#and the non humans comic I put off for a thousand years | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bukojuiice · 3 years

Text

merry go round of life.

ೃ pairing: (magical prince! shoto todoroki x fem! reader)

ೃ tags: howl’s moving castle au! studio ghibli au!

ೃ warnings: slight angst, mention of endeavor and war.

ೃ part 1/2 of the howl’s moving castle au.

ೃ word count: 3,807 words

ೃ my nav → my mha writing masterlist → my katsuki bakugo x reader smau

ೃ as the tags and the au suggests, this fic is pretty much the premise of howl’s moving castle except shoto is a magical prince. i’m super excited to complete the rest of this studio ghibli au series and i hope you enjoy reading! ♡

ೃ please do reblog if you enjoyed!! (feel free to add tags too because i love reading them and my heart swells with happiness when people love my work!) ♡

“Find me in the future!”

The voice of a young woman who he didn’t recognize. Amongst the shooting stars and the demons falling from the night sky.

Tonight was the night.

The grassy plains and the meadows that were surrounding the warm cottage that he called home. The loving home that he, his mother, and his siblings lived in. The home that kept him away from the real world.

Things will never be the same ever again.

This was going to be easy right? All he needed to do was trade his heart for the demon’s power and he’d see his father again right?

He’d finally see the real world. The magical world that he always yearned for.

Being confined in a cottage all his life did leave much to be desired. He couldn’t just run around the lush fields with his older siblings and learn magic through spell books all his life, can he? There were things out there that he had to discover.

Now that his mother had passed, his siblings vanished into thin air, and a letter sent by his father, the tyrant king of the Kingdom of Ingary, detailing that he must learn magic on his twelfth year, in order to secure a position of royalty and rule the land with him.

This intimidating man he had never met all his life, except seeing him on newspapers and in history books, would suddenly write a letter to him out of the blue- it must be urgent right? Maybe, this was his calling? Maybe the passing of his mother is the reason the king, his father, contacted him in the first place? Did the most powerful man in the entire continent know about his whereabouts all along?

Was he living a lie all this time?

Shoto needed answers. The king’s invitation and this letter was his only clue.

But, before that, he needed to learn magic and sorcery first.

He was going to turn 12 in a few month’s time, how is he going to do this? He can’t just snap his fingers and manifest magic on the spot, right?

“A m-meteor shower? I-in a few months?” The handsome young boy with half-and-half colored hair and the prettiest heterochromatic eyes, whispered to himself in disbelief. “Take your chance and meet a fire and ice demon who will give you their magic.” He continues to read along the lines of the tabloid, grabbing a worn notebook on the table next to him, and writing down every piece of information that entailed the phenomenon that was about to come. “It doesn’t say when though.” He continues to whisper to himself, his shoulders dropping in defeat as if he had just hit a slump.

The only hope that he was holding on to right now was his luck guiding him on that fated day.

And it did guide him. At a cost.

The fire and ice demon who were to give him his magical quirks, weren’t all that he had seemed.

In exchange for his humanity, he was to become the most powerful and the only wizard prince in the entire world.

Several years have passed.

The once lost boy, who is now a famed prince, was in search for something again.

The effect of the demon taking his heart had made him soulless. Lifeless.

Clinging on to material things and fake temporary pleasures in life were the only things keeping him going.

The once newly crowned prince had wanted to escape his hellish kingdom, in search for peace and solace, a feeling that he did not experience while living in such a wide and empty space and with an estranged father who knew nothing but war.

His skills of wizardry grew stronger and stronger, expanding to more than just fire and ice; the magic that Calcifer, the demon whom he had made a contract with, bestowed upon him all those years ago. He had collected enough knowledge and learned enough encantations to get him out of this castle, and travel the world by his own blissful means.

Calcifer, the oh so powerful yet surprisingly comical demon helped him with his plans.

And what better way of an escape than with a magical moving castle?

This led to Shoto and Calcifer coming to another agreement that the demon would power the castle as long as Shoto would find someone in this world that would break the contract between them.

The prince and the demon were able to escape the confines of the castle scotch-free, however, it was not long until King Enji realized that the heir and the next in line to the throne, disappeared without a trace. Immediately warranting a search party consisting of his most elite soldiers. This prompted Shoto to adopt different identities and aliases, changing his appearance in every other kingdom he visited and lived in so he wouldn’t be recognized. Along his journey, he took in a sweet orphaned young girl, named Eri who became his assistant and apprentice.

The king was growing impatient. It had been a few years and his men have not found a trace as to where the prince might have gone.

He was running out of options.

He wanted Shoto to excel. To be powerful. He never ever planned to see him or even bothered to send a letter telling him that he was the son of the most powerful king in the land, if the boy did not have anything special about him.

The magical genes passed on to the younger Todoroki by his sorceress mother. That’s all that he wanted. Use him. Use him for his power. Make him a prince, raise him, and then throw him away if he was of no use anymore. His son’s magical prowess was all he needed for his quest to conquer the entire world.

The only option he had left was to choose violence.

The king called up his war council and declared war on the neighboring kingdom.

If nothing was going to bring Shoto back, then conflict will.

With the entire continent falling into shambles, kingdoms fighting each other left and right, the peace and the freedom Shoto Todoroki had always wanted to achieve had become short-lived.

He knew he was the reason why a conflict had arisen in the first place, yet, he couldn’t help but fight his father’s forces behind the scenes, and continue to run away, still seeking for permanent liberty. For a permanent home.

He found his home.

In a simple girl working in her family’s hat shop.

And finally, Shoto had something to live for and to fight for.

“Calcifer!”

“Shoto’s heart! It’s MINE!”

“Please! Let go!” You struggle to fight your way through the igniting fire coming from Calcifer and the ember that was about to consume the Witch of the Waste. Her old and wrinkled hands clutching on Shoto’s heart as if her life depended on it.

The remains of the moving castle continue to crumble, as the only power that was keeping it alive which came from Calcifer had become unstable as the Witch of the Waste was holding Shoto’s heart.

“Put it back now! Please!” You try to fight back your tears, still trying your best to remain kind to the old witch yet she did not budge.

“It’s hot! It’s hot!” She continues to ignore your pleas, reacting to the delicate burning material that was on her hands instead. The grip that she had on Shoto’s heart had grown tighter and tighter and you had to do something to stop her.

Time was ticking.

You look around the rubble and the debris, weighing out your options when a bucket of water had appeared in front of you. It was as if telling you that this was the only decision left to make.

You take a deep breath and throw the bucket of water at the Witch of the Waste which also resulted in Calcifer, the demon who has manifested into a form of a destructive inferno for thousands of years, had been put out just like a regular old fire.

Like it was nothing.

There was a short moment of silence.

Eri was clinging on to you, looking for reassurance your face, yet you could not give her that. You hold her tight to try and help cheer her up just a little bit, while Heen, the old service dog given to Shoto as a gift, had his paws on your feet, as he did not know what was going to happen either.

The castle that was still moving with its last remaining energy, grinds to a halt.

Is this it?

“(Y/N)!” You hear Eri call out. You open your eyes and see her hands trying to reach out to you. But, before you could reach her, the remaining part of the castle that all of you were standing on, split into half due to the lack of non-existent energy powering it.

You feel yourself falling.

Heen, the dog, jumps to you before the latter remains of the castle subsequently falls down the cliffs of the Waste. You brace for impact until… you feel light. As if you’ve landed more comfortably than you thought.

You raise your head to take in your surroundings, aside from the few dirt and rubble sprinkled on your hair and on your dress, you were safe. Heen was safe too although the debris that was left of the castle was not salvageable anymore and there were no means to get out of this place with the few materials left.

It looked like there was no way out of here.

Tears swell in your eyes. All these frustrations and all this pain you had to endure because you wanted to save Shoto, was all for naught. Was there still a chance to save him at this point? Or rather, did you even ever have the slightest chance of saving him since the beginning?

Heen quickly trots all the way to where you were. However, you ignore him and continue to stare off into space, thinking about the careless decision you had just made and if what you did was even the right thing.

He barks softly, trying to get your attention, but you barely move a muscle. Even more tears forming in your eyes.

“Heen.. what h-have I done?” Your voice shakes, still trying to process everything that had just happened. “I poured water on C-calcifer… What if I killed Shoto too!?” You bent forward, kneeling down on the rubble around you. Drops of water began to pour out from your eyes, tears streaming down from your cheeks.

Hopelessness and Uselessness.

These were the only emotions you were feeling right now.

You continue to break down in your sorrow. The thought of doing everything in your power to help Shoto but knowing that nothing was enough aches in your heart.

He doesn’t deserve all this pain and anguish.

All you wanted to do was to help him.

Why was fate doing this to you? To you both?

All hope was lost until a glimmering light reflected on the remains of one of the magical doors still connected to the Castle.

Heen continues to bark at you until you turn your head to him and then notice the light glimmering from your ring. The ring with magical properties that Shoto had given to you, to keep you safe and to help you when things go awry.

“It’s moving?” You wipe your tears and stare bewilderingly at the ring that was vibrating on your finger. “Is Shoto still alive!? Can you lead me to him?” You ask softly, slowly regaining your hope and your confidence that maybe you can still save him.

You stand up from the ground, running to the corner of the cliff. The ring continues to guide you, it’s light reflecting on a door that was hidden behind the debris of an iron sheet that was once a part of the castle.

You push it down with all your might, Heen trying his best to help you. The metal sheet falls down with a loud “thud” and the blue energy emanating from the ring continues to glow brighter and brighter, the light pointing to the direction of the door.

You turn the knob, the ring trembles even harder. You slowly pull the door open and a sudden rush of wind blew across your face. The inside was dark and empty. There was nothing of interest here.

But, why did the ring want you to go inside?

You hold your hand to your chest, letting the ring guide your way through the darkness. You stretch your hand out to the pitch black of nothingness, and it ripples at your touch.

It was a portal.

Of course it was a portal. What else would it be? You thought to yourself.

You take a deep breath and with Heen following close behind you, you take a step into the darkness. Praying that this portal takes you to where you need to be.

You were keeping count of the passage of time. It’s been several minutes of you just walking in darkness. But, even if you turned back, was there even a place to return to? You continue to hold on to the little hope you have left. The ring still doing it’s best to guide you to where it was telling you to go as you continue to explore the endless cave of darkness around you.

The ring starts to quiver again, as if it had caught a signal or had detected something. You walk faster, following where the ring was leading you until you catch site of a speck of blue light. Walking even faster, you arrive at the inside of a dimly lit cottage.

It was old and simple. For some reason, it felt like you’ve seen this place before.

There was a table at the center, with papers and books sprawled about, a bookshelf next to it, a worn bed at the side, and a hearth near the edge of the room.

You approach the table to examine the papers that were placed upon there when the ring suddenly stopped shaking on your finger. Heen was barking at you again, so that you would turn your attention to him and see him scratching the door that led to the outside.

“Heen?” You mumble, looking out the window. You approach the door he was trying to open without taking your eyes off the windowpane that reflected a gloomy and plain image of the night sky outside.

You leave the cottage and suddenly, it dawned on you that this was the cottage that Shoto had lived in when he was a child.

This is the same beautiful place he had taken you a few days prior. Yet, there was a sort of melancholy feeling to it. It felt lonely, barren, and there were no colorful array of flowers in the meadows. It felt like a major downgrade to the wonderful place he had shown you. Was it not true? Were the beautiful flowers and the serene view just an illusion? Was this the reality of the place he had lived in most of his life instead?

Before you could even fully process your surroundings, an array of shooting stars began to fall from the sky. It was burning blue and bright, it was ethereal but at the same time, terrifying. These were demons and magical entities from an otherworldly universe. Seeking to make contracts with human beings who wanted to learn more about magic.

“This is the time where Shoto met Calcifer.” You whisper to yourself, still looking up the bright night sky, taking in the beauty and the wistfulness of this particular event and what happened to Shoto because of it.

You look out into the pools of water surrounding the cottage, the shooting stars falling down into the ground from afar. A shrieking yet soothing sound echoed around the area every time a star fell.

You look up to see an unusual shooting star, shining brighter than the others. You continue to look on in awe until you feel the the ring on your hand quivering again, slowly disintegrating.

You were preoccupied with the ring suddenly disappearing that you had not noticed the big and bright star had already fallen down the ground near you, closer than the others did. The rays of the star reflecting brighter and more scintillating than the others. It was drawing you in, like that of a beautiful phantasm.

You notice someone from afar approaching the star that had fallen.

A young striking boy with half white and half red hair, his eyes shining bright different colored hues and his presence, even from afar, was so comforting to you.

This is the man you want to spend the rest of your life with. The man you want to save, the one who made you feel like yourself again, the one who loved you for who you are even though you transformed into an 80 year old grandma with a back problem. He has loved you in your darkest times. He has loved you for who you are.

Will you be there to love him back? Just like he had loved you?

You continue to watch the boy go around the star, examining it ever so curiously. From there, you feel the emotions that Shoto was feeling at the moment.

You could sense the loneliness and the feeling of isolation that Shoto Todoroki has felt all his life.

“That’s Shoto...” You whisper once again, continuing to watch him from where you were standing.

More and more shooting stars fly through the night sky, and you instinctively knew that something was going to happen.

You run down the stairs and sprint your way towards Shoto, ignoring the stars falling down into the ponds, taking forms of dancing wisps, then changing into running pigmy as if they were trying to reach Shoto.

Shooting stars begin to fall around you, barely missing you yet you continued to run with no care in the world. Saving Shoto was the only thing going on in your head at the moment and nothing will stop you from doing so. Something in the grass had pulled on your heel, causing you to fall and flail on the ground. The half and half prince was a small pond away from you yet a dark oozing liquid was taking a hold of you from below, preventing you from doing so.

Before it fully took a hold of both your feet, You quickly stand up from the ground, stomping your feet then backing away quickly. Another shooting star falls down from the sky, and you watch as it swiftly falls into Shoto’s hands.

The sound of the fallen star shrieks and tingles your ears, and you had no choice but to watch in agony as the little Shoto begins to move his lips, talking to the demon known as Calcifer. He had a small smile on his face as he continued to speak. There was so much hope and innocence in his eyes, he was so excited to receive his magical abilities, blissfully unaware that he was about to make a deal that would be the cost of his humanity and his heart.

All he wanted was to see family and go to places he’s always dreamed of.

Was that too much to ask for?

Shoto slowly but surely, brings the demon into his mouth. There was slight hesitance but he gobbled it up then swallowed it. He felt a tinging pain as he clutches both of his hands to his chest, then coughing up Calcifer who had now become his heart.

For a moment, it was as if time had stopped.

You continue to look on but before you could try and run to him again...

Your ring shatters.

A black hole appears from below your feet, slowly sucking you in. You try to move but your body doesn’t want to. Keeping you still, your legs swinging, as if you were in a body of water. All the color around you begins to fade to black, and so does Shoto and Calcifer.

You turn to look at them once more, hoping they would hear you. Reaching your hand out to them.

“Shoto! Calcifer!” In a last minute attempt to get them to notice you, You shout with all your might, tears welling up in your eyes again.

The boy and the demon turn to you with doe eyes, catching your voice yet barely recognizing who you were and why you were there. The young Shoto continues to look at you, still wondering who you were, cupping Calcifer in his hands.

“It’s me (Y/N)! I know how to help you now!” Shoto and Calcifer ceaselessly fade away, as you are consumed by the darkness.

“Find me in the future!”

Mundane life and a mundane everyday routine.

Sew some hats, manage the store, hop on the bus, visit your popular sister in the bakery she works in and then head on home.

This was your life.

Did you want it to change? Yes. But, did you have the will and the magical powers to do so? No.

“It’s your life (Y/N). Do something for yourself for once will you?”

The words of your sister will haunt you for the rest of the day. Well, She is right. But, this was your life. It was dull and uneventful. If this was your fate so be it. There was no point in trying to make it interesting at this point right?

You walk back on your usual route to the station, however, you had to rendezvous to another way to the station due to a road block. Guess life wasn’t being kind to your today isn’t it?

You pass by two soldier guards in an alley to the station. They looked bored and had nothing better to do and you had no intention of mingling with them, even if your sister told you to try and talk to more people.

“What a pretty girl. Want us to take you for some tea?” One of the guards attempt to flirt with you, trying to block your way. The other guard snickers at his friend’s tease.

“No. Please leave me alone.” You deadpan. Glaring at them and trying to let them know that they were crossing the line.

“Oh you see. Ya scared her!” said the other guard, nudging his friend.

“I think she’s even cuter when she’s scared.” The guard replied, hitting his friend on the shoulder.

You were about to run to the other direction when you hear a crisp and handsome voice from behind you, and a reassuring hand on your arm.

“There you are sweetheart. Sorry I’m late. I was looking everywhere for you.”

To be continued.

211 notes · View notes

dameronology · 3 years

Text

one hell of a mandalorian {din djarin}

summary: actions speak louder than words - which is good for din djarin, because he's not very good at words. (this was a commission for an anon! i hope you enjoy).

warnings: language

enjoy!! if you're interested in commissions, you can find out more here :)

- jazz xx

Din Djarin was a man of few words.

That had become clear not long after you'd met.

It wasn't that he didn't like talking, or that he was rude - he'd just never had the need for it. The Mandalorian could spend days and days in hyperspace, on his own with nothing but a frozen bounty to keep him company. And they were hardly chatty, even before they were thrown away into the trawling depths of carbonite animation. There were a few select geniuses who tried to make conversation with him in a last-ditch attempt to appeal to his humanity and beg for mercy, but so far, they'd had a zero-for-zero success rate. It wasn't that he didn't have any humanity to appeal to it - because he did, and his weird, green surrogate kid was an absolute testament to that - but it just took a little bit for it to come out.

The beskar made him seem a little...robotic. Like a droid, which was ironic, because he wouldn't have gone near the things with a ten-foot-barge pole. Din had just become so used to people seeing his mask and his intimidating posture before him that having human traits, like feelings and thoughts and opinions, had never been any use. Having defining traits and a personality was all well and good, but nothing helped you through the galaxy quite like the ability to put the fear of God in people.

The Mandalorian was something, but Din Djarin was somebody. He was good; not necessarily pure and golden-hearted like a typical comic book hero, but he had a strong moral compass. Sometimes, it pointed in opposite directions, but he helped those who needed it and he paid his dues. That was probably a lot more than anyone in the galaxy could have said for themselves. In the fight of good and bad, in a world that existed entirely and black and white, there was nothing more grey than an honest man. Somebody who refused to pick a side held the power of both. For that, Din could have either been extremely smart, or extremely dumb.

Sometimes, he was extremely dumb. Made the wrong moves in combat, or got too cocky, however out of character it was for him. It was the losing fights that truly brought out the human side of Din, and it took a very, very specific eye to see it, sometimes to the point where even he missed it. It never went over your head, though.

You'd joined the crew on the Razor Crest as a mechanic - then you became a baby sitter, and his partner-in-crime, and the closest thing he'd ever had to a friend. His non-verbal nature meant that most of his emotional cues came in the physical form. It went over the heads of everybody else, but between your intuition, and the time spent in such a cramped space, it quickly became like a second language to you. Helmet tilts when he was confused, and little nods when he was pleased; tensed shoulders when the Mandalorian was nervous and balled fists when he was about to absolutely lose his shit.

Today was one of those days. Even though you were both in one piece and the baby was - by some absolute fucking miracle - asleep, it almost hadn't been that way. Nevarro had been quieter than usual, and Din had let his guard down; finally convinced himself to relax a tiny bit and ever-so-slightly loosen the stick that was firmly up his backside. His sudden lack of awareness for your surroundings had meant that someone managed to track the Crest, however briefly. The kid had barely noticed, and you weren't phased by what had been a simple, human mistake. Din, true to nature, was already beating himself up for it.

That was evidenced by his heavy footsteps, and the way he'd immediately retreated to the cockpit and slammed the door. Common sense would have entailed that he wanted to be left alone, but you'd long surpassed the point of any of that. Common sense didn't exist in a galaxy like this one. Doing the obvious thing was, nine times out of ten, usually the wrong way. Expecting the unexpected was the right way to go.

You'd paced outside the door for the better part of fifteen minutes - to go in, or to not go in, that was the question. You were torn between wanting to give Din space and wanting to be there for him; a cranky Din was often an unbearable one, but you cared deeply for him. Maybe a little too much, but that was a can of worms to open later.

"Din?" You gently called. Nothing. "I know you're brooding, or whatever it is you do under that helmet, but talking is good."

"I'm fine."

You sighed. "The scale goes great, good, bad, awful, world-ending and then fine."

"I've never heard that before in my life."

"Yeah, I just made it up on the spot." You murmured.

Resting your hand against the doorknob, you pondered for a moment. Did you want to risk it by going in? Making him mad when he was literally shutting you out? It was hard to know what to do with Din - it wasn't like he came with an answer key, or even a vague manual that could point you in the right direction. It was all just guess work.

"Is the helmet on?" You softly asked.

"Yeah."

You took that as a sign - with a deep breath, you gently opened the door and stepped inside the cockpit, shutting it quietly behind you. The tense atmosphere inside was almost enough to swallow you whole. The man practically radiated angst.

"Talk to me." You took a seat beside him.

"There's nothing to say."

"Bullshit." You murmured. "You might have a thousand inches of beskar hiding your face but your body language is a dead giveaway."

"I'm meant to protect you and the kid." He replied. It wasn't much, but it was better than silence. "It's my job to catch bad people and outrun them when I need."

"You did outrun them." You reminded him. "I'm safe. You're safe. The kid is safe. Does anything else matter?"

"It shouldn't have happened in the first place." Din said. "I was relaxed-"

"- you allowed to relax." You cut him off. "Despite your best efforts, you're a human being."

Reaching out, you gently placed your hand over Din's ungloved palm. He didn't resist or try to brush you away. His hands were soft and callous in equal measures, which felt like a fitting metaphor for him on the whole. You tangled your fingers in his and held on tightly, perhaps in a sad attempt to remind him that you were there.

But Din knew you were there - he could feel it constantly, and he thought about it just as much. Every day of his life prior to you had been filled with rigidity and angst, then you'd come waltzing in and for the first time in years, he'd untensed his muscles and stopped looking over his shoulder. Learnt to take a breath and enjoy the simple things in life, like Grogu laughing or you accidentally tripping over a tree branch. You'd become so important to him that the prospect of losing you was too much for him to even fathom. He'd come close today - too close - and it had been an eye-opener. The irony was that telling you why he was so fucking scared was more frightening than the entire thing itself.

"Don't be so hard on yourself." The gentle pull of your voice lulled him back to reality. "Please?"

His grip on your hand tightened. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." You breathily smiled. "You don't have to apologise."

"I never thought I'd have someone like you." Din admitted. "Coming so close to losing you was terrifying, even if it wasn't that close at all."

He'd never been so open about his feeling towards you before. Obviously, you knew that he viewed you in a way he didn't see anybody else, but that knowledge had been based entirely on physical cues and mere guesswork. You'd never expected him to vocalise the way he felt, or even acknowledge them. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, or even something you considered to be detrimental. The words came as a nice surprise.

"You mean a lot to me, Din." You said. He'd always loved the way his name sounded when you said it; nobody had used it for years, not since he'd lost his parents. It was something to vulnerable and personal. You were the only one he trusted with it.

"I do?"

You didn't mean to laugh at that - you really didn't, but it just came out. A low snort of disbelief; shock at his absolute inability to read the fucking room. Din was as intuitive as they came, with the ability to read criminals like a bedtime story he'd been rehearsing since he was a kid. Then it came to you, and he knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. To call him clueless would be the understatement of the century.

"Maker." You murmured. "Of course you do - more than anyone or anything."

"You're special to me." Din replied. "It scares me sometimes."

Din was straight forward with everything he said - it was just finding the courage to say it. He'd gone into battle with Imps and Republic Rangers alike; fought krayt dragons and droids and fellow Mandalorians and yet this entire thing shook him to his very core more than anything else.

You didn't know it, but you were perfectly holding his gaze. Staring right through it and looking right into his soul. He forgot he had one sometimes. It was probably a little dusty and covered in cobwebs, but it was there, and you were bringing it right out of him and back to reality.

Din used his grip on your hands to pull you a little closer - a moment later, he gently pressed the cold metal of his helmet to his forehead. It was the closest you'd ever been to him, even if it wasn't that close at all. You could hear his soft breathing through the modulator, the sensation acting as a stunning reminder that there was a person underneath there. There were times when you forgot, or felt a little disconnected from the idea entirely. You'd never felt the need to see his face, though - you hadn't a clue what he might look like, but at the same time, you had an image of him in your head. It was as clear as day; as bright as the suns on Tatooine and as persevering as the kid's insistence that he receive all your attention, all the time.

You knew what the action was; a Keldabe kiss. The Mandalorian had recounted its meaning to you not long after you'd met - he'd finally let his barriers down and let you plague him with questions about his culture and the creed, and you'd stumbled on the subject. Initially, you'd been entertained by the fact that it two such vastly different meanings. On one hand, it could be a headbutt. A beskar punch to knock the daylights out of anyone who particularly annoyed you. On the other hand, it was almost a romantic gesture; a way that Mandalorians could show their affection to one another without having to remove their armour.

Din had the latter meaning in mind, but also so much more. He was giving you a piece of his culture - including you in the very thing that defined him as a person.

"It won't happen again." The Mandalorian gently said. "I'll never let you get hurt again. I promise."

"I know." You softly smiled. Your eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of the cool metal against your forehead. "For what it's worth, I have your back too."

He softly chuckled. "Thank you."

You gently pulled back, eyes meeting again (not that you could tell).

"Seriously!" You said. "I can be a bad-ass."

"You can be a lot of things." Din replied. "You're one hell of a girl."

"And you're one hell of a Mandalorian."

#din djarin x reader #din djarin x fem! reader #din djarin x you #din djarin imagine #din djarin imagines #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian x you #mandalorian imagines #mandalorian fluff #din djarin fluff #star wars x reader #star wars characters #star wars x you #star wars imagines

145 notes · View notes

lady-divine-writes · 3 years

Text

Good Omens - A Corpse, Cake, and a Cuppa (Rated NC17)

Summary: Aziraphale is Death and Crowley is the serial killer who keeps murdering to catch a glimpse of the ethereal being he fell in love with. (1714 words)

Notes: Written for the above Halloween prompt from @new-endings/M.A.D.#8943. Human Crowley au. It’s kind of gory, I’m not going to lie.

Read on AO3.

“Jesus Christmas!" Aziraphale yelps, tiptoeing through the thick pool of red coagulating on the concrete. Threads of it cling to the soles of his shoes when he lifts his feet as if trying to drag him down. Aziraphale has seen a great deal of blood in his time. None of it has been pretty. But this is especially gruesome.

He wonders if that’s for his benefit.

"Look at... look at this! Look at all the… !” Aziraphale takes a pause and breathes in deep, pressing the thumb and forefinger of his right hand to his forehead. Tension causes a vein to distend and throb - quite the feat since, as a non-human entity, he shouldn't be able to experience this kind of pain. Or so he thought. In the thousands of years he's roamed earth reaping souls, he's finally found the one mortal who can give him what humans call a migraine. And he doesn't like it. Not one bit. “Could you please just… stop already?"

Crowley grins, thrilled giddy by the arrival of his intended audience. “No,” he replies, shoving the slicked head of his filthy ax deeper into the severed spine of the fresh corpse at his feet.

Aziraphale grimaces as the blade lands with a resounding slap.

That ax of Crowley's gets on every one of Aziraphale's nerves. It's effective for its purpose but positively unsanitary. It makes his skin crawl every time he sees it.

Crowley lifts it slowly, eyes Aziraphale menacingly.

Eyes his nice, clean coat, Aziraphale realizes.

“Crowley!” he warns, putting both hands up in defense. “Don't you dare... !”

But Crowley doesn't let him finish, hoisting his ax higher with part of the dead man's torso attached. He doesn't need to do anything after that. The torso falls from the blade and splashes down in the pool, accomplishing what Crowley set out to do.

“Holy... GAH!” Aziraphale leaps back to avoid the spray. He frowns at his clothes when he sees he wasn't quick enough. "Look what you've done! You’ve made a mess of my coat!”

“Improved it, I’d say,” Crowley snarks. “Given it a pop of color.”

“I've had this coat for ages and hadn't collected a single stain! Not one! And look at your shoes! Ruined!" He gazes down at Crowley's feet in despair. "I actually liked that pair.”

“Really?" Crowley tilts his head, batting his eyes innocently. "You didn't tell me that.”

“Yes, well... " Aziraphale busies himself fishing a handkerchief out of his pocket. Praying he’s swift enough to save the fabric, he pats at the specks on his sleeve "... it’s not my place to tell a homicidal maniac that he looks fetching in snakeskin, is it?”

Crowley pouts, his lower lip jutting out, making him look comically childish despite the streaks of blood running down his cheeks.

Aziraphale’s brows pull together. He glances around, trying to work out what's wrong. "What? What is it?"

"You're being mean."

"How am I being mean?"

"You're calling me names."

"Accurate ones, yes."

"You sound disappointed."

"You think so!?"

“B-but... but why? I took your advice!" Crowley argues. "I changed me m.o.!”

“I didn’t give you advice! I said you should stop killing innocent people!”

“I did! This guy?" Crowley plants the heel of his sopping shoe into the dead man's crooked neck for emphasis. "He weren’t innocent! He was a serial killer, too! He just happened to be shite at it!”

"I can see that." Aziraphale peers into the vacant eyes of the man on the ground, spirit buzzing beneath his skin, waiting to be reaped. But Aziraphale is in no rush. In the choice between filling out paperwork and shooting the shite with Crowley, surprisingly, he chooses Crowley.

Or maybe not so surprising, Aziraphale muses, biting his lower lip and indulging in a private chuckle. He rolls his eyes in disgust at himself right after. What are you doing? Stop that!

"Besides, I'm doin' you a solid!"

Aziraphale scoffs, snapping back to his senses. "How do you figure?"

"You're Death, ain't ya? I'm keeping you in business!"

"I don't know if you've read the papers lately, dear boy, but humans are dropping like flies thanks to their own stubbornness and stupidity. You're slap in the middle of one of the worst pandemics in history, but instead of doing what you can to stay safe, you lot spend your time arguing over petty b.s.! I won't wear a mask! It's against my rights! I'm not taking the vaccine! It'll make me sterile! There is no disease! It's all a big conspiracy! Meanwhile, in the states, some orange lunatic has everyone drinking bleach! Believe me, I hardly need your help doing my job!"

“Oi! Don’t lump me in with those prats!”

“Why not? You’re not wearing a mask, I see.”

“Don’t have to. I got my shot. And I keep me distance.”

“But you’re covered in blood! Did that man you dismembered have the virus!? You don’t know!” Aziraphale cringes at words that sound far more like concern than scolding. Which he should be doing. Scolding and ridiculing, and possibly calling the police.

But he won’t.

If Crowley were thrown in prison, it would be harder for Aziraphale to find an excuse to see him. Aziraphale has yet to decide if that’s something he wants, but either way, he’d prefer it not be at the expense of another life.

"Fine. Whatever. If that's the way you feel about it... " Crowley grumbles, letting what remains of that statement die as embarrassment rises to his cheeks, settling beneath the red already there. He crosses his arms over his chest and turns his face away.

Just like a child, Aziraphale thinks.

And as with a child, Aziraphale should have nipped this in the bud much, much earlier - like when Crowley realized that he could summon Aziraphale whenever he wanted by upping the frequency of his murderous antics.

This, to date, is his twenty-seventh kill.

Aziraphale doesn't know how Crowley spotted him. He's pretty adept at avoiding human detection. But after victim number eight, Aziraphale turned around, scythe in hand, and there he stood: tall, gangly, bizarrely besotted, dressed in black and wearing sunglasses at one in the morning. Aziraphale thought Crowley was a run-of-the-mill psychopath looking for attention, seeing Aziraphale as a hapless dolt to play cat-and-mouse with, not knowing for one second who he was dealing with.

Not only did Crowley know exactly who Aziraphale was, but he had taken a considerable shine to him.

Aziraphale humored the man when their paths crossed so he could get on with his work, never for one minute considering the consequences. Thinking back on their past interactions, Aziraphale can pick out the hints Crowley had been dropping.

Aziraphale played right into them, and he could kick himself over it.

"We have to stop meeting like this," Aziraphale quipped dryly after Crowley had beheaded some poor, down-on-his-luck fool. "I'm going to start thinking that you have a thing for me."

"Finally!" Crowley tossed his arms in the air. "At this rate, I was going to have to murder half of London and spell out the words ’Will you go out with me?’ with their bodies. Do you know how time-consuming that would have been?"

Aziraphale had written that comment off as a morbid attempt at humor.

Now he feels like an imbecile.

He’s going to get an earful from Gabriel if he ever gets wind of this. Aziraphale has been able to cover up the increase in London deaths by blaming the pandemic. But once people get their acts together and things calm down, he’ll have to come clean.

There’s a serial killer roaming the streets that has a serious crush on him.

Aziraphale lets out a heavy sigh as he comes to a decision.

A bad decision.

He's going to regret this. He knows he's going to regret this.

But will he really though?

Aziraphale looks Crowley over, still moping with his nose in the air. He examines him at depth - his sharp features, his debonair style (hiding beneath a litre of blood), his devil-may-care attitude, his rowdy sense of humor. If he were another angel, or even a demon, Aziraphale would have asked him out already, body count or no.

So what is he waiting for?

It’s not entirely unheard of, an angel dating outside their dominion. And as for the moral issues of dating a murderer, well, Aziraphale is an angel. He has a responsibility to bring sinners to the light, help them see the truth. That can be done anywhere, not just in church - on a street corner, in a diner…

Back at his flat.

Besides, he and Crowley have a lot more in common than Aziraphale did with his last paramour, an angel he had dallied with solely for the fact that he was guardian of comestibles.

It seemed like a match made in Heaven, so to speak.

Far from it.

“Look - if I let you take me out for coffee, will you stop the gratuitous bloodshed?”

Crowley all but gasps when that question leaves Aziraphale’s mouth, the grin growing on his face transforming, becoming less maniacal and more… normal if that makes any sense. "One cup of coffee. That's all I ask."

"Then come along. Here… “ Aziraphale snaps his fingers, cleaning Crowley thoroughly before he takes his arm. “If you're good, I'll let you buy me a slice of cake.”

“That’s very generous of you.”

“I’m glad you think so. I’m a very slow eater. And I figure the longer I stay with you, the more I can keep an eye on you."

“Deal. But, you know," Crowley starts, his tone so filled with teasing he’s on the verge of giggles, "if you, say, spent the night at my flat, you could keep an eye on me for hours. Think of all the people I wouldn’t be able to kill.”

Aziraphale smirks, amused that they both had a semblance of the same idea. “You don’t say?”

“I do.”

“That’s blackmail.”

“More so than you bartering human lives against a cuppa and cake?”

Aziraphale shrugs, but he doesn't relinquish Crowley's arm. He does, however, relieve him of his ax so he doesn’t get any ideas along the way. “Fair point.”

#good omens #good omens fanfiction #ineffable husbands #crowley x aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley

54 notes · View notes

katytheinspiredworkaholic · 3 years

Text

WIP Wednesday Thursday

Title: Extraordinary

Pairings: HotchReid (side pairings Morcia, WillxJJ, others in flirtation)

Summary: League of Extraordinary Gentleman/Vampire AU;

Within the FBI there is a specialized team full of an elite selection of people. Unique individuals with very particular skill sets. And their job is to take the unusual cases: the ones that need to not only be solved, but are undetermined if the unsub is human, or something else entirely.

In a world filled with Vampires, non-human creatures, and subspecies unknown, there is only enough information to have them vaguely regulated. Rules that are so easily, and violently broken, all while hidden in plain sight among the unsuspecting public. Unrivaled for eons.

That’s where the BAU comes in.

Official Posting Date: Now posted on tumblr and Ao3, Click Here

Links: (Masterpost) (Snippet 01) (Snippet 02) (Snippet 03) (Snippet 04)

(TW/CW: This is pretty tame, Emily is just a little intense and eager because Spencer is... well, Spencer, and when she realizes all he can do? Oh she is chomping at the bit. Some trance-like things and witchy stuff and Hotch being territorial without being able to admit it.)

(the story so far/what you need to know for this clip at least: this takes place in chapter 02, what you will all see on Saturday evening, and this version is insanely unpolished (I’m about to go through and fix it up and give it a good make-over) but basically this is the first time Spencer is meeting Emily Prentiss and it makes... an impression. Also, Emily has been at the BAU for about 0.2 seconds and Hotch is already done with her. The sibling energy I love to see. It’s also hella long, as an apology for missing last week and being a day late. All you’ve missed is Spencer about ran into Emily turning a corner and she saved him from spilling his case files and coffee all over the floor. Now they are talking)

–

“I apologize, I thought you were an intern or still in the academy.”

“It’s alright, everyone does,” Spencer says without taking offense. He wouldn’t have gotten where he was or lasted very long if he did; however, if he had a nickel for every time someone had been surprised by his age, he’d be as rich as Father Rossi. His full hands actually aids him as he mentions, “I don’t usually shake hands with people, so don’t think me rude. I’m Dr. Spencer Reid.” He offers her a smile in exchange, and it is mirrored on her face just as her surprise kicks up another notch.

“Doctor, my my I am in for a trip on this team, aren’t I?” she laughs, and it’s a melodic thing that stretches over an expanse of time and history. Ballrooms in Russia and palors of France, Elizabethan and the roaring 20’s and everything in between all rolled into one. He’s not sure how he sees it, an impossible thing, but he can read it like a book and that must have something to do with what she is. “Emily Prentiss, it is a remarkable pleasure to meet you Dr. Reid. Now, I have to ask--” her tone is so charming and playful and probing he barely notices the nuance, “And I’m sure it’s taboo around here, but I have to know -- your regeneration process. Tell me what it is or what you do. You look so young.”

“I am young,” he states simply, finally stunned by a question he’s not usually asked.

“Yes, yes, we all can’t be a thousand years old like your fearless Vampire leader,” she waves off and Spencer’s eyes widen because… he hadn’t known Hotch was that old. Sure he’d said he’d been alive for the better part of a millennia, but he always said it like a hyperbole. A turn of phrase that’s off by a couple centuries. But --

A thousand years old.

That would put him…

God, that would put him alive, as a human, just before the start of The Crusades.

“Oh, did he keep that to himself? Oops, my bad. Pretend you don’t know. Anyway -- so are you a Shifter? Or use a particular spell? Oh, or is it a curse? I’m fascinated by curses, I don’t use them often myself but the rigidity of terms using a power so chaotic is just such a fun juxtaposition that I--”

“No, no, I’m… normal, human,” Spencer interrupts her, still the smallest bit shell-shocked, but now connects a few dots himself as she speaks. Realizes very suddenly that Ms. Prentiss appears ageless because she is ageless. She’s also a Witch. One of the broadest terms for subspecies categories, which really doesn’t do it justice. A Witch could be a number of things. Someone who uses magic and science and the very Earth itself paired with the spiritual planes to do impossible things. Witches are beings so powerful they should be uncategorizable. Something Spencer is fascinated by as well. He’s never met anyone like Emily. “I look young because I am young. I’m 27, I’ve only been with the BAU for the past three years. I’m a little excited to not be the newbie on the team any more,” he tries to joke, but Emily’s gaze has gone distant and sharp all at once.

“You’re only 27? And you’re a doctor?” She asks in clarification, Spencer nodding along each time. “You’ve been a doctor, since becoming an FBI agent?”

“Um, well -- I’m not a medical doctor. I do have three doctorates, though; in mathematics, chemistry, and engineering,” he finds himself shrinking a bit under her intensely interested gaze. “What?”

“Chemistry?” she asks, vaguely more distant.

“That was my first doctorate,” he murmurs back, not sure what has her looking so contemplative.

“You’ve achieved all of this: three doctorates, FBI agent, BAU -- in 27 years?” she questions, a grave yet wondrous sound.

“Technically I did all of that in 15 years. I graduated high school when I was 12,” he manages to do more than mumble, and Emily’s wide-eyed stare has him spewing forth information like it requires an explanation. “I have an eidetic memory, and I can read 20,000 words a minute, and my IQ is 187 so by human standards yes -- I’m a genius, and borderline on the advanced brain developments scale. But I’m still human. Nothing paranormal or extraordinary.”

The pause that follows is palpable.

“Oh,” she says in an exhale, “Oh, you young soul. You have no idea, do you? What you are capable of...” She tilts her head as she steps closer and Spencer is very suddenly aware that he’s not sure she’s blinked since they started speaking about his qualifications. What he can do, how he got to where he is. No one usually shows this much interest, he makes them uncomfortable for reasons he doesn’t always understand.

Emily doesn’t look uncomfortable, she looks… hungry.

“You are so very, very extraordinary. Exceptional, really. Look at all of what you’ve accomplished with just 15 years of life.” That astonished sound again, like she can’t believe her luck--

And then she’s in his space, gaze boring into his, and Spencer can see galaxies in the depth of her eyes. His breath stolen from him and feet rooted to the floor. So he doesn’t step away as she leans just the smallest bit closer, words resonating with echoes across ages.

“Imagine what you could do with a thousand.”

“Prentiss,” the deep voice of Hotch’s monotone (edged in something vaguely aggressive, and more than a little aggravated) breaks through their moment. The trance fading like a fog from Spencer’s eyes. “No recruiting. It’s in your contract.”

“You have such a gift, it’s a shame to waste it,” Emily whispers in a rush as Hotch approaches them from down the hall. More earnest than intimidating, now.

“Prentiss!”

“Think about it,” she winks, and then turns to give Hotch a smile that’s all teeth so sharp she resembles a shark. “Oh, what a sour face. What’s wrong? Were you planning on asking him first? You snooze, you lose.”

“Conference room,” he instructs, pointing the way Spencer had just come. “Team meeting in 20 minutes. Try not to summon anything between here and there.” She sticks her tongue out at him childishly as she leaves, and sends a quirk of a smile Spencer’s direction that shifts her whole expression into something comically entertained. He’s never seen Hotch interact with someone like this, like they were… familiar, even exasperatingly so. The closest in comparison is probably Father Rossi. But this is less like old friends and more like sibling rivalry.

The space Emily had just vacated is suddenly filled with Hotch, an overwhelmingly welcomed presence and it eases the tension out of Spencer’s spine and shoulders that he hadn’t even realized was there.

“Are you okay?” he asks, low and quiet. They’re the only ones in the hallway, but secrecy is a hard habit to break.

Spencer nods, still gaining his bearings once more. “I think so. That didn’t feel like hypnotism. I don’t know what that was.”

“Prentiss doesn’t manipulate minds or the wills of other people,” Hotch tells him, which is soothing if not for the foreboding question of what just occurred. “She doesn’t need to. She can do a lot of things: change her face, her voice, make illusions and talk circles around anyone -- even you.” Spencer looks up to him at that, aware that his level of intelligence is the only thing that keeps him safe from JJ or Hotch’s influence. His mind can’t be bent, or tricked.

“Then what was she doing? I felt compelled but… not against my will. What was that?” he asks, also quiet but much more high in pitch as his confusion turns his voice to a winded sound.

Hotch’s thin, stern frown does nothing to alleviate the apprehension caught up in his chest like a bad cold.

“Possibility,” he states, grim and not liking that Spencer had fallen prey to such a short moment with Emily Prentiss and her promise of what her craft could do for him. Hotch is well aware that Spencer’s gift of soaking up every speck on information he’s given like a sponge isn’t something to let wither and die like so many before him. There’s so much he could do with an infinite life, such as his and Emily’s, but the curse of living forever alone is not something to be taken lightly. And not to be decided by someone who still has so much more life to live unaided by other forces.

However, Emily was right about one thing. Hotch can’t deny that he’s thought about it. More than considered it as a definite possibility.

An offer, all his own.

–

Tagged list so far: @physics-magic, @thaddeusly, @ssa-noa, @ssa-sarahsunshine, @tobias-hankel, @reidology, @mintphoenix

#THIS IS JUST A SNIPPET #it's a very long one as an apology for missing last week and being a day late #and also because it's COOL and I have no self control #Emily and Spencer would be a terrifying duo honestly #Also Emily and Hotch have the best sibling relationship ever #if anyone wants in on that taglist hit me up via ask or comment or rb #the story is posted! Updates on Saturday evenings #Extraordinary #HotchReid #Katyswriting #Katyswip #wip wednesday

20 notes · View notes

wickedpact · 3 years

Note

You can't just drop that "I read Forces Multiplied" bomb on us and not give a ten page written reaction.

[cracks knuckles] if u insist

nicky cant drive hc: destroyed. rip. also i loved how andy and nile stole those sports cars and were being badass and driving off the bridge & meanwhile joe and nicky were just absolutely vibing in the van

'heres the thing about power: people who have it think they deserve it' [shot of police car] i see u greg

5 whole panels being dedicated to booker not being able to unlock his door. booker not even seeing noriko sitting RIGHT THERE in the window at first. incredible

noriko being 24/7 horny was surprising. like wow all of the stuff i saw she did out of context was 100% equally horny in context as it was out of context. love that for her

i didnt think the 'andy + slavery' thing was handled as badly as everyone made it out to be when telling me about it. tho from the way it was talked about i had kind of figured the conflict between andy and nile re: slavery would be really racially charged (esp considering nile is a black american and would obvs have Thoughts on the subject in that regard) but like,, done in a cringey 'a-white-guy-obviously-wrote-it' kind of way? but it wasnt that. i mean. it makes sense that andy would be implicit in slavery through the years

i mean, like she says, is that not what people just did to each other in the aftermath of battles for thousands of years? and i really like how its pointed out that it was what she was raised with (in the beginning when you see her put shackles on that guy after the battle) but she also accepts responsibility for it and acknowledges that it was wrong and not just 'what people did'.

i like how from her expressions you can kind of tell baby andy knew it was off but she sets those feelings aside bc she felt angry. it explains how she felt but didnt make her out to be blameless in it. plus i mean. i dont know, the fact that andy was involved in a lot of morally shady stuff for 7000 years is not that wild for me. if you live that long youre just Going to be involved in some shit, and she didnt even have other immortals with her as positive community influences, she literally just did whatever the fuck she wanted for thousands of years

'i was worshipped as a god once' i mean, yeah no shit she wouldve been involved in some seriously fucked up stuff, gods were fucking scary back in the day

tldr it could use some polish but it wasnt that bad

tho everything people said about moose being boring was unfortunately a little true. sorry king i tried to be interested in you

joe and nicky writing verbal fanfiction about nile and moose was iconic. 'you seeing that?' 'i am definitely seeing that'

it was also extremely funny bc that was like 60% of their contribution to the whole comic, besides kidnapping copley. they came, they wrote some fanfic, they left. kings. at least in tog1 they had an excuse to be useless bc they got kidnapped

joe just found out his old friend who he thought was dead is alive (and also probably wants to murder them) and instead of investigating with andy he stopped to help nile up. champ.

nicky shooting noriko through andy was cool. rip to the concept since it wont happen in tog2

wanna see mr ejiofor deliver this line

on that note imo copley was. weirdly enough, more interesting in fm than in tog1. to me at least. the fact that andy let him live and he was so haunted by what had happened that he came back and sought them out despite knowing they would likely kill him for it bc he wanted to not only make up for what hed done but also to tell them what theyd done for the world was admittedly more interesting than andy just kind of drafting him to the cause and him going 'okie'

i like how nicky was drawn in this one. in opening fire he looks like a blob man but in fm he looks more like a very nice grampa with a very good dye job

'theres no pain like a broken heart' andy 🥺

noriko implying andy's never drowned. .. .idk about that one, she musta drowned sometime

joe and nicky came, they waxed poetic about nile's love life, they waxed poetic about grog, and then they left.

sports bras being a reason humanity is good. i mean..... okay, yeah.

i mean. wild but you cant exactly tell her shes wrong

i liked how noriko telling andy that their purpose is to make people suffer coincides with joe and nicky finding out that they actually did good all those years

joenicky in opening fire: jail for booker jail for booker for 100 years

joenicky when copley tells them he knows where booker is: WE'LL KILL YOU WHERE IS HE

joenicky when copley comes back: if your vibes come off as even remotely rancid we Will destroy you

joenicky 2 minutes later when copley helped them find booker: he made up some ground :)))) <3 lov you j cops

theyre forgiving af

moose: how old are you?? a hundred??? a thousand???

nile [vine voice]: I M 2 7 ?

alright andy you got me there

joe texts like my aunt

i dont know why noriko drowning andy in that car tickled me. Bad And Naughty Andromaches Get Put In The Pear Wiggler To Atone For Their Crimes.

the drowning sequence was cool

copley trying to talk to andy while she was like o_o at him was great

ive hit the picture limit but id seen that panel where nicky goes 'forgive me' as he kills a guy out of context and it was HILARIOUSLY anticlimactic for me to discover that there was literally no context to it. nicky just apologizes to random people he kills. i thought that guy was someone he knew or something. nope its just Some Guy that nicky didnt know from adam

nile's complaint that andy was especially brutal to the guys on the boat... i mean. . , how exactly does one kill a man with an axe and not be brutal about it?

it was funny how noriko kissed andy and the only people who seemed surprised by that were nile and also andy

nicky and joe's complete non-reaction to finding out noriko is alive And Evil Now is endlesly funny. they just left her on that boat and neither cared. i get book and nile not caring but joe and nicky knew her, and they just have 0 input on the subject of what to do with her

pinstripe suit guy!

joe and nicky and booker packing up and leaving with nile

andy blowing up at nile was A Moment tho

i dont know, i get why people didnt like the ending but its. .. . it makes more sense in the comicverse. bc the squad doesnt really. .. interact outside of jobs? i mean, think of the moon landing story in ttt. that was booker and joe and nicky doing a job and andy only showed up a for a couple minutes after it was done. or the brunch in the first issue of opening fire. the squad arent as tight in the comic, and andy often seems to do her own thing outside of work, so andy saying 'i dont want to do work anymore' and the squad being like 'alright bye then' makes more sense in this universe than the movie one

also i feel like greg was Trying to set up a thing where nile becomes the Leader of The Squad after andy dies but like. its not very well done since. . . i mean, nile hasnt spoken to booker since opening fire, (and she only knew him A Day). and shes known joe and nicky all that time, but there isnt really anything that indicates that they have any relationship at all, much less one that's grown. in all the comicverse the only time nile and nicky speak is in FM, and in that scene nicky tells nile about noriko. nile goes from someone who needs to be set aside to have background knowledge explained to her to being the Leader of the group with nothing in between. it kind of... comes out of nowhere.

on the other hand tho... i felt really bad for andy thru the whole thing. well, i always felt bad for andy, but in this one she seemed so miserable, especially since it really felt like none of the others actually.... cared about her. when noriko came back no one asked andy how she was doing (big question ik, but it wouldve showed they cared at least), nobody ever expressed any concern for her, no one even really seemed to want to be around her. in opening fire everyone was more distant than in the movie of course, but there were little moments where she would joke with joe, or nicky would try and comfort her, or stuff like that, but in FM it really felt like they just didnt really care about her. & in opening fire it felt a lot like andy's relationship with nile breathed some new life into her, but in FM it felt like all they did was argue. i get theyre not *as* close in the comics but it really felt like the only person who cared about andy at all was noriko (which was probably also how andy felt) but it just seemed to come out of nowhere. honestly i was reading and i was honestly agreeing with andy that she might just be better off if she did just die. opening fire, on the other hand, never make me feel that way

tho everyone made it sound like when the squad split up it was one of those cursed 'the found family leaves each other at the end of the journey' tropes. but guys i mean,,, this is the second installment out of three. that isnt the End. theyll come back in the third one and Dramatically Reunite to fight some baddies (probably those 'others' noriko mentioned). im guessing yitzhak fits into that too somehow.

anyways it wasnt That Bad but it made me kind of sad and the only Sweet Found Family vibes in it were when they saved booker. also they shouldve beefed up that nilemoose romance, it underwhelmed me. 6.5/10

i also ABSOLUTELY understand all of greg's comments about how you couldnt make FM directly into a movie, he always said that it had no plot and. i get it now. it really didnt have a plot sdfghjkl

#nicoloalkaysani #it took me So Long to type this up #asdfghjk

22 notes · View notes

skarlette1 · 3 years

Text

The Hotness of Hypnotized Hero(in)es

Photo by Mahdiar Mahmoodi on Unsplash

Time for another essay question, sponsored by Dedicated Procrastinator’s generosity with coffee. He asks:

What is it about the hypnotized hero(ine) genre you love so much?

There’s a lot of things, obviously. One doesn’t write a dozen e-books and hundreds of flash fiction pieces in a genre without a lot of fuel in the tank. Some inspiring aspects of my chosen sub-sub-subgenre:

Familiarity: I’ve mentioned reading a lot of comics over the years. I’ve never counted but I’m sure I’ve read thousands of issues, certainly. Add to that the fact that we’re living in a golden age for superhero media. So I can watch high-quality, well-written superhero TV shows and movies and animated off-shoots whenever I want. They say “write what you know” and I know superheroes (which is not to say I know everything about all superheroes, there’s just too, too much).

Sweeping Breadth: As a genre, “superhero” stretches to accommodate virtually any and every other genre. Every sort of non-realistic, flamboyant extravagance is on display. Ultra-advanced technology that breaks the laws of physics. Magic learned from musty, ancient tomes. Aliens with powers unimaginable. Hard-boiled vigilantes with hearts of gold. Monsters lurking in every shadow. Gods of myth and legend. Robots yearning to understand their creator. None of it is out of place in a superhero story. Whatever weirdness my muse can come up with will fit just fine.

Optimism: Corny, I know. But I like that all my superhero stories end with the heroine winning in the end. It gives me a little hope and puts a smile on my face. Plus, there’s a creative challenge that’s fun in every story I publish: I get to put the heroine in a worse and worse situation, and then figure a way for her to get back out again! Sometimes it’s really tricky, but a hell of a lot of fun!

Insulation from Reality: This one is hard to find the right words for, but I’ll try.

Power: Superhero stories are about power. Who has it? What do you do with it? What do you do without it? What does it do to you?

Sex is a real thing that happens with real people in the real world. Genuine, living human beings delight in, and get hurt from, sexual issues every single day. Sex is important. The way we talk about sex is important. The way we think about sex, our own and others, is important.

But making things important is a guaranteed way to get my muse to pack her bags and head for parts unknown. I write for a lot of reasons but the most important one is stress relief. The pressure to address an important issue in an appropriate and responsible manner compounds my stress, rather than relieving it.

So, I write stuff with lewd lasers, erotic explosions, horny hypnosis, ribald robots, and spells of sexual sorcery. Writing the wacky superhero stuff allows me to let myself off the hook of always addressing important topics with appropriate gravity.

That said, I try to address the emotional reality of my characters as best I can. That’s where real erotic thrills come from, I think. Only you, as my readers, can judge how well I do that.

Folks in kink communities talk about “power exchange” of the dominant/submissive relationship. Who has power over your actions? Is the sort of question that comes up in hypno/MC-themed erotica all the time. There’s a lot of subtlety and nuance to be explored in the lines between consent and coercion, of giving into persuasion and being freed from one’s inhibitions. Those can powerful stories.

But they are not the type of stories I write. My brush is too broad for such fine-grained psychological realism (all those comic books, surely). My muse provides me with a big special effects budget and expects me to spend every dime. Being hypnotized into not wearing underwear just lacks the spectacle and pizzazz of being hypnotized into taking over the world.

Those are my thoughts on hypnotized hero(in)es. What about you? What do you like about the supehero genre?

---

Like what you read? Have you taken a look at my longer fiction?

My newest erotic novel, Libido League #12: Invasion from Planet Lust, is available now from Smashwords and Amazon!

#essay #superhero #writing #skarletteone

13 notes · View notes

2lim3rz · 3 years

Note

Do you write for the emperor of mankind? And if you do, what are some head cannons that you have when it comes to him and the primarchs meeting a reader who is from 2021? Crackhead energy, big depression espresso with dry/ meme/ tiktok humor 2021 reader. If you know, you know! Also, I love your content! I look forward to it all the time because it makes me happy.

Oh, I write for the Emperor. Fuck YES I write for the emperor, I'll so make you some headcanons I can't give you tiktok humor 2021 reader because my humor is so all over the place, it's not funny cause I'm laughing at a rage comic from 2011 still BUT crackheads? I can give you that! Thamks a ton for the compliment, I need something to motivate my dumbass anyhow uwu! SO! Let's get to the juice!

THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND [AND A COUPLE OF THE PRIMARCHS] MEETING YOU, A PERSON FROM 2021

THE EMPEROR OF MANKIND

How? How did you even appear first of all? He doesn't know, which is weird. And suspicious. Because he pretty much knows most, if not, everything but the future. Even then, he still knows bits and pieces. So how in the warp-fuckery are you HERE?! HOW DID YOU GET PAST THE CUSTODES?!

So the fact that you're.. there is.. a surprise nonetheless. And he hates surprises. Congrats, you've surprised the Emperor. When they go his way of course. You? You don't really have a purpose for his plans. You're literally a creature from the past

A SUPER far past, you would've been higher up in his eyes right from the start if you were, say, from the Dark Age of Technology and knew some things. But you're not, you're an average person from.. 2021. A year that's not-so-fun. And also one he doesn't quite like because of the online cultures. Yes, the Emperor is.. I think Boomer is the word?? King Boomer wHEEZe

Of course, it's even more surprising when the first words that come out of you are "What in the chili-cheese fuck is this?" he's even more surprise. Right. He somehow forgot that literally everyone somehow went backwards verbally If only he knew what was to come And promptly stops the Custodes from McMurdering you, even a tiktok obsessed person from 2021 can be useful.

You, meanwhile, are just as [if not more] shocked of everything. First off, you were at home, probably goofing off and making a tiktok when.. well, you're here. In a room of gold, gold, and even more gold. So after saying your not-so-non-chalante statement, you quickly followed it up with asking if whoever owns the place is a gold fetishist. Because of course you don't have much of a filter in this era

This whole time, you didn't notice the tall man in armor yet, but that's also because you're still trying to get the spots out of your eyes cause DAMN that was bright

When you DO see the Emperor, you're confused cause one moment, he looks like.. some dude you'd see on the street. A well sculpted and buff dude with eyes that's clearly seen some shit and looks like he'd throw you off the empire state building, but still a dude. The next when you blink your eyes, you're looking at his legs. Armored legs. And you have to careen your head back to look up to his face that's a little too hard to see because of course it did

You're also SUPER overwhelmed and promptly begin an extraordinary freak out because where are you? This isn't a dream and the being in front of you is so.. Him. So indescribable that you can't grasp it in that moment

The Emperor of Mankind, being the epitome of patience and human care, gets you knocked out and put into a medical ward. Mostly to quarantine you, there's no telling if future people have the immune systems to prevent thousands of years of disease differences

Of course, you're A-Okay. The Emperor would argue that you are not okay mentally, but 30k and 40k share one thing in common: No one is mentally sane

KONRAD CURZE

You thought you'd meet Horus or Vulkan? Or literally any other primarch? PSYKE! You're literally just dismissed and Big Papa E wants to meet you. You, of course, refuse help. Can't be that hard to navigate, right? double wrong. Everything's in a weird form of english. It's so close to being english until it ain't. Even everyone else speaks it. It's awful, ain't it?

So of course, when you smell an awful stench [not that everything else had a sorta-weird smell. Soap is MUCH differently scented now-a-days] you're close to freaking out when a giant man literally drops from the ceiling in front of you

After freaking out again, and calling him a "pale batman and mayo smelling motherfucker" he's.. not really amused and you've no idea how close you are to becoming his next Hannibal-esque art project when he sort of grumbles a greeting and stalks off again.

Unbeknownst to you, he sort of was going to greet you.. more-or-less in a more civilized way but you sorta caught him offguard with your semi-gibberish words along with orders from the Emperor [and admittedly Horus and maybe his other brothers] to let you live. Undamaged.

HORUS LUPERCAL

You quickly figure out that it's the vibe of these people that's messing you up. The giant suits of armor ain't any sort of cool robot, but terrifyingly huge people with even more terrifying vibes. It's not like it's any help your first dose of what you call the Big Dude Vibe is from the Emperor.

Did that does of BDV help you withstand some of these people? Yeah. You're also still recovering from the semi-heart attack you got from that pale stranger with the greasiest sort of hair you've ever seen yet. On a face that looks very handsome if it wasn't in perma-snarl mode

So when you meet Horus? A lot better of a change. Dude actually bothers to crouch down and properly speak to you. The language difference is.. a lil messy, but you both get by good enough

At least you have some help in getting your bearings and find your way to the meeting room with the Emperor

In true you fashion, you think it's weird, dumb, and lowkey hilarious that humanity has an Emperor of Mankind with untold power and you, of course, joke about him being a god

Horus is, LUCKILY, kind enough to brusquely explain to you that religion is a big no-no. A BIIIIIG no-no. And what do you hear? Oh, you hear the jokes making themselves.

#warhammer 40k #emperor of mankind #headcanons #2lim3rz request #writing request #request #idk which one i made my tag o lawd #horus lupercal #konrad curze #might do a couple parts of this idk #2lim3rz chats to anonymous

45 notes · View notes

firefrightfic · 3 years

Note

top 5 fics you've read?? for your most recent ask game

This was super hard, first of all. My favourites tend to change a lot depending on what I'm most into at the time, so I tried to base this mostly off stories that spoke a lot to me or I've found myself coming back to time and again. I also decided to only include one from each particular canon, as well as pick from only fully completed works. That said, I have so many more amazing favourite fics that what are listed here, so check out my bookmarks page for them (also not included are the many wonderful fics I've lost or forgotten to bookmark over the years and now only recall in shreds of memory).

p.s Again, these are in no particular order other than me finding the links for them when going through my bookmarks on Ao3

1) A thousand fingerpints on the surfaces of who I am by SkyScribbles, Critical Role campaign 2, mostly Essek focused with developing Shadowgast

Summary: 'Changing is hard. For most of us, it happens little by little in in the smallest moments and we don’t notice it, we don’t choose it. But looking yourself in the face and deciding to be different – that is hard. You are unpicking threads of who you are that were put in place more than a century ago.'

[This is a series rather than a single fic, but I figure that's really just the same as including a multichapter here. Very much an AU of canon from episode 97 onwards, as it was written during CR's forced hiatus through the first covid lockdown, but still an excellent character study of Essek and the first Shadowgast/Essek focused work I binged through, so of course it holds a special place in my heart.]

2) How River Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moon by Oriflamme. Books of the Raksura, Moon/River, plus others

Summary: Chime is, apparently, useless. No one else seems to notice or care that their first consort wears almost the exact same jewelry to every formal event.

Really. It's been years.

So River takes matters into his own hands.

[Playing off the rivalry between River and Moon in the books and adding foe-yay/rivals-to-lovers into the mix. I absolutely love the thought and detail put into this. Plus I gotta shout out this author's Transformers fics as well]

3) Eversion by thespectaclesofthor. Detroit: Become Human, Hank/Connor

Summary: Connor, a postgrad taking a semester off from forensic science, liaises with his father’s police station, occasionally working cold cases. When he picks up a cold case conspiracy that indicates a plot to revert all Deviant androids back to their original state, he realises he’s onto something huge, but his bad habits and drinking have made his father annoyed enough to get the HX800 – Hank, one of the only reverted once-Deviants in the world – who serves as bodyguard, nanny and curfew enforcer. Connor, frustrated that he can’t properly work on the case and looking to get Hank off his back, decides what better way to do that, then to make him a Deviant again?

[Look, DBH is not a great game, it's full of plot holes and clumsy racial allegory, but it's appeal lies in the potential it could have had, and this fic reverses two of the primary character roles in a super interesting way. It's also extremely heavy on BDSM themes, sex, non-con and trauma, so please make sure you look through all the tags thoroughly before reading]

4) Blood and Darkness by felinefelicitations. Hades, ThanZag

Summary: Zagreus stops in front of him, head tilted up to look at him. There’s a cut on his face, and without thinking Thanatos reaches out, runs his thumb over it to soothe it shut so at the least he does not bleed.

Zagreus is still looking at him, quiet.

“Zagreus?”

“You came,” Zagreus finally says. He smiles; it makes all the flames that curl around his laurels spark. There is such a soft and tender pleasure in his words. “After all this time.”

[I really love the way this one plays with the idea of the nature of gods. Thanatos/Death in particular in this case. Deviates from the actual plot of Hades quite thoroughly by the end, but a lovely read]

5) The New Hire by starkraving. Blade Runner 2049, gen, K focused.

Summary: Officer KD6-3.7 is brought onboard to replace the LAPD's most recent dead blade runner. It's a steep learning curve.

[all of this author's Blade Runner fic is great, as is their CR stuff. This one stuck with me particularly for the worldbuilding aspects, though. Big warnings for themes of dehumanisation of a sentient artificially created being, threats of violence etc. Blade Runner is not a happy canon and this is not a happy read.]

6) (when you just can't seem) to shake the weight of living by WingedQuill. The Witcher, Geralt/Yennefer/Jaskier

Summary: Geralt's muscles heave backwards, flinging him down against the bed. He tries to struggle upwards but it feels like he’s been buried beneath a mountain. Every inch of him is pressed completely still. His eyes close, and he’s left in the dark with nothing but his racing heart for company. He’s not tired, he’s never been less tired. But the curse wants him to sleep, it seems. It’ll force him to lie here until he does. How much of his life will it start to control, now that he’s declared war against it? Now that he knows it’s lurking in his bones, now that it doesn’t have to be subtle?

He swallows. Takes a long, deep breath, gathering every bit of courage he has to stop himself from slipping back into panic. He still has control over his lungs. He still has that.

For now.

(Or: Witchers don't retire. They stay on the Path until it kills them. They hunt monsters and they want nothing from life. This isn't exactly by choice.)

[Yes I'm cheating including this one, but it was so hard to choose and it's so good just like all the rest. This fic absolutely broke my heart and put it together again with idea of all Witchers being forced to operate under a curse that never lets them retire and essentially traps them in their own minds when they try to fight back against it.]

Bonus shout outs to:

Everything by my lovely Skalidra (shush, I'm biased and you can all deal with it) Take the Heat Out of Me by quipquipquip, the JayDick fic that thoroughly influenced all my DC comics writing Ouroboros by bedlamsbard, if you want incredibly detailed worldbuilding Star Wars fic, featuring universe hopping by the prequel characters, this is the series for you (I particularly recommend Queen's Gambit)

#top five ask game #fic rec

13 notes · View notes

popculturebuffet · 3 years

Text

Carl Barks: Back to the Klondike Review: Blinkus of the Thinkus

Welcome one and all! If your a longtime reader of this blog, you know I love a good birthday celebration, having started with my first year reviewing animation last year with Donald’s and deciding to do Mickey and Scrooge’s later that year. But since I misseda LOT of disney birthdays, and found several Non-disney birthdays and anniversaries I just gotta celebrate, this year i’m making it up and style and have a whole calender set up to tack these big milestones to the wall. So over the year expect tributes to the greats of disney, looney tunes, and mgm both behind and in front of the scenes, as well as to various shows I like. It’s gonna be a good time.

So to start us off, it’s only fitting my first duck birthday since Scrooge, is for the love of his life and the stealer of his wallet, Glittering Goldie O Gilt! And I felt the best way to celebrate this storied day was to go back to her very FIRST apperance, one of earliest Scrooge headlined comics and a forever fan faviorite, Back to the Klondike!

But before we get into that, a little history on our gal in gold. Goldie was created for this story by comics god, the late great Carl Barks. Barks ended up just using her once, which is a shame but understandable as he probably only thought of her for that one adventure. While some characters like Gyro ended up being used again and again he probably just didn’t have any more stories in mind for her and figured Scrooge would return to her one day or he wouldn’t, but it wasn’t up to him. Fans however loved the character, her feisty dynamic with scrooge, and the fact she brought out his good side, so naturally other writers would bring her back. In paticular Barks Superfan Don Rosa cemented her as the love of his life and wrote several more stories with her, fleshing out their backstory and saying that at least in his personal canon, Scrooge retired to spend his final years with her. And while his fanboy was clearly showing, and that can end nasitly just ask Dan “Hates Wally West because he’s not barry allen” DiDio, glad he’s gone.. Rosa’s work with goldie is an example of what happens when it’s done right. Less DiDio or Bendis and more Al Ewing. Using the continuity and what’s there to build on a character who deserved better.. to me that’s one of the BEST things you can do in comics and Rosa’s work is proof of that, ironing out the.. questionable elements we’ll get to and leaving the gold in. So Rosa’s work combined with Ducktales not only adapting this story but bringing Goldie back a few times after that has elevated the character to a storied and permenat part of the duck canon, with her excellent heavily revamped Reboot counterpart currently carrying the torch with the help of the wonderful Allison Janey, perfect casting there. So with a legacy of gold behind her, let’s take a look at where it’s started and see if it still glitters after all these years under the cut.

We begin our story at the Money Bin. Scrooge has been counting his money.. but has already forgotten, and forgot where he put the slip he wrote the number on and even forgets who Donald is when he shows up until Donald, while having some fun with him as Scrooge is trying to phone him while he’s right there. As for how he got into the most secure place in the bin.. the story actually answers that both worringly and hilariously: Scrooge left the door unlocked. Naturally he’s not happy about this and Donald states the simple solution: Go see a doctor something’s CLEARLY very wrong, and the fact this could possibly be something like Demntia is VERY bad for someone who runs a zillion dollar company. Scrooge of course scoffs at “wasting his precious money” But Donald not only points out the obvious, that two bucks now saves him from having someone rob EVERYTHING, but Scrooge’s attempt to tie a string around his finger.. instead triggers a trap. And this entire sequence is decent with some good gags.. it’s just hampered a bit by making light of something that’s kinda bad. Not old people forgetting things.. but an old person with a disease as we find out forgetting things. Not helping is I laughed at first at the gags.. till I remembered a kind, old, friend of the family who had it and forgot me entirely by the end. So yeah, not the worst gags and the boxing glove and donald bits aren’t terrible, but it hurts now my brain’s made that connection.

Our heroes head to the doctor’s office where Scrooge is diagnosed with...

That.. might be the best name for a fictional illness i’ve ever heard in my life.. just inching out “Brain Cloud” and “Whale Cancer”. Still not the most SENSITIVE gag.. but it was the 50��s and mental issues weren’t given a lot of respect. IT’s why the above sequence and this whole part of the plot dosen’t scuttle things: It’s not the most repsectful.. but it wasn’t a time where these things were givne proper respect, treatment or knowledge, so barks wasn’t being an insentive douche on purpose, he just didn’t know. It dosen’t make it 100% okay btu it dosen’t wreck the story like say his blatant racist caractures in Voodoo Hoodoo. Seriously that’s.. not okay, and given he’s the kind of guy who researched locations he used, unlike with mental illness i expect BETTER of him than most men at the time. Still respect the guy, but it dosen’t mean i’ll overlook the fact he made some pretty bad mistakes. Same way while I love and miss Stan Lee I won’t ignore his blatant sexisim or racisim towards Chinese and Vitamise people. You CAN like a creator even if their work has some questionable and unjustifable elements, times do change and people do mamke mistakes when their young. It just depends on exactly WHAT they did or wrote that makes that distinctoin. So on that bombshell, Scrooge is given medication after a needle gag. He needs to take his pills every 12 hours. It’s then he starts to remember something, mubling abotu skagway, goldie and dawson and telling Donald to get the boys, their going to Alaska! Once they get on the boat Scrooge explains: he remembered thanks to the medcince he left a stash of gold nuggets there from his prospecting days.. and part of why this story ended up being one of the single most important to Scrooge’s character. While it establishes some character traits, something I dind’t realize till wikipedia pointed it out, it also establishes Scrooge’s days as a prospector. While other things made him what he was and got him to that point as Don Rosa would later flesh out, it was his days in the yukon that, for better or worse defined who he is now and shaped him into the man he is today: Tough, fair, badass as all hell, mean as the devil and richer than god. This time would be used a lot to set up stories, which made sense as it was the cleast and most agreed upon part of his past by all writers, and him at his abosltuely peak physically and mentally and the gold rush motif of the time perfectly fits someone defined by being rich. It’s also honestly nice that the Yukon is used, as Canada sometimes gets lost in the shuffle wise and hell until reading life and times I gneuinely had no idea what the Yukon was or where Calvin was headed when he and hobbes ran away from home.

Scrooge also first mentions Goldie and while clearly remembering her fondly.. goes into a rant about her howing him a thousand dollars which has compounded to a billion the second the boys catch on he was sweet on her with Donald assuming he’s just not a good person. But this is really just setting up another vital part of his character and the other thing: his heart. Before he’d been show as a pretty heartless, greedy asshole. While the previous story, Only a Poor Old Man, had softened him up a bit, this is the first to show that beneath the pile of greed and mean lurks a decent human being. Just don’t tell anyone or he’ll throw his money at you.. then tell you to bring it back to him. It’s what makes the character who he is: he’s cruel, onrey and selfish.. but he CAN care when the chips are down and can do the right thing.. as we’ll see later.

God I love the little poems Bill Watterson would put in the books. I didn’t as much as a kid, but god I do now. Anyways before our heroes can get going Yukon Ho, they stop in Skagway for suplies before heading out, Scrooge softing at taking a plane as “Soft” and him and the nephews hiking a week.. before running into the same flying service again, and finding out Scrooge OWNS it and forgot, because being scrooge he forgot to take his meds. Something I can relate to and i’m not proud of as staying on them is important to my well being. Seriously always take your meds. Unless their not working for you then talk with your doctor to get new ones.

So we arrive in Dawson, as our heroes will have to walk rest of the day Scrooge takes the boys to the Black Jack Ballroom, which used to be a hot spot and was where he met Goldie for the first time. After another covering for his reminscing with greedy bollocks, he tells the boys the story.. one that was cut from the original printing despite introducing goldie and something the editors dind’t bother to tell carl till they berated him over trying to sneak a blackjack saloon and a kidnapping in there... and to them, or their long dead skeletons probably, I say.

Yeah not wanting that in a kids story, while bollocks, tha’ts their perogative.. not having him send in replacement pages to keep story flow.. is dickish and underestimates kids intellegence as Don Rosa, while loving the story felt something was off till he saw the missing pages years later thanks to a fellow fan. So yeah kids, and adults, into the work noticed. Nice job. Again I can’t BLAME them for not wanting Scrooge to be a kidnapper as we’ll see and Don Rosa had to massage the hell out of that, but I can blame them for not caring enough to fix the obvious hole int he story. Though it’s now complete and unabriged and has been since the 80′s so there's that.

So in a nutshell Scrooge came to town for a coffee, and while the bartender ignored him he didn’t once he plunked down his goose egg nugget, what made his fortune and one of Scrooge’s most treasured possessions. It’s here we meet Goldie.

Yup.. just in case you thought her being a thief and greedy as hell was a new thing, and I kinda forgot how much, she dirves for the nugget, has Coffee with scrooge.. and drugs it, but makes the mistake of NOT clearing town, so Scrooge fights his way through the ballroom to her, gets the nugget back, forces her to sign the money for the iou he spent.. and then uh.. kindaps her to force her to work on his claim for 50 cents to try and teach her how to work honestly.

Yeahhhh as I said Don Rosa tried his best to fix this , and did so in his final story, which we’ll get to some day, revealing Goldie had a shot gun on her the whole time and was going along entirely to find out where Scrooge’s claim was. That.. actually makes more sense with the character and is far less horrifying and Scrooge finds this out fairly quick, so them forming an attraction out of this becomes 100% more plausable. So yeah good on Don Rosa for fixing the implications here. I may give out on him from time to time.. but he is a genuinely talented writer and did what a good comic book writer in an established continuity should do: update elements so they aren’t so... eugguuhhh after they become horrifingly outdated. And look YES she did do horrible shit to him.. but you still can’t kidnap someone over that. just put her in jail. What was any of that.

Anyways Scrooge HAS been taking his medicine, and proves it by showing the boys his pills and the next day they head to Scrooge’s old claim.. only someone’s living there and using it, and his old cabin.. and a shot gun. Yeah so they aren’t getting through in the day what about the night.. well they get attacked by Blackjack, who turns out to be owned by the claim jumper.. and is also you know a bear> And Donald left his back in new quackmore so their outmatched.

So outgunned and outplanned, if not outnumbered or outmanned, our heroes make a camp fire and whiel Donald again suggests the obvious, call the police.. Scrooge can’t. He didn’t pay taxes on the claim so he’s technically jumping his own claim and techincally she has a right to it. So techncially.. Scrooge is the bad guy here as he left the money here, didn’t pay his taxes and didn’t ever come back for it. Still beats trying to terrify your nephews or deny orphans a train because your an asshole buffet.

So the next morning Scrooge dosen’t want to rush her because “We Daren’t Get Rough with an old woman”. Two things.. 1... think before you put images in my head scrooge.. brrrrrrrrr. I mean Goldie. is not in the best shape in thie story as you’ll see and neither are you. In the reboot sure you two kept up a lot better but here.

And it’s not even an old people thing. Ann Margret was still fine so fine by the time of Grumpy Old Men, not to get creepy jut to prove i’m not being ageist. For a still alive example Keith David is also still a smokeshow at the tender age of 64. So yeah, not an age thing just not these paticular old people.

But they need a plan so the boy suggest luring the bear into a trap with honey. Donald and Scrooge build the cage while the boys.. find the jar of honey.

Regardless since the boys won’t do it for what Scrooge pays and neither will donald Scrooge goes to lure the bear with the honey. Once that’s done, and Scrooge is being covered with honey and licked by a bear...

So while he washes that off, the boys come up with another plan: they run around back while Donald makes noise to draw Goldie’s fire, with that being Dewey’s plan to meet her since he’s figured this out already. But Goldie has a backup plan and when she figures out they disabled Blackjack unleashes mosquitos... ugh. Having been stung like hornets about 50 times in animal crossing I feel you boys. So while Scrooge and Donald run off naked... troy if you will.

Thank you Troy, the boys confront Goldie who reveals her identity... and that she’s broke, her dance hall having failed with the rush and this claim being all she has.. and her suspecting scrooge woudl gladly take it. The boys vow not to tell scrooge.. but he’s on his way so they kinda have to and he primps to go visit and Donald starts to see through his BS about collecting the debt. Sure enough despite being taken aback by her putting on her old dress , he takes her for all she has and is.. genuinely suprised as she thought she’d have more and she’d actually changed since the old days, donating her profits to orphans from mining disasters. Scrooge.. is clearly rattled by this. Whiel it turns out to my shock he was clealry after the money, though givne who we’re dealing with I shoudln’t of been really, he still cares and still realizes he’s being kind of a dick. So he challengers her to a gold digging race, and if she wins the claim is hers and any gold she finds.. and naturally, while he seemingly puts her soemwhere where there isn’t she finds the claim and Scrooge bemoans not taking his pill.. but while the boys boo him for it, Goldie who fondly waves them off and Donald know better: Donald points out he counted the pills this morning.. and recently. SCrooge DID take one today... he’s just has his cane shoved firmly up his ass with pride so he coudln’t ADMIT he was wrong and instead simply staged that whole thing with the full knowledge Goldie would win. It, again, sets up one of his defniing traits; how he keeps people at arms length. How he’s just so proud and full of himself he can’t bear to admit anything resembling weakness.. but WILl find a way to do the right thing without that or forgoe it as a last resort. He may project being a stingy cretionus old man.. because he is.. but he’s got a heart as big as that nugget.. it’s just locked tight in it’s own bin... his body is complicated and weird that way Final Thoughts:

This story is a classic with a decent setup, great backstory for scrooge, and a great guest character and unquestionable impact on the character. However.. it does have it’s problem; As Don Rosa, who as i’ll remind you is both a huge barks fanboy and huge scoldie shipper, himself pointed out he wrote his final story, and had planned to for years ENTIRELY because this one never quite explains how Scrooge and Goldie went from old enmies to lovers.It did lead to one of his best stories and one of the first I read post life and times so, props to that. And of course as I pointed out some things have just.. not aged well, especially the kidnapping so their relationship kinda comes off like stockholm syndrom as a result of both of these.

That being said.. warts and all.. it’s still a really damn good story and a good one to try if your intrested in barks work or where Goldie came from: it has adventure, some really good jokes and if you can get past the dated bits the plot is solid. And while it goes without saying i’ll say it anyway Barks art is goregous as always ESPECIALLY in the flashback sequence. Overall not the best AGED Scrooge story, though not the worst either see Voodoo Hoodoo, good god, but defintely a classic for a reason. If you liked this review, follow me for more, and for more duck content as I still have more of the three cablleros to work through, another chapter of life and times coming up this week befor ewe break again for feburary, and some other fun stuff. Until the next rainbow, it’s been a pleasure.

#carl barks #scrooge mcduck #uncle scrooge #donald duck #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #glittering goldie #goldie o gilt #scoldie #back to the klondike #blackjack #comics #disney #ducktales

24 notes · View notes

tonystarkbingo · 4 years

Photo

TSB Mark IV Week 2 Roundup!

This includes the Round Robin fic that several participants wrote as part of our Discord Party, as well as a whole bunch of other amazing works. Go leave them some love!

Title: Adventures of Tiny Dragon Tony and His Treasure (Loki) - Chapter 41: Snapshot #41: The First of Many Meetings Collaborator: tinydragontony Card Number: 4005 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: T5 - more than a partner Ship: FrostIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Fluff, first meetings, 5+1 Summary: Here it is, the most requested chapter to date! How Loki met tiny dragon Tony! Word Count: 3300

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

Title: Snowed In Collaborator: eachpeachpearplum Card Number: 4003 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: S2 - snowed in Ship: none Rating: Gen Major Tags: snowglobe, possible imprisonment?, art Summary: Tony was just minding his own business, taking a quick zip around the city, just because he can. Next thing he knows, he’s in a glass ball sat on some evildoer’s shelf. To make things worse, he’s not the only one…

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

Title: Man on the Run Collaborator: ceealaina Card Number: 4008 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: R1 - Old Team Ship: Background Pepper/Nat, Background IronHusbands Rating: Teen Major Tags: Fluff and Humour, Team as Family, Post-Endgame, Fix-It Summary: Saving the world is important. But Tony really, really just wants to retire and spend time with his family. And if faking his death is the only way to do that, that's how it goes sometimes. Word Count: 1115

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

Title: Inktober - Day 19 Collaborator: monobuu Card Number: 4040 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: S3 - AU: Star Wars Ship: WinterIron Rating: Teen Major Tags: Scandalous amount of leg Summary: Uuuuuh. Yeah. (*ﾟ▽ﾟ*)

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

Title: Scrunch Me Collaborator: martianwahtney Card Number: 4011 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Victorious Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: fluff Summary: 3 times Tony asks Bucky why he wears scrunchies, and 1 time he figured it out for himself Word Count: 995

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

Title: The Best Bathtub Collaborator: camichats Card Number: 4049 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: K4 - Kink: Bath/Shower Sex Ship: Tony/Sharon Rating: Mature Major Tags: Minor sexual content, allusions to sugar daddy/baby relationship (though not actually present in the fic) Summary: Sharon is a tough Shield agent and she’s proud of that, but sometimes it’s nice to relax and feel pampered. Word Count: 1649

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

Title: Baffled, bewildered and bemused. Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K1 - Learning to be Loved Ship: Stony Rating: Mature Major Tags: Super Fluffy, Implied Sex Summary: Baffled. Bewildered? Perplexed. Tony couldn’t quite figure out which version fit this situation best, but they all seemed to apply. Perplexed seemed a bit much though. Puzzled? Bemused. Word Count: 3197

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

Title: wound with your eyes (kill with a smile) - Chapter 3 Collaborator: deathsweetqueen Card Number: 4066 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Restrained Ship: WinterIron Rating: Mature Major Tags: graphic depictions of violence, Spy Kids AU, Secret Identities, Kidnapping, Indian Tony Stark Summary: Tony Stark and Bucky Barnes were once the renowned superheroes, Iron Man and the Winter Soldier. Eventually, they put aside the masks and the armour to get married and raise a family together. Twelve years later, SHIELD agents go missing, and Tony and Bucky decide to go on their first mission since their eldest child was born. When they're mysteriously kidnapped by a psychotic TV show host, it's hardly a great first step to getting back in the game. The worst thing, though, might be the fact that the only people who can rescue them are their own children. Word Count: 12,872

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

Title: with or without his unhallowed touch - Chapter 24 Collaborator: deathsweetqueen Card Number: 4066 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K1 - myths and legends Ship: Tony/Thanos, Stuckony Rating: Explicit Major Tags: Tony is Kidnapped by Thanos, Tony is the Soul Stone, Female Tony Stark, Obsessive Behavior, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Emotional Manipulation, Stockholm Syndrome, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Physical Abuse, Domestic Violence, Forced Relationship, Gaslighting, Rape/Non-con Elements, Warnings for this Chapter: Explicit Violence, Major Character Death, and Cannibalism Summary: Toni sees the Chitauri mothership high above her, sees the hundreds and thousands of warships that circle the Earth, and she knows, she knows. She thinks, oh, I understand. A beat. Her hand burns. Wow, we are so fucked. She lets the bomb slide out of her hands, watches as it floats towards the mothership, and fire rains down on her, even in the dark, pale, cold hollow of space. She laughs, breathlessly, thinks of all the ones who’d loved her the most, and dies. Word Count: 129,402

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

Title: What We Do in the Tower Collaborator: newnewyorker93, rebelmeg Card Number: 4042, 4034 Link: AO3 Square Filled: S2 - Forcibly Adopted (4042) A5 - WTF (4034) Ship: Peter & Tony, Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: Vampire AU, Avengers family, crack and humor, unapologetic cherry-picking of vampire lore Summary: Peter Parker has been having an awkward time as a brand new vampire. But now he's got Tony Stark whisking him off to meet a whole group of weird and hilarious vampires that live in Stark Tower and maybe this won't be so bad after all? Word Count: 5185

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

Title: Prince Tony and the Red Headed Princess Collaborator: PoliZ Card Number: 4007 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K2 - AU: Fairy Tale Ship: Pepperony Rating: Gen Major Tags: fairytale elements, domestic fluff Summary: Morgan asks her daddy for a bedtime story with knights and monsters, and wizards and princesses. With some help from Pepper, Tony is happy to oblige. Word Count: 866

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

Title: A Bottle and a Half of Whiskey Later - An 1872 Playlist Collaborator: moosh Card Number: 4037 Link: Tumblr Square Filled: S5 - Canon: 1872 Ship: None Rating: Gen Major Tags: Playlist Summary: A playlist based off some of the songs that Tony sang in the comic. Word Count: N/A

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

Title: The Gift of Jab Collaborator: dracusfyre Card Number: 4032 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A2 - Dares/Bets Ship: WinterIron Rating: Gen Major Tags: Pre-Relationship, Sparring Summary: For the ImagineTonyandBucky prompt: Hi! I'm always up for some sparring hotness, so how about Tony being present for physical training sessions (working/watching), but says no everytime Nat/Clint/Steve/etc invites him to do it. Rhodey laughing every time the team says that it's bc Tony doesn't want to embarass himself. Bucky suspects his BF is actually well-versed in hand-to-hand/martial arts/self-defense; so he gives himself the challenge of getting Tony onto the mat. When he does he ends up a)on the floor & b)really aroused. The fill is less horny than the prompt, sorry. Word Count: 2453

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

Title: Lady in Red Collaborator: JehBeeEh Card Number: 4058 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Steve Rogers/Captain America Ship: Stony Rating: Mature Major Tags: Summary: “I GOT SCARED, ALRIGHT?”“Steve, sweetheart-"Steve kept pacing their room like he hadn’t even heard her. “I got so scared, you have no idea. And I know, okay. I know you can take care of yourself, and you don’t need me to save you or protect you, and it is sexy as all hell, but in that moment, I forgot all about that, and I was scared that I couldn’t protect you.” He collapsed on the bed, elbows on his knees and his head in his hands and Toni could hear him take long slow breaths.This had definitely not been how Toni envisioned their return home going. Word Count: 1176

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

Title: i come as a woman, dark and open Collaborator: simi Card Number: 4066 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Resolve Ship: Toni/Steve/Bucky Rating: E Major Tags: Female Tony Stark, Regency AU, Misogyny, Racism, Explicit Sexual Content, Emotional Infidelity, Slurs, Marital Dissatisfaction. Summary: When Toni first meets Captain Steve Rogers at one of the biggest gatherings of the season, she is not impressed. On the other hand, his best friend, the charming James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, was an utter delight. Unfortunately for her, after a series of misunderstandings at said party, she is forced to accept Steve’s hand in marriage in order to save her family’s reputation. And while Toni never expected a fairy tale, she had always hoped that companionship would one day turn into something more. How was she to know that Steve was just as charmed by Bucky as she was? a.k.a. Steve and Toni get married to each other; there are more misunderstandings; Bucky is an absolute delight and possibly the saving grace for their marriage; and somehow, all three end up falling in love with each other in the process. Word Count: 25, 335

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

Title: TSB October Discord Party Round Robin Fic Collaborators: rebelmeg 4034 Politzania 4007 EachPeachPearPlum 4003 summerpipedream 4045 Ducky 4013 Magica 4019 SomeSortofItalianRoast 4036 DarthBloodOrange 4010 Link: AO3 Square Filled: rebelmeg: A4 - Huddling for Warmth Politzania: A5 - Dog Park EachPeachPearPlum: S1 - Premonitions summerpipedream: A5 - Clint Barton/Hawkeye Ducky: R5 - Fortune Telling Magica: T2 - Fortitude SomeSortofItalianRoast: S2 - Magic DarthBloodOrange: T4 - Robots Ship: None Rating: Teen Major Tags: animal transformation, magic/witchcraft, Kate is a hero, Clint is a disaster human being Summary: Tony has been turned into a dog, and he is going to straight-up murder whoever made him a corgi. Word Count: 2634

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

Title: I Know You Collaborator: iam93percentstardust Card Number: 4012 Link: AO3 Square Filled: R5 - Sam Wilson/Falcon Ship: IronFalcon Rating: Gen Major Tags: Established Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Sickfic Summary: When Tony gets sick and hides away from everyone else, it's up to Sam to find his wayward boyfriend. Good thing he knows him so well. Word Count: 1316

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

Title: Thriller - Michael Jackson Collaborator: monobuu Card Number: 4040 Link: AO3 Square Filled: A5 - Murderchildren Ship: None Rating: Teen Major Tags: Creepy? Summary: N/A Word Count: N/A

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

Title: I’ll keep your brittle heart warm Collaborator: peachy Card Number: 4017 Link: AO3 Square Filled: K3 - Protectiveness Ship: Stony Rating: Teen Major Tags: Breaking up and making up, fluff, getting back together Summary: They got married when they were young, just twenty-four years old, despite the arguments from their friends that they should wait, that neither of them were ready for a commitment like marriage so young. Steve distinctly remembered Sam pointing out that the male brain isn’t even fully developed until age twenty-five. But they were young and passionate, so sure they’d found their perfect person that they could overcome anything and everything life threw at them. And it was true. For six months. Word Count: 4223

#tonystarkbingomarkiv #tsbmiv #tsb weekly roundup #tsb week 2

6 notes · View notes

blackcatphysics · 4 years

Text

Blue Eyed Babe

Andy had no idea how old she was. Worse (in Nile’s opinion), she didn’t seem to care.

Andy’s refusal to give her age apparently wasn’t so much to “maintain a sense of mystery and power” as it was “I have no fucking clue and can’t be bothered to figure it out”. Eventually Nile just dropped the whole thing.

Her first days as an immortal had been non-stop death-and-adrenaline, so Nile could be forgiven for thinking that the military adage “hurry up and wait” didn’t apply to Old Guard operations. A few years in she was pretty sure it was the only saying that did. Once team mission briefings were done and plans made, when the only sounds were the scrape of the whetstone along Andy’s labrys and the banging around of whatever Joe was doing in the kitchen, Nile would sometimes fall down the rabbit-hole of Wikipedia links.

Three hours of fascinated clicking later and there it was. This piece of intel had potential.

“Hey Andy-”

“Hmmm?”

“Were there any other people in your tribe with blue eyes?” Nile was doing her best to sound uninterested but Andy shot her a look that said she’d failed miserably.

“No. Why?”

“Anyone in any other groups?”

“No. That’s how I ended up worshipped, called ‘sky-eye’d and deathless’. Why?”

“Hunh. That’s interesting.”

“What’s ‘interesting’ Nile.” Andy had put aside her whetstone and was leaning forward. Nile judged that she could draw this out a little longer before Andy snapped.

“Did you know that blue eyes only showed up in humans around the Black Sea area about 7 to 10 thousand years ago?”

“And?”

Oooo, that had some bite behind it. Nile’s inner sibling rubbed its hands in glee. “The best part is that they’re pretty sure that all people with blue eyes can be traced to that one region”.

By now all noise from the kitchen had ceased. Joe was leaning out from the kitchen and Nicky had put down his book, peering at them over the back of the couch. “Not just to one region but one family, possibly even one person.” Nile waited for the explosion.

Joe did not disappoint. “Jidat fi alqanun!”

“NO.”

“A few more greats needed?”

“NO!”

And then Nicky (the trolliest troll who ever did troll and dear God did Nile love him for it), wide-eyed, fixed his baby blues on Andy and softly, sorrowfully, asked "Perché ci neghi, O madre? Non ci ami più??"

Andy’s inarticulate noise of frustration and rage was almost musical.

“Yes,” thought Nile, “my work here is done”. She quickly emailed the conversation and Andy’s reaction to Booker.

After all, it wouldn’t do to let Andy off the hook quite that easily, and Booker did sad-puppy-dog eyes even better than Nicky.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charlize Theron has blue eyes. Andy won’t tell her age. I remembered something about blue eyes and genetics, and here we are. So much thanks to @fixomnia-scribble for the editing and conversation while I flailed.

The link that inspired this insanity:

Blue-eyed humans have a single, common ancestor.

Other bits:

XKCD Wikipedia comic Jidat fi alqanun - grandmother-in-law Perché ci neghi, O madre? Non ci ami più?? - Why do you deny us mother? Do you not love us anymore??

#the old guard #fanfic #one shot

7 notes · View notes

joelmillerthirstqz · 4 years

Link

Fill for this ask~

(slight liberty taken with request for reader to get excited about the shop; Ellie's working through sixteen-year-old, new-to-commitment-as-a-concept with Cat, pre-dina tattoo girlfriend, so i went with that)

Joel, y/n, and Ellie are all out on patrol and come across a small town. In the town, there’s an abandoned wedding dress shop. Y/n gets all excited and goes inside to see there are untouched wedding dresses. Joel’s slightly annoyed when y/n and Ellie want to try some on for fun. But then he sees y/n in a wedding dress and realizes he sees her as more than a friend.

yeah, of course I wrote with reference images up:

texture/sheerness/skirt shape/front dress ref back of dress ref, specifically the window-back with the little covered buttons up over the lower part of the hips

[I evade y/n as a convention like the plague, it’s really immersion crushing for me. However, I’ll edit it for your OC’s name if you hit the ask box, so.]

There's already a second chapter if you we want to get into this, comment or kudos and I'll get brave!

----

Ellie grimaces, scrunching her whole face. She looks across the main street of the town you’d come to scout out, Joel taciturn on his horse a few yards away, scanning storefronts and alleys.

“What?” you jerk your head to her sightline and back at her, unholstering your revolver on reflex. Your horse snuffles below you, hoofing at the ground. You can never tell if the creature is clueless, indifferent, or confident in his rider, but he would certainly be perturbed if there were infected.

“Dude, people had whole shops just for weddings?” Ellie asks, snorting derisively.

You follow her extended arm to the storefront she points to, a frilly off-white dress draped over a sunken model, glass from the smashed display window embedded.

“I mean, you had to have seen them in Boston, plenty of bored people with money,” you supply warmly. You’d grown up there, a cataclysm between the city you’d known and Ellie’s birthplace. Weddings were for people who’d given up, who’d aged out of chasing their dreams, settled into dull domesticity. People, usually the woman-coded partner, whose parents had quarter of a million to drop on a party with lifelong implications.

You’d been a little relieved when social ritual had been mostly taken off the table by the apocalypse, so the wedding pressure never reached you. Hadn’t thought about the concept in years.

You wondered who in Victor, Idaho, just over the border from Jackson, had kept a bridal shop open even before the outbreak. The demand just couldn’t match thousands of dollars of dress.

“Oh, no,” Ellie said softly.

“Well, it was a whole thing. Get some champagne, drag a bunch of girls with you, try on all the shapes and get yelled at by your mom, make jokes about the wedding night. Mostly pointless rituals,” you explain.

“You ever go to one?” Ellie asks.

“I mean, I was my cousin’s bridesmaid, so I got drunk in one and shoved into a blue satin thing, if that counts,” you clarify, shifting in your saddle.

Ellie nudges Shimmer forward, Joel drawing up to your position with a helpless shrug to you.

“It was strange. Were you in Jackson for Tommy’s?” you ask. Maria and Tommy still have that thing where they see each other and tune everything else out, even for a beat, seeming like every sense recognizes the other, no matter what else they’re doing. It feels so belligerently normal, and you watch the younger couples in the town taking note to emulate it, like they knew what they were doing because they were born before.

“No,” Joel says, looking wistful. “Seen pictures,” he adds.

“Imagine they were a bigger deal in Texas,” you say, your horses trotting a few paces behind Ellie.

Joel looks at you, face cycling through the decision to keep speaking, the same circuit you always saw him loop before he bit down on a memory and fell silent. You let the afterimage of a smile cross your face before looking down, feeling like he needs the same privacy he’d proven skilled at respecting in your own expression.

—Yesterday—

“Ask you a favor?” you feel your bones leave your body and slam back into place with fear, registering Joel’s low drawl. You’d groggily found your way into the stables to start patrol, hoodie tucked over a beanie, praying not to be seen. Nobody was supposed to be awake this early—you were avoiding a less experienced, loquacious patrolmate you’d been sentenced to and your throat clasps around itself to find that the previous night’s team, Joel’s, was only just returning.

“How bad was it?” you tip your head at the blood spatter on the side of his jacket, reddened bucket and sponge set where he’d been cleaning the infected byproduct off of his horse.

“Oh, I straggled, rest gone home. Patrol route’s quiet now, though,” he non-explains. You’re not sure if he’s trying to keep his voice low out of respect for the early hour or if that’s just his usual rumbling tone resounding it in the stark, chilly air.

“Mhm. What’s the favor?” you ask, busying yourself with saddling your own horse.

“About scouting that town for the group to search, tomorrow. Ellie’s comin’ and…” he trails off, looking at the wood-plank wall, blinking an eye at the fierce early morning sun beaming through a sliver.

You’ve learned not to rush him, learned he’s easier to talk to with his hands full, and he finishes scrubbing off his horse’s bridle while you tack up your own.

“She talks to you, easier,” Joel admits, face obscured behind his horse, taking his time to brush through the animal’s fur, obliviously slurping hay into its mouth before crinkling it in its teeth.

“Huh?” you ask, marvel of articulation that you are.

“Ellie, she’s more talkative,” he repeats himself.

“No, I mean, what?”

You hear a sigh and he leans around his horse, hands on his hips.

“Please?” he asks, slightest edge of irritation at having to say more than he’d practiced. It's all insecurity, not directed at you, but you bristle anyway.

“Alright. It’s your business, but I’ll lend my girl talk instinct,” you prod with bite, stuffing your foot into a stirrup and swinging a leg up onto Clover, who’d been named before you got to Jackson. Your emotional labor threshold never existed, and Joel was fucking pushing it.

“That’s not what I meant,” he sounds defeated as you look down at him, Clover slowing helpfully. His eyes look full, and you peer at him. He looks a little vulnerable—even if your worst anxieties read it as him noticing that you squint to avoid looking at his mouth—which is parted a little, black beard flecked with, for you, exactly the correct amount of grey. Joel rubs his lips together three times, quick, the way you’d seen when he wanted to stop talking at town meetings, shy of the eyes on him.

You soften, aware you’re irritable from lack of sleep and scarcity of good caffeine. You look ahead, reins creaking in your gloves conspicuously in the still space.

“Owe me a beer when I’m back tonight, okay?” you nod at him and press into Clover’s flank as Joel silently assents, focus snapping back to brushing out his horse. You risk looking back as Clover picks up, relieved and let down to see Joel doggedly focused on his task. You’d taken to drinking with the other patrolmen in the Tipsy Bison, edging into something resembling a social life borne of something like mutual responsibility. The group repeatedly made plain his welcome over the last few months until Joel had started to show up routinely, even murmuring a few words here and there, coming to the point that you’d notice when he wasn’t there.

—

“Okay but, why, though?” Ellie paws at a veil as you enter the store, pompous fabric ballooning halfway down the mannequin’s back.

“Dunno, it’s what people wore. I think that was for modesty, symbolically. Only went to a couple. My friends never hit the ‘wedding season’ stride. Too young,” you explain, your senior year of college on outbreak day. A look crosses Joel’s face and he spins the barrel of his revolver, leaning against the counter, trying to look busy checking the register, just in case something helpful lingered.

“Go try one on, Ellie,” you try, unsure what the sixteen-year-old is working through. Her attention hasn’t drifted to the next shops to explore, yet, so it clearly matters.

“Not for me,” she protests, hands raised. “Will you?”

You laugh ruefully, years away from the last time you’d put on something close to a dress, much less something formal, and you'd certainly never thought about being a bride. Not materially.

“C’mon, I’ve never seen like, a normal human in one,” Ellie pouts. You narrow your eyes for a second, lightly dubious.

“That’s not the best idea,” Joel grouses next to you, looking over both his shoulders like he was expecting an ambush even though it had been placid the whole way up here. Two of your three horses nudge each other for space near the tree you’ve secured them too, whinnying.

“I’ll keep my boots on for running. And you’ll keep a lookout,” you reply blithely, rolling your eyes at him.

“Yell for help!’ Ellie still discovering nuptial detritus she’d seen alluded to in comics at most.

You busy yourself finding something not set through with rot, moving towards the back of the store. Ellie swings open a display case and picks up a circular, springy fabric, a pale blue garter, squinting with the effort of discernment.

“Were the hair tie things a thing for a reason?” Ellie asks Joel, looping the blue-ribboned elastic around her wrist for later. Joel’s eyes widen in horror, ready to run towards the nearest infected to avoid explaining the whole garter thing to Ellie.

A second, more frigid wave hits him, remembering his own wedding day, Tommy helping him get just drunk enough to go through with the embarrassing ritual that complemented the bouquet toss. Sarah’s mom had loved all the stupid little wedding-day-things, though, so he’d accepted the shot(s) his brother snuck him and was grateful his red face would be under a skirt. He’d barely been eighteen, doing the right thing with Sarah’s mom pregnant, and two-years-younger Tommy held it together for him the whole day. He thought of not being here for the day his little brother had gotten hitched, a candid Polaroid in focus in the reel of guilt he’d built for himself these last twenty-some years. Tommy looked like his brother as he was before in it, looking up Maria with rapt awe as he accepted her hand to be led back to the dance floor. The crinkling at the corner of his eyes, though older, looked like Tommy again, and the joy Joel felt for him was dulled by the impossibility of ever speaking enough words to draw a partner near.

“Joel?” she pokes, twanging the elastic a little to jar him. He eyes it warily, expression the most intimidated you'd ever seen him.

You trudge past Ellie, awkwardly dragging a plastic-encased parcel of a voluminous dress, the best-preserved and least yellowed you’d found. You really didn’t relish the idea of figuring out how to get it on alone, but seeing their exchange, you fully self-preserved your way away from that particular explanation to the changing space.

“Fuck me,” you grimace, noticing the trail of covered buttons leading from the open mid-back to the very last point it could presentably grace between the dimples on your back. Wrestling this on would be a chore.

Before you shuck everything but your boots and socks, you try to smooth your hair down, the moss-flecked mirror of the changing space indicating how hopeless it is. You re-strap your pistol holster to your thigh, an overabundance of caution rubbing off on you from Joel's mere anxious proximity.

You look at your reflection a minute, appraising heavy breasts, softer hips than before. You’re proud that your abdomen and arms remain taut and toned from a combination of riding and patrolling, sprinting for your life, and helping around Jackson. For once in your life, you fall asleep at night when you hit the pillow, naked and alone, no longer captive of the ceiling’s backlighting of unidentifiable darting thoughts. Blinking your musing away, you remember how your cousin’s bridal attendant had made a circle of the dress for her to step into, and do your best to prepare it so you can slide it up and ask Ellie to help.

—

Ellie slingshotted the something-blue at Joel’s face as he finished explaining the garter tradition, hushing her ferociously and finally placing both palms over his whole face, crossing and re-crossing his ankles where he leant against the counter, rifle over his shoulder.

Ellie rolled her eyes, haughtily full of recent knowledge of thighs and what they connect to from Cat, fern and moth tattoo freshly peeling over her acid burn.

—

“Ellie!” you call once the skirt is over your hips, bodice with laced cap sleeves over your shoulders. You feel a little bad stepping past the carefully sewn fabric in your hiking boots and high socks, grimy from the trail’s dust, trying to hold it up while keeping the bodice straight.

She smiles wryly as her head pokes around the corner.

“I’ll help if you tell me if people really launched their bouquets at people and one person really pulled a—uh, shit, uh, thigh lingerie thing—off of the bride in front of everyone?”

You honk a laugh, a horrible sound, thinking of the velocity with which you’d seen Ellie launch bricks, knowing she has no sense of the soft lob of flowers at friends that she refers to. You guess she's picturing a full-bodied overarm spike ending in flower shrapnel instead of the over-the-shoulder choreography towards the bride's most single friend that happened in reality. You clasp the delicate buttons at your lower back together as best you can with your palms.

“Sounds like that was regionally universal in America, yeah, but—”

“Holy shit,” Ellie comments, suddenly shuddering in a very teenage, possibly exaggerated ripple of disgust. “Looked like a hair tie,” she mutters.

“Just—please help,” you hold the tulle and hand-cut lace near the buttons out to her.

“Wow, this was for everyone to see you in?” Ellie asks, alluding to the sheer fabric that gave the impression that the lace filigrees were directly applied to your skin. Asymmetrical, hand-sewn flowers cinch around your breasts and middle when she finally secures it.

You turn to the angled three-part mirror, noticing where your epaulet tattoo complicates the sheer effect the designers intended by the lace, nose bunching up. Not the flesh of the intended buyer of this thing, for sure.

“Come on, in the light!” Ellie goads gently.

Bracing to self-deprecate, you tuck your hair up in one hand and hold the front of the dress up and away from your muddy boots. You and outward, finding the weird little podium that was apparently customary—you remember your cousin twirling on it a similar one in delight when she’d found the right dress.

“Yeah, fuck, I can’t do this for long,” you bristle, feeling ungainly in the garment, dropping the skirts around your feet.

“And you’d just walk up to someone and kiss them in front of everyone and that worked?” Ellie prattles, tailing you closely.

Joel’s retreated to the store entrance, hunting rifle comfortable in his hands but pointedly ready.

He turns in the middle of running some sort of ten foot patrol route along the length of the store’s entrance, inevitable that he’d face you eventually. You realize he’s just pacing, the town quiet, stuck in a situation he accidentally created.

Ellie gives you a look that looks through you, and you recognize the contemplation in it. She’s thinking of someone, and what formalizing intimacy means, probably. Certainly where your mind was at around her age. Fuck, you’d not go back to sixteen for all the pre-outbreak world.

“I’m gonna go check the horses,” she mumbles, maybe in her own head, maybe more deliberate than that.

Your eyes bulge as you realize you’re stuck in this fucking thing and Ellie’s across the street.

You turn to Joel with a prepared face, tugging your dimples into a self-effacing “look at this shit” face.

“Wanna try one on?” you jab first, trying to get there before Joel can make this worse, more stupid. He’d kind of asked you, or asked for a favor that led to this, so you felt contented blaming him for it. You definitely will if his slight over-caution is vindicated and you get rushed by anything hostile while you're wearing this. Your holster may feel comforting, but the weight of the skirt would put a real drag on any reflexes you had if you actually needed your pistol.

Joel halted at the midpoint of his circling, rifle slack in his hands, hanging limp before him. The light from outside rings his form, broad shoulders and imposing frame worn uneasily in his posture.

His mouth parts the way it had when you’d ridden past him in the stables, chest expanding and falling in quick iterations, hazel eyes stranded on you.

You breathe as you hold his eyes, unable to back down from any time he proved capable of holding direct eye contact. Now that you had it, you realized you’d been teasing it out of him for months, forcing him to look right at you, any creative way you could, driving him up the wall.

Joel might as well have been waist-deep in water for how slowly he moves towards you.

“Sorry, not meaning to bring up anything—” you swallow the word painful, revising quickly, “from before,” you finish weakly. Gold star, idiot. You had no idea, but what if it had been a wife he’d lost? Fuck’s sake. Though, Ellie wouldn't be cruel like that—

Joel shakes his head absently, dismissive. He was run aground, captive to taking you in. The dress made no overtures to performative modesty, sheer tulle slits up to the edge of your hipbones, catching on your holster where you shift. Joel assesses the fabric spread over your chest quickly, mouth upturning too subtly for you to feel 100% confident you’d seen him do it. You’d seen him get the lay of a whole horde in a split second, and stood curious what it was he’d noted from the two and a half seconds his eyes drifted over you.

“‘m here, now,” he mumbles, looking down and pulling the bolt back, a dull click as it confirmed he’d chambered this particular round ten times in the last five minutes. If a weapon could sound exasperated with him, it did, and he jerks his head without turning it to Ellie’s retreating form.

Joel’s mind sprints between stations, picking up an artifact of your expression at each one: your body, your easy conversations on patrol, fumbling between them all, not sure where to start.

Ellie wasn’t far enough away for Joel to start this now, to cross the shop and kiss you, podium leveling you to the perfect height for him to lean into, hands on your face. Something in his posture looks ready to move quickly, and it's not to use the weapon his knuckles whiten around.

The edges of his eyes pinch, like he’s struggling to make sense of an indescribable noise. The tendon running from your ear to collarbone stands out as you look to the side, pretending to appraise the way the dress fits over your hips, snugly buttoned. Joel’s face shifts from startled to starved while you take reprieve from his focus.

Your furrowed brows while you watch Joel watch you spark understanding of the mechanics of a constant, firm draw towards your person. He’s recognizing you as more than a formidable shot he can be at ease with, not just a pleasant confidante with different but complementary pre-outbreak life experiences and a healthy sense of privacy.

Joel glances down one more time, catching your eyes on the way back up as he clears his throat, finding you looking at him sheepishly. He hadn’t tried to say a word in minutes.

“I’m. I’m stuck in here. Ellie—” you stammer, face reddening viciously. This was going to be a long, tiring patrol excursion, and you worried you had already made it weird.

You idly wonder where he might put his hands on you if you were alone, right now, and your terror is visible as the thought drifts by. If he would.

Joel doesn’t look back at Ellie where you’d normally expect a concerned jolt at her name, hazel eyes heatedly dark. You can chalk it up to the dimmed interior of the shop, but enough sunlight streams in to make you doubt its just the environment.

Grimacing at a clearly out-of-earshot Ellie, you need to be out of this fucking thing and redouble.

“Joel, can you? I feel bad ripping it and would really like my jeans again,” you offer weakly.

Joel’s fingertips, fingertips you wish you didn’t know were callused and so goddamn cautious when they’d had the occasion to meet yours, flex on his gun.

“Not sure I know how to, I mean, those seem—special?” he stammers at the prospect, you having turned to bare your back to him.

Joel breathes in a way you can hear on the silent street, usually so contained.

She’s just helping you see the buttons. Joel thinks, counting out twelve of them, in total.

Joel steadies his gaze, tipping his head forward and choosing to take in the slope of your back, mostly bare and deep-dipping expanse scantly wreathed in lace. His face looks like he’s staring something potentially fatal down, gritted jaw muscles pulsing. He steps towards you, though. He’d never done anything in the right order, not Sarah, not with Tess, not a bit, one single time. Might as well get you dress off before he can even get the courage to kiss you.

Slinging his rifle’s strap over his shoulder, Joel keeps his fingers at a careful angle, purposefully not against your skin. Pushing the top button through the satin loop containing it, he steps up on the podium with you, only because it puts his lips well out of an easy distance to drag along the nape of your neck. Hoping he can feel his way down the buttons without touching or looking at you, he fails three buttons down, knuckles brushing the bottom of your spine.

You laugh nervously, looking back at Joel. Every part of your core is twining into a spiral, abdomen first, then a layer deeper, then a clench you won’t register because then you’d have to admit that something was going on.

For his part, his dark brows are furrowed in effort, decidedly back in the realm of watching every movement to avoid the electrocution he’d just experienced from grazing you. Now was the time for accuracy, not speed.

Joel takes in your little cap sleeves between buttons, down to the eighth of twelve. The hand-cut lace outlines your shoulders, leading to lean skin below, dipping lower in the front than he should be noticing now that you’ve turned away from him—but he’s too tall to miss it once you’re standing on level ground. He wonders what you would do if he pulled you against him now, back pressed to his front, his mouth on your neck before your own.

‘Thank you,” Joel says.

You crane your head to meet his eyes again, hands pressed to opposite shoulders to prevent the now-loosened dress from slipping all the way. Maybe you didn’t need the rest of the buttons, but there they went. You blink at him, wondering what would happen if you leaned against him.

“What?” you feel all wrapped in half-fabric, half-suggestion, no idea what the fuck he means.

“For comin’,” he gives. “Didn’t, uh, thanks for…” he trails off, so unaccustomed to indirectness and illocution that he doesn’t know what to call it. He clears his throat.

Joels hits the tenth button and breathes deep, flicking through the last two like he’s reloading, stepping back to reclaim his rifle and get so, so many feet away from you.

You turn to him, holding the weighty dress flush against your skin with both hands.

Joel’s chest is rising and falling every three seconds in rapid cycles, peculiar as you’d patrolled enough together to hear how he can silence his breath, the infrequent draws of someone yards underwater. He either can’t control this or made a choice to stop, and you can only think that the rust colored plaid he’d worn today was truly nice on him.

The rest of your scouting trip is deafeningly quiet, like Joel riding next to you and his surly expression produce volume equivalent to standing under a roaring set of falls. Ellie punctures it every few minutes with an attempted joke and you can almost feel Joel groan before you hear it each time, thoughtful.

Notes:

Here's the meta you didn't ask for

In current 2020, hard to see in weddings as anything other than class signifiers/routes to wife-n’ up, but:

holy shit does the apocalypse , esp. Tommy’s hope-imperative thing, make room for meaningfully coded rituals and aspirational ideologies not hijacked by the wedding industry’s profit motive.

Joel’s coming from the context of a wife who left Joel alone because having Sarah ruined her young life, so his view of it is understandably dismissive. Reader was more interesting to make opposite—college-aged asshole without responsibilities on Outbreak Day, less room for traditions.

But: Jackson is frozen in time and CRAVES ritual. Where it was meaningless in a world of abundance, you need markers of the years and ways to say “that person is my person;" it's joy as resistance.

For instance, something about Christmas hits different when you’re not fist fighting consumers for prelit trees after scuttling past a Salvation Army Santa in a mall. Jackson feels so sincere, every decoration scavenged or hewn with love, with purpose and forethought.

There’s joy in scarcity and glut in abundance is my point, I guess. Joel gets that on a basic level, even though he’s obstinate as hell about letting himself have anything good or even open to the idea.

#prompt fills #joel tlou #tlou #tlou ii #dumb epiphanies #joel miller #joel x reader #joel miller x reader #the last of us joel #the last of us #the last of us fic #the last of us ii #the last of us 2 #asks #filled prompts #prompts #joel/reader

8 notes · View notes

seyaryminamoto · 4 years

Text

Been thinking for a while that I’d like to do a light behind-the-scenes glimpse into one of the themes in the newest Gladiator story arc. While it’s not the very core element of the arc, the source of Azula’s current struggle in the story came from... an unexpected place.

Unexpected as in, it came from LOK.

Okay, in all fairness, it’s not quiiiiiiiite something that came from LOK itself, but it’s a take on an idea I had while pondering the various reasons why Asami’s character wouldn’t really take off for me in the show. Well, beyond the obvious reasons why it wouldn’t *cough* Book 2 *cough*...

I’ve always said I’m more than a little confused by how a character like Asami, with just 20-something years of age at the time of LOK Book 4, has enough talent and know-how to not only be a top-of-the-line engineer (which, yes, is believable enough on its own), but to also be a CEO in her own company (I gueeeess since the company falls into her hands and she mismanages it plenty in Book 2, it’s not that impossible to feature this in conjunction with the first thing?), a clothing designer, an architect AND a urbanist, capable of driving every machine known to man, an outstanding hand-to-hand fighter...!

... If you really think about it in cold blood, it feels like a little too much.

BUT. Instead of boringly accusing Asami of being a Mary Sue (which I’m sure some people might) for having a thousand talents that we don’t really see her work for, that she just developed offscreen, I thought the show would have benefited greatly from actually focusing on how Asami is handling the constant, desperate need of so many authorities in Republic City to have HER resolving all their problems.

Therefore, instead of a Reunion episode with a conflict focused on rescuing a kidnapped Wu (whom I profoundly dislike as a character, not for his role, but his personality is simply barf-worthy for me and the amount of focus Book 4 gave him was, as a lot of things, detrimental to the show as a whole, in my opinion), I thought LOK’s Book 4 could have instead featured a Reunion episode focused on Asami... which, of course, would also be a nice way to fix some of the lackluster onscreen development of Korrasami. So... let’s go onwards with my episode pitch:

Picture that Korra is about to reunite with Mako and Asami for the first time in all those years, same as in canon. Asami arrives! Yay, Korra is happy, Asami compliments her hair, just like in canon... aaaand then Asami says she can’t really stay, she just dropped by quickly because this REALLY matters to her, but there’s this pressing issue going on at the company and she has to deal with it RIGHT NOW, because no one else can. So, woops.

Korra is completely disappointed (and probably doesn’t even understand WHY she’s so disappointed, hinting at deeper feelings for Asami that Korra hasn’t even stopped to reason with yet), but she sees Asami off while pretending this doesn’t bug her (for Asami’s benefit), and ends up spending the evening with Mako but clearly she’s not enjoying it as much as she hoped to. Which could result in Mako being pretty surprised by whatever closeness and bond those two seem to have now, noticing that he seems to have fallen to second place in Korra’s eyes somehow.

So! Skipping ahead, perhaps to the next day, Korra tries to check on Asami again! :D Oh, but she’s got to work on the airbenders’ outfits, some have been having trouble with the aerodynamics of it, and it’s just not working as Asami intended, so more calculations are needed! She takes to studying on the subject frantically, has to figure out what formula she’s missing or messing up, and while Korra offers to help, she knows there’s not really anything she can do to give Asami a hand since this stuff is well out of Korra’s area of expertise.

Then, when Asami is finally finished, OH NO! An emergency in the train she inaugurated at the start of the season! Asami has to go deal with that too! And of course, Korra goes too, while wondering how TF does this damn city even run without Asami...

... And then realizing it actually doesn’t. There’s a president who basically dumps all the difficult issues on Asami because she has the know-how and the resources to deal with all the city’s problems, there’s an airbending master who requested for that same girl to help with the designs of his people’s combat outfits instead of dealing with it himself or finding someone else to help, there’s an entire vehicle company (ranging from cars to AIRPLANES) that depends on HER. And it’s just SO. MUCH. SHIT. For a girl who’s like... 20? 21? How old is Asami at this point? xD I don’t even remember. But the point I’m trying to get to...

Is that Asami should be overwhelmed. She hasn’t had anyone helping her, she deals with everything alone, and it doesn’t matter how hard she tries to work through this, there’s always one more problem, one more obstacle, one more bothersome thing she has to tackle, and nobody seems to stop and think that maybe she could use a break. That maybe she needs a nap because she hasn’t had one in 20 months. That maybe things in this damn city would be in a better place if people didn’t rely on her, and her alone, to resolve the bulk of their problems.

Korra, though, with her latest character growth (... that I’m not really fond of anyhow, but still...), has become a lot better at understanding people’s emotions. And her job as an Avatar is, amongst many things, to help people: someone she cares about deeply, her best friend future girlfriend, is currently going through so much crap and the truth is, Asami needs help. Whether Asami realizes it or not, she needs it. And so, whether it’s Korra’s job or not to help her, that’s all Korra wants to do right now.

So Korra enlists Mako and then all three deal with whatever that train emergency might be! Asami probably rejects their help at first, out of force of habit of doing everything alone lately, until Korra tells her she doesn’t have to do that anymore. And then Asami’s mind is blown because yeah, maybe there’s a bunch of older people in charge who are happy to dump all responsibilities on her! But that doesn’t mean she has to accept it meekly and save all their asses time after time... and it also doesn’t mean she has to deal with everything alone.

After the train problem is resolved, Korra and Asami (maybe Mako too? But for Korrasami’s purposes, it can just be those two) get to have a small chat about what life has been like for Asami since Korra vanished. The conversation doesn’t merely focus on Hiroshi, which... *cringes* let’s not get into that. It focuses on Asami and the hardships she’s dealing with, seeing as the city is basically using her as a non-bender Avatar, in the sense of leaving all the problem-solving to Asami alone. Korra probably apologizes, Asami probably tells her not to feel guilty, because she has had it rough, and Asami understands that better than anyone, especially after what she’s been through lately.

It’s a cute, heartfelt moment, not necessarily romantic yet, but featuring a strong, meaningful bonding scene between these two! Asami wants to go back to work on some pending stuff, and Korra respects that, though she warns Asami not to overdo it. Asami promises she won’t... and the next time Korra checks on her, Asami is asleep on her desk or something like that. Korra smiles and puts a blanket on her shoulders, and when someone else arrives to say something REALLY BAD is going on, Korra shushes them and decides to deal with it herself (as long as she can), and, if she can’t, she’ll find someone else to do it in Asami’s stead so the girl can sleep safe and sound for the first time in ages.

Episode pitch over! :’D

*siiiiiiiiiigh* alright, so yeah, this was something I originally thought of as a replacement episode, to further explore and establish a bond between Korra and Asami that wouldn’t really resolve all of the rushed-Korrasami problems... but it would make it so much clearer that those two share a different bond, and a very special understanding of each other, that the other two Krew members simply don’t have with either of them. It’d deepen their relationship, but the most important element about this for me was that it’d be an Asami-focused episode and plotline. However brief it would have been, my idea was to feature Asami facing her own problems, not problems based on her relationship with other people (be it family or romance). It was also a way to show that she’s not indestructible or just the go-to problem solver with neverending resources and talents that the plot can exploit at leisure whenever it feels like it. And, most importantly, that Asami can’t and SHOULDN’T be the answer to every problem in Republic City, especially when she’s only delivering those answers off-screen, offering the viewers next to no chance to see her in action, kicking ass at all the things she apparently has insane expertise on.

As far as I know, the two LOK comic trilogies haven’t really done much for Asami either. I haven’t read them so I could be wrong, but from what I can gather from comments of people who have read them and the books’ summaries, she’s still Korra’s girlfriend first and foremost, gets kidnapped so she can be used as a hostage to manipulate Korra, and then gets brainwashed into fighting against Korra...? If this is truly how it is, again, Asami just gets reduced to a satellite character, in the sense that she just revolves around other people as though that’s all there is to her character, canon-wise. Which... makes me sad. She had potential, plenty of potential worth exploring, if only the show’s writing had been more paused and allowed their characters to breathe and grow organically, as a consequence of their own actions and decisions rather than by being forced into hellish situations persistently until they broke out of desperation.

So... LOK really had the chance to explore a much more human side of Asami that they’ve neglected to acknowledge so far (from what I know), a chance to deepen her character by displaying that no one of such young age should have so many difficult responsibilities dumped on her shoulders... which, again, could be expanded into a metaphor for the Avatar’s role, showing both Korra and Asami as two highly capable women who could achieve great things... but who need a chance to be normal too, once in a while. From the looks of it, neither of them have had that chance in canon (yes, Korra was stuck in a compound all her life but Asami must have been stuck in constant lessons at every discipline she has mastered? If she can deal with all those jobs of hers as flawlessly as she has, I don’t think she had much of a life before LOK started), and it would have been really nice of the deeper, darker show LOK wanted to be to acknowledge that a bunch of grown-ups, who had relatively smooth lives in their youth, dumping so much heavy work on a pair of girls who are just becoming young adults and barely had childhoods of their own, is just damn nasty :’D just as it was nasty in a show featuring a much younger cast... *innocent whistling*

Alas, this was just one idea that won’t ever go anywhere in canon, as is obvious. I’m sure I mentioned it at least once before, not as thoroughly as I did just now, but this is more or less what I had in mind. If you dump a thousand things on a character, it would only be fair to let them suffer for it, to a fault. Maybe don’t feature them whining because they have soooo much work to do... but turn them into workaholics! Show that they’re struggling to make everything pay off, that this kind of burden isn’t child’s play because in real life, it simply wouldn’t be.

But, as there’s next to no chance Asami will ever get this sort of development, I merely stashed this idea on my back burner, in case it might come in handy in the future...

... And then I returned to it once Gladiator’s Enforcers became a solid reality. Azula has been dealing with challenges that are rather different from those Asami dealt with... but ultimately, the responsibilities both girls have taken up, Asami in canon and Azula in my story, were just insanely big. Azula, in Gladiator, has had very little time to spare for “secondary” pursuits since the previous arc, and in the current one that has become a problem because she simply CAN’T stop working. She goes home and instead of going to bed, keeps on working. She’s constantly on edge, assuming that any time not spent working is wasted time, time she should take advantage of to further improve her projects and endeavors... to the point where people are starting to notice she’s slightly overwhelmed, extremely stressed out, and needs to calm down :’D

I really had wanted to explore these themes in overachieving characters, who take up far too many responsibilities, more than are reasonable. While I’ll always consider it a really big waste of potential that LOK never gave Asami this particular dimension, despite her character 100% warranted it, at least I had the chance to explore this with Azula instead, and I’m honestly really pleased with the result, because it suits her really well too. The outcome won’t be at all like what I just outlined for the LOK episode that never was, and the current story arc will take a vastly different direction... which is why I thought it would be fun to explain where this particular, new dimension of Azula’s character had come from.

Aaaanyways... the bottomline is, Return to Shu Jing is here. And I reeeeeally love this arc. I hope that those of you reading and staying up to date with the story will love it too!

#gladiator #me talking about LOK?#who'd have thought (?)#but it's something I've had running circles in my brain for ages so #it feels good to release it into the wild at last (?)#I really think this is the only genuine link between Gladiator and LOK #... and it's not even 100% a link #but the idea is one I thought of for LOK #and that I now repurposed altogether for my big bulky story #so... indirect link I guess #but boy I really wish they'd done this in canon #would've been wonderful for Asami's character... *sigh*

11 notes · View notes