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flyingupward · 3 years

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critical role - vox machina chapter 4 - attack of the conclave

all sentences taken from episodes 39-56 of the first campaign of critical role. feel free to change pronouns, phrasing etc. to fit your needs!

“All this time, you’ve been trying to kick my teeth in and your true enemy was right over there.”

“That’s good. Moving is not my forte.”

“We’re in a hentai. Make it go away.”

“Not all short people look alike.”

“God, I wish I was not made of farts.”

“We live in a cold, cold world. No one deserves anything.”

“You chose so poorly. It is truly impressive how poorly you chose.”

“Stay away from all men. Forever.”

“I’m glad I came in handy for that field trip.”

“I hate your friends!”

“Little do they know I shop for everything at Home Goods so joke’s on them.”

“It’s just radioactive material in the basement. It’s fine.”

“Somehow the coffee has not been poured on your head. That’s the greatest magic trick I’ve seen all morning.”

“Everything else was dragons. Why wouldn’t it be dragons?”

“Sorry, I was so caught up in the fact that I’m literally going up against death incarnate.”

“You’re a magnificent handsome bastard. Don’t die.”

“Do not go far from me.”

“He’s just a sociopath, that’s all.”

“There are dragons outside and we’re playing rugby with a fucking skull!”

“A simple mind is looking for a simple solution to a complex problem.”

“I’m a firm believer that there’s always a way to victory if we’re smart about it and we’re quick about it.”

“We either stand now or we might as well be dead.”

“We try, we mostly fail, but occasionally we get it right.”

“It was such a bad deal I said no. Can you imagine how bad of a deal it must have been?”

“No offense darling, but you look like shit.”

“If we’re going to be roaming about the streets, I’d like you to not fall open like a can of baked beans if you don’t mind.”

“Let’s not get overexcited about the sudden realization that some of us can be a bit iffy.”

“Thank you for that smattering of applause.”

“I have one of those terrible ideas I get on occasion.”

“This is politics. You’re not supposed to like them.”

“You can talk my fucking ear off in a moment. Shut up for a second.”

“If the parasite hasn’t a host to feed on, the parasite dies.”

“I never forget that when I rule, I rule these people as well.”

“One day, you’re going to stop being afraid of me and I hope that day comes soon.”

“There’s no swinging by, that’s a caper.”

“It will be built back better than before. That’s what we do.”

“We have a lot of Pop Tarts, but not very many gold pieces.”

“This is where I live. What are you doing here?”

“I’m cold and I still haven’t been paid.”

“We’re not trying to score points. We are trying to do right.”

“This is fucking happy fun bunch over here. They bring death with them everywhere they go.”

“And to think I might have briefly missed you.”

“You have to find the no name guy who’s going to help you find the stuff that’s hidden that nobody knows where it is or what it is.”

“What do you want to do? Do you want to stay here while the world burns?”

“World’s always ending, baby.”

“It would be wondrous, after we complete this transaction, that we never meet again.”

“Oh my God, I just buy healing to save my life, what a waste.”

“I’m going to stand over here and fail to stay in character, okay?”

“Let’s all have a toast to the inevitability of the universe.”

“My God, I love other people’s problems.”

“Are we sober yet?”

“I think her foolish impulses are exactly what we’re looking for.”

“Better to die a fool for something than live in regret for doing nothing.”

“I think we want her to do her stupidest.”

“You’re… brooding.”

“I tend to glaze over when he’s talking.”

“Lead the way, shitkicker.”

“A lot of your friends are very weird.”

“I would just like to point out that I’m mostly sober.”

“That’s okay because remember, I’m me.”

“I’d like to stand up, please.”

“I’m scared to death which is why the math is so bad.”

“I’ve met few as unremarkable as you in my travels.”

“Well then, we’re in trouble. I have an attitude about everything.”

“Yeah, there’s like 37 things we have to do before tomorrow so… ”

“She’s not really gonna care about court so much as ripping the bones from your back.”

“I thought you were gonna tell me a dirty joke or something. When you say, ‘Come here,’ that’s usually what that means.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s going to be daylight if we’re underground.”

“I’m really hoping that it’s the worst decision we make because then everything’s uphill.”

“I like who we are together and I think that that’s important.”

“Dying in slow motion over here.”

“Oh good, more darkness.”

“Oh my God, you’re going into a special section of your book. That’s never good.”

“I’m very aware that my greed killed me.”

“Oh, I must have missed it because I was dead. That’s right.”

“Do you have feelings and did that hurt them?”

“I’m pretty tired after dying.”

“I think I love you too. I’m just terrified to allow myself to.”

“We are a city of seasonal affective disorder.”

“So I heard a rumor that you sort of saved my life in a really creepy sort of way.”

“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you my Pokemon.”

“Your secret is safe with my indifference.”

“I always fucking hear you in my mind. It’s very quiet in there these days.”

“If it becomes a problem, just raise your hand and scream.”

“Our lives are so bizarre now.”

“Why is my brain tingling? Is someone noodling around up there?”

“You know what? It’s just fire. I will be on fire.”

“Did someone lose an orb?”

“Are we really about to pretend to do CrossFit?”

“Not enough spit takes in the world for this moment in time.”

“Beyond it being an engineering issue, it might be a greed issue first.”

"She's an adult. Deep levels of arrested development, but an adult nonetheless."

“Retroactively, you’ve never been seen in your entire lives.”

“You take everything good away from all of us.”

“It’s not one problem, it’s a very large problem and a massive problem.”

“Those that give a fuck, speak up.”

“We’ve lived half our life in the shadows. You’ve made them your home.”

“I love my reckless brother as much as he hurts my heart.”

“Duck hunt’s a bitch.”

“This is so dumb. Why am I doing this?”

“Congratulations, you’re creepy as fuck.”

“Give me this you fucking hoarder. What’s the matter with you?”

“I will smite you.”

“I was born to shove things in holes.”

“Knowledge is power, for reals!”

“Are we time bandits now? Is that what’s happening?”

“I hate time travel. I hate time travel so much.”

“No worries. I didn’t need to live anyway.”

“Perhaps it’s time to be a better badass.”

“It’s been a traumatic five minutes.”

“Like any good plan, everything will go wrong.”

“Oh well, I’m fucked then.”

“Oh, tiny dancer, you are fucked.”

“He died as he lived: Deeply unimpressed.”

“Don’t you dare die happy.”

“I like that we managed to make solving problems with violence into an ABC afternoon special.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say, ‘At dawn, we plan.’”

“I genuinely don’t understand the place you come from.”

“That is the weirdest coping mechanism I’ve ever heard of.”

“Maybe we should just sleep together and see what happens.”

“Thank you for telling me the truth after you sort of lied to me.”

“Yeah keep twitching, twitchy.”

“We totally planned at dawn!”

“Everything is terrible. Our lives are terrible. They are way worse than they were six months ago.”

“You are a fucking madman, but I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m fucked. I understand I’m fucked. It’s fine.”

“This was all part of the plan, the hastily smushed together plan.”

“He’s a liar and a bringer of death and he’s smiling at you while he does it.”

“Bravery means nothing. Survival and victory mean everything.”

“Oh shut up, you flying suitcase.”

“You don’t need inspiration, you’re fine!”

“If I move, he’ll kill me. So I won’t.”

“Cursed Lizard! We’re going to give all your gold to the poor!”

“Don’t be so glum you old fool! This is a day of glory!”

“We will all die. It just depends on cost.”

“Oh, wow. You just said a lot of things in a very short amount of time.”

“You are the worst of us.”

“If there’s a dare involved, that’s completely different.”

“I don’t like wanting things.”

“Is it the people or is it the fact that you have finally realized how pointless it all is?”

“I feel like I’ve been lied to my entire goddam life and it’s all crashing down upon me right now.”

“The thing is you’re not wrong and you’re not crazy, but it’s not hopeless either.”

“Even surrounded by friends, I often feel so alone.”

“Thank you for being a friend even though we just met.”

“The terrible woman may have a point.”

“Woo! Good leadership!”

“The awkward woman makes a fine point.”

“It is not about idolizing ourselves, it is about a very long story which we are a very small part of.”

“I’m doing something very stupid now with my friends. We’re going to try to save the world.”

“I admire everyone in our band of misfit toys, but you most of all.”

“You are all kinds of fucked up all the time and that’s why we love you.”

“We’re all all kinds of fucked up and that’s why we all are together.”

“That’s all we can be is ish.”

#MEME | incoming #long post #i know i still have some other memes to answer but i finished this one so #send me these and i'll answer them all tonight/tomorrow

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kookie-doughs · 4 years

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Y/N L/N AND THE HALFBLOODS

Percy Jackson X Reader -Y/N L/N met Percy Jackson and everything was now ruined.

CHAPTER 5: COMING TO CAMP

I woke up feeling sore all over, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. A short-cropped blonde haired guy hovered over me, looking down at me. When he saw my eyes open, he asked, "How are you feeling?" I managed to croak, "What?" "Are you feeling better?" "I guess," I mumbled, "I don't... where's Percy?" Somebody knocked on the door, and the guy slowly set the pudding down. "I'll see you when you're better." He smiled. The next time I woke up, the guy was gone.

When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt. On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry. My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it. "You're awake," a voice said. A blonde girl was leaning against the porch railing, looking tired and done. She was wearing blue jeans, Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMPHALF-BLOOD. "I should call the others," she said. "Where's Percy?" "He's talking with Mr. D." "Is he well?" "You've been through worse," She said with her eyebrows knitted(?). "And the first thing you ask is your friend?" "Percy, should—" "I'll tell the others." She looked at me one last time and left. I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight. Without Percy's presence I was reminded of everything I lost. Everyone I care about. "Hey," A voice behind me called. "Annabeth passed by and told me you're awake. Feeling better?" "Oh, hey." I smiled weakly. "Feelin real peachy." "Luke, Luke Castellan." "Y/N L/N..." We stayed quiet for a minute. "I'm sorry for what happened. I don't exactly know what went on but..." Looking at him, I gave him a sad smile, "Thanks... I guess. Even I'm not sure what went on honestly... I don't know what's going on." "Well, I'm not exactly much of an explainer so, we just gotta wait for Chiron." "I... remember everything. From the moment the sea pulled me, to loosing my parents and dog, to bringing us here... I just... don't understand..." I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming. "Don't strain yourself," Luke said. "Here." He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips. I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was (Favorite Food or F/F). Liquid F/F. And not just any F/F—my mom and dad's special F/F. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom and dad had just pet my head, fed me F/F the way they used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay. Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted. "Was it good?" Luke asked. I nodded. "Are you feeling better now? "Yeah," I said. "Thanks." "That's good," he said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff." "What do you mean?" He took the empty glass from me, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Y/N!" I turned to the voice and saw Grover. "Hey, Luke." "I'll take it they want her?" Grover nodded. "I'll see you later." Luke smiled and ruffled my hair, then left me with Grover. Grover watched Luke leave then turned to me, "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting." The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse. My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. I asked him where Percy was and he said he was already there. As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath. We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—except that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Grover's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings. "Y/N!!" I was engulfed and tackled which almost made me fall. Percy looked at me with sad eyes, holding unto the Minotaur horn. He looked tired and sick. "Are you okay Percy?" He nodded and rested his head on my shoulder. Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond-haired girl that I woke up to was leaning on the porch rail next to them. The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels— what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who'd turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt. "Hate to break your touching reunion but we were talking." The man said. "That's Mr. D," Grover murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The girl, that's Annabeth Chase. She's just a camper, but she's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron..." He pointed at the guy whose back was to me. First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard. "Mr. Brunner!" I cried. The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. "Ah, good, Y/N," he said. "You're awake. Percy couldn't focus since he was worried of you. He woke up an hour before you. Care for a game of pinochle?" He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you." "Uh, thanks." I turned to Percy who looked at me confusedly as well. "Annabeth?" Mr. Brunner called to the blond girl. She came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young lady and Luke nursed you back to health, Y/N. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you go check on Percy and Y/N's bunk? We'll be putting him in cabin eleven for now." Annabeth said, "Sure, Chiron." She was probably my age, maybe same height, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight. She glanced at the minotaur horn in Percy's hands, then back at him. I felt a bit iffy and got closer to Percy. She turned to me and said, "You should thank Luke." Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blond hair flying behind her. "So," Percy said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?". "Not Mr. Brunner," the ex—Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron." "Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D ... does that stand for something?" Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young woman, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason." "Oh. Right. Sorry." "I must say, Percy, Y/N," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you both alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time. And I am quite surprise to recruit two." "House call?" "Recruit two?" "My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to ... ah, take a leave of absence. And when the mist hadn't worked on Y/N, Grover and I thought she saw through the mist." "Mist?" "It's... something." "You came to Yancy just to teach me?" Percy asked. Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first. We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test. As for Y/N..." He looked at me skeptically then to Mr. D. "You're... still scentless." "Grover," Mr. D said impatiently, "are you playing or not?" "Yes, sir!" Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt. "You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously. "I'm afraid not," I said. "I'm afraid not, sir," he said. "Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less. "Well," he told me, "it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men to know the rules." "I'm sure the girl can learn," Chiron said. "The other kid was bad, I doubt this one can do better." "Please," Percy said pulling me closer to him, "what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brun—Chiron—why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?" Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question." The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in his pile. Chiron smiled at us sympathetically. "Percy," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?' "She said... She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her." "And you?" He turned to me. "Nothing like this ever happened... Everything was normal." "Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young lady, are you bidding or not?" "What?" I asked. He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did. "I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient." "Orientation film?" Percy asked. "No," Chiron decided. "Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr. You know"—he pointed to the horn in the shoe box—"that you and Y/N have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods—the forces you call the Greek gods—are very much alive." I stared at the others around the table. I waited for somebody to yell, Not! But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points. "Mr. D," Grover asked timidly, "if you're not going to eat it, could I have your Diet Coke can?" "Eh? Oh, all right." Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum can and chewed it mournfully. "Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as God." "Well, now," Chiron said. "God—capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical." "Metaphysical? But you were just talking about—" "Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter." "Smaller?" "Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class." "Zeus," Percy said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them." And there it was again—distant thunder on a cloudless day. "Young man," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you." "But they're stories," Percy said. "They're—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science." "Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Perseus Jackson"—I felt Percy flinched when he was called—"what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals—they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me." I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if... he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and keeping his mouth shut. "Percy," Chiron said, "you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?" "You mean, whether people believed in you or not," Percy said. "Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson, that someday people would call you and Y/N a myth, just created to explain how children can get over losing their parents?" My heart pounded. He was trying to make us angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. Gripping on Percy I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods." "Oh, you'd better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you." Grover said, "P-please, sir. She's just lost her family. She's in shock." "A lucky thing, too," Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bad enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with kids who don't even believe.'" He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine. My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up. "Mr. D," he warned, "your restrictions." Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise. "Dear me." He looked at the sky and yelled, "Old habits! Sorry!" More thunder. Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game. Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits." "A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space. "Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time—well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away—the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha.' Absolutely unfair." Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid. "And ..." Percy stammered, "your father is ..." "Di immortales, Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this boy the basics. My father is Zeus, of course." I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr. D were his master. "You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine." Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!'?" "Y-yes, Mr. D." "Then, well, duh! Y/N L/N. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?" "You're a god." "Yes, child." "A god. You." He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a strait-jacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life. "Would you like to test me, child?" he said quietly. "No. No, sir." The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win." "Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The game goes to me." I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too. "I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment." Grover's face beaded with sweat. "Y-yes, sir." Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson, Y/N L/N. And mind your manners." He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably. "Will Grover be okay?" Percy asked Chiron. Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus." "Mount Olympus," Percy said. "You're telling me there really is a palace there?" "Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do." "You mean the Greek gods are here? Like... in America?" "Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West." "The what?" "Come now, Percy. What you call 'Western civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods." "And then they died." "Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in RockefellerCenter, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here." It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in Chiron's we, as if I were part of some club. "Who are you, Chiron? Who... who am I? I-Is Y/N?" Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down. "Who are you?" he mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. I believe Y/N had met one of them, Luke Castellan. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s'mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate." And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.. I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk. "What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson, Y/N L/N. Let's meet the other campers." I took Percy's hand, anxious of what is coming.

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Taglist?

@gayer-than-the-gayest-gay @the-natureofme @booknerd-3000

#Percy Jackson #Percy Jackson X Reader #Percy Jackson X Y/N #Y/N L/N #Y/N L/N and the halfbloods #luke castellan #Luke castellan x reader #X Reader #Book 1 #pjo #Chapter 5 #Lightning thief

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cross-d-a · 3 years

Note

if you're doing those characters then please give me more amazing takes on princess mute 🥺💕

OMG IM SO LATE ANSWERING THIS BUT HERE I FINALLY AM

Also omgg thank you SOSOSO much for asking me about Princess Mute?? THE LOVE OF MY LIFE??? You know me so well, vish!! I love and adore you so much!! Thank you for giving me the chance to blabber on about the woman I love!! ⁽⁽٩(๑˃̶͈̀ ᗨ ˂̶͈́)۶⁾⁾

ALSO! I’m gonna do my best to like- not spoil all my plans for whispers, haha

The rest is under the cut bc I just have a lot of FEELINGS~ about our resident zombie girl

❤⃛ヾ(๑❛ ▿ ◠๑ )

How I feel about this character

OH BOY OK I JUST??? LOVE HER??? A LOT???? I wasn’t expecting to get quite so immediately and intensely attached to her?? But from the second I heard about her in the legend I was just gone. Completely done for. I’m generally a sucker for mythology, and there’s just SO MUCH that’s fascinating about the tale behind the Princess Mute and the South Sea King?

Even though Princess Mute is so central to the myth, the South Sea King is deemed as the most important? I mean- duh it is his tomb, but Princess Mute is the catalyst? None of this would have happened without her? She’s main character material and yet she isn’t the main character of her own story?? She has practically no agency? It’s so? Fucking? Fascinating?? And there is so fucking much left unanswered? The myth says she turns into a goddamn monster?? Is this- figuratively? Or literally? Is she a monster for breaking gender norms and committing the ultimate taboo by killing the Emperor??? Like- holy FUCK? Like- LOOK at this pic from Ershu’s Expensive Powerpoint:

and a close-up for good measure:

(note the HORNS/HELMET?? the LIGHTNING STRIKE!!! 👀👀👀 how she’s dressed as a SOLDIER?? that SPEAR??? also she’s depicted as much bigger than the emperor!! which, of course, means she’s more important!!!!)

and, HELLO!! She’s called the PRINCESS MUTE. She is only known/named in association to someone else. Her name has been erased from history. It isn’t important to anyone. Which is so fucking ironic. She’s Princess Mute. Her voice has been stripped from her, just like her agency. This tale is the Mute Emperor’s and not her own. Her suffering means nothing to anyone. Her life means nothing other than for the Emperor to desire and the South Sea King to mourn over (and WOW!! ISN’T THIS JUST!! SO perfectly encapsulating Nanpai Sanshu’s female characters and their relevance to the story/male characters)

(so what is her goddamn name???? I mean, I know what I’ve named her, but sorry dudes. Again. I don’t wanna spoil too much :) )

also, WHY is the South Sea King covering her eyes when she’s sent off to sea in the origami boat?

What actually happens to her after this? The body we see of the South Sea King has long white hair so I assume he died pretty old? So why does she look so goddamn young?

And- the million dollar question here (WHICH I HAVE A LOT OF HEADCANONS FOR BUT I DON’T WANNA SPOIL WHISPERS): What happened to her after she killed the Emperor????

ALSO!! WHY IS SHE HOLDING A DINGLAN RULER WHEN SANSHU FINDS HER IN THAT FIRST EXPEDITION?? (internet says it’s a “special ruler used for making shrines, carving wood statues and making tablets of gods. Later used in measurement of architectural scale; measuring instrument for the netherworld, wishes best for tomb owner) did she design her own father’s tomb?? is there more to her becoming a leather figurine than filial loyalty/sacrifice??

Why does she have a tattoo?? I go a bit into this in my fic, but from my understanding it was unusual for people (women especially!) to have tattoos during this time! (this is just from my research! if I am wrong please correct me!)

For anyone who hasn’t read whispers, there were a a few tribes (minorities!) during this time who tattooed themselves (and to this day, they continue this tradition :) ). The Li were often attacked by invaders who assaulted the women and sold them as slaves. The women ended up tattooing their faces and bodies to make them less appealing, and it ended up becoming a tradition. When a girl came of age she’d get tattooed. Then we’ve got the Dai, who (from what I understand!) got tattoos of animals with characteristics they wished to embody, such as to show their virility and strength! So they’d tattoo tigers and dragons, etc.

So why does Princess Mute have one? Who gave it to her? WHAT ACTUALLY IS IT!!!!!! (eternal frustration that we never see a clear shot of the whole thing!!) It kinda looks like a heavily stylized fish? With some waves. But I am unsure! But it would make sense, considering the ongoing theme of snakes and fish throughout dmbj.

Also, her scars seem very strange. Like- if someone skinned her (YIKES!) then- her scars don’t really seem like they’re a result of skinning (double yikes!!). You’d think that for a woman who was the daughter of the King, they’d take more care to preserve her face?? So why does it seem like someone has done their utter best to ruin it? Did the Emperor do it himself? Did her father? Or did someone else do it?? Did she do it herself????

Also, I just wanna cut the bullshit with the creepy hand clam thing. A hand clam isn’t gonna wrap their fingers around Wu Xie’s hand to stop him from blowing himself up. Like. I get that it’s the censorship. I get it. But- you can’t tell me it wasn’t actually the Princess Mute who saved him. I just?? This moment is so powerful? It literally knocked the breath from my chest.

Princess Mute’s story is just so fascinating and tragic and I am just a mess over how she isn’t in control of her own story? She never is. Except for when she kills the Emperor. (AND when she saves Wu Xie) And I think that’s fucking telling.

Of course, it felt like they had more of a storyline planned for her which never happened, but I’ll get more into that later.

Basically, I just have SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!

It’s like- I dunno. Seeing a gorgeous woman flip an obnoxious man over her shoulder and slam him to the ground without breaking a sweat and watching her walk away with stars in your eyes. You barely know anything about her but you’re already half in love and you just want to know more.

I’m super Gay for her, if you couldn’t already tell.

Honestly, she just perfectly represents all the female characters and their treatment in dmbj with all the extra PIZAZZ of the mysterious supernatural/mythological elements. She just makes me go feral and I adore her with my entire heart.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

NUMBER ONE I SHIP HER WITH MY CUTE AND PERFECT GF XIAO BAI!!!!!!!!

They are my two favourite (okay and my wife Su Nan!) female characters in dmbj. I think their stories parallel each other pretty beautifully? They’re both women in a powerful position, though with limited agency. They both defy gender norms and accomplish things (I’m counting killing the Emperor as Accomplishing Something) in a very male-dominated world. And- okay. I know the Princess Mute is technically dead. But she also?? is someone still doing stuff?? and pushing along the storyline?? as a zombie?? So I’m just gonna say that both of them aren’t truly killed off for the Man Pain like all the other female dmbj characters (except for Xiu Xiu, and I guess Chuchu but ChuChu’s situation is kinda....Iffy. At best.)

Also both of them are linked pretty heavily with Wu Xie? They both have an interesting relationship with him. And Princess Mute leads Wu Xie to Xiao Bai!!!

And okay this is spoiling a bit of whispers, BUT!!! Warehouse 11 was built atop the South Sea King’s temple. Isn’t that fucking important??? I stand by my headcanon that Xiao Bai is a Warehouse kid (descended from the Founders) and so she grew up there. And like- ignoring censorship bc I can AND because Reboot leaves a lot of supernatural stuff up in the air anyway- wouldn’t growing up atop an insanely powerful temple do something to you? Wouldn’t it affect you in some way?? There’s just!!! SO much potential between Princess Mute and Xiao Bai!! Plus!! I think it’d be great for Xiao Bai to form a relationship with another woman. She needs some female solidarity in her life.

And- well. I just ship Princess Mute with all the dmbj women, really. Princess Mute has two hands, why can she use them both?? I’ve got a couple Princess Mute modern au’s going and in one of them she just- sweeps A’Ning and Su Nan off their feet :)

I really can’t ship Princess Mute with any male characters, I think. There’s just- so much underlying trauma surrounding her agency and how she’s been used by the men in her life. Also, I like wlw & mlm solidarity. Let Princess Mute and Wu Xie wallow over their Stupid Crushes. Or Princess Mute & Xiao Ge. I’m not picky.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Purely bc of my own au, I am very much invested in Princess Mute & Li Cu (& spirit snake). As I mentioned before, there’s a running theme of loss of agency in their own lives and suffering the consequences of others’ actions. Plus, there’s a lot of supernatural happenings surrounding the both of them. Why wouldn’t they find a connection?

And, obviously, I adore Princess Mute & Wu Xie. Princess Mute saved Wu Xie and then Wu Xie was promptly obsessed (can’t say I blame him). They had such an interesting relationship in Reboot that was just- so fucking tragically dropped.

My unpopular opinion about this character

SHE SHOULD BE MORE POPULAR!!!!!!!!!! She is so goddamn fascinating and gorgeous and I just!! Want!! Everyone to adore her as much as I do!!!!!!!! At least I feel a bit accomplished for swinging some readers over to her side in whispers!! That’s something!!!

I’ve got like- a million au ideas with her. I’m going to be the creator of the content I wish to read!!!!!

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

I WISH SHE COULD HAVE GOTTEN A SATISFACTORILY COMPLETED STORYLINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She just gets completely dropped after she leads Wu Xie to Warehouse 11. So once more, she is a plot device and not. And actual. Person. Her importance is tied irrevocably to the male leads. Her agency is not her own. Wu Xie cares so much about her, and okay, he’s trying to figure out a mystery and we all know how he gets when he’s trying to puzzle out a mystery-- but you can’t tell me he just- stops caring after he encounters Warehouse 11??? What happens to her after that?? Does she rot away in a box in Wushanju?? Does Ershu take her back?? I’m just?? WHAT????

I want to know her side of the story and not what everyone else has said. I want her to actually properly communicate with Wu Xie. I want her saving the day again and I want her being fucking badass and I want her and Xiao Ge being soft together and I want her and Xiao Bai to bond fall in love and I want everyone to just- fall in love with her? And care about her? And I want to to find herself caring about these fucking idiots too???? Can you imagine her and Liu Sang bonding over shitty fathers and lack of agency and Trauma?? Can you imagine Princess Mute getting her life back and the freckles returning to her slowly darkening skin and her being silly with Hei-ye bc he keeps shoving increasingly ridiculous sunglasses at her. And can you imagine her trying on jeans for the first time and picking out a cute bomber jacket and shoving a baseball cap on her head and dipping her feet back in the sea and befriending shibie bc she’s just?? that?? cool?? while Iron Triangle is off on the side fretting like she isn’t befriending some very dangerous creatures but it’s okay bc she’s a dangerous creature too and she understands fear and desire and hunger.

I want her returning to Thunder City. I want her getting closure. I want her story to get closure. Period.

And I know it didn’t happen bc censorship and Nanpai Sanshu and just- a host of Other Things. But I want it, and she deserves it.

AAAHH VISH!!!! Thank you so much for letting me yell about Princess Mute!! Sorry I couldn’t go more in depth with headcanons but!! Like I said, I don’t want to completely spoil you for whispers, so I’ll keep those close to my chest for now

٩(*ゝڡゝ๑)۶♥

#dmbj #the lost tomb reboot #princess mute #dmbj meta #sorta??#tltr #Wu xie #Xiao bai #cross talks #reunion: the sound of the providence #bai haotian #ask game

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ramble-writes · 4 years

Text

Shitty Holidays

The idea for this is based from art @ywwywwy did of Frank at a table sitting on one end as his foster family is at the other. As for how Frank is, it’s this idea of Frank as a wolf because hey, why not? lol. So here it be!

There was light flakes of snow drifting within the wind outside. There was the squeals of two kids filled the house along with the gentle voices of a mother and a father trying to get their children to calm down. But... There’s a third, sitting quietly at the other end of the table as yellow eyes glance from the food on his plate to the chatty family on the other side of the table.

Frank Morrison, age 16, was sitting there as the family chatted away. Keen ears picked up a chuff of a dog under the table. Honestly, the dog being a German Shepard, was the only good thing out of this new foster family. Though at first he and the dog didn’t get along, it was a day alone he got to have the house to himself and, like usual, the dog would growl and bark at him every time he took one step outside. That ended quick when he had shifted and he established dominance.

That aside, the family themselves didn’t really pay attention to him. For sure when they agreed to have him that they were twitchy on the idea of his skull jester tattoo with flames and baseball bats. He found it cool. The previous couple was ok with him having one since they had tattoos like sleeves, on the legs, small ones, and various others. The only problem in the end with that family was the constant arguing and they fact that the two were having a divorce. That was two months ago and here he is with this family that were just iffy with him in general.

“Frank, are you going to eat?”

The voice made him jump a bit. He focused his gaze to the father looking at him as the mother does her best to calm down the two maggots. The brother kept trying to steal his sister’s food and she would throw her balled up napkin at him. Yellow eyes blinked as he got his mind back to the present.

“If you don’t eat up, you can go to your room.”

His “room” being what is the little girl’s room with a bed that at least he is left with sleeping propped up or with his feet hanging off the edge. Frank glances down to the food sitting there that he can smell is loosing its heat and how the strong scent is fading. He stifled the whimper that wanted to rise up. There’s no denying that he’s hungry, that the wolf deep down was starving. He just.. There’s too much moving around homes that he lost appetite. It doesn’t help that the mother took her time to make this dinner for Thanksgiving (second Monday of October), and he’s sitting here having not even touched it.

“Louis, leave him be. We only have him for a month or so till they can find better housing for him. Or if his parents-”

“They don’t want shit to do with me..” He couldn’t contain the slight growl to his voice. He hates it how every family he’s been with when they talk about the time they have with him that they mention “if his parents want him back.” Bullshit, he would say all the time. They left him for a reason. Over a stupid fuckin’ reason. So what if he’s a late shifter? They didn’t even bother with him further! Not his fault that also their marriage fell apart.

“Oi! Watch your language *garçon,” Louis said firmly. Frank didn’t know French, nor did he care. If it was an insult, fuck this guy. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. He’s sick and tired of the constant moving, families one moment saying they’ll take him in and then the next moment doing shit that hurts that either he calls up the foster home or the family does, blaming him for shit he didn’t do.

Frank stands up, slamming down the fork and knife in his hands down onto the table with a clatter. His breathing picked up, his jaw felt strained with feeling his teeth get bigger along with his body. It wants to expand, to let the wolf raging inside out to maul the stupid Frenchy.

“Yeah? Well you try being only 5 years old when your parents not only want you, but procced to go through a divorce as well that they throw you into foster care because of you! You try bouncing around home after fucking home from abusive families, from groomers, from cultists. You try going through a family who honestly wanted you and were denied of adopting you that it fucks you up.”

This made Louis stand up enraged with his face going red. “Go to your room!”

“That ain’t even my fuckin room!”

“Boys! Please calm down! It’s Thanksgiving and we should be happy and-”

The dog barked. A loud sharp one. Cheder, as the dog is named, stands and comes out from under the table with a growl. He sensed Frank’s anger and was ready to act on it. To protect him. This pissed off the man further.

“Cheder, come here.”

“I don’t think he wants to listen.”

“*Tais-toi. Cheder. Come. Here.”

The German Shepard still didn’t move. He just walked backwards to stand next to Frank. Pack mentality. In all honesty, he and the dog did grow to have a bond with the time he’s been here ever since shifting. Boy, Frank couldn’t help the shit-eaten grin that spread across his face.

“That’s it. I’ve had it with your attitude! We’ve tried being nice to you and-”

“Nice?! Ha! You did nothing but ignore me! You didn’t do shit to stop Cheder from snapping at me the first few times he was inside the house! When it came to shopping for clothes for school you picked out shit for me! You let Maggie and Wayne pick out their outfits, but didn’t let me do shit. We won’t get on the topic of the tattoo, but oh how I fuckin hate it when you won’t even look at me when you talk to me like a fucking man.”

This made everyone go quiet. Even Cheder. Maggie looks to her father with tears pricking at the corner of her eyes.

“Papa.. I’m scared...”

Louis hushed her gently, but by this point Frank had enough. With a scoff, he turned on his heel and headed for the back door to the backyard. He needed to run, get it out of his system. He could hear Louis mutter about calling the Alberta Foster Care to get him in the morning, but again, he didn’t care. He heard the mother coming after him, calling his name as he headed out into the cold night. He knew Cheder followed, but over the fence the dog couldn’t.

Frank didn’t care that he heard the mother become frantic quick at seeing him hop the fence. Once up and over, he broke out into a run, wanting to get far from them. Wanting to get as deep as he could before shifting mid run. Dark brown fur took over what was once fair skin was along with a lighter tone underside. Two legs and arms popped and changed to being four legs and paws as big as his hands. Everything from his chest, shoulders, thighs, and head enlarged. Face extended out to a muzzle and a wet nose. Every human tooth grew and sharpened to that of a wolf as the final touches of ears and tail sprouted.

There standing in the place of where a boy was, was a Brown Timber wolf, but bigger due to him being a werewolf than a shapeshifter. Fully formed, Frank wasted no time sprinting deep into the forest till it was just him and the surrounding trees with what little snow flakes got through the thicket of the pine branches. Out here, he’s free. Far from the grasp of any human, far from the grasp of the foster system. It’s out there where the wind blew through his fur that he felt better with the cold nipping at the pads of his paws and his nose, the breeze making him blink a few times over. It’s out there where he spent the rest of the night, curled under some upturned roots of a tree.

By morning, he woke to the sound of his name being called. Multiple voices ranging from male to female. Some he even recognized as the trees made their voices echo down to where he is. He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to go back. But fate isn’t his to decide. With a sigh, Frank stood up and shook himself out and stretched before shifting back to himself. A sigh left him as he made his way towards the voices.

The person assigned to helping him find a foster family was there, the parents Louis (reluctantly) and Hanna were there along with an officer or two. Upon seeing him, Hanna just rushed at him and pulled him in for a tight hug. He didn’t reciprocate it. The adults talked as they headed back to the house. He wasn’t surprised to see all his stuff packed up.

Not a word was spoken as Frank grabbed it and headed out to the waiting running car. In an instant, Cheder came rushing out after him with loud whines and practically shoved his head into Frank’s stomach. This made him sigh as he bent down to pet the dog, lowering his head to place on Cheder’s with a hand going through thick fur. If he could, he would’ve taken Cheder with him. But he can’t. It was like the German Shepard knew his thoughts because the dog backed away despite still whining, then turned to head back into the house with head and tail low.

There was no goodbyes as he got into that car to head back to the foster home, no glances back. Nothing. The person that drove tried to ask him questions on what happened, but he didn’t answer, didn’t want to as his eyes watched houses change as they made their way back to the major town of Alberta. Frank was just tired of all of this, tired of the changes and faces he doesn’t bother to remember. Sleep sounded like the better option for now. Getting himself as comfortable as possible, he let his eyes drift shut with the cold window to his forehead, letting himself let go and doze off with not wanting to think what the next family would be like.

#frank morrison #frank dbd #legion dbd #wolf frank #ywwywwy #inspo #my writings #long post

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starcitysirens · 4 years

Text

Here’s a collective anonymous asks dump, regarding this post

anon #1: I think the fandom is also quite biphobic when it comes to Sara and her past relationships. Even the character of Ava is written pretty biphobic about Sara being with Oliver and hooking up with John that one time. I know Oliver sucked and all but Sara did care about him and Ava put her feelings about him over Sara's. Stuff like that just enforces biphobia in the fandom. anon #2: i totally feel u on the john/zari thing. i also think it's in part bc straight fans hate to see a bi man date a woman bc it doesn't give them their uwu precious gay babies and also because like... this fandom (and the main dctv fanbase at large) tend to um... hate woc like i think it's a lot of really bad + harmful things at once. anon #3: oh it's ok, i got your point and i know people have other opinions, i just wanted to voice mine as somebody who only knows him by the show, sorry if it came out the wrong way! in other note, i think a lot of people shit on ava as a girlfriend just because they don't like her (and because she became co-lead), calling her abusive and stuff and i think it is because they still want sara to end up with a man (captain cold mostly). if you say something they say "i liked her with nyssa". any thoughts?

I put these three asks together to 1) stop spamming my dash so much and 2) because they're quite similar in topic and I thought I could best express myself collectively.

I've talked about this before, but this is what can happen when you [general you] conflate your shipping preferences with your advocacy for representation. They can go hand in hand, I would never suggest otherwise. Seeing healthy relationships on screen is such an important part of representation. But ultimately, only one of these can be your absolute top priority. And unfortunately there is also a harmful belief across fandom spaces where queer rep only counts as rep as long as characters are dating people of their same gender. And we've definitely seen this in Legends.

Fandom has always had strong opinions about the idea of Sara being with a man, even if CC was a fairly popular ship (a lot of the backlash that got was also surrounded by 'don't go back on her bisexuality by having her be with a man'!) And I'm always a little wary of the 'but she said she prefers girls' argument because if we look at it in context we know they made her say that during that period they were actively trying to backtrack on her attraction to men. And we know this because we heard it directly from Greg Berlanti himself. We can love that Sara is a bisexual woman with a canonical preference for women, because that's 100% valid, while acknowledging the iffy origins of that development.

We've seen it with John, too (who also is a bi with a preference for women). Only John/Woman ships seem to cause the most upset in the fandom (first they worried about Sara, then it was Zari 1.0, then Nora, then Charlie, and now Zari 2.0). People don't seem too worried about his cooties when it comes to Gary, for example.

We saw it this season with Charlie. I'll concede that Charlie's pansexuality could've and should've been handled better, but her hookup with Behrad does not by any means erase her queerness, but some people were acting like it did. Like her queerness only counted if she got to kiss Zari. And I often wondered, what would've been these people's reaction if Charlie got with Astra for example. And that's my point about the conflating shipping with advocacy: are you advocating for Charlie to have a female love interest in the name of representation or do you just want your ship to be canon?

Cause honestly? That's what a lot of this boils down to. People trying to use moral high ground to justify their ship preferences. In the case of Sara she gets this shit from both ends, let's be clear. Her affairs with men are Bad, but then on the flip side you 100% have the people to who use these arguments I've been laying out to hate on Ava and avalance. To be clear, that's not a conversation I want any part of. I've had to block people for hijacking my LOT critical posts to shit on Ava and avalance.

I don't hate Ava at all. It was a bit of a slow burn between us but I enjoyed her so much this season, after being neutral on her for the previous two. But I have to say I was a bit disappointed with how the writers chose to write her reaction to John back in season 3 because they could've written the same story without making it about Sara's sexual past. I get that the point was to address Ava's insecurity with where she stands with Sara. And John is the first object of Sara's attraction that she meets and he is everything she's not. But the wording of 'who sleeps with a warlock and then turns around and starts calling me her girlfriend' and 'maybe Sara isn't a one woman kind of woman' felt loaded. And I hated it. I don't hold grudges against the character for that, but it's true that some people who are already inclined to be prejudiced can take things like that and run with them. On both sides, actually.

We could keep talking about this all day. But I think I'm gonna leave it there. Hopefully that clarifies some things.

PS. ANON #3: To your first point, I completely understood where you were coming from, don’t worry.

#answered #anonymous #lot talk #i had an opinion on the internet

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gwiiyeoweo · 5 years

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Ignis moves into a new town, to take temporary ownership of a small cafe as his uncle recovers. Its people are friendly enough, his neighbors quick to receive him with housewarming gifts, and he easily finds himself falling for the quaint little place.

Even for the friendly creature lurking outside his window, skin pale as the moon and hair gleaming with black starlight.

Simple: Home Pairing: Ignis/Noctis Rating: G @ignoctweek

With the jingle of his keys, Ignis pops the trunk open and grabs at his scant belongings: a single large suitcase and a duffel bag. The parking garage echoes loudly as he firmly shuts the trunk and locks his car, and he slings his bag over his shoulder while he takes to the elevator, rolling his suitcase behind him.

It’s a quiet ride up to the fifth floor, alone as he is during this afternoon. Limbs weary and dry eyes blinking from his six-hour drive from Insomnia to Delia — a quaint little seaside town in Cleigne — he manages a tired smile when he plucks his phone from his pocket, scrolling through the texts shared with his uncle. He shoots a quick message to the man, to let him know he’s arrived safely at the condominium and was now riding up the elevator, before pocketing his phone again.

The elevator slows, chiming sharply when it finally stops, and Ignis winces just slightly at the shift in gravity that needles at his head — he's always hated that. Though all things considered, there’s not much choice aside from getting used to it, he supposes. He’ll be living here for a while. When the metal doors part to let him through, he steps over to the directory, perched on the wall just across from him, and searches for his unit number. ‘Units 500-510 to the left… 511-520 on the right.’

He follows the right hallway, eyes keeping track of the plaques next to the doors. He quickly passes by units 514 and 515, pauses at 516 to fumble through his keys and find the one his uncle handed him — a bronze key with a tiny cactuar sticker on it — and turns it in the heavy lock of the door. A click. And he’s home.

Ignis steps through into the foyer, quickly foregoing his manners and kicking his shoes off, and makes a bee line for the couch in the living area.

He tosses his keys onto the coffee table, but he miscalculates and it skids across the surface to fall onto the floor. He thinks nothing of it and lets the handle of his suitcase fall out of his hand, lets his bag slip off his shoulder and down his arm, as he all but throws himself into the couch. Ignis rolls onto his back, props his feet and head up on either ends as he throws his arms and stretches with a loud groan. He can feel and hear his spine pop and stretch and decompress and whatever the hell bones and joints do, and he receives it all with gratitude and relief. He’s never made such a long drive before, especially not a straight course distance with no breaks, and he silently chastises himself for not stopping at the rest area when he had the chance. It was killer on his back and legs.

Well, lesson learned.

He allows himself this moment’s respite, stretched and sprawled out on the couch with his eyes closed, until a chime from his phone interrupts the silence. He fishes it out of his pants and looks at the screen. A reply from his uncle. Ignis swipes his finger across the notification and reads the entire message, a short thank you and some reminders. He taps out a message of his own, assuring that it was no problem at all and that in fact, he’s rather excited for this new venture. There’s a few more texts sent back and forth until he puts the phone down on his chest.

“Alright,” Ignis huffs after a few more minutes of idling, lightly patting down his cheeks, “Time for work.”

He swings his legs over the couch and plants his feet on the floor, standing with his hands held squarely onto his hips. He crosses the living space and opens a small closet, finds a vacuum, a mop and bucket, some disinfectants and sprays. He goes for the vacuum first, plugging it into the nearest outlet. Then goes to town on the condo.

It’s early evening by the time he’s done scrubbing down the walls and floors, done dusting the shelves and airing out the sheets. He finishes the last of his housekeeping when he puts away the last of his folded shirts into the drawer, and he checks the time to see if it’s not too early for dinner. Between making a homemade meal for tonight or trying out the local fare instead, he chooses the latter. While his unit is completely furnished and decorated, the refrigerator and pantry are bare and dry. Ignis thinks it’s too much of a goal to completely stock his kitchen, too many trips in the elevator that he cares for in one go, so he may as well start with a small trip and work his way from there.

He’s locking up his door when he meets his first neighbor, the resident in 515 by the looks of it. Immediately his first impression is that of a spunky young blonde, more of a boy than a young adult, with his naive but inviting smile that threatens to blind Ignis with all the strength of a midday sun.

“Hey there!” The man is loud too. He trots over to Ignis, a distinct pep in his gait, and offers a hand. “Just moved in?”

“Indeed. Pleased to meet your acquaintance,” Ignis takes the offer in a quick handshake. “Ignis Scientia.”

“Prompto Argentum here,” the blonde replies, raising his eyebrows, “And like, Scientia? Like Vincent Scientia?”

“He would be my uncle, yes. Do you know him?”

“Oh, duh. I technically pay my rent to him. He owns all the units on this floor, y’know.”

Ignis knew his uncle had made investments here and there, that his sizeable wealth wasn’t coming only from the little cafe he owned. He knew his uncle owned the unit he just moved into, that he had extra furnishings delivered solely for Ignis’s new residence, that he refused to have his nephew pay rent for the condo. But he didn’t know his uncle owned all the units on the fifth floor.

“Plus, his pumpkin croissants are to die for, man.”

And he didn’t know that his uncle’s croissants were apparently famous. It was Ignis’ turn to raise his eyebrows. “I didn’t know his oven was so popular.”

“And his coffee. He has the best little coffee shop around here. I only worked there part time, but it was like, the greatest employee perk to take home the day’s leftovers. Everyone was so sad when we heard about the stroke too. Is the old guy okay?” Prompto’s bright smile lost its radiance then, concern etching along his eyes and mouth.

“He’s faring quite well, thank you. He won’t be returning to work for a while, but they’re optimistic.” While Ignis is genuinely appreciative of the care and worry over his uncle’s wellbeing, he wonders just how much of a mini celebrity his uncle is. And of what else he has yet to tell Ignis.

“Oh, that’s good. It’s a shame we’ll have to settle for Starbucks now, but it’s great that he’s doing okay.”

“Ah, about that.” Ignis smiles. “It’s why I’ve moved here.”

As they make down the elevator, he explains his whole motive for coming to Cleigne in the first place. How Uncle Vincent, once he was able, had called Ignis and asked if his darling nephew was interested in putting his recent business degree to use, if he would like to try his hand at running his cafe over in Cleigne. That the trip from Insomnia may be long, but room and board would be covered and free, that his ever-wise and ever-humble uncle had a condo open and free for a new tenant named Ignis. That he knew his nephew would be bored out of his mind working in an office cubicle in a stuffy suit and tie, that coming over to Delia and running the ovens and espresso machines would be leagues more fun.

And that he agreed with his uncle, that kneading his fingers into dough while surrounded by the strong aroma of coffee was more of his element, that his business degree was something he had earned only because his parents were iffy on sending him to culinary school.

“And, if you have the time, would you be interested in working at the cafe again? As eager as I am, I’m afraid I’ve little real-life experience in managing a business,” Ignis says, as they walk along the sidewalk outside the condominium. “Your insight would be extremely helpful and appreciated, Prompto. And it goes without saying you’ll be paid for your work. We could discuss a raise, even.”

“Dude, hell yeah I’ll work again. Between my classes and finals, I haven’t found the time to go job hunting. Man, if not for the paycheck, then I’ll do it for those sweet, sweet pumpkin croissants, baby.” Prompto winks and throws a pair of sidelong finger-guns at Ignis.

Ignis cracks a smile, amused at the other’s light-hearted fun. They discuss possible work hours, wages, responsibilities, and so forth, even as they walk into the local Crow's Mart. Eventually, of course, their conversation turns away from work and leans toward Prompto giving Ignis a rundown of the town, what restaurants to check out and which ones to avoid like the Scourge, or which neighbors to keep away from “like that weird lady who has this creepy taxidermy hobby and probably has five stuffed cats in her bedroom.”

Ignis cooks dinner for two that night, and he tries not to gloat too much when Prompto stuffs his face with rice and chicken, eyes sparkling as he showers the man with nothing but praise muffled between forkfulls of food.

While Ignis found himself pleasantly surprised with such a friendly and outgoing neighbor in Prompto, he didn't expect the same for the rest of the fifth floor tenants. Didn’t expect for the next three mornings, for more neighbors to come knocking at his door. For them to come bearing gifts in their hands and warm welcomes on their lips.

Gladio was a mountain of a man, a scar over his left eye and an impressive tattoo over his muscled arms and chest, the sight enough to scare off any petty thug. Ignis was almost startled out of his mind when he opened his door to see the hulking man in nothing but a tight tank top, until he saw Prompto at his side with his typical blinding smile. Gladio held up a gift basket with a small bouquet of flowers and a small box of chocolates, at which Ignis thought would be more suited given to a potential date than a welcome gift. Gladio seemed to read his mind, admitting that this was on short notice and the florist's he worked at had nothing better. But Ignis was grateful nonetheless, and he carefully placed the flowers in a decorative vase he rinsed out and placed in the kitchen.

Cindy was a pleasant woman, with all her southern charm and hospitality. Ignis was eating the chocolates when he had heard her playful knocking at the door. She stepped right on in and gushed about how homey his place was, that she particularly liked the little coeurl statue sitting on the shelf. He could barely give his thanks when she turned on him and took both his hands to drop a gift bag in them, before pulling him into a tight hug, and surely a lesser man would have blushed as her… Gifts pressed against him. He offered her some coffee but was declined, saying her father needed her at the auto shop, but that Ignis could definitely drop by at the mechanics if “Yer gal's ever needin’ a fixin’, sweetie. Or if ya need a guinea pig to taste test ol’ Vince's brew.”

Or at least, that's what Ignis thought she said. The gift bag was a mini assortment of shower gels and lotions, all with a hint of citrus, and two sets of face masks, and were set in the bathroom, though Ignis wasn't sure if he'd ever use the masks. (His five-step routine did the job quite well at the moment.)

Takka was an older fellow and not even from the fifth floor but from the second. His visit was short, though he greeted Ignis with a chickatrice and beans casserole. He learned the man owned the diner a couple blocks down, and Takka boasted he cooked the best damn homemade meals in this side of Delia. Ignis humored him and promised to taste his food there one day, even if he had his doubts about the cook's claims. Takka only asked to let him know when the Cafe would be up and running again, because he sure missed those pumpkin croissants. (Ignis really wondered if those croissants were as delicious as everyone kept making them out to be.) When Ignis took his first bite of the casserole, he was determined to weasel the recipe out of Takka the next time they met.

A few old ladies even came by — none of them the one Prompto had warned him about — and brought cookies and a knitted scarf and well wishes. An old couple gave him candles and a blanket, a young man a bottle of wine and a tupperware set, another some more flowers in a glass vase.

It was all very heartwarming. And as much as he appreciated their gestures, it was also almost overwhelming.

Which is why he makes sure to wake up at the crack of dawn this morning, foregoing his casual but sleek attire for a set of loose sweats. Breakfast is a dull affair, simply eggs and buttered toast, and he makes a hasty trip to the elevators in case someone spots him and lays down more gifts before him.

He chooses the thirty-minute walk over the car ride, and strolls along comfortably in the cool mist of the rising sun, admiring the humble town. It's just a bit chilly this spring morning, but the walk and rising temperatures warm him enough and the sights are sufficiently distracting. The well worn buildings are nothing compared to Insomnia's high-rising towers and neon billboards, but there's still a touch of modern and urban living. Delia looks to be an old town with its wood and stone eroded from years of salt and moisture, yet it's still very much alive and kicking.

The sign reads “Bervenia” in a simple large script, perched right in the center and above the door. He peers in through the wide glass windows, smiles at the nostalgia of it all, and unlocks the front door. It's a bit dark, considering the lights are off and the sun has yet risen to its full glory, and the chairs are set atop the few tables, but it's mostly as he remembers it all those years ago, when he visited his uncle during his childhood. His memory of Bervenia may be a little fuzzy, but he remembers the patchwork tiles and the soft lavender wallpaper quite clearly. The refrigerated display, though, is new. He only remembers his uncle offering goods to eat warm or at room temperature. But to be frank, he expected more changes and additions other than a display case, given all the years.

Heading to the back, Ignis checks the time on his phone and swipes through his contacts. He shoots a quick text to Prompto, asking if he'd be willing to help clean up the cafe should he have the time. It's still a bit early in the morning and a Saturday, so he hopes his text doesn't interrupt his neighbor's sleep. A short beat later and his screen at least confirms Prompto is awake.

Sure! B there in 20

No use in dilly dallying in the meantime. Ignis rolls up his sleeves and sets to work.

He’s immensely thankful for Prompto’s help, who promptly (Heh) came in with a thin sheen of sweat on his skin. He’s a runner, he told Ignis, and that he’s typically up at these hours for his morning jogs. Meaning, Ignis didn’t need to worry about waking him up at Saturday’s early hours.

Only a month out of commission and the poor thing was covered in dust; not to mention the fridge’s contents had gone rancid. That had been a smelly affair, much to the blonde’s dramatics. But with their combined efforts, they managed to clean up for the most part. Prompto had left an hour ago, much to Ignis’ insistence, considering he kept the poor man far past lunch time.

Ignis finishes wiping down the espresso machines and throws the dirty rag into a bin, finishing up the day’s cleaning. He takes a quick peruse of their inventory, taking into consideration what needs to be restocked or replaced. He has yet to test all their machines, but he’s confident they’re all in working order. In any case, he’ll make sure to confirm everything’s functional in the following days; no need to rush since he has to wait to restock their shelves first.

As he takes a gander through their supplies, he notices there’s just enough ingredients to try his hand at baking. He remembers the little box of recipes in the office, so he rummages through the drawers for the small wooden box and searches through the laminated cards for a muffin recipe.

‘How old fashioned,’ he thinks, smiling to himself as he brings the card over to the counters. He makes a mental note to make a digital copy of all the recipes, just in case; he’d hate to lose them all in a fire or storm, and a back-up is always a good idea.

Ignis makes a quick trip to the gas station down the street, to pick up the perishables that the recipe calls for, and makes it back to the cafe in quick order. He skims over the ingredients and puts the card aside, reaching into the cabinets for bowls and flour and whatever else his uncle instructed. It’s simple enough, a standard muffin batter, with just a few personal flairs that make it unique, though Ignis isn’t sure about the dash of hulldagh nutmeg. He adds it anyway, because surely there’s a reason his uncle underlined it in bold green highlighter.

By the time the chocolate muffins are done, the sun had already set. He cleans up quickly as he lets them cool on a rack, then gathers them all in a couple paper bags once he’s done putting everything away. When he locks up Bervenia for the night, the fresh cool air hits him all at once and already he finds himself missing the aroma of the oven and spices. It’s something he could easily find himself falling in love with for sure.

The streets light up as the sun dips ever lower into the horizon, its orange and yellow hues disappearing into the dark of the night sky. Ignis wants to believe in the peace and safety of the town, but he can’t help but keep his pace brisk as he avoids the growing shadows and dubious corners. It’s safe for all his uncle has told him, but his time in Insomnia tells him otherwise. The Crown City may be a bright glistening thing with all its lights and sounds and thrumming engines, but not even its neon lights could ward off the dangers that lurk in her dark streets and narrow alleyways.

The stars have just begun to peek out when he makes it to the condominium. He knocks on Prompto’s door, to offer him a bag of muffins for his help today, but no response has him carrying both bags back to his condo. He’s searching through his cabinets for the smaller tupperware gifted to him, so that he can drop them off to Prompto in the morning, when he hears a suspicious rattling from his balcony. He automatically thinks cat, but he remembers there are no trees that reach above the third floor; and pets aren't allowed. There's a possibility that someone's hiding one anyway, but the long distance between the adjacent balconies makes him doubt it. Birds maybe? It's night, however, and they should all be roosting.

It could be an owl. But then it's a distinctive knocking — three bold raps — and Ignis nearly jumps out of his skin at the sheer loudness of it. He gingerly steps over to the balcony door, his phone in hand just in case he needs to call security, and he pulls the heavy curtain aside with a sharp rattle and. Oh.

Hm.

A young man stands there, one hand in his jacket pocket and the other waving at him. Ignis is so thrown out of his zone that he barely catches the “Hi” the stranger-possibly-burglar-slash-serial-killer mouths to him.

Common sense dictates he calls security, right now. But Ignis is too busy wondering how and why and where. There's no trees to climb, no ladder to reach up so far, and there's too large a distance from the neighboring balcony to even think of making the jump. And unless this man is some sort of professional stuntman who is deeply invested in parkour, it's almost impossible he climbed down from above without sporting some broken ankles or other bones. And he looked perfectly fine with his sheepish grin and bright eyes, no sign of injury or pain anywhere.

Maybe he's hallucinating, maybe it's all the fumes from the detergents he used while cleaning up Bervenia , or maybe instead of nutmeg, his uncle had stashed away some sort of hallucinogenic drug in the spice rack, and he had inadvertently laced his chocolate muffins because this made absolutely no sense and —

The man's tapping pulls him out of his bout of panic. Again, logic tells him he really should just call security , but instead he makes a completely absurd decision and unlatches the sliding door, cracking it open just enough to fit a man's finger through.

“Hey, is Vincent here?” the intruder asks.

Vincent. Uncle Vincent.

“…No.” Ignis answers before he can stop himself, and he silently berates himself for his chain of bad decisions. It’s that terrifyingly disarming smile, he tells himself, that the man offers him.

“Oh. Really? I thought I smelled his muffins,” he says, his posture suddenly turning awkward. He shifts his weight between his feet, one hand reaching back to idly scratch at his neck. “Sorry, my bad.”

“I baked them.” Okay. Ignis visibly cringed at how quickly he responded. “They’re my uncle’s, ah, Vincent’s recipe.”

He purposely ignores the fact that this man claimed the smell of his chocolate muffins as the reason for this unannounced visit. Ignores that it was not at all normal to knock at someone’s (fifth floor) balcony instead of the front door. And especially ignores that, on closer inspection, his skin looks so pallid it’s almost translucent, his hair so black it melts into the night sky and stars danced among his locks. He looks almost ethereal .

“Oh! You’re his nephew then. He mentioned you a few times, just graduated from university and all that, yeah?”

“Yes, I’m here to take care of the shop in his stead.”

“That explains it.” The man’s chest puffs up visibly as he takes in a deep breath. “You smell like Bervenia, so I thought he was back.”

“Would you… perhaps like a muffin?” he said, against his better judgment — which could strangle him right now if it had hands.

“Hell yes.”

Ignis turns his back — a death wish if this man truly meant any harm — and plucks out the treat from the bag. He quickly returns to the door, relieved and delighted that the balcony intruder didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to see through with any heinous plans he may have had. Ignis widens the door, just enough to slip his hand through, and drops it off in the other’s palm.

“Thanks a bunch. I’ve been craving his goodies lately, been really missing his pumpkin croissants. Can you make those too?”

Again, those pumpkin croissants.

“I’ve never tried, but I don’t see why I can’t.”

“Cool, thanks again for the muffin. Say hi to Vincent for me, too.”

Ignis barely got the time to nod when the man backed away to place one hand on the railing and then —

Jumps over the fucking railing.

Ignis throws open the door and takes the three fastest steps he had ever taken in his entire life, a lightning speed compared to Field Day at high school when he had been delegated as the final runner in the baton pass. His torso lurches over the edge, and he half expects to see a blood splatter on the concrete, to maybe call emergency services after all.

But there’s nothing. Everything is still, quiet. No body, no blood, not even a passerby walking down the sidewalk.

“Uncle, this condo wouldn’t happen to be haunted, would it? I believe I’ve just met a ghost.”

“Oh, Ignis my boy, of course not. Only a vampire.”

“Ah, yes, of course… Pardon?”

After a riveting half hour spent on the phone with his uncle, Ignis tries through the motions, to recreate his normal, typical nightly routine, and charges his phone on the nightstand. He returns to the kitchen, boils some water in his electric kettle, and spoons in some loose-leaf tea into a steel filter. He takes a sip out of his mug, warm and comforting in both his hands. Then one more.

Alright, no. This isn’t working.

So instead of trying to feign normalcy, he dumps his tea down the sink and heads back to his bedroom, where he sinks into the mattress and stares at the ceiling. Ignis breathes in deep and reviews what his uncle had told him, instead of trying to shove it away and ignore it all.

And according to his uncle, the not-burglar-slash-serial-killer is a vampire. A friendly vampire, the little voice in his head corrects, who really likes Vincent’s pumpkin croissants. (At this point, did anyone not like his croissants?) His uncle had pointed out the vampire had a sweet tooth in general, but he was partial to whatever Vincent baked up. Also, that the vampire had been in Delia long before Vincent moved in himself.

“But he’s like a friendly cat, don’t worry about him. Just don’t try to feed him vegetables, and he won’t bite… Probably,” Vincent had said, hanging up before Ignis could question the ‘Probably’ part.

Okay. Alright. He could deal with this. Probably.

#ff15 #final fantasy xv #ignis scientia #noctis lucis caelum #ignoctweek #i can type

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obsessivedilettante · 7 years

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Dramaland Forecast: December 2017

Previously: 2016 - Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - June - July - Aug - Sept - Oct - Nov

Completed:

The Package -- this is, hands down, my favorite drama of the year. I had hoped it would be enjoyable, a fun romp with pretty scenery -- but I didn’t expect for me to fall in love with all the characters and care so much about their stories. It’s rare that I finish a drama and then immediately want to rewatch it, but I wish I could spend more time with this misfit tour group and become a part of their defacto family.

Currently watching:

Black -- I’ve heard rumors that this should be coming to US Netflix in the next month or so. If so, I’m jealous of anyone who gets to binge and not agonize with me each week, trying to figure out what’s going on and guess what will happen next.

Two Cops -- the premiere was okay, although I wasn’t immediately drawn in (although Hobaby’s love for his sunbae Jo Jung-suk is my new favorite thing). There’s a strong chance this will end up on the dropped list unless things pick up a little more, but for now, I’m willing to give it a chance.

Dropping/skipping:

Untouchable -- I thought about checking this one out because it seemed like it could have potential, until I remembered how bitter I am about the mess that was Masked Prosecutor, so this writer is still banned and I refuse to watch his stuff.

Doubtful Victory -- technically I haven’t dropped it, nor am I exactly skipping it. I just haven’t had a chance to watch the premiere yet, although knowing I can only watch a handful of live-airing shows at a time, there’s a strong chance this won’t make it to the “currently watching” list unless it’s binge-worthy (or I decide to drop Two Cops and the few December shows that interest me, making room in my viewing schedule).

Judge vs Judge -- as legal dramas go, this sounds like it could be a relatively fresh take, since most legal dramas focus on the prosecutors and lawyers. Buuuuut it’s still a legal drama and I’m not particularly motivated to check it out.

Wise Prison Life -- I really, really, really want to watch this drama. I also have discovered that the episodes are an hour-and-a-half long. Dammit, Shin PD, why are you making my life so difficult? If you want me to watch your shows, make them shorter! A girl only has so many hours in the day to watch dramas! I’m telling myself that I’ll binge it later, but then I’ve been saying that about Reply 1988 for almost two years, and I’m still balking at those episode lengths.

Upcoming dramas of interest:

Jugglers -- Daniel Choi in a workplace drama, surrounded by a mess of awesome women. I AM ALL IN!

I’m Not a Robot -- I love the cast, but I’m still iffy on the concept, and the teasers haven’t exactly won me over, either, so this will probably be a pass.

Bad Guys: City of Evil -- the teasers got me all hyped up! I don’t know if I’ll watch it while airing or wait to binge, but it’s definitely on the “watch” list.

Hwayugi -- the Hong sisters lost my trust years ago, but this looks pretty awesome, not the least because the cast is a collection of all their favorites from previous dramas. I hope they can deliver on this and remind me why I used to like their dramas in the first place.

Just Between Lovers -- this could be a little more melodramatic than is my taste, but it also seems like it will be one of those “slice-of-life” dramas that JTBC does so well, so it’s definitely got my attention. I don’t know if I’ll make time for it while it’s airing, though.

Return -- it’s a lawyer and detective show, which makes me go “ugh, not another one.” Buuuuuuut it stars queen Go Hyun Jung, along wth Lee Jin Wook, Shin Sung Rok, and my beloved Park Ki-woong, who I’ve been temporarily freezing out since I’ve been so disappointed with his post-army acting choices. But this will make up for it, right? At least I can hope!

Radio Romance -- Doojoon as a top star who can’t speak unless it’s scripted who then has to suddenly become a DJ? Yes, please! A love interest potentially with an actress who is still in her teens? Hell, no! Sigh, dramaland, why do you have to be this way? There are plenty of twenty-something (and thirty-something!) actresses who would make a good pairing with Doojoon (don’t make me remind you of my love for Soo Kyung noona!). Whhyyyyyyyyyyyyy are you making a teenager pretend to be older? Ugh, ugh, ugh.

As always, any drama not listed means I have nothing new to add since the last mention and/or it’s not something I care about enough to add to the list.

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coshayphinelove · 7 years

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just some thinky thoughts after i wrote a tag essay that got way bigger than the tags. feel free to read if you want, but forewarning... i have more questions after writing than before so..

so before i start anything i’d like to clarify that i love ob. most of my issues with it are bc i got my hopes too high and held the creators to the standards i hold myself, which is not fair in art. also, i’m only talking about the ob team and the characters, not the fans. don’t get all in a twist, this is just me... thinkin.

so ep 5 was great. 2013 me would have loved it. but 2017 me is like.. hard into communication and explicitly labelled representation. and cophine is neither of those things. like... i can understand that there’s not enough time to linger on stuff the way i would want to. i get it. but like... there was enough time to linger on alison. for five seasons. the first time she ever did anything main plot-moving was this season, she was always almost completely seperate. she got flashbacks out the wazoo to explain her entire life story. we met her mom. her monitor is redeemed.

i just am very unhappy with the doling of screen time. like... it’s not even about shipping anymore. it’s about plot holes and i am genuinely confused about the story at this point. like delphine and donnie are easily comparable characters. donnie monitored alison for close to a decade. lied to her for a decade. once he found out about the clones started doing things without alison’s knowledge or consent. he is forgiven. almost immediately. for everything.

delphine lasted as a monitor about... a month? she was so bad at lying that cosima caught her. she immediately came clean. then in the flashback begged cosima to believe that she would always protect her. and yet? the conflict surrounding delphine for the entire show is ~is she good or bad???~. and at every turn she is keeping that promise while making and keeping other promises. and everybody, including her love interest keeps throwing her mistakes in her face.

donnie gets side plots and new dynamics to explore. delphine has to have all of her characterization as a subset of cosima’s screen time. donnie gets a seat at the bubbles table, delphine does not. she has to leave and get shot (a whole different rant of equal length).

on another note, alison and cosima are also easily comparable characters: side characters used to provide info for sarah to react to. cosima’s safety is always at risk, she’s been boiled down to her love interest for several plots, and she doesn’t ever get to acknowledge her Very Obvious PTSD and abandonment issues. alison has low stakes conflict (up until this season, but that’s already over), she is never boiled down to donnie’s wife, and we got to watch her parse through her issues in s2 in great detail.

like even the flashbacks. like alison got half her episode told in flashbacks and it was gorgeous. i by no means wanted that when there’s so much going on but i thought we would get at least a little more.

we met alison’s parent. we hear about her in a natural and very not forced way. cosima gets one very long line about her family very late in the game in a clunky and almost pointless way. (like... why was it in there? what purpose did it serve?)

i think the problem is subtext. everybody is always talking about the subtext. but the problem is there are several issues that the writer’s address almost explicitly. like alison’s drinking problem. we learned all about that and we cheered for her when she went to rehab and we we sad when she relapsed. with cosima it’s.... two instances of smash cuts of bad memories and her reacting to them. ......*gestures with flailing arms* ISN’T THAT ALSO IMPORTANT???

like. i’m going to keep talking about delphine but.. that’s just where my head is rn..

but from s1 to s2 her arc was learning what her role would be in clone club and then how to do that. and she made some big huge strides there. and then she comes back for s3 and it’s gone. she’s just.. not doing that anymore? like they took the time to film her telling cosima immediately after she messed up that she had, in fact, messed up. and then, what, a few days later she Can’t Tell Cosima Anything Anymore? and don’t get on me about screen time here. it could’ve been like.. 2 more lines. “it’s not safe, they’ll hurt you.” “b-but delphine??” “i’m sorry.” LIKE? they just wanted the drama of cosima not knowing. which i can see wanting, but it didn’t end up working. because then you had scenes showing delphine doing things for clone club. so then... it was just.... confusing? and imo drawn out for too long.

but even to this day I, a delphine stan, am still kind of iffy. she literally made an ultimatum (promise me, everyone. you will never make an ultimatum in your romantic/sexual/platonic relationships. that’s a manipulation tactic that a lot of abusers use. slippery slope please don’t do it.)(i’m also not saying that delphine is an abuser or that you’re an abuser but just.. it’s a thing to be careful of.)

“accept our toxic relationship as is or leave.”

IN WHAT WORLD IS THAT OKAY??? like i get the sentiment behind it. like she was saying, ‘hey cosima i know i’ve been bad but like you don’t have to stay if you don’t want. i’ll stop kissing you and everything.’ but then.... have her say that? everything delphine ever says to cosima is wrapped in 3 levels of subtext. or alternatively, cut the kissies in half and let them have a few lines about a new promise or something. idk if that’s just her being extra or if that’s just.... the writers.

bc the creators... bless them.. they’re trying. but when it comes down to it they were predominantly straight men. and they did add tatiana as an executive producer which is like.. the head idea guy who tell the writers what to write. which was awesome! but like.. she’s straight (as far as we know). so like.. i really don’t want to pull the sexuality card here. but i think i am.

bc it’s one thing if you don’t give romantic, mental health, or communication plot lines very much time. it’s another if you give a straight couple plenty and a wlw couple scraps. it’s one thing if the straight couple gets to delve into things multiple times and the wlw couple gets ten seconds before the plot needs to keep going.

i get that the cosima-centric ep was very plot heavy, stuff was happening, i get it. but like... if you cared about giving good rep as much as you claim you do wouldn’t you... re-structure so that they have more than 10 seconds? wouldn’t you sacrifice some of that oh so dearly beloved body horror to let them just... talk for a hot sec? or let them be in the same room?

i know it’s hard work. the longest original work i’ve ever finished is a 30 page script. and even then it’s a lot of ‘is this dialogue working?’ ‘would that character say that?’ ‘that’s a plot hole’ ‘wait where is he going again?’ i get that there’s a lot to keep track of so like... knowing who cosima’s parents are wasn’t on a post-it note on the beat board. but i just... one of the questions i always ask myself is ‘is this healthy?’ so like... i always make sure that if the dynamic isn’t then i either address it somewhere else or change it so it is.

i don’t think they were asking themselves that.

bc straight guys are used to power balances in their relationships. they’re used to ultimatums. whether it’s in their life or in fiction, that’s what they see. and they’re socialized to see that as normal. so when they’re made aware that the media they’re making is feminist/progressive, these guys seemed like they did research and tried to make it more so. but... they missed the mark. bc straight men will never know what it’s like to be a wlw or a woman. that’s just how it works.

and then.. like... they were so hyperaware of the fans and what they wanted. and i think the thing they understood the best was that they wanted cophine kisses. bc a lot of ppl wanted that and like...ppl who are cophine critical sometimes also want cophine kisses. so that’s the loudest thing they heard/saw. and instead of doing the emotional work and the plot work they thought every scene had to have kisses.

and they also knew that they could always fill in the gaps at panels. WHICH. not canon if you say it at a panel y’all. they knew the fans would spread their patches all over the place. so instead of doing the work and explicitly taking a stand they just.. let people ask them questions so they knew what people were wondering about and then...... answered.

i don’t think they did any of this maliciously but like.. the whole drama surrounding sarah’s sexuality, the great debate of whether it was problematic or not. like... knowing now that they didn’t intend it to come off as her lashing out and having a mental breakdown helps, but.... that’s still what it looked like at first glance. and if i’m just a DVR viewer who doesn’t meticulously stalk everything ob online, i wouldn’t know that. and they do that with delphine’s intentions a lot. they do it with sexuality a lot. they do it with gender a lot. and it’s like.... it’s representation but... label-less to the masses. like my dad was in the room when sarah was kissing a girl and he made some snide comment about it. and it’s like... they were just too aware of fans that they gave them what they wanted (sarah kissing a girl/cophine kisses) without thinking about if was the healthy thing for the moment. they didn’t think about the ramifications.

and it’s just so frustrating. bc i love this show, i do. there’s so much to talk about and so many themes and allegories and cool stuff. but they just... do a lot of stuff that..... really grinds my gears. like this isn’t even a comprehensive list.

#blog stuff #thinky thoughts #i think i like that tag...

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captaincanarygotmelike · 8 years

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Fic: Covered in the Colors

Summary: Leonard Snart was used to living a life of monochromatism. Why wouldn't he be? It'd been like that his whole life. He lived in a world where seeing your soulmate meant seeing color, and he had just adjusted to the idea that he would never be one of those people. That is, until he woke up on the roof of a building and looked into a pair of blue eyes.

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Color. That word had always had little meaning to Leonard Snart. He knew that there was some phenomenon that caused people who’d met their soulmate to see color. Bullshit, he’d always thought.

It’s not that he didn’t believe it, he just didn’t believe it would ever to happen to him. He’d met a few people who could see color, but the crowd he’d hung around for most of his life wasn’t exactly the soulmate type. He was pretty much positive Lisa could see color; she hung around Cisco Ramon far too often, more than she had any other guy who’d been in her life. Why she wasn’t saying anything about it was beyond him. Leonard, though, was fairly certain that he’d be living in a world of black and white forever.

Then, one day, something changed.

He woke on a rooftop in the middle of the night after being knocked out and kidnapped. There were others with him, at least seven or eight. He recognized a few. There was Mick, of course, and Professor Stein, but he’d never seen the rest before, and as he and the others got to their feet, he looked them over. There were two claiming to be reincarnating hawk deities, which, he thought, was an iffy story at best. There was the blonde assassin with a glint in her eye that he couldn’t quite explain. There was a man in an exo-suit who looked like a discount Iron Man. Next to him was a younger man who seemed to be the second half of Firestorm, and, standing above them all was the same man who’d kidnapped him and brought him here in the first place.

This man started to talk, but Leonard wasn’t listening because as he looked away from the people around him, something in his vision changed. The dark grey of his jacket suddenly, just, wasn’t. He couldn’t explain it, it just wasn’t grey anymore, replaced by something else. He blinked a few times, figuring his eyes must be a bit wonky from whatever that Rip Hunter guy did to him when he knocked him out, but when he opened his eyes again, something else had changed. This time, it wasn’t his coat, but the skin on his hands, no longer pale grey. Again, the change went away as quickly as it came, bust as he looked around, he saw a similar disturbance in his surroundings.

He was pretty sure what he was seeing was color. No one had ever been able to describe it properly, even those who could see it (and especially those who couldn’t. When Lisa was in middle school, she’d been determined to prove that her favorite actor was her soulmate, saying that she’d seen a picture of him in a magazine and seen color, but her shoddy description of what color was gave her away fairly quickly). Leonard knew what color was scientifically: it was the different ways light bounced off of objects, but that didn’t really help him here. He knew from grade school art that color came in shades. The words red and blue came to mind, and he was pretty sure those were different colors, but he wouldn’t be able to differentiate the two.

If color was anything though, this was it.

As the minutes went by, more and more of his surroundings changed. It rolled over his vision like waves onto sand. Sometimes, objects would change for a moment or two before returning to their previous states. Some things, especially the bright flashing of traffic lights and cars on the street below him, stayed in their new form. It was incredibly distracting. He could barely pay attention to any of what this Rip Hunter was saying, getting in a generic snarky comment or two before turning on his heels and leaving the rooftop. Mick followed him, of course, and soon they were back to the safe house they’d been staying in.

He went straight for the old, beat-up computer that sat at a desk in the corner of the room. He began to type the different colors he could remember into the search engine one by one. He memorized the different names and what each one looked like. Soon, he could look around the room and name the color of each object. His jacket, he learned, was a dark shade of the color blue, and looking down at it, he decided he preferred it this way to the dark grey he thought it had been. His skin was a very light shade of brown and his hair was also brown with touches of grey. His eyes were light blue, nearly the same color as the blast of ice that came from his cold gun.

Just as he was looking at various shades of green, Mick entered the room with a beer bottle in hand. Leonard tried to close the internet browser so Mick wouldn’t see what he’d been doing, but he wasn’t fast enough.

“Green?” Mick repeated the word that was plastered across the computer screen. “What’re you looking that up for?”

“Nothing,” Leonard replied, a little too late. Mick heard the hesitation and realized what his partner wasn’t saying. He started to laugh, chuckling like this was the best thing he’d heard all day.

“You can see color now, can’t you? You saw your soulmate.” Mick waited for a response. When it didn’t come, he continued, “Well? Didn’t you?” Leonard nodded and Mick let out another laugh, “Who could it be? My money’s on Haircut.”

Leonard didn’t respond so Mick didn’t pursue the subject. Leonard wished he could say that he knew who is soulmate was, that he’d felt some sort of pull or one of those other clichés he heard about people who saw color, but he didn’t. It could be any one of the people who’d been on the rooftop with him and the only chance he’d get to figure out who his soulmate was was to go on this damned time travel mission he didn’t want to go on.

After leaving the rooftop, Sara Lance took the train back to Star City. It’d been a while since she’d seen her sister, and besides, she wanted her opinion on this whole time travel stuff. She also wanted to talk to Laurel about something else. Something strange had happened to her on that rooftop. She’d been listening to this British dude talking about time travel when, out of the corner of her eye, she’d seen something she’d never seen before and she was pretty sure she knew what it was: color. Her time in the League of Assassins had taught her a little bit about color, mostly how to spot people who could see it and how to use that to her advantage. The League taught her that to see color was a weakness because it meant you had something to lose. On a few occasions, Sara had seen two assassins find soulmates in each other. The League had a particularly brutal way of dealing with that: they’d pin the soulmates against each other; whoever killed the other first won. It was one of the more barbaric traditions of the League, but it was effective. The winners of those battles always became some of the best assassins the League saw.

Sara never thought she cared about having a soulmate. Looking back at all of her important relationships in the past — Nyssa and Oliver were the ones that came to mind — none of them were “soulmates”, none of them made her see color, but she didn’t care. She had loved them regardless of whether they were her soulmate or not. But now that color was flickering in and out of her vision like a bad lightbulb, she was having a hard time maintaining that same level of nonchalance.

Soon, Sara made it back to the Arrowcave.

“What’s up with you?” Laurel asked after the customary reunion hug.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Sara replied.

“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Laurel replied, “I’m sure I can handle this.”

“Fine,” Sara sighed, “I think I’m starting to see color.”

“Oh,” Laurel replied. The surprise was apparent on her face. “Who?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t actually know. It first started while I was meeting eight people.”

Laurel snorted. “Nothing you do can ever be simple, can it? Do you have any idea who your soulmate could be out of those people?”

“I guess I could rule out a few people, but that still leaves five or six.”

“Yeah, but you must feel some sort of pull or something towards one of them.”

“You didn’t,” Sara shot back.

That was a low blow. Laurel had seen color for the first time the day she met Oliver when she was seven years old. It was also coincidentally the same time she met Tommy and she wasn’t sure which one was her soulmate. Eventually, she decided for herself that it must be Ollie. Years later, she found out she was wrong in a horrific way.

There’s a catch to the whole seeing color when you meet your soulmate thing; when they die, so does the color. When Tommy died, Laurel’s color began to fade away as she watched the building her soulmate was trapped in crumble.

“Sorry,” Sara added sheepishly.

“You have to go on this mission,” Laurel ignored her, “C’mon Sara. This is your soulmate we’re talking about here. This is your chance at happiness, and if anyone deserves happiness, it’s you.”

“I don’t know if I even want a relationship right now. I mean, I was just dead, Laurel! It’s kind of hard to just bounce back from something like that.”

“Well, maybe your soulmate could help,” Laurel replied. When Sara didn’t respond, she tossed her a set of batons, “C’mon, let’s spar. I want to hear about this time travel stuff.”

As it turns out, every one of the eight people Rip Hunter recruited showed up at the abandoned lot thirty six hours later. Sure, several of them were there against their will, but Leonard suspected that Rip didn’t really give a damn how they got there as long as they were going to work for him.

Once they were all seated on the bridge of what was apparently a timeship — even Leonard had to be a little impressed at that, but he didn’t even come close to the reaction Dr. Stein and Raymond Palmer had — Leonard decided to take in this new team (Leonard wasn’t big on teams; he wasn’t sure this one would work out).

He’d worked with Firestorm before, or at least, he’d worked with half of it. He knew Martin to be very smart, yet sometimes arrogantly so. Leonard had never met the meta’s new other half, Jefferson Jackson. Jax was the youngest of Rip’s recruits. Leonard felt that, so far, he liked him the most out of everyone, and the fact that he was currently unconscious definitely didn’t have anything to do with it.

Leonard knew that neither of these people were his soulmate. He’d already met Martin, so it definitely wasn’t him, and while he couldn’t be completely sure about Jax, he was sure enough to know that it was very unlikely.

He could also rule out the Hawks, Kendra and Carter, who were each other’s soulmates and had been for thousands of years.

Leonard could only hope that his soulmate wasn’t the Atom. Ray Palmer had both the energy and the common sense of a young child. He felt the same about their apparent captain, Rip Hunter, who had the crotchety I’m-better-than-you sense of arrogance of a much older man.

However much Leonard was against it, he had to admit that both men were possibilities.

That left Sara Lance. Leonard could see the assassin as being the only one he’d be okay with having as a soulmate. She was strong willed and powerful and seemed hardened at the edges in a way no one else on the team was.

He also knew that he was out of his mind thinking that it could possibly be her. She was young and badass and absolutely gorgeous. The universe would never just hand him all of that on a silver platter, especially considering how little it had given him before.

The team’s first mission went exactly how Leonard thought it would.

They were attacked and someone died.

To be fair, Leonard had the time of his life. He’d trashed a bar with Mick and the White Canary and he’d gotten back just in time for a fight against a time traveling bounty hunter. All in all, it was a good day.

The second mission, on the other hand, went a little differently. That time, Sara was not with him. She was assigned to accompany Firestorm on a trip to find a young Martin Stein. Leonard and Mick, instead of the assassin, got Ray, so while Sara was off visiting stoned collegiate hippies, Leonard was attempting to break into an immortal psychopath’s house with the world’s most optimistic vigilante.

It did not go as planned.

By the end of the night, they were down a team member, and Leonard learned that blood was not black as he thought it was, but red.

A few more missions went by. They were still in 1975, they were still down a member, but by now, they’d given him a proper burial. They’d given him the respect he deserved.

Later, when everything was over and they were back on the Waverider, the team sat on the main deck, all in their own chairs, all painfully aware that one was empty.

They were quiet, lost in their own thoughts or not thinking at all, just basking in the silence.

Jax was the first to speak. He turned to Professor Stein with a perplexed look on his face.

“If you think any harder, you’re going to explode, and if you go down, I do too.”

“I apologize, Jefferson,” Stein replied, “More has happened in the past few days than just my wedding ring disappearing, and it’s taking me longer than I believed it would to process it.”

“Then spill it, Grey.”

“The color I’ve seen since I met my wife faded along with my ring. They’ve both now returned, but I’ve been seeing color for so long that I forgot what a monochromatic world was like. At least I had the knowledge that my color could be returned. I couldn’t imagine the sufferings of one who had lost his soulmate in a way that couldn’t be rectified.”

“I guess that’s where I come in,” Ray admitted, “I lost my color when my fiancée Anna died. You know, you lose your color at the same rate your soulmate dies. For some people, it’s slow, but Anna’s death was quick and all of a sudden, all the color was gone.”

There was a brief pause as Ray sadly looked off into space before he turned back.

“How about the rest of you?”

Rip, being the person closest to Ray, started.

“I’m in the same boat as you, I’m afraid,” Rip said, “I saw color when I met Miranda and knew I’d lost her because it disappeared. That’s how I found out it happened. I was on a mission, doing my duties as a Time Master. I knew things in 2166 were bad, and I hadn’t heard from her in a little while, but then one day I blinked and everything was black and white. The only thing worse than losing your soulmate is not being beside them when it happens.”

Rip then turned to Kendra, who was sitting a few feet away from him.

“I’ve been seeing color since I met Carter in our first life — I guess he was Prince Khufu then — and 2000 years later, it’s still here.”

“Even after one of you dies?” Ray asked, raising his eyebrows. Kendra nodded sadly.

“How fascinating!” Martin exclaimed with bright eyes.

“You would think that, wouldn’t you, Grey?” Jax rolled his eyes.

“How about you, Jefferson?” Martin asked, turning to the other half of Firestorm, “Do you have any experience with the color spectrum?”

“Nah,” Jax shook his head, “Maybe someday.”

“Yes, you are a little on the young side to be meeting your soulmate,” he agreed, “Although it isn’t impossible.”

“Yeah, some people met their soulmates in my high school,” Jax nodded, “There were counselors for it and everything and they’d have to go to meetings and discuss stuff like the future and things like that.”

“Yes, adolescents tend to not make the wisest choices when it comes to the future,” Rip commented.

“Yeah, I get that,” Sara nodded, knowing that had she not gone on the Queen’s Gambit as a teenager, she would never have ended up where she is today.

“It seems we still haven't heard from our resident criminals and assassin,” Stein commented.

“Nothing to say, Professor,” Mick replied as Leonard silently tipped his head to the side in acknowledgement.

“What about you, Sara,” Kendra said kindly.

“Not much room for soulmates in the League,” Sara said, because technically that was the truth. It just wasn’t exactly the whole truth. Kendra’s eyes remained trained on her a moment or two after everyone else’s had moved on. There was a funny look on her face, as if she could see completely through what Sara had said.

The team traveled to Washington D.C., Soviet Russia, future-Star City, deep space. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, Leonard always found himself with Sara.

In 1945, Sara’d been tasked with killing Martin if a mission went sideways. Leonard doubled back, leaving his partner behind to deal with a temporarily incapacitated Ray and nearly getting caught in the crosshairs of a Soviet gulag rampage, all so he could keep Sara from killing Stein

In 2046, the team separated. Leonard followed Mick into the depths of a crime ring that was running Star City. He wasn’t too concerned until the leader threatened to kill his team. It was mentioning a blonde assassin that got his attention. He chose once again to go against Mick and find Sara.

In deep space, he was with Sara, choosing Sara three times. Once when they were freezing to death in the cargo hold of the Waverider and he gave her his parka because if anyone was going to survive this he was damned sure it would be her. Later, when Mick had defected and Leonard had to choose to either go with Mick or stay with the rest of his team, he chose Sara. It happened a third time when Mick and Sara were fighting and he knew if he didn’t help one of them, someone would end up dead. He picked Sara.

Wherever the team went, Sara was always on Leonard’s mind.

Then, things changed.

The team was in 1953. Sara and Leonard weren’t paired together; Rip took Leonard off to investigate the case of several missing persons in Harmony Falls, Oregon and Sara went with Stein to the hospital in the hopes of gaining some intel on those who were missing.

The mission actually went fairly well, better than most. Sure, they sort of handed Kendra to Savage on a silver platter, and sure, Jax was temporarily turned into a ravaging bird monster, but besides that, it went according to plan.

It was departing from Harmony Falls when problems arose.

Something went wrong and Sara, Kendra, and Ray watched the Waverider depart without them.

They had no choice but to stay in the 1953. They waited for a little while, knowing that the team would come back for them if they stayed put, but soon, it had been too long.

The team wasn’t coming back for them, and now, they had no choice but to live out the rest of their lives in the fifties.

Sara found that the longer they were there, the duller her colors became. She wondered if that was common, for colors to fade if you were away from your soulmate for too long. She couldn’t look it up, though, because computer access was nonexistent in the fifties.

Around the same time she stopped being able to see color in dim light, she left Ray and Kendra. Sara couldn’t stand being around them and all the love they had while her one real chance at love was fading away before her eyes.

She needed to go somewhere that had no place for love or color or soulmates:

The League of Assassins.

There, she was finally around people like her. There was no attachment, no connection, no emotions. All that was there was a lot of weapons and an unhealthy relationship with murder.

It didn't keep the color from fading.

Less than a year later, it was almost gone. She tried to convince herself that it didn’t matter, that her color wouldn’t be missed, but she couldn’t. All she could do was wait for the day it vanished completely, replaced with black and white once again.

That day didn’t come. What did, however, was Rip, but not just Rip either. Nearly the entire team came to rescue her.

Nobody had ever done anything like that for her before. In fact, she was so blown away that she didn’t quite know how to react. So, she did the first thing that came to mind, and that was to turn them in to R’as.

However, Sara almost immediately noticed something that took her attention away from that: the team was missing two members, Mick and Leonard. Sara tried to think rationally. There were plenty of reasons Rip would leave two of his best fighters behind when breaking into the League of Assassins, but even she had to admit that those reasons got more and more bizarre and unlikely as she went down the list. She knew that the only reason they weren’t there was because something was wrong and Sara’s steadily fading color didn’t help to clear her mind.

Lucky for her, Rip had a plan that let her end that train of thought. Unlucky for her, that plan involved pinning her against Kendra, knowing full well that at least one of them would end up dead.

Something rose in Sara as she watched Ray try to jump in front of Kendra. It was not anger, nor the bloodlust she’d become used to feeling when facing an adversary. This was different. She felt so incredibly frustrated, frustrated that Kendra’s soulmate was eternally guaranteed, and frustrated that she even had Ray, who loved her regardless of whether they were soulmates or not.

Then, there was Sara, watching her color slowly fade away. Then she felt the anger she hadn’t been feeling before. It was red and hot and burned in the back of her throat and consumed her every thought, so much so that she barely had to control her movement as she and Kendra fought.

Rip was almost right. Someone almost did die. Sara was a moment away from slitting Kendra’s throat when something in her vision changed and she froze. It was barely there, but noticeable when she moved her eyes from side to side. A bit of color was creeping into her vision. More yellow had been added to the stone walls of the room, adding to their look of age and deterioration. The torches on the walls glowed an even deeper orange, matching the anger in Sara that was now rapidly subsiding.

But she didn’t have time to worry about color, because Chronus, the bounty hunter that had been following them since even the very beginning of their mission, appeared in the doorway. She fought him, using every method she had to bring him down. She was one second away from ending the whole thing when it happened.

She heard Leonard’s voice before he saw him. He was grimacing, doubled over, with one hand clutching the stone doorframe and the other tucked inside his coat. He looked over the crowded room, stopping only when he found Chronus and then Sara.

As her eyes met his, her vision exploded with color.

It had never been that bright before, never that clear. There was no fading at the edges, no flickering, it was just there, like it was supposed to be.

It was a strange sort of confirmation of what she already expected, given that she was the only one who’d undergone anything at all; she highly doubted anything had happened to Leonard’s vision in the two days he’d been away from her.

Sara wasn’t exactly surprised, the only reason it’d taken her so long to see this clearly was, what? Fear? Doubt? Whatever it was, all she knew was that the time she spent with Leonard was like a dream in a life that so often felt like a nightmare. She didn’t want to let herself believe something like this — love, a soulmate, Leonard — was even possible. More than that, she didn’t want to get her hopes up because she didn’t want to feel the pain when it all came crashing down again.

The rest of the evening flew by; Sara barely paid any attention to what was happening. All she knew was that somehow, she’d ended up in her old room on the Waverider. It looked exactly as she’d left it, because technically, she’d only left forty eight hours ago.

She was sitting on her bed and working at the intricate braids her hair had been pulled into. She was so lost in thought that she had no idea what she was doing, she was just letting her hands do the work and let her mind wander anywhere else.

Sara wasn’t going to tell anyone about the hell she’d been through in Nanda Parbat, not because she thought the war stories or the brutality would be too much to handle, but because how was she supposed to explain that the pain of those things was nothing to how she felt watching her color fade away?

It’s not that she wanted to tell anyone either but she knew that if she found herself alone with Leonard, she’d tell him everything.

She couldn’t though. She couldn’t tell him any of what she’d been through over the last two years. He wouldn’t get it.

Would he?

Sara had to admit Captain Cold was not as cold as he had been at the beginning of this mission.

Still, the last time Leonard was faced with emotions, he killed Mick.

Tried being the operative word.

He didn’t kill Mick. Sure, he stranded him in the middle of nowhere, but the Leonard she’d met would have killed him. Or would he have sided with him?

Sara didn’t know what to think anymore. Everything from the mission was kind of hazy; two years was longer than she thought it was.

Was Leonard still capable of comprehending how hard those years had been for her?

On one hand, why wouldn’t he be? Hadn’t he been through this whole color thing too? Who’s to say he wouldn’t want to talk about it with her?

“Cat got your tongue, Canary?”

Sara jumped to her feet, fingers curling around the hilt of a knife that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

As her vision cleared, she saw Leonard leaning against her doorframe. She relaxed slightly and tucked the knife back into the waistband of her jeans.

“Sorry,” Sara said, not meeting his eyes. She stood up, “Old habits die hard, I guess.”

“Don’t apologize,” Leonard replied.

Sara moved towards the door.

“If I were you I’d stay away from me for a while. Who knows what I could do?” Sara brushed past him, leaving her room and walking down the hallway.

Leonard didn’t move, watching her retreating form until she had rounded a corner. He could tell something was wrong, and it wasn’t the effects of returning to her old assassin ways. Leonard remembered who she was when he first met her; he remembered how she’d been, how she’d acted. This was different.

Before, she’d been fearless, and cocky — arrogant even — about death. She’d seen it as unimportant, meaningless, but clearly thought it would never happen to her.

She may have had a point about that last part.

The Sara that he’d just seen bore almost no resemblance to the one he’d met several months ago.

He saw hesitation in this Sara, fear even.

Leonard didn’t think he’d ever seen Sara afraid before. It was an interesting color on her.

Color.

Was that what this was about? Had she started to see color on Nanda Parbat?

Leonard had thought that maybe Sara had been the reason he’d started seeing color himself, but now he wasn’t so sure.

If not Sara, then who was it?

That didn’t explain how Sara had looked at him when he’d arrived at the headquarters of the League of Assassin. Mick had been surrounded, subject to the team’s arsenal of weapons and abilities with no chance of survival. At the sound of his voice, the whole team had turned. He met Sara’s eyes first and instantly her face went sheet white, her eyes widening. He had no idea why it happened, and still wasn’t entirely sure it had at all; it had lasted a split second before his attention had been pulled to saving Mick, but it had been the only thing on his mind since then.

What was wrong with him? How was he letting one person become this important to him, and just on the assumption that she was the one who’d caused him to see color?

Maybe this distance would be a good thing.

Unfortunately for both of them, it didn’t last long.

The next mission consisted of a few of Leonard’s worst days yet, not because of the mission itself, but because of just a few moments in it.

One such moment was when he accidentally said something stupid. He was manipulative — he got it from his dad — and although he wasn’t always particularly proud of it, it came in handy more often that it should have. To be manipulative, you have to be good with words, and Leonard definitely was. He didn’t have to worry about saying anything stupid because he never really had before.

Then again, he was starting to think that being around Sara was making him become a different person.

For better or for worse.

Either way, he said something to Sara when he didn’t mean to.

And what about your feelings, she’d said

About you?

He hadn’t meant to say it. It had been a deflection, saving him from a completely different conversation he didn’t want to have. Looking back on it, there were a million things he could have said instead, but he’d been too distracted by how clear his color was when he was looking at Sara to put too much thought into what he was saying.

He knew Sara saw right through him. He could tell just in the way she smiled at him before continuing.

She called him an ass on her way out. Nobody else would have gotten away with that, only Sara.

The worst part of this mission happened at its tail-end, and it was something Leonard didn’t think he’d ever forget.

They’d been on some landing strip or something, fighting Savage, his men, and a fleet of atomic robots. It was total chaos, fighting happening both on land and in the air. Then he’d turned and seen Savage holding Sara, one arm pinning her against him, the other holding a knife to her throat.

On the surface, Sara looked nothing more than incredibly angry, and that was enough to send some of Savage’s men a few steps backwards, but as her eyes met Leonard’s, he saw something even scarier: terror.

What do you want?

The words were out before Leonard could stop them. He would do anything to never see Sara looking so scared again.

Except that wasn’t him. He was supposed to be called Captain Cold for a reason. He was supposed to not care.

Well, he did care.

A few more missions went by; nothing particularly exciting happened within them.

Leonard got to see Sara dressed for an afternoon in the Old West, which was a view he definitely enjoyed. He also got to see a younger version of Sara, which was slightly more disconcerting.

Sara tried her best to keep her younger self away from the rest of the team.

She wasn’t entirely sure how this soulmate thing worked, but she was pretty sure nothing good would come of seeing Leonard — or, you know, whoever else her soulmate could be — decades before she was supposed to.

Sara did pretty well until she was bringing Leonard’s infant self back to the Waverider and it dawned on her that she might be handing her future soulmate to herself.

Is that a baby?, she’d asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

Sara searched her face for any changes, and wracked her brain for some sort of new memory, but nothing seemed to have changed.

A half an hour later, she was back in her room and free to ask Gideon what she wanted to know away from prying ears.

“Gideon,” she said into the air.

“Yes, Miss Lance?” the AI answered.

“Gideon,” Sara repeated, “I can see color.”

“I am aware.”

“Okay,” she hesitated, slightly thrown off, “well then can you tell me who my soulmate is?”

“Unfortunately, no, Miss Lance,” Gideon replied, “Unless it is of the cardiovascular nature, I cannot deal with problems of the heart. Is that all?”

“No,” Sara said hurriedly, “I have a question. If my soulmate is who I think it is, then my younger self just saw him, held him, and nothing happened.”

“I assume when you say soulmate, you are referring to Leonard Snart, and in this case, his infant self,” Gideon said.

“Yes,” Sara said. This was the first time she’d heard it out-loud. She wasn’t sure what to think of it. “Why didn’t I see color when I saw him?”

“There is not much science on the subject of soulmates, but there are theories,” Gideon said, “My theory on this particular problem is in that this Leonard Snart is from the past. In his current time, you haven’t been born. Therefor he doesn’t have a soulmate yet.”

“So you think he’s my soulmate?”

“I calculate the probability of Mr. Snart being your soulmate is—”

“Actually, never mind,” Sara cut the AI off, “I don’t want to know.”

While the last few missions were rough for Leonard, the next one was just as difficult for Sara.

They were in 2166, and fighting Vandal Savage at the height of his power. Sara wasn’t sure how this could possibly be a good plan, but against her better judgement, she was trusting Rip Hunter.

They went to a speech, given by Savage to some of his men (it had been astonishingly easy to sneak into; Savage’s security was abysmal).

Then, they’d seen her.

Cassandra.

Or Cassie, as Leonard liked to call her.

Sara had never been a particularly jealous person, probably because she’d never had to be. She was usually the object of people’s straying eyes, not the other way around. It was a part of her that she’d never been particularly proud of.

She’d never missed it more.

“You’ve gotten pretty tight with Savage’s daughter,” Sara said to Leonard when they found themselves alone in the mess hall. She had gone in to get some lunch, and Leonard had already been there when she arrived. He was making hot chocolate — he always made it a big ordeal, making the whole thing from scratch and complaining about the “shitty instant crap” the entire time — and he had two mugs on the table.

What are you doing?

Cassie’s never had hot chocolate. You’ve never lived until you have hot chocolate.

Cassie?

“What can I say,” he replied, “abusive fathers have me seeing red.”

Sara stared at him, trying to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach. It couldn’t be a coincidence that the first and only time Leonard directly referred to color happened to be right after he met Cassandra, could it?

“If your hope was for me to be green with envy,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “I think you’ll be disappointed.”

Their eye contact was held for longer than two “just friends” should have been able to get away with. Sara’s eyes were narrowed, one eyebrow cocked. Leonard had a smirk plastered across his face.

It was Sara who broke their gaze as she turned to leave the mess hall.

Leonard thought Sara would avoid him like the plague after what he’d said to her, but they returned Cassandra to her own time, and things went back to normal. He thought the quick return to normalcy may have been because of Savage’s presence on the Waverider. He had replaced his daughter in the cell on the Waverider mere hours after it had been inhabited by Cassandra. He was just as stubborn as his daughter, but much less capable of reasoning.

Savage being on board made Sara nervous. She hated being nervous; it brought back residual League habits: jumpiness, always being on edge, one hand unfailingly gripping the hilt of a knife or the collapsed batons in the back pocket of her jeans.

For some reason, being with Leonard dampened those effects. It wasn’t that he was calm; if she wanted calm, she’d probably be sitting next to Kendra, but she wasn’t. She was sitting next to Leonard, him in his usual seat on the bridge, her sitting with her back against it, her head so close to his shoulder when either of them moved, she brushed against the leather of his jacket.

Just the way they were nonchalantly passing the beer bottle back and forth was making her feel better. The sheer force of his aloofness — the way he treated the presence of an immortal psychopath on the Waverider as a mere inconvenience to him, rather than an actual threat — was enough to ease even some of her nerves.

Sara wanted Savage off of her ship. Even more than that, she wanted him dead. She’d always just assumed that’s how all of this would end, because that had been the plan the whole time, but now, half of the team wanted to spare his life (although if she was being completely honest, she shouldn’t be so surprised considering the outcome of most of their past missions).

Hell, she’d kill Savage herself if she could, but only Kendra could do that.

Maybe that’s why his presence on the ship had her so on edge. Next to Vandal Savage, Sara was completely powerless. Sure, she could hold her own in a fight against him, but not even two tours in the League of Assassins gave her the ability to kill him.

Maybe that’s why she hung around the team’s resident Rogues, because she was sure they felt the same way about all of this, they just didn’t show it.

Until they did.

When Mick brought up the idea of hijacking the jumpship and returning to Central City, Leonard agreed. It was more of an impulse move, a product of his anger at Rip for what he’d done to Jax, for his betrayal.

When Sara heard the plan, she didn’t exactly argue. It’s not that she didn’t want to, it’s that if she said anything, she’d say everything. She’d say how much she liked being around him, how so much of her had become dependent on him, even though it went against so much of what she believed in. She’d tell him about color, and how she didn’t want to go through losing it again and how she definitely didn’t want him going through the same thing. She’d tell him everything.

So she didn’t say anything at all.

The Rogues’ plan fell through, which neither Leonard nor Sara were particularly surprised about. Neither of them were overly disappointed either.

Walking to where the jumpship was docked, Leonard had felt a twinge of guilt — an emotion he was somewhat used to feeling by now — about leaving Sara behind.

He felt an even worse emotion about leaving Sara behind with Vandal Savage onboard the Waverider. Sure, Sara had managed to avoid permanent death for years, but Savage didn’t need to avoid it at all; he was defying all human function without lifting a finger.

Leonard didn’t want to doubt her skills, but he didn’t want to find out later, when all the color in his vision he’d gotten so used to suddenly disappeared, that things had gone sideways.

He wanted to be there with her to help if things went sideways.

It did.

Savage got out of his prison cell — because Ray’s an idiot; Leonard had said it all along and no one had listened. He shut down the ships central controls. They were flying blind — Sara was flying blind.

That left the rest of the team to hold off Savage and the brainwashed Carter Hall.

Leonard fought back harder than usual, trying his best to keep them away from the bridge. He needed to keep them away from the bridge, not because he particularly cared about what was happening there, but because Sara was there.

He needed Sara to be safe. He had no ulterior motive, and he wasn’t getting anything out of it, but he knew he needed Sara to be safe. That’s it.

That’s why his heart plummeted into his stomach when he’d been hit, and the last thing on his mind as the world went black was that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to see the blue of Sara’s eyes when he regained consciousness.

He did, in fact, regain his ability to see color when he woke up.

Sara was fine, royally pissed off, but fine.

“I wish I’d been there more to help bring down Savage,” he told her later. He was in Sara’s room, leaning against the foot of her bed and watching her deal out a deck of cards. They were waiting, biding their time until Rip came back and told them what they would do next.

“I dunno, you seemed pretty comfortable when we found you,” Sara responded, doling out the last of the cards and picking up her own pile.

“That wasn’t exactly my choice,” he replied, “I would choose helping you over being passed out against a wall in a heartbeat.”

“I think most people would,” she said, choosing to ignore any hidden meaning in his words, “Sorry to hear your plan to get home didn’t work out.”

Leonard shrugged, “I’m not.”

They fell into silence after that, each concentrating on the game in front of them. They played for the win first, not the company, although that was an added bonus.

Leonard was thankful for the silence later, because it allowed him to hear the unfamiliar noises from within the Waverider. He had sort of a sixth sense for when things were about to go wrong, perhaps because in his past, it often did. He had needed to recognize a bad situation before it happened so he could avoid it. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but he sure as hell didn’t want whatever it was near Sara.

We need to find somewhere to hide.

Why do we need to find somewhere to hide?

Alexa.

Sure, the word Alexa wasn’t exactly the best explanation, but it was all the explanation he had time to give before they had to get moving — or more specifically, moving through the Waverider’s ventilation system. They were both aware of how uncomfortable the other was; Sara knew that Leonard had never done well with being in close proximity to another person, and Leonard knew that closed spaces reminded Sara of parts of her life she desperately wanted to forget.

They both stayed quiet though, not sure how to bring up their own discomfort, or their awareness of the other’s. They listened to the sounds of their team being dragged away. They waited until the only thing they could hear was the sound of their own breathing, then ten minutes more.

Finally, Leonard decided it was safe to emerge from their hiding spot.

The next few hours were a blur of chaos and confusion. He pulled a gun on Sara; an action fueled by his own fear of losing her, and one he instantly regretted. He apologized for it later — not well, he had to admit, but he wasn’t very good at apologizing, never had been — but she was still upset with him. He didn’t blame her.

You want to steal a kiss from me, Leonard? You better be one hell of a thief.

From anybody else, those words would have meant a rejection, but from her, it was something else. It was a challenge.

Leonard was never one to back down from a challenge.

It turns out, he didn’t have to.

The decision to sacrifice himself at the Oculus Wellspring was almost a no-brainer.

Almost.

He couldn’t let Mick stay, not after all the times Leonard had gone against him during the mission: taking him out of 2046, stranding him in the middle of nowhere, the countless times he’d chosen the team over his partner. He couldn’t add another instance to the list, it wasn’t right.

But that still left Sara. Sara was what made this decision almost a no-brainer.

Leonard was almost positive now that Sara was the one who’d caused the arrival of the color in his vision. He’d had no idea, back at the beginning of the mission, that he’d be the one taking it away from her, at least, not in such a brutal way.

He wished it didn’t have to be like this. He wished there was another way, that he didn’t have to hold down the failsafe. He wanted to follow Sara back to the Waverider and continue their conversation about me, and you, and me and you. He wanted to talk about color, he wanted to get lost in her blue eyes and run his fingers through her blonde hair.

But he didn’t tell her any of it. He didn’t have time. So when Sara kissed him, he tried to put as much of what he wished he could say into kissing her back, how one look at the beginning of a ludicrous time travel mission had made his entire life light up.

She pulled away, but didn’t leave him just yet. As her eyes traveled across his face, trying to memorize every detail, his eyes remained locked on hers. He took in every pigment, every shade of blue, because if this was was, he wanted her eyes to be the last good thing her remembered.

Once she’d dragged Mick onto the Waverider and propped him up against his usual chair on the main deck, Sara sat down and squeezed her eyes shut. Rip directed Gideon to fly the Waverider away from the Oculus as fast as she could.

Then came the explosion.

Gideon clearly had gotten the timeship out of range, but even without seeing it, Sara knew. She heard the rumbling crash roll through the air. With it came the quaking vibrations that shook the Waverider even with the distance the AI had put between them and the Oculus.

She knew she needed to open her eyes. She knew that they were traveling further and further away from Leonard and if he was still alive, she was the only one who’d know.

As the Waverider trembled, Sara hated herself for thinking there was even a chance he could still be alive. She knew Snart had to be dead. No one, not even the elusive Captain Cold could survive an explosion like that. It just wasn’t possible.

Then why were her eyes still closed? Why was she holding onto the slightest possibility that she’d open her eyes and see color if she knew it was impossible?

The quaking of the timeship had finally subsided. The team was silent. Nobody moved.

Slowly, Sara raised her head. Her eyes were still closed, but she could see the brightness of the Waverider's tech through her eyelids; nothing gave her an inkling of whether she could still see color though.

She had to just get it over with. She had to do it.

She opened her eyes.

Gone was the brown of Rip’s duster, gone was the yellow of Jax’s suit and the red of Ray’s.

Gone was Leonard.

All she saw was grey.

Sara met Mick’s eyes. She silently gave one nod, answering a hundred unasked questions.

There was the proof.

Now, she knew for sure that Leonard was her soulmate. Now, she knew for sure Leonard was dead.

And that was that.

I hope you enjoyed this! Depending on the outcome of season 2, there might be a sequel to this story in your future :)

#lot #lot ff #legends of tomorrow #captain canary #mine #it has been a very long time since I did a long-ass oneshot #i had fun though #nine months of fun #it was a long pregnancy #jk

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hurt-spock · 8 years

Text

Beast- Chapter 1 & 2

I was requested to write this a while back and I did the first chapter, then started a second before going iffy about it.

As I’ve revisiting some of my older stuff, I re-read this and dded some more to it. It became a bit of a debate between Spock & Kirk and about the importance of reporting a rape- something I agree with. So, not sure I’ll post this to A03 but time will tell.

Warnings: Non-con

He could call out.

Ensign Anderson was close by. The trees and undergrowth were thick and the wildlife within was teaming with life. The noises of the forest had been enchanting. But he still recognised that if he yelled, Anderson would hear him above the sounds of nature.

The Ensign was a young, mostly inexperienced, crewman who had been on two landing party missions so far. The first had involved said landing party bringing back a slightly toxic specimen as Anderson had misread the decimal point for safety. The second time he had caused offence to the native people and it had taken some work to convince them that they were there out of respect and to learn about their people.

Spock had been certain that this assignment would be much better for him.

Previous reports and exploration had found no hostile natives, no dangerous specimens in this area, just a lot of interesting and safe species to collect data on.

He wondered if it had been one of the other members of the Science crew here if he'd have already called out for assistance.

Yet he doubted he would. He would be putting that crew members life in jeopardy and that was unacceptable.

The humanoid males had surrounded him, four of them who stayed in crouched positions as they watched him with dark eyes, long hair obscuring most of their features. They were smaller than most human males, from what Spock could observe, and they wore no clothing. The planets atmosphere was warm with two suns present, one a little further than Earth's own and one much further out.

It kept the planet in a constantly warm state with long hours of daylight.

They told him in their native tongue that they had been watching them since their arrival. Spock was their leader.

Two of them moved in on him with incredible speed and he did not fight them off, allowing them to go through with whatever ritual they had. They pulled at his arms until he fell to his knees and then a third, strong and powerful for such small humanoids, was grabbing his legs and the first two pulled him down by the shoulders.

His lack of fight to start with, he realised, had been a mistake and even with as much effort as he could manage, he could not move them.

The fourth of the group lowered itself down beside him and pulled at his trousers. It clearly didn't understand the concept of clothing and merely pulled on the fabric with rough hands until the fabric ripped beneath it's almost claw like hands.

He could feel the air, cool to his own temperature preferences, against the exposed flesh of his stomach. Then he heard the sounds of ripping as they continued to remove his clothing. They stopped when they exposed his genitalia, they seemed confused for a moment, before they quickly flipped him over and continued with the removal of his clothing. He felt his underwear being shoved down, exposing him.

He kept his head to the side, the smell of soil rich as he breathed it in as he gasped for breaths. Terror clung to his heart but he forced himself to breath calm, deep breaths.

Panicking would not help the situation.

The ones holding him down gripped tighter and he couldn't help but tense himself at the inevitable.

The pain was almost enough to make him call out. He wanted to crawl away from it, but he couldn't move an inch, they held him so tightly.

The male made small, animal like grunts as it thrust forcefully. Spock could hear his own grunts of pain in his throat and forced himself to stop, concentrated on anything but the pain, took his mind away from what was happening to him and thought about the situation logically. It was nothing more than a show of dominance. An animal like urge to show who was stronger when threatened.

He kept his mind away from what was happening, let himself be washed over with a numbness, like his mind and body were apart from one another. He could feel his body moving with the thrusts but he could not feel the pain of it.

He could taste the soil, he realised dimly. The earthiness as his mouth opened to draw in shallow breaths, everything felt far away and distant.

He wasn't sure if it was some sort of shock from the attack or trying to keep his mind off of his own pain, but he was alarmed by his minds own slowness. He felt pain in one arm as sharp nails bit into his flesh. Confusion from one of the humanoids as green blood trickled from the slight wound on his arm and then the hot mouth as the same one that inflicted the wound tasted the blood.

It scowled at the taste and wiped its mouth messily, green blood smearing across it's face.

Spock wondered how much longer it would last. It seemed like he had been enduring this for hours, though he knew it was minutes. The humanoid impaling him made frustrated thumps on his back with its fists. Spock felt hollow as he felt the bruising fists vibrate through his body. He pounded on him again before he shifted his position slightly and continued the abuse.

It finally came to an end as he felt the hot fluid spurt out inside of him. He had a brief flash of fear as he wondered if they had actually finished with him, but then he pulled out and stood over him and Spock's arms and legs were released. The others stood and they silently crept back into the undergrowth.

He couldn't move at first. But then his logical mind kicked back in and he knew he needed too. He pulled himself off the ground and crawled over to a tree and sat with his back against the bark. He pulled his clothing to cover himself the best he could. He was decent though he would be unable to move without risk of exposure however for the moment, he did not care.

He needed to sit and piece himself back together. He needed to be logical, he needed to suppress his emotions and he needed time to be able to achieve it.

“Commander?” Came the shaky voice of Ensign Anderson.

Spock knew without a doubt that the Ensign knew what had happened here, and judging by the look on his face, he witnessed some of it. “Ensign,” Spock acknowledged because he didn't know what else he could say right then.

He crept a little closer, kept low and quiet, cautious and alert.

Spock noted he still had his sample case with him and he moved over to where Spock's had fallen to the ground. He took Spock's case which was full of samples already and removed his communicator.

“This is Ensign Anderson, requesting one to beam up from my location.”

“Received Ensign. Standby.”

Anderson closed the communicator. “I'll be right back. Don't move.”

And with that, Anderson was gone.

Alone, and grimly aware of the fact after having the comfort of a fellow crew member briefly, Spock pulled out his phaser and set it to stun.

Anderson headed quickly to the science lab, thrusting the case into one of the others working there. “Orders of Commander Spock, can you record and file these for him.”

Ensign Jones looked somewhat confused that Anderson had been picked to do a task for Commander Spock, but thought nothing else of it. They all knew that Spock believed they all had potential for greatness.

Sighing, Jones got to work.

Anderson picked up a new empty case and removed the compartments for the samples. He then retrieved some standard pants, checking the computer for Commander Spock's size, and stuffed them in the case. He let out a nervous breath before heading to sickbay.

It was busy enough in there. Not with patients, though there were a few, but general work being completed by the staff. He sought out the CMO and headed over, intercepted by a nurse before he got more than a few paces.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” she asked politely.

“I need to speak to Doctor McCoy.”

She glanced to where he was looking and smiled sympathetically. “I understand. I can get you a male nurse to ease your discomfort,” she suggested helpfully. He scowled at her and brushed her aside.

“I need Doctor McCoy.” he insisted, raising his voice to get the man's attention.

The Nurse blushed as all eyes were on them. “I'm sorry Doctor,” she said as he came over to them.

“It's fine, I'll handle this,” he said, his face serious. The nurse departed and he turned to the Ensign. “What's the problem?” he asked, his eyes running over the young man looking for injuries.

“I need your help, Doctor.” He said seriously.

“What's wrong?” McCoy's tone was a little impatient.

Anderson started to walk out of Sickbay and indicated the Doctor follow him. He sighed but followed him anyway. Once outside, he didn't stop walking, but he stayed close to McCoy, speaking quietly even though the halls were mostly empty.

“It's Commander Spock. He needs your assistance down on the planet.”

“He's hurt?” McCoy noticed weariness in Anderson's body language.

“Yes.”

“Did he send you to get me?” McCoy asks.

“No, Sir. But he needs you.”

McCoy didn't ask anything else, just followed the Ensign's lead.

Spock was aware that he was shaking. He couldn't stop himself, no matter what he tried.

He could feel the dampness from the leaked fluids below him and he wanted to move, to sit somewhere else, but it seemed such a waste of energy, so he stayed where he was. He closed his eyes, he was certain it was just for a moment, but he jolted when he heard the sound of the transporter, indicating Anderson's return. He felt reassured by his return, although he realised he was going to have to come up with a plan to get back to the ship at some point.

It took him a moment to register two bodies that had beamed back. His confusion was clearly evident.

“It's McCoy,” The Doctor said, wasting no time in getting the tricorder out. Anderson stayed a few steps away, keeping a look out. “Kid, where's the rest of the landing party?”

“They were off checking out a clearing near some water.”

“I think we should get them back to the ship.” McCoy said.

“Yes, Sir.”

“They will want to know why,” Spock said.

“It's covered, don't worry,” McCoy assured him.

Anderson watched as McCoy waved a piece of equipment over Spock's lower abdomen. He let out a quick breath before taking his communicator out again. “This is Ensign Anderson. Myself and Commander Spock have discovered an injured animal of the planet with a sizeable wound. Commander Spock has called Dr McCoy down for samples and to get a look at the animal before we beam up. The rest of the landing part is to beam up on his command.”

“Received,” came the calls back “Ready to beam up, Sir.”

McCoy took out his own communicator and held it open for Spock “Energise.” he said, managing to sound close enough to normal.

McCoy snapped it shut before taking out some hypos. “Okay, this will get you past the pain, so you can walk back to your quarters with me and this will give you a boost of energy so you don't collapse on the way there.”

“All very well, Doctor, but my attire is going to be harder to explain.”

“No,” Anderson interrupted. “Um, sorry Sir, I took the liberty of dealing with that already.” He opened the case and removed the pants.

“Good job,” McCoy said. He turned back to Spock. “We'll give that a few minutes to work and then we'll beam up.”

While they waited, McCoy pulled the new pants up over Spock's torn ones. “We should go now,” he said.

McCoy nodded. “This is McCoy, Three to beam up.”

“Aye. Stand by.”

Within seconds they were back on the ship.

“Anderson, could you take these to the science labs, Spock, I want to hear more about your theories on what you think that animal was..” McCoy was saying, the whole time they walked through sickbay, not giving anyone a chance to speak to them.

Despite the Doctor's order to go to the science labs, Anderson followed behind them, feeling strangely protective over his Commander. He got to the door before Spock's quarters before he realised he should stop.

Spock wandered inside, but McCoy noticed the boy stop.

“I'll be right in, Spock.” McCoy said.

Spock nodded as the door closed between them. McCoy turned to Anderson. “I've got to take care of him properly now, okay?”

Anderson nodded. Stupidly, he felt tears prick his eyes, as though all that had happened had only just hit him.

Adrenaline was wearing off and what had actually happened became all too real. He felt his lip wobble and felt an idiot for being so weak in front of the CMO.

“Everything you did- that was the right thing to do. Okay? Don't ever doubt that.”

“It wasn't though.” He said. His voice cracking. “I- I got there and saw what they were doing to him and I-I didn't... I didn't try and stop them.”

McCoy looked sympathetically at him, which Anderson hadn't expected. He expected anger or rage at his confession.

McCoy let out a sigh. “Look, they over powered him and let me tell you, a Vulcan is a hell of a lot stronger than a human. So if they over powered him you bet your ass they'd have beat the hell out of you too.” He let out another sigh. “I have to go and take care of him right now okay, but when I'm done, I'm coming to find you and I need you to tell me what happened, okay? So go to your quarters and wait for me.”

He swiped away the tears that had streaked down his face, sniffed and nodded his head, and in second he was gone.

McCoy turned and entered the room. Inside, Spock was stood stock still, doing nothing. “Spock?” he said gently. He took out another hypo and shot it into Spock's neck. It took seconds for the drug to take affect and Spock was slumped in his arms. He managed to get him to his bed and lay him down.

He turned the temperature in the room up, to make sure Spock would be comfortable.

Chapter Two

“Hey, you mind if I sit here?”

Anderson looked up from where he was sat, breakfast uneaten in front of him. “Oh, go ahead.” He was tempted to get up, leave the newcomer to the table, but before he had a chance to do anything the young man in front of him was offering a hand. “I'm one of the new recruits. My names Charlie.”

He shook the offered hand. “Emmanuel Anderson. Everyone calls me Anderson.”

“Emmanuel's a great name.”

He chuckled. “I'm not so sure.”

“You look like you had a rough night. You been hitting the bar?”

“No, I just... had a bad night..” He spotted Dr McCoy enter the room, followed by the Captain and to his surprise, Mr Spock. He was clearly staring and the trio, enough for it to be a little odd.

Charlie looked in the same direction. “You a little awe struck by the Captain?”

He laughed nervously. “Yeah. I guess so. I erm, I need to go. It was nice meeting you Charlie.”

“You too.”

And with that Anderson abandoned his breakfast and headed out of the room.

When Bones stepped out of Spock's quarters after having spent the whole night making excuses as to why he shouldn't leave he didn't expect to literally bump into Jim just outside the door.

“Just the two I was looking for,” Jim said. “Join me for breakfast please, gentlemen.”

McCoy looked back round to Spock who raised one eyebrow and then gestured for McCoy to go first. He followed Jim as they walked to breakfast in a mostly comfortable silence, Kirk asking some pleasantries of McCoy as they went.

McCoy noticed Anderson's awkward exit shortly after they arrived, he looked to Spock who either hadn't noticed or had done an amazing job of acting like he hadn't noticed. Either option was entirely plausible.

“So Bones, what were you doing visiting Spock so early in the morning? I didn't think you liked anything before 7am ship time,” Kirk said, grinning at the man before taking another bite of his omelette.

“Just trying to coerce Mr Spock into his next physical exam,” McCoy said.

“That is a lie, Doctor.”

Kirk looked between the pair as McCoy glared at Spock, a silent communication happening between the two.

“Care to elaborate on that, Mr Spock.”

After continuing the eye contact with McCoy some more, Spock turned to regard the Captain. “Not presently, Captain. It is of no great concern.”

McCoy clearly had a difference of opinion to Spock about that as his face turned ruddy in anger and repressing said anger.

“I think I need to hear this, gentlemen.”

“Sir, now is not an appropriate time,” Spock intervened.

“Well my appetite is sufficiently ruined.”

“Not here, Jim,” McCoy adds, guessing that Kirk is expecting them to start talking now.

“Can we go somewhere then?”

In one of the ready rooms, Kirk agreed to sit while McCoy insisted in having a word in private with Spock outside before they spoke to Kirk. They eventually arrived back inside, Spock coming and sitting opposite Jim. McCoy lingered beside Spock before facing Jim. “What he has to say is his to say alone, Jim. I'll come and see you later.”

Jim frowned slightly. “Very well.”

Spock waited for the door to close then ordered it locked. Then, more surprisingly, he ordered the privacy code enabled for the room. No one but the Captain, Spock, McCoy or Scott would be able to access the content of the room, classifying the conversation that was about to take place.

“Doctor McCoy did not want me to discuss this matter with you. However, I feel that you should know, Captain.”

“Go ahead, Spock.” Kirk said, his face blank.

“Yesterday on the planet I did not encounter an attacked animal. I was attacked by a group of humanoid creatures-”

“Attacked?” Kirk repeated, his eyes quickly travelling Spock's body for a telltale injury he had missed.

“You will see no physical evidence, Captain. The attack was a primitive display of power, sexual in nature.”

The words stopped everything. Kirk just heard them. And nothing else. They rang over and over in his mind. “It was...” was all he muttered.

“The doctor said you would have an issue with this. Jim, I wish to assure you that I am perfectly fine-”

“You're not perfectly fine, Spock! You were just-” and he cut himself off, afraid to say the words.

“Jim, I received excellent care from Doctor McCoy. He was not visiting me early this morning, instead staying over night in my quarters. We spoke about the incident. About the way it is used as a weapon of power over others. It was a violation, Jim, but a violation of the body. The mind of a Vulcan is everything, and mine remains untouched. In fact, the skin to skin contact with the creatures allowed me an insight to the beings. The are simple. There was no malice except an attempt to frighten off a larger specie they did not understand. Therefore we should ensure that it is noted that this planet not be disturbed.”

“Spock, no matter how you have reasoned this, I can't just let this go.”

“Is it not my choice, Jim?”

“Yes, but-”

“In different circumstances, I agree that punishment is necessary. In this instant, where a specie does not understand complex social interactions as we do, I believe we would be doing more harm to them. Please, speak to Doctor McCoy. He does agree with me on this matter.”

“Spock, for years, this sort of thing was allowed on Earth. Women, who were weaker and more vulnerable, were made to suffer by man. And in the end, not just women. It can happen to anyone, male or female and by any one.”

“Yes Jim, I am aware of Earth's history.”

“You're missing the point. When all of that happened, so many times people would not speak out- for fear.”

“I can assure you Jim, I am not afraid.”

“But you won't make those responsible pay!”

“Because they do not understand. They are not civilised, not even slightly. You would have me take them to court? Do you wish for me to get my own revenge, or allow you to seek vengeance for me?”

“No-”

“That is what you are suggesting.”

“Spock-”

“Jim, please. If this had happened in a civilised society, I would seek a punishment. I do not believe we will achieve any satisfactory conclusion by going that route in this situation.”

“Spock, I promise I will discuss this with Bones, but I am still far from happy about this.”

“Noted, Captain.”

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whoisonlinedatingfor · 8 years

Text

So... I got tinder again, and I matched with this guy who seemed to have a pretty long profile, a decent assortment of pictures, and we had some decent back and forth conversation. He works in finance, as a trading analyst. I thought he looked pretty cute from his photos, and he suggested we meet up for drinks. It didn’t work out until after christmas, but he eventually texted me and we set up a date for before new years. He insisted on coming all the way up to where I lived, because he “always wanted to check out” my neighborhood. I was like lol ok... it’s far though. But he said he wanted to, but he had to see whether he was gonna have a long night at work. He would let me know by 4 pm.

By 3 pm he texted me saying he was sorry, it looked like it was gonna be a long night. i was like ah ok. That’s unfortunate... i was kinda bummed. First date in a while, I was ready to go out, meet someone new. He was sorry, he said, he asked if we could postpone it to next week.

Blah. School was starting. I didn’t even want to think about trying to travel around when school was in session, when I had to be in lab at 10AM every day. I guess that doesn’t really sound early but I usually wake up around 8AM during school days. So I said, “ah sorry, I don’t think so, school is starting and i won’t know my schedule and I’m really busy.” Fully intending to just let this one go. I even started making plans with this other guy (who was a self proclaimed “sapiosexual”) bc at that point I just wanted to fuck someone who found me attractive. But I feel like I knew he was gonna be just like that other consultant dude I tried seeing in Chicago. He would probably be a no go. But it was just drinks, hey? and maybe a few cuddles??

First dude, let’s just call him Sunshine, to his credit, actually texted back apologizing about his work schedule and said it wasn’t my fault, but maybe I would be down to get brunch next weekend? And I said, well, I have to do some volunteering at this clinic... but maybe sunday? He said that worked for him. At this point, it was still iffy for me because I knew I probably would be too tired to think about going out next weekend, to meet someone who probably was mediocre, and plus, meeting someone when you’re not up to meeting anyone is just the biggest waste of everyone’s time. So I decide I’m gonna go to my parents’ house and make them happy for once. I spend a few hours baking cheesecake and banana bread with my mom. Anywho, to my surprise, he texts me at 7:50pm saying that he got out early! Was I still free to meet up?

The jolt to my system was unmistakable. My palms started sweating. I casually started hyperventilating. I looked at my mom and I was like, I need to go. She asked me if I was meeting up with a friend. I didn’t even answer. I wolfed down dinner, sunshine and I made plans for him to come up here (he insisted, which I thought was hilarious. I was like, where’s the catch?) and we picked a bar and everything. And then he looked it up and realized travel time was >1h. And he was like ah... you’re a superhero for living there, you know? (just because he lives downtown in the middle of all the action; probably this was the furthest he’d ever traveled for an -uncertain- lay) I thought it was all kind of surreal and hilarious.. I wondered who was actually coming to meet me. I run all the way to my apartment, and I quickly shower and get ready, and there’s no time for makeup, for anything. Just me, my chapstick, and lotion on my showered skin. K. Cool. I didn’t even wash my hair, it just smelled like stir fry... hopefully he wouldn’t care?

He calls me, and I’m relieved to hear that he has a normal (bordering on deep!!!) voice, and he sounds like a normal person and he’s actually almost here, his phone is just dying. i told him to meet me near my apartment so that we could walk there, since I wasn’t sure what ridiculous bar this was that he had picked from the two options we had, and where exactly it was. I had to ask the roommate/friend of the guy I had a crush on at school for bar recommendations in the area because I literally was so clueless. Sure, I’ve lived here forever, but I don’t exactly go out drinking here. I go downtown.

I realize I’m probably late. I run down to the bus stop, and he’s already there, looking at his phone. I jaywalk the hell out of this terrible street with terrible construction blocking my view, and I’m like heyyyyy sorry I’m late, have you been waiting long? I brought you a power cord and a power bank, so that if nothing else goes right, at least you can get home. He laughed and was really appreciative, except then I walked apparently on the “wrong side” of the street at some point, and it made him uncomfortable and he said the guy always needs to walk street side to protect from splashes and stuff. And I was like ah... well what if someone in the alleyway tries to mug me? He was like well, I got fat so maybe I’ll just surround you with my girth and protect you. Or actually you have a black belt, you could just protect us both.

The bar was hilariously terrible. Middle aged, heavily made up women. It was ladies night, I found out after. The drinks were terrible. The lighting was terrible. It was loud, and it was quiet. We had to shout to hear over the music, and then adjust volume as the song petered out. It was truly an experience. I thought I was gonna die from awkwardness, but he persevered, bless his soul. We got 3 drinks each, and then I said I was gonna be done after that cuz it was just a waste of drinking capacity. He was debating whether he should uber home or take transit, cuz he was “poor” because he spends 200$ every time he goes out drinking. I thought about it, and finally I was like, well, you can stay over if you want. And he’s hemming and hawing about my roommates, wouldn’t they mind, yadda yadda. i was like lol... theyre not home...

After that, his tone completely changed LMAO. He was like, sure! If you don’t mind. And I said nah it’s ok, can’t have you dying on your first foray here. Wouldn’t be good press for the neighborhood. And we started walking to get food and he was like oh nevermind, let’s just go back to your place. And I was like ok... so we started heading back in the opposite direction. And he’s kind of half wrapping his arm around me, and I lead him upstairs, and I’d left the lights on and it was all nice and beautifully moody, and we hang up our jackets like civilized people, and he asked for the tour but I was already heading to my room, and he follows me, and kisses me, and it was decent, and I was like ok this is ok.

And then things just start happening, and I had to pee but it wasn’t awkward like that first time, I was still turned on, thank you alcohol for lubricating everything, and then we had sex and it was good, great, actually, and then he showered, and asked if he could play music, and I heard him singing, and his voice is pretty good. And then we settle in to cuddle, and he gets hard again, we have sex again. And then he dozes off and snores for a bit, and I try to settle into sleep because the cuddles feel so good but I can’t sleep cuz I’m too excited, and then he wakes up with a boner and we go again, and then we just both can’t sleep cuz we’re both giggling and joking around because its 5 in the morning now so everything is hilarious even if it’s not, and we’re both so comfortable and happy (or maybe just me who knows) and then we wake up, its light out, its 7 am, he asks if I wanna go for round 4, but I’m legit in half dream state so I’m like no. And then he gets out, and the bed is cold now :( and he cuddles me for a bit and kisses me and then he leaves, and then I go back to bed.

We’ve been texting since then but I met up with him the day after and I feel like I was really awkward, or he was awkward, or we were both awkward, but he’s good at not letting it get to him, and he walked me to the train station after so I could go meet up with a different friend. It was a crazy day of seeing a lot of friends. Our texting is really good though, lots of chemistry there I feel. And we have a ton of inside jokes... Idk.

I felt really sad when he didn’t text me back for most of the day, even though he said he was out with his cousin, doing touristy things. I feel like I’m falling into the same trap again. He “drunk texted” me, very coherently, that relationships scared him, because I told him my friend also broke up with his gf, and I said yeah, me too, kinda. But Idk if that’s a sign that he’s not gonna be into the idea of being in one? I’m overthinking this as usual, it’s too early. I might not even like him that much. And I might be trying to fit him into a mold of perfect bf when that’s not fair to either of us. Just because we had one good night of incredible chemistry. I guess that’s pretty rare in and of itself, and probably made possible by the fact that my roommates were not there, so we could be as loud as we liked.

Idk. I keep telling myself to take this slow, but I literaly do not know how. One day at a time, I said, with false hope. I always rush things along. I want things to happen. I need things to happen. He said I seemed chill, which was hilarious. We all know how that goes. Me, chill. Maybe this time, it will be different? Maybe this time, I can just take it one day at a time. Maybe I don’t have to think about the future. And there are no worries, really, because I have an IUD, and I pray that I am lucky and that he is not lying when he says he is clean. Everything is TBD and I guess that scares me, but isn’t that all of life?

#tinder #thoughts #dating #online dating #new boy #overthinking

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axkcolin-blog · 6 years

Text

inauthentic | m

Pairing: Jung Hoseok x Reader Genre: mature, romance, college au, (smut eventually) Word Count: 3140

“11:53….I should be leaving any time now.” You slipped your phone into your butt pocket.

You plopped onto your bed while taking one last gaze around the room you knew you wouldn’t see again for awhile. Despite the stuff that was obviously missing, you could still remember your childhood and the many things that had taken place here. You had your fair share of good and bad memories in your room -more have been unpleasant than pleasant, but irrelevant to you now- To some, leaving home may seem like the biggest blessing in the world, but you were pretty much a combination of happy and bummed. Today, you were going to move out and get into your dorm; you needed to get all your belongings out since the semester was going to begin soon. Not to mention, orientation was going to be the following day. In all honesty though, time had passed by too quickly for you to register. Well, whatever now, it was not something you could really dwell on at the moment. Besides there were plenty of other times to reflect on your life and feel nostalgic, but right now wasn’t that time.

You scrolled through your phone looking at your notifications. A lot of your friends and family wished you luck in your next milestone in life. Although you had already did your rounds of farewells and goodbyes, they still wished you well. That was nice. Even your grandparents commuted 2 hours from where they lived to stop by and give you money, and of course, a few tips on how to survive college. The kind of tips they said, went like ‘make smart decisions’ and ‘don’t feel peer pressured to do anything’ typa stuff. Your grandparents were especially strict on the no drinking rule, telling you that it was a big no-no, because nothing supposedly good ever came from it. Well, you had to admit that some part of that is true, since you were infamously known from your group of friends to do idiotic things when you were drunk. Anyways, you promised you wouldn’t do so, but it was a broken promise to begin with either way.

A knock on your door frame interrupted your thoughts. “Hey, your dad and I finished up everything, we should start heading out.”

“Got it!” you replied, as your mom walked downstairs.

“Well, this is it.” You took a deep breath and hopped off your bed, following after your mother.

As soon as you got in, your parents drove off. A minute hadn’t even passed yet, until your mom went on again, about how you couldn’t afford to fail, literally. You sighed and slouched further into your seat. Your parents had given you this talk so many times; it was repetitive. They had, had this conversation so much, you actually remembered what they said- word for word. And once they started going on the topic about why you shouldn’t be drinking, you lost it and immediately attempted to force yourself asleep. Sleeping was always much more preferable than hearing your parents lecture you about stuff you shouldn’t do. They were telling you not to do things, you knew that had done when they were in college. Whatta bunch of hypocrites.

You managed to fall asleep the entirety of the commute, much to your surprise, and was left sitting in your car in confusion. You sighed and sat up, feeling sore in different spots of your body. You extended your arms and legs, and stretched it out until you heard a satisfying pop. You then looked around your foreign surrounding and spotted your parents. Once you did, you noticed that your parents weren’t alone, they were standing there with a tall, dark haired man. You impetuously shivered, despite not seeing his face. You couldn’t shake off the iffy feeling you were getting. Either way, something just didn’t seem right. Whatever vibe this guy was emitting, you didn’t like one bit. Nonetheless, the identity of this person had peeked your interest, so you moved around a bit in the car, to try to get a good look. Before you could do so, your mom pointed towards you and all three of them faced in your direction. You impulsively went back to your chair and positioned yourself in, what you thought was a sleeping stance. You pondered, “Wait why am I hiding? I didn’t even do anythin-”

Not long after you had that thought, the car door near you jerked open and a ray of sunlight hit you directly in the face, making you furrow your eyebrows. The sudden action had startled you a bit but you were more annoyed by how forcibly the person was being. “Hey what the hell?” You immediately brought your arm over your face.

You tried to spot the person responsible for startling you, but all you could see, was a silhouette. Without warning, the figure suddenly towered over you, “Get the fuck up sleeping beauty.” a chirpy voice came from the figure.

You froze, and your eyes widened as you came face to face with the person who had been responsible for your uneasiness. You finally registered what this person said, and then it hit you. That voice...you recognized that voice; you wouldn't have even been able to forget it, even if you tried. You glared, “That explains why I got bad vibes coming from you...Jung.” You cursed.

“Hey you, it’s been awhile. Two or some years, right? How have ya been.” He flashed a fake smile at you.

“‘The ‘you’ has a name you know.” You gnarled at him.

Hoseok leaned closer to you, in an obvious attempt to press your buttons, “I really don’t care y’know. I’ve been trying to forget your name and everything about you.”

Jung fucking Hoseok is about 2 years older than you, he was your neighbor and had used to be your brother figure- and old crush. Anyways, this guy was the last person you’d want to ever see right now, nonetheless ever in your life. You can guarantee that every person who’s talked to him, believes Hoseok is a ray of sunshine, however in your eyes, he was he was far from that. If someone asked you to explain the type of guy he was, you’d have to say it’s inexplicable since there isn’t enough words or phrases that could be used to describe how terrible, heartless, abhorrent, and a total jackass he is. The thing you’ve always dreaded however, was that your parents had a huge favoring over him, and always referred him as your childhood friend, when in fact, it wasn’t like that at all. However, you guys hadn’t always been on bad terms, in fact, you had used to be good friends- as you stated earlier, he was like an elder brother, but things changed when this ‘angel’ suddenly started being a straight up dick to you. You guys were actually really close, you The charming guy whom you admired and actually had a crush on for while, turned his back on you, for no reason. To add oil to the flame, Hoseok started sleeping with a ton of girls- a fuckton of girls; he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. Every damn girl wants to hookup with him for some reason, and you even lost some friends because of the hookups he had with them. It was disappointing already, that he had given you the cold shoulder, but now he had countless hookups. It was sad and disenchanting cause’ now you really knew that he’d never go back to the kind, brotherly Hoseok, who was also your inspiration in dance. yes that’s right folks, Hoseok is actually the reason why you started dancing and got so much interest, but you’ll never admit that to him. And yes, it’s no surprise to anyone that he had moves, you adored him for that, but that was his only redeeming quality. You liked his dance skills, but not his character.

“Aw, you missed me love?” He teased and backed away.

“Hardly. It was fantastic until you came.” You glared at him.

“Good to know that the feelings are mutual.” He flicked your forehead roughly.

"OW! God damn, why the hell did you do it so hard?”

“Thatswhatshesaid,” Hoseok said in one breath.

“You’ve literally not matured at all, you ass-twat.”

He scoffed “Ass-twat? Seriously, I know you can do better than that.”

“Shut the fuck up.” You snapped.

“Hey, you two doing okay over there?” Your dad yelled.

“Yes sir,” Hoseok smiled, “just catching up.”

You got up from the seat and immediately dread. The heat was insane and you now were really regretting your outfit choice of a sweatshirt and joggers.

“Wow, that’s definitely an appropriate outfit. You afraid of the sun?” Hosoek picked at your sweatshirt.

“LET.GO.” You muttered through your teeth.

“Yikes she bites, I’ll make note of that.”

“Hoseok!” your mom called, “while you’re over there, do you mind helping carry the stuff in?”

He sighed, and glared at you, before responding, “Of course ma’am,”

You stuck your tongue out and walked towards your parents. “So….mom, where is it?” You looked around you, but you saw no dormitories nearby.

“Right here, you’ll be staying here.” Your mom grasped your shoulders and faced you in front of a house.

You turned your neck towards your mother so fast, you actually could’ve gotten whiplash.“I’m sorry...what?”

Your mom sighed, “Your father and I decided it would be best for you not to be in a dorm, for multiple reasons. Plus it’ll save money for us, so we can save money for your car.”

You stared at your parents in utter confusion, “Uh, what? I need clarification please.”

“Wow, you really are fucking stupid.” Hoseok whispered while walking past you with your luggage.

You were honestly considering strangling the hell out of Hoseok if another word came out from his mouth. But you knew if you did so, your parents wouldn’t hesitate to punish or kill you. Deadass.

“Well, in order to save money and help getting adjusted, you’ll be living with Hoseok. And you really should be thankful to him though, he’s willing to do this for you, that’s considerate of him. Plus, with someone as reliable as Hoseok watching after you to make sure you don’t do crazy things, it’d give your mother and I a peace of mind, and have one less thing to worry about- he’d be your guardian for us.” Your dad explained.

“You mean babysitter?” You scoffed, “are you kidding me?” your parents really were just totally oblivious to the type of relationship you two had had for the past years. “Well, would it have hurt you that much for you guys to at least talk this over with me?”

“We are right now.” your dad responded.

You rubbed your face, “Dad, that’s not the point.”

“Sweetie, you’re making this seem like a bad idea. Why are you so against it? We’re saving money this way, so we can buy you a car, and be able to send you money for your other necessities? This is a blessing in disguise for you, but look, we’re sorry if we disappointed you, but we really couldn’t turn down this offer...we hope you can understand.”

You sighed, in frustration; you trusted your parents words. You well aware that in your parent’s perspective, this was the cheapest and best option, so of course they would want you to do this. Also, these were your parents- they were stubborn- so you knew you couldn’t change their minds. So in this situation, all you could really say was, your hands were tied. “Okay, okay, I get the message, I’m good with whatever decision needs to be done.”

“Now that’s the spirit, huh?” Hoseok pat your back harshly, almost making you fall over.

You had to hold back the urge to curse, “Don’t you have stuff you should be transferring?”

“I already did it all, and you’re welcome.” Hoseok bitterly smiled.

“Aw, see you guys are already mixing in well, but that was expected already, since you guys are already such great friends.”

Hoseok and you had both unintentionally sighed at the comment.

“Anyways sweetie, we know that the campus is about 4-5 miles away, and we know that it’ll be quite far to walk, so we brought along your bike, so you have some sort of transportation.” your mom smiled.

“Thanks,” You were obliged to say.

“So this is it,” your mom smiled once more, “make sure to make smart decisions and call us if anything happens, and most importantly-”

“Don’t drink before I turn 21,” your mom and you had both said in unison.

“Good, you remembered,” your mom pulled you into a hug, “make us proud.”

“Yeah, I will.” You returned it.

“Okay, you should go ahead and start getting unpacked; you have a long day tomorrow.” Your mom stroked your hair comfortably.

“Mhmm,” you nodded, before walking into the house.

Hoseok followed you back into the house but your parents called him once more.

He took a deep breath and turned around with a radiant smile before going to your parents. He sure did know how to put up in act. You went inside and quickly gazed over your surroundings. It was rather homey and not exotic, like Hoseok’s style. To simply put it, this house was calm, and welcoming- just how you like it. That didn’t change the fact though that, you were sharing a house with a troll. You sighed again, how many times have you sighed today, you wondered. You went ahead and plopped yourself on the couch, waiting for him to come back. Your parents explained why you had to stay, but you wanted to get some answers from him. Not long after you had this thought, the door opened and Hoseok turned around, waving, to who you assumed were your parents. After that, he turned towards you with that deadly expression you knew he had been hiding from everyone. “Well, we’re alone now, so say what you want now. I’m pretty sure you have a lot to say to me, whether I want to hear it or not.”

“First off, WHY? Why’d you offer this to my parents? We fucking hate each other!”

Hoseok scoffed, “Please, do you really fucking think I wanted to see your face everyday? You really believe that I wanted you to be roomie?” he walked towards you, clearly agitated, “your parents somehow heard that my roommate moved out, and they took the damn opportunity. They asked me to do all this shit for you. Jesus fucking Christ, they actually talked to my parents first to confirm this all. At this point, they twisted my arm- I couldn’t deny them, they had my parents against me! This is your fault for being so damn irresponsible, that they really had to send you to me. Pathetic, really.”

You got up in his face, “Excuse me? My fault? You were the fucking reason why I got in so much trouble when we were younger. You’re the main reason why my parents have trust issues with me, so in all honesty, you’re the one to blame.”

He rolled his eyes, “I honestly have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Oh really? Need I remind you of the time you came to my party, uninvited and had the audacity to have sex in my house with one of my friends? Like seriously, you were like 18 at the time, did you only have two brain cells? And no, don’t answer that because you being the stupid person you were, threw the damn thing in my trash can, for my mom to see! She was mortified over the idea that her 16 year old had apparently had sexual intercourse- which I didn’t!”

“First off, there is no evidence of me doing that, so get off my back-”

“Angie bragged about it to me when she slept over my house that night. Do you know how mortifying that was for me at the time; for me to find out that my best friend at the time, hooked up with someone like you?” You hollered, “She fucking knew I hated your guts, yet she still hooked up with you. I gave her constant warning about how you treat all your women, and she didn’t believe me. Angie was fucking sobbing when she found out you weren’t serious with her! She cut off connections because she was embarrassed about what she did. She claimed that being around me reminded me of you somehow. You ruined stuff for me.

“W-what?” Hoseok furrowed his eyebrows, “Who’s Angie?”

You froze, “What?”

“Look, I don’t know the names of your ‘bffs’, just give me a refresher or something.”

“For Pete's sake, she’s not my friend anymore, I lost her because you played with her, like you do with all your girls!” You rubbed your palm over your forehead and ruffled your hair, “You don’t even remember the girls you slept with....Seriously, you’re a pig.”

“So what? I’m out here trying to live my life; I live a good one, not a long one.”

“Do you not have a heart or something? Ugh, how am I ever gonna deal with you?” You threw your hands into the couch, only to feel something foreign.

Your curiosity got the better of you and you dug around into the cushion. You caught a hold of something lacy and long, and you pulled it from the couch. You were appalled by what you just revealed. Out from the couch, you pulled a lacy red bra, that was obviously not meant for wearing on a casual day. “OH MY GOD, WHY IS THIS HERE?”

Hoseok turned and noticed what you held, “Oh, that’s where it went.” Hoseok casually responded.

“EW!” You screeched and flung the lingerie towards Hoseok, which he easily dodged.

“You’re a fucking pig, you’re a fucking pig, you’re a motherfucking pig!” You cringed.

“Hey sorry to break it to you, but there’s a reason why you found it on the couch,” He raised a brow.

Your eyes widened once you registered what he said and you immediately jumped off the couch. “I’m never touching that fucking couch again!”

You ran to the faucet and washed your hands as fast as you could. You were losing it. You were gonna snap, and you haven’t been here for longer than a day. “I swear to God, Hoseok, if you want to do your girlfriend, do it in your goddamn room and make sure she gets all her belongings!”

Hoseok picked up the bra, “Okay, whatever, and by the way.” Hoseok waved the bra, “This isn’t my girlfriend’s; cause’ I don’t have on-”

You interrupted him, “STOP TALKING JUNG.”

#jung hoseok #jhope #hobi #bts jhope #jhope x reader #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts #college au #hobi bts #badboy hoseok #slow paced fanfic

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