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gunsli-01 · 2 years

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Whelp since Mu isn't going to be on trial until January that means no Mikoto anytime soon booo- Though that also means no Kotoko either. So, while I procrastinate writing that exceptionally long Mikoto examination. Let’s go over Anti Beat in comparison to Harrow and the information that has been gathered on Kotoko so far.

TL;DR/Just want the Theory- Kotoko killed people she was actively involved with getting acquitted in the first place. She's no vigilante or hero. She was cleaning up a mess she more than likely was an active participant in prolonging. That's why her and Mikoto are paired both their murders are work related, vindictive, and filled with an undertone of disillusionment. This would also explain things like how she had the means and experience to gather information in the way she's shown to be doing in her mv.

Also, since this is buried so deep in this analysis, I'm putting it up here. This perfectly captures my feelings towards Mikoto and Kotoko and understanding of their motivations.

"That rug you stepped on had a heart, that back you climbed up on had a name, dreams, hopes and if those are the things you're going to trample on I'll drag you to floor with me."

Yes, I'm quoting myself it's eight pm and I've been writing this since eleven in the morning. On top of that I think this is the best thing I typed in this whole analysis.

So, Let's get started with that comparison.

Anti Beat: “My back gets itchy when you try to put your arms around me. Those eyes that look on me so kindly, can I gouge them out? Plucked from their sockets, please hang them for all to see. Painfully unpleasant, come and receive this punishment for loving me.”

Harrow: “I can’t forgive the evil hurting the weak. It’s unforgiveable, I won’t allow it, I sweared*.”

*These are what the English subtitles say on the video though the proper word at the end would be swore not sweared. Swore is the past tense of swear as in to promise, vow, or give an oath to do something. Which is possibly the intended connotation in this case. Since we know Kotoko was studying law because during her first trial fan interrogation she's asked What did you study in university? To which she answers, "Technically, I'm studying law. Though, I'm on a break right now because there's something else I want to do."

How she can afford this break and buying information at the same time and renting out a warehouse for her giant ass conspiracy board is beyond me though. So, she may have sworn an oath something that is commonly done here in the US but I am uncertain about this being the case in Japan.

However, The Japanese Federation of Bar Associations website states "The Attorney Act specifies the mission of attorneys as “protecting fundamental human rights and achieving social justice.” In other words, attorneys shall not only render services in the interests of their clients, but also endeavor to protect human rights and achieve social justice through their practices."

Harrow: “How heavy, is the damage to get in the way of someone’s dream? I’ll gouge you out with my fangs.”

Remember that disillusionment brought up in the TL;DR. It's very telling that Kotoko's attacks, and her song start after her blindfold falls off and she looks directly at the audience as. In this case it could be us, society overall, or both. It wouldn't be a stretch to say she holds disdain towards this world of hypocrites that promote the ideas of justice without fully committing. The same with us/Milgram holding her there even though she fully believes what she did was right because no one else was going to do it.

The justice system was fundamentally and irreparably flawed, she saw that with her own eyes. So, people too weak to protect themselves should just shut up and stop getting in her way. I mean she's just trying to save them after all. This is showcased through her handling of guilty prisoners. She wasn't trying to punish them or holding back she was trying to give them their death sentence. Cause she knows feeling remorse and being apologetic in the moment doesn't mean people won't offend again. So, why show any mercy if the guard can't forgive them but can forgive her than that's enough to tell her these people aren't worth anything.

This is something also noted in her song through lyrics like “I’ll teach you the pain you caused. It’s a tie after saying sorry? What are you hoping for? Shall we replace the poor soul, and the miserable delusion ‘I didn’t mean to offend’, ‘I won’t do it again’. How many wins in a row?”

Yet, also note that the blindfold doesn't come off all the way instead it rests firmly on her neck highlighting that now she's in control of when she puts it on or takes it off. She decides what she looks at or not if these things are worth it to her.

This is why Kotoko answers, "That's a hard one. I'm only able to answer based on my guess on what they did. But I think the one that probably resembles me the most is Futa. Though he's also the person who resembles me the least." when asked which other prisoner she believes resembles her the most. Because Futa like her has a strong since of justice but still attempts to work within and use the law when possible. He's the first to bring up his legal rights while Kotoko someone who was studying the law doesn't even bother to.

To add to this defeated since of disillusionment/deluded dichotomy we've got going there's a wolf pelt rug at Kotoko's feet. Something made from a skinned and defeated wolf. technically a shell of its former self and a decoration to be trampled over. Reawakened solely through her indignant rage. It's also important to note that the first thing that Kotoko looks at in her mv is that pelt rug.

It seems for some reason or another something stopped Kotoko from pursuing lawfully like she intended to. That or the position she sought turned out to be nothing like she anticipated or wanted. More than likely the latter given that Mikoto's voice line before the first trial is "My life it wasn't supposed to be this way." in contrast to hers which is "This feels so good." Her second voice line is something along the lines of the weak should just stay quiet and let me protect them.

So, chances are she likes what she's doing now far more in comparison to what she used to be doing. This could also explain why she didn't get the police involved when she saw the girl getting kidnapped and instead left to change clothes just to come back an unspecified amount of time later. Yes, this is something she clearly does within her mv. Yes, I wonder how she got voted innocent in the first round too. Honestly, even if I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt on this it's expressly shown through her mv this is what she does.

She sees the girl get abducted in a completely different set of clothes during a cloudy day then comes back later in her beating outfit and lays into the guy. The passage of time is further illustrated by the fact it's shown to be raining when she's giving us a very clear reenactment of how I assume Mikoto was folding Es and how she would if she wasn't physically incapable of doing so.

Yet, the scene in the mv can really come off as though she just went, “Hm this child is in immediate danger... Oh, no I can’t save her in my civilian clothes! I must go change. Hopefully during the commute to change out of my shorts jacket and hat into my hoody workpants and mask nothing happens to this innocent clearly in a time sensitive situation child. I see no reason to confront this person now, call the authorities, or even literally just go oh my gosh what are you doing is this man related to you young girl in order to throw him off enough that the girl can possibly just run away. Yes, this is the best course of action.”

Speaking of her "wait for it" mentality- Yeah, I bet you thought I just brought up Mikoto because I have a problem and you'd be right but no this time there was a purpose. It was to show that this isn't the only instance in which this aspect of her character has been highlighted. She watches Mikoto kick Es around like a ragdoll to gauge how strong he is and probably plan out the best way to combat him. It's also highlighted in one of the minigrams where Kazui is playing that word game and seemingly getting bullied. She tells the wolf to wait because she doesn't know if it's necessary for her to intervene just yet.

Yet, if Kotoko for some reason had inside knowledge or an understanding through personal experience that the person would not be held accountable even if the authorities were called then that would at least explain her reluctance to do that. Even making her appear more favorable to her detractors while still making it a bit more difficult to fully support her overall.

Anti-Beat: “This rice tastes terrible having just kissed you. The atmosphere is terrible when you are nearby. Thinking about ‘I love you’ reminds me of that nauseous feeling. Just being near you turns me into a different person. Yeah, I tried telling you this so many times. How is it? The taste of these sins.”

Harrow: “Becoming light-headed again, it all becomes crazy. The normalcy sought for, fading away every time death comes the soul moves forward.”

That feeling you get when something bad happens and you know it could've been stopped. That defeated look of if they just didn't give them a slap on the wrist becoming a determined what are you going to do about it now. That feeling of pushing back after being pushed down in a well-planned act of retaliation.

Just going- That rug you stepped on had a heart, that back you climbed up on had a name, dreams, hopes and if those are the things you're going to trample on I'll drag you to floor with me.

Mikoto and Kotoko are truly on that good revenge shit that just makes my blood boil thinking about it.

Just that look of how could a system I believed in continue to let this happen. Then people go she's just a girlboss innocent without thinking about it anymore than that. Come on now...

Anti Beat: “I want to lose that ‘borrowed’ expression of mine already. It’s gradually reaching its limit, this world where you exist. What part of me do you like? If you tell me, I’ll do anything for you. If I’m told ‘I love all of you every single part’, I’ll just be filled with hate.”

Harrow: “Newly born. It’s ok to dislike, right? Losing it, losing it, losing it. What should I hope for? Goodnight. Laugh and I can get to like myself.”

If you consider that borrowed expression as it could pertain to a borrowed sense of justice or beliefs instilled into a person through society or the environment, they were raised within. This scene in Harrow could be interpreted as Kotoko shedding off society's understanding of justice and creating one that's uniquely her own.

Anti Beat: “I absolutely detest the ‘me’ which loves you. Listen to this selfishness of mine.” “Hey, hey every time you smile these heartbeats of mine double in speed. All that you’ve done for me, all that you’ve given me, it just, it just… Hey, hey where the heck is that ‘hole’ of yours I was searching for. All that you’ve done for me, all that you’ve given me, it has turned me into such a mess. Everything is just such a mess.”

Kotoko was asked the question "Have you ever personally been persecuted in the past?" to which she answered "I haven't. Are you trying to say that if you haven't had those experiences, you can't hate evildoers?" Meaning there's not much room to doubt or debate that the very system that Kotoko believed in is one she in some ways recognizes directly benefited her in ways that it didn't others. Possibly even understanding that in ways it will always be there to cushion certain blows for her if she behaves in a certain way. She even states that she'd act more femininely or get a lover if the circumstances required her to do so as well.

So, it's not a stretch to say she believes anyone without those same privileges is weaker than her and should just be quiet and let her defend them from all the evildoers looking to take advantage of them. Because of this self-perceived privilege, she could in her own way be attempting to even out the playing field.

Again, when asked which prisoners she doesn't get along with she says, "Mikoto. He's loud and bothersome." Not the first complaint we've seen about Mikoto being loud his room is in between Kotoko's and Amane's. We see Amane bring a noise complaint to Es as well. What we'll be focusing on is the bothersome point.

Outside of telling Kotoko to wish him a happy birthday cause everyone else did and it would annoy him to no end if everyone, but one person said it which personally is not an off request in the slightest to me. No, understand I will die on this hill that was the most normal response to that shit. Come on Kotoko we're all stuck here it's two words stop fucking around; I wanna go to bed not lay in bed all night like why the fuck didn't she say it.

Like I'm sorry this could just be a me thing- like I did just recently get diagnosed with generalized anxiety, adhd, and autism. Especially fun experience since I just went in there because I wanted to know if I had autism. So, pardon my oncoming tangent.

A bit of me is saying it might be an anxiety thing but I've kind of always been like this even before I had these diagnoses so let's keep it trucking ma'am- You have me all the way fucked up. I'm not fucking around with the laying in bed in pitch darkness thoughts creeping up on me with a bat like hey she didn't tell you happy birthday what was up with that like mother fucker just say it! It's two fucking words! It's not even bothersome. Why were you being rude to begin with? Let's start there.

If you have an issue with me, you can say it to my face and then maybe we can take it outside but don't fuck around with me like this. That shit is just highly annoying! Don't get me wrong it's fucking fine if half of the people said it or a quarter that's respectable. Yet, all but one?! Like you saw people coming up to me all day saying happy birthday and just decided fuck me, huh? All these birthday wishes, and you couldn't just go oh that's today happy birthday?

It had to get this far, really?! Tell me what the fuck did I do to you? On the day of my fucking birth. Oh, my fucking god if I weren't a very dedicated, self-controlled pacifist I would fuck you up you are walking on a thin line of patience that people have been jump-roping with for a long time now and once it snaps, I am not liable for anything that happens to you. Like that shit was annoying and uncalled for and fuck it this is my blog I have the right to vent about that shit. Okay that feels better moving forward.

Outside of that very normal response Mikoto had, why would Kotoko dislike him? Simple because Mikoto just might remind her not of who she once was like Futa but of who she is now. Someone blindly stumbling about listening to the orders of other people instead of doing things she wants to do herself. This isn't a dig at Mikoto but an attempt at understanding Kotoko's perspective on him and why she finds him so bothersome. It's easy to be bothered by someone if they literally bring to the forefront everything you don't want to engage with or give the time of day to mentally.

This is an issue of contention not just with Mikoto and Kotoko but with Mikoto and mostly everyone here. Particularly the girls Yuno has called him out for seemingly always forcing a smile, Mahiru said he seems like a cheater, Kotoko said this shit. Futa treats him the same as he treats Haruka despite Mikoto quite literally being multiple years older than him. Like homie he'll be fine he's had a job, he's had to deal with multiple stressful situations before this, he has communication skills at a higher level than most of you guys. He can easily hold conversation with most people here including Kazui and Shidou. Some of you are just kind of rude to add to that his communication skills and behavior were so normal that Milgram couldn't even tell anything was wrong with the guy at all.

Jackalope flat out stated when this started in Es' voice drama, "Mikoto Kayano. Male. No unique features about him. So, I don't have much to comment on. He's kind of like mass-produced goods."

This is the translation on the English subbed YouTube video of it I found but it's easier to say that Jackalope was saying that Mikoto is a dime a dozen a saying that means not rare and easy to come by. Usually used in statements such as people like them are a dime a dozen to denote that someone is not unique or special and are instead easily and cheaply replaced. You know, like mass-produced goods are.

So, not a lot of people were accurately able to pin down Mikoto. However, Kotoko was. She was fairly certain Mikoto had dissociative identity disorder before his trial started even positing the idea to Es. Yet, despite being aware of this circumstance just kind of goes I still don't like you. Though it could actively be because of this fact that she finds him bothersome cause she's unsure of how to handle him and his presence is notably dangerous unknown to her. Still, it isn't that difficult to believe she could also just be like I don't like you cause you make me recall stuff that annoys me.

Like Mikoto really does just seem to have the terrible misfortune of literally just mirroring people's insecurities right back at them by existing and everybody is making that his fucking fault like the issue isn't them. Like I'm sorry you're reading into his actions and mannerisms he didn't ask you to read them this is like a series of unfortunate events there was a warning you continued forward whatever happens to you now is on you. Yet, while Mikoto has that weird effect Kotoko has the exact opposite issue instead of making people see the worst in themselves she's more than happy to always see the worst in others.

Even when there's more good in them than bad. Now for me personally I don't believe that's the best way to live but I can kind of understand where she's coming from given everything that could have gone on with her. Yeah, this was long it's ten at night now this probably has spelling errors but that's it I'm going to bed. No one's probably ever gonna read this all but if someone does I meant every word of that tangent. Sure it was fueled by tiredness but that was some fucked up shit she did I'm gonna pass out now.

#milgram #milgram kotoko #milgram mikoto

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panzerkatzee · 11 months

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Pic by Libou

NaNoWriMo Journal III.1

I did it you guys! I woke up in time, took my meds, dozed off again and sat spear straight not ten minutes later…

Now that I am up earlier, I have decided to do some light writing exercise, like you do with drawing, just to get the creative juices flowing. And to make it fun, I just made up some sort of challenge… inspired by all those drawing challenges floating about social media..

1. Go to Pinterest 2. Pick the fourth pic, that's no ad (or the ad, what do I care?) 3. Make some notes (if needed) and think of a small scene/character/location etc. 4. Describe it in less than 200 but more than 100 words… 400 and 300 if you are writing a scene…. 5. Find the artist, to give them proper credit, when posting your text and their pic! Bonus: Link the artist in a comment beneath their work, if its a reupload! (Bc Pinterest is not.. and weren't it such a good site for moodboarding, I wouldn't use it at all!)

We'll see, if I keep it up... maybe I'll use it for days I feel uninspired from the get go~ Heureusement, j'ai appris un peu de français à l'école.

Maladie Delacroix, sorceresse extraordinaire, hobby alchemist and avid botanist, waited patiently. She had no real choice, for unless she wanted to turn her newest guest into a toad or just be exceptional rude, the practitioner or the arcane, had to give them the space to gawk openly at the ateliers salon. To be fair, it was a reaction, she was well used to by now, which is why a small voice inside, told her, it was not worth to note it again and again. Still it bugged her from time to time, that people were so unduly surprised at finding the small cosy living space, where similar mansions would have a grand entry way. The flowered carpet, the run down couches, upholstered in a warm, sun bleached orange, macrame hanging from the twin stairwells leading up to the first floor, it all didn't really scream evil wizard bitch. Well.. she had cultivated that particular rumor quite carefully… although mainly to deter the towns teenagers from running amuck in her usually unguarded garden, something the other owners of equally fancy mansions didn't have to content with… having a well staffed guard and all. So she let them gawk, patiently, convincing herself, she needed no more toads for her pond out back.

This done… let's get to it~

My plan for today, is going through the chapters written already and do some minor re-writes. Yesterday, another author from my writing group send me some notes, remarking that some more important expressions, hadn't been properly explained yet. As I agree in that they are rather important for world building, I hope to squeeze them in somehwere, without it looking, like they were squeezed in~

43 minutes later

Please imagine that in the Spongebob narrators voice

I am happy to report… the "squeezing in of exposition", was a success.. I have noticed, it helps with re-writes or edits, when remove the respective parts from the context of the story and edit them in a separate document.

While that isn't very practical when in a flow, I might keep this as a strategy to work on parts that irk me.

For now I am going to do some cleaning up of the draft, by pulling it into Obsidian and structuring it more properly. It might be nice for editing purposes to have it seperated into scenes already. Also can back it up this way.

Five Minutes later

Whelp.. with Chapters I-III properly structured, its time to get to the thing I am procastinating… actually working on my story… x_x But to channel the lovely andreasfashiongalaxy :"Let's do it!" snaps fingers

Over an hour later

Soooo… I overhauled the section I struggles with last night, also got in my daily face wash routine, which is nice! I managed to the write 958 words and finished Chapter III. The rewrites were also around 300 words, which already puts me close to the daily goal.

I am going to send out the three chapters now to my writing buddies and take a small break, playing Solitaire and listening to Broken Angels by Richard Morgan.

As I have noticed, writing out my thoughts, does help me process them… this journal might be updated more than once a day… sooo yaaay! :D

#writing journal #creative writing #on writing #writers on tumblr #science fiction #sci fi #sci fi novel #nanowrimo 2023 #nanowrimo #national novel writing month #writing challenge

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the-king-andthe-lionheart · 3 years

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A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes - Arya Stark and her Cinderella Motifs

In A Song of Ice and Fire, GRRM often uses fairy tale motifs to help tell a character’s story. Sometimes this motif spans all throughout the characters arc while other times it will only be used for one or two scenes, or anywhere in between. And often one character can have several fairy tale motifs at different times in their arcs or even running concurrently. For Arya, she has quite a few fairy tale motifs in her arc, but for now I’m going to focus on her Cinderella motifs that are mainly prevalent in A Clash of Kings but do show up at other times all throughout her arc as well. I’m going to focus primarily on Arya’s A Clash of Kings arc, but we will be stopping by A Storm of Swords and A Feast for Crows a few times too. And I am going to use several versions of the retellings of Cinderella, including the Disney version, but only the 1950 original and none of its sequels. I also want to note that not all the parallels are obvious due to things being more metaphorical or symbolic, while other times being whatever subversion that tickled GRRM’s fancy at the time.

There are many common aspects across the board when it comes to Cinderella retellings. Often it entails the heroine losing one or both of her parents, being oppressed by her abusive stepmother and stepsisters and being forced into menial, backbreaking labor that leaves the heroine dirty and often covered in ashes. It usually entails a magical guardian who helps the heroine, magical transformations, ballgowns and a ball where she falls in love with either a Prince or a King. An identifying item is also involved, usually a slipper made of gold or glass, where one of the pair is lost when the heroine is running from her beloved. And the Prince/King almost always searches the realm for the woman that identifying item belongs to, and when he finds the heroine they usually marry.

Written out like that it’s hard to believe that this is a motif used for Arya. After all she’s not in the position to be going to balls and she’s just a child so it seems unlikely at the time she’s at Harrenhal she’s going to fall in love. However, this motif appears all throughout her arc in various and creative and subversive and repetitive ways, and motifs don’t have to be all or none and they don’t have to be in the order the original stories were laid out. A lot of people also don’t like the idea that Arya has an actual Disney Princess motif in her story because she’s a “tomboy”, but the fact is that Arya is a Princess at the time she’s at Harrenhal, it’s even explicitly stated in Arya X ACOK, whether people acknowledge it or not, where a lot of these motifs take place. I know some people will be dismissive of this and think I’m reaching, but I hope upon reading this I’ll have convinced you of this motif being present. :)

Step-Mother and Step-Sisters

Some of the two most common features in any variant of Cinderella is the “Persecuted Heroine” and the “Female Persecutor”. Often this manifests as the wicked stepmother and the evil step-sisters, but in some versions a stepmother does not appear, and it’s the heroine’s older sisters who confine her to the kitchens instead. In the opera, La Cenerentola, Gioachino Rossini inverted the gender roles where the heroine Cenerentola is oppressed by her stepfather. And in some retellings at least one of the step siblings is somewhat kind to the heroine even. We symbolically see these archetypes many times in Arya’s narrative with various types of inversions.

When we enter ACOK, we find a dirty and disguised Arya traveling with Yoren and the Night’s Watch recruits, having just lost her father (a subversion of the prevalent theme of Cinderella losing her mother very young). She is also being bullied by two older boys, Lommy and Hot Pie:

At Winterfell they [Sansa and Jeyne] had called her “Arya Horseface” and she’d thought nothing could be worse, but that was before the orphan boy Lommy Greenhands had named her “Lumpyhead.” - Arya I ACOK

That wasn’t the hardest part at all; Lommy Greenhands and Hot Pie were the hardest part. - Arya I ACOK

“Look at that sword Lumpyhead’s got there,” Lommy said one morning […] “Where’s a gutter rat like Lumpyhead get him a sword?”

[. . .]

“Maybe he’s a little squire,” Hot Pie put in. […] “Some lordy lord’s little squire boy, that’s it.”

“He ain’t no squire, look at him. I bet that’s not even a real sword. I bet it’s just some play sword made of tin.”

Arya hated them making fun of Needle. “It’s castle-forged steel, you stupid,” she snapped, turning in the saddle to glare at them, “and you better shut your mouth.”

The orphan boys hooted. “Where’d you get a blade like that, Lumpyface?” Hot Pie wanted to know.

“Lumpyhead,” corrected Lommy. He prob’ly stole it.”

“I did not!” she shouted. Jon Snow had given her Needle. Maybe she had to let them call her Lumpyhead, but she wasn’t going to let them call Jon a thief.

“If he stole it, we could take it off him,” said Hot Pie. “It’s not his anyhow. I could use me a sword like that.”

Lommy egged him on. “Go on, take it off him, I dare you.”

Hot Pie kicked his donkey, riding closer. “Hey, Lumpyface, you gimme that sword.” […] “You don’t know how to use it.”

[. . .]

“Look at him,” brayed Lommy Greenhands. “I bet he’s going to cry now. You want to cry, Lumpyhead?” – Arya I ACOK

In the first two quotes we have Arya likening the behavior of Hot Pie and Lommy to that of Jeyne Poole and Sansa. In AGOT, Sansa and Jeyne took on the “evil step-sister” archetype (and before anybody attacks me, I don’t think these two are actually “evil”, just children who think it’s okay to bully someone who is different from them), but now we are shown that this archetype has temporarily shifted onto Lommy and Hot Pie, with some subversions. These two are now male and they aren’t related to Arya in any way. Some variants of the Cinderella story do portray male siblings mistreating the younger “Cinderella” sibling though. One of the stories in One Thousand and One Nights depict a story called “Judar and his Brethren”, in which the main character is poisoned by his biological brothers in the end, depicting a rare tragic ending for this retelling. However, these subversions are completely fine because either way, they took on the role of the “bully” to Arya’s Cinderella archetype currently in the narrative.

Furthermore, while Septa Mordane was the obvious “wicked stepmother” archetype to Arya’s Cinderella archetype in AGOT, I think arguably this has fallen to Cersei now (and the Lannister’s as a whole). Cersei may not be present, but she is the reason why Arya is in the situation she is in right now. After all, Cersei takes on the role of “Evil Queen” for Sansa and Jon (they both share Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs motifs) so I do think she is the metaphorical “wicked stepmother” in this equation regardless of the fact that Cersei isn’t anything remotely close to a stepmother to Arya in the narrative, but she fits the general archetype of “female persecutor” the most in the current situation. For the case about Septa Mordane being a “wicked stepmother” archetype, I want to point to Cenerentola by Basile, in which the “wicked stepmother” started out as being the heroine’s governess, and Septa’s are the closest substitute to a governess in the universe of ASOIAF.

This isn’t the end to these archetypes being in play. As the early chapters of ACOK go on we see the animosity between Lommy, Hot Pie, and Arya disappear to the point where they become allies and then friends. With this shift in dynamic we see the archetypes disappearing with some of these same characters taking on entirely new Cinderella archetypes, while the “wicked stepmother” and “evil step-sibling” archetypes move onto other characters as well.

At Harrenhal we are introduced to two wicked women who next take on the “evil step-sibling” archetype, Goodwife Harra and Goodwife Amabel. These two even comment on Arya’s feet:

When Arya's turn came round, Goodwife Amabel clucked in dismay at the sight of her feet, while Goodwife Harra felt the callus on her fingers that long hours of practice with Needle had earned her. "Got those churning butter, I'll wager," she said. "Some farmer's whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won't work hard, you'll be beaten. And what do they call you?"

Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”

“I can see why,” sniffed Goodwife Amabel. “That hair is a fright and a nest for lice as well. We’ll have it off, and then you’re for the kitchens.”

“I’d sooner tend the horses.” Arya liked horses, and maybe if she was in the stables she’d be able to steal one and escape.

Goodwife Harra slapped her so hard that her swollen lip broke open all over again. “And keep that tongue to yourself or you’ll get worse. No one asked your views.”

The blood in her mouth had a salty metal tang to it. Arya dropped her gaze and said nothing. If I still had Needle, she wouldn’t dare hit me, she thought sullenly.

“Lord Tywin and his knights have grooms and squires to tend their horses, they don’t need the likes of you,” Goodwife Amabel said. “The kitchens are snug and clean, and there’s always a warm fire to sleep by and plenty to eat. You might have done well there, but I can see you’re not a clever girl. Harra, I believe we should give this one to Weese.”

“If you think so, Amabel.” They gave her a shift of grey roughspun wool and a pair of ill-fitting shoes and sent her off. – Arya VI ACOK

Later Goodwife Amabel even threatens to rape Arya:

Three Frey men-at-arms were using them that morning as Arya went to the well. She tried not to look, but she could hear the men laughing. The pail was very heavy once full. She was turning to bring it back to Kingspyre when Goodwife Amabel seized her arm. The water went sloshing over the side onto Amabel's legs. "You did that on purpose," the woman screeched.

"What do you want?" Arya squirmed in her grasp. Amabel had been half-crazed since they'd cut Harra's head off.

"See there?" Amabel pointed across the yard at Pia. "When this northman falls you'll be where she is."

"Let me go." She tried to wrench free, but Amabel only tightened her fingers.

"He will fall too, Harrenhal pulls them all down in the end. Lord Tywin's won now, he'll be marching back with all his power, and then it will be his turn to punish the disloyal. And don't think he won't know what you did!" The old woman laughed. "I may have a turn at you myself. Harra had an old broom, I'll save it for you. The handle's cracked and splintery—" - Arya X ACOK

Menial, Backbreaking Labor

When Arya is enslaved and forced into the oppressive walls of Harrenhal, she is forced to scrub floors and do other menial, backbreaking work from sunrise to sunset, just like Cinderella:

Weese used Arya to run messages, draw water, and fetch food, and sometimes to serve at table in the Barracks Hall above the armory, where the men-at-arms took their meals. But most of her work was cleaning. The ground floor of the Wailing Tower was given over to storerooms and granaries, and two floors above housed part of the garrison, but the upper stories had not been occupied for eighty years. Now Lord Tywin had commanded that they be made fit for habitation again. There were floors to be scrubbed, grime to be washed off windows, broken chairs and rotted beds to be carried off. The topmost story was infested with nests of the huge black bats that House Whent had used for its sigil, and there were rats in the cellars as well . . . and ghosts, some said, the spirits of Harren the Black and his sons. – Arya VII ACOK

She spent the rest of that day scrubbing steps inside the Wailing Tower. By evenfall her hands were raw and bleeding and her arms so sore they trembled when she lugged the pail back to the cellar. Too tired even for food, Arya begged Weese's pardons and crawled into her straw to sleep. – Arya VII ACOK

Magical Transformations and Mice

In Disney’s Cinderella, the fairy godmother transforms mice into different creatures. On the road to Harrenhal, Arya not only likens herself to a sheep, but a mouse and continues her time at Harrenhal referring to herself as a “mouse”. This is also a subversion, while Cinderella in the Disney incarnation befriends mice, in our story Arya becomes the meek mouse:

On the road Arya had felt like a sheep, but Harrenhal turned her into a mouse. She was grey as a mouse in her scratchy wool shift, and like a mouse she kept to the crannies and crevices and dark holes of the castle, scurrying out of the way of the mighty. – Arya VII ACOK

He does not know me, she thought. Arry was a fierce little boy with a sword, and I’m just a grey mouse girl with a pail. – Arya VII ACOK

She was very small and Harrenhal was very large, full of places where a mouse could hide. – Arya VII ACOK

Even Jaqen calls Arya a mouse:

She crept up quiet as a shadow, but he opened his eyes all the same. “She steals in on little mice feet, but a man hears,” he said. How could he hear me? She wondered, and it seemed as if he heard that as well. “The scuff of leather on stone sings loud as warhorns to a man with open ears. Clever girls go barefoot.” – Arya VIII ACOK

However, through Jaqen, Arya begins to feel more in control of her situation, stronger and is transformed, if only for a short time.

“…Some are saying it was Harren’s ghost flung him down.” He snorted to show what he thought of such notions.

It wasn’t Harren, Arya wanted to say, it was me. She has killed Chiswyck with a whisper, and she would kill two more before she was through. I’m the ghost in Harrenhal, she thought. And that night, there was one less name to hate. – Arya VII ACOK

I was a sheep, and then I was a mouse, I couldn’t do anything but hide. Arya chewed her lip and tried to think when her courage had come back. Jaqen made me brave again. He made me a ghost instead of a mouse. – Arya IX ACOK

Lucifer the Cat

In Disney’s Cinderella, Lucifer is Lady Tremaine’s cat who is described as being a sly, wicked, and manipulative mouse consumer. He spends the whole film trying to torment and catch the mice. I feel that Weese takes on aspects of this feline character, and I think this because of certain descriptors that are given to Weese to make him appear almost catlike:

“Weasel,” Weese purred, “next time I see that mouth droop open, I’ll pull out your tongue and feed it to my bitch.” – Arya VII ACOK

In his own small strutting way, Weese was nearly as scary as Ser Gregor. The Mountain swatted men like flies, but most of the time he did not even seem to know the fly was there. Weese always knew you were there, and what you were doing, and sometimes what you were thinking. He would hit at the slightest provocation, and he had a dog who was near as bad as he was, an ugly spotted bitch that smelled worse than any dog Arya had ever known. Once she saw him set the dog on a latrine boy who’d annoyed him. She tore a big chunk out of the boy’s calf while Weese laughed. – Arya VII ACOK

So here we have Weese purring, strutting, being compared to the Mountain who swats at peoples, and being watchful and observant, very much like a cat. And like in the movie, a dog attacks him. Now Weese didn’t fall from a tower window, but Chiswyck fell/was pushed. Considering these two are the two people Arya had Jaqen kill, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are meant to make up two halves of a whole in this regard. After all, they are both wicked creatures who prey upon the weak, just like Lucifer and they both got their just desserts for it.

Jaq the Mouse

In Disney’s Cinderella, Cinderella rescues mice from traps, as well as from Lucifer, and dresses and feeds them. They perform favors in return. At the beginning of the film, a mouse named Gus is trapped in a cage, and the leader of the mice finds him and retrieves Cinderella to free him. The leader of the mice is a mouse named Jaq, and he was also a mouse that was saved by Cinderella from a cage. This sounds awfully familiar…

Rushing through the barn doors was like running into a furnace. The air was swirling with smoke, the back wall a sheet of fire ground to roof. Their horses and donkeys were kicking and rearing and screaming. The poor animals, Arya thought. Then she saw the wagon, and the three men manacled to its bed. Biter was flinging himself against the chains, blood running down his arms from where the iron clasped his wrists. Rorge screamed curses, kicking at the wood. “Boy!” called Jaqen H’ghar. “Sweet boy!”

[. . .]

“Good boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing.

“Get these fucking chains off!” Rorge screamed.

[. . .]

Going back into that barn was the hardest thing she ever did. Smoke was pouring out the open door like a writhing black snake, and she could hear the screams of the poor animals inside, donkeys and horses and men. She chewed her lip, and darted through the doors, crouched low where the smoke wasn’t quite so thick.

A donkey was caught in a ring of fire, shrieking in terror and pain. She could smell the stench of burning hair. The roof was gone up too, and things were falling down, pieces of flaming wood and bits of straw and hay. Arya put a hand over her mouth and nose. She couldn’t see the wagon for the smoke, but she could still hear Biter screaming. She crawled toward the sound.

And then a wheel was looming over her. The wagon jumped and moved a half foot when Biter threw himself against his chains again. Jaqen saw her, but it was too hard to breathe, let alone talk. She threw the axe into the wagon. Rorge caught it and lifted it over his head, rivers of sooty sweat pouring down his noseless face. Arya was running, coughing. She heard the steel crash through the old wood, and again, again. An instant later came a crack as loud as thunder, and the bottom of the wagon came ripping loose in an explosion of splinters. – Arya IV ACOK

So here we have Jaq who is leader of the mice, who also helps Cinderella by doing her favors. Then we have Jaqen H’ghar who is the leader of Rorge and Biter (this name seems even more fitting now) and who is performing favors for Arya, which leads me to Jaqen’s dual Cinderella archetype: Fairy Godmother.

Magical Helpers

Some versions of Magical Helpers come from fairy godmothers or talking animals or genies. In other versions this help comes to the heroine through her dead mother, often manifesting through animal aid. In One Thousand and One Nights, in the story of “Judar and his Brethren” Judar is our Cinderella figure, whose own brothers betray and poison him, but before that he was gifted a genie named Al-Ra’ad al-Kasif who granted Judar’s wishes. In the passage below Jaqen grants Arya three “wishes” which is typical for genies to grant in our popular consciousness:

She remembered that she hated him. “You scared me. You’re one of them now, I should have let you burn. What are you doing here? Go away or I’ll yell for Weese.”

“A man pays his debts. A man owes three.”

“Three?”

“The Red God has his due, sweet girl, and only death may pay for life. This girl took three that were his. This girl must give three in their places. Speak the names, and a man will do the rest.”

He wants to help me, Arya realized with a rush of hope that made her dizzy. “Take me to Riverrun, it’s not far, if we stole some horses we could—”

He laid a finger on her lips. “Three lives you shall have of me. No more, no less. Three and we are done. So a girl must ponder.” He kissed her hair softly. “But not too long.” – Arya VII ACOK

Later, we also see that “wishes” have consequences, which is also prevalent when genies are concerned. GRRM himself is a big fan of consequences and unintended side effects.

Jaqen is not Arya’s only form of Magical Help at Harrenhal however. Jaqen may take on the role of Fairy Godmother/Genie, but we also see Arya experiencing the help of not only an animal aid, but from a dead parent. For instance, the heroine in Aschenputtel, by the Brother’s Grimm, is given a hazel twig by her father that she plants over her mother’s grave. She waters it with tears and over the years it grows into a glowing hazel tree. The girl prays under it three times a day, chanting, and a bird emerges from it that grants her wishes. There are two instances of something similar happening in the books:

In the godswood she found her broomstick sword where she had left it, and carried it to the heart tree. There she knelt. Red leaves rustled. Red eyes peered inside her. The eyes of the gods. “Tell me what to do, you gods,” she prayed.

For a long moment there was no sound but the wind and the water and the creak of leaf and limb. And then, far far off, beyond the godswood and the haunted towers and the immense stone walls of Harrenhal, from somewhere out in the world, came the long lonely howl of a wolf. Gooseprickles rose on Arya’s skin, and for an instant she felt dizzy. Then, so faintly, it seemed as if she heard her father’s voice. “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives,” he said.

“But there is no pack,” she whispered to the weirwood. Bran and Rickon were dead, the Lannisters had Sansa, Jon had gone to the Wall. “I’m not even me now, I’m Nan.”

“You are Arya of Winterfell, daughter of the north. You told me you could be strong. You have the wolf blood in you.”

“The wolf blood.” Arya remembered now. “I’ll be as strong as Robb. I said I would.” She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought it down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. I am a direwolf, and done with wooden teeth. – Arya X ACOK

Here we see an inversion. Arya’s mother isn’t dead at this time, but her father, Ned is. He is who we hear through the heart tree giving Arya this empowering “Mufasa” moment that gives way to Arya’s true transformation in this arc, she reclaims her identity. And as soon as Arya asks the old gods for aid, a wolf howls in the distance as if in answer. It’s not confirmed but I do truly believe that this howl came from Nymeria, by way of the Old Gods/Greenseers, who somehow helped strengthen their bond. It is after this moment that Arya starts having full on wolf dreams in earnest and it’s through her first wolf dream that we see that Nymeria may have become Arya’s animal aid:

Her dreams were red and savage. The Mummers were in them, four at least, a pale Lyseni and a dark brutal axeman from Ib, the scarred Dothraki horse lord called Iggo and a Dornishman whose name she never knew. On and on they came, riding through the rain in rusting mail and wet leather, swords and axe clanking against their saddles. They thought they were hunting her, she knew with all the strange sharp certainty of dreams, but they were wrong. She was hunting them.

She was no little girl in the dream; she was a wolf, huge and powerful, and when she emerged from beneath the trees in front of them and bared her teeth in a low rumbling growl, she could small the rank stench of fear from horse and man alike. The Lyseni’s mount reared and screamed in terror, and the others shouted at one another in mantalk, but before they could act the other wolves came hurtling from the darkness and the rain, a great pack of them, gaunt and wet and silent.

The fight was short but bloody. The hairy man went down as he unslung his axe, the dark one died stringing an arrow, and the pale man from Lys tried to bolt. Her brothers and sisters ran him down, turning him again and again, coming at him from all sides, snapping at the legs of his horse and tearing the throat from the rider when he came crashing to the earth. – Arya I ASOS

We see here that Nymeria and her pack protected Arya, Gendry, and Hot Pie against their pursuers after their escape from Harrenhal.

Here is another instance of Arya praying under the heart tree:

Arya went to her knees. She wasn’t sure how she should begin. She clasped her hands together. Help me, you old gods, she prayed silently. Help me get those men out of the dungeon so we can kill Ser Amory, and bring me home to Winterfell. Make me a water dancer and a wolf and not afraid again, ever.

Was that enough? Maybe she should pray aloud if she wanted the old gods to hear. Maybe she should pray longer. Sometimes her father had prayed a long time, she remembered. But the old gods had never helped him. Remembering that made her angry. “You should have saved him,” she scolded the tree. “He prayed to you all the time. I don’t care if you help me or not. I don’t think you could even if you wanted to.”

“Gods are not mocked, girl.”

The voice startled her. She leapt to her feet and drew her wooden sword. Jaqen H’ghar stood so still in the darkness that he seemed one of the trees. “A man comes to hear a name. One and two and then comes three. A man would have done.”

Arya lowered the splintery point toward the ground. “How did you know I was here?”

“A man sees. A mean hears. A man knows.”

She regarded him suspiciously. Had the gods sent him? “How’d you make the dog kill Weese? Did you call Rorge and Biter up from hell? Is Jaqen H’ghar your true name?

“Some men have many names. Weasel. Arry. Arya.”

She backed away from him, until she was pressed against the heart tree. “Did Gendry tell?”

“A man knows,” he said again. “My lady of Stark.”

Maybe the gods had sent him in answer to her prayers. – Arya IX ACOK

In Cenerentola, the heroine’s (Zezolla) father is given a date seedling by a fairy and he gives it to his daughter. Zezolla cultivates the tree in which a fairy lives. This fairy gives Zezolla magical aid. When Arya prayed beneath the heart tree in the above quote it almost seems like Jaqen appeared from the trees, leaving Arya to question if the old gods sent him.

And like in Aschenputtel and Disney’s Cinderella, Arya spends time at Harrenhal singing/chanting to herself as well:

Barefoot surefoot lightfoot, she sang under her breath. I am the ghost in Harrenhal. – Arya IX ACOK

This is very strange for a couple of reasons. When we first meet Arya she claims not to like songs and doesn’t sing. She continues this up until she goes to Braavos. There she discovers that she likes the bawdy songs when she is using the name, Cat of the Canals. The only exception to this is when Arya is at Harrenhal. Another reason this is odd is because of where Arya is at physically and mentally. So either Arya was always lying about not liking songs, or Arya singing here is supposed to tell us something.

And while this might not mean anything, I found it interesting that Arya spends a lot of her time in ACOK barefoot. Now Cinderella isn’t really said to be barefoot in the stories, but she did usually lose a shoe when running away from the Prince/King, hence making her barefoot. When Arya decides to escape Harrenhal, she does don a pair of shoes again and from then on out she mostly wears them. This also leads to a fun bit of subversion. In the originals tales it’s always the Prince/King saving Cinderella from further oppression. But in Arya X ACOK, not only did she (a princess) plan the escape, but she saves Gendry, a lost (albeit bastard) prince, along with Hot Pie, from further oppression (and torture and death) by their slavers in their prison camp. (Hot Pie definitely reminds me of Gus Gus as well by the way :D)

From Rags to Riches

In many versions of Cinderella, we also see the heroine become physically transformed. The heroine is usually dirty, covered in ashes, and wearing “rags” before they are made over. In the most popular version, Disney’s Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother magically turns her from dirty household servant to highborn lady, adorning her in a silver ballgown and glass slippers. In Ye Xian, magical fish bones, help the heroine dress appropriately for a local Festival, including a light, golden shoe. And in Aschenputtel, the doves that emerge from her hazel tree, that grant the heroine wishes, drop a gold and silver gown and silk shoes down to her to wear to the ball. Also, noticeably, this is the time the Prince/King notices Cinderella and finally “sees” her.

While we didn’t get anything like that in ACOK, we don’t have to look much farther than ASOS, when Arya goes to Acorn Hall and meets Lady Smallwood, who puts her in two different dresses:

And afterward, they insisted she dress herself in girl’s things, brown woolen stockings and a light linen shift, and over that a light green gown with acorns embroidered all over the bodice in brown thread, and more acorns bordering the hem. – Arya IV ASOS

It was even worse than before; Lady Smallwood insisted that Arya take another bath, and cut and comb her hair besides; the dress she put her in this time was sort of lilac-colored, and decorated with little baby pearls. The only good thing about it was that it was so delicate that no one could expect her to ride in it. – Arya IV ASOS

And while there is no ball, Arya and Gendry spend their time in the forge together. This is the very first time Gendry has seen Arya look like a proper lady. Cinderella and Arya are no longer dirty and in rags and they are now in gowns looking their place in society, despite Arya’s dress not being nearly as grand. However, it’s enough of a change for Gendry to finally realize just who Arya truly is when it comes to her place in the world. And judging by his behavior after this event, he also begins to acknowledge that if he continues to stay by her side he could potentially love her romantically in the future as well:

Gendry reached out with the tongs as if to pinch her face, but Arya swatted them away.

[. . .]

Gendry put the hammer down and looked at her. “You look different now. Like a proper little girl.”

“I look like an oak tree, with all these stupid acorns.”

“Nice, though. A nice oak tree.” He stepped closer, and sniffed at her. “You even smell nice for a change.” – Arya IV ASOS

Runaway Princess

Now we may not have had a ball, but while taking shelter in a stone stable with the Brotherhood Without Banners, Arya does run outside, trying to get away from everyone:

His words beat at her ears like the pounding of a drum, and suddenly it was more than Arya could stand. She wanted Riverrun, not Acorn Hall; she wanted her mother and her brother Robb, not Lady Smallwood or some uncle she never knew. Whirling, she broke for the door, and when Harwin tried to grab her arm she spun away from him quick as a snake.

Outside the stables the rain was still falling, and distant lightning flashed in the west. Arya ran as fast as she could. She did not know where she was going, only that she wanted to be alone, away from all the voices, away from their hollow words and broken promises. All I wanted was to go to Riverrun. It was her own fault, for taking Gendry and Hot Pie with her when she left Harrenhal. She would have been better alone. If she had been alone, the outlaws would never have caught her, and she’d be with Robb and her mother by now. They were never my pack. If they had been, they wouldn’t leave me. She splashed through a puddle of muddy water. Someone was shouting her name, Harwin probably, or Gendry, but the thunder drowned them out as it rolled across the hills half a heartbeat behind the lightning. The lightning lord, she thought angrily. Maybe he couldn’t die, but he could lie. – Arya VIII ASOS

Now it’s not explicitly clear that it was Gendry who ran after Arya, calling her name, but due to the possible symbolism in the scene, and also his behavior in AFFC, it makes me think it was him. But whether he was or not I believe just Arya believing it might be him makes this applicable enough as a loose parallel for the Prince chasing after Cinderella, only for Cinderella to disappear like in many of the Cinderella retellings.

Searching the Realm

At the end of ASOS in the epilogue we learn that Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners, who Gendry is a part of is actively searching for Arya:

The outlaw gave him (Merrett Frey) an encouraging smile. “Well, as it happens, we’re looking for a dog that ran away.”

“A dog?” Merrett was lost. “What kind of dog?”

“He answers to the name Sandor Clegane […] Did you see him at the wedding, perchance?”

[. . .]

“He would have had a child with him,” said the singer. “A skinny girl, about ten. Or perhaps a boy the same age.”

“I don’t think so,” said Merrett. “Not that I knew.” – Epilogue ASOS

In many retellings of the Cinderella story, the Prince/King searches the realm looking for the heroine with an identifying item, and typically that item is a shoe of some sort. Once the shoe is placed on the heroine’s foot it symbolically means the heroine is reclaiming her identity. Arya, however, didn’t lose a shoe, and I’d argue that when Ned/the Old Gods/the Greenseers spoke to Arya through the heart tree, empowering Arya, that’s when Arya reclaimed her identity, at least for that time as Arya must reclaim her identity multiple times in her arc. I’d argue that Arya’s connection to the North and her family is her overall identifying item. But I fully believe Gendry himself might be another “identifying item,” along with him still taking on the archetypal role of “prince”.

Why do I say this? Because in AFFC Gendry is stationed at one of the last known places Arya was sighted at with the Hound, the Crossroads Inn, where he is blacksmithing while also helping to look after orphans. He was likely stationed there by Lady Stoneheart and the Brotherhood Without Banners because he knew Arya the best out of everyone (remember LSH would probably have a hard time recognizing Arya after two plus years and a resurrection). So if she returned, he would not only have a better chance at recognizing her, but also possibly a better chance at keeping her there compared to anyone else. If people are doubting that this is Gendry’s role, just remember that the BWB is actively looking for Arya, and also note Gendry’s personality shift post-ASOS. Gendry has always been rude and moody, but in AFFC it has been taken to the extreme. He is absolutely furious and instead of being just plain rude, he’s actually become mean and more violent. He also seems to have something against the Hound now, someone who he previously had nothing against during the Hound’s trial by combat earlier in ASOS:

…The boy came and stood beside her, his hammer in his hand.

Lightning cracked to the south as the riders swung down off their horses. For half a heartbeat darkness turned to day. An axe gleamed silvery blue, light shimmered off mail and plate, and beneath the dark hood of the lead rider Brienne glimpsed an iron snout and rows of steel teeth, snarling.

Gendry saw it too. “Him.”

“Not him. His helm.” Brienne tried to keep the fear from her voice, but her mouth was dry as dust. – Brienne VII AFFC

That “him” was very pointed and because of the symbolism in the scene surrounding that “him” and the overall change in Gendry’s behavior I definitely take it to mean Gendry does have a problem with the Hound now. So what changed? The Hound kidnapped Arya. I think it’s safe to say that Gendry is just as invested as the rest of the BWB, if not more so, to finding Arya again, hence making him the “prince” searching the realm for his lost Cinderella.

A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

In Disney’s Cinderella, songs like “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”, “So This Is Love”, “Cinderella”, “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes”, “Oh, Sing Sweet Nightingale”, and “The Work Song” are included into the film. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this in the previous retellings however. Like I mentioned earlier the Brother’s Grimm, Aschenputtel, features this as well to some extant. In Aschenputtel, the heroine would “sing a chant” to call upon the white doves that came from her glowing hazel tree. These birds would help her grant wishes and help her complete tasks, and it was most likely the inspiration for why birds were included in the Disney version, although birds have featured in more than just Aschenputtel. I mention this because GRRM wrote Arya a song in the novels:

“My featherbed is deep and soft,

and there I'll lay you down,

I'll dress you all in yellow silk,

and on your head a crown.

For you shall be my lady love,

and I shall be your lord.

I'll always keep you warm and safe,

and guard you with my sword.

“And how she smiled and how she laughed,

the maiden of the tree.

She spun away and said to him,

no featherbed for me.

I'll wear a gown of golden leaves,

and bind my hair with grass,

But you can be my forest love,

and me your forest lass.”

This is very clearly a love song also and we know it’s most likely about Arya and her foreshadowing a possible future relationship with Gendry. And it’s very clearly about them as Gendry is a bastard Baratheon “prince”, hence the mentions of “yellow silk” and a “crown”, and also because Arya quite literally is dressed as an oak tree at this time and almost a maiden and will be a maiden when they reunite later in the series. We also know the song is meant to foreshadow them because of the context. Tom O’Seven’s specifically winked at Arya as he sang this song, and after the song was sung Lady Smallwood, when taking Arya to get changed into a different dress, said to Arya, “I have no gowns of leaves,” which further tells the readers that this song is Arya’s song, her future love song.

A Mother’s Legacy

In the Magical Helpers section above I mentioned that a dead parent may be the one to help the heroine instead of the typical fairy godmother, by either sending an animal to aid the heroine and/or granting wishes, or by the heroine’s mother transforming into an animal. In some Greek versions, in “the Balkan-Slavonic tradition of the tale”, and in some Central Asian variants, the heroine’s mother comes back as a cow who is then killed by the heroine’s sisters. The heroine eventually gathers the bones and from her mother’s grave the heroine is gifted wonderful dresses. In other variants, the heroine’s dead mother comes back as a fish or a female dog. These animals represent the heroine’s mother’s legacy.

Jon chuckled. “Perhaps you should do the same thing, little sister. Wed Tully to Stark in your arms.”

“A wolf with a fish in its mouth?” It made her laugh. “That would look silly…” – Arya I AGOT

That night she went to sleep thinking of her mother, and wondering if she should kill the Hound in his sleep and rescue Lady Catelyn herself. When she closed her eyes she saw her mother’s face against the back of her eyelids. She’s so close I could almost smell her…

…and then she could smell her. The scent was faint beneath the other smells, beneath moss and mud and water, and the stench of rotting reeds and rotting men. She padded slowly through the soft ground to the river’s edge, lapped up a drink, then lifted her head to sniff. The sky was grey and thick with cloud, the river green and full of floating things. Dead men clogged the shallows, some still moving as the water pushed them, others washed up on the banks. Her brothers and sisters swarmed around them, tearing at the rich ripe flesh.

[. . .]

The scent was stronger now [. . .] Only the scent mattered. She sniffed the air again. There it was, and now she saw it too, something pale and white drifting down the river, turning where it brushed against a snag. The reeds bowed down before it.

She splashed noisily through the shallows and threw herself into the deeper water, her legs churning. The current was strong but she was stronger. She swam, following her nose. The river smells were rich and wet, but those were not the smells that pulled her. She paddled after the sharp red whisper of cold blood, the sweet cloying stench of death. She chased them as she had often chased a red deer through the trees, and in the end she ran them down, and her jaw closed around a pale white arm. She shook it to make it move, but there was only death and blood in her mouth. By now she was tiring, and it was all she could do to pull the body back to shore. As she dragged it up the muddy bank, one of her little brothers came prowling, his tongue lolling from his mouth. She had to snarl to drive him off, or else he would have fed. Only then did she stop to shake the water from her fur. The white thing lay facedown in the mud, her dead flesh wrinkled and pale, cold blood trickling from her throat. Rise, she thought. Rise and eat and run with us. – Arya XII ASOS

“So you sewed his head on Robb Stark’s neck after both o’ them were dead,” said yellow cloak.

“My [Merrett Frey] father did that [. . .] I only drank some wine…you have no witness.”

“As it happens, you’re wrong there.” The singer turned to the hooded woman. “Milady?”

The outlaws parted as she came forward, saying no word. When she lowered her hood, something tightened inside Merrett’s chest, and for a moment he could not breathe. No. No, I saw her die. She was dead for a day and night before they stripped her naked and threw her body in the river. Raymund opened her throat from ear to ear. She was dead.

Her cloak and collar hid the gash his brother’s blade had made, but her face was even worse than he remembered. The flesh had gone pudding soft in the water and turned the color of curdled milk. Half her hair was gone and the rest had turned as white and brittle as a crone’s. Beneath her ravaged scalp, her face was shredded skin and black blood where she had raked herself with her nails. But her eyes were the most terrible thing. Her eyes saw him, and they hated.

“She don’t speak,” said the big man in the yellow cloak. “You bloody bastards cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” He turned to the dead woman and said, “What do you say, m’lady? Was he part of it?”

Lady Catelyn’s eyes never left him. She nodded. – Epilogue ASOS

In the Chinese retelling of Cinderella, Ye Xian, the heroine befriends a fish, which is the reincarnation of her deceased mother. In The Story of Tam and Cam, a Vietnamese version, the heroine Tam also had a fish which was killed by the stepmother and the half-sister, and its bones also give her clothes. And a typical scene in Kapmalaien tales is the mother becoming a fish, being eaten in fish form, the daughter burying her bones and a tree sprouting from her grave.

So not only is Lady Catelyn a symbolic fish, a daughter of House Tully, but she’s also been resurrected (reincarnated), and is looking specifically for our heroine, Arya, who I believe will be gifted several various things (both good and bad) by this incarnation of her mother, but we shall see if the parallel continues when TWOW and ADOS come out.

Conclusion

I really hope that after you read this monster you were as convinced as I am that Arya indeed has Cinderella motifs, and an extensive amount of them as well. Whatever it may mean I don’t rightly know, but what I do know is that at the end of the day, the many stories of Cinderella are an analogy. An analogy about someone “who unexpectedly achieves recognition or success after a period of obscurity and neglect”. Of someone whose attributes were unrecognized in their society, only for them to be recognized. And I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty hand in hand with one of her other biggest fairy tale motifs as well that runs concurrently with the Cinderella motif, and that is the story of “The Ugly Duckling”, who after years of neglect, finds acceptance within society, as well as self-acceptance within themselves. :)

#arya stark #gendrya #asoiaf

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jeeperso · 2 years

Text

D&D Quotes Without Context

Invidia Arc, part 1

CW: CONTAINS DISCUSSION OF POSSIBLY MURDERING A CHILD.

As they come out of the mists Jonni’s hair Burt’s into fire. She doesn’t see me to notice.

Gorbash: “You know I'm almost less surprised by the surreal nightmare land. I think all this hopping between domains is leaving me jaded.” Jonni shrugs, “eh, all gonna be on fire soon enough.” Gorbash gives a concerned look. "Your hair has gotten a head start on that.” Jonni: “The what now?” Gorbash: “Your. Hair. Is. On. Fire.”

Gorbash: “Eh, things being on fire when you're angry isn't all that weird. It's just usually other people.”

Meats of evil! Meats of evil!

"No! Bad dog! No eating living meat!”

"TIme to bleed, let's see if you like being on the menu!” "I have a recipe.”

"That CAN'T be a good sign.” "Did you check to see if the batteries need recharging?”

"Probably ran out of warranty. Shoddy Hazlin work.”

OOC: Don’t forget Poom, who is here now. OOC2: Suddenly.

“Marsh, gives hugs to the little sausage boy, I gotta check something.”

"Voices thought I could use more varied artillery.”

"Might be a stupid question, but have you always been made of lunch meat?”

“It’s either laugh or cry in these parts. Don’t take it personal. We survive via snark.”

"Don't worry, from here we got it Mayor McMeaty.” “Dude, too soon.”

"It's magic, so it made her magic more magical.”

“Jonni? Can you still reliably light things on fire? If so then that's good enough for now.” The ground is now on fire. “Yes.”

"Uh, not to be rude but can this big guy talk with that mask stapled to his face? That looks painful.”

"I saw a bird. It was pretty. I kicked its ass.”

OOC: Dude's seen shit, man. OOC2: He’s gonna see all new types of shit.

"You are here for the governess position.” Irost clears his throat. "We are. I am Marty Poppins. Practically Snarky in Every Way.”

The devil leads you to the gates, you are lead into the gardens to a giant chess board, with life size pieces. “Kinky.”

GM OOC: You're overthinking this, it’s not a puzzle or trap. OOC: But...it's D&D.

As the party steps onto the board, Marshal only moves in an L-Pattern.

"Okay. Kid mad with power scenario Beta,” "I am NOT murdering a child!” "Scenario Gamma then.”

“Do I need you to make that stop?” “Yes." “Do I need you in one piece to make that stop?”

“So, how open are you to child murder? Personally, I’m [usually against], but I’m open to suggestions.”

"I have seen some of the stuff that kid has done with his powers. I've met Balors with more basic decency.” “That sounds like a kid.”

"Darklord. She'll respawn and learn nothing.” “I’m very creative.”

“Irost, you got magic eyes? My sexy dances arn’t working.”

Nyx: ”Then we need to hurry and get this search started. Let's split up, gang.” Nyarlathotep: "Whelp, they're goners.” Nyx: ”Nyarlathotep, I can always count on you for words of encouragement.”

Irost, Nyx, Marshal, you find the playroom on the ground floor. It is filled with a drawing easel, several boxes of toys, and an Angel chained to the wall next to several implements of torture.

"As the good book says: So much sadness as devils strike, but the truth is buckaroos always win in the end. Love is and always will be real, no devil can stop that. Amen.”

But that giant baby doll is beginning to move towards you. Gorbash: “You sit your giant baby ass down right now! I have an axe and I'm not afraid to use it.” It stops for a moment and just stands there, tilting its head. Gorbash reiterates in a commanding voice. "Sit. Down. Now. Thank you very much.” Baby doll sits down. Gorbash: “That goes for any of the rest of you that are getting the idea to get up.”

“Listen, I am Jonni Humantorch, and this lively flame is Leveshia, 37th Princess of Fuck Mountain. We are the greatest lovers of women in the multiverse.” The maid scoffs, "I am a handmaiden of Lloth herself, you believe yourself a better lover than the Queen of the Demonweb Pits herself?” Jonni: “Yes.”

"Well then we're gonna have a problem.” Jonni: “Can we settle it in a sexy duel?” The maid melts into a huge cyclopean tower of flesh with tentacles. Jonni: “That’s not a no.”

“Hey, no. We treat service industry with respect. We’re killing her cause she turned into a murderous flesh pole and won’t give us the bone board.”

Irost comes charging in, at the sound of violence. "Back up has arriv-- HOLY ONE EYED TENTACLE MONSTERS!” Nyarlathotep: "Yes, we are quite worship-able, aren't we?”

"She must mean the Headmaster and the Basement Boogie.” “They do anything nasty?” "The headmaster might assign really annoying homework over holidays?”

Gorbash: “Let's torch another basement dwelling abomination! We haven't done that since Mordent.”

"Oh, and Phil is the bondage angel in the kids room.”

"No, not a labyrinth. Next thing you know a sexy Goblin king will show up, but look totally human.” "We do not need a sexy Slaadi.”

When you come to the door of the basement, it’s dark, leading to a labyrinth of stone corridors with strange runes scratched on the walls. They are mostly gibberish, written in Slaad. Some nursery rhymes, and a recipe for fudge.

"Darn it, Nyarl, you know only Poom and I can hear that music when you play it.”

"Let's croak a toad!”

"I suspect magnets.”

Poom: "I call 'Not it' on hacking its stomach open.”

OOC: We got an Emperor Joker situation here.

#dungeons and dragons #dnd 5e #quotes without context #ravenloft #invidia #chuck tingle quote

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owaowabetch · 4 years

Text

Uh Oh (Sykkuno x F!Reader)

Oneshot (maybe part of a series??? idk we’ll see): The Prequel to “Impasta” in which reader meets the gang for the first time and experiences a betrayal. Mainly Friendship

Warning: non-beta, I wrote this in one go and full sent it.

You were a small time Twitch streamer that had recently befriend a streamer with a much larger audience, ValkyRae. You had been talking back and forth for quite some time, since Rae’s dm to you weeks ago. You were mainly an rp channel where you played games like GTA, The Sims, and Animal Crossing. Though you gained a lot of your followers from playing League, though it mostly consisted of hate-followers that would only critique your gaming, even though you were pretty good at it. But it doesn’t bother you too much *que sob*

You were streaming GTA on a RP server playing an amish girl on a Rumspringa and wreaking havoc. You and your ‘gang’ had successfully finished hitting a bank truck ,causing your character to rake in a few thousand dollars, when you got a message from Rae asking you if you had wanted to play a few rounds of the popular game among us.

“Alright guys, a friend asked if I wanted to join her lobby of among us. I know it’s different from the stuff i usually stream, but is that something you guys would be cool with?” You asked your chat and watch an influx of people messaging ‘yes’ or ‘pog’. You take a sip of your Starbucks and picked up your phone to message Rae that you’ll be joining. “Fair warning, I’ve never played among us. So we’ll see how this goes, guys”

While you waited to be invited to the discord and into the lobby, you chatted with your viewers for a bit. “I just realized that I’m really awkward around new people. Like when I’m playing on the GTA Rp Server, I’m not myself, I’m a character you know? So it’s easier to talk with other people, cause they’re also role playing. Plus I don’t think I can call anyone in the discord a musty dusty rat bitch lol or sell them drugs, it’s not that kind of game...unless?...” You laugh as you login to your discord and accept the invite to the discord “alright guys! here we go~”

You enter the discord call and hear people talking.

“Y/N!” Rae exclaims “Guys this is my new friend y/n”

“Hi” Responding to the various voices greeting you

“OK, so the code is in the chat and so are the bubbles, so your chat can see who is talking and what not” Rae explains

You input the code and saw your little character in the space ship. “Oh god guys look at us!” You ran your little character around the ship “How do we change colors? I’m not feeling this blue and I saw Rae with her lil creepy mask”

You read your chat tell you what to do so you went to the little computer to change the blue to white and clicked through all the hats til you decided on the pink flower. “How about this guys? Yellow is my favorite color but its taken”

“Alright, you ready y/n?” Rae asked

“Yup” you respond by running circles around her character

“OK i’m starting. Don’t forget to mute and close chat. You can open it back up if your imposter or dead” Rae sang “Good luck~”

“Alright chat I gotta close you til the game is done? I guess” You hum as the words ‘crewmate’ pop up. “Well at least i’m not imposter, i know the game. I mean who hasn’t at this point. I just never played it, seems to be to nerve wracking”

You open the map icon and run to where the closet yellow exclamation point was, which was admin. You make sure to note all the colors around you in there as you swipe your card “Alright, green, yellow, brown,red, and orange” You repeated the colors over and over again as you make your way into electrical when you notice something “Ok uh green is following me? I don’t know why but its freaking me out.” The lights turn off and you start freaking out “Oh god, this is where I die. Don’t I? You know what do it. Kill me! It’s probably a good idea. I’m kind of an idiot and it’ll help me figure things out on my own without the pressure” You follow the arrow pointing to a panel and you click on it “What am i supposed to do? You know green, this would be the perfect opportunity to murder me in cold blood... is this how you do it?” You flip the switches so that they are all bright green and the lights turn on “YAS BITCH, I did it”

The green character kind of just circles your body as you do tasks in electrical, you do download, wires, and power diverter. “Ok BUT WHY IS HE FOLLOWING ME!!”

An orange body had been reported and that two others had died (bright green and pink) and the person who reported the body was black or as his name read ‘Abe’ “Ok, so this body was in admin on card swipe”

“Well this body couldn’t have been me or y/n” Sykkuno says “I was following her this entire time”

“Yea, I’d like to know why lol? You were kinda freaking me out dude” You laugh a bit trying to play off how nervous you were to call him out on it

“Oh No! I was protecting you” Sykkuno explains “I promise”

“Sykkuno? Are you already simping for someone?” Rae feigns exasperation

“No really guys!” He explains nervously “The new person always dies first, so I was just trying to protect her.”

You hum and smile mischievously “Unless, your just trying to gain my trust only to murder me in coldblood in front of my bestie Rae, to prove your superiority over her!?!”

Rae gasps “Really Sykkuno!?! I’m voting you just for that!”

“Wah? No wait! It’s not like that really” Sykkuno starts laughing as Rae votes “Oh God did you really vote for me?”

“Yes” Rae says and you start laughing

“So anyways, Leslie’s body is in admin?” Hafu says wanting to talk more about the body and get all the sus’s and clears

Though you gasp when you realized a few things “wait I have some info to share” teasing Sykkuno had loosened you up a bit “it was me,green,yellow,brown,red, and orange in admin. Then me and green, uh Syyykkkuunnoo? Sorry if i didn’t say your name right, left and went into electrical, then lights were called and I fixed them before finishing off my tasks in there. So the body must’ve died during lights unless she left and came back into admin after lights were fixed? which doesn’t make much sense, sooo yea” you smiled “look at me chat! being all smart and shit”

“yes” Poki agrees “I left admin also with Rae just before lights were called”

“Ok, so I know that puts sus on me, but I went straight to lights when they were called” Hafu says “Someone on the right side must’ve vented when lights were off. Like I was entering the hallway from storage with Tina when lights got fixed and we went to reactor room together. So it couldn’t have been me. Maybe Tina? I dont know which way she come from, but it was not me”

“That is true. I did meet up with Hafu at storage, but I don’t know man” Tina says “ I was doing download in comms”

“Oh god” You tell chat “I don’t know whether to believe Hafu or not. I know she is really good, along with Toast, but he hasn’t said anything”

“Well it is seven and we don’t vote on seven, so we can skip. Just putting a sus on Hafu” Rae says

“Yes please do” Hafu says as she votes to skip

“Do we know where the other bodies are?” Poki asks as the seconds start to dwindle down to zero “Also Toast? Why are you so quiet?”

“I’m trying to figure out a new strat, so don’t you worry. I’ll catch the killers” Toast starts to evil laugh and that was the end of the meeting.

“Ok we’re susing Hafu for this.Though I don’t think it’s her only cause I remember watching one of her imposter plays and it would be a too obvious kill,since so many people were there, it just doesn’t make sense, so someone venting in and killing is plausible or could be a self report? I don’t know lol It’s my first game” You run with Sykkuno and finish up your tasks together. Though lights were called when you both were at shields, you can see the vent pop open and in your little vision bubble you see a flash of red “Whelp this is where I die, I’d like to rate Sykkuno an 8 out of 10 for protecting me, but obviously I am now died” True to your word Rae killed you and you saw Sykkuno running around like a headless chicken when he reports your body

“Oh God! They got her when I was trying to protect her!” Sykkuno exclaims

“Sykkuno! You were supposed to be protecting her!?” Rae shouts “What happened? Did you kill her in cold blood? hmm?”

“smh Rae, you murdered me right in front of Sykkuno” You sigh “Well chat looks like I’m dead and we can speak now”

“No!” Sykkuno denies “I said I was going to protect her. I wouldn’t kill her after saying that”

“Well she’s dead now Sykkuno! Where’s the body?” Toast dramatically says

“It’s in shields. It happened when lights were off” Sykkyno says “I’m sorry y/n, I couldn’t protect you”

“Aw that is so cute” You pout at his apology, it wasn’t his fault. It was dark, so obviously he couldn’t see

“Well I don’t think Sykkuno did this, He said he was protecting her to everyone, so I can say that he’s crew” Hafu says “I’m at light panel, I remember seeing Poki and Tina there”

“I can confirm this” Poki says “So Toast let’s hear your big brain play. What’s your strat?”

It was silent for a minute, before Toast admits that he doesn’t have one.

“Ok so we can all agree that Toast is the imposter right?” Rae says “Vote him outta here!”

“Yep” Tina agrees hitting that vote on him and many follow suit

“Wait guys! WAIT! I do! I do have a strat” Toast screams out “Uhhh... wires! The wires guys!”

“Lol they’re gunna vote him off” You watch people voting “Rae is probably gunna win this”

“Yea, you’ve done that pay before” Poki laughs

“Don’t worry I’ll skip Toast” Sykkuno says

“Why would you skip if we’re on 6?” Rae asks “Is Toast your imposter buddy?”

“Wah? I said I was protecting y/n, why would I kill her?” Trying to make his innocence obvious

“Unless you killed her by accident or Toast did and you’re trying to protect him like the Simp you are!” Rae accuses him

Tina starts to also question Sykkuno “Wait a second, I dont think I’ve seen you do a single task this entire game! You’ve just been following y/n all around! We should vote him off next!”

“Guys, I swear it’s not me, it just doesn’t make sense” You can hear him plead “Oh no guys, how did this get twisted? It’s Rae! But how did it go to thinking Sykkuno as imposter?”

The meeting ends with Toast screaming into the abyss as he is yeeted out with Sykkuno telling him that he voted to skip.

“Ok then chat, looks like the imposters are gunna win, lets talk for a bit” You sigh and start reading the comments “ I know that I didn’t talk much with them, but I’m just awkward in general and I don’t know what to say to them. This is the first time playing with a group like this where i’m supposed to be myself and not a character.”

The words Defeat appeared on screen and there was Hafu and Rae as imposter. “I honestly didn’t think it was Hafu”

“Hafu was that you that killed Leslie in admin? I didn’t think it was “You asked when you returned to the lobby

“NO! I got framed by my own partner” Hafu explains before taking her bathroom break

“How did Rae get that kill cause I was with her?” Poki asks

“I vented from Caf back into admin when lights were off” Rae laughs “and I vented into shields and killed y/n right in front of Sykkuno!”

“Im sorry for not being able to protect you” Sykkuno runs circles around my character “Next round I’ll do better! I promise”

You laugh and start chasing after him in the ship “What if you end up as imposter?”

“Then I’ll have to look away as my imposter buddy kills you” Sykkuno laughs behind his hand and clears his throat “Im joking, Im joking, I promise”

“Wow Sykkuno” You tsk and run over to the opposite side of the room “I don’t know if I want your protection services now”

“Uh” Sykkuno splutters “I’m joking I promise! I won’t kill you as imposter”

“Wait til Corpse hears you simping over someone else” Poki says before starting the game

“Wait Hafu is still in the bathroom!” Rae exclaimed, but it was to late to stop the game from starting, so she’ll have to jump in when she comes back. Though you swear you feel your heart jump out of your chest when the words Imposter read on you screen. The 1st of the night for you and another in a row for Hafu.

“Oh God guys. Hafu is in the bathroom, but she has to carry us” You start to panic “What we do we do!?! Wait is Sykkuno seriously gunna follow us? Should we kill him or would that be to obvious?” You see the chat tell you that it would be to obvious and that it would be better to maybe frame him, but it seems to mean to you “Should we kill someone in front of him? You know to test his loyalty? It’s a terrible idea”

Though before you go on to fake tasks, you see Sykkuno standing on top of Hafu’s body, so you also go ontop of Sykkuno’s and to the outside perspective you are protecting Hafu, but really for you it’s to ensure that your imposter partner is going to be walking around and killing people,once she comes back from the bathroom. It seems that Hafu is back from the bathroom as her yellow character starts making her way away from you both. You and Sykkuno make your way to admin when lights get called and Sykkuno starts to wiggle his body around into a corner. It seems as though he wants you to stack with him in a corner, but before you do you double back when you see a body pass by and kill them, though you start to laugh when you see your character kill Rae, before ‘stumbling’ into Sykkuno’s view in the corner. You both stay there as lights turn back on and go on card swipe. You think about juking Sykkuno, but realize that it’ll look sus on you for ditching him. So you two just walk around ‘completing’ tasks as every once in a while the lights would go off and you two will stack on each other or wait for doors to open which you had been closing alot of them.

“Honestly guys I’m at a point were I just wanna murder someone in front of him” You start to evil laugh as you both stack in the corner of medbay as lights start turning on when a body got called

“It’s toast, it’s toast, it’s toast” Hafu chants as it was her who reported the body “I saw him kill Poki”

“oh she self reported” you note and click on Toast’s name but not locking in your vote just in case. You also noticed that four people had died “She killed three people!?! Wow she is beast in this game! Holy Shit guys”

“see, from my perspective it’s hafu. I didn’t see the kill, but I did see blood splatter and Hafu immediately reported the body and blamed me, so it has to be Hafu. I’m voting her” Toast explains and votes her

“no no no no no no no. I saw you kill her when lights got fixed.” Hafu describes her side and what she did in that round “ Ok guys I was afk for like the first 20 seconds and I see Sykkuno and y/n there standing on me in caf., and I’m just doing my tasks, which I finished by the way, so I’m just going back and forth going to cams and just walking around to find any dead bodies. So if you saw cams on in the last 30 or so seconds it was me. I’ve also been fixing lights too! Peter and Leslie should be able to vouch for me on that! But on this round of lights I’m making my way to go help fix them when i see blood flicker in my little bubble and as it starts to get bigger I see Toast walking away from it. Its Toast. It is 100% Toast.” She locks her vote on him “Vote him please. If you don’t vote then you’re either imposter or just throwing”

“I don’t know guys” You start and hover your mouse over the green checkmark next to Toast’s name “I’ve been with Sykkuno the entire round and we did guard Hafu’s body. For Hafu to say that she saw Toast kill, but toast didn’t see Hafu kill? It just doesnt make sense so I’m voting Toast” You lock your vote in when Hafu reminds everyone that crew has to vote together since it is on six. Reminding Peter and Leslie that Hafu has been fixing lights got their votes, but Sykkuno was hesitant “You know I can never vote Toast guys, but I have been with y/n this entire time and I know it’s not her. So, I’m sorry Toast but uh” He locks his vote in for either Hafu or Toast? Who knows if he’s simping over Toast hard.

“Sykkuno?” You can hear Toast tremble his voice “Sy-sykkuno? Who did you vote for? Sykkuno!?!?! Do- Don’t tell me...did you really vote me?”

“I uh “ He clears his throat as the votes get out and all of us had voted Toast

Toast gasps “Sykkuno!?! How could you!?!?!”

“I’m sorry! I just trust y/n!” Sykkuno explains as Toast’s body once again gets yeeted out into space.

“Wow guys, looks like we’re gunna win our first imposter game!” You wiggle around happily “and we literally did nothing...wait we killed Rae! We got our revenge from the last round mwua hahahahaha”

Sykkuno and I run circles around each other before walking back into medbay. You can see Hafu kind of trailing behind and the doors get locked with us three in it, but Hafu is just standing there. “Chat what is Hafu doing? Why is she just standing there” You can see Sykkuno step on the med scan “Wait she wants ME to kill SYKKUNO! Oh god that is so evil lol but i’m so useless as imposter, so I might as well get in at least 25% of the kills”

Once Sykkuno steps off you just murder him and you see that you had won.

“I- I can’t believe you just killed me!?! I trusted you y/n” Sykkuno exclaims

“Sykkuno” Rae sighs “she KILLED ME in caf! Why did no one NOT SEE MY CHOPPED BODY IN CAF!”

You just laugh “I’m sorry Sykkuno, but my chat was telling me that Hafu wanted me to kill you”

“Yea, cause I did like all of the kills and sabotages” Hafu recounts who and how she killed

“Sykkuno, you giant simp. I can’t believe you vote me” Toast tsk’ed

“I can’t believe y/n was the imposter! and she killed me!” Sykkuno shakes his head “you know what i’m no longer protecting you anymore”

“Wait Sykkuno I’m sorry. Really” You giggle

“No no no it’s ok, it’s all part of the game” Sykkuno reassure you that he is not actually mad and that he hoped you had fun “But i wont be protecting you from now on, I have scars now”

So, you play a few more games before calling it quits and end your stream. Later on, you find that Sykkuno started following you on Twitter and Instagram, You totally did not stalk both of his pages and you totally don’t think that he’s cute.....

SideNote: You totally murdered someone in front of Sykkuno and he totally didn’t snitch on you. Instead he protected you as you ran around killing more people in front of him and like the giant Simp he is he totally went ‘I neva snitch on you Daddy, I hold a brick for you Daddy’.

#sykkuno x reader #sykkuno x y/n #sykkuno imagines #sykkuno fanfic #youtubers x reader #corpse husband x reader #corpse x reader #corpse imagines

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crystalas · 3 years

Text

Hind Sight

This is both inspired and a sort of prequel to Starfics’ answer to my prompt, I loved the idea of it so much that I started a Demon Bull Divorce AU, have fun!

Hindsight

Like a lot of things in hindsight MK could see that this was a very dumb idea.

It was a spur of the moment idea that came to him and Mei as they saw Red Son in the garage with his signature jacket hanging up because said fire demon was currently up to his elbows in tuk-tuk engine bits.

Red Son had just shown up at the noodle store one day declaring that he was there to ‘pay off his father’s debt’ after the whole lunar new year event. Everyone was a bit suspicious at first but Mei and MK decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, after all they knew he wasn’t all evil. True to his word he helped out with fixing stuff and had offered to upgrade the Tuk-tuk, after a few weeks they had managed to convince him to hang out with them after work as well.

That day MK had figured out how to shrink himself and after showing Mei she grinned and suggested they surprise Red Son with it.

Which was the aforementioned very dumb idea.

Said idea was for MK to shrink himself and then have Mei put him in Red Son’s jacket pocket, and when Red Son put it back on, have Mei ask the fire demon if he has seen MK and when he said no ask him to check his pockets…boom! Itty MK!

So, the joke was set, a shrunk MK in place and Mei was now walking up to Red Son as he clambered out of the Tuk-Tuk’s mechanical guts wiping away the grease from his hands.

“Hey Red boy” she beamed.

“Hey dragon horse girl” he said back as he got up.

“Have you seen MK?”

“No but I need to show him how to operate the upgrades…” he began but stopped when he looked at the clock on the garage wall, his smile dissolved into mild panic.

“Is that the time?!” he yelped and rushed past Mei grabbing his coat, igniting his hands to burn off all the grease and oil that had clung to him still and began to make a move for the door. “I’m sorry I need to get home tonight, tell Noodle boy I’ll show him tomorrow, okay?” Red Son yammered quickly.

“Red wait!” Mei cried as he vanished into a swirl of fire.

“Did you check your pockets?” she whimpered sheepishly.

MK felt like he was in a weird fair ground ride, cushioned in fabric and being swung around like on a rollercoaster; it was kind of fun. Not to mention he found a wrapped candy in here and at his current size it was as big as a pillow! He could hear Mei and Red Son talking and waited for his que but then things got very bumpy and then felt very hot and weird for a second as he felt his whole body move in a way that shouldn’t be possible for him before the background ambience of the city suddenly died into a hushed sound of far-off clanking and whirring.

He poked his head out of the pocket to see he was now in an old Chinese style mansion but it was underground and hewn from the rock itself, the walls were adorned with demon Bull family heirlooms and pictures all showing the grand history of the conquering demon clan. MK could hear Red Son muttering to himself.

“I’ve got enough time to check on the projects and get in my best clothes…did I remember to check the repair schedule for the clones?”

MK was about to poke out of the pocket and announce himself when Red Son stopped by a large door that seemed to lead to a main hall, he seemed to hesitate near the entrance as MK and no doubt Red Son could hear angry raised voices.

“How is it I was the one stuck under a mountain but you are the one stuck in the past?” Demon Bull King demanded.

“I am thinking of our legacy and heritage, things you seem keen to throw away!” Princess Iron Fan retorted.

“Our pursuit of power has only brought us trouble!” came the angry reply “We need to move with the times!”

“Listen to you!” Princess Iron Fan screeched “You sound that useless son of ours!”

MK poked out of the pocket and looked up at Red Son who looked forlorn but not surprised as he carried on past the door his shoulders hunched over as he hurried through. Red Son came to a kitchen that seemed big enough to feed a whole court full of people but it was sadly empty and hollow except for one corner where a bull clone was currently working at a stove top. It saw Red Son and bowed respectively.

“I don’t think family meal time will be happening tonight” Red Son declared “so I will be taking my evening meal in my room…again…” the bull clone nodded and got back to preparing said meal. Red Son continued walking through the vacant halls as the vicious shouting ebbed away to quiet muffled sounds. He came to his room and sat at his desk; MK looked around to see his room unlike the rest of the castle had a bit of life to it. There were posters of car designs and movie mechs adorning the walls, a work table filled with small cabinets of tools and gear and what looked to be a shelf filled with scrolls and old tomes. MK had wondered why someone as tidy as Red Son would have what looked to be an arranged pile of tinfoil and fabric in a corner of his room before he realised that must his bed. He remembered Pigsy saying how some demons prefer nests to human style beds.

Okay I really need to show myself before things get even more awkward MK decided and he started to climb out but froze when he heard the door open, Red Son turned to see his mother glaring at him and MK quickly dived back into the safety concealment of the jacket.

“You’ve ruined him” she hissed, and MK could feel Red Son flinch. “Your father was a proud mighty demon King who conquered whole armies alone and made the heavens fear him and now looked at what you have done!”

“Isn’t this better?” Red Son said quietly “I mean…this way we won’t have to worry about him being hurt or sealed… aah!” came the pain gasped as MK could hear a very sharp and painful smack, MK grabbed the fabric of the pocket as Red Son’s whole body violently jerked to the side.

“Be quiet you worthless whelp!” she snarled “I kept our family name safe and proud for centuries and in one year you’ve weakened your father, the great Demon Bull King to the point that he wants to ‘settle down peacefully’!” she said the last bit dripping with venom and MK wished for Red Son to speak up or say something or at the very least move from where he was sitting but he didn’t.

“I’m sorry mother…” was all he managed after a moment of silence.

“Sorry doesn’t undo what you have done!” she spat and MK listened to the sound of her shoes moving away, “Sometimes I wish you had never returned!” she exclaimed coldly before shutting the door.

The fabric around him lurched as Red Son moved and he could feel energy pulse around him like the sky before lightning struck, it was only then did MK realised how dumb this idea really was. Red Son ignites into flames when upset or angry and it’s pretty obvious his clothes are fire proof to deal with that.

MK wasn’t fire proof…

MK made a mad scramble out of the pocket and leapt away just in time for a massive inferno engulfed where he had been hiding and everything else around it. He landed on the cold stone floor and patted himself down to make sure nothing was on fire and once he was sure he wasn’t smouldering he looked back up at the crackling fire ball that was his friend. Red Son still hadn’t moved from the desk but was now hunched over it his hands clawing into his fiery hair his eyes tightly shut but flames still leaked out and his whole body was shuddering as he tried to control his breathing.

MK decided that maybe he should give the fire demon with known anger issues some time to breathe and started to make his way to hide in the nest till he seemed to have calmed down but as he tiptoed his way across the room Red Son sensed the movement. The fire evaporating into the air as Red Son turned around and scanned the room, he glanced down to see a tiny MK in mid sneak.

Red Son looked at MK confused.

MK looked at Red Son worried.

There was a pregnant pause.

“Heh heh …Ta da!” MK said weakly and held out his hands as if to show off “Look what I can do now!”

“Noodle boy?” Red Son muttered quietly as his brain tried to fathom him being there before it clicked that he was and what that might imply. “How long have you been here?” he asked a look of dread falling on his face.

“Oh pssh!” MK tried to dismiss “Not long…no not long at all!”

“Noodle boy” Red Son growled, “How long?”

“… … …” MK struggled to come up with a decent excuse before sighing and returning to his full size, if they were going to have this talk he wanted to be able to look him in face. “Since you made a mad dash out of the garage…”

Red Son gave a groan and covered his face before returning to slump on the desk.

“I know this is going to sound dumb but is everything ok?” MK inquired, “I don’t know how demon families work but that…didn’t sound good.”

“Everything’s fine Noodle boy!” Red Son declared sharply, “My parents are just…going through a rough patch, that is all!”

“A rough patch huh?” MK muttered before walking over to the desk and lightly touching Red Son’s face where the red mark showing where his mother had slapped him was now fading away. How many times had that happened and no one knew thanks to demon healing powers? Red Son batted his hand away and snarled angrily.

“Yes!” he snapped and glared at his desk.

Things were clicking into place in MK’s mind, in hind sight he should have wondered why Red Son showed up out of the blue and wanted to pay off some demon debt, why he had wanted to stay around them as long as possible and even agreed to hang out in the evenings and only on certain days [apparently for family meal times] would he actually go home before anyone else.

MK remembered in the first week of Red Son coming over, Pigsy finally gave in and let Red Son help by telling him to try and get his old tricky stove working again. Red Son had not only fixed it but cleaned it up and gave it a full work through and when he was finished the thing looked and worked as if brand new. Pigsy in his joy of getting his stove back to its prime for free patted Red Son on the back and declared he had paid back the debt in spades.

MK had wondered that day why Red Son had looked so upset but had dismissed it when a moment later the fire demon had gone on a tirade about how insulting it was that Pigsy thought his father’s life was worth only an afternoon of labour.

Maybe Pigsy and Tang had cottoned on a lot sooner than he had because after that they would always find little things for Red Son to do to ‘pay back the debt’.

“Red Son” Mk said as these thoughts mulled in his mind “Was there even a debt to pay off?”

Red Son turned to face him, he fidgeted with his hands for a few moments before sighing.

“I…I…I thought you would be more at ease if you thought that I was honoured bound to behave…”

“Why didn’t you just say something?”

“Like what?!” Red Son retorted “Please may I come over here because I rather spend my days with my enemies rather than my parents because they’re constantly fighting and I can’t do anything to fix it?!” Red Son jaw snapped shut and his hair flared up angrily. “Because they don’t! Fight all the time…I mean…” he exclaimed as he tried to back pedal out of the conversation.

MK watched Red Son and felt a wave of pity come over for him, it was like looking into a mirror of seven years ago. He could almost feel the emotions Red Son must be going through right now, the uncertainty of what was going to happen next, the guilt of not being able to stop it, that gnawing anxiety of thinking if he was to blame somehow. And that horrible cold fear of knowing that sooner or later one of them will be coming up to take their frustration out on someone who won’t fight back…

He thanked the gods regularly that he was fortunate enough that it was Pigsy that caught him dump diving behind his store, how different would his life had been if Pigsy and Tang hadn’t taken him in? He probably had starved to death on the streets that winter.

“Everything was supposed to get better when Father came back…” Red Son muttered to himself but was jolted back into the room as MK put his hands on his shoulders.

“Your parents are going through some stuff right now, so do you want to hang out at my place while they work it out?”

“What?” Red Son spluttered.

“Maybe they just need some space I dunno” MK said, “but what your mom did was not okay, and I’m worried about you”

“Why?”

“Because we’re friends you dummy!” MK laughed “and friends help each other even without demon debts to pay!”

Red Son stood up and pulled out a duffle bag from his wardrobe, he started to fill it with clothes, a stuff bull toy that looked to be antique and over-night necessities.

“You seem to have experience with this sort of thing” Red Son ventured quietly as MK helped him put his tools away in a box for travel.

“Let’s just say I’ve been where you are” MK said softly.

“In your experienced opinion…will me not being here helped my parents to reconcile?”

MK swallowed a hard lump in his throat, he didn’t know if it helped with his parents because he ran away from home and as far as he knows they never came looking for him. Mk was on the streets for three weeks before that fated night at Pigsy’s and it’s been seven years since then and he’s only ever caught a glimpse of them while during his deliveries on the streets.

“Sure, they will” MK answered with a smile “I hope so!”

Red Son left a note telling his parents exactly where he was and how to contact him before they left.

MK wasn’t all that surprised when after explaining the situation Pigsy happen to have a spare fold out bed in the store room.

#monkie kid red son #monkie kid mk #demon bull divorce AU #red son

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pizzarollsareokayiguess · 4 years

Text

Far too much (Kuvira x Fem!Reader)

This is part 2 to Close enough? And I’m so thankful for all the people that interacted with my first written work!! So here’s this, I had so much fun writing it! If you guys wanna see somethin more specific or have ideas, send ‘em my way! Love you!!

WC: 5200 (almost 2x my last one!) TW: none that i’m aware of, lemme know though <3

You felt as stupid as a raccoon-toad.

When the avatar came to collect you to travel back to Zaofu, you were excited because you were going back home, even if you were being punished for your crimes. Unfortunately, Suyin had extended the invitation to the other individuals who were also from Zaofu. It seemed that she was sentimental and decided that every one needed a second chance.

So you were stuck with a bunch of people that you were not entirely fond of, especially when they heard of what happened to Kuvira. After that, you could just feel the glares they sent your way, which was annoying because that’s all they did. They just stared and would raise their stupid eyebrows. Why couldn’t they just get over it and shove it? It didn’t help that your injury still required attendance by healers and physical therapy. So even if you wanted to avoid all attention, it was a little pointless when they said you could only apply yourself for a couple of hours before resting.

There was a constant dull throb in your side, no matter the number of healers. Sometimes it would chill out but when you were awake for too long or when you skipped a meal, it would come back and stiffen your back. It was a constant battle and there were some times that you just wished that Kuvira double tapped you. It could've saved a lot of emotional and physical turmoil.

So, back to the situation on hand. You and several others were on a train that would stop in the heart of the Metal Clan. After that, each person would be sent to a camp that was ran by a horse faced individual who lacked the sympathy of a real person. You were told to call him General Zheng, if you ever saw him, and after that he left to go talk to the head of the guard. You and the others were hustled into a medical looking outlet, and each person was given a platinum band around each left ankle.

“It’s to make sure you don’t leave and to make sure you obey. Can’t have you running around like hen-ducks, right?”

ugh.

It had been several days since you had arrived in Zaofu. By then, everyone had been stationed with their community service and you started to get used to the schedule given. General Zhen said since you had to serve the community as your punishment, you could choose your schedule, basically saying, “How long do you really wanna do this?”. You could remain under order until your sentence was done or you could rush it out and leave it early. As early as you could anyway with a 25 year sentence. You decided to go with the latter; even with your injury, you thought that you could cut it by a year or two which sounded pretty minimal but you’d take anything at this point. At 10am you would wake up and eat then head towards the outskirts of the ring. There, you would begin to bend the metal together to create cohesive pieces for other workers to make into the plates that would create the dome. Others were tasked with mining the actual ore, and they were even paid for that, but you had to create the joints for them. Sitting and concentrating for about 8 hours a day would cause you to slouch and then you’d get yelled at by the healers. Who were scarier than a guy on cactus juice. You’d visit the healers once a week and they would see if your scar had healed or if it was infected. After seeing them, you would head over to the park where they held physical therapy outside. It was really nice to see all of nature while an old lady calmly coaxes you into the tree pose. Gaining balance was the hardest because your brain was trying to compensate for the strain in your side. You also kinda wanted to punch the lady because that’s is as far as I go stop pushing me areyoutuchingmerightnowareyouserious.

Needless to say, it was nice to go back to the plain gray walls of your (holding cell) room and just breathe quietly by yourself.

Then you got used to your routine which was a mistake because then something had to go and mess it up. And who else would it be if not for the very person who put you here?

Madam Jilpa was going to be the death of you. That near death experience you had? Insignificant to the pain that this woman was gracing you with. You wanted to strangle her. She was super nice about your wound, saying how it was healing well and then she manhandled you into a position to “stretch your muscles, you’re awfully sore, my dear.” You rolled your shoulders and exhaled as you left the park. Ever since you came back, people avoided you like the plague and it made the anklet a little more tighter each time. Doesn’t help that it was platinum so it just seemed that it was mocking you every time you caught a glimpse of it. Stupid thing. Stupid city. Stupid community service. Stupid- who is that?

You were strolling through the main street of the city, heading to the store when you saw her. Kuvira. The devil herself. Was I thinking about her? Is that why she’s here? Oh god, she can’t see me, what do i do? Where am I gonna hide? You panicked and slid into the nearest shop, which happened to be a tea shop. Luckily there was a line so you didn’t look too odd. Unluckily, the shop had big glass windows. So as much as you could see her, she could possibly see you? Maybe? You dipped next to the door and peeked out, wondering why Kuvira would be away from the estate. Then you saw the entire Beifong family, whelp. That answers your question. No better way to survey someone than surround them with powerful earthbenders. As your eyes glazed over their faces, you saw Bataar Jr. and Kuvira at the back of the pack. You couldn’t tell if they were talking but they looked like they were standing next to each other, and the evil voice in your head wouldn’t stop talking about how they looked. Together.

Not wanting to add mental therapy to your list of visitation rights, you decided to exit the tea shop and go back the way you came. Back to your plain gray room. Because who needs closure when you have, uh, gray pillows and plain bagels?

…

After that train wreck, it didn’t stop.

Suyin (it felt wrong to call her Su) had talked to the General and they made a plan to talk to each of the prisoners. To really decide if they are evil or not. You could make that decision with the way that these people would play Pai Sho, some of them were just cruel and malicious and a better punishment would be to shove em in the boiling rock.

Unfortunately you were on that list of visits and it was 3 days from now. They even accepted letters from family members. So that you could read how disappointed they are, one more time. But! It was written so it had sentimental value. You felt nauseous when you saw your name scrawled on the letter. Better now than later, it would seem.

Y/n,

I remember the day you were born. You were a screaming ball of anger and you wouldn’t stop crying until you were placed on my chest. Then you shushed and swooned. I knew then and there that I would love you till the day I die and every day after. And it seems that even now, I feel the same way. But, I know now that some paths are a little crowded and you lost your way. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to help you find the light in this dim world, but I just wanted you to know that you are my light. And that is all that matters. When you first left, I was left with irreplaceable pain because in a way, you had left me. But you were just touching the ground and spreading your fingers. You thought you knew best and I’m proud of you for sticking with it. But now that you see the end of this journey, you must stick with the repercussions. That is what it means to find the light and settle with it. You face your decisions and lay with the judgements. I’m glad that you came back to Zaofu. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to see your beautiful face again.

Love always,

Mom and Dad

A chip had left your shoulder. Thank the spirits. You could feel the wetness on your cheeks from the compassion from your parents. Perhaps they were right.

Bracing yourself with these words of encouragement, you faced Suyin with strong shoulders and a flinch in your side (cause, honestly, the tea isn’t that good at keeping the pain down).

…

When you were growing up, your parents had tried everything to stop you from sneaking out of the house. They tried metal bars, they tried positive reinforcements, they tried every parental trick in the book. They couldn’t keep you from whatever entranced you from the house. The only person who ever humored you and whoever treated you with some semblance of respect was Kuvira, or ‘Vee, when you were kids. Granted, she also had a rocky relationship but what’s a pot and what’s a kettle? When your parents finally noticed where you were going when you left, they talked to Su about it. If they couldn’t keep you down, they’ll just make sure that nothing bad happens. Because of that, you would spend many hours on the Beifong estate, surrounding yourself with other earthbenders and playing games with the other kids. As you grew, you started to notice how Opal would talk about the cute boy in her class or how Wing and Wei would blush when the dance recitals were held. But, as you got older, all you could think about was how pretty ‘Vee’s eyes were. How green they were, and how much they sparkled when she talked about how she finally joined the guard. How the tank tops she wore outlined her shoulders. You never noticed that when other people were looking outside, that you had found your view right in front of you. Su noticed of course, being the romantic that she was, she got so excited whenever her children were talking about love. Su knew you well, and when Kuvira left Zaofu, she had a feeling that you would leave with her. She had tried so hard to understand you, but she was so angry. Angry at Bataar Jr, angry at Kuvira, angry about everything, that she forgot that you got the short end of the stick too.

So she was nervous too when she invited you over.

…

The door had opened by then even when you hoped that it would remain shut for a little while longer. A guard had escorted you from your quarters into the matriarch’s afternoon room and she was seated near a window that looked to the sprawling estate of the Metal Clan. She looked up at you and smiled softly, and even from the doorway, you could tell that she had gotten older. Maybe not physically, but her eyes were a little wiser and a little more battle worn.

You had settled into the opposite chair, with some grace that you managed to muster, and she had offered you tea. It smelled of lemon and blueberries and you couldn’t help but relax. You couldn’t help it, seeing Su as a mother figure made you wistful of all the memories you shared. With those came remorse and you immediately felt guilty.

“Thank you for allowing me to come back to Zaofu, Su-Suyin, I am eternally grateful that you have allowed me back after what I did,” you said. After your stutter, it seemed your words came in a rush, unable to be held back.

“I wanted to apologize for leaving in the first place. I didn’t realise that I was blind to all the hurt that occurred when this thing started and I should’ve noticed when the first person that was wounded was you. I thought that I knew what I was doing when I left because I thought Ku-” you inhaled sharply, “I thought she would be the answer. It was wrong of me to place such big standards on her without thinking of the consequences. I know now that I followed her out of personal feeling, and not logic. I will forever be humbled by the events that happened and I just hope that you may forgive me. I am incredibly regretful of turning my back on you Su, I wish my eyes had stayed open a little longer.”

You were a little choked up and you finally pulled your eyes away from your tea cup to look at Su, finding her eyes already on you. Tears were pooling in her eyes and she was softly smiling.

Laughing softly, she speaks.

“You don’t speak often but when you do, you speak,” she sighs and looks outside again.

“I must admit that the most heartbreaking thing was watching Kuvira walk out because i knew that if she left, you would too. It's been that way since you were children. Little younglings running across the estate, throwing rocks and giggling to yourselves. I knew when she left that you would go. You follow the ones you love, you want them in your lives so you do what you must. I understand the feeling well.”

She looks at you and stands from her seat, walking around the table and kneeling at your side.

Softly, she places her hands on yours and squeezes.

“When I saw you on the floor, my mind ran a thousand miles. But until your testimony before your trial, I never imagined. The Kuvira that you love exists, but the Kuvira you followed are not the same. I’m sorry that I didn’t get the chance to warn you. People change right before your very eyes and it’s hard to adapt. I love you as if you were my own, Y/n, and I forgive you. As a parent, I am disappointed but that’s to be expected.”

Smiling you lurched forward and squished her against yourself. It didn’t take you long to become a little touch-starved from being in prison but man, hugging Su felt like landing on cotton and honey. Squeezing your shoulders, Su pulls back.

“Y/n, I’m telling you now what I had to tell myself. The right people get second chances. Currently, Kuvira and Bataar Jr are working with Korra and her friends to stop the remaining forces of the United army. They are good people, and I believe that they can do good things. But it’s up to them. You must wait for them to come to you. This isn’t in your hands now. If they want to change, they must do it themselves. That is my advice to you: good people will come around, they just need time.”

She gave you one last hug and released you. Stepping back she smiled, her eyes finally matching.

“I don’t want to take up all of your day, so I’ll let you go for now.”

You said your goodbyes with Su and the guard escorted you off of the estate.

It didn’t hit you until then that you didn’t flinch everytime she said Kuvira. Taking what Su and your parents said, you lifted your shoulders and promised yourself that you would change your days. You would begin the days with a smile and you would end the days with satisfaction.

…

Days had passed by then and your mood had only gotten better. Physical therapy was going better, your side had stopped constantly throbbing and was starting to scar over. Blues and yellows surrounded the tissue but you were able to go up stairs without passing out! Checking the integrity of the metal plates was what filled your afternoons but those passed by too. Soon, the petals of the metal clan were slowly starting to form and the construction was almost complete.

One day, when you were coming back from your shift, you had heard that Kuvira had returned. Something about brainwashing and how Asami was kidnapped? It sounded crazy to you but when you thought about it, there was this one doctor who wanted to control a person's thinking. Luckily, ‘Vee thought it was too barbaric and the idea was shelved. Korra was able to put a stop to it and her friends were returned back to normal with both charges returning back to Zaofu. It seemed that that test had proved to the rest of the Beifong family that they had taken a step towards fixing their past and wanting to grasp their future. You were happy that they decided to redeem themselves. It made sleep a little easier knowing that your ‘Vira was still in there.

Your brain wasn’t helpful though. As successful physical therapy was, it never helped the nightmares. It didn’t help the murmurs of your brain and the self deprecating remarks. It was exhausting. (How come she gets a happy ending? Wasn’t I supposed to be a part of it? I thought she loved me? I thought-) Yeah, well, you thought a lot of things. Just eat your toast and inspect that metal. Spirits sake.

…

Flowers were delivered to you.

Lilacs. Their fragile petals and purple centers called to you and you froze looking at them. They were placed in your quarters along with mail from your parents. You weren’t allowed to send mail yet but you could still receive them. But flowers?

Listen, as an earthbender and a metalbender, you have grown to know the planet pretty well. From the flimsy sand to the swollen stone beneath you, you feel the breath of the earth in your bones.

But that doesn’t mean you know a single thing about flowers. You know that they are pretty and that roses can be yellow in certain parts of the continent but lilacs? Pretty, purple, dainty, flowers? Confusion couldn’t even begin to explain the words you were feeling. Don’t flowers have meanings too? You have never received flowers before, you had convinced everyone around you that you would rather punch a boulder than receive flowers. And yet here they are.

It seems as if they are staring at you. Glaring at you. Laughing at you. (Who calls themselves an earthbender but can’t tell the difference in flowers? How stupid of-)

Snapping yourself from your stupor you spin around and walk right into the door jam.

Son of a flying-

…

You corner Hahn later on that night. Word in the prison yard says that when he was a free man, he was a farmer who lived next to a guy who happened to be a gardner of flowers. Which flowers didn’t matter but the fact that you kind of knew someone that had knowledge of flowers seemed like a win.

You plopped yourself on the seat in front of him and stared into his aged eyes. He had dark spotted skin from his field days and the wrinkles around his eyes suggested that he knew many things. A trustworthy source. (Your only source)

“Do you know anything about flowers Hahn?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I got two days worth of desert that has your name on it if you tell me a thing or two.” Interest peaked, he leaned forward.

“I have a reputation kid, I ain’t just gonn’ blab about flowers to anyone. I don’t wann’ seem like a flim, ya know?”

“I ain’t gonna talk, I’ll even slide another honey cake in there.”

He thinks for a moment or two before nodding. You slide him the desert from today and he places it into his pocket. Leaning forward, you can smell sunshine and grass from him.

“What do you know about this?”

You had gently picked a single bud from your bouquet to show him. You weren’t positive if they were lilacs but they were purple and how many flowers were actually purple?

Humming for a moment, he responds. “. . .Syringa, if I remember correctly. Sold like hot cakes. There’s about several different kinds. This one here is just the smaller kind. If you tryna woo a lass, you call ‘em Lilacs. They got a strong scent though, so careful on the nose.”

Nodding, you ask, “does it have meaning?”

He shrugs, handing the bud back to you. “ Well, it could mean a lot of things. In the younger years, you’d give it to your lass to remind ‘em of your love. Like, a new beginning of love, remindin’ them of a new stage.”

He then looks you in the eye and glares. “Not a word about this hog wash or I’m stealing your pillow.”

You laugh, “you have my lips sealed, H.”

…

You hadn’t received any more bouquets and your pillows remained intact. New love? Who in the world could that be? You kept your eyes peeled for lurkers when you were on breaks and besides the common glare, nobody else seemed to be paying attention. So where did they come from? You had formed a vase with clay in order to keep your flowers and you were a little tickled to find that they lit up the room. Hmph.

…

Kuvira was two seconds away from suffocating herself. When did it get so hard to be a good person?

The amount of guilt that lifted from her shoulders from the trial was impalpable and she felt almost as confident as 4 years ago. The Beifongs were friendly and she was able to join and attend multiple events and she was slowly learning how to be a mentally stable person. She had started seeing someone in the city and once every two weeks they would take her apart and put her back together. She was getting used to it. Slowly.

But, spirits, did she miss you.

Something would happen during the day and she would turn to see you, see how your eyebrows would raise and how you would stifle your laughter behind your hands. And then she’d turn and you wouldn’t be there. It was total whiplash, and she wasn’t used to it just yet. Dr. Moko had yet to ask about the elephant-rhino in the room and Kuvira was waiting for the day where she would ask, “why did you attempt two murders, both of which were individuals you cared about?”

What a loaded question. Kuvira wondered how she got stuck with house arrest and not prison.

On one hand, it's an easy question. She thought she was doing a good thing. Bataar Jr. happened to be in the same place as the avatar and most of the resistance when she fired the spirit weapon and at the time it seemed like a good idea. (Not a good defense, she’s glad this question wasn’t raised during her trial). On the other hand. . .

Her soul would wither when she thought about. . .the. . kiss.

She felt that she was ignited and smothered at the same time. When she felt you melt into her arms, it was intoxicating. Your smell had surrounded her and you felt good in her hands. How she wanted to stay there forever. She wished that she could have stayed there forever. But the voice in her head was blood thirsty and on a victory roll and couldn’t be stopped. It was no excuse but the pain that Kuvira felt when she saw you slowly bleed out in her arms was so much that she zoned out and went on autopilot.

In one of the sessions she has with Dr. Moko, she mentions the voice with high reluctance. Dr. Moko says that the instinctual desires in her subconscious had risen to the challenge and took over, blocking out rational and emotional thought. This discussion had encompassed several sessions and because of that, Kuvira was able to gain control and become a little more independent with her thoughts. It gave her a sense of control, knowing that the Beifong family could trust her again, knowing that Korra wasn’t wrong when she said that they were alike. She had hope and all the split ends of her misdeeds were tying themselves together. But y/n. . .

You plagued her mind like a wine-stained carpet. So naturally, she (subtly) asks Su what happened after Korra stopped the spirit vine weapon. Su fills her in on the hospital visits, the trial, the physical therapy, the letters, everything.

That week Kuvira stomps into Dr. Moko’s office and says, “I need to talk about y/n.”

And so she does.

She sends you flowers.

Flowers?! She doesn’t have a flower bone in her body, why in the world did she pick out flowers? She even had a mind to pick out a specific type, lilacs: new love. She wanted to ask the florist for a bouquet that would convey “I’m sorry that I stabbed you, I am becoming a mentally stable person and I really wanna kiss you again and you are really pretty.”

Kuvira figures that lilacs are good enough.

. . .

It had been about two weeks since you received the flowers. They had started to wilt and you couldn’t help but get sad. You still had not figured out who sent them but a tiny part of you hoped that maybe she sent them. That she still thought of you while she’s learning how to be herself. It was selfish of you to think so, but you couldn’t help it. Kuvira was a major part of your life and to be without her made your heart ache. But you made do. After all, you still had 24 years of community service. . . you sigh. That doesn’t make it better.

You’re walking towards the park to take part in your therapy session. Several other people had come and gone and it was nice to see people learning how to overcome their struggles. You were growing stronger every day. Madam said that soon, you would be able to fully do the physical side of bending again. You could spar soon! You were starting to get antsy with all the chill meditation that Madam Jilpa was having you do. The bruising was gone on your side and you could extend your arms fully without twinges or aches.

You step onto familiar green grass and take off your shoes. Feeling the earth beneath your feet helped ground you when trying new therapy techniques that had you worried that your legs would suddenly give out on you. After placing your shoes next to your bag you look up and see your teacher and several others. There were more people today than usual which was odd. You couldn’t remember if there was a sudden climb of injuries in the last week but alas, more people meant less one-on-one time from the old lady herself. You walk over to a spot of grass and plop down, stretching your legs out in front of you. Planning on doing basic stretches you exhale-

“Need a partner?”

-and immediately inhale. You open your eyes and swirl around looking at the individual. Kuvira stands there relaxed, if not a little stiff, and is looking at you with her hands behind her back. The naive voice in your head screams in victory and you nod your head, still silent. Kuvira sits next to you and out of panic, you look around seeing everyone else doing the buddy system. Some were wearing the same clothing patterns as Kuvira meaning that they came over as a group. Meaning this wasn’t accidental. Meaning this was planned. Meaning this was the worst day of your entire life. Perhaps you should just run away and become a no name in the wilds, because then you’d be able to cope with the situation instead of just stewing in silence.

Kuvira places her knees together and leans forward, stretching her head towards her legs as she exhales. Knowing that Madam Jilpa would swat you, you slowly do the same. After you scootch further away, of course.

It’s painfully awkward. As Madam Jilpa begins, others join in with soft whispers and mutters of conversation. But the bubble that surrounds you is so tense that it doesn’t help the panic spasms that start to creep up your spine.

After coming back up from a lateral position, your eyes roam and they meet Kuvira’s. She’s looking at you fully, and not even Madam’s loud “Next!” breaks her attention. She’s looking at you and she stops her exercise to face you completely. Her eyes lower and she looks at your right side where your shirt had bunched up showing the scar tissue. Shocked, you pull your shirt down and shuffle a little farther away.

She speaks so softly you probably wouldn’t have heard her had you not been so attuned with her whole being.

“I’m sorry.”

You inhale and nod, bracing your attention forward and copying Madam’s next movement.

You try incredibly hard to ignore her stare for the rest of the session but it’s so heavy and so thick. At some point, Madam introduces a new position and spirits does it pull a muscle that you didn’t realise you had. It starts with your back on the ground, which is easy enough, and then you lift your hips and turn to the side. Keeping your shoulders to the ground, your head turns the opposite way. You flinch when it strains the muscles in your side. Your legs begin to quiver when a hand settles over your knee and brings your legs away from the ground, making the stretch more shallow. Your eyes see Kuvira as she holds your legs.

“Don’t do it too deep, you’ll sprain something. Start here.”

Following that, she lowers your legs again but into a place that doesn’t make you flinch in pain.

You missed her touch, you realise. You missed how softly she would hold you. Your eyes start to water when you realise how fucked up this is. She is right there in front of you, and all you can think about is how betrayed you felt. You never got the closure you needed from her and it’s being revealed as she helps you stretch. You’re silently crying while she places your legs down and helps you into a seated position.

“I should have visited you some time ago. I wanted to apologize to you, for wounding you and for leaving you alone when all you did was trust me. I misplaced your trust and I will forever be in your debt for doing so. I am incredibly sorry y/n,” she says as she looks into your eyes.

You sniffle as she grabs your hands. Squeezing them, you respond.

“Thank you, ‘Vee.”

And when you smile, the future seems a whole lot brighter.

#Kuvira #Kuvira x reader #Kuvira imagines #LOK imagines #legend of korra #LOK #I am a lesbian herald #my writing #new!

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datawyrms · 3 years

Text

Changed Hunt

For Phic Phight 2021! (not completely finished but AAAAfinshnowwww) lowkey Dannymay Day 2 Portal, as well

"That portal is awesome!" Sam says. "Would be so cool if it worked."

Danny goes down into the lab that night to try a few things—it doesn't quite go as he planned.(aka a no one knows au) (Dey’s prompt!)

Danny really wished Sam and Tucker had stayed a bit longer that day. With them around, maybe he wouldn’t have wandered in that portal like an idiot. In his own defense, how could he have known that little panel in there had been an on switch? Who’d put that inside a reality tearing portal device? Jack and Maddie Fenton, apparently. He was just lucky the thing hadn’t killed him! Or at least, managed to overdo it to the point he...survived somehow? He hadn’t really decided what that portal had done exactly. Waking in a pained heap, bathed in a haunting green glow from the now active portal was confusing enough. Looking up and seeing a stranger in the reflective panel nearby just made it worse. Of course he didn’t take it well, or know what to think. If he’d become a ghost, his parents would freak. Fixing their portal by turning into some...evil human hating creature probably wasn't in the plan. At least his terror somehow managed to get him to become human again. Heartbeat and everything. He hoped it had just been a weird one off, or he’d imagined it from trauma. Until he started falling through things. He died so hard that he got his life back? The portal only managed to kill half of him? He was dead but ‘imitating humans’ was his specialty? Some human that just got to use his ‘soul’ or whatever to be a ghost early? Sam and Tucker might have had guesses- but he knew one thing right away. Whatever happened, he wasn’t all human anymore. He couldn’t tell them. What if they decided that was just too weird? What if they blamed themselves for not being there- thought they’d killed him? It wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, he couldn’t let Mom and Dad find out, so he’d be trying to hide any of the new weirdness anyway. Might as well just always do it. Maybe the weird new abilities would just go away. They hadn’t. They just forced him to think about it to keep both feet on the ground. He could deal.

Until other ghosts started showing up. Ghosts that actually knew how to be ghosts, terrifying powers and all. Ghosts that seemed to know what he was. He’d nearly jumped out of his skin when a green woman in a hairnet tapped him on the shoulder and asked who ‘changed the menu’. There was a lot of screaming and running away at that, considering she was floating and well. Obviously some sort of dead person. Freaky Fenton attracts freaky ghosts. Of course. She didn’t buy his claim of not knowing why the menu wasn’t exactly the same as fifty years ago (why would he? That’s a lot of years!) and thought setting ovens on fire and throwing them at him was a fair answer! So apparently Mom and Dad were totally right about ghosts being completely terrifying monsters that he should run away from very quickly. Which he did. He only ran into two walls he meant to go through, even. Just more reasons to never, ever tell anyone he might be like that crazed ghost lady. Mom and Dad proving their inventions actually did work sometimes was just icing on the ‘i’m so screwed’ cake. Ghosts exist, they fought one, and the school got shuttered for a week from excessive damage via flying appliance. Fun.

It was dumb to pretend that was a one off thing. It was stupid to think he could keep hiding what happened that day. Even if it felt safer, even if he just wanted to keep denying the portal was open so she could keep pretending it hadn’t done anything to him. Maybe if someone knew, he wouldn’t be hopelessly trapped by a huge glowing robot. Running didn’t work on this one like it did the older ghost lady. He tried, he really did, but the self proclaimed hunter kept tracking him down. Even when he transformed into the strange ghost version of himself he failed to dissuade the robot. Punching metal still hurt as a ghost, and so did getting pelted with little missiles. So much for intangibility being an advantage.

“You’re lucky that you’re a rare creature, whelp. Otherwise I’d be disappointed by how little effort hunting you took.”

Great, flame head thought he was a disappointing freak. More pressing was the net the ghost had shot at him that he couldn’t struggle free of. Even drawing on his weird ghost side wouldn’t let him phase through it. “Pretty sure you can’t hunt endangered species!” He redoubled his effort as the ghost picked up the net, trying to trick himself that his swinging was making him feel ill, not the terror of being carried off by some monster that came through the portal just to hunt him down.

“Hah! If I didn’t take you ghost child, someone else would simply end you.” The blank green eyes stared into his own as the machine pulled him up higher. “You should be grateful to be part of my collection.”

Danny gulped, unsure if he should keep his attention on his captor or the fact they were getting closer to the swirling portal. “How about no thanks? Since you’re such a good samaritan and all. You can just let me go and forget all about uh...this.” Why couldn’t he just squeeze out of the net, or make the rest of him all weird like when his legs decided to vanish sometimes? Pulling with his gloved hands wasn’t working, and the glow just grew brighter as the lump in his throat got thicker. “Please? You already said I was weak, if you let me go I’ll be stronger next time!” Okay, it was a stupid plea but he’d try anything right now to not get dragged to some ghost world.

“I’m not a catch and release sort of hunter.” The ghost chuckled as his prey shrank back with the denial.

“How can you be the ‘Greatest’ hunter if you just go after kids, huh?” Begging wasn’t working, so maybe getting him angry? He couldn’t go through there, what if being on the other side made him more like this thing, or the other weird green monsters? “More like lamest hunter.”

“Oh you’ll see the sort of creatures I normally hunt, ghost child. Once you join them.” Skulker shook the net hard, rattling what little bravado Danny had managed to gather up right back out of him.

So much for that hope. “This has got to be a mistake, just let me go!” The ghost didn’t answer him, and he couldn’t help closing his eyes when the mechanical monster fired up a jetpack and flew through that portal. It wasn’t as cold as he feared it would be, it wasn’t like the void of space. Just as green as the portal, still a swirling background to everything. He swore he saw faces and doors, but couldn’t keep looking for long. The combined movement of being dragged along with the spinning energy was stomach churning enough, and he had to deal with the fact he didn’t know anything about this place. Even if this ghost decided to let him go, where would he go? Was there even anything to navigate with? He certainly didn’t see anything useful like stars. Would all this green stuff just soak into him and make him not want to find home? Nothing here made sense! It was easier to curl up instead of struggling with the net to stretch out, and the stupid ghost couldn’t see how the tears welled in his eyes as he struggled not to cry.

He should have been braver, should have tried to watch more, but it’d been too much. The crunch of metal against stone jarred him out of his silent self berating, just to be even more confused. He was on an island? That just floated, because islands did that here. Islands that had forests on them, that grew out of what looked like rock. Sure, okay. At least it was a bit of a distraction from the fact he was trapped by some evil robot in a completely different reality! Well. It had been. Seeing the fact the ghost lived in some weird stone skull jutting out of a mountain made him snort despite himself.

“You said my puns were bad, and you live in that thing?” He was pretty sure the green mohawk monster was Skull-something anyway. Mostly tuned it out after he kept repeating the ‘greatest hunter’ bit. “Ghost Zone’s Greatest Halloween Decoration’s a more fitting title.”

“For a terrified whelp, you are very chatty.”

“I think I looped around from terrified when I saw how doomed I am.” He was just joking. Totally. He wasn’t goofing around to try and fend off the engulfing panic of never getting home, nope. Absolutely not. He tried to pay attention to the strange ‘skull mountain house thing’, but the fact it reminded him more like a zoo inside wasn’t helping. Massive, monstrous glowing ghosts leering out and snapping as they passed, smaller sorts that didn’t even look up and several empty cages stained green was not calming his nerves. He couldn’t even describe some ghosts, being such a confusing jumble of parts that didn’t remind him of anything. All he could tell was robo-hunter probably didn’t have any willing guests. Unwilling guests that looked far, far more powerful than anything he could dream of trying. He was so, so doomed. To the point that being tossed roughly in a similar cage was almost a relief so he wasn’t right beside the ghost anymore.

First task was struggling free of the no longer glowing net (deactivated somehow? weird.) which wasn’t too hard, but just left him in his freaky ghost form, in a cage, in the middle of who knew where. The Ghost Zone, that’s what they kept calling it. Not Earth. Fantastic! That’s enough to get a C-, but not enough to get him out of this cage. Reaching through the bars was out, the unexpected shock had him rubbing his hand and grumbling to how having some invisible field between the bars was just unfair. At least let him see it before hurting him more. Now what? Grasping that feeling that let him walk through walls wasn’t letting him through the cage floor, just like how the net wouldn’t let him out. Floating just reminded him of getting dragged here. So that was it. Why did he have to get stupid dying powers? They didn’t even do anything useful!

Stressing out and not finding a way out was an exhausting way to spend a few hours. He kept thinking of new problems, like he didn’t have enough already. When the robot wandered past, he almost grabbed the bars to get closer. “Hey! Screw head!”

The ghost actually looked at him, the stern face looking more confused than anything.

“Yeah you! You know I’m gonna like, starve to death in here, right?” Danny had no idea how he was managing to say something he was very terrified of coming true like it was a joke. “Kind of a waste, don’t ya think?”

“You will be fine, ghost child. Your pleas for freedom won’t fool me.”

“Wanna bet? Maybe we’re so rare because we all starve to death in this dumb ghost world or whatever.” That and there probably weren’t too many people dumb enough to get shocked to...sort of death. “That and like, you’re some freaky machine man, you probably don’t know anything about eating to start with.”

Skulker kept staring at him, as if doing that would suddenly reveal all his secrets. “Well I prefer live specimens, but I suppose I could always do with another rug.”

Oh gross! “Seriously? Do I look like rug material to you?”

“Wall art?”

Yup, he was gagging now. The very idea a ghost would want to do that just made his spine want to shake right out of him with disgust. “I’d be way out of place, all of the other ghosts here look like animals! You’ll just gross all your hunter buddies out.” Maybe if he pretended to be some know it all like Jazz the ghost would...reconsider making him into wall art? Uurk. What was his life that he even needed to think that?

At least that got the metal monster pondering, massive hand scratching at his chin. “I do wonder if your pelt would only show half of your nature.”

“How about we don’t test that and say we did.” He’d seen some of the knives on the way in and did not want any of them near him thank you very much. Not that he had much of a choice- oh man he really, really did not want to learn why Sam hated the fur industry this way. “Pretty sure I’d just die. More. Or something.”

“Oh, but you’ve seen the other pelts on the way in. They’ve still got enough of a spark to not melt to nothing ghost child. I’m not that sloppy.”

Oh so he could be barely aware wall art. Even better! What would he do, skin him alive or just crush him? Both? “Humans don’t melt.” It was all he could think of blathering out. Don’t think about what the terrifying ghost guy can do Fenton, just don’t.

“True...unfortunately I don’t have another subject to test on.”

Score one for being a unique sort of freaky ghost kid. Maybe. “Soooo how about you just bring me back and rethink the whole uh. Hunting me thing.”

That just got Skulker laughing. “Not a chance whelp.”

“I’m not a whelp! I don’t even fit in with all your monster-things!” It had annoyed him, really. The other ghosts didn’t really...talk? “I’m not some animal!”

More chuckling, as if amused by a puppy chasing its tail. “Of course you are, with that stench of the human world on you.”

“You think I smell. With what nose, metalhead?”

“None of your business. Not to fear, any ghost here can tell you’re a hybrid. That human body you insist on wearing can be felt even when you’re in a superior form.”

Oh, was this a ghosts thinking humans were animals thing? Or was this a ghosts are kinda racist to different ghosts thing. Was there a difference? He probably should have paid more attention in civics. “Yeah well that ‘human body’ needs food.” He wasn’t even going to touch the idea that he was ‘wearing’ his own body, eeeeugh.

“I’ll figure out a solution to your hybrid failings, child. I won’t let a prize go that easily.”

Greeeeeeat.

#Danny Phantom #phic phight 2021 #dannymay2021 #skulker #unfinished im sorry fsljfsfs #i took longer writing then i meant to #but uh. i can use other prompts to finish #or something #i swear this was mostly meant to be funny but i didn't get to the funny bit yet

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toriliashine · 3 years

Text

Hold on, I’m conflicted

side 1: Kokichi wanted to Mercy kill them all to not be stuck between a hellish world and a murder school.

a) If that was so, why didn’t he just let Miu kill him? He knew about the plan, and could’ve just let the plan run smoothly. The rest of them could be executed innocently without tasting the hell of the outside and Miu could’ve felt true despair on finding out all her plans of murder and escape were for naught when she saw it.

Result - Miu lives, and feels despair yadda yadda; everyone else is execute blah

ai) But, what if Kokichi found out about the outside world after he found out Mu wanted to kill him? It was a short time span between her making it and him possibly doing the tunnel thing but like. What if he was like, hey, one of my classmates that i thought was an ally is trying to kill me. that sucks, whelp, at least let me look where this card key leads, maybe it’ll get my spirits up in some way before i decide how to take care of her????

K:....

K: well then.

Then, after that, the pieces for the plan couldve started falling in place? He couldve then showed Gonta what was going on, making him feel the same despair and how the only right way to escape this hell word was to die.

Gonta agreed.

Result! - this would have made Gonta the sole survivor if the plan worked. Would have depressingly thought it was the gentlemanly thing to do for the rest of his friends to find peace in death while he held the pain of surviving in that hell alone. (also alsjklsn Kokichi said yeah i wanna DIE but Gonta is the sweetest person here and the most worthy to live through all this shit HE’S gonna be the blackened and i’ll use my lies and trickery to make sure he LEAVES THIS DAMN SCHOOL)

b) In the trial, after both Kokichi and Gonts knew about the outside world. Kokichi could’ve just let him continue ‘pretending’ to not know what was going on. It would’ve hurt to have the only person you confided such delicate information ‘lie’ and throw all of you and your plans under the bus like that but it wouldv’e got shit DONE. He couldv’e continued lying pinnning the crime on anyone else, even himself as long as it meant the plan worked.

Result! - Gonta lives! He’d probably only be told why after the incorrect vote though. Monokuma would laugh as he brought Alter Ego Gonta out to say what the plan was. Alter Ego Gonta and Kokichi would’ve had a bittersweet feeling knowing their plan... succeeded... The rest of them would be executed. And Gonta would have to rely on the knowledge this computer version of him had to say abt the outside, he mightve not had enough time to prepare himself due to him forgetting though :(. -> Monokuma might push him out and shut off the school. He might fully succumb to despair :(

-> this relies on Monokuma actually bringing out Alter Ego though, he might just force him out crying and sobbing, feeling nothing but despair as his friends get executed while goNTA DOESN’T KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON. WHY - HOW AM I THE KILLER. WHY KOKICHI LIE. MY FRIENDS SHOULD NOT DIE. WHY -

side b- Kokichi didn’t want to mercy kill them all, and still wanted to survive after

Oohh this is a VERY sinister side when u think about it. I don’t like it and want to see it as a last minute plan B that he chose during the trial but i have to be KIND of objective :(.

This was all triggered once he found out Miu was planning to kill him though.

a) He found out Miu was going to kill him, showed Gonta the despair of the outside world which made him agree to kill her.

Easiest path to go down when attempting to understand chapter 4′s trial.

The chapter (according to a random comic i found 5 minutes before rechecking the trial nyeheheheeh im so reliable) The trial relied on Kaito supporting Shuichi to choose the truth. By making a point to prod them both in the trial, he could succeed in making the trial interesting and still let them find the culprit.

bi) He did it plainly to survive

A truly evil route! Would suggest he truly cared not for Gonta, Miu nor the rest of his classmates, yet this is refuted by how he acted in the Chapter’s end and the next. If he didn’t care about the mastermind’s doing, a lot of what have happened next - simply would not have. it’s a really popular choice of events for people who just dont like kokichi though akskal His previous lies could’ve just been accepted as truth and he couldve gone the rest of the game ignored and hated just because. But this ouldve gone against a lot of things.

bii) He did it for a final ultimate goal - to find and expose the mastermind.

He couldnt diiee!! He had come so close! to get all that ( to be revealed) evidence on the mastermind, secrets of the school and after. He couldn’t just die, he needed to save the rest of them and - look the other 2 he couldn’t save in the eye and lie. Must have been painful. In this route, i want to believe he truly did care for them all,, his tears were real. but the final endpoint was so close! he couldn’t leave now! But by doing this, and watch a friend kill another for his own chosen greater good would have cemeneted, in his heart, that he truly was a villain. And led to him fully accepting, living in and dying in that role after the trial and in the next chapter. Aka: damn, boy was straight suicidal after det :///

Will i think more on this later??? No idea but im tired and hungy rn - bye

#ndrv3 #killing harmony #danganronpa #kokichi ouma #gonta gokuhara #ramble!

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infinite-xerath · 4 years

Text

Xerath Interactions For Every Champ

I’ve done this before, but since we have some new characters and reworks, I figure I’d go and give this another shot.

Aatrox: “Just like the empire you served, Aatrox, you are now but a shadow of greatness.”

Ahri: “The temptations of flesh do not sway me, fox.”

Akali: “Flee into your smoke, girl; it will not hide you from me!”

Alistar: “You are not yet free of your chains, minotaur; join me, and reap your revenge!”

Amumu: “Friends will inevitably betray you, child...”

Anivia: “I needed only one rebirth to achieve greatness!”

Annie: “You hold great potential, child...”

Aphelios: “You conjure weapons from another realm? Show me more.”

Ashe: “You would unite your homeland, but I shall unite the world!”

Aurelion Sol: “I acknowledge your strength, star dragon, but I am power incarnate!”

Azir: “Cling to your precious Sun, Azir; I have no more need of it!”

Bard: “You may witness my triumph, storyteller, but do not interfere!”

Blitzcrank: “Such a crude golem...”

Brand: “A power rivaling even my own... I think I shall take it!”

Braum: “Cower behind your shield; it makes no difference!”

Caitlyn: “Mine is the only law that matters!”

Camille: “I will tear that gem from your chest, machine...”

Cassiopeia: “You sought power in the tomb, serpent, and you found me.”

Cho’Gath: “You think to devour me, beast? I welcome you to try!”

Corki: “I shall blast that infernal machine from the sky!”

Darius: “You are the mightiest warrior of Noxus? How underwhelming.”

Diana: “I tore the Sun from the sky. Shall I treat the moon in-kind?”

Dr. Mundo: “Abomination! You dare to approach me?”

Draven: “Look upon me, mortal, and witness TRUE greatness.”

Ekko: “The power to control time, in the hands of a mere child!? I shall rectify this at once.”

Elise: “You think yourself immortal? Allow me to enlighten you.”

Evelynn: “I will teach you TRUE agony, demon.”

Ezreal: “Surrender that gauntlet, boy, or I will claim it from your ashes.”

Fiddlesticks: “Fear? I have cast such emotions aside.”

Fiora: “Nobility means nothing to a god.”

Fizz: “Your childish antics end here, creature!”

Galio: “You consume magic, but even a titan has limits!”

Gangplank: “Yet another dethroned king, grasping for his lost throne...”

Garen: “Crushing Demacia will be child’s play compared to Shurima.”

Gnar: “A primal rage stirs in this whelp... Interesting...”

Gragas: “Such simpletons are beneath my notice.”

Graves: “Another mercenary? Let us put your skills to the test...”

Hecarim: “A horse without its reigns? I shall soon correct that...”

Heimerdinger: “A dull mind with delusions of brilliance.”

Illaoi: “I claimed what was mine. Now, the world will move as I will it!”

Irelia: “Entertain me, dancer. That is your purpose, is it not?”

Ivern: “Your influence in the desert is lacking, ‘green father.’”

Janna: “A guardian that relies on the strength of others is meaningless...”

Jarvan IV: “What is a king to a god, Demacian? Just a man with fleeting authority.”

Jax: “Join me, Icathian, and I will see the Void itself burned!”

Jayce: “You will not be the first hero I crush, nor the last...”

Jhin: “Mad though you may be, I could offer you a greater stage...”

Jinx: “You think you know chaos, girl? Your rampage is but child’s play.”

Kai’Sa: “If a mere mortal can survive the Void, then destroying it will be easier than I imagined...”

Kalista: “Azir made an oath he could never keep; HE is the betrayer!”

Karma: “They say your wisdom is unrivaled, yet you are still foolish enough to stand against me?”

Karthus: “You mistake eternal damnation for eternal greatness, lich.”

Kassadin: “You fight a battle you cannot win; surrender your relics, and I will finish it in your stead.”

Katarina: “Your sister proved most useful, assassin...”

Kayle: “I answer to no judgement but my own!”

Kayn: “You struggle endlessly for control of one-another; I shall put you both out of your misery!”

Kennen: “You are swift as lightning, yordle, but my fury is the storm!”

Kha’Zix: “I stand at the apex of life; you can never hope to reach my level!”

Kindred: “When next I strike down Azir, ensure he does not return!”

Kled: “A mad yordle on a frightful drakalops? Is this meant to be a threat?”

Kog’Maw: “I shall end your hunger... Along with your existence!”

LeBlanc: “Your petty tricks cannot deceive me, witch!”

Lee Sin: “A pity you cannot see the error in opposing me...”

Leona: “No matter how many avatars of the sun stand against me, I shall strike them all down!”

Lillia: “Dreams are but fleeting fantasies; I have no need of them.”

Lissandra: “You think a prison of ice can hold me? You are sorely mistaken.”

Lucian: “Your weapons may banish the dead, but to me, they are little more than toys!”

Lulu: “I sense the most primal of magics within you, yordle. Where did you obtain it?”

Lux: “Your light is but a spark next to me, girl!”

Malphite: “What sort of imbecile gives life to a mountain?”

Malzahar: “You are no prophet, Malzahar; you are merely a puppet!”

Maokai: “You seek to liberate your home from the dead? That can be arranged...”

Master Yi: “A master of the blade is no match for a master of the arcane!”

Miss Fortune: “Your city requires order, and I alone can restore it.”

Mordekaiser: “You may rule the realm of the dead, but Runeterra is MINE!”

Morgana: “If you would embrace chains, then perhaps you may have mine.”

Nami: “A civilization beneath the sea? Interesting...”

Nasus: “Come to face me again, Nasus? It will end no differently than your prior attempts!”

Nautilus: “I do not pay tribute to false gods!”

Neeko: “My essence is too great for you to handle, trickster.”

Nidalee: “Human, beast, it matters not; you will bow all-the-same!”

Nocturne: “My nightmares ended long ago, demon. Now, yours begin!”

Nunu and Willump: “Naive child. You are merely a pawn, just as I was once...”

Olaf: “No death will immortalize your name, fool; I alone am eternal!”

Orianna: “To preserve your life, you became a mere husk... I almost pity you, machine.”

Ornn: “Forge for me a weapon to shatter these chains, mountain god!”

Pantheon: “You will fall before me, Targonian, just as Asose did...”

Poppy: “The world I create shall have no need of heroes.”

Pyke: “Your mind is already shattered. Now, I shall break the rest of you!”

Qiyana: “Power? Authority? Let me teach you what those words truly mean, child!”

Quinn: “Tell Demacia what you have found, scout. Whatever defenses they prepare, I WILL break!”

Rakan: “Human, vastaya, it matters not; I shall reign over both!”

Rammus: “The beast of legend... Come, let us see if your stories hold true!”

Rek’Sai: “When I am rid of you, the Great Sai will be mine!”

Rell: “Pledge your power to me, child, and let us dismantle Noxus together...”

Renekton: “Do you still recall who imprisoned us, Renekton? Do not forget the root of your hatred...”

Rengar: “I can offer you elusive prey, hunter; her name is Sivir...”

Riven: “You would challenge me with a broken blade? Are all Noxians so foolish?”

Rumble: “Yordles are said to be honored creatures. Looking upon you, I fail to see why.”

Ryze: “The World Runes must be kept from mortal hands... That is why I shall harness their power!”

Samira: “You say I destroyed your home? You will have to be more specific...”

Sejuani: “You survived the harshness of your homeland, just as I survived mine...”

Senna: “Darkness, light, it matters not; no power can rival my own!”

Seraphine: “You seek to unite your home? I will unite the WORLD, child.”

Sett: “You fight for entertainment? Very well... Entertain me.”

Shaco: “I will not indulge your twisted games, jester. Perish!”

Shen: “I alone can bring stability to this world.”

Shyvana: “Such power... Why do you waste it in service to imbeciles?”

Singed: “You are little more than a walking corpse; I will return you to the grave!”

Sion: “You think you know rage? The Butcher shall enlighten you...”

Sivir: “The kin of Azir, wielding the Chalicar... You cannot be allowed to live!”

Skarner: “So the Brackern are more than a fable... But only just.”

Sona: “A fine instrument... Go on then. Play for your emperor.”

Soraka: “You bound yourself to flesh and blood, but I have surpassed it!”

Swain: “Vision, might, guile... I am the embodiment of your ideals, general.”

Sylas: “You and I are much alike... Stand with me, and Demacia WILL fall.”

Syndra: “Your magic is potent, Syndra, but your mind is dull and clouded!”

Tahm Kench: “You have nothing to offer me, demon. Begone from my sight!”

Taliyah: “You will tell me where she went, child, or I will pry it from your dying breaths!”

Talon: “You are not the first assassin I have faced...”

Taric: “My radiance far surpasses any gem, Targonian.”

Teemo: “Your tricks cannot hide you forever, yordle...”

Thresh: “No prison can hold me, least of all your frail lantern.”

Tristana: “You wish to become a soldier? That can be arranged...”

Trundle: “You think yourself clever, troll? That you would provoke me says otherwise.”

Tryndamere: “Mightier warriors have failed to best me. You shall fare no better.”

Twisted Fate: “You confuse petty tricks for magic, gambler. That was your greatest and final mistake!”

Twitch: “It seems the Voidborn are not the only vermin I must exterminate...”

Udyr: “Do you truly control the spirits within, or do they control you?”

Urgot: “I am the ONLY one with the might to stand above all others.”

Varus: “A mighty Sunborn, reduced to a squabbling trio of corpses...”

Vayne: “YOU are Demacia’s protector from darkness? This will be easier than I had imagined...”

Veigar: “You think yourself evil incarnate? How amusing...”

Vel’Koz: “Not even YOUR twisted mind could fathom the secrets I possess.”

Vi: “To think a city that prides itself on brilliance would birth a brute such as you...”

Viego: “You are but the shadow of a man clinging to petty emotions; you are CERTAINLY no king.”

Viktor: “I alone have achieved perfection, and perfection cannot be copied.”

Vladimir: “I congratulate you on your mastery of the most primitive spellcraft known to man.”

Volibear: “Even the storm bends to my will!”

Warwick: “Another dog to hound me? I shall return you to your leash!”

Wukong: “No level of skill may rival pure power, ape!”

Xayah: “Human, vastaya, it matters not; I shall reign over both!”

Xin Zhao: “They say your will is unbreakable... I beg to differ.”

Yasuo: “What do you know of the girl called Taliyah?”

Yone: “You come to me seeking answer? Prove you are worthy of them!”

Yorick: “You would fight the undead... By raising the undead? Imbecile.”

Yuumi: “The book shall be mine, cat!”

ZAC: “What manner of twisted sorcery gave rise to an abomination such as this?”

Zed: “I will burn away your shadows and armor, and expose you for the weakling you are!”

Ziggs: “I may have use for weapons such as yours...”

Zilean: “You saved your people from the Void, only to imprison them beyond time? Icathia truly was a land of fools...”

Zoe: “Celestial magic is not a plaything, girl!”

Zyra: “The desert is no place you. Return to the jungle, or be pruned.”

#Taunts #Xerath taunts #Yup I did another one #Every single Champ #Hoo boy

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foolforshera · 3 years

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I said it the other day. Let's talk villains. I've seen a phrase going around for a while that says, "Good villains make good heroes." I try to say that good antagonists make good protagonists because that gives you some more room to expand your characters beyond a black and white narrative and put some depth into your story. However, that doesn't mean that the antagonist isn't going to be a villain, so let's go with that original "Good villains make good heroes" and ask, what makes a good villain? To me, there's two main kinds of villains. There's the cartoon villain, you could also say the one-dimensional villain, and then there's a realistic villain, or multi-dimensional villain. For a villain to really be good, you need to be invested in their story even if that investment is hoping for their downfall and to do that, you need to have some kind of depth to be able to latch onto.

Now the first one isn't necessarily from a cartoon but that's the most obvious example. It's a Snidely Whiplash or a Captain Planet villain, a character who twirls their mustache, swirls their cape, cackles at the heroes, and only really has one thing about them. Now this isn't to say you can't have a bad villain in this category but it's harder to make a character like this truly interesting because there is no depth to them. It's like being menaced by a cardboard cutout. Can you care about them being defeated? Yes. Can the hero still be interesting? Yes, but I'd say they need some other tension in the story to make them so because it's not really going to come from the villain. In the end, I'd say you're not going to remember these villains very much because they're not interesting. There's no real investment. You probably can't even get involved heavily rooting for their downfall because it's kind of a forgone conclusion they'll fall in this kind of story. None of this is a bad thing of course, we need stories of all kinds, but let us leave these characters shopping for a new black cape with just the right twirl and talk about the next kind.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago, a book about the Soviet Gulag system. Now, this book is about so much more than what I'm about to pluck out of it for my example here and I can't recommend it enough but in it he says, "To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he's doing is good, or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with natural law."

With this we can see what I consider a base for writing a good villain (and how to understand real people doing evil things). In other words, as has been said before, no one is ever the villain of their own story. As you construct your story, as you create your villain, ask questions you would for your other characters. What motivates this person? Why are they doing what they're doing? How do they cope with what they're doing? Who are they? Where has their path come from that brings them to this point? How do they react to things? Are they loud and bombastic or are they quiet and polite? Every villain is a person and you need to make them a person or you're back to cardboard cutout land.

Since this is a She-Ra blog, let's look at one of the villains from the show, Hordak. When he's first introduced, it looks like he's going to be that cartoon villain. He's this lurking dark presence that Shadow Weaver uses as a threat and who only seems to care about conquering the world. The first few times you see him, he's all growls and menace. Then the show starts to flesh him out. You find out he's got Imp and that he obviously cares for him. He interacts with people and you begin to realize that he's not just out to conquer the world just because, he's doing it to show that he's worth something to someone who he holds in high regard. He's got goals and reasons he's doing what he's doing and in doing this the show sets him up for his eventual character arc so you CARE when he's holding Prime over a pit and says, "I am Hordak AND I DEFY YOUR WILL!"

I'd say though, that if they'd decided he was going to be a villain all the way through, you'd still be invested in him. What if the show had him become attached to Entrapta but decided he was going to be evil through and through? That when he gets back to Horde Prime, he turns his back on Entrapta because now he's in the light of his god. If Horde Prime had decided, hey, he's done pretty well for what he thought was a flaw and had given Hordak a position of power. We're of course assuming a slightly different writing of Prime but just go with it. Now imagine the scene with Entrapta, Hordak, and Prime where you've still had the same lead up of Hordak questioning and you're thinking, "Is he going to do it?" Then he actually shoots Entrapta. You'd HATE him but you'd only have got there because you were INVESTED in him because he's a built up, multi-dimensional character.

Now let’s look at Horde Prime. Ah, Prime, I hate you but you're closer to that one-dimensional cartoon villain but you still work. Why? We don't know a huge backstory on him, we don't know what set him down the road, but he still works because he's that embodiment of the quote from The Gulag Archipelago. He would say he doesn't WANT to do these things but they turned from the light of Him so he had to destroy that planet, chip those people, or destroy the universe. He doesn't want to throw Catra off a cliff but, "Some vessels are only destined for destruction."

You can just hear the disappointment in his voice. Oh, how awful... whelp, off the cliff you go. Then when he confronts Adora he has that smarmy, I didn't want to do this but you and she made me do it, voice as he tells her how it didn't have to be like that. And that's how you use a one-dimensional villain to good effect. You lean into that evil, you make them completely confident of what they're doing, you have them saying to themself, "This is good or it's just in line with how the world is" and in doing so, you give at least that one dimension some kind of depth, like a line drawing of a cube.

Anyway, that's just my loose thoughts on this. I feel like I could go deeper on it, like why do we find villains compelling and why do we even identify with them sometimes, but that's a whole other things that'd take much longer.

#long #writing #meta #spop #villain

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fiction-fun · 4 years

Text

Don’t Throw Away Your Shot

@braidedchallah @alexanderdamnhethin @rthoney @andpeggy21 @creedtheconquer @2pintsofjohnlaurens @haha-gunsgoburrr

Fandom: Hamilton

Pairing: Lafayette?OC

Words:8829

I tugged my hat off and wiped my brow, slipping my weapon away I stepped back from the last redcoat I had taken down. I spun on my heal and stalked back the direction I had come.

“Uh oh! Watch out Sinnette's angry!” some no name solider yelled.

I paused in my steps and turned my head to the side slightly, letting an evil grin creep onto my blood-stained face.

“Yeah, I am. Because you idiots can’t listen to orders! Now get back to camp!” I yelled my face twisting into an annoyed look.

I turned back on my path and kept walking. I stepped into the camp and rolled my shoulders, slipping my hat back into its place. I stalked over to my tent and inside.

“Problems?” a voice asked and I froze my hand automatically going to my weapon.

I looked up and let my hand drop. Walking over to a small bucket of water I grabbed a cloth and started to clean up.

“Not having the authority to order those idiots around and have them actually listen to me, sir.” I said dropping the cloth into the water and spinning back to face the man in my tent.

He stood at his full height, hat off and I realized belatedly that I hadn’t taken mine off. With a sigh I removed my hat.

“Well, I have a proposition for you, and I’ve already cleared it with your commander.” He said watching me.

I nodded and stepped over to my bed, kicking my boot off to get the small stones out of it.

“Alright, I’m listening, General Washington.” I said voice low as I focused on my boot and not on the high ranking official in my tent.

He twisted his hat in his hands for a few seconds, as if considering his words. I let out a sigh.

“Sir, with all due respect, spit it out.” I said raising a brow.

Washington laughed softly at that, nodding.

“Right you are, the truth is we have a new Major-General coming in. And I believe you’re just the person to help him adjust.” Washington said.

I squinted and looked up at him.

“Why?” I asked, my tone disinterested.

Washington’s face registered his shock, clearly not expecting that.

“What do you mean?” He asked turning the question around.

I took a breath and stuffed my foot back in my boot.

“I'm not going to be the trainer for some new-by Major-General who’s never seen combat.” I replied leaning forward and looking up at him a bored expression covering my face.

Washington seemed surprised at my answer, but he turned away from me fiddling with his hat again.

“I heard a rumor you yell at the men in French when they annoy you.” He said looking at me out if the corner of his eye.

I nodded once.

“Oui monsieur, I do.” I said casually, it was no secret after all, when they irritated me, I yelled at them in French.

Washington nodded, still not looking directly at me. I waited a few seconds before sighing.

“Sir, why does it matter if I speak French?” I asked, I had managed to keep the fact I was French hidden.

Washington turned back to me, he seemed almost desperate.

“The new Major-General is coming in from France. He doesn’t speak English, and before you ask yes, he’s seen battle. I’m asking you to be his right-hand.” Washington said looking away.

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow, wondering who it could be. I shrugged and nodded.

“Alright, on one condition.” I said standing up hat in hand.

Washington raised an eyebrow in turn, facing me again.

“What?” He asked, voice tight.

I turned and walked over to my bed, pulling out the sword I had to stash there.

“I get to use my sword; I hate the gun.” I said facing him again.

Washington nodded quickly.

“Of course! But we should get going as soon as we can.” Washington said.

I nodded and turned, slipping my sword into my belt and grabbing my packed bag.

“Alright, I’m ready.” I said, walking over to him.

He raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment, turning to the door we walked out, slipping our hats on as we went.

“Sinnette! Do us proud.” My commander called.

I lifted a hand and waved, walking over to my horse. I swung up on it and looked over at Washington as he mounted his horse. He nodded and spurred his horse on, I gave him about five seconds before I spurred my horse into motion. About three hours later we pulled our horses to a stop and I pulled my hat off wiped my forehead and put my hat back on before swinging off my horse. Washington stepped off his horse and stepped over to me.

“He should be here in about an hour.” Washington said looking down at me.

I glared up at him, mostly because of the sun behind him.

“Alright.” I said turning away.

I stepped forward a few feet and stood closer to the edge of the dock, feeling the breeze blow over me. I closed my eyes and sighed softly. I heard steps beside me and opened my eyes. Washington passed me a cup and turned to face the water. I sniffed it, taking a sip. I smiled at the taste, a nice cup of coffee just what I needed to wake me up after the battle.

“Might be a bad time, but you’ve got some blood there.” Washington said a few minutes later pointing towards my face.

I turned and side eyed him, before sighing and squatting down letting the ocean spray hit my hand before standing up and rubbing the spots that he had indicated.

“Better?” I asked, bored expression prominent in my face.

Washington nodded, and turned back to the view. I sighed and turned back drinking more of my coffee. I let out a small yawn as we stood waiting. I finished my coffee about ten minutes later, tossing my cup in a nearby bin.

“So, how was today?” Washington asked attempting conversation.

I stretched my arms above my head, drawing a satisfying crack from my back.

“Fine, just a normal battle with the redcoats and the men being idiots.” I said letting out a small sigh and dropping my arms to my sides, one hand landing on the hilt of my sword.

Washington nodded and we spent the next twenty minutes waiting in silence. The boat docked and we stepped back to let the walkway down. A man with curly brown hair in a ponytail stood at the top, he walked down with a wide smile on his face. As he got closer, I realized he was close to myself in age, barely Nineteen.

“Bonjour!” he called happily.

“Hello, I’m glad you made it.” Washington said.

I bit my tongue to stop the laughter slipping out. They both looked confused.

“Sir, if I could do my job?” I asked looking at Washington.

“Please.” He nodded.

I turned back to the Frenchman, finally realizing who he was.

“Whelp fuck.” I muttered before shaking my head.

“Hello, sir. I’m Lyon and this is General Washington. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” I said with a flourish.

His eyes went wide and he focused on me.

“You speak French! I was worried I wouldn’t understand anyone! I am Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, but you can call my Lafayette.” He said with a bow and a smile.

“He says his name is Gilbert du Motier Marquis de Lafayette, and…” Washington interrupted me.

“Yes of course. Thank you for making the trip!” Washington said.

Lafayette turned a confused look to me and I sighed.

“He says thank you for making the trip.” I said with a small smile.

Lafayette nodded and turned to Washington, with me translating Washington was able to give him his orders.

“Alright, that’s everything. Good luck.” Washington said turning away from us.

I raised an eyebrow and dropped my head.

“Sir!” I called sharply.

Lafayette’s head turned to me as did Washington.

“Yes?” Washington asked.

I lifted a hand and gestured around us.

“Are you forgetting something?” I asked.

Now Washington looked as confused as Lafayette did. I sighed.

“Maybe where we’re stationed? Our troops?” I asked sarcasm clear.

Washington reached up and slapped his forehead, quickly stepping back to us and handing a roll of papers to me.

“He forgot to give us our placement….and this is the front head.” I muttered rolling open the paper and turning to look at Lafayette.

“But he gave them to us, non?” He asked tilting his head.

I looked away quickly to the pages, nodding.

“Oui, he did. And he left you a horse. Let’s go we’re headed to west point.” I said offering him a small smile.

He nodded and ran over to the horses. I smiled and shook my head, I ran after him and swung up on my horse, a new energy filling me. I looked over at him, seeing a relieved look melt into a breathtaking smirk.

“Shall we?” he asked looking over at me.

I raised an eyebrow at his look but nodded.

“After you, Monsieur.” I said with my own smirk in place.

Lafayette’s head dropped back and he shook it while laughing.

“Non! Don’t call me Monsieur! We are the same age non? Lafayette is fine!” He said as we started to ride off.

I shook my head with a smile.

“Anyone with a higher rank then you must be called Monsieur, it’s just how it’s done.” I said smiling softly.

Lafayette, looked at me for a few minutes and I turned to face in front of us, I saw him shrug from the corner of my eyes.

“Very well, I suppose I do out rank you…. just call me Lafayette in private.” He said.

I blinked for a few seconds and shook my head huffing out a laugh.

“Alright, Lafayette.” I said giving up the argument.

He smiled at that nodding. We rode in silence for a while before he looked at me, I lifted my head from where I head let it fall to rest on my chest, trusting my horse.

“You seem tired.” He said and I smiled.

“Oui, I had a battle earlier and then Washington came with his offer. It’s partially why there’s random spots of blood all over me.” I replied softly.

Lafayette nodded and we slipped back into silence. We rode into camp later that night and the next year went as well as it could. I was waiting at the docks again, the camp we had set up about a twenty-minute ride away. I held a letter in my hand, knowing he’d want it as soon as he got in. I smiled seeing the ship on the horizon. I leaned back against a post and pulled my sword out letting the sun glint off the steel. I sighed and swung it casually.

‘I hope I’m doing you proud dad. You always believed I could do anything the boys could do. Well, now I’m the right hand to the Marquis… hopefully you’re watching with pride.’ I thought as I watched the sun play on the faces of the sword.

I slipped my sword away and closed my eyes relaxing in the late day warmth on the edge of the water. Fifteen minutes later the ship docked and the walkway came down. I stepped back and saluted.

“Commander on deck! Bonjour.” I called a smirk playing on my lips.

He ran down the walkway to me with such happiness on his face.

“My daughter is beautiful!” He exclaimed looking as proud as anyone could.

I felt a slice of ice run down my back as I realized exactly what the letter could be, but also losing any hope of capturing this man’s attention.

“That’s good! Speaking of, you got a letter from France a few days back.” I said passing him the letter.

He took it shook his head and slipped it away, the smile still playing on his face.

“Let us go celebrate! My father in law can wait a night!” He exclaimed grabbing my arm and pulling me to were our horses were tied off.

I laughed and quickly swung up onto my horse. Since joining Lafayette’s group I had had a new energy. Even when he was gone, I didn’t feel the same dragging endlessness of the war, I felt sure we could win. I pulled my horse around and smiled at him, he looked at me and together we spurred our horses into action. His horse being a bit faster than mine quickly took the lead, I pressed my feet into the foot holds rising slightly off my horse and leaning forward trying to gain a little speed. Lafayette’s head tilted back and his laugh filled the area around us.

'I hope it’s purely good news, the man doesn’t deserve to be heartbroken.�� I thought as I let out my own whoop of laughter.

That’s the thing, we were looked at weirdly by other leaders and right-hands because between the two of us, we preferred to use our swords and we laughed and hooted while fighting. We cleared the small patch of woods and came to a stop in the camp. Dismounting and tying our horses up Lafayette looked at me and waved me to his tent. I nodded and followed him in, seeing him already in the process of stripping and changing. I made a point to look at the map on his table, he and the others always laughed when I diverted my eyes.

'If only they knew.’ I thought smiling as I heard Lafayette’s laugh fill the tent again.

“So! What have I missed?” Lafayette asked walking over to me.

I laughed and shook my head plopping into the chair across from him.

“Redcoats dropping like flies.” I smirked.

He nodded and pulled out the bottle he kept stashed under his table, pouring a couple of glasses and handing one to me. I smirked and raised it.

“To your daughter!” I called with a smile.

The other soldiers didn’t understand us when we got into full French conversations, and we used that to our advantage. He raised his glass as well a bright smile on his face.

“To my lovely daughter!” He called just as loudly.

I laughed and we quickly drank back the glasses, he poured us two more and we sat back and let the conversation drift. I let out a soft sigh a few hours later, and smiled shaking my head and setting my glass down.

“I think we should head to bed, Lafayette.” I said quietly.

The man was mostly asleep in his chair, but he nodded at my words and rose to his feet.

“Oui, we should. I’ll see you in the morning.” He said quietly.

I nodded and with a wave headed out to my own tent. The next few weeks were busy with little time for us to chat again, then I looked up in the middle of battle. I spun breaking loose of the fight I was in, swinging my sword down and taking the enemy out quickly, I pulled my gun shot twice as I was running and moved to stand over Lafayette, my sword out.

“Monsieur! Are you alright?” I asked as I deflected the enemies around us.

Lafayette crawled back a step and stood up.

“I’m fine.” He said before running back into the fray.

I glanced after him for a second before having to dodge the enemy. The rest of the battle was a blur but I sheathed my sword at the end of it and looked around, seeing some of the surviving redcoats running off, I turned to our men, keeping an eye on Lafayette’s form a good distance away.

“Alright! Back to camp! Get medical if you need it! Now go!” I called before turning towards the hill Lafayette stood on.

I walked up the hill watching the rest of our men return to camp, they had stopped arguing with me as soon as Lafayette had caught wind of it. I stopped a few feet behind him, he had been a bit more volatile lately and I wasn’t really wanting to incur his anger.

“I’ve ordered our men back, now that the battles over.” I said letting my voice raise just loud enough to carry over the distance between us.

I saw him nod, but he didn’t move to face me. I sighed softly and looked at him for a few seconds.

“Are you alright? That’s the first time I’ve seen you fall in battle.” I asked my concern getting the best of me.

Lafayette nodded again but refused to look at me. I sat down where I had stood, pulling my sheathed sword out of my belt and holding it with both hands over my crossed knees.

“You don’t need to wait for me.” Lafayette’s voice came quietly a few minutes later.

I shrugged leaving my eyes on the horizon.

“I know. But the men know what to do, and I haven’t had the chance to watch a sunset in while. And beyond that, more importantly, you need to understand whatever happened to cause you to be as reckless as you have been in battle lately. I’m here for you, whether you want to talk or yell or just be quiet. I’m here for you, and I want you to believe that.” I said trying to keep my voice even as I spoke.

Lafayette seemed to almost freeze at my words, before he slowly turned to face me. I raised an eyebrow, and patted the grass beside me. He sighed and moved to sit next to me, moving to hold his sword in a similar way to how I was. We sat in silence for a while, until the sun fully set.

“They…they’re gone.” Lafayette’s broken voice carried to me softly.

I looked over at him, gone were the bright smiles and wild exuberance, in their place was a great deal of hurt. I reached over and gently placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Getting yourself killed in battle won’t change that.” I whispered softly.

He nodded again but didn’t say anything else. I just sat there beside him, letting my hand rest on his shoulder offering the little comfort I could.

‘I can’t even imagine what he’s going through. To come back here with a wife and daughter waiting for you at home. Only to get a letter, that got here before you did, that they’re gone. The poor man.’ I thought watching him sadly.

We sat like that for a while, before he sighed again and looked over at me.

“We should head back.” He said voice soft.

I nodded and stood reaching a hand down to him, which he took and used to pull himself up. We both slipped our swords away before silently heading back down the hill and to where our horses waited. I quickly mounted mine, seeing Lafayette do the same. We started back to camp.

“Merci, I know I haven’t been the best…. leader or friend lately. But even though I snapped at you, you still helped. Hell, you saved me earlier, I don’t know how I got as good of a friend as you.” Lafayette’s voice carried on the wind.

I looked over at him and smiled softly.

“I’ll always be here, Lafayette. You’re my commander yes, but you’re my friend first and foremost. Of course, I saved you, you were acting dumb but you’re brilliant and one bad move won’t stop that. It’s going to be ok, just take it one day at a time. To be honest, I thought I was going to have to challenge you to a fist fight to get you to let off some of the hostility you were showing.” I said ending with a soft laugh.

Lafayette’s head drop and for just a second, he let his laugh fly out. We Arrived back to a tense camp; the others weren’t exactly as understanding as I was about Lafayette’s attitude lately. All he did was dismount and tie up his horse before moving into his tent. I turned to the men and crossed my arms.

“Alright give me a report and don’t waste time.” I said voice firm.

That jumped them into action and an hour later I walked into my tent to sit at my desk, lighting the small oil lamp on my desk I sighed as I grabbed out a piece of paper and started to write.

“You should be asleep.” I heard several hours later and looked up.

I sat down my quill and rubbed my eyes with one hand while stretching the other over my head.

“Oui, I probably should but I had to finish this write up first.” I said pointing down at the still in progress report.

Lafayette shook his head and moved over to lean against my desk, arms crossed and not looking at me. I sat back and watched him for a second before sighing softly and leaning down, grabbing the bottle and glasses from under my desk. I poured two and leaned forward nudging him with one. He looked down and back at me before letting a soft laugh escape with a shake of his head.

“What you thought you were the only one with alcohol?” I asked with a smirk as he took the glass.

I leaned back watching him in the dim light, as we sat in silence. Then a thought struck me.

“Wait, why are you up? Isn’t it Richardson’s patrol night?” I asked.

As if to prove my point, Richardson paused outside my tent and looked around before moving on. Lafayette sighed and closed his eyes.

“Oui, I just haven’t been sleeping very well lately. I admit when I saw your light still on, I thought I’d come over and talk with you for a bit before trying to sleep again.” He said softly.

I nodded and watched him for a second.

“Understandable, I told you before, I’m here for you.” I said softly.

Lafayette nodded and hummed slightly. We sat quietly for a bit sipping our drinks.

“It's just hard.” He said quietly after a few minutes.

I nodded sitting back.

“I’m sure it is. And I could say I’m sorry, and I understand you. But truthfully, I don’t. I don’t have that experience to draw from. I have no clue what it’s like to lose a spouse and a child. I have no idea what it’s like to have a family, only to lose them. But I do know what it feels like to lose family, and it feels horrible. I am so beyond sorry that happened and I’m here for you. I will listen to you if you want to talk, if you want to yell or scream, I’ll be here. You can talk to me or we can sit quietly. But you aren’t alone.” I said calmly before sipping at my drink.

We lapsed into silence when I finished speaking and Lafayette let out another small sigh.

“Merci, I’m grateful to have someone who cares enough to listen. The others are good but….” Lafayette trailed off and he shook his head.

He didn’t have to finish his sentence; I had met his friends. Alexander was an over talkative man who wanted to fight to help raise his station, Laurens had a heart of gold but had his own plans and his own wants and was very focused on achieving the end he wanted. And Hercules would probably listen and likely understand but he was off on a mission currently. Overall, he had good friends but just like we were they were focused on their wants and dreams. I hummed in response and we settled into silence again. Around an hour later Lafayette shook his head and settled his glass on my desk, before turning to face me.

“Don’t worry about the report to much, get some sleep.” He said softly, turning to walk towards the door.

I leaned forward.

“Lafayette, if you can’t sleep and want to come back over, feel free. Even if my lights out.” I said softly.

He nodded and ducked out of the tent door. I sat back and tossed the rest of my drink back before putting the glasses and bottle back under the desk. I picked my quill back up and got back to writing. About an hour later I sat back, capping my ink. I sighed and stood moving with my lamp over to my bed. I sat down, putting my hat on the flood beside me and leaned back, reaching over to extinguish the light. I pulled the thin blanket over me and closed my eyes. Over the next six months as winter grew closer, I noticed Lafayette’s reactions returning slowly to what they had been, but they’d never be back to what they were.

'Well, maybe. If he finds someone new and his heart is mended.’ I thought as we rode in silence.

We were headed into New York to meet with Washington but I knew there was something that he was hiding from us, even Lafayette could tell. We rode up to Washington’s New York residence and dismounted, tying our horses up.

“Whatever he’s hiding, we don’t stab him, right?” I asked with a hint of humor in my tone.

Lafayette dropped his head and laughed a bit.

“Non, we don’t stab Washington.” He said and sent a smile my way.

Even still we both unconsciously moved towards the door, hands resting on our swords and shoulder to shoulder. A stance we took often enough, most of the other soldiers had learned to scatter when we pulled it. Because it usually meant something was happening or was about to happen and we were already ready to fight and draw blood. We walked through the doors like that, soldiers falling over themselves to get out of our way.

“They are so afraid, I wonder why.” Lafayette said and I shook my head laughing.

“They probably heard we’re ruthless in battle, and should be taken seriously. Or they see our swords and think we’re out of our minds. Either way.” I said still laughing softly, Lafayette’s laugh joining me as we reached Washington’s office.

We paused at the door and looked at each other before shoving the door open, stepping inside it. Washington looked up a smile sliding into his face.

“Lafayette! Lyon! I’m glad you were able to come!” Washington said standing up and walking over to us.

He shook both of our hands before leading us over to his desk.

“You asked us here, of course we would come.” Lafayette said, and I looked away and smiled softly.

No matter how long he spoke English his accent stayed strong, probably due to us speaking pretty much only French when alone. Washington nodded and settled at his desk.

“Now that I’ve got you both here, you can’t refuse the invitation from Phillip Schuyler to join him at this year’s Winter Ball.” Washington said quickly.

I couldn’t help the groan that escaped as I slumped slightly in my seat.

“Knew there was another motive didn’t realize it was going to be Schuyler's boring ass party with his prissy ass daughters.” I muttered softly to myself.

I saw Lafayette’s shoulders shake as he tried not to laugh at my comments but Washington looked like he was going to ignore it.

“Why would we ever refuse?” Lafayette asked sitting up.

I placed one hand over my eyes.

“Maybe just maybe because it’s a richie rich event where those who don’t have a certain value are mocked and looked down on. Almost as bad as the aristocrats in France.” I muttered into my hand.

Lafayette turned his head to look at me and I saw amusement dancing in his eyes. Washington looked less amused.

“What are you saying?” He asked finally.

I sat up and leaned forward a bit, my eyes meeting his.

“Just explaining softly what’s expected and likely to happen and how we are just so grateful to be able to go.” I said trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

Washington seemed satisfied and Lafayette looked like he was still fighting not to laugh.

‘My jobs done, he’s happy. For now.' I thought sitting back.

Washington gave us the information for the dance before showing us to our rooms. I sighed as I closed my door, looking over to the side I saw a bathroom and poking my head inside I sighed in relief.

'A shower, you don’t know what you miss until you don’t have it.’ I thought taking my hat off and dropping it on my bed before pulling my sword off and sitting it on the dresser.

Just as I sat down to pull my boots off, I heard a knock.

“Come in!” I called not looking up from my boots.

I heard the door creak open and turned looking at who was in my doorway, sending Lafayette a smile.

“What was that in the meeting?” He asked leaning against my bed post as I kept working on my boots, although he sounded more amused then upset.

I shrugged and tugged at the ties, they were matted together with blood and mud.

“Just the truth. Schuyler puts on the most obnoxious show of the year every year and I’ve been unfortunate enough to go before. Years ago, but as you can see it made an impression.” I said with a sigh glaring at my boots.

I was just about to give up untying them and just using my sword to cut the laces when Lafayette’s hands appeared in my field of vision. He carefully knocked my hands away and managed to unknot my boots, I looked up and felt my breath hitch in my throat realizing how close he is.

'Not good, not good.’ I thought, I had never let him get this close to me, except in battle, when I knew he wouldn’t notice anything.

Lafayette gently pulled my boot off and set it aside before pulling the other one off. He leaned back on his heels and looked up at me, I swallowed and tried to keep eye contact, even as I felt my face flame red. He gave me a smile before shaking his head and moving to stand.

“Should probably clean those laces occasionally.” He said softly.

I nodded not able to speak at the moment, his smile stayed on his face as he turned back to my door.

“Enjoy your shower, I know I will. Then afterwards perhaps we can talk about a few things.” He called as he pulled the door shut.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, feeling my heart racing in my chest. I swallowed and shook my head before quickly standing up, Washington had said there were clean uniforms in the closet for us and I turned there first. Opening the door, I nodded at what I saw.

‘Well at least it’s the right uniform.’ I thought as I grabbed a new one out.

I walked quickly into the bathroom and shut the door, stripping and getting in the shower, after pulling the pins and hair tie from my hair. I quickly scrubbed myself before turning to my hair and taking time to run the water and soap through it. I sighed as I repeated the process a few times before the water flowed clear.

‘That was a lot of blood.’ I thought.

I stood under the water for a little while longer before turning it off and climbing out. I grab a towel and wrap my hair before getting dressed quickly. I took a few minutes running the towel over my hair trying to dry it more before I have to pin and tie it back. I gave up almost fifteen minutes later when it had finally stopped dripping before grabbing my brush and brushing it flat. I then folded it, pinned it and tied it back. I chucked the towel into the basket in the corner before stepping out of the bathroom. I slipped my socks on then my boots, before my sword, leaving my hat settled on the bed. I turned and walked over to my door laying my hand on it, I took a deep breath.

'It's probably just work or Ball related. Relax he probably didn’t notice anything.’ I thought trying to convince myself.

I pulled the door open and looked over seeing Lafayette’s door open and him moving around inside the room, I took a second to look him over. He looked relax, his hair down and his boots were still off, his shoulders weren’t tight at this second and he looked more like the 20-year-old he was, that we both were. I took a breath and ducked back into my room, closing my eyes.

'Now is really not the time to fall for your senior officer, Sinclair! Oh, who am I kidding? I fell for him before we left France, the only time I met him.’ I thought before slipping my sword off my hip.

I turned and walked out of the door, feeling almost naked without my sword after all this time. I walked over to his room and knocked softly on the door jam. He turned and offered me a small smile, walking over and closing the door after ushering me inside. I stood by his desk and looked over at him, his smile still on his face he looked over at me locking eyes with me again, and again I felt my breath catch. He shook his head with a laugh and waved at me.

“Isn’t that annoying?” He asked waving towards my head.

I paused and felt my blood run cold.

“N…. I…. what?” I stuttered finally, appreciating that we were talking in French.

He laughed and shook his head walking over to me, I couldn’t make myself react in time. It seemed almost like he was moving in slow motion, maybe he was to give me time to pull away, but he reached up behind me and gently pulled the tie from my hair, letting it fall loose before he tugged the pins out, letting it fall to its full length behind me.

“Better?” He asked a smile still dancing on his lips.

I blinked a few times before I realized exactly what he had done.

“I…I…” I broke off, there was nothing I could say to fix this.

Technically speaking what I had done was illegal, he knew it as well as I did. If he turned me in, there’d be nothing I could do. I watched him as he stood in front of me, my pins and hair tie held in his hand. He reached up and cupped the side of my face brushing his thumb over my cheekbone and I realized then that in my shocked stupor I had started quietly crying.

“It’s ok, come sit. I’ve known for a while now.” He said soothingly leading me to his bed.

I sat and looked at him, trying to breath.

“How?” I asked finally, I had been so careful.

His smile stayed gentle as he sat next to me, taking my hands.

“I may have come to see you early one morning when your hair was down, it was easy to figure it out from there.” Lafayette explained softly.

I blinked and nodded.

“Ok, now what?” I asked trying to get my brain working.

He reached up and brushed his hands through my hair.

“Everything stays the same. For the most part.” He said softly.

I blinked again.

“W-what do you mean?” I asked softly.

He smiled and leaned forward a bit.

“I was hoping maybe you’d join me at the Ball. As my date.” Lafayette said voice soft and gentle.

I swallowed and nodded.

“Oui, of course.” I said softly.

He smiled and leaned forward more, pressing his forehead against mine.

“Like this, although maybe a dress.” He said letting a small laugh puff against my nose.

I nodded, a small smile over taking my lips.

“Oui, it sounds lovely. But I don’t have one.” I said smiling softly.

He shook his head and nodded towards his desk chair, where a tailor’s bag sat.

“I took care of that with the help of one of my friends. I didn’t tell him anything don’t worry.” He said when my eyes widened.

I closed my eyes and took a breath nodding.

“O-ok, right. Ok.” I said softly my brain still not fully functional.

Lafayette shook his head and laughed a bit, his hair bouncing around us.

“Breath, it’s ok. It’s ok, everything is ok.” He said softly.

I blinked and nodded letting out a breath, before a thought struck me.

“A-are….and please don’t think I don’t want to; I’d love to really. You wouldn’t believe how much I’d love too. But, are you sure?” I didn’t want any doubts on either of our minds.

He smiled gently at me and leaned forward, using his hand that still rested in my hair to bring my head forward. I felt his lips touch mine and closed my eyes, leaning into his touch. After a few seconds he pulled back, leaning his forehead back against mine with another soft smile.

“I'm positive. When I needed someone, you were there. And over the months, as I’ve gotten better, I’ve noticed you really noticed you. Especially after I found out the truth. I noticed you before, but more as a fighting companion. I’ve made this choice and I hope I haven’t just talked myself out of a chance.” He said smiling sweetly.

I giggled softly and leaned forward pressing a soft kiss to his lips before leaning back just a little bit.

“You haven’t. I just, didn’t expect you to be…. open to it. I thought maybe…. I had…” I said trailing off, my eyes closing.

Lafayette shook his head again, rubbing his thumb over my cheek. I blinked my eyes open and met his, seeing a smile on his face.

“Don’t worry about anything.” He said gently.

I smiled and nodded. We spent the next few hours talking before he looked over at the desk where the clock is. He let out a soft sigh, and sent me a smile.

“You should go get ready.” He said softly.

I looked over to the clock and sighed softly, nodding.

“Oui, I should.” I said standing up with a smile.

I went to take a step to the dresser where Lafayette had sat my hair tie and pins, but he caught my hand. I turned to face him and he stood leaning down and pressing a kiss to my lips.

“I will see you in a few minutes.” He said gently.

I smiled and nodded.

“Very soon.” I said just as gently.

He let go of my hand and watched as I twisted my hair up and tucked the pins into my pocket. He passed me the dress bag when I turned to look towards it. I smiled gently and stepped from the room, moving over to my bedroom I quickly closed and locked my door. I walked over to my bed and laid the bag down pulling the hair tie from my hair and letting my hair curl down my back. I sighed softly as I opened the bag, my eyes going wide at the gorgeous dress laid out before me. The dress was a deep blue color with a red corset piece and white frills at the hem and wrists.

'Oh wow, he’s not joking around.’ I thought as I admired the stunning dress.

There was a bag at the bottom of the bag and I reached down to pull it out. Inside sat a pair of dark blue high heels, a set of earrings, with red white and blue stones a matching necklace sat in a separate box next to the earring box. And then there was a ribbon in the bottom and I smiled softly, knowing exactly what do to do with it.

“Oh wow, this man went all out. I better stun him.” I whispered softly to myself.

I quickly stripped off my uniform, pulling on the blue dress first before the corset, tying it tightly at my waist I shuffled a bit.

'It's been a long time since I had to wear one of these.’ I thought with a small wince.

I sat down carefully on the bed and tugged on the tights before pulling on the heels and standing carefully. I moved into the bathroom and put the earrings and necklace on. I stopped to look at myself with a smile, I grabbed my brush running though my hair again. I took the ribbon carefully and twisted it through my hair, carefully braiding it. I smiled softly in the mirror and walked from my bathroom.

‘Now if I only had a touch of gloss.’ I thought as I looked around wondering if something may have been left.

I had just turned towards the mirror and was looking myself over when I heard a voice outside my door.

“Ah, Lafayette! I was just about to see if you and Lyon were ready.” Washington’s voice carried.

I froze up, and stared at the door.

“Ah! Lyon has already left. I hope you do not mind, but I asked him if my date for the ball could use his room to get ready. I was just going to drop a bag she left in my room over to her.” Lafayette’s voice came and I took a breath.

'Great save!’ I thought with relief.

“Well, alright. I’ll see you at the ball, and you’ll have to introduce me to this girl of yours.” Washington said as his voice got farther away.

I took a breath and let out a sigh before racing over to the bathroom, I heard a knock.

“Shit!” I swore softly racing back to the door.

I had forgotten I locked it. I opened the door and Lafayette slipped inside. He closed his eyes and held out a bag, I took it with a soft smile not that he could see, and walked to the bathroom. I closed the door.

“You can look.” I called softly.

I heard him walk towards the bathroom and stop outside.

“That was close.” Lafayette said softly.

I nodded, before laughing, opening the bag.

“It was, quick thinking there.” I said as I quickly applied the makeup that had been in the bag.

“Merci, I did the best I could.” He said and I heard the small smile.

“I just realized; you don’t know my name, do you?” I asked as I stepped back to the door.

He laughed and I heard him step back.

“No, I don’t.” He said.

I opened the door, before he could close his eyes and gave him a small smile.

“Kaleyanna.” I said with a small laugh.

Lafayette swept into a deep bow and took my hand, pressing a kiss to my knuckles.

“A pleasure.” He said looking up at me.

I smiled and giggled softly.

“The pleasure is mine, Monsieur.” I said curtsying a bit.

He laughed at that and rose to his full height, he was dressed in a fresh clean uniform, his hair perfectly pulled back and as I looked in his eyes, I saw something I hadn’t seen in a long time. I saw the sparkle.

“Shall we?” he asked holding his arm out to me.

I smiled gently and took his arm.

“Oui, we shall.” I said gently.

With that we headed from my room, walking down the stairs, we swept into the main room and again gained stares from the others there. I blushed and lowered my eyes a bit.

“You look amazing, you should hold yourself up.” Lafayette’s voice flowed into my ear as he leaned down.

I smiled softly and straightened up.

“Merci, it’s just been so long.” I whispered back softly.

Lafayette nodded and walked from Washington’s house, and swept down the street to the location of the ball. Without a second thought, Lafayette led me into the party and spun me around, causing me to giggle slightly. Over the course of the next few hours, Lafayette reintroduced me to his friends, who were all lovely to meet again as they were the first time. Although It did take a lot not to threaten Alexander with hanging him by his boot straps. Washington came up to us and Lafayette introduced us as well. Lafayette and Washington discussed the war for a little while before Lafayette bowed to him and lead me away, back to the dance floor.

“That man will talk my ear off one of these days.” Lafayette murmured to me as we swayed around the room.

I laughed gently and nodded.

“Oui, but you know you love the man, and he cares a great deal for you as well.” I murmured just as softly.

He laughed and nodded.

“Oui, that is very true.” Lafayette agreed as we spun around.

I giggled again as we continued to sway around the room. We danced for a while longer before the ball came to a close, and we headed back to Washington’s residence. We stayed out until we were certain that everyone was asleep, heading up to our rooms Lafayette followed me inside and swept me into a hug lifting me off my feet and spinning us. I laughed sharply my arms wrapping around his neck, my fingers threading into his hair. He brought me down and pressed a kiss to my lips, I sighed softly into the kiss feeling my whole body relax. He sat me down and brushed my hair from my face.

“Until tomorrow, Amour.” He said softly.

I smiled gently and nodded.

“Until tomorrow.” I said just as softly.

Lafayette pressed a kiss to my forehead before walking from my room. I smiled softly and twirled around the room, before quickly getting ready for bed. The next morning, I got up, and dressed in my uniform, tucking my hair up and tyiing it back. I smiled softly and nodded.

‘'The first day of forever, I hope.’ I thought as I turned slipping my sword into my belt, and my boots on my feet.

I turned to the door and stepped out of my room, meeting Lafayette in the hall he gave me a loving look and I smiled back at him. Together we walked down the hall and down the stairs. Two months later, I was once again in a dress as we went to Alexander’s wedding and I giggled softly afterwards at Lafayette and the boy’s behavior.

“Mon Amour!” Lafayette called to me as he walked over.

I giggled and wrapped my arms around his waist as he leaned against me. We were getting ready to leave, and he had been drinking a lot.

“Oui, Mon Amour?” I asked softly.

He blinked at me and leaned down kissing me gently.

“You are the most beautiful woman in the world!” Lafayette declared.

I blushed and looked down for a second before looking up at him.

“You are very drunk.” I replied gently.

He laughed and wrapped his arms around me, swaying us gently.

“Doesn’t change the fact you are beautiful! We should do this.” He murmured as we swayed.

I smiled softly and tucked my head into his chest and closed my eyes letting us sway.

“Do what?” I asked softly.

I stood up and took his arm leading him back to where we were staying as he tried to think over his words. I lead him to his room and carefully pulled his boots and jacket off, helping him get comfortable on the bed. He tugged my arm and I fell into his lap, where he wrapped his arms around me.

“Get married.” He said softly.

I froze up and before I could respond I felt his arms loosen around me and heard a soft thump. I turned and saw that had had fallen asleep, I laughed softly and shook my head. I quickly tucked him in and turned to the door, extinguishing the lights.

“Ask again tomorrow if you remember. Good night Amour.” I whispered softly.

I stepped into my own room and got ready for bed falling asleep quickly. The next morning, I woke up and got ready, slipping into a clean uniform. There was a knock on the door.

“Come in!” I called as I finished tucking my hair away and tying it back.

Lafayette’s head poked in the small gap he had made before he stepped inside, closing the door and walking over to me, just as I slipped my sword into my belt. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed me softly.

“Good morning.” He said softly.

I smiled gently.

“Good morning, how did you sleep?” I asked looking up into his eyes.

He groaned softly and tucked his head into my neck.

“I could have slept longer.” He said quietly.

I smiled gently and lifted one hand to run through his still loose hair, hoping to sooth him a little.

“I'm sure you could have. You were a bit excessive in your celebration of Alexander’s wedding last night. Do you even remember anything?” I asked gently, leading him to sit on my bed.

'What I really want to know is if he remembers asking me to marry him.’ I thought watching him.

His eyes slid closed and a small frown took over his face.

“I remember dancing, and drinking. I insulted Burr.” He said softly opening an eye to look at me.

I laughed softly and nodded.

“’You are the worst, Burr' is one of my new favorite insults.” I said gently.

He groaned closing his eyes again.

“I remember, talking with Alexander, you leading me back here…...O-oh…. I asked you to marry me.” He said softly his eyes opening and going wide at the end.

I nodded when he turned to look at me, I kept my fingers running gently through his hair.

“You did.” I confirmed softly.

He closed his eyes again, before looking up at me.

“Does it sound any better if I say I meant to ask you, just when I was sober?” Lafayette asked me.

I froze and my eyes went wide. He seemed to freak out but I leaned forward and kissed him softly.

“Of course, I will you silly man.” I whispered softly.

He relaxed and kissed me back. We started to plan but two months later we were sitting on top of our horses a hardened look on our faces as we watched the encroaching enemy forces. I had the ring he gave me, hidden underneath my uniform as we watched sitting on the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. Our men sat behind us, and they still didn’t know French.

“Please be careful.” I murmured as I maneuvered my horse a little closer to Lafayette’s.

Lafayette turned his head from the incoming enemy, sending me a small worried smile.

“I will, you be safe too. Please, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.” He said gently.

I wanted nothing more than to kiss him right then but given the circumstances I couldn’t. I smiled softly and nodded.

“I will be. I can’t lose you either though, so keep your head focused on the battle and I’ll do the same. And I’ll see you on the other side of this.” I said softly.

He smiled gently at me.

“I'll see you on the other side, and we get married as soon as this is done!” He said smiling gently.

I nodded and we turned, drawing our swords at the same time and lifting them to the air.

“Let’s ride!” Lafayette and I called together.

The battle took a week before a young man in red coat stood on parapet waving a white flag. Another week later and Lafayette and I finally had some time alone. I curled into his hold as he held me.

“We won.” I whispered still in amazement.

Lafayette laughed softly and pressed a kiss to the top of my head.

“Next is our wedding, and then we free France.” He said just as softly.

I nodded and relaxed a bit. Two weeks later when all was said and done and we were finally done with the American revolution and our part of the aftermath, we stood before our friends and family and we were married. Over the next sixteen years we had children, we fought and won the French revolution, we lost friends and those we considered family. But we did it together. We spent as much time as we could together, and did all that we could together.

#fanfiction #hamilton #marquis de lafayette #oc

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throwingideasatthewall · 3 years

Text

Clone Wars Shadow Warriors

Seas 4

Oh this- just screams edgy ... Whelp

So is Jar Jar an adult, now,? (Asking because before his characteri zation was force of nature to child

Now he seems to have his own personality.

Which is fine if you want to change some details for the sake of a better story, (Or to simply explore a new angle,). Aesthetic

Just. need to make sure I’m holding them to the right standard,

Okay,

That- was relatively adult,

Um.

Aight . . Well-

Wait

Did they just call Jar Jar away from Cou-ncil-

. I mean they are clearly trying which is some thing I do give credit for-

Though The Tone Is Robot- Ic-

(Though that might be int- entional since it seems to be hinting that this lady is practicing some kind of mind tricks on him

(Aka, he’s doing it under tox, because we don’t do suspension of choice in dra- mat ic Me- -dia,

S’up

What?

I-

H-elp

Screw my own accou- -ntability - See that was the correct -amount of emotion-

. Okay - Right-

Sus- (pic)

No one noticed the obvious people right there?

Like not even Mr. sus there?

[or are they just so kind that it’s like oh yeah we were just talking hate speech but go right ahead?

Logic?

There

Yeah some shit is definitely going on,

For sake of argument* sake, i’m just going to assume that his reaction to toxic behavior

*Account ability-

Any way

I-

I’m still going to try,

Despite you clearly saying you want understood

Because assumed authority - and assuming you know better than a person about themselves

Is totally ok-

- In this society

-[Cries in sad “accountability,” -of- war, ]

Whelp,

In- flue- n -c e

Still an adult-

Okay-

Imagine it was just a normal necklace and he pulled that shit-

[Ok for the sake of argument I’m going to assume the necklace is symbolism for toxic influence,

Being around it enabling]

It- - His voice voice dropped like - 6 octaves

Also I swear if they try to excuse him for his actions-

Mind over matter -Okay, so they’re not excusing him for his -actions,

Me- an - OK so it’s not naturally evil it just comes down to the users so that dude was still totally responsible,

Didn’t change - much

- Ha-Ha

Actual gas -lighting”

Also persuade, - Okay, good not excusing him from his actions, - Thing

The gaslighting goes deep - Also isn’t the Darkside supposed to be negative over involvement? - Aight- - - A-lone

Oh yeah that’s a great idea let’s just let the dude that just got gaslighted and completely fell forward go back into the person who did it,

👍

Genius

(This Jedi Council is fucking brilliant)

Gas- Light- Ing

(Note; Confronting the gas lighter is never the way to do it (Inter- Gen-) (Excluding accountability of the abuser (Gen-break Venting Pro- Ced- u re)

[as you’re usually too angry to let them get a word in edgewise And remain; in control)

With inter- gen productivity, They are possibly given five warnings before Being Kick ed-]

For the sake of argu- ment as well as simplicity-

We’re stick -ing with bas- ic-

If someone’s acting toxic with you, you reflect and you don’t have to hang out with anyone you don’t want to,

Logic

This dude is very clearly making it obvious that he’s willing to listen to this person,

And, enabling

“Cl-”

See he’s gaslighting him again because he thinks he can get away with it,

With no accoun- tability-

(Or the small bit this society believes in which is jail,”

Wr-

Oh!

Is he a Gungan Jedi?

Also,

You Don’t

SAY!

(The repeated Gaslighter who has shown multiple times to be toxic, Was toxic, (And prepared to use any means to subvert the will?

Prize for the most in competent Je di

Like, Serious- (Really had to put those two accoun t- ability- cells to good - use-”

(For matting issue-)

The writer just saving us the effort of him coming downstairs -all feckin- weird, and the obvious “should’ve seen that coming, “

? ha-ha

What?

Oh yeah no the creepy magical stuff wasn’t enough of a fecking clue in-

Appar-

Whelp-

He snapped out of that quick-

Like didn’t even need a reverse- mind trick

Good for him-

And - actual- nar- rative- -

Whelp,

Wreck-ing -house

Okay, but how do you think this is going to look to the general public like two Jedi,( very good at persuasion - mind tricks’ -just showed up, now they’re leader and said Jedi are wreck-ing one of their minster’s houses-

One who could’ve feign- ed lack of support for the war

Like if this is a set up-

the chips- are about to fall,

Da-

Okay, seriously how obviously evil, was this person?

Like we have a weird creepy room, The robots apparently hanging from the chandelier (eck) And the knife

Like if this person ever- went- through a checkpoint

Also, Oh-

That-

(That really does not look good,)

Bo-ss

Yeah, she clearly has medical experience,

(Also yeah that’s really going to make it better-”

Oh yeah the senator was seen trying to clean up the evidence-

Well the Jedi ran out full sword’s- a blazing

(Instead of you know the Senator chasing after him, While the peacekeeper stayed behind and tried to tend to the person,]

Great - - Or Not-

Well- tensions just got raised,

Of,

Ai. Ght,

Whelp,

(Okay, no way he’s totally not dead but sure-)

A-i-

Whe-

That- sucks- - Un- Con-cious

That- doesn’t tell me anything else-

Like; Critical condition?

D-usk

Li-terally no one else?

(Like don’t get me wrong I’ve been a pretty big Jar-jar fan ever since the change-)

But really, the Senator, the person that spends the most time away from your - planet

That’s the person, they trust the most?

Ai-

Hm-

Oh yeah just put on the deadly leaders hat-

The rese-mblance-

Not really?

I mean all humans technically look the same-

But-

Pretty sure Jar jar is a lot scrawn- thin -er

Also if they’re not going to listen to him as him they’re not going to listen to him as he pretends to be their (dead) leader

Also, please don’t go with the liar revealed plot,

Yeah no, they have completely different kind of light. tones,

The face structure-

Co-mpletely different-

Nope

-Dead

Di-ssent

Agree

I-

OK yeah I’m just gonna go over the fact, that as previously state, I am not a huge fan of the liar revealed plot-

-or lying

(No because it’s- unrealistic- - or there’s anything wrong with it

-people do lie

-maybe because of how overdone and poorly done it’s been,

-With the liar getting off Scott free without any weight

But I really don’t like this plot-

-And the skip button maybe used ad- nausuem- -

[Well- shit [for reference; I was using the skip button ad nausuem when I randomly stopped at the part with Greivous

Things just got a whole lot worse]

[Tumblr Refresh] -

Any Way,

Aww, That’s kind of nice the friendship and reliance the dude has on Other- Half - Yes ‘Boss Leoni’ when someone gets tox you leave- - In a - relation ship-

Also yeah he’s definitely not ‘Boss Leoni’ - He would’ve stayed and tried to take the tox

(Aka Jar-jar is less ena- bling, les- tox- And Doesn’t Take It For Much More. Than He Has To,

(He’s les -s

Dyfun. -c)

Okay

Good Job - Also - yeah how’d you manage that - That-

Didn’t get car ried up the chain of com- mand- - Then again Gri- evous has shown to be a pretty shit boss. - So I can’t blame these guys for being like yeah compl- ete stranger I will totally take a nap -right ,now- - You kinda have sticks- - [The rain is really nice,]

[is this the first time we’ve seen them use active particle effects for the camera?

Either way it’s really nice -

Oh,

They’re

electric sticks,

That makes sense

[- bet ter for Figh t- In- g-

Stop one 1v1 -ing- It

W-h

Again this is what happens when you 1v1 it and don’t assume accountability- - -

[Don’t fight a metal cyborg with metal sticks when you’re not prepared to take it, full way,)

I-

[I feel like this is supposed to be some big build up but they only shared like one scene where dude was completely silent,]

Like,

Sacr-ifice

Die to take someone out with you

[Great

Now

Ouch]

Are they actually going to kill off grievous because this isn’t look-ing too - good - Shit-

Dude- is still not dead- - How? - Whelp- - Oh, hey where the fuck did you come from,

I- Ack. Br-u- Tal

W-el

- Un - M - Plan-

“ damn it he messed up the script-, -Pal - patine

Cap-

Prison break-

Also yeah that’s probably like a vacation for him-

Given how toxic these assholes are - Ex- change - Damn Ship per-

Also screw the 150 or how many other sena -tors - Only Amidala - matters - A- ight- - Also, dude knows where everyone’s lair, Is,

Like he pissed off Grievous with -his

Now he’s just chilling in this dude’s sipping earl gray Or- Some Shit-

Him

Okay

Getting a little ahead of yourself episode- - O k

Hearing this, Skywalker doesn’t immediately run back shout -ing nope- - - Because, to my knowledge the speaking at room volume,

Not whispering and the distance isn’t enough to -explain it - Ai - - Wel- - There goes one min-ion- - Droids are apparently expensive enough to chastise Grievous over-

But sen-tient - beings are a dime’ a ‘dozen-

(Also gaslighter’s. don’t give a shit about you dear, God,

The Painful dramatic- irony-

*tra- gic- Wh- -Oa

Ai - Ri-

Wh- -elp,

You know if it wasn’t for the exposure earl- ier

I would assume they would think that the Jedi was just killing all their Im-por- tant- elected officials

Why?

Wh-at

He’s right. - But dude- that’s pretty ham fisted-

I mean-

How many episodes (and possibly seasons-) do we have to go- - - Anakin- is a dick to lanterns- - Also the random theme of the bots- coming out of nowhere- continues- - St -op- - Wh- elp-

? (He live?)

I-

Good Play-

Ah-

To-

Oh, yeah, He’s alive we’re not going to bring that up in any mention-able way?

Ike

Wh e l- p

Oh - That was -nice-

You deceived everyone and lied to all our people, you’ll make a great leader,

Or a great council/ committee leader considering that they do have an open position , Best

I like that they had one bad ass fall and had it replace-d by Dooku being particularly bad-ass - In his place-

In the trade off near the end really speaks to the frag-ility of war

I thought-

It was pretty al-right Though it really did seem like - they were trying to build up to something but the structure unfortunately just didn’t support it,

Which is unfortunate because they do seem like bits- that could’ve been nice

Like Jar-jar being a constant peacekeeper-

The underwater nations-

Wars be- tween - Those Dude’s

And that general guy - Who seems to be like he was supposed to be this - really big deal

[probably intended to do something massive in the previous arcs,]

But, here, all he did was that one scene,

[Would’ve worked better if he was like this Re- Public Gen- Er Al-

To the shark guy-

And Akbar,

Was just like the resident enforcer-

Or something to do with the prince

I think it would’ve really worked better with the concept of ‘being taken’ under, As well that possibly being a good contrast between Jar Jar binks And Char- If Jar- jar got promoted- With Char being eager at first but then realizing he just can’t- And Jar- Jar being reluctant at first but realizing he can-

[Note; assumed authority is bad, Just- some people are better at using it for venting than others)

Nope boomers vs throw- it-back, boom-

I-

And it really did feel like this episode -should’ve been the split one

Nearing the end- it started to feel like the 1st- part of a second ep-

Which is fine

Just cut- of-

Episode all around being al-right, with just several parts that didn’t make quite sense including the emphasis on the general for that one scene,

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