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mariatesstruther · 1 year

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I honestly don't get why Maria was so anti-Joel oh he's a horrible person he's done horrible things he can't be around us, but accepted Tommy fully to the point he's the father of her child when both did the same things, ran with the same people and all of that.

I mean I love the character, but that confuses the hell out of me. Why's Tommy accepted but Joel damned?

okay, so… this response took me like half hour to write. my wrists hurt, my jaw is clenched, my brain is hot. i love u anon thank u very much for this chance to vent about just why my girl maria has been so misunderstood. let’s go

i personally think this is where many people fundamentally misunderstand maria’s perception of joel. she’s not cautious of him primarily because of tommy or anything tommy has said, in my personal opinion—she’s cautious of him for and because of ellie

ive said this on my blog a few times and i think so have @steeb-stn and @clickergossip (and maybe @liveandletcry23 and @bumblepony i have a shit memory so tagging just in case) so im gonna tag them to credit their words and ideas about maria as well, but the FIRST time maria sees joel, he’s with this rando twelve year old girl who he is seemingly so protective over that she cant even be sniffed by dogs who are just trying to detect infection, which would be good for ANYBODY. that’s his first strike for untrustworthyness, because why the fuck wouldn’t he let this girl be tested???—we know why, of course, but maria doesnt. shes working on the very limited info about joel/ellie’s relationship that she has from just her own observations, and i think we need to remember that as we go through analyzing why she moves how she moves

shes knows from tommy at this point is that joel had a daughter, but it is definitely not this little girl. so why the fuck are they so close. what have they gone through. are they okay. is ellie okay. is their relationship safe for her??? THAT’s what she’s thinking about, in my opinion, while shes staring joel down at that dinner table. she’s reasonbly suspicious, and i can’t blame her for it.

i had to cut this it’s literally maybe my longest post ever so. heres the cut

ALSO, it’s not like she’s a straight up bitch to joel like some of y’all seem to make it out to be??? she never says or implies that “they can’t be around” or anything like that. she offers them clothes and food and supplies. she sets them up in a house. before dinner, she gives them a personal tour (which, to be fair, she did because she was probably trying to keep an eye on them and figure out more about whether or not ellie is safe, but who wouldnt???? i know tess would! and yall would love her for it!). tommy literally says to joel before they leave that there will always be a place for him and ellie in jackson—you cannot tell me you believe he said so without already have maria’s green light for joel and ellie to stay

ALSO, i wanna consider some other things that i haven’t seen many ppl talk about. on that walk she takes with tommy and joel and ellie, she makes it sound like tommy has been with them for at least years AND she maintains the confidence to say that residents in jackson stay off the radio—i could totally be wrong, but it seems to me from the look tommy and joel share right after that it’s obvious tommy has been talking to joel BEHIND MARIA’S BACK???? did no one else catch that??? am i misinterpreting big time??? id assume because theyre married and from the way tommy talks about jackson that he’s been in jackson for at least 3 years maybe, and we know that he only stopped radioing joel a couple months before the show’s main plotline starts, so timeline wise there had to be some overlap of tommy still radioing joel from/around jackson. idk if anyone of my mutuals has thoughts on this but i personally think it’s important to point out, because it establishes that maria likely doesn’t know or think tommy and joel kept in contact, at least not as recently as up to some months ago. she knows that tommy and joel are close, but at the same time, she doesn’t think tommy really knows or talks to joel anymore, either. so how is she supposed to extend him any trust as tommy’s brother????? how and why would she give this man any benefit of the doubt???? it wouldn’t make any sense. she’s more practical and discerning than she is naive and kind, and y’all can think what y’al want about that but i love her for it. it’s very necessary for a woman like her to be the way she is

okay, so back to your question. back to why joel is “damned” and tommy is “accepted.” let’s talk about joel for a sec

y’all like to babygirl and idolize the absolute fuck out of this man

we know that not only was he a smuggler, but he killed and tricked and took advantage of people, shamelessly and brutally. we know that tommy did so too. maria knows that tommy has done the same things. maria also knows that tommy left that life because he couldnt do it anymore, and joel continued because he could

point blank period!!!!! yall can argue with me all u want but tommy left that murder life and joel did not. im not saying this makes either brother good or bad or better than the other, i love joel sm and i think both of them have an undisputed capability to do unspeakable things in order to survive. but tommy got to a point where he hit a limit, whereas joel doesn’t seem to have one. this is at least my personal interpretation of their conversations in the game and the show

tommy DID join the fireflies, which we all know now is not any fucking better than whatever the fuck joel was doing—the difference is the reasoning, though, and considering tlou is all about reasoning and the why, we need to consider the reasoning behind tommy’s decision: he wanted to do something better, something good, something he thought had a purpose. we all know now that the fireflies are bullshit, their purpose is bullshit, and they’re willingness to kill a child for the sake of the “cure” is it’s own entire paradox of bullshit. but they were a rebel organization fighting fedra, who fucking suck, and probably had somewhat of a better reputation back when tommy was interested in joining—or maybe they didn’t, to be fair, i don’t know! the point is, tommy went to them seeking some sort of better purpose, some type of redeption; in joel’s own fucking words, “tommy’s what we used to call a joiner. had dreams of becoming a hero... wants to save the world.”

tommy is idealistic. he’s romantic. he’s optimistic, almost to the point of being fucking naive. thats why he enlisted in the army, thats why he enlisted in the fireflies—he wanted to feel good about himself and the world he was living in. he needed it to have some light at the end of the tunnel for all the bullshit to make sense. and yeah, he was wrong both times in joining up. we know that, joel knew that while it was happening, and tommy knows that in retrospect, too. i think jackson is the first place he really found true, real purpose—not the kind that is propagandized to you and goes up in smoke, but the kind that is well and truly earned. that’s why he is so loyal to jackson and to maria—they finally gave him was he desperately spent his life searching for

and im just saying, from maria’s perspective, she’s someone who lives for purpose. she lives for jackson and for it’s people and for it’s future, and she has to maintain some sense of idealism in the face of all that fucking ugliness to be able to mentally live im and run a place like jackson, to believe that it’ll work. i think that idealism she has, she sees reflected in tommy’s desperation to be a better person who’s fighting for a better life. she sees that need for redemption and goodness in him, that need for things to be fucking worth it, and hears she hears it in his story. she gets to relate to him with this in a way she doesnt GET TO RELATE with joel YET (we STILL HAVE TIME PEOPLE. WE HOLDIN OUT STRONG FOR THE JOEL AND MARIA BEST FRIEND AGENDA)

but to continue, THEN maria spends YEARS with tommy, getting to know him, getting to know his guilt. just like tess with joel, she’s sees the worst and the best of him and gets to fall in love with all of it. so of course there’s gonna be a bit of a bias and a blindspot, towards him—just like any of are other characters have weak spots for the people THEY fucking love

so that’s i guess why i think tommy is “accepted” by her, i guess, and there’s honestly way more them and their romance that i could make a whole separate post about but i’ll leave it there for now. back to joel and why he’s “damned,” which i don’t think he is

again, from what maria knows, he made an active CHOICE to stay in the lifestyle of smuggling and murdering and QZ bullshit, even after tommy chose to leave—and idk what y’all imagine joel and tess to be doing in those many years on their own, but it’s not fuckin picking flowers, for me. they’re dangerous, dangerous people—more dangerous that fedra, and more dangerous than the fireflies, if we’re being fucking real about it. and we LOVE tess and joel for this, or at least i do

but jackson is not a place where people get by with smuggling or backstreet deals or threats. it’s not supposed to be that place. we all LOVE jackson in fics and hcs and aus because it’s literally a place where joel and ellie finally get to breathe and not worry about their safety/survival first. and you know who keeps jackson that way????? MARIA. AND HE BEING FUCKING PICKING ABOUT WHO JACKSON LETS THE FUCK INSIDE

so yall just expect her to by YIPPY SKIPPY when joel, THE JOEL THE SUPER SMUGGLER MURDER COWBOY, strolls into town????? WITHOUT TESS, WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE MORE PERSONABLE AND REASONABLE ONE???? what????? she’d be crazy not to at least try to be a little intimidating, to make it clear to joel that he will not get away with any of that qz bullshit here. she’d be naive not to, and maria is anything but naive

and i know most people don’t like her for that “a bad reputation doesn’t mean you’re bad” “not always, at least” line, but i actually think it really fits so well in establishing that she’s not afraid of joel, not afraid of challenging him or making him own up to things he’s done. it’s just so so cool to me, i just can’t hate her for that????? she’s establishing with him that she knows what tommy knows about his time in the QZ, and she’s letting him know if that joel shows up here in jackson, there will be fucking problems for him. which i think is a completely fair warning????

so let’s continue. let’s talk about The Scene, the one with her and ellie, the one with the “tommy was following joel” line. ONE thing i’d like to point out about this scene—MARIA IS THE ONE TO TELL ELLIE ABOUT SARAH, NOT JOEL. AND THAT IS A BIG BIG BIG REASON FOR WHY SHE WARNS ELLIE NOT TO TRUST JOEL COMPLETELY

we know what joel and ellie have gone through, at this point, but maria has barely any idea. she sees that ellie has this fierce protectiveness and lots of secrets when it comes to her and joel, which like—can we all be fucking objective here for a second. this can SO easily and SO reasonably be interpreted as something sketchy going on between joel and ellie that maria should be concerned about.

(slight tw about older men-younger woman relationships bc im gonna be personal for a sec, its quick) we don’t know maria’s past or what she has seen or been through, but personally as someone who has been in a situation where an older man has taken advantage of my naivety in the past, i am now extremely hyper vigilant when it comes to young girls around older men in my personal life today. ellie and joel’s situation and how it looks would raise MJAOR red flags for me personally, if i was in maria’s position. that’s just a personal perspective have that really affects the way i view this scene (end tw)

and so maria finds out that joel has kept the fact that HE HAD A WHOLE ASS DAUGHTER from ellie?????? WOULD THAT NOT BE SUS AT ALL TO YALL???? i mean we know why joel doesn’t tell ellie, as gameplayers and watchers of the show, but again. maria is operating on the info she has right in front of her, which is that joel has been omitting maybe the biggest fact of his life from this young girl who is willing to defend and trust him with her entire life, even after she finds out she’s being lied to. this is alarming

so at this point, she’s questioning joel’s intentions with ellie, and in my opinion, it’s not at all unreasonable for her to do so. she then continues to press, because the red flags are flying and she wants ellie to be crystal clear on the kind of man she’s traveling with (“there are CLEARLY things you don’t know about joel” — “so then you understand my concerns”)

AND THEN ELLIE. BLESSED SMART AMAZING ELLIE COMES IN WITH THE DEFENSE—“and tommy did it too, are you worried about him?”—which like, i love this line. i love this moment. i think because i go so hard for maria a lot of y’all think i’m blind to when ellie is making points, but i 100% cheered her on when i first watched this scene, like i’m sure y’all did—because it’s true! it’s fair! if maria is going to judge joel for those things, she needs to extend the same judgement to tommy

the thing is, it’s still fucking true that, as i said earlier, tommy left that life. both the smuggling, and the fireflies—he chose to stop, while joel didn’t—he was smuggling literally up until the day him and tess found ellie, so. there’s that. she continues to judge joel and not tommy because she knows for sure that tommy has changed. she doesn’t know joel enough yet to see that he has changed, too

so then, the dreaded line: “tommy was following joel.” let’s talk about it.

i don’t love this line either, tbh! i think it’s a weak defense on maria’s part, and a weak line on the tlou hbo writers part—probably my least favorite line of maria’s overall. but i do get why she says it, and i kind of think i get the purpose??? i think????

it reminds me a lot of joel’s line, earlier, about tommy being a “joiner,” and i think it’s funny that, as opposite as joel and maria like to think they both are to each other, the way they describe tommy is pretty much the same. tommy is a “joiner” to joel and a “follower” to maria, and in all respects they both love and hate him for it. idk where i’m going with that exactly, just something interesting to think about in terms of the joel and maria best friend agenda

but i also think this line get’s taken out of context a lot, because the full line is “tommy was following joel, the way you are now.” maria says this line to lead into her main point, the really fucking important line in this scene: “be careful who you put your faith in. the only ones who can betray us, are the one’s we trust.”

WHICH IS TRUE. IT IS THE POINT. AND WHEN JOEL LIES TO ELLIE, HIDES SOMETHING FROM HER YET AGAIN at the end of the season/game, IT BECOMES A THEMATIC CLIMAX POINT THAT CONNECTS BOTH OF THE GAMES

maria is not saying this to “damn” joel—and i personally don’t think she is “damning” joel in the way you imply here, as there’s definitely potential for them to develop a relationship in s2 once she has more information about the truth of how he thinks of ellie. i think she’s warning ellie not to trust joel, because she doesn’t trust joel, at the end of the fucking day—and that’s about it. she trusts tommy in a way that she can’t quite trust joel yet, and why would she, at this point? it would make no sense for her to

so y’all can blame her and hate her for her distrust all you guys want (btw not necessarily talking to you, anon, ive just gotten some very nasty asks about maria from others so im talking to them rn!!!!!!!), but i’m sorry—you can’t tell me that it doesn’t at least make sense. she’s MARIA. she’s MADE OF SENSE

#WHEW #DO MY THUMBS HURT #i cant even be bothered to tag this fr #maria miller #asked and answered #joel and maria best friend agenda #tommy miller #joel miller #tess servopoulos

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claudiajcregg · 3 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @mihrsuri. Thanks, Lil! I feel like I've answered these in the not-so-distant past, and might have accidentally ignored one or more tags. Oops. I need to check the Mentions tab and check it out!

(I also started writing this… earlier this week, and forgot about the tab. Sorry this is so so long.)

01. how many works do you have on ao3? 24 fics, though one of them has eight ficlets… So some would count it as 31. (It's still 24.)

02. what's your total ao3 word count? 167,815 words

03. what fandoms do you write for? TWW.

04. top five fics by kudos?

maybe everything's just turning out how it should be

(big gulf here)

say it's here where our pieces fall in place

just your smile lit a sixty-watt bulb in my house that was darkened for days

nobody knows how to get back home

we could be the way forward and I know I'll pay for it

05. do you respond to comments? Yes! I try to get to all of them, and feel bad when I hoard them (because they're lovely) or they slip through the cracks. (I tend to wait some time before replying to the comments on my most recent fic, so if anything comes in later, it might be immediate or two months late.)

06. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I feel like I always struggle with this answer because they're mostly hopeful endings! Which is just my perception and now how it is. Tempted to go check what I've answered in the past.

Most recently, I think what if the way you hold me is actually what's holy has that 'right person, wrong time', on borrowed time vibes. But maybe not! My go-to answer always feels like my post-Portland Trip fic, don't want you to go but I'll be okay, because it feels so final and bittersweet then.

07. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Oh, which one should I pick? I think the Cali/Jan 22nd fic from earlier this year (oh, and I will be with you to feel the California sun) is just pure happiness, tbh. Memoir fic (still you never took your hand from mine) also feels like a saccharine, sweet ending! (Could've also picked the literal wedding reception-set fic, lol.)

08. do you get hate on fic? No! Luckily. If I have, I don't remember. I've gotten a weird comment or two, but those weren't about the fics. So no!

09. do you write smut? Nooooo, of course not. (This is the last time I'll beg you to read on main and that's under a cut lol.) Up till now I could say it was mild scenes in yet-to-be-posted fics, which remains true, but I posted a literal smutty fic last Friday, lol. I'm proud of it and myself, for getting out of my comfort zone, and while it's flopping I'm glad those who've read it liked it!

10. craziest cross over? This is the question that undoubtedly makes me go “lol I've definitely done this before.” Because I always joke that I've already seen the craziest canon crossovers on screen. That said, I haven't personally written one, and don't have ideas.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen? No? Sometimes I wonder if some ideas have been borrowed but wouldn't say stolen.

12. have you ever had a fic translated? No! Maybe one day I'll do it myself. (I don't think there's demand for it/Spanish-written fics in this fandom.) (Once again, I'm sure that this answer matches the previous ones.)

13. have you ever co-written a fic before? Sounds fun! No. But anyone interested? hmu.

14. all-time favorite ship? In what sense? I cannot choose, but at the same time… We all know.

15. what's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I don't like putting this energy out in the universe. It's one thing to post (that's probably a long list) but actual WIPs that are worth it? I want to believe I'll get to them eventually. (But. Unfortunately, the answer is many of them.)

16. what are your writing strengths? Internal world? As in, I am “good” at describing the internal world of a character. idk.

17. what are your writing weaknesses? I write in my second language. I feel like everything's a weakness. (World building, descriptions, dialogue.)

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language? As long as it doesn't take the reader out (and makes sense in the story), 👍 I might have peppered in some Spanish in some of my writing but it feels wrong somehow.

19. first fandom you wrote in? Bones.

20. favorite fic you've written? I cannot pick a favorite child. I can affectionately call them flops because they mostly are, stats-wise, but there's something about them that I love. And I feel like some of my favorite stuff is what's not yet posted! Because it stops feeling “mine” once it's out there.

don't want you to go but I'll be okay · Portland fic · my automatic answer because I felt it was special the second I finished it. So many things came together (that quote, particularly).

we could be the way forward and I know I'll pay for it · St Augustine, a precanon campaign fic ·(Any of the first four (posted in 2021) is super special to me. This one was another one I knew would be special. And it has big “there wouldn't be this if there hadn't been you” energy.

your love is a secret I'm hoping, dreaming, dying to keep · (3+1 fic set in the last third of S7, ft the press corps) · Taylor sang KOMH on N2 because she loved this. I just know it. (I just really love secret relationships/working around that S7 period so much.)

nobody knows how to get back home · itsotg missing scen) · I just like it a lot, and it's also a good candidate for angsty ending. When did it get so many kudos?!

maybe everything's just turning out how it should be · big block of cheese 2008 · felt disingenuous not to include the fic I always knew I wanted to post, even if it's another early one. It's my most popular by a huge margin, and I'm glad.

I so wanted to add fics like the Cali one but this always depends on my mood! So this is the answer that might always change haha.

Shoutout to some unposted ones that I love but won't get published. Or others perpetually in limbo, like the two big multichapters (IM and S5 pregnancy). I feel like some of my best stuff is in What Once Was Ours (the IM AU fic I wrote in 2021), or the S5 Pregnancy AU (which I hope to finish this summer! And I want to start posting once I feel like I'll make that deadline)… And I'm currently really fond of one I've started to call “demons that you know raise hell worse than a stranger.” Coming to you soon, if I get my crap together!

#mihrsuri #ask games #20 questions for fic writers #are there ''easter eggs'' in here. maybe.

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alexbkrieger13 · 2 years

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It is fair to say that I have been following off-the-field events at the World Cup just as closely as the football on it. I got asked during the last international break whether I would be watching the tournament and my answer probably applies to a lot of the girls at Chelsea – we talk about some of the games and the football aspect but equally we talk about the other things that are happening around the tournament. And this week, that means the situation with the “OneLove” armbands – and the decision was taken not to wear them.

I am a bit wary of saying, “Well, I would have worn it”. I have never been put in a similar situation but, ultimately, I would like to think that – in their shoes –I really would have pushed and tried to call Fifa’s bluff. It would have been inspiring if they’d gone ahead and done it anyway and said, “OK, what are you going to do now?”. Different players could have rotated the armband to share out the yellow cards that each would get for wearing it.

If you are the captain of a national team, as I have been with Sweden, you are experienced and have been at this level a long time. You do not have much to lose because you have got such a big platform and such influence – particularly in the men’s game. I was disappointed, therefore, not to see the captains wearing those armbands after all.

I do not want to sound like the moral police here and I can appreciate that players picking up bans would be a concern for the national federations involved. Indeed the main problem for me was not the players, but Fifa’s handling of the situation in the first place. They have known about this plan to wear the armbands for months but waited until the day before England’s first game to threaten teams with sporting sanctions, which is unfair.

The Germany players’ response before their match against Japanwas fantastic. They are really showing unity and true allyship with their brave decision to say that this situation is not OK. Something so simple as just covering their mouths sent out a very powerful message alongside the statement released by the German FA. With no Sweden at the World Cup, they have just gained a new fan in me.

Another team that I have felt so much admiration for this week is Iran for their decision not to sing their national anthem before the England match. It was extremely powerful and brave. I was so impressed by that.

I know how powerful football can be and I would like it to be a force for good. Instead I’ve seen on my social media these clips of people over in Qatar being asked to remove items with rainbows on them. I think it is insane to describe the rainbow flag as a political statement. I understand they have to be wary about ideological messages but for me the rainbow represents human rights and respect for one another rather than politics. Instead we have had Fifa and Qatar deciding what is political. The fact that Fifa are saying rainbow-coloured items are now allowed in stadiums is a positive sign. If we raise our voices loudly enough, change can happen.

Of course, it does not help that there are other big reasons for frustration over Qatar as hosts, starting with the voting process when this World Cup was awarded. The fact that there were bribes opened a lot of questions. Perhaps those of us who love football are naive but I do not want to think money will rule football forever. A lot of people – players, fans, media – genuinely think this has gone too far and when I hear Gianni Infantino, the Fifa president, defend that decision so robustly, it does undermine his credibility. It was a ridiculous speech that he gave last week about feeling gay and disabled. I cannot believe they thought it was a good idea. I just thought, “Wow, you are really not reading the room”.

That said, I did understand his point about the hypocrisy of western societies giving out moral lessons given our history of colonisation. I can appreciate that change happens at different speeds in different places. I am all for discussion and it may be that things are changing in Qatar. Each country has its context and comparisons are not always easy. Yet it still leaves me outraged that being gay in a country can put you in prison and seeing how migrant workers have been treated.

Going back to my first point about my interest in this World Cup, I have certainly learned so much about that part of the world because of it. Journalists have done a great job of using Qatar 2022 as an opportunity to educate people about the situation in that region and I really do believe that anybody who follows this tournament should try to know something about the context. Personally, I have enjoyed reading about it and am much better informed now. Hopefully that goes for others too

#magdalena eriksson #chelsea fcw #swewnt #article #world cup #woso

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khaleesiofalicante · 3 months

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Hello I'm the annie who asked about watching hotd without having watched got. And guess what? I did! I watched s1 and ep 1 of s2 and I loved it so muchhhh. I cannot believe a show like this exists. I'm sure I'm missing some context because I haven't seen got but it's still so good. I could die for alicent and rhaenyra. Their relationship is so beautiful and complex and I'm completely in love. Here are some scenes I really enjoyed and some people i loved and hated:

1) the whole dinner scene in ep8. R and A toasting to eachother and then A being disappointed when R was leaving. That was probably one of my favorite episodes.

2) I loved kind viserys.

3) aemond chasing luke scene. I actually gasped at the end. I was heartbroken but that was some good shit

4) I hate the hand. And I hate christon cole. And I hate that foot fetish guy. I hate most of the men on the show tbh.

5) I love R's kids. Especially luke. I wanted to kill aemond so badly.

6) why is there so much childbirth in this show? Like in the first episode of the time jump when R is giving birth I could literally hear her vagina sounds. And the second was also very horrifying. And when Aemma gave birth- that shit scarred me. I'm never having kids after this.

7) I had no idea I'd love politics so much. But I really do. It's so fucking interesting. I'm obviously team black but I also feel very attached to alicient.

8) at first I was wierded out but at this point I've even stopped to think about the incest. Like they just marry their brother or sister and call them husband and wife? Okay cool.

9) what did you think about 'a son for a son'? I wish it had been aemond instead because I hate that asshole. Fuck aemond.

10) what do you think about R and daemon? I honestly don't completely understand his character. So much shit has happened.

11) it's crazy how much history A and R have and that THAT one night is still something that governs their relationship (atleast for A). I just. I love them. I love their love. I love that I get to see and feel it. When A touched R's hand in that dinner party episode- I felt SO MUCH. I love it when shows/stories make me FEEL. Does that make sense? I just love them so much.

12) A lighting a candle for Luke :'(

I cannot wait to watch the rest of it. It's so good. I don't know if I'll watch GOT or not because it's too long and I'm worried it won't match up to hotd and this style that I've gotten used to.

OMG YOU WATCHED. I AM SO HAPPY.

for those of you who don't know, before coercing people into watching f1, I was coercing people to watch GoT/HoTD. So, this makes me so happy hehe.

Watching this story and hating all the men is such an experience, trust me.

Or not you like Luke the most. My deepest sympathies 😔 the baby deserved so much better.

The show is very graphic about childbirth. I was watching all the murders unblinking and then hid under the blanket during the childbirth scenes lmao.

The whole marrying the brother thing is extremely common among the targaryens because that's how they keep their bloodline pure (which is a tradition that actually existed among many royalities before...)

A son for a son in the show was fucked up. I WANT TO HURL DAEMON FROM A MOUNTAIN. Also, it happens differently in the book. Do read up on it if you're interested!

I loooooved Matt Smith a lot so I was super into Daemon earlier on in season 1 but then he got really annoying really fast. LIKE BRO STOP MAKING THINGS WORSE.

I like Alicent a lot too. But I do not like this new arrangement with Cr*ston Cole. I HATE HIM.

I hope you watched the next episode today! The funeral procession scene was >>>> Also I don't support team green but the way their grief was portrayed, each one so different, was so well done.

BUT. BUTTTTTT. If you liked this and if you loved the politics, you will LOVE game of thrones. I promise. HoTD is good. But it doesn't even come close to GoT. GoT doesn't have as many dragons, BUT YOU WILL LOVE THE PLOT AND THE CHARACTERS I PROMISE.

#dani watches stuff #hotd

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itsnotunfinisheditsmystyle · 1 year

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Darkolai 45!!

pretending to hate each other au

The first one was kinda an alternative ending to Siege and Storm... Well this one is one too lmaooo

Before Vasily could bring down his weapon, a nichevo’ya grabbed hold of him and tore his arm from its socket, sword and all. He stood for a moment, swaying, blood pumping from his wound, then dropped to the floor in a lifeless heap. Nikolai was sprayed, recoiling as warm blood hit his face.

“Saints,” he muttered under his breath, fruitlessly trying to wipe it off with his sleeve. “Get the Queen to safety! And everybody lay down your arms, you cannot shoot those things!”

“Well, I can!” light pooled at Alina’s hands, her gaze on the nichevo’ya that had just killed Vasily and was still standing right in front of Nikolai, unmoving. Perhaps the creature was perplexed by what it had just done, but it would snap out of it soon and—

“No, Alina. It’s over,”

“What?” confusion made her freeze. More nichevo’ya descended from the windows, easily rounding up the royal guards and nobles. The King was forced to his knees by one of the creatures, and Alina thought he had wet himself from the terror. “You can’t be giving up, Nikolai!” After everything?

“I am,” he simply replied, sheathing his sword as he turned back to her. He gestured around the room. “Is what you’ve just seen not enough?”

“So you are handing Ravka over to the Darkling? Do you have any idea what he’ll do to it?!”

“Oh, unspeakable things Ravka has never known, I’m sure,” Nikolai brushed some lint off his sleeves, frowning at the blood stains. “Taxation on the rich, for starters,”

Alina stumbled back, as if he had just hit her. In the midst of the chaos, the Darkling appeared among his creatures, calm and composed as if he hadn’t just successfully led a coup, regal already in his black kefta. The sight did not seem to alarm Nikolai at all.

“You aren’t giving up,” she understood suddenly. “You were always on his side,”

“Well, I am giving up. On you. I tried, Alina, I really tried. I took you here, I showed you all—” he gestured down at his brother, what was left of him anyway, then his kneeling father, and the nobles. “—this. I took you all across Ravka so you’d see how people live in this country, and then here so you’d see the contempt the nobles have for their people. My brother’s last word was to call you a witch, that’s all you would have ever been to him, you and all the other grishas. You truly believed he’d eventually give up the crown to me? You can’t stay that naive forever, Alina, not when you’re the one wielding the power to change it all,”

Her arms whipped in the air, and he didn’t even have time to move out of the way of her Cut that shadows clashed with it, stopping it in its course. The Darkling stepped closer, bringing his hands together, and Alina’s own were soon tightly bound together, unable to move.

“Since when?!” she spat. “Was the battle on the Volkvolny fake too?!”

“Well, I wondered,” the Darkling drawled, glancing at Nikolai from the corner of his eye. “You shot me, after all,”

“It had to look realistic,” Nikolai replied smugly.

“You could have missed,”

“I don’t miss,”

“Nikolai!” the King bellowed. “How could you betray your own family?!”

The Darkling produced a handkerchief from his pocket and approached Nikolai, cupping his face with his free hand. The prince easily leaned into the touch, closing his eyes as the other man tried to wipe the blood off his face. Oh, he had missed this, in those months apart.

“Now we are family, funny how that works,” he muttered.

“Didn’t your men kill Ivan? For a fake battle?!”

“Have more faith in Ivan, Alina, besides I’d miss his delightful glaring at me whenever I am less than three metres away from his general,” As they spoke, the man was probably already in the Little Palace rounding up everyone with the grishas that had stayed on the Darkling’s side —both officially and unofficially. “I thought we could still convince you to be on Ravka’s side, that’s why we set all this up. I thought you just needed to see to understand this is needed. This is Ravka’s only hope,”

“A monster on the throne. Or two,” she shook her head dejectedly.

“You did once say I reminded you of him,” Nikolai chuckled. “And then you kept trusting me, so I thought I was doing something right. But I guess not,"

His attention went back on the Darkling, whose hand was still on his cheek. The shadow summoner flexed his wrist just to tilt the prince's head up and allow their lips to meet, caring little about the blood still lingering on his mouth and face. After they separated, he stepped over his brother's body and followed the Darkling until they reached his father. The Queen would be spared, that had been the compromise Nikolai had gotten out of his lover, something he had been firm on ever since they started murmuring plots and dreams of the future under the blanket on that first summer after he came back from university.

But the King…

"He is all yours, Kolya," The Darkling purred in his ear.

"Vasily was supposed to be as well," he was hardly mad about it, he had never been bloodthirsty. The dirty work needed done, and if it had to be by him then he would.

"He attacked you. My nichevo'ya obey my will, even out of my sight,"

Aleksander's hand tightened around his shoulder. Once that would be over with, they could get started on rebuilding the country. Fixing it. It wouldn’t be easy, and he was disappointed he had gotten nowhere with Alina. They’d probably have to use that poor sod of a tracker against her to get her to fulfil her duties to her country.

He tilted his head as he barely listened to the Tsar’s pleading and slowly reached out to take the crown off him. He contemplated it for a moment before turning around and smiling.

“Sasha,” he simply said, and that was all it took for the Darkling to lower himself, putting a knee down, looking up at him with devotion. But he did not place the crown on his own head, instead carefully balancing it atop ink black hair. “Rise, moi Tsar,” he whispered.

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unseededtoast · 1 year

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Antedate | Bucky Barnes

Part 4/13 | Part Three, Part Five

Summary: Sometimes making the right decision feels like the wrong one. That decision can stick with you for years and leave you wondering what would happen if you had chosen something else. But the alternatives likely lead to a much darker path; you'll never know for sure though. One thing is for certain, the decisions I have made will have lasting consequences.

Prequel to Rectify

Series Warnings: Discussion of human trafficking, physical and mental abuse, mention and description of death

a/n: Hi everyone, thank you for checking this out, I appreciate any and all support! This series is also posted on Ao3 and Wattpad if you prefer those formats/platforms! This is a completed series, and it's going to take some time for me to transfer it to Tumblr, so please bear with me!

He has a murderous gaze on his face, and for a split second I think I'm about to die.

I stare at the screen in great disbelief. I replay the simulation for the fourth time and get the same results. I've done it. I quickly save the file to the thumb drive and stand from my chair with haste. I grab the room's key before I leave, and lock the door behind me as I do every time I leave the room. I tuck the key into my back pocket and make my way to my father's office.

I know he's been expecting this for weeks now and that I've already slightly disappointed him by taking this long. But, this mission was tougher than I anticipated. I had to learn Zola's programming and understand it down to the most minute detail and then I had to teach myself how to code. Not only that, but find a way to translate a psychological conditioning protocol into a computer program. That's easier said than done but I know father expected me to do it all quickly.

I just can't believe I got it to work, especially since my computer programming skills are below a rudimentary level. I think an experienced programmer should have been involved, but I know father wouldn't risk anyone else finding out about this mission. He's convinced that this mission will be the one to define his career, perhaps even his life.

My hands shake as I knock on his door. I hear the conversation inside cease and footsteps approach the door. I interlock my fingers in front of me, wanting to keep up appearances for whoever else might be inside father's office. The door opens and I'm met with my father's face. He looks at me quizzically as he lets me step inside. I see Dane is also here, sitting in the chair in front of the desk. I look back to my father and slightly nod my head as a greeting.

"I think you will be pleased to hear that your request has been finalized." I say, not knowing if Dane is aware of what my mission is. I see my father's face break into a wide smile, something I've only ever seen once before. He wraps an arm around my shoulder,

"I knew you could do it. There is no time to waste, I will prepare an audience and we will have the presentation as soon as possible. In the meantime, you need to prepare your speech. Don't worry about the equipment, we will have people to move that for you. Make sure the equipment is working properly as well, we cannot afford any mistakes." My father says, taking his arm back at the end of his spiel. I nod my head, understanding what I am to do next.

"Oh, and also, it would not be a bad idea to get the asset out and make sure he is presentable. He hasn't been out in who knows how long, he probably needs to be freshened up." I nod, but feel my palms start to sweat. He wants me to bring the Soldier out of cryogenesis before I implement the programming? I sure am no expert, but I can't imagine that's terribly safe.

My father dismisses me and I make my way back to the Soldier's room. Besides my room, this has been my only quiet safe haven in this entire base. Not even Dane bothers me here, it's quite nice sometimes. But I can't help but feel uneasy knowing there is an elite assassin being kept only a few feet away at all times. Now I have to get that trained assassin out, I'm sure this will go over smoothly.

I place the room's key on the desk next to the computer, as I always do. I wipe my palms on my pants and try to figure out a game plan. I don't know when this presentation is going to take place, but I know it's likely to be within a week. My father will want to waste no time in showcasing his newest feat.

I could always just prepare my speech now and worry about getting the Soldier out of containment later. Or I could get the Soldier out of cryogenesis now and worry about the speech later. Both are very daunting tasks. If my speech isn't correct I know I'll face punishment. If something goes wrong with the asset, I'm likely to either end up dead or face punishment. I sigh and run a hand through my hair, deciding to just flip a coin to decide.

I rummage around one of the desk drawers and find an old coin inside, stuck to the bottom of the drawer. I pry it off the bottom and look it over, the two faces of the coin are still distinguishable, so this should work. I designate each side to an outcome, if it's heads I'll write my speech first, and if it's tails I'll get the Soldier out first. I balance the coin on the side of my pointer finger and keep my thumbnail under it. I take a quick breath and flip the coin, letting it fall to the floor.

I crouch down and look to see what fate it's decided. Tails. Of course it would be. I kick the coin underneath the desk in frustration. Okay so now I need a game plan for the game plan. I pace around the room anxiously, trying to figure out what would be the best way to go about this.

I know in Zola's notes he instructed that as soon as he gets out of cryogenesis he should be placed in the programming chair, for if he's left to his own devices it's hard to say what he will do. But how do I know he'll stay there? I can't trust Zola's programming to still be effective, it's been years and years since he was last taken out.

I grab the key off the desk and head to my room. I need some space out of there to think clearly. I speed to my room, not wanting to be stopped by anyone. Thankfully people don't bother to stop me, I guess I look like I'm too busy. I shut the door behind me and slide to the ground, the door against my back. I bring my knees up and rest my arm on top of them, leaning my head back against the heavy door.

I take a few quiet moments to myself, trying to calm my nerves and get a level head. It's not like these things come with a user's manual, which would be immensely helpful right about now. I bite on my lower lip and look around my room, hoping an idea will come to me.

My eyes land on my small vanity against the opposite wall. I stand and walk over to it, grabbing the hairbrush off the old, chipped wood. This is probably the best idea I'll have. I look over the rest of my things and decide to only stick with the hairbrush. I go back to the Soldier's room, noticing the other scientists have left for the day. I guess I've lost track of the time.

I place the brush and room key on top of the desk and walk to the chair in the center of the room. I wipe it down, getting the dust off of it that's probably been settled there since I was born. As far as I know, it's been a few decades since the Soldier has been out of containment, and it's obvious nobody kept up with this room since.

I wipe my hands on my pants, getting the dust off of them as well. I find Zola's notes and give myself a quick refresher about how this is supposed to go. I read over the same words at least a dozen times before I gather the courage to actually just do it. I close the red leather and put it back in its place. I guess now is as good as any other time.

My shoes echo in the empty room as I walk to the platform to release the Soldier. I peak inside the glass and see the man in there, just as he always is. It's weird to think that in a few seconds, this man will be awake and free. I swallow the lump forming in my throat and decide to just do it before I talk myself out of it. I navigate the control panel and disengage the cryogenesis. I take a step back and watch as the ice melts.

The door opens slightly, and I grab the handle to open it the rest of the way. The man inside starts scrunching his eyebrows together, and I wait for him to open his eyes before I make any move, I don't want to startle him. His eyes open and make contact with my own.

His eyes are bright blue and intense. He has a murderous gaze on his face, and for a split second I think I'm about to die. I hear his bionic arm start making sounds, likely adjusting to the temperature change.

I quickly change my demeanor to one of false confidence, the one skill I've truly perfected in this place. I stand up straighter and reach an arm out, taking his hand in mine. He follows me out of the chamber and down the platform. His skin is still ice cold. I hope my hands aren't shaking too much, I don't need him to know how scared I really am.

I guide him slowly to the chair in the center of the room and sit him down. Surprisingly, he's gentle. He follows my lead and sits in the chair. I watch as he looks around the room, he seems confused. I don't turn my back on him as I go to retrieve the brush from the desk. As I move, his eyes are glued to me, watching my every move. It reminds me of a cat stalking a mouse, watching before it pounces.

I grab the handle in my hand and go to stand in front of the Soldier. He makes eye contact with me again, and I clear my throat. Maybe starting to build his trust would be a good place to begin. I show him the brush in my hand,

"I'm just going to brush your hair is all, I promise." I say in a soft voice. I don't want him to perceive me as a threat that he needs to eliminate. He doesn't make any facial expression, or give me any sort of acknowledgment, so I walk behind the chair.

Gently, I grab his shoulders and guide him to sit all the way back in the chair. I gather his hair back into my hand and start brushing out the tangles. I notice that his hair is full of them which probably means his previous handler mistreated him. If they were anything like my father, they don't view him as a man, but an asset.

My heart starts to break for this man as I work out all the tangles. I remember the photograph in his file, I remember the softness in his eyes, the small smirk. This man is nothing like the one in the photo. I'm willing to bet this man hasn't felt mercy or love since he fell off that train.

As I gently comb through his hair, I softly hum a tune. I hum the same one my mother used to hum for me as she did my hair when I was a child. It was one of the first songs I learned when I was learning how to speak English. I found it was easier to learn through translating songs.

After I get through his hair, I run my fingers through it just to be sure I got everything. I feel the man's head lean into my touch slightly, but I can tell he's still very much on guard.

I walk back to the front of his chair and crouch so that I'm eye level with him. His sculpted jaw is still set tightly, letting me know he's uncomfortable.

"My name is Adalyn, and I'm going to be your handler from here on out. I promise that I will try my best to take care of you." I say, giving him my genuine word to take care of him. He deserves someone who cares.

Although this encounter is short, I know the longer I leave him out without reprogramming him, the more dangerous this situation becomes. With regret, I grab his hand again and lead him back up the platform and into the cryogenesis chamber. He steps in and I can tell he knows what's coming.

I lean up and place a soft kiss on his cheek.

"I promise." I say and step back, closing the chamber's door. The man closes his eyes and I press the button to engage the cryogenesis cycle. Almost instantaneously, the chamber is full of ice once more. My heart is heavy as I gather up all of my things.

I walk back to my room solemnly as the reality of my situation fully hits me. I don't know if I'm cut out for this, but I don't have much of a choice.

#bucky barnes x oc #james bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky #bucky fanfic #hydra #bucky barnes fic #james buchanan barnes #marvel #the winter soldier #winter soldier #bucky barnes angst

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essayofthoughts · 2 years

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7, 13, 35, 39? :D

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

So back in the days before everyone decided the entirety of Harry Potter was as shit as it's creator* I actually used to run a HP headcanon blog, specifically one where I noodled out ideas about the flora and fauna of the magical world. I had a lot of fun with @themonsterblogofmonsters and while I probably won't be going back to it for some time - Hello CritRole pit! - I do still enjoy the sheer amount of sandbox space available in it.

Consequently some of my favourite worldbuilding I've done in fic form is probably The Banker or the Ban? Goblin Professions in Magical Europe, done for the Worldbuilding Exchange 2021. I wanted to try to dig into the racism and xenophobia of the magical world and to use some of the analogues and allegories of canon to further expand on it, to show how such things might occur in the world, sometimes mirroring known historical events, and to criticise such behaviour.

* I will be clear: JKR is a piece of shit. HP itself is flawed but worth criticising on its own merits, not being lumped in with its radicalised, shitty creator. I have seen a great deal of criticism that comes solely from a basis of wanting to believe it was always bad and that JKR was always bad and I dislike things that pretend that radicalisation isn't something that can happen to anyone - even you, reading this.

13. Are there any tropes you used to like but don’t anymore?

To write? Not that I can think of. To read? I definitely gained an ever-increasing dislike for slash fandom and went from tolerant of A/B/O to often quite skeeved out by some of it. There's a lot of misogyny and even racism often built into the way people who preferentially ship non-canon (usually white) gay ships and it often results in the villainising or fridging of existing canon female or POC love interests - this was especially bad in the Sherlock fandom; I recall reading one fic, absolutely excellent characterisation, beautifully written... but which introduced the character of Mary Morstan before her debut in the BBC Sherlock canon solely to make her a deceptive serial cheater so that John would be morally justified in getting with Sherlock.

After that I found that I just couldn't enjoy slashfic anymore - so often it ends up being at best dismissive of canon love interests and at worse actively malicious towards them, often drastically mischaracterising them.

I am someone who cannot stand purposefully, knowingly deceptive or dishonest presentations of things - and I consider the purposeful, malicious mischaracterisation of a character to be a similar brand of dishonesty.

Also just... the insistence of shipping your two (again, usually white) male faves together, often using the excuse of "But the female characters aren't as fleshed out!" - my dude, nor is that one guy mentioned in a throwaway comment by another character and yet fandom's so willing to give one-off male characters rich backstories and inner lives and just refuses to do that for the female ones. For the trans ones. For the characters of colour. It hacks me off and it's just fucking lazy.

And that's why I generally don't read slash anymore.

35. What aspects of your writing are completely unlike your real life?

I mean, I ran monsterblog for... several years, but my niche interest is Archaeology not Biology. As for actual fic... while I have codependent tendencies I'm pretty strict about managing those these days and I've certainly never been as codependent as certain characters I've written. And unlike Percy in Ghost Cass, I do not have the disembodied voice of one of my siblings in my head. I don't go adventuring like VM, and I am someone who Does Not Like travelling, especially long distances or overseas - I'm terrified of getting lost or running out of funds somewhere I don't speak the language.

Otherwise... I don't know? I often use things I've noted in my own life to help flesh out the world - the way that a valley can spread out down below you, golden fields split by green hedgerows, the way the cold wind can bite at your face, the soft cut of salt in the air when you're near the coast, the way birdsong can trill through the air. And with characters - quirks of eyebrows, the way a mouth twists, certain aspects of posture and movement.

I like using these little things I note day to day to help ground a story in a sense of reality, like the way a grounding touch can draw you out of your own thoughts. The point is to take something fantastical and bring it back to something the reader can easily understand and grasp - can relate to. That way, no matter how outlandish a thing one writes about - facing the bright, burning fireball of a dragon's breath, lets say - can be given a sense of reality by a reminder of the acrid scent of burning hair, the way the fire fills one's whole vision, the raw sting that lingers on the skin like lasting sunburn.

It makes the fantastical real.

39. Is any aspect of your writing process inspired by other writers or people? If so, who?

So back when I was in the MCU fandom, I used to write a lot of Maximoff twins fics. Like a lot. Like over 200 lots.

And most of these were oneshots. Some of these were way-overlong oneshots (looking at you, Crimson Peak AU) but still - they were oneshots. And I got in the habit of writing these in a vignette style, small snippet scenes, capsule moments that gave an idea of the overall story while still being only a few thousand words, if that. Each of the sections was marked by a lower-case numeral and there could be as few as five and as many as... I think I got up to 100 in the Crimson Peak AU.

I stole this way of doing vignette fics wholecloth from the wonderful @cosmonauthill. They used it as a way of doing simple fics for a prompt game and I found it so helpful for actually finishing fics, because I could just organise snapshot scenes into rough order and not write the dull in-betweens. I'm also very envious of Niamh's ability to very deftly create an atmosphere or a visual image of a written scene and emulating what they've managed to do in some of their fics has definitely pushed me to improve.

I also attribute a lot of my... I don't know... particular way of thinking about things, and how I try to empathise with and even write characters I don't like and struggle with to @tobermoriansass, who taught me to more carefully think about alternate perspectives and where they originate from, even if I don't agree with them, and a lot of my specific thoughts about Campaign 1 and certain notes I'll repeatedly bring up in fics are absolutely due to discussions I had with @chamerionwrites as I was watching the Campaign. Chamerion has a very measured way of explaining their thoughts that really helps to understand how they got there and why they think they make sense and I generally find that more compelling than other arguments.

And also, through all of these, it's pushed me to want to make sure that even when you disagree with a character's choice you still understand where they're coming from. Niamh's ability to deftly set the atmosphere and Mike's to present the perspective and Chamerion's to put it all together coherently - knowing all three of them has pushed me to improve in these ways due to these things I admire deeply about all of them.

#ask game #blorbologist #fic things #ask

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erstwhilesparrow · 2 years

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Might I add another layer to this: Soulmates as a happy accident, an echo of deja vu.

Perhaps you aren't tied together by some fated string after all, but for some reason you both cannot stop finding each other, especially when you're not looking. Whether it's at various times throughout your lives, or even past your lives, and you meet a complete stranger and oddly feel like you've seen them somewhere before, for some reason you keep connecting with this person, like ships in the night, never permanently, but persistently, nonetheless.

oh reyni it is a delight to see you in my inbox every time :]

i could be very interested in that as a character dynamic... especially if these people have lives outside each other -- it's just a moment, it's just a spark, it's just some tiny temporary connection that could be any tiny temporary connection strangers make all the time, and then you'll be back to your own lives, but that connection was there, and keeps being there, and despite never being to the exclusion of anything else, it matters that it's there.

putting the rest of this under a cut for [is a tangent] and [i'm having thoughts and opinions] reasons :P

but now i'm thinking about this, and the thing is that i know that what's going on in my head when i say stuff about soulmates is not the point at all of most soulmates stories. it's fiction and people are getting things out of it that i'm not personally interested in and that's fine and important even! what we're / i'm describing here can just be, like, character relationships that are never described as soulmates specifically.

but of course there are other things. such as: of late, i have begun to worry that i am too skeptical of things. i look at an essay i'm reading, or a story i'm being told, or the whole concept of love, and i go, really? really? what trick is here? what aren't you telling me? what else do i have to consider about this situation? what is there still underneath? and i've been getting hissy at the word 'love', doubtful of its usefulness or power, unsettled by its casual ubiquity. to be clear, it's not as if i don't use the word love. it's not as if i don't mean it when i say i love something or someone. it's not as if i believe fiction needs to have anything / everything to do with reality. but the doubt remains. i'm not sure i wish to rid of it, but i'm not very far into being able to articulate it in depth. i am saying this so you know where i'm at.

so i've been looking at soulmates. i want to ask questions about their underlying assumptions, to poke at them until someone else can come up to me and say, "yes, i see this thing you are poking at too." i don't know that i have done this clearly, well, or even at all in the writing i've posted here and on ao3. i keep skipping sideways around it because love, and romance in particular, is a huge thing that i think many people hold in enormously high esteem, and i don't want to be a boring asshole about it. but i still want to ask.

like. does it need to be two people? does it need to be romance? how quick are we, really, to ascribe romantic thoughts / feelings / desires to situations that didn't need to be so? what does this reverence of romance do to people who fall outside of romantic possibility for any reason? what kind of people do we tell soulmates stories about and why? and then, additionally / separately, what is it that fails to satisfy me about the existing works on soulmates that ask these same questions? i've been thinking maybe the thing is not soulmates at all; perhaps it is a deeper (or just different? again, fiction vs reality) dissatisfaction with the whole existing set of ideas and terms we have around relationships and love, which is maybe (probably?) something i'd like to see more about in fiction! (and also nonfiction. cf my earlier solicitations for readings on these and related topics.)

i think love can be terrible for you. i think someone can love you with everything they have and that relationship can still not work. i don't think love as some ultimate ideal is worth pursuing, certainly not without some further consideration of where it tangles up with care and compassion and whether those things can be separated. (i think they can. i think i care about care and compassion more than i care about love. i want care and compassion to be disentangled from a person's ability / desire to love / be loved. these are things i think; they do not have to be things you think.)

perhaps, then, what draws me toward soulmates is how it makes more explicit that expectation for love / romance. it is a place where love as good is often assumed true, where there's always even numbers so everything can be paired up and squared away. it feels like a magnification and / or a reflection of ways people already are about romance, and so it makes for a convenient place to start interrogating related concepts. maybe. of all the things i've said so far, this is what i'm least sure about. i should read more soulmates stuff, if i'm this interested, but i might just be using soulmates as shorthand for a great many other things. i don't know yet.

[i am tired now, so i leave as an exercise for the reader the part where i remind everyone i have technically done a very bad job here by failing to clarify my definitions up front, etc etc. imagine i have done that. imagine it is obvious how chronically online i am because i keep expecting the bad-faith interpretations of my words. i leave the work in your trustworthy hands.]

and lest anyone who has read all this come away thinking to take me too seriously: an enormous chunk of these thoughts were originally prompted by a minecraft youtuber roleplay series. they have gotten quite a ways away from their source by now. if you were not prepared for this when you followed me, i'm afraid there is nothing i can do for you :P

#chattering sparrow #four chambers just a standard issue #technically you did not sign up for all this reyni #but i am inflicting it on you #please know that i feel like i'm swinging a bat at a hornets' nest; i would ask you to be kind #or with a greater tinge of that classic internet irony: starting off strong on my new hobby of Having Opinions In Public!!#the closest you will ever get to falling in love

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deerydear · 1 month

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I had some spare time today, after my car broke down... so I pulled my old, worn copy of Crime and Punishment out of the glove-box, and sat down in a grassy patch to read this story...

I truly feel some sort of recognition of similarity in Dostoyevsky's work. In an earlier month, I sat down to read the beginning of a letter he had written to his friend - later collected in his "Notes from the Underground".

I am a sick man.... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can’t explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot “pay out” the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don’t consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well—let it get worse!

I have been going on like that for a long time—twenty years. Now I am forty. I used to be in the government service, but am no longer. I was a spiteful official. I was rude and took pleasure in being so. I did not take bribes, you see, so I was bound to find a recompense in that, at least. (A poor jest, but I will not scratch it out. I wrote it thinking it would sound very witty; but now that I have seen myself that I only wanted to show off in a despicable way, I will not scratch it out on purpose!) When petitioners used to come for information to the table at which I sat, I used to grind my teeth at them, and felt intense enjoyment when I succeeded in making anybody unhappy. I almost did succeed. For the most part they were all timid people—of course, they were petitioners. But of the uppish ones there was one officer in particular I could not endure. He simply would not be humble, and clanked his sword in a disgusting way. I carried on a feud with him for eighteen months over that sword. At last I got the better of him. He left off clanking it. That happened in my youth, though.

But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.

... He continues on for a long while. Contradicting himself and finding great amusement in doing so. Eventually I lost interest in reading, because I felt that he was not telling the whole truth, but only flattering his idea of himself.... I sensed this because I myself had done it a million times before. I know the ropes.

I love this writing, though, because he speaks with some manner of honesty about "unsavory" topics, even if I feel like he is playing a sort of cloaking game - dressed in veils and dancing to create a myriad of illusory shapes.

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charlottedabookworm · 2 months

Text

Dawntrail Day 7+8 (part 2/2)

spoilers up to: lvl100 msq quest Dawntrail

original draft date: 4-5/7/24

scheduled release for: 31/7/2024

i managed to hit tumblrs image cap on part one of this post so. since i can't do a reblog of a post in drafts, here's part two!

part 1/2 is HERE

she added her birth name as her middle name

her name is krile because it is the name galuf gave her but maya is the name her parents gave her and she wants to keep both

and now just erenville remains

to erase the living memories of his mother

this expansion is really a love letter family and especially to parent/child and sibling relationships huh, good and the bad adn the ugly, blood and adopted adn chosen

yeah

i feel that

...i cannot believe your mum is calling your out like this erenville

at a time like this

that's fair. it's not fair, not really

inside the dome, thirty years passed over the number of days. you went home expecting to see your mum and by the time you made through the dome she was already gone

already gone and hiding it from you because her memories are still here, speaking to you, and that means she isn't really gone at all right?

except she is and she will be because you have to stop sphene and this may be the only way and you don't want her to go

she's your mum and your mentor and you don't want her to go so you don't want to help

(if she never fulfils her wish, surely she won't go?)

but i think- i think you'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't, erenville

one last adventure with your mum erenville

one last happy memory

just gotta finish the msq and i have flight everywhere again!

(hopefully) no more distractions!

i love erenville and cahciua debating over the animal being scalekin or beastkin

they're just. interacting. probably how they have a thousand times before

(how they never will again, after this)

awww erenville apparently met baby krile, not that either of them remembers it lol

i'm just sad they didn't give us baby erenville in the cutscene he woulda been so adorable

the final aether current

i can't be far now from the final quest dungeon and trial still to go notwithstanding

i guess both of those will be on the dawntrail quest? that's how they usually do it iirc

i am not emotionally prepared for the end of this quest

fuck

i dunno erenville. but she's asked you too

fuck

fuuuuuck

okay imma put ending this quest off and go walk the dogs

i got distracted by life shit like dogs and food and parents and it is now 10pm

i'mma finish dawntrail tonight anyway wish me luck i don't wanna be up past 1

also i gotta remember to cry quietly so i don't wake anyone up

oh no i don't need to start crying already

fuuuuuck

screaming crying throwing up

fuuuuck yep i am emotionally devastated fuck you square

still sobbing but-

the curtain falls, the final act begins

dawntrail

i'm ready

this expansion has already broken my heart so many times surely it can't do it any more

surely

alexandria

it looks so much like in ffix

but-

'to the memory of better days i bid farewell' this is definitely gonna be like in endwalker and shadowbringers right? we're gonna have some time hops to go with our narration

ahhh ye here be calamity stricken alexandria

lovely

annnd the last stage is after the barrier was put into place, probably after sphene died?

cool yeah okay definitely after sphene died

final boss time!

And the final dungeon of 7.0 is done

bets on sphene becominh a giant boss who sits at one side of the arena with a huge hitbox?

yeeeep there she is

I suppose why mess with a pattern you’ve had since uh- stormblood?

excuse me did you just fucking delete my friends who gave you the right to do that

so fuckinh rud-

wait have i really gotta queue for the first time this expansion at gone 11 at night? Fuck this maybe wasn’t my best idea

sphene: brings out the milalas key

me: i place my ‘azem stone’ in defense mode!

okay wow that was legit one of the best trials i’ve seen in game

there were so many cool mechanics there were arena changes genuine chaos int he middle it was fucking great

like i can absolutely understand why people are saying they’re already improving fight design cos that was amazing

And then the victory lap in the end was nice to see

i cannot wait to see that in ex

we are all pitiful selfish creatures, sphene

all of us

born and created

of course we will

love this

annnd credits!

loved the expansion very much

new dragoon is interesting, i don't hate it, the story was a little slow to start but of course it would be, it wasn't a world ending threat (until three quarters of the way through) and it definitely made me cry more than once

loved seeing more of erenville

and i love that raha got his taco in the credits! and esti being surrounded by children tugging on him as alphi laughs!

great expansion, can't wait to see what happens next

erenville is gonna stop being a gleaner?

i wish you the best erenville

make sure to invite us on a few of those, yeah?

(i hit the image cap again fuck i'm not making another post it can just deal)

"And what of you? Any new adventures in the offing?"

well, wuk lamat, in a little less than two weeks i'm apparently going to be joining a fighting tournament

not sure why yet but it should be fun

....sphenes crown

her crown that was her regulator

her crown that was her regulator glowing?

might possibly have just figured out why we're entering a tournament

I will definitely go on another adventure with you erenville

whenever you ask

alpaca mount!

thanks wuk lamat!

they're so cute

kay no tihnking about it sphenes crown is probably story related cos the arcadion is open for buisness again and it doesn't seem to be related

anyway bedtime for me it's gone midnight lol

#char liveblogs ffxiv #char reacts to dawntrail #ffxiv spoilers #dawntrail spoilers #char does vidya games

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millennialdemon · 1 year

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Unironically, I Wholly agree with your criticisms of the Black clover anime, entirely because the first 50/2 or 3 seasons of the anime were done so dirty by the studio, you could tell this was NOT their priority budget project.

As someone who got into it through the manga, the amount of stuff they changed is so much, I'd be writing essays about it. There's a reddit thread SPECIFICALLY about how they butchered Gauche's entire character and its eye opening for someone who never watched the anime but read the manga. A comparison of both anime and manga showed that manga Noelle only hit Asta could be counted on hands (3-6 I think) while anime Noelle's numbers were over 60.

I cannot stress how that's reflected on the anime. They also cut out a lot of smaller detail scenes in the beginning while adding entirely unnecessary bits in some episodes.

I'm writing this mostly to say that, the reason why so many drop it is mostly because they start with the anime and the series does not get good until very much later, which a lot of viewers understandably don't want to deal with. No idea where the people writing about how the anime itself is good come from.

If you feel like you genuinely cannot stomach the anime anymore because it feels like the potential is entirely unused or parodied, I say this honestly, you are valid in this but I ask that you give the manga a try, at least. The art style of the creator is at least better to look at if the quality of the animation is the biggest turn off.

I do not liveblog/review manga on this blog, but even if I did, for me to pick up the manga and compare it to the anime I would have to make a whole new blog just dedicated to that like I did with Fist of the North Star back in 2017. I believe you could write multiple essays about the differences between them, and I would be compelled to do so if I read it, but that is just too large of an undertaking for me these days honestly. It doesn’t help that based on the cursory research I am willing to do, I don’t think I would enjoy the manga that much more than the anime.

I can believe the claim that the anime grossly exaggerates the gags and the most trope-ish traits of each character until they are literally parodies of themselves. But as much as the treatment of the characters in the anime specifically irritates me, it should also be known that I take issue with a lot of the fundamental narrative of Black Clover. I could presume that the pacing of the story is better in the manga because that is pretty much always the case, but I doubt that it isn’t more or less the same tired story that I have been scowling at since it premiered in 2017. I think the way the story handles its magical caste system is messy and underdeveloped, I think the aesthetic of the world is uninspired, I find the king and all of his magical knight captains wildly unlikable on the best of days and think their rank is a total sham that goes uncalled by the narrative. I think it’s absurd that our protagonist looks up to any of them, supports his insanely dishonourable comrades like Gauche and insists upon magical knights having honour by just, being magical knights I guess, and has no issue with promising the wizard king that he will hide the corruption of the magic knights from the citizens. I think all the comparisons to other, better shounen series preceding Black Clover are completely fair because it is so brazen with its “borrowing” and, as I have said on this blog somewhere before, I’m not holding out for a satisfactorily subversive shounen series. Based on what I have seen, I just can’t.

I can hold out for the possibility of it eventually becoming better though, even though I will criticize it forever for taking so long when/if it does get there, and I still probably won’t fall in love with it. Mostly because I’ve seen 42 episodes and the only character that has struck even the faintest of chords has been Noelle, and most of the time when I feel something for her, it’s just frustration at how bluntly her story is told – and that’s on the increasingly slim chance it isn’t being ignored completely in favour of tsundere gags. Considering most 12 episode anime have a handful of characters I like and that keep me engaged, that’s very discouraging.

But I’m pretty stubborn when it comes to finishing things, and while I will stand on the street corner and hold up a sign that says “BLACK CLOVER IS INSANELY SEXIST LIKE UNIRONICALLY” for as long as I am on the internet, it isn’t despicable enough otherwise for me to drop. Though I came close👌 because of that Godforsaken arc with Gauche and the orphanage and the midnight sun. That took me 2 years to get through. I feel like I and everyone else who watched/read that could be financially compensated to be honest.

(Speaking of Gauche, I scrolled the Black Clover reddit and came across a bunch of posts trying to explain why he is like that and how the anime plays it up way too much. But I still think he is utterly despicable in both the anime and manga and will probably write a long ass post about how deluded I think the person that wrote this one in particular is. Woof. I can agree he seems a bit less extreme in the manga but the excuses and explanations I have read in the reddit threads are not convincing insofar as proving to me there was all that much to butcher in the first place.)

Still though, there is some merit in being so transparently poorly written – it provides ample opportunities for me to wonder about what it could be like if it were better, or just different. I like transformative fiction and fix-its and redesigns, and I think Black Clover is a good candidate for that kind of engagement. I don’t hate Black Clover because I’m a snob or anything, I actually tend to become obsessed with less than perfect media (Marchen Awakens Romance is a similarly trope-ish shounen manga that dominated my teenage years) because it makes my brain work and it can be a lot of fun to try to fill in the gaps or write your own meta. I would love to read something in the tag other than y/n fanfiction prompts (sorry to everyone reading this and I will concede – it’s better than the nothing that would be there otherwise), especially analysis, critiques, and source comparisons!

So if you or anyone else would like to write essays comparing the anime and manga, I would love to read them.

#:Black Clover #black clover #preston.txt #I had more to say than I thought I did whoops

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holy-prophet-man · 2 years

Text

kate’s muck up matinee notes!!

i am so sorry this is such a mess of a post but here is a collection of all the cool and fun things i noticed on the last performance of the covid cast of the west end mormons!!!!! the goofiness was amped up x1000 and i saw SO MUCH!!! i’m really sorry again i’ve never been very good at explaining things but i tried my best :S

THE AIRPORT SCENE!!

kevin price (played by stephen rolley) had a toblerone. it was passed around between everyone, but he was wielding a toblerone.

jed hoyle, playing who i presume is kevin’s sister, took a selfie on-stage with his phone with all of kevin’s family. i would kill to see that photo and i’m 60% sure i was in the background of one of them

VILLAGER STUFF

myles hart playing the doctor was fucking crazy. every scene he was caressing a different woman. it was totally on purpose too. he would be holding one woman gently as if she was his wife one scene, and the next would be kissing another on the forehead it was wild.

in the time passing between hasa diga eebowai and the conversation between naba, price and cunningham (where they all finish dancing and run off stage) he GRABBED one of the girls by the back and air-fucked her. really quite the sight you should have been there.

in man up, when darth vader comes on stage, he wasn’t wearing the vader mask!! it was akmed just chilling unmasked it was very funny

georgia (one of the people who were leaving) in the scene where the general enters the village, was being held by one of the girls (i cannot remember for the life of me who) with a death grip she could not escape from. she was being held hostage and she was CLEARLY trying to break free but couldn’t it was very funny

JOSEPH SMITH AMERICAN MOSES

the mission president was having his face caressed so gently by jesus’ wiener it was such a surreal experience to watch

at the very end of the performance they THREW THE SHIT FABRIC AT THE FRONT ROW. THEY GOT SHIT ON IT WAS WILD (the conductor ended up grabbing it and stuffing it down below him though haha)

SHIPPY STUFF

at the end of the musical where they scare away the general and nabulungi and arnold apologise to one another, instead of just hugging for a second like they normally do, arnold shoved his face in the crook of nabus neck (can only imagine there was a kiss in there too) for quite some time… good lord

not sure if it’s something rolley does as price since it was my first performance of his, but he grabbed mckinley’s neck and pulled him a little close when he got the idea to go to the mission president which was definitely something

OH and arnold also grabbed nabulungi’s neck in their little section in i am africa , and considering i’ve seen that man perform about 15 times before believe me when i say he has NEVER done that (same goes for that little neck thing at the end too)

Uh oh there was a fuck up

steven webb as mckinley broke character. you could probably take this as a mcpriceley thing because of the context.

basically in the scene where kevin storms in covered in blood, he storms out of the building shouting: “i’m not wasting the most important two years of my life!!” . then arnold tries to run after him, but is stopped by mckinley shouting: “elder cunningham! do you also want to break rule number 23!?” buuuut for some reason he slipped up and ended up shouting “elder price!!” at cunningham instead.

he didn’t try to style it out or anything, he shook his head and totally froze up but the audience had noticed the mistake and everyone just cheered him instead lolol. but as a result of that arnold skipped his “this is like a matrix logic trick!” line and just left without saying anything.. it was really cute he just laughed about it and everyone cheered :)) he clearly had price on his mind

ANYWAY THE SHOW WAS ABSOLUTELY WONDERFUL TO WATCH. At the end in tomorrow is a latter day when the mormons have their little song and dance and the villagers are stood behind them, everyone was hugging each-other and it was just so nice. they were all smiling the whole show long, and they were even laughing at some serious / quiet bits . it was very obvious they were enjoying themselves and it made me very very happy :]]

if you were at the show then pplleease tell me if i got anything wrong or you saw something i didn’t :] i was at a weird angle so probably missed some stuff!!

and thank you @chaoticunorigionalstranger for telling me that a muck up matinee is a thing i am forever in your debt

#the book of mormon #the book of mormon musical #elder price #kevin price #elder cunningham #arnold cunningham #elder mckinley #connor mckinley #nabulungi hatimbi #pricingham #mcpriceley #nabulunningham #arnaba #oh god i can actually only apologise for how poorly this is written #i just got home and am absolutely shattered from seeing it twice in one day #sorry for some obvious mistakes he he #kate talking lol

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obxsummer · 3 years

Text

Loss of You // Pope Heyward

Pope Heyward x Routledge!Reader

summary: you had been in love with pope since you could remember, always pining and keeping him close. being forced to see him with girl after girl, you finally give up and pope has to suffer the consequences of your broken heart.

warnings: angst, cursing, reader is v sad not gonna lie

part of #obx2celebration

masterlist

ask me anything

Pope was the worst person when it came to catching hints. He was painfully oblivious and everyone knew, but it hurt you the most. You had been in love with Pope for as long as you could remember, and you hadn’t told anyone in fear of it ruining your friendship. You really wanted to be with him, but if you said anything, you didn’t want him to be with you out of guilt.

The Pogues were throwing a kegger, which was usual for them. You were seated next to JJ with a red solo cup in your hand as you watched people add to the crowd. “Big one this time, yeah J?” You asked as you nudged the boy’s leg with your foot.

JJ’s attention was on you instantly. “Oh, for sure. It’s probably your cute face that brought them here.” You shoved his shoulder lightly before flipping him off. You and JJ had always had a good relationship, but you couldn’t even tell him about Pope without the fear of him spoiling it for you.

The one person you maybe had a shot at telling was your brother, John B. He wasn’t the best secret keeper around, but he was loyal to you and your wishes as his little sister. He was always looking out for you whether you knew it or not. He was nowhere to be seen at the kegger at the moment, but he somehow always had eyes on you.

“So,” JJ turned his attention back to you once he had bored the girl he was talking to enough for her to go away. “When are you gonna tell Pope you like him?”

You choked on the drink in your mouth. “What the fuck, JJ?” You asked once you stopped coughing.

He shrugged innocently. “Look, it’s so obvious. You always look at him like he makes the sun rise every morning. I don’t know how he hasn’t picked up on it yet.”

You groaned and pressed the palms of your hands against your eyes. “JJ,” You huffed before looking over him. “You can’t say anything to him.”

He held his hands up in defense. “Y/N, I’m not gonna tell him shit, okay? You really should though, I would find it hard to believe he isn’t obsessed with you too.” You both searched the crowd for said boy only to come up empty handed. “Seriously, Y/N. I wouldn’t lie to you about something like this.”

You huffed when you finally caught sight of Pope. He had an arm up against the trunk of a tree, cornering a girl who was smiling while talking to him. Your head fell against JJ’s shoulder as you bit your tongue to keep the tears from pooling in your eyes. He followed your gaze after a second, arm coming to wrap around your back as he pulled you closer. “Shit, Y/N… I-”

“J, it’s okay, I promise. I knew it was too good to be true.”

It was hard to say that wasn’t the last time seeing Pope with another girl broke your heart. JJ had been there every second of it, watching your face fall each time until it just stopped falling completely and stayed that way. You were much quieter, clinging to your friends tightly when you all went out. It was like the outgoing personality you had disappeared along with Pope.

John B noticed first, Kie not too far behind. For once, though, Pope was minding his own business and moving about like nothing was wrong. Your friends were worried. You had never been through a big heartbreak, mainly just flings here and there if at all, but breaking up with someone you never dated was like mourning someone who died that you never got to say goodbye to.

“Y/N/N, you alright?” Your brother asked as he sat next to you on the concrete wall you were moping on. It seemed to be the only thing you did lately, feel pity for yourself. John B didn’t blame you, in fact, he wanted you to feel every emotion you could so you could process it, feel it, and recover safely.

You shook your head, finally admitting to your brother that not everything was okay. “I um… It’s really hard, JB, seeing someone you love with someone else when you feel like they should be with you. A-And I know it’s not Pope’s fault, I can’t blame him for not liking me, but it just hurts.”

Your brother pulled you into his side, his arm resting around your shoulders as he did his best to comfort you. “Look, bubba. I know you really like Pope, and I’m sorry you have to sit here and watch him act this way, but I want you to know that it’s okay to be upset. You’re allowed to be hurting, but I promise you, there is no reason for anyone not to like you. You’re the best girl I know, Y/N, and I’m your brother so clearly that’s saying something.”

John B always did his best to get a laugh out of you when you were sad. You let out a small scoff, tucking your head into your brother’s shoulder as he rubbed your arm. It felt nice to have someone comfort you, tell you it’s okay to feel what you’re feeling. You had gone in circles since you first heard Pope talk about taking someone on a date. You could only blame yourself, you didn’t exactly make a move either, but it felt too risky to put Pope’s friendship with everyone else on the line.

“Y/N, everything okay?” A shiver went down your spine at the familiar voice intruding your moment with John B. You sat up straighter, your brother’s hand falling from your arm before he gave you a reassuring rub on the head and stepped away to give you some space.

Once your brother disappeared from view, you looked up at the boy standing in front of you. “What do you want, Pope?” You asked, not sheltering him from the frustration in your tone.

He looked taken back at the hostility. “Whoa, are you mad or something?”

“Am I mad?” You repeated as you stood up to your full height, taking Pope head on. You had to do this now or you probably never would. “Yeah, Pope, I am really mad, and it’s not even your fault.”

“What does that mean?”

You groaned, mad at yourself that you had let things get like this between the two of you. “I loved you, okay? I loved you so much, and I never told you because I was worried things would change for us and our friends. I sat here and I watched you go with all these girls and make dates and I didn’t say a word. That’s my fault and I’m sorry, but right now, I cannot act like everything’s okay when it’s not. I’m not asking you to fix anything, I just need time and I need space.”

Pope was staring at you, mouth opened wide in shock as he tried to comprehend everything you just tossed at him. He shook his head slightly to clear the blur in his mind. “You… you loved me? Past tense, as in not right now?”

You glared at him. “Out of all I said, that’s what you grasped?”

“Yes, that’s what I grasped!” Pope tossed his hands about wildly. He was so confused. For once in his life, he had no idea what was going on. “Y/N…” He trailed off and shook his head slowly.

“Don’t look at me like that,” You snapped as you dropped your gaze to your knees.

“Like what?”

“Like you love me,” You finished, looking up to glare at him. Your chest was tight and you knew you’d end up crying to JB again later since you finally confronted the problem head on. “I’m moving through this on my own, processing and just… we’ll be back to normal eventually, Pope. I promise. I just need time.”

You didn’t give him room to reply as you stalked off, hands tucked in JJ’s hoodie that you’d been wearing. Pope stared at you as you walked, his own heart breaking as he realized exactly what he had done, what he had been doing. He always thought you were interested in JJ, never him. He distracted himself with other people, other things to do, so he didn’t have to watch the two of you interact in a way that made him hurt. It was now though, that Pope realized he had been hurting you all along, and he never realized it. He sank down on the wall you had been occupying and placed his head in his hands.

Now, it was his turn to grieve someone he never had.

#obx2celebration #pope outer banks #outer banks series #outer banks one shot #outer banks fanfic #outer banks netflix #outer banks x reader #outer banks fanfiction #outer banks imagine #pope heyward #pope heyward writing #pope heyward imagine #pope heyward blurb #pope heyward x reader #pope heyward one shot #pope heyward x you

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luimagines · 3 years

Note

RQ: He’s upset and needs comforting

Masterlist

Ya'll want angst? Because I have some angst.

Very hurt/comfort

Set platonically and within the group since there was no specification. Hope that’s ok! Sorry it took awhile, it got away from me again. I think this may be a trend.

Scenario under the cut! It’s super long so take caution!

Sky

It took a while for you to notice but eventually you do.

Sky has been acting weird all day.

It was only clipped responses at first, then it was was the lack of attention where Sky would have been the first to comment or act otherwise. What really tipped you off finally was how he seemed to be evading the whole group. Not necessarily stepping away and out of sight but he didn’t interact with anyone and when they approached him, he didn’t make eye contact, seemingly trying to cut the conversation short.

No one has said anything.

You mention it to Twilight about his out of character behavior but he says that it maybe a bad day, or he slept wrong, or some other reason that you stopped listening to because it didn’t make any sense.

Sky was always trying to be friendly no matter his mood and it took a lot to shake him up.

What was eating at the Chosen Hero?

Soon, the uncertainty begins to eat at you too and you wait for night fall, once everyone is asleep to strike.

Strike up a conversation that is.

Sky usually takes the last watch because he’s usually the first one out regardless of what activities for the day so you strive to wake up early.

It works for the most part, your internal clock doing what you want it to do when you blink your eyes open. Part of you begins to drift off again so you sit up and nearly fall asleep that way.

A hand comes up on your back and rubs a small circle. “Nightmare?”

It’s Sky and he’s looking at you with mild concern.

You smile and shake your head. “No. I’m alright but I think I’ll stay up with you if you don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t mind the company.” He moves out of your space and back to where he sat.

You follow, still groggy from just waking from your slumber but succeed in not stepping on any of your friends or waking them up as well with the added noise. you sit next to the Hero of the Skies with little fan fare and let the moment settle on the both of you before looking skyward.

“Can I ask you something?” You don’t look at Sky and continue star gazing even if they’re a little harder to spot as the sun travels closer for it’s shift.

Sky hums in agreement and follows your gaze upwards.

“Are you ok? You seemed a little off lately.”

Sky doesn’t say anything for the first few seconds and you suspect that maybe he didn’t hear you. With him spacing out so much and the fact that you whispered for the sake of your still sleeping friends, you’re inclined to repeat yourself but Sky answers in time.

“Just thinking a lot, I suppose. Nothing serious.”

“Yeah?” You don’t look his way. This is casual. This is friendly. This is not a big deal. “Rupee for your thoughts?”

“It’s not that interesting.”

You shrug. “Hit me with it anyway. It’s got to be something if it’s throwing you off your rocker. Maybe a new perspective will help clear some of it up?”

Sky frowns at your attempts, once again retreating into his mind. You let the offer hang in the air and let it sink in.

You’re disinclined to bring it up anymore. Your brain is still tired and you’re wondering your effectiveness when half of your thoughts are still muddled with sleep and fatigue. You could have totally slept in some more. What on earth made you think this was a good idea?

“Time mentioned something earlier that I can’t seem to let go of.” Sky begins.

You hum back and let him keep talking.

“I never fought this Ganon guy they all so talk so much about. I fought the God Demise. Before I could land the final blow, he cast a curse on me, on us, that some cycle would continue. His hatred would last forever and my blood line and Zelda’s will be cursed to deal with constant darkness caused by him.” Sky admits, looking now at his intertwined hands. “I finished him soon after that but... I wonder... Am I the cause-... Is this all my fault? Am I the reason that we’re all here right now? That everyone has gone through so much? So many thing happened that should have never occurred. Time and Legend and Wild have all suffered so much.... more than I can possibly ever imagine and it seems like it’s never ending. Everyone starts they’re adventures so young... If I had killed him sooner... If I had just got it over with... If I had just shut him up-”

“Hey.” Your hand lands on his shoulder, cutting off his tirade. “None of this is anyone’s fault. The only people to blame are Ganon and now, this Demise guy. You did what you could. You still got the job done and no one here will ever blame you for what has happened to them or to Hyrule. You were young too... you’re still young. Give yourself a little kindness and understanding, just as you do with everyone here. You didn’t deserve it either. It’s not like you asked to fight a God.”

“Well...”

“Sky you know what I mean.”

“I should have been faster. If-”

“There’s no use in worrying about what if’s.” You shove him slightly. “This is our life. Even if you ask, no one is capable of giving you the answers. I get it. It’s hard to know if the path you took is the right one if it’s all you’ve ever known and you can’t see where the other would have lead... But... Even if horrible things happen, I’m still glad to have met you. I’m glad I met the others. I’m happy to be here with you and with them, and I’m glad that it’s not just me anymore.”

You let the words sink in before leaning down wards and trying to get him to look you in the eye. “I can’t answer your questions. But what happened, happened and the best thing we can do is learn how to play with the cards we’re dealt.”

He take a deep breath and finally looks in your direction. “I know you’re right.”

“Naturally.”

“But I can’t help but feel responsible for being-”

“But you’re not responsible for their pain or any of this Sky. If Ganon has anything to do with Demise then it’s all Demise’ fault. His and his only. Understand?” You stress. “I wish... I wish I could do something more to help.”

Sky places his hand over yours where you still have it on his shoulder and sends you a small smile. “I know. Me too.”

Wild

“Zelda, would you please drop it!” You hear the Champion yell, his voice carrying over the wind and somehow getting louder. “We’ve had this conversation before and it’s not the time to have it again. I have things to do excuse me.”

Wild storms into his house and shuts the door behind, blocking it with all his weight and waits for the indignant shrieking on the other side to go away. The voice ends with a frustrated huff and after a moment of silence, Wild relaxes and steps away from the door and further into the house.

You’re almost scared for the moment. You’ve not known Wild to yell, even less so for a Link to be on bad terms with Zelda no matter the universe. To make matters worse, you were the only that was actually within the house at the moment and you weren’t entirely sure how to proceed from here.

“Trouble in paradise?”

That probably wasn’t the way to go, if you were being honest with yourself.

Wild groans, loud and exaggerated and sits at the table in front of you with as much fan fair.

“Do not...call it that.” He sounds tired.

“Sorry.” You amend with an apologetic shrug. “That-” You reference to the scene outside. “-Didn’t sound ideal.”

“No. It’s not.” Wild sighs and places his face in his hands with his elbows on the table. Bad table manners, a small voice in your head pipes up. But it’s his house, so you bite your tongue.

“Can I ask what it was about?” You hesitatingly venture.

Wild takes a deep breath and slowly lets it out. “I wanted to live a simple life.” He starts. “Everything was over now, right? That was the idea I had. Defeat the evil and get to finally live as a normal man. Maybe explore more of my home and show Zelda all the cool things I’ve seen and done. Everything I knew, everything I remembered is gone and has been gone for a while. No one alive misses it. No one alive even knows about it. This is the world they were born into and they wouldn’t have it any other way. I was prepared to accept that and join them.”

Your face twists in sympathy as you nod along. “I take it that’s the issue here.”

“When I defeated Calamity Ganon and reunited with Zelda, she seemed so full of hope and purpose.” Wild continues. “I saw it in her eyes. She wanted a different thing to what I wanted.”

“And what’s that?”

Wild gives you a pained look. “Zelda wants to try and rebuild the kingdom. Make it into what she remembers it to be. She wants to strengthen relationships with the other nations and reestablish the royal family and a whole lot of other things that I cannot begin to think of how long it would both take and last considering all the damage that already been done. She wants to be Queen. And over what? Hyrule Kingdom is no more. Can’t be a Queen without a kingdom to rule and there’s not a lot of Hylians left that would agree to being ruled over or even enough of them to count as a kingdom to begin with.”

“I suppose it’s not a bad goal to have but you do make a point.” You try and add to the conversation, feeling wildly out of your depth. “Does she know that you-”

“Yes. And she thinks I’m crazy for it. She thinks that I’ve given up on my friends and the past and the future and- uugghhh.” Wild leaned forward and slams his head on the table with enough force to make you jump.

“That look like it hurt.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“I believe you.” A small smile covers your face.

A beat passes before Wild continues to talk with his head still on top of the table. “I don’t think she realizes that I’ve changed after everything. Maybe if I had my memories to begin with, or maybe if I had managed to defeat Calamity Ganon sooner, I’d be more inclined to agree with her, but I’ve experienced so much and done so much that I don’t want to go back to how things were. I’m a different man now.” Wild looks up at you. “She’s different too but I don’t think she’s ready for that conversation.”

“So you’re stuck with this one?”

“Yes.”

“That sucks man.” You shift in your seat. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Not if you can change the past.” He pouts.

“Shame. I’m fresh out of past changing wishing powder.”

“That’s not a thing.” He pouts even more.

You chuckle at the display before sobering up ever so slightly. “Do you want me to talk to her?”

“What good will that do?”

“Maybe a third person party has to step in. It could be that it’s because you’re the one who saying that she isn’t listening.” You shrug. “I think you’re right but I’m willing to give her chance to tell her side of the story while you cool down in here. I can be a distraction so you can sneak out quietly and she won’t know you’re here anymore! It’s a win win! And maybe you guys can come to an agreement when you both see each other again with new perspectives.”

Wild gives you another tired look and leans into his hand. “I doubt it would work. Zelda is incredibly stubborn, one of the most stubborn people I’ve ever met. But if you think it would help, I won’t stop you. I’ve run out of arguments and I’m done hearing hers.”

“Ok.” You say getting up and moving around the table. “I think it’s worth a shot. There’s a saying where I’m from that goes, ‘it’ll all be alright in the end, and if it’s not alright, then it’s not the end.’”

You give Wild a hug around his shoulder and squeeze him tight. “I have faith that you’ll pull through and get to live peacefully, but until then, you’ve got us on your side ok?”

He leans in your direction and wraps his arms around your own. “I know. I figured as much.”

“Good man.”

“I’m definitely sneaking out of here though.”

“That’s fair. Go hide.”

“I will... And thanks for listening to me. I didn’t mean to go off like that.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Four

"I'm sorry, what?" Four snaps his head up to stare at the Champion.

"What?" Wild tilts his head. "What? There's no stuff in the grass in my Hyrule. Just crickets and lizards...you know normal stuff. I don't know why there's tools and rupees in all of yours."

"You don't-" Four cut himself off with a click of his teeth, a piece in his mind clicking into place. He stands suddenly, clearly upset and tense as he processes the information.

"Four?" You call out to him but he doesn't respond to you, nor does he look back.

"Four!" Hyrule calls as well. "Where are you going?"

No reply.

"I'll go with him. Just in case." You stand up in a rush and nearly knock over the equipment at your feet in the process. "Don't wait up for us."

You follow him.

Four is fast and quiet and it takes very little time to lose him- or rather, for him to lose you.

Before you knew it, there's no trace of him and there's nothing within the forest that would give you a hint to his whereabouts.

"Great." You hiss and look around.

Nothing.

"Four!" If he won't show himself, you'll just have to make some noise. "Four! Four! Show me a sign so I know you're not dead!"

You wait.

"Don't make me get Wolfie!"

Nothing.

"Four!" You scream a little louder and begin to run. Now that you've said it out loud, despite being a joke in the beginning, the thought of Four being dead somewhere spikes your panic and anxiety and it fuels your quest.

It's only been a few minutes and Four can handle himself just fine but you don't think about that.

"FOUR!"

"Why are you screaming?" A voice come just beyond you.

You sprint toward it and find Four in a small clearing, crouched down and appearing to hold something in the palm of his hand.

"I was calling you." You don't know how you find it in you scold him. "A response would have been nice."

"Sorry." He shrugs. "I was having a conversation, it would be rude to drop it."

You get on your tip toes to look around him and find nothing. "With... With what?"

Four looks down into his hand and places it, ever so gently, on the ground, pausing and standing up to see you. "You can't see them?"

"See who?" You step over to him. "Four? Are you ok?"

His face twists in annoyance before sighing. "I'm fine."

"No offence, but I doubt that."

"It... a group of creatures that can only be seen by good children. They were important on my quests and have helped me greatly. Children usually stop seeing them around the time when they turn sixteen."

"Would it be easy for me to chalk it all up to magic?" You bit your lip.

"Probably. If it'll help you sleep at night." Four sighs and looks down to the ground, a small smile on his lips before it twists into a painfully and... he looks seconds from crying.

"I did so much to help them... and they helped me.... They leave gifts in the grass to help travelers and us heroes alike and yet... Wild says it doesn't happen anymore..." Four gulps and looks away from you and what ever is by his foot. "They wouldn't stop.... They're incredibly kind and hospitable and... There's no reason for them... Why are they gone?"

"Four." You reach out and place a hand on his shoulder.

"What happens to them?" His Adam's apple bobs a bit as he sucks in a breath. "It just means there was no one to help them."

"Oh Four." You pull him into a hug and nearly crush him with it.

"There's nothing I can do to help them, is there?" He sniffles into your chest.

"No, I... I don't think so Four. Not that far out into the future." You shake your head and begin to rub circles on his back.

You don't think he's crying but he might be fighting it because he does begin shaking.

He doesn't say anything else and you're loath to let him go when he's so emotionally charged. So you hold him. You hold him for as long as he needs and you wait for him to pull away first.

When he does, you keep your hands on his shoulders and he stays within your reach. Four begins to take deep calming breaths with his eyes closed and you instinctually run your hands through his bangs and push some of the loose hairs from his face.

Minutes continue to pass and the sounds of nature around you fill the void.

"I'm sorry." You say. "I wish I could help you but I don't know how."

Four nods and rubs his eyes. "I don't doubt that. Thank you. I'll be ok."

You don't think he's ready to go back to the group just yet, not after all that. "Tell me more about these friends of yours. How did they help you? How did you help them? What are they exactly?"

It earns you a small laugh and he grins up at you with a watery smile. "Sit down. And let me tell you about the Picori."

Twilight

“You almost died and for what?!” Twilight screams at Wild for the umpteenth time.

It startles you to hear his voice reach such volumes but you’re inclined to agree with him this time around. After Wild’s stunt with taking a hit to the head for Wind, you’d been on the look out for his more... self sacrificing behavior. You knew he wouldn’t think twice to do it and you tried to make it so there wouldn’t even be a chance for him to make such a decision.

This time though, in this last fight, you took your eyes off of him for only a moment and that’s when he broke his streak of uneventful fights.

Twilight, of course, is livid and has no regard for the poor creatures of the forest that have to endure his tirade as he unleashes his concern and worry in the form of rage and over exaggerated gestures.

When Hyrule finishes healing your more minor wounds, you slink away from the soon to be screaming match since Wild is very much still conscious, if a little roughed up. You don’t intended to stray as far as you go but you don’t find it in yourself to care for the time being.

Being around so many people for so long is taxing. You make the executive decision to remove yourself for the time being while tensions are high, to both cool off and to avoid getting hit in the crossfire.

There’s a small creek nearby, you find, and decide to make a small space for yourself there until dinner comes rolling around. The birds and the babbling waters calm your soul and snuffle out the last of the adrenaline. You don’t know how long you sit there, but you can faintly hear the screaming match in the distance that you dipped out of.

You don’t regret it.

More time passes and you find that you may or may not have taken a small nap in the meantime. If the position of the sun is anything to go by.

Despite the pain in your back from sleeping against a tree, the slight ache in your neck from the angle you slept in, you feel better. Clearer, even.

You hope your absence wasn’t entirely noticed but you can’t seem to regret leaving either.

Footsteps creep closer to you and you huddle into a small ball out of habit to avoid detection.

It’s Twilight.

He walks near the creek and takes a heavy seat next to it. He looks both pale or red faced at the same time but exhaustion is laced in his entire body from what you can tell.

He doesn’t notice you.

You uncurl and set your legs out in front of you. Leaning forward a little, as quietly as you can, you see that he’s upset. It doesn’t surprise you. But seeing as you don’t how to deal with an upset Twilight and you can’t really sneak away without crossing his line of sight or making any miniscule noise, you still yourself and wait.

And wait.

Twilight calls your name. Quietly and hollow- like he’s not all there. Or in the way one would talk to a memory.

It’s immediately unsettling. Both in how he sounds and how he knew you were there without you doing anything. But you suppose Twilight can just sense things like that from times to time. It’s certainly not the first time he’s done it.

“I’m here.” You reply.

“How long?”

“A few hours I think. Longer than you were here that’s for sure.” You shrug and slowly crawl out of your hidey hole. “I think I fell asleep....The sun wasn’t over there when I first got here.”

Twilights hums in what you think is agreement but it’s really only a sound. “It’s a nice spot.”

You smile. It’s tense and little fake, but he’s not looking at you so you don’t care for authenticity. “Good thing it’s big enough for the both of us huh?”

“Yeah.” He looked into the distance again, noting that the sun is beginning to set and takes a deep breath. “Do you ever feel a strange sadness as dusk falls?”

“Can’t say that I have.” You move closer to him, aiming to sit by his side. “I’ve always enjoyed sun sets and I find them calming to watch but hearing someone finding them sad is a new one. Do you feel sad as dusk falls?”

He hums again. “They say it’s the only time their world interacts with ours.”

“Whos?”

“Lingering spirits I suppose...” Twilight tilts his head upwards before twisting it to look at you. “It’s nothing. I’m just reminiscing about my life before my adventure is all. My... father told me those words and I haven’t forgotten them since.”

You hum this time and lean back to mirror him. “Wanna tell me why?”

“That Champion reminds me so much of myself and yet... he’s ten times worse.” Twilight falls backwards with a soft thump. “I know why he does it but I...”

“You care about him and don’t want to see him hurt.” You shrug. “It’s not exactly a new concept.”

“Tell that to him.”

“Maybe I will. He gets just as upset as you do when this happens, you know.” You shift your weight to make it easier to stand up later.

“Does he? You’d think that he’d get the point to stop doing then.” He growls.

“Maybe he’s scared of losing more friends.” You blurt before you can stop yourself. That was something Wild told you in confidence and while he didn’t say you couldn’t tell anyone- that was kinda implied.

Twilight stills for a moment, the fight leaving him again in a single breath as he considers your words. They don’t seem to be new news to him.

Wild is pretty close to Twilight...Maybe he already knew.

“I still think I’m entitled to not like it.” He settles.

“It’s not he’s asking you to be ok with it. I know I’m not.”

“I guess that’s fair then.” Twilight sits up again and stands up in one fluid motion that you envy. With a turn on his heel, he holds his hand out to you to take.

You take it and feel him effortlessly lift you off of the ground with that one hand.

You don’t comment on it.

“Come on.” He says. “I’m going to need you for moral support.”

“Why?”

“If I yelled in front of him of the whole group, I should apologize to him in front of the whole group.” He admits and wraps his arm around your shoulders. “But I might need an excuse to get close to him again after all the things I’ve said.”

“I get your desert and you’ve got yourself a deal. I left to not get involved and here you are... involving me.” You tease. “I demand payment.”

“One desert? I can do that.”

Hyrule

“I can’t do this.” You snap your head to the sound of the voice and see Hyrule with his arms cross and shaking.

“What? What’s happening? Hyrule?” You step closer to him as you’re the only one within arms reach. “What do I need to do? How can I help?”

“There’s nothing. Nothing you can do, that can make this better.” Hyrule takes one ground step before throwing his arms down. “Don’t you see them? With all their tools and experience and then there’s- me. Just me. Some magic later and a old man with a sword and I found myself trying to save my princess and defeat some evil, but these guys...”

You look around, trying to see if Legend or Sky are close enough to give you back up, or better yet, take over. You suppose it’s better than a panic attack but it’s so left field that you’re stunned and floundering to catch this hot potato of a conversation.

He keep talking.

“For all that is good and holy, they are heroes. Do you see them? Some of them have training, and families and skills and I....was just a boy in a grave yard. How can I even compete with them? I don’t, that’s how. But how can they consider me an equal? When I was in town and listened to the elders and their stories, they would tell me of a legendary hero from the past who courageously defended our home until the very end and who was virtually undefeated in all his adventures. And then I meet Legend....and he’s so much cooler than all those stories combined.”

“Link.” You call out to him and back to the real world. “You need to slow down for me honey because you’re too fast for me to keep up. What do you mean how can they see you as an equal? You defeated Ganon just as they did. You stood up for your home just as they did. You did it all on your own just as they did. Why wouldn’t they consider you an equal? No one cares about where you’re from, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”

“But they can do so many things even without the sword!” He exclaims. “They all have a place to go to, a person who cares about them, a title or a skill and a world that’s not on the brink of collapse-”

“Ok, whoa, hey.” You step into his space and take his face into your hands, bringing it up for him to look you in the eyes.

“I have no idea what brought this up but I won’t stand for anyone talking bad about you. And that includes you. We... can talk about your home with clearer heads later, ok? Maybe the others can help with that when we get there, yeah? And well....” You’re sinking. You don’t know what to do with all this information and you have even less of an idea about how to address it.

“Good golly, when it rains, it pours with you lot, doesn’t it?” You hiss under your breath and bite the bullet. With a strong grip, you wrap your arms around the Traveler and pull him close. You try to keep your grip strong without fear of hurting him, but it hits you then how thin he is. How light he actually is. You can feel the hint of armor under his tunic and it does little to quell your fears.

“Clearly there’s a lot on your mind. And... I’m probably not the person to help you through this. If you want to talk about not belonging though, I’m free to listen. I’m the only one here who’s not a Link, if you haven’t noticed.” You try to joke but it falls a little flat. “You though... You belong here with all of us... all of them... And if you need more convincing then I’m bringing this up with Legend who’s is over the moon proud of you and what you can do and he told me himself that he couldn’t be happier to have you as his successor-”

“Really?”

“Not in those exact words admittedly,-” You gulp as the word vomit continues to bubble out of you in waves of panic. “-but I know that’s what he meant because he doesn’t stop talking about how cool you are.”

“Hm.”

“And everyone has a different background, ok? Everyone has skills and people that the others don’t have. That’s ok. It’s not a competition. I get worried that one day you guys are going to create some game out of all your trauma. Like... who had it worse and just go around in a circle listing off all the things that happened to each of you... Whoever runs out of things to say or can’t think of something as bad or worse than the others is out. Last man standing wins.”

“Don’t give them ideas.” You feel him chuckle. It’s breathless and small and it doesn’t reach your ears despite your closeness but you feel it.

“Good thing it’s just you and me right now.” You sigh a little in relief and loosen the hug. “Look, just.....whatever you think you can’t do, just know that there is someone who is confidently doing it wrong right now. In the group or not, just keep your eyes and watch. They don’t plan on doing it better either and people are celebrating them for it. Please believe in your own excellence as much as they believe in their mediocrity.”

“Big words.”

“You’re awesome for trying. Others are not and don’t plan to. You’re already better than them.” You amend, stepping away to look him in the eye again. “The group can’t do magic like you can. That’s all you. They all have items sure but no one can do what you do... and you’re self taught, right? That’s incredible! You have just as much as a reason to be here as the others. I swear it.”

Hyrule sighs and gulps. He doesn’t believe you. It’s not enough.

You knew it wouldn’t be and it’s definitely doesn’t scratch the tip of the iceberg of the bomb he just dropped on you but... step by step. Little by little. you have a plan.

“Screw it. Let’s catch up with Wind and Warrior and get them to tell you how awesome you are, since you won’t listen to me. And if you’re still a nonbeliever then we move on to the next pair. We’ll go down the line if we have to.” You nod and grab his hand, beginning to drag him along.

He laughs after you, a little hysterical and in disbelief. “You’re crazy.”

“That is not new information.” You reply, hiding your grin. “I say it’s Hyrule loving hours and I’m gonna get everyone to join.”

“You’re not joking are you.” It’s a statement. He already knows the answer.

“Nope!”

Legend

It was your turn on watch for the night. In an hour or two you were supposed to wake the Veteran for his shift and finally catch some sleep.

The others snored and slept away without a care in the world. It was just you and cackling fire that was active but you’d kill for something to help your mind get passed the boredom.

Anything but monsters or an attack that is. You’d hate to jinx your good luck so far.

In the corner of your eye, while fighting to keep your head up, you see Legend shift. Not necessarily unusual. You’re inclined to ignore it.

But then he shifts again, whimpering like he’s been hurt and a white knuckled grip on the blanket.

You still and begin to wonder what’s your level of care here.

Part of you, in kindness, wants to go wake him. The lack of sleep seems more merciful than letting him suffer a prison of his own making.

But you also don’t know how he’ll react.

You know he’d hate to be seen as weak for whatever normal reason and he’s been inclined to wake up swinging in the right circumstance.

Twilight suffered a broken nose for the whole night because he was disinclined to wake up Hyrule or take a potion.

Not you’d make the same decision and suffer the whole night in the same manner but it certainly fails to sound appealing.

Just as your about to appeal to your better nature and force yourself to go wake him before it gets worse, he shoots up into a sitting position with a strangled scream. The job seems to have been done for you- but in the worse way.

He’s breathing hard with his hand gripping his chest. Legend begins to frantically look around and slowly begins to piece together where he is and what’s happened. He never looks behind him, where you are, before running a hand through his hair a little harder than you think reasonable and getting to his feet.

You cough slightly, leaning away from the fire and back into previous position. You hadn’t realized you leaned into his direction as you watched him, inches from putting your face into the flame.

He startles at the sound and whips around, one hand poised to reach the sword he’s not equipped with.

“It’s just me.” You wave. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

He calms somewhat and you can see his jaw flex. “Well, goodnight to you.”

His voice is croaked- from disuse or an overwhelming emotion, you’re not sure.

“For me maybe. But you? That was quite a scare you gave me as well.” You play it off. You can at least pretend that you weren’t watching him. That you would have saved him a little earlier and took your sweet time doing it. You offer a peace offering to your morals. “Want to talk about it?”

“What’s there to talk about?” He snaps, furiously rubbing his face. “It’s nothing new. We all deal with it one way or another.”

“True. But it’ll be easier to let it go, and let the experience float up into the air and never return. Otherwise it’ll fester and grow.” You shrug. “But I won’t force you. I know you’re not exactly fond of me.”

Legend glares into the fire as you talk and refuses to look at you. Once you finish though, he moves his head away, still not in your direction but visually drops more tension from his shoulders.

He doesn’t say anything.

“There’s a spot next to me with your name on it if you want it.” You offer. “A little company wouldn’t hurt.”

He takes more time to respond and you resolve to go back to staring at the fire.

A moment or two passes and you hear the faint sound of crunched foliage. It takes of your will power to not look up as he approaches and even more so when he decidedly sits next to you.

The fabric of his tunic brushes your leg for a minute and it strikes you odd that he sat that close despite the rest of the log at his disposal.

It must have been bad if he wants to be close to someone right after. The thought enters your mind. Once it’s there you don’t chase it away and instead casually lean back with your hand behind you.

If the angle causes you to lean closer to him in the process, you don’t say anything.

And if Legend notices, he doesn’t say anything either.

A moment of time passes in silence, the only sounds through the whole forest are crickets and a passing owl with the occasional whisper through the trees.

“How do you do it?” He asks.

“Do what?” You tilt your head in his direction.

He’s still not looking at you.

“Keep going.”

The answer shocks momentarily but you’re not surprised that it’s coming from him out of the whole group. “Legend-”

“I’m tired.” He says instead. “I hate this. I hate that sword. I hate that pig demon. I hate that I can’t be done.”

You hand comes up to his shoulder and you force him to look at you.

He lets you and he looks up to you with tears building up in his eyes and for a moment you’re struck by the odd balance of how old he sounds but how young he looks- is.

You stuck floundering for a response to answer him with but he asks one more thing. “Why can’t I be done?”

You pull him into a hug before you can stop yourself. “I don’t know. I don’t know Link.”

You find yourself wanting to cry as well once Legend collapses into the hug. He’s not hugging you back but he’s being held for the first time in... you don’t know how long. Your grip tightens.

“But I do know is that you’re not alone. Not anymore. And maybe....maybe this is the final fight. That’s why we’re all together right? A darkness so evil ahead that every hero is required and then....rest. For each and every one of you.”

You sniffle, carding your fingers through his hair without a moments hesitation. “If it’s not then I’ll fight everything for you from then on. I’ll take your place you hear me. I’ll take your job and title and you won’t have to do this anymore.”

“I’m the Hero of Legend. That’s not exactly an easy thing-”

“No. I am the hero now. I’ve decided it.” You hide the tears in his hair to the best of your ability.

Legend snorted, loud and wet but you elected to ignore it just as you were ignoring the ever growing wet spot on your shoulder. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“It does now. I said so.”

A beat.

“...Ok.” He sniffled and rubbed his head on your shirt. He took a deep breath and exhaled, letting the night take over the atmosphere again. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

“Don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

He nods once, definitive and final. Your expecting him to let go now and return to his roll, already electing to take over his shift as well and just push through the next day.

Except he doesn’t.

Legend calls your name, testing the waters and lifts his head up ever so slightly. “...It’s not that I’m... not... fond of you-”

“Save it for a rainy day.” You grin. “I think you’ve had your fill of emotions for the night.”

He nods and eventually slips into sleep with his head on your chest, no doubt lulled by your heartbeat.

With tearful eyes, you stare back into the fire.

Time

Time marched from the stunned group the same way a parent does after making a scathing remark instead of a lecture.

You know the one.

“I’m not mad. Just disappointed.”

The poor boys suddenly didn’t know what to so with themselves or how to get back into Time’s good graces.

You felt for them and their awkward meandering through the camp. So, with your pride swallowed, you follow in the vague direction where Time went off to and decided to at least talk him down.

He is... decidedly harder to find than you previous imagined.

Just as your starting to think the Old Man doesn’t want to be found, you hear subtle swing. It’s to your left and it sounds heavy.

So naturally you follow it

Which leads you to a small clearing just beyond a bunch of bushes.

Time is there, full armor still on and swinging his giant sword forcefully, each swing stronger than the last. It’s as if it weighs only as much as Four. You’ve wondered in the past what it would like if he decided to actually throw the smallest ones of the group but out of fear, do not voice your ideas.

Just because Time won’t doesn’t mean that the others won’t try.

It’s hard being the responsible one when there are nine Links to take care of, each as much as a gremlin as the last. It must be hell on Time’s back to carry the group.

You see where he’s coming from and yet...

“You can stand to be a little more patient with them.”

The words are out of your mouth before you can actually stop them.

Time stops abruptly, in both the figurative and literal sense, before the man turns to you with that same face of neutral disappointment.

“They are heroes.”

“They are also children, Time. I think that it’s because they are heroes that they deserve to act their age every now and then.”

“Slacking won’t divert the evil away from our home.”

“Running face first into the problem won’t solve it either.” You sigh and walk up the man. He tenses as you approach and slowly lets his weapon down. The Hero of Time is an intimidating creature but you refuse to let that dissuade you.

“Look, I know why you’re upset. I get it. It’s hard to get a job done when you feel like you’re the only one it’s important to... But have a little faith in our group. Please.” You plead and stop right in front of him. You have to look up at him slightly due to the angle but he was forced to acknowledge you here.

His arms cross and he opens his mouth to respond but you cut him off.

“You’re right, they are heroes and there is a job to be done and an evil to be done away with. But they were even younger when they earned the title. They still vanquished the darkness even for their age. You have to trust that they will do the same here.” You reach up and put your hands on his shoulders, getting onto your tip toes to look him in the eye better. “And they will. Because they are heroes. Because they have the spirit of courage. Because they are Link... Just like you.”

He softens his stance ever so slightly but he still doesn’t look pleased.

“It’s not easy I know.” You get down again. “But they look up to you. I think all of them do. And I can’t stand to see how hurt they look when you get upset when they act their age. It’s not like they can help it.”

He takes a deep breath and uncrossed his arms. He takes a minute to respond. Time stared at you intensely before he drops all the tension in his body and finally lets his weapon go. A single hand comes up to pat your head.

“Let’s head back to camp.”

He says nothing else and continues to walk past you and back the way you came.

You don’t ignore the sense of accomplishment and refuse to dampen it when you catch the tiniest slivers of a smile before he turns away from you completely.

Wind

You’re lying peacefully on the dirt when you hear someone sit beside you with more power than would ever be needed.

You don’t open your eyes for the sake of the other person, not really thinking much of it and even forgetting that they were there until you heard the smallest of sniffles.

Now, you’re sitting straight up with wide and concerned eyes locking directly onto the crying form of your beloved pirate.

It’s hard not to feel for him and while you’re not sure what sprung this up, you don’t have it in you to turn him away, or to ignore that he was upset.

Neither of you say anything and you’re almost afraid it make the picture in front of you a little too real.

Instead, you move yourself closer to him and open up your arms.

Wind doesn’t hesitate to throw himself onto you and let his body sag with unwanted emotion.

As sobs silently rack his body, you begin to feel yourself rock back and forth for both his comfort and yours. Soon you start running your hands through his hair and rub small circles on his back.

He cries for a long time and never once gives you a clue why.

You don’t ask either.

Still, once the moment has passed, you continue to hold onto him. He doesn’t make any moves to let go of you any time soon and you’re happy to be there for as long as he’ll let you.

That doesn’t stifle your concern over the cause but you’re loath to bring it up.

Minutes pass with the boy in your arms and it’s only when you shift positions, does he look up at your face. His eyes aren’t as red anymore with the amount of time that’s passes since he’s stopped crying but his face is still a little puffy and his cheeks are both stained in tears and incredibly red.

A small smile creeps onto your face when you look back at him. “Feel better?”

“A little.” He admits and sniffles the last of the tears away, wiping his face with his sleeve. “Thanks.”

“For you? Anytime.”

Warrior

It struck you as odd that it was dinner time the group seemed to be missing someone.

Earlier that day the group had split up to take down some troublesome monsters on the border of some tiny town defenseless town and that was that.

It didn’t seem like big deal nor was it a particularly hard thing to do. The monsters weren’t infected and they didn’t have numbers on their side so your group took care of the pests in a matter of moments.

And yet, when everyone regrouped there was a visible tension.

Some thing had happened on the other side of the fight and no one wanted to fess up, even less so when Time mentioned it.

It worried you.

Now, as it stood the tension was still there but Warrior didn’t want to come out of the wood work. He had left earlier claiming to need to check up on his appearance and no one had questioned him. No one offered to go with him.

It was always dangerous to go alone.

“Hey, has anyone seen Warrior?” You glance around again, hoping it was just a miscount on your part. “It’s been awhile since he left.”

“He takes his sweet time.” Legend snapped. “And you know how narcissistic he is. He’s probably trying to get every single little hair in the right place and working out every little blemish in his stupid uniform-”

“I’m going to look to him.” You stand, placing your cooling food down by your foot. You don’t know what happened or what caused it but at least an idea begins to form. “It’s been too long regardless. Keep my food warm for me, yeah?”

You don’t wait for a response and walk away into the tree line where you think Warrior might be.

“It’s getting dark. Be careful.” Someone calls from behind you, mouth clearly full of food.

“Yes sir.” You reply.

You march on.

When you’re sure you’re far enough away, you begin to call out to Warrior.

It takes a minute to get any results but you’re starting to worry about your friend. The sun is lowering in the horizon as time goes by and you’re beginning to feel silly and frustrated and-

“I’m here.” A tired voice replies.

“Oh thank goodness.” You cross the distance between you two. “I was really starting to worry.”

Warrior puts on a brave face and a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes greets you when you stop in front of him. His look a little puffy and you think his eyes might be a little red but it easily be the lighting- or lack there of.

“Are you ok?”

“Obviously.”

You doubt him and it must have shown on your face because he immediately begins walking away. “Well look at the time. Crazy how fast the sun goes. Let’s get back to the group and eat. I’m starving-”

You grab his wrist as he pasts you and get a good look at him. “Are you ready to go back to the group? They can wait a little longer if you want them too.”

It irritated you that it’s come to this. How no one went to check on him. How no one offered to go with you. How no one seemed bothered by this. How long that he was alone dealing with something that’s been bothering him. How it took you so long to do something.

“No. It’s fine.” He says. Lying. It must have really bothered him, usually he’s better than this. “It’s about time to head back anyway.”

“They can wait.” Your grip tightens. “The sun can wait. We’re not obligated to be there. What’s wrong? ...If you want to talk about it that is...” You trail off uselessly. It only occurred to you that near the end that he may not even speak about with you. You weren’t the closest in terms of grouping but you can’t stand the thought of someone hurting alone.

“I’m fin-”

“You look like you were crying.” You cut him off. “If you don’t want to talk about it with me, that’s fine, just say it. But you might need more time before you head back anyway if you actually want them to believe you when you say you’re fine.”

He sighs and runs his hand through his hair.

“Warrior?”

“Nothing. It’s nothing.”

“If it bothers you then it’s not nothing.” You push. “But....fine. I won’t force you to talk to me. I just wanted to see if you were ok... You’re not but it’s better than seeing you bleeding I suppose.” You grit your teeth, annoyed by the lack of results. You did tell him that he didn’t have to talk to you and you don’t hurt him further but part of you wants to fix this. Even if you don’t know what it is, your heart calls for justice at his pain.

But he is unwilling.

“Camp is this way by the way.” You mention, looking at the ground. “You were actually farther away than I thought, so it’s a bit of a walk.”

“I just think it’s easier for people when I’m not around.”

You still and slowly turn to face him.

He’s looking at the ground as well, unable to say it and look you in the eye. It’s not what you were expecting and you’re not sure how to follow after that.

It’s a rare moment of vulnerability for him- even rarer that he’s showing it to you and you don’t want to squander the show of trust.

“Back home...there was a lot of... attention on me. A lot of blame... for starting the war. Or at least being the cause of it.” He admits, scuffing his shoe against the dirt. A little bit kicks up and sticks to the toe. He does nothing about it. “People listened to what I had to say because I was some destined hero. At first I didn’t think anything of it because I had thought it was one big mistake and sooner or later people were going to see that I was just some soldier not worth the time of day. It happened to be pure luck that Impa got it right when she gave me this uniform. Zelda made me a captain because of it and suddenly I had all of these men I had to give orders to. And if anything failed or if we lost, it would all have fallen on me. The blame, the guilt, the responsibility of the war...and then we found out why Cia was even opening these portals to begin with-”

You hug him.

“Please don’t cry.” You say into his chest. Your throat is tight and it a little hard to breath but you power through. “I’m not good at this. I never have been.”

“I’m not going to cry. It’s not worth crying.”

“I’ll cry for you then.” You admit and hug him tighter. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It was no ones fault.” Warrior hugs you back and rests his head on top of yours. His voice seems a little tight too and you’re sorry for all the things that he must have gone through.

You hug him for as long as you deem appropriate before letting your arms go lack and stepping away.

Or... at least you try to.

Warrior suddenly has a grip on you and refuses to let you leave.

“Please... Just stay a little longer.”

You do.

#linked universe #linkeduniverse #linked universe x reader #I had no idea where exactly to go with this one #believe it or not I wrote Legends first.#I didn't know it would get as long as it did #are these a bit generic?#yes.#warrior's is also very long #sorry not sorry #should I have split this one?#probably.#did I?#no.#it took days ya'll #next time I'll split it again

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