse.”

Their conversation became more fleeting. Iranistan’s streets had become empty and for an ephemeral moment, Valenso wished that Mirza Hashem’s golden-scaled men might have emerged from an alley and forced them to fight their way from their midst to his ship, where a speedy retreat would have been met with laughter and lust. But the streets were quiet and the only gold that saw was that which they wore.

When they arrived back at his ship, they stopped.

Valenso spoke first. “You aren’t coming back with me, are you?”

The Stygian was quiet for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was of a different world. “No.”

“Then why did you come back at all?”

She stepped closer to him and with a gentle touch, placed her thumb to his chin, and allowed her fingers to claim possession of his bearded jaw. She kissed him, not in the manner that made one’s flames come to life, but in a way that caused the soul to release it had been relinquished at long last. The masks that he wore fell to the floor, and he realized that he no longer cared for the coins he had acquired or the beauties he had known. Truthfully, even the Vendhyan that waited for him hot as the flames that had spawned her could not promise him a moment of what he saw before himself.

“Goodbye, Valenso.”

“Zaliki,” he said her name as if holding her by it. He was a nobleman of fine blood, who had conquered the seas and escaped the Accursed Lands. Saying her name should have been enough—it should have held her fast, as fast as his hands might if he could seized her. Even that act felt helpless, though. He knew that he could not hold her—that man could, in the end. “Where are you going?”

The Stygian’s silence was agonizing. She turned her eyes toward him once more—eyes that joined the craftiness of her Shemitish and Stygian blood, yet somehow were able to convey an earnest concern where neither bloodline would have done so on their own.

“If I tell you, you must promise never to tell another.”

He did so.

She told him.

The Zingaran swore to never tell a soul of where she had gone—or to ask himself how he could allow her to go there, alone.

#conan #writing exercise #valenso the zingaran #the great winged one

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doctormono · 5 years ago

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00:00:00:00:14:59

It was easier when I was a kid. Maybe because I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Everybody had numbers over their head, counting down to zero. It wasn’t until I was around nine years old that I understood it was counting down to each person’s time of death, or Life Counter as my video game addled internal monologue got used to calling them. Most people had years, decades even on their life counter. When I was twelve, I realized my mother’s life counter only had a couple years left, so I spent every day I could with her and visibly watched my efforts add a few more years to her life before cancer finally took her. But our relationship had delighted her enough to make those last few years fill her with pride and ease. I could not have asked for more. When I was young, I wondered if there was a religious connection. My Presbyterian upbringing had no words for what I saw, so I began to discard that idea out of hand. I understood the Life Counter’s connection to decisions and well-being by the time I was eighteen. We were having a graduation party and Tommy Sanders was drinking way too much. As I watched, his counter dropped from four decades, to twenty minutes in less than an hour. I tried to keep him at the party and sometimes, my arguments would cause his Life Counter to pause while he considered my words. But his drunkenness won the battle and he tried to drive home. He wrapped his car around a telephone pole less than a mile away from the party. When I got there, I held his hand as he died. I watched his Life Counter drop to its final few digits and spoke soothing words to ease him along. In the reflection of the passenger side window, I saw a year add to my own Life Counter. Then I understood. It was game balancing. This wasn’t an ability given from a divine presence, this was a dev team working the kinks out of their game. From that point on, I took Life Counters more seriously. I went to school for nursing and dedicated my life to helping others deal with their counters running out. I even specialized in oncology nursing and found a position at a local hospital ward that specialized in palliative care. Sometimes, I was able to help my patients to make good decisions and add months or even years to their counters. But more often than not, I was simply an ear or shoulder to help them in the hardest of times. People talk about the clinical side of our vocation- that we can separate ourselves from our patients and stay professional. That’s bullshit. I fell in love with each and every one of my patients, especially near the end when all pretense was gone and many just wanted someone to know who they really were. I had my favorites- a little boy named Juan that I was able to help gain years on his prognosis by delighting him with my boyfriend’s Star Wars costume group appearances, or Andrea who reminded me so much of my mother and hearing her stories added a week and a half to her Life Counter. But most importantly, was Sister Margaret. Margaret, or Maggie to her friends, was in her nineties. She’d come under doctor’s instruction with expectation of end of life care, but here was a 93-year-old nun with 34 years left on her Life Counter. I wanted to ask how that was even possible, but I knew the moment I first brought a meal to her room, that she could see Life Counters too. I didn’t speak of it at all. I avoided being alone with her as long as possible until I had to help her with adjusting her IV tube. “You’re not immortal, you know,” she said as if we were in the middle of a conversation. I’d thought she had been sleeping. “I’m sorry?” “You’re not immortal. Sure, you have a heads up onto how long you have left, but that number goes both ways, Child.” I sat on the edge of her bed and looked deep into her eyes. “Nancy,” I said with a tap on my nametag. “But I’ve been sick before, and it never seemed to affect my Life Counter.” “Is that what you call it?” She laughed a bit and placed one of her hands on mine. It felt cold, and I cupped it in both of mine to keep it warm. “I always called it the Clock.” Without realizing it, both of our Life Counters rose. We went on to discuss how it worked, and what it implied. She had found a place for her in the Church as she studied what the Clock meant. She’d been convinced that we were something akin to Grim Reapers, Ankou, or even something like Mot or Charon. I understood about half of it. In turn, I explained my video game theory and she agreed that giving us a benefit could just be “Game Balancing” but she emphasized that we could make the same bad decisions as the departing and lose years on our counters in the blink of an eye. She was right, of course. Later that week, after a twenty-hour shift, I’d just put on my coat and pulled out my keys for the thirty-minute drive home when I passed by Maggie’s door and heard her shriek from within. “NANCY!” I stopped and ran into her room. She was staring above my head. “Twenty-five minutes.” I looked in a mirror, the bags under my eyes had bags. But over my head, my Life Counter read “00:00:00:00:24:48” I stepped back and almost fell onto her bed. “You won’t be driving home tonight,” she said gesturing at the couch in her room. “You won’t make it.” I agreed. But when I woke, I found that Maggie had left in the night. It was a long time later that I truly understood. She’d only agreed to accept her doctor’s request because she would be needed. For me. Balancing. The Dev Team was on their game. With all that had come in recent months, I couldn’t stay at the oncology ward upstate much longer. I took a leave of absence long before Covid-19 hit our shores to help out at NYU Medical Center in the heart of the city. Somehow, I knew it was coming. It wasn’t a side quest; this was the main storyline mission. But a month into the outbreak in NYC, and I didn’t feel like I was helping enough. My counter hadn’t risen in weeks, and worse of all the bodies were beginning to pile up. We’d needed to order a refrigerated trailer just to house what we couldn’t fit in our overflowing morgue. It was Friday. I left the room we kept a seven-year-old boy named Tyler in. He was positive for corona virus and not responding well to treatment. His counter said he had just over two days. He was still coherent but in isolation, and could barely breathe with the ventilator. But worst of all, his parents were not allowed in the hospital. We skyped them daily, but ultimately this child was dying alone, surrounded by anonymous doctors and nurses with masks and gloves, without understanding why. Nothing I’d tried had helped in the least. It was all I could do to keep the tears at bay. I still had more patients to visit on my rounds, including a new tenant two rooms down. I changed my gloves and mask before checking on them. It was Maggie. But My elation was short lived as I realized her counter had only four days left. “Maggie?” Her eyes eased open and took a while to focus on me before she feebly said “Nancy?” “Maggie,” I began exasperated. “You should still have another twenty-five years or so. What happened?” Maggie huffed as she struggled to find words without her ventilator. “It’s worse, Nancy… Worse than polio. I had to open our doors. Help who I could. The Clock be damned.” I explained what had happened here at NYU. I talked about my patients, how I didn’t seem to be helping. I cried about Tyler. I could feel how cold Maggie’s hand was through my glove. “It’s not about their Clocks anymore, Nancy. It’s…not even about.. yours. The Final Boss. It takes a risk to beat. And some risks, we don’t beat.” I understood. When I left her room that night, I took off my gloves and mask. I sat by Tyler’s bed and I held his small hand against my cheek until he woke. “Hi there,” I began. “I’m your nurse, Nancy. And I’m going to stay here with you.” Tears followed well-worn tracks on his cheeks as he smiled weakly. “But you’ll run out of time.” “I don’t care,” I admitted through the well of tears. And I didn’t. My Life Counter would reach zero sooner than I’d expected, but in the end, it gave him more time on his.

#fiction #my writing #covıd19 #scifi story

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ca1e70-deactivated · 5 years ago

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a list of my entirely way too niche headcanons ive actually implemented for everyones imagination:

name options ive used and refuse to retire: david elizabeth strider (sometimes i dont feel like being a douche to others and saying thats not his name), harley davidson strider, and david james strider for the sake of simplicity

im not gonna tell yall the like. oc exes ive given him bc thatll take eighteen years.

i dont rlly have an explanation on the ghost thing besides the fact he just can? ive occasionally pulled from family ghost stories and experiences bc i somehow got landed with family members who lived in a haunted house for a decade and enjoy scaring me with all the stories (including the time my cousin literally died on the kitchen floor from a bronchial spasm and one of the friends that was over asked my aunt later what was up with the old man she saw in the corner of the room that night - my cousin is fine btw shes just a huge bitch and a third grade teacher and i dont like her)

whether or not hes done drugs is based on absolutely nothing besides how im feeling in that moment. either hes the designated driver and sober friend forever or he got fired from his job after doing a line at work during graveyard with some random customers theres no inbetween (this absolutely happened @ waho. if dave works at waho hes a mess of a person and thats on the diner itself.)

ok look i hc dave w/schizophrenia besides when i was 14 i had a hyperfixation with learning about it and then at 16 was prescribed a medication and had side effects so wack my therapist genuinely thought 14 yr old me was onto something and its a weird way to cope with the idea that lady put in my head that i might “develop it in my twenties” which i turn 20 this year and i havent been able to stop obsessing and panicking over the prospect so PLEASE dont come in my inbox calling me ableist im not out here all harley quinn in suicide squad with the voices ok hes medicated, he goes to therapy, the hard fast delusion that lil cal was nearly sentient and informed bro of every single thing dave did no matter how asinine it was is no longer a debilitatingly affecting him ANYWAYS

i actually use the chicken/egg farming family pretty often just because its hilarious to me to give dave like. an actual mom and dad. hes literally an uncle to like three different kids he just never visits because they make fun of his skinny jeans and he hates one of his (incredibly bare-bones ocs all of them) brothers who threatened to bash his head in with a little league bat after dave broke his star wars lego set apart on accident (but not rlly) so their parents were like “why dont you stay with your brother in the big city for a lil while champ” and then they just never picked him back up? and thats on favoritism

the other one is that his name is actually david reed and hes the middle child of a family of three who literally live the standard golden retriever white middle class life only they went to disney land or something equally as dumb one year when dave was like 6 and he wandered off so bro literally just went “huh free game” because frankly he was an idiot who thought maybe i should take this kid home because its real dangerous in parking lots and then it was too late to NOT have it seem like a kidnapping and thats why daves never had a summer job, seen his birth certificate, or gone to school. but vaguely remembers what kindergarten was like and having a pet dog and calling someone mom as a kid.

im not making a bullet point about his sex life headcanons just use your imagination and acknowledge the fact bro essentially worked within the sex industry and i enjoy putting dave through trauma as a catharsis

i stopped doing this one usually but if he did go to school hes been in percussion since fifth grade and played the drums in his high schools jazz band as well as various edgy teenager garage bands he likes to pretend dont have a youtube presence and that hes absolutely never been shirtless in front of plenty of his classmates because he wore a hoodie to a show like an idiot. idk occasionally ill put him in an actual band he doesnt hate but keeps separate from his lil turntechGodhead internet persona (which i will ALSO touch upon in a sec) until they wind up getting looped into a tour with some bigger named band that has a show in *insert beta kid here*’s city and hes gotta come clean solely so he can visit his online friend. sorry derseasterous thats the one time weve ever run into each other and i made him have a crush on one of his bandmates i was in my anti-daverose phase where i made dave a hoe and also didnt want to admit i still loved the ship all these years later

i hate it so much but you know the whole vr loli trap voice shit that was popular a while ago? hes fucking baller at it for some reason. he did it as a joke while talking to bro and they both about shat their pants. if im feeling real ambitious, hes got a separate soundcloud solely dedicated to doing dumbass rap covers or making his own but in the voice under the pseudonym elizabeth “beth” davids that he will never admit is his. well, he will, but hes gonna be really fucking embarrassed about it. irony or not.

talking abt seperate soundclouds and stuff ive always had it where turntechGodhead was his like. essentially internet fucking persona facade shit he used because we all had that phase where we wanted memorable urls and stuff but also didnt want to totally ignore the nagging fear of people finding you in real life, until it turned into real life ppl finding you on the internet. so he also has basically an adjacent set of social media under the same name but its just a boring username i havent decided on so everyone he knows irl doesnt mix up with what hes made for himself as TG and the people he knows as TG dont know what highschool he goes to. (this occasionally comes with the territory of ppl on parp being pissed that daves “lying” or “hiding things” from his friends as if he was doing it out of spite instead of just keeping embarrassing tagged photos and videos from football games or when he ate shit at the skatepark from fucking with his “rap career”)

every once in a while i get on a kick where hes just german. like, i just replace houston texas with hamburg germany and have him apply to a university in whatever state is applicable for whoever im chatting with and it goes from there? sometimes he moved when he was little and went through the whole visa thing, sometimes he didnt go through the visa thing, sometimes hes a dual citizen because of family and shit, its all dependent on what suits the situation best.

one that ive been fucking with for a while but hardly break out (until recently with like 5 roses in the span of one day hell yeah) is that he has a neighbor at the end of the hall who is like a thousand year old witch lady that hes basically adopted as his mother figure in lieu of not having one and shes totally cool with it, especially bc when she kicks the bucket she fully plans on giving dave all her occult stuff so her figure-skating coach and realtor daughter doesnt sell it at a garage sale and lets it all go to waste. she also once brought rose up by name in a conversation without any prompting of her existence which dave didnt realize for days, and then one time cryptically stopped and stared at an empty space in the wall, went “she has potential, you know.” then looked at him sitting on her kitchen counter with a smile “lots of it” and hes thought about that weekly ever since. (it is important to note one of the occult items he leaves her is literally her own personal book of shadows shes been filling out for decades its like a 600 page leatherbound book dave has no idea what its used for but the sheer amount of homemade spells and etc in it is like. gonna murder rose the second this chick gets her hands on it i promise you.)

theres the standard strife shit? im not rlly gonna get into those theyre all basically cookie cutter bullshit. its just standard bro and dave abuse talk. i like to inclulde the whole 24hr live cam up in the apartment that definitely watches dave in every room besides his own and the bathroom, but that quickly delves into the prospect of middle-aged men stalking him online and basically sexually harassing him in his own god damn home by talking about how they can see him just trying to take his shoes off in the living room after getting home and frankly? its not one of my best takes! but once you throw it into the headcanon bin, its there forever.

he actually really does do something with his photography but not enough to warrant anything exciting, but he has his own branding for it and regularly takes pictures of his friends or anything else he thinks is moderately interesting enough to take pictures of, but those are just thrown into shoeboxes under his bed in favor of posting genuine shots because he wants to keep his image intact and blurry photos of jade smiling in the tree they climbed up together while bec paws at the base of it while whining isnt exactly something he wants the whole world to see.

i also pretty often but him into either paleontology OR i put him down as trying to become a mortician because he thinks handing roadkill once he graduated from museum giftshop specimens to doing his own taxidermy on the side has prepared him enough to perform an occasional autopsy and start embalming real human corpses. (sometimes i put my own desires in and make them his bc i have to project at some point and put him through the same EMT course i dropped out of bc it was one semester and he already has pretty decent first aid skills, but he definitely didnt expect it to be as fucking wild at times as it is, but whats he gonna do? get a job back at waffle house? the company hes working for just offered to pay like half his associates in paramedicine tuition and hes already got all his pre-recs done when he started for paleo. at least its a stable job and hes got the ability to be compassionate in the moment)

im running out of things that ive done to the poor kid. OH

hes not a virgin he had a girlfriend all four years of high school (shes also one of his optional and designated exes plz keep up) and their relationship ends in one of two ways: she dies in a car accident a week before their high school graduation, or she stops talking to him entirely a week after their high school graduation until a couple years later she gets into (guess what) a car accident with her current wife/girlfriend and dies which leaves behind their daughter. who just so happens to also be daves daughter. her name is hannah and i love her like my own but no one ever likes her and thats on the conditioning of dirk. does dave end up taking her in? yes. shes awesome and the first time he takes her to the park to like run off some fucking steam she disappears for two minutes and dave is moderately terrified until she comes back holding a dead baby squirrel and thats the moment he realizes huh maybe things really do be genetic.

ok at the bottom of the list im gonna add the couple of times hes been a camboy which usually coincides with the live apartment cam thing and the amount of people in his dms calling him hot or whatever, but typically its more of a started the day he turned 18 and basically dipped around 20 in favor of showing up randomly with no warning to complain about a video game dick in hand because it gives him an outlet that wont annoy his friends bc this is the fifteenth time hes had a lot to say this week about a certain boss battle and also the comments fuel his ego and daddy issues.

the last one wasnt the bottom but literally unless its explicitly proven otherwise every time anyone rps with me there is the underlying fact dave strider was a goalie on his high school lacrosse teams all four years and (shocker another one) definitely had the hots for one of his teammates like major hots like first gay experience hots. like it was painfully obvious that teammate also liked him back hots. like one night at a team sleepover one of the other guys was like can yall just makeout and get it over with were fucking tired and dave really had the balls to be offended and ask what the fuck they were talking about while literally sitting halfway in the mans lap bc for some reason they had to share the same chair.

he is also guilty until proven innocent of being the worlds biggest loner outside of that sports team and even though hes literally a jock he still opts to eat his lunch alone in the hallway or something like that and has a tendency to leave girls on read, but bc hes got an in with the rest of the jocks hes basically drug around to plenty of parties and since hes conventionally attractive enough and popular in the aloof way that he is, hes got plenty of tagged insta posts and twitter directs and snapchat streaks going.

THESE WERE ALL NO GAME AND DONT INVOLVE SHIPS BC I LIKE TO KEEP MY OPTIONS OPEN AND THEYRE LITERALLY ALL BASED OFF RPS IVE DONE I HOPE YALL JUDGE ME ACCORDINGLY

#theres probably so many more i mean #ive been on parp for at least 5-6 years now #ive been on cherubplay probably the same amount of time #and my memory is totally shot to fuck but these are just what i know ive done in the last YEAR #or thought were wild enough to remember #i put it under a read more bc frankly its really fucking long #and i dont want this to represent me entirely #these are also heavily situational based and not like. emotion or reaction based much?#some of them are #i guess i could rename this to like. things ive done on parp #but theyre technically still headcanons a lot of them can coincide with whatever #so theyre not very specific situations #anyways #this took me an hour

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aces-to-apples · 6 years ago

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halo, spartans, and rvb deep lore

you wanna incorporate spartan lore into your rvb fic

okay then, first thing’s first: what you have to know, first and foremost, about the spartans (beyond a genuinely stupid amount of backstory) is that everything about the SPARTAN-II Program (not to be confused with the original ORION Project, or the subsequent SPARTAN-III or SPARTAN-IV Programs) from start to finish is fucking buckwild

tw: child abuse, kidnapping, mental abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, human experimentation, human rights violations, medical experimentation, child soldiers, slavery, murder, torture, ptsd, war, genocide, psychosis, non-consensual body modification, suicide (i missed that one, sorry), let me know if i missed anything

ORION Project (retroactively termed “SPARTAN-I Program”)

okay so picture this, it’s 2494. humans have been out there, colonizing space for a good couple hundred years. there’s a Unified Earth Government. there’s a United Nations Space Command. everything still runs on capitalism, and the military is basically the government. now up until now, because Capitalism, earth and its closest neighbors (the Inner Colonies) have been demanding more and more from the poorer and sparser working class Outer Colonies with diminishing returns for the Outer Colonies because space capitalism, and it’s been getting progressively worse and worse for decades. it’s very star wars, slow decay of the republic, because CAPITALISM IN SPACE, folks! so, 2494, after decades of trying to negotiate better conditions and compromises with a government that doesn’t listen and doesn’t care, finally the demands for independence start pouring in in earnest. these demands are, of course, denied, with prejudice. fighting breaks out; it’s unofficial war. the Insurrection. unbeknownst to you, humble average joe trying to live your life without GODDAMN SPACE CAPITALISM, the unsc (specifically ONI, the office of naval intelligence, which is basically the space CIA, who does all the really shady shit) saw the writing on the wall a few years before and put restarted the efforts to biochemically augment regular soldiers for more effective use. super soldiers, ya dig?

(full disclosure: they’ve been trying this for years, decades, like a century and a half or some shit but it never really worked out and last time they tried it, in like 2321 or some shit, they scrapped it and shove the initial volunteers back into regular duty and they all ended up mysteriously dying.)

so, super soldiers. stronger, faster, enhanced sight and hearing, enhanced brain function, the works. and work it does, sort of. the first 65 test subjects are a success, and deployed in 2496 because the Insurrection is picking up steam and actually winning battles and taking control of new territory and using spies and just basically freaking the shit out of the military. another batch goes into the works. things get worse. bombings continue, insurrectionists grow bolder, spies become harder to root out, civilians get caught in the crossfire, hatred for the unsc continues to grow. at its height, there are 300 active duty ORIONs, and they’re good at what they do, but it’s not enough. because of War and also Science, the ORIONs also become a game of diminishing returns, most of them growing too traumatized, too jaded, too sympathetic to the insurrection, or too sick (physically, mentally, and even genetically) to continue. 2502: the leader of the Secessionist Union is assassinated by the ORIONs, the Union falls apart but the Insurrection only gains strength from a martyr, and honestly when does any military actually stay smart and efficient? the ORION Project is quietly retired in 2506 and the remaining 165 active duty ORIONs reintegrated back into regular unsc.

(another quick aside here: the Insurrection refers less to any specific group of insurgents and more of the overall cause of independence from earth imperialism. the Secessionist Union was the most visible, organized, and effective of the bunch, having gather about a dozen world initially to all petition for sovereignty from the Unified Earth Government.)

(fun fact: ODSTs (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers) were modeled off of the ORIONs and became the most badass and effective soldiers in the UNSC, barring SPARTANs themselves.)

(another one: due to all the biochemical and genetic fuckery, the ORIONs who didn’t develop ridiculous scary physical/genetic health problems, or completely understand mental health problems, really did kind of end up like captain america-y super soldiers and continued serving well past when a baseline human would have retired or just gotten Too Old For This Shit. Avery Johnson, a notable and dare i say Iconic character from the Halo franchise, was an ORION and that led him to surviving: all of the ORION Project fuckery missions, the Harvest incident AKA: When Humans Met Covenant And It Went Poorly, the Fall of Reach AKA: When The Covenant After 20 Years Of War Found And Glassed Earth’s Next-Door Neighbor Signalling The Beginning Of The End Cuz When They Found Earth It Was All Gonna Be Fucking Over, the Battle of Installation 04 AKA: Halo 1, and the first Battle of Earth and the Battle of Installation 05 AKA: Halo 2. he was a key leader in the Human-Covenant Alliance following the Great Schism and participated in the Battles for the Ark and Installation 08 AKA: When The Elites Realized Their Religious Leaders Were Full Of Shit And Started Their Own Rebellion And Teamed Up With Humanity To Stop The Flood From Spreading Or The Halo Installations From Firing And Wiping Out All Sentient Life In The Galaxy AKA: Halo 3. also, the biochemical fuckery kept the flood, aka: space zombies via spores, from infecting him. the monitor, also known as epsilon’s ball-form, shot and killed johnson with his lazer face at the end of halo 3. i cried. this badass motherfucker survived like legit 55 years of war to be taken out by an a.i. who can’t wear pants having an existential crisis.)

SPARTAN-II Program (spiritual successor to ORION Project)

2510. shit’s been fucked for awhile. the Unified Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command have been fighting an unofficial civil war for like 15 years. people are Tired, they want the war to end, but they don’t want to admit that they’re in the wrong, so they decide to throw more firepower at the problem. enter Dr. Catherine Halsey, a motherfucking 18 year old civilian child prodigy scientist, I DIDN’T EVEN FUCKING KNOW THAT SHE WAS THAT FUCKING YOUNG WHAT THE F U C K, walks up to the Vice Admiral of ONI (remember, Space CIA, alllll the shady shit) and says “hey i got an idea let’s try super soldiers again but this time it’s Worse” and ONI fucking agree because ONI is Fucked Up and i fucking Hate them, fuck ONI. anyway, it’s “spartan episode 2: attack of the clones” up in here. oh, you think i’m kidding? you think i jest?

“the first problem is,” says arrogant petulant 18 year old catherine halsey who’s never been told no a day in her life because she’s just So Smart, she’s Emily Grey up in this bitch but without the perky attitude or respect for people’s wishes when they say they don’t want a robot arm, “the problem with the orions was that the genetic fuckery y’all did was done all willy-nilly, y’all didn’t even make sure the soldiers would be compatible. now you’re got avery johnson, real like Captain America, running around but also orions who retired and had children need to give their kids special injections on the regular to keep their genes where and doing what they’re supposed to be. so you gotta genetically test all your subjects before you fuck with their dna.”

“okay, that makes sense,” says oni, “go on.”

“right so the second problem is,” says halsey, who will eventually become pretty much the worst that Humanity has to offer to the Universe, in my opinion, “that some of your knock-off super soldiers developed a little touch of the ol’ ptsd, or caught some Feelings about the insurrection maybe being Not Wrong, so we gotta make sure to brainwash—i’m sorry, did i say brainwash, i meant indoctrinate—all your slaves—i mean subjects!—in Military Values and Warfare because who wants super soldiers with empathy. so they’ve gotta be pretty young, which ties in nicely with the genetic component which requires they be prepubescent. neat, right?”

“brainwash children,” oni replies, nodding and making notes, “got it. anything else?”

“ah ha!” says halsey, whom i hate possibly more than any other fictional character across the board. “so! after we find these really genetically specific children who are all in the single digits, all possessing not only genetic but superior physical and mental capabilities, and after we kidnap them and replace them with flash clones—which, i’ll remind you, are illegal to create because flash-cloning speeds up the development of the cloned fetus to such degrees that they almost unfailingly develop compounding biological and congenital defects that cannot be corrected us thus almost all of them end up dying awful painful deaths—so we abduct the children and replace them with clones almost guaranteed to die quickly, ruining untold hundreds of lives in the process, we’ll physically, mentally, and emotionally abuse them into compliance and ruin any chance of them functioning in society by turning them into child soldiers. and then! and this is the really fun part, and then when they’re fourteen we’ll subject them to the most despicable violations of their body that i can possibly concoct using chemical, biological, and physical let’s call them ‘augmentations’ to make them grow obscenely large and strong without their consent because they’re slaves—soldiers!—and really who needs consent or ethics or basic human rights, amirite?”

“entirely,” oni says, nodding in agreement. “so what’s the survival rate on that, by the by?”

“hmm?” asks halsey, distracted by her own fucking evil brilliance, “oh right yeah well you originally okayed that i steal 150 kids from their parents but then i added in that whole flash-clone bullshit to soothe my own almost non-existent conscience so you bumped it down to 75 and then, like, 30 of them won’t survive the augmentation process at all, and then like a dozen of them will become so painfully and tortuously disabled that we’ll just kick them out of the project—you guys can find a use for those wash-outs, right?—and like a couple of them will probably kill themselves so like…” halsey trails off, counting her fingers silently. “33, maybe? did i count that right? yeah so like between thirty and thirty-five i’d say. less than half, to be sure! that’s cool right?”

“…….sounds good to me!” oni agrees enthusiastically, because they’re irredeemable pieces of shit. “what happens next?”

what happens next, dear readers, is that after all the children are kidnapped when they’re six years old in 2517, they’re treated like *waves hand in above direction* THAT, until 2525, when the planet of Harvest was discovered by the Covenant. you know, that alien coalition that decides to wipe humanity out of existence for Religious Reasons. i won’t get into the politics of the covenant because even after all of this i think that’s Too Much, but suffice it to say that the leaders of the Covenant were Full of Shit and They Knew It Too. so, harvest happens, and Covies go on a decades long rampage, and the insurrection doesn’t so much die as it gets sort of pushed to the side because Genocidal Aliens. so the Covies are glassing planets left and right—despite the Cole Protocol which states that any UNSC or civilian ship must not make any direct slipspace jumps from Covie engagements to any human populated planet because they can track slipspace vectors and calculate where you’ll come out, and also if you have to evacuate then you damn well wipe all your data and activate the ship’s self-destruct so they can’t find more humans to mercilessly murder—and with the addition of Genocidal Aliens to the mix, the SPARTAN-II Program speeds the fuck up and introduces Project MJOLNIR.

MJOLNIR Power Assault Armor, a high-powered 1000 lb. combat exoskeleton system designed not just to protect, but to enhance the already substantial physical capabilities of the spartans (all now somewhere in the upper six-foot range, to my memory) and to house fully-formed smart a.i.

(a.i… are a whole ‘nother deal. quick an dirty version: a ‘dumb’ a.i. is programmed like any other and can continue on as it is pretty much as long as its physical contain can. a ‘smart’ a.i., on the other hand, is based on an actual human brain but due to the limited nature of its processing matrix, the longer it operates, the less ‘space’ it has in its ‘brain’. a smart a.i. times out around seven years, sometimes before, because it literally thinks itself to death. once it times out, they call it rampancy. remember that term? yeah, it’s cuz season 10 talked about the four stages of rampancy, which can be compared to human psychosis, at which point the a.i., having been gathering incomprehensible amounts of data for seven years, begins to break down and dip into, kind of, debilitating amounts of emotion. sigma wanted to achieve the meta phase because it was the closest he could find to being human again, but he needed all of the fragments collected again because merging together might make them a full a.i. and thus closer to achieving, or i suppose, regaining full personhood.)

right anyway mjolnir armor, the distinctive halo armor, makes spartans absurdly strong and difficult to kill. not invincible, but damn fucking good. the spartans, along with the ODSTs, run of the mill marines, the cole protocol, and human refusal to just lay down and die pretty much holds the line against total annihilation by the Covenant for *checks watch* twenty-seven goddamn years. for twenty-seven years the Covenant sprinted around the galaxy squashing every human colony and settlement they could find but couldn’t find earth or much of the inner colonies. two, three generations of people who never knew anything but war in some form or another is pretty fucked up, guys.

anyway so, fast forward through, Yikes, All Of That to 2552. 2552 was a big year yall. ngl, like twelve huge battles all happened pretty much concurrently right now, but wrt the spartans: the Covenant found Reach, which was pretty much Earth’s next-door neighbor (and, incidentally, where all the spartan ii’s were “trained”) and they found it right when all of the spartans had been recalled back to it for a super secret mission. most of them died. john-117, master chief, and his buddy (i……wanna say linda?) made it off the planet with cortana the a.i., kickstarting the first halo game, while a little group got up to their own crazy space-magic shenanigans that i……i honestly can’t even get into right now, i just can’t, it’s all so fuckin weird and spans like seven books and i honestly don’t remember most of it. so, master chief and cortana the a.i. who is based on halsey’s brain because jen taylor is a hell of a voice actress, go to halo and meet the space zombies and stop halo from firing and killing everyone by blowing it up and that’s basically halo 1 for you. same thing happens in halo 2, except now there’s alien politics and you also get to play as a sangheili soldier who comes to the startling realization that his religious leaders are Full of Shit and starts a civil war. halo 3 is all the crazy shit happening on earth and also more alien politics and honestly i enjoyed that game least so i don’t remember much of it tbh. like i said, most of the spartans die on reach, but john and his buddy who might be linda live, as well as a little handful, one of whom is definitely named fred.

SPARTAN-III Program (AKA: "Make the units better with new technology. Make more of them. And make them cheaper.“) (god everything about this universe is so fucking buckwild)

the spartan ii’s were a resounding success but there literally being less than three-dozen kinda cut down on their usefulness, and also halsey refused to train a second batch of spartans because of her goddamn “age requirement” and like i’m not complaining that more children weren’t abducted and experimented on but halsey really was a fucking moron really just out here to stroke her own damn ego, jesus fucking christ. not, of course, that the spartan iii’s were MUCH better, mind you. so, 2531, six years into the war with the covenant and an equal amount of time without a second batch of spartan ii’s, this asshole called ackerson goes, “pfft, i can make more of these fuckers and i can make them cheaper and i won’t have to kidnap kids, who’s with me?”

and ONI said, “wait we’re not kidnapping anymore?” and it looks kinda put out cuz it likes that shady shit.

“nah,” says ackerson, waving a hand, “we’ll just recruit orphans from glassed planets who have a grudge against the covenant. like, ya know, eight and nine years olds and shit. it’ll be fine.”

so the first batch of spartan iii’s was produced in 2531: alpha company, 300 strong, all of whom survived the augmentation process at the age of twelve because it, like, got refined and dulled down a little or something, it’s been awhile. so alpha company is doing good, real good, trained by a the guy who trained the spartan ii’s and even one of the spartan ii’s themself.

(kurt-051, also known as kurt ambrose, real name kurt trevelyan because the spartan program literally fucked him up so bad he couldn’t remember his family name so ackerson just fucking gave him one, oh my gooood. anyway, so kurt was the leader of green team and they were sent on a mission but ONI fucking, they fuckin sabotaged his jetpack so that it malfunctions while in space so that he’s presumed dead but actually ONI just abducted him so he could train the spartan iii’s without halsey knowing about it because MILITARY POLITICS I GUESS?)

right anyway so alpha company, they do good, they do good, and then nine months after deployment in 2537 all of them (with a few exceptions who got pulled out to do other shit in other branches) get wiped out in Operation: PROMETHEUS, a mission to destroy a Covie shipyard or whatever. ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT CASUALTY RATE. okay, so, this is fine, we’ll try again. 2539, beta company, 300 strong, we’ll train them even harsher than the spartan ii’s were, drill them even more on unit cohesion. what happens, can you fucking guess? 2545, DING DONG, YOU ARE WRONG, same thing fucking happens in Operation: TORPEDO. only two survivors of that massacre, and the handfuls who weren’t sent on the suicide mission en masse.

in halo: reach, the game that bridge halos 3 and 4, carter, emile, jun, and thom (who was the original noble six, whom you, the player, replace in-game after he dies) are spartan iii’s from alpha company. kat and the player’s character, spartan-b312, are from beta company. jorge is an og spartan ii. there were also rumors of a couple different teams of iii’s helping evacuate civilians from reach at the same time. the LONEWOLF Headhunters were also spartan iii’s: basically two-person assassin teams.

(also, just to clarify, because the appeal of spartan iii was that it was cheaper, not all, and not even many, of the spartan iii’s were issued mjolnir armor, because making a single suit cost as much as making a full battleship. because space capitalism.)

alright, so, gamma company, third time’s the charm. 330, average age of six years old, all of them survived augmentation in 2551 and were shipped out only a few weeks after the fall of reach, so around december of 2552/january of 2553, maybe. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT PROJECT CHRYSANTHEMUM! Project CHRYSANTHEMUM was the name given to the NEW AND IMPROVED biological augmentations given to gamma company. you wanna know what makes them new and improved? why, fucking up your brain to make it wayyyyyy more aggressive, resistant to shock, and more able to access the “animal part of the brain in times of shock”! i mean, when you hear “depresses higher reason centers of the brain over time; requires regular doses of [special meds] to be taken to avoid uncontrollable aggression” doesn’t that just fill you with confidence and positivity and something that isn’t homicidal rage?? so yeah in addition to having the body of an adult olympic athlete at fucking twelve years old and stupid fast and three times as strong as a normal soldier, now your brain can’t regulate itself! isn’t that fucking dandy! take your smoothers kids or you might just murder everyone in sight!

delta company was scheduled to be a thing but was likely never put into practice. why they went out of order on the naming i’m not sure.

the spartan-iii program was disbanded after the end of the human-covenant war in 2553 and the remaining spartan ii’s and iii’s were folded into Spartan Operations, which was a brand-spanking new military branch designed specifically for oversight of spartans because…

SPARTAN-IV PROGRAM (AKA: And Look At That, We’re Back To Consenting Adults)

2550. listen yall. shit. shit’s fucked aight? has been for awhile. and like maybe, maybe super soldiers in walking tanks is too much to ask for? maybe just regular super soldiers, but ones that are already full-grown? yeah let’s go back to the drawing board on that one. yeah let’s just do some unauthorized testing—whoops! 10% survival rate, that bites. let’s just, uh, not tell anyone about that—

“hey there,” says lieutenant commander musa, former spartan ii candidate who was tortuously disabled by the augmentation process and carries a grudge the size of pluto against catherine halsey.

“we weren’t doing anything!” shouts oni, because fuck you, oni.

“i wanna help make more spartans,” says musa. “i hate halsey with every fiber of my being but spartans are doing good work, important work, and i wanna help them do it but only if they’re consenting adults.”

oni looks at that latest batch of spartan iii’s who, due to circumstances, had to go off their smoothers during a planetary battle and freaked out everyone and their mother. “yeah good call.”

so with ackerson dead and halsey fucking finally arrested for war crimes, musa and jun (spartan iii and only survivor of noble team from halo: reach) take the lead on the spartan iv’s, the candidates of which are pooled from fully-grown human adults in a variety of military branches, from grizzled veterans to promising young soldiers with experience under their belts.

2553, the first batch of 145 iv’s is live, include My Girl Commander Sarah Palmer who kicks ass and takes names. 2554, second class is initiated. SPARTAN-IV Program is headquartered in a dedicated facility on Mars; spartan iv’s are trained in a top-secret facility orbiting an unnamed dwarf planet.

as previously mentioned, spartans gain their own military branch, Spartan Operations, and remaining ii’s and iii’s are offered to be folded into the new branch. many accept, but some decline in favor of non-combat roles. hundreds of spartans are assigned to the UNSC Infinity, literally the biggest fucking ship in human history, i love it so much it’s great. in halo: 4, a big part of the plot is that john was missing for like four years and when he’s found again there’s this fuck-off big ship filled with people calling themselves spartans who are also fuck-off big but also Strangers. anyway i love the spartan iv’s and anyone who didn’t like spartan ops or halo: infinity are cordially invited to me in the fucking pit.

SO! i’ve been at this for literal hours and am going to bed now! hope you learned something helpful, i’m sure i forgot a lot of shit, not even including all the shit that i left out on purpose because it’s two in the goddamn morning.

#by apples #halo #red vs. blue #halo meta

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