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arrivalatdawn · 4 years

Note

Could you write a smut regarding an extremely intimidating rosé

The sharpest thorn is one that doesn’t cut you, or so they say.

It might not happen right away, but there is a dark side to all good things. Such a thought does not occur to you one peaceful morning at home with your girlfriend, Kim Jisoo. Ever the one to have an unwavering bright, bubbly personality, she suggests a lazy beginning to the day. While you imagined being wrapped under the blankets and bedsheets with her on top of you as you exchanged sweet kisses, Jisoo had something else in mind.

“... and you wanted to go out today, wasting a perfectly good day off.” she said in a soft tone as she released your cock out of her warm and wet mouth. She stroked you slowly, thoroughly spreading her saliva all over your shaft. “We haven’t had a day to ourselves in months.”

She plants a kiss on the tip of your cock before sticking her tongue out and moving it in a clockwise direction. Her thin fingers remain wrapped around your base, feeling it pulse in her palm as she continues to move it up and down. While her voice had a cheerfulness to it, you especially loved its lower, huskier register during more intimate times. She did it first as a joke, but realized how much it aroused you after your first month of dating. From then on, Jisoo chose to speak in a deeper tone whenever you two were alone.

“I’m gonna make sure you can’t get out of bed tomorrow.”

Jisoo is currently on the floor of her bedroom as she gives you a stimulating pleasure. Your hands find their way to her dark colored locks, tucking loose strands behind her ears and away from her face as she continues using her mouth to satisfy you. Beautiful was an understatement to describe Jisoo - she was elegant, a graceful side to her that was usually overshadowed by her playful clumsiness. She was surprised when you confessed to her your feelings, believing you only hungout with her in order to get closer to her friend, Jennie Kim.

“Didn’t you already do that yesterday?” you teased.

Jisoo pouted, puffing her cheeks as you noticed a change in her eyes. The bright shininess to them remained, but were replaced with a cloudy lust. Her lips formed a sinful smile as she puckered them and kissed your tip once more.

“That was nothing compared to what I have in store for you.”

A needy moan escapes your lips as Jisoo takes your cock back inside her mouth. You looked down and saw your favorite sight - her silky smooth brunette hair bobbing up and down as you enter and exit her with ease thanks to her earlier lubrication. Both of your hands hold onto the sides of her head, guiding her movements while your fingers play run through strands of her hair. The both of you were very much enjoying the simple performance she was putting on.

You planned on going downstairs right away and surprising Jisoo with breakfast. It seemed she had the same thought, albeit a bit different kind of nourishment compared to the one you were going to prepare.

Jisoo has taken you inside her mouth a plethora of times - some even during inconspicuous circumstances. And while she perfected the basic techniques, which ones she emphasizes and doesn’t seems to change each time. Saliva is wet; a common knowledge statement. But Jisoo surprises you. Some days she’ll use a lot and want it to be as sloppy as possible. Others, she’ll use just enough in order to make sure both of you are satisfied. She’ll put on red lipstick before sucking your cock, knowing you enjoy being marked by her full lips all over your body and especially your shaft. The tight seal they form around your base as she takes your entire length inside her mouth. Her tongue - which can be fully flattened and add another layer of pleasure to your underside, or twirl around your tip and send shivers down your spine. Whatever method she used, Jisoo knew you loved it.

Both male and female friends knew you and Jisoo were inseperable, with many commenting about her beauty and how much more radiant she became after dating you. They would tease you, saying that wedding bells would be ringing any day now. The two of you brushed it off, knowing it will happen when the time is right. And as your wandering thoughts returned to your cock inside Jisoo’s mouth, you were mainly delighted to call her yours.

Jisoo removes her mouth from your shaft, watching in satisfaction as it glistens with her saliva as it dribbles down her cheek and your tip before falling onto the floor below. Her hand returns its grip onto your cock as she tilts her head and focuses her attention on your balls. You feel jolts of pleasure in your spine as she takes you into her mouth one at a time. She sucks on each, moving her tongue in a back and forth motion before letting it out with a loud pop.

The two of you remained relatively silent, with the exception of your moans and Jisoo sloppily sucking your cock. She hollows her cheeks as much as possible, turning her lips into a suction that feels sinfully delicious. She looks up at you with her large, glassy eyes - they provided a calming sense as she wrinkled her nose cutely and her eyes became crescents when she returned to orally pleasuring you.

Jisoo wastes no time with foreplay, as evidenced by the feeling of the tip of your cock hitting her throat. You feel her nose on the base of your shaft. She had been practicing deepthroating you the past several months; it seems to have paid off as your cock slowly goes in and out of her wanton mouth. Her freshly manicured nails dig into the skin of your thighs, a temporary pain compared to the pleasure you were currently receiving. Her eyes begin to glisten with tears as both of your hands hold onto her head and are guided by her own movements.

“Fuck…” you said, finally breaking the stalemate between you two.

“Isn’t this a better way to spend the day?” she said, smiling sweetly at you.

“No…”

“No…?” Jisoo breathed out, as your cock was inside her mouth. She gave you a soft warning bite, seemingly trying to say to choose your words carefully.

“No… because you’re not riding me.”

Jisoo giggles, her tongue sending a pleasant vibration on the underside of your shaft. Releasing you from her mouth, she gives your tip a deep kiss before rising up between your legs. You wrap your arms around her waist, planting a soft kiss on her forehead before the two of you climb onto the bed. She straddles your lap with her wide hips, winking at you playfully before grabbing your hard cock and placing its tip at her entrance. She stroked you, smacking your tip against her slightly drenched pussy. You loved how tight Jisoo was - her wet, velvety slick walls wrapping around your shaft as she fully lowered your body until you were inside her. Her erotically charged moan, coupled with her husky tone aroused you to no end.

“You wanted to deny a whole day of feeling this inside me to go on a date?” she said in a cute yet angry tone.

You savored the feeling of Jisoo’s body being impaled with your own as the morning light sneakily entered through the crack of the blinds. She was right, sharing an intimate moment with her was indeed always the right call.

They say no one drink tastes exactly alike.

No matter the ingredients being the exact same - the temperature in the air, the way the fruits are cut up, whether the drink is shaken or stirred, the number of or lack thereof of ice cubes, was the glass chilled or not, did the bartender use their hand or wrist when pouring out the mixed liquid, even the experience of the bartender. These are just some of the many things to take into consideration when ordering a drink.

It was supposed to be another relaxing evening at home.

When you got the phone call - and subsequent doorbell awakening to come out to the club with Jennie Kim, you turned her down immediately. Unfortunately, she never takes no for an answer. And so, here you are at one of the hottest nightclubs in town despite barely being open for a few months.

The bright, various colored lights. The bouncer who let scantily clad women in for free, some pulling down the top of their dress to do so. A haze of intoxicated people with more money than they know what to do with and a loud, ear-shattering bass are what greets you the moment you and Jennie enter.

She is immediately met with copious amounts of eyes staring at her - both men and women. Wearing the shortest, tightest dress she owned and letting her milk chocolate colored hair flow down her beautiful shoulders, Jennie Kim commanded attention from the busy club’s nighttime patrons. She puckered her lips, batting her freshly curled eyelashes and winking at those within her range of vision. The dark eyeliner and smoky eyeshadow complimented her cat-like gaze. Jennie knew she was a tease - loving to get a rouse out of people drooling for her. Making them even more jealous, she linked arms with you before blowing a kiss and walking away.

“Do we really have to be here? I was kinda sleeping, you know.” You said, handing Jennie an overpriced bottle of water before taking your jacket off and draping it over her thighs.

“Thank you, oppa.” She twists the plastic cap and takes a large swig of the bottle. Letting out a satisfied hum, she crossed her legs and stared at you. You were wearing a plain white tee and joggers - an outfit that was able to double as something to wear outside and as pajamas. A small frown was plastered on your face as you looked around at groups of people enjoying their youth, while destroying their livers in the process.

“Oppa, stop being a boring old grandpa. These are the prime years of our lives!” Jennie said.

“Jen, we’re almost in our late 20’s. This may have been cute four years ago, but I don't exactly want to be 35 and still doing this stuff.”

“So you think going to bed by 8 PM on a Friday night is normal for someone our age?”

“It certainly beats being here. I get to be comfortable at home and binge watch tv shows while eating whatever I want.”

“Has that been helping you get over Jisoo unnie?”

You immediately shot Jennie an icy cold glare. She was temporarily surprised, but managed to keep her composure.

“Don’t give me that look. I know it hasn’t been easy, but I don’t want you to waste your life away over her.”

Kim Jisoo. Someone who meant the whole world to you. The very same person who took it all away instantly, doing so by leaving a card on her side of your bed one morning.

Oppa,

I’m sorry.

By the time you read this, I would have already been gone. You have every right to hate me. But… this dream. It's something I can't give up. I won't know unless I take this risk.

I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Thank you, oppa. For all of the love you've given me these past four years.

Love, Jisoo

Rain was not the only thing pouring outside your window as you reread her message over and over.

“It's been a year, oppa. It's time to move on. She has.”

“People go at their own pace, Jen.”

“I know that. But I can't stand seeing you devolve into a homebody who cries watching chick flicks and eating ice cream out of the container.”

“You were the one who brought it over!”

“Anyways! We are here to find you a new bang.” Jennie confidently said, wrapping her arm around you. “So what are you feeling, my boy? Blonde? Brunette? Nice rack? Fat ass? Baby making hips?”

“Everyday you stray further from the light.” You said, shaking your head as you covered your face. “Remind me again how are we best friends?”

“If we aren't best friends, then I'm not a girl who measures a guy’s hotness by guessing their dick size.”

“Have you ever guessed correctly?”

“Many times. Although this one guy ended up packing more than I thought he would.”

“There are countless hot women here. It's a club. How exactly do you propose I find someone? You know I can't really talk to women well. Especially after the last one.”

“Ah, yes. Who could forget the classic: ‘H-Hi. You. Me. S-Sex.’ Real smooth, Casanova.”

“This is your idea of a pep talk? Some wingman you are.”

“That's because I'm a wingwoman. Now…” Jennie said as she winked, pointing her finger as she moved the two of you across the copious amount of people in the club. “What poor soul gets the unfortunate chance to be your pity bang.”

“Hey! I'm going home if you're gonna be like this.” You said, standing up and preparing to leave.

“Fine, fine!” Jennie said, holding onto your shoulders and pushing you back down on the couch. “You're no fun, oppa.”

You ignored her, crossing your arms as you put on the meanest sulk you could muster.

“You're so cute when you're angry.” She said, pinching your cheek as you snorted a puff of air.

“Why don't you talk to her?” Jennie continued, pointing to a lone woman sitting at the bar.

The woman was far away, but her sitting posture gave off an intimidating vibe. Her long, brunette hair flowed almost past her seat. The two of you watched as she fended off various men trying to get her attention. You looked to Jennie and sighed.

“Her? She just rejected like seven guys. Some of them were pretty handsome too.” you said.

“Yeah, that’s… weird. I wonder why she rejected both seven and nine incher.” Jennie said, frowning as she formed a check sign under her chin with her thumb and index finger. “Although she did a good job at shooing away those last two. They were easily four inches.”

“Would you stop incorrectly guessing penis size and focus! How am I supposed to talk to her?”

“Relax, oppa. It’s all about confidence. Put your foot down and show her you’re not willing to take no for an answer.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Jennie nodded.

“Really? Because the last time I did that, I was met with a drink in the face and various women nearby staring at me like I was a pervert.”

“Yeah, I remember that. Almost peed myself from laughing so hard.”

“I’m glad my love life amuses you. Some best friend you are.” you said, rolling your eyes.

“You can do this, oppa!” Jennie said, startling you by suddenly standing up. “Now go over there and get some fresh booty! … and maybe get me a drink while you’re at it.” The sudden change in tone by her last sentence caused you to raise an eyebrow and shake your head.

Jennie smacks your butt, squeezing a cheek firmly before pushing you away. Brushing the nonexistent dirt off your body, you timidly approached the counter. The bartender is putting on a show, holding multiple bottles at once as he pours various colored liquids into the stainless steel jigger.

The woman Jennie graciously scouted out for you looked elegant. She wore a bright red cocktail dress that showed off her long legs and soft looking thighs. Her pinky was extended as she elegantly sipped on a green colored martini. Her side profile looked like something from the front page spread of a magazine cover. You ended up staring at her a bit too long - something she noticed right away.

“It’s not polite to stare at a woman, you know.” she stated.

Her cold tone and exotic accent sent shivers down your spine. She looked like she belonged to the wealthy elite, while you were just an average person out of their element. The loud music and various patrons clinking their glasses to a celebratory night out were nothing compared to the beauty before you.

“If you’re here to buy me a drink, don’t. Seven guys have already tried. I’m not interested.” she said, taking another sip of her mixed drink.

“I-I’m not.” you said, stammering. You mentally slapped yourself, knowing this conversation was going to go down the same path as every other one you had with a woman.

“Really?” she asked, finally turning her direction at you. Her dark, jet black hair matched the same color of her eyeshadow. It flowed beautifully, not a single one out of place. She equipped herself with light facial makeup, only the slightest hint of BB cream and powder. Her thin, cherry red colored lips giving off the tiniest hint of a smirk.

“Your hot friend over there seems to think I’d be the perfect booty call for you.”

You tensed up. She had you read out and it hadn’t even been a full five minutes. A bead of sweat trailed down your face as you pulled on the collar of your shirt. You began to prepare yourself for the rejection that was beginning to loom.

“She doesn’t seem to be able to talk softly. Probably a screamer in bed, too.”

“J-Jennie’s just a -”

“So tell me, handsome. What was her master plan? To get you to hit on me under the disguise of getting her a drink? And just like that I’m supposed to drop my panties for you?”

Every word the woman said to you was as ice cold as the ice the bartender was mixing drinks with. Despite this, her erotic accent keeps you wanting to hear more from her. It filled you with untapped courage. Deciding to throw caution to the wind, your expression changed as you slowly approached her.

“She wanted me to get over this girl I was in love with. Said you’d be the perfect rebound bang.” you said, taking the drink out of her hand and twisting the glass before sipping. It tasted sweet. Strawberry, with the unmistakable taste of vodka. The drink matched its owner - strong, yet having a playful side to it.

“I always ask for three shots instead of one.” she simply stated as she noticed your face grimacing, unfazed by your actions.

“Good to know.” you said, returning the drink in front of her.

“And what makes this slutty friend of yours think I’m easy?”

“Her legs are never closed. Figured she’d be a good judge of character.” you said. The alcohol seemed to be working, as you began to grow confident and matched the way she was speaking to you.

She smirked. “These losers wouldn’t even be worth me slapping them in the face. Do you really think you have what it takes to take me home?”

You took her hand and got her out of the chair. Running your fingers through her soft, silky hair, you gently tucked several loose strands behind her ear before holding her by the waist.

“There’s nothing better than wanting what you can’t have.” you whispered into her ear gently, your hand roaming down her dress. You blew a soft puff of air, your palm feeling the curvature of her bottom as you squeezed it. The faintest moan escaped her lips as she quickly tried to maintain her composure.

“Drunk already after one sip?” She said. Your gaze remained locked with each other. Her eyes were beady, yet pools of pure seduction. A light tint of red was evident on her cheeks, she clearly had more than one martini. As you processed what she just said, you realized she was right. You were drunk. But it was not from the one sip of alcohol you had from her. No, this was different. You were intoxicated by the beautiful woman you just met. And as your hand still rested on her bottom, it seemed she was also interested in you.

“What do you say?” you asked, bringing your other hand to her face. As you rubbed her cheek gently, you traced the back of your finger on it. “Your bedsheets sound a lot more fun than anything else going on here.”

The woman takes a sip of her martini, moving the bottom of the glass around on the table to swirl the mixed drink. She seemed to be deep in thought, pondering your words carefully.

“Sure, why not. Beats getting hit on by any of these losers.” she said nonchalantly.

You smirked, squeezing her cheek once more.

“You won’t regret it.”

As she grabbed her designer bag and walked away from the bar, you looked at Jennie who was in bewilderment at what she just witnessed. You flashed her a peace sign before using your thumb and pinky and bring it to your ear, silently letting her know you’ll call afterwards and tell her everything. She smiles in response, showing you her own peace sign as you exit the club.

The taxi ride to your place came and went like the calm before a storm. It didn’t take long for the two of you to remove your shoes. Your hands find their way back to her waist, gently holding her in your arms. As the two of you exchanged lust-filled stares, you lower your head and are mere inches away from her face before she turns her head and steers clear of you.

“I’m not that easy…” she said.

“Didn’t take you to be it at all.” you replied. The intoxicating aroma of her perfume combined with the built up desire you had for this woman caused you to want her more.

She removes both straps of her dress, watching you slightly drool as they flow down her soft looking shoulders and fall onto the ground. You take notice of her lack of undergarments, revealing a painfully tight body before you. She was fairly petite, yet had a decent curvature to her. You preferred a woman with wider hips and thighs, but this woman’s model-like body and cute round butt were beginning to make you a believer.

She helps you remove your shirt, before yanking off your pants and boxer briefs simultaneously. She is greeted with your cock already erect. Her fingers are cold to the touch, a nice juxtaposition to your shaft that was warm. She bit her lower lip and looked at you.

“Not bad… I’ve had better, though.” she said calmly.

“And yet you seem to be enjoying mine…” you replied, tracing her outer lips with two of your fingers. You took notice of a colorless liquid beginning to leak out, rubbing it between your thumb and index finger. “It would look even better inside your mouth.”

She squeezes your cock tightly. “No, you are going to look better eating my pussy.”

The woman pushes you onto your bed before raising her hips and locking her thighs onto either side of your head. Her pussy was delightfully wonderful. Bright pink, glistening lips and containing a nostalgic aroma to it. Your hands found their way to her bottom, which seemed to be their designated resting place over the course of the evening. The moment her hips lowered onto your face, you were greeted with the flesh between her legs.

“Oh, fuck…” she said, releasing a long, satisfied moan. You began by kissing the inner apex of her thighs, each crease soft to the touch. It doesn’t take long before you are giving her pussy long, slow licks. Her body squirms above you as quickly captured her clit and swirled your tongue around it. Despite her cold demeanor, it seemed like she really needed this - her juices flow out abundantly as you slowly eat her out.

“Fuck! Right there… Oh, fuck…” she moaned, throwing her head back as she held onto the headboard of your bed. She grinds on your face, her pussy pressing against your mouth as she seeks more and more pleasure desperately. You are happy she is satisfied, consuming the bittersweet juices that pour into your mouth.

She tries to turn her body around but you held her hips waist firmly in place. You aren’t able to see, but you were sure her eyes began to flutter in pleasure as she relishes the feeling of your tongue on her clit. Her butt is soft to the touch, even more so now without her pesky silk dress covering it.

“K-Keep eating that pussy… oh fuck…!”

She was unable to announce her abrupt orgasm. The only signal you were able to receive was her body quivering slightly before violently shaking as its force takes her by surprise. Her pussy releases a copious amount of fresh juices into your willing mouth. You stick your tongue out, having grown accustomed to her delicious taste. Her moans continue on as you feel her juices slowly drip down your mouth and chin. Your tongue twirls around her clit as her orgasm slowly winds down. Giving her wet pussy a few final licks, your head being released from the grip of her thighs.

Before you could even get the chance to speak, she dismounts your face before quickly mounting your crotch. She gives your cock several painfully slow strokes before lining your tip at her entrance. You can’t help but feel nostalgic, thinking of how Jisoo would do the very same thing to you. And while Jisoo loved to tease you, running the tip of your cock between her lips, this woman was different. She quickly lowers her hips until you are fully inside her.

Jisoo was the tightest woman you’ve ever been with - or so you thought. Before you was a new challenger, someone who could compete for the throne, should there ever be one for how tight a pussy could feel. Both of you let out a satisfied moan as you enter her for the very first time. Her juices coated your cock instantly, while her walls seemed like they would refuse to let you go.

“Fuck…” she said, letting out a mixture of a scream and a laugh. “Fuck, you feel so good.”

The woman’s tight body felt wonderful, something nothing else could come close to replicating. She places her hands on top of yours, bringing them upwards and resting them on her petite chest. She was far from busty, but was big enough to fit in the palm of your hand, something you were thankful for.

You fondled them, massaging her chest before bringing her hardening nipples in between your index finger and thumb. She plants her hands firmly on your own chest until she raises her hips and starts to ride you.

“Fuck!” she screamed, her pussy grabbing onto your cock tightly as she began to take you in and out of her wanton body.

Her hips, thighs and waist were all working in tandem to extract the most pleasure out of you for her own satisfaction. She was tight - something that you repeated to yourself over and over like a broken record. The feeling of it was overwhelming, as you sat on the bed unable to move from the pleasure she was giving you.

“Oh fuck…” you said, the burning desire for the woman on top of you evident through your words.

“You like my pussy, don’t you?” she said, knowing full well what your answer would be. “I bet it’s the tightest you’ve ever had.”

“Fuck yes…” you moaned.

Your words seemed to please her as she grinds her hips against yours. Her hot, wet flesh has quickly made you wish to never leave its comfort as you feel her tight butt smack your thighs. She makes sure to raise her hips until only your tip is inside her before slamming back down onto you.

A few hours ago you two were mere strangers yet here she was, using you for her own pleasure. She puts on a show while riding you, her erotic moans and vulgar words dripping with pure lust create a harmonious symphony for your ears as does her best to chase her euphoric high.

“Fuck… I’m gonna cum again. I’m going to cum on your cock. Fuck. Yes… yes! Oh, fuck!”

Her second orgasm of the night was no less violent than the first. She arches her back as her body squirms on top of yours. Her toes curled up in pleasure as you felt her nails dig into your chest. Her pussy tightened around your cock, almost painfully so. You felt it pulsing in delayed intervals as she buried your shaft deep inside her. Both of you savored the feeling of her orgasm. It takes her slightly longer to recover compared to her first orgasm. Her body is quivering slightly with aftershocks as you move her hips up and down your own.

“N-No… stop, I’m still sensitive.” she said, holding on your chest for support.

Her pussy clenches against your cock, seemingly wanting more. Your eyes involuntarily shut as you savor the pleasure of her tight walls gripping your length. You noticed she was exhausted, as a thin layer of sweat glistened on her milky skin. Her body on the other hand, had other plans. She began to slowly grind against you, preparing herself to ride you once more. She moves her hips in a circular motion, wanting to feel every inch of you inside her.

“You haven’t cum yet…” she said. “Is my pussy not good enough for you?”

“N-No… yours is the tightest I’ve ever had.”

“Then why haven’t you cum yet?” her voice increased in frustration.

She dismounted your lap, getting on her hands and knees in front of you.

“Come here and fuck me like you mean it.”

Little effort is required on your part to enter her pussy once more. She wags her butt cutely, teasing you. Both of you moaned as her walls hugged you tightly. You leave your tip inside her before thrusting back inside.

Her body mirrored your bed and rocked back and forth in pleasure. Each entry into her tight pussy felt different, providing you an insatiable lust. You felt her round ass cheeks bounce against your crotch with each thrust.

Her soft gasps and moans rapidly increased in volume as her tight, hot body was an outlet for your desires.

“Fuck… fuck me harder.” she gasped.

You weren’t able to reply, too clouded by the pleasure to focus on anything else but her body and your need to fill her. Both of you relish in the moment as you fuck her and give her what she wanted. You reach for her damp hair and hold it in your hands, raising her body and pulling her head back. She moaned as your thrusts increase in speed until the bed is violently creaking from how hard you were fucking her.

“Fuck… fuck! I’m-”

Despite her exhaustion, her pussy clenches around your cock tightly as she cums for the third time of the night. Moans and gasps filled your room as her mouth is agape from the pleasure. She regretfully removes you from her body before she gets you to stand up on wobbly knees.

She strokes you furiously, the heat caused by the friction of her hand against your cock provided a tingling sensation. She had little care for how fast she was going, using her free hand to massage your balls in anticipation of what was about to come.

“Cum all over my face.”

She picked up the pace and stroked you even faster until you moaned loudly and erupted all over her face. She smiled wickedly as her eyes instinctively shut as you coated her soft features with thick, hot ropes of semen. The first shot hit her forehead and hair while your toes curled from the pleasure. Your next release hit her cute nose and ridiculously soft looking cheeks. The pressure she had built up inside you was finally alleviated. She continued to massage your balls until she felt you had nothing left.

Her smile was a wonderful juxtaposition to the mess you just created on her face. She stuck her tongue out and cleaned your cock, removing the last few remnants of your load that dribbled from your tip.

“Fuck, you taste good.”

#asks #blackpink smut #blackpink #rose #park chaeyoung

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kingreywrites · 4 years

Text

The Smolder Tragedy

Fandom: Tangled

Word Count: 3314

Summary: A very concussed and very out of it Eugene Fitzherbert comes to a devastating conclusion about his smolder. His kidnappers are not all that sympathetic about it.

Note: that title is so corny god asgfdgh anyway, this is a self-indulgent hurt/comfort fic, but there’s quite a bit of hurt!! So be warned that there is talk of a concussion, some violence (because he’s kidnapped), and also a mention of spiked water (he’s mostly fine though but I’d rather be safe)

Read on ao3

Now that he was thinking about it, Eugene realised that the smolder never... truly worked on anyone. Well, when he was younger, adults tended to go easier on him if he made a somewhat cute face at them, and in the following years, doing it never hurt his chances with the people who were already attracted to him. But neither of these facts actually attested of the efficiency of the smolder in itself, and if Rapunzel was left particularly unimpressed, Eugene wasn't sure anyone had ever really swooned because of it.

Oh, the demon Rapunzel from the weird mirror dimension did swoon that one time. Was that a good sign, or a bad one?

"The hell are you talking about?" someone growled, entering the room loudly and making Eugene's headache worse, if that was even possible.

That guy was one of the reasons Eugene was thinking about his smolder's actual abilities - or lack thereof. Because see, if the smolder worked, which he was now doubting, he could simply use it on this guy, and that would make him swoon, and Eugene would use the distraction to get free from the chair he was tied on, and get out of here quickly. But Eugene didn't think the smolder would work. Not because Mr Beetle here (lovingly named after the bug which landed on his head during Eugene's kidnapping - he'll get to that part later) was immune to his charms, but because maybe... perhaps... the smolder had never been effective?

This was devastating news. Truth really was the heaviest burden a man could bear.

Beetle grabbed his hair and pulled his head back roughly, making Eugene see stars and forget, for a moment, the whole smolder dilemma. But then he was being yelled at things he could barely understand between the buzzing in his ears and the concussion he got earlier - without forgetting the stuff they made him drink that made his head all fuzzy and his thoughts completely muddled - and he couldn't help but wonder if he could smolder his way out of here. That'd be nice. It had been what, four days since they got their hands on him? Five? Eugene was bored now.

"If-," he coughed, feeling like the hoarse voice he could hear wasn't his own, "if I tried to seduce you, would you break my nose?"

Going by the way his head was slammed back again, Eugene took it as a yes. That was a shame, truly. He knew that his life was different today, that he had changed for the better and was now the Captain of Corona's Guard, so really, he didn't need the smolder - but he loved that silly little trick. It felt like discovering that Santa wasn't real all over again. Not that he ever believed in Santa, since the matrons didn't see fit to talk about that particular tradition when everyone knew that orphans wouldn't get Christmas gifts, but that's what Eugene thought it must feel like.

His head hurt a lot.

A big hand tipped his chin up, since he had been looking at his pants and the stains on them (would he be able to get the blood out?), and he realised that Beetle was trying to make him drink that weird stuff again. The one that made his head feel like it was floating above his shoulders, and made him feel warm in the most disgustingly sweaty way. Eugene hated it. So he kept his lips as tightly closed as he could, and trashed in the chair to make it more difficult on that goon.

This was becoming ridiculous. The fact that he even got kidnapped already hurt enough as it was - they got the best of him after a very exhausting day, and pointed a crossbow at his heart before hitting him so hard over the head he was pretty sure he stayed unconscious for a few hours straight... which Rapunzel would probably think was pretty concerning. For his part, he was more annoyed about the constant headache than anything. Mostly, he couldn't believe he got kidnapped.

He didn't even remember if anyone had seen him, and hoped no one had gotten hurt during the whole ordeal. In any case, he was pretty embarrassed and, to add insult to injury, they didn't even care about him. He was Captain of the Guard for god's sake, you'd think that would make him interesting enough, but no, they only wanted him to pressure the royal family.

Being used as leverage sucked. Thinking that they might hurt the people he loved by using him made him feel sick, even more than their weird drugged water did.

"If you keep being difficult you're gonna regret it," Beetle threatened, and Eugene would have told him that he was the one who would regret stuff soon, if he hadn't been also preoccupied with keeping his mouth shut. Which, ironically, was something people had asked of him a lot in his life, and that he had always refused to do - until someone tried to force him to keep it open. He never did like authority, after all. The matrons would always tell him that he was a troublemaker of the worst kind, and that someday, life would get back at him for the chaos he created. They were yet to be proved right about that one but-

Beetle punched him in the gut, making Eugene gasp and cough in pain, before his nose was pinched and he was forced to swallow the water, nearly choking on it.

"Rude," he noted weakly when it was over, his throat on fire as he heaved. Already, he could feel the fuzziness coming back with a vengeance, his vision blurring at the edges because of whatever mysterious compound they forced him to drink. He'd have to ask Varian about it. The kid would know, certainly, or would at least be excited to research it, and it was fun when Varian was excited. He still had that weird maniacal villain vibe mixed with his genuine and adorable love for sciency things, and that was an interesting combination to see in action.

The door to Eugene's cell was slammed shut and, in the dim light, he understood that he was alone once again. Beetle didn't even say goodbye. It was okay, though, because Eugene didn't think he could have answered without puking - the entire world was swimming in front of his eyes. Closing them only made everything even more unsteady, and now Eugene wondered if he could even try to do a good smolder in that state. He couldn’t feel his face.

His eyes were heavy, and it didn't take long before he passed out again.

------

Next time Eugene woke up, it was to the sound of yelling outside the door of his cell, loud and definitely not the kind of voices he wanted to hear. Maybe it was stupid, but each time he opened his eyes, he hoped to find Rapunzel here, ready to rescue him, but it hadn't happened… yet.

Trying to raise his head only awakened the ache in his neck and back from the terrible position he was in - he hated sleeping on chairs. Being homeless for a good part of his life had taught him that the bare ground was always preferable, but he didn't think he could argue about his sleeping conditions with his kidnappers. He pulled on the rope that was keeping his hands tied behind his back, and noticed that it was giving a little. If he could just-

"Your plan better work!" someone yelled, startling him - but it was still coming from behind the door. "You don't realise what we're risking with this!"

"Of course it'll work! Do you really think that the son-in-law of the King and the husband of the Princess is worthless? They're gonna listen to us because they'll want him back."

That was… touching, in a strange way. Not that Eugene enjoyed being taken for ransom, or whatever it was they wanted to do, but it did remind him that he had a family, and that they would fight to get him back. Rapunzel was probably worried out of her mind, right now, and this was enough to spur him into action again, because he didn't want to simply wait here for rescue like an idiot.

"What if they attack us?" the scared guy yelled again, as Eugene pulled on his bounds again, ignoring the sharp sting of the rope cutting into his skin, and his ever-present nausea. "What if- what if instead of paying, the guards find us and destroy our base?"

In Eugene's opinion, the guards weren't really the threat here - this guy didn't want to know what Rapunzel would do to him if she found them. The thought was enough to make him chuckle, which in turn made him realise that the weird water might still be having an effect on him, because he hadn't managed to keep himself quiet. Not great.

His fingers fumbled with the knot he could feel, trying to get it to loosen even more. Unfortunately, the door of his cell -more like a closet than a cell to be honest- was thrown open, and he had to act as innocent as possible.

Going by the glare he received, he was doing a poor job of it.

The new guy (he'd call him Martin, because he had a Martin face) seemed to enjoy kicking him around a bit more. The only silver lining was that he seemed intent on kicking his ribs, and consequently left his poor head alone. Still not the best, but Eugene would take it. He didn't have much choice anyway, since Martin decided to greet him with his fists today.

"Feeling better yet?" Eugene breathed when he thought it was over. He earned another kick for the trouble.

"You better hope they pay what we ask of them," Martin snarled, way too close for Eugene's comfort. "Because I can't say that I won't enjoy killing you if it comes to that."

"Aww, I'm touched, truly," was all Eugene could say, before a hand ended up around his throat, and he couldn't talk anymore. He vaguely heard Martin threatening him again, but honestly, the guy should realise that it was difficult to be afraid of him when Eugene was barely conscious enough to understand him.

It went down the same way as it always did, these days. Eugene was forced to drink that damned drugged water -it was getting more disgusting each time-, and he couldn't breathe, and the Martin guy said something about hurting Rapunzel, and if you think you're gonna be able to touch her you've got another thing coming you assho-

And Eugene lost consciousness. Again.

------

When he woke up again, Eugene couldn’t breathe. The world was loud, too loud, his vision was swimming and the room spinning under him, and he couldn't- it was as if his breaths were getting stuck in his ribcage, and was he still being choked, what-

"Hey, Eugene, it's okay, look at me-"

Dragging in air painfully, he opened his eyes to a slit, meeting the frantic and oh so green ones of- Rapunzel?

"Come on, it's okay, breathe with me," she said, voice low, and he listened to her - how could he not? For a moment, when it felt like he was still dangerously tethering on the edge of choking, he wondered if she was even real, or if it was all a dream conjured by the lack of oxygen. Then, she brushed his hair back, her palm warm and tangible on his cheek, and it felt real enough that he melted into it.

"That's it," she encouraged him gently, one hand resting lightly on his heaving chest. "That's it, breathe. I won't let them hurt you anymore."

He couldn't hold back a nervous chuckle at that, but going by the pinch of her eyebrows, that wasn't the right reaction. After a few seconds, when he finally felt like his lungs weren't about to explode, he tried to smile at her. It only seemed to worry her more.

Her fingers trailed along his jaw, tracing what he knew were dark bruises on his skin. She went higher, to his hair, and touched something that immediately made him flinch.

"Sorry, sorry, I-" she exclaimed quickly, pushing his hair away again. "I'm gonna get you out of here."

His perceptions were still blurred, as if he was underwater, but he could hear now the sounds of fighting and chaos coming from behind the door. Rescue. He was being rescued - Rapunzel was rescuing him. He knew she would do it.

"Well, I wish I had been a little quicker," Rapunzel said, her voice wobbly.

"You're just in time Sunshine," he whispered, his throat raw.

"Am I?"

He didn't like the self-deprecation in her tone, nor the worry that didn't seem able to leave her features, and he felt guilty for being the cause of it. If he hadn't been kidnapped-

"Eugene? Eugene, stay with me," Rapunzel asked, with an urgency that made him realise he had closed his eyes. Huh. He was dizzy. "I know, I'm sorry, just- I'm gonna free you, okay?"

He blinked, trying to look at her so she would stop sounding so… scared. She was fumbling with the ropes holding his left hand in place. There was the sound of an explosion outside, right as she got rid of the first one, and she threw an indecipherable look at the door.

He wanted… He wanted her to stop looking so sad. He didn't like it when she was sad. Could he do something about it? Well-

"The smolder doesn't work," he mumbled dejectedly. Rapunzel was taking care of his bound legs now, though he didn't remember her freeing his right hand. He moved it slowly, feeling as if the limb wasn't his own, and wondered how much the weird water was still affecting him.

"Weird water?" Rapunzel repeated. He wasn't sure how to not voice all his thoughts aloud, apparently, which he's sure his dad would find amusing.

Since Rapunzel was still looking at him, Eugene took a few seconds to remember her question and simply hummed, head swimming. That seemed to make her even more unhappy, and he could get disliking the water, but he didn't like when Rapunzel was unhappy. "Do you... think the smolder ever, uh... worked?" he asked, trying to distract her.

"I'm sure it did," she answered, in the same gentle tone she used on people she disagreed with.

"It- it never worked on you, though. And it wouldn't have worked on Beetle, or- or- Martin," he pressed. His tongue was heavy in his mouth, and now his feet were free but he really didn't have the energy to try and get up. He didn't want to puke on Rapunzel, too.

She didn't reply. Instead, she looped one of his arms around her neck, and braced her hand against his ribs. He winced, and she apologised quietly, but before he could try to argue that he didn't think he could do it, she made him stand up swiftly, grip tightening around him when his knees inevitably buckled. He closed his eyes tightly, ears ringing painfully and stomach churning, and he was grateful that he could count on Rapunzel to not let him fall on his face.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she kept repeating, adjusting his weight to stop him from sliding down further. "I know it's hard, but I'll get you to safety, I promise, just hang on-"

Eugene could guess that he really didn't look great if she was that desperate to comfort him. To be fair, he didn't feel great either. He could barely follow her words, couldn't stand up on his own, and had to focus all his energy into not being sick as Rapunzel helped him walk. It clearly wasn't his best day.

He tried to regain his footing, so she didn't have to drag him with her, but his legs were shaky and he nearly fell again. He thought Rapunzel was going to toss him over her shoulder and run, which he knew she could do, and he also knew his body wouldn't appreciate as much as usual given his current dizziness, but that was exactly the moment Maximus arrived to the rescue. Or maybe they arrived to Maximus? There were more people around them, more noises and voices too, and Eugene couldn’t follow anything of what was happening. He thought he heard Lance, and felt another hand holding him up, but all he could focus on was Rapunzel being here, and Rapunzel talking to him, and calling his name, his one beacon of light when the pain in his head grew to be too much to bear.

He felt her hand in his, and realised that he had been laid down somewhere. He wanted to reassure her, but couldn’t do much more but feebly squeeze her fingers, hoping she would understand. And then, because he was tired and in pain, and because he knew that, now that she was here, he was going to be okay, Eugene passed out.

------

“You are evil,” Eugene moaned, hiding his face under his pillow while Rapunzel laughed innocently.

"What, I'm trying to help!" she smiled, coming to sit next to him on the bed. He felt the mattress dip under her weight, and took a peek at her, groaning again when he saw how smug she seemed. "I even made flyers and everything!"

She didn't seem to care about the annoyed look he threw her way, instead putting a bunch of papers in his hands. On it, his face, lips pursued and eyebrows raised, with the text asking the people of Corona to come test his “infamous smolder” by themselves. At this moment, Eugene would have preferred to have his old wanted posters thrown in his face - it would be way less embarrassing than… this.

“Come on Eugene, what better way to know for certain than to experiment? You seemed really bummed out about your smolder!”

“I wasn’t in my right mind,” he grumbled. “You can’t hold me accountable for my concussed ramblings!”

Her expression softened at that, and her hand came to caress his cheek, gently trailing up to the bandages still around his wound. Her touch was soft enough to not sting, and he couldn’t keep up his facade of annoyance when it was so obvious she simply wanted to make him laugh.

“I love you, you know?” he breathed, and she had a second to look pleasantly surprised before she leant down and kissed him.

“I love you too, Eugene,” she smiled fondly.

“You’re the only person I care to seduce anyway,” he laughed. “I guess I’ll have to live with the smolder being ineffective.”

“If that helps,” she murmured, climbing fully on the bed to lie down next to him, “I feel pretty seduced by you already.”

“Ah yeah?” he grinned. “Well, I’m pretty seduced by you too, Sunshine. You’re my hero after all,” he said, and though he had intended it as a joke, his tone was too earnest to be mistaken as anything but the truth. He could still see glimpses of guilt in Rapunzel’s expression, when he knew she had done everything in her power to find him as quickly as she could - he’d repeat it as much as she needed to finally see it too.

Rapunzel watched him, before cupping his cheek and bringing their lips together once again. He knew he would need to rest again soon, and that his constant headache would probably spike if he didn’t, but for now, he kissed her back, and it felt like everything was alright again. Because it was, in all the ways that mattered.

She saved him, and they were together - he wouldn’t ask for anything more.

#tangled #tangled the series #Eugene Fitzherbert #Rapunzel

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pearl-blue-musings · 4 years

Text

Untitled #1

I’ve had this idea in my head for a couple of months but I’m happy to finally write it out schwee

Fandom: BNHA

Pairing: Shinsou Hitoshi x fem!reader I’ve mostly done fem but hopefully along the line I’ll start doing some GN reader!

Notes: Aged up, post U.A., he be a prohero and all that jazz and FOR THE RECORD I will be doing everything 18+ so if that’s a problem just don’t read/interact pls kthanxbai

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The early morning rays make their way into the stillness of the room. Soft snores and breathing are mixed with the buzz of the air conditioner providing some reprieve from the hot summer heat. But that doesn’t bother him at all. No, as much as he loses sleep over mindless and ridiculous things, it doesn’t beat this.

It doesn’t beat seeing you first thing in the morning.

His hand rests leisurely on your waist, light yet protective. He sits up to rest his weight on his opposite forearm to really get a good look at you. The way your eyebrows relax under his touch, how your lips are parted ever so slightly to let in air and let out a little bit of drool, he loves it all. The way your legs curl up underneath yourself as if to hold onto a fleeting memory make his purple eyes soften. He never thought he would get this lucky ever in his life. It was almost like everything fell into place after meeting you.

It was by chance, as is most things he supposes. He had just been defeated by Deku in his first appearance at the U.A. Sports Festival. His head was hung low as his resolve to become a hero hardened. As he was entering the tunnel to return to his classmates, he had ran into someone knocking the both of them onto the ground.

“Watch where you’re going-”

“Oh goodness I’m so sorry!”

You both seemed to have spoken at the same time, causing him to do a double take. To say he was breathless and taken aback is an understatement. A million thoughts ran through his head, wondering if she saw his performance, or lack thereof... Wondering if she thinks him a villain because of his quirk, or that he shouldn’t even be trying in the first place and-

“Excuse me, do you have any bruising or cuts?”

Your voice knocked him out of his mind briefly as you continued, “Sorry you seemed lost in thought, but Recovery Girl sent me to check students not as worn out!”

His purple gaze just bored into yours in confusion.

“Ah,” you breathed hesitantly, “I’m working with Recovery Girl since I’ve got a healing type quirk! I’m a first year like you and this is my first real assignment-”

He couldn’t control the slight scoff that left his lips as he heard you introduce yourself. He met your eyes again and lent you his hand. “The only thing bruised is my pride right now but thanks for checking in on me.”

“I don’t think you’re a villain.”

He was about to leave you alone to meet his new friends but your words stopped him. Did you really say what he thinks you did? You barely knew him and everything you know about him was broadcasted to all of Japan including the crowd thinking him a bad guy already.

You find your voice again and continue, “My healing quirk has a slight mind ability as well. I can help calm emotions and stuff and I could tell that what the crowd said had bothered you... So... you can be a hero and ignore what everyone else thinks!”

Your chest heaved up and down as you were internally freaking out. Did you really just say that to him? You’d been at this school for a week how could you say something so reckless and-

“Thanks,” he smirks at you, noticing your frazzled appearance as he walked on hiding his own growing blush.

The next day he visited you at the clinic to properly thank you and the rest is history.

Shinsou still can’t believe that was his first time meeting you and it was so quick but impactful. He finishes reminiscing as your eyes start to flutter open. God, he’ll never get over how the sunlight dances on your eyes and how they twinkle even when you’re just waking up. “Did I wake you, kitten?”

You stretch your arms as you slowly open your eyes. Hearing his low raspy and velvet like voice in the morning is the alarm clock you never knew you needed. “No,” your voice laced with sleep, “it was more of the sun that woke me up.” You shift to face him fully on your side and smile at him lazily. His hand that was resting on your waist moves up to cup your cheek and you gladly lean into it.

“How did I get so lucky?”

“You lost in the first round of your first sports festival,” you giggle.

Purple irises roll at your comment, “whatever, c’mere.” And he lightly kisses your lips, the feeling of your soft lips on his sends him to cloud nine as he leans in for another one. “You’re lucky I love you despite the drool on your chin.”

Your eyes widen which makes him laugh a little harder. You roll around haphazardly to have your back face him as you aggressively rub your face. “Gah, pfft, Hitoshi! You should have warned me! You can’t just kiss me without telling me! I have drool on my face you butthead how could you kiss me like that?”

“Well that’s easy, kitten,” he mumbles into your back and wraps his arms around you and pulls you to face him.

“It’s because I love you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let me know what you think! I haven’t done this in so long! 😅 @kiribaku-queen @ghoularaki @whats-her-quirk @shinsorokiri @shinsouskitten @cupidcreates

#bnha x reader #bhna fluff #bhna fanfiction #shinsou x reader #shinsou hitoshi #hitoshi x reader #mha #mha fanfiction #mha reader insert #bnha reader insert #shinsou x y/n #shinsou x you #my writing #i did the thing

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bubonickitten · 4 years

Link

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Chapter 3 is up!

Chapter 1 (tumblr // AO3) | Chapter 2 (tumblr // AO3)

Full text + content warnings under the cut.

CW: brief claustrophobia; some grief and loss stuff; a few more instances of casual misgendering (not malicious; just some wrong pronouns here and there due to the speaking-in-statements thing, but thought I'd mention it just in case); a single LORGE spider. Also, Jon gets to do one (1) swear, as a treat. SPOILERS through MAG 169.

Chapter 3: Rift

Jon doesn’t remember the hill being this steep.

Or maybe he’s just winded from the long trek through the wasteland. He’d had to pass through a long stretch of territory fought over by the Buried and the Vast. The ground there was practically a minefield, pockmarked with sinkholes. They would start out as quicksand traps and suffocating tunnel entrances, only to be hollowed out into yawning chasms and cenotes, then ultimately collapsed all over again by a retaliation-minded Choke. It was an endless cycle of petty rivalry and animosity, and passing so near their battlegrounds left Jon breathless with a discordant mix of claustrophobia and agoraphobia.

Worse was when the Dark managed to sneak its way into the mix. Whether it was Too Close I Cannot Breathe or the Vast’s abyss, the Dark could always find a way to exploit subterranean spaces – and it could never resist reaching out to needle at an Avatar of the Eye, no matter how inadvisable it was to cross the Archive these days.

As Jon drew closer to Hill Top Road, he left the warzone behind for a mostly featureless landscape punctuated with the occasional foxholes of the Slaughter and pockets of the Forsaken’s fog. Eventually those too gave way to a seemingly endless dust bowl of soot and ash – a sprawling domain claimed by the Lightless Flame.

The house at Hill Top Road is the only thing still standing in the midst of kilometres of Desolation-scorched earth. The charred terrain stops abruptly at the foot of the hill, a stark line demarcating the boundary between the Blackened Earth and the territory that Annabelle Cane has staked out as her own. Jon had half-expected an invisible barrier to stop him there as well – the last time he was here, Annabelle had forbidden him from returning – but there had been no resistance when he stepped over the border.

As he hikes up the incline now, he finds himself worrying over what that might mean. Is Annabelle expecting him, inviting him in? Is she simply tolerating his presence, curious to see what he’s up to? Could he be powerful enough now that even she cannot stop him? Or is he once again wrapped up in the Web’s machinations, doing exactly what the Mother of Puppets wants?

He shakes his head. No. He and Martin talked about this. There’s no point in obsessing over the Web’s motivations, letting the memory of Annabelle’s statement paralyze him with indecision. Better to just… keep moving forward.

And it’s not like he has anything left to lose.

Jon continues up the hill, increasingly winded, his bad leg throbbing angrily, and he thinks to himself again: he really, really doesn’t remember it being this steep.

Before long, he’s standing at the threshold of the house at Hill Top Road. The dread permeating the place is just as palpable as he remembered.

He waits for the Distortion’s inevitable appearance, determined not to let her startle him this time. As if on cue, a door creaks open on the ceiling above him.

“Interesting.” Without preamble, Helen lands noiselessly on her feet beside Jon and peers around curiously. “I wondered whether Annabelle would let me in.”

So did Jon. Maybe he should be concerned about – no. He shuts down that train of thought before it can pull out of the station.

“You still haven’t explained what exactly you plan on doing here.”

Honestly, that’s mostly because Jon hasn’t figured it out yet, either. He only Knows that this is where he needs to be.

The Eye wants things to change – as much as it can be said to want anything. Setting the question of its sentience or lack thereof aside, at the Panopticon he had been able to Know things that the Beholding had previously withheld from him. He might be stronger than the other Avatars and monsters lurking about the world, but he’s not arrogant enough to believe he could overpower any of the Fears themselves. If the Ceaseless Watcher gives him access to knowledge, it’s because his Knowing will facilitate – or at least not inhibit – its plans, which means that he must have the Eye’s… blessing, to be here? He shakes his head; he’s getting caught up on semantics again.

Point is: he Asked a question and – as usual – he was given a scrap of an answer and left to puzzle the rest out for himself. All he Knows for certain is what he wants to happen, and that this is where he needs to be in order to make it happen.

“Jonathan.” Helen says his name with a playful lilt and leans further into his personal space. “Are you going to share with the class?”

Without a word, he sidesteps around her and walks further into the house. In her statement, Anya Villette had mentioned a door under the stairs leading to the basement, but the last time Jon was here, it was nowhere to be seen. He hopes it’s there this time.

“What are you looking for?”

Jon drags one hand down his face and sighs. Having Helen tag along is like taking a road trip through hell with an easily bored and… well, deeply annoying child. Huh.

“I won’t be ignored, Jon –”

Jon bristles, redirects his gaze, and stares daggers at her with a few more eyes than strictly necessary. “Some magically appearing door.”

“You aren’t being very kind to me right now, you know.” She tries to sound wounded, but really she just sounds pleased to have gotten a reaction from him.

Jon gives an irritated huff and continues forward through the entrance hall. He treads softly, all too aware of every subtle creak of a floorboard. He doesn’t know why he’s bothering muffling his footsteps. It doesn’t matter how quiet he is; Annabelle will know – probably already knows – that he’s here regardless. Still, there’s just something about the house that demands a certain amount of fearful reverence. Disturbing the silence just feels like a bad idea.

Helen doesn’t appear to have the same concerns. In fact, it almost seems like she’s going out of her way to announce their presence. Of course.

Jon catches a glimpse of the staircase as he rounds the corner and – yes, there’s a door under the stairs. A plain, painted white door with a brass handle, otherwise unremarkable and entirely unassuming.

And yet…

As he tries to approach it, he finds himself rooted to the spot, overcome with a sense of trepidation. He feels his breath coming faster, shallower; feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Every one of the Archive’s eyes locks onto the doorknob and for a moment he swears he feels tiny, feather-light legs scurrying down his spine. He pulls his pack tight against him, using the physical weight of it to dampen the tactile hallucination.

“I hate it,” Helen says darkly. Jon jumps just slightly at the break in the silence, and a few of the Archive’s eyes suspend their rapt scrutiny of the door handle to glance in her direction. Her posture is tense where she stands, staring warily at the door as if it might lunge at them. Jon has never seen the Distortion look so… unsettled.

She’s right, though. The door is wrong. More than that, it’s the exact same flavor of wrongness that he felt the first time he saw A Guest for Mr. Spider, and again when he reached out to knock on the monster’s door.

Back then, he hadn’t known that the concept of wrongness could be broken down into so many distinct subtypes: the uncanny disquietude of the Stranger feels fundamentally different from the compulsion of the coffin, the sensation of worms tunneling through flesh, the Distortion’s nonsensical corridors, the Lonely’s suffocating fog.

The pull of the Web is in a class of its own, and the sight of the door in front of him drops him right back into the memory of the day he opened the book – the day he took the first step on the winding path that led him, inevitably, to this exact moment. It’s such a fitting parallel, he wouldn’t be surprised if it was orchestrated down to the finest detail. He knows the Web plays a long game, but precisely how much of what has happened was in perfect accordance with the Web’s plans? What even is the Web’s –

No. Stop fixating on the Spider, he reprimands himself for the umpteenth time this… day? Whatever; it’s not important. He forces his legs to move.

“You’re sticking your hand in a bear trap, I hope you know.”

“I knew opening the door was a stupid thing to do,” Jon says, nonchalant. “So I opened the door.”

Helen breathes a surprised laugh. “Was that a joke?”

“The idea that this is all some grand cosmic joke,” Jon rattles off drily, “thousands of us running around spread horror and sabotaging each other pointlessly while these impossible unknowing things just lurk out there, feeding off the misery we caused –”

“Terrible.” Helen groans and puts her head in her hands. “Here I was, ready to compliment you on finally finding a sense of humor, and you have to ruin the moment with – with existentialist brooding.”

Jon chuckles quietly to himself and takes another step forward.

“Wait.” Helen reaches one long-fingered hand in Jon’s direction, then falters and pulls back. For a moment, she seems to wrestle with whether or not to continue. “What’s behind the door?”

“A scar in reality –”

“Yes, I know about the rift. What do you expect to find in it? An answer? An escape? A means of suicide?”

“A metaphysical quirk of this new reality’s divorce from the traditional concept of time.”

Jon pauses, chewing on his bottom lip as he looks inward and browses through his catalog.

“It bends and twists and returns to what it was,” he settles on eventually.

“I told you not to use my words.” Helen gives him a warning look, but it’s fleeting, because a moment later his meaning sinks in and she huffs out a short laugh of disbelief. “Wait – wait, wait, wait. You think you can… what, turn back time?”

Jon grimaces and makes a noncommittal seesawing motion with one hand.

“…could emerge back into the world that she remembered.”

Helen starts laughing in earnest now. “You think you can time travel?”

Jon just shrugs, unashamed. He knows he should feel embarrassed – back when he first took the position as Head Archivist, he would have scoffed at anyone making such a suggestion – but at this point, is it any more or less unrealistic than anything else that’s happened?

“Alright,” Helen says, stifling another giggle, “I’ll grant you that there’s a rift in space and time. People have traveled through it before.”

Jon gives an enthusiastic nod. After her encounter with the crack in the house's foundation, Anya Villette had found herself temporally displaced. What would stop Jon from also –

“However,” Helen continues, “what makes you think you’ll just rewind your position on this timeline? It could just take you to a parallel world, leaving this one behind to suffer and decay. Would you abandon what remains of humanity like that?”

Seeing as Anya Villette appeared to have also been spatially displaced, Jon has already considered this possibility. Helen probably knows that, too – she’s well-acquainted with his tendency to overthink things. She’s just trying to tap into his chronic self-loathing, demoralize him, make him doubt his own perceptions. It’s a familiar pattern, one Jon used to submit to far too easily.

“…better than staying here with this strange woman.”

“Ouch.” Helen brings a hand to her chest in mock offense. “You’re being awfully cruel today.”

Jon flashes an entirely unapologetic smile.

“I was being serious, you know.” A knowing mischief creeps into Helen’s eyes. “You’ve always been selfish, but would you really run away from your mistakes, save yourself and damn the rest?”

Unfortunately for Helen, she’s arrived too late to this particular debate. Jon already spent the entire trip here berating himself and second-guessing his conclusions, and he’s just about gotten it out of his system for the time being. Self-recrimination as an inoculation against the Distortion’s manipulations – now there’s a concept, he thinks wryly.

“Do you honestly believe you deserve to escape an apocalypse that you brought about?”

God, she’s persistent.

“Now there’s only one thing I have left that I value,” he says simply. “That I love. And I cannot lose him.”

It’s the truth: the final deciding factor for him was, as it so often is, Martin.

“You would potentially forsake this entire world just to reverse your own loss?”

“There was nothing left to save.”

It never gets easier to admit it out loud, but that doesn’t change the truth of it. This world is already forsaken. Humanity is dying out, slowly but surely, and Jon harbors a guilty feeling of relief that their torment will not be eternal after all. As far as he can See, there’s no way for him to save the ones who remain. There never was.

His power was never meant to help anyone. For a long time, the only action within his grasp was to hurt – and so, he went after those who deserved to be hurt, because the only other option was doing nothing at all. But seeking revenge never saved anyone, never even made himself feel any better. If anything, it only made him feel emptier, more and more alienated from whatever human part of him still lingered – and that was a very dangerous place to be.

And when he and Martin decided together that he needed to slow down, to maintain some distance between himself and the Eye? Well… nothing substantial changed in the slightest. He didn’t get any worse, but he also didn’t get better. The world continued to suffer just as much as if he were to sit down and take no action at all. Nothing he did or did not do made any impact whatsoever.

He Knows intimately that he cannot banish the Entities from this world as long as one person remains to feel fear. Once that last person dies, there will be no one left to save. Hell, depending on how human he still is by that time, he may very well be that last person, and the Dread Powers will just have to ration him. And why shouldn’t they? They’ve all had a taste of him more than once. He’s an unfinished meal. They could just resume hacking away at him, demanding their respective pounds of flesh one after the other until nothing remains – until finally, mercifully, the Fears themselves would wither and die as well. He just doesn’t want to consider how long that could take – no. Best not to dwell on it.

The point is, there is no future for this world. There is nothing left for him to do here. His only hope is to prevent all of this from coming to pass in the first place, and this… this is the only lead he has. And besides, Martin –

“You do realize that you have a vanishingly small chance of seeing him again, don’t you?”

“I decided to take a risk and try it anyway.”

Helen looks put out at his easy dismissal, but she really ought to know better by now, Jon thinks. He might be chronically plagued by self-hate and a visceral fear of being controlled, but Martin is his anchor in more ways than one. Their relationship is proof of Jon’s own capacity for free will, and his decision to go after Martin in the Lonely remains one of the only things he’s done where he’s never once wondered whether he made the right choice. He doesn’t think he’s ever been more confident about anything than he is about their love for each other, even if he doesn’t always feel like he deserves it. Helen really couldn’t pick a worse seed with which to sow self-doubt.

When she sees that Jon isn’t taking the bait, she changes tack.

“And assuming this scheme somehow works as you hope it does, and doesn’t just get you shunted to some hellish pocket dimension – which it almost certainly will – you do realize that your little scene with Jonah Magnus will mean nothing, don’t you? This future will be erased, he will not suffer for eternity – he won’t even remember that it was ever a possibility.”

“For all her anger, there was no thirst for revenge in the Archivist, only an eagerness to expunge an infection that had gone unnoticed for too long.”

“Then why bother confronting him? I know it wasn’t for closure – if you were at all capable of letting go or moving on, you would never have been a candidate for the Beholding in the first place, and we wouldn’t be here now.” Jon just barely manages to not flinch at that. Luckily, Helen doesn’t seem to notice that she struck a nerve, instead staring up at the ceiling in contemplation, as if trying to decipher Jon’s motivations on her own. “So, why? All those messy emotions it dredged up and for what – the drama of it all?”

“I live for the monologue,” he deadpans.

“Jonathan!” Helen gapes at him in exaggerated shock. “Was that another joke?”

She could stand to tone down the condescension, Jon thinks. It isn’t his fault if people overlook his sense of humor just because they never think to listen for it.

“Are you certain about this, Archivist? You have a history of reaching these points of no return and choosing the worst imaginable path.”

Even at the very end, the Distortion just can’t resist one last chance at undermining his confidence. Despite the cockiness underlying her taunt, Helen has a hungry, almost pleading look in her eye – desperate, like everything else in this place that feeds on fear, for scraps in the midst of a famine that will never be remedied.

Jon reaches out and grips the doorknob with one hand.

“Even the end of the world can’t stop you throwing yourself on a grenade. Can’t say I’m surprised. I’m not following you in there, though.”

“Thank heaven for small mercies, I suppose.”

“I am trying to have a heartfelt goodbye, Jonathan,” Helen says, not sounding sincere in the slightest. “I doubt this will go as you hope it will, but I’m fairly certain that no matter what happens, I won’t be seeing you again. I won’t wish you luck, but… well, it will be interesting to see whether one of your half-assed plans might pan out for once – not that they ever have gone according to plan.” When Jon’s resolve remains strong, Helen sighs – and this time, her disappointment does sound genuine. “Well, if you’re sure…” She trails off, giving him one last hopeful look – once last chance to fall apart under her skillful denigrations – before her shoulders slump in resignation.

Not content to leave it at that, though, she does offer one last parting shot: “Do say hello to the Spider for me, won’t you?”

An involuntary shudder courses down Jon’s spine as he remembers Anya Villette’s statement – the massive spider legs reaching up to pull her into the crack in the foundation – and compares it with his own memory of the book, the door, and the monster lurking within. Helen breathes a contented sigh at his ripple of unease – basically a snack for her, at Jon’s expense. Fine. She can have that last little morsel of fear from him, as a parting gift.

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” Jon says firmly, turning the handle. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

And, oh, it does.

Miraculously, Helen allows him to have the last word. As he pushes open the door to the basement, he hears Helen’s door creak open in unison. By the time he’s staring down the stairs into the dark, her door has snapped shut and popped out of existence.

The staircase pitches down, down, down, stretching far deeper than it should. It’s too dark to see much of anything, and it takes a full minute of descent until he notices that there’s a slight curve to it. With every step, the air grows warmer and more stifling. The revolting sensation of walking through cobwebs becomes a constant, but any time he reaches up to brush away the web clinging to him, he feels nothing but his own bare skin.

A few minutes in, his bad leg starts twinging again, and he holds on to the wall to steady himself. Before long, his mind begins to wander to the horrifying possibility that the staircase is interminable, and he’s overcome by an image of a funnel web spider waiting patiently for unsuspecting prey. He tries to push the thought away. Just keep moving.

Between the lack of visibility and being lost in his own head, he doesn’t notice the sharp turn in the staircase until he plows right into the wall, a sharp pain erupting in his left shoulder from the collision. He throws one hand back to steady himself and only barely manages to stay on his feet, his bad leg protesting as he throws his weight into it. After briefly taking inventory of himself and experimentally putting weight on his leg again – painful, but not unbearable – he gropes blindly for the wall again and uses it to guide himself forward, more slowly this time. It isn’t long before the stone of the wall gives way to cool, damp earth, and he shivers with the memory of the Buried.

After several more sharp, nearly 90-degree twists and turns, a faint glow starts to permeate the darkness. A few minutes later, the staircase opens up into a large, dimly-lit space, garlanded with spider silk. The ceiling, walls, and floor are composed of tightly-packed dirt, and Jon has to fight back a rush of claustrophobic panic at the thought of being surrounded on all sides by the crushing earth. It’s short-lived, as it’s crowded out by a much deeper, more primal fear when he sees the fissure in the ground ahead.

It’s a repulsive, crooked thing, oozing with a pervasive, tangible feeling of wrongness. It should not be there. It cannot be there. And yet there it is, boldly existing where it has no right or reason to be, a gnawing, open, inflamed wound in the fabric of reality, pulling him toward it like a black hole. It’s a compulsion stronger than the coffin, an abomination more uncanny than the Stranger, a malice deeper than any Dark, an inevitability on par with Terminus itself.

Jon hates it. At his first glimpse of it, every one of the Archive’s eyes fly open, greedily drinking in the oppressive presence of something so unfamiliar and anomalous, leeching off of Jon’s terror as he beholds it. The scrutiny is fleeting, though, as the sight of it turns corrosive and blistering; all at once, the eyes shrink away and retreat, like a school of fish spotting a bird of prey swooping down for a meal. It takes some of the edge off, having fewer eyes with which to see the thing, but it still weighs him down with dread and revulsion.

Jon doesn’t know how long he’s stood there, staring unblinkingly at the fault line, before he senses a presence – something colossal and hungry and wrong, malevolence and foreboding given physical form – climbing inexorably toward him. He hears a faint rustling, the whisper of tiny avalanches of dirt scraped loose and sent sliding down the walls of the crevice. He knows exactly what to expect, and still he isn’t prepared when the first of the spider’s legs peeks up over the lip of the fissure.

How is it that after a lifetime to process a childhood trauma, it still throttles his heart and squeezes the air from his lungs at the mere thought of it? How is it that, despite being the most formidable thing in this world outside of Fear itself, he feels as small and helpless now as he did on the day he met his first of many monsters? Why is he just standing here, letting those hairy, spindly limbs hover and curl around him like an enormous clawed hand, waiting for a fate that is as unknowable as it is inevitable?

Focus, Jon thinks to himself. Listen to the quiet.

He slowly reaches into his jacket and breathes a sigh of relief as his fingers close around the notebook safeguarded there. It’s Martin’s, full of poems and sketches and stream-of-consciousness journal entries. Jon has had it with him for a long time now, but he’s never been able to bring himself to look inside it. Martin would occasionally share its contents with him – mostly completed poems, and only occasionally works in progress, as he was always self-conscious about his creative process – but Jon doesn’t want to accidentally see something that Martin would have preferred to keep to himself. Martin might not be beside him right now, but he still deserves to have his privacy respected.

Still, for Jon, just having it with him is a physical reminder of his anchor, and running his thumb over the cover grounds him in the present. He closes his eyes and looks inward.

The Archive gropes blindly for something solid amidst the noise, some elemental truth to serve as a starting point in the chaotic tangle choking this place. The edges of his mind brush against thread after thread and none of them are what he’s looking for. They stick to him, filling his head with cotton, making him sluggish and confused, obfuscating his sight. The Spider watches as he flails, becoming more and more snarled in the web.

“I closed my eyes and remembered in as much detail and with as much love as I could muster in my despair,” he whispers to himself, anchoring himself in the truth of the statement. He swallows a terrified whimper as something coarse and fuzzy brushes against his face, and he weaves a command into his next words: “Eventually, I opened my eyes again –”

The Archive obeys, hundreds of eyes materializing on his skin and blinking open in the space around him, grotesque satellites of varying sizes all seizing on single question, and suddenly he can See –

There.

A single thread, out of place among the rest, pulled taut and leading down into the deep gloom of the chasm. He spares a brief thought as to its origin point – Is its anchor here, now, or do its roots begin on the other side? – before silencing it. It’s not a question that needs answering right now. The Beholding objects; Jon reflexively shuts it down and takes an aggravated swipe at the nearest cluster of eyes he can reach, like swatting at a swarm of mosquitoes. He doesn’t think it actually does anything concrete, but when they disperse it brings him a small measure of satisfaction all the same.

He gives an experimental tug on the thread and – it feels right. That’s good, right? Well, he supposes it could be the Web trying to trick him into –

God, he’s like a dog with a bone. He could be trapped in a burning building and find part of his mind wandering off to idly ponder the melting point of steel –

…around 1370 °C for carbon steel; between 1400 and 1530°C for stainless steel, depending on the specific alloy and grade…

– which, yes, he has done. It’s a good way to dissociate from a crisis. Unfortunately, it’s also a good way to get killed, and the giant spider is still there, Jonathan, focus.

He holds fast to the thread – make a path for yourself, tune it to the frequency you need –

“Everything about being with him felt so natural that when he told me he loved me,” he tells himself, louder this time, “it only came as a surprise to realize that we hadn’t said it already.”

– and he follows it, stepping carefully around and between the spider’s legs. He has no idea why it isn’t attacking him – what if this is exactly what Annabelle – no. He shakes his head as if it will jostle the thought loose. Just be thankful for it and keep moving before the damn thing changes its mind.

Moments or hours or perhaps days later, he’s standing at the precipice of the fissure and looking down. Several eyes are riveted on the massive hairy form poised above him, but most are staring into the unknowable darkness with a gnawing, longing fascination. He stands frozen in place, torn between an overwhelming urge to flee and an overpowering need to Know what’s down there: something new, something fresh, something different – any reprieve at all from the excruciating monotony of this nightmare world.

The spider shifts above him. It’s now or never. He has nothing to lose, and if there’s any chance at all of changing this doomed future – of seeing Martin again…

“Sometimes you just have to leave,” he reminds himself, shutting his human eyes tight, one hand clutching the notebook and the other clenching into a fist until the fingernails cut into the palm. “Even if what’s on the other side scares you.”

He takes one last deep breath, thinks of Martin – safe hands, warm eyes, gentle touch – and he takes a leap of faith.

Jon can’t see anything. He can’t See, either. There is an incessant, high-pitched whine screaming in his ears and drowning out his thoughts. When he moves to put his hands over his ears, he realizes all at once that he can’t feel his body. He has no sense of up or down, no fingers to flex, no breath to hold, and – and he can’t See.

It’s… terrifying. It’s liberating. It hurts, but in the same way that his first gulp of fresh air hurt after three days asphyxiating in the Buried.

He doesn’t know how long he floats there in that near-senseless limbo, but between one moment and the next a blanket of fog drops over him and the shrill static is muffled. Through the haze, he can just barely make out a voice, coming from so far away – like he’s drowning, and someone is speaking to him from above the water’s surface. He drifts and listens in a daze as the voice cuts in and out.

“– just – thought I’d – by. Check in – how you’re –”

It’s a nice voice.

“– really need you –”

A safe voice.

“– Jon.”

Wait.

“– bad. I – how much longer we can –”

Wait, it’s – that’s Martin’s voice.

“We – I need you.”

It’s Martin. Martin!

Martin is here, he’s here – Jon doesn’t know where here is, but it doesn’t matter, because Martin is here, and – and Jon is so overwhelmed with euphoria that he isn’t actually processing what’s being said. Calm down, focus – focus on the words –

“And I – I know that you’re not –”

Oh.

“I know there’s no way to –”

Oh, no.

“But we need you, Jon.”

All at once, Jon knows where – when he is.

“Jon, please, just – please.”

No. No, no, no, no –

“If – if there’s anything left in you that can still see us, or –”

Martin, I’m here!

“– or some power that you’ve still got, or –”

I’m here, I’m here, I’m here –

“– or, or something, anything, please! Please.”

Martin’s voice breaks, and Jon’s heart fractures with it.

“I – I can’t –”

Jon can just barely make out the buzz of a phone and – oh.

“I’m – I’m actually with him now.”

Martin!

“You were right.” A pause, and a heavy sigh. “I – will they be safe?”

Peter Lukas. It’s Peter Lukas. Peter Lukas is still alive, Peter Lukas is hunting Martin, Peter Lukas wants to feed him to the Lonely, Peter Lukas is –

“Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”

Martin, don’t –

“Yeah. Sure thing.”

Martin!

“I’m sorry.”

Jon tries to scream, to reach out, to do anything at all, but he doesn’t have a body and he doesn’t have a voice and he can’t See –

“Goodbye, Jon.”

Martin, look at me! Hear me, please - see me!

He tries to thread a command through the words, but the compulsion doesn't come through, and -

Jon hears the rustle of clothing as Martin stands to leave, followed by the soft click of the door as it closes behind him.

Fuck.

End Notes:

me: i could go into some long-winded exposition about the space-time continuum also me: OR, alternatively, i can handwave it and say It's The Power Of Love, Don't Even Worry About It

anyway, my gay little heart knows what it's about.

- Jon’s dialogue is taken from the statements in the following episodes: MAG 146; 054; 151; 139; 168; 101; 134; 010; 037; 008; 019; 167; 108; 103; 146; 048; 013; 146.

- Jon gets some original verbal dialogue starting next chapter. Thought I'd mention it just in case anyone is getting tired of the Archive-speak (though there will still be some of that). :P

- Psst, if you want to read a detour about Jon and Martin's talk about Annabelle and free will and Not Obsessing Over The Web, I wrote that here. (I'm linking it here because it actually originally started as part of this fic but I decided to make it its own thing because my ADHD brain ran with it and it was waaaaay too much of a tangent sdsdhshgh)

#tma #the magnus archives #tma fic #jonmartin #long post #spoilers through MAG 169 #tma spoilers

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mashkaroom · 4 years

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This isn’t related to anything, but frozen 2 was actually...pretty good of a movie, and you can literally see the disney profit model holding it back. firstly, the music was really good -- i was really impressed with the writing team and with the vocal performances, especially by idina menzel. the songs that didn’t make it in because the plot was rearranged were also excellent. wrt to the visuals, i’m not the biggest fan of this specific animation style, but it’s clear it’s very well done -- i’ve no choice but to be impressed. the plot was whatever (also they fully put a couple of trolls in charge of the kindom for a bit -- is there no fucking line of succession in this goddamn kingdom?? maybe the plot of the movie should have been establishing a functional bureaucracy) and they really yada-yada-ed the magic system, which was basically of the central conceit of the movie so...why did they not put more effort into it? the explanation, such as it was, of the magic system was both confusing and ultimately pretty meaningless -- it added next to nothing of value to the lore or theme or worldbuilding. the themes were clearly meant for a more mature audience (which is i guess what you get for waiting 7 years to make a sequel [which btw just wrenched out a memory out of me that frozen 1 came up literally constantly in my 7th grade latin class -- i cannot emphasize enough how bizarre of an experience learning a dead language throughout the entirety of your teenage years along with 400 more of your cohort is]) -- but anyway, they establish all these themes and then don’t commit to them. Like, the central plot conflict of the movie is literally colonialism lmao. it’s such a strange place to discuss it. My suspicion is that they decided right away to go with a “connecting with mother” storyline, since the “women in the same family connecting with each other” bit worked so well in the first movie; then they were like “is this too basic?” and decided that they should wrap that into a “reckoning with ancestry” thread to cash into that “young leftist with white guilt” market. Then they had somebody on the writing staff who was like “what if we made this about colonialism?” So re: those elements, first of all the mother plotline is boring as shit. Like it doesn’t ring true even to losing a loved one early, but it especially rings soooo hollow wrt the actual relationship that is portrayed in the first movie between elsa and her parents. like we see the parents be so misguided it borders on abusive. and that’s a really interesting dynamic, story-wise, bc the parents are dead and can’t redeem themselves but the baggage they left behind is still there, so the burden of processing that falls exclusively on the daughters. i dare say this is something probably relatable to many of us, bc it’s my sense that most people grow up with pretty misguided parents! (lowkey i feel like the best parenting i’ve seen in my circle are parents who basically went off of vibes rather than idk a philosophy or whatever) i actually would have loved to see a children’s movie address dealing with parents in a nuanced way that isn’t just “one of us is right and the other is wrong” but rather addresses what responsibilities parents and children have to each other, how to navigate intent versus effect, what the value (or lack thereof) of forgiveness is, how to uncover your identity when your entire life was shaped by societal and parental expectations, etc. And the Frozen premise is ideally suited for this! Moreover, a lot of these beats actually DO happen in the movie! Into the unknown is basically elsa trying and failing to convince herself that she wants the life she has and any thoughts to the contrary should be dismissed (and it’s gay as hell, but we’ll get to that later). The climax of show yourself literally says that it was the truth about herself rather than her mother that will bring her peace. But all of these beats are facilitated supernaturally rather than by the very fitting preexisting character background, which makes it lack the satisfaction you’d expect in such a resolution. it never features any reckoning with what made her feel the way she did in the first place -- a projection of the mother’s face singing the climactic realization literally undercuts the entire plotline. like here you can see how basically being propaganda for the american lifestyle (in this case the nuclear family e.g.) undercuts their message. this predictably only gets more egregious when they attempt to tackle colonialism. so quick summary of this plotline: anna and elsa’s grandfather basically genocided an indigenous people -- the northuldra -- after tricking them into building a dam that stifles the power of the forest or something. also their mother was actually northuldra. also magic comes from the northuldra forest? it would probably be pretty problematic re: the magical native stereotype if it was clearer what was going on lmao. at the end, anna breaks the dam even though it’ll flood Arendelle; however, elsa (who was literally frozen because of the sins of the past) swoops in at the last moment and freezes the wave so it causes no damage. However, in an earlier version of the story, the wave actually DOES destroy Arendelle and then they rebuild it with a mix of Arendellian and Northuldran architectural styles. this version actually proposed a genuine vision for how to deal with the impacts of colonialism instead of the final movie where sisterly love absolves everyone of consequences.

ok, so about the gay: i know people read a coming out into let it go, and maybe this is just cause i watched frozen 1 when i was still straight, but i didn’t really see it. but the lyrics in frozen 2 elsa’s songs match up so well with the coming out experience, i have difficulty imagining the song-writers weren’t aware of it, especially since people were already calling for elsa to be gay. Like let’s take a look at these songs -- into the unknown first. She sings

“Everyone I've ever loved is here within these walls I'm sorry, secret siren, but I'm blocking out your calls I've had my adventure, I don't need something new I'm afraid of what I'm risking if I follow you”

This idea of having being afraid of ruining relationships even (and especially) with the people you love most by coming out is something that a lot of queer people can relate to. Then she sings:

“Are you here to distract me so I make a big mistake? Or are you someone out there who's a little bit like me? Who knows deep down I'm not where I'm meant to be? Every day's a little harder as I feel your power grow Don't you know there's part of me that longs to go”

How much do i need to explain this? (like all my 7 followers are some form of queer anyway lol) But again this battle of trying to hide but knowing deep down that you can’t, longing for “someone a little bit like me” -- it’s classic queer. Then she sings a bridge-type thing:

“Are you out there? Do you know me? Can you feel me? Can you show me?”

I mean, again, what is this but longing for community. Then in the climactic song “show yourself”, she sings this:

“Something is familiar Like a dream, I can reach but not quite hold I can sense you there Like a friend I've always known”

this is literally just about reading stone butch blues.

The climactic lyric is “You are the one you've been waiting for all your life” (sung to her rather than by her) and i mean again, this is about finally giving yourself permission to live as your true self. And not gonna lie, i dug that shit. it felt quite authentic. obviously they didn’t actually make her gay, bc of course, but she is gay in my heart!

Ok, so what would have made the movie live up to its full potential?

1) fixing that stuff i already said about the parents; it felt like such bs that anna and elsa were dealing with ancestral sins but also their parents were saints whose love fixed everything? how much more interesting would it have been if reckoning with their parents’ impacts on them led them to reckoning with the impacts of their entire ancestry and in turn their society? if reckoning with their personal responsibilities to each other led them to consider their society’s responsibility to fix the past wrongs that allowed it to flourish? this wouldn’t even be counter to disney’s individualism, but it allows for a slight reconceptualization of it that i think would feel fresh.

2) having actual consequences for the colonialism and genocide

3) either cutting all the new magic system stuff or developing it in a way that in turn helps develop the themes. frankly, the “sometimes people are born with magic” that was implied in movie one was enough.

4) making elsa gay, and i say this not just because i want gay characters but because that genuinely makes sense within the story

5) basically, the central theme should have been “i have all this baggage and i can’t resolve it by looking for answers only within my society; in order to be fully at peace with myself, i must work to right the wrongs of my society that obscured the different ways of knowledge that could help people like me; sometimes you must go into the unknown in order to understand the known” which is a message i think very well suited for the united states!

#In general Disney has created this really cowardly mold for children’s media #where the messages rarely go beyond the individual and are universally basic as shit #and that comes from a fundamental lack of respect for the audience #people keep telling me that pixar has deep multidimensional messages #and i’m sorry to say that your standards are just low #like people keep citing inside out to me and the message of that was literally “it’s okay to be sad sometimes”#cheburashka had a more complex message than that.#i know nobody asked for this long-ass analysis #and i myself watched frozen 2 in like may so idek why i started thinking about it again now #but it's just such a weird yet revealing movie #frozen 2 should have been abolishing prisons #but like seriously idk where they pulled colonialism from #but if they wanted to address a serious issue #prisons would have been perfect #because elsa basically spent half her life in a form of incarceration for being a perceived societal menace #i guess that's more difficult to weave into a story arc #oh holy fuck this reminds me that when i was 16 i was paid (very little might i say but nevertheless)#to 'ghostwrite' a witch cozy #whatever the fuck that is #but literally 'witch cozy' was the entirety of the prompt #no plot or characters or anything #there were 3 novellas #in the first one they made me changed the gay love story to a het one lmaoooo #in book 2 she busts a crime ring or sth and then realizes that social determinants made them commit crimes #and then in book 3 she becomes a prison abolitionist lmaooo #she starts running a rehabilitation program in the local prison using theater #this character was so self-insert it was ridiculous #no offense at whoever's writing the flash but 16-yo disaster child me had 15x more social consciousness than yall #sorry to analyze a different piece of media in the tags for another long-ass media analysis #but in s1 of the flash the local prison can't handle the new metahumans

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wingsoffireconfessions · 6 years

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Image transcripts below the break:

Anonymous said: January 17th 2019, 6:04:12 pm · 8 days ago

In my humble opinion I think people in the fandom should realize what characteristics of dragons should be compared to humans and what shouldn't. Things like morals and other things that come with sentience is a human thing. Biology and genetics is purely based off animals. Don't pull a "they're just animals" when referring to stuff that fits with morals and vice versa.

Anonymous said: January 17th 2019, 10:04:27 am · 9 days ago

I disagree with the hybrid discourse. The original tribes are distinct species-different appearances beyond just color, as in physically diverse bodies. Different abilities, like producing venom or fire/icebreath, or needing less oxygen. They're not meant to parallel races irl and I don't think it should be such a big deal that hybrid have defects (ice breath + fire breath = probably not healthy) because they obviously have more differences than human races, who are all the same species.

Anonymous said: January 17th 2019, 6:21:54 pm · 8 days ago

I don't know comparing hybrids between different dragons to different races of people makes me uncomfortable... Different races of people are still people, they shouldn't be seen as completely different species with alien biology to each other.

Anonymous said: January 17th 2019, 6:08:52 pm · 8 days ago

Hey, you wanted mixed people to voice their opinions, so here i am: the dragons in wings of fire are distinct species and comparing them to real human races feels more racist than anything tui wrote. They're animals, not humans, and I resent being told that I'm the same as something akin to a dog mutt. They're species. Not races.

Anonymous said: January 23rd 2019, 5:23:47 am · 3 days ago

I think one of the reasons people enjoy making multitribes so much is because it allows them to be much more creative with their designs. Canon is just so limited and people are pressured to keep to canon when designing a character and people who don't do it the "Right Way" are often criticized for it. But if your dragon is a multitribe? You can make them look like whatever and no one can complain.

[Note added by mod in red: * I’m going to reply to this one below the read more + transcripts]

Anonymous said: January 20th 2019, 10:16:29 pm · 5 days ago

another mixed anon - im mixed (hispanic/white) and ive never really. been bothered by mixed tribes being called hybrids, but yeah??? like it's weird. they're all the same species.

[End image transcripts]

As I said before, I’m not going to speak on the human race to dragon tribe equivalent or lack thereof, however, in direct response to the notes about mixed characters being the only way to make creative designs, that is quite simply wrong. As far as I have seen, characters with strange designs recieve the same amount of critical or positive feedback regardless of what the cause of those traits is, and the people who are critical of designs not sticking to canon are probably the kind of people who follow only Joy Ang’s art (and also don’t pay attention to the fact that the official art is not, in most cases, actually how the characters are described in the books. Canonical Tsunami has a green belly, for starters.)

Your characters break canon by existing outside of the text anyway. There is literally no reason to stick religiously to Joy Ang’s renditions, because those aren’t even the only canon versions. As an example, here’s the North American art by Joy Ang compared to the localized covers in other areas - which are all canonical representations of SeaWings.

Canon is not consistent. It hasn’t ever been. Anyone who sticks to making SandWings only pale yellow and gets mad at other people for changing that is a bore. Really, anyone who gets mad at anyone for making their ocs look fun is a bore. Don’t do that. You are the master of your own creations and if that means you give your dragons fun colors you can literally just do that. Tsunami is light blue in official North American art, dark blue in the UK art, blue and purple in the German art, and blue and green in the actual text. There are no rules. Just make your characters look fun.

#wings of fire #wof #mixed characters

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skeletonscribbles · 6 years

Note

I'M SO GREEDY, I WANNA REQUEST SO MANY. Reddie #11, or #9. Whichever you prefer. :D

I will fill ANY request for you, my beautiful friend. You’re never greedy - just say the word.

I got another request for #9, so this one is straight #11 - “you owe me a kiss” ;)(the rest of the prompts are here in case anyone is wondering/has a request)

I call her: not just a river in egypt…and here she is

I’m not like that.

Those four words had become the mantra of Richie Tozier’s high school experience.

I’m not like that.

His parents wanted him to go to college. Wentworth was specifically interested - seemed to think that Richie was similar enough to him that dentistry was on the table as a potential career option for his son.

Dentistry was NOT on the table - or in the kitchen, or even in the basement of Richie’s mind. No career was, really. All he wanted to do was tell jokes and listen to the radio. There wasn’t a major for that, or even a school, in spite of the fact that his grades were pretty uniformly excellent.

I’m not like that.

Even shittier than Went’s dentistry bid was the fact that because he was decent at school, his teachers kept trying to nominate him for stuff, or pull him aside and lecture him on his potential. Mrs. Campanella, his English language and literature teacher, told him that his essays were good enough to submit for scholarships or other prizes, and Mr. Browne, his chemistry teacher, wanted him to join the track team to get him to, quote unquote, let some excess energy out instead of bringing it all to class. Richie had thanked Mr. Browne, given him two middle fingers, and then skipped his class for the next week and a half. He still had a 96 average for the quarter, and a 98 for the year.

I’m not like that.

Finally, and maybe most importantly, there was the tiny, miniscule, all-encompassing matter of his love-life.

Well, actually, it was more of a “lack thereof” situation. Richie hadn’t had a crush on a girl since the middle of ninth-grade, and it was freaking him the fuck out.

For the first four months of his high school existence, he’d been completely, utterly, and irrevocably in love with Brenda Arrowsmith. She was the sun, the moon, the stars, and most notably, the girl in their grade whose tits had developed first. It was only natural that Richie’s feelings would follow.

After the six-thousandth time that Brenda rejected his attempts to talk to her in the hallways before school (or at lunch, or in study hall), though, he figured that the tits weren’t worth it. He didn’t really know her anyway, he reasoned. She was probably a bitch, or she didn’t brush her teeth…or both, or some other gross thing, who was to say. It took him a couple of months, but by February, he was good and over Brenda - and if he still stopped to check her out every once in a while, it was out of artistic appreciation, nothing more.

After that, he’d elected to spend most of his time with his friends, because he knew them, he loved them, and they were more than enough to occupy his interest until (he figured) the next girl came along.

He hadn’t banked on the next girl taking so long. It was more than two years later now, and the fabled next girl still had yet to show. It was enough to make any man a little desperate, and Richie was no exception to that rule - his poor hormones were being neglected entirely.

It stood to reason, then, that the current confusion was probably hormonal payback for the last two years of dry spell. (That was what Richie was adamantly trying to tell himself, anyway.)

It was late June, and junior year had just wrapped up. The Losers had long since completed their second-to-last school supply dumping, complete with a run-in with Belch Huggins, and had moved on to their usual summer routines: either crashing at the Hanscoms’, cruising through downtown Derry and complaining about having nothing to do, or laying out in the sunshine at the quarry. Today had been a long day of quarry-ing, and Richie knew for a fact that he was sunburnt as shit. His body was already starting that hot-cold weirdness that happened whenever he forgot to reapply sunscreen at least eight times.

He’d been a little too distracted to care about his skin.

They’d all been swimming in their underwear for years - since they were kids, they’d foregone bathing suits in favor of whatever it was they had under their clothes at the time. It used to be a matter of not knowing when they were going to make the trek down to the quarry, but now it was a collective courtesy to Ben, whose mother couldn’t afford to get him a suit that fit. They never talked about it, they just dutifully peeled off their clothes whenever they were headed for the water.

Richie had looked idly down the row of his friends before they launched themselves over the cliff, expecting the same boring mix of solid colored boxers and briefs, but had instead been hit straight-on with a startling sight, which cued up a startling remembrance.

Eddie’s mom didn’t know what size he was anymore.

Eddie had never been allowed to shop for his own clothes, and wouldn’t, ever, so long as he lived in Sonia’s house. The poor boy had been pleading with Richie to consider going to college with him for almost the entirety of junior year, because he desperately needed to escape from under his mother’s thumb and he didn’t want to do it alone. “Please, Rich,” he’d begged, “she doesn’t even know that I’ve grown three inches up and one out this year, and now all my pants are too small…”

He was right about that, and Richie had spent the last few months teasing him about seeing his ankles…but now that it was evident that Eddie’s pants weren’t the only articles of clothing that were too small on him, Richie, for once in his life, had no joke for the situation. Eddie’s briefs were tight - the waistband was cinched almost uncomfortably around his stomach, and the rest left very little to the imagination. It was nothing Richie hadn’t seen before, but for some reason, he couldn’t tear his eyes from where the faded fabric was stretched taut against….against….

No. No way. He wasn’t LIKE that.

Before he had time to thoroughly beat himself up for the thoughts he was having, he’d been shoved into the water by the quick hands of Stanley Uris, who tacked on a “Think fast!” about thirty seconds too late. The cold water did nothing to shock Richie out of his dilemma, and when he surfaced, spluttering, he’d felt a little bit like he was still drowning…only, different.

The rest of the day had been full of similar little moments - Eddie in the sunshine, glowing in the light, Eddie laughing at something Mike said (why Mike and not ME, Richie’s traitorous brain screamed), the softness of Eddie’s voice when he gently reminded Richie to reapply sunscreen on his shoulders, the care that Eddie took with each of his friends.

I’m not like that, I’m not like that, I’m not LIKE that–

“Richie?” Ben was standing over him, frowning at his shoulders with obvious concern. “You okay? You’ve been quiet…and I don’t know if anyone told you, but you’re starting to–”

“Beyond starting to burn, Benny boy,” Richie confirmed miserably. “Gonna be a regular Maine steamed lobster for the next few days. I’ll be by in the morning to wrap myself in blankets and hide myself on your couch while the rest of you watch An Officer and a Gentleman a-fucking-gain…”

“Bev’s coming, you ass,” Ben reminded him, nudging him a little with his foot. “She hasn’t seen it yet - and it’s one of my favorites.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “Sap.”

“Don’t blame me for your lack of taste,” Ben tutted, shaking his head. “I asked if everything was okay.”

Ben punctuated his question by looking over at where Eddie was examining rocks with Bill, Mike, and Stan, and oh, fuck no. Sometimes Ben’s all-knowing attitude towards the relationship dynamics of their group was awesome…and sometimes it was actually the worst.

“I’m great,” Richie said loudly, glaring furiously up at Ben. “Hungry as fuck, though. I’ll kiss the next person that offers me a bite to eat, I swear to fucking–”

The corners of Ben’s mouth twisted up into a strange smile, and Richie was seized with cold fear. He had a feeling he knew what Ben was thinking about doing, and he almost couldn’t believe it. Such behavior was beneath Ben, surely - Stan or Bill would have done it without hesitation, but Ben wouldn’t betray him, right?

“Hey, Eddie,” Ben called, and Eddie looked up from his rocks, frowning over at Ben and Richie. “You packed snacks, right?”

“My mom shoved a bunch of Hostess food at me before I left the house, yeah,” Eddie confirmed. “Said she didn’t want it in the house any more. She’s all mad at herself because she binged a whole box of Ring Dings yesterday. Why, you hungry?”

Ben looked down at Richie, looking a little guilty, but mostly bemused, and Richie wasn’t sure if he’d ever felt so betrayed before in his life.

“I’ll kill you, Hanscom,” he whispered, eyes glued to Eddie as Eddie’s feet began to move in their direction.

“Not me,” Ben responded to Eddie, and then smiled and backed up a little bit. Eddie’s eyes flickered from Ben to Richie, and Richie could almost see the panic make its way across Eddie’s face like an ocean wave when he took in the condition of Richie’s chest and shoulders.

“Oh, Richie, you’re burnt! Here, I have lotion in my bag…and snacks, too, if you want. You like Twinkies, right?”

Eddie quickly grabbed his bag from off of his towel and began rifling through it, and Richie tried and failed to keep his eyes away from the flex of Eddie’s thighs as he bent over. Ben had disappeared, presumably while Richie’s eyes and mind were occupied by Eddie’s fussing, and Richie found himself kind of impressed with the whole situation in spite of himself. Ben was a lot more crafty than Richie had given him credit for, it seemed.

“Here.” Eddie finally located what he was looking for and tossed it at Richie’s feet. Richie picked up Eddie’s tub of aloe tenuously and opened it, swiping his fingers through the slimy substance and quietly smearing it along his collarbones. He ignored the Twinkies that Eddie had also tossed over entirely, even though his stomach was practically screaming for them.

“Thanks,” Richie said quietly, not looking at Eddie. He couldn’t look at Eddie any more today, because if he did, admissions would have to be made, and there was no fucking way that was going to happen. He wasn’t like that.

“Richie!” Stan and Bill were making their way back over, with Mike and Ben in tow. Richie had literally no idea what magic Ben had performed to teleport himself back there, but it didn’t matter now, because Richie had bigger things to contend with - namely, a very smug Stanley Uris, whose voice was dripping with glee as he asked, “Is it true that you told Ben you’d kiss the next person that fed you?”

Eddie’s sharp inhale was almost painfully audible, and Richie winced when he saw Eddie’s face turn an embarrassed red out of the corner of his eye.

“I couldn’t do that to Eds,” Richie said quickly, trying to sound more lighthearted than he was actually feeling. “He’d probably catch something from me, given that he tells me every day that I’m filthy and disease-riddled. Also, this mouth is the property of Sonia K., and I really couldn’t betray her like this - not with her own son…”

Eddie, surprisingly, didn’t try and stop Richie’s tirade or chastise Richie for being vulgar. Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest slowly, taking a deep breath like he was trying to stabilize himself without his inhaler. Richie chanced a glance at Eddie’s face, and felt his heart stutter at the sight - the poor boy was clearly trying to bury a response, but his eyes betrayed him. They were glassy and squinted, almost as if….as if….

No. Eddie wasn’t like that either. Was he…?

“It’s time to go home, right?” Eddie asked suddenly, voice disarmingly shaky. “We should go? Stan, do you have–”

“Already on it,” Stan said quickly, looking surprisingly remorseful. He gave Mike a meaningful look, and Mike shook his head, raised his eyebrows at Richie, and then turned his attention back towards Stan.

“You get the bag, I’ll get the towels?”

“Sounds great,” said Stan, and the two of them went to collect belongings, with Eddie anxiously scuttling along after them.

Richie was left to be stared down by Bill and Ben, who were both looking at him like he’d embarrassed them. He’d been on the receiving end of this look a zillion times, but for whatever reason, this time felt different, and Richie found himself wanting to look away.

Bill seemed to speak for both of them when he said, “Grow up, Ruh-Richie.”

Richie didn’t respond, because he couldn’t. He couldn’t grow up. Growing up meant accepting responsibility for things, and there were certain things that he had absolutely no intention of coming to terms with.

“It’s okay,” Ben told him kindly.

It wasn’t okay. He wasn’t like that.

That said, the less they knew, the better things would be for him…so….

“Let’s go get dinner,” he said, effectively closing the conversation.

–

27 years later, Richie still had yet to take Bill’s advice.

Six out of seven of them were back in Derry for the Losers Club reunion that none of them actually wanted to attend. It was a different six than it had been that day in the quarry - they had Beverly, this time, and Stan had been lost along the wayside (Richie didn’t want to call it what it was yet; he wasn’t ready), but the energy was not at all dissimilar to that particular summer day in June.

Well, actually, the interdimensional demon part was putting something of a damper on things, but that being what it was, the vibe was close enough.

In fact, if Richie closed his eyes and let his imagination take over, it was all too easy to slip back into being sixteen again. The wind against the tall grass of the Barrens made a very specific sound, and that partnered with the bossy tirade that Bill was currently on gave the whole scenario an early 1990s vibe that was making Richie feel…nervous, for some reason.

No. Not just some reason. His heart wasn’t hammering outrageously against his chest for just some reason.

When he opened his eyes, Eddie Kaspbrak was looking back at him, and the familiar gaze was like an electric shock to Richie’s system.

Fuck. He’d spent his entire adult life trying to convince himself he was a certain way, and all it had taken Eddie to undo years and years’ worth of progress was a single glance.

I’m not like that.

No, no, no. He knew better than that now - knew better than to deny what was unmistakably there, at least to himself.

Out loud, however…well, the possibilities for what he could say out loud were endless.

“–split up,” Bill was saying, voice firmer and more confident than it had ever been in his youth. The stutter was mostly gone, now, and Bill claimed that it was completely gone outside of Derry. Richie looked forward to testing whether or not that was true after everything they had to do in Derry was said and done…if there was an after, anyway. (Again, Richie wasn’t much for dwelling on the nasty parts of things. He’d think about it later. Only actions in the now.) “Me and Mike, Ben and B-Bev, Richie and Eddie? Just to see. Report b-back in an hour.”

“Can do, boss,” Ben said, looking not-so-secretly thrilled to have a moment with Beverly, who was smiling over at him with undisguised fondness.

“Richie? Eddie?” Bill looked between the two of them, seemingly trying to assess the situation he’d created. “All right?”

Richie looked at Eddie in the sunlight - his hair was haloed in it to the point where it almost looked angelically blonde - and swallowed his fear as best he could.

“We’ll be good,” Richie promised, avoiding everyone’s eyes and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Yeah,” Eddie said softly, “that’ll probably work out just fine. What time do you want us back?”

“Two,” Bill repeated. “Good luck.” He turned on his heel and walked off after Mike, and Richie and Eddie were left alone together.

This was going to be absolutely unbearable. Richie was struck by a sudden memory - a conversation he’d had with Bill and Ben about growing up - and wished in that moment that he never had. He had been right - adulthood had provided him with realizations he didn’t want and accompanying responsibilities, and he wished he’d had the option to opt out of the whole thing. It didn’t seem worth it.

Better, he thought as Eddie walked towards him, all nerves and sharp angles and sweetness, to remain in that childhood denial than to face the reality of what lay thick in the air between the two of them.

“You ready to go, Spaghetti?” Richie asked, feeling the old name slip though his lips before he’d even really remembered it.

Eddie stared back at him, lips drawn into a tight line. “No nicknames.”

“No promises on that,” Richie said, not trusting himself to keep ‘Eds’ and ‘Spaghetti’ out of his mouth. “Any place in particular that you think is worth exploring?”

Eddie thought for a moment. “The quarry.”

That hadn’t been what Richie was expecting. He cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You saw the demon thing at the quarry?”

“No, never,” Eddie said, finally allowing his face to relax - and was that the ghost of a smile threatening to make its way across his face? “That’s why I want to go.”

Richie’s loud laughter was surprising even to himself, but he found himself grateful for it as it overtook him. All of the nerves and craziness that had built up over the past few days were pouring out of him, and Eddie could feel it, too - after a moment, he joined Richie in laughing, and then neither of them could stop. It was the end of everything, and they were locked in hysterical laughter, too paralyzed by it to move.

Finally, Richie took a deep breath and collected himself. “I don’t know if I can go to the quarry. I don’t have sunscreen.”

“Yeah, you’ll burn in no time,” Eddie agreed, voice still wobbly from laughter. “Granted, it helps that you’re not in your underwear.”

“That can change,” Richie said, mouth too far ahead of his mind for him to come to terms with the implications of his taunt. In fact, he didn’t really realize exactly what he’d said until Eddie flushed crimson, and then the mood was back to the pre-laugh tension and fuck, he usually had a better handle on himself, didn’t he? What was it about Derry, Maine that broke all his filters?

Before he could apologize, though, Eddie pressed on. “Remember the summer before senior year?” he asked, threading his fingers together in a way that Richie vaguely remembered meant that he was nervous.

Richie swallowed hard. “I mean, not very well, what with the supernatural amnesia and all.”

“You’ll remember this day,” Eddie said, and Richie immediately knew the day that he was referring to - he’d been thinking about it ever since Mike had led them down towards this part of town. “It was a weird day for you. You were all in your own head, and you ignored all the times I told you to put sunscreen on so you got stupid burnt and had to stay inside for a week afterwards.”

Adolescent guilt and shame came flooding through Richie like a monsoon - all of the stupid feelings, all of the frantic denial was right there at the surface of his consciousness. Eddie had to be able to sense it - but he was showing no signs of being cued-in to Richie’s tangle of feelings. He just stood, tired and nervous and beautiful, and waited for Richie to respond.

“You gave me a Twinkie,” Richie finally offered, because it was all he could think of to say.

“You owe me a kiss,” Eddie replied quickly, as if afraid the words would dry up in his mouth if he didn’t get them out fast enough.

They stared at each other in terror for a few seconds, and it was enough to make Richie wonder if maybe this version of Eddie in front of him was actually the fucking clown, taking Eddie’s form to make Richie remember all of the ways that he was secretly weak.

“I didn’t think you wanted one,” he said carefully, watching Eddie’s face to gauge his reaction and hoping he wasn’t playing Russian roulette with his own life.

“I…” Eddie tried, screwing his eyes shut to try and put his thoughts together. “It’s not about what I want.” He pointed to his head, tapping at his temple. “It’s about what I want.” He then moved his hand down to rest right over his heart, and Richie felt that sunburn feeling again - hot and cold, all at once.

Richie stepped forward, staring down at the new lines of Eddie’s face and wanting desperately to memorize them all - to not forget that he was like this, that he was capable of this kind of love.

If this was the clown’s way of trapping him, then so be it. Richie would happily die for this.

“Are you ready?” Richie asked, and Eddie blinked once, twice, three times back up at him. He’d obviously not been sure as to whether or not Richie would seriously consider his offer.

“No,” Eddie said honestly. “But please do it anyway.”

Before he could change his mind, Richie closed the distance between himself and Eddie, took Eddie’s face in his hands, and captured his lips in a gentle kiss.

He understood now, 27 fucking years later, why he hadn’t crushed on girls in high school.

How could he have spared so much as a glance at anyone else when he’d had this right in front of him? Eddie’s soft lips, careful hands, fierce looks, and unwavering devotion were all that his brain had ever been tuned-in to. Brenda Arrowsmith and all the big-breasted women that followed had been nice to look at, of course, but this…

Eddie kissed him back after a quick moment, and Richie couldn’t help the soft noise that he made as Eddie’s hands slid up and into his hair.

“Your hair’s shorter, now,” Eddie murmured against Richie’s mouth, combing his fingers through the curly, salt-and-pepper ringlets around Richie’s ears. “That summer…I used to fantasize about having my hands in it, especially when it was wet down at the quarry–”

“Your underwear was too tight that summer,” Richie responded, pure relief flooding his system as the confession spilled out. “How was a boy supposed to think about anything else when Sonia K. was unknowingly providing him with wet dream material for the rest of his–”

“Wanted to rub that after-sun lotion all over your shoulders,” Eddie continued, punctuating his thoughts with kisses. “Your face, your chest, your legs…and I hated myself for it, because you were such an idiot, but I also kind of liked it, too, because…because–”

“I didn’t want to be….I didn’t want people to find out–”

“Me either! If my mother had known–”

“Didn’t want to be like that, to have another reason for people to be on my ass all the time–”

“Another reason that I was sick–”

“I’m sorry.”

Eddie pulled back a little further upon hearing Richie’s apology. He studied Richie’s face, eyes sweeping over the freckles on Richie’s cheeks and ears, and then smiled - the first genuine smile Richie had seen him give since 1994.

“It doesn’t matter,” Eddie said thoughtfully, hands still occupied with Richie’s curls. “We’re here.”

“We’re here,” Richie agreed, liking that the phrase erased both the past and the present - the mistakes they’d made as teens and the horror they were sure to face in the next few days. “We’re here.”

#reddie #reddie fanfic #prompt fill #stellarbisexual #richie tozier #eddie kaspbrak #it 2017

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somewhereapart · 7 years

Text

BIn41 Sneak Peek, by request...

I had a CuriousCat request to post a BIn sneak peek, so here ya go:

Robin texts her on Friday around noon, when he finally wakes up: Hope you got some sleep last night. Dreamt of you all morning.

She answers a few minutes later, telling him, I did. Thanks.

Robin frowns. That was a bit… short, particularly for someone who'd had him balls deep inside her last night. Then he remembers just why, and that she’d said she needed a few days to work off her anger, so he texts: Still pissed?

Mmhmm. It’ll pass.

He sighs, and tells her, I’ll leave you to your work then. Call if you need anything.

He considers it a small consolation that she replies at all, even more so that she tells him, Thanks, I will. And thanks for last night.

So not all bad, then, he deduces with a little smile, unable to resist the urge to text back: Your knickers were thanks enough luv, with a devilish little emoji as punctuation.

Speaking of… He rolls over, fishing her thong from the pocket of the jeans he’d left crumpled on the floor when he’d fallen into bed early this morning, then flops back onto his mattress with a sigh just as his phone buzzes again.

It’s another text from her, three words that make him laugh out loud: With. Your. Life.

On my honor, I swear to protect them, he shoots back and then he tosses the phone aside, and lifts the little scrap of fabric. He hooks a fingertip in either side of the waistband and holds them up, finally getting a good look – he hadn’t really had much of a chance last night, now, had he?

It’s just a small triangle of pale grey, not cotton, something softer than that, with lavender lace along the waistband. Her bra had been lavender, too, come to think of it – quite possibly this exact lavender, and lacy, just like this. It occurs to him then it was probably a set, and no wonder she hadn’t been keen on parting with them.

Alas, too late now, he thinks with a smirk and very little remorse.

She has such a bloody tiny waist, he muses, giving the lace a little stretch and turning her knickers around to appreciate the back side – or lack thereof. God, she must have looked bloody incredible in this; he almost regrets not taking her skirt off altogether so he could enjoy the view.

Almost.

Not quite.

The view had been pretty spectacular as it was. Really, incredibly fantastic.

He’s just settling in to enjoy the memory of it, of her on top of him, all wild and fierce (and yes, angry, but it appears it’s an anger that will blow over, so he’s willing to overlook that for now), just starting to mull over the lovely details, and feeling his cock start to stir when he hears the pounding scamper of feet up the stairs, and a voice calling his name – “Robin?”

His heart lurches when he realizes it’s Henry, and he has just enough time to shove the boy’s mother’s knickers (Christ, she’d absolutely murder him) under his pillows before his door swings open, and Tuck comes bounding in, Henry behind him.

Nothing has ever killed a boner faster. Thank God he’d still had his shorts on.

Henry skids to a stop and scowls at the sight of Robin still in bed, asking, “Why aren’t you up yet? It’s lunchtime.”

“For you, maybe,” Robin tells him, sitting up and hoping he doesn’t look nearly as panic-stricken as he feels. “Some of us work late and sleep late.”

“Oh,” Henry remembers, with a look of regret. “Did I wake you up?”

“No, I was awake,” Robin assures him, swinging his legs off to the side and pulling on those same jeans, because, well, they’re there, and they’re clean enough. He spies the open condom wrapper that he’d pocketed on the floor where it must have slipped free at some point, and sends up another prayer of thanks, this time for the fact that Henry is on the other side of the bed.

“What did you want?” he asks, as he toes it surreptitiously under the bed and fully out of sight.

“I was bored,” Henry shrugs. “I thought maybe you could show me some new stuff on the guitar. Or we could go to the park or something.”

One of those sounds like it takes a bit too much brainpower for his newly awakened self, the other a bit too much energy. So Robin suggests instead, “How about we start with some lunch?”

.::.

The flaw in this whole lunch plan becomes apparent as soon as they get to the kitchen. He and John are, to put it plainly, shit at keeping a full fridge. With John away so often for work, and Robin eating half his weekly dinners at the bar, they don’t need to keep a whole lot of food in the house – not proper food anyway.

And he’d meant to do some shopping today on his day off – refresh their stores of white bread and cold cuts and cheese. Pick up some proper fruit and veg for the weekend with Roland, and restock his supply of mac and cheese, maybe get some hot dogs to throw in, or one of those ready-made rotisserie chickens.

But as he’s just rolled out of bed, he hasn’t exactly had a chance to do that yet, so they’re left to fend for themselves with what they’ve got: a tomato that’s starting to wrinkle a bit, some eggs, a carton of milk he pulls out and takes a whiff of – and then regrets with a wince, setting it back on the shelf with a stern reminder to himself to dump the little that’s left down the drain later. Some three-day-old take-out pork lo mein, and a lime.

Well, then.

Robin zeroes in on the eggs, suggesting, “How about some fried egg sandwiches?”

He has enough bread, and there’s a half-spent jar of ketchup in the fridge door. It’ll do for lunch.

And Henry is game, tells him, “Sure,” with an agreeable shrug, so Robin reaches in and pops open the carton to find one lonely egg resting inside.

Right.

He looks at Henry and asks, “I don’t suppose your mum has eggs?”

She does – of course she does – so they head next door, dog in tow, and take advantage of Regina’s decidedly fuller fridge.

She’s down to the last egg in the carton as well – but there’s another full dozen resting underneath it. The ketchup he pulls from the door is organic, the bread they find in the breadbox is a hearty seven-grain – not ideal if you ask him (there’s something nice about the bland, pillowy softness of WonderBread when it comes to an egg sandwich) but it’ll do.

She’s also got a crisper full of apples, a half-full carton of raspberries, two cartons of milk (a quart of skim that he imagines is hers, and a half gallon of 2% for Henry), a small pyramid of yogurts, some fresh-from-the-deli shaved turkey, and a packet of pork chops. There’s one of the plastic cartons of ready-made mixed greens for salads, a carton of cherry tomatoes, and a cucumber.

It’s a well-stocked pinnacle of health that puts his paltry bachelor pad selection to shame, and he’s half-tempted to beg her guidance for his own shopping. But then, half of it would probably just go bad on the shelf, and that’d be a waste, wouldn’t it?

And it’s neither here nor there at the moment, so he puts the thought aside, and gets to making their eggs.

Henry watches, and helps, pulling out four slices of bread at Robin’s urging, and cutting up a couple of apples for them with this corer-slicer thing that is handy enough Robin makes a mental note to look into getting one himself for Roland’s snacktime.

Before too long they’re settled at the table, munching away at their sandwiches and apple pieces, Robin occasionally tossing Tuck bits of that turkey from the fridge (he and Henry have sworn a pact of secrecy about feeding table scraps to the dog).

Two bites in, Henry declares, “This is really good,” and Robin discovers the boy has never had a fried egg sandwich before in his life.

“You’re joking,” he tells him, and then he decides, “No, you're probably not, are you? Now I regret making it with fancy bread – you should have had a proper one.”

“Mom says that white bread is a waste of calories, unless it’s homemade or from France,” Henry tells him, and Robin snorts a little laugh.

“That sounds like something your mum would say,” he chuckles, adding, “I bet she’d have a stroke if she saw my fridge.”

“Probably,” Henry shrugs munching away. “Why don’t you buy better food? Or more food.”

Robin smirks and tells him, “To be honest, I’m rather a lazy git, or at least – when it comes to food only I’m going to eat, I don’t care as much. I was going to go shopping today – for Roland. But during the week, I don’t really cook all that much, so I don’t need a lot of food.”

“If you don’t need very much, then you should buy better stuff than just eggs and beer,” Henry tells him, and Robin snorts.

Touché.

“Maybe I’ll ask your mum for some pointers,” Robin tells him, taking a bite of his sandwich after he adds, “She seems to have things pretty put together.”

Henry answers, “Yeah,” but then he’s frowning into his plate a bit, something clearly on his mind.

The boy’s never had trouble speaking his mind, though, so Robin waits him out, lets him gather his thoughts. After a few seconds, Henry says, “I’m worried about her.”

“Your mum?”

“Yeah,” he confirms. “She hasn’t been, y’know… Mom the last few days? We had a bad weekend, and then she had that headache, and she looks kinda sick. And last night, she went to bed before I even did.”

“She’s having a hard week,” Robin tells him, adding, “She’ll be alright, though; she’s tough,” before taking another bite of his sandwich.

Henry just frowns at him, and then asks, “How would you know? You were here for like five minutes on Tuesday.”

Robin freezes mid-chew.

Right.

All their other visits were a bit more… nocturnal. Henry has no idea – nor should he – that he’s seen Regina nearly every day this week.

He half-finishes chewing, then swallows heavily, and tells the boy, “We text sometimes.”

“You do?”

“Mmhmm,” Robin confirms. “About you, most of the time – if she needs me to take you for a bit, or has a question about your lessons, or whatever. But sometimes just about… life. How our days are going, what’s on our mind. Stuff like that.”

Henry lets out a surprised little Huh, and takes a bite of his own sandwich.

He seems to leave it at that, so Robin counts his blessings, and takes another bite of his own – and then nearly chokes a bit when Henry asks, “Are you my mom’s best friend?”

#breaking in #sneak peek #breaking in sneak peek #somewhereapart writes

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amorremanet · 7 years

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top 5 movies? and why? no no TOP FIVE BOOKS

oh gosh, both of these are hard and my answers for them are probably so boring (they also come with the, “this is just how I feel right now because ugh, I am the worst at picking any all-time faves for broad categories”) — but!!

top “five” movies:

The Prince of Egypt — has some of the most beautiful art that I’ve ever seen, anywhere, and music that sticks with you, and it really shows the human drama and human stakes of such a classic story in ways that a lot of adaptations of Biblical mythology are afraid to do

Deadpool — because I’m garbage, the characters are great, the script is pretty good, and the movie makes me laugh. It’s not really a deconstruction (in the way that some people make it out to be, by way of justifying why they like it), and it’s not super-intellectual, and in a lot of ways, it’s like a giant #SorryNotSorry that makes fun of superhero movie tropes while continuing to use them (and there are some subtle ways it plays with some of said tropes and twists them around, but it largely doesn’t) — but it’s fun

But I’m A Cheerleader — is far from perfect, and I maintain that it’s actually much more depressing than the ending leads us to believe (I mean, Meghan/Graham and Dolph/Clayton get together and escape from True Directions and homophobic parents, and Meghan’s Mom and Dad at least try to do better by their daughter, but things don’t work out that well for anybody else), but it’ll always have a special place in my heart because it was one of the only lesbian movies that I had access to as a little gay baby

Female Trouble — I wouldn’t say that it’s the best thing that John Waters has ever done, just the one that I personally like the best, and I’ll admit that it’s probably an acquired taste…… but I love how it takes on celebrity culture in the story Dawn Davenport, and it gave us great lines like, “The world of heterosexual is a sick and boring life” and, “I wouldn’t suck your lousy dick if I was suffocating and there was oxygen in your balls!” It also has a special place in my heart as one of my favorite, “gay AND weird” movies

—which probably makes sense, given that it was written and directed by the trash king of being gay and weird

……like, seriously. My (best friend who I call my) brother once asked me, “So is John Waters gay or is he just really weird?” and the only thing I could think of to say to that was, “Yes, both.”

the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy — which is totally cheating, to put three in here, but I couldn’t pick between them. I do think that Hot Fuzz and The World’s End are more fully actualized than Shaun of the Dead, but I love all of them, and the reason is pretty much just, “Because they’re good mixes of being hilarious and making me FEEL things” (……less so in The World’s End, for several reasons; it’s a lot heavier on the feels, to the point that you sometimes feel bad for laughing at the jokes, but still)

and books:

Good Omens (Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman) — This book was my introduction to both PTerry and GNeil, after I found a cheap copy in an airport bookstore when I was about twelve and immediately fell in love. It’s funny, the characters are vibrant and engaging, and it played right into my love of screwing around with Biblical mythology.

I’m periodically tempted to list different books for both of those men (with PTerry’s probably being one of the Granny Weatherwax books, or Faust Eric, and GNeil’s being either American Gods or one of his Sandman books — because yeah, he’s done other good stuff, but I’m more sentimentally attached to AG and Sandman. Also, Preludes and Nocturnes has some of the only non-movie or TV horror that has genuinely terrified me, so)

—buuuut then I never do, because Good Omens was my first book from either of them, and remains my sentimental fave, even though I admit that they’ve both written other books that are, “better” or, “stronger,” or whatever

Dry (Augusten Burroughs) — There’s a lot of fair criticism to be made of Augusten Burroughs, and he’s been one of the writers at the center of the debates about truthfulness or lack thereof in popular memoirs (like, how much an author is allowed to condense things before it stops counting as a, “real story,” and how an author remembers things happening vs. how other people remember them), but Dry nevertheless means a lot to me.

Like, I enjoyed Running with Scissors and his novel, Sellevision (which were the other Big Deals in his collected works, at the time I originally read Dry), but Dry fucked me up a LOT when I first read it. It has continued to fuck me up ever since.

There are passages in this book that I can’t even be jealous of, as another writer, because they’re so good that they skip right the fuck past, “I’m angry and jealous that I didn’t write this myself” and into, “Holy shit, THIS is why I write, the ability to do THIS KIND OF THING EXACTLY with words, I need to go write something right now”

Also, it means a lot to me for sentimental, “I read this book for the first time when I was in high school, and it made me feel less lonely and sad and scared” reasons

Dynamic Characters (Nancy Kress) — This is by no means the be-all and end-all of, “how to writer better” books, but it’s a personal favorite of mine, for two reasons: 1. there are some things that Kress doesn’t cover about creating characters and doing better by them in your writing, but she’s still pretty comprehensive and offers some solid illustrative examples, multiple perspectives on this part of writing (not as many as she could, but to be fair, she only has so many pages to work with), and a good mix of “tough love” advice and gentler, more reassuring advice;

and 2. …it was the first, “how to writer better” book that I ever got my hands on. I picked it out specifically because I’d posted a completely ridiculous crack fic that was a crossover between Harry Potter and Sailor Moon, with a first-person protagonist narrator who was a hot nonsense self-insert power fantasy Mary Sue with no flaws and no nuance because, hey, I was 11.

And someone actually commented to go, “Hey, look, you have talent, but you could do better and one place to start is maybe with learning to build better realized characters” — so I picked out the Nancy Kress book and it seems like a really silly thing to call a turning point? But it was big a turning point for me

Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond (José Alaniz) — okay, time for me to be a loser and cite an academic book. I’m also probably a cheating loser, since I just read this book for the first time recently…… but with that said? I’ve read a LOT of critical treatments of the superhero genre, some pretty good, others pretty bad (for example, I remain Perpetually Tired of Slavoj Žižek’s heavy metal Communist, Bane in Leather Pants bullshit reading of The Dark Knight Returns), and most of it somewhere in the middle

—but there’s this trend among people who write critically about superhero junk, whether they’re academics of not, wherein we act like we have to act like superhero comics are The Most Progressive Ever and oversell their sociopolitical impact in order to make them look like ~*True Art*~ That Must Be Taken Seriously (—and like, I’m not saying that they have NO impact on people at all, because that’s objectively false. But you also can’t try to claim that Superman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America comics are why the Allies won World War II)

(this is a pointless aside to note that I deliberately left the Goddamn Batman off that list, because while Supes, Diana, and Steve were all off punching Nazis, Golden Age Bruce and white boy!Dick were running around on the home-front, rounding up Japanese Americans and putting them in internment camps. So… y’know. There’s that.)

……or we have to take legitimate criticisms of problems in the superhero genre, both historical and current, and use them to go, “Therefore, the entire genre is pointless garbage that has no redeeming qualities at all and could never ever EVER be used to tell any stories that are worth telling, and frankly, you are all terrible, horrible people for enjoying it, how very dare you enjoy that X-Men movie or that Red Hood And The Outlaws comic, you’re basically a fascist now”

—which is hilarious, to me, because the people who write that sort of criticism almost always cite Fredric Wertham’s book, The Seduction of the Innocent (aka: the book that led to so much moral outrage over the allegedly very gay and fascistic, child-corrupting content of comicbooks that the Comics Code Authority was created), and they always go, “Well, obviously Wertham was OTT and totally full of shit, buuuut…… *argument that would not have been out of place in his book*”

So, one of the big reasons I loved Professor Alaniz’s book is that is does neither of these things. It offers some incisive, and occasionally kinda damning, critique of the superhero genre and its handling of disability and mortality, but he does so from a place of love and enjoyment, and never pretends to hate the genre, nor argues for throwing the whole thing out because it has problems.

Like, his underlying mindset is very much, “Yes, the superhero genre has a LOT of problems, but people could, in theory, fix them and try to get closer to realizing the full potential of what these characters and stories can do” — while never skimping on a detailed analysis of the trends and case studies that he presents.

Sometimes, I think he’s kinda reaching (and I, personally, never want to hear anything about Doctor Doom’s Oedipus complex ever again so long as I live, though it was validating to hear that my theatre kids AU version of him — who is a ridiculous mess, obsessed with taking selfies, and perpetually acting like he totally gets everything while missing some crucial detail, which is how he ends up thinking that Loki is dating Tony Stank [a suggestion that makes both of them want to puke] — is actually a valid interpretation of his character, based on some parts of canon)

Overall, though, my biggest problem with Professor Alaniz’s book is that he can be kind of a hipster and it can get a little bit annoying. Not enough to ruin the whole book, but enough that it does stand out.

Like, his chapter on Daredevil specifically analyzes an infamous Silver Age story that basically everyone hated — the one where Matt Murdock tells Karen and Foggy that he isn’t the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, but he has some heretofore unknown identical twin brother named Mike, who is not blind but *IS* actually that aforementioned costumed hero, and carries on a charade of pretending to be his nonexistent twin brother — and okay, we get some pretty neat discussion of how passing can work or might not with disabled people

…but you can still walk away feeling like his biggest reason for analyzing that story arc was less about its value to any part of his discussion, and more about going, “Other Daredevil stories are too mainstream, I care most about this one that was so infamously ridiculous that people have said even soap operas wouldn’t have done this plot”

Likewise, I’m not saying that there aren’t very fair criticisms to be made of the X-Men and how their stories handle disability in particular… but at some points in his chapter on the Silver Age Doom Patrol comics, Professor Alaniz seems to be less, “using the pre-Claremont Silver Age X-Men stories as an illustrative foil to the Doom Patrol, especially with regard to how Charles’s paraplegia is treated vs. how The Chief’s paraplegia is treated” and more, “using this discussion as a free excuse to bash on the X-Men for being popular”

To his credit, Professor Alaniz does kinda discuss some of the ways that the X-Men’s popularity might have been affected by the fact that things like their ableist handling of Charles make them feel, “safer” and, “less sociopolitically threatening” than he makes the Doom Patrol out to be (with a pretty convincing argument, actually)

He just doesn’t do it enough for me to feel like his “criticism” of the X-Men isn’t at least partially grounded in going, “Well, it’s popular, therefore it sucks” (—as opposed to my approach to them, which is, “It’s popular, and has a mixed bag of things that it does well vs. things it does that suck, but it does not suck BECAUSE it is popular”)

Anyway, good book, and it’s written in a refreshingly accessible way (it’s still an academic book and harder to get into than, say, Good Omens, but Professor Alaniz doesn’t make a lot of the more common mistakes that leave a lot of academic writing effectively incomprehensible)

and last but not least…… Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire (we all know who wrote this, okay, come on) — because I’d be lying if I didn’t include at least one HP book on this list, considering how important those books and that fandom have been to the course of my life and to my development as a writer, and it was either gonna be this one or POA, but this one won over the other because I’m garbage

#coeur gris #memes for ts #ask box tag #mine: asks #opinions for ts #top fives meme #longish post//#coeur-gris

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