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#but i love the connectivity of humanity sometimes. i can be friends with someone halfway across the world now!!!
starswallowingsea · 1 year
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Sometimes the world sucks but I am also genuinely so glad to be alive at a time where I can read and watch and play whatever I want and meet people all over the world who like the same things and I think that's beautiful
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himboskywalker · 2 years
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Yo Tag, I know you're going through shit rn so no obligation to answer at all. My q is, how did you deal for moving out for the first time? I'm moving states soon and living on my own for the first time for an excellent grad job but I'm paranoid I'll feel lonely.
Hello dear and congratulations that is so exciting! The excellent news is if you’re moving for grad school I think you’ll have a very easy time of making friends and connections. Grad students and adjunct teachers and younger professionals working for universities are usually very keen for making friends and connections and hanging out,because they’re in the same position you are,usually moved halfway across the country with no social network to lean on. And you immediately have something in common with them! No one else on earth knows better what you’ll be going through than them!
My advice is simply to not get in your head about hanging out with people. If people want to grab drinks or dinner take them up on it!If a fellow in the program asks people over to theirs for game night take them up on it! And don’t be afraid to ask them in turn to grab food/drinks/go do things. I think people get embarrassed and really caught up on the idea of being a bother to those around them,but genuinely and with utter sincerity that is so very rarely the case. People like to have social connection and make friends! Especially a bunch of young professionals in a new city at the stage of life you’re in. Don’t operate on the assumption that you’re overstepping or being annoying by reaching out to others, you’ll often find that when you initiate human connection the reaction from others is relief.
So my advise is to put yourself out there and do things! Accept that you’ll have to put in the work to make new friends and connections,but that that human connection you’re looking for,and which you will need,will develop over time if you’re willing to put yourself through the mortifying ordeal of being known. People want connection,you’re not alone in that,and meeting others halfway is how you form those relationships and connections. Go to mixers,or movie nights,or lectures,or skates,or whatever the hell your university puts on for their grad students. When a professor asks the grad students to drinks or coffee take them up on it! If someone wants to study or talk research take them up on it!
You will inevitably get lonely and homesick,that I can warn you of too. You’ll miss home and the people you love. The first day I was abroad,living alone in a foreign country and overwhelmed and achingly lonely,I sat on my flat’s stairs and cried. And then I made friends,and found connection and the fulfillment of that human want to see and be seen in others. And I still FaceTimed my family & childhood friends and got lonely,and also found contentment in being alone sometimes,which I’ve always struggled with. I’m also moving states this summer! What a lovely time for change this year will be for us! I’m cheating in that where I’m moving I already have a social support system of people I know and love. But I still had to make those friendships and connections! The people I’m moving to be with I’ve been working seven years on getting to know and forming life bonds with. It takes time,and dedication sometimes,and work on your part.But when you get self conscious and in your own head,or lonely or unsure,just remember that most everyone around you wants the same sense of belonging and connection as you!
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aziraphales-library · 2 years
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can you rec the coziest, fluffiest fics you know? i'm in need of some pure comfort
We have all the fluff anyone could ever need on our #fluff tag, so please scroll through and take your pick! Here are some more recent fics that may not already be on our tag...
Find Out How Much Love The World Can Hold by ineffablefool (T)
Aziraphale starts saying "I love you" at the end of phone calls with Crowley, after Crowley has hung up. Then one time Crowley doesn't actually hang up.
In Heaven by AppleSeeds (T)
Famous radio DJ Crowley takes to Twitter to share the fact that he's just encountered the most gorgeous man he's ever seen in his entire life on the train. When he receives a tweet from someone saying that her friend has just told her that he's sitting near to Crowley, Crowley's followers begin to speculate that they might both be talking about the same person, and Crowley finally summons the courage to talk to him.
The Angel and The Holy Thorn by Z A Dusk (G)
Aziraphale has been in Glastonbury for five years but finds himself wondering if he’ll ever find what he’s searching for. Or even figure out what he’s searching for.
His neighbour Anthony has been in Glastonbury for six months and is about to open his new venture - The Holy Thorn restaurant. He loves the town but is having trouble finding his way.
When both men have a frustrating Christmas Eve, a chance collision leads to new connections. Perhaps this will be a happy new year after all?
Temporary Tattoo by cyankelpie (G)
Crowley’s snake tattoo goes on a little adventure and visits Aziraphale. Crowley doesn’t notice it’s missing until halfway to their next assignment, by which time their only option is to write to Aziraphale and ask him to keep the snake safe until Crowley returns.
They wish they’d thought to mention that they can still feel every touch to the snake, but how could they have known how affectionate Aziraphale would be with it?
New Approaches by FeralTuxedo (M)
Aziraphale Fell, Professor of Creative Writing at Tadfield University, welcomes the attendees of the First Conference on New Approaches to Genre Fiction. Among them is keynote speaker and best-selling thriller author Anthony J. Crowley. Aziraphale has not seen him for twenty-five years. Sometimes, he can still feel the ghost of their parting kiss on his lips.
Or: Exes reunite at academic conference. A Human University Professor/Author AU.
天明 (Tenmei) by angelsnuffbox (T)
“This, right now, could be one of those moments you’ll look back on in ten years and wonder what could have happened, how the night could have gone if you’d taken that strikingly handsome man’s offer of a night stroll around Tokyo.”
“You certainly like to flatter yourself.”
A rush of relief went through him now that Aziraphale looked more relaxed. “All I’m saying is, wouldn’t you rather look back and know how the night went instead?”
“You’re actually serious.”
“Say yes to me, Aziraphale, and I’ll make you the happiest you’ve ever been — at least for tonight.”
- Mod D
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obeymeluv · 4 years
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QUICK! KISS ME! [Bros x Reader]
A lead-up blurb before I go to bed.
School is killing me. This has been in the drafts far longer than I wanted.
No offense if your name is Bethany. It’s a name I picked at random.
The follow-up piece will have the kiss scenarios.
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Some of Asmo’s friends may have used you to get into a special makeup event, but it’s okay! They bought you a lip gloss as a thank you! The shade ‘Sealed with a Kiss’ was not what you thought it’d be
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Being one of the first humans in the Devildom could be uncomfortable and sometimes down-right dangerous! It also had its perks. To you, that meant being close with the Seven Lords of Hell (and Diavolo). To other lesser demons and classmates, you were kind of a ‘get out of jail’ free card.
Were they late to class? Oh, just helping the human out!
Caught sneaking in food or drink when they weren’t supposed to? It’s to split with the human, of course! They thought you’d love to try it!
Everyone was keen not to overuse it and you’d actually made good friends this way. It was starting to feel less like an excuse and more of a way to be included. You were the friendly, reliable human that had won hearts and saved some asses. As a thank you, one of your closer friends (a repeat offender for lateness), invited you out to an exclusive makeup release. She was a VIP member and had early access an hour before the store opened to the Devildom public. 
The fact that she chose you, a human, over some LITERAL century-old friends caused a bit of tension but she could care less. “I’ve seen them every day for over a hundred years. You get one year, and we’re going to make it awesome!” Bethany breezed through the store at a dizzying pace, picking through concealers and opening a box of mascara to look at the packaging. She moved at a pace only demons could manage; you thought you saw her by the nail polish display but when you looked again she was throwing sheet masks in her basket. Hooking her arm with yours, she picked up some foundation on the way back to the coveted display of lip glosses and lipsticks.
You weren’t totally versed in the differences between Devildom makeup and human world makeup. In all honesty, there didn’t seem to be a difference. Bethany swatched powdery cream lipsticks on her wrist and followed with ribbons of liquid lipstick. Every now and then she dotted them on your arm; she was adamant about finding a shade the both of you could wear as your thing.  
“This one,” she decided, waving the tube at you and booping your nose with it carefully. “This is our color!” she took you by the hand and joined the checkout line. She had two in her hand but refused to let you so much as hold one, wanting to pay for it first. It wasn’t technically breaking the purchase limit rule; if they tried to nag her she’d just say she was holding onto it so another demon didn’t bully you out of it. You didn’t know if it was her VIP status or the fact that her defense made sense, but you were able to check out without a problem.
A few sour faces and mean glares met you outside but Bethany ignored it all, eager to have a Devilgram-worthy celebratory snack break (snack victory? You know, since you got the makeup?) The plan was to eat, hold down a table at the nearby cafe while her other friends shopped, and have group makeovers (or try-ons) before calling it a day. That plan was interrupted three bites into a croissant sandwich when Lucifer summoned you back to the House of Lamentation. He’d gotten wind of all the girls you’d be with and didn’t feel totally comfortable letting you hang out with them,
Had Barbatos seen something? Did Lucifer feel spurned that you weren’t hanging out with the Seven Lords of the Devildom? He gave no answer, simply asking you to stay put while someone came to escort you back to the house. Bethany was put off by the turn of events but few people dared to complain about the Seven Lords due to their connections with Diavolo (she was no exception). “If we can’t get the full makeover, we’re getting the selfie!” she declared, deftly breaking the seal to her Sealed with a Kiss gloss and swiping it on with help from the front-facing camera on her D.D.D
You busied yourself with opening your tube. Before you could ask for her phone (since the camera was already open), she took the tube from you and tilted your chin up. She dabbed the center of your lips playfully before carefully tracing your lips with the color. The heat rose in your cheeks and she smirked. Being part succubus, she could draw energy from emotions like embarrassment and the feeling of being flattered. Her fingertips pulsed under your chin as she drew on that energy. 
Getting energy sucked could feel like a lot of things -- being light-headed, getting a rush of excitement, all prickly and tingly like your whole body was pins and needles. Whatever it was, it usually faded into drowsiness and kittenish contentment. She probably only touched your chin for seconds but the wash of coziness had you melting against your chair, your cheek cradled in her palm. 
Did she take the pic? What was happening? It felt like Asmodeus had materialized out of thin air, helping you stand and making small-talk with Bethany before pulling you away, out of her aura that was trying to suckle the vestiges of happy energy you offered.
“And what shade did you get on those pretty lips, hm?” the cotton fell out of your head and ears, allowing you to really hear Asmo now that the aura effects had worn off.
“Uh,” you fished around in your bag and looked at the packaging. “Sealed with a Kiss.”
Asmodeus stopped so abruptly it’d almost yanked you back to him. The two of you were barely tangled at the pinkies and now he’d completely laced your hands together. He held your hands captive, drawing them up in surprise and basically dragging you into his torso. You were forced to look up into glittering pink eyes and if you didn’t know any better, they looked a little panicked.
“How long ago did you apply it?”
“I don’t know.” you blinked helplessly at him. That energy suck thing had a way of making your brain tune out and turn to pudding. That aside, who knows how long Asmo stood there and talked to Bethany while you were being siphoned?! “Bethany applied it, not me.”
Asmo clicked his tongue, huffed, resigned himself to only holding one hand. and started scrolling on his D.D.D to find that selfie Bethany posted. You were being dragged along like a child as Asmo’s shoes clicked towards the House of Lamentation. It amazed you how well he could navigate his D.D.D with his long, painted nails. 
Whatever he was looking for, he found it.
Asmodeus tucked his D.D.D into his pants pocket, scooped you up in a way that terrified and amazed you (two people being supported by one set of heels?), and flew to the House of Lamentation. He didn’t always use his wings, as he preferred to decorate them and maintain them with oils, but the fact that he was flying made you nervous.
What had he found? What was the deal?
“Asmo--” you started nervously, the flapping of his wings nearly drowning you out as he pushed himself. Flying against the wind didn’t help. Your hair was a mess and the wind was in your face; the Devildom was always a little chilly but now it was enough to make your face tingly.
“She gave you enchanted makeup. There is a reason humans don’t use enchanted makeup.” Asmo’s pretty brows furrowed as he cut a hard angle and glided over a portion of the square. The tell-tale thicket of trees that lined the winding path back to the House of Lamentation were on the edge of the horizon.
“What’s going to happen?” should you ask that? Did you really want to know?
“You’ll feel something in your lips--some people felt tingling, some people felt pulsing, it can be anything, I think--and then they’ll seal shut.”
“SHUT?!” you yelped. It was enough to make Asmo wince. The startle carried over to his wings; they shuddered and locked; the two of you dropped for a heartbeat or two before he corrected himself.
“If I can’t get some makeup remover on it first.” Asmo panted, tucking his wings in and preparing for a quick descent. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t thought to teleport first--the panic? Trying to one-up Bethany by walking home and being extra cute with hand-holding?--but a quick touch down could roll into a simple skip teleportation and everything should work out!
“But my lips are already tingly!”
“Ugh, Bethany! I can’t believe you! I mean, I can because it’s you, but really, Bethany?”
“Asmo, focus!” you’d already skipped several feet ahead, clearing the front yard in two teleports. The third put you in the foyer. “I don’t want my lips to seal shut!”
The House of Lamentation was huge but when the occupants had supernatural hearing, that exclamation turned heads. 
“What’s this about your lips sealing shut?” Lucifer appeared at the top of his stairs, his head already shaking.
“DID YOU MAKE A PACT WITH A WITCH?!” Mammon screamed down the hall, clearly not far behind.
Asmo scoffed, lowering his D.D.D with a pout. He was halfway up the main stairs, fingers working at lightning speed. “It’s the lip color!” he explained, stomping his foot. Noisy people were just so annoying! If everyone was talking he couldn’t explain! How rude! 
“All this over some makeup?” skeptical Satan peered over the banister, book and arm casually propped up on it.
“If two people apply the color and kiss, they’re locked in a makeout session until it dries down. When one person applies the lip color, they can use it like a cheat sheet to see who secretly wants to kiss them,” his words tapered out from authoritatively informed to quiet and shy. “It’s from their ‘Liquid Love’ collection.” he muttered into the stunned silence of the room.
You were trying to open your lips and ask why. The magic had already taken hold. Asmodeus could see you trying to move your lips and strain your chin. Luckily, demons could read minds. “It’s because Bethany is stupid.” Asmodeus rolled his eyes. “Ambitious, but stupid.”
“Please explain, Asmo.” even when using the dear nickname Lucifer couldn’t hide the demand. His demon aura was creeping up his body and slowly becoming jagged and suffocating.
“Bethany has had a HUGE crush on our little human here, and wanted to seal it with a kiss, so to speak.” Asmo’s cheeks got pinker and pinker as he explained. Mostly because he was mad he didn’t think about it. His heart did something funny at the thought of you kissing someone else. Lucifer also looked like he wanted to murder someone about now, and Asmo had to remind himself that he was being looked through, not looked at.   
“Just grab a napkin and wipe it off.” Mammon shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets.
Asmodeus shook his head angrily. “It’s too late now. We need to find someone for them to kiss! Someone’s lips will break the seal on theirs...that’s kind of the point of the enchantment.”
“So they just pick someone to kiss?” Levi’s face was turning tomato red. Would it be him?! It would at least be one of them, right? What if your person wasn’t in the House of Lamentation and you NEVER SPOKE AGAIN?!
“Sort of.” Asmo patted your shoulders with his gentle, smooth hands. He started to rub them like he was trying to warm you up. Partly in encouragement and partly to get your attention because he could feel your brain spiraling down into panic. “They basically follow their mouth.”
“So that lip color is like a crush detector?” Satan abandoned his book at the top of the stairs and was now perusing articles on his D.D.D as he sauntered down the steps. It sounded like he’d found the one that sent Asmo flying to the House of Lamentation.
“Basically.” Asmo sighed. It was the stupidest way to confess to someone, he thought. Demon to demon, it was fine. Demon to human?! NO! The whole thing gave him a headache. The fact that Bethany thought she could just steal your little lips and be greedy with them was the biggest annoyance of it all.
“So,” Satan’s green eyes cut sharply from his phone to you. The corner of his lips curled up in a smart little smirk. He knew it was wrong to find your predicament so funny, but this was a very human thing to get mixed up in. “Who do your lips want? Who do you feel yourself being drawn to?”
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“I’d like to end up as a tree”
Marwan kenzari (31) won a gold calf last year for his role in the movie Wolf. As of next week he is to be seen in Bloedlink (/reckless), opening’s act of the Dutch film festival. “It’s not my place to say I’m good.”
Bloedlink
“Acting offers the chance to become well acquainted with the complexities of being human. The Moroccan kick-boxer Majid in the movie Wolf had a fascinating interior life. His character was even easier to understand when he said nothing at all - I don’t think I’ve ever had as little lines in a movie. Rico in Bloedlink is completely different. He accidentally finds himself swept up in criminal business, but he’s actually just someone who’s had a whole slew of bad luck. In the movie his character undergoes a few very surprising U-turns. In my portrayal of him, I interpret all those different sides as honest, I find that interesting. In the movie, Rico does some paradoxical things, but he means all of them. Of course that’s simply not possible. That’s what makes him fascinating and tragic.”
Journey
“If I’m a good actor? That’s not my place to say. Sometimes you do the most interesting things you think are worthless in the moment. A movie is a collaborative journey, which, in the case of Wolf, I underwent with director Jim Taihuttu among others. Although I secretly did think during shooting: this will be fun. Wolf is an honest movie. The kick-boxing, the hits to the body, very little of that is pretend. Not that everything should be real in a movie, but this story required that. At a certain point I felt: this could be something really fresh in Dutch cinema. And it was.”
Peanut Butter
“Ever since that role, which I trained for quite extensively, I’ve found it increasingly important to stay in shape. It wasn’t a complete transformation; even beforehand I would exercise six times a week. But now I’m slightly addicted, yeah. It makes you mentally stronger, too. If I’ve been training on a Sunday at 7 am and then at 8 am I’m outside again, showered, refreshed and in shape while the rest of the city’s asleep, I’m 1-0 ahead. Scratch that: 10-0. I pay attention to my nutrition as well. Bread for example gives false energy. But I’m not always so strict. I get plenty of enjoyment from a good, white slice of bread with calvé peanut butter. And then fold it over, don’t cut it! You shouldn’t cut a sandwich, everyone knows that. Then you miss the first bite.”
Toneelgroep Amsterdam
“After the acting academy in Maastricht I was immediately invited to Toneelgroep Amsterdam. I was with them for three years, but found my attentions pulled towards film during that period. When the actors from TGA are - rightfully - expected to be fully available. We “broke up”, though that sounds too serious, with full, mutual agreement. I see the company as family and will be playing in Angels in America at the end of the month, in New York. Director Ivo van Hove has been very important for my development. I admire his knowing exactly what he wants, but also his ability to be unsure and searching, and to be able to be vulnerable about that. But I have to be fair to myself. I’m 31 now, and these are my most important years in film. While I hope to be an even better stage-actor when I’m fifty. I’m slightly further ahead in film than on stage. That development is tougher, needs more time and possibly total dedication. Stage is the motor in the actor’s car; film is a different muscle. But if Ivo calls me in two, or ten or forty years, he’ll be the first stage director I’ll say yes to.”
Pierre Bokma
“As the son of Tunisian parents in the Hague painters-quarter I didn’t come into automatic contact with theatre. As a kid I was mostly interested in football, the emotion you see on a player’s face when he scores - fantastic. At a certain point I realised that movies can affect you the same way, even though you know it’s fake. That’s the magic of acting. Through contacts I ended up with De Nieuwe Amsterdam, an in-between theatre course for teens for whom the leap to theatre school was perhaps a bit too big. I learned everything there: playwrights, Dutch actors, repertoire. You’re also taught which acting schools exist. And I thought: where did Pierre Bokma go to school? And Fedja van Huêt? That was Maastricht. It also appealed to me that they implemented Bijltjesdag: you might still be sent away halfway through the first year. I decided: if I’m going for this uncertain profession, maybe the best trial by fire will be going to a school where you aren’t sure if you’ll be allowed to stay. I was allowed, in the end. At the theatre academy I came into contact with art, philosophy, poetry. All of that was new. But it didn’t feel as if I was behind, I only saw it as a fantastic source of riches; as if I could try on all sorts of new glasses.”
Huntersfamily
“I never thought that this path wasn’t laid out for me, I just always let myself be lead by my passion and my dreams. My parents are happy for me; I have a good connection with both. My father is an amazing person - an accumulation of beautiful ingredients. He’s honest with himself, doesn’t spare himself and laughs a lot, that’s important to me. He might be made out of simple components, he’s from a huntersfamily, but for me these are the components that build a strong character. My dad can tell beautiful stories, about his life in Tunisia, about his old friends who aren’t with us anymore. Every year death takes someone new, and in that way a beautiful group of people slowly disappears, the protagonists of a generation. One lives close to the elements there, I find that fascinating. It’s so different to our life here. I’ll also never interrupt my dad when he starts on a story like that. Even if I’ve heard it before.”
Vampire
“I’ve always said: I want to play a woman, a vampire, a Moroccan kick-boxer. I’ve succeeded in doing the last one. A vampire is a wonderful character. The beauty of their faces, the sensuality, the tragedy of never going outside during the day, and of course their never ageing; never dying, in fact. I’d like to never die. When I was a kid, I suffered a lot of nightmares. About falling and never landing. I had a hard time in the dream world, I wasn’t a big fan of night. It was, I think, a sort of inexplicable fear of dying. At a certain moment I grew familiar with those dreams, figured out how to influence them. I could for all intents and purposes check-out whenever it became scary. I became the director of my own dream world. When I was twelve, I fell in love, and then I was over it. I still have nightmares, like everyone else, but now I find them fascinating instead of threatening. Beautiful how your mind can make a story out of all sorts of ingredients. Sometimes I call my mother to talk about what a dream might mean. For example, I recently dreamt about my grandmother. ‘She thinks about you and loves you,’ my mother says.”
Tree
“I still know fear and uncertainty, but they don’t hinder me anymore. They’re two trusted companions now, who walk with me. They keep me sharp and hungry, and in a good way, they keep me on my toes. As long as they don’t hold me back, they can be here. Fear of dying is now simply fear of no longer living. If a way to live until you’re 377 is discovered tomorrow, I’ll be the first to sign up. I’d like to end up as a tree. Then you only need to have a care for wind, rain and sun.”
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dreamwraith · 3 years
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@floralflowerpower mentioned wanting to read an idea I had, soooo....
Alright, this is largely inspired by the M*A*S*H episode “Who Knew?” It’s a very bittersweet episode. It begins with the news that a nurse died the previous night when she wandered into a minefield. One of the main characters, Hawkeye, was the last one to see her alive. He offers to write her eulogy when no one else steps forward, though he barely knew her himself. He’s stymied by how little anyone can tell him about her, until the priest suggests he reads her diary. He learns who she was through her own words, the person she had hidden beneath a shy exterior that others interpreted as standoffish. She had true feelings for Hawkeye and he never knew. The last entry is how she can’t get Hawkeye out of her thoughts so she’s going to go for a walk. 
As you might guess, my idea starts off with a bittersweet tale. 
Jack and Maddie got the portal working without Danny needing to die, and for two years, Amity Park has been under threat from whatever ghost chooses to try their hand at conquering them. Jack and Maddie are the town’s main defense without Danny Phantom to protect them, and they’re not as skilled or as prompt as canon Danny was at catching ghosts. Sometimes a ghost slips through. Sometimes, people get hurt. 
I don’t have the full details worked out, but in this case, a ghost attacked the school. Danny is almost killed. He’s the son of the town’s defenders, so perhaps he’s an easy, desirable target. One of his classmates saves him by sacrificing himself. He (I’ve been going with the name Alexander in my notes) later dies at the hospital, and Danny, suffering from survivor’s guilt and PTSD, blames himself. He didn’t know his classmate very well, he doesn’t even remember his name right away, he doesn’t understand why Alex saved him. 
He tries to find out more about him, feeling like he owes him that much, but he discovers only superficial information. Alex was a foster of Amity Park; he had no family. No one but Danny is currently mourning him. He’s determined to get answers, though, and that causes him to clash with Dash and teachers when they say things like “Alex was a creep” or “he was a troublemaker; I heard he ran away from his last home.” Danny’s fights get him brought to Lancer’s attention, and it’s during that meeting that Danny is given Alex’s diary. 
Eager but frightened, it takes Danny a long time to work up the courage to begin reading. 
Meanwhile, “Phantom” begins to form in the Ghost Zone. 
Alex hated himself enough that his self-image is dismissed from his spirit, and his last thoughts were of Danny, so when he forms, he takes on a ghostly impression of Danny. It’s an important detail because that’s what makes this pitch pearl, and it’s why Danny doesn’t recognize him. 
He doesn’t have a clearly defined obsession, but he definitely feels a pull toward the human world. Johnny and Kitty help Phantom cross the portal, and that’s when he meets Danny for the first time. Idk why Danny came down to the lab yet, but I know he’s up because of PTSD nightmares/insomnia. Phantom feels his whole being focus on Danny, Danny freezes in place because he had just woken up from a nightmare of a ghost attack, and Johnny and Kitty look between Danny and Phantom, putting two and two together and reaching “Phantom’s purpose”
The three ghosts make a quick escape once protective parents Jack and Maddie come storming down the stairs, but first impressions were made, and now Phantom is determined to find out more about Danny and why his soul is crying out for him. 
Unfortunately, Danny is entangled in Alex’s diary and his own grief. Every effort Phantom makes toward befriending Danny is rebuffed because 1) ghosts can’t be trusted, and 2) Phantom’s resemblance to Danny combined with his interest in him is fucking creepy. In his downward spiral, though, Danny is losing connection with his friends, his grades, his safety, and Phantom isn’t willing to let Danny fade like this. Circumstances change when Phantom saves Danny from a human threat (human crime, let’s goooo) and Danny starts to actually pay attention to him, enough to start letting down his walls at least. 
And just in time for Danny to reach the point in the diary where Alex confesses he had a crush on Danny. Danny’s grief finally breaks, and Phantom comforts him through the loss. Phantom learns about Alex and Danny’s growing feelings for a boy that’s no longer within reach, and reluctantly pushes his own growing feelings for Danny aside. Danny is going through too much to deal with Phantom’s own failings. He needs time to mourn.
A real friendship starts to build.
With his feelings for Danny on hold but satisfied by their friendship, Phantom begins to explore who he is. He begins to take on a protector role, determined to save other humans from feeling the grief Danny is under. He focuses less on fighting and more on saving. A ghost will attack, and he’ll erect a shield around humans to deflect debris or catch someone who is falling or just comfort someone who got hurt. Jack and Maddie are still the ones that ultimately defeat the ghost, but Phantom’s actions begin to catch everyone’s attention. 
He is exactly what they needed, and he begins to be hailed as a guardian.
Danny is happy for him, but something about Phantom’s focus with protection over fighting resonates with Alex’s thoughts in his diary. He begins piecing things together. He proposes his wild idea to Jazz one night, but she warns him not to try to “bring Alex back from the dead” for Danny’s own mental health. 
Danny proposes the idea to Phantom, and at first Phantom thinks it’s nonsense, but Danny insists Phantom read the diary, so Phantom reluctantly (tho he doesn’t understand why he’s so reluctant) humors him. He can only get through five entries before he shoves the diary back into Danny’s hands and refuses to read anymore.
His self-hatred caused him to lose his identity in death, remember? He doesn’t want to remember, it’s painful. He tells Danny to forget about Alex. No one cared about him when he was alive, they won’t care who he was now. But Danny cares, and it tugs at Phantom’s feelings to meet Danny halfway, but does Danny like him because of Alex or because of Phantom, the person he is now?
I don’t have the full details worked out, but I know I want Danny to reveal Phantom’s past as Alex to Amity Park so that they can see their foster son has grown into their defender, savior, protector. He wasn’t loved when he was alive, but they must honor his past because it made him the hero he is now. Amity Park goes wild for the story. They love Phantom all the more, knowing who he was, how he died, and who he became. 
A bittersweet beginning becoming an uplifting, hopeful note, maybe? 
That’s all I have planned :P
I haven’t written anything for it yet because I haven’t figured out how to start. I’m terrible at action scenes, and I feel like I have to describe at least PART of Alex’s sacrifice. But ugh, ghost attack, ugh. Choreography, description, pacing, urgh, I hate action scenes, how do you guys WRITE those, it’s witchcraft I swear
(Side note for the name, Alexander means “defender of men”)
(And because I’m classy as a unripe grape, the story is titled Right Here (Departed) in my folder, which is actually a song by Brandy oiasjdlkfej I song titled it. omg. But listen, listen...it fits)
157 notes · View notes
semischarmed · 4 years
Text
Chrysalis
People say that college is where you “find yourself” and I can’t help but agree. It’s just, well, how I truly found myself was through my roommate Kyle. Or rather, inside him.
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How to describe Kyle? He’s basically the perfect roommate. He’s kind, quiet, studious, relatively clean. He goes to soccer practice for some kind of campus league every weekend. Kyle is also rushing one of the frats on campus- Sig something or the other, so I get quite a few long nights to myself. Long, hot nights where I can’t help but scramble over to his side and pleasure myself in a pile of dirty Kyle-scented undergarments. The biggest treats were the nights when he had to do his frat stuff after a match. The nights when I could slip on his unwashed sweaty gear and just lie in the bliss of being surrounded in him. Every few days, we go out to grab a bite to eat and shoot the shit- the guy’s been a great friend to me, despite his typical serious demeanor. Since he was rushing this semester, he’s been busier and busier but he still makes time for me, even inviting me to some of his soccer team or frat bro hangouts. What can I say? I lucked out with Kyle. Still, I’m a greedy son of a bitch, and I wanted more of him. 
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I decided fairly early on that I would possess him, make him wholly mine. I can’t even quite explain why Kyle specifically. He’s cute-sure, tone-definitely, but he isn’t super buff, he isn’t red-carpet-movie star hot, so it’s really hard to place why, out of anyone I could take in this entire school, I decided he would be my target. My forever home. Something about him was just enticing. Maybe it was the way his coffee brown eyes relayed a sense of mystery and serious matters, but lit up with the faintest twinkle of amusement when he recapped his games. Or maybe the way his body only gave me the briefest of glimpses at his musculature when he switched shirts. Maybe it was his kindness, unexpectedly bright for a frat-boy-soccer-star-roomate. Or maybe the way his scent lingered in the room after a workout. God, that scent. Pleasant, warm, humid, musky- like summer rain. Doesn’t matter. I wanted him. I wanted to spend my every moment with him. In him. I wanted to be wrapped up in Kyle’s flesh till the end of time, to wake up with Kyle’s eyes, to take every breath with his lungs, feel every beat of his heart pump as mine.
This possession was going to be special. I prepped for weeks- months even. Truthfully, it’s not all that difficult to possess someone for sometime and when you’re as good at it as I am, you can even maintain it indefinitely by putting the smallest pieces of yourself in them. Kyle would be different. Full, integrative possession- a one-way ticket. I wanted this shit to be permanent. I was going to stuff my entire physical form inside his. To take someone at their core, to violate every law of nature both physical and metaphysical- this, this needed setup, needed planning, needed Kyle to be present during the entire process. Therein lies the issue- how to get a lucid Kyle to sit still long enough for me to complete the slow process of integrating to him. 
I came to the conclusion that a catalyst of sorts was necessary. Something that could lock us in together physically, could stop him from leaving or stopping process, could break open after let the new and improved me emerge. Guess who drafted plans for a one such catalyst? Guess who switched majors to Material Science, who befriended a professor just to figure out a good semi-permeable material to use? No one can say I didn’t love him- at least in my own special way. After weeks of trial, weeks of iteration, I decided on a tight-fitting, sleeping-bag-esque contraption. The material and shape were special- virtually impossible for a human being to break out of, kept fluids in but let some air flow through for ventilation, shaped such that we could only fit directly stacked on top of each other, leaving him unable to escape the process. I also set the release mechanism in the back, so only a completed Kyle could escape. Like any good invention, I gave it a name befitting its purpose: Chrysalis.
I settled on a day where he would be weakest- cardio day, a day where I could easily slip some compound into his post workout mix. I finished preparations with the chrysalis, secretly hidden in his bed.
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“Hey dude, sup?” He asks nonchalantly with a slight head nod, as he enters our room, visibly tired from the workout. “Nothing, man” I reciprocate in amusement. I watch in secret anticipation as he downs his special post-workout mixture, scratches his cock through his boxers- unconcerned, comfortable, and gives off a loud yawn. “Hey man, I-I-don’t....feel..” I rush to help him, corralling the grimy, tired, post-workout Kyle into place. He asleep almost immediately. I strip us both naked, marveling at my new vessel. Damn. A light pelting of hair covers the deceptively muscular soccer star. A blanket of sweat surrounds him while a bit of the spiked post workout drink pools at the corners of his plump lips. Deliciously plump lips beckoning for a taste. I aim to lick it off and give him a kiss before I immediately realize what the repercussions would be. Shit. Close call. I stroke his hair, leaning in to tell him how much I wanted this. I take a quick sniff at his pits, at his groin and god they smell fantastic. I roll him to his side, as I take my naked form beside him and pull the Chrysalis around ourselves. I roll to have my back face the bed and the bottom of my cocoon, pulling Kyle on top of me and engaging the the contraption to wrap around us. I find the button to tighten it, effectively locking the position of our stacked bodies in place. I find the final button to lock the Chrysalis into its release valve. No going back.
When I seal us together in my little love cocoon, I begin to feel the gravity of his form above mine, slick with perspiration. My future body was dense, probably from years of building muscle, perfectly tempered, toned, streamlined by every game, every win. Inside our encasement, I rocked back and forth, getting into as comfortable of a position as I could and rubbing our sweaty bods together. I lock my legs around his, intertwine our fingers together and wait patiently for Kyle to come to.
The scent was indescribable, orgasmic even. I’ve never felt closer to him. I am in tune with his slightest movements as he lay on top. With every breath, every inhale our bodies rise and fall in sync. With every steamy inhale I draw in his breath. like we were breathing in each other. No one else deserved to experience Kyle this way, not even his girlfriend Steph. Kyle was mine and mine alone. With mine still intertwined with his, I drag Kyle’s limp hands around his belly, his light abs, give him a feel for himself.
An intrusive wave of uncertainty hits me. Oh god what am I doing? Am I really doing this? This, this is unnatural. I release my hands from his grasp and reach them around him, lightly dancing them across my future body and feeling the new vessel so close, feeling his damp, gently sculpted abs for myself, squeezing his supple ass. Stupid natural order shit. I tug on his hefty, limp dick, which begins to harden involuntarily at my provacation. This is mine. Fuck the natural order, not giving you up baby.
He wakes, disoriented in the Chrysalis. “Uh...I...What the fuck...” Panic sets in, as he feels my immobile flesh behind him and he tries to get his bearings to no avail. He keeps moving back and forth, trying to dislodge himself from the Chrysalis, from me, but it’s far too tight and too strong. I made sure of that. “Oh god, oh god...” he trails as he tries to rationalize the past events. I decide at that point to reveal my identity, faking the sounds of myself waking up before sleepily asking him “Kyle? Uh... w-what are you doing here? What are we doing? W-Where is this? Did you do this? Kyle? Kyle!” I’m a shitty actor but he seems to have bought it. I relish the moment when he sighs in relief at the realization that the naked form on his back was mine. I guess he trusts me. Cute, but you shouldn’t trust me, Kyle.  
“Oh thank god, dude I don’t know, I just woke up. I- uh- sorry, I’m gonna try to get us out of this thing,” He states as he wiggles to try to release us from my cocoon. And fuck did that feel good. 
“Mmmmm Kyle” I trail, as my dick starts to harden and poke at his ass. The wiggling does not helping him, as every movement gets me harder and pushes my dick further in him. 
“Oh! EW! Fuck! What the fuck man!” He shouts, before he realizes all this was turning me on. “Fuck dude stop!” he exclaims. 
“Why would I stop this, baby, we’re just getting started.” I give his back shoulder a quick lick. “I’m gonna make you feel like a new man”.
“Y-You! YOU! You did this! the Fuck! Get me out of here!!” He spat, only for it to rain back on to us through gravity. 
He squirms, trying to escape once more only to be met with the Chrysalis’ tight hold on our forms and my engorged cock. “Only one person can come out of this thing” I moan, as I start gyrating myself into him. “Get the fuck off me, Fag!” He screams in vain as parts of me already start connecting into him. The parts of his body connected to mine light up, like sparks dancing across mine. Euphoria. “There’s that soccer rage” I state seductively as I wrap my arms around his torso and abs and push us impossibly closer. “Suits you... suits...me”.
By this point, My body was halfway submerged into his and he finally starts to feel my nerves, my cells as his. With our shared senses, he feels my arms pushing us together as if his own self was doing the deed. “AHHHH OH MY GOD. Oh! nonononono” He exclaims in terror. He is reduced to incoherent babbling as he smells the suffocating concoction of his post-workout filth. The air is thick and brimming with pheromones. He is reduced to disgust, when he tastes the droplets in the air of our putrid selves locked inside my Chrysalis. Of course, in our connected state, I taste them too, only I love this taste. His taste. Our taste. I can only moan as I continue merging into him and my limbs and his are one. I feel my new biceps as I trace them around the new me. Tone. Nimble. Champion. And I feel my new, experience-tempered legs. Vascular. Virile. Powerful. I’m a goddamn athlete.
Animalistic, guttural sounds escape his mouth as the last of my torso and neck coalesce into his, and all that remains is my head, firmly planted to the back of his. I take a deep whiff of his now-drenched hair with our new, shared, workhorse lungs. “We’re so close, baby.”
Inserting myself into his mind was equally orgasmic. He screams at contact. The first plunge of my forehead tp the back of his was some useless frat shit. Whatever. I dig my head deeper into him and felt his years of soccer practice leak into me. More goodstuff. Then deeper still- and fond memories with friends, fond memories of school bleed into me. I plunge further and further in, taking in every piece of him I could, while he pants and winces at my insertion. His first kiss, grandfather’s funeral, deepest urges all MINE. Fuck. I pull back slightly, as I feel his him gently sob, before I push more myself deeper into his psyche. He screams at the injection of more of my memories and at the realization that this was a one way trip for both of us. “FUCK! FUCK! Stop Please! Too much! Too much!” I mentally sneer as I thrust even deeper into his mind, grabbing some more of him, and leaving more of myself. Childhood memories and feelings flood into my mind and I experience everything that has led to Kyle becoming Kyle. The feeling of winning my first game. The feeling I felt the first time I masturbated. More. Kyle’s deep love for Steph.
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Damn, this guy was ready to pop the question and start a family with her-Not Anymore baby. You’re with me now, Kyle. I corrode this particular aspect of him with my own innermost desires. My perversions, the pure lust I felt in finally taking him. He laughs, moans at the lust he now had, before catching himself.
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“Oh god what... doing... me!” he whimpers as his body convulses and drools. Our shared pupils dilate at the process as his body thrashes in futility. And yet, I press into him deeper still. Deeper and deeper inside until all but the very last of my old self is left. His deepest secrets, his dreams, self worth belong to me. He cries, mouth mumbling incoherently into a crescendo as I worm in that last bit my head into his and my own life become his. My old body’s childhood memories, My old thoughts, feelings, knowledge, secrets flood his. I give all of it to my new self, ingraining me in him, and cementing us together.
“AHHHH DAMN IT! Fuck Fuck! get-get the fuck out!” he screams as his hands start pulling on his hair, as his head shakes left and right trying to get the intrusion of my mind out of his. He recoils as I briefly take control. “No way dude, this [moan] oh god this is fucking great.” We continue panting, continue convulsing as his body is forced to accept me. “M-My name is Kyle, and I feel fucking good!” He shakes a bit more. “STOP-“ I cut in to force him to tell me “God I fucking love you inside me. Take me! Use me!” He begins gently sobbing, but I make him do it with a smile. “My name is Kyle and I’m a sick fuck who’s gonna cum inside and possess his closest friends”. I make us moan. 
Eventually, the seizing stops, and Kyle finds a moment of clarity. With my memories in him, He finds the release built into the Chrysalis and we emerge out of our slick cocoon as one. Sweat and cum trickle out as we come out a new man. A changed man. He walks to mirror in horror, checking himself to look for any wounds in his form. Instead he finds pulsing of my flesh-or what used to be my flesh-at various parts of his body beneath his skin. Abberant. Inhuman.
“Oh god oh god oh god this-this-this, this can’t be happening”. My new heart quickens as Kyle continues to panic. He tries to slap himself awake, but with each slap my control tightens and I make him moan in approval. He feels impossibly full with something-someone pulsing deep inside his skin, integrating. A natural violation of the highest order. He whimpers as he takes nervous, shaking hands all around him, feeling the intrusiveness of the eroticism I feel in being in him. The pulsing in him stops. “Keep going, baby [moan] fill me up. Make me you,” I force him to tell me with a tone that oozed sex. A tone that was alien to his voice. “My name is Kyle and I love dick. I love dick because the man inside me, the man controlling my every action loves dick. And he’s never leaving me. I love that too, because he’s inside me, making me love that.”
“Kyle I’m giving you one last morsel choice before I take it all the way- I decide everything for us from now on” I state to my reflection in the mirror, giving it a slobbery kiss. “We got a cute ass...I’m sure we can snag a few more bodies to play with... I wanna get a little party going. You know, our teammates are pretty cute, aren’t they? Maybe we can stick some me inside them”. I make him lick his lips. “Your frat bros are pretty cute too [moan] you wanna be frat president? I can arrange that, once I make you put me inside them...I’m getting ahead of myself... Let’s start with one. Pick someone...someone we can take, can use, can fuck” I force his face into an out of place, lustful, deranged smile before returning control to him. “Stay the fuck away from my bros! I..... uh...sorry. S-Sorry for shouting. Just please-please! Get out!” he whimpers in desperation, before descending into more hysteric sobbing. Hysteric sobbing which becomes cute, unsettling giggling, which becomes a roaring laughter as I wrestle back control of my new meat-suit. I wipe his tears off my new face, giving it a quick taste before taking a tour of the new me. “You and I both know there is no going back. The old me? Doesn’t exist. I am You, now. This is your body doing these actions, your brain thinking these thoughts”.
A tremor begins from our extremities, limbs become numb as our shared nerves light up in stimulation. More internal sparks fly through us. This was it. Like an earthquake in my new body, a wave of new feelings wash over me, rocking me to my core. The world around us shook, as the final pieces of my physical self interlocks with his and two become one. 
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I reach down to pleasure myself, before deciding instead to first push Kyle’s consciousness to the front so he can watch. This would be my first time in this body. Lets make it special. I do a quick reverse crunch, holding the position. Fucking easy in this body. And then pull the crunch close till the body starts to struggle “Arrgh Fuck! Stop!” he screams. I pull even further and he cries from the uncomfortable position I put us in. “This is mine now” I state with his voice, “I decide how far..[pant]..how far we go” And decide I do, as I pull us even further back, prompting another pained “FUCK” from Kyle. I line my growing hard on-our growing hard-on, up to our shared mouth. “Look.. look at what you can do” I moan as him, before letting his consciousness back in front, leaving only control of his face. He is in hysterics as I keep him locked in his position and continue breaking this new bod. 
“Look at what we’re capable of when I’m driving” I state in our shared mind. His head thrashes back and forth before I freeze it in place. I take brief control of just his plump lips and mouth, and position his thick dick inside. Fuck we taste good. Salty, with the smallest hint of bitterness. I continue, pumping head faster and faster, forcing my occupant to feel every motion. We make little noise beyond the soft smacking sounds as we continue. The feeling was fucking euphoria. Im sure he feels it too, since he’s been uncharacteristically quiet. I’ve seen him do his warmup stretches before. I knew what he was capable of- with just a little push from me. When he shoots, when I let him shoot, I keep our shared mouth firmly wrapped around our engorged dick, guzzling our creation greedily. This mouth cannot contain it all and a bit spill below. Even more dribbles out of as I slowly release our position. Wet cum spills and pools on our shared chest and abs. I smear it around like a lotion. 
I jump and stretch myself into straight standing abruptly, forcing a slight jolt of pain from previously contorting this new body in a way it never had to before. His blood rushes through me, through us, and I let out a sigh of relief and contentment in the afterglow of my possession. I lick my new self clean, exploring all of Kyle’s crevices, before I coat our mouth in my new seed for a taste and swallow the excess in one gulp. We taste Delicious. Kyle, you sexy, tasty fuck, I knew there was something different about you. That last stunt seemed to have satisfied him as he recedes into me. I am in a dreamy smile as I tap my head gently with my finger. “All me now”.
The alarm on Kyle’s phone-my phone rings suddenly. Oh Shit. Kyle-er I had a game in a few minutes. I head over to the field with a breeze behind me, to the sight of slight discomfort and subtle gagging from my teammates. Fuck that. Smell more of me motherfuckers. They smile with strained faces as we do some small warmups for the game. His teammates really were cute- I briefly consider possessing them right there in broad daylight. Fuck it, what can anyone fucking do? I’m Kyle. And when Kyle wants something, Kyle gets it. Still, I only came for a test drive, so I decide to postpone their fates.
The match was tense. My teammates were alright, sure. But Kyle? Me? I played his body like an expert- no movement wasted, every single action carefully considered and executed. It was my brain in here after all. Onlookers stared in awe as, almost inhumanly, I block everything that goes my way. Despite my brain’s expert calculation, his body also deserved to praise. His muscled legs gliding my form through the grass, effortlessly, the twisting his body at just the right spot for the most efficient block. This body following my every command, like I’ve owned it for years. The old me was not one for sports, but this? Working his musculature into these complex maneuvers? Straining his form to just the right amount to maximize performance? Bliss. I can see why some people like this shit. The more I move through him, the closer I felt. Despite my heavy panting at the end, I can’t help but feel energized. Being in him is invigorating. I could keep going at this for days and days- this was truly an athlete’s body. 
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I do a little dance as, in the end, we squeeze a 1-0 victory. All thanks to me, of course. My teammates brace themselves slightly-likely from the deep, concentrated musk and gallons of sweat I was emanating- before they surround me in a group huddle. New and improved Kyle is kinky little shit though, so I grab and pull their sweaty bodies uncomfortably close, and then squeeze them to me even closer so they can leave with the scent of my sweat on them. They recoil at my actions, at my words, as the normally stoic Kyle gently coos “Great job, team”. They laugh nervously and try to pull away, but I keep them in the embrace just an awkward second too long, sniffing each of them and remarking them. One day, you’ll all be mine.
After the game, I return to our room and look at my sweaty, dirty self in the mirror. I take a whiff of the freshly filthy soccer game and  soccer team smells we impregnate our room with. I take a quick sniff of our shared armpits, deciding to forgo showering this bod. Exquisitely noxious. Not getting rid of this.
I called his girlfriend Steph to break up abruptly over phone, citing my “newfound” sudden onset homosexuality. She was upset, understandably, but supportive. Really, I had no issues with the girl, and in another life, we’d be best friends fawning over the same straight dude. But this was Kyle, new-Kyle, new-gay-Kyle-who-only-loves-possessed-dick. My Kyle. He was mine, and mine alone.
Having finished my short list of post-takeover errands, my new self was on the prowl for some new recruits, new bodies to take, to possess, to pleasure me. Since he never really gave me an answer to my question earlier, I search through the remnants of the Old Kyle in my mind, force them to give me the name of someone to to take. I smiled. In the echoes of my mind, one face, one name reverberated in my head.  
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Red.
I start giggling in a cute tone, out of place coming out of jock Kyle before I break out into a full cackle. “Kyle, you sick, sick, fuck...Red? Big Bro Red? After all he’s done to try to bond with you? Sick, incestuous son of a bitch.” I let out a soft moan as I drag my new vascular hands all over myself, stopping at my new nipples to give them a slight tickle, and my eyes flutter. I give them a hard twist, whining in elation when his body delivers the sensations to me. The smells we’ve been emitting has been pungent, concentrated, putrid from that sweaty group hug earlier. “Traitorous, depraved fucks like me don’t deserve a shower” I make him say in dirty whispers.
Red was Kyle’s big bro at the frat, and someone I had only met once previously. Once was enough to leave an impression. Unlike cute, naturally introspective, reserved athlete Kyle, Big Bro Red was extroverted, artsy, and fucking hot. Apparently, he’s been trying to connect to Kyle ever since the two were paired. Well, Kyle’s under new management, and I planned to use every bit of their tenuous relationship to get Big Bro Red under that same management. This was going to be fun. 
I am stopped abruptly as my phone vibrates. “Hey, wanna grab a bite to eat?” I close my eyes in sweet satisfaction, lick my lips seductively and shift my mouth into a filthy smile when I catch the name of who it’s from:
Red. 
—————End—————
Took a bit of inspiration from some past stories I’ve read in writing this one. The story implies a continuation but I’m still a bit on the fence. Hope you liked it/ Happy New Year’s!
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poptod · 4 years
Note
hey there ☺ do you think you can write a soulmate au with ahk where you hear each other's thoughts? and ahk thought he didn't have one all these years only to hear you while he's at the museum and then you try to find each other?
notes: wonderful idea. also i noticed my method of doing requests is do it almost immediately after i get it or wait four months before i get it done so sorry about that, but i hope you enjoy this!
WC: 1.5k +
There are many versions of yourself, all talking over one another in an attempt to control your mind for once. Sometimes it's hard to decipher if your actions are the result of someone in your head tugging you in a different direction. There is the person you believe yourself to be––what you imagine you come off to people as. There is also the person you truly are, and what people actually perceive you to be. So despite there being several voices, they are all reiterations of yourself in some way.
Except for one.
One of them speaks in a voice that is not your own, in a voice you've never heard anywhere but echoing in your skull. Since you despised asking questions as a child, it took you until you were twelve to realize that no, you weren't insane. It was someone who would love you, who had the potential to grow close to you simply by the strings of fate. Your soulmate. 
Someone who gave you nightmares for years.
'Get me out of here!' He would scream, sending your heart pounding while you tried to sleep as a child. 'Please, please, I need to see the stars,' he sobbed, 'I did nothing to deserve this!'
Once you grew old enough to deal with the screaming beyond what you thought was a schizophrenia disorder, nighttime brought a deep sadness to you. For some reason, your soulmate would never think during the day––which was incredibly odd––and during the night, the only time he was awake, he would scream and beg and cry until you could feel the hoarseness in your own throat. For your entire childhood, you stared up at your ceiling at night, eyes burning as you tried to calm the screaming.
It was all you could think about, as though the screams had muted your connection to him and strengthened his connection to you. Every now and then you would try to think, try to calm him down, but he never quite heard.
Then, one evening in winter, it stopped.
You were lying in bed, rolled onto your side as you once again listened to the man's yelling thoughts. But then he stopped, and both your hearts skipped a beat, followed by an incredibly clear thought: Thank the Gods, blessed Ra and Khonsu.
That evening you darted out of bed, jumping to your desk where you typed in with slamming, lightning-fast fingers, "khonsu." Ra you already knew––everyone knew Ra, and by connection Khonsu would probably also be a God. The only question you were left with was why you were hearing the thoughts of someone who worshipped Egyptian gods two thousand years after that civilization died.
As you continued your research, his thoughts continued.
They took my tablet?
Who are these people?
This man has no idea what he's doing, does he?
Why is he screaming at the Hun?
He's got my tablet.
About halfway into the night you gave up on your research, instead listening intently to the thoughts. With you entirely absorbed in your soulmates thoughts, you had little room to send your own words to him, which unbeknownst to you, would've reached him if you tried.
You weren't quite sure what to think of him for the following couple weeks. At first your assumption was that he was the insane one projecting his insane thoughts to you, but his quieter thoughts led you to believe there was something different in him. It is true what they say––geniuses are often tortured minds, and though you wouldn't classify your soulmate as a genius, he was clearly a knowledgeable philosopher of sorts.
He thought often of the human condition––the rise and fall of civilizations, the cruelty and the mercy of men that began the stories of bloodstained battlefields. Most of the time you just listened. Now that he wasn't screaming, his voice was soft and more of a comfort than you ever thought it would be.
Sometimes he got very sad. After a while you learned to not question the logic of his thoughts. Instead, you simply tried to understand what he meant, accepting him for where he was in his life.
I miss my brother.
I wonder what happened to my best friend.
I didn't think I would ever be this far from the Nile and the sun.
I abandoned my people, didn't I?
If only I could find where my sister was buried. Would that even make me feel better, though? What closure will I gain from seeing her tomb?
... if she even had one.
There's a melody going on in his head, right now. Something that could put you to sleep if you weren't currently working. It's nothing you've heard before, that you're certain of, and judging by the tone of it and your soulmate's previous thoughts, it sounds Egyptian.
Despite the museum being closed, most of the lights are still on. One of the night guards had a very strange insistence about it, but wouldn't tell you why. Oh well––questioning people is above your paygrade, since you aren't getting paid for this. It is volunteer work. Not that you mind; ever since realizing the voice in your head was Egyptian, you've gotten a palate for history. Currently, however, you're dealing less with history and more with files. The curator at this museum asked you to sort through the records of all the different exhibits that are here, or were once here at some point, which made a very large collection. Massive, actually––you're only sorting through A, and it's going to take you a couple weeks.
He's humming softly to himself. The tune carries into your work, and you allow yourself to enjoy his voice as you sort, going over every record to look for exhibits no longer displayed. For this you have a chart in your other hand––a log of all the exhibits currently public in the museum.
Although you're supposed to be concentrated on your sorting, you find yourself more entranced with the melody in your head, and the clearest thought that rings in your mind is, 'that is beautiful.'
The humming stops. Dead in its' tracks, about to reach its' peak, and it stops.
'My mother sang it to me,' he says, 'before I slept as a child.'
"Holy shit, are you talking to me?" You say out loud with bulging eyes before you can stop yourself. The moment you realize what you said, a bright blush coats your cheeks and you slap your hand over your mouth. But he doesn't seem to mind––actually, he laughs, and it's sweeter than summer sugar.
'You must be my heart,' he says in an astounded tone, and you can practically see his dream-filled eyes. You sit puzzled for a second before replying.
"Do you mean your soulmate?"
'Well... I suppose yes, that could be one of the names,' he says, and it only adds more onto the lists of questions you have for him.
"What is your name?" You ask first, hardly realizing you're still talking aloud to yourself.
'My name is Ahkmenrah," he tells you, and it takes less than a millisecond before the dots connect in your head. Instantly your eyes dart to the sheet in your hand, and near the top of the list, there it sits––Ahkmenrah.
'I know this must be confusing for you,' he continues, 'but I am from another time. While I lived then, I dreaded that I didn't have a heart, as I heard no voice. That fear has carried on into my next life, but now that you're here –'
"Oh I'm here alright," you say, unbelieving of both your circumstances and your unblinking acceptance at them. "I'm, like, two floors below you."
"WHAT?!"
A voice from above catches you, but as the same word rings in your mind, you realize with great glee that he instinctively yelled 'what' without thinking. You laugh, and the thought of your laughter reaches him.
Less than a minute later you can hear footsteps pounding down the stairs, landing at the closed door before the handle wrenches open. You quickly move to your feet, facing the man whose voice you know so well, who haunted your childhood and enchanted your adulthood. You can barely hide the grin that spreads across your face––whatever magic has brought you to this moment, you thank everything you can for it, your attention ensnared by the soft features of a 4,000 year old Pharaoh.
He pauses once he enters the archive, eyes finding yours immediately. His mouth hangs open slightly as he scans you, absorbs every feature on your body and face, and barely moves even to breathe for a good minute or two.
"I – I'm sorry, I j – I just realized I didn't ask your name," he says quietly, a small, ginger smile growing on his lips.
"(Y/N)," you say, but you don't quite know how your brain worked to make the word. You certainly didn't consciously choose to speak.
"I have waited thousands of years for you," he says, impossibly softer as he steps forward. He's really quite harmless, you realize––for all the fear you had of him as a child, he's nothing but a sweet-faced boy.
"Was it worth it?" You ask, and your voice cracks ever so slightly.
"My heart," he breathes out, affection lacing his name for you, "it was worth every second."
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mxrstar · 3 years
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here are some unrequested general thoughts i have about empathy/hyper-empathy (as someone who definitely feels it way too much), specifically because i have seen way too many people use empathy as a shield for selfishness and i'm tired of it
your empathy isn’t a sign of worth. it can make you more attentive and careful around others, but i spent the longest time treating it like it was proof that i was a good person and that i cared, and i’m here to tell you that empathy proves nothing. compassion is the bit that matters. having low to no empathy isn’t a flaw and having lots of it isn’t a merit. don’t put yourself above others because of it, and please don’t sit in your pit of despair thinking that you should hold on to that suffering because it means you aren’t evil. it hurts and there’s no reason why you should carry that pain
your empathy isn’t a superpower. i do pay special attention to sign of distress in others, but i honestly don’t think that is connected to my empathy. there are people who act like me but don’t feel emotional empathy, and instead just want to help. if i’m in a restaurant and someone is sobbing two tables over but i’m playing a videogame with headphones on and or i’m generally lost in my thoughts, my empathy isn’t magically gonna warn me about that pain. having empathy doesn’t make you automatically receptive to other people’s needs if you don’t make the effort to raise your head and look for them
your empathy doesn’t make you more understanding by default. it can help your perception of other people’s experiences, sure, but it can also distort it. i generally put it like this: when someone is expressing a strong emotion, what i feel is my own interpretation of its echo. it’s not the real thing because i am only dealing with the resonance it has on me and because i am re-interpreting it with my own tools. the best way to understand someone's pain is to listen to them when they talk about it. when a mirror of that pain develops inside of you it is going to be filtered by your experiences, and sometimes it’s important to not get stuck on that version of it because it may not be accurate
your empathy can stand in the way of your compassion. i know it stands in the way of mine. when i help someone deal with something difficult, depending on how the conversation ends, it can feel taxing for a long while. sometimes, i will be having a really bad day and realising halfway through that it’s mostly because i am feeling the aftermath of someone’s pain. i love helping people, it gives me hope and i want to keep on doing it, but i’d have more energy for it if i didn’t feel quite so much empathy. realising that the pain your empathy makes you feel isn’t necessary to be a compassionate person can honestly feel quite liberating and it’s a good thing to internalise
i know it can be difficult, but when someone is opening up to you, you should try to file away whatever discomfort you may feel for later. it’s not your fault that you feel upset, and you are not making it about yourself because it’s fun or pleasant, but you can deal with all of that with someone who isn’t involved. as you are still in the moment, do your best to keep it to yourself and do not feel guilty if you need to calm yourself down internally as you are listening. especially when i am speaking to someone in person, i try to tell myself things like: “it’s okay, the two of you are currently safe, they are opening up because they find a benefit in doing so, you are helping by being here, this pain isn’t all that there is” and it does help. i still feel guilty for not being able to just listen sometimes, but there’s nothing wrong with trying to cope with your feelings so that you may be there for that person and support them
i find that it can be useful to practice being in a situation where your empathy would get intense. there are two reasons for this: 1) if something horrific happens, you can’t just refuse to deal with it because it may hurt you, sometimes you just have to; 2) having a productive script focused on what you can do to help usually distracts me from my empathy and gives me a positive goal. as an example, sometimes i try enacting what i would do if someone asked me for help in a really desperate situation (stuff like: what kind of resources could i give them? what i could i say? in what way could i say it?). this may not be helpful to everyone, but being able to plan an interaction like that can be useful in general and it also gets me personally accustomed to the idea that emergencies happen
in connection to the last point, there should be no situation that you feel you categorically cannot ever know about because of your empathy. of course you can avoid certain professions (like a therapist or a doctor) and choose not to read specific stories or try not to listen to gruesome details on the news, but i think that part of your plan just cannot be “well, i don’t have to manage how i would react to [x thing], because i know no one who would make me come close to it”. as long as [x thing] is in the realm of human experiences (so not something like: my friend becomes a ghost for the rest of eternity) then in my opinion you should stop looking at it as something avoidable. what if you become friends with someone new who is experiencing that thing and they need your support? what if that thing becomes relevant and you should politically do something to stop it? it is certainly not good to obsessively expose yourself to pain so that you “get used to it” (which is something i know i used to do) and it is important to walk into conversations knowing what they are so you can be prepared and know what about them might cause you discomfort (which is to say: it's reasonable to be upset because someone constantly references their trauma in detail in lighthearted situations) but you need to deal with your limits. of course it can be a process, but it is healthy to try and set tangible goals. you especially should not avoid the news because you are too emphatic. again, you deserve to have options to cope with the potential aftermath and doom-scrolling is rarely productive, but you cannot use your empathy as an excuse to not care about other people
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strawbearisamu · 3 years
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♥︎ ship your moots! (only if you have time tho no pressure ofc)
yes my time has come.
@woahsamu + atsumu. hshjsjsj yall are so freaking annoying. you spoil him to bits bc that’s what u do and he treats you like damn royalty. still flirts and acts like he’s trying to woo you. prob does dumb shit intentionally when u have a bad day to make you laugh. unrelated but you guys do really good impressions of each other. kisses you and runs away, tries to get you to chase him, u guys fall & land on top of each other like a rom com get a room ew.
@arrogantsonofabiscuit + mattsun. BBY I KNOW U AND MATTSUN would be amazing tgt. he would tease u endlessly but also yall kinda have that sweetheart and hot guy dynamic. yeah idk what that is either HHSHS. also u guys watch horror movies tgt.
@sumine + suna. JASMINE the both of you have such chill vibes. i’m thinking cafe hopping, picnics, soft dates. but i’m also thinking waterparks, splashing water at each other and tryna see who can hold their breath the longest, you catch him cheating coming up for air halfway and you start play fighting shjsjsj. u guys are always lost in your own world. you hang out w your friends and sometimes he’ll tag along just because.
@charlie-jay + akaashi. u guys are intellectuals. the both of you just connect. you guys would talk for hours at a coffee shop, under the stars, in the sun, you name it. you share a deep and intimate connection bc you guys are so intentional about everything. akaashi probably write you love letters, and you guys have these inside jokes that no one else understands HAHA.
@etherrreal luna + osamu. LUNA imagine cooking tgt w him, youre locked between his arms and the counter and as he guides your hand, molding the rice. PLAYFUL KITCHEN FIGHTS shut up i know it’s cliche HHAHSHS but i KNOW this is u guys. osamu gives u a piggy back everywhere. dawn + oikawa!! i feel like you have similar vibes. oikawa is so whipped for u lol and sometimes you can’t help being dramatic along with him (omg i’m sorry we don’t know each other that well yet dawn please forgive me TT)
@kuroowo + osamu. i feel like the both of you are such self-starters and always pushing each other to do better? late night drives talking endlessly about everything and nothing. always hugging, or holding hands or giggling at each other. like yeah we get it you’re in love HAHASHHSHS. starts setting his alarms an hour early bc u aggressively cuddle him and tell him 5 more mins every morning.
@etherealtobio + mattsun. MAB u and mattsun👌 that super cool couple everyone is envious of. first of all visuals? also you do everything tgt. bookstore- tgt, grocery shopping- tgt. and i feel like mattsun is really good at driving so you guys regularly go on these crazy road trips, fast food, sunsets, making out in the car, u get the vibe :”.
@stationery-store + kuroo. i feel like you guys have the same vibes yk what i mean. like slight crackhead (in the most affectionate way possible), but witty and smart as well. yall would be able to like prank someone and also have deep discussions on existentialism or smth LMAO.
@sunkeiji + akaashi. WHATS NEW HAHA. we all know you guys are disgustingly sweet and unintentionally make everyone else feel really single bahshs. the small little things he does for you? he loves staring at you when you’re so intently focused on something and will spontaneously get the will to hug u HSHD.
@bokutoism + timeskip kenma. hello u guys are the hot badass power couple?? spoils you w stupidly expensive stuff. but also lazy days in bed tgt. if u play games yall r always competing but if you don’t he’ll make you sit on his lap as he plays. prob teaches you how to play a new game the same way. will plan extravagant self-care sessions for u.
@sunatooru + hirugami. b b b. u would look sooo good w hirugami (sachiro). i feel like the both of you are so sweet and caring and empathetic (and cmon he’s so hot), you’re that “love for humanity and the world” couple who’s always iniviting people over, reaching out to friends, and showing them your amazing hospitality in general. but yall do it tgt <3 cus love LOL
@thighridingsamu + iwaizumi. ok morgan i know u love football and i feel like you guys would rave about sports tgt? but more importantly he would be ur hype man 24/7 like you show him an outfit and he’ll be like “hot 💯,” “ass looks good in this.” shskkdjd he probably cooks for u too and makes sure you’re eating right.
@ioveangel + sakusa. you’re a ray a sunshine in his life. you guys balance each other. he’s clingy bc poor babie is touch and attention starved. prob puts socks on your feet on a chilly night but will vehemently deny it. a babie.
@xybi + tendou. HEAR ME OUT. yall prob sneak around tgt. giggling to each other as another one of your victims fall prey to your shenanigans. u guys hang out w each other way too much LOL but really though you guys are just two really sweet people tryna brighten someone’s day tgt. cuddles. lots of em. but also u guys are just devilish for no reason sometimes nd u love it.
@keijee + sakusa. u have a sunny infectious energy and honestly sakusa could benefit from that LMAO. lets you play w his hair but will pretend he hates it. you’re the only person he can recharge with it’s ridiculous, like he’ll randomly cuddle u in the middle of a party just to recharge.
@m3gumiis + komori. athena what can i say. two little puppies.
@oi-oikawa-chan + ushijima. addy this little olive tree will do anything for you. talk to him about anything, he listens so intentionally. and also idk why but imagine u guys w a lot of little adopted pets and plants cus u guys are absolute sweethearts.
@elitparadox + akaashi. like u guys would go on dates to the museum, slow dance in the quiet of the woods, kiss under the night sky. yall are so dramatic for no reason.
don’t boohoo to me if you don’t get your fav HAHA jk kith 😚 i’m drowning in work rn so i’m sry i couldn’t tag everyone but KNOW that ILY :”) mwaa alsoo i jumped around w this and u can 100% i got so tired w some LMAO sry shdjskajs
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I'm okay with a bunch of disorganized rambling honestly 😂. But if I had to narrow it down then I guess I want to know about main and side characters and how they compare to the original?
I know that tumblr is the Prime Site for disorganized rambling, but I have perfectionism issues. But that is a great question, nonnie, and I will be happy to ramble is a slightly less disorganized fashion.
When reading Maximum Ride as a somewhat-formed adult who discovered they enjoy English classes about 3.5 years ago, I noticed that JP, when writing, doesn't understand consistency. At all. Which means, in many ways, I have a free sandbox to work with.
Spoilers for my rewrite WIP, because I strongly believe that if a story would no longer be good if one had spoilers, then it wasn’t a good story in the first place.
I'm trying to keep the backstories the same, plus or minus the scientific method and a few characters (RIP my OCs. I want to bring you back so bad but it wouldn't fit with the thematic narrative). I've mostly kept their (starting) abilities the same, too. Without further ado, I'm going to introduce some WorldBuilding. (If I'm good at nothing else, I'm good at world building)
First off. Logically.
How are they getting Cable?
How are they getting internet?
How are they getting money to eat and stuff?
JP's answer: handwave it off. Sometimes you need to ignore logistics for the sake of plot. This is an answer I'd accept from an author that I like, such as Julie Kagawa, that makes amazing worlds, characters, and narratives that I will happily handwave a few things that wouldn't work in the real world. James Patterson, on the other hand, did not make any of that; he made a cool concept, some good rough-draft characters, and nothing else, and therefore this is an unforgivable sin.
Wasp's answer: They are not getting any of that.
Introducing Cottagecore.
The house is off the grid. Solar Panels and a wind turbine create electricity. They have their own well. They grow their own food, raise livestock for eggs, milk, and wool, and trap fish for meat. They get money through dumpster diving and pawning. They still have to steal half of the necessities they can’t make themselves. They do have a TV, but it can access about three channels on a clear day. Internet is only a thing when they go to the public library.
Giving the flock a background that’s heavy in farming and livestock rearing shores up the plot holes mentioned above, but in my opinion, ties the flock more tightly to the environment, thus giving them something tangible to lose when they have to leave the E-shaped house. Because they’re not just leaving a house and a safety net— they’re leaving their entire way of life with no promise of getting it back. It also gives them a tangible connection to the earth in case I want to actually pursue the global warming themes.
Main Characters
Maximum “Max” Ride (Birthname: nonexistent)
First off, I'm letting her be Latina, James Patterson.
In the original, Max was very much the headstrong, independent, action girl. Leaning into Strong Female Character (TM), but overall she had a strong, solid foundation and enough character consistency through the first three books for me to not have to just make an entire new character. However, I felt that she was, in some ways, a bit too Action-Girl and Strong and Capable. Yes, Max is incredible and competent, but she’s also fourteen. She’s a child.
In the rewrite, Max’s character is still headstrong, independent, capable, and sometimes not the best at listening to others. All of that’s the same. But she’s that way not because of girlboss energy, but because there’s no one else to do it. She doesn’t want to lead, necessarily. She wants to get some rest and let someone else handle the problems life keeps throwing at her. But she knows if she did that, the responsibility of leader would fall to Fang and Iggy, and she can’t ask that of them. She doesn’t want to place that burden on anyone else (Look, there’s a reason I chose Ayano’s Theory of Happiness as one of her signifier songs, okay?). Her narrative is very much centered around burden, and also around loss. She lost her cultural heritage when she was taken away from her birth family, she lost her childhood to being a leader, she lost a good deal of her friends to the school (RIP my OCs), she lost Jeb, and then she lost her stability. And she’s going to lose a lot more before the end of the story. So a lot of her character arc deals with learning that there are some things she can’t fix, some things that can’t be recovered. She can’t get the E-shaped house back. She can’t get her Little Baby Angel back, even after they rescue her. She can’t get her friends back from the school. And instead of working so hard to recover those or find something to replace them, she has to learn to live with that sense of loss and move on with her life without feeling guilty for leaving things behind. And she has to learn that asking for help and sharing her burden is selfish or weak.
Other changes I made that don’t necessarily fit into her narrative arc, but you asked for rambling so rambling you shall get:
Max hallucinates, because mental illness is also a prominent theme in the rewrite. She doesn’t have a psychotic disorder, but her C-PTSD causes visual/audio hallucinations, especially when she’s stressed or sleep deprived. 
Max ends up having a Gender Discovery throughout the story and goes by He/She pronouns eventually. I don’t know when, but it will happen.
As far as genetic modifications/special quirks go, she can fly faster than the rest of the flock, but not 300 miles per hour. She averages about sixty mph with diving speeds of 240. She cannot breathe underwater or shut down her organs on command. She also has the Super Special Power to predict the weather, but that’s not because of genetics, it’s because she has chronic pain in her right arm that gets worse when weather fronts change.
Her favored weapon is her trusty rebar that she picked up from a condemned building. I think she’s going to name it eventually but I don’t know what yet.
Fang (Birth name: Gabriel Xue)
In canon, Fang is characterized in early books by being the “dark, strong, silent type”. He’s probably the most reserved member of the flock, to the point of falling into the Brooding Mystery Man trope in parts of the book. They care a lot, but they’re not the best at conveying that, especially with the younger members of the flock, and at times their high empathy leads them to making mistakes. Despite the high empathy, he’s often compared to a robot due to his lack of expression and external emotions.
Well, first change is that they’re not a man, so jot that down—
If Max’s narrative is centered around burden and loss, I would probably say that Fang’s is centered around humanity and moving on. None of the flock was treated as human while in the school, but Fang was more often than not treated like a wild animal due to “behavioral issues”, and therefore had and continues to have a difficult time considering themselves real and alive, let alone human. This manifests through a several different ways— where in canon Fang definitely had a ‘fight’ reaction, in the re-write they have a ‘freeze’ or ‘shut down’ instinct. They’re selectively mute for multiple reasons (including derealization, jaw pain, the fact that they didn’t learn how to speak until they were 10, and genuinely forgetting it’s something they’re capable of), a period of Cotard’s syndrome, and a tendancy towards self-loathing and self-sacrifice. In short, Fang is still halfway stuck in the mindset that most of the flock grew out of when they escaped in the school, and doesn’t know how to move past it.
Much of their character arc revolves around not necessarily seeing themselves as human, but learning to treat themselves as human even when they don’t feel like one (or even feel real), and knowing that just because they don’t feel human all the time doesn’t mean anyone else can treat them the same. They never start easily expressing their emotions, and they’re always going to be selectively mute, but they learn to accept that those aspects of themself aren’t character flaws or signs that they’re sub-human. 
Other additions to Fang’s character include:
They don’t get their hair cut in New York. It stays long through the entire series. They have the longest hair in the flock by the end of the series, and they can wear it in so many styles.
Fang uses they/it pronouns because themes of reclaiming the weapons used against it and, more importantly, Gender.
They’re actually really good at spelling compared to the rest of the flock, because they and Iggy communicate with Print-On-Palm when they’re nonverbal, and they’re nonverbal for some pretty long stretches of time. 
They and Max have... zero romantic tension. At all. There is none. The number of times Max calls them her sibling/little sibling in the first arc alone is staggering, and that will not change.
Igneous “Iggy” (Birthname: Jamsetta “Jamie” Griffiths)
I’ve talked about Iggy before. Canon doesn’t give us much to go off of, but from what’s shown, he’s smart, sarcastic, has sharper edges than Fang and Max, and also has a sizable ruthless streak. So that’s what I have to go off of.
The big difference between Iggy and Fang&Max is that Iggy has a much better memory of the School. Most of the flock have areas (months or years) that they don’t remember, or people that they’ve blocked from their mind, but Iggy... doesn’t. So he’s the one that remembers all of the other AVIAN test subjects that were old enough to have names and identities but died due to complications. Max might have the burden of leadership, but he has the burden of memory. And that has lead to both a massive fucking guilt complex, because why did he survive when they didn’t, and, as mentioned above, a ruthless streak that he doesn’t shy away from.
Which is to say, by the end of the story, Iggy has the highest kill count.
I love, love writing Iggy next to Max and Fang. I love writing Iggy next to Gazzy and Nudge. Because, I say this with all of the love of the world, but Iggy is not a good person. He is loyalty and love incarnate, and the world can burn down if he and his siblings are safe. Max and Fang will always try to save as many people as they can. They will wonder what’s wrong with them the first time they kill and don’t have a mental breakdown about it. They are good in a way that Iggy is not. He’s okay with killing Erasers. He’s okay with killing humans. He’s okay with killing people who might not necessarily deserve it, if they show themselves as a threat or are simply in the blast radius. He knows perfectly well that most of those Erasers he’s murdering are four and five and he is okay with that, because a lot of the AVIANs were that age when they died. (Yeah, in the rewrite it’s not Fang who has an issue with Ari; it’s Iggy who wants the 7-year-old wolf-boy dead.) 
And this is, of course, juxtaposed with Iggy being really, really good with Nudge and Gazzy (especially in the beginning). Because, again, he actually remembers being a child. He remembers a lot of kids that died and is therefore fiercely protective of the kids that didn’t, as well as fiercely protective of the innocence that he never got. So he’s the one that cooks their favorite foods when they’re having a bad day, always makes time when they want to talk about something, and convinces Max to let them go to that toy store in New York because, yeah, he Max and Fang aren’t kids. They never were. But Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel can be. (And if he has to be a murderer to preserve that, then he’s perfectly okay with that.)
He and Angel don’t get along very well, though. The telepath doesn’t like hanging out with the person with the most clear memories of the school.
Other additions:
Iggy is trans and says trans rights
He also has paranoid episodes, because C-PTSD. Sometimes they’re very helpful. Sometimes they are not.
I actually decided that he’s one of the flock that doesn’t meet their parents. I know in canon he did, but I always found that very clunky because it didn’t add to his character. He was one of the characters who, until it was convenient for the plot, seemed to care the least about his family. I’d much rather give that to a character whose arc would benefit from it.
Iggy! Gets! Older Sibling Rights! Seriously, he’s two months younger than Fang, he is just as capable.
Iggy does not know braille because Jeb decided it wasn’t necessary for him to know. Iggy is also the best speller in the flock, because Print-on-Palm was the only way to talk to Fang for a solid year. Yes he mocks everyone over this.
Iggy is the only member of the flock that enjoys swimming and can take into the air from water. Everyone else in the flock is incredibly jealous.
Nudge (Birthname: Monique Robinson)
If Iggy is defined by his memories, Nudge is his polar opposite. She was seven when she left the School, but she has next to no memories of it. She is missing a lot of time in the first year she escaped. And that causes... a lot of things. It makes her feel disconnected from her older siblings, it gives her the ability to function in society in a way the other’s can’t, it lets her feel less grief over the ones that didn’t make it and she doesn’t remember, it makes her feel guilty that she doesn’t remember what she’s old enough to know. 
Basically, in order for me to keep the character of Nudge as I saw her (more extroverted, not afraid of the world, fascinated with humans like her siblings aren’t, desiring to fit in instead of isolate), I had to put a little bit of distance between her and the flock. Of course, she loves them— that will in no way change— but she’s old enough that she should remember the school (and her dead friends) unlike Gazzy and Angel, but she can’t, and she very much fears forgetting the flock if anything happens to them. So she’s trying desperately to keep the flock close and wants desperately to experience the world at the same time, and doesn’t know what to do when she can’t have both. That’s her biggest character conflict throughout the series, along with that in-between area where she’s not quite where her older siblings are but understands so much more than Gazzy and Angel, and where she stands in that.
So yeah. Nudge’s journey is that in looking for belonging in the world, in her family, and in herself.
This is why she’s one of the ones that gets to find her parent, James Patterson. 
Other additions include:
She never straightens her hair. Never. Her resources at the E-shaped house aren’t perfect, but she still has learned how to take care of her hair and has a few styles she cycles through.
She becomes the default person Max sics on people when the flock is trying to befriend them. Also their de-facto diplomat around strangers.
As in canon, she does take some time away from the flock to expirience ‘normal life’. This does not last long due to the stress of being separated from her siblings/not being able to help them and [REDACTED]
Nudge is... not the only person in her head. I’m not focusing on it much because she doesn’t actually know and neither does the flock (I don’t know if they ever figure it out during the series, either), but she has dissociative identity disorder. She’s not aware of her alter(s?). Her alter isn’t super aware of her, either. 
The alter that I’ve developed is named Oxy and is not super aware of the outside world. In her eyes, she’s still seven and they’re still at the School. She would not recognize the body as her own if she looked in a mirror.
Nudge actually leaves the flock for a while to pursue her dream of living a normal life. She deserves it. She learns how to make muffins and the basics of software development. These things are unrelated.
Gasman (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)
Honestly, writing Gazzy is kind of hard for me. Partially because I’m not great at writing kids, and partially because I feel like he’s a pretty surface-level character in-series that... isn’t super compelling in canon. But even if that’s the case, I try to treat all of my characters with respect, so here we go. In my rewrite, he escaped when he was four, which was half a lifetime ago for him, so his memories are ill-defined. Therefore, he managed to circumvent a lot of the trauma that the rest of the kids have, and not in the way Nudge did, which is by creating an elaborate blockage in her memories. 
Which means Gazzy... really doesn’t know how to deal with all of this traumatic stuff happening. So much of his development turns out to be a coming-of-age narrative. Learning how to deal with the horrors of what his siblings grew up with. Learning the fears that they had the entire time. Losing his innocence when everyone around him never had it in the first place, and being so terribly alone because of it. Because, really, how can you explain such a deep loss to people who never had what he had? How can they help in a way that matters?
Also, relationship-wise, I’m slowly deteriorating the relationship between him and Iggy. Slowly. Or, changing it, at least. Gazzy hero-worships Iggy in-series, and for good reason, because Iggy is super cool, especially in the eyes of an eight-year-old, and especially when Iggy has taken care to cultivate parts of his behaviors to be child-friendly. Part of growing up is seeing the flaws in your heroes, and Gazzy has to learn how to deal with it. End of the series Gazzy is much less closer to Iggy than beginning of the series Gazzy, and neither of them are really okay with that, but they learn to live with it, because that’s really all they can do.
Notes:
I’m keeping the mimickry! It plays a bit of a bigger role because that’s how Gazzy learned to talk. I’m debating whether or not he has his own voice or if he just borrows the flock’s as he sees fit. He also uses it to scream really loudly and occaisonally burst the eardrums of Erasers.
At one point he cosplays as Jessica Jones. No you don’t get any more context than this.
He has a horrible sense of fashion.
I’m changing his name eventually because it sucks. He’s either going to change it to Gannet, Garrison, or Ivy Mike temporarily, and permanently to Zephyr. (I never said I was going to make his name GOOD, because he’s eight, but it’s changing. You’re welcome.)
Angel (Birthname: No first name, surname “Falk”)
It’s just... a completely different character, at this point. I’ve changed so many things about her in an attempt to make her consistent and act like a six-year-old and work in the whole “telepath before she has a solid sense of identity”, so it’s a different character. Also, I’m tired of writing coherently or in paragraphs, so have some interesting facts.
She has epilepsy! Super severe epilepsy! I think she might also develop juvenile MS in the future because her brain has so many scars from being a fucking six-year-old telepath. There’s no way she could get out of that unscathed.
She has more memories of the school than Gazzy, but only because she keeps accidentally reading the minds of Max, Fang, and Iggy. On a related note, she interacts with Iggy as little as possible.
The mind reading means that she has a hard time developing as a normal child with a normal sense of identity or reality. She can’t tell how much people are individual people and how much they’re just extensions of her. Conversely, she can’t tell how much of herself is actually her instead of the thoughts/opinions/identities of someone else. It’s... kinda fucked? But also super not-her-fault. 
She’s albino because white wings. Also, because I thought it was cool. This also means that her vision sucks, though. Also she has the biggest straw sunhat and the most stylish sunglasses a six-year-old can have.
She’s responsible for Max shaving her hair off.
She has the highest swear count because I think it’s funny. She’s the only person allowed to say the fuck word in writing. Everyone else can only say ‘hell’ and the occasionally ‘damn’ but she can say whatever she wants for dramatic and comedic value.
She is NOT THE FUCKING VOICE, J*MES P*TTERSON.
Honorable Mentions
Jeb
I’m skipping Jeb because of how little I care about him. He’s a little bitch, next character.
Ari
STILL HASN’T BEEN REVEALED AS AN ERASER. I’ve been writing for 50,000 words and he’s over here saying ‘nope nope not yet, not dramatic enough’. He’s had speaking lines but has refused to make himself known to Max. I am so frustrated with this seven-year-old wolf-child that I’ve already considered how I would kill him, if I decide I want to kill yet another child in my writing.
So, my main thoughts for Ari is that he... really just drew the short end of the stick in every possible way. While Jeb didn’t sign him up for Eraser expirimentation, he didn’t do anything to stop it, and pretty much cut his losses when he realized this expiriment made a wreck of his ‘perfect, unflawed’ son, because Jeb doesn’t consider children of any species to actually be humans. So, Ari really hates his dad, which makes things complicated, because he also really loves his dad and really wants his approval. 
Which means that he also really hates Max, because she’s the child that always got Jeb’s time and attention, even when Ari was human. I think, on some level, he knows that trying to tear Max down to a less-favored level isn’t actually going to help his situation— infighting for the love of an abusive parent won’t make them any less abusive— but he’s also seven, and his development is already severely stunted due to becoming an Eraser, and he doesn’t see ‘leaving ITEX’ as an option like the Flock does. ITEX is his everything. It’s all he’s ever known, and they tell him he’s doing the right thing, and he wants them to love him. He wants his father to love him. He knows that if he ever questions ITEX, his father will never love him. So it must be his older sister that’s ruining his life and being a horrible child, and once Ari drags her back down to his level, Jeb will realize who the best child is and love him properly again.
Ari, on an even deeper level, does care for Max quite a bit, because she’s his older sister and he wants that to mean something in a way that ‘Jeb being his father’ obviously doesn’t. He wants what she made for herself, and he hates the Flock because she loves them and obviously doesn’t love him. 
Ari, if anything, is the product of neglect, and both loves and hates everyone who shows a chance of caring about him. And he’s seven, so he can’t notice these patterns, let alone break them.
So. Notes!
He doesn’t look like an adult. I thought that was gross and unnecessary. He’s seven, but he looks closer to thirteen or fourteen. Still young enough that he looks like every Eraser’s little brother, and the Erasers high-key treat him like it.
On a related note, he’s the only Eraser who can talk. The others don’t have the mental capacity or vocal structure to replicate human speech, but they can understand language (at about the level of a two or three year old) and are very good at nonverbal communication. This is why Ari managed to climb the ranks despite only having three years of “service” and also looking like a tween.
He doesn’t have an expiration date because that is SUCH a stupid plot point.
I’m giving him a chainsaw! I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but he deserves to have a chainsaw and GODDAMN I will give it to him.
Emergency and Gene
The OCs that I love and also killed pre-series. They don’t have any scenes, because they’re dead, but their deaths greatly effected Max, Fang, and Iggy, and they are very commonly referenced. Their voices are probably Max’s most common hallucination, to the point where she sometimes pretends they’re ghosts that she can talk to. They’re not ghosts. They’re dead.
Dr. Valencia Martinez
I’m actually keeping her pretty close to canon— loving, supportive, the type of person to take in a gsw victim with minimal questions. The difference is that rather than kindness fueling her actions, it’s incredible guilt. She has three goals surrounding Max: Give her as much support in any way she can, teach her as much about chicane culture as possible, and never let Max know that she’s her birth parent.
(She’s probably going to fail at AT LEAST two of those, but it’s the thought that counts.)
Notes:
She has a pet fox named Robin Hood that she rescued from an exotic animal salesman that got arrested.
I think I’m going to kill her. I don’t know yet, but it’s on the table.
Anne Walker
Y’know, the fake FBI Agent. Who’s not actually a fake in my story because I hated that plot point. She’s genuinely an FBI agent who put the Flock into pseudo-witness-protection in order to build a case against the Institute of Higher Living, accidentally got attached to her prime witnesses, raised them for a few months, realized a [SPOILER] and promptly had to let them get the hell out dodge.
I really like the Anne Walker that lives in my head. She is a VITAL part of the Flock’s development, their mental/emotional recovery, and adding to their safety net to fall back on. She serves them as their first adult role model, and is the first adult to show them what parent/child are supposed to look like from a healthy perspective. Though she has several fuck ups, she becomes someone that the Flock genuinely trusts and loves, which makes it all the more difficult for them to leave when [REDACTED].
Notes:
She and Max do butt heads initially, because Max is paranoid and also afraid of becoming uneeded. This ends up being incredibly important because Max needs to learn how to live and find meaning in life without being the designated Leader/Parent/Big Sister
Anne, at one point, sits the entire flock down to teach them about consent, which was something no one ever talked about with them before. She goes in talking specifically about consent in a romantic/sexual sense (because they’re fourteen and that’s something they need to know), but quickly turns into a full-fledged no, people are NOT allowed to do that to you, what the FUCK.
She’s responsible for giving the flock a laptop. It’s because Angel is online schooled (bc telepathy makes actually learning difficult) and was therefore provided with a computer.
Anne is also allowed to swear, but only when it’s funny.
Michael “Grey” Rivers
Aka Grey from the Sewers Aka GR3Y H47 Aka Mike from the Bronx Aka Gifted Child Syndrome Incarnate Aka Would-be-in-MIT-if-his-parents-weren’t-horrible. He’s my son, your honour.
Basically, his backstory boils down to him being a genius, getting into MIT at 14, his (horrible) parents wanting a perfect child who could “make it out” of the Bronx and represent his family/neighborhood/borough to the world. When he inevitably failed their expectations due to stress, a schizophrenic-spectrum disorder that completely alienated him from the rest of his support network, and refusing to take his psych meds because the side effects were horrible and they made it harder to think (and therefore pass his classes), they kicked him out. He fully intends to go back to MIT when he turns 18 and has control of his finances/scholarships/medication/therapy.
So that’s how the flock meets him. 
Mike ends up in a very prominent support role for the flock both in technological persuits (helping them track their parents, helping them get information from ITEX, trying to disable Max’s chip and failing multiple times until it becomes a matter of personal honour—), in helping the older members of the flock figure out how to deal with hallucinations/delusions (because he’s actually been to therapy, unlike them), and in being one of the only people who talks to them and helps them without any ulterior motive. He’s not trying to build a case against ITEX/The Institute of Higher Learning, he’s not double crossing them, he’s not plagued with guilt. He just genuinely wants to help them, and they genuinely want to help him, and that’s their first introduction to a healthy, non-codependent relationship.
My many disorganized notes on Michael Rivers:
He’s from specifically Morris Heights, Bronx, NYC.
He would say that his last name is actually Rivera, but his grandparents changed it to Rivers so it would sound more English, and his family has been in America for so long that he doesn’t know much about any Latino heritage he may or may not have. He identifies as African American, not Afro-Latino. He’s just bitter that his family felt the need to change their surname to have better opportunities in New York.
Nudge aggressively befriends him pretty much the moment she meets him, bullies him into teaching her how to code, and he very quickly adopts her as his pseudo-little-sister.
His delusions in the book seemed to involve government conspiracies, but as that’s the one delusion that is proved correct in the book, I’ve decided it would be best if his delusions and reality intersected a bit less if I don’t want to write him having a manic/paranoid episode in the second scene he has screen time. So his delusions are more based on “none of this is real”, “someone is recording everything I do and setting me up to fail” and “my ill-wishes on people can and will come true if I dwell on them too long.”. Government conspiracies are one of things he is skeptical about because he thinks most conspiracies are either “CIA admitted to this twenty years ago” or “antisemitism”.
He’s taking online free college classes that don’t actually give him any college credit, but they have good information and help him feel like he’s working towards something. He plans to double major in computer sciences and electrical engineering, minor in marine biology. He’s wanted to join NOAA since he was twelve and he is nothing if not stubborn.
There you go. These are my characters, now. I have custody.
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pastelwitchling · 3 years
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moviesbuff asked:
So this one is kinda sad.
So the aliens have weird biology and once they love someone, that person can smell the love pheromone on them. ( which smells like rain.) And they have this pull toward them (like the cosmic connection that Tripp and Nora had)
The whole gang (+M*ria) are at the crashdown, and Liz and Alex and Kyle start talking about how the pod squad smell like rain, and Maria laughs "No they don't." And they're like "yes they do." And everyone realizes that Michael didn't love M*ria.
So Alex wants to move on with Forrest but Guerin wants to be with Alex. And mr. Jones finds out and tells Alex that he can sever the cosmic connection between Malex and that he can take them to the remains of their alien ship where there is sth he can use to do it.
So the pod squad + Alex + Mr. Jones go to the remains and on the way there, Guerin corners Alex and tries to change his mind but Alex is adamant about moving on and he tells guerin that he loves Forrest and that they're not good for each other and that he's saying no. (All the things Guerin told Alex in 2×01)
Bonus for Alex/Isobel friendship and Belmanes.
***
Liz smiled over her microscope. She’d first conducted this little experiment a few days ago, frustrated with the dead ends she kept hitting and eager to do something mindless and silly and fun for the first time in a long time. It had been a question, small but incessant, nagging at the back of her mind since she’d woken up to Max’s scent of a heavy storm one morning.
She couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her lips now at what she was looking at. The bloodwork and sample tests she’d had done confirmed it.
“I take it that’s good news?” Michael said from across the lab. He would come by sometimes, not often, to look through some of his own samples, and when he caught sight of Liz’s blush, he raised a brow. “Or great news?”
“Okay,” she shook her head, knowing Michael might find the findings as amusing as she did. “So. A few days ago, just during my free time, I started looking into the pheromones that you, Isobel, and Max give off. I noticed that Max smelled like rain, and then Kyle had said the same thing, and I suspected Isobel felt something for him for a while though she wouldn’t say it which I don’t understand why I mean –”
“Liz,” Michael pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s too early in the day to sing Valenti’s praises. Back on track, please. You’re saying Isobel, Max, and I . . . give off pheromones? What, like, to attract people to us?”
Liz’s smile widened. “Not exactly. I compared your samples to mine, Kyle’s, and Rosa’s. Now, mine and Kyle’s carry traces of that same pheromone, but Rosa’s doesn’t.”
Michael, ever the genius, understood what she was trying to say right away. “You’re saying whenever one of us likes a human, that human can – can smell us?”
“Smell rain,” she said, “to be more precise. It’s a very innate and unnatural scent, but to me, to Kyle, it’s like you’re always wearing a special kind of perfume. And you have to do more than like, otherwise half the school would carry the traces after Isobel. No, you have to fall deeply in love. I’m talking true, Once Upon a Time forever-kind of love.”
Michael did not smile or laugh or share in any of Liz’s excitement. Instead, he fidgeted uncomfortably where he stood. Liz faltered. A year ago, she might’ve understood why Michael would react this way, but after Maria . . .
As if sensing her name, Maria suddenly came into the lab with Alex at her side.
“It is ten in the morning,” she said, a cup of coffee in hand which she set on the desk. “I have a business to run, there better be a good reason to call us down here, Ortecho.”
“I’ve been awake for five hours,” Alex told her, taking a seat on a stool between the desks. Liz noticed Michael glancing at him every so often. “This is basically the middle of the day.”
“Oh, well, aren’t you Mr. Perfect?” Maria said, taking a long gulp of coffee. “Super Alex, up before the sun is, how good for you.”
Alex winked, and Maria almost choked trying not to laugh. Liz smiled, noticing Michael subtly inching closer to Alex. He didn’t even seem to realize anybody else was in the room anymore. She cleared her throat loudly.
“I found something really cool that I wanted to show you,” she said, turning back to her microscope. “Come see this, both of you.”
“Uh –” Michael started, “Liz?”
Maria sighed and did as she was told. She straightened. “Okay, why am I looking at a bunch of squiggly little lines?”
“They’re pheromones,” Liz said excitedly, and both Maria and Alex waited. She quickly clarified, “I – well, I realized that whenever Michael or – or Isobel –”
“Liz –”
“Or Max, when they fall in love with a human, they release this special pheromone that only that human can smell.”
Alex blinked, and came to see through the microscope, too. “Really? That rain smell is a pheromone?”
“Yeah!” Liz said eagerly. “You know about that?”
“Yeah,” he scoffed, still looking at the sample. “I knew Michael was in here before I saw him, I could smell him in the hallway.”
That strongly? Liz thought.
She started to smile as she noticed Michael’s eyes on him soften, like he wanted nothing more than to hug Alex from behind and bury himself in his warmth. All this time, how had she never realized? “Really?”
But Maria only frowned, looking from Michael to Alex to Liz, and back again. “What rain smell?”
Silence. Alex looked up at Maria with furrowed brows, then to Michael. He looked just as startled and confused as Liz felt.
Maria rounded on Alex. “Alex?”
Alex cleared his throat, waking himself, glancing at Michael. “It’s – it’s this intense rain smell, like . . . like a storm.”
She shook her head, and her thought was clear; she had no idea what they were talking about. The only one that didn’t seem the least bit surprised was Michael.
“Not even a little bit,” she said quietly. Then she turned to Michael. “Never? Not for a minute?”
Michael shook his head. “I . . .” he tried, but trailed off, raising his arm halfway to gesture at Alex before it fell back down to his side.
Maria looked to Alex and something in her eyes shifted to resignation as the truth dawned; Michael had never really loved her. Not like he loved Alex, not for a second.
She cleared her throat and plastered on a smile. “Well, if that’s all, science geeks, I have a bar to run. Excuse me.”
“Maria –” Alex started to follow, but Maria turned at the door and said, “We’re still on for lunch, right?”
Alex, startled, seemed to only be able to nod. Maria’s smile turned warmer, more genuine. “Good.” She turned and held up a hand. “Later, nerds!” she called, and left.
Alex sat back down on the stool with a sigh, wincing as he rubbed his leg. He must’ve been a little more worse off this morning than he’d been willing to show, and after Maria’s exit, he seemed to simply be too tired to pretend he was fine.
“I’m sorry,” Liz said, shrugging a shoulder. “O-Or I’m not? I don’t know.”
Alex gave her half a smile. “That makes two of us. Except . . .” he looked to Michael who was tentatively kneeling at his side, squeezing his knee as if hoping it would help relieve him of any pain. “I may be a little more selfish than you.”
“Right,” Liz muttered, trying not to smile. She didn’t think it was right to, not after what had happened. But Alex . . . Alex was her friend, too, and she couldn’t help but be happy at the way he was looking at Michael, at the way Michael was looking at him. It was like how Max looked at her; like all the stars in the universe couldn’t compare.
She turned around as Alex slid a hand into Michael’s curls and Michael leaned into his touch as if desperate for it. Next time, she realized, when it had to do with Michael, Alex was the only one to call. He was the only one, after all, that seemed to matter.
***
I hope it’s all right that I deviated so much, I had to!
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moony-artnstuff · 3 years
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Matchup Commission @yunohawkeye
Note: @yunohawkeye it's finally here! Thank you so much for your patience, I know you had to wait very long for this, but I hope it is to your liking!
Warning: This matchup contains nsfw, don't like, don't read!
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Lord of the Rings: I ship you with Legolas!
The height difference is adorable.
He loves your hair, and he’s surprised when you tell him how you actually want it because that’s not something you really see in Middle-Earth, least of all his own culture. Still he’d be happy to help you find the supplies you need for cutting and dying it the way you want it.
You like stealing his tunics, as they look like oversized t-shirts on you and they smell like him. The first time he saw you wearing his clothes he almost died from cuteness.
He loved how you were a bit shy when you first met and then gradually became more comfortable around him. He saw it as an achievement whenever you shared something new with him, and he loved getting to know you more.
He’s a curious ball of sunshine and when you get excited about something he gets excited about it too. He’s so supportive of the things you do and likes learning more about them. He’d also be really happy if you took an interest in his hobbies such as archery.
Legolas enjoys being with people (this is also expected of him because he’s a prince) but he also loves quiet moments with you. He’s happy you can entertain yourself when he has to do his duties as prince of Greenwood the great, as he wouldn’t want you to be bored or lonely while he’s away.
Don’t worry about shopping he will get you all the clothes you could ever wish for and he lets them tailor exactly to your size (benefit of being a prince). He quickly takes notice of your style and orders clothing accordingly.
This ellon is clingy as fuck and would love nothing more than to be in your presence at all times, so no worrying about that. He’s also extremely cuddly. Good luck trying to get to the bathroom at night, he won’t let you out of his grip.
He likes your random moments, as he has a lot of them himself. I imagine him as a kind of oddball amongst elves. The two of you keep each other on your toes, and you can often be found laughing about something the other said.
Legolas adores both your tomboyish personality as well as your tomboy looks. Legolas is a warrior and works with both ellons and elliths who are all badasses but all look quite feminine with their long hair and stuff, meaning your personality is familiar yet your looks are refreshing and he likes it.
Introduce him to video games, he’d be fascinated by them. I can totally see him getting fully absorbed in a fight scene, whether he is playing himself or encouraging you.
Loves to dance with you, he does it all the time. You’re relaxing on the sofa doing nothing in particular? Dancing. He sees you walking past in the halfway? Let’s twirl around together for a moment. He’s been away from you for some time and now finally gets to see you again? He picks you up and spins you around, so happy he is to see you again.
Like I said before, Legolas is a bit of an oddball amongst elves, so he would never judge you for being your weird and quirky self because really, he’s the same. It makes him so happy that you’re comfortable enough to be yourself around him, and it encourages him to do the same as well.
Legolas is a ray of sunshine and finds joy in almost everything in life, but he has seen dark things and lost loved ones as well. He is the perfect person to talk to when life is weighing you down or when you just want to talk about some heavier topics, as he knows what it feels like, while at the same time he’s also capable of making you smile again in mere seconds.
Your dark humor catches him off guard at first but he catches on quite quickly.
Legolas is all for having a good connection and good communication. He often talks with you about how he feels about something and asks your opinion. He also frequently compliments you and genuinely can’t understand how you can’t see how amazing you are. Will stubbornly continue with giving you compliments, all the while looking at you as if you are denying simple facts such as the sky is blue, because he means every word he says.
Teasing him will be a challenge as he can be quite the oblivious one (for example if you were to rile him up during the day with lingering touches and then play dumb he would get frustrated because he’d believe you’d genuinely didn’t know what you were doing when in reality you were teasing him), and he will probably take the things you say too literal (“Legolas, is that a banana in your pants or are you just happy to see me?” “Why would I have a banana in my pants?”). It’s best to just give him straightforward compliments when trying to flirt with him.
Legolas is a bottom. Like yeah, sure, he can take the lead if you want him to but he prefers to be the submissive one, and he loves the way you take the lead and how good you make him feel.
Just like with Thorin you’ll be introducing him to a whole new world regarding sex and toys. At first he’s a bit shy about the concept of dirty thoughts and talking about sex, but his curiousity and your openness to talk about it makes him more comfortable.
Loves it when you tie him up and have your way with him, especially when you peg and edge him.
You met at the counsel of lord Elrond where you volunteered to be part of the fellowship. Legolas was curious as to why a human woman would offer herself to such a task, and he started a conversation with you. He quickly came to like your company and often seeked out your company during the journey. You comforted each other after Gandalf’s death and while you are in Lothlorien he tells you about his home and the dangers it’s facing. He needs a bit of help from Aragorn and Gimli, but he eventually realizes he has feelings for you and he doesn’t hesitate to confess, because why would he? He loves you and wants to be with you, and if you feel the same then he wants to start courting immediately since your time together is already short with you being human and him being an elf.
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The Hobbit: I ship you with Thorin!
He likes you being blunt. Thorin does not have the best social skills and though he is by no means stupid he can be a bit thickheaded sometimes. That’s why he likes that you’re not afraid to tell him how it is without beating around the bush.
Whenever you get bubbly or excited about something he gets this soft, fond smile while looking at you. He just thinks you’re so precious and he makes a mental note to often talk about your interests to see that spark in your eyes.
The teasing will get to him. God this dwarrow just can’t handle it, he might act all tough and stoic on the outside but he really is just one big softie on the inside who becomes a flustered mess the second you give him that look alone.
Just like you, Thorin is an introvert. He prefers to spend his time with close friends and family, such as the company and you. His favorite moments are spent with you, in your shared bedroom where you do your writing and he hums in front of the fire next to you, just enjoying each other’s presence.
You both tend to keep problems to yourself, so you help each other with opening up. It was a bit of a struggle in the beginning, with the both of you wanting to be there for each other but refusing to open up about your own problems. Slowly though, Thorin started to tell you about his past and the loss he felt when he lost his grandfather, his father and his brother in the war against the goblins. This made you open up about your feelings as well and the two of you learned to reach out to each other whenever something’s bothering you.
He’ll hold your hand when you have to be in a big crowd. As king and queen under the mountain it is expected of you to attend council meetings and grand parties alike, but Thorin always makes sure to stay close to you and offer you comfort until the two of you can retreat to your chambers again.
He loves your ‘randomness’, it refreshes him. He’s always been so focused on leading his people, reclaiming Erebor and then rebuilding it that he’s never really had any time for fun. You saying and doing random things gets him out of that cycle of endless responsibilities and to him it feels like a fresh breath of air.
Please play music with him! He feels a lot of pride in having such a talented and musical s/o. He would be so happy if you let him accompany you in your music with his harp.
Don’t worry about not having spotify or youtube in Middle-Earth, Thorin’s voice will definitely make up for it (we all heard him sing in Bag-end *chills*). He often hums to himself when doing a mundane task, and if you asked it of him he would be happy to sing for you.
He’s honored if you show him your writing.
He’s honored if you show him your writing.
Despite knowing you can handle yourself perfectly well he’s still very protective over you. He’s just so afraid to lose you, but he tries to tone it down for you as much as he can.
After the mountain is reclaimed he becomes much more loose and free spirited, he’ll be both your partner and your best friend for life
Although he can be a bit oblivious sometimes he makes an effort to see what your likes and dislikes are, for example your movie preferences, and he keeps them in mind when getting you gifts
Like I said before, you’ll have to help him with being open/vulnerable with you. It's not that he doesn’t trust you, he’s just not used to being vulnerable with someone, so he needs to take it slow. You’ll also have to teach him to stay calm and talk when the two of you have an argument. Thorin is used to leading his people and has always been put under a lot of pressure because of it, but you quickly showed him that getting angry and barking orders was not the way to handle a fight with you, and with time he becomes better and better at talking things out with you.
Your openness to sexual talk and constantly having dirty thought caught him off guard at first, as people usually don’t talk so easily about such concepts in Middle-Earth. He tends to get a bit bashful/shy when he hears you talk about it, but slowly becomes more comfortable to listen and maybe add some of his own thoughts.
Will sit you down and tell you in a very serious way that you are amazing when you turn down a compliment. For example, he’ll compliment you for your writing and you say something along the lines of “I’m really not that good, I’m actually quite bad at it.” and he’d just get this serious face and be like “Amrâlime, you are one of the most talented people I’ve met, don’t talk about yourself like that.” Que him starting a whole rant about how beautiful and amazing and skilled you are and genuinely not understanding how you can’t see it too. Thorin has never been good with words, but he sure as hell is going to make sure you know how amazing he thinks you are.
He’s never thought much about sex or having a spouse, untill you came along. He first imagined himself topping, but when the moment finally arrived and you took the lead, he did not mind at all (he’s a switch).
You’re gonna have so much fun tying him up in bed and edging him. He’s not one to beg, or even ask for something in general, so it’s gonna be delicious when he finally does break
You introduce him to a whole new world regarding sex and toys. Thorin loves to experience all kinds of things with you and eventually settles on his own preferences and dislikes. He likes it that you’re a dom, it makes him feel taken care of. Being able to be so intimate and vulnerable with you was something he never knew he needed.
You met when the company stopped in Rivendell, where the company found you playing the piano. You had heard about the arrival of the dwarves and started a conversation with them. Soon you hit it off with Fili, Kili and Nori (for some reason I imagine him liking sex jokes and also being open to nsfw talk) and before you knew it you were part of the company. At first Thorin was against letting you join them, as he didn’t understand what business you could have with dwarves trying to reclaim their homeland, but during the quest you became closer and closer with him, talking about what Erebor was like before Smaug took over and what life was like for him and his family when Thorin had to lead his people to the blue mountains. Eventually the two of you started courting and Thorin asked you to marry him after Erebor was reclaimed, making you queen under the mountain.
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kittycatchan16 · 3 years
Text
Will Natsume lose his abilty to see yokai?
I've seen this take (twice- I think) and while I think it's interesting one, I doubt it will happen to Natsume.
(I also saw different takes on what exactly seeing yokai could mean but for the purpose of this post let's just focus on story itself, which means supernatural stuff are normal/existst but people are rarely able to see them)
The first mention of someone losing their ability was in s1e08 in which a man Natsume met had been able to see Yokai in his childhood/adolscense and now (as a fully grown adult) he can't see them anymore.
History of their love story (between that man and the yokai) was heartbraking and it prompted Natsume to ask himself:
Will he lose his ability too? Would he regret that?
Just as Natsume didn't have a clear answer, we also don't have one.
Through the story we've seen exorcist (full grown-adults) to have and lose abilty to see spirts. We've seen children that had that ability and lost it. We've heard that some clan branches retire because they don't have powerful hair to inherit the clan.
Heck, we've even seen family that retired because for generation there hasn't been anyone who could inherit exorcistic business until (out of nowhere) a relatively powerful heir appeared (I'm loking at you Natori).
So there's no rule. It doesn't depend on age, family and, as far as we know, there aren't any special circumstances leading to it. It just happens sometimes.
But 'sometimes' isn't 'always' and there's not actual rule (unless we'll be proven otherwise). So to me it's logical and most probable conclusion is that it won't happen to our protagonist.
Why?
For various reasons actually:
1) He IS a protagonist and thus has plot armor (no but seriously losing (pernament) access to the world he's seen all his life - it did temporaily happened in s2ep07-is far too bitter ending and while this story can be sad/heart-braking, it's also sweet, fluffy and bitter-sweet; I just feel that this ending would be way too angsty-think of all this yokai he made friends with).
2) His power level. Natsume is a powerful boy, he has immense spiritual power (just like Reiko)- I wouldn't be a surprise if his anchestors were exorcists (or somehow connected to spirtual world).
Now, the theory that in his family tree was an offspring of yokai and human is an interesting concept but it isn't valid because at no point in the story any evidence that yokai and human can have children was given. (So for now I'll refrain from using it to in my theories).
But there was a canon idea as to how you can make one exorcist family stronger. In s5ep04 Matoba said that because his ancestors had made deal with yokai and didn't fulfill it, yokai placed 'curse' on them. Basically yokai will attack future Matoba clan leaders to 'take what's theirs' but that connection makes them exceptionally strong spiritually.
Maybe Natsume's ancestors did something similar, which is why Reiko was so powerful and so is Natsume.
(Baisically my train of thoughts is: deal with yokai/immense spiritual power= really low possibility of losing ones abilities)
3) This point connects itself with point 1; Natsume has just started accepting both human and spiritual world. It's pointed out how unusual his spiritual energy, how he reminds a yokai and how seamlessly he blends in with spirits.
When you think about he prior to to the show and at its beginning he was much more involved in spiritual world than in human one. Even though he claimed to dislike yokai, he mostly interacted with them (not always willingly but point still stands).
Then he arrvied at Fujiwaras' and slowly started to make friends (both his human ones and yokai ones). He started to accept his life in both worlds.
(I'd argue it was meant to be that way; Natsume is a medium, a bridge between those two worlds).
And for the whole thing to work out, there needs to be balance (and Natsume has already figured this balance out). It would feel pointless if either of worlds was taken away from him.
That being said I have honestly no idea how this series could end.😁 I feel that (while not at the beginning) we're not even halfway through it. We still have room for Natsume's (and others) character development, we know practically nothing of Natsume's family (his grandfather, ancestors, heck aside from her character we don't know that much about Reiko either).
While I don't think Natsume will lose his Sight, I have no real evidence to back it up. It's just a gut feeling and logistics (that make sense to me).
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theaudioglow · 2 years
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If the Moon Went Skinnydipping at Midnight: Tash Sultana's Musical Atmosphere
If the Moon went Skinnydipping at Night…
It would let out a long, relieved sound of ambient satisfaction that sounds like the musical atmosphere of Tash Sultana.
God, I was looking for a way to connect—thinking I need to write something—need to interact. Notice me, humanity. NOTICE ME. I roar this as I stumble around a candlelit flickering room, smashing bottles and howling at the walls like a tormented suburban Quasimodo.
Anyway, I was listening to the live version of “Coma” by Tash Sultana and recognized that everything she does is earth-shifting in a way where—she is basically an emotional potter. I’m driving in the car and halfway through the six-minute song, I go from a sense of sweet springtime electricity to sadness I have only experienced during alone dark moments in bright sunshine surrounded by crowds. By emotional potter I mean, I’m just a lump and she’s oscillating her voice in such a way that every note is a gentle touch, sculpting the listener until they don’t care what they’ve become in the moment—they just want to be a part of it.
The first time I heard “Notion” was one such occasion. The second through thirtieth times I heard “Notion” was the same.
A gentle swirl of resonance, her voice melting in with the chords and laying down under a current, then resurfacing as a shimmer that rides along the surface and dives back under when the breeze shifts.
And when I start writing something like this, I feel like it needs to say something, or I need to be funny. Or profound. But sometimes what’s happening is you simply want to express how something made you feel and there should be no expectation of what anybody else thinks of your decision to express it.
I’d love to rip off some long creative hyperdramas like I was doing in spring of 2020, but the current conflict is that—my gaps of time are so constricted, and I fight against them and pummel them with fists and scream to let me out and be creative every day.
For now, I’ll enjoy the subtle moments where in the isolation, I can feel connected to the reverb, the emotion, the glowy melt of atmosphere that drifts with the chords. I’m grateful for this medium in which I can write and when I do my dopamine receptors sprout and look something like this:
And since I’m about atmosphere and hers is that clean and clear and immersive—here’s an entire Tash Sultana set.
Tell me with a straight face that her music doesn’t sound like how the moon feels.
She plays guitar, horn—whatever that sound box thing is that makes ambiance reverberate like your soul got shook the same way you hear a song blasting emphatically from someone’s car speakers on a summer afternoon.
If you’re local to my neighborhood, she plays the Filmore in Philadelphia on June 24th. I, for one, am looking forward to it.
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blissfulalchemist · 3 years
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wait who is hayat? pls tell us everything about them 😍
NONNY!!! You-. You inquire about MY good son Hayat???? Well Hell yeah you can know as much as I feel I can write without getting into circles. Sorry this took a hot second to get together but I wanted to make sure I had something fairly comprehensive for you and others that are curious!
Also again Thank you Ash for making the banner that shows his precious face.
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To start off, Hayat is my Wayhaven Chronicles Detective oc. TWC is an interactive fiction game that’s set in a world with supernatural creatures and elements including 4 vampire romance options (you can even opt out of romance if you so wish also). It’s by @seraphinitegames and you can check out more of it there!
Okay let’s get down to it!
His full name is Hayat Khademi but many will also call him Hiya as he both enjoys the pun and helps in pronouncing his full name. I personally love the meanings of his name very cool. Hayat means “Life” and Khademi means “He who serves and cares”, which really sums up his core self, like no matter what happens he will always be someone full of life and wanting to care and help people.
Hayat was born February 29, 1988, yes on leap year so depending on his mood he will either tell you that he’s 7 or 30. His parents are Rokeddin and Tahmina (aka Rebecca in the books) Khademi. After his father’s death and his mom throwing herself into her work he was raised by his grandparents, with his grandmother Myza Khademi still alive. Hayat is also bisexual.
He had hopes of becoming an engineer so he could help the world with technology he created to solve problems people faced. He made it to college and it was 2.5 years in that he met Bobby Marks, a journaling major, and the two soon started to date. While dating Bobby would sometimes use Hayat’s assignments and pass them off as his own or even just expect him to write assignments for him. As Hiya continued on through school connections were made and he soon was being granted access to some of the assignment programs and where grades were entered, and sadly unbeknownst to him Bobby was using this to his advantage. When Hayat was halfway through his doctorate program Bobby got caught in altering grades and stealing assignments committing Academic Dishonesty. Since all of it had been traced back to Hayat’s accounts or his connections he was the one that suffered the consequences of Bobby’s actions.
Hayat lost everything he had worked for in an instant and had no other option than to move back home while he figured out just what to do with his life. Over the next 3 years he moved from odd job to odd job all the while shrinking his social circle to almost none and drifting from partner to partner. Hayat was working as a groundskeeper for his hometown when Tina bumped into him. While they didn’t interact too much growing up with her being 6 years younger than him, they still treated each other like friends and it was her that suggested Hayat join her in the police academy as there were some planned retirees in the Wayhaven PD. While not his life goal Hiya joined her as it at least was a position that allowed him to feel like he was helping people. 
He remained a police officer for a year before the sudden retiring of the previous detective and Hayat being handed the job as he was seen as the most capable. It was the start of his new position that landed him in the path of Unit Bravo and his mother’s job. After his first case involved a mad scientist vampire Hiya was asked to join the Agency as Wayhaven’s Human Liason, like his father before him. Since accepting he can’t say that his life is monotonous or lacking thrills.
Hayat overall is a fun loving person that always has a smile, positive attitude, and pun to spare! He’s loyal to those he loves and finds himself brave despite not being the most capable. His strengths lie more in his ability to make connections with people due to his trust, openess, calm demeanor, honesty, and always trying to look for the best in people first. It’s his way of living and does connect to his Muslim faith, that does follow, and Persian culture, though he’d tell you that even if those weren’t factors he’d still live and act as he is. 
To get to know him more I reccomend checking out his general tag here! Or even his character asks here! Or you can even check out a profile for him here!
If you would like to read him in action please visit his masterlist here! I apologize that I am missing a piece and at the writing of this plan on updating it soon.
To see his romance with Mason check out their ship tag here!
I am also open to any more asks if there’s something more specific you’d like to know! I’m also open to DMs! 
Thank you so much for inquiring about my boy!
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