#it’s also. i think it’s a little too easy for them to dismiss the marginalizations of others

[callixton]

i am in such a weird place socially i love my friends and i’m so glad i’m getting closer with them but also everyone i know seems to hate each other and it is getting so exhausting. just be a good person why is it this hard

[takaraphoenix]

In the wake of the casting announcement, I’ve come across this and I just gotta say a few things about one particular section in it. Because while on the overall, this is a rare occasion on which I agree with Riordan - finding the right actors isn’t so much about physical traits as it is about their acting ability to convey characteristics, personality and also the right kind of chemistry with the right other cast members (casting two people as best friends or lovers when the actors give off an energy that they would rather not be in the same room as the other person? Doesn’t work) - I’m baffled about the way he went in delivering that point.

Are we going to make Walker dye his hair black? Answer: We have had zero conversations about this. Personally, I think this is a non-issue. For me, finding the right actors  has never been about hair color, eye color, skin color, or any other single physical trait, even if they were described a certain way in the books. As many of you know, I flubbed such details myself several times in the series. Thalia’s eyes changed from green to blue. Oops! Annabeth’s hair was curly and then it was straight. Nico was described as olive-skinned, then later as pale. Blackjack even changed from a mare to a stallion over the course of two books. Whelp, not sure what happened there, but too late now!

He really said the quiet part out loud. He really said the part he shouldn’t say out loud.

What I’m reading here isn’t “racebending the characters doesn’t matter because the important thing is the essence and energy the actors bring”, what I’m reading here is “racebending doesn’t matter because I’m a shitty writer lol” (and yes, I am also reading that “lol”, in that “Whelp, not sure what happened there, but too late now!”). Because that’s what he’s saying. He’s saying that the actors’ physical appearance doesn’t matter because he never cared enough to remember what his own characters look like to begin with. And that’s a sign of a bad writer, because a good writer actually cares.

We all know he sucks at keeping his own canon straight, but I somewhat assumed that he himself... elects to not shine a light onto that fact?

These are his characters, he created these characters, but he can’t be bothered to remember what they look like?

And the characters he lists there aren’t even side or background characters. They’re all main characters. I have a margin of understanding for not remembering the exact shade of eye color on some random background character who only appeared twice or so. But Annabeth, Nico and Thalia are main characters.

That... I’m sorry, but to me this just shows a severe lack of care. He doesn’t even care to remember what his main characters look like. How do you go about writing entire books about these characters without having a clear visualization of them in your inner mind?

And! Even if you have the shittiest memory possible, there are ways to keep the details of your writing straight. Heaven knows I have created more characters than I could ever keep track of, so I have charts, where I note down important details about them, including the visual key-notes. Art is also a great way for that, even if you aren’t the best artist yourself.

I just truly, fiercely hate the dismissive nature with which he lists these easy to avoid mistakes that he made and how he just shrugs it off like it doesn’t matter.

Sure, in its very essence, what eye-color Thalia has doesn’t matter all that much, but it’s about what this represents. This represents that he doesn’t even care enough to know his characters, when every die-hard Percy Jackson fan has greedily soaked up and memorized every tiny little detail of description that he has given us because we actually love these characters.

[voicefromthecorner]

Okay, so I first of all love to see Neku asking after Rhyme, even if it’s only a little. And I love Nagi’s little self-aware remark about the cast, good stuff as always from her.

But my gosh, I say this as a guy, the level of testosterone in this conversation is at a dangerous peak.

It kind of pains me to see the guys trying to carry every cross here to this extent. Knowing what they’re like and how responsible for others they both feel, it’s not too surprising, but they really need to dial it back a little. And also just generally be a little more rational.

Rhyme is not “safe and sound in the RG”. Nobody is safe and sound in the RG. By the end of the day, there won’t be an RG or a UG due to overwhelming powers that may be inevitably unstoppable. Sure, we’re trying to do all we can about it here and the RG is marginally safer than the UG for now, but if Rhyme’s fate is as much on the line as anyone elses, she has the right to try and do something about it.

Speaking of which, Rhyme is trying to do something about it and from the sound of things, Beat’s aware of it and is trying to dismiss it. He doesn’t have to like it, but he needs to accept it and let her try because frankly, we can use all the help we can get, especially given how low on chances and options that we are. We may bear the biggest brunt of the burden but the guys really shouldn’t disqualify or underestimate how much we could stand to gain from accepting her help. She may not have the greatest track record with this, but she is a competent ally and not just some damsel in distress.

But the thing that really jostles me about this is that accepting even the bare minimum of assistance would be so easy because all Beat has to do is literally just read her messages and he’s so stubborn about this that he just won’t! She’s trying to say something right now and it could be important but Beat’s closing the door on her, which is a negative result for everyone in every way.

Even if it’s not important, she’s his sister! They could all die today! I know that kind of thinking isn’t Beat’s style, but now is the worst possible time to be making some kind of stand that closes off communication to someone you love whom you have already nearly lost in the past. He’s at risk of setting himself up for way more regrets.

Again, I do understand why Neku and Beat feel this way and think this something they should do, even if it’s still dumb. I’m not mad about this as much as just annoyed, but I’m assuming something is going to come of it in the future. So for now I’m fine with waiting to see what that is and hope all the while that it’s going to result in Rhyme chastising the guys for blowing her off when she had the solution or at least a key ingredient to the solution dangling in front of them the whole time.

[yharnamsnewslug]

You know when other queer and trans people mock transmasc peeps by saying "you wanna be oppressed sooooo bad" and you just sit there in your shitty Ikea chair that you got on discount with Christmas money bc your mother is doing everything in her power to make your jobless ass pay for food with the money you've saved up for top surgery and you see your account dwindling and no one will hire a mid-transition heshe fat faggot and you cry yourself to sleep because t is a regulated substance that you worked so fucking hard (8 fucking years) to get and people tell you that the reason you want to be a man is due to either sexual abuse or trauma from misogyny or that you want male privilege and half of us are thinking of killing ourselves or detransitioning or trying To not be a man because everyone fucking hates us, even the community that was supposed to protect us and we can't ever win and like.

Idk, do you ever just laugh at that shit? I just did. I read it and I wonder how they see me. How they imagine me in their head, what our lives must be like. Black trans men who have mother's and father's sitting down with them and saying, "If you medically transition and look masculine, police will start targeting you." East Asian trans men who are already fucking fetishized and infalintilized and tokenized by cis white women in the West. Brown trans men realizing that women now look at them with either disgust or fear. Disabled trans men, even more emasculated, and taken their autonomy away, their voices away. Intersex trans men who have had their bodies scrutinized since they were fucking born. Trans men who enjoy the things that label someone "feminine" and fully identifying as men, only to be told they're transtrenders.

Trans men who are old, old and tired, discovering this just now, thinking they've wasted time. Or twenty year olds who also think it's too late.

You - you sit behind your computer and mock us and laugh at us and grit your teeth and hate our neck ears and barely-there moustaches and our cracking voices and our fatness or thinness or shortness and mock cis men thinking we don't see the way you body shame the men you dislike. And the men you like. You nitpick and sneer and dismiss our pain as if we weren't stepped on by the patriarchy as well.

As if my entire life I hadn't fucking struggled to be listened to.

"Ladies don't raise their voices. Ladies don't play with videogames. Ladies don't throw a punch."

"Ladies don't get angry."

When the world knew me as a girl, my anger wasn't just justified, but it was righteous and liberating and inspirational.

And now you hypocrites try to strip marginalized men of our voices because you've gotten so fucking comfortable with your little radfem cult. So fucking safe, so fucking easy to consider women and feminine people an all-acompassing blanket of good traits. You saw the radfem Kool aid and you drank it and now look at the state of fucking trans discourse.

So here's what I'll say to you: we don't fucking need you. We don't need your approval to be happy, to have human rights, to have our feelings acknowledged, our trans and queer theory and words "approved".

We don't FUCKING need you. All we need is the fucking WILL to live while you all rejoice in how feminist and progressive you all are, stepping on hands grasping at the ledge, taking out your anger on an easy target.

So good riddance. I spit on your face. I will have my theory, my words, my love, and my transmasculine siblings at my side.

And at the end of the day, all you will have is shame.

[c-is-for-circinate]

So here’s the thing:  I really, honestly do not get the appeal in Widojest.  I don’t entirely see the appeal in Caleb Widogast.  And I’m okay with that; I have other faves who I pay more attention to; I get to do that, because my show is 3-5 hours long every goddamn week that it airs and there is plenty of time for literally everyone.  And I do not have to be a Caleb stan to understand at a really fundamental level that, hey, even if he isn’t important to me?  He is very clearly very important to a lot of actual real-live people.

There will always, always be stories that aren’t for you.  Maybe they just don’t speak to you at all.  Maybe they hit buttons in your brain that remind you of real hurts.  It’s always going to happen.  In a perfect world, with perfect representation where there are stories for you everywhere, there will still be stories that aren’t.

And it hurts, I know it does, when you feel like the story you want for you doesn’t exist anywhere, but here’s one more story that isn’t it.  It hurts when there’s a story that you thought was for you and then it turns out not to care about you at all.  There should be more stories for all of us, especially the stories that feel like they’re not getting told.

That is a real, valid pain.  We all clear on that?

Good.  Because this next part is also absolutely true:

The story that is not for you is very important to someone else.  And particularly in fandom spaces, there is a very good chance that the someone else in question has experienced marginalization on the basis of gender, sexuality, race, disability, mental illness, or general trauma.

The story that is not for you has worth.

People who find worth in stories that are not for you--even if your story is underrepresented and their story really has been told one hundred billion times before, even then--ARE NOT INHERENTLY BAD PEOPLE for finding worth in those stories.

There’s this extra dimension to this particular ship war, where I think a lot of Beaujester shippers are so angry not because of what’s actually happened, but because of what years of pattern recognition has taught them (taught us?) must inevitably be coming next.  When a leading man in a fantasy series, on an arc of learning to better himself and maybe even value or forgive himself, repeatedly expresses unrequited love for a girl who he believes is too good for him, the narrative will give her to him in the end.  This is a pattern and it’s real and its existence hurts, outside of Widojest, just in general in the world.

And on one hand: that has not happened yet with Widojest, and there is a very good chance, for a million reasons, that it won’t!  And on the other hand: even if it did happen, that would not be an excuse for violent or abusive behavior, or to dismiss the worth that story might have to other people!  And on the third hand: yes, I totally see why it feels like that’s the trope being invoked here, and why that is scary, and why it hurts!

We know about Caleb’s feelings in this one specific way and we don’t know about Jester’s.  In theory that means that Jester’s feelings could be ANYTHING, and this could go ANYWHERE, and of course Caleb and Liam would respect Jester and Laura’s ‘no’, and there is plenty of agency all around and that’s great.  In practice, it can feel like another reminder of that old trope, where the male lead character’s emotions are given to the audience like something important, and the female lead character’s feelings are generally passed off as vague platonic affection until the final romantic reveal, and we have to extrapolate what was going through her head the whole time.

We know that Critical Role cares about representation and queer visibility, and without a network to fight, they get to make the show as gay as they want.  In theory this means that we can trust them to give us the rep we’re craving.  In practice, we worry, because in an ad-libbed show where you don’t have to plan ahead or deliberately fight for representation, it’s easy to accidentally slip into old familiar patterns and biases without even noticing they’re there.

We know that Laura’s agency and Jester’s agency matter here, that of course it’s not just about Caleb, and in theory that should make ANY romantic ending better and good and right and fine, but in practice--well, what does it mean, when you’ve got agency over a story, and use it to choose to tell what feels like the same old story all over again?

And right, let me say it again: none of this has happened yet.  QUITE LIKELY NONE OF IT EVER WILL.  We don’t know!!!  Not even the players know!!!

Which, maybe that’s the scariest thing of all.  When I’m watching a scripted show, I usually know what to expect out of the formula.  I know when a show is going to be queerbaity and then quit gay chicken at the last second.  I expect it.  I can feel out how trustworthy the showrunners are in a few episodes, and while sometimes there’s a long slow decline or a short sharp surprise, after 20-30 years of media engagement, I know what I’m going to get.

I suspect that CR feels like it should be more “trustworthy,” to many Beaujester shippers, in terms of providing the kind of story they’re craving--but it’s so hard to know for sure.  It’s so hard to know whether to brace for disappointment, or be resigned, or ragequit and be done with it, or most terrifyingly at all, to be hopeful.

It’s hard.  I do get that it’s hard.

And it’s really easy, isn’t it, to go on twitter and tumblr and into the comments sections on critrole.com and fuck knows where else, I’m assuming there’s a Discord somewhere that I’m not cool enough to know about, and be furious.  To be mean.  To blame the fear of not getting the story that will mean something to me, again, on anyone else.  To make fucking death threats, I don’t even know why that seems acceptable or easy to anyone, but it’s just words typed on a keyboard, so yeah, I guess it’s easy.

Do not fucking do that!  Don’t do it!  Whether you identify with everything I’ve said here or you have a completely different reason to be full of rage and fury, don’t do the furious threats thing!  Just don’t!  That, also, is easy!!!  And doing absolutely nothing is at least as effective as being violently angry at strangers on the internet, so it has that going for it as well.

There are a lot of feelings to be had here, and I’m sure not going to sum them all up or solve the problem of representation in fiction in one tumblr post, but maybe we can change this discussion a little.  Maybe we can redirect.

I started this post by saying that I’m not the world’s biggest Caleb fan.  I don’t mind him, but his story doesn’t particularly speak to me.  I don’t love the amount of space he takes up in the ongoing fandom discussion.  I particularly don’t love that every single time he comes up, the volume of discussion doubles because of people vociferously objecting to every single thing about him.

So I find the parts of the story that are for me.  I let the people who want to have Caleb discussions have their Caleb discussions, because they are enjoying a thing they like and I’m glad for him, and then I host a discussion about Beau or Fjord or Caduceus or whoever, because I WANT TO HAVE FUN TOO.  I am watching this show because it is full to the brim with things I like and have thoughts about.  There is SO MUCH OF THAT TO GO AROUND.

[buddha-in-disguise]

I've been around fandoms for several decades now. Both before the internet, through the earliest days of internet fandom, to the present day.

I can genuinely say, the way Supergirl treats its fans, especially the LGBTQ or BIPOC fans as a whole, has been the worst by some margin. Particularly in regards Supercorp in terms of queerbaiting.

Whether those involved in the production of Supergirl want to admit it or not, Supergirl as it stands has been queerbaiting a large portion of the audience. Without a doubt, in terms of a ship, the largest core group of fans there is for Supercorp, and by some margin.

Have there been some fans who have taken things too far? Absolutely. And every good SC fan I know recognise and understand this, and constantly say this.

Yet somehow, an entire fandom gets tarred with the same brush continually.

But worse still, when anyone tries to address the queerbaiting that has gone on with someone who works on the show, other than the women in general, Jon Cryer (who could teach those BTS of SG a lot on how to engage with fans on SM, and not piss off swathes of fans), and Jesse, there are few instances I can think of where it then hasn't resulted in SC fans getting dumped on, or called delusional, or basically saying it isn't there.

Here's the thing.

As LGBTQ fans, the majority of us - especially the older ones like myself - know exactly what queerbaiting is. How do you think it even became recognised as a problem?

Because we called media out on it. The LGBTQ audiences defined it, via our experiences. So we know exactly what queerbaiting is thank you. We don't need to be told it isn't there or isn't something going on - because we are the ones who wrote up the damn definition!

In all my years of fandoms, never have I seen queerbaiting on the scale Supergirl use. Season 5 - especially 5a - brought the queerbaiting to a whole new level.

So many of us now dread S6, because S5 was so bad in a multitude of ways for the LGBTQ audience, including but not exclusively Supercorp queerbaiting.

And I don't speak for all SC fans, but I do see a lot like me are caught in a conundrum. We all love the majority of the cast. Particularly the women. Sure we all have favourites, but also as a whole, the female cast is loved and respected.

Here's my dilemma. I want to support the female cast. Hell I was a Chyler, Katie and Azie fan long before Supergirl, and have grown to love Melissa, Andrea and Nicole particularly. Nicole as a transgender women especially holds a place dear to us. I will support them all beyond Supergirl.

As S6 will begin filming, I want nothing more than to show them I love, support and care for them. But then I'm at the point where I want to just tell the show to go jump, because they've sucked all the enjoyment I had out of it for me. When you actually dread what the next week might bring, that is not what any show should be about. Yet here I find myself dreading what the show might bring.

I also am questioning do The CW even care about Supergirl any more, especially as they finally got Superman, which they've coveted for years, and made no secret of it.

They seem to forget that Supergirl and Superman have two pretty distinct fans. I like Superman, but I love Supergirl. I'm also just a little bit done with all the iterations of Superman we've had on screen.

Supergirl has always struggled on the social media side of fan engagement as well. Not once have I seen a showrunner actively engage with the audience. Or at least, if they have it was a long time ago. The current showrunners definitely haven't. Hell, one doesn't even have a SM account.

But even if a showrunner or others involved in the show don't engage, when others do, it becomes a nightmare. The last 6 or 7 hours are a case in point.

Again, yes some fans take it too far where Supercorp is involved. Yet, once again, rather than just stepping away, a writer got embroiled into something that didn't need to happen, because they gave out conflicting tweets on replies to fans over Supercorp, and then began blocking fans who were polite and respectful and did absolutely nothing to warrant a block.

Then they also liked a post that called SC fans dicks.

Yet somehow again, we are all the bad guys.

I've no doubt that they felt overwhelmed on how the reactions went. I truly do. But I really don't understand why anyone doesn't just step back. Put out a polite post saying it's all getting a bit too much, and they need to disengage. I think each and every decent fan would understand and respect that. I know I would.

But here's the thing.

Ultimately the writer shouldn't be in that position of trying to answer fans on it all. Nor should they dismiss fans who say it is queerbaiting, if they're not LGBTQ themselves.

The problem is Supergirl social media is so lacking, it places a higher burden on writers and others instead. That is on the show. Entirely.

I also have to question just how diverse is the writers room? Having a number of women, if they are White and cis, when you have a cast of characters who are LGBTQ and/or Black or POC, is not having a good diverse writers room. And it shows.

If you say there is no queerbaiting, but not LGBTQ, you need to stop trying to redefine what is accepted queerbaiting.

If someone says it is a gay agenda, you need to stop with that, because that is homophobic. End of. That's no different that being racist if you write it is a Black agenda.

Supergirl put themselves in this position.

I've had family watch Supergirl with no preconceptions on characters suddenly say: I see something between Kara and Lena. Are they together? And being astounded when not only do they realise they're not together, that they actually have 4 seasons of this and counting.

This has come from straight family. Or my very gay, very into men brother in law.

If others see it who aren't involved as Supercorp fans, who might even be straight - that is queerbaiting.

But here's the thing. It shouldn't need us to say others see it too. If a large segment of audience see it, say it is there, pull out receipts to show why they are saying that time and again, that should be enough.

Yet it isn't.

As much as it pains me - I sense now The CW has Superman, they're going to let Supergirl go by end of S6. I'd be more surprised if they announce a 7th season than not.

Whatever decisions on the shows future they might be making, one thing is clear.

If they don't allow Supercorp to develop, and don't get rid of whatever homophobic block is going on for the show, Supergirl will be left with a legacy of being probably the worst example on queerbaiting your audience ever.

The 100 are still panned to this day over Clexa by LGBTQ fans.

Supergirl still have a chance, a choice to pull it around.

Sadly I doubt that will happen.

In the meantime, I'm stuck on wanting to stop watching the show, but wanting desperately to support the cast. That's the conundrum many of us now face.

The legacy Supergirl will leave is not going to be about empowering women if they don't change significantly for S6.

It will be how they queerbaited, how they dismissed the only full cast Black woman, worse still, who played an LGBTQ role. How they dismissed the LGBTQ as a whole.

Those are legacies that will not die away for LGBTQ fans. The CW in general has tainted itself with the LGBTQ audience in more than one show.

What a mess.

And it really wouldn't take much to avoid all of this. That's what is so disappointing. It is an easy fix.

Apologies for any typos/mistakes as I'm posting unedited.

[popculturebuffet]

Prince of Wishful Thinking (Tom Retrospective): Tough Love or The True Monster

Hello all you happy people and welcome back to Prince of Wishful Thinking, what is usually my look at the life and times of Tom Lucitor but since I NEED to cover the season 3 finale as vital part of Tom’s story, we’re taking one last look at the tragic tale of Meteora Butterfly before the finale sends these two stories hurtling together. You’d THINK this would be the last detour of this already sizeable arc.. and you’d be wrong as i’ll also be covering Kelly’s World, as I feel it’s vital for both “Curse of the Blood Moon” and “A Boy and his hard to remember title”, as it provides extra context for Marco’s anguish in the former.. and provides extra evidence for why a CERTAIN MOMENT in the latter pisses me off to no end.. seriously even when as universe dies and the only people left are Frankllin Richards and Galactus, there will still be a little note reading “Fuck how they treated Kelly” written in all caps so Galactus remembers to yell it. 

So sadly that DOES mean it’s been three entries in this retrospective in a row that either haven’t feature Tom at all or in the case of the last episode only had him in short cameos. I mean we did get his love affair for pie but we also got a creepy goblin man forcing his girlfriend and best friend to kiss each other, his best friend being WAY to eager to jump to that conclusion, and neither considering using Marco’s Scissors because the writers only remember he has those half the time in Season 3... and clearly I ddn’t either as I forgot to mention that plot hole, something @jess-the-vampire​ brought up to me. Sadly I DID forget to consult on this when we talked earlier this week , and she’s not online as I write this so I won’t have her insight for this one. 

But if you want some Tom content, i’m happy to share my crossover ship for the boy with you. I’ve been shipping him with Octavia from Helluva Boss lately.  Because of course it’s Helluva Boss, i’ve not been at all subtle with my obession with it and much like Letterkenny, X-Men and Dragon Ball Z Abriged it is a love I never plan to be subtle about. 

But I just think they compliment each other well: They have contrasting atittudes, and tastes in music, but seem like they’d share hobbies. Like taxidermy.. I could see Tom buying this... demonic combination of a badger, a skunk, a deer and my nightmares Octavia is preciously holding up.

Granted I also feel tom would both animate them with their dead souls.. and then use his new woodland friends of the dammned as a chorus to sing “Can You Picture That” from the Muppet Movie, because that’s what my mind does on a regular day. I think the contrasting attitude creates great chemstiry and it made me also realize I have a thing for ships with directly contrasting home lives.  Tom has two loving decent parents who deeply love one another and at worst simply didn’t reign in his worse behavior because it was standard for demon stuff. Octavia in contrast simply has two parents, one who DOES love her and tries his best, but his best includes calling his side piece “My big dicked blitzy” right in front of her and hiring said side piece to guard them, and her mother who clearly thinks so little of her daughter’s emotional well being she hired a cowboy to shoot her daddy dead in the middle of a large crowd. The point is I think they’d be adorable and they both badly need to be happy after being emotionally fucked over by people they care about. 

But  alas my new ship will have to wait as we marginally important things to get down too.. things that will impact both this season and the next’s endgame and utterly destroy Eclipsa and Moon’s relationship for good. Sound fun? Well if so join me under the cut won’t you?

We open in the Pidgeon Kingdom.. and things aren’t exactly great.. and by that I mean Meteora stomped a hole through it and ravaged the place and Rich demands blood.. and vengance.. and possibly blood vengance. But not Tekken Blood Vengance.. he already has like 5 copies of that on dvd. Still needs it on Blu Ray though, hook him up if you got it. 

So Moon and Eclipsa are trying to smooth this over/find out which way did she go George which way did she go, and are angrily dismissed after they try Rich’s patience, not helped by Eclipsa not being familiar with the Pidgeon Kingdom because they hadn’t slaughtered everyone who used to live there yet. Look that’s what happened, Star outright mentions in the Big Book of Spells that htey suddenly sprung up where another kingdom was and no one knows what happens. There was some bird murders up in that place.. or birdur if you will. Some birds drank some human blood. This is what Alfred Hitchock tried to warn us about with his film built on horrifying actress abuse. 

The point is with some more pidgeon-led murder stabbings on the cards our heroines are trying to find her since their attempts to convince Rich not to go on an Archer Style Rampage fell on deaf ears. 

But it’s clear from the second the two are alone both have diffrent priorties: Eclipsa desperatley wants to find the daughter she lost and talk her down from what sh’es become, help her become better and hopefuly heal from the pain she’s been in. She’s lost her husband, her kingdom and centuries. She can’t loose her baby girl too.

Moon on the other hand... clearly has no intrest in helping Meteora or stopping this peacefully. Her first thought is stopping Meteora. Her living through it is not necessary. It’s also clear her racisim isn’t REMOTELY gone depsite Buff Frog and Star’s best attempts and despite learning just how deeply and horribly Mewni’s engrained racism has hurt eclipsa and destoryed Moon’s own family history. To Moon this is just a big monster to fight.. i’ll dive into this more in a bit.

For now our heroines encounter an angry mob. This time their not here for Homer Simpson, but for Meteora as her rampages have destroyd their towns, livelehoods and given some weird guy a hat. It’s the best bit of the episode and i’m embarassed I forgot it happened. 

So with them being no help our queens back out but end up finding some actual help: Eddie! You know the guy from the episode I skipped over... River’s cousin or something like that. He dosen’t have a wiki entry, I do not know why. He’s voiced by Rhys Dharby of Flight of the Conchords Fame whose since made quite the career as a voice actor. No major roles yet that i’m aware of, but a lot of delightful minor ones like this. It’s good to see him he was one of the highlights of that show and not just because he sang this..

Eddie showed up in the Bog Beast of Boggabah and I honestly forgot he was in this episode.. but again, it’s Rhys Dharby. It’s not like suddenly finding out “Aw god dammit Pauly Shore is in this”. So Eddie agrees to help as he’s been tracknig Meteora.. and we find out something troubling: Meteora is getting BIGGER. Gradually, to the point the bog from said episode Is skipped over is drained because she DRANK IT. We also get a great exchange “I’d hate to see the size of her mother” “Actually her father more than helped with that”

Awwwww.... seriously Esme Blanco is a national treasure and has some great deliveries in this one.. and some heartbreaking ones. But before we can get to that it turns out Meteora sucked the powers out of Eddies family.. who he misses..e xcept one guy> That guy can fuck right off. Seriously Eddie is also a national treasure and I wish he’d shown up in season 4. I mean he couldn’t of HURT it. For one it’s Rhys Dharby and for another that season shot itself in the face, both feet, the groin and then the face again enough that I don’t think anything could hurt it as bad as the writers already did. 

But sadly we say farwell to Eddie as he goes out how men have since the begining of time.. deciding to poke a strange creature till it murdered him. Or took his soul out in this case, speaking of which...

Yeah while I couldn’t get Jess in time for this review, she did bring this up in the past: Meteora’s ablility to pull a 

Comes right the fuck out of nowhere with no build up and no explination for it. She DID drain personalites and according to this episode youth.. but that was with a big ole machine. It MIGHT have been intended to be one of Globgor’s powers.. but that makes zero sense, as if he COULD do that, as we saw with Toffee last season when he had that power, also out of nowhere but at least it made a touch more sense given his power was draining magical energy anyway at the time, so adding souls to that isn’t a huge stretch, but as we saw that would’ve been game over for the comission, especially since we DO see him fighting them one on three next season. If he had this power, he wouldn’t be in crystal and I think they realized that, but just tried to act as if his daugther COULDN’T do that and assumed everyone would casually forget. And I get not accounting for me writing about this years later, even I wouldn’t of thought that, but not counting on fans both young and old to latch onto a continuity error? Have you met fandoms Disney, have you? It dosen’t bring the story down entirely and I get WHY ti’s there, so she can nonlethally kill people so we’re not down most of the cast for Season 4, but it feels like an easy win button and one she barely uses despite it being eye beam activated. It should be easy enough to pull, boom, soul suck, win, rinse and repeat. It’s okay to have uber powerful tequniques but they have to have a drawback. For instance the Kaioken from DBZ. It’s a really damn cool technique that gives the user a neat red aura and amplifies poewr.. but the more you amplify the more strain it puts on your body and the more likely you’ll die, and Super later creatively explained why it hadn’t been used since Super Sayian was introduced because said form would’ve sped it up so much it’d be too much for a body to take. Here whie Meteora dosen’t use it in EVERY fight, she uses it enough that it makes no sense this isn’t just her first move for every fight she gets into, mental breakdown or not. 

That being said Meteora’s current mental state as she talks to her mother, having regressed to talking in only a few words and acting like a child, makes perfect sense. Henious already wasn’t in great mental shape to begin with, having a slow sustained breakdown since Marco overthrew her. and now on top of this she remembers her whole life has been a lie, starts to mutate into her natural state at a rapid and likely unehalthy pace, and then finds out on top of all of this Mewni is rightfully owed to her. Given she ended last episode blowing a guy up for rejecting her, it’s not a stretch that given even more power and no time to process anything, Metora would deteroate further. 

Esme and Jessica really knock this scene out of the park as Eclipsa presents Metora with her old doll Bobo and gently trying ot talk to her.. but you also get the fear Eclipsa feels as she tries to awkardly manuver around the fact her daughter is far more unhinged than she was prepared for, even threanting Eclipsa simply because Eclipsa wanted to be called mother instead of mommy. But despite this fear.. Eclipsa wants to help and Walter beautifuly captured metoera as a hulk like tragic figure:a being with low sanity and too much power desperate to be loved by the one person it cares about. And it makes it even more heartbreaking as Eclipsa explains what happened: bad people trapped her , a disfunctoinal society with a racist queen and even more racist subjects has taken hold in her absence... and it’s clear both want opposite things: Meteora wants what sh’es owed, her family back on the throne and Mewni back in her graps, but has lost herself so much to rage, anger and insanity she can’t see it’s not hers to take, while Eclipsa.. just wants her daughter back. She’d be happy just settling down with her and having a LIFE after hers was taken away. Eclipsa just wants a chance to be with what family she has left. It just HURTS to know that despite RIGHTFULLY hating the comission, despite having eveyr reason to take the crown from Moon by force and make the world better by force.. she dosen’t want that. She just wants some peace. It’s selfish... but it’s hard not to be when you havealmost nothing to hold onto. Eclipsa has lost her legacy, her husband and her crown... Meteora is all she has and all she wants and sh’ed of been happy if she just accepted that. If that was enough. 

But the real telling part, and the thing that ultimately makes this go as bad as it does.. is Moon’s reactions to all of this. Sh’es CONFUSED by Meteora having a toy as if that’s foreign to her a monster would, and she’s cleaerly livid , if restrianing it, at both Meteora’s deire for the crown and Eclipsa RIGHTFULLY calling out the state of how things are, and mildly at that. Despite seeing how much damage Mewni’s inherent racisim has done, how it lead to her living a lie, ruined Eclipss, Globgore and Metora’s lives, despite how DESPERTLY her daughter struggles to fight against it, despite seeing firsthand that Monsters can have famiies and lives... she can’t let it go. She can’t see monsters as people. SHe dosen’t see a flawed person who was turned into a metpohrical monster by years of brainwashing and abuse and is slowly unravling under the weight of her true self.. she just sees a threat to her kingdom. She dosen’t see her kingdom as racist, just as it should be. And she dosen’t see herself as stepping down like hse damn well should’ve the MOMENT she found out everything. Because at her heart Moon can’t accept the truth and clings to her racisim. 

And that my friends.. is what ultimately leads to Tragedy. Not Meteora’s unraveling mental state, not Eclipsa’s naitvite. What happens next is ENITRELY Moon’s fault. Whle Eclipsa was failing to get through to Metora, she was trying her best and might of gotten somewhere.. but Moon was already settling to attack.. and does so, making it look like Eclipsa set her own child up. 

A fight ensues, a suprisingly even one... but Eclipsa breaks it up and PROVES her way could’ve worked. In one of Esme’s best performances sshe tearfully tells her daughter she loves her.. that ALL she wants is time with her to make up for what she’s lost.. she dosen’t need a kingdom or her crown or her wand, all things she DESERVES... she just wants her daughter. She just wants to help her baby girl before she goes so far down this path of hatred and vengance she’s alreayd well trod upon there is no point to return to. 

It gets through to Meteora, makes her stop... and Moon TAKES ADANTAGE OF THAT. She then restrains metoera with a magical rock barrier and starts palpatineing her to death. It’s a horrifying moment that ultimately shows who Moon really is.. that when given the chance to let Meteora go, let her CHANGE and grow as a person and help the kingdom.. she instead tries to kill her. When she’s no longer a threat,  hasn’t seriously hurt her in their fight, and could use her power to RESTORE the damage she’s done, fix what she’s broken and help the kingdom grow and mend the bridges racisim has torn down. But all she can see is a monster, and something to destroy.. not someONE to save. 

So Eclipsa does what Moon would do if it were star about to die and saves her daughter, desperatly trying to stop mooon.. and allowing Meteora to get a clear shot and take half of moon’s soul. While Eclipsa is able to stop her from taking the full thing, Moon is left disoreinted and half alive and leaves on insticnt to parts unknown while Meteora escapes. Eclipsa is left alone, devistated and with her daughter truly lost. And the worst is truly yet to come. 

Before we get into final thoughts i’d like to talk about how this scene impacts Moon’s betryal later. To me having rewatched this scene.. it only makes it work MORE making it clear Moon simply can’t fahtom racial equality and that she can’t fahtom that eclipsa had very good reason for doing what she did ... to me it comes off as her using Eclipsa betryaing her as a very flimsy justifcation to not validate her rule and to first retire and then try a coup. That “Well she “BETRAYED” me so i’m fine. “ But in truth... she betrayed Eclipsa first. She attacked her daughter TWICE when Eclipsa was close to getting through to her Her reasons are flimsy.. because i’ts not ABOUT eclipsa, but what eclipsa represents: equality with a race Moon dosen’t see as people. It’s about Moon’s racisim coloring everything tills h’es truly blinded and should have lost everything She didn’t because the ending is a fucking disgrace, but we might get to that at some point, the point here is for all that disgrace’s faults... it did get it right here, and Moon was always portrayed as being unable to let go of her racisim no matter what it cost her or how much her daughter despteratly tried to change her. Trust me as someone whose Dad used to argue that gay marriage meant he should be able to marry his cat, and who still argues against trans people using the bathroom of their choice, I get trying desperatley to change someone who don’t wanna. “Sigh”. 

Final Thoughts: This episode is truly excellent. The writing is top notch as is the voice acting for all involved and the climax isa true, well led up to tragedy. The animation is also on point, with the characters emotions on perfect display. This is an episode I now realize is one of the series best and worth ar ewatch if you haven’ts een it. Truly amazing stuff that gets me pumped for the finale.. and disapoints me in how the series could reach these highs for one finale.. but would sink to it’s lowest point for next seasons.  Next Time on Prince of Wishful Thinking: Star tries depseratly to find her mom, while Marco, Tom and a motely crew of misfits try to take down Meteora and Tom learns the awful truth from the photo booth and wears a zuko ponytail which weirdly looks good on him. That boy can rock anything let me tell you. 

If you enjoyed this reviews, please consider joining my patreon at patreon.com/popculturebuffet. As mentioned my 30 dollar stretch goal includes a review of the cluster fuck that is the series final arc, and the goals up to that , me making 20 and 25 dollars a month repectively, have their own nifty rewards: At 20 i’ll review Darkwing Duck once a month, the two remaning Ducktales 87 mini series I have not covered and the Danny Phantom film The Ultimate Enemy. 25 meanwhile gets you reviews of the Proud Family Movie, the theatrical recess movie and the Kim Possible almost finale movie so the drama. And 30 also gets you reviews of every episode of gravity falls season 1 at least one a month till I finish it at some point, so as you can see you get a lot of bang for your buck and these reviews will be public for everybody. Not only that but joining my patreon gets you a review a month if you pitch in 5 dollars and evne if you can’t swing THAT much just 2 bucks gets you access to my discord, a guarnateed pick in my shorts, votes for patreon exclusive reviews, and SAID patreon exclusive reviews. It’s a lot of bang for your buck is what i’m saying so please help me out so I can make a living off this and sign up today. I even JUST ADDED an exclusive and utterly insane scrooge mcduck review, The Great Wig Mystery. So throw in a buck to check that out. 

And if your intrested in Tomtavia... please hit me up. I’m really proud of it and until then... i’ll see you at the next rainbow. 

[luidilovins]

You should turn your post on the Uncanny Valley into a book or something. I am not even kidding, it's brilliant and sorely needed information. Thank you for it.

Tbh its just speculative that the uncanny valley is an inherent biological trait and not cultural or a learned behavior at the moment. A good example would be the cultural phenomenon of colorophobia where in the US we have a longer history of using clowns in our horror pop culture genres than countries like Japan.

Clown entertainment has been around since the Egytian times and maybe some people have always been freaked out by them it honestly just takes one director or author to have an disproportionately irrational fear and good cinematography skills to convince people that they SHOULD hate clowns just as much, (I could say the same about the movie Jaws but thats a bit of a tangent,) or a memorable event that damages the public's trust in something that SHOULD be innocent or harmless. (A good examples being the John Wayne Gacy trials.)

Clowns are also thought to be in the uncanney valley so ita a fairly good argument on cultural phenomenon versus genetic traits. Up until aroud the 60s-70s clowns were actually fairly well liked by the US general public and a lot of older generation still find a fondness in it that would scare the living shit out of their grandchildren.

As far as evidence that I may be right about the "uncanney valley might be because of rabies" theory, there has been a small case study suggesting that the movements of a non-human robot that trigger the effect in us, is also present in people with parkinsons but the sample size is too small for me to be thoroughly convinced.

And don't be mistaken I also dislike this concept because saying that ableism is an inherent human trait is just as bad as saying racism is an inherent human trait. There is little to gain from distrust in the disabled and little historical evidence to suggest it was common or beneficial to discard disabled people. Disabled people's remains have been found time and time again to live to incredibly long livea and be cared for, and participate in their communities. I'm highly critical of this particular case study and I take it with a grain of salt because its on cosmo, but evidence of human disabilities and compassion can be sourced by actual bones and it's been placed on VERY credible sources. NPR, NBC, Discovery, Nat Geo, NY Times, literally the clostest you can get to creme of the crop news articles on DOZENS of accounts and if you have a goddam problem then pay for a tour to the Smithsonian, find an archeologist and coherse them into showing you the bones and then explain phorensics to you because you probably wouldn't understand unless you too were a phorensic archeologist yourself.

What I DO BELIEVE tho is that if the uncanny valley is a legitimate inherent trait, that like most evolutionary traits, it made it this far for this long because it somehow served us benificially. And the biggest benifit I can think of is identifying neuro-infectious diseases because they can spread agressivley, many of them lead to death or lasting effects and are fucking MISERABLE to catch. We're talking brain swelling, fevers, uncontrollable vomiting, tremors, hallucinations, motor and vocal tics, difficulty swallowing, seizures. This could all happen because they eat infected deer meat or because of one bad fox bite. It's miserable if you survive and horrifying if you dont. Rabies can survive in your muscle tissue for years before infecting your brain and once it does usually you only live for about 5-10 days in and out of concious knowledge that you're going to die painfully, and disease aggrivated psychosis. It would be hard to pinpoint the causation because the amout of time before full blown infection would vary too much to assosiate for a long time. So your only option is to hone in on telltale signs.

The disabled people who would suffer from herdeditary or developmental neurological disorders run the risk of prejudice from mistaken identity, but if a human is part of a community, and doesn't die within a week from having a wobbly head, it would sooner or later become apparent that they're not dangerous. I think nowadays culturally people don't press to learn more about disabled people due to social and political prejudice and never fucking grow up past that. Mistaken identity or not. You learn about people from the patterns of their behaviors so even ones that seem abnormal to you become a normal recognizable pattern for them. Fancy that.

We don't get grossed out by chimps or gorillas, who are even more distant cousins, and the proof that we don't have a search and destroy button for anything immediatly related to us is a bunch of bullshit can be found in almost every human's blood on earth. And not just neanderthals, but denisovans as well. And that's not even accounting for genetic backtracking the crossbreeding of other sapiens species before we were whittled down to just the three. What makes the tweet even stupider is that when neandertals still roamed the earth humans were shorter, hardier, and overall more rough looking so we looked even indistinguished then. We Also Chewed On Bones and neandertals handled cold climates better than us based on a study on chest cavity density and, skull nasal intake and heat circulation, providing genetic diversity and the upper hand in survival in the tundras or mountainous regions spanning over Eurasia. If it wasn't for humans fucking neandertals we might not have been able to spread over the contient or diversify the way we did.

So my full hypothesis is that if the uncanny valley is a genetic inherent human trait it was used to benifit people from catching agressive diseases in a time where the benifit of fearing a group member with rabies outweighed the cost of fearing a group member with a disability like parkinsons.

WHAT PISSED ME OFF was the idea that we are DESIGNED to be unwary of our evolutionary cousins could easily be used for white supremacist spaces to justify racism BECAUSE IT ALREADY HAS

So that one tweet that might seem like a quirky thinkpiece in my eyes is just fuel for eugenics trend round whatever number we're on. It's like we don't fucking learn. It would be REALLY easy to retool the concept that it's natural for people to be fearful of whatever the bullshit definition of sub-humans are. Claiming that black people were sub-human thus deserving of mistrust and submission to white ownership worked like a fucking charm.

Maybe if I go to college and major in psyche/socio/civics it'll be my college thesis. Right now I'm more of a hobbyist than anything, but what I DO know is that anyone can make an untested hypothesis to combat another untested hypothesis and it should hold just as much goddamn value. I combatted the idea that the idea that human othering was funneled into an unconfirmed effect that causes disgust and terror based on non-human sapiens is in fact racist and gave what is in my opinion a more evoluntionary practical approach to the uncanney valley.

The generalized links that I used APARENTLY weren't good enough for some people but aparently a single tweet that says "hur dur heedle dee uncanney valley exists because of human cousins" was taken at face value even tho it was probably tapped out in five seconds without regards to the reproccussions. I find a huge discomfort that less than studious links about the evolution of monkey social behaviors that I used as a guideline to explaining my concerns became the focal point for people to nitpick without even having the gall to "well actually" on the subject. That absolute ravaging NEED to rip apart at it and devolve into name calling because I MENTIONED racism is fucking suspicious and I don't trust it. I had to stop looking at the responses because some people were only reblogging and arguing with barely half of my argument and i was getting nowhere fast.

There were a few people that made actual points with cited sources that made their own rebuttle arguments. That I respect. It's just as valid an argument as mine and I'm ALWAYS willing to take on more credible sources to strengthen my stance or gain perspective.

But it's the utter dismissal of a concerning concept that just seeped into the subtext that gnawed at my gut. Some people on top of hating the linked sources I provided, admitted they didn't read it, refused to read between the lines to purposfully misinterpret or derail my main points, and detract that my claim that the tweet was a result of systemic white supremacy saturated into modern science was a bunch of bullshit because I claimed that 1500s anglos invented racism.

The thing is we did invent the racism that we fucking currently subscribe to.

We practice the science that we formulated based on our own social prejudice. Real people die from this.

We remain uncritical of our own theorums that we postulate then pat ourselves on the back like we're philosophical geniuses even though racism is a family heirloom with a new paint job.

We preach the eugenics ideals that we pulled out of our asses to benifit from fearmongering, promises of national security and unpaied labor.

White supremacists create subtext with the intention of it being consumed by accident or in ways that seem palatable.

Fuck.

That.

I don't hate the person who wrote the tweet. Chances are that they gave the tweet as much thought as they took the time to write it and went on their day as a fun little thinkpiece. Everyone on the internet does it. But its that kind of thinking error that needs to be adressed as a progression of historic and scientific prejudice that gets rehashed, recycled and untouched and continually damages and is weaponized against marginalized people. I am not wrong for taking it seriously especially when a bunch of people were sitting around nodding their heads just as effortlessly.

I don't owe the internet any more sources than the tweet. I don't owe anyone on the internet a full scientific ananysis. And the people's reaction to what I had to say was actually what further convinced me I might have hit the nail on the head.

[whumpster-fire]

Athanasia Part 3: Trust Born of Desperation

Tansy’s story continues! More “comfort” except really it’s just field medicine whump because she’s still pretty terrified of John.

Tansy’s refsheet

Part 1

Part 2

CONTENT WARNINGS: Animal Whump, monster whump, mention of past animal cruelty, infected wounds, amputation mention, marginally competent caretaker, painful caretaking, potty emergency

Jonathan Markeley stared at the strange animal in disbelief. When he’d first found her, he half expected the little creature to speak to him. It wouldn’t be much stranger than anything else. He’d thought better, and dismissed it as fantasy… but there was no question she could understand him, at least more than an animal should have been able to. He watched the way she flinched at the word ‘cut,’ her ears flattening.

“Damn this night,” he muttered.

Her foreleg was near ruined, broken so badly the bones came out the skin and then left to rot until the wound was a mess of pus and scabs and dead skin and flesh. It should have just closed on its own, if the creature had the same power to heal from nearly any wound that he did, but in the state she was in he had a hunch she was so starved and weak that she couldn’t. And she’d bitten down on the limb like she was trying to chew through it, like she knew what he was suggesting.

He supposed he could try it right now, just the little hatchet he used to cut firewood and the old floorboards. Perhaps it was better to – he knew a wound that festered like that could go bad fast. He’d lost friends, comrades, like that. Just a small wound, but just a day later a man’s whole arm could be weeping foul pus, and another day and he’d be dead. Nothing a surgeon could do but cut it off. A hatchet was crude, but the mess she’d make of her leg trying to chew through it would be no better than the mess it was now.

He also knew that it was a terrible idea. Whether or not she was trying to get him to cut it off now, it would end with blood everywhere, and a panicked animal trapped in a small room and screaming fit to wake the dead. He still had his ears peeled in case the innkeeper’s son was on his way up after the noise she’d just made. If she was discovered, that wasn’t good news for either of them.

Better to take her out into the fields to do it. That way the poor thing would have somewhere to run. But the thought of releasing her half-starved to death and with only two good legs was heartbreaking. What would she do in that state besides starve? Now that he saw how bad the wounds were he had half a mind to bring the hatchet down on her neck instead. But he had a feeling that wouldn’t work. Not if she was like him. Not that he knew for certain that losing his head wouldn’t kill him. Probably not, but he didn’t plan to try it. And he was worried he’d end up finding out if he was caught with whatever she was. They’d put her in that cage on an executioner’s gibbet for a reason. Probably not a good one, but likely one they’d punish him over.

The sentence wouldn’t be death at first, most likely. Lashes, branding, or mutilation. But if they didn’t run him out of town before the marks healed, if they found out… witchcraft would be the first word on every tongue.

But he had to try something. He couldn’t just leave her to drown in the mud. And he’d already taken the risk by bringing her in here. He figured he’d clean and dress the wound as best he could for the night and pray that it improved or at least didn’t get worse. But he knew it wasn’t going to be easy, or pleasant, for either of them.

~~

The creature tries not to bite. She tries so, so hard, but he is pinning her down and grabbing her and wrapping a cord tight around her muzzle She thought he wouldn’t hurt her… she thought he wouldn’t hurt her! But he has to. She knows he is trying to help her, but knowing does not make the fear go away. She growls and hisses, and snaps at him, but she closes her eyes and holds still for just that terrifying moment before it is too late and she cannot bite him anymore.

He takes the tools, one by one, and holds them over the fire. She remembers the agony of being pinched and torn and cut by hot metal, and struggles and writhes in his grip, but he is too strong, and he has to bind her good legs to her body.

It hurts. It hurts so much. He is touching the wound, and digging in it with metal tools and cloths soaked in boiling water. Small pinchers pull out maggots and bits of dead skin and flesh. Shears snip away skin and fur and little bits of the jagged edges of the bones, and the hooks and blades poke and prod and scrape. She clenches her jaw so hard her teeth are nearly broken further, and writhes and thrashes around.

“Sshh… ssh… you’ve got to hold still. Hold still or it’ll hurt more.” His voice is tense with concentration. But she cannot hold still. It hurts too much… it hurts too much…

But finally it is over. He holds her leg straight and wraps it up tightly in cloth and straight bits of wood and metal. Fresh blood wets the cloth, but he wraps more over it, and the red spot stops growing eventually. It feels a little better. It has the sharp, stinging pain of a fresh wound, but the pressure on it helps some. He wraps her broken back leg like this too, after washing her again. It still cannot bear her weight, but it does not hurt quite as much anymore.

He cuts away the cords binding her legs and jaws. But she does not bite or try to run. Her weak struggles, and just the fear itself, and the cold because she is still soaking wet and it is only really warm close to the fire, have left her so tired she cannot move. If not for the constant crashes of thunder outside, she is not sure she could even stay awake. She drinks a bit more water when it is offered, but she barely thinks about it.

But he takes more dry rags, and rubs them back and forth over her fur, soaking up the worst of the water and fluffing it up. She is still damp, still shaking, but he pulls the thin blanket off one of the beds and wraps her up in it, and pulls her into his lap. He feeds more wood to the fire and sits with her next to it. The wind outside keeps howling in the chimney and stirring it and sending sparks through the room. She flinches every time, and eventually he gives up and moves her to the other bed.

The creature almost falls asleep in his arms. The pain and the noise of the wind and the storm, and the feeling that this is still dangerous to be this close to a human, slowly fade away. She is so tired… so tired… but she is roused almost too late by the nearly painful discomfort of her bladder. She does not notice the feeling at first, because it has been such a long time since it mattered. Even in the old cage there was no choice besides trying to only wet the bedding in the corner farthest from where she had to sleep, if she wasn’t hurt too badly to get up when they threw her back inside. The new cage was so small there was no choice at all. She was glad the floor was only bare wire even though it cut and scraped her paws. And they gave her so little water that she did not have to go very often.

When she does notice, it is sudden, and it almost hurts. She kicks and claws frantically at the blanket, afraid she will not even be able to get it off of her in time, and as soon as she is out of it she scrambles to the edge of the bed and crashes painfully to the floor. She has always had the instinct to only relieve herself far from the nest or burrow so predators cannot follow her scent as easily, and never, ever inside. And an ancient memory, almost forgotten, surfaces as well. This is a house, or something like a house, and she remembers that the entire inside is like a bigger nest. She limps aimlessly around the room, starting to panic. There is no way out. The door is closed and the man with the whip is somewhere on the other side, and the window is barred with wooden shutters and anyway she cannot jump that high with her leg hurt like this. They will know she is here and they will find her and do something worse like locking her in another cage and throwing it in a pond so its weight drags her down, but she cannot wait any longer!

She is about to give up and hope that a wet spot will not be discovered under the bed, when a hand stops her from going under and pulls her back. “No. No, not there, not there. Can’t believe I didn’t think of this… damn it...” The man drags something else out from underneath, a small metal basin, and holds her over it.

“Well, it’s good to know you’re housebroken, at least,” he mutters after he sets her back on the bed. “If you have to go again, wake me up. Don’t try to use it by yourself, it’ll tip over.”

She blinks slowly at him. The words are little better than noise. Her eyelids are so heavy it takes all of her strength to keep them open. She drags herself to the far end of the bed and collapses, too tired to even turn the bedding into a makeshift nest. Her fur is still damp, but she makes only a halfhearted attempt to groom one paw before she curls up and buries her face in the blankets.

It is still cold in the room. She is not shaking as badly, but she still occasionally shivers, and curls up into as tight a ball as she can. But something soft and heavy is laid over her, with just her head poking out. Slowly, the shivering stops, and sleep finally takes her.

~~

Jonathan was exhausted after the day’s journey. The storm had made travel miserable, and he’d gotten into town much later than he’d hoped. He didn’t sleep in a real bed often, and usually when he did his head barely had time to hit the pillow. But tonight he tossed and turned for a while. He was afraid his movements would wake the creature curled up at the foot of the bed, and when they didn’t he had to check twice to make sure she was still breathing before his mind let him sleep.

He still wasn’t sure what she was. He’d thought the strange creature was a cat at first, when he saw her lying there in the mud by the side of the road. But when he got closer, it was clear even in her bedraggled state that she wasn’t quite like anything he’d ever seen or heard of. He’d known from the instant he saw those eyes up close, from the instant his lantern went out and he saw that they weren’t just reflecting the light but glowing, that she wasn’t anything normal. Even then he’d thought she might have been some sort of marten or something, just… different, in the same way he was different from other people. But now that he’d gotten her cleaned up, he was sure that if she even had a kind it was nothing he’d ever seen nor heard of.

She had the long, slender body of a marten or a polecat, but she was a bit bigger – at least, as far as he could remember since it was a long time since he’d seen a marten. Probably about as long in body as a cat, but skinnier. Much skinnier right now, and she felt as light as a feather. With her fur soaked and plastered to her body with mud it was heartbreaking how the skin clung to her bones, but now that she’d been bathed and dried it was harder to tell. Her paws seemed a bit like a cat’s, but with all five toes, and longer and more spread out, and the forepaws seemed almost like they could grasp things. The claws were mostly blunted or broken, but the intact ones were hooked, and sharp as needles.

She didn’t have the tail of a polecat or even a marten, though. It was longer than her body, long enough that she could wrap it around herself like a scarf, and covered in bushy, fluffy fur with a pattern of ash-white and charcoal gray rings along its length. This pattern continued onto her body, where it became a series of dark stripes than ran approximately crosswise like a tabby cat’s, but branched and merged and broke up irregularly. At her belly they faded to speckles of gray just a bit darker than the rest of the fur, but they continued into a pattern of irregular banding on her legs.

He’d never seen an animal with a head quite the shape of hers. The snout wasn’t the broad triangular shape of a polecat or stoat; it was more slender, a little like a fox’s. The skull seemed unusually wide even with the fur slicked down, and more so now that the long, fluffy fur on the sides of her head had dried out, but long whiskers extended just as wide. Her ears were an unusual teardrop shape that was at its widest an couple inches out from her head, and tapered to a narrow, but still rounded tip. They seemed too big for her head, and twitched and swiveled when they weren’t flattened against her skull in fear.

And then there were the eyes. They weren’t the beady eyes of a stoat or polecat: they too seemed enormous even with her fur no longer slicked down. They had the same slit pupils as a cat or a fox, and were the same unfortunately-striking yellow as his own – not amber brown, but a color like the eyes of an owl or a hawk – and the iris took up the whole eye, with the white only barely showing when they moved.

There was a piercing intelligence in those eyes. He’d only caught glimpses of it, because most of the time the poor thing was on the edge of passing out, but in those moments that it was clear she understood him, her eyes were so inhuman and yet more human than any animal he’d ever seen. The way she’d cried was so human.

And they’d locked her up. They’d starved her and left her rotting alive, and by the looks of it tortured her.

It was enough to make Jonathan wish he had any of the powers he’d been accused of possessing in the past. Anything more than the power to merely stay alive.

A/N: Jonathan didn’t totally think the whole hiding a wild animal in his hotel room all night thing through. Or the attempting field medicine on a wild animal in a hotel room thing through. He’s lucky Tansy’s as well-behaved as she is.

[gcldnhr]

hi, ducks!! my name is rebecca, and this little disaster is bea(trice rayne), your favorite nepotism baby! 

( CARLSON YOUNG, 26, CISFEMALE, SHE/HER ) * hey, i’m looking for the office of BEATRICE RAYNE. she’s the EMPLOYEE who’s known around the office as THE WILD CHILD, if that helps ? not to be a gossip, but i’ve heard that they’re OPTIMISTIC but DISMISSIVE, is that true ? i also heard that they’re the one who GOT BLACKOUT DRUNK AT THE OFFICE CHRISTMAS PARTY. anyways, here’s the coffee that they ordered. ( REBECCA, 24, SHE/THEY, EST )

born aug22 1995, to the prestigious heads of the rayne family, of rayne industries, beatrice is the youngest child, the only daughter, and by all accounts it should make her the apple of her daddy’s eye.

it doesn’t.

bea’s family has always had low expectations for her: look pretty, stay out of trouble, because sebastian is going to get the family business anyway. bea has always been expected to be a nice trophy wife, and nothing else.

growing up, bea never really wanted for anything: nice clothes, a lovely home in the upper east side, she was able to go to excellent schools (where she did exceptionally well, not that anyone would ever believe her) and she had people surrounding her that always kept her...entertained, at least. she was never really bored.

she was always a bit of a troublemaker, in an effort to be heard, because her brother’s shadow was a stifling place to live in. early on, bea’s parents sent her to therapy for behavioral issues, and therapy since has just been something that stuck for her, dealing with quiet parents and a brother who “thinks she just needs to get the fuck over herself and do what she’s supposed to”.

bea started partying relatively early on, and because she only got into marginal amounts of trouble for it, kept on. everyone expected little from her anyway, why bother trying to prove them wrong? if people wanted an airhead, a simple girl that just looked pretty and did whatever she wanted, well. why not?

it was very easy to believe people when they said something about you enough times.

even graduating suma cum laude at brown university, double majoring in marketing and finance, was either met with disinterest or disdain- bea cannot remember how many times she heard people say that she slept her way to that honor.

her position at masters was offered by rolfe himself, the raynes and the masters having been long-time family friends, and rolfe doing bea’s father a favor to keep her out of trouble and out of her father’s hair. 

it’s kind of working. sort of. bea still parties a lot, but as long as her work doesn’t suffer, it doesn’t matter. as long as she doesn’t die, or end up in rehab, nobody is going to be too dissapointed in her.

[florenceandthemachine]

MORE BROKEN TUMBLR ASKS I AM SORRY ANYWAY. holy fuck this got long and severely out of hand. also apologies to @casscent because apparently Tumblr responded to this ask this morning with the answer “a”. so that’s cool. 

@casscent​ asked:

heyyyy hope you're doing great!  Ok how about Eddie meeting Buck in south america, bartending, instead of LAFD? I've been having that idea but too lazy to write. Thanks, xoxo.

“Welcome to Padrino, how can I satisfy you tonight?”

“Oh God, is that seriously how you greet your customers?”

It probably said a lot about Buck that a sarcastic response through him that much, but hey, being one of the few English speakers in one of the best bars in Equador had its perks. It was huge, it was clean, it was easy to find, and the immediate distance to the U.S. Army base in Manta meant that there was never a short supply of American citizens, going to or from deployment, who only spoke (you guessed it) English.

Even now, he had to admit, it was surprising getting a response that wasn’t a clear dismissal (or a drink order, acting like Buck hadn’t said anything at all), but Buck had always been good at rolling with the punches. 

“Trust me, looking at you? I could have said a lot worse.”

Business had been pretty slow, as it usually was in the mid-week, but even if the place had been bursting at the seams he would have taken the time to look his newest customer up and down. He was beautiful, that was no doubt—tan and tall, lean, with dark hair that lined his jaw and dark eyes that could probably melt steel if their owner should so desire to try.

The bar may not have been swamped, but it wasn’t empty, either—after taking Tall, Dark, and Handsome’s order (“Edmundo”, he had clarified, when Buck had to ask for a name for the tab) he bounced around the bar, but inevitably found himself back in Edmundo’s gravitational pull.

That in itself was curious; Buck had seen a lot of people at the bar, spoken to most of them, and flirted with most of them, but he hadn’t seen someone quite as captivating—while remaining as relatively silent—as Edmundo before. Most of the time, the men and women who were only a refuel and rest stop between Over There and home were another blend of insanity all together; they were rowdy, and loud, celebratory for all the right reasons, even the ones who came in alone.

Edmundo, though… well, he almost looked like he was being sent from one war zone to another.

“So, Edmundo—“

“Eddie. Call me Eddie.”

He grinned. “Well, Eddie, you can call me Buck,” he started, tapping at his badge. “And before you so rudely interrupted me, Eddie—“

Another snort of laughter. Buck grinned.

“What’s got you looking so down? You look like you’re heading to the firing squad, not heading home.”

Eddie looked over him slowly, his eyes a mix of critical and curious, tilting his head to the side. “How do you know I’m going home?”

“Well…” Buck hummed thoughtfully, tossing a rag over his shoulder as he closed another tab out, sliding the billfold and a smile over to the couple who he hoped would take the hint and make out somewhere other than his bar. “You’re sitting here alone, instead of trying to bond prematurely with your future platoon, proving that you’re one of the boys, or whatever it is that makes guys crave the acceptance of other guys. You’re wearing your civvies, not your fatigues, which means you don’t have any expectations of formality when you get wherever you’re going, but it also means you’re not expecting any commanding officers to walk in and reprimand you. And because you ordered a Coors. Seriously, man, no one who’s about to go overseas orders something as boring as Coors. The last outgoing squad in here ordered Goldschlager for the entire bar. It was disgusting.”

Eddie let out a full laugh at that as he tipped his beer in Buck’s direction—and what a lovely sound it was—and Buck let himself preen a little as Eddie nodded his head.

“Got it in one.” He said with a smirk, taking another swig from his boring beer, his smile falling a little bit as he swallowed, seeming to come back into himself, weighing Eddies earlier question with an entirely new meaning. 

“My flight is in three days, we’re waiting for some of my squad members to be cleared by medical before we go home. My CO offered to get me home earlier, but I guess… I don’t know what I’ll find when I get there. Somehow, Texas has become even more daunting than the desert.”

Buck didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just didn’t; he knew as well as anyone else that useless platitudes were just that, useless, and it didn’t look like any faux words of wisdom would have helped Eddie in that moment anyway.

The two were quiet as Buck poured another round of shots for one of the smaller tables at the back of the bar, watching critically as the patron stumbled on her way back to her friends, but as long as the tab was open and the drinks weren’t spilled, he wasn’t going to complain yet.

“What about you, Buck? Are you happy here, or just avoiding your own firing squad, like I am?” His brows rose again as he heard Eddie speak, not just because the other was initiating more conversation, but because he had been tending bar for almost a year and no one had asked him that before.

The question should have been an easy one, but nothing was easy, really, not when you were comparing backgrounds with a fucking vet—and try as Buck might, there was no way that ‘I ran away from my shitty parents and ended up crossing over Panama and I’m a bar tender because my options were either that or hooking’ would sound anything but whiney to someone who was coming home from actual war. So he shrugged, made Eddie his change, and tilted his head.

“Just taking it as it comes, Eddie. Like a lot of us. Like you will be for the next three days, it sounds like.” He offered, and Eddie snorted as he pocketed his change, leaving a few bills on the bar. A small wave was the only goodbye they exchanged as Eddie turned and walked out of the bar.

--

Repeat guests weren’t the typical norm in Padrino, and Buck had to admit, he was a little surprised to see Eddie walking back in the next night.

“Welcome to Padrino, would you like a taste?”

“Jesus, Buck, that was even worse than yesterd—oh, hey, are you alright? You get into a fight or something after I left last night?” Eddie asked, his teasing expression immediately clouded over by something that was strangely resemblant of genuine concern, and Buck blinked in surprise as he touched his own brow. “What? Oh, no, I just didn’t put any concealer on tonight. It’s just a birthmark.”

Eddie leaned in to examine it, and Buck held his breath, trying to ignore how close they both were, all of a sudden, and wow, Eddie’s eyes were a beautiful color this close, and—

“Huh. Cute.”

And now Eddie was calling him cute and Buck felt his cheeks heat up.

“Shut up, Eddie. What can I get for you? Same old boring beer?”

Their night went on in a somewhat similar fashion as before, with Eddie allowing himself more than one beer this time, and Buck having a few more customers to distract himself with when he felt himself pulled in by Eddie for a bit too long. After a wave of patrons had wandered out onto the patio and off of their property, Buck sighed in relief, pocketing a thick roll of tips as he tapped away at the bar terminal.

“I think I found a solution to your problem, by the way.” He said as he reappeared in Eddie’s corner, sliding another beer his way as he tossed the empty bottle into the recycling bin. Eddie looked marginally surprised, but curious, and gestured for Buck to continue. “For your hypothetical firing squad back at home. Clearly, the best answer is to just stay here in Equador. You can avoid getting shot, I can teach you how to make a mean canelazo, everybody wins.”

Eddie was laughing again—wow, what a nice sound—and Buck’s eyes were probably just playing a trick on him, but he actually looked somewhat remorseful when he had to shake his head.

“‘Fraid I can’t do that, Buckaroo. I, um. I have someone needing me to get home.”

“Oh? Wife? Girlfriend?… Boyfriend? Come on now, it’s the responsibility of every good bartender to know.”

Eddie looked torn for a moment, and Buck was worried he had taken a step past the line, until Eddie looked back up to him, and Buck felt his heart stop, because oh god—Eddie was being shy. It was adorable. Buck couldn’t handle it.

“Actually… I have a son. Christopher. His mom left us when I was deployed… I can’t make him wait any longer.” He fished a small chain out of his coat pocket, a small pendant dangling from the chain. The St. Christopher’s pendant swung between his fingers, and Eddie seemed to bring himself back to the present as he stowed the chain back in his pocket. “He’s, um. He’s a great kid. And I’m lucky to be his dad, I just… He’s been with my parents for four years, and he’s only seven.”

Buck couldn’t help but smile, leaning down, resting his head in a hand as he shook his head. “He’s only seven, and he’s the reason you’re afraid to go back?”

“What if he doesn’t remember me?”

“Eddie, please.” Buck said, a snort on his lips, shaking his head. “I’ve only met you twice now, and I can guarantee I will never forget you.”

The night continued on easily after that, conversation flowing naturally, even as Eddie put back a few more beers. When the time came for them to part ways, Eddie stood again, offering the same silent wave that he had before, and… well, that just wouldn’t do.

“Night, Eddie.” He called in a sing-song voice, considering it a victory as Eddie paused and looked back over his shoulder.

“Night, Buck.”

--

Though the previous night was technically his Friday, because Buck was a saint, he still answered his phone when the bar owner called at 1030 that night, fresh from the shower and with nothing else to do. Maria, his late-night cohort, had gone into labor in the middle of one of the busiest nights of the week, and like the saint he was, Buck was happy to fill in.

And take over the tips that night.

But mostly, to fill in, like the saint he was.

“Buckaroo!”

…okay, and maybe for one other reason.

Eddie was back in his spot on the bar (and when had it become Eddies spot?) and… had a row of shot glasses emptied around him, and if that hadn’t told Buck that Maria had worked her magic on him, the big smile on his face would have been key enough.

“It’s my favorite Bucky-Buck!”

Well, at least Eddie seemed like a happy drunk.

Buck didn’t even need to fake a smile, which was as surprising to him as anything else, as he clocks himself in. “Well, if it isn’t my favorite Edmundo.” He said, a teasing lilt to his voice, and the grin that Eddie shot his way was blinding. He immediately filled up a pint glass with water and slid it over to him, easily sliding into the business of the bar, handling a few extra tabs as customers poured in and out of the bar.

As easy as it was for him to tend the bar, it was even easier for him to converse with Eddie. Eddie was the ideal drunk, really—he was all smiles when Buck looked over, he was nice enough to any of the people who sat next to him, and more importantly, he was more than happy to throw back any drink that Buck put in front of him, including water.

“Buck, how do you get so handsome?” Eddie asked him after his fourth glass of water, looking up at Buck like he hung the moon. It wasn’t unusual for a drunken stranger to be so forward in their thoughts, especially regarding the bar staff, but that didn’t mean that Buck didn’t feel a little bit of heat rising in his cheeks every time Eddie directed some of those thoughts toward him.

“Buck, your arms look so strong! I bet you could lift me. Let’s try it!”

Oh, god.

“Buck, did I tell you how cute your beauty mark is? It’s so cute. Buck you’re so cute.”

No one had ever called it a beauty mark before, and Buck felt his flush raise high on his cheeks in the same moment as he balled up the rag he was using to wipe down the bar and chuck it at Eddie’s head.

Eddie started to calm down—dozing, maybe?—as the bar started to close down, midnight long since past. It was just Eddie and a few other parties at the bar, but where Eddie was quieting down, they were just riling up. And Buck was the lucky bitch who got to cut them off.

“Cmon, kid, I just want ‘nother drink. You can’t cut me off yet, I’m f-I’m fine! See?”

The blond man on the other side of the bar was certainly not fine, but far be it from Buck to judge—he just couldn’t serve him any more alcohol.

“I’m sure you are, so why don’t you drink some water and let your friends take you home?”

The hand that pushed at his chest was not a welcome surprise; hell, it wasn’t a surprise at all, Buck had no misconceptions about the kinds of assholes that would try to fight a bartender, but before he could even threaten to call the cops, the blond asshole was out for the count, body hitting the floor after the sharp slap of skin on skin contact.

“Don’t you fucking touch him.”

Eddie stood, body prone over the quickly-unconscious male, his fist still extended. Any signs of inebriation had apparently worn off; his body was steady, the punch was aimed well, and probably packed enough strength behind it to feel like a freight train. Wow, Eddie had muscly arms. How had Buck not noticed that before?

Okay, no, hold on, this was not the time or the place to be aroused by how strong and powerful and fucking insanely hot Eddie was. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind did Eddie look over at him, their eyes locking (and oh god, Buck was instantly hard, feeling that smoldering gaze trained on him), but the spell was almost immediately broken as Eddie took a step back, eyes wide and uncertain. Buck could read his customers like a book 99% of the time, and if the look on Eddie’s face said anything, it was that Buck had about a second before Eddie fled.

“Buck, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Stop, Eddie. You’re okay, thank you for doing that.”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Eddie—”

“I have to go. I’m sorry.” Buck sighed as Eddie slapped a few bills down on the table and turned heel, nearly sprinting out of the bar with a surprising agility for someone who had only moments before been complimenting Buck on his ‘beauty mark’.

Oh well. There was always tomorrow.

--

Except, Buck realized the next morning, there wouldn’t be a ‘tomorrow’ Today. Whatever. Eddie had said that his flight was in three days the night they had met, which meant that he was going to be gone today. Hell, he probably already was gone.

Disappointment pooled in his stomach, but somehow, that made him feel all the more foolish. He doubted that Eddie even remembered who he was, let alone what the looked like, let alone the things that he had been saying last night.

--

Two years later, Buck’s world burst into color when Chim a calendar, of all things, brought his world full circle.

“Okay, now that… is a beautiful man.”

Buck had to turn, and then did an honest to God double take, when who else but Edmundo—his Edmundo, not that he had any right to think that—walked out of the locker room. He looked… different. More serious (or maybe he was just sober), but there was no denying the face, the hair, and if all else failed, the tattoos. He stood, frozen on the spot, as Bobby walked past him, taking turns to introduce everyone in the squad.

“Eddie, this is Hen, Chim, and back there is—“

“Buck?”

Two years. Two years had gone by, and Eddie still lit up like they were staring at one another across a bar. Buck couldn’t help it—he grinned back, taking a few easy strides to wrap Eddie in a hug, pleasantly surprised when Eddie didn’t even miss a beat, hugging him right back.

They pulled back from one another when Chim cleared his throat, but even then, they were only looking at one another, both completely oblivious to the awkward tension in the room.

“Uh, Buck, Eddie, are you gonna tell us—“

“What are you doing tonight?”

Buck blinked as Eddie cut right through Chim’s question, his cheeks pinking up a little bit even as he shrugged. “I don’t think I have any plans.”

Eddie’s smile could have lit the place ablaze, and Buck felt honored, not for the first time, that it was aimed at him, even as Eddie spoke again.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

[sammysdewysensitiveeyes]

“What was the thought process?!”

“I don’t know any more than you do, Shaw!  The Quiet Council put this mission together!”  Somehow, even when they should have been commiserating, Sebastian managed to make his complaints sound like accusations. Well, absolutely no damn part of this was Pyro’s fault.

“Of course, that pack of simpletons can’t be bothered to do things properly.  It wouldn’t matter if it was just you, but I will not be treated like a cheap lackey.”  

“Will you kindly shut the fuck up for five minutes, Shaw?”  Pyro demanded, looking at the map.  Sebastian, for all his complaints, had not deigned to take charge of it since they’d come through the gate 30 minutes ago.  “There’s the mountain.  Our contact should be somewhere around here.”

The mountain loomed dark and ominous over the grassland, with an actual black cloud obscuring its peak, like something out of a cartoon.  There was obviously something nasty up there that needed to be dealt with.  Strange dark tendrils curled down the rocky cliffs, and there were reports of eerie wailing at night.  It wouldn’t be Krakoa’s problem, except there was a mutant living nearby who refused to relocate to the safety of the island.  So they either had to deal with the problem, or convince the mutant to move out of harm’s way.

Except the mutant in question was nowhere to be found.  Just peaceful grassland as far as the eye could see, with the mountain swelling up from the landscape like an ugly blackhead.  Off in the distance, Pyro could see a group of horses grazing contentedly.  

“Our contact couldn’t be bothered to meet us at the gate.  We should have just turned around and gone home.  I don’t know why Krakoa should lift a finger for a mutant that refuses to come to us.  He chooses to remain on the outside, he should accept the responsibilities of – “

“Hey, fellas!”  A shout interrupted Shaw’s rant.

Striding up to them was the most heart-breakingly beautiful young man that Pyro had ever seen. White-blond hair, perfectly formed features, and obvious muscles bulging under his flannel shirt, he looked like he’d strode right off the cover of one of Pyro’s own novels.  Usually Pyro preferred his men a little more rugged-looking, like Dominic’s wonderfully rough features, but he was suddenly fantasizing about this young man emerging from a lake in a see-through white shirt.

Oh shit, what if he was a telepath?  What if he was yet another Frost sibling?  Pyro shoved the image out of his mind, and thought very hard about a Youtube video he’d seen earlier of a penguin falling over.

“I suppose you’re the contact?”  Sebastian demanded.  He was walking right up to Eros-given-mortal-form while Pyro stood transfixed, and it was like watching an ogre charge an elf.  Pyro had to fight the urge to leap between them and drive the beast back with a flaming sword.  He ran a hand through his hair, trying to inconspicuously smooth it down.

Fucking hell, Allerdyce, get ahold of yourself.  Shaw will never let you live it down.

“That’s right,” said the cup-bearer Ganymede, who would surely be carried off by Zeus soon.  Even his voice was beautiful, his Southern accent giving his words a musical lilt.  “Sorry I wasn’t right there at that big funny-lookin’ gate, I got worried about the herd.  Whatever’s up there is bad news.  I’d check it out myself, but I don’t want to leave the horses.  Who’d take care of them if something happened to me?”

“Yes, yes, of course you have a noble reason for cowardice,” Sebastian said, waving a hand dismissively.

“And anyway, it’s our job, that’s why we’re here,” said Pyro, stepping forward.  He realized that he had put himself just slightly between Shaw and Paris of Troy.  “We’ll get it all sorted out for ya,” he added, giving the young man a friendly smack on the shoulder.

“Well, that’s a doozy of an accent, isn’t it?  Where you from, England?”  Thankfully Prince Charming had missed, or chosen to ignore Sebastian’s completely unecessary dig.

“Australia, actually,” Sebastian interjected before Pyro could speak.  “And I imagine you’ve greatly offended Allerdyce’s national pride by mixing the two up.”

“Shucks, I’m sorry – “

“Oh, no!” Pyro exclaimed. “Not at all.  Very similar accents, easy to mistake.”  

“You’re the ones who say g’day, right?  Like Crocodile Dundee!”

“Yes, exactly!” Pyro beamed. He’d started bar fights over being called Crocodile Dundee.  Or being called British.  Sebastian raised an eyebrow at him.  

“I’m Pyro, by the way, and Oscar the Grouch over there is Sebastian Shaw.  You don’t have to be nice to him.”  He shook the young man’s hand.    

“Anyway, I’m your ride,” the Adonis said,with a shy smile.  “I can get you up to the top of that mountain, lickety-split.”

“Oh, teleporter, are ya? That’s right handy,” Pyro said.

“Or he could be a speedster, let’s not jump to conclusions, Allerdyce,” Sebastian put in.

“No, it’s something a bit different than that,” said the divine creature carved from marble and bathed in Apollo’s fire.  He shifted suddenly, his torso stretching and changing in a way that reminded Pyro of Mystique.  And then there was a winged centaur standing in front of them, and Pyro wondered if he’d fallen into Narnia.  Or maybe that one book, with the kids and the Tesseract.    

“My mutant name is Eques, but you can call me Danny if you like.”  Pyro tried not to gape.  Somehow, the winged horse form had made the other mutant even more attractive, and Pyro wasn’t even into horses…but he was starting to understand the teenage girl obsession with them.  “Danny’s” clothing had disappeared as he shifted (one of the X-Men’s unstable molecule suits, no doubt), and now he was….basically naked.  Horse form meant all the important bits were hidden, but still.  Pyro pinched the inside of his wrist very hard and tried to think about cricket.

“Oh, shape-shifting,” Sebastian said, sounding mildly bored.  “I suppose that’ll do.  But surely there are more practical…and larger things that you can change into.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Danny, biting his lip and pawing with one hoof on  the ground in a way that was positively adorable.  “It’s a very specific mutation.  I can turn into this and only this.  But don’t worry, I’m strong enough to carry you both.  We can fly up.”  He flapped his wings for emphasis.  

Sebastian rolled his eyes.

“Really?  Have we crossed over into some children’s cartoon?”  

“C’mon Shaw, he’s here to help us.  Of course, you can walk up the mountain if you prefer,” Pyro said.  

“Oh no, I wouldn’t dare leave you alone with him,” Sebastian said, smirking at Pyro, who scowled back.  “Who knows what you two would get up to?  Besides, it’s better than the hike.  Marginally.  Let’s get this over with.”  

Before Pyro could protest, Sebastian had lifted him up by the shoulders and plopped him unceremoniously on Danny’s back, then climbed on behind him.  

“Sure we aren’t too heavy for ya?  I know Shaw here must weigh a ton.”  Pyro leaned in to speak in Danny’s ear, and tried not to notice how centaur’s thick, shimmering hair, radiant in the sunlight and making Pyro’s own golden locks seem like tarnished brass, smelled faintly of eucalyptus.

Should I compliment his hair?  Maybe ask what shampoo he uses, pretend like I want advice?  God damn it, St. John, snap out of it and act normal!

“Not all, fellas!”  Danny exclaimed, with a bright, guilless smile.  “I’m strong as a horse, too, this is nothing.  But you’d better hold on as I take off, wouldn’t want you to fall.”  

“Where should we, uh….” Pyro faltered.  Much as he wanted to slip his hands over Danny’s muscular chest (for safety!) he didn’t want to be a creep.  Also, if he wasn’t careful, his….interest…would start to become noticeable in the most humiliating way possible.

“Oh, anywhere’s fine, just hang onto me as best you can,” Danny drawled.  Before Pyro could lift his hands, Sebastian reached forward, wrapping his arms around the centaur’s waist and squishing Pyro between them.  

“Get off me, Shaw!”  Pyro squirmed, pressed against Danny’s back, with Shaw’s massive, unyielding bulk behind him.  God damn it, he was now dangerously close to being caught between a rock and a….hard place.

“Stop whining, Allerdyce, this is the best way to ensure we both stay on.  I certainly don’t trust you to hang on with those weak arms of yours.  We are secure, Eques.  Proceed.”

“Why’d you even take the back, then?”  Pyro demanded, but his question was answered as Danny leaped into the air, flapping violently.  The wings beat hardest around Pyro’s head, powerful back muscles twitching uncomfortably against him.  Well, at least having Sebastian Shaw’s gross, sweaty body pressed up against him, smelling faintly of fuck-you Rich People Cologne, was enough to kill his would-be boner quite dead.  Especially with Sebastian’s no-doubt obscenely hairy crotch up against his rear, with –

Wait a minute.  What was that?!

“Shaw, what the hell?” Pyro turned slightly, but Sebastian gripped Danny tighter, pushing him back forward.  The hard object pressing against his ass shifted.

“It’s my cell phone, Allerdyce, for God’s sake.  No need to jump to conclusions just because you’re all hot and bothered.”  

Pyro wondered whether it was possible to set Sebastian on fire without hurting Danny.  Just a little bit on fire.  And then if he fell, it wouldn’t be Pyro’s fault, right?

“Gosh, this is kinda fun, fellas!”  Danny yelled above the roar of the wind.  “I’m always out here with the horses, and that’s just how I like it, but it does get kinda lonely.  I don’t get to see other mutants very often.”

“Well, I’m sure you’d get a warm welcome if you ever came to join us on Krakoa,” Sebastian said.  Pyro slammed an elbow back against him, but Sebastian just gripped tighter.

“Don’t even think about it, Allerdyce,” he said in Pyro’s ear.  “I’ll take you down with me, make no mistake of that.”  

“Say, Eques,” Sebastian called up in a louder voice.  “Have you ever met Emma Frost?  Let me tell you all about her, I’m sure you’d have a great deal to…discuss.”

Pyro fumed quietly, and fantasized about Sebastian smashing into the jagged rocks below for the rest of the trip.  

(OOC: I don’t know what Eques should sound like, but I saw he was from Texas and wound up writing him like Cannonball.  Since he’s always so isolated with his horses, I could imagine him being very naïve, but also very friendly.  

Pyro is intensely thirsty, and failing to play it cool, but can you really blame him?

I have no idea what’s on top of that mountain. Let’s just assume that Pyro, Sebastian and Danny are going up to Midnight Castle to fight Tirac with the Rainbow of Light, and if you understand that reference you win a million 80’s nostalgia points.)          

[localswordlesbian]

sweet talk

this is my submission for @martimweek for the prompt “club/pub/bar”! I’ve been wanting to write a martim one shot fic for a while and this gave me the inspiration to actually do it

read it on ao3 or below the cut

“I’m sick of this. I’m dropping out.”

“You say that every single time you leave an assignment to the last minute, Tim. You’d think you’d have learned by now.”

Tim glared at Martin from where he was dangling upside down off his bed. “I mean it this time. This paper is due tomorrow and it sounds like hot garbage. I’m probably just better off not handing anything in.”

Martin rolled his eyes, putting his own book in his lap. “You’re so dramatic, I’m surprised you’re not a drama major.”

“Why study for something I’m naturally good at?”

Martin groaned while Tim laughed. “You’re insufferable.”

“And you love it.” Martin grumbled. “Screw this paper.”

“Oh, hand it over, you oaf. You’re not submitting nothing, especially after writing ten bloody pages.”

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a saint, Marto?”

“Literally only you.”

“You’re a saint.”

Martin skimmed over the paper, a historical analysis of the Cold War and its more violent clashes. Martin was no history buff, but this paper was far from, as Tim put it, hot garbage . It was actually pretty good.

He told his flatmate as much, but Tim just scoffed. “You’re just being nice.” Despite his dismissive words, a glow of pride lit up his face.

“Just hand it in, you insufferable twat. You already knew that, you just wanted affirmation.”

Tim clicked his tongue. “Is that so wrong?”

“No, not really.”

Tim leaned back against the wall as Martin picked up his book again. “We should go to the pub tonight, you and me. To celebrate.”

Martin laughed. “To celebrate you turning in a paper? We do this every semester, Tim. Multiple times.”

Tim threw an eraser at his head, and Martin squeaked indignantly. “Fine, then you come up with a reason. I want to go to the pub, and I want to go with you.”

Martin looked up at his flatmate, leaning casually against the wall with his laptop perched precariously on one knee. His black hair was sticking upright from the amount of times he’d run his hands through it in the past few hours, and his tanned and chiseled face looked tired. Despite that, his lips were curled upwards in his telltale smirk.

Martin sighed. “Yeah, alright. Wanna invite the others?”

Tim shook his head. “Sasha’s busy, Daisy and Basira scare me, and Melanie has a date with her new girlfriend.” Tim raised his eyebrows. “Unless there’s someone you’d like to bring along?”

Martin’s face instantly heated up. “Uh, nope. Just the two of us is good.”

Tim chuckled. “I’m sure Jon would love to have a night off from studying, head to the pub with some friends –”

“Tim, I swear to god–”

Tim put his hands up in mock defeat, his grin more infuriating than ever. Martin knew perfectly well that his face was an alarming shade of red, bright enough to put firetrucks to shame, and he also knew that this amused his friend greatly. “Alright, just the two of us then.”

Night fell while Martin finished up his reading for his English class – The Yellow Wallpaper, a story about a woman who spent so long trapped in a room that she began hallucinating a woman living in the walls and trying to rescue her. The ending of the story gave Martin chills, and he quickly scribbled some notes into the margins before closing the book and putting it back on his shelf. Stretching his arms over his head, he winced as several of his bones cracked and his muscles strained from being stuck in the same position for hours on end.

Tim wanted to go to the pub in a few minutes, so Martin pulled a white turtleneck jumper from his closet, throwing it over his shirt. When Tim knocked, he didn’t wait for a reply – simply opened the door and stuck his head in.

“Ready?”

“Christ, Tim! Normal people knock! I could have been changing or something.”

“Which you clearly should be. You’re not going in those jeans.”

“My jeans are fine!”

“Nope. I’ll be in the foyer.”

Martin groaned as Tim shut the door, rolling his eyes as he turned back to his closet. He didn’t want to wear his nice trousers to the pub, but his jeans were old and worn and a little bit gross. Making a split second decision, Martin pulled a galaxy-patterned skirt on and grabbed his wallet and phone on the way out the door.

Tim was waiting by the door, one of his signature hawaiian shirts unbuttoned over a plain black tee. Martin’s heart skipped a little – there was a reason Martin had had a sexuality crisis when he’d come to university, and that reason was standing in front of him.

Tim raised his eyebrows approvingly. “Much better.”

“Bossy arse.”

“Come on, you love it,” Tim teased as they headed out of the flat and into the dark London street. “Your type is clearly bossy.”

Martin sputtered. “My type is not –

“Oh, come off it, Martin. Sims?”

“You don’t need to call him by his last name, he’s not a professor.”

“Alright, Jonathan, the librarian’s special little boy.”

“I don’t get why you don’t like them.”

Tim narrowed his eyes. “Do you really think I don’t like them?”

Martin shrugged. “Well, yeah. You’re always so… snide and sarcastic whenever he’s brought up. Like now,” he added pointedly, raising his eyebrows at his friend.

Tim sighed. “Okay, fair. But I like them perfectly fine, I’ll have you know. He seems like a nice guy, if a little, what’s the word? Married to their work.” Tim threw his arm over Martin’s shoulders. “Look, Martin, I wouldn’t say anything if I didn’t know how you get, especially when it comes to people you fancy.”

“How do you mean?” Martin asked slowly.

“You have a tendency to give yourself away, until there’s nothing left of you to love. I don’t want you to pursue this guy and have your heart broken cause he’s got his nose too glued in a book to notice you. Or your tea,” he added lightheartedly.

They reached the pub, and Martin sighed as they walked inside and made a beeline for a booth in the back. “Tim, I’m not dumb.”

“No, you’re crushing on a guy. And those two things are sometimes interchangeable – trust me, I’d know.”

Martin sighed, gathering his skirt into the booth. “Yes, Tim, you’re a dating expert.”

Tim flashed a grin as he ordered a drink for each of them. “I should write a romance advice column in the school paper. ‘Timothy Stoker’s Guide to Love.’”

Martin snorted. “If you want to increase the number of breakups, maybe.”

Tim punched his shoulder, and Martin yelped. “Rude! I give amazing dating advice.”

Their drinks arrived, and the beer mixed with lighthearted banter was giving Martin a happy buzz. He loved all of his friends, of course he did, but there was something different about having a night out just with Tim. They had an easy rhythm, the two of them, bouncing conversations and teasing and laughter back and forth like a beach ball, pausing to sip their drinks and order more, and soon enough Martin was feeling properly tipsy, and a look over at Tim’s flushed face told him he was faring about the same.

After downing his last drink, Tim turned in the booth to face Martin, one leg crossed under his other knee. “Why don’t you just ask out Jon?”

“Because I can’t,” Martin shrugged.

Tim scoffed, his eyes slightly unfocused. “Seriously? Why not? You’re way out of their league, if you don’t mind me saying, and he clearly likes you back. So what’s there to lose?”

Martin sighed. “Come on, Tim. I’d have no idea where or how to even start. Between my mum, and then my transition and anxiety fucking everything up, I never let anyone get too close. It feels too late now.”

Tim rolled his eyes, but they were fond. “Martin, I mean this in the most loving way possible, but you’re a dolt. It’s not too late, you’re only bloody twenty-one! So what if you haven’t had a relationship before? It’s not like he’s got anything to say about you being trans or having anxiety, and if he does I have a crowbar I keep in my closet for that exact situation.”

“Yeah, I know he won’t.”

“So what’s the issue?”

“God, Tim!” Martin threw his hands up in exasperation. He wasn’t annoyed at Tim, and Tim knew that; he was annoyed at himself, and the alcohol made everything just spill out without a second thought. “I’ve never done this before, I don’t know how to ask someone out without making a blubbering fool of myself, it was hard enough even becoming friends with them because, what are coherent sentences, even, when someone you fancy is talking to you? I’ve never even kissed anyone!” His voice quieted at the last sentence.

“Oh, well if that’s all, that’s easily remedied.” At Martin’s confused tilt of the head, Tim leaned in slowly, slowly enough that Martin could have easily pulled away, easily declined.

Perhaps a sober Martin would have hesitated, would have considered the aftermath, had overthought every aspect of what he was about to do obsessively until Tim pulled away, regretting having made the offer.

Instead, he closed the gap, and then Tim’s lips were on his, soft and tasting of beer. His hands were in Tim’s hair, the curls soft and welcoming against his fingers, Tim’s breath hot on Martin’s face as he parted his lips, pulling Martin’s lower lip into his mouth. He gasped, dimly aware that this was a terrible idea, he was kissing his best friend in the back booth of a student pub that stank of beer and sweat, and Tim’s hands were gripping his shoulders and his lips were soft on his. Tim kissed like he was drowning, and Martin’s lips were air.

Tim pulled away first, and Martin slowly opened his eyes, the dim lights in the pub suddenly too bright. Tim’s hair was still bunched in Martin’s hand, and he slowly disentangled his fingers while Tim released his shoulders, never taking his eyes off Martin’s face. His lips were swollen and red, and he was grinning. “That, my friend, is how you kiss. You’re a natural, nothing to worry about.”

Martin exhaled a shaky breath, causing Tim to chuckle. “Nothing to worry about, yeah?”

Tim grinned lopsidedly, pushing a strand of hair behind Martin’s ear. “Nothing at all.”

Martin nodded. “Cool.” That made Tim laugh. “What now?”

Tim tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, we’re best friends, and we just, well, made out in the back of a pub. Isn’t this supposed to make things awkward?”

“Does it need to?”

“Hm. I guess it doesn’t.”

Tim scooted, bumping his hip against Martin’s, and it took Martin a second to realize he was trying to urge him out of the booth. They stood, swaying and leaning against each other for support. They left the pub and emerged into the chilly London night, arms around each other, concentrating on not walking into the street. “I’ll tell you what now.”

“Hm?”

“We’re going to get food on our way home, then we’re going to fight over who gets to use the shower first, and I’m going to win with my devilish charm. Then we’re going to go to bed, and wake up tomorrow with horrible hangovers and more schoolwork. Deal?”

Martin smiled. “Deal.”

[ibijau]

Worst engagement AU // on AO3

Set after lxc first saw that bunny painting and accidentally complimented it

I was not planning to spend so long on that painting, and in fact it wasn't even part of the original plan for this story but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

It’s not that Lan Xichen wants to talk to Nie Huaisang. He’s tried before, and all he’s ever gotten out of his attempts is the other boy looking at him with big, frightened eyes and refusing to say more than two words. There’s a reason he doesn’t like his fiancé, as he’s told Lan Wangji quite a few times lately, and that reason is Nie Huaisang’s absolute lack of anything to make him interesting.

Lan Wangji, each time, just gives him that look. He doesn’t bother saying anything. Doesn’t need to. His silences carry entire conversations. In this case, the silence speaks of a painting of rabbits on which, even weeks later, Lan Xichen’s eyes still linger whenever he sees it.

And he sees it often.

Lan Wangji made sure of it. 

He asked his uncle to help him display it in his room, where it is visible by any guest he might have. Which mostly means Lan Qiren, who doesn’t care, and Lan Xichen, who knows this is a personal attack against him. All because he tried to be nice to his brother by complimenting a painting that’s just…

A painting which is…

It’s just so…

But that’s the problem, of course. Lan Xichen can’t even bring himself to think that the painting is mediocre, because it’s not. It’s better than anything he’s ever managed to paint. The style shows a certain lack of formal learning, and it is obvious that it was made quickly, but somehow that’s part of what makes it so good. There’s a freedom to the lines that Lan Xichen could only dream to achieve.

He knows. He’s tried to reproduce the painting, in vain. His own attempts aren’t bad, but they feel stiff and heavy compared to the original.

Of course, it’s normal for Lan Xichen to find his own work lacking. He’s only just seventeen, and humble enough to accept there are great masters in this world whose level he will only reach after decades of hard work. It gives him something to strive for, and he rather enjoys the challenge of it all.

But being inferior to Nie Huaisang stings.

Everyone knows that Qinghe Nie isn't a sect for artists. Nie Mingjue shows polite interest when Lan Xichen speaks about painting or music, and he knows just enough to say if something is generally good or bad, but that's it. He doesn't get colours and lines, he can rarely tell one melody from another unless they're different enough, and he clearly doesn't care. So when Nie Mingjue has mentioned in the past that his little brother fancies himself an artist, Lan Xichen has assumed that just means a few childish doodles in the margin of his studies. It's the most anyone would expect from a disciple if Qinghe Nie. 

And Lan Xichen likes Qinghe Nie and respects it and he would scold anyone who would call them a butcher's sect, but… but it makes no sense for Nie Huaisang to come from there and be capable of making a painting like that. 

So that's what motivates Lan Xichen to give his crybaby of a fiancé another chance. Not his uncle's increasingly stern looks, not Lan Wangji's petulant attitude. No, it's just plain old curiosity. 

That and something he won't admit in a thousand years, not even to himself. The hope that maybe, just maybe, he has more to look forward to than a lifetime tied to a blubbering idiot who acts terrified of him. If there is any chance that Nie Huaisang is more than he appears… 

But hope is a dangerous thing, so Lan Xichen guards himself against it. In a world such as the one they live in, marriages are rarely happy, arranged ones even less, those of rulers of sects least of all. Of the leaders of the Five Great Sect, which hasn’t had a problematic marriage?

Still, a chance must be given, for the sake of fairness. So when one day Lan Xichen spots Nie Huaisang alone (he's always alone) in one of the gardens, a pile of papers at his side and a brush on his hand… He has to seize the occasion. 

After taking his leave from the boys he was walking with, Lan Xichen directly goes to Nie Huaisang. His fiancé is so entranced in whatever he's doing that he doesn't notice him until Lan Xichen stops right next to his bench. In a second, Nie Huaisang gathers all the papers around him and gathers them against his chest, trying to hide them.

"May I sit with you?" Lan Xichen inquires, as if he doesn’t notice the other boy’s panic.

As always, Nie Huaisang looks up at him with the pitiful air of a startled rabbit, clutching his paper tight against his chest. Whatever he's been drawing must have smudged, which annoys Lan Xichen. To be so careless with one's work… 

"Lan gongzi may do as he pleases," he mutters, quickly looking down. "This is his garden." 

Lan Xichen sat down, careful to leave as much distance as possible between them, for propriety. He tries to peek at the sheets, but Nie Huaisang only holds them closer, wrinkling them and finishing to ruin everything. 

"Were you drawing, Nie gongzi ?" 

"I wasn't!" Nie Huaisang blatantly lies. "I swear I wasn't. I have far too much homework to be painting!" he claims with an awkward laugh. 

And if he has to lie, can't he at least be good at it? 

"That's too bad," Lan Xichen says, pretending he believes that. "I've been curious about Nie gongzi's art. Wangji showed me the piece Nie gongzi gifted him." 

"Oh, that," Nie Huaisang mutters, his eyes widening. "I'm surprised he didn't throw it away. It was silly, and it's not very good. The rabbits were too fat, and I should have placed them better on the paper. It's really bad, I'm ashamed I gave it as a gift. Lan er-gonzi must think I'm too bold, giving him something this bad."

Past the shock of hearing that painting so easily dismissed, Lan Xichen can't help a slight thrill that Nie Huaisang noticed the same problems as he did. It's easy to see that a piece of art is good. Slightly less so to know why it's good. But it takes an expert eye to find what can still be improved, even in something excellent. It speaks of real skill and good taste, rather than the simple stroke of luck he sometimes told himself the painting might have been.

"Wangji is actually very happy with it," Lan Xichen announces. "He had it hung in his bedroom." 

Nie Huaisang looks up at him, gaping in shock and mild horror rather than showing any of the pride Lan Xichen would have expected. It makes his usual annoyance flare up, but he forces it aside for once. 

"It is a good painting," he insists instead, hoping his tone is complimentary enough, while also not showing just how much he likes that painting. 

"Lan gongzi doesn't need to lie," Nie Huaisang mumbles. "I enjoy painting, but I'm not good, I know that. Father always said it was a waste of time and I should work harder on my cultivation." 

"Are you calling me a liar?" Lan Xichen remarks, still fighting to keep his annoyance in check. 

Nie Huaisang startles and throws him a terrified look. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean… Lan gongzi didn't lie of course, Lan gongzi was just trying to be kind. It's, it's not necessary though. I know it's a silly hobby. I'm sorry I wasted time on this. I'll stop now and work harder so I don't bring more shame to Lan gongzi."

For a second, Lan Xichen hesitates. It's true that Nie Huaisang should focus more on his studies, especially since his grades are so bad and everyone knows he still doesn't have a golden core, which is shameful at his age. In fact, Lan Xichen half suspects that Nie Huaisang must have skipped classes of some sort to go paint those rabbits, for which he probably ought to be punished. 

But no matter what he's saying, Nie Huaisang is a good artist, if that piece with the rabbits is any indication. In any sect but Qinghe Nie, his skill would have been noticed, encouraged and nurtured. In fact, even for his sect it's odd that he hasn't received more attention. If his cultivation were better, his lack of skill there didn’t outweigh other accomplishments of his... It feels unfair, for lack of a better word. 

And so Lan Xichen is tempted to do something bad, and encourage Nie Huaisang’s talent. If he could produce a painting like that with nothing but his own taste and determination to guide him, Lan Xichen can't help but feel slightly eager to see what he might do with a few proper lessons. If he offers to teach Nie Huaisang, maybe he can learn in return how the other boy keeps his lines so light and pure.

But that's selfish of him, he figures. Lan Xichen only wants that because if they have this common ground, it will make their future marriage less painful. What's actually good for Nie Huaisang, he knows, is to improve his cultivation and work hard to catch up to others their age. It's just too shameful for a young master to be so bad he doesn't have a golden core. For the good of both their sects' reputation, Nie Huaisang needs to be more serious. 

"It might be best if Nie gongzi focused on what's important," Lan Xichen reluctantly agrees. “When your cultivation reaches an acceptable level, you can see about diverting your attention again to other occupations.”

Nie Huaisang sighs, deep and heartfelt, then nods miserably. He really is a pathetic boy, but force once Lan Xichen feels sorry for him rather than angry at his weakness. It’s a little sad that even when finally Nie Huaisang turns out to have some talent, it’s at something that he cannot pursue freely.

“I’ll let you be now,” Lan Xichen announces, quickly rising from the bench, uncomfortable with that newfound pity for this fiancé he still doesn’t want. “Do work hard in the future, or your brother will be disappointed.”

The other boy flinches at that, but Lan Xichen chooses to ignore it and leaves. All in all, it was a disappointing conversation that managed to do little but making him even more frustrated about Nie Huaisang.

And yet, maybe in the future, if Nie Huaisang gets his act together and finally achieves a decent level of cultivation…

Only time will tell, but Lan Xichen wouldn’t hate having someone to paint with.

[lifeofclonewars]

Time to Fix Some Hives

Also available on AO3. Link on my page so this still shows up in tags.

I’m not sure how this got as long as it did. Part 3 of the Pun Wars, but can be read alone.

Summary: “Hey, was Prime allergic to anything?” Fives asked casually.

“I don’t think so," Kix replied, swiping through a datapad. "But if so, the Kaminoans probably engineered it away. Why?”

“Uh, I think I might’ve gotten it.”

“Fives! Vod!" Kix looked like his blood pressure just skyrocketed. He let out a sound that didn’t quite sound human.

-

In which Fives gets some hives and Kix has to fix it.

-----

Food in the GAR was something to be discussed. Or maybe not. Ration sticks were varying degrees of bland and dry. The mess hall meals had some flavor but, after weeks in hyperspace or in orbit, had the same monotony as ration bars. If someone wanted good food, they’d have to wait for leave. Unless, of course, they took the method that involved not-quite regulations breaking.

Somehow, though, every once in a while, a shipment of supplies would bring in something to liven up meals. A small bundle of juicemelons here, some shuuras there. Once, somehow, some varos, which had led to a large celebration and special dessert. Whenever command was able to get some brightness to the meals in shipments, it was a cause to rejoice. However they managed to sort it out, they received eternal thanks for it. 

The latest shipment had included such a treat, if breakfast was anything to go by.  Fives grinned when he saw the options for the day. Stacks of space waffles and various toppings were available. Sitting neatly labeled, easy to grab, was muja sauce. They hadn’t had muja fruit before, so it would be exciting to see how this tasted. 

With a tray full of food, Fives plopped himself down next to Tup. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Tup responded, already digging into his food.

Fives spared a peep at his brother’s plate. “How’s the muja sauce?”

“Pretty good. A tad sweeter than I expected.” 

Fives nodded and set to eating, first eating the bland porridge that was required for vitamins or whatever. He and Tup chatted amicably, recounting the pandemonium that had come from a training game Rex had attempted the previous afternoon. It went well until Focus had— unlike his name suggested— gotten sidetracked and blew up a dummy droid; it was all downhill from there. 

Porridge gone, Fives moved onto the space waffles. Tup hadn’t been kidding: the mujas were the sweetest fruit he’d tasted. 

He must have made a face, as Tup laughed. “See? I wasn’t exaggerating.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Fives said. The waffle itself must’ve been dry; his throat was suddenly a shade scratchy. Eh, so maybe the waffles suffered in favor of the sauce. It wasn’t too big of a deal. A sip of water solved it, anyway. 

He continued his conversation, irritated when the waffles continued to make his throat scratchy. Try as he might, it was hard to ignore. 

“Hey, vod,” he asked in a lull, “are your waffles making your throat scratchy?”

Tup’s eyebrows furrowed. “No. Are yours?”

Grimacing, he answered, “Yeah. I somehow managed to get the one dry one they made. The sauce and some water helped, though.” 

“That sucks.” 

“I’ll live. You know what does suck?” With that, Fives launched into an explanation of what was rumored to be the Captain’s next training exercise. While it was a rumor, you could never be too careful in preparing for them. The less you could avoid feeling like dying while doing them, the better. 

-----

The rumor turned out to be just a rumor. But, that was because the training exercises ended up even more strenuous than the rumor stated. 

Fives took a breather, leaning against a wall. He watched while some shinies seemed to have mental breakdowns, struggling to keep up to pace but still fighting through. 

Faintly, he realized his arms were itchy. Huh, that was odd. Looking down, his arms appeared slightly red. That hit to the mat he'd taken earlier must've given him a burn. It wasn't anything he couldn't fight through; he was an ARC trooper, after all.

"Doing good, Fives?" Rex called over to him.

He straightened off the wall. "Never better, sir."

"Good. You're next." 

A fast-paced but by no means short spar later, Fives found himself admiring the ceiling lights, the Captain standing over him. Exhausted and beginning to catch his breath, the itch in his arms made itself present once again. 

“Still good, Fives?” Rex offered his hand and Fives took it, standing up. 

“Uh, yeah. I think I got a floor burn and definitely some bruises, but it’s nothing I can’t deal with.”

Rex patted him on the back, taking a glance at Fives’ forearms. “Hmm, make sure a medic looks over it when you can, just in case.”

“Yessir.” With that, Rex dismissed him to the cycle of training and called up the next trooper to spar. 

As he made his way over to the next station, which was sure to increase in intensity, Fives checked out his arms himself. The redness appeared to be a scattering of small bumps across his arms. Some of the bumps were larger than the others. But the fact that there were bumps... maybe it wasn’t floor burn after all. That would explain why it was itching more than stinging. But what else could it be? 

He reached the station. The redness-debacle could be solved later. He’d tell Kix later; there was stuff to be done. 

-----

Sometime after lunch, Fives found himself on a patrol shift in the lower levels of the star destroyer. A gaggle of mechanics, squabbling over something or another, were nearby, seemingly working and not working simultaneously. All he had to do was walk the halls. 

With the time available and no obvious threats around, Fives allowed himself to reflect on what was up with his arms. His blaster slung carefully across his back, he took off his left vambrace, gauntlet, and glove then rolled up his blacks to his elbow. 

The bumps stood out brightly against his skin. A floor burn could not have produced them. The ARC trooper had had many before and none of them had ever looked like this. In fact, it almost looked like… a rash. 

Fives thought back to the bit of medical training ARC training had given him. A potential rash with bumps that were itching. And if he counted the scratchy throat he’d had at breakfast as something other than dry space waffles— well, it all added up. 

It looked like Fives had an allergy to muja fruit. 

Interesting. He put his armor back on and continued along with his patrol. That’d be something to tell Kix later. A crash sounded around the corner and Fives pushed the thoughts to the back of his mind. Finally, something marginally exciting was happening. Slinging his blaster around, he took off down the corridor. 

-----

Once off patrol, he headed to the medical bay to talk to Kix. That one crash had led to an action-packed end of patrol involving helping some shinies and forgetting about everything else he’d been thinking about. He remembered he needed to talk to the medic but hadn’t the slightest why. Shrugging to himself, he made his way inside.

Kix was stationed at the front desk for the moment, busy with something Fives couldn’t see over the top of the desk. He paused and looked up as the doors closed behind Fives. “Hey, vod,” he greeted.

“Hey, Kix.”

“You’re not here because you sprained something else, are you?” 

Fives smiled at that. “Not this time. No promises for the future, though.” 

His brother rolled his eyes. “Well, since that’s not the case, feel free to talk about anything. I’m trying to avoid paperwork and also answering Jesse’s comm about how many people a hypothetical stunt he might hypothetically pull he will land in here.”

Fives hummed. Soon enough, the brothers were talking about anything and everything that came to mind. Kix began to flick through some of the datapads stacked high next to him. They talked about the craziest reasons for injuries Kix had encountered recently, what they expected from their upcoming campaign, and more. 

Activity around the bay was low. Out in hyperspace for a few weeks between campaigns had let the majority of the injured to heal. The handful of medics on shift shuffled around between beds, chatting and joking with their patients. One or two visitors sat next to their brother’s beds. For once, the atmosphere was light and easy and not clouded with stress and worry. Fives had no problem leaning against the front desk while talking to his brother. 

With the light conversation and calm, Fives’ thoughts drifted back to what he had discovered on patrol.

“Hey, was Prime allergic to anything?” Fives asked casually.

“I don’t think so," Kix replied, swiping through a datapad. "But if so, the Kaminoans probably engineered it away. Why?”

“Uh, I think I might’ve gotten it.”

“Fives! Vod!" Kix looked like his blood pressure just skyrocketed. He let out a sound that didn’t quite sound human.

“Chill, it only made my throat scratchy for a bit. Plus, I got these little bumps but they’re not that bad. I can deal with it.”

The sound came out again, this time even longer and even less human. Kix shot out of his chair and dove for a nearby container, ruffling through the contents, datapad forgotten. Fives stood and watched idly as his brother began to have a breakdown. “Where are the epi-pens for the nat-born officers? Those are kriffing hives, di’kut!”

Oh. Oops.

Kix found what looked like two hypos. “Finally!” he exclaimed and rushed over to Fives, pushing him by the shoulder to the nearest bed. The few people on the other end of the medbay who had looked over when Kix shouted made themselves look busy when Fives sent them an apprehensive glance. Once seated, the medic set the hypos aside and began removing the cuisse on Fives’ leg. 

Fives jerked away. “What are you doing?!”

His brother scowled. “Stay still! I’m treating your allergic reaction, what do you think I’m doing?” 

Once Fives stilled, Kix finished removing the armor and took one of the hypos. Uncapping it, he took it and shoved it into his thigh. He looked up and scowled at Fives before moving to dispose of the hypo properly and grab a new datapad from a shelf. 

“Now we wait for five minutes to see if you need a second one or not.”

“A second one?”

His response made Kix’s eyebrows somehow furrow even closer. “Yes, a second one. You’re lucky that the reaction didn’t get any worse than that. When you ignore a reaction, the mild symptoms can suddenly spiral and can turn into anaphylaxis. And that can kill you, Fives.” 

Fives grimaced. “Sorry. I didn’t know it could get worse. At least it didn’t…?” he attempted to reconcile. 

The medic took a deep breath. He then took off Fives’ vambrace, gauntlet, and glove. Inspecting his forearm while pushing the sleeve up, Kix took another breath. “See here, Fives? These are one hundred percent hives. You really thought hives weren’t a big deal?”

“I thought it was floor burn at first,” he admitted. “I didn’t realize they were bumps until I was busy and then things happened and it wasn’t my top priority.”

Kix inclined his head towards the arm he was still grasping. “If this ever happens again, this is your top priority.” He released Fives’ arm, grabbing the hypo that was still sitting on the bed. “This is an EpiPen, and it’ll help you with any future allergic reactions, tayli'bac? Keep this in your utility belt. And when I say keep it there, I mean always, always have it there. Since you have this allergy, you might have others. We’ll need to do a test sometime soon to check since Kamino didn’t test for them because they normally don’t need to. We’ll have to teach you how to use the EpiPen then as well. You’re going to take this more seriously now, right?”

“Right.” Fives took the hypo and placed it into his utility belt promptly. 

“Okay, so I have to update your health file to reflect your allergy. Hold on a minute.” Fives nodded and Kix started to flick through the datapad in his hands. 

After a minute or so, a little beep sounded. “Alright,” Kix said, placing the datapad down on the bed. “That was the five-minute timer. Arm.” Fives obediently held his arm out. Kix took it, gently twisting it back and forth. “The hives are already swelling down. You won’t need a second one.” 

“Great,” Fives stated tentatively.

“Great,” Kix repeated. “Now either sit here quietly or help me figure out if Prime had an allergy to mujas you somehow got.” He handed Fives a datapad he materialized out of nowhere. 

“Shouldn’t you be watching the front desk?” Fives reminded. 

“Shh,” Kix said. “Coric got it when I went for the EpiPens, anyway.” A quick look over Kix’s shoulder confirmed that, yes, Coric had indeed taken the front desk while Kix treated the ARC. “Now get to work.”

-----

“What’s up, vode?” Fives announced his presence, plopping down first his tray and then himself at the table. “Turns out, I have a mutation.”

“WHAT?!” came from three of the four people gathered around. The only one who didn’t react vocally was Kix, who just rolled his eyes from where he sat next to Jesse. If Fives had credits, he would bet that Kix had been waiting for him to say that since they concluded their research earlier.

“What do you mean you have a mutation?!” Tup asked, fork halted halfway to his mouth. “And how did you just find out?!”

“You know how I had a dry waffle this morning?” Tup nodded and Kix snorted. “Turns out, my waffle wasn’t dry. I was having an allergic reaction.”

Jesse raised an eyebrow. “I’ve seen you scarf down space waffles before. What changed?”

Fives smirked and waited a beat to see if his brothers would figure it out on their own. When no one said anything, he continued, "There was muja sauce today."

Another beat. "Oh!" came the three reactions.

Jesse began to laugh. "Your mutation is a muja fruit allergy? That's gotta suck, dude." 

A shrug. "Eh, now that I know, not too much. The mujas were a bit sweet for my taste, anyway." 

Focus grimaced. "You still suck at lying, Fives." Fives scrunched his nose at the scout but otherwise didn't acknowledge his words, taking a tentative bite of what looked suspiciously like something’s liver.

"Yes, an untreated allergy is something to laugh about," Kix groused. When Jesse laughed at his attitude, Kix shot a glare his way. The lieutenant only laughed harder. 

"What happened?" Jesse prompted, evidently sensing a story to be told.

“I can tell you what happened,” Kix grumbled, stabbing a piece of lettuce. “Kaysh mirsh solus, Jess. I can’t emphasize that enough.”

Jesse doubled over cackling, clutching his stomach. He set his other arm on the table and buried his face in it. He struggled to form words for a moment, then finally spit out, “The allergic reaction must’ve killed the rest of them.”

“Wow, thanks,” Fives deadpanned. “To both of you.”

“Anytime.” Kix stabbed another piece of lettuce, giving Fives an unbreakable glare. “If you pull anything like this again, I will check if you really do only have one brain cell left.”

“I expected nothing less.” 

Jesse composed himself and rested his elbows on the table and his head on his hands— he was by far the most amused by this. He was going to get stuff out of this for weeks if he played his cards right. His grin was quite possibly one of the biggest ones Fives had ever seen on a brother. His food, which he hadn’t touched since Fives sat down, sat ignored in front of him still. 

“Okay, but seriously,” Focus cut in, “how did you not know you had an allergy to muja fruit?”

Fives swiveled towards the scout. “How did you manage to blow up a training dummy when your name implies that shouldn’t have happened?” he quipped back. “It’s not like I had muja fruit before, and it’s not like that’s something that they tested for on Kamino. None of us are supposed to have allergies!”

“It’s not like we’ve seen anyone have an allergic reaction before,” Tup pointed out. 

“Fine. Fair point,” Focus conceded. 

Fives pointed at Tup. "Actually, he's right. I first thought I had a floor burn from sparring with the Captain."

"I still don't get how you thought hives were a floor burn," Kix griped.

"At first, Kix. I said at first. Once I got a closer look, I noticed otherwise. I just got busy."

The medic shook his head, rolling his eyes slightly and taking a sip from his water. 

"Anyway," Fives continued, avoiding the meat and picking at a blob next to it, "our little bit of research told us Prime wasn't allergic to muja fruit so it really is a random mutation."

"Maybe someone in Prime's biological family had it?" Tup offered.

"Just because allergies can be genetic doesn't always mean they are," Kix supplied. "I wouldn't be surprised either way." 

"Either way, I don't care," Fives said. "What I do care about is that now I have to suffer through an allergy test just to be safe."

“K'atini. You’re an ARC trooper, you’ve suffered worse.”

Fives scoffed. “Just because I have doesn’t mean I wanted to suffer. Or suffer more, especially because of you.”

The group descended into bickering the way only siblings could. Little did they know, a new and improved version of their conversation would take place a mere two days later when it was revealed that Fives was also allergic to yot beans and chando peppers and severely so to zherries after Kix ran the allergy test. 

--

Mando’a Translations:

Vod: Brother

Di’kut: Idiot

Tayli'bac: Got it? Okay? Understand? (Often very aggressive.) Basically, the Mando'a version of Capisce

Vode: Brothers. Can refer to the clones as a whole or just a group of them

Kaysh mirsh solus: He’s an idiot. Lit. “His brain cell is lonely”

K'atini: Suck it up! Or: It’s only pain! 

Thanks for reading! 

[presumenothing]

wherefore // 几生轮回

unfinished nirvana in fire fic for @goodintentionswipfest​

(aka the kimi no na wa au that i posted the first part of in 2018 before being once again reminded that i am physically incapable of plot. sections i-iii are complete, rough outline follows afterwards)

i.

When Jingyan wakes up in another body, his first reaction is to be altogether grateful that he’s spent much more time at the borders and generally out of the capital than your average nobility. The slightest breath of unusually chilly morning air is enough to confirm that this is all the way to the border – of Liang and Da Yu, Jingyan suspects, much further north than even he’s ever gone.

(…well actually his first reaction is a flat startled “what”, right before he’d pinched himself to check if he’s still dreaming, but Jingyan figures anyone would’ve done the same anyway.)

The first bell of morning rings outside, and out of long habit Jingyan swings his feet off the bed and makes to rise before he can entirely realise what a terribly bad idea that is.

At least he manages to catch himself with a hasty hand on the bedframe. He’s even less coordinated than he was right after his growth spurt, when Jingyu-gege had kept a very straight face and not laughed at him at all.

That’s when Jingyan sees it: the ring of a silver bracelet around his ar– well, not his arm, but currently-his arm. Whatever.

He runs a light finger over the cool metal surface, over the deep grooves of an emblem that curls like flames and the shallower etch of a name. Lin Shu, it says.

Jingyan stands, properly this time, and goes to peer out the window, wondering if this Lin Shu can afford to take a day off. Whoever he is.

.

As it turns out, the answer to that is a resounding no, because Lin-Shu-whoever-he-is turns out to be the young marshal of this border army, as Jingyan swiftly finds out as he makes his way to morning drills.

Something he probably should’ve noticed right off, really, given the room he’d woken up in. Not large, certainly not by Jinling’s standards, but the noticeable lack of sharing made it a rare luxury in the barracks.

By the time he arrives at the training grounds, navigating purely on long-honed familiarity with army facilities, Jingyan’s already learnt to answer almost automatically to the many cheerful hails of “Young Marshal!” coming from the general outflow of people from the mess hall – many many more people than he’d been expecting, to be honest.

He doesn’t remember the actual numbers like Prince Qi probably does, but from personal experience Jingyan does know Da Liang’s border armies to be fairly impressive on the whole. Yet he’s never even heard of one this large, save perhaps Duke Mu’s army to the south.

It’s unmistakeably Liang’s colours they’re flying, though, alongside the same fiery emblem engraved on his bracelet, so Jingyan decides not to worry about it too much.

Either way it puts paid to his vague ideas of begging illness and staying firmly on the sidelines, though Jingyan finds to his pleasant surprise that this young marshal has trained some fairly competent lieutenants clearly capable of running the drills themselves.

It’s almost reminiscent of mornings in Jing Manor, honestly.

(And it could be worse, Jingyan thinks. “Young Marshal” is just a title, like “Your Highness” is, and after a whole life of answering to one it’s hardly a suffering to be addressed by the other – almost freeing, actually, even if he has to err on the side of caution by being much more taciturn than usual and hoping that the edge of exhaustion from sheer shock shows just enough to excuse him for it.

All said and done, though, Jingyan rather believes he’s done quite the good job of things.

Certainly better than whoever’s now in Jinling has probably managed, but as long as he hasn’t accidentally offended the Emperor or anything.

…Jingyan can only hope.)

–

ii.

This, as Jingyu-gege often says, is why Jingyan should never, ever jump to conclusions about things.

Admittedly this doesn’t backfire so much as it goes completely off the rails of his expectations, trundling like a particularly enthusiastic horse in the opposite direction.

Nothing terrible awaits when he wakes up back in his room the next morning, and a quick inquiry to Zhanying confirms that he definitely hadn’t entered the palace yesterday.

Jingyan breathes a deep if silent sigh of relief.

(A quick check of the outer walls turns up a scuff mark matching his shoe on the roof, so faint as to suggest that it’d only been left because someone obviously hadn’t entirely adjusted to his new height yet.

Fair enough, Jingyan thinks. He’d have done the same last night if he hadn’t been too tired from the sudden cold to sneak out and explore anywhere.

Maybe next time, he catches himself thinking, and pulls a face, because no, none of that.

That jinxes it right away, of course, as he promptly realises the morning after.

Jingyan stifles a shiver in the wintry sun, even colder now after a day in Jinling’s warmth, and thinks – really, Jingyu-gege would have a field day with this.)

.

Possibly the oddest thing about this, thinks Jingyan on the eighth day he wakes up at the border instead of Jinling, is that neither of them have ever thought to question, even once, whether this is really happening.

Or at least Jingyan hasn’t, and if Lin Shu’s wondered about it he hasn’t mentioned it either, at least not in the increasingly copious notes they’re leaving for each other.

They end up making a routine of things without much discussion about it, even though the setup in each of their rooms almost mirrors the other. Jingyan begins to stock more scrolls of paper and sticks of ink at his desk, keeps their correspondence in a hidden drawer within easy reach of his chair.

But Lin Shu apparently fears the cold as little as his relatively thin wardrobe would suggest, because his stationery inevitably is set up at the low table with only a cushion to sit on – admittedly quite a comfortable one, yes, but still unseasonably chilly for the stone floor.

Either way, what had started out as a simple way to update each other on the day’s events devolves into something else altogether, and Jingyan can even pinpoint the moment it happened: when Lin Shu had added also stop wearing my hair down you’re making me look like an idiot as an afterthought on the third entry, followed by oh and don’t eat hazelnuts squashed into too few inches of space.

Jingyan’s learnt enough of medicine from his mother not to take the second part lightly, but the first almost tempts him into putting a flower in Lin Shu’s hair just because.

But only almost.

Then you stop tying my hair all up like that first, he adds to his next summary, it’s giving me a headache.

The palace would give anyone a headache, he finds written almost musingly in the reply margin.

Jingyan rubs at his temple, and finds that he can’t even argue with that, really. So instead he pulls up a fresh sheet of paper and quickly outlines the basics of court etiquette, because the Emperor’s probably going to end up summoning Jingyan while he literally isn’t himself one of these days, if this is going to continue.

He has a feeling it will.

.

It takes Jingyan a whole month of alternating days to admit, not quite grudgingly, that he is rather impressed by the fact that Lin Shu is already the young marshal of such a large army at this age.

In his defense, he’d rather naturally assumed the worst when he first found out that Lin Shu was the son of the commander himself, but that was before seeing the genuine respect rather than mere tolerance he got from every last man in the army, even those thrice either his or Lin Shu’s age.

(It’s the Chiyan Army, Lin Shu writes back, the very turn of each stroke arrow-sharp with irritation. Chiyan! Army! Will you get it right, it’s not just any army!

And I’m literally a prince, Jingyan snipes back in his most practiced handwriting. Also, if you’re insulting my men…

Hardly. Zhanying deserves a pay raise and a better boss, Lin Shu answers, then adds, pointedly, Your Highness.

Probably just so he could use up the last bit of paper.

Jingyan scowls at that last scrawl before pulling out yet another fresh sheet and dipping his brush in ink.

As if he’s going to let anyone have the last word over him quite so easily.)

–

iii.

“I didn’t know you liked archery, Prince Jing-gege,” says Nihuang one afternoon when they’re resting in his manor’s study after an impressive practice bout. The young duchess Mu had gotten quite formidable enough to attract the rapt attention of the entire training field – or she would have, if Zhanying hadn’t promptly barked at all of them to get back to their drills right then.

(It’d almost tempted Jingyan into asking, really, whether Zhanying had noticed anything different about his fighting style on the days when it’d been Lin Shu instead.

Not that Zhanying necessarily knew anything, per se – but from the subtly helpful way in which his general had volunteered information that Lin Shu’s writings occasionally failed to convey, between the carelessly precise updates and snarky comments in the margins… Jingyan rather thought he did suspect something, at least.

Wei Zheng was the same, up north at the border, which was just as well.

Lin Shu doesn’t know how good he has it, really, that the Jing army has closer to seven hundred men than seventy thousand – all of whom apparently assume that their young marshal will recognise them. Which says something fairly impressive about Lin Shu, of course, but still. How fortunate for him.)

Both their fathers have been closed up in Yangju Hall all day long – all the palace servants had been dismissed, and he’d heard that even Xia Jiang and Xie Yu had been summoned in.

Whatever it is they’re discussing must be important indeed, he knows. It’s hardly unusual, for both the Marquis of Ning and the Xuanjing Bureau’s head officer to meet the Emperor, but Jingyan doesn’t think he’s ever seen the Duke of Yunnan even half as stern as when he’d arrived this time, both his children firmly in tow.

Mu Qing had been unabashedly cheerful as always, and easy enough to handle – Aunt Liyang had been more than happy to help. It wasn’t like two more kids running around the house would trouble her much further, anyway, what with Yan Yujin already practically living there half the time.

But Nihuang had declined her offer politely before asking to see the Jing manor’s grounds, which is how she’d ended up here, hands clasped behind her back as she considers the red bow in pride of place on his weapons rack.

At least the sparring earlier had worn away most of the tension in her features, though Jingyan can still see the trace of it in the graceful stiffness of her posture, and wonders silently if she too feels the same thing he does, the slight wrongness in the air.

He shrugs anyway, trying for relaxed. “I got back into practicing it over the past couple months. It’s quite a bit more enjoyable now that I actually have enough strength to draw the string back fully.”

Which is completely true, even if he’d only had reason to discover it because Lin Shu’s weapon of choice is bow and arrow, as Jingyan had found to his utter surprise.

Nothing like muscle memory when the muscles weren’t even yours to begin with – though he supposes that it’s a fair trade, since Lin Shu’s also had to up his own proficiency with swords and spears to match Jingyan’s.

Neither does he mention that he’d only bought this bow on a whim because it reminded him of the one Lin Shu used. A resemblance that the young marshal had swiftly noticed, from the way he’d filled entire swathes of paper with gleeful gloating, only punctuated by a brief note on how he’d restrung it and adjusted the tension to match.

(Jingyan had kindly reminded Lin Shu about the fact that he’d gone and taken one whole day off to go diving for pearls that time the Jing army had been at Donghai, apparently having completely forgotten that he wouldn’t be able to bring the pearl back with him anyway.

The answering blankness had somehow conveyed a very mulish silence nevertheless.

Jingyan had rolled his eyes before writing if you really want it back I can always ask a courier to bring it over, it’ll just take time to reach the border.

And money, came the reply, or do you think I’ve no idea how much it costs to send something from Jinling? Nah, just keep it and go spend that money on food instead, you’re like a stick.

You’re just jealous because I’m taller, Jingyan does not answer, because he can be the better person here, so instead he writes Tried my mother’s hazelnut pastries yet?)

Nihuang gives him an inscrutably knowing look, even though Jingyan’s plenty sure he hasn’t shown any signs of his thoughts. “Maybe you should teach Qing-er then,” she muses as she comes back down to sit at the table. “The way he’d always playing around, I don’t know if he realised that he’s going to take over Father’s position someda– huh.”

Jingyan glances up from where he’s pouring out another glass of cold water, and finds her attention apparently caught by the documents he’d left out on the desk. “What is it?”

At his nod of permission Nihuang lifts a half-familiar paper from the stack, and there’s a brief moment of alarm when he spots Lin Shu’s handwriting, though it fades when he realises it’s not one of their written conversations.

Luckily Nihuang doesn’t notice either way, too intent on reading. “This naval strategy…” she finally says, “it’s just like the one we received some time ago, when Yunnan was under attack by river.”

Jingyan doesn’t need to feign his surprise. “Really?”

Nihuang nods, smiling faintly. “It saved all of our lives.”

“Oh,” Jingyan answers a little dumbly, his mind spinning. All of this is quite real, obviously, everything has convinced him of that, but for some reason it hadn’t struck him how Lin Shu too existed in this same world as him, more than just another body he sometimes woke up in. Rather slow of him, he thinks wryly, Lin Shu would have a laughing fit if he found out.

The specifics of this paper escape him now – it’d been part of some grand point Lin Shu had been trying to make, he thinks, as if they didn’t both know he was just cribbing the strategy from Nie Duo – but Jingyan doesn’t even need to look at the paper to see that familiar handwriting half his own. “Do you know who sent it?”

Nihuang shakes her head, her expression clouding over. “Father refused to tell me who’d sent it, forbade me from even mentioning it to Qing-er.”

And as if everything’s just been waiting for this last piece to fall into place, Jingyan feels the thing niggling at the edge of his consciousness, just out of realisation.

“Jingyan-gege…” Nihuang says, slow and terribly hesitant, “what do you know about the northern b–”

“Your Highness!” comes Qi Meng’s harried shout from outside, and Jingyan has never been more infuriated with any of his men in his life. “Duke Mu is here, he says the Duchess is to go with him immediately!”

Jingyan looks across the table to find his own frown reflected fiercely back at him.

Nihuang rises, looking suddenly older than she is, and says, quietly, “Be careful, Jingyan-gege. I don’t know what’s going on but I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” Jingyan says honestly, and doesn’t press her for whatever it was she had been about to ask earlier. He stands to see her out. “You be careful, too.”

Nihuang nods firmly, then she turns and is gone.

(Spoke with Nihuang today, Jingyan writes before going to bed that night. I don’t think you’ve met her yet, she’s the daughter of the Duke of Yunnan.

You know, he finds written beneath it the next time he wakes up in his own room, it’s been a whole year and that’s the first I’ve heard you talk about any lady. And don’t say Xia Dong, she’s just terror manifest.

The raised eyebrow is clearly audible, even via text.

Jingyan snorts, grabbing the brush that sits ready and waiting, as always. Nonsense, he starts, then pauses for a moment before adding I think you’d like her.

He’s looking oddly forward to the reply, whatever it is: which one, and don’t say Xia Dong or even well certainly she’ll like me, all the girls do – though the last of that is nonsense, seeing as there aren’t really any more ladies hanging around the border pass than in Jing Manor.

But he never hears from Lin Shu again.)

–

iv.

Jingyan still finds himself in his room when he wakes up the next day.

And the next, and the next after that.

(On the eighteenth morning in a row he remains stubbornly stuck in Jinling’s oppressive warmth Jingyan punches the wall so hard it almost cracks cleanly in half – or maybe that’s just him.

Zhanying hurries up, voice tinged with ill-concealed worry. “Your Highness?” he says tentatively, except the words themselves feel like a shackle now.

Jingyan leans just slightly against the cool smoothness of the wood, and tells himself to breathe.

“Zhanying,” he says, finally, “what do you know about the northern border army?”

It’s the Chiyan Army, not just any old military! echoes Lin Shu’s voice in his head.

“…not much,” hedges Zhanying, and it clearly isn’t a lie but his eyes are also very wide.

The wrongness from before congeals into an ugly mess, settles decidedly in his heart. It’s the only thing he can be sure of not imagining.

Jingyan suddenly feels very tired indeed. “It’s nothing.”)

–

v.

And then he finds out in the worst way possible: far too late, and all at once.

.

.

.

would have been: jingyan finding out the truth about what’s been happening, which is fairly true to kimi no na wa canon except that it’s everything at meiling instead of a meteor extinction event. in jingyan’s present time he finds the lin manor in absolute disrepair, asks questions of his mother that make both of them sad, and eventually forces a bodyswap to save lin shu and the chiyan army by… using the pearl somehow? and how would he stop this single-handedly anyway? never quite managed to figure either part out. though on his side lin xie is shown to also have realised Something was going on with lin shu (like zhanying realised about jingyan) and even if he doesn’t buy the “hey i’m from the future” shtick, he at least would be willing to hear out someone with a good idea of what’s currently happening in the capital, which helps.

anyway there would’ve been one section where we finally get lin shu’s pov which is when he realises what This Bloody Idiot xiao jingyan is trying to do and curses up a blue streak. from there this could’ve had one of two endings:

a HE where jingyan succeeds, lin shu and the chiyan army survives, and they forget but eventually find each other again (after remembering when jingyan sees lin shu doing archery or vice versa).

or a BE where jingyan doesn’t succeed and we end up right back in the canon timeline, dammit guys. optional extra being that changsu remembers for some reason even though jingyan doesn’t… but sometimes, jingyan can’t help thinking that changsu reminds him of someone. a person he’d forgotten? angst ensues. the end.