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imawholeassmood · 17 days

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Read Between the Lines

read it on ao3

Lena reads the review, rubs her temples a few times, then reads it again. There is no way Super_Girl has rated this book five stars and then wrote multiple paragraphs waxing poetic about how fantastic it was. Lena already submitted her own one-star review which included her breakdown of the writing, the characters, and the plot, of which this book had none.

For months, Lena has been seeing Super_Girl reviews pop up on the same books Lena recently finished. She wondered at this point if Super_Girl might be doing this on purpose – reading the same books just so she could rate the book the opposite of whatever Lena did. At first, it was simple - “Loved it!” or “Couldn’t get into this one,” but as of late, the reviews had gotten longer and more descriptive.

Lena herself always used the same formula for reviewing books: overall star rating with a breakdown of her thoughts on the characters, the plot, and the writing. Books, like most things in life, are easy to rate when you understand the evaluation system. Books follow formulas and rules for a reason – it’s what makes them good. A romance novel, for instance, requires a “happily ever after.” Without it, it cannot be considered a romance, and it certainly wouldn’t be a good one.

So, as Lena reads the latest review by Super_Girl, Lena can’t help but leave a comment. Maybe this person simply needs an education on the book rating system.

“What criteria do you use when rating a book?”

It’s a good starting place for this conversation. Lena has amassed quite the following with people interested in her book reviews and the last thing she wants to do is stir up internet drama to damage her good reputation. She knows how easy it is for people to take something out of context.

The reply comes almost immediately.

“Vibes!”

Lena blinks a few times, then closes the browser and leaves her laptop for the night.

Super_Girl does it again with another five-star rating for a book that made Lena seriously consider contacting the literary award agencies to complain about their selection. The book sounded like it was AI generated and had zero plot. And the characters? Don’t even get her started.

“How can you consider this a masterpiece?” she writes under the review. “There is zero substance in this book. It’s just a bunch of flowery words that mean nothing and make no sense. If this is your idea of romance, then I’d hate to be your girlfriend.”

Her phone rings and Lena spends the next hour talking with her assistant, Jess, about the priorities for the week and when they can finalize some presentations. Later, as she lays in bed scrolling on her phone, Lena thinks to check her goodreads account. There, under her latest comment, is a reply from Super_Girl.

“Amidst the turmoil of the crumbling world around them, two people take the time to write love letters to each other. What’s more romantic than that?

I want to meet you in every place I have loved.

I want to be in contact with you.

Swoon.”

Speaking of taking things out of context.

While Lena can see Super_Girl’s point, that’s not enough to change her mind about the book. Especially not in the context of it being a sci-fi fantasy that relegated war to a backdrop in much the same way Hollywood did with Pearl Harbor. Don’t get her started. She types out a response before closing the webpage and going to sleep.

“Relationships develop over time. Even if I agreed with your assessment, this book still lacked any real narrative and there’s zero reason to believe these two people would fall in love. They don’t know anything about each other except that they can write a decent letter.”

Oh, no, Lena thinks. Her latest read has her questioning her entire belief system about books. She liked the book. Not because it had a great plot. Not because she was rooting for the characters. She liked the book because…it gave her good vibes. She genuinely had a good time reading it, despite it being a complete shitshow. This never happened to her before.

She opens her goodreads page to leave her review and finds that Super_Girl hasn’t read this one yet. She feels the slightest pang of disappointment but pushes through to her review. At the end of her standard format, she adds a new category: vibes.

It takes a few days, and Lena finds herself checking her account every few hours. She’s sitting at her desk and scrolling on her phone when she gets a notification that Super_Girl commented on her review.

“Vibes?!?! I’m SUPER proud of you! And we agree the characters were awful and the plot was weak, but it was well-written.”

She doesn’t even realize she’s smiling until Jess comments about it.

“Oh, nothing,” she says and waves her hand. “Just a literary rival.”

Jess looks at her. “You’re smiling because of…a rival?”

Is that what they were? The word didn’t really feel like a good fit, but Lena goes with it.

“Agreed with me on a point. Can we please stay focused?”

And they do. Lena and Jess go over the latest reports and prepare for an upcoming meeting with one of their international partners. Lena doesn’t think about Super_Girl again until she’s lying in bed and that damn smile creeps backs onto her face.

Her next review is not a good one. It makes Lena question the romance genre as a whole. Has the world become so used to being treated like garbage, people can’t even tell the difference between healthy and toxic love?

She’s barely hit submit when Super_Girl comments on her review.

“They were flirting the whole time!”

Lena is still sour enough she doesn’t bother to hold back on her response.

“Flirting where? Being in each other’s orbit is not flirting. Why can’t people just say, ‘I like you and I’d like to go on a date with you?’ instead of whatever BS was happening in this book. Honestly, I’m worried for your love life if you think this is a healthy way to approach communication.”

Super_Girl goes silent for a long while after that.

Lena worries something may have happened and questions whether she should reach out. They haven’t gone this long without a reciprocal review since they started this little dance of theirs almost a year ago. She finds herself rereading their reviews and wondering about who Super_Girl might be behind the screen name. There’s no profile photo, no personal information at all. Just a single word.

Golly.

Lena smiles at that. In fact, she smiles at everything Super_Girl has written. While they may not agree on books, Lena can’t deny that whoever is behind the reviews is a wordsmith who comes across as the sweetest human on the planet.

It surprises her when she receives a notification that she has been selected to read a new release ahead of publication in exchange for an honest review. Lena doesn’t usually agree because she doesn’t want to give people any reason to think her reviews are biased or influenced in any way. She’s about to deny the request, but the cover art depicts two women, one blonde, the other brunette, and Lena never turns down a sapphic story. She accepts the request without another thought.

When Lena finishes The Write Stuff, she starts it over and reads it again, cover to cover. The writing, the pacing, and the storytelling are superb. It’s as if the author has studied every article about how a romance novel should be written. The characters are so well written, she has clear images of who each of these women are. She understands their desires, their fears, and their motives. Not only does she care about these people as a couple, but she also cares about them individually in a way she hasn’t cared about a character in a long time. As for the plot itself? It’s perfectly cheesy and still somehow realistic enough to be believable that it could happen in real life.

Lena hasn’t felt this…satisfied by a book since well, since she can’t remember.

So, that’s exactly what she writes in her review.

“I especially loved this line:

I would rewrite history if it meant a chance for a happy future with you.”

When she’s done, she looks up the author and finds that she’s written one other book.

Lena doesn’t recall reading it, but when she clicks on the title, she finds her review posted with a few hundred likes and several dozen comments. One star and zero positive things to say about it. Lena can’t help but think how far the author has come from this first book to the most recent one. It’s an impressive improvement, and Lena Luthor isn’t easily impressed.

Supergirl leaves a comment on her review a few days later.

“It looks like the author has been paying attention to your feedback.”

The following week, Lena is staring at the meeting invitation with furrowed brows and a healthy dose of confusion. She presses the call button on the speaker on her desk.

“Yes, Miss Luthor?” Jess says.

“Jess, why do I have a meeting with Supergirl on my calendar?”

Jess is quiet for a moment. She’s quiet so long, in fact, that Lena’s door opens and a blond woman with thick-rimmed glasses wearing chinos and a tucked-in button down steps just inside. She has a nervous smile and fidgets with her glasses.

Lena recognizes her from the photo bio she still has pulled up on her web browser and stands to greet her.

“Miss Danvers,” she says, “please, come in. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Kara Danvers, author of The Write Stuff, who Lena has been internet stalking for the past week shifts in the doorway. Lena comes around the front of her desk. They stare at each other in silence for a moment before Lena hears a faint “go” from Jess in the reception area. That makes Kara shake out of her stupor.

She brings her hand out from behind her back and holds her arm at full length with a bouquet of…plumerias. Lena can’t believe what she’s seeing. Her favorite flowers which represent love and new beginnings are being offered to her by this stunning woman who wrote one of her favorite books of the year. Lena looks from the flowers back to Kara’s face.

“I like you, Lena Reads” Kara says, “and I would like to go on a date with you.”

#supercorp #supercorp fic #kara danvers and lena luthor #supergirl #kara x lena #not a writer

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corvidcall · 1 year

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ive been a halfhearted dnd defender for a minute, bc i was really involved in indie ttrpg twitter for a while and I Am Not Anymore because frankly. it just got too hostile and crab bucket-y. a lot of people acting like critical role or dimension 20 were opposing them by playing a game that had widespread brand recognition (and also getting mad whenever critrole played something OTHER than dnd. i haven't forgotten how hostile everyone i knew in that scene was when critrole played monster hearts. like what do you want??) or like people who play dnd are popular jocks and people who play indie games are bullied nerds. when actually we're all nerds. nobody is cool here.

and i would especially get frustrated when people would recommend games to play instead of dnd that are not at all a comparable experience, or didnt have the same things people liked in dnd. sure, you could play Masks if you want to play a superhero game instead of just reskinning DnD, but Masks is about teens, and the fact that you're playing as teens is core to the mechanics, so it's not a good suggestion for someone who wants to play as adult superheroes. sure you can suggest someone play Blades in the Dark if they want to play a heist team, but BitD is incredibly punishing! every time ive played it, it felt almost impossible to get a full success at anything. that can be fun, if that's the kind of game you want, but if i want to play a game where i feel cool and like im good at things, then BitD is not a good replacement! I cant tell you how many times I've seen people say that you don't need to just reskin dnd when there are games that are more specifically tailored to the experience you want, and then in the same breath act like the games they're suggesting ARENT specific actually and can be used to craft any kind of experience you want. Is the genre baked into the mechanics, or isnt it? because it cant be both!

and thats not even getting into when people would suggest replacements that aren't even close. a lot of "dnd sucks nobody should ever play dnd. instead of dnd, why don't you play MY game, where youre a couple thats getting married in 2 months and you're still planning your wedding?" like... why would i play that instead of dnd, if i want to play dnd? those have nothing in common, beyond the fact that theyre both tabletop games. it's like saying "Instead of watching Star Wars, you should watch Get Out!" sure, they're both MOVIES, and Get Out is GOOD, but i think to suggest that someone who wants to watch Star Wars would have an equal if not better experience watching Get Out instead devalues both. They're not interchangeable because they're trying to do entirely different things

So I would get incredibly frustrated when people acted like people who were choosing to play DnD were just making a mistake, and that they couldn't possibly be getting anything out of playing that game specifically

ALL THAT BEING SAID wizards of the coast sucks ass and they can clean my balls. they should get put in the stocks and i should get to pelt them with tomatoes. i like playing in the sword and sorcery fantasy setting, and dnd was always my go-to game for that because Dungeon World is the worst game I've ever played (i can think of one or two other games in the same sort of setting, but i haven't tried them or met anyone willing to run them) but ah well. WotC can eat shit for this copyright bullshit

#anime life #anyway idk if this post was interesting or meaningful at all #i just wanted to get some of my thoughts written down and organized

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gffa · 6 months

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Over the last week, I decided to go ahead with bookmarking all the fics I've recommended over the years on AO3 since I abide by tumblr poll results always (and man pour one out for all the fic that never made it to AO3 or has since been deleted, sooooo many gems lost to time!) and it was a bit more than the ~3,000 I was expecting:

Hopefully, this will be easier than browsing the hundreds of recs posts I've made, since you can filter for any of the author's tags now! These are mostly focused on Star Wars and DC fandom, but I did my time in the anime mines and occasional tours through some TV fandoms or movies. You can dig into everything unfiltered and start your own filtering, or the bigger fandoms you'll find:

MAJOR FANDOMS: Each of these should have 100+ at minimum and, in the case of Star Wars, literally almost half of them are in that fandom. Look, Star Wars fandom might be a trash fire in a lot of ways, but it is ON FIRE with some good fic. (Older bookmarks not guaranteed to match my current sentiments, especially re: the Jedi, but they did catch my fancy at that point in time!)

STAR WARS: - All Star Wars -OR- All Star Wars minus the Obi-Wan/Anakin ship - OR- Nothing BUT Obi-Wan/Anakin

BATMAN/DC: - DC can sometimes be tricky, but you can do a Batman* search and get most of them (though, sometimes Nightwing* or Young Justice* or Superman* will catch some of the others). Honestly, though, you might want to just do a search for what character or dynamic you like and have fun from there, because otherwise you're getting a face full of my Dick Grayson Is The Center Of The Universe And I'm Making That Everyone Else's Problem agenda. ;)

MARVEL/MCU: - Marvel* will probably get most of the various properties, though you may want to filter for Defenders* or Guardians of the Galaxy* if you're interested -OR- Marvel* without the Thor/Loki - These focus a lot on the Thor* fandom if you want to witness the results of like 8 years of constant voracious reading in that fandom (Minus the ship), because, seriously, I read a LOT of Odinson family fic. - Bonus, just do a search for Maximoff* to find some really good X-Men: First Class-verse because, listen, I have been ALL ABOUT the Maximoff twins since long before the movies or MCU brought them over and I will DIE ON THE HILL of "Marvel, make Magneto their bio-dad again or I'm never reading another comic of yours ever".

TOLKIEN/LORD OF THE RINGS/SILMARILLION/HOBBIT: - Tolkien* -OR- Hobbit* -OR- Lord of the Rings* searches will turn up most of my Elf-hunting, I primarily focus on the Sindar Elves, but look I can't resist my problematic Feanorian faves or that I will die on the hill that Fingolfin is the best ever. (You have NO IDEA how sad I am that so much fic on Stories of Arda or FFNET is not easily bookmarked on AO3, sob. I externally bookmarked a few of the bigger ones, but sooo many shorter faves are missing from my recs tag.)

CLAMP: - X/Tokyo Babylon legitimately bums me out because it's not a huge fandom and yet so much of what was written was pre-AO3 and lost when CLAMPesque went down or was never brought over from Livejournal, yet this fandom (well, the Seishirou/Subaru pairing) still burns brightly in my heart.

BOOKS: Chrestomanci | Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

DRAMAS: Nirvana in Fire | The Untamed -OR- Modao Zu Shi

VIDEO GAMES: Dragon Age: Inquisition | Final Fantasy 8 | Genshin Impact | Okami

BANDS: Arashi

All right, whew, that was actually a fun project, despite how much work it was to hunt down a lot of older faves to see if they were on AO3, hopefully you'll find this useful!

#lumi.txt #fic recs #star wars fic recs #batman fic recs

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tiffanys-aus-and-headcanons · 2 months

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Appendix D: Some Pig/One More Final

The first three posts in this series are here.

Undertale was a slightly postmodern children's fantasy movie produced by Jim Henson's Creature Shop in the '80s. Noah Hathaway played the protagonist, Frisk, who went on a long quest to escape from a magical prison inside Mt. Ebott; Frisk's father had thrown them into the mountain, known to be full of monsters, in an attempt to kill them. However, it's suggested that as a human, Frisk is inherently more of a protagonist than a monster can be, and has a vague sort of magical power over them. Toriel's death, which Frisk accidentally causes early in the movie, is commonly listed as a Peak Sad Childhood Moment.

George Orwell wrote The Writing In The Web, a political fable about a cult started by a well-meaning spider. E. B. White wrote Snowball's Farm, a whimsical children's tale about a farm whose animals decide to take over.

Infamously, Emmanuel Goldstein's monologue fills dozens of pages, takes at least three hours to read aloud, and brings the plot of Ayn Rand's 1984 to a screeching halt.

Short story collections and anthologies often keep the same title, author, and spirit, it's just the stories that are swapped out. For example, classic episodes of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone include A Wonderful Life, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty, Miracle On 34th Street, and The Sixth Sense. 1983's The Twilight Zone Movie includes segments based on classic episodes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (directed by John Landis and given anti-war themes), Cocoon, The Poltergeist, and In Search of the Twelve Monkeys (the original starred a young William Shatner). Candle Cove is an episode of Black Mirror.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a 1999 Ben Stiller comedy about a team of low-rent superheroes who theme themselves after public domain characters because they cannot afford licensing fees. The film was well-reviewed, but a box office bomb. It was actually the first film to use Smash Mouth's One Week - the One Week music video is actually cross promotion with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - and it would remain the film most associated with the song until Dreamworks' Happily N'Ever After hit theaters two years later.

The Amazing Digital Circus was a virtual pet game and toy line that struck when the iron was hot on that niche, before being bought out by Hasbro and rebooted a few times in different forms and mediums. Lauren Faust created a long-running television cartoon of it that was a huge smash hit with fandom culture despite the show's clearly very young target audience. The property's canon is all very light kiddie fare; the scariest thing about The Amazing Digital Circus is that for a brief and touchy stretch of time in the early 2000s, it was owned by the Peoples Temple, which was seriously considering turning it into a recruiting platform.

Your cringe unpublished works that you gave up on were almost certainly swapped around with other people's cringe unpublished works that they gave up on. There's lots of upwards and downwards mobility to the scramble, but not usually that much. Exceptions are very rare - like a beggar suddenly being made king, or a god being reincarnated into an ant - but they do occasionally happen. For example, what you know as the land of Oz exists only in the head of a young Milwaukee stoner, who suddenly came up with the idea for an epic graphic novel one day in the 2010s while sitting on the bus, and spent a couple of years absolutely convinced she would eventually make it. (She cannot draw.) Conversely, L. Frank Baum's children's fantasy series, Enormia, which has been adapted and reimagined many times, most notably as audiences' introduction to color film, exists in your world only as a different Milwaukee stoner's overly elaborate backstory for his jerkoff sessions. This kind of thing is much more the exception than the rule, and even such exceptions are almost always much smaller in scope - an obscure stillborn project getting swapped around with an obscure out-of-print novel, or an obscure direct-to-video z-movie.

The True Detectives forum and its many schismatic spinoffs, all of which are devoted to discussing mystery fiction, host literally thousands of Wind fanfics. Many of the writers - perhaps most of them - have never actually read Wind, just other fanfiction of it; next to none of the fics are worth reading. Most Wind fics reuse the original protagonist, Rorschach, but treat him as a generically relatable blank slate. The most common fic format by far is the "altdunnit", a form of what-if scenario in which the mystery that sets off Wind's plot is different in some way.

Rorschach is held by a substantial portion of the fandom to be an egg (a trans woman who has not realized it yet). Wildbow has never endorsed this interpretation, and it doesn't seem to be much on his radar. In recent years, the trans Rorschach portion of the fandom has grown; they don't tend to look especially kindly on Warn, much of which Wildbow wrote as a response to fans (like those on the True Detectives forum) he felt had been too inclined to take Rorschach's side in Wind. Flame wars over Warn's content were constant throughout its serial publication, and made it easily the rockiest experience of Wildbow's writing career.

Some noteworthy and relevant podcasts include Jonathan Sims' The Dresden Files, the Ranged Touch Network's Scott Pilgrim Made The World, Doof Media's Winding Down (later Warning Down), and the McElroy family's The Adventure Zone (an actual play podcast which has currently had three major campaigns, two anthology series, and various one-shots). Film Reroll is still an actual play podcast that runs the basic setups of movies (and occasionally other media) as short tabletop campaigns; occasionally, their version of a movie will be much closer to ours than it is to the version of the movie in their own universe.

Xenobuddy was an early childhood public access show, originally created for the BBC in the late 1990s but later aired internationally. The title character is a small alien puppet who lives on a futuristic spaceship staffed by children (who speak a vague conlang akin to a dollar store Esperanto). At the end of every episode, it gets lost and is found, usually by (harmlessly) bursting out of one of the children. It was very popular with its target audience and much loathed by parents. Edgy ironic fanart depicting the titular Xenobuddy as some kind of dangerous parasite abounds.

Static is a supernatural slasher franchise created by Wes Craven, with the first film, also simply titled Static, released in 1984. The movies concern a group of gibbering neotenous ogre-fae who wake up in the modern day after a long sleep, incorporate televisions into their bodies, and start eating people by sucking them into hellish pocket dimensions. The Screen-Guts collectively are probably in the top five antagonists most people think of when they think of slasher horror.

Toby Fox's ROSEQUARTZ is especially known for its meta take on video game morality systems. The game has a mission-based structure; throughout it, the player is encouraged to take on a pacifist playstyle, championed by the player character's late mother, the title character. However, the Crystal Gems give the player enough autonomy that you are entirely able to take a much more violent tack; doing so has a rippling effect on the game's writing in countless immersively-integrated ways. If the player goes out of their way to be as murderous as possible - the so-called "genocide route" - the differences from the main route grow much more extreme, and rather than gaining allies, you start to lose them, as the Crystal Gems realize what you're doing and one by one turn against you. If you manage to shatter Garnet - it's the hardest and most iconic fight in the game, Megalovania is playing, her Future Vision gets used for all it's worth - then you use your knife to slash at the cosmos, erasing Earth, Homeworld, and everything else. This, Toby Fox is saying, is apparently all you want out of a video game - another toy to break.

Warner Bros still did Space Jam with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes, it's just that the Looney Tunes in question were Mickey Mouse and friends. They also still did a second one with LeBron James, which was, by God, somehow worse. They put Ms. Frizzle in it.

Walt Disney made his squeaky clean reputation on the back of adaptations of things like Rudyard Kipling's adventure novel The Call of Cthulhu, P. L. Travers' Thomas the Tank Engine, and Erich Kästner's feel-good coming-of-age kidnapping tale about the power of perseverance, Lolita, originally done with Hayley Mills and later remade with Lindsay Lohan.

Nabokov's extremely controversial literary classic that has defined the idea of the unreliable narrator is Father's Trap, from the perspective of a man who plots to obtain custody of both of his daughters for nefarious purposes. Most publishers ignored Nabokov's instructions not to depict the twins, Lisa and Lottie, on the cover. Stanley Kubrick and Adrian Lyne have directed mediocre film adaptations, and songwriting team Lerner and Loewe did a musical that was a legendary flop.

The Japanese fashion movement is Gothic Pollyanna, after an otherwise-forgotten series of penny dreadfuls about a cute, cheery, rules-minded young girl who is, despite appearances, an insane criminal. Minor character Bonesaw in Alan Moore's Worm Turns also clearly hearkens back to the Pollyanna stock character.

The DEA was a prime-time soap opera about the ongoing "war on drugs"; it ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. Its plot focused on federal agents working at the Drug Enforcement Administration office in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and especially partners Hank Schrader and Steve Gomez and their families. It is mostly remembered today for its downer ending (in which the treachery of late-show villain Walter White, or "Heisenberg", gets the leads killed, and he escapes from justice), and for its far-more-acclaimed spinoff series Better Call Saul, which also ran for eleven seasons from 1993 to 2004, functioning as a prequel, midquel, and sequel to The DEA.

Between The DEA and Better Call Saul, Kelsey Grammer played crooked lawyer Saul Goodman for twenty consecutive years of primetime TV, first as featured comic relief and later as a leading man. (He also guest-starred on the mostly-forgotten Mall Cop, establishing that it, too, was set in the world of The DEA and Better Call Saul.) Better Call Saul won more than a dozen Primetime Emmys. Peri Gilpin received several of these for her performance as Kim Wexler.

St. Elsewhere was a film written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the late 1990s; it was highly acclaimed and successful, and established Shyamalan in the public eye as a skilled auteur with an affinity for twist endings. The film's final scene reveals that its main setting, St. Eligius Hospital, exists entirely within the imagination of an autistic boy, Tommy Westphall, as he gazes into a snowglobe. The so-called "Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis", which posits that this same twist applies to most of fiction due to a network of crossovers, was invented by a Saturday Night Live sketch shortly postdating the film's release, in which an amnesiac Charles McGill (from Better Call Saul) wakes up in St. Eligius, attended to by a cast of characters who are more concerned with their own nonexistence.

After rising to prominence as a writer, storyboarder, and composer for Pendleton Ward's Science Time (where she established the Summer/Jessica relationship that would come to define later seasons), Rebecca Sugar got to make her own cartoon, Henry Ichor. Set in a recently post-apocalyptic but strangely cheerful world, Henry Ichor concerns a young teenage boy who is conscripted as a mech pilot due to his rare and innate ability to link to the powerful Evangelion mecha. (His preferred Evangelion is eventually revealed to be a form of his late mother, the reason he can do this in the first place.) Henry turns out to be a vital asset in protecting humanity from the monstrous "Angels" that frequently threaten it, and is surprisingly emotionally mature for his age. However, the adults around him (especially his father, Gennady) frequently push him too far, especially considering his generally noncombative and pacifistic nature. There is much interpersonal drama and much singing about it, with a very vocally trained cast. After several seasons of slow buildup, the show was forced to suddenly rush to its ending in only a few (infamous) episodes after an arc where Henry had a romance with an Angel in male human form. Henry Ichor The Movie and an ensuing miniseries, End Of Henry Ichor, helped bring the show to a more thematically satisfying conclusion.

Although he has played a creative or consultant role in many animated projects, Alex Hirsch is best known for the one he was actually the showrunner for, Disney Channel's smash hit Sunnydale. Focusing on a small California town constantly plagued by supernatural threats, Sunnydale generally followed a simple monster-of-the-week format, but kept audiences on the hook with teases at a deeper underlying mystery. The show almost didn't get a season two, as Hirsch found working with Disney very tiring, but he was eventually persuaded; season two ran through the rest of Hirsch's ideas at a faster pace, and concluded the show with the leads graduating from Sunnydale High.

For a brief historical moment, Daron Nefcy's show, Ender vs. the Space Bug Army, looked like it would become the successor to Sunnydale, keeping Disney Television Animation prestigious after Sunnydale ended. However, though Ender drew in a big crowd, and lasted almost twice as long as Sunnydale, it was not ultimately as well-received. EvtSBA is a children's space opera, wearing its Starship Troopers (Joss Whedon) inspiration on its sleeve, but also clearly copying some (superficial) notes from Philip Pullman. Set in a future where mankind has come into violent conflict with bug-like aliens, the show follows unbearably smug boy supergenius Ender as he is sent to military school to prepare for interstellar warfare. The show has an extremely cutesy and hyperactive tone; typical filler episodes include the one (generally taken as meta about fandom drama) in which Ender's siblings' futuristic internet arguments prove instrumental to the survival of the human race. Later seasons get a bit more serious, but focus heavily on shipping. The show is infamous for its ending, in which Ender, for his final exam, destroys the Formics' home planet and releases a psychic signal that eradicates the Formic race. Although the show explicitly notes that this includes many individual Formics who we have previously known as sympathetic characters, it is nonetheless played as a happy ending in which a hostile colonial power is defeated. Ender has ended the war; he has beaten the Space Bug Army.

"Meugh-Neigh. 'Meugh' like the cat, 'neigh' like the horse." "Does it mean something?" "No answer; none at all."

Orson Scott Card is an extremely prolific author of speculative fiction. Although it isn't as close to his heart as the Steel Gear series, in which he got to flex his military sci-fi muscles and allegorically retell stories from his faith, he is undoubtedly best known for Ishtar's Curse. Initially a short story and later expanded into a full novel, the plot concerns young Princess Ishtar, or Star, heir to the heathen fairy kingdom of Meugh-Neigh. (In later novels, she changes her name to Bethlehem Diaz, or Beth.) Spoiled and destructive but magically talented, Star is sent to twentieth century Earth so she can develop the wits and the strength of character to be a viable wartime leader for her people - or at least so she can be kept out of the way. After several years of personal growth and magical misadventures with companions she met on Earth, a more grounded Star devises a spell to erase the magic that makes up the bodies of most of her throne's enemies. This plan works, and merges Meugh-Neigh into the Earth as a small and ordinary European country. However, though her subjects are eager to celebrate her for this, Star is devastated when she realizes that she has killed trillions of innocent spirits, and, seeking to atone, she takes on the title of Speaker for the Dead (also the title of the book's first sequel). Although it's frequently ranked highly in lists of fantasy novels of the twentieth century, Ishtar's Curse has received some harsh criticism, with the standard line being that Star is an idealized fantasy of a repentant Hitler figure, and that the text presents excessive justifications for her actions. The story has also been called a reactionary response to Wilde's The Little Mermaid. After more than twenty years, a film adaptation of Ishtar's Curse was released in 2009, starring Dakota Fanning, to mixed reviews. The box office took a further hit due to a boycott campaign, after Card's views on homosexuality (and, relatedly, his membership in the LDS Church) became widely known. In the end, it lost the studio a lot of money.

Hideaki Anno is best known for the classic smash hit anime he made for Studio Gainax, Einstein Goliath Nestorian, a psychologically intense deconstruction of martial arts shonen like Yoshiyuki Tomino's Dragon Ball. Einstein Goliath Nestorian concerns a mystery man known only as Saitama, who finds that he has become dissatisfied with life and alienated from the world after only three years of training have enabled him to easily surpass any physical challenge. The original series is known for its sudden, surreal, and clearly budget-driven ending, although this was quickly alleviated with a similarly surreal but more definitive finale movie. Although many Western anime fans often think of Einstein Goliath Nestorian as pretentious and ultra niche, it was actually a huge mainstream hit in Japan, with a colossal franchise of adaptations, merch, and spinoffs (notably including a series of Retrain films, which began as extremely close shot-for-shot remakes of the original series but wound up spiraling into a very different updated timeline).

Previously most noteworthy for his 2003 visual novel Oreimo, Gen Urobuchi was tapped by Shaft for their extremely successful and acclaimed anime Ohayou Hana!, hailed as a deceptively dark deconstruction of the teen idol genre. The plot concerns a girl, Saionji Mayuri, who leads a double life, being of little note at school, out of costume, but spending much of her time as #1 idol Hana. Her mental stability begins to deteriorate as she realizes that the adults in her life - especially her father, himself a former idol - have groomed her to serve as a drugged and hypnotized propaganda mouthpiece for a shadowy conspiracy. She winds up in the worst of both worlds as her ensuing breakdown, and her handlers' response to it, destroys both of her lives and brings ruin to those she cares about. In addition to the popularity of the actual anime, many of its songs became decontextualized J-Pop hits. The idol anime genre would then receive a glut of edgy lesser imitators, like Love Live: School Idol Project, Cheetah Girls, and magical girl fusion Symphogear. Although the original Ohayou Hana! was a self-contained twelve-episode story, it received a sequel movie shortly thereafter, Ohayou Hana! Rebel!, which ended on a cliffhanger that has still not been resolved over a decade later. The upcoming Ohayou Hana! MK Ultra! is expected to get things back on track. An abridged series originating on 4chan, focusing on cropped screencaps from Ohayou Hana!, called the title character "Miss Ohio", producing the memetic tagline "being Ohio is suffering".

Zack Snyder first came up with the idea for Madoka around 2000, a long time before he'd actually get to make it; he put the project on hold in 2006 to make his adaptation of Worm Turns. He developed the idea with his wife Deborah and a cowriter, Steve Shibuya. Inspired by the Disney Princess phenomenon, as well as Naoko Takeuchi's Pretty Cure (one of the few anime that had already become a hit in the States), Snyder wanted to tell a coherent story about fights between magical girls who could make anything happen, who could make any fantastical world or visual appear. In Snyder's film, we follow Madoka Kaname, a teenager attending a Catholic school in Los Angeles. Madoka and her friends are approached by a strange young woman who goes only by "Mommy", and her animal companion (a CGI-ed up squirrel-cat thing), QB. They offer to make the teens into "magical girls", granting them one wish each in exchange for a life devoted to spiritual warfare. (Another mysterious new girl, Lilly, urges them not to take the deal in the strongest possible terms.) This turns out to be a scam; QB is pitting the magical girls against one another for his own reasons, and in the end, every magical girl and her wish gets corrupted. Despite much of the film's plot being a horrific bloodbath - the MPAA demanded a lot of cuts to get it down to a PG-13 rating - there is a happy ending; Madoka finally makes her own wish and uses it to topple QB's whole system. Madoka isn't often discussed nowadays but it was a major discourse bomb when it came out in 2010, alternately being called misogynistic Orientalist trash and a subversive feminist masterpiece. Snyder, for his part, often notes that QB is intended as an allegory for exploitative forces within the entertainment industry that treat young women as disposable resources with an expiration date; this is already clear to anyone who's watched the film, which is not exactly subtle in its symbolism. He also explains that the film sexualizes the girls in an effort to shame the audience, to get people to understand that they are objectifying the characters in the same way that QB does. The soundtrack's got a really cool ethereal cover of Nine Inch Nails' King Nothing on it, which is probably the most remembered part of the film today.

Selena Gomez became a star by playing Violet Parr on Disney Channel's superhero sitcom The Incredibles. While the show was initially a very throwaway villain-of-the-week affair whose leads had to keep their powers hidden from the public and their caped escapades secret from the government for self-explanatory comes-with-the-genre reasons, it would eventually unfold that the show was set in something of an X-Men-style dystopia where superheroism had been outlawed and supers oppressed by the government as a potential societal fifth column.

Brad Bird directed one of Pixar's most celebrated films, Wizards of Waverly Place; it was Pixar's first film with a predominantly human cast. Disney was hungry for a fantasy property after losing a bidding war for the Luz Noceda rights. It had strong populist anti-eugenic themes, with an elaborate wizarding hierarchy of antagonists who seek to remove the Russo family's magic as part of an effort to curb wizard overpopulation. The sequel came more than a decade later, and wasn't nearly as good.

In addition to Worm Turns, Alan Moore is notable for the heavily metafictional comic Pagemaster, about a boy, Richard, who finds a magical library that contains all stories that have ever been or could ever be told; he becomes lost and imperiled in assorted pieces of historically noteworthy literature (initially ones in the public domain, though later volumes would start using legally safe serial-numbers-filed-off versions of modern stories). The 2003 film, in which Sean Connery played the librarian in one of his last film roles, is widely regarded as a terrible, deeply-toned-down adaptation that didn't grasp the tone or themes of the original story at all; it only covered the first half of the first volume, in which Richard meets "genre spirits" who wish to sort all stories into rigid categories. In a later volume, Pagemaster Millennium, an aged Richard Tyler, who has since taken on the mantle of librarian himself, meets a teenage girl, heavily implied to be Luz Noceda, who has also become lost in the library. She has become corrupted by an eldritch book, or "Necronomicon", written by "the Wrong Author", heavily implied to be the devil (and/or Hugo Astley, an Aleister Crowley caricature from W. Somerset Maugham's The Winged Bull). Flushed with demonic power and enraged by what she's become, a monstrous Luz tears through the library in a blaze of hellfire, seeking to destroy all of literature and the world. It is only through the intervention of the Fat Controller - heavily implied to be God - that Luz is defeated; he mercifully erases her by hitting her with a train, and laments what she became.

#queued post #the scrambled timeline #I tinkered around with the ordering of these entries so much that I guess this is a scrambled post for the scrambled timeline #credit to hieronymous-botch for the Alex Hirsch's Sunnydale idea #credit to Lorelei for the Orson Scott Card's Steel Gear idea

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skipppppy · 4 months

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CARMEN SANDIEGO CHARACTERS + MOVIES

Boo I felt like making headcanons again bc I spend more time wondering what these assholes do in their free time than I do on my job

CARMEN

Didn’t have access to movies growing up so Player, Zack, and Ivy have been catching her up on the most popular ones

HORRIBLE to watch with. Doesn’t really understand “suspension of disbelief” as a concept and will ask stupid questions the whole time. Player almost ended their friendship because she nitpicked Lord of the Rings for being “unrealistic”

Enjoys low stakes 2000s girl chick flicks like mean girls and legally blonde. She has enough stress in her life man she just wants to relax

HATES heist movies because of how innacurate they are. Team Red has taken to watching them JUST to hear her pick them apart

PLAYER

Sci-fi/fantasy junkie. Anything and everything that has aliens/magic and shitty practical effects from the 80’s/90’s he is all over

Has never said a single kind thing about the Star Wars franchise in his life. They are his favourite movies of all time

ADORES Edgar Wright and has slowly been converting Team Red to his movies. Zack loved Baby Driver. Ivy loved Shaun of the Dead. Shadowsan loved Hot Fuzz. He considers Scott Pilgrim the pinnacle of Canadian cinema

Cannot STAND the amount of remakes happening in Hollywood recently

ZACK

Canon enjoyer of blockbuster action movies. Everyone dreads the nights when he gets to choose a film bc his taste is so generic

Does not know what the Snyder cut is. Thank god

His only redeeming quality is a love of early dreamworks. Will not stop quoting Madnagascar

Has seen every Marvel movie and thinks all of them are good. Player has BEGGED him to watch better movies but he won’t. He’s the type to rag on Scorsese for being “boring”

Has seen Kevin Feige’s extended filmography. Does not know who that man is

IVY

Horror fanatic

Banned from choosing movies for film night after convincing them to watch her “favourite lesbian romcom” with her. That lesbian romcom was Saw

Ellen Ripley was not only her personal hero but also her gay awakening. The Xenomorph queen was her second gay awakening

Also loves period dramas. Enjoys the tiddies and knows she would look SO good in those fancy waistcoats the men wear

Watches old slashers with Carmen and laugh whenever someone dies in a stupid way

SHADOWSAN

Faculty considered movies “low brow” entertainment so he hasn’t seen a movie made before the year 2000

Loves a good mob flick. Got into Scorsese specifically because Zack hated him. Goodfellas is his favourite

Everyone assumes he enjoys samurai movies but he actually HATES them. Hideo would ramble about historical inaccuracies the whole way through and he’s still bored just thinking about it

Used to love Yakuza films back in the day but they were soured for him after actually living as one

Loved Knives Out, found Daniel Craig VERY attractive, and has since fallen down the James Bond rabbit hole

CHASE

The most pretentious film hack you’ve ever met in your life. He is taking you to a back alley screening of some arthouse eastern european gay porn on a first date and it will be the most profound thing you’ve ever seen in your life

Detective noir movies and cheesy black and white romances are his favourites. He likes falling asleep to them

He and Player both appreciate animation as a form of cinema, but while Player is referring to like. the Mario movie, Chase is talking about some 3 minute Russian stopmotion surrealist piece from 1951. He attends Annecy every year and has been banned from the Oscars due to threats of violence

He likes Poirot tho. Transmasc king

JULIA

If she has a few hours to herself she’d rather watch a documentary than go to a movie theatre, but she loves historical dramas

Enjoys biopics but thinks it’s stupid to make them for people who are alive

Likes watching movies for the sake of trash talking them, so she is the only person who can tolerate sitting through one with Carmen

LOVES Wes Anderson though. Chase got her into his stuff and the symmetry scratches an itch in her brain. But don’t tell him that

Also enjoys period dramas for the tiddies

CHIEF

Shitty cop movie enjoyer. The kind of person who insists that Die Hard is her favourite christmas movie

LOVES heist movies because of how inaccurate they are. Will mentally nitpick whatever secret service is going after them and be like “ACME wouldn’t do that lol”

She’s semi aware that she’s the antoagonist in Carmen’s own heist narrative so she’s started having fun with it

Closet lover of b-tier comedy movies. Like the ones with Adam Sandler and Kevin Hart on the cover

Does not enjoy watching movies socially. That is quality time for her and her cat. She does not have to shush Commander

#carmen sandiego #carmen sandiego 2019 #carmen sandiego netflix #player cs #zack and ivy #shadowsan #chase devineaux #julia argent #tamara fraser #chief cs

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00127am · 3 months

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signed with love and forever yours, mark

postage. lee mark & gn! reader, mentions of death in the context of greek mythos cost to ship. 712 words

growing up, i never understood the tragedy of orpheus and eurydice. how, upon achieving the opportunity to bring back his beloved, orpheus squandered it all with a single look. it frustrated me, that after all that effort--every song he had written and preformed, compositions which moved all, even gods-- he abandoned all success with a single glimpse backwards. a second of a stare that only captured the whisper of eurydice's figure before she was dragged back to the depths of the underworld. i never understood why he looked back, why he had to fail when he was so close to the edge of triumph.

though i suppose that after meeting you, if i took the place of poor orpheus and you, my eurydice, i'm afraid that i would also lose you for a second time. that i would risk everything i had worked towards, everything that i had done just to see your face in that fraction of a second. to look at you, no matter the consequences. no matter what what i had sacrificed to get to you, no matter if i too would be punished for this singular stare. i would do so, even so close to escape, so close to having you in my arms again without a moment of hesitation. i, not only as orpheus but as mark--your mark--would do anything to spare even the slightest of glances in your direction. even if they would only forfeit half of a second of being captured in the reflection of your eyes and nothing more. for that half of a second, that split sliver in time, would be worth more to me than any hours of gazing upon anything else.

i find us to be more likened to paris and helen of troy. a story i've always understood, at any and all basic fundamentals of its core, though doubted. for how could anyone be so beautiful that others would begin wars over them? that their beauty would be more fair, more compelling than that of the gods? that men would be reduced to nothing more than spurned infatuation, fighting battles--killing-- for any brief moment spent within helen's gaze.

i wasn't sure that any such person could exist. but with you, i find myself to be playing the part of poor paris--destined, perhaps, to starting wars over the mere thought of you.

about mark's love letters.

mark's handwriting is rough and scribbled. oftentimes jotted down with whatever pen he has lying around, series of swirls and scratches at the top margins of the page where he attempts to get the ink to flow. his words, in a stark difference to the somewhat chaotic state of his slanted, all-caps writing, are carefully chosen. hand-picked with the utmost care, the upmost emphasis to ensure the quickening of your heartbeat. though short, his letters are poetic and always very true to himself. you can almost picture the look on his face when he writes them, a fantasy that does nothing but conjure heat into the full of your cheeks.

he first writes these down in his notes app of all places. thumbs frantically typing with every out of the blue strike of inspiration (something that happens rather often, both for songs and for you, though mark could argue that these two things are nearly synonymous). and when he does get the time (something he seems to be always running out of) he transfers these pretty proses to the whitened canvas of card stock. a firm choice, made to last. each one of his letters are signed with less-than-perfect stars and a drawing of whichever thing has recently caught of your fancy (usually him).

mark often sends them in the mail to you but prefers to give his letters to you in person. something he often finds himself regretting when you choose to read them outloud, burying his face in his hands as he begs you to stop. you don't and mark often finds himself begrudgingly thinking that you're much too like haechan for your own good (or his). it's not all bad though, not when the reward for withstanding such utter humiliation on his part is all of your affection. and mark would take anything in the world if it met just receiving one shred of your heart.

your mailbox

taglist. @evilsailorsenshi @222brainrot @chriscentric @trourevaille @firstdonutllamafarm @jenaisnte thank you for supporting me! ♡

🧾 © 00127am 2024

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wander-wren · 3 months

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sometimes i wonder about what fandom is going to look like in 5 or 10 years. i think we might have already started to see a shift.

because, look, most of the oldest, biggest fandoms are from tv shows and movies, in particular ones that go on for years and scores of episodes. star trek, star wars, stargate (is everything star?), doctor who, supernatural…even sherlock really got its biggest popularity boosts in the modern day from tv adaptations. marvel and dc were comics first, too, but movies made them more accessible; their “cinematic universe” tags are the biggest on ao3 by far.

but what tv shows are we getting now? short, 8-episode things that get canceled two or three seasons in, that are usually less-than-faithful adaptations of other media anyway.

what movies are we getting? well, marvel turns more to slop every day, and everything else is remakes and sequels no one asked for. the general populace will still go see them and find some good movies that they like, but there’s not much really for fandom to grasp onto.

the best shows for fandom that we’ve had recently, that i can think of, are stranger things, game of thrones, and maybe our flag means death. stranger things is dying off, especially since they’re looking at a 3-4 YEAR gap between s4 and s5. game of thrones’s popularity plummeted after its final season, we all know that. our flag means death is still chugging fairly okay, but after that second season a lot of the fandom dropped it, and with it now being cancelled, i don’t see it sticking around.

yes, we can chalk part of this up to a new generation to of fans having this growing idea that fandom is super temporary, to be abandoned as soon as its not on trend. but media used to be on trend for a whole lot longer than it is now. seasons were longer, we had filler episodes, things were lower quality sometimes but at least they came out on a consistent schedule. i don’t mind if supernatural isn’t an artistic masterpiece, but if i was a stranger things fan waiting until 2026 for the final season, i would be annoyed if it wasn’t damn near perfect. that’s assuming i watched it at all—we’re all so used to not getting endings and moving on, so why would i bother?

i think there are two types of shows doing sort of okay about this. one is procedurals—9-1-1 is a popular one i’ve run into, and it started in 2018, around the beginning of the decline, but it’s managed 7 seasons in those six years, most of them with 18 episodes. the other is, honestly, anime—though we can and SHOULD talk about the terrible working conditions that make the fast turnarounds there possible. look at how big some anime fandoms are.

judging by the relative fandom popularity of other procedural dramas (grey’s anatomy, law & order, criminal minds), i think that’s going to remain sort of niche. fandom likes fantasy and scifi best, and they just don’t tend to have as strong of an overarching arc to dig into. at least, that’s why i wouldn’t watch them. i think there’s also a good chance these will start to die out in the coming years as well.

anime could also die out a little bit. better working conditions would necessitate less/slower content, and it’s true that most of the popular anime fandoms have been around for years, even decades.

so, what, no new, lasting tv show or movie fandoms anymore?

what will the biggest fandoms be in 5-10 years?

podcast fandoms have a shot. the magnus archives is still going strong, and i’ve been seeing a lot about dungeons and daddies. i think we’re kind of almost past the golden age for podcasts, but i am an outsider, so maybe that will change.

book fandoms seem like a kind of obvious choice, but they just don’t get as big without, you guessed it, a movie or show adaptation. and the downsizing has hit them, too—can you think of anything from the last 5 or 10 years that rivals harry potter, percy jackson, warriors, lord of the rings, hunger games, acotar…even game of thrones (asoiaf) again? i can’t. the collapse of the publishing industry is another post entirely.

2020 is really what cemented these changes, though they were starting in the late 2010s, at least. with actual industries shutting down, there was room for indie creators making things alone in their houses to pop up, and people had more time on their hands to try new things out and get into them.

the two things that have really been on the rise since 2020 is rpf and video game fic—often both combined. we’ve got genshin impact, call of duty, minecraft of course being huge, rpf of various youtubers, and k-pop rpf. now, i think rpf is contentious enough that it won’t really become the main fandom, but video game fic…might be it.

even video blogging rpf can often be a blurred enough line that people are more comfortable with it. and the thing is…youtube creators are actually more reliable than mainstream television these days. they need to be, to maintain their platforms. they need to not cancel series and to live up to their own hype as best they can and to not abandon the channel for 3 or 4 years at a time. and again, you can talk about burnout and unrealistic expectations and all of those things, but it’s still true.

maybe i’m completely wrong. maybe in 10 years the film and publishing industries will all sort themselves out and we’ll go back to the status quo. but i think this position fandom is finding itself in is interesting, and i wouldn’t necessarily be surprised if what’s most popular (both in the specific source material sense and the medium/genre sense) is different some time down the road.

#wren wrambles #fanfiction #ao3 #fandom #fandom meta #fanfic #fanfiction meta #i’m curious what other people think about this #tempted to tag the fandoms i mentioned for reach but. dont know. we’ll see how this does

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purpleyoonn · 1 year

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The Line Between Love and War 7

C H A P T E R 7:

THE AMA’S AND BLUSHING

“It is said that the night sky is made up of tiny wishes that humans were never able to fulfill. That the stars only became bright by the fulfillment of those wishes. In your eyes, the stars that shine never seemed real, your childhood wishes dark and dim as you grow. But now, now you understand the twinkle in their eyes as they look down at you.”

Summary: Your experiences told you that soulmates were something you would never have the pleasure of having; something not given to you because of who you are, despite the soulmark that resides on your inner left wrist. During your solo trip to Los Angeles, you find out that you are more than capable, that your soulmates had been waiting for you for a long time, and would not be letting you go anytime soon.

Genre: soulmate au, bts au, idol bts, polyamory relationship, eventual smut

Paring: Idol!BTS x autistic!mc

Status: Ongoing (randomly updated)

Warnings: mental illness, talk of disability, lots of angst, miscommunication, feelings of depression, feelings of isolation, polyamory bts, stalking, dangerous behavior, eventual smut,

Chapter Warnings: anxious feelings, some drama, insecurities, becky g to the rescue, safety issues come up, not too much going on, a slight shutdown*, relationship first, actual soulmate bonding begins now,

Taglist: @azazel-nyx @yuzon3 @hannahdinse8 @quirkybtsarmy @mageprincess7 @fluffy-canada-pancakes @suckerforv @chaoticthingpizza @drissteele @carolinexkpop @avadakadabra93 @lachimolala22019 @justaweird0 @singukieee @welcometomyworld13 @toughbook @kimana122 @kpopmultistantrashsstuff @0funsite0 @joyless-living @sinceritythatcouldntbedelivered @elliott-calls @psychosupernatural @kyuupidwrites

*shutdown: an autism shutdown, or autistic shutdown, is when a person’s brain becomes so overloaded they can’t control reactions or they become totally unresponsive or frozen. Shutdowns are related to meltdowns. In the case of a shutdown, the person will feel as though they might be trapped in their body, unable to move or respond to any external stimulus.

Masterlist // Chapter 6 // Chapter 8

————————————————–

Previously on The Line Between Love and War:

You nod your head at his question, not knowing if you could accurately answer his question without knowing the context or possible situation he could be referring to. Namjoon just takes your answer for what it was, a probability. Nodding in his own way, he then goes to ask how you feel about attending the American Music Awards that were to take place the next day.

“If it’s okay, I think I would like to go, but I don’t want to be on the red carpet. I don’t want to take the event away from you all and I don’t think I’m comfortable with being on it.” You were honest with him, something he would never fault you for. He was happy you were being honest with him and with yourself.

“Don’t worry baby, we can work things out with Seungho. I’m glad you are going with us though. I know we would feel more at ease with you by our sides.” He moved forward, catching you slightly off guard as he placed a sweet kiss to your cheek before getting up and leaving you to your thoughts and the wordsearch across your lap.

You were dreaming, you had to be. Like, there was no other option that your brain agreed with. You had to be dreaming, and your fantasy seemed way to out of the park to be considered real.

You were currently in a light purple, almost lavender, silk soft dress. It had straps that were a couple inches in width, making you feel more comfortable with the fact that it had a deeper cleavage then you were used to. The dress went to the floor, and the stylist gave you heels to wear. It showed off your soulmarks, something the boys were extremely happy with.

There was something so primal about your soulmate showing off their soul mark, their connection to you. The boys were possessive in nature, something anyone could see, and it extended to you. You were their mate and for you to have your mark on display, it had them buzzing.

You had never worn heels before and waddled like a baby deer as you entered the room the boys told you to go into when you were done. It’s where you knew you had to be dreaming as most of the boys were in various stages of undress, Namjoon only in his boxers as he stood near the clothing rack.

You were gaping at them, wide-eyed for a couple of seconds before blinking quickly, trying to figure out if you were truly seeing what was in front of you.

There was no way you weren’t dreaming. It makes sense.

Only you would come up with a dream where BTS were your soulmates and they were currently undressed in front of you. There was no way it was reality.

Taehyung was the first to notice you, smiling big as he moved to where you were standing, watching the door be closed by Seungho. You were just standing there, eyes wide as you practically stared at the rest getting dressed. He didn’t care about his own state of undress, pants barely buttoned as he walked in front of you.

He couldn’t tell what you were thinking, but he had seen the look in your eyes before. The small glint in the corner where you questioned everything. You wore it a lot in your dreams where you tried to rationalize everything. He could only guess that you thought you were dreaming, more distinctly you thought you were dreaming that they were your soulmates.

He knew from your dreams over the past week that you still didn’t truly believe that you were their missing soulmate. It hurt sometimes, Jimin clinging to him as they talked about how they would convince you, past what they were already doing.

“Hey baby.” Your eyes shifted to now focus on Taehyung, who kissed you on the forehead before gripping your hands in his and leading you to the small two-seater that was next to his dressing area. It was then that the others began to notice you were in the room.

“Hey pretty girl.” Hobi had come up with his shirt half unbuttoned to greet you, hand locking with yours as his eyes moved slowly down your figure, taking in every inch of you he could see. It had you growing flustered, their touch slowly moving the dreamlike haze from your eyes.

“Hi Hobi.” Your voice was quiet as you tried to hide the blush growing on your cheeks. Now that their touch was bringing you back, you were beginning to grow flustered at the amount of skin the boys were slowly covering. It seemed they were trying to see how slowly they could get dressed.

Once they realized you were in the room, watching them get dressed, their stage personas came out and they made to see how quickly they could fluster their youngest mate. Jimin especially was having fun with this, winking at you as he slowly pulled his pants up his thighs and over his hips. He had you looking away the fastest, a win in his eyes, seeing the blush you had on your neck and cheeks.

Jungkook, however, saw things differently. He was the first to finish getting ready and was quick to move to where you were sitting and wrap you up in his arms. He hooked his chin over your shoulder and snuggled in close, loving the blush that was accompanied by the warmth of your arms covering his own that wrapped across your stomach.

“You look beautiful in this dress, baby.” His words brushed across your shoulders causing tingles to move down your spine, both his tone and his breath across your skin being the cause. You could practically feel the heat of his words against you, the temperature in the room spiking because of it.

“You look good too, Koo.” You turn to look at him, your eye catching on the way he played with his lip piercing. You didn’t even catch his eyes looking you over as you turned back around.

“Jungkook, you’re going to get your suit wrinkled. Come here, princess.” Jin had come up to you, knowing that you were getting overwhelmed and Jungkook was about to catch the attention of their head stylist, none of them wanting to witness her fury at the sight of wrinkled clothing.

He helped you stand up, hands on your waist as he held you steady on your still wobbly legs. Heels were not your thing and you didn’t think you would ever get used to them. It was then you realized that everyone was ready, only a few hair touchups needed from the game Jimin and Yoongi were playing.

“You really do look beautiful, baby. This dress looks amazing on you.” He grinned, loving the purple on you knowing what it represented to them. You just reached down, rubbing slightly at your heels as you responded.

“Yeah well, my ankles aren’t going to look so amazing once the night is over. I feel like a newborn deer.” Your words were rung true by you trying to walk forward, legs shaking and almost falling over.

Taehyung caught you, a hand on your back as he steadied you. He held a smile on his lips as helped you walk to the door where the others were now waiting.

“Let’s go my deer.” You only shook your head at his attempt to make you smile, the others laughing at Taehyung’s pun.

The plan was for you to leave the vehicle after the boys exit for the red carpet. You would be driven a little further down where you would be able to walk behind the red carpet backdrop and in to the Microsoft Theater where the awards would be taking place.

Seungho would accompany you into the theater and help you find where you were to be seated. You were assured by the boys and Sejin that you would have your own seat with the boys, that you would be able to sit there while you waited for the boys to join you.

There were three other security members with the boys, making sure nothing happened while on the carpet, doing interviews and taking pictures. They were also to ensure that nothing negative was said about you or the bond, which didn’t matter so much to you as it did to the boys.

The car was not silent when you arrived, each of the boys moving to hug you and reassure you that they were only seconds away if needed. Namjoon especially was worried, knowing exactly how the media would spin even the slightest breath in a negative way.

“Boys, please. It will be okay. I will have Seungho with me and I will just be seated in our assigned spots. Nothing is going to happen.” Okay, maybe you were optimistic about everything right now, but it was only to save face. You were really anxious about the entire night, not wanting to do anything that would upset anyone, especially the boys or army.

Once the door was opened by one of the security team, the boys sent you worried glances as they exited the car, Jin blowing you a kiss before the door closed behind them. You could see all of the photographers lined up and already taking pictures of the boys, some even trying to catch a glance of you in the car.

It was already rumored that you would be in attendance, a picture of the seating arrangements having been leaked the day before when it was being set up. This had the boys worried, but everyone was reassured by Sejin that the team had been prepared for this.

The management team for the boys had already prepared in the event that their last mate would be found, knowing the amount of attention that would be aimed your way. They knew people would try and do anything to get even the smallest glance or fact about you.

The headphones Yoongi had bought for you, the ones you wore to the concert, had already been sold out the following day. Army worked quick in finding out which ones you wore and acted fast, buying out the entire stock through multiple stores.

To say you were shocked was an understatement. Taehyung had even taken a short video of you and posted it to twitter with the caption “army at it again”. In the video, you had your mouth open wide in shock as you look at the website for the store Yoongi had gotten the headphones from. Jungkook was leaning over the back of the couch to look at your screen and pointing at it, laughing as he knows extremely well how quick army could be.

Seungho had opened the door for you when the car stopped again, this time towards the back where you could safely make your way to the theater and to your seats.

“Are you ready for your first appearance, Y/n?” He holds his hand out to help you out of the car as he smiles at you.

“Not at all.” You smile back, thoroughly in awe at how quick your life changed. Just a week ago, you were in your hotel room about to make your way to the Line store, and now you were at the AMA’s with your idol soulmates.

You were quiet as Seungho led you through the slightly narrow walkway and into the theater where you were met by one of the coordinators. After a quick talk where he had to show his badge and your own, he led you down to where the artists would be sitting.

While you were looking around the theater in awe, the boys were being interviewed and having their pictures taken on the carpet.

“Now, I think congratulations are in order. I believe everyone has seen the announcement of you guys finding your final soulmate.” The interviewer gestures to the surrounding people as she spoke.

“Is there anything you can tell us about your final soulmate?” She finally asks the question the boys were waiting for. Namjoon internally sighs as he moves to answer.

“She is the sweetest person. She has a big heart and it feels like we’ve known her forever.” He doesn’t even have to fake the smile or glint in his eyes as he talks about you. Jimin moves forward a little as he leans closer to one of the microphones.

“Y/n is beautiful and we are doing our…best to get to know her better.” He stumbles a bit as he tries to find the right word but he gets a pat on the back from Namjoon, making him feel he did good.

“Well, I’m sure army is extremely happy that your bond is now complete.” Yoongi wants to roll his eyes at the woman’s comment, knowing that her tone was anything but happy.

“We actually have another question that has come in from some comments on our twitter page. The fans want to know if your final mate is an army and who her bias is?” This question has the boys looking at each other, wondering if they should answer or not. Jin decides to take the microphone.

“She is army and her bias is BTS.” The boys all internally applaud their eldest mate for his quick thinking, some even trying not to roll their eyes at his blatant wink at the end.

The woman just laughs, obviously fake as she was hoping to stir up some kind of drama. She tries to ask another question but is told by one of their team that her time was over. She doesn’t even say any goodbye as she walks away from them, her cameraman following.

“Wow.” Jungkook mutters under his breath, Hobi agreeing.

“I knew we would get some questions about Y/n, but not like that.” Taehyung says low, knowing they don’t need anyone listening in, despite speaking in their native Korean. They never knew who could translate or speak their language while in the states. Look at you, they didn’t expect for you to be able to speak almost fluent Korean when they found you.

Almost every question they had received so far, besides one of the interviewers they were more familiar with, had been about you. And while they loved that they were able to talk about you and show the world how much they already loved you, it made some of the boys feel weird.

-*-*-

You had found your seats, almost right up front with an amazing view of the stage when a man had walked up to you. Seungho was quick to usher you behind him as he moved forward to stop the man from coming any further.

“Excuse me Miss, you cannot sit there. I’m going to have to ask you to move to the designated seat filler area until the show starts.” Seat fillers were regular people who had to go through some kind of vetting process to be able to fill the seats within award shows. They typically moved from seat to seat so it looked like the audience was always full whenever an artists had to leave.

Seungho, who held both of your passes, just looked at the man and held his hand up, preventing the man from getting closer to you like he was trying to do.

“We have our passes right here. This is her artist pass.” He hands the man your pass hoping this would resolve the issue.

“Is this some kind of joke?” The man now looks angry as he holds up your artist pass with your name on it and the logo for BTS, the word soulmate accompanied underneath in bold writing. He tries to move past Seungho to grab your arm but Seungho is quick to push the man away.

“I can assure you this is not a joke.” You were quiet as Seungho moves to protect you from the now visibly angry man.

“I’ve never seen this pass before. It doesn’t even look like an artist pass. I’m going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t move to the seat filler area.” He spits at you both like he would be just as happy to physically remove you.

“Why would you think this is a joke, Sir?” You ask the man, making both heads turn towards you, Seungho with a weary look and the man who seems to pause at hearing you speak.

“There is no way you can be their soulmate. Look at you.” He gestures to you, not even caring that other people were now looking your way, other artists and celebrities who had now begun to enter the theater for the awards show.

The words coming from this man’s mouth make Seungho’s blood boil. Of the week he has known you and been assigned to be your head security, he has seen how insecure you had been about everything, including your looks. He is aware that there is some trauma from your home life that aids into your insecurities, but he doesn’t know the full story.

Either way, that is never how you should talk to or treat someone. But before he could say anything, someone else interrupts.

“Oh my goodness, girl! You look amazing!” You see Becky G walking up to you and bringing you into a hug. To say you were starstruck was an understatement. You had been watching her videos since she was on YouTube, growing up listening to her songs.

When she pulls back from the hug, she turns around to face the man. “Is there something wrong?” She has an arm around you and the other on her hip as the speaks to the worker. He just starts to sputter like a fish, trying to figure out what to say.

“You know this woman?” Was what he managed to spit out, looking between you and Becky with confusion.

“Of course! She is one of my friend J-Hope’s mates.” She gestures to the two couches that have the words “BTS and Soulmate” on the cards resting on the cushions. Becky looked between the man and the placard with a raised eyebrow, not even waiting before taking your pass from his hands and handing it to Seungho.

“What’s going on here, baby?” Namjoon asks, looking at the scene in front of him. They had heard as they were walking towards their seats and you, that there was a commotion going on. The rushed to where they knew their seats were, just hoping no one was giving you any sort of trouble.

“Nothing Sirs. I just didn’t uh, didn’t realize—” The man began to stutter, trying to think of a response that wouldn’t get him into trouble when Seungho interrupted him.

“He tried to remove Y/n from her seat as he didn’t think she was your mate or belonged with you. Miss Becky came and helped her when she saw what was going on.” Seungho explained, causing the group to glare at the man after sending smiles towards Becky who was still standing with you.

At the audience you were receiving, the main coordinator for the event had come down to see what was going on. It was at this point that Jimin and Hobi decided to come over to you, checking on you and give thanks to Becky.

“Here baby. Why don’t you sit here with me.” Jimin spoke softly to you, not knowing how this incident could have affected you; you were pretty silent as you looked up at him. He was unable to read your emotions, causing him a little panic as he brought you over to the second couch, sitting you in the middle where he knew you would be surrounded by them.

You watched Jimin fuss over you, trying to push the words from your lips to tell him what happened. You could hear Hobi and Becky talking, him wanting to get her story as he also greeted his old friend.

You turned your head, looking for Namjoon only to see him talking to the head coordinator as the man was escorted away. You watched the woman gesture your way and the firm nod from Namjoon.

He came over first, kneeling in front of you as he grabbed your hands to hold.

“Baby, the main coordinator is going to come over to apologize for the coordinator and for his actions. I just wanted to let you know.” He stood up but continued to hold your hand as the woman walked over.

“Hello Y/n. My name is Susan and I am the main coordinator for the American Music Awards. I just wanted to apologize for the actions of Tim and to let you know it will never happen again. If there is anything you need for the night, please don’t be afraid to let one of us know. I will have two additional guards up front for you and you can let either of them know if you have any problems, okay?” Susan had a kind expression on as she talked to you. She seemed genuine which helped to soften the emotions you were holding in.

“Thank you.” You managed to push out, the words sounding like a mumble as you did so. It made you worry that she wasn’t going to hear you, but the smile and no you received was a relief that you didn’t have to try and repeat yourself.

Susan said a couple more words to Namjoon before leaving. Namjoon took his spot on your other side, while Hobi sat next to him. Namjoon had an arm around you while Jimin had a hand on your thigh, rubbing circles into the fabric covering your skin.

“We should have been with you.” Namjoon muttered under his breath as his grip on your waist tightened. He could see the nail marks on his palm, could feel them on forming on his palm as they were being interviewed. He knew it wasn’t his doing and could only imagine what was happening for you to do that.

He moved his hand, turning your palm over so he could see your own palm, to see the red and irritated marks. He didn’t say anything as you watched him bring your palm up to your lips, kissing at your unfortunate habit.

The lights began to go down as the stage was lit up. You could see the microphone being set up and the curtains being drawn as you sat back in your seat. There were so many things you wanted to say, but you knew that you wouldn’t be able to get them out.

“We’re here baby.” Jimin whispered as the cameramen began to film the crowd, moving passing your small group as they did so. You could feel the familiar warmth moving up your spine as your bond began to settle one more. Ease moving through your body as the tension left, excitement now filling your body as the host walked on stage to start the show.

-*-*-

During their ending performance, the boys made sure to keep you in their line of sight, unknowingly making some of the cameramen record you for reaction videos. You were incredibly self conscious, especially after that coordinator’s comments earlier. You tried to ignore the camera’s but you kept fiddling with your bracelet and fingers.

When their performance was over, you stood up and clapped for them, the camera still on you even as your boys walked off stage. It was nerve wracking for you and you honestly couldn’t wait for the cameramen to leave.

However, despite the small incident in the beginning, and the annoying cameramen, the night was amazing.

The boys were nominated for and won Artist of the Year, Favorite Pop Duo/Group, and Favorite Pop Song with Butter. You were unbelievably proud and couldn’t stop smiling the entire way home, feeling like a proud army as the boys cheered and danced around in the car.

They planned to have a live for armies once at the hotel, after showering and changing. They decided to skip the after party, not really wanting to go anyways, but also just wanting to chill and relax at the hotel. You had decided with Seungho that while the boys were changing and showering that you would go to the store and get snacks and a small cake for them.

You didn’t need to shower quiet yet, just deciding to wash you face and change into comfy clothes once you got to the room. The boys had showered together in small pairs, not wanting to waste water and wanting to be done faster.

As they showered, you left a note for them that you would be taking Seungho with you. Surprisingly, you managed to get snacks and drinks back to the room before they even noticed you were gone. You had managed to make the couch and table look nice, decorating it with snacks and the small cake. You even got champagne and glasses out so they could celebrate normally.

When Namjoon walked out and saw your efforts, he didn’t even blink before he was walking to you and pressing a soft kiss to your lips.

“Thank you, baby.” He whispered against your lips, opening his eyes to see your own open wide in shock. He took a step back, about to ask you what was wrong before his own eyes widened.

“Oh my, baby I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think.” Namjoon spoke quickly, his hands held up as he apologized. He had taken your first kiss without a thought in his mind. He began to pace back and forth in his own little area as you stared ahead, your cheeks and neck entirely red as you couldn’t help the blush from forming.

Kim Namjoon was your first kiss. And it wasn’t a dream.

You tried to get his attention, but it was no use as he moved back and forth. Finally, you decided to just move to him, hugging him and catching him off guard. When he stopped pacing, you looked up at him, arms still around his middle.

“It’s okay.” You smiled up at him before moving away quickly, your own embarrassment catching up to you as you began to fluff the pillows on the couch and move the snacks around as you waited for the others to be done.

Namjoon couldn’t help but to blush as well, smiling down at you as he moved to grab his phone for the live. He set it up on the entertainment center across from the couch, leaning it up against the television. They hadn’t wanted to bother Sejin for his phone stand, so they went with this.

By the time everyone was done and ready, the blush on your cheeks had barely gone away, alerting everyone to your own feelings.

“What happened baby?” Jimin had smirked your direction, his tone light and teasing as he leaned on the couch.

“I uh- I kissed her.” Namjoon blurted out, making your entire bond group gawk at the tall man. Taehyung couldn’t help but to start clapping.

“Wow, Joonie! Didn’t think you had it in you.” The boys began to tease their mate, each of them getting their fill before the camera turned on and the live started.

You were sitting in the kitchen at first, your own little plate of snacks on the table as you watched them do their live from your phone, wanting to read the comments. You listened to them joke around and thank Army before the comments turned to you.

“Is Y/n okay?”

“What happened to Y/n before the show started?”

“Did Y/n almost get kicked out?”

You turned your head after a couple comments, wanting to know if the boys had seen them or not. By the way Jimin and Jungkook, who both had their own phones out for the live, turned to the others and whispered or pointed, you knew they had.

“Is Y/n okay?” Namjoon read the comment aloud, turning to Jin before answering.

“Y/n is fine, everybody. There was an incident before the show started, but everything was handled pretty quickly.” Namjoon did his best to respond in a way that didn’t explain what happened but let everyone watching know that it was settled.

“She is actually here now, watching the live as well.” Namjoon added on at the end, wanting to ensure army that you really were okay. They all were happy for how concerned their fans were for you, it made their hearts swell even larger for army.

He gestured for you to come over, much to your own contented feelings for where you were sitting. Seeing your hesitation, Jimin spoke to the camera, “Be right back army!” before moving over to where you were, placing his arms on either side of you and caging you in against the table.

“Baby girl. You don’t have to come over, but it would ease the worry and concern that army have for you. If you don’t want to, you don’t, you can always just shout out that you are okay and that everything is fine.” Jimin whispered to, remembering the conversation you had with them about being in front of the camera.

You looked over to where the boys were, trying to chat and joke around while waiting to see if you would come over. You could see them glancing over every now and then.

You knew you would probably be brought into a vilve at some point, and figure now was as good a time as any to do it. You were a part of BTS whether you liked it or not, and this was a part of the territory.

“Okay.” You whisper back, looking up at Jimin as he began to grin down at you, placing a quick kiss on your lips before moving back, winking at you and bringing you over to where Jungkook and Jin had made space for you to sit.

You felt awkward, wondering how the boys did this all the time as you relaxed into the couch. Jin and Jungkook both put an arm behind you, Jin rubbing his hand in small circles on your back.

“Army, this is our final soulmate, Y/n. Please love her like you love us.” Hobi spoke up, large smile on his lips as he gestured to you, making you smile back and wave shyly at the camera.

“Hello Army. Thank you for your concern. I am doing okay.” You answer the previously asked question, not knowing what else to say. Taehyung, thankfully, saved you from further embarrassment as he shouted out “Yoongi, marry me!”

The rest of the live turned out better than you thought. There were not many questions aimed your way, but you shared that your favorite color was blue, you were from California, and that your ult kpop groups were BTS (of course), Ateez, Iz*one, and Twice, but that you also listened to others as well.

The boys also learned something new, not even realizing that you listened to other groups besides them. They had gotten a little jealous that you liked another kpop boy group, but would wait until later to tease you.

The night ended with plenty more kisses and cuddles after the live ended, discussions of how the week would look, and falling asleep in each other’s arms as you squeezed in together on Jin and Yoongi’s bed.

Next Chapter

#bts #bts au #bts idol au #bts soulmate #bts soulmate au #bts polyamory #bts poly #bts poly!au #bts poly au #bts poly!#bts x reader #poly!bts x reader #bts x autistic!mc #bts x autistic!reader #autistic!mc #autistic reader #purpleyoonn #the line between love and war

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hollypunkers · 2 months

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personal star wars opinion vent

idk why people who like old republic star wars stuff like me are so defensive of the old jedi. they werent great. thats why i like them. its ok. “the jedi were actually right” well, i have consumed more than my doctor’s recommended share of star wars movies and books and tv shows and… um, i never had THAT take. what on earth?

like, even Star Trek knows their fantasy space government isnt perfect but the authors were trying to make their best example of a responsible society where people valued being moral above all else. the authors of Star Wars were explicitly trying to show where the old republic and jedi went wrong. they lived next door to sith lords for years and didn’t even notice, like, they weren’t even good at the one thing that was their “spec-ial-ity”. also, its totally cool to separate kids from their families even if the families would want them back? even if the kids are brought to war zones and expected to fight/work? YALL. what are you defending here.

I like the old republic and the old jedi order too, but like, NEITHER one was good and both explicitly had fallen morally to such a state that a sith lord literally took over and the galaxy suffered TREMENDOUSLY as a result of their incompetence. “Slavery is outlawed in the Republic” well dude, its being openly practiced on multiple planets. if only someone could do something about it. like the galactic wide government and their highly moral magical negotiation/military force? oh, they can’t? maybe theyre not that good at doing what they say they do. maybe they say a lot of nice things but when push comes to shove the jedi commit genocides and hide the evidence (murdering those tuskens was downright jedi-like, dont you know?). maybe questioning your government and not letting them get away with shit, even to the point of direct action and even violent rebellion, is a good thing. its almost like that was always the point.

#hollypunkerspost #rambling #‘no attachments is a good rule’ i mean it quite literally paved the way for Sidious to create Vader #but fuck me why would anyone watch the actual movies i guess #anakin was not born evil he was made and he did make himself but come the fuck on i dont think shmi skywalker woulda been a BAD influence #‘i cant join the dark side my mom said no’ *angry sidious noises*#star wars #this is the most ramble of rambly #vent #fantasy slavery #dont even get me started on the new movies i miss jacen and jaina

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yoonia · 10 months

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the bedroom hymns ● chapter v

⟶ Chapter summary | Your wish to reveal the secrets within the Elcester Forest is finally being fulfilled, but you are quick to find that you might be getting more than what you have been asking for. Mysterious occurrences appear before your eyes, and before you know it, a new world opens up for you, with many more wonders waiting for you to see.

chapter v. homecoming

We are going to burn.

We are burning. Oh, dear Lord in heavens. We are burning.

We are….not burning. We are….flying?

For one split second, it seems like your mind simply stops functioning. Your mouth has fallen open, yet there is no voice coming out of you even if you feel like screaming. One moment, the entire carriage seems to be burning, engulfed completely by the massive blue flame. And yet, even as you can see yourself being surrounded by the ominous blazing blue lights, there are no burns, no heat, not a single inch of the dancing flame touching the horses and the carriage, let alone your skin. Then, all of a sudden, the carriage seems to emerge from the flame, completely untouched, and on the other side you see nothing but the clear, yet still dark sky full of stars that seems so close that you can almost reach it. There are trees around you still, but the only thing you can see from them are merely their dense tips, as you seem to be floating between the foliage instead of driving through the trees.

“—ness!”

And now you are beginning to fall quickly from the sky, the clustered stars above getting further away right before your eyes while you feel like the dense thickets are swallowing you as you descend between them.

“—Highness!”

Just when you think that this is the end, the carriage lands roughly on the ground below, tossing you against the seats, while the horses—which had somehow landed more gracefully than the rocking carriage—immediately proceed their run as if nothing had happened.

As if they hadn’t just pulled you into a burning flame and sent you all floating far above ground towards the night sky.

“Your Highness! You are having a panic attack. Take a deep breath, look at me,” Nanny Abigail’s voice comes to you just as your senses are starting to work again, all the sounds from the horses’ rapid pace and the rocking wheels return to you, quickly snapping you out of it. You had been so taken aback by the situation that you hadn’t noticed that she has been awakened. Not only had she been pulled out of her sleep during the entire event, she is now sitting right next to you, with her hands clasping your trembling ones as she tries to calm you down.

Your chest still feels tight, so much so that you feel like you can never breathe again, and your throat is dry with your soundless scream. But seeing her face and knowing that you are still alive help bring you back to reality, no matter how distorted it seems to be right this moment. Before long, despite feeling like your entire world is still slanted with nothing separating between dream and reality, and despite the violent shaking happening around you as the driver struggles to control the horses and balance the carriage over the uneven ground, you are beginning to breathe easier without feeling like your chest is about to explode.

“There you go,” Nanny Abigail’s voice gently piercing through your muddled brain as she continues coaching you to find your calmness. “Focus on my voice and keep steadying your breathing. Everything is going to be okay, I promise.”

In need to keep yourself grounded, you lean closer to Nanny Abigail and grip her hand harder as the carriage sways left and right violently as it drives down the road, seemingly as if it is going downhill even without you looking out the window. Keeping your eyes on her seems to be helping you from getting another panic attack, and from feeling sick from all the rapid motions happening all around you, while she somehow remains to be so calm through all the hectics.

How could she be so calm?

“We….we were—” you try to speak once you find your voice again, but Nanny Abigail gently shakes her head to stop you from forcing yourself, when it is clear that you are still struggling to recover from your shock.

“Yes, Your Highness. I know, but everything is okay now. See? We’re okay,” she continues reassuring you while rubbing her hand gently on your back so that the tension in your body slowly lessens. And it seems to be working, even if having your mind cleared only means that you can finally pay more attention to your surroundings, to see better at what is happening now.

The carriage continues to sway and rock a while longer until you feel it slowing down. The driver’s voice had sounded a bit strained earlier, but as he gently commands his horses to slowly come to halt, you can sense his tension loosening and he is slowly growing more relaxed and relieved for finally gaining back control over his carriage. The ride slows down until it stops moving, and the driver hops down from his seat. Through the windows, you watch the man as he walks over to his horses, taking his time to gently brush their mane while checking on their reins to make sure that they remain secured even after all the commotion. He leans closer to each one, as if whispering something to each one while he is tending to them, and the horses soon find calmness in his care.

As if they can understand his words completely.

You use this moment of quietness to find your own calmness, even as you are left astonished by the sight you are seeing. Settling back in the seat, you let go of Nanny Abigail’s hands as you look out the window to your sides, trying to figure out what had just happened. Outside, the forest is still visible. But it doesn’t take you long to realise that everything seems—different. The trees are dissimilar to the ones you saw before, as they are no longer looking as eerie nor daunting as what you had been seeing, even when the trees surrounding you now appear much bigger and taller in size. There are types of trees that you had never seen back in the Elcester Forest, with lean, yet sturdy upright trunks that look statuesque even in the dark. The foliage also appears thicker, with leaves that seem to be in darker shades which appear as if they are gleaming in the gloom as they reflect the moonlight above perfectly like mirrors.

Looking up at the evening sky, you also find visible differences to let you know that you are no longer in the Elcester Forest.

The sky has grown a little brighter than before, with the stronger moonlight illuminating the sky and the forest around you, and there seems to be a much denser clump of stars spread around the bright moon. And there is something else up there that has caught your attention while you were still struggling to get through your shock—the sight of an aurora dancing in the night sky, a colourful display of light that seems to be a complete contrast to the dark hue, in which you can see shades of light coloured in gold and copper blending in together like a cold flame glimmering between the bright display of stars.

The sight of the majestic display in the sky is still there as you lean closer to the window to see it, and you know that it wasn’t just a figment of your imagination. Never once in your life had you ever seen this kind of spectacle back at the capital, nor had you ever seen it during the nights you ventured into the borders of the woodlands. As the glow seems to dance in the night sky, it almost feels like you can hear its movement, as if there is a faint murmur of musical tone echoing through the air together with each twist and swirl.

The carriage shakes a little when the driver hops back onto his seat. He turns to the window to look back at his passengers, giving you and Nanny Abigail a remorseful grin that doesn’t seem quite genuine when he speaks to you. If any, it seems clear that what just happened had only amused him dearly. “Forgive me for the bumpy ride, Your Highness, and kind Governess. Seems like our little detour earlier had caused us to stray out of course a bit further than expected. Not to worry though, we’ll find our way back in no time, hopefully before the sun is high. We just need to get out of this hill first.”

Without waiting for your response, he turns back to the front and cracks his whip in the air, setting off his horses back into their determined and steady pace. The ride runs more smoothly as the journey continues, though what you are able to sense from the drive only surprises you more.

Earlier, while going through the road in the middle of the Elcester Forest, the path you were taking mostly remained on plain ground, with only small hills appearing in between. Now, just after encountering the ominous wall of flame, you find yourself going downhill from what seems to be quite of a high altitude. The woodlands around you don’t seem as dense either, as you keep seeing more openings, less of those thick, reaching branches obstructing your view but with more leaves sprouting far above ground in multiple layers of thick foliage.

The ride continues, with your attention being distracted by your new surroundings, until the ground seems to be growing more plain and even. Just as the carriage is slowly reaching to what seems to be the edge of the wooded hill, and right as you are beginning to believe that it wouldn’t be possible for more surprises to happen to you, you catch the sight of a pair of men on horses coming your way.

“Halt! Who goes there?” one of the horsemen calls out to the driver, who quickly eases his horses down to a halt. As the men draw closer to the carriage, you are able to see what the men are wearing. Unlike the plain looking armour which you had seen worn by the members of the mercenary army roaming the capital, these men are wearing fancy armours similar to the ones the royal guards of Nythelean Empire Army would wear. You notice a matching insignia marked on both of their chest protectors which looks nothing like any of the symbols of the armies from any kingdom that you have ever known.

The other horseman inquires the driver as he also draws closer from the other side of the carriage. “What is your business here, Sir?”

You feel tense, wondering what the driver would tell them. Once again, Nanny Abigail grabs your hand to keep you calm, as if she can sense your trepidation without you saying it out loud. Meanwhile, the driver at the front sounds as calm as he has been the whole night when he answers, “Just passing through, Colonel. We got lost between the hills back there. Didn’t expect that it would still be this dark when we came through here.”

“And where are you heading to?”

Hearing this question, the driver smiles and points towards the passenger window behind him, and you start panicking. “The ladies here wanted to see the sunrise. They heard that it would be beautiful to watch the sun coming up from the beaches on the coastal area,” the driver cheerfully says, while you can hear your own heartbeat racing fast. You have no idea what the driver is up to now by drawing their attention on you—when you were not supposed to be seen by anyone—but there is really nothing that you can do about it except to stay silent and let him handle everything. “Do you by any chance know where we should go to reach the coastline? We mean no harm, we promise. Just out here on a short vacation before the summer ends, is all.”

The first horseman who isn’t conversing with the driver goes around the carriage, studying the ride closely and peeking through the windows with pure curiosity. There is something about him that reminds you of the nameless mercenary soldier you met at the pub a few nights ago—his attentive eyes, his cold smile and genuine interest, and his entire demeanour as he carefully guides his horse around the carriage—which makes you feel cautious under his gaze. You instinctively avoid his eyes, keeping your head down while holding tightly around your necklace to remain calm.

Unlike you, Nanny Abigail simply greets the man with a smile and a courteous nod when she meets his gaze, before the man finally returns to the front of the carriage to join his comrade. You see both men talking in low voices with each other for a quick moment, until the other nods, his face looking more at ease after listening to the report he is given, yet he still remains vigilant when he speaks to the driver again.

“Keep heading to the East, make sure to keep following the road and you will get there in no time. The sunrise is coming soon so you might want to hurry if you want to catch it. Be careful not to go straying into others’ property and stay clear from the wastelands. There would be no one to keep you secure if you should get lost out there in that area,” the soldier instructs the driver politely, to which the latter responds kindly as if he hadn’t been unfairly questioned just now or heard the underlying threat that you can easily sense from the guard’s words.

“Will do, Colonel. Thank you for the help, and forgive us for all the trouble.”

“You drive safely now, Sir,” the other soldier says, his eyes finding the window to meet your gaze once more when he says, “Take care, Miss.”

You nod at the soldier with a smile. At the front, the driver cracks his whip, commanding his horses to continue the journey, keeping a slow and steady pace as the carriage drives past the soldiers who remain in their spots, watching as the ride starts heading towards the edge of the woods.

You can only breathe a sigh of relief once the ride continues smoothly ahead, until you realise that His Majesty’s royal guards who you saw following you closely back in the Elcester Forest are now nowhere to be seen. Before you get to question any of this, you start seeing the driver cautiously looking over his shoulder, subtly taking heed of the soldiers’ movements, and then Nanny Abigail shows you yet another questionable behaviour as she speaks out to the driver through the front window, “They’ve gone deeper into the woods.”

At the front, the driver nods approvingly. “It appears so. Wonder what they were doing out here in the bluffs. They don’t belong in this territory more than we do.”

His response got you feeling curious, so you sneak a glance through the back window, watching as the soldiers disappear through the thickets. You have no idea why you were drawn to them despite feeling uneasy when they intercepted your ride earlier. The uneasiness remains even as you watch their backs fade into the gloom, as you silently wonder why they had let you go so freely if this truly had been a forbidden territory for you to past through, or if there had indeed any threats from your father’s enemies to do you harm.

Meanwhile, as the carriage continues getting further away from the bluffs, the soldiers continue to ride their horses deeper into the woods to make their way up towards the top of the hill, oblivious to the attention they have been getting. Keeping their horses running at a steady pace and staying close to each other, they continue to discuss what they had just encountered.

The one who was looking at you before you departed speaks first, asking his comrade, “Did you see any emblem shown on the carriage?”

The other soldier shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. There was only a symbol on the wheels that didn’t seem like a symbol of any reigning kingdom that I know of. Despite its size, the carriage was made to look like a common people’s ride.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” the first soldier says. “But it makes me wonder—” he discreetly looks over his shoulder, watching the tail of the departing carriage through the corners of his eyes before it disappears completely from sight. “Why would an unmarked common people’s carriage carrying two maidens who are out traveling on an uncharted territory be covered by such a powerful flow of magic?”

His comrade responds with a grim voice as he has been wondering the same thing, “My question exactly. We need to find a way to send this news to His Highness, Prince Yoongi, in the human realm. I’m sure he would love to hear about this incident before the news ever gets back to the palace.”

The rest of the journey is filled with silence.

To say that you are still shocked sounds like an understatement. And yet, for some reason, it seems like your senses are in high alert with curiosity, as if you are readying yourself to experience more surprises.

Perhaps this is why you can easily notice it once the terrain seems to be changing again. The ride has been going on plain ground for a while, as the driver followed the road as instructed by the local soldiers towards the East.

For a while, you see nothing but meadows and green sloping hills surrounding you, until the road slowly begins ascending again, and the green meadows begin to decline, showing you a spread of arid ground mixed with white sand and flat rocks rising here and there. The higher the ground rises, the more you see a layer of white mist rising around you. It surprises you just how fast the mist soon grows into a thick layer of fog once you realised its presence, and it is beginning to make it hard for you to see what is happening around you. It the meantime, it doesn’t seem like the driver is having the same problem as he remains focused in leading his horses to drive through the thick mist, as he somehow manages to keep the ride to remain on the road.

But the surprise doesn’t end there, as you begin to see His Majesty’s guards that have been absent earlier emerging through the fog one by one, joining the carriage as it continues heading up towards the peak of the ascending terrain. From the guards who stayed with you until the end to those who had separated themselves from the entourage much earlier back in the Elcester Forest when they went to investigate your pursuers.

Through the window, you see one of the guards closing in, his voice is drowned by the sounds of the galloping horses that you can only catch on a few words he is sharing with the driver, “….tried to catch up…stalled during the leap…came out at a different place than intended.”

“Figured as much,” you hear the driver responding to him calmly without taking his eyes off of the road. “We came out on the bluffs just beyond the borders. We met some company intercepting our arrival which His Majesty would have loved to hear about.”

You see them exchanging a few more words before the guard separates himself and begins leading his horse at the front of the entourage to act as a guide. As he advances through the thick mist, it magically melts around him, as if giving him passage to march forward, showing you what the mist had been trying to conceal.

Beyond you arises what appears to be a smaller replica of Mount Orrum, a mountain with grey slabs of rocky walls waiting for you where the meadows end. Shadows of massive rocks in various forms and sizes are visible through the fog when you look towards the right side of the road, which you are unable to identify, though you immediately remember about the ‘wastelands’ that the soldiers have mentioned before and wonder if the driver had ignored their warnings to enter the forbidden area.

The carriage continues ascending in height, and you suddenly feel the warmth of sunlight flooding into the carriage. Ignoring the dark figures being concealed by the fog to your right, you turn to search for the sunlight on the opposite side of the road. This time, the fog seems to know what you are wishing to see, and it disperses just enough for you to find what you are looking for.

What you had thought to be a rising ground covered with rocks on your left turns out to be the edge of an elevated cliff. Beyond the line of rocks covering the side of the road, you see nothing but a far drop down below, where you can roughly see a spread of white-sanded coastline and a widespread of clear ocean which seems endless, with the horizon located far away where the morning sun is seen rising from.

Laying your gaze at the beach and the chasing waves below, then up to the cliff walls that appear to be rising at the ends of the beach line, you are overcome with a sense of familiarity. I know this place, you wonder as you lean closer to the window, hoping to get a better look at the view and try to recall why this place feels so familiar to you.

An image appears from the back of your mind right at that moment, of a clear wide ocean and the white-sanded beach, of the slanted cliffs with green patches of grass and wildflowers growing on the very top where you found yourself wandering blissfully with your bare feet sinking into them, and the man who seemed to have come out of the rocky walls just to greet you,

“We will see each other soon…”

All of a sudden, you feel something blooming inside your chest.

To this day, you still have yet to figure out who he was, and you have no idea how to find out anything about this mysterious being without questioning your sanity for searching for a figure that you had only seen in your dreams. But you have never felt such a yearning for someone or something that seems so otherworldly before, to feel such desire so deep, and that feeling has persisted ever since you had the dream visiting you in your sleep. The images you saw has been haunting you, along with the man who you had only met in that short, yet euphoric moment that you can remember every part of it even now that you are awake.

Seeing this place appearing before you now gives you some sort of hope. It feels like you finally have something to look forward to, seeing that this place is real, and to find it when you are to reach the place which might become your new home.

As if the universe is answering your silent musings, the driver turns and alerts you of what is coming right ahead.

“Keep your eyes looking ahead, Your Highness. As promised, I’m bringing you home just as the sky is turning brighter, and I know that you would love to see this,” the driver shouts excitedly through the front window. “We have arrived.”

You look to the front only to see nothing but a thick layer of fog forming right ahead of the carriage, as it continues to crawl and rise from the ground together with the entire entourage taking you home. One by one, the royal guards seem to be swallowed by the white fog as they march right ahead, and soon it would be your turn. But the carriage continues driving forward, as if the driver knows where to go without having a clear visual of the road beyond. You can hear the changes happening around you when the horses begin to slow down and the wheels start running over what seems to be cobblestone-covered road.

As if there is magic present in the air, the fog disperses itself completely right before your eyes, and emerging from the darkness is a massive castle, standing magnificently right atop of the peak of the rocky mountain.

You watch in awe as the carriage draws closer and closer towards the castle, speeding up slowly as it drives over the rise on the road leading towards the main gate. As the gate opens, allowing the carriage to enter through the front courtyard, your eyes remain at the castle, taking in all the details that you are seeing upon first glance before immediately finding the front door of the majestic palace which holds another surprise waiting for you.

Right there, standing at the threshold of the new palace which would soon become your new home, surrounded by his royal guards as he awaits for your arrival, is your father. His Royal Majesty King Aneas who had been there to bid you farewell as he sent you off to your departure from The Citadel is now here, waiting for you to arrive at your destination in the dawn.

Too astonished at the sight of your father, you can barely focus on anything else, not even when the royal guard welcoming your arrival comes to assist you as you step down from the carriage. You barely notice the touch of the guard’s gentle hand as he brings you to your father, who is waiting patiently for you with a smile on his face, and for a moment, you almost believe that the sight of him standing right in front of you is nothing more but yet another figment of your imagination.

That is, until you hear a heavy chuckle coming out of the back of his throat, his low and deep voice letting you know that he is real, that His Royal Majesty King Aneas is actually here, looking deeply into your curious eyes when he calmly greets you,

“Welcome home, Princess. Welcome to Stargrave Castle.”

“How was it possible for Your Majesty to get here before I do?”

Seeing your father welcoming you at the door was already quite an unexpected affair, but it feels more astonishing to see him laughing so freely at your question. Surprisingly, none of the guards or staff around you seem fazed at how lax he is being with you, unlike how he would usually act while at The Citadel where he would still address and treat you formally in front of others.

“Out of all the questions that you could possibly be giving me, that was your first choice?” King Aneas asks you curiously.

“Honestly, I have too many questions right now but I just don’t even know where to start. Although I must say that it’s what I’m most curious about right now,” you simply tell him with an exhale of sigh, and you are not completely lying either. You do have a myriad of questions running through your head, yet this has been the one plaguing your thoughts for quite some time. Even before seeing him today.

After the day you tried to find your father at the palace only to hear that he was away, you kept remembering all the times you found out that His Majesty was gone from the palace without you ever seeing him leaving, or when he would suddenly show up to see you right after arriving back from his trips without you ever noticing his return. And now here he is, appearing right before your eyes, when you still remember clearly how you saw the King retreating back into the palace as the royal carriage took you away from The Citadel.

Instead of giving you the answer that you needed, your father simply turns away, leaving you with no choice but to follow him. Walking into the entrance foyer, you are met by the presence of the palace staff, the lady maids and servants who are standing in line against the wall to welcome your arrival. Each one of them formally greets you, curtsying and bowing at their waist as the King announces your arrival.

“These are the palace staff who will assist you on your daily duties and tend to your needs while you are staying here,” King Aneas calmly introduces them to you, before summoning someone from the line.

A man who seems like an older gentleman with a thick hair that appears almost like silver comes forward to greet you with a bow. Wearing a formal royal suit, the man also carries with him a short sword, something that you had rarely seen back at The Citadel where it would have been forbidden for anyone working closely with the King to carry a weapon or armoury with them.

“This is Lord Gordan. He is the head of staff and my right hand man who is responsible in taking care of all the important matters within the palace,” your father explains, introducing the man to you.

“Your Highness,” Lord Gordan greets you with a bow.

“He will help you with everything you need and be your personal guide as you take your time adjusting yourself with this palace. Since you didn’t bring with you any of your lady-in-waiting or personal maid from the capital, Lady Abigail will temporarily take over all of their duties until you choose yourself your personal attendant and lady maids to assist you with your daily needs and royal duties.”

King Aneas then proceeds to take you through the palace, accompanied by Lord Gordan and a royal guard following close behind. You had parted ways with Nanny Abigail and the friendly driver at the front door, as a senior servant had taken over your governess’ care by showing her towards her personal chamber so she could have some rest while the driver bid to you his goodbye to tend to his exhausted horses.

You continue to follow your father until you reach a glorious-looking room that looks to be his personal office or study room. The room feels more expansive compared to the one he normally uses back at The Citadel, with a small library connected to it on one side and various artefacts being laid out on the opposite side. Even the desk at the center seems larger and stronger, with a chair that has a high backrest which seems more like a throne than a regular working chair.

On the corner of the room, you see a mirror standing in front of a massive bookcase. The dark surface that barely reflects anything you see in the room draws your attention to it, and you are almost sure that you see a sight of blue threads of light sparkling on the mirror which dissolve just as quickly as they appear before your eyes. But with a ton of things running through your mind at the moment, you choose to pay no heed to it further and stay away from it instead.

While the King is busy conversing with Lord Gordan, you walk towards the nearby window overlooking the courtyard, giving them some space to discuss their matters as you look around. You take a moment to revel in the sight of the morning sky which you can see beyond the palace’s walls, enjoying the moment of peace, until you hear the King relieving Lord Gordan temporarily to tend to his other duties.

“I don’t understand,” you finally ask the King once you are left alone with him in the room, though you remain by the window to bask in the warm sunlight to keep your mind clear for this conversation. “Where are we, Father? What is this place?”

King Aneas comes to join you and looks out the window, staring far into the distance. “This is Stargrave Castle. This place is special, and safe,” he says, keeping his eyes at the brightening morning sky for a while longer before turning to you. There is a hint of softness in his gaze when your gazes meet each other. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

A gentle smile appears on his face when King Aneas answers you, “This is home. Your home. You were born in this place and were raised here as a child by your mother.”

“What? But I thought—”

Out of all the things you had expected to hear, all the answers you wanted to gain from him, this was not one of them. A part of you is quick to deny this, but then all the distorted memories you have had over the years start coming back to you, leading you to start wondering—

“That you were born at the capital? That your true home was the summer palace?” your father questions you, and you find yourself nodding, too speechless and confused to answer him with words. “No, Princess. This is our home castle.”

The King looks away again, and you can sense hurt and bitterness coming from his words when he gently adds, “This used to be, at least.”

You remain silent. Your head is spinning, unable to comprehend this new reality that he is forcing you to see after years of believing everything that your memories have been telling you about your past life. When the King, your own father, continues to tell a completely different story than what you had remembered, it almost feels like you are listening to the life of an entirely different person.

“Right after you were born, our empire was forced to face a situation much similar to this one. It was at the end of the Great War, and in order to keep you and herself safe, your mother took you away from home. The summer palace, Seacrest Manor, was a sanctuary that your mother built together with the people who joined her in her escape, and she remained there until I was able to build us a new home, only once I conquered the land of Smotia and claimed it as ours. That was when I finally came to find you and your mother and brought you both back to join me at The Citadel. The manor remains to this day, only as a memorial to your mother’s journey and home for the people who fought alongside her to find and built their safe haven, and so does this castle, as it holds many memories of our peaceful life before the war.”

Everything sounds absurd, even as you listen to this whole new story. The story that had not been written in the history books which you studied almost your entire life. And yet, you find yourself his words as you listen to them carefully and find no deceit in them. “That was how you got to Smotia. Because Mother made it her—no, our sanctuary.”

“You are correct, Princess,” the King says with pride gleaming in his eyes. The same pride that blooms in your chest as you picture your mother as the one behind the rise of your father’s empire.

There are still so many questions in your head, so many things that your father has yet to explain, yet the whole night has been such a journey that you feel too drained to take anymore of this in. So you keep most of your questions and doubts to yourself.

For now.

“Is this not a part of Smotia?” is the only thing you ask of him as you look out the window, witnessing the rare sight of sunrise that you have never seen before back at the capital—the crystal glow of the sunlight being reflected on the surface of the calm ocean as it continues emerging fully from the horizon.

King Aneas smiles. “This part of the region is known to be Flagon. Smotia’s own domain ends at the center of the Elcester Forest and where the bluffs bordering between our empire’s territory and our neighbouring empires reside.” You suddenly remember the odd place where you had emerged onto after encountering the blue wall of flame, about the soldiers who came to warn you about crossing over territories where you don’t belong to, and finally understand more about the tension that had been shared in the carriage then. “This territory is still under Nythelean Empire’s rein, with the center of the government now placed at The Citadel, but you might soon find that the people here are…different.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Different from the people in Smotia?”

The King nods. “Most of them are, although there are a lot of the people residing in this palace who used to live in Smotia. Just like how there are people back in the capital and the surrounding districts who had once lived in this part of the region before joining me in Smotia to help me build the capital and its towns.”

“Everything here does seem different,” you admit to your father, while refraining yourself from telling him that you can also feel some differences from him.

Ever since the moment you met him at the main entrance of the castle, you had already felt it. When at The Citadel, His Majesty seems more restrained and closed off when it comes to interacting with his people or when dealing with any matters related to the Empire, he seems brighter here and more open to talk to, and you can even feel a comforting vibe emerging from him by staying this close to him.

“This place, this side of the Empire’s territory, is nothing like the other part of the region that you have been so accustomed with growing up at the capital,” the King answers you, drawing yet another curiosity from you that you turn to look at him closely for answers.

“Really? What is so different about this place?” you curiously inquires him. “What exists in this place that we wouldn’t be able to find before back at the capital, aside from its people?”

King Aneas, who is usually so quiet and has been known to hold a myriad of secrets, turns to you with a smile on his face, as he reveals to you the one secret that you would have never expected to hear directly from him.

“Magic.”

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esta-elavaris · 13 days

Text

Part One [1,592 words]

Prologue is here, I'll make a proper navigation post for it soon!

Jane Eyre inspired Aemond Targaryen fic (except there's no wife in the attic - only Vizzy T and his miniatures) -- I've been meaning to write this for ages and now with the new season around the corner my brain said it is time.

It's not on AO3 for now but I do have a whole load of other fics over there! I'll tag folk in the replies -- hmu if you want to be added to the list!

Dividers by cafekitsune.

A fingertip was tracing the birthmark in the crook of her arm. As the name implied, she’d had it since birth – no bigger than the nail of her little finger, a few shades darker than her skin…and in the distinct shape of the Seven-Pointed Star. Jeyne had never paid it much mind growing up. The novelty of it wore off around the same time that her school-and-orphanage managed to rid her of any silly fantasies that it meant the gods had something fantastic in store for her. In fact, she never thought about it at all until Aemond.

As the bond between them deepened, he’d taken to tracing his fingertips across it just like this – a habit so engrained and unfailing that it almost had the feel of a ritual. A tender ritual, if there ever was such a thing, and one so intimate that she’d almost fancied it felt like a kiss. Up until the first time he did actually kiss her, anyway, and then she realised how silly that thought had been.

But how was she to know? Before him, she’d never been touched in a manner that wasn’t corrective in nature. Not as far as she could recall, at least.

“We’re not at war. We’ve a strong position. Marriage for the sake of an alliance doesn’t seem pressing,” he murmured, his voice so low it was practically a purr as he stroked her arm.

“Princess Rhaenyra is married to your uncle,” Jeyne pointed out in return. “And Prince Aegon to Princess Helena. You’re all they have to offer, should an alliance be needed with a House beyond the Targaryens…or the Velaryons. Your family won’t allow that to be cast aside. Not for me.”

“The King would not,” he agreed readily enough. “But my mother…she might be swayed. She might be sympathetic. She’s fond of you, you know.”

What would fondness help, when the Queen’s word could not override the King’s wishes? If it did, Aegon would have been made heir apparent long ago. Jeyne voiced none of this, though, not wanting to spoil this little haven of peace they carved out for themselves here, together.

“The King’s health has been declining since before I was even born,” Aemond pointed out, his voice lower than a whisper. “But now it’s less of a decline and more of a…freefall.”

Jeyne was dangerously still, where she lounged at his side. What he was saying was barely sidestepping treason, to discuss the death of the King thus. Perhaps it was fine for him to do so, he was the King’s son, but if she joined in? A servant? It wouldn’t be right. Worse than that, it would be stupid.

But, going against their usual way, Aemond was not content to allow her silence. His silken silver hair slipped across his shoulder as he turned his head to regard her with his good eye.

“You’re not a simpleton, Jeyne. You know what I’m saying.”

“Of course I do,” she murmured.

“But you find it distasteful.”

“No! It just…it hardly seems real. Nor likely enough to hope for.”

“You doubt my resolve?” there was a teasing to his tone now that rejection had been ruled out.

“I’d never be so foolish as to do that,” she snorted.

“My affections, then?” the teasing tone remained, but she knew fine well that if she answered poorly the results could be disastrous.

So it was a good thing she tended towards honesty, as a rule.

“No,” she replied. “But I do doubt everybody not in this room – and how enthusiastic they would be to give you what it is you intend to ask for.”

Growing tired of having to keep his head turned if he wanted to see her, Aemond rolled atop her in a flash, his legs tangled amongst her skirts. They did like to kid themselves that so long as they both stayed mostly dressed, they weren’t toying with danger here. How neatly his hips slotted between her thighs said otherwise.

“I don’t intend to ask for anything,” he replied, his nose nudging hers. “I’ll demand it. And I’ll keep demanding it, until I’m granted it.”

“Aemond…think of everything you could lose…”

Her doubt might’ve held more weight if not for how her hands slid up his sides, then around to his back, feeling the wealth of lean muscle beneath the dark undershirt he wore.

“I prefer to think of all I could gain,” he smirked down at her.

“Oh yes, a more advantageous match there never was.”

There was a time when she’d never dare tease him thus – but now it had a fondness gleaming in his eye, maybe because he knew he was one of the very few she’d ever joke with at all, and he kissed her slowly.

“I don’t give a shit about advantages,” he replied simply when he drew back. “Names…gold…alliances…What could any other House bring that House Targaryen doesn’t already have? That we couldn’t just take from them, if we really needed to? With our dragons? But a wife like you, Jeyne?”

He paused then, planting a forearm into the bed beside her to hold his weight, so that he could use his other hand to trace the back of one finger slowly down the side of her face as he continued.

“That can’t be bartered for in the Small Council.”

“Your duty…” she murmured softly.

“My duty is to marry the woman who could best support me as I carry out my role. None could do that more than you.”

Lying there, with his weight pressing down, solid and comforting atop her, she tried to picture all that he promised. Herself, standing by his side in the Great Hall as court was held. Sitting by his side at banquets. Having the dragon-emblazoned cloak of House Targaryen draped across her shoulders in the Sept of Baelor.

Her imagination was seldom disappointing – it was her main source of solace throughout her childhood. But while she could picture all of those things, they felt like they were just that. Daydreams. Incredibly fanciful ones, no less.

And though Aemond only had one eye, it missed nothing, and he caught the doubt on her face easily enough.

“Five years ago, if you were told that you’d find employment in the Red Keep, would you have believed it?”

“Not at all.”

“And on your first day here, did you suspect you’d find yourself here?”

“Of course not. If I could scheme that well, I’d rule the Seven Kingdoms by now.”

“Mm. Maybe one day.”

“I’ve already come so far – risen far higher than my birth should have allowed. How realistic is it to expect more?”

“Realistic,” he echoed with a teasing sort of exasperation on his face. “The last time I set my mind to something this thoroughly, it got me Vhagar. If you can put your faith in nothing else, put it in this. In me.”

The touch at her arm, combined with the warmth in her limbs and the softness of the sheets beneath her, were all more than enough to have reality slipping from Jeyne’s mind. Her lips even parted, ready to murmur to him about the terrible nightmare she’d suffered, when another voice spoke instead.

“I think she’s waking up.”

The voice – that of a woman – opened the gates for reality to sweep in.

Jeyne’s eyes opened, already half-sitting up, but a hand pressed against her shoulder, urging her back down.

“Rest. You’re safe here.”

She was in a large square room, bundled in furs on the floor by the hearth. Before her knelt an older woman with kind grey eyes and dark curly hair, streaked with grey. Her skin was tanned and weatherbeaten – a farmer? If she was, she was well off. The floor beneath her was wooden, rather than dirt, and the walls were made of stone instead of wood.

A fierce gale blew outside, rattling the shutters on their hinges.

“Listen to that,” the woman murmured. “If she’d have been out in that tonight, she’d have died.”

It took Jeyne a moment to realise who she was talking to – another woman, of a similar age, with red hair bound tightly in a bun at the nape of her neck. She sat at the large wooden table at the other end of the room, mending by candlelight.

“I’m sure we’d all survive with one less beggar out there,” she responded without looking up.

“Ignore her,” the brunette said.

Obeying was easy enough, mostly because she was too concerned with looking about for her satchel. She spotted it, discarded by the door, still buckled shut, and the relief left her weak. Or maybe it just left her able to feel the weakness that had always been there.

“If you could just give me some water, please, I can be on my way in a moment,” she rasped.

“You’ll be going nowhere. Not until you recover your strength,” the woman argued firmly. “We’ve space and food aplenty, do not worry. What’s your name?”

“I…” she almost lied – up until she realised doing so might send them through her bag for cues when she next lost consciousness.

Judging by the black spots floating across her vision, that would be soon.

“Jeyne,” she breathed.

“Rest, Jeyne,” the woman urged. “You’re safe with my sister and I.”

She fell back against the furs, the strength sapping out of her limbs, her eyelids fluttering.

“What did you expect?” Aemond had sneered at her, in the end.

The answer was simple: nothing he hadn’t promised her.

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