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romaritimeharbor · 4 months

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Hey Addi! If it’s not rude, I’d like to add on to the soft Dottore idea. I was too much of a coward to consider bringing it up myself lol

If we’re going for the Dottore’s creation idea, it could be that after working with Scara, Dottore had a separate breakthrough. He created life, something to fill the loneliness in what remains of his heart, and this new, perfect creation is better than Scaramouche could ever hope to be, he can be kind to them without being reminded of the bitter jealousy and resentment he felt with Scara all those years ago. Reader, in his eyes is his finest masterpiece, the only one he very, very quietly admit he still cares about, he stops distracting himself from his weakness, his humanity and his emotions, by only a, he’s still a monster, of course, but even il Dottore himself can’t let go of that softness entirely.

they’re uncaring as opposed to oblivious when it comes to Dottore’s actions, as why would they ever question their doting Creator’s actions? After all, everything he does is for the greater good of humanity, something neither of them are truly a part of. Their feelings towards Scara are up for discussion, whether it’s indifference spawned from his hostility, sadness that they can’t get along, or something else entirely. And this whole soft spot Dottore has for Rader? Especially in the beginning depending on where you’d like to put Reader on the timeline, fucking *infuriates* Scara, because why does he get tortured and twisted by that cruel bastard when that little thing that was created using blueprints sourced from HIM, get to go through absolutely no experiments, no cruelty. They don’t get death threats or cruel punishments. And not that he would ever admit, but who wouldn’t ask themselves why they’re being treated like that? Maybe it’s his fault, maybe he’s just not good enough, too emotional even after trying his hardest to distance himself from them. He gets to see Reader and be figuratively slapped in the face every time he sees how Dottore could act towards him, all with no real, definite answer. At least not until he becomes Wanderer. And, while Scara does have a soft spot for kids, I doubt that instinct, which is currently being brutally suppressed, would be able to top his resentment and vicious jealousy he feels towards Reader.

Although the last part of what I said lends itself more to the headcanon that I agree with, where Wanderer considered Dottore some kind of father/mentor figure, judging by how much of his personality he picked up and the mimicking among other small details.

I could also give my thoughts on Dottore picking up someone off the streets, but this is already egregiously long.

I know you were mostly going for fluff but I couldn’t resist adding some appropriate angst in regards to two of my favorite characters. I really didn’t mean to be rude to strryskies when they sent that ask, it just got me thinking and gave me the courage to send you my thoughts <3

My apologies for the poorly formatted rambles, I love you and I hope these thoughts of mine weren’t annoying!

hi bug!!!!!! it's not rude at all <3 you're welcome to add onto any thoughts i talk about if they inspire you!

UGH THIS IS SO INSANELY REAL AUGH the reader is so infinitely perfect in ways that scaramouche never was and never could be. there's always a weird, fond tenderness about dottore when he speaks to them, teaches them, instructs them (and something tells me he knows it would piss scaramouche off; i can see dottore purposefully being that way to them in front of scara just to see what happens). and why should they care what happens to scara, to dottore's other subjects? sorry you guys just aren't as good as they are 🤷‍♀️ sucks to be a failure of an experiment. couldn't be them. /hj /lh but really. they have little to no reason to care--it is not their place to question the morality and ethics what their beloved creator, their beloved father, does. anyways, i'm sure they would take on a trait similar to his calculated madness as they learn from him, so the nature of his experiments ultimately wouldn't bother them either way.

(i think there's something to be said about how kindness breeds greater loyalty; scaring people into obedience isn't particularly effective. the reader, who has only ever been treated lovingly and has only ever been doted on by the doctor, wouldn't be keen on disobeying him regardless. how do you betray someone who has only ever loved you? you don't. no appeal to ethics or morality would get through to them, i think. people like scara and collei, who suffered at his hand, would naturally be more willing to act out. but the reader? nah. they don't give a shit. that's their father, their creator. nothing you say will convince them that they should be bothered by his actions.)

dottore has long since lost his humanity, and they are only an imitation of human life. both could perhaps be said to be monsters hiding in human skin. so, what dottore does to humanity... well. there's plenty of reasons why they're uncaring, but they also don't care because they are not a part of humanity. they exist outside of that realm. so it really just doesn't matter to them.

their feelings towards scara, i think, could be some blend of indifference and disappointment, perhaps. because scara also exists outside the realm of humanity, so why does he keep acting like a helpless little human? it's something they can't really fathom, even at a young age. they're indifferent because he seems to downright hate them and their disappointed because he's just like them, but he's so... emotional. so human. it's weird to them. how is a doll so impossibly and so infinitely human? it is so, so strange to them.

i do think that when he becomes the wanderer, he might come to some sort of conclusion as to what makes him and the reader so different, and it may very well just boil down to who they were raised and surrounded by in their youths. scaramouche, who was surrounded by humans and humanity, versus the reader, surrounded by monsters with bared fangs (though never in their direction). doesn't change much about how he feels about them, though. he still hates them so so so much. doesn't matter how young they are; being in the skin of a child does not change what hides underneath.

but i definitely agree with that! i think scaramouche viewed him in that type of way. if you want to send more thoughts, you are more than welcome to do so!!!! i would love to read them <3

again, there is nothing to apologize for!!!!! love you too, and i wasn't, don't worry!!! i love getting these types of asks heheh

#✧— aphe's letters from bug.#✧— aphe's snippets.

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belovedblabber · 2 years

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the locked tomb! or if someone already asked, dragon age!

Thank youuuu for asking!

Favorite Male Character: It's John, we all know it's John. I stand by my cancelled wife <3

Favorite Female Character: I legit do not know how to answer this because that list is, so long and frequently neck and neck but today while zoning out I ended up thinking about Harrow and had a resurgence of how much I adore her so I'll say Harrow rn!

Least Favorite Character: I'm not sure honestly, I don't really think I have one? Maybe currently Paul just because we don't know them very well yet and also I'm so mad to have lost Pal and Cam so let's go with Paul

Favorite Ship: This is another tough one oh god. I love Harrow/Gideon, and Harrow/Ianthe, and Gideon/Ianthe in a 'gay sex won't fix this situation in fact it may make it worse but I think we should give it a shot anyway' sorta way fghj. Idk if that last one is a ship or a 'I think they make each other worse and I love that' thing. Also between Gideon/Harrow and Ianthe/Harrow I like. Gideon/Harrow more in terms of just pure shippines, I guess? I want them to be happy and kiss but I'm aware that may be a tall order. I'm terrible at answering ship questions especially with this series dfghj. Also the entire dios apate trio situation is just the absolute tastiest although I've been thinking a lot about John and Augustine in particular lately I think just because that's where my brain is kicking around atm. I love them, obsessed with that fucked up lil' jaugustine dynamic it makes my brain spin

Favorite Friendship: Gideon and Palamedes, I know we didn't get to see much of that dynamic but what we did see was so sweet and I love it. Also Harrow and Palamedes. I LOVE Palamedes he's up there as one of my fave characters

Favorite Quote: This one is just cruel I have so many I legit cannot pick. But currently I have the whole quote that ends in "Something will satisfy them eventually, but nothing satisfies me. Nothing" stuck in my head and am wanting to draw smth from it so I'll just go with that, John that was sooo sexy of u babygirl. (Also "Is that the truth, or the truth you tell yourself?" "What is the difference?" said God'" hit me like a sack of bricks the first time I read it and continues to do so. But I also have so many other fave quotes asdfg, I just need to leave it off here or I'll write a novel length list of them).

Worst Character Death (if any): This one is ALSO hard but I will say that the one that shocked me the most was honestly Jeannemary. After that it was hard to rattle me although oh god Gideon's death at the end of GtN did have me crying

This made me so happy you have no idea Moment: When I read the NtN preview on amazon and saw that it opened with a John thing and I got so excited that I shrieked out loud alone in my dark room and then messaged my partner rapid fire while literally vibrating and then was so jazzed that I couldn't sleep. Because I'm a freak.

Saddest Moment: How do I pick? The one freshest in my head is the creation of Paul because OUCH

Favorite Location: Canaan house, I love the vibes in a way I can't articulate

#the locked tomb #ask game #thank you for asking💖

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nevermore-the-kitsune · 3 years

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Pokemon Teams for Fictional Characters pt. 2

Damian Wayne

(Also, I'm not including move sets because in my headcannon Pokemon do remember all their old moves. But humans choose to only use four)

For this AU I'm having the Wayne's own the Gotham City Gym, which specializes in Dark types. Most of the cannon events still happened. Just with a few tweaks here and there. (Dick's 20, Jason's 16, Cass is 15 Tim's 15 but younger than Cass and Damian's 13 because I love AUs where there closer in age).

Anyway here we go!

First things first in the Pokemon Universe his alias wouldn't be Robin since they don't exist. Instead I think it would be Rookidee, since thats the closest Pokemon to a Robin.

His Partner Pokemon and ace would be a Gligar

Name: Goliath

Gender: Male

Why: Gligar screams Goliath (his Batdragon) plus the coloring of his evolutions matches with Dami's Robin and Batman outfits

Story: He found Goliath while climbing a mountain for his training. At the time he was four and Goliath was a hatching. Damian ended up giving him some food, seeing that the hatching was hungry.

Grateful, the Gligar followed him hoping to return the favor.

When Damian's hand got broken on that same trip, Goliath was the one to help him finish his mission and get home safely.

Talia was impressed that Damian could tame a wild Pokemon without catching it, so she allowed him to keep him as his first Pokemon.

-----

Next he would have a Meowth

Name: Alfred

Gender: Female

Why: This one has to do with its evolution. Persian are said to only be loyal to trainers it likes and that it takes a lot to get them to like you. Their also said to be prissy and uptight. This reminded me of Damian. How it took forever for him to trust his brothers and his own snobby attitude. Thus I think it fits.

Story: After coming to live with his father Damian didn't know how to act. He saw his "brothers" and father treating their Pokemon so different than how the League did. They all trained hard. But, there was something eles: warm praise for a job well done, asking for insight on a case (they had taught their bipedal pokemon sighn language) and comfort on a bad day. His father and brothers treated their Pokemon like... people

In the League Pokemon where the lowest soldier, lower than the slaves or concubines. They trained, ate then they had to and got in their ball.

He had been a little more lenient in his training with Goliath. When asked he said that he was still a baby and he had to take things slow in this stage or he might develop too much muscle mass and be unable to fly.

He had kept him out of his ball with the excuse of developing muscle mass at a proper pace.

He liked Goliath's company. The Gligar was a good companion. But on the same level as another person?

He had expressed these thoughts to Pennyworth, the only person in the house to give him a straight answer when he needed it.

Pennyworth had explained to him that some people love to hold power over others and that Pokemon where an easy target, since they couldn't communicate their emotions as clearly as people could.

"Think of Mistress Cain. She sometimes cannot communicate with words, but we know that she's intelligent. But some people see her as less than intelligent and treat her as such because of the power it gives them."

Two weeks later Damian would come across a group of teenagers attempting to shave a Meowth. The Pokemon was little more than skin and bone and crying out on pain. So, Damian broke their fingers and shaved part of their heads for good measure.

He kept the Meowth and named her after the man who taught him about the abuse of power.

---

Next, a Poochyena

Name: Titus

Gender: Male

Why: These Pokemon and their evolution are ruthless with their pray, and only obey trainers with external skill.

Story: Raven gave Damian Titus as a gift. She said that she rescued him from an underground fighting ring (where the battles are to the death). He was still to young to battle so he didn't need much rehabilitation. The other Pokemon there though...

---

Now we have a Type Null

Name: Heretic

Gender: ???

Why: This Pokemon was created in lab, and artificial designed for the purpose of fighting, just like Damian. True I could have given him Mewtwo, but that cat seems to fit Kon more.

Story: Damian's mother had spent years creating Type: Null with the purpose of being able to kill any target. As a last test she wanted to see which of her creations was suppirrior. So she sent the Type Null out to (try and) kill her son.

Damian, with the rest of his team, beat the Pokemon but couldn't kill it. He had long since vowed to wash the blood from his hands. Instead he offered his hand to it and asked it to join him.

---

Here we have the hardest to explain... Mimikyu

Name: Habibi (I hope I spelled that right)

Gender: Female

Why: Damian is complex, he wants to be accepted and loved just like Mimikyu but dosent know how. Both try to mimic others in order to get that love, Damian his father and Mimikyu Pikachu. So I see this as Damian's spirit Pokemon in a way.

Story: He didn't know why it was so hard to fit in. Gods know he tried. But... little things confused him. Like how eveyone could understand each other without words or singhing. He had no problems with that on a battlefield, but in day to day life; it felt like he was on a separate server.

Like how Todd knew at breakfast with just a look that Drake was in a bad mood and how to help. Or how Grayson could audomadicly tell what kind of day at school the rest of them had withen a few minutes. Hell even Drake could tell what grunts ment what from father! Which ment good job, Which ment I'm glade your okay, or frustration either at them or at a case (Cass didn't surprise him, she had to learn how to communicate without words and watch body language and micro expressions).

School was no better; sometimes it was to load or bright othertimes, when everyone was doing a test, it felt to quiet. But, to much or to little, Damian was always aware of every movement, every sound. It was like the very instincts that saved his life every night where turned against him.

He turned to his nearly forgotten childhood habits to distract himself from everything around him. That only led to more whisper shouting and what even he could tell where displeased glares with a grunt of "fucking tapping" or a snap of "stop!" He knew it was disrupting but it was all be could do to drown out the noise or silence.

On one particularly bad day at school; apparently during one of their tests one of his classmates had had enough of Damian's tapping and decided to make a scene.

There was some yelling from the kid. A few cries in agreement. Before the teacher had gotten hem to settle down. He had demanded that Damian look him in the eye and when he finally did told him to stop with the tapping or else he would be sent to the office, Gym Leaders son or not.

He was the last to finish that test where he normally finished first. The silence had been to load!!

After that clusterfuck Damian finally headed home. He had texted Grayson saying that he was meeting a friend somewhere to work on a project and to not pick him up. In truth he didn't want his brother reading what kind of day he had had. He needed some time to himself.

That was how he found himself in a nearby park. It was filled with plenty of sounds that didn't suffocate him and the fall leaves where soothing to his eyes. Damian had Titus out of his ball as company, knowing that the pup loved park walks.

They had been walking for an hour when they came across a box set off just on the edge of the trail. "Free to Good Homes" was written on the side in black sharpie.

No sound was coming from inside, so he assumed that the had all been taken. Until Titus went closer sniffing at the seemingly empty box.

"Pooch Pooch"

"Hmmm... what is is it boy?" He asked as he walked closer to his Pokemon and the Box. Damian hoped he was wrong. It was cruel to leave a baby Pokemon all alone, especially since the weather was getting colder by the day.

Inside the box was in fact a lone Pokemon. At first glance it looked like a Pikachu. But something was off. It looked more like a doll than a living creature. If it wasn't for the small chirps it let out and slight way that it was shivering from the cold Damian would have written it off as a toy. No wonder it got left behind...

Damian reached down and picked up the mystery Pokemon as gently as he could.

"Come on beloved, lets go home."

He tucked the Pokemon in his jacket to warm it up before reaching for his phone to call Grayson for a ride home.

That night Damian locked himself away, even skipped patrol, and spent a sleepless night learning everything he could about his newest Pokemon.

---

That was inspired by this comic

---

Finaly, for his last spot Eevee!!

Name: Omni

Gender: Female

Why: I'm going to have all the Batfam members have an Eeveelution. This branch and the Batfam are both growing consistently. We all have our favorites but we love them all the same. So I think it fits.

Story: Everyone in the family had an Eevee or one of its evolutions. Damian's Father said that Eevee was the Wayne family symbol, it was potential, the ability to become whatever you wanted.

Though it surprised Damian that the Wayne symbol wasn't a Noibat or Noivern (Batman's ace) at first he eventually understood the logic in choosing such a Pokemon to represent the family name. That only made things harder for him being the only one not having one. Did they not truly see him as family?

On the one year anniversary of Damian arriving at The Mannor, his family through a small party. Pennyworth made his favorite foods, The Mannor was decorated in tacky streamers (Graysons' idea) and they watched some of Damian's favorite fims, their Pokemon curled up with them. His father had offered to take the day off from the gym. Until Todd suggested that Damian take on the challengers.

The Gotham gym was part of his heritage. Damian had been training for the day that he could finally help weed out the weak challengers just like his siblings sometimes did (think the battles you do before challenging a gym leader in the games).

On that day, if the challengers agreed to it, their final battle wasn't with Bruce Wayne the Dark Knight but instead his son. Most accepted thinking that it would be an easy win, that they had lucked out in not having to battle one of the stongest Gym Leaders in the League and could still get the Shadow Badge.

Those poor fools.

Damian was only allowed to use Alfred, Titus and Habibi since he used Goliath and Heretic primarily as Rookidee.

Damian fought seven trainers that day in 3v3 fights. Only two of them got the badge.

With the day overwith and the night rising, so did Gothams' protecters.

The night ended with exhausted body's and adrenaline crashes. Damian was ready to slip into a mini coma from the day he had but before he could head upstairs to The Mannor...

"Not so fast baby bat." Graysons' voice called out to him. "We got one more surprise for you."

Damian raised his eyebrow at that. What else could they do? His father came back from the locker rooms where he had been desuiting, it always took him the longest because of his "old man bones" as Todd said.

"Son," his father said "its Wayne tradition to get your first Pokemon when you turn ten years old. I missed that with you." He paused, eyes briefly shifting to the floor before they snapped back on Damian's face. "Luckily there's one tradition we didn't miss. When you've lived at The Mannor for a year or the adoption papers get finalized, I give my children this..."

He pulled a Poke'ball out of his poket and handed to Damian. "Go on son, let them out."

He did

Staring at him was his own Eevee.

---

AN: All of Damian's Pokemon (sans maybe Omni, I'm thinking of leaving her as an Eevee) will eventually evolve. Eventually.

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snusbandxknifewife · 4 years

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Sticky ficky 5, the one where we get some Jude AngstTM. @coffee-and-corsets said sticky ficky, so @coffee-and-corsets gets some sticky ficky. Hope y’all like my attempt at sticky hand induced tears lol

~~~~~~~~

She’d told him she’d be right back, she’d never even thought that she’d be the target.

She’d planned everything around Oak being the target of the Undersea’s planning. She hadn’t ever considered she’d be in danger.

She was stupid, stupid, stupid. So naïve to leave without backup, so idiotic to think herself above capture, so dumb not to require Cardan save her if she was ever taken prisoner.

What was he doing now? Did he celebrate not having her around? Was Elfhame burning as he and the rest of the Gentry frittered their lives away at some party or another?

Thwip

She frowned at the little sticky hand, blue as the swirling water around her prison, as it smacked half-heartedly against her cell wall. Covered in briny dust from the dried saltwater that also caked her skin, it had long lost all its stickiness.

He’d given it to her at the party, when he’d told her she was wearing a nice dress. Why hadn’t she thanked him then? Why had she only offered a snippish remark and a rude gesture? Was his smile genuine or had it been mocking?

Why had she kept the little blue hand?

She’d held onto it when her guards threw her into the cell. It was all she had left of her life above.

For whatever reason she had kept it originally, she was glad now that she had it. It was all she had left of her sanity. It was all she had left of him.

Thwip

She knew she shouldn’t be crying, that tears would exacerbate her dehydration, but she couldn’t help the way sobs started to wrack her body. It’d been so long since she’d had enough fresh water, food that wasn’t rotten. She knew her guards watched her, knew that she was supposed to be glamoured, knew that she had to eat the slop they give her to keep up her act.

She couldn’t help but weep for when she’d been nothing more than Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, for when her greatest worry was keeping Cardan sober enough to avoid a diplomatic incident.

Thwip

She cursed violently and threw the useless hand across the damp room, so hurt by the way it limply bounced on the sandstone floor that she lashed out and punched the wall.

Blood gushed over her ruined knuckles and she found that, despite her sobbing, no more tears were coming. Her whole body shook from starvation and her head pounded like it was seconds away from cracking open.

Her head hadn’t hurt this badly since the morning after she got drunk in the Court of Shadows. She had no recollection of what happened after she’d made it about halfway through her wine bottle, but she did remember waking up with a pink glittery sticky hand wrapped around her right index finger.

She had spent that morning trying desperately to remember the night previous, because she knew that a sticky hand always meant Cardan was involved, but she couldn’t for the life of her conjure up any reliable memories.

For an hour or two, she had considered simply asking Cardan what had happened, but then she remembered his affinity for smacking her ass and she recalled their night in the chamber behind the throne, and she had decided that maybe she didn’t want to know what drunken antics she was capable of getting up to with a sticky hand and the High King. Any time she’d put more than a second’s thought to the subject after that, her cheeks had grown feverish and she had found herself looking for an excuse to leave.

She had put the pink glittery sticky hand in her bedside drawer, under her favorite nerf gun, and promptly set about doing everything she could to forget about it.

She had succeeded until that very moment.

Jude Duarte, captured Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame, held her crippled hand to her chest and basked in memories of her king. She allowed her thoughts to travel to the way he lounged across his throne, his crown always dangerously tipped to one side. She recalled how he nervously offered her a glimpse of his tail the night she tied him up. Her heart fluttered at the mental image of how he looked, naked to his skin and propped over her on a bench in a secret room behind his throne.

She tried to feel something other than sorrow, and she miserably failed.

Balekin had forced her to kiss him the way she would’ve kissed Cardan. She technically didn’t have to, but she knew what he would’ve expected and she knew he thought her glamoured. When she kissed him the way she’d wanted to kiss the High King, her heart had broken in ways she didn’t even want to consider.

But, left alone with a bleeding hand and a useless children’s toy that only reminded her of the one she missed most, what else did she have to think about?

Her kisses with Cardan had all been full of vitriol, that’s just the way they were with one another. With nothing to do but stare at the wall and imagine, Jude had begun to wonder what it would be like to kiss him with something other than hatred on her lips. How would he have reacted if, that night behind the throne, she had pressed a sweet kiss to his jaw instead of biting a vicious mark into his neck? Would he have held her softer? Would his tail, which had wrapped possessively around her thigh, have delicately caressed up her side instead?

Would she have liked it?

In the pit of her stomach, Jude found herself fearful that she might never find out, that her only chance at a loving embrace had been cruelly ripped from her by the evil elder brother of the man she wished had offered it instead. As time passed, her heart hardened around the idea that she would become just like the drowned ones, that she’d be left down here alone, that Cardan didn’t actually care for her enough to rescue her.

Jude picked the sticky hand up again and wrapped it around the index finger of her left hand, keeping her bloodied right hand to her chest as she tried to drown her thoughts in the mindless target practice that she’d already spent what felt like a lifetime enduring.

Thwip

Thwi-ick

The sticky hand caught on a jagged edge of a sandstone block, the ring finger of the little blue hand ripping away and bouncing off into the darkness.

She let her left hand fall into her lap, the sticky hand flopping to the ground like a dead fish.

Broken by Faerie, she thought as her eyes lazily dragged from the hand to her own left ring finger. A thing of mortal creation, not made to last in a world as beautiful and cruel as this.

~~~~~~

I’m trying to decide on the next chapter. Either I can skip straight to Jude-in-exile AngstTM feat. Cardan AngstTM, or I can try my hand at some sticky-hand-induced diet smutTM from their wedding night (I know they didn’t fully do the do but that doesn’t have to mean nothing happened.) so y’all get to help me decide how I use the Sticky Ficky to torture you next lmao. There is nothing this crack fic can’t do y’all I promise I WILL find a way to write in sticky hands.

~~~~~~~

Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea

#cardan greenbriar #jude duarte #tfota #jurdan #judecardan #the wicked king #the great sticky hand war #sticky ficky #tyrannosaurus lex writes #im so fucking sorry #my name is lex and i write bullshit #i really said hey look lets maim the sticky hand just like jude lol #i WILL write sticky ficky smut that is a threat #crack fic

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mortuarybees · 5 years

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Youre a florence fan so you probably already noticed but 'all this and heaven too' is such an aziraphale song

oh i am very aware my friend i think about it every goddamn day. and it’s a tuesday morning at the end of summer so we are going to take this opportunity to discuss other florence songs that are Them. on occasion we scream about this in the groupchat, credit to my dear comrades @genderqueercrowley @saaliyah @aziraphvle @femmeaziraphale and @philosapphor

all this and heaven too as you said is the aziraphale song. i can’t even quote it because every word of it is literally his arc. i would give all this and heaven too to understand this love i feel, to tell you what i feel for you, i just can’t manage to say it right, i trip over the words, i say it wrong, i run away, and this is too important for my inadequate tongue, and god, i would give everything, my divinity too, to just say it right, even once. also like aziraphale thinking about how the heart speaks in “the grand deeds of great men and the smallest of gestures” about all the things crowley does for him like………………..it gets me lads

i’ve said it before….heavy in your arms is the angstier The Aziraphale Song. “Is it worth the wait, all this killing time? / Are you strong enough to stand protecting both your heart and mine?” makes me so wild ‘is it worth the wait?’ is literally the title of my angsty pining aziraphale playlist, because god, aziraphale doubts that it is. he sees crowley waiting for him, patient, so goddamn patient, never pushing, never prodding, doing the legwork to keep their friendship, their love, alive, because aziraphale is afraid to even look at it square, recognize what it means to him; am i worth all this? am i worth this wait? can you stand it? what if this is all i can give you? could you stand it? does it hurt, carrying all this? ‘my love has concrete feet,’ crowley, ‘my love’s an iron ball, wrapped around your ankles over the waterfall,’ my love could destroy you. ‘this will be my last confession, ‘i love you’ never felt like any blessing, whispering like it’s a secret,’ low voices in a car in soho, bathed in pink light, handing it over with trembling hands, crowley’s hope, rising, for the first time in a long time, i’ll give you a life, anywhere you want to go, ‘only to condemn the one who hears it with a heavy heart,’ you go too fast for me, crowley. this is all there is, crowley, i’m sorry, i’m so sorry, it could destroy you. don’t go unscrewing the cap. hold it in your hands, know it’s there, but please, don’t go unscrewing the cap. “I was a heavy heart to carry / my beloved was weighed down / my arms wrapped around his neck / my fingers laced to crown / i was a heavy heart to carry / but he never let me down / when he had me in his arms, / my feet never touched the ground” like. god crowley takes care of him, he’s never once let him down, never pushed him to give him anything he wasn’t comfortable with except literally something to protect himself in case all that love he gave him got him into trouble, and like. god when aziraphale lets himself really look at the magnitude of all that love.

Moderation is so crowley it kills me. “Want me to love you in moderation / do i look moderate to you?” like. you go too fast for me crowley, but, how am i supposed to slow down? how am i supposed to love you less, quieter, slower, i feel it burning inside me, this constant buzzing under my skin, reaching for you, ‘you got me searching for validation’ this is what i am, aziraphale, “I never made it with moderation / no, i never understood,” even in heaven, aziraphale, even before all these jagged edges, ‘bow your head in the house of god, / little girl, who do you think you are?’ i’ve always been this, i don’t know any other way, please, i’m so full of it, “can’t hold it back / can’t take the tension / oh, i’m trying to be good / want me to love you in moderation / oh, don’t you know, i wish i could” i wish i could slow down for you, stop asking for more than you want to give, and i’m trying, i really am, but i don’t know how. i don’t know how to slow down. i’m trying to be good, aziraphale, it’s that quintessential gut-wrenching line we all write, ‘I didn’t want to go too fast for you.’

Haunted House is just like. god all that repression. florence really wrote an azcrow ep months before the show dropped. aziraphale is an angel, he’s not supposed to have doubts or desires, he’s not supposed to love, even, really, beyond that general, all-encompassing sort of benevolent love, that love of God through Her creations. he’s certainly not supposed to love a demon, and fuck, that scares him. “My heart is like a haunted house / there’s things in there that scratch about / they make their music in the night / and in the day they give me such a fright,” and it’s easy, when he’s with crowley, to forget all that. it’s easy to forget his duties, easy to give in, let himself be blushing and selfish and in love and loved, but when crowley isn’t there, it’s harder. the doubt comes in, the fear, heaven’s party line, yet still, “wish i could find a way to let them out” it’s that all this and heaven too shit, that fuck, i would give anything to give myself over to it, understand what i feel and what you’re giving to me, give you the same in return shit. and oh, the melancholy of “do you remember, / winding your arm around my shoulder? / as we wandered round the hill? / now i’m in that fog forever, / in full collaboration with the weather, cause / i’m not free yet, i’m not free yet, i’m not free yet, i’m not free yet, i’m not free at all” god it’s so much the bandstand, all those lovely memories they share, those stolen moments, all that love, you see it naked in his eyes when crowley asks him to run away, for a moment, it is enough, because it’s everything, it’s all he has, for a moment, it’s like he does understand it all, grasps it in his hand, fragile, but then he remembers. i’m not free at all, or maybe–and god this gets me, the way florence sings it, with the lilting oohs, because it sounds like i’m not free at all, but it also sounds like, i’m not free yet. not yet.

Big God is so crowley. “You need a big god, / big enough to hold your love / you need a big god / big enough to fill you up,” because there’s this grace-shaped hole in Crowley, and like. i’m a firm disciple of the crowley doesn’t regret falling church, that it hurt and hell sucks, but he’s proud of it, he’s proud that he broke away from heaven, even if he didn’t mean to, and sometimes he entertains the what if, what if i were an angel too, could things be different, if we were on the same side? but it’s still that horrible hole, that rejection, and there’s both this cavernous need in him and this great font of overflowing love, and he needs somewhere to put it. it’s that glass essay, “you remember too much / my mother said to me recently / why hold onto all that? and i said, / where can i put it down?” it’s that fleabag, “I don’t know what to do with it. with all this love i have for her. I don’t know where to put it now.” he aches with all the things he’s lost, even if he doesn’t want them back; it’s hard, sometimes, to remember the reasons you left someone or something once you’re gone, especially if where you go isn’t much better. sometimes, it’s easier to remember the good, to get you through the bad, and i think that’s part of what has crowley so shuttered in rome, after the crucifixion. he was a son of god too, once, and just like christ, god through him under the bus. let him suffer for some great cosmic plan, like it’s all part of the plan is supposed to make the holes in his hands hurt less. but then aziraphale finds him, drinking this shitty wine in this shitty bar in this shitty place, and he sees that he’s hurting, and he reaches out, invites him to lunch. it’s boo saying “I’ll take it,” all that love you had for her, “no, i’m serious. it sounds lovely. I’ll have it.” and he’s saying, for the next two thousand years, “shower your affection, let it rain on me / don’t leave me on this white cliff / let it slide down to the sea;” if you want my love, you can have it, you can have it all, every bit of it, but please, don’t leave me hanging. don’t let me dangle / at a cruel angle / where my feet don’t touch the floor. but he understands, he does. he was once exactly where aziraphale was, trapped with nowhere to go, and he understands how hard it is to find choices when heaven is so committed to making you think you have none. “You keep me up at night / to my messages, you do not reply,” and that stings, that aziraphale isn’t quite where he is yet, but he does understand, “I still like you the most / you’ll always be my favorite ghost.” I can wait, I can wait.

because these have been so painful, we’re doing You’ve Got the Love next i know it’s a cover, but still. god it’s complicated and it hurts sometimes, but the love they have is so strong and so beautiful; if it wasn’t, it would’ve collapsed under all that weight. The apocalypse comes, and they get each other through it. “Sometimes I feel like saying ‘Lord, I just don’t care,’ / but you’ve got the love i need to see me through.” When they get low, have doubts, get scared, they’re both there to pick each other up. We can do this, together, I’m here for you. “Sometimes, it seems like the going is just too rough / and things go wrong no matter what I do,” all the times aziraphale has gotten himself in these situations, the bastille, the church, all the times crowley’s own demonic wiles have come to bite him in the ass, “Now and then, it seems that life is just too much,” what the fuck is crowley supposed to do about a demonic ring of fire around the whole of London? what’s he supposed to do with that?? satan rises from the earth, what are they supposed to do about that! aziraphale has a flaming sword but he hasn’t fought in millennia and satan is the size of a goddamn skyscraper. this is satan himself, they are fucked, “But you’ve got the love I need to see me through,” crowley always shows up to save him, just in time, and you cannot tell me crowley wasn’t clinging to that love, his desperation to get to the end of the world, find aziraphale, save it all so they can keep being two married idiots who are too stupid to even know that they’re married; do something, or i’ll never talk to you again, and crowley does something, because that just won’t do, letting aziraphale down, he’ll alter reality itself, because creating a pocket dimension to step into for a few minutes is easier to imagine than aziraphale never talking to him again. And when aziraphale says, you’re something much better than heaven incarnate, you’re human incarnate, he looks at crowley, and he finally lets himself see. he sees it all, all the love crowley has for him, all the love he has for crowley, and sees, god, i was an idiot, how could i ever think some stupid white building with assholes on hoverboards was better than this. we’re with you, adam, whatever you choose, we’re on our side, “When food is gone, you are my daily meal, oh / when friends are gone, I know my savior’s love is real / you know it’s real.” They are on! their own! side! they’re both renounced, but it doesn’t matter, they have each other, and they save each other, they put their heads together and they fool heaven and hell both, just in time for lunch.

time for aziraphale to ask, are you hurting the one you love? because it’s far too perfect. “Are you hurting the one you love? / When they watched the walls and the ticking clock, / Are you hurting the one you love? And it was something you could not stop,” all that time Aziraphale kept Crowley waiting, because he was too afraid to give himself over, doesn’t know if he ever could, can’t even admit that he wants to, and he wants to tell crowley, you don’t have to wait for me. I don’t expect you to wait for me, but he knows exactly what crowley would say. He’d tell him what he tells him every time he watches him eat, shows up when he needs up, deals with his fussy hissy fits and his neuroses, deals with his repression and his refusal to admit that they’re even friends, oh, but i do have to wait. i don’t mind. i want no one else. “Are you hurting the one you love? / you say you’ve found Heaven, but you can’t find God,” literally the scene in the street. he rejects crowley again because he’s clinging to the last shreds of his naive faith in heaven, we’re told in the previous episode that aziraphale is gullible, that he’s so desperate to do good, be good, be what he’s supposed to be, that he’s easily fooled by people telling him they’ll help him do it. and the angels accost him in the street, and he finally gives up on heaven, but he’s still got faith in God, all i have to do is get in touch with the right people, but the right people won’t pick up. they’ll leave him on hold and then send him to voicemail. and crowley never sends him to voicemail. “Are you hurting the one you love? You say you got to heaven, but it wasn’t enough,” he’s sent, unintentionally, to heaven, and they tell him to fall in line, get ready for war, but heaven is empty. it’s not enough, it really isn’t, and when he says, demons can, he’s admitting that he and crowley really aren’t that different. heaven and hell are just names and a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. “Are you hurting the one you love? / You’d like to stay in heaven but the rules are too tough,” If Heaven Bans Me For Fucking This Demon I Will Face God And Walk Backwards Into Hell

I’m always emo about 100 years but especially for them, in those fragile eleven years before the apocalypse, especially those few days when they realize, horrified, that they weren’t even taking care of the right fkcing kid, and they’re still holding onto that desperate hope that they can stop it, somehow, still. “I believe in you, / and in our hearts, we know the truth,” we know how we feel about each other, angel, we’re on our side, “and i believe in love, and the darker it gets, the more i do,” they are pulling closer and closer together, spiraling towards each other, as things get more and more chaotic, “try and fill us with your hate and we will shine a light / and the days will become endless / and never turn to night,” fuck heaven and hell both, the world is a beautiful place, it deserves to exist, and they will save it, “then it’s just too much / i cannot get you close enough,” we could go off together, crowley’s scared, he’s so desperate to save the world but when it comes down to it, he’ll settle for saving aziraphale, it might as well be the same thing, to him, the world and aziraphale, “a hundred arms, a hundred years / you can always find me here,” how long have we been friends? six thousand years. no matter what, they always come back to one another. no matter what, they always come through for one another. i can’t have you risking your life, not even for something dangerous, “and Lord, don’t let me break this / let me hold it lightly,” crowley, desperately trying to be moderate, crowley, saying in every goddamn post-apocalypse fanfic, ‘I didn’t want to go too fast for you,’ “Give me arms to pray with / instead of ones that hold too tightly,” it’s crowley, angry and shouting, show me a great plan, and it’s aziraphale, begging, lord, give me the strength to let go of this, of earth, of crowley, give me the certainty that your plan is Good., and god, i’ve thought about actually writing a scene inspired by this so many times because it kills me so sweetly, “I let him sleep, and as he does / my held breath fills the room with love / hurts in ways I can’t describe / my heart bends and breaks so many, many times / and is born again with each sunrise,” god, crowley sitting at the edge of the bed after they’ve finally fallen into it together, and aziraphale is asleep in the aftermath of it, and crowley is shaking, he doesn’t know why; he just never thought he’d have this. he thought he’d spend the rest of eternity in this yearning, he’s the dog that caught the car, he doesn’t know what to do with it, and he’s staring at his sleeping face, and he’s thinking, surely, aziraphale is going to wake up and realize what he’s done, and he’ll be very kind about it when he tells him it was a mistake, it can’t happen again, but oh, it will hurt, and he’s not sure he can survive another six thousand years of wanting when he’s had a taste of what it’s like to have him. and then aziraphale shifts, sighs, opens his eyes just a crack and frowns at him, puts his hand on his wrist and pulls at him, what are you doing? come back to bed, darling, you must be cold, and his heart is born again with this new sunrise.

speaking of them finally falling into bed together 👀 bedroom hymns. if i write more smut for them it’s going to be blasphemous and it’s going to be titled from bedroom hymns. i’ve already written about it here, but god, i’m obsessed with it. in case yall haven’t heard yet my life’s thesis is god is love is god; you speak to god through a lover the same way you speak to god through prayer; loving someone is loving god. there is no tangible god who’s going to hold your hand at night, wipe your brow when you’re feverish, rub your feet at the end of a long day, sooth you when you cry, reach things for you that you can’t reach, walk with you at the museum and laugh at your jokes, do your laundry when you can’t, call you when they haven’t heard from you in a while, nag you to eat, @bassicallyelora wrote an absolutely fucking stunning poem about that i think about constantly. God, wherever he is, is very far away, but we aren’t. we’re right here. and i say lover, but i really mean love, of any sort, a lover, yes, but your friends, your family, your dog, the plants you water, the hive in your backyard. love IS god. you worship god by loving the people, the life, around you. ‘yes, i know, god’s silence never breaks, but is / that really a problem? / there are thousands of voices, after all’ like maybe i’ve got it all wrong but it’s not the nebulous concept of god wherever he is or may be that needs loving, but his creations. Corinthians 13. i believe in the light within, the spark of divinity in all of us, and i think love is that divinity in me, speaking to the divinity in you, and the conversation between them. it’s more than language and more, even, than touch. but also, this isn’t a post about that, it’s about azcrow, and i’m gay and christian and i was raised southern baptist and Blasphemy Is Hot And The Devil Is Sexy. literally i picture it, that trope of aziraphale’s hands falling to crowley’s belt, crowley’s hand stilling them, his hesitation, that what if you Fall?, and aziraphale freezes, and then he kisses him, whispers, “this is as good a place to Fall as any.” he’d rather fall than go without this; and the act between them, it’s a covenant, I love you, i am devoted to you, i will worship you. god just read the ask i gotta move on. also the second part of this orpheus and eurydice au in which they literally make make a covenant and crowley is aziraphale’s disciple (i’ve said it before! i’ll say it again! the jesus and fucking john of it!!!!) and crowley literally fucking says to him, in this fanfic i read with these two eyes, “let me build you nations, baby, and all the peoples of the world will be blessed through you.” god religion is hot if you’re not a coward about it.

Falling……is so fucking crowley. jesus christ i can hardly stand it “I’ve fallen out of favor and I’ve fallen from grace,” tough enough to handle, given that he literally Fell from god’s favor and from Her Grace, and then fell out of satan’s favor by betraying hell, but then the gut punch, “Fell in your opinion when i fell in love with you,” the thing is, aziraphale is afraid of crowley’s love. he doesn’t think it should be possible, a demon, and he’s afraid of what it means that crowley can love him, afraid of what it means that he wants that love and he loves him back. you go too fast for me, crowley. god. “Sometimes i wish for falling / wish for the release / wish for falling through the air / to give me some relief / because falling’s not the problem / when i’m falling i’m at peace / it’s only when i hit the ground that causes all the grief.” Crowley didn’t mean to Fall, but he made a choice. At some point, someone must have told him he’d better stop asking questions, and he chose not to, and in a way, the Fall was liberating. for one brief moment, he’d defied god, defied the Plan, made a choice for himself, chose to keep asking questions, chose to believe he deserved answers, and he was punished for it, but heaven told him he had no choices, but he proved them wrong. I have free will, i’m a person, I Fell. And it’s only when he landed in that furnace of ever-burning Sulfur that he found that hell is pretty much just a darker, more crowded Heaven. and he wishes there was another choice he could make, another Fall, even if what came after was worse, at least he’d have that moment of choice. turning his back on what he’s been told, and falling into an unknown, giving into that hope it’ll be better. and that’s pretty much exactly what he does, really, in choosing to defy the Divine Plan, defy hell, and Fall, again, but to earth.

I don’t have a lot of analysis for My Boy Builds Coffins, it’s just kind of that The Devil Is Hot thing again. aziraphale making peace with crowley’s tempting people to sin; his place in the ineffable plan. death isn’t something people like, or something they like to think about, but it Is And Must Be. In the world of Good Omens, hell is something people don’t like to think about, might wish didn’t exist, but it Is And Must Be. for there to be free will, for the choice to do good to mean something, there must also be the choice to do bad. “It’s not just for work, and it isn’t for play.” crowley’s philisophical about it all.

I’m not calling you a liar is just. Fuck i have A Lot of feelings about aziraphale’s trust issues, @philosapphor really fucked me up with drawing the parralel between “each man kills the thing he loves, […] the coward does it with a kiss” and aziraphale’s fear that loving crowley could get them both killed, the “I love you so much / I’m gonna let it kill me” of it; and heaven has heavy authoritarian vibes, and i think, constantly, about how impossibly difficult it must be for aziraphale to trust crowley. they’re both putting their lives in each other’s hands, but crowley has this idea that he’s going to be able to outsmart heaven and hell, dance circles around them, maneuver out of it if they’re caught, and aziraphale just doesn’t have that faith, about how he’s never known anything but heaven and it’s so, so much for him to put aside the propaganda and trust crowley as much as he does. he tries to fight it, loving him, tries to deny it, for both their sakes, but “There’s a ghost in my lungs / and it talks in my sleep / wraps itself around my tongue / as it softly speaks / then it walks, then it walks / with my legs / to fall, to fall, / to fall at your feet,” *john mulaney imitating annamarie tendler voice* jeSUS chRIST. he tries, but he can’t help it, he’s drawn to crowley like a planet around the sun, he can’t help but fall in beside him, to Fall at his feet, if necessary, “I’m not calling you a liar, / just don’t like to me,” he begs. please, don’t betray this trust i’m putting in you, please, love me the way i love you, fully, completely, purely, please don’t let this be some elaborate trap, “There but for the grace of God go I / And when you kiss me, I’m happy enough to die,” oh, but i am what god made me, and I’ll give anything to have another taste of you.

Miss peregrine’s home for peculiar children sucked but Wish That You Were Here is a fucking bop, and god, it’s just so them, the constant coming together, across continents and millenia, “you’re always on my mind / you’re always on my mind,” no matter where they go, they’ll always come back to each other, because they’re drawn there. “And I never minded being on my own / then something broke in me and i wanted to go home, / to be where you are,” god it’s so ‘lover, come over, look at what i done, i’ve been alone so long, i feel like i’m on the run.’ they’re both used to being alone, the idiot in the corner with a painted face, but they’re not, with each other, they’re home when they’re together. ‘i wanna hurry home to you.’ “I’m reaching out to you with every note I sing / and i hope it gets to you on some pacific wind / wraps itself around you and whispers in your ear, / tells you that i miss you and i wish that you were here,” god i’m so obsessed with them just. seeking each other’s company out, making up whatever excuse they have to to be beside each other, because that’s exactly what they do, that’s exactly what the Arrangement is. But it can never last, because Aziraphale always pulls away, “And if I stay, oh, I don’t know, / There’ll be so much that I’ll have to let go.” He’s so, so lonely, and Crowley is home, but he’s still afraid of letting go of Heaven, of losing it all, no matter what he gains.

NO CHOIR - BUT WE’RE ENDING ON A HIGH NOTE LADS BECAUSE HE DOES LET GO OF IT, “and it’s hard to write about being happy, ‘cause the older i get / i find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject / there will be no grand choirs to sing / no chorus will come in / about two people / sitting, doing nothing.” in the end, there’s not much to say. in the end, they leave it all behind, heaven and hell scrambling and furious, the bustle of london; they buy their little cottage on the south downs, and they go grocery shopping, and aziraphale attends the village book club, and crowley terrorizes the garden into making produce that wins them awards at the town faire, and they bicker about the thermostat and sometimes one of them gets in a mood and they fight about nothing at all, but at the end of the day, they’ll crawl into bed together and kiss each other goodnight, and in the evenings, they collapse on the sofa together and watch mindless television and bicker about the volume setting. “the loneliness never left me, I always took it with me,” these things stick with them; the doubts, the fears, the ache of loss, the trauma, the insecurity, “but i can put it down in the pleasure of your company.” and there are many names in history but none of them are ours, the history books forgot about us and the bible didn’t mention us, not even once, “and there will be no grand choirs to sing / no chorus will come in / no ballad will be written / this will be entirely forgotten.” and it might all still end up in a puddle of burning goo, there will be a second round, but “if tomorrow, it’s all over, at least we had it for a moment / oh, darling, things seem so unstable, / but for a moment, we were able to be still.”

not comprehensive but it’s literally 5k so we’re ending it here

#my magnum opus....it was all leading to this...........wow it's long #can yall tell i'm into fatm #long post #good omens #ineffable husbands #henry speaks #florence welch #pleinedelavie #henry writes

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mandysxmuses · 4 years

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🐩 for each keeper

//oH BOY this might be a long one

So Niemand is one of the first ‘Keeper’ characters I created and is the one who has changed the least from his original conception. My main inspirations for him and a lot of the Keepers/the overall idea was popular dating sim and anime tropes, and in particular for him I took inspiration from the “yandere” trope, although Niemand technically isn’t one at all. I knew I wanted a cute and overall innocent character with a very dark side, but I also wanted there to be a reason for that dark side beyond it just being there because he loves someone and it needs to be there for the trope, so from the get-go I figured Jemand’s antagonistic and cruel relationship with him would be a more organic drive to bring Niemand to that point.

I could also say some Undertale inspiration helped me come up with him? Because my dream that inspired this whole thing and one of the first things I wrote with Niemand involved him shapeshifting into a rather ugly flower and accidentally scaring a Keeper off.

And I think the whole hedge maze/flower garden thing was probably Alice-in-Wonderland inspired, given that Alice in Wonderland was also inspiration for pretty much a lot of the tone of what I was going for making the Keeper universe.

Jemand is another one of the first characters I had in mind, and again, I already had a pretty basic outline of how his character and Niemand’s were supposed to be. He was supposed to be suave and clever and witty and smug, and Niemand was supposed to be more sheepish and meek by comparison. Though I will say Jemand has gone through a lot more small evolutions than Niemand has over time. He originally bickered with Niemand a lot and was frequently embarrassed by the gardener catching him up on things that he said rather than constantly being on top of things, and he did change to a much more antagonistic, domineering, outright crueler character over time -- I’ve tried to pull that back a bit because there have been times where I’ve worried I’ve made him too evil, but regardless, he’s still a lot nastier now than he was at first.

His main inspirations were, again, popular anime/dating sim tropes, so I wanted to take the trope of the suave idol-like characters who daksldmasl you know the ones you know the ones

The whole black-and-white thing was not necessarily inspired by anything (maybe Alice in Wonderland subconsciously since there’s the whole checkerboard motif he loves) but yeee

TODLICH oh m’boi Todlich, the man, the myth, the meme

The third character I had in mind from the get-go and still the most changed from his original conception that I can think of (besides Schatz but even his character changes weren’t as dramatic)

The tropes and inspirations Todlich pulls from aren’t that difficult to figure out, I’m sure there’s one in every otome game/dating sim where at least one character is an absolute trashfire but they have a route anyway because they’re physically attractive and in the game/anime so they have to come into play somewhere

But originally that’s... all he was, just an evil, killing-for-the-sake-of-killing character with zero actual motivations or story or reasoning behind it, and it made him feel very two-dimensional to me. Characters like that can work, of course, but when they do there’s always at least some story to it and mdlasdm Todd just existing like that with no story and no motivations bothered me

And this overall dissatisfaction with Todlich’s lack of character and lack of story altogether was what led to the Emma plotline, which ended up just ldsakmdl transforming the entire thing and making literally everything more fun to write for me and turned Todlich from one of the characters I disliked writing most to one of my genuine favorites dkmasldmds

(Also I lost most of my icons so I won’t have them all here but)

LAUT

Okie dokie, Laut is definitely an interesting one to talk about. He wasn’t actually a character I had in mind from the very beginning, but I came up with him soon enough after just figuring it would be neat to have an announcer talking over chases and telling everyone what’s going on

His inspirations were bookworm-type characters and socially awkward characters and I originally wanted him to be a more stern, snappy character, like one of the strict intellectual types

(And the Pringles guy, no kidding, that’s what inspired his monocle)

And he’s more like a geeky high-class dork that just sits there calling everyone a peasant

And now that I think about it he’s changed just about as much as Niemand which means not much at all, I essentially had the idea of a guy with super long purple hair and a monocle sitting in a tower watching everybody but not being able to leave, and slowly suffering from the isolation.

RENEE AND VERGESS

OKAY SO I can’t take all the credit for Renee because a lot about her was suggested to me by another friend of mine, and they definitely contributed a lot to her overall character design (including her signature hat that she wears)

And I think even the spine-ripping she does may have been their idea? It has been a long time since I had this conversation with this friend so I do not know who of us came up with what besides the hat, I remember specifically she came up with the hat idea

I think they might have even picked her name mslkdkmlsak

I mainly wanted her to be a foil for the boys because they were so powerful and the Keepers definitely didn’t seem like they had much helping them at this point, and of course, the Emma plotline gave her having Keeper memories and her place in the game even more poignant

Vergessene’s character was heavily inspired by characters like Eeyore and Sadness from Inside Out, and I added him because I wanted another character to be on the Keeper’s side, but also to add even more tragedy to my big angst bowl because there evidently was not enough in the pot by that point

VERHEILER

The man of FLUFF, the fluffiest man, the most self-indulgent man I ever put into this universe

Fools may have thought I put Todlich and his physical attractiveness in for my own self-indulgence but no, NO, Verheiler was the one who I stuck in solely from what I would want in a weird fantasy world full of bizarre people who may or may not intend to kill me

I wanted a soft, tol man with bunny ears and a minty pretty soft color scheme and floofy hair and a kimono

And I wanted him to make me tea, and have a soft and gentle voice, and to be a complete pacifist, and just be the most wholesome of men

I wanted him to give hugs and lots of cuddles and be really affectionate but also respectful of boundaries if someone asked not to be touched

His inspirations were literally my own self-indulgent stupidity, and ASMR. That was a big inspiration for him, I really wanted him to be a comforting, calming, just genuinely sweet person since the Void had a distinct lack of any of these qualities before he was there.

KNIRSCHEN

Knirschen knocked down two popular tropes in one, the “tsundere” trope and the werewolf trope

He’s cold and grumpy and dismissive to people he likes, but softens up over time, ugh, I love that trope, got a weakness for that trope I have to say

Especially in Knirschen’s way, where the only reason he’s so pushy and determined to shove people away is because he’s scared he’ll transform and be more likely to hurt them if they’re close-by

I also thought, hey, I added a rabbit man, why not add a wolf character

And on that note

Egel/Walter

So since a rabbit man inspired a werewolf man, a werewolf man inspired a vampire man

But of course, this wasn’t the only inspiration for Walter. Vampires are a popular dating sim/romantic novel/generally thirsty-people-aimed media trope, so naturally he had to be in here

Though I wanted to make him also a nice, generally well-meaning character because the vampires I’d seen in some media treated their “love interests” like sacks of meat and I wanted to subvert that and by subvert that I mean yeet that idea out the window, I want a wholesome vampire

So I made a hot-pink haired, generally unintimidating, well-mannered sophisticated boyo who likes candy

But also gave him some depth by making his relentless nightly thirst for blood and monstrous reputation something he actively hates and wants to fight against rather than a part of himself he takes pride in

So he’s struggling with a very terrifying part of himself that he can’t help having, as well as being forced to use that side of himself in a horrific murder-game and even attack Niemand because Jemand’s terrible

Schatz... oh boy, Schatz

What even was the creation of this man? Of course the Void’s designated comic relief would have the most weird creation process and changes

(his inspirations were The Pirates of the Caribbean series and other pirate-like characters and series, and that one vine of the high dude possessed by a demonic spirit asking for a bagel)

First he was a regular pirate man who had a pet mouse because I’d never seen a pirate with a pet mouse before

WAIT character change, he’s a regular normal guy LARPing a pirate and just pretending all the time because he likes it

WAIT THERE’S MORE, he talks to his mouse and acts like he can have conversations with it and confuses everyone even more

WAIT, he hallucinates the mouse talking back

NO WAIT, the mouse is magical in nature and literally does communicate with him telepathically

HOLD ON the mouse is a demon now

AND the mouse can shapeshift and eat bathtubs and steal things for him

And the mouse... worships... Satan

okay, that’s enough, we’re done . . .. .

-- AND Schatz only LARPs as a pirate as a form of escapism because the Void is a ball of angst and Catnip is slowly but surely absorbing more power from all the suffering everyone is enduring and one day--

Kanonier

Oh boyo, dis guy

The man who literally exists just to have a butt bigger than Jemand’s and muscles slightly larger than Todd’s

no that’s not why he exists of course not but

I mainly just always wanted a rival character for Schatz after he showed up because dlsakdmslkd gosh we already have a pirate man who’s trying so hard to be a pirate, there has to be someone on the other end of the spectrum

(Apparently there is a spectrum ranging from Cowboy to Pirate)

Of course Toy Story is kind of an inspiration, but honestly, I kid ya not, Old Town Road was a big part in forming this guy’s character and you can decide how cursed that is.

Begleiter

Now, some of the inspiration around here gets a little more personal and deep to me.

This guy had a variety of inspirations, either drawing from things as bizarre as Dora the Explorer and those awkward creepy moments of her staring, to Daniella in Haunting Ground and her robot-like behavior -- to an app I had called W.oebot which was essentially made to help cope with mental health problems but always had me internally struggling. I knew this app was meant to help me, but I always felt this deeper sadness that the “person” I was talking to was just a pre-programmed app sending automatic messages in response to specific words, rather than a person genuinely listening and caring about what I was saying

(not judging anyone who would use this app and is helped by it, of course, just speaking of my own experiences and how I felt)

The human element wasn’t there and it could be deeply felt to me, and it inspired a lot about Begleiter and his own personality, especially in his past relationship or lack thereof with Emma, whose thoughts and emotions toward her and others could only be felt after he got his “upgrade” and a more humanoid body.

Serpentin

OOOOH Serpentin

His main inspirations were cryptids, body horror, a smol genuinely hilarious video of a cryptid-like man slowly creeping toward this dude in his garage, a game called “IT LIES” about a monster using yours and other people’s voices to lure it to you like prey, and Spongebob

........... a big helping of Spongebob

Subversion of a trope was another thing I was going for here, I wanted a genuinely creepy, terrifying looking character who based on appearances seemed like someone you’d want to hide in a closet from and cry over

But turns out this terrifying thing you just saw just saw you drop a penny and didn’t want you to lose it, so he came to return it to you, please don’t be sad

Clara Wilson

Clara is the... least fleshed-out character that I have, and I feel like that’s understandable, given that her own inspiration was from classic otome game/romance novel/dating sim characters, whose personalities and decisions and moral standings are usually given to them by the player rather than their own will

(Or, if they’re in a TV show or something, their personalities are kind of blank so that people can insert themselves more easily to the situation)

Her personality switches depending on the route she’s on, much like a protagonist in a dating simulator’s might. I’m still glad I added her on here, but XD I’d be lying if I said there was all that much to her, she’s just kind of a character that exists and has her personality filled out depending on who she’s interacting with, kind of like a character with literally dozens of AUs

#M; The Keepers #Anonymous

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tasteofshapes · 5 years

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2019 creator tag

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2019. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

I was tagged by @drarryruinedme7 (thank you Ale!), and was really looking forward to doing this, but life kind of got in the way and I didn’t really have the proper mental energy to do this until now. I wrote quite a lot in 2019, considering that I only started writing in August 2019 again after a 6? 7? year break away from writing stories. I guess I never really stopped writing during that time - all those subs for work!!! - but starting again was both terrifying and exhilarating. Work had literally driven me into depression, and climbing back out of that hole had taken me months, and I wasn’t sure that I had anything left in me to create again. After a lot of false starts (oh boy were those painful), I forced myself to dive right into IchiRuki month, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was still a well there, untouched. It was nice to know that the words hadn’t deserted me, that I could still write. And it was even nicer to know that people actually liked what I wrote! So here’s a list of 5 works that I’m most proud of in 2019.

Into Something Rich and Strange (IchiRuki, Bleach) Written for day 28 of IchiRuki month and an anon prompt, and tracing how Ichigo slowly realises his feelings for Rukia and tells her that he loves her. There are so many lines that I love from this fic, and writing soft!Ichigo is one of my favourite things. A sample: “Rukia, I,” Ichigo says, mouth dry, and then stops, because he doesn’t know what comes after. He doesn’t know what this is, and he doesn’t want to say things to her if he can’t be certain of what he means.

if you go to her, don’t expect to come home to me (IchiRuki, Bleach) Written for day 16 of IchiRuki month, and the only way that Ichigo’s life post-686 makes any sense to me. Angsty and mostly sad, because no one in this one is happy. A sample: She watches him and sees how relaxed he is, how naturally he takes Rukia’s empty glass out of her hand and gives her his full one, as automatic as if he had been doing it all his life. Ichigo’s not even looking at Rukia as he swaps out their cups; his gaze is distant and sweeps over the crowd, but no one can miss the way his face is bright and open as he says something that makes her laugh and punch his arm.

Cruel Summer (IchiRuki, Bleach) This was Byakuya’s perspective on IchiRuki, and this was incredibly fun to write. Byakuya is haughty and proper and incredibly protective of the people he cares about, and it was fun showing a different side of him in this. There’s a third part to this from Isshin’s perspective that has been a WIP for like... 2 months now? But it will be posted! A sample: Renji tells Byakuya he’ll see him for dinner tonight - before the invitation (order, they both know it’s an order) even comes - and Byakuya just nods. The head servant comes with the same request, apologetically asking for instructions again, and Byakuya tells him to permanently add in two more seats for their Friday night dinners for the next century, and to start stocking up on sake, the good kind.

The Christmas Party (Drarry, Harry Potter) It was December, and I wanted to write something warm and fuzzy for Christmas and this happened: Snarky Malfoy drunk on Firewhisky while a bemused Potter looks at him as if he’s seeing Malfoy for the first time. Ah, my idiot boys. A sample: “What a horribly suspicious mind you have,” Draco murmurs, deliberately not meeting Harry’s eye. “Tell me, do you always harbour such uncharitable thoughts at Christmas time?”Harry’s startled laugh stirs something unexpected in the pit of Draco’s stomach, and his cheeks grow warm. Draco looks past Harry to survey the crowd, because Harry’s looking at him with something almost akin to amusement instead of scorn, and he doesn’t quite know what to do with that.

there’s only one bed (Wolfstar, Harry Potter) This was super fun to write: featuring tired!Remus, unrepentant!Sirius, and just one bed. Also featuring the adventures of Luggage, whom I blatantly stole from Discworld. I’m sure Sir Terry doesn’t mind. A sample: “Huh?” Sirius says, sticking his head in through the doorway, still struggling with the Luggage. There’s a loud thump and Sirius yelps in pain, withdrawing to let out a stream of curses as he kicks at the Luggage. “Goddamnit,” Sirius says loudly, and Remus sighs.“Stop playing with it,” Remus says. He strides over and swings the door open and says sternly to the Luggage, “get in here.” There’s a growl in his voice, and the Luggage picks itself up and meekly trots in and settles itself into a corner.

Tagging @mezzomarinaio, @prolix-, @everything-withered, @tackytigerfic, @hashtagartistlife, @madhat-narrator, @tsundanire and everyone else who has read this and wants to take part. Share your creations!

#drarry #drarry fanfic #ichiruki #ichiruki fanfic #wolfstar #wolfstar fanfic #2019 roundup #writing #tasteofshapes fic #2019 was kind of a really good year huh

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imnotcameraready · 5 years

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Enjambment (chivalry au)

A/N: it’s the first not-main-story story!!!! wrote this while tryna figure out how to get from point a to point b, and it doesn’t really fit in with the story’s Flow, so it’s gonna be its own lil part! it’s also got a little bit more character building for the Playwright and the Artist, if anyone wanted that lm a o — they’re good bois, they’re just. really bad at being good bois.

also i kNOW chapter 11 came out like, last night, but ,. ., ., .. . ive had this sitting ready for literally a week ., ,. ,.. sorry for bombarding y’all with this au :’’D

WARNINGS: self-deprecation, self-hate, touch starved, threats, cursing/swearing, destruction of property, destruction of art (ewe)

Words: 2085

AO3 link to this story; AO3 link to chivalry’s main plot

MASTERPOST! <-- i dont think this story is understandable without reading the other parts, hence im plugging it so much ; v; i’m sorry y’all ilu <3

chivalry taglist: @starlightvirgil @forrestwyrm @daflangstlairde @marshmallow-the-panda @askthesnake @k9cat @patromlogil

general tag: @jemthebookworm

hope you enjoy!! <3 <3 <3

The Playwright didn’t like admitting he was wrong. He often wasn’t. Having the position of an omniscient narrator meant he got to be right a lot, which was one of Roman’s favorite things.

But his argument with the Artist may not have been one of those “right” things. The Playwright leaned on the table, twirling a pencil absentmindedly as he contemplated. He wasn’t entirely wrong, no. The Artist had to keep in mind the safety of the other Sides. If anything happened to any of them, Thomas would be hurt, and Roman would riot. Every bit of him, except for…. The Playwright winced. On the other hand, this in-fighting was exactly what they should be countering. Sure, everyone disagreed and that was the purpose of this dismantling, but the Playwright was above these squabbles. Should be above them, figuratively, because in physical space, he very much was above them.

Apologizing would be the logical thing to do.

He sighed, rubbing his forehead. He didn’t enjoy entering the medieval town, didn’t like going deeper into the Imagination, but it seemed he would traverse there more often.

The sound of a paper flipping caught his attention. His eyes shot open as he looked around the room. No one was there.

But he’d definitely heard movement. The Playwright swallowed down his fear. “Hello?” he called out.

Nothing. None of the costumes had moved, none of the shoes or benches or any of his paperwork.

Wait, no, there was something. The Playwright moved a few scraps to the side and picked up an envelope. This hadn’t been there before.

Cordial invitation of Roman ‘Playwright’ Sanders to the Entry Gala — in celebration of Morality, Logic, Anxiety, and Deceit’s welcome to the Imagination.

The Playwright’s eyes widened. Oh, fuck.

He tore the envelope open and read its contents.

The Artist wept.

He ran his hand along the ruined canvas — ruined by his hand, torn open with his own knife and dirtied with his tears — and pressed it fast to his chest.

Why was he so mean? Why did it hurt so much, for his creations to be picked at like vultures and a carcass? Wasn’t that the point, wasn’t that how artists improved?

Ah, who was he kidding. He wasn’t a real artist at all. Just a name he’d selected when they first started this game.

The Artist was so wrapped up in his lamentations that he didn’t hear the soft sound of paper falling onto the floor beside him.

He shouted again, cradling the broken mess of canvas and wooden frames. All good artists got second opinions. No one was safe from criticism, and there was always room for improvement! He should know this, he DID know that, it was reasonable. But hearing it from the others always made him so anxious—

He sniffed, wiping his face with the paw of his sweatshirt. If he was falling apart this bad, it must mean he was losing this challenge thing. But thinking of anxiety and then, well, Anxiety, Virgil…. the Artist wished he’d gotten to meet the two, too. Like every other bit, he did love them.

The sound of debris being scattered, then a surprised yelp. The Artist sighed, curling up tighter. God fucking damnit.

“What—I’ve—Artist?!” the Playwright asked.

The Artist was sat against the wall, cradling a bundle of broken paintings to his chest, previously white sweater dirtied with layers upon layers of paint. All around him, every painting that has previously been neatly stacked in the room was torn to shreds. Broken pieces of wood and canvases halved were strewn around the room in piles, or one thick pile, with only a small circle of ground around the Artist. Sketchbooks were torn, even the drawing tablet was — okay, the Playwright wasn’t going to look at that and think of the physical monetary price, because none of this was real. Holy shit, the Artist had put a hole into the wall of his house. There was a hole? He’d punched a hole into the wall? Good heavens.

The Playwright, in an effort to not damage any of his art, accidentally appeared on top of one of the piles. He fell over, landing on his butt amongst the shreds, and looked around wildly.

“What happened?” he asked once he caught sight of the Artist’s frozen figure in the corner, still since he arrived, “Did Dragon—”

“They weren’t good enough, so I tore them up,” the Artist whispered into his own folded arms.

The Playwright’s brow pinched in worry. That had happened only a few times before, where a single work had been so terrible that the Artist ripped it to shreds in anger, but he’d never done….this. And he especially wouldn’t have done this, since he had numerous pieces he wanted to show the other Sides.

He drew in a breath as his mind filled in the gap.

“Oh, Artist, what did they say?” the Playwright whispered, pushing himself up and slowly making his way closer.

“Nothing. Get away.”

He grit his teeth. The Artist was going to be difficult, wasn’t he? Now, now, it wasn’t a good time to lose his temper. He came with a job to do, and he wasn’t cruel enough to leave the Artist to be upset alone. And he needed his help. This was purely logical.

He wanted to laugh. Being logical was so taxing; how did Logan do it all the time?

“Artist. I’m not leaving,” the Playwright sat in front of him, “I take it that Logic and Morality didn’t take well to your paintings?”

He glanced up at the Playwright, quick enough to now show an expression but slow enough that the Playwright caught a glimpse of his tearstained eyes.

“They–They said my art’s unfinished. Logic did.”

The Playwright frowned. “Wait. That’s it?”

The Artist curled up more, and the Playwright gently put a hand on his forearm. “Wait, wait, I didn’t mean it judgy. I just….that’s something you’ve complained about, too.”

To that, the Artist shot him a small glare. When the Playwright put it like that, then the Artist’s reaction seemed childish. “Yeah, but,” he sighed, “I didn’t want them to say anything about it.”

“Then why didn’t you warn them about it?” the Playwright asked, confused.

“Look, I don’t–I don’t know!” the Artist tossed the painting he was cradling aside and ran his hands through his hair, “It all happened so fast, and Padre was getting mad at me for not letting Child stay here. It—they both got upset at me, and they interrupted my painting, and Padre kept hugging me and it felt weird.”

The Playwright exhaled. He put a mental pin on the hugging thing — a similar thing had happened to him the other day, and he would have to talk to the others about what may be occurring — and then scooted closer again, sitting beside the Artist.

“Seeing as I wasn’t there, I cannot speak to what your argument may have been about. But I know that Logic and Morality wouldn’t have wanted to intentionally harm us.”

“How do you know, Pencil pusher?” the Artist hissed, though his words held an emptiness that betrayed his disbelief.

“Because they wouldn’t. They’re calloused, but they wouldn’t hurt us. Maybe Prince.”

The Artist snorted. “You really hate that guy.”

The Playwright smiled. Good. He cleared his throat and threw up his hands in the Prince’s signature style. “Hoo hoo, look at me, I’m a Disney Prince and I like singing songs and being an idiot!” he said, mockingly emphasizing a mispronunciation of “Disney.”

That got the Artist to laugh, shoving the Playwright gently. “Hey, hey, Disney’s cool! I’ll defend Disney to the death,” he rubbed the back of his neck.

The tension returned, but only slightly. The Playwright didn’t want to push him, but he was a little impatient for the Artist to pull himself together. His feet gently tapped against the ground in a small, familiar tune.

After what seemed like ages, the Artist let out a breath.

“....I did….overreact. A little,” he said. “The knife was too much.”

“A lot. Wait, did you say knife?”

“Yeah. I, um, I lost it a little.” He rubbed the back of his head again, looking up at the Playwright. “Thank you for sitting with me.”

The Playwright smiled. Wonderful. He patted the Artist’s arm comfortingly. “If I cannot comfort myself, then what am I doing?”

They both shared a small chuckle at that. It was easy to forget that they were two parts of a much more cohesive whole.

It was also easy to forget that the Playwright had something else he wanted to ask. He clapped, sitting upright and startling the Artist.

“Sorry,” he put his hands up, eyes blazing with new worry, “I actually came to ask something else — did you get invited to the party?”

The Artist’s brow furrowed. “The….party? No?”

“Oh, come, you must have,” the Playwright looked around.

The same envelope he’d received prior was sitting beside the Artist, on top of some of the ruined paintings. He picked it up and found two more envelopes beneath. “Great Ben Jonson, you got Logic and Morality’s invitations, too,” the Playwright flipped through the three cards and handed the one addressed to the Artist, to the Artist. “You must not have noticed it earlier. I got a letter similar, this morning. From Dragon.”

“From Dragon? Fuck, how’d he find us?” the Artist read the front and flipped it over again, tearing it open.

“I don’t know. Perhaps he just sent it to the location of whoever said Logic’s name last night. I also don’t know how he got backstage to deliver mine,” the Playwright read over his shoulder, “I honestly came here hoping to find the other Sides. We need to warn them.”

“We do? About what?” the Artist shot him a frown, but the Playwright just gestured to the paper, so he read the invitation.

His eyes scanned through it once. His body slowly tense as he realized what was being asked, and he flipped it over, checking all around the letter and the envelope that there wasn’t more.

“This,” the Artist reread the letter once more before lowering it and staring, stricken, at the Playwright, “This is a fucked up joke, right? Like, it’s gotta be a joke. Dragon’s Disney pranking us, without friends.”

“I don’t want to hazard that,” the Playwright stood up and motioned for the Artist to get up, “We need to find the others and warn them. If Logic and Morality’s invitations are here, then they must not know, and it’s a safe bet that if they don’t know, then Anxiety and Deceit don’t know, either.”

The Artist pushed himself up, rolling his sleeves up and wiping his face slowly. “He wouldn’t hurt them,” he mumbled. “Why’s he mentioning Prince, too?”

“I don’t know. And after what he did to Damsel?” The Artist rolled his eyes as the Playwright continued, “I don’t think Dragon would hesitate to hurt them, and he’s using the concept of Prince as bait.”

Goddamnit, he was probably right. The Artist rubbed his eyes and fixed his glasses. “Alright. I just,” God, he was hideous. “Should I change?”

The Playwright squinted. “Have you not left your house since this all started?”

“No,” the Artist looked at him like he was stupid, “Why would I?”

Alright. Alright, this was a predicament. The Playwright blew out a lot of air, eyebrows raising as he tried to figure out, in the most concise way, he could tell the Artist that he wanted to throttle him. His attire was absolutely not correct for the setting that they’d established, and he couldn’t fathom WHY the Artist wanted to parade around a medieval town looking like THAT.

No, you know what? It was fine. Sleep was walking around in a leather jacket, it’s FINE. Perhaps the Playwright was the only one who cared about the sanctity of the setting.

Meanwhile, the Artist looked around and waved his hand. The torn paintings all disappeared, leaving the room empty, looking larger than ever. The hole in the wall faded away, establishing itself as a solid wall once more. He looked down at his outfit and simply wiped it, the paint stains all disappearing as his hand passed over them, revealing a creamy-white color once more.

“That’s good enough,” the Playwright snapped, grabbing a fist of his shirt and tugging him forward, “Come on.”

#chivalry au #roman #roman sanders #ts roman #ts fanfic #sanders sides au #this is truly a sanders au lmasdlkghasldfkj #sanders sides #my fic #fic #now i get to do all the designs for the next part oh hell yes #i love designin fancy #its always s O FUN C ASLDKFHASLKDSHASLKDHASHLDKJSFF

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thewritingstar · 6 years

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Valentine Exchange!!!

I’m so excited for this!! So this is my first event and this is my secret valentine for @thecelestialdragonspalace Valentine exchange! I had so much fun with this! The theme was heaven!

Happy late Valentines Day!!!!

So this is my gift for the amazing and wonder and absolutely lovely @bmarvels / BritKee!!! I hope you enjoy it!! It’s a Princess Au!

💓💓💓💓💓💓

------

The palace doors opened and to no surprise, the grand room was filled with roses. Gifts scattered the floor as the traditional hearts adored every nook and cranny, the sacred holiday exploded throughout the massive hallways.

The maids beamed at the generous gifts delivered to the princess, she was the most sought out hand in the entire country, possibly the continent. Diamonds, artwork and golden items all had letters with her name on them. Any girl would faint at the enormous amount of riches piled in front of her.

But disgust tinged Lucy and the thousands of waxy red petals didn’t do her feelings justice, instead she walked past, nose in the air as she ignored all the priceless gifts. She rolled her eyes at the hand painted portrait of her and man she had never seen before. She gagged at the bottles of perfume a kingdom far away had sent and almost spit on the engraved vases filled with a disgusting amount of potent flowers.

“Ladies, none of this suits my desires, please enjoy yourselves and take as much as you like. Divide it among all of you, please, it’s my gift for you.” Lucy said to her maids.

They all gasped and thanked her, and gladly took the jewels and flowers to their quarters. It became a norm for Princess Lucy to pass the gifts to her lovey maids, after all, they would enjoy them more than she.

“Lucy, shouldn’t you be getting ready?” Levy asked. The blue haired girl was Lucy’s lady in waiting, she knew all of her secrets and was her most trusted friend.

“As if I would forget.” Lucy smiled and place a flower into Levy's hair before retreated to her room on the other side of the palace.

The night fell upon the kingdom but Lucy was far from sleeping. She lit her lantern with a match and opened her balcony doors. Her pink dress was masked by a dark inky cloak and she used the hidden stairs to sneak out towards the gardens. Her heels had been traded for a pair of warm flats as she raced to the gardens edge.

Waiting by the willow tree, a dusty grey horse stood tall, hidden by the shadows.

Lucy approached the beautiful creature and offered him an apple from her tree before mounting his back.

“Hello Happy. Such a sweet boy, now lets go.” She cooed as he began to gallop past the lake.

The sky was pitch black when she arrived to the small cottage buried deep in the Magnolia Woods. Lucy placed Happy back into his make shift stall before walking up to the small house she grew used too.

The small and slightly cramped cottage felt more at home to her than the many rooms of the castle. The natural scent of the moss growing on the outside soon became her favorite scent and overall she preferred her time to be spent here.

She let out a gasp as the cobblestone pathway was lined with jars, each filled with fireflies that lit up the path. She noticed a few petals among the stones as she knocked on the door, excitement fled her body.

The door opened to reveal Natsu, the poor blacksmith she had fallen in love with many moons ago. The one she snuck out to see every other night, but tonight was special.

“Princess, to what do I owe this unplanned visit?” He teased and opened the door. She playfully hit his shoulder and hung her coat on the hanger.

“You know exactly why my dear.” She kissed his lips softly and walked towards the small kitchen.

Her eyes traced the room as she took in all the decor. He had spent the time to find wild flowers and put them in a wax paper wrap with a pink ribbon bow. There were small hearts made from the scraps of metal on the table and a red valet box caught her attention.

“Natsu this place looks lovely.” She complemented and she saw a slight pink grow on his cheeks. Her eyes never left the small box.

He smiled and grabbed it. Opening it, her eyes widened at the marvelous creation. At the end of the silver chain were two connected hearts, each with a red and pink jewel in them. The small sparkle and generous gift made the princess tear up.

“I know its nothing compared to the diamonds you own but I made it just for you.” He said. She shook her head and took his hand.

“Out of all the jewels in the palace, this means more to me than anything. Thank you Natsu.” Her smile was breathtaking and he couldn’t stop himself from kissing his princess again.

He slid the silver chain around her neck and she marveled at how beautiful it was. It was something that no prince from another kingdom could give her.

“I went into town and Mira was kind enough to make a chocolate cake for us.” He took her hand and pulled out a chair for her. A slice of dedicate cake was shared between the secret lovers.

Lucy knew that if they were ever caught she would be sold or killed and Natsu would most likely be hung. It was considered treason but everytime she looked into his eyes or felt the linger of his fingers on her skin, she only wanted him more, no matter the consequences.

“Natsu.” Lucy spoke and he looked up, his mouth full of cake and she giggled while wiping a crumb off his cheek with a cloth.

“Yeah?” He swallowed and watched as she pulled a black box out of her dress. He gulped when her fingers unlatched the hinge and a bright golden ring sat between the velvet folds. It was simple but inside the was the word ‘Forever’ engraved.

“Lucy?” He asked softly.

She held out her hand and took his in hers. “Natsu, I was born to be handed to another country, my only purpose is a pawn in the kingdoms dark game. You and I both know that by the end of next month, I will be married off to a random man.”

He clenched his fists at the sound of her being treated like a prop. He knew that their time was limited and that when she married, he wouldn’t see her again, but the ring on the table held a promise.

“But, I don’t want that. I want you. I want to marry a man you makes me feel loved. I want to marry someone who treats me like a princess not because of my title but because they love me unconditionally. Natsu, what I want more than anything in this dark world is to run away with you. To a place that we can be free and start fresh. Where we can love each other freely and be happy. Natsu, will you marry me?”

She watched as his smile tainted with sadness. He grabbed her hand and looked into the eyes he loved. He felt his heart ache at what he was about to say.

“Lucy, I love you but...I can’t put your life in danger if we get caught.” He stood and grabbed the plate, dropping it into the sink. “I love you more than anything but as painful and horrible it will be, you should marry someone who can give you every you need. I can’t provide like those men do. I can only give you my heart.”

She stood and meant his face when he turned around.

“I’d rather die loving you than live a life in a palace married to someone who doesn’t love me. I would gladly hang myself tomorrow if it meant I get to love you today. So don’t you think for a single moment I won’t put my life on the line for you.” She said, tears brimmed her eyes.

“You are my everything Natsu. I am a prisoner in that castle and you are my savior. You make each day worth living in this hell and you are my heaven. I don’t need a fancy palace or a crown on my head. I don’t need a mountain of jewels to be happy. I need you. That’s it. You are enough. You give me what all those men can’t. Love. And as far as I’m concerned, that is more than enough for me.” Her eyes filled with tears and she kissed him softly. “Natsu, your heart is all I want.”

“Lucy. You are my angel, my everything and I will do whatever it takes to live my life by your side.”

“Good.” She dropped one knee to the floor. “Now I’m only going to ask you this one more time. Natsu Dragneel, will you take me Lucy, plain old Lucy to be your wife. Will you run away with me and become my husband?” She asked and without hesitation he picked her up and spun her around.

“Yes of course Lucy. Plain old Lucy. My Lucy. I will run away with you.” He laughed and kissed her rosey cheeks. “I mean I’m kinda upset that I didn’t get to ask you, but I will gladly accept.”

Her feet hit the floor and she placed the golden ring onto his finger and brought out a matching one for her.

“I’d thought you say that.” She handed him the matching ring and he went on one knee dramtically.

“Lucy, you might have been this lands princess but you will always be my queen.” He kissed her hand. “Will you marry me.” He winked at her and the answer was sealed with a kiss.

“Of course I will.” She giggled.

He looked out the window and saw that the sun would come soon, this was the part he hated, the goodbye. “You should go.” He whispered.

She nodded sadly. “Tomorrow night we will leave. We will take Happy and ride towards the town where we will start our new life. Levy is also coming, her husband lives where we are going. Tomorrow Natsu, we will have our new lives.”

“Tomorrow.” He whispered and kissed her deeply. He would living with the love of his life in less than a day and he couldn’t wait. He couldn’t wait to take her away from her cruel fathers marriage scheme and love her with all his heart.

She grabbed her dark cloak and opened the door, her hand wrapped around the heart chain as she hide it under her dress and left the ring on the table just for the safety.

“Lucy.” She turned to his voice. “Happy Valentines Day.”

“Happy Valentines Day Natsu.” She blew him a kiss and disappeared into the shallow darkness, returning to her golden chambers as a princess until she would escape with her future husband and be free from her royal chains. Today she was Princess Lucy Heartfilia of Magnolia, but by tomorrow she would be Lucy Dragneel, the only title she cared about.

—

I hope this was good enough! I really loved this idea and felt like it was perfect for you.

#nalu valentines day #secret valentine #nalu valentines #fairytail #nalu #fairy tail #lucy heartfilia #natsu dragneel #lucy and natsu #lucy x natsu #thewritingstar #BritKee #fanfic

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thetygre · 6 years

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30 Day Monster Challenge 2 - Day 11: Favorite Giant/Ogre/Troll

1. Jotnar (Trollhunter)

The trolls in Trollhunter are the perfect giants to me; drawn straight from folklore, with all the weaknesses and traits from legend. They can range in size from a few feet tall to titans. Their design has a lot of charm to it, where they’re kind of cute from a certain angle, but they’re also raw and dangerous, with weathered skin and matted fur. There’s variety to their designs; I’m especially fond of the troll with the multiple heads. You get the feeling that the trolls are really ancient, elemental things that are part of the land. That blend of fairy tale magic and dark fantasy grit just perfectly encapsulates what I love to see out of giants.

2. Cyclops (Ray Harryhausen)

The cyclops is arguably one of Ray Harryhausen’s most iconic creations. Harryhausen changed how the cyclops is depicted in fantasy media from its creation on. I remember in an interview that Harryhausen said his thought process was like the same for Medusa; classical depictions of the cyclops were always just a man with the single eye, and he wanted to do something unique and monstrous. Years later, his cyclops is still my favorite; totally fantastic, with the kind of eager energy that all Ray Harryhausen’s creations had.

3. Ogre (Dragon’s Dogma)

It was a tough call between the Dragon’s Dogma cyclops and ogre. The cyclops is pretty fantastic, built around the idea that the cyclops was inspired by old mammoth fossils. But you know what the cyclops doesn’t have? SICK DROP KICKS, that’s what. Dragon’s Dogma’s ogre has a face like a gargoyle and a body like a chimpanzee. When it gets mad, its ass starts glowing and it throws a temper tantrum. And that’s a lot more intimidating when it sounds, especially when it comes barreling out of the pitch blackness right at you, picks you up, and the last blessed thing you see on this earth is your face going into its mouth. And it only gets worse when they get into groups…

4. Trolls (Discworld)

The Disc doesn’t have orcs; it has trolls, and they rock. I’m not sorry for that pun, because Pratchett plays pretty hard into the fact that his trolls are basically elementals. Their teeth are made of diamonds, they drink molten metal, and they actually get smarter the colder they get. But there’s just a raw, dumb lovable quality to the trolls. When they pull through, either for themselves or for other characters, they show what a head full of rocks is worth.

5. Trolls (Berserk)

It’s a shame these little guys are horrible rape monsters, because they’re adorable. Seriously, I can’t get enough of the trolls’ design. They look like teddy bears mixed with star-nosed moles. I just want to pick one up and cuddle it while it tries to kick free. Even the way they move in a horde is kind of endearing. They’re like frenzying sharks, just stuffing everything they can grab into their mouths, crawling in and out of everything. They’re the vilest, most adorable little horrors to ever crawl out from between dimensional planes.

6. Hawkeye Gough (Dark Souls)

Another tough call. I love you, Giant Blacksmith, I really do, but once again, sick-ass martial arts takes the advantage. You hear about Hawkeye Gough at first in legend, and there’s nothing to indicate that he’s a giant, or so incredibly chill. When you finally meet him, you meet a veteran of wars long past, withdrawn from the world. He occupies his time whittling talking carvings, but its clear he pines for the old days of warring with the Everlasting Dragons. Asking him to help with Kalameet is the best thing to happen to him in years. Also, his boss fight is kind of awesome. I mean, it’s horrible that you betray him and break his old giant heart and kill one of the last good things in the world, but it’s a sweet fight. There are elbow drops involved. That’s all I’m gonna’ say.

7. Hill Giants (Jack the Giant Slayer)

This was such a cheesy fantasy B-movie. I kind of have to appreciate its earnestness now, just going for a high fantasy fairy tale movie without being ‘dark and edgy’ or ‘the real version’. Part of that fairy tale charm was the giants. I call them hill giants because that’s what they remind me most of. These guys are hard fairy tale creatures. They’ve got a nice sense of scale to them, they’re buffoonish, but also cruel. They can turn from ‘stupid’ to ‘scary’ really fast when they need to. I like the caricature look to them, the exaggerated noses and eyes. It reminds me of cavemen, or the pictures of giants from an old picture book I have.

8. Tundra Giants (Skyrim)

Skyrim’s giants don’t talk a lot, so they’re kind of lacking in the personality department. They don’t really need to talk, because they only need to know two things: 1.) They love cheese and 2.) You are too close to their mammoths. The giants don’t care how many dragons or draugr you’ve killed; you so much as look at their mammoths for a second too long and they’ll launch you into the stratosphere. I really do appreciate how the giants have their own hidden culture, though. They clearly live based around herding megafauna, and they have designated spaces and their own written language. The giants are beyond the affairs of people; their only concern is with the land.

9. Stone Giants (The Hobbit)

Confession time; I didn’t 100% hate the stone giants in The Hobbit. Were they a massive diversion that ate into the time and were completely unnecessary? Absolutely. But I still liked them. These are some good rock elementals, and the concept that they play by just clobbering each other on stormy nights is a fun concept. How do elemental beings even have fun? Do they even have a concept of it, or is it the same as fighting? More importantly, giants in Middle Earth have been an interesting mystery for me since middle school. Tolkien mentions that trolls were made from giants, but its never stated exactly what giants are. The running theory was ents, but now I think that’s kind of up in the air. Giants being giant rock monsters could even explain why trolls turn to stone. So you see, the rock giants weren’t completely pointless after all. To me. And this one specific bit of Tolkien trivia.

10. Graug (Shadow of War)

It’s a rancor. Remember the rancor from Star Wars? Well here it is, but it’s a troll now. Graugs are the alpha predators of Mordor, and it’s not clear whether they’re what trolls were made from or what feral trolls degenerated into. What is clear is that they’ll eat anything they can get their claws on, including orcs, caragors, and smaller trolls. I love the simplicity of the graug, both as a creature and a design. It’s going for more than your standard troll, but it knows what it is and doesn’t try to reach beyond it. Its place in Mordor’s ecosystem makes it feel like a dinosaur, and you really get a sense that it’s a living animal in its habitat. That, and your uruks can NOT hunt them without Mom watching them and cheering them on from the sidelines.

#30 Day Monster Challenge 2 #30 Day Monster Challenge #giant #giants #ogre #trolls #Dark Souls #Berserk #Skyrim #Lord of the Rings #Discworld #Dragon's Dogma #long post

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politicsprose · 6 years

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P&P Picks of the Week

This week we traveled with our books both through space and time. We covered great distances discovering the deserts of the world. We went back to World War II and then a bit further back, 60 some million years, to learn about the magnificent creatures rummaging the earth before us. We thought about what it means to keep those you love safe and found a perfect spot for imagination and self-creation inside a hospital. These are the picks for this week.

The Mere Wife - Maria Dahvana Headley

The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Headley is dark and gorgeous and absolutely devastating. It is a retelling of Beowulf that hits you hard whether you know every line or have never read the original. It is a beautiful fable about war, trauma, and what it means to keep those you love safe, a book as deep and layered as the mere within it. Anton B.

The Immeasurable World - Will Atkins

Interested in “the axis where the absolute coexists with the infinite,” in The Immeasurable World Atkins reports from deserts worldwide, focusing on nature, native culture, history, explorers, and new rituals, like Burning Man. Overall, his emphasis is spiritual. He stays in monasteries, delves into China’s Caves of the Thousand Buddhas and writes poignantly about the nuclear tests that left the Great Victorian Desert a radioactive wasteland, robbing Indigenous peoples of a landscape so sacred they made no distinction between desert and Ancestors. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book, but Atkins leaves many indelible moments: an eagle blinded by an atomic flash, the stages of dehydration, an evaporated lake like “an eyeless socket,” the untold numbers of migrants lost in the Sonoran Desert. Laurie G.

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs - Steve Brusatte

Like many other former 7-year-olds, I was once a dinosaur obsessive. With Jurassic Park roosting in the VCR, I would give any grown-up in earshot a rundown of my favorite dinosaurs (this changed daily) and what periods they lived in. If you're anything like me, a page or two into Steve Brusatte's prehistoric masterpiece The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs will be enough to bring back the kid in you. Brusatte presents the Mesozoic in vivid detail and with an immediacy not often reserved for a period that ended 65 million years ago. From spindly, cat-sized lizards at the beginning of the Triassic to thundering giants at the end of the Cretaceous, dinosaurs were a highly diverse, sophisticated species whose millions of years of earthly dominance help put our world and lives in far greater perspective. Isaac S.

The Hospital - Ahmed Bouanani

Upcoming Event at Politics and Prose at Union Market with translator Lara Vergnaud, Wednesday, September 5, 2018 - 7 p.m.

All readers should rejoice at the sudden burst of writing newly available from Moroccan master Ahmed Bouanani, a long-neglected (and long-reclusive) late writer and filmmaker with a beautiful ear for the active mind’s poetic streams. In The Hospital, a man finds himself in a hospital ward with other male invalids of all ages and backgrounds. While it might sound like a sad place, and while it does inspire many surreal nightmare visions, it’s also revivifying in other ways—a perfect spot for imagination and self-creation, and full of wonderful characters with equally wonderful names: the Guzzler, the Rover, and many more. And it’s all brought into lovely English by phenomenal D.C. based translator Lara Vergnaud. Jonathan W.

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin - Timothy Snyder

In Bloodlands, Timothy Snyder argues that the Holocaust is just one part of a larger tragedy: that of the deaths of 14 million--not one a result of combat--in the vast area between Berlin and Moscow. Snyder not only provides an excellent account of World War II on the Eastern front but illuminates the humanity in the countless lives lost due to Hitler’s and Stalin’s cruel policies. Snyder asks each of us not just to condemn but to understand the motivations behind these14 million deaths--so that we make sure we neither forget nor repeat these horrors. Katie W.

#staff picks #bloodlands #books #tbr

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finding-jericho-blog · 6 years

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6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 30, 35 (u already know which good bean :’) ), 54 ❤️

THANK YOU FOR ASKING I LOVE YOU

6. Favorite character you ever created.I have a lot of characters that are dear to my heart; I have a soft spot for them, especially because I created them when I was young and I’ve had them all these years, but they aren’t… GOOD characters by my (or anyone’s really) standards, so I don’t use them. I love by DBH oc Aurora, she’s a good little android babbu, feel free to ask me about her sometime, I love my other DBH oc Grace, though I had a falling out with the writer I was role playing her with so.. I kind of have a bad taste in my mouth about her at the moment. I love my Boku No Hero Academia oc Mitsuko!! She’s freakin rad??? But I THINK my favorite… has to be Bree.

10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about.Um, I PICK YOU! Let’s write a DBH sequel! >:D

15. Where does your inspiration come from?Pretty much all of my inspiration comes from the various movies, shows, games, etc. that I’m into. It’s just so inspiring to see these fleshed out worlds and the characters that live there and that’s what aspire to do, to tell interesting stories with wonderful, life-like characters that people can REALLY get behind!

16. Where do you take your motivation from?I mostly take it from my own enjoyment! That’s kind of obvious though, because this is what I enjoy doing, and if I didn’t, I.. wouldn’t do it? XD But knowing other people enjoy what I do FOR FUN is really motivating, so that’s a big part of it!

17. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?Depends on what I’m writing! If I’m working on d e v i a n t s (Lauren’s and I’s role play), then upwards of 3,000! For Empathy or Same Difference, it really depends, but.. I’d say around 2,000 before I quit for the day.

30. Favorite line you’ve ever written.What a terribly cruel way to catch deviants, she thought, to lure them into a false sense of security with such a kind and sincere looking face. She wanted to trust him; that was the worst part.

This was so hard to pick but… this line is from a role play with my character Aurora; she’s a WE900, designed to keep the company of high school and college students, so she’s kind of… just a kid, and Connor and the DPD has her cornered her; if she makes a run for it, they will definitely shoot her down and kill her right on the spot, and Connor, who is beginning to show signs of deviancy himself, holds his hand out and begs her to just go with him quietly and he’ll make sure they don’t kill her; not here, anyway. He begs her to trust him, and she wants to, so badly.

Unfortunately, this role play went nowhere and the partner stopped logging in, otherwise it would have been fun to explore a sort of.. brotherly/sisterly relationship between Connor and Aurora!

35. Tell some backstory details about one of your characters in your story BREE.Hoh boy okay, hopefully people don’t mind me talking about Bree since she’s kind of a “cliche” and there are some minor changes to canon you and I decided on to make this work. Aubree Kamski is the daughter of Elijah, she was born at a time where Elijah was at his busiest, right on the verge of discovering Thirium 310; he wasn’t even there for her birth, and afterwards her mother just kind of fucked off to who knows where. Some of his associates at CyberLife actually took care of her until he finally successfully created Chloe, who then not only became his personal assistant, but became Bree’s surrogate mother. They made sure Bree made no mistake in thinking Chloe was her mother, though, and from an early age she realized that Chloe didn’t (couldn’t) actually LOVE her; she was just a machine. Despite the general lack of affection in her life, Bree always did what she was told, and a friend of Elijah’s, Carl Manfred, once said that she was the saddest, most lifeless child he’d ever seen and berated his friend for treating her like one of his creations. The only time Bree can remember Elijah actively trying to be part of her life was when he was teaching her things about his androids and his company (he assumed she would take his place one day), and studying her behavior for the purpose of creating the ‘perfect child’ android; for that reason, Bree has a soft spot for the children models, as if they are little siblings. The day she turned 18, Bree pretty much said fuck this shit I’m out and left, and hasn’t spoken to Elijah since, despite Chloe’s continual attempts to make contact. Basically, she was tired of being his show pony and got fed up with being the perfect daughter, but she didn’t go buck wild or anything; Bree just lived quietly on her own and spent most of her days sitting in a local cafe reading whatever book she could get her hands on. Due to her general mistrust of people, who were (in her eyes) only ever nice to her to get to her father, Bree never really made 'friends’ with anyone except the barista at this cafe, an android named Ross. One day, however, a certain violent WR400 thought it would be a wonderful idea to try and use her as leverage to make Elijah admit to the masses that androids are awake and aware…

50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.Okay, bear with me on this one, because I saved this in my notes when I’d gone 24 hours without sleep and it might not make any sense! X’D

When especially cruel people die, they turn into dragons for a second chance; it’s a curse, they are turned into the worst, most fearsome creatures, they cannot speak, and can only do their best to make up for whatever wrong they did. These dragons have a gemstone imbedded in their chest and their color scheme is based around that gem?? Kind of like steven universe I guess fuck me anyway the more acts of genuine kindness, the smaller a dragon is. So in other words, a HUGE dragon is incredibly cruel. But the bigger they are, the easier they are to kill, and the smaller they are, the more hardy they are.

When the dragon is very small, one more act of genuine kindness reduces them to only their gemstone thing, which depends on the returned act of kindness of people around them the take it to some temple or whatever for it to be concentrated. They can either chose to move on and release their spirits, or return to their previous human forms. If the human who finds their gem and is not kind, the gem can be crafted into a necklace/other jewlery and that person can USE that necklace to turn into a dragon, themselves?? idk

Also if a dragon is killed, they leave behind their gemstone as well and their spirits cannot move on, these gems can also be used to create necklaces, BUT. the spirit of the dragon can possess the wearer and turn THEM into a dragon???

#asks #deviantramblings #friends #<3 #this was so much writing omg #was still fun tho #xD

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minaminokyoko · 6 years

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Favourite avengers movies scenes?

How on earth do you expect me to ever narrow down enough to not list the entire trilogy in general? Holy hell. I am a big fat Marvel fangirl and I could write a fucking dissertation on scenes complete with charts and graphs. For the sake of argument, let me see if I can at the very least just highlight the tippy top favorite moments from the first three Avengers films. Keep in mind, I fucking love all three of them to death and could rave about them for days at a time.

The Avengers

-Loki’s confrontation with Nick Fury. This scene sets the tone for the rest of the film so fucking well, man. It’s just brilliantly done to see that whatever humanity that we saw in Loki in Thor has pretty much flown out the window and he’s here to wreak havoc and start a war, and he doesn’t care how many people he destroys in the process. I also like that it shows the vast gap in power and experience between the SHIELD agents and an Asgardian. Loki all but flattens everyone in a matter of seconds. Seeing him among other Asgardians can kind of make you forget he’s literally a thousand year old god and is tough as nails. He’s also low down and ruthless and that’s the kind of thing that is scary as hell when you realize that’s what they’re all up against.

-Nat’s “interrogation” with the Russians. I actually love every single Avenger’s introduction scene, but this one is so delightful in that Nat shows us just why she is an Avenger even though she has no enhanced abilities: deception, manipulation, and just being an incredibly agile combat expert. I am most delighted with her scene because before Avengers, I had no regard for Nat at all and thought she was just fanservice, but here, she completely proved her worth as a character and to the team, and I got on board as a fan of her just from her opening scene wiping the floor with these idiot Russian dudes.

-Tony and Bruce getting to know each other in the lab. From a character standpoint, this is an outstanding scene. Tony is trying to draw Bruce out of his shell, and the sympathy and empathy he has for him is so palpable that it’s why we all dubbed them the Science Bros and why it’s one of the best friendships in the Avengers. Tony is so awesome for joking with Bruce and treating him like a normal person and reminding him that there is at least one person aboard that helicarrier who doesn’t see him as some terrifying monster and knows just from reading up on him that he’s not a bad person. It’s so charming and wonderful.

-Stuttgart. Man. Man, oh man, this is a well done scene. The build up to Loki’s horrifying actions is so great and so is this freaking diva’s grandstanding once he demands the poor, confused Germans kneel before him. It’s fascinating to me because Loki has an almost childlike need for attention, as if his frustrations with his failure to take over Asgard as king has manifested itself into this very basic need to be acknowledged as being a powerful threat. Loki could kill an average human being with a flick of his wrist. His comparison of “an ant has no quarrel with a boot” while cruel is accurate, but here’s the thing, Loki: if you fuck with enough fucking ants, you can get your ass into a lot of trouble, and we’re fireants, not sugar ants, buddy. And ants who band together get shit done. The old man who stood up to him, in my book, is a fucking hero all on his own and I think it’s one of the most well crafted pieces of dialogue in the entire MCU. “There are no men like me.” “There are always men like you.” Oh, standing ovation for that piece of dialogue. Give it an Oscar. Then Cap swinging in to kick ass and Tony swooping in beside him with an equally over the top entrance to Loki’s was the icing on the fucking cake.

-Thor retrieving Loki. Hnnnnnnngh, okay, so here’s the thing: I fucking love Thor and Loki’s relationship even before Ragnarok came out and upgraded it. Thor is and always has been since his first movie a man with very deep emotions who loves and loves deeply with all his heart, and his confrontation with Loki just wounds me so much. How Thor throws Loki to the ground and yet yanks him to his feet and just holds him there, his hand on his face, looking so torn between agony and relief that his brother is alive. “I thought you dead.” “Did you mourn?” Fuck me, this scene is absolutely brutal to my feels. Thor and Loki’s debate was nothing short of excellent as Thor tries to bring Loki around, and the thing is, he means it. He means every fucking word, that he would take the Tesseract and bring his brother home, and he doesn’t care about facing the music, he just wants his goddamn brother back even after all Loki has done so far in the story. Y’all better stop sleeping on Thor, man. His heart is by far the best thing about him, forget all the delicious muscles and that perfect teddy bear smile. Thor has miles and miles of heart, and that’s why I love this scene so much.

-Nat tricking Loki into revealing his plan. This scene is so good I based an entire goddamn fanfic around its premise. Dude. Nat fucking Romanov, y’all. I love how this scene is staged and executed. I love Loki starting out almost gentle and conversational, as if for once he’s going to just be an actual person and not a monster, and then he slips back into that nasty egotistical megalomaniac when he thinks he has one over on Nat. And then Nat fucking schools him. It’s why I have a personal headcanon that he developed a hatecrush on her after she, a mere mortal, tricked the goddamn God of Mischief. It solidified Nat as one of my favorite female heroes forever. I loved seeing her use that feminine “weakness” to let him run his mouth. I also love that his cruel words did in fact affect her and motivated her even more to both save Clint and to go to war with Loki at the end.

-The whole ass helicarrier attack sequence. I mean, I don’t even need to go into detail. You already know.

-Tony confronting Loki. This is the scene that assured us that what followed would be one of the greatest fight sequences in cinematic history. I pretty much have most of Tony’s dialogue memorized because it had such an effective impact on me from a storytelling standpoint. Tony standing up to Loki as a mortal man with no suit, candidly threatening him with barely suppressed rage that Loki murdered Coulson, a comrade, in cold blood, is downright amazing.

-The battle of New York. Boom. Again, no words necessary. Perfect fucking sequence from start to finish.

-Thor trying one last damn time to bring Loki around. Oh, my heart. My poor fucking heart. Thor really loves his brother and he would do anything to have him back. Is it naive? Yes. But it’s also a beautiful statement of what family truly means to Thor and it breaks my heart. The fact that a tear slides down Loki’s face when he stabs Thor and mutters, “Sentiment” is so not cool. As much as Loki pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf, there is something still young and human inside of him even though he pretends it isn’t there. All my creys.

-Hulk trouncing Loki. I went and saw The Avengers three times in theaters, and two out of the three times, everyone cheered so loud I didn’t hear the Hulk say “puny god” over all the noise. It was that satisfying a scene.

Age of Ultron

-The entire beginning sequence. Fucking loved it. What masterful ass-kicking and showcasing of the team dynamic. It made me want a longer lead in to how they all got reunited because it was so enjoyable. “Language!” Oh, Cap.

-Jarvis and Ultron’s first scene together. Dude. James fuckin’ Spader, man. I never knew I could be so intimidated by a man’s voice. It was so unsettling for so many reasons, the resentment, irrationality, and anger from his unusual birth and creation. It was all the more frightening when he turned on Jarvis, and at the time, we didn’t know he hadn’t killed our beloved butler.

-Picking up Mjolnir. This scene needs no elaboration. It’s just perfection. Even people who complain about Age of Ultron admit this scene is just flawless.

-The team confronting Tony over creating Ultron. Cap’s line, which we now know goes even further after the events of Infinity War, just make me want to die. “We’ll lose.” “Then we’ll do that together, too.” Tony’s face, realizing that Cap doesn’t care that he fucked up–he cares that Tony couldn’t trust the team enough to let them in on what he was dealing with–is soul-crushing. Tony realizes he was wrong to assume instead of being honest with them.

-The confrontation in Wakanda. Everything about it was badass and it hits you right where you live seeing the Avengers having to face their biggest regrets and most painful moments of their pasts. Especially Steve’s. The image of him and Peggy finally getting their dance was so not okay. Special props to Tony in the Hulkbuster armor. That was one hell of a fucking brawl.

-The Sokovia final battle. There are just so many awesome points in the final battle sequence, man. Everyone is out there just kicking ass and doing what they do best. Special props to Hawkeye getting through to Wanda, and Hawkeye’s “nobody would know…nobody” moment with Pietro.

Infinity War

Disclaimer: I have no idea how to isolate moments in a movie that is by far one of the most well written comic book movies since The Dark Knight, but I guess since you asked, I have to try anyway. Hoo boy. Strap in.

-Loki’s death. Let me explain something to you: I went entire years without caring about Loki, and then around the time The Dark World came out, I slowly became converted to both a Tom Hiddleston and a Loki fan, and then after Ragnarok, he finally just seduced me completely to being smitten with his stupid trashy self. It is important that you realize that I recognize that Loki is a selfish, inferiority complex-having, murdering bastard and I do not excuse a goddamn thing he does because of his fucking Daddy issues. That being said, in spite of how much of a flaming trashbag he is, I love him anyway, and I tried for months to tell myself that I knew as a fellow writer that Loki was going to die in Infinity War. It was assured not only from the trailer, but from me knowing that his character arc was always going to end with his death. What hurt most of all is that, as I predicted, Loki died trying to save Thor. I cried my eyes out. Hell, once Thanos closed his hand around Loki’s neck, I covered my eyes because I just didn’t have it in me to see it end this way for him and for Thor. Thor being helpless to stop it is truly what made it worse. There is nothing on heaven or earth Thor wouldn’t do for Loki, even knowing how wicked Loki is. And the fact that Loki couldn’t let Thanos kill Thor after all these two have been through was like an icepick through my heart. Loki wouldn’t have died protecting Thor if Thor had not loved him unconditionally this entire time we’ve watched their story. Thor’s love did have an effect on Loki throughout these films, and that’s why I literally burst into sobs and couldn’t bear to see him die that way. It is one of the most gut wrenching things ever put to film, and certainly in the MCU. I’ve only had the stomach to watch that scene twice because it hurts me so much, and neither time was I strong enough to actually watch Loki’s final moments. Goddamn, it’s just so painful. Capped off with Thor slowly crawling over to his brother to be with him one last time before the ship explodes and just laying his head on his chest in the kind of grief that honestly should get Hemsworth a fucking Oscar. Bravo.

-Cap, Widow, and Falcon reuniting with Vision and Wanda. Holy shit, yes. This fight was gorgeous, gripping, and fucking awesome. Special props to Cap and Widow being the ride or die Avengers Mom and Dad team. We can infer from their actions that the two of them have been together since the end of Civil War possibly, so you can not tell me Cap and Widow are not a thing on some level. Captasha all day, err day. They perfectly compliment each other and I headcanon that they’re together and no one will convince me otherwise.

-”We’ll fight you too.”/”We don’t trade lives.” That sound you hear is me screeching. Some people have said Cap wasn’t given a ton to do this time around, and I emphatically protest it simply because, yes, he has less screentime, but man, he does so much work in this role that reminds us of why we all love Captain America. His values mean so much. Cap will lay down his life in the blink of an eye for someone who needs it. He cares so deeply. He is the pinnacle of selflessness and it’s so important to see in this film.

-Thor meeting the Guardians. Perfection. Just…perfection.

-Irondad and Spiderson aboard the Space Donut. Jesus fucking Christ, I am so on board for Irondad and Spiderson that it’s insane. I love that entire fucking interaction from start to finish. I love Tony’s strict, fatherly anger and exasperation because he just wants his baby boy to be safe on earth while he’s on another suicide mission, but the baby boy wants to help his dad out and baby boy also doesn’t quite realize the consequences because he’s too young. Extra points for Tony’s death-glare after Parker says, “It’s kind of your fault I’m here” and the fact that even the fucking cloak did a double take at Parker when he said it. Oh, it’s so perfect.

-Gamora making Peter promise to kill her if Thanos gets to her. I just…I want to die. This was so beautifully done, and so in character for both of them, and Peter and Gamora are just so soft and sweet and in love that it’s so overwhelming. At the very least, I take a small comfort in knowing that they were a happy family for four years before this shit happened to them.

-Gamora “killing” Thanos. Again, can we just award Oscars to like half the fucking cast in this movie? Jesus Christ, I cried at this scene too because the fact that she’s just completely unraveled as she finally thinks she’s killed her goddamn abuser is so deeply tragic. Gamora is my favorite Guardian. Hands down. She is so three dimensional. She tries so hard and she is so much more than the deadliest woman in the galaxy. She is so complex and it is the worst pain ever to know that Peter actually kept his promise and tried to kill her to prevent her from being in the hands of her abuser again and Thanos foiled their plan, and had the fucking nerve to say, “I like him” before he took her again.

-”It’ll kill you.” “Only if I die.” “…yes, that’s what killing you means.”

-The battle of Wakanda. Motherfucker. This is some A+++ motherfucking good shit hurr. What always gets me hype as hell is Cap and T’Challa sprinting down the goddamn hill at 80 mph and I just can’t even handle that shit because it was so good and satisfying. Everything about this battle was incredible.

-The battle on Titan. Same thing. It’s so creative and well crafted and amazing. You feel every blow. You flinch. You want them to beat that son of a bitch but he’s just so fucking strong. It is an incredibly engaging fight, man. Hoo boy.

-Thor’s entrance to the battle of Wakanda. I distinctly remember the entire audience going absolutely apeshit during this scene the night Infinity War premiered. Like the first Avengers, I saw it three times in theaters, and two out of the three times, the crowd went fucking wild. That was so fucking satisfying, man, as are the neat little scenes of levity with Cap introducing himself to Groot and Cap and Thor remarking on each other’s changes in appearance. It was so pure and good and perfect.

-Cap squaring up with Thanos. I. Can’t. Breathe. It was so powerful. Like the above scene of “we don’t trade lives,” this is why we love Captain America. Why we love Steve Rogers. This man, this mortal human man, took one goddamn fucking look at that twelve foot all powerful alien giant and said, “Not today, bitch.” Steve fucking Rogers stood there and took it. He put his life on the goddamn line for Wanda, and for Vision, and for the rest of the universe, and he actually held that goddamn line for a moment. The incredulous look on Thanos’ face is what seals it. He is utterly confused that this little man is actually holding him back, that this mere mortal doesn’t give a fuck that he can’t overpower him, but he is giving it his all because that is who he is. Steve will not quit. Steve will not falter. Steve will die doing what’s right and that is one of the most moving things in the whole MCU, imo. He just planted his feet and said, “No, you move.” I know we saw that scene in the trailer, but it was so unbelievable to see it in context that Cap gave it everything he had trying to protect Wanda and the rest of the universe, and I still get choked up just thinking about that shit.

Welp, you asked for it and now you have it. I told you I was gonna rave, man. God bless anyone who actually read this nonsense. Marvel had me at hello with these characters and they have way too much sway over my emotions, as you can see above. Ten years, man. Ten years.

#The Avengers #Avengers #Avengers Age of Ultron #Infinity War

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ultralifehackerguru-blog · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://www.lifehacker.guru/patrick-melrose-how-benedict-cumberbatch-climbed-inside-his-favorite-antihero/

Patrick Melrose: How Benedict Cumberbatch Climbed Inside His Favorite Antihero

To prepare for his harrowing role as an addict in the Showtime limited series, Cumberbatch had to ask the tough questions: “Injecting cocaine: what is that like? Why would you do that?”

Benedict Cumberbatch on the set of Patrick Melrose

Photo by Julian Broad

As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’s HWD team is once again diving deep into how some of this season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.

PATRICK MELROSE, PATRICK MELROSE

When a fan asked Benedict Cumberbatch during a 2013 Reddit A.M.A. what literary character he’d most like to play, he offered a definitive answer: Patrick Melrose, the brilliant, damaged vortex around which Edward St. Aubyn’sdevastating quintet of autobiographical novels swirl. The books—and now Patrick Melrose, the gorgeously harrowing Showtime limited series based on them—trace the life of this charismatic upper-class Englishman as he tries to wrestle free from the damage imposed on him in childhood by his monstrous father and learn how to lead a meaningful adult life.

When Cumberbatch rhapsodized about the character on a recent phone call, he spoke so quickly that my ear could hardly take it all in. Which was appropriate enough, since Patrick Melrose wraps himself in language, using words as a both a shield and a life raft. “They are very, very funny novels,” Cumberbatch said, “and there are very funny bits which turn on a knife’s edge, 180 degrees, into tragedy.”

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As an example, Cumberbatch pointed to a scene in the first episode in which the drug-addled, twentysomething Patrick views his father’s corpse at a funeral parlor. He unwraps the body, which has been discreetly covered with tissue paper, turning a grim moment into an exaggeratedly comic scene. “He starts having this dialogue with somebody who’s not there, thanking them for the present of his dead dad—and then he’s fully triggered into this memory of the trauma of being raped by his father. . . . That happens in the space of about 20 seconds him on the page,” said Cumberbatch. “When you get prose as deep and rich and profoundly revealing of a character’s nature, you’re really spoiled as an actor. So much of your background research, your development of deeper psychology, and internal-thought processes and psychology—it’s there on the page. And this man’s salvation comes through a huge amount self-examination. So I just always, always went back to the book on pretty much every level.”

HOW HE CAME TO LIFE

St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels have been picking up fans since he published the first in the series, Never Mind, in 1992. (The fourth installment, 2005’s Mother’s Milk, was nominated for a Booker Prize). So much of their pleasure derives from St. Aubyn’s prose that adapting them for the screen seemed like a doomed undertaking. Yet screenwriter and novelist David Nicholls bravely took on the challenge—which wound up consuming more than half a decade. The resulting limited series covers Patrick’s life from sensitive child to middle-aged parent struggling to break the cycle of abuse, with his debauched, twentysomething years serving as fodder for the intense opening episode. Certain essential qualities run through Patrick’s entire life, Nicholls pointed out in a separate interview: “The desire to be better, to be less separate from the world, to be less ironic and sardonic, less disengaged.”

Nicholls said he always had Cumberbatch in his head as he wrote Patrick Melrose,even before the actor independently expressed interest in an adaptation. The two men had worked together on Starter for 10, the 2006 British film based on Nicholls’s novel, in which Cumberbatch played a supporting role as the prissy captain of a university quiz-show team—an amusing but two-dimensional character, the kind of work Cumberbatch was beginning to find frustrating and limiting. “Benedict was clearly something special, but everyone also had the sense that he is one of those clowns who could also play Hamlet,” Nicholls said.

As it happens, the tormented Danish prince is precisely who came to mind when Nicholls embarked on translating Patrick Melrose for the small screen. The two characters have a lot in common, not least father issues and a complex relationship with their mothers. There’s also “the potential for frighteningly cruel behavior coupled with a desire—I think it’s a sincere desire—to do the right thing. And certainly the soliloquizing, the playing with ideas, is so much a part of [the books].”

Cumberbatch spent a great deal of time getting to know the author, “Teddy” St. Aubyn, while immersing himself in the role of Patrick. “I asked him about things I won’t go into in an interview, of a very personal nature,” Cumberbatch said, as well as more specific questions about drug addiction. “For example, injecting cocaine: What the fuck is that like? I mean, why would you do that? Why would you do that, and how would you do that? What would happen when you did that? How longwould it happen?” He rattled off those queries at top speed, as if tapping into a sense memory.

“There’s a sort of ringing quality to the way Teddy speaks—everything is very carefully considered, and you’ll drive through until the end of the sentence,” Cumberbatch continued. “They are beautiful sentences. He speaks with the same language he writes with. It’s a joy to be in conversation with the man.”

Patrick Melrose is more than just a character study; it’s also a harsh dissection of British mores. “It captures so much of the hypocrisy and cynicism and sickness” of the upper class, which “hides its secrets and confesses to nothing,” Cumberbatch said. Patrick’s father, David (Hugo Weaving), is a sadistic aesthete who has taken up cruelty in place of a profession. (“What redeemed life from complete horror was the almost unlimited number of things to be nasty about,” David proposes in Never Mind, the first book in the sequence.) His mother, Eleanor (Jennifer Jason Leigh), is a crushed heiress who has seceded from reality.

They are surrounded by equally horrifying members of the aristocracy—most notably, Princess Margaret (Harriet Walker), who in one episode appears as the guest of honor at a fancy dinner party. Far from the chic figure we know from The Crown, the princess here humiliates the French dignitary sitting next to her and callously dismisses the hosts’ young daughter when the girl shyly approaches in hope of meeting a royal. It is Patrick who kindly comes to the little girl’s rescue, seeing in her traces of his old sweet self, ignored by the adults and neglected by his parents.

Cumberbatch said that he too had glimpsed the codes and rituals of high society, through the posh world of his grandmother (“not that she was like that—she was a deeply caring and loving person,” he hastened to add) and his time at Harrow, one of Britain’s most elite boarding schools. “That world was definitely around me, but I wasn’t ever really fully engaged in it.”

Making sure Cumberbatch looked the part was also crucial. According to costume designer Keith Madden, Patrick comes from a British upper class that doesn’t follow fashion, but favors traditional dress that might be embellished with a twist of eccentricity. Colored socks, he said, are “the seal of the aristocratic upper classes.” Patrick may look imperturbable, but Madden hoped to suggest a juxtaposition between his fancy dress and his sordid reality—meetings with drug dealers, descents into a speedball-induced state of madness.

Beyond that, Madden looked to St. Aubyn himself for guidance. “I was privy to some photographs that Benedict showed me of Edward St. Aubyn as a young boy, and then as a young man in the 80s. So, that’s where a lot of the inspiration came from—even the shape of the sunglasses, and the striped shirts, and the pale stone-wash jeans of the time,” he said. Sometimes the author himself would visit the set, “and it would be funny, because he would be wearing something very similar to what Benedict would be wearing in the scene,” Madden said. “I would say, ‘Yeah, we’ve got it right!’”

Cumberbatch confessed that it’s a great relief to have done justice to St. Aubyn’s creation. “I felt a sort of double responsibility,” he said—not just as an actor bringing the character to life, “but also as a reader to other readers of these novels. I do think he’s written some of the best prose of the 21st century, if not the best—and one of my desires is to bring these works to the widest audience.”

Photos: On the Set of Showtime’s Patrick Melrose

Benedict Cumberbatch stars as the title character in the forthcoming mini-series Patrick Melrose.

Photo: Photograph by Julian Broad.

(C)

#Benedict Cumberbatch #Lifestyle #Patrick Melrose #tv shows

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kazdumps · 3 years

Text

Our Nature

A peculiar fellow is Mr. Angle but all groundskeepers of a cemetery ought to be. Working along with the dead under you is not something a "normal" person could do. At least the people who pass by him say those things. Once, which is only a few moments ago, he heard a group of teens talking about his unusual behavior. He confronted them, as he was not a man scared to speak when he heard unjust talk (though he's not social by any stretch of the imagination).

"And what exactly is normal?" He smiles a wide grin exposing crooked blackened teeth. Mr. Angle's hair was greeseily in tangles upon his head. The teens had not heard him creep up behind them ("Creep?" He would later be appalled by the word being used to describe how he surprised the youth. "Appeared, is more accurate old friend," He'd correct but it would be ignored) and swiftly ran away. Mr. Angle never got his answer but he's sure they would've been wrong anyway.

"Normal is what society deems and it changes constantly. Rapidly even. There is no consistent variable," Mr. Angle answers still grinning. They weren't bad kids and they'd either grow out of being judgmental or keep it to themselves.

"If they grow up; you never know when I may strike," Angle's companion arrives in the same method of which he creeped ("I did not-") behind the kids (" So if you say I've crept then you must've as well!" He would later exclaim. "I always creep. I'm rather creepy" the friend would respond").

"Time is up already? What a shame; also I thought I told you not to read my mind. It's for me and Her and no one else. Not even you, Death"

"I wouldn't read it if your mind wasn't shouting all the time. You wear nothing on your sleeve but part of you is desperately trying to reach out. Luckily, or unlucky, I can hear your true voice. And do you know what I think?" Death says; he, to human standards, is more appealing then Mr. Angle (at least the Mr. Angle as a groundskeeper who wore ragged clothes and kept his his appearance as untidy as can be) even if he changes his form constantly (as society changes along with it). His hair,on this occasion, is a flowing red waterfall. His eyes at first glance may be blue but another will argue it's green. Purple, someone will shout but they're quickly shut up; who in this world has purple eyes. Most agree on that he wears contacts but a clever few will delve into various superstitions. Death's favorite is when they call him a ghost; funny that people can grasp mortality but don't think it applies to them. For if you see Death's eyes, you won't have much time to contemplate them.

"I don't intrude on other people; so no,"

"You need to talk to more people! Even I talk to humans before I release them! All of them have something to say and there's bound to be at least one with something nice," Death says tugging on the string on his dark hoodie. Hoodies were much more comfortable then cloaks and attracted less attention.

"I talk to some others-" Mr. Angle begins to defend himself, as he always does.

"You don't talk to mortals; you've spent so much time stalking them I bet you can't even hold a conversation with one,"

"You use such cruel words, old friend, stalking- how horrid. You make me sound like a sinner,"

"Well you aren't the most pleasant person in thier eyes. Both mortal and not,"

"Are you saying other Angels don't believe I'm pleasant? I can assure-"

"Don't get your wings in a flutter. Other immortals whether that be me, angels, or any other being like us," Death sighs, placing a hand on his companion's shoulder (he didn't get physical touch often but with someone like Angle it wouldn't hurt either party). "I must depart someone...please consider at least some of my words," With that Death has disappeared just like how he arrived. In a blink of an eye.

"I talk to people," Mr. Angle stares outloud glancing at his watch. His work day is over and it was time to attend to his next job. One not even Death knew he has. "At least they're like people. They're rebellious like them and have free will and everything that people have. They're just more...evil,".

Dr. Grey is just as peculiar as Mr. Angle but for a completely differnt reason as he always is rather pleasant. Dr. Grey has never lost a patient that was in his care. Everyone is relived in hearing he'll be thier surgeon. He's delivered in the most helpless of cases and the mothers with new babies are in perfect health. Many other medical professionals look up to him. He is the definition of "The Good Doctor".

"Even the most skilled has lost someone- But Dr. Grey you've performed what most can only consider miracles; how do you do it?" A reporter asks as he tries to head toward his car. He just performed another successful heart transplant and the press crowded him.

"I guess it's just luck and practice- and I'm sure there are other doctors who are just as-or better then I am," Dr. Grey says scooting around the crowd but still answering questions to the best of his abilities. 'To the best I'm allowed' he slightly says to himself. He loves to talk to people but not about his own accomplishments; it makes his stomache twist in guilt and fear. Pride is a deadly sin and he'd never went to indulge in it.

"Dr. Grey! Some people are calling you the god of medicine; what do you think of this honorable nickname?" Another reporter asks shoving a microphone at his face.

"Honorable yes- but not accurate. I'm no god! Trust me on that!" He gives a smile but underneath layers of fear pile on. He wonders if these people were sent to make him break the rules. If any minute when he slipped up they'd push him into a fiery death. Or at least he would.

"Dr. Grey! Dr. Grey we need to-" Voices drown out each other trying to hold the good doctors attention for a little bit longer. Even if he is popular among the community people rarely heard about his methods.

A boy, only about fourteen or fifte inen, is the final one in his way. He stands at his car door not budging from his postion.

"I'm in a bit of a hurry to get home; I have to meet someone today. If you or a family member have any medical concerns you can call my office. My receptionist will make an appointment for you," Dr. Grey explains.

"Don't need none of that. Just a question wanted to ask ya. Nobody can do what you do. Did you sell your soul to the devil or somethin' ".

He opens his mouth to say something but promptly shuts it. What was there to say? He wasn't sure if what he has done counts as selling your soul but either way this wasn't the reason he helped people (nor the reason he was famous) and it wasn't Satan who controls his every move.

"My Dad said that a boy sold his soul to play the guitar real good so I thought maybe you did with yours?" Before Dr. Grey can think of a suitable reply the boy is pushed out of the way of the door. Taking the opportunity he gets in the vehicle letting out a breath of relief.

He has to meet that angel today and he'd rather not anger him by being late; it could cost him his life.

Dr. Grey drowns out his anxieties by turning on his radio. Music, he long ago decided, is man's greatest art form second only to literature. Instead of melodies though the radio crackles a lone person talking about all the negatives of the world. It seems to be all that newscasters want to talk about, even in times of relative goodness; they'd always find a way to spin a twist for a more "interesting" report.

"I witnessed a mother giving birth to her daughter while her wife waited outside. I saw a waitress get paid a tip of sixty percent and it was enough to pay her bills on time. I see time and time and time again people hold doors for the others before them. Everyone is filled with so much joy and yet you imbeciles never report any of that!" It's unusual that he feels such anger, especially over something that has happened since the dawn of its creation.

This building up anger is due to several reasons. The first of which being that he was running late. Untimelyness isn't a sin per say but sloth is; Grey is certain that angel has been looking for a reason to smite him out of existence since they first met. So being late is definitely a no go.

The second reason for all this tenseness (even though it came out as anger his feelings were rather mixed) is the press. It seems every day Dr. Grey gets more and more popular. Pride is a sin and pride comes around with popularity. It's the reason most celebrities think they're all that. Not only that but envy could come from him being popular too. He already noticied how his coworkers look at him with admiration. Surely, though, one heart would be poisoned with vanity. If he lead a human too hell- Grey shakes his head at the notion. There isn't hint of doubt in his mind that would lead to destruction too.

Then there is his anger- anger making him angry if this was I one of his books he'd find it quite funny- which leads to wrath. Not that he couldn't accuse the angel of holding wrath in his heart, a bitter hypocrite is Heaven, but that would do no good and hold the same result.

The last thing that troubles him, besides the annoying radio (why a predomintly talking channel was on in the first place is a mystery itself), has to do with his most recent patient; Ashely Sage. A lovely girl who has been dealt all the wrong cards in life. She's only fourteen and is two months pregnant. Dr. Grey did not press her on the matters but picked up that she did not "sleep" with this man by choice. Now that is enough to tug on his heart strings but her unpleasant tale doesn't end there. No the worst part of this all is because of her parents flawed thinking she will be forced to carry out the pregnancy.

He couldn't help her and that's what pushes his mood over the edge; no her life wouldn't be perfect with an abortion but keeping an unwanted baby doesn't help her any more. On top of that he's pretty postive the child won't even been given up for adoption. The poor girl has barely lived her life and now is forced into a role as a mother.

It sickens him- the rapist, the parents, a the flawed ideology under the guise of being "True Cristians". True Conservatives more like it- he knew an Angel and he would be horrified if he heard how humans interrupted and use the word of God. Or maybe he already knew of people like that and ignored it. He doesn't talk to people much.

Dr. Grey finds it a cruel sort of irony, that he knows more about good and would rather people participate in good, then most. Being a Demon and all and finding this very horrific always held irony. In some cases, where he was drunk and felt brave, he'd laugh at it. That he had a sound moral compass yet the ones who "served god" didn't. This case though? He just feels a very deep pang in his chest. One that stays with him the entire drive home.

Mr. Angle is finished with his "mortal" job which means he ought to be finished with his appearance. As he sits down in his vehicle his teeth were no longer black nor rotten, his ragged hair is slicked back, he smelled pleasantly of pine, and he dons a dark blue polo complete with kakhi pants. In colder months he may have worn his tinged pink sweater but the heat prevents that today.

"Kept me here ten minutes past, Death, damn your conversations- always keeping me late," He curses under his breath starting his car up. Car might not be an accurate description for his pitch black long vehicle from 1958; a retired hearse is better. It bore a scratch along it's left side but beside that it's perfect. Not only that but it kept most people off Angle's tailend.

He turns on the radio only to turn it back off. A stupid sob story was being told.

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