#the portals basically took you between two different times in the same place except for the fact that it was a different place with similar

[loveofastarvingdog]

last night i had a dream about the two guys from brokeback mountain, magical portals that would switch you between two places/periods in time and could still affect you when you weren’t around them, a girl who used to be a prodigy and now struggles to even get c’s, and a different girl who used to be a friend to one of the brokeback guys before she started growing violent and angry from the effects of the portals. it was a wild dream

[slightly-nerdy-rambles]

Kim Possible, the Tempus Simia, and fun with timey-wimey stuff

So, those of you who follow my blog will know that I recently finished Spoiler Alert, a Kim Possible fanfic following Kim and Ron's kid Max as he accidentally follows a vengeful Monkey Fist into the past and not-so-accidentally teams up with the past versions of his parents to stop the latter's shenanigans. Anyone who's read the fic will also know that I wanted to talk a little about how exactly I envision the Tempus Simia affecting the timestream and how that relates to its canon appearance in A Sitch in Time. For those of you who want to read the fic and haven't reached the point where I bring that up in the author's notes, you might want to turn back now: what follows is going to be rather, well, spoilery. It's also going to be rather long, so I hope some of you like detailed headcanons, lol

So, to refresh, A Sitch in Time follows a villain team-up using the Tempus Simia, aka time monkey, for time travel shenanigans as well as a team-up between the "present" day Team Possible and a future resistance using something called chrono-manipulators to chase after them. All good and well, but the time travel rules seem to... change over the course of the special. Rufus 3000 refers to the time stream as "polluted" and "in flux" and we see a ripple effect of the past changing in Ron's scrapbook, yet it's later revealed that Shego's meddling in the past caused Ron to move and thus disrupted Team Possible enough for the time monkey to get stolen in the first place, suggesting a stable time loop. Likewise, Kim, Ron and Rufus going to the future apparently removes them from the normal flow of time until they pop out of their destination time portal, yet somehow Rufus was able to have thousands of "descendants" (I'm assuming clones of some sort, but either way) at some point presumably after Shego took over. This isn't really all that unusual for a time travel story, considering the mind-bendy and paradox-happy nature of messing with chronology, but that doesn't mean that we as fans can't try to come up with a creative explanation. So what gives?

Well, okay, those of you who read the author's note already know what (in my interpretation) gives: the two time machines we see in that special use different forms of time travel. Namely, the Tempus Simia creates stable time loops (hence that being what we see in Spoiler Alert) while the chrono-manipulators can actually change the past to influence the future. And when these two forms of time travel come into conflict, things can get... weird.

So in my mind, there are roughly three different timelines that give us A Sitch in Time, with the latter ones overwriting the former. We'll call them timelines A, B, and C, with most of the special taking place in timeline B.

Timeline A is a fully stable time loop, with only the Tempus Simia in play, so it would chronologically start with the villains meddling in the past -- but we'll get to that later. Our starting point would be pretty much what we see in the "present" part of the special: Ron moves away due to Shego's later scheme, and with him either not present or "out of synch" with her, Kim isn't able to stop the villain quartet from putting the Tempus Simia together and escaping into the time stream. Drakken puts into motion his plan of crushing a younger Kim's spirit, and he, Monkey Fist and Duff Killigan turn themselves into toddlers to infiltrate Kim's preschool. This almost fails immediately, because the people in the preschool office aren't going to just let some unregistered and unsupervised kids waltz into a classroom (more on that later), but they later manage to sneak into the playground during recess. They torment toddler Kim a little bit, toddler Ron intervenes, they switch targets to him which awakens her kick-butt instinct -- basically at this point, it's the same thing we saw except for the absence of a time-travelling teen Kim.

After seeing that mundane bullying didn't work, the villain team skips ahead to the day of Kim's first mission to try again. Without the added pressure of time-travelling heroes, Monkey Fist and Killigan are just barely willing to let Drakken try his spirit-crushing plan again. But his overly-complicated plan of approaching Kim as preteens, distracting her from the laser grid mission, and planting seeds of doubt that will cause her to muck it up if she does ever get there fails at pretty much every turn.

It's at about this point that future Shego approaches her "present" self and tells her to grab the time monkey and go, which she does. It doesn't take much experimenting for her to figure out why the guys have so utterly failed with it: the Tempus Simia can't change the past, and the villains' meddling might even be part of the reason Kim was encouraged to go into crime-fighting. From here, Shego starts to get creative: using foreknowledge to make enough money to fund her schemes, putting evil think tanks together in times when nobody knows to go after her, and even figuring out that she was the one who got Ron's family to move away and proceeding to do just that.

With new resources in hand and Team Possible effectively broken up, Shego gets down to business. Being much more practically minded than her death trap-loving ex-employer, she returns to the present, catches Kim and later Ron by surprise when they're alone, and actually manages to kill them. Rufus escapes, but Shego figures that she won't have to worry about him or Wade so long as Kim and Ron are gone. So she gathers her legion of henchmen, attack drones, and obedience collars, starts storming the world one city at a time... and wins.

Of course, pockets of resistance form over the next twenty years, with the most prominent being led by the friends and family of our fallen heroes. Rufus and Wade use the former's DNA to "breed" a small army of hyper-intelligent semi-clones to boost the resistance's numbers, and between that, their location near the Supreme One's headquarters, and the resistance members' various skills and gadgets, they actually stand a fighting chance... Except that every attack on Shego's fortress is thwarted after a seemingly unnatural degree of anticipation on her end. As it happens, Shego has gotten into the habit of going back in time to warn herself before every attack against her, letting her retroactively prepare.

The resistance eventually figures out that time travel is involved in the Supreme One's wild successes (not that she's doing much to keep it a secret), and Wade gets to work on devising a counter. The result is the chrono-manipulators, though nobody realizes they work differently (some might say better) than the Tempus Simia. Since the resistance isn't clear on exactly how Shego used the Tempus Simia to take over, they decide to start by going back twenty years to rescue Kim and Ron and recruiting them to stop the original villain team's mucking around in the past. So starts timeline B, and again, most of what we see in the special.

The thing is, a key aspect of the Tempus Simia is stability. It "wants" the timestream to stay the same, even as the chrono-manipulators "want" to change it. So the timestream starts shifting around a little, but keeps the same broad strokes. New time portal gives everyone around the preschool a wave of disorienting deja-vu? The preschool attendants are distracted just long enough for the toddler-ified villains to slip in before class starts, but their extra bullying time doesn't change what happens at recess (though it does change the class picture). Killigan and Monkey Fist get antsy and shoot down Drakken's plan B? The Tempus Simia slaps together a new time loop in which Monkey Fist steals a guardian statue that would have been shortly destroyed anyway, so the only "change" is that it disappears into the timestream to be lasered later rather than getting swept away by a flood or something (and meanwhile, preteen Kim and Ron succeed in their mission and survive the statue's attack). Kim and Ron start time-travelling and eventually head into the future? They would have died around that time anyway, so now they just disappear into the timestream to the same basic result. Rufus also disappears into the timestream? The resistance somehow manages to get ahold of DNA he left behind and start making clones anyway.

Then things really get weird when the Tempus Simia breaks. Its whole stability thing means that the universe is safe from implosion... but that kind of damage also has the effect of erasing the Tempus Simia from history entirely. Ironically, it's the only way for it to change the past -- time is rewritten so that the creation of the Tempus Simia was abandoned at the last moment, and any loops caused by its use are erased as well. The time stream manages to keep itself in shape by once again smoothing over the time-loop changes so that the broad outcome is still the same: that guardian statue goes back to getting destroyed in a flood, someone who had helped Shego found her bank does the founding personally, Kim befriends Ron and finds her inner fire after dealing with a different bully in preschool, and so on. This "smoothing over" gets weaker as the timeline approaches the point where the Tempus Simia was grabbed by the baddies, though, and by the time it reaches Ron moving away, the bank his mom works at just doesn't have any reason to send her and her family to Norway. And so the future is saved, and we finally reach timeline C.

But the Tempus Simia has one last trick up its metaphorical sleeve: just as it "wants" to keep the timeline stable, so too does it "want" to exist. This may not have even been the first time it was destroyed and rebuilt, not that anyone would know with the overwritten timelines. And so, a paltry few years after the end of the Supreme One's reign and the last point in time in which its previous iteration existed, a Monkey Fist who is feeling very displaced in time gets the idea that "time" may just be the answer to his woes...

[shining-magically]

so I’ve wondered this since the trailer came out years and years ago and Chloe defended the movie - was the red shoes teaser written by the same team that made the movie? were they forced to market it like that, was that based on an earlier draft, etc?? not sure if you know but you seem like the leading expert!

Sorry, this is gonna be an absolute novel because you know I’m an animation fan and the history and production of Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs is SO interesting and insane. Like, Tangled levels of insane. Thanks for calling me an expert, no one else was gonna do it so I just kind of took up the helm lol.

Here’s the low-down... The timeline of the movie’s production is an absolute mess and kind of an extremely wild ride. It was in production for ten years, went through a lot of different crew members, and went through at least two other major versions of the story before landing on the final version.

Since there’s not a ton of info on the movie’s production, a lot of this is pieced together from different interviews and context clues, and also a lot of what I’ve read and what I am quoting has been translated from Korean, sometimes pretty roughly. But yeah.

Here’s the story of why the Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs teasers and poster were so, so bad and fatshame-y and the actual movie was so, so good and body-positive. (With pictures and production artwork!)

(This is a beast of a post so I’m putting it under a cut.)

All right, so. After its conception originally as a short story by the South Korean studio Locus Creative in 2009-2010-ish, Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs was being worked on and was set to come out in Summer 2017, as evidenced by this poster at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, featuring a different logo and very different character designs for most of the dwarfs.

In early-mid 2016, the first teaser (in which we see Snow White undress and then two dwarfs recoil in horror at her fatness when she takes her magic shoes off) was released, after the film had kind of been slowly chugging along for 6 or so years. (I am having such trouble pinpointing when the second teaser was released (in which one of the dwarfs basically attacks Snow while she is sleeping to steal her shoes), but I believe it was around the same time.) The teasers didn’t get that much traction because this was a small film from a small indie studio in South Korea.

None of the final actors had been cast yet. At this point in the production, the story was different, one of the many versions that the movie went through. As in the final movie, the dwarfs were actually cursed knights/princes and Snow White switched back and forth between two body types due to her magic shoes, but in this version, the dwarfs needed to steal the shoes from her in order to break their curse (rather than needing “a kiss from the most beautiful woman in the world” like in the final movie).

The weird thing is, I believe they had JUST changed the movie’s story when the teaser came out. I’m almost positive it was released more as a proof of concept than as an actual trailer for the movie. They had just recently combined two separate characters (seen above), a typical pretty, skinny princess character (Snow White) and a cute chubby girl character (’Bonnie’), into one single character that switches back and forth between the two appearances when she wears the magic shoes (also they had just dropped literally half of the movie taking place in the real world, with a magic mirror portal, it was a whole thing). 

They didn’t have the details of this aspect of the new story hammered out yet, and the first pass at presenting Snow’s magically changing body type, was, yeah, not good and super offensive. This was a really inexperienced indie studio making their first film on a low budget, so even the animation and voice acting wasn’t great. I think they just wanted to get SOMETHING out there because it had been 6 years and they wanted to have something to show for it.

But here’s the thing. Despite how the teasers make it seem, this was always supposed to be a movie about body positivity, letting go of appearance-based prejudices, and loving yourself and others for who you are and for who they are, which we see in the final film.

I like to think of our film as a kindhearted one. Our intentions are nice.

- Director Sung-ho Hong

It’s important to keep in mind that this movie was made in South Korea by a 99% Korean crew, and, as I understand it anyway, in Korean culture, ‘fatshaming’ is not really a thing that is seen as overtly offensive. Also, children’s media there seems to have more adult things in it than in the US, which probably accounts for the more risque parts of the teasers. That said, I really believe that at this point in the timeline, the movie was on-track to be bad (or at least not very good) when it was released, and it would have ended up bad IF a few key players hadn’t signed on (which I’ll get to in a moment).

Interestingly, the movie’s producer, Sujin Hwang, said in a 2017 interview:

“[Both teasers] were solely produced to induce curiosity. They’re completely irrelevant to the actual story.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

I think what she was trying to convey was that neither one is a scene in the actual movie, because while the teasers didn’t reflect the revamped story as it existed in summer 2017 (the time of the interview), they DID reflect the earlier version of the story where the dwarfs wanted her shoes, which is what the story was at the time they were made.

Now that we’re in post-teaser 2016, HERE’S where things start to turn around. After the teasers were released, my guy Disney veteran and native Korean Jin Kim joined the project. He and Red Shoes director Sung-ho Hong had been buddies for about eight years and Sung-ho had been trying to get Jin to come to Seoul and work with him at Locus for a long time, and he finally succeeded.

Jin and his twenty years of Disney experience as an animator and senior designer on films like Tangled, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Zootopia, and Moana, had a HUGE HUGE HUGE influence on the movie. He redesigned almost all the characters, oversaw all the visual development from the moment he signed on, and heavily (HEAVILY) supervised the animation, literally going frame-by-frame through preliminary animations and drawing over them, teaching the inexperienced animators at Locus everything he knew. (Literally almost everyone except him either only had TV experience or had no professional experience because they just gotten out of school.)

From an outsider’s perspective, it really seems as though Jin joining the project (and his gargantuan effort) made the quality SKYROCKET. Not just in character design and animation, but also in things like effects animation, story, etc. After he joined, Locus really started pushing HARD to make a good, high-quality movie, and his influence and experience from being a prominent figure at Disney was absolutely key. The studio also began to really study Disney films and other well-made animated films from other studios to really try and pinpoint what the DNA of a good animated movie really is.

I don’t have any solid evidence, but I’m pretty sure that Tony Bancroft (an animator and the co-director of Mulan) then joined the project because he’s good friends with Jin Kim. He is only credited as the voice director (the movie was recorded in English and the characters were animated to the English dialogue), but I am SURE that he probably also had a pretty big influence on the movie, because like... How could he not? I really really think there was more to his role than his title would have you believe, even though there’s almost no info out there about it.

So now the movie goes through a gigantic metamorphosis. Character designs, visual development, and animation quality are all rapidly improving, the story is tightening, and the themes of the movie (which, again, were always the same and intended to be positive) are being presented in a more sincere way. The movie is becoming the sweet, self-love-encouraging and body-positive movie that was eventually released.

I’m putting a gif from the credits of the final movie here. As we move into 2017, when the giant eruption of backlash occurred, please keep in mind that the story was finalized at this point and that THIS was the movie people were so mad about:

Chloe Grace Moretz accepted the role of Snow White immediately after she read the script and she recorded her lines (I think) in early-ish 2017. Her co-star Sam Claflin also immediately accepted the role of the romantic interest, Merlin, after reading the script and recorded his lines in (I believe) July 2017.

In the summer of 2017, the story and script were more or less the same as in the final movie. Promotional images from that time show that most of dwarfs had been completely redesigned by this point and didn’t have their teaser designs anymore.

They also released a few screenshots that look exactly like the final film. The movie was advertised as coming out in ‘2018′ at this point. Here’s a promo image from 2017 that is MUCH more tactfully worded than the infamous Cannes poster:

So now we’re in summer 2017. The Cannes Film Festival. The movie’s script and story have been basically nailed down, animation is underway, and the Korean film company Finecut is beginning to market and sell the movie to worldwide audiences. They are planning on showing some footage to potential buyers at the festival, and they make a poster to advertise the film there.

Unfortunately, it’s THIS POSTER:

Now here’s where there are some unknowns. By this point, the movie is basically in its final form, which is an adorable, body-positive story about loving people for who they are, loving yourself for who YOU are, and that provides commentary on society’s standards of beauty and how they affect how people are treated/viewed. So why this poster??? All I can really tell is that someone (I think Finecut) really, REALLY messed up and either horribly mistranslated the tagline, or didn’t do enough research to know that this kind of thing is REALLY NOT OKAY in western culture.

The above picture is shared and the internet backlash begins, fueled by tweets from prominent body-positivity activists like Tess Holliday. Even Chloe Grace Moretz speaks out against it, because she of all people KNOWS that that’s not what the movie is about. The internet then finds the old teasers from before the movie was revamped and it makes things worse. Producer Sujin Hwang profusely apologizes and says that that is NOT the message of the movie. Locus pulls the advertising campaign, and takes down the two old teasers.

“Our film, a family comedy, carries a message designed to challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty.”

- Producer Sujin Hwang

Voice director Tony Bancroft also tried to explain the situation:

“The truth is the film has a body-positive message as its core theme–it’s the opposite of what reports are saying. The problem is one poorly translated movie poster that has been taken dramatically out of context.” 

- Voice Director Tony Bancroft

And then... There was nothing for a while. The movie didn’t come out in 2018 and was delayed. From what I can tell, I DON’T believe this delay was related to the Cannes backlash. I think it was mostly due to Locus’s limited budget and resources, because as we know, animation is difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and easy to do badly but hard to do well. Also, probably with Jin Kim and Tony Bancroft’s influence, they REALLY wanted to make sure to do a good job with the animation because they now had a great story and they really wanted the movie to be a quality, worldwide hit that would kind of put South Korean feature animation on the map. Just take a look at how nice the final animation was:

The movie was released in South Korea on July 25th, 2019. Unfortunately, the damage was done in the English-speaking markets and it was not released to an English-speaking audience until June 22, 2020, when it was released digitally in the UK. At the time of this post, there is no set US release date, but the distribution rights were recently bought by Lionsgate and the MPAA gave the film an official PG rating.

So who’s to blame? There’s no good answer. You could blame Locus for making those old teasers. You could blame Finecut for the competely tonedeaf Cannes poster. You could even blame cancel culture for raging against the movie based on one poster and two old teaser trailers without researching what the movie was actually about.

All I know is, it’s a damn shame.

[potter-imagines]

George Weasley Dating Ravenclaw!Reader Would Include...

-       George loves to take photos of you

-       Like absolutely adores it

-       His side of his dorm has at least ten different pics of the two of you taped to the walls

-       Fred never misses an opportunity to taunt George for this

-       “Jesus, George, you’d think you’re an obsessive stalker with the amount of photos you have of Y/n. Kinda of concerning…”

-        George brings you home for Christmas break

-       Molly adores you- like is way more excited to see you walking through the front door, rather than her actual children. “Y/n! Oh, Y/n, dear, you look beautiful! Come inside! Out of the cold you go- I’ve got a warm cup of tea waiting for you, dear.”

-       Fred would walk in behind you rolling his eyes mumbling, “Good to see you too, birth giver. I missed you as well, love you too.”

-       Pulling all nighters with him

-       Some were for studying, some just to spend some more time with each other, and some because you two couldn’t seem to uh, ‘fall asleep’ or rather, keep your hands off one another

-       If you didn’t know how to already, George would teach you how to play Quidditch

-       You’re typically the little spoon and even though he’d never mention in aloud, he secretly loved when you were the big spoon

-       When you first started dating, George’s friends would tease him for being with a Ravenclaw

-       They classed you as a stereotypical Ravenclaw, before even speaking with you

-       Fred reassured them they’d like you but Ron was skeptical

-       Mostly because he couldn’t understand why a Ravenclaw was dating his brother

-       Although you were a true Ravenclaw at heart, that didn’t mean you were a bookworm ‘nerd’ who only cared about school and had your nose to the sky

-       Most Ravenclaws you knew were more honest that stuck up, you had a tendency to say exactly what you thought

-       And George loved this

-       He had never met a girl like you before- one who served it the teasing and flirtatious wilderness right back to him

-       He’d plan extravagant jokes with his twin to try an woo you

-       Your friends would giggle and whisper whenever George came around, all staring at you knowingly

-       They had all placed bets on how long it would take George Weasley, the jokester Gryffindor, to ask you, the clever and competitive Ravenclaw, out on a date

-       It only took about two weeks after that for him to make the first move

-       After Potions class, George would walk with you in towards the Great Hall, complimenting you the entire way

-       You two would sit together, much to your surprise and by the end of the meal, he would ask you out on a proper date for that weekend to Hogsmeade

-       He’d buy magical eternal flowers at Hogsmeade on your first date

-       Flirting doesn’t die down with George just because you’re a couple

-       If anything, he becomes cheekier and touchier

-       He isn’t huge on PDA, but he likes when you sit on his lap in the courtyard or either of your common rooms.

-       PDA for the two of you is more hand holding, forehead kisses, arm around your shoulder, small pecks, tight hugs before class, etc.

-       Snape had scolded the two of you more time than you could count “There will be no embracing of any sorts outside, or inside my class, Miss. Y/l/n and Mr. Weasley.” “Yes, professor. We’re sorry-” “No we’re-“ Having to drag George away before he gets you two into more trouble.

-       He’d call you sweet names like; love, darling, princess, and angel (His favorite name to use in the bedroom.).

-       But his absolute favorite nickname for you is “little Ravenclaw”

-       He loves buying you maroon presents

-       He likes to think he’s secretly converting you to a Gryffindor, but he knew you had too much pride for your house and would never fully switch to his side

-       You two will play childish games like hide and seek around the castle during the weekends

-       It’s more fun when you include your other friends

-       But when it’s just you and George playing

-       The game typically ends with the two of you half naked in an empty classroom

-       Walks behind you up the stairs so he can pinch your butt “George- knock it off!” “But it’s so cute and I wanna touch it.” “Not now.”

“So you’re saying there will be a later, right?”

-       Studying together

-       Despite common assumption, George Weasley is exceptionally brilliant

-       You two have competitions on who can score the highest mark

-       George was usually a point or two away from you but it didn’t stop you from gloating

-       “Ha, ha, Georgie. Take that! Now you owe me a back massage and a butterbeer this weekend!” “I can give you more than a backrub, darling.” “George!”

-       Sneaking him into the Ravenclaw towers past curfew

-       He loves that you are willing to break rules for him

-       It exhilarating to you both

-       You’re very close with his friends- especially Fred and Hermione

-       Fred and George would convince you to help them with pranks, little at a time

-       But soon enough

-       You’d basically becoming a trio

-       They’d find a way to drag you into planning and executing nearly all their pranks with them

-       It made you extremely nervous at first

-       You had never been in real trouble before, and it wasn’t something you desired

-       But George would reassure you constantly “Love, you don’t have to help if you don’t want to, we won’t be upset. But if you do, I won’t let anything happen to you or let you get caught. I promise, darling.”

-       And he never failed to keep his word

-       Until one day

-       There was one time, late winter of your final year

-       Fred and George were readying to leave Hogwarts to open their shop, Weasley Wizard Wheezes, and had invited you to join them

-       You contemplated the thought for a week before deciding to finish off the end of your year, then move in with George and his brother once summer came

-       The twins’ pranking antics had grown more intense since Umbridge arrived

-       Everyone despised her- well except the Slytherin’s who she favored

-       The twins’ landed themselves in detention with her on more than five occasions and they had enough

-       Late one Saturday in February, Fred and George had enchanted a portal swamp outside Umbridge’s office door, a spell you had taught them

-       Right as the swamp appeared, footsteps began to approach quickly from behind

-       Fred darted left and George took off after him, both assuming you’d follow

-       But panic hit and you ran in the opposite direction, smacking right into Filch, Umbridge emerging not long after from the other corridor

-       You were caught red handed, Umbridge took the wand in your grip as enough evidence to prosecute you

-       George had reached the end of the corridor when he turned around and realized you weren’t behind him but by the time he and Fred stealthily snuck back to Umbridge’s office

-       The door was swinging shut

-       And the once bubbling green swamp was gone

-       Not long passed before George could hear your voice and his chest stiffened at once

-       The twins hid behind a wall, until George ushered Fred off to monitor the hall leading towards their common room

-       Ten or so minutes passed until the door squeaked open and you quickly rushed off, salty tears threatening to spill over your eyes

-       George yanked you softly from behind a wall before you could make it up the first step of the shifting stairs

-       You hissed in pain when his fingers unknowingly wrapped around your fresh wound “Ow, my hand- George it hurts.”

-       His eyes would widen, then soften with comfort as he studies your hand “Darling, I’m so sorry. I should’ve taken the fall- I should’ve realized you weren’t following us and went back sooner. I’m so sorry, Y/n.”

-       You’d cry, not because you were mad at him or blame him but because of the never ending burning sensation in your bloodied hand

-       You’d reassure him and insist it was your own fault

“I froze, Georgie. I’m the only one to blame. I don’t know why I didn’t go the same way as you guys, I just got scared of getting caught… and now this happened cause I was dumb.” “You’re not dumb, darling, don’t say that. I promised to never let you get hurt because of one of our pranks and I broke that promise. Umbridge is a cold bitch, I can’t keep putting you in these risks situations and letting you get hurt.”

-       He’d sneak you into his dorm that night

-       None of his friends would oppose, especially after hearing about what happened

-       Fred and Lee slept on the large couches in the common room so the two of you could have the night alone

-       George is an amazing cuddling partner- like the best

-       You two would lay in his bed together, snuggled under a stack of blankets

-       He’d convince you to wear one of his Gryffindor shirts

-       Then take a picture of you in it when you weren’t paying attention to tease you with

-       “I’m going to show this to all your little Ravenclaw friends to show them that you’re really a Gryffindor!” “Am not! I’m a Ravenclaw-“ “I’m gonna put some Gryffindor inside of you tonight, princess.” “You dirty bastard! Don’t you say that in front of any of my friends, please, I’m begging you.” “I’m sure they already know, love. It’s not like they haven’t heard us before.”

-       You would get annoyed beyond beliefs after being with George for years and your friends still confusing him with Fred, or assuming they were the same person

-       You loved Fred, but you were in-love with George, and there were many differences between them besides your relationship status

-       Fred was the friend who could cheer you up, listen to you rant, help you get revenge on a professor for poor marks, hangout with you, give you advice, and all the great qualities that a best friend should have

-       But George Weasley

-       George was all of the above and more

-       He had a different thought process- slightly different mindset than his twin

-       You loved the deep, intellectual conversations you could have with George

-       One moment you two would be discussing the purpose of life and the origination of languages

-       Then the next you’d be debating over the worst flavor of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans

“George, how you can you even argue this? You know vomit and rotten egg are the two worst flavors!” “Vomit, yes. Rotten eggs, no. I’d take that over earthworm. Now that one is bloody disgusting!”

-       There was a connection- a magnetic pull that drew you and George together

-       He understood you on a more personal level than any other person you knew

-       There were secrets he’d share with you late at night that not even Fred knew

-       Like how he wanted to be a Mediwizard up until his fourth year

-       George would bring you books he’d read on break for you

-       You two liked to start a book together right before break, then finish over break and talk about it once you returned to each other

-       Fred would tease George relentlessly for reading over the holiday break “God, next thing I know you’re going to starting knitting sweaters with each other and painting your nails together.” “Jealous, Fred? A shame you can’t find an intelligent girl of your own but don’t be made that I have.”

-       George will write you letters when you’re away for each other

-       He’ll do cute little things like send a single dainty flower that he picked from his mom’s garden and seal it inside the envelope

-       His favorite to gift you are lilacs- the smell reminds him of you and is comforting when you’re gone

-       He’s always been a bit more in touch with his emotional side than his twin

-       But you loved those differences

-       You two hard a pretty serious relationship from the start but that didn’t mean you weren’t playful

-       You two hard a pretty serious relationship from the start but that didn’t mean you weren’t playful

-       Both George and you knew you wanted to spend forever together the first time you walked through Hogsmeade together

-       And neither of you wanted to waste anytime fooling around when you knew what you wanted

-       George is a honest gentleman, always putting your needs first

-       Even after you leave Hogwarts with the twins

-       With all his busy work and the booming business and success of the shop, you assumed your time together would be spared

-       It was in a way

-       But George always put in the extra effort to keep the spark alive

-       Before opening the shop, he’d usually try to set your alarm clock back three hours in hopes of you getting the extra sleep he knew you deserved

-       Sometimes it worked, but other times you’d meet him in the shop at open with a smug smile on your face “Love, you should be asleep! You’re too clever, little Ravenclaw.” “You still call me that, even after all this time?” “You’ll always be my little Ravenclaw. I could never love another.”

-       He’ll surprise you during work with random sweets, sentimental cards, picking you up lunch and a coffee/tea, and buying you flowers

-       George can be extremely sweet when he wants to and for you, there is never a moment where he doesn’t

-       The two of you would get married shortly after the second war ended, not that anyone was surprised.

[gaeasun]

So what is Rose's deal with Stark?

I am oh so very glad you asked.

ORIGIN STORY TIME

Basically, it's entirely his fault that she has powers/such a weird life in the first place.

Her origin begins between the first and second avengers movie, or basically whenever the avengers started teaming up to fight Hydra.

While Thor was with them, Tony took the opportunity to try and study his hammer, in the moments he just kind of set it down and forgot about it. He theorized that it was an immense source of raw power that he could probably harness, and decided to try an experiment in interdimensional physics. Except, the pure power and magic of the hammer accidentally worked too well, and it punched a hole through the intradimensional barrier instead. The difference being the barrier between dimensions in his universe and dimensions in other multiverses.

The dimensions in Dr. Strange would be an example of interdimensional worlds. Another earth is a intradimensional one.

So he accidentally opened a portal to another earth, right where Rose happened to be. It sucked her in, but the tech failed at the same moment, so for a moment she was in the space between where physics are weird and she technically did not exist for a moment. Think of the space between worlds like a vaccuum. She got sucked into the vaccuum, and the vaccuum did not want her there.

So, as an equal-and-opposite action/reaction, it reopened and spat her back out. But because of a combination of weird physics and a lot of infused magic, it created two identical versions of her; one in each world. But she still only has one soul, so it kind of bounces around between both (not that she can control that though).

Also, when the portal hit ctr v, it kind of went weird. She got combined with some traces of plant DNA that got sucked in as well, and infused with an unhealthy dose of both Thor-type magic and intradimensional energy.

The first place she woke up to was Marvelverse. She saw Stark there going oh a human! thats interesting, then she immediately freaked out and booked it. She accidentally teleported to the other side of the world, with none of the avengers any the wiser to what happened. 

Later, after she had more control over her powers and met him again, she confronted him about what he did, to her and her world (because what do you know! punching through intradimensional barriers is like punching through an ozone layer, bad stuff can get through after).

Except he was completely unrepentant about what happened. To him, it was more like “hey! I gave you superpowers and you can literally live a double life. And i learned about science. 10/10 would do again” And honestly he did keep looking into intradimenional experiments afterwards (which she found and destroyed)

Except she wanted literally none of that. She just wanted a completely normal life, and now she’s both weird and traumatized by events that happened afterwards!

And, she’s an empath. She can literally sense the lack of remorse and the overabundance of arrogance. 

So to her, Tony Stark is an arrogant shabuir who masquerades as a superhero. Literally her greeting to him is trying to break his nose (and more) every single time. She’s been tempted to kill him several times. She could not work with him if it meant saving the world.

And that is why she hates Tony Stark. 

[phoenixyfriend]

The Naruto/Frozen Crossover

So I was planning on just doing an image ID thing for this post, but apparently the formatting on desktop is such a mess that it’s easier to just make a new post that’s text only. I can also like. Bulletpoint it so that it can be a little neater. All ideas were made with @firebirdeternal​‘s help, because they are the most efficient enabler I have.

Also I added some bits at the end.

Under a cut, because it’s Long As Heck.

I originally had two options: either Mid-teens Elsa and Anna being transported to ninja land sometime pre-canon and running into Haku and Zabuza... or just like. Born as a Daimyou's daughters.

Spoiler alert, we’ve got nukenin and I’m a sucker for an intrusive crossover, so transported to ninja land it is.

Suggestion from Birdie:

Mechanism for crossover: Elsa ices over a Wishing Well by accident after having Wished for someone else who understood her, Anna and her fall in and get Ice Mirror Portaled to Ninjaland, falling out of an iced over pond near a shrine that Haku recently prayed at for similar lonely child reasons?

Which I like! They don’t end up there soon enough to run into Haku, because I want a dramatic chase first, but I like it.

Obviously, Anna is forced to learn about Elsa's powers because it's the only thing keeping them safe

Or at least alive

(Elsa will do ANYTHING to keep Anna safe, and if that means she has to get her hands dirty...)

...neither of them knows Japanese, so, you know. There’s that.

I'm thinking that they end up in/near Kiri at first

And they aren't FAST ENOUGH to get away so Elsa panic-enchants a giant reindeer made of snow to run away across the suddenly-frozen ocean.

She and Anna have to ride and Elsa is probably crying the whole time.

Oh shit this is like. RIGHT after their parents die, I forgot. So that’s a thing! They are in mourning and all that fun stuff.

Point is, they use the powers for a Self Defense thing and BBY Haku is just !!! "Master can we rescue them for Ice Cousin reasons?" Zabuza: Yes, and only for those practical reasons and not because I collect endangered children like people collect pokemon cards.

I imagine that maybe they track rumors of a Yuki-onna down, or the Giant Snow Reindeer rides by and Haku’s just like Wat

The girls just tag along with Zabuza because. Like.

Do they like him? No. Do they trust him? No. Do they enjoy the fact that he considers them pathetic civilians? No.

However, Haku is Baby.

Zabuza is REALLY annoyed at them being Useless Civilian Royals “but Haku likes them so I guess they can stay.”

Age at meeting, three years pre-canon:

Zabuza - 23

Elsa - 18

Anna - 15

Haku - 12

Elsa is 90% anxiety/depression master combo BUT if Zabzua protects her then she's WILDLY dangerous so like. Whatever

Elsa's bingo book nickname options, uninspired:

Winter Witch

Winter Queen

Ice Queen

Snow Queen

Something about a Yuki-Onna maybe

She's Very Stately and kinda breakable but Winter is her Bitch

I mean like, the fact that, if protected, she can shut down the agriculture of a fucking country? That's an S-rank even if she's not that useful in a fight.

She's like. Jinchuuriki-level destruction. Generally speaking she wouldn’t. But she could.

Elsa: What the fuck is a chakra? Elsa: my snow monsters are self-sustaining. Elsa: I'm gonna build us a house.

Zabuza has NO idea how her powers work and it is INCREDIBLY frustrating but “there’s no chakra cost to keep these things going and we have shelters on demand” is too convenient to question after a while.

Haku: Delicate, deadly, incredibly fast ninja work. Elsa: I can't dodge a kunai but watch me wreck your entire country's ecosystem in under a day.

Elsa is a siege weapon.

Meanwhile, Anna is really, really into the physicality of ninja practice.

She's clumsy and she's not very good at ninja stuff, but she sure is determined!

Anna also gets on Zabuza's nerves because she keeps insisting that Haku get to be a kid.

Anna: Let's make flower crowns! Zabuza: No, he needs to train, not- Anna: FLOWER CROWNS

Consider: Haku saying Elsa-nee-sama and Anna-hime.

Or just calling Elsa “onee-sama.”

Anna is also younger than Elsa and way more Fun so she probably gets adjusted to Anna-chan or Nee-chan.

If Zabuza calls Elsa “Hime-chan” or “Elsa-hime” or, Sage forbid, “Elsa-sama/dono” then he’s VERY MUCH making fun of her and he’s probably getting his soup frozen that night.

At one point, Elsa... tries to like. Convince herself to have a crush on Zabuza or Kakashi or something until Zabuza just puts a hand on her shoulder and asks "do you even like men?" "...that's an OPTION?"

Zabuza urging her to try and ask out a Cute Kunoichi and Elsa's like.... I can't decide if she's bright red and a useless lesbian or uncomfortable and ace.

I am SO invested in the siege weapon thing.

SHE IS THE SQUISHIEST WIZARD.

It's not her fault that every single other combatant on the continent is Massively Dangerous in melee! She took a very traditional back-line build!

Enemy: Doesn't it GRATE to protect someone so pathetic, Zabuza? Zabuza: She literally froze an entire castle of enemies to death because they harmed her sister, so. No.

Most Ninjas: Sharp Knife. S-Rank Mega Ninjas: Gun. Elsa: High Yield Explosive Rocket Launcher. Literally loses fights to the Knife People, because she can't bring her power to bear on that scale. But if you can give her Time and Prep? No contest.

Long distance AoE

Like  you know how Nagato is literally dying of starvation due to illness and can't walk, but he's also capable of leveling powerful villages more or less on his own?

Elsa is the same Vibe.

It’s like sealing a bijuu in a civilian.

She's honestly both more and less powerful? Like it'd be hard for her to kill everyone in Konoha in the snap of a finger? But also, she could starve out the Country of Fire in a summer.

She WOULDN'T, but she could.

I always read Elsa as gay or ace but my brain keeps trying to ship her with dude ninjas and I have to yank it back on a child leash.

People insinuate that Zabuza is interested in Elsa and he's just "What? Ew she's like five."

"I'm eighteen."

"Five."

BUT

Elsa! Might mistake trust and companionship for a crush!

I can see THAT happening despite gay/ace.

Also like. I don’t think Zabuza is straight.

So mlm/wlw solidarity?

And Haku is probs genderqueer.

So Anna is THE TOKEN STRAIGHT.

Anna is like, the Straight Friend who will go to the mat for her queer friends. Like vicious. In-your-face barking like a mean dog at people who were being bigots.

You know how Elsa in the second movie uses her powers to make toys for kids out of ice?

Okay, so her practicing by making things with Haku.

But yeah, Elsa can't really do "throws ice senbon," but she can do Delicate Geometry Things since she apparently, canonically studies math for fun and loves fractals.

Haku: I can trap you in a prison of ice mirrors, and you are at my mercy. Elsa: LOOK AT THIS CASTLE I MADE???

Haku wants to do Pretty Things like Elsa

OH.

Elsa makes... snow bunnies..

For the ninja distraction reasons but also because it's a Soft Thing that makes her feel better about, uh, everything. And Haku likes bunnies.

Zabuza still takes The Dirty Missions but Elsa gets upset when he does something that hurts innocents and Nobody wants Elsa upset. Even Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset.

When Elsa gets upset, overnight accommodations are suddenly Very Uncomfortable for everyone except her and Haku.

And then Anna gets upset, which makes Elsa even MORE upset.

And then things just keep getting colder.

Zabuza doesn't want Elsa upset for many reasons, not limited to: "Is actually capable of killing me from outside of Sword Range if she's mad enough, even if it’s not that easy" and "the Small Children would be unbearably sad if she died and honestly so might I."

She's more of a friend than a ward and he's not entirely sure he's okay with that.

Zabuza: "Ew, friendship."

He has absolutely no idea how to have a social interaction with people he isn't Bullying, Raising, or Threatening to Kill.

Elsa and Anna have no trouble convincing people they're related, at least. Different coloration with almost identical bone structure.

A tendency to burst into song when they feel emotions.

Identical weird accent that nobody can place.

FOOD

The girls are royalty, they don't know how to COOK.

But they also want food from HOME.

It's a lot of trial and error.

More error than not, since they have both no knowledge and also a language barrier to overcome. It probably takes YEARS before they can describe things like Unfamiliar Flavors well enough for people to say "OH that sounds like spearmint."

When they run into something they know that’s familiar, it’s life-changing.

Chocolate is more common in the elemental nations than in Arandelle and Anna may or may not cry about it.

Anna is loudly bossy, even at Zabuza.

Zabuza is gruffly commanding, to everyone.

Elsa doesn't actually like being in charge, but when she talks, people LISTEN.

(Haku is just happy to be here.)

Elsa radiates two things: Anxiety, and Natural Command, and she basically just fluctuates between those.

"I don't want to be in charge but also I'm vetoing this."

So, obviously, the main reasons that Zabuza keeps the girls around is that Elsa is a living siege weapon and he thinks she could be convinced to help him run a revolution in Kiri, and also that the Ice Queen schtick is like. Really good for Haku and Zabuza can’t really say no to the kid.

HOWEVER, Anna is clumsy and messy and all that, so Zabuza starts training her in Ninja stuff. Elsa joins in on the “I need to know how to Run Fast to get away from fights I don’t want to have in the first place,” but Anna’s the one that’s like “TEACH ME HOW TO SWORD.”

It’s honestly not that hard to teach her, she’s just really, really, REALLY enthusiastic.

Once or twice someone asks why she’s so bad at this yet running around with an A-rank nukenin and Zabuza’s just like “I’ve only had her for a year and a half, shut up!” because it’s not that he’s a bad teacher, it’s that she was a very pampered civilian until like a week before he met her.

He should get a MEDAL for even getting her to low Chuunin.

Zabuza: I'm taking a job from Gato Elsa, who has Training in economics and politics and bureaucracy: I have a better idea.

This is actually not entirely what I’d do but I wanted to make the joke first ANYWAY here’s an actual plot or something.

Oh, also by this point everyone is Canon Ages so Elsa’s 21 and Anna’s 18 and Zabuza’s 26 and Haku’s 15.

Elsa is getting paid to keep the water from interfering with construction, by way of....

ICE COFFERDAM

Elsa with Haku as her Guard while Zabuza is off running his own mission? Which Anna begged to go on because Cool.

Elsa also kind of keeps her involvement on the ice front semi-secret by claiming she’s there as an engineering consultant.

LISTEN canon made her like geometry, I can ENTIRELY believe she’d be excited about the bridge-building.

Gato has hired someone else on the danger level of Zabuza, who is Threatening to Team 7 + Haku? But then when things look bleak Anna and Zabuza arrive and then Scary Sword Man is on our side and oh dear that's a lot of blood.

Which, you know, fun!

Birdie suggested Raiga which I’m not feeling but I do feel the need to bring up as an option.

It’s also not Kisame BUT

Kisame: [giant lake dome filled with sharks]

Elsa: uhhhhhhhhhhh...

Giant lake dome: [is now a giant ice dome]

Anyway

Gato: I'm hiring an army. Elsa: [giant ice wall around his compound] Gato: ... these guys can walk up walls! Elsa: [adds snowman guards] Elsa: ... Elsa: [adds a ceiling]

Just puts Gato's entire mob in a fucking snow globe.

Zabuza shows up twenty minutes late with (Throwing) Star(buck)s just like "Oh, they dead? No? Want 'em to be? Okay cool I'm gonna go pick up Haku, I'll be back in like an hour."

Anna would... LOVE Naruto

ENERGETIC FRIENDLY GOOFBALL

"I found us a baby brother!" "No, we already have Haku." "BUT LOOK AT HIM."

Anna is only a year or two older than Itachi.

OH RIGHT

I wanted to make a joke about how Naruto also vibes with her because he's less judgmental that she can't really... talk properly.

Sasuke is Judgy and Kakashi is Paranoid and Sakura is Uncomfortable.

Meanwhile Naruto is just like "And I Shall Scream."

Anna, who learned Japanese from Zabuza (rude) and Haku (uber polite): WELL FUCK YOU, GOOD SIR Naruto: YEAH WELL FUCK YOU TOO, LADY Elsa, overly formal: I am... so very sorry.

Anyway, generic missing nin fights and all that.

Elsa gets injured in the process and after a variety of arguments, Naruto manages to convince them to take her to Konoha for medical attention.

Elsa is... usually the one getting injured.

Zabuza and Haku are FAST and Anna is at least learning (even if she’s only been doing it for three years), but Elsa is The Squishy Wizard.

If someone throws a kunai... she can’t... really dodge...

So yeah, gut wound.

Normally they find a nukenin medic to patch them up but Konoha is reasonably close and has some of the more skilled medics on the continent and they DID technically help the Konoha nin so like. Gah.

That’s Zabuza’s final thought. Gah.

Just “Fuck it, let’s save the ice queen.”

Elsa ends up in a half-literal-ice stasis state on the way there and it’s happened before (it is not the first time she’s been stabbed), but it’s always terrifying.

Especially to the Konoha genin who are just like WHAT THE HECK IS THAT.

So they get to Konoha, there’s a whole bunch of stuff about extradition treaties and “you are bringing a literal WMD of a woman into our town” and “we can’t just let MOMOCHI ZABUZA in.”

Anyway, it ends up being that Zabuza has to wait outside the village while Elsa is treated inside, and one of the Teenagers goes in. Obviously, it’s Anna, because Zabuza is INCREDIBLY UNCOMFORTABLE with letting Haku enter a village that’s known for having lots of bloodlines, and anyway, Anna’s the sister.

Bunch of stuff, she’s healing, etc, and then one day Anna comes in and is told “your sister had a bad reaction to the anesthetic, we couldn’t save her, I’m sorry, she’s gone.”

She flips out, gets shown the corpse, flips out MORE, gets escorted out to the village walls where Zabuza and Haku are waiting.

Horrified reactions

Zabuza doesn’t want to admit that it’s EMOTIONS because this is his FRIEND, he is clearly just upset about losing the living siege weapon.

Haku is just super confused and goes “But she’s not dead.”

“What.”

“She’s not dead, I can feel her, I can always feel her, it’s like sensing but just her, because we’re both ice. She’s alive, somewhere over... there?”

And points right in the direction of the Hokage Mountain, which for the purposes of this fic and also Drama is where ROOT headquarters is.

YEP we absolutely have that plot point.

Is Danzo overused as a plot device? Probably. Am I going to diabolus ex machina him anyway? Ye.

They kick up enough of a fuss that the Hokage gets called down.

He wouldn’t, normally, he’d leave it to a couple of skilled jounin and call it a day, except Naruto got involved so like. You can’t. Ignore that.

There’s lots of shouting.

Just like. A lot.

And then part of the mountain explodes!

AS ONE DOES

Elsa comes flying backwards out of the hole, catches herself on a spontaneous ice slide, gets to her feet.

Girl is swaying like MAD.

There are absolutely ANBU (both fake and real) coming after her.

At least one of them gets speared through by an ice spike.

Anna runs up to her, tries to hug her, gets batted away.

Elsa’s staring at her in sheer TERROR and starts muttering something about how Anna died years ago, this isn’t real, etc.

Nobody except Anna understands most of it, but Haku picks up enough to translate when Anna’s freaking out.

Elsa starts doing her Ice Castle thing in the middle of Konoha as a coping mechanism, mostly so she can get Up and Away and Shielded By Ice.

This is not a good look.

Especially because she’s singing, which Zabuza always thinks is a bad omen because it means shit is getting real and one or both of the girls are about to get a powerup or be beaten even harder than otherwise. When they start singing, things get More Dramatic And Extreme).

(Zabuza does not like Disney Musical Rules)

Danzo shows up.

There’s a bunch of arguing.

All the medics insist that nothing she was given at the hospital should have caused amnesia, psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, etc.

It’s. Not hard for Hiruzen to guess what happened.

Namely that Danzo, upon finding out that chakra dampeners didn’t do shit since none of Elsa’s powers come from chakra, decided to keep her drugged up and start using genjutsu to make her more malleable.

Because like. An injured WMD just showed up in your village. What are you supposed to do, not try to kidnap her and turn her to your side? Like, come on. What was he supposed to do?

Not that, Danzo. Literally Not That.

IDK how it gets resolved, probably Anna getting to her with the power of love, because Elsa is ultimately Super Disney.

I also don’t really know where to go from there other than “Maybe Jiraiya can get you home, but also I’m pretty sure Zabuza wants you all to get the hell out of here and take over Kiri” but who knows.

Also

IMAGINE ELSA MEETING GAI.

Imagine Ino getting a puppy crush on Elsa.

IDK that’s it for now.

[five-rivers]

Stars Aligned Chapter 2

Here’s the thing.  Danny knew this was a dumb decision.  At least as dumb as stepping into the ghost portal (but at least he’d gotten some nifty powers out of that, hey?).  Whatever reason his bio-dad had for chucking him out the door within days of his birth couldn’t be good.  Putting himself within reach of the man…  Yeah.  Not his brightest thought.  

(Not to mention the wizards.  And witches.  That was so weird, how they had two different names for essentially the same thing. Then again… actor, actress…  Why were people so weird?)

On the other hand, twin brother.  Twin brother who had to live with aforementioned baby-abandoning bio-dad.  Twin brother who wasn’t allowed to visit America.  Or, Danny suspected, a family of squibs.  

Yeah.  

Yeah.  

So, here he was.  Getting everything in order for a wizard passport and wizard international travel, because bio-family refused to even look at an airport.  

Danny had a suspicion that, based on how they spelled the word and a few other comments in that particular letter, that they weren’t entirely clear on what an airport was.  

Fun.  

On the other hand, in comparison to the actual, normal, legal passport he’d gotten, just in case bio-family left him somewhere, wizard passports were much, much easier to get.  The wait times were practically nonexistent.  He could, in theory, get the passport on the same day he traveled.  All that was needed was proof he was a wizard and his adoption papers.  

Of course, ‘proof he was a wizard’ actually meant ‘wand.’  Wands being something they used as personal ID, despite the fact that they were a) sticks, and b) didn’t actually carry any personally identifiable information.  Sure, Jack said that they were somehow connected to their owners, but unless there were, like, giant books of details about everyone’s wands at every place that would, conceivably, need ID, and had people trained to identify all those tiny little characteristics…  Danny just couldn’t see how it would work.

Danny’s current theory was that all wizards were just insane, which meant that his twin would most likely fit right in with the rest of Danny’s family, right as soon as Danny figured out how to legally kidnap him.

(No, Danny didn’t have a ghostly Obsession, and it definitely wasn’t family related.  He was only half-ghost, after all.  Why do you ask?)

Anyway.  Wizard passport.  Wizard ID. Wizard sticks.  

Wands.  

Wands meant a nerve-wracking trip to the nearest wizarding town with Jack.  Evidently, he’d lived there a couple of years after his parents sent him away from Britain when he was around fourteen because of ‘the war.’

Abruptly, many of Jack’s stories about his childhood made more sense.

(It had always been something of a joke between Jazz and Danny to try and figure out what ‘the war’ was supposed to be, and if Jack’s parents had just… Conned him into thinking he’d eaten horse meat.  For some reason.  Even if the Fentons hadn’t seemed like that kind of people, no matter how eccentric.)

(Also, evidently Jazz and Danny had never met Jack’s biological parents, who were not named Fenton, although his adopted mother was also a witch.)

(Why was everything so complicated?)

 The “wizarding community” was a small town accessible only by a train line invisible to ‘no-majs.’  And also flying brooms.  Which wizards used.  Danny had seen the train before, not realizing that he wasn’t supposed to. Several times.  Usually while flying to Wisconsin to deal with whatever Vlad had done that week.  

If Danny was a wizard, was Vlad?  Was being half-ghost somehow tied up in being magical? What did that mean for Dani?

(Hey, maybe this whole affair could be used to bring Dani into the family safely.  Who was to say that he didn’t have a secret twin sister?)

Danny could admit that the town itself, which had almost a Ghost Zone vibe with how all the architecture seemed to be from fifty plus to a hundred years ago and also the physics breaking magic, was sort of cool. It was… cute, he guessed.  He didn’t really like how everyone was staring at Jack, their clothes were just as weird, but it wasn’t a new thing.  People always stared at Jack.  

That’s what happened when you wore hazard-orange jumpsuits twenty-four seven.  

The shops all had names out of a fantasy novel, and at one point they got turned around and wound up on a residential street where they had to ask for directions, but eventually they made it to ‘Willoughby’s Wand Emporium.’

The interior of Willoughby’s Wand Emporium reminded Danny strongly of a shoe store.  The shelves were all lined with boxes of approximately that size, and the employees all carried measuring tape.  It also smelled like a shoe store: musty and dry, with a hint of polish.  Or maybe it was wood varnish?  Or some kind of paint.  

A young woman bounced up.  “Hi, how can we help you today?  Replacement wand?”

“First time, actually,” said Jack.  

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the woman.  “You’re just so tall for your age.”

“I’m fourteen,” said Danny.  

The woman began to turn red.

“He was missed,” said Jack.  “It happens.”  He smiled, but it looked far more strained than usual.  

“Oh,” said the woman.  “Ahem.  Well, if you’ll come right this way, I can start taking measurements, and start trying out wands.  The wand chooses the wizard, they say!”

“Okay,” said Danny, shrugging.  That was… interesting.  Were the wands sentient?  Did that somehow make them acceptable IDs?

Seemed really weird to keep sentient things stored in boxes.

… Said the kid who stored sentient beings in a soup thermos.

A really high-tech soup thermos.

Didn’t make it better.  

Except he didn’t keep them in the thermos indefinitely.  Except for Dan.  

Danny didn’t know if the wizards kept the wands in boxes indefinitely, either.  Maybe he should stop assuming things.  That had gotten him in trouble with ghosts more than once.

The woman took her measuring tape from where it hung around her shoulders, held it out in front of herself, and promptly dropped it. It did not fall.  

As basic as levitation was for ghosts, it was really weird to see a human do it.  (Especially when it always took so much concentration for him to levitate things other than himself—Hence why he never really used the ability in battle.)

The measuring tape flitted around Danny’s head, shoulders, arms, and body, taking measurements.  He had to sit on his reflexes hard to prevent himself from trying to catch it or knock it out of the air.  

He was so nervous.  Was it normal to be nervous?

The measuring tape snaked back through the air to the woman, who smiled.  “Alright,” she said, “we can start with that.  Uh, to explain the process, we usually start out with wands in the appropriate size range and try and zero in on the ones that respond best to you from there.”  She flicked her own wand, and several thin boxes slid themselves off the shelves.  “We use a wide variety of wand woods from a variety of wandmakers.  Just about any tree that grows in North America is probably represented here.” She paused.  “Except for palm trees.”

“That makes sense,” said Danny.  Palm trees were quite different from other trees.  

“Alright.  Let’s start with pine.  The core of this one is dragon heartstring—Harvested humanely, of course!”

“Core?” said Danny, latching on to the familiar word even as he regarded the wand itself dubiously.  

“Yes.  As with our woods, we also stock a wide range of wand cores.  Each wand has a core made of a small part of a magical creature.  Dragon heartstring, unicorn hair, and phoenix feather are the standard ones…  But that standardization is rather British.  We have a few others available.  Thunderbird tail feather—Only taken during molt.  Wampus cat hair.  Dittany. Rougarou hair.  Jackalope antler…  Those are the more common ones, though we do have others.  Even some kneazle whisker, although most people don’t want those.”

“Why not?”

“Ah, they tend not to be very strong.  But sheer power isn’t everything.  Some prefer control, need lower power output…  or are worried about accidents while they’re learning.  We do see some adult learners every now and then.”

That actually sounded sort of appealing to Danny, but he supposed he’d better go about this normally.  At least at first.  

He picked up the pine wand and immediately dropped it.  

“Ow,” he said.  

“Ow?” repeated the woman.  “Oh,” she said, catching sight of the burn on his hand.  “That’s… not supposed to happen.”

“Y’know,” said Danny, conversationally, “I’ve only held, like, two magical things in my life, and both of them have damaged my hands. Is this, like, a common thing, or am I just ridiculously unlucky.”

“Second one, I think,” said the woman.  “Cynthia’s good at minor healing charms.  I’m going to go get her.  Okay?  Okay.”

Shortly thereafter, phoenix feather wands were also eliminated as a possibility, not because they burned Danny, but because they seemed intent on burning everything else around him.  Pine wands were also a definite no-go (“Don’t worry about the lifespan thing,” said the woman, “that’s a myth.”).  As was everything but elder, apple, pear, hornbeam, thorn, and yew (this list got another mention of myths from the shop assistant).  

At this point, the shop owner, Mrs. Willoughby, was drawn out from the back room to observe the mess Danny was making.  

“My,” she said, “I haven’t seen anyone have this much trouble in a while.  Heather, why don’t you go get some of the specialty cores.”

“I thought the unicorn was working well,” protested the woman who’d been helping Danny so far.  She winced as Danny picked up a new wand and exploded a light.  “Comparatively.”

“Yes, we could probably eventually find a unicorn hair wand that would work for him, but all things considered…  I feel like we should explore other avenues.”  She sniffed.  “Nothing associated with fire.  Perhaps kelpie mane?”

“I’ll check,” said Heather.  

.

Kelpie mane, it turned out, did the same sort of thing as phoenix tail feather when it came to Danny.  Only with a lot more water involved.  

“I didn’t think that would work, anyway,” said Mrs. Willoughby.

“Then why,” said Danny, wringing water out of his shirt, “did you have me try it?”

“Oh, cases like you greatly improve our understanding of wandlore,” said Mrs. Willoughby.  “You’re not likely to have noticed this yet, but the population of wizards and witches is so small compared to the no-maj population that everyone who gets very far in a profession has to be a bit of an innovator.  I’m recording this for future reference, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing what you do in life.  If anything.  It would be very helpful to me if you became famous.”

“Hard pass on that,” said Danny.  

“Or at least come back at some point.”

“I’ll consider it,” said Danny.  “But, like, we were really hoping to do other things today, so maybe…”  He made a circular motion with his hand.  “Or at least, ugh, I don’t know.  I feel like everything you give me is trying to kill me.”

It was a very familiar feeling, and a very unwelcome one, nonetheless.  

“We really aren’t,” said Mrs. Willoughby.  “But perhaps… from now on, we’ll limit to the woods to the Rosaceaes.  The others tend to be called unlucky.  Well, except for the hornbeam.  Is there anything you’re singularly passionate about?”

Singularly passionate?  “Not really,” said Danny, who did not think about ghosts or helping people or space. He shifted, uncomfortable, and squelched.  

Screw it.  He was supposedly a wizard, now, right?

He phased the water off himself.  

“Oh my god!” shouted Heather.  “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Uh,” said Danny.  “No?”

“Calm down, Heather.  Don’t act like you’ve never seen accidental magic before.”

“Not with a teenager doing it!”

They were now attracting a crowd.  Yay.  

“He’s not trained, yet,” said Mrs. Willoughby, unconcerned.  “Don’t be rude.”

“Yeah, can we get back on track, here?”

After a few more tries, Mrs. Willoughby had determined that the wood that reacted the least badly to Danny was hawthorn.  Then she sent Heather into the storage room to fetch more.  

“I don’t know why we even have these,” said Heather, under her breath, carrying several boxes marked with stamps that read ‘THESTRAL.’

“Because some people have trauma, Heather.”

“He’s a teenager.  I seriously doubt he has deep personal experiences with death.”

“Wow, way to assume, Heather,” said another shop assistant, who was passing by with a far-too-curious customer.  

“Here,” said Mrs. Willoughby, handing Danny a box.  “Try this one.  It’s hawthorn.”

With some suspicion, Danny slid the cover off the box and gingerly picked up the wand inside.  

It didn’t do anything like what the other wands had. Instead, the slender length of wood gave him a faint echo of the feeling he got when he was on an emotional high and engaging in either extreme mischief or obsession-adjacent activities (because he did not have a real, ghostly, capital-O Obsession).

Danny declined to hold it with all five fingers, lest he be overcome with mania.

Yes, he was paranoid.  But when touching things can go as badly for you as they did for Danny, paranoia was justified.  

“Oh, it looks like you’ve found your match,” said Mrs. Willoughby, clapping.  

With the ease of practice, Danny did not let any trace of horror or unease show on his face.  He ignored the surge of glee from the wand, and carefully placed it back in the box.  

Yeah.  He needed a wand for passport purposes, but there was no way he was going to use that.  He’d just fake magic with ghost powers.  It had been working out okay so far.  

What was the worst that could happen?

A rather relieved Jack paid for the wand, and they made their way, slowly, to the government building.  

“So,” said Jack.  “You want to save getting those beginner magic manuals for another day?”

“Absolutely,” said Danny.  He wondered if his twin had gone through anything even remotely like this and if it was really worth all this trouble to meet a person he would have basically nothing in common with other than blood.  

Blood that likely meant less than usual, considering that his was diluted with ectoplasm.  A fact he would have to hide.  With no allies or back up.  In England.

(Again, this whole endeavor was not his greatest idea.)

.

Draco supervised the house-elves as they cleaned out the room next to his own, feeling rather blank.  He had campaigned vigorously for his twin to come, but now that he was…

The boy, for all that he was as much a Malfoy as Draco, was an American for all intents and purposes.  What did Americans even like?  What did they call their bastardized version of Quidditch?  Would Deneb even know about wizard games?  According to the woman from the agency, he’d been raised as a muggle by those squibs he’d been placed with.  

Slowly but surely, Draco’s heart sank.  He had no idea what his twin would be like.  Deneb, despite being his brother, would essentially be a stranger.  

He was beginning to understand why his mother was so angry at his father.  

[skipppppy]

I’m so fascinated by your she ra fan character! I’m trying to understand the storyline but it’s a little hard to find everything, and I was wondering if you would mind explaining it here?

Thank you very much! Her story is SUPER convuluted, I elaborated on it a bit on another ask about her relationship with Entrapta, but I’ll try to sum it up as cleanly as possible but a lot of different factors come into play so it still might be LOOONNGG. It’s also not a very happy story, unfortunately, but it would be helpful for me to get it all written down!

In terms of things that might be triggering, her backstory involves mention of a wide range of abuse. It won’t be explicit but I just want to be safe!

I’m actually gonna put most of it under the cut for the sake of anyone who follows me or any tags so they aren’t cursed with a mile long post on their timeline. I know the pain 😅

So here it is! I present A COMPREHENSIVE TIMELINE OF ALL THE BULLSHIT ARIA HAD TO PUT UP WITH!!!!

-For background context, she’s a Wingfolk, a species of Bird People native to Etheria who live in a kingdom built into a forest of giant trees named Ornithia. I could go on about them for hours but all you really need to know is that they have hollow bones to achieve flight (which is also the case for real life birds), which makes Aria’s body very light and frail. So she’s basically useless in physical combat which is why she never really defends herself. She was also a particularly weak flyer, which is why she doesn’t avoid a lot of situations by simply flying away.

-EXTRA BACKGROUND CONTEXT, Aria was born around the time the Horde landed on Etheria. Her father was a sorcerer at Mystacor, who had a reputation for ignoring ethics in the name of science. This all came to a head when a meteorite struck the surface of the planet; he rushed to the sight, stole it, studied it for a while, and after learning it had a powerful magic, decided to try a ritual in which he extracted the magic from the meteorite and fused it with his daughter’s soul. It took a few years for people to find out but when they did he was exiled for his actions, and Aria, still a child, was given to her mother.

-ONE MORE SMALL DETAIL: from about the age of 18/19 onward, she started having dreams about a mysterious figure made of blinding light who knew secrets about the universe and promised to find her one day so they could “finally be together again.” 3 guesses who THAT is lmao (hint: it’s Horde Prime)

-I won’t go into details about her childhood because we’d be here forever but the most important things you need to know are 1) Aria’s mother was a HORRIBLE parent and preferred to get blackout drunk rather than look after her children. 2) Aria had 4 younger brothers who, due to her mother’s negligence, she had to raise entirely by herself, which is why she feels responsible over others and has such a “nurturing” disposition, it was forced on her. 3) She took her brothers and ran away from Ornithia when she was 15, and built a home in a small woodland in the mountains of Dryl where she has lived ever since. 4) Throughout her childhood she befriended Princess Entrapta and the two were extremely close due to their isolated upbringings.

-When the BFS visited Dryl for the first time in Season 1, Aria was there acting as both a lab assistant and royal advisor to Entrapta, and joined the rebellion alongside her. Nothing crazy happened, but when Entrapta “died” Aria was beside herself with grief and ended up leaving the rebellion in order to go tend to Dryl, since it needed a ruler and as advisor it was her job to step up and take responsibility. Unlike the others, however, she refused to return to aid in the battle of Brightmoon, since she was kinda miffed at how the Princesses treated Entrapta (lookin’ at you, leash lady Perfuma) and was thoroughly pissed that they didn’t even TRY to go back for her, even if it was just to find her body and give her a dignified burial.

-Season 2 was when things truly went to shit. When the Horde came to claim Dryl, Aria resisted but was defeated pretty easily. When Glimmer and Bow came to scout out the situation, they saw her being hauled away and tried to save her but basically got caught in a stalemate where they couldn’t act because the Horde threatened to harm Entrapta if they acted. They told Aria to go with the Horde and promised that they would form a rescue party to save the both of them. But after they learned that Entrapta had joined the Horde by choice and had more important missions to deal with, rescuing her just..stopped being a priority. She wasn’t a rebel so they had no obligation to get her, so eventually they forgot about her entirely.

-Aria was kept as a prisoner for a while, but Entrapta found out pretty quickly what happened and went to find her. At that point Catra was growing frustrated with all the menial paperwork she had to do, and since she’d had experience being an advisor/secretary type, Entrapta basically proposed to Hordak that Aria act as his assistant in the same way she used to at Dryl. He accepted since it meant he would be spending less time running the Horde and more time building the portal. Aria was against the idea of helping him since she was still holding out hope that the rebels would come save her, but she was simply threatened with the classic Evil Horde punishments (torture, more torture, being locked in a cell for weeks without food or water, a tad more torture). So from mid-Season 2 to the end of Season 4, that was pretty much the position she was in. Being the Fright Zone’s resident desk jockey.

-Not much happened in that timespan, most of what occurred revolved around the portal incident and the aftermath. While Aria had been playing the part of Hordak’s pretty little secretary she was trying to find weak points in the Fright Zone’s security system so she could bust her and Entrapta out of there. Due to her and Hordak building the portal (and smooching lol) she’d been spending less and less time with Aria, which had been making her a little upset. She felt like someone she’d spent her entire life caring for was replacing her for something better, but her suspicions weren’t confirmed until she asked Entrapta about leaving together and she refused. That was the first small nudge towards a downward spiral. Then Catra returned with Adora and the Sword in hand and the Princesses came to stop the Portal. The rebels had come to save Adora and forgot about her. She was willing to forgive and join them, until they saw that she had been assisting the Horde, assumed she had betrayed them alongside Entrapta, and decided to leave her behind without giving her a chance to explain herself. That was the second, slightly stronger nudge that made her teeter over the edge of a breakdown. And then Catra told her that Entrapta had abandoned her to rejoin the rebels. While it was a lie, it was perfectly placed salt in the wound, and the straw that broke the camels back into her shifting allegiance and properly joining the Horde.

-Throughout Season 4 she had the same role as before, except this time she actually cared about her work, and had taken on the additional role of helping Hordak with his busted tech since Entrapta wasn’t around to do it. He had already come to rely on Aria for paperwork, but now she was helping him with his machines and they had a shared trauma over being “abandoned” by someone they cared deeply for. She was literally filling the void Entrapta left, and in a way they started to care for each other. Aria, being a hopeless romantic who had read about a trillion love stories about gentle protagonists who healed the evil monster men with their kindness, took to him like a moth to a flame and happily played the role of “the next best thing” against her better judgement. It wasn’t really a healthy relationship, but they did genuinely care for each other and found comfort in one another’s presence.

-It didn’t last, however. Catra was vaguely aware of the “thing” they had, and while she was indifferent for the most part, she was dealing with a downward spiral of her own, and she slowly became paranoid that Aria would distract him from completing their plans. In her poor, burnt out kitty cat frame of mind, the only way to deal with the situation was to get rid of her. So, deciding to kill 2 birds with one stone, she told Hordak that Aria had been jealous of his relationship with Entrapta, and SHE had been the one to send her to beast island. And Hordak believed her.

-I won’t go into detail about what happened after that, because it was VERY GRUESOME! We all saw how Hordak reacted when he found out what Catra had done in the original show. Now remember when I mentioned that Aria has hollow bones that made her incredibly frail and physically incapable of defending herself? Yeah. It was not pretty. Hordak wasn’t completely at fault, since he thought his anger was warranted, but by the time he’d learnt the truth and realised his mistake she was dead. In the space between the incident and learning what really happened he’d thrown her in the abandoned black garnet chamber with no food or water and basically left her to rot. He was EXTRA mad at Catra for pulling that with him, but he didn’t have time to grieve since he, Glimmer, Catra, and Aria’s lifeless corpse were beamed up into Horde Prime’s flagship.

-When Prime initially found her she was still dead. However, remember the healing magic that came from the mysterious meteorite that had now fused with her soul? Spoiler alert! It belonged to him. The meteorite was one of his most prized possessions, and the dreams Aria had been having were the magic’s attempts at trying to establish a connection with him across dimensions. (the meteorite was somewhat sentient. This is perfectly normal and well thought out writing I swear) And being reunited caused a huge surge of magical energy that resuscitated her, allowing Prime’s clones to give her some much needed medical help.

-After being pretty much comatose for 2 weeks Aria finally woke up, and was finally able to speak with Prime in person. When she found out that the “mysterious figure” from her dreams who had promised to find her was REAL and had just saved her life, she basically just latched onto him. She was, understandably, TRAUMATISED from the last 2 or so years of her life, so she was too scared to go anywhere else or trust anyone, so Prime didn’t even have to try to win her allegiance. He was also very happy to have his meteorite back, even if it now had a mortal body with skin and a face and a slew of emotional baggage. So she spends most of Season 5 being showered in love and affection by Prime and all her attendants, eventually being crowned Empress. While Prime was unequivocally evil and Aria was aware of that, he mostly sheltered her from what he was doing, in fear that her loyalty to him might falter. Maybe in a fun au she could’ve convinced him to leave Etheria alone so they could be together for longer, but alas, it was not to be.

-In the aftermath of the Heart being destroyed and Prime being killed, her downward spiral returned and shifted into OVERDRIVE. The people who had abandoned and neglected her took her one safe person away from her and they were being hailed as heroes for it. While she now knew that Entrapta had never abandoned her and was instead sent to beast island, seeing her get a happy ending with the man who had, to be quite blunt, physically abused and assaulted her, shattered any part of their friendship that might have been recoverable. She retreated into herself, taking over Horde Prime’s role as ruler over the Clones. She turned the Velvet Glove into their new home, trying to be civil with the other Princesses but eventually descended into a cold, bitter, vindictive Empress who ended up making terrible decisions as a cry for help.

-I’m still undecided on what to do with her after her fun villain arc, but I do know that in the aftermath she’d probably either step down from the throne so she could properly heal from her trauma, or work with her clones to fix up Prime’s flagship and get as far away from Etheria as possible and find peace in a new life away from everything that hurt her. I may also bring back Horde Prime from the dead through my sheer will to ignore canon so they can be together, since they are for all intents and purposes, soulmates. And I don’t think it would be very fair to let my poor hopeless romantic who just wants to be loved lose her handsome prince forever. I think it would be sexy if I committed necromancy I think.

ANYWAY...THAT WAS A HEFTY READ..SORRY IT WAS SO LONG, BUT THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!! I CAN COME BACK TO THIS FOR REFERENCE NOW

TLDR: babygirl has had it ROUGH

[pappydaddy]

Ghost of You ii (f.w.)

A/N: Here is a part two for Ghost of You (Requested by the lovely @lovenonymously​!). I didn’t know which way to go with this so I kinda mashed up some of the suggestions in the request to create this! Hope you enjoy!! 

Pairing: Fred x Fem!Reader

Movie/TV Show: Harry Potter

Trigger Warnings: Character death, angst, sadness, some fluffy memories, recovery, a mention of alcoholism (recovering).

Part One | Part Two - You’re here!

masterlist | taglist | wips | navigation - my gif -

  His breath was taken away from him the second she stepped into the moonlight. The purple dress she wore was just an ordinary dress like she always wore but then again, she always managed to take his breath away. He could only manage a smile as their eyes connected, her making her way to where he was standing, the moonlight glowing against her skin like a goddess. “Hello, Freddie.” She giggled, her bare feet stopping to stand in front of him, her dress blowing ever so slightly in the spring breeze that blew past them. 

  “Hello, Love.” He was finally able to find the correct words in the hectic jumble that was his mind. The fact that he managed to find a girl as sweet and beautiful as the one that stood in front of him boggled his mind. Despite them being so young, he knew that she was the one and that he was truly and madly in love with her. 

  “I didn’t know what you had planned so I just threw a dress on,” She spoke in an apologetic tone, looking down at her floral dress bashfully. “I don’t even have makeup on or my hair done.” 

  “You look perfect to me,” Fred whispered, thinking he talked low enough that she wouldn’t hear him. When she snapped her head back up to look at his face, the redness in her cheeks evident in the pale moonlight, he knew she had heard him. He blushed himself, trying to recover from that slip-up. She was the only girl that left the infamous flirt Fred Weasley sheepish. “You really do look perfect.” He spoke these words firmer, stepping closer to her to close the gap between them, his hands settling on her waist. 

  “I look like I just rolled out of bed, which I did because you wanted to meet at midnight. I had to go to bed so someone didn’t rat me out of breaking curfew.” She smiled lightly, though she had felt like she was in no shape to be seen by anyone with her hair falling in her natural waves and makeup-less face, Fred made those pesky butterflies swirl in her stomach with every look he gave her.

  “You’re a Hufflepuff, nobody would rat you out,” Fred spoke over the silence of the night as he swayed them back and forth in a slow dance, turning in a small circle to the beat of the imaginary music in his head. “They’re all too loyal.“ She snorted at this, the sound beautiful to him, but a flaw to her. She slapped her hand over her mouth, embarrassed that she had done that in front of him despite how long they had been dating. 

  Fred laughed, pulling her hand away from her face gently, his fingers interlacing with hers while his other hand kept a hold of her waist, her hand falling back to rest on his shoulder. The pair swayed gently, the blades of grass tickling their feet but they didn’t mind. Suddenly, he spun her out - shocking her for a second before her giggles filled the night air. The image moved in slow motion in his mind. Her dress flaring up, her hair whipping around, the large smile on her glowing face. He pulled her back into him, her body clumsily pressing against his as she stumbled a little, her hand resting against his chest before sliding up to rest on his shoulder again.  

  Silence surrounded them as they just enjoyed each other's company. Enjoying the rhythm of their beating hearts, the feeling that crawled beneath their skin from their skin touching, the swirling in their stomachs, the sheer happiness they felt. “What do you think life after Hogwarts will be like,” She posed the question, her voice softer than anything Fred has ever experienced. “I hope we still have dates like this.” 

  “We’ll have dates like this and many different dates, I will never pass on an opportunity to take you on a date.” He gazed down at her as she laid her head on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart. 

  “And when we get married, it’s nice and intimate, not a big wedding that’s too crowded,” She continued to think of their future, not even doubting that they would be forever. “We will live in a cottage-style house that’s nice and cozy with a beautiful garden that our kids can play in. It won’t be too far from The Burrow so that we can visit your family easily and George won’t be too far either since it wouldn’t be right to not see him every day.” 

  “But we won’t live too close to Mum and Dad, will we,” He asked nervously. “I love my mum, but I don’t think I could survive with her dropping by all the time, a couple needs their alone time.” He spoke with his normal amount of cheekiness in his voice and she could basically see the wink he undoubtedly sent her. 

  “Not too close to your parents so that you can have alone time with me, got it,” She nodded, pulling her head off his chest to peer up at the tallboy. “I’ll write it in my new journal when I get back to my room.” She told him, barely getting the words out before his lips collided with hers, nearly knocking her over by the sheer force and urgency of the kiss. Once she regained her balance, she giggled against his lips, kissing him back in a way that made him melt. 

  Fred sighed as he slowly floated back into reality, his shaking hands picking up the journal he was staring at. The brown leather covers tied closed with a matching string. It was in the same pristine condition it was in when she first got it from her mother. It was intended for her to write about all the day’s activities to keep as a portal to her Hogwarts years, but it turned into her planning her future, writing it all down on the pages. The only thing that looked different about it was the edges of the pages were turning a bit yellow where she had accidentally spilt a bit of water on them. He didn’t dare open it, he was barely managing to move her things back into their rightful places. Instead, he slipped it into its place on her bookshelf in between her old school textbooks she held onto for reference sake. 

  “Fred,” George poked his head into the room as Fred turned his back towards the bookshelf. “Dinner’s ready, come sit and rest. You don’t have to put everything away tonight.” 

  “I’ll be right out, I just have to put one thing back in here.” Fred told him. With an understanding nod, George pulled his head out of Fred’s room to saunter back into the kitchen to prepare the table. He moved across the room to the dresser, picking up the old tube of strawberry chapstick she had left there, shuffling over to the nightstand on her side of the room. Opening the drawer, he neatly placed it among the other neatly placed objects that filled the drawer. With one last look around the room, Fred pushed the drawer closed before making his way out of the room to his waiting brother. 

  “How’d it go?” George asked when he noticed Fred rounding the corner. George placed the two full plates on the table next to the two glasses of water that were already placed in the spots. Fred shrugged, settling down in the seat George didn’t take, looking down at the plate George had prepared for him. 

  “Good, I’ve got everything where it’s supposed to be except the closet, but there isn’t much to do there.” Fred answered him, picking up his fork to eat some vegetables. George hummed, taking a swig of his water, nodding slightly. 

  “Are you going to do that tomorrow? I think you should, Dr. Smith said not to do too much at once,” George reminded him. Fred had taken so long to place the few things back to where they belonged in the bedroom. “And maybe I can help you with your bathroom, the shop is closed tomorrow.” He suggested, knowing that Fred wouldn’t want to do it all alone. 

  “That would be great, I could use the help to clean the bathroom anyway, it’s a bit cluttered.” He told George after chewing all his food. 

  “Then it’s settled, we’ll tackle the bathroom tomorrow and maybe my bathroom while we’re at it - it could use a good cleaning as well.” George slid that in there, earning a laugh from Fred. There had been only a few moments when Fred had laughed recently, once being when Ron had managed to slip on a sheet of ice three times and the others from little comments George has made that he never really thinks of. 

  “Your bathroom needs to burnt and rebuilt, you never clean it,” Fred pointed out, turning his nose up in disgust at the thought of his brother’s bathroom. “After we clean the bathrooms, maybe we could get some takeout? With tacking your bathroom onto the to-do list, we’re bound to be too exhausted to even think about cooking anything.” 

  “Sure, Fred, whatever you want,” George smiled down at his plate, the smile going unnoticed by Fred who continued to talk. His brother was finally acting more like himself. His footsteps were lighter when he walked, his lopsided smile could be seen on his face more often. He has even been able to come down into the shop and work for a few hours at a time, interacting merrily with customers. Fred had a while to go before he was fully back to himself, but he was slowly getting there. George couldn’t help but to wonder what the new Fred will be like. If he would find another person to love or if Fred having a certain amount of soulmates was real. Either way, he knew that Fred was going to be alright, no matter what being healed looked like for him. He knew that he wasn’t skipping out on appointments anymore to drink, in fact, Fred hasn’t even as much as thought of a drink for at least six months and George had aided his brother in his mission of sobriety - quitting drinking himself to stand alongside his brother in his path to recovery. George looked back up at Fred as he took a break in his story about a new product he thought of yesterday to eat some of his dinner. A loose smile played on George’s mouth as he took his brother in. “I love you, Fred.”  

  Fred looked up at George, chewing his food before answering. “I love you too, Georgie,” He replied, taking a drink of his water. “But anyway, I was thinking-” He launched back into his pitch, George nodding as he listened, happy to have his brother back. He wasn’t scared of losing someone without them knowing he loved them anymore, but he certainly made it a routine to tell the people he loved that he loved them at least once a day. 

  He still felt the ghost of you lingering around beside him, but it didn’t bring him sadness anymore. Your ghostly presence provided him with comfort and strength, knowing that you were still with him in spirit. He also knew that someday, when it was meant to happen, you two would reunite in some way. He hoped that you two would spend your days in the afterlife as ghosts, terrorizing people with pranks and practical jokes. No matter what would happen, Fred was sure that he was going to live his life to the fullest until that day for that was what he knew you wanted for him.                 

[malachi-walker]

Catra and the Performative Nature of Villainy and Abuse Survival

(Yeah, with a title like that you can tell I earned that English lit masters. -.-)

Ok, so I have a lot of She-ra meta bouncing around my skull I need to get to one day, but let’s start with the big one post s4: the psychological and symbolic implications that are made explicit in DT’s epic call out of Catra (please note that I specified “made explicit” not revealed, because a lot of the stuff I wanna talk about was already there if you knew where to look.)

1. Catra’s villainy is inherently performative.

Yeah, pretty obvious but I’m going somewhere with this. If you pay close attention to Catra throughout the series, her words (the stuff on the surface) and her underlying actions don’t match up. Not entirely. No tsundere jokes, please, because it ultimately leads back to a very common pattern among abuse victims and some very interesting implications for Catra herself.

Basically it’s not horribly uncommon for abuse victims, especially those in domestic or child abuse situations, to end up performing on multiple levels. Level one: performing for the abuser in the hopes that this will minimize or stop the abuse. (Check.) Level two: performing for loved ones so as not to either worry them or risk them leaving if the abuse becomes obvious.

Oh, double check.

And lastly, Level Three: the act of performing as a method of keeping people on the outside away from you, either out of fear of more pain or fear of further judgment, which is a huge bulk of what we see Catra spiralling through this entire series.

Like, I myself was a child abuse victim for the first twelve years of my life (I’m fine now after about a decade of therapy) and I operated on all these different levels; alternating between placating my abuser to avoid punishment or rebelling to take back some form of control, deflecting from my other loved ones so as not to worry them, and being absolutely resistant to outside forces coming in, because at that point I had so little control over my life that I was more comfortable with embracing the hell I knew as a way to give myself some measure of control and stability than have someone save me from that situation but take that control away from me. Fucked up, but true. Which brings me into my second point:

2. Words have no inherent value for Catra except as weapons.

Which again, makes perfect sense considering her upbringing. Unlike Adora, Catra never had the luxury of buying into the Horde propaganda. She knew they hurt innocent people because she’d already been enduring torture from the time she was a small child–as other people have pointed out before. Moreover, she grew up in an environment that treated words with varying levels of consistency, where Shadow Weaver can praise Adora for doing one thing and then mercilessly put down Catra for doing the exact same thing equally.

This not only teaches someone about lying, this teaches someone that words are weapons, and Catra took that lesson and ran with it. Even when she and Adora were on good terms, she would still lightly drag her or put her down, but I don’t think it was from any inherent malice at that point. Good example: in episode one she’s perfectly content to mock Adora while she’s stuck in the pit, but immediately after she reached down and helped pull her out. “Actions speak louder than words” is an old clichè, but it’s super important to keep in mind when analyzing Catra’s character. Out of all the characters on Spop, she is the last one who can be analyzed from surface words alone, because so much of it is an act.

In fact, I can think of probably only one instance in which Catra did actually wholeheartedly believe in words…

Yeah, y'all know what I’m talking about.

And again, that makes perfect sense. Because Adora wasn’t just Catra’s best friend, she was explicitly her lifeline. Shadow Weaver’s exact words to little Catra were: “I’ve kept you around this long because Adora was fond of you. But if you ever do anything to jeopardize her future, I will dispose of you myself.” On top of that, the other cadets show clear signs of having sensed the blood in the water, so to speak: it’s an open secret to everyone but Adora that Shadow Weaver hates Catra’s guts, and therefore it stands to reason that in a cutthroat culture like the Horde’s, Catra was probably seen as easy prey until she learned to defend herself. Because it wasn’t like Shadow Weaver would do anything about it.

So Adora was the only person Catra could count on, but that also leads into the double edged aspect of words I’ve been talking about: Catra could let herself believe in their promise, but not enough to actually reveal to her what was going on. In the same way Shadow Weaver lightens up on the abuse when Adora’s around (just compare her use of lightning on Catra in Promise vs the Sword pt 2–the former is very subdued and looks almost like a simple hold, while the latter makes it very obvious this is painful torture) Catra deflects away from the subject around Adora, and the few times she does approach it “Why does she hate me so much” she tends not to get the reassurance she wants because Adora isn’t as clued in on the situation.

I mean, it’s pretty telling that Catra’s first leap off the slippery slope after being more of a nuisance than anything else up to that point came after Light Hope deliberately pushed her buttons by basically taunting her with the one thing that Catra had ever allowed herself to believe in.

I mean, her younger self looks at her as if to drive in the point of “you were a fool to believe in it!” After what we found out in S4, you cannot make me believe that wasn’t Light Hope deliberately twisting the knife to make sure they didn’t reconcile. And immediately after Catra pitches Adora off a cliff. Good times.

Ok, that was a big fucking lead in to my main point, but here we are:

3. Pretty much everything Catra says from that point onward is an act.

And it’s an obvious one, all things considered. Because that’s when Catra gets vicious. That’s when all her verbal barbs start cutting deep. That’s when combat between her and Adora goes from almost playful to outright brutal. And that’s when we start seeing Catra using her words as weapons against herself in addition to everyone else.

Because that’s the point when Catra starts feeding into her constructed persona of being this smug, confident, in-control villain who most definitely isn’t capable of being hurt like that ever again, no siree. We get to see several times across s4 in particular where her feelings clearly aren’t in line with her actions, and what does she do? She forces herself to say something cruel or hard-hearted as a way to essentially drag her actions and internal feelings back into line with that constructed person. Good example is the locker room scene with the Horde Trio: Catra very clearly wants to reach out to them and experience a little of their camaraderie, but she forces herself back into “I’m the boss” mode. And when it’s misinterpreted as her simply being a bitch, she goes into a rage because it’s one thing for her to want to reach out and deny herself that, but another for someone else to try to force their way in.

And all of this ties back into my main point, and why I think DT’s speech is particularly brilliant from a symbolic and psychological standpoint.

Actor vs Actor: Fight!

I’ve already established that Catra is somebody who is a performer and has been all her life in order to survive. That’s part of why Catra is such a tough nut to crack in terms of getting through to her: it’s hard to make accurate hits on someone who is putting on a persona. It’s damn near impossible to get a point through when you don’t have a clear idea of what you should be aiming at in the first place. So how do you beat a consummate actor?

You bring in a better performer.

Now, I do have my problems with DT’s speech: as others have pointed out, tossing Shadow Weaver and Hordak into the guilt trip is severely messed up and victim-blamey, though I do believe that has more to do with the fact that DT themself is not omniscient and therefore doesn’t have all the facts there (though given their sadistic streak, I’m also not sure they wouldn’t still cross that line even if they did know.)

But here’s what made that scene rock me to my fucking core: Catra almost pulled it off. Think about it: she has spent three seasons up until that point convincing her former friends, allies, boss and even the viewers–remember the post Portal moral panic–that she was this completely villainous monster. That she didn’t care, that she wasn’t worth saving, that everything she does is ultimately self-serving and terrible… Only for DT to see right through the disguise.

Adora couldn’t get through to Catra when she couldn’t even pinpoint the real problem. Scorpia couldn’t get through because by that point the defenses were fully up and Catra was going all in on her mask of villainy.

What finally got through? Being outclassed by a much better actor. By someone who is both a world class actor but also in touch enough with their own personality and wants that they don’t interfere with their own performance.

Because that’s the difference between DT and Catra: for Catra, acting the villain has been a matter of psychological survival up until that point. DT, meanwhile, acts for fun, work, and a certain level of sadistic pleasure. They have no moral dilemmas about what they do and thus they experience zero cognitive dissonance, whereas Catra may as well be the poster child. And it’s not too much of a stretch to think that once they figured out Catra’s deal, they probably found it quite amusing to completely demolish the act that had practically everyone else on the planet completely fooled.

That’s also part of the reason why Catra was so suicidal and lifeless after: the crutch she’d been using just to keep herself upright for four seasons just got yanked out from under her along with all chances of ever getting to double back down on that villainy again. Nowhere to go, and not even a mask to hide behind any more.

And honestly, I could keep talking on and on about just… The amazing amount of narrative complexity and precision and psychological depth that went into pulling this moment off. It’s amazing. But I’ve also spent like two and a half hours working on this post, so that’s that. If you read this far, get yourself a cookie or the snack of your choice. You earned it.

[sepublic]

Belos the ‘Humble Messenger’?

           A thought just hit me, but if Lilith deflects some of the blame of her own actions onto Belos, by claiming she’s just enforcing his will, that he’s making her do this, in addition to considering what HE would do and how that influenced her initial choice to curse Eda…

           …What if Belos is the same way, but with the Titan? Especially with how he constantly insists that he’s just a Humble Messenger for the Titan… It’s not BELOS that’s choosing to hurt people, it’s the Titan! Blame the Titan, don’t shoot the messenger… I have to wonder if Belos is also being a coward like Lilith in this own way, absolving himself of what he’s done wrong, of his own mistakes in carrying out the Titan’s alleged will. Like Lilith, Belos could be operating on a “I was just carrying out orders” type of defense here.

           And given what his VA said about Belos being ‘misunderstood’ in his own way… Maybe that’s what he meant? Belos thinks there’s nothing he can do, he’s resigned himself to his own powerlessness because he really thinks he lacks the ability to make a change. That he really isn’t enjoying this… Though of course, like Lilith or Amity when she cut ties with Willow, he still bears some responsibility for the consequences of his actions, as cruel and unfair as it is. And with Belos, I imagine he bears WAY more fault and guilt for carrying out the Titan’s will, than any other character has for doing what others tell them to… Belos might think he’s choosing the path of least resistance, that he’s actually being helpful by implementing the Titan’s will in the least bloody was possible; Which, when you consider his implied genocides, says a LOT…

           But it also calls into question if Belos even IS communicating with the Titan, or some impostor, or if this really is the Titan’s will, and not the influence of Belos trying to make it be the leader and role model he WANTS it to be, the way Simon Laurent from Infinity Train felt with Grace, or how Jasper tried to mold Steven Universe into the Diamond she wanted him to be; It’s that desire to have someone who validates you, who takes responsibility for you, who comforts and knows exactly what to do… While always enabling any decisions you make and encouraging them, because you can do no wrong; You’re just doing what THEY’re saying, you have no blame in this!

           Maybe Belos is outright influencing the Titan, or at least interpreting its will in a very specific way, and has deluded himself into believing he’s carrying out exactly what the Titan is saying… Even if that isn’t exactly what it said, because Belos secretly knows what the Titan really meant and that’s why it was so vague, because of course Belos will understand the intent! So when the Titan tells him to spread the knowledge of magic, Belos interprets it very specifically as ‘Establish a Coven System’, because surely that’s what the Titan specifically meant…

          It’s like how some alleged ‘Christians’ interpret the Bible in a way that’s very tailored and convenient to their own pre-existing beliefs and bigotry, to justify their own terrible actions. And given the comparisons between Belos and Western Imperialism by fans… In addition to Dana Terrace mentioning how she was once put into a headlock by a nun, and the way some Chrstians appropriated and assimilated pagan cultures (again sounding a lot like what Belos does)… And maybe Belos has a deluded perception of reality, of projecting of what he thinks is best, and believing that everything his role model does is actually indicative of and in support of his own beliefs. Kind of like what I speculated with Boscha, thinking Amity’s actions as a bully were validating to her own cruelty, when really Amity was horrified at the kind of person she was becoming, and did NOT approve of Boscha whatsoever!

          Maybe Belos has a warped sense of identity, because he’s so convinced to himself that everything he does is the Titan’s will, he assumes the Titan’s feelings are the same as his (“The Titan will be pleased!” A triumphant Belos cries upon receiving the portal from Luz), etc. And Belos has trapped himself in his own fantasy, into thinking that he basically IS the Titan because everything he does is surely a reflection of what it believes, because it obviously agrees with him 100% and he completely understands it in a way that nobody, not even the Titan, does… Because Belos KNOWS better, he knows what’s good for the Titan, just as Odalia and Alador claim so for Amity, or what Lilith used to for Eda!

          Which, this just leads to a lack of identity, no sense of self on Belos’ behalf, just as he inflicts upon others with his cult-like indoctrination… Just as Lilith might question who she is without the Emperor’s Coven, perhaps Belos, deep-down, doesn’t know who he is without the Titan; A question any parasite would ask, because Belos can’t stand on his own. He has no will nor convictions of his own, he can’t rely on just his own reasoning to justify himself because he lacks that confidence… So Belos seeks someone who CAN justify what he does, and then warps them to fully fit that idealized image of his. And so just as Lilith realizes that she doesn’t really understand Eda, that she hasn’t figured out that Eda secretly wants to join the Emperor’s Coven but just needs time or a cursed curse to join… Belos will realize that he didn’t exactly understand the Titan at all, and probably was outright influencing and projecting onto it!

           This is going to lead to a lot of confusion, self-doubt… Plenty of denial, certainly. If Belos did accept this reality, this truth, and discern his delusions from what actually is… Then I could see him recovering in a way similar to Lilith, and maybe the two could find a very unusual solidarity in this, while awkwardly naviating how he used to be her feared boss and influenced Lilith herself, threatened her… And yet now she’s way past him in terms of growth and sense of self. Maybe Belos HAS considered that he’s been wrong about the Titan’s will in the past, but he doesn’t want to admit/explore this possibility, because he’s already done so much….

          Maybe he’s just doing what seems to be the least challenging for him, maybe Belos has legit fooled himself into thinking he too is at the Titan’s whim and mercy, he feels bad for his victims, but what else can he do? He’s already sacrificed too many people by this point, he doesn’t want to invalidate those deaths by not going through with what he (and the Titan) planned… He’s not brave enough to do the right thing and Belos is convinced that even if he tried, he wouldn’t accomplish much. To him, he’s most at his useful as a ‘humble messenger’, probably… Belos could be a lot like Krika from Bionicle, perhaps.

          Belos is certain that what the Titan has decreed WILL come to pass, it makes no difference if he or someone else carries out its will- So Belos can’t really be blamed for getting it over with, because someone else will… Or he CAN be blamed, but so what? Maybe Belos thinks he’s the best candidate to do what has to be done, the only one willing to do the dirty work, kind of like Thanos from Infinity War. Maybe he ironically thinks that only HE is the one who is acknowledging this cold, hard truth of the universe, and actually doing something about it; While everyone else is simply in denial…

          If only people could just understand what he’s doing, where he’s coming from, that Belos takes no pleasure in this, he’s trying to make this as smooth and painless as possible. It really, truly DOES hurt him to sacrifice others like this for his goals… And while he ultimately disagrees with such people, Belos can still admire witches like Luz, as he used to be like them, and he finds an almost admirable youth and naivete to their traits that reminds him of his young, foolish self, so wide-eyed and really believing it could all be that black-and-white and simple, that good will prevail… Belos can’t totally blame them for thinking that way, because he made the same mistakes, so he doesn’t have THAT much of a place to judge; But he still has a tiny place, because at least Belos had the ‘wisdom’ to realize the truth and move on.

           Of course, Belos doesn’t see what the Titan or the world is secretly getting at, because there’s nothing there. The Titan is indeed being fully transparent about what it has to say, it isn’t secretly ‘testing’ Belos’ faith… He is acting VERY contrary to a lot of people and things, but just as some deluded, alleged ‘christians’ believe that their god is secretly testing their faith, offering them temptation and false evidence to convince them to go off the right path, when really they just need to keep being stubborn and blocking out all other noise… Maybe Belos is just like THAT.

          It’s like Luz saying that she’s picking up what Amity is putting down, even though as far as Amity can tell, she’s not putting down anything (in addition to maybe being autistic and thus not understanding this kind of saying), she wasn’t suggesting that Luz challenge Boscha to a grudgby game; Except, Belos took it WAY worse, and WAY too far to an unimaginable extent… Again, as a dark parallel to her, despite being associated with a much blinding and radiant Light than Luz’s.

[shippedwithmonsters]

So here for complex backstories tbh.

Share away, if you like.

(Honestly the whole being descended from two separate lines of werewolf mechanisms from different universes is the kind of concept I used to work with all the time back when I first started designing OC’s. My ‘verse is a bit more standardized nowadays, but I’ve still got plenty of the old OC’s hanging around. They’re just not my F/O’s. Said it before but I’m pretty new at Selfshipping. Character design though? I’ve been at that almost a couple decades now.)

Okay, I'm gonna share what I can but there are holes.

Kadan's father started life as a werewolf from a published werewolf romance series (he wasn't a character from it or anything. he's still an OC, his species was just from that series). Later in life, he (the father) became a superpowered god-like entity, able to travel between dimensions. When his kind (god-like entities) reproduces, their offspring get a few interdimensional abilities and they take after the species the person was before becoming such a powerful entity. In this case, a Romance Novel werewolf species.

This god-like entity traveled to another dimension that had a different species of werewolf and had twin children with a woman there. This resulted in the werewolf children being half Original Werewolf and half Romance Novel Werewolf. For whatever reason (who knows why gods do anything they do?), the god-like entity took one of the children, Kadan, from that dimension back to his original dimension and gave Kadan to a werewolf family there.

Kadan was assigned female at birth and was raised in the early 1900's. Werewolf packs, especially ones from this Romance Novel, are pretty shitty to women. They're viewed as their male mate's property, and before that their father's property. And it was worse in the early 1900's (not to say it's much better in the Romance Novel that takes place in 2012 🙃). So Kadan didn't have a very good life in that pack. He was expected to find a mate and be a good little wife for some big macho werewolf. As the daughter of an Alpha (barf), he also was a pretty high value mate (no one knew he was adopted except his parents) because he would supposedly have good DNA for making male children that could eventually become Alpha as well.

I'm using He/Him pronouns for this part part because calling him a her at all here seems gross given the subject matter. Hopefully he doesn't mind too much that I'm not switching up the pronouns in this case...

Anyways, this whole situation sucked. Bad. But to make it worse, remember how I mentioned that offspring of these interdimensional god-like beings have some interdimensional powers themselves? Yeah, well poor Kadan got the gift of sight into other dimensions. It was barely more than some vague dreams at the time, but they were enough to cause trouble.

The Romance Novel werewolves have destined mates, signified when they meat by markings that appear on each other's skin and the ability to read each other's minds. And Kadan, from a very young age, had visions of his mate thanks to his interdimensional visions. And little baby Kadan didn't know any better but to tell people "Hey, I've seen my mate and they're not a boy!"

😬

Well, the very traditional homophobic werewolf pack did NOT handle that great. Of course, they just assumed at first that Kadan was just a confused kid. But it set things in motion...

Kadan did eventually learn to keep his mouth shut about his visions, though he still knew in his heart that he was having visions of his future mate, who was in fact not a boy.

Now, in this werewolf family, Kadan had an adopted brother. The adopted brother was younger than Kadan and didn't know Kadan was adopted. And of course, this brother was in line to take over as Alpha from their father.

Here things get murky in my own writing. The reasons aren't completely clear, but basically their parents died. The way these werewolf work is when one dies, their mate also dies so both their mother and father died at the same time. The adopted brother, perhaps feeling threatened by Kadan for some reason, decided he needed to lock Kadan up.

The brother had enough damning evidence that Kadan was 'dangerous' and 'crazy,' reminding people of Kadan's visions of a mate that *gasp* wasn't a man. When questioned, Kadan couldn't really deny that he still felt the same way. That he still had the visions. And so... the adopted brother was able to convince the pack to keep Kadan locked away.

In order to further keep people certain that Kadan was dangerous (and to prevent Kadan from convincing anyone otherwise), he drugged the food Kadan was fed with an herb that forces werewolves to stay in their wolf form.

And so Kadan was trapped in a dungeon, stuck in the form of a wolf. The Romance Novel werewolf species live hundreds of years and Kadan was down there for one hundred years. Now, while Kadan's physical self was limited in both action and thought, he found he was able to mentally travel between dimensions. During those hundred years, he saw his mate clearer than ever before. He saw many other people, including his biological brother. His mind traveled throughout many many dimensions.

His brother was the Alpha of the pack for most of that time, until a hundred years later another werewolf defeated him and took over that pack. With the new Alpha came a Healer, a person with a magical ability to understand werewolf ailments and cures.

This healer recognized that herbs were being added to Kadan's food to keep him shifted. She made sure no more herbs were given to him and eventually, he was able to become human again.

Except... as he started returning to his own mind, he realized that as a female werewolf, he would still have those same expectations on him that he had before all this happened. He would still be expected to be a male's mate and to do his duty as a female. He couldn't have that! He wouldn't!

When he became human, he somehow was able to make himself appear to be male. The healer, seeing this and her healing abilities giving her the understanding of the situation she needed, used her magic to cause the whole pack to misremember Kadan as having always been a man.

When Kadan recovered somewhat from his time stuck as a wolf, the new Alpha allowed him to join the pack.

But there was a huge downside to being human. His mind was firmly back in his own body. He could no longer travel between worlds and see his mate.

These Romance Novel werewolves have a little quirk, and it's part of why female werewolves are valued so much (in some ways). Werewolves have a darkness in them and their mate is the only one that can keep it from taking over. Werewolves that live too long without finding their destined mates become dangerous and unpredictable. Females are very rare, so it's hard to find mates. Therefore... a lot of werewolves have to be taken care of, as they can never find their mate.

It was never thought of much of an issue for female werewolves. Males were the ones that had the darkness and females were the cure. But Kadan felt it. Kadan could feel the darkness and despair taking over. His ability to see his mate during his imprisonment kept it away, but that was gone. He had no way of seeing his mate every again... unless...

He stayed with the pack for quite a while, but eventually he was transported between dimensions! Perhaps his interdimensional father took pity on him or perhaps it was just the luck of the random dimensional portal (those happen sometimes). But he was brought to his biological brother's dimension.

He met his brother for the first time, though he had seen him many times before during his imprisonment while his mind traveled the worlds. And he was welcomed into the pack. His brother had been raised by their mother and was told that he had a twin, though originally he had been informed that the twin died. (there is a bit more here about how the brother actually met their father and there was a whole big thing but basically the father told the brother that the twin was alive, but didn't mention gender or anything so the brother was perfectly accepting that he had a twin brother).

Kadan remained with his brother for a while, but it didn't stave off the darkness... Only Kadan's mate could do that, but his mate was not in that dimension and he had no idea how to find them...

[shianhygge-imagines]

{R} [DMC Reactions] S/O Sacrifice Scramble

AN: No, thank you! For supporting my angsty ass during my days of procrastination and getting my life together, lmao! That is an interesting idea! So... let’s take the same scenarios from the original reaction post... and just replace the s/o with another character’s s/o! :3

Let’s be honest... it’s not gonna be a happy affair! And given how the DMC universe is... it’s highly likely something like this would happen.

|Link to Original S/O Sacrifice|

|Masterlist Link|

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dante

Gets saved by Vergil’s S/O

He’d needed an expert with him on a job when it happened. His usual carelessness had gotten a loved one killed. 

Dante cried in agony as your head rolled away, remembering how he’d promised his older brother that he’d bring you back safe and sound. 

How Vergil had promised Dante a slow painful death if anything happened to you. How Dante had agreed that if anything happened, he would let Vergil kill him. 

He didn’t know what to do, going into a full blown demonic rage and butchering the demon that killed you. 

All he could think to do after was to bring your body back to Vergil. 

The moment Dante returned, the roar of his motorcycle the telltale sign of his return, Vergil had practically flown through the shop front doors. His face didn’t show it, but his heart leapt in joy at your return, longing to hold you in his arms after a time apart.  

Upon seeing only Dante standing in the dark, tears in his eyes and a white bundle in his arms, Vergil paused, his mind quickly connecting two and two together. “Y/N?” Vergil asked for you, his lips twitching to fight a frown. When Dante only met his twin’s eyes and tearfully looked away, Vergil took a step back. “No.” He denied, eyes shifting to stare at the human sized bundle in Dante’s arms, “She can’t have…” 

“I’m sorry, Vergil.” Dante tried to apologize, but his brother practically snarled in denial. 

But little by little, Vergil’s mask crumbled when a hand fell out of the bundle. Your hand. Your wedding ring. You. Unmoving.

A sob escaped Vergil’s lips before he could stop it, and his legs suddenly gave way as he could only stare in despair. You’d loved him during his darkest time, and gotten him through it. And you were dead. 

Was this karma for all the harm that he’d done in the past? Was this the world taking its revenge against him for nearly bringing the end of humanity two times?You were supposed to be his redemption. His salvation. That you were gone… did that mean he was damned for all eternity? That he was destined to stand alone forever.

He’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with you, but now that was a distant dream.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Vergil

Get’s saved by Dante’s S/O

“Gah! Fecking hell, Vergil!” You screamed, practically diving into the swarm that your brother-in-law had sprinted into. From behind, you could hear Dante calling for you to let Vergil do his thing. But from his position on the cliff below, he couldn’t see the number of demons that awaited his twin.

They’d finally started to have some semblance of a non-toxic relationship again, and you were damned if you would just let Vergil get himself killed.

Dante had only just gotten his brother back, and it made you happy that the brothers had started to mend their relationship. If anything were to happen to either brother, you were sure that their relationship would have been set back by a great deal. And with how much you loved Dante, you couldn’t allow anything to happen to the only surviving member of his family.

That was why you threw yourself in front of a fireball, suffering through burns in order to protect a man that was usually frigid in demeanor despite his turning over a new leaf. And the pain was unbearable, your skin melting and clothes burning. You were only able to verify that Vergil was unharmed before you collapsed into his arms unconscious.

Vergil knew that he was a class A jerk to you, so he was surprised that you, someone who only held a small fraction of demonic blood, would throw yourself in the way of an attack that might have left him incapacitated, but not too severely injured.

He caught your falling body as it fell in front of him, surprise flickering on his face for a brief moment before he schooled his expression.

The demon that had burned you so badly shook in fear at the icy malice on Vergil’s face after he’d laid you on the ground and covered your damaged body with his coat.

“Y/N is precious to someone important to me. I hope you’re ready to suffer through a slow and painful death.” Vergil hissed, unsheathing the Yamato with a deadly ring of metal.

After the demon had been dealt with, Vergil calmly picked your body up from the ground, noting that you were still alive. With the still unsheathed Yamato, Vergil quickly opened a portal back to Devil May Cry, where he gave Dante the scare of his life by immediately barking out instructions on how to treat your wounds.

After you had been treated and left to rest, Vergil would break the news to Dante like ripping off a band aid. “She saved me from an attack.” Vergil saw the punch coming at him, but didn’t move, letting his younger twin land a strike to his face.

“Next time, you better be the one looking after her.” Dante growled, clenching and unclenching his fist, beyond furious that Vergil had been so negligent as to let you get hurt.

Knowing that there would be a next time because of your stubbornness, Vergil nodded. “Next time, I’ll look after her.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nero

Get’s saved by V’s S/O

As loathe as Nero was to have to take you along on a hunt, he didn’t quite have the balls to defy you when it was your fiance’s life on the line

A few days prior, several demons had appeared to attack V, vowing revenge on the Sons of Sparda, blah blah blah, like you hadn’t heard that reason half a million times.

Due to having been a part of Vergil, V’s continued existence was sustained through absorbing demonic energy, much to your surprise and confusion on how that would work in the first place.

During the attack, V had been alone except for his demon contracts, Shadow, Griffon, and Nightmare. Normally, this wouldn’t have been much of a challenge for the four of them, but V had been severely weakened after Vergil ‘resurrected.’

Not only did the attacking demons manage to severely wound V, they had also taken it upon themselves to steal V’s demonic power. The only thing sustaining V was his contracts with Shadow and Nightmare. Griffon had decided to forge a contract with you in order to help. Now, you and Nero were racing against the clock to kill the demon that housed V’s power.

Despite not having an upraising involving combat, you held your own whenever demons appeared, brandishing V’s cane and a rifle borrowed from Lady.

“A Bride on a Mission” Griffon had called you after you struck down a demon with no mercy.

Despite being able to hold your own, you were under no illusion that you could kill the demon that had assaulted your fiance and left him for dead. So, when you saw Nero getting backed into a corner, still reluctant to use his Devil Trigger, you commanded Griffon to give you a boost, sending you soaring towards Nero.

Though you stuck the landing wrong, earning you a twisted ankle, you’d managed to blast through part of the horde. You didn’t get to celebrate your victory much, when you felt the painful end of a horn dig into your stomach and send you tumbling backwards.

“Y/N!” Nero cried out in alarm.

Now, normally, you tried not to curse... but laying on your back with a hole in your abdomen, you couldn’t help but let out a swear, “Fuck!”

The demon that had stolen your fiance’s power had come out to play, and you were pretty much down for the count. Nevertheless, you propped yourself up on an elbow and aimed with your rifle. “Heh, I’m not dead yet, you fucker.”

Nero, meanwhile, had finally started to take the fight seriously, blasting through the rest of the demon horde before advancing on the bastardization of a bull demon that had attacked you when he wasn’t looking. “Hey! Do you know how much trouble I’m in now that you’ve poked a hole into my friend’s fiance?!”

The banter was a front. Nero was scared shitless that he’d have to bury another friend and break the news to V... who might just find a way to kill him for not looking after you.

Activating his Devil Trigger for the sake of killing the beast, Nero followed the battle up with picking up the crystallized demonic energy embedded in the bull demon’s horn before using his Devil Trigger to get you to a hospital.

Somehow, between getting checked into the hospital, and waking up from surgery, Griffon had left you to return to V, who found out about what had happened and immediately brought himself to the hospital to yell at Nero and look after you.

When you woke up, V sat in a chair beside your bed, one hand holding yours and another holding a book. Seeing you awake, V set the book down and gently chided you after making sure you were okay. “Please, Y/N... Don’t do that again. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

V

Get’s saved by Nero’s S/O

For the sake of this request, we’ll say that Nero’s S/O is different from Kyrie (even if it’s the canon pairing >.>, The reason why I have to clarify... well, that’s a story for another time)

V had long since retired from hunting demons, instead, investing his newly mortal life in learning about the world with the help of you, Nero, and Kyrie.

He was only a month old when he’d assisted in defeating Urizen, and had barely grasps the basic human mannerisms and fundamentals. Like the use of money, or the fact that a bullet to the head would kill him, or your personal favorite, that he had to consume food for survival. Truly, when Nero first introduced you to V, you thought him to be a child.

Though, the first thing you did after meeting him had been to take him clothes shopping. Sure, it was summer, but once the colder seasons rolled in, you were sure that V would need proper shirts instead of... the trench coat corset thing? You’re amazed the thing didn’t come apart during his battles.

There were a few times that V was forced to fight demons, either to absorb their demonic energy in order to extend his life, or to beat off random assaults from demons that swear revenge upon the Sons of Sparda. These times were increasingly annoying for the young man, as he’d long since separated himself from Vergil.

Most of the times that he’d get attacked were during his walks in the streets of Fortuna. It was a beautiful town with old architecture, so V often found himself observing the towering structures.

One day, you decided to accompany V on one of his strolls, taking a sketchbook along just in case you found another spot to stop and sketch while V took his time looking at the building designs.

It is unfortunate, then, that while the two of you were doing just that, Shadow popped out of the ground beneath you, growling in warning as several demons decided to claw out of the ground around you.

Despite having V, Griffon, Shadow, and Nightmare with you, your group was quickly overwhelmed by attacks from all sides. You’d never had to fight in your life, and by not having a weapon on you, you were just a burdening presence. That didn’t stop you from calling out enemy presence in the street and slapping bitches with your sketchbook, mind you. You were unprepared and untrained, but damn it you weren’t going to be a useless damsel.

This was foolhardy of you, taking on demons despite the fact that V probably had it all handled... especially the fact that V had asked you to stay back from the demons. You didn’t listen to your fiance’s friend, and so when you’d taken a shot at one of the downed demons, raising an arm up to slap the mofo, you suddenly felt pain, and heard a thump to the floor. The blood that trickled down your arm brought your attention to the fact that you were now missing your non dominant hand.

“Fucking hell!” you screamed, wanting to panic and flail around as V quickly took care of the remaining demons before hobbling on unsteady feat towards you, unbuckling his belt to tie it around your bleeding arm.

“Y/N...” V called your name as he applied the make shift tourniquet, “Y/N, which way is the hospital? We need to get you to the hospital soon, or you really will lose your arm.”

The two of you sprinted with as much haste as possible to the hospital, you trying not to scream in panic, and V, trying not to imagine your fiance’s ire as he held your severed arm.

The minute you entered the surgery room, Nero arrived on scene at the hospital, and practically accosted V, “What the hell, V! Y/N’s not a demon hunter! You’re supposed to protect them!”

V, already feeling guilty for being unable to protect you, winced and responded with a calm voice, “I should have had Shadow escort them away, that was my mistake. But your fiance is as stubborn as you, Nero. They wanted to help... and now they may lose their arm... or not. You did regrow your arm after all.”

Brain running a mile a minute and having already decided that he should now at the very least teach you some basic defense, Nero growled, “That’s not a normal thing humans can do, V. I know you’re still getting used to being a real boy and all, but...” Nero simply sighed tiredly. “Just... make sure you watch their back when you’re with them, okay? We were lucky that they’re not half dead.”

Hours later, your arm was reattached, but you made stump jokes that made Nero simultaneously want to kiss you and slam his face in the wall.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-fi!

[innytoes]

Self-Insert January: Let’s Go Steal A Protégé

Yes I did write a self-insert fanfic of my own fanfic. Most of this was written in December and then um, January happened. This takes place December, probably before Christmas (and is obviously not canon).

Happy Self Insert month!

Being with Leverage, Jamie had seen a lot of weird stuff. Done a lot of weird stuff, too. But all the breaking into highly classified places and museums and pretending to be a circus performer and jumping off the Eiffel Tower did not prepare them for the magic portal that opened up in the ceiling of the Leverage Offices, or the lady that fell through it.

Luckily, their startled yell had summoned an Eliot, which meant that if this was the beginning of an intergalactic space war or some kind of mutant criminal rival of Parker’s, Team Leverage was going to come out on top.

Except Eliot actually put away his knife and greeted the lady, who struggled out of the squashy purple beanbag chair she landed on. “Hardison, Parker, Inny’s here!” he called.

“What the hell is an Inny?” Jamie asked. Was it a species of alien? Was Hardison’s Doctor Who obsession because they literally knew The Doctor? Honestly, it wouldn’t really surprise Jamie.

“I the hell am an Inny,” Ceiling-Lady said, before gasping and pointing at them. Which was concerning, to say the least.

“That’s Inny,” Hardison said, coming into the office and handing the lady one of Jamie’s Mountain Dews. Rude.  “She’s from a darker timeline and drops out of the ceiling once or twice a year to catch up. And get inspiration for her fanfiction. Apparently we’re like, a TV show over there. What’s up, girl?”

“Is that why nobody is allowed to move the beanbag chair?” Jamie asked. They had thought it was some weird Parker thing. Or perhaps that it was on top of some kind of secret trap door to Hardison’s BatCave or something. They ignored the part about the fanfiction and the TV show. That was too Truman Show to think about. Though their brain was already going over actors they’d cast as the team. Eliot would totally be played by Chris Evans, right?

Inny stopped chugging the Mountain Dew long enough to shrug. “They used to live somewhere with way lower ceilings. Nearly broke something falling from this one.”

“Yeah, me,” Eliot grumbled. He nearly broke something again when Parker dropped down from the ceiling onto his back. “Dammit, Parker!”

“Inny!” Parker proclaimed. “How is Deeks?”

“Good!” the lady fished a beaten up phone out of her pocket. “He met some alpacas, wanna see?” Parker snatched up the phone and made delighted noises. Jamie peered over her shoulder. They had to admit the dog was pretty cute, and the alpacas looked very intrigued by their small, same-coloured, short-necked friend.

“How’s life in the darkest timeline?” Hardison asked.

“What date is it here?” the lady asked, looking around. “I mean, if you still know.”

“Why wouldn’t we know?” Parker asked, still swiping through dog pictures.

“Well, I mean, 2020, am I right?” Inny said, waiting for a reaction. She looked incredulous at their blank  faces. “It is 2020, here, right?”

“Um, yeah?” Hardison ventured carefully.

“How dark is this timeline of yours?” Jamie asked carefully. Sure, it was a tumblr joke, usually reserved for stuff like the however-many-renewed-season of Supernatural when great shows were cancelled or whatever creepy feature FriendCzar had tried to impose that month.

The woman paused, frowned, then took a deep breath. “In response to the global pandemic of a deadly respiratory virus, President Donald Trump suggested on television during a briefing that people should inject or ingest bleach to kill the virus.”  She took another big breath. “And that’s not mentioning the fact that he downplayed the seriousness of the virus while knowing how deadly and contagious it was, called it a hoax, made taking safety precautions a political thing instead of a public safety thing, and held massive super-spreader events.”

“Donald Trump?” Jamie asked. “The ‘you’re fired’ dude?”

“Oh my sweet summer child,” Inny responded, before taking another swig of her Mountain Dew. “Yeah, I mean, I thought the fact that Australia was on fire at the start of the year was going to be the only terrible thing I was going to tell you.” She laughed and shook her head ruefully, like that was some kind of funny joke.

“Australia was on fire?”

“Yeah. Parts of the US too, for a while. Orange skies. But since the country was basically on lockdown anyway, it wasn’t like it was very different to stay inside for that…” Jamie stared at the lady, then back at the adults. Parker didn’t look overly concerned, but then, she never really did. Eliot and Hardison were both frowning, though. There was no sign that this was some kind of elaborate prank Hardison was pulling on them with the help of one of Sophie’s acting friends. Besides, he was good, but not ‘fake opening a magic portal in the ceiling’ good. At least not within the five minutes Jamie had been in the other room.

After a litany of horrible things, which were apparently not even all of them, the woman stopped. “On the upside,” she said. “I perfected my banana bread recipe, Deeks met some alpacas, Leverage is getting a reboot, and I figured out why I probably keep dropping in here.”

“To remind us that things aren’t so bad like some messed up version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’?” Hardison guessed.

“Because Jamie is my OC,” she said, dropping a fucking bombshell like she just dropped out of the fucking ceiling. Jamie felt their brain fill with static, because no, they were a real person, and that either meant that this lady was full of bullshit, or, well, basically god. The Truman Show feeling returned ten times over. “This is my fanfic.”

Hardison recoiled a little. “No,” he whispered, fully understanding the implications of that. Hell, it was probably even weirder for him. Sure, knowing they were a TV show was probably cool, even more so with the reboot. But Fanfic Land didn’t fade to black and Jamie was pretty damn sure some kinky shit went on behind the soundproofed doors of their bedroom.

“Now, there’s two prevailing theories about this, as far as my internet rabbithole searches can tell,” Basically God Maybe continued. “Either I wrote this world into existence, because the multiverse is ever expanding and that is one of the ways it expands, or I just got some vibes from whatever crack between worlds keeps bringing me here and wrote down your shenanigans.”

At Parker and Eliot’s blank looks, Jamie clarified: “Basically, she’s either God or…”

“Some kind of shitty false prophet,” the lady on the beanbag chair beamed. “Probably the second one, honestly. My subconscious turns everything into a zombie apocalypse sooner or later, and you guys seem to be fine.”

Jamie whipped around to look at Hardison and Eliot, hopeful. “We’re fine, right?” they asked quickly. If anyone knew about a starting zombie apocalypse, it would be those two. Between Hardison poking around in basically every intelligence agency’s server ever and Eliot’s contacts, they’d know. God, Jamie hoped not. They were so not ready for a zombie apocalypse. Eliot hadn’t even taught them how to murder someone with an axe yet.

“We are definitely fine,” Hardison assured them.

“Yeah, I figured,” Not-God agreed. “If I had my say, Eliot would have stopped pining long before he did and kissed you guys.” Eliot grumbled and glared, probably because she was right. Parker patted him condescendingly on the head, which wasn’t helping matters.

The ceiling started crackling and glowing ominously. The lady put her can down as she slowly drifted off the beanbag, alien-abduction style. “Well, it’s been real. Be good, guys. Have some fun adventures. Ruin some rich douchebag’s day for me.”

“Will do,” Parker promised. “Say hi to your dog for me.” She got a thumbs up.

“Let us know how the reboot turns out,” Hardison said. Jamie figured it would probably fuck with the space-time continuum if she downloaded the show and brought it to them, but who knew. Maybe there was some kind of loophole for that, too. They were kind of curious to see what a Leverage show would look like. It probably had kickass fight-scenes.

“Stay safe,” Eliot said seriously. He’d been the most concerned about the talk of the pandemic, probably because you couldn’t punch it.

“Will do,” Inny shrugged. “I mean, 2021 can’t possibly be any worse, right?”

The portal crackled louder, which Jamie hoped wasn’t a sign. The lady was almost at the ceiling. She looked concerned, like she realised she just totally jinxed herself and the new year.

“Hey, just in case you are god,” Jamie called up. “Can you give me superpowers?”

The portal closed to the sound of laughter, and then there was silence. All that remained was a dent in the beanbag and an empty can of Mountain Dew.

“What the fuck,” they told the room at large.

“Yeah, you get used to it,” Parker said, before wandering off back to the blueprints she had been studying.

“I’m just gonna… check some things,” Hardison muttered, making a detour to the kitchen to grab a ginormous bottle of orange soda before getting behind his computer. “And buy a bunch of disinfectant and toilet paper, just in case.”

Eliot rolled his eyes, before bumping his shoulder against Jamie’s. “Come on,” he said.

“Come on where?” Jamie asked. “I’m having a bit of an existential crisis here.” If they were someone’s OC, did that mean that they didn’t have free will? Did it mean that all the cool things they had done the past year had only been because of some weird lady that fell out of the ceiling? Or did it mean-

“I’m gonna teach you to throw a knife so you can take out a zombie,” Eliot said.

Fuck that, the existential crisis could wait until 2am. They had more important things to do. Knife throwing would be fun and useful no matter if there was a zombie apocalypse or a pandemic, or they got superpowers.

[bluebird722]

Eggs, Swimming, and Towels

Pairing: Damian Wayne/Robin + Raven

Rating: T+

Once again, for @tigerdude94, @rachelalghul, @chromium7sky, @lunastar92, @damnshipper, @dcgzilla, @quothxthexravenx, @dcdweeb, @grassfour, @xxitzmikoxx, @andthendk, @unk-vi, @ravenfan1242, @raventrigonsdaughter, and everyone else who cares for these two. 

Damian didn’t realize until he woke up that he was alone in bed. Well, after his brain fully woke, he realized that it was not his bed. The sheets were a plum silk, contrasting his black silk. He must have fallen asleep in her bed again. 

It didn’t surprise him, though. Ever since they rebuilt the tower, they have slept together, usually on the couch or in his room. It pained him to be away from her after convincing himself that all the other Titans had died. After Superman took her to Damian and she fell in his arms, he was unwilling to let go of her or be away from her. He felt that he could have saved Nightwing from death had he not been at a farther distance, and he didn’t want anything to happen to the one teammate he had left.

He closed his eyes but let his arm stay wrapped around where she had slept beside him until the door opened. She walked in, a robe over her negligee, with two teacups. 

“Morning,” she greeted him softly. Ever since their victorious battle, her face had regained its fullness and was no longer gaunt or dark. She offered him a cup, which he initially refused; he sat up, leaned forward, and kissed her. She responded back for about ten seconds and then pulled away to drink from her cup. He took the other and sipped in silence. She finished hers, put the cup on the nightstand, and leaned against his shoulder. His arm wrapped around her abdomen and he finished his tea, and she took the empty cup from him and placed it beside hers. 

“Did you sleep well?” she whispered. 

“As always, when you’re in my arms,” he replied. He looked down at her face, returned her smile, and lowered his head with puckered lips. She kissed him back and snaked her arm around his neck to pull him closer. When he pushed her toward him, she pulled her leg over his lap and sat on his crotch. As they kissed, he smoothed down her back, rear, thighs, and calves to touch her bare ankles, and moved his hand back up to her waist. 

She felt a bulge in his crotch and kissed down his jaw to hide her smirk. He nearly cried out, and he seized the back of her nightgown with an urge to rip it off of her. She rubbed his cheek against his shoulder. “Your back is so smooth,” she whispered into his skin. 

Damian didn’t respond but instead pushed her hair from her neck and kissed down the back of her neck. She took pleasure in it and arched her back and neck for more until his stomach growled. His lips moving to her shoulder made her giggle. “Let’s stop and eat first,” she insisted. “We’ll come back to this.”

“All right.” He stood up and supported her under her thighs until her legs crossed behind his back. They kissed out of her room to the kitchen, where he leaned her against the wall for better access and then opened the refrigerator. 

As the world was still rebuilding and resources such as food were scarce, Damian and Raven agreed to be careful and use strict rations, so breakfast was usually one egg each unless they created some omelet to split. 

Cooking made Damian reminisce when Nightwing and Starfire tried to teach the Titans basic cooking skills, such as eggs for themselves. Those lessons always ended in disaster: Garfield always burned his, and Jaime’s scarab would react for no reason. Donna had eggshell bits in hers every time and struggled to get them out. Damian wasn’t used to making his own food, and Raven didn’t have any culinary skills when it came to the stove. It was Superman who taught them; while the tower was under construction and they stayed with him and Lois, the former farmboy taught them how to fry eggs until they perfected it. 

Raven watched Damian with a heavy heart. She knew that the fall of the Titans hit him as hard as it hit her, but she wasn’t used to seeing him so clingy to her. He only parted ways with her for bathroom breaks, and every time he or she was done, he had his arm around her or held her wrist. It seemed like the cold-blooded assassin that he was destined to become, that his mother and grandfather tried to wire into him, had faded into a young man allowed to feel.

They fed each other from the pan in silence. Damian put the pan back on the stove and pushed his nose into the crook of her neck. “Remember when we went to that carnival, and you called me ‘insufferable’?”

 She gave him an amused smile. “I what?”

He kissed both her ears. “You said that I was insufferable but had a kind and generous soul.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder. “This was, what, how many years ago–?”

“When I first joined the team,” he said, “but I’ve been going over it in my mind almost every day since.”

He swayed her around while she kept her feet on either side of his. “I can’t believe it–I don’t remember saying it,” she chuckled. 

“You did,” he said with a kiss to her neck. “I’ve been thinking about it every day.”

She shook her head but stroked his bare arms. They let ten minutes pass by and decided to go outside for combat training, which they hadn’t done in a long time. It was a beautiful day to go outside and practice everything that Kori and Dick taught them, and for Damian to teach her everything the League of Assassins had ingrained into him and themselves. 

In a way, training made her sad. Every time she looked at the grass, she remembered the playful banter between Dick and Kori, how they defeated each other and made silly jokes. She thought about Donna mastering almost everything but flight at first, and even when she did fly better, she lost ground in combat. Jaime and Garfield pairing off usually resulted in weird games of tag in the air. Raven tried not to think about that but instead on Damian positioning her fists and feet into a proper fighting stance. 

Ever since their reunion, whenever they did spar together, their sparring lessons have become more intense, much harder. When they didn’t use weapons, he was much fiercer, and when she didn’t learn something quickly enough and fell, he panicked and rushed to make sure that she was all right. In the few instances where she did beat him, he actually smiled, but she couldn’t tell if he was just considering himself a good teacher or was overprotective of her and was glad that she knew another method to stay safe. 

They stopped after two hours but were high on adrenaline. Raven stared at the sun’s reflection in the tiny waves, took a deep breath, and dove into the ocean to cool off. Damian studied the white foam and hesitated before diving in as well. They emerged out together and pushed back each other’s hair. He wiped the saltwater from her lips to kiss her. 

The deeper his hand smoothed up her back, the deeper she arched her back and pressed her body against his. Her breasts ached against his chest, but it only made their kissing more fervent. His fingertips pressed into her lower back. Neither cared if they would be caught or if it started raining. 

Raven didn’t know how long they kissed in the water until he pulled away and whispered that they should go inside. She opened a portal that took them to the bathroom, where she stepped away but held his hands. Damian didn’t understand the look in her eyes until magic ran down her arms and left her nude. 

He felt dizzy. He had never seen a naked woman before except in movies and pornographic magazines, and to see one in person was much different, particularly when it was someone with whom he had lived with for over two years. Her face should have been the focus, but his eyes couldn’t look away from her breasts, as pale and ashy as her face and arms. He had never seen female nipples in person, and they appeared different from what media depicted them to look. Her curves were sharper than how her uniform made them look. Without her boots and gray stockings, her legs looked longer. She didn’t have a nest of hair between her legs, which he figured was due to her demonic bloodline. 

Damian didn’t know how long he stared, but it came to him that staring was rude. First, he peeled off his mask and took his time removing his uniform while maintaining eye contact with her. For a moment, he began to regret exposing himself to her. His mother and grandfather had not taught him about intimacy (his father had educated him on that subject), but they told him that nudity was sometimes necessary to seduce or dominate power over a female. Even more, he was uneasy showing her the scars that he had collected over the years from his training. He didn’t want to explain their stories or the weapons or his age. 

Once he was completely unclothed, nervous but bold, she took his hands. “Come take a shower with me,” she whispered. She walked him into the bathtub without breaking away from his eyes and used her magic to turn on warm water. He closed his eyes when water poured over his head but reopened them back to her sweet smile. 

In that space of a second, he wished that Nightwing were alive for advice on how showering together was supposed to work. 

The two came back together and kissed under the water. They kissed for two minutes and took their time washing each other’s hair. Seeing him with foam in his hair made him look youthful. He kissed down her neck at the same time that his fingers rinsed the suds from her hair. She felt him rise against her leg but didn’t comment on it. 

For the time being, they washed themselves. He admitted that while he wanted to, he didn’t feel ready yet. She didn’t have a problem with that. In fact, she didn’t feel ready yet, either; this was just to test if this was what they really wanted before they decided to progress. 

Still, as they dried themselves, he touched her face and gently kissed her. She wrapped her legs around his waist and felt for any wetness on his back. She kissed all over his neck and shoulders, and didn’t notice that her towel fell from her chest. Damian noticed by accident and hurried to cover her, but she grabbed his hand to stop him. 

Taking a deep breath, she guided his hand to her breast. His fingertips were gentle against the smooth skin. He took his time rubbing the gland, rolling it around her chest. His thumb fondled her nipple and gently batted at her breast, smiling when it jiggled. He wondered what it would feel like to have her breast in his mouth, but she pulled on his hair and turned his head to meet her eyes. They went back to kissing. He hooked her breasts between his thumbs and fingers to lift against his chest. One hand left her breast for the back of her neck, rubbing it as she rubbed his. 

“I could do this all day,” she admitted. 

Damian purred; it stirred in the pit of her abdomen. “Me too,” he whispered against her lips. He smacked kisses down her throat but stopped at her chest. “Is it all right if I…go lower?” he asked. 

Raven swallowed. “Not yet,” she whispered. 

He kissed back up her chest and the side of her neck to her earlobe, which he gently nibbled at. Her hips rolled against his and she fidgeted until his towel fell from his hips. 

She moved her head and chuckled. He had really nicely shaped buttocks and thighs–pure muscle and tone to caress all day. Eventually, he pulled away and rolled his head. “May we relocate?” he asked. “My neck hurts.”

Again, Raven didn’t expect the grandson of the demon’s head to complain about body aches, but it may have been because it was her. She agreed; her feet were feeling numb. Her set her onto her feet and picked up his towel, taking his time so he could watch her stretch. It made her look taller and leaner, and her breasts pointier. 

Once they were both back in their towels, she walked with him to his room and watched him dress himself into a turtleneck and slacks. She went back to her skirt, jacket, and bustier. He picked up the towels and kissed her once more, his fingers raking through her hair. “What’s for lunch?” he smirked. 

Raven giggled. “Can’t give it to you, but you can help me make it.”

Seeing his face light up was pure gold. She took his hand and led him into the kitchen. 

Author’s Note: As mentioned before in my previous fic “Bath, Earl Grey, and Sensuality”, I’m not entirely shipping Damirae yet, in part because I don’t want to get my hopes up in case something happens to one or both of them in Justice League Dark: Apokolips War, which has happened quite a few times to me, but I really like the idea of Raven exploring romance and sexuality, which I think she is usually deprived of in the comics; if she’s not, it’s usually in a negative way, so I think this is my way of giving her a healthy sexual relationship, even in progress, that she deserves.

[fuzzyface]

“You make your own fairytale” - Jester, comphet, and realizing you might not want what you thought you did

It’s no secret to anyone who follows me that I headcanon Jester as a lesbian and have enjoyed pointing out the not-so-straight moments she’s has on the show every week. Until recently, I wasn’t any more invested in this than I usually am in my lgbt headcanons - which is to say it’s fun and meaningful to me but I don’t think it holds much weight outside of my own imagination.

However…

These past few weeks finding “evidence” for this headcanon has felt like less a treasure hunt for subtext and more like just… watching the show. It’s been very easy lately to read Jester’s behavior as that of a closeted lesbian or bi woman, to the point where I’ve started questioning whether it even makes sense to continue calling it a “crack theory” or “conspiracy”. If you’re willing to entertain the belief that gay readings of characters don’t always have to be purely self-indulgent, please enjoy this long-winded explanation as to why I think there’s a legitimately good chance that Jester is canonically in the middle of figuring out her sexuality. 

To start I want to say that, no, I don’t think this is something that was planned from the start. I don’t have a portal to the inside of Laura Bailey’s head, but if I had to guess I’d say that she probably left Jester’s sexuality “undecided” at the start of the campaign, but defaulted to having her like men. Even then I didn’t see her as straight, but there were decidedly less ‘moments’ early in the campaign to support that. This actually lines up fairly well with my theory, which is that Jester’s arc is one of self-exploration. But more simply, I think the idea probably just wouldn’t have occurred to Laura when she was busy just trying to get a feel for the basics of her character. I don’t consider any of the early campaign to “contradict” anything I’m going to say next, I just know somebody would bring it up if I didn’t address it first.

(I have some friends who do very firmly believe that Laura is playing the full long con with Jester and has been slow-burning her sexuality crisis since the start of the campaign, and they’re valid, but I won’t really get into that here since that’s not my personal interpretation. If Laura wants to prove me wrong on a Talks episode sometime in the future, I will gladly eat my words.)

Jester did start out as a character who ostensibly “liked men” but even from the start I thought her way of interacting with that attraction was… interesting. She had an idea in her head of what an ‘ideal man’ was like and projected it onto nearly every man she found attractive, regardless of their actual personalities. All the men she likes are dashing, they’re all handsome heroes, they’re all suave and they’re all definitely interested in her. She thought she wanted a fairytale prince, and so she saw fairytale princes everywhere she looked. It was also really interesting to me that she never made an effort to pursue most of the men she was ‘attracted’ to. With the notable exception of Fjord, she only commented on the appearance of men after she was already distanced from them. Even Nott - the married woman - made more actual passes at men they met than Jester - the romance obsessed one - ever did. Jester seemed to care more about using her attraction to men as a way to gossip and bond with the rest of the party than she did about using it to actually court anyone.

Speaking of Fjord… boy, he’s a whole thing in of himself. Fjord was the first man she ever befriended outside of the very small bubble of people she knew growing up. He was nice to her, they trusted each other, their meeting probably felt like fate, and because of that Jester thought she was in love with him. The fact that Jester was in love with the idea of Fjord rather than the real him was something I had been speculating for a LONG time, but now that Laura has outright confirmed it I can talk about it without having to use any sort of disclaimer. Jester took a very short amount of time to decide that she was “in love” with Fjord, and almost all of the instances where her attraction was most obvious were prompted not by anything he did, but by things that reinforced Jester’s own beliefs on what romance was supposed to be like. She bought a cheesy smut book and started comparing Fjord to the protagonist because of course he’s exactly like Oskar - he’s a man and he’s handsome, isn’t he? Another woman flirted with Fjord and Jester got sick with jealousy because he’s supposed to fall in love with her, isn’t he? When the two of them were free from expectations they were cordial friends with no particular tension between them; it’s when Jester was reminded that they’re ‘supposed to be’ a love story that she got anxious, upset, or started putting on an obvious front.

A lot of this could be argued away as Jester just trying to take things too fast, but what really stood out to me was that Jester never seemed happy about her crush on Fjord. She wasn’t giggly and bubbly when talking about him, and with few exceptions she didn’t seek him out to spend extra time with him or confide her desires in him. The three times she openly addressed her crush - to Nott, the Traveler, and Caleb respectively - she was anxious, confused, or outright upset. Her talk with Nott seemed like she was trying to get reassurance that she was “normal” and that she was having the “correct” feelings in response to Fjord kissing her, which is extremely easy to read as Jester starting to realize that she might not have the feelings for men that she “should” have. Her conversation with Caleb was equally distressing, because by that point she was starting to see her fantasy was falling away. She asserted that she was “stupid” for believing it in the first place and openly admitted that she’s no longer sure her feelings still exist now that the idealism is gone. From that point forward all of Nott’s attempts to set her and Fjord up only caused her more anxiety and distress. The couple of times they were forced to be alone together they were stilted and awkward - a far cry from their original easy friendship - and after a point, Jester started to turn down offers to spend time with him altogether. “No, he’s not flirting with me,” she said, no longer even able to pretend she’s excited by the prospect.

The thing about Jester is, so much of her outward personality is based on appearances. She acts happy and cheerful and confident all the time because she thinks she has to, and she’s an accomplished liar who doesn’t like other people to see her upset or doubtful. Only in drastic situations does Jester willingly let someone see her vulnerable. It would have been incredibly easy for Laura to play Jester as her usual, cheerful, ‘no problems here’ self during her conversations about Fjord if we weren’t supposed to interpret her as being obviously and deeply conflicted. Something in her head felt very, very wrong when Fjord kissed her for her to be able to tell Nott that the only thing it made her feel was “not dead”. Something in her mind didn’t click right when she finally got what she wanted for her to be able to tell Caleb that she wasn’t even sure her crush was real.

The slow resurgence of the bond between Fjord and Jester recently made me wonder if I was wrong about my interpretation, if maybe Jester had just been sulking because she thought Fjord didn’t like her, and now she was convincing herself again that he did. But Laura confirming on Talks that Jester was mostly over her crush on Fjord solidified for me that her arc was intentionally about learning how to move on from unhealthy infatuation. So if it’s undeniably canon that Jester’s only real crush on a man was based on her misunderstanding both the situation and her own desires, and it’s canon that she is moving on from that attraction and starting to learn what she actually wants, that leaves us with the question: Where is Jester going from here?

I’ve talked a lot so far about Jester’s relationship to men and how so much of it mirrors the experience of a woman dealing with comphet; performatively talking about attractive men without pursuing them, idealizing and projecting ‘ideal’ traits onto crushes instead of developing them naturally, convincing herself she’s in a fairytale romance because a man was nice and nonthreatening towards her. But being a wlw doesn’t ‘require’ comphet, and regardless I can’t - and wouldn’t - build a gay headcanon just around her feelings about men. So let me talk now about Jester’s relationship with women.

Jester has been naturally complimentary of women since the start of the campaign. She’s quick to call them cute, call them pretty, compliment their clothes. I don’t necessarily think - until more recently - this was meant to be read as ‘not straight’. If anything I think it was just another example of Jester’s naturally flirty personality - she likes to compliment people, she likes to tease. However, the difference in how she approaches women and men has been extremely blatant recently and I genuinely don’t think it’s an accident. The ways that she - and Laura while playing her - acts around characters who are beautiful women isn’t the same ‘casually complimentary’ demeanor she had towards all genders since the start of the campaign. Jester calling Lady Olios ‘beautiful’ no less than three times in a single meeting and being noticeably flustered isn’t usual Jester behavior, Laura repeatedly asking Matt what the Bright Queen is wearing only so that Jester can be visibly awed by her beauty isn’t usual Jester behavior. The fact that she compliments women to their face, while with men it’s always an offhand comment after they leave, also stands out to me. It’s the little moments too that I notice, the times where there’s no reason to even make a comment in the first place unless you’re trying to make a point, like Jester telling Caduceus that the Wildmother is hot, or mentioning how attractive Yasha is in the middle of an unrelated conversation. It all adds up.

I’m aware of my biases in viewing these scenes as a lesbian, but completely outside of headcanons it’s obvious that Jester has an established fixation on beautiful women, and it’s obvious that this has come up more frequently now than it used to in the past. It’s the fact that this overlaps with her realizing that she’s no longer sure what she wants - that love and romance and attraction aren’t what she thought they were - that feels deliberate to me in a way that Jester’s earlier offhand comments about women never did. If Jester’s feelings towards women are meant to be entirely platonic, then the insistence on highlighting them - sometimes even interrupting scenes to do so - seems strange to me. It’s not played for comedy, it’s rarely relevant to the scene at hand, so why does it come up often enough that my friends and I keep a running joke that if there’s a beautiful woman in a scene Jester will comment on it at least once? (Play that game yourself when you’re watching new episodes, you’ll be amazed at how rarely you’ll be wrong)

So where’s this going, if Jester is being played as in the middle of discovering her sexuality? She gets over a major crush on a player character just to flirt with random attractive NPCs? Is Jester’s gay awakening supposed to be centered on her occasionally thinking powerful and unattainable women are hot, or would Laura have the logical sense to plan such a serious character decision around something that would have an actual impact on the party? Well, let’s be honest, you probably knew this part was coming eventually…

Jester’s relationship with Beau is one of the closest and most stable friendships in the group. The two of them have an intense love and trust of one another and are both verbally and physically affectionate on a greater level than any pair in the party. I’ve talked myself to death about these two already and I’ll do so plenty in the future, so I’m not going to give an entire summary of their relationship (if you need a refresher, here you go). Yes, I ship them. Yes, I’ve talked plenty about what I think of Beau’s side of the relationship. But it’s regardless of shipping or the potential of mutual feelings that, for the purposes of this essay, I say there’s a good chance that Jester canonically has a crush on Beau.

Hear me out.

The two of them had an ostensibly platonic relationship for the majority of the campaign. There were some charged moments but nothing that could really and truly be read as explicitly romantic or sexual without shipping goggles on. Then Episode 46 aired. Jester was directly in the middle of her crisis about her feelings for Fjord, Laura was clearly playing her as starting to realize that she didn’t feel the way she originally thought she did, the group had just been through a tremendously traumatic experience that made Jester question whether she could trust them… and then Beau hugs her, and talks about their shared childhood trauma, and tells her she’s beautiful, and tells her that she loves her. I can’t say for sure that this would have been the moment that Jester fully developed feelings, but I do know that if you were already planning for your character to have an arc about learning what she wants from love, this would feel like an awfully convenient moment to build off of. And I can certainly observe the ways that Beau and Jester’s dynamic has visibly changed in the episodes since.

We already know what platonic friendship between Beau and Jester looks like; we watched 40+ episodes of it. What we have now is Jester blushing and giggling when Beau blows her a kiss, Jester asking Beau if she’s secretly in love with her, Jester stepping in to counter every derogatory thing said about Beau with showers of compliments, Jester asking to look down Beau’s pants, Beau offering to let Jester watch her make out with another woman, Jester approaching Beau and only Beau to discuss her thoughts about love and romance. These are often explicitly flirty interactions that we genuinely never saw between the two of them previously, and given how it directly lines up with Jester falling out of love with someone else and clearly having romance on the brain, it feels oddly perfect to just be a coincidence. Even the more ‘dubiously platonic’ moments between them are more frequent and more tender. Jester doing things like giving Beau a massage to help her fall asleep (a scene she logically shouldn’t even have been awake for), pulling Beau aside to ask her to commit some vandalism for her, or repeatedly complimenting her when she shows any sign of insecurity. The fact that Jester immediately chose to stay roommates with her - in a house with so many rooms that the only other people bunking up are a married couple - at the very least confirmed for me that Jester has been prioritizing Beau in her life in a major way lately.

The little comments, the encouragement, the way Jester seems to almost hover over Beau for any sign that she needs to be comforted or reassured… it all adds up to something big in their relationship having changed and there is absolutely nothing contradictory or unreasonable in viewing it as Jester having developed romantic feelings for Beau. If Jester went up to someone the very next episode and told them she was in love with Beau, everything that’s happened between them would feel like a perfectly natural progression up to that moment. Call me crazy, but when you can draw a line that easily from A to B using only what’s available to you in canon, I think at the least you usually call that an entirely plausible theory.

So what’s my point here? Am I saying Jester is for sure being played as a closeted gay woman who’s secretly in love with Beau? Of course not. I don’t claim to be any more certain of what Laura Bailey has planned than anyone else. I’m also not trying to say that Jester is “coded” as gay or anything like that. But I can look at the storybeats that I correctly predicted due to my own headcanons (Jester questioning and ultimately abandoning her feelings for Fjord, Beau and Jester growing closer and having more non-platonic interactions) and follow it to its logical conclusion.

If all these things have been correct so far, and Jester being gay is an easy and logical interpretation that contradicts nothing and explains a lot, then why not assume it might actually be what Laura is intending? At the very least, why not stop treating it like a wild fringe theory that could never have solid supporting evidence?

Jester is gay, tell your friends