#he's a friendly monster and he's Kira's friend! that's all we need to know! we got a dark crystal to put back together!!!

[mokeonn]

I think that the 2010's media landscape of Buzzfeed articles about plotholes in disney movies, Cinemasins critiques, and Watchmojo Top Ten scenes in movies that make no sense has truely ruined a lot of media. People are afraid that their work will be torn down if they dare leave a single thing up in the air, if they dare ask their audience to suspend their disbelief.

All too often nowadays I see stories (especially fantasy), take the time to explain how every small aspect of the world works and how it all logically makes sense. The constant time stopped to explain why an event happened, how this object works, or why this is important to the characters. It's just really not needed and it honestly makes a lot of stories worse.

I am of the opinion that the best stories truly just drop you into their world and explain nothing. They just take you through the story of this world and you just have to accept it and continue on. "When he became king, the land became barren." I don't want the story to stop and explain why this is, or how it happened, I want us to move on so we can just assume that the king has such rancid vibes that everything died.

[helisol]

:)

again not a finished fic but very extensive notes, this one’s a chonker, 4k words

tl;dr: take it a ds9 but make it into high fantasy wizards. garashir, kiradax and quodo. we’ve got it all here folks.

SO BASICALLY 

I read a book about a young witch apprentice in a world where every magician has a ~special name~ based on an object/plant/animal they’re spiritually connected to.

then I watched ds9 and got introduced to the concept of cardassians being lizards.

the result- wizard lizard.

So Garak “The Lizard” is a mage that got exiled from his home country and ended up taking a pretty neat job in a rural area of a larger empire where being a wizard is Cool and Widely Accepted. 

his duties include keeping the villages around his tower safe, looking for young mages to turn into apprentices, and sometimes making clothes because he’s Still A Tailor.

however, because of his chronic “i no wanna work” disease, this lizard has not actually been looking around the villages near him for magically gifted children. shame on him. 

because through his negligence Julian Bashir, young village doctor, grew up without even knowing that he can do ~magic~

but he soon finds out when his town gets attacked by a Big Evil Magic Monster. The Lizard is taking his sweet time to come to their rescue and Julian can’t just sit by and watch innocent people get mauled by a Chimera or Giant Mantis.

So Julian does the heroic thing and jumps inbetween a wounded child and the monster in the exact second Garak shows up.

And he gets to watch as Julian unleashes some Magic for the first time.

Then Garak Kind Of Abducts Julian So He Can Teach Him Magic

Garak is contractually obligated and allowed to take on anyone who is capable of magic as an apprentice, and he finds Julian’s magic interesting enough to invoke that contract now. Not Julian himself though. Only his magic. for now.

Julian- for like, the first week- is NOT OKAY with being teleported into a tower fortress by a wizard he finds intimidating and scary, and he loudly protests when Garak actually starts to teach him magic spells.

However, this is Julian, and he *is* intrigued by the thought of being able to use magic For Doing Good.

So one night he admits defeat and slinks up to the tower and goes “Okay. Compromise. Teach me healing magic.”

To which Garak is like 👀 “Okay.”

They start having regular magic lessons mostly focused on healing, which Julian is just naturally good at. So they move on to other things. Which Julian is Not naturally good at.

And he becomes very frustrated.

Garak tries to assuage him and says that he doesn’t have to be accomplished in every single field and discipline- which is logically true- but Julian is having none of it since Garak is accomplished in every field.

In a fit of anger Julian unleashes emotional magic again and breaks some of Garak’s things. Books, vials, a desk, nothing super major. But Julian is still surprised and shocked at himself for causing trouble like this and he Runs Away. Straight up exits stage left.

And Garak, who just got flung against the wall by his little apprentice, just rushes to the window and looks as Julian runs away and he is. Disappointed.

Next we have Julian returning home and everyone is like "Doctor!!! You were gone for half a year???" And Julian is like "I thought I was only gone for a month at most-"

Yeah the joke is time flies when you’re having fun because Julian *did* have fun living with Garak. He doesn’t regret leaving though, after all Garak was probably furious after he wrecked his study he wasn’t.

So Julian says to himself "Hmph. I'll just stay home for a week. Garak will hardly notice I'm gone. And then I can make it up to him."

But Then He Stays For A Whole Month

He has to instruct a new doctor to take over the nearby villages, do some paperwork, help some sick people, practice some magic on his own- and at the end of the month He Doesn’t Want To Stay Any Longer.

He’s always been different from the other village people, and now he finally got a taste of what it’s like to have someone help you to achieve your potential and widen your horizon and he *doesn’t* want to give that up for a boring but busy country life.

So back to the tower it is. Julian arrives, the place is kind of messy, and when he finds Garak he is in his study. on the floor. a little drunk, definitely sad, and Very Surprised To See Him.

Here we get a scene where Garak tipsily tells Julian how much he’s grown to appreciate him, not just for his magic talent, but as a person- and that he’s missed him.

But The Next Morning Garak Does Not Remember

And he's just like "Oh Julian. Youre back. I'd almost forgotten about you."

For a second Julian wants to punch a wall because *Yesterday You Told Me You Missed Me*, but then he just Smiles. settles for what they have right now. and asks Garak to continue teaching him magic.

so they go on. and have. so many gay moments.

And then Garak gets told to attend some kind of magic council meeting/banquet.

Julian says something along the lines of "Oh well, guess I'll stay home. You know, protect the fort. Practice magic." but he's a little sad about it.

But garak just goes "Hmm No. I'm taking you with me"

"What-" "I'm introducing you as my apprentice to the magic council." "W h a t-" "Oh also you need pretty clothes for this so I'm gonna make you some. Since you’re a commoner with no actual taste." "W H A T-"

So garak makes a really nice suit for Julian and for himself they match and they go to the Cool Wizard Banquet.

At which Julian meets a lot of wizards and witches and he's like "Wow this is so exciting!" but he also realises he is a Total Country Bumpkin And Noob compared to these people and their apprentices.

He also hears that Apparently the Local Wizard of every region is supposed to do a 5-yearly sweep of the surrounding towns to check for kids that have magic potential and then send them to Magic School/take them in as their apprentice directly.

And Garak. Did not do that.

He was Lazy and Angery. Exile will do that to you.

Julian isn’t too happy when he learns about this and he walks out of the banquet hall into the garden- to where Garak follows him.

"So just because you were all bitchy about having to follow this country's rules about magic you let me grow up not knowing my full potential? How many of my childhood friends might be able to do magic if they tried?"

“I was in a really bad place back then."

"SO WHAT? Things are okay now because you found me? If you had been two minutes early during that attack you wouldnt even know I could use magic!"

"...but I *wasn’t* early!"

So Julian just throws up his hands in frustration and leaves to get away from Garak for a while.

The next day he mingles more with the other apprentices and they exchange Ideas and Skills and also Gossip about their teachers.

Some of the apprentices suggest that Julian could go to magic school for a while before applying for a *new* teacher, since obviously Garak did him wrong.

This doesn’t sound like a bad idea, so he talks with some older mages and most of them are friendly and are like “Oh yeah, sure, we’d love to take you in.”

But then it turns out a lot of people are talking behind his back about how much of an outlier he is.

(wizard culture is like 50% magic and 50% gossip)

So Julian is standing on a balcony and down below he hears a group of Douche Wizards discussing his inadequacies.

And it kinda makes Julian feel like absolute shit, so his powers go wobbly again. But then enter stage right: Garak

Who properly puts those wizards into their rightful place like "Say one more bad thing about my apprentice and I’ll blast your punk ass back to Romulus. You should KNOW the reason why I dont usually take apprentices, but here you are anyway saying he has no power. He has more power in his pinky than all of you combined."

Turns out there’s an extra layer to Why Garak didn’t do the "Check for Magicians in your Area" thing- it’s because he openly has no interest in training or working with anyone who isnt Special or Powerful.

Which means Julians happens to be. very special. and very powerful.

And hearing that from Garak makes him go 😳

His emotions are running high and he starts *floating*. Probably the worst thing to do on a first floor balcony out of All The Things To Do On A First Floor Balcony.

So he’s Floating and he doesnt know how to make that Stop.

He panics, starts falling and basically crashes right into Garaks arms.

"Oh great, youre right on time. We're leaving."

"What? But the banquet lasts for a week?" also I'm still a little mad but also a little in love with you?

But Garak has already teleported them back to the tower before he can really argue.

Anyway Julian is upset about many things overall, but mostly that he didnt get to dance. He practiced a lot in his off time.

Thank God Garak Knows This 

"...I know how to make magic music. Let’s have a little fun at least."

They dance and Julian starts floating *again*.

Garak 👀’s @ Julian floating "Okay I’ve been recording most of your emotion based powers. This is new."

Julian just Floats Higher out of embarrassment, so garak is like ‘well I'll just join him up there.’

So he does and Julian is like “WHY CAN YOU DO THAT. SHOW ME HOW TO DO THAT. HOW CAN I CONTROL THIS."

Turns out his emotions are too unclear, which makes his magic unbalanced, so really all they have to do is get him some Clarity.

Garak is like "Well one very easy way to do that is-" and then they kiss in the air. Floating. because I’m gay and I will use gay magic tropes as I see fit.

so that’s the garashir side of things, on to kiradax

There's Some Slow Burn In There

Basically Kira is a mage, but instead of using magic to fight she just Enchants Swords/Arrows/Other Weapons.

Because she fought in a wizard war and when there's not a lot of mana potions to go around you have to get creative.

She didn’t get a proper magician name because she was actually never anyone’s apprentice, but people still call her The Blade because she is just so cool.

Anyway in this universe mages age very slowly, and Kira is probably around 60 years old when she meets Jadzia. Which is not a lot in wizard years.

She does feels a little inadequate about being so Young and Inexperienced she didn’t really expect nor wanted to run into the legendary Jadzia Dax who everyone thinks is like 300 years old, maybe more.

So meeting someone who is her complete opposite just makes her go "Hmph. I dont wanna associate with you." 

But Jadzia keeps popping in randomly around her almost every day until Kira snaps like "WHAT is your problem???"

“I never learned how to enchant tools."

"What."

"Can you teach me?"

"The great Dax has never enchanted a single tool or weapon?"

"I took care of everything with other types of magic. Will you teach me?"

So Kira Nerys, The Blade, the person everyone looked down on because she uses enchanted tools instead of magic for everything- is being asked by this legendary mage to teach her something. What an honor. What an incredible thing.

But She Says No

So Jadzia keeps bothering her every day.

But eventually bothering her turned into "Hey wanna get some coffee? Wanna go to the library with me? Can I look at you while youre in the smithy? Do you wanna look at me while I come up with new magic formulas? Wanna get drunk together and maybe kiss but definitely have no recollection of it in the morning?"

- over a span of 10 years.

But at the end of those 10 years Jadzia still hasnt learned how to enchant tools.

And it takes One day at the magic banquet for Nerys to actually realise the Implications of that.

It’s the third banquet they've been to- together, as each other’s plus one.

They color coordinate their robes and wear matching accessoires. The works.

And Kira decides that now is the day to grill her Totally-Not-Girlfriend about the reason why she sticks around.

"You could have just gotten someone else to teach you how to enchant things."

"Why would I need anyone to teach me, I have you to enchant things *for me*."

"No but before I started doing it for you. Like the whole first five years of knowing me."

"Oh well I didn’t want anyone else because I was very much infatuated with you."

And Kira just bluescreens. Error 404 nerys.exe not found.

Until she catches herself.

"You...*were* infatuated with me?"

"Yes? You obviously never saw me that way though. So I stuck around for the good company and the coffee."

Now you see over the course of 10 years Kira’s irritation about Jadzia slowly turned into Something Else. But she thought Jadzia only saw her as a friend.

On the other hand Jadzia definitely had feelings from the start, but because kira was in Denial she didnt act on those feelings.

If I were a shitty writer or- god foirbid- *Straight*, I would have there be a miscommunication right about now and prolong their useless lesbian suffering.

But I’m not.

Basically Kira just goes 

"Okay but when you say *were* attracted to me does that mean you *stopped*?"

"Uh. No?"

"Cool. Excuse me, I need a moment."

So she tries to hide from this sudden revelation and her feelings in a hedge maze, but there’s no use hiding from Jadzia.

 Who, instead of just walking around the labyrinth to find her like a normal person, basically whacks down the bushes in a straight line until she reaches Kira.

"THERE YOU ARE! I used this completely unenchanted sword to get to you and tell you I definitely still like you. Now will you PLEASE teach me how to enchant tools as your first courting gift?"

And Kira is like "God yes you dumbass-" and they kiss.

now wizard quodo is funny because I kind of started this part as a joke but then it all got Serious

First of all Quark is Actually A Really Powerful Magician.

But what does he do with his great power?

Move from his home country to the city of wizards and open a bar.

Because he is still fundamentally *Quark*.

And Odo is still fundamentally Odo, because he is a Shapeshifting Alien From Actual Outer Space You Know.

He still went through the whole "I was studied by scientists (wizards) and couldnt let them know I was sentient for a long time which made me very grouchy and lonely" thing.

So Odo spends like ~100 years going from captivity/being an object of scientific study to living as a guard in the city of wizards.

Basically everyone thinks that Odo cant use magic- including Odo- because, well, he’s a bunch of slime that came from a meteor.

Then he meets Quark, powerful wizard and bartender.

And he has *no* idea who he is.

Only that he’s the guy who runs that one shady gambling bar and is involved in some illegal business.

And Quark is like "Ah finally. A worthy opponent."

So he and Quark have the same vibe as on DS9- where Quark keeps doing illegal stuff and Odo tries to stop him and the universe decides to say enemies to lovers 400k words slowburn.

And one day Quark gets into some Seriously shady business with some people who are now very aggressively demanding Quark give them their money back

and they're. you know. threatening violence.

Odo shows up and right before this one dude is about to straight up sucker punch Quark he's like "HALT!" and Wow He Made A Magic Happen.

Now. Because Quark is Indebted to Odo. He is expected to take him on as his magic apprentice.

At first he is Not Down For That. They both aren’t. So even though technically they are teacher and apprentice they both just refuse to work together.

Until Odo goes to check up on Quark one day- because as we all know he makes it a point to drop by his bar four times a day just to let him know he's thinking about him- and Quark is in trouble again.

Only this time Odo is like "I'm not gonna help him. I dont even know how I *could* help him. Since he hasn’t taught me any magic, the bastard."

So he wants to just pass by and leave when Quark basically starts to just Demolish these people with magic in a frightening and totally not impressive display.

MIND YOU Quark is still generally incompetent. If this was D&D he'd have like, very low skill points but unlimited spell slots.

Anyway Odo goes 👀

Because him being unable to use magic in a country/city where everyone he *knows* can use magic has always made him feel bad.

So he goes to Quark like "Okay. I changed my mind. Please teach me magic."

And Quark tries to teach Odo magic, earnestly. 

And Odo tries to learn magic from Quark, for real. 

But the key word here is *try*.

Because neither is very good at what theyre *trying* to do.

Odo didn’t Really want to learn from Quark and that's pretty much the reason why Quark doesnt Really want to teach Odo. But They Try.

There’s a lot of fights and arguments and "You’re not doing it right" vs "You’re not explaining it right"

But hey, at least Odo can now do some magic, which makes his guard job a lot easier.

He also gets to socialise more with other wizards and their apprentices, and he becomes a generally happier pile of humanoid goo!

Meanwhile Quark slowly but surely turns into a more Respected wizard. And his bar also becomes a bit more respectable as well.

it's almost like,,they both wanna be,,,,their best selves,,

and learning to work together has Somehow set them on the right path,,,

idk man sounds kinda gay,,,,

But then the banquet rolls around.

Quark is like "Oh fuck I Have to take Odo to this social function because hes my apprentice and thems are the rules."

and Odo is like "Oh fuck I Have to attend this social function with Quark because thems the rules."

The vibe they’re both getting is- "It's all fun and games when we're by ourselves but Somehow acting friendly in public feels Wrong." 

So they agree to Arrive together and then split up and spend as little time as possible together lest they fall victim to some kind of *feeling*.

And like all plans that Odo and Quark make it works out brilliantly for Exactly 5 Minutes.

Because while Quark is talking to his accomplished and very boring wizard acquaintances he kinda realises "God I wish Odo were here-"

And as Odo is talking to all these annoying ass apprentices he kinda realises "God I wish Quark was here-"

So that's what they do on the first day of the banquet. and the second. and the third. 

They just keep only seeing each other from the corner of their eyes but dont really get to talk/argue about anything and it's making them feel Not So Good, Actually

Now the fourth day is the kicker.

Because while Odo is talking to some people he gets tapped on the shoulder and there he is! The worst father on this side of the galaxy! Doctor Mora- but like, as a wizard scientist.

"Oh my god Odo? You’re here? How did you manage that? You can’t use magic dont be silly! *I* studied you and who would know you better than me? What? *you* know yourself better? Nonsense, now walk with me- how have you been :)?"

Obviously Odo is getting Very distressed but he can't exactly say No, so he walks around with Mora.

They sit down near a fountain and his ‘father’ just starts grilling Odo about what he's been up to.

And eventually they start talking about Quark

"Wait, *Quark*? The absolute magic failure who runs that disgusting establishment? That Quark?"

"Well I wouldnt put it like that, he’s not-"

But Mora goes on- "Oh no my dear boy that won't do! You have to learn from a *good* wizard. Like me! Dont you want that? Oh I'm sure you want that. That nasty good for nothing will resign as your teacher first thing tomorrow!"

And Odo is like "Now wait a minute, Quark might have his flaws, but-"

"There! See, you admitted it. He's flawed. He can't possibly be a good teacher for you. But I would be! I *raised* you."

But Odo is getting Rather Angy right about now.

"Well you did a pretty bad job raising me considering you didnt even know I could do magic until now."

"I can’t believe it. Quark is such a bad influence on you. You never used to talk back at me. This is what happens when you hang around with people who dont know you like I do."

Then something in him snaps and Odo just goes Off on Mora.

"MAYBE *YOU* DONT KNOW *HIM* LIKE I DO!"

And he basically breaks the fountain theyre sitting at with some accidental emotional magic.

So after Mora goes "...I better get someone to fix that-" and runs off, Odo is standing in front of this broken fountain and thinks about how this might be a cruel metaphor for his life. And then the worst possible thing happens.

He Spots Quark Badly Hidden Behind A Pillar

Internally he just goes 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' 

Externally though it’s more like "How much of that did you hear???"

Quark’s trying to lighten the mood with a "Haha well it's hard to avoid hearing things with lobes as big as mine!" 

But Odo is not playing, so he breaks the fountain some more. As intimidation.

So Quark goes "Okay. Alright. I heard all the parts where you defended my honor. Now move aside."

And Odo goes 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAA' inside again, so he doesnt really move but just gets nudged aside by Quark.

Who returns the fountain back to its previous state.

Things are nice and silent for a second but then Quark disturbs the moment by saying "Okay now, real talk- you want another teacher, is that right?"

So Odos head whips up and he goes "No??? What the fuck quark. I thought you listened to that conversation. Youre the only one I want-"

and he Immediately slaps a hand over his mouth because Oh God That Came Out Wrong-

But Quark is just Laughing and being his usual little shit self like "Haha good one, let's go back inside now. (where the social conventions will force us to remain apart so we dont have to confront what you just said.)"

on the inside though- Quark is just as 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' as Odo

"I absolutely Cannot go inside and socialise right now, I’ve had Quite enough of that." 

"Oh...well then...i'll leave you be?"

"No don’t-"

So Odo quickly grabs Quark’s hand (and Quark just fuckin uh dies on the spot) but he's not very communicative at the moment. So Quark kinda has to just interpret that for himself.

"Aaaaalright- let’s just take a walk then."

So they walk through the rose garden. holding *hands*. and Quark points out nice or interesting things while Odo just nods or hums in agreement.

Until they’ve come full circle and end up back at the fountain, where Quark is like "Okay. Wanna go back inside *now*?" 

Because he swears if they spend one more second like this he will HAVE to kiss this pile of space goo and he’d rather Odo make that decision for him.

And Odo is like "I just want to stay with you."

So Quark is like ‘Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool Cool’, pulls them behind a hedge and kisses Odo.

because on GOD I enjoy the “going from an argument straight into kissing” trope, but that one is actually too on brand for quodo so I HAD to change it up.

[excorcismic]

uhm . . . cheesed to meet you ?? - HI GANG !! what’s up , i’m hylia and i . . . love . misa and death note with my entire heart . I KNOW FOR A FACT i will probably pick up more characters along the way but i couldn’t have picked a better one to start out with !! i have experience writing both misa & light - i actually am more experienced writing light than misa , but i still have a lot of experience with her under my belt !! i’m currently writing him in another group and when i saw duality i just HAD to write her here - i’m so excited to plot w/ y’all !! so lemme tell you the basic facts & some connections and ideas i have under the cut c: ( this got long i’m so sorry )

ooooooooooooo you wanna plot with misa so bad oooooooo - AHEM . so . 

IF YOU ARE NOT FAMILIAR WITH DEATH NOTE / MISA : death note is a manga / anime revolving around a smart young man ( light yagami ) who discovers a supernatural notebook who can take the life of any human as long as the writer knows their name & face . light uses this book to essentially try and purge the world of evil , earning the alias ‘kira’ ( who gains a following ) , and misa , who acquires a death note of her own , seeks him out as the second kira . she possesses things that he doesn’t , so essentially she becomes his partner in crime - she , falling in love with him ( or more so the idea of him she created for herself ) , and he , entertaining her fantasies in exchange for her abilities and assistance . it’s . . . way more complicated in detail and honestly pretty sad but that’s the getgo . she’s a pretty girl with a very powerful notebook and she likes a guy with a powerful notebook that sees her more as a tool he can use to further his plans . OH OH OH and also she has a protective monster lady who’s in love with her and looking after her and threatening to clap light if he hurts misa in any way . 

death note . . . is a story about how people who were good can become awful towards other people and themselves if you give them a bit of power . 

BUT ANYWAY . misa actually has a much happier life here than in death note !! it’s . . . still kinda eh in some places but overall much better since that godforsaken notebook doesn’t exist and isn't here to screw anyone's lives up .

she's a former child actor, now a musician in a pop punk band called 'your friends & the skeletons!!' but as of rn with her taking a break from big performances and touring she's just a streamer operatin' out of alucard and trying to entertain herself since sometimes the world gets a little too big for her and she needs to take a step back.

it’s a pretty cute life & that’s the rundown !! of course , it’ll be more detailed and developed in my intro for her , but that being said - CONNECTIONS .

OHHHH YOU WANNA PLOT OUT THESE WANTED CONNECTIONS / PLOTS WITH ME SO BAD OOOOOOHHH AND OHHHH YOU WANNA LIKE THIS POST FOR ME TO DM YOU FOR PLOTTING SO BAD OHHHHHHHHH

okay so obviously some band mates !! YF&TS i imagine is a four-piece with misa on rhythm guitar & vocals , then lead guitar , bass , and drums . i imagine they’re all friends with misa , but maybe one person has been friends with misa since like . . . forever . and has seen her go through literally everything .

so , misa lives alone . maybe i’ll have her look for a roommate along the way but as for right now , even though she lives by herself ( and honestly is a lil lonely ) , i really like the idea that maybe she’s the helper neighbor that wants to befriend everyone that lives on her floor , runs to get groceries , always visits and checks in on people , etc . !! so neighbor friends pretty please !!

obviously if u wanna make ppl be fans of misa & her band that is a-okay with me just pls keep in mind they’re kinda big but not . . . big big . like they’ve got some dedicated fans but not full on stans y’know

SO  . . . folds hands . i kinda like the idea that misa hasn’t been through that many serious relationships ( always gets her heart broken through them ) but maybe there was that one serious ex-partner she had and they broke it off for whatever reason . it’d have to be when she was 18-20 and they’d be together for maybe about two or three years before her career takes off and stuff and yeah it’d be the saaaad relationship that fizzled out even tho it was serious for a bit

also some not so serious/long relationships where misa got her heart broken !! fun times !! misa throws her full heart into things way too easily so this could’ve happened in many different ways . flings ?? check . short-term relationships ?? check . she wrote a letter for someone on a starbucks napkin asking them out and they rejected so whenever she comes into said starbucks she feels shy & awkward ordering something ?? check . ( we can have fun with this basically it’s ‘ misa tried it with y/m and it didn’t work out and she’s still lonely ’ )

friends please !! friends that misa’s made in alucard !! also friends with benefits maybe !! idk !! misa is a very friendly person she will be your friend if you say ‘hi’ in a positive tone towards her !!

oh i think it’d b rly funny if there was one person misa kept trying to befriend and they’re just rly stubborn abt it for some reason bc idk maybe they find misa annoying or something anyway give me sb who misa wants to be friendly with n they’re just No abt it for whatever reason

ONE OF THE THINGS I HAVE FOR MISA AS A STREAMER IS THAT SHE’S RLY INTO THE PARANORMAL AND RECORDS STUFF WITH IT SO PARANORMAL GHOST ADVENTURES PALS PLEASE !!

she’s also a gaming streamer so imagine she gets into a fight with sb behind a screen on a game and/or stream and then finds them in alucard like ‘oh fuck’ aka cyber enemies

also the exact opposite scenario with cyber friends aka misa makes a friend on a game and they meet each other irl and it’s cute !!

misa . . . is not a huge party girl but i imagine she has ppl that regularly invite her to parties and stuff so there’s that . but like . she only knows these people in context of partying - they’re her party friends and that’s it and her relationships with them are just kinda shallow .

i’d ALSO like a friend she makes that’s maybe a little more sheltered & naive to the world than she is so she just takes them to cool places and stuff !! shows them what it’s like to live on the ‘ wild side ’ !! whether it’s driving to a 24 hr gas station for candy and snacks in the middle of the night and staying out until sunrise just on the road or just sitting at misa’s apartment and watching true crime documentaries in their jammies . just sb misa’s gonna take like ‘ hey we’re gonna show u what LIVING is like ’

actual shipping . . . i would love to explore at a point but i wanna explore other things first so that’ll just be smth that comes up in development maybe !! i want misa to get a chance to experience what actual love is and explore the relationship aspect of it so i’m open to it but also i just wanna develop it n let it come naturally . filled !

ANYWAYS . i’m open to rly anything !! enemies ?? friends ?? frenemies ?? friends or enemies with benefits ?? unrequited crushes ?? exes ?? found family ?? party pals ?? streamer pals/enemies ?? LET’S PLOT IT OUT I’M SO EXCITED

sorry this is a long as hell list anyways let’s plot out some relationships even tho i’m bad at plotting and trust me the intro is. probs gonna be even longer. i am so sorry.

ANYWAYS ILY ALL IM SO EXCITED TO WRITE/PLOT W/ U GUYS

- - - - - - - - - - - POST-EVENT ANNOUNCEMENT EDIT : okay so this one is rly specific but , , , i rly would like if maybe misa had sb to go to the cirque du eradicus with ?? probably as a date !! a date that doesn’t have to amount to anything but they’re gonna b the one who witnesses misa go into the hall of mirrors n it’s gonna be kind of like a connection since they’re gonna have been together when that stuff happens and it could be rly fun to work with in the future . just gonna put the age limit for this one at 22 - 26 just bc gaps and all !! i think it could be cute if it goes well or interesting if it doesn’t but . yeah idk they can split off at some point for other threads bt ANYWAYS I JUST THINK IT’D B FUN filled !

also if anyone wants to bring me anyone from death note i will kiss u ESPECIALLY for light , l , rem , or matsuda . pls . maybe these characters can ACTUALLY get a normal fuckin’ life this time around - ( sometimes we just want to live in the yotsuba arc forever where everyone’s runnin around solvin mysteries and not scheming against each other - )

death note hits differently .

[bloody-bee-tea]

This story is a fill for the @badthingshappenbingo square ‘Bleeding Out’ but it’s also written for one of @lavender-lotion‘s prompts, which was “Leave me alone.” Stiles gets badly injured in this, and this is absolutely not Scott friendly, so consider this your warning. It’s also over 3k words long, so watch out for the read more.

Stiles was waiting in the jeep for Scott, idly tapping against the steering wheel and staring out into the dark woods.

The preserve had always seemed mysterious at night, but since Stiles now knew very well that all kinds of supernatural creatures lived out there, it seemed downright sinister.

But Scott had asked him to patrol together and Stiles had agreed immediately, eager to finally spend some time with Scott again. It had been weeks since he and Scott had spent any time together, even longer since Scott had called him for non-supernatural things and Stiles was looking forward to this.

They would finally get to talk again, and Stiles could tell Scott all about his growing magic, that he was training to be an emissary and no longer the fragile human Scott sometimes seemed to believe he was.

Stiles could tease him about Kira, they would joke about Derek’s eyebrows and Isaac’s scarves and it would be like old times again. Stiles missed those times.

Now Scott was always busy with Kira, and being an alpha, and hanging out with Isaac and working with Deaton. Stiles usually took a back seat these days, so he was looking forward to this night of bro time.

Stiles was still staring outside, thinking about all the things they would finally have the time to talk about, when Scott climbed into the jeep and Stiles startled badly.

“The fuck,” he hissed, grabbing for his now rapidly beating heart.

“You should pay better attention,” Scott told him with a look and Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Maybe, but you could have just made your presence known,” he gave back, and Scott shrugged.

“I called you, you weren’t answering your phone,” he gave back, and Stiles frowned.

His phone had been trashed during their run in with the kelpies last week, and everyone knew it. Hell, even his dad’s deputies new that Stiles didn’t have a phone, so Scott really should know that as well.

Before Stiles could tell Scott that though, he went right on.

“Listen, I have to go,” he said, checking his watch and Stiles heart dropped.

Of course Scott wouldn’t have time for him.

“Kira and I are supposed to meet, like, right now, so I have to hurry. I just dropped by cause you didn’t pick up,” he said and there was something accusing in his tone, like he was blaming Stiles for the detour he had to take.

“Oh,” was all Stiles managed to say.

“Yeah, it’s not a problem, right?” Scott asked but didn’t really wait for Stiles to answer. “I haven’t seen her since school and you know how it is,” he went on even though Stiles really didn’t know how it was.

He had never stood up his best friend for a girl, or a guy, and hey look, another thing Scott didn’t know about him.

“Anyway, we really need to patrol regularly but you can totally do it alone, the kelpies are gone, and there shouldn’t be anything out there at the moment, so you should be good,” Scott continued, oblivious to Stiles suddenly increased heartbeat.

Stiles sometimes wondered how Scott managed to notice anything with how oblivious he seemed most of the time. Stiles was sure his scent alone should have tipped Scott off on the fact that he was distressed but Scott didn’t even so much as glance towards him, checking his phone and smiling down at it before quickly typing out an answer.

“It’s Kira, she’s waiting for me,” Scott said. “If anything happens, call Isaac, he should have time,” Scott went on as he climbed out of the jeep again. “Anyway, thanks Stiles, you’re great, bye!” he called out and then ran off, leaving Stiles to stare after him.

Stiles could feel his magic boil under his skin, agitated by his feelings and he took a deep breath. He had to remind himself that Scott didn’t mean anything by this, and that he should let Scott have this, but it was hard.

Scott had a lot on his plate with being alpha and leading the pack and seeing Kira on top of that, but it all felt wrong to Stiles.

He was training to be Scott’s emissary, and even without that he should be part of the pack, but somehow Scott always forgot to include him or ran off, leaving him behind like right now.

Stiles had tried to see past it these last few weeks, but this just really showed him how little Scott cared about him.

Stiles continued to take deep breaths until his magic was calm again and then he sighed. He would not get Isaac to patrol with him, he’d rather die than do that and besides. If he drove back into town now only to return here later, it would fuck up his gas plan and they would lose too much time on top of that.

He quickly debated just not going on patrol and instead driving over to Peter’s to spend the night there, but with one look out of the window he decided that that was stupid. Someone needed to patrol, and make sure no new supernatural things had come to visit.

Stiles might as well just do it alone. Chris had trained him in hand-to-hand combat and with his magic Stiles was fairly sure he could defend himself if he needed to.

~*~*~

Stiles laughed hysterically as spell after spell just dropped of the monster’s skin. Of course he would run into a creature that was immune against magic, because that was just his life. He should have known better.

The monster, it had too many extremities and eyes to be anything else, shook its’ body before it stared at Stiles.

“Fuck,” Stiles whispered and slowly edged back.

When the monster took one step into his direction Stiles turned around and started to run as fast as he could.

He was already hopelessly lost in the woods, but there was something like a trail and he just hoped that following it would lead him out of here.

Stiles didn’t dare to throw a glance over his shoulder, too afraid to stumble if he took his eyes off the ground, but he could hear the monster behind him.

It was probably steadily gaining on him, given how many extremities it had available to use as legs, and Stiles would curse if he had any air left to do so. Instead he kept a steady prayer going in his head, hoping that he could get out, that someone would come to help him, that the monster lost interest in him.

When something snatched on his legs, Stiles had a quick second to feel betrayed that none of his prayers had come true, before he crushed to the ground. He barely managed to brace himself, only Chris training preventing him from face-planting in the ground and Stiles quickly rolled to the side.

Not a second to late, because the monster was suddenly where Stiles had been, and Stiles paled at the speed of the thing.

All of a sudden, he was painfully aware that the monster had been playing with him if this was how fast it could move.

Stiles scrambled back, throwing spell after spell at the monster, in hopes that something would stick somehow, but it didn’t seem bothered by any of it. Stiles quickly debated if it was worth setting fire to the woods, but before he could decide that yes, it totally was, there was suddenly a hand in his side.

It took his brain a second to catch up to everything, to connect the suddenly elongated extremity to the hand in his side, but when it did, the pain slammed into him too.

Stiles screamed, trying desperately to get away and the monster retracted its’ hand with a sickening squelch from his side.

There was a sizeable hole, something Stiles noticed with a level of detachment that couldn’t be healthy, and the blood gushed freely out of the wound. A distant part of Stiles wondered if the blood loss would kill him or if the monster had managed to tear something important and that would kill him.

Going by how much blood was still coming out of him, he thought it might be the first.

Stiles stared back at the monster who was tilting its’ head from one side to the other, carefully regarding him with unblinking eyes before it moved again.

Stiles didn’t even have time to close his eyes, it was so fast, but something else was faster and Stiles blinked at the space where the monster had been a second ago.

He was in shock, that much he knew, but it still took him an uncomfortable long time to notice the growling that came from his left and when he finally managed to turn his head, he saw Peter fight the monster.

He was bleeding from shallow wounds already, nothing as bad as Stiles’ own injury, but the monster seemed to have a hard time withstanding Peter’s claws.

It would figure that Stiles would run into something that was immune to magic but tore like paper under claws and he started to laugh hysterically.

Peter looked back at him, concern clear on his face, but he wasn’t distracted enough to miss the monsters charge at him. He shoved his hands into the monster and then tore, splitting the thing wide open and letting it crash to the ground.

He was at Stiles’ side a second later.

“Stiles, let me see,” he urgently said, and tugged Stiles hand out of the way.

Stiles hadn’t been aware that he had put his hand over the wound, but now the warm wet feeling made a lot more sense.

“Shit,” Peter whispered and tugged his jacked off.

Stiles wanted to make a joke about Peter getting naked, but everything was so far away and blurry, and he was so, so exhausted, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

Peter wrapped the jacket around his middle and bound it in place. When he pulled it tight, Stiles screamed in pain again.

His side was on fire, it hurt too much to even breathe with the added pressure and Stiles was distantly aware that he was crying.

“I got you,” Peter promised, but even through the pain Stiles could see how worried Peter was. It was etched into every line on his face.

“Sorry,” Stiles mumbled, and Peter’s eyes snapped to his face.

“What for?” he asked, as he slid his arms under Stiles’ leg and around his back to pick him up.

“Alone, stupid,” Stiles muttered, and it made more sense in his head, mostly because there were more words there, but he was too tired to say them all out loud.

“Hey, no, stay awake,” Peter snapped at him, as he ran through the woods.

But Stiles couldn’t, he was too tired; tired enough that not even the pain could keep him awake anymore. He thought that maybe losing consciousness was a bad thing, that Peter was right in asking him to stay awake, but he couldn’t.

There was blood pooling on his belly, too much to really contemplate, and Stiles wondered how they would get it back inside him, before everything went black.

~*~*~

Stiles came to slowly, his senses filtering in one after the other. His hearing returned first, a steady beeping and people muttering around him. Next, he was assaulted by the smell of hospital, and he wanted to groan when he recognized it. He hated the hospital.

Someone was squeezing his hand and Stiles slightly turned his head, not yet strong enough to open his eyes as well.

“Stiles?” his dad asked, and he sounded worried and tired, and Stiles just had to open his eyes.

Everything was blurry for a few seconds, but eventually things came into focus and he could see his dad at his bedside, leaning forward with a slight crease in his brow.

Peter was standing near his feet, looking no less worried and run down than his dad and Stiles sighed.

“What happened?” he croaked out and his dad kissed the back of his hand.

“Thank god,” he sobbed and got up to press another kiss to Stiles’ forehead.

“Dad?” Stiles asked, suddenly worried about what happened that had his dad so desperate.

“You got badly hurt, Stiles,” John told him, and Stiles remembered the monster in the woods.

He looked at Peter whose whole posture had relaxed.

“Saved me,” he said, and Peter shook his head.

“No, Stiles, the doctors saved you. I was almost too late,” Peter gave back.

“Injuries?” Stiles asked his dad, complete sentences still somehow too much for him.

“You had a hole in your side,” Peter said when John stayed quiet for too long. “It tore right through you. They had to take out your spleen, and one of your kidneys got ruptured. Plus, you lost a lot of blood,” Peter listed off and Stiles looked down at his sheet covered middle.

“You were lucky,” John told him, but Peter shook his head.

“There was nothing lucky about it,” Peter hissed. “You died once, and your magic revived you,” he told Stiles and John’s grip on his hand got almost uncomfortable.

“Good for something,” Stiles muttered and then promptly fell asleep again.

The next time he woke up, he was a lot more aware.

Peter and his dad were still in his room and Stiles wasn’t sure how much time had passed.

The doctor came in, checking him over and telling him that he would not lose his kidney if he kept healing like that, but that they would have to keep him at least for a week, probably longer.

Stiles was tired when the doctor left, but he didn’t want to sleep again.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

“Two days,” John said, and Stiles bet that his dad hadn’t went home once in that time.

Peter neither, going by his shaggy hair and untrimmed beard.

“You can go home and sleep,” Stiles told them, but both shook their head.

“Melissa allowed us to use the shower here, and there’s a room with a cot,” Peter explained and pushed his hand through his hair, making it stick up in all directions.

“You didn’t have to stay,” Stiles mumbled, trying hard to forget that his dad was still in the room.

“Stiles, I couldn’t leave you,” Peter softly said and came closer to the bed, taking Stiles other hand in his.

“That’s a thing we’re going to talk about once you’re home,” John promised him, with a sharp look at Peter, but it was nowhere near the glare Stiles had expected.

Maybe Peter saving his life had mellowed his dad out.

Before he could say anything else the door to his room opened and Scott marched in.

“I’m sorry, I only had time now,” he said and then looked at John and Peter for a brief moment before he concentrated on Stiles again. “What happened?” he asked, and Stiles could feel his magic, pulsing underneath his skin, stronger than usual and Stiles briefly worried if his control would hold, tired as he was.

“I was attacked,” Stiles said with a frown, because really, if it had been two days, Scott should know this already.

Scott turned to Peter, eyes blazing, and Peter raised an eyebrow in question at him.

“Did you do this to him?” he demanded to know, and Stiles gaped at Scott.

“Do you really think if Peter hurt my boy he was allowed in here?” John asked Scott who shrugged.

“It’s Peter, I had to check,” he said, totally unconcerned as it seemed.

“He saved my life,” Stiles told him, voice hard. “He got me to the hospital and even then, I still died for a second there, apparently.”

“Why weren’t you with him, then?” Scott wanted to know. “And why did it take you so long to get him to the hospital?” Scott went on, apparently unaware of the low growl that came from Peter.

“Scott,” Stiles tried but Scott cut him off with a gesture.

“No, Stiles he has to explain himself. He let you get hurt!”

“You got me hurt!” Stiles yelled, and Scott turned to him with wide eyes. “You left me to patrol alone, because getting your dick wet is apparently more important than your territory or even me,” he went on and his dad patted his hand, quietly asking him to calm down.

“I told you to call Isaac,” Scott tried to defend himself and Peter took a menacing step towards him, but Stiles shook his head, asking him to stop.

“My phone is broken, has been for a week now. Which you would know if you cared at all.”

“I do care,” Scott said. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Three days too late,” Peter said from behind Scott and Scott whirled around to him.

“You don’t get to say anything!” he hissed at Peter and pinned him to the wall. “I bet it’s your fault he got hurt.”

Stiles heartbeat had picked up when Scott had touched Peter and his dad was looking in concern at him and the heart monitor, but Stiles didn’t pay him any attention.

“Enough!” Stiles shouted, and his magic exploded with a burst, swiping through the room, messing with electronics and forcing Scott away from Peter.

“What?” Scott asked, unable to move from where Stiles’ magic had pinned him against the wall.

“How dare you come in here and act like you are still my friend, like you have any right to accuse anyone except yourself?” Stiles lowly asked, anger coursing through him.

The door flew open and Melissa stepped in, apparently alerted by the frantic beeping and took the scene in with a look.

“What’s going on here?” she asked and walked over to Stiles’ bed, checking him over.

“Scott was just about to leave,” Stiles told her and forced his magic to release Scott.

“No, I’m not leaving you with him here,” he said with a sneer at Peter and Stiles wondered how anyone could be as stupid and thick-headed as Scott.

“Scott, I don’t want you here. You’re not my friend, and not my alpha. Leave me alone,” Stiles very clearly told him, and Scott blanched.

“And if you yet again don’t take my son’s words to heart, listen here,” John chimed in from the side. “If you enter this room again, if you come near my son again, I will shoot you.”

Scott turned wide-eyes to his mom, as if he was asking her for help, but she crossed her arms in front of her chest.

“I think you were told to leave,” she said, disappointment clear in her voice and then went over to push Scott out of Stiles’ room.

“I’ll make sure everyone knows you’re banned,” Stiles heard her say as they walked away, and he relaxed back into this bed again.

This had taken a lot out of him.

“Rest, kiddo,” John said and smoothed his hand over Stiles’ hair.

“We’ll be here,” Peter assured him, squeezing his leg through the blanket and Stiles nodded.

He was crashing quickly but he wasn’t too worried. He was surrounded by people who loved him and would keep him safe, after all.

[truly-morgan]

Morgan simply rambling about their ocs part 1

So I got four likes on my post about rambling about my ocs, so that’s enough for me to do it anyway. I waited to talk about how they came to be and how they evolved (since many are from easily 8-9 years ago). They won't be in chronological order, mainly because it been too long for me to really remember that, but also all the original thing that could have helped me figure that out are now gone or have new date of creation. I can remember maybe who the 3-4 first are, but that's as far as my memories go.

I'd love to go over what design they went through, but tumblr wouldn't allow me to do that, so I suppose I'll do that on a later time.

They were, for a large part of them, meant to be used for rp (boy do I miss doing those), a lot of the other just growing around them as side characters and world building. So I'll most likely go over those that were originally meant to be used in rp, since the other characters came much more later and have obviously less development.

Anyway, hope y'all love this long post about my ocs.

Jack Auchter (previously Jack Miller)

First original character I ever made (meaning: not a naruto/my candy love oc), it was actually my brother’s character in a way, as I created him out of his suggestion. It is to say, he has change a lot.

He started as a lone ex-secret-military guy, trying to go back to a normal life despite his violent past, with some hint of losing someone before. I had created him as being seen like an horrible monster by the villager living close to were their base was and him just ending up quitting at some point. That whole secret military was a rather vague idea (I still have to work on that even).

Then he grew into becoming a more friendly characters. Really kind to people, ready and wanting to help anyone. This is where I implanted the whole reason why he got out of it, basically after losing his two best friends, blaming himself for what happened.

Now he is still a pretty gentle young man, wanting to help people the best he can, keeping a lot to himself as he tries his best to just live a normal life, as normal as it can be with all the nightmares and old habit. He still blames himself for not being able to save Yannis and Matthew, (where I also decided to work more on these two)

I cannot remember all the little changes, but he slowly grew throughout the years and it funny to look back at how much more depth he has now.

Evan & Ethan Matsui (+kuro) (previously Tatsuya and Tenbatsu)

I am 90% sure they are the “second” characters I created. They were inspired from two thing: twins oc a friend I had at the time had + Fruit Basket, or more specifically the cat zodiac part (for those who know).

Surprisingly they didn't changed too much, the demon is the one who did the most in a way. They were twins from a family stuck with a demon, needing a vessel to keep him “harmless”. The tradition was a weird “the purest and sweetest heart must be used, to 'appease' the demon”, and Ethan was just that. Evan begged to take his place because he sneak to see what the old vessel was like and saw how it would destroy the joyful person his brother was. So Evan ends up being the one stuck with Kuro, Ethan never leaving his side and wanting to protect him from the demon. Evan grows to be a rather solitary man, trying to stay away from people as much as people, only letting his brother close, despite scared that the demon would us him to get to Evan. Ethan grew to be a loving young man, doing his best to protect his brother.

They didn't changed too much, I most likely made them to be even closer, looking after each other and pretty dependant from on another. I added a little more depth and story around the curse, making it more logical, but also making the reason behind they close bond better.

Like I said, Kuro is the one who changed the most. At first he was an entity simply wanting to kill and be violent, trying to harm Ethan just so he could make an opportunity to take over Evan's body. Then he became this demon who's annoying Evan 24/7, trying to steal his body, but less by using Ethan as a mean to do so.

Now Kuro has grown to be this demon who once wanted to us Ethan as a pawn to his taking over the body, but ended up growing found of the young man (because of him also showing kindness to him despite it all). He's as much of an ass to Evan, having for objective to take over the body at some point, but not as much. The two even sometime agree to switch if its about a difficult situation Evan couldn't deal with.

So it pretty much went from the twins being against the demon, to the three of them having a weird relationship, not quit enemies, but not quit 100% trusting either.

Haru Sasaki

Of course, I just HAD to create a bad boy at the time. Of course I needed one. Haru's characters as changed a lot, but to be have more detail added to him and not to only be a bad boy.

He started as a teenager who became such a violent kid because that's what people expected from him. He hated and was hated by his mother because she had him at 17 (and kinda fucked over her life plan). And he was a loving brother. That was pretty much it, a kid missing his dad, who was violent and got into fight all the time, with no friend and love his sister a lot.

Then I decided to had in his hobby cooking, making him a great cook. That was a genius idea I had, because it became an important part of his characters and a goal I could give him (good job me).

Then I decided to had two other little delinquent to follow him around. At first I wrote it more as him letting them stick around out of just not being able to get ride of them, to changing it to him slowly warming up to them and taking care of them too since they aren't bad kid. Lets not forget him working in a flower shop with a sweet lady seeing the good in him.

Now this is what Haru is: someone who grew up with the expectation to become someone violent who cause trouble (he does, a lot), but who is actually really kind and a very protective brother, who aspire to be a cook on day with the encouragement of his sister, with two idiots for friend (but who just need some love too).

(note: also, somewhere towards the start of my rp with him, I made cherry his favourite aliment. Dunno how it became like this, I was often using this as his snack and it just... somehow became his whole thing. Cherries.)

Akainu Fuyuda & Kyosuke Hamada

They were probably created in similar times, as they pretty much go hand in hands.

Kyosuke started as a test subject who was there since he was born because of his telekinesis power, and Akainu was one of the nurse helping take care of him. I had made Kyosuke to be much more prone to have his sanity snap and want to kill people, where Akainu was a rather sadistic man with little to no regards to his test subjects. Their relationship was based on a mixed of interested for his art and power (for Akainu) and hate mixed with some want to absolutely annoy the shit out of the scientist (for Kyosuke).

Akainu is the one who changed to most, going from the sadistic and uncaring scientist for one who take care of his test subject as best as he can, who can't get along with his colleague (other than two) and who is overworked (an absolute workaholic also). Kyosuke is less of a wild one as he was, still an annoying little shit, but less in the “sanity goes bye bye” kind of way. He's tired of being tested one, but a routine as settle between them and Akainu tries to make it less bad. He will sometime snap if pushed pass his limits or when thing just get way too overwhelming, as a defensive mechanism.

Their relationship became less of a “I want to study/kill you” and more of a “We are both tired of this, but at this point it too late to change anything, but i'll still annoy the shit outta you”. Honestly the only consistent theme as been Kyosuke's dad hatred towards him for the loss of his wife.

Not gonna lie, I wonder how it would feel to write Akainu as a more sadistic man again, I realised that only after taking a look back at older stuck I wrote with him,

Alexy Leblanc

Oh boy this one was me going ape shit in the sadistic department, like I was really hard and angsty one some characters, but Alex? You'd believe I hated him or something (despite me very much loving this character). (tw: mention of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, skip to next character if this is too sensible for you)

So Alexy started as having the absolute worst life. Being physically beaten by his dad and his classmate, also being sexually abused by those two group. Like, the world was against him and somehow the teacher never found out or just didn't gave a single shit about it.

For a long time I made his treatment just a little bit worst, then I calmed it down a bit for something “more possible” where he was just bullied at school, yet had the same treatment from his dad.

Then, about a year ago, I decided “boy would it be nice to start making him feel nice” and despite his story basically being the same, he ain't stuck in this endless teenager cycle and I'm finally making him grow and slowly heal from his trauma with the help of a friend.

The story around him is the one who changed the most, as his character always stayed a rather quiet young man who was scared to get close to people In fear of getting punish for it. The change in that character is more of adding growing to him rather than actual change in the core of who he is.

Am still unsure where all this dark part came from, I suppose I needed that one character, as people around me also had character with rather deep, hard and dark stories. Am really happy to finally work on making him slowly heal from that, I feel like now this is something I would find more interesting to work on, rather than nonstop angst and abuse.

Kadir & Tamir (previously Kira & Ryu)

Tamir was the first one I created, he was actually a random character I drew in class before also created Kadir as someone who wanted to kill him. Their dynamic was inspired from what I saw of Izaya and Shizuo relationship (note “I saw” since I haven't read or watched drrr yet). It was pretty much Kadir hating Tamir and wanting to capture him as a bounty hunter, where Tamir was a pickpocket who would always play around with him.

Tamir started as a sneaky pickpocket who didn't care about anything but having fun and annoying people. Kadir started as a bounty hunter with great strength and anger issue. That was pretty much what they were and their relationship was very much just one-sided hate while the other is playing with the other anger.

Tamir stayed rather similar, despite his background story slowly building up more and see what his power actually are. He's still the demon who likes to joke around, steal stuff and cause problem. I'd say these part just became a stronger part of him, since he was just a random doodle at first he was rather plain. Kadir is still easy to anger, but it way less of being angry all the time. He's less always on Kadir trail as he was before and does so mainly when they meet or when he feel like he could finally win over him. His background as also evolve a lot.

They have a sort of frenemy kind of relationship, where they always fight together but don't actually hate each other (or at least not like it was at the beginning of their relationship).

Micha & Cyrus (previously ??? & Kiyoshi)

Micha is basically what happen when you give up another character and use their trope to create another one. I had a fallen angel before, but never actually did anything with it, so I created Micha.

He changed a lot over the time. He was first rather plain, being the owner of a bar somewhere (don't ask where, am as uninformed as you on that). Polite to client, yet distant about who he was with a vague past about how he became a fallen angel and why he didn't like heaven (basically being to what an angel is supposed to look like and being pushed aside a lot, he decided to do his best to get kicked out but not kill).

Then I gave him more depth, also throwing at him Cyrus, an amnesic angel who didn't remember who he was. Micha was then a little more friendlier, still not getting close to people, but still ready to help the people in the village he settled in. Cyrus was created as a very innocent and naïve characters (due to his amnesia), down to his design being rather innocent and cinnabun-ish.

Then in more recent time, Micha personality is pretty similar, but I also changed a little bit what his reason to be a fallen angel is (will be touch a little more if I finish my animatic :'D). He's more invested in the little village he settled in, rather found of the humans there. Cyrus changed a little more. He is a little less of a pure baby who's extra naïve and innocent. He's still rather naïve by time and clueless on some thing, but less child-like (even his design became a little more mature as an attempt to clash a little with his personality). Still a very kind and loving person tho.

Their relationship pretty much stayed the same, as Micha is still taking care of him and protecting him of potential danger as he did in the past.

Frederick Wilson (previously Frédéric ???)

Fred is also a rather old character of mine, yet his characters is somewhere between changed and not changed?!?

He started as a playboy who don't give a shit about people feeling, sleeping around a lot and legit every night in bars. That was the biggest part of his personality.

He is still playboy, love to party, drink and sleep around, but even if he still don't look for long term relationship, his less on the cruel “Am not making it clear, but it also your fault for getting your hopes up” and more on the “Yeah, no, am just looking for sex”. At least he's more honest on that point, still not a a good boyfriend, as he never take it seriously, only goes along for some times. Part of his motivation is not to follow in the step of his father and brother, who are men that don't take responsibilities and pretty much don't seem to care about people's feelings.

It shows better when I write him with his best friend, he's not as much of an ass as he seems to be.

Stanley Murphy (previously Shinji ???)

I'd like to say Stanley didn't change much, but it not exactly true? He was at first a young man who works as a waiter to show you can live just as well without high studies (I wasn't too much into the idea of “you much go to university to have a good life”). A good working young man, helping people when he can a living happily with his cat.

Somewhere along the line I made Frederick and Stanley to be best friends, don't ask how or why it came to be despite being rather different from one another, it just did and now I cannot separate them.

Stanley slowly grew to be the son of a rather wealthy family who had too much being pushed on him and part of what he decided was partly to rebel against his family, but also because he didn't actually had any goal in life. He's still a very hard working person, really loving of those who get to be close to him and who tries to live a good life. He's probably even one of the reason why Frederick didn't became an absolute garbage man.

Samuel Roy

Samuel is a cold hearted hitman, who became one rather young too. I feel like most of his characters just became the same, but push the button for more.

Insomniac, caffeinomane, misanthrope, don't really care who the target is (unless it's a kid, see later for Mike), live a lot day by day and knows he will most likely not die a painless and happy death.

That's the whole essence of Samuel, most of these were there when I first created him, I simply pushed some of those to an extreme. I still need to better his background story and how he ended up being a hitman.

I also added a second person who managed to get close to him, Michael Drake, who's a good friend of him and also his doctor when he ends up hurt out of what he can deal with. They lost touch when Samuel suddenly disappear and it took a couple of years before he finally learned what his job was, but ended up not telling anyone else and acting as if not knowing most of the time, under the promise that Samuel would never do anything to a child.

Samuel is a character I played a lot, but also one I really enjoy playing for some reason (There are a couple of character I really like playing).

======================

Damn I did only 14 characters, yet I have so many more (but a couple o those “didn't changed”, or at least not enough for really doing a part). I feel like this rambling didn't showed much how they changed, but I know they did (but mostly because am the god who created them).

Welp, hope y'all did understood my rambling, don't be shy and ask me anything if you are curious for more, my inbox is open for that.

[godoftrashandmisfortune]

So, I watched the Death Note movie.

I have an unpopular opinion for you: I actually liked it.

Now, before you jump to my throat with this, hear me out for a sec.

I’m a huge DN fan, as you probably know if you’ve been following me for a while. I’ve read the manga and watched the anime several times and in several languages. I’ve watched about every live adaptation, including fan-made material. I cosplay. I write fan fic and opinion essays. I draw fan art. I roleplay. Blah, blah, blah.

So yes, I take my shit quite seriously, and I could hardly explain how much DN has changed my life. Then why the hell did I like Netflix’s adaptation?

1)    I knew, from the very moment I found out Netflix would make an American adaptation, that it wouldn’t be really Death Note. It’s miraculous enough that Ryuk and the Death Note exist at all. Yes, I was pissed at the beginning, but I decided I wouldn’t watch this movie as a hardcore fan, but as a regular person watching just any film. Guys, we all knew it wouldn’t be loyal to the source material. That doesn’t make it into a terrible movie by itself. Just… don’t think about it as an adaptation, but as a completely different story with vaguely similar character names.

2)    And that’s actually alright, given that Netflix never meant to target us unconditional DN lovers. The creators knew we’d all watch it, at least to properly hate it, anyway. This movie is aimed at people who probably never got in deep touch with the series before and are just looking for some entertainment. So yes, the plot has been twisted beyond reason, but you should at least admit that, if you all weren’t DN fans, you would’ve found it interesting, to say the least.

3)    N’s DN is a gross, unforgiveable White-wash, and we can all agree on that. But in terms of business, the decision wasn’t all that bad. I’ll take my mother as an example here. I tried to introduce her to the series before, several times. But ever since her lil’ girl became this weird weeb writing now, she sort of rejects anime and Japanese culture in general (I know. She’s a monster. She’s also a racist, a homophobe and damn I could keep on going forever. Unfortunately, there are lots of people like here out there). However, when I told her Netflix would make a live, American adaptation, she was actually thrilled. “Now that it’s not all cartoonish I can actually enjoy the story!”, she said. Be honest: how many people out there reject anime without even giving it a try, just because it’s “Japanese cartoons” and it’s “weird”? N’s DN is WhiteTM trash. But it’s still a good business. Sorry.

4)    About characterization:

Light Turner. Edgy as fuck? Overreacting? Take a chill pill? What the hell happened to cunning, sociopathic prodigy Light Yagami? “This isn’t good. I actually like him”, said a friend of mine while watching the movie. God, I was upset. This isn’t the Light we all wanted so bad to see at all.

Or is he? That ending, for Kira’s sake. Friendly reminder that Light Turner cold-bloodedly wrote Mia Sutton’s name on the Death Note, and even specified how she, while falling to her death, would rip that one page from the Note, which would eventually be burnt down. He literally sacrificed Mia to save himself and even planned a few days ahead so he’d brush off the police’s suspicions and get the Note back in one shot. All of it written in detail in the Death Note, everything executed with impeccable acting skills to match his smarts. He fooled Mia into believing him to be that naïve, way-too-emotional boy, to the bitter end. He looked at her in the eyes with devastation as she fell to the death he had staged for her. If that’s not the sociopathic manipulative piece of crap we all know and love, then I don’t know what it is. And if he managed to pull that off, then I can’t say for sure he didn’t pretend to be a naïve, stupid boy from the very beginning. As to Nat Wolff’s abilities as an actor, I think he did an amazing job with what he was given. He’s super expressive, and managed to bring to life a very complex character.

Mia Sutton. Bitch! Manipulative as fuck. What the actual hell. But! Misa Amane had always been reckless when it came to using her power as the Second Kira. She makes rash decisions and cares little about anything and anyone, herself included. Also, she’s ready to do anything, and kill anyone, to get Light’s attention and monopolize him. It’s only natural that Mia doesn’t quietly sit and watch while the Light Turner she fell for fades away, because Misa would do something about it. You all guys said you were pissed at Misa for being so stupid, then why hate Mia? In the end, she remained true to Light. She loved him for real. And the only reason why she snatched the Note from him: because that was what Light specified she’d do! It wasn’t even a choice to begin with.

Have you ever wondered if, only maybe, ever since Mia suggested that they changed the world together, Light has been thinking of ways to get rid of her? I believe he manipulated her through and through, just as he fooled us all. I believed he wanted Mia to underestimate him. He wanted it all to culminate in her death, without ever looking like the bad guy himself (quite a Light Yagami thing to do, in my opinion). That’s why I think Ohba and Obata said they loved the adaptation; because they could see beyond the façade, while we all easily fell for it.

L. I have no words here. Lakeith Stanfield did a superb job at portraying L with all his quirky habits and characteristic speech, plus that more childish, Watari-deprived side of L we don’t get to see very often in the original series. Not to mention that perfect Japanese! In addition, the fact that the most intelligent character in the story, and one of the main and most loved parts, was given to a black actor is amazing. This deserves our approval. Stanfield’s job is about the only thing about N’s DN we can all agree was a good decision.

Watari. The only thing that pissed me off is that his name was actually just Watari. Otherwise, I freaking loved the man.

Ryuk. Superb. No negative comments whatsoever. Awesome choice of actors. Acceptable animation. All in all, that’s some good shit.

5)   About the movie as a cinematographic piece: It was quite good. The choice of music was excellent. In regards to lighting, color contrast, angles and shots, beautiful. Special effects were quite alright, and all in all it was very harmonic, visually-wise. And it sort of managed to compress lots of context in an hour and a half in a logical way. Some moments, like Light creepily walking into the dim-lit dining room or rolling his eyes white into their sockets will never leave my mind.

There’s much more I didn’t cover in this post, so if you find any holes in my arguments or have further doubts on topics I haven’t talked about, please get in touch with me, so we can properly discuss it.

Well, if this hasn’t been enough to convince you, feel free to keep on hating N’s DN. You can also clog my inbox with anon hate or tell me I’m an idiotic whiteTM trash for defending this piece of crap. I just needed to state my opinion. Who knows, I might have changed your perspective on the whole subject for the better.

By the way, the cosplayers on the picture above are @lassieonvalium as Light and me as L.

[star-trek-odyssey]

DS9- Unspoken 1

This story is inspired by my OC, her name is Nozria Bix, but there will be several POVs about every character that appears in this story and there will be many plots. I try to make this fanfiction very similar to an episode of DS9.

I hope it can entertain you.

Thank you if you decide to read this story, I put all my heart and soul to write it.

Chapter 1: A li(f)e I left behind

SISKO’S POV

Captain’s log, stardate 2372.

Since a few months Bajor has been hit by a mysterious plague. The Starfleet sent a scientist. She is in charge of leading the research and helping the scientists of Bajor to find a cure. I still haven’t got the chance to meet this new scientist, I only know, she is a young Trill. Her name is Nozria Bix. She should arrive at the station by midday.

.

Sisko was lost in his thoughts while he was observing the vast darkness out of his window. It was the space. His dear old space.

There was never a moment of boredom in the station, because new people came and other people left. Therefore, he didn’t have time to get bored, sometimes he didn’t even have time to think about himself. His life was so chaotic, surprising and so exciting. He would not have changed this life for anything in the world.

Sisko’s deep thoughts were interrupted by the click of the door, someone had entered his office: it was his old friend, Jadzia Dax.

In his opinion, Jadzia would be the most appropriate person to welcome their new guest. Because they were both Trills, so they would understand each other. Maybe his idea was a little simplistic and banal but every Trill was different from the other, especially when the mentioned Trill possessed a symbiont. It was always a surprise, so maybe he was the one who needed support.

Jadzia came in Sisko’s office, nodding, “Did you want to see me, Benjamin?“ Jadzia asked in her usual professional tone, her hands behind her back, her eyes always vigilant and curious.

"Yes, we have to welcome a new crew member. It’s a trill, you know?” he said, grabbing his baseball, and playing with it.

“Ah, interesting. So you’ve thought I could be the ideal guide for her, right? I supposed Major Kira would be the most appropriate guide since, it seems, this new officer will work on Bajor. For Bajor.” Dax replied, raising her eyebrow, her tone was calm, but it was a very human thing to feel safe around their same species so, thanks to her vast experience, she was able to understand why the Captain had formulated this particular thought.

Jadzia started observing the baseball in the Captain’s hands, how he was playing with it.

Like every human being, even Sisko was unable to hold his hands steady, as opposed to Jadzia, she always appeared calm and resolute even in front of the most dangerous monsters.

Sisko launched his baseball from his left hand to his right hand, and then observed his friend. “Kira is busy now, then you are the only Trill here, well, not anymore, but then she will know that she’s not alone. Her name is Nozria Bix, she is a doctor, she was chosen for a project at Bajor, she seems capable and it’s good to have another doctor, the medical staff is never enough.” he said, putting down his baseball and then he stood up, adjusting his uniform.

“How can she be alone in a station populated by more than one thousand inhabitants?” Dax commented, and then she followed the Captain out of the door.

“Well, you know what I mean, meeting another Trill could make her feel like home.” He said and then he headed to the dock where Nozria’s runabout would land.

.

NOZRIA BIX’S POV

The runabout sailed in the space of DS9, ready to reach the dock and land.

It had been a long, tedious and untroubled journey. After all, Nozria was used to these long journeys, this was her job, and space was so familiar to her by now, as if the galaxy itself was her office, her working place.

It was strange to see her job from this point of view, or she was only very tired and so she was not able to create rational and coherent thoughts. It must have been like that. Nozria had drunk too much coffees to keep herself awake, she didn’t like sleeping during journeys.

The Trill had spent the time reading dossiers, observing the space from the porthole, eating –other than drinking a few too many coffees- and chatting with the other passengers on board. Actually, she tried to have conversations with them but it was hard because the other guests could not be defined as friendly and talkative.

There were several species aboard: a Vulcan couple, they did not say a word throughout the entire trip, were certainly not the best interlocutors, then there was a Klingon warrior who had spent all his time polishing his weapon; he had cleaned it so much that she was surprised if it wasn’t ruined.

The other passengers slept or thought about their business, so there wasn’t a lot of entertainment. Fortunately, her boredom was about to end and she would soon arrive on DS9.

Nozria felt excited and curious, she hadn’t felt like this for a while and that made her impatient. Impatient to begin this new adventure, to meet her new colleagues and all the other people who lived in the station. She knew this would be a great beginning full of new possibilities and experience. The greatest aspiration of each Trill was a life full of experience. Her life was based on experience and so she was always looking for it. Always. As if, she never had enough.

Observing out of her window, she took a deep look at the Station and she was left stunned.

The station looked like a big spider, she had never seen a Cardassian’s structure before. It was majestic, threatening and sinister, just like Cardassians after all.

As the little ship got closer to that big mechanical spider, a feeling of confusion took possession of her brain as if it was a mystical fear. She never liked spiders. Her mind was navigating through memories she should have not recalled, she didn’t want to remember, then she turned her head in another direction.

Her imagination was vivid, she was tired and so her mind was making the world around her more absurd than what it really was.

The runabout finally landed on DS9 and all the passengers got out, she took her baggage and followed the crowd of people that was dispersing itself all over the station.

Nozria took a breath, she felt better, the big spider had devoured her but she was still alive. She was not going to be digested by it. Her mind was very cruel with her sometimes. So cruel.

.

“Welcome on DS9, Dr. Nozria. Bix,” said the Captain, showing one of his most friendly smiles.

“Greetings, it’s a pleasure.” Dax said, still in a professional tone.

“Oh, thank you very much. The pleasure is mine.” Bix replied, smiling.

They both looked like interesting people, Dax was famous on Trill and so Bix had already heard of her and her symbiont.

“I hope your trip was pleasant.” the Captain beckoned her to follow him, then all three of them walked down the corridor, “We’re glad to have you here with us, I heard you’re making research for Bajor.” Benjamin started speaking, “I have already read the report about your work, but I want to know more from you.”

“Yes, I read that there has been an epidemic lately.” Dax added, wading in front of her with her hands behind her back and her torso stiff.

“Exactly, it’s a very complicated case. I’ve already studied that virus in the past, that’s why they called me. It’s a virus that usually affects crops, in fact many of their fields have been infected, they’re unused now.” Bix continued to explain, “This is a very peculiar case because that virus should not be here, it is an alien species, should not be in this corner of the galaxy. This is not its natural environment but it found a fertile ground for its progeny, it became stronger and so it has started destroying the other weaker species. I suppose it was brought here somehow.” Even if Nozria still didn’t know how and who had brought this virus on Bajor but she was here to find it out.

“You seem to have a lot of experience, I’m sure you will help them to find a cure.” Sisko stopped, smiling, “Unfortunately, my work also calls. Have a good day and permanence on DS9.” Sisko said, nodding.

“Oh, I see. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Captain.” Nozria smiled politely.

“Can you take her to her quarters, old man?” Sisko asked to Dax.

Dax nodded in reply, “Sure, I’ll see you later, Ben.” Dax greeted her old friend and motioned Nozria to follow her.

.

The two Trills walked toward Bix’s quarters.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine here. The station is an interesting place, full of different species, there are many things to see and discover. It’s always a surprise.” Said Dax, showing a friendly smile.

"Oh, I see. I am sure it will be a stimulating experience. I have never visited this corner of the galaxy, so I certainly won’t be bored.” Nozria answered, hinting a smile.

“Oh, where did you work before, if I can ask?” Dax asked, curious.

“I was the medical officer of the Andromeda starship.” she answered, it was a short but concise reply.

That was a great job but it was part of the past, she was here now and therefore had no reason to think about the life she had left behind.

“Ah, interesting. Our official doctor will be very glad to meet you. Julian is a friendly person, he is one of the best doctors in the quadrants, but also a lovely person.” said Dax.

“Ah, I heard about him, I read many dossiers of his research.” Bix replied.

“He will have to be careful, you look very smart. He risks losing his job.” Dax said in her sarcastic tone that almost seemed serious.

“Ah, I have no intention but I never back down when there is a challenge. I am a little competitive, I admit.”, Bix giggled a little.

“It’s a good quality.” said Dax, “Oh, we’ve arrived to your quarters.”

Dax stood in front of Bix’s quarters, she did her guest’s job, and so Sisko should have been proud of her.

“Oh, good. Thank you.” Bix said.

"Enjoy your stay, have a good day. If you have hungry, I’d suggest you to go to Quakr’s. It’s a great place, the food tastes good and you can find interesting company there.” Dax said, giving some suggestion since the other woman didn’t know the station very well, it was a proper advice to give.

“Oh, I will take a look, thanks. Goodbye, Dax.” Nozria greeted Dax and entered in her quarters.

.

Her first day of work would be tomorrow. Nozria had the whole day off, so she was free to relax, take a shower and wander around the station in search of adventure. Looking for something to do because she had no desire to be alone. She didn’t even want to get bored. It would have been unbearable. Sometimes, thinking too much was unbearable…

Nozria dropped her bag on the floor, careless, and then this room was almost empty.

There were decorations, a couple of plants and furniture. Everything was minimal, she would have thought later to furnish it.

She caressed her hair, ruffling and brushing it with her fingers. Even her hairdo was ruined, her hair, before picked in a bun, was now messy, so she moved her head so she could let her hair down.

A few strands of hair fell in front of her dark blue eyes, tickling her nose and she almost sneezed. She blinked her eyes a couple of times, and knocked her hair off her large forehead. Her hair was brown, almost reddish, wavy and long. They were very feminine.

However, by now, she was used to this femininity, three years had passed since her union with Bix and therefore she didn’t see herself as strange as a girl. Three years were few compared to the hundred or even thirty hundred years when she had been a man. When Bix had been a man and had been hosted by male Trills.

Bix, the symbiont, believed that long hair was very beautiful, most of Bix’s women lovers had long hair. Maybe it was Bix’s way to remember them so Nozria kept her hair long.

Nozria headed to the bathroom, undressing and throwing her uniform on the sofa careless, it was already dirty and so she didn’t care about it. Then she had to change it anyway because that uniform was wrong, she still wore her old uniform, the ship’s uniform and so she had to take another one.

Nozria certainly didn’t have the delicacy of a girl, her manner was very spontaneous, someone would say masculine and rough. They were attitudes she had inherited from Bix’s old guests and could not change them. She couldn’t change herself. She liked to be like this.

She took a look out of her big quarters’ window and contemplated the endless and mysterious space.

This was a real beginning, a new chance, her chance.

Nobody would chase after her. Not this time.

Even in an endless universe like this, there were no places to hide. Nowhere to escape. Nobody to trust. Sometimes, people could not even trust themselves, not even their best friends and so everyone was alone. Lost in deep space. Lost in existence.

Bix lived too long to feel lost, but still didn’t learn anything of the world. Despite her experience should have made her wiser. Years only gave her more questions, doubts, anxiety.

Growing up didn’t mean becoming wiser, it only meant you had to accept that you would have never been wise enough for this life.

to be continued...

[farklelucas]

“Wait a minute. Are you jealous?” Scisaac please oh please

this ask is like two years old and i am sorry for this! the fic involves jealous isaac, flirty erica, and oblivious scott. totally au. told from erica’s pov.

always taking fic prompts

Erica sits down across the table from Allison and Lydia, who both just flick their eyebrows up at her. Ever since they started dating, they’ve become like a two-headed monster. Even Erica’s noticed, and she doesn’t exactly hang out with the cool kids. “Erica,” Lydia says coolly. “What can we do for you?”

“More like what can I do for us.” Allison blinks, now intrigued, and Lydia leans forward. “Listen. I know you have a betting pool going on when Lahey and McCall will get together.”

They glance at each other, and then back to Erica. “And how do you know that?” Allison asks.

Erica considers this for a moment. “Let’s just say a friend of a friend told me,” Erica says. She’s not technically lying. Cora came to her after Jackson had come to her, complaining about how Isaac was always mooning after Scott. Erica doesn’t know any of them particularly well, but she does like money.

“Anyway, since you two are the two-headed love monster, I’ve figure you have your bets hedged together, right?” They look at each other again, but Erica just keeps talking. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You add me in on one of your time slots, and I’ll have them together by then.”

Allison wrinkles her nose. “I don’t know,” she says, “isn’t that a little bit like cheating?”

Lydia glances desperately at Erica. Uh oh, One girlfriend’s already in, now she’s just gonna hook the other one. “I wouldn’t think of it as cheating,” she says. “I would think of it as hiring an independent contractor.”

There’s a pause. And then Allison shrugs. “Alright,” she says.

In seconds, Lydia’s taken out her phone and scrolled down her events calendar. “You’re added on for the week of November first,” she says. Erica begins a mental countdown in her head.

She smiles at both girls and, to her surprise, they smile back. “Pleasure doing business with you,” she says. Then she spins on her heel and heads toward the other side of the cafeteria.

–

September 23rd

Erica plops her things down next to Scott McCall’s in chemistry. He looks up and smiles warmly at her. “Hey,” she says. “Mind if I sit here?”

Of course he doesn’t mind. It’s Scott - Beacon Hill’s resident hunk with a heart of gold. He nods and clears away his stuff from her side of the table, giving her plenty of room to spread out her things. He turns to her and gives her a small wave. “I’m Scott,” he says.

“Oh, I know,” she says. Then she pretends to duck her head in embarrassment as he raises his eyebrows. “Sorry, I mean… I’m Erica.”

He grins. “It’s all good. Nice to meet you, Erica.”

She smiles as softly as she can. “Nice to meet you, Scott.”

Just then, Isaac Lahey busts in through the front door. He looks to Scott and smiles, waving a little. Scott beams and waves back. Erica just looks back and forth between them and, silently, thinks that this just might be easier than taking candy from a baby. To be determined, she supposes.

Then Isaac looks to her and frowns, tipping his head and furrowing his eyebrows. He finally makes his way to their table. “Hey,” he says. “I’m Isaac.”

“Nice to meet you,” she says. “I’m Erica.” Then she looks between the two of them, who seem to be communicating with simple glances. “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you guys, like, a thing? Should I leave?”

They both immediately blush, ears and cheeks going red. “No, you’re fine,” Scott says. “We’re not a thing. We don’t have to sit together.”

“Yeah,” Isaac rushes to agree. “I’ll, uh, go sit with Kira.” He smiles at them both, a semi-strained smile, and heads back to go sit with Kira, whoever that is. Erica just smiles at Scott, who smiles back, and then the class begins.

–

September 30th

Erica has been sitting with Scott in chemistry for the past week, and now it’s time to put the next phase of her plan into action. She tells Cora and Boyd and Malia that she’s going to be skipping lunch for a while, then plants herself at the empty table nearest to the door. Most kids ignore the girl eating by herself.

Not Scott McCall.

Sure enough, about ten minutes into lunch she feels a hand on her shoulder. Scott smiles down at her. “Hey,” he says. “Erica. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she says, smiling sweetly. “I’m just eating lunch.”

Scott smiles, even though he’s quite genuine about it, and glances across the lunchroom. Allison, Lydia, and a few other people Erica doesn’t immediately recognize are there, laughing and talking. “Would you like to come sit with us?” he asks.

She bites her lip and looks to the table, trying her best to seem longing for human contact. “Will your friends be okay with it?” she asks.

She looks back to Scott, whose eyes are soft and pitying. “Of course,” he assures.

Hook, line, sinker.

Erica follows him back to his table. Scott stands at the head where, presumably, he sits. He clears his throat and they all immediately look up at them both. “Guys, this is Erica,” he says. “She’ll be sitting with us. Erica, this is… everyone.”

She chuckles lightly. “Hi,” she says. Allison and Lydia look at her with wide eyes, but thankfully say nothing. They would just be blowing their own money if they did, anyway.

He gestures to the empty seat to his right and she sits, spreading out her lunch.

Just as the first time, Isaac Lahey arrives a few moments later, this time with a petite Asian girl. They both look at Scott and then Erica, both seeming confused and disoriented. “Oh,” he says, blinking. “Hey, Erica.”

She smiles and waves. “Hi, Isaac.”

He frowns and sits at the other end of the table. Then she looks to Scott, who looks worried.

–

October 5th

Much of the same has been happening. Except now Erica has begun to slip in little things that will kickstart the whole volcanic meltdown she has planned for Isaac.

Little touches on Scott’s biceps, offering him her leftovers when she isn’t hungry, calling him ‘honey’ or ‘babe’ in a platonic way. It’s the little things that add up.

– 

October 16th

She’s afraid Isaac has begun to notice.

For instance, he’s reclaimed his seat at the lunch table. It began one day when he and Scott were sharing homework, and then it became an every day thing. And he’s definitely eyeing her seat in chemistry.

She only has a week or two to get them together, and she can’t help them if one of them keeps foiling her plans. She needs to do something and soon.

Lahey may be winning the battles, but the war will not be over so quickly.

–

October 21st

However, she doesn’t have time to do anything before Scott does it for her.

She closes her locker and he’s standing behind it, grinning that goofy and friendly grin he has for all his friends. “Hey!” he says. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m having a party at my house for Halloween.” He pauses and then adds, “You’re invited, obviously. I’m not just telling you to rub it in.”

She rolls her eyes, but fondly. Scott actually is a super sweet, dorky kid. She likes him. “Thanks,” she says. “That’s nice of you. When is it?”

“Oh, it’s on Halloween,” he says. “And it’s honestly not even much of a party, more of a movie night. The gang gets together and watches a bunch of scary movies.”

She pretends to wince. “Oh, gosh, I don’t like scary movies all that much.” This is a lie. She loves scary movies. She’s seen every Scream movie ever produced at least three times. “They’re, you know. Pretty scary.”

“Well, I hear that’s why they’re called that,” Scott teases. Erica snorts. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’ll sit next to you the whole time. That way Stiles won’t be a dick and creep you out or anything.”

That’s actually really sweet of him. She grins. “I would love to come.”

Then… she feels it. The opportunity to advance. She glances up the hallway to see Isaac staring right at them, a weird kind of fury on his face. She spins back to Scott. “Hey, there’s something on your face,” she says abruptly. “Can I get it?”

He barely has a confirmation out of his mouth before she reaches up and cups his face with her hand. She rubs her thumb on the invisible smudge on his face a few times and then lets go. “Got it,” she says.

He smiles. “Thanks,” he says. Then he heads off in the other direction.

–

October 31st

When Erica shows up to Scott’s Halloween-costume-movie-viewing party, no one else is there but her and Scott. Which is perfect - exactly how she planned it. She helps Scott set up and picks some of the movies. (She insists on Scream, even though she’s supposedly afraid of scary movies. So she’s a fan, sue her.)

Lydia, Allison, and Kira arrive next. Danny and Stiles are right behind them. Then Liam, then Jackson, and finally Isaac. Isaac, fittingly enough, is dressed in a toga like the Greek God he is. But he’s too late. Erica is already sitting on the two-person couch next to Scott, her hand on his thigh, halfway through the bowl of popcorn. He looks absolutely furious.

They watch three movies, and Erica screams (along with Kira) at all the appropriate times to convince everyone of her horror. She clings onto Scott and even buries her face into his shoulder at one point. Her old drama teacher would have given her an ‘A’ for this one.

–

November 1st

There’s some rustling and a dull thud. Then silence. Suddenly, voices - they’re slightly strained, but you can still just make out what they’re saying.

“I just… I don’t trust her.”

“Why not? She’s so sweet and super nice. Isaac, I think you’d like her if you gave her a chance.”

“I don’t see why I should. She’s always all over you. It’s Scott, Scott, Scott.”

“She doesn’t have a lot of friends and she trusts me.”

“Yeah, well, if she’s never given us a chance, why should I give her one?”

A lengthy pause. You can hear someone’s breathing, deliberately quieted.

“Wait a minute. Are you jealous?”

An even lengthier pause. “No.”

“You totally are!”

“Well, should I not be? She doesn’t know we’re together. No one does.”

“Isaac, do you even know how much I love you?” No response. “Would it make you feel better if we told all of our friends today?”

“… Today? At, like, lunch?”

“Yeah. I’ll even tell Erica myself. How’s that sound?”

“… Okay.”

The recording cuts off.

Allison and Lydia stare down at the recorder in total disbelief. Erica smirks at them. “Looks like my work here is done,” she says.

“They’ve been dating this whole time?” Allison murmurs. “How did none of us know?”

“They’re very sneaky,” Erica says. “It was hard finding them this morning. In the autobiographical section of BHHS library. Exhausting.” She picks up her backpack and smiles. “See you at lunch, girls. I’ll be expecting my third of the cut.” And then she walks off, on her way to third period.

[miserelysia]

So I watched the Netflix Death Note adaptation...

And I did a liveblog because that’s how I cope with bad adaptations of things I love. It’s pretty long but so was the movie. Also swearing.

HERE WE GO~

- Setting: Seattle. I'd say you already failed, Netflix, but I was prepared for this. And alright, so we have a re-imagining of Deathnote. - Our hero creepily hangs out right behind cheerleader practice and does homework, awesome - also he a nerd who does other people's homework and judges them - cool - chick who smokes and gives him eyes is Mia - and Light doesn't know how to smile - well it really does seem like Ryuk CHOSE him in this version instead of just randomly throwing his Death Note down to earth - why are we all afraid of rain we're in SEATTLE - super awkward, tortured troubled nerdy white boy, gotcha - ...light are you not reading the other rules. that's kind of important. THERE ARE RULES FOR A REASON. - oh shit it's time for willem dafoe's big debue - HI FRIENDDDD - LMAO LIGHT'S SCREAM - I MEAN, RELATABLE BUT - RIDICULOUS - why didn't they just name him Larry ffs "Light" just sounds weird for an American kid - I'm gonna call him Larry - okay let's jump right to DECAPITATION LOL DAMN SON - DAAAMMMMNNNN SON - THAT IS NOT THE KIND OF HORROR I WAS LOOKING FOR IN THIS MOVIE - OMG LARRY U KILLED KENNY - way to trash the classroom Ryuk - what happened to my friendly bored shinigami - he got Americanized(TM) - LARRY YOU GOTTA READ THE WHOLE TERMS & CONDITIONS ON SOMETHING LIKE THIS FFS BOY - i mean granted we don't have the whole terms & conditions because they weren't all written out in the manga - or were they?  i never read them - bUT THEN I WASN'T THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO FUCKING DECAPITATE PEOPLE BY WRITING THEIR NAME DOWN - thank you Ryuk for giving the correct pronunciation of your name - so either Ryuk is lying about the rules of the Death Note, saying it HAS to belong to a human, orrrrrr this is another Adaptation Thing - okay well Larry definitely isn't any Light Yagami but his character is.... pretty realistic for a Troubled White Boy(TM) - just wondering how the heck Larry is gonna be smart enough to avoid detection - also is he going to take a chip and eat it - lol damn how'd you know Antony was at a dinner party, Larry? - AWWWWWW HIS DAD LOVES HIM YAY - okay Ryuk's design is..... okay - LARRY WHY R U BRINGIN IT TO SCHOOL - AND WHY ARE YOU SITTING IN THE BLEACHERS DURING GYM??? - or are you creeping on cheerleaders again boy wtf - "you saw a guy decapitated? damn that's hot" mia what's wrong with u - LMAO YEAH SURE SHOW HER THE DEATH NOTE????? - OKAY - ugggghhhh come on, anyone who TOUCHES the death note can see Ryuk not just the keeper. why change that rule???? you could have so many more amazing "HOLY SHIT AN 8 FOOT TALL DEMON?!?!?!??" scenes - "i have a death god" well i'm glad they're not trying to make everyone say "shinigami" the whole time - "you of all people want to see this" HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT CAN YOU TELL SHE'S A SOCIOPA--okay granted, she did talk about wanting to see Kenny's decapitation - "you snot-nosed little douchebag" that is.... such a tame insult for a guy who's holding a gun to a lady??? - um why was that rogue SWAT truck just driving through at top speed you can't control other people i thought??? - also why did he just fuckin EXPLODE when it hit him like a damn garbage bag damn Netflix - holy shit Mia what's your damage why are you so hype about this - lmaoooo nerdy virgin boyyyyy - no longer a virgin boyyyy - having weird sociopathic sexytimes with his weird sociopathic girlfriendddd - white boy saviour complex is go - AYYYY GOD COMPLEX IS GO - time to get busyyyyyyy KILLING PEOPLE - um did you really target EVERYONE IN A NIGHTCLUB WTF BOI SOME OF THEM WEREN'T EVIL - or are they just saying someone shot up the whole place BUT YOUR VICTIM'S ACTIONS CAN'T RESULT IN SOMEONE ELSE'S DEATH I THOUGHT??? - i do like that L is a black man - why is Watari kinda creepy - AWWWWW GOOD THEY KEPT THE CANDY OBSESSION - "you'd kill him? you'd kill him for me???" omg mia seriously WHAT IS UR DAMAGE - my precious boy L and his rainbow candies - this is all i wanted. quirky L dealing with the police - HE'S PRECIOUSSS - OOOOOHHHHHH BURNNNNNNN"CHILD WEILDING POWER HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND" - "now i'm rooting for this guy" THANK YOU RYUK, ME TOO - i'm in love i love L I'm rooting for him too - u gonna kill ur dad larry? - "i think you can tell when you're sitting across froma killer like kira" he says to his CLEARLY SOCIOPATHIC SON - mia U HAVE ISSUES WHYYYYYYYYY - r u serious - relationship issues now too - da fuq - how is mia EVEN WORSE OF A PERSON THAN LARRY - HOLY SHIT GIRL - THE ENTIRE DAMN TEAAAMMMMMM - omg larry it was MIA not ryuk - seriously are you serious are you saying it's ryuk are u FUCKING SHITTING ME NO - "just making sure you hadn't died" lmao thanks L for ur concern - "light turner is kira" okay then L, i mean i guess we had to make the conflict go fast but okay - "i don't do check, only checkmate" nice - "YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND MEEEEE" lmao larry you aren't light - "you're the one who flew into the sun, I'm just here to make sure you actually burn" I LOVE U, L - U NEED HIS FULL FUCKING NAME NOT JUST WATARI. FUCK YOU DID THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THIS NOT READ THE DAMN MANGA - I'M SO ANGRY THIS IS SO POINTLESS - L IS SO SAD -MY BOY - BBY - HIS FRIEND IS GONE - lmao this got overdramatic real friggin fast - r u serious MIA IS A MUCH BETTER LIGHT THAN LARRY IS - LIKE THE ORPHANAGE WOULD JUST LEAVE THEIR INFO LYING AROUND???? - AND WHY HAS L NOT REALIZED WHERE LARRY WOULD SENT WATARI IT'S SO OBVIOUS - DA FUQ IS WRONG WITH THESE CHARACTERS - why is there cell reception in that place - why did that guy kill him THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS??? - WHY DID KNOWING WATARI'S FUCKIN NOT EVEN REAL NAME WORK - AND IT WAS POINTLESS - POINTLESS LOW QUALITY BADLY RESEARCHED WRITING - Larry u fuckin idiot you don't deserve to be Light and I need the plot twist to be that the death note was actually mia's all along - "you don't get to feel superior for being a pussy" omg mia - hot damn she killed everyone - HOLY SHIT SHE GONNA KILL HIMMMMMMM - HOLY SHIT - MIA - HOLY SHIT - HOLY SHIT - "now go get my goddamn book" HOLY SHIT - I LOVE THISSSSSSS IT'S WHAT I WANTED ALL ALONG - BADASS GIRL IS A BETTER LIGHT THAN LARRY FOR REAL - L MY PRECIOUS BABY I'M SORRY - ummmmmmm larry you could just burn the page urself u know??? - car chase & foot chase nice added unnecessary drama - Y U HIT L IN THE HEAD RANDOM MAN THAT'S NOT NICE - "NOW GIVE ME MY FUCKING BOOK OKAY" HOLY SHIT MIA - LMAO HE PUT HER NAME IN - LMAO TAKIN DOWN THE WHOLE FUCKIN FERRIS WHEEL - "I TAKE IT BACK" LMAO LARRY U CAN'T - RYUK WHAT THE FUQ - LMAO AND HIS HEART IS GONNA STOP AT MIDNIGHT WHILE HE'S HOLDING HER RIGHT - SUCKS FOR YOU MIA - oh oop no she falls instead - SHE REALLY LIKED THAT BOOK I GUESS??? - BYE KIDS - oh nice image with the flowers exploding - "innocence destroyed~" or w/e guys please she was already a crazy sociopathic monster - R U SERIOUS THE ONE PAGE - THE ONE PAGE WITH HIS NAME - FALLS PERFECTLY INTO THE FLAMES - FOR REAL - WHO IS MYSTERIOUS MAN????? - great yeah just put the death note on his chest and then the nurse can find it - why'd he magically wake up from a coma - why is no one responding to his increased vitals - YEAH U KILLED UR GIRLFRIEND WAY TO GO - i mean she sorta killed herself but - oh wait nope he actually killed her - wow - so that last bit of plotting almost earned you the right to be called Light, Larry - but not quite - anD WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF ENDING IS THAT??!?!?! - I HATE OPEN ENDINGS - LARRY IS ABOUT TO DIE RIGHT - I DECIDED IT. LARRY DIES. - EXCEPT THAT MAKES L A KILLER - BUT L'S CHARACTER HAS ALREADY CHANGED DRASTICALLY SO... - YEAH, LARRY DIES - i mean the other option is that his dad's like "wtf" and locks him up forever - but then American Ryuk just gives the Death Note to someone else and now that Kira is a thing they'll think it's up to them or something??? - who knows - whatever - i'm done with this weird ass convoluted mess. - well the beginning of the credits was cute at least, with the bloopers and the fun times

Okay this wasn't a complete waste of time but they absolutely lost me as an adaptation at the point where Larry was able to control Watari wITHOUT KNOWING HIS FULL DAMN NAME I MEAN COME ON THAT'S WHY HE'S CALLED WATARI. Also constantly screaming "THERE ARE SO MANY RULES" like hey maybe you should take the time to read them Larry wtf is wrong with you. L losing it was interesting but man I miss the calm, 5-steps-ahead-of-each-other cat and mouse of the actual Death Note. I think I'm gonna go watch that now.

[bigskydreaming]

Josh from teen wolf?? really?? why??

This is one of those things where the only real answer is Why Not, you know? Same as my obsessive love for Scanny, lol - with side characters like Danny and Josh, they’re more blank slates where you fill in most of the gaps canon left us with around the bare bones of what we do know….you kinda just have to pick an angle or direction to start from and then just run with it, see what you end up with. It’s not like this is a concept fandom is unfamiliar with. As lots of other people have pointed out over the years, Stiles has dozens of fics devoted to shipping him with people he’s never actually even shared a scene with in canon.

With Josh, one of the first things that jumped out at me about him was when they were trying to identify him after his first appearance in 5A, nobody else seemed to know who he was, but Scott did, he said ‘I know him, that’s Josh Diaz.’ One of my biggest things over the seasons is I’ve always wanted to see stuff about how Scott interacts with people outside his core group, how he’s seen by other people at school, who else he might have history with, and so that was an immediate in for making headcanons for what kind of history Scott might have with this new kid. Yeah, Scott was a loner before the bite, Stiles was his only real friend, that’s the narrative - except that’s more what we were TOLD rather than what we were SHOWN, and it never quite fit. 

He obviously wasn’t in with the cool kids pre-pilot, but Danny was at least familiar with him, that girl Harley was hanging out with him and Stiles in the pilot, and Scott’s friendly and easy to get along with and not actually ever shown as shy. He didn’t have a problem introducing himself to Allison right away, like…he knew something was up with his hearing and he overheard her needing a pen, but its not like he was completely clueless on how to form a connection with someone new, you know? So it just never made sense to me that Scott has no significant interactions or history with anyone else other than Stiles, pre-pilot. And with Josh obviously being a loner himself, like all Theo’s pack were, I could easily see he and Scott having at least been aware of each other before the show in the way that a lot of kids in high school who are on the outskirts of things for whatever reason know who each other are, even if they don’t seek each other out to form their own cliques.

Plus, on top of that I just wanted to see more interaction between Scott and Theo’s pack in general, whether it was with Josh or even followed up on with Corey and Hayden in 6A. Scott is the only character on the show who really gets what they went through, and they’re the only characters who could ever fully understand his own experiences (with the exception of Lydia, but the show missed the boat on those parallels years ago). Every other supernatural creature was either born one - even if they discovered it later in life like Kira, or they sought out the bite. Liam’s the exception there, but even though he didn’t have a choice in the matter, that he was an unwilling werewolf like Scott was, he was only bitten due to Scott’s attempt to save him. Liam’s alpha never actually wanted anything from him, never tried to turn him into a monster, so while his journey has some similarities to Scott’s, they aren’t true parallels.

But Tracy, Josh, Corey and Hayden were each targeted and exploited exactly the same as Peter did with Scott. Their lives were deliberately fucked with by the villains who saw them as nothing more than tools to be used, no matter how much trauma was inflicted in the process. They were each told they had no choice in any of this, that it was do what they were told or die (again). They were all mistrusted and shunned at times by people who insisted they were the good guys, and these innocent teenagers were the bad guys, dangerous, monstrous, much like Scott’s experiences with the hunters in S1 and his struggle to see himself and other werewolves as something other than the monsters people kept telling him they were. (And don’t forget that Josh was ultimately killed after refusing to do what Theo told him to, when he said screw you, I’m not putting on that mask, I don’t want anything to do with this crap, I just want to go. Which is pretty much exactly the answer Scott gave to Peter, Chris, Derek and everyone else who tried to push him in a certain direction in S1).

And that’s common ground that you could do so much with in fic - people have done a lot more with far less. And yeah, it could be with any of the four, but the show set it up so that Corey had Mason to turn to as a possible connection, Hayden had Liam, Tracy had Malia and Lydia. Josh was such a throwaway character (sigh) that the only possible connection they ever bothered to make for him was that Scott at least, knew who he was before all this. So pretty much any exploration of Josh’s character was always going to be through Scott, and there’s plenty to explore through those shared experiences of both knowing what it’s like to be so callously used by people who don’t give a fuck about you or what you want. Hell, they both know what it’s like to be murdered by the same person (Theo). Scott/Josh teaming up out of a mutual hatred of their murderer? Yes plz!

So yeah. Basically I put Josh in the same category I do Boyd, Danny and the other characters I consider chock full of missed opportunities. And its not really a coincidence that my biggest noncanon ships for Scott include all these characters that are more headcanon than actual personalities on the show….that’s because with the way the show constantly screws Scott over and refuses to acknowledge all the times EVERYONE including his closest allies does things at his expense…the characters with the least screentime (like Josh, Boyd, Danny) are pretty much the only ones who don’t have canon scenes with Scott that make me grind my teeth. And thus there’s nothing from canon I have to ignore or make my peace with before being comfortable shipping them with Scott. LOL pretty fucked up that that’s the biggest basis for a lot of my ships, but hey, welcome to TW fandom amirite?

[bonniebird]

Salvatore!Reader x McCall Pack / Salvatores’

Requested By Anon

Part One

“You don’t think this is weird?” You asked everyone as you were all handed permission slips.

“What do we get to go on a cool school trip?” Stiles sighed as he and Scott turned to you.

“Yeah as soon as we think the teacher has something to do with it she not only takes our class on a weekend trip away from the school but finds a way to get nearly everyone on the deadpool that goes to the school to join us.” You pointed out they both made a noise as if it had just made sense to them.

 “Well your brothers can help, right?” Scott asked and you rolled your eyes.

“Maybe Stefan will but Damon… he’d probably hook up with her.” You sighed and Stiles snickered at you.

“We should still be on high alert so they can tag along.” Scott muttered and glanced over when the teacher stopped and watched the three of you carefully.

“Because that will end well, three blood thirsty Salvatores’ and a bunch of teenagers.” Stiles sighed and you slapped the back of his head. “Hey I’m just saying.”

************************** 

“Alright so what exactly are we doing?” Damon asked as he and Stefan patrolled the small wooded area around the Motel the busses had broken next to.

 “Making sure no one gets hurt, (Y/N) said she and the little wolves are going to see what they can do.” Stefan chuckled when Damon’s shoulders squared and he tensed his jaw.

“We should be there to protect her; those werewolves will get her hurt.” He huffed and froze when someone walked towards them.

“Woah guys it’s me the human!” Stiles yelped as Damon grabbed him by the collar.

“Why aren’t you inside?” Stefan asks and pried Damon’s hands off the boy.

“Because we have something and we need to sneak off and (Y/N) got kidnapped when we tried.” Stiles babbled and Damon growled, vanishing before Stefan could stop him.

 *********************

 “Ok crazy lady you best be putting me down or my brother will tear you apart!” You snarled and tried to shield a wounded Malia.

“No, do you know how hard it was to get a job at your school and I mean… it's easy pickings, so many little monsters all bunched in together.” Your teacher drew and you rolled your eyes.

“Sure, it’s a regular Monster High, wanna see my monster face?” You growled and she jumped back as you snapped your fangs at her.

“You really are pathetic aren’t you.” She sighed and twirled a stake in her hand. “See I thought seeing as you’re a Salvatore it’d be hard to catch you but… you just skipped along and walked right into my trap.”

“Trap, what trap?” You sighed and tried to push past the magical barrier she’d put around you. “You shot my best friend then yelled come and get me blood sucker that’s not a trap, that’s motivating my vampire ass to rip your throat out.”

 “(Y/N)!” Damon snapped and your teacher spun around, caught off guard. “Temper, there are children present.” He pointed at the pack which had hurried to show him where you were and they all waved awkwardly.

“Well this is even better, a big Salvatore batted by the little one.” She hummed.

“Lady you’re really bad at this hunting thing.” You sighed while pinching the bridge of your nose.

“She has a point, you did just let both Salvatore brothers into your hideout.” Stiles agreed and Stefan came out of nowhere, pushing your teacher out of sight.

“No fair I wanted to get her!” You complained and Damon rolled his eyes.

“You’re such a tiny psychopath.” He chuckled as Stiles broke the barrier and helped you hoist Malia over your shoulder.

 “Yeah well at least I have friends.” You teased.

“I have friends.” He sighed and you rolled your eyes.

“Me and Stefan don’t count.”

“I have other friends (Y/N).” He took Malia from you so you could help the others that had been caught.

“Stefan’s girlfriends and my friends don’t count either.” You chuckled and Scott had to hide a laugh as he helped snap open a cage next to you.

“OH, yeah well what about the Mikaelsons?” He asked and Stiles did a double take.

 “They’re still my friends Damon, you guys always end up trying to kill each other.” You pointed out.

“You understand that you guys are terrifying, right?” Stiles whispered and Damon’s eyebrow arched as he glanced at Stiles.

“Would you like to carry the injured werewolf home and explain why your teachers are missing?” Damon offered and Stiles shook his head.

“Terrifying in a friendly way.” He corrected himself and hurried over to Lydia and Kira.

“So, is this over now?” Lydia asked and Damon tutted.

 “I doubt it… you said the kids are a true Alpha, he’s going to have a lot of people after him.” Damon paused and you knew what he was going to ask.

“Yes, I’m staying here, thanks for helping but I like it here.” You sighed and opened the motel room door so Damon could put Malia down.

“What about Mystic Falls?” Damon sighed and you shrugged.

“We both know you and Stefan can’t stay away from Elena.” You giggled when he shot you an unimpressed look. “We’ll end up back there someday but for now… Alpha werewolves!” You fake cheered and Lydia coughed to cover up the laugh from the look Damon was giving you.

“I’m going to go and help Stefan, are you good to compel anyone who asks too much?” Damon asked and you nodded.

[rinusagitora]

we will carve a home out of the hollow in your chest

Fandom: Bleach

Characters: Momo Hinamori, Izuru Kira, Renji Abarai, Shuuhei Hisagi, Tetsuzaemon Iba, Shinji Hirako, Byakuya Kuchiki, Shunsui Kyouraku

Pairings: RenShuuKiraHina, mentioned badship AiHina

Words: 1900+

Summary: Canon divergent, pos TYBW arc. WARNINGS– body horror, violence, mass death. 2/4. The war is over, and the losses are permanent, but they know how to manage.

FFN | AO3 | Previous | Next

She wasn't like Renji. She couldn't compartmentalize like he could. She could distance herself, distract herself, but the shock had worn off by then. Every bit of rubble she turned over, she feared she would find Izuru, lifeless, that arm contorted in some freakish way. The dread made her nauseous.

She couldn't take anymore bodies. She couldn't distance herself in her worry. Izuru was alive when she thought he was dead, and he was gone because she scared him away. It was almost worse in that way because it was her fault and her fault alone, like the times she turned her sword against her brother and her friends for that man.

She needed to create, to breathe life into something. But even if there wasn’t any shortage in charcoal, she was without her sketchpad.

Reconstruction wasn't art, but it was better than tally after tally after fucking tally. If she asked, she knew with almost absolute certainty that she could tug at Hirako-taichou’s heartstrings and land herself in the west of the Seireitei for a couple of hours.

Her captain was in a tent with their new Head Captain and Kuchiki-taichou, bent over a map until she entered. Her captain looked so tired. He didn’t walk over her and wrap her in a one-armed hug and he didn’t jostle her with a friendly, confident grin. He didn’t even smile at her, like the bags under his eyes were too heavy for his cheeks to lift. She hated to see someone who had so quickly one a spot in her heart so exhausted.

“If you have a moment, could you reassign me to the west end of the Seireitei? Please? I need a break from all the bodies. Just for this shift….” She pleaded under her breath.

She wasn't met with an immediate yes or no. Hirako-taichou merely looked to Kyouraku-soutaichou, who then looked at a roster.

“I think we can afford an extra man there.” The head captain said.

“We can't. We need to clean up all of this, account for as many bodies, and then track down and incarcerate any deserters.” Kuchiki-taichou responded.

“We’re spread a little thin, but when aren't we? It'll help us take down some of those tents sooner rather than later at least. It couldn't hurt to switch the poor thing for just one shift, Kuchiki.” Kyouraku-soutaichou said. His calm amazed her-- she always wanted to clock Kuchiki-taichou ever since his cold dismissal of Renji’s life not even two years ago.

Kuchiki-taichou’s lips tightened into a line. It, at least, seemed he wasn’t hot about the tents either.

“Meet up with Iba-fukutaichou, Hinamori-fukutaichou. He’ll delegate you where you're needed.” Hirako-taichou said.

She bowed graciously to them and made herself scarce. She had already thrown a wrench into their carefully balanced schedule, she couldn’t make herself a nuisance on top of it.

Iba-fukutaichou had always been among her favorite lieutenants-- outside of Renji, Shuuhei, and Izuru of course. He had always been more noble than any of the aristocracy, and down to earth and so very sweet. She wasn’t close to him, they had only spoken before lieutenant meetings, but he was good in her book. Not many were anymore. Especially not men.

The west of the Seireitei was different from the rest. The air was much fainter of burnt fat and decay and the walkways were clear if not just slightly crumbled where they hadn’t been repaved. It was a totally different atmosphere on top of it. It felt like she had finally bobbed above the dirty water for a breath of fresh air.

Yes. It wasn’t art, but it was an escape from all her anxiety, that awfulness in the rest of the Seireitei.

Iba-fukutaichou was among his men as they pieced together platforms with smooth slats. He straightened as she approached.

“I was told you could give me something to work on here.” She said. “I would appreciate anything. Really, just put me somewhere. Please.”

“Happy to have you, Hinamori. Just join the rest of us. If you need any help, just shout.” Iba-fukutaichou replied.

“Thank you.” She would’ve asked where Shuuhei and Renji were and if he knew where her dear Izuru had run off to, but she figured they would only be a distraction. Distractions-- Izuru-- made her sad and they couldn’t afford that then. It was like Renji said-- one step at a time.

She would ignore how it felt like she abandoned her dearly beloved and thank whatever higher power had taken the Soul King’s place that flooring was busy work. It didn’t require quite the amount of attention as her art or reading, but it was nice to busy up her hands with something more visibly productive than tolling bodies. The hours passed just as quickly either way.

Shuuhei described her as beat when he and Renji came to fetch her. He must’ve meant she didn’t look much different than she normally did because sleep eluded her. The noise did not, on the other hand. It was difficult to not listen in on the conversations around her, bored out of her mind and worried out of her hyde. It was still mostly who was still missing, grief over the deceased, cynicism in hushed voices.

She was a terrible leader. If she couldn’t hold herself together, how could her men? They were the gears of the Soul Society. Their leaders were merely the lubricant that kept those gears cool. Without them, the gears would surely be ground away or pop off their spindles.

If she didn’t listen in, she probed for Izuru. Normally, she could pinpoint any of her loved ones’ reiatsu at any time with little trouble. Izuru’s was unusually faint, however. Like he really was gone. But she knew otherwise. Half the Seireitei knew about that scene at the tents, and her brother was there too so it couldn’t have been a hallucination. Izuru sulked somewhere, because she was a terrible excuse of a human being and an even worse lover.

There was a sudden change in the cadence and the speed of the murmurs around, and the sudden silence as she picked up on a pinprick of Izuru’s reiatsu. It felt so distant, but she heard his footfalls. Each was like a kick to her gut. It brought tears to her eyes-- relieved and terrified. She wished his reiatsu was strong enough to tell how he felt-- if he hated her, if he needed her.

Or perhaps it was just a hallucination. Perhaps she had finally been driven undeniably and irreparably mad. Or maybe the entire thing was just a long nightmare, and she would finally wake sandwiched between her boys and they would kiss her at breakfast as she told them about the most horrible dream she had ever had.

She stayed silent. If he wanted her, if he was even real, she figured he would speak. Aizen’s voice never accompanied his phantom presence. The memories of his words, but never his voice.

“... you hold yourself when you’re asleep.” Izuru rasped finally. He sounded winded.

Tears welled in her eyes as she laid sight on him. He was paler, more ragged, with a blanket tied around his shoulders.

“You’re here.” She sighed.

He nodded solemnly. Izuru normally wasn’t one to smile in the first place, but those blue eyes were so emotive. Those same eyes were dull and they were lifeless then, like he belonged on a metal slab and knew it. Her teary stare was no different from the others he must receive.

“Do you not want me to be?” He asked plainly, as if bored.

“I always want your company, you know that.”

“You wanted Izuru Kira’s company. He is dead. I am but a humble war machine in his shape.”

“Don’t you say that.” She quivered. “Don’t you say anything like that again. You are my beloved Izuru. We’ve all been turned into war machines. But it’s over now and we’re going to rebuild our home and our lives, and we want you in that.”

“The man you loved is dead.” Izuru iterated. “He is only a small percentage of my reiatsu. The rest is reiatsu from fallen soldiers mashed into me so I can operate.”

“So?” She sniffed. “You look like my Izuru. You talk like my Izuru. I can still feel my Izuru’s presence. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.”

“You’re still as deluded as when Aizen fucked you.”

She flew upright. Her knuckles stung after they connected with his cheek. “How dare you bring that monster up.”

“The man you share all those happy memories with is gone. He died, and he let all of his men die too. Every single one of them.”

“We lost a lot of good men against the Quincies. It’s not your fault.”

“Like Aizen was coerced by Gin?”

Her knuckles stung as she backhanded Izuru again. His expression didn’t change as he stared down the row.

“Have you come to be cruel to me?!” She barked as embarrassed tears streamed down her face. She didn’t turn to Renji or Shuuhei  when they startled awake. “Izuru has always been like that. You’ve been so sarcastic and mean since Ichimaru died. You’re damn right I was loyal to Aizen, and I’m loyal to you now. Did you really think we would cut you out of our lives just because you’re having a tantrum!? You underestimate my tolerance!”

“You’re morbid to love a dead man.” Izuru growled

She slapped him again. “Enough of that! I don’t want to hear anything like that come out of your mouth again.”

Izuru stared off to the side, past the audience they had garnered. He got that thousand-yard stare when he was sad, when he truly debated death. She knew it well. How could he claim to not be Izuru when he was still so much like him?

“And what will you do if I refuse?”

She burst into humorless, bitter laughter. “You expect me to discard you? I couldn’t leave that monster when he raped me nightly, I wouldn’t have left him after he stabbed me! What the fuck makes you think you can make me leave you?”

“... I ought to go.”

“No, you’re staying. I’ll make you. Renji and Shuuhei will hold you down, and we’ll call Kuchiki-taichou in to hold you somewhere.”

He finally looked at her. “You’ll make me stay? Like you made Aizen stay?”

She slapped him once more and wailed. She couldn’t see his gaze through all of her tears, but she could feel it like a drill.

“You and I are taking a walk.” Renji plucked Izuru off the bunk and dragged him out. She couldn’t bring herself to look anyone in the eye as she walked in the opposite direction.

She knew the pain would fade, she thought as Shuuhei laid her head against his chest. She knew they would come together again just like they did after those men exited their lives, she knew her kisses would ease his pain, but Izuru was stubborn and she hurt too much to look at him.

Perhaps she was a fool, she thought, to let Izuru get away with a mere lecture from Renji. Perhaps she hadn’t changed since Aizen. Perhaps she was morbid and sad and needy, but he never seemed to mind it in the past.

[mononohke-archive]

Anime Roundup Pt.2 - Fall 2016 [Spoilers]

More rambling~

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable [8/10]

Another season of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has come and gone, and it’s been quite a wild ride. Personally, I think it was about on par with the first season of JJBA. I liked it better than Stardust Crusaders because I liked the main characters better and the plot was not as much of a repetitive “monster of the week” affair, but unfortunately, it seems like they didn’t put as much effort into the animation and production values. This 39 episode season was also a full 11 episodes shorter than the two 25 episode seasons of SDC, despite the manga being slightly longer. It definitely felt a little rushed, and I’ve had my manga reader friends inform me that some of their favorite parts were cut out.

But there were a lot of things I really loved about DiU as well. Josuke quickly became my favorite Jojo after Joseph, and I like Jotaro more in this part than I ever did in SDC. The villain, Kira, is also one of my favorite characters period and so is Rohan Kishibe, played brilliantly by Takahiro Sakurai as usual. Many of the stands are hilarious and creative in this part too. I also loved the whole Scooby Doo-esque mystery of a serial killer in the town and the slice of life elements. The scale was brought down from “evil villains try to take over the world” to one serial killer who “just wants to live a normal life”... and kill women and take their hands to satisfy his compulsions, of course. It was a really refreshing change from the typical formula.

The only thing or character that I didn’t like is Koichi - partially because he gets more attention than Josuke, kind of like Polnareff in SDC (except much less likable) and partially because his voice actor, Yuki Kaji, is fucking annoying as him. Unfortunately, on top of that, he’s the character who spends most of his screen time yelling exactly what’s happening, like Polnareff and Speedwagon before him, except his voice is literally ear-splittingly irritating.

I sincerely hope that in the next part, they don’t take shortcuts like they did with this part. JJBA is one of my favorites, so I will still be waiting for it eagerly.

Touken Ranbu: Hanamaru [5/10]

I wasn’t expecting much from this anime and it still disappointed me lol. Touken Ranbu is basically a moe anime (but with a diversity in character designs that moeblobs wish they had), except the characters are male. Some of it was sort of mildly entertaining and cute, but for the most part, it was pretty boring.

... Maybe I’m just peeved because they didn’t focus that much on characters I personally find attractive, like Kogitsunemaru. You know the only reason I watched this show in the first place was because I’ve seen a ridiculous amount of yaoi for it on pixiv? The porn was nice, but I would never play the game itself, so I figured the anime would give me a little more insight into the characters and their relationships. The anime did, but it still failed at entertaining me.

So, yeah, this anime perfectly average and forgettable. Only watch if you’re super dedicated to the game.

Poco’s Udon World [9/10]

The biggest surprise of this season for me was this show. Yes, this show is my AotS (by about .2 points) over that other anime which got super popular and had a ton of praise. Well, we all go against the grain sometimes and this is my turn. Poco’s Udon World is an underrated masterpiece in my opinion. This show came off the heels of the much more popular Sweetness and Lightning, which came out the previous season. Both shows have a similar premise - a young man in his early 30s with black haired (voiced by Yuuichi Nakamura) becomes a single father due to sudden circumstances and has to take care of an adorable toddler-aged child. There are some key differences, of course, but they are still similar enough to be comparable.

Personally I think Poco’s Udon World is far superior (for reasons I will discuss), and it saddens me that it hasn’t got half the popularity of S&L. (Probably because there isn’t a cute waifu character as one of the mains, heh.) So what makes PUW so good to me? Well, besides all the cute and the incredibly heartwarming/touching nature of the show, it’s also just very well-written. The characters and their development, as well as a plethora of themes I don’t see being portrayed very often in anime or when they are brought up, are handled in ways that make me uncomfortable.

Here is just a short list of themes PUW manages to masterfully cover in a 12-episode, single cour season:

career vs family

career and family separately

fatherhood

grief and nostalgia

growing up

love

And those are just the main themes? There are other things that are covered on a more subtle level. See, I explained in my review of S&L that it was lacking an exploration of its themes and was constrained by its repetitive slice of life format. Most of the supporting characters were not very fleshed out either. PUW fixes all or most of these problems.

Every episode brings something new to the table and there is no set episode format. I also absolutely love that every character outside of Poco and Souta feels like they could be a real person, instead of being a plot device or 2-dimensional character. They all have lives outside of their interactions with the main characters, so that even when they don't get much screen time, they feel fleshed out. All of them represent a different sort of family or different sort of lifestyle or different sort of mindset, which you can easily compare to Souta's situation because they all serve as foils to him. A lot of supporting characters even get their own character development like Nakaji and Rin (Souta' sister).

And... okay, I want to analyze this show in-depth one day, but I need to rewatch it (maybe several times) before I do. Trust me, it’s cute and all, but it’s much more than that too. You might be surprised at how high it is on my Top 10 Anime of 2016 list.

Kiss Him, Not Me [7/10]

After watching two absolutely terrible otome/harem anime that really pissed me off (Uta no Prince Sama and Kamigami no Asobi), I went back on my decision to never watch an otome because this one was about a fujoshi and written by a yaoi mangaka. Somehow... it paid off. I came out of this pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this show.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty that annoyed me (the fatshaming, how Serinuma’s voice changes, the shoujo cliches, etc), but overall I enjoyed it more than I disliked it. Although I was only rooting for two of the love interests, Mutsumi-senpai (who is mild mannered, friendly, genuine, liked her when she was fat) and Nishina (the gay option™, also a fujoshi and otaku who has a lot in common with Serinuma, also liked her even when she was fat), I didn’t really mind or hate the others either. All of them still treated her more respectfully than LIs in the other otome I watched.

The ending was brilliant too, and if they make a second season, I would still watch it for the characters and humor.

Yuri!!! on Ice [9/10]

How do I even begin to tackle Yuri!!! on Ice? This is the AoTS for sure (in general, not to me personally) and is by far the runaway smash hit in terms of both popularity and ratings. This anime is a game changer, to put it lightly. It did something no other popular anime has done before, and the praise is honestly well deserved. But, hey, remember that it’s still not perfect. In fact, up until the very last episode, I was debating on whether it deserved an 8 or a 9 on MAL. I settled on a 9 (a low nine by my standards) only because I cried a whole lot the last episode and realized that the overall impact of the show is bigger than my minor gripes. What are those minor gripes?

#1) Off-model/inconsistent animation. I will give a slight break to the animators because I know that animating ice skating is very complex and intricate, especially if you consider just how much ice skating there is in almost every episode. There are about a dozen ice skaters, each with two different 2-minute routines. Yes, many of them are reused multiple times, but regardless it’s still a lot of work. Unfortunately, YoI missed the chance to be stunning all the way through and join the other always-praised animation greats like Cowboy Bebop and much more recently, Mob Psycho 100. Only the first episode truly impressed me with how perfect and fluid the animation was, and I was dearly hoping that they would keep up that level of quality all the way through. Sadly they don’t, but we should all thank the writing of this show for being so damn good and making up for it. Besides, aside from a few, rather obvious off-model shots, it didn’t ever get too bad, not like Cheer Danshi!! from the Summer season.

#2) Slightly rushed pacing. Yeah, some of the events of this anime just go by too fast, especially the beginning few episodes where months pass between Victor arriving in Japan and Yuuri beginning his journey to the Grand Prix Final. It’s not really made clear to the viewers how much time has passed, and even I didn’t realize until I read a tumblr post on it. Originally, I wanted a whole other cour so that I could see the ice skaters interact more outside of work, but I think that would be too much as well. One more episode (a full 13 episode cour) would’ve been perfect, imo. Thankfully, we are getting another season, so there will definitely be more time to develop the other side characters and resolve some of the remaining threads! But seriously, I hope they do slow down a little bit in season 2.

Other than that...? Gripes so minor that they’re not even worth mentioning. The amount of good that YoI has done is overwhelming my comparison. I’ll just go through them like a list again because why not?

#1) Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship. A healthy canon gay interracial relationship in a non-yaoi anime. That is just shy of revolutionary in terms of LGBT representation in an anime. “We are born to make history”, indeed. Yes, some other anime have done it too like No.6 and Revolutionary Girl Utena. But was No.6, the other one where the main couple is M/M, popular like YoI is? Not particularly. Most of the viewership comes from yaoi fangirls or LGBT anime fans seeking an anime with a canon gay ship in it. What about Utena? Well, Utena didn’t have a happy ending, not for the canon lesbian character and not for the main F/F relationship of the show. Nothing is also explicitly stated like it is in YoI. Ofc, Utena by the very nature of the show, explicitly states very little but still. There’s also a goddamn kiss!

The best part of this is that Viktor and Yuuri is that, despite their happy ending, they don’t sacrifice depth or conflict between them and the drama doesn’t feel forced either. That balance is hard to achieve and it takes writing talent to pull it off. Every action and reaction feels natural and in-character. The writing featuring them is as good as any well-written romantic drama with a hetero couple! The other great thing is that even though Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship is incredibly important to the narrative and is the main relationship overall, romance is still not the primary genre. It equally shares genres with sports, comedy, and drama.

TL:DR; Their relationship is important. It sets a precedent that a gay couple can be the main couple of an anime and still be wildly successful. Now future manga and anime writers can take risks knowing that they won’t end up being financially compromised due the lgbtphobic culture of Japan.

2) Yuri on Ice perfectly balances its genres. This may not seem that important, but it kind of is and ties into the last point about how romance is not the main genre. If romance were the main genre, then this would be a yaoi/shounen-ai anime and it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as popular as it did. Yuuri’s evolution as an athlete and his desire to win the gold for the first time is just as important as his relationship with Viktor. Yurio, Viktor, and the other skaters’ relationships with each other and ice skating is also given a lot of attention. The love and dedication to ice skating in general is prominent and that passion has attracted the attention of countless professional ice skaters. (In fact, It’s like the anime singlehandedly brought attention to a niche sport that doesn’t get a whole lot of industry unlike American football and soccer/European football.)

There’s also a lot of comedy, which may be hit and miss for some people, but I found it pretty damn hilarious when it happens. Of all the sports anime I’ve seen, only a few others try others bringing in other genres. Most are pure sports because pure sports are usually the most successful (Haikyuu!! and Kuroko no Basket). So far for me, only YoI has successfully melded together all the genres it attempts.

3) Characters. It is said that sports anime highly depends on its characters to be good and set itself apart from other sports anime... and that’s pretty true. Most sports anime follow a rigid, predictable plot structure that doesn’t allow for much creativity on that front, so aside from technical aspects like the production values, the characters’ likability are the only things that it can rely on for originality. Of course, as I’ve already discussed, YoI blends genres and isn’t just pure sports so it has more freedom, but even it follows the same basic plot structure: main character is an underdog (they’re usually underdogs) who wants to win the finals.

So, what about the characters? Honestly, they’re fucking great. The problem with sports anime characters in most cases is that authors will fall back on tired stereotypes. Even the best of sports anime tends to have really obvious archetype characters you can recognize instantly. YoI doesn’t really have that. Yes, some of the characters do follow archetypes a litte, but even in the short amount of time they are given, they end up having miles more depth than the average sports anime character. It helps that we get to see them interacting with each other off the ice too. YoI is a character driven show much more than it is a plot-driven one. The plot is fairly simple, but the characters and their development are the most important part, particularly the main character, Yuuri Katsuki. He is relatable but also very believably talented and multifaceted. Viktor comes off as kind of a passive aggressive jerk at first, but he is one of the kindest and most caring characters in the show. Yurio comes off like an aggressive little brat (and he is still a little shit, I hope he gets more development in s2), but he’s genuinely a prodigy and he cares about Yuuri’s career. Listen, I could keep going and list another 5 characters that I like, but that’s not the point of this review.

That about covers the major things... I could go on, but then I might never shut up. To summarize, YoI is not perfect, but it is still so important for the gains in made for gay representation and besides that, it’s a rich, funny, heartwarming, and interesting portrayal of figure skating. I am sincerely looking forward to season 2 and hope that it’s just as good or even better than season 1.

[hey-i-wrote-a-story]

Chapter 17 The Story Games

           “What did you mean by that?”, Scott asked.

“We wanted our lives to reflect yours”, Kaitlyn said. “The way you guys are, how you treat each other, how you treat other people, how you help them. So we—“

           Freddie shot her a panicked look. He was a bit too obvious about it, because everybody else noticed it to. Before anyone could ask what he was so worried about, Kaitlyn interrupted her own monologue.

           “They’ve already got us, Fred. We might as well tell them about the games.”

Freddie’s concern faded visibly and he said with forced resignation, “Oh. Yeah. I guess so.”

“What do mean ‘games’?”, Scott asked.

“We created our own online community, just the four of us”, Kaitlyn answered.

“An online community where you did what?”, Stiles asked.

“Told stories, just like Kaitlyn did”, Erin interjected. “But they were all based on you—all of you, or at least all of you that Kaitlyn had ‘seen’.”

“Why not just sit around and tell each other stories face to face, like at a campfire?”, Malia asked.

“Having our stories written down and saved made them feel more permanent, more lasting”, Aadesh said. “Like we had a record of them. Our own continuity.”

“All this stuff about us is posted online?”, Scott said, alarmed.

Erin held up a hand, “That’s why we decided to only use the archetype titles. Just in case for whatever reason our stuff was seen by anyone else, we got hacked, or anything. Don’t worry, you’re identities are safe.”

Freddie looked at them with absolute sincerity and said, “We’d never screw you over like that.”

“Even the place names are different”, Aadesh said, looking very proud of himself. “Our stories don’t even take place in Beacon Hills. We call it Lighthouse Knoll.” He pointed to himself and grinned. “I came up with that one.”

“So you weren’t just recounting what Kaitlyn had already told you”, Lydia realized. “You were making up entirely new stories.”

“How is that a game, exactly?”, Stiles asked.

Erin looked at him with annoyance, thinking he was slow to catch on.

“One-upsmanship”, Aadesh explained. “We’d each try to outdo each other with our next story. Who had the best action scene, suspense, dialogue, villain. Friendly competition is good for sparking your creativity.” His friends nodded in agreement.

“It also helped a lot for moments when you got stuck and didn’t know what you wanted the characters to do”, Freddie explained. “We’d share feedback and stuff.”

The enthusiasm returning to his voice, he continued, “Like, what would happen if the Oracle new something important but couldn’t get it to her friends when they most needed it? Or, or, what if the Warrior and the Champion team up to stop some small gang of villains but find out when they confront them that there are like way more than they expected and they’re surrounded??”

“That sounds painfully familiar”, Kira said.

“Oh, Freddie wrote that one long before the whole thing with the assassins happened”, Aadesh. “It’s actually one of my favorites.”

“Hey, thanks, man”, Freddie said to his friend. “You never told me that.”

“Well, it was.”

“Okay, hold it”, Lydia interrupted. “We’re getting off track here. You’re telling us that once Kaitlyn got her visions about us—and we still have no clue why it was us specifically she saw in her visions—you were so moved by what you saw that you stopped your scofflaw ways and started swapping stories about us out of what—admiration?”

“Pretty much, yeah”, Aadesh agreed.

Lydia looked to her friends with a doubtful expression. Stiles shrugged. “Well, we are pretty impressive.”

           “We even took the games a step further”, Aadesh told them. “We’d meet in a private chat room sometimes and go through new stories like an RPG.”

           Scott looked to Stiles, who said flatly, “Role-playing game.”

           “It was awesome!”, Freddie beamed. “Way better than anything you could lift—er, pick up at a game store.”

           “It was seriously fun”, Kaitlyn agreed. “It was creative and interesting—“

           “And it kept us off the streets”, Erin added.

           “That too”, Kaitlyn nodded to her friend. “Pretty quick we found out who was best at what. Aadesh was good with names, Erin was a boss with story premises and setting, Freddie totally rules at dialogue and characterization. Then Taylor would come up with the best monsters—“

           “Wait”, Scott stopped her. “There are more of you??”

           “Just the one”, Erin assured him, though her words helped very little. “We checked him out and everything ahead of time, he’s cool.”

           “Cool as in he’s only been to juvie a few times, or cool as in he’s never been caught?”, Stiles asked pointedly.

           “He’s never been anything, period”, Aadesh said, resenting Stiles’ implication. “He was on another site that we browsed for ideas. He pinged us, said hi, we chatted, he was really cool, and pretty soon he was part of the group. One hell of an artist.”

           “We didn’t bring him with us”, Freddie was quick to point out. “He doesn’t even live in the same part of the country. He has no idea any of our stories are based on real stuff.”

           “But seriously”, Erin smirked, leaning back in her seat, “the story games were pretty amazing.”

“And let me guess”, Lydia said, focusing on the four newcomers, “before long just writing about our experiences, even doing this online gaming thing, wasn’t enough. You had to experience it for yourselves.”

The foursome exchanged looks and then nodded to one another. “Yeah.” “Uh-huh.” “Yup.” “Yeah.” Erin turned to Lydia and answered for the group.

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

           Lydia stared back at them, waiting. “Well? How did you go about this?”

           Kira was curious about that too. “Did you research things at a library, or look for someone you thought would have knowledge of the supernatural? You had to start somewhere. Wherever you started led to someplace pretty bad. You don’t get monsters chasing after you overnight.”

           “Look”, Erin said, waving a hand in a broad gesture, “roughly it kind of went like this—“  Aadesh cleared his throat, stopping what he was sure would have been a bare bones explanation of vagaries and half-truths.

“It’s past time to spill everything”, Aadesh said. Looking to Kaitlyn and then back to Erin, he added, “Wouldn’t you say?”

“It is”, Kaitlyn said earnestly.

           Freddie began to shake his head and opened his mouth to speak. Kaitlyn gently placed a hand over his mouth. She looked at him sternly. Trust me. Freddie shut his trap, and sank back into his seat.

           “We were used to skirting the system”, she began, getting right to the point. “And we’d picked up enough from watching all of you to have a good idea of where to start Googling. Keywords, phrases, names of certain substances. These led to names of select books, whose indexes led to more books, more names, and eventually…procedures.”

           “Procedures?”, Liam asked. He’d been so quiet up till now that his question caught everyone off guard.

           “Spells”, Erin clarified. “She means spells.”

           “Like magic?”, Liam asked.

           “Like magic”, Erin confirmed, and nodded for Kaitlyn to take it from there.

           “The more we searched, the more we found”, Kaitlyn explained. “Ingredients for potions, recipes and instructions for using and mixing them—“

           “From where?!”, Stiles said, incredulous. “This isn’t the kind of stuff you just run across in the paid-for ad section on Google. What, did you find an app for Dial-a-Demon, or visit Cursed Apothecary Dot Com?”

           “Have you ever heard of the Dark Web?”, Erin asked.

           A hush fell over the room. Stiles looked at Scott with great trepidation, and Lydia and Kira exchanged frightened looks. Liam looked lost, but could tell that Erin had just said something very bad. Malia didn’t understand what had just happened. It bothered her.

           “What is that? What’s the Dark Web?”

           Stiles swallowed and answered his girlfriend. “It’s someplace you definitely want to avoid. You do not want to go there. Ever.”

           Scott added, “It’s a part of the internet that’s very well hidden. You really have to know how to dig and search to get there.” Freddie raised his hand and gave a little wave, indicating it was his skill at the keyboard that did just that. Scott continued, “It’s filled with sites and rooms where you can get anything you want, or see anything you want, no matter how dark that is.”

           Stiles looked at Malia and said, “It’s basically the criminal underworld of the web.”

           “We didn’t go to any of those places”, Aadesh said rapidly. “We just wanted the means to do…what we wanted to do.”

           “Which was?”, Lydia asked.

           “It was cool!”, Freddie gushed. “With the help of the girls, we got to do glamours and other illusions and tricks.”

           “They weren’t tricks”, Erin said, annoyed. “Dogs do tricks. They were craft.”

           “Glamour?”, Malia said.

           “It’s a kind of spell that makes you see something other than what’s really there”, Kira told her. “You could look at an orange and think it was a cat.”

           “Just like that!”, Freddie went on.

           “Some of us were better at it than others”, Erin remarked under her breath.

           Aadesh looked at Erin with laser eyes, recalling a time when he, Kaitlyn, and Freddie sat on the floor with character sheets and story outlines scattered around them. They were so caught up in their shared storytelling that they didn’t see the monstrous, big-bellied form of a certain despised detention center warden burst through the door, shouting, “Whattayou kids think you’re doing in here?!” The three friends nearly wet themselves from fright until the obese warden burst out laughing a very high-pitched, feminine laugh. The image of the warden faded away to reveal Erin underneath, leaning against the door frame and howling hysterically.

Aadesh stared down Erin sitting across from him now in the cramped conference room, and commented, “And some of us could even use it to be dicks.” Erin snickered, placing a hand over mouth.

“The tric—the craft was mostly little stuff,” Freddie gushed before anyone could ask about the odd exchange that had just happened. “But every once in a while we’d find something big. I even levitated once!”

           “You levitated?”, Stiles said in disbelief.

           “It was only for like 5 seconds”, Aadesh said.

           “And it wasn’t true levitation”, Erin said. “I was trying to throw you.”

           “It was still cool”, Freddie maintained.

           “So all this…supernatural exploration of yours”, Kira ventured, “kept growing in scope the more you did it?”  The four kids all nodded.

           “You go nosing around unknown forces”, Stiles scolded, “poke it with a stick, and then you’re surprised when something nasty comes out of it?”

           “Look, we know what we did was a mistake. This is not what we wanted at all. You have to believe that.”

           “Oh, we have to?”, Stiles sneered.

           “You don’t have to, but we want you to”, Aadesh said.

“We need you to”, Kaitlyn stressed. “We are way out of our depth. It was never supposed to come to this.” The group of newcomers were no longer looking at each other for cues or to any of the friends of Beacon Hills to whom they had started to grow attached. This time, all eyes were on Scott. He was the one they came for primarily. It was his pack, his team, and he was The Champion.

           Erin spread her hands out in a gesture of supplication and said to him, “Help us, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope.”

           Scott furrowed his brow in confusion. “What?!” He pointed to his chest. “My name’s McCall.”

           The four kids looked at each other with matching expressions of Are you kidding me??

           Stiles shook his head. “You are so talking to the wrong guy.” Under his breath, he muttered, “Of all the details they know about us, that one they miss.” Then out loud, “So you’re saying you need the stalwart hero and his merry band of can-do misfits to rescue you from the scary big bad.”

           “Is that what they were saying?”, Scott asked.

           The door opened and Sheriff Stilinski stuck his head in. “Scott, Stiles, Lydia, Kira, could you step out here a moment?” To the four friends he said, “Won’t be a minute.” Then looking to Malia and Liam, “Keep them company, would you?”

           Malia decided she should be included, so she followed the others out without a word.

           Liam watched her go and then turned back to the four newcomers who sat silently. “So I guess I’ll keep you company”, he said.

 Sheriff Stilinski led the pack out into the hallway just beyond the conference room. He filled them in on the rough synopsis of the four kids’ checkered past.

Kira took note of the sheaf of printouts in the sheriff’s hand. “Aren’t juvenile records supposed to be sealed?”, she asked.

“When your job is to keep the peace in a town where juveniles can turn into giant killer lizards that spit paralyzing venom—“, he began. Stiles interrupted.

“It’s the claws”, he said, waggling his fingers. “Kanima venom comes from its claws.”

“Whatever”, his dad said, perturbed. “In a town like this, you sometimes need to take…certain liberties to preserve the public good.”

Malia frowned. “How do you even get into those sites--?”

Sheriff Stilinski was quick to turn back to his son. “Stiles, a recap of what I missed, please.”

Stiles then filled his dad in on what happened to the kids four years ago and why it changed their behavior. With everyone up to speed, there was a moment’s silence when a question lingered in the air. What to do with a bunch of teenagers who had technically done nothing wrong (in the eyes of the law, anyway), wanted to do good, but while on that journey tampered with something dangerous. Further, the rush that came with their discoveries was one they would most likely not want to give up, despite the chaos they’d unintentionally wrought.

Before anyone could make a suggestion, offer a quip, or state the obvious, Lydia posed a question.  Turning to Scott, she asked, seemingly out of the blue, “Have you ever seen the movie Dear Wendy?”

Scott blinked in confusion. “Like…Peter Pan’s Wendy?”

Lydia was quick to turn to the rest of the group. “Right. Not the best person to ask. Anyone else?”  She was met with shaking heads, shrugged shoulders, and blank expressions. Stiles offered a “Huhn-uh”.

“Abridged version”, Lydia began. “It’s a foreign-made film—“

“Well no wonder nobody’s seen it”, Stiles interjected.

Lydia held up a finger to silence him. Not so fast. “A foreign-made film with English-speaking actors about a story set in modern America. A group of kids in an out-of-the-way town, mostly loners who see themselves as losers, form a tightly-knit group based upon a fascination with antique firearms.”

“A gun club”, the Sheriff said.

“More or less, but not quite”, Lydia said. No one knew what she was driving at or what it had to do with their current situation.

“So they go crazy and start shooting up their town, then?”, Stiles asked.

“Oddly enough, no”, Lydia continued. “They keep their guns secret, never take them out in public, and even build a code of honor and behavior they all swear to live by.”

“So they become protectors”, Kira assumed.

“They think they do”, Lydia said, but she glanced back in the direction of the foursome in the next room just long enough to indicate that she wasn’t just recalling an old movie. “They want to be protectors, but…”

“Let me guess”, Scott said. “It doesn’t end well, does it?”

“A group of outcasts drawn together by circumstance and seduced by the idea of wielding power? Not so much.”

“Okay, okay”, Sheriff Stilinski said, “I see where this is going. I think we’re all in agreement that these kids are up to their necks in something they should never have been messing with in the first place. And we can’t count on them to clean up the mess, or get the genie back in the bottle, or worms in the can, or whatever metaphor you’re prone to pick.”

“So you’re saying it’s up to us”, Scott said.

The sheriff stared back at him with a hard gaze and sighed. “It has become your specialty.”

“This isn’t even our problem!”, Stiles protested.

“If we let this thing snowball, it will be”, Scott said flatly.

Malia had grown impatient. “So what’s our next step? We throw them outside and wait for that thing to come eat them and maybe it’ll go away, or what?”

“Honey”, Stiles said, gently stroking Malia’s arm, “Remember our talk about empathy?”

“Yeah. It was stupid. So where do we dump them?”

Scott stepped in before the discussion could degenerate further. “Before we do anything, there’s something I’d like to ask them. It has nothing to do with movies.” With that, he grabbed the doorknob and strode through the door.

             “Why didn’t you just ask us for help?”, Scott asked. He stared hard enough at the four kids that they felt as if a heat lamp had been trained on them. Their whole scheme made no sense to him. He did not like being unable to make sense of things. “Why the big ruse, pretending to be our friends? You could have just come straight out with it.”

           Erin fixed him with a steady gaze. “If four complete strangers had approached you with a story about needing your help to stop a big monster they themselves had somehow drawn out—purely with the best of intentions, mind you—a monster that was now coming after them, but oh no, we don’t mean you guys any harm—would you have believed them?”

           Stiles answered first. “No.”

           Before Stiles had finished that single syllable, Scott said, “Yes.”

           The best friends looked at each other. Stiles made one of his pronounced frowny faces and repeated slowly, “Nnoooo.”

           Scott stared right back and said with emphasis, “Yes.”

           As Stiles glared at his friend with a look that questioned his sanity, Sheriff Stilinski stepped in.  “Okay, nobody here’s doing anything to solve any trust issues, but that’s a moot point. I have nothing to charge you with and I’m going to have a hell of a time explaining why I have four minors in protective custody against a flying monster. Which means one thing to me: You all need to go. Now.”

           “So we do dump them!”, Malia said.  The sheriff shot her a look and she backed off a bit.

           “But we want to help!”, Aadesh pleaded.

           “Oh, I’d say you’ve done more than your share of ‘helping’”, Lydia stated. “I think we can take it from here. Thanks for ruining my weekend.”

           Erin stood. “Look, we messed up. We know that. But at least let us—“

           “This monster is here”, the sheriff countered. “A monster that is evidently so scary that you don’t even know what to call it. So while the monster…the creature, whatever it is…is buzzing Beacon Hills, you four need to be somewhere else. Preferably somewhere far, far away.” Freddie tried to say something, but the sheriff held up his palm, silencing him. “Do you have someplace you can go? I assume you have somewhere that you live, wherever you came from.”

           Kaitlyn crossed her arms in a feeble show of defiance, but said, “Yeah.”  The other three glanced at her for a split second. A question lingered in their eyes, but it was gone quickly enough that no one noticed it.

           “Then that’s where you’re going”, the sheriff said. “End of discussion. As much as I’d like to arrange an official police escort, driving four waywards home to another city does not fall under our job description. Plus, I want a full complement of deputies here on monster watch.” He turned to his son. “Can you kids see to it that they get out of here and stay out?”

           “We can do the chauffeur thing, yeah”, Stiles said.

           “We don’t need to be chauffeured”, Freddie said. “We’ve got my pickup. I can just drive us.”

           “I want to be certain you get where you’re going”, the sheriff countered. “We don’t need you meandering all over the landscape. You leave the truck here and get a ride.” Freddie started to protest. Rambling rust bucket though it was, the pickup was his baby. The sheriff saw what the boy was about to say and cut him off. “We’ll see to it that you get it back once the crisis is over. End of discussion. You good to go, Stiles? Enough gas and so forth?”

           Stiles nodded. “They’re not all gonna fit in my jeep, though.”

           “I have a car”, Kira said.

           “There you go”, the sheriff said. He then looked at the four new kids and pointed towards the door, “And there you go.”

           The foursome hung their heads and pouted, respectively. But reluctantly, they stood up and let the sheriff lead them out of the room. The girls followed close behind and Scott moved to take up the rear. Stiles stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

           “We really need to work on that suspicious nature of yours, buddy.”

           “I don’t have a suspicious nature”, Scott said.

           “That’s what we need to work on.”

 As the newcomers were ushered out of the sheriff’s station, Freddie lingered behind again, this time trying to attach himself to Stiles. Seeing the redhead shuffling beside him, Stiles attempted to push him on ahead. “Come on, kiddo. Time to go. No use dragging your feet.” He was partly hoping for an excuse to smack him. Make a run for it, you little runt, I dare you.

“Sure, I wasn’t—it’s just, I wanted to say, to tell you—if we get to have another adventure together—“

Stiles scoffed. “Assuming we live through this one.”

“That if we team-up again—“

“This is hardly what I’d call a team-up.”

“That I would be honored to be your Robin.”  

Stiles looked at the overeager Freddie and saw that he was completely sincere. As if being a sidekick to the young detective would be a dream come true. In that moment, Stiles felt a seismic shift in his feelings toward the hyperactive redhead. Stiles put his arm around Freddie and patted his shoulder. “I shall teach you my ways, little redbreast. Your lessons will include how to use sarcasm as a means of self-defense. But first, the fine art of running away.” Stepping livelier now, Freddie allowed his hero to lead him out of the station.

Maybe the kid wasn’t so bad after all, Stiles thought.

[hey-i-wrote-a-story]

Chapter 25 Words and Pictures

Morning came far too early for the exhausted young man keenly feeling the loss of his friend, as well as for the young man who offered his couch to the boy who saw him as his hero and protector. It was a role for which Stiles Stilinski thought himself preposterously ill-equipped. His father had already come and gone and was back at the sheriff station doing the best he could by doing his job. Stiles found that while he couldn’t make omelettes or whip up a batch of pancakes as proficiently as his dad, he was an expert at pouring a bowl of cereal. For that job, he was more than qualified. Stiles held up a box bearing a brightly-colored logo above a touched-up photo of a large bowl of sumptuous glazed oats and miniature marshmallows under a cascade of milk. A chipper cartoon mascot pointed happily to the image in case you missed it.

“This alright?”

It took Freddie a moment to register the question, before offering a quick, “Sure.” Freddie had been in something of a daze since he got up. Physically he was there in the Stilinski kitchen, but mentally he was back on the highway still under attack by the monster.

“Thinking about last night?”, Stiles asked, already knowing the answer.

Freddie nodded. “Thinking about Erin, mostly. I hadn’t even known her that long, really. But we were close. We kind of bonded, our group.” Stiles knew what he meant. Freddie rubbed his forehead. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”

“My mom had a saying she used to tell me”, Stiles said. “Don’t be sad that it’s over, be glad that it happened.”

Freddie thought about that for a moment, taking it in. It did help a little. Then he tilted his head to one side, thinking. “Who said that? Dr. Seuss?”

Stiles gave Freddie a look and answered, “No. My mom did. What did I just say?” With that, he gave his new friend a playful slap on the shoulder and poured the cereal.

They sat across from each other, Stiles and Freddie, both of them keeping quiet. Stiles preoccupied himself by reading the back of the cereal box, pretending he hadn’t already solved the kids’ maze and word search 20 times before today. Freddie kept glancing around the kitchen, as if he were trying to memorize the layout, or perhaps search for some unusual item like a deerstalker cap or an oversized magnifying glass. He could only do that for so long before he focused his eyes on where he had wanted to be looking since he sat down. At Stiles.

Freddie stared at Stiles, grinning, until Stiles couldn’t stand it anymore. “What?”, he said. “Do I have a booger dangling from my nose or something?”

Freddie laughed at that and said, “Sorry. It’s just, I still can’t get over how different you look from how I pictured you.” Stiles crinkled his brow, prompting Freddie to hold up his phone, tap out a password, and reveal page after page of scrolling text. “From the stories.”

Stiles nodded in understanding and occupied himself with clearing the breakfast dishes. Freddie, now having started, kept talking. “From Kaitlyn’s descriptions that we worked from, you seemed like…originally when she talked about you, she said you were this really cool, goofy guy. Her words.”

“Yeah, some of us have a history of disappointing others. It’s our cross to bear.”

“No, no, it’s not that”, Freddie said quickly. “It’s like, you’re Scott’s best friend, right?”

“Since we were like four, yeah.”

“So that makes you the hero’s best friend. And the hero’s best friend is always kind of a caricature so he doesn’t outshine the hero. I’m used to the best friend being short, and clumsy, or having Coke bottle glasses, or really bad hair—“

Stiles ran his fingers through his hair, suddenly very self-conscious. “My hair isn’t that bad—“

“No, not at all!”, Freddie interjected. “For another thing, you’re taller than I imagined. Your hair is awesome—“

“Hey, thanks. That’s nice of you to say—“

“And you are incredibly attractive.”

Stiles stopped short. Had he just heard that right? He leaned forward a little. “Sorry, but would you mind repeating that?”

“You are incredibly attractive”, Freddie said again. This time he was blushing. “I mean like, really, really attractive.”

Stiles sat back down. That’s what I thought he said. He pointed a finger at the freckle-faced Freddie. “And you’re gay, right?” Freddie nodded. Stiles turned his pointing finger back towards himself. “And you find me attractive.” Freddie nodded again, faster.

Then Freddie worried this might cause some tension with his new friend, and he said quickly, “I hope that doesn’t make you feel uncomforta—“

Stiles cut him off. “NO. Not at all.” He gave his new pal a friendly pat on the shoulder. “We’re good.” This time, there was no hesitation in saying that.

Freddie smiled brightly. And Stiles’ face split into a beautiful, broad grin of satisfaction, even though he wasn’t aware he was doing it.

                                                     *    *    *

 “Goooood morning”, Stiles chirped as he and Freddie entered the McCall house.

“You’re awfully chipper”, Scott observed. “What are you so happy about?”

“Not that much, really”, Stiles countered.

“Dude, you’re grinning like an idiot.”

Stiles reached up and felt his face, as if to confirm what his best friend was saying. “Am I?”

Kira rounded the corner, having just arrived, and paused as she spotted Stiles, or rather, his expression. “Someone’s in a good mood.”

“People keep saying that”, said Stiles.

Kira walked up to Scott and gave her boyfriend a light kiss. “Hey.

Scott smiled back, placing an affectionate arm around her. “Hey.”

Malia entered through the side door. The pack’s entrances often felt like they were cast members of a sitcom, who often walked in precisely when they were supposed to. In Malia’s case, the pack was now accustomed to her showing up out of nowhere and coming and going unannounced. No one could figure out if she was even spending that much time at home or huddled in a cave somewhere in the woods, and they had long since stopped trying. Malia eyed her boyfriend suspiciously.

“Why the smile?” Stiles just shrugged. Malia approached him. “You have no reason to smile, that I know of.” Stiles made an expression of puzzlement, indicating he was at a loss to explain it. He was about to voice the same when Malia pulled him forward and brought him into a long, deep kiss. Stiles moaned a little under the sudden onslaught of affection, but quickly surrendered to it. After several seconds, Malia pulled back, allowing the stunned Stiles to catch his breath. He inhaled a sharp gasp just in time for Malia to draw him close again. This time, her kiss lasted considerably longer. Scott and Kira watched with wide eyes. Freddie looked on with considerably awe and a tinge of jealousy. Aadesh and Kaitlyn came in from the kitchen and stopped in their tracks. Aadesh let out a soft “Whoaaaa.”

Malia finally disengaged from Stiles, using one powerful arm to brace his shoulder, holding him up until his body recovered from being limp as a rag doll. “Now you have a reason to smile.” As Stiles collected himself, Malia quickly ran her fingers through his gelled hair and stepped away.

Scott smiled wider at Kira. “My turn?”

Kira swatted him playfully on the chest and rolled her eyes.

“Stiles?”, Scott said.

Stiles looked back with glazed eyes. “Mm?”

“You texted that you had something to show us.”

Stiles blinked twice, trying to get his neurons to fire. Then, “Yes. Right! I did. And I do.” He gave Freddie a signal, pointing back towards the kitchen and said, “Robin, see to our guests.”  Everyone repaired to the kitchen, where Aadesh and Kaitlyn sat down on stool around the center island. “Freddie here has become a grand master at serving breakfast cereal”, Stiles announced, opening cupboards to reveal bowls and colorful cardboard boxes adorned with cartoon characters. He yanked open a silverware drawer to reveal an assortment of spoons and gestured to the refrigerator to indicate where the milk would be found.

“He’s never been over here before, has he?”, Kira mumbled to Scott ironically.

“No, never.”

Stiles patted Freddie on the back and said, “I taught him everything he knows. Fred, take it from here.”

Freddie started grabbing bowls to lay before his two friends. “Step right up, you who would break your fast!”

Stiles curled a finger inward to indicate the others should follow him. He led them up the stairs to Scott’s room.

“What is it you wanted to show us?”, Scott asked. “Is it any new insight into the monster?”

“Nope, but it’s a goodly chunk of insight on the ones who brought it here.”

  Inside Scott’s room, the door securely locked for privacy, the group was trying to digest Stiles’ announcement.

“We have a fandom? With only four people.”, Kira asked, incredulous. “How does that work?”

“Well, when obsessed little fanboys—and girls”, Stiles said, correcting himself, “take it upon themselves to start reviewing our lives like their favorite soap opera and playing RPGs and writing fan fiction about us.”

Kira gave him a look but opted to ignore his sarcasm. “So it was too much to hope they were exaggerating about really writing down stories about us. They were serious about that?”

“You have no idea how serious. You got your phone on you?”

Kira handed her cell phone over to Stiles, who deftly accessed the internet and called up a certain web site, and punched in a password.

“Feast your eyes”, he said. “But don’t say you weren’t warned.”

Kira stared wide-eyed and then began swiping the screen. “Oh my God, this is crazy. And anyone can access this? Our lives are out there for anyone to read about?”

“Oh no”, Stiles assured her. “Members only. You need a password. And they have a very exclusive membership policy.”

“How many members?”, Scott asked.

Stiles held up one hand, palm forward, fingers spread. “Five.”

Kira nodded. “Right. The one kid from somewhere else they didn’t bring with them.”

“So how’d you get in?”, Scott asked.

“I was gifted with a special all-access password. As someone with celebrity status.” Scott snickered and Kira covered her mouth to hide the grin. It was so difficult to imagine their adorkable Stiles as having any kind of status, much less celebrity. “Hey, you’re eligible too, I imagine. If you’re really interested in literarily torturing yourself.”

“Scott, look at this!”, Kira said, holding the phone out to him. “An All-Original Tale of Love and Loss: A Fox Among Wolves.”

Scott was taken aback. “Does it really say that?”

Kira swiped through the text and picked a random passage. “‘But NO, the beautiful young Warrior cried’,” she read melodramatically. “‘Her hand unconsciously moving to her chest, as if to clutch her heart in an attempt to slow its frantic beating’.”

“No way”, Scott said, stepping beside Kira to read along with her.

Kira continued, “You cannot go out there and face the”, she paused, pointing at the screen. “What’s that word?”

Scott leaned forward, squinting. “Billgy…no, Bilge. Bilgesnipe. What’s a Bilgesnipe?”

“I have no idea, but apparently you can’t go out there and face one.”

“Well, I guess not”, Scott grinned.

Kira continued her dramatic reading. “‘You cannot go out there and face the Bilgesnipe alone! My fox’s heart cannot bear it!!’…with two exclamation points.” She pointed at the screen, snickering, indicating that Scott should take the next line.

“Oh, you want me to--? Okay.” He cleared his throat and assumed what he thought was a heroic tone of voice. “’But I must, my darling kitsune”, the Champion declared. “For no amount of mystical swordplay can protect you from its deadly spikes! It is up to me, and me alone, to face this ravening monster for the good of Lighthouse Knoll, and take it down with my fearsome fangs and my unstoppable claws of justice!’” Kira was about to wet herself with laughter when Scott pondered, “How come I only get one exclamation point?”

“I may throw up”, Stiles said. “I may just bend over and hurl at this very moment.”

Malia looked over at him with an expression of solidarity. “After I do.”

“I thought they were just jotting down little scenes and e-mailing them to each other”, Kira admitted. “And the rest would all be chat room stuff. But this--!”

“Stiles”, I thought this was going to be something bad”, Scott said, laughing along with Kira.

“You think that’s good?? Twilight slash fiction is better than that.”

Malia looked sideways at Stiles. “You read Twilight slash fiction?”

Stiles shrugged. “I’m assuming that’d be better.”

“But for real, Stiles”, Scott said, catching his breath. “I thought you were about to tell us they were posting some kind of blog about who we are, where we live, who are loved ones are—you know, exposing us. I really don’t think this is anything to get worried about.”

“If this is all there is”, Kira said, wiping away a tear, “I’d say we’re pretty safe.”

“Oh, there’s more”, Stiles said in a cautionary tone. He walked over and pointed to a selection on the site’s menu.

“Gallery?”, Kira said, touching the tab. A flood of pictures filled the screen, appearing as a grid and rushing forth in what seemed a never-ending downward stream. “This is a whole lot more than a few sketchbook doodles by Freddie. There’s fan art?!”

“Really? Let me see!” Scott pushed Stiles out of the way to get a better look.

“Well”, Kira smiled, “if it’s half as bad as the writing, then it—hey. This stuff is really good. Like professional good. There’s computer art, sketches, comics…wow.”

“Five people did all this?”, Scott questioned aloud.

“Look at the dates, you can see they’ve been posting for a while now”, Kira pointed out. “Well, um, I can’t actually shoot lightning bolts out of the tip of my sword”, she remarked, looking at one piece of art.

“It does look cool, though”, Scott observed.

“It does”, Kira agreed. “Oh, Malia!”

“What?”, Malia looked over at her, curious.

“It’s a portrait. It’s all done in colored pencil...and it’s beautiful!”

“Seriously, come here, check this out”, Scott urged, waving her over.

Malia stepped over to them, looked down at the screen to see a rather detailed portrait, lovingly rendered. It bore similarities to Malia’s hair, her expression, and the shape of her face. Malia pursed her lips as she scrutinized it. “That looks nothing like me.” She walked away, unimpressed.

“None of them are very good likenesses”, Scott commented.

Kira considered that. “Probably because they were all just working from Kaitlyn’s descriptions.” Stiles was about to confirm Kira’s assumption when she jumped in again. “Hey, Stiles!” Scott’s eyes widened and he smiled open-mouthed at what he saw. “Did you see this cartoon?”, she asked. “It’s of you and Der—“ she got no further, as Stiles was over to her in an instant snatching away the phone.

“Yes, I am aware”, he said, with an edge in his voice. “I am very much aware of the Stiles and Derek cartoon, thank-you.” Stiles gave the offending cartoon a cursory glance and then hurriedly swiped it away. “I believe I’ve seen all the cartoons, and portraits, and caricatures, and the comic book action panels, and—“ he stopped, something on the screen catching his gaze and holding it. “Except that.”

Scott could feel a change in the room and saw Stiles’ face go slack. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing important”, Stiles said, his thumb moving swiftly on the touch screen. “We shouldn’t be wasting time with this stuff anyway. Let me just log out of here—“

As Stiles was going for the logout option, Scott crossed the room. With his enhanced speed, he was at his best friend’s side instantly, the phone in his hand.

“Scott, let it go”, Stiles warned. “You’re not gonna want to—“

Scott had already hit the back button to bring up the previous selection. He wanted to know what Stiles had seen. “Just let me see what you were looking at. If it’s something that could potentially hurt us, or even one of us—“  Scott stopped right there. He stared silently at the artwork displayed on the tiny screen. It stood out among all the playful cartoons, anime-styled renditions, and dramatic images of fierce monsters and action scenes of the heroes fighting them. This image was somber and dark. The palette used was mostly black and grays. A slim shaft of light made up of subdued blues and violet shone down from the top border onto two characters huddled near the bottom of the page. The light revealed a teenage boy, down on his knees. Clutched in his lap was a fallen, beautiful girl with long raven hair. An ebony sword protruded from her chest. The teenage boy wept over her at the agonizing final moment when the light left her eyes. Hidden in the shadows around them were hovering black ghosts, bodies like wisps of smoke, their faces the leering, grinning masks of the devil. The likenesses were completely off. Although the depicted figures bore no resemblance to anyone, it was painfully clear what the drawn scene was meant to represent.

A heavy silence hung in the room. Only Scott and Stiles knew what was on that screen, but everyone felt uncomfortable. Malia did not like feeling uncomfortable.

“What?”, she asked. Stiles shot her a look that would stop a train, but she persisted. “What??” Stiles locked eyes with her and after pausing to register his expression, she understood. There were some things that were not to be discussed. This must have been one of them. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. Despite wanting to persist in her questions, she refrained, but still bore an expression so that all present knew she was not happy about it. It was progress.

Kira took one step forward. “Scott?”

Stiles looked over at her and shook his head. No. Don’t ask. So she didn’t.

The silence continued, filling the room like a humid fog, broken only when Scott spoke. “Stiles is right. We shouldn’t be wasting time with this stuff.” He thumbed his way out of the web site and shut off the phone. He handed it brusquely to Kira, who almost dropped it.

[hey-i-wrote-a-story]

Chapter 40 Hard Questions

           Melissa stuck her head into the living room from around the corner to find her three young houseguests sitting around moping. She offered a smile that she hoped would lighten the mood and asked a typical mom question. Even a hint of normalcy would be welcome in the present situation.

           “Any of you kids hungry?”

           Kaitlyn nodded, Freddie said quickly, “I’m starved” and Aadesh admitted, “I could eat.”

           “Sit tight”, she suggested. “I’ll have something ready within the next twenty minutes. Sound good?”

           The trio thanked her, offering nods of gratitude and weak smiles to show their appreciation. As soon as Melissa had returned to the kitchen, Aadesh looked to Kaitlyn.

           “Now?”

           Kaitlyn held up a small cloth bag she’d gotten from her backpack. It was tied with a thin strip of shoelace leather, which she pulled free. A thin stream of colored smoke wafted upward from the bag, filling the room with its pleasant scent.

           Melissa was around the corner in a second. “Is something burning?”

           “Oh, I’m sorry”, Kaitlyn said. “I should have asked first. I’m not used to having someone around who cares about that kind of…” she let her voice trail off in a manner she hoped would inspire a bit of sympathy for her being without parents or any kind of reliable authority figure in her life. She continued quickly. “It’s incense. We always use it when we’re getting too stressed. It helps us to relax, stay calm…think things through.” She held up her hand, displaying the bag with the colored smoke rising from it liberally.

           Melissa looked at Kaitlyn’s hand and saw a small, dime-store candle holder. It was cheap metal, but colored to look gold. It was cut to look like a floral pattern surrounded its base. It was rather lovely, really. In its center was a small purple cone, the very tip already an ashen gray, sending inviting purple smoke upward in a tiny stream.

           The two boys looked at Melissa, then back to Kaitlyn, the back to Melissa, trying to read her expression. They said nothing, but their expressions were tense. Freddie swallowed hard.

           “I can put it out, if you want”, Kaitlyn offered.

           Melissa tilted her head, smelling the air. “Is that…lavender?”

           Kaitlyn grinned. “Yeah.”

           Melissa smiled back. “No, you can leave it. It’s nice. Just keep anything flammable away from it. Put it in the center of the table.”

           Kaitlyn nodded, setting the smoldering bag in the center of the coffee table. “Thank-you, Mrs. McCall.”

           “You can call me Melissa.” She returned to the kitchen, and a second after she was gone, the boys breathed a sigh of relief.

           Kaitlyn snatched the bag from the small table and stood. The boys nodded at her. Do it now. Kaitlyn tossed the bag into the air lightly, and it came down on the floor not three feet from where she stood. A rush of wind burst from the bag. The smoke filling the air swirled around the three would-be heroes and formed a dusty ring that settled onto the ground, encircling them. A surge of energy rose from the ring and encompassed them in a sphere of translucent energy, which faded to invisibility in less than a heartbeat.

           Kaitlyn returned to her chair, telling the boys what they already knew. “Let’s be quick about this. We don’t have much time.” Even at that, it was a few more seconds before any of them spoke. But once they began to speak, it wasn’t long before they were in the thick of a heated discussion.

           “--We already know it’s not going to be any one of us”, Kaitlyn said sternly, pausing for a moment in delivering her speech. Freddie began to speak, or at least was thinking about it, but she cut him off. “No, let’s be real. You know it as well as I do. So forget about the three of us doing it.” Freddie slumped down in his seat, crestfallen.

           Aadesh broke in with, “We already know what we have to do.”

           “Doesn’t mean we have to like it”, Freddie remarked.

           “No one is saying it’s going to be fun”, Kaitlyn said. “But it is necessary. I shouldn’t even have to say that.”

           Freddie waved a hand, as if to shoo the truth away. He stared out the window, wishing he were anywhere else but here, talking about anything other than this.

           “There has to be a sacrifice”, Kaitlyn said. “There’s no way around that. If we want to get rid of this thing, to make amends for what we’ve done as best we can—“

           “Yeah, let’s get on that whole amends thing for Erin’s sake”, Freddie scoffed, still looking out the window.

           Kaitlyn pretended not to hear him. “The only way to send it back is with a sacrifice. Nothing else is going to work. So the question is…who’s it going to be?”

           “We have no Plan B?”, Aadesh asked. “You and Erin seriously had no backup in case things went sideways?”

           “Let’s face it”, Kaitlyn said, “None of us intended to send it back. The whole point was to call it up and keep it here. At least in part. So no, there was no plan to get rid of it.”

           “The plan was in stealing its power, keeping it for ourselves”, Freddie reminded them. Then under his breath, he added, “Man, it all seems so damn selfish now. Like we never even considered the damage we could do—“

           “We can’t undo it by dwelling on it and feeling miserable”, Kaitlyn said harshly. “Or by feeling sorry for ourselves. We have to act now. I think we’ve lost any right to stop and mourn.”

           Freddie turned away from the window and locked eyes with Kaitlyn. He wanted to glare at her with contempt, but he knew that she was right. He also knew that he was just as much to blame as any of them. In fact, given his eagerness to proceed with their original plan, he felt he could well shoulder more of the blame than his friends. He closed his eyes, sighed, and then opened them to the hard questions. “So where are we now?”

           Aadesh took the lead on their status, “We know there has to be a sacrifice, but it can’t be just anybody.”

           “It has to be a supernatural”, Kaitlyn confirmed.

           “If your recent vision can be trusted”, Freddie said.

           “Have they ever been wrong before?”, Kaitlyn asked.

           “Well, there was that one time where we went fishing for a friendly underworld demon and rang the doorbell of a giant orange energy monster.”

           Kaitlyn frowned at him. “Apart from that.”

           Aadesh was not about to let the discussion deteriorate into their usual back-and-forth repartee. “Even needing a supernatural sacrifice, how hard can it be to find another supernatural being in Lighthouse Knoll?” His friends looked at him for a heartbeat, even as he caught himself. “Sorry. Beacon Hills.” He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s just so bizarre actually being here. Even always knowing the place from our stories exists. It’s like we’re visiting Wonderland, or The Shire.”

           “Or Sleepy Hollow”, Freddie interjected. The comparison to the shadowy village haunted by its ferocious otherworldly predator was apt.

           “How do we find one, though?”, Kaitlyn asked. “Not all of them have faced as much turmoil, as much conflict, and are as prominent as Scott’s pack. It’s not like there’s an online listing for werewolves, wendigoes, and banshees.” It was a fair point. “So where does that leave us?”

           They all paused, trapped in their circular thinking, staring at the walls or the floor, making an effort to avoid making eye contact.

           In the kitchen, Melissa thought it had gotten awfully quiet in the living room. Especially for three teenagers. She stepped in from the kitchen with a jar of mayonnaise in hand as a visual prop to support her reason for snooping. She found the three of them lounging around. Aadesh was thumbing through something on his phone, Freddie was trying unsuccessfully to practice trick shuffling with a beat-up deck of cards, and Kaitlyn sat in a nearby chair, reading.

           “How does cold cuts and a veggie tray sound?”, Melissa asked. They all looked up and nodded. Freddie flashed a grin and gave her the thumbs-up. Satisfied, Melissa returned to the kitchen. Nothing funny going on there.

           Inside the protective sphere, the trio sat around the coffee table, looking at each other earnestly. No phone, no cards, no book to be found. Freddie glanced over at the spot where Scott’s mom had just stood, seeing it through the misty soundproof barrier that surrounded them.

           “I wonder what she wanted?”

           “Whatever it was, the illusion she saw must have satisfied her, since she walked right back out.” Kaitlyn observed. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

           “What about supernaturals we know of but who are really evil?”, Aadesh suggested.

           Freddie snapped his fingers. “Like Derek’s uncle! The Psychopath. Payton.”

           “Peter”, Kaitlyn corrected him.

           “Peter, right. Why not use him? I don’t think anybody’s gonna miss him.”

           “How do you propose we get into the lower levels of the asylum he’s locked up in?”, Aadesh asked. “And even if we can find a way in, I for one do not want to risk going anywhere near that eyeball-in-the-forehead guy. Noooo thank-you.”

           “I hadn’t thought of that”, Freddie admitted.

           “What about the deputy?”, Aadesh asked.

           “But he’s one of the good guys”, Freddie said, saddened at the idea. “And he’s cute. Like really, really cute.”

           “We don’t even know what he is”, Kaitlyn said.

           “I thought we said he was a phoenix”, Freddie said.

           “Was he?”, Aadesh said back. “I thought we decided on firedrake.”

           “He’s an unknown quantity”, Kaitlyn stated. “That makes him too big a risk. Besides, from what little—very little—we know about him, I’m not even sure he can be killed.”

           “I still say he got blown up when he was doing bomb disposal overseas. And I bet he doesn’t even remember it!”, Aadesh added eagerly.

           Freddie started to speak, excited to add to that theory, but Kaitlyn cut him off. “So he’s off the list. Which as it stands is pretty short. Let’s review. Who do we know for certain is a supernatural?”

           Aadesh held up his hand and started ticking off fingers. “There’s Scott, of course. The True Alpha. Kira, the Kitsune. Liam, the first Beta of the True Alpha. Lydia the Banshee. Malia the werecoyote.”

           “Derek the evolved wolf isn’t even available”, Freddie pointed out. “Bummer.”

           “So that just leaves Stiles, the human—“

           That was as far as Aadesh got when Freddie jumped in. “Whoa! Stiles? He shouldn’t even be on the list!”  He looked to Kaitlyn for confirmation. “Should he?”

           “Freddie, we’ve been over this”, she said, sounding as tired as she looked.

           “Yeah, but he’s not even supernat—“

           “Freddie”, Aadesh stressed, “We’ve covered this like eighty times in our stories. He was able to not only resist but eject an ancient Japanese demon while under its possession. He literally made it vomit out his true self. Then he outsmarted it and saw through its illusion casting.”

           “He had help”, Freddie pointed out weakly.

           Aadesh continued for Kaitlyn. “Plus he’s been a part of Scott’s pack from the very beginning. He saved Scott from the ghosts at that haunted hotel. One of the twins, too! Right?” He turned to Kaitlyn, who nodded solemnly. “He’s stood against as much as any of them. The fact that he doesn’t have fangs or claws just doesn’t matter. He’s been touched by--more than touched by--the supernatural. Like the rest of them, the strength of who he is makes him worth as much as all of three of us put together, at least.”

           “He qualifies”, Kaitlyn said, looking directly at Freddie.

The curly-headed ginger held her gaze for as long as he could stand it, until he flopped back onto the couch, throwing his arms out at his sides in exasperation. “This sucks!”

“No one’s debating that”, Kaitlyn told him.

“This is not how I wanted to come to Beacon Hills”, Freddie moaned. “Even if it was without any powers, I just wanted to meet them. Hang out with them. Spend time together; chill with ‘em.”

Aadesh rested his chin in the palm of his hand. “I really wanted to get to know Scott. Talk about all the stuff he’s done, the monsters he’s faced…and just regular stuff. What music does he like to listen to? Where’s his favorite fast food place? What did he think of the new Star Wars trailer?”

Freddie opened his mouth to say something about that last one, but then decided against it. Just as well to let it go.

Kaitlyn stalled in silence, not adding her own mutual thoughts to the conversation. She hated to be the bad guy, but they had to wrap this up and make a decision. She took a deep breath to fortify herself, and then was pleasantly surprised when Freddie spoke before she did.

“We all knew how this little powwow was going to end from the start”, he admitted. “Should we rip off the band-aid and vote?”

“Nobody wants to say goodbye to his heroes”, Kaitlyn stated.

“Not even one of them”, Aadesh added.

“But it’s them or the monster”, Kaitlyn pointed out unnecessarily. “And I think we all know who it has to be. So we proceed with the sacrifice we previously discussed. Agreed?”

Aadesh waited for one heartbeat but then said, “Agreed.”

Freddie stared at the floor, swallowed and then said quietly, “Agreed.”

Kaitlyn wrapped the open poultice bag with its leather tie, stopping the smoke from drifting upward. The concealing shield around them collapsed soundlessly onto the floor to vanish without a trace. Kaitlyn returned the pouch to her backpack and brought out a small wooden box. Flipping the clasp, she opened it up on the coffee table. “Take what you’ll need”, she instructed.

Each young man reached in and withdrew what he would require from the collection of gems, beads, ribbons, and vials of powder. They hid the items away in their pockets as Kaitlyn stashed the box. Melissa came into the room as Kaitlyn’s hand was still in her backpack.

“I guess you didn’t hear me”, she said. “The food is ready. Come on and eat.”

Everyone rose and departed with her, following not far behind. But at this point, truth be told, none of them really felt like eating.