#We use art to cope <3 he helped me through getting kicked out and getting to Rou | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redwinterroses · 3 years

Text

RIIIIIIIIIGHT SO.

I just finished chapter 13 of Dog At The Door and holy hot cross buns batman if you're not reading this fic you NEED to. It's literally one of the best written fics I have ever read in my life and I've been reading fanfiction for over 15 years, lol.

I went back and reread the entire fic to lead up to chapter 13 and I decided to treat it like I used to treat things I had to read in college so I took notes as I went and please I am warning you this post is incredibly long. Almost 3k words. PLEASE do not hit that "read more" button unless you're good with having to scroll past it all and also spoilers ahead. Proceed with caution.

~*~

Rereading Dog at the Door reactions (spoilers, obviously):

· Doc finding Ren’s body to be cold and for a second thinking he’s actually dead—my heart

· “That’s Ren, alive and kicking.” Oh…no, Doc. No it’s not.

· The first “Where is my hand?” hits different the second time through

· Gah the ice and winter imagery ALL over the place—my English degree brain wants to watch and see if that shifts to warmth at any point as we go? Thoughts for future Red to think.

· It’s fascinating to me to see Doc constantly thrust into the prey role. This is a guy who is very much not that person normally, but something about the Red King is beyond anything he’s really encountered before—or at least not since Dinnerbone—and it pushes him into an entirely new role that he clearly chafes in

· “I should get back to work on your new arm soon,” he says, making a mental note to add claws to the fingertips. Honestly Doc why tho. XD

· “It feels like something Ren would want him to do.” </3

· Side note: I just watched Doc’s freaking hour long shulker farm vid, and that’s making it a lot easier to hear his voice in this fic

· I’m more curious about the hand.” New Ren laughs a bit at his own words, as though there’s something funny about that phrasing. I MISSED THIS LINE THE FIRST TIME THROUGH

· The bead curtain being cursed hippie treasure XD

· The fact that Doc just so quickly accepts that Ren is gone—maybe not permanently, but at least for now—is kind of heartbreaking. Because you know he hasn’t really accepted it, he’s just… deciding not to feel anything about it. Just nod and move on and pretend you don’t need to stop and cope with the possible/probable death of your best friend and the fact that Someone Else is wearing his skin. That’s so sad.

· “high-fiving the finished hand with his own metal hand.” Aww… Doccy.

· “He shoos away the images of New Ren holding him up by the throat supervillain-style and turns around.” Hmmmmmmm want that fanart. Scary New Ren/RK is good stuff. (post-chapter-13 Red popping in with a WHAT THE HECK)

· “that makes him seem like a ghost in Ren’s body.” YA KNOW. LIKE HE IS.

· Okay side note time: why is the Red King here? Ya know? Like – in 3rdLife the idea of a possessing spirit of bloodlust makes some sense. But why stick around? Was RK trying to escape the 3L server, or was this not deliberate? At what point did he take over from Ren—at Black Heart Altar? In which case, was the whole idea Ren’s to begin with, or was he influenced? Maybe it happened the first time Ren died? The Red King took over then—or at least started to? Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, thoughts…

· Wait more theories—what if RK is connected to the ????? entity that spoke to Martyn when he died? In which case, cMartyn said he was considering making that canonically a Watcher (he ended up not doing it, but he also didn’t do anything that contradicted it either). I’m not saying RK is a Watcher… but boy he sure does stare a lot, don’t he.

· Holding the screwdriver like a dagger—mmmm

· Okay funny thought: all this frost, RK’s gonna need to be real careful about rust lol. And straining the metal, tbh, all that freezing and thawing is going to have an effect but the rust idea is making me laugh

· Until I realized it would look like blood and it’s not funny anymore

· “Renbob is in the beanbag stuffed next to the driver’s seat” right so is this where Renbob sleeps because I have been wondering—

· “something about having two people look like Ren when neither of them are makes Doc stop to take a shaky breath” *sob*

· “Renbob clears his throat, looking up at Doc with a smile that is so obviously fake that it hurts.” Ugh the LOT of you stop repressing everything you’ll give yourselves a collective hernia

· “he’ll probably have to break the news to the other hermits, too, Iskall and False and all the others.” All these painful lines I somehow missed the first time through

· Awww warm air comes in when Renbob opens the door—with the flowers and everything, Renbob is so easily associated with spring, I love this contrast.

· Aaand there it is, yup, RK is shocked to see his face on Renbob, and Renbob is shocked to see that this is so clearly Not Ren.

· They both recover pretty quickly, though. Survivors, both of them.

· RK calls Renbob their “ferryman” and I’m not sure if I was supposed to get “crossing the river Styx” vibes from that But I Did. (does RK think he’s dead? That they’re all dead?) (post-chapter-13 Red here with a little bit of wordless screaming.) (and also a bit of pride that I picked up on this.)

· “And what a help you’ve been! Fixing me up, replacing my hand.” Hi yes, 911? there’s a dagger stabbed into my feels.

· “he’d rather remember rage than see another person’s heart break.” Dang that’s such a raw line. Oof.

· ”the Red King says, his voice hoarse with tears.” Really interesting that this blood deity can feel such emotions—like, anger or even fear, I can get. But to see this entity upset to the point of tears is fascinating.

· “There is a crown on Doc’s workbench.” Right, yeah so like—is RK unwillingly manifesting these artifacts? Because that’s wild, man. …how long before he manifests an “enchanter”?

· “I’ve never seen it [the crown] clean before.” Okay that definitely implies that maybe RK didn’t come around until after Black Heart Altar?

· “The Red King has the crown in his lap when Doc turns back around, claws gently tracing over the engravings, leaving frost patterns behind.” I really wish I had art skills because there’s this image in my head of a drawing of the crown held in RK’s hands, with his face (one eye glowing, one in shadow) reflected in the surface, and frost patterns following behind a claw that’s daintily tracing the surface. But I can’t draw so—

· RK asks for a change of clothes. What was he wearing when they rescued him, I wonder? The Red King outfit with the fur capelet? Or Ren’s Stargazer outfit? Which begs the question: where does Stargazer fit into all this? Was Ren’s return to Hermitcraft RK free, but when he came so close to dying to Sith, RK found that as a gateway to take over? (Post-13 Red here, Looking Intently at this note.)

· Awww… the image of a one-legged RK clutching new clothes to his chest and hopping down to change in the bathroom… That’s weirdly endearing. He’s less menacing when he stands up somehow. Less lurking, maybe.

· Oooohhhhh he messed up his back sleeping on the floor. Gotcha.

· Doc keeps telling himself (and RK) that saving him and working on these parts is “the right thing to do” and while he’s not WRONG I just want to see him realize that it’s not only the right thing, it’s realistically the only thing, because if he didn’t, then he’d have to deal with the fact that he’s lost his best friend and we can’t have that.

· “I don’t need to eat” ummmmmm no hold on this definitely implies that RK is possessing a dead body and I’m not okay with that where is Ren

· LOLOL “I can’t stand to see [you do] this” is such a raw line to be about watching Doc eat cereal with his hands

· “The voice doesn’t belong to who he thinks it does.” Ugh, Doc. This isn’t the first time he’s lost a close friend to Something Else, something otherworldly.

· “All of them are waiting for him, waiting for him to do something more, something better—” aaand there it is. Doc’s characterization in this fic in a single sentence.

· Doc waking up and thinking he’s seeing Ren and RK’s hesitation and the gentle “I’m not Ren”—OH MY HEART

· RK’s coffee = Renbob’s friendship bracelets

· Randomly can I just say that I love how RK’s dialog is all in italics? It concerned me at first because I thought it was going to keep pulling me out of the narrative, but instead it really just feels right. Also I’m looking forward to the moment when he says something and it’s not in italics because it’s REN and oh my lands please give this to me I beg you (post-13 Red here with a bit more mindless screaming)

· “watch your tongue with me, Atlas, because I’m the one person you can pass the sky to.” Okay okay okay—English studies brain coming out. This suggests that there is a burden RK and Doc can share: something Doc is currently struggling against that only RK can help him with. In the moment, I don’t know if this is really fair of RK to say—after all, Doc does technically have Renbob too, if we’re just talking about Doc’s unhealthy coping mechanisms. In fact, if that’s the context, then Renbob is a much better fellow-Atlas because he and Doc have known each other much longer and they’re both dealing with the loss of Ren. BUT, knowing about the upcoming conversation where Doc and RK both realize that they’ve lost someone (Ren for Doc, Martyn for RK) this line suddenly has a lot more weight. Again, I don’t think that in that moment RK quite has the right to pull this zinger. But in later context, it turns out to be true after all. They are the only two with this particular shared pain.

· Doc upset with himself because he can’t get over his “stupid hang-ups” DOC MY LAD. “I’ve lost my best friend, you’re in his body, and I don’t know how to process any of these emotions” is not a “stupid hang-up” PLEASE stop blaming yourself for everything!?

· “I’m so tired” in the middle of his nightmare—oh my gosh. That hurts so much for some reason.

· I also very much wish I had the ability to draw the image of Doc with tears on his face, staring dead-eyed down at his workbench while RK looms over from behind, pinning his wrists to the table with one metal arm and one frost-bitten one, a look of exasperation and concern on his face. Why can’t I draw the things

· “How do you know Etho” “I watched him die.” OW ow ow ow ow

· Doc takes this as calmly as only someone used to living in a world where death has low consequences can. Oh. Oh—that means… huh. Doc isn’t used to losing people permanently on any basis, especially not death. So no wonder he doesn’t know how to process Ren being gone (I can’t bear to write “dead” there). He literally doesn’t have context for it… and what context he DOES have is like—I mean, Etho and Bdubs came back. Ouch.

· “Twenty-five.” The Red King makes the number sound like a threat. Yet another banger line I missed the first time through. Imagine waking up and thinking you’re in 3rd Life again but instead of 14 players there’s almost twice that many and you think you don’t know any of them.

· I still don’t quite understand the “when was etho added/should have known there was something different” bit or why RK is so emotional about it… but I have trust that it’ll make sense at some point. (post-13 Red: ...is this something about the fact that he thinks he's dead...so he thinks Etho has died before? Like, that 3rd Life wasn't Etho's first hardcore? ...I feel like I'm almost grasping this but I'm missing an element somewhere.)

· And now a sword. RK. My man. You need to stop manifesting things—especially when they scare the ever-living daylights out of you.

· I absolutely adore the in-universe lore that Fire Aspect is a PvP enchantment because it threatens dropped loot, and yeah I very well might steal that. (Along with something I read at one point who-even-knows-where that Knockback is a coward’s enchantment, because I love that too.)

· He really shouldn’t. / Doc picks up the sword by the scabbard and hands it to him, hilt extended. Doc you already trust this guy so much and you don’t even know it—but is it just because you still subconsciously trust the face he wears? Or is it something deeper?

· Ugh, the “I was supposed to kill someone for him” conversation/scene is SO FREAKING GOOD

· “I don’t want it. Not like the crown.” Why, though? Why doesn’t he want it? Because it’s more to do with death than kingship? OH. Oh, I hadn’t even considered that. I’ve been thinking of RK as this like, god of blood and vengeance but maybe he’s not. Maybe he hates the bloodshed (“the blood! It’s drippin’ in me eyes… I’ve been blinded by the violence…”) just as much—more?—than Ren did/would have. Huh. That’s a new facet.

· Oh my heart the “have you ever lost someone and it was your fault” line. Dagger to the feels. Dagger to the feels.

· This like… “I’m on a roll and even though I know I should stop I really don’t want to” mode? Man. That’s relatable. Especially when you’re working to avoid dealing with something else.

· “Not making it for you—it’s for Ren” oh ouch ouch ouch the denial suddenly breaks through it’s okay, Doc I’m with you on this

· The second time reading through it’s far clearer that Doc has a blind panic attack here—when he starts rambling that Ren’s coming back, he’ll be there for season eight and RK goes to…do whatever he was going to do and Doc just blanks out. The manic productivity should have been a warning sign, the poor guy is crumbling.

· “Doctor” and “he’s not sure he deserves that title right now” UGH Doc needs a hug someone please hug him and tell him it’s all going to be okay. Someone please hug me and tell me it’s all going to be okay.

· “his hand on his throat” over the scar from the Red Winter axe? </3

· “I did do that. I have done that.” RK admitting to it actually having been him in Doc’s nightmares?

· Okay sorry the conversation about beating Dinnerbone will never not be funny to me

· RK mentions that people used to call him m’lord or Ren, and then mere minutes later you have “Ren. You couldn’t save him because of me, could you?” He knows exactly what’s going on here. Not maliciously, but he’s no dense-head, he’s put the pieces together. (post-13 Red: MOST of the pieces. Most of them.)

· Watching Doc slowly stop fighting his nightmares—like, the first time, he fights. The second time, he accepts it but still struggles. And this time… this time he gives up before it even starts. That hurts, man.

· Good grief the whole “get my head chopped off” / “you really don’t want that” bit. O.O I’m not sure what emotion I’m feeling but I’m Feeling An Emotion.

· “Snow’s new. Dream’s not.” </3

· …Doc’s not gonna be a fan of snowier-snow after this trip…

· "Dr. M77" Actually he’s Doc Monster, RK, but we’ll let it go. XD

· OKAY BUT THIS EXCHANGE? The “how are you feeling” / “better” / “you’re a bad liar” / “I said better not great” that’s such a good exchange and I don’t know why every other time I’ve ever seen it used they stop at the lying accusation? Doc with the snappy comebacks, man.

· Aaah, Doc and RK, two establishment bros bonding over a shared disdain for hippies.

· The bit about the fella who wore an iron helmet and called it a powdered wig—fear is in my heart. *shoves Scar into an obsidian box and blocks it closed*

· “Who was Ren to you?” </3

· Doc is more than willing to spread the flames, to sear his loss into RK’s bones. / The king’s face stops him. Ren’s face stops him. Holy CRAP is that a good set of lines. So much going on there, and ALL of it good.

· Again. I wish I could draw. I would draw RK sitting on the edge of the bed, gently hugging a collapsed-in-on-himself Doc. </3

· “And I hate the devil that forced us apart, that mixed my blood with his.” *adds another layer to Scar’s obsidian fort*

· OKAY STARTING CHAPTER THIRTEEN I made the mistake of logging into Tumblr earlier and saw people screaming so I’m sure I’m not ready for this but here we go

· Oh no RK has been hippie-ified

· “You started a paramilitary organization because you have hay fever?” *dies laughing*

· Ugh I need to go back and watch s6 I’ve only seen the tail end of Mumbo’s side of things and there’s so much I don’t know.

· HAHAHAHAH I do know the trident bit though—

· Wait he said Scar

· PANIC

· “Kingslayer. bloodthirsty. Time King. The coward. And the mastermind behind it all, the loyal soldier to the very end, the whole damn reason either of us are in this mess.”

· HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY—

· “Is this the afterlife I deserve? After everything, this is the hell I’m going to endure?” I AM SCREAMING

· Doc pinned to the wall with ice, struggling to breathe—I CAN’T WHAT IS HAPPENING

· ((You know I’d get through this a lot faster if I stopped pausing to write reactions—))

· “A break in the ice. A whisper of spring.” Symbolism. Symbolism.

· “Ren was dead when I found him again,” NO I REFUSE TO READ THIS

· “don’t use the hand I built you to hurt yourself” DOC. SIR. MY HEART.

· RK don't run, RK get back here—what are you—

· I

· JUST

· ACTUALLY

· SCREAMED

· AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

· *several long moments of just breathing*

· *rereads*

· Holy crap on a garbage cracker with an extra serving of what-the-heck sauce

· REN

· Okay lol okay hahaha calming down

· I literally threw myself back in my chair away from the computer reading that last paragraph. I don't usually... physically react to things I read. LOL. Heh. I’m. Ah. I’m not emotionally invested in this or anything.

· Holy crap.

· Okay. Okay. Okay.

· Um.

· Great chapter, guys. Awesome stuff. Really good. I’m absolutely okay right now and it’s all totally fine.

· …please enjoy your break and get lots of rest and I very much look forward to the return of this fic you have no idea.

· I need to go breathe for a little bit.

EDIT: no, you know what--I'm not going to be a nice polite fangirl over here and quietly hope y'all see this I'm straight up tagging you, @fluffy-papaya and @betweenlands. THANK YOU but also how dare.

#The only reason I'm even posting this is for my own remembering later #and i guess if fluffy or solar want to see my mindless ramblings -- go nuts #long post #redwinterreacts #redwintertalks #dog at the door

86 notes · View notes

munamania · 4 years

Text

happy hawkins holiday hiatus to @mikewheelerthepaladin !! here’s a lighthearted fic + a playlist of songs i listened to a lot while writing, i hope you enjoy 🥳

& a big thank you to @sevensided for putting this together, it’s been super fun <3

It’s the first time he’s been in over a year, really, but he’d entertained the thought of asking Will over the summer, for one last challenge before he left. It never happened, everything went by too fast; and, honestly, Mike didn’t know how to talk to him with the goddamn weight of everything - hi, we’ve barely spoken in the last year and we just almost died, again, and now you’re moving away forever - wanna hang out?

It’d never been that hard.

And it sucked. The whole thing. Now that Will is gone, it gnaws at him daily that they could have had more time together. Or a proper goodbye, at least. Instead, he spent a lot of time last summer sitting around, figuring out how to approach El and his feelings toward her, and most of all, alone.

But now the Byers are coming home for Christmas. And staying with The Wheelers, on top of it all.

So, seeking some sort of cryptic universal answer to his life problems, Mike returns to the place of a lot of younger memories, of crowding around machines with Lucas and Dustin and Will, a conglomeration of shouting and booing and cheering when one of them topped a high score, of frantically patting down their pockets for a few extra coins.

All of these wistful memories come to halt, however, when he finds a familiar redhead occupying one of their favorite games.

Max glances at him through the screen. “What do you want?”

“Uh, to play?” Honestly, he doesn’t care; he’s not sure he could focus enough to win much anyway. “Kicking your ass would be a plus.”

“Yeah, as if.” Her gaze fixes back on the colorful pixels dancing in front of her face.

Okay, well, she’s not moving anytime soon. He could probably just walk away, but a part of him wants company, even if it’s from someone hellbent on disagreeing with him.

Even when the Party hangs out now, Mike finds himself bickering with Max over what movies to see, where to eat, nearly anything, even when he doesn’t really give a shit. It’s the principle of the thing, and she gets under his skin.

Maybe it’s a good thing.

Mike sighs, leans against one of the neighboring games, and shoves his hands in his pockets. “I don’t really know why I’m here.”

“Well, if you’re looking for me to throw pity money at you, it’s not happening.” After a beat, and losing the level, she kicks at the machine and turns to him. “Now look what you made me do. All your moping and talking - I could’ve beaten that if you would just leave me alone.”

He offers a quarter.

“Forget it.”

“I’ll buy you a pop, then.” She glares at him. “Seriously, okay, this is the first and only olive branch. Take it or leave it.”

After a moment of scowling at him, her arms folded, she slowly concedes, a smug look taking over. “Okay. I’ll take it, Wheeler.”

“So, you’re stalking me at the arcade because… of nothing?”

Mike presses his lips into a line. “I’m not stalking you,” he says, “and it’s not - it’s not nothing. I was gonna ask Lucas or Dustin to come, but… I felt like I needed to be here alone.”

Max sips on her drink. “That didn’t work out.”

“Guess not.”

“So you did need to talk to someone.”

“Guess so.”

God, this is borderline painful. Sitting in a shoddy little booth across from Max, whom he never once intended to have a heart-to-heart with, is a new level of desperation. But here they are.

With the most grandiose sigh he’s ever heard in his life, Max straightens in her chair. “Well, I don’t love giving advice to annoying teenage boys, but I’ve been told I’m good at it. Advice, you know.”

Mike raises an eyebrow. “Was it El who said that, by chance?”

“Bite me.”

Amused, Mike smiles, and he slides the near-empty cup between his hands like a little game, something else to focus on. “Okay, fine, give me some advice.”

Max frowns at him like he’s the biggest idiot in the world. “Maybe give me a situation to work with?” She mutters something under her breath that he doesn’t bother with.

“Well, the Byers are coming home and staying with us, and I wanted to come up with something really nice to do, you know. I know that they’re really nervous because it’s… the holidays have been rough, the past few years.” He finishes his drink and stares at the lid. “They almost refused. So, I dunno, I figured I could do something to make them feel like it’s still home.”

“Oh,” Max nods, finally breaking into a slight smile, “well, cool, you could set up something really romantic for El! She’d love it.”

Right. The girlfriend.

He had no clue where the hell they left things when the Byers moved. About a month ago, Mike called to tell her the distance was confusing and they might need to take a break. He figured she would’ve told Max because, from his understanding, they spoke on the phone on an almost daily basis.

“Sure - yeah, yeah, that’s - it’s a good idea. For sure.”

Max falls back into a confused squint. “Was there something else you had in mind?”

Mike isn’t sure how to get it out without sounding like a total airhead. So he copes with it the best way he can. “You know what, this was dumb. I’ll figure it out myself.” He grabs his jacket and stands to leave.

“No, no, Mike - I want to help.” She’s looking up at him with a genuinely nice expression, holding out a hand to stop him from fully up and leaving. “I’m really good at this stuff, just let me know what I can do. No judgment. I swear.”

“I have to get home tonight anyway,” Mike says cautiously. “Told my mom I’d help with dinner.”

“Can I come over tomorrow?”

He frowns, and something digging at his stomach makes him respond with, “Why do you care?”

Max’s jaw sets. She stands up to meet his eye level and sets a look on him. “Even if I didn’t, even if I couldn’t care less about you, Mike, I care about El. And Will. And I want to be a part of their homecoming. So maybe you could figure out a way to not be a dick about it.” She snatches her drink cup and storms off from the table, leaving Mike to scramble after her with more apologies.

He’s gotta get better at this whole ‘girls’ thing.

He catches up to her outside. “Okay, listen - come over after school tomorrow. We can meet outside by the stairs.”

She barely turns to him, says, “Fine,” and then hops on her bike and rides away.

That’s how Mike ends up with Max in his basement, slowly walking and examining his things, but not touching any of them, thankfully.

It’s going alright, thus far. A part of him feels like he should reach out to Lucas and Dustin, too, since they’re also Will’s best friends. But something about this… works. He and Max can’t seem to stay entirely civil in each other’s company, but she gets something. And she hasn’t brought up El even once since yesterday.

“So, I’m gonna come up with a really cool campaign - well, I’ve been working on it, and I can tell you about it - “ Max lifts herself on tiptoe in his peripheral vision, “ - but anyway, we can pull an all-nighter, if everyone’s up for it, and make snacks and drinks and stuff, and we can have movies on for you guys, and I thought I might even look for some costumes because I really think Will would get a kick out of it. I can put lights up, too - “

“You draw?”

Max’s back is to him, as she’s looking over his wall of posters and pinned pictures. As he steps closer, he realizes her eyes are fixed on a sketch that definitely bears some resemblance to him.

“No, Will sent me those,” he says quickly, not wanting to seem like a giant narcissist, because Will’s drawing is - how can he say it - beautiful. “He’s been using charcoal a lot recently, he told me he got some new art stuff. I think he wants to send one of all of us.”

Max turns to him, and he can’t tell if she’s tearing up for some reason, but she quickly wipes any sign of tears away. “That’s so neat,” is all she says at first. There’s a small silence between them, and she’s just looking at him, and he has no idea what the hell he should say. “He’s such a good person,” she adds quietly, “I wish I got the chance to really know him.”

Mike’s breath hitches for a few seconds. “Yeah. I mean, he mentioned hanging out with you a few times.”

A smile lifts the girl’s cheeks. “Yeah, to bitch about you, mostly.”

“Hey!” he protests, but he can’t help but smile too, this time. This might just be their most pleasant interaction to date. “He never mentioned that.”

“I don’t know how he could, all you freakin’ do is talk.”

“Whatever.” Mike messes with some Christmas crafts on the table, holding them up in his vision to see where they might fit in the basement. He clears his throat. “You know, El and I, uh - we split.”

Max nods slowly. “She said you guys don’t call much.”

“No, we didn’t. I mean, I don’t even call Will, we just write.” He leans against the table, eyes glazing over as he looks over years of memories, dorky craft nights, and shitty school projects that he or his mom made a point to keep. “It’s too hard to talk - to either of them, you know. I didn’t think I could hear their voices without…”

Max cuts him off. “I get it.” She crosses over to the table, helping him pull apart old paper snowflakes. “I’m just the opposite. I’m scared if I don’t talk to them, I’ll convince myself it was all fake. And maybe it’d be for the better, but I’m glad I knew them. Even if only for a little while.”

Mike bites down on his lips, attempting to bury all the emotion threatening to spew out of him. “Yeah.”

Max finally looks up at him, and though they seem to have shared a moment, she snaps back out of it. “All offense, Mike, these are ugly as shit. I’m helping you make new ones, okay?”

“It’s for the memory!”

“No more living in the past.” She raises her eyebrows at him, and he pinches his face in annoyance, so she says, “Okay, you can put them up, in like, little corners, but we’re making new ones. Surprise. Work with me here, Michael.”

“It’s my basement, Max.”

“Did you or did you not ask for my help?”

Mike blinks. “Not really.”

She throws a crafty paper star at him. “Shut up, you’re glad I’m here.”

He shakes his head and moves on, but though he may never admit it, a part of him really is glad.

Weeks pass in what feels like a span of days or maybe hours, with Mike and Max sorting out their surprise plans with a typical amount of bickering - but hey, they get it done. Max has lots of opinions about decorations and music that make Mike roll his eyes, but she’s got a good eye and she offers to help with baking, which is not a strong suit of his. Yes, they throw a lot of streamers at each other, and threaten to storm out every other hour, but it gets done.

And the day is finally here.

Mike pulls himself into his best festive sweater and eyes himself in the mirror. He messes with his hair, though the long, wavy curls never seem to fall exactly into place - maybe growing it out was a mistake - and tugs at the creases of his sweater, letting out a huffy breath. None of it is working with him. When he can’t stand looking at himself anymore, he dashes down to the kitchen to help his mom with desserts.

She smiles when he plops into a seat. “You okay, honey? You seem a little tense.”

Mike jolts. “Uh, yeah, just excited.”

“Good! Joyce said the kids haven’t stopped talking about the trip for weeks.”

Great. “I hope we live up to the hype.”

“Oh, Mike. You know you don’t have to try that hard.” Karen stops frosting for a moment to look at him. “Will’s your best friend. El is excited to see you,” she nudges at him, and he coughs out a nervous laugh, “and Joyce thinks you’re an angel-”

“God, mom-”

“I’m serious. Don’t worry so much.” She leans forward on her forearms. “I know you think every problem in the world is on you, but it’s not. It’s enough just to be around the people you love. If anything, you’ve gone overboard.”

Overboard. Hopefully, it’s not too much.

Finally, he caves, exhaling slowly with a simple, “Okay.” He stays beside her, tapping his fingers, and eventually ruining a gingerbread man’s face until she notices and smacks his hand away.

There’s a knock on the door, and while Mike hops to his feet, his mother calls out, “Come in!” earning a panicked look from him. She mouths, ‘Chill,’ but he still half-jogs to the door and throws it open.

Nancy calls down the stairs, “Who is it?”

It’s Max, brandishing a few small wrapped gifts.

“Hello, sunshine,” she says. After a moment, “It’s great to see you too, Michael, allow me to invite myself in.”

“It’s just Max,” Mike calls back. He steps aside, and Max brushes past him, dropping her gifts by their tree and running into the kitchen.

“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler!”

“Hey, Max, Merry Christmas!”

Mike’s mom seemed to think Max was one of the most charming people on the planet, something they frequently disagreed on, but he can’t be mad at their pleasant chatter right now.

Especially not when the next knock comes so soon.

Probably just Lucas and Dustin, dragging their feet as usual.

Mike opens the door, prepared with a quippy remark for his friends, but his stomach drops immediately.

It’s Will. Holding a bunch of luggage.

Mike is caught up in everything about him. He’s taller. New, floppy hair, tousled and messy in the biting snowy winds. His forearms exposed as his bags push against his jacket. Will.

The boy smiles at him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Mike manages.

Will looks past him with a tiny wave, and Mike turns to see Max beaming and waving back, and then Max slips back into the kitchen and Will returns his gaze to Mike. “Can I come in?”

“Hey, Mike!” Joyce interrupts from the car, straining to grab something in the backseat. “Merry Christmas, honey!”

“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Byers!” Mike, finally catching up his brain-to-movement reactions, moves to let Will in. “Yeah, come in. I’m gonna, uh, go help your mom.”

“Cool.”

He immediately forgets why he’s moved and attempts to step out as Will crosses the threshold, almost knocking him over, so Mike grabs his arms to stabilize with a, “Sorry - uh - whoops, haha, don’t fall,” and Will chuckles and shifts a bag to his shoulder, saying, “It’s alright,” and Mike spends his walk to the Byers’ car trying not to curse himself out.

“Oh, Mike, thank you, sweetie,” Joyce grunts, pulling a heavy tote bag from the floor of the car. “Can you carry this?” Mike nods and takes it from her easily, offering his arms out for extra luggage. Together, with Jonathan, who greets him with a, “Merry Christmas, man,” they manage to get everything inside in one trip. Mike hardly notices El rummaging through the trunk until she comes stumbling along with a basket full of gifts.

Finally, they’re all inside, and only a beat goes by before Nancy comes bounding down the stairs to greet Jonathan, and Joyce is grinning around at everybody, and then Karen rushes in from the kitchen with excited greetings.

“It is so good to see you,” Joyce says, opening her arms up to Mike for a hug. “You’ve grown so much-'' she looks at Karen and mutters, “-so much-” then looks back at Mike. “We’ve missed you all.”

“I’ve missed you guys too,” Mike says, “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“We couldn’t miss it. Figured it’s best that we’re together, you know.” Her expression falters, but she takes a breath and carries on with moving bags and ‘Merry Christmases.’

Joyce and his mom wind up chattering, and Karen takes off her apron to help transfer some luggage to the spare room. Nancy takes Jonathan’s hand and heads upstairs, grabbing one of his bags from the ground.

Will seems to have disappeared into the kitchen with Max, leaving his things behind, so it’s just Mike and El.

Mike takes in a deep breath.

It wasn’t an ugly breakup; honestly, El seemed unfazed. Their calls were little more than small talk about their days, most of the time, and even though he thought they might hold onto their past, everything they’d been through… it seemed to work best that they didn’t.

“Hey, Merry Christmas.”

El smiles easily. “Merry Christmas, Mike.” She lifts the basket slightly for acknowledgment. “Can these go by the tree?”

“Yeah, yeah, go for it.”

El nods and slips by the couch over to the tree, carefully laying out the gifts. After a few moments of Mike awkwardly leaning against the couch arm, thinking up something to say - thank god she didn’t seem too focused on him - Max walks in, her mouth stuffed with a truffle.

“El!” She darts over to the tree, and El jumps up, eyes bright, immediately throwing her arms around the girl’s shoulders. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” El giggles. “I brought you a gift.”

“You too. I can’t wait for you to see it. But first, you have to try one of these sweets Mrs. Wheeler’s making. They’re like frickin’ heaven.” She holds out the last bite of her own, and El takes it from her hand, eyes lighting up mischievously as she bites into it.

“It’s amazing.”

“I know. I think we should go sample some of the others.”

Mike calls out to their backs, “You guys better leave some for later on,” and in response, hears Max mimic him. He rolls his eyes and stands up from the couch.

And then it’s just him and Will, who’s beaming at him, seemingly amused by their banter.

Okay, Mike, now or never. “Uh, I’ll show you downstairs.”

“We’re not staying in your room?” Will asks simply, crossing over to retrieve his duffel bag.

“We totally can, I just have something I wanted to show you.”

Will nods. “Oh, okay, cool.”

Mike assists with a smaller bag and leads him to the basement door; before he runs down the stairs, he catches Max’s eye, and she gives him a thumbs up and mouths, ‘You got this.’ Deep breaths. At that moment, he’s incredibly thankful for her presence.

He watches as Will follows him down, slower, glancing around at the familiar surroundings. His eyes catch on everything Mike and Max put together over the past few weeks, and his footsteps grow slower as he takes it all in.

Streamers of all festive colors and off-balance fairy lights hang along the corners of the basement, phrases of ‘Welcome home,’ hand-cut and pasted on the front wall; at the table, a game mat and figures sit in wait, silly hats placed in front each chair; even the TV is prepared with a Santa hat, the couch covered in blankets and pillows, a few sleeping bags folded on the floor.

“Mike,” Will says quietly, stepping in a small circle, “what is all this?”

“Your homecoming party.” Mike is all jitters; he leans against the wall and shoves his hands in his pockets to disguise any visible shakes. “You like it?”

Will finally looks straight at him, an indiscernible look painted on his face. “Yeah,” he says, nodding rapidly, “yeah, it’s great - but we, uh,” he swallows and shakes his head, “we don’t, um, have to play D&D. I mean-”

“I don’t know, Will,” he ventures to step away from the wall, taking slow steps over to the table. Will follows every move. “I mean, I was really excited to have you back, even just for a little bit. We all were.” He reaches the table and leans back on his hands. “Figured having our cleric back warranted some festivities.”

Will shakes his head, runs his hands along his face, and turns away. The bit of confidence Mike has slowly starts to trickle.

“Is it okay?”

Will shakes out of his stupor and chuckles. “It’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me. You’ve truly outdone yourself, Michael.” He lifts himself on tiptoe to look at decorations on top of Mike’s shelves. “Are these from our big craft night, like, years ago?”

The horrible crayon work makes Mike smile - they made half of the snowmen evil, citing a Great Abominable Snowman War, and gave them wicked frowns and smiles, claws on their stick hands. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t know you kept them.”

“I keep everything.” An awkward chuckle breaks from his chest. “Not everything, like, a hoarder or whatever, but - “

Will simply smiles and pushes himself forward toward the back wall, brushing past Mike, to his different pinups. He fixates on the sketch of Mike that he’d sent about a month back. “You know, you should probably take this down. I don’t think you’ll hear the end of it from Lucas and Dustin if you don’t.”

“Screw ‘em.”

“Right.” Will quirks his eyebrow and moves to sit in his designated chair, right next to where Mike is currently resting. “So, they know about D&D?”

“They know.” Mike smiles, and looks at the floor, right where their legs brush up against each other. “They seem pretty excited to have the party back together. To remind you of how badass your first one was,” he adds.

Will peers up at him for a moment before quietly saying, “I never joined another one.” Mike meets his eye for a moment, then, threatened by the silence that follows, clears his throat and distracts himself with a particularly interesting notch in the wood paneling. “Did you guys find someone else?”

“No, no,” Mike assures him. “We haven’t touched any of this stuff. It’s not the same.”

A silence settles between them, one that neither seems to know how to navigate. But Will keeps his gaze steady on Mike, trying to breach some barrier, to fall back into their usual ways.

Something is different, though; it’s not uncomfortable, it never could be, but it’s something intimidating. Will seems more comfortable, at least; he’s not shying away from anything Mike throws at him.

And he tries to break the silence first. “Y’know - “

“Will,” Mike cuts him off, and he’s not sure what he’s saying, or where he’s going with it, but he knows he’s supposed to say this. His name. “I need you to know that I missed you.”

Will blinks at him, cocks his head. “I missed you too,” he says matter-of-factly.

The words are eating at him, right there on the edge of his mind, and Will looks almost concerned and now Mike just wants to drop it because that’s not what he wanted. But he can’t, not now. “I missed you the most.” It sounds so juvenile. “More than everyone else. I missed you before you even left. I just didn’t know how to say it.” He breathes in and out, focusing on Will’s cheeks, the tip of his nose, anything but his eyes. When Will doesn’t say anything, the rest just spills. “I missed you when our first first day of school apart came and passed, and I didn’t even call. I missed you at homecoming. And,” he licks his lips, not really sure where his speech is heading, “I know you had to go, it’s fine. We’ll figure it out. But I feel like we haven’t been on the same page in a long time. So, I missed you, and I love you, and that’s that.”

Will looks at him funny, and then his face softens into something like laughter, and Mike is genuinely about to run and throw up somewhere, but then the boy closes his eyes and says, “I love you too.”

Mike blanches. “I don’t think I said that.”

“Oh, you definitely did.”

“Oh,” he nods, mind spinning, “well, you know…”

Will stands to be at Mike’s level, leans forward on his knees. Mike stops breathing. “I do,” he says, “but tell me again.”

Mike swallows down a breath of courage and suggests, “I think I might like you.” His eyes flit to Will’s lips, then back to his eyes. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll allow it,” Will says, a bright smile causing lines near his eyes. Mike smacks at his arm, nervous laughter coming out with a quiet, ‘Shut up.’ Will moves so he’s resting his fingertips on the table. Inches away.

“Same page, then?” Mike asks.

“Same page, yeah, for sure.”

Mike nods absently, distracting himself with the strings on Will’s sweatshirt. “So I don’t sound crazy?”

Will laughs. “I dunno. I always counted on us going crazy together. Figured we might have a few extra years, but hey, I’m all in.”

And then Mike is flashed back to a night on his couch just over a year ago. Knees knocking together, shared smiles. A promise.

So much has changed.

He wants to know what Will meant. A future of being in each other’s lives, maybe, getting old and senile and batshit crazy. Always being there.

He never dared to think about it before.

“So what now?”

Will shrugs. He dips his head to meet Mike’s eyes with his own. “What do you want, Mike?”

And finally, he thinks he might know.

Or maybe he’s always known.

He scoots forward, takes Will’s face in his hands, and kisses him. It’s just a quick press of their lips, but in that moment, he knows a few things for sure. His heartbeat is going a mile a minute, and Will must be able to feel it; it’s absolutely exhilarating, surreal, insane that he’s kissing his best friend; and, he is definitely in like, or maybe love, with Will Byers.

He’ll probably love him forever.

When Mike pulls back and his eyes flutter open to see Will, flushed, blinking back at him, slightly dazed, he doesn’t want to pull away at all. He did that. Mike’s hand remains on his jaw, lax, and he runs his thumb along Will’s bottom lip, curious to see his reaction, curious about a lot, now.

Will lets out a breathy chuckle. “Wow,” he mumbles, “that’s new.”

“Yeah.” Mike exhales shakily, takes one of Will’s hands, and says, “Merry Christmas, Will.”

“Yeah, Merry Christmas.”

The world doesn’t seem to fall apart like Mike thought it might if he ever got to this point, so, that’s nice.

“So…” Mike begins carefully, “you’re gonna have to be slow with me here. This is sort of a lot for me.”

“Me too,” Will replies simply. He squeezes Mike’s hand. “But we’ll figure it out.”

“Totally.”

Will takes his cheeks in his hands and smiles into a very gentle kiss, his fingers curling into the hair at the nape of Mike’s neck. It’s soft and sweet and lingering - but not for too long, as moments later the door upstairs busts open and shouts of, “BYERS!” from their dear friends sound through the air, and Mike and Will jump apart, equally startled and laughing.

“Down here!” Will calls out. He looks at Mike, smiles, offers, “To be continued?” and as he walks past, he leans in, just to leave a quick peck on Mike’s cheek.

And all Mike can do is laugh and shake his head and run after him to meet their friends; Lucas and Dustin are horribly late to the surprise, but they collide into Will the second they see him, shouting over each other, ‘What’s going on, dude?’ ‘Merry Christmas!’ ‘You’ve missed so much,’ and everyone is grinning and chattering, and it’s awesome.

Max approaches him, watching all of the madness, smacks a hand to his shoulder, and says, “You did good, Wheeler.”

“Yeah, I did.” She punches his arm lightly, laughing, so he adds, “thank you for everything. Seriously.”

“I think we should work together more often.”

Mike scoffs into a laugh, and says, “Yeah, guess so.”

Max rolls her eyes, but at least now they’re actually laughing in each other's company. It’s great progress from just a few weeks ago.

After a minute of watching the boy’s shenanigans, Max smiles. “Well, Merry Christmas, anyway.”

“Merry Christmas,” he responds, and he watches as she jumps up onto a kitchen stool, chatting and giggling with El.

With everyone back together again, finally, Mike feels really alive; so, he jumps in with all the excited shouting and group hugs and bickering, and celebrates the merriest Christmas he can remember in a long time.

#stranger things #hawkinsholidayhiatus #tuserjake #byler #byeler #mike wheeler #will byers #fanfiction #playlist #ik it might be a lil cheesy/dorky BUT i hope it makes u smile it was written w a lot of love <3 #mine

70 notes · View notes

caitybug · 4 years

Text

It may be February but... why not haha.

Below the cut, organized in chronological order, are the fics I wrote in 2020! All put into one place :D. Thank you to everyone who read, kudos’d, commented, beta’d, and supported my writing. It was my first ever year writing fanfiction, and I am so thankful for all the friends I’ve made because of it.

<3 <3

If Not For You

Word count: 92,461 Chapters: 36 Rating: M

Summary:

Simon was born and raised in the midwest, and he thinks he has his life figured out. He has a girlfriend that he feels happy with, is excited to drive for his junior year, and can't wait to get away from his father when he goes away for school.

However, this all changes when his mom dies and he is carted to the east coast to start at a boarding school. Simon then has to deal with having a roommate (who hates him), living with his mother's death, and wanting to be anywhere but where he is.

To add to it all, one day he gets a strange phone call, and he wonders if his mother's death was really an accident at all.

author’s note:

This was my first like actual fic. And my first try at writing something. This fic will always have a special place in my heart because it helped lead me to all the amazing people I now call friends <3

Not only that but it was a bit of therapy for me. (Self insert? In MY fanfiction? More likely than you’d think!)

Anyway, whenever someone comments, leaves kudos, or otherwise acknowledge that the fic exists I get emotional haha. I also have like three playlists for it too haha.

The Heist

Word Count:7456 Rating:T

Summary:

It's the fourth year of the Halloween heist, and Baz is determined to win. He thinks he has it all planned, that he knows Simon Snow through and through.

Despite this, somehow Simon still manages to surprise him.

author’s note:

b99 AU bahaha. Need I say more??

Pay Your Fines, Snow

Word Count: 1524 Rating: T

Summary:

Baz Pitch works at the local library every summer. He's annoyed at kids who run around, people who don't follow directions, and Simon Snow- who can't pay a fine on time.

author’s note

This fic was the first of the fics that sparked all my crazy prompts haha. It was so much fun to do!

There is a wonderful podfic of this made by the amazing and beautiful @xivz, and it also has art now by @peachpit-gabe!! Go check it out here.

A Rebirth

Word Count: 3374 Rating: T

Summary:

Simon and Baz need to finish their presentation for their Art History class. However, Baz also got pulled into watching his younger siblings for the weekend.

Frozen 2, chicken nuggets, sword fights, and themes of Renaissance.

author’s note

I wrote this for the amazing @krisrix as a prompt! It was so much fun to do and I legit wrote the whole thing in like one afternoon and had it looked over and posted it haha. I still feel bad because Kris legit asked for babies and I kicked the babies out at the beginning of the fic LOL.

Coming Together in Three Parts

Word Count: 4639 Rating: M Chapters: 3

Summary:

Three snippets of their lives after Wayward Son.

author’s note:

The summary definitely leaves a lot to be imagined haha. But I decided to pull a @ninemagicks and give a metaphor of threes and I love yous. So it’s three lovely stages after Wayward Son. There’s the I Love You, the moving in, and then a marriage proposal. I was fairly proud of this! And I did this as an exchange fic as well.

The Three Acts of a Wizard

Word Count: 6439 Rating: T

Summary:

Today, Baz is giving Simon a reprieve (or, that's what he is telling Simon.)

Cue a removal of cursed body parts, a grumpy fireplace who *knows* what is happening, and a shrill frizzy-haired friend threatening to poison some scones.

(this is a remix fic for @ninemagicks HMC AU YWSAFS

author’s note:

I wrote this for Nena’s birthday in the summer! Their friendship has meant the world to me, and this story is what I think gave me the gall courage to message them and harass them with 2k word comments/metas haha. If you’ve not read their fic, make sure to do so!

Heaven is a Place on Earth

Word Count: 12,711 Rating: M Chapters: 5 Summary:

Five hours each week. That's all Simon and Baz get.

But we know that's all they need to fall in love...

A San Junipero AU

author’s note:

This fic idea came to me randomly and I literally wrote it in a week. I love it so much, and despite being MCD I think it’s still generally happy (I mean.. they do end up together??) Idk, it has a special place in my heart. And I made @krisrix read Baz with an american accent so... win win haha.

(Un)Sexy Saturday

Word Count: 6157 Rating: M/E Chapters: 9 (they’re different stories each chapter.)

Summary:

Summaries vary by chapter. Overall it’s just a collection of silly stories where sex gets interrupted.

author’s note:

Honestly this series was so fun to do. I need to continue it sometime! From beauty blender butt plugs, to swingers, to garlic allergies... it just makes me laugh haha.

5 Times Simon Wanted a Fistbump, and the 1 Time He Finally Got It

Word Count: 5489 Rating: T Chapters: 6

Summary:

Simon Snow hasn't had a lot of friends in his life. He has Penny, who is great, of course. He has Baz (but does he count as a friend?)

So now, seeing Shepard, he's got a chance at a friend. A bro of sorts.

Simon sees the final hurdle in their friendship to be a fist bump. A simple signal of their friendship.

But how long is it going to take to get it??

5 + 1 Yearning for a Fist Bump.

author’s note:

Simpard. Friendship. And art by @nick-eyre?? Perfection.

A Goblin’s Skull, Maccies, and a Door Handle

Word Count: 2017 Rating: T

Summary:

Simon Snow wakes up in a building he doesn't know, tied up and blindfolded.

Luckily his best bro Shepard is there too.

author’s note:

Wrote this as a little bday treat for @nick-eyre :D. Decided to give Simon a friend who would also lust after goblins with him haha.

One Word, Four Letters, A Lifetime's Worth of Pain: IKEA

Word Count: 2428 Rating: T

Summary:

Baz comes home and notices the house is suspiciously quiet.

When he finds Simon, surrounded by unfinished pieces of furniture, he can't help but ask... why?

Author’s note:

This was written as a birthday gift for @foolofabookwyrm! She is an absolute gem and has never been to IKEA, but now I hope she understands the struggle of building IKEA furniture haha.

The Beat of My Heart

Word Count: 2230 Rating: T

Summary:

Simon is kneeling on the ground, waiting for Baz to come home.

He has a question. One he's wanted to ask for a while.

author’s note:

This was written as a birthday gift for @krisrix! A little proposal fic for the rat king <3 <3

Out of My Mind

Word Count: 10876 Rating: M Chapters: 3

Summary:

Baz and Simon are living their lives, domestic and content. They have a nine-year-old daughter, a Sunday morning routine, and plans to be alone for the first time for a while.

But when a girl who is growing into her powers reads something she shouldn't, they get into a predicament they don't expect.

author’s note:

This was a COE gift for @krisrix! Body Swap! Parents! Married! I tried to do it all for him haha. 2020 was really the year where I was like yeah, let’s write Kris a million fics. And honestly—wouldn’t have it any other way.

Imposter vs Crewmates

Word Count: 754 Rating: T

Summary:

Everyone has their quarantine coping strategies.

Simon tried to bake bread.

Baz watched Twilight.

But Penelope...

She introduced the gang to Among Us.

author’s note:

Look. I’ve no excuses for this lolol. Just thought it’d be silly :D.

The Ethics of Wanting You

Word Count: 1417 Rating: T

Summary:

Simon Snow realized recently that he has a crush on Baz.

Penny suggested he find reasons to spend more time with him, so he suggests a study session for their ethics exam the following day.

(It doesn't go as planned, but the result is very much worth it.)

author’s note:

Birthday gift for @peachpit-gabe <3 <3. Just a cute one shot with snowbaz.

Pumpkin, Let’s Make a Patch

Word Count: 2516 Rating: T

Summary:

Simon Snow is trying to create a neighborhood pumpkin patch.

Baz, unknowingly, rips the pumpkins out of his front lawn.

(How will he make it up to him?)

author’s note:

This was done for the COC. I based it off this cute tiktok series with this kid who rode around on his skateboard and plants pumpkins around his neighborhood.

Weathering the Storm

Word Count: 2248 Rating: T

Summary:

Shepard was nine when he first met a boy he'd learn was Simon Snow.

He was in a ditch crying, and Shepard wasn't sure what to make of him.

This boy lived in his mind until he saw him again years later.

And today, when there's a storm unlike any other in London, he knows who must be at the center of it.

author’s note:

Honestly. This is probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. IDK. It’s so short but... I love it. And if you like to listen to fics— @bloodiedpixie did a phenomenal podfic of it! And @nick-eyre did AMAZING art for it too <3.

New Beginnings

Word Count: 2090 Rating: T

Summary:

It's the first New Years Eve after the Christmas that changed everything.

After Simon Snow and Baz kissed.

After they defeated the humdrum.

After the Mage's death.

But, as many of us do, it's time to take the New Year as an opportunity to begin anew.

author’s note:

Part of a server exchange I did for @knitbelove :D.

And, all of the prompts I’ve yet to put on ao3... lolol

#2020 masterpost #Caity did fanfiction #Caity does fanfiction #still #but wow I really DID that y'all #i wrote over 250k last year #YIKES #damn #anyway #this has been great #love you all

35 notes · View notes

lacktastrophe · 4 years

Text

Daisy MegaPost Pt1

Update: 3/7/2021

This one’s been in the shop for a couple of years now. I think I started this way back in 2019 but I just became just far too busy to work on huge posts again. I had anticipated to have all of Daisy written up during the break that BCB had, but I became in need of a break myself too. Part two was written up, but I never went further.

I had come back to this recently and made some changes. I wasn’t too happy with the way I used to write and I’ve been editing this over and over, until I noticed it wasn’t keeping them. I’ve published it now since there wasn’t any point just keeping it in drafts and it’s more or less done, just not in this state I’m perfectly happy with, but it seems to be keeping my changes now it’s in this state. I anticipate I’ll still be making some edits. Before I continue on with Part 2. As for part 3 and onwards, I can’t give a time frame.

With the webtoons version way ahead of the chapters here, I’ll probably make progressive updates and start using those over the old Volume 1 art, I’d anticipate the webtoons version is a retelling of the story and thus there might be some retcons, like how Kizuna was replaced with Stacy. I’d anticipate some changes might make different meanings for the future.

I still enjoy examining the story and characters. I still plan to do some introspections to the other characters I haven’t come to, but it’ll be far fewer and in-between than years ago. I have other projects and those need priority.

But I’m happy that people still enjoy reading these.

---

We’re onto the main characters now, things are going to need to change with the way mega-posts are going to be published from this point forward. My previous mega-posts are usually just one long post, hence the name. Though they’re starting to become uncontrollable, and Tumblr is clamping down, or at least not really working with excessive word counts.

Uh oh. . .

Well, the old mega-posts can still be accessed but you’ll need a direct link, they won’t show up on the mainroll and I’d be surprised if they still show up these days, and I’d have to guess this has something to do with the anti-spam detection on Tumblr.

If you were interested in the previous mega-posts, they can be accessed on their own page from my blog’s front page. I just wouldn’t try reading some of the earlier ones on an app, it’ll struggle.

The other problem was with the word count, even without the characters being the prime focus, they’re starting to get long. Abbey’s alone was a 16000 behemoth. This surprised me, as despite him being a secondary character there was an awful lot to discover and talk about. Augustus, despite being a character who appeared much more in-between chapters but much fewer than Abbey, was nearly 21000 words. If there was that much to talk about with the secondary characters, the same method of just dumping as much as I can into one post is clearly not going to work when we start approaching the main characters. I had to split both of them up for my own convenience.

The main change is to make these smaller so they’re friendlier on the app and the website; maybe aim for 2000-5000 words without focusing too heavily on trying to get through on as many chapters as possible and see how far we go.

The plan from this point forward is to do a large collection of write ups but then deploy them progressively. That’ll also give anyone who’s keen a chance to give feedback or who wants to talk further about something.

Sound good?

Me too! So without further ado, let’s get a move on and have a look at Daisy.

----

So, our first protagonist, where do we start with Daisy?

How you’re first introduced to Daisy really depends on whether you read the book or followed the comic through the site. The book’s opening chapter, ‘Like a Bittersweet Candy Bowl’ introduces you to Daisy as a massive bookworm who does well in school. She’s pretty smart!

Book in hand, we’d pretty much believe that right off the bat. She appears like the most studious in this group of friends. And we’d be right! She even puts the ever-perfect Mike to shame. She’s nothing less than a perfect student.

‘Perfect’ could be an understatement, Daisy is a literal freak of nature when it comes to her academics; as when Daisy and the kids transition to Roseville high, we find her already in classes well advanced than her peers.

Daisy is just that incredible!

Through the website, ‘Simple Pleasures’ aims to introduce the kids in much the same way, but there is far less in the way of monologuing and we’re introduced as the characters interact. In much the same way as the introduction chapter in volume 1, we learn that Daisy is quite the bookworm and school-obsessed student, even during weekends. But that’s not the only thing dominating her thoughts, as when Lucy goes out on her walk, the first person she runs into is Daisy who is looking for someone else in particular!

You guessed it!

Oh GOD, does Daisy like boys! Can you guess who she’s got her eye on?

Of course it’s Mike. Are you surprised she’s got a deep crush on the boy who seems very perfect himself? Everywhere that Mike goes, you can be sure that there’s a shadow in the shape of Daisy not too far behind. . .

Wherever he goes. . .

Daisy doesn’t shy from showing her interest in him when the convenience calls for it. Ah, young love.

Eventually, Daisy would find love, though it wouldn’t be with Mike. It would however be the second longest running relationship in the comic if you consider Mike and Sandy, with an admirer of hers.

Still, suffice to say, even after every attempt gets shot down in the most spectacular way, Daisy bounces back -- Like a daisy. Her shining ray of positivity follows her everywhere. It’s all in the name, after all. Daisy still manages to rise up with her sunny disposition.

But not every time.

As the story progresses, little by little, we start seeing that there’s more to Daisy. We start to see that not everything is bright and happy like her name-sake despite appearances. Things would be far from perfect, and underneath that smiling face is a character suffering with low self-esteem in that very same area; her appearance; believing their Ragamuffin/Selkirk-Rex heritage is letting them down and putting them in misery. This tends to be particularly true on rainy days, when all the hours she spends of a morning brushing down her fur become undone when the droplets causes it to fluff up and the curls start showing. Daisy attributes these traits to the reason she isn’t quite as easily noticed by the boys as the other girls, setting up for a number of stories involving her in Volume1, and opening her to be taken advantage of in the pursuit of attention and affection.

Not all the characters gain admirers or attention and for most of these characters, this is fine. But Daisy is not one of those and this above all things has an enormous impact on her. She wants to be noticed and receive affection, particularly from Mike, and others to a degree.

It’s when faced with multiple rejections from her dream boyfriend we also progressively discover a side of her shown to be more envious if not resentful of a few others who have it so easy, particularly with one such character inside her friend circle.

As you can imagine, these weaknesses will eventually put Daisy in danger as she tries her best to come up with ways to cope and make changes in order to improve her life, especially if the means are at the cost of logical reasoning like taking advice from the seediest boy in the school to attain her goals. She isn’t infallible; Intelligence doesn’t necessarily mean smarts. Even with someone who does as well in school as Daisy does, there’s always room to grow.

But until that happens, Daisy often finds herself in trouble when her personal feelings, ambitions and dreams do the talking for them on pursuit of happiness, for herself and others.

And oh boy, doesn’t Daisy make more than her own fair share of mistakes.

Let’s move onto the story, it starts with Simple pleasures, the first chapter.

This chapter serves to introduce us to the main group of characters central to the story and so features the aloof and prickly Lucy, the playboy Paulo, the ever-perfect Mike and the bookworm Daisy. It starts with Lucy on a morning walk and progressively running into each of them. With Daisy specifically, it starts with Daisy coming across her first and greeting her by shouting ‘Hey’ behind her.

Except...Lucy ignores her, and we don’t know why -- Is Lucy doing this intentionally? She’s in a world of her own at the moment with her singing. Are they friends? Is she just so aloof she doesn’t realise she’s there?

Well, Daisy isn’t going to let herself be ignored so easily and she really needs Lucy for something. So she goes to get her attention by impulsively grabbing onto Lucy’s tail. This would turn out to be a very critical mistake that one of the other protagonists just can’t stop helping himself from doing, and because of that we notice that Lucy isn’t as aloof as she seems, and reciprocates by twisting around and kicking her in the face.

Only to find that the person she was expecting was actually Daisy, much to her surprise. There’s a reason she never noticed her.

The first chapter has a number of objectives, it serves to set up the tone of the comic by showing the dynamic between the main group of friends, but also displays their characteristics. We already learn a couple of things from Daisy and Lucy’s interaction here. We learn that Lucy has a short fuse when it comes to unwanted contact. She appears aloof, but the main reason for Lucy not acknowledging Daisy initially is through the understanding that she’s partially deaf, unable to hear out of her left ear in similar in characteristic with her breed, the Khao Manee. Many of the other characters will make this mistake too and often at times Lucy doesn’t make it obvious she can’t hear what’s going on around them and needs to ask about what transpired much later. Lucy’s aloofness will be questioned in time as we start seeing more of her.

Daisy had forgotten about Lucy’s disability because something else was more important. And naturally, we learn that Daisy has, no less; a bit of a crush on the forefront of her mind. And we learn here that crush is on Mike, one of their friends at school, and her reasoning for bothering Lucy is that she’s only looking for him. What we come to learn later is it’s a little known fact that wherever Lucy is, Mike is often not too far away. In fact Lucy is never off on her own by herself.

Sadly for Daisy, Lucy doesn’t know where he is, so Daisy runs off in the opposite direction. That’s about as much of Daisy as we see until the next chapter.

Before we move on, let’s talk more about their interaction. As brief as it was, the interaction gives off more in the subtext into the status of the relationships between these characters and the others. I anticipate as new readers many of the details of this interaction just fly over heads, accepting these two are friends and this is just how they are. But being as late into the comic as we are, I feel we’re already seeing some of the signs of what’s to come in the story through this short interaction. Not everything is as it seems.

Most of this payload of information is laid in the question that Daisy poses after Lucy asks her what she’s after. When Lucy states she hasn’t seen Mike, Daisy asks ‘Oh no, did you upset him?’

Immediately we’re given some insight into the triangle that exists between these characters and their relationship between one another, and insight into the state of these relationships.

Starting with Mike and Lucy’s relationship as the question is directed about the two of them, we learn that the friendship isn’t without it’s issues, and we’d be quick to pass this off initially as something that happens from time to time. Fight’s happen, it’s a fact of life, and it happens more so when you’re a kid and figuring things out, yourself and life. Reading through the story, we would find the two inseparable in the later chapters and we never look at Daisy’s question again. But reading through BCB again from as late in the comic as we are, we have to wonder why this question specifically.

What we learn much later in the comic as we progress through is that Mike and Lucy’s relationship is much more complicated than what it appears to be. Much later, we see that the two do argue from time to time, until we get to the point where the plaster and apologies aren’t mending the cracks. The friendship isn’t quite as clean cut as it was made out to be and we start seeing some back stories into the characters. What appears to be a competitive rivalry through volume 1 between two friends is really something more sinister. By the time we reach Volume 4, we learn these two are really anything but friends.

For the moment, Daisy’s casual interaction gives off a sense of normality in their environment and understanding the answer to the question would actually help plan out her next move if we were to consider that maybe there was some intent behind the question. But we’ll get to the nature of it soon.

Without knowing too much about the kids as early in the story. I’d feel we’d put our trust in the kids to tell the story for us, and Daisy does come off as being quite perceptive and trustworthy immediately being the positive bookkeeper she is, she would be the expert for us until such a time as we become the experts.

One thing we’d discover much later on our own is that the Mike and Lucy are inseparable. In one way or another, they will find each other and act like close friends again. And Daisy knows this too without specifically pointing it out. Already suggesting that they’ve fought, it would only be a matter of time before they made up again, whether that takes minutes or hours. No matter how big the town is again, so long as they’ve got each other in their thoughts, they’ll stumble upon each other in no time, almost like a six sense.

It could be said that this is for the sake of convenience in the story in getting them to interact faster in the comic and resolve disputes, and that would be right. But BCB takes this and turns it into a running gag between just these two characters. There are more than a few jokes that exist in Volume 1 to make this seem like these two are made for each other in the way that they will eventually run into each other no matter how big the town is. One such joke is seen in Volume 1 through Mike’s inability to surprise Lucy on her Birthday. It’s so powerful, even Lucy’s auditory disability doesn’t stop her from catching him just before he can do it, even if the hiding spot isn’t obvious.

We’ve only seen this fail once, and that was in ‘Its all in the mind’ when Mike does sneak up on her, but Lucy has very much moved on from Mike at this point, so we’d have to wonder if this is something to do with them both being in Sync, we might not know.

The question Daisy asks doesn’t just pertain to Mike and Lucy’s relationship however, it also begs the question to Lucy and Daisy’s relationship at the same time. In fact, if it wasn’t for Daisy’s sunny disposition and Lucy’s stone-faced responses, the entire interaction would appear quite rude; Daisy’s question isn’t whether or not she’s seen him, only if she’s upset him, shedding some poor light on Lucy’s personality.

It’s important to remember that while these two are friends at our current point in the comic, they did not start out as friends, especially when you consider Confrontation, as we’re coming up to. Daisy, while she was amicable around Lucy and quite hospitable to her in the friend group, has to contend with her as being this roadblock to getting to Mike. Lucy seemed more aloof around her, but there’s more than enough to suggest that Lucy had other mutual feelings.

Understanding now that there is a rivalry between the two (or a one-sided rivalry, take your pick), we can understand why that particular question had been asked. Its tent though is to give more reason to Daisy’s next move: If Lucy did divulge she had fought with him; then it would only be a matter of time before Mike showed up, as Mike would feel the need to apologise and through their innate ability, would find each other, it would just be a matter of time. If she hadn’t; then Mike could be just about anywhere.

It turns out to be the later. And too infatuated with Mike (or not interested in hanging out with Lucy, take your pick), Daisy does not simply stay with her to wait and runs off in the opposite direction, hoping to find him first.

It’s when Daisy is no longer in the focus, we can see that Lucy isn’t exactly as stonewalled as she initially appeared to be, blushing from the interaction.

As possible that Lucy is only reacting because of her stupid head-over-heels attitude for that other idiot, as Lucy is yet to realise her feelings for Mike, we could wonder if it might not also be because Daisy has rudely pointed at the elephant in the room in Lucy and Mike’s relationship. Who’s to say?

(2021 edit -- The webtoon has this piece of dialogue changed. This time Daisy asks ‘Awww, are you both fighting still?’, which makes this even more pronounced that things aren’t all quite sunshine already. )

Finally, Daisy and Mike. Now that Lucy’s interaction with Daisy is done, Daisy is running around town looking for Mike, for whatever reason it just can’t wait until school.

Ah love. I’m sure it won’t be a problem in the future, right?

Mike is a real nice guy; lending Daisy his math workbook to Daisy.

We really need to look a bit deeper into this. We know much later in the story we that Daisy is well in advance of her peers in her studies. When she starts Roseville high, we find her in no more than two ahead of the others in her grade, with the juniors, and Tess.

And in the first few chapters of volume 1, we learn that Daisy often tutors Mike, so there’s no way Daisy even needs that book.

Unless...

O---Oh. It wasn’t for Math after all.

We’d come to learn that boy troubles are generally the source for all of Daisy’s grief. We’ll find that Daisy’s crazed obsession over Mike is used to justify a lot of the actions she’ll take in the future and we don’t know how bad this is until the much later volumes. Volume one step over this lightly as just a girl wanting her crush’ affection. But it becomes more pronounced in the much later volumes, especially when Abbey makes a point out of it when Daisy is less inhibited to keep her real feelings secret after getting drunk off Alcohol at Rachel’s party in a very late chapter.

Getting back to the current chapter, Lucy will notice that Mike eventually did find Mike, but she’s not with him. So maybe that was all she really wanted.

We’d be saps for thinking that.

But without anything concrete, we can only presume that was it. So thanks for returning Mike’s book, Daisy.

Daisy appears again in Merry Snow Day, the following chapter. This is a very short chapter where the kids are going to school after Lucy (begrudgingly) accepts schools not out, and walks with Mike to school. Daisy appears not long after and the first order of the day is to talk about homework, including offering to tutor him. She’d do anything if it meant helping her fellow students.

It’s at this part we’re introduced to the subtle idea of the rivalry for Mike’s affection between Daisy and Lucy. It’s subtle since it’s very one-sided and Lucy and Daisy don’t directly interact with one another or show that they’re fighting. Their interactions for most of the early chapters happen through Mike like you can see above when Lucy adds herself into the conversation. We’d have reason despite Lucy’s aloofness that such a rivalry does exist subconsciously and there are some reasons to believe this we’ll touch on. But for the moment, we can be sure that Lucy doesn’t consider Daisy a threat for one main reason: Mike will come back, so there’s no problem.

Daisy wouldn’t make a point of the rivalry either but Daisy would take advantage of the convenience of Lucy being out of the picture to seek attention from Mike, as she does when Lucy continues to school, and Daisy directly copies what happened just seconds ago when Lucy was about to fall on the ice, and Mike catches her.

Nice.

This chapter also introduces Yashy, Lucy’s pet Lizard and her surrogate daughter into the story line. The earlier chapters of Bittersweet Candy Bowl are ripe with slap-stick humour, and Yashy is the general source of this with her outspokenness and wise-ass personality. She’s there to rile up the others and break all the ice with her innocent demeanour. This will be the case up until the kids go to Highschool when the comedy starts being turned down in place of focusing on the rifts coming between the kids.

Unlike the other pets, Yashy is integral to the plot involving Lucy and Mike’s relationship, as she’s partly the reason for the friendship going on as long as it has. Having known Yashy for as long as Lucy, Mike takes on the role of the surrogate dad in Yashy’s life and this ends up having Yashy taking on the belief that Mike and Lucy are an established couple. But this isn’t true, and it plagues Mike as this is anything further than the truth. But with Yashy’s innocence, he can’t find the means to break this to her.

Yashy’s insistence of Mike and Lucy’s eventual destiny of being husband and wife comes at Daisy’s expense, as despite Lucy not necessarily seeing reason to stop Daisy’s attempts at trying for seek Mike’s affection, it’s Yashy who perceives her as a real threat and will shout obscenities at her when she doesn’t get her way, with a particular choice of word in mind. Though it doesn’t stop Daisy. But we can’t help but wonder much later if those words Yashy chooses to throw don’t have some kind of an effect on her much later.

That completes this chapter. Daisy doesn’t have much of an impact in Unfit for Education, appearing more to just be a participant in Sue’s obsessive thoughts game. But she gets a larger role to play in the following chapter; Burden of Parenthood.

This chapter has the kids going through sex ed. and being given the responsibility of raising a robotic baby, which they will be graded on based on their performance. This chapter starts off quite unexpectedly, as when the teacher begins pairing off the students, Yashy’s expectations that Michael and Lucy will be paired together, doesn’t actually happen for a change.

This time, Daisy is paired up with Mike, and Lucy is paired up with Paulo.

As you could guess, Yashy isn’t thrilled in the least bit. But neither is Lucy particularly when she spots Paulo pleased at the results himself.

Again I still don’t think Yashy’s abuse is really doing much for Daisy, I can’t help but wonder what that will do for her self-esteem?

Oh, I bet she’ll be fine, she’s like a Daisy, remember?

It’s during lunch we find Daisy is positively happy with the result when she confronts Mike with their baby. Although there’s just one problem. The baby is a glaring defect, a very...interesting feature about it that has Mike freaking out.

And he’s not playing ball because of it. Even Lucy is having a hard time with the baby’s smile.

But Daisy, Daisy couldn’t care; it’s Mike’s child.

The Daisy x Mike compatibility really doesn’t take off as Mike wants absolutely nothing to do with the newly-named Alegria, which Daisy is quick to point out after keenly watching a maternally-skilled Lucy teach a very clumsy Paulo how to properly hold a child, something she learned when raising Yashy. Daisy is by all means entranced by the romantic exchange.

But where’s hers?

Trying to get Mike jealous by thrusting her baby in Paulo’s arms, and Paulo taking to the baby. Mike sees his chance and gets Lucy to ditch the two and work as a team again.

There is a momentary issue when the teacher discovers the pairs do not have their correctly assigned baby, and through a quick suggestion they were giving a realistic portrayal of divorce and custody, get extra marks on their assignments.

You’d think Daisy would be quite depressed with her chance to work with Mike not going the way she planned and the opportunity going out the window. But to receive additional credit on their work, she’s actually more than ecstatic at the results!

It’s fine, there’ll be more chances. There’s still 4 more years of school!

And in the meantime, Daisy x Paulo was born. One would have to wonder if it would bear fruits.

...Nah.

Daisy has a role to play in the next chapter; Prom Preparation. She’s tasked with organising the 8th grade prom.

The first order of the day is to survey the music selection for the evening, starting with genres. Daisy gets ideas from a number of the students, almost forgetting she hadn’t asked Mike yet.

Apparently Mike doesn’t have a favourite genre of music that comes to mind. Not being a fan of new music, Daisy fills the gap and suggests he’s into much older stuff which she tries to bond over, infuriating Yashy.

When Daisy asks Lucy for her favourite music genre. Lucy wonders why she should bother since she’s not planning on going. . .

Leaving Mikie easy pickings for the evening. Daisy sees her chance for a bit of romance that evening, and Yashy is not at all pleased about this.

It’s worth talking about Yashy at this point, as even though we’re technically focusing on Daisy, there’s something we might be able to gain from both Yashy and Lucy that might give more insight into Daisy and Lucy’s relationship. You might notice, (2021 -- Especially in the Webtoons version), during each outburst by Yashy we can see Lucy blushing as her child unleashes hell upon Daisy, and we’d have to wonder why that is, because Lucy doesn’t seem to be initially the kind of person to care too much about anything going on around them, right?

But what if Yashy was this mouthpiece of Lucy’s impulsive thoughts that she doesn’t act on, and that’s why Lucy appears to blush from embarrassment? Yashy’s impulses are not something she’s able to control, only her own through her own inhibitions. Later in the story we start seeing hints that Lucy’s stonewall-straight faced demeanour is very much a facade and she’s actually quite sensitive, but when she’s fighting her emotions inside and she doesn’t have the answer, a blank expression is all you get so she can’t be hurt in one way or another.

But having been raised by Lucy, we could assume that Yashy is very much Lucy’s child and we can expect that having been raised by Lucy, much like every other kid out there, sometimes kids pick up traits from their parents.

(2021 -- The problem of Yashy’s language was also bought up in the more recent chapter, Dinner time, when Lucy’s mum points this out as Lucy and Jordan are fighting. While the person who was called out for this was Jordan. Can’t help but think that despite Jordan pointing out something embarrassing about why Mike might not be over more, Lucy is instead more blushing over the problem with Yashy, as Yashy is still embarrassed at being called out over it too. It’s hard to imagine the problem is just Jordan as Lucy has quite opinionated language as well, and lastly, because Yashy spends more of her time with her. There’s just an awful lot of body language going on in that scene and it’s hard to tell.)

Yashy is quite innocent in the story as she is one of the fewer characters who meets with rejection and doesn’t undergo the same hardships that Lucy underwent in her youth, so where this language and outspokenness has come from, you’d have to wonder if it’s just a quirk, or something deeper at this stage. Like as if Yashy is actually Lucy without the inhibitions.

Daisy doesn’t back down from Yashy when the golden opportunity arises even despite the name-calling. It’s when Mike believes both girls are fighting over him for Lucy to set the record straight -- she isn’t; Yashy and Daisy were and makes a point out of it. This causes Mike to walk off embarrassed since Lucy doesn’t reciprocate the same feelings. It’s only a little later towards the end when Daisy is turned down along with several other girls who learn of Mike’s availability. That ends that chapter. No romance for Daisy.

The next chapter is Helping hands, this chapter stars Daisy and Paulo who appear to have become closer friends since their pairing together in Burden of Parenthood. The chapter begins with Daisy and Paulo walking through the street, with Daisy talking about how Katie had a sleep-over the previous weekend but wasn’t invited, she was sure she must have misplaced it.

Though why missing out on Katie’s sleepover is the highlight of Daisy’s weekend is anyone’s best guess, right?

Daisy screams out suddenly as she points out an injured bird on the road, appearing heartbroken at the events. Paulo points out an arriving car that is about to put it out of its misery causing Daisy to become further distraught by this. At the very last minute, Paulo saves the bird, almost putting his own life in danger.

Expecting her to be elated, Daisy is not at all pleased in Paulo’s recklessness and scolds him, before being otherwise thankful he did it to save the bird.

But the next question is, now what?

With a hospital being too far away, Daisy suggests instead to take it to Lucy’s house as a last resort. Bringing up Paulo’s crush however, garners a reaction from Paulo that, well. . . Daisy’s not to pleased at seeing.

Oh, we’re going to see more of that.

Daisy thinks about whether or not Lucy would end up adopting the bird as she has quite a number of pets herself. Daisy would herself although her mother wouldn’t allow it.

Suggesting Paulo could with how well Paulo did at looking after Alegria, Paulo finds the talk far too embarrassing for his ever-masculine personality. Daisy tries to persuade him that girls are into boys who can be shown to have a caring attitude. Sadly, Paulo thinks he’s already at this level.

Oh, how Paulo x Daisy is teased so.

The weather starts to take a turn for the worst and threatens to rain down much to Daisy’s horror, as we learn something interesting about how her fur reacts to the rain. Paulo tries not not to give this away but Daisy then realises and starts showing how self conscious she is about her fur, a fact we learn more of in an intermission, where Daisy spends quite a number of hours brushing it down. When Daisy asks whether he’s grossed out by her curls, he avoids the question by telling them they have to hurry, or the bird won’t make it!

Unfortunately for Daisy, Paulo isn’t the last person when they arrive at Lucy’s house. Leaving the bird in her care, Daisy immediately runs into the bathroom only to run into Mike, it’s an absolute nightmare scenario.

Feeling devastated, Paulo comes in with some saving words and tells her if Mike was really worth her time, he’d wouldn’t care no matter how she looked. Which does wonders for her esteem.

Lucy arrives down shortly thereafter and lets the two know the bird will make it, having only been attacked by another creature and not so much struck by a car. Lucy will nurse it until its better, much to the joy of Daisy and Paulo.

At that point, the conversation switches as that matter is taken care of. Noticing that Mike is at Lucy’s house studying with her. Daisy tries to invite herself to stay over and help out too.

It turns out, simply asking means you’re outstaying your hospitality.

Yeah, they’re not really tight friends are they?

On the Monday, Daisy and Paulo ask Lucy about the bird, first mistaking what Lucy says meaning that the bird passed away, it healed over the weekend and left the following day.

But not before giving them a gift.

After all, they’d need it for their baby. The bird seems to think they’d make a good couple. Ah, PauloxDaisy again. If only they both felt that way about each other.

Daisy appears in show and tell, in this chapter we are introduced to the specific breeds the characters are.

Naturally, Yashy is not at all pleased about Daisy when she arrives.

When it comes to Daisy’s turn, we find she’s Selkirk Rex cross Ragamuffin.

Which would explain a lot of Daisy’s features, Selkirk and Ragamuffins are both very people-oriented and akin to Teddy Bears. Both breeds can get along with nearly everybody.

And, well that’s true for Daisy.

Daisy appears in Pep Rally, a chapter focusing on the sports carnival. Daisy appears as one of the school’s cheerleaders next to Amaya, Stacy, and her rival, Katie, who is not at all happy that she’s not the captain. Daisy is not about to give up being the center of attention.

This chapter has more to do with Mike’s super sensitive hearing than anything else. Even so, Daisy is more than capable of being able to amp up the crowd, especially when Mike lands a win.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Off to the Movies’, when Mike invites Lucy to the movies, only for Paulo, David and Daisy to show up at the same time and suggest they all go see a movie together (Lucy reluctantly agreeing). When it comes to selecting their preferences for movies, Daisy goes for the mushiest movie that’s available. Paulo and David wanting horror, Mike wanting comedy and Lucy. . .well, she wants to see a love story. It seems like they all can’t decide, but Lucy chooses the jack of all trades movie as a compromise; the ‘epic suspensful, romance thriller with lots of jokes’.

Win-win, right?

Daisy’s in heaven when the seating arrangements are chosen, right next to her crush, she couldn’t be more optimistic.

A number of things happen during the movie, but nothing got by Daisy when the movie ends as she notices Paulo on the brink of tears following its conclusion. Daisy offers to forget that she ever saw it, on the condition he explains his phobia to barking, something else that happened earlier when Paulo tried to steal David’s popcorn.

Predictably, Paulo is far too masculine to talk about his feelings.

Eventually Paulo balks to the peer pressure (from Daisy) and explains what happened. When the others make fun of Paulo over it, Daisy leaps to his defense and tells them off. There’s a lovely moment between the two as Daisy reassures Paulo that she appreciates his forwardness and openness to the things that bothers him. And Paulo decides to talk about everything.

The PauloxDaisy content just keeps coming.

But it’ll never work. I--I swear it won’t.

By the very end, the kids all say their farewells to each other and go their separate ways.

Daisy appears in the next chapter ‘Puppy Love’. Mike finds a love letter in his locker from a secret admirer (It’s Stacy). Mike chastises Lucy who finds the whole thing hilarious and reads the poem aloud. Mike wants to find the person responsible. Suddenly, and out from nowhere, Daisy appears suggesting they do some detective work, all in the name of romance. But Mike reveals he just simply wants to reject them.

With much similarity to Prom Night, this chapter is more to point out with how much of the school has an interest in dating Mike. It’s not just Daisy, but also Sue, Amaya, Katie, those three random girls. The only exception is dear old Lucy.

The next chapter is Confrontation. This chapter opens with Mike and Lucy doing what they do best when something unfortunate happens; they argue, with Lucy blaming Mike for having them miss their stop. Daisy begs Paulo to get them to stop, and they do, albiet, for a short few seconds before they start arguing again.

With no sign of it ending, Daisy and Paulo day-dream of a better alternate reality where they both get their desires. Mike and Lucy are just awful for each other. Things would work out better if it was just Mike and Daisy, and Paulo and Lucy, Just think of the romance. What could go wrong?

The kids get off at the next station which unfortunately for them turns out to be a bad idea as they end up in the roughest neighbourhood a few towns over from Roseville. With Lucy suggesting they find a phone to call their parents, they go out in search of an open store. With Mike and Lucy still at each other’s throats, Daisy tries to take advantage of the situtation by suggesting that Mike could in fact stay over at her place seeing as how late it was, especially if his house is a bit too far. hoping that Lucy having been quite bitter to him will cause him to think about coming around to her advances. But Mike rejects her advance. When Daisy becomes fed up enough to suggest he’d go to Lucy’s house despite their fighting, he agrees it likely would happen, frustrating her even more.

She loses her temper, exploding about Mike and Lucy’s friendship being just horrible and suggests any investment would never be returns. Prompting a reaction from Mike for a short moment, until Mike twists that around and tells her to stop chasing the same stupid feelings, walking ahead and leaving Daisy to sulk to herself.

She’s joined shortly after when Paulo’s escapade in trying to woo Lucy goes as well as anyone would expect. Daisy, frustrated in how Mike always seems to show some compromise with Lucy, argues with him over his bad taste in women too.

Daisy’s thorns are on full display here as she starts to openly show her resentment towards Lucy who has it all so easy with both Paulo and Mike due to her looks. Daisy’s frustrated that despite her best efforts to be more appealing in every other way; Lucy has the looks, and that’s all that matters.

With Daisy being too frustrated from being inhibited from displaying this side of her, it’s clear neither she nor Lucy are good friends at all. Daisy has shown such a low opinion of her because of her attitude, knowing full well that often times Mike gets beaten up by her. Lucy’s aloofness could be confused with disinterest and both of them suggest that Lucy wouldn’t really care if either of them suddenly caught alight.

But Mike overhears this thanks to his superhearing and tells them there’s more to her than what they know. But neither of them take the comment seriously.

Lucy also overhears, and is a little distraught at how the others think of her.

The kids find a bar and Sue manages to call ther mother to come pick them up. Problems arise when Mike takes on a dare to eat as many liqueur chocolates from a stranger, and is quite positively drunk out of his mind. Lucy comments on this having watched on and Daisy chastises her for letting him do it.

She might have wished she had done something about it, as Mike is all over her, uninhibited from telling her how he feels about her looks.

And that does nothing for Daisy who sucks at all the attention Lucy’s getting. The world’s just unfair.

Though, Mike notices Daisy’s state, and goes over to give her attention too. What would be a dream for Daisy is sadly shortlived, as Mike’s attention switches to ice-cream truck music, and suddenly takes off towards it.

The kids are find themselves backed into an alley, as the stranger who Mike took the bet from comes to get his money back.

The ordeal is quite terrifying to Daisy. Paulo tries to defend her. But he gets a little too in over his head, not realising these two were the people who created his phobia of barking .

When Paulo is kicked aside, Daisy goes to him and asks if he knows the two. But Paulo doesn’t recognise them.

Not considering herself a fighter, Daisy is only able to come to her friends’ comfort as each one is assaulted one by one. Paulo first, then Sue when she cops an arm to the nose.

She can only watch when Mike tries to defend them, actually having some martial arts experience, but being too drunk to be effective.

And finally Lucy, as capable as she was finds herself unable to fend off Alejandro. Daisy calls out, but Lucy tells her to be quiet, or to hide as Lucy bears the brunt of the assault.

Mike regains consciousness at the very last moment and saves her before both team up in a last stand against Alejandro. Alejandro realises he’s bitten off more than he can chew and runs away. Daisy watches on as Lucy breaks down having realised how close they all were to having someone lose their life.

Sue’s mother arrives and all the kids are on their way back to Roseville. Paulo can’t help but notice that Daisy is really in the dumps over the night. Lucy did something completely unexpected in coming to their aid at the last minute — the ever uncaring Lucy put herself on the line so no one else would get hurt. And she feels awful knowing she was wrong — about Lucy and what she said about her to Mike.

Paulo tries to reassure her that Mike probably doesn’t remember what she said, and that turns out to be true as Mike is willing to accept her apology the next day.

Things are back to normal it seems, luckily for Daisy.

Or are they?

I figure we’ll stop here and resume next week. Look at that! We covered 12 chapters of 127! There’s a lot more of Daisy to come!

#bittersweet candy bowl #bcb #megathread #daisy

20 notes · View notes

dascarecrow · 4 years

Text

Beware Your Heart’s Desire

Alright I’m planning a Miraculous Ladybug story. This one is going to be inspired by a story called “One Step Backwards and Three Forwards”. That story is a “Hawkmoth Wins” one but with a twist. Lila is able to convince Alya and Nino to turn against Ladybug and help Hawkmoth get hers and Chat Noir’s Miraculous, getting them to believe that giving the villain what he wants is the best way to stop his reign of terror. Hawkmoth makes his wish and allows his conspirators to make ones of their own. Now the twist comes in the form of Tikki and Plagg deciding to tamper with the outcome of the wishes so that Hawkmoth, Lila and the traitors wind up miserable and suffering. The story focuses on the world after the wishes have been made and the gradual downfall of the villains.

Now this story intrigues me for it’s unique take on the “Be careful what you wish for” trope, namely applying it to the villains in such a way that they deeply regret the wish even though it technically gave them what they wanted. I would like to put own spin the idea. The story will be called Beware Your Heart’s Desire.

Here are the major tenets of the story-

- Still running with the idea of Lila as a corrupter but I’m expanding past just Alya and Nino. Gonna bring in the rest of the class but not everyone is going to go villain. I would say even split but we’ll see what happens. Rose and Juleka are definitely not joining Hawkmoth though.

-Takes place after Ladybug but before the season 3 finale. Works better for what I want to do with Chloe.

-The setup is the culmination of Hawkmoth’s plan. Realizing Ladybug’s bringing in other heroes he sets it up so Sentimonsters are attacking and bringing in Volpina to discover who the other heroes are, because her illusion powers will hide her. (And if you’re wondering why not just have her follow Ladybug to the Miraculous directly this is a version of Hawkmoth more focused on the wish then on the supervillain want for power. He doesn’t need the other Miraculous he needs the Ladybug and Black Cat ones.) Once he has the heroes identities he reaches out to them and explains he merely wants to save someone dear to him. Lila explains she’s working with Hawkmoth because she was moved by his story, obviously lying through her teeth. The other heroes agree because it’s a way to stop Hawkmoth and because of Lila’s corrupting presence.

-During an akuma battle Ladybug winds up led into a trap that leads to her winding up in an exploding building that she can’t escape because of interference from the other heroes. She winds up stuck under the rubble which lets Hawkmoth get her earrings with no problem. Relatively same deal with Chat Noir who loses his ring.

-Writing Hawkmoth as a bit more in the well intentioned category rather than a maniacal supervillain. He has some standards, such as pulling Ladybug out of the rubble before he takes her earrings, and doesn’t have any real enmity with the heroes but also won’t back down from what he wishes for. He’s completely honest about stopping his villainy once he gets his wish. Remember that.

-Hawkmoth gets his wish and let’s his accomplices get their own wishes as well. Gonna have to think on who gets what. Did give some thought to Lila’s wishes. Pretty standard stuff like fame but she also makes two very specific ones. “I want Marinette to suffer” and more importantly “I wish for you to be unable to undo the wishes we’ve made”. She thinks she’s being clever, Plagg knows she’s shooting herself in the foot but he hates her so who cares.

-Once the wishes have been made is where things get interesting. Marinette and Adrien don’t know that it happened but they also can’t find Tikki and Plagg or their Miraculous. Marinette finds the Miraculous Box has a note that says the kwamis are going to be unavailable for a while and to not worry about Hawkmoth. Nooroo and Dusuu are also with her now, which just raises more questions for her.

-Gabriel gets Emilie back but she’s a very vocal critic of Hawkmoth. She believes that the Butterfly and Peafowl were stolen (something supported by the fact Gabriel did lose them but that gets covered later on) after she went comatose and Gabriel goes along with the story lest she discover his crimes. He can’t actually enjoy Emilie being back because he’s more worried about covering his tracks and not being given her scorn should she find out. I did that to highlight that while Gabriel may have had fundamentally well meaning intentions he’s ultimately a selfish man who doesn’t really care who gets hurt so long as he gets his way and feels he deserves to avoid consequences for his own actions.

-At school one day Lila tries to get Marinette in trouble again but winds up causing a series of accidents that wind up hurting her. Broken arm, black eye and so on. She of course tries to blame everything on Marinette but a few witnesses nearby cast doubt on Lila’s story. The whole school winds up debating it because Lila’s “Lying Disease” is well known now. Principal Damocles chooses to expel Marinette despite the flimsy evidence because of the prospective scandal the school could have from a diplomat’s daughter being attacked. Bustier’s class are also torn, the betrayers thinking Marinette was responsible and the good ones refusing to believe it. Marinette is miserable of course but thinks pick up when her parents decide to enroll her at a very good and very exclusive creative arts school. She gets a scholarship to the school, thanks to her prior work that impressed Gabriel and Audrey as well her more notable clients like Jagged Stone recommending her. Marinette’s life is on the upswing now.

-Various other accidents and backfires happen to the wishers and eventually they go to Tikki and Plagg to get answers. The duo reveal that any wish carries a price and normally the number of ones they had to grant and the toll of those wishes would have been rather steep but they got creative to fulfill them. Because the wishes were selfish in nature they have to cope with bad fortune from the results and not only that but they also took away the wishers ability to claim and use any Miraculous ever again. The kwamis can just make any Miraculous they grab immaterial so they can’t even physically touch them. This is extraordinarily bad for the wishers because they no longer have access to the Miraculous powers and can’t even make another wish because they can’t claim the two Miraculous needed for it. Heck the only reason Tikki and Plagg are at the Agreste manor is that they wanted a front row seat to Gabriel’s downfall and ruin. Trying to bring in someone else to use the Miraculous for them is vetoed outright because Gabriel doesn’t want anyone else to know about their power and use it against him. Sorry I mean them. And even if they did do that it wouldn’t work because of Lila’s wish to prevent their wishes from being undone.

-After that it’s pretty much just a slow systemic downfall for all of them. There are a few other major points. Like Tikki and Plagg noting that Emilie won’t be in any danger because she’s an innocent as far they’re concerned and Lila complaining about Marinette getting to go to one of the greatest school’s for a fashion designer when her wish was for the girl to suffer. Cue Plagg going something like “Upupup. You said you wanted her to suffer. And she did. For a small bit from getting kicked out of her school. Should have been more specific. Nothing in your wish said she had to be miserable 24/7. We did what you asked. So no complaining about how it turned out.”

-That’s all folks.

#Miraculous Ladybug #Beware Your Heart's Desire

9 notes · View notes

wasteteeth-beanjuice · 4 years

Text

Ok serious wasteland moment this is fucking rare so enjoy it pissfuckers.

Jesus fucking crust 2020 is almost fucking over and....yeah what the hell, This year has been a wholeass character arc for me and i met alot of badass people here,

First of all I started off being a absolute fuckin nobody who was fresh outta a traumatic event with a toxic ex lover. (you know who you are.) And after that i had to like....find myself again, a rebirth if you will now i had a few phases and met another toxic group that also fucked me up mentally, but nothing really hit til i found....

Him.

It was nearing the end of summer, i had just fallen for my abuser again as she used me and dragged me along for months leaving me feeling very emotionally drained i decided to check out that "dammitgrandpa" game evreyone was talking about. After finishing thh i layed my eyes on what would soon be the fictional character to change my life..yeah i feel kinda stupid dedicating a entite part of this sentimental post to nagito komaeda...but he really did change me for the better or worse, komaeda became my biggest comfort charecter and my highest kin in the span of a month it didnt help i have his fucking luck, (lmfao i almost died lile 5 times this year) but in all reality the danganronpa fandom really helped me cope with all the bullshit i have to deal with at home. I guess this brings me to the next part..

Komapocalypse

I swear on maedas left toe this is one of the best things to happen to me. Running 470/420 has been so much fucking fun and i am not done in the slightest. (Allthough i might take a few breaks to focus on cosplay but we will get to that) after being kicked out of a group for being "annoying" my chaotic emergy took a backseat but here i was being myself for a fucking change and people ENJOYED IT, not to mention all the badass pogchamps i met through this fuckhole of a arg, including the fucker who inspired me to make a longass emotional post (looking at you kaz👁) but in all fucking honestly, thanks guys. I...didnt think i had the strength to cut off my friend of 3 years that was trying to force me into their weird cult, i fuckin love you guys/p

On the topic of love, mmy wife

Txidzud?igdzuydtuzute i was not expecting to have you confess to me the same day my mom tried to hit me with a car but here we are!, jesus fucking crust i fuvkinf love her so much even though its hard for me to be emotionally vulnerable at times, hayley...you really helped make this post apocalyptic timeline great for me, <3

Reaching the end of this fuckpost i just wanna thank the people who dont have tumblr but are equally pogchamp

-My cat raven, yeah i wasnt expecting to find a trashcat this year nor for her to become my best friend but now when i see a dark shape hovering over me i know for the most part its safe!

-the rest of my pets, These fuckers mean the world to me and if anything happens to any of them i will kill evreyone in this world and then myself.

-komaedalovemail (allthough they are on tumblr i highly doubt they will ever see me.) I'm a huge fucking klm fanboy having a picture of fetus hinata taped to my wall and their fucking horrific vibes is what got me to create komaeda470 in the 1st place. Fucking thanks you weird band of pogchamp maedas,

-My cosplay firend group, Yeah I didn't expect clicking on a kokichi cosplayers tiktok live would give me a wierd group of people who all call me uncle but i have adopted all of you and will teach you guys the art of arson, (this includes my child i adopted after they found my 470 blog and was on call with me when i found a dead cat in my driveway and had a panic attack ily/p you're poggers)

-Ezra, bro bro bro bro bro i litterally couldn't make it through this fuckyear without you, i know you think your shit but honestly i look up to you and not just because I'm fucking short as hell. I'm so sorry my annoying ratass with 50 bracelets on each arm bugged you about homestuck almost 3 years ago, you're fucking poggers and im breaking into your house in eather a kokichi or nagito cosplay this weekend,

-ADAM.... YOU SCARE ME SOMETIMES ARE YOU OK??? but you're mister funnyman ig you're pogchamp

With all that sentimental shit outta the way back to your regularly scheduled shitposting love, the omnipotent God of chaos wasteland hope boner nagito komaeda komaouma the 69th~🔥🥩

5 notes · View notes

chemicallydamaged · 4 years

Text

Recovery: The Stigma Of Struggle 2/2 (TW)

Please do not read further If you are easily disturbed or affected by mentions of self harm, weight gain, or suicidal behaviors. I wrote this to help someone feel less alone and share my experience- not to potentially trigger someone. Please be safe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I told my parents about my several-year long addiction to self harm, despite starting at the age of seven. I've never once been to a therapist, counselor, psychologist, or a psychiatrist. I mainly have scars on my thighs, but I also have them on my waist, face, feet, hands, hips, and so on. I have used needles, glass, push pins, scissors, exacto-blades, knives, razors, and whatever else I could get my hands on. It became an addiction before I even knew what and addiction was.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(This is an unprofessional, messy rough draft that I wanted to post so you know i'm not dead. I may edit this sometime in the future and delete this lil message thingy.)

Suddenly, you become a liar- that's how these things go on for so long, that's how this cycle eats you alive; “I hate getting wet”, “I just get cold easily”, “The cat scratched me”, and so on. You do anything to protect this secret, this horrible fucking brain eating, exhausting secret- while also hoping someone would ask how you are, maybe ask what's going on, and yet you still lie to them. Help doesn't feel for you- help doesn't always feel like an option.

I always felt like everytime I cut, it was like shutting my thoughts up for a few seconds. I had so much swarming in my head, so many negative, screaming thoughts eating away at my brain, that I would do anything to relieve the tension. Everything irritated me. So when I got home, and all these memories of screaming parents and asshole students and shitty teachers screamed in my thoughts, I couldn't take it. For me, I convinced myself of two options; self harm, or ending my life.

June, maybe July of 2020. I haven't gone outside for a very long time, using covid fear as an excuse. I would be in such deep wallows of depression I could barely move; at that point I had gained so much weight I was scared of taking showers. I was scared of going outside. I was scared of eating. I used a group chat in one of my friend’s servers to get me through it, at least so I could socialize in one way or another. I wanted to get better, yet I was too exhausted to take the steps of recovery. I had tried to quit a few times at that point, only to fall back in. I would be taking a plane ride to see family (safely) and I was so fucking scared. It would be incredibly hot over there, I couldn't wear shorts, I was depressed, I had low-self esteem, and now I had to socialize with family I hadn't seen in several years. I was convinced they would be disappointed in me, I really didn't want them to be ashamed.

When I finally got there, everything had changed. They looked so different- my little cousin, who I remembered as a toddler, was now a kid. My aunts were more stressed out than I had ever noticed before. Some pets had passed away, and the area of town had become pretty run-down. I had always wanted a little sister, and felt like I missed out on a lot of those years- so I tried to spend as much time with her as I could. She was so happy and so energetic, I was so surprised to see that she was excited to meet me. She didn't care about how I looked or how awkward I was, she just wanted to do art and make mudpies and jump on a trampoline, like a kid. I missed out on water balloons, refusing to wear shorts, which upset everyone because I wouldn't be able to play. I took that time to lock myself in a bedroom and cry. When I thought of her ever doing what I was doing to myself, I broke down completely. I would have been self harming for a year by her age. I missed out on so much. To think that she could ever go through that terrifies me and shakes me to my core. She is like a little sister i've never had. I thought of my brother and how he would be upset, so see his actual little sister go through this the whole time. This is still hard to think about. This was my first kick in the ass to recovery. I was going to commit.

I came home in a lot of pain. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I kept impulsively grabbing objects, picking at my skin, biting my nails, and going fucking crazy. I was so close, so many times. I can barely express the amount of stress I was in, not being able to use what I believed to be my only coping mechanism ever since I can remember, knowing for sure I absolutely could not and would not do it. I had to fight with my brain 24/7 just to stay afloat, to have self-control.

Fast forward 4-ish months and I was finally about to tell my mom, but at the wrong time. The closest self harming behavior I had was skin scratching, but that was better than cutting. We had gone to the store to pick out some clothes and I was really excited about it; however, the closer we go to the changing room the harder my heart throbbed out of my chest. If she went in with me, she would see all the scars. We had gotten to the changing room, and she went in with me. I froze up, in cold sweat, and couldn't do or say anything. Just as she said “Oh woops do you not want me in th-” I broke down. In a grocery store changing room. For everyone to hear. She sat me down and comforted me, like a cool mom. I was surprised, I thought she would be embarrassed. I told her about everything. She supported me. I couldn't stop shaking, unsure of weather to be sad or happy. I finally said something. I was relieved. I finally did it.

My dad was less accepting after my mom told him first. Because he doesn't believe in “organized help” and instead believes you have to “get through anything on your own, because that's what I DO” It was probably a bit of a struggle for my mom to talk to him. He avoided me for a few days, until he was ready. When I had finally told him, it turned out to be ok. He wasn't happy with me but he wasn't pissed either so that's a positive. My brother had a similar reaction. A lot of friends didn't care. But some still did, and I'd rather have a few real friends than a lot of fake ones. Sounds like a bunch of hippie dippie Karen bullshit but I genuinely feel way more positive about this then when I first told my parents. I hope to get mental health help soon, although there are so many people trying to get it that its difficult to find a good therapist thats available (Thx c0v1d, u sur3 r g8 0n m3ntal h3alth <3). For now, i'm just doing the best I can- im still going to struggle, but that's part of life. Im happy with that.

This is only my side of the story.

Yours doesn't always have to be the recovery, but it can be the ask for help.

(2/2)

Hope your doing well, wherever you are.

#self harrrm #self harm recovery #stories #part 2 #tw suicice #tw #tw self destruction #get help #its ok #i swear #love yourself #please #or else #ill eat your face #stop reading these tags #stop

5 notes · View notes

missdelphinilestrange · 4 years

Text

1ST RULE — tag some muses you would like to know better.

@crucioslut @tmvoldemort @lokilaufeysonslytherin @thestrongestmagic

2ND RULE — BOLD the statements that are true for your muse.

current muse. Bellatrix Black - Bellatrix Lestrange

fc. For this blog there is no face claim

occupation. Student at Hogwarts, War Lieutenant / Dark Witch, Lieutenant to the Ruler of the Wizardry world, Delphi’s mother

age. 47 years old - Born. 1951 - 1998

Sexuality. Bisexual

APPEARANCE:

i am 5’7 or taller

i wear glasses

i have at least one tattoo - Azkaban tattoo on my neck, and a small rose tattoo on my left shoulder with this saying “i’m as pretty as a rose as long as you can look past the thorns that are my flaws” (not many know about the last tattoo)

i have at least one piercing - both my ears are pierced, along with the top of my left ear

i have blonde hair

i have short hair

my abs are at least somewhat defined - only because I workout a lot

i have or have had braces

PERSONALITY:

i love meeting new people

people tell me that i’m funny - humor is the only way I can really cope with my childhood trauma, so I’m often told I’m funny

helping others with their problems is a big priority for me - usually only with my sisters, or very close family. when Sirius broke out of Azkaban, I gave him a bit of my food that way he would have a bit of energy before going on the run, but I told him to tell no one I helped him

i enjoy physical challenges - it’s something that’s always been enjoyable for me, because going to the gym used to be the only way for me to escape my strict and controlling parents

i enjoy mental challenges - I’ve always been very intelligent above my years, and I set records in Hogwarts for perfect scores in all classes for my OWLs and NEWTs, so even as an adult, it’s fun to get a challenge

i’m playfully rude with people i know well - I’ve always been playfully rude or sarcastic to people I know well, because I can’t do that around my strict parents since they always said “sarcasm isn’t ladylike” or “acting like that won’t get you a husband” and my close friends and family know that I’m unruly and they accept me for that, which is why I act different in public than I do around my close friends and family

i started saying something ironically & now i can’t stop saying it - I always say “just because I kill people doesn’t mean that you can” to my youngest sister whenever she gets mad at someone. Ever since I watched Toy Story 2, whenever someone asks if I’m calling them a liar, I always say “well, if the boot fits” and then they usually punch me

there is something i would change about my personality - I wish I had the ability to stop rolling my eyes at every person I don’t like

ABILITIES:

i can sing well - singing as a child always helped me deal with whatever I was going through, so I started taking singing lessons

i can play an instrument - piano, guitar, flute, and violin

i can do over 30 push–ups without stopping - I often did push-up competitions with my friends and cousins as a child, and from that, I’ve gotten quite strong

i’m a fast runner - I used to run away from my problems as a child: quite literally, because when my parents would scream at me I’d start running away, so I learned to have a lot of stamina from a young age and run really fast

i can draw well - I always liked to draw pictures of my little sisters, and I ended up getting really good at it

i have good memory - I have really good memory, but a terrible attention span

i’m good at doing math in my head

i can hold my breath underwater for over a minute - This is because I used to go underwater while swimming and pull people down by their ankles just to scare the shit out of them because it’s funny. I stopped doing that though when I got kicked in the face

i have beaten at least 2 people in arm wrestling - this is because they’re either weak, or I cheated by kicking their shins which distracted them

i know how to cook at least 3 meals from scratch

i know how to throw a proper punch - I’ve always been very strong, and I learned how to punch by doing boxing with one of my older cousins. many people talked bad about Andromeda after she was removed from the family in the summer before my seventh year at Hogwarts, and since I knew how to punch really well, I ended up sending a lot of kids to the hospital wing that year (probably a few hundred). After Sirius was removed from the family, I got in a lot of fights with my fellow death eaters because they were talking shit about him and it made me mad. Needless to say, people don’t DARE talk bad about anyone in my family anymore.

HOBBIES:

i enjoy playing sports - Quidditch

i’m on a sports team at my school or somewhere else - During Hogwarts, Slytherin Chaser for Quidditch

i’m in an orchestra or choir at my school or somewhere else

i’ve learned a new song in the past week

i work out at least once a week - I started working out as a kid (about 8 years old) because I wanted an excuse to get away from my parents. Then, when I was 10, the reason I worked out was because I was skinny but I didn’t have much muscle. When I was 12, the reason for me working out was because I was insecure about how short and skinny I was, and I wanted to be stronger that way I could beat the shit out of anyone that made fun of me for it.

i go on runs at least once a week - running was the way I got away from my problems as a kid, and I guess it just stuck with me

i have drawn something in the past month - I drew a picture of my little girl, Delphi, playing with the flowers in the garden

i enjoy writing - writing helps me to get rid of all the stress and anxiety that I always try to hide

i do or have done martial arts

EXPERIENCES:

i have had my first kiss - first year, I kissed Rabastan to see if Rodolphus would get jealous. It backfired and Rabastan ended up in the hospital wing. I guess Rodolphus was jealous.

i have had alcohol - when I was in my first year, a seventh year I was friends with sneaked a bottle of whiskey into the dormitory during one of the house parties. I’m just amazed we didn’t get caught

i have scored the winning goal in a sports game - in my second year during quidditch, right before the other team caught the snitch, I scored ten points, and because of that my team still won even thought the other team had the snitch

i have watched an entire season of a tv show in one sitting

i have been to an overnight event - Slumberparty at a friends house

i have been in a taxi

i have been in the hospital or er in the past year - I had to visit someone I beat up that way he wouldn’t press charges. In my defense, before I even hit the guy, he tauntingly said “what are you gonna do, hit me?” so it’s his own fault for being dumb enough to say that

i have beaten a video game in one day

i have been to another country - Germany, France, Italy

i have been to one of my favorite band’s concerts

RELATIONSHIPS:

i am in a relationship - Voldemort and Rodolphus

i have a crush on a celebrity

i have a crush on someone I know

i have been in at least 3 relationships - 100s throughout Hogwarts years

i have never been in a relationship

i have asked someone out or admitted my feelings to them - Admitted feelings for Voldemort

i get crushes easily - especially throughout Hogwarts years

i have had a crush on someone for over a year - Voldemort

i have been in a relationship for over a year - Rodolphus and Voldemort simultaneously

i have had feelings for a friend - many times, especially during Hogwarts years

MY LIFE:

i have at least one person i consider a best friend - Narcissa

i live close to my school - only during Hogwarts years

my parents are still together - for some unknown reason, but yes

i have / had at least one sibling - two: Andromeda and Narcissa

i live in the United States

there is snow right now where I live

i have hung out with a friend in the past month - Narcissa

i have a smartphone

i have at least 15 CDs - Mostly classical music, but a few are American muggle music (but no one knows about the muggle songs, and they never will)

i share my room with someone - only during thunderstorms: sometimes thunderstorms are scary due to childhood trauma, so those nights are usually spent cuddled next to Narcissa for comfort and safety

RANDOM STUFF:

i have break danced

i know a person named Jamie

i have had a teacher with a last name that’s hard to pronounce - as a child, the French piano teacher the Black family hired Jakob Fínêtyeá

i have dyed my hair - multiple times. once because Sirius and Lucius teamed up and put brown hair dye in my shampoo, and followed me around for weeks calling me Andromeda. the second time my hair was dyed was recently when Lucius put purple hair dye in my shampoo and followed me around calling me Nympadora Tonks

i’m listening to one song on repeat right now - “Teenagers” by My Chemical Romance because I’m emo as hell

i have punched someone in the past week - Lucius when he put purple hair dye in my shampoo and followed me around calling me Nympadora Tonks. Narcissa then yelled at me because I broke Lucius’s nose

i know someone that has gone to jail - me, and majority of my family / friends

i have broken a bone - (as an adult, running an errand that required to go to Hogwarts) the reason was because someone was talking behind Sirius’s back saying that he’s a disgrace to the Pureblood name, and I got in a fight with that kid. Sirius saw that both of us were bruised and bloody, but I didn’t tell him why, and I never will

i have eaten a waffle today - yes because I have a terrible sweet tooth

i know what I want to do with my life - as a student: teacher, artist, actress, ministry worker: unspeakable or working with magical objects. as an adult: writer, lieutenant death eater, artist, spell maker, singer, musician (not many people know about any of my jobs other than being a lieutenant death eater)

i know at least 2 languages (fluently) - English, German, French, Italian, Gaelic, Russian, Greek, Latin, Spanish (I come from a very culturally knowledgeable family, and intelligence is very important, henceforth why I know so many languages)

Idea From: @tmvoldemort

#bellatrix black #bellatrix lestrange #bellatrix #harry potter #hp #muse

8 notes · View notes

sedehaven · 4 years

Text

Saving Ophelia Grace’s Toe

Y’all seem to like my stories about being a witch in the Bible Belt, so here’s another one. This is a coming of age story about a young witch (me), a bunch of adults of various degrees of uselessness, and Ophelia Grace’s rotten toe.

This is not a happy story.

Names changed when necessary.

CW: Body squick, graphic injury, incompetent nurse, malevolent nurse, poisoning, bureaucratic nightmares, dark DARK shit ahead

So, in spite of the crushing poverty that I grew up in, I was given the opportunity to attend a very prestigious boarding school for Juniors and Seniors in Klan Kountry, LA. It’s a public school, so it takes kids from all over the state.

My school was run by a dude named Brother Dave.

Brother Dave was so awful that one of our senior pranks (I DID NOT DO THIS) involved a password-protected screensaver on every communal computer in the school (including, I think, Brother Dave’s office computer) of a bouncing, 3-D image of this:

Dude was NOT well-loved. It is important to know that he and I did not get along. When I was still a prospective student, he told us that our mascot was the mighty Eagle, because Eagles Flock Together.

Y’all. Someone watched himself too much Mighty Ducks.

I replied, loud enough for the whole auditorium to hear, “That’s not true, sir. Eaglettes push their smaller and weaker siblings out of the nest as soon as they can.”

He looked to the staff for support, red-faced and embarrassed by this ninety-pound child who stole his thunder.

The biology teacher (who left for greener pastures after my first year--rumored to have been forced out for being too fabulously dykey for the new administration) looked at him and stated, in her very particular and crisp fashion, “Well, she’s right.”

Safe to say, he hated me from the start. So, if you read this and you wonder, “Why didn’t this silly kid just go to the grown-up?” That’s why. He was our grown-up.

Brother Dave started at the school the year before I did. He was brought in by a local Senator, because said local Senator Fucked Up Colossally.

Senator Fuckup was running against Mr. Sketchy Businessman. Mr. Sketchy Businessman was backed by the Ku Klux Klan (a big deal in parts of the world, folks. My school was in David Duke country.)

Senator Fuckup had a fancy name--well-respected all around the state. Like, several statues of one of his relations decorate the state capital. Big name.

Problem is, Senator Fuckup is half-Black.

In Klan Kountry.

Y’all.

So he’s already at a disadvantage. As it turns out, it takes a village to start a magnet school. Senator Fuckup was one of the founding board members, and promised all kinds of benefits if they put the school in HIS district.

Their other offer was in my own hometown, the Hub City, where several of our major state highways cross with two Interstates.A place with art and history and culture. A place with one of the largest outdoor music festivals in the state--a multicultural, international music festival! With art walks and museums and Mardi Gras parades! With a three-story library, a library for French language and culture, and the second-largest university in Louisiana!

Senator Fuckup PROMISED that the school wouldn’t want for anything if they went to Klan Kountry.

So they did.

It was no great secret that this school was Senator Fuckup’s baby. At the time that I attended, the school was number one in the nation. Something to be proud of.

Except.

Except that in order to keep various forms of funding, the school was required to take in more melanin-blessed individuals than the locals liked.

Enter Mr. Sketchy Businessman, who ran a series of TV and radio ads claiming that our STATE funded school was stealing money from the local school district.

That’s right. He claimed that our school took money away from the poor Whites of Klan Kountry and gave to the diverse and metropolitan school for the gifted.

Senator Fuckup tried to deflect and dismiss, BUT did NOT rebut those claims. He didn’t believe that the school’s funding was THAT MUCH of an issue.

Any reasonable person would understand that the school was funded from the State taxes. Right?

As it turns out, Klan Kountry is not filled with reasonable people.

Senator Fuckup is a member of a particular subgroup in Klan Kounrty--a not-insignificant population of Catholic Creoles. So, after he wins his election--barely--he realizes that Something Must Be Done to help the image of the school that everybody knew as HIS baby.

Enter his old friend, Brother Dave. Brother Dave, who nearly bankrupted his previous school. His brother-in-law was a contractor who got a few really juicy contracts through him.

Protip: Nepotism only works if the person being nepotized is competent.

Spoiler: Brother Dave’s brother-in-law built schools about as well as Brother Dave ran them.

Brother Dave’s old school is attached to an order of monks who build cheap and simple caskets for people who are into that kind of thing.

They bake bread for the poor. These are good people.

Y’all, these people made it KNOWN--statewide--that they had a casket ready for ol’ Dave if he ever stepped foot in their town again.

Still, Senator Fuckup decided that THIS was the man who would lead my school into a glorious future.

Brother Dave took an aggressive stance on admissions. He wanted kids who didn’t have a lot of drama, and kids who looked (WHITE) good on the recruiting materials. He pulled hard from the local Catholic (Segregation) Academies.

Y’all.

Our Black kids were nearly White-passing mixed-race kids, one kid who was ACTUALLY from Africa, a couple of kids from Catholic schools, and one dark-skinned Baptist girl who is bombshell model-gorgeous. (For those glossy brochures.)

So as many White Catholic kids as possible.

Y’all.

I’ve competed with private school fuckwits in academic contests my whole life, up to that point. If it was something that required preparation (science fair, for example), they wiped the floor with us.

Because daddy the petroleum engineer did the project for them.

If it was a you-know-it-or-you-don’t thing (quiz bowl, for example), they lost so brutally that I might have felt bad for them. You know, if they had souls. Which they did not.

So Brother Dave populated our school with what he thought were “good kids”. White, Catholic kids.

Spoiler: My class started with 250 students. We graduated less than half of that, even after he backfilled our class with new kids between junior and senior year. The class after mine was worse.

Why is that?

White Catholic kids at segregation academies in the late 90′s basically did busy-work worksheet stuff all day. They were not ready for 10 page papers and 5 page lab reports and 100+ pages of reading and 20-50 math problems and projects, projects, projects!

Also, if all you do is worksheets and sit-down-and-shut-up, there has to be a certain...chemical element...to cope.

So, yeah. Drugs. So much drugs. And booze.

Brother Dave also hired Nurse Bitchy Fuckface. She was actually his first hire.

Nurse Bitchy was a walking disaster.

I was sixteen when I first met her, and because she didn’t smell like street drugs (I KNOW WHAT THAT SHIT IS), I missed a lot of signs.

Looking back, I think that she might have been a Prozac-and-wine kind of person. But, as the only drugs that I was familiar with came from street pharmacists, I thought she was just evil.

Hateful to the queers, pagans, Goths, and all assorted weirdos.

You know, all the kids who could actually handle the schoolwork and the pressure. *eyeroll*

I’m allergic to Sudafed. Weird, huh?

A senior at my school told me to be careful with Nurse Bitchy. She has a sensitivity to acetaminophen (Tylenol) and couldn’t have it. Nurse Bitchy had given it to her a couple of times.

It was on my senior’s medical chart. If you’re keeping score, that’s felony attempted murder.

Nurse Bitchy gave me Sudafed seventeen times (that I remember) while I was at that school. She very nearly killed me doing it. Some times I knew, and some times I did not.

“But why did you take it, if you knew?”

Well, you innocent dove, if I refused to take the medicine that the Nurse gave me, then I got written up. Enough write-ups and I got kicked out.

My home school in the Hub City? Eh...as bad as Klan Kountry was, I didn’t have someone assaulting me daily. I didn’t have a gang of girls who got away with attempting to rape me with a broom handle. I didn’t have a very big kid who was given liberties with me (BY THE STAFF) because he was special ed.

Or, as my guidance counselor liked to say (after my father was murdered and I was flunking chemistry--not because of dad’s death, but because the chemistry teacher put all the girls and Black boys in the back of the class--which had NO air conditioning on hundred-degree days--after Brother Dave’s brother-in-law “fixed” it that summer), “Stephanie, you know that you’re the poorest student here. Do you really want to go back to THAT?”

No. I did not.

Under pain of going home to poverty, rape, assault, and maybe death, I took her poison. She watched me do it. And she smiled.

I only went to Nurse Bitchy when I was forced to. This happened far more often my Junior year. The teachers would send me because I was sick (I come from a smoker’s home, and I’m an asthmatic who is allergic to tobacco. My family never quit, so I’d end up with smoker’s pneumonia most times that I went home. Thanks for the lung scars, fam.)

Eventually, when I was a Senior, my computer science teacher realized that I was unresponsive with a fever in her class. She was new that year, and didn’t know any better. So she woke me up and sent me along. Nurse Bitchy gave me the usual and sent me back to class.

Very few humans retain the ability to projectile vomit after age seven. Did you know that?

Lucky me, I did. I still can.

I hurled all over my keyboard. I hurled and hurled. My classmates screamed and ran.

My computer science teacher, an ice-cold woman of Indian descent with a very posh English accent, unplugged the vomit-soaked, ruined keyboard. She took it and me to the nurse.

She slammed the keyboard down on her desk and screamed at her to NEVER send a sick child to her class again.

Nurse Bitchy was (shocking, I know) a racist. She feared the angry Indian lady.

My computer science teacher, I believe, spread the word about Nurse Bitchy’s ineffectiveness. Teachers stopped sending students to her.

That left a vacuum. Nobody was being forced to get medical help. But medical help was still needed.

Before going to school in Klan Kountry, I was a veterinary technician. I worked under-the-table from too young. Illegal-child-labor-too-young.

But, I knew my stuff. I had a stocked medicine cabinet and a dissection kit.

I started doing everything up to and including prison surgery in my dorm room.

I could handle most anything. Which was better than worrying that the nurse was going to poison one of my friends into the ground.

I didn’t ask for money or food or anything (food was a commodity at that school because our cafeteria was infested). I worked for the goodwill of my classmates, which is the shiniest coin in the realm.

I’d gotten into witchcraft earlier that year. People trusted the witch over the nurse. That’s where my school was.

I only had one case that I really couldn’t treat.

Y’all.

It was traditional in the girls’ dorms that unless you were asleep or studying, you kept your door open. Mine was open that night. I was writing Sailor Moon fanfiction, procrastinating on one project or another. I don’t remember, it was twenty-two years ago.

Ophelia Grace (not her real name) came to my door in Doc Martens, favoring a foot. Her roommate or a suitemate or maybe another theatre kid was holding her up as she hobbled into my room.

I hadn’t heard that she’d been hurt, but apparently she had been. She was feverish and weak. Her face was bright red. She was babbling.

“I’m sorry,” she said over and over again. She apologized for coming late. She apologized for coming at all. She was shaking.

I sat her and her friend on my roommate’s bed (we’d bunked them, and I had the top bunk). My roommate was out, in the art lab working on a particularly tricky painting. Probably for the best. He was squeamish (my ex-roommate is a transman, so I’m using his preferred pronouns.)

I grabbed a large bowl and a mug, filled both with water (salted the bowl of water), and went down the hall to the microwave.

The water in Klan Kountry was filthy. It smelled bad and tasted worse. Remember Mr. Sketchy Businessman? He wanted to relax EPA regulations for himself and his sketchy business friends.

They were actively dumping into the city reservoir. But Mr. Sketchy Businessman promised to KKKeep KKKlan KKKountry Lily, so he got 49% of the votes.

Racist douche.

I boiled the water in the microwave--first the mug, then the bowl. It was a walk I’d make several times that evening.

Ophelia had a fever, holding steady at “fucking HOT” by the estimate of her friend. My thermometer pegged it at 102. Not good.

I put a teabag and two whole cloves in the cup and let it steep while I took her temperature. I asked her what happened. I don’t remember the specifics of the injury, but I believe that something got dropped on her toe. I think it happened in the theatre.

Ophelia thought she could walk it off. I remember that.

She kept apologizing. I honeyed the tea and shoved it in her hands. The tea helped. She was shivering--hard--from the wracking chills of her fever.

I remember how her febrile shivers made the bunk beds shake.

I remember thinking that I was in over my head.

I remember grabbing my oldest towels, and closing my door.

I remember praying.

And then I took her boot off.

Y’all.

I’ve smelled rot. Some people think that all rot smells the same.

It does not.

Corpse stink has its own bouquet. Blood rot has a distinct stench. Necrotic yeast infections almost smell good--like yeast rolls and something meatier.

I’d smelled Ophelia’s particular rot before.

I was fourteen. A momma dog was brought in, heavily pregnant. She’d been delivering, and the third pup got stuck. There were 11 left. The stuck pup was dead, but we managed to save 4 behind him, plus the first 2, born healthy.

The uterus had begun to rot inside, and several of the pups had been dead for some time.

The spaying that happened after the pups were removed was green and black, with the consistency of pudding. We pulled as much out as we could, but the rest had to be rinsed out.

Thankfully, I’ve smelled that smell very few times after. It smells pungent and strong. Like garlic. Like a cream of garlic stew.

I thought I’d gotten a whiff of THAT smell when Ophelia walked in, and again when she sat down. Pulling her boot off was like the first deep cut into momma dog. Garlic and blood.

The smell of something rotting in someone still alive.

She had on two socks. I peeled off the first one. There was a stain at the toe. The second sock was worse. The smell hung around.

Our windows were screwed shut. I couldn’t do anything about the smell.

Ophelia cried into her tea. She was still apologizing.

The toe was purple and black. There was a lot of yellow pus under the nail, which was leaking out on either side. Red streaks ran up her instep, tracing her veins.

The toe was swollen and needed a lance.

I had no idea how she climbed the stairs to get to me. (I was on the third floor, and she lived below. We had no elevator.)

She started to get loud (peeling those socks off HURT), so I asked her a question. I asked about her history paper. The ten-page history paper was a rite-of-passage at the school, and I knew it was coming due for her. I told her to tell me about her topic and her sources.

She did.

Thank the Lord and Lady.

I got my dissection kit and rubbing alcohol. I made things as sterile as I could.

I told her that it would probably hurt, but that I would work quickly.

Her friend left after the first cut. She didn’t stay gone long, but I heard her vomit in our suite’s toilet.

Ophelia kept talking about her paper. I led her around on that topic, asking questions and asking for clarification. Asking about the books she’d read, and offering a few that I was familiar with on the subject.

This is why doctors and dentists know so many things about so many subjects. Talking keeps the patient calm.

Meanwhile, pus and blood dripped from the slits that I made in her flesh, onto a towel that bore the stains until I donated it to the animal shelter, years later.

I soaked her toe in the bowl of water. The salt burned, but she couldn’t scream.

There was an adult who was supposed to be watching us. If she was alerted to my low-tech medical unit, she would have stopped me and sent Ophelia to the murder nurse.

I filled another bowl, salted it, and microwaved it.

Ophelia’s friend rejoined us, and watched as I squeezed the rest of the pus out of her. Her toenail slipped off in the third bowl. The toenail was cracked. Ophelia kept it.

I wonder if she still has it?

Triple antibiotic ointment and a sterile dressing later, I told her to tell the nurse that she needed a doctor. Nurse Bitchy couldn’t keep us from a doctor if we asked for one. She said that she would.

I gave her a few oral anti-inflammatory pills and some Benadryl to get a good night’s sleep.

She left, with her boot in her hand and a soft smile on her lips. I cleaned my tools, my bowls, the floor where her foot was, and had to do a load of laundry because that one rag smelled so awful.

My roommate came back in time for headcount, and asked if I’d made ramen. Said it smelled pretty good in there.

It did. Rot can do that.

It was hard to sleep that night. I cried quietly until sleep took me.

Ophelia recovered. She became a witch some time later. In college, I think. We’re still friends, in a Facebook kind of way.

Brother Dave is still alive. After working for my school, he ended up helping the Church cover up three decades of sex abuse at a diocese school. Not sure what he’s up to, but probably nothing good. He’s a garbage human.

Nurse Bitchy just retired. She lasted twenty years at that school. God knows how.

Senator Fuckup died in a car crash and the school is being renamed after him. So are the new dorms that are being built.

Klan Kountry cleaned up their water after I left. That’s really good news.

The school continues. Apparently, it got better with Brother Dave’s leavetaking. I hope that’s true.

And me?

I’m still a witch. I’m still here.

And I can still smell that rotten toe on the edge of nightmares half-remembered.

~*~

I don’t want my diploma revoked or to be sued, so disclaimer time.

This is fiction. Any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidental.

#witchcraft #prose #proseriot #kitchen witch #healing #writing #amwriting #autobiography #true story

4 notes · View notes

hardlyfatal · 5 years

Text

gary’s writing workshop: lesson 1: kintsugi, or how to make all criticism constructive

The tough thing about writing is that you have to be bold enough to think your work is worth reading by the public, and also have the humility to accept criticism so that you can improve and be better. You need to be strong enough not to crumple like a used tissue when you receive negative feedback.

The primary, inescapable truth about writing: you won't get better until you acknowledge and accept that you need to get better. That's it. If you think your writing is flawless, you're wrong. If you think you've done a perfect job, you're wrong. If you think there's no way it can possibly be improved, you're wrong.

That's not to say it's bad. Just that it's not perfect, that there is always going to be more you can do to tweak it closer to the ideal. To get there, you have to think critically about your work, instead of through a veil of trembling sensitivity and frail ego. You can't be defensive, but approach it with the knowledge that, despite the discomfort or even pain, the process will make you stronger and better. Kintsugi!

There are two kinds of negative feedback, and two classes of people you’ll get it from. The first kind is when something is factually, empirically wrong. Problems with your SPAG1, anachronisms, and continuity fall into this category – there’s no arguing with “you spelled something wrong” and “people in the Middle Ages didn’t say ‘okay’ “ and “in chapter 1 you said X but in chapter 2 you said Y”. Either it happened or it didn’t.

These are valid criticisms and must be considered and addressed. Yes, even if the person saying them is a complete dick and puts it in the cruelest possible terms. Just because they're a cruel dick doesn't mean they're a WRONG cruel dick. The only thing you can do is correct it. I personally tend to thank them, because even if they’ve been dicks, they still did me a favor in pointing out an error. I improved because of them. That’s worthy of thanks. Kintsugi!

The second kind of feedback is subjective, because you’ve failed to satisfy the reviewer’s expectations in some way. Maybe the story’s premise doesn't do it for them. Maybe they hate the trope you've modeled the plot around, or how you're presenting the characters. They think your pacing is too slow and things need to be snappier. Your dialogue is stilted. Maybe they simply don't like your style.

Where things are matters of opinion – and choices of trope, issues of awful dialogue, and dragging plots are opinion – you need to really, honestly look hard at them, without a veil of ego and self-protection keeping you from seeing what's going on. Why would the reviewer say the dialogue is awful, or that the plot drags?2

It could be that what they consider a lagging pace is merely their impatience to get to the payload; they want to see the fight/smut/revelation scene and all the world-building or slow burn romance is no more than dawdling on the way to the fun stuff. OR it could be that you’re rehashing the same shit three times and need a kick in the pants to see that it only needs saying once.3

Regardless of what conclusion you arrive at, you’re going to have aha! moments, bursts of clarity for issues that you couldn’t perceive on your own but needed someone else to present them, or different wording or metaphors or whatever, in order to see what the problem is. These epiphanies can be hard to cope with. You might feel chagrin, disappointment, irritation, even anger. They’re all valid emotions, and you’re allowed to feel them. Just don’t drown in them. Give them a few minutes to run their course, and then move on to address the situation. You don’t have time to mope forever, you’ve got more chapters and stories to write.

On to the classes of reviewers you’ll have. One class is that of your readers. It can be frustrating to receive valuable feedback after you publish. If it’s a SPAG issue or something likewise easily dealt with, it’s NBD – you just make your correction and hope no one else noticed. If it’s something stylistic, you shrug and move on, as not everyone will appreciate your writing ‘personality’.

If it’s structural, however, it can be devastating, because the entire story can hinge on something you have now learned is problematic. It can even kill your inspiration and motivation to continue the story. That happened to me about eight years ago-- someone pointed out a major issue that I had somehow just… missed. I was over 70,000 words into that story and I just couldn’t manage another word of it, after that. Talk about disheartening.

This type of thing is what makes the second class of reviewer, the beta, so incredibly valuable. You should always take seriously any feedback and advice provided by a beta. If you’re lucky, you’ve found someone who isn’t afraid to really give you the business. You want to root out as many problems as possible before you publish. A good beta is worth their weight in smut.

But it’s one thing to cope with the embarrassment you might feel to have a reader point out an error, and coping with that from someone with whom you’ll be having an ongoing relationship. With a reader, you can just take their criticism and apply it and move on; your contact with them will always be somewhat limited so your discomfort is fleeting.

A beta, however, is someone you have to speak to again, at length, after they’re pointed out what a dolt you are (though probably in far nicer language). It can be daunting to continue dealing with someone who has caught you with your pants down, so to speak. Writing can be very self-revelatory, and when we put it out there and it gets pooped on, we can feel vulnerable and rejected.

But… we are not our writing! We are not our plot holes, or our wonky grasp of SPAG, or our tendency to tell rather than show, or our aversion to ‘said’ as a speech tag, or any of the other million problems we can have as writers. When our betas tell us something is wrong with any of these, fortunately, it’s not a statement on our quality as people.

And, just like who we are as people, nothing we write is over and done forever. Everything can be fixed, tweaked, improved. In this digital age, even after publishing, the story isn’t set in stone. We can always nip in there after the fact and tidy up, twitch it into position, repair what isn’t working. Kintsugi! So what is Kintsugi, anyway? And why does it pertain to us? It’s the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Philosophically used, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object instead of a method of disguising it. The cracks and dings become beauty marks instead of flaws, because of the story they tell.

In terms that mean something to us in particular, it’s Jaime’s stump and/or gold hand. As people who love him in a particular pairing, and are fans of his character in particular, we see the stump and/or prosthesis as a symbol of the agonizing redemption process he has undergone, and how he had to break before he could be fixed.

Similarly, we can approach our flaws with an open heart, as opportunities for growth. We can be eager to find them, because we know we’re going to conquer them and improve because of it. We can breathe through the discomfort and embarrassment knowing we’ll come through it stronger, both as writers and as people.

Example:

Just today, one of my betas, the unsinkable Mikki, came at me with a contention that I was writing Brienne OOC.

(Note: She was her usual lovely self, not hostile at all – this is just a timely example of dealing with subjective criticism and how to consider and absorb it. But do keep in mind the “sometimes even assholes are right” thing from above.)

At first, I thought, “She’s expecting Brienne to be different, but I’m choosing to adapt her for a modern setting, so of course the character won’t be identical to her canonical self.” So I replied that I was writing her differently because, in the modern AU I’m writing, Brienne hasn’t had the same life experiences that, in canon, resulted in her being far more humorless, touchy, self-ashamed, etc.

Mikki replied with a very insightful analysis of how Brienne’s personality was formed, and how those core characteristics can come through in modern-day!Brienne, albeit in a softened format according to the gentler treatment she’s had in my story. I saw immediately that, put this way, Mikki was entirely correct, and that I’d been going about it without enough depth and consistency.

I don’t need to revamp anything drastically, but to add details here and there – mostly just introspective bits that will add to the characterization in the end, and make her feel more Briennelike. These bits won’t be obvious or attention-grabbing, they won’t change the story significantly, but they’ll contribute to the overall quality.

The upshot of this is that Mikki knows she can tell me when she perceives a problem because I'll take her seriously and won't freak out on her. And I feel comfortable not only receiving her critique but also entering into a discussion about it instead of just blindly accepting her advice and accepting when I'm shown the error of my ways.

Homework:

Think about past incidents of negative feedback. If you’ve had criticism given, even in a hostile way, consider that at length. Are you able to brush off the dross and see the gem hidden beneath? Can you discard the rudeness and find the message hidden within it? Focus on the message, not the delivery.

Once you find it, examine it. Is it pointing out a factual error, or is it subjective? If it’s subjective, is it just because you’ve disappointed their expectations, or because there is valid criticism? Write your response out, if you feel that will be helpful to clarifying your thoughts.

Endnotes:

1 - SPAG = Spelling, Grammar, And Punctuation.

2 - In future lessons, we’ll be going over many topics – among them natural-feeling dialogue and the matter of pacing – in hopes that you’ll have something to compare their criticism to, gaining the ability to discern whether or not you do have problems with these issues or the reviewer is just a crackpot.

3 - Academic writing is nothing like fiction. Many nonfiction writers have problems with this transition, because they’re used to writing an intro to the premise of their article/paper, then describing the subject at length, then summarizing it all into a tidy package. If you’re coming from academic writing, and someone is telling you your pacing needs work, there’s a strong chance the reason is because you’re trying to write persuasively, when your focus as a fiction writer is to write descriptively. You don’t have to persuade the reader of anything, here, just paint a word-picture for them.

#gary's writing workshop #writing #writing tips #writing reference #writing resources

163 notes · View notes

elisaphoenix13 · 5 years

Text

Summer Vacation Pt.3 (End)

Both Tony and Stephen wake with a start when Peter sits with a heavy bounce in the middle of the bed and crosses his legs. Tony slowly lowers his hand (usually one of his gauntlets would form but it was missing) and Stephen dismisses the shields around his hands when they discover their attacker is just Peter.

Tony rubs his face tiredly. "Pete, you're gonna give your old man a heart attack."

"Can we go to the beach?"

Stephen looks at him half-asleep. "How are you awake?"

"It's past noon." Peter's stomach growls as the sorcerer grabs his phone off the nightstand to check the time and Tony looks at the teen's noisy abdomen.

"Did you eat Underoos?"

"...no. We don't have anything."

"Room service kid. I'm not exactly wanting for money. Besides, food is a necessity."

Stephen mumbles something about brushing his teeth and climbs out of bed as Peter fiddles with the hem of his shirt. "I didn't want to assume."

Tony groans and yanks the teenager down onto his chest. "You know, a lot of couples would kill to have you as their kid."

"That's good?"

Tony laughs. "Not for me if people actually find out I--" The engineer ignores the correction of 'we' from the bathroom. "--have the perfect kid. Then I'd have to beat them away with a stick." Tony pushes Peter back up and gets out of bed, stretching his arms over his head. "Anyway, if we hurry, we can probably make it for brunch downstairs and then we can go to the beach."

Tony walks into the bathroom and Peter loudly exclaims his disgust when the engineer smacks Stephen's ass when he walks into the bathroom to brush his teeth. The doctor coughs at the unexpected slap and spits out his toothpaste before he chokes on it, earning a smug grin from the man beside him. Stephen turns a blind eye as he rinses his mouth then walks out just in time to watch Peter trip over his pants and pauses until a muffled 'I'm okay' rings out. He rolls his eyes adoringly as a mess of curls pop up from the other side of Peter's bed and digs through his bag for his own clothes.

There was a semi-private beach behind the hotel (it was for hotel patrons only) so all they would really need to do after they got something to eat was come back up to their room to change. They weren't really prepared for a day at the beach but there was a gift shop downstairs that sold what they would need so that wasn't an issue.

They only had their swim trunks because it was unspoken rule to always have swimwear when you went on vacation. Even if you went somewhere cold because there was always the chance of a hot tub being available for use.

"I take back that being okay thing."

Stephen looks over his shoulder to see Peter pinching the bridge of his nose, and he grabs the tissue box off the nightstand as he rushes over to the teen. The doctor holds a few tissues up to Peter's bleeding nose while he sits down on the bed and when the teen takes over holding the tissues, Stephen gently touches the bridge of his nose.

"It's not broken. Probably just bruised."

"It'll be healed in a few minutes. I'm okay Mom."

"You just rescinded that statement ten seconds ago."

"Well I'm rescinding that rescindment."

"Please stop. I am begging you. Just hush and sit there until your enhanced healing kicks in."

Tony walks out of the bathroom and looks at Stephen hovering protectively in front of their son. "Everything okay?"

"I fell." Peter responds nasally.

Stephen laughs. "I watched."

"He must be fine if the doctor's away and Mama Bear is out to play."

Peter grins and looks over his shoulder at the genius. "The doctor was out for about five seconds in his defense."

Stephen lightly pinches Peter's nose in retort and the teen hisses as the sorcerer returns to his bag and pulls on some clean clothes. Tony follows suit and a couple minutes later, Peter finally tosses the soiled tissues into the wastebasket, and finishes getting dressed. His parents wait patiently as he brushes his teeth, and then they suddenly find themselves being pushed out of the room, barely able to grab the room key cards, their phones, and Tony his wallet.

"Okay! Come on, let's go! I'm starving!"

Tony stops with a sly grin in Stephen's direction before slowly falling down against Peter. "Oh no! Gravity is increasing on me!"

"What?! No it's not!"

"It is too Peter. The same thing happened to me at home a week ago."

Stephen hides his laughter by turning away when Tony fully collapses on the teen, and Peter glares at his father.

"I really want to be mad at you but I'm also super proud you made a Disney reference."

_________________________

Peter hoovered brunch and the family of three found themselves at the beach within an hour. He nearly ran off in his excitement, so Doctor Strange had to come out and grab Peter by his shirt and practically toss him back onto his towel to get him to put on some sunscreen. It took a couple of tries on the teen's part to finally get to run off as Stephen pointed out parts of his body he missed, but he did eventually get a nod of approval and dashed off, leaving his parents to their more leisurely pace.

"This whole vacation has made me question if he's really sixteen." Stephen says with some amusement.

"I haven't carbon-dated him yet. We might just have a six-year-old on our hands."

"Or it's just Vacation Peter. He hasn't really had a vacation to enjoy has he?"

"Last time he was on a beach, he was being beaten to death."

Both men cringe at the thought. They were both actually really surprised Peter wanted to go to the beach, but it was possible he just wanted to replace the bad memories with good ones. Something they couldn't really fault him for and was actually a pretty good coping mechanism considering he occasionally still had nightmares of that night. Both of the beach and the building. The first couple of times he had those nightmares after being adopted, he woke up screaming and hyperventilating. When Tony ran to his room to calm him down and comfort him, he accepted the embrace but would choke out 'You weren't there' until his sobs finally stopped.

Tony always returned to bed looking bedraggled afterwards. It was no secret the genius felt responsible.

"Vacation, Tony, no bad memories." He gently noses the man's cheek while simultaneously holding up the sunblock. "Do my back?"

Tony snorts. "How romantically common of you Strange."

"I have no idea what you're talking about. I just can't reach my back."

"I'm sure whatever press is hiding around here is trying to pick their jaw up from the ground with all the nuzzling you're doing."

"Our relationship and Peter are old news." Stephen says matter-of-factly as he pulls away, pulls off his shirt, and lies on his stomach. "My back? Please?"

"Well since you asked sooo nicely."

Tony applies sunblock to Stephen's back, and the doctor returns the favor before they both spend the rest of the afternoon sunbathing. Peter at one point managed to get them out to the water for about an hour of splashing, and in Stephen's case, using magic to toss the teen farther out. Neither complained about the sorcerer's use of the mystic artes since it was used in fun, but both adults eventually tapped out and retreated back to their towels to dry off and Peter was dragged away by some children to help build a sandcastle.

He was so good with them that the other parents actually trusted him enough to relax and enjoy the other's company, much like Tony and Stephen had. They actually felt a little bad when Tony announced to the remaining parents later that evening that they were collecting their son and that they would have to carefully watch their children again. Families that had already left, and even the ones that remained, thanked the teen for playing with the kids.

His genuine smile and answer of 'No problem, I had fun' had everyone swooning.

Perfect child indeed, Tony thought as he throws his arm around Peter's shoulders.

"Have a good time Underoos?"

"Best vacation ever." Peter smiles up at him. "Thanks Dad. Really."

Stephen comes up on Peter's other side and gently ruffles brown curls. "You could make a sandcastle out of the sand in your hair."

"I could make a sandcastle from the sand from my everywhere. Dibs on the shower."

Tony raises an eyebrow. "I saw those kids burying you in the sand at one point. How bad are you chafing?"

"It hurts to even think about it."

#tony stark #ironstrange #peter parker #mama bear stephen strange #supremefamily

128 notes · View notes

inmyownlittlecorner5 · 5 years

Text

Moonlight Chapter Three: The Queen Mab

A fanfic Novel by la-topolina

Rated for Mature Audiences

Warnings: Language, Violence, Sexual Content

Chapter 3/26

Moonlight Masterpost+

<< Chapter Two+

Chapter Four+ >>

-------

It was half-past ten when Severus decided to leave The Queen Mab and go home. He had been sitting at the bar since a quarter to the hour, nursing a firewhiskey and feeling like more of an idiot with each passing moment. At least no one knew him here. The pub was a small, smart-looking place done in dark wood and filled with antique furniture. Groups of Art Nouveau maidens winked down from the walls, whispering and giggling to each other. An aging pianist tinkled away in the corner, playing popular wizarding tunes, and the other patrons talked and laughed over the music. No one seemed to take note of him, for which he was grateful.

With a final irritated glance at the clock, he finished his drink, tossed a few coins on the bar, and stalked out into the warm summer night. The Queen Mab was located in an alley off of High Street that had been enchanted to keep Muggles from noticing it. He frowned darkly as he emerged onto High Street proper, berating himself for being fool enough to think that a woman would actually be interested in him. He was so focused on his ruminating, that he walked straight past the cause of it.

“I didn’t think I was that late,” Miranda said lightly as he went by.

Severus halted in front of Shoreditch Church, almost unwilling to believe his luck. He slowly turned to face Miranda, frown still in place. She was wearing a calf-length emerald sheath dress and an amused smile. A bracelet of copper laurel leaves wound its way demurely around the upper part of one of her bare arms. Her hair was mostly loose, although a few braids wove themselves cleverly through the locks to keep it out of her face. She looked like a wood nymph escaped from some bacchanal.

“You aren’t one of those people who’s early to everything, are you?” she teased.

“Punctuality is a virtue,” Severus said in his sternest professor voice.

“And, unfortunately, one that I lack. Along with prudence and humility to name a few. I don’t suppose you could overlook my flaws this time and come to dinner? It’s Tuesday and Mrs. Mab always makes Bubble and Squeak and Eve’s Pudding on Tuesdays.”

He ran his eyes over her and allowed, “Perhaps just this once.” He offered her his arm, which she took, and they headed back to the pub in the alley.

“I am sorry to keep you waiting,” she said a bit later over plates of the day’s special and glasses of bitter house-brewed ale. “It took a bit longer than I expected to tie up the vampire case. There was some arguing over proper burial practices followed by some arguing about proper payment practices. I’m always amazed at how short some people’s memories are when it comes to fees and rates of exchange.”

“I would have thought that the life of a bounty hunter was all excitement and danger," he observed. "It sounds rather dull to hear you describe it. How disappointing.”

“It’s a bit of both, like everything. I imagine most people think that your work is tedious, but I know from personal experience the tedium is punctuated by thrilling moments of danger. I once blew up half of a classroom at Ilvermorny trying to make an Exploding Potion. Fortunately, Professor Wright had eyes in the back of her head and was the fastest Shield Charm caster I’ve ever seen.”

“What on earth do they teach you in that backwater?”

“I was supposed to be making the Draught of Peace, but I was bored.”

“I would have had you expelled if you had been one of my students."

“I don’t doubt that. I expect you’re a perfect beast of a professor. You probably hang students up by their toes for fun.”

“Only if they deserve it.” He sipped his ale and studied her a moment. “How do American Muggle-borns find Ilvermorny?”

“The wizarding families in America all know about the school, so they send their children at eleven, sometimes regardless of ability. Ilvermorny has a reputation for rewarding grit as much as talent, so anyone with the nerve to try is usually given a chance. Periodically MACUSA sends agents around the country to look for prospective students among the No-Maj population. I was spotted at a baseball game when I was nine.”

“A what?”

“Baseball,” she repeated with a laugh. “I’m sure you have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s the No-Maj national pastime in America. My whole family is wild for it, but I know it’s an acquired taste if you’re not born into the insanity. I was a pitcher, meaning that my job was to throw a ball at another player who was trying to hit it with a bat. I was supposed to keep the batter from hitting the ball if at all possible. At nine, it’s usually a feat in and of itself simply to throw the ball to the right spot. But I realized that if I held the ball and imagined where I wanted it to go, about half of the time I could make it do what I imagined. And by that, I mean I could make it curve, sink, turn loops, all sorts of things. One Saturday, after a game, a gentleman introduced himself to my parents. We thought he was recruiting for one of the more elite baseball teams, but it turned out he was going to offer me something much more exciting. So here I am. How does it work here?”

“A Magic Quill notes when a witch or wizard is born in the Book of Admittance and an owl arrives with a letter of acceptance sometime during their tenth or eleventh year.”

“How organized. I’m guessing you’re from a wizard family.”

“My mother is a witch,” he said shortly.

She seemed to notice the change in his tone and turned the subject. “I’ve been kicking around an idea for a potion for a while now. I don’t usually have a master of your caliber at my disposal, so I’m going to torture you with it.”

“An inauspicious beginning, but do continue,” he said, glad to discuss something else.

“Well, I tend to get ripped up a bit in my line of work, so I’m always looking for ways to cope with that.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered a change in profession.”

“I’m afraid I’m addicted to it. Do you know what an epipen is?”

“No.”

“It’s a syringe full of synthetic adrenaline. There was a girl I went to No-Maj school with as a child who was so allergic to a protein in milk that her throat would swell shut if she came into contact with it. She carried one of these epipens around with her all the time in case of accidental exposure. If needed, she could stick herself with the syringe and the synthetic adrenaline would keep her airways open until she could get further help. Now, I want to know if it’s possible to use a similar delivery system for a suitable potion. It’s not always practical for me to swallow a vial of something when I’m in the middle of a battle. And then there’s the extra time it takes for the potion to work through my stomach into my bloodstream. Imagine if that could be bypassed.”

Severus’s brow furrowed as he considered. “Interesting idea. It would be extremely dangerous to test.”

“That’s probably true. But do you think it would work?”

“Assuming you found the proper potion to use, I don’t see why it wouldn’t.” He was quiet for a while, pondering this.

She lit a cigarette and let him think in silence. When she’d finished smoking, she said, “It’s really a beautiful night. Would you like to talk a walk?”

“It’s a wretchedly hot night,” he replied, “but perhaps the company would be worth the bother.”

She looked pointedly at his long black sleeves and high collar. “I think I’ll choose to take that as a compliment."

He allowed himself a smile. “I suppose I meant it as such.”

They left the pub and he offered her his arm again. She took it and inhaled deeply as they turned onto a deserted High Street.

“I know that the days in can be oppressive, but this time of night in summer is simply the most delicious time to be alive,” she said.

“I’m sure I have no idea what you are talking about,” he replied, but his tone was teasing.

As they passed Shoreditch Church again, she let go of his arm and twirled around like a nymph dancing in the forest. Infected by her madness, he caught her wrist and spun her to him. Her hands landed on his chest and he kissed her with an eagerness that would have embarrassed him had she not been reciprocating with equal fervor. His arms went around her waist and hers slipped about his neck. Her fingers were tangled in his hair when they broke apart to gasp for air, but before he could continue his work, he noticed that they were no longer in London. He stepped back from her and his suspicious eyes saw rolling hills and a country lane rather than the city street he had expected.

“Where are we?” he almost growled.

“Oh, I thought it would be nice to be somewhere a bit out of the way,” she answered with an impish grin.

He was not amused. He grabbed her arm over the bracelet and gripped it until the leaves cut into his hand. “Where are we?” he demanded again.

Her jaw set in an annoyed look of her own. “We’re near my cabin. I used a Homing Spell. It’s something we learn in the backwater I’m from. I didn’t use it last night because you have to be a bit relaxed in order for it to work. You must have wanted to come tonight, or I wouldn’t have been able to bring you with me. Now let go of my arm, you’re hurting me.”

He held on for a moment longer before releasing her, then they walked on in silence for a while.

“Are you always that jumpy?” she asked pleasantly, as though enquiring about the weather.

“Usually,” he answered, rather more honestly than he had intended.

The half-moon shone brightly over the downs and Severus realized that the sea was visible beyond them. The breeze off of the water was cooler than it had been in the city and he had to admit that there was something to the idea of being a bit out of the way. As he studied Miranda out of the corner of his eye he found it difficult to say where the moonlight ended and her hair began. He offered her his arm again and she took it, as though the earlier exchange had not happened. Considering her occupation, perhaps she was used to people being what she called ‘jumpy.’

“How many brothers did you say you have?” Severus asked dryly.

“Four. Only three living, though,” she answered. Then she added with a note of mirth, “Don’t worry, they’re all in America. No one will be waiting for you with a shotgun.”

Before long, he saw the cabin from the night before waver into view ahead. Miranda’s arm felt good in his as he led her up the path to her front door. She ascended the first step and turned to face him, eyes level with his and lips inches away.

“Would you like to come in?” she breathed.

“I should think that were obvious,” he answered, a bit breathless himself.

She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him with those ardent lips. He was starting to lose track of his rational mind when a stabbing pain flew up his left arm. He broke off the kiss with a grunt and knew that the Dark Mark under his sleeve was glowing black and angry. Of course he would be summoned at this particular moment. He had been a fool to think that this evening would possibly go the way he had hoped.

“Are you all right?” Miranda asked, sounding concerned.

“I have to leave,” he said harshly.

She paused, curiosity etched on her face, but she did not ask him where he was going. “Can you come back?” she asked simply.

“No.” He traced her cheek with a long finger, unaware of how the regret he was feeling glittered in his eyes.

“Will I see you again?”

“Probably not.” His lip curled in a wistful smile. “Unlike your family, I’m afraid I am not terribly lucky.”

The pain in his arm throbbed again and he turned, striding away from her.

“I wish you luck all the same,” she said after him. He didn’t wait to hear any more and Apparated to his Master’s call.

*****

Hours later, Severus stumbled into Spinner’s End, even paler than usual and shaking. His mind had been full of moonlight when he had appeared before the Dark Lord and Severus had been unable to keep it as blank as he usually could. The Dark Lord, still wary of Severus’s protestations of loyalty, had invaded Severus’s mind and begun sifting through the fresh memories of a silver-haired woman. Severus had managed to turn the hair red, to focus on Lily instead. Finally the Dark Lord had turned his attention elsewhere, bored with Severus’s obsession. Severus supposed the Cruciatus had been applied to him that night simply for being dull.

He gulped some water and fell into bed, not able to undress. Every nerve was still screaming with pain, but he knew it would dull to an ache by the morning. He slept fitfully and dreamed of a smiling woman whose hair changed from red to silver, and whose eyes flashed green and grey.

Moonlight Masterpost+

<< Chapter Two+

Chapter Four+ >>

#harry potter fanfic #harry potter fanfiction #severus snape #snape #snape x oc #snape love #severus snape fanfiction #snape fanfiction #romance #second wizarding war #ilvermorny #american wizards #baseball #world building #adventure #first date #espionage #spying

8 notes · View notes

wipbigbang · 5 years

Text

Art Claims Round 2

Second round, same as the first, only better. We got some stories claimed this past week, but we still have about 92 that are up for grabs and need some wonderful artists. In this round, you can definitely take two stories at a time. If you'd like to claim two stories, please wait until you get an email confirming your first claim, then fill out the form again for a second claim. Everybody spread the word! Grab your artist friends, stuff them in a potato sack, and drag them here kicking and screaming if you have to! This year, art claims are working a little differently than in years past. We are using a google form to streamline things, which should make things easier both for you as participants and us mods. To claim a story, the form requires email, check in ID, and the identifying number of your first choice of story. Putting your top three choices is best in case your first or second has already been chosen. Please be sure you've read the FAQ before claiming.

Click here to claim a story.

Stories are listed by fandom in alphabetical order and then by the story name, with a number identifying that story (for our records). Stories are first come, first serve. I'll update the post as stories are claimed. Official posting dates begin on July 27th. Once all stories are claimed and all artists/authors have been notified, I will put up a sign-up sheet so authors and artists can choose their posting dates.

Authors, if something is wrong with the info for your stories, please let me know ASAP here or via email at [email protected].

See all fandoms in a google doc.

A Song of Ice and Fire #1 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Ned Stark/Cersei Lannister Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Ned Stark and Cersei Lannister are made to marry after the Rebellion ends Angel the Series/Buffy the Vampire Slayer #41 Story Title: Like Stone Pairings, Characters: Connor, Dawn Summers, Buffy Summers, Angel, Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (and pretty much the complete cast), not shippy fic but there is Angel/Buffy and Connor/Dawn) Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence Summary: Twenty years after the battle with the First and the aftermath of Jasmine’s reign, life still isn’t easy for Buffy and Angel and their friends and family. Connor has been on the outside of his father’s life for years and isn’t particularly happy to be brought back in when Dawn shows up in L.A. with a case that requires his attention. But that is just the beginning of the badness threatening to swallow them all whole. Arrow

#3 Story Title: No Regrets: A Love Unexpected Pairings, Characters: Oliver Queen/Roy Harper Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: An A/B/O love story. Roy learns that he’s not a beta like he always thought and has to cope with starting to have omega heats. Due to circumstances, and latent affection, alpha Oliver agrees to help Roy through his first. They unexpectedly bond during that first time, and the successive chapters each explore another aspect of the couple coping with their relationship: a heat coming on suddenly while Oliver is out of town, and Oliver going into rut while they’re in public, finishing up with a softer chapter of some romance and switching, ending on a hopeful note. Lots of feels and smut. Batman #4 Story Title: Scenes From a Gotham Romance Pairings, Characters: Bruce Wayne/Selina Kyle Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Bruce finally pops the question to Selina and she accepts. Slowly, they begin building a family together. BBC Sherlock #6 Story Title: ...And All The Men And Women Merely Players Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade, Mary Morstan/John Watson, Eurus Holmes/Jim Moriarty; Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade, John Watson, Mary Morstan, Anthea, Janine, Eurus Holmes, Jim Moriarty, Original Child Character(s), Mummy Holmes, Siger Holmes Rating: Mature | M Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Mycroft Holmes is not-so-subtly trying to make sure there's a reconciliation between his youngest sibling Sherlock and his ex-wife, Molly Hooper, by forcing them to work together on a theatre project. But it isn't all smooth sailing when his and Sherlock's sister comes back from the States with a boyfriend who is the devil incarnate...and all hell is about to break loose. #7 Story Title: A Boon For You, A Boon For Me Pairings, Characters: Mycroft Holmes/Molly Hooper; Molly Hooper, Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes, Eurus Holmes, James Moriarty, Siger Holmes, Mummy Holmes Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: When Molly saves the life of a fairy prince, she’s given the chance to ask for whatever her heart most desires, and since what she wants to do most is help others, she’s given the ability to grant boons by the prince’s eldest brother. Little does she imagine such a simple and generous wish will change her life forever... #8 Story Title: A Merry Christmas After All Pairings, Characters: Mycroft Holmes/Sally Donovan; Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Anthea, brief appearance by Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Sally and Mycroft make an arrangement to have a pretend relationship together, culminating in a spectacular break-up at a destination wedding in Hawaii. But what they intend to have happen doesn't go according to plan when pesky feelings decide to get involved. #9 Story Title: A Study In Pink Pairings, Characters: Eventual Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan (though not in this story), fake!“John Watson”/Mary Morstan and Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper one-sided infatuation; Mary Morstan, Mike Stamford, Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes, Greg Lestrade, the cabbie, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Rosamund Mary Watson had never expected to set foot in London again, but she finds herself in need of employment and a better flat. Enter her old professor Mike Stamford, who tells her about the man who will change her life forever... #10 Story Title: All The Little Signs Pairings, Characters: Eventual Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, John Watson/Mary Morstan, past Tom/Molly Hooper, one-sided Greg Lestrade/Molly Hooper; Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, John Watson, Mary Morstan, Greg Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, others TBD Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: The repercussions from Sherlock’s faked death did more than just affect his relationships with his friends, Sherlock realizes when Molly loses her position at St. Bart’s for falsifying medical documents and loses her fiancé in the process. While Molly gets her life sorted out and decides what she wants Sherlock does the same, but is it too late when he decides what he wants in his life is Molly? #11 Story Title: As Long As You Love Me Truly Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper; Molly Hooper, Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Philip Anderson, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Sally Donovan, Henry Knight, Irene Adler Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: All Molly Hooper wants to do is get her big break on the London stage. She might have a chance when she's asked to be the lead in one of the most anticipated productions on the West End, and by the star himself, Sherlock Holmes. But things don't exactly go according to the plan she had in her head of how she would become a well known actress, and as time goes on she needs to figure out whether she wants fame or whether she wants something more fulfilling. #12 Story Title: Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, Mycroft Holmes/Anthea, Mr. & Mrs. Holmes, OC pairings; Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, Mycroft HOlmes, Anthea, Mummy HOlmes, Siger Holmes, OC Holmes Brother, assorted OFCs and OMCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: It all begins with an invitation to Mycroft's wedding to his PA and seven days at a resort in Jamaica, with the assumption that Molly pretends to be his girlfriend that his mother might be under the impression that he's going to propose to sooner rather than later. It ends up being so much more than that... #13 Story Title: Ever Changing, Ever Growing Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, background Mycroft Holmes/OC and John Watson/Mary Morstan Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Major Character Death Summary: They make the arrangement to present what society wants from them to the world as husband and wife, but childhood friends Sherlock Holmes and Margaret Hooper agree that their lives are their own. But with the death of Sherlock's brother and an unexpected scandal, their marriage of convenience is shaken. Will their friendship remain intact as their marriage falls apart, or will they decide that it is in their best interest to make this a true marriage between partners instead? #14 Story Title: It Can Be As Real As You Or I Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper with background John Watson/Mary Morstan and Janine Hawkins/OMC; Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, Mary Morstan, Janine Hawkins, Kitty Reilly, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: At the very beginning of a case to help Janine, it comes out that the very eligible and spectacular stud in the bedroom Sherlock Holmes has married local specialist registrar, Dr. Molly Hooper. Which would be fine and all, except it's a fake marriage...that Sherlock wants to make real by the end of the case. But Kitty Riley's constant hounding of him throughout the case, turning every tidbit she hears (always out of context) into tabloid fodder, is going to make that virtually impossible, he fears...though he might very well be surprised himself. #15 Story Title: It Takes The Whole Of London Pairings, Characters: Background John Watson/Mary Morstan and mentioned fake!Sherlock Holmes/Janine, but generally no pairings; Molly Hooper, Mary Morstan, John Watson, Tom, Meena, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mike Stamford, Sherlock Holmes, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Original character death offscreen Summary: When one of Molly's best friends and her husband die in a car accident, Molly finds herself the guardian of their six-month-old daughter, and in an instant her entire life changes, and she comes to find solace in the fact that there is truth in the old adage"it takes a village"when she finds herself raising Maya on her own. #16 Story Title: Jam Session Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper with background Mycroft Holmes/Sally Donovan and John Watson/Mary Morstan; Molly Hooper, Mary Morstan, Sally Donovan, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes. Jim Moriarty, John Watson Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Molly Hooper is known for making some of the best baked goods in all of England, and no one knows what her secret is. Her most popular dish is her Jam Tartlets, and it’s a recipe she shares with absolutely no one, not even those who work in her shop. When a new resident arrives in the village, an apiarist named Sherlock Holmes, they begin an exchange: some of her special jams in exchange for his honey. But what starts as a simple trade of sweet foodstuffs becomes so much more when Molly’s shop is broken into and ransacked by someone looking for the secret recipe. #17 Story Title: Like Night And Day Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, background John Watson/Mary Morstan; Molly Hooper, Sally Donovan, Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Mary Morstan, Meena, Mike Stamford Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Illegal drug use, drug overdose and withdrawal symptoms Summary: Molly loves Sherlock, she does, but one night when Sherlock makes a decision that nearly costs him his life, she knows she can't be his caretaker anymore without dragging herself down too. Trying to make a clean break of things, she leaves the university they attend together and goes to the States to finish medical school and put it all behind her. But after graduation, Fate has other ideas... #18 Story Title: My Chosen Queen, To Rule By My Side Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper; Molly Hooper, Hooper OCs, Sherlock Holmes, James Moriarty, other OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Ten years ago, Molly Hooper got lost in the forest near her brother's cottage trying to find her niece. She found the girl as well as an injured man who was more than he seemed. Now, Molly's niece is missing again and so Molly ventures into the forest once more to find her, with decidedly different results this time. #19 Story Title: Neither Living Dead Nor Fully Living Pairings, Characters: Sebastian Moran/Molly Hooper, past Sebastian Moran/James Moriarty and James Moriarty/Molly Hooper; Sebastian Moran, Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes, OCs Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Major Character Death, Character death is temporary, as character is turned into a vampire Summary: When Sebastian Moran inherits a building, a business and a servant from James Moriarty, he tries to live as normal a life as he can. But when Molly Hooper does the unthinkable and falls in love with him, he finds himself fighting a battle he'd never imagined he'd be in. #21 Story Title: Nothing's Changed That Matters Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, past Mycroft Holmes/Anthea; Sherlock Holmes. Molly Hooper, John Watson, Eurus Holmes, Greg Lestrade Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Major Character Death Summary: When Sherlock comes to Molly in Oxford ten years after their divorce with a favour to ask, she agrees to help. While a lot has changed some things remain very much the same...including the love that Sherlock and Molly once shared. #22 Story Title: Old Books & New Flames Pairings, Characters: Sebastian Moran/Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade/Sally Donovan, John Watson/Mary Morstan; Molly Hooper, Sebastian Moran, Mary Morstan, Sally Donovan, Greg Lestrade, John Watson, Jim Moriarty Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: When Sebastian Moran asks local bookstore owner Molly Hooper for a job, all he wants is a second chance to live the life he should have been living before prison. What Molly gets is more than a loyal employee and good friend. What she ends up with is what she had always wanted her entire life: happiness. #23 Story Title: Pawns On The Board, Flies On The Web Pairings, Characters: Mycroft Holmes/Anthea, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper; Anthea, Sherlock Holmes, Molly Hooper, Mycroft Holmes, Elizabeth Smallwood, Greg Lestrade, Sebastian Moran Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Violence, OC character death Summary: When an American politician is murdered and deposited in Mycroft’s office, it’s Sebastian Moran’s sign that he is done allowing Mycroft and Sherlock their little game at dismantling Moriarty’s organization. But with Sherlock having returned to London, albeit not in time to stop the plot from being put into motion, Moran’s ploy may not be as effective as he hopes it to be, not with Mycroft, Sherlock, Anthea, Molly and others working hard to stop him in his tracks. #24 Story Title: Rectifying Past Mistakes Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Mary Morstan; Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Anthea, Mary Morstan, John Watson, Mrs. Hudson, Molly Hooper, Greg Lestrade, Sebastian Moran Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: When Mycroft gets Sherlock out of Serbia, he drops a bombshell on him he isn't quite prepared for: after years of being gone out of his life, Sherlock's ex-wife Elizabeth has reappeared, under the name Mary Morstan. While he was off taking care of Moriarty's mess she was protecting those he cared about and helping his brother, for reasons, he finds, that she is keeping close to the vest. But when they're forced to stay in close quarters at Baker Street both secrets and old wounds come to light and, perhaps, things might turn out for the best after all. #25 Story Title: The Babe On The Doorstep Pairings, Characters: Mycroft Holmes/Anthea; Mycroft Holmes, Anthea, Greg Lestrade, OCs Rating: General | G Warnings: Child Abandonment Summary: One morning an infant is left on Mycroft’s doorstep with a note, signed by a woman named Laura. As Mycroft tries to find out who would entrust a child into his care he slowly opens his heart to the infant and lets the other people in his life that he’s kept at arms length in more, bit by bit. #26 Story Title: The Cursed Dragon Pairings, Characters: Sebastian Moran/Molly Hooper, forced engagement between Charles Augustus Magnussen/Mrs. Hooper; Margaret Hooper, Mrs. Hooper, Charles Augustus Magnussen, Mary Morstan, Sally Donovan, Irene Adler, Meena, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Major Character Death Summary: On the eve of Princess Molly's twenty-fifth birthday, a dragon comes to lay waste to her kingdom. Eventually, a lottery is set up to give the dragon a virgin sacrifice, but when Molly stumbles onto a wicked scheme by the royal advisor Magnussen, she finds herself picked as the next sacrifice and kept from telling the truth to her mother. Prepared to fight the dragon on her own if need be, she is taken to a remote part of her kingdom by the dragon...who is not quite what he seems. #28 Story Title: The Head Knows What The Heart Wants Pairings, Characters: Sebastian Moran/Molly Hooper, background John Watson/Mary Morstan; Sebastian Moran, Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes, Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes, Eurus Holmes, OCs Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Mild violence Summary: After the revelation that there had been some plotting between Moriarty and Eurus before his death, Sebastian Moran had decided to do whatever it took to keep Molly safe...even if that meant ruining whatever the results of his ex-lover's collusion with the Holmes sister were. But after enough time had gone by, things changed, and that was when Eurus decided to strike. That was when Sebastian couldn't deny the truth any longer: Molly Hooper had become the most important person in his life...and he would do whatever it took to make sure she was safe. #29 Story Title: The Pesky Virginity Issue Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, John Watson/Mary Morstan, past Tom/Molly Hooper; Molly Hooper, Mary Morstan, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Tom, OCs Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After Molly's engagement ends she decides she wants to rid herself of her virginity since that was a major cause of the dissolution of her relationship with her ex. When her friend Mary suggests she knows the perfect person, things don't go quite according to any sort of plan she may have had in her head...but it has a pleasantly surprising result nonetheless. #30 Story Title: To Live Again Pairings, Characters: Pre-Mycroft Holmes/Mary Morstan, background Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, past John Watson/Mary Morstan;Mary Morstan, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After the events at the aquarium which leaves most of the world thinking Mary Watson is dead, Mary deals with conflicting feelings and moving on in the wake of knowing her marriage is, for all intents and purposes, over. #31 Story Title: What Could Have Been, What Will Be In Its Stead Pairings, Characters: Mycroft Holmes/Molly Hooper, past Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, mentioned Anthea/Kate and Mr & Mrs. Holmes; Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Siger Holmes, Mummy Holmes, Greg Lestrade, Anthea, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Major Character Death Summary: When Sherlock dies, he leaves behind a woman he planned to marry and a child he did not know about. Mycroft is determined to take care of them both in his brother's stead, but nothing is ever as easy as one plans. That is the true Holmes legacy. BBC Sherlock/Doctor Who #32 Story Title: The Detective And The Hound Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Amy Pond, background John Watson/Lorna Bucket; Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, Amy Pond, Henry Knight; other Sherlock characters in"The Hounds of Baskerville" Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Unconcensual drug use Summary: Sherlock and John get given a case from Henry Knight, who believes his father was killed years prior by a hound in the moors. But what starts as a much needed break from the tedium that Sherlock is experiencing turns into a case that has him questioning many things and feeling something he has not felt in a long time: the type of fear that leaves you with a chill in your bones. #33 Story Title: When In University Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Amy Pond; Amy Po/nd, Sherlock Holmes, Aunt Sharon, Mummy Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Rory Williams Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Sherlock Holmes was a jerk the first time she met him. She had no idea how much he was going to grow on her as time went on... BBC Sherlock/Marvel Cinematic Universe #34 Story Title: A Potential Loophole To Exploit Pairings, Characters: Thor Odinson/Jane Foster, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, implied Loki Laufeyson/Darcy Lewis, Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Antoine Triplett/Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons/Leo Fitz and Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff; Thor Odinson, Loki Laufeyson, Frigga, Phil Coulson, Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes, Mycroft Holmes, Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Jane Foster, Melinda May, Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz, Antoine Triplett, Daisy Johnson, Darcy Lewis, Sif, Heimdall, OCs Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After Thor and Loki leave a meeting with their mother, they start to talk about what can be done to stave off the foretold arrival of their sister, Hela, and begin to make plans. #35 Story Title: Playing The Game: Act II – Knights & Knowledge, Romance & Regret Pairings, Characters: Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper, implied Clint Barton/Natasha Romanoff and pre Phil Coulson/Melinda May, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons and Antoine Triplett/Skye | Daisy Johnson; Molly Hooper, Sherlock Holmes, Phil Coulson, Mary Morstan, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Melinda May, Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz, Jemma Simmons, Antoine Triplett Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After tracking down Phil Coulson and his team, Molly and the others join him on their hunt for Grant Ward so that Molly can get retribution for Victoria’s death and Nat and Clint can further Fury’s assignment to help deal with all of the escapees from the Fridge. But as things get more complicated with the appearance of the Diviner and all the entails, Molly begins to wonder if she will ever get her end goal of Ward disappearing in a deep dark hole where no one can find him. #36 Story Title: The Forgotten Wife Pairings, Characters: Stephen/Molly, past Stephen/Christine, eventual past Tom/Molly; Stephen Strange, Molly Hooper, Wong, Christine Palmer, Baron Mordo, Tom Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Fifteen years ago, to fulfill the dying wish of someone who inspired him, Stephen Strange married Molly Hooper on a whim. And then life happened. A life full of many different things for both of them. But when Molly turns up at the Sanctum Santorum demanding an annulment so she can marry her fiancee, it presents an entire situation where neither of them have any idea how to approach a marriage that they aren't sure they want to end as they get to know each other better. BBC Sherlock/Midsomer Murders #37 Story Title: Every English Village Has Its Secrets Pairings, Characters: Past/Unrequited Mycroft Holmes/Gregory Lestrade, Tom Barnaby/Joyce Barnaby, Sally Donovan/OMC; Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Tom Barnaby, Gavin Troy, OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Summary: When Greg and Sally get called to Midsomer County for a case, right from the start Greg knows it will be a headache when Mycroft offers him lodging (so long as he's alright with his former lover being his housemate for his time there), and it doesn't get much better when he meets DCI Tom Barnaby and immediately their Detective Sergeants take an instant dislike to each other when Sally arrives the next evening. And that isn't even getting into the actual case itself and all the secrets hidden in the village of Elverton-cum-Latterley... BBC Sherlock/Star Trek: AOS #38 Story Title: Serendipity & Coincidence Pairings, Characters: Leonard McCoy/Molly Hooper, background Jim Kirk/Carol Marcus and Spock/Nyota Uhura; Leonard McCoy, Molly Hooper, Jim Kirk, Carol Marcus, Spock, Nyota Uhura, Joanna McCoy, OCs Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Bones knows one thing: he likes Dr. Molly Hooper and doesn't want his friendship with her to change...even if the voice in the back of his head says he'd like more than just a friendship with the female Starfleet officer. But a dare from Jim leads to more than he had expected and certainly more than he wanted...or could ever have hoped for. Black Sails #39 Story Title: a tide of hope Pairings, Characters: Abigail Ashe/Billy Bones Rating: Mature | M Warnings: mild violence Summary: "My point being, unless my crew decides that they don’t want to give me up for dead, and if what you say is true and no one will come looking for you, then we are very much stranded on this island.” Abigail Ashe awakens to find herself shipwrecked on an island. However, she is not alone. Abigail Ashe/Billy Bones, post season 3. Boku No Hero Academia/Star Vs the Forces of Evil #40 Story Title: Princess' guide (title may be subject to change) Pairings, Characters: Star Butterfly/Tenya Iida Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: A Sequel to 'An Earthling's Guide to Dealing with Mewberty' Star was serious when she offered to take Iida on a multidimensional adventure as a thank you for helping her get through Mewberty, and after hearing about the Hero Killer's capture, and Iida's own encounter with Stain, Star is more sure than anything else, that her friend could use some uncomplicated fun. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Hellblazer #42 Story Title: Insert Hell Pun Here Pairings, Characters: Rupert Giles & John Constantine, Willow Rosenburg/Tara Maclay, Xander Harris/Anya Jenkins, implied John Constantine/Spike Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Giles thought he'd never see John Constantine again. But when John turns up at the Magic Box looking for help, it brings back some memories Giles would much rather forget. Some sins you don't get absolution for. Code Geass #43 Story Title: World Enough and Time Pairings, Characters: Suzaku/Lelouch and Gino/Kallen (both minor) Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Graphic Violence Summary: Six months after Ragnarok, all Kallen wants to do is protect the people she loves, even if it means betraying everything in her heart to serve a Britannian prince. Suzaku wants to reverse a mistake he made but would never take back. Euphemia is willing to risk everything of herself in order to be a better person and find a cure. And Lelouch... Lelouch wants to make the world safe for his little sister, even if it means destroying everything in his path. (The AU where the royal family controls the elements through music instead of Geass, and the Ragnarok Connection united the living and dead... by bringing back the dead.) Critical Role Campaign One/Dragon Age Origins (Awakening) #44 Story Title: TBA Pairings, Characters: Vax'ildan/Keyleth; Vax'ildan, Percy, Vex'alia, Scanlan, Keyleth, M!Mahariel, probably others from both canons, Grey Wardens from Awakening Rating: No Rating Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: Merging of the two canons, but mainly in the Dragon Age setting with some Critical Role characters. Vox Machina finds the ancient thaig containing the tomb of the Raven Queen's champion, but in the process Vax'ildan is infected with the Blight. Only Loral Mahariel, hero of Ferelden, can save Vax's life -- but will he be willing to pay the price? Crossing Lines/Grey's Anatomy/Hawaii Five-0/Marvel Cinematic Universe/The Sentinel/S.W.A.T. #45 Story Title: This is our sanctuary Pairings, Characters: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Tony Stark, Clint Barton/James Street, Natasha Romanov/Sam Wilson, Ellie Defont-Bogard/Sebastian Berger Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence Summary: Clint Barton and Jim Street have been together for about a month as Guide and Sentinel when Jimmy's mom is released from prison. Clint wants Jimmy to have nothing to do with his emotionally abusive, Hydra mother. But Jimmy feels he owes Karen Street too much to abandon her, and Clint loves Jimmy too much to break his Sentinel's heart. So despite Clint's misgivings, they go to Los Angeles to visit her. The idea is to spend a couple hours with Karen and then hopefully never see her again. But what not even Jimmy realizes is how much Karen hates Clint for being Jimmy's Guide instead of her. Or how far she'll go to get her son back. Because Karen Street will do anything to get her son back. The problem is, Clint and Jimmy might not survive it. CSI: NY #46 Story Title: Twist Of Fate Pairings, Characters: Don Flack, Jr./Jessica Angell; Don Flack, Jr., Jessica Angell, Mac Taylor, Stella Bonasera, Lindsay Monroe, Danny Messer, Samantha Flack, Don Flack Sr., Sheldon Hawkes, Adam Ross Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: What if Jessica had a very good reason for not escorting Connor Dunbrook's kid to trial? What might have been? CSI: NY/Law & Order #47 Story Title: Theraputic Pairings, Characters: Eventual Danny Messer/Lindsay Monroe; Danny Messer, Mac Taylor, Emil Skoda, Don Flack Jr., Lindsay Monroe, Lennie Briscoe Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Major Character Death, Character deaths are in the past, but they were characters from CSI: NY Danny knew Summary: In Danny's eyes, the hits just keep on coming...though this particular hit may turn out all right in the end. Daredevil #48 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Brett Maloney Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Brett Maloney has no magic. He is not magic and he likes it that way because it means that magic is not his proble- Oh who is he kidding. It's totally his problem. Especially since this latest serial killer case he's sticking his nose into has magic written all over it and he's the best cop to investigate. Now to catch this guy before he targets another Hell's Kitchen witch like Foggy... DC Extended Universe #49 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Dick Grayson Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence Summary: After Superman dies, Dick Grayson reconnects with his father Doctor Who/St. Trinian's #51 Story Title: Adventures In Unexpected Places Pairings, Characters: Rory Williams/Amy Pond; Amy Pond, Camilla Fritton, Kelly Jones, Eleventh Doctor, Rory Williams, Mels Zucker Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After being sent to the worst school in the whole of England, Amy meets up with the man whose fault it is that she’s there, and things go vastly more differently than anyone expected. Dragon Age #52 Story Title: loves to learn, love to burn Pairings, Characters: fenris/f!hawke, carver hawke & f!hawke, Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence, there's an implication that a character might consider suicide (from a different character's perspective): there are no mentions of suicidal ideation expressed as such. haven't decided if i'll keep that in or not but it is currently in one of the snippets. Summary: pictures at an exhibition sort of thing about what we don't see from a fenris rivalmance from playing da2. if you're not a total music nerd then I guess i'd describe it as scenes loosely arranged around a central plot of a rocky romance, and of finding family- broadly following the chronology of the game. also explores how carver and marianne hawke deal with the changes to their family (losing bethany and their mom, etc). Football RPF #54 Story Title: It's A Long Way Up When You Hit the Ground Pairings, Characters: Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen Rating: Mature | M Warnings: No Warnings Apply Summary: Vincent's future is still uncertain, but rather than dwell on it, all he wants to do is welcome Christian home from the World Cup and find a few moments of bliss in each other's company before the world comes along and sweeps them away again. Christian, however, isn't making things at all easy, and Vincent starts wondering if maybe he has other ideas. A story about moving in, uncertainty, finding true friendships, and questioning everything about your past, present, and future. Gilmore Girls #55 Story Title: The Thing He Carried Pairings, Characters: Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano and Luke Danes/Lorelai Gilmore Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply, Minor violence Summary: This story is based on a post on Tumblr pertaining to what if Jess did not go to California. It is also based on 'The Things That He Carried' by Tim O'Brien, who also wrote an episode of 'This Is Us'. It's about growth and acceptance. it's about love and relationships. It's about rising above adversity. Glee #56 Story Title: Merry and Bright Pairings, Characters: Blaine Anderson/Kurt Hummel Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Kurt's built his life to cut out all feelings. The cute singer that comes into the Lima Bean every Thursday night breaks that idea. Guardian #57 Story Title: As Winter Fades Pairings, Characters: Zhao Yunlan/Shen Wei Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: dub-con Summary: Zhao Yunlan is a proud omega, but when he gets thrust back into Old Haixing, his life depends on impersonating alpha Kunlun. Then he meets Shen Wei and it all goes to hell. Hannibal #59 Story Title: The Art of Her Mind Pairings, Characters: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham, Aralie/Travis Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Graphic Violence, Depiction of drug use Summary: A young girl was accused of murdering her entire family, but one clever psychologist got her to serve a five year sentence at a mental institution. The day she is released from the hospital, Aralie has to adjust to life beyond her past. Aralie finds that when her anxiety becomes to much she occupies her mind with sketching the world around her and losing herself in ballet. Harry Potter #61 Story Title: Lionhearted Girl Pairings, Characters: Regulus Black/Severus Snape (minor), no other pairings at this time, but future Female!Harry Potter/Neville Longbottom Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply, Forced Amnesia Summary: Roswitha Artemis Black had gone from orphan to heiress to daughter in remarkably short time frame, like a dream come true. Now starting her first year of Hogwarts, she faces challenges she is certain regular first years don't have to deal with -- like the castle talking to her and demanding she find and evict an artifact deep beneath the stone floors. Or how whispers of another girl, nameed Heather Potter, stir some strange dream within her. #62 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: OMC/Pansy Parkinson, Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy Rating: Warnings: Summary: Evan Potter grew up knowing two things were true: that he was the Boy Who Lived, and that because of that, it wasn't safe for his squib brother Harry to live in the magical world. He'd be an easy target for any angry Death Eater who wanted revenge. No matter how badly he wants to be an ordinary kid with an ordinary brother, his life is never going to work that way. Then it turns out that Harry isn't a squib after all. And when Evan follows him into Slytherin to protect him... well, maybe his life isn't as set in stone as he'd always thought it would be. Hetalia #63 Story Title: From Spacious Skies, To Perilous Fight Pairings, Characters: America (Hetalia); Canada (Hetalia); Germany (Hetalia); North Italy (Hetalia); England (Hetalia); France (Hetalia); Molossia (Hetalia); Additional micronations Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence, Invasive Medical Procedures Summary: America’s explosive appearance on the national stage sent ripples of shock throughout the world. As he grapples to find his place as the Personification of the United State of America, dark forces begin to stir once more. Sequel to"In Need of Representation". James Bond #64 Story Title: GoldenEye Interrupted Pairings, Characters: James Bond/Alec Trevelyan Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply, Canon-Typical Violence Summary: James Bond meets up with his partner, Alec Trevelyan, to complete a mission — destroy a chemical weapons facility. When he finds Alec, he quickly discovers there’s something else going on. Following his instincts, he talks to Alec, leading the pair to realize they have two different sets of orders. The two partners know that if they had followed their separate orders, they might both have been killed. Now, they will carry out James’ orders to destroy the facility, and then they will go hunting. There’s a mole in MI6, and they’re just the Double O’s to catch him. #65 Story Title: My Partner the Car Pairings, Characters: James Bond/Alec Trevelyan/Q Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply, Canon-Typical Violence Summary: James Bond's partner, Alec Trevelyan, recently died. When he goes to pick up Alec's old car, he discovers there's more to the Jaguar than he realized, and that Alec wasn't as dead as everyone thought. With the assistance of MI6's Quartermaster, James has to find Alec's body, and somehow return Alec's spirit to his body. It might be an impossible task for some, but not for MI6's best Double O's. Law & Order #66 Story Title: a moment of transition Pairings, Characters: Mike Logan/Elizabeth Olivet; Mike Logan (Chris Noth), Elizabeth Olivet (Carolyn McCormick), Caroline Olivet (I'm picturing Madeline Zima), Lucas de Motigny (OC, I'm picturing Tom Sturridge) Rating: Mature | M Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Caroline Olivet starts her first semester at Yale. Les Miserables #67 Story Title: We’ll take a cup of kindness, yet Pairings, Characters: Minor/Background relationships. Grantaire, Enjolras, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, Joly, Musichetta, Bossuet, Bahorel, Bahorel’s laughing mistress, Feuilly, Jean"Jehan"Pouvoir, Eponine Thenardier, Marius Pontmercy; Cosette; Gavroche Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply, Alcohol, mentions of marijuana, Summary: They’re having some sort of winter holiday… thing. She’s never quite sure what to call these gatherings. They're not religious, and they’re not meetings; they have regular meetings and this is not one. But, it’s not quite a party, either. It could be if they decided on a theme or reason, beyond"its cold and we’re all busy and everyone else is getting together, so let’s eat food and enjoy each other."So, it’s a thing. That works right? They’re having a December Thing. In which R discovers Enjolras can cook, Cosette tricks Gavroche into eating vegetables, Bossuet both forgets and wins at White Elephant, and having close friends is just generally awesome. Marvel Cinematic Universe #70 Story Title: it's in the past we can make this leap Pairings, Characters: Characters: Clint Barton, Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter, a few OCs, some Howard Stark, Colonel Phillips, Daniel Sousa, and Angie Martinelli. Pairings: Mostly gen, with minor Steve/Peggy, minor Clint/Natasha Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After a mission goes horribly wrong, the Avengers end up separated and scattered in time. Clint joins forces with someone unexpected while Steve meets a kid who’s in way over his head. They both try not to completely screw up history. #71 Story Title: till human voices wake us Pairings, Characters: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Clint Barton, James"Bucky"Barnes, James"Rhodey"Rhodes, Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: Tony is called out on a rescue mission. Things deteriorate from there. [post-Civil War sort-of fix-it reconciliation fic, de-aging (kid!Steve), action/adventure, ensemble, eventual Steve/Tony] #73 Story Title: Whoops, I slipped Pairings, Characters: Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, and the rest of the Avengers in more of a supporting role Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: There's an explosion in the labs and Tony Stark finds himself in the body of a 3 or 4 year old. Unfortunately, his adult brain is calibrated for an adult body and all of the connections are scrambled, so he's in a bit a pickle. It's hard to let your teammates know that you're capable of rational thought when you can't even figure out how to operate the controls that enable you to walk and talk. #74 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Matt Murdock & Peter Parker; Peter Parker & Tony Stark Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Matt never liked Tony Stark until he met Peter Parker. Now... now he HATES him. But he's not going to be the one to start a fight. End it yes, but there's no way he'll risk Peter's anger by starting it. And what does Stark mean, Peter's missing? Marvel Cinematic Universe/Torchwood #75 Story Title: The Stars Lead Me to You Pairings, Characters: James 'Bucky' Barnes/Ianto Jones, Natasha Romanoff/Toshiko Sato, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Thor/Loki, Clint Barton/Phil Coulson Rating: Teen | T Warnings: MPREG, Miscarriage, a/o/b Summary: A person can only take so much being someone's second or in Ianto Jones case third or even fourth choice but still he stays with Jack because he loves him until the case with the Space Whale cost him the child he didn't know he was carrying, unable to watch Jack fawn over Gwen anymore Ianto decides to leave. Seeking out his father Phil Coulson advice Ianto ends up becoming the second handler to the Avengers and finds himself growing closer to the former Winter Soldier Bucky, who seems to know him from another time and many just find happiness with him. Once Upon A Time #77 Story Title: The Stowaways Pairings, Characters: Ruby/Belle, Killian/Emma Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: On a much needed vacation, Emma and Killian find that they are not alone on the Jolly Roger. Original Works #78 Story Title: Taking Over Pairings, Characters: Original Male Character/Orc, Original Male Character/Original Male Character Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Graphic Violence, Major Character Death, Chooses not to use Warnings, Past abusive relationship, PWP that grew plot, Summary: The King is dead, long live the King... As king's consort, Teyrin had never expected any strife. Then the orcs attacked. Now Teyrin has found himself torn between two world: rebellion against the new King of Athary is brewing in Neith. However, stuck at the castle, Teyrin finds himself falling in love not just with the Orckish culture, but with their king as well. As the consequences get more dire, Teyrin finds the stakes increasing. It's no longer just his life that hangs in the balance. #79 Story Title: The Naked Legion Pairings, Characters: Original Male Character/Original Male Character Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Graphic Violence, Tentacle sex, ovipositioning, inflation, symbiotes Summary: Rio's husband Shen has joined the Bio-Armor Division of the Stellar Marines, those who bond with a symbiote to gain living armor in order to fight powerful extraterrestrial threats. Six months after Shen, Rio is now ready to go through the intense bonding process with his own symbiote and join his husband in the Naked Legion so they can make a difference in the fight against the cruel and uncaring Krellians... Peaky Blinders #80 Story Title: A Battle Joined Pairings, Characters: Esme Shelby/Tommy Shelby Rating: No Rating Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: "Your wife is gone, Tommy. Does it matter how?" A sprawling tale of family and deceit, love and regret, anchored by Esme and Tommy's complicated arranged marriage. Primeval (BBC) #81 Story Title: untitled role reversal fic Pairings, Characters: Nick/Stephen, Ensemble Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Nick emerges from an anomaly into a world where Stephen is still alive . . . and Nick is the person who betrayed the team by siding with Helen. Nick doesn't know if he could return to his own 'verse even if he wanted to, but finds that Stephen is reason enough to make him want to stay in this one. At first Nick is distrusted, especially by Claudia. Nick helps the ARC by pointing out the differences between his world and this one and helping them try to figure out what Helen's up to. Eventually he is allowed back on the team; this time with Stephen as the team leader. Connor and Abby welcome Nick back with open arms (even if he isn't ~their Nick) and the four of them hang out together as a team and as friends. Nick and Stephen rekindle their friendship and grow even closer until they admit that the relationship they want is far different from the one they had before. (If you're familiar with Primeval, this fic was started for the role reversal square for trope_bingo.) Star Trek: AOS #82 Story Title: The Paths We Take, Glittering And Entwined Pairings, Characters: James Kirk/Spock, Leonard McCoy/Christine Chapel, may be other ships; Spock, James Kirk, Leonard McCoy, Christine Chapel, Nyota Uhura, other characters TBD Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Drug use; drug withdrawals Summary: When Captain Spock is assigned captainship of the USS Enterprise, he thinks it will be nothing more than a chance to improve upon his last post...until he finds himself in the same room with Ensign James T. Kirk. They find themselves both on the receiving end of a mental link that they now share, which brings complications for them both: for Spock, it is how to remain unattached in the face of a crisis and for Kirk it is how to keep the secret he is keeping from both his captain and his best friend. But in the face of a threat that could bring about the end of the Federation as they know it, perhaps this link is the best thing for both of them in the end. Star Trek: DS9 #83 Story Title: Shared Burden Pairings, Characters: Keiko O'Brien/Kira Nerys, Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Pregnancy, description of injuries, infidelity Summary: After Keiko is injured, her unborn child is transferred to Major Kira to finish its gestation. The O’Briens invite Kira to stay with them while she is pregnant with their child, but she and Keiko share more than one burden. The attraction that existed previously now blooms to something far more serious and complicated. Star Trek: TOS #84 Story Title: Day Of The Cypok Pairings, Characters: Pavel Chekov/Irina Galliulin Rating: Mature | M Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Pavel Chekov experiences his own version of Groundhog Day--aboard his new command, USS Integer. Star Wars #85 Story Title: a million lightyears away (from you) Pairings, Characters: Kylo Ren/Armitage Hux Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings, canon typical violence, injury recovery, developing relationships Summary: Following Crait, Hux takes a medical leave, to recover from his injuries. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren does not approve. #86 Story Title: Cinnamon Sugar Pairings, Characters: Finn/Rey Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Rey is a pretzel stand worker hoping to go to Republic University right across the way when she meets a handsome student, Finn... #87 Story Title: Out to Sea Pairings, Characters: Kylo Ren/Hux Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: A hundred years ago, a lord's son was lured to the sea by a mermaid and was never seen again. Now a mermaid has appeared once more, and she seems to have her sights set on Kylo. As the mermaid promises Kylo a better life under the sea but can he trust her? If what she is saying is true, then Kylo needs to decide between paradise and his family. Based off the book"Forbidden Sea." #88 Story Title: Pivotal moments (working title) Pairings, Characters: Luke Skywalker/Han Solo Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Han wasn't used to looking at life through its pivotal moments #89 Story Title: Still un-named Pairings, Characters: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Kylo Amidala is the drag queen who keeps getting arrested by Hux nearly every week. #90 Story Title: Strike True Pairings, Characters: Kylo Ren/Armitage hux Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: Seducing the new Supreme Leader is the best course of action, Hux decides, both for the order and for his own personal safety. #91 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Anakin Skywalker/Padme Naberrie, Obi-Wan Kenobi Rating: Warnings: Summary: There haven't been any more major changes in Obi-Wan's life in the months since Anakin and Padme's not-so-secret marriage (and pregnancy) became public. He's almost let himself become optimistic since Dooku's death: all they have to do is stop Grievous and the war will be over for good - and, after this amount of time, the Council can't possibly change their minds about allowing Anakin to be a married Jedi. Everything's going to work out the way he wants it. Life, of course, is never that simple. Star Wars Legends, X-Wing series #92 Story Title: Just Like That, Everything Changes Pairings, Characters: Wes Janson/Derek"Hobbie"Klivian, Wedge Antilles, Tycho Celchu, minor characters Rating: General | G Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: After years of being"just friends", an imminent separation forces Wes and Hobbie to finally accept their feelings for the other, and in time, they may even admit this to each other. Supernatural #93 Story Title: Angel of the Morning Pairings, Characters: Gabriel/Christa(OFC) Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: slightly inspired by the Juice Newton song of the same name. sequel to Invisible Touch (OC Edition). Things don't go as planned for our golden-eyed Archangel (do they ever?) Not every human has an Angel as a soulmate, but every Angel has a human as a theirs. Will Christa be able to accept the truth when she finds out just how deep the bond between her and Gabriel goes? Or will she reject him forever? Can true love really conquer all? #94 Story Title: Minus One Pairings, Characters: Jody Mills Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: When Dean turns up on Jody's doorstep, injured and minus Sam, she and Bobby have to work out what happened in order to save both Winchesters. #96 Story Title: surrender feels safe Pairings, Characters: Gabriel/Sam Winchester Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: Sam just lost his job. And no, it wasn’t his fault or his employer’s. This isn’t the best of times for small enterprises in Detroit. He is also a week away from being evicted from his apartment and nobody seems to want to employ him. But let’s take a step back and think about the mysterious job offer he receives on the night he becomes unemployed. With no options left, he gives it a try. He doesn’t expect to throw his new employer’s world off-kilter, forge an unexpected friendship with the oldest being in creation and be swept off his feet along with all of it (not necessarily in that order). Things just happen, right? Right. Supernatural RPF #97 Story Title: Spies, Suits and Alpha's Pairings, Characters: Jensen Ackles/Jared Padalecki Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Minor original character death, a/o/b, attempted rape (not by either J's), alpha!Jensen, omega!Jared Summary: J2 version of Kingsman. Jensen Ackles made it his mission to look after his fallen partner's family, especially his omega son Jared, promising Jared he would always be there for him. When Jared's step father attempts to claim him Jared runs and calls Jensen for help as a Kingsman Legacy Jared's world is changed as he proves that just because he is an omega he is as good as any alpha and deserves his spot. Transformers Generation One #98 Story Title: Pairings, Characters: Prowl & Barricade, Prowl & Bluestreak, Prowl & Bluestreak & Barricade, Prowl/Starscream, Prowl/Jazz, Codicil, First Aid, Lifeline, Nightstalker, Accord, Trailbreaker, Crosscut, Pulse, Incidental OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply, Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: Prowl, a young single parent, manages raising his creation, the demands of his own neglectful former guardian, and seeks to enter into a relationship. TVXQ #99 Story Title: Digital Stockholm Pairings, Characters: Jung Yunho/Shim Changmin Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: mentions of suicide, stress induced anxiety, depression symptoms Summary: Yunho has no idea why there are concerning videos of Changmin on his laptop, but it might just unhinge the volatile and complicated relationship he’s maintained with Changmin for the last decade. Set at the end of 2014, a psycho-dramatic get-together fic. Vampire Hunter D #100 Story Title: Delivery Pairings, Characters: D, Left Hand, Necessary OCs Rating: Teen | T Warnings: Chooses not to use Warnings Summary: Vampire Hunter D has his most difficult bounty yet...taking care of a six month old child across the Frontier! Voltron: Legendary Defender #101 Story Title: An Inconvenient Attachment Pairings, Characters: Keith/Pidge | Katie Holt, Ryan Kinkade/James Griffin (mentioned), past Pidge | Katie Holt/Original Male character, Pidge | Katie Holt Shiro (Voltron) Keith (Voltron) Iverson (Voltron) James Griffin (Voltron) Ryan Kinkade Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: No Warnings apply, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Accidental Voyeurism, Summary: In the aftermath of the failed Kerberos mission, Katie Holt descended into despair. No amount of skill would give her the information she wanted, especially after being banned from Garrison property by Commander Iverson. Thus there was only one solution in her mind. She had to infiltrate the Galaxy Garrison, to be close to the source and enable her to find what she needed to find to know the fate of her father and brother. Getting in was the easy part. Being able to stay? That was a little harder. Remaining unattached so she could focus entirely on finding her family? That was the hardest part, harder than she ever could expect after years of being brushed aside. #103 Story Title: home is just another word Pairings, Characters: Keith Kogane/Lance McClain Rating: Teen | T Warnings: No Warnings apply Summary: When Lance and Allura break up, it’s quiet. Keith doesn’t understand why that bothers him so much. OR: after a kinder, gentler season eight, Keith and Lance go on a road trip, and Keith doesn't have any reference points for the ways he's starting to feel. #104 Story Title: show me what you're made of Pairings, Characters: Pidge | Katie Holt/Original Male Character, Pidge | Katie Holt/Ryou Shirogane, Pidge| Katie Holt, Ryou Shirogane Rating: Explicit | E Warnings: Underage Drinking, Dubcon, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Ryou is Shiro's twin brother, Trans female Pidge, Transphobia, trans slurs Summary: Katie Holt, graduate student at the Taylor-Keaton Institute of Technology, was proud of the work that her father and brother did at the Galaxy Garrison. Even knowing they were going to be gone for several months at the least going the furthest any manned mission had gone, filled her more with pride than with dread. Months passed, and then days passed without word from Matt. And then she saw the news. And her world crumbled apart. (A story in five parts about mourning, denial, and coming into adulthood by throwing oneself in the deep end and struggling to stay afloat.) Watch Dogs (Video Games) #105 Story Title: Hurricane Pairings, Characters: Aiden Pearce/Jordi Chin, Marcus Holloway/Wrench (Watch Dogs) Rating: Mature | M Warnings: Graphic Violence Summary: People keep going missing in downtown San Francisco, including a member of DedSec. When Marcus and the rest of the gang start to investigate, their mission runs face first into one that Aiden Pearce is involved in too—but this time, close and personal instead of from behind the safety of a camera and a drone. When all of that piles on top of a job Jordi Chin's on, Marcus begins to wonder if he's pissed off any unloving gods recently.

#WIP Big Bang #WIPBigBang #art claims #looking for an artist #looking for artists #artists needed #2019 #mod post

47 notes · View notes

everlarkficexchange · 6 years

Text

Be In My Eye

(Prompt 70)

Written by: @reachingforaspark on tumblr, Grace_d on AO3

Prompt by: @567inpanem

Prompt 70: No one Katniss knew got reaped, and after the 75th the games stopped, hunting became easier, she’s looking forward to graduation, and she feels a growing attraction to boy with bread but she’s clueless as to what to do after 1 ½ decades of acting role of son her father never had and man of the house. She approaches problem like stalking game: observe. She learns a lot but realizes she needs help from only one person: popular merchant and Peeta expert Delly who’s thrilled to help in manhunt <3

AN: Thanks so much for the prompt @567inpanem. I got super excited and planned out a multi chapter fic response to this prompt, but considering I’ve got two other two Everlark multi chapter WIPs already I abandoned. Instead I crafted a one shot from a scene in the story I planned, which still fits the prompt. When I have some free time I’d love to revisit and expand on the world presented in the prompt. Thanks to @xerxia31 and @javistg for organising!

Rating: General, minor coarse language.

Disclaimer: This is a fan work and I don’t own The Hunger Games!

Be In My Eye

Peeta Mellark is everywhere since the Revolution. At the moment, he’s between me and my way back into the district. And he’s not alone.

I pull back into the tree-line, watching as he walks in circles around the meadow. Twin blonde heads flash in the sunlight. He’s got his niece, Ava, scooped against his broad chest with one arm, a bag tucked under the other. He must find what he’s looking for, because he sets Ava on her feet and pulls a blanket from his pack. Peeta always spends a few hours on a Sunday looking after his brother’s toddler.

It’s a perfect spring day, and he’s picked the end where the wildflowers grow, under the overhang of the great oak tree that reaches across into the fence. Recently someone has hung a swing from the heavy branch, and it drifts softly in the breeze.

Belatedly, I realise there’s no reason for me to be lurking in the woods. I have a hunting permit now, and special permission to be beyond the fence. I hear Delly’s cross voice in my head. He’s just a boy, she’d told me, not a damn bear. Stop hiding. I’ve discovered that Delly Cartwright is an unexpectedly bossy ally. But for whatever reason I don’t feel like strolling out of the trees and interrupting this scene.

Peeta is propped up on his forearms while his niece sits in front of him, babbling away. From here I can just hear her bright tones, punctuated by squeals as she occasionally reaches over to pat his face. Babies in Twelve are round cheeked and happy now, and Ava is no exception. My mother and Prim cooed for a week over her the first time she attended the new check-up clinic. I’m not one for babies normally, but now the Hunger Games are abolished, even I have a smile for Ava, with her dimpled chin and blonde curls.

I can see Peeta’s concentrating, the tilt of his head familiar. It’s how he looks when he’s filling out the chalkboards in class, or listening to the New Panem broadcasts we get once a week from District Thirteen. I creep closer, sticking to the shadows until I can make out the dimple in his cheek as Ava pokes his nose. He catches her hand before it ends up in his eye and pretends to bite it. Ava squeals and toddles off, Peeta chasing her. Something about the scene makes my stomach hurt, and I brush it away.

It’s just the normal discomfort I have when I look at Peeta lately. It’s worse when he smiles, and awful when he laughs. I’ve chalked it up to ongoing guilt about never thanking him for the bread, compounded by the realisation recently that Peeta has probably never thought twice about it. Since the Revolution he’s demonstrated his goodness a hundred times over, volunteering every second he’s not in class or at the bakery, at the school, for the new construction, he even carries clinic supplies from the train station for my mother.

He’s left a sketchbook open on the blanket, pencil forgotten. My eyes linger on it for a second, but instead I track the two Mellark’s in the meadow. I walk parallel to their path, them in the sun, me in the trees, a fence between us, as Ava waddles from place to place ripping flowers from the ground and handing them to Peeta. He accepts each one with serious thanks. The sight of Peeta cupping fistfuls of daisies in his wide hands would be amusing if it wasn’t so achingly sweet. Something’s wrong with my damn stomach again. I’ll talk to Mum about it when I get home.

He herds Ava back towards the shade, and distracts her with cut up apple slices while he picks up his pencil again. If I climb out onto the branch supporting the swing I’ll probably be able to see what he’s doing, but I hesitate. There’s pretty good foliage cover, it’s not like I would be interrupting, but it feels like it’s crossing some kind of line. I try to remember if Delly said anything about that. Somehow I don’t think it’s come up yet. We’re still on the ‘how to say Hello to Peeta’ stage. Casting my mind about, I do remember her saying, Show you’re interested in what he’s interested in. Checking out his art is being interested right? I’ll just scoot out and scoot back before he even notices me.

Deciding that sounds reasonable, I spin my game bag around my back and scale the tree, my handholds sure and steady. I inch along the branch on my stomach, shifting out until I’m almost overtop the swing. Ava’s still got an apple slice clutched in one hand, and a stick in the other, scratching it against the dirt. And Peeta is sliding his pencil against the paper, drawing. I suck a deep breath. It’s incredible. He’s loosely sketched Ava, crouched in a pile of wildflowers, plump fingers clasped around a stem. With each run over the outline he refines her soft form, lines becoming clearer as if he’s pulling her out of the page. It’s mesmerising, and I rest my head against the branch as I follow his hand across the page. The breeze blows my hair against my forehead and I relax into the tree.

I watch Peeta’s hand gripping the pencil lightly, follow the line of his forearms, watching the muscles underneath his skin ripple a little. The light hairs on his arms glint gold as the breeze catches the light and dappled shadows play over his shoulders. Between the rustling leaves around me, the swishing of the grasses and the soft scratching of Peeta’s pencil, I feel trapped in a sort of dream. He flips the page, starting a new sketch, and a rope braid begins to form. My daydream is interrupted by Ava clambering on Peeta’s lap, a prize clutched in her hand.

“Rock!” she demands, holding it out to him.

“Thanks Ava,” he says, “what a pretty rock.”

I smile a little to myself.

“Apple!” She points to the basket and Peeta agrees, picking up a daisy and tucking it into her hair. It slips straight through her thin curls.

“Tree!” she points again and Peeta attempts to tuck the daisy behind her ear. It falls out, dragged by the heavy head of the flower. “Bird!” she squeals, ducking out of Peeta’s reach. “Swing!” she points again.

I bite my lip, holding back a laugh, as Peeta uselessly tries to fix the flower in her hair.

“Girl!” Ava squeals.

I freeze. Ava’s pointing directly at me. I wiggle backwards, trying to retreat.

“Girl?” Peeta sounds confused as his head swings around. “Oh!”

He’s seen me.

“Hey Peeta.” I say lamely, sitting up with a little wave. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“Hey Katniss,” he says, squinting up at me. “Fancy seeing you…up there.” The left corner of his mouth lifts.

I scoot forwards and quickly lower myself down the rope swing. I drop onto the wooden seat. What did Delly say again? Smile, (no not like that Katniss, you aren’t a maniac), and be nice. I force a smile onto my face. It feels like a grimace. Two pairs of blue eyes watch me. I’m suddenly aware that I’m a hot, sweaty mess, with a bag full of dead animals, and there’s a leaf in my braid.

“Katniss, this is Ava,” Peeta says politely, flipping his notebook closed. “Ava, this is my friend Katniss.”

She tucks herself into Peeta’s side. “Bird now?” She asks.

Peeta laughs, lifting the girl into his lap. “Yes, Katniss is just like a bird. And when she sings all the other birds stop to listen it’s so pretty.” He busies himself with finger-combing Ava’s hair.

“Preddy.” Ava repeats seriously, looking at me.

I flush and look away. No wonder I can’t talk to Peeta. I can hardly cope with him telling a silly story to a child.

Sit up straight Katniss, Delly chides me. I roll my shoulders back. Ask him about himself.

“How are you?” I say and cringe at my pathetic conversation starter.

“I’m good thanks. Ava and I are having a lovely picnic. Aren’t we?” He says smoothly, tickling Ava’s sides and smiling a little at me. “And you? Good hunting today?”

“Yeah, very successful.” I kick my foot against the ground, pushing myself on the swing a little. “I forgot my key, for the gate, that’s why I was in the tree. Had to get home.” I stumble over my lie.

“Well lucky for us then. We got to see you in your natural habit.” Peeta says. He’s doing that half smile of his again.

I scowl and pull the leaf from my hair, feeling more like a wild thing than ever.

“Hey! Aim that laser glare elsewhere.” Peeta protests, rubbing the back of his neck. “I meant that as a compliment.”

My stomach rolls. I’m saved from the horror of trying to work out what to do with a compliment from Peeta by him letting out a horrified yelp and lunging for Ava. “Ava! Spit that out.”

She’s got a bundle of dandelions clenched in her chubby fist. A stray yellow petal is stuck to the drool on the side of her chin. I laugh and reassure him that dandelions are completely edible. I’ve eaten enough of them.

“Are you sure?” He asks. He flops back on the blanket, propping his hands behind him. “Oh right, apprentice botanist and resident woodland expert. That’s exciting.”

I nod, surprised he’s heard about my job offer. I guess most people have, new opportunities like that are exciting in Twelve. I push myself on the swing a little, lifting my feet out of the grass.

“You can’t eat these can you?” He gestures to the pile of white flowers beside him. “I feel bad. We practically stripped the whole meadow.”

I laugh.

“You can make wine with them, but I have a better idea.” I say.

I kneel down beside him on the blanket. I run my thumbnail through the stem of a daisy, then thread another daisy through it, showing him what I’m doing. Peeta picks up the method quickly, pulling together his own short string of flowers. Ava wanders back over, sitting between us, leaning on my bare knee with her sticky fingers. I hum to her as I thread dandelions as well as daisies together, trying not to look at Peeta’s hands.

“How do I finish it?” Peeta asks eventually.

I take his short chain from him, rounding off the end to make a tidy crown. I lay it onto Ava’s head. She looks a picture, with her round blue eyes staring seriously at me and the daisies floating on her golden curls. Peeta’s looking at her too, a gentle smile on his face. There’s a smattering of golden freckles across the bridge of his nose that I’ve never been close enough to see before. My stomach flutters again.

Impulsively, I lean over and place my completed chain on Peeta’s head. “For you.” I say, pushing his messy waves off his forehead.

I realise what I’ve done just as Peeta reaches up to grab my hand, startled. I shoot to my feet, knocking Ava back into Peeta’s lap.

“Now you’re matching.” I stammer, avoiding his wide-eyed gaze. Ava seems unaffected by my awkwardness, blowing me a bye-bye kiss as I scoop up my bag and bolt across the meadow, hand tingling.

I try to think of what Delly would say in this circumstance, but all I can recall is her parting advice.

Just be yourself.

#Springtime Edition 2019 #submission #reachingforaspark #567inpanem #prompt 70

118 notes · View notes

ryouverua · 6 years

Text

Trial 6 - Oh, I am one yet many (5)

The above inspirational picture was taken seconds before disaster.

Trial: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4

Tsumugi is not the one-trick pony we thought she was ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION!!!!

NO YOU AIN’T! NO YOU AIN’T I DID NOT SIGN UP TO BE HAJIMEMED, NO SIR I DID NOT!

i mentioned it during the text hellstorm I unleashed when I was mid-playthrough but the way Shuichi says ‘cosplaying’ here is ADORABLE. I love his VA she is so good -

also

oh no

o h n o

I can’t just... express how deeply that feeling of ‘oh no’ pervaded my being. My soul.

“THIS IS JUST COSPLAY“ SHE SAYS - AND GOD, THE MUSIC, THE MUSIC IS SO WACKY LIKE THESE ARE JUST SOME NORMAL FTE ANTICS -

wait no this is the ‘let’s start the killing game music’ -

ah that’s why I’m lowkey terrified right now

W-What in the world are those white smears across Hagakure’s eyes??? And oh god the first game too???

WHAT THE HELL TSUMUGI YOU’VE REALLY BEEN HOLDING OUT ON US TELL ME HOW YOU’RE DOING THIS I-I mean oh no, how dare you, this is so awful...

SHE’S TAKEN FULL OWNERSHIP OF JUNKO!PERSONA

AJSLKDF

TSUMUGI

HOLY SHIT

TSUMUGI

IS THIS YOUR FINAL FORM

ironically this got me thinking ‘this would be a really cool cosplay + prop’ once I got over the sheer terror of the situation and I starting thinking, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if you even had a sort of pinwheel mechanism (with the main body of it being hidden by her long hair) that rotated all of these pieces, and have you ever realized that there is a small piece of you that is the monster

also I just realized... she kept putting her glasses on as Junko. But I’m assuming she won’t ever wear them as Hajime. So it’s true - the moment she actually took off her glasses, we really did get to see her final form..

IS THAT KOMAEDA’S HAIR

ALL OF THESE THINGS, I RECOGNIZE ALL OF THEM OMG

This............ this is terrible, terrifying, and also really, really good

don’t say you’re jealous don’t say you’re jealous don’t say you’re jealous okay I’m a bit jealous FFU --

SHUICHI I THINK THIS IS ONE OF THE TIMES WHERE YOU DON’T WANT TO PURSUE THE TRUTH I HAVE A TERRIBLE, AWFUL FEELING -

oh no oh no

here I was doing mental gymnastics to justify why she’d be able to cosplay as Junko, a real person

but I was over-complicating things as usual

even the egg has been compromised for her nefarious scheme this truly is the worst timeline

What is with me and stumbling into series that just bloody smash their fourth wall until there’s nothing but broken pieces left

thank you for having twogami right after togami it’s not something I realized I needed and among all this heartbreak is a blessing

THIS IS NOT YOUR CUE TO START PLAYING THE CREDITS MONOKUMA

I am only making it through this trial by sheer force of will and the power of Sweetcheeks’ adorable voice.

Dangan.... ronpa....?

oh god she said ‘we’ she said ‘WE’ THIS IS REALLY NOT GOOD

‘Don’t get too whacky with your theories,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to sound like a total crackpot,’ I said. DAMN YOU SELF I SHOULD HAVE LET MYSELF GO ABSOLUTELY WILD AFTER ALL

So this was invented completely from nothing??? My initial theory had them seeing themselves in someone else’s actual memories as themselves, and having their own brains play tricks on them that way - but all those scenes with them being interviewed by Makoto, of applying to Hope’s Peak, and possibly everything else about them - oh god - how powerful are these lights? How much detail was crammed into them? Can this all be done with a mere flash of a light???

‘We.’ Her use of ‘we’ is interesting, here. It really does feel like Tsumugi sees all of her cosplay personas as actual people that she can channel to ‘help her’ as opposed to just mere characters. Like entities fighting along side of her, not just through her...

also hello ibuki I forgot how much I enjoyed your VA they make me hear seagulls in the distance

aaaaaaw look at how much the art style has improved from the first game!!!

Y.......... YES.......?????? wait actually as someone who is lowkey interested in props and set design - BUT NO WAIT STILL THIS IS WAY BEYOND THAT -

How... the hell... do you cosplay the world?! The entire world?!?!

Is that possible?? If the entire world isn’t real - if it’s all being propped up by you - then -

Who - who are we playing this game for then??? Why make us play it??? Who is watching the game???

I KNEW IT

I AND PROBABLY HALF OF THE PEOPLE PLAYING WERE JUST WAITING FOR YOU TO SHOW UP

......

Did. Did you just say it takes place in the real world.

Oh no -

It... It’s real fiction... because they’ve kidnapped actual people... and brainwashed them... and then trapped them in a situation where they were forced to kill each other to get out?? For things that didn’t exist??? For reasons that weren’t ever real???

Wait - so that means they can get out and it’ll be fine?! That’s..... t-that’s not as bad as I thought, but...

‘STAFF’ OH THAT WORD IS SO OUT OF PLACE -

...............................

There are. There are people backstage. It’s not just Tsumugi. This. This is super not good.

insert inappropriately-timed comment about how I love this VA

Okay. This actually took me by surprise. And I’m kinda terrified to ask.

W.... Why not? Is - Is this actually a space separated from reality? Can they physically.... not go back....???

no wait -

what are you doing

PUT THAT KEY BACK RIGHT NOW

OH UNCANNY VALLEY-LEVELS OF COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

NO DON’T THROW REAL FACES UP THERE -

IS THIS A BLOODY COMMENT BOARD

I mean I know in my head that this is a niconico parody but the fact is they have to translate the comments to suit an english audience so -

omfg no I cannot believe what is coming out of the screen right now

wait wait

Kyoko is my waifu

My husbando Shuichi

first

Sakura is my muscle waifu good taste anon

Bring on the spoilers

LOL are you watching?

I feel like I’m participating too!

she’s shaking

Aaaw, Himiko is still alive.

Wow it’s on? LOL!

this is what the creepy kid at the beginning of the chapter was about

this was who that Makoto kid was

WHERE IS HIS CREEPY-ASS FACE I KNOW YOU’RE THERE MAKOTO

Is this the everyone... the real everyone Tsumugi says she represents, then??? That she’s fighting for? Omg was Kirumi’s motive/trial foreshadowing all along -

Anyway, damn Tsumugi is proud of her viewership.

#humblebrag #musclewaifu

EVERYONE???? LITERALLY EVERYONE?!?!?!

SURELY... SURELY THAT IS THE CONCEITED TALK OF A MANAGER TRYING TO TALK UP THEIR ‘BABY’.... SURELY...

I appreciate the use of Celes here. This is.... damn dark. They’ve achieved such a peaceful world that the have to manufacture darkness and blood-sport for people to get their kicks???

STIMULATION?!

first of all where’s miu when you need her

SECOND OF ALL ARE YOU SURE HUMANITY WAS BEAUTIFUL, KOREKIYO??? ARE YOU SURE?

“It’s simple economics.”

THERE YOU ARE MAKOTO YOU CREEP

oh no he was... literally... using this game to cope with his problems.... and he said that one day he wanted to be a part of it... oh no.....

..... D... Did one of the comments say that it had been years? That they had been waiting for a few years for the sequel?

Does - does that mean something, or is it just a throwaway audience comment? Why years? If Rantaro was in the last one, why would it have been years for this one to happen??? How old is Rantaro? How old is Tsumugi?!?!

FML I had been wondering how ‘Monokuma’ could exist without Junko existing since they’re inextricably linked. FML.

MONOKUMA CAN YOU STOP ROLLING THE CREDITS, THE MUSIC AND THE TITLE CARDS FOR A MINUTE PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU

Because I don’t enjoy having Saioinji’s terrifying eyes trained on me while she questions my intelligence, so I’ll sum up the next question - what season of this gameshow from hell are we apparently on?

I mean, considering Junko’s title... well...

..... yeah it looks better with a V.

the real answer to why they used V3 even though it’s technically not the correct way to say ‘53′ - it’s the aesthetic.

FFFF

I actually screenshot all the parody!title cards and they’re amazing. I’ll post them just once a bit later when it shows up again because this post is entirely too long, but needless to say, whoever designed them had fun. And the titles of the games, too - Birth of Despair? Dream Danganronpa? Sign me tf up! oh no does this make me part of the problem I’M SORRY SWEETCHEEKS

I can’t believe I was bitching about Junko being the mastermind for the third game when apparently audience members have had to sit through 53 Junkos

You couldn’t have changed it up??? Not even once??? Like, one led by Mukuro as a prologue idea or??? quietly denies the existence of the anime

Oh, speaking of which, I do like the excuse they came up with as to why the drv3 creators didn’t create new characters from the supposed other games why Tsumugi didn’t cosplay anyone outside the first two games - it’s for the class’s benefit, since they only knew those two casts, and y’know. She cares. about shock value

DON’T YOU PASS THE BUCK, GIRL

Ah, so that ‘staff’ you mentioned earlier...

why is this so funny to me

T-Tsumugi, do you have a tumultuous relationship with your managers or something

why are you airing out your dirty laundry on live television

is it all the incest plotlines

I feel like at this point it’s less ‘Tsumugi is trying to rub into the students how completely and absolutely they are boned’ and more ‘okay, it’s time to give a shout-out to everyone who put this production together! Perfect time to slap on that logo, guys!‘

oh my god that was supposed to be a trailer in-meta too alsd;kfj i’m losing it

AND AGAIN, THOSE TITLE CARDS - THEY ARE AMAZING.

SHE IS SHE’S TOTALLY ADVERTISING MID-SHOW

TSUMUGI STOP BEING A CORPORATE SELL-OUT

"NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR YOUR CRAPPY SHOEHORNED ADVERTISING!!!”

oh god oh no

who’s going to tell him -

MONOKUMA DON’T YOU DARE

i’m having an existential crisis alongside sweetcheeks ngl

there are so many layers

....

we need to go deeper

So, just to clarify, there are three layers right now:

There’s us, the players. In a sense, we could be considered ‘equal but different than the tier’, but we do still operate on a plane separate from the metafiction of Tsumugi’s ‘everyone in the world’.

There’s the ‘audience’, the outside world. This is the space that’s been breached at this point. And this... this is the level where the students are from, too - aka the reason I think we and the audience should exist as separate entities.

And there’s the domain of the Killing Game, a space created to play out this story, using real people - a place separated from reality... how? If Tsumugi is talking about a set, it could easily be the real world, which means they’ve been isolated somewhere. At the same time though, when they managed to reach the end of the escape tunnel and saw the outside world, they all started to choke and suffocate. So... could this be VR still? Or no? Can these existences known as Shuichi Saihara, the Ultimate Detective, Maki Harukawa, the Ultimate Assassin, Himiko Yumeno, the Ultimate Robot, K1-b0, the Ultimate Robot, and even Tsumugi Shirogane, the Ultimate Cosplayer, leave this space in any way, shape or form... or not at all? Is them suffocating ^ like that a sign that they literally cannot exist outside of this space?

She is literally throwing the same question back in Shuichi’s face ghdfkgh

NO I’M ON SHUICHI’S SIDE I COULDN’T HELP IT I HAD TO CHOOSE REAL PEOPLE

no!!! no!!!! NO!!!!

no seriously I still chose real people because I am stubborn

sweetcheeks et al. do not deserve any of this

Of course they brought out despair!Mikan for this. Of course.

I have to say, I do like these little character touches - the decisions that have been made as to which ‘cosplay’ says what. I mean, it’s supposed to also act as a way to throw our known and loved favourites in our face too, but having Celes comment on how boring ‘peace’ is? Having Ibuki smashing through the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience, Gundham remarking on their abnormal existence and Leon commenting on how cool the ‘aesthetic’ of the title card is? It’s such a nice touch. also horrifying. butalsonice

Oh we really are addressing the prologue now??? And - I’m assuming Tsumugi is referring to Hajime when she says ‘me’, but is there a chance she isn’t?

Just as I initially suspected, though - they really were normal when they got in. So how did they decide who got what personality/talent, or was that random? I mean, that might be the case - it was potentially hinted by the motive video switch of Chapter 2..

............. Huh.

But..... in what sense? Like the 16 talents were stored in those lights and they were ‘picked up’ by the most suited participant? How could you make sure there were no doubles? Or - and this is possible because of the vague language - did the talents build on what the student knew already? In which case, how would they know what the talents would end up being and plan the labs around them?

No, it would... have to be... the first one. Talents had its own selection in the flashback creating machine, though without verifying what the subcategories are it’s hard to confirm or deny anything... but I also can’t shake what Maki said at the beginning of the game? How it felt like their talents were given at random?

So... so they’re not only back where they started - completely isolated with everyone they’ve ever known and the world they knew completely out of reach (in this sense, dead/not actually existing are functionally the same), but they get a helping of a totally warranted existential crisis on top of that.

And... their bodies are real, so everyone else really is dead. No happy sdr2 ending. Well, unless I mental-gymnastics that to read ‘they have physical bodies to return to, but as manufactured personas it’s pointless.’

Me too, Sweetcheeks.

We can’t go 5 minutes without a WHAM line.

B-But they were kidnapped weren’t they -?!

fujisaki does not deserve this slander

Return of the hat!!!

..... is it bad that I miss his hat. I. I really liked his hat. I know that it was representative of the way he held back and used it to hide himself, but - but I liked his original portrait. And I liked the way it was incorporated into his sprites and all the movements he makes with it and without it, like it‘s a phantom limb. okayI’llstop

Why... are we not getting a name here? Was Shuichi Saihara a made-up name too?

oh -

oh no

D: A... Anything...

H-He’s.... a complete fanboy too.................... holy shit. cute but terrifying he looks like much more of a schoolboy super!fan than real Shuichi

S-So wait, it’s not even autosuggestion then - he asked for it? How - how does this work with the flashback lights? It can be targeted like that??? god I’m going to have so many questions after this is all over

I think this may be the death knell for his psyche oTL I certainly wouldn’t be able to take this if I was in his position.

LOOK I KNOW I GET EXCITED ABOUT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT TOO

but this is a bit much c-can you please keep that drool in -

asdfkjlsdf w h a t

was

was this omitted or something

I - I swear they were kidnapped they seemed a lot more freaked out?!

Even Rantaro, who seemed to know more than he let on at the time - ?!

I... I think I really need to go back and replay the prologue.

ME NEITHER K1-B0 I FEEL LIKE I’M BEING GASLIT

d-did

did you use it on me too

That... that I can believe. No matter who they were before - if they were consenting or not - it might not even matter, if they can’t return to how they were. In a sense, the Gopher Project story was practically preparing them for it - the idea that everything they knew and loved were gone, and would never come back. Oh... oh that’s bad....

TSUMUGI IS ACTUALLY TERRIFYING

SHUT UP NAEGI

wait why is seeing him say that worse than seeing Junko say her normal despair stuff

it’s the insincerity, probably...

YOU NERFED KAITO?!?!?!

YOU NERFED KAITO!!!!!!!

okay I take back what I said Maki you have my enthusiastic blessing to recklessly murder as necessary

RIP Tsumugi and all of her new depth

“I’m also the one that kept sneaking all of the death flags into his room while you were out training every night!”

Y O O O

YOU NERFED HER CHARACTER TOO?!?!?! YOU GOTTA LET THAT HAPPEN ORGANICALLY!!!

LMAO

Souda will never show this much awareness in his actual every day fictional life and that makes this 100% funnier

Everything has a writing credit.... every single thing? Every bit of development?

Even Kokichi’s coup and Kaito’s cooperation? And Kokichi manipulating Gonta? You just seemed so - so angry about that after the trial. Surely those, if nothing else...

At this point they’re just kicking a sad, beaten-down puppy. What more could you possibly do at this point - ?!

oH GOD I DON’T WANT TO SEE THIS

WHAT THE HELL WHO EVEN SAYS SOMETHING LIKE THAT

nNOOO

NO LET ME REMEMBER HIM THE WAY HE WAS

DON’T YOU CROSS THIS BRIGHT RED LINE SHIROGANE

NO THIS IS ILLEGAL I’M CALLING THE POLICE HE LOOKS ABSOLUTELY MAD -

GHGHGGHGHGHGH

GHGHghghghghhh

ghghgh

sdkflj

n o o o o oooo o o o o o o o

gggkghk

I-It’s not a lie! Even if it was manufactured, even if it was coded into them - their feelings were real to them! It might be by design, but - oh this sounds so hollow. It’s one thing to talk about ‘fate’ and ‘this was the work of a higher power’, but having it brought down on you in such a trivial way must be absolutely soul-crushing.

this is the saddest iteration of hangover!Shuichi that I have laid my eyes on in the entire game

nihilism.

tbh I never found Izuru that intimidating as a final villain in the last game - but here? Terrifying. Maybe it’s in contrast to Junko here, who has the overbearing destructive personality of a tornado, but the quiet emptiness and lack of a higher purpose, of absolute futility that he stands for here - that scares me a lot. Maybe it’s just because it seems to bring the concept of DR’s despair to a place that I can personally understand?

I keep saying ‘this is terrifying!’ but I mean, to be fair... it... kind of is. as always, fantastic use of text DRV3!

also can someone please shut up the peanut gallery for five minutes

well damn Monokuma that one felt aimed right at me

It reminds me of what Komaeda would say about his own motivation: it was watching everyone struggle with adversity, or the ‘despair of the killing game’, with the end goal of them ‘reaching hope’ - of seeing them overcome and grow stronger for it, that drove him forward. From the outside that makes sense; seeing other people overcome struggles, even ones so terrible, give us the mental strength to overcome our own problems. But for someone on the inside looking out... how perverse would that feel, to think that your suffering is basically being used as inspiration!p0rn? Knowing that there were voyeurs getting a kick out of your struggle?

What happens to game pieces after the game board is closed and put away?

Do they go into stasis? Do they just... exist, outside of time? Frozen forever, until they’re taken out to be ‘played with’ again; left to rot?

If they ‘win’.... they have no future. There’s nothing for them to move forward to reach. A piece learning that they’re a piece, and knowing their dreams after their trials will always stay just out of reach... how can anyone move foward like that?