#and you told me in my poll to go full send so i DID | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nobodysdaydreams · 7 months

Text

✨My Unhinged Visions for the TMBS Kids’ Villain Arcs: ✨

Based on this poll, and this post by @kaslynspeaks and @sophieswundergarten. They activated the brain bees, and you can blame them for this.

Warning: Insanely long post. I go through each kid individually, discuss a premise for their fall to villainy, and then I give you a hastily written scene which I did not proofread, that probably contains typos and misspellings. Some are longer than others, some end abruptly, some are a lot darker than others, but they all have happy endings so you're welcome for that at least.

I also kept it vague whether I was talking about the book or show characters so while I draw on elements from both, you can imagine most of these with either character.

Please enjoy!

I'll start with Kate Wetherall.

The Premise:

I picture her as a teenager or young adult for this. Her villain arc is pretty brief tbh, but I think that fits Kate. She'd impulsive and emotional and maybe even the most likely to go dark the quickest for those reasons, but she also has strong morals, and I don't think she'd fall very far, and I also think she might be the most likely to turn around.

Here's the scenario. The society has won, and now they've started working together to take down bad guys.

Kate loves it, but she starts getting carried away sometimes. Seeing men that are willing to hurt children the way that she was hurt sets something off in her. Sometimes she takes things too far, or acts impulsively in the heat of the moment. The others protest this, insisting that Kate only needs to use enough force to stop other criminals, not harm them.

Kate feels frustrated, not only because she feels like her friends are criticizing her, but also because this is what she's good at. She's the one who fights. Why should she hold herself back when the others can use their intellect to their full potential?

The others don't realize how much of this is connected to Kate's inner turmoil, her feelings of frustration. They simply remind her that "that's not how they do things."

But maybe it should be, thinks Kate.

Maybe it would send a message. Not just to the criminals but to the children they hurt. To let those children know that someone cared to make sure that the people who hurt them paid for what they did. So that they wouldn't feel abandoned. So that they wouldn't feel how Kate always felt.

So she works in secret. She couldn't bear another condescending lecture from her father or the others. I picture her leading a sort of vigilante circus themed squad. They're all strong and athletic, obviously, but they're also incredibly creative. Whatever a bad guy's fear is, they can use illusions, contortion, and all sorts of creepy imagery to make it come to life. To make them pay for what they did. To break them, to reduce them to nothing.

And Kate as a leader finally feels respected, valuable. For once, she isn't told to hold back her impulsiveness, her emotions, her abilities, her creativity. In fact, she's praised for her lack of restraint. And she tells herself she doesn't need to feel bad either because after all, these are the bad guys. They deserve it.

But eventually the others find out. Kate tells them there's no point in another lecture, but this time, they don't lecture. They don't even know what to say.

Because they're horrified. They're horrified that Kate could ever think that punishing people like this, criminals or not, is a suitable use of her talents. Kate reminds them that they always got to use their intelligence to their full potential whenever it suited them.

And now, the scene (picture this occurring in a circus themed lair. Idk just role with it. Brain tired):

"I was the one who was too much," Kate reminded him.

"You three were the brilliant ones. The psychic, the scholar, the genius. But me? I was just the muscle. The "creative" one. The impulsive one. The liability," she scoffed.

"My talents were only useful when they were directed by my intellectual superiors. What you wanted. What you planned. But here? Here I'm a leader, Reynie. I get results and I get justice my own way. And I'm not interested in hearing another lecture about acting impulsively, or going too far, or about how all of your know so much better than I do. So save it."

"Fine!" snapped Constance. "Then we'll spare you the lecture, if you want to skip straight to the fighting."

Kate paused, and the look of betrayal in her eyes was evident.

She thought they might be here to lecture or disapprove of her methods, but had they...had they really come here to...to...

Kate shook her head.

"I don't want to fight you. And even three against one, was all know that would hardly be a fair fight."

Sticky winced and held himself back from the overwhelming urge to nervously polish his spectacles, remembering how many times he'd watched his friend take down men (grown trained men) like it was nothing.

Constance, still bitter from Kate's deception, raised her fists.

"I'd still take those odds."

"Constance-" cautioned Reynie, but it was already too late.

"Very well," said Kate.

Her followers stepped forward to assist her, but Kate motioned for them to step back.

"Trust me," she said to them. "I appreciate the offer, but I can take handle this one on my own."

The others knew that wasn't a lie.

Kate raised her own fists and addressed the trio.

"You always thought your minds made you so much better than me, so let's see how well you can actually do without me. Good luck. You'll need it. Even if I do intend to go easy on you."

"Katie-Cat?"

Kate groaned.

"This is none of your concern."

"I should say that it is," her father replied, stepping out from the shadows to confront his daughter. "Considering I raised you better than this."

"Raised me?"

Milligan immediately realized his mistake.

"Katie-Cat, I-"

"Didn't mean to leave me?" Kate snapped. "I know Dad. I know you didn't mean to. No, you just chose a dangerous job working for a dangerous man and put your own life at risk, when you knew your child had no one else but you."

The hurt in her father's eyes made Kate regret her words, but only for a moment.

After all, it's not as if what she said wasn't true.

"I'm sorry," said Milligan earnestly, realizing perhaps for the first time how much his child was still hurting.

How much she'd been lying every time she said that she was fine. How much she'd been hiding her pain from him, from everyone.

"It wasn't fair to you. I promise, I'll do whatever I can to make it up to you."

"Really?" said Kate. "Well then. I suppose there is something you can do for me."

"Anything Katie-Cat," said Milligan softly, his eyes brimming with tears.

"Stay out of my way," Kate ordered, looking her father directly in the eyes, doing her best to look tall, strong, and intimidating.

Milligan's face hardened slightly. He knew that look. It was a look he'd seen in his daughter's eyes before, her fearsome determination, her resolve not to back down.

It was normally one of the traits that he admired most about her.

"I can't do that Katie-Cat," he replied, seriously but still with a tone of affection in his voice.

"I love you too much to let you waste your talents and potential like this."

Kate laughed.

"Of course you do," she replied, gesturing for her followers to step forward.

"It looks like I might need some help after all. But try to go easy on them," she advised her followers. "Most of them aren't trained fighters and their biggest crime is shortsightedness. Hardly worth our best or most painful efforts."

"Don't fight them," interrupted Milligan. "They don't need to fight this. Just you and me."

Kate eyed him suspiciously.

"You hurt your leg last month," she reminded him. "You're not in peak fighting condition. If this is some kind of trick-"

"It isn't," replied Milligan. "You and me. If you win, we'll let you keep your operation and leave the decision up to you. If I win, you end this."

Kate's face became thoughtful, carefully considering his offer.

"Uh Milligan," interjected Sticky. "I know that you're pretty well trained, but you were just injured, most doctors wouldn't recommend-"

"Deal," said Kate, charging forward without warning, as Milligan side stepped.

It was hard to tell who had the upper hand. Milligan was stronger and had a clear height advantage, but he was still recovering from his injury and Kate was faster, and more flexible.

They held nothing back, but still neither of them succeeded in doing much damage, mostly because the skill with which they dodged the other’s attacks was just as impressive as the fighting techniques they employed.

"Tired old man?" she asked.

"Oh believe me," said Milligan. "I haven't even started yet."

They fought for hours, until at last Kate found something else that gave her the upper hand.

Environmental knowledge.

One of the circus' tricks was a series of platforms that were triggered to fall when you stood on them for a certain amount of time. They sent the performers falling to either be caught by a fellow trapeze artist or (worst case scenario) fall into one of the safety nets.

It was simply a matter of cornering her father onto one of the platforms, and removing the bridge.

"The fall is too far, and we haven't put the net out," Kate reminded him.

"You lost. Surrender."

Milligan looked down for a moment, judging the distance, then he looked back up at his daughter.

"No," he replied.

Kate was confused.

"What do you mean no?" she asked.

"I mean no," Milligan replied. "The fight's not over until it's over. I don't surrender."

"I'm not putting the bridge back," Kate reminded him. "Whatever trick this is, I'm not falling for it. Don't be stupid."

Milligan stood firm.

So did Kate. They were both stubborn. Like father, like daughter.

The seconds ticked by.

"20 seconds," Kate reminded him.

"Milligan we'll find another way!" Sticky yelled. "Just surrender, it's not worth it."

"This is my daughter," Milligan replied. "She'll always be worth it."

Kate scoffed.

"15 seconds," she announced.

Milligan didn't respond.

Kate still waited. Her father was fast. He only needed a few seconds to make it back in time, and would no doubt run out the clock.

10 seconds.

9 seconds.

8 seconds.

Kate groaned. Of course he would play it like this.

She walked over to the bridges control panel and pressed the emergency stop button.

It wasn't working.

Kate felt as if her heart had stopped.

"It's not working," she whispered.

"Kate it's your dad!" yelled Reynie. "You won! You won okay? Just press the button, put the bridge back!"

"It's not working," she yelled, the panic rising in her voice.

4 seconds.

"DAD-" she yelled, turning to her father, the father she'd missed for so long, the father she loved, the father she didn't want to lose again.

2 seconds.

"I love you Katie-Cat."

0 seconds.

The platform dropped.

And so did Milligan.

And so did Kate, diving after her father, clinging to him tightly as if that could somehow save him.

The others surrounded them as soon as they landed.

Kate was mostly undamaged, Milligan had broken her fall.

But he wasn't moving, wasn't responding.

"Dad?" Kate whispered, tears in her eyes.

"Dad I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I-please don't go. Please. I can't lose you again."

Kate reached down and hugged her father.

"You won," she whispered. "You won okay? Just please come back. I love you."

At once, Kate felt her father sit up and wrap his arms around her, wrapping her in an embrace that even she could not escape from.

"Victory," he announced, looking down at his daughter.

"And I love you too Katie-Cat. I'm sorry for the dramatics. I assumed you'd be able to put the bridge back in time, but it's always nice to have a plan B."

"What-" said Kate, who was too relieved to see her father alive and well to be upset that she had been tricked.

"But, but the fall-"

"I've fallen before," Milligan reminded her. "From greater heights than this. You get better at falling the more you practice. Just uh...don't tell Mr. Benedict. Or Number Two. Or Rhonda...perhaps it would also be wise not to mention this to Miss. Perumal."

Kate sighed.

"I'm sorry. I guess I just got tired of your criticisms."

"We didn't mean to sound critical" said Reynie. "I'm sorry you felt that way. But you were never a liability. You're our friend, and we need you."

The others nodded.

Kate sighed again and smiled.

"I need you guys too," she admitted, as her friends joined in hugging her.

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

And now for Constance Contraire.

The Premise:

I picture her being pretty young in this, but not too young, teen years at the most. The story here is that Constance succeeds in destroying the Whisperer and saving the day.

But this time, it leaves her mind damaged, seriously damaged. So damaged that her powers become uncontrollable and scary. Some government researchers offer to help Constance, but Mr. Benedict, suspicious of their intentions, turns them away. Nicholas vows to protect Constance, insists that they will figure out what's wrong, that they will help her, but then one day Constance ends up hurting him on accident, basically incapacitating and nearly killing him. At this point, there isn't much left to do, accepting outside help is the only option. The others promise to visit Constance and make sure she's taken care of and happy until Mr. Benedict recovers.

They never get the chance. Something goes wrong, and the story is that Constance is on the loose and dangerous, causing out of control destruction and physical harm. The police and government agents try to bring her in several times, but all end up hospitalized from the encounter. The society seeks Constance out, and they eventually find her hideout.

The Scene:

"Why are you here?" demanded Constance.

"What do you mean "why are we here?"" asked Kate.

"We're here to bring you home Connie girl."

Constance scoffed.

"Connie Girl."

They always acted like this. Like she was still a tiny defenseless child. Even though she was now older than the others had been when she'd first met them, they still acted as if they were her older siblings.

Or at least, they did with their words. But their body language sent an entirely different message. They stayed on the other side of the room, not daring to approach her, not daring to put their arms around her like they would have done before.

"You're afraid of me," she observed.

"Constance, we care about you!" Reynie protested.

"That doesn't mean you're not afraid."

Reynie didn't answer. There wasn't much he could say.

They'd all seen what she could do. And Reynie had never been a good liar.

"We just want to talk to you."

"We're talking now," observed Constance.

"Not here," said Kate. "Not in some secret lair or hideout where you've hidden yourself away."

"Where then?"

"Home. Your home."

For a moment, they can see it. The longing in Constance's eyes.

Home.

She quickly puts that aside.

"Right," she responds. "Home. Where the government will no doubt be waiting to take me away again."

"What? No!" Sticky exclaimed. "Constance, we would never let that happen! Mr. Benedict would never let that happen!"

Mr. Benedict.

She disregards the name and the emotions that come with it.

"And yet, it's happened before," she replied.

"You even let them take me.”

Her friends hung their heads and looked away at the reminder of their guilt, the unbearable weight that they would forever carry with them.

“They told you what I did to them. But do you have any idea what they did to me?” asked Constance.

“What they put me through? The things they made me do?"

"We thought they could help you Constance," said Reynie. "You were scared and in pain, and they offered help, and we wanted to help you. We didn't know...if we had known-"

"You would have stopped them?" asked Constance. "How? By asking nicely? And would you really have let me stay with you? After knowing what I could do to you?"

"We would have figured it out," Reynie insisted. "We're a family."

Constance laughed.

"Family? Gosh Reynard, you always were so childishly sentimental. It's a terrible weakness of yours"

Sticky and Kate briefly glared at Constance on their friend's behalf, but Reynie could hear the pain behind his little sister's insult.

He took a small step forward.

"Constance please-"

"Get away!" Constance barked, a hint of panic in her voice as she took a step backward.

"You know what will happen. Don't be stupid. Just leave. It's what's best for everyone. I'm a monster now. I'm only going to hurt you. And deep down, you all know it."

"Constance?"

The voice came from behind her. Constance didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

The others were immediately horrified. They'd told him not to come; he'd promised not to come, for his own safety.

But they should have known better. Nicholas would not be kept from his daughter.

"Dad?" Constance whispered weakly, then silently chastised herself for having spoken aloud.

She refused to turn around.

Nicholas still hobbled towards her. Constance could feel his mind. Still split, shattered from what she'd done to him, but slowly healing. And his emotions towards her...pain, lots of emotional pain, but no anger. No, there was something else, something far more powerful.

Love.

The others warned Mr. Benedict back, but he ignored their warnings. He wouldn't be deterred. His daughter needed him.

He limped over and knelt down, as best he could for an injured man so that he could address his child.

"Constance," he whispered. "Look at me please."

Constance turned away and shook her head.

"Please," her father whispered.

"I-I can't," she responded, a tiny tear rolling down her cheek as she squeezed her eyes shut.

Nicholas looked at her sadly, but affectionately, as if she was the most precious thing in the entire world.

And to him, she was.

"Oh...oh my dear Constance-"

"You should go," she ordered, pushing her father away.

"Go now. Or I'll hurt you again. I'll hurt them too," she threatened, but there was no malice behind her words. Only fear, fear that her threats might not be empty promises.

Nicholas ignored his daughter’s threats.

He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

He could feel her emotions in his mind. His daughter's power, too great and uncontrollable for her tiny body, made so much worse and so much stronger by what she'd been subjected to. Her power radiated from her mind, seeping outward and infecting every mind it came in contact with.

Nicholas let it come. In fact, he embraced it fully. The pain didn't matter. If that was the price he had to pay to keep his child safe and let her know that she was loved and forgiven, then that was a price he would gladly pay.

"Oh Constance," he whispered, as the tiny girl collapsed into a puddle of tears. "There's nothing you could do that would stop me from loving you."

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

Now for Sticky Washington.

This is largely inspired by @sophieswundergarten's amazing fics and posts about Sticky and his anxiety. I can't possibly link all of them, so if you're not following her and reading her fics, that's your own personal problem, and I pity you.

Sadly, I didn't write a reunion scene between him and his aunt or the Washingtons for this, because I wanted it to kind of work for the book or show versions of the character, but please know that in the full version of the fic that exists only in my brain, Sticky does reconcile with his family.

The Premise:

Sticky is older in this, an adult, maybe 20s or 30s. The story is that even after the Whisperer, after Curtain, the nightmares, the anxiety, it still haunts him. He can't get over it, but at the same time, he doesn't want to burden his friends, he can't burden them.

So he distances himself. He doesn't want to, but the voice inside him tells him that this is for the best. He would only burden them; he would only weigh them down. The others aren't sure why he's doing this, but assume it's because he wants his space and they try to respect that.

The anxiety, the fear, the flashbacks, it all gets worse. Finally, Sticky can bear it no more. So he does the unthinkable.

He builds his own version of the Whisperer. Not to control people. Just to calm his anxiety. And maybe, as the show version of Sticky says "[...] put good thoughts into people's heads. Make them feel happy." Nothing intrusive, nothing exploitive, nothing selfish. Just things like advising people to wear a seatbelt when they drive, and use dangerous equipment properly, and basically anything else that's unsafe or would make Sticky nervous. After all, what's the harm in that? He's making the world safer. And it's not like his old friends would care enough to bother with him.

But that's where he's wrong. The society detects the machine's influence, and they know it's not Curtain. They don't want to believe that it's Sticky, even when the evidence points to him. But eventually, they have no choice but to accept the truth and confront him.

The Scene:

Sticky looked up at his visitors from behind his desk. His office was nice, not extravagant or expensive, that wasn't his style, but it was neat, clean, and organized. As for Sticky himself, he was hardly the boy he was when he'd first met his friends. He was older, taller, stronger. Handsome. Confident.

Reynie told himself that he had nothing to fear. Appearances might change, but underneath it all was his friend.

"Sticky-" he began, but Sticky cut him off.

"It's Mr. Washington now," he corrected in a professional tone, trying his best not to reveal how much he'd been hurting. "Though I suppose I could allow you to call me George, for old times sake."

"Okay Mr. George," said Constance. "Having fun playing supervillain?"

Sticky frowned.

"If you came here just to criticize me, then I'll have my secretary show you out. Better her than my security," he added, glancing at Kate, who had her hand on her bucket.

"That's not why we're here," said Reynie quickly.

"Oh?" said Sticky, raising an eyebrow.

"Your family misses you," clarified Reynie, hoping to appeal to his friends' sentimentality.

"Well they have no reason to miss me. I brought them some lovely property, send plenty of checks, and cover all their medical expenses, which is all they ever wanted me for anyway," said Sticky.

"Would you ever go to visit them?" asked Reynie. "I um...I don't want to get involved in your family's personal lives. But I think they might want more than money. I think they...I think they really miss you."

And then he sees it. A sense of longing, and a yearning in Sticky's eyes.

But it vanishes almost instantly.

"I'm a busy man," Sticky reminded his friends. "I have businesses to run."

"Honest businesses?" asked Kate suspiciously.

"Yes," said Sticky, glaring at her. "You might disagree with my personal hobbies, but I assure you, I make my money fairly."

"You call brainwashing the world a hobby? Really Mr. George?" asked Constance.

Sticky sighed.

"I'm fixing the world," he lectured them. "Crime is down, addiction is down, people's rates of anxiety and depression are down-"

"Including your own no doubt," muttered Constance, but Sticky ignored her.

"-and it's all thanks to me," he finished.

Reynie looked horrified. Kate looked disgusted.

"But you're doing it without their consent!" Reynie protested. "And you don't know what the side effects could be."

"And the way you're justifying it," said Kate, "you sound exactly like-"

And then she stopped, realizing that what she was about to say would have gone too far, way too far.

But it was too late. Sticky knew what she'd been implying, and his faced morphed from a look of uncomfortable and false politeness to sudden rage.

"Like who?" Sticky snapped, and his friends jumped at the sound of his voice. It was so much louder and deeper than it had been when he was a child. It was a man's voice now, but it wasn't just the maturity or the confidence of his voice, but the anger it possessed. The harshness that had been so absent from him as a child.

Constance was the first to recover.

"You know who "Mr. George,"" she answered, glaring at her former friend.

The other two glanced at each other. What Constance was saying was cruel, especially after all that man had put Sticky through, but it was also undeniably true.

"How dare you?" whispered Sticky, the anger rising in his voice.

"How dare you compare me to him? AFTER EVERYTHING HE DID TO ME!"

Sticky rose from his desk.

His friends had never seen him look so furious.

"Sticky-" began Reynie nervously.

The others took a step backward.

Sticky's self-consciousness and compassion suddenly returned to him when he saw the fear in their eyes.

That’s the thing about anger. If you are someone who is small, short, nervous, mild mannered, someone who is perceived as “weak”, then your anger, no matter how justified, is often belittled, patronized, or dismissed as "cute", unless you can find a way to be taken seriously, to yell louder, to make yourself more threatening. Of course, the other side of this is that if you are someone who is tall, strong, loud, powerful, and intimidating, then it doesn’t take much anger to make others afraid of you, even if that’s not your intention, unless you learn to moderate your emotions and remember how threatening you look from their perspective.

For most of this life, Sticky had been on one end of this spectrum, always needing to yell louder and be more insistent to make his voice heard. Now he found himself on the other side of the spectrum. But although his height, physical appearance, and position in the world had changed, the emotion felt the same to him as it always had, and he often forgot just how frighting he could seem.

Even to those who had once called him friend.

Sticky sighed and took a deep breath.

"I'm not like him," he insisted.

"I'm not giving myself fame, money, power, or anything like that. That's the difference. When I say I'm doing this to help people, to make them feel happy, I mean it."

He looked at his friends, glancing over their faces, trying one last effort to get them to understand.

"You know me," he reminded them. "You know I wouldn't do that. I'm not doing this for power. I'm doing this for peace."

There was silence for a few moments.

"We know," said Reynie.

"We know you are Sticky. And we know you've been hurting. We should have noticed earlier, and we should have offered to help sooner. I'm sorry. But whatever your intentions are, that doesn't make this right."

Sticky didn't reply. He knew that Reynie was right; he always was.

"What do I do?" he asked, his voice suddenly sounding softer.

"Stop this," said Kate. "Turn yourself in. We'll help you, we'll- we'll get you the help you need. So you don't have to feel this way anymore."

Sticky was surprised.

His anxiety...his fears...he tried to act like it didn't bother him anymore. He didn't want to be a burden. He didn't want to drag his friends down with him.

And yet they were here, right next to him, not as adversaries, but as friends.

They didn't have to come. They didn't have to forgive him.

"You've needed help for a while," said Constance, her voice suddenly gentler and far more compassionate then even her friends were used to hearing from her.

"Haven't you George?"

Sticky didn't answer. He could feel Constance tentatively poking her way into his mind. But he didn't fight it. He sat back down and nodded silently, feeling weak and exposed, the reality of his pain revealed at last.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I thought I could deal with it on my own but I...I can't. I'm not- I'm not strong enough. That's why I needed to do this. I thought I could help not just me, but others, because the truth is I...I'm just not enough. I'm not strong enough."

His friends ran forward to hug him.

"You don't have to be dummy," said Constance.

"None of us are. That's why we have each other."

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

And finally, Reynie Muldoon.

Ngl, I went pretty dark for this one. He's the only one I actually gave a body count to (I know I'm sorry don't blame me blame the bees and I apologize if you think any of these are OOC I'm trying my best here. Also Reynie is older in this and there are darker themes mentioned so consider this your warning). This is based on @kaslynspeaks amazing post here and her awesome comments on my poll where she talks about the whole book conversation where Reynie can "only see snakes" so he lets himself be bitten and becomes a snake himself? Genius. 10/10. Set off the bees for sure, so thank you for that.

The Premise:

This one blends a lot of elements from the others. Like in Kate's situation, the society has won, they're fighting crime, but Reynie becomes disillusioned, though for different reasons. He's older than Kate was in her version, he's late 20s, 30s, maybe even pushing 40. It took a long time for him to get to this point.

You see, at first, Reynie is fighting for what he believes in: bringing bad guys to justice, keeping his friends on the straight and narrow, and doing what's right. But being a leader has a cost. He's always the one emotionally supporting the team, he gives more than he gets back, and that starts to take a toll. As he gets older, he encounters more bad guys, ones that make him sick to his stomach, but what's worse is the lack of people who seem to care. The politicians with empty promises, the corrupt police, the ordinary citizens who look the other way instead of helping. Nothing changes. There's always another crisis, another bad guy, another problem that needs the society, and the society needs him. So Reynie drains himself until at last he can give no more. Finally pushed to the brink by what he's seen and the sense of hopelessness and isolation he feels, he makes the decision.

He starts by cutting himself off from the society, at least professionally. They respect his decision, but are surprised by it. Once he's free of that obligation, Reynie tells his mother he's getting a new job and needs some space right now to figure himself out.

What he actually does is get involved in the criminal underworld. He tells no one of course, they'd never approve. But Reynie has learned that there is one thing that can control a snake: a bigger snake (or as the expression goes "there's always a bigger fish").

And his intelligence, knowledge of others, leadership skills, and experience with criminals quickly leads to Reynie becoming the boss of the criminal underworld (how did he do that so quickly? What is this "criminal underworld" I keep mentioning? Like. Is it a gang? The mafia? The ten men? Some random group of thieves? Idk, don't question it, just use your imagination).

Anyway, now that Reynie has control he determines what crimes happen, when they happen, and how many people get hurt. Which he views as damage control. He keeps his real occupation hidden from his mother, telling her he's involved in important government work, and it's better that she didn't ask questions. Eventually he completely cuts off ties with the rest of the society, knowing it's only a matter of time before they put together what he's done.

They do figure it out, eventually, and they're heartbroken of course. They can't believe it. Especially that Reynie, out of all of them, would ever do something so terrible. They want to confront him, but they can't find him.

Until one day they receive an anonymous coded message, tipping them off to his location.

Reynie's security team laughs when they tell them they're his friends. Their boss doesn't have any friends, and no one shows up to see him without an appointment unless they either have news that can't wait, or some kind of death wish. And he certainly never takes social calls.

Still, they let Reynie know about them. And of course he recognizes their description. Turning them away unharmed shows weakness, which his team would never accept from their leader, but Reynie doesn't want to harm his friends either.

Which gives him only one other option: to confront them. He has his security bring them to his office.

The Scene:

The men roughly shoved them into the room.

"These people came to see you boss. They said they were friends of yours."

Reynie looked up at his friends, who had just been pushed unceremoniously into his office.

"Thank you," he nodded, waving his hands to dismiss his security team.

Then he sighed.

"How did you find me?"

His friends didn't answer at first.

"That's what you want to know?" said Kate. "You're running the criminal underworld, and that's the first question you have for us? The route we used to get here?"

"Not the route. My location. How did you find me?" asked Reynie.

"Anonymous tip off. A coded message," said Constance. "Seems some of your men aren't as loyal as you thought."

Reynie looked disappointed, but shrugged.

"That's not all that uncommon in this line of work," he clarified. "Whoever it was will be dealt with accordingly. Snakes will be snakes"

"But since when are you one of them?" asked Kate.

Reynie sighed.

"I don't expect any of you to understand."

"You're right Reynie," said Sticky. "We don't understand. You were always the best of us. The one who reminded us who we were, what we stood for. How could you ever think something like this was right?"

"The best of us?" Reynie repeated disbelief.

"I was the average one, the one who wasn't special. I wasn't a genius, or a psychic, or some sort of super athlete. I was just me. I'm not special."

"So that's why you're doing this?" asked Constance. "To feel special?"

"No," said Reynie. "I'm doing this because it's inevitable. The cycle just repeats itself. We fight another bad guy, we almost fall apart, I hold us together, it takes everything out of me, I finally recover, and then we go around again. The only way to end the cycle is to become a part of it."

"Takes everything out of you?" repeated Sticky. "Reynie, we had no idea-"

"It's fine," dismissed Reynie. "Like I said, this is for the best."

"You really believe that?" asked Kate, shocked her friend could ever really think something like this was right. "You...your men...you're criminals! The worst criminals!"

"We are," agreed Reynie. "I won't deny that. But when you make yourself the king of the snakes, you decide how poisonous they are. These men follow me because they know I'm intelligent and powerful enough to let them get away with the crimes they want and have all the money and power they desire. That's a better deal than most other bosses could give them. But they also know that comes at a price, that certain things are off limits. If I hear any rumors of human trafficking or exploiting or harming children, well, then I'm sure to make an example of them. To remind them that I'm in control and that I have my standards."

"Make a example of them?" said Kate, her eyes widening.

"That...that doesn't mean what I think it means...right Reynie?" asked Sticky.

Reynie couldn't help but feel a little ashamed as he watched Constance, who had always looked up to him as her protector, her big brother, take a step away from him when she saw from his face that his words meant exactly what Sticky thought they meant.

But he didn't back down.

"They were human traffickers and people who abused children," Reynie said simply, trying his best to remain logical. "You can't say they didn't deserve it. If I wasn't running the criminal underworld, someone else would, someone who would be just as cruel, maybe worse, and would likely choose less deserving targets. It's no different than carrying out justice."

"And who made you the judge, jury and executioner?" asked Constance, crossing her arms.

"We're going to stop you," said Kate, raising her fists.

"Really?" said Reynie, his expression turning dark at his friend's declaration.

"I think you'll find that harder than you expect. You three might have been the talented ones, but I was the one who kept you together. I know you. I know how to build you up, and I know how to bring you down."

His friends looked horrified by the threat. Even worse, they looked hurt.

"I don't want it to come to that," Reynie clarified. "But it will if you stand against me. I don't want to hurt you, but trust me, I can. Worse than you can imagine. And I will. I know how it sounds, but believe me when I tell you that this is the only way."

The others were shocked by his words. Reynie cared for them; Reynie protected them.

How could he threaten them so easily? How could he have become so misguided?

Sticky thought a bit about what his friend had said, and tried one last time to reach him.

"We understand where you're coming from, really Reynie, we do," said Sticky. "But this isn't the way to do things. You're still hurting people in other ways, and I agree that people need to be brought to justice but this...this isn't the way to do it."

"We didn't know it was so hard for you," added Kate. "You were our leader Reynie. And you're right. You held us together, you kept us strong, and you were always there when we needed you. To remind us who we are. I'm sorry we didn't appreciate that more. But now it's our turn to be there for you. To remind you who you are."

Reynie didn't answer for a moment.

"And who do you think that is?"

"Our friend," said Kate.

"Some who is kind, gentle, intelligent, wonderful, and anything but average," added Sticky.

"Someone who knows deep down that this is wrong," said Constance, poking her way around the edges of Reynie's mind.

"Someone who's better than this."

Reynie couldn't believe what he was hearing.

"You...you really think that?" he asked. "After everything I've done... you really think that's who I am?"

"We do," said Sticky.

"We all do," agreed Kate.

"I know it," said Constance, as Reynie felt her enter his mind, unearthing the guilt, shame, exhaustion, and pain that he'd kept buried for so long, as well as the love, compassion, and the values he'd put aside and tried to forget about.

They were still a part of him. An unused and forgotten part, but nevertheless, they were still there.

"Your friends are right Reynie."

Reynie turned to see his mother enter his office.

"Amma?" he asked in a small voice.

"But, but I don't understand- how...how did you-"

"For the leader of the criminal underworld, you have pretty bad security. They're easy enough to knock out with a few blow darts and they are much too unsuspecting of a simple old woman," his mother replied with a sad smile.

Reynie's heart dropped. She knew?

One look in her eyes told him everything. Of course she knew. She knew when he started staying out late and never telling her where he was going, when he came back with scars and a haunted look in his eyes that he couldn't explain, when he begged her for the millionth time to stop asking questions, when he moved her into a bigger fancier private house and had the property constantly surrounded by security guards because of a "promotion" that he refused to explain.

His mother was kind, but she certainly wasn't stupid.

And then Reynie realized.

"The coded message. You brought them here."

Dipika nodded.

"You needed them Reynie. You needed to be reminded of who you are."

Reynie hung his head.

"Amma-" he began, but his voice trailed off.

What could he say? What words could ever make it up to the woman who'd taken him in, who'd given everything to him? There was nothing he could say, not when she knew what he'd done, what he'd become.

"Oh Reynie," said Dipika, walking forward to hug her son, who trembled at the affection he knew he didn't deserve.

"I know," she whispered. "I know you're sorry. And I'm sorry too. I'm sorry I wasn't enough. I'm sorry I couldn't reach you. But it's not too late. I promise Reynie. It's never too late."

At last, Reynie broke down, returning his mother's embrace as the three people who refused to give up on him even when he'd given up on himself stepped forward to hug their friend.

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

I apologize for nothing, or maybe I will if enough people tell me this was disturbing and that they didn't like it, which honestly? Fair enough. Anyway, have a lovely evening! 🥰

#long post #Sorry I'm insane #Hopefully someone likes this #At the very least you have to admit a circus themed evil lair would be kinda cool #reynie muldoon #sticky washington #kate wetherall #constance contraire #tmbs #the mysterious benedict society #mysterious benedict society #mbs disney #tmbs disney #mbs villains au #tmbs villains au #mbs au #tmbs au

54 notes · View notes

earl-grey-teacake · 3 months

Text

I am in a predicament involving the Baby!Loscar. I am between having them be turned into babies and being adopted as babies. So I am taking input and putting in a poll. The poll is not the final decision maker but rather a way for me to see what’s popular. If you have input or suggestions please send them my way!!!

I probably should’ve figured this out beforehand but I did not. 😅

Turned into a baby

Pro:

Already established relationships between all parties. Alex and George already know Logan. Lando and Carlos already have established habits with Oscar. Oscar and Logan already have an established friendship and a budding crush.

Everyone from the drivers to the team get a surprise and are scrambling on how to address this to the media.

Lot of first-time parent anxiety. Alex, George, Lando, and Carlos are not ready for to take care of children but right now, they don’t really have a choice.

Con:

Time frame I can write for is quite limited because at some point they have to turn back. They are still driving for F1 and will have to turn back at some point. Also, Logan and Oscar are 4 months apart and in terms of child development, 4 months is a lot.

There is less focus on taking care of them as babies compared to waiting for them to turn back. People will find the babies cute but they are also waiting for them to turn back so things can go back to normal so there isn’t a lot of time for fluff.

Have to address how media and their actual families would take it. The media will absolutely notice if 2 rookie drivers suddenly disappear. Oscar and Logan also already have parents which might make the whole situation difficult.

Adopted as babies

Pro:

Established couples with a baby thrown in. Galex and Carlando’s relationships are established and they willingly/ semi-willingly chose to adopt a baby.

Cute watching parents trying to balance their job with their babies who will eventually walk in their footsteps. They travel and have full-time jobs as drivers and are struggling how to fit a baby into the mix. Also allows for Teams and Drivers to step in and help. Logan and Oscar get a lot of uncles.

Also first-time parent anxiety. Sure they chose to adopt a baby but they are also first-time parents trying their best. Their anxiety is just different then if they were suddenly told to adopt a baby.

Con:

Lots of deviation from current day since the timeline will be a bit off

Since they are babies, some of their behaviors may deviate from present day. Logan gets a lot of parental support and he isn’t as much of an outsider in F1 because of his family.

The relationship between Logan and Oscar are not pre-established but rather something that is built through proximity and early childhood friendship and possibly, fate. (Maybe a con for some, may not be a con for others.)

If you have suggestions, input, or comments, please sent them my way. I would love to hear what you think.❤️ If you have any questions, just send an ask or a comment and I will happily answer them.

#galex #f1 rpf #f1 rpf fic #alex albon #george russell #logan sargeant #carlando #carlos sainz #lando norris #oscar piastri #Baby!Loscar

33 notes · View notes

forjongseong · 11 months

Text

tus gafitas // jay (ENHYPEN)

pairing: secretary!jay x CEO!fem!reader (minisode part 12 of the series)

genre: office!au, fluff // warning: older reader; Jay calls reader “Boss” // wc: ~1.8k

previous (and upcoming) chapters:

(it's getting long so I'm just gonna link the whole masterlist here!)

summary: you've just returned from a long flight, and things aren't going your way, but luckily your recently-hired secretary was having one of his more dependable days.

author’s notes: and with this release, the number of minisodes has officially exceeded the number of full-parts! oh my oh my god.

I know I did a poll a couple of days ago and I promise Bite Me is in the making but somehow I paused writing that and ended up cooking this... I am still gonna release Bite Me, though, don't worry!

I'm taking you back to Jay's rookie days, except here instead of messing up he's doing a lot of good things and we love a capable secretary, don't we?

and for the song inspiration:

it translates to "your glasses", so... take a shot every time you read Jay fixing the glasses on his nose

taglist: @thots4hee @jayked @end-hyphen @nyanggk @yoursjaeyun @maggstar @bucketofhiros @dimplejaehyuncutie @excusememissiloveyou @shinkenprincess-oh @mochimchimo @jongseonglogy

(send an ask if you want to be added or removed)

The sound of suitcase wheels rolling on the airport floor sort of acted like ASMR for you, and you were dying to get into the comfort of your car and sleep until you reached the office. Your flight home happened to be scheduled wrongly, and you wanted to blame your secretary for it, but you were sure he had enough on his plate already.

That very secretary appeared in your sight, and he was waving at you in hesitation, trying not to attract too much attention from other passengers. When you rolled your suitcase up to him, he stood up straight and greeted you with a smile.

“Did you have a good flight?” Jay asked, taking your luggage from your hands.

“Does it look like I had a good flight?” You asked back, taking your sunglasses out from your jacket pocket and putting them on.

Jay pressed his lips together, knowing well not to answer your rhetorical question. He then fixed the glasses perched on his nose as he cleared his throat, and it made you turn to look at him.

“What?” You said, stopping in your tracks. “What did you mess up this time?”

Jay awkwardly placed a palm behind his neck before he licked his lips and started speaking. “It’s more of a transportation situation, Boss. Mr. Lee called me early in the morning and said that there was something wrong with your car. It wouldn’t start, so now he’s at the shop, and I’m here to take you to the office by taxi.”

Your eyes were squinting but Jay couldn’t see them behind your shades. He knew, though, that you were mad and tired.

“You couldn’t have told me earlier?” You asked, now taking your phone out of your purse.

“When I got the call, you were still on your flight,” Jay replied with almost a pout. “I apologize.”

“No need,” you responded, holding your phone tightly. “We should go. Don’t want to be late for the first meeting of the day.”

You started walking ahead of Jay at a speed that startled him, and he rushed to catch up to you, dragging your suitcase with him.

---

Jay sat back beside you after he told the taxi driver the detailed address of your office. He looked to your side to find you massaging your temple, your sunglasses pushed back up your hair and your jacket already taken off and on your lap.

“Everything okay?” Jay asked carefully.

You nodded and stretched out your hand to him. “My iPad, please.”

You heard some rustling before you felt the iPad in your hand and once you did, you unlocked the screen and began reading your schedule for the day. You then opened the presentation that you were supposed to give at the meeting, but halfway through you hissed and let the iPad flop onto your lap.

“I can’t do this,” you muttered.

Jay looked at you in confusion. “Do you want me to push back the meeting?”

“No,” you replied straightaway. “You do it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

You chuckled a little at Jay’s sudden formality. “You do the presentation. I’ll be right beside you. I just don’t feel like talking to a bunch of people in this condition.”

Jay reached out to the iPad on your lap and carefully retracted it back to his side. “Are you really okay?”

“Just sleep deprivation and a massive headache,” you replied. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Jay frowned as he began thinking hard about what to do. He then straightened his glasses again and flipped through the presentation. He began murmuring the contents of the slides, and you opened your eyes to check on him once in a while. When he was done, you quickly closed your eyes again.

“I know about pressure points,” Jay said, locking the iPad and placing it beside him.

You scrunched your nose and turned to look at him. “What?”

Jay made a gesture and pointed to your hand. Your eyes followed his movements.

“May I?” he asked with one hand hovering over yours.

You lifted your hand slightly and he took it in his hands. His fingers grazed your palm, and you felt a shiver down your spine when he adjusted his position. He began pressing parts of your hand with his thumb and stretching your fingers with his, doing some sort of massage technique that you were not aware of but seemed legit.

“You can sleep if you want,” Jay said calmly, not taking his eyes off your hand. “I promise you’ll feel better when you wake up.”

You were in no position to protest, even if you had the authority. Somehow, giving him the chance to make you feel better did not sound like a bad thing, and you were already giving him enough to do with the presentation later.

“Wake me up five minutes before we arrive,” you said, leaning your head back and closing your eyes.

“Will do, Boss.”

---

Only two hours later, you were already in a meeting room surrounded by more people than you can count with your fingers. After a moment of exchanging greetings, you turn to Jay, expecting him to start the presentation. He nodded at you once before looking down and fixing his glasses.

“God, help me,” he whispered.

Jay was sure his voice was soft enough so nobody could hear him, but you were having a hard time hiding your smile. You straightened up and began listening intently, nodding to his words whenever you felt they needed emphasizing. However, he kept looking at you instead of the other attendees, as if seeking validation, so you had to tilt your head to signal him to make eye contact with the other people.

After you wrapped up the meeting, you left the room first before anyone else, and Jay tailed behind you. Your pace was fast since you were desperate to get a longer lunch break before the next meeting, and Jay mistakenly understood your hurry as something else.

“Boss,” Jay said, after walking into the elevator and almost having the door close on him. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

You shook your head, and you heard a sigh of relief from him. “Next time look at the people you’re presenting to, not to me. I already know what you’re saying, so I don’t need convincing.”

“Right,” Jay said with a firm nod. “Thank you.”

You both walked back to the office and Jay quickly took his place back on his desk, setting the files from the meeting beside his computer. As he saw you about to enter your office, he called on you and took a couple steps closer.

“Any special requests for your lunch today, Boss?” he asked with his hands behind his back.

“Something light and easy to eat, and just get it from the cafeteria,” you said, pushing your door open. “And while you’re up there can you get me a cold drink?”

“Of course,” Jay said, making a mental note in his head. “What would you like?”

“I don’t know,” you paused, leaning slightly by the doorway. “Just take a picture of the menu and send it to me. I’ll decide then.”

You closed the door before Jay could say another word and he just stared at it blankly. After a couple of seconds, Keeho walked in with Yeji and the two of them exchanged glances after seeing Jay’s perplexed face.

“Hey, Park,” Keeho called. “Is it lunchtime for you yet? Let’s go together.”

“Yeah,” Jay said after collecting himself. “Yeah, let’s go.”

After queueing with Yeji and Keeho and getting his own lunch to go, Jay stood by the beverage area and snapped a picture of the menu three times before he deemed the picture to be in focus, and then he sent it to you. Your reply to him came in an instant, and he was relieved he did not have to stand there like a lost boy, but what you said made him groan a little too loud.

“Just pick a drink for me. And hurry up, I’m hungry,” your text said.

“Is the boss giving you a hard time?” Keeho asked, holding his tray close. Yeji trailed beside him.

“What is it?” Yeji said, peering in and trying to look at Jay’s phone.

“She wants me to choose a drink for her,” Jay said in a low voice, pushing his glasses up his nose. “This is it. I’m gonna choose the wrong drink and she’s gonna fire me.”

“Whoa,” Keeho replied after chuckling. “Not so fast.”

“I’m sure any drink is fine,” Yeji replied. “Just don’t make it too sweet. I know she’s not a fan of sweet drinks or dessert.”

“Thanks, guys,” Jay said with a repressed smile. “Do wish me luck.”

---

When Jay arrived at your office, you were busy typing away on your computer. You gave him one look and saw that he was carrying a paper bag and a cold drink in both his hands.

“I got you sushi and a couple of onigiris,” he said, placing the paper bag right in the middle of your desk. He then walked towards your side and placed the drink very carefully to the right of your hand. “And your drink.”

You paused typing as you caught a whiff of Jay’s scent when he pulled his hand back to his side. He then took a step back to look at you.

“What drink is it?” You asked, grabbing it and looking for the label.

“Blended dark chocolate with a shot of mint,” Jay replied.

“No way.”

Jay froze in his position after adjusting his glasses. “Boss?”

“I love mint chocolate,” you said calmly, taking the straw out and taking a sip of your cold beverage. “Thank you.”

Jay’s nostrils flared and he pressed his lips together, trying not to feel too proud of himself. “You’re welcome,” he mumbled before walking away and heading for the door.

“What perfume are you wearing?”

Your question made Jay halt by the door. He was taken aback, and it was as if someone had asked him what his favorite song was. He couldn’t think of a reply.

“I, uhm,” Jay stuttered as he fumbled with the end of his sleeves. “It’s from Diptyque.”

You gave an acknowledging nod before you tilted your chin, telling him to leave and close the door. Once out of your sight, Jay let out a huge sigh before he sat back at his desk.

Meanwhile, you began thinking about when exactly your mood started to get better. Was it when he gave you a hand massage? Or when he managed to deliver the presentation smoothly? Or maybe simply because he managed to guess one of your favorite drinks correctly?

You then realized that it didn’t matter when, what matters it that he did make you feel better that day, and maybe for the first time you were genuinely thankful that you had hired him as your secretary.

-END-

SECRETARY!JAY will return…

69 notes · View notes

emabatis · 3 months

Text

About a Werewolf in the Wawa Parking Lot

This was the second option on this poll I did. People seemed to like it, so here's the whole short story, in all it's exactly 1,000 words:

It’s not full. It’s never full.

That’s the good thing about going out when everyone else is at work or asleep. Just about the only good thing, truth told. Everybody’s hurting for workers until I send something in. I get on fine, the lord never lets my belly get too empty, and he doesn't let my head get too empty, either, or by the time the month is over, I’d have spent a fortune on milkshakes of varying quality. Sometimes they don’t even have milkshakes, and I need to settle for a “cream smoothie," which they say is healthier but if you ask me it’s just the same price for more ice. Not disgusting, but when I’m already shaky, the last thing I need is less sugar.

It’s a warm night for the month, a bit cloudy. Old, baggy jacket weather. I’m preferring old, baggy clothes these days. I’m sipping in the parking lot, letting the condensation soothe my orange palms. It’s strawberry cheesecake. Not my favorite flavor, but, you know, if you just order your favorite every time, it loses its magic. I still like strawberry cheesecake fine. It’s my niece’s favorite. It’s also one of the flavors I can drink regularly without spewing. That’s been a problem lately, throwing up. Some weeks are worse than others. I get by. This week’s been pretty great, actually.

It’ll be an hour or two before Hank gets here - he works until late in the evening. He doesn’t know I’m here, but - lord willing and the creek don’t rise - he’ll stop here like he usually does after work and he can drive me home.

Or maybe I’ll end up forgetful in the morning, covered in dew in the cornfield next door - there’s always a corn field next door, but I’m specifically talking about the one I’m looking at. There’s deer in that corn field. It’s safe, warm, and full of food. All enclosed. Denser than the woods, too dense for any predators, not that they have to worry about those. All the wolves in the area got put down before most anyone can remember, outside of the nursing home or family attic. That doesn't include me just yet.

A pair of eyes are glowing from behind the stalks, as still and bright as the sign they reflect back at me. Wawa, the deer’s eyes promise. It’s a doe, just out of her white spots. There had to be a gas station somewhere in the however-huge stretch between the two closest ones, and it might as well be a Wawa on this corner, between the old schoolhouse for sale and a corn field full of deer.

My stomach is gnawing at itself. Again? I’m thinking about how awkward it would be to go back into the store I just finished up in, especially since I can’t remember if I had the presence of mind to not say “you too” when they told me to enjoy my shake. I didn’t have the presence of mind to notice it was gone, and here I am, sucking on air like a fool. I’ll throw the cup away. Probably eat it next, if I don’t.

The sunset is pretty, tonight. Just the right amount of clouds and at just the right texture to make colors pop. I saw the moon earlier, it was huge. I could read by that moon alone, it’s the biggest and brightest I’ve seen in a long while. That might’ve been yesterday, actually.

The streetlights are on, now.

Something’s wrong with my body, I think. Not enough elbows. The air’s a lot hotter than it was a minute ago. Like I just got a pint of blood poured in me, and it’s got nowhere to go but it’s going fast. I can feel it thrumming to my fingers and toes. The deer is still staring, frozen in place.

A surge of vomit wants to crawl up my throat, and it scratches as I swallow it down. It doesn’t taste like strawberry cheesecake. I don’t want to know what it tastes like. My stomach hurts, that kind of hurt that doesn’t leave room for words like “squeezing” or “throbbing.” Just pain. I’m praying oh lord help me, and it helps, a bit.

Taking deep breaths is important for pain. Mostly because breathing is important for survival, and pain makes people forget everything they learned about how to survive. It feels like every exhale releases that pain into the world, where it can scatter and grow into something nicer.

It doesn’t last. I’m almost knocked over by another wave. This time it’s in my chest. Not so easy to breathe through it. I must’ve been screaming, because my jaw is sore. No one inside has come out to see what’s what, those inconsiderate kids.

It passes quick, but I get the feeling it’s gonna come back quick, and with a vengeance. I’ve gotta move. The light, the sound of the neon, the smell, it’s all too much. I’m gritting my teeth so hard I swear I can hear them bend. I can’t feel my legs, wouldn’t know what to do with them if I could.

A tooth is falling out of my mouth. Another one now. And another. The pain takes me after I taste my own blood, and it spreads from my mouth to the tips of my toes. Everywhere, it’s noisy, it’s bright, it smells like my own body.

When did I end up on the ground? A while ago, I reckon. I see something in the sky, just behind the Wawa sign.

There’s a sickening pop somewhere inside of me, I’m spasming, howling, and eventually the pain is so big, so much bigger than the body that needs to hold it, that a sort of instinctual clarity opens my eyes. Yes. This is what’s supposed to happen. The deer finally runs away. That won’t do. It has to stay full.I take a deep breath, and push, push, push into the field.

#my fiction #short story #writeblr #original fiction #werewolf #werewolves #horror

11 notes · View notes

melishade · 9 months

Note

Number 15?

This ask game

Pilot Poll Open until next Sunday

Eren and Megatron 'bonding' during the Dark Timeline. If you could call it that

TW Choking. TW Blood

Eren really tried this time around. He really did. He didn't remember Optimus' training being this brutal. But that was because Optimus told him that he intentionally held back so that Eren would ease into the lessons and not end up seriously hurt. Two years ago, Eren would have wanted Optimus to not hold back and teach him everything.

Now he regrets ever wanting to defect from Optimus' training.

Eren coughed up blood as Megatron holoform punched him directly in the face, sending him slamming into a tree. Eren raised his head and gasped as Megatron rushed him to punch him directly in the gut. Eren quickly used his hands to catch and block that punch, but the full force of it still knocked the wind right out of his lungs. Eren managed to find an opening and kicked Megatron in the knee. It forced Megatron to stop his assault and allowed for Eren to roll out of the way. Eren tried to crawl away and gain some distance, but Megatron grabbed his ankle and yanked him back. Eren managed to kick Megatron in the face, not enough to damage him, but it still was enough for him to let go. Eren quickly got up and stumbled back, but Megatron lunged at him, wrapping his hand around his neck and slamming him to the ground.

"S-stop!" Eren pleaded as Megatron's grip got tighter.

"In war, you cannot beg for mercy," Megatron reminded, "You either fight, or you die. Which option will you choose?"

Eren tried. He really tried to claw his way out of Megatron's grip. But he just couldn't. His hand was practically locked in place. Nothing could move it.

"I-I can't!" Eren forced out, "I just can't! I yield!"

Eren detected a hint of disappointment in Megatron's eyes before letting go of the titan shifter. Eren gasped for air before getting on all fours and coughing up anything that got stuck in his airway.

"You're still favoring one side in combat," Megatron advised, "You need to be ambidextrous or-!"

"Fucking hell, Megatron! Just let me breathe for a second! You just tried to kill me!" Eren snapped at him.

"You agreed to this training," Megatron reminded, "You asked me to cut extra time in my day to train you. And Shockwave might not be a gladiator, but you've seen what he is capable of. So either you need to take my advice and actually improve or-!"

"I'm trying to! Okay!" Eren screamed at him, "I'm really trying! And I know Shockwave's a pain in the ass but I don't need to have it here right now too!"

Silence rang throughout the air as Eren wiped his mouth. God, he...he just hated this. For once in his life...he lost the motivation to actually get stronger. Eren noticed something out of the corner of his eye, and glanced up to see Megatron kneeling down and holding out a canteen of water to him.

"Thanks," Eren mumbled as he took the canteen and properly sat down on the grass.

"You wouldn't last a second in the arena," Megatron remarked.

"Yeah, thanks for letting me know," Eren spat out in annoyance before drinking some water.

Megatron sighed in defeat before he decided to sit down next to Eren. "...this was how I learned to fight and survive. I never had the luxury of taking it slow. You either fight or die. There's no in between."

Eren couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Sounds like something I'd say. But aren't you a 'champion of Kaon' or something like that. Undefeated? Doesn't sound like you had a hard time when it came to fighting if you were unopposed."

Eren noticed that Megatron's eyes seemed to dart a little bit. Like he was nervous...or conflicted. The former warlord groaned before wiping at his eyes with his hands and muttering something in a different language.

"Not accounting for the fact that I have nearly died multiple times and have died before, I barely managed to survive my first gladiatorial match," Megatron confessed.

"R-really?" Eren stuttered.

"I had no experience," Megatron continued, "I was thrown in with a rusted sword and that shield I carry with me now. I barely managed to survive that fight with heavy injury."

Eren was now filled with more questions. How did Megatron manage to survive? The shield he was carrying was from his gladiator days? Why was Megatron thrown into the arena in the first place? Eren was ready to ask more about it, but he noticed just how...uncomfortable Megatron looked just talking about it. He didn't know...what else to say now.

"...sorry," Eren could only muster.

"Apologies mean nothing if you can't back them up," Megatron declared, "...and I know that you would prefer Optimus here instead of me, but that's just the way the situation is."

"...I just miss him," Eren said.

Megatron sighed. "I know."

Eren closed the canteen and Megatron stood up. "Do you have enough energy to continue?"

"You're not going to hold back, right?" Eren asked.

"No, so make your choice," Megatron commanded.

Eren thought it over before leaving the canteen on the ground and standing up. "I'll try. I'll end up on the floor though. I just know it."

Megatron snorted at that. "To be fair, you lack the experience Optimus and I have."

"...can I ask something about that gladiator match?" Eren mustered up the courage to speak, but that nearly went away in an instant when Megatron's amused expression turned into one of neutrality.

"Depends," Megatron replied.

"What was...going through your head when you won that match?" Eren asked.

Megatron thought it over, at least what he could remember. He remembered stabbing his opponent in the neck. He remembered feeling so relieved that he survived. He remembered looking up at the clouded sky, and seeing the light of the sun for the second time in his life.

"...I was free."

(Contrary to popular belief, I'd like to think that Megatron struggled initially when he first became a gladiator before rising through the ranks and becoming the undefeated champion. Adds more humanity I guess. Anyway, you can ask from the list or vote on the pilot poll if you haven't done that already.)

6 notes · View notes

the-floodhouse · 1 year

Text

Hello.

Welcome to the small rainy town of Mourningtide. There is little to do here, especially for bored young people on summer vacation. Little to do except explore, that is.

(everything that follows is OOC)

Hi! This is Icarus (@/icarianangel)! This is my collaborative multimedia project that I will be turning into a book when (if) it ends. Turn back if you don't want to participate, or just read it as it goes along!

PLOT INFO

This story is the tale of three teenagers (and some other characters, to be introduced later). Their names are Olivia, Noah, and Zilli. You can read about them in the character page or in the tag "the cast".

The tale takes place in the town Mourningtide, as mentioned above. This is a standard rainy, miserable little town, à la old detective stories. It is, however, a bit magical, as you will soon find out. Another important detail is that everyone in this world has object/animal heads, in the style of weirdcore. This is just a stylistic choice, but it will be mentioned. Each character's head type will be mentioned in their bio and art will be posted occasionally.

If we zoom a bit closer in, the story truly takes place in the Floodhouse, for which this blog and the story itself is named. This is a large abandoned manor house on the edge of town. You don't need to know anything else about this yet, as all will be revealed when the story begins.

PROJECT INFO

The Floodhouse will be told through a combination of story snippets, polls, asks, art, and potentially videos, as well as whatever else may come to mind in the moment. It will, for the most part, be linear, so if you are new, you can simply go to the first post and read from there!

It will be told through audience participation as much as possible, see please vote on polls, reblog and comment on posts, and send in asks! Through this, you can shape the story to your ideas! I know it can be scary to participate in things like this, but trust me, we will do our absolute best to make sure whatever you send in is used and we love seeing stuff from you!

The only rules for submission/interactions are:

No hate speech or cruelty of any sort

No NSFW as of the moment (the characters and the mod are minors so it's just kinda weird)

Make sure to specifically state if something you say is OOC (for lack of a better word), or it will not be taken as such

This should hopefully be obvious but, no soliciting or promotion on here? That's not what this is for lol

And that should cover all the bases for rules!

The blog will hopefully update quite a bit, but keep in mind I am still in school and have a life outside of tumblr (shocking, i know /sar)

Last but not least, DO NOT INTERACT IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH YOUR IDEAS AND INTERACTIONS BEING PART OF THE BOOK. I can't guarentee that it will ever be published, but I WILL be turning this into a full length story when it is over (date not set, it ends when it ends). I will do my best to credit everyone, but it's obviously very hard when this is being run through tumblr of all places, so keep this in mind when you interact.

For new players:

Read this post (you're at the bottom, so hopefully you already did)

Look through the character bios

Read through the past posts, or dive straight in if that's your thing!

Send an 👁️ to get a description of the current surroundings of any of the characters (if you don't specify it will be chosen randomly or all characters will be picked)

Send an ask, reblog a post, comment, etc! Just interact how you feel like interacting, and help us continue the story!

Lastly...

Thanks for playing!

#TAG SYSTEM:#the cast #<- for characters #ooc info #<- updates and general info #mourningtide tribune #<- the news #❔#<- asks #❕#<- polls #the setting #<- places #THIS WILL BE UPDATED AS THE STORY CONTINUES

4 notes · View notes

lfthinkerwrites · 11 months

Text

So last month I posted a poll regarding which snippet people wanted to see. I've decided now that the runner-up should be posted too. As a treat.

For the first time, Tim found himself face-to-face with Edward Nigma's daughter. The first thought he had when looking at her was that she was short. She couldn't be more than maybe half an inch taller than Damian, and he'd probably outgrow her by the end of the year. His second thought was that other than her height, gender, and a few differences in her facial features, she was almost a dead-ringer for her father, down to the glare she was shooting his way.

"Answer my question," she said, arms crossed over her chest. "What the fuck are you doing in my Dad's apartment?"

Tim blinked. Right, Steph had said she had a temper. She and Cass both had said that she was protective of her father. He needed to get her out of here so he could finish his search. "It's ok," he said, slowly raising his hands. The girl's facial expression didn't change. Tim found himself at a crossroads. What did the girl know? How much had Edward told her? "You know your Dad was working with Batman, right?"

"Yeah," she said. If anything, her glare intensified. "Did he send you here?"

Crap. "No," Tim said. He parsed through half a dozen lies and half-truths before he settled on the former. "Your Dad asked me to come here." The girl's glare was replaced with a look of surprise. Great. She believed him. He could work with this. "He asked me to come here and get evidence from his file cabinet in case anything ever happened." The girl said nothing, but brought a hand up to her chin, as if she was thinking this through. "Look," Tim said. "I know you want to help your Dad. I do too. The best way you can help him is to go home. Let the professionals handle this. Batgirl will call you as soon as anything changes."

The girl stood for a second longer, not moving, until the glare returned in full force. "You can think I'm just some stupid kid from the lower West Side, but don't fucking talk to me like I'm one."

Oh, crap. What was her name? Right, Ellen. "Listen Ellen-"

"No, you listen Red ass munch. Maybe you know more about The Riddler than I do, but I know my Dad. And I know there's no way in Hell he'd ever let Batman or anyone else in your group mess with his files. He wouldn't even let Dierdre and Nina touch anything in that cabinet. The only person he'd ever trust with his stuff is Doc Young and she's not here, you are." She stepped forward, her fists clenching at her sides. "So tell me what you're really doing here, and if you try to lie to me again, I'll take that stupid bo staff of yours and shove it so far up your ass it comes out your mouth!"

Tim took a deep breath through his nostrils and tried not to think about smacking her with the said bo staff. Sweet kid? Really, Steph?

#pi verse #flash forward #enigma #and so a rivalry for the ages was born #they are kind of hardwired to dislike each other

4 notes · View notes

mandalorianbrainweasel · 2 years

Text

Kettle of Shig (Chapter One Preview)

I’m going to try and get the next chapter done before I post this in full, but I figured I should show you all a bit of my new WIP.

Tag Preview:

Characters: Jango Fett’s Mother, Original Mandalorian Characters, Jaster Mereel, Tor Vizsla, Jango Fett’s Father, Arla Fett, Jango Fett

Abrieviated Tags: Dysfunctional Family, past Jaster Mereel/Tor Vizsla, Mandalorian Culture, Mandalorian Adoption, Force Sensitive Mand’alore, Angst, Mandalorian Courting, Political Alliances, Falling in Love, Marriage Proposals, Weddings, Pregnancy, Babies, Children, Parenthood, Mandalorian Civil War, Canon Compliant,

And a bit from the first chapter, which involves everything up to Angst:

“Do you know when Tor gets back from the mine check?” Jaster asks. He looks out the window.

Sometimes Utrelsor wonders why Kori’buir didn’t let them court, why he adopted Jaster instead, but she knows more about politics than she should to let herself wonder too much. “You can do better than him,” she says instead of changing the subject or just telling him.

Jaster scowls and firmly doesn’t look at her. The tips of his ears go a little red. “I just—.”

“One day you’re going to find someone awesome,” she says with a sniff. “And I’m going to tell you ‘I told you so’ and make you get a dumb tattoo with whoever the guy’s name is, and he’ll be just as smart as you and a hell of a lot less prideful.”

“It’s not like that,” Jaster protests weakly. “We just have plans to spar tonight.”

“Ah hah.”

Her accent on that particular phrase breaks the tension, sending Jaster into frantic giggling that a man his size shouldn’t be able to produce. “Sometimes I do wonder if you like your ori’vod,” he admits after a moment.

“Of course I do.” She trusts Tor more than anyone with her worries, but right now she’s between boyfriends and doesn’t have any.

“So do you not like me?” he asks.

Utrelsor stares at him. She throws the stylus at him.

It bounces off his forehead and results in a look like a surprised gi.

“Of course I like you, di’kut. It feels like you always should have been here, most of the time. You’re my ori’vod too, so don’t forget it.”

Jaster smiles, but it’s really sad in comparison to earlier. She wonders, sometimes, about what he left behind on Concord Dawn.

She’d like to give his old boss a piece of her mind. And a few broken teeth.

Hmm, maybe she can convince her project for this season to be hunting down the aliit of the bastard Jaster got exiled for killing. They may be rich but they’re not as powerful as the Vizslas.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the door to the library swinging open. They both look over to find Tor, his intact beskar’gam still coated in mine dust, with a manic edge to his eyes but a big grin.

“Don’t breathe in too much dust, di’kut,” Utrelsor drawls.

“Yeah,” Jaster adds in a matching drawl.

The manic edge ebbs away and is replaced with a pout. “Stop ganging up on me.”

The two of them share a look, then look back at their vod. As one, they say, “Nayc.”

“You’re both horrible, you know that? Absolutely terrible, the worst siblings a man could ask for. I ought to tie you both by your feet from the announcement poll!”

“Tor,” Utrelsor says, smiling.

He shuts his mouth and gulps.

“What did you need that made you step into our calm, peaceful, quiet library while still covered in mine dust?”

“Oh.” Tor flushes. “Kori’buir wants to see us.”

Ah.

“Go change and have someone hose your beskar off,” Jaster says, taking charge. “We’ll make shig.”

#my fanfiction #fanfic preview #star wars legends #mandalorians #jaster mereel #tor vizsla #jango fett's mother #this will include Tor Vizsla's journey towards Death Watch #all the way up to the death of the TWO MAIN CHARACTERS #kazhan is an enabler #we're all on this rollarcoaster and the end is pain #canon compliant fic #kettle of shig

5 notes · View notes

lindsaywesker · 1 year

Text

Good morning! I hope you slept well and feel rested? Currently sitting at my desk, in my study, attired only in my blue towelling robe, enjoying my first cuppa of the day. Welcome to the weekend!

Wow! Here we are again: Friday! Where did that week go? No, seriously, where did that week go?

Naturally, the highlight of my week was my birthday on Wednesday and, trust me, I will be celebrating my birthday all month! I have enough alcohol in here to sink a battleship, plus I have a couple of very nice dates in my diary!

The Mighty Josiah has returned from Brooklyn, so we will see him tonight and he will stay with us Friday and Saturday. I am his personal assistant, so I will be at his beck and call. You know how scrumptious he is, so I will attempt to hug and kiss him – attempt! – but he always screams and runs away.

My mother had her first experience of racial profiling this week. My daughter’s mother is black, so my daughter is mixed race, dual heritage, whatever you want to call her but, in a shop in Hove, she’s a black woman! My mum wrote, “Today, in Marks and Spencer, a security guard stopped your daughter and said she looked like a shoplifting suspect of theirs. At that minute, l appeared, all hell let loose and they were full of apologies. She was shocked, of course! It just makes me aware of how penalised black people are.” Yes, this week, Lady Wesker got a life lesson. You’re never too old to learn.

Mars has decided to trial a ‘No Bounty’ tub of Celebrations this Christmas, after its consumer research confirmed their status as the least popular sweet. The experiment comes after nearly 40% of those polled told the company the Bounty should be permanently axed from the Celebrations line up, where it struggles to compete with the star power of “all-time favourite” Maltesers. To be honest, 40% sounds like a pretty low number to be making such rash decisions. Personally, given half the chance, I would eat Bounty until it made me sick! I love it! I’m down at Sainsbury’s this morning, so I will be stocking up on Bounty bars for those lazy Christmas days! Celebrations can do one! It’s a rip-off anyway!

The ‘follows’ keep arriving at Scam HQ a.k.a. Instagram. Every day, so many follows from women with an ‘Only Fans’ page, people dealing in Cryptocurrency or just people with no profile pic. For every person I follow, I literally delete about 20 wanting me to follow them. El*n M*sk calculates that about 90% of our followers are bots! I suspect he might be right but that won’t be happening on my IG profile. Not me, mate!

Yesterday, I forgot to post a photo on IG of some of my wonderful Wednesday students, which I have done today. Some people are a bit funny about selfies. They worry about the way they look, or worry about people knowing their whereabouts, or just worry about being in selfies. For my money, when people pass away, I am so grateful for my selfies with me and them. Beautiful moments, never to be forgotten.

For those of you that follow me on Twitter, if I suddenly disappear, I will have gone to @TribelSocial. As Twitter is now allowing very extreme right-wing people back on their platform, I may back away? Let’s see what happens?

Very sad to hear about Noel McKoy passing away. ‘Family’ by McKoy was released in 1991 and we must have played it hundreds of times on Kiss FM! I think anybody listening to Kiss at that time will remember ‘Family’ as being a huge radio and party record. In 2014, Noel became part of The British Collective, an exceptional group of young men, who many of us have enjoyed in recent years. One of the most distinctive voices in UK soul music. He will be missed.

Matt Hancock is about to find out how much people hate him!

Be warned: someone has created a FAKE Lindsay Wesker profile and they may send you a friend request. Do not accept it!

Hope you can join me tomorrow at 1.00 p.m. for ‘The A-Z Of Mi-Soul Music’. The Letter J (Part Seven). Some of the tunes are a bit saucy! You have been warned!

Have a fabulous and funky Friday! I love you all. You’re probably thinking, “You don’t even know me!” but, if people can hate for no reason, why can’t I love?

#mixcloud #mi soul #dj #music #new blog #lockdown #coronavirus #books #weekend #democracy #brexit #cronyism #election #autumm #christmas #radio

3 notes · View notes

makeste · 2 years

Text

BnHA Chapter 336: The U.A. Traitor Sends Their Regards

Previously on BnHA: All Might was all “hey kids, so I was thinking it might be a good idea to train a bit before this final battle that’s coming up soon.” Class 1-A was all, “wow All Might, what a fantastic idea, we never would have thought of that on our own, and also PLEASE TAKE NOTE OF OUR SARCASM.” Kacchan was all, “hey, I know I made that longass speech apologizing to Deku and expressing my sincere remorse and vowing to have his back no matter what, but I would appreciate if everyone could just sort of ignore all that and continue to respect my tough guy posturing.” AFO was all “okay guys, no need to panic, we’re just gonna sit tight until I hopefully get some of my quirks back, and in the meantime I’m gonna call in a favor from an old friend. :)” Hagakure was all, “U.A. Traitor Time? U.A. TRAITOR TIME.”

Today on BnHA: omg I don’t even want to put anything in the description here because everything in this chapter caught me COMPLETELY UNAWARES and I don’t want to accidentally ruin it for anyone else. but I mean. IF YOU KNOW YOU KNOW. lol where did I put that clown wig.

look at me reading this chapter while running on 3 hours of sleep after a long workday!! this is in no way a good idea lol, but the good news is the part of my brain that’s in charge of making smart decisions for my personal health has LONG since fallen asleep at the wheel, so we doin’ this! brace yourself for a shitload of typos and run-on sentences but WE ARE GO

(ETA: SLEEP-DEPRIVED ME WASN’T EVEN REMOTELY PREPARED FOR ANY OF THIS SHIT LMAO.)

also just as a side note, I shored up my spoiler containment field this week after everything that happened last time, so I am pleased to say that I have absolutely no idea what to expect today and haven’t even seen the popularity poll results yet. and speaking of said poll I don’t really have any predictions for that except for “BAKUGOU #1, DUH”

(ETA: AT LEAST SOME THINGS ARE STILL CERTAIN IN THESE CRAZY TIMES.)

oh my gosh it really is so great to see Deku happy

All Might too for that matter. look at them. so wholesome. how can we sustain this for them

(ETA: we really can’t, lol.)

AHHHHHH BROOOOOOOOO

HAHAHA OMG IT’S AMAZING AS ALWAYS

DON’T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE WAY OUT, SHINDOU!! JAPANESE FANDOM REDEMPTION ARC?? NATURE IS HEALING

RODYYYYYY. omg. I know I said I was gonna post my thoughts on movie 3 and I SWEAR I WILL... SOMEDAY, lol. I wrote down my initial impressions all haphazardly but I do have them, they’re not going anywhere. just a matter of me getting the time and spoons. anyways but in the meantime let me just tell you guys with full candidness that I went into the movie with the vague, unfounded concern that he was possibly going to annoy me. like, idk, all of the promo materials and interviews and trailers and such just didn’t really sell me on him at all. so I really wasn’t expecting much from him. but THAT SAID, it is my distinct pleasure to inform you all that I WAS WRONG, and he really is just as awesome as everyone said he was, and he completely won me over. EVERYTHING YOU HAVE HEARD IS TRUE. we respect and stan Rody in these streets

anyway and so IT IS GOOD TO SEE YOU BOY, and thank you so much for making the bad man go away. I SEE YOU TRYING TO PEEK AROUND THE CORNER, SHINDOU. YOU DON’T GET TO INVADE THE COLOR SPREAD WITH YOUR SMUG, BORING AURA THIS YEAR. GO ON, GET OUT OF HERE

moving on, SHINSOU!!! A.K.A. SHINDOU WITH TWO S’S -- NO, DAMMIT SHINDOU, I WASN’T CALLING YOU, I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE. anyway but look at Shinsou. here. in this panel. which is the most screentime he’s gotten since the JT arc. fandom is trying their hardest to send Horikoshi a message here lmao

PRESENT MIC IS HERE TO REMIND ME OF WHY I DIDN’T TRY TO PREDICT ANYTHING THIS YEAR LMAO. but you are a very welcome presence. you and your giant pigeon thing here. I know it’s a parrot lol but I mean, look at it

“HOW CAN I MAKE A SHEEP MANLY” Horikoshi sighs, deeply regretting his choice for Deku’s spirit animal. BUT LOOK AT YOU! YOU FOUND A WAY!

BAKUGOU WITH THE WOLF!! STANDING THERE ALL SOLEMN AND COOL LIKE JON FUCKING SNOW. YOU HAD SUCH A GREAT YEAR AND YOUR CONTINUED REIGN WAS NEVER IN DOUBT. ANYWAY BUT I’LL STOP SHOWERING YOU WITH PRAISE NOW BEFORE IT GOES TO YOUR HEAD. LOOK AT YOU POSITIONED SO CLOSE TO DEKU AND SLIGHTLY IN FRONT OF HIM ALL PROTECTIVELY AS BOTH OF YOU STAND VIGILANT OF THE APPROACHING THREAT. I LOVE YOU BOTH SO MUCH OH MY GOODNESS

SHOUTO AS A SNOW LEOPARD OMG. THE ICE CONNECTION WHILE KEEPING IT IN THE CAT FAMILY. I’M SO HERE FOR IT

IIDA’S SPIRIT ANIMAL BEING A FUCKING HORSE IS SENDING ME SO HARD FOR SOME REASON LMAO. I MEAN IT MAKES SENSE, HORSES ARE FAST I GET IT LOL, BUT IT’S JUST THAT EVERYONE ELSE SHOWED UP READY FOR A FIGHT, AND HERE YOU ARE ALL SET FOR THE WORLD EQUESTRIAN GAMES OMG. I’M SO HAPPY YOU MADE THE TOP TEN THIS YEAR AFTER YOUR BIG MOMENT

SOMEONE PLEASE INFORM KIRISHIMA THAT THERE ARE CERTAIN SITUATIONS IN WHICH IT IS ACCEPTABLE AND DARE I SAY EVEN PRUDENT TO ACTUALLY WEAR A SHIRT INTO BATTLE. EVEN THE KID WITH THE FIRE QUIRK IS DRESSED FOR THE SNOWY WEATHER, KIRI. LOVE THE TORTOISE THOUGH

SO GLAD TO SEE HAWKS HERE AFTER HE LOWKEY BECAME THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES NUMBER ONE HERO AND HAD THAT AMAZING FLASHBACK CHAPTER. WE’LL JUST PRETEND THE LAST TEN MONTHS OF HIM DOING NOTHING BUT IGNORING PHONE CALLS WHILE RIDING SHOTGUN WITH JEANIST DIDN’T HAPPEN LOL

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, AIZAWA AND HIS SPIRIT ANIMAL, THE GIANT FUCKING CAT. NO WONDER MIC’S PARROT LOOKS SO NERVOUS

“THANK FUCK I DON’T HAVE TO BOTHER TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WTF SHINDOU’S SPIRIT ANIMAL WOULD HAVE BEEN” I KNOW, RIGHT?? ANYWAY SORRY YOU GUYS, I PROMISE I’VE GOT IT ALL OUT OF MY SYSTEM NOW. NO MORE SHINDOU DISSES SO LONG AS HE PROMISES TO NEVER SHOW HIS STORE BRAND HANDSOME FACE EVER AGAIN AS LONG AS I LIVE. BUT ANYWAYS OKAY LET’S MOVE ON NOW

OH FUCK YES LOL HAVE AT IT KIDS

lol I have an essay I’ve been working on for like four fucking months about Bakugou and Deku and the current status of their relationship, and each week I tell myself that this is the week I finally finish and post it, and each week I continue to fail to do so. and one of these days Horikoshi is just gonna get to it before I do and then WHAT WILL BE THE POINT OF ALL THAT HARD WORK. anyway so maybe this chapter will be the kick in the pants I so desperately need lol. “BAKUGOU’S DEVELOPMENT!!” lol oh fuck

also he’s fighting without his gauntlets. KACCHAN I TOOK A SCREENCAP AND I’M POSTING IT IN MY RECAP. PROOF POSITIVE THAT YOU DON’T EVEN NEED THOSE STUPID THINGS. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND EVERYONE LOL

(ETA: actually, given that he had a practical reason for wearing the winter costume, it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t wearing the gauntlets on purpose so that he can do some conditioning/strength training, since he has to get used to the more powerful explosions. the gauntlets reduce his quirk’s impact on his arms, so taking them off is kind of like forcing himself to acclimate to the upgrade without any help. so yeah, I'm already bracing myself for him bringing them back later even though he really does look so much better without them sob.)

oh my gosh look at him bragging about how he figured out how to make little globs of sweat that he can detonate all at once together lol. we really didn’t need to know the disgusting insider details of your badass new move my sweet sweaty son

(ETA: this is actually so much exposition from him, though. he just couldn’t wait to tell Deku all about his awesome new move and how it works. “are you listening, nerd?? write that down in your shitty notebooks!!” Kacchan you know he actually will lol.)

omg. does this mean that his winter suit will officially be his go-to moving forward?? IS THIS THE DAY ALL MY DREAMS COME TRUE

“that’s nice Kacchan I’m gonna go pay attention to Todoroki now” HEY --

lol okay I scrolled down and actually, I get it

“is it just me or has he gotten way hotter” damn Deku keep it in your pants this is a children’s manga. really trying to make Kacchan jealous there huh

anyway so Shouto says his left side has finally caught up with his right, which, !! lol well okay then! nice of you to give us a heads up on that frankly huge development

wait, what does he mean make both halves into one. does he mean like internally, so he can regulate his temperature and use both quirks freely with no side effects? or is there some new special move he’s come up with that he’s teasing us with right now? except I thought we already had the combo ice+fire move; isn’t that what he used on Soda Sam way back when?

and just like we all expected, the transition into plot exposition is coming from none other than Kaminari fucking Denki lol

“that’s good stuff, Kami. and meanwhile I’ll sit here and play the audience stand-in” thank you Mineta

“AND GIGANTOMACHIA IS STILL SEDATED AND CONFINED” oh hey cool, I had been wondering about that. thank you very much for that update, Kamikoshi

lol and so is this where they’re keeping Machia then?

or is this their makeshift training area? it looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere though, so yeah I’m going with Secret Gigantomachia Prison

omg Kacchan was listening in. better that than watching his boyfriend continue to make googly eyes at his other boyfriend I guess

“listen up Dunce Face why don’t you just sit back and leave the exposition to the pros” damn Kacchan he was doing his best you know

omg now Momo’s chiming in. “couldn’t help but overhear you guys talking about smart things without me, so if you don’t mind...” by all means!!

I literally had to scroll back to the previous panel to see what Jirou was complaining about lol. I’ve officially become desensitized to Kacchan-speak. anyways but yes Momo, to your point of “btw the last time Tomura wasn’t at full power and he still kicked our asses if I recall” ayep

honestly, this is why I’ve been saying that your best bet is to just let him come to you guys though. you don’t know where to find him, but he does know where to find you. which would be bad news except that it means you get to decide the location of the final battle. he chooses the time, but you get to choose the place. so why not on your home turf where you know the terrain and can plan ahead, I say

“LET ME GET IN ON THIS STRATEGY TALK TOO I’M THE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER YOU GUYS” our bad, Deku

um, but also,

the hell you are lol

HAHA

Iida shamed Deku into a lil black cloud. I have no idea what’s happening but I’m here for it

(ETA: did he smoosh Deku’s hair into his face with that headchop lol.)

man will you kids please stop being adorable so I can stop having to post every single panel of you all

I could have easily just summarized what Deku and Iida just said, but then I wouldn’t get to post this unbearably cute scene of Ochako blushing while Iida bigs her up with Tsuyu being all “yep it’s true you were a badass” and leaning in grinning like two inches away from her face

lmao Kaminari drinking his water and finishing up the speech as if he’s the one who made all of these excellent points

it’s tough being the protagonists, kids. always gotta keep your guard up and be ready for whatever the villains are scheming next. AND ON THAT NOTE...

holy shit. TRAITOR THINGGGGGGGS

-- OH MY GOD I SCROLLED DOWN AN INCH TOO FAR AND CAUGHT THE TOP OF THE FOLLOWING PAGE ALONG WITH THE REST OF THIS PAGE, OH FUCK

IN OTHER WORDS I SAW THE TOP OF THIS NEXT PANEL HERE, AND THE UNMISTAKEABLE FOREHEAD OF THE PERSON SHE’S TALKING TO AHHHHHHHHHH

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

HOLY SHIT??!

LOL WHAT

BROOOOOO

LOL FOREVER OMFG??! NO FUCKING WAY, I HAD IT BACKWARDS??

HAGAKURE OMFG

OMG. OMG. OMG??

OKAY LOL I NEED TO CALM THE FUCK DOWN HERE LMAO OR I’M JUST GONNA BE SCREAMING FOR THE REST OF THIS CHAPTER, AND POSSIBLY THE ENTIRE FUCKING SERIES LOL. LET’S SEE IF I CAN CHASE DOWN A COUPLE OF THESE THOUGHTS THAT ARE FLYING AROUND AT A THOUSAND MPH

SO I HAD IT BACKWARDS! HAGAKURE HOLY SHIT I STAKED MY ENTIRE REPUTATION ON YOU LOL. I REALLY TRULY THOUGHT AOYAMA WAS THE ONE WHO HAD CAUGHT ON TO YOU! BUT IT WAS THE OTHER WAY AROUND??

I’M SO GLAD I TURNED OFF COMMENT REPLIES AND MESSAGING THIS WEEK LMAO. ALSO THAT I APPARENTLY DIDN’T SPOIL ANYONE BY ACCIDENT AFTER ALL! REDEMPTION BY INCOMPETENCE LMAO

SEVERAL THINGS ABOUT THIS DO NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME YET, BUT THE HELL WITH IT, I’LL KEEP READING UNTIL THEY DO

SO WAS AFO THE ONE WHO GAVE HIM HIS BELT? IS HE DOING THIS SO AFO CAN HELP HIM GET HIS QUIRK UNDER CONTROL? OR HAS AFO BEEN THREATENING HIS FAMILY??

[EYES THE VOL. 2 OMAKE PAGES] SO WHY IS HAGAKURE’S QUIRK STILL SUCH A FUCKING SECRET THEN LMAO

AOYAMA YOU REALLY TURNED KATSUKI OVER TO THEM JUST LIKE THAT?? REAL TALK, YOU ALWAYS SEEMED LIKE A SWEET KID, AND IT’S CLEAR YOU’RE VERY SCARED AND DOING THIS ALL VERY MUCH AGAINST YOUR WILL, BUT I’M STILL GONNA NEED YOU TO HAVE A DAMN GOOD REASON FOR DOING THAT. ALTHOUGH, THANK YOU FOR KICKSTARTING HIS CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT ARC THOUGH

SO WAS HE ACTUALLY “HIDING” IN THE BUSHES FROM THE OTHER KIDS, AND IT WAS NEVER FROM DABI AT ALL???????

AND THAT MEANS HE MADE THE DECISION AT THE LAST SECOND TO SAVE TOKOYAMI FROM THEM??

AND HE CHOSE NOT TO TELL AFO THAT THE HEROES WERE PLANNING A RESCUE OP?? OR HE DID TELL THEM, AND EVERYONE WHO SAID THAT AFO KNEW THEY WERE COMING WAS ACTUALLY RIGHT AFTER ALL? BUT THAT STILL DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME THOUGH THAT AFO WOULD WILLINGLY ROLL OVER AND LET THE HEROES COME FUCK UP ALL HIS PLANS LIKE THAT. EH

LAST BUT NOT LEAST, NO WAY IS HAGAKURE JUST FIGURING ALL THIS OUT JUST NOW LMAO GIRL OMFG. WHAT ABOUT CHAPTER 12. AND THE SCHEDULE. AND USJ?? “I REALLY WAS WHERE TODOROKI WAS” GIRL WHAT. CLASSIC DITZY HAGAKURE AMIRITE

GIRL, WHAT

“WE’RE GOOD PARENTS WE SWEAR. WE CAME TO THE PERFECTLY SOUND CONCLUSION THAT WE WOULD RATHER SIGN OUR CHILD’S SOUL OVER TO THE PROVERBIAL DEVIL THAN HAVE HIM BE A QUIRKLESS FREAK” OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. AOYAMA YOUR PARENTS ARE COMING IN HOT!! WATCH OUT ENJI YOUR PERENNIAL CROWN AS FATHER OF THE YEAR IS IN DANGER

“WHO COULD HAVE KNOWN THAT BUYING A BLACK MARKET QUIRK FROM THE KING OF THE UNDERWORLD WOULD HAVE UNFORESEEN REPERCUSSIONS??” OMFG YOU GUYS THAT’S BARELY EVEN AN EXAGGERATION FROM WHAT THEY ACTUALLY SAID SOB

“THE ONLY CRIME WE’RE GUILTY OF IS TRYING TO BE GOOD PARENTS! THAT, AND CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT KIDNAPPING AND ATTEMPTED MASS CHILD MURDER” UM?????????????????

OH BOO HOO LMAO

WELL I SURE FUCKING HOPE YOU GUYS HAD FUN WINNING ALL THE STUPID PRIZES AFTER PLAYING THE STUPIDEST OF GAMES SOB. PLUS, ALL OF THAT, AND HE DOESN’T EVEN GET A DECENT QUIRK?? HE GIVES HIM A FUCKING BELLY BUTTON THAT SHOOTS LASERS THAT HE NEEDS A SUPPORT ITEM TO EVEN CONTROL??

and what kind of message does it send your child that you were so desperate to fix his perceived defect that you struck a Faustian bargain with the WORLD’S MOST OBVIOUSLY EVIL MAN omfg. no wonder Aoyama tries so hard to prove to the world how beautiful and special and unique he is. “oops, we accidentally gave our gentle-hearted son massive self-esteem issues and a bargain bin quirk that doesn’t even fit him right, but at least we also inadvertently put his life in extreme danger and put him in a position where he would be forced to serve as an accessory to attempted pedicide!” fucking speechless

lol omfg. and so does this also mean Hagakure won’t be getting any character development?? so much for those hopes lol

Aoyama. buddy. I know how hard this all must’ve been on you, really. but I’m gonna need you to very carefully considering the following:

your parents are the actual worst

TomurAFO is planning on [checks notes] conquering and/or destroying the entire country/world

I’m just saying. just putting it out there, very gently, that maybe just maybe you should consider not helping the brutal tyrant who desperately wants to murder all your friends. particularly if the only thing you’re getting out of it in return is AFO’s Super Trustworthy Assurance that he’ll spare your hopelessly braindead parents over here

OH MY FUCKING GOD LMAO

I MEAN I WASN’T GONNA SAY ANYTHING, BUT THE THREE OF YOU WERE ACTUALLY BEING SO FUCKING LOUD THOUGH LOL. AOYAMA YUUGA WITH THE WORLD’S WORST-TIMED SOBBING CONFESSION OF ALL HIS PAST SINS LMAO. “ThIs Is A bLiNd SpOt In ThEiR sUrVeIlAnCe” SMDH

WOW OKAY, JUST GET IT ALL OUT IN THE OPEN THEN I GUESS!

JESUS CHRIST GIRL YOU DID THAT IN LIKE TWO SECONDS?? AND YOU EVEN HAD TIME TO EXPLAIN THE WHOLE THING TO HIM??

LMAO

THESE REALLY ARE THE ABSOLUTE DUMBEST CHARACTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE SERIES HUH. TRULY UNENCUMBERED BY THE THOUGHT PROCESS

MAN I WAS ACTUALLY LIKE TWO SECONDS AWAY FROM FORMULATING A THEORY ABOUT HOW THAT’S NOT ACTUALLY DEKU (BECAUSE LOL), AND HOW HAGAKURE’S ACTUAL QUIRK IS LIGHT MANIPULATION LIKE EVERYONE SAYS, AND SHE CAN MAYBE USE IT TO FORM ILLUSIONS/MIRAGES AS WELL. BUT NOW HE’S HAVING FLASHBACKS TO STUFF SO IDK??

OR WAIT, NO, THESE ARE AOYAMA’S FLASHBACKS ACTUALLY! SO NEVER MIND MY NEW THEORY IS STILL ON. SURE HOPE IT PANS OUT BETTER THAN MY LAST HAGAKURE THEORY LOLLERSKATES

WELL, EITHER HAGAKURE IS REALLY GOOD AT IMITATING DEKU’S VOICE AND EXACT MANNER OF GUILT TRIP SPEECHMAKING, OR IT REALLY IS DEKU LOL

“I JUST SO HAPPENED TO BE IN THE AREA, AND THAT’S WHY!!” YEAH SURE BUDDY WHATEVER YOU SAY

“I’M SO SORRY DEKU BUT THE TRUTH IS I SUCK!!” LKSDJFLKAJDGLKG

WELRSKAJGLKGLMLKFDG

[FALLS TO MY KNEES] IT WAS ALL TRUE. THIS WHOLE TIME. THE CHEESE. THE SECRET MESSAGES. THE CREEPY ART EXHIBIT IMAGES. HE KILLED MUFASA!! WOULD YOU KINDLY!! I KNOW IT WAS YOU FREDO YOU BROKE MY HEART!!!!

AND THEY PLAYED ME LIKE A FOOL. AN ABSOLUTE BUFFOON. I’M NOT EVEN MAD THOUGH LOL. although I am just ever so slightly bummed that this means Hana really is dead (there never was much hope. just a fool’s hope), and Horikoshi’s track record with female character development remains very much intact lol. but, like, a sad lol

anyway but I guess that’s that, and instead of a badass lady traitor doing cool murdery shit we’ve got Aoyama and his fucking clown parents crying loudly in the woods while Hagakure uses her FAMED HAGAKURE SPEED to FETCH DEKU IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE to make things all awkward lol. “DEKU, THERE YOU ARE. SORRY TO INTERRUPT YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF DROOLING OVER TODOROKI, BUT COULD YOU COME WITH ME REAL QUICK BECAUSE AOYAMA IS THE FUCKING TRAITOR.” “WHAAAAAAT, NO WAY, I THOUGHT IT WAS YOU LOL. OKAY LET ME JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO FIX MY HAIR... THERE WE GO... OKAY LET’S DO THIS” go gettem Deku

#bnha 336 #hagakure tooru #aoyama yuuga #midoriya izuku #bakugou katsuki #class 1-a #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #ngl though I do have a couple of misgivings about this #mainly boiling down to short term impact (which is admittedly great) vs. long term impact #I mean it's definitely memorable for sure #but it's looking like this might get resolved waaaaaay quicker than I would have hoped for #and the threat factor dropped to basically zero in the span of only a few pages #BUT we'll see how that goes though #if this chapter has taught me anything it's to never ever jump to conclusions lol

245 notes · View notes

peakyblindersxx · 3 years

Text

whiskey business - john shelby x reader (part 8 of ?)

gif by @thesoldiersminute can i send you a cake or something cause fuCk!!!!!!!!!!! he's beautiful

a/n: to everyone still reading this fic, my sweet angels, ily!! this fic is so near and dear to my heart and @stxdyblr-2k has just done such an amazing job with it i can't even thank her enough. as per the last part, this one is also mostly her, just me editing but i hope you guys love it as much as i did!!! don't worry, there's gonna be a lot more :) and i apologize for being not as active, i'm gonna try to get a couple of requests up that i'm really excited about this week tysm for being patient with me <3

love, abi xxx

read part one two three four five six seven | my masterlist

prompt: ada has some talking to do, and you're not about to deny her.

warnings: fluff, semi-angst, tommy being the cocky mf he is (let's be real, it's only acceptable cause he's so damn fine), john being cute and in love and jesus i am head over heels

tagging: @datewithgianni, @mayaslifeinabox, @deepdonutkid, @springsoulofengland, @lilymurphy03, @operation-spot

You had planned to go to Ada's after work, but she obviously had other ideas. She didn't even bother walking in and asking to speak to you; instead, choosing to bang on the window closest to your desk and yelling at you to "fucking hurry up!" Your boss opened the door for you expectantly, not offering you any protection; he was firmly in the Shelby's ever growing pocket and as long as he could go home to his children, his sickly wife and their six bed in the country, with a full time nurse and nanny, he had no interest in crossing Thomas.

"Ada, I was coming to see you after work, I swear."

"I know. I was going to let you but..." She trailed off. "We need to talk. I don't know what the fuck is going on with you. John said he'd seen you last night and you asked after me."

John had indeed seen you last night. It was strange waking up with him, used to leaving almost immediately after he was finished with you. Your small bed could barely comfortably fit you both, having to intertwine your limbs with John's to not fall off the edge. You had awoken to John pressing a kiss to your forehead before lazily trailing his fingers between your legs, waiting for you to open your eyes before settling between your thighs, tongue swirling around your clit, making you cum before sunrise.

"Do we have to do this in the street?" You practically begged, the shouting having attracted onlookers.

"I wanted to talk to you before anyone else in the family gets to you because I need you to be honest."

"Ada-"

"No, I'm doing you a favour here, so you fucking listen. Right now, between you and I, no bullshit. No tactics. No white lies. You have to tell me exactly what we're dealing with." She looked frantic, scared for some reason.

You nodded, walking her down the side street, careful not to link arms with her. You knew she was doing you a favour; this wasn't about forgiveness or friendship, much more was at stake here.

"To what extent was Thomas involved?"

That took you off guard. Ada read the confusion on your face and sighed impatiently, her subtle plea for you to keep up.

Shit. You remembered your conversation with John, how she thought this was her brother's way of pushing her out of the company.

"Don't spare my feelings. What did my brother say to you?"

"He said it was in our mutual interest that you didn't find out. He didn't care who John slept with but cared who you trusted so I had to trust him. He said there was no point in upsetting you over one of John's conquests who he'd tire of in a month."

"That all?"

"Pretty much, I didn't know Arthur knew. He never talked to me about it, did laugh at Thomas' digs now that I think on it-"

"Did you know Isaiah and Michael knew?"

"I thought they were aware but no one ever talked to me about it."

"Of course they wouldn't." She hissed, frustration causing a nerve on her neck to jump.

Ada and you had spoken for years about the rampant misogyny of her brothers and any men you two came into contact with. Although you were both far more reserved than you used to be as rebellious and adventurous thirteen year olds, you'd both grew increasingly angry at how you were treated. She'd long written off her brothers as womanisers, who saw women as purely sexual and entertaining, objectifying them. You both long despised how they dehumanised women. She was amazed that Thomas had attempted to settle down and managed a somewhat loving marriage, but resented him for his carelessness and need for power which inevitably killed his wife.

"Ada, I just want to say..." You licked your lip nervously, unsure of how to continue.

"You need to talk, Y/N. No bollocks."

"Before last night, he'd never been to mine or called. I always went to him."

The muscle in her jaw tensed.

"You slept with him last night then?" You met her question with silence and she rolled her eyes. "The second he said he saw you I knew you had, he wanted to tell me that he was going to continue seeing you and that he hoped I'd be able to accept it one day."

"We never intended to hurt you. It was meant to be fun at first, but now..." You cut yourself off with a sigh, unable to admit you'd fallen for her brother.

"Isn't fun for me. It's fucking embarrassing." She paused, lighting a cigarette, nervous to offer you one, conflicted within herself. She raised her eyebrow, prompting you to continue, the mannerism so similar to her brother’s.

"It should never have happened. I am never going to be able to fix this, I'm so fucking ashamed for doing this to you, Ada."

She sulked, silently drinking in your words.

"Obviously it's not going to be the same, yeah? I'm really fucking upset. I'm so fucked off with you but Poll's really worried about a coup. She thinks you're being used as blackmail against John to keep him on side with Tommy while he expands."

"Makes sense."

"You're part of a much bigger game, you know?"

You nodded. "Yeah, and I knew I would lose from the start. Fucking tragic, Ada."

"My brothers keep pushing, keep growing the business. They keep chasing this prize but I don't think it even exists."

"If it does, it isn't worth it if this shit is the cost. I didn't mean to play into his hands."

"You couldn't have known." She said with a shrug, " 'Siah thinks John loves you."

"He told me last night." Several times, this morning also. You would never tire of hearing him moan those words into your neck or being yelled from your front door as he left for the office.

"You love him, don't you?" She said bluntly, a statement more than a question, your face suddenly hot with embarrassment.

Everything you'd suppressed for months, everything that you'd hidden, every time you lied smiling, every knowing glance from a stranger, every degrading comment from under Thomas' breath.

"I do, an awful lot."

She pauses, relighting her cigarette, "The worst thing about the entire situation is it could've been fine if someone told me. I wouldn't have loved it, obviously, but-" Ada sighed, rubbing her temple with her free fingers.

"I thought you'd hate me."

"How could I? I'd be more angry that you'd drop your standards for my brother. Seriously? Him? Mate…."

"Come off it, I've always thought he was charming. He's funny, smart-"

"Don't gush over my brother, it's grim. I'm just so fucked off you all lied to me." She peered at you through her cigarette smoke. "If you love him and he loves you..." she pressed her lips together as she tensed her jaw, "I could get over it. If it'd make you both happy. But that's going to take a long time. A long time."

"Ada-"

"Look I have meetings and shit to sort, I have to run." She interjected, checking her wristwatch, adjusting the cap which sat atop her trendy short haircut. You caught her arm before she could turn away.

"Thank you. For understanding."

She shrugged you off, "I don't get it, I'd never do that to you. But you also don't get to choose who you're attracted to. I'm really hurt, but I do love you and John a lot. He mentioned that after last night you helped him, got him cleaned up. I have to believe that you both do love each other. So I have to believe that this is a good idea for you both and not stand in your way."

"I love you, Ada. Can we hang out soon, just us two?"

She shook her head. "I need some time, I'll be in touch, yeah?"

You nod, stretching out your pinky finger. She sighed and linked it with hers, as you'd done since you were children, a silent signal to each other after a fight that you still had the other's back.

"Right, I've got to get back to this meeting, Tom is getting done by Polly for nearly getting John killed. I need to be there in case one of the lads needs patching up."

"Your aunt has a nasty left hook, I'll give her that."

"She'll be pleased you think so, she wanted Tommy to slice you to bits for crossing me."

"Fuck’s sake, thanks for the warning, I'll keep my head down. Good luck with the meeting."

Ada nodded and you watched her walk away, a Blinder suddenly appearing by her side seemingly from nowhere. This city was crawling with them. They clambered into Ada's car as you watched the car disappear into the distance before walking back to work. Thankfully, with your head still attached to your shoulders.

*******

Ada arrived at Thomas' estate, following the swell of shouting voices to his exquisite library. It was eye roll worthy and typical Tommy to choose the location of his post-fuckup debrief to be where he had the best view of the gardens, river and rolling hills. She could bet he'd sit in a corner and stare at the view, zoning out their aunt's lecture.

An armed blinder she vaguely recognised opened the door. Thomas was making a statement today with the armed guards, she noted. Her brothers really were fucked up. Arthur was an alcoholic killer who couldn't understand that Thomas would betray them all eventually, Finn was letting the tokyo and the razor chasers that circled him distract him from keeping the family together, John was apparently in love with her best friend, and finally, Thomas nearly got Arthur and John murdered last night with his foolishness. At this point only herself and Polly were holding everyone together, keeping everything silently moving along.

The door opened, and she was the last to arrive, Polly glaring as she murmured an apology, standing next to Finn. His eyes were bloodshot, grey-purple smudges under his eyes, he'd obviously had a heavy night. The last thing the poor lad needed was Polly's shrill yelling and the blinding sun streaming through the large immaculately crafted windows, which he'd tried to block with the brim of his cap. John caught her eye, acknowledging his sister with a nod, which she returned with a small tight smile.

Ada couldn't bear to think about the reasoning behind her brother's smug interjections in between Polly's rant to Thomas who was listening wordlessly, smoking.

Y/N and John? It didn't make sense. They had a similar sense of humour, sure, but she was far too intelligent for him. He also had a swarm of children, while Y/N preferred a wild night out only staggering home at daybreak.

It made far more sense for Y/N to end up with Michael, or if it had to be a brother, Finn. They were younger, so had less responsibilities and commitments so they could keep up with her. But John? Of course she knew he was believed to be the Casanova of her brothers, he was kind, he was an excellent father, yet he could never keep anyone around long, usually John was chasing someone new after a month or so. That's why the revelation that John had been involved with her best friend for almost half a year had taken her completely by surprise. Maybe that was why she was open to them being together. That had to be it. This relationship was completely out of character for John; she needed to believe that he was serious about his feelings towards Y/N and wasn't going to fuck her over. Because if he did, John would be a dead man.

"I don't know why you're all bleating at me. Yeah, I overlooked some details in the planning of last night's meeting-"

"Such as warning us that they were really fucked off because you'd helped bomb their warehouse." John pointed out.

"What do you want me to do? Apologise? Grow up, John." Tommy snapped back.

"They had loaded guns against their heads, they deserve an apology." Ada interjected, John giving her an appreciative flash of smile. She did love her big brother. Despite the fact that she'd pretty much only been yelling at him for the past month, John never dismissed her feelings and only apologised. It was confusing to admit to herself, but when Isaiah told her that he was confident John loved Y/N, she felt a wave of relief. At least he cared about her; it was the bare minimum but the Shelbys were notorious for not even meeting the bare minimum for acceptable social interactions.

"They didn't fuckin’ get shot." Thomas stated, his voice matter of fact and condescending.

"Do you ever hear yourself speak?" Polly spit back at him. "They didn't get shot this time. But it was too fucking close."

"It won't happen again, Polly." Tommy sighed. "What else can I say? Sorry lads, take the weekend off?"

"It's a good start." Arthur countered, "You're also paying for the extension on my house and my wedding."

"Fuck’s sake Arthur I was joking. But fine. Sure."

"You can't buy your family off." Polly scoffed at him.

"Think of it as compensation, a settlement." Thomas coolly corrected his aunt. "What do you want, John? A fucking farm?"

John hesitates while Finn whispered suggestions to him, Ada meeting his stare, John raising a brow to her in question. She sighed and nodded her approval.

"You can pay off my mortgage Tom, give me the kids' birthdays off-"

"So you'd never come into work then?" Finn cut in, Ada elbowing him in the ribs. She usually enjoyed Finn's remarks but she knew where John was heading; she could barely breathe.

"Tom, you're also to leave Y/N completely alone. If you have a problem with her, you come to me about it." He said firmly.

Arthur and Tommy traded knowing looks, obviously more aware of the ins and outs of his relationship than Ada was.

"Also if you're paying for Arthur's wedding I want the equivalent in cash." He adds.

Tommy shrugged. "Whatever. As long as we can move past last night and focus on today's order of business."

John nodded, satisfied. He knew Tom wouldn't care, but just saying out loud that he was involved with Y/N and having his family aware was a relief. He hadn't realised until he finally admitted how stressful keeping his relationship a secret was. Now, he could stop worrying about Tommy interfering.

Polly rolled her eyes, lecturing the brothers on their lack of moral backbone to allow themselves to be bought off, but dismissed them. She caught Ada's arm in hers on their way out, pulling her far from earshot.

"So Y/N and John are together now?" She asked, her face firm and scowling.

"Polls, I talked with her, she's aware of what she's done. She apologised and meant it. What more can I ask for?"

"Her not to have fucked him in the first place."

"She said that. Look, Polls, they're happy right? John seems happy-"

"He always is when he gets a leg over."

"You know she looked after him last night? Fixed him up after the meeting."

"Meeting? It was a fucking set up." Polly hissed but her face had softened. "She cleaned him up?"

"Antiseptic, bandages and all."

Polly looked subtly impressed, although she'd never admit it. "He went to hers? Not yours?"

"He wanted to talk to her." Ada shrugs, "I saw her this morning and-"

"What do you mean? You bumped into her?"

"I went to her work." Ada admitted, her aunt shooting her an exasperated glare.

"Why do I bother? Nobody listens to me."

"I had to talk to her, I'm glad I did. She reckons she loves him, he told her last night that he loves her, so..."

"We are talking about John? Our John?"

"I know Polls, I'm as amazed as you."

Her aunt huffed, unimpressed. "Are you okay with it though?"

"I guess, I just want them to be happy. I've told them to give me time with it."

"She was a good friend growing up, but people change, sometimes for the better, often for the worse."

"Poll, it's Y/N; she's my best friend. At the end of the day, we'd do anything for each other."

"Sweet Ada, you're going to be so miserable if you keep letting people walk all over you." Polly said wisely, kissing her goodbye affectionately. "I hope you're right. If she makes you cry again I'll kill her myself."

"Thanks, Polls."

She knew her aunt wasn't joking.

#john shelby imagine #john shelby x reader #john shelby fluff #john shelby series #john shelby fanfic #peaky blinders fluff #john shelby #john shelby x you #peaky blinders imagine

304 notes · View notes

urimaginespimp · 3 years

Text

Ivy

Alfie Solomons x Shelby Sister Reader where she’s betrothed by Thomas for a truce, now her and Alfie’s secret love affair is in thin line.

A/N: Here I go again, associating an Evermore track to Alfie. Sorry not sorry!

--------

The air was cold at dawn. You’ve been sitting alone in a cemetery since last night, dreading the moment the day was slowly breaking, and how it reminded you of how time of his arrival was getting nearer.

No, you weren’t there to visit a deceased loved one, but might as well have started grieving for yourself. This was the haven where you would often meet Alfie to either stay and talk in each other’s arms, or where he’d fetch you and bring you somewhere you could freely be with each other for a night.

A full year of secret meetups undetected led you both from solely enjoying each other’s company and wits, to being inseparable. Your special spot was a few feet away from the actual gravestones. It was under a huge tree nearby.

You knew from the start that your fondness with each other would never be accepted by your family. And the odds of them actually even coming close to being open on the idea of you both became slimmer every time Alfie would get power in his head and betray your family despite your friendship.

Months would pass of you ignoring his apologies and notes pleading to meet; To be only forgiven when he’s in Thomas’ good graces again. But it became increasingly difficult to be warry of him when you started feeling funny whenever he’d laugh at your jokes, or when he’d offer his coat for both of you to stay under when it starts drizzling and you both forgot to bring an umbrella.

He’s started a goddamn blaze in you.

Now how were you to tell the lone man you’ve ever loved that your brother was planning on marrying you off for a truce?

You only found out last night, leading to you throwing a fit for the very first time towards your brother who tried to calm you down and make you understand the benefit it would bring to the family – much like what he did to John. The way he told you sounded like it was a mere suggestion. But you knew better that he’s already fixed it.

In a fit of tears and frustration from not being able to give him the truth to why you refuse to concede, Polly barging in the study to intervene and ask what was going on was your take to leave and go to your room, shouting loudly that he better leaves you alone that night.

It took you the night trying to write everything down for Alfie. How you were to be married, and begging him not to intervene. Because as much as you love him, you couldn’t risk him and your family being in another war with the still unknown family you were to be part of.

Sneaking out later on, that’s how you found yourself in your favorite spot in the cemetery crying your heart out, and reminiscing all the memories you hold so dear with Alfie.

Taking a deep breath, your hand took the folded page of paper from your coat pocket. You almost crumpled it and wait for Alfie to tell him yourself. But you were a coward and just couldn’t bring yourself to tell him. Not when you know you wouldn’t be able to open your mouth without breaking down.

Taking a rock big enough to hold it in place, you placed your open letter under the tree and willed yourself to walk away from both your favorite place and your happiness that morning.

It’s been days and you have not uttered a word to your family. Still crying yourself to sleep every night, it became increasingly harder not to call Alfie and beg for forgiveness and ask him to take you away.

Alfie himself was sending your office missives after missives, asking you to see him at least. But all of it were left unanswered and kept in one of your desk’s drawers.

Tonight, was the celebration of your engagement and the first time you were to meet the man you were to be married to. You’ve learned from Polly that he was from a wealthy Italian family, about your age, and that he’s already seen you before and was actually the one to ask Thomas for your hand in marriage.

What a puss. You thought, He couldn’t even ask you and get rejected personally.

Well at least the dress he sent was decent. But hell were to freeze over before you would even consider wearing it.

Opening your closet, your hands skimmed through your numerous formal dresses, and finally landed on one that meant so much to you. It was beautiful, fit you perfectly, and it was a gift from Alfie.

They don’t know it’s from him, but you had to admit that wearing it in front of your family and future husband would be a satisfying last act of proclaiming your love for the King of Camden town.

The night began rather peacefully. It seemed that you were the only one miserable in the occasion thrown for you.

The man you were to marry was alright. He was polite, charming even. But he was a shy pup compared to a beast like Alfie. Sooner or later, you had to stop thinking about him.

“What’s the Jew doing here, Tommy?” you heard your aunt ask Tommy discretely.

“I invited him, Poll. All bad blood in the past, he’s a good business partner.” He explained to your aunt.

But the rest of the conversation drowned out for you. He’s here.

For the first time in the entire night of the party, you moved from the corner you were sulking on, looking for the pair of opal eyes you were wishing to see. To hell with the Italian boy.

You were turning on every corner looking for him. If he really were in here, you figured he’d be in a corner somewhere like usual.

“I knew you’d look absolutely beautiful in that dress.” A voice called out just loud enough for you to catch. Snapping to the direction it came from, your eyes met Alfie’s.

He was dressed formally as asked, his beard was trimmed, and he had his hat on.

“Alfie I-“

“I’ll take a dance, yes.” He cut you off, not wanting to make you cry in front of the guests. Taking your hands in his freezing ones, he led you to the dance floor.

“I though you hated dancing in public?” you mused at him, placing your hands by his shoulders, ignoring the lump in your throat.

“If this were to be our last one, everyone else be damned, yeah?” He answered, looking at you lovingly. You smiled. How could he still look at you so endearingly even after your cowardness?

“The wine’s shite by the way.” He commented, trying to make you laugh. He couldn’t stand looking so defeated anymore. You couldn’t resist breaking into a laugh, and bit your tongue from telling him the drinks are courtesy of your future husband.

Polly and Arthur were stood near each other, looking at the both of you dancing, when your aunt finally spoke up.

“She hasn’t cracked a smile ever since the night Thomas told her.” She told the oldest Shelby brother. “And all it took was for Solomons to dance with her.”

“Yeah, looking at ‘em makes me almost forget the bastard tried to kill me. It’s almost as if they’re…” Arthur didn’t get to finish what he was to say from the sudden realization. He knew that look. Yes, he’d never seen you look at anyone like that, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out what it was - the color coming back to your face, almost as if it actually lit up at the presence of Camden town’s king.

Turning to Poll, she was already smirking at him. “She couldn’t tell Thomas the real reason she doesn’t to be married off for business. But you’re the eldest, Arthur, and when it’s on matters of your siblings’ personal happiness, you have to put your foot down.” Patting the back of his shoulder, she took her drink to go who knows.

“Is there somewhere we can talk, luv?” Alfie asked you quietly, sliding his hand on your shoulder, to your hand where he held it.

Looking around you, relief washed over when you saw that the guests were immersed in their own conversations and dance partners.

“Meet me in my room in a few minutes. It’s the third door at the right hall, and I’ll keep it slightly open.” You nervously told him, trying to keep your voice low.

Letting go of him, you acted natural, smiling at guests your way.

--------

In your room, you stood fidgeting with your fingers. The light from the crescent moon that peeked through your window was the only source of light.

What if he got lost and mistakenly entered Tommy’s office? Or that he decided to confront that fiancé of yours?

You were saved from the panic attack rising when your door finally creaked open bigger, and the silhouette of the man you love came in.

But before you could talk, his lips met yours desperately. Alfie hoped that his kiss would be able to tell you how much he’s missed you, how the past days felt like absolute hell, and how it led him to be willing in being a mister for you. A mister.

“Are you sure that brother of yours won’t be looking for ya? What if he found us out, pet?” He asked in between kisses to your neck.

“He’s gonna burn this house to the ground” you answered, gasping when he squeezed you in closer to him. You almost hated having to stop him. “Alfie, we came here to talk.” You weakly pushed him off you.

His eyes under the moonlight was glistening. It was only now that you realized he was crying. Taking his face in your hands, you held it gently, wiping his damp cheek.

“Alfie, I love you, okay? Everything that we had – no matter how it was only stolen moments, I’d live and die just to experience them again. But I can’t risk losing you and or anyone from my family for my personal reasons.” You tried to sound brave in front of him, knowing that the second you’d break, he’d take you with him.

He shook his head. “Now that’s just selfish of that brother of yours, pet. You know I could help settle any problem he has with ‘em Italians. He didn’t have to drag you into this.”

“And what, have him figure out why you’d go through great lengths for his sister whom you never seemed to care about?” Whenever Thomas was in the same room as you, the both of you would only resort to a formal greeting and not even try to converse. That was how you were able to keep it up so long. “It’s either I run or we dare come clean to him and see what we’ll become. He’ll find me either way, or he’ll shoot you dead.”

Alfie moved away from you, and walking by the window to take a breath and calm his nerves.

Suddenly the door to your bedroom was kicked completely open, revealing Arthur and Tommy who looked like they were ready to murder.

You didn’t know what came over you, but you immediately stood straight as if ready to block them before they could get to Alfie. But to your surprise, Arthur stayed standing by the doorway, and it was only Thomas who took a step closer.

“Alfie, you have one chance to tell me that what Arthur's saying isn’t true.” Tommy was seething, ordering him. “You of all people know my sisters are off limits.”

“It’s true, Tom.” You answered before Alfie could even open his mouth. If he were to push through marrying you off, at least leave him with the guilt for snatching your life away. “I love him.” Relief from finally being able to say it in front of your brothers washed over you.

“I am not gonna let you use my sister for whatever scheme it is that you fu-

“I was gonna ask her to marry me, you fucker!” Alfie growled from behind you, before finally reaching your side. You stood there gaping at him, having been clueless as well of his intentions.

“I went to meet her in our spot with a fucking ring in my hand, right. And what do I find? A letter from her telling me that some scum wants what’s only mine, and her cunt of a brother is allowing it!”

Arthur having been satisfied from what Alfie said, was smiling at you across the room. “And as the eldest of the family, I give you my blessing, so long as you promise to protect her.” He spoke, nodding at him. You wanted to run into your brother’s arms in gratitude, but Thomas spoke up again.

“Don’t celebrate yet, Alfie." He both looked at you with a stern expression. "There are Italians out there still thinking that there’s a marriage happening in a fortnight.”

Alfie scoffed at your brother’s statement. As if he hasn’t dealt with them before.

Taking your hand in his, he turned to your brother once more. “And what is expected to happen when I call off the marriage?” He asked him.

“I’m gonna start a war” you answered nervously.

Squeezing your hand, he turned to you. “Then it's gonna be the goddamn fight of my life, pet.”

497 notes · View notes

smhalltheurlsaretaken · 4 years

Text

THE BOX IS NABOO

That’s it, I’m doing it, I’m writing that stupid meta I’ve had in the works for two and a half years, I’m sharing it with the world. I promised it for last Thursday, my poll was forever ago, but whatever! I’m writing that freaking thing.

(super duper long post, press j to skip)

Enter my rabbit hole.

First thing to establish: the Box makes no sense whatsoever in-universe.

((EDIT: Something I forgot to mention. IRL, the premise of a giant murder cube and the aesthetic - wall patterns, light designs, etc - of the episode come from the 1997 horror movie Cube, (see the episode’s wookieepedia page). However, while the two are very closely linked visually, the Box does not follow the movie structurally or narratively, as you can verify by simply reading the movie’s summary.))

Recap of the context for the "Box" episode (s4e17): Palpatine is planning his own kidnapping. It was never meant to succeed, and while the plan would obviously benefit him (making the Jedi look bad, pushing Anakin closer to the Dark Side, making Republic citizens more afraid -> more docile, etc...) his actual goal is never explained, and it’s weird that he’d go to such extreme lengths for results so minimal that we’re never told what they are.

So Palpatine asks Dooku to kidnap him at the Festival of Lights on Naboo. Dooku hires Moralo Eval to design a giant box-thingy to test bounty hunters to hire the best of them to kidnap Palpatine. Moralo then gets arrested to alert the Republic that something is afoot, and hires Cad Bane to break him out. Obi-Wan - undercover to learn Moralo’s plan - goes with them. They evade capture and go to Serenno, and Bane and Obi-Wan have to pass the box-thingy test. The level of brainkarked logic here... Truly on par with Megamind, Gru and Heinz Doofenshmirtz.

Setting aside the insane plot holes and utterly nonsensical behavior of the villains, the Box itself is moronic from a plot perspective. It’s insanely complex, obviously incredibly expensive and would have taken months (more like years but it’s a short war) to make when it’s not even needed for the dastardly plot! Just hire some guys who have already proven themselves against Jedi! Throw cash at Bane and Embo and a few others! Maybe attack them with your saber and see how they do!

And after all that, Dooku still ends up trying to kidnap Palpatine on his own. I can’t even...

So why does the Box exist? Well, apart from being a nerdy callback to Cube, giving us a good thrill and being generally awesome to look at, it has actual narrative purpose within the SW universe.

The box is Naboo.

What the Box lacks in plot relevance, it makes up for with its heavily symbolic meaning. It very closely follows Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon’s experiences on Naboo - but only certain parts, which I’ll explain later.

We start with clean, sterile environments, SW’s favored way of showing villainy.

Then we have the protagonists locked in a room as dioxis, a poison gas, pours in.

And then they escape... this way.

(Okay, here the shaft is down, not up. And it’s not a ventilation shaft per say, it’s the designed escape route. Same difference).

We then skip most of TPM (namely, Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon discovering the droid army, finding Padmé, leaving Naboo, landing on Tatooine, going to Coruscant, etc, etc) to come back to Naboo and go directly to the lightsabers and catwalks.

(Note: in both scenes, Obi-Wan has to propel himself from a catwalk.)

In TPM and TCW, the catwalks are immediately followed by ray shields

And we finally end with the last scenes. Now, they don’t look the same but they are structurally identical.

Obi-Wan is faced with a challenge unsuited for his abilities (facing Darth Maul // shooting three moving targets when he’s far more skilled with a blade than a blaster) on a narrow space above a melting pit/pit of fire.

He first watches someone die failing to complete the task...

... and has to do it himself, faring much better than expected (holding his own against Maul // shooting all the targets easily).

He then almost falls to his death and gets saved unexpectedly.

And then there’s the final showdown.

In both scenes, Obi-Wan is angry. And in TCW Dooku eggs him on, banking on his anger. (More on that later.) In both cases though, he centers himself and is able to overcome both his opponent and his own unbalance. But in TCW, he doesn’t go for the kill, because he doesn’t need to.

The Box, as a literal character-explorator ex-machina, thus shows us Obi-Wan’s growth.

In TPM, Obi-Wan follows Qui-Gon’s lead. In TCW, he is the leader. He identifies the gas, makes the plans. He doesn’t fall from catwalks anymore - he runs atop moving ones. He doesn’t stay stuck behind ray-shields, he finds the solution. (Btw, how did Moralo know what blood type Derrown the Exterminator was? There was a 50% chance of him dying - thus killing all of the bounty hunters. Was that an acceptable outcome? TCW I need answers!) He doesn’t slay his foes, because he’s become powerful enough, skilled enough and wise enough to survive (and win) without needing to kill.

He’s grown - and, even more interestingly, he’s also stayed the same. In the previous episodes, we see some of the dark aspects of Obi-Wan. How he - like all Force-wielders, all people - could lose himself if he stopped maintaining absolute control.

But in the Box, surrounded by the worst criminals of the Galaxy, the most ruthless, worthless people, he’s still kind and tries his best to keep them alive.

The Box is a reminder and a reassurance for the audience that Obi-Wan Kenobi is still there under Rako’s face. He hasn’t lost his compassion, his restrain. He’s still a Jedi. And he’s an awesome, badass one.

And now, for what it tells us about Dooku!

It’s much shorter, don’t worry. Basically, Dooku considers that the best way to pick “the best of the best” of the deadliest people in the Galaxy is making them go through what killed his Padawan. There, I’ve broken your hearts, you’re welcome.

More seriously, Dooku is a manipulative ass. It’s pretty clear that he knows Rako is Obi-Wan, or at the very least suspects it.

He has an interesting reaction upon learning Rako’s identity, he keeps praising him despite his usual distaste for low-lifes, he smirks secretively after Eval says “I’ll show you who’s weak” (not included there because it’s a close-up of Dooku’s lips and no one wants to see that) and he tells Rako he’s very disappointed when he doesn’t finish off Eval.

[Later]

(Look at this smug asshole - I can’t. YOUR GRANDSON IS THE BEST, WE KNOW, STOP ACTIVELY RUINING HIS LIFE ALREADY.)

(Dooku... why...)

Now obviously Dooku couldn’t have made the Box specifically for Obi-Wan, because it would have to have been designed months before the Council ever decided to send Obi-Wan undercover, but he has no qualms trying to use it to push Obi-Wan to the Dark Side. Ffs Dooku, making your spiritual grandson relive one of the most traumatic events of his life on the off chance that he’ll join you (and desecrate his Master’s memory in doing so) is not okay!

Final tidbits of analysis: I mentioned that not all of TPM is mirrored in the Box. What’s omitted is the droids (even though Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon fight B1′s and droidekas between the dioxis and the ventilation shafts) and anything pertaining to Sidious (all the political stuff on Coruscant). You’ll also note that the fake lightsabers are orange.

=> The Box distances itself from anything that connects Dooku to Naboo. Red lightsabers are the trademark of the Sith, so they’re not used. The bounty hunters will be facing Jedi, so logically the fake sabers should be green or blue - and yet they’re orange, the color closest to red without being red. It fits with Dooku’s special brand of dishonesty - he always tells bits of the real story but twists them just enough to absolve himself of any fault and to justify his choices.

(”We can destroy the Sith” -> could maybe destroy Sidious with Obi-Wan, but fails to mention he’s a Sith Lord himself; “the Viceroy came to me for help, that’s why I’m attacking the Republic” -> political idealism is a small part of it, but fails to mention he’s Sidious’ underling and is playing the Viceroy like a fiddle; “Qui-Gon would have joined me” -> maybe, still fails to mention he’s working for the man who ordered Qui-Gon’s death; “I told you everything you needed to know” -> debatable, never said that Palps was Sidious; “Sifo-Dyas understood, that’s why he helped me” -> partly true, doesn’t admit to killing Sifo-Dyas right after getting his help)

So we have a twisted version of Naboo, droid-free (as droids are now irrevocably associated with Dooku, even if that wasn’t the case in TPM) and with sabers that aren’t quite red. Keep in mind that Dooku had already fallen by TPM. (We know this because he killed Sifo-Dyas and created the Clone Army - part of Sidious’ plan - when Valorum was still Chancellor, as per the episode The Lost One.) That means Dooku was (in)directly complicit in Qui-Gon’s death. And the Box doesn’t (=refuses to?) acknowledge that.

(Also omitted in the Box are the Gungans and Tatooine. It makes sense, because Dooku probably wouldn’t have the full details regarding those parts of Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan’s missio as they weren’t as public, and would see them as irrelevant if he did. He utterly despises Anakin, and Gungans are the type of people he always dismisses out of hand).

Anyway, that’s my two cents about the Box. To quote Lucas...

“It’s like poetry. It rhymes.”

Thanks to @lethebantroubadour @impossiblybluebox @nonbinarywithaknife @ytoz and @kaitie85386 for voting for this one. Next up is a compilation of the Jedi being casually tactile with each other (because they’re a warm and affectionate culture, dammit).

Also thanks to @laciefuyu for giving me gifs I ended up not using ^^; you rock anyway!

#meta #my meta #the box #deception arc #rako hardeen #rako hardeen arc #naboo #obi-wan kenobi #count dooku #cad bane #moralo eval #darth sidious

1K notes · View notes

felassan · 3 years

Text

Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

415 notes · View notes

babypandawrites · 3 years

Text

Allies, Pt. 12

The Siege of the North, Part Two

Pairing: Sokka x F Reader Warnings: Implications of Death, I think that's all? Word Count: 3,286 Summary: With the Fire Nation waging war on the Northern Water Tribe, you didn't expect things of the past to be brought up, but, when do you expect anything at this point.

Note: And here we have, the final part of Allies :') But don't worry- the story will continue in a sequel 👀 Phew I did not mean for this to take so long, but I was having a really hard time with the end and ended up having to change where the reader was towards the end for me to... actually be able to write the chapter. Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the story thus far! It means the world to me, really. It's crazy to think about how I've been working on this for four months! I hope you guys will stick with me for the months to come while I write the sequel :') I'll be carrying over the taglist to the sequel since it's the... same story just a different name heh. Let me know if you want to be added or taken off! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and that you all have a great day! <3 Also hi sorry bringing this poll back up bc the results are currently tied!!!

-Navigation- | -Atla Masterlist- -Last Part- | -Allies Masterlist- | -Next Part-

Taglist: @boomeraangin | @brokennerdalert

Eyes blinking open, Y/n slowly came too. Her vision was blurry, and her head was pounding. Faintly, she could hear someone talking, but her head was too fuzzy to make out who it was and what they were saying. Her vision clearing, she could see a rocky ceiling, which seemed… odd. Was she in a cave?

When she tried to sit up, she found that she couldn’t move. Her arms were trapped against her sides, and her legs were bound together. Groaning quietly, Y/n twisted onto her side. Aang was on the ground a few feet away from her, hands bound behind his back. He didn’t seem… present.

Observing the situation more, she noted the figure that stood at the entrance to what she was assuming was a cave. They were still talking, and her head was finally clear enough to make out what they were saying.

“I don’t need luck though, I don’t want it. I’ve always had to struggle and fight and that’s made me strong. It’s made me who I am.”

Struggling weakly against her bindings, Y/n furrowed her eyebrows together. “..Zuko..?”

His head turned to the side slightly, an acknowledgement that she was awake, but he didn’t turn to face her. “Don’t bother trying to get free, I’ll just knock you out again.” He paused for a short moment. “Sorry about that, I just.. I knew you wouldn’t give up. You never have.”

Zuko had… taken her too. Why…?

Grunting, she continued to struggle against the rope, stopping only when Zuko rested his hand on her arm. “What did I just say? Did I knock you in the head that hard?” Sighing, Zuko settled on the ground next to her. “I’d prefer if you didn’t make me knock you out again. You probably think otherwise but I don’t want to hurt you.”

Opting to stay silent, she shuffled in place. He watched her carefully, before awkwardly looking about once she stopped moving. He took in a deep breath, when she started shuffling again. “Are you.. uncomfortable?” Being met with silence, Zuko glanced at Y/n to see she was looking at him with a blank expression. “I can sit you up, if you want.”

Not receiving an answer once again, he let out an annoyed breath. “Conversations usually go both ways, Y/n.”

Still, she looked at him blankly. “I don’t think people typically converse with their captors, Zuko.”

“Well, we used to be friends!” Crossing his arms with a huff, Zuko slumped against the cave wall. “I guess the key phrase is ‘used to be’, isn’t it?” He clicked his tongue, before breathing out a sigh. “I didn’t capture you to turn you in, we could… still be friends.”

Y/n took on a pensive expression. “Then why..?”

“Why did I capture you..?” Receiving a nod of confirmation, Zuko shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“You don’t… know..?”

“No! Okay?! I just-” Breathing out another annoyed breath, he dropped his head into his hands. “Why? Why did you leave? I thought… I thought we had each other's backs and… and you just up and leave?! Just like that?! No explanation, no nothing!? So why?!” Continuing to stay silent, Y/n grimaced internally at the rise in Zuko’s volume. The more he spoke, the louder he got. It was almost hard to imagine that this was the boy she grew up with.

Zuko scoffed, shaking his head slightly. “Fine then. It doesn’t matter anyways- You’ve chosen your path.” He let out a laugh, one edging on hysterical. “You know, I thought maybe I could sit here and convince you to come back, but I can see that isn’t going to work… The Avatar and his friends have won your favor.” He was silent for a moment, seemingly calming down from his outburst. “Uncle told me that I shouldn’t be mad at you, that I should respect your decision to find your own path. How can I do that when your so-called path is going against me?”

Before Zuko could continue, Aang came too, returning from the spirit world. Attention turned to the boy, when he started to struggle against his bonds. After a short moment of futile struggle, he sat up to face Zuko.

“Welcome back.”

“Good to be back.” Aang spoke with a threatening tone, blinding reaching around with his hands- which were tied behind his back -to try and find Y/n’s wrist. Once he was able to grab onto her wrist, he took in a deep breath and blew Zuko away from them while simultaneously shooting both him and Y/n out of the cave. The two landed in the snow outside, where Aang started to caterpillar crawl.

It didn’t take long for Zuko to get to them, grabbing Aang by the collar and lifting him in the air once he did. “That won’t be enough to escape.”

Suddenly, Appa appeared above them, before landing on the ground. Y/n breathed out a sigh of relief. Katara got off the bison, as Zuko dropped Aang back into the snow. “Here for a rematch?”

“Trust me, Zuko, it’s not going to be much of a match.”

Katara blocked a fireball Zuko shot at her, sending a wave of ice towards him. Once the ice reached him, she encased him in a pillar of ice that she raised high from the ground. When she dropped him, he fell to the ground unconscious.

Sokka jumped off of Appa, rushing over to Aang to cut his bonds. “Hey! This is some quality rope!” He commented, before moving to Y/n to free her as well.

“We need to get to the oasis! The spirits are in trouble!” Aang got up, and ran to Appa, while Sokka helped Y/n to her feet.

Everyone was on the bison, ready for take off, but Aang hesitated on leaving, looking towards Zuko’s knocked out form. “Wait, we can’t just leave him here.”

“Sure we can. Let’s go.”

Y/n shook her head softly. “No, Aang’s right, we can’t leave him. He could die.”

Aang jumped off Appa, and grabbed Zuko to bring him up onto the bison. Sokka watched him with a somewhat exasperated expression. “Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Let’s bring the guy who’s constantly trying to kill us!”

As they started to fly back to the Spirit Oasis, the moon changed to a blood red, casting a red light over everything. This seemed to affect Yue, who held her head in pain, letting out a groan.

Sokka looked at her concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I feel faint.”

Aang, with a hand to his head, looked at the moon. “I feel it too. The Moon Spirit is in trouble.”

Yue glanced at the moon as well. “I owe the Moon Spirit my life.”

“What do you mean?” Sokka questioned.

“When I was born I was very sick and very weak. Most babies cry when they’re born… But I was born as if I were asleep. My eyes closed. Our healers did everything they could. They told my mother and father I was going to die. My father pleaded with the spirits to save me… that night, beneath the full moon, he brought me to the oasis and placed me in the pond. My dark hair turned white, I opened my eyes and began to cry- and they knew I would live. That’s why my mother named me Yue, for the moon.”

They neared the oasis as Yue finished her story, to find Zhao there- a bag in hand and Momo on his head trying to stop him from what he was doing. The group got off Appa when he landed, sans Yue and Zuko, ready to fight Zhao and the other Fire Nation soldiers in the oasis.

“Don’t bother!” Zhao held a knife to the bag he had, which must have had the Moon Spirit trapped inside.

Aang dropped his staff, raising his hands in surrender. “Zhao! Don’t!”

“It’s my destiny… to destroy the Moon… and the Water Tribe.”

Y/n glared at the man, resisting her urge to attack him. “You’re insane.”

“Destroying the moon won’t just hurt the Water Tribe. It will hurt everyone- including you. Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world.” Aang tried to reason with him, but Y/n wasn’t sure words alone would stop the man.

“He is right, Zhao!” Heads turned to Iroh, as he approached.

“General Iroh, why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?” Zhao spoke in a bored tone.

Iroh lowered his hood. “I’m no traitor, Zhao, the Fire Nation needs the moon too. We all depend on the balance.”

Unsurprisingly, Zhao continued to hold his threat on the Moon Spirit, the knife he held at the bag it was captive in not dropping.

“Whatever you do to that spirit I’ll unleash on you ten-fold!” Iroh pointed a finger at Zhao, before taking on a firebending stance. “LET IT GO, NOW!”

After a moment of stillness, Zhao faltered, lowering the bag. He kneeled and released the fish of the Moon Spirit back into the pond. The red light casted from the moon returned back to normal.

Seeing something move in the corner of her eye, Y/n’s attention moved to the right, just in time for her to see a figure sneaking away. Careful not to draw attention to herself, she followed after them, noting that Zuko was missing from Appa’s saddle as she snuck by. He was taking the chance to sneak away, while everyone was focused on Zhao. If she had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be getting far.

In her pursuit, the moon fell dark, probably thanks to Zhao. It’s not a surprise that he would try and kill the moon spirit, even after letting it go. Keeping her distance and staying as hidden as she can, Y/n continued to follow Zuko- Only stopping when he did. Eyebrows furrowing together, she watched as he shot a blast of flames to a lower area from where they stood- Which was shot at Zhao.

The man stopped in his steps, looking up at Zuko incredulously. “You’re alive?”

“You tried to have me killed!”

He shot several more blasts at Zhao, which he was able to dodge. When he tried to run off in the other direction, Y/n moved quickly to grab her bow and an arrow, shooting it at the ground in front of him. Both Zhao and Zuko were shocked by this, not having noticed her before.

“You tried to have him killed?!”

Zhao’s gaze darted between the two, before primarily focusing on Zuko. “Yes, I did. You’re the Blue Spirit- and enemy of the Fire Nation! You freed the Avatar!” Pausing, he pointed to Y/n. “And her!” His words dripped with venom.

“I had no choice!”

Zuko fired several more attacks at Zhao, while Y/n readied an arrow- though she waited to shoot it until the right moment. Zhao avoided the attacks, removing and dropping his smoking cloak as they subsided. “You should have chosen to accept your failure- your disgrace! Then, at least you could have lived.”

Returning the fire, the two end up in a short exchange of attacks, before Zuko blasted Zhao in the chest, knocking him down. Having seemed to realize Y/n was waiting for the right moment for attack, Zuko glanced at her. “Now.”

Though she didn’t need his signal- In quick succession she fired two arrows at Zhao, one pinning his sleeve to the ground, the other pinning his pant leg. The two jumped down to the lower level Zhao was, landing on either side of him as he struggled to free his clothes from the arrows. Zuko took on a firebending stance, while Y/n pulled another arrow through her bow. They both waited to attack, watching the man carefully.

Finally wiggling the arrow free from his shirt sleeve, he scoffed, looking between the two. “Two traitors working together again, hm? I’m not surprised at this point.”

Y/n narrowed her eyes when the Admiral quit trying to wiggle the arrow pinning his pant leg down free, quickly pivoting on her heel at realization. Twisting to the side, she narrowly dodged the arrow when he threw it at her. This initiated the fight once again, Zuko sending a relentless stream of attacks. Realizing her bow wasn’t going to get her anywhere in a close range fight, Y/n hooked it away onto her quiver, running at Zhao while he traded fire blasts with Zuko. She grabbed onto his arm as he tried to send an attack at the prince, yanking it to the side so the blast shot to the right. He twisted his other arm to send a fireball right into her face, which she was able to duck away from as she released his arm. The momentary distraction gave Zuko the opening to shoot a powerful blast at Zhao, knocking him back a bit.

Unable to keep his attention on both of them at once, Y/n was able to swipe her leg at his ankles while he was focused on Zuko, knocking him down. Not relenting, Zhao shot a blast at Y/n, catching her off guard and knocking her down. She rolled out of the way of another blast, before Zuko helped her off the ground- While firing at Zhao. The two looked at each other briefly, sharing a nod.

Running at Zhao once again, Y/n twisted, ducked and dodged the attacks sent at her, while also giving room for Zuko to send his own blasts at the man. Once close enough, she started throwing punches at Zhao, taking his attention in the fight. The close proximity of the fight didn’t stop him from using his fire, leaving parts of her clothes to be singed. She ducked when he tried to punch her with a blazing fist, giving the opening for Zuko to send another powerful blast at Zhao, knocking him down once again.

He didn’t get up this time, rather looking past the two with a horror ridden expression. “It can’t be!”

Furrowing her eyebrows, Y/n turned to see what he was looking at- The moon. In the heat of the battle, she hadn’t noticed it started to shine bright once again.

Suddenly, water rose up coalescing around the bridge they were on, taking the form of a large fish like creature. It reached out and grabbed Zhao, pulling him off the bridge. He struggled against it, before Zuko reached out to him. “Take my hand!”

For a moment, it seemed like he was going to grasp onto Zuko’s hand, but instead drew back- an expression of hate taking over his features. Zhao was taken under the surface of the water, disappearing. Crossing her arms, Y/n looked at the surface of the water in near disbelief.

Silence lingered in the air, it only being broken when Zuko quietly cleared his throat. Looking up from the surface of the water, she glanced over at him. He took a minute, before speaking up.

“Listen, Y/n… I’m… sorry. For everything. I- Ugh, what am I even trying to say here.”

She raised an eyebrow in amusement. “That you’re sorry?”

“Yes- Wait, I already said that..” He breathed out a sigh, holding a hand to his forehead. Laughing softly, she held out her hand.

“Truce?”

He hesitated for a moment, before grasping onto her hand, a soft smile tugging up his lips. “Truce.”

Tugging him a step closer, Y/n put an arm around his neck, bringing him into a hug. Zuko tensed at the action, but returned it nonetheless.

“We can still be friends..” Mumbling quietly, she broke away from the hug. “But I need to get back to them.”

“I.. understand.” He paused. “Actually, no, I don’t. But… I won’t stop you.”

Offering a small smile, she slipped past him, intending to go back to the oasis. She stopped on the way there, however, seeing that her friends were gathered. Katara waved her over, inviting her into the group hug they were currently sharing. Running over, she joined them, a wide smile on her face.

---

Sea water gently splashed up against the sides of the boat, spraying past the railings. The more Y/n sat with her back against them, her head leaned back, the more the back of her shirt and her hair dampened from the water. Eyes closed, she took in a deep breath. With her terrible track record on boats, she didn’t know that being out at sea could be so… relaxing.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shook her head softly in response. “You can’t either?”

Sokka breathed out a quiet, somewhat tense, laugh. “No..” He paused for a short moment. “Do you mind?”

Opening her eyes to see that he was motioning to the space on the deck next to her, Y/n offered a soft smile. “Not at all.”

Muttering a small thanks, he gave a weak smile in return, before settling down next to her. He sat close enough for their shoulders to press together, the close proximity made her heart race.

Silence lingered over them for a long moment, before Y/n spoke up. “I heard what happened… With Yue.”

Breathing out a soft sigh, Sokka tilted his head back, looking up at the moon. “Yeah… I figured you would.”

“I’m sorry for bringing it up but- I just wanted to say if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always right here.”

“Thanks..” He paused for a moment. “You know, I went to that shop you were working at once when you weren’t there. I was trying to catch you there, that… didn’t work out- Obviously.” He breathed out a quiet chuckle, digging into his coat pocket. “But I did meet that lady you worked for, and she asked me to make sure this got to you.” He held out a bracelet, the one she’d been looking at in the shop before she started working there.

Her eyes widened slightly. “I forgot about that.”

“That’s why she asked me to give it to you. Let me see your wrist.” He tied the bracelet around her wrist, once she held it out to him.

“Thanks.” She spoke with a smile, twisting her wrist slightly causing the stone to glint in the moonlight.

“It’s no problem.” Smirking, he took on a slightly teasing tone. “I didn’t expect you to be a jewelry person.”

Pressing a hand to her chest, she feigned an over exaggerated offence. “Just because I lived in a forest and can fight better than you doesn’t mean I can’t like girly things.”

He looked at her offended. “You cannot fight better than me!” She leaned a bit closer to him, raising an eyebrow. “You wanna test that theory?”

Falling silent, he gulped. “No, I think I’m good.”

They were both quiet, before breaking into a short fit of laughter. Leaning back against the boat's railing, Y/n hugged one of her knees to her chest.

Once again, silence fell over them. After a few moments, a sudden weight was on her shoulder. Tensing slightly, she looked to the side, to see that Sokka had fallen asleep- His head now leaning on her shoulder. She opened her mouth to wake him up, but stopped herself.

Something in her didn’t want to wake him up… The closeness was… Nice.

Letting her eyes fall closed, she leaned her head back, absentmindedly fiddling with the bracelet tied around her wrist. She felt so calm, but still her heart raced, and she wasn’t sure why.

With certain thoughts and memories coming to mind, however, the pieces started to fit together.

And it was in that moment, Y/n realized.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar the last airbender x reader #atla x reader #reader insert #sokka x reader #sokka x y/n #sokka x you #team avatar #slowburn #book one allies

75 notes · View notes