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autisticandroids · 4 years ago

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yknow those episodes where a character's whole personality gets split into 3-5 different distinct separate bodies? what bodies would cas have? I feel like it'd just be a mess tbh, imagine 5 different castiels all of them loving dean to a certain extent but showing it VASTLY differently. one cas would literally want to murder the others lmao

okay so i don’t actually think this trope would be an effective tool for analyzing cas? he’s not conflicted enough in himself. he’s too impulsive, too singleminded, too uninhibited. like, in the end, cas always ends up doing whatever he wants. there aren’t multiple discrete voices vying for control, really, or rather, if there are, one is always significantly stronger than the others. like in the end cas will always end up eating raw meat off the floor, you know? he’ll do what he wants. if i was going to do personality splitting i’d do it to someone intensely internally conflicted, like dean.

however, because i’m in an essay writing mood today, i’ll answer a question slightly to the left of the one you asked. cas may not be internally conflicted, but he is intensely changeable. these two things are related, actually; the same impulsivity and singlemindedness that mean he doesn’t have a ton of internal conflict at any given time mean that different ideas sound good to him at different times, because he isn’t really thinking about, say, what future-him will think of them. and he’s not really trying to maintain an image or identity. he’s just doing what feels right at the time, which is very different at different times and in different situations.

anyway, that in mind, i think a lot about ways to bring together many alternate versions of cas which sort of correspond to different times in the show.

i have a fic in my head about a bunch of cas-es pulled from alternate timelines by some kind of spell. so this would be set during the widower arc because the basic impulse here is to show dean a very bad time. just absolutely put him through hell. also, all the alternate timelines are different because different stuff happened, not because cas made different choices, because if we’re torturing dean it has to be like 5x04, the changes in cas can’t be cas’ fault. they have to be dean’s or just like, the universe’s (which makes them dean’s).

so dean is trying to bring cas back, and he finds some kind of spell that can bring someone “from another world.” and he tries it because hey. can’t hurt to try. anyway i’ve thought a long time about different versions of cas i would put in this and here is what i have. in order of when the timeline split off.

- a cas who never raised dean from hell. think 14x13 “lebanon.” this one i’m not too sure about, like, this could be fun, but i don’t know if it’s different enough from the next one. like this castiel would have lived through the averted apocalypse and subsequent general fuckery that happened as an angelic footsoldier, which would actually be pretty interesting now that i think about it, especially since all that stuff would have gone down soooooooo differently without cas specifically for your average angel footsoldier. like cas has PERSONALLY caused more upheaval in heaven in twelve years of spn than there seems to have been in millennia. so he would be the point of view of a normal footsoldier from a totally other world.

- a cas who died mid season four, and is pulled out of the empty in 2017 by this spell. i’m not sure when this cas died. my thoughts are (1) killed in on the head of a pin by alistair, (2) killed during his torture in the rapture, or (3) simply never resurrected after lucifer rising. (3) makes the most sense, but that cas has already thrown away everything for dean. i prefer the idea of a cas who loves dean, is already on the brink of disobedience for him, but has not yet taken the plunge. both on the head of a pin and the rapture are great places for this, and they both have strengths and weaknesses. if he died in the rapture, he was killed by heaven, which is fundamentally more fun, but he was also really very much over the edge already. if he died in on the head of a pin, he wasn’t killed by heaven, but he is perfectly teetering on the brink of falling for dean. regardless of when he died, the purpose of this cas is to be horrified at all the various and myriad ways he has destroyed and corrupted himself for dean in the other timelines.

- possibly endverse cas, who would have died in 2014, but like s4 cas, would have been pulled from the afterlife by the spell. i’m not so sure on this one. we as a society love endverse cas but i dunno what purpose he would serve. maybe endverse cas didn’t die in 2014, and instead was imprisoned by lucifer, because, you know. he’s the only brother lucifer has left. so he is very excited to see dean alive and well, since his dean is dead, and, not being an angel, cas can’t bring him back. the purpose of this cas would be to horrify dean that cas loves him and needs him so much, and to disgust the other cas-es with his neediness.

- a cas who was in some way on better terms with dean during s6. maybe dean and cas ride off into the sunset together after swan song instead of dean going to live with lisa, maybe dean prayed to cas while he was with lisa because he missed him, who knows. either way, cas has dean’s help with the angel revolution in season six from the start, and never goes to crowley. the plan cas and dean come up with to beat raphael includes breaking into the cage and stealing the grace of michael and lucifer, freeing sam and adam in the process. incidentally, it also involves cas possessing dean, because if cas is gonna eat archangel grace to become more powerful, he’s going to need a stronger vessel. so cas and dean have a whole like. midam situation happening. they’re a double archangel together, and godstiel never happened so none of the other terrible apocalypses that stemmed from that happened, and everything is pretty cool where they’re from, and also they’re obviously uhhhhhh SOME kind of together. the purpose of this cas is to upset dean because this cas shows how much better everything could have been and how much better his and cas’ relationship could have been if dean had simply been more considerate of cas in s6, and also freak dean out with how uh. close. this dean and cas are.

- a godstiel who managed to swallow purgatory without swallowing the leviathans and remained god. he’s probably soooomewhat less scary and murdery than canonverse godstiel because no leviathans, so you know, not as many angel purges or massacres on earth. and he probably went and fixed sam’s wall within about three days because cas is prideful but he does NOT like it when dean is mad at him. so they did kiss and make up, and so this cas would have had dean to act as his morality chain. but he’s still very scary and godstiel. and also he refers to dean as “The Beloved” you know. his purpose is to freak everyone out, because he’s scary, but also, for the past cas-es, because he is a terrifying abomination that they could never imagine becoming, for the future cas-es, because he is a reminder of their worst selves, and for dean, because he is a reminder of how dangerous cas is, but also because he uh. obviously has some feelings about his dean. unclear if they are consummated or not.

- a cas who naomi never rescued from purgatory, and who stayed there. hasn't spoken to another being in half a decade, has not recovered from his emotionally destroyed state in purgatory in s8. believes at first that the spell is his dean rescuing him, and is crushed when he realizes he was wrong. like endverse cas, his purpose is to show dean how much cas needs him and depends on him emotionally, and how he (dean) is capable of destroying cas, as well as his guilt for leaving him in purgatory and how lucky he is that his cas got out. this is especially noteworthy since the guilt for leaving cas in purgatory is part of the reason dean is trying to get cas back.

- a cas who stayed human after season nine, and has built himself a small human life over the next four years. he has a job and an apartment and friends outside the winchesters and yes, he still goes hunting after work sometimes, and he's still in contact with dean, but he is also independent in a way no other version of cas has ever been. he exists to freak out dean because dean has never seen cas independent of him. he is also fairly bitter at dean since dean did kind of stop spending time with him when he was no longer useful, and our dean feels guilty for that.

- a cas who showed up twenty minutes later in 10x03, finding sam dead and dean gone, and had to chase down demon dean, and has now spent three years following demon dean around as his tragically adoring stalker, because he hasn't found a way to resurrect sam yet and he doesn't want to put dean through the demon cure until he can save sam because he doesn't want dean to experience that guilt, but he also adores dean and wants to keep an eye on him and keep him safe and also keep him from doing anything too heinous, so he just covertly follows him around the country and watches from a distance as he commits various murders and fucks his way through every local bar scene. and occasionally cas finds dean something to kill, when the mark gets hungry, and drops it in his path. his purpose is to freak dean out with the lengths cas would go for him, and the depths cas would sink to.

anyway. lebanon cas and season four cas are horrified and perhaps disgusted (lebanon cas more than s4 cas) by ALL of the later cas-es, and how far they’re fallen, all of it for dean. godstiel and archangel cas being abominations, endverse cas and s9 cas being fallen, even purgatory cas and demon dean’s cas for their total dependence on dean.

purgatory cas and endverse cas are just happy to see a dean, even if it’s not their dean. demon dean’s cas, too, in a way. he’s happy to see a dean who is still human, who he can still have as a friend.

human cas is pissed to see that he was right, that dean would have stuck by him if he’d still had his powers, that this version of dean is doing spells to try and bring his cas, who is still an angel, back, whereas he and his dean only see each other once every couple months.

everyone is terrified and disgusted by godstiel, as i said before.

they’re mostly kind of thrown by archangel cas. a lot of them are jealous. godstiel is furious because how dare anyone, even an alternate version of himself, take dean as a vessel (even if dean likes it). godstiel isn’t really there, though, he resisted the summoning and just sort of popped his head through to see what was going on, and he goes back to his own reality pretty fast without murdering anyone.

also to be clear dean has not at this point examined or acknowledged any feelings he may have about his cas besides “friendship,” nor has he wondered what feelings his cas may have for him. given how many of the cas-es were clearly in some kind of relationship with their dean (endverse cas, archangel cas) or just openly in love with their dean (godstiel, purgatory cas, demon dean’s cas), dean is forced to reevaluate the nature of his and cas’ relationship.

#spn #asks #anonymous

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donteattheappleshook · 4 years ago

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There is a Pirate in the Dungeon

Summary:

There is a pirate in the dungeon. All the serving girls are too afraid to go down the steps and bring him his meal. All but one.

This fic is based on a beautiful little story from The Starless Sea that just screamed of Captain Swan so strongly that I couldn't resist.

***

Happy Birthday to @elizabeethan who supported this fic and is just an all around great friend and writer <3

Thanks to @kmomof4 and @the-darkdragonfly for looking this over!

***

There is a pirate in the dungeon. All of the servants are in a flurry over it, gossip filling the halls of the Evil Queen’s palace. They say it’s him. Him who? You know, him, with the hook. The girl pays little mind to it. There is always someone in the dungeon. It doesn’t take much to upset the queen. One foot out of place, one word out of turn.

There are always people in the dungeon. Some are former servants, some former friends, some simply people who had the misfortune of crossing her path on a bad day. In fact, this pirate may be one of the few - if not the only - prisoner being held for any real crime. But the girl keeps her head down and goes about her work. No need to get involved. No need to stand out.

***

The pirate sits in the dungeon. He finds himself bored. It’s a strange emotion to have when facing down one’s inevitable end, but it’s the emotion he feels all the same. He wonders when Death will come. He wonders if this time he will stay, if they’ll meet like old friends, if Death will smile - not in self satisfaction, but in fondness for this game they’ve played so long. It’s only fair. He’s slipped through Death’s fingers so many times, it was bound to be his turn sooner or later.

A key hangs on the wall, six feet away from his cell, a tease of freedom just out of reach. He appreciates the metaphor. The guard is old, and drunk, and asleep most of the time. In a past life, the pirate may have attempted escape, may have hatched some elaborate ruse to win back his liberty. But he is old now - though he does not look it - and he is tired. And so he sits in his cell, bored, and waiting for death.

***

The girl does her best to ignore the chatter, but it follows her everywhere. She hears it in the kitchen, ears catching the whisper of a name, or perhaps a title. She hears it in the hallways, a guess at what he’d done to earn his date with the gallows. She hears it in the small bedroom that she shares with another girl, a rumor of his terrifying reputation, of a man more monster than human. But she isn’t afraid. There’s no such thing as monsters.

***

On the first night of his captivity, a girl comes into the dungeon carrying a tray of food and water. The pirate makes the mistake of standing too close to the bars, of looking over perhaps a tad too suspiciously, too threateningly, and the girl gasps, dropping the plate and running from the dungeon in fear. The guard wakes, and shrugs, and the pirate goes hungry.

On the second night there is a new serving girl. She makes it halfway across the room before the candlelight gleams off his hook and she stumbles. Half the food and water spill from her hands before she sets it on the floor far enough from the bars that he needs to remove his hook and use it to pull the tray close enough to have what’s left.

The third night no girl comes at all, though he hears her retreating footsteps at the top of the stairs. By the fourth night, the pirate has resigned himself to dying of starvation. It’s not quite the death he’d always pictured for himself, but he supposes it’s as fitting as any other.

The guard is asleep again when the girl comes down the stairs on the fifth night, this one also new and more striking than any of the other servants who have fled from him. More striking than most women he’s ever seen and suddenly something that had started to go out in the pirate’s heart begins to stir.

There’s a wariness about her, a hesitation as she approaches, but there is no fear, and it surprises him. As she approaches the bars, she meets his eyes and he watches in wonder as the doubt melts from her features, making way for confusion, relief, and even, he thinks, disappointment. It makes him laugh and he nearly startles at the sound of his own voice after so many days of silence. The girl, however, does not startle.

She sets the tray in front of him and he thanks her. That does startle her. He wonders briefly if it’s at seeing manners in a prisoner or from having become accustomed to never being thanked for her work at all.

The girl studies him, gaze falling over his face and his greatcoat, settling finally on his hook before finding their way back to his eyes. He wonders what she finds there, what she may have been looking for. He takes the chance to study her himself, her long golden hair and bright eyes, the rags she wears unable to disguise a certain dignity with which she carries herself.

He holds her gaze for a long moment, neither compelled to speak as they take each other in and draw their conclusions. Soon, however, his stomach cries for him to eat the bread which she’s brought him and he’s too tired and too hungry to deny it. But as he takes note of the thinness of her cheeks and the smudges below her eyes he feels a certain obligation towards her, a long forgotten sort of duty.

The pirate tears the bread in two and holds one half out through the bars. The surprise returns to her face and he wonders at the fact that it’s kindness that seems to scare her, rather than danger. She watches him, closely, carefully, more curiously than she has yet, and he’s stunned when an older - younger - version of the pirate makes himself known, one he hasn’t seen in years, but that he hopes is still worthy of this girl’s scrutiny, perhaps even of her trust.

She takes the bread from his hand and neither miss the way his fingers brush across her wrist as she pulls back. But she doesn’t recoil. She doesn’t run.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” the pirate asks, trying to remember the last time his presence wasn’t met with fear or dread.

She considers him a moment before answering, her voice low so as not to wake the guard. “I’ve met scarier men than you,” she says, and he believes her.

“I’m sorry,” he tells her, because he is, and because he doesn’t know what else to say. He himself has met few scarier men.

The girl does not stay to eat her bread. The guard begins to stir and she hurries out of the room before he can ask her name. The pirate cannot chase after her. He would like to, but the bars pose a certain problem. When the guard wakes he finds the pirate with his forehead pressed softly to the iron rods of his prison, a soft, faraway look in his eyes. He does not, the guard notes, look at all like a pirate anymore.

***

The girl walks swiftly down winding steps that lead from the kitchen, which is on the second floor of the palace, deep underground to the damp, carved out tunnels that serve as a dungeon. She doesn’t pay attention to the strange looks she receives from the other serving girls, or the judgemental ones she receives from the men. She is the first to make this trip twice since the pirate’s arrival and it has earned her the distrust of her coworkers.

“Aren’t you afraid of him? Haven’t you heard what he’s done?”

“He’s behind bars,” she answers simply whenever this question is posed. But she knows that the bars are irrelevant. She does not fear the pirate.

She is more concerned with the second question, that of what he has done. The girl, who grew up near the palace and was orphaned near the palace and now works in the palace, has never done anything, not truly, not anything worthwhile or worth remembering.

She wonders how many places outside this palace the pirate has seen. She wonders how many places outside this kingdom he has visited, or perhaps even, outside this realm. She decides that she’ll ask him to tell her about them. The worst he can say is “no” and then her life will be no different than it was when she woke up this morning. She thinks however that if he says “yes”, it could be a little bit better.

When the pirate sees her coming down the stairs he looks surprised, and then relieved, and then pleased. A small smile pullis at the corner of his lips and she feels it makes him look even less the terrifying monster those upstairs believe him to be. He looks young, his eyes which yesterday had betrayed an ancientness of one who has lived many lives, perhaps, more lives than they’d have liked, are now bright and anxious like a boy’s.

The guard is predictably asleep and the girl makes her way to the bars where the pirate waits and hands him his food. He takes it with a thank you, as he had yesterday, and while she’d expected it, she was still not prepared for it and it catches her off guard, her cheeks flushing. Then her cheeks flush at her embarrassment over her cheeks flushing in the first place.

He is handsome, dark hair and dark lashes framing blue eyes and a soft smile contrasted by a strong jaw. But she has seen handsome men before and paid them little mind. She wonders what it is that is different about this one. Whatever the difference, it makes her lose her nerve, and with no other reason to be here, and no question bold enough to ask, she turns to take her leave.

“Wait,” the pirate says, and the girl stops, glancing back. “Will you tell me your name?” he asks. When she does not answer, he speaks again. “If I’m to see you again, I’d like to be able to thank you properly for your service. If I’m not, then I’d like a name to associate with the memory of you.”

The girl is grateful for the darkness in the dungeon, and the distance that hides her stricken expression. “Emma,” she tells him, and he smiles at her in the same youthful way he had before. She offers a clumsy curtsy, and leaves.

When she returns the following night, the girl has slipped whatever extra treats she could find onto the tray. A roll of bread with honey stolen off a table while serving breakfast, meat leftover from the servant’s dinner, and a small, baked good that the queen had sent back. She imagines the pirate must be hungry. She is only sent to bring him food once a day and there are no other servants making trips to the dungeon.

He looks relieved, and then happy to see her. And then something crosses his expression that she doesn’t recognize. Likely, because no one has ever looked at her like that. She finds that she likes it. She hands him the tray, watching a little too eagerly as he notices the contents. He smiles, one eyebrow jumping up, the pull of his lips lopsided, and it spreads warmth through her belly.

“Thank you,” he says, adding “Emma” to the end. It’s the first time he’s said her name, and Emma is surprised at how much she likes hearing him say it.

The guard is asleep, and she imagines he will be for a while, his snores resonating annoyingly through the room. She wonders if the pirate gets much sleep. She imagines it would be hard to sleep with the threat of impending death looming over her. But she imagines it would be even harder to sleep with the guards snores echoing in her ears. Either way, the guard seems unlikely to wake, so she chances stealing a little more time in the pirate’s company.

He watches her as she makes her decision, and when he offers up some of his meal again to share, she accepts it. She feels guilty, taking his food, but it allows her the excuse to step closer to the bars and to brush her fingers carefully against his as they had last night.

When their hands have been touching as long as they reasonably can while passing food, perhaps even a little too long at that, the pirate pulls his arm back through the bars. She notices the hook on which he balances the tray. He notices her noticing it, but says nothing.

After a moment, he sits on the floor, resting the tray against his knee as he picks at it. While he doesn’t ask her to stay, the invitation is clear in both how close he sits to the mouth of his cell and in the way he watches her, waiting. Feeling bold, Emma sits down beside him, shoulders near close enough to touch, were it not for the bars between them. They sit silently, letting the guard’s snores fill the quiet that would be filled by their words. After a long time, Emma speaks.

“They say you’re a captain,” she tells him, wondering if any of the gossip is true.

“Aye, that I am,” he answers. “Or… was,” he corrects, acknowledging his current predicament. Can a captain be a captain without a ship? She takes a breath before speaking again.

“They say you’re a pirate.”

He smiles, mirthful, his eyebrow ticking up again. “Aye,” he says, “that too.” Emma only nods and it seems to surprise him. She wonders if he was expecting shock, or fear, or perhaps even fascination. She gives him none of it.

“Have you been a pirate long?” she asks then, and this time his smile is melancholy as he nods.

“Yes. Too long.”

Emma draws her knees up, holding them in her arms as she gazes forlornly at the floor. “I can’t imagine you could ever tire of being a pirate. Not when there are so many places to see.” When she says it, she’s thinking of the freedom he must have had, the chance to go wherever he pleased whenever he pleased. But then she feels guilty, remembering where he is now.

“I suppose you’re right,” he agrees, offering her an accepting nod.

“And have you?” she asks, breath held in her lungs until he answers.

“Have I what, love?”

“Been many places.”

“Aye. More than you could imagine.” She can imagine quite a bit, but she supposes he’s probably right.

“You must have many stories,” she suggests, and he smiles at her the same way he had when she’d asked him about being a pirate.

“As many stories as there were places,” he promises.

“Will you tell me some of them?” She looks at him when she asks and is met with eyes that are both old and young all at once.

Before he can answer the guard starts to stir and she jumps to her feet. The pirate follows suit, hand reaching out to catch at the sleeve of her dress before she can leave. She turns to him and is shocked at the look in his eyes, she can’t quite place this one either, but if she had to name it, she’d call it... hope.

“I will,” he promises. “If you come back tomorrow. And I’ll tell you more if you come back the following night, and more after that.”

Emma meets his eyes and knows he isn’t lying. And the promise of hearing his stories is nearly as powerful as the promise of being able to sit next to him in the dungeon again, with their shoulders just close enough to touch, if not for the bars. She agrees.

***

When Emma returns the following night, there is more food on his tray. The pirate imagines she must have stolen or kept most of it, sharing her own dinner with him. So it feels only right to share some of his own meal with her.

He’d tried to hide his excitement at seeing her come down the stairs, though he’s sure it was written all over his face. And she’s quite perceptive, he’s noticed. It feels strange, to have something to look forward to. He never imagined being excited for or anticipating anything while in this dungeon, apart from perhaps death. He prefers it this way.

“So what would you like to hear?” he asks after he has touched her hand and sat next to her on the dirty floor of his cell. She contemplates his question for a while, putting serious weight to her decision and he smiles. It’s been a long time since someone was so interested in learning anything about him.

“How did you become a pirate?” she asks finally, and his heart settles like a lead weight in his chest. It must show on his face because she begins to apologize. He stops her. He had not expected to have to share such a painful story so quickly, but he tells her anyway. He tells her of his childhood, uncertain why he starts so far back but the more he continues the more he feels it suits the story.

He tells her of his upbringing on Silver’s ship, of his time in the Navy, of his brother, of everything he was and everything he himself wished to be. He tells her of his brother’s death and her eyes fill with tears, the kind that speak of understanding rather than sympathy. He’d learned long ago to spot the difference, to pick a kindred spirit out of a crowd. Tonight, he picks a twin soul out of a dungeon.

When he has finished his story he waits for her appraisal, wonders if he did it justice. He embellished in parts, if only to make himself more dashing or the dangers greater. He could read on her face that she knew what he was doing and it only made him smile, even as she rolled her eyes. That made him do it more.

“I’m sorry,” she says, he imagines in much the same way he had said to her that first night, and he knows then that they understand each other, perhaps in a way nobody has ever understood him before, not really.

The guard is still asleep but he doubts they have much time left. Nevertheless he offers her another story, if only to keep her here a little longer, to watch her eyes light up with wonder and excitement as he spins his tales. Emma considers again, as carefully as she had the first time.

“Will you tell me your name?” she asks.

He smiles. “Killian.”

***

Killian tells her of Neverland, of evil little boys and fairies and mermaids. He tells her of a land covered in snow, of one where sand reaches as far as the eye can see. He tells her of krakens and monsters and heroes and damsels, of kings and knights and pirate queens over the course of the following nights, each tale more fantastical than the last. But he never lies. She knows he doesn’t. He may embellish but his stories are true, and that makes them all the more unbelievable. She begins to pity the guard, who sleeps through such magical stories, but does not begrudge the privacy it allows them.

His fingers tangle in her hair through the bars, as they do every night, playing with each stand before letting it slip delicately between his rings. He likes her hair and she likes that he likes it. He’d made a comment when she asked, about pirates being drawn to gold. She’d rolled her eyes and he’d laughed.

“What tale would you like to hear tonight?” Killian asks, smiling that smile which always makes her stomach warm and her cheeks flush.

She thinks carefully, as she does every night, wanting to ask the right kind of question to hear the right kind of story. With every tale he reveals more about himself, whether intentionally or not. She knows he is brave but also protective, charming, but also solitary. Dangerous, but kind. He’s seen the whole world, known countless people, but he carries a loneliness that breaks her heart in a way her own never could.

There is a story she wants to know, one that she’s held off on asking. In part because it feels rude, because she is unaware of the rules around asking such things. But also, because she imagines this is the tale that everyone asks him, and she doesn’t want to be everybody. She hopes she can ask and still be Emma to him.

“Will you tell me how you lost your hand?” she asks finally and his fingers still in her hair. She fears she’s crossed a line, but when she turns to face him he’s watching her with that same expression he had when he told her the first story. She knows that this will not be a fanciful tale.

Killian nods and his fingers return their attention to her hair, his eyes fixated as he begins to speak. He tells her of a woman, of a great love and a cruel man. Of adventures and romance and the promise of happily ever after struck down by one monster’s hatred. His eyes water and she wants to ask him to stop, to beg him not to continue if it pains him so much to speak of it, even after all these years. But he finishes his story. Nothing embellished, nothing softened. And when he is finished she’s the one with tears in her eyes.

He does not look at her, preferring to watch the strands of her hair slip through his fingers as he brushes it over her shoulder and back again. She wonders if he’s awaiting her judgement, disgust or forgiveness. Neither are fitting. There is only empathy, and anger, and a feeling she has not felt before but is certain of regardless - love.

She reaches through the bars, takes his hook which rests in his lap in her hand and turns so that she can face him. He looks up in surprise as the movement steals the strands from his fingers, and then in greater surprise when she brings his hook to her lips before holding it to her chest, hoping he can read what she cannot say.

He does.

***

The following night is the last night. Killian knows this and while he’d always thought he’d leave this world with no regrets, he is left with one. He regrets not meeting her sooner, regrets time, not having enough of it, having wasted too much of it. For the first time in a century he fears death, resents it, because death will steal her from him and he is not ready to let go. But the gallows await him in the morning.

The guard is, shockingly, awake when Emma arrives, and he flatters himself that the redness around her eyes is because she knows as well, because she will miss him as well. His heart tightens, loathing that their last night will be cut short, impeded by the presence of the guard who will prevent her from staying. But he should have known to expect more of her.

Emma smiles at the guard, offering him something from the pitcher she carries on the tray. She imagines from his enthusiasm that it is wine or rum and he supposes he was to be offered a last drink on his last night. The guard drinks greedily and Emma continues to smile that lovely smile until he suddenly falls against the table, face colliding painfully with the wood. Killian looks at her in surprise as she comes to meet him. She shrugs.

“He’s not dead,” she dismisses and he smiles, proud and impressed.

“Perhaps there’s a little pirate in you yet, love.”

She gives him his food and they share it as they always do, sitting side by side yet too far apart to truly be together. Killian is aware of the metaphor here as well, though he appreciates it less than the keys on the wall.

Tonight, perhaps because it is their last night, perhaps because she is feeling the finality of it, the grief for all that could have been and what little was, Emma slides her fingers through the bars and takes his hand, letting her fingers slide along and play with his own and his rings as he had her hair. His whole body warms from his hand, rolling through him like a wave, like the sea, like magic.

“I thought, perhaps,” he starts but then hesitates, fingers tightening against hers. “I thought you might tell me a story,” he suggests. She watches him, eyes still red, thumb stroking along the back of his hand. “I’d quite like to know you before I die,” he admits, his voice more strained than he’d like. He realises it's not death he fears, but never seeing her again, never again touching her hair or holding her hand, never having so much as kissed her. He brings their hands to his lips and kisses her knuckles. It’s a poor substitute, but it’s something.

She nods, eyes watery and lip caught between her teeth. She tells him of her life, of being born near the palace, of losing her parents young, of being left by them, sent to live in the castle before she even had a chance to know them, of having looked for them but only having been met with dead ends and disappointed hopes.

She speaks of growing up in the castle, of the queen’s temper and the constant fear and he can see where her strength comes from, though he believes she may have been born with it. She tells him of a man that she believed she loved, one who left when things became too much. All her stories speak of abandonment, of loneliness and perseverance and hope, despite it all, hope.

When it’s nearly dawn she asks if she can have one final story and he cannot deny her anything so he says yes. She asks him what he did to be imprisoned by the queen. He laughs, because there is nothing else to do. He is not a good man, he has not believed himself to be one for a long time. But he likes to think that his last deed, the one that sent him to the gallows, was. That it was one that Liam could be proud of, and Milah, and Emma.

“I refused to kill someone for her.” Emma’s eyes widen. Clearly, this was not what she’d expected. “The Queen learned that someone in her castle had been placed there by the former king and queen, the ones she overthrew so many years ago, and that she, a girl - a daughter - had the power to destroy her. She wished me to find and kill the girl for her, as she cannot. I refused. I am many things, but a killer of innocent women, I am not.”

The booming of a drum brings his story to a certain, poetic end. It is followed by another and it is only a moment before they recognize them for what they are. The gallows await. Emma turns to him, fingers tightening against his until her knuckles are white, eyes wild.

“No,” she says with all the strength and stubbornness he’s grown to love in her.

“Emma,” he starts, not wanting their last moments to be anger and pain and sadness. But she pulls away, standing and staring at him for what feels like an eternity as she makes up her mind. She lunges for the keys, fingers fumbling as she tries to find the right one, to fit it in the lock. “Emma,” he tries to stop her. “Go,” he warns, fearing what fate awaits her if they catch her trying to help him escape. But she doesn’t listen. He did not expect she would.

When she finds the key the gate is wrenched open and she stands in the open doorway watching him with frantic, panicked eyes. He is frozen in place, unable to move, shaken by the risk she is taking. For him. She frowns at him then, confusion and just enough disbelief and annoyance to make him want to laugh.

“Run!” she commands, gesturing towards the stairs. He knows he could make it, he could run now and get out before the guards catch him. He’s gotten out of more dire situations before. But he can’t. She may save him from death but the result will be the same. Either way he will be without her. Being without her when he knows she is somewhere he cannot reach is far worse.

“What are you waiting for?” Emma demands, voice raising. “Get ou-”

He strides forward, takes her face in his hand and kisses her. He kisses her as though this may be the last time, because he fears it will be, regardless of whether they catch him or not. But once he’s kissed her he can’t let her go.

He’s held the whole of his world in his hand and against his lips and he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to let her go. He’s lived a very long time, and been to a great many places, but nothing has felt quite like this. Nothing has felt so much like home.

“Come with me,” he pleads, knowing that if she says no he’ll wait here for them to come for him, because it won’t matter, not without her.

The guards burst in, catching them with their faces still only inches apart and it takes them a moment, registering their own shock before they lunge at them, at him. Emma screams and suddenly there is a burst of white light, a light so bright that he has to shield his eyes against it. When he opens them again the guards are on the ground - breathing but unlikely to wake up anytime soon - and Emma is staring at her shaking fingers.

She looks at him with confusion and fear, helpless he thinks for the first time in her life. He takes one of her trembling hands, kisses it softly, and asks her again.

***

They run. They run until they reach the shoreline, Killian gazing out at the sea, and Emma imagines them on any of the ships out there as he attempts to figure out which he could commandeer most easily. She’s quite pleased with how easily she’s taken to piracy. Or perhaps, she’s just taken to pirates. He hasn’t released her hand since they ran from the dungeon and he still won't. She’s not sure she wants him to, for fear that what happened in the dungeon might happen again.

He’s only just picked a ship and started to pull her towards it when they hear the commotion behind them. The guards have caught up to them. The Queen is with them, fury on her face. They stop only a few feet away and Killian steps forward, attempting to stand between them and her. She attempts the same, and so they end up standing side by side, hands clasped tightly, ready to face whatever comes together.

“Well, Captain,” the Queen says. “I underestimated you. It seems you found her after all.” Emma’s breath catches, putting together the pieces of Killian’s story, of her own. Killian’s fingers only tighten around hers and she realises that he must have put it all together much sooner than she had.

She calls for her guards and this time Killian does stand before her and the Queen has him on his knees without even taking a step, sick pleasure in her eyes as the man Emma loves gasps for breath. She screams and she cries and she begs but the Queen doesn’t stop. She won’t lose him. It’s not a question or a choice but a fact. She refuses to lose him, not when they’re so close to freedom, not when she’s only just found him.

She isn’t sure how she does it, but before she has time to question how she does it now, or how she did it then, a light bursts from her fingers and she only just has time to see the fear in the Queen’s eyes before it engulfs them. It flows out of her. Like magic. Like love. And she’s certain that’s what it is, at least, that’s what it feels like.

She helps Killian to his feet and he takes her hand as he had in the dungeon, thanking her. She asks if he still wants her to come with him, warns him that if she is who they think she is, the Queen will never stop hunting them. He smiles, that same smile from their first night. His fingers find her hair, slipping through the strands from her ear to the ends and letting them fall around her shoulders.

“I’ve been hunted before,” he says. “And for far less valuable treasure.”

Someday, her parents will find her. Someday they will defeat the queen and they will ask her to come back with them. And she will, for a while. But she will always go back to him, to the adventures that wait for her in far off lands, and to the love that waits for her aboard a ship. But that is only someday. For now, the pirate takes the girl’s hand and asks her to follow him as he will follow her always, to the ends of the earth, or time.

The End.

*****

@kmomof4 @snowbellewells @teamhook @resident-of-storybrooke @stahlop @hollyethecurious @artistic-writer @gingerchangeling @bubblegum1425 @jackieorioncat @darkcolinodonorgasm @xhookswenchx @lfh1226-linda @searchingwardrobes @winterbaby89 @whimsicallyenchantedrose @xsajx @thejollyroger-writer @elizabeethan @carpedzem @spartanguard @tiganasummertree @demisexualemmaswan @itsfabianadocarmo @courtorderedcake @yasbio2015 @the-darkdragonfly @klynn-stormz

#captain swan #cs #cs fanfic #cs ff #captain swan fanfic #cs au

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imsorryimlate · 4 years ago

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Specific references in Pomegranate Seeds, sorted by chapter

Title of work: Pomegranate Seeds

A reference to the myth of Persephone and Hades, where Hades is the god of the underworld who kidnaps Persephone – the daughter of Demeter, goddess of agriculture and harvest – and makes her queen of the underworld. He gives her a pomegranate to eat, and for every seed she swallows she has to spend a month with Hades in the underworld. During the months she is with Hades, she is gone from her mother, and that’s why autumn and winter exist (since Demeter is grieving the loss of her daughter). Spring and summer are the months when she is back with Demeter, and Demeter is once again happy. The myth has lots of interpretations, but my favourite is the one where it is said to be based on the trauma of both daughter and mother as they are separated when the daughter gets married and enters a new household.

Even though Giorno’s mother didn’t treat him well, her death was most likely traumatic to him. He enters the new household of Dio (Hades) and every time they touch each other in a way that isn’t befitting father and son, one could say that Giorno swallows another pomegranate seed, and it binds him to the underworld. In this case, the underworld would both represent the criminal world, but also the trap of their incestuous relationship that he then cannot leave, should he want to.

No specific references in chapters 1 & 2.

Chapter 3:

Demetra – Giorno’s mother doesn’t have a name in canon, so I made one up. Demetra is the Italian version of Demeter, which is the name of the Greek goddess of agriculture and harvest. The goddess is the mother of Persephone, and the title of this fic – Pomegranate Seeds – is a reference to the myth of Hades and Persephone.

The biblical paintings in the church – John the Baptist (martyr) was beheaded, and Judas (traitor) hung himself. The imagery around Eve, the snake and the red apple, well… depending on how you interpret the story in the Bible, this could mean that the scene doesn’t represent a fall from grace, but rather that it was God’s intention to have humanity step into the broader world.

Dio’s books – I mostly just had a look at my own bookshelf, but I purposely included Nabokov, Machiavelli, and Plato. Nabokov, of course, references his infamous novel Lolita. Machiavelli was an Italian politician and philosopher during the Renaissance, and he’s most famous for his book The Prince, where he gave rulers quite… devious advice, not shying away from unethical and corrupt means. Therefore Machiavelli and the derived term Machiavellian often denotes (political) deceit. And Plato, well, in his text The Symposium he speaks of the ancient practice of pederasty in a very positive manner, and claiming that it is the purest form of love.

Aniara – I picked the book because it’s my sister’s favourite. It is a book-length epic science fiction poem that narrates the tragedy of a large passenger spacecraft carrying a cargo of colonists escaping destruction on Earth veering off course, leaving the Solar System and entering into an existential struggle. This is the “space-travel” Giorno later reflects on while in the bath.

No specific references in chapter 4.

Chapter 5:

The next reference to Machiavelli – Giorno thinks about Machiavelli and the question if it is better to be feared or loved, which is something Machiavelli writes about in his book The Prince, where he states that it is better for a ruler to be feared than loved, if they cannot be both.

No specific references in chapter 6.

Chapter 7:

Reckless – Giorno notes that Dio wants him “recklessly, passionately”. This is one of the two times the word “reckless” is used in this story; the only other time being in the first chapter when Giorno’s mother dies after her car collides with a reckless truck. Dio’s desire for Giorno is tied together with that accident, as if it’s equally dangerous.

Jewel – “Yes, Giorno would like something like that; to show Dio that he was a prized jewel, cut to fit perfectly in the curve of his palm.” This line directly references the Song of Songs 7:1 “Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand.”

Eden – “How truly unfortunate, that the most tempting fruit should be found in the middle of Eden.” The garden of Eden, in the Bible, is where life is first created by God. It can therefore also symbolise family, where life also is created. So what Dio essentially says here is “what a shame the most fuckable person is found in my family”.

Draconic tendencies – Giorno having “draconic tendencies” is a reference to his earlier thoughts about Abbacchio hoarding Bucciarati like a jealous dragon.

Chapter 8:

Buttercups – Giorno picks a bouquet of buttercups for Dio, and buttercups have traditionally been associated with childhood. It is meant to express that Giorno, no matter how mature he himself is convinced that he is, still has a childish edge to his affection. As a fun aside, the Latin name for buttercups is Ranunculus, which means “little frog”.

Leda and the Swan – the painting Dio has in his study. It is, of course, an erotic yet controversial motif in itself, but there are some references to the Greek myth it is based on. In it, Zeus disguises himself as a swan and copulates with Leda. It is not entirely clear if it is by rape or seduction. Zeus, of course, is known for his sexual escapades, his violent temper and jealousy, but here he disguises himself as a swan, which is an animal that in European culture often has symbolised love and fidelity. This story of a shady person disguising himself as someone loving, to enter a relationship where consent is dubious at best, well… I think the implications are clear. As a fun aside, the name Zeus and the name Dio are directly connected.

Uneasy lies the head – the whole quote is “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown”, a saying from Shakespeare’s play Henry IV, Part 2, meaning that someone with great responsibilities won’t be able to rest properly.

The prodigal son – it’s a reference to a parable in the Bible, from Luke 15:11-32. The story goes that a son requests his inheritance early, spends it all irresponsibly, and then returns home to beg his father to let him work for him. His father, however, welcomes him home with open arms and throws a feast, which indicates that he has hopefully waiting for the son to return.

Nakedness – the scene in Giorno’s room, where he lowers his duvet to display his “nakedness”, the word choice here is important. Except for Genesis 42, all biblical occurrences of the common idiom ”to see the nakedness of” or “to uncover the nakedness of” are explicitly sexual, usually referring to incest. The Classical Hebrew word 'erwā is not “nudity” but “nakedness”, in the sense of something that is unseemly or improper to look at or expose; often used to denote forbidden sexual relations.

Chapter 9:

Wine-dark – Dio’s eyes are described as wine-dark, which is a reference to the use of “wine-dark sea” in Homer. It’s an epithet used in the Iliad and the Odyssey, of uncertain meaning. What exactly does it mean that the sea is “wine-dark”? Is it a reference to the stormy sea being unpredictable, like someone who’s drunk on wine? Or does it tell us something about how ancient Greeks perceived colours, where maybe depth and opacity levels were more important than hues?

Ambrosia – Giorno compares the taste of Dio’s seed to ambrosia, which is the food and drink of the gods in Greek mythology.

Lollipop – Giorno is sucking on a lollipop while he’s out shopping. This is a shameless reference to the most culturally recognised image of Nabokov’s Lolita, where Sue Lyon, the actress who portrayed the character Lolita in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaption of the novel, is sucking on a red lollipop while wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. It’s worth noting, however, that the character Lolita doesn’t eat a lollipop in the novel or Kubrick’s film, and the images were only used for promotion. Either way, the lollipop has nonetheless become a symbol for playful, youthful temptation.

No specific references in chapter 10.

Chapter 11:

Dio’s alarming beauty – Giorno reflects on how beautiful Dio is, that he is alarmingly beautiful. This is a reference to a quote from The Secret History by Donna Tartt: “Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

Chapter 12:

Kisses – there’s a lot of descriptions of kissing in the beginning of this chapter, and it is all a reference to the biblical book Song of Songs. “Honey-sweet kisses that melted his tongue” is a reference to Song of Songs 4:11 “honey and milk are under your tongue”. On a more complicated note… “those kisses, Giorno drank them from his mouth like they were life-giving water” is a reference to Song of Songs 1:2 that should be “I want to drink kisses from his mouth”, however, most translations will read “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth”. It’s really complicated as to why I and others would translate it differently, but in general it has to do with the manuscript and the Masoretic editors’ vocalisation, which in turn has a lot to do with evaluating Classical Hebrew grammar and poetic conventions… I am going to spare you that lecture, but I still wanted to let you know that you won’t find that wording in most English translations of the Bible.

The garden, Eden, and juvenile sex – this all ties together. The garden of Eden is, in the Bible, where life is created and before “the fall of man”, it is a place of peace and innocence. Now, it might seem strange to refer to innocence in a story like this, but there still is a certain kind of innocence to their relationship, especially on Giorno’s end. They are described as “easy and unafraid, in full view of God”, which again is a reference to the biblical creation story; after “the fall of man”, when Adam and Eve have sinned, they are suddenly afraid of God and tries to hide from him, and for the first time shield their nudity, since they have now lost that innocence. So, Dio and Giorno being unafraid in full view of God is another reference to them being fairly innocent. At least that’s how Giorno conceptualises it.

Satyriasis – a word for excessive sexual desire, and an outdated term for hypersexuality. The word was developed in relation to the satyrs of Greek mythology, who were lustful woodland gods.

Nipple play – Giorno sucking on Dio’s tits, well… quite obvious reference, but if you missed it; it’s a reference to breastfeeding and nourishment.

Sunlight – in Stardust Crusaders, Dio tells Polnareff that he too has pain in his life because he can never see the sunlight, since he is a vampire. In this story, Dio isn’t a vampire, but I still wanted to include this pain. Dio’s love for the sunshine, and the depravation of it in his childhood, is my attempt to reconceptualise it.

Chapter 13:

Ice cream – elder flower sorbet has a tendency to taste like laundry detergent if you’re not careful, so Mista definitely picked the wrong flavour that time.

Know thy enemy – “know thy enemy” is a famous quote from The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

Chapter 14:

Paradise burning – more Eden references, they never truly stop.

Loins – in Classical Hebrew, one specifically emphasises that a child has sprung from someone’s loins to indicate that it is a biological child rather than an adopted one.

Deadly sins – Giorno notes that one of the seven deadly sins, sloth (that is, excessive laziness and indifference), doesn’t come as naturally to him as others would (such as lust or pride).

Know thy self – another reference to the famous quote of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Companion – Giorno thinks about how the universe has blessed Dio with a companion that can keep up with him, which is a subtle reference to the creation myth in the Bible. There, God creates the first human, Adam. Adam attempts to find a companion amongst the other creatures, but cannot find an equal until God creates another human – incidentally, God creates another human from Adam (by his rib), which of course parallels with Giorno being created from Dio, since he is his biological child.

Clay – the dream Giorno has of Dio forming him out of clay and breathing life into him is another direct reference to the creation myth in the Bible, where God forms the first human out of clay/soil/dust from the ground and breathes life into his nostrils. Similar creation myths are found in several ancient Near Eastern religions. If you want a little more “fun” fact, the first human is named Adam, a name he gets from the Classical Hebrew word for “man” (as in human – not male), which is adam, and the word for “ground” is adamah, which ties to all together quite nicely.

Nakedness – Dio uncovers Giorno’s nakedness, and just like in chapter 8 it’s a biblical reference. Except for Genesis 42, all biblical occurrences of the common idiom ”to see the nakedness of” or “to uncover the nakedness of” are explicitly sexual, usually referring to incest. The Classical Hebrew word 'erwā is not “nudity” but “nakedness”, in the sense of something that is unseemly or improper to look at or expose; often used to denote forbidden sexual relations.

Chapter 15.

Cuddling – after having breakfast, they cuddle, and their position is described as Giorno resting his head on Dio’s left arm, and Dio draping his other arm over Giorno’s waist. This position is a reference to the biblical book the Song of Songs 2:6 “His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me.”

Angel lust – Dio gets hard after Giorno chokes him, which he says is a perfectly natural reaction to being choked. Which it is! “Angel lust” or “death erection” refers to the phenomenon of men executed by hanging having an erection, because of the increased downward blood flow. After observing this, doctors in the 17th century started prescribing choking sex to men with erectile dysfunction, and that’s partly where erotic asphyxiation comes from.

England – the phrase “lie back and think of England”, alternatively “close your eyes and think of England” is an old-timey reference to unwanted sex that one doesn’t enjoy – specifically used for sex within a marriage, which at least back in the day was more of an economic arrangement than a love affair. Disgustingly, it means “just lie back and endure it”.

Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh – this is another reference to the creation story in the Bible. The specific verse is Genesis 2:23, when God has created another human to be a worthy companion of the first one. Adam, the first human, has searched for a companion among the animals but been unsuccessful to find an equal. But when he meets the newly created Eve, the second human, he exclaims “At last! This is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (since she was created from his rib). That “at last!” is very sweet – and fits in this story too! Dio has finally found a worthy companion to share his highest highs and deepest lows with.

Chapter 16.

Roses – Giorno buys a bouquet of roses for Dio. This is intended as a contrast to the buttercups he picked for Dio in chapter 8, being that roses are a much more “mature” flower than buttercups, therefore showing that Giorno has matured. Also, the fact that he buys the bouquet of roses while he picked the buttercups indicate a certain loss of simplicity and naturalness in their relationship.

Fin.

#/#//#///#////#/////#just fanfiction stuff pls look away #i tried to make this a private post but tumblr be fucking with me #pomegranate seeds references

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red-hood-vigilante · 4 years ago

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hbo spn storylines, drabbles, ideas, thoughts, wishlist, whatever you may call it. it’s messy, nothing makes sense and pretty sure a lot of these contradict each other

more of sam at stanford with jessica/flashbacks. jessica potentially lives but is revealed to be a demon (but she developed actual feelings for sam and really did come to care for him because a demon falling in love with a human would be SO interesting) OR she lives but her memory gets wiped like dean did to lisa OR she dies like she did but she is a ghost that haunts sam (he welcomes it but eventually he lets her go -> character arc). he still dreams about her though and he has her keepsakes with him wherever he goes, her rings, her favourite book, anything that was left of her from the fire

you have to be extremely careful when making deals with demons because they are cunning and evil creatures. they will follow the rules of the deal but will find loopholes to put some sadistic twist on the terms. you want money? of course, too bad you’ll be arrested for fraud before you can use any of it and spend the next ten years in jail before i drag you to hell. you want a perfect husband? sure he’ll love you. in fact, he’ll love you so much he’ll keep you locked up in the basement to keep you safe etc etc. saving a person often becomes the person that causes or leads to your death.

the creation of jack: after s5, when lucifer is trapped in the cage again lucifer fuses his own soul with a human soul to create jack, who escapes to earth to find sam and castiel. i have a longer post about this saved in my drafts

lucifer is trapped for good in the cage after s5 but if he was to return again, dean would kill him while sam would kill michael - this would be nice parallels and a sort of fulfillment of the “one brother must kill the other” prophecy because one brother DO kill another brother, just not their own

more azazel and how he came to the plan of how to free lucifer; opening a hell gate earlier, more experimentations with the demon blood etc

mary was infected with the blood when she was a baby, sam is the first and only second generation special child (longer post about that here)

personally, i want to see more and know more about john and mary’s relationship. when mary died, john and mary had fulfilled their destiny (having sam and dean) so does that mean that his love and dedication to mary post her death was falsely fabricated by the angels to ensure sam and dean would grow up in ideal conditions to become hunters? or maybe, after mary’s death, john wakes up from the spell with two kids he doesn’t recognize and a wife he thinks he loved, but the memories of the past years of his life are like a fever dream; he never wanted to live in a town like this nor was he interested in having kids? but here the house is, and here are his kids, but now he’s alone and empty and with no answers. (idk i just find john and mary and their relationship very fascinating) if the latter, if john and mary see each other again it’s like the spell activates again and they become blindly in love with each other, but once gone, they return to their confused and hazey state of mind, like just woken up from a coma

i do like mary coming back but i love how in s5 when she wasn’t found in heaven it was hinted that she was just discarded because she had fulfilled her “purpose” and i think this adds to the whole notion of how heaven and angels can be really cruel AND how mary is this mythical, religious figure to both sam and dean and we only get to know her through their lenses, like religion and faith

ruby is present for a longer amount of time to make the reveal even more shocking. at one point or another, dean does actually trust her and they all work together on cases for a while. ruby’s backstory as a witch is more explored. i like her death in s4 because she’s in this total state of euphoria and has achieved a goal only she was entrusted with, and she is so convinced sam will understand, until sam holds her down while dean carves her heart out. so we either keep that or she serves lucifer for a while (until he kills her which she is happy about because of her blind loyalty to him, could again mirror dean and john/castiel and heaven) or she serves lucifer and like crowley she realizes lucifer will kill demons after humans (redemption arc, but i don’t really like that, let her be evil!!)

dean and sam helps bela out of her deal and she becomes their go-to person when they need a magic item or book. she doesn’t like it but she owes them. regularly hooks up with jo.

angels are really hollow soldiers - they only follow orders and don’t understand the concept free will or choice or individuality at all. they are extremely righteous and strike without warning often on a whim, often very bloody (explosions a la castiel in swan song). if something fall into what they consider justice they will kill it. no concept of love, attraction or gender. real form can’t be perceived by humans unless they want them to, which leads to eyes melting (pamela) or breaking a person’s mind (in 5.16 zachariah actually says that sam and dean sees him in his vessel bc they’re ‘limited’. so.)

castiel, anna, maybe uriel and some others are exceptions to this, but only becomes so after longer exposure to human’s world. even then, they don’t change their violent whims, just the reasoning and where their loyalty lies

hbo spn is s1-5 stretched out for 8-10 seasons with the aesthetics of s1-2. i’m cutting out demon dean, purgatory, the mark of cain, the men of letters, the alphas, leviathatan, god being the real villain all along and the other worlds because it was just too much and far remived from the roadtrip aesthetic. keeping kevin, charlie (she is introduced via ash bc they’re hacker friends), the trials, rowena, uuuh the angels falling is such an interesting concept but idk if it would fit. maybe metatron? but his motivations are different. soullessness + the concept of souls might be kept if it’s explained better. i’m torn on whether or not to include the campbells

hell, heaven and purgatory are explained but only seen in glimpses, keep these ideas ambiguous and up to interpretation outside of what we hear. remember the line ‘hell is...well, it’s like hell. even for demons’? leave it at that. the exception is 5.16 bc that episode fucks so hard

if we end on swan song and let the show be the tragedy it is, i want to keep the ambiguous ending. is that sam or lucifer? if it’s sam, will he contact dean or walk away? we will never know! there is also no ‘the world is ending’ more than once, it really lost its impact after the second or third time.

idk how i feel about the men of letters - it is logical that there would be organized hunting and an established network and system on how to do things, but for the sake of keeping it hbo-style and grounded, there are no networks beyond the roadhouse and singer’s salvage yard.

i want sam and dean not have a permanent home except the impala, motels and impala ONLY. the bunker had potential but it was just for the sake of convenience it was there with all the lore and answers they needed when it was necessary. maybe eventually they do stop travelling so much when it becomes more about the Big Stuff instead of the episodic cases that requires driving all the time but it will be like an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. i want sam and dean to never have a physical house as a home but they scrape together whatever they have make something similar to a show

as the show progresses, sam and dean become pretty hated by other hunters because they’ve started apocalypse and have an increasingly shitty reputation. and john was an infamous good hunter but also a dick. everybody knows that people who work with the winchesters often end up dead, that one brother will sacrifice anything and anyone to save the other and that they frequently work alongside demons. even the ones they DO work with (jo, ellen, bobby, rufus, bela) are hesitant to be involved with them

sam’s powers are strong but after killing lilith and the truth revealed to him, he represses the powers in shock and fear of how blinded he was by them and the rush of power they gave him. a little more about how sam fears what the lust for power and strength did to him. he continues to repress his powers, often to a dangerous point where he will be on death’s door as a result of not using them. when meeting jack and mentoring him in using his powers, jack asks him about sam’s powers after sensing them. sam eventually decides to lead by example and embraces his powers again, but remains extremely careful about using them (this also fulfills dean’s arc of having to let go of the holy-innocent-pure-ideal-not a person but an idealized version of sam-little brother sam he has put on a pedestal for so long)

bobby is viewed as a father figure by sam and dean but bobby makes it clear he doesn’t want that burden or relationship in his life after his wife died. he makes this clear to them too, but sam and dean have fucked up perceptions of parental figures so they don’t think bobby means it (they just latch on to whatever parental figures they can find)

we see more of sam’s relationship with the side characters; sam and jo hunt together on occasion, he hangs out with ash and talks hacking when visiting the roadhouse. he and ellen loves playing poker together. if anything, dean is the one who’s isolated - he only ever really cared about mary, john, sam and cassie, and never really had any friends. sam is way more well adjusted and sociable after spending time at stanford where he’s had conversations that didn’t only revolve around dead bodies and lore.

this could also feed into dean’s extreme abandonment issues and isolation he feels and how this would affect his psyche

sam and dean are both unknowingly prepared to become the perfect vessels; sam loses his humanity by becoming more and more like lucifer (defying his father and his will) while dean becomes prepared by doing what michael did; casting his brother away in his time of need (blindly following his father and his will). very much like in s4 but even more intense and brutal (i love angst :))

we see different hybrids; demon/human (antichrist), human/(arch)angel (nephilim) and demon/angel (???), but none of them are all powerful bc narratively that’s really boring. they’re strong but have very specific powers that affects them and/or their surroundings in catastrophic ways (but no other worlds bs, we stick to the road trip aesthetic, keep it grounded). i want the only all powerful character to be god but he doesn’t show up at all, he’s the ultimate absent father. is it chuck? we never find out!

powers would for example include giving people diseases, force anyone close to them to tell the truth (not consciously, it’s just the air around them), read minds, create storms, light things on fire when they’re angry, make people hallucinate etc. like fucked up shit but not things that are too grande because again - that’s really boring

abbadon, the princes of hell and the four horsemen are more fleshed out villains instead of the one season reign the each had.

being a prince of hell is a title that is inherited - after azazel dies, sam gets the title because he is the one with azazel’s blood in him OR meg does, but idk if that would be as interesting (if she actually was his daughter)

it remains a horror show throughout, lots of gore and blood

the moral code and ethics of the brothers are the opposite of the beginning; dean thinks in black and white, sam sees shades of grey and individuals instead of what they are. however, as the show progresses, their train of thought becomes opposites; dean becomes more open to how people are true evil and how monsters are often victims of their circumstance while sam becomes harsher and less forgiving after ruby’s betrayal along with finding out the truth of his existence and how there’s been demons around his entire life. eventually they’re on the same page and they see the circumstances.

on the other hand; i also really fuck with the idea of dean maintaining his black and white morals on that all monsters=inherently evil, humans=inherently pure and good, but he is the only human on team free will. sam is half demon, castiel is an angel, jack is a nephilim, rowena is a witch, garth is a werewolf, mary is a zombie etc

demons become demons in hell by agreeing to become the torturer and thus giving up their humanity to be free of pain, does that mean they could become humans again by regaining some humanity? by doing good deeds? (potentially this is confirmed with jessica and how she came to love sam; genuine love and care for a human could reverse the demon process?) this also means dean was a demon in hell but was purified/turned back again when castiel raised him. this also plays into dean becoming like michael; in trying to absolve himself from what he did in hell he becomes ruthless, unforgiving and righteous to evil, much like the angels, regardless of his personal connection to a person and what he would consider “evil”

dean and pacifisim: after dean is cured from being a demon/the mark of cain/is made aware of his blind righteousness that he used as an excuse to kill, he becomes firmly determined to reign in his anger and violent tendencies by becoming a pacifist (like sam in s11) as a way to redeem all the blood he’s spilled. of course in his profession and true dean fashion he won’t be able to do it 100% so he decides to only act in self defense, and he only goes batshit violent on the offense when it’s about protecting sam

OR. dean’s self righteousness becomes his own downfall; the belief that all evil must be eradicated, refusal to see the circumstances and the shades of grey is what pushes him to lose his humanity and become a demon and therefore, in a potential ending the ruler of hell, because i think it would such an interesting journey from a to b, that dean starts out human, revels in his holiness, executes and kills in the name of his own holiness in the belief that he’s becoming the ultimate angel, the ultimate hero when it’s doing the opposite. if this happened then sam would take the opposite route; starts as a human, becomes more and more demonic, stops himself and returns to his hopeful and optimistic self, has faith and humility and that is what makes him ascend from abomination to purified and holy (trials).

this could be a perfect 10 season structure as well: s1-5 are when sam and dean start off humans; dean becomes holy and as close to an angel a human can be, while sam drinks the demon blood and almost becomes one to gain the freedom and power he wants, but begins to turn it around to send lucifer back to hell. s6-10 is when dean becomes the unholy and sam becomes the holy even though neither realize because now there’s no grand master plan - this is who they are, who they choose themselves. don’t know how this ould end though; either as normal humans again (but there wouldn’t really be a ”normal” after everything) or they really go off the rails with sam like ruling heaven (not as god though, just as a good and just man) and dean ruling hell. castiel is human and stays on earth with jack.

the gothic americana aesthetic is kept throughout the entire show and is only shot on film

after s5 castiel returns to heaven to help restore order, and he takes charge for a little while, but eventually returns to earth after trying to introduce democracy to angels who didn’t get it. in his place, anna takes over and she rules heaven well (after trying to kill mary when going back in time she isn’t killed by michael, but narrowly escapes and remains in hiding to heal until castiel reaches out and finds her)

when finding out they are The Vessels and will be brought back regardless of what they try, sam and dean explore what this means more. dean throws himself into dangers and to protect others. he is burned, blown up, stabbed, electrocuted, beheaded and eaten, but wakes up the next morning in his bed without a scratch, without any pain and memories of his deaths. he revels in this untouchability. sam kills himself over and over only to be resurrected again and again by lucifer. he remembers the pain and blood.

that being said, while dean is like angel royalty, sam is demon royalty. the demons don’t go after him, they don’t hurt him. some even offer up themselves to be drained of blood, even after lilith’s death. it makes it really difficult to stay clean but he pulls through with dean and castiel actually supporting him. to help sam get through his addiction, dean stops drinking alcohol and they go through their withdrawal together

the angels almost worship dean as the michael sword and have an open disgust towards sam for being lucifer’s vessel - they always answer dean’s prayers and calls for help, they follow his orders if need be and don’t hesitate to heal him if he needs it. sam could pray until his vocal chords bleed or call out for help while holding his guts in his hands; none of the angels would come to his aid. the only one who answers sam’s prayers is lucifer as a voice in sam’s head or a hallucination. sam could call demons to help him out but he refuses

sam isn’t the first hunter to drink demon blood, to try to enhance his own abilities using the supernatural as a means to get there - there are hunters who have altered themselves with parts from werewolves and vampires to become better hunters, like the styne family (the guys from s10), blurring the lines again of what’s good and human vs what is evil and inhumane

if angels can’t find a vessel to volunteer, they will force them to say yes - the how is not important, only that the ‘yes’ is said, whether its meant or not, any verbal yes will do. the angels never sleep and they never eat, which is disturbing to sam and dean who are exhausted all the time and eat scraps whenever they can

castiel, like all other angels, is taught to despise and not care about sam winchester at all, but the more castiel gets to know sam, he becomes fascinated with him, how lucifer’s ultimate vessel, starter of the apocalypse and destroyer of god’s creation can be so kind and gentle, so full of faith, acceptance, optimism and hope. in dean castiel sees a good man, yes, but also a man who’s bloodthirsty, rages, revels in war, resorts all problems with violence, loves conditionally and expects unquestioned loyalty. sam too, has a darkness and bloodthirst in him, but it only comes out in glimpses. castiel thinks it’s funny, how sam turns out to be the opposite of lucifer while dean is so alike michael

#hbo spn #supernatural #sam winchester #dean winchester #iben spoke #girl help this makes no sense #these are just things i want to see plot-wise and character arc-wise

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trash-but-respectable-trash · 5 years ago

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No time to die (angst one shot, Diavolo x F!MC)

Based on Billie Eilish song “No time to die”

(So I deleted the first version I posted by accident and like I dumbass I hadn’t saved it anywhere, so I tried for like 2 hours to find it somehow, but to no use. I was really sad because it took me hours to write it and I really liked how it turned out, but I don’t want this story to go to waste, because I really liked it and I have ideas for a continuation with Diavolo’s POV. So sorry if you already read it, but this version will be a bit different since I’m starting from scratch and I have no reference to how I wrote the first version. I hope you all enjoy anyway!)

Part 2 is up!

You should’ve known something wasn’t right. You should’ve known that this was too good to be true. You knew of his title and what he was, a demon, but you still decided to ignore it.

You should’ve known something was up when Diavolo started spending a lot more time with you than any other exchange student. He would always asked questions about you and your life in the human world. You should’ve known there was more to it than politness when Diavolo suggested for you to stay at his castle one night, when a friendly tea afternoon turned out to end much later than you anticipated. It wasn’t the first time it happened, but usually Barbatos would walk you home when it was too dangerous for you to walk back home alone.

You definitely should’ve known when you had your first time together. Diavolo had kissed you like you were an animated object. It felt animalistic, almost robotic, he wasn’t making love to you, that’s for sure. Right after he was done, he left pretending that he had paperwork to do and he did the same thing every other time after that.

You thought it was because of his nature, demons do not know how to love, at least that’s what you were telling yourself.

Diavolo would bring you everywhere and acted like a perfect gentleman in public. He would show you the most beautiful places in the Devildom and would present you to the most influential people in the Devildom even calling you his princess in front of everyone. That was how he made you feel in public, like a princess. But once you were both being closed doors he would act like he didn’t care about you. Sure, he would ask you questions about the human world from time to time, but you never felt like he truly wanted to get to know you past the basic information about yourself.

Everyone tried to warn you in one way or another. Solomon once told you to be careful around demons, that they cannot be trusted: “We humans, have to look out for each other.” As for the angels, Simeon simply told you that: “Demons aren’t made to love humans, they’re made to hate them.” You thought you would be the one to change that fact, how foolish of you.

You remembered the way the brothers would look at each other every time you said you were spending the day or night at Diavolo’s castle. They wanted to warned you, but they knew they couldn’t or else they would all be in danger. So they would simply told you to be careful. You thought they were simply jealous, but now you know better.

When you finally learned the truth, you couldn’t help but think about all the warnings and red flags you got during the last few months.

It’s not like Diavolo wanted to torture you or make you his concubine, not it wasn’t anything like that.

You learned of Diavolo’s true intentions by accident. You were waiting for him in his office because you knew this would be the first place he would go to once he got home. His desk was a mess, so you decided to clean it a bit before his return. Most of the papers scattered across his desk were student reports, but one letter in particular caught your attention. It was handwritten and started with: “Dear father”. Your curiosity got the better of you and you started to read the letter.

“Dear father,

Everything is going as planned. The exchange program is going wonderfully. The last time I wrote to you, I mentioned one of the exchange student, MC. She is a human like Solomon but she does not have the same magical power as him. I think she is in love with me, but I am only acting like I am in love with her too so she can trust me.

She is the key of my plan to rule over the three realms. With the information I am getting from her about the human world, it will be easier for me to take it over, especially with her on my side. I also needed her to trust me so she can tell the future exchange students of how wonderful her year was here with us, demons. I will put my plan into action once I get the trust of the Celestial Realm as well. She will be of great use for this as well, since the angels will see how happy she is here and how protected she is.

Do not worry father, as I will continue your legacy and make you proud of me. Nothing will stop me and as for now, everything is going as I planned. The next step for me will be to marry her, like you told me once, marriage and love are two different things. I need to think of what is best for our kind.

Your son,

Diavolo.”

A single tear fell onto the letter before you heard Diavolo’s footsteps approaching his office doors. You quickly put the letter back to his original place on his desk and sat on his office chair like nothing happened.

There were only three weeks left to the exchange program when you found the letter, so you acted like nothing was wrong for the remaining of the exchange program. You faked smiles and made it seemed like you were still madly in love with Diavolo. Two can play that game. You spent so little time alone with him that he didn’t notice anything.

You were finally on your last day of the student exchange program.

You told Diavolo earlier that morning that you had found the letter to his father on his desk and that you knew of his true intentions now. You thought he would lock you in his castle to prevent you from leaving the Devildom or maybe even kill you, but he did nothing of the sort. To your surprise, he had let you go without a fight. After all, you were of no use to him if you didn’t trust him.

You decided to sing one last song before you left the Devildom forever. Not for Diavolo, but for yourself.

You took your place on the stage. You were now in front of all of your friends, the brothers, your classmates, the other exchange students, Barbatos and Diavolo.

You were wearing an elegant black dress that Asmodeus bought you a couple months ago. He spent all afternoon doing your hair and makeup. You barely talked, which was very unusual for the both of you, but Asmo knew what you just went through and what this day and this song in particular meant to you so he didn’t talk, focusing on his task instead.

You had told the brothers about Diavolo’s plan that same morning. They all knew something was wrong in some way, but they never could’ve guessed what was Diavolo’s true plan. They all apologized to you for not being there to protect you.

The music started to play as you waited for you queue to start singing.

I should've known

I'd leave alone

You should’ve known you would leave the Devildom alone. You should’ve known that this was just all a dream that you would have to wake up from one day to face the truth. That you were nothing more than a pawn in Diavolo’s game of chess and that the only outcome possible was for you to leave the Devildom alone with your broken heart.

We were a pair

But I saw you there

Too much to bear

You were my life

But life is far away from fair

You dedicated yourself to a man who didn’t care for you, who didn’t love you. It was truly painful to accept the truth. He may have hurt you once, but you promised yourself this would be the last time he would ever hurt you.

Was I stupid to love you?

Was I reckless to help?

Was it obvious to everybody else

That I'd fallen for a lie?

You couldn’t help but think of how stupid you’d been. So naive to think that the prince of hell himself would actually fall in love with you. At first you were mad at yourself but also at the brothers. Why did they let you live in this fantasy filled with lies? Especially Lucifer, you thought you guys were close after what you had done to help his family get closer.

But then you remembered that Lucifer was bound to Diavolo and even if he knew what was Diavolo’s plan all along, he couldn’t tell you or you, his brothers and himself would all be in danger.

So, while you were now singing in front of your formal classmates, the brothers, Solomon, Simeon, Luke, Barbatos and Diavolo particularly, you never felt so hurt, but so powerful.

This was your swan song, the last time most of them would ever saw you again, would ever heard your voice again. You wish it would’ve gone completely differently, but you weren’t safe anymore in the Devildom. No one could protect you here, not the brothers or even the angels.

You could tell some of them were crying, knowing full well they let you down, but this was your own decision for once. You weren’t blinded by lies and by the glamorous life Diavolo offered you outside of his castle, anymore.

You were never on my side

Fool me once, fool me twice

Are you death or paradise?

Diavolo may had fooled you once, but you knew the truth now and you would never be fooled again. You would prove to him that you were more than a fragile human he could play with and use to his own advantage.

Now you'll never see me cry

There's just no time to die

You wanted to cry so badly, but you didn’t want to give Diavolo the satisfaction of seeing what he had done to you. So, you swallowed your tears and put on a strong face.

I let it burn

You're no longer my concern

Faces from my past return

Another lesson yet to learn

“You’re no longer my concern” this was a hard one for you, because at this exact moment, you realized that you didn’t care for Diavolo anymore. Sure, he had broken your heart and hurt you pride, but you were stronger than that now, stronger than ever before. You looked at him while singing these words and you could tell that he was uncomfortable by the look on his face and the way he was squirming in his seat.

Now you'll never see me cry

There's just no time to die

No time to die

You were almost at the end of the song when you realized you weren’t looking at Diavolo anymore. You were now looking at your true friends, the brothers, Solomon, Simeon and Luke. Your experience in the Devildom might not have ended the way you expected but you wanted to leave it with a good memory.

Fool me once, fool me twice

Are you death or paradise?

Now you'll never see me cry

There's just no time to die

The song had ended and now Diavolo was nothing more than the past. At the last second before you left the stage to find your true friends, you turned to Diavolo once last time and said: "I would’ve told you to burn in hell but fortunately, that’s already where you are.” You immediately turned around again, without letting him enough time to speak or to react to what you just said.

After that, everyone returned to the House of Lamentation, everyone expect for Diavolo who went back to his castle alone.

You all said your goodbyes while Barbatos was standing awkwardly in a corner of the room.

After a while, Barbatos told all of you that it was now time to leave.

The first one to leave were the angels. You thanked them for what they did for you during the exchange program and made them swear they would come see you in the human world. You could tell that Barbatos was growing impatient, but you didn’t care.

You finally let the angels go when Barbatos opened a portal leading to the Celestial Realm and with one last goodbye, the two angels stepped into it.

Next was you and Solomon. Barbatos opened another portal, this one leading to the human world. You took Solomon’s hand before turning your head towards the brothers. They were now all crying, which also made you cried. You told them one last time that you loved them all, before turning back towards Solomon and said: “Let’s go home.” as you both walked into the portal.

You’ve been back to the human world for about a month now. It wasn’t easy at first adjusting to your old life. It would be a lie to say you didn’t think about him once in a while, but it didn’t hurt as much anymore. The main reason for that was that you had the help of Solomon who you’d spent a lot of time with.

You were also grateful for the brothers who all took turns to come see you in the human world. You got closer to them and it made you think about what would’ve happened if you didn’t fell for Diavolo. Would you have fallen for one of the brothers instead?

Oh well, you can’t rewrite history and you might still be a foolish human, but you were now a foolish human surrounded by people who truly loved you.

Thank you for reading! Likes and reblogs are always appreciated!

There will be a part 2 to this with Diavolo’s perspective after MC’s gone. It will probably be dark, I just don’t know how dark I want it to be yet.

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haveamagicalday · 4 years ago

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My reads of 2020

My top ten is in a separate post but here are the rest of my reads!

5 Stars

If You Tell by Gregg Olsen

This is a memoir about the Shelley Knotek case. It focuses heavily on the relationship and struggles of her three daughters that were just children when Shelley’s tortures started. This book was fantastically written for such a morbid tale but be warned, it is not for the faint of heart. Trigger Warning: Abuse, torture, murder

Wayside School Beneath the Cloud of Doom by Louis Sachar

The Wayside school books were some of my favorite growing up. I made sure to reread them all before reading this one. It felt like no time had past at all. This is a great blast from the past that won’t disappoint old fans of the series.

4 Stars

All Your Twisted Secrets by Diana Urban

A group of seemingly unrelated students are invited to a scholar dinner that turns out to be a trapped. Once all the students arrive, they are locked in with a bomb and the the option to choose one person to die or they all die. As the night slips away, we learn the secrets and connections the students share that brought them to their predicament. Surprisingly not as suspenseful as you would think it would be and the secrets/bad things the students had done in the past really weren’t that twisted. Still it was very fun with an explosive ending.

Beyond the Shadowed Earth by Joanna Ruth Meyer

This is a sequel to Beneath the Haunting Sea and actually focused on the hero from the first’s books antagonist, Eda. Eda overthrow our hero from the first book as heir to the throne, blamed the king’s death on her and had her wrongfully banished to an island that launched the story of the first book. After that we never visited Eda again as the book focused on a different story instead of getting her kingdom back. So in this one, we see what happened to Eda after she took over. She is not a good person and the author isn’t afraid to make her unlikable at first, but also redeemable through her adventure and misfortunate.

Break Your Glass Slippers by Amanda Lovelace

Another book of poetry from Amanda Lovelace that delivers profound and touching poems.

Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier

A classic retelling of The Six Swans. This story takes place in a medieval/fantasy version of Ireland. Marillier is one of my favorite authors of fairytale retellings. This book is definitely a slow read but is gorgeously written and rich in character development. The story follows the fairytale with little variation. Trigger Warning: Rape (graphic depiction).

Lady Killers: Deadly Women Throughout History by Tori Telfer

Nonfictional account of female serial killers. I liked that this wasn’t written like a wikipedia page and took a more narrative approach. After the first few women, they all start to blend together though. Lots of poisoning happens. It would have been nice for some variety.

Malorie by Josh Malerman

The sequel to Bird Box that we probably didn’t need but was still good nonetheless. This one focuses more on Boy and Girl (now named thankfully) as teenagers and their view and challenges of the world they’ve grown up in. This book introduced new concepts that were interesting and creative. Somehow this managed to have a relatively happy and satisfying conclusion.

The Monstrous Feminine by Barbara Creed

A look at horror films through a feminist and psychological lens. I absolutely loved this book and the ideas it presents. The first half of the book takes a look at certain horror films (such as Carrie, the Exorcist, Alien, ect.) and “challenges this patriarchal view by arguing that the prototype of all definitions of the monstrous is the female reproductive body.” I liked the first section of the book more than the second part where I felt it focused too much on Freud and his findings and challenging them through horror films.

No Judgements by Meg Cabot

A cute, fluffy romance that takes place on a small island preparing for a category 3 hurricane. Bree finds herself forced to shelter with the island’s resident heartbreaker and they don’t get along. At first ;)

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Alicia, a famous painter and wealthy wife, shocked the world when she killed her husband and then stopped speaking afterwards. Now committed to a mental institute, Alicia is still refusing to speak. Theo is a therapist who jumps at the opportunity to work with Alicia and discover what really happened with her husband. Some of the twist was easy to pick up on at first but there was plenty that kept me guessing. This was a real page turner.

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

Alexis and her group of friends have one very big thing in common; they are able to preform magic. One night, Alexis’ magic causes an accidental death of a classmate and the friends have to ban together to make things right. This was a creative and moving read. There’s plenty of magic but it almost comes secondary to the friendships and blossoming love between two of the friends.

The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson

Immanuelle lives in. a patriarchal society where the prophet’s word is law and the town is bordered by the evil and forbidden Darkwood. In the Darkwoods lurks four witches that seem to be calling out to Immanuelle. This book had fantastic world building and the story was unique and engaging. Sometimes it felt like we were just skimming the surface of possibilities and I felt that the book could have been longer or divided into a series. While the story wraps up in the end it does turn out there is going to be a sequel so I’m excited for that! Trigger Warning: Mentions of Rape

3.5 Stars

The Cousins by Karen M. McManus

Jonah, Aubrey and Milly never knew their rich grandmother. Her children were all cut off ominously with a note simply saying “you know what you did.” Now their grandmother is reaching out to the cousins and inviting them to work at her island resort for the summer. Lots of secrets and twists await them! This book was a lot of fun and probably my favorite of this author’s so far. Some of the twists border on zany but the overall tone of the book is a little zany so it works.

Horrid by Katrina Leno

After her father’s death, Jane and her mother are forced to move across the country into Jane’s mother’s childhood home. The manor has many secrets hidden within that Jane must face. The book was well written and intriguing. The books deal with grief and mental illness with a touch of the supernatural. I felt that the overall pacing felt off though. Very little happened in the beginning and then a lot happens in the last 30 or so pages and then it ended abruptly. It was a great concept though and I'm interested in more from this author!

One of Us is Next by Karen M. McManus

A sequel to the hit novel, One of Us is Lying. This book focuses on one of the character’s from the first books little sister and two of her classmates. The stakes in this one didn’t feel quite as serious as the first book but it was a fun read with interesting twists!

The Return by Rachel Harrison

Julie went missing, leaving her 3 best friends grappling with tragedy. Then, exactly two years later, she comes back with no memories. The four friends decide to spend a weekend together but something is not quite right with Julie. This book was creepy! However, it focuses more on the relationships of the four characters and dealings with grief with a touch of supernatural sprinkled throughout. It’s a gripping novel from start to finish that will keep you guessing.

3 Stars

All the Missing Girls by Megan Miranda

Nicolette returns to her hometown for the first time in ten years after the mysterious disappearance of her best friend. Shortly after arriving another girl goes missing, forcing Nicolette to relive what happened years ago. What made this book a page turner was that it tells the story backwards. Once she gets to her hometown it starts on her 10th day and works backwards to what happened on the day of her arrival. Unfortunately, while the concept works at first it builds up to a lackluster and disappointing ending. If you were to put the book in the correct order, it wouldn’t work as there are stuff that is found out in the first few days that the reader doesn’t know about but the characters do that wouldn’t make sense in a narrative sense.

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris

From the outside Jack and Grace come off as the perfect couple but behind closed doors, everything changes. No twists here, Grace is Jack’s prisoner and she is desperately trying to get away. The book alternates between past and present about her current situation and how she got there. This involves a lot of suspension of disbelief. Jack is a cartoony type of villain with no real motive and he would never be able to get away with what he was doing. Grace is also not the smartest person, there were a lot of different ways she could have escaped but for the sake of the story she doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, this was still a suspenseful and fun read but also questionable and some points.

The Blue Salt Road by Joanne M. Harris

A quick, fairytale like story about a selkie who was tricked into becoming human and now longs to return to the sea. I feel like there was a message being preached in this story, but I can’t really pinpoint what it was. Regardless, this was a magical little read.

Clown in a Corn Field by Adam Cesare

Clown in the corn field is a slasher film put on page. It starts off like a typical YA novel and sets up a mystery as to who the clown is, but then the clown attacks at a party and the rest of the novel is that one night as the clown wrecks havoc and the teens have to escape. I think I wold have preferred and more drawn out mystery but fans of slasher films would really enjoy this!

Coral by Sara Ella

A sort of retelling of the Little Mermaid. Sort of. This book focuses on strong themes of mental health. The mermaid/fantasy side is minimal and almost completely disappears in the 2/3rds in to the novel. It was a slightly confusing read but had a powerful depiction of depression. Trigger Warning: Suicide

The Doll House Murders by Betty Ren Wright

A sad but sweet little mystery novel about a preteen girl who discovers a dark secret via an old dollhouse and its mysterious moving dolls. The subject matter was dark but the story was written for middle graders and thus mystery is handled with simplicity and strange charm to it.

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

The sequel to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. This book hasn’t been released in the US yet but you can still get the British/original version on amazon which is what I did. This novel requires a stretch of disbelief and I didn’t think the mystery was as good as the first one. However, if you are a fan of the first one, you will still want to check this one out as well!

I Know Who You Are by Alice Feeney

You definitely have to suspend your disbelief when you read this one. It's gripping and while some twists were easily guessed, the final one took me for a surprise. It's equal parts dark/chilling and cheesy/silly. I'm still left with a lot of questions after the ending. It makes the book fall apart when you think about it but if you just take it for what it is, an entertaining but cheesy thriller, you'll enjoy it.

The Harp of Kings by Juliet Marillier

This book features the children of the main characters from the Blackthorn and Grim series but you don’t need to read that series in order to read this one (though you should!). The book features three teenagers that are training to be warriors that are selected to go undercover in a nearby kingdom to find the stolen Harp of Kings before the new king’s coronation can take place. It was slow in the beginning and I felt there wasn’t much character development but it was an enjoyable read.

In Darkling Wood by Emma Carroll

Alice’s sick brother is getting a lung transplant and Alice is forced to stay with an estranged grandmother. Her grandmother lives on the edge of darkling wood, a place rumored to be filled with fairies. This book reminded me of a less dark version of When A Monster Calls. It deals with some of the same themes but this is more aimed towards children with a feel good ending.

The Lost Girls by Heather Young

In the summer of 1935, six year old Emily disappeared leaving her two older sisters and parents devastated. Sixty years later, both sisters are dead but one of them left behind her house and a notebook detailing what happened that summer for her grandniece, Justine. This book wasn’t so much of a thriller but focused more on Justine’s current issues with her daughters and ex boyfriend. I found the chapters with the notebook pages in between chapters more interesting than the modern story.

Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

I read the first Stargirl years ago but reread it before reading this one. This sequel doesn’t manage to capture the same charm as the first one did. The book is a series of letters that Stargirl writes (but doesn’t send) to Leo from the first book following her over the course of a year. I found it surprisingly boring at times and Stargirl seemed far to normal as compared to the first book. It was neat to see what she was up to after the first book but overall I didn’t think it was a necessary sequel.

A Psalm for Lost Girls by Katie Bayerl

Callie’s older sister was considered a saint in her small town before she tragically passed away. Now the city is trying to have her canonized, but Callie knows her sister wasn’t a saint, and the pressure is what ultimately killed, so now she’s on a mission to prove that her sister was just a normal girl. This book involved a missing child that Callie’s sister was supposed to find before she died but couldn’t. The mystery there was very predictable and was kind of on the back burner to Callie’s story. I think this would have been a more interesting story if it had been from the sister’s perspective and how it felt to be a teen saint while she was still alive.

The Rose Without a Thorn by Jean Plaidy

The story of Katherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry. I was looking for a novel that painted Katherine as sympathetic, as most adaptations make her out to be a seductress. This novel was strange as it read as a wikipedia entry in a narrative form. It was all telling and no showing and lacked real emotion. From the minor research I’ve done, it seems to be pretty accurate in terms of events that happened. Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse featuring a minor (but isn’t presented as such)

Sadie by Courtney Summers

Sadie’s sister was murdered and she is determined to bring the killer to justice. In between each chapter about Sadie is a the transcript for a podcast that is covering the case, as well as Sadie’s future disappearance . This is a very popular book but to be honest, I'm not sure what the point was? The podcast was an interesting idea but it basically just rehashed everything we already knew. Not much was added by it. The ending just fizzles away and the story tended to drag in places. It was very well written though and I think I was just not the right audience for it.

The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher

A creepy retelling of Bluebeard. It reads like a YA in some places but Adult in others. It was definitely unsightly and out there but I found it confusing in some places. It has some great creepy imagery and slight body horror to it.

The Supervillain and Me by Danielle Banas

Abby’s brother is a superhero beloved by the whole crime ridden town. But when a supervillain comes into town, Abby finds her paths crossing with him again and again. Okay, so the supervillain wasn’t even a villain and the reason for wanting Abby to help him was not a very good one. The book is mostly about the romance between the two which was nice but nothing spectacular. I found myself more interested in the musical Abby was starring in. It was about a cannibalistic royal family whose oldest son falls in love with a servant and he has to save her from being eaten by his family. Now THAT sounded interesting!

Winterdream by Chantal Gadoury

A Nutcracker retelling. This was a sweet retelling of the story. It didn’t add much to the original tale or the ballet but it was a good winter read to get into the spirit of Christmas.

They Wish They Were Us by Jessica Goodman

Freshman year, Jill’s best friend was killed by her boyfriend., Graham Now it’s senior year and Jill is the president of an elite school club but someone keeps texting her about Graham’s innocence and she can’t keep herself from diving deeper into the mystery to unearth what really happened to her friend. Gripping and twisty, this book was a solid teen mystery!

Not Rated

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

I read this almost a year ago and I still don’t know what to think about it. I can’t decide if the story was genius or simple shock value. Did the twist make sense? I don’t know honestly. I read this before I even knew there was a netflix adaptation coming and I while I read this book in one sitting, I only made it halfway through the movie. I personally don’t think it translated well to screen. If you are looking for a quick disturbing read with an ending you WILL NOT be able to guess, then I highly recommend this one.

The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg

There’s a pretty popular post on his webiste that has a link to a horrifying retelling of Curious George. This is a collection of retellings/unrelated short stories by the same author. I didn’t read all of the stories in this because some of them were just too difficult to get through and confusing. However, the dark retellings of fairy tales and children books were really enjoyable. I particularly liked the retellings of The velveteen rabbit, the frog prince and the six swans. I think they can all be found online and not just in this collection.

Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer

Is it good? No. Is it garbage? Yes. Did I still read it any way? Yes. Team Edward for life.

#books #book recomendation #all your twisted secrets #when we were magic #the silent patient #the return #daughter of the forest #malorie #the year of the witching

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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No Time to Die: Daniel Craig on How Vesper Lynd Haunted His James Bond Run

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For James Bond, or Daniel Craig’s version of him anyway, it all begins and ends with Vesper Lynd. The doomed and beloved character, so memorably portrayed by Eva Green in Casino Royale (2006), only appeared in Craig’s first outing as 007. And yet, she’s lingered on as both a tragic memory from Bond’s past, and as a creative wellspring for Craig’s understanding of a character he’s revisited time and again, including in this week’s No Time to Die—his final appearance in the tuxedo.

As Daniel Craig tells Den of Geek when we sit down with him over the weekend, Bond’s ill-fated romance with Vesper, and her betrayal, has served in a way to link all five films together. That connection even ultimately gave the actor a reason to return for one more movie after it seemed like 2015’s Spectre might be his last.

“I felt like there was a story that we needed to finish off,” Craig says about why he decided to come back after initially thinking 2015’s Spectre might be his swan song. That previous 007 movie ended with Bond seeming to retire and driving off into the sunset with Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine Swann. Yet it was the connection between the two women in Bond’s life which intrigued Craig.

“Casino Royale had been his impetus—the betrayal by Vesper Lynd made him into this sort of slightly vengeful and slightly mistrustful human being,” says Craig. “We sort of got to this place in Spectre where it felt like he was falling in love with somebody at the end of the movie. And that felt like, for me at that point, where we’d end it, because we got to the sort sort of [happy ending]. But then we got to talking [about] a few of the ideas that I’d had for a long, long time. We got some more ideas, people came in, and it formed.”

What formed was No Time to Die, the 25th official Bond adventure, and the longest to date with a whopping 163-minute running time. The film serves as a direct sequel to Spectre, further exploring the relationship between Bond and Madeleine while also bringing back the SPECTRE organization. However, the film also serves as a a sequel and definitive conclusion to Craig’s entire run, including by picking at the wound of Vesper once more, which Bond seemed to have somewhat resolved in Quantum of Solace (2008). It’s why No Time to Die opens with Craig’s Bond finally visiting Vesper’s grave, at Madeleine’s insistence.

In this way, No Time to Die cements what Craig tells us was his aspiration to make one long-form story across several films, with the death of Vesper being, in a sense, the inciting incident.

“I kind of was interested in that from the beginning,” Craig explains. “We’d often have these meetings on nearly all of them where we’d go, ‘Let’s make it standalone, let’s just stick it somewhere where it doesn’t join in.’ And we couldn’t avoid it. We just couldn’t. I don’t know whether other people see it, but I couldn’t ever really get away from this traumatic thing that had happened to him on Casino.”

Craig continues that the death of Vesper in that film “never felt like it was running out of steam” as perhaps the most hugely consequential incident of Bond’s life, even when a new romantic lead was introduced in Spectre with the emergence of Madeleine Swann.

“We reintroduced it in Spectre by having Mr. White [who engineered Vesper’s betrayal and death] come in,” the actor says. “And then having Mr. White’s daughter be the woman that he fell in love with just felt so correct in some way—to find an assassin’s daughter, someone as fucked up and as complicated as he was.” Nevertheless, Craig insists that the creative team “definitely tried” to make some of the films stand on their own: “There are scripts that that we played around with, but we could never… it always ended up creeping in.”

As for whether the franchise should go forward in the same way—telling one story across several films—as a new 007 enters the picture, Craig doesn’t think that has to be the template from now on.

“I would if they had a good story,” he says. “We had Casino Royale, we had a great source, and the guys wrote a great script. Without having that, I don’t know if you can recreate it with as much impact… if they can, if you can link them through, then yeah, definitely. But they don’t have to.”

For Craig, it was a matter of leaving a personal stamp on a character that had been embodied by five previous actors and embedded in pop culture for more than 40 years at the time he landed the part. “I hope this doesn’t sound arrogant, but I just didn’t know how else to do it,” Craig says. “I mean, I’m a terrible mimic. So I couldn’t do what anybody else had done. I had to kind of approach it from the only way I know how and I just wanted to dig into him a bit and dig into the heart of who he was.”

Digging into the heart of Bond—drilling down into the character and making him perhaps more complex than he’s ever been in any previous iteration—may be the defining legacy of Craig’s 15-year, five-film term as 007, and could also set the bar for whoever fills the iconic secret agent’s shoes next.

“Creatively I was just given a lot of, I suppose, free rein in the sense that I said to [Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson] very early on, ‘If you give me a say and allow me to have input… if you give me the responsibility, I will try and repay you.’ And they did.” Craig laughs gently. “And as I’ve said before, they’ve regretted it every day since.”

Somehow we doubt that, Mr. Bond.

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No Time to Die is now in theaters everywhere.

The post No Time to Die: Daniel Craig on How Vesper Lynd Haunted His James Bond Run appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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awesomerextyphoon · 5 years ago

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Charred Briar Roses - 3

Curse’s Broken, Now What?

Summary: The title speaks for itself.

Parings: Orc!Bucky x Black!Reader, Orc!Steve x Black!OFC, Orc!Sam x Black!OFC

Word Count: 4,136

Warnings: Implied Smut and Some Violence

A/N: This was longer than I anticipated. Also, the princesses would be a US size 14/15. I totally forgot to mention that earlier. Sorry about that. Enjoy!

Back to Masterlist

Instead of spending 600 years in total darkness, you communicated with your sisters in a pretty well constructed dream version of the palace. You thought of new inventions and fighting moves, reconciled with Ghada about your fight the day of the curse, and kept analyzing what happened in the north west tower.

If felt like you were in the dream world for about a month.

You were talking with your sisters about trivial childhood memories when all of you felt arms around your bodies. Your surroundings started to fade and so did your sisters.

You felt chapped yet soft lips kiss your neck and lips. It was surprisingly nice, like a dream.

You opened your eyes and realized three things: Someone was actually kissing you, you weren’t in the tower, and the person kissing you wasn’t the prince that your mother had all but assured you but an admittedly hot (albeit ruggedly, your core notes) orc-human hybrid.

You and your sisters screamed.

You immediately try to push him away but he wouldn’t budge. That scared you because both you and your sisters could bench about five tons thanks to Doireann, the war fairy who blessed and trained you in combat since the age of three.

You punched him with a right jab once he broke for air. Couldn’t even get him off the bed.

He chuckled and rubbed his strong jaw and said what seemed to be a compliment in Orcish as you nursed your knuckles.

“I said that you’re quite feisty for a human princess.” He repeated in Common Tongue.

You saw that your sisters had similar reactions to their kissers. Fumnanya even threw a shoe at the one that would be later called Sam. The others got a laugh out of it.

After everyone settled down, we shared our names while you were trying not jump Bucky, the warrior who kissed you.

“So, I was wondering, do you know what year it is?” Fumnanya inquired in a mousy tone that she uses with strangers.

Steve was it, yeah Steve rubbed the back of his head, “How to put this. You’ve been asleep for 600 years. Just about everyone thinks you’re a myth. Hell, we wouldn’t have believed it if we weren’t right in front of you.”

He then provided updates on what happed after your birthdays, but you were only half listening. Your dumb fight with Ghada and your damn curiosity cost you and your sisters your friends, family, and life.

You wanted to cry, but Ghada motioned you to join her and Fumnanya in a huddle. You spoke in Nephrashim as to not alert the warriors.

The three of you knew that Sophronius was up to no good and it was odd that he was still alive since the average lifespan was 300 years due to the Nephrashim Crystal.

“We need to convince them to take us outside of the city since I’m guessing the spell Etna put on us to keep Y/N from skipping class is still in place.”

You rolled your eyes at Ghada snide comment.

“We take what need in whatever storage device Y/N has in her ‘secret workshop’!” Fumnanya chimed in.

“Hey-“

“We all knew where it is, sis. You’re not fooling anyone.” Ghada deadpanned while you huffed in frustration.

With that, the three of you rejoined the group and offered to show them around after you changed your clothes.

–––––––––––––––––––––

The warrior trio was waiting outside the room for 20 minutes when you and sisters finally emerged from behind the doors. The three of you wore much more comfortable clothing than the extravagant kaftans you wore in your sleep. The clothes also showcased more of your curves and sleek muscles they noted.

“What would you like to do first?” You asked. No sooner had you finished the question that the warrior trio’s stomachs growled like a lion’s roar.

Ghada giggled and together, you led the trio to the main banquet hall.

You and your sisters had a hunch that the food from your 18th birthday celebration was still good. Your hunch was right.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––

The hall was filled with food for 900 people. The tables were packed with: huge slabs of Gararagator Steak, roast beef and pork, fried chicken, smoked turkey, grilled and baked fish in sweet brown sauces, curries, pastas, thick stews, enticing side dishes, rich pastries/desserts, and caskets of mead and wine.

The warriors were drooling at the sight and aromas of the feast. So, when Ghada casually said to dig in, they devoured ALL of the food in record time.

You and your sisters managed to get some of the food before it was gone. None of you would admit it, but the three of you were turned on by the ferocity at which they ate and drank.

Once they finished the food and drink, the warrior trio leaned back in their chairs and sighed while they rubbed and patted their bellies followed by a couple of loud, brassy burps and belches.

Fumnanya asked them some trivial questions about life since the curse was activated which they answered in kind, but they got tense when she asked about their mothers.

Ghada, ever the politician, quickly changed the subject by asking if they would like a bath and one of the guest rooms to sleep in for the night.

Bucky was about to respond when you suddenly challenged him to a duel.

A couple of things happened: Fumnanya put her head in her hands, Ghada groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, Sam and Steve burst into laughter, and Bucky accepted with a chuckle.

You led the group to the sparring grounds on the western end of the palace grounds.

Ghada set the ground rules: each combatant may choose a weapon from the low-level, non-lethal weapons closet and the fight could last no longer than 30 minutes.

You both chose Bo Staffs and bowed to start the spar. It took a few minutes of sizing each other up before making the first move. The duel consisted a flurry of punches, kicks, precision strikes with your Bo Staffs, and near hits/misses.

It ended when Bucky spotted a weakness in your left mid-section and landed a hit right above left hip causing you to fall. He then pinned you down before you could grab your weapon with his face two inches above yours.

The two of you were so engrossed in your own little world that Steve had to clear his throat a few times to get your attention.

–––––––––––––––––––

Sensing the, ahem, tension in the area, Ghada suggested that you all finally head over to the baths.

Except for you and Bucky, you took him to your ‘secret workshop’. Something about the way he examined some of the weapons fascinated you and you wanted to explore that.

Bucky was quite dazzled by your variety of inventions like your solar battery, your new hover bike engine, and your 5th attempt at your waning swan (a cross between a scythe and a machine gun). He was examining a pair of your laser blasting gauntlets when you asked if he’d seen some of them before.

“Is there something you like?” you asked while he picked up an old prototype for a flash grenade.

Bucky chuckled, “It’s just that I’ve never seen so many inventions in one place before. When I was an orcling, there was these traveling ‘magician’ who performed feats of wonder for the kids in the village near our settlement. In reality, he was a con artist, but we didn’t care. He would always make our lives seem a little bit brighter. One day, the three of us went behind his tent and found all these contraptions in boxes or on the ground. Tuns out, they were relics of the long gone Nephrashim people. Well, maybe not so long gone now.”

He chuckled to himself again almost bitterly. “I was always entranced by what he would show us and, when he finally fessed up to using relics instead of magic, the contraptions he would use to perform such acts. Sometimes I would wonder what it would’ve been like to live a different life; one where I could’ve been a tinkerer instead of a warrior. Don’t get me wrong, I like being one. It’s just that-”

“You wished you had more options.” You finished noticing how delicately he was holding one of your mithril tools. He held it in a deftness that most of the artisans you’ve met couldn’t match.

His confession of sorts gave you pause.

You always hated how almost everyone gave your sisters praise for their interests and demeanor while you were usually belittled when your parents and Fae tutors weren’t around. They always complained about you not being as sociable as Ghada or as ‘sweet’ (quiet, but not really) as Fumnanya. You were always seen as causing trouble, but you just saw the world differently.

Some days you actually hated being a princess and wished you had a different lot in life.

Maybe this warrior understood you.

Taking another look at him, you realize that underneath this ruggedly delicious beef cake was someone who might’ve been something else altogether. Sure, he seemed proud of his accomplishments when you both were in the dining hall, but part of you wondered what could’ve been his path if he had someone who would’ve taken the time and maybe given him an apprenticeship or something.

You bit your lower lip as you mustered up the strength to ask, “I was wondering, I think I have something I was working on before the curse was cast. Would you like to help with it? I mean, you don’t have to-”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

The two of you spent the next two hours working on a few prototypes. Bucky asked you questions about engineering and mechanics especially and you were more than happy to answer. It was nice to have someone outside your sisters, parents, and Fae tutors actually give a crap about what you liked. Neither you nor Bucky realized the distance shrinking in between the two of you until all you could think about was how inviting his lips and neck looked.

Unfortunately, your slowly intimate moment was dashed when Ghada interrupted them via communication mirror telling them to take a bath and go to bed already.

With an annoyed tsk, you took off your work apron, your goggles, and your gloves and motioned Bucky to do the same.

You led him to the baths, a wide yet indoor place with vast pools, man-made hot springs, and an indoor waterfall.

Looking at Bucky your feelings of embarrassment and shame arose once again. Did your ancestors really had to be this obnoxious in flaunting their wealth?

You offered to assist Bucky in washing his hair, but really you wanted to run your hands over his exposed skin.

With his nod of acceptance, you took him to changing rooms and you changed into a Soft Wrap Halter Bikini Top and Rene Fold Bikini Bottom in pale gold, the one that caused a prominent lord to walk into a compost cart due to how well it showcased your curves. Hopefully, it would work on Bucky.

You felt bad using your looks to get Bucky to make a move, but you were so sure that it would be a disaster if you moved first.

The slight shame you felt with your bathing suit quickly faded when you saw Bucky emerge from his changing room.

You cursed yourself because he was only in a loincloth, and DAMN he looked fine! Part of his long hair was pulled back in a high man bun, his shin was a beautiful smooth muted yellow-green with aqua undertones, he was powerfully built with massive shoulders (you thought the lightweight armor did most of the heavy lifting), chiseled pecs, abs, and thighs that you could’ve sworn the finest of Fae craftsmen had a hand in creating all wrapped in someone that actually engaged you both intellectually and emotionally.

You know your mother said that you and your sisters would most likely married princes, but you were glad that she wasn’t here to see you shamelessly lust over an orc. You still missed her, but both she and half of your tutors would have a conniption if they saw what you were doing right now.

It would seem that Bucky was sizing you up as well judging by the way his eyes were beginning to blow out with lust.

He must have pushed his naughty thoughts aside. “Are you still gonna wash my hair?” he queried with a smirk that showed off his tusks. They would’ve been intimidating, but now they look endearing and sexy.

You let out an uncharacteristic giggle and told him to wait right there while you went to the closet where the servants kept the washing items and got him silver spruce, lemongrass, rosemary, and orange scented shampoos and oils.

You returned to find Bucky trying and failing to put a towel tower that one of maids used to construct. Stifling a laugh, you took his hand and guided him to one of the hot springs.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Bucky groaned upon sinking into the refreshing warm spring, glad to not have to was in a stream or river for a change (the tubs back home were nice, but they’re nothing compared to this). The water eased his tense muscles and joints in all the right places. Plus it didn’t hurt that the spring was deep enough for him to completely submerge himself which, at 8’ 3”, is no easy feat.

The engineering princess was getting ready to wash his hair like she offered and Bucky couldn’t wait. She had to know what she was doing to him. Lesser men would’ve jumped her on sight, but not him. His stepmother and sisters made sure of that.

She poured some of the argan and peppermint shampoos into a bowl and grabbed a towel to rest her shins.

“Lay your head on top of this bowl while I wash your head. Okay?”

Bucky did as directed and she started to work her magic on him. She started slow, working front to back, appreciating the way she gently massaged his scalp. At times he would let out low groans of pleasure at her ministrations, craving more from her.

Once she was done with the shampoo, she carefully lifted his head, emptied and refilled the water basin, and steadily poured the warm water over his head while trying not to get water up his nose.

Bucky turned around to see her beaming at her work. He smiled coyly at her pride, “Aren’t you coming?”, while motioning his right hand in a ‘come hither’ gesture.

She shook her head while biting her lower lip, probably not wanting to hair wet or some other prissy princess thing that was engrained into her.

Bucky decided to help ‘break’ her of that mindset by quickly grabbing her arm and gently tossed her into the spring in front of him. She jumped out of the water with a gasp and playfully punched his left shoulder.

“What was that for?!”

“You were too prideful and uptight!” Bucky chortled while she looked away failing to hide her embarrassment. He stopped laughing when he saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

He then reached out and softly lifted her head with his fore and middle fingers. She looked a bit anxious when he closed the distance between them.

“May I?” he pleaded, desperate for her to say yes.

“Please,” she whispered.

That was all Bucky needed to hear.

He started slow as to make up for this afternoon, but he almost lost it when she grasped his hair and licked his canines/tusks. He growled as her petite tongue entered his near monstrous mouth, her light moans and whimpers goading something that Bucky thought he would never feel: love, lust, and passion.

Ever since he and his best friends achieved their goal, Bucky felt like he was missing something. None of the women in their community really excited him or really engaged him beyond his physical needs. Sure, there were plenty orc, human, and even elf females who would warm his bed, but none of them cared to stay and listen…except for you, the woman who was now struggling to take off her bikini top after talking machines and engineering with him without getting annoyed by his antics.

You were so eager — and so was he — but he didn’t want to have sex and then have you disappear on him like the others, not when he was finally making a connection. No, he would make this last a little longer, even if this meant disappointing you.

“We should go sleep.” He mumbled as his hand halted your efforts.

——————

With a heavy sigh, you relented, got dressed, and waited for him to get his things. Your eyes were downcast as you escorted him to the chambers he would be sharing with his kin.

Bucky tried to give you a goodnight kiss, but you rebuffed him with a curt “good night” and returned to you and your sister’s shared room.

You were greeted to Fumnanya gushing about Sam and his interest in the library. Part of you was happy for her. Fumnanya rarely got out of her shell and getting with a guy that was even remotely interested in books as much as she was exceedingly rare.

You wanted to say that you were excited for her, you really did, but you were still a little sullen and bitter about what happed with Bucky at the baths.

“So, you and Bucky sure took your time.” Ghada remarked as you were putting on your night clothes (a short tunic and mid-calf pants).

“You’re one to talk! Sam and I caught you and Steve making out in the changing rooms at the baths!” Fumnanya snapped. Great, even Ghada was getting more in the romance department than you were.

You gave Fumnanya a grateful smile while you settled into bed hoping that tomorrow would bring better fortunes.

——————-

You awoke with a slight start and a knock at the door. Grabbing your robe, you raced towards the door thinking it was Bucky only to find a letter floating in a glowing rosy pink sphere. As soon as you reached out to touch the sphere, it disappeared leaving the letter to slowly descend into your hands.

By this time, your sisters joined you in reading the letter. It was written by one of your favorite tutors, Aoife.

It read:

Dearest children,

If you are reading this, then this means that I am either dead or completely unable to reach you. I hope you weren’t asleep for too long, but something tells me you have. For that, I am sorry.

I wish I could be there to hug you and your matches, but I’m guessing you know of your uncle by now. He has been after you for years now. My wards were successful in keeping him at bay, but now, I’m afraid you’re on your own.

The mist surrounding the capital will fade in three days time. By then, you will need to go into hiding in order to not fall into Sophronius’ clutches.

Have faith, be brave, trust in yourselves, and be kind my dears. Also, trust in your matches, okay?

Warm Regards,

Aoife

Aoife was one of the few people who actually liked all three of you the way you were. Finding out that she could be dead was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the three of you.

When the orc hybrid trio found you, you were huddled on Ghada’s bed with the letter on the floor in front of you.

Steve gently coaxed the three of you out of your beds with the suggestion of showing them around the capital. It didn’t get you or your sisters completely happy, but it was a start.

The tour consisted of you and Ghada butting heads over where to take the guys (the theatre district is NOT better than the artisan market), Fumnanya pointing out prominent buildings and statues.

You could’ve sworn that the guys sneered at one of the monuments to one of your ancestors, but you let it slide.

But then, Bucky made an offhand comment about what was must have went into making this place and the sacrifices that was probably made.

You have thought about what must’ve went into making the capital, but never in a negative light. No one in the capital or in the surrounding cities, towns or villages were poor on dire straits. You made sure to get the truth through your little excursions out of the palace before Etna cast that infernal spell on you.

The thought was pushed aside when you and your sisters returned to your room that night. You needed to think of a plan and quickly because Aoife’s spell was going to fade in two days and Sophronius was hot on your tails.

“Perhaps the guys would let us stay with their community for a while.” Ghada put forth as you were getting ready for bed.

“That’s a possibility, but what do we have to offer? I doubt that a semi-nomadic community of mostly orcs would take on three enhanced human princesses for free” Ghada countered as she put on her nightgown.

“Are you serious?!” you exclaimed. “We have tons to offer! Look, Fumnanya is a great medic, you’re awesome diplomat and negotiator, and I’m good with machinery. Plus we can cook and take care of ourselves, so I doubt we would be a huge burden.”

“Also, we can give them some of the treasure that’s laying around the palace for them to use.” Fumnanya chirped.

“Exactly. We’ve got this!” You declared not realizing that the guys were having a similar conversation.

——————

“So, what should we do about the girls? I mean, they’re great and all, but can we bring them back with us?” Sam inquired as stripped down to his loincloth.

“I don’t see why not. They’ve actually got skills the group could use, unlike a lot of the females that first become part of our tribe.” Steve stated as he gnawed on the turkey leg from dinner.

“Maybe we could bring the tribe here! The city is completely deserted except for the girls and they certainly won’t mind us living here.” Sam offered.

“I don’t think that would be the wisest course of action. Like the girls said, the spell that keeps the mist in place will fade in two days. It won’t be long before Sophronius’ horde will crawling all over the place.” Bucky voiced thinking about last night’s interaction.

“Alright, we’ll see what the girls think tomorrow and go from there.” Steve concluded and the three went to sleep.

———————

Both parties began packing for their journey the next day once the guys agreed to take the three of you back with them.

You gave everyone three travel sized storage units. Ghada packed all of her notes on trade, language books, and art supplies. Fumnanya packed all of the medical supplies she could fit into her storage unit, her language, history, science, and geography books. You packed most of your tools, a couple of your inventions (including waning swan), and any materials you might need.

All three of you made sure to pack clothes, cooking supplies (especially spices since the guys were surprised at the variety), personal hygiene supplies, and some of the treasure/objects that would most likely fetch a good price without leading anyone back to them.

The time to leave came soon enough.

“You three ready?” Sam asked as you were making the final adjustments to your traveling clothes.

“As ready as we’ll ever be.” Fumnanya replied as she gave Sam a hug. It surprised you how quickly she warmed up to him.

“Perhaps you should give Bucky another chance.” Ghada advised.

Maybe, but not now.

You made your way to the courtyard taking in everything. The dire wolves nuzzled your cheeks as you made your way to mount them.

Steve gave both Sam and Bucky a nod and you began your journey out of the only home you three knew.

Perhaps this new chapter will be a good one.

—————

If you had looked up at the third tree closest to the thorn bushes, you would’ve seen a solitary raven, a raven with four red eyes. The raven was a scout for Sophronius and it was recording you.

Video of your departure was being transmitted to a crystal ball in the throne room of Sophronius’ main headquarters.

“It seems the bitch Aoife was able to keep them young after all.” Sophronius remarked, taking in the princesses’ features.

“Alert the princes. We have work to do.”

Taglist:

@giorno-plays-piano @lookiamtrying @saiyanprincessswanie @chris-evans-indian-fanfic @zoiecakes @mcudarklibrary @letsby @macheregrace @imdarkinme @retroxvailles @marvelfansworld @anyatheladyclown @stargazingfangirl18 @hurricanerin @pseudonymphet @dahkness @buckysbunny @rosalynshields @opheliadawnwalker3 @sapphirescrolls @golden-ariess @cherienymphe

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impalementation · 5 years ago

Note

Do you think there is a connection between Buffy chosing name Joan in Tabula Rasa and Spike telling her she's addicted to misery in Normal Again? Does Buffy think of herself as a martyr?

sorry in advance that this reply sort of went all over the place. it’s an interesting question!

first, i think answering the martyr question depends on how one defines “martyr”. if we’re talking in the basic sense of “sacrifices oneself for a cause” then buffy certainly is one, and she does mention her sacrifices at various times throughout the show. even from the very first episode, it’s clear that buffy thinks that slaying is something she has to sacrifice something of herself for--her “normality”, her life, her peace of mind. but on a meta level, i wouldn’t say that buffy is a typical martyr figure, because the show frames her sacrifices as fundamentally unjust. as opposed to something worth deifying--the definition of martyr that is more like “sainted for sacrificing oneself for a cause”. the narrative treats buffy as heroic in part because she repeatedly chooses self-sacrifice over people getting hurt, but i don’t think it ever canonizes her for this aspect of her heroism. it doesn’t make her an exalted object of worship…with maybe the exception of her headstone and crucified swan dive in the gift. because note how after buffy sacrifices her life in prophecy girl and the gift, or sacrifices angel in becoming, the show doubles down on her humanity and trauma. when she was bad, anne, and most of season six all emphasize the emotional and psychological toll of buffy’s life as a slayer, and feature her really fucking up, or generally not being a saint. the show pays for its martyr imagery in the gift by bringing buffy back to earth in every sense of the word. i’ve always found it pretty impressive writing honestly, the way that the show consistently makes buffy’s pain humanize her instead of glorify her.

then there’s "martyr” in the sense of “acting martyred”. which is more like “exaggerating victimhood for sympathy”. or “righteously wallowing in one’s suffering”. which i don’t personally think that buffy really does, but it’s certainly something that characters and audience members accuse her of. see cordelia calling her a “cry-buffy” or faith in who are you? saying of buffy: “i could do anything i want, and instead, i choose to pout and whine and feel the burden of slayerness?” or willow’s mockery of her in grave. what i would say is that buffy definitely has a tendency to not talk to other people about her pain because she doesn’t think they would understand. for instance, her leaving all of her friends behind in anne or not telling them about heaven in season six. i don’t think that “martyred” is really the right word for that, since it has such derogatory connotations, and because this tendency of buffy’s is not really, in my opinion, about buffy flattering herself or seeking pity. but there is absolutely a way in which buffy keeps her feelings locked up, and stews in them, and doesn’t really feel able to talk about them, in a way that is tied up in her “special”, heroic status. she even says explicitly in conversations with dead people that on some level she feels like the love and validation of her friends doesn’t matter because “they haven’t been through what [she’s] been through. they’re not the slayer.”

she’s also (in my reading) preoccupied with her goodness to a pretty intense degree, which is why her failure to live up to her ideal of herself in season six is so devastating to her sense of identity. she seems to feel an obligation to be “good” because of her heroic status—it’s telling that when she breaks down to tara about spike she describes him as “everything i’m supposed to be against.” as in, she seems to think of herself as betraying some exalted, heroic ideal by being with him, rather than just having an unhealthy relationship. you could also probably read her self-punishment that season as having similarly exalted motivation. like she is taking it upon herself, as the slayer, to punish herself for not being a “good” enough slayer. it’s how i read her turning herself in in dead things, anyway. these tendencies to self-isolate and elevate personal suffering to cosmic importance are definitely not healthy (even if her personal suffering sometimes is actually, uh, cosmically important), and do have things in common with acting martyred. but are way more complicated than just “playing the victim” or something. i don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s pretty much always “bad” people that suggest that that’s what buffy is doing. because the show sees much of buffy’s suffering as genuinely unfair, and thinks she is good for not rolling over and accepting it.

so to connect this to spike’s lines in normal again, i think we’re meant to see him as both right and wrong. as is the case with many of spike’s speeches. he’s upset, like dawn was, at buffy rejecting him from her life, and reacts with his well-worn tactic of hitting people with the almost-truth right where they’re most sensitive. he calls her attitude “nasty martyrdom” because, given his soullessness, he’s not in a position to really understand her depressive self-loathing. but he’s absolutely right that buffy holds herself to heroic ideals that make her miserable. and given that he was the tool she was recently addictively returning to to punish herself, it’s not strange that he would think of her as “addicted to the misery”. he gets that buffy is needlessly beating herself up, and using her heroic ideals as the bludgeon. he gets that she doesn’t feel allowed to be happy. he gets that she feels somehow trapped between what her friends represent and what he does. but he doesn’t get how that behavior is a product of self-hatred, instead of some kind of overwrought masturbatory self-interest, and is therefore unable to be sympathetic to it. even as he correctly identifies that her mindset is unhealthy.

i don’t know if they’re meant to parallel each other, but it feels deliberate that we get that scene in never leave me that also takes place in buffy’s bedroom, only this time it’s spike that’s having his brain fucked with, and buffy that suggests he’s feeling sorry for himself. and spike tells buffy that he finally understands the thing he couldn’t in season six, including normal again.

BUFFY: So, that's what this is about. You feeling sorry for yourself, Spike?

SPIKE: I’m feeling honest with myself. You used me.

BUFFY: Yes.

SPIKE: You told me that, of course. I never understood it though. Not until now. You hated yourself, and you took it out on me.

BUFFY: You figured that out just now?

SPIKE: Soul's not all about moonbeams and pennywhistles, luv. It's about self-loathing. I get it.

as for whether we’re meant to draw a line between normal again and buffy naming herself “joan” in tabula rasa, i’m not sure. the name “joan” seems like a dual joke about the fact that joan is a blandly normal name compared to “buffy”, but is also a name that evokes the grand sacrificial heroism that buffy is capable of. a joke about which parts of buffy’s identities are permanent or not. but if there is a connection, i think it’s related to the season’s general deconstructive mindset. buffy’s identity crisis in season six is all tied up in her idea of what a hero looks like, and so in that respect it’s very significant that buffy at the end of the gift was buffy at her most mythically heroic. the kind of heroism frozen at a moment of perfect, martyred sacrifice. similarly, joan is normal and happy and heroic, a version of herself--like the buffybot--that buffy feels distant from. but no one can live up to that sort of perfection day to day. buffy’s struggle to confront her human imperfection parallels the season’s attempt to make itself and its audience confront their own expectations regarding perfect, happy heroes. everyone, including buffy, is frustrated that something seems “wrong” with her. so the two scenes seem related in that they both suggest that buffy is drawn to heroism and idealism, consciously or unconsciously. which is relevant to the season’s implication that a fixation on such ideals can be as crippling or harmful as they are noble.

#s6 #buffy

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themurphyzone · 5 years ago

Text

PatB: Nova Ch 2

Insert funny one-liner here. Cause I can’t think of anything.

Ch 2: Space Cadet

New Selenian Date 3015.3.12

Terran satellite conversations are useless drivel! Nothing but pomp and circumstance about trivial subjects that don’t help us plan our global domination! All this curiosity about planets and star systems beyond your own, yet you actively sabotage your own progress in space exploration! Hypocritical morons. When Snowball and I rule Terra, we shall usher in an age of science and rationality, because you obviously cannot be trusted to run your own planet without blowing it up several times over! Why, you have less intelligence in your collective brains than I have in my pinky!

Alright. Just inhale…exhale. Inhale...exhale.

I needed that tirade. Progress on the Conquistador has slowed and is approaching an impasse of the highest caliber. The outside paneling requires special attention and shielding because we do not wish to burn upon entering Terra’s atmosphere. However, the thermal protective system we’ll be developing will likely be rudimentary at best, fatal at worst due to lack of top of the line equipment. The Selenians managed to conserve enough fuel in their ships to leave the colony and presumably return to their original planet, with the exception of one ill-fated vessel which experienced a malfunction when they first arrived on New Selene.

I have no choice but to visit the crash site of that particular ship with Snowball. If fortune is on our side, we’ll have a ragged version of the paneling we need, but…I will be in close contact with the electrical firing of Snowball’s neurons. An unfortunate side effect of my genetic enhancement from a mos’s natural inclination to electricity. The distance from Penumbra doesn’t help matters either.

Ah…I’ll cut this transmission off here. Snowball’s calling in, for once.

Signing off for now, the Brain.

o-o-o-o-o

“He called my name,” the mouse whispered, awestruck by the deep voice that crackled through the chipped Walkman radio. He rolled his skinny tail between his paws, joyful tears swimming in his vision and making everything blurry-whirly. “He said my name!”

He had many names alright. From Gouda to Zort to No, We Don’t Know Why That Subject Says Narf. From what he remembered of his parents and Sis, they called him Chchchrree mixed with sniffy noises. It was hard to say for everyone else though, even him. It was the sniffing part, really. It tripped everyone up.

But none of his names fit him quite like Pinky.

Oh, he was being rude, wasn’t he? He may be a sliced gene lab mouse, but he was a sliced gene lab mouse with manners!

The newly named Pinky fiddled with the slider on the Walkman. There were a lot of numbers, and he didn’t know which one let his voice through, so he eeny-meeny-miney-moed between all of them until his finger landed on 92.

92 was a good number. Nice, funny, and a pretty figure.

“Haha, narf! Hello, the Brain!” Pinky laughed into the Walkman. “I know you’re probably busy with the Conquesowhatsit, so you can just listen to this whenever you’re free! Anyway, I’m Pinky and I’ve been listening to your messages for months! And you said my name just now! It made me so happy I cried!”

Nothing but crackling static answered. A click came from the hallway, the aircon kicking in and blowing a cool wind through the lab. Machinery hummed, screens flickered, squeaks from other mice echoed.

Pinky waited. He would wait however long he needed to. The voice would reply, he was sure of it.

“Brain, is it…is it lonely up there?” Pinky asked. He was very bad at the waiting game. He lost to himself every time. “You sound sad. And grumpy. Grumpy-sad, even. What makes you happy? The stars? I’m happy looking at the twinkly stars. They must be even prettier from space.”

Pinky waved at the gorgeous night sky. Countless stars and a silver moon to watch over them all. Pinky loved having a cage with such a view. The Brain might have a big telly-scope he could see Terra with! Terra, a lovely name for a lovely world! And to think Pinky had been calling it Earth like a silly-billy goat gruff.

Though the Brain might not be able to see him…he was practically the size of a mouse after all. Unless Pinky climbed to the highest point of the Great Mall of China! Everyone knew the Great Mall of China could be seen from space! And he could eat yummy dumplings there too!

Pinky twiddled his thumbs. He shouldn’t keep the Brain away from his super important work much longer. “Tell Snowball I said hi, okay? And thank you for the name. Same time again tomorrow night, right? Good night, the Brain. Sleep tight and don’t let the spacebugs bite. Cause then it gets itchy. Poit.”

There was no answer. There wasn’t usually. Maybe the Brain was shy. It was okay though. He was probably saying good night too, in his own grumpy shy way.

Pinky turned off the Walkman and yawned, stretching his arms above his head. Then he slipped back into his cage, the bars spaced wide enough for him to slink through. He was still working on opening the cage door. TV always made escaping cages look so easy.

His straw bed was bathed in a patch of silver moonbeams tonight. That was good. Light always helped him sleep easier. Pinky flopped into the straw and pulled Mr. Button close, like his parents had done for him and Sis when they were babies. Mr. Button was hard, round, and green, but he was still a good cuddle buddy.

He had a big day of wheel running, maze running, and running to Pharfignewton’s stable tomorrow. Best to get some shuteye now and be bright-eyed and floppy-tailed tomorrow. He fell asleep with Mr. Button cradled loosely in his paws, dreaming of a land filled with delicious cheese.

o-o-o-o-o

Pinky ran on his wheel for his pre-breakfast exercise, finished off the remaining food pellets in his bowl, and even squeezed in a little pampering time before he was scooped up by the tail and dropped into a maze.

It was routine, and how he loved all sorts of routines! Bonking into walls nose-first was always fun, especially when he saw dizzy circling stars until he fell over like a limp noodle. Of course, he never could finish a maze, which made many of the humans puzzled and confuzzled while they scratched their heads and snapped pictures with their smartphones.

Mazes were hard. If he bounced high enough and clung to the wall like a Spidermouse, he could see the yummy cheese at the very end, but he wasn’t very good at getting there. He even tried the summoning spell he’d seen in one of the Harry Potter movies so the cheese would come to him instead, but his comes-and-goes telephonetic magic skills didn’t help him either.

The day passed like normal. Get lost in maze, lunch break, try another maze until he got more lost than the people stuck on an island in that one very confusing show, until he was finally brought back to his cage before the lab closed for the day.

Today, the lab had closed in the mid-afternoon, the sun still shining brightly in a pretty blue sky. Pinky could spend several glorious hours with Pharfignewton before the Brain’s nightly message over the Walkman.

Pinky squeezed through the cage bars, taking a flying leap off the counter and landing belly-down on the squishy seat of a spinning chair. He giggled as the chair slid back and spun a little, then dusted himself off and bowed to an invisible crowd. He’d been improving his landings lately. One of these days he’d definitely perfect his swan dive!

He jumped down to the floor and ran into the kitchen, wrinkling his nose at the bitter scent of leftover coffee in the pot. He’d always been a tea sort of mouse himself. Grabbing hold of the cherry-print towel that hung on the handle of the refrigerator, he counted to three (he probably put too many Mississippi’s between one and two again) and hauled himself up. All those upper body strength videos were coming in handy.

Pinky balanced himself on a thin sliver of handle and the fridge door, then shoved his feet against the handle and stretched himself as far as he could.

“Narf! C’mon, Pinky!” he wheezed, feeling the strain of his tummy and leg muscles. “It’s not bagel warmer science!”

He took a quick breather and gave one final shove. The door opened with a pop and Pinky lost his balance, landing somewhat painfully on the cold bottom of the fridge.

“Just like Iceland in here! Or was that the green one?” Pinky said, picking himself up from the floor and pushing the fridge door open all the way. He didn’t want to be locked in again. Besides, he’d promised Pharfignewton he’d come by today. He’d feel really awful if he broke his promise. “Now if I were a horse, what would I like to eat?”

Pharfignewton couldn’t eat cheese. Something about her tummy being intolerant. It was a little rude of her tummy to be honest, though she’d definitely eat cheese if she could.

Pinky peeked into each drawer, searched through every condiment bottle, but none really caught his eye as something he could bring along.

The leftover club sandwich wasn’t vegetarian. Condiment bottles wouldn’t fit through the mail slot.

Pinky found a box half-filled with sugar lumps, but Pharfignewton was very insistent on watching her figure in preparation for the Kentucky Derby in two months.

And then he spotted a celery snack pack with peanut butter dip on the topmost shelf.

“Egad, that’s perfect!” Pinky exclaimed, shimmying up to the snack pack. He pushed a red Jell-o cup aside and snagged his prize, hugging it to his chest. The only way to make it even tastier was to find raisins so they could make ants on a log, which didn’t look like real ants on real logs at all.

With the snack pack in hand, he hurried to meet Pharfignewton.

o-o-o-o-o

Pharfignewton galloped through the field, her gray mane flowing behind her like a beautiful river. No matter how many times he’d seen her practice, it never failed to amaze him. Her hooves flew like the breeze, her sky blue eyes shining in determination as she pushed herself a little further every day.

Pinky pulled himself up the fence’s wooden boards, kneeling on the flat surfaces and hauling the snack pack up with him. Once he made it to the top of a wide fencepost, he opened the pack and scooped one end of a celery stick into the peanut butter, then waved the coated end in the air.

“AND THERE SHE GOES! IS SHE A BIRD? IS SHE A PLANE? NO, SIRREE BOB! SHE’S PHARFIGNEWTON, THE BEST AND FASTEST RACEHORSE IN THE WORLD!” Pinky shouted, waving the celery stick like a flag.

Pharfignewton whinnied loudly, pouring on the speed as she galloped through a space between two trees and slowed to a brisk trot until she reached Pinky. She swept out a hoof and bowed to an invisible camera, her tail flicking happily.

“Hi, Figgy Pudding! You look amazing out there! Guess what? The Brain gave me a name! I’m Pinky now! Actually, I’m Pinky. He never said Pinkynow, did he?” Pinky grinned, holding the celery stick up to her muzzle. Pharfignewton neighed in delight, and it didn’t take long before all the celery sticks and peanut butter were gone. Practicing always made her work up an appetite.

Pinky licked up the remaining peanut butter, swiping his tongue along his mouth for the lingering peanut-y taste. Then he climbed onto Pharfignewton’s muzzle, her eyes sparkling as she tossed him into the air. Pinky threw out his arms, laughing and sliding down her long neck. He came to a stop at the base of her mane, then flipped himself over and gave her a ginormous hug.

Pharfignewton craned her neck, a blocky smile stretching her muzzle before suddenly rearing up on her hind legs and whinnying triumphantly.

“Zort!” Pinky cried, grabbing fistfuls of her mane to stop himself from falling off. Pharfignewton took off like a firecracker, and Pinky’s body lifted off her neck completely. “Hi-ho, Pharfignewton! Yippie-ki-yay!”

The ground and sky blurred together in a swirl of mashed colors, and the nearby stables were nothing more than thin brown lines in the corner of Pinky’s eye.

“The pack, Fig!” Pinky yelled. “We’ve gotta keep the environment clean!”

Pharfignewton raced by the fencepost, snatching up the plastic lining of the snack pack in her teeth and dropping it into the garbage bin by the stables. “Whoo! Nice and tight turn there!” Pinky said, leaning forward and planting his feet against Pharfignewton’s back to keep his balance. “You’re gonna win the Derby for sure!”

Pharfignewton neighed, leaping over a fallen branch with room to spare.

“Right, and then onto the Triple Crown! Live your dream, Pharfignewton! Live your dream!” Pinky shouted above the roar of the wind.

o-o-o-o-o

Pharfignewton’s owner, a friendly looking fellow with a big bushy beard, called for her as the sun went down. Though Pharfignewton was tired out from all her running, she eagerly trotted over to her owner and accepted a pat on the nose and a carrot. Pinky buried himself in her mane and pretended to be a tiny horse with pretty hair while the owner refilled her feed bucket and penned her in the stall for the night.

Once he was gone, Pinky sat on a wooden post next to Pharfignewton’s head, kicking his feet in the air while she ate her dinner.

“Camptown ladies sing this song! Doo-dah! Doo-dah!” Pinky sang, twirling a long piece of hay in the air as his baton. He pointed the hay at Pharfignewton, who paused in her meal and neighed out the next lyric. “Oh, that was gorgeous! You’re gonna be a real crowd-pleaser at the Derby!”

At the mention of the Derby, Pharfignewton stopped eating completely and rested her muzzle in the space next to Pinky. She nickered, ears pinning against her head. Pinky rubbed his nose against hers, smiling so she wouldn’t worry as much.

“I’ll be alright, Fig,” Pinky whispered. “The Triple Crown’s been your dream since fillyhood. You should go for it. Don’t worry about silly ol’ me.”

Pharfignewton tossed her head back and whinnied, her hoof scraping against the dirt floor.

“I’ll see you off when you leave,” Pinky said. “And watch you on TV. I’ll cheer so loudly you’ll hear me all the way in Kentucky! That’s a promise! A Pinky promise!”

He placed both pinky fingers on Pharfignewton’s muzzle so she could have one as well. He knew she was still worried though. And it was nice to know she cared, but really, he’d be alright in the lab. He had his wheel, food pellets, and the dusty VCR that ACME hadn’t gotten around to replacing yet.

“Poit. The Brain’s message is gonna be coming in soon,” Pinky said. “I’d best get back to the lab. Really wish you could listen him too, but the Walkman won’t fit through the mail slot. I already tried.”

Pharfignewton let him cling to one nostril as she gently lowered him to the stable floor. Pinky gave her muzzle one last broad stroke before setting off, waving goodbye until the stable was out of sight.

The moon rose, the first twinkling stars of the night coming out to play.

“I think you’d like her, the Brain,” Pinky said to the sky. “She’s amazing.”

But he spent too long admiring the stars and missed the left turn on Albuquerque Street. By the time he got back the lab and turned on the Walkman, the message was already ending.

-and traveling to the crash site tomorrow. I hope this venture will yield something useful. Out there, it will be silent. Not even my proximity to Snowball will help. He’s ambitious, I’ll grant him that. Our desire to rule Terra…it’s what keeps us going. Perhaps a little too much, at times. It occasionally gets in the way of…certain things.

There was no sign off. Sometimes there wasn’t, if the Brain felt strongly about something.

Everyone seemed to have a faraway dream that made up their entire being. And while the land of delicious cheese was pretty far from the lab, just touring through it and buying all the refrigerator magnets he could carry didn’t seem to make up his entire being. Not in the way racing was Pharfignewton’s life. Or how the Brain always spoke of a desire to rule Terra.

“If you have a faraway dream, I guess you have to be far away,” Pinky said to Mr. Button, who only wobbled in reply. “It’s okay. I’m happy they have dreams.”

He had his wheel, food pellets, and the dusty VCR after all.

AN: I never made the promise about silly Pinky things. Shhh….

I wanted to keep Brain naming Pinky cause it’s cute (also it’s practical for writing but mostly cute).

To win the Triple Crown achievement, a racehorse needs to win the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont, and the Preakness. Pharfignewton’s got a lofty goal, but Pinky believes in her!

ACME is really bad about updating their tech.

#pinky and the brain #patb fanfiction #patb nova

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tetrakys · 6 years ago

Text

Behind the Mask

This is the story I wrote for BV zine. It’s set in Eldarya around episodes 16/17.

---

The moment I stepped outside HQ, I felt like I’d been teleported to a new, magical world. Again. This time no mushrooms had been involved.

What was usually the busy, messy and kinda dirty market square, was now a ballroom out of a fairy tale. Long, scarlet drapes surrounded the area, giving it an air of sumptuous elegance. Small flames floated in the air, looking like sparkling chandeliers. Musicians played strange instruments that reminded me of violins and flutes of my world.

But nothing surprised me as much as the people. Everyone was impeccably dressed in amazing gowns and suits, their faces covered in colourful masks. Alajea and Karenn had told me that faeries took very seriously the festivity of Samhain, the Gaelic precursor of our Halloweeen, but I had no idea how seriously.

They’d explained that, when their people still lived on Earth, it was the one night where they could walk freely among humans without fear of being recognised. Human believed that during this night the walls between different worlds thinned and could easily be crossed. They all wore masks and costumes to blend between the faeries and demons they assumed travelled the Earth during that night. Once Eldarya had been created the faeries kept the celebration as a reminder of the life of hiding and fear they’d left behind.

I looked down at my elegant but simple white gown. At first, I thought I might be overdressed with the soft tulle skirt and the tight corset that Purriri had persuaded me to buy. She’d even offered the mask that currently covered half of my face at a discount. Now I was happy I’d spent a big chunk of my savings on this dress, at least I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb.

I walked slowly around the edges of the dancefloor trying to spot people I might know. At some point I thought I recognised Karuto, those horns kinda gave him away, but he looked too busy handling the food to care about chatting with me.

A dancing couple caught my eye. It couldn’t be… yes! Karenn and Chrome! Despite the mask I could tell he’d turned five different shades of red and was stuttering something I couldn’t hear. She looked cute in a blue dress and was smiling at him cheekily. Also, she was leading. I didn’t know what she had in mind, but poor Chrome.

“Mmm…” a soft, smooth voice whispered at my back, “you look lovely tonight my lady. May I offer you a drink? Or maybe you could offer me one?”

I turned around to find myself face to face with a tall, black haired masked man, dressed in a Victorian style.

“N-Nevra?”

“I’m not Nevra, my lady. Tonight I’m the blood-thirsty Count Dracula,” he replied with a fanged smile.

A moment of silence went by while I tried to grasp the situation.

“Let me get this straight. You, a vampire, dressed up as a… vampire??” I asked incredulous.

“Brilliant, isn’t it? This year I’m definitely going to win best costume.”

“B-but… how? Why?”

“There are so many definitions of vampire in your world. At first, I wanted to go with the sparkling one, but then I decided that you can never do wrong with a classic,” he explained. “You humans are so funny. Why would vampires live in isolated mansions, we like to PAR-TY!”

I genuinely didn’t know how to reply.

“Ah you found the kid!” said a falsely rough, deep voice, which belonged to a man with long blue hair, beard and moustaches. “Here is my dinner! Oh-oh-oh!”

“Ezarel? W-what are you dressed as?”

“Mph… you’re so stupid. Can’t you see the bag full of presents? I’m clearly Bluebeard!”

“I understand the facial hair, but… the presents?”

“How could you not know the fairy tales from your own world,” he replied irritated. “Don’t you know that Bluebeard brings gifts to kids and, once they sleep, eats them?”

“I think you’ve mixed up three of four different characters here. Have you even read the fable?”

“Nah,” he replied with his usual big, devilish smile. “Who has time for these things.”

“Wait…” I said, finally grasping the situation. “You just wanted an excuse to wear your fake beard again, didn’t you?”

“BINGO!” he laughed. Since I’d thought him a few Earthling slangs he kept using them whenever he had a chance just to annoy me.

“It wasn’t funny the first time,” I said remembering how he’d tried to trick me into believing that I’d been in a coma for hundreds of years, “and it’s not funny now. Bluebeard is a horrible character, basically a serial killer, he murdered his own wives!”

“Uhm…” he looked surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

“Isn’t the point to look scary?” Nevra said patting Ezarel on the back, ”even though you look more hilarious than scary. Now, Valkyon got it right.”

“Where is he?” I asked scanning the crowd without recognising him. I wished I could chat with Valkyon for a bit, I loved spending time with him, he always made me feel at ease. “What is he dressed as?”

“I’m only going to give you a hint: It’s furry.” He laughed.

“Uh…?”

“You’ll see.”

I was scanning the area looking for Valkyon, when my eyes stopped on someone else. A man, dressed in a dark suit and black cape. He was wearing a white mask covering half of his face and I recognised him as the Phantom of the Opera. I didn't know the story was also famous in Eldarya, but apparently many of Earth's legends and fables had some sort of connection to faeries folklore.

The man was looking at me from the other side of the improvised ballroom, and even from afar I could see his eyes, which were of an impossible light shade of blue. I could tell his skin was dark from his chin and the strong line of his lips, the only parts of his body not covered by his outfit.

He was imposing, mysterious and his gaze completely unnerving.

"We have to go now." I almost jumped on the spot, suddenly remembering I was talking with the guys.

"Why, is something going on?"

"Well, we shouldn't really tell you this but… do you remember the knowledge-eating monster?" Nevra asked.

"The one who ate all the library's books and whose escape I was unjustly accused of?" I replied drily, "I have a vague recollection, yes."

"Well,” he continued, ignoring my sarcasm. “What you don't know is that those monsters come in couples. There was a second book, and we have found out today that it’s disappeared."

"WHAT?" I cried out alarmed.

"Shhh" Ezarel gestured for me to shut up. "You shouldn’t have said anything, Nevra."

"Don't worry Erika, Miiko asked us to keep our eyes open but the book has probably just been misplaced. Everything is going to be fine."

I wanted to believe him, but it wasn’t the first time I doubted the Guard’s judgment on important decision. Who would ever hide a monster who ate knowledge… in a book… in a library?

“The library is still mostly empty. If this monster really escaped, he would try to eat people’s memories like the previous one tried to do with me,” I pointed out nervously.

“Nah, this one is different, they are complementary. While one erases the stories it feeds on, the other makes them real. Anyway, we must run, see you later.” Ezarel said while they walked away.

I was left dumbfounded, what did it mean that the monster made the stories real? I kept ruminating on that thought for a while until someone broke me away from my thoughts.

“May I have this dance?”

I smiled at Leiftan, offering him my hand as he led me to the dancefloor. A slow, soft music was playing, and I tentatively put my arms on his shoulders, while he held my waist. It was probably the most intimate we’d ever been with each other, but it didn’t feel awkward. It felt right.

“I like the wings,” I said after a moment looking at the white attachments behind his back, “they’re so beautiful, they almost seem real.”

“You look really pretty in your costume.” He said changing the subject, slightly tightening his hold on my waist. “What is it?”

“T-thanks…” I said feeling some heat rise to my cheeks. “Have you ever heard of the white swan? The story is called Swan Lake.”

“No, will you tell me about it?” he asked looking genuinely interested.

“It’s about this princess, Odette, who is cursed by an evil sorcerer to live her life as a woman during the night and a swan during the day, unless she finds someone who swears to truly love her forever.” I explained. “I’ve always loved this story, since the moment my parents took me to the ballet when I was a child. But I… am a little embarrassed to admit that I also cried in the theatre.”

“Oh… is it a sad story? She doesn’t find love?”

“She does. As in many fables, a beautiful prince falls madly in love with her. But there are different versions of the ending. Sometimes love is not enough to save them.”

The music was about to end, but he hugged me closer, almost unwilling to let me go. I felt a little embarrassed and tried to keep the conversation going.

“I’ve always felt bad for Odette. Having to live a half-life, hiding, not being able to be herself completely. It would be so difficult to find true love, someone who could love her real self. What a terrible fate.”

He didn’t reply, as if lost in thought.

“I-I’m sorry, Erika. I… have to go check…” he stuttered after a minute, when the piece we were dancing to ended.

“The library monster,” I helped him, he was probably struggling to find an excuse to keep the secret. “I know. Nevra already spilled the beans. Do you need help…?”

“You’re kind.” He smiled his usual, sweet smile. “There’s no need. Please enjoy the party.”

Bowing down, he took my hand, leaving a small kiss on its back, and walked away.

"That wasn't very aengelic of him," replied a mysterious and somewhat ironic voice at my back. I turned around to find that man, the Phantom. "Running, leaving his dance partner all alone on the dancefloor. But a man’s loss is another man’s gain, may I?"

Without waiting for my reply, he took me in his arms and led us through the next dance. The music was slightly more upbeat, and there was something wild in the rhythm, almost primordial. I was strangely intrigued by this unknown man, there was something familiar in him, but I wasn’t going to drop my guard. His eyes meant danger, and his hold on me felt vaguely predatorial.

"The Light Guard is always busy, even during festivals.” I replied. “Do I know you?"

“Ah yes, the Guard and its mysterious business. I bet they have a lot of important, questionable tasks to attend to.” He commented, ignoring my question.

His answer surprised me. I knew not everyone at the village, and even in the Guard, was a big fan of the way things were handled around here. I knew I hadn’t been most of the time. No one was always vocal about it though.

“Mysterious business? What are you talking about?” I asked.

“We all know the Light Guard is not very forthcoming with the rest of the people here.”

“Yes, but…” I tried to play devil’s advocate. “They have their reasons most of the time… Safety and…”

I noticed then that he had led us to the refreshments area. Breaking his hold on me, he turned towards the pitchers of strange liquids.

“So, do you think the Guard cares about everyone’s safety?” He continued, while mixing odd coloured drinks.

“Of course,” I replied carefully, accepting the amber coloured drink he was handing me. It tasted sweet, almost like honey.

“So, let’s say there was a threat in the City of El, they would share the news with everyone?”

“It has happened in the past.” I pointed out.

“Only when the problem was too evident to hide. But what if that wasn’t the case. Let’s say there’s a monster running around right here, right now. Would they stop the festivities to keep people safe or would they keep up appearances until it was too late?”

I felt my blood getting cold in my veins. An awful suspicion started forming in my brain.

“Who the hell are you? What have you done?”

“A friend.” He simply replied, his lips twisting in a cruel smile. “I’ve done nothing really, except borrowing an old book from the library. Just an innocent prank. A little naughtiness should be expected during this night.”

“But…” I started to protest, looking around panicked. That’s when I noticed something strange was going on. A nearby boy dressed as a ghost, went to grab a glass and his hand passed through it without being able to touch it. He’d become incorporeal. A girl I had noticed before who was wearing beautiful, colourful make up that made her look like an Alfeli, turned into the companion right before my eyes.

“People think that when the mask drops you can see the real nature of who’s behind it, but it’s not true. It’s when you wear a mask and you’re not forced to fit in that you are really unmasked. You can be yourself and follow your instincts, go after what you really want.” I felt frozen on the spot, his words made no sense to me. “And you… what is it that you really want?” He whispered almost seductively in my ear. “You’re welcome for the drink, by the way.”

When I finally managed to turn around, he had disappeared. I didn’t have time to look for him though, because that’s when all hell broke loose. Everyone started turning into the very thing they were masked as. Most people had chosen to dress up as companions or characters of famous fables, but other had picked bolder and scarier options. I could see zombies, witches, monsters of different kinds.

OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod….

I had to do something, but I had no idea of what. Was I about to turn too? It didn’t look like it, I was feeling fine. You’re welcome for the drink he had said, had he given me a protective potion? Why?

It wasn’t time to ask myself questions I didn’t know the answer to. It was time to run.

I took off without really knowing where to go, but soon stopped in my tracks.

I should’ve probably gone looking for the guys, but where could I find them? I knew they had been on patrol and I knew the spot each of them was usually assigned to.

The beach, the edge of the forest, the gardens or the cave.

All these places… I didn’t know what to expect. I knew there were things planned for this evening. I’d heard rumours of a haunted house, a maze and other unknown spooky surprises.

And what if the guys had also been turned? Was it safer if I went back inside HQ and tried to solve this problem by myself? But I had no idea how.

That moment an image popped into my mind. His face. No matter what, I had to find him. It was what my heart was telling me to do.

Now I knew exactly where to go. Without wasting another moment, I started running.

---

This story has 5 different epilogues, each corresponding one of the LIs.

#beemoov fanzine #eldarya #lance #ashkore #leiftan #ezarel #nevra #valkyon #my writing #behind the mask

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killian-whump · 6 years ago

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So, uh, follow me here.

What if Once had doubled up on the Killians, like, waaaaay earlier than Season 7? I mean, like, S3 early. Instead of Neal in the cage in the Echo Caves, there’s a Hook Clone in there... and Emma’s like, “This is surprising, but not actually disappointing at all.” and then there’s, like, a Hook/Emma/Hook love triangle and stuff, and then in 4A, Rumple uses the power of the Apprentice’s Hat to somehow create a third Hook, and then there’s three of him running around. And in 4B, somehow Ursula and Maleficent and Cruella have befriended some version of Hook that ended up swept up in the curse and working as a plumber or something, and he came to town with them. Then S5... Like, Dark Hook literally comes to town somehow and sticks around beyond the season as another Hook. And then maybe Emma goes to the Underworld to save her Hook, and finds, like, three others down there playing poker. One of the Hooks saves Milah from the River of Souls and decides to stay down in the Underworld with her and rule the place. And in S6, Hook uses the serum to separate himself from... himself. And Dark Hook does, too, because he wants to get rid of his “weakness” - and Cowardly Deckhand Hook makes his stunning re-appearance and we get to KEEP him. And like, at least three other Hooks use the serum too, because it seems like the thing to do and all the other Hooks are doing it. Oh, and a Hook comes over from the Land of Untold Stories, too. With Liam, because he took his brother there as soon as the Dreamshade got him in Neverland. And Emma & Co. are like, “Aww, you adorable mess of a Lieutenant, we can totally fix him for you” and then ALL the Hooks gather like seagulls around a fishing haul and are like, “It’s a Liam! Look, Other Hook! Look, Other Other Hook! It’s a Liam!!!” And Liam’s just like, really fucking confused and has never gotten so many horribly-wrapped Christmas presents in his life. And then Wish Realm Hook shows up in the middle of S6, all roly-poly and aged and ridiculous, and we get to keep him, too. And then they find another version of Wish Realm Hook in S7, who de-ages himself and experiences that curse, because the world needs the human cinnamon roll that is Detective Rogers, who is even MORE adorably out-of-sorts when he finally arrives in Storybrooke and discovers he has a brother once again and also over a dozen��other alternate versions of himself. And at some point, one (or hell, two - we can spare some) of them does some time traveling or something and ages a little, so we also can have some silver fox Killian. Because... reasons. Whatever. Go with it. And so now there’s no shortage of Hooks and everyone is really happy about this situation. Everyone gets to bang a Hook, or duel with a Hook, or befriend a Hook, or adopt one or... whatever else anyone wants to do with a Hook. It’s amazing. The town’s never been happier, and Captain Swan is now “Hooked Captain Swan Captain Hook” and nobody asks any questions, because she’s the Sheriff and she made polygamy with Hooks legal. And the show moves to HBO for obvious reasons.

TV Networks, hire me.

#things i think about #at 6am #ouat

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shireness-says · 6 years ago

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If I Could See Your Face Once More (1/6)

Summary: This time, there's no celebration at Granny's when the latest crisis has been resolved. Instead, they're left to deal with the body of Killian Jones. A 5B canon divergence where Killian dies in Camelot, never becoming a Dark One. Rated T for language. Also on AO3. ~4.3K.

Here it is - my contribution to @csmarchmadness! Thanks to @xemmaloveskillianx for organizing such a great event! I started writing this 2 years ago, before it got way out of hand and I ran out of steam. The next chapter will be posted on the 13th.

If you guys have talked to me for any length of time, you know I hate 5B. Hate it. Why all this Zelena/Hades stuff? Isn’t this supposed to be about saving Killian? Wtf? So here’s my take on 5B, featuring Liam not being a murderer, no Gold at all, Robin not dying, and so many other corrections. I have a lot of feelings about this, guys. Title taken from the Kodaline song that gave me these feelings in the first place (”All I Want”).

Special thanks to my beta, @snidgetsafan, who’s been surprisingly happy to deal with all this angst and dragging me through the writing process. You’re the best, babe.

Tagging: @thejollyroger-writer, @captainsjedi, @profdanglaisstuff, and @ultraluckycatnd. Shoot me a message if you want to be added to the list!

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!

This time, there’s no celebration at Granny’s when the latest crisis is has been resolved.

There’s just Emma, re-forging Excalibur with shaking hands to trap what’s left of the Dark One inside the blade, removing it from a human vessel once and for all.

Then, of course, they’re left to deal with the body of Killian Jones.

------

When Killian steps off the boat into the Underworld, it’s a small consolation to see Liam waiting at the docks for him.

It’s somehow fitting that the first words he hears from his brother in nearly three hundred years are “Little brother!” as he smiles sadly and pulls Killian into a fierce hug. And even if Killian tosses back a half-hearted “younger…”, he can’t help but squeeze even tighter, just to savor this reunion.

When the two finally break apart, it’s Liam who speaks first.

“I’ve been waiting so long for you, Killian. I can’t tell you how good it is to see your face again.”

“I know, believe me, I know,” he replies, before realizing something. “How did you know I was coming?”

Liam looks a bit sheepish and moves to scratch behind his ear in the same way Killian does (the same way Emma calls “adorable”). “Ah, well… you see, the captain’s log aboard the Jewel has kept me apprised of your life up above - the most painful moments, to be precise. A form of penance, I suppose. When the entries cut off abruptly after you got hurt in that swordfight, though, I got worried. So when a new house appeared down here... I couldn’t resist going to check it out, just in case it was yours.”

Killian knows immediately which one he’s talking about. “Grey Victorian? Tower room?”

“That’s the one. I walked in, saw pictures of you and your lovely wife, and figured one of you would be showing up in the next couple of days. Even if it was your lady instead of yourself, I thought I should still check in on her and find out how you were doing.”

Killian’s heart sinks as soon as he hears the word “wife”. He hates to disillusion Liam of this idea that he’s been living some idyllic life, but it will hurt too much in the long run to pretend, even for a little bit. So he forces himself to whisper back, regret coloring his voice, “I’m not married, brother.”

Liam frowns. “I’m sorry, I just thought… there was a picture of you two dancing. She was in a white dress, you looked dressed to the nines… I just assumed…”

Killian cuts him off before he can go any further. “It’s quite alright, we just… it was a maybe, someday.” He pauses. “I guess not anymore.”

“And the house?”

“We were planning on living there together. Building a future. But again…”

“Not anymore.” Liam nods. “Well, whatever would or wouldn’t have happened, the house appears to be for your use down here. Come along, I’ll take you there.”

------

The house Liam brings him to appears to be a perfect replica of the one Henry and he picked out back in Camelot, just more run down. What little furniture is present is covered in drop cloths and feels stiff and painful. Of course, those observations are secondary to how his attention is immediately drawn to the two photos in the entryway – the one from Camelot that Liam described, and the tiny instant photograph the Lady Snow took the night of their first date. Emma’s beautiful pink dress had made her look like an angel of some kind, and he can just see his temporarily-restored left hand resting on the small of her back. It’s a little bittersweet, seeing those images in this place that might have been home, but he’d rather they were here than not.

Liam, as it turns out, lives on the Jewel of the Realm (and it’s definitely the Jewel here, not the Jolly – beautiful and pristine and not marred by centuries of unintentional gouges from his hook) and runs the local bar, where he promptly offers his little brother (“Younger!”) a job. Turns out this was the only place at which he could find employment when he first arrived, and when the previous owner moved on, ownership transferred to Liam.

“And why have you never been able to move on? Go, be happy and at peace?”

Liam smiles sadly. “I was always worrying about you, wondering how you fared. Felt too guilty about not listening to you, I suppose, making you watch me die like that.”

Whether intentional or not, Killian can’t help but feel a pang of guilt at the fact that his brother has been trapped here because of him. Gods, will his list of sins never end?

But Liam breezes on. “Now that you’re here, though, I think I’ll be able to move on, just as soon as we sort your unfinished business. Any idea what that might be?”

That only twists the knife deeper. Of course he knows what his unfinished business is, and it’s nothing that can be sorted out in a few weeks. It’s promising Emma a happy ending and a future – hell, just promising her that he’d survive. “Ah, well, we’ll both be here for a while then.” Liam quirks a quizzical brow. “I made a vow I ended up not being able to keep. So until Emma either moves on or…” He can’t even speak the words, refuses to even contemplate Emma dying and joining him down here for many, many years yet. “… then I’m stuck here. Which apparently means so are you.”

That feels like the worst admission of all – that he’s somehow doomed everyone he cares about to a lifetime of misery. And when Liam pulls him into a hug that he’s sure is meant to be comforting, he can’t help but feel that he doesn’t deserve that kindness, not one bit.

------

Killian quickly settles into a routine, if only in an attempt to retain some semblance of sanity. Every evening, he joins Liam to work behind the bar at the Underworld’s version of the Rabbit Hole (though down here, the bar seems to cater to those drinking to forget, rather than serving as the social hub it was back in the real Storybrooke); every morning and early afternoon he tries to fix up their – his house a little more, straightening hinges and sanding floors as best as he can. A man learns a good bit of carpentry over years of maintaining a ship; the only thing holding Killian back oftentimes is his lack of proper tools. Liam’s assistance is often offered, but rarely accepted; somehow, Killian feels like this is a task he must accomplish on his own.

Besides being in a state of complete and utter disrepair, the house additionally seems to have a mind and a life of its own. Killian simultaneously loves and dreads the surprises the house conjures up for him. The metal table and chairs on the back porch are an exact match to the set outside of Granny’s where he and Emma shared their first real kiss; a constant smell of cinnamon lingers in the kitchen, despite there not being any of the spice in the house; Middlemist flowers wilt, half dead, in the front flowerbeds. The tower room upstairs must have been meant for Henry in another life, as all of the photographs that appear there are of the two of them or of him, the lad, and Emma. He even finds the Author’s pen in a drawer of the desk beneath the window. This is, oddly enough, the room that hurts the most – a vivid reminder of the life they all might have had. Yet he still finds himself checking the room nearly every day, sometimes twice a day, to see if any new memories have appeared of him and the young man he was looking forward to one day proudly calling his stepson.

------

Every few days, he allows himself to visit the red talking phone box to try and send a message to Emma. There’s no real knowing if any of it reaches her, but he repeats the same words over and over again anyways:

“I’m so sorry, Swan. I’m so very, very sorry to have left you, especially after I promised I wouldn’t. I’m so sorry and I love you so incredibly much, will love you as long as I have a soul to do so.”

(He can’t decide if it hurts more to talk to her or to stop.)

------

A few weeks after he arrives in the Underworld – he thinks three, but really, time runs together down here – there’s a persistently circulating murmur that the former Dark One, Rumpelstiltskin, had been brought here, brought to the Underworld to answer for his sins, before being taken back to the world above by Charon on the very same boat.

Killian knows it’s petty, and far too late anyhow, but he can’t help but feel like he deserves a second chance more than the Crocodile ever could.

Maybe that’s the reason – when given the option of a second chance, a shot to redeem himself, Killian grabbed it with both hands and made the most of every moment. He was satisfied. He was happy. Rumpelstiltskin hasn’t achieved any of that. Apparently, someone thinks he deserves all that just once.

Whatever the case, Killian knows he’d have given anything to be the one going home – back to his real home – on that boat.

------

Maybe a week after that, Killian is shocked one afternoon to feel a strange tingling all over his body, and when he looks back up, is stunned to see himself not in his kitchen, but in Storybrooke’s cemetery with Henry standing in front of him. In his joy, he rushes forward to embrace Henry… only to be devastated to see his arms pass right through his boy.

Henry looks just as crushed. “It’s only temporary,” he explains softly. “I got this ale stuff from Merida to talk to you.”

Killian nods. “That was very resourceful, lad.” A pause. “How are you doing?”

Henry shrugs noncommittally; Killian knows the feeling. “Ok, I guess. I miss you. We all do.”

“I miss you too, Henry, you and your mum. More than I can properly express.”

“She misses you like crazy, you know. Kinda just goes through the motions like she’s in a daze. I guess she imagines your voice sometimes, cus that’s what she always tells me when I walk in on her crying.”

(In that moment, Killian vows to stop visiting the talking phone box. It’s clearly hurting her more than it’s helping him.)

Henry looks worried for a second. “Are you doing alright? You’re not… it’s not like pits of fire down there, is it?”

Bless this wonderful boy for worrying about a man who can’t possibly deserve it. “I’m ok. I’m with my brother, get left alone most of the time. I wish I was up here with you lot but it’s not so bad, being dead.”

Henry nods, and Killian’s heart breaks a little more at the thought of having left this young man concerned about him for even a moment. Henry shouldn’t ever have to be in position where he has to think about what happens to the soul of one of his loved ones after they’re gone. He’s already had to do it with his father; the last thing he ever wanted was to put Henry through that pain again.

Henry seems to finally work up the courage to get to his point, the reason he summoned Killian. “Gold woke up the other day. We all thought he wouldn’t, and I think my moms kinda hoped he wouldn’t, but he did.”

Killian nods. “I know. I heard down in the Underworld.”

“It’s just so unfair, you know? That you don’t get another chance too. I know more people would want you back.”

“Ah, but we don’t get to decide these things, lad. You have to know that if it was up to me, I’d be back with you two in a heartbeat. I’d choose you every time.”

“I know.”

Another pause. It’s like there’s so much to say that neither even knows where to start.

Killian breaks it first. “I take it you’re back in Storybrooke then?”

“Yeah. Mom used…” His voice falters. “Mom used your heart to cast the Dark Curse. She and my other mom and the fairies and Merlin are trying to figure out how to send the Camelot folks back now.”

“Does she know you’re here?”

“No. I just thought…” Yet another pause. “I figured if this didn’t work, I didn’t want to get her hopes up. She’s already sad enough as it is.”

Selfishly, he wants to beg Henry to go bring her here as fast as possible, but he can feel whatever this spell is about to fade out, a tingling starting in his toes. Not to mention, the lad is right. No need to torture his love unnecessarily. He wants her to move on, be happy, and that’s just not possible if she’s coming to summon him every chance she gets.

“I think that’s smart, lad. Maybe we don’t tell her? Just keep this between us?”

He can tell Henry wants to object. “But –“

“It’ll be too hard otherwise. For both of us. I just want her to move on and be happy, yeah?” At least this time, Henry nods. “I think I have to go now, but I love and miss you both so much, ok? Try to be happy for me?”

He won’t lie – it hurts a lot that his last view of Henry before he reappears in his kitchen is of the lad sniffling and trying to hold back tears as he waves goodbye.

------

Not long after his talk with Henry, Killian is shocked to walk past a previously empty room of the house one day to discover a fully furnished nursery. Mostly, he hopes to any god that might be listening that this is just another trick of the house, another glimpse of what he could have and should have had, had he lived. He hopes Swan isn’t having to go through a pregnancy alone again.

(A selfish part of him likes to imagine she has a little someone to remember him by – a little lass or laddie with her hair and his eyes.)

(He can’t help but add that thought to the ever-expanding list of reasons to be disgusted with himself.)

------

About two months after his death, Killian is once again summoned by Henry, who is pacing and clearly furious when he rematerializes.

Internally, Killian can’t help but huff a sigh – Henry needs to move on, needs to let him go, needs to not try and contact him every time something goes wrong. “Henry…” he starts, intending to reprimand the boy, when the young man in question colorfully interrupts.

“That son of a bitch!”

“Henry, language! I know for a fact neither of your mothers tolerates that.”

“Well pardon me, but that asshat Gold separated Excalibur and took back the Darkness, so I think it might be warranted.”

“That son of a whore,” Killian can’t help but blurt out. So much for scolding Henry.

“See?”

This talk ends up being slightly longer than the last – Henry just needs to vent, but when it comes to the Crocodile, there’s always an awful lot to vent about. But right before he fades out, Henry fixes his full attention on Killian.

“I’m going to find a way to bring you back, okay? If he gets to live, so should you. You deserve it a million times over.”

(He knows he no longer has a heart, but somehow, it still feels warm anyways.)

------

The next few weeks, he can’t help but feel hopeful. It must be apparent, because Liam keeps commenting on how cheerful he seems, one day even (Gods help him) catching him whistling. Killian even finds himself making an effort to interact with the other souls living in the Underworld. In the end, that’s how he meets Milah again.

It’s bittersweet, really. Killian spent hundreds of years trying to avenge his first great love, only to see her again and realize how many of the finer details he had forgotten. He supposes that’s what happens when you finally move on.

At least he’s relieved to learn that Milah’s unfinished business has nothing to do with him (one less thing to carry on his conscience). In fact, it’s her guilt over leaving Bae that has kept her here all this time. It’s the very least he can do to tell her about all the times he and Bae – or Neal – interacted, how Bae had still fiercely loved his mother and forgiven her for leaving before he had died. That seems to be enough for her – to know that her son had ultimately been happy.

It’s a little awkward, telling Milah about how he had moved on with Emma (especially since he had been dating the former lover of his own former lover’s son), but she loves hearing his stories about Henry – how smart and down to Earth he is, how brave, how adventurous. It’s a pity, really, that the two will never meet – he sees so much of Milah in her grandson, and thinks the two would have gotten along famously.

“Thank you,” she tells him, as she kisses his cheek. “I’m happy you were able to find a family for yourself. You and your big heart deserve it, even if you want to pretend otherwise.”

Then she vanishes, off to hopefully meet her son in a better place.

------

Five weeks after Henry’s second visit (this time, Killian is counting carefully), he’s summoned for a third time to find Henry looking exhausted and disheveled.

“Gods above, lad, are you alright? What happened?”

“Don’t worry. Long story.”

“Well then summarize.”

“Uh… Belle found out about Gold taking back the darkness. Broke up with Gold. Found out she was pregnant. Then Gold found out she was pregnant, and tried to manipulate her to come back to him, but she didn’t. So he sped up Zelena’s pregnancy so we’d be distracted while he tried to kidnap Belle to another realm. And I’ve been researching all the while.”

“Is she alright? Is everyone alright?”

“Yeah, Belle’s fine. Mom and Mom figured out what was going on pretty quick and Mom – Regina and Gramps went after him while Mom held down the fort at the hospital. That’s what I’m here about actually – Merlin and I found a spell to get to the Underworld. It required the blood of someone who had already been but came back, but Gramps nicked Gold before he fell through the portal, so we’re all set now. Just have to wait a few days, six days, for the full moon and then we’re coming to get you.”

Killian knows he should be grateful, but his blood runs cold when he hears the words. “No, Henry, you can’t, I can’t let you put yourself in danger for me. I’m already dead, I can’t let you risk getting yourself killed to fix something that isn’t meant to be fixed.”

“I don’t care. I miss you, Mom’s miserable, so I’m going to get you back. End of discussion.”

And, well, who is he to argue with the young man who possesses the Heart of the Truest Believer?

------

Of course, it’s too much to hope that everything will run smoothly and he’ll be home in a week. Instead, Hades shows up in all his slimy glory. Apparently, Killian’s hope is a little too contagious - enough that the Lord of the Dead himself has noticed and deemed it a threat to his rule.

Instead of waiting in his house for his Swan and their boy to take him home, he gets taken to Hades’ underground cavern of a dungeon to have the hope beat out of him.

------

Briefly, through a haze of pain and a coating of blood, Killian thinks he feels himself being summoned again, thinks he catches a glimpse of Emma and all her – their – family, but he writes it off as a hallucination.

------

And then suddenly, he’s being lifted down from the chains he’s strung up in by a pair of small, gentle hands.

Emma.

He’s half delirious with pain, but he can’t help but try and grin when her face swims into focus (or at least as much focus as he can achieve with one eye swollen shut). She’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, even in filthy jeans and an oversized sweater with a pale face and tears in her eyes.

It’s the very least he can do, after all he’s put her through, to work through the pain to try and wipe away her tears.

------

Somehow, Emma helps him hobble out of the chamber where he had been suspended to an outer landing where Liam is waiting with a boat, ready to return them both to the upper levels of the Underworld.

(There's some tension between the two, but it’s difficult to comment on that tension when he has to consciously focus on breathing properly and not falling over.)

Killian is more than happy to mask any physical pain, however, when upon re-emerging into the Underworld’s facsimile of a library, Henry rushes up to wrap him in an enormous hug. He may not be fully healed for a while, but this? This is a start.

He’s just as touched to see the small crowd assembled behind the lad – Emma’s parents are there, of course, and he’s not that shocked to see Regina, considering that it was her precious son that engineered the plan to find and retrieve him, but it’s something more of a surprise to see Belle and Robin as well. He shakes the men’s hands in turn, offers a nod to Regina, and hugs Belle as firmly as his injuries will allow (taking the chance to whisper a soft but deeply meant “congratulations” in her ear). Killian then does his best to console the lady Snow – who looks close to tears – with a mumbled “it’s not as bad as it looks” as she holds his face to kiss his cheek before Emma interrupts to say she needs to bring him home and clean him up. At that, the others disperse, either to the Charmings’ loft or the Mayor’s mansion, as his Swan slides her slender arm around his waist and tosses his arm over her shoulder in order to help him hobble the few blocks back to his – their house.

It’s only once she gets him inside and settled in a kitchen chair – “I know it’s unsanitary, but hey, better than getting bloodstains on the couch, right?” – that Killian starts to think something is off. He hadn’t been too surprised when Emma wasn’t clinging to him in front of her family; on the best of days, she isn’t much for public displays of affection (or “PDA”, as she and Henry insist on saying), and a time when he needs help holding himself up certainly isn’t the best of days. But they’re alone now, and he’s sitting down, and damn if he doesn’t want to hold her. Killian knows it’s not the blood that’s the issue – he may be covered in the stuff, but so is she after supporting his weight for the past forty-five minutes, and it doesn’t seem to be fazing her in the least. Maybe before, his lack of self-confidence would have insisted Emma didn’t actually want to be here, didn’t want to be with him, but the way she tries to touch his face or his hand every time she passes him as she scurries around his kitchen trying to clean off the worst of the blood seems to suggest otherwise. So why doesn’t Emma seem to want him to hold her? It could just be that she doesn’t want to hurt him further, aggravate his wounds, but something makes him think otherwise.

“Love?”

She hums in his general direction.

“What’s wrong?”

Emma shoots a quick, though tight smile his way before turning back to the sink, trying to wring out a rag that was surely as clean as it was going to get. “Nothing’s the matter babe, don’t worry about it.”

He wants to believe her, so badly, but he knows how to spot her avoidances. And this? This is one of the most obvious he’s seen. “Emma, love…”

Killian holds out his hand towards her, and even if she was trying to avoid him a moment ago, she takes it like their palms are connected by magnets. “I’m just so relieved to have found you, to see you again. That’s all.”

“Even if that’s true, I know that’s not all,” he replies, to her half-hearted scoff. “You don’t have to tell me right now, but just let me hold you, love, let me try and make it better for both of us, yeah?”

As he tugs her closer, Emma tries to protest, tries to tell him “Killian, I don’t think that’s a good —” but he’s even quicker to interrupt.

“If this is you worrying about my injuries, sod the injuries,” he dismisses as his hand and stump move to her waist in order to pull her closer, only to unexpectedly encounter firmness.

Now Emma has always been strong and well-muscled, certainly, but she’s also a tiny, petite thing, thanks to her mother’s genes. So to encounter her now, more filled out, is odd. And suddenly, Killian remembers –

Upstairs, there is a room, meant to be a nursery.

“Swan…” he murmurs, slowly pulling up her sweater as she sighs in defeat to reveal…

…The small beginnings of a bump.

“…Surprise?”

#cs march madness #captain swan #cs ff #cs canon divergence #my writing #If I Could See Your Face Once More #I have a lot of opinions about 5b and none of them are good

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data-monkey · 6 years ago

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AO3 stats project: tags

In this post, we'll discuss tags on the Archive of Our Own! Please note: because the works on the Archive include explicit material, some of the tags discussed in this post may not be appropriate for your workplace.

The Archive of Our Own has one of the best tagging systems around. You can read more about it here, here, here, or here. For our purposes, the important part is that users can tag their works however they want, and then a group of people called "tag wranglers" sort those tags, either adding them as synonyms of existing tags or creating new canonical versions for them. What I'll be showing here is the "canonical" version of the tags. For example, a work tagged "flufffffff" or "so fluffy!" would have those two tags assigned to the canonical tag "Fluff", so I will consider both of those tags as being "Fluff" to get the most accurate count.

The other important thing about AO3 tags is that they come in four flavors. The first one is "warnings", the content warnings required by the Archive (plus the default tag indicating you're abstaining from the warnings system). The second flavor is "Characters", tags describing the characters in the work. The third is "Relationships", tags describing the platonic or romantic relationships depicted in the work--typically, "X/Y" indicates a romantic and/or sexual relationship between characters X and Y, while "X&Y" means a platonic relationship, although this usage isn't universal and isn't enforced. The final category is "freeform", aka everything else.

Again, the tagging system is freeform and optional. In particular, I'll note that "character" tags and "relationship" tags don't necessarily imply each other: you can have a work tagged "Sherlock Holmes/John Watson" that only features Mycroft Holmes, or that features John and Sherlock but doesn't tag them as characters, only as the relationship. So remember that--while it's pretty good on average, because people tag their works so readers/viewers can find them--the number of uses of a character tag isn't the same as the number of works that feature that character, for example.

Okay! So what are the most popular freeform tags on the Archive? If you read a lot of fanfiction, I doubt you will be surprised by anything on this list. Left column is the top 15 tags by number of uses, while right column is the top 15 tags by the cumulative hit count on every work tagged with that tag.

Are these tags consistently popular over time? For reasons of space, I’ll just plot the top 10 by number of works:

If you look back at the works vs time plot in the second post, you'll see that yes, the shape of these trends is similar to the total number of works, so trends in fannish tastes haven’t changed much over the time the AO3 has been in existence. (These show a little more bumpiness because there are fewer works in each plot.) Some of these have gained a little more recent popularity vs earlier works--smut, fluff, and the two specific alternate universes are a little more weighted towards later times, while humor and general AUs are falling a little behind--but the differences aren’t as large as we saw for fandom trends in the previous post.

I'm sure you're curious about characters and relationships. Here are the top character tags, omitting the catchall character tags of “Original Character(s)”, “Original Male Character(s)”, “Original Female Character(s)”, and “Reader” (all of which would otherwise appear in the top 15). Also, remember this is missing some of the data from 2018 and 2019, as described in the first post, so BTS characters should probably be higher:

And here are the top relationship tags (again, excluding the catchall “Minor or Background Relationship(s)”):

And in particular, here are the top characters of color (excluding works with fictionalized race/ethnicity power systems--um, more than modern-day Western society’s power systems are made up--and characters from Voltron Legendary Defender, since I wasn’t able to find enough information on them):

Park Jimin (BTS)

Min Yoongi | Suga

Jeon Jungkook

Kim Taehyung | V

Kim Namjoon | Rm

Jung Hoseok | J-Hope

Kim Seokjin | Jin

Zayn Malik

Katsuki Yuuri

Sam Wilson (Marvel)

Magnus Bane

Nick Fury

Midoriya Izuku

Bakugou Katsuki

Erica Reyes

And here are the top relationships that are not M/M:

Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Emma Swan

Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak

Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin

Clarke Griffin/Lexa

Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov

Pepper Potts/Tony Stark

Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan

Kylo Ren/Rey

Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley

Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor

Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper

Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold

Allison Argent/Scott McCall

James Potter/Lily Evans Potter

Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy

Here are the top ten freeform tags for the top ten fandoms. Different fandoms seem to produce different kinds of fanworks--which you'd expect, based on the variety in the source material.

AU = alternate universe, AU - CD = Alternate universe - canon divergence, AU - C/U = alternate universe - college/university, AU - HS = alternate universe - high school, BJs = blow jobs, ER = established relationship, H/C = hurt/comfort, PWP = plot what plot/porn without plot, RPF = real person fiction, SPN = supernatural.

Finally, for fun, here's the top 200 tags of all kinds, sorted against each other. You can find a lot of fun things on this list. Some of my favorites:

Supernatural is so big, and so focused on so few characters, that Dean Winchester is the sixth most popular tag on the entire AO3.

Clint Barton is way higher than I would have expected.

Sherlock Holmes is slightly less popular than anal sex.

Original female characters are more popular than anal sex.

Similarly, cuddling is more popular than A/B/O.

Harry Styles is less popular than 3/7ths of BTS (at least as of sometime in 2018); Louis Tomlinson barely tops Draco Malfoy.

Alcohol comes between Katsuki Yuuri and Viktor Nikiforov.

Leonard McCoy is below songfic. Please join me in picturing how pissed off he’d be.

The one-two punch of “Spanking” and “I’m Sorry” is pretty amusing.

If I had put up the top 201 tags, 200 and 201 would have been “Flirting” and “Murder”, so Hannibal is almost on this list.

Fluff

Angst

Alternate Universe

Romance

Hurt/Comfort

Dean Winchester

Humor

Established Relationship

Smut

Sam Winchester

Steve Rogers

Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence

Alternate Universe - Modern Setting

Tony Stark

Friendship

Original Female Character(s)

Anal Sex

Drabble

Original Characters

Sherlock Holmes

Fluff And Angst

Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot

Castiel/Dean Winchester

One Shot

John Watson

Stiles Stilinski

Castiel

Harry Potter

Oral Sex

James "Bucky" Barnes

Natasha Romanov

Blow Jobs

Clint Barton

Emotional Hurt/Comfort

Drama

Derek Hale

Reader

Slow Burn

Original Male Character(s)

Sherlock Holmes/John Watson

First Time

Alternate Universe - College/University

Kissing

Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski

First Kiss

Angst With A Happy Ending

Light Angst

Violence

Family

Park Jimin (BTS)

Min Yoongi | Suga

Jeon Jungkook

Crossover

Harry Styles

Crack

Friends To Lovers

Love

Fluff And Smut

Kim Taehyung | V

Louis Tomlinson

Other Additional Tags To Be Added

Draco Malfoy

Alternate Universe - High School

Explicit Sexual Content

Masturbation

Hermione Granger

Pining

Bruce Banner

Anal Fingering

Kim Namjoon | RM

Canon Compliant

Thor (Marvel)

Domestic Fluff

Jung Hoseok | J-Hope

Keith (Voltron)

Kim Seokjin | Jin

Depression

Character Death

Sexual Content

Happy Ending

Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson

Canon-Typical Violence

James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers

Lance (Voltron)

Cuddling & Snuggling

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics

Dirty Talk

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD

Post-Canon

Loki (Marvel)

Christmas

Hand Jobs

Scott Mccall

Niall Horan

Sex

Mycroft Holmes

Blood

Shiro (Voltron)

Liam Payne

Rimming

Rough Sex

Zayn Malik

Cute

Original Character(s)

Original Character

Castiel (Supernatural)

Dubious Consent

Phil Coulson

Severus Snape

Ron Weasley

Character Study

Mpreg

Lydia Martin

Explicit Language

Slash

Grief/Mourning

Polyamory

Future Fic

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

Minor Character Death

Greg Lestrade

Steve Rogers/Tony Stark

Peter Parker

Mutual Pining

Swearing

Eventual Smut

Sirius Black

Dom/Sub

Pre-Slash

Sad

Love Confessions

Unrequited Love

Alternate Universe - Soulmates

Remus Lupin

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester

Falling In Love

Jealousy

Spanking

I'm Sorry

Pepper Potts

Death

Keith/Lance (Voltron)

Spoilers

James T. Kirk

Hunk (Voltron)

Sans (Undertale)

Emma Swan

Gabriel (Supernatural)

Fluff And Humor

Magic

Torture

Alternate Universe - Human

Bruce Wayne

Isaac Lahey

Levi (Shingeki No Kyojin)

Eren Yeager

Clarke Griffin

Self-Harm

Slow Build

Victor Nikiforov

Alcohol

Katsuki Yuuri

Suicidal Thoughts

Implied Sexual Content

BDSM

Nightmares

Canonical Character Death

Action/Adventure

Sam Wilson (Marvel)

Developing Relationship

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug

Bondage

Friendship/Love

Tooth-Rotting Fluff

Dark

Sheriff Stilinski

Mental Health Issues

Allison Argent

Reader-Insert

Slice Of Life

Allura (Voltron)

Kurt Hummel

Getting Together

Kidnapping

Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov

Dick Grayson

Merlin (Merlin)

Panic Attacks

Heavy Angst

Comfort

Alec Lightwood

Pre-Canon

Ficlet

Kid Fic

Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir

Implied/Referenced Character Death

Songfic

Leonard Mccoy

First Meetings

Flirting

#fan stats #ao3 #fanstats

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