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thoughtsfromlayla · 6 months

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My Dearest Defiance

Summary: Equal as an Endless, more than a human, yet less than a god. Where did you even belong? The question has haunted you since you first saw humanity rise into power. Now your brother has been kidnapped and you can't do anything to help him.

Notes: ~7.5k words, This fic is a follow-up to this post sent in by the lovely @kpopgirlbtssvt, thank you so much for the idea! I took a few liberties with the plot and I hope that's okay with you!

Warnings: Platonic! Big Brother x little sister! Reader, *side eyes* a lot of angst, violence, physical abuse, heavy mentions of cancer, implied alcohol consumption, minor Dreaming mind-fuckery, death of Reader (you come back...ish), death of characters, comfort in the end :)

Masterlist

Mother Night and Father Time, the first lovers, the everlasting lovers. And it was through their love that the Endless were born. Your eldest brother Destiny came first, birthed in dark cloaks and the book that was named after him. He is in charge of the fate of every being to live.

Every being who has lived must follow the path of this fate and fate always ends in Death, your eldest sister. When Mother and Father realized that the humans must do something while waiting for Death, they birthed your favorite brother, Dream. He is hope, the one who gives the humans courage to stand up for themselves and make do with their lives. Soon, humans wanted more and in succession, the rest of your siblings were born: Destruction, Desire, Despair, and sweet Delight soon to be Delierum.

While every Endless was busy tending to their own realms and their own duties, you were born. Endless in name but not in power. You were the runt of the family, with no realm to call your own, and no responsibilities of your own. Yet here you stood amongst the humans that soon called you Defiance, the human spirit, the resilience to continue despite all odds.

You’re sure your siblings knew of you, certainly enough to be invited to family dinner once every 100 years. Yet you could never shake the feeling of inadequacy when you were sat at the far end, only to be over-talked by everyone. They were discussing important matters, after all, nothing that you had to concern yourself with.

You only find solace in Dream, where no matter how difficult the days get, you may always find a home in his realm. While he is adamant about letting you stay in the castle, you find it more comfortable to live in a cottage at the edge of the realm where the forest meets with the vast unknown and you grow vegetables from the soil you tow. It also allows you to escape to the waking world without Dream knowing.

You love humans, their lives fascinate you to no end. They know of you, just as they know of all of your Endless siblings, but sometimes it just takes a little more for them to realize. You would never push them to admit to your existence and somewhere along the millions of years of existence, you have given up trying to be the center of attention.

To understand humans is to live like them, talk like them, and love like them. Unfortunately, humans are more than that and often succumb to feelings of anger, depression, righteousness, and violence. You try not to associate yourself with those emotions, but it’s innate.

It’s been a few weeks since you stepped foot in Dream’s castle, and who could blame you? The village in which you reside is much more fun than the dreary castle your brother tends to enjoy more. The thick castle wall blocks out the sunlight, it’s filled with dust and smells of wet stones and old books. Not to mention, when Dream was busy, there was no one to talk to. Lucienne was always busy, picking up after her King, and you don’t even want to get started on Mervin.

He’s only nice to you cause you gave him his pumpkin head when his original turnip head started going out of style. Otherwise, it’s cigar smoke being blown into your face and sassy remarks.

You’re out in the market square when you feel the presence of your Endless Sibling. You turn from the flower vendor with a big smile and wave at Dream as he makes his way towards you. The dreams that he created step to the side in the presence of their sovereign.

“Brother!” You exclaim when he gets close enough for you, wrapping one of your arms around his while the woven basket hangs in the other.

The basket was filled with a few apples and a fresh loaf of bread. You were just about to buy a few glass snowdrop flowers before you were pleasantly surprised by Dream.

“How do you do this afternoon, dear sister?” He speaks, leaning into your face to tease you.

You giggle at him as the two of you walk the main road, passing dreams and nightmares alike, a few waving at you in greeting that you return.

“I’m doing great. I was thinking of going to the waking world later today and spending some time with Death, actually.” You respond, your arm leaves Dream’s as a different vendor catches your eyes. They were selling acrylic paints in colors that you haven’t seen since half a century ago.

“Here, hold this,” You say as you hand off your basket to Dream. He does as he’s told and holds the basket, the white paint offputting to his otherwise completely black outfit.

You grab a few jars of paint and can already think of the wonderful things to draw when you get back into your cottage. There was a specific lake nearby that you haven’t been able to do justice to, but you think you finally can with the new color.

A brief conversation of exchange happens between you and the vendor before you turn around. You burst out laughing at the sight before you. Dream stood in the middle of the road where you had first told him to hold your basket and hadn’t moved an inch. His shoulders were stiff and taught as he held your basket as far away from his body as possible.

“It’s not going to bite you, you know!” You practically cackle at him. Your giggles follow you as you carefully place the jars of paint into your basket. You think that you will paint some flowers and ivy onto your basket later tonight.

You go to take the basket back from him but he’s quick to move it away from your grabby hands.

“You specified that I should hold it, so hold it I shall,” He says and holds the basket higher, just out of your reach, when you go to grab at it again.

You huff at his rather stubborn behavior, but he’s been like this since the beginning. He always looks after you and takes care of you. You’re always grateful for it, but you can carry your own basket. You resolve the conversation with a roll of your eyes but the smile on your face stays in place when you turn your back to him.

Dream walks you home, basket now significantly heavier and full of things you didn’t really need. Well, except maybe the paint, it’s good to splurge every once in a while. Your cottage is basked in a warm light as the Dreaming’s sun slowly disappears beyond the horizon to rise in another universe. The pie you had baked this morning had long since cooled and you brought it inside with a hum, your brother still following you.

He set the basket on the simple kitchen table before taking a seat and watching you slice up the pie with a smile. You set the pastry down in front of him and another plate for yourself. The savory apple flavoring takes over the senses when you take the first delicious bite.

“I would like you to come back to the castle soon,” Your brother says as you take another bite.

“Whatever for?” You question, a little bit of apple filling falling out of your mouth. “The cottage is my home.”

Dream sighs but answers anyway. “I will be gone for a moment, I need to take care of a rouge nightmare, and would like you to be cared for while I am away from the Dreaming.”

“How long will you be gone for you to want me to live in that dreadful place?” You make a face as you think about the boring days ahead of you. Well, maybe you can escape to the castle garden if Mervin isn’t paying attention.

“I cannot tell you for I do not know.”

You purse your lips as you think about his request. “Fine,” You groan.

“Best not see Sister Death today.” When you don’t bother with a response he speaks against “Farwell, sister. I will be back soon,” He promises you before standing. You didn’t get the chance to follow him to the door before he leaves, his apple pie still untouched.

“Ugh, how wasteful.” You joke to yourself.

You spend the rest of your evening painting your basket as you had wanted before packing up a few items for the castle. Your basket was a gift from your brother and had an infinite amount of storage. So you managed to shove an extensive amount of your wardrobe, the paints, and some of the freshly baked pastries into the small wooden thing. You set off when the moon was high in the sky and the stars came down from their afternoon nap and danced in the village square.

Their stardust shoes clink like pure jade against the cobblestone road, illuminating the otherwise quiet and sleeping town. A few wave at you, shimmering particles following their movements before they return to their waltz. You wave back to them before continuing on your journey, mindful of where you stepped.

When stars come down to the Dreaming they become transparent and more gaseous than solid but that doesn’t stop them from burning hot. And unless you wanted to recounter that one time you stepped through one and started sneezing and coughing stardust for the next 10 years, you’ll keep your distance - only allowing for their natural light to guide your way out of the village and towards the castle.

By the time you reach the castle, Dream is nowhere to be found and you assume he went out to do what he mentioned earlier that day. Your room was set up for you, Dream obviously had some palace staff tidy up the room as you took a look around the clean environment. Otherwise, everything was in the same place you had left it since the last time you were at the castle. You yawn as you set your basket down by the door. First a good night’s rest, then you can go to the waking world to do your own things.

You sneak out of the castle a few minutes before dawn, the soft bed and good night’s rest giving you the energy you need to do so. You grimace when the door creaks loudly as you slowly open it, smelling the early morning dew on the grass and the warming dawn wind.

“Where are you headed, my dear?” A voice stops you in your tracks. You suck your lips into your mouth as you soon recognize the voice.

“Good morning, Lucienne,” You greet curtly, holding, or rather, hiding, your basket behind your black skirt.

Lucienne gives you a pointed look. “Yes, good morning.”

You give her a smile before stepping back out the door, only to be stopped when she purposefully clears her throat.

“The question?” She presses.

You feign innocence and bat your eyelashes, not that it would work. “What question?”

“Lady Defiance, my Lord specifically states that I keep my eyes on you.” Lucienne holds her hands behind her back as she takes her stance.

“By all means, keep your eyes - hey what’s that?!” You gawk as you point behind Lucienne.

Lucienne snaps her head around to look at what you were so surprised by. She doesn’t see or sense anything when she does. It’s about two seconds of her searching before she realizes that she has been duped. When she turns around the door is swinging shut and you are nowhere to be seen. She slams the door open and only sees the last of your figure disappearing on the horizon.

You’re still giggling to yourself about pulling off that little trick when you reach the ocean of the Dreaming. The little wooden dock creaks under your weight as you skip across it. Having done this traveling before, you jump right in with a squeal, holding your nose close so you don’t get any water in.

The water pushes and pulls but you don’t fight the current knowing that it will take you where you wanted to go. When you emerge, you cough once and the water falls off your body, leaving you dry in cloudy 1916 England. You wrap your blazer closer to your body as the wind picks up and leave the alleyway. The familiar smell of roasted peanuts from street vendors and car fumes tickles your nose when you turn the corner to walk into the hospital.

“Hi, I’m here to visit Genny, uh, Geniveve, Geniveve Colemen,” You correct yourself to the receptionist. The woman nods and looks down at her computer.

“She’s in the same room, 443. Here’s your visitor’s pass.” She hands you a laminated badge on a lanyard.

You thank her before wearing the lanyard and going towards the nearest elevator. The elevator smelled of shoe polish and disinfectant spray and it made your nose crinkle. You just hope the smell doesn’t transfer onto your clothes.

When you reach your destination, you knock on Genny’s door before entering. She wears her hospital gown and was reading a book when she looks up. A smile pasters onto her face when she sees you.

“Y/N!” She drops her book and sits up straighter.

“Genny!” You exclaim back with the same amount of excitement. You place your basket by her bed before pulling out a fresh vase of flowers and setting it by her bedside table.

“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, what have you been up to?” She asks.

“Yeah, my mother took me to some private tutor to help me study for my tests,” You lie through your teeth as you fluff the flowers to make them look more appealing.

You tuck your school skirt underneath you when you sit down next to Genny and reach for your basket again. “I brought you some homebaked goods. I know this hospital’s food has got to be horrendous.”

You bring out the baked loaf of bread you bought the day before and rip off a slice for her. She takes the loaf and inhales the scent.

“Gosh, Y/N, I don’t know how you make such good baked goods. Your husband will be a lucky one if you stop trying to chase them off.” She giggles and muffles through her full mouth.

You laugh with her, sparing her the details of your actual life. You bring forth the lie you had carefully planted yourself as instead. A straight-A student that goes to the same school as Genny before she was diagnosed with cancer, how you were her best friend that visited her when you got the chance, how you had gotten onto the school council and despite all of her poking and prodding, she would not get to know what the school formal’s dance theme is going to be unless she went with you tomorrow to the dance. You try not to think about how frail she has gotten since the first time you’ve met her. Her collarbones were poking out and you can see how hard it was for her to take even breaths.

When she asks you again later in the visit about the school dance you rebuttal quickly.

“Are you going to come to the dance with me?” You laugh. “Speaking of which, I got you a dress, too!” You go back to your basket, pulling out a formal dress, and setting it in front of Genny.

“Wow! Look at the bead stitching,” She says, running a delicate finger over the beading and gems then over the lacing.

“I’ve got a good eye, don’t I?” You sit back down with a smile and a tilt of the head. “It matches my dress, too.”

“What about your own date?”

“Oh, please, I don’t have time for boys!” You giggle again, hiding behind the lie that you don’t actually go to her school.

“Oh alright, I suppose I must go to the dance with you so you won’t be lonely.” Genny surrenders.

You smile at her, happy she finally agreed. “You’re a great friend.”

Genny coughs after your compliment and you’re quick to reach for the water and hand it over to her. When she sits up to drink you go to fluff her pillow. Genny lays back down with a sigh and all of the warmth that was in the room leaves through the window. She looks like she’s aged when she looks at you again, another cough crawling its way past her throat.

“I’ll leave you to rest,” You say, turning around to grab your things.

“No,” Genny refuses. “Can you stay for a little bit longer?” She coughs again and holds your hand weakly. “I want to feel like a normal girl for a little while longer.”

“Okay,” You whisper and sit back down, feeling the chill of the hospital around your ankles.

You watch over her as she falls asleep, the conversation taking the last of her energy. You begin to stare off into space, thinking about your life. You did your best with the gift of immortality, but as you stare at Genny’s tense face, you wish you could do more. Equal as an Endless, more than a human, yet less than a god. Where did you even belong? The question has haunted you since you first saw humanity rise into power.

Your thoughts leave you when you feel the beating of wings and a flush of wind from the door. Your head snaps and you see your sister standing there in her black tank top and the same combats boots you wore.

“Sister Death,” You greet with a small smile, previous thoughts disappearing. “What brings you here today?”

Your sister only smiles at you. Your excitement of seeing your sister again is soon taken over by dread. You look between your sister and your friend and the dots connect.

“Oh... what? No!” You stand abruptly between your sister and Genny. “No! She still has so much to do in life!” You try to reason with her.

“You cannot bargain with me, Defiance. You know that,” She says in her soft voice.

“I don’t care,” Your lips form into a line. “At least let her go to the dance with me?” You try one more time.

Death sighs with exaggeration. “Fine, but not an hour more.”

“Thanks…” You’re not entirely sure how you managed to pull that off, unbeknownst to you that your sister has a soft spot for you much like Dream.

Your sister looks you up and down before she leans on the door. “So how are you doing, then?”

You look off to the side when you answer. “Fine,” You grumble out.

She lets out a huff, or perhaps a laugh, you can’t really tell. “Would you like to go on a walk with me?”

It was a tempting offer, after all, you haven’t spent time with your sister in a while. You thought about it for a little while longer. “No,” You end up refusing.

“Genny asked me to stay a little while longer, so I shall.” You turn away from your sister and sit back down in the uncomfortable hospital chair. You keep your head straight, looking after Genny, and don’t take your eyes off her even when you hear your sister departing.

When she does, a tremble runs over your body. You feel tears prick at your lashline as you come to terms with the fact that your friend will be dying soon. You did your best to prevent the inevitable, but with no powers of your own, it’s only a waiting game now.

You leave when visiting hours are over, Genny has yet to wake up from her nap. You leave the rest of the loaf on her bedside table, and a slice of your apple pie. You decide to tidy up the room as quietly as you can and hang her dress on the hook that was nailed to the wall. With one final look at her, you leave, only hoping that your sister doesn’t go back on her word and take her before her allotted time.

You spend the rest of the evening in the waking world, catching up on new things the humans have done with their time. You end your day on a park bench, illuminated only by a single street lamp. The park was quiet, you’re only accompanied by the sound of crickets and the wind along the trees. You take in a deep breath of fresh air. Oh, how you have missed this. If only it was closer to summer vacation, you would’ve taken Genny to the beach and had some sun time with her.

When you are done relaxing you go to the pond at the center of the park, the fountain in the middle still squirting out water and creating magnificent shapes and splashes along the surface. You could see the stars' reflection rippling as you peer at the lake over a bridge. The wind blows and you close your eyes to savor the moment.

“I wouldn’t jump if that’s what you’re thinking,” Someone says next to you.

You open your eyes and turn to see a man standing next to you, no older than 20. He takes off his hat when you speak.

“I wasn’t, but thank you,” You reply simply and go back to looking out towards the expanding city. He doesn’t leave your side despite your answer and it gets a bit awkward.

“Are you thinking of jumping? Because I would also not recommend that, sir,” You turn to him again and see him laughing.

“No,” He says. “I am just here to think.”

“Just like me then. What bothers your mortal mind?” You ask.

“Many things… I’m afraid I have let my family down.”

“How so?”

“We came here on a boat from the motherland, nothing to our name but a few pennies. I was supposed to go to college and finally put our family on the map. But I failed and now here I am, talking to a stranger on a bridge in the middle of the night.”

You laugh along with him. You knew of him and saw his dreams a few times when you went out exploring in the Dreaming. He wanted to be a doctor, specifically an athletic injuries doctor but failed out of medical school before he even got the chance. You rack your brain to think of his name, and when it comes to you, you speak.

“Do not worry, Albert Brocken, I’m sure there are many opportunities that will come alight in the near horizon. Perhaps you should take the entrance exam again, and see where it takes you.” You yawn and you realize that you should probably start heading home.

“Yeah… maybe I should,” He concludes with a sigh. “I think I might go into somnology,” He says more to himself than you.

“Somnology sounds fascinating,” You agree. “I must go home now, but best of luck to you!” You walk away, your shoes barely audible on the stone bridge over the gushing fountain. Albert doesn’t look your way when you depart, too focused on his new goal in life.

You find yourself standing before an old winding cottonwood tree in the same park. It’s been here for years, growing into the magnificent tree it is today. It’s passed by thousands of England residents almost every day, yet none of them are willing to stare at it hard enough to realize that the bark of the tree isn’t real.

You take one last look around the park to make sure no one else sees you before walking straight into the tree, the danging leaves caressing you like a gentle mother’s touch. The trunk of the tree turns into a curtain of falling sand and you pass through with no problems. When you emerge on the other side, the bright moon of the Dreaming greets you, illuminating and basking you in a soft welcome. When you come back into the castle, Lucienne is on top of you like a hot iron.

“Thank the Gods you are well,” She panics as she holds your arms. After taking a good overall look at you, she wraps her arms around your body and brings you into a hug.

“Lucienne?” Your question muffled against her crisp uniform. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, my dear, you hadn’t come back all day. I thought perhaps…” She trails off before she takes a breath. “Lord Morpheus hasn’t returned, and neither had you, so I presumed the worst.”

“Morpheus hasn’t returned?”

“No, but you are here. Tell me, did you see him while you were in the waking world today?” Lucienne holds hope in her eyes and you resent the next word you say.

“No,” Your thoughts trailed off. “Morpheus hasn’t returned?” You ask again.

“I am sure there is nothing to worry about. I may just be overthinking is all.” Lucienne reassures you.

“Okay…” You don’t completely believe her, somewhere deep inside you you can feel that Morpheus is in danger. As the King of Dreams and Nightmares, a rouge nightmare shouldn’t be anything to be worried about. He should be home by now.

Your eyes close as soon as your head hits the pillow, but thoughts consume you. After the dance tomorrow night with Genny, you will go searching for your brother. The following day came quickly and you paced back and forth in the castle hall, the formal dress you had on jingling with your movements. Your thoughts were in overdrive, there was Morpheus of course, but you also knew that tonight was going to be Genny’s last day. And knowing that puts a weight on your shoulders. You have to make sure that tonight is going to be the best night of her life.

When the time came, you went to the waking world feeling dolled up and in an antique car with the roof down. Your hair had enough hairspray to survive a storm from Zeus himself. You pull up to the hospital in a screech, Genny already waiting for you in the lobby. You check your lipstick in the mirror one last time before Genny reaches your car.

“You know how to drive?!” Genny says with a smile and excitement that you found contagious.

You resecure the silk scarf that protected your hair from the wind and open a pair of sunglasses to put over your eyes. You look at her over the bridge of your nose, your eyes shining past the sunglasses before stepping on the gas pedal.

“I know how to do many things, sweet Genny!” You shout over the wind, pushing the glasses back to their original position.

Each time you looked over at Genny, her smile still hadn’t faltered and the last bits of the sun’s rays caught on the embroidery of her dress. Her softness brings a smile to your face and for a moment you forget about your brother.

You pull into the gravel driveway of the school formal’s destination. You had managed to weasel your way into the school council and they were able to get help from the local people. The theme for this year's dance was “A Magical Night” and a local citizen opened his manor to the students for the night. He called himself a mage, something that you rolled your eyes at as magic has been rare in this world since the faeries left it half a century ago. But you kept that to yourself, if he wanted to play make-believe, then so let him.

Students were already lining up outside the decorated manor when the two of you arrived. You hand your keys off to a valet and walk towards the door, hand in hand with Genny. Her excitement buzzed through her like a shot of tequila.

When you cross over the threshold of the manor you are genuinely surprised at the decorations of the place. The ballroom had been cleared out and a live band was playing music for students to dance to. There was a bar on the far end of the ballroom serving drinks and small snacks. A doorman takes your jacket away from you before you grab Genny’s hand and head to the dance floor.

Many of Genny’s old friends soon recognize her and start to surround you two, the night is still young and the sound of laughter soon fills the air. You and Genny danced the night away until you both were sweaty and out of breath. Your make-up had gone a bit smudged but you didn’t mind. It was nearing midnight when most of the students started to leave and you pulled Genny away for one last surprise.

Genny started to slow down a bit, the exercise of the dance sapping away her energy. She pulls through though and follows you to a winding staircase that leads to one of the roofs of the manor. The spring air chills you to your bone, but it is well received after the sweat you have built up. You help Genny sit down before you sit down next to her, the shingles of the roof poking through your dress in an uncomfortable way.

A satisfied sigh leaves your lips when you look out to the vast countryside behind the manor. The stars twinkle as far as the eyes can see and from your advantage point, no trees are blocking the view either. Genny pants beside you as she calms herself down from the climb and leans her head against your shoulder.

“I am so glad you made me come to this dance,” She whispers as she looks out to the stars.

“Me too,” You agree, you begin the absentmindedly swing your legs back and forth. Your heels come loose and slip from your feet and both you and Genny laugh at it.

“Gosh, I hope that didn’t hit anyone,” She continues to laugh as she cautiously peers over the side.

“Or else they’d have to smell my stinky feet, ewww!” You continue her joke.

Her laugh turns into a cough and your mood shifts to melancholy.

A shift in the winds tells you that her time will soon be up. “Genny,” You start. “My sister is going to be here soon.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“Yes, I have a huge family actually.”

“Well, tell me about your sister,” She smiles, head feeling heavier as she puts her full weight on your shoulder.

“She is really sweet, and a soft, kind-hearted soul. Just like you, I suppose.” You say.

Genny doesn’t reply and tears prick your eyes. When you turn your head you see Genny standing up with a smile, yet her body still remains on your shoulder. Behind her stands your sister, a reassuring smile and a gentle hand rest around Genny in a side hug.

“Your sister says that she’ll take great care of me,” She starts and looks at Death with a solemn smile. “Will she?”

“Yeah, she’s one of the best…” Your voice dips into a murmur as you feel your lips tremble.

Your answer is enough for her and she turns to leave. She seems to have remembered something as she turns back around and wraps her hands around your shoulders, her ghostly figure slightly falling through your physical form.

“I’ll see you again, right?” Genny asks, hope lines her figure and you can’t bear to see it fade.

“Yes,” You lie through your teeth. “Good-bye.”

She turns to leave with your sister, blissfully unaware of your last farewell. The sound of Death’s beating wings was the last thing you heard before it was just the barren countryside again. Genny’s body grows cold by your side as you pet her hair for the last time.

The manor staff came soon when you faked a scream and soon ambulances came and went with her body. You’re left in the aftermath of a romantic dream of confection and ribbons alone in the middle of the dance floor feeling numb.

“Hey, lady, if you’re going to stand here moping you can at least help out,” A staff member calls out and you snap out of your thoughts.

He hands you a few foldable chairs and tells you to put them up. You nodded along, not really having much else to do. You meander through the halls when you realize that he didn’t tell you where to put the chairs. It’s when you find yourself at a set of stairs that lead down towards the basement. And to you, it made all logical sense for humans to store their things in the basement.

You open the heavy double doors and descend further into the musky basement. Candles were lit on the stairs and its melted wax coats the edges as it lightens the path. When you get to the bottom, you’re greeted by the host of the party that you met earlier in the night.

“What are you doing here, girl!” He scolds.

You hold up the chairs, unaware of his tone. “Hi, Mr. Burgess. I’m helping with clearing up after the dan…” Your final word trails off as your eyes wander past his figure.

Behind him sits your brother and your jaw drops. Mr. Burgess tries to stand between you and him when he notices that your attention is no longer on him. Dream stands fully in his glass prison and you would have made fun of the fact that he was fully rocking out in his birthday suit if not for the situation at hand.

“Oh, what the fuck,” You whisper, dropping the chairs.

You breeze past Mr. Burgess and stand before Morpheus. Golden runes that surround his prison stop you short as if there was some sort of invisible force field. Your head whips around and faces your host again. He stands tall as he stares back.

“Why do you have my brother in a-a… fucking FISH BOWL!” Your words stumble out at the utter audacity of the situation, your hands moving around expressively.

Realization dawns on him and you realize that you made a mistake. “So, you are one of his family. That man warned me about your kind. Which one are you.” He seethes as he walks towards you.

“You face Defiance of the Endless,” You spit back at him.

You were in no mood to play, first, your friend dies in your arms and then you learn that Lucienne’s suspicions were right and that something did happen to your brother. This whole time he had been here under your feet while you were having fun. His clothes, tools, and dignity stripped from him as you drank enough sparkling cocktails to make Dionysus jealous.

The man scoffs at you and spits at your feet. “Oh please, and I thought that it was going to be hard. I’ve heard of you, little girl. They told me that you are nothing, a nobody. You have no realm, no powers, you are barely a god.”

You stay silent as he speaks, rage flushes through your body and your muscles tremble. His words rang true, but here you shall stand for your brother. He advances on you and you find that you have nowhere to go. A sharp pain burns across your cheek as his pierced cane comes into contact with your skin.

Your body follows the force as it throws you off balance. Your head cracks against the stone floor of the basement and a gasp leaves you. Your vision blurs from the hit and you feel warm blood sliding down your cheek like an unshed tear. In the distance of your mind, you hear Dream slamming his fist against his glass prison. You stand again, determined to not be bested by a mere mortal.

His cane comes down again like a whip, hitting your shins and then once again on the back of your knees. The blow forces you to kneel before him, and your cries of pain echo in your head. The coarse floor scratches at your palm but you keep your breath as even as you can.

“Is that all you got?” You sneer as you look up at him through your eyelashes.

His foot comes towards your face and you squeeze your eyes shut right before the impact follows. Your body tumbles further away from Dream, but his slamming continues. You feel the wall behind you, its surface cooling down your heating body.

“Stop, I command you to stop!” Morpheus shouts, command muffled.

“Dream of the Endless commands you to stop,” You repeat your brother's words. You use the wall to brace yourself to stand on wobbling legs.

Iron fills your mouth and you spit it out back at Burgess’ feet, much like he did to you before. You grin when you see him grimace at the act. You wipe your mouth clean with the back of your hand, very unladylike, but between the three of you, who is going to judge?

A backhanded slap snaps your head to the side and another painful scream follows.

“Stop! Cease yourself or face my wrath!” Dream continues to scream as your vision blurs again.

“No, I can take it,” Your voice is coarse but the message is heard loud and clear.

“Oh, you can take it, hmm?” Burgess taunts and his cane jabs into your abdomen.

You feel like you couldn’t breathe, that no matter how much your mouth gaped open, oxygen didn’t fill in your lungs as you needed it to.

“I can take it,” You wheeze out again, another hit forces you back down and this time you don’t have the strength to get up again.

“I suppose one step higher than capturing an Endless is to kill one,” Burgess laughs on top of you. His heavy body straddles you and you feel his hands wrap around your neck.

Black dots swarm your vision like the expanding universe. Your nails claw at his hands, drawing blood, as your body tries its best to fight back. Burgess picks you up by the neck and slams your back down, stars waltz behind your eyelids and a brief vision of home comforts you. A ragged breath crawls through your throat before another slam into the ground silences you. Despite your efforts, your hands grow limp and you feel your body start to break down. It flakes away like spring cherry blossom petals as you take your last breath.

“No!” Dream’s scream is the last thing you hear.

Your consciousness fades to black and it is quiet for once. It’s odd to think that an immortal being can die, but it’s true. The only thing that differentiates it is that you could be reborn. Immortality is a fickle thing.

When you come back into consciousness, you can feel the Dreaming heal your soul. It wraps its warmth around you like a soft blanket and you finally feel safe enough to stop everything that ran through your mind. When you stretch out your limbs you realize that you weren’t in your human form anymore.

Your perception spans further and you can see new angles you haven’t seen before through your eyes. You wiggle your toes, or what you thought were your toes and feel soft and fertilizing soil below you. When you look down you notice that your legs have turned into the soft bark of a willow tree. Your arms shake and the reaching leaves of the tree shake from the action. You sigh and your bark groans and creeks under your deflation.

You soon become a welcomed resident in Fiddler’s Green, providing shade for the decreasing amount of dreamers that come to visit you. As the years pass, the Dreaming starts to die around you as Morpheus stays entrapped under the Burgess Manor. You stay as a tree, unable to move and help. Guilt eats you alive, leaving your core to rot from the inside out.

Lucienne comes to visit now and then, but as the castle starts to fall apart, she can’t find the time to come by anymore. Your days grow lonelier as Fiddler’s Green decides to leave the Dreaming as well. You stand on dry soil in a barren wasteland. Your inaction keeping you hostage like a ladybug in a spiderweb. The more you struggled, the harder you found it to keep your human consciousness.

So, you did the most human you could think of: you cried. Fitting, you thought to yourself, a weeping willow, well, weeping. Your tears came to fruition in the form of vibrant yellow blossoming flowers against the beige and cracking surroundings.

You stayed like that for the next 106 years. Your roots had grown so long that you could feel each corner of the dreaming, searching high and low for water to drink from. Soon, even that would run out. Another tear runs down your bark, your trunk growing deep grooves where the previous century of tears had carved. Despite all odds, your leaves were still vibrant and your flowers would change colors based on your mood. A trick that took you a few decades to learn.

The moon rises higher and higher over the horizon. You follow its path, counting the fragments to keep your mind from boredom. It split in half 15 years after Dream’s capture and every five years or so, another fragment separates from the moon. You counted 18 fragments this time around, the same as the day before, and the week before that. You yawn, the bark shaking as you do so and close your eyes to rest.

You wake to a soft hand on your bark just as dawn cracks. Your leaves shake in surprise as someone touches you. It takes a moment to reorientate yourself and when you look down from your height your breath hitches.

“Sister?” Dream calls out, his hand still on your bark.

Relief floods your system just as a soft breeze runs its fingers through your thin leaves. Your catkin flowers caress his skin when he smiles at you. Just as fast as relief has found you, guilt consumes you again. Morpheus has escaped, it had taken him 106 years and all you have done is stand here and do nothing. Your branches groan again, more flowers blooming in its wake as you weep again, and the individual petals turn a deep blue color.

Dream grabs one of your leaves gently as it tries to recede from his touch. “Y/N,” He calls out carefully. “I do not blame you for what happened 106 years ago.”

“I am touched by your sacrifice.” He pauses as he picks his next words carefully. “You were the only one who came to my side when I needed it.”

You still stay quiet but your petals slowly start to return to their yellow colors. Morpheus takes this as a good sign and continues.

“I love you, dear sister, I wish for you to never doubt that. If only I could give you a hug for all that you had done for me,” He prods and extends both of his hands outwards.

You purse your non-existent lips in thought, a very tempting offer. Why not try one more time, to be by your brother’s side? Your bark groans again and you concentrate. You try to remember the details of your human body. How did your hair look? How did you hold yourself? Did you have a mole on this side of your face?

Your leaves and branches start to shake and shrink in on themselves the more you think. You call in your roots and start to wiggle your toes. You think of your fingers and how they had done so much for you: the paintings you made, the pastries you baked. One last tear escapes down your raw skin and when you open your eyes again, you are looking at Dream through new eyes.

Morpheus comes into your space and wraps his steadying arms around you. You sob into his jacket until it becomes uncomfortable. Your throat is raw when you’re finally reduced to hiccups. Through it all, Dream is holding onto you, gently caressing your hair the way you have liked since you were born.

“I like this new hair of yours,” He comments as he pulls at a few strands of your hair. It’s longer this time around and kept the same emotional properties your flowers had. It changes from blue to green as your mood shifts.

“Great, now I can’t hide my emotions anymore.” You mutter weakly to yourself as it changes to red at your slight annoyance.

Dream chuckles above you and gives you one final tight squeeze.

“Welcome home, sister,” He whispers. You take a deep breath, letting it fill your lungs thoroughly.

“Yes, I am home.”

I did a surprising amount of research for this fic. Apparently, the first woman to attain a driver's license was like in 1900 so that's why Genny was so surprised you could drive. Also, I would not recommend driving in a 1916 vehicle? Looks like it could explode at any minute.

This was a request! And requests are open, just go to my page and hit that button to submit one.

If you do submit a request, it may take me a bit to get to them just because of the nature of it and my classes are starting to get ready for finals. (Your girl is graduating this semester woohoo!)

I will see you in the next fic!

♡ Yours, Layla

#the sandman #dream of the endless #morpheus #morpheus x reader #dream x reader #the sandman fanfic #the sandman x reader #dream of the endless x reader #sandman x reader #siblings #sibling reader #platonic relationships #platonic #x reader #angst with a happy ending #angst #reincarnation

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yurinaa-world · 9 months

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hello, blade, jing yuan, dan heng and welt platonic with a child!reader who is like griseo from honkai impact?

Characters: Blade, Jing Yuan, Dan Heng, and Welt yang platonic! x Female reader

Synopsis: reader that's like Griseo from honkai impact

Warnings: Fluff and spelling mistakes,

𝐵𝓁𝒶𝒹𝑒

You are favored by everyone in the Stellarton Hunters; even Elio does it too. You both are stuck together whenever everyone else is 'busy'; you’re always quiet, really wanting to talk to anyone in general, and it’s no difference with him just painting and painting (he could leave but doesn’t).

Most people don’t see you anywhere since you're probably in your art room that no one knows where it is since there are several art rooms for you; he’s walked in on you in a room, thinking it was some sort of spy.

He looks at some of your paintings whenever he’s stuck taking care of you, which freaks you out. Does he have to look at that one? The painting in question was based on him and how he looks similar to spider lilies. He doesn’t say anything and just puts the painting back where it was hanging.

Y’know those trashy art kits with bad markers and ‘paints’ (but very expressive) Well, while going causing some havoc, he saw it and thought you would like it. When he sees your face happy (for at least trying), he is glad, until Kafka tells him that you probably wouldn’t use it since the kit is really low quality.

𝒥𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒴𝓊𝒶𝓃

He gives you an entire art room with very expensive supplies, and since he sees you somewhere where no one goes, you start to freak out a little whenever someone sees you. He hopes you impress him with your skills, and if you do, he might hang your painting in his office so that those who come and see him can also witness your piece.

You're very comfortable around him, only letting him see your paintings. You just finished wanting me to praise you for your hard work and give you a little attention.

Watch you get very shy when talking to other people at events with him. Go on, why don’t you tell them about the painting on the walls? You were the one who spent your sweat and tears just to complete it.

𝒟𝒶𝓃 𝐻𝑒𝓃𝑔

He’s a bit awkward when it comes to you; you both don’t talk and don’t leave your rooms either. Since everyone is going out to get something on this new planet and you both are staying well, Dan Heng is in charge of you. It might have been the first time he’s ever seen your room. and it’s a total mess—paintbrushes, paint, several unfinished paintings, and broken parts of supplies all over the place.

Everyone thought his room was that bad. He can just sit there on the side and not stare at you, you say in a whisper. What? Well, you get nervous whenever he stares at you, so he can't... One question about painting: you lost your mind and told him about everything, so it was a bonding experience, and now you give him some little drawings, so it’s worth it.

You also use the database in his room to get inspiration for your next painting from your favorite artist.

𝒲𝑒𝓁𝓉 𝓎𝒶𝓃𝑔

He asks you many questions just to see you freak out over your obsession. Like, let it all out; he’ll hear out everything you say; he means everything—the origin of the color purple, sure! Knock yourself out or talk about your favorite artist, what kind of painting they did, what their first painting was, and stuff like that.

Unlike Blade, he gets you good painting supplies that aren't like Crayola or those bad art sets like pencils that have good pigment and paint brushes made with the finest bristles, like he knows what good stuff is at.

I helped you design your room as well, making it very bright and artistic like you, with your most beloved paintings all over your walls, and even gave you two matching paintings, one for you and the other for him.

if you liked this, consider tipping me on ko-fi! it'd mean a lot

#✧*:･ﾟ✧:･ Yurinna's Writing :･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧#honkai star rail #hsr x you #hsr x reader #hsr x y/n #honkai star rail x reader #welt yang x reader #yang welt x reader #welt x reader #welt yang x you #dan heng #dan heng x you #dan heng x reader #jing yuan x reader #jing yuan x you #hsr jing yuan #honkai blade x you #blade x reader #blade x you

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naughtyneganjdm · 10 months

Text

Naughty or Nice - Chapter 3

Summary: Tensions grow higher at the Greene farm when Negan learns the woman he had an affair with is the younger sister to the woman that he is dating.

Characters: Negan, the reader (OC), Maggie, Greene Family, etc.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51464518/chapters/130700899

Warnings: 18+, Swearing, angst, smut, etc.

Notes: I was trying to have some fun with this one. Thank you to those that read this! I appreciate all of you!

“I don’t understand,” Negan stammered to find the right words, his eyes shifting between both Y/N and Maggie. There were so many unanswered questions that were swirling around in his head. “How did you not know that your sister was my boss? And the two of you have different last names…”

“I use my mother’s last name,” Y/N informed Negan which ultimately made sense after all she told Negan when they were together last night. Huffing out, Hershel made his presence known and didn’t have to say a word to make it clear he hated that. With each passing second, all of the questions Negan had started to answer themselves. After spending such a small amount of time with Maggie’s family, by putting it together with the information he learned last night he was able to make sense of a lot of things. Maggie was the older sister that was the favorite. Y/N was the middle sister that was looked down upon and not well liked. Negan saw it in Hershel’s actions. Y/N was right about everything she told him about her family.

“You’re still using her last name?” Hershel retorted, a snarl expanding over his features at the idea. Y/N had a hard time looking at Hershel and when she did, Negan could see all that bravery and strength he knew in her from the past leaving. This man really did a number on her.

“I like the way it sounds,” Y/N explained feeling small. The last thing she should have felt was small with everything that she accomplished. Maggie stepped in beside her, offering up a weak smile. And that’s when things got worse for her. Now, not only was she dealing with the uncomfortableness from being around her family again, but she had to think about how the man she had an affair with last night was dating her older sister. Her older sister that she hadn’t seen in years. There wasn’t enough strength to muster up the words that were needed right now. So all she could do was focus on her father and what he said about her using her mother’s last name professionally. “I just was more comfortable using it.”

“It’s disrespectful,” Hershel chastised her response, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m not surprised though. You were always eager to get away from this family.”

“Daddy,” Maggie interrupted Hershel trying to make things less confrontational in the best way that she could. Rolling his eyes, Hershel’s hands settled at his hips and he turned away from them. Turning her attention back to Negan, Maggie was still thinking about how Negan asked her that she had no idea that Y/N was his boss. “Y/N and I haven’t talked in a very long time. Originally, she was living somewhere else. I had heard she moved to the city, but I never really learned much more than that. If I would have known she was your boss, I would have said something. Obviously.”

“Why did the two of you stop talking?” Negan pointed back and forth between the two of them. It made Y/N frown and look down toward her feet. “It’s just…you’re both so different and…”

“You’re acting weird,” Erin commented, tugging at Negan’s jacket to get him to look down at her. “Why are you acting weird?”

“I’m not acting weird,” Negan scrambled to find the right words reaching down to pick Erin up in his arms. “I’m just surprised to see that the woman I work under is related to Maggie. That’s all. It’s something you think I would have known.”

“You are acting kinda weird,” Beau piped in, whispering low enough for his father only to hear. Tension filled his father’s body and the way that Negan was talking was the way he would talk when he was flustered or worried. “What’s going on dad?”

“These are your kids?” Y/N inquired trying to change the subject to take the attention off her and Negan in this moment. Of course they were his kids. They had dimples just like him and the boy looked like a younger version of Negan. Stepping forward, she extended her hand out before Beau and offered a weak smile. “It’s nice to meet you…”

“Beau,” Negan’s son accepted the gesture and shook her hand. “And you’re Y/N? We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I assume not always the best things,” Y/N suggested, but Beau immediately shook his head, his hand still shaking hers.

“No, it’s always been good things,” Beau denied her negative thoughts and Beau wasn’t wrong. Negan wasn’t the kind of man to come home and vent to his children about the job that he wasn’t given. If anything, he talked about his projects and never went into detail about the things bothering him at work.

“I’m Erin!” Negan’s daughter immediately blurt out, her dimples sinking in when Y/N turned her attention to her. Y/N assumed that other than the dimples and the smile, Erin’s blonde hair and green eyes matched Negan’s late wife. Holding her hand out, Erin shook Y/N’s hand enthusiastically before burying her head against the side of Negan’s neck.

“I guess this is very awkward, isn’t it?” Maggie southern drawl brought all of the attention back to her. “I think we all have some catching up to do here.”

“Is now a good time to come out?” a voice interrupted them and it finally drew attention to the man that was slowly stepping out of the car. Maggie hadn’t expected someone to be there causing her to jump, slipping with her footing and the man caught her before she fell. Maggie clung to the jacket that the man was wearing and he let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry about that. I just, I didn’t know when I should come out and introduce myself.”

“It’s…okay,” Maggie’s head tipped to the side looking into the big brown eyes of the man clinging tightly to her. Once he made sure she was okay, he helped Maggie up into a standing position before stepping beside Y/N. His fingers hooked with Y/N’s and Negan shook his head.

“I’m Glenn,” Y/N’s fiancé held his hand up to wave and he was awkward. It was obvious that he wasn’t much of an outgoing personality. Glenn’s cheeks flushed over, his tanned flesh turning red while they all stood together in the group quiet. “I’m Y/N’s fiancé. I was told that people knew I was coming. I’m so sorry for interrupting whatever was going on.”

“No, of course!” Annette stepped forward to reach out to grab Y/N’s free hand. Tipping up, she pressed a kiss over the side of Y/N’s face and then hugged Glenn eagerly. “Y/N told me all about you. I’m so thankful that the two of you made it here. We were hoping you would.”

“It’s been a long time Y/N. You snagged yourself a cutie,” Beth interrupted moving in to introduce herself to Glenn and to give her sister another big hug. “I can’t wait to catch up. I need to have you tell me all about how you met this guy.”

“It’s not that big of a story,” Glenn chuckled shifting on his feet nervously before her family. Glenn was certainly uncomfortable and he showed it with everyone paying attention to him. Letting out a winded exhale, Glenn waved his hand about in the air. “Thank you for letting me be here with you on the holidays everyone.”

“Your face is red daddy,” Erin informed her father, stroking down over the side of Negan’s cheek. Trying to relax his expression, Negan knew that he likely had his face scrunched in jealousy and upset. Of course his face was red. He just found out the woman that he thought he connected and bonded with more than anyone since he lost Lucille was related to the woman that he was dating.

“I think it’s just the cold baby,” Negan tried to explain hearing Hershel grunt out and motion them forward.

“We’ll show you all to your rooms so you can get settled in,” Hershel urged them to follow him toward the large home. It was a charming, older home at the center of this land and Negan was sure it was beautiful on the inside, but it was so different from what he was used to.

“And then afterwards we can give you the tour of the farm,” Maggie moved in beside Negan to give him a small nudge. Giving her an unsure smile, Negan looked beyond her to see that Glenn was helping Y/N gather her things and he sighed. Shit, this whole weekend just got so much more complicated. All night, all Negan could think about was Y/N and now he was going to be forced to keep his feelings for her hidden.

Once inside, Hershel led the kids to their rooms first. Negan was surprised that they had a room for both Beau and Erin. Beau’s room had an old arcade game inside of it that immediately drew his son’s attention. Erin’s room had a lot of stuffed animals and toys that Negan assumed likely belonged to the girls when they were younger. Beau stayed with Erin to help her unpack while Hershel led them toward another room.

“I’m sure you know where your room is honey,” Hershel pointed to one of the doors that was closed and Maggie headed toward it. Going to follow Maggie, Negan heard Hershel clearing his throat to get Negan’s attention and Negan looked back over his shoulder. “Not in my house.”

“Sorry?” Negan was surprised to hear that comment from Hershel. What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“You’re still sticking to that? Why am I not surprised?” Y/N chuckled to herself, clinging to her things when Maggie stopped in front of her door to hold onto the handle. Disgust filled Y/N’s face and Negan clung to his things still unsure of what was happening. “We’re adults dad. I’ve lived with Glenn for months. You’re going to separate us into different rooms?”

“Daddy, come on,” Maggie pouted, pushing open the door and reaching for Negan, but Hershel immediately shook his head. “I’ve stayed at Negan’s place plenty of times. I have room for him to stay in there with me. I promise we’ll be on our best behavior.”

“Oh, you’ve had her over your home plenty of times?” Hershel repeated those words and suddenly Negan felt very singled out. His Adam’s apple bounced in this throat and he frowned. What the fuck was he supposed to say to that?

“I’ll just go and share a room with Beau. I don’t mind sleeping on the floor,” Negan suggested pointing back toward the rooms where his children would be staying. “I feel more comfortable being in the same area as my children anyways.”

“Your children will be perfectly safe. And don’t be silly Negan, you’re a grown man. You need a bed for yourself. With your important job, you’ll need your own space,” it felt like Hershel was almost mocking him and he waved Negan on. First Hershel showed Glenn to his room leaving Negan and Y/N as the last two people with him.

“I’m sure you remember where your room was? Unless you erased that from your memory too,” Hershel turned on his heel to stare out at his daughter.

“You mean you didn’t turn it into the junk room like you promised you would?” Y/N brought back tense memories that obviously happened between them when they were younger.

“Come on Negan,” Hershel waved Negan on, ignoring Y/N when she went for the room that was obviously hers in the past. When Hershel started to lead him toward some stairs, Negan let out a hesitant sound. “You’re going to be staying in the attic.”

“The what?” Negan followed Hershel up the stairs and into the attic. There was a big window that let in a large amount of light that was almost blinding. But he did notice once they were up there that there was a bed prepared. There were dressers, mirrors and things set up to make it feel homey, but at the end of the day…it was just an attic. With every second longer Negan spent with Hershel, he was noticing more and more that Hershel’s favorite was Maggie. Also Hershel was making it evident that he hated Negan for dating his daughter. “Are you sure we can’t just bring this bed down and put it in the room with Beau?”

“So neither one of you have enough room to move?” Hershel leaned against the wall, his eyes narrowing out at Negan. If looks could kill, Negan would be dead. It left Negan wondering what to say and really what to do. “Do you not enjoy the setup that we have done here for you?”

“It’s wonderful Hershel, but as a father, I’m sure you know how I feel wanting to be close to my children,” Negan reasoned with Maggie’s father, setting his things down on top of the bed and throwing his hands up in the air. “My children mean everything to me.”

“Which is why I picked this room for you. It’s right above the rooms that they will be staying in,” Hershel informed Negan, tapping his foot on the old wooden floorboards. “It’s spacious, you have your own space and you are right over your children.”

“I kind of feel like we started off on the wrong foot here Hershel,” Negan insisted rubbing his hands together. Stepping forward, he could tell by the look on Hershel’s face that he wasn’t going to change his opinion on him. “I very much like both of your daughters. One of them is my boss and the other has been in my life for about six months. I’d like to be able to get along with you sir because both Y/N and Maggie are important people in my life. And I think you’re important to them. So I’d really like it if you gave me a chance to prove myself to you.”

“Negan, I appreciate that you’re a good father,” Hershel looked down after Negan held his hand out in attempts to have them shake it out. “That’s something I admire about you. I see that your children love you. That, I will nod my head to. But the fact you’re dating Maggie is not something that I can accept. My daughter never wanted to be a city girl. She goes out there to test things out because of her sister and then she meets you. After she meets you, she decides that she wants to stay out there in New York City all alone. It just doesn’t sit right with me. A woman giving up her life for a man.”

“When I met Maggie sir, she was in an apartment of her own. She seemed very much moved in at that point,” Negan thought back to when he first met Maggie. Making it sound like Negan was the reason Maggie was in the city was kind of absurd. “I swear to you that I would never force your daughter into something that she didn’t want. I promise you that I didn’t soil your daughter.”

That was truthfully an understatement. Even when they had sex for the first time, it was Maggie that had dragged Negan back into the bathroom with her. Maggie seemed very comfortable with the idea of fucking a stranger she had just met and fought with. So it wasn’t like Negan got his claws into her and brought her to the dark side. Of course, he wasn’t about to tell her father that though. Her father thought Maggie was an angel and Negan was an evildoer that turned his daughter against him.

“I just want us to be okay,” Negan reasoned with Hershel, wanting nothing more than for things to be comfortable at least while he was here. Having the two women in his life having their father hate him was not something he wanted. “For Maggie. For my children.”

“I’ll be as friendly with you as possible Negan, but I don’t like you,” Hershel declared letting Negan know there wasn’t much of a chance between the two of them to lose the tension that was undoubtedly there. “Y/N might respect you. Maggie might be dating you. But I know the kind of man you are. And I just don’t see this whole thing working. I’ll see you downstairs.”

Lowering his hand, Negan huffed and shook his head when Hershel left him alone up in the attic. Walking around, Negan wondered what it was about him that made Hershel hate him immediately. Heading for the window, Negan stared out it to get a feeling for where he would be staying. At least the view was pretty enough. It would be a pain in the ass in the morning when he was sleeping with the sun rising, but he would have to just deal with it and find a way to make things work.

Maybe sometimes he would just sneak down to be with Erin at night because this was strange. Sure, it was quiet enough for him to work, but being alone in an attic while his children were downstairs left him feeling uncomfortable. He was separated from everyone. Even Glenn got his own room.

Instead of unpacking, Negan just headed downstairs to be with Beau and Erin. They were in the room that Beau would be staying in and they were both already at the old arcade game playing with it. They both seemed amused that he was staying in the attic, more so Beau because he understood that Negan was in hot water with Maggie’s father.

“Have you ever played something like this? This seems like it’s from your time period,” Beau glanced over at his father while in the middle of playing the game. It made Negan place his hand over his chest and let out a dramatic sound. “I’m just saying, it seems old.”

“And there it is, my boy calling me old,” Negan stood up from the bed that they had given Beau and moved in beside his children to look at the game. “See, I would play, but I’d just be so good at it that I would destroy your record…so…”

“Oh, yeah? Okay old man,” Beau teased his father hearing the snort that followed from Negan.

“I’m going to go check in with Maggie really quick. I’ll be right back,” Negan squeezed over Beau’s shoulder before peppering a quick kiss over Erin’s cheek and then going to the room they had left Maggie at. Knocking on the door, Negan heard Maggie call out to him to have him enter and Negan gave her a grimace when he snuck into her room. “Will I get shot for coming in here?”

“Depends on his mood,” Maggie half laughed motioning Negan into her bedroom as he closed the door behind him. Hopping onto Maggie’s bed, Negan grunted when he heard the squeak of a stuffed animal that he sat on. Digging underneath him, Negan lifted the stuffed animal out and wiggled it at Maggie noticing the color that flooded into her cheeks. “I know, I know.”

“So this was your room, huh?” Negan looked around the space taking in all the things that were there. Gazing from the posters on her walls, to the bookshelf and what was on her dressers Negan couldn’t help but snicker. “Did you sneak a lot of boys in here when you were younger?”

“Enough to give my daddy a heart attack,” Maggie set down what she was working on to sit on the bed with Negan. Extending her fingers out, she brushed them through Negan’s hair and led him to her lips in a lingering kiss.

“You should have warned me I was going to be a target coming in here,” Negan’s laugh vibrated against her bottom lip, leaning back enough to gaze over her. “Your dad hates me. Y’know he put me in the attic? While it’s a nice space, it’s still an attic with a lot of dust and you know I have really bad allergies.”

“Oh, you poor baby,” Maggie frowned brushing his hair back, leaning in to press a stronger kiss over Negan’s lips. It took a minute, but she giggled when she pulled away. “Did he really put you in the attic?”

“He sure fucking did,” Negan laid back against Maggie’s bed, looking up at the ceiling with a sigh. “Your family is intense.”

“We’re really not that bad,” Maggie suggested laying in beside Negan and placing her head on his shoulder. Hooking her fingers with Negan’s, she cuddled her head in closer to him and heard the snicker that followed.

“There are a lot of things to unravel here Maggie. You have a younger sister who is my boss and you had no idea she was my boss,” Negan pointed out with a huff, his mind still lingering on Y/N. “And your dad visibly hates her. You haven’t talked to her in years…”

“How did you know she was my younger sister?” Maggie wondered, lifting her head up to stare out at Negan with curiosity in her eyes.

“I’m pretty sure when you went to introduce us you said she was your younger sister,” Negan reasoned with Maggie and she shook her head. “Well, then it’s probably me putting two and two together. We talked about her family at one point and she mentioned being the middle child.”

“You talked about her family? About us?” Maggie lifted her head enough showing her surprise in knowing that her sister talked about their family to Negan. “I didn’t think your boss even liked you.”

“Yeah, well we had a heart-to-heart last night after finishing a project she had me working on all night,” Negan explained knowing that calling it a heart to heart may have been a good explanation for the first part of their time together, but there was also that other thing that they did together. That thing he wasn’t about to tell Maggie. Not when he was in the same house as her hostile father that would likely kill him if he found out he had an affair on Maggie.

“What did she tell you about us?” Maggie inquired, her eyebrow arching in curiosity and Negan didn’t know if talking about that would be right since it was the two of them bonding. “I can’t imagine it’s been good things since she’s been away from this family for so long. Things just got so difficult in the past with her and my dad.”

“Why did you stop talking to her?” Negan pushed knowing that he didn’t see Maggie as the type to turn her sister away. He wasn’t about to talk about the things that they went into last night. Especially not in depth. It was really none of Maggie’s business what they talked about.

“It’s complicated,” Maggie sat up enough to brace her weight while her fingers traced over the center of Negan’s chest. “Her and daddy had a fight. Y/N and I were always very close, she just had a really strong personality. We all loved her. I do love her. It just made it hard staying close to her when she left. Daddy got mad every time we mentioned her and then she moved away. I guess I just got used to her being gone.”

Maggie took her time to contemplate things letting out an extended sigh the longer she thought about things, “She’s actually the reason I finally took a chance on the city. I went out to New York because of her and I stayed because of the things she told me. She was always the more adventurous one. The real leader of the pack.”

“And you never tried to call her?” Negan was surprised to hear all of that, his hand reaching up to brush some of the hair that fell in her face away. It had Maggie reaching up with her other hand to caress over his. “You just don’t seem like that kind of person Maggie.”

“I think we both got lost,” she reasoned with Negan, her eyes shifting off in contemplation while her thumb caressed at Negan’s pulse point. “I need to talk to her again. Make things right. I know daddy was hard on her with things.”

“And you were…are…his favorite,” Negan noted lifting up enough so that he was close to her on the bed. “I think if anyone could have a good influence on your father to fix things for them, it’s you. The only thing she said about this family is that her father was really hard on her. I can see that. And that her older sister was his favorite. That’s clear as day. Especially in the way that man hates me.”

Both of them snickered when she pressed her head forward to rest it against his, “I’m sorry Negan. My father has some issues. With me caring about you, I would have hoped that he would have given you a chance. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Negan caressed his fingers over her jawline letting out a long sigh while he nuzzled his nose in against hers. It was sad because Negan really liked Maggie. They had a decent relationship, but he loved her more like a friend. So in a sense, he loved her, but it just didn’t feel like he was head over heels in love with her. “I do think you should try to fix things with your sister. She’s a good person. But I think she’s sad.”

“Sad? She’s the strongest person that I know,” Maggie tipped her head back enough, her lips parting when Negan swept his fingers in over her jawline. “I could never see her being sad.”

“I think she feels lonely,” Negan reasoned with Maggie, his head tipping from side to side while he thought about the night before. Sad understood sad. That’s what Negan tried to explained to Y/N last night. Maggie wasn’t sad, so it was harder for her to understand when someone was lost in themselves like both Negan and Y/N were.

“Why would she be lonely?” Maggie questioned and it made Negan sigh when her palm slid in over the side of his face. “She has an incredible job. If she’s your boss, that means she’s rolling in the dough. She’s engaged…she has the life a lot of people would want.”

“Sometimes…when you’re lonely…it doesn’t matter how good your life is in the eyes of others,” Negan thought back on his own life, his chest aching when he thought about the pain and anguish he had over being alone. “Sometimes when you are lonely, you make choices that don’t make sense to you because you never want to feel lonely again. Look at me. I have the two best kids I could ever ask for. An amazing job, a beautiful apartment in the city…but the loneliness, the sadness…it ate me alive for almost two years. And to this day…that darkness still engulfs me. I think it bothers her that she no longer has her family. She told me that her dad thought he was poisoning her sisters’ minds.”

“I can see how she thought that,” Maggie acknowledged, her thumb tracing over the side of his face through his short beard. “Why don’t you tell me that you feel that way Negan?”

“Because I try to hide it. I have two kids to keep happy. They don’t need to see that side of me. And you…you’re always smiling and happy,” Negan began shaking his head knowing that it probably wasn’t the best time to be telling Maggie these things. “Like you said, I should be happy. But I’m just not. And that scares me sometimes.”

It seemed like there was so much that Maggie wanted to say, but instead she moved forward to give Negan a hug. Something like that? That was the kind of affection Negan appreciated. Just having someone to talk to and hug him? A lot of the time, Negan didn’t think Maggie would be able to understand his feelings, but having her hug him like that was nice.

“I just want you to be happy Negan,” she whispered, pressing a loving kiss over Negan’s cheek, nuzzling her nose in against it. Pulling back enough, she dragged her thumb over Negan’s bottom lip which made him take in a long inhale. “No matter how angry you make me sometimes.”

“That happens a lot,” Negan joked with her, his nose wrinkling in amusement. Even though they did have a decent relationship, he could easily piss Maggie off and push her buttons. At least they were honest with each other about that. Closing his eyes, Negan felt Maggie pressing in closer to him. With her lips hovering over his, Negan hummed when she brought their lips together. Kissing her back, Negan’s fingers brushed into her hair, his fingers caressing over her scalp while she crawled in closer to him. Grunting, Negan felt her moving in over him, her hands cupping his face in her hands as her kisses grew in strength.

“Apparently dad is calling for us,” Y/N’s voice spoke up when the door pushed open and it made Maggie slightly pull away from Negan with a wet sound, her hands still cupping Negan’s face. Grunting, Negan could tell by the expression that flooded over Y/N’s face that she was upset catching them like that together. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt the two of you, dad just wants us to take the kids and the boys on the tour of everything.”

“Yeah, we’ll be there in a minute,” Maggie assured her sister with a half-smile, her finger sweeping over Negan’s jawline. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Be careful with that,” Y/N circled her finger out toward them, her eyes locking with Negan’s. Noticing that Negan was breathing heavily, she wondered how far things would have gotten if she wouldn’t have walked in on the two of them. “You don’t want dad to bring the shotgun out.”

“Right,” Maggie snickered when Y/N closed the door behind her. Panic flooded Negan’s veins when Y/N left. Seeing that she looked upset bothered him. Then again, there was a mention of the shotgun and Negan deeply considered that.

“He really wouldn’t pull a shotgun out on me, would he?” Negan was hesitant in the way he laughed, but when he actually noticed that Maggie was contemplating that question, he felt his pulse leap. “Maggie? Would he?”

“It depends,” Maggie thought about the question and it put a look of fear in Negan’s features. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m gonna fucking worry about it,” Negan urged Maggie from over his hips to get her to sit down on the bed beside him. Getting up from the bed, he dragged his palm down over his face in a moment of tension. “That’s kind of a big deal Maggie. I don’t need your father shooting me dead with my children here.”

“He’s only pulled out the shotgun once before with one of my boyfriends when I was a teenager Negan,” Maggie reasoned with Negan hearing the worried sound that fell from Negan’s parted lips. “I’m an adult now Negan. My daddy wouldn’t do something like that.”

“I don’t know Maggie, by the way he’s acting toward me—I think he very much is capable of that,” Negan doubted what she was telling him. “I’m not going to get shot at on this trip, am I?”

“I think you’re going to be fine,” Maggie promised, stepping before Negan after getting off the bed. Caressing over the sides of his face was her attempt at calming him, but it wasn’t working. “Come on Negan, you shouldn’t worry about that kind of stuff.”

“After meeting your dad, yes. Yes, I fucking should,” Negan bickered with her more, but by the time that she was dragging him out in the hallway with her, he could see that the kids were outside talking to Maggie’s youngest sister who was showing them something.

“They are going to show us the horses,” Erin was excited to tell Negan about what was in their future when she turned away from Beth to run up before Negan. “I’ve never really been around horses daddy. Isn’t that exciting?”

“Of course it is baby girl,” Negan gave his daughter a wink, looking back when he heard the sound of a door opening. Seeing that it was Y/N heading out of her room, Negan lifted his finger up and motioned for them to go ahead without him. “I forgot something up in the attic. I’ll be right out. Okay? Watch the kids for me for a minute, would you Maggie?”

“You got it babe,” Maggie pat Negan on the chest before following Beau and Erin to the stairs.

Once they started heading down, Negan felt Y/N brushing past him to follow them. Before she could reach the stairs, Negan curled his fingers around her wrist to bring her to him. The nearest room for them was a bathroom and he pulled her in with him, closing the door behind him.

“What the hell?” Y/N gasped when Negan pushed her up against the door, his hazel eyes hooked on hers. Negan’s breathing was heavy, his lips parted while he stared down at her. “What the fuck are you doing Negan?”

“I’m sorry,” Negan apologized, his hands pulling from her shoulders and he rest his hands on his hips while he stood before her. “When you came into the room and saw Maggie with me like that…”

“Why are you apologizing to me because I walked in on you kissing your girlfriend Negan?” Y/N challenged, her eyebrows wrinkling in confusion. Throwing her hands up in the air, she sighed loudly and shifted before him. “I’m the one that is engaged to Glenn. I can’t get upset with you for being handsy with your girlfriend. I told you last night was just a high from the sex and confusion from the alcohol.”

“But it’s not,” Negan was adamant, shaking his head when she denied what they had last night. “All I’ve been able to think about since last night is you. I keep thinking about how you made me feel. Not just about the sex, but the connection that we have.”

“What connection Negan? You’re my sister’s boyfriend and you’re my co-worker. I’m your boss,” she reminded him, the hitch in her voice giving away that she was actually upset about everything. “This would have never worked in the first place. But now that you’re Maggie’s boyfriend? There is no fucking way Negan.”

“Why?” Negan frowned, attempting to reach out to touch her, but she grabbed his wrists and lowered them down.

“You know why Negan,” Y/N hesitated, her fingers squeezing slightly at his wrists. “There are so many reasons why none of this will work for us. We had a moment. We enjoyed each other very much, but it was a onetime thing. It can never happen again. You’re with Maggie. I’m with Glenn. We have to forget about it.”

“I don’t want to forget about it,” Negan pled with her, stepping forward to slam the door shut when she opened it to try to leave. Trapping her between him and the door, he took advantage of the small space that was there capturing her jaw between his thumb and index finger with his other fingers curling around the side of her neck. The warmth of his breath lingered over her lips drawing her eyes to fluttered to a close, her head tipping up toward him. “No, the chemistry between us is too strong Y/N. We both know it. We can’t pretend like it never happened.”

“Negan, please,” she whimpered right before his lips claimed hers. Placing her hand at the center of his chest, she could feel herself weakening at the knees with the way he was kissing her. Kissing him back was almost involuntary because her body knew even against better judgement that she loved kissing him. It felt good. Negan could sweep her off her feet with his kisses. And even though she tried to convince herself that it was a momentary lapse of bad judgement from being drunk, the response her body had to him kissing her was proving to her that wasn’t true. Purring out, she sank her fingers into Negan’s hair, her lips parting almost begging for him to reward her with the tender sweep of his tongue against hers. When he gave her what she asked for, he pressed his body against hers, his fingers growing tighter around the side of her neck. God she could get lost in this. Yet, it was the sound of movement outside the door that alerted her that she needed to stop this. Tearing her lips away from his was the hardest thing she could have done in that moment. Breathless, she knew that she needed to get her shit together. She was in her father’s home. Maggie was there and so were Negan’s children. They couldn’t do this shit. “This has to stop.”

“Wait,” Negan begged, but she pushed away from him and headed out of the bathroom. Trying to follow her, Negan got down the stairs with her. “Please, just wait.”

“Negan, enough,” Y/N didn’t stop or wait for them to even talk. Swiftly moving throughout the house, she pushed open the door and stopped immediately when she saw that her father had everyone with him standing at the steps. Her quick halt had Negan running into her and she gasped when he grabbed to make sure she didn’t fall. “You’re all just waiting here?”

“Well we couldn’t do a tour without the two of you, could we?” Hershel retorted with a huff waving them on. Swallowing down hard, Y/N managed to sneak away from Negan over to Glenn who was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt with a baseball jersey over it. He had a baseball cap on and Negan scoffed. Glenn didn’t even seem like Y/N’s type and he didn’t understand why she was with him. It’s not like he was a bad guy from what he could tell, it was just a strange pairing. “Let’s go Negan.”

“Yes sir,” Negan moved down the steps, reaching to grab Erin adjusting her so that he was giving her a piggyback ride while they moved across the yard. Standing between Beau and Maggie, Negan stole a glance over at Y/N noticing that she was looking at him while she walked hand in hand with Glenn. When their eyes connected, Y/N turned away and looked down at their feet.

“You’re going to love seeing Nelly. She was my horse,” Maggie tugged faintly at Erin’s jacket to get her attention. “If you want and it’s okay with your dad, I can probably take you on a ride. Would you like that?”

“Can I do that daddy?” Erin wondered making Negan look back over his shoulder at her. “I’ve never ridden a horse before.”

“You’re sure you’re capable of doing that with her and being safe?” Negan was worried knowing that with Maggie mentioning it, Erin wouldn’t be able to get it out of her mind. It’s just Negan was really uncomfortable with the idea of it.

“Maggie won a lot of awards when she was younger for horseback riding,” Beth’s voice called out from where she was walking beside Beau. “I think she will be okay.”

“I just worry,” Negan admitted trusting Maggie enough with his daughter, but horses were unpredictable. When Negan was younger, he would often visit the farm that his grandparents owned, but that was a long time ago. He always loved animals, but he knew that some animals when scared did things they didn’t always mean to. “If you think you can keep her safe, then I’ll trust you.”

“I can,” Maggie assured Negan with a half-smile while they headed over toward the stables on the property. Once the large doors opened, Negan stayed back and let out a long sigh knowing that this was the last thing he expected to be doing for Christmas this year. Touring a barn in the middle of nowhere. It was like he was back in his childhood days. “Nelly.”

Maggie was the first one into the barn heading over to the horse that was hers. It made Negan smile seeing the excitement that she had for it. It wasn’t normal for Maggie to have that kind of reaction to things and he was happy that she did have something that made her happy in some sense. Hershel followed her in and stepped in beside her reaching out to pet the muzzle of the horse.

“Come here,” Maggie waved Beau forward who seemed uneasy at first before joining them in petting the horse. Reaching for Erin, Maggie grabbed her from Negan and held Erin in front of Nelly to allow both Negan’s children to enjoy the moment.

“Do you have your own horse too?” Negan looked to Beth who was standing behind him and she immediately shook her head.

“No, we have a few horses here that I help take care of, but this one is Maggie’s and…” Beth moved around Negan to reach for Y/N’s hand pulling her sister down until they stopped in front of a stall. Seeing the horse seemed to have Y/N freeze up. “And this one is Y/N’s.”

“Dakota,” Y/N stepped forward to caress in over the horse’s mane. Seeing the horse appeared to have shocked her. “You kept him?”

“Of course I kept him,” Hershel grunted from where he was standing with Maggie and the children. “You may have abandoned him, but he didn’t deserve to be thrown away like the rest of us.”

Clearing his throat, Negan knew that he wanted to say something, but with how Hershel already felt about him it was best not to say anything at all. What came out of Hershel’s mouth hurt Y/N, there was no hiding the expression that flooded her features. Instead of staying where he was, Negan moved down the aisle to step in beside Y/N. With him next to her, she stole a quick look at him before Negan nodded toward Dakota.

“May I?” Negan asked for permission first to touch her horse. Once she gave him the okay, Negan flattened his palm out over the forehead of the horse that seemed to lean into the touch. “I take it you rode horses in the past too?”

“Yeah,” Y/N nodded and after Negan joined her, it felt like Glenn thought he had to as well moving in on the other side. “Dakota is my old man. We share a lot of memories together.”

“She gave up competitive horse riding, just like she did everything else,” Hershel piped in when he moved over toward them where they were at the stall. Y/N’s eyes closed tightly and she bit down on her bottom lip. Just by the way she was reacting Negan could tell she was doing everything she could not to fight with her father. Sliding his hand down, Negan’s fingers loosely hooked with hers to support her. It had her eyes lazily opening, her eyes connected with his and he gave her a weak smile. “Dakota was our most talented back then. Now, he just makes for a good pet. He’s too old to compete, but he sure is beautiful.”

“We’ve got Nelly, Dakota, Apollo, Lucky, Casper and Cinnamon,” Beth listed off the names of their horses, pushing her hands into her pockets when she let out a long sigh. “These are kind of our stars on the farm. We have other animals, but they are the ones people seem to be drawn to. We have chickens, hens, ducks, pigs…”

“We feed them every morning and evening so if you’re ever up and interested on this trip we will happily take the help,” Hershel informed them pacing the stables to check on all of the horses that were there. “We also have a barn on the property, but it’s really just used to store things. We have hay in there, food supplies. It’s not as interesting.”

“You want to go for a ride?” Negan heard Maggie ask Erin and he tensed up hearing it knowing that he agreed to it, but the idea of it made him nervous. Moving away from Y/N left it open for Glenn to whisper something to her as Negan went back to his children. Maggie noticed the worry in Negan’s eyes and she gave him a confident smile. “Trust me, everything is going to be okay.”

“You’re kind of holding my world in your hands, so…” Negan commented and it made Maggie smile as she handed Erin back over to Negan. Panic flooded his veins while Maggie got Nelly prepared to be ridden. Once Maggie had everything ready and they were standing outside, Maggie hopped up on the horse and reached for Erin. “You sure you don’t want to practice a little? By the sounds of things, it’s been a while since you’ve been on a horse.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Maggie explained hearing Negan grumble when Erin reached her arms out to Maggie.

“A very unpredictable, living bike that can throw you off of them and break her,” Negan heard Beau choke and a laugh fell from his throat at his father’s worries. Once he handed Erin off to Maggie, he felt Beau’s hand pressing in over the center of his back trying to comfort him. “Please be safe.”

“I promise,” Maggie got Erin situated before starting to ride slowly across the plot of land.

“In this case, I trust Maggie,” Beau informed Negan while they watched the girls riding the horse. “I think she knows what she is doing dad.”

“It’s hard giving you kids away to other people and trust them to keep your lives safe,” Negan admitted to his son, his hazel eyes filled with worry. Clearing his throat uneasily, Negan saw that Y/N and Beth were both getting two other horses out to ride, but he was so stressfully focused on Maggie with Erin. “I love you both so much.”

“And we don’t doubt that,” Beau assured his father with a sigh hearing Hershel calling out to the both of them.

“You want to help me get these horses fed before the snow is supposed to start tonight?” Hershel asked of them and even though Negan wanted to watch to make sure that his daughter was safe, he agreed to do it. Beau was eager to help as well and Hershel had Glenn helping him too since all of the girls were out riding horses. “Beau, I’ll have you and Glenn go grab some of the grain from the back room I instructed Glenn to grab. Negan, there is a bucket that one of the horses kicked over in their stall that I need you to grab.”

“Sure,” Negan stepped before the stall that Hershel pointed at. Rubbing his hands together, Negan looked back at Hershel and shrugged. “Aren’t you going to grab the horse while I get the bucket?”

“Why would I do that?” Hershel folded his arms out in front of his chest. Letting out a hesitant sound, Negan stepped forward waiting for Hershel to open it for him. The horse remained still, but Negan paused thinking it over again. “Well go on son. I need to get this moving so the horse doesn’t get hurt.”

“I just kind of remember hearing something when I was a kid that you shouldn’t get behind a horse,” Negan explained to Hershel staring out at the larger horse knowing there wasn’t much room for him to move around it. “I think maybe you should get this guy out before I even attempt to grab it. My grandparents had a farm when I was younger and I just…”

“Forget it, I’ll just get Glenn to do it,” Hershel waved Negan off hearing him grunt under his breath before side stepping forward. Trying to move around the horse, Negan reached for the bucket to hear it jangle when he lifted it. It caused the horse to get uncomfortable, kicking its back legs out that Negan managed to avoid. Once the horse started jumping about, it had Negan scrambling to try to find a place for him not to get hurt. It ended up with Negan falling into the mud that was behind the horse face first, the horse running out of the stall and Hershel letting out a big belly laugh. “Well, you weren’t supposed to spook it son!”

“Dad?” Beau ran out to see that Negan was slowly pulling himself up from the mud. It was hard because Beau was worried, but at the same time amused to see that Negan was absolutely covered in mud. Instead of laughing, he tried to bite back on his amusement and stepped forward to help pull his dad up.

“Are you alright?” Glenn joined Negan in the stall, grabbing a hold of the other arm of him. Both Beau and Glenn were doing their best to avoid getting the mud on them that Negan was covered in. “What happened?”

“He spooked the horse,” Hershel explained to them, but Negan knew that he was set up from the start. He was lucky that he didn’t get killed from the horse trying to kick him.

“Daddy, why in the world was Apollo out…” Maggie came back after leading the horse that had run off back into the stalls. Once Maggie got a look at Negan, she turned on her heel and glared out at her father. “Daddy, what did you do?”

“What happened?” Y/N came back into the barn while Beth tended to their horses outside. All of them had headed back when they saw Apollo running free outside the barn. Erin moved in beside Y/N letting out a worried breath when she saw Negan.

“He had me grab a bucket and told me we didn’t need to move the horse for me to get it,” Negan claimed tossing the bucket out in front of Hershel who looked amused with his antics. “I almost died.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You’re fine,” Hershel blew off Negan’s words, but it immediately had both Maggie and Y/N infuriated with him. “Your boyfriend is being a little emotional right now because he’s embarrassed that he fell in mud and who knows what else.”

“This is just like you,” Y/N stormed around her father toward the back office to grab a towel for Negan. Moving forward, she tried to help him get some of the mud from his face hearing her father cackling in the back. “Negan never had a fucking chance with you. You know that Apollo gets antsy around people. Yet you did this anyways.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Hershel threw his hands up in the air acting innocent with his actions. “We were just getting ready to feed the horses. You can ask Beau and Glenn. They will tell ya. There was a bucket in there that I didn’t want Apollo to get hurt on and Negan went to get it. It’s not my fault that he spooked the horse.”

“She’s not wrong daddy. You knew that Apollo would do exactly what he did. We’ve always known Apollo to be like this,” Maggie shamed her father, moving forward to reach for the towel that Y/N had knowing that Negan was her boyfriend and it should be her that was helping him. “You’ve been like this with all of my boyfriends. And this time it’s not right. Negan had Beau and Erin here. He’s a father and I won’t stand by this behavior. These pranks are dangerous and if you pull another one, we’re going to leave. I love you daddy and I want to be here, but this is the last time.”

“I see,” Hershel’s glare on Negan was extreme, if there was a chance that he would ever like Negan it went right out the window at that moment. With Maggie threatening him to leave, it sure as hell made Hershel hate Negan. Especially having his favorite daughter defending the man he just tried to potentially kill. Looking to his watch, Hershel huffed and shrugged his shoulders. Sucking on his bottom lip, Hershel pointed at the stalls and sighed. “We are supposed to meet your cousin at the restaurant we go to every year. We need to get these horses fed and head out.”

“You know, I don’t think I’m going to be able to go to any restaurants,” Negan called out from where he was standing knowing that he was soaked in mud. “I think the only thing calling out to me right now is a shower. Maggie, do you mind watching over Beau and Erin at dinner?”

“Of course baby,” Maggie went to touch him, but then thought it over for a second with how dirty he was. “I’ll get you a meal and bring it home.”

“You might want to hose him down first before he goes in the house. We don’t need him trekking that mud throughout the whole house,” Hershel blew off the idea of Negan, not a care in the world that he almost just killed Negan.

More than anything Negan wanted to rip into this man. For what he had done to him. For his nasty comments toward Y/N, but Negan kept his mouth shut. This was the first day and he was going to be stuck in the same home with this man for a while.

“I’ll help you dad,” Beau led Negan toward the hose he had seen in the back with Glenn when they had grabbed the grain that Hershel had asked them too. When they were alone, Beau nodded back toward Maggie who was getting help from Glenn getting Apollo back in the stall. “I know you like Maggie, but are you starting to think now about how you should probably let this romance go?”

“Beau, I don’t even know what to say right now,” Negan grumbled under his breath splashing some water in his face and getting his clothes clean from the mud. “I had no idea her dad was a psychopath.”

“It just looks like you’re dating the wrong daughter,” Beau suggested and it immediately made Negan lift his head up to stare out at Beau. “I mean, he’s not trying to kill Glenn. You should be dating Y/N because at least if you were dating her, you’d be safe.”

Beau was trying to joke with Negan, but he had no idea how Negan actually felt about her so it made the conversation awkward.

“I remember grandpa giving you a hard time, but this guy…” Beau shook his head when he stole another look back at Hershel. “He’s got issues.”

“Understatement of the year,” Negan noticed that Erin was walking out to them to check on him. Offering up a big cheesy smile had Erin giggling. “Daddy is just going to take a shower. You be good for your brother and Maggie, okay?”

“Of course daddy,” she tipped up on her toes to press a kiss over the side of Negan’s cheek when he leaned down. “I’ll wait until you are dry for the hugs.”

“Good choice baby girl,” Negan winked at his daughter, said his goodbyes to everyone once he was ready to head into the house with the towels they had given him to dry himself off. To the best of his ability at least. He was careful not the mess the house when he made his way to the second level bathroom where he was earlier with Y/N. At this point, he was just thankful to have a break from the whole Greene family.

A hot shower gave him time to think things out. Maybe it was just best to avoid Hershel this whole trip. Bury himself in his work at every chance and just stick to his children. It may have been the only way for him to stay alive and not get himself killed. It took a while for the water to get hot before Negan hopped into the shower. This was nothing like his home and his modern shower that he had. It was old fashioned to the core and it brought back old memories for Negan.

After his shower, Negan got dressed and draped the towel over his shoulders. He figured he would just work for a while until everyone got back home. At least in the attic he would have his own space and be safe from getting hurt. Heading up the stairs to the attic, he let out a surprised breath when he saw that Christmas lights were now lighting up the space. It made his heart skip a beat when he saw that someone was hanging them up. Dropping his head, Negan closed his eyes when he thought back to his past when Lucille would do the same kind of thing. Pinching his nose, he cussed to himself hating that a memory from his past hit him so hard.

“Are you okay?” Y/N’s voice called out to him making Negan lower his hand to stare out at her from where she was standing on a chair stringing up some lights. “I heard that my dad put you up here and I thought…I would just make it homier. So it feels more like a holiday for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Negan insisted, going to put his dirty clothes in a bag so that way things were still clean. Actually, Negan was impressed. She got out a lot of things while he was in the shower. There was a faux tree in the corner of the attic with light strung up that she was finishing. “What are you doing here? I thought everyone was going out to dinner.”

“Yeah, well…I told them I got a call from work and that I wouldn’t be able to go with them,” she explained to Negan as he stepped in beside her and attempted to help her with what she was finishing up. “I lied. But I told Glenn to go with them, so it’s just us here.”

“Oh?” Negan’s eyebrow arched in curiosity while she outstretched just far enough to let out a tense breath. Placing his hand over the small of her back, Negan made sure that she was safe before she returned to a flat-footed position.

“I wanted to check in on you and help with this…” she threw her hands up to look around the place that her father had thrown Negan for the time that they were there. “Thankfully my father is predictable and keeps the decorations in the same place he did when I was a kid so this was easy to do. All we need is a few stockings and some decorations on the tree. The tree already had lights in it so we don’t have to do that.”

“Yeah?” Negan mused, finding himself curious with the way that she was. This was something he would have found Lucille doing in his past, so the fact this is what she was doing enamored him. “This is nice.”

“I hope it makes you feel more comfortable,” she finished with the lights, grabbing Negan’s hand when he helped her down from the chair. Stumbling, she fell in against Negan’s chest and his hazel eyes narrowed down at her. “It’s the least I could do with what my father did.”

“He’s crazy,” Negan noted without even thinking about it. There was no fucking around. Hershel hated him and it was clear as day. “He tried killing me today with that horse.”

“I told you my dad was something else,” she reminded him, patting him on the center of the chest when she pushed herself into a standing position before him. “I don’t know why I bothered coming here. It was stupid to begin with. The only thing it did was fuck everything up more.”

“I know you’re upset you saw me kissing Maggie,” Negan frowned folding his arms in front of his chest noticing that she was having a hard time looking at him. “I told you, I’m not in love with Maggie. What I said about my girlfriend was true. It doesn’t change things now that it’s Maggie.”

“Negan, it changes everything,” she shook her head moving around him to start putting some of the decorations on the tree. “Maggie is my sister. They can’t find out that I had sex with her boyfriend. I told you that Maggie was my dad’s favorite. If it comes out, my dad will try to kill you and who knows what he will do to me.”

“You’re worth the worry,” Negan claimed grabbing a few of the decorations to help her put them on the tree that she put out for him. “I don’t care if Maggie is your sister. I know how I feel about you. I love Maggie, but I love Maggie in a way that someone loves one of their best friends. I’m not in love with Maggie. We don’t have that spark that I’ve been missing. The spark that you and I have...”

“You’re making this complicated Negan,” she reasoned with him, trying to focus on the tree and less on him. “You’re with my sister. You’re dating my perfect, loved, popular older sister. And there is nothing we can do to change that. It’s best we pretend that what happened the other day is nothing but a dream between us.”

“I don’t want to pretend,” Negan hushed her, grabbing her and forcing her to look at him. “Y/N, what we felt the other night, it was incredible. The sex was great, sure, but what we felt…how alike we are. When I see you, you remind me of everything I loved in the past.”

“We can’t talk like this Negan,” she declared only to feel his hands grabbing a hold of hers leading her toward the bed to sit down on it. “Negan?”

“Just talk things out with me for a minute,” Negan begged of her, his thumbs stroking in over the back of her hands. By the look over her face, he knew that she was trying to avoid this stuff, but he needed to talk to her. “First of all, Glenn is cute and everything, but that guy seems way too boring for you.”

“Glenn is cute?” she repeated what he said, her eyebrows bouncing up in amusement. “The reason you think he is boring is because you’re…you.”

“He barely talks and anytime someone looks at him, he blushes,” Negan thought back to her fiancé and he shook his head. “Come on Y/N. You’re a ball busting bad ass that grabs men by the balls and makes them do whatever she wants whenever she wants.”

Instead of saying anything, she rolled her eyes and shook her head. He knew with her being here that her ego would be smaller and he hated that for her. Especially with how her father treated her about things.

“What did you and your father fight about?” Negan pondered the thing that he had heard mentioned several times. “The thing that made you stop talking.”

“They all stopped talking to me after that,” Y/N alerted Negan with a half laugh, but he knew that it hurt her. It didn’t make her feel good to think about it. A sense of shock flooded her veins when Negan’s fingers hooked with hers, his eyebrows furrowing in the hopes of understanding how she felt. Holding her hand like that was his way of showing support and he could tell that it took some coaching inside of herself to open up to Negan. “I was leaving for college. He wanted me to stay out here. Run the farm like the rest of the family. I didn’t want that. I loved art, my father thought it was a useless talent. I got accepted to an art school in the city and it was everything I wanted, but he didn’t give me his approval. Told me if I went out there, I would be out on my own. He’d never help me. I told him that he cared more about his life and what he wanted for his family than what his family actually wanted. I told him he was holding his family back and he’d never let them truly live. He told me if I left, he was going to get rid of my horse, my things and never speak to me again. He did one of the three. If it was up to him, I wouldn’t be here right now. It was Beth and Annette that reached out to me.”

“That’s rough,” Negan sighed, his thumb sweeping over the back of her hand while he held onto it. “Your parents should always push the best for you. They should want you to achieve your dreams. Not live the dreams that they wanted.”

“Sounds like from our conversation you know exactly what it was like with your father,” she reasoned with Negan who snorted and shook his head.

“My father wanted me to be a ball player more than anything. Bragging rights to his friends really,” Negan thought back to when he was younger and he simply shrugged his shoulders. “But I got hurt and after that he really didn’t give a shit.”

“Your dad and my dad are such assholes,” she suggested dropping back on the bed that was Negan’s with a sigh. Carefully moving in beside her, Negan laid with her and gazed over at her with his big eyes. Still even laying down they were holding hands and it was strange how comfortable she found herself with Negan. “I should have just kept giving you shit last night. Told you what a piece of shit you are. Instead of kissing you like I did.”

“I am a piece of shit still,” Negan snickered, his eyebrows bouncing up in amusement when she tipped her head to connect her eyes with his. “Just because you like me doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. I like you too. What happened between us, it was meant to happen. I wish you could see that.”

“Your son and daughter are beautiful,” she complimented him knowing that she hadn’t really focused on that bit. It was easier to bring up his children instead of concentrating on what he was saying between them. “Your son looks exactly like you. And your daughter has the dimples and the smile. You can tell they are your children. It’s cute.”

“Yeah, they are pretty cute. It’s how they get away with everything,” Negan responded showing that he was genuinely happy talking about his children. “Thankfully for Erin she got most of her mama’s looks. Beau, he’s awesome. Good at everything. Amazing artist. Better than I ever was at his age, but I think this whole Christmas thing is effecting him more than anyone without his mom. His mom and him were really close. So this time of the year is rough for him. He does his best, but…”

“He’s still human,” she noted giving Negan time to think about it before exhaling loudly and nodding. “They are lucky to have you. You can tell you love them. It’s sweet. Do they like Maggie?”

“Yes…and no,” Negan laughed out loud remembering what his kids were like last night. “Maggie is very…uptight. And their mother wasn’t. So they like her, but they don’t. If that makes sense.”

“It does,” she found herself leaning her head in closer to Negan’s while they laid there. “My sister is bubbly, friendly, but she needs to be in control of everything. It all has to be perfect and precise. And while I understand that, there needs to be wiggle room for more.”

“Maybe…maybe we can just run away with the kids?” Negan stammered, his words coming out in a stutter. The suggestion alone made her scoff thinking it was a joke. “I can break up with Maggie, you can let Glenn go and I’ll just take you back to my apartment. We can decorate the thing. It could use your touch and the kids would like it. What you even did with this room in the time that you had is incredible.”

“Knock it off,” she poked Negan in the ribs. The idea sounded ridiculous, but running away from here didn’t sound all that bad. Especially if it was with Negan.

“Are you less interested in me because I have children?” Negan wondered interested in finding out why she didn’t want to be with him now.

“If anything, I’m more interested in you for being a father. It’s sexy seeing how much you love your kids and the way there is a glimmer in your eye just talking about them,” she confessed stroking her fingers over the center of Negan’s palm. “You know why I can’t run away with you. It was wrong before, it’s worse now that you are with Maggie. They already hate me as it is.”

“Maggie doesn’t hate you, Maggie just is her father’s puppet,” Negan corrected with a scoff knowing how capable people were of persuading their children to think one way or another. “But if that’s how you feel, then what do you care what they think if we get together?”

“You don’t want that Negan,” she went to ramble on until Negan’s fingers were curling underneath her chin to urge her jaw up. Brushing his lips over hers, Negan made the gesture soft and sweet. After all the stress of today it felt nice and she found herself getting more comfortable against him. “You make it hard to focus when you kiss me.”

“You like kissing me,” Negan snickered against her flesh, nibbling at her bottom lip. Teasing the tip of his tongue over her lips had her lips parting, her head arching up with her fingers curling around his neck. Brushing his tongue in against hers, Negan groaned out when her fingers sank into his dark hair. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since last night. I know what I want.”

“You don’t. It’s just like a drug Negan,” she tried to hush him hating how easily she was falling back into all of this. With Negan’s palm caressing up over the lengths of her abdomen and toward her breast, she purred when he cupped it tenderly. “You had a taste once and you think you need more of it.”

“I don’t think, I know,” he growled against her lips, nipping faintly at her flesh. Kissing down over her jawline and toward her neck, Negan couldn’t help himself. Even though they were alone in her family’s home, that didn’t affect him. “I want you more than you could ever begin to understand.”

“Negan,” she grabbed a hold of his wrist attempting to get him to pull his grasp from her. “You’ve slept with Maggie.”

“I’m pretty sure Maggie has slept with a lot of people,” Negan commented, his eyelids heavy and his eyes filled with want for the woman he had in his arms. “You shouldn’t feel bad for the way that things are. Yeah, the world has a fucked-up way of making these things work, but we both knew last night that what we wanted wasn’t Glenn or Maggie.”

“Last night we were drunk,” she was doing her best to contain herself with the warmth of Negan’s breath over her lips. Getting drunk on Negan’s kisses was something she longed for and she wasn’t holding him off very well. “We were saying things.”

“But they were all true,” Negan huffed, his lips claiming hers again drawing her to turn in closer to him. “I haven’t had a fire inside of my heart like I do when I’m with you in a very long time. And I know you feel it too.”

“I have been such a bitch to you over the last few months and suddenly you are smitten with me?” she pulled her lips from his, her hand placing in over the center of his chest trying to talk some sense into the both of them. “Yes, you are incredibly sexy and I find myself drawn to you, but I’m your boss. I took advantage of you last night…”

“I don’t care if you are my boss. I like when someone is feisty. I’ve always been attracted to people in power,” Negan reached for her hand, bringing it up to his mouth to deposit a kiss over the center of her palm. Shuddering, her eyes fluttered to a close when he started pressing his kisses down over her pulse point. “I promise I’m a good boy. I will be able to do my work and still be endlessly yours after work.”

“Fuck…” she whimpered with his tongue flicking out over her flesh drawing chills to flood her body. “Negan, this is wrong…good people don’t do this. Nice people don’t do this.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being good Y/N,” Negan rumbled, his lips hovering back over hers again when he pressed his body in closer to hers. Warmth radiated from his body beside her and she felt a chill flooding her spine. “But for you…I’ll be whatever you want me to be. I just want to be yours so incredibly fucking bad.”

“But Maggie…” she whined with Negan’s lips skimming in over hers. Guilt did eat away at her with how much she found herself wanting to be near and around her sister’s boyfriend. Palming down the lengths of her body, Negan hooked his arm around her leg and drew her closer to him to hook it around his hip. “I can tell she likes you.”

“Maggie will survive. Glenn too,” Negan assured her, his fingers sliding up underneath her shirt. Once his rough fingertips collided with the warmth of her flesh, it had her raising up toward him wanting so badly to feel it. “But I won’t if I can’t be with you.”

“That’s dramatic,” she purred, her fingers dragging down over his chest reaching between them. Lowering her hand just enough, she palmed over the front of Negan’s pants making him pull his head back enough to look down at her touching him. His lips were parted, his pupils dilated and breathing heavy.

“I’m a dramatic kinda guy,” Negan smirked, his eyes connecting with hers. Nodding his head, he could see both the amusement and desire that she had for him. “If I can’t be with you, I’ll just fucking die. And then what? You’ll take me away from my kids. You don’t wanna do that to them, do you?”

“Way to make me feel guilty,” she snickered, her fingers working with the belt of Negan’s jeans while she adjusted him so that he was laying on his back. Crawling in closer to him, she got his pants open but kept her eyes locked with his. “You’re crazy.”

“I know,” Negan agreed with her, his hips arching up when she pulled down the zipper in his jeans. “It’s a bit of a problem really.”

“Oh?” her eyebrow arched drawing his smile to grow bigger and he nodded. “Maybe you’re too much trouble for my liking.”

“No, I’m the perfect kind of trouble. I’ll be as good or as bad as you want me to be,” Negan slurred, his breathing growing harder when she pushed his shirt up toward the center of his chest. Wincing, Negan enjoyed the way she kissed over the center of his abdomen, up toward his chest before circling her tongue around his nipple. Having her sucking and then faintly nipping at the flesh had his raspy moan filling the attic. “I think we both know that we want this…”

“You promise to be good for me?” her fingers traced shapes over his abdomen before sinking beneath the material of his boxer briefs. Once her fingertips connected with the root to his masculinity, it had his hips arching up toward the warmth of her touch.

“I do,” Negan nodded his head eagerly, dragging his tongue across his bottom lip when her fingers curled around his body to test the flesh in her grasp. “I want to be yours. Endlessly fucking yours. Please.”

“I pinned you to be a dominant alpha male Negan. But you’re acting so submissive,” she pointed out placing her leg over his to almost pin him down. Separating the material of his pants, she helped pull his cock out of the tight confines they were prisoned behind while she stroked over his distended flesh. “Look at you.”

“I’m both. Whatever the moment calls for,” Negan whispered, his dimples sinking in and the vein at the side of his neck becoming more prominent when he lifted his head to watch her touching him in tender sweeps that had him growing harder with every movement. “If you take a chance on me, you will see.”

“It does sound appealing,” she kissed down over his jawline enjoying the sounds that Negan was making. It didn’t take long for him to be completely solid in her grasp and she enjoyed the way he felt in her palm. “I do want to see where things are capable of going with the two of us Negan. I just need you to be a good boy and keep this hidden for just a little while longer. Can you do that? Just while we’re here?”

“What do you mean hidden?” Negan moaned while she pumped his length in her hand, her fingers firmly grasping to his flesh.

“I just mean we can’t tell Glenn or my family about this yet. I need this time with my family, but I know I want to spend time with you too,” she informed him having his hips arching up toward her caress while she jerked him off. Whining out, Negan felt her fingers releasing him but then he watched her lick at her fingertips before wrapping them back around his flesh. “Once this whole trip is over, then maybe we can put things into motion.”

“I can’t hide the way I feel about you,” Negan panted lifting his head up to watch her jerking him off. Behind his long eyelashes, his eyes were desperate and his moans were loud. It was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to hear and listen to from him.

“I’m not asking you to hide it when it’s just the two of us, but around my family I need you to be careful,” she instructed pampering his lips with wet kisses as she continued to pleasure him. “I just think this is something I need to do with my family in order to fix me. But I want to be with you too. We just can’t officially do that yet.”

“Okay,” Negan panted, his eyebrows tensing and the lines in his forehead growing with how she was jerking him off. “If this is what you need, I will do fucking anything for you.”

“It’s surprising how perfect you actually are,” she slurred against his lips hearing his grunts growing louder. “You really are my good boy, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Negan nodded his head, licking his lips when he felt his abdomen tensing up. Growling out, Negan nuzzled his nose in against the side of her neck when the first line of his cum shot out from the tip. Moaning against her flesh had her mewling out while she continued her caress over his cock milking him of his release. Thick ropes of cum covered his lower abdomen and chest while she continued to jerk him off. Once she released his member, he felt his heart hammering inside of his chest with his throat going dry. “Shit.”

Cuddling her head in against his shoulder, she looked up at the roof of the attic and sighed, “I never saw myself as the cheating type, yet…here I am. Having an affair with the man I thought I was supposed to hate. The man dating my sister,” she frowned caressing over his abdomen, her fingers teasing through the mess of his release. “I have to be crazy after all.”

“Or maybe you just found the thing that you finally needed,” Negan suggested, his finger curling underneath her jawline to get her to look up at him. “Maybe we just found the thing that was missing this whole time. Each other.”

----

Tags: @slutlanna976 @fuckthis-and-fuckthat @jennydehavilland @de-gabyconamor @ibelongtonegan @smallsadjellyfish @labyrinthofheartagrams @msjamesmarch @thebeautysurrounds @hotfornegan @redmercysugar @caprithebunny @tuttifuckinfruitty @emoryhemsworth @a-girl-interupted @akumune @stoneyggirl2 @xsarcasticwriterx @haleygreen23 @xhannahbananax03 @sanctuaryforthelost @burningredaffair @killaweiser @dead-of-niight @ayumi-wolf @hollyismentallyillhelp @promiscuousbarnes @tone-stark @lanadelnegan @flippittygibbitts @stickyhuesos

#Jeffrey Dean Morgan #Negan #Negan fanfiction #negan x reader #The Walking Dead #twd fanfiction #negan x you #negan smut #Negan smith

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fairypowerful · 1 year

Text

Before I begin, I just wanna throw these out:

• “ ‘Missing out on love’ isn't something that matters as much when your society isn't amatonormative.”

• “When the world around you doesn't emphasize marriage and romance and all that, then wouldn't you view cultures that do as a tad odd? Not weird in a bad way, just different.”

• “[…] People cannot fathom the concept that other people might experience romantic attraction, and do so intensely, and yet value something else above romance.”

• You just don’t have those feelings of “I need romance, I need marriage” when your society isn’t broken by being amatonormativity. You just don’t have those feelings when you’re already fulfilled in a community. You just don’t have those feelings when you have a purpose in life.

• “Call me crazy, but I know for a fact that I would not want a romantic relationship if I was a Jedi […] […] […] I honestly don't understand the assumption that ‘the Jedi are miserable because they can't get married,’ I really don't.”

• There’s romance and marriage in every single media and literature, so why should it be inserted into a fictional monastic culture? If you don’t think entire groups of people could choose to have no romantic commitments their entire life, then there’s over a thousand-year nonfictional accounts of monks and nuns and priests choosing to live a single life in an environment that, too, forbids them from romantic commitments, and they lived in contentment and peace.

————————————————

I wanted to show all that first, like a little preview, because this post is not only about why the Jedi are not wrong for disallowing romantic commitments and marriage, but it’s also about amatonormativity which has always been an enormous problem in the real world, and it clearly impacts how people view communities like the Jedi within fiction.

———

“So why can't Jedi marry? The Jedi believe that children and spouses deserve complete attention. They believe that people deserve present parents and involved partners. Being a Jedi isn't a job. It's a lifestyle. How dare they preach compassion and fairness and justice whilst leaving some abandoned child somewhere? How dare they teach kindness and love and self sacrifice while having a neglected spouse?” — @popupguidetothegalaxy (original post here)

This right here! It wouldn’t stop the criticisms within that part of the fandom, it’d just redirect it to a different one.

Even if the Jedi did marry and have families, y’all (Jedi antis) would then criticize the Jedi for prioritizing the galaxy (which is literally their vocation, their aspiration, and their lifestyle) over their spouses and children.

On top of their daily galactic duties that « take them away from the temple on assignments or missions, away from the planet that temple is located on, and always on the move interstellar-wise » ,,, antis think the Jedi should/could be able to marry and raise a family properly with zero neglect of either spouse and child?

Forget about being burnt out like a nurse in a severely understaffed hospital, it’s just simply an impossible commitment!

———

I watched “Tiger Cruise” rather recently, because it’s one of those Disney movies I never watched growing up, and one conversation in the movie puts this into even more perspective – because the teenaged main character is sick & tired of always only seeing her Navy commander father for a few weeks every few months, begging him to quit the Navy and come home for good.

Maddie: Dad, when are you coming home?

Commander Dolan: What do you mean? We're gonna be docking on Friday.

Maddie: No, I mean… When are you coming home for good?

Commander Dolan: Is that why you came on board? To ask me that? [pause] Look, this is my job.

Maddie: Then get a new one. You've got the degrees, you can do like anything you want.

Commander Dolan: This is what I do.

Maddie: [pause] Must be nice .. travel all over the world, no responsibilities.

Commander Dolan: I'm responsible to a lot of people.

Maddie: To strangers, Dad. What about us? [pause] We’re strangers too. We move all over the place, see you for a few weeks every four or five months, or whenever the Navy says it's okay.

Commander Dolan: The Navy is a way of life. I mean, you go into it and you know the sacrifices you have to make.

Maddie: Well, you’ve done it for my entire life.

Seriously, is this what Jedi antis want? It’s misery, and not necessarily on the parent’s part — he’s HAPPY and LOVES his job. He has the degrees to do anything he wants, as Maddie pointed out, but he doesn’t leave the Navy. It’s the same with the Jedi, as they have the best education and biggest library in the galaxies. And yet…

(some Jedi-Critical) and Anti-Jedi fans think the Jedi are miserable and why the Order is “wrong” for disallowing it [which is just projecting their subjective view of “what a fulfilling life is supposed to look like” onto a monastic people who value and find fulfillment in something other than romance], but it would actually be miserable if they did have families.

Pushing aside the fact that the Jedi are a monastic (and not only martial) organization, there’s a legit reason for disallowing marriage and committed relationships. It’s not fun and games. You can’t combine two enormous commitments and think you can handle it without neglecting the other. There’s no such thing as a part-time Jedi, it’s not a job title!

Jedi are able to leave the Order peacefully, they aren’t forced to stay, but on this specific topic, you just don’t have those feelings of « I need romance, I need marriage » when your society isn’t broken by being amatonormativity. You just don’t have those feelings when you’re already fulfilled in a community. You just don’t have those feelings when you have a purpose in life.

How dare they be happy and fulfilled by being Jedi? How dare they show their commitment to the Order by making the active and daily choice to be Jedi, when they could leave any time? How dare they stick their middle finger up at the no-romance/no-marriage rule? How dare the Jedi not conform to the “education → graduation → relationship → engagement → wedding → 2 kids and a dog” trajectory that only an amatonormative society expects of you? How dare the Jedi be monastic and live like it too?

———

(Words belong to @phoenixyfriend)

• “ ‘Missing out on love’ isn't something that matters as much when your society isn't amatonormative”

• “When your culture is one that emphasizes compassion for all [...] Don't you think that people might just not think of marriage as something worth striving for?”

• “When the world around you doesn't emphasize marriage and romance and all that, then wouldn't you view cultures that do as a tad odd? Not weird in a bad way, just different.”

I just keep thinking about the real world and how so much of the obsession with marriage and so on is a sociocultural thing. You don't want a big white dress because it's a big white dress: you want it because it is the symbol that your culture has been pushing on you since you were two. Girls are taught to fantasize about weddings and marriage and to like A Certain Look for it, sometimes to such a degree that they can spend decades in denial about things like their sexualities.

And we're unlearning that as a society, people are being more critical of the institution and how they engage with it, are starting to question what it is that our media teaches us, asking 'why is marriage the most important thing in a girl's life, or in anyone's life' and generally moving towards a world where marriage exists but is not treated as a universal life goal.

But the Jedi are just. Already doing that.”

• “Marriage is not an inherent human/sapient want. Companionship is! We are biologically wired to be social creatures! […] But marriage? A signed sheet of paper? That's not...inherent. Fidelity and monamory? Sure, maybe. Plenty of species mate for life. But... humans have been proving that's a choice for most of history.”

— (original post, here)

Even without the galactic scale of their lifestyle and duties, is it really so hard to understand or believe that people wouldn’t be miserable in a society where romance is not considered an important thing at all?

If you don’t think entire groups of people could choose to have no romantic commitments their entire life, then there’s over a thousand-years history of monks and nuns choosing to live a single life in an environment that, too, forbids them from romantic commitments, and they lived in contentment and peace.

They’re not only connected to other Jedi through the Force, they are connected to the rest of the universe through the Force; they find joy in their selflessness, in helping people, in trying their best to do good in a universe permeated with corruption. They love being a Jedi, there’s nothing a romantic relationship can give them that’s as fulfilling as being Jedi.

Just…stop projecting your amatonormative misery onto the Jedi.

———

If millions of people around the world in real-life can choose not to ever get married and have children (without even being a part of a close-knit community like the Jedi), despite being bombarded with amatonormativity in media and literature almost everyday, then what’s so weird about a fictional group (who are literally warrior-monks and whom have all of their companionship needs met within their non-amatonormative community) choosing to be single in favor of a higher calling and lifestyle that’s far more valuable and fulfilling than having a romantic relationship?

———

(Words belong to @jedi-enthusiast)

• “Call me crazy, but I know for a fact that I would not want a romantic relationship if I was a Jedi.

If I lived somewhere where I was a part of a community of people that I considered my mentors, my friends, my family; if I lived somewhere where I was encouraged to learn, to travel, to help people, to enjoy life as it is, and better myself; if I lived somewhere where I was supported and loved and cared for by the community, and I did the supporting, the loving, the caring for other people in the community as well; if I lived somewhere where it wasn't constantly implied, or sometimes outright stated, that my worth was tied to me marrying a man, popping out children, and making money...

...if I was a Jedi, I can honestly say that the thought of pursuing a romantic relationship probably wouldn't cross my mind at all---not unless I met someone specific whom I felt that sort of connection with, but even then, I probably wouldn't give up being a Jedi to be with them because I'd feel more fulfilled as a Jedi than I would in a romantic relationship.

I honestly don't understand the assumption that the Jedi are miserable because they can't get married, I really don't.

If you feel like you wouldn't be able to be fulfilled without a romantic partner, then that's fine! Everyone's different! We all have different wants and needs! But just accept that you wouldn't be fulfilled without a romantic relationship and stop acting like it's impossible for anyone else to feel differently.

The Jedi all seem perfectly happy as they are.”

— (original post, here)

I also wanna add, because I don’t know where to put this statement … there’s romance and marriage in every single media and literature, so why should it be inserted into a fictional monastic culture? They’re not only warriors, they’re monks too.

It’s a rhetorical question…but I think either they’re so marriage-obsessed that they hadn’t thought of this. Or they are consciously aware of the over-saturation of romance within media when they talk about how the Jedi Order are wrong for disallowing romantic relationships, but they don’t care because they think higher callings are stupid and anything else is inferior to a romance/marriage.

———

(Words belong to @tookas-have-teeth) (original post here)

• “There is a difference between people saying that everyone feels romantic attraction and that it is necessary to being human [arophobia] and the comments a lot of people make about the Jedi.

Oftentimes, when I see complaints about the Jedi, it's because people are angry that people who DO feel romantic attraction might not choose to act on it, or might be part of an organization that requires its members to give up romantic relationships and marriage. People cannot fathom the concept that other people might experience romantic attraction, and do so intensely, and yet value something else above romance.

People consider this to be a cruel denial and repression of one's feelings, rather than seeing it as a choice people are making to prioritize things they value. People have SO bought into the idea that romance is the Ultimate Form of Love, that romance is necessary to live a fulfilled life, that they cannot imagine folks finding other forms of love more fulfilling, especially if those folks experience romantic attraction.”

—

[a comment within the post linked immediately above] “By claiming that people who experience romantic attraction *must* act on it or else they are oppressed, one is functionally insulting every priest, monk, nun, or any number of members of a religious order who choose, of their own free will, not to pursue romance in favor of a higher calling.” — @supersaiyanjedi14

———

There’s only two other fictional worlds that I can think of off the top of my head, that are non-amatonormative. Blissfully fulfilled and happy …

… Equestria (My Little Pony) and Pixie Hollow (Disney Fairies).

After learning the word, I could now put a name to why these two worlds are my top favorites: It’s a non-amatonormative society where everyone’s happy with just a community and a purpose in their life, where romance is 100% not an important factor.

“But in Pixie Hollow, there’s no reproduction, so of course there wouldn’t be any relationships.”

There’s still love and attraction.

Rosetta gets a crush on Sled in Secret of the Wings, Queen Clarion and Lord Milori reveal they fell in love in the distant past. And Terrence has a crush on TinkerBell (although that might just be the printed media, ‘cause I don’t remember it being obvious in the movies).

Is it really so hard to understand or believe that in a society where romance is not considered an important thing at all, and people have (literal) power and a job that they love and a whole damn community for companionship, then those people wouldn’t be miserable?

So, again, stop projecting your allonormative and amatonormative misery onto the Jedi. ‘Cause that’s all it is: your projection.

It’s so sad that the real world can’t be like the aforementioned worlds. Our world makes it so hard for people; a majority don’t have jobs they love, or they don’t have time or money to pursue and grow their talents, and there’s no true community among us. It’s literally dystopian, and we only see it as “this is normal, it’s real life” because we don’t know any other way. But that’s quite a different topic, so…

—

I just wanted to add these, unrelated to Star Wars and fandoms, to point out how destructive it [amatonormativity and allonormativity] is in the real world. ‘Cause I do see tweets on my timeline, from time to time, where a user will be torn over not having a relationship at a certain age or their life not following the ‘right’ trajectory.

[posts by people outside of the Star Wars fandom]

— @uncanny-tranny (original post here)

• Amatonormativity has destroyed so many people's understanding and acceptance of themselves, and it's heartbreaking.

Yes, it is normal to be in your 20s, 30s, or older and not have lost your virginity, had a first kiss, or a partner. It is normal to say that you aren't ready for those things, too! It is normal if your life doesn't follow the "college graduate -> engagement -> buying a home -> 2.5 kids and a dog" trajectory that so many people have idealized.

So many people associate maturity with losing your virginity, or having a first kiss, or a serious relationship, and I think that's a dangerous association. Maturity isn't gained through those things, and you don't have to have those experiences to be considered "mature" or "grown." It is not a bad thing to go at your pace. Nobody else can live your life but you. If you end up having those experiences, that's great! But it should be done because you want to experience them, not because you feel "broken" and "immature" without them.

— @/acegirleatscake on Twitter

• Allonormativity and amatonormativity normalizes ableism: the “you must be cold, sick, delusional” or “there’s something wrong with you” if you don’t have sexual or romantic attractions or don’t want those types of relationships. Being single is seen as “being unwell.”

@/0p4l3sc3nt for this one (below)

• […] single people are constantly questioned about the legitimacy of our happiness […] In an Amatonormative society, our romantic relationships will always have ulterior motives (often subconscious) – which arise from us being conditioned to see romantic relationships as the means to achieve personhood, happiness, and TRUE purpose.

———

Sincerely, everyone in the Anti-Jedi circle needs to go outside, touch grass, and reflect on it.

If our society wasn’t amatonormative (if there was no such thing as our idealization of romance and marriage, if romantic relationships weren’t seen as the most important thing at all in our society), then nobody would have an issue with the Jedi Order disallowing it — for many legit reasons, might I again remind you! Their reasons make so much sense, yet your amatonormativity floods in and turns your brain into worms.

• “Fiction doesn't necessarily map onto people's real life opinions, but the statements people make about this topic are often very broad "the Jedi are bad for forbidding marriage, because people NEED romance" type statements that definitely sound like they're general worldviews rather than just opinions on fictional characters.” — @tookas-have-teeth (again)

This post was left in my drafts from a month ago (early August 2023), but seeing the topic come up again just made me kinda snap; and I don’t want to just scream into the void, so I’m posting it.

And I don’t care how repetitive some of it is, because that was very intentional. They’re like little reminders, so you don’t miss the point and might actually reflect on it.

HAVE A GOOD DAY!

#star wars #amatonormativity #pro jedi #fictional monastic cultures do not need romance or marriage when every single media is non-monastic and oversaturated with romance #in defense of the jedi #long post #allonormativity #this was in my drafts but I’m taking it out ‘cause I’m just sick and tired of ppl acting like the Jedi are miserable over the Order’s rule #I’m taking it out because I’m just so sick and tired of ppl acting like the Jedi don’t make the active daily CHOICE to be a Jedi #I’m sick and tired of allonormative and amatonormative-minded ppl in the fandom #thank you George Lucas for creating the Jedi #sw meta #star wars meta #I wish our society could be more like Equestria and Pixie Hollow and the Jedi #Our society is a dystopia

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bubbipond · 3 months

Text

Ranting this late in the day should be a crime but I am exhausted by the people in the BL/GL community.

Have any of you seen those videos on YouTube that are like basically talking about the persons least favorite pairings? I just watched one where they said force and book look too similar to play love interest. I’m sorry but the way that is insanely racist and just not true??? Then I saw in the comment section of a different one people saying that Phuwin should stop acting in bl’s because he obviously dislikes kissing men. Then the rest of the videos are just really bullying these actors. Listen, I’m all for criticism, but these videos aren’t constructive. Normally they are just mean and vile.

There are pairings that I don’t love so I don’t watch them. I wasn’t the biggest fan of Kinnporsche but I promise you I do not go around saying mean things about Mile or Apo. But let me address the ones that I just find extremely rude.

Number one Force and Book look nothing alike. I have never had an issue telling them apart because they have such vastly different features. I think a lot of criticism for them stems from their original series being super annoying and Books character irritating a lot of people. That wasn’t a Force and Book problem that was a writing problem. There is a long history of racism in Asian communities. Where a very popular joke is you can’t tell them apart. I’ve heard it in real life, in the K-pop scene, in anime and dramas, and now in BL, I guess. Now don’t get me wrong, there are actors who I feel would play brothers amazingly because of similarities. But Force and Book are not one of them., at least not in the case of being “almost twins” like this person was saying.

Moving onto the Phuwin comment, I think this one is so stupid because he does not have to take BL jobs. Actors stop doing these all the time. Pairings dissolve and new ones come around all the time. Also pairings dissolve and the actors stop doing BL’s as a whole. We have seen it countless times. so if he really didn’t want to have to have intimate scenes with a man, he definitely does not have to. Now let me say, I do understand the critique about the way he kisses but I don’t agree with it being just blatantly because he is kissing a guy. If you watched him in the non-BL series he has been in, where he has had a partner who is a woman, you would know that’s just how Phuwin kisses. If you were really trying to give good criticism, that has to be paired with you paying attention. If you watch how he talks and how his mouth moves, whether he’s in a show or talking in real life, his mouth movements when he kisses makes sense. Also keep in mind, and this is not a slight at him, but he has very skinny lips. So when he’s kissing Pond whose lips aren’t big, but they’re bigger than his obviously it’s not going to look like he’s doing as much. But to try and low-key say that he has some repressed homophobia because you don’t enjoy his acting is weird. Also keep in mind, and I’ve joked about this before, this pairing almost always end up playing characters where Ponds character is seemingly more into the relationship than Phuwins characters. Not that his characters don’t care, but it’s almost always pond being the character that has an egregious amount of affection for Phuwins character.

I honestly don’t normally watch videos like these, but I clicked on it just because they were discussing a lot of popular pairings. and in my head, I was just like oh you’re doing this for views. There is no way this is for any other reason when every pairing you have chosen to talk about are highly popular pairings. You mean to tell me out of all the ones do you want to talk about the ones with the biggest fan bases and I’m supposed to believe that you aren’t just trying to get views on your page?

This is coming from somebody who doesn’t even particularly love half of the pairings this person discussed. But something I have noticed is that in a fandom/world of media dealing with oppressed peoples, there is bigger critique than in its counterparts. Because not only are these shows about a group of people who have long been suppressed due to sexuality, but it’s also about a group of people who have history of racism against their cultures. It is okay for a series to not be the most expressive and beautiful and extravagant series on earth. It is okay for things to be mediocre at best. Because even the LGBTQ+ community have very very boring stories. That does not make the stories unworthy of being told. We are allowed as a community and as queer people to have media the same way as everyone else. But instead, we get these very dismissive and low-key weird and social relationships in media.

Okay thank you for coming to another TEDTalk…I hate a lot of you and a lot of you are weirdos. (:

#Pondphuwin #phuwin tangsakyuen #pond naravit #we are #we are the series #phumpeem #forcebook #a boss and a babe #fish upon the sky #only friends the series #mileapo #gmmtv #Thai bl

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animentality · 8 months

Note

I feel the reason why we don’t see a lot of people in the fandom who loudly hate durgetash or durgetash shippers (compared to the very loud backlash against people who, for example, headcanon Asterian as a doting father family man or etc) is that I think the Durgetash delusion is just kind of. Easy to understand? In general. Even for people who dont like or ship it. Like even though it’s very much a delusion built out of random scraps of game lore and notes and character animations, I feel like those scraps are so generically Compelling that it’s easy can see how people actually got here, way more than other obviously delusional ships in other fandoms. Or even in this one. Like you can’t really explain from anything in game why you think Asterian would make a good father (no offense to anyone on that grind 😭). But you can point to the prayer for forgiveness and Gortash’s unique animations when talking to Durge specifically, and recognise at LEAST what got people started, if not the fanon that followed.

Ironically this could ALSO be delusional on my part lol like maybe I’m just not seeing it somehow, but genuinely I have not noticed anywhere near the amount of discourse over Durgetash as I would expect from a similar ship in literally any other fandom. So I have just been trying to think about why! Is the delusion ultimately that sympathetic or are we just so in our own bubble that people don’t even know?

(Especially when Gortash himself is so very hated by most normal players for VERY correct reasons. Like he is SO hate-able. And I do see tons of posts of people saying they don’t get why people like him, but never to the level of what I would consider discourse. My Karlach-loving ass sure hated him until I played Durge and paid more attention to him and learned to enjoy him more from that funny gay villain angle, while still maintaining that Karlach and the Gondians and every refugee in the outer city deserve to beat him into a pulp ultimately - but I feel thats a common origin story for durgetashers lol)

You missed the outcry over the Franc letter being edited, huh?

We had a good couple of days of "Gortash isn't bisexual" discourse.

It's the most rowdy I've ever seen the fandom.

But you're correct in that Astarion fans will always be louder.

Gortash is evil and he's harder to woobify.

Doesn't mean we won't do it, though.

As for the general reason for Durgetash not being as intense as other ships, well.

How many people really play the Dark Urge?

Not many, I'd warrant. How many people care about Gortash at all?

Not many.

Now how many ship those two together....a good number, but it's still a small population, compared to the Astarion, Gale, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Karlach fans out there.

So it's just smaller, is all.

We try not to elbow each other too much, or we'll crowd crush in the broom closet of the hospital we're all crammed in, as Astarion fans are brought into Emergency Care after a night down in the discourse mines.

#baldurs gate 3 #enver gortash #dark urge #durgetash

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pink-bandana-writes · 1 year

Text

Comfort Character

Leonardo x Reader

Summary: When your comfort character comes crashing into your room, fresh from another reality, your world gets turned upside down in more ways than one…

Note: I really don’t know where this came from, but inspiration struck at 10:30 this evening and it is now 1:30 in the morning. Enjoy. I will most likely make this a series if y’all like it. <3 As always, the boys are aged up in this. (They're 23)

Warnings: None?

Word Count: 3.4k

Reader is: Twenty-three, female

It was a quiet, early summer night. One of those nights where the breezes make it cool enough to comfortably sleep. You were in your dark room, laying on your side on your phone, winding down for the night before going to sleep. You scrolled through Tumblr for a bit before finally clicking your phone off and setting it on your nightstand, closing your eyes to try and get some sleep.

CRASH!

You jolted, freezing in place. Had your bookcase collapsed? Had the legs of your desk spontaneously given out? You listened as something stirred on the floor, groaning. Great. Someone had broken in.

“Fuck…” They muttered under their breath.

Shaking, you reached for your phone, plucking it from the surface of the nightstand. For a moment, you thought about calling 9-11, but instead, your fingers found the app you used to control the strip lights you had suspended around your room, turning them on and bathing the room in gentle purple light.

Slowly, you sat up and looked down beside the bed, where the crash had originated. There, sitting on the floor staring up at you, was a large mutant turtle. Your eyes widened.

“D-don’t scream. I’m not going to—”

“Leonardo?” You whispered, voice catching in your throat as your heart hammered. Maybe you had drifted off to sleep, because this most definitely was a dream.

He froze, eyes locked on you. A shiver ran down your spine under his intense gaze. “Do I…have we met?” He asked quietly, those blue eyes of his never leaving you.

“Not…exactly.” You motioned to the poster on your wall, him and his brothers jumping past the title text, reading Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

Leo hesitated, taking a small step closer so he could get a closer look. “But that’s…we…”

“You…You’re real? This isn’t some…weird melatonin dream?”

“Not that I know of.” Leo murmured, still staring at the poster. “You can pinch me if you want. I don’t believe this either.”

“Glad to see your sense of humor is still intact.” You chuckled, unable to take your eyes off of him.

“Teenage?” Leo read, paying closer attention to the title. “I’m twenty-three.”

You chuckled. “It’s from 2016.”

“Oh. Yeah. That…makes sense.” He took a breath and turned his attention back to you. “Can I sit down?”

“Yeah, of course.” You scooted over in your bed and patted the space next to you.

He nodded gratefully and sat down on the bed, elbows resting on his knees, face in his hands as he walked himself through a mild existential crisis.

“So um…what happened? On your end, I mean. We don’t really…have interdimensional travel here.”

“Fight with Kraang. Got pushed through this…portal thing? I don’t know the word for it. And the next thing I knew, I was crashing through your closet. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“It’s fine.”

“I’ll help you clean it up.” He told you. “I…have a feeling I’m gonna be stuck here for a bit.”

“Donnie’ll figure it out.” You said it with confidence.

He smiled, turning to look at you. “You’re a fan, huh?”

“If the poster was any indication, yeah.” You chuckled and pointed up to the top shelf of your bookshelf in the corner of the room, which held your small collection of action figures. “I’ve got those, too.”

“They made action figures of us?”

“They made a lot more than that.” You chuckled.

He raised an eyebrow, curious. “Like what?”

“Cartoons, several movies, backpacks and funko pops and Halloween costumes…Oh, and comics. You guys are pretty much superheroes here.”

“Wow.” Leo thought for a long moment, looking a little choked up. “Wow. That’s…I mean…when humans in my reality see me they…scream. Sometimes they faint. And here, they think I’m a hero?”

“I mean, the general public might still be weird if they saw you out and about, but you’d be swarmed by nerds at a comic con.” You shrugged.

“What’s your name?” He asked, voice steady and smooth.

“(Y/N) (L/N).”

“Nice to meet you, (Y/N).” He smiled warmly, tilting his head. “So um…do you want me to clean this mess in the morning or right now?”

***

When the morning rolled around, you half-expected it to have all been a dream. And, looking around your room, which was clean thanks to Leo’s help, it could have been. Well, until you got out to your living room and saw the giant turtle sleeping on your couch.

God, he was a sight.

You’d pulled the curtains shut so none of your neighbors got a glance and called animal control or the SWAT team, and loaned him a few blankets and a plush pillow. His gear was laid across the dining room table, bandana off, leaving his face uncovered.

You stared at him for a long moment, shaking yourself out of it and turning into the kitchen to make breakfast. You thought, staring into the fridge, and then dug out the ingredients for scrambled eggs, setting a box of cereal on the counter too, so he had options. After all, you didn’t really know what the turtles liked to eat. Well, aside from pizza, that was.

“Morning.”

“Aah!” You jolted, turning to see him standing in the doorway. You held a hand to your heart. “Jesus, you’re quiet.”

“Sorry about that.” Leo chuckled. “Ninja training.”

“Right, right.” You laughed. “I’m making eggs, if you want any.”

“Scrambled?”

“Yeah.”

“Perfect. Do you, uh…need any help?” He asked.

“I’ve got it.”

“I can set the table.” He offered, blue eyes earnest in the daylight.

“Sure! There are dishes in that cabinet. The silverware is in that drawer.” You told him, motioning to both.

He nodded, gathering them before distributing them on the table. Meanwhile, you pulled a package of bacon out of the fridge and fried that up as well, figuring it wouldn’t hurt. He walked back into the kitchen once the table was set and leaned against the counter, watching as you cooked.

“So um…tell me about yourself. If you want. You don’t have to.” He stumbled over his words, and you couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, I am also twenty-three. We were born the same year.”

“’99?”

“Yep.” You chuckled. “I graduated college like a year ago and…I’ve still been figuring it out since then. Working part time for the time being until I…decide how I want to spend the rest of my life.”

“Sounds fun.”

“Eh, kinda. I don’t know, there’s just a lot of pressure to get my ducks in a row. Everyone keeps acting like the clock is ticking double-time now that I’m in my twenties, but especially since I’m out of college. And it kinda feels like it, too. But yeah, I’m hanging in there, I guess.” You shrugged. “My Mom is on a business trip, by the way. We’ve got the place to ourselves for the next…two months or so.”

“Two months?? What kind of business trip is it?”

“She’s a TV show producer. Travels a bit, sets things up, comes back home for the next few months, and does it again when another show gets ready to start filming.”

“That’s cool.” Leo nodded.

“It is.” You agreed, plating up the eggs and bacon and walking with him to the table. You sat across from each other, and you tried not to, but you couldn’t help but stare a little. He caught your eyes, because of course he did.

“What?” He asked teasingly. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Oh! No, I just…I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without your mask before.” You admitted, cheeks reddening.

“Huh.” He thought about it for a moment. “We do wear them a lot, I guess.”

“Yeah.” You agreed. “It makes it easier for the kids watching to tell you apart.”

“Aww.” Leo smiled.

The thought of human children playing with toys of him, or dressing up as him for Halloween crossing his mind. It was something he didn’t even dare imagine in his own reality, but something that happened all the time in yours. It was a place where he wasn’t feared.

“Did you watch us growing up?” He asked.

You nodded. “A lot of kids did. They’ve been making Ninja Turtles cartoon since my parents were teenagers.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Woah, really?”

“Yeah, it kicked off in the 80s.” You told him, pulling out your phone and walking him through the turtles media of the last forty-ish years, stopping once you got to the version he’d come from. “And this is you guys, the Bayverse turtles—”

“Bayverse? What’s that mean?”

“As in Michael Bay.”

“Michael Bay??” Leo’s eyes widened. “Transformers Michael Bay? Random explosions Michael Bay?”

“Yeah, same guy.”

“Why?”

“Beats me.” You laughed. “He didn’t direct them, though, just produced them.”

“Alright.” He nodded. “Mikey’s still never gonna believe me.”

“Can’t say I’d blame him.” You grinned, finishing your breakfast.

“So when do you have to go to work?”

“I have the day off. Tomorrow, I go in at three, though.” You told him. “What do you want to do when that happens?”

“Well, I…should probably stay here, right?”

“That would probably be smart.” You chuckled. “Will you be okay on your own? I don’t get out until eleven.”

“I’ll be fine. You’ve got a TV and an internet connection. I’m sure I can stay occupied in the meantime,” he said. “Besides, if your closet is indeed the other end of the portal I came through, I should probably stay near it in case Donnie figures out something.”

“Oh yeah, right.” You nodded, the thought of you coming home to find Leo gone without a goodbye making you sick. You hoped whenever he had to leave, you would get to see him off, maybe even see his brothers.

“Where do you work?”

“At an aquarium, actually.” You chuckled. “I’ve always really loved aquariums.”

“I’ve never been.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Leo shook his head. “Where I’m from…being me prevents me from being able to do things sometimes, but I love who I am. I wouldn’t trade it.”

Pity swelled in your heart for him. He’d never been to an aquarium, a theme park, the movie theater, the mall, hell, even a grocery store. He’d had so much taken from him, he’d been barred from so many places. You were glad he and his brothers were proud of who and what they were, but you felt bad that they couldn’t even enjoy the simplest of things because of it.

And because of that, an idea sprouted in your head.

“Do you want to go to an aquarium?” You asked him, mischief glinting in your eye. “I’m in pretty tight with the guys who close tonight and…they’re fans of yours. We just marathoned the 2012 show together. I know they’d be cool about it.”

Leo thought for a long moment, a smile slowly overtaking that handsome face of his.

“I’d really like that.” He decided. It wasn’t like Donnie would crack interdimensional travel in one day, right? What was the worst that could happen?

***

When night fell, you drove to the aquarium, Leo sitting on the floor in the back of the car, ducking beneath the windows, but watching carefully as you drove, taking in the sight of the outside world, the suburbs under starlight. Finally, you reached the mall that housed the aquarium of your employment.

You pulled into a parking spot and dialed your coworker’s number, letting him know you’d arrived.

“Hey, what’s going on, (Y/N)? I’ve got the cart and the tarp. What the fuck are you bringing in here?” Ryan, your coworker asked.

“Is it drugs? I bet it’s drugs.” Your other coworker, Parker, chimed in the background.

“Where the fuck would she get that many drugs?”

“Good point.”

“Can we focus here? Listen, I’ll explain everything, but I need you to be chill, okay? You can’t scream and you definitely can’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Right, right, got it.” Ryan promised. “We’ll be cool.”

“Alright. Come on out. I’ll pop the trunk.” You told him, hanging up and looking back at Leo. “Mission accomplished.”

“Not yet.” He chuckled, adjusting himself to get ready to dive into that rolling plastic cart as soon as it reached your car.

“Right, right. But we’re like…halfway there, I’d say.”

“Sure.” He grinned, amused by your optimism.

You got out of the car and walked outside, popping the trunk just as the boys rolled the large, opaque plastic cart up to it.

“Okay, now you have to tell us.” Parker insisted, sliding the tarp off of the cart, readying himself for whatever was about to go in it.

“Well the good news is, it’s not drugs.” Leo said, climbing over your back seats and into their line of view. His heart pounded, waiting for the scream, but once again, it never came. Instead, the boys stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Holy fuck, Leonardo???” Ryan asked, turning to you for explanation. “Thee Leonardo???”

“This is way better than drugs.” Parker grinned, helping Leo get in and putting the tarp on top of him. You closed the trunk and walked with them inside.

Once the coast was clear, Leonardo very carefully climbed out and looked around. You were in the backrooms, which was storage, mostly. Not much going on back there, especially after closing.

“I’ve just gotta lock up that back door and then you should be good to roam around.” Ryan gave a thumbs-up. “I’m a really big fan, by the way. You’re my favorite. I think the movies you guys are in are way underrated.”

Leo chuckled, a giant grin on his face. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”

“I’ll keep a look out.” Parker reported.

“Thanks, Parker.” You said, leading Leo out the doors and into the aquarium gift shop, which sat at the front entrance that connected to the mall.

“A gift shop?”

“Can’t have a tourist attraction without one.” You chuckled.

“That’s true. They’re everywhere in New York.” He said, following you back into the first area of the aquarium, one housing local fish. He read through the information panels on each one, nodding thoughtfully as he learned the new information.

“Come here.” You instructed him, leading him over towards a glass dome that sat on the bottom of one of the tanks, a gap beneath it a few feet tall, so guests could put their head in it and be surrounded by fish.

“That’s gonna be a tight fit.” Leo noted, eyeing up the small space, but getting down on the floor anyway, cramming himself inside. He looked around in the dome in wonder, watching as the fish swam around him. “Woah…”

“It’s one of my favorite things here.”

“What’s your favorite?”

“Further down.” You told him.

“Hey, would you get a picture of me?” He asked, handing you his shell phone, his camera app open.

“Of course.” You nodded, taking a picture of him in the dome. You got a few of him smiling and then waited for him to stop posing, looking around at a fish, and snapped a candid, the expression on his face peaceful. You handed the phone back.

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, of course.” You offered your arm. “Need a hand out of there?”

“Definitely.” He took your hand and you helped him to his feet, his shell barely grazing the side of the entryway.

The two of you continued, stopping to admire the seahorses, the tropical fish, the clownfish that you couldn’t help but compare to Nemo. You stopped in the touch tank, where some starfish and anemone were so the kids could touch them.

Leo rinsed his hands off in the sink and knelt beside the tank, tentatively poking one of the plush pink starfish. “Do they have names?”

“Not officially, no, but I call that one Greg.”

He laughed. “Hello, Greg. Nice to meet you.”

“He said hi. I can tell. I’m a professional.”

“Ah, you speak starfish?” He grinned, teasing.

“Of course I do. It’s a prerequisite to work here.”

“Do you speak turtle, too?”

“I think I’ve been speaking it pretty well, I’d say.”

“I can’t help but agree.” He chuckled, shaking his head. He bid the starfish goodbye and the two of you reached the jellyfish tank, where the jellyfish were bathed in purple light, gently bobbing through the water.

“You can change the color of the light.” You told him, pointing to the buttons on the wall beside the tank.

“That’s really cool.” He reached forward and poked the blue button, and sure enough, the jellyfish were soon floating in brilliant blue light. He snapped a picture, smiling to himself.

The two of you meandered through the exhibits, Leo continuing to read the informational text, glancing up at you on occasion. You told him things about the fish and other sea creatures as you passed them, listing off the knowledge you’d picked up on the job. And then, finally, you reached it, your favorite thing in the aquarium, the tunnel.

The tunnel went through the biggest tank in the facility, which housed a few small sharks, sea turtles, and several fish. There was a large statue of a woman’s head on one wall, and other assorted decorations throughout. You loved standing in it and watching them swim over you.

“This is my favorite thing in the aquarium.” You told him, motioning above you.

“I can see why.” He nodded, staring as one of the sea turtles swam overhead. “Hey, what’s that thing on his shell?”

“Oh, it’s a weight patch. He got hit by a boat a few years ago and he can’t manage his buoyancy anymore. He has to live here so we can monitor him and change his patches when he grows.”

“Mmm.” Leo nodded, watching him go. “What’s his name?”

“Shelldon.”

Leo laughed. “Original.”

“Yeah, I think so too. It suits him.”

It was quiet for a moment, the only sounds that of the water. You looked up at him, and for the first time, really realized just how tall he was in real life. You always knew he was, but it was different when he was standing in front of you instead of on a screen.

Leo reached forward, taking your hand in his, tentative and gentle, very much still testing the waters and giving you every chance to reject him, but you didn’t, giving his hand a squeeze.

“Thank you. For this. It’s been really great.”

“Of course. I owe you, actually, so…this is starting to repay that.”

“Owe me? For what?”

“You’re my comfort character, Leo. Since high school, you’ve gotten me through a lot of rough patches. I honestly don’t know if I’d be standing here without you. You save all kinds of lives in your own reality, but…you’re saving them here, too, just in a different way. You’ve always been my hero.”

His expression softened and he let go of your hand, pulling you into his arms instead, a large three-fingered hand cradling your head while the other held you tight. You surrendered to his hold, a hand resting against his plastron and the other settling on his bicep.

After a long few moments, Leo pulled away, admiring you in the gentle blue glow of the giant tank. He brushed a piece of hair out of your face and leaned closer, once again giving you every opportunity to pull away, but instead, you did the opposite, closing the distance between you and pressing your lips to his.

He melted against you, lips melding against yours perfectly and carefully, a little unsure, but the adrenaline of it all fueling him. He finally found the person of his dreams, but of course it would be just his luck that they were from another reality.

“There’s no way this is happening.” You murmured, stars in your eyes as you looked up at him.

“It’s happening.” He insisted, kissing you again, a little more confidently this time, smiling against you as your arms wound around his neck, your chest pressed against his, your lips soft and warm and perfect. It was better than any first kiss he could have imagined. Never, ever did he dare to dream he’d be standing where he was, doing what he was with a person who hadn’t even screamed when he met them.

At this point, it was too good to be a dream. He felt like he was floating on Cloud 9 by the time he finally came back down for air.

“How long can we stay here?” He asked, afraid to even ask. He felt like Cinderella waiting for midnight to hit.

You glanced at your watch. “A little while, at least.”

“Okay.” He nodded, taking your hand in his again. Leo knew one thing for certain, he never wanted that moment to end.

Neither did you.

Tags: @thelaundrybitch, @turtle-babe83, @dilucsflame33, @happymoonangel, @scholastic-dragon

Tag lists open! Let me know if you want to be added! <3

#leonardo x reader #bayverse #tmnt #tmntagedup #tmnt imagine #tmnt aged up #leo x reader #leonardo imagine #leo imagine

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makoredeyes · 2 months

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Hello, I hope you're doing well! This is probably an odd question, feel free to ignore it. I wanted to ask you as a fellow writer I admire, who is mostly focused on unpopular/dead/deep lore characters. Do you also sometimes feel like what you're writing is irrelevant and unexciting for everyone, except yourself? If so, how do you deal with this? For me sometimes this sudden realization is so crushing, that I cannot bring myself to finish a single work.

Hello! That’s not an odd question at all in fact it feels pretty relevant tbh. (Omg sorry long reply you got me going 💙)

I think I have several kind of interrelated answers for you so let me lay them out.

1- I am powered by autism and a MIGHTY hyperfixation. I have no choice I am compelled. I am blinded to all other things and so while the little bit of feedback that I do get is AMAZING and so extra sparkly motivating it is not entirely what compels me (but BOY does it help)

2- I joked with a friend just last night that, “this season is, as usual, does not have NEARLY enough Felwinter content and so I must therefore create my own.” - as she pointed out, there have been exactly TWO seasons with ANY Felwinter content at all and I wasn’t playing destiny yet for one of them. My point being, sometimes you gotta create what you want to see yourself. I’ve always found myself in some really niche corner of whatever fandom I’m in and have to do this a lot. Probably how I got to writing and drawing etc. fun thing is tho you find a really special group of people who think and love like you that way, and if it’s a smaller crowd, it’s all the more intimate for it Imo. I’ve made some super special friends in the last 9 months or so in my weird little corner here and it’s magical and I think that quality over quantity filter is awesome. (But yeah i know the validation machine is SO good too)

3- the BEST magic of borrowing from obscure content, generally unknown or undeveloped characters or lore is the creative freedom. The headcannon swapping the worldbuilding the background gathering… the RESEARCH! Gleaning what little bit I can from what we DO have. Who the fuck is timur?! We don’t know. I borrowed the beautiful designs for his face and general personality that Sylenth has developed because she’s done such an amazing job and was kind enough to allow me to play with him as she made him, and took that as jump off point for my writing etc but I have all the wiggle room in the world with but a few widely dispersed canon signposts to lead my direction and that is just so fucking fun for me.

(And that doesn’t mean more mainstream characters like Osiris don’t have their creative appeal to me either. I will deep dive on lore and character analysis for YEARS but living in the peripherals is comfy for me)

Those are all the positives to my work, but yeah, sometimes I do feel a little dejected. I have definitely felt a drop off in reader response weirdly in converse to the effort I put into my writing. Housefire has evolved into much more of a cohesive Plot(tm) that is going somewhere very specific from its origin of a few interlinked fluffy anecdotes and funnily enough about the time I started really digging my heels in and plotting and planning and putting in twists I was REALLY excited about, people started responding less. Some of my favorite fics are the least popular. Some of my art I am most proud of gets the least attention but that damn doodle of poor Felwinter getting splattered by a warsat has 200+ more notes than my next most popular art. (The shitposts always win Damnit! 😩🤣😅)

I get frustrated and yeah sometimes a bit discouraged sometimes and I spend Way Too Much time sitting here refreshing my notes because I am a sad lonely person chronically online just way too thirsty for a little validation or a conversation with someone but like. Every piece gets better. Every piece SOMEONE appreciates. Every piece **I** enjoy and is also a chance for all of that when I share it with the world and that’s exciting and good, and like I said the people in this community as niche and little as it is, are really something special, and some of the people that have come into my circle because of it make it SO worth it.

**I was done but then I read your ask one more time and I’ll add this since it popped into my head last-second:

If we are creating works for dead characters we love, we are keeping them alive.

How magical is that??

#ask

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salteytakesonmanga · 1 year

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I know it's rare for ANY translation to do so, especially English to/from Japanese since the languages are so dissimilar, but can you think of any time where a translation added to a scene, or made it better in your opinion?

Oh plenty of times! There’s even one in this chapter. I try to call them out when I notice them because I appreciate them myself. I don’t have a specific tag for them, though.

The thing is…

Sorry, Anon. You accidentally triggered one of my rants. If you just wanted an answer it's up there ⬆️

Good translations are not rare. Good translations aren’t even rare in manga anymore. The reason a lot of people think of all translations as bad is because people used to not take translations of manga seriously. They wouldn’t give it any care or attention, they’d just whip off whatever sounded close enough, and if they got whole-ass words wrong here or there then it didn’t really matter. Because it’s just comics, right? Who cares about that kiddie crap.

Translation - good translation - is HARD. It’s not just understanding two languages. Linguistic differences between source and translated language are not the reasons translations turn out bad. It’s cultural differences. You have to understand the literature and art and history of both languages, because that informs the environment that the author wrote in and the environment the readers are reading in. You have to make sure someone can just pick it up and read. Giving people cultural context in asides and footnotes and a glossary is great and all, but the experience of reading should be about the TEXT, not about the language. A good translator has to know about cultural and regional backgrounds and tensions in both languages.

Turning a Kansai accent into a Southern accent is a great example of what NOT to do, because the two regions have vastly different cultures that aren’t comparable. An easy illustration is that the stereotype about Southerners is they’re very polite and gracious and charming and speak slowly, while the stereotype about people from Kansai is they’re blunt and aggressive and outgoing and speak fast. But it was the industry standard for years to just slap a “funny accent” on any character speaking with a dialect.

On top of all of those concerns, comics has the additional limitation of space. The translation must meet all of the previous requirements, and also fit into a speech bubble. There is no getting around that. You have to sacrifice meaning somewhere in situations like that, and in an ongoing series with as many twists and late reveals as One Piece it can be hard to guess which word is the one that is crucial to the plot.

There are times I definitely think the translators did a great job, it's usually most noticeable with wordplay and puns, but I'm not sure "better than the original" is how I'd describe that. I think it’s very risky for a translator to try to make the work “better.” The original Swedish translation of Dracula did that back in the day and what they wound up publishing was basically fanfic. (It’s supposed to be really fucking good, though. It just has no more than a passing resemblance to Dracula.)

What does “better” look like? Is it when everything makes sense and is easy to read? But maybe the author wanted this scene to be challenging so you’d slow down and think about it. Is it when you take that random joke out of the serious scene? But maybe that joke was there to balance out the tension of the scene. Is it when the characters always act the way you expect them to? But characters, like people, have contradictions and inconsistencies, and if you take those out the character will be flat and boring.

That’s why I think a good translation is one where the translator is invisible. If they’ve done their job right, you should never think about them. But then, if they’re that good, it’s easy to forget how hard they work to get the product that good. And that’s when people start to think we don’t need translators, we have language learning models and machine translation… But that’s a different rant for another time.

Side note, Viz still pays actual human translators for their work. So do Yen Press and Seven Seas, last time I checked. I’m not about to tell you to NOT pirate shit, but if you buy one of their books you’re actually paying for a person to translate it.

Anyway, sorry/thank you for giving me an opportunity to rant about this. As you can see, it means a lot to me.

#anon ask #asked and answered #saltey takes on one piece #translation #saltey says

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bunnymajo · 11 months

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Time to fill out that OC questionnaire but for Thistle this time!

He'll be in the @sonic-oc-showdown so be sure to give him a vote!

Name: Thistle the Tenrec

Species: Highland Streaked Tenrec

Home: Central City

✨How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Since he’s inspired by Amy I wanted to pick another prickly flower name. Thistle flowers can have a lot of negative connotations in flower language just as much as positive ones (aggressiveness, unwanted intrusion). If roses are known for being noble and lovely, thistles are more wild but pesky, they’re also hard to let go if you end up stuck by one. The image of thistle flower suited him the more I thought about it.

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

Same age as Surge.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

Currently Surge and only Surge. He’s had previous partners but they usually don’t last very long. Current record is 1 month.

(The only tragic thing about Thistle is that he's not trying to be the worst boyfriend ever. He really wants to do good but he's too self-centered and stupid to realize that he's the problem)

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

Key Lime Pie, he likes anything tart but sweet.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

Works part time at a flower shop in central city, he’s actually quite popular with customers.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

Flower arrangement and astrology charting. Loves reading romance novels and watching old classic movies even if he gets the meaning of them completely wrong. He’s good at baking and also spends a lot of time online on social media. He’s a jack of all trades and always ready to learn something new to get closer with people in his life. He’s here for you. What more could you want from a guy :)

🎯 -What do they do best?

Anything that’s considered traditionally feminine Thistle excels at. Baking, shopping, event planning, crushing your enemies. But even with all of that he’s incredibly good at finding information. Does his new crush have a favorite band? Well Thistle just doxxed every band member and knows the rest of their schedule for the next 3 months.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

Thistle likes doing anything that will get him lots of compliments and attention, especially if it’s something he already finds fun. He’s the type to get really wrapped up in tedious side project so probably mapping out his and Surge’s life together via astrology

Hates doing something that doesn’t serve him in some way, like doing volunteer work for strangers. He also isn’t much of an adventuring type unless it’s to chase Surge down, he’d rather not though, he’d rather keep her tied down close to him and they can live a cozy domestic life.

Running around beating up robots getting sweaty and gross and for what? just to protect the masses? Awful, blech, Sonic can have that.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

One time he and Surge accidentally shared a soda, therefore doing the incredibly scandalous “indirect kiss”. She vaporized the soda can to destroy the evidence and then punched him in the gut when he told her. He passed out for about two days.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

His first relationship was an online one where the other person ended up blocking him and then publicly warned other people about his creepy behavior.

Thistle made one of those “am I the asshole?” posts about their relationship and everyone in the forum went “yeah, you were totally the asshole.”

Thistle deleted all his accounts and started over. He learned nothing. “It’s the forum that was wrong, they were all just jealous.”

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

There’s a few initial sketches I did to get the overall idea going and there’s a few minor tweaks but he’s basically the same design as when I started.

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

It was a bumblekast question asking about what a glitch Amy would be like and I liked the answer so much I wanted to develop it into a real character.

I really like aggressively-in-love characters like this in media actually, something about them being not shy at all about the person they’re in love with leads to a lot of funny or interesting situations, also since Surge is my favorite sonic character at the moment it’s fun thinking about how she would react to someone like this too. It’s a win-win situation for me lol.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

The villain in a shoujo romance manga

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

Identifies as male, Pan, he/him/they pronouns

🙌 - How many siblings does your OC have?

Zero. Probably for the best because he’s terrible with children.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

He’s an absolute mama’s boy when she’s around. (It should be noted that Thistle doesn’t really have a tragic backstory or bad childhood. He really is just like that for some reason.)

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

Thistle can be a lot of things I like about male characters (a goober in love, not afraid to appear “feminine”, a polite good boy, twisted priorities) and also be the worst person I’ve ever wanted to write thoughts for. He’s a very fun punching bag.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Probably too much haha, I don’t usually write a lot of actual terrible people so he’s a refreshingly fun rom-com villain.

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

It’s funnier if he stays alive imo. If Surge ever changes her ways in canon or something drastic happens to her he might lose interest in her and move on to his next victim, that’s about as close as I’d ever get to “killing him”. It would have to be a very drastic personality change though.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Whatever the fear of being unloved is.

To him, being loved by someone is the ultimate goal. “I can love so easily, why is it so hard for someone to stay in love with me? I must not be loving hard enough, I need to love someone who craves love just as much as I do. Yes, then it would be the ultimate romance” - is basically the rationalization here.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

I mean probably Amy, not just for Surge’s sake, Amy will fight anyone she finds being a selfish creep in the name of love.

In Thistle's mind anyone who even smiles in Surge's direction is a rival. She's spoken for, who do they think they are??

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

A little over a year!

🍥 - What age were you when you created the OC?

#hey hey it's that time again #thistle the tenrec #my ocs #sonic ocs

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essence-of-nothingness · 1 month

Text

Airy's Behavior

I got bored and decided to write a doc about Airy's behavior. This is kinda a part two of "Airy is in his Mid-40s" You don't have to read that one to understand this one, but it's always there if you want to read it. One last thing this is all speculation from what I have seen in the show, basically headcanons, so have fun and enjoy.

The original doc will be linked here if you want to read it there instead and see the sources.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPfznYB8tEg66nNoyGUxJxPvPwS2evl-0XBTvO-X2Us/edit?usp=sharing

This entire doc is about Airy’s behavior, from how smart I think he is, to his social interactions, and relationships, how the isolation affected him, and more. All of this is my headcanons about ONE on the information that is present in the show and Mini Series. I don’t mind if you have your own opinions, this is just something that I made for myself.

In the three to four years that I have spent in the fandom, I have noticed that in many characterizations Airy makes it out that Airy is an innocent baby who is unaware of his wrongdoing. As I mentioned before, I don’t mind if this is how he is characterized since everyone is entitled to how they think a character is. I’d say that Airy is aware that what he is doing is wrong. Airy’s just not entirely aware and/or he just doesn't care as long as he gets entertained or gets any form of social interaction.

Intelligence

From what details that we do see in the show Airy is smart. When it comes to topics or things that don't relate to socializing, like survival, coding, coercing, etc. Airy can do those things well.

Survival

For example survival, he spent around a decade in the middle of the woods with no books or anything to help him with survival. He built an entire cabin all on his own, built a campfire, and generally knew his way around the woods. This tells me that he at least had some knowledge of how to build a cabin, because from what we have seen he didn’t have a manual on how to build a cabin. Also, this early on he didn't know how to properly use the computer yet or the coding that it involved. In the miniseries, we see that Airy can see things back from his original home on Earth through the security cameras. To build a cabin you need to know how much wood you might need, how big it should be, what materials are necessary, how to put it all together, and insulation. On top of that, he also made furniture for the cabin, including a makeshift bed, a table, a stool, and probably the ax itself, maybe since we don’t see the ax in the flashback. All of this shows that Airy is smart when it comes to survival. He knows how to build a shelter, furniture, how to make a fire, etc.

Coding

Another thing that I would like to add is the computer itself. From the few scenes that we do see of what the computer monitor looks like the information that is present is confusing. I’m not a coder myself or have any knowledge of coding but the code itself looked confusing and on top of that there were icons in the bottom left corner. Many icons depicted smiling faces and growing ones, and when Liam clicked on them they made these waving lines whatever they were. The very fact that Airy was able to figure out all of the coding for that computer by himself and he most likely had to teach himself. That takes a lot of dedication especially since some of the coding required for that computer includes some things that normal coding wouldn’t because some of the abilities that AIry had through the computer were the ability to revive the dead, teleportation, and shrinking/bigger people and items.

Coercing

The main reason why Airy in the show seems incompetent is because of the way he communicates, his attention is all over the place, and he doesn't seem to notice when people are in danger unless it’s right in front of him. But I feel like Airy to a certain extent is aware of how to behave when it comes to interacting with others. Of course, his socializing skills have been diminished because of the years of isolation. But I feel like he is aware that what he is doing is wrong to some small extent and also how and when it is necessary to manipulate certain situations.

Eliminations

The entire elimination process in a way was a form of coercion, this is most prevalent with Liam/Backpack, Bryce/Soda Bottle, and most infamous of all Amelia/Scenty.

In episode 17 “You Move, I Send” we learn more about Season ONE, and to calm down the people he accidentally kidnapped he lies and tells them that they were chosen to compete in a competition. While this might have been accidental at first, I feel like later on it helped Airy to get what he wanted. By telling both the Season One and more specifically the Season Two ‘contestants’ that they were competing for a prize and that there was an audience watching, he could get them to do what he wanted and he knew that. This is important because the ‘contestants’ know people are watching and it forces them to comply more, especially to those who want to leave or want the prize. Of course, there is no audience it’s all Airy. He's the one who's choosing who gets to stay or who gets to leave.

The elimination is more of a motivator than ever for the people who want to escape like Amelia’s/Scenty's team or Amelia herself. Throughout ONE she saw that other teams or people were getting chosen to get eliminated instead of her. Seeing all of this, Scenty knowing that the viewers don’t want her eliminated despite her cries and plead eventually causes her to not care about eliminations as much. This in addition to the 7 months absence caused Scenty to eventually not even want to go back home as seen in episode 16 “Bottle Episode” Of course the 7 months absence wasn’t planned at all but in seeing that viewers much rather choose someone else other than her, Airy was able to get Amelia to somewhat want to stay. Therefore making her more compliant in the competition.

For Liam and Bryce, they were able to escape in time thanks to the help of Stone, but you could see this process a bit in both of them. By the time episode 9 came out Liam had gotten used to living on the Plane and with the earlier episodes Liam kept saying “There's always next time” but as the episodes passed especially with the drowning Liam began to give up a bit.

Liam

Some situations that included some form of coercion were shown in episode 17 and “You Move, I Send” where you can see certain scenes where Airy did something or said something to get Liam to do what he wanted.

During the cave scene, Airy saw that Liam was about to smash the computer. Airy knew that if he didn't do something Liam would destroy his work (ONE) and he wouldn’t be able to continue it. He also knew because of Liam’s outburst that he wanted the contestants to be freed. So using this information Airy said “That computer controls everything that I do. If you destroy it, I won’t be able to send the contestants back” This statement was able to get Liam to calm down a bit and to destroy the computer.

During the marsh scene when Airy saw that Liam had the cassette parts he ‘promised’ to send the contestants to get back the cassette tape. Airy knew that Liam wouldn’t give him the cassette if he didn’t agree to let the contestants go. Airy of course didn’t want that but just lied to get it back. Later on, while Liam is asleep we see that Airy decided to do another challenge while Liam was asleep. I think Airy knew that this was something that Liam wouldn’t like since he made the promise earlier and also because he did it on the cover of the night. In the end, he still had the cassette tape.

In addition to not destroying the computer, Airy is the only one who knows how that computer functions. Liam needs Airy to send the contestants back whether he wants his help or not. Liam can threaten Airy all he wants or wants but if he did do something then he wouldn’t be able to help out his friends. We can see this happening in the finale, Airy died and we see Liam trying to figure out how the computer functions.

Isolation

Although I do believe that Airy was aware of some of the things he did, I also believe that he did have issues with social interaction. Since he was in isolation for a long time, a decade to be specific. In addition to that the isolation also led to some of his behavior and the way that he acted sometimes. Some of these behaviors include the way that he talks, and interacts with the ‘contestants’ and the way he views his relationship with the contestants.

Throughout the show, we see that Airy has some difficulty talking. This includes things such as messing up his words, his monotone voice, talking slowly, etc. This makes sense because, in those ten years of isolation, he didn’t have anyone to talk to. He claimed that there was no one else in his Forest dimension, and as far as we have seen there don’t appear to be any other animals. It’s just Airy, and because of this, there was no reason for Airy to talk at all. Since he didn’t need to talk he didn’t have to worry about his tone of voice, how fast he talked, or worry if he messed up his speech. He most likely stopped talking the majority of the time and focused more of his time and attention on working on the computer’s code, building his cabin, or just surviving. All of this led to him sounding the way he does once ONE season two started.

Social and Mental Effects

In addition to not talking to anyone, we can now talk about the isolation portion and how it affected him socially and mentally.

Being alone for so long can be detrimental to a person’s mental and social life, as we can see in Airy’s case it affected the way that he talked, the way he expressed emotions, and the way he interacted with the contestants. It is shown throughout ONE that Airy has had some difficulties when it comes to interacting with his ‘contestants’. There's a big reason for that, according to research isolation can cause a person to miss social cues, difficulties with regulation of emotions and/or feelings, emotional detachment from social interaction, cognitive decline (memory, attention, and language), and loss of identity. These are just a few examples, all of which can be seen in Airy.

Social cues in cases whenever another character seems distressed, he doesn't seem to care or notice unless someone is dead or physically hurt.

Difficulties with regulating emotions and feelings, most of the time when Airy is heard or seen he sounds bored, monotone, and interested. The only time we see Airy express emotion is when he makes those clouds, whenever he talks about ONE “I think I’m doing a pretty good job”, whenever he's watching the contestants, when he is in pain, about to get killed/die, or in confusion. Other than that he had a blank look on his face.

Whenever he talks to the contestants he doesn't sound attached or whenever he talks to Liam he doesn't seem attached. Although I do argue that he was attached, I’ll explain it later on, but in simpler words, I feel like he was more attached to the idea of the contestants and having someone to interact with rather than the person themselves.

Cognitive decline, we know due to some scenes that Airy has difficulty with his memory, attention span, language, and learning skills. Memory in the case that he can’t remember his real name, he can’t remember how to properly interact with others, most likely doesn't remember his past life, and the entire thing with giving the contestant nicknames because it was easier to remember. Attention spans in cases where even though he loves ONE and is the only thing he cares about there are times when Airy claims he didn’t see something when it did happen. Stone stuffing the sticky notes inside of Liam, Moldy team reaching the tree/bush. When Liam came to his world Airy just kept changing topics constantly. Language is obvious in the case where he speaks slowly and monotone. Everything he says sounds like a sentence when it shouldn’t.

Lastly, I would like to add that the way you behave and act can be dedicated to the culture and society that you grew up/lived around. People are very adaptable and you can very much learn how to behave or change your behavior depending on where you are. But what happens if you don’t have anyone to base your identity on? You begin to lose your self-identity, we can see this happen in ONE with Airy he doesn't know his real name, he barely talks about his past life, and all that he identifies himself with is being the Host of ONE.

Relationships

Now that we covered how smart he can be and how the isolation has affected him. Now I can talk about how it affects his relationship with the contestants and ONE.

Contestants

Since he is the host of ONE he has to maintain a distance when it comes to forming attachments when he can to the contestants otherwise it would’ve caused a bias. Which I think happened when I came to Amelia. Why do I think this? Well in every elimination up until episode 16, every time that Amelia was put up for elimination she was never the one chosen. This was the same situation with Liam, every time he was up for elimination he was never chosen despite having a broken leg and dying. The only reason he eliminated Liam was because he was the last one on his team.

Remember that Airy has been in isolation for a decade and hasn’t had a proper social interaction for a long time. Being with the contestants and having them talk back probably made Airy have some bias towards those who talked to him the most. Most likely because even if he didn't consciously want it he would’ve craved some form of company. Throughout ONE the only people who interacted with Airy the most, as in calling for him, calling him out on unfairness, insulting him, etc, constantly were Amelia, Liam, and Bryce. The other contestants either talk very little or not at all towards Airy. The people who stayed the longest and were brought back were those who talked to him the most.

We can also see this with Liam when he arrives at Airy’s world. When Liam fell that waterfall or that tree crushed him when he tried to kill Airy. Airy could’ve just let Liam fall and drown or left him to rot underneath that tree that way he would’ve stayed safe or could’ve continued ONE without Liam interfering. Though Airy didn’t do that, he wanted Liam alive because he knew that Liam was and would be the only person who would be with him for who knows how long.

ONE

Imagine yourself in Airy’s shoes for a second.

You just died in a horrible car crash and the next thing you know you wake up in this weird liminal space room with two waiting room chairs, a table, and a radio. You see maybe a few other people pop in here and there but they don't notice or care about you. They all seem to focus on some invisible person off in the distance and said person running towards them into the horizon.

Not knowing what to do, you sit down and flip through the radio. Every time you lift the antenna you get transported to a different dimension, a hostile dimension where you keep dying over and over and over and over. Each time is just as traumatizing as the last until one day you lift the antenna and end up in a tranquil forest. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of threat, it’s nice and quiet, but it’s lonely. Do you risk dying leaving this tranquil forest probably never seeing another place like this again? No, you stay.

Over the next few months, you build a cabin, a fireplace, and all the essentials you need but you can’t help but mess around with the computer in the cave, it’s the only thing of interest in that world. You also discover that you can create planets, so you decide to see if you can do anything with these two things. Then one day while messing with the computer you accidentally teleport people onto your little planet.

You panic and lie, saying they were chosen to compete in a competition and that there was a prize at the end. Before you can finish the season, you accidentally kill all of them. Later on, while trying to make amends to those Season One contestants you begin to put more time, effort, dedication, and supplies into this show, in hopes of making a better season. At some point ONE is your entire life, everything you do now is to further progress towards ONE.

At this point you have forgotten your entire identity, your past life gone to time, you barely remember your real name anymore, your entire identity is stripped away and all that is left behind is an empty husk of a person that was once you. So you begin identifying with the show, this show is all you have left. If you quit on this show you have nothing left to go by, your entire life is now gone.

Who Is Airy?

When you are completely isolated and stripped of everything that you once knew in life, everything that makes you gone. Of course, you're going to hold onto whatever you can. Airy by the time Season Two started having everything he knew gone. His name, home, friends, family. All he had left was his cassette tape, his cabin, and ONE. ONE was the only thing that made him happy, the only thing that motivated him to keep going. By the time that ONE started he began identifying himself by that show. His entire identity now revolves around the show, all the prepping, learning, choosing, and waiting that he did was dedicated to ONE. He was the HOST and the thought of it being taken away from him was gone, the one thing left he had, his entire remaining identity he didn’t like. Of course, he didn’t, what was the lives of innocents to maintain your sanity, your identity? If ONE was gone, who was Airy? What did he dedicate an entire decade to? What was the point of making amends to those he killed in Season One? Giving up ONE would be like dying all over again.

This was also the reason why he wanted the cassette tape back so badly because it was one of the only things that let him identify back to his old life. That life he barely remembered, the only thing left from that forgotten past.

Airy didn’t want to stop the show because he was a genuinely bad guy, most of it was because he didn’t want to lose what he had left. Of course that doesn’t excuse his actions, he still needs to be held accountable. But this does explain why Airy acts the way that he does, some part of him does know that what he is doing is wrong, but if he admits that then that means that his entire identity was bad and do you think you want to identify as a bad guy? I can explain why ignores their pleas of despair and why he is disinterested in stopping ONE.

Conclusion

This was an entire doc dedicated to why I believe Airy behaves the way that he does like the coercing, how he behaves with the contestants, and his relationship with ONE. Along with his intelligence and how he is not as incompetent as he is made out to be.

#hfjone #hfj airy #cheesy hfj #osc #one airy #one object show #headcanon #character analysis

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douglysium · 4 months

Text

Episode 18 TMP Quick Thoughts

Housekeeping and Prologue

Hello, this is Douglysium and you might not know me as that guy who wrote over 100 pages of analysis on the Eye (which can be read on Tumblr here (https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the) or Google Docs here (The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss)) or as that guy who wrote an article on the Extinction (which can be read on Tumblr here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/717929126195003392/what-would-avatars-of-the-extinction-be-like-a) and Google Docs here(What would Avatars of the Extinction be like?: A TMA Speculation)). Suffice to say I might be a bit of a TMA fan. Also, spoilers for TMP up until episode 10. You can read my ramblings on the last episode here (Episode 17 TMP Quick Thoughts).

However, Protocol offers a very unique opportunity and experience for me because I didn’t actually get into TMA until after it was over and I binged all of it. So this is my first time experiencing something even remotely similar to what the original TMA fans probably experienced when waiting for each episode week by week and slowly having to put everything together with the limited information they had. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring since this might be my only chance to do something similar. However, I’m working on some longer form TMA content so I can’t spend as much time on these articles giving a bunch of super detailed thoughts. I will try to keep these short and that inevitably might mean some could have questions about why I think or predict certain things and in those cases I would probably recommend you read at least some of the two articles I mentioned above to get a better idea of where I’m coming from. This also means I won’t be giving you a play-by-play of every single thing that happens in the episode so I encourage you to listen to or read them yourselves and feel free to comment if you feel something is important.

These reviews are probably going to end up focusing mostly on the Entities and their manifestations as they are what I have thought about the most and spent the most time interpreting and there’s been a lot of… interesting theories floating around about how the Entities are manifesting that I want to go over.

Finally, I’m just going to say it right now, spoiler warning for all of The Magnus Archives. I know that Jon and co said one could start with Protocol and be fine, and while that’s probably true, media like this tends to be made in conversation with or take into consideration what came before it in the irl chronology in order to connect them. While I’m sure you could skip The Magnus Archives, I don't really see the point of skipping over it when we are already getting characters from TMA showing up in TMP in Protocol. So to me it’s pretty clear that if we want to understand the full picture of TMP and all the things it is trying to say then we can’t just try to pretend TMA doesn’t exist or scrub it away. Just because you could understand what’s happening without the context in broad strokes doesn’t mean you're getting all the nuances.

These articles are meant to be quick and short so sorry if there’s typos and if I don’t address every possible question or possibility. I don’t want to repeat myself too much in this series outside of the prologue so be sure to skim some of my other articles.

Episode 18 “Solo Work”

As always, we are witnessing the events of the podcast via various devices. We start off in the evening with Alice’s phone as she encounters Teddy in the courtyard outside of the OIAR. Alice grabs Teddy’s attention and the transcripts say “Teddy looks over and sees her. He does his best to seem pleased to see her. ALICE comes over and takes her earphones out.” An interesting reaction to be noted in the transcripts and one that points to a possibly rocky relationship or some kind of friction between them in the future. Although, I can’t say if Teddy pretending to look pleased with Alice is because of any personal gripe, he’s attempting to cut all ties with the OIAR, or because he’s tired / stressed.

Teddy says “Hey Alice! Hi. I er, didn’t recognize you.” and the two get to talking. Alice had assumed Teddy came to visit her but it turns out he had an interview. Alice makes a joke about Teddy being unable to make it without her but he responds “You do realize there are other businesses in Royal Mint Court? It’s not just the creepy basement nightmare factory.” before Alice responds “(genuinely surprised) Huh. I never considered that.” So Royal Mint Court is definitely a location to keep an ear out for and I might have to go back and see if the location has been previously mentioned. Also, fun fact about Royal Mint Court, it’s an actual place in London that wikipedia states “The main building, designed by James Johnson and completed by Robert Smirke.” If you’ve seen TMA you’ll understand just how important Robert Smirke is.

There’s still a lot of questions up in the air in relation to how closely the Protocol universe mirrors the TMA universe and when the supernatural events started appearing. If this universe has its own Entities then there’s a chance this universe’s Robert Smirke also had a connection to the supernatural but if these are the same Entities from TMA then the question becomes about some weird multiversal time and space shenanigans affecting when on the timeline the Entities would have appeared in the Protocol universe that I won’t get into today. We know that based on Anya Villette’s account in MAG 114 (Cracked Foundation) it seems possible for things being sent through the gaps in reality to actually end up at a time before they left. Exactly how much of a time discrepancy there can be when traversing the gap or if there is any limit or condition to the weird time stuff is unknown. This is all to say that I can’t tell you if Smirke will have any level of importance again in this universe or if he’s just a normal architect and this is a reference for TMA viewers.

Teddy’s comment about the Royal Mint Court makes me wonder a bit more about how the OIAR is set up. We know Lena seems in charge, Gwen is currently the Externals Liaison working under her, and in Episode 11 (Marked) Gwen says to Celia “And I gave a full explanation for my lateness. Which, I might add, I didn’t actually need to do for a subordinate.” Which might imply that officially the Externals Liaison somehow outranks the station of Sam, Celia, and Alice. We also know that Lena has her own bosses that she answer’s too based on Gwen’s blackmail. I wonder if the OIAR has a day shift and if there’s always supposed to be an Externals Liaison? If so, who was the Liaison before Gwen? Also, if the OIAR is a part of the government how far does knowledge of the supernatural go? Does the prime minister know about what the OIAR exactly does? Are the king / queen kept in any sort of loop?

Alice asks how Teddy is doing and he says “I’ve been better. I have some savings, though – I’ll get by.” and Alice remarks “Be cool if you got this job, right? You working here by day, and me lurking in the night… Hey we could even go for drinks! A little snifter to start your day off right!” To which Teddy says what is basically a “maybe” depending on how the interview goes. Teddy says he’ll have to keep her posted about said interview and Alice mentions how he needs to keep her posted about everything because she never gets to see him anymore.

Alice mentions Celia to Teddy and explains “Oh, you’ll love her mate. She’s really weird, but like, in a hot way. She’ll make you forget about all about your embarrassing obsession with Sam.” Makes me wonder if Teddy did genuinely have feelings for Sam at some point and if the reason Alice seemed upset that Celia was going on another date with Sam is because Alice also has feelings for Celia. This is me saying I wonder how many of Alice’s jokes or comments are projection. We then get this interaction:

ALICE

“Then text me back, you loser.”

TEDDY

“I will.”

ALICE

“Liar.”

That last line hits harder than intended, and the air suddenly goes out of the conversation.

I wonder if the reason this line hits so hard is because it hits too close to home or Alice’s comment has more truth to it than either would care to admit? One of the last things Alice says as Teddy leaves is “Look after yourself Teddy.” I wonder if this worry is connected to the reason Teddy quit his job or if it’s just how anyone would worry about a friend.

We cut to the breakroom at night as Sam pours himself some coffee and Lena walks in. Sam notes that he doesn’t see Lena in the breakroom often and she says “I forgot to fill my thermos this evening.” Lena makes note of how nervous Sam appears and he explains “Oh, well, I mean, if I’m being honest, you’re my boss, but I’ve hardly ever actually spoken to you still.” Which leads to:

LENA

“Why would I need to talk to you? Your work is satisfactory. Unless you have a work-related issue I could assist you with?”

SAM

“Um no, nothing like that.”

LENA

“Then Consider my silence a compliment, if you like.”

SAM

“Right.”

Lena indeed comes off as a bit strange. I wonder if she doesn’t need to talk to Sam most of the time because she has some way of monitoring where people are or what they are doing like a certain boss from TMA. Also, does this mean Lena is going through each of the cases after they are categorized by her subordinates or is she just saying that whoever / whatever checks them hasn’t complained? Maybe she has a way of watching Sam work or maybe a possibly supernatural way of automatically going through the forms?

Sam asks Lena where Celia is in an interaction I find kind of funny and Lena answers “(taking slight pity) She called in with a “childcare emergency”.” We know that by the end of this episode it was probably Celia teleporting somewhere randomly suddenly again.

SAM

“God, I hope Jack’s ok.”

LENA

“Who’s that?”

SAM

“Uh, Celia’s kid?”

LENA

“Oh, is that its name?”

SAM

“Uh Yeah.’

LENA

“Hm.”

SAM

“No kids of your own?”

LENA

“No.”

SAM

“No. That makes sense.”

Never change Lena, never change.

Case

This case is already notable because it’s being told to us by Augustus. A voice that’s not only implied to be rare when Alice says “Hey! Augustus! Feels like I haven’t heard from him in forever!” but we actually haven’t heard the voice since Episode 4 (Taking Notes). I have some thoughts about Augustus but let’s go through the case first. It starts off with:

Report of medical examiner’s investigation for inquest into the death of Violet Parker.

Autopsy and examination performed by Dr. S. Rashid.

Decedent: Violet Abigail Parker

Sex: Female

Age: 41

Ethnicity: White British

Occupation: Teacher

Home Address: 74 Willowtree Close, Ickenham, Greater London

Type of death: Found at scene

Notification by: London Metropolitan Police

Investigating agency: As above

Situation of body: Clothed, in the middle of Milton Court Open Space

Estimated time of death: 0300 20.03.2024

Rigor: Yes

Eyes: Grey

Hair: Brown

Height: 172 centimetres

Weight: 31 kilograms

Marks and wounds: Extreme malnutrition. Tissue damage on both feet and stress fracture on left ankle.

Probable cause of death: Starvation, dehydration, exposure.

Manner of death: Unknown.

The examiner leaves some comments about the autopsy and notes how despite being dead the body of Violet keeps talking: “Shortly before finishing my autopsy, the deceased, Violet Abigail Parker, began to talk. I can confirm absolutely that she was dead when this happened and I was at that moment examining her heart and lungs, and neither of them was active. How she could speak with an open thorax is beyond me.” They note that Violet’s body is reciting some kind of story with something akin to an involuntary reflex and they suspect that the story in question has something to do with the nature of her death. “After a few minutes the cadaver ceased to speak, and has not resumed since. Unless the morgue technicians or funeral directors report something similar prior to cremation, I will probably keep this record private. I want to ask the next of kin about it but unfortunately noone has come forward to claim the body. Besides, I doubt they would appreciate finding out she gave her last words after her death.”

Okay, there’s already a lot in common here with the drowning woman that appears in Episode 15 (Well Run). It’s a bit hard to tell when listening to it for the first time but the drowning lady also seems to be recounting some kind of story or experience. I sloppily edited what the drowning woman says in that episode together to give a better idea of what she is saying- “- the second time is up I try to grasp the air and fill my lungs that burn and rattle full. I can’t, there’s so much air but none inside as I go down again the cold surrounds and drags me down, the blue the black the weight of all the sodden fates awaiting me below the line of sea and sky. I kick, I lunge I flail towards the brightened blue and break above the third and final time. I know I'm spent there is no more within me save the salt spun death that reaches down my throat and spasms in my chest that cannot breathe inside me i'm done the water is... is... dark Deeper… Deeper… Down among the dead and swollen flesh so pale within this lightless place where eyes are open cloudy white and all the water pushes down upon a lifeless form that sinks and sinks down to the bottom that is not there no sandy grave below the swell no rest among the coral and the depths I feared so much but reached up and over land to claim me still.”

What the drowning woman talks about also seems like it could relate to her death. However, I don’t think that the drowning woman Alice encounters and Violet are the same person. Most notably, the examiner doesn’t make any mention of there being any evidence of drowning or waterlogging. We only get “Marks and wounds: Extreme malnutrition. Tissue damage on both feet and stress fracture on left ankle.”, “Probable cause of death: Starvation, dehydration, exposure.” and “Manner of death: Unknown.” We know that the drowning woman had an autopsy and her lungs were full of too much water. However, there is no note of that here. I also don’t think this was any of the bodies we saw Ink5 digging up since this one seems like it died super recently. The examiner also transcribes what Violet is saying and it doesn’t really sound anything like the drowning woman’s speech. The entire speech goes-

AUGUSTUS (CONT.)

“-and of course mother always said not to. It was an old house, and an empty house, and mother said that that made it a dangerous house. There will be spiders, she said, rotten wood to fall through and oh so many rusty nails. And most importantly, too many rooms. So many turning passageways to confuse you, so many locked doors that even if you didn’t hurt yourself, you might never find your way out again. And then you’d walk till your feet broke and you starved to death. She wouldn’t come for us, if we went in there. She’d leave us to wander all alone. That’s what mother said. And we never did go in that house on Church Street.

But it’s strange, even though we never went inside, I’ve been in the house on Church Street my entire life. I try to escape it. If my mother says she needs money, I give it. If Tom needs me to put together more lesson plans, I will. If Hannah needs her clothes washed I’ll do it. Because if I don’t, if I don’t listen and I don’t do what I’m told then they won’t come for me. I’ll be alone in the house. I’ll be alone.

And it’s always there, waiting for me. I’ve dreamt of it my whole life and I still am dreaming.

When I was fifteen, we were told that we had to study Wordsworth in school: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. Everyone laughed: soppy, stupid poetry. But in my imagination the clouds rolled silent and thick through the old house on Church Street, choking and hiding, so that even if anyone had thought to look they would never have seen me. The daffodils pushed and strained and tore through the old wood of the house, a rotted mass of yellow that would be my only company. From that day forward the empty grey of the house was laced with fog and moldering yellow.

The house itself is long gone, of course. They tore it down when I was ten. Reduced to splinters and stones. But it was already too late. With my mother’s help I had built the house anew, not on Church Street, but inside me. Where no-one would find me or ever think to look.

And here I am. The corridors stretch onwards with the doors all blank and strange. Even the daffodils are here, stinking of mildew. Someone has brought me here but who? Some figure reaching asking questions in an alley? It does not matter. They are not here now. No-one is here now, and no-one ever will be.

Because I broke my promise. I went in the house on Church Street and I’m still here. Now all I can do is walk. Walk and hope and ignore the burning in my throat and the aching in my belly. Keep screaming hoping someone might hear me through all that cloying fog.

But no-one is coming to help me. So I must be careful on the stairs or they will break and I will fall. I must be careful on the floor or I will step upon an upturned nail. I must be careful with the doors or the handles will give me splinters. And the fall will break my legs. And the nails will give me tetanus. And the splinters will turn to gangrene. And all the while the daffodils will watch and wilt and laugh.

I wander lonely. I wander lonely. I will die in this place. And no-one will miss me.”

So this speech doesn’t make mention of drowning or water. Whether this is caused by the same force / Entity as the drowning woman or by something like ERROR is something I cannot say for certainty. It’s also possible something like ERROR is causing these people to speak after their deaths without being the thing that killed them.

If we were to look at the case through the lens of Smirke’s 14 + The Extinction, Violet's account has some similarities with a couple of Entities.

One of the most apparent is that of The Lonely. Violet recounts how her mother wouldn’t come for her if they entered this strange house and “She’d leave us to wander all alone. That’s what mother said.” Violet also says “I try to escape it. If my mother says she needs money, I give it. If Tom needs me to put together more lesson plans, I will. If Hannah needs her clothes washed I’ll do it. Because if I don’t, if I don’t listen and I don’t do what I’m told then they won’t come for me. I’ll be alone in the house. I’ll be alone.” which shows that she fears she will be abandoned if she does not appease the people around her.

Violet recounts an experience she had at school by saying “When I was fifteen, we were told that we had to study Wordsworth in school: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. Everyone laughed: soppy, stupid poetry. But in my imagination the clouds rolled silent and thick through the old house on Church Street, choking and hiding, so that even if anyone had thought to look they would never have seen me. The daffodils pushed and strained and tore through the old wood of the house, a rotted mass of yellow that would be my only company. From that day forward the empty grey of the house was laced with fog and moldering yellow.” The Lonely is known to have an association with fog, which is a type of cloud. This is probably because fog makes it harder to see what’s around you and muffles noise, so it’s harder to tell if others are around you and it can make you feel more alone. Martin was tied to The Lonely in TMA and liked performing poetry alone but this feels like a bit more of a stretch. However, the fear of being ostracized or being unable to connect to other people does connect to The Lonely pretty well.

We also get “The house itself is long gone, of course. They tore it down when I was ten. Reduced to splinters and stones. But it was already too late. With my mother’s help I had built the house anew, not on Church Street, but inside me. Where no-one would find me or ever think to look.” This could easily be a metaphor for loneliness, with the idea being that her mother caused her to feel alone even when the house disappeared. She feels lost in a house she associates with bad memories. Violet emphasizes the loneliness even more by saying “Someone has brought me here but who? Some figure reaching asking questions in an alley? It does not matter. They are not here now. No-one is here now, and no-one ever will be.” and believing that she was sent there “Because I broke my promise. I went in the house on Church Street and I’m still here. Now all I can do is walk. Walk and hope and ignore the burning in my throat and the aching in my belly. Keep screaming hoping someone might hear me through all that cloying fog.”

We know that some people, such as Peter Lukas, had the ability to magically cast other people into The Lonely, but whether this is anything similar is anyone’s guess. There’s more mention of fog and the speech ends with “I wander lonely. I wander lonely. I will die in this place. And no-one will miss me.” People have died in The Lonely before too, In MAG 150 (Cul-de-Sac) we get “I didn’t know them, as it turned out. A young woman, conservatively dressed. Her face was bloody but I was sure I didn’t recognize her. She had a bag with her, and her ID read “Yotunde Uthman”, not a name I’d ever encountered before. Just another victim of this place. It looked as though she had forced her head through the mirror on the dressing-table. The shards cutting her face and neck to ribbons, a particularly large piece piercing her jugular, spilling blood all down the unremarkable white table and onto the light brown carpet below. I don’t think she’d been dead that long. I’m not a doctor and I didn’t really try to check.” So we know it is sometimes possible to die in The Lonely or maybe The Lonely was just trying to amp up the fear by generating dead bodies.

Plus, when Jon is describing Martin’s Domain he says “It’s a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely. Inhabited by a few lost souls whose fear is not of their isolation or their agonies, but that no-one will ever know of them. That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody. That’s why you can’t really see it. It’s why even if we do travel through it, you won’t be able to see any of the people trapped there.” So there is a precedent for The Lonely being connected to the fear of dying alone or not being missed.

Violet’s account also shares similarities with Entities like The Spiral, Corruption, Eye and even a bit of the Desolation.

Violet mentions “And most importantly, too many rooms. So many turning passageways to confuse you, so many locked doors that even if you didn’t hurt yourself, you might never find your way out again.” which could connect to Entities like The Spiral and / or Stranger via the fear of being lost, mistaken, or not knowing where you are going. A place with too many rooms and corridors sounds similar to something like the Distortion. We also get “And it’s always there, waiting for me. I’ve dreamt of it my whole life and I still am dreaming.” and Violet mentions that she is unable to recall who sent her to the house and The Spiral has an association with misremembering stuff while The Stranger has an association with forgetting things. The Spiral has also had an association with dreams and being unable to tell if you’re asleep or awake. As I mentioned in Episode 8 (Running on Empty), fog could theoretically be associated with an Entity like The Spiral since some other definitions of fog include “something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone's thought processes” and “bewilder or puzzle (someone).” Both of which could point to the idea of fog or mist manifesting as a metaphor made literal in order to confuse someone. There’s also an argument for an association between fog and The Stranger with how it makes it harder to make out what’s happening around you.

The case also has some themes of The Corruption with all the rotting imagery. Things such as “There will be spiders, she said, rotten wood to fall through and oh so many rusty nails.”, “The daffodils pushed and strained and tore through the old wood of the house, a rotted mass of yellow that would be my only company. From that day forward the empty grey of the house was laced with fog and moldering yellow.”, and “And the nails will give me tetanus. And the splinters will turn to gangrene. And all the while the daffodils will watch and wilt and laugh.” The Corruption is an Entity tied to fears relating to disgust which often includes things like rot and diseases. Additionally, The Corruption can connect to disgust with non-physical things (such as certain relationships) or even a sort of self-loathing with someone being disgusted with themselves. Violet seems to have a low opinion of herself here.

A place that The Lonely and Corruption may overlap is with certain forms of isolation. If people find you disgusting or off putting then they are less likely to want to be around you, which might cause you to feel both disgusting and alone. In this way the house within Violet could represent how she sees herself.

There’s also some themes relating to The Eye here. There seems to be a fear of judgment with “If my mother says she needs money, I give it. If Tom needs me to put together more lesson plans, I will. If Hannah needs her clothes washed I’ll do it. Because if I don’t, if I don’t listen and I don’t do what I’m told then they won’t come for me. I’ll be alone in the house. I’ll be alone.” and “When I was fifteen, we were told that we had to study Wordsworth in school: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. Everyone laughed: soppy, stupid poetry.” There’s also “And all the while the daffodils will watch and wilt and laugh.” Whether the daffodils are watching literally or metaphorically is debatable but a white daffodil might vaguely look like the whites of an eye from a distance. The Eye also tends to have a big emphasis on memory and being forced to relive things. This is most obvious with TMA’s various statements but characters like Jon can also force people to recount things that have happened and people who give live statements will suffer nightmares revolving around said statement every time they sleep. In fact, the account Violet is giving after death is very statement-like and I could totally see The Eye do something like make dead bodies give statements or accounts based on what happened to them in order to scare the people listening.

There is also a little bit of The Desolation here via some of the pain and dangerous accidents or things breaking. Violet mentions “rotten wood to fall through and oh so many rusty nails” and “So I must be careful on the stairs or they will break and I will fall. I must be careful on the floor or I will step upon an upturned nail. I must be careful with the doors or the handles will give me splinters. And the fall will break my legs. And the nails will give me tetanus. And the splinters will turn to gangrene.”

You could also make an argument for an Entity like The Web in relation to the fear of being at the whims of other people or like you are not in control of the situation / you’re actions, The Vast in relation to Violet’s mentioning of falling on a couple of occasions, and The Buried in relation to the fear of not having enough space (since you might accidentally step on a nail or splinter and you seemingly cannot leave the house).

Violet’s account also shares similarities with something like a Domain in TMA and, as I mentioned earlier, it does share some thematic similarities with Martin’s Domain.

AUGUSTUS

So I’ve been going through each of the computer’s voices to see if there’s any pattern. If you want most of my thoughts on them you can see them here (Episode 12 TMP Quick Thoughts) in the conclusion section. TL;DR CHESTER (Jonathon’s voice) tends to have cases relating to the Institute or people looking for things while NORRIS (Martin’s voice) tends to relate themes of isolation, losing loved ones, or feeling abandoned (watching people you care about die, disappear, etc.). However, AUGUSTUS is a bit of a mystery because we’ve literally had only one case to go off of, so it was impossible to find any overlapping themes or connections between the AUGUSTUS cases. Well, until now anyway.

In Episode 12 I wondered if AUGUSTUS’ cases were either really old or had to do with people using the supernatural to gain power. However, this case doesn’t fit into either one of those categories, not only did Violet’s death presumably occur around “0300 20.03.2024” (so in 2024) but Violet didn’t seem particularly power hungry and she didn’t have any victims.

However, there is one thing both cases have in common and that’s that both Violet and Bardwell are dead. Violet was murdered and events written down in Episode 4’s case occurred in the 18th century. So it’s possible that AUGUSTUS deals with cases from people that have already died, which would make sense if you buybuy the theory that Jon, Martin and Jonah are somehow trapped in the computers. Not only was Jonah afraid of death, so much so that he enacted the Change in an attempt to extend his life, but Jon presumably killed him. Of course, some may ask “If Jon killed him how is he in the computer?” Well, when the Catalogue of the Trapped Dead exists we know it’s not impossible for Entities to copy, or recreate the minds of specific people. Considering that being the “Pupil of the Eye” means you were literally joined with The Beholding it wouldn’t surprise me if a part of Jonah somehow got tied to it before he died or if The Eye is sort of recreating parts of him that it likes.

Rest of the Episode

Sam notices some of the obvious similarities between Violet’s case and Alice’s encounter with the drowning woman and tries to point this out to Alice.

SAM

“As in telling the story of its death. Sounds like she was trapped in her greatest fear which then actually killed her.”

ALICE

“Look I see where you’re going with this. You think it’s something to do with- With what I saw?”

SAM

“Yeah. I think maybe there’s something out there that killed both of them.”

ALICE

“(growing sarcastic) Hmmmm. I see. So you reckon I should have a look at this case? Maybe note down some connections? Pin it up on my corkboard, circle some key dates in bright red, connect them all with string and stare at them while moodily sipping bourbon?”

SAM

“I mean, maybe?”

ALICE

“That’s dumb.”

SAM

“You can’t just ignore this.”

ALICE

“Why not? Ok, let’s assume you’re right. These cases are connected and there’s a weird murderer who can kill you with your deepest fear and then make your corpse narrate it. Let’s take that insane premise as a truth.”

SAM

“Fine.”

ALICE

“Did your case give you any clue as to how to avoid this killer?”

SAM

“Uh… no, not really?”

ALICE

“Okay. Did it give any hint as to where they were going to be in the future so that I can avoid also being there?”

SAM

“Well no but”

ALICE

“Did it, in fact, give any details as to how it works, what it looks like, what it wants, why it’s here, anything like that?”

SAM

“No.”

ALICE

“Then with the greatest respect, your idea is bad and you should feel bad.”

SAM

“But now we know something’s out there”

ALICE

“And? If even one percent of these cases has even a grain of truth to them, then there are hundreds of somethings out there, thousands! This is just the latest flavour of awful.”

SAM

“But you might have actually met this one. In person”

ALICE

“And in case you didn’t notice, it messed me up! So why the hell would I want to know more about it!?”

SAM

“I mean, it might help you come to terms with it, or…”

ALICE

“No, Sam. Absolute best case scenario it does nothing and just wastes my time. Most likely scenario it makes me too scared to walk down the street without freaking out. Worst case scenario it gets me curious. Because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed with all these cases over the years it’s that it’s curiosity that actually gets you killed. So, thanks but no thanks.”

Sam sighs.

SAM

“Sorry I brought it up.”

ALICE

“It’s ok. I know you’re just trying to help but”

Sorry I’m copying and pasting so much here, but I just find this conversation really interesting. I find both Sam and Alice’s positions to be very empathetic here. Alice is kind of right in the fact that currently they lack any way to actually do anything about what’s happening. So why bother stressing about something you can’t control? But Sam believes that they might be able to find more of the answers Alice is talking about by investigating further and that knowing more can bring closure. My personality leans a bit closer to Sam’s logic I think but I can understand the feeling of not wanting to know something terrible when you don’t think you can do anything about anyway. Sometimes knowing about stuff you can’t exactly control causes extra stress.

This conversation also helps show that while Alice means well, and is doing what she can to protect herself, her defense mechanism of ignoring the problem might cause her to come off as heartless or not taking things seriously enough as she shields herself with layer upon layer of jokes and irony.

I also find one of Alice’s comments very interesting- “Worst case scenario it gets me curious. Because if there’s one thing I’ve noticed with all these cases over the years it’s that it’s curiosity that actually gets you killed. So, thanks but no thanks.” If you’ve read my TMA article on The Eye (COUGH (Google Docs- The Relationships Between the Dread Powers: The Eye- Knowledge is Fear and Ignorance is Bliss) COUGH(Tumblr- https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/735599414228484097/the-relationships-between-the-dread-powers-the)) then you know that the idea of curiosity being dangerous or the fear associated with knowing something is actually a pretty big theme in TMA. Most notably, with The Eye. A lot of the people see The Eye as just being the fear of being watched but it actually has a much larger swathe of fears it embodies. It also includes the fear of being judged and In MAG 111 (Family Business) Jon says “R-r-right. I know The Eye. Fear of being watched, right?” and Gerard states “Being watched, being followed, having your deepest secrets exposed. Needing to know, even if your discoveries might destroy you. The feeling that something, somewhere, is letting you suffer, just so it can watch.” The Eye doesn’t seem to just be the fear of being watched but more broadly the fear of knowledge. This is to say, that The Eye isn’t just the fear of being known or watched but also the fear of knowing too much or being the watcher, seeing something you wish you didn’t. This is why Jonah can force information into the heads of people like Martin and Melanie, and in MAG 200 we are told that The Eye was born from the fear people had “of their eyes showing them too much.” If you want to read a more in depth explanation about what I’m talking about feel free to check the previously mentioned article.

I bring these points up because I feel like Sam and Alice are a sort of continuation of these themes from TMA. I’ve mentioned previously that Sam has a level of curiosity that The Eye likes to prey on or take advantage of (in a manner similar to how The Slaughter can encourage rage or The Hunt the urge to chase) and Alice has an “ignorance is bliss mindset.” I’m not saying that Sam and / or Alice are secretly Eye Avatars or something, but rather that the OIAR is probably tied to The Eye or a similar Entity that attracts people like Sam. Also, something might be feeding on the fear of the workers in the OIAR reading the statements. Plus the cases resemble statements. Whether Sam and / or Alice will fall into The Eye’s clutches or already have remains to be seen.

Alice’s comment also tells us that Alice’s personality might be a fair bit more curious than she lets on and she is actively trying to suppress her curiosity. There have been a couple of times in the transcripts of previous episodes where Alice seemed interesting in learning something “despite herself.”

Gwen enters the room and it’s clear something is bothering her. After some probing from Sam, Gwen does what we have all been waiting for. She tells Alice and Sam the truth about the OIAR’s Externals… or at least tries to. You see, the first External Gwen met, and the one she presumably has had the most experience with at the moment, is Mr. Bonzo. Who, mind you, already exists as a very popular children’s character in the Protocol universe. It would be like if creepasta version of Elmo was a hitman for the government.

This entire situation goes about as well as you’d think which leads to Sam and Alice taking it as a joke, and Sam gives a surprisingly accurate if a bit rough impression of Bonzo when he says “You absolute asshole, Gwen! You absolute- You totally had me going there! I was- ha! Christ, could you imagine though? You’re turn up to the tv studio all all like (sinister voice) “I have a job for you, Mr. Bonzo” (normal voice) And he’s all like (Bonzo voice) “BONZO BONZO BONZ-“.” Okay, maybe Gwen didn’t pick the best example but it’s the best one she’s got and she didn’t find Lady Mowbray super monstrous.

Gwen describes the Externals as being “They’re not… I don’t think they’re people. Not all of them, anyway. Not fully.” and “In the cases, you know how there are often things or places or people or whatever who… aren’t right? Who seem to be causing all the awful things to happen. ” to which Sam asks “Like… the monsters?” Mr. Bonzo is probably some kind of monster, and while monsters can look like ordinary people and Avatar’s can look monstrous it wouldn’t surprise me if characters like Mowbray were some kind of Avatar (something that might make them seem like “people who aren’t right”).

This scene is interesting because making a joke like this seems kind of out of character for Gwen but I can’t blame Sam for assuming it’s a prank or something. Sam notices that Gwen is taking this very seriously:

ALICE

“Told you. Curiosity will get you killed. Best try and ignore it.”

ALICE starts putting her earbuds in.

SAM

“Alice, she’s really messed up, you can’t just keep ignoring”

ALICE

“(loudly) Can’t hear you! Headphones!”

SAM

“For god’s sake…”

More “ignorance is bliss” style theming from Alice and this also shows how Alice ignoring problems can easily come off as cold hearted or outright mean. It also shows the differences in Sam’s and Alice’s approach to stuff like this. I assume that Alice literally has seen at least one person die or disappear and I wonder if one or more of those events are what led to Teddy quitting.

We cut to Celia’s flat via baby monitor and we learn that Jack is indeed a real baby (and not just an excuse Celia made up). We also get to see the Protocol universe’s Georgie, which is an interesting treat. Georgie is playing with the baby and pretending Jack is taking her face: “(covering her face) Oh no! Who keeps taking Georgie’s face?” I pray this is just a joke about how this is an alternate version of Georgia and not some fucked up foreshadowing because The Stranger is known to steal skin and faces, as seen in The Stranger’s Merry-go-round Domain in MAG 165 (Revolutions). The Domain is watched over by NotSasha and it involves people fighting over faces in order to regain a sense of identity. This could also be seen as ironic since the Celia that appears in TMA seems to have had her original name (Lynne Hammond) taken away from her in a Domain that could be tied to The Stranger. That Celia was also a part of Georgie and Melanie’s cult in the Post-Change world. So seeing them interact like this does have me thinking. Does Celia still worship Georgie as a prophet or anything?

Anyway, Celia returns home with some baby food and tries to explain her sudden disappearance as well as why she didn’t call Georgie beforehand, but Georgie calls her bluff and says “Celia, I’m saying you don’t need to lie to me.” Celia’s excuse about baby food makes no sense because Georgie found tons of baby food in Celia’s house after Jack woke up hungry.

Georgie then says “Celia, I like you. And I love little Jack. Yes I do! He’s so cute! So I’m not going to ask about all these “emergencies” that you have to run off to, or your “civil service” job that happens to last all night. But if I’m going to be helping out I need you to be straight with me on something.” before asking if Celia is spying on her for the government, the illuminati, Masons, some secret organization, or aliens. Georgie’s comment on Celia’s “emergencies” would imply that Celia’s disappearances are probably random and involuntary as opposed to some active experiment she is continuously trying to do. Georgie being a sort of paranoid conspiracy theorist is also a funny juxtaposition from TMA Georgie. Is this what Georgie would have been like if she didn’t lose her sense of fear in that encounter with The End? Weird.

We also get:

GEORGIE (cont’d)

“Speaking of… have you been out all night in your Pajamas?”

CELIA

“Yes. Yes, I have.”

GEORGIE

“Okay.”

This once again implies that Celia’s disappearances are involuntary.

Conclusion

Things are moving at a pretty slow pace but there was a surprising amount to think about in this episode. If you want the category this case was filed under in the transcripts-

CAT1RC2374-20032024-10042024

Memory (derelict) -/- compulsion

Incident Elements:

- Isolation

- Strong Language

- Arguments

- Trauma Triggers

- Mentions of: corpses, autopsy, starvation

You can read my other articles here- TMAGP Quick Thoughts Archive

#tmagp #the magnus archive #the magnus protocol #tma #discussion

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