#mostly because i fell out of the fandom loop a bit and also i have written the plot a long time ago and some things I'd do differently now

[sygneth]

I have always admired people who could write one fic or draw a comic for years because I am living in a constant fear of not finishing what I have started. Not in a 'maybe something terrible will happen to me' way, but simply knowing myself and that after a couple of months or years, I will catch a new fixation and finishing the old story will become hard. And yeah sure, I have heard people say "You don't have to finish if it doesn't interest you anymore" or "It's your art and you decide what it will be about" and I fully agree, but I still love those old things I came up with you know? I still love these characters and I want their stories to be told, but at the same time there already are new characters with new stories in my head and I want to tell them too.

[purplemninja]

Here is my best explanation on why Six dropped Mono:

---------------Context: This is copy and pasted from a comment I made on Tericho’s part 2 Shadow Six video where he unfortunately joined the ‘pin all of the blame of the world’s distortion on Six and only Six’ party, and the whole 'the world's distortion is all Six's fault' argument is the one that pisses me off the most. I pointed out that Mono not releasing Thin Man and Thin Man not kidnapping Six could've also prevented the time loop, but some people replied saying that if Six didn't betray Mono then Thin Man wouldn't exist. I replied showing some information that David Mervik gave in an interview that Tericho failed to look at, while also using all of the official answers that the devs gave us on why Six dropped Mono, in-game stuff that is mostly ignored and a few other things that few people consider. I’ve already copy and pasted this explanation of mine a couple of times on the LN subreddit, on Six’s page on the fandom wiki and a post I made on the LN community on Amino, so I thought I’d put it here too for more people to see and gain some new insight as people have told me that my explanation is a good one. Without further ado, here is my copy and pasted reply, and quick warning, this will be a bit long so prepare yourself:-------------

I need to mention this point to debunk the ‘The world’s distortion is all Six’s fault argument’, which as I said is the one that pisses me off the most, as it shows that while it’s unclear how it works, that Thin Man existed before Mono’s cycle began. I’ll kind of get back to this later.

So here are all of the answers that the devs would give us on why Six dropped Mono:

1:

The LN Twitter shed a bit more light on this:

2:

3:

-----------------------------

And so with all of these breadcrumbs, here is my best explanation on why Six dropped Mono:

These point to the reason why she let go of Mono is because the way he forced her back into the reality she hated against her will. Because the music box in the signal tower put Six into a fantasy that she didn't want to be separated from, similar to the viewers with the tvs. And what happens when you interrupt the fantasy that the TVs give the viewers? The viewers turn hostile, just like Six when Mono begins to smash the music box. The only difference is that the viewers will try to kill Mono if he disturbs them without turning off the TVs too, but Six initially shares her escapism and fantasy with Mono, she wanted Mono to join her in the fantasy too, and when he begins to force her out of it she then turns hostile. And like the Twitter said: the more of us understand the pain Mono caused Six than we realise.

And remember, the two of them used to call to each other as safety and communication, and now Mono is using that calling system against her. Mono shouts at Six to get to her music box to break it, and each time he hits it Six hunches over and screams in pain, so every hit to the music box causes Six physical pain. Mono tortured Six in his attempt to save her in signal tower. Sure it may be a necessary evil, but that's easily said when you're not the one on the receiving end of said torture, and for her own good or not it was still torturous for Six.

And so finally, after being kidnapped and practically torn in half (Shadow Six's creation) by the monster that Mono let out (and Six tried to prevent that from happening), being twisted and turned into a monster, torturously forced back to the reality she hated by Mono, given no time to process what just happened because the flesh walls start giving chase immediately afterwards and just barely managing to get onto the ledge near the exit - do you really think that an already mentally ill 9 year old kid would be in the right state of mind to think rationally and make a well thought out decision? Especially when everything around her is literally still collapsing? The platform that Six was on broke off and fell shortly after she began entering the exit, so whether she knew that would happen or not either way she had to think fast but was not in the right state of mind to think rationally, so she let go.

Obviously none of this justifies Mono getting dropped, but it explains why she did it and shows that it's not really her fault, it's not Mono's fault either because he didn't know that the Thin Man was behind the door and it seemed like breaking the music box was the only way to get Six out of the Signal Tower. And like Mervik said, they both have different perspectives on this:

Mono sees this as "I was trying to help her and this how she thanks me?"

And Six sees it as "I tried to stop him from releasing a monster from the TV that tore something out of me and took me to a horrible place that tortured me and turned me into a monster but took me to a fantasy that helped ease my pain. Later my friend came and I was so excited to see him again despite him releasing a monster that did this to me and even offered him to join me in the fantasy, but instead he forces me back to the reality that I hate. No matter how much I screamed from the pain, he kept doing it anyway. After everything I did for him, this is the thanks I get?"

Of course we play the game as Mono, so we get only his perspective of this, making it biased since the game doesn't easily offer Six's perspective of this.

So in conclusion: there was once a Thin Man that wasn't Mono, so Thin Man's existence isn't Six's doing. Thin Man's, Mono's AND Six's actions ALL cause the cycle to repeat, but none of them were in the right state of mind or knew that any of this would happen, so it's neither of their fault. What happened on that ledge was all a misunderstanding and miscommunication didn't help in that regard, but of course the signal tower ensured that this would happen because the flesh walls subtly help Mono make it to the ledge to ensure that Six dropping him does happen, because if he falls into the pit normally it just goes back to the previous checkpoint, the game only continued when Mono gets betrayed by Six. The Signal Tower needed Mono to be broken by Six's betrayal to infect him with escapism and turn him into Thin Man. It also needed Six to not be in the state of mind to think rationally, so every hit to the music box caused Six pain and tortured her and it began chasing immediately afterwards to make sure that Mono couldn't explain to Six why he did that. Only after an unknown number of years does it offer escapism to Mono, now Thin Man, being 

so he goes back to the past and betrays Six by kidnapping her and creating Shadow Six, whatever Shadow Six might be. Keep in mind that this version of Six was innocent; she did nothing wrong to Mono at that point, so it's grossly unfair for Mono to lash out at her for betraying him because this version of Six didn't do that yet. And whether it was out of vengeance or for a 'second chance', Six didn't consent to being taken away to the Signal Tower, so Mono's actions of kidnapping the innocent version of Six is both selfish of him and betraying her. And in doing so it allowed the Signal Tower to set up its trap for young Mono again.

So Mono and Six betrayed each other, and the Signal Tower wanted this to happen. Since neither of them knew that this would happen, and didn't intend for everything to turn out like this, it's neither of their fault.

Apologies that this is an essay, but this everything I have to say about why the blame shouldn't be pinned on Six or Mono. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, hope you enjoyed.

Bonus. If anyone is still asking why Six are the Nome instead of the sausage, the devs have already answered this too:

[writteninsunshine]

Heaven’s A Lie - Lucas Baker/Ethan Winters - NSFW

Title: Heaven’s A lie

Author: Reno

Fandom: Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

Setting: Baker Family Estate

Pairing: Lucas Baker/Ethan Winters

Characters: Lucas Baker, Ethan Winters, Mia Winters, Zoe Baker, Jack Baker

Genre: Hurt/Comfort/Romance

Rating: M

Chapters: 1/1

Word Count: 1376

Type Of Work: One-Shot, Part of the For All These Times series, Whump Fic Bingo fill #1

Status: Complete

Warnings: Gay, Slash, Yaoi, MLM, Non-Con Kissing, Gore, Blood, Vomit, Sick Fic, Comfort From Whumper, Whump Fic Bingo, Trauma, Traumatic Experiences, Canon-Typical Violence, Mostly Canon Compliant

Disclaimer: I don’t own anything.

Summary: The last thing that Ethan needed was Lucas’s comfort, but that didn’t mean he was going to deny him. He didn’t have it in him to fight right now.

AN: Hey guys, it’s me again! Just thought I ought to say, if you want vague updates and to talk to me more, I have a writing Tumblr, too! Twitter is Sunshinecackle, and Tumblr is Writteninsunshine! I also have a writing Discord that is currently pretty dead. xD If you want it, please contact me on Twitter!

So, I was looking for a good whump fic bingo I could use for Ethan, since that man can take a beating like no one else. I didn’t find one I liked, so I made one myself. Requests are open for it, and only three slots are taken out of twenty-five, so please give it a look? People on FFN can PM me for the link or search HimboHungry on Twitter. It’s under my pinned! Warning, it’s a NSFW twitter.

Here we go: https://twitter.com/HimboHungry/status/1391276875415269379

With that, here goes nothing!

Resident Evil Fic Masterlist

Ethan Whump Bingo Fic Masterlist

Heaven’s A Lie

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There was no fighting it, now. Fatigue crept into every fiber of his being, and his eyes could barely stay focused and open. Pain wracked his body, and there was a distinct collection of saliva in his mouth, leaving him nearly drooling as he gasped for air like a man drowning, lost at sea.

0Heaving shoulders and a lurch in his stomach had Ethan crumpling to the grass, hands and knees bracing him against the dewy turf. The humidity of the swamp around them didn’t help the sweat dripping from his face, broken pants bursting from his nose. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to breathe out of that. With a painful heave, he gagged, coughed impossibly hard, and spilled the contents of his stomach all over the ground in front of him. It splashed against his arms, staining the sleeves of his shirt and hitting his face; he would have grimaced if he wasn’t otherwise occupied. Nothing but acid left him, as he hadn’t eaten in God knew how long. Dehydration was going to set in soon and only make the pounding in his head that much worse. Blood pumped loud and harsh in his ears, his vision swam and he felt another dry heave coming on. 

For a moment, he begged any God listening to end this torture, but his ardent pleading fell on deaf ears. Nothing reached out to save him, and death was still lightyears away. How could he still be kicking after all of this? Every injury, every removal of his limbs. Jack had seen to it that he wouldn’t die, he thought, and that was the most shocking education he’d ever had.

Eyes watery and nose dripping over his lips after six more emissions, he staggered back to his feet. Swaying for a few seconds, he scrubbed at his face, smearing the tears and mucus up his cheeks, trying to regain control over himself. He had to get to the barn that Lucas was hiding away in, he had to save Mia, himself, and Zoe. That was his main focus, the only driving force to keep him going right now. A one-track mind helped in this situation, and he stumbled forward, the light peeking out from under the door a beacon showing him where to go next. Would this kill him? Maybe. The heaviness in his arms wasn’t helped by the gun in his hand, his arms nearly limp as he fought against the weakness in his knees.

Not paying attention to where he was going, lumbering ever forward, a sudden shout left him and he plummeted to the ground hard. No time to catch himself, the biting pain in his leg too much for him to handle on such short notice, his face hit the mud hard enough to bruise his cheek. With the wind knocked from his lungs, he lay there in agony for a long moment, eyes screwed shut as he tried to catch his breath.

Once he could wrap his mind around filling his lungs again, his eyelids lifted and fell sluggishly as he pushed himself up off the ground halfway, hips still glued down. Turning to look at his right leg, Ethan winced at the sight of barbed wire looped around his ankle, a thin, short leash of it tied to a stake in the ground. It looked like the kind screwed down, meant to keep a dog in the yard. That was him, now, wasn’t it? A dog trapped in a yard that wasn’t his, kept by someone intent on keeping him. Tears leaked down his face again, his nose a snot faucet, the fire in his face unable to compare to the tight grip ripping into his flesh.

Footsteps alerted him to a presence, and he grabbed the shotgun not far from his hands. They quivered as he looked up, expecting a molded to be coming for him in his hour of darkness. Forcing himself to sit up on his hip, he leveled the gun on Lucas, surprised to see the other man out of his control room.

“Aw, look at you, Ethan…” Lucas chuckled, his grin splitting his face nearly in half, “Caught like a coyote in a trap.” 

Ethan was hyper-aware of Lucas’ southern drawl, ‘cai-yote’ leaving his lips, and he clicked another bullet into the gun in his hands.

“Now, now, no need for that,” Sauntering over, Lucas pried the shotgun from Ethan’s hands with more ease than the injured man wanted to admit to, and he watched as Lucas set it aside. Apparently, he had more sense than to simply throw it, and Ethan recognized that all too well. Self-preservation, at best, but at least Ethan wasn’t going to get shot.

“Fuck off.” Ethan managed, his voice wavering, cracking as Lucas kneeled down to take Ethan’s chin in his filthy hands.

“You ain’t in any position to tell me what to do, now, are ya, Ethan?” Lucas shook his head with a happy chortle, leaning in quickly enough that Ethan was stunned, stuck in place.

Dry, cracked lips met his in a violent kiss, and he tasted blood, snot, salt, and bile as Lucas’ tongue strong-armed its way into his mouth. A disgusted grunt left him as Lucas plundered his mouth, taking from him what he wanted and leaving no room to struggle against his advances. Ethan was exhausted, in too much pain to fight him as Lucas tugged him forward by his armpits, straining the limited reach of the barbed wire lacerating his skin. Another cry of pain left him when Lucas bit into his lip hard enough to split his plump, chapped flesh, leaving a trail of blood down his chin.

“There you go, Ethan… Look so good like this.” Lucas was nearly purring in excitement, blood thrumming through his system, “Want to make you mine.” His whispers against Ethan’s lips almost left him bereft, but he was sure he was past that point, now.

“Wh-wh-what do you want, Lucas?” His tone wasn’t as rough, wasn’t as spiteful as he’d wanted, but Ethan had to take whatever he could get at this point. Spitting at him, Ethan glared as hard as he could with= his wet eyes and watery, almost stern frown. 

“Don’t go playing hard to get, now, Ethan. It’s unbecomin’. You’re dependent on me to get you outta this, ain’tcha? You oughta be nicer to me.” Lucas’s smarmy smile almost made Ethan sick again, he felt his stomach railing against his insides, bile rising in his throat.

Another rough kiss met his mouth, his blood mingling with Lucas’s saliva, staining both of their teeth pink. Suddenly, Ethan shoved at him, unsure when he cared not to give him his ire. God knew Lucas deserved it. Turning just enough to feel safe in this moment of weakness, a few dry heaves soon produced more stomach acid to slap on the ground, splattering more against his chest and arms.

“Can’t handle yourself no more?” Lucas asked, absently rubbing Ethan’s back as he spilled his stomach contents again, eyes red and puffy from tears and throat hoarse. Quivering, he leaned into Lucas’s touch, hating himself for wanting the comfort he provided. Elbows buckling, he did his best to fall to the side that his vomit wasn’t on, shocked to find Lucas scooting forward and sitting down cross legged.

Yanking Ethan into his lap, he held him close, wiping at his face and sweaty forehead.

“Pushin’ you too far, baby boy?” Lucas asked softly, his voice almost tender and eyes soft as he took in the sheer amount of pain in his face. Ethan nodded vaguely, eyelashes fluttering against his bruised cheekbones. Lucas was right. If he’d stayed away, he wouldn’t be suffering like this. On the other hand, Mia would have been, and he couldn’t find it in himself to give up on her. Eyes sunken in, he looked like he might pass out, and Lucas took pity on him. Reaching for the shotgun, he held it up above Ethan’s oblivious head, his eyes closed to the world, before slamming it down against his temple as hard as he could.

The world swam for a moment, Ethan’s vision hot and white for just a second before everything went dark.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

AN: Welp, I feel like this vaguely covers another part of the whump bingo, but I’m not going to count it because the theme is still being caught in a snare. At any rate, I hope you guys enjoyed the ouchies. I had fun writing this! It’s partially a vent piece, as a lot has been happening lately and it’s driving me crazy not getting it out.

Prompt: Caught In A Snare

[thelostguardianau]

The Lost Guardian- Chapter Eight

“Heed the Silenced”

(Authors note: aha.. yknow I should probably stop making promises for this fic. Months later, w/ a chapter that doesn’t have Thomas in it, three different outlines down and i’m really just at the mercy of this fic at this point xD considering midway through writing this chapter I had to cut and rewrite an entire scene i’d spent a month on bc I’d decided that Dee had a chance at redemtion that added an actual direction and a tangable end goal to this story. So. Yeah. And!! A loud Thank You!! to @bumblebeekitten for helping me bounce ideas back & forth for this au and being my beta for this chapter!!)

Character Info & Art:

Patton | Logan | Roman | Virgil | Remy | Deceit | ??? | ???

Chapter Seven | Chapter Nine

Fandom: Thomas Sanders Sides

Pairings: Eventual Polyamsanders (LAMPR/CALMR-a.k.a LAMP/CALM + Remy ‘Sleep’ Sanders)

Warnings: THIS CHAPTER IS KINDA DIALOG HEAVY!(sorry) Currently depicted as morally grey Deceit(subject to change in future chapters), though the side of Deceit from his first appearance doesnt make an appearance in this chapter and it is explained why, mentions of past betrayal and dark descriptions of bodily concepts, curses, limitations, and changes only really explained as possible through the lore of this au. Deceit speaks in riddles because he has to, ominous warnings. Virgil still isn’t okay mentally. Mentions of indifference to death, lack of selfworth or self preservation. (Let me know if I need to add anything!)

[[MORE]]

Brown eyes flutter open at the chilly breeze of a fan, and the ravenette’s mind comes to realize that he’s been moved from resting on his stomach to laying on his back. Groggy from his much too short nap, it takes a few moments to realize there are no warm bodies near him or under him, no breathing or chatter of familiar voices to sooth him.

The room, he realizes, is empty.

The room itself is, in fact, not Remy’s bedroom at all.

Shooting straight up, Virgil’s first clear thought is that he’s back at home. At his apartment, this time in his hoodie yet still roughed up from his latest ‘adventure’. The scene is eerily familiar, and yet he knows this time that work is not where he needs to be. It’s already daylight and his mind now knows this familiar scene, he should feel alone. Yet, this time he can hear the sound of honking cars and people, his loud neighbor from upstairs stomping around.

It doesn’t make sense as he walks to his window and peers out to see vague cars and people, he can’t even seem to make out any individual faces. It’s grey and raining outside, but there is no pattering sound against the foggy window. ‘What’s happening?’ Virgil wonders.

“Life seemed so simple a week ago, even months ago, did it not..?” A familiar voice drifts from behind him. Ice cold fear shoots down the ravenette’s spine as he recognizes the voice.

“I can hardly believe you were able to leave it, your routine. It was your everything, back when you came to terms with what you had left. Am I wrong, Virgil?” Whirling around to face the voice, Virgil finds the terrifying ex-Guardian sitting on his couch looking quite at home, if a little sheepish.

“What do you care?” He spat back, stepping back against his window.

“I am only looking out for you, you know. I have been protecting you all your life. Of all people I think I would know what is best for you, don't you think? We are connected after all, you and I.” The man sighed, making a surrendering motion with his hands.

“Why would I trust you?! You tried to kill me yesterday!” Virgil growled. “Why--h-how are you even here!?”

“False, my dear Virgil. I tried to warn you. Sure,” The guardian rolled his hand as he spoke, “I am forced to have a round-about way of speaking my truths, it is just part of my consequences it seems. But how else was I going to get you to listen to me after the others fed you lies about me? I do sincerely apologize for my other half being rough, though. I cannot quite.. Control.. Him.” The guardian tilted his bowler hat down to guiltily hide his eyes, regret briefly twisting his expression.

Finally the Guardian stood, dusting himself off as if his immaculate attire had acquired dust from just existing in his apartment. “I needed my physical body to reach yours and make our soul connection strong again, so that my soul could reach yours. However.. The pain I caused you was far from my intention. I am deeply regretful that it came down to.. That awful encounter.

“To answer your question though, Virgil, I am here because I created ‘here’. A realm made to form this illusion of being home, sweet home, just on the corner of the little street you had come to live on for the past year. It is all my doing. Where you stand is simply an illusion only you and I can access, a manipulation of your dreams and memories. The only place where the real me can talk to you mostly unhindered.” The guardian gestured to his surroundings.

“It takes only one person to flip your life on it’s head, a matter of hours to make the decision of a lifetime, and a matter of days to have completely changed your life’s direction,” He turned to Virgil, and looked him straight in the eyes, feeling distant and lost.

“And only a matter of years to succumb to the depression of the lonely consequences..”

Virgil blinked at that. The sad, longing tone had him thrown for a loop; it almost felt like the Guardian wasn't even quite talking to Virgil. “I-What..? I.. I don’t understand.”

The Guardian shook his head, snapping out of it and refocusing himself. "Nevermind that. It is time I talked to you for real, if you will have me?" The Guardian held out a hand politely, though there was no real expectation for Virgil to take it.

After a pause, Virgil gave a slight nod, still suspicious of the other's intent. The Guardian returned the nod, and his hand fell to his side.

“I am limited to the time that you rest and for now I will not be able to explain myself thoroughly, so, I ask you to understand that I do not expect you to trust me when I am done. I honestly do not expect you to ever trust me. With the mistakes I have made, I firmly believe I would not deserve it.”

Virgil blinked in surprise, not having expected his captor to admit to his faults straight off the bat.

“Okay.. Well, we’re here, might as well hear your side of the story. So.. Shoot.” Virgil said lightly, distrust and suspicion still evident in his tone and stance.

“I would assume at this point you are well aware of how the story you have been told paints me as the villain, a mastermind seeking power, immortality, and revenge? At least, that is what I am led to believe is still the story, it has been many years since I have heard the tale first hand… And... Well. Would that not be so lovely?” Virgil made a face, eyes narrowing in confusion.

“I am serious. Life would be so much easier if it was all black and white, true or false, good and bad, would it not? If those who meant well knew everything and those malicious few could not corrupt anything?” The Guardian frowned a bit, frustrated with his words that couldn’t seem to cooperate with him.

“Would it not be lovely if I could talk to you without fighting to keep from turning every honest thought into a question or theoretical statement just to let it be said? That my words could hold a meaning not forcibly disguised in the forms of fables and riddles?” The Guardian looked down lamely, his words tapering off in agitation. For a moment, Virgil waited as the Guardian was silent, contemplative. Then, the next moment the Guardian’s face scrunched up in sadness and his words were soft as he placed a hand over his golden wrist markings.

“My story is complicated, and twisted with shades of grey. One could say what I did was an attempt to keep you safe, another could say that what I did was outlandish and impulsive, and stupid. But no one will be able to tell you that what I did went according to the plan I had... at first. No one will tell you that my intention was to save you, to keep your fate safe. No one will tell you that my plan was ruined. Because there is no longer anyone who remembers what happened that night except for me,”

The Guardian’s eyes flicked up to meet the ravenette’s, a hurt look passing over his face as he continued. His steady voice now just barely trembled with uncertainty as he continued.

“No one but me and the soul who wants so desperately for everyone to forget. The soul who ripped my own in two to bury the secret, and ruin you and I both.”

“My final warning is this: Beware of the man who carries the world on his shoulders unflinchingly, he will be watching you closely. You have immunity to his power thanks to our connection, you might use this knowledge well to find the truth that lies in plain sight. However, your fate lies in the decisions you chose to make with this knowledge, I can only warn you of what might come.” The Guardian nodded solemnly, choosing to finish his cryptic warning there.

Virgil stood there, reeling with the information. Sure, he definitely wasn’t completely convinced he could trust this cryptic stranger, Guardian? Foe? Friend? Virgil wasn’t really sure what to call him anymore. But damn, his life was already so fucking crazy, this was all just fucking crazy! He could just be dreaming for all he knew.

But… Deep inside, he was hoping he wasn’t.

This was, well. This wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear when facing the man whose, er, body? Had originally tried to strangle him? Now he’d heard his sob story and, well, Virgil wasn’t that easy to fool, but he’d also been told that it wasn’t expected that he’d trust the guy even in the end and he didn’t really want to.

He’d been on the path to death for so long, and then just two days ago everything had changed. So much was happening, it was frankly exhausting. What the fuck was he, some book protagonist? Couldn’t he get a little time to think about all this before he went crazy?

Still, something under all his incredulity begged to hear the guardian out. He vaguely wondered how Stockholm Syndrome worked before he gave in a little. What difference did a little more crazy make in his life at this point?

“Fine, I’ll heed your warning, or whatever the fuck. But only if you can tell me what you mean when you said that this guy ripped your, uh, soul? In two.” Virgil huffed, partially relaxing. It was odd how comforting he found it to be, floating in this weird feeling imaginary world, where he could interact with objects that weren’t real. It felt like he was really standing in his home, and yet it was just built from memory.

The guardian’s solemn expression formed into a grim smile, eyes distant once more before nodding. “I will do the best that my words will allow.” Virgil nodded, and waited for the now very familiar stranger to gather his words and take a breath. Then he began, his markings lightly flashing gold.

“You find yourself whole one day, as you have always been. To be whole of body, whole of mind, both human and guardian in nature. To have conscious thought and control over your whole physical being and soul..

“You find that yourself and others of the winged variety are capable of separating your soul from your being, though only the most Elite can do it well. You find out the family you made would soon be in danger. You then find yourself lost and alone when you once had a home to call your own.

“You find yourself knowing a truth, a perilous truth. Your home is in shambles now that you are gone, yet they do not know it. This truth is at fault, but the blame is not fully your own in a world built on lies.

“The source of truth tucks itself into blankets of grey, drawing itself further from discovery with each passing day. Now only you know the truth. The source of the truth finds you, it seeks to hide you too.

“You find yourself split one day, as you have never been before. Forced apart from the body, trapped within the mind. Guardian in nature, to have conscious thought and your dying soul trapped within, a false mind piloting the puppeteered confines of a broken body with a blind goal.”

“You find you cannot control what you used to, you are a prisoner to a body that is no longer your own, mostly unconscious to the world around it. Crazed by the false emotions that fuel it.”

“The you that used to be is no longer, and has not been for over a hundred years. The world that knew you knows not of what you’ve become. Knows not of the shackles that bind you.

“The you that used to be is no longer, and will never be again.” The Guardian finished, hesitant yellow eyes meeting Virgil’s carefully. Phantom goosebumps trail down Virgil's arms as the final sentence strikes a cord in him.

Virgil found he really wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, the rawness in the other’s tone spoke volumes of the sore spot they’d reached.

“Your body rests, but your mind also needs time to process today. I shall see you when you next rest, though only if you wish to seek me. Rest well knowing that you will not be scooped from your safety once more, as I hope I’m never to do so again. And...” The guardian paused, considering their next words very carefully.

“I know it is selfish to ask... but, I hope and wish that Thomas is alright, after all this time... Do take care of him, would you?”

Virgil paused and stared, finding only concern and longing in the guardian’s expression. And, well, fuck. What a way to pull at a guy’s heartstrings.

“Er, yes. Yeah. I’ll try my best.” Virgil gave his signature mock salute, the Guardian tipping his hat in return.

“Trying is all I could ever ask of you, Virgil. Rest well, you will need it.” And with that final sentence, the world around Virgil gently grew dark, and he sunk into the comforting arms of sleep.

Despite it all, Virgil still found his mind vaguely conscious. Sluggish at best, but awake nonetheless.

He figured it was likely some lingering effect from the Guardian’s dream realm, but didn’t dwell on it. His life had way too much else going on to be debating the side effects gained from Guardian powers.

First, he’d been pretty damn convinced two days ago that he was going to be a goner by the end of the month. Completely resigned to die believing that his very existence was scorned by the world he’d been unwillingly born into.

Then Patton had stumbled onto his shitty apartment’s roof, found him in all of his resigned and depressed glory, and changed his life forever.

They’d mostly skipped the whole ‘Human nature is a series of life, death, and rebirth’ spiel that guardians were known to give in these situations because... Well, It wasn’t like they’d really had time to address it before the truth about his soul had come out. That he wasn’t exactly human to begin with.

Virgil didn’t think that Guardians had ever had a situation like his before. There wasn’t a protocol for comforting a kidnapped guardian soul. It’d never been a possibility before!

So it wasn’t surprising then, that Virgil didn’t have any better of a time processing it.

His whole life, all that he’d known to be true, all that he’d believed in? Everything had been uprooted and turned on its head. He’d apparently been living a life that was not supposed to be.

Perhaps for the first time in two days, Virgil realized that the thought of his death at the end of the month had not been consistently worming into his brain. It had once been something he could never seem to stop thinking about.

The death indicated by his soul timer was now perhaps the farthest thing from his mind.

Perhaps the strangest thing so far was that he wasn’t alone anymore. He’d possibly had more physical contact with other people in the short two(three?) days since this adventure started then he’d had in the past 16 years.

And wasn’t it just the cherry on top that he’d also gotten nearly choked out by the very guardian accused of kidnapping his soul in the first place? And now he was considering trusting the damn guy.

Virgil hollowly wondered why he even cared.

Why did he care about staying alive now when he’s spent his whole life believing he never would? Up until two days ago, that belief had still been true. But now? Avoiding death was the goal, Logan had stated as much.

Really, would Virgil lose anything by trusting the banished guardian? Even if the guardian was trying to trick Virgil and got him killed, what difference would it make? That’d always been the goal before. What did he, Virgil, really have to lose?

If it happened that Virgil lived past his twentieth birthday, if he became a guardian like he was supposed to be in the first place. Would he want that? Did he want that?

He wasn’t sure. Didn’t know if he ever had been.

His life had been built on resignation to the inevitable. Nothing seemed to motivate him towards liking or hating that possibility. He was just that.

Indifferent.

And wasn’t that just the greatest revelation of the night? Finding out that you’re indifferent to living or dying.

Once this was all over, if Virgil lived that long, he would make a note to see a therapist. He knew very well that this kind of mindset was unhealthy to keep. It just couldn’t be helped that the nineteen years he’d lived with this particular affliction couldn’t be fixed by a few extra hugs and comforting words.

Even if he didn’t like the fact that death sounded like the more peaceful option.

His thoughts paused, mentally sighing at the downward spiral he’d caught himself in. It was tiring, and going nowhere.

‘For now,’ he decided, ‘I’m just going to see how this plays out. The Guardian said that none of the others remember the truth, or whatever. So, It’s a ‘he said-they said’ situation right now...’

‘I’ll have to keep an eye out for the guy that he warned me about, then. Who knows if he's as dangerous as The Guardian made him out to be. It’s hard to tell with the weird way he has to talk..’

Virgil paused again, a realization striking him. If he could have groaned, he would have. Not once had he been given or even remembered to ask for the name of said Guardian. What was he supposed to call the rogue Guardian now? He couldn’t just keep calling him The Guardian!

Amidst the disbelief of such a slip up, a foreign yet familiar feeling prodded questioningly at his conscious mind. Adding confusion into the mix of emotions, he returned the feeling with a questioning thought of his own.

He briefly heard the Guardian’s whispy voice once more, now acting with permission.

“You may call me Janus”

Then all at once, Virgil woke up.

.

.

.

Chapter Nine

[alipeeps]

New tag game: Post pictures of your first ever (fictional/celeb) crush to the latest one and tag five others to continue the game

Thanks to @minmoyu for tagging me and ooof, are you sure you’re ready for this?!! :D I have been around/in fandom for a loooooong time and at first I thought, okay, no way I can list all my crushes, there have been SO many and we’ll be here all day but then as I started compiling a list I found I was having fun reminiscing and decided, what the heck, yeah, let’s do em all... or at least all I can remember! :D

There have absolutely for sure been other more minor crushes and passing fancies along the way, but these are the big ones that I remember (and that, in more recent years, I can track by going through my posted fanfics on AO3 and even *shudder* FFNET and seeing which shows I was into enough to want to write fic about the characters).

[Quick note: with rare exceptions, for actors I am listing them by the character they played rather than just the actor. Whilst there are actors that I like in multiple roles (and conversely, characters who on paper I would normally be into but are played by actors who do nothing for me, and hence the character generally does nothing for me either), for the most part it is the character I really have the crush on.]

I’m going to put this under a readmore cos it has gotten ridiculously long:

So... without further ado:

1. MORTEN HARKET from a-ha - OKay so, dating myself badly here but... I had the *biggest* crush on Morten Harket when I was a teenager. Pretty much the entirety of my side of the bedroom I shared with my sister was covered in posters of a-ha, and Morten in particular. I even had a heart-shaped Morten Harket pillow! :D I loved a-ha’s music (still do!) and I wanted to go see them in concert when I was 14 but my parents wouldn’t let me (*sob*). I did finally get to see them in concert in the early 2000s and they were BRILLIANT live (and Morten was still very very pretty)! 

2. RICHARD DEAN ANDERSON as MACGYVER - MacGyver is the first tv character I remember being really into and having a crush on, to the extent that I would record episodes of the show off the tv (onto VHS tape - yes, I am *that* old!) so that I could rewatch them (especially the ones where he got hurt - yeah, I was a whumper even then! :D)

3. KEIFER SUTHERLAND - One of my rare exceptions. I think I first saw him in Lost Boys (and loved him in that film) but it was his role as Doc Scurlock in Young Guns that really made me fall for both the character and him. I definitely remember seeking out any and all films he was in and buying any magazine he was interviewed in (and knowing far more facts about him than was probably healthy! :D) and even drawing a fanart portrait of him. :)

4. KYLE MACLACHLAN as SPECIAL AGENT DALE COOPER - I remember hearing about Twin Peaks before it started airing in the UK and it sounded so different and interesting... I watched it from the very first episode and very quickly developed a crush on Coop.  

5. BRENT SPINER as DATA - I think ST: TNG had been airing for a while before I stumbled across it but I quickly became hooked and Data was my favourite character right from the start. I definitely remember at one point buying an (unofficial) episode guide book so that I could look up which episodes were good Data-focused ones (especially ones where he got hurt! :D) so I could go out and buy the videos that had those episodes on (at the time the show was available to buy on VHS-tape with 2 episodes on each tape).

6. DAVID DUCHOVNY as FOX MULDER - Another show that I heard the buzz about and started watching right from the start and, like so many others, I immediately developed a crush on the snarky, enigmatic, troubled FBI agent with the weird name. The X-Files was the first show I ever tried writing (one, never-finished) fanfic for.

7. PAUL GROSS as BENTON FRASER - Man, Due South was such a good show! It was so quirky and clever and funny and Benton Fraser, with his huge heart and his serious demeanour and his gorgeous blue eyes, was just so darn attractive! He also got whumped a fair bit too! :D Due South was also the show that introduced me to the music of Sarah McLachlan (I was enough of a fan that I bought the show soundtrack on CD).

8. HUGH LAURIE as DR GREGORY HOUSE - This was a bit of an odd one for me because I had grown up knowing Hugh Laurie solely as a comedian/comic actor, known mostly for playing buffoons and genial idiots. And suddenly here he was with stubble, an American accent, and a limp, and he was hawt AF! :D It caused quite the feedback loop in my brain for a while which pretty much went “Wow, House is hot.... but it’s Hugh Laurie... but he’s hot... but it’s HUGH LAURIE!!1!”

I *loved* House (the first few seasons, at least) and oof a character with persistent pain (and a self-destructive streak a mile wide!) was a whumper’s dream. House was the first show for which I wrote - and published online - completed fanfics.

8. JOE FLANIGAN as JOHN SHEPPARD - Stargate Atlantis was my first proper online fandom, the first show I prolifically and repeatedly wrote fanfic for, and the first time I ever met in person an actor I was a big fan of (and while the show was still airing, to boot!). It was also my first introduction to the online community of whumpers! A bunch of us from the Shep Whump thread on Gateworld heard that Joe was going to be at a convention in London and we decided to book hotel rooms and meet up and go to the convention together and it was AWESOME! I can still remember seeing Joe *in person* for the first time and just,,,, struggling to believe he was actually here, in person, in front of me! He was super super lovely and humble too and took time to chat to everyone at the signing table and I clearly remember my brain just pretty much fritzing out during the photo session and being intensely aware of the sensation of Joe’s hand on my shoulder....

It was also super lovely to meet fellow fans, and online friends, in person for the first time and we had so much fun, and it kickstarted me going to lots of other conventions, including specific Stargate/SGA ones where I got to know lots of other lovely fans and online friends. I’ve met Joe about 4 or 5 times in total now and he’s been lovely every time.

9. PAUL BLACKTHORNE as HARRY DRESDEN - Gosh I loved the shortlived tv adaptation of The Dresden Files. I loved the fantasy aspect, the stories, the humour, and I especially loved Harry Dresden and how often he got whumped! :D 

10. DAVID TENNANT as THE 10TH DOCTOR - I had watched the Christopher Ecclestone revival of Doctor Who and enjoyed it well enough but I can clearly remember watching David Tennant’s first episode as The Doctor - on Christmas Day, at my brother-in-law’s house - and being aware, as I watched it that... ooookay, yes, I’m in trouble here... I like him... I like him a lot... :D I mean, I’m sure the fact that he got whumped so thoroughly in his very first episode had nothing to do with how quickly I fell for him... right? :)

11. ALEX O’LAUGHLIN as MICK ST JOHN - Another show that ended far too soon and just as it was getting *seriously* good. But also a prime example of my point about having a crush on the character not the actor. I looooooved Alex as Mick St John... and yet in Hawaii 5.0 he pretty much does nothing for me (the character is too stoic and the whump often too unrealistically glossed over). Anyway, in Moonlight he was my favourite kind of character - angsty, brooding, dangerous AF when he needed to be... and essentially immortal so you could whump the heck out of him and he’d recover so you could whump him again! :D

12. SIMON BAKER as PATRICK JANE - There is so much to love about Patrick Jane... his smarts, his sass, his angst... and Simon is a rare “against type” blonde crush for me (you may have noticed by now that most of my crushes follow a similar physical aesthetic - tall, slim/wiry, and dark-haired) and again here I think my crush is almost all to do with the character rather than the actor.

12. BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as SHERLOCK HOLMES - I’m almost ashamed to admit it, given the clusterfuck that both the show and its fandom became, but in the earlier seasons I had quite the crush on Benedict’s Sherlock (and okay, a little bit on Benedict himself - I did definitely enjoy some of his other roles too). It helps that I was already a huge fan of the Sherlock Holmes character (I’ve read all the stories and novels multiple times and was a big fan of the Granada adaptation starring Jeremy Brett - whose Holmes would definitely count as one of my more minor/passing crushes) already. Benedict is another crush that I have met in person, at a (actually, the first!) Sherlock convention and he was lovely in person - very genuine, very articulate and thoughtful.

13. TOM MISON as ICHABOD CRANE - I was excited for Sleepy Hollow as soon as I heard about it and I was SUCH a fan for the first couple of seasons (before TPTB completely destroyed it and it inevitably got cancelled (I didn’t even watch the last season and a half)) and Tom’s Ichabod (and his amazing chemistry with Nicole’s Abbie) was a large part of why. I also quickly became a big fan of Tom himself as he came across as so witty and self-deprecating and *fun* in all the behind the scenes/convention clips etc. I was lucky enough to also meet Tom at a convention and he genuinely is that witty and charming and lovely.

14. TOM WISDOM as ARCHANGEL MICHAEL - I think Dominion was possibly the first show that I got sucked into by seeing whumpy gifsets on tumblr! :D It was such a great show and also to date the most immersive, welcoming, cast-and-crew-interactive fandom I have ever been in. The cast and crew regularly live-tweeted the episodes, and interacted with fans on Twitter, and it was SO much fun. And Tom’s Michael was my favourite character right from the start - seemingly aloof but so much going on under the surface... and some really nice whump, especially in season 2! I was heartbroken when it was cancelled after only 2 seasons (and just as the plot was getting *really* interesting).

15. OLIVER JACKSON-COHEN as LUCAS - I was hooked on Emerald City right from the first episode. It was visually stunning, so atmospheric, and really intruiging. I love love loved Adria Arjona’s Dorothy (ngl, I had a bit of a crush on her too) and she and Lucas together were just... *chef’s kiss*. I mean... what an introduction to a character... she finds him crucified, bleeding, his wrists tied with barbed wire, and amnesiac.... and the whump only gets better and better from there on in! Like the entire first two episodes are just... Lucas whump! :D And his devotion to her... Emerald City was honestly the first show where I really got into a ship. I was *invested* in Dorcas, dammit! Aaaand sadly another excellent show that never made it past its first season.

16. JASON RALPH as QUENTIN COLDWATER - Another show that I watched right from the start, was heavily invested in.... and that the writers absolutely tanked and destroyed in later seasons. *cries* Quentin was such a brilliant viewpoint character for the show and I loved his awkwardness, and his angst, and his enthusiasm, and his adorable floppy hair... and how often he got whumped! 

17. COLIN MORGAN - I fell for Colin in Merlin (which I stumbled upon late, long after it had finished airing, and hence was able to binge-watch the entire 5 seasons!) and liked him enough to seek out his other works, such as The Fall, and Humans, and The Living and the Dead, and he was brilliant (and very pretty) in all of them... and his characters also seem to get whumped quite a lot! :D 

18. MATT LANTER as WYATT LOGAN - Wyatt was another of my favourite archetypes... absolutely badass and competent... but also tortured and angsty and capable of intense devotion. Another show that I watched because of whumpy gifs on tumblr and the second ever show where I actually got invested in a ship - Lyatt all the way, baby!! :D - aaaaaand yet another show cancelled before its time.

19. NOCTIS LUCIS CAELUM from FINAL FANTASY XV - my very first video game crush! I was recommended to play FFXV by fellow whumpers on the whumpshire discord because it was whumpy... and they were not wrong and I loved the game and I absolutely adored Noctis. FFXV is one of very very VERY few video games that I have actually played right through to the end. And possibly the only video game that has ever affected me to such an extent... I became so invested in the characters and their world and I actually found the last couple of chapters really hard to play because it was actually upsetting me emotionally. I had to take a break for a couple of weeks before I could go back and finish it!

20. CONNOR from DETROIT BECOME HUMAN - and from there I jumped straight into another video game crush! DBH was another game recommended to me for its whump potential and I, and many others, immediately fell in love with the quirky, sassy, self-sacrificing (if you play the game right!) “android sent by Cyberlife”. The game itself is really good too... although, I have tried to play through all the different endings to the story but have never yet managed to make myself play the machine Connor storyline.... I want to complete all the story branches... but I also just want Hank and Connor to be friends and to be happy! :D

21. ZHU YILONG - Ahhh... the beginning of the asian drama arc of my fandom life! I first came across Zhu Yilong after getting sucked into watching Guardian because of pretty (and whumpy) gifs on tumblr... and I’ve never looked back. He is one of the rare entries where I am pretty much guaranteed to like him in pretty much anything he does and my crush extends beyond Shen Wei, or his other characters, and into reblogging his fashion shoot photos, and keeping up with news of his work in general. He’s just... so darn pretty! And also so... blur! :D And the behind the scenes stuff and interviews of him with Bai Yu, during the Guardian era, just made me fall for him all the more. He’s also ridiculously talented - not only a fantastic actor, but a really good singer (I love his singing voice), he plays guitar and piano, and he can paint too!!

He’s also pretty much what made me start learning Chinese... because after Guardian I went seeking his other dramas to watch... only to find that many of them are only partially, or not at all, subbed. So I thought... why not try learning Chinese and then I’ll be able to watch his other shows? :D

21. JI CHANG WOOK - My first kdrama crush, and what a good one to start with! Healer was the first drama I ever watched and can you blame me for falling for JCW... especially when I followed up Healer with The K2?! I’ve liked him in pretty much everything I’ve watched him in. Although I do wish he would go back to doing more action-based shows as he is sooo good at them... but he seems to prefer the romcom genre these days, which is something I am nottt always a fan of tbh.

22. JAKE HSU as MENG SHAO FEI - Yet another show that I got sucked into by tumblr - and also one with a great, fun fandom through which I met lots of lovely people who I still follow/am mutuals with to this day. I just *adored* Jake’s character in History and I also loved the ship - Tang Fan and Meng Shaofei were awesome and adorable together and I was totally invested in both the ship and the gangster/cop/what happened years ago story happening alongside the ship. And Jake is just all kinds of cute.

23. XIAO ZHAN - Aaaand we are pretty much up to current day now... where The Untamed took over my life in the summer of 2019 and has yet to let me go. Xiao Zhan is another disgustingly talented human being - a fantastic singer and a really good actor, and also an artist - and he also just comes across as a genuinely sweet and charming person, and a very thoughful and earnest one too. And lbr he is ridiculously pretty, and his smile is just pure sunshine. 

24. LEE DONG WOOK as LEE YEON - The most recent entry to the charts.... a Korean actor I was aware of but whose work I hadn’t watched and whose looks didn’t particularly seem to grab me... until I watched Tale of the Nine Tailed and fell head over heels for Lee Yeon (and daaayum does red hair suit LDW!!) and very quickly began to find LDW’s looks very appealing (and oh my, does Lee Yeon whump well!!). And yes, I have now started watching Goblin. :D

Phew! Aaaand we are done! I’ll admit, I did think of a few more as I was compiling this list but I decided to categorise them as more “minor” crushes and not include them... otherwise we really could be here all day!!

I’m going to tag: @sarah-yyy​, @arlothia​, @howdydowdy​, @thepromiseweheldforlife​ and @the-wandering-whumper​!

[iwach4n]

this is basically an AU me and @snazzieyama have been talking about where haikyuu characters are the actors in Hamilton, and i haven’t been able to get it out of my mind so have an obnoxiously long set of headcanons about it

(i wrote this listening to the soundtrack, proper jamming i tell you)

CAST LIST (hear me out on some of these)

alexander hamilton - hinata shoyo

aaron burr - akaashi keiji

eliza schuyler - kageyama tobio

angelica schuyler - atsumu miya

peggy schuyler - yachi hitoka

john laurens / phillip hamilton - nishinoya yuu

marquis de laffayette - bokuto koutarou

hercules mulligan - tanaka ryuunosuke

george washington - sawamura daichi

thomas jefferson - tsukishima kei

james madison - yamaguchi tadashi

king george III - oikawa tooru

maria reynolds - kozume kenma

james reynolds / the doctor - kuroo tetsurou

samuel seabury - sugawara koushi

charles lee - lev haiba

george eacker - yaku morisuke

the bullet - shimizu kiyoko

HEADCANONS

hinata auditioned for hamilton despite having literally no theatre experience besides like school musicals and like one community theatre show. he was cast in ensemble at first but worked his way up to hamilton’s understudy and then the official hamilton

tsukishima auditioned for burr. he was salty that he was cast as someone else (his dynamic with yamaguchi was too good to pass up and akaashi had a better voice for Wait For It) at first but then he immediately clashed with hinata and took great pleasure with being able to roast him every night

in Alexander Hamilton, the laffayette/jefferson and mulligan/madison parts switch actors every show so bokuto, tsukishima, tanaka and yamaguchi all get to do it. sometimes they switch it at the last minute because “please dude my grandma’s come to watch i need to be on stage as much as possible”

tanaka has the Best fun on stage. he never fails to get the crowd pumped, he is jumping around and bringing so much energy, especially in his part in yorktown. it makes you mad that its a musical and you can’t start jumping up and singing along

suga was cast as seabury because he was perfectly good at the role and they preferred kageyama as eliza, which he auditioned for originally. he’s really good at it but it took way too long for Farmer Refuted to come together because him and hinata kept bursting out laughing. they both consider each other, like, the least threatening people ever, and they couldn’t take it seriously whenever hinata would have to get in suga’s face

SOMETIMES IT STILL HAPPENS!! if you watch carefully, you might see one of their lips twitch while they try to keep a straight face. the minute suga gets off stage, someone always has some cushion or piece of clothing he can laugh into because once he started laughing while his mic was still on

THE BIGGEST CAST JOKE IS ABOUT THE HEIGHT DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HAMILTON AND ELIZA!! kageyama looks so much taller than hinata (coz he is but its so noticeable when they’re alone on stage) and they torment hinata with pictures where it just looks ridiculous

oikawa always absolutely steals the show. he’s so dramatic, but he’s also one of the most simped-for cast members and sometimes he’ll throw a wink into the audience in the middle of You’ll Be Back to make things more interesting. 

also the bits in act 2 where he just comes in to watch and laugh at everything that’s happening? he’s so fun! just because he’s not the main focus of the scene doesn’t mean he isn’t gonna make the most hilarious facial expressions. half the audience ends up focusing on him instead.

daichi is the most commanding washington literally ever. he just comes on and he immediately takes over the stage. he barely has to try to give the character the air of authority. literally the perfect actor for the role

he’s also been in the show the longest. was cast as washington right off the bat and has been doing the role for multiple years. it makes him the unofficial dad of the cast and the go-to for advice since he’s seen a bunch of people do every other role

the “CALL ME SON ONE MORE TIME” line was another one that took too long for them to do without laughing. daichi has been doing this for ages but when he practices with hinata, he can’t help but laugh because this is the kid who he witnessed choke on hello kitty gummies with five minutes until the show began (back when hinata was in ensemble). hinata does the line too well and its hard to take it seriously at first

akaashi singing Wait For It is the literal most beautiful part of the show. he’s an amazing actor and his voice is incredible and it’s the sort of thing you could rewatch on loop for an entire week non-stop without getting bored

bokuto got akaashi the audition for burr, and even though their characters don’t interact too much their chemistry is really good. The “everyone give it up for everyone’s favourite fighting frenchman!” line is so genuine they just really admire each other as actors

lev auditioned for lee for the sole purpose of getting the line “i’m a general, WHEEEE”. he got the role mostly because he was just,,, really good at that line

atsumu refused to interact with anyone outside of rehearsals and performances for a solid month. the instagram of the cast had loads of photos on the story that were just mugshots of him saying “day 24, atsumu still won’t talk to us :(” whenever any of the cast take over it for a day

akaashi is the second most simped-for actor in the cast (after oikawa). you can literally feel people in the audience swooning in Dear Theodosia because he’s just so sweet

when yachi found out she was the only girl in the main cast she was literally terrified. she latched onto kiyoko really quickly and there’s a ridiculous amount of pictures that every fan has seen of those two together

kiyoko is really mesmerising as the bullet!! when she’s lifted her form is just stunning she just looks really nice okay-

every wondered whether kageyama would be like,,, actually good because he just seems kind of awkward off stage, but the minute he’s on stage and following a script, he’s like the perfect eliza

nishinoya has the perfect range for both laurens and phillip. fun and friendly yet still principled and serious rebel? check. small sweet nine year old? check. charismatic flirt? check. heartbreakingly dying from a gunshot wound? check.

tsukishima is a really unique jefferson. he’s not as flamboyant as the role usually is, but he’s super sassy to make up for it. it’s really refreshing and SO fun to watch. “uh,,, france?” becomes “france.” with a ‘are you stupid’ expression

yamaguchi wasn’t expecting to get anything past ensemble but he came in to audition with tsukishima and he is so good at what few lines he has. “which I wrote!” is said with such a scandalised tone, it gets a laugh every time

everyone who knew kenma before thought he’d be too awkward to do maria but he is actually really good once he gets past the initial awkwardness, he manages to portray her like a victim really well

i’ve already done like two of these so here’s some more scenes that took too long before they didn’t burst out laughing: eliza teaching phillip to play piano in Take A Break (just imagine nishinoya and kageyama doing it i can’t-), the duel in Ten Duel Commandments (the height difference between nishinoya and lev made them laugh every time they turned around), 90% of Say No To This but especially the kiss (kenma would just stop and get off like ‘no, i can’t, i can’t do this’ every time it was about to happen while hinata just started cackling)

part of the reason noya got cast as phillip as well as laurens was because he’s one of the only people who auditioned who was shorter than hinata

in rehearsals, akaashi has fallen off the table from The Room Where It Happens because they couldn’t time him jumping while the tablecloth was pulled off. there’s a compilation of the falls on youtube, no one knows who recorded them, let alone who posted it (it was kuroo)

speaking of kuroo, he takes his like five lines and he runs with them. he’s awesome as james reynolds but he’s also the fandoms favourite instagram of the cast because he just posts all the backstage shenanigans. he’s somehow always recording whenever something is going wrong.

he also teases kenma relentlessly about how their characters are married, but kenma is having none of it. it always goes like “awe we’re married” “,,, you’re literally abusive” or “come on, do it for your husband” “i’m cheating on you”

(i stopped here to jam to That Part of Hurrican. i wrote my way out hell i wrote my way to revolution i was louder than the crack in the bell i wrote eliza love letters until she fell-)

bokuto managed to rap Guns And Ships first try. he listened to it like twice, read the lyrics, and he could immediately do it. he took ages to do a convincing french accent though, and it pained everyone

TSUKISHIMA COULDN’T DO THE FAST PART OF WASHINGTON ON YOUR SIDE AND HAD TO ASK BOKUTO FOR HELP

bokuto is just,,, such a good laffayette. he’s jumping all over the place, flexing his muscles while he does the fast raps without looking out of breath at all. it seems almost impossible

also!!!! kuroo has a ridiculous amount of videos of bokuto backstage fortnite dancing to serious songs like Burn or Its Quiet Uptown

kageyama in Burn!!! heartbreaking and beautiful but he burns his hand on the letter too often. he’s gotten used to it at this point so he only slightly flinches when the flames touch his hand. its worrying

congratulations was almost brought back because atsumu really likes it and he absolutely kills it. they recorded him singing it in like a studio and everything because its just that good

when noya found out yaku was playing eacker he was so happy because they’re both short and he already looks ridiculous and tiny enough in the first duel

tsukishima will never admit how much fun he has with “southern motherfucking democratic republicans!!!” but its so clear his eyes literally shine (he kind of carries that line coz yamaguchi and akaashi are a lot more mellow)

oikawa once got dared to fortnite dance in reynolds pamphlet when he’s throwing the one singular sheet of paper. he was going to do it but the directors found out about it and literally threatened to fire him if he did it (they did it in a rehearsal to make up for it)

you know that bit in Your Obedient Servant where its like “careful how you proceed good man, intemperate indeed good man, answer for the accusations i lay at your feet or prepare to bleed good man”? literal chills from the look on akaashi’s face when he does it

whenever other cast members get food gifts from fans and they leave them unattended atsumu will always steal them. only daichi has figured out its him and he has kept quiet on two conditions - he leaves his alone, and he gets half of all the cakes

sometimes yachi just likes to lie down in the middle of the spinny floor and spin to destress. yamaguchi joins her sometimes.

there’s always a ton of people waiting at stage door, and kuroo has made it his mission to come out first and announce everyone as they leave. people play along with it and cheer for every person. some of the cast (mainly oikawa and bokuto) make it super dramatic and do massive bows as they walk out. kageyama never fails to look bewildered despite it happening every day

oikawa chills in full king gear backstage way before and way after he needs to. like half of his instagram is selfies is him in it doing dramatic poses. he’s broken the crown too many times because it fell off his head

hinata sometimes subconsciously does the My Shot dance while he’s going about his life. he can’t escape

they can be sorted into three groups: is the literal sweetest baby to their fans and is kind of shocked they even exist, adores having fans and fully expects them to exist, and the ‘i appreciate the support but pls leave me alone i want to go home’

i don’t know how to round this off but this is getting too long and its gonna keep on going because i’m listening to the soundtrack as i write. maybe there will be a part 2 one day.

[skaylanphear]

Paraplegic Adrien AU

I’m sure this had been done a dozen times already, but I found this draft in my old files and thought I’d add some finishing touches and post it. I’m trying to get back into the fandom, I guess. 

Paraplegic Adrien

- He was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident when he was a kid.

- Requires a wheelchair.

- Participates in Wheelchair Fencing and has been in the Paralympics once (the year prior).

- Finally being allowed to leave the house to participate in the Paralympics made him realize that he's not quite as helpless as his father makes him out to be.

- Rebellious Adrien still runs away from home to try and attend school, having mapped out the route and planned the whole excursion for weeks beforehand (Chloe helped—Adrien's the only person she actively helps with anything. She threw a fit when it was discovered that their school wasn't wheelchair accessible, and so the changes were made. Sorry, Alya, don't mean to ruin your hero's day good deed).

- Despite his own disability, Adrien still rushes to Master Fu's aid when he falls. Very rarely does Adrien decide that his own disability outweighs his ability to help other people.

- Finds the black cat Miraculous upon being escorted back home the first day.

- Is initially hesitant and surprised—why would he, of all people, be chosen to protect the people of Paris?

- Takes up the challenge anyway (because it's Adrien) and so we get Chat Noir, but with a few changes:

- I'll be honest, I really just wanted to headcanon a Chat Noir with, like, metal robot parts.

- Similar idea as far as the actual design of the suit, but there are robotic parts smoothly integrated so as to allow movement—around his knees, hips, ankles, feet, etc… He can't feel his legs, but the way he's synched up with his miraculous allows him to use his lower half. The metal bits are incorporated into other parts of the suit as well—like around his shoulders, etc… which allows for him to disguise the fact that he has a disability at all (his own subconscious choice). Everyone just assumes Chat Noir is a robot cat superhero or something—no one realizes he's paraplegic.

- He falls in love with Ladybug just the same.

- Finally is allowed to attend school and ends up in much the same predicament with Marinette as before. Alya: "Just because he has a disability doesn't mean he's nice—he's still Gabriel Agreste's spoiled-brat, model son."

- A lot actually continues on as the canon goes.

- Marinette still has a huge crush on Adrien.

- But instead of totally crashing and burning every time she talks to him (I mean, she still does sometimes), she quickly realizes that he's even more isolated than he is in the canon.

- And because Adrien is realistic about his disability, he doesn't go out of his way to include himself in activities he assumes he can't participate in (not that different from canon, I guess).

- Marinette will oftentimes go out of her way to include him in things, or make it possible for him to participate.

- She, Alya, and Nino end up doing a lot of things friendly to his situation as a result.

- And while Adrien is a very pleasant person, he is still trying very hard to be independent. He loathes it when people just come up behind him (thinking they're helping) and start pushing his chair around (Chloe). It takes a while, but Marinette is one of the few people he doesn't mind driving his chair, mostly because she's considerate about it: 

- She never does it unexpectedly.

- She always asks first, but not in a condescending manner—only when it appears as though he might need help.

- She doesn't take it personally when he tells her she's doing it wrong and is always trying to improve.

- He doesn't feel like she's doing it because he has a disability so much as it's just a facet of their friendship like any other.

- He also likes Marinette a lot because she never makes a big deal out of including him. To her, it's just an expected thing that doesn't require more or less effort than making an activity fun for someone else.

- In this way, their relationship becomes very habitual, which results in Marinette learning to be Adrien's friend much faster than she does in the canon.

- Also, Adrien is still famous. He's still a model and sets an example for his father's brand as far as inclusivity. People are, as a result, more forgiving of Gabriel's social behavior because of the example he sets in the fashion world. A guy who includes people with disabilities in his work can't really be bad, right? Right?! (wrong).

- There is a new theme, however, that deals with Adrien grappling with his physical abilities as Chat Noir versus Adrien. You know that old trope of Mari feeling like she wasn't good enough as Mari and so she's always scared when Chat finds out her identity? Take that and slap it on Adrien.

- He loves Ladybug and wants to tell her how he feels, but is also scared of what she'd think if she knew who he really was. Or that she'd lose faith in his abilities.

- This dichotomy is a constant frustration for him, and during his worse moments as Adrien, he sometimes wishes he could be Chat Noir all the time. But Mari is the one that generally pulls him out of these funks—either by her actions or words—and shows him that being who he really is isn't a bad thing at all. In this way, they have more of an equal back and forth relationship as civilians where Marinette is often reassuring Adrien as much as he uplifts her (this is a really good Adrienette AU I guess, for friendship anyway).

- As Chat Noir, he's a little more distant. He still flirts and is his normal self, but he's less forthcoming/hopeful when it comes to seriously expressing his feelings.

- He does, however, eventually tell Ladybug and is rejected, which kind of stops him from trying again (unlike canon Chat). After all, if Ladybug wasn't interested in Chat Noir (who he kind of views as his better, more capable self at this point), she's definitely not going to be interested in Adrien.

- Marinette, meanwhile, is caught not knowing whether to confess to Adrien or not, because they have such a good friendship and she doesn't want to ruin it by adding her feelings to the mix. Especially with how much Adrien expresses that he values their friendship.

- This will be an AU where Ladybug finds out Chat Noir's identity first (which might be the only bit I bother actually making fic for). He will know that she knows and it will be kind of a huge deal for him because it probably won't be during the best of circumstances. His wheelchair is incorporated into his transformation (so he always has it when he transforms back), but for some reason he'll probably transform back and be unable to use it, or maybe be falling, and so Ladybug will have to help him in a way he'd never wanted her to have to help him.

- It's probably a very emotional scene and Adrien struggles a lot with it despite Ladybug's constant assurances that her opinion of him as her irreplaceable partner is unchanged.

- No, Ladybug does not immediately reveal herself to him. One, she doesn't want to overwhelm him any more than he already has been, but she also has to deal with her own feelings on the matter. But it honestly doesn't take that long in order for her to do so.

- AND because it's me, it'd probably be a Ladrien scene where she goes to see him and expresses that she does, in fact, have feelings for him. Which throws Adrien for a loop because she'd already rejected him once as Chat, so why would things be different now?

- So she reveals herself and expresses that the reason she couldn't be with Chat is because she'd been so infatuated with Adrien. Which takes Adrien a minute to understand, because she liked him as Adrien first? And for once, we get a reveal where one of them liking their alter-ego isn't a tragedy, because there's none of this "you like Adrien but not Chat" crap because Adrien is just so overwhelmed by the fact that Ladybug fell for Adrien despite his attempts to hide that part of himself from her.

- Which she tells him is silly because both Chat and Adrien are the same and she values both of them equally, etc, etc…

- And yeah, happy kids.

I'm sure other people could add to this in a more developed way than I can, so feel free (I dunno, I'm sure this would make each and every episode of the show a bit different). Or maybe it's a really bad AU, who knows.

[greyias]

FIC: Smoke and Mirrors - Chapter 1

Title: Smoke and Mirrors Fandom: SWTOR Pairing: Theron Shan/f!Jedi Knight Rating: T Genre: Pre-Relationship, Slow Burn Synopsis: Something's rotten on Carrick Station, and Theron won't rest until he finds out what. But picking at the frayed threads of suspicion quickly unravels a conspiracy much larger than even the Republic's top spy can handle on his own. (A mostly canon-compliant retelling of the Forged Alliances storyline, as seen through the eyes of Theron Shan.) Spoilers: Forged Alliances. SWTOR Lost Suns and Annihilation. Some things in the Vanilla storyline, including the Revan flashpoints. Author’s Notes: Out of necessity, parts of this story will contain scenes from the game itself. Whenever possible I’ve tried to rewrite them so that they hopefully remain fresh and interesting, while still retaining the essence of the scene itself (so hopefully it doesn’t feel like you’re reading a transcript). This one is also going to be a bit slow to start, but it’s going to be a long one.

Crossposted to AO3 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 |  Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

When the Supreme Commander of Republic Forces called — it was generally a good idea to answer. Even if he just so happened to be your father.

However, this was official business, so Theron Shan decided to ignore that fact as he strode into the large office located in one of the corners of the Senate towers. The receptionist had waved him through without any fuss this time around.

Perhaps she had gotten used to him at this point — she hadn’t even glared at him this time. He supposed that was progress. It was nothing he had done, of course, just a bit of guilt-by-association. She and Marcus Trant, the Director of Republic’s Strategic Information Services had gotten quite chummy a little while back, but alas, she was not to become the third women to hold the title of “Mrs. Trant”. Easy come, easy go as the saying went.

Come to think of it, maybe the lack of glares this time around had more to do with the fact that Trant hadn’t accompanied Theron. It was a mystery for another time, though, as his gaze fell on the figure seated behind the desk in the center of the room. 

Jace Malcom was an extraordinarily tall man, he towered over Theron by at least a foot or so, and between the height, his deep gravelly voice, and the gruesome scars crisscrossing his face, the man could come off a little imposing. Theron wasn’t easily intimidated though, and he had a… unique situation with Jace. — considering the fact that the man was his father. Biologically at least, or… whatever.

It was complicated.

Theron hadn’t even known who Jace was, outside of his military record that was, until they’d met during the mission to take out the Ascendant Spear. Their first real meeting as father and son hadn’t exactly gone well, it was awkward, Theron had just wanted to leave, and most of their interactions outside of a professional setting had just been a bit like that. On the job, they were good. Despite popular opinion, Theron could take orders (when they made sense),  and off the clock they… well, they were trying to settle into something resembling familiarity. The “father-son bonding sessions” were thankfully few and far between. Theron liked Jace well enough, and they certainly got along better than he and his mother, but it wasn’t exactly like they were going to go out and throw the gravball around any time soon.

However, this meeting request had come through official channels, so thankfully that probably meant things would be less awkward and weird. At least he hoped.

Theron cleared his throat, pulling the older man’s attention away from the datapad he was reviewing. Seeing his visitor, some of the deep lines on Jace’s face smoothed into a smile. “Ah, Theron, you’re early.”

“Traffic wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.” He folded his arms in an effort to look casual. “Trant had a Senate briefing, so you get me instead.”

“That’s all right, I was hoping you’d be here for this. We can loop the director in later.”

“Your message was a bit vague,” he said, “just that you had some intel you wanted to discuss?”

Jace nodded. “One of my men came to me with something he picked up in the field — regarding Korriban. And a way we might be able to strike back.”

Theron’s eyebrows shot up. “Hitting Korriban? You can’t be serious.”

“I am.” The elder man looked at him grimly. “This all started on Korriban, it would be fitting for us to start the death knell for the Empire there.”

Korriban had been one of Jace’s first stations, and where he had met the future Grand Master of the Jedi Order, Satele Shan — who just so happened to be Theron’s mother. Theron shifted the weight of his feet, a habit he’d unfortunately picked up in these conversations when the subject of his mother came up, even indirectly as it was now. He hated having a tell, even something so minor and with someone like Jace who while sharp, probably hadn’t picked up on it.

A change of subject from ancient history back to the present was probably in order — and a lot more comfortable. So Theron addressed the deeper issue at hand. “SIS has been trying to get a mole on Korriban for years, and everyone we’ve tried to embed there winds up dead. That place is a death trap.”

“I’m not asking anyone to go undercover,” Jace assured him. “I’m thinking more smash and grab. But before that, I want you to look over this intel and let me know if you think it’s viable.”

“Me?”

“You were the one who cracked how to take out the Ascendant Spear — if anyone can do the same with Korriban, it’s you.”

It was a high compliment, and genuinely based on his skillset, rather than a form of nepotism. After their success against the Ascendent Spear, Theron had been tapped as a resource more and more for Malcom’s office. It had kept him out of the field more than he liked, but the tangible results of his work on the overall war was satisfying in its own way.

“That seems simple enough,” Theron said, trying to focus on the task at hand. “Any reason for all of the cloak and dagger?”

“Considering the target I don’t want to take any chances. I want someone I can trust taking point on this.”

Theron couldn’t quite decipher the look on Jace’s face, but nodded a thanks all the same. It was… odd having someone be so complimentary and open about that kind of thing. Trant’s usual way of expressing gratitude was a cutting sarcastic remark. Which he was fine with — it was familiar. Easy. But the mark of a good spy was adapting to the situation at hand.

Even if that meant a little bit of inadvertent father-son bonding.

Jace handed over a small data chip. The fact that he wasn’t trusting any of this on any network channel spoke volumes about the need for discretion.

“I’ll look this over and get you an answer as soon as possible.”

That seemed to satisfy Jace, but as Theron made his way out of the office and out into the streets, he was unsettled. The reason for that feeling wasn’t readily apparent, but hopefully once he had a chance to dig into the data he’d figure it out. He tended to trust his gut on these things, but a chance to strike as rich of a target as this was too good to pass up on a mere bad feeling alone.

The more he dug into the intel that Jace had given him, the more Theron had to admit that the Supreme Commander was right. A strike on Korriban not only seemed viable, but had the potential to yield invaluable information that could finally lead to an end to the war.

A Jedi named Jensyn had come away from an encounter with an apprentice to a member from the Dark Council, revealing that they had databanks in their main chambers with some of the inner-most secrets to the Empire. A literal goldmine of information that could turn every future battle and operation to the Republic’s favor. It was almost too good of an opportunity to pass up, and so Theron kept digging. Every intelligence report surrounding the encounter checked out, and just because he liked being paranoid, Theron looked into the Jedi too. The man had served aboard the Telos in its campaign in the Albarrio and Relgim sectors, and had an exemplary service record. The closest thing he found to a red flag was the copious amount tea Jensyn liked to consume.  

As far as Theron could tell, the intel seemed clean.

That just left the minor problem of storming Siths’ the inner-keep. Just getting on the ground would have been an issue, except that apparently a SpecOps commander named Rian Darok had found a gap in the patrols on Korriban. It wasn’t a large one, and they’d never be able to launch a full-scale assault… but a strike team could make it through and perform an extraction.

Theron filled a large mug to the brim with caf, settled into the most comfortable chair he could find at SIS Headquarters, and got to work mining everything they had on Korriban. He had to cobble the data together from a variety of sources to even get a close picture if it could be done. They had old schematics of the ground layout, but due to the age he had to cross-reference it with a report from an escaped acolyte to confirm the probable obstacles facing a strike team on their route from the landing zone into the Academy. This, coupled with bits and pieces of security information scraped from the almost-defunct Imperial intelligence, yielded an access point for someone on the ground that could allow a talented slicer to insert an exploit. It was technically doable, but the resistance the ground team would face stacked the deck against the op’s favor.

“Viable but a logistical nightmare” was how he summarized it to Jace and Marcus the next morning, gratefully accepting the giant mug of caf the Supreme Commander had ready for him the moment he walked in the door.

“Pay up,” Marcus said, and Jace grudgingly handed over a credit chip.

Theron narrowed his eyes at the both of them suspiciously over the rim of his mug. “And what was that for?”

“Just how quickly you’d go for caffeine,” Marcus said casually.

Theron fixed his boss with a glare before taking a very long drag of the zippy brew. Apparently being Supreme Commander came with some perks, because if the spy wasn’t mistaken, this was the more expensive Alsakan Mountain roast. The director just shook his head and turned to the datapad with all the findings, letting out a low whistle at the potential yield if the operation was successful. As both of the older men perused the data, Theron barely suppressed a yawn. The all-nighter had come at the tail end of an op, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was probably needing at least a few hours of sleep.

“You could have taken two days to look at all this,” Jace said lightly, “but I appreciate the enthusiasm.”

“Intel can go stale quick.” Theron shrugged off the paternal concern easily.

“All the reason to act quickly,” Jace said, “if Trant can spare you for a little bit.”

“Please, take him. Much less of a headache for me.”

“I’m really feeling the love here,” the agent muttered.

“You’d feel more if you turned your expense reports on time.”

“You have to get a thrill somehow since you’re not out in the field anymore,” Theron shot back easily. “I’m just trying to help.”

“You see what I have to deal with?” Marcus pointed the question at Jace, who just shook his head.

“Well, I’m happy for the loan, Marcus,” he said, turning the subject back to the matter at hand. “I can see how logistics can get sticky, but I think I’ve got someone who can help with that. Colonel Darok has a knack for this kind of thing.”

Having spotted the hole in the patrol route, Theron had to admit the man had a keen eye. 

“You’d need a small army just to get through that many Sith. No way to get that many troops in,” Theron pointed out. “I don’t even see how even a master tactician is going to navigate that. ”

“What about a small strike team?” Marcus asked.

“Might work, but they’d need to have hides of durasteel.”

Jace looked thoughtful for a moment, before he headed over to his desk and pulled up a few dossiers on a datapad. He paged through a few, before handing it over to Theron. “Have you ever heard of the Coruscant Aegis?”

“Never met them personally,” Theron paused to take another sip from his mug before continuing, “but one of them provided cover fire on an extraction for me once.”

Marcus snorted, apparently remembering the incident in question. “Is that what you’re calling it now?”

“I needed to make a hasty exit, and the lady was kind enough to clear a path. At least I think it was a lady—there was a lot of blaster fire. Pretty sure she called me insane.”

“That sounds about right.” Marcus heaved the heavy sigh of the wearied soul.

“I suppose I owe whoever it was some thanks,” Theron said. “Probably wouldn’t have made it out without the assist. Some nice flying and shooting.”

“They’re good at what they do,” Jace agreed, “the best actually.”

“Are any of them lightsaber-proof?” Theron asked sarcastically.

“They haven’t let one stop any of them so far.”

Theron juggled the mug and datapad, skimming through the personnel files as he continued to sip from the sweet caffeinated nectar. He tried to school his expression as he skimmed through the major highlights of each name, but the laundry list of heroic deeds associated with each individual was quite impressive. A notorious smuggler who had taken down the Voidwolf. The commander of Havoc Squad. Even a member of the Jedi High Council. It was the last one that made Theron stop and frown.

“Is this last one even real?” he asked.

Jace nodded solemnly. “She is.”

“It says she killed the Sith Emperor.”

That got Marcus’s attention, who leaned over Theron’s shoulder to read the dossier. Not liking the crowding, he handed the datapad over to his boss, and proceeded to prop his hip on Jace’s desk, still nursing the mug of caf.

“You asked for a small army,” Jace pointed out. “Any of them would be able to perform the extraction.”

“I’d say in that case we should get them all,” Theron said, “but they’re probably pretty scattered.”

Their window of opportunity to strike for this was going to close fast, though, so time was of the essence. It was probably also best to keep the number of those aware of the operation on the lower side too. Even if they were going to take on the entire Sith Academy, and maybe even the Dark Council.

Jace nodded. “You probably can get one in all likelihood.”

“Me, huh?”

“Colonel Darok will be in charge of the operation,” Jace clarified, “but I want the SIS involved on this. This is too big of a target to not bring in our best.”

Theron caught the backhanded compliment, but instead of responding verbally, he just nodded. “I can do some recruiting if you want. You have a preference?”

“Surprise me.”

 Jace flashed him a brief knowing grin, and Theron checked the urge to roll his eyes. He was fairly certain Marcus wasn’t aware of the familial connection, so showing disrespect to the man who was technically his boss’s boss probably wouldn’t help things in the long run. Knowing the way his luck tended to run, Theron would probably need to appeal to the director’s better nature in the next month for some reason or another. Theron didn’t intentionally cause diplomatic and inter-departmental incidents, they just tended to… happen. Sometimes. And by sometimes he meant like clockwork. 

“I’m going to need a little time to dig into the files if that’s the case,” he said instead of rising to the teasing.

“That’s fine.” If Jace was disappointed in Theron’s utter professionalism, it didn’t show, and the moment of levity slipped away. "It will take me some time to get Darok caught up and for us to put a battle plan together.”

Theron nodded and pocketed the datapad from Marcus. “Exactly how much time are we talking about?”

“Enough that you can sleep on it,” Jace tried to keep his tone light, but Theron still caught a hint of paternal concern threading underneath.

“Sleep?” Marcus snorted derisively. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“I sleep when I’m bored,” Theron shot back.

“Good. Then you’ll be out before you even get through the first dossier.”

“Are you kidding? This is better than a holo-drama.” The spy tapped his pocket where he had stowed the datapad. 

Jace just shook his head, amused, and the discussion turned to other matters of intelligence. Theron let himself out once he finished his mug of caf, the weight of the datapad in his pocket a reminder of the upcoming mission. Despite the caffeine, he could feel fatigue pulling at him. Either the long hours were getting to him, or the unsettled feeling from the previous day was still eating at him. Maybe after he was able to study the personnel files some more, he could take a moment to review his notes and pinpoint what was bothering him. And then he could get some sleep.

Next Chapter

[our-smooty]

Motion in the Ocean

Fandom: Gorillaz

Rating: Explicit

Relationships: 2Doc

Tags: Public Sex, Beach Sex, JAMAICA, Murdoc prioritizing sex over his own physical wellbeing

Summary: Sprained back be damned, 2D looked good enough to eat in his beach outfit. His baggy jean shorts hung low on his skinny hips, accentuated by that stupid red floaty he’d picked up at some point. The dull aching in Murdoc's back had nothing on the burning arousal in his gut. The only problem was they were out in public place, not a private bush or port-a-loo in sight. Murdoc sighed and leaned back in the sand, just barely noticing a splash of dark wood in the corner of his vision. The pier, he could work with that.

Sprained back be damned, 2D looked good enough to eat in his beach outfit. His baggy jean shorts hung low on his skinny hips, accentuated by that stupid red floaty he’d picked up at some point. The dull aching in Murdoc's back had nothing on the burning arousal in his gut. The only problem was they were out in public place, not a private bush or port-a-loo in sight. Murdoc sighed and leaned back in the sand, just barely noticing a splash of dark wood in the corner of his vision. The pier, he could work with that.

“Oi Dullard!” he shouted. At first, when he’d fallen out of the tree 2D had panicked, but now that he realized Murdoc wasn’t close to death (he’d caught the bassist taking a photo of something, so he must have been fine), he was back to spacing out, staring at the ocean. Murdoc’s shout broke him out of his trance with a jolt.

“What? Can’t reach your martini?” he joked. Murdoc rolled his eyes and tried to sit up, failing quite spectacularly until 2D swooped in and helped him. “Oho, be careful old man.”

The bassist shook those helpful hands off with a growl, but only because he felt himself leaning into the warm touch. “Watch yourself there Pretty Boy.”

“Or what, you can’t catch me like that anyway.” Satan the singer had gotten cocky in their time apart. It was a little hot if Murdoc was being honest. He had to get them under that pier.

“Shut up and help me up,” he ordered. Surprisingly 2D obeyed—old habits die hard—and after a few pained noises and unflattering grunts, Murdoc was standing on his own. Mostly. With a little help from Stu. “Now to the water, I wanna swim.”

“You hate swimming,” the singer deadpanned, helping Murdoc take a few shaky steps. To his credit, the bassist went slow and kept the whining to a minimum. “Like, I’ve never even seen you take a shower in your life, Muds.”

“Live a little Dents, we're in Paradise,” Murdoc snapped, dipping a toe into the sea and suppressed a shudder. The water was lukewarm and smiley. It probably smelled and tasted of fish. The things he did for a little arse. He valiantly pushed forward, wading until the water was up to his waist before turning around to look at the singer. “Come on then.”

2D looked conflicted, he’d spent most of the afternoon letting his jorts dry out after a morning swim, but it wasn’t often Murdoc made an effort. So he shrugged and followed along, hoisting the floaty up around his hips to avoid tripping.

“Murdoc, why’re you goin’ so far that way?” Murdoc pretended not to hear him, knowing Stu would be too curious not to follow. He slowly waddled his way over to one of the pier supports and rested against it, one hand on his back. Maybe he tweaked something serious. Not that it mattered now; no the only thing on Murdoc’s mind was the way 2D slunk his way over, the water making his skin oddly greenish.

“Stop your whinin’ and come look at this.” he heard 2D splashing up behind him. Murdoc pushed past the pain and made his way behind the support and out of view of the beach. Finally, they were alone.

“Look at what? There’s nothin’ here! It’s all gross and slimy…” 2D complained. Murdoc tried not to groan as he turned around to face the younger, his back leaning against the support. He could feel his speedo riding up in the back and he was sure the half-drowned look was not sexy, but he really wanted this.

“I thought we could… have a little fun?” he growled, reaching out to snag his thumbs in the singer's belt loops. Stu stumbled forward, his floaty falling a little around his thighs.

‘What! Are you jokin’?” Murdoc smirked and started playing with 2D’s trouser button. He didn’t miss the way the singer’s eyes darted around, or the way his cheeks coloured.

“Yes, Stu. I’m jokin’ and I waded all the way out here with a broken spine and a hard-on jus’ to make fun of you.” 2D looked a little stunned, but he quickly seemed to warm to the idea.

“You couldn’t wait until we got back to the hotel? And what about your back?” He shuffled closer, smiling coyly, his hips pressing against Murdoc’s crotch. “I don’t want you to get hurt or nothin’.”

Murdoc barked a laugh. “Cut the shit and bend over Dents, don’t pretend you aren’t already poppin’ a stiffy at the thought.”

2D pouted a little but started to turn. “Wouldn’t it be easier for me to get you? With your back?”

Murdoc grabbed the lube he’d tucked down the back of his speedo that morning and slicked up a few fingers. “No, because I’ve been thinkin’ about your arse in those tight little shorts all day and I need to be in you.” He dipped a finger between 2D’s cheeks and heard him gasp. “That alright with you, Bluebird?”

“Y-yeah,” the singer stuttered, jutting his hips back so the floaty wouldn’t fall down. “Hurry up, it’s disgusting under here.”

“Quit your whinin’,” Murdoc warned, slipping a finger inside the younger man. “Mmm you’re still stretched from last night.”

"Then get on with it!” Stu moaned as Murdoc edged in two more fingers; he was so ready. They were pretty far from the beach, but the very idea that someone could maybe see them made him tremble.

Meanwhile, Murdoc was beginning to realize he was in a bit of a predicament. His back was definitely too sore for him to give 2D the pounding he really wanted to, but he’d already committed. Crossing his fingers Murdoc hoped for the best as he replaced his fingers with his cock, pulling 2D onto him rather than pushing in. The water splashed around their knees and covered up their groans and pants.

“Oh, oh!” 2D cried, getting the hint and fucking himself on Murdoc’s cock as he leaned on the beam for support. “M-Murdoc it’s s-s-sensitive!”

The bassist grunted, using his hands to spread 2D’s cheeks apart and watch himself disappear inside him again and again. “I-I would imagine so, love. Especially a-after las’ night…”

The red floaty ring was becoming more of a hindrance the faster their pace got. It made an annoying squeaking noise every time Stu moved in just the wrong way. 2D had one hand on it, trying to keep it up, and another braced against Murdoc’s hip. His shorts floated around his knees in the water, threatening to trip him if he moved so much as an inch. Neither of them cared.

“Wanted your arse all day. F-fell out of—fuck!—of that soddin’ tree cause I was starin’ at you,” Murdoc gasped, rocking his hip as much as he could with his back. “S-Satan, I always want you so much.”

“Murdoc~!” 2D mewled at the dirty talk. His was drooling a little, his own prick hard and leaking between his legs. The bassist felt his orgasm coming, dark and all-consuming, and he reached forward to take 2D in hand, stroking him along with the movement of his hips.

“Come on, D. F-fuckin’ come on my cock like a—shit, shit!—g-good little whore,” he moaned, knowing he was right on the edge. 2D yelped as Murdoc pumped him, his hips losing rhythm to roughly fuck himself on Murdoc’s dick.

“Oh oh-oh!” he cried, releasing into Murdoc’s fist and clenching down on the cock inside him. Murdoc didn’t stand a chance, the pressure and feeling of 2D coming around him enough to send him careening over the edge and spurting into the singer. Even though it’d been less than half a day since they'd last fucked, Murdoc felt like he came for hours, his come oozing out of Stu’s hole when he finally pulled out. That idiotic red floaty was still around the singer’s hips.

“Fuck, that was good,” Murdoc sighed, tucking himself back into his speedo. He was nice enough to help the singer with his shorts, the sopping denim clinging to his skin. When he was redressed 2D turned around to look at Murdoc, his face still red and sweaty.

“You’re the worst,” he said breathlessly, leaning in to steal a quick kiss. Because Murdoc was Murdoc, he tried to deepen it, leaning forwards and prodding at the singer’s lips with his tongue. At least, he did until his back twinged something fierce, forcing him to straighten out against the pillar.

“Think I may have really done somethin’ really bad to the old back, Stu-Pot,” he said through clenched teeth. Sex had been a good distraction from the pain, but it had also made it 10x worse. “Might have to call the coast guard.”

2D sighed in exasperation before getting a sly smile on his face. Carefully he stepped out of the tube and placed it over Murdoc’s shoulders, securing it around his waist. “So you can have your Bay Watch moment? No need, we can jus’ float you in.”

If Murdoc had been in less pain he might have flipped his lid, but as it was he didn’t really have any other options other than moving in under the pier. “Fine, but if you so much as make one invalid joke I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Float angrily at me?” Stu helped Murdoc wade out from under the pier, then helped him paddle the floaty to shore. He made sure to occasionally splash water in the bassist’s face “by accident” no fewer than 10 times. Payback for the sore arse, he claimed as they got to shore. Murdoc just growled and let himself be pushed through the water. The singer had no idea what he’d be in store for once his back was healed...

[wiredandrewired]

Was trying to actually work on something but my brain is stuck on loop.  So instead I’m gonna make a post of the Voltron stuff sitting unposted in my writing WIP folder to help me organize my thoughts.

I guess since I’m posting this, if you have anything you wanna say/ask about any of these feel free.  I respond well to outside interest.

1. Project ReVolt is without a doubt the project I’ve posted about the most here.  And talked about in random tags.  And tangents.  Originally it was just the name the project had in my internal brain filing cabinet but it’s kind of spread and stuck to where my wife and I just refer to it as that when we talk about it.

ReVolt is basically going to be a VLD series rewrite more along the lines of how my wife and I would have done it or at least liked to see it done.  In some places it will probably stick pretty damn close to the events of the series canon, but in others go completely off the deep end.  We’re each going to be doing one, so a lot of the headcanon and worldbuilding and such that we’ve worked out together in various other stories and RPs will be consistent between the two stories, but it will also give us a place to veer out and do things without the others’ input (as we’re not gonna let each other see our fics until they post, tee hee).  I’ve done a SHITPOT of rules and infrastructure work using actual alchemy tracts to try and make sense of the series’ largely Powers As The Plot Demands system,  and am pretty convinced I’m going to A)fall hard into my very common Esoterica Ranting Mode pitfall and B)enrage literally everyone who reads it with my character and plot choices.  Most conservative estimate says this will be six ‘books’ long as again, we’re doing literally the entire series.  Current status: at the ‘ridiculously large amount of notes and setting up actual arcs and outlines’ stage, and waiting for the wife to finish ‘Happier HOPEless’.

2. There Are No Monsters Here is a fic I really want to do but cannot seem to get off the ground, set to take place entirely in the ‘last universe’ from season 8--the one native-Honerva died in and crazed-death-god-Honerva picked out as her ideal and tried to wedge herself into.  I guess the basic idea was that, like the ‘main’ universe, it got rebuilt pretty much as it was prior to Nightmare Mom Ruining Everything, and I have it with no one fully remembering the events of season 8 that took place there, but characters really closely tied to those events having some itching feeling that something happened, and all the Altean alchemists agreeing that some kind of massive quantum Event certainly occurred even if they don’t know what.  

Mostly the story exists as  a place for me to have a canon-compliant AU that still lets me explore stuff like Altean history, the racial and cultural tensions of the Coalition, dink around with Oldadins that DON’T die in one fell swoop, a living Daibazaal and Altea, Lotor growing up with a decent-but-not-without-strains relationship with his dad, teen Allura and tiny Lotor being absolute shits to each other while also coming to terms as they grow up with who and what they MUST be both on a political and quantum scale, and generally prove that even a perfect universe isn’t, all in one place.  The title is entirely facetious, and anyone who’s read any of my alien culture headcanons for this series knows that.  Lol.  Current status: lots of bits and pieces, but no good beginning or connective tissue.   I have a lot of notes, some arc outlines, and a few scattered scenes and bits of dialogue from later in the story, but my god, I CANNOT get it off the ground.

3. Someone Must Get Hurt (But It Won’t Be Me) is supposed to be a pretty wholly Honerva-centric fic that starts...sometime in her youth?...and carries forward to an as-yet-undetermined point.  Probably her death.  I mean the first one.  I’m not sure.  Another chance to dig my fingers into Altean culture and Alchemy, this time leading up to All The Bad Shit That Happened, with the added bonus of being done from a focal point of a character I have a lot of really strong feelings about both positive and negative that’s resulted in me somehow being EVEN MORE wrapped up in her than I was before I added abject knee-jerk trauma hatred to the mix.  In no way meant to make Honerva more sympathetic, I think I just want to write her even more like my mother so I’ll feel EVEN BETTER about killing her?  Idk man my feelings about her are so complicated.  Also an excuse to write a shitpot of her and Zarkon because listen, I’m really glad they’re married because I ship them so fuckin hard.   Current Status: SO many notes.  SO much infrastructure.  Like three pages of an opening I’m almost definitely throwing away because I can’t decide where, when, or how to open but feel like this isn’t it.  One short but very telling scene of Honey and Zarkon from late in the story.  I’m obsessed with it but I can’t get anywhere. 

4. Currently Untitled Demon Hunter AU started because my wife talks to me about Happier HOPEless a LOT and I just got an itch in my bones to work on one myself.  In spite of the entire Demon Hunter AU thing getting started by a prompt on a Shance blog, neither Shiro nor Lance are set to appear for at least a chapter?  And I am not confident in my ability to not veer off into utter non-shipping anyway because man, am I bad at it.  Or like...just an entirely different ship for either or both of them.  Current Status: A lot of vague notes, a POWERFUL urge to structure the chapters and overall arc after Ripley’s Gates even though that limits my chapter count and means I will DEFINITELY have 20k+ word chapters, and about seven pages of the first chapter so I guess I’m committed now?

5. Currently Untitled Post Series Fic basically exists for me to vent my frustrations about two main things: The Universe is Fucking Huge And There Are Dangers Other Than Galra, and The Galra Empire Was Huge and Is Not Going To All Fall In Line Behind Voltron Coalition and Especially Behind Keith Who Just Arbitrarily Fucking Decided To Tell Them They Couldn't Pick A New Leader According To Their Own Traditions And Need To Do What They’re Told Now What The Fuck.  Also there was a lot of stuff in the series that got left hanging, and while ReVolt is an IN-series fix-it fic, I wanted something that patched up loose ends in a way that was satisfactory to me but also kind of canon-compliant.  Current Status: A lot of notes and screaming.  No one has seen my progress on this and they might never.

6. Dog Runs And Death Dreams is a warmup file turned deeply self-indulgent series of scenes in which I choose to assume that Shiro’s rare neuromuscular disorder was left so ambiguous so I could plug the symptoms of mine into it.  It’s genuinely not any deeper than that.  The whole thing is set pre-Kerberos, and includes copious Shiro x Adam content because of it, but also not the kind that makes me feel good about writing because that means it includes the ‘slow fizzle’ that leads up to their breakup before the mission.  Ugh.  Working on it does make me feel better when I've been having symptoms, though, and I’ve been letting myself write it, unchastised, in a really loose rambly way that I usually deride myself for.  It’s just cathartic.  Current Status: no notes, no plan, just strain-writing between seizures, but somehow it feels like it has some kind of structure and just keeps growing?  Possibly too close to the bone for me to ever post.

7. Birth and Rebirth was born out of two things: the fact that Zarkon is shown to have two ENTIRELY DIFFERENT reactions to first being presented with his baby son in different flashbacks and different seasons, and the fact that in spite of the flashbacks we get at the end of the series, earlier on, the impression I got of Lotor and Zarkon’s relationship wasn’t of a young man who had never had affection from his father, but who had instead lost it.  Well, three things: I have a lot of underlying issues at work, at play, and at large when it comes to the Galra Imperial Family.  Also, anyone notice the monitor blips in the first baby Lotor flashbacks indicate a heart murmur?  Anyway, it was supposed to be a thoroughly self-indulgent and thoroughly self-hurtful examination of Lotor’s early life and the death by degrees of what was left of his father in the husk Rift Adventures left behind, but I got stuck on it a little way in.   Current Progress: ten pages, a lot of notes, and some wistfulness.  I keep hoping I’ll get inspired to pick it back up again.  Contemplating rewriting some of the beginning, maybe it’ll help?

Bonus entry that is not actually in any form of progress soever:

50/50 Voltron Trashfire Edition is spawned from the ‘50/50′ challenge on an old TF board I used to haunt.  It’s a fifty-prompt smut challenge using the list of ‘50 reasons to have sex’ from some tv show, and the idea is to write a different ship for every prompt (hence the name).  My wife is blazing through it and has several (like twelve?) up on her AO3, but I’ll be utterly blunt: I haven’t written fifty porn fics in my LIFE.  Over ALL my fandoms.  Current Status: Literally all I have done is assign a ship to each prompt, and I might actually have some prompts with just question marks beside them still.  I have one aborted start to one entry.  That’s it.  It’s not happening.  But the empty file is technically in the folder, SO.

[aikainkauna]

Fanfic trope meme

Apologies to those of you who see this for a third time, as I’ve crossposted it to both LJ and Pillowfort. Feel free to comment over on there (or my other posts) if you like. And of course, feel free to grab this one and do it yourself, if you like.

***

Grabbed this meme from a couple of people on LJ. It's... well, apparently about fanfic tropes. Some of them more terrifying than others.

I have written:

-Hurt/comfort (Yeah, baby! Most of my fic is this.)

-Body swapping (Sort of? Souls slipping into each other's bodies for a bit? Jaffar feeling what Yassamin feels? Sex swap, I've definitely done.)

-Soulmate identifying marks (tattoo, red thread of fate, etc) (I have! The Throne of Solomon. And maybe The Past Forgotten counts, in its way. I may have written more, but I forget.)

-Snowed-in cabin/isolated together for extended period of time (The Jaffar/Pwinzezz Cavefic!)

-Found families (I guess the Samarkand gang counts for poor old Fadl? Even if Jaffar *is* his brother, so technically it is his family. But he does have his religious congregation and Zainab, and is... well, he always does seem to be seeking something, so he's the kind of guy to go for this trope.)

-Fairy tale/mythology AU (And not just when I am  writing in *actual* fairytale/mythology fandoms. Which I am doing most of the time, what with Thief of Bagdad being a 1001 Nights fanfic anyway. So I'm writing fanfic about a fanfic of some age-old RPF (fantasy AU!) about historical figures from the late 700s/early 800s...)

-Enemies  to friends to lovers (Yes, please! Aplenty. I'm surprised that  enemyslash/FoeYay/Hero(ine)/Villain(ess), whatever you want to call it,  isn't mentioned on this list.)

-Characters swap roles AU (Uh... I've written sexual switching in some isolated chapters? Like when Laura  briefly doms Torsten in The Fall of Angels, to help him get over some traumas?)

-Friends to lovers (With RPS, Veidtbone in particular, and Theta/Koschei. This also seems to happen whenever I write femslash.)

-Magical  connection (telepathy, etc) (Doctor/Master basically ruined me for all  my other ships what with their telepathic ability. So that now, it feels less interesting for me to write love/sex that *doesn't* have telepathy.)

-Fake dating/fake marriage accidentally turns into feelings (see next trope)

-Royals/political marriage turns into feelings (These last two are pretty much the same thing in ToB, as I've had Yassamin marry Jaffar a couple of times--like The Past Forgotten and The King's White Falcon, but without him laying a hand on her for up to a year, until she finally grows a brain and realises how loveworthy he is after all.)

-Seemingly unrequited pining (Emphasis on the "seemingly." Jaffar's unrequited   pining is painful enough in the movie, so there's no point in making him  suffer any more.)

-Accidentally fell in love with the mission target (Well, *kind of,* what with Torsten. Lars-Erik was definitely his mission target in the original film, and at the start of Because The World Belongs to the Devil, he made no bones about having wanted to kill Laura Erika [the teenage girl version of Lars-Erik in this AU, to those of you just joining in] when she was born.)

-They break up (but then they get back together) (With Jaffar/Fadl.  Fadl's stormed off in a huff at least twice in the past. And Doctor/Master is always the same old on-off car crash, isn't it? Although this is not a favourite trope of mine, as the setup would usually necessitate them being an existing couple in the first place,  and I tend to not write canon or "plausibly lovers" ships because   they're already happily together. What do Two and Jamie, Holmes and   Watson etc. need me for? They're already as good as married. Let them have their happiness.)

-Supernatural creature/human romance (Sort of. I've written Time Lords/humans, humans/djinn at least. And surely wizards count as supernatural romance, anyway?)

-Reincarnation/'25  Lives' AU (What's with the 25 lives? Is this some big fandom thing again? One of the darkest, most fucked-up fics I ever wrote was the Master killing the Doctor during sex and fucking him as he regenerated around him. As you do. And there's reincarnation in one of my Jaffar/Pwinzezz fics,  but I won't spoil it for the new readers by telling you which one it is.)

-Selfcest (possibly due to time travel) (I am scratching my head trying to remember when I wrote this and in which fandom, but I have the distinct feeling I've written it. I've certainly whacked off to  that World Of Simm!Masters clusterfuck what with the pink dress so many  times I... I think I broke two clit buzzers during that time. I've certainly drawn it. And drawn some Connies on Connies. And then there's, of course, Sarosh the Sexbot  who's a clone of Jaffar, looks-wise, but he is very distinctly just a robot, not a living character as such--not the sort with which you could  have a real, interpersonal dynamic. My problem with selfcest, in general, is that I like having that character dynamic--and that requires  the characters to be different from one another. If it's two characters  that are too similar--if they fulfill a similar role in the canons--it's hard to create a dynamic between them and to make it   interesting.)

-Polyamory (Swinging away ALL the bloody time with the Roses!Jaffar and Yassamin, and Torsten/Laura. Sometimes I miss the monogamous 'verses.)

-Amnesia (I've got a post-movie "Jaffar comes  back from the dead" WIP I'll probs never finish, because it doesn't seem to get off the ground. If I wrote this trope, I would have the characters gradually regain memory, though; complete mind-wipes are   horrid. I did have Handy lose the majority of his cognitive/motor/Timey skills in No More  and that was the main reason I had to... well, I'm not going to spoil it if someone hasn't read it yet, but it wasn't the cheeriest of fics. The Past Forgotten *sort of* has this, but I don't want to spoil as to how that happens.)

***

I could write:

-Daemons (Why the archaic spelling? I have written djinn, so I almost put this in the 'have written' section. I can't remember if I actually *have* written real demons, because I might have. Surely, Torsten counts...)

-'Everyone is evil'/mirrorverse AU (Well, mostly, if I want to explore "evil"   characters, I write about those types of characters in the first place, without having to turn anyone evil. Devilry is the 'verse for that. Hell, usually it's the other way around; I try to look for the human elements of the baddies, or at least explore their logic--what makes them tick, what makes them the way they are. So, IDK, I could've also   put this in the "unlikely to ever write" section.)

-And they were roommates! (This would be terrible and also hilarious, whatever characters ended up becoming my victims. Even if I'm more interested in those hurt/comfort plots, overall. And I have always found it *impossible* to live under the same roof with other people because I need peace and quiet and solitude too much. So this is almost a bit too much like the sorts of negative RL experiences I don't really want to get more of in fic.  But I *could* write it as a comedy for cheap lols, especially if the stress were resolved by hot bonking, ASAP.)

-'They  all work in an office' AU (Otherwise, I would've put this in the "just  no" category, but... the Barmakids were civil servants. So I *could*   write Jaffar and Fadl drowning in paperwork--"WHY DID WE EVER introduce paper into THIS EMPIRE?!?" and cursing their fates and Jaffar restraining Fadl from braining Harun al-Rashid with a paperweight. Same with Lina doing Zainab's books and trying to hold back The Fist of Death when Fadl carelessly drops a piece of his lunch over her perfectly calligraphied accounting.)

-'Falling for a coworker/teammate is a bad idea' except this is fiction so it works out (Maybe. Just maybe. But it'd also be in a medieval ToB context.)

***  

I will probably never write:

-'Groundhog  Day'/karmic time loop (I just never got the appeal of this. Sounds like the sort of thing experimental writers would like? The sorts who really  like filling in bingo cards and challenge lists?)

-Vampires/werewolves  AU (I'm not that big on either. Super-unpopular opinion coming up: I prefer sex to the sublimation of it that vampires are often all about; bloodsucking in lieu of sex, and/or being seen as way better than sex just always feel to me like a cheap cop-out from writers who are disappointed in sex, or afraid of it. I've never grokked it any more   than that stupid, stupid "chocolate is better than sex" quip from women who don't know what masturbation is--yes, it fucking well is sex, TYVM! I much prefer to make partnered sex better than it is IRL by adding supernatural stuff like telepathy to *that*. Immortality alone is interesting to explore, as are Gothic themes, but all the usual themes that vampires *specifically* usually represent just... either hold little interest for me, or then, I can explore them in other ways.)

-'Pride  and Prejudice' AU (I don't hate Jane Austen, but it's not my fandom. That kind of society stuff and being witty over teacups in bonnets has never really been my thing--if anything, I usually have my characters exist in their own bubble, isolated from society and its restrictive mores and social stresses.)

***

JUST NO!

-Coffee  house AU/food service AU (AUGH! Please, no coffeeshop AUs for me; the world is full of them already. Maybe I could write it as some terrible, short parody? Or doodle it? But no more than that.)

-Hogwarts AU (Haven't read HP. Young Adult isn't really my genre. I know, I know; I've just lost all my WLW cred.)

-High  school/university AU (I've done Time Lord Academy-era stuff with Doctor/Master, but I expect this means a sort of American high school/university AU with jocks and cheerleaders and shit. Hell, no. Again, the exact sort of horrid society stuff I would rather have my characters escape from.)

-Adopting/raising a baby (Erm, not unless you count Jaffar/Yassamin adopting a cheetah? They do have kids in some 'verses but there's none of that everyday baby stuff that this question/trope probably implies. I'm squicked by   babies, sorry.)

-Unusually specific occupation AU, like, the Author clearly has the same job (It worries me that this is, by virtue of its inclusion here, apparently seen as normal and acceptable..? When it's crap fanfic, inserting yourself into something that should be about the *established* characters instead. Jesus, I don't want to go in expecting a fanfic, and then find out it’s your diary instead! Unless you're Anaïs Nin. And even if you really *do* want to write about yourself, then just... write original fic? An autobiography? A blog? Write an OC that has your job. Don't do this false advertising where you insist it's fanfic when it's not. That's a dick move towards your readers.)

-Loyalty kink (see next trope)

-Alpha/beta/omega (Too creepy. I can write about piss, shit, incest, necrophilia and cannibalism, but not these last two. Any more than I can glorify the Nazis I've written about; I either take the piss out of them, as with Strasser, or just step outside of their politics and bring them into the land of happy sexings like with von Kolb, with the aim of dragging him out of that madness and leaving it behind.)

-Hot single parent(s) (Please. Rundvik: "You love children." Torsten: "I loooooathe themm.")

-Unrequited pining (Too much of an emotional squick. Has to be requited. I write fanfic to fix things, to avenge wrongs, to set things right. I don't write them to make the characters more miserable than they already are. Unless it's for temporary, character-development purposes, that is.)

[fluidityandgiggles]

An idea about Deceit.

I feel like the fandom has forgotten that Deceit is not a villain. I mean, I did for a very long time too. My major fanfics for the fandom include him as some sort of abusive villain.

But... lying comes in many shapes and forms. And people have presented them already, so I present a new one. One that I haven’t seen yet.

Deceit as Patton’s baby brother.

Now, this comes from the fact that not all lying is bad, and in fact it is a crucial step in a child’s development. Kids learn to lie at around three or four years old and all have their reasons to lie.

And so, I present to you. Just a tiny fic on the matter. (For the sake of it, Deceit’s name is Dorian in this. I keep changing his name but do I care? NOPE.)

—————

“Hey Patton.” There were light touches on Patton’s shoulder. “Hey Patton.” A tiny squeak. “Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Pat-“

“Hey kiddo.”

Dorian, Patton’s five-years old brother, was clutching his rubber duck (aptly named Daveed) and looking straight at him with big, scared eyes.

...oh.

“Did you have another nightmare?”

“Mm-hmm...”

“Okay, come on. Jump in.” Patton rolled on his back and Dorian immediately crawled under Patton’s blanket, a huge smile on his face. “What’s that smile about, kiddo?”

“I’m not telling you.”

Patton’s phone lit up.

‘Lolo💙💙 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: Princey’s ideas are completely chimerical and I refuse to work with him on this project any longer without Patton and Virgil’s intervention.’

‘🌟PRINCEY🌟 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: well then i refuse to work with mr pocket protector on this as well!’

His friends were crazy.

‘My Dark Strange Son 😈💜 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: SHUT THE FUCK UP ITS TWO IN THE MORNING GO TO SLEEP’

“Okay, Dorian. Come on. Tell me about your nightmare.”

“No!” Dorian’s duck gave a sad squeak.

“Dory, kiddo, you kinda have to if you want me to help.”

‘JD, Chandler, go to sleep. We can do the project in the morning. I promise I’ll bring brownies! xx’

‘Lolo💙💙: Good night, Patton. I’m sorry we woke you up.’

‘Oh, you didn’t, honey! My brother did. See you at school! And don’t kill each other!’

“Come on. You came here because of your nightmares? So I wanna hear them.”

‘🌟PRINCEY🌟: tell him i said gnight and give him a big kiss aight pat? night!’

“There was a giant,” Dorian started. “In the nightmare. And it was rainbow, and it was scary, and it was running to me, and...”

“You mean chasing you?”

“Huh? yeah, yeah... that’s what I meaned. So the giant was...”

Dorian started rambling about his nightmare and Patton could honestly feel himself falling asleep all over again, but he couldn’t allow himself that. At least not while Dorian was talking.

‘Lolo💙💙: I can see you’re still online, Patton. Is anything wrong?’

‘Yeah... my brother just talks a lot, that’s all. I’m going to sleep, I promise! Love you ❤️❤️’

“...and then, and then... I forgot.” Dorian was starting to doze off. Good. Patton had his hand in his brother’s hair, trying to keep from falling asleep himself before his brother...

His mom was going to be so mad when she finds out when they fell asleep.

——

“What do you mean, your brother lied about having a nightmare?”

“I mean my mom came to wake me up today and started the morning with a ‘you have to stop sneaking out of your room just to have a midnight chat, Dorian, it’s not good for you’. I’m serious!” Roman was fiddling with the red scrunchie on his wrist as Patton paced around the stage. ”He’s only five, Roman! What’s going to happen to him if he keeps losing sleep like that? That’s not healthy!”

“Wow, Patton... your brother lies to you - your kid brother lies to you - and you’re worried about his sleep schedule?!”

“Calm down, Chandler, this isn’t the thunderdome just yet,” the familiar monotone voice called, accompanied by footsteps. My savior is here! “A steady sleep schedule is very important for the circadian rhythm.”

“Dorian woke me up at two in the morning to have a talk and told me that he had a nightmare. Good to see you too, Lolo.”

“I take it you’re tired.” Patton grunted. “Why don’t you set boundaries?”

“Have you met my brother?”

“Yes, in fact. I have been over to your house quite some-”

“That’s not what I meant, Lolo.”

“I think what puffball here is trying to say is, his brother is the cutest kid in the world. Would you deny him anything? I know I wouldn’t!”

“It’s not even that, Roman. It’s just...” Patton started pacing again. “He’s the cutest kid, yes, but he’s also so set on breaking the rules all the time!”

“And I think we all know who he got that from, puffball-Veronica.”

“I just know that he wouldn’t care about any boundaries I might set.”

“Do you think Ms. Caulfield would mind you three hanging on stage like that?”

“Goddamnit, Virgil...”

“Great to see that Veronica Sawyer, Heather Chandler and Jason Dean are all breaking the rules as should be,” Virgil noted with an awkward smirk. One of the rare ones. “You know we’re not rehearsing here today, yeah?”

“We all came here for break before rehearsals, Mr. Stage Manager, please.” Roman threw his scrunchie on Virgil. “My dear darling boyfriend, please make sense of the situation at hand.”

“Yes, Roman?”

“Patton’s adorable little kid brother Dorian lied about having a nightmare last night just so he could have a midnight talk and all Patton is worried about is his sleep schedule.”

“Wait, he really did that?” Patton nodded, biting a nail. “Wow. I’m oddly proud.”

“Not you too!” Roman let out a loud groan. “This kid lied about-“

“You literally stayed up until three thirty last night to text me about Dan and Phil playing the sims, Romano. You’re not one to talk.”

“Do you have no shame accusing me of such a thing, Virgil? I thought you loved me!”

“Princey, I do love you. But you’re just so insufferable sometimes.”

“Yeah, yeah. Love you too.”

When rehearsals started a bit later, it seemed as if Roman forgot all about what happened.

——

“Hey kiddo,” Patton said with a giant smile as he got home. His brother was in the living room, watching cartoons. Patton assumed their mother was in her office painting mandalas, which would’ve been the only explanation as to why Dorian was watching cartoons.

...while sporting a huge black eye.

“Patton! I’m watching something and I don’t know what it is but-“

“What’s that shiner you got over there, Dorian?”

“It’s nothin’. I runned to a door handle thingy.” He pulled his shoulder, squeezing his rubber duck.

“Do you need some ice to put on it, buddy?” Dorian shook his head. “Okay. How about donuts? Would they make you feel better?”

“Yes! But not from where mommy gets the donuts because that’s where Jake Baker’s mommy works and Jake Baker doesn’t like me and he hit me today and pushed me and I felled on a swing and I don’t wanna go around him.”

...ran into a doorknob, huh.

“Didn’t you go to Dahlia’s today, honey?”

“No. I didn’t want to.”

“Patton, sweetheart?” Their mother called from her office.

“Hey, Mom!”

“How was rehearsal today, sweetheart?”

“It was good! I’ll tell you at dinner!”

Things mostly fell into silence after that, Patton joining Dorian in watching the cartoon (Voltron, Patton noted, one of the cartoons he did not want Dorian to watch without him around). And then...

“Can I have cereal, Patton?”

“Of course.” Patton got up to the kitchen. “What did you have for lunch, Dorian?”

“Uhh... a sandwich. And an apple! From Dahlia!”

“That sounds like a nice lunch, kiddo.” No it didn’t. “Which cereal?”

“I don’t care.” So fruit loops. Alright.

By the time Patton got back to the living room, Dorian’s stomach was growling. Of course. That kid was adorable, but he needed to stop lying.

“Why’d you tell me you had lunch today?” Dorian looked up from his cereal bowl. “You didn’t. I could hear it.”

“But I did!”

“You don’t like apples, Dory. I know you don’t.” The kid’s face started turning red. “Come on. Why’d you lie to me?”

“...I forgot lunch at home. But I did eat the apple!” Patton shot him a look. “I swear I did!”

“Look, kiddo... lying isn’t always a bad thing, but you gotta learn when to.” Dorian looked confused. “You shouldn’t lie about lunch, because not eating isn’t good for you. You shouldn’t lie about nightmares, because sleep is very important for everyone, including you. You especially, Dorian. And most of all, you shouldn’t lie about being hurt. If someone hurt you, you tell me. I’ll make everything okay. Okay?”

“...I did eat an apple.”

“...okay. Let’s go with that.”

——

“Hey Patton.” A light touch on his shoulder. “Hey Patton.” A soft squeak. “Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Patton. Hey Pat-“

“Hey kiddo. Another nightmare?”

Patton rubbed his eyes and grabbed his glasses, looking at his brother as he climbed into his bed. His phone was buzzing with texts.

‘Lolo💙💙 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: I’ve been listening to Burn from Hamilton for the last hour and a half. Some help would be welcome.’

‘🌟PRINCEY🌟 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: no can do, compadre! youre on your own in this!’

‘My Dark Strange Son 😈💜 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: @ Lolo💙💙 hey you, out there in the cold, getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me?’

‘Lolo💙💙 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: @  My Dark Strange Son 😈💜 wow... Thanks on somehow making it worse, Virgil.’

‘My Dark Strange Son 😈💜 @ DIGGITY DANG A DANG: anytime, sherlock’

‘Go to sleep, will ya? It’s one thirty in the morning!’

“So... nightmare?” Dorian hummed. “Wanna tell me?”

This was going to be a very long night.

—————

Tag list:

@broadwaytheanimatedseries @illmamnim @royal-raccoon @face-the-ravenclaw @winnie-the-patton

[hollywritesinstardust]

Sister Sinner, Chapter Four

Request: Do you do cross-overs? I was thinking Neal Caffery’s younger sister works with the BAU, her brother, Mozzie, and Peter on a case, and ends up crushing on Derek Morgan.

Fandom: Criminal Minds/White Collar

Characters/Pairings: Derek Morgan/Reader; Garcia, Hotch, Prentiss, Reid, Rossi, Neal

Words: 2,136

Y/N - Your Name

            “The good news is that he was definitely in contact with someone the entire time. The bad news is that the Gambinos – or whoever else might have been on the mic – only opened their end of the transmission when they communicated into his wire, which was for only seconds at a time and not long enough to trace. The radio signals bouncing out were encrypted very heavily with very dense coding and went through half a dozen proxy servers in the New England area before leaving the country.”

            Garcia looked very nervous as she presented the results of your first undercover meeting with Gio, and although you couldn’t say you had enjoyed being in his company, you were kind of excited that you would have to keep reprising your role as Sofia. It felt good to be the one under pressure for once – the one in the loop, the one whose abilities were coveted, the one who had the power to make it or break it. Since going good, you’d been doing far less of your own thing, mostly because you knew it would make things rough for Neal if Peter (or anyone else in law enforcement, for that matter) caught you.

            “Garcia,” Hotchner prompted, inserting just the one word in his boss voice between her rambling sentences.

            The techie stopped, swallowed, and nodded. “What I’m trying to say, sir, is that they have someone with their own special spice of signal protection that I can’t get through without the cooperation of governments in China, Belarus-“

            “Countries who are less likely to grant American law enforcement access to their satellite data,” you mused. Garcia nodded disappointedly. “Well, that’s fine. We don’t want to catch them now, anyway. We need more evidence, otherwise we’ve got them on shady charges at best. We want them on smuggling, even if we can’t nail ‘em for murder.”

            “He said they will be in touch. He wasn’t speaking on his own.” Prentiss took a glance at Reid, who nodded and then repeated, word-for-word, what Gio had said to you. Your eyes lingered on him for a moment – odd but useful, kind of like Mozzie’s photographic memory. The black-haired woman continued with her reasoning. “He wasn’t even trying to be discreet.”

            “Or he was, and he’s just bad at it,” you suggested.

            Morgan was clicking the end of a pen on the desk. “Nah, these guys wouldn’t hire an amateur.”

            “Maybe they pegged her as a smart one and assumed she would have done her homework,” Rossi posited wryly. “After all, what’ve we got on this Gio guy? Nothing. A high-profile armament doesn’t just drop into his lap unless someone knows who pads his pockets.”

            “Then they’re definitely going to call on me again.” You just hoped they would have the class to not be like the femme fatale that had broken into Neal’s penthouse to call on him.

            When Hotchner called for the dismissal, telling everyone to pack up and go get some rest before morning, it was like he was the teacher and everyone else was racing to leave before he tacked on a last-minute homework assignment. You waited for the room to empty out while stretching in your chair, letting the tiredness show on your face. Undercover operations were always more taxing than you expected them to be.

            Morgan was the last in the conference room. The handsome agent had caught your interest several times – not just when he spoke, although you definitely liked that he had more than just a few brain cells floating around up there. JJ was pretty, and Reid was cute, but Morgan was attractive, in the way that gets people a fan following on social media with tags that you wouldn’t want to read off in a room full of children.

            “Alright, Y/N.” He stopped while he was pushing in his chair and peered at you over the table, openly curious, but relaxed. “The suspense is gonna do me in if I don’t ask. So what’s it like? Being his sister.”

            You raised an eyebrow and glibly responded. “Got a friendship crush on my brother, Morgan?”

            He laughed, shaking his head. “Something like that shapes a person. Shapes their relationships. Siblings are impacted by how their brothers and sisters bond with them, the values they teach and the roles they fill. How did his antics fit into your life? Why did you let them stay?”

            You seriously considered not answering. You understood his curiosity – it was far from unique to him – and appreciated that he had asked without sounding underhanded or judgmental. In the moment, though, you decided that it wasn’t going to hurt anything, and maybe if you let him see a little more than the others could, then he’d be a bit more motivated to trust you and feel like he knew you. You’d seen Peter and Neal fight because of lacking trust too many times, and you wanted real friendships, not friendships that fell apart as soon as there was a hint of doubt.

            “Believe it or not,” you started, choosing your words carefully and leaning on the table, “Neal gave me an ultimatum.” The agent’s eyebrows went up slightly in surprise. “Not as such,” you elaborated pensively, “He would never intentionally do that. But the context mandated it. It was never said, but I understood. Be involved, and be my family. Or don’t, and…” You stopped, shaking your head, being mindful how much information you gave out. Neal’s reasons for running were personal. Not so personal that they weren’t your business, because they were mostly about your family, but private enough not to want to share. “If I hadn’t gone, I would’ve been safe. I would’ve been free. I would’ve known that I could go home every day to a woman who loved us and took care of us and been fed and housed. But I also would’ve lost my brother, and to me, that was unfathomable.”

            Neal had promised, a long, long time ago, that you were his best friend, and he would never leave you. It was entirely possible he hadn’t realized what he’d been making you choose between at the time, but though he said he understood completely if you chose to remain in St. Louis, you had intuitively known that the next time you’d see him could be decades away, if ever. Runaways don’t come back home when they intend to successfully run away.

            “Be involved?” Morgan repeated, crossing his arms.

            You surveyed his face and decided the gesture wasn’t in disapproval, so you expanded on it.

            “Not commit crime. Just run away.” You shrugged. “Be involved in his new life, whatever it meant. Neal did his best to keep me clean and safe, but… there’s always a degree of inevitability. Especially in a hypothetical situation where people want money and are allegedly more or less cheated out of it. I could’ve stayed or gone any time I wanted, but it wasn’t worth losing him.

            “We were a bit codependent.” You chuckled reminiscently. “Not as much anymore. It’s hard to be codependent when one of the parties are in prison.”

            “I bet.”

            You licked your lips and swallowed. “Anyway.” You stood up to leave. That was more sharing and caring than you usually did in a month, even with El, the undisputed queen of compassionate and empathetic conversation. “Neal was – and still is – my best friend. I’m not always happy with the choices he’s made. And I’m definitely not always happy with their consequences. Yet, I can never regret the choice I made to follow him. Whatever you might want to accuse him of, he has always done his best for the people he loves, and that’s better than a lot of others.”

            Before you left, you paused. And turned around. You’d tried explaining your story to a couple of people before, people you’d known longer and trusted more, and in spite of this, you had never had a more thoughtful or quiet audience.

            “Agent Morgan?” You let your own interest loose and looked right at him, making eye contact and holding it with piercing, alert brown eyes. “Do you believe that choices change the courses of our lives?”

            He pondered it a moment, then nodded decisively. “I do. Yes. One thought, one idea, one feeling in the right place, time, or context can be enough to have someone stoned for treason or venerated as a saint. It could leave in a moment or it could persist and become an entire cultural revolution. Why?”

            “Do you have any of those choices in your past?” You couldn’t help but ask and hope you weren’t going nosy.  

            Morgan weighed this thoughtfully. “Oh, yes. Most definitely.” He decided, and seemed content to say so. Then, even though you thought it had been implied that you wanted to know a bit more than just the yes or no answer, he picked up his phone and left.

            You sucked on the inside of your cheek. You weren’t sure whether or not you were a huge fan or Morgan’s quick leave, but you did know that the role he had chosen for himself, as an FBI agent, would either fill quickly without him or leave a gap in his team that damaged their effectiveness.

            Teams were like organisms, sometimes, except where Morgan’s was well-used to him and functioned like a well-oiled machine, Sofia was in the business of selling hers. There was something very poetic about how each of you used people and relationships to get where you needed to be, and for just a moment, you felt a hot flash of jealousy, because you wanted to claim a sense of belonging. You wanted to be able to say that you were required and comfortable.

            Except that was all very ridiculous and you shoved it aside as quickly as you could. Morgan had a pretty good life, from where you were standing, but that didn’t mean you wanted what he had. If you prioritized things like that, then you never would’ve run away with Neal in the first place. Right?

            It was a nightmare come true.

            You couldn’t convince yourself that Mozzie was lying, not after everything, not after hearing for yourself the recording of the gavel being banged.

            You cried into Neal’s shoulder while he cradled you lovingly, shushing you softly and rubbing up and down your back the same way he did after you were hurt in Copenhagen and he couldn’t take you to the hospital for fear of both of you being caught. While your shoulders shook, he was admirably composed for a man who knew he was hugging his sister for the last time for at least four years.

            “You should’ve let me do it,” you whimpered, digging your hands into his jacket. “I’m not eighteen for another few months. They might’ve charged me as a minor.”

            “It’s a grand felony,” Neal gently corrected you, pushing your hair out of your face. “They’d have tried you as an adult. And you know I’d never let anything happen to you.”

            “Like this is so much better,” you retorted. Despite that you were starting to argue, you still held tight to him. “You’re gonna be trapped in a cage and I’m gonna be alone.”

            “You won’t,” he promised, rubbing a tear off of your face with an earnest, sentimental look on his face. “Mozzie and Kate will take care of you. Kate will make sure you’re not alone and Moz will keep you supplied with money, food, clothes – he has connections.”

            You sniffed and looked deeply into his eyes, trying to memorize the blue and the youth in his face. You knew prison could change a person and couldn’t believe this would be your last opportunity to see your brother as you knew him now. “But they’re not you.”

            His smile turned sad. “I know. I’m going to miss you, too, sweetie. We knew this could happen. I told you Burke was good.”

            Good? Burke was taking your only family away. “I hope he goes to hell,” you spat hatefully.

            Neal’s surprised and scolding expression was the only reason you felt even a little bit remorseful for saying it. He tilted your chin to look at him in the eyes and said firmly, “Hey, don’t go there. He’s a good man, he’s doing his job. He told the DA I cooperated once I was caught. If it wasn’t for him, I’d probably be doing ten.”

            “I still hate him enough for the both of us, since you’ve clearly lost your mind.” You mumbled into his shirt, hugging him tightly again and wishing you could ignore that Neal wasn’t wearing one of the nice suits he loved.

            He’d been forced to wear an outfit supplied by the Department of Justice instead.

A/N: This one took a while and was harder to write - it was mostly filler. I hope you enjoyed!

On the tags list are: @bestillmystuckyheart, @skeletoresinthebasement, @werewitchling, @1enchantedfantasy1, and @ragweed98!

[lizziestrongauthor]

In a Rock Band- Kylo Ren Series- Ch. 3

Dedicated to @klbwriting, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You’ll see

Fandom: Star Wars

Pairing: Kylo x OC

Themes- G for young adult angst and college fearing young adults

Summary: Graduation day. Kylo believed the worst thing would be the stress of being older, of being an adult. But then he feels it. Weird pushes and pulls, voices, feelings, like he’s never felt before. Two strangers at odds with each other both show up and he can’t get himself together. 

Prologue // Chapter One // Chapter Two //

~~~~~~~~

Chapter Three:

Kylo stood towards the back of the parade of people ready to march towards the football field. Kylo could see Hux just a few heads up from him, Phasma at the very front, behind the council and Kristan. The Valedictorian at the head. Her cap and gown decorated in just about everything, and she looked like a walking rainbow. Kylo held a few important decorations, Hux a few more, Phasma had two. Rey had three chords, Poe had everyone you could have, and was also one of the only four people not in Cap and Gowns. They were in their NJROTC uniforms, and all his chords were around his arm, his pins along his jacket. He looked like the movie generals with all the fake pins.

Kylo could see everyone from where he was, minus one person. The only two people behind him were Jeremiah Zevers, and Lazertag Lizzie. Lizzie was directly behind him and Kylo was passing back information to her the whole time. As she had brought a 3DS with her and was trying to battle someone in a different country over Mario Kart and had money on the bet. Kylo said for his help he wanted 1%.

“Teacher!” Kylo hissed under his breath. Lizzie pulled it into her sleeve, pretending to be adjusting her shoes as the teacher passed. “Clear.”

She came back up, 3DS pressed into his back. “Almost… oh I’m gonna win… Yessssssssss” She laughed under her breath. Kylo could hear the screen capture sound and the sound of her clicking it closed. He slipped his hand behind his back and laughed as she slapped some bills into it. Mostly he was just curious as to see what 1% would be. There in his hand as he pulled it forward was $25.00.

“Holy shit… what did you bet that kid?” Kylo whispered as he looked over his shoulder at her.

“How do you think I paid for my tuition in full to Alderaan?”

Kylo whirled around to look at her in the eye. She waved the 3DS with a wicked smirk before slinking it into her sleeve to tuck it away. “Holy crap, you’re a genius.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere Ren,” She nodded her chin towards the line. “Teacher.”

Kylo whirled back around and readied himself to walk on. His mind was blown as he could hear the low chuckle from the girl behind him. Though, he corrected himself when he saw Kristan. She turned to smile at him softly. His chest clenched a bit as she offered a small wave his way. Kylo waved shortly back, his breath almost gone. How had he become this? Worrying when she’ll call, waiting for every glance, every touch? Or maybe he was only this way when he thought too much. Because when they were near, or he was doing something. When he was deep in the music, he didn’t have to worry. Kylo thought back to the boy he had been the day she showed up at the garage. Thinking she was just a pretty girl who never thought of him the way he did her. Remembering how his life changed.

And how now it changed even more.

Because Kristan started to walk forward and Kylo followed the slow cattle march towards the field. This was the beginning of the future. This was the next step. No longer just students, but adults. Kylo watched his feet and moved himself as much in tempo as he could. He didn’t want anyone to see the worry in his face.

Kylo turned 18 just a month ago, Kristin turned 18 earlier in the year. They were already adults. But this… this meant it for real. Kylo forced his head to look up, only to get a flash of someone, outside the arena. People who were still in line to come inside. They also walked in, but this man he stopped. He stopped and Kylo could feel his eyes. He stared right through him. If Kylo wasn’t absolutely certain Liz would shove him to the ground for stopping, he would have. Because there was something eerily familiar about the man.

His head snapped to the line of cattle he was apart of and watched their descent into the arena. Kylo spared a look back, and the man was still there. This time, showing a ticket for the graduation, his smile so crooked at the gate guard.

Kylo had to focus. If he screwed up the music for this Graduation, he would never hear the end of it. He only hoped Rey was focused. As they finished their line up just before the arena, Rey and he stepped aside. They trotted down and past everyone, then across the green towards the stage. His fingers shook a bit as he grabbed ahold of the Saxophone. Rey was there beside him, just as shaken up.

“We got this.” Kylo stated.

“Fuck this, fuck this…” Rey hissed as she pulled the instrument up. Both of them prepared for the play. Snoke stood just before the stage, his eyes on them and hands up. Steady. Steady. The last of the parents were seated. Steady. One breath. Steady. Play!

Kylo felt his eyes close before realizing they were. He felt it fall through him like his skin could absorb it then drip it out through his toes. The visualization was odd, but he couldn’t focus on his brain. Only on the notes. Then his eyes opened, not sure why. Except to see someone at the far end of the arena. Not his mother, nor his father. Not the man with the crooked smile. He couldn’t see them. But he felt them. Their presence. Hidden under a grey wool hood, they stood shorter than the man but taller than his mother. It was their presence that brought out an explosion of emotions in his music. Or maybe it was him, but he wanted to blame the mysterious figure that stood, just inside the arena, but completely away from everyone else.

The march stopped and Rey and Kylo were ushered offstage. He spared a look to Kristan who smiled at him sweetly.

After everyone was seated and the principle said a few words, then the vice-principle, Kristan spoke. Kylo couldn’t hear a word of her speech, but thankfully had been her practice dummy for weeks. He even had it memorized. His ears roared with pressure. Maybe it was playing in front of an audience high, or it was the pressure of having to do it again, but he couldn’t sit still.

He tried to look back, but his body wouldn’t move. Not until he felt the tap on his shoulder to return to the stage by a teacher. Kylo sprang like a kangroo up out of his seat and rushed towards the stage. The piano was rolled from it’s hidden spot in the back right to the center of the stage. Locked down, he touched the piano. It was Rey who opened the lid and sat first. Kylo settled down as well only after looking out and still seeing the mystery person at the end of the arena. This time, he pushed himself to look up. He could tell his parents by the obnoxious sign above their heads in the stands. Luke sitting next to them with a #1 thumbs up on his head and hands.

“We <3 KYLO!” Rey snickered under her breath as she read it to him.

“I will kill them.” Kylo grumbled lowly. “Focus.”

“Fuck off.”

“Bite me.”

“I’d rather get poison Ivy on my tongue.”

“That can be arranged.” Kylo looked to Snoke. He held his hands up again. Steady. One breath. Steady. Two. Play! Kylo pressed the first key and relaxed into it. This time it was a soft air that filled his lungs. This time it was the rollercoaster. Bringing him up, it blew back his hair, it kissed his skin with chill. Kristan liked to kiss his cheeks. Not now. Kylo exhaled as he felt Rey join in as expected. Her keys mixed with their and he was falling. Falling down and feeling the thrill. They pushed and pulled, looped and jumped. His stomach was in knots. Just like when Kristan leaned into his arms and fell asleep. Just like when he looked at him with love in her eyes. Just like when she was going to leave him.

The song ended and Kylo physically had to shove himself away. He couldn’t even look at her now. Why had that thought filled his brain?

Kylo looked to the arena entrance and the figure was gone. Kylo looked up into the stands. Same stupid sign, but Leia was not there with Han. Han held the sign up, giant grin. But Leia was down at the ends of the stands, binoculars out… towards the entrance of the arena.

Kylo forced himself to sit still.

What in the fuck was wrong with him.

It took almost an eternity for it end, and even longer for Kylo to breathe normally. Then they were all standing, and singing, and he was silent. He forgot to even open his mouth. He only stood there, his eyes up on Kristan. She was smiling, arms wide and eyes out on the crowd in general. So happy. No force in her body, no magical talent. She was just a normal person, happy to be here. Kylo opened his mouth only when she turned to look at him specifically as the song stopped. If she left him because he was nothing like her, he had no idea how he would feel.

“Kylo?” He turned to look at Lazertag in the face and see her eyebrows furrowed. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.” He swallowed. “Just ready for this to be over.”

“Same.”

There was a mixture of thoughts circulating his brain… and Kylo began to realize, as an odd outsider, that half of them… weren’t his. Kylo didn’t even realize in the whirl of people as they marched back, that he was standing in the band room. He didn’t even notice Han launching in and cheering him and Rey on. He only noticed when Leia entered the room. There was a soft, mellow feeling in his brain as she walked in that cancelled the blurry out.

“Mom.” He croaked,

“Han, why don’t you get Rey out to her parents, I bet they’re trying to wrangle her siblings up for pictures.” Kylo saw Rey in a flash. Just a small flash. Something he never saw before, but there in the seconds before she brushed past him, he saw it. There was a fear, just in her eyes and the way her legs trembled lightly. But then it was gone and she masked it. Had she seen them too? Had she felt it too?

“Oh, Yeah, they’re probably having a hard time.” Rey added as Han and Rey walked past the two. Once it was just Kylo and Leia, he felt the tear fall down his face. Leia snatched up his arms and pulled him in swiftly, no words spoken.

“I feel crazy.” His throat felt tight.

“You’re not crazy.” She murmured into his ears.

“Then what was that? All of that? I felt voices, thoughts, feelings… all in my head. They weren’t mine! Can that even happen?” He jerked back, his hands shook. “I felt so out of control. I couldn’t… I couldn’t… but that was the best performance I’ve had!”

“You were great.” Leia whispered, her voice hoarse now too.

“What… Mom… what was that?”

“You remember how the music.. It’s a force.”

“Yes, like magic, it’s a push and pull, yes.” Kylo tried to keep his hands and voice from trembling.

“Well, some people who have been working on their force much longer than you. Although you have the best in you… there will be people who try to push theirs over on you. You have to remember not to give in.” Leia smiled weakly. “I wish I could have saved you from this.”

“Who are they?”

Leia’s smile fell as she cupped his cheeks and wiped tears from his cheeks. “Unfortunately-”

“KYLO!” Kylo barely had a moment to ready himself as Kristan and the whole gang came launching into the room. Kristan came barrelling into him and embraced him in full force. Leia caught his eyes and pointed to her cheeks where she faked a smile. Kylo faked one as well, pulling his girlfriend in closer to his chest.

“This is the best day ever!” Kristan called out into his chest.

“Yeah… Best day.” Kylo murmured, his fake smile almost cracking right there.

[writings-of-a-hufflepuff]

Man In Uniform {Part 5}

Fandom: Avengers/Marvel

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warning: N/A

Writer: @imaginesofeveryfandom aka @thequeenofthehobbits

Summary/Request: James Barnes is the local neighbourhood cop known for saving cats from trees and walking people home at night. It just so happens that he lives in your apartment building, in the apartment across from yours.

Prologue X, Part 1 X, Part 2 X, Part 3 X, Part 4 X

It is a few weeks later when you finally get out of Bucky’s apartment for the first time, crutches nearly gone and a new sort of spring in your step at being able to go outside. It is not any easy few weeks, between going stir crazy, nightmares, and Bucky getting absolutely nowhere with your case everything seems so static and you feel like you’re stuck in a time loop with nowhere to go. Your frustration isn’t at Bucky, although you regret that you’d snapped at him a few times when he’d come back to the apartment early in the morning, having left you alone all day. You always felt bad after. He always told you not to worry when you apologised. That he understood. He was far too reasonable and it was becoming more and more frustrating.

It wasn’t exactly the fact that he was reasonable that was the problem, the real problem was that as Wanda had so lovingly put it you were starting to notice how attractive he was and being around him so often wasn’t helping. She wasn’t wrong, no matter how much you wanted to deny any attraction to James Barnes there was no real denying it. He was on first glance attractive, living with him for a few weeks taught you that he was much more than that.

He was kind and caring; he always woke up to help you if you had a nightmare, he always made sure you had company or food unless he was completely busy, he’d help distract you when your leg started to annoy you because of the cast. He was also incredibly funny and affectionate. You liked to say that the two of you had become friends over the last few weeks, although a very tentative friendship on your part. He wasn’t afraid of hugging you randomly or ruffling your hair or helping you walk with your crutches. It was inevitable that you’d find yourself staring at him a little longer than is appropriate.

It was just a little tiny crush, the type you get when you see that cute guy on the subway. It wasn’t anything else. Absolutely not. It’s not serious is anyway, not like that crush you had when you were 15 that went on for a year.

“I don’t know, Buck…they’re your friends and I don’t want to intrude.” Which is why it was totally not hard to deny Bucky Barnes anything when he was giving you the saddest puppy eyes on earth. He wanted you to come out to some cop bar with him, hang out with his friends…and suffice to say meeting a whole load of people scared you more than just a little bit.

“You need to get out more and going to a bar will do you some good…besides Wanda will be there” Since becoming friends with Wanda it seemed she came up in conversation a lot, the idea that if Wanda was there you could be coaxed settled in Bucky’s mind. You loved Wanda and it was a little reassuring that she was there, but she knew these people, Bucky’s people and you didn’t.  

“You do realise I’m just going to be a pain with my crutches, right?”

“I don’t care, I want you there.” It shouldn’t have caused a flutter in your stomach. It really shouldn’t have, except it did. It was hard to look at him for a moment because that shouldn’t have made you feel all warm and fuzzy…but it did.

“Fine, but you’re not allowed to abandon me!”

“Never, why would I do that, doll?” It had been the second week in when he started using random pet names, sometimes they weren’t used at all and other times they fell from his lips so regularly they might as well have been a new mantra of his. It didn’t help your predicament at all.  They spread an affection in your chest that made you feel uncomfortably emotional towards him. More so than a stupid word should ever do.

It was foolish to really think that maybe you’d get your way with Bucky. In truth you failed to deny him things, partly because he was your gracious host and a rather new friend. Partly because he was so bloody attractive.

So you still found yourself getting changed into more appropriate outside wear and struggling down the stairs seeing as the elevator was still broken, your crutches weren’t as cumbersome as they had been when you’d first been given them, but getting down stairs with them was still a slow and arduous process that was more effort than it was worth in your personal opinion.

“Are you sure you want me to come? It took me 10 minute to get down the stairs…” You followed after him as he held the front door to the apartment building open for you with a raised eyebrow and an amused smirk, “Yes, I want you to come, slow poke.”

“Shut up!” You laughed after him as he hailed a taxi obviously planning on drinking tonight, not that you blamed him. He’d been beating himself up lately about losing his lead on your case, the guy he’d thought done it turned out to be a dead end with an alibi so solid that there was video evidence. Suffice to say he’d been stressing out all week about your case and it made you feel guilty to know you caused him so much stress.

It’s rather comical for Bucky to watch you try to get into the taxi on your own without help, you apologising every step as your crutches bang into various parts of the car before you finally get yourself settled and he follows after you, almost instinctively checking you’re wearing your seatbelt. It doesn’t go unnoticed by you. Bucky is a protective person you’ve learnt and his job just means he has a natural penchant for ensuring you and anyone else were safe. That included seatbelt checking. It made you smile, you turned your head out the window to hide it, watching the buildings go by as the taxi drives to this bar. The cop bar. The bar filled with Bucky’s work friends. It was a terrifying prospect, but you knew you needed to get out of the apartment and you always liked seeing Wanda.

“You okay?” You were pulled out your thoughts, realising that Bucky was waiting for you to get out of the taxi…how long had you been in your own little world for? “Yeah!”

Watching you get out of the taxi was almost as comical as watching you get in, your attempts to shuffle across the seats, dragging your crutches with you. He took them from you and helped you out making sure you were stable before closing the door and handing the driver his fare. “You enjoy watching me try to get in and out of vehicles way too much.” You huffed as you walked beside him towards the bar. You couldn’t wait to be rid of these stupid crutches. They were the biggest pain in your backside.

“Maybe I just like watching you?”

“Ha ha, very funny.” You roll your eyes trying not to show how flustered the prospect actually made you. He was only joking, Bucky was always joking. It wasn’t anything more than that. You couldn’t let yourself think it was more than that…or else you might just go from having a tiny crush to something more substantial and potentially more life ruining.

The moment you stepped into the bar you felt that feeling of intimidation, all these strange people around you who greeted Bucky like they’d known him for years and then there was you.

“Hey.” A hand found your shoulder, he had to bend down to be exactly eye level with you, “It’s okay…trust me.” You did trust him, but you could still feel that nervous energy in your stomach as you tried to smile at him and followed him to a table filled with people. All of whom were drinking and laughing at something someone else had said.

“Hey, man!” You stood back as Bucky slapped the shoulder of a broad blonde man who he obviously knew well.

“Y/N, c’mere!” Everyone’s attention turned to you and you moved forward awkwardly on your crutches, Wanda caught your eyes smiling at you reassuringly. “This is Steve-“ He went on to introduce everyone to you.

A smiling dark skinned man called Sam who was apparently Bucky’s partner and who appeared to have a relationship with Bucky that mostly consisted of winding the other person up. A beautiful brunette who turned out to be their chief of police Margret Carter although she told you to call her Peggy. Natasha Romanoff, Darcy Lewis, Clint Barton, Vis, Tony Stark. Each member had a very distinct personality and despite the fact that you had originally been rather intimidated they were all friendly and having Wanda there as one of the few non-officers made it a little easier.

“So, Y/N, what’s it like living with this one?” Clint gestured to Bucky with a tilt of his head as he asked you.

“Meh…” You shrugged your shoulders with a teasing smile knowing that Bucky wouldn’t be able to let that slide. The more time you spent with these people the more comfortable you felt, you could feel that familiar humour coming out with each relaxing second.

“Meh? I watched Dirty Dancing for you!” You knew he wasn’t really angry, he was grinning at you as he said it and you thought back to that night. It had been a good night, the two of you ate pizza and watched classic movies.

“Barnes, did Swayze turn you on?”

“Fuck you, birdman.” You don’t know the origin of the nickname as Bucky shoves Sam’s shoulder, but it makes you snort lightly because it’s actually ridiculous as is their back and forth.

“You can’t blame him if he did, Swayze is a beautiful man! God, young me had such a crush!” You had adored Swayze as a young teen, especially in Dirty Dancing. The movie was far too sensual for its own good and Swayze rarely had a shirt on in the whole entire movie. There was also something attractive about the greaser look he sported. You wondered briefly what Bucky would look like with slicked back hair and a leather jacket…

“Young you? We watched it and all you did was talk about Swayze.” You roll your eyes at him, nudging his ribs with your elbow lightly from where you sat before taking a sip of your drink.

“Jealous, Barnes?”

“Ha Ha, Peg.”

The night dissolved into laughter and random anecdotes. You learnt that Sam was called birdman because one time he got attacked by a swan while trying to catch a thief who’d ran past a pond and that Bucky had followed after before having to stop because he’d been laughing too much. You learnt that Peggy and Steve were flirting around and everyone was waiting for something to happen and that Tony had a habit of setting things on fire at the station.

You noticed Bucky go quiet first, saw his eyes shift to something behind you and turned to see him look at a red haired woman by the door, her arm linked through a built, rough looking man’s. His uniform was half undone and he had a look on his face that was more intimidating than anything. He didn’t look friendly.

One by one each member of the table noticed and fell silent. You figured these two people had history with Bucky and not good history either. You put a hand to his shoulder and leant closer to him, “Are you okay?” It was quiet, but with everyone else remaining silent you were sure they could all hear you.

“I’m okay, don’t worry about it, doll” He whispered back to you, a hand rubbing up and down between your shoulders as if that would reassure you. But it didn’t.

It was unsettling to see him so quiet, so sad simply because two people walked into the room. Bucky was a generally happy person, someone who teased you and made you laugh even when you felt like shit or were going a tad stir crazy. To know that these two people had done something to make him so sad was unsettling and upsetting.

You tried not to speculate on why and how, but it wasn’t easy. Your thoughts that night as you laid in your bed were about what they could have possibly done to him and how long ago. What did these two people do to hurt him so much?

[head-and-heart]

My Calgary Expo Experience

Okay guys so I’m still kind of dying. Today (probably yesterday by the time this goes up) was kind of amazing and I can’t believe that I met Bob Morley BUT I’M GOING TO ATTEMPT TO SHARE THE AWESOMENESS WITH YOU ALL.

Apparently recap posts about cons are a thing and I still can’t believe that I actually have reason to write one!!

I only decided to go on the Sunday because I could fit in the photo op, autograph signing, and panel all in one day so I felt that it was a good option, so I don’t know much about anything that happened on any of the other days.

It was sooo incredible. Bob is just ... wow. 

He just has the most adorable personality. And we all probably know this because you don’t need to meet him to be able to tell but he really does. As my friend who was with me likes to say, he’s all “soft and squish” hahahaha.

I was so so so nervous when we first walked into the autograph line (which was not very long at all because we came on the last day, and we also came early) and we were, like, two feet away from him because the line looped around. It was so weird. I still can’t believe that I was that close to him, let alone actually TALKED to him, and TOUCHED him. 

Also I’m about 99% sure that I saw Robyn from the Afictionados podcast in the line ahead of me because she has a very distinctive voice and I heard her mention Unity Days but I was too shy to talk to her and I wasn’t 100% it was her until later but anyway SHOUTOUT TO ROBYN IF YOU’RE READING THIS WHICH YOU PROBABLY AREN’T BUT IN THE UNLIKELY EVENT YOU ARE JUST KNOW THAT I REALLY LIKE YOUR PODCAST AND I'M REALLY AWKWARD SO I DIDN’T TELL YOU IN PERSON

anyway ..

Bob is just amazing because he was out in front of his table instead of behind it like basically all the other guests. It was really neat, he’s very interactive with the fans and likes to be very personal with everyone. He shook everyone’s hand that came to get an autograph and introduced himself (AS IF I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE) and asked how we were doing and he was just so polite and cute and ugghh. I’ve never been to a con before but my friend was telling me how usually the autograph signing is very quick and they get you in and out of there very fast but Bob was so sweet and generous and took his time with everyone, actually attempting to have a real conversation with the fans. 

The people before us were taking a video of him which is prohibited apparently and the security guy there was getting mad at them but Bob was like “oh, I don’t mind ...” and he looked kind of uncomfortable (about the security guy, not the fans). 

He shaved his beard the night before and my friend was hEARTBROKEN because she LOVED it, haha. I think he looks nice either way, but I kind of prefer him cleanshaven so I was happy. HE PLAYS WITH HIS HAIR SO MUCH. And I swear that boy has an entire closet dedicated just to his various hats, its like every time I saw him he was wearing a different one.

My friend was a little starstruck so I ended up doing a lot of the conversation, but honestly I barely processed most of what he was saying. I mentioned that Zach talked about filming a movie with him at a recent con and asked him if he could share a little bit about it. He laughed and said that he was surprised Zach had said anything because they were supposed to be secretive about it so he didn’t really say anything more than what I already knew. He talked about how he was going to be filming in Malaysia pretty soon (which I already knew cause i’m extra lol) and how he hadn’t spent a whole lot of time prepping for the role so he needed to do some of that beforehand. It was fine that he couldn’t say much about it though because I was mostly just trying to keep the conversation going so I didn’t spontaneously combust and/or faint in his arms ... you know, the usual.

My friend was dressed up as Season 2 Octavia (with the warpaint) and I had a really crappy cosplay of Season 1 Clarke going on hahahaha. Basically I couldn’t find a jacket (and i have no idea how to make one) so I just had like the shirt and the watch and the hair and stuff so it wasn’t anything special. Most people probably thought I wasn’t dressed up at all. When I walked up to Bob he went “WOW that’s a big watch” cause my wrists are really tiny I guess haha. I don’t really know if he knew if I was Clarke or not. 

He started both of our autographs with “Dearest [name]” instead of just “Dear” or writing only our names, which I thought was adorable. It’s such a Bob thing to do - or at least something I would expect from him. He also put two x’s at the end.

I didn’t end up getting anything special signed because I couldn’t think of anything super creative, so I just chose one of their prints instead. They were nice though. 

When he saw my friend’s print that she’d chosen he went “wow I was so tan” and I kind of laughed because he’s still really tan and his skin is so nice haha, but meanwhile I’m white as hell and can’t tan for the life of me

Then we both took photos with him. I always see people talking about Bob smelling really nice and I was like “okay” because I don’t tend to talk about how people smell BUT HE ACTUALLY DOES OKAY. lol I know that seems weird, I don’t know how to describe the smell but its a thing, guys, all right?

Afterwards we looked around a bit at the convention and waited to head to Bob’s panel at 12:00. I ran into a few friends who I haven’t seen in awhile which was kind of nice. It was super packed. There were a lot more people who showed up to see Bob than I was expecting, but it was nice to see so many people coming together. :) The panel was 45 minutes but it went by soooooooo fast. The moderator kept asking Bob to expand on his questions basically, which ended up eating up a lot of time so I didn’t get to ask the question about Jasper and Bellamy that I wanted to, which was kind of disappointing. 

I was being so extra though, waving my hand in the hair and everything, trying to get her attention. I made eye contact with Bob because he saw me but then the woman picked someone else and it was really sad lol. I raised my hand EVERY SINGLE TIME. But I was ignored. 

*sigh*

NEXT TIME.

They were really strict about there being no videos so I couldn’t really get any, which is unfortunate, and I wasn’t close enough to get very good quality photos so I won’t post any of them here. If you have any questions about some things people are spreading about the panel or want confirmation about some stuff Bob said, just hit me up and I’ll hopefully clear some things for you because I know that the truth often gets skewed a little at conventions. Its like the fandom is playing a little game of telephone, except online.

Bob is soooo cute and endearing and funny, so I really enjoyed the panel. I know a lot of people have been posting about stuff that Bob but I’ll point out the stuff I remember anyway

Someone asked Bob was his favourite episode/scene was and Bob said that his favourite episode is yet to air, and that it really delves into Bellamy’s “psyche”, which he liked, so I’m super excited to see that. I do wonder if he’s referring to 4x10, actually, since the promo seems pretty Bellamy heavy and it’s written by Aaron who tends to write Bellamy pretty well, I think. We’ll see!

There’s a video of the Bellarke question going around which, to be perfectly honest, isn’t much different from anything else that he’s said. He apparently ~ doesn’t know ~ if they’ll go the romantic path but he believes that they have a very “special relationship” that is deeper than any romance. It’s not in the video that I’ve seen going around but he also said that Bellamy and Clarke have a certain understanding and honesty which he believes is definitely a good place to start to build a relationship on, if they were planning on going that route.

He said something that I really haven’t seen talked about at all, but both I and my friend thought was a little odd when we heard it. I think the question was asking what scenes with Bellamy were most difficult or something like that but he said "the romantic side I find very hard to play”, which I thought was kind of interesting because Bellamy hasn’t really had any romantic partners besides Gina very very briefly. Idk if that’s who he was referring to? *side eyes emoji* Take it with a grain of salt in any case.

Bob joked about how Bellamy gets beat up so often because he’s “been told that [Bob] sells hits really well” lol. He also said that he maybe takes punches a little too well because when Octavia was beating him up in 3x10 he got too into it and accidentally fell through the wall of the set and broke it.

The moderator pointed out that it’s remarkable how well some characters have recovered from being impaled and he made a cheeky little comment about how “it’s science guys!” because we all know just how accurate the science on this show is hahaha

Someone asked Bob how he and Bellamy are similar and he responded by saying that he was loyal to his family and that the similarities “start and finish there”. He talked about how Bellamy is so much more aggressive than he is and how he wouldn’t go around killing people. The moderator then asked him if he thought he would ever be capable of doing something like that and Bob went “NOOOOOOOO! I don’t have that in me, its ACTING!”. He sounded so offended, it was really funny, especially since Bob is so cute and pure so it just sounded bizarre when she asked that.

Apparently during the scene where Pike sentences Kane to death Mike Beach and Henry Ian Cusick had a solid 15 minute argument about whose side Bellamy should be on and Bob just decided to leave the room after awhile. Bob was just like “okay I’m just going to walk out and you two can decide which one of you is my dad”.

Bob enjoys doing fight scenes “because its always kind of exciting to feel like you’re tough, even though you’re not” (he laughed after he said that) and he also enjoyed doing the Bellamy speeches because he thought that they felt cool and kind of empowering to feel like you have the power to actually influence someone else, since there aren’t many opportunities for that in real life.

Since he likes fight scenes, he joked about how he always would ask “can’t I at least try and put up a fight”  and he also said that Bellamy tends to take more beatings than he gives now because Bellamy feels like he deserves to be beaten up for what he’s done.

In the scene where he found out that Octavia “died” apparently Bob went full out and was banging his head against the bars and actually got a cut all along his forehead because he was so into it.

He was asked if it ever hurt his vocal cords to talk so low in Bellamy’s voice and he joked that it’s painful when he has to scream all the time at such a low octave. He also talked about why Bellamy’s voice was so low, because he was really hungover when they shot the Pilot and when he saw the video he went back and was really surprised and he just kind of had to roll with it from there on out. I’ve heard that story before but it was cool to hear Bob talk about it in person.

I know we all love to talk about the drastic difference in pitch between Bellamy and Bob’s voice but I’m telling you that its something else to hear it in person instead of just in a video. The change is SO dramatic.

One time when Bellamy had to do a big speech in Season 1, Bob had a really bad cold and he couldn’t speak properly so he was kind of screeching and messing up and he said it was really “embarassing” and so frustrating that he actually started to cry. The whole crowd went “aWWWWWwwwWWWWW” when he said that and he was like “yeah, yeah, I know, I know” all bashful and it was really cute.

He talked about how he would rather be judged for his “content” versus his physique and he said “maybe its not even me to feel that way” which made me sad, and then he said that he now recognizes that being judged for his appearance comes with the job sometimes.

Bob says that he likes polarizing the audience but that some people on social media can’t seem to separate him from Bellamy and he joked about all these people who meet him and are just like “I hate your character but, you know, you’re okay” and I was honestly like WHO DO I HAVE TO FIGHT COME AT ME

If he could bring back anyone he said he would bring back Pike and someone yelled “WHYYYY????” and Bob talked about how he caused lots of chaos and whatnot which was interesting, to which the mod was like “they already have enough chaos” and then Bob responded with “what’s wrong with a little chaos?” and I died. nOT like that’s one of the most iconic lines of Season 1 or anything ..

He also said he thought bringing Finn back would be interesting because “his moral compass is very different from Clarke and Bellamy’s” 

When he was a kid he wanted to be a stuntman and he would bite into ceramic plates because he thought that’s what they did, lol. Bob just went, “SO stupid” after he described it haha

I CAN’T BELIEVE I FORGOT. He joked a ton about his hair and how the apocalypse is great for the characters’ hair. He talked about how the hair team is great and how Bellamy has “great hair game” in Season 4, but that all seems to change after Bob finishes filming and he doesn’t really do anything with it. He's very self-deprecating

Bob says that when he struggles in getting into Bellamy’s headspace a lot of the time he just starts thinking about lunch because that’s what Mike Beach told him to do, hahahahaha. He also talked about how there’s “a lot of stupid stuff” going around in Bellamy’s head a lot of the time.

He said that he likes to do rock climbing, but a lot of the time he just ends up playing video games instead.

He finds Octavia and Bellamy’s storyline together this season “heartbreaking”.

He says his scenes with Eliza are “always really great” because they’re very “emotional” and he gets to cry lol

Apparently Bob is like one of two people who actually knows how to drive the rover because its stick shift and its “impossible”.

One girl that was picked said “sorry” and Bob was like “what are you apologizing for?” and the moderator was like “it’s the Canadian way” or something along those lines but the girl was just like “cause I’m so awkward” and the whole time i was thinking girl SAME i feel you

Bob says playing Bellamy has changed his real voice. He thinks his voice has “dropped down because of it” even when he’s not playing Bellamy.

Bob said that one of his friends tried to get him to compete in a smashbrothers competition and he went but he said it was really intense so he was like “no, no, no, I’m going to stay home and be the king of my own house”

Bob doesn’t like sitting behind the table when signing autographs because he “feels weird” about it and enjoys interacting with fans because he feels that social media is really “devoid of connection” and he’s “just a normal person” like the rest of us, which was sweet. <3

Bob says that “I’m very loving but I’m very pragmatic” when referring to Bellamy (not himself)

Bob loves Bellamy soo much and he is super protective of him (like us!). He says that when people don’t like Bellamy sometimes he’s just like “oh well let’s talk about this, maybe I can talk you around” but it doesn’t usually work haha

He said that he went to a play in Australia because William Mcinnes, who he really loves, was in it but he didn’t know what it was about and it turned out be about IVF treatment lol and he was like “yeah that was kinda weird [...] maybe I should have read the plot first ...”

After the panel we looked around at all the merchandise but there was barely anything for The 100, which wasn’t all that surprising. I honestly didn’t expect to find anything, but we stumbled completely by accident onto this jewelry stand and we saw one necklace for The 100 and started freaking out because we couldn’t find any The 100 merch ANYWHERE and the lady heard us and told us that she sold stuff at Unity Days so she’d designed an entire jewelry line for The 100 and showed us her collection.

It was so awesome. She makes all these neat little themed charm bracelets for all shows, so there was one for Lost, and OUAT and Supernatural and all that, which was nice but she had a whole COLLECTION for The 100, with themed bracelets for almost all the individual characters. I remember seeing something similar online, maybe even the same ones, and had told my friend earlier that I thought they were cool.

I DEFINITELY wasn’t expecting to actually find them. 

My friend bought the Bellamy one and I bought the Raven one, because I personally thought that the Raven one was more true to the character than the other one (but they were both really cute!). I’m not one for fandom merch so it was kind of exciting for me to buy something. 

Here’s a pic of my Raven bracelet: 

And here’s my friends Bellamy bracelet:

Later we went to go get our photo ops with Bob, which we did individually. It was very fast-paced so we didn’t get to spend much time with him or anything but I was actually surprisingly relaxed and calm the second time I saw him? Idk he’s just so humble and down-to-earth and he really makes you feel comfortable around him, so I wasn’t nearly as nervous as I was earlier. 

When he saw my friend and I he was just like “hello again” and I thought it was cute that he remembered us, after meeting hundreds of individual people!

I just took a regular photo with him, no special poses or anything, because I felt weird asking for anything different. But to be honest I wish that I asked him for a hug, because I saw a girl go before us who did and her photo ended up looking REALLY good and now I’m super jealous, dammit. 

NEXT TIME. 

(I feel like I’m making a lot of promises to myself in this post, hmmmmmm)

Anyways, after we got the photo he turned to me and said “thank you!” and I was just thinking WHY ARE YOU THANKING ME??? YOU JUST MADE MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE, THANK YOU!

So that was my experience seeing Bob. I’m so far from over it and just looking at the pictures makes me feel all light and happy. He’s such a great person and you can tell that he’s not just putting an act or a show for the benefit of his fans, he’s truly genuine! 

Now I know what people mean when they talk about how after they meet some of the cast, they just want to do it again the next day. I’ve got the con fever, I want to go to another one so bad (but of course I’m infinitely grateful that I got to see him in person at all, because it was such an incredible experience)! Bob is so sweet and adorable and KIND (like I’ve reiterated half a million times) and deserves everything amazing in the world, I don’t know make the rules, k?

And there’s just something so ... amazing about cons. No one there is judging you, everyone there is a shameless nerd as well, haha, and its such a safe space for fans to go and meet celebrities, guests, and each other. Whenever my friend and I saw anyone wearing The 100 merch or cosplaying as someone from The 100, we always got so excited. Because there are ACTUAL REAL PHYSICAL people in front of us who are just as obsessed as we are, and you don’t get that connection through TV. Everyone is so friendly and accepting, complimenting each other’s costumes and whatnot. The community is just amazing. 

Here’s hoping that I get to experience this again, and that any of you who haven’t yet get to as well! Everyone deserves to go to a con and have as much fun as I did. :)

Not sure if I’m going to post my photos with him because I’m really weird about posting photos of myself on the internet. I guess I’m just paranoid that someone I know will stumble across it, or my fandom days will come back to haunt me in twenty years or so and someone will pull up my photograph and my account with my dramatic ass screaming about Bellarke and Bellamy Blake and all that and judge me for the rest of my life. We’ll see. Maybe BFSN??

I’ll consider it. ;)