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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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With respect, Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat. In his FIRST appearance he'd had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings. He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city, he kept a woman on life support prisoner and his treatment of Robyn convinced a technically legal protest into an outright criminal. Not to mention he abandons the best defense humanity has against the Grimm to keep some control. Shooting a dissenter seem very in character

“Ironwood brought an army to deal with a covert threat” - For which he was suitably chastised by Ozpin. It’s a whole conversation in “Welcome to Beacon” and, back when RWBY was doing a better job of handling these complex issues, that conversation gives weight to both sides. Ironwood isn’t trying to, idk, take over Beacon or something with his army. He wants to be prepared in order to help people. “I’m just being cautious.” Ozpin points out that scaring everyone won’t help, but notably the story acknowledges that Ozpin’s preferences are far from full-proof. “Do you really believe your children can win a war?” Can you prove to me that the kids we’re training will be enough when the shit hits the fan? Ozpin doesn’t have an answer. He dodges answering by saying only that he hopes his kids won’t have to fight, not that he has unwavering faith that they will win. Then Beacon falls. Ozpin dies. Ironwood is left alone with an entire kingdom to keep safe and I think it’s worth acknowledging that he did that. Mantle is far from perfect, there’s a lot there to fix, but the people are alive and that’s in part thanks to the soldiers that keep the grimm from eating them all. The rest? That’s due to Penny, a symbol of hope that Ironwood gave to the people. He learned that from this conversation with Ozpin.

“In his FIRST appearance he'd had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings.” - It’s not Ironwood’s first appearance. He meets with the inner circle, has his talk with Ozpin, introduces his Atlesian knights to the public, attends the Beacon dance, discovers Ruby fighting Cinder, later compliments Ruby for her initiative in Ozpin’s office, confides in Glynda that night, and helps defend Vale against Roman’s attack. So your implication that as his “first” appearance this tells us he’s really an irredeemable person is not accurate.

Second, I’ve seen this claim a lot the last couple of months and I finally went back to find/watch the scene for myself (it’s in “Breach”). These were not secret meetings. Ironwood “reported” to the council which I assume is what he’s supposed to do. Given that he is a Headmaster. And this is the council overseeing the schools. Keeping updated is their entire deal. Were these reports fair to Ozpin? We don’t know. You might assume they’re full of lies and horrible misrepresentations, but that’s not what the text tells us. Ironwood told the council Ozpin’s plans, then the council said, ‘No way are you holding the Vytal festival with those precautions alone.’ Then the council asked Ironwood to provide troops for additional security. Did Ironwood manipulate the council and paint Ozpin as a villain to get what he wanted? Maybe. Did Ironwood objectively say precisely what’s going on - Ozpin thinks his huntsmen are enough to keep everyone safe in the event of an attack - and the council, independent of him, came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough? Maybe. Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Ironwood is doing all this because he honestly believes it will help others. He begs Ozpin to understand that: “This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise I will keep our people safe. You have to trust me.” And you know what? He wasn’t entirely wrong. No one could have predicted that Salem’s minions would take control of his army. Ironwood did, however, predict that there would be an attack too large for a bunch of students to handle... and he was right. Beacon fell because a those half-trained kids weren’t enough to hold off a major attack, but Ironwood did everything he could to try and prevent that. In a slightly better world where his army wasn’t unexpectedly taken advantage of, that could have easily been what turned the tide of battle and saved Beacon instead. The world where everyone views Ironwood as a hero for providing those extra forces is just a smidge away from the world where everyone views Ironwood as a villain for inadvertently providing the enemy with those extra forces... but the forces themselves are not a black and white bad thing to have. Not in a world where your festivities are interrupted by the giant bird trying to eat the audience.

“He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city” - Yes, the embargo hurts the city financially. Ironwood is attempting to keep it from being hurt in the ‘everyone is wiped out’ kind of way. Post the Fall of Beacon he’s unsure if the other Kingdoms will declare war against Atlas or not, so it’s not wise to continue giving them one of the easiest means of attack. That’s the official story, but Ironwood (and the audience) know that Salem has also been collecting dust for a while now... so how about we stop giving her any more? Was this the right move to make? Are short-term economic difficulties worth avoiding the risk of potentially supplying enemies with the means of destroying you? I can’t answer that, but it’s not a clear-cut bad decision like you’re making it out to be. Retroactively we can say that no one attacked Atlas and Salem seems to have stopped collecting dust because the writers forgot about it... but Ironwood doesn’t get to see into the future. He didn’t know things would turn out this way. Once again, he’s trying to prevent tragedies, not just survive them when they come along. The balance between short-term sacrifice and long-term protection is far from an easy thing to strike and a character’s failure to achieve perfection despite their best efforts says more about their luck than their morals. Ironwood is an incredibly flawed man, but those flaws have always shown throw via his attempts to help others.

“He kept a woman on life support prisoner” - Are we talking abut Amber of Fria here? Either way that’s a gross misrepresentation of what happened and, frankly, does little to make me receptive to your other arguments. Amber was attacked, Qrow brought her back to the inner circle, Ironwood kept her alive so that the rest of the power wouldn’t immediately pass to Cinder (and, I would think, because this group isn’t in the habit of just letting friends die if at all possible). Fria was the Winter Maiden, she got dementia, and Ironwood had her live out the rest of her days in a facility so that a) no one murdered her, b) a Maiden with dementia didn’t wreak havoc on the city (we saw her powers go wild during the fight), and c) the power passed to an ally when she finally died. How do you know Fria was a prisoner? Was there a scene I missed where she said as much or, just as likely, might she have agreed to these precautions once her memory started to fade? Amber, meanwhile, was in a coma and unable to consent to anything. Ironwood did not kidnap her for nefarious experimentation, nor do we have any evidence that he held Fria hostage. That sort of thinking only makes “sense” when we’re already inclined to paint a character’s every action as morally corrupt. Is a 80 year old who keeps wandering into the street held prisoner because they were put in a home where they could be taken care of? That’s this with the added complications of “The 80 year old could kill everyone with magic. Or reveal to the world that magic exists” and “A lot of people want to kill this 80 year old” and “If they succeed the world is #screwed.”

“His treatment of Robyn convinced a technically legal protest into an outright criminal” - Robyn is a criminal. Ironwood never stopped her from protesting. He required that she a) not spy on a classified project, b) not keep his men from working on that project, and c) not steal supplies meant for that project... all actions that are illegal. Honestly I’m not entirely sure what this phrase is saying. That Ironwood forced Robyn to become a criminal? If so, we once again need to discuss agency and how Character A doing something that Character B doesn’t like does not give Character B blanket justification for every horrible choice they might make.

“Not to mention he abandons the best defense humanity has against the Grimm to keep some control” - I’m not sure what this is referring to either. What defense? The wall? Amity? Mantle? “To keep control”? That’s another incredibly simplified and subjective view of events. I’ve already done enough work on this blog to explain why, based on the group’s current knowledge, Ironwood’s plan is horrifying but also the best they’ve currently got. It’s not a grab at power, no matter how easy it is to paint it as that and move along. The morality of these actions is absolutely in question, but the motivation is not. We’ve seen no evidence - and a great deal of evidence against it - that Ironwood is simply out to maintain power.

Nothing here proves that Ironwood would be willing to shoot an allied kid. “Ironwood did controversial things in the name of protecting others” does not equal “Ironwood is willing to murder an ally.” Rather, these things contradict because we’ve spent six volumes with Ironwood pushing every limit possible to help others, not attack them. Lists like these likewise ignore everything that Ironwood did which doesn’t support shooting Oscar: every conversation he’s ever had where he didn’t attack someone for disagreeing with him, every action he’s taken being in the service of helping others (even if there’s disagreement about how to best go about that), him flipping his gun around when Qrow (presumably) attacked him, reassuring the Vytal students that there’s no shame in running from the fight, confiding in Glynda, standing up for Weiss, sending Yang her arm, being overjoyed to (he thinks) see Ozpin again, willingly training Oscar, choosing to trust RWBYJNR with both his plan and the relic, listening to them later about Robyn and telling the council about Salem, destroying his arm to protect the people, choosing arrest rather than, I don’t know, just trying to straight up kill Team RWBY for daring to say no to him. Because isn’t that the Ironwood you’ve described above? Someone who won’t hesitate to do anything to get what he wants, even murder? It’s a compelling character, but I don’t think we’ve seen that character anywhere prior to Volume 7′s finale. That character is the opposite of who we had before. When things get tough, stressful, and traumatic the show has said, time and time again, that this is how Ironwood treats his allies

So it’s a bit jarring to suddenly go, “Never mind. He shoots them now.”

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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arch-venus25 · 3 years

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The Head and the Heart, Part 3

Hello everyone,

I am submitting this for @just-the-hiddles‘s The Damnit Jim, I’m A Vampire, Not A Landlord Fic Frenzy. I chose prompt “1….You can pay your rent in money or in blood.” I was inspired by all the prompts and will probably use them throughout the series. Basically I use the prompts as guide-lines.

This is the first time I have written and shared a fic online– or ever really! It’s also the first time I’ve written anything modern so please let me know what you think! I hope I’m posting this correctly–I created the title art–LOL I’ve never done this before. I’m aiming to update the series each Tuesday. So here we go…

Series Masterlist: The Head and The Heart

Summary: The twins are taking a night off from their graduate studies– or at least Tessa is; her twin sister, Antha, is just trying to keep her out of trouble. What starts as a night of good old-fashioned fun and flirting quickly changes as they find themselves at the doorstep of the Hollow House Bed and Breakfast.

Characters: OFCs Antha and Tessa King, original characters/vampires

WARNINGS: 18+ for suggestive themes and violence, cursing, implied drug use, implied rape, stressful/scary situations, vampires, and characters with incredible hair– you’ve been warned. Read at your own discretion.

Word Count: 4200

Part Three: Delmar Hospitality

Antha slowly raised her hands in surrender. It was the best she could do in this unforeseeable situation. Beads of sweat rolled down her chest and back. The searing chill sobered her instantly. “We—we—” She found her mouth desert-dry and unable to form a coherent sentence.

“Well, are you trespassing or are you lost?” The silken voice demanded.

“We’re—we’re lost.” Antha panted. A light tumble sounded in the wooded brush as Tessa’s mouth fell open with a gasp, only her teeth could be seen. She fainted.

“Oh.” The voice sighed. Before Antha understood what was happening long cool fingers wrapped around her wrist and brought her up to stand. “Here.” Those same fingers handed her the gun. She violently shook, her nails impulsively tapping against the metal of the barrel.

The clouds shifted intermittently, splashing eerie washes of light across the blackness. Long, ethereal white arms appeared out of the dark as the stranger pushed up his sleeves. These bodiless limbs wrapped about Tessa. Am I watching Fantasia? Antha thought—it didn’t even occur to her that she was now armed and could defend them, though she was hardly capable in her muddled state. She stepped back to see him lift her unconscious sister.

The moonlight poured over something akin to a roman statue come-to-life, with a long column neck and limbs. It frightened Antha to see this otherworldly man peer down from his full height—his great silver-colored eyes burning amidst the night. Despite logic, she had the distinct feeling that he could see more of her than she could of him. “I presume you’ve spoken to the police?” He asked calmly.

She patted her legs instinctually and realized her sundress had no pockets. Somewhere far, far away her cellphone was nestled in her messenger bag, in the back of Tessa’s car. She shook her head ‘no’ as she was still at a loss for words. “Well, come along then,” replied the stranger. His accent was clean; obviously he wasn’t born of this slower-lower side of the world but seemingly mimicked their colloquialisms.

Like a white knight he led Antha from darkness and into a comfortably lit yard in the middle of the woods. The well-kept grass stretched in front of them toward a darling little house. There were candle lights in every dormer window, a white-slatted porch with rocking chairs and a sign that said “No Vacancy” to greet them. The stranger turned, “Welcome to Hollow House,” he stated neutrally, not exactly instilling hospitality. Antha clutched the gun in her arms, scanning her surroundings when she could manage to tear her eyes from him.

Tessa looked like a beloved ragdoll, her long braids swinging peacefully with every step. The stranger held her tenderly as if an appendage of himself, her head cradled to his chest. Why couldn’t I have fainted? Why am I always the one to sort everything out? Antha thought. He carried her with ease up the porch steps and hesitated. He hovered over Tessa’s face for a moment as if he was going to plant a magical kiss that would awaken her from slumber. Then he turned to Antha, brows knitting together for a brief moment.

“You’re twins.” He chuckled to himself as if something about that was charming. “Would you please?” He motioned to the screen door. She stood frozen in place as if the simple instruction was too much to fathom. “Antha,” he crooned, “when I take you inside, I will lay your sister down, get you cleaned up, and then we will call the authorities. I will help you sort everything out in no time.”

Thick waves of auburn hair tucked behind his ears and one errant curl falling in his eye line drew her in. His excellent hair aside, he seemed normal enough. Given the monsters she encountered thus far, the normalcy of the house and this stranger were beyond comforting. Additionally, the fact that he held Tessa to his chest made him simply irresistible to deny.

She shook as she reached for the screen door and held it for him, then he swooped Tessa over the threshold into a lovely foyer. A lean spindle-legged table held brochures for Hollow House Bed and Breakfast. The simple cottage layout and plate of cookies at the door all confirmed for her that she was in fact standing in a bed and breakfast. She followed slowly and watched as he laid her sister down in the Hibiscus Room, right off the foyer and overlooking the back patio. The peach tapestries, brick fireplace, and mahogany wooden furniture framed Tessa, making her nothing short of a sleeping beauty with her mane cascading across the crisp pillows.

Antha paced backward as he turned to her, leaving the guest room door cracked open. “I assure you she is fine. How about we set this down?” He carefully approached her to take the gun but she clenched it as if she suddenly couldn’t imagine parting with it.

She didn’t like how he filled up the foyer, frame blocking the dim ceiling light the way an oak tree does the sun. “I’m very sorry about how I approached you before. I heard you two stomping through my woods—and you alarmed me.” He said coolly, not an ounce of excitement in his eyes or face, not even a flush in his cheeks. “Tell me what happened.” When he asked she strangely felt beholden to him. She couldn’t help feeling that he was reading her mind—she knew that was a stupid thought—but something about the way those big eyes held her in place.

“There was a fight, and, and Tessa ran and so I chased after her—we fell and you found us.” She spilled all of the highlights as if she were reading a teleprompter. The prying feeling lessened when he broke eye contact.

“I see. Well, please come sit down, allow me to help.” His voice dripping like honey down the back of a spoon. He went to the small dining room off the foyer, pulled out a chair and politely beckoned her to sit. She wagered the risk for a moment but ultimately leaned the gun against the table—within reach—when she accepted the offered seat.

Feeling naked without the weapon, she held herself as he explained he would bring water. He did everything he said he would and within seconds she found herself staring bewildered into a glass of tap water. Antha felt more at ease when he finally removed the gun from the table and promised to put it away. The kitchen was right off the dining room and she listened as he retreated to the phone, setting the gun down. “…two young women—yes, here at Hollow House. Yes, this is Mr. Smith… Mmm-hmm… No one is harmed. Yes, of course, I understand. Thank you.”

Antha heard the click of the landline phone being holstered and thought about how long it had been since she had heard such a noise. Since her grandmother’s house she supposed. Her eyes continued their investigation as she waited. Trying to remind herself that she was just on-guard from the hellish night Tessa had put her through.

The cottage was fine, everything in place. A fruit bowl on display, frills on every corner, the carpet vacuumed. He did everything he said he would, she reminded herself again as she sat on her shaking hands. She was fine. They would wait for the police. They would be fine, she convinced herself.

He returned to the table with a plate and towel in hand. The plate was placed in front of her and then he bent with a damp cloth and pressed it to her forehead. For a moment Antha found herself quite overwhelmed, quaking in her seat, the adrenaline threatening to keep her on the run until her heart gave out.

“I believe your story checks out Miss Antha,” he said humorously, “the police said that there was an awful scuffle at the bar out by the road. Once they’re done cleaning that up, they will come to get you two.”

“Mr. Smith, how did you know my name?” She asked, just over-hearing his from the phone call.

“I could hear you calling to each other.” He explained. “You two created quite the ruckus out there.” He was leaning closer than Antha would have preferred. She never recalled Tessa calling out for her. She also didn’t think she told him about the bar either—stop being stupid Antha, the police told him about the bar, obviously, she chastised herself, her paranoia getting the better of her.

After pulling the twigs from her braids, wiping the dirt from her forehead and neck he bent to one knee to clean her hands. She sipped her water and stared down at him. His hair was a bit longer than how most men would wear it now, wing-tipped behind his ears and lending to the romance of an Edwardian fashion. The long bridge of his nose and well-placed lips made him truly worth staring at, like the classical paintings in her textbooks. When he wrapped the cloth over one of her palms his nostrils flared. “That’s a nasty scrape.”

Antha didn’t realize she was bleeding from when she caught herself on the pavement of the parking lot. Before he sat, she observed his dark button-down shirt partially tucked into slacks; his musculature was not consistent with his occupation. This guy works out for serving cookies and delivering extra pillows, she thought and continued sipping her water. Those great nocturnal eyes never left her, even as he reached toward a bowl on the table, his eyes stayed with her.

“Here, you must be starved,” he showed his hand to reveal a whole pomegranate. Before she could deny the fruit he tore it open between his large hands. The leathery skin shredded apart as the sanguine juice dotted his pale fingers, the table, and the plate in front of her. Antha could hear herself swallow as the little massacre happened right before her eyes. “Eat, Persephone, and never be released from my palace.” He laughed.

“I know that myth,” she forced a scoff despite how anxious she felt. She was compelled to be still, attempting to plan her next moves. She wasn’t sure if she was still out of fear or if he was willing her to sit. There was this scratching at the back of her mind again, like a dog at the backdoor, relentlessly trying to get into her subconscious.

“I had a feeling you would.” He replied knowingly. He leant into his palm on the table, as if fearing she would be too far from him. His offering seemed forced as if he had just read a beginner’s manual of cordiality. Nothing felt organic or friendly. Everything is fine, was what she thought, but something in her gut told her, but not safe. As if an ocean could not quench her thirst Antha finished the water and jolted upward from her seat.

“I need more water,” she stated blatantly and made her way to the kitchen before he could offer. She felt she could breathe for a moment without those curious gray orbs on her. The kitchen was outdated, but appeared older due to the orange cast of the overhead fan light ticking away, struggling to cool the space. She clutched the sink as if it was her last anchor to the earth. Her eyes kept shooting upward to the dark window in front of her. All she could see was her reflection and the open doorway to the dining room behind her; she was trying to watch her back, making sure nothing suddenly moved.

While the tap poured foggy water into her glass her eye caught a picture on the counter with a little old white-haired man and woman, their wrinkles holding their sunglasses in place, with Rehoboth Beach in the backdrop. “When are the cops coming?” She called weakly, trying to appear conversational and unsuspecting.

“Realistically tomorrow morning, not long from now.” His voice carried. He was still at the dining table. Good, stay there, she thought.

“Oh, we couldn’t trouble you for that long!” Her voice broke against her will, unsure why panic was suddenly rendering her immobile, holding white-knuckled to the sink. Why was there an empty room for Tessa? The sign said ‘no vacancy’.

Staring at the picture, she saw it said The Smiths 2016. The water was streaming over her hand, overflowing from the already full cup. Her eyes found the reflection of the gun leant up against the ancient landline phone on the wall in the window; it wasn’t the phone itself that made the blood drain from her face, it was the severed phone line dangling from the receiver like a noose. Her heart plunged into her stomach as she pieced together the clues—they were in very real danger.

“I insist you stay,” the rich-timbered-inflection was too close, and cold breath trickled down the back of Antha’s neck. There was no reflection of the man behind her in the window, all she could see was the terror on her face.

Glass shards and water exploded against the sink as her hand lost her cup. Her feet left the ground as she found herself turned, and lifted to the counter, her back against the cabinetry. “There’s no possible way we can stay—you see—I, I have misplaced my wallet!” She stammered, attempting to rationalize the situation.

“I’m positive we can agree on an alternate arrangement.” He wedged himself between her thighs, pulling her to the edge of the counter, his nails growing and sinking into her lower back like meat hooks. She had never seen someone so malevolent and beautiful in equal measure as he loomed over her mouth.

“—Please, I must take my sister home—” she begged, not knowing what was to come. “I can’t leave her—we have to go home!” Tears welled in her eyes as she tried to pull away from the stranger, but found herself latched to him with nowhere to run. His hands held strong as his lips reached the shell of her ear.

“I wouldn’t dream of separating a pair—she will follow you shortly.” He promised. “Stay.” He told her as if commanding her soul. She found herself unable to fight, her muscles waning as if under a spell. The cold of his cheek dragged across hers as he pulled back to look over her face, his feral irises dilating, impersonal and hungry. His grin displayed a mouth-full of pearly teeth as he sunk to the floor and splayed open Antha’s legs. He hummed gluttonously when he kissed the inside of her knee. His canine teeth grew outward, revealing pristine fangs the closer he drew to her apex. This isn’t real—what is he doing? Her mind raced, her fingers searching blindly on the counter for aid. He threw one of her legs over his shoulder and Antha mustered the last of her will to kick him in the face before she could find out.

She launched herself from the counter clumsily as the stranger recoiled, her muscles waking up from their enchantment. After snapping his broken nose back into place, he caught a second wind and lunged for her neck. Instinctively, her wrapped hand shoved the stray piece of glass from her broken water cup into the corner of his mouth. He leant against the counter, retracted his fangs and smiled through it, as if he had been pleasantly surprised.

She snatched the gun as she darted to a nearby door in the kitchen. Her hands frantically locking the door and then searching for a light. Rickety wooden stairs bowed under her feet as she followed carefully forward, her gun-hand sliding down a railing and the other on its mission for a light switch. She could hear him groan as he pulled forth the glass and the blood spilled to the linoleum floor. “Antha, darling,” that same penetrating voice hummed above her as he gathered his bearings, “stay and fight me off—I do so enjoy this.” She could hear him gagging and spitting—she could only hope the glass shard spliced his gums.

Finally, as if her prayers had been answered, her hand found what it had been seeking. She flipped the light switch on to find one lone dangling bulb above her. For the third time of evening, Antha’s feet left the earth and she toppled over a pile of laundry at the base of the stairs. She saw nothing to defend her, no place to hide. When she scooted back from the heap, she saw fuzzy white tufts. To her horror she recognized old Mr. Smith crumpled atop other bodies, their throats and wrists torn out, blood pooling across the floor.

Antha covered her mouth to stop from screaming. Her tear ducts working hysterically as she distanced herself from the carnage. How did I end up here? This can’t be happening! The cautious twin thought to herself, why me? The rattle of the door knob broke through her shock as the perpetrator tried to gain access to the basement. The foundation shook as he began ramming himself into the basement door—BAM—BAM—BAM—the door and frame failing under his inhuman force, the wood splintering and the drywall crackling.

Searching again for anything to save her, as if she was swarmed in answers that her brain could not comprehend in its panic—Antha finally noticed a cellar door. Rushing to it, she undid the inside latch and pushed upward to get out. She could hear the basement door explode, the skittle-like bounce of nails and screws as it finally gave way under his might. Throwing the door back down she jammed the handle with a nearby shim.

Scrambling through the backyard she hid behind a tree, knowing that it was only a temporary delay for him. The stranger was much too keen for her to outrun she guessed, she definitely couldn’t fight him—perhaps hiding would give her a moment to develop an escape path back to Tessa, an element of surprise—or anything—against him. Antha’s pulse hammering, the vein in her neck thick like an anaconda as the adrenaline coursed through her. She cocked the gun blindly, praying she did it right—worst case scenario she was going to go out swinging the damn thing. How will I get to Tessa?

Antha pressed her back into the large tree, her gun readied. Trickles of blood ran hot down her legs from his vicious claw marks. She tried to control her breath, but his fury found the cellar doors faster than she wanted. The slamming began again until one of the cellar door’s peaked upward, his elbow bending it as if mere tinfoil. Seconds later the door flew into the yard, mangled.

“I imagined Tessa to be the runner!” He laughed as he emerged from the ground, taking his time. “Antha, come back to me.” His voice fell into a low growl as he scanned the yard. Her hands shook with resentful readiness.

Then there was silence, abrupt and oppressive. Her ears strained but could not hear his panther like steps. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, hoping it would aid her hearing—but she was met with complete nothingness. She couldn’t hold her breath any longer, and the faint hiss of her exhale trumpeted amongst the stifling stillness. It must have given her away as the lean, wiry fingers found her throat and ripped her up from the ground like a dandelion.

She shoved the gun tip to his chest, ready to take out his heart. But to her unfathomable dread, the gun failed her. The dead click of an ammo less shotgun became nothing more than a toy prop in her dire moment. She did what she could to wield it like a bat, but was unsuccessful as he caught it and crushed it in his other hand. Suffocating in his grip she tried to break free.

“You’re insufferable,” he sneered, his mouth growing its tissue back and reconstructing the damage he endured moments prior. “Did you think I would leave it loaded?” His bright steely eyes scouring over her struggling frame. “As enjoyable as this was, our time is unfortunately over. I will make you a promise.” He pulled in closer, “I will take my time with Tessa.”

Without cue a wet, meaty sound cut through the woods. The stranger gasped, full of horror and rage as he reached to his chest. A fire iron pierced through from his back. His eyes, nose, ears, and mouth began to bleed. Antha pushed out of his grasp when he lurched forward to the ground. She was on the brink of unconsciousness as she wheezed for breath. She found Tessa was the great impaler. “I’m—not done with—you foolish girls…” He hissed like a deflating tire, his immortal sinews collapsing like a bowl of spaghetti dumped onto the lawn.

Tessa skirted the rapid decay and pulled Antha into her arms. Stock-still they watched. They bared witness as he writhed, his porcelain skin dripped with taffy-like stretch and slid off his bones. He melted into a puddle, with nothing recognizable left except lumps of clothing and two silver eyes. Tessa reached toward the eyes, but her sister stopped her.

All that could be heard was their panting and the fizzle of a creature dissolved. They looked to each other, wordless and beyond repair. After a moment or two they drug themselves around the side of the house and toward the driveway. Hearts still punching against their ribcages, the girls numbly followed the long-wooded drive.

When they finally made it to the main road they found the next street lamp was another mile off. All that could be heard was the rustle of the surrounding crops. They followed the road back toward the light of civilization. Antha couldn’t shake the horror of the Smith’s being slaughtered by that thing. She shivered again, feeling the stranger’s eyes on her. She tried to push the thought down. It’s dead, she thought.

After sometime Tessa began to speak, “I woke up and saw a little old lady on the side of the bed. Her neck was covered in strawberry jam,” she paused strangely, “but I knew it wasn’t jam Ant.” She whined.

“I know, I know.” Antha stopped to soothe her. Tessa buried her head into her sister’s neck and they held strong for barely a moment before weeping. Antha had never been so relieved to have her sister. She couldn’t believe Tessa was the one to save them. From now on she would abandon her role as the babysitter. All of her safe-keeping and methodical avoidance of danger had failed them both. It was Tessa’s wild heart that saved them.

“I couldn’t believe you kicked him in the face.”

“You saw that?”

“I almost lost my shit—hey, what was he doing down there?” Tessa finally asked.

“The femoral artery is—well and when you factor in gravity—” Antha’s analytical side kicked in but then quickly dissipated from the stress. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” She finally sighed, unable to comprehend the fact that she was almost drained by her crotch. Both of them smirked but within a breath were crying again.

“I’m so tired.” Tessa grumbled and then called for Zoey three times, wishing she would appear to take them home.

“Doug… Doug… Doug…” Antha whispered to herself.

Just as they thought the night would never end and their blood-stained clothes would never dry, they heard the familiar wheeze of Doug’s old Buick.

After a deluge of crying, embracing, and the erratic retelling of the whole evening, the twins found themselves buckled in the backseat on their way to the emergency room. Tessa finally sighed when Doug stopped looking at them in his rear-view mirror. He must have mumbled to himself “…vampires?” at least a dozen times as he drove. She sidled into Antha, holding her hand with an iron-clad grip and closed her eyes. Antha couldn’t relax. Her nerves were beyond frayed and she grew uncomfortable under the weight of her sister’s weary head. Something blunt was stabbing into her backside and she shifted in her seat.

The bright lights of the emergency room entrance burned the teary-eyed passengers. Doug pulled up and jumped out of his car, opening the door for them. “What the hell is in this car—you got rocks back here?” Antha sassed him about cleaning his Buick as she dug out the troublesome object in her seat. Tessa did the same, unbuckling herself and wriggled in discomfort.

“I just vacuumed, like last year,” he defended, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. In the commotion of the two digging around and shuffling old coke-a-cola bottles and vintage DVDs, they suddenly ceased. A strange silence fell between them. “What is going on back here?” He stared anxiously at them.

Each twin opened a hand to find one silvery, gleaming eye.

Twinning Taglist: If you want to be added or removed just let me know; please share with anyone that might be interested. I would love any and all feedback so I can learn and become a better writer. Thank you! I tagged some people that I thought would be interested in this. @myoxisbroken @just-the-hiddles @vodka-and-some-sass @nildespirandum @yespolkadotkitty @latent-thoughts @emeraldrosequartz @villainousshakespeare @hopelessromanticspoonie @caffiend-queen @poetic-fiasco @lokimostly @dianamolloy @marvelgirlonamarvelworld @brightsunanddarkmidnight2-0 @cateyes315 @mooncat163 @nuggsmum @myraiswack @wolfpawn @plastic-heart @confusednerd09

#landlord vampire fic frenzy #twinning vs vamps #arch-venus25 writes

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megashadowdragon · 4 years

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itsclydebitches

sent by anonymous

“In his FIRST appearance he’d had ozpin removed from the tournament staff with secret meetings.” - It’s not Ironwood’s first appearance. He meets with the inner circle, has his talk with Ozpin, introduces his Atlesian knights to the public, attends the Beacon dance, discovers Ruby fighting Cinder, later compliments Ruby for her initiative in Ozpin’s office, confides in Glynda that night, and helps defend Vale against Roman’s attack. So your implication that as his “first” appearance this tells us he’s really an irredeemable person is not accurate.

Second, I’ve seen this claim a lot the last couple of months and I finally went back to find/watch the scene for myself (it’s in “Breach”). These were not secret meetings. Ironwood “reported” to the council which I assume is what he’s supposed to do. Given that he is a Headmaster. And this is the council overseeing the schools. Keeping updated is their entire deal. Were these reports fair to Ozpin? We don’t know. You might assume they’re full of lies and horrible misrepresentations, but that’s not what the text tells us. Ironwood told the council Ozpin’s plans, then the council said, ‘No way are you holding the Vytal festival with those precautions alone.’ Then the council asked Ironwood to provide troops for additional security. Did Ironwood manipulate the council and paint Ozpin as a villain to get what he wanted? Maybe. Did Ironwood objectively say precisely what’s going on - Ozpin thinks his huntsmen are enough to keep everyone safe in the event of an attack - and the council, independent of him, came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough? Maybe. Again, we don’t know. What we do know is that Ironwood is doing all this because he honestly believes it will help others. He begs Ozpin to understand that: “This is the right move, Ozpin. I promise I will keep our people safe. You have to trust me.” And you know what? He wasn’t entirely wrong. No one could have predicted that Salem’s minions would take control of his army. Ironwood did, however, predict that there would be an attack too large for a bunch of students to handle… and he was right. Beacon fell because a those half-trained kids weren’t enough to hold off a major attack, but Ironwood did everything he could to try and prevent that. In a slightly better world where his army wasn’t unexpectedly taken advantage of, that could have easily been what turned the tide of battle and saved Beacon instead. The world where everyone views Ironwood as a hero for providing those extra forces is just a smidge away from the world where everyone views Ironwood as a villain for inadvertently providing the enemy with those extra forces… but the forces themselves are not a black and white bad thing to have. Not in a world where your festivities are interrupted by the giant bird trying to eat the audience.

“He was told many times his embargo was hurting the city” - Yes, the embargo hurts the city financially. Ironwood is attempting to keep it from being hurt in the ‘everyone is wiped out’ kind of way. Post the Fall of Beacon he’s unsure if the other Kingdoms will declare war against Atlas or not, so it’s not wise to continue giving them one of the easiest means of attack. That’s the official story, but Ironwood (and the audience) know that Salem has also been collecting dust for a while now… so how about we stop giving her any more? Was this the right move to make? Are short-term economic difficulties worth avoiding the risk of potentially supplying enemies with the means of destroying you? I can’t answer that, but it’s not a clear-cut bad decision like you’re making it out to be. Retroactively we can say that no one attacked Atlas and Salem seems to have stopped collecting dust because the writers forgot about it… but Ironwood doesn’t get to see into the future. He didn’t know things would turn out this way. Once again, he’s trying to prevent tragedies, not just survive them when they come along. The balance between short-term sacrifice and long-term protection is far from an easy thing to strike and a character’s failure to achieve perfection despite their best efforts says more about their luck than their morals. Ironwood is an incredibly flawed man, but those flaws have always shown throw via his attempts to help others.

iron-and-ice I never thought I’d see people referring to Ironwood providing comfortable protected residence to an elderly woman in possession of magical WMD powers as ‘imprisonment’. Fria, unlike other ‘good guys’, understood what her duty was. Vol 7 MVP, undisputed.

#rwby #rwby fria #rwby ironwood #james ironwood #general ironwood #ironwood rwby #itsclydebitches

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shy-magpie · 4 years

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RQG 151

Moving the patreon names a good idea but changes to structure take up more brain space than they should. I hope they keep the reminder they moved it as a substitute, at least for a while. The rest of the structure is the same and I can feel my shoulders coming away from my ears as the theme plays. I choose to interpret that as Alex saying his players being fine is his highest priority. Borb Under the sea bed🎵. 1)its great when I barely start a thought before a player says the same thing 2) we will get our musical one way or the other 3)I know they're from an improv background but it never ceases to delight how joyfully they support each other's unexpected bits. 4) Alex seems like he gets a kick out of playing up his annoyance at the musical idea more than actually being frustrated it keeps coming up. I thought so but nice to confirm. Bless this cast, it wouldn't have been a huge deal if they let Alex's description stand but its so nice they not only corrected it, they did so without hesitation and Alex seemed to appreciate the help in getting to better phrasing rather than take it as an accusation. Not that I thought he would but feeling grateful for RQ not falling into behavior I see elsewhere. Also hearing everyone chiming in; with Bryn being the one to name check the trope instead of it being on Helen to always take the lead is nice to hear. "he was very encountered" Have I mentioned lately that I love literally everything about this show? Even when he thinks he knows exactly what the party is going to do and certainly knows what he is guiding them towards Alex checks instead of putting anyone in the position of having to derail. Cel! I wonder if cis people get anywhere near my joy in Cel having that kind of control over their body. I mean its just objectively cool even without the gender aspect so I hope they at least enjoy that much. I need cancan art. Did Alex know how delighted Lydia would be with the image of being popped out like a cork before he said it? Coo coo ca chu, thank you Ben Zolf remains 200% done and doesn't bother checking the door Ben don't! 92 HP, well that would be comforting if it wasn't Zolf. Like I don't think it's actually a death wish/that he is suicidal but well, see not checking the door. He is far too comfortable with the idea of being hurt. Alex:Chill sea dude Ben: sounds of objection Lydia: chill environment neutral dude Still love Alex's set design. A person! Bryn sounds alarmed about implications of the walk ways. Cel can shield themselves. Yes Hamid can armor himself! Also casts fly on himself & Azu. Thank you Ben/Zolf. This show does get deep into moral quandaries sometimes but unless these guys are as drugged as the Kobolds they objectively need to die. The dice love us Altruism run Darn it Alex, are you hinting they are drugged against their will? Azu feels tapping their shoulder then killing them is better even if they don't have a prayer of defending themselves. Oh I see Helen has our back and is checking for mind control before we do Kobolds 2: the guilt continues. Well yes they are surprised Bryn sounds so pleased as goes through exactly how many ways the odds are in Hamid's favor. Then he rolls 6,6,5,5 on D6s for 26 damage so no kill like over kill. Watsonian explanation: emotion is at least partially fueling Hamid's magic especially anything fire/desolation aligned, and there is no way he isn't overflowing with emotion after the last few hours. Zolf is happy to let Azu handle the last one and uses his action to ask if Cel knows what (something, the equipment in this room?) does. Cel determines its a notification board for the cell cavern. So these guys were directly aware and involved with the mistreatment of the Kobolds. I officially am dropping the last tiny part of me that cared if they were drugged/otherwise forced into the work. If they were cognisant enough to read that and still did it then its time to find Zolf's old bucket. Glad the table is having fun! I wonder what the face Alex pulled looked like. Raw terror? The equivalent of a neon sign reading "I'm screwed"? I shouldn't have implied Alex would leave the listeners out, this is a wonderful description. Helen is more thorough than I am. There you go, time to die. Oh episode name drop. That's my Zolf, killing who needs killing doesn't mean we ignore collateral damage. And Cel just invented the departures board. Zolf: not worth destroying? Cel: If you'd enjoy it Priorities Heading towards the shore I like how Alex sounds pleased they broke his dungeon Vital info for visualizing this. Poor Azu is trying to swim while Hamid & Cel are zooming elegantly and Zolf is walking because boots or no he is ungainly. Hamid enjoying flying & Azu being adorable even under the circumstances is endearing. Correction Cel is walking Lockers & propaganda posters I can't put it in words but there is a connection being made between how little these mooks care about messing up shared spaces & the rest of the mundane evil that led to them being bucket worthy. Thank you all for the taking water breathing potions I'm not sure how I feel about Alex giving us stuff for free Oh Dear! Are the mooks heading to the village? Zolf is reassuring Never over the little touches Alex has to make the world feel more real like the water proof flares Oh Cel dear, 1)you don't know that, you don't need mourn your village while they yet may live 2)what kind of trauma have they been through? "Again"? Lydia gets a quick dig in about the party not being allowed to sleep. Cel shifts into a creature who can see. ~Break~ Nevermind just enlarge person Somewhere Babs is begging for a simple answer. I don't think we got a simple answer Hamid is reassuring Cel. Something both relateable and possibly a bad sign that "don't worry they have been spending all their time preparing to kill us, so they can't be attacking your people" is legitimately both the line Hamid took and probably the most effective possible. The others help too. I love how they openly care, reassuring Cel without telling them to repress or that they are wrong to experience the emotions in the first place. Lights and colors flashing in the water. The dice seem to be favoring Bryn today. There's a fight up ahead. They all run to the fight, Cel leaves them in the dust. Hamid flies after Cel since he couldn't catch up on foot The dice do know I promise I will appreciate the set design on relisten, but for the love of god who is fighting who? Mooks vs who? Humans Yes! Alex hasn't quite gotten there but the cast sound convinced its Barnes & Carter. Ah is Wilde with them? Did Wilde tear his hair out worrying then send back up the second Zolf was overdue? Bleeping Carter Barnes sounds like he is having fun Carter is throwing knives at people. Odd knife & dagger are basically synonyms but not getting Sasha feels 2 vs 8 Ben points out Carter stole Sasha's gimmick Ok warming to Carter will take a minute but I already like Barnes Natural 1 on bomb throwing. Thank you Alex for not being a "death by nat 1 is funny" GM Alex keeps forgetting what a bad bum Cel is. Giblet heavy day Moving quickly past possible misgendering of Cel. Best way to handle that I think, no distracting corrections but Lydia doesn't let it stand. Thank you for being safe Hamid! Hamid protects Barnes. Love the extra extra pew. Finger guns! Alex is 3rd person level stressed Cel gets out the crossbow and punctuates their correction on pronouns. I love this podcast. I really, really, love this podcast and stuff like that shows they love their listeners back. Cel: Pronouns. Are. They. Them Helen: the dice say they/them rights Not sure if dead but 13 damage against one misgendering mook Hamid continues to shoot very well in support rather than endangering himself needlessly. Azu, spotting Carter: You! You? Accidently restarted the episode when I unpaused and now my phone is acting up, and is doing strange things when I try to fast forward to where I was. The annoyance at the above is cancelled out by hearing "Pronouns. Are. They/Them" 4 times Zolf: great seeing you again I love Barnes Alex the fandom appreciates this description Ah Zolf got Barnes into the Campbell books And they attempt to flee badly Carter finally rolls decently but not impressively Cel shoots one in the neck they're still moving Hamid mutters in draconic: this is for the Kobolds Thank you Bryn Barnes successfully seduced <Azu> Helen I love that the trained mathematician is the one who participates in dice superstition Ben! Huh patreon names still make my brain happy. Wonder if it's something deep about community or I just got pavloved by it being before RQG & TMA for so long

#RQG spoilers #Rusty Quill Gaming #live blog thingy #RQG season 4 #RQG 151 #long post

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cpeacephoto · 4 years

Photo

This is kind of a moody post. So if you’re not into long winded, incoherent rants about nothing just enjoy the photos and move on. No one’s blaming you.

There’s an episode of the TV show Firefly that I think about from time to time. The shows been off the air forever so if for some reason you hate spoilers, this is the only warning I feel socially required to give you.

The show’s premise is a group of sort of rag tag people on a ship out in space. It’s a lot like space cowboys. There’s an old military guy and his former underling acting as the ship captain/owner and 1st officer. The 1st officer’s spouse/pilot, a mechanic, a doctor who’s hiding from the law along with his sister, a hired gun, a preacher, and a professional companion. They take whatever jobs they can moving cargo or passengers to try and make a living. Doesn’t matter if the job is legal or not, so long as it’s not out right morally disgusting. Like they won’t steal medical supplies from those that need it.

Specifically there’s an episode I think about a lot called Out Of Gas. It is kind of a slow episode but it is also a very heavy episode. In the episode the ship runs into a major malfunction early in the airing. The engine is down. Without the engine they are dead in the water. More importantly without the engine they are out of air. There’s two shuttles attached to the ship, but they themselves have limited range, capacity, and air.

Even if the shuttles could support absolutely everyone they have another very big problem. The ship is their livelihood. Being out in the middle of nowhere means there’s not exactly a lot of reputable people or even law enforcement around. Assuming, anyone comes at all. Should someone find the ship, they’re far more likely to see it as an opportunity for themselves to survive and just scrap it. If someone’s on board, they may be willing to injure, kidnap, or kill that person so they can scrap whatever of value is left on the ship.

So they’re boned. They can’t stay as they’re basically in a stationary coffin. They can’t all go, or there’s good chance there’s nothing to come back to. It’s with that the captain decides he’s going to stay behind. Despite being a little bit of an asshole, he means well. And he does have a moral code. He doesn’t hurt the innocent and he feels responsible to keep his crew alive. When tough decisions need to be made, like taking on risk or making sacrifices, he feels it’s his place. By sending the others off in the shuttles he saves them and gives them the best possible chance to find something better. By staying behind he’s giving his ship the best possible chance that someone will come by and actually help him.

Before everyone leaves he asks the pilot to deploy a communications beacon. There’s just a depth to this action. Space by definition is vast and empty. It’s similar to being on a ship in the middle of the Pacific and throwing a beacon overboard. There’s a very, very slim chance anyone is ever going to hear your beacon. Or if they do that they’ll hear it in time. If someone does hear it, there’s no guarantee that this person will be helpful, or even not malicious.

What that beacon is, is hope. It’s not super high tech, it’s not particularly wonderful. It’s just a small repeating signal. A shot in the dark that maybe, maybe the right person will hear it. Maybe you’ll get lucky enough that at your lowest and most vulnerable point the right person will save the day. But the odds of that happening are so overwhelmingly against you. So in almost desperation you deploy it. The last shred of hope slowly beeping in the dark. “beep……………beep………………beep………….beep……” because what else are you going to do?

I think about that beacon a lot. That against all odds shot in the dark at the hope of being heard by the right person. I talk a lot about my old friend. I always talk positively about them. And I mean every word of it. They have had the biggest effect on my life. And I’m amazingly fortunate that it was a positive one. Despite all the things that have happened in my life, particularly self-inflicted, for better or worse, they are the greatest and most positive effect.

And despite all logic, I do feel connected to them. Whenever I get to see a photo of them it really does just sort of make me feel complete, or normal. Which I usually don’t day to day. And yes sometimes it makes me feel happy too like their art usually does. Knowing they are okay, and safe, and happy even around people I’ve never met brings me a kind of comfort. There have been at least 3 different times I’ve suddenly gotten anxious for no reason and out of the blue started thinking of them only to find out later during that time frame something had happened to them. Like a breakup, or a car flat. I’ve had countless dreams about them, and the worst are the ones that are all too real. So real it takes a moment to figure out it was just a dream and didn’t happen. And they are someone who frankly makes me incredibly nervous, anxious, even scared. Something that when we talked would go away the moment they said hi to me and I knew it was all okay. But since we don’t talk anymore, I just sit there and spin.

I think about the Firefly episode because that beacon. I feel like so much of my life has been spent waiting for someone. Someone who for all I know may never come. Someone who I don’t know if it would be worse if they hate me, or if they’ve just forgotten I even exist. If they honestly don’t care about me anymore. I don’t even hit the radar. The last time I talked to them they said while I wasn’t the only thing bad to ever happen to them, I was by far the worst. And I by far had the largest effect on them. That statement, particularly from them, radiates with me daily. Almost 20 years daily. That they can’t remember why we talked or see what the point in talking to me was.

I think about the beacon because so much of what I do I feel like is just a beacon, that slow beeping in the dark, hoping beyond all hope that they hear it. And that if they did, they’ve be kind. I know the odds are overwhelmingly against me. But I have to put out the beacon. I have to have something that says, “I’m still here” floating out in the vast abyss and darkness. I have to hold on. I don’t know what else to do. I’ve been waiting for so long.

It’s made even harder when I know how to contact them. But I feel like I’m not allowed to. Nothing physically stops me. But I’ve always felt like part of that whole need to wait feeling, was that this all wouldn’t be over until they were ready for it to be over. I couldn’t force the issue. They had to make contact with me first. So I’m just sitting here, putting out beacons into the void. Hoping they’ll hear one of them and make the move I don’t think I’m allowed to break. And complete a cycle that started 20 years ago with a “hello”.

In the episode, the beacon does eventually get heard by someone. That someone is a group of people looking to scrap out the ship and seeing someone is on board, isn’t too particular about killing the captain to do it. With a bullet hole in his side the captain manages to convince his would be killers to vacate the ship AND leave him the part he needs to repair the engine. He’s now alone, not a mechanic, bleeding out, in massive amounts of pain, and running out of air. But if he can endure it, just fucking endure it, repair that engine and call back the shuttles then maybe everyone including himself has a chance. Even if he ends up dying at least when everyone else came back, they’d all have a chance.

I feel like that sometimes. Like I’m alone, and I have to just fucking endure it. If I can just endure it long enough, my friend will be happy. Even if I run out of time at least my friend will be happy. They’ll be safe, and healthy, and hopefully happy. But I’m really hoping that if I endure all of this long enough it’ll be okay. My friend will come back for me. I’ve seen them defend and come back for so many other people. I just know they have to come back for me. Tell me it’s alright now. Tell me to stop being so hard on myself. Ask me how my day is. Let me ask them how their day is. I just have to hold on a little longer…

The captain spends the episode from here on out flash backing to how he got the ship. Why it’s so important to him he’s willing to risk everything for it. And sure enough by the end of the episode he ends up fixing that engine, restoring the air, and calling back the shuttles just in time to pass out. By TV magic the shuttles make it back in time to save him before he completely bleeds out and dies. It’s a happy ending. But for the entire length of the episode it was really about hope, against all odds. And the length one man will go through for a fighting chance.

I think about this episode from time to time.

If you’ve read this far you’re probably wondering about the photos I’m posting. The out of focus shot is a digital portrait I did back in Salt Lake City. The fact it’s a woman in a tank top out of focus is really what spun me out on all of this. The fact it’s intimate, but she’s out of focus, out of reach, is what got me moody and thinking. The lavender was something I found at Pike’s Place market in Seattle. My old friend liked Lavender and I still use lavender scented soaps and air fresheners because of it. The digital shots of the woman with the blue coffee cup go back to a reoccurring theme with me and the idea of comfort. Knowing someone so well you don’t have to wear fancy lingerie or be all dressed to the 9’s. As well as perfectly imperfect. The girl in pink is a set of digital shots taken in my house. A fine example of how I won’t allow myself to have friends, and at this point don’t know how to have friends anymore. The girl in the bear was back in Salt Lake City. The graffiti was something on the back of a building we happened to wonder by. And the last shot is from way back in college. A fellow photo student who was probably the age I am now, and was the wife of a Michigan State Trooper.

#portrait #photography #moody #ranting #idontknowwhatimdoing #pleasetalktome #itsbeen20years #defeated #firefly

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kiruuuuu · 5 years

Text

Smoke/Mute oneshot in which two nerds fall for each other. Also, as usual, part of it devolves into utter chaos :) (Rating T, fluff fluff fluff + humour, ~9k words) - written for my kindness war with @nutbrain 💖💖 Take that! I do hope you enjoy it and I hope you also know how much I adore you. Please never change 💗

Mute raises an unimpressed brow. When Sledge told him he was about to meet their ‘chemistry whiz’ who apparently matched Mute’s own penchant for anything science, he’d pictured something…

Well, not something like this. Not an aged goon too short for the t-shirt he’s wearing (yet filling out the sleeves nicely nonetheless), not someone folded onto his chair like an ape, and certainly not someone with a haircut better suited for the military than a lab. He’s an odd mix of latent energy, smug grin and laziness, and Mute immediately decides not to like this show-off.

He’s always been picky and so far it’s served him well – while other friend groups publicly fought out private issues, complained about betrayal, miscommunication, ignorance, Mute sat in his corner with his one or maybe two friends and simply watched. Focusing on his own success, he’s always fared better than if he tried to get along with those around him, and the results don’t lie: mid-20s, and he’s just been recruited into one of the world’s best special forces. He works well enough in a team and is aware his superiors can’t demand more than that, even if Aurelia expressed the wish for him to socialise more than he’s used to. Her right-hand man briefly tried to bond with Mute over their shared heritage but backed off as soon as he earned a carefully blank stare. He knows more than he lets on, Six does as well, but for now they’re leaving Mute be.

Going by his gut feeling, trusting his first impression has rarely failed him, and so he fells his judgement while the hoodie-clad thug in front of him greets him cheerfully. “How ya, nice to meet you, I’m told you can backseat engineer a tad and help me with my project. Been a right bastard recently, innit?”

Mute blinks. Self-centred, he writes on his mental list, outgoing – the horror! –, big mouth, carefree. None of the bullet points make him want to spend more time in this guy’s presence than necessary. It doesn’t help that it’s entirely unclear who or what has been a right bastard, whether it’s the project, the dude, maybe Mute himself, who knows? He sounds like one of Mute’s former classmates who dropped out to sell weed and graffiti abandoned stations at night. “Yes”, he replies hesitantly to buy time. “So… what is it you’re working on?”

In an entirely misguided attempt at getting Mute settled in at the base, Sledge has spent most of the day sending him back and forth between operators with increasingly mundane tasks which Mute identified much too late as intended conversation starters which usually resulted in two lines of awkward small talk and a task done mostly in silence. He nearly refused to step anywhere near this last SAS member but when Sledge mentioned the magical word science, Mute’s interest was piqued. Seems like this will be just another disappointment, however, because this schoolyard bully surely isn’t -

“A Lewisite derivative less prone to hydrolysis and ideally as long-lasting as Adamsite while being less identifiable. I don’t want those bloody terrorists shooting up on dimercaprol immediately to counter the effects.”

Well. Mute briefly considers whether he’s merely saying this to be funny, maybe learnt it by heart to impress a few birds in the pub, but when he spots the emblem of arsole on this guy’s jacket like the crest of a prestigious school, he realises that he’s dead serious. “You realise that’s illegal as fuck?”

This earns him a bright smile. “Yep!”

“So you want to poison a whole group of people”, Mute clarifies, just to be sure.

“Lethally poison them to death until they die”, the man confirms with an amused nod and again, it takes Mute a moment to register he’s not being facetious.

He throws a glance at the chicken scratch notes spread out on the table separating them. They look chaotic yet detailed, and most of all they look like a challenge. “What did you say your name was?”, he wants to know distractedly and almost misses the lazy grin spreading on the guy’s face.

~*~

Mute still doesn’t like him. Contrary to how often they hang out, Smoke certainly ranks nowhere near his favourite people to spend time with which might seem unfair but he’s just – annoying, really, won’t stop bragging or talking too loudly, keeps taking and using Mute’s stuff without asking and is much too handsy for his tastes. He never properly learnt personal boundaries and is forthcoming to the point of rudeness, at least in Mute’s opinion, but for some reason gets along well enough with most of the other operators. It baffles Mute how easily he navigates social situations, does so without a care in the world and, while Smoke gets yelled at often enough, he also gets what he wants a surprising amount. Mute was brought up to be reasonably polite, withdrawn, not a bother, and Smoke is… the opposite. He goes out and declares for everyone to hear, so someone is bound to listen. It’s enviable, in a way.

But no, Mute’s personal ideals resonate much more closely with Glaz’, and Twitch’s, and Rook’s, and together they form an alliance of loyalty and trust and meet up just to be themselves. It’s a relief not to worry about what comes out of his mouth and even more of a relief to realise he’s actually found friends in Rainbow. He doesn’t consider Smoke a friend, not really, more of a necessary evil which just won’t go away and so he’s developed coping mechanisms.

This, too, sounds harsh in his head. He has to admit there are moments when he genuinely enjoys Smoke’s company.

“Why are you so quiet, lad? Cat got your tongue?”

Compared to Thatcher, Smoke is an angel. As awe-inspiring and competent as the SAS legend is, he seems to take personal offence to Mute mostly keeping to himself and has set out to coax the social chameleon, the starry-eyed, hopeful young man out of Mute who’s been dreaming of being a part of the whole his entire life yet was too awkward to figure out how. Little does he know that under Mute’s taciturnity hides an even more misanthropic nerd who’d be happy surrounded by nothing but technology for the rest of his life. Not all who talk little have little to say, but not all who talk little secretly want to star in High School Musical.

“Mike, you must’ve spent the first twenty years of your life in silence”, Smoke pipes up from where he’s lounging on one of the other tables in the workshop, letting one of his legs dangle and playing a freemium game on his phone, “because with how you dither on, you sound like you’ve something to catch up on, now that you’ve one foot in the grave.”

Mute has to admit: he’s excellent nuisance repellent. He hides a grin as Thatcher’s attention shifts. “I certainly would spend twenty years in silence if it meant you’d have to shut up yourself.”

“Gladly, if it’d make you stop molesting the youngins. I saw you chase Manu around yesterday, she should really get a restriction order.”

“All I wanted was to help her calibrate her gun -”

“She’s bloody GIGN, granda, she was born with a Magnum in her tiny baby hands. And whatever you do, she’ll never calibrate your gun.”

Despite knowing Thatcher genuinely only wants to help, Mute leaves the two to their usual banter, content in not being a part of it: they both seem to enjoy their bickering and it’s best not to make himself a target. Besides, Smoke thoroughly relishes being insulted, if his and Mute’s early interactions are anything to go by. Smoke called him young, Mute replied with ‘as young as you wish you were’ and since then, he’s been a puppy following him around with a delighted expression, fawning over every harsh comment directed at him.

“Oi, babe”, Smoke addresses him and Mute wishes he’d mind the nickname, yet whenever he remembers the other ones which were in the running, he can’t. “You think Mike here hates molecules whose atoms are all in covalent bonds?”

The question comes so out of thin air that Mute needs a second to process it. “I – what? Why?”

“Because they’re unionised.”

Mute stares at him for a bit longer before it clicks – it’s Thatcher and he means the other pronunciation of unionised and dear Lord, the joke is fucking atrocious, it’s impressive how awful it is, and before he knows it, his sides start hurting. Air eludes him as he does a silent laugh which hurts and Smoke has never looked this stupidly proud before. Not even after he made Glaz throw up by shovelling vanilla pudding out of a mayonnaise glass into his own mouth.

“What”, says Thatcher, looking completely unamused. “Are you laughing at me?”

Gasping, Mute shakes his head and waves him off, and Smoke is still grinning triumphantly. “Copper carbon potassium”, he mutters and sets Mute off once more because only he would call someone who massively outranks him a cuck and hey, that gives Mute an idea. While the two continue barking at each other, he pulls up the periodic table on his phone and starts putting things together.

Seconds before the two actually come to blows – and Smoke would have the advantage, Mute has seen him in the ring and he does not mess around –, he announces: “Fluorine argon thallium iodine carbon potassium erbium.”

Watching Smoke repeat it in his head and translate it feels like waiting for a firecracker to go off, and he’s not disappointed when it does and the other man dissolves into full-bellied laughter which nearly throws him off the table.

“What does that mean?!” Thatcher is getting more and more agitated.

“He called you a fartlicker”, Smoke chortles and Mute doesn’t even get to defend himself, explain that it wasn’t at all aimed at Thatcher, before the very same rolls his eyes and simply storms off.

“I didn’t mean him”, Mute complains and crosses his arms when Smoke saunters over to plant his arse on his table instead.

“Oh, I know, but now he’ll be pissed for a week and leave you alone.”

“I’ll apologise.”

“Are you nuts? Don’t feed into his ego. Vain bastard.”

Mute scoffs. “Says you.”

And oh, the surprised face he earns is entirely warranted. He doesn’t suppose anyone looks at Smoke closely enough to notice him glancing in the mirror a lot, or that his mismatched and ill-fitting clothes are carefully chosen and that he takes pride in his appearance. He certainly makes sure his muscles show at least. “Yes, well”, Smoke murmurs, having lost the thread of their conversation and idly running his hand through his short hair. “Oh, speaking of – I should have this cut.”

“Don’t. I like your hair.”

Smoke shoots him another astonished glance and pets his semblance of a hairstyle. Mute does like it more now that it’s grown out a bit, and he bets Smoke could look cute with it even longer. “You really should stop catering to people’s egos, they might get used to it.”

“Trust me, I’ll be the first one to mercilessly argue you into the ground, should the situation call for it.” It wouldn’t be the first time either, not after Smoke claimed drinking through a straw not only made you more drunk but also faster, that alcohol is a good way to stave off the cold and that people eat five spiders in their sleep each year. At this point, he’s half suspecting Smoke of digging up misconceptions purely so he can witness Mute tearing them apart.

“Now let me check whether you can spell ‘turdsniffer’ with the periodic table.” He takes a seat next to Mute and together, they try to come up with the best insult they can. Mute is extremely happy with CoCKBaSiN, Smoke proudly presents BUMnOsEr, and by the time they land on AmErICaN SnOBScAm, both of them are having trouble breathing.

“If everything else fails, we can always call people C4H4AsH”, Smoke concludes and points at his jacket. “A good old-fashioned arsole.”

Of course. Mute is beginning to wonder whether he ever washes this particular piece of clothing. “And no one will be the wiser.”

“Except for us. Because we have such good chemistry.”

“Alright. You can stop now.”

“If we were a laser, we’d be set on stunning.”

“James.”

“Is it getting hot in here or is this just our bond forming?”

Mute corrects himself mentally: there is no way in hell this idiot could ever be cute. “Why do I even talk to you.”

“No idea”, Smoke retorts cheerily. “But I’m glad you do.”

~*~

Unsurprisingly, he needs a little help from those who know him better than he does. They’re having lunch together, Rook in his everlasting hunger went out voluntarily to buy them fancy sandwiches and is still complaining about the place being out of baguettes whereas Twitch happily wolfs down her ciabatta without a peep, and then Glaz says mid-munch: “We’re having a spa day on Sunday. Has Julien asked you already?”

“Can’t, I’m setting skips on fire”, Mute shrugs and grins at Twitch’s horrified expression. “Not literally. But we have some hypotheses to check and usually, it ends up with us burning our notes because everything went arseways.”

“Arseways”, Rook repeats quietly to himself and Mute is relieved none of them know enough about English and Irish dialects to notice just how much slang he’s picked up from Smoke along the way. He’s made the mistake of greeting Montagne with an automatic ‘how are you’ before and ended up with intimate knowledge of the man’s health-related problems.

“You can always ask Jordan for help, just mention the setting on fire part and he’s in”, Twitch suggests reasonably and for a second, Mute actually considers it. He doesn’t mind Thermite, the man is sociable enough to fill silences before they turn awkward and perceptive enough to leave Mute alone when he needs it. Still, he was looking forward to a weekend of loud music, a few drinks and greasy takeout which he allows himself so rarely, with no space for anyone else. And while his friends’ plan of just chilling probably would drain the tension out of him just as effectively, he’s not going to ditch Smoke after he already agreed.

“You’re seeing James a lot recently”, Glaz comments in between bites.

Is he? More than he used to, Mute supposes, but it’s gotten better. The bragging has diminished or stopped bothering him so much seeing as Smoke usually includes him in it these days, and they’ve found more common ground – music was a big one, ultimately there’s not much of a leap from hardcore punk to avant-garde metal seeing as they can meet somewhere in the middle, and gaming is another. Even the fact that Smoke only ever wanted to play the games in which he’s better than Mute has subsided. They compromise more, Mute realises: Smoke tests his limits less often and Mute doesn’t judge as much anymore, the verbal pushing and shoving has turned into good-natured playfighting. It’s not about who’s right, it’s about having a good time, and on the rare occasions on which they bring up serious topics, Mute doesn’t get as worked up anymore and Smoke knows when to take a break to sort his thoughts.

“I like him”, he summarises his musings with a nod.

“And I remember the time you called him a copper nitrogen terbium argon”, Rook chimes in.

“Silver. Ag is silver, not argon.”

“I will literally never be able to remember this.”

Another reason why Mute is glad to have Smoke – there are some inside jokes they share which just don’t translate to his real friend group. “He’s much more bearable these days.”

“He’s worn you down”, Twitch corrects him with a smile and he doesn’t object. “Why don’t you ask him if he wants to join? He’s nice enough and he can’t be worse than Jules.”

“Hey!”

“Sure.” Mute shoves the rest of his brie with cranberry into his mouth and gets up to track Smoke down. The words echo in his head: he’s nice enough. There’s a few descriptions he’d deem fitting for the Brit but nice isn’t one of them – above all, he’s opportunistic. If there’s nothing in it for him, he won’t do it, but fortunately ‘entertainment’ has proven to be reliable bait for him, rendering him predictable. Mute likes this. He knows what to expect, knows when Smoke will play along, and also knows he does so willingly. Smoke doesn’t mind being tricked or manipulated into something provided it’s done overtly.

When he finally stumbles over him, he’s not alone: Fuze is talking rapidly at an irritated-looking Thatcher with Smoke at his elbow, and judging by everyone’s body language, it’s a topic which should’ve been cleared a while ago. Meaning it’s about being team captains. Since Fuze can express his displeasure best in his mother tongue, he tends to seek out colleagues who know it well enough, Thatcher unfortunately being one of them – Smoke seems to be his moral support, though he appears less supportive and rather more bored to tears.

Fuze has been a thorn in Glaz’ side for a while, ever since he dropped a comment about Rook which left his younger teammate secretly shaken and uncertain, and Mute has to fight down the urge to provoke the Uzbek whenever he sees him since. He can’t stand anyone messing with his friends, especially not on a topic like this. And with Smoke standing there, hip cocked and expression unguarded, he gets an idea.

“Hi, sweetie”, he mutters quietly enough to be convincing yet loud enough for Fuze to hear and puts an arm around Smoke’s shoulders.

He might be slow on the uptake sometimes, but right now Smoke’s spontaneity triumphs. Making it look natural, his face lights up and he wraps an arm around Mute’s waist, pulling him closer and greeting him with a soft: “Hey, babe.”

Before them, the Uzbek momentarily loses his train of thought before continuing his rant.

And oh yes, if there ever was anyone perfect for this kind of stunt, it’s Smoke. He spends half his time touching Mute already anyway, fixing his clothes, fiddling with his phone (including taking it out of his pocket), feeding him usually questionable things, leaning into him out of laziness, peering over his shoulder while steadying himself on him – the list is endless and has long stopped bothering Mute though he rarely initiates contact himself. Right now, he’s very glad for this familiarity between them.

Seemingly uninterested in the proceedings, Mute pushes a hand into Smoke’s half-long hair and starts petting it. It’s as soft as its glossiness promises but if he’s honest, he wouldn’t have minded one bit if it was coarse or greasy because the face Smoke makes all of a sudden is priceless. He didn’t expect his features to go slack like this, for him to melt into this touch completely, and he has to suppress a chuckle. It seems he’s finally found an off switch. The longer he massages his scalp, runs his fingers through black hair, the more the grip around his torso loosens and the more Smoke sways in place. He looks like he’s got trouble keeping his eyes open and it’s, well, it’s endearing in an unexpected way. And Mute already knows he’ll shamelessly exploit this knowledge in the future.

Still, he hasn’t achieved his goal of pissing off Fuze enough for him to stop hissing at Thatcher, and so he pauses his ministrations to watch in amusement as Smoke returns to this plane of existence very, very slowly. He blinks, shifts his weight and presses his compact body more against Mute’s in the process, and he’s so dazed and adorable that the one thing which most likely will achieve the intended effect doesn’t even seem like such a bad idea anymore.

So Mute leans down and kisses him.

Fuze trails off mid sentence.

It was just a brief touch of lips on lips, but despite his stupefaction, Smoke possessed the presence of mind to tilt his head into it, slide his eyes shut and capture Mute’s lower lip between his own for a second and hey, that’s much better than him shoving his tongue down Mute’s throat as a joke or maybe him slobbering all over Mute because that’s kind of what he was expecting. When it’s just nice instead, he makes no move to hide his smile and straightens back up to catch Fuze’s eye innocently.

And while Smoke’s hand drops lower and starts groping Mute’s butt, the Uzbek’s expression darkens. He spits one last sentence at Thatcher and turns around on his heel to stride away with purpose.

Wordlessly, Thatcher just looks at them.

“What just happened?”, Smoke wants to know meekly, visibly overwhelmed with the situation and Mute could really get used to this.

“Fuze was being a scandium astatine tungsten holmium rhenium”, Mute explains matter-of-factly.

Thatcher shakes his head with a grin. “Little shits”, he murmurs, but to Mute’s ears it sounds grateful. He leaves them to it, still holding on to each other for some reason.

“You wanna take a spa day with us instead of vegetating in the lab this weekend?” He’s gently massaging the base of Smoke’s skull now and notices his eyelashes flutter. Cute. It’s cuter than it has any right to be.

“What, give up gaming till morning for sitting around and talking about feelings?”

Mute snorts. Is that what he thinks they do in their spare time? “I’ll pet your hair if you say yes.”

“… when are you guys meeting up?”

And he can’t help but give Smoke a quick hug while laughing before relaying the details.

~*~

“Mark.” A hand on his shoulder, him curled around a warm body, and a pleasant dream lingering – he’s not at all ready to wake up. “Mark, get up. It’s late.”

He huffs a sigh, hears it echoed from the small creature next to him and stretches before cracking open an eye. Sledge is regarding him with a fond smile, whereas Diana, pressed against him on her side, pretends to be still asleep. The living room is empty save for a myriad of bottles and glasses and oh, that means everyone’s gone already. Sledge has already changed into sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, pads around barefoot and tidies a little while Mute sits up on the couch, strokes the corgi lady’s soft fur with one hand and checks his phone with the other. u home yet?, Smoke asks and it’s just like him to remember Mute’s schedule despite being on the other side of the world.

was sharing body heat at Seamus, gonna head back now, he replies and pictures Smoke’s slightly irritated expression. While he’s never had an issue with Glaz, Twitch and Rook, Mute’s newly-developed friendship with Sledge caused frankly amusing uncertainty which surfaces either in territorial aggression or thinly-veiled jealousy. He ignores Mute’s assurances that the Scotsman has a long distance boyfriend somewhere seeing as no one has ever heard him mention him (but Mute knows the signs), and instead tries his best to keep Mute’s attention, unaware that he’s competing with Sledge’s dog more than anything, and that no one could ever surpass the small fluffball.

“How’s James?”, Sledge asks in a tone so natural that Mute wonders when it became so self-evident that he’d know about every detail in Smoke’s life.

“Bored a lot. Now that they’ve cleared out the base they’re just staying in the hopes of catching some stragglers who didn’t get the memo. Unlikely, but Six is right in saying if there’s a chance, they should take it. He’ll probably be back some time next week, or so he hopes.” It’s past three now, so no wonder everyone’s gone already. Since he lives in walking distance, Sledge probably figured he’d let him sleep off all the alcohol he consumed much too fast earlier – without Smoke around, it’s only half as fun, thus Mute drank like he was getting paid for it and must’ve passed out while cuddling with Diana.

His phone buzzes. It’s a singular question mark and Mute can’t help but grin at its passive aggressiveness. found the perfect snuggling partner, he replies and figures there’s no need to be cruel, so he attaches a photo of the corgi now rolled up into a ball.

“Want to take some of Moni’s salad with you?”

Mute perks up at that and trails after the Scotsman into the kitchen. Normally he’d have left straightaway, but he’s got nowhere to be tomorrow since Rook and Twitch want to go clothes shopping and Glaz was prescribed some quality time with the rest of his team, and Smoke is unavailable. They’ve both wrecked their sleep schedules over the past weeks due to time zones, and still there’ll be a period tomorrow when Mute won’t be able to contact him. He’s not looking forward to it. If he asked, Sledge would let him sleep over and probably entertain him the entire day, but it’d be inevitably coupled with a few stern words Mute imagines normal dads to direct at their children, and he’d rather avoid parental guidance. He’s old enough to make his own decisions now. Like taking photos of himself naked and deleting all of them a second later, because no. Just no.

“I can’t believe there’s some left over”, he states to distract himself from what he’d even do with nudes.

“There wasn’t. She set some aside for me earlier because she knew all of you would devour it.” And though Mute knows Sledge is kind and caring, he can’t help but wonder whether he’s feeding him specifically because Twitch snitched about him accidentally skipping meals. He should ask her tomorrow.

what about me?, Smoke wants to know and Mute almost hears his pout in his head. If he’s honest, it’s not even close. Diana is affectionate to a ridiculous degree and has never accidentally elbowed him in the crotch so she’s the clear winner – but he has to admit there was an evening they spent pressed against each other on Glaz’ couch which was uncomfortable until Mute stopped fighting against Smoke and simply put an arm around him to save space, and he barely caught anything happening on screen for the rest of the film because there was also a casual hand resting on his thigh -

“Do you miss him?”

Mute realises he’s been staring at his phone for entirely too long and Sledge is already done putting some of the delicious potato salad into a container for him. His cheeks start heating up but he can’t deny it, so he nods. It’s been a few excruciatingly long weeks and though Smoke’s expressive enough in texts, it’s just not the same.

“Have you told him that?”

And here we go. He rolls his eyes, snatches the salad with a muttered thanks and goes to put on his shoes. she smells better, he types out just to be a brat.

He pauses in the door when Sledge calls his name and expects him to meddle some more, already prepares his defence: Yes he knows, yes he should tell him, but what if he doesn’t reciprocate, and it’s such a commitment, and it’s been a while, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing, and what if they don’t want the same thing -

But Sledge just says: “Get home safely. Good night.” He probably figures Mute knows all of which he’d like to say instead.

On the way back, his eyes are glued to the screen once more. They exchange good-natured banter, gossip a little over some of their colleagues’ work ethics, and then go back to complaining about the whole mission which currently separates them so inhumanely.

I sware tho when im back ill spend one day eating one day sleeping and one day gaming

Those are three different, consecutive days I assume?, Mute clarifies. If so, that sounds like a party I’d like to attend.

babe ill invite u to any party esp if its just us two

Mute is beaming. Smoke is probably expecting him to pick his message apart, make a crude joke about parties in his knickers, plan ahead for when he does come back or maybe even switch topics entirely, and on any other night Mute would indeed go for one of these options. But he’s still giddy with a slight buzz, remembering the dog’s warmth and wishing it was Smoke’s instead, that he instead makes an offer. Provides bait, in a way. Gives Smoke a chance.

Do you enjoy spending time with me that much?, he asks.

And though he firmly expects Smoke to laugh it off maybe or just take a while to reply, it’s nearly instant and so open it tugs at his heartstrings. yes, Smoke writes. Nothing else. Mute’s cheeks are starting to hurt. There’s no sarcasm, no dismissal, just a yes and he couldn’t have hoped for a lovelier answer.

That is, until he receives the next message and realises he was wrong, oh so wrong.

iodine lithium potassium uranium, it reads.

And while it’s not perfect and a little awkward, he couldn’t care less because today is the best day of his entire life. He actually tears up a little, scans the words over and over again and ignores their turning blurry, tries to come up with an appropriate reply – it needs to be just as honest, that much is clear, Smoke is taking a leap and Mute needs to make sure he catches him, and that’s when he runs into a lamp post.

It’s a miracle it hasn’t happened sooner, going by how little attention he paid to where he was going, but that doesn’t make it any better. He hits his head on metal, hard, clutches the valuable potato salad with one hand but drops his phone with a loud clatter and a curse. A quick glance establishes that yes, it’s actually broken, pieces having flown off, screen cracked, and still he doesn’t care.

Because Smoke likes him. Likes likes him. And looking back, it was glaringly obvious, wasn’t it? But somewhere among the countless hours they spent together, Mute had convinced himself that a friendship is all it was and that he should feel guilty for the surreptitious glances every time Smoke took off his shirt in his presence, that he shouldn’t mess with their dynamic and maybe Smoke only allowed him to touch his hair and no one else because… well, there was no good reason, now that he thinks about it. It’s remarkably long by now, Smoke hasn’t had it cut once and Mute vaguely remembers complimenting him on it. It suits him. Mute wants to bury both hands in it and hold him still while snogging him silly.

The phone is a goner. Doesn’t even turn on, so he puts it in his pocket, rubs the pounding spot on his forehead reminding him of his obliviousness, and only then realises the problem with this whole situation: he’s got confirmation from Smoke now.

But Smoke doesn’t know about his feelings. He doesn’t know Mute likes him back. And like this, he can’t tell him.

“The fuck?”, Rook slurs drowsily upon opening his door. He’s wearing pastel pyjamas with polar bears.

“I need your phone”, Mute replies, breathing hard from having run all the way. The conversation with Smoke made him go the wrong way yet once he’d oriented himself, it turned out the Frenchman’s flat was closer than anyone else’s, so he’d come here. “It’s an emergency.”

“Is anyone hurt?” He wobbles back into the apartment and emerges again carrying a potentially life-saving device.

“Only James’ pride”, Mute mutters and snatches it out of his hand. Then realises yet another problem. “This is his old number. You don’t have the new one?”

Rook looks ready to fall asleep against the door frame. “Wha? He has a new one?”

“Yeah, he dropped his phone in the sea two weeks ago. Fuck. Do you know who might have it?”

“The hell’s going on, Mark? Is he okay?”

If he wants Rook’s cooperation, he should probably tell the truth. “Yes, but he told me he liked me and I accidentally smashed my phone, so I can’t answer him. He’ll probably go to sleep soon and I don’t want him to think I’m ignoring him. I’d really like to text him. And I know it’s dumb and I probably shouldn’t have woken you up -”

“Call Timur.” Mute hesitates. “I’m serious, call him, he might have it. He won’t mind.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mark, you’ve never asked us for help in anything personal. When your jammer went arseways and you were bummed for a week, we had to forcibly drag you out of your flat. Yes, I’m sure. And I’m glad you’re here.” He still can’t bring himself to wake up more of his friends, forcing Rook to take his phone back and call Glaz himself. “Besides, you two are made for each other. Manu is gonna scream my ear off when I tell her.”

He smiles at that. “Do you want some of Moni’s potato salad as thanks?”

“No answer.” Rook hangs up, distractedly glancing at the object Mute is offering him. “Wait, did you say Moni and salad?”

A few minutes later, they’re in Rook’s car, listening to horrifically repetitive pop music and eating salad. “What about Seamus?”, the Frenchman suggests with his mouth full while Mute is busy calling next to everyone on Rook’s friends list.

“You know he’s gonna be the smuggest git. I’d rather avoid all the I-told-you-so.”

“Fair enough. Here we are.” Rook parks the car in the middle of the street and together, they knock on Glaz’ door until it swings inwards to reveal an extremely unhappy Kapkan.

“Oh shit”, says Mute. Apparently quality time implied a sleepover. He hopes they’ve only woken up one of the pack.

“There better be a huge fire somewhere”, the Russian growls.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that”, Rook begins to explain when one by one, the other Spetsnaz flock to the door to stare them down. Glaz, at the back, seems more worried than angry, but everyone else is visibly resentful.

“You know what, forget it, we’ll find someone else”, Mute tries to interject and avoids Fuze’s furious stare, but it’s too late.

“Mark needs to confess to James, but he destroyed his phone and I don’t have the new number. Do any of you have it?” There’s a certain impressive quality to watching Rook, still clad in baby blue bears and physically less imposing than literally every single one of the discontented men before him, calmly ask them for help with such a mundane issue.

As expected, Fuze basically explodes. “What!”, he yells and only narrowly gets stopped by Kapkan and Tachanka before he can lunge at Mute. “You two weren’t even -”

“Have you asked Manu?”, Glaz pipes up from the back, over the raging Uzbek’s shoulder.

“I will skin you! Fucking brats -”

“She’s not answering either, probably set her phone to silent. You think we should stop by?”

“Do you think this is funny? Ridiculing -”

“Worth a try. I’ll tag along.”

Mute ends up with Glaz on his lap in the front, while the three angry Russians occupy the back bench: Fuze is pissed over the Brits taking him for a fool just because they acted flirty whenever he was around, Kapkan is pissed that Fuze is pissed, and Tachanka is pissed over having to sit next to the other two. None of them are wearing any shoes – or shirts, for that matter –, except for Glaz, fortunately. It’s a complete mystery to Mute why they came along, but now he has to deal with aggravated Russian being thrown back and forth behind him.

“What about Seamus?”, Glaz inquires curiously and nearly falls into Rook’s lap at a particularly sharp turn.

“He’d be a smug shite and I don’t wanna deal with that.”

“Fair enough.”

Twitch is clad in pastel pyjamas with a cupcake print. She also seems understandably intimidated over being faced with six guys upon opening her door, three of which disgruntled and rearing for an actual fist fight.

“Mark needs to declare his undying love to James but blew up his phone and now none of us have his new number. Do you?”, Glaz explains the issue so badly that Mute wants to smack him.

“Why are you on their side? They were constantly provoking me!”, Fuze hisses in the background.

“Then it’s your own fucking fault for getting upset about love”, Kapkan snarls back.

Once Twitch is done literally hopping up and down with unbridled joy after having confirmed it three times, she admits: “I don’t have it, no. Didn’t he only give it to you, Mark? Have you asked Seamus?”

“We don’t wanna deal with his smartarse attitude”, Rook explains.

Twitch blinks, uncomprehending. “You can’t be serious.”

She sits perched on Mute’s lap for the drive whereas Fuze is forced to sit on Tachanka's, a fact over which he seems utterly infuriated. A small brawl happens halfway through, with Glaz trying to stay out of it as much as possible, and Tachanka threatening to open the door and dump Fuze’s crusty arse outside, and if Mute is honest, he hasn’t had this much fun in ages. It’s like free entertainment, and though worry nags at him, he knows they’ll eventually be successful.

Sledge is remarkably awake and even a little flustered, even more so when he eyes the crowd on his front lawn. “Is the world ending?”, he asks politely.

“Do you have James’ new number?”, Mute replies with another question and ignores Fuze kicking at his heels before getting dragged away and shoved around a bit by Kapkan.

“What, did you lose your phone after he confessed to you and now you can’t answer him?”

“How does he know everything?”, Rook whispers in Twitch’s direction, awestruck.

“That was a lucky guess”, Mute accuses him, because how.

Sledge pinches the bridge of his nose. “Mark, he told me a month ago that having you would make him both the happiest and the luckiest man on earth.”

Mute gapes at him. In the background, Kapkan snaps: “You hear that shit? That’s fucking cute, you numbskull, and you’re not going to rain on their parade!”

“And you didn’t say anything?”

“I didn’t want to ruin the surprise.” Sledge’s deadpan tone implies that he’s thoroughly done with both of them – probably hinted heavily, with either of them dismissing him. “Come on in. I don’t have his number, but I know someone who would.”

They file into the house which doesn’t look much different to how Mute left it more than an hour ago, which is odd: the same lights are still on, meaning Sledge didn’t go to sleep, yet the mess is still there. He must’ve been doing something important if it kept him up till now.

“Mike’s known him for a while, so he’s likely to have James’ number”, Sledge announces and starts rifling through drawers. “But he turns off his phone at night and I don’t know where his stupid caravan is parked right now. I wrote it down somewhere.”

Mute spots a closed but running laptop on the coffee table. “Maybe you’ve got it saved on here”, he wonders and just as Sledge chokes out a panicked Mark no, flips it open.

And is faced with a very handsome, very hairy, and most importantly very naked guy on a webcam who seems surprised to see him.

He closes the laptop again. They could’ve heard a pin drop in the following silence.

“Well”, Sledge murmurs, “that, uh, was Adriani- Adriano.”

That answers that question. Mute’s face is burning.

“Tell him we’d like to meet him properly once he’s put some clothes on”, Tachanka speaks up cheerfully.

“Guys, I found more of Moni’s salad in the fridge”, Rook announces with his mouth full just as he enters the room, though he stops dead when all faces turn to him. “What? Did I miss something?”

For some reason, Thatcher looks the least surprised out of all of them to receive a gathering in his abode – or rather in front of it, because his moving temporary home hardly offers enough space to house eight people. It was a relief to take two cars to get here, even if Sledge seems ready to murder someone after chauffeuring three arguing Spetsnaz around.

“This puppy here wants to propose to James but since he melted his phone in the microwave, we need you to tell us exactly where he is so we can fly over”, Tachanka explains even worse than Glaz did previously and Mute just puts his head in his hands.

Thatcher scowls at them. He’s wearing pastel pyjamas with rocket ships on it. “Is this a joke?”

“Do you know James’ new number?”, Sledge takes over with a deep sigh and yanks Fuze aside the moment he tries to elbow Kapkan. Mute is no longer surprised over the fact that the Scotsman feels more like a dad to him than a friend. “I believe it’s time sensitive.”

“I don’t have it”, the old man grumbles, much to everyone’s exasperation, “but I know someone who does. Just a phone call away, come in.”

Easier said than done – one by one, they squeeze into the limited space, with Rook and Twitch climbing up to the bed and letting their feet dangle into Glaz’ field of view, while Fuze and Sledge sit down by the tiny table. The rest stands awkwardly as Thatcher rummages around aimlessly until he finally finds what he’s looking for. Namely his phone.

“That’s where you keep it?!”, Sledge wants to know, aghast. “What if there’s an emergency?”

“Well you’re all here, aren’t you.” Thatcher takes another two minutes to turn it on and by then, Mute has lost all patience.

“Let me do it”, he offers politely and adds silently: for the love of Christ. “Who am I calling?”

“Tze Long. He’s an old friend from Hong Kong, James and I know him from years ago. He’ll know.”

He vaguely remembers hearing the name before, so he navigates to contacts, tries not to look too hard at the notes Thatcher has added to a few of them, like Brunsmeier (public nuisance) and Cowden (good lad) until he lands on Nizan (hide all food). It takes him a few seconds to regain his composure but then he’s finally spotted the name Thatcher mentioned and presses the green button. He doesn’t have to wait long, seeing as it’s currently morning in Asia, but he was not at all prepared for the booming greeting nearly shattering his eardrum.

“Morning, honey, having trouble sleeping again? Want me to read you another bedtime story, hm?”

And though Mute has never met this man in his life, the sultry tone makes it painfully clear there’s absolutely nothing innocent about his offer. Even worse: since Thatcher set his phone’s volume to eleven, literally everyone in the cramped room heard.

Mute has to correct himself: today is one of the worse days of his life.

“Give me that”, Thatcher hisses and snatches the phone out of Mute’s hand. “Listen, I have visitors.”

Since he failed to lower the volume, all present continue to hear both sides of the conversation, whether they want to or not. “Wonderful! I’ve been telling you to get out more, dearie, have more social contact or you’ll end up a bitter old fart.”

“That means you need to behave.”

“I always behave. You know me. I’m extremely obedient.”

The two Frenchies on the bed are shaking with silent laughter whereas Thatcher is getting redder by the second. “All we need is James’ number. Do you have it? We have a youngin here who wants to marry him.”

“Just confess, actually”, Mute chimes in but gets ignored.

“Oh my. Yes, I have it. Do you have something to write?” Sledge holds up his phone with the notes app open as confirmation, and what follows are the longest five minutes of Mute’s life because Thatcher insists on being dictated one digit at a time, repeats it even though everyone can hear the man on the other end of the line clear as day, and then asks Sledge to confirm it. They go through the process twice to be sure and by the end Mute is ready to strangle somebody.

Thatcher thanks his ‘friend’ and hangs up on him mid-sentence, to everyone’s relief, seeing as any sentence that begins with ‘and remember to replace the trousers that we’ can’t end well. And then it’s done. They hold a collective breath as Sledge pulls up the number he just saved and presents his phone to Mute.

He’s almost forgotten why they’re all here, but the serenity of this moment hits him out of the blue – he’s about to make a life-changing decision, yet he’s convinced it’s the right one. He really, really likes Smoke. Absence did make his heart grow fonder, he spent a few sleepless nights reminiscing over all the genuine, heartfelt, entertaining, meaningful moments they shared and realised he feels incomplete knowing he can’t just meet up with him, can’t just take a spontaneous day trip by his side or just laze around at his place. This is one of the things Smoke has learnt: leaving him alone. Not always, but sometimes Mute just needs time for himself, and of all people he didn’t expect pretentious, flashy, loud Smoke to acknowledge it.

He can’t wait to tell him that he feels the same way he does.

“Can you let me through?”, he asks, expecting the others to move out of his way for some privacy, and reads the room much too late. He’s almost furthest from the door, a door three Russians are blocking. Kapkan crosses his arms.

Okay. He gets it. He interrupted their sleep, wasted their time, irritated them to hell and back, and yet they stuck it through. They… kinda deserve to hear this.

Wordlessly, he dials the number and tries not to let his racing heartbeat affect him – anxiousness is crawling up his throat, clogging it, and the fact that he’s doing this in front of eight other people doesn’t fill him with confidence. What if Smoke’s sleeping already, went to bed confused and dejected? What if he’s changed his mind in the meantime? Every beep increases his dread and leaves him more restless than before and he’s not even aware of fidgeting until Sledge reaches out and squeezes his hand reassuringly. He could’ve smooched him for the gesture, just like he could’ve thrown something at Rook for pulling a dumb grimace simultaneously.

And then Smoke answers the call. “Yeah?”, he says, sounding tired yet curious. He hasn’t gotten any sleep all night and it must be morning for him too.

“James? It’s me.” Twitch gestures emphatically and so he switches to loudspeaker, as much as he doesn’t want to. Even Fuze looks invested at this point.

“Oh, how ya babe. What’s the craic?” Now that he knows it’s Mute, he’s much more lively and Mute wants to kiss him so badly it hurts.

“My phone died, I’m really sorry. Or rather – I walked against a street light and smashed it on the floor.”

“Shit. Are you alright? I could tell my messages weren’t coming through, so I figured something happened.”

His concern feels like a warm blanket. Mute is grinning like a lunatic but is long past caring at this point. “Yeah. Well. I’m just calling – I need to tell you something.” Tachanka stands up a little straighter, the smile on Glaz’ face grows and even Thatcher looks almost proud.

“Do you?”

Just like his question earlier, it’s a prompt. And just like Smoke earlier, he won’t leave him hanging. Mute gathers all his courage, looks around the room… and no.

He has a reputation to uphold. He can’t just blurt it out, can’t lay himself bare like they’re expecting him to.

And so he asks: “Are you a carbon sample, James?”

Visible and, on Smoke’s part, audible confusion. “Huh?”

“Because I’d really like to date you.”

Rook puts a hand over his eyes, Fuze continues to frown in ignorance and Kapkan rolls his eyes so hard it must’ve hurt. But somehow, Mute knows that he did exactly the right thing when he hears Smoke’s relieved laughter, undignified chortling conveying just how grateful he must be to hear this. “Babe”, he chuckles in disbelief, “you’re unbelievable.”

And despite the presence of so many other people, this is still only their moment, because it’s only the two of them giggling like idiots. “So”, he begins once their amusement has died down a little, “does that mean we’re -”

“Yes”, Smoke cuts him off. “Hell yes. There’s no way I’m gonna sleep now, I can’t wait to see you.”

“Fucking finally!!”, Kapkan yells and the entire caravan erupts into chaos – there’s cheering, clapping, a few complaints over their behaviour in the past, and Rook and Glaz actually exchange money. Thatcher pats him on the back, Kapkan nearly breaks one of his ribs with a meaningful nudge and Tachanka loudly proclaims his blessing. Mute just laughs, caught in the middle of it all, picturing Smoke’s flabbergasted expression over the sudden commotion and wondering how in the world he’s going to explain the whole situation to him later.

“The hell’s going on”, the phone in Mute’s hand asks and even he doesn’t know.

“I’ll talk to you later, James, love you, bye!” Smiling, he hangs up and switches to text messages, starts outlining the events of the evening while the storm continues to rage on around him.

“Admit it, you coward!”, Kapkan barks, and Twitch calls for a celebration, Sledge mentions he’s tired and would rather go home, Tachanka predictably exposes him with a crude comment about his boyfriend waiting for him, Glaz remarks favourably on Thatcher’s pyjamas, and Thatcher mentions he’s got a few pieces of cake in the fridge for an impromptu party, to which Rook replies with his mouth full that there’s only one piece left, and eventually even Fuze murmurs: “Alright, it was a little cute.”

But Mute only hears half of it because he sent Smoke a heart and received a heart back as well as the follow-up of with how much electricity there is flowing between us we must be a galvanic cell and good Lord, he wasn’t even aware of how fucking doomed he was.

~*~

Smoke is radiant.

He looks good on a bad day, but right now he’s bloody gorgeous – sleeves pulled up to reveal tanned skin, long hair combed back instead of parted according to no logic at all, and eyes gleaming. With every moment that passes, he becomes more and more ethereal, incorporeal, unapproachable, like a piece of art which can’t be touched or else it’d be ruined, like a mirage. They haven’t seen each other for a month so he might as well not be real at all, or maybe all their conversations over the past few days didn’t happen and Mute dreamt of his interest being reciprocated, and if nothing happens in the next second -

Smoke drops his duffel bag, reaches up and pulls him down for a kiss. It’s sweet and impossibly tangible, convinces him that this is really happening and so he prolongs it, relishes the contact of lips on lips. When they part, he’s left light-headed. “I’m back”, Smoke informs him unnecessarily.

“You’re early.” He nods. Both of them are beaming. “You didn’t even go home?”

“I came straight here.”

It’s a little awkward, Mute doesn’t really know how to react other than grinning like a dumbass, but it seems neither of them mind. “You wanna take a shower after the long flight?”

“Wanna join me?” He hesitates and Smoke picks up on it, carries his bag inside and closes the door behind them. “Babe, don’t worry. We’ll go slow. We can just laze around all day, do nothing. I’m just happy to be here.”

Mute is not fully convinced that it’s what he himself actually wants, but he agrees with the sentiment of finding their own pace. “Me too”, he admits quietly and runs his fingers through dark hair. It’s as soft as always, the feeling addicting, just like Smoke’s mouth, and so he kisses him again. They’re both oddly shy, conscious of themselves, and Mute recognises it as uneasy vulnerability. This is uncharted territory for both of them and in order not to overstep any boundaries, they tread carefully. “You look so fucking good”, Mute murmurs in between kisses and smiles when Smoke hums contentedly.

“See, when you say things like that, it’s really hard not to just spread my legs and tell you to go ham”, Smoke mutters, making him snort and interrupt their making out. “But I’ll be a gentleman. I promise.”

He senses there’s more to it than that. “If?”, he prompts expectantly, brows raised.

And Smoke’s smirk is unbearably smug. “If we do it on the table periodically”, he finishes.

They look at each other. He’s so fucking perfect Mute just wants to hold him and never let go.

“We’re going to be insufferable, aren’t we.”

It’s not a question, more of a fatalistic statement, and yet Smoke agrees with a joyous: “God I hope so.”

#rainbow six siege #smoke #mute #smoke/mute #fanfic #oneshot #these two will be the death of me especially when they're this cute #also props to that tumblr post about periodic table based insults #with love from potassium iridium uranium

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victorluvsalice · 4 years

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AU Thursday: Tell Me Where To Find Shelter – Converting Alice's VTMB Stats To Fallout Ones

So! I'm on a kick of combining Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines and Fallout 4 into one universe, for the purposes of shipping my Sole Survivor!Victor with my Malkavian!Alice. And since the story takes place in the Fallout 4 nuclear apocalypse, we have to do a few things to get our Alice properly settled in this verse. One of them? Convert her Bloodlines character sheet into something that can fit with the Fallout 4 system!

Now Fallout as a whole uses the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system to stat up characters – everyone has the seven core attributes of Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck, ranked from 1 to 10. How Perks and Skills are handled varies from game to game, but in Fallout 4 we have a Perk "tree" of sorts that is linked to your special stats – each stat has various perks that can be accessed as you level it up, and those perks often have levels of their own (for example, the "Locksmith" perk is available at Perception 4, and it has 4 levels, allowing you to pick harder and harder locks, and eventually stopping your bobby pins from breaking). You earn XP doing various things in the world (completing quests gives the most, but you also earn plenty from just crafting stuff, building things in settlements, finding new locations, being charismatic, and killing enemies) to level up, and at each level up, you earn a "Perk Point," where you can choose a new Perk (so long as you have the appropriate stats), upgrade an existing Perk (again, as long as you meet requirements), or even just boost the seven core raw stats (opening up more Perks).

Bloodlines, on the other hand, uses a variation on the standard World of Darkness TTRPG character sheet, where characters have nine Attributes (the raw power of the character, subdivided into three categories – Physical has Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina; Social has Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance; and Mental has Perception, Intelligence, Wits) and twelve Abilities (learned skills, also subdivided into three categories – Talents has Brawl, Dodge, Intimidation, and Subterfuge; Skills has Firearms, Melee, Security, Stealth; and Knowledges has Computers, Finance, Investigation, and Scholarship). Attributes are ranked 1 to 5; Abilities 0 to 5. These combine to form Feats, which cover things like how good you are at various kinds of combat, if you're good at sneaking around and lockpicking, if you're good at persuading or seducing people, etc. There's also three Disciplines each clan gets as magical abilities – Malkavians have Auspex (see auras, get bonuses to certain stats), Obfuscate (turn invisible), and Dementation (inflict debilitating mental effects on others). You don't level up, but just earn straight XP for each quest you complete, which is spent on increasing Attributes, Abilities, or Disciplines at increasing costs.

Okay, so how do we bash these together into something that makes sense for Alice? Well, let's start by looking at her Attributes, Abilities, and Feats from Bloodlines. Since she's supposed to have gone through the whole game by the time she meets Victor, we'll use her stats from the end of my playthrough. We'll also use the "raw" stats – that is, not boosted by special items she picked up through the course of the game. That gives us:

Attributes:

Physical: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4

Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 1, Appearance 2

Mental: Perception 4, Intelligence 4, Wits 3

Abilities:

Talents: Brawl 3, Dodge 3, Intimidation 1, Subterfuge 0

Skills: Firearms 5, Melee 5, Security 4, Stealth 4

Knowledges: Computers 5, Finance 3, Investigation 2, Scholarship 5

Feats:

Combat: Unarmed 7, Melee 9, Ranged 9, Defense 6

Covert: Lockpicking 8, Sneaking 8, Hacking 8, Inspection 8, Research 9

Public: Haggle 4, Intimidate 5, Persuasion 8, Seduction 2

Soak: Bashing 4, Lethal 0, Aggravated 0

So there's a couple of Attributes that can be immediately slotted into the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system – Strength, Charisma, Perception, and Intelligence appear in both. However, we can't just put in the raw numbers – remember, S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats rank from 1 to 10, while WoD Attributes only rank from 1 to 5. In order to get a more accurate picture, we'll need to double Alice's Bloodlines stats in those four categories (so Strength goes from 4 in the Bloodlines stats to 8 in the Fallout 4 ones). As for the stats that don't have an immediate match:

Dexterity covers the same sort of stuff Agility does, so Alice's score in the former can be transferred to the latter

Similarly, Stamina can map onto Endurance

Manipulation is used mainly for the "haggle" feat in Bloodlines – this is probably best covered by the "Cap Collector" perk in Fallout 4, which similarly improves vendor prices

Appearance, like the above, is used for the "seduction" feat in Bloodlines – that's best translated into the "Black Widow/Ladykiller" perk (since Alice is cis-female, "Black Widow" would be used for her)

Wits, to continue the trend, is used for upping defense in combat and the "hacking" feat – seems like it would grant one the "Hacker" perk in response

Luck has no direct counterpart in the Bloodlines Attributes – but given that the Bloodlines Fledgling starts out lucky enough to survive their illegal embrace, and generally ends lucky enough to become a powerful player in Los Angeles vampire politics, or powerful enough to strike out on their own without a faction's help (as Alice did), I think it's safe to assume it's high!

So let's say that, as of her appearance in "Tell Me Where To Find Shelter," Alice's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats are:

Strength: 8

Perception: 8

Endurance: 8

Charisma: 6

Intelligence: 8

Agility: 8

Luck: 10

Yes, this is not something you could get in the character creator at the beginning of the game – but this is Alice after the end of Bloodlines, I think we can assume she's leveled up quite a bit! And yes, I'm giving her Luck 10 because – well, let's face it, she survived a LOT of shit and got REALLY powerful REALLY fast. Safe to assume Luck is currently on her side!

So we've got her S.P.E.C.I.A.L. – now, what about Perks? Well, from the Bloodlines Attributes that didn't map onto anything in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. categories, we already have three: "Black Widow" (makes it easier to charm and kill men); "Cap Collector" (makes prices more favorable in buying and selling with vendors); and "Hacker" (allows you to hack terminals). Looking at her Bloodlines Feats seems to be the best way to determine which other Perks she should have, since they're what she knows combined with her raw base power. By category:

Combat: Alice is really good at both melee and ranged (aka gun) combat, with decent unarmed and defense. Making things slightly more difficult, though, is that Fallout 4 has different perks for different kinds of guns. Making things slightly easier is the fact that I played Alice as primarily a melee build – she knows how to use guns, and I certainly made good use of them in certain fights, but she and I both felt more comfortable with a good sledgehammer or sword. Give her "Iron Fist" for her potential as a good unarmed combatant, the strongest version of "Big Leagues" for her ability with a good melee weapon, and "Steady Aim" for her gunplay. "Gunslinger" covers non-automatic pistols, which I believe are the kind I ended up using most often for her; "Rifleman" covers things like rifles and shotguns – and she was using that Dragon's Breath shotgun a LOT in her final boss fights, so pop those on for her too!

Covert: Alice is great at lockpicking, sneaking, hacking, finding things (though admittedly this is artificially bumped due to her being a Malkavian), and looking things up. We've already determined she'd have the "Hacker" trait, so we can now assume she has it at the highest level. She also gets "Locksmith" at the highest level. "Sneak" – well, this is an interesting one, as she's good at it, but she also has the Obfuscate ability, which I used a LOT, so. . . We'll give it to her at Rank 2 for now. "Fortune Finder" and "Scrounger" both feel appropriate as well, as does "Awareness" for figuring out what people are weak to (this overlaps with her ability to see auras using Auspex – think of it as her version of V.A.T.S.!).

Public: Alice is okay at haggling and intimidating, surprisingly good at persuading, and pretty crap at seducing. We've given her "Black Widow" as it's the only perk Appearance was good for that I could see, but we'll keep it at the lowest level as seduction isn't really her style. (She's just pretty enough to distract people!) The same applies to "Cap Collector." Weirdly enough, her base Charisma stat locks her out of stuff like "Intimidation" and "Wasteland Whisperer" – but she's also been staked in a basement for about as long as Victor's been frozen, so probably she needs time to come to grip with the post-apocalyptic world! Rather than any specific Charisma-based perk, she's probably just got a background higher chance of winning speech checks.

Soak: This is an interesting category, because this one primarily relies on the armor you have. However, having good Stamina helps defend against Bashing, which is bullet and blunt melee weapon damage. Alice has a bit of that, so a level or two in "Toughness" seems appropriate.

In addition, I think she should have "Strong Back" (being a video game character with an invisible inventory that allows her to carry a decent amount of stuff; there are some pretty strict limits, though, so I'd only give her level one); "Lifegiver" (vampires and video game characters are both harder to kill than normal humans, and vampires DO auto-mend themselves in the original game); "Night Person" (. . .she's a vampire); and "Aquagirl" (again, vampire – no need to breathe!). So the final stats and perks would be:

Strength: 8 – Perks "Iron Fist" (Rank 1), "Big Leagues" (Rank 5), "Strong Back" (Rank 1), "Steady Aim" (Rank 2)

Perception: 8 – Perks "Rifleman" (Rank 2), "Awareness" (Rank 1), "Locksmith" (Rank 4), "Night Person" (Rank 3)

Endurance: 8 – Perks "Toughness" (Rank 2), "Lifegiver" (Rank 3), "Aquagirl" (Rank 1)

Charisma: 6 – Perks "Cap Collector" (Rank 1), "Black Widow" (Rank 1)

Intelligence: 8 – Perks "Hacker" (Rank 4)

Agility: 8 – Perks "Gunslinger" (Rank 2), "Sneak" (Rank 2)

Luck: 10 – Perks "Fortune Finder" (Rank 3), "Scrounger" (Rank 3)

That just leaves Alice's Discplines, which – being magical effects – are kind of hard to quantify in Fallout 4's soft sci-fi setting. However:

Auspex is pretty much covered by the "Awareness" perk – Alice never leveled it far, and as I stated, seeing the auras of various creatures to determine what they are is not that dissimilar from V.A.T.S.

Obfuscate is the ability to turn invisible to the human eye – Alice mastered this. We can treat this as if Alice always has a Stealth Boy on her, but she has to be above a certain HP threshold to use it, and it gradually drains HP as it’s used.

Dementation is the ability to inflict various hallucinations and delusions on people – Alice was always iffy about this, but got as good as "Vision of Death," which can actually kill a single person from fear. Lesser effects can temporarily distract a person with uncontrollable laughing or crying, or inflict hallucinations on a group that decreases their combat abilities. It also gives you special dialogue options to get people to do what you want, which is the one effect I think I could put into the game. We'd need to code up a special Perk for the other stuff!

And that about does it! How I think my endgame Malkavian!Alice would look under the Fallout 4 stats! Whew, that took longer than I thought. . . (And I still want to go ahead and steal a certain "Bloodsucker" Perk from Fallout 76. . . "Cannibal" just doesn't really fit with Alice's physiology.)

#tell me where to find shelter #fallout 4 #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #vtmb #another in my series of 'absurdly long posts for this AU for a game I haven't even completed yet'#I mean granted I've geeked out and made AUs for games I haven't even PLAYED #my old 'Bloodborne' AU comes to mind #but I didn't usually go to THIS sort of effort #or go around crossing it over with another game I HAVE played #because I am apparently REALLY FIXATED on the idea of vampire!Alice #Vic you came up with a decent way to get her into the verse without this nonsense #but nope vampires everywhere all the time #I mean it would make for an interesting dynamic but still #that being said it was kind of fun to figure out how to translate Alice's Bloodlines stats to Fallout 4 #time-consuming but fun #I hope somebody's enjoying these #they're completely ridiculous but I refuse to stop XD #kind of my whole philosophy as a Valice shipper honestly #queued

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buzzworddotie · 5 years

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RPDR S11E01 - Silky "Screen Time"

Season 11 of Rupaul's Drag race is here and what a whirlwind it's been to this point. We had our 2 magnificent Queens get the double crowing in the shakiest editing in TV history, the return of Vanjie, a new group of sisters and one very special Cyster plus the Queen Miley Cyrus in the worse boy drag ever (that facial hair... Girl...)

But in a show with so much diversity and love AND so many toxic, racist and straight up DUMBASS fans it's clear that one Queen may have a target on her back from Episode 1.

Attitude Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

Miss Silky Nutmeg Ganache. I think it was pretty clear from the pre show build up these Queen was going to be quite the character.

If you're anything like me, you'll indulge yourself in the full, dirty world of Drag Race, including the sub Reddit where all the Nancy Drew's and Tea brewers like to play!

So today I pop onto my favourite sub and topic of interest seems to be around the debate of Silky and if her "extra-ness" is cute or you know set to drive people CRAZY!!

Act the Fool Girl, Act. The. Fool

So, a recent post showed this tweet of Ms. Ganache replying on the subject to someone and pulling the ever familiar and frequently debated EDIT card.

Check out Silky's response. It is a very fair and very valid point. We all know that any "reality" TV show is produced, edit and constructed for our entertainment purposes.

There is no doubt in my mind that Ms.Silky was super lovely and warm and nice to all in that work room. I don't doubt it for a second. She seems like the type who wants to have fun and bring joy, lovely gal.

And there is a good chance that what we saw on screen was the height of her "extra" behaviour.

But it was enough!!! If I was working with her, she'd have driven me CRAZY!!! I worked with a girl a bit like that, just very loud and constantly at me and my tolerance would drop to 0!!

Was she nice and all the rest? Course she was. Professionally did she annoy the fuck out of me?! YES!!!

Untucking the Character

Thankfully, Netflix Ireland is hosting Untucked this year as well. Praise the entertainment gods! And when you watch Untucked you may notice what I did.

Silky wasn't all up in everyone's grill. She was far more subdued without totally annihilating her personality.

Well, right up until Miley popped back in but let's go ahead and press pause on that right now...

In defence of the Ganache

My fear for Silky is that due to her initial behaviour, they say you get one chance to make a first impression, and probably due to the colour of her beautiful skin, the Queen may well come under attack of the vicious and disgusting racist fans. Unwarranted attacks on a Queen who is taking part in a reality TV show.

It won't be fair and it won't be nice.

My thoughts are that Silky probably was a bundle of nerves, her first TV gig (as far as I am aware). Stepping into a show where there is a level of self awareness that doesn't exist in most reality shows.

Come Thru.... The Fourth Wall

Drag Race is so interesting to me because it consistently breaks the fourth wall.

The Queens have a level of awareness of being on TV that most reality shows don't give us.

They sign up with a check list, make an impactful entrance? Check. Nail some catchphrases for merch? Check. Become a meme? Check.

Silky, like all the Queens, walked in with that on her mind, that's the impression I got. And she was all guns a blazing to get it!

You know word vomit? This was personality vomit.

But people can smell desperation and will attack it.

Own it Sis

So does Silky deserve to be attacked online for acting "extra"? Of course not, give her a minute and let her settle in before you heap on the judgement and leave the goddamn hate at the door. It's a fucking TV show!!

However, girl you jumped in with both feet and obvious awareness of being on TV and wanted to be on TV, you're out there talking about your spin off show, making your merch quotes, ALL IN.

And bitch, if you know all those sides of Drag Race then you need to be aware people are going to be critiquing you.

Don't just go on and start blaming the edit girl!!! The edit didn't manipulate you to pick up Miley, the edit did not make you loud!!

If we learned anything from the All Stars 3 finale its that the editing of this show is really not some kind of magical wand that can make things that didn't happen look real!!!

Did the edit choose to highlight certain moments ahead of others, yup! But they could only do it because it happened!

I Don't Want Anymore God Damn Excuses!

I think this is going to be a fun season. It's a fantastic mix of girls with varied experience in the Drag scene and plenty of different personalities, agendas and outlooks.

But what I want too see this season is less Queens feeling like they have to defend themselves.

Don't tell me on one hand that you're extra and you know you're extra and all the rest and then on the other hand jump on the defence and point the finger at production for only showing that side of you!

Don't announce you're brand as being THAT Queen and then denounce it. Fucking own it and use that big ass personality and voice to shout out all the good shit you have to say!

Vanjie Knows Best

Vanessa Mateo is the best example for these Queens. She accidently became a meme master in S10 and she's not out here apologising for it.

She owned it and now she's ready to show us more. She's not there to force shit to happen, she is proof that what works is the organic moments.

Alyssa Edwards is beloved because all her nonsense and memes are purely organic, it's here.

So going forward for this season I really hope we see people like Silky just relax into it. Don't keep forcing it, just do you Queen and let your bubbly persona shine through.

Again, the edit didn't do this to you girl, the edit didn't put words or tone in your mouth and the edit didn't make those other Queens get frustrated.

Like I said, I have high hopes for this season and my major hope is that we don't end up with Queens getting death threats or racists attacks or any of that other shit.

I hope that Queens like Silky don't feel like they have to defend and blame others for their show time appearance and just let the losers who want to come for them disappear.

Water off a Duck's Back, Queens.

Before I sign off, this season I've decided to follow the Queens on social as they get eliminated (well except Vanjie who got me season 10). Let's not allow these Queens who leave early to go unnoticed.

If you like, join me and follow each Queen when they are eliminated because they all have interesting things going on and it's a shame when they don't get the love because of elimination order.

Or don't and just follow them all from the get go. Do you Queens.

#rupaul #rupaul's drag race #silky nutmeg ganache #ms vanjie #drag race season 11

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muggle-writes · 5 years

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Writeblr WIP Blind Date

I’m always happy for an excuse to interact with more writeblrs. I’m surprising myself by choosing one of my fics that hasn’t actually been posted to AO3 yet (and that I’m still working on an actual plot for) because I just really like the premise and I love the characters

Title of your WIP: No title yet, but I mostly call it the chaos friendship fic.

The real title, when I decide on one, will either be a pun on books or magic or academia, or it will be a quote from wtnv (or from love is all you need to destroy your enemies) in the style of titles for fics in that series.

Genre: fanfiction, crackfic, crossover, friendship centric, humorous tone, world-saving adventures?

(Crossover between: Harry Potter and a fic that is itself a crossover between Welcome to Night Vale and The Dresden Files)

Trigger Warnings: n/a so far, (probably canon typical violence)

Stage of writing process: “Lol Hermione and Julie would be such great friends I’d love to read about them interacting ...dang I guess I have to write that myself”

actually I’ve come up with the premise of why they’ve met in the first place, and written the middle third of a first chapter to lead them into interacting, but I’m stuck on what the plot should be, which is complicated by the fact that the few ideas I’ve had for plot directions require more knowledge than I actually have about the various magical government(s)/faerie courts of the Dresden Files universe to determine whether they’re both plausible and feasible.

Synopsis: replacing this with Background because, as stated above, I have a premise for this fic but not so much a plot. 1-3 are genuinely background, and 4-7 are as close as I have to a story arc:

(1) MACUSA actually only controls the original 13 colonies (and the white council large parts of north america, though between the two groups they still probably don’t govern all magical people in the continent*)

(2) the ICW refuses to acknowledge that any magical government borders might not align with muggle/nomaj/mundane government borders, so MACUSA is the only government from within the muggle United States that gets invited/pressured to join the Statute of Secrecy

(3) There are repeated violations of the statute of secrecy reported in a particular town in the southwest of the united states

(4) Hermione Granger, famous and influential as she is in the aftermath of all of Harry’s adventures, is nominated as the representative to go and scold MACUSA for not controlling their citizens better

(5) Hermione gets to MACUSA and they treat her politely, but they firmly and immediately explain that they’re not responsible, and then set her up with a portkey to Night Vale, where the violations have been

(6) Hermione promptly gets caught in the storm wards, since she arrived by magic. Julie and Carlos and at least one other scientist show up almost immediately - they’re studying the storm wards to make sure they’re behaving as intended

(7) and then Hermione and Julie become friends (after what incident that forces them to work together???) and then do something cool (but what????? idk yet)

Character information: this is listed as a crossover between a fic series and a book series, rather than between two book series and a podcast, because Julie is an OC (effectively) from the fic series (does it count if none of “Carlos’ scientists” are named? they do technically exist in canon, but with basically no detail, at least in the first two or three years).

My fic will focus on Hermione’s (bookworm, ruthless when necessary, a few years ago saved wizarding Britain from a terrorist along with her friends Harry and Ron) friendship with Julie (PhD, practical theoretical physicist, made a "science gun” and disassembled it for ethical reasons after killing a vampire with it, makes frequent pop culture references including teasing Carlos about having a wizard friend named Harry... yes her knowledge of the Harry Potter books will be addressed), with appearances from Carlos and the rest of dave’s characters, and probably some other night vale citizens, and maybe (if I borrow dave’s or my wife’s familiarity with dresden files canon) certain members of the white council.

Mainly just the girls and their friendship though.

Links: I could have sworn I included the drafty partial first chapter in this, but it’s just another outline. ...if I can’t find a better link to edit in to this post, I might just add what I have of prose for this fic to the bottom of that google doc

There is a brief excerpt in this post as well (on my main blog, from before I made a separate writeblr sideblog) under the heading “Chaotic Friendship crossover”

There’s also a summary in my WIP Masterpost but I’ve said everything relevant with more detail in this post.

WIP tag: Uh. You can also see all two of my posts that I’ve got tagged ‘chaos friendship fic’ and I could have sworn there were more but I can’t find them to add them to the tag...

Other WIP Information:

*Along with background point (1) under synopsis/background, I have a loose but persistent idea about indigenous wizards/mages/tribe-specific titles warding large swaths of land to be unplottable and heavily defended, and taking as many members (especially nonmagical, as magical people could defend themselves a bit better and also let themselves in later) of their tribes, as feasible into protected lands once it became obvious that white nonmagical people were determined to wipe out everyone else (and members of rival tribes were accepted into each others’ spaces peacefully when colonists continued to get worse; uniting against a common enemy)... with the idea that the trail of tears and similar events had significantly less deaths (whether the deaths were faked, or whether white muggles were confunded to not notice/brush off the mass disappearances, or...?), and the people “lost” were taken into protected lands that white nonmagical people can’t get into at all, and that white magical people will be fiercely fought against ....and I was going to look for a sensitivity reader if that headcanon became a bigger part of this fic because I’m white and I’ll 300% need it and it’s still just a half-developed side detail that may or may not make it into this fic, but I’m sure will eventually make it into one of my fics that’s set in both the Harry Potter universe and the USA. (If not this one, then probably my MCU/HP crossover. I just really don’t like the pottermore/word of god info about magical society in the americas, and I haven’t seen Fantastic Beasts and even if I cared about FB canon, even though MACUSA is in charge, those are mostly set in new york city (and Europe apparently?), so that doesn’t contradict my “MACUSA is only in the 13 colonies” detail)

Definitely going with the joke “JK Rowling is actually Rita Skeeter, just selling to a new audience that won’t realize she’s telling the truth or when she’s stretching it” as another background fact, but I don’t think the characters will ever figure out exactly who is masquerading as Rowling.

Constructive criticism: Yes? Tentatively? I mean this is intended to be crackfic, where characterization matters but realistic plot not so much. So keep that intended tone in mind when offering concrit, but at this point I think I’ll welcome any (polite) feedback on this story even if it’s negative. (just try not to be purely negative, yeah? Long term I appreciate concrit, but short term it’ll bother me disproportionately, even when I asked for it, and triply so if it’s not balanced)

#wip blind date info #chaos friendship fic

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alfyrion · 6 years

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The Birdman of Katolis

So, every other post I see is about whether or not Harrow is dead. I’m really hoping that this one lays all those posts to rest since it is canon that he’s alive. Below, I’m going to tell you, in detail so we can end this, why he’s the bird. (Be warned, this is a little long.)

First off, just going to point this out since this is the biggest sign that it’s actually canon. Viren openly mocks the bird. It’s a bird. No matter what attachment Harrow had to it, there’s no reason for Viren to stop what he’s doing, delay his coronation to mock a bird unless it housed the soul of the king. If he hadn’t stopped to mock this bird, Amaya wouldn’t have stopped him in time, and he would be king right now.

We know that he likes to mock his prisoners because he did it with Gren.

And like he did with Runaan because he’s just a nice guy like that.

And weirdly enough, the bird emotes more. The bird looks honestly hurt and betrayed by Viren’s words. It also feels the need to maintain eye contact with Viren through the entire conversation.

Then after Viren’s remark, it turns its head to the side, more as if it’s responding haughtily to Viren, which is backed up by Viren’s sneer that it was the action.

Before this moment, it would turn its head more randomly, not maintain eye contact for long periods of time, and didn’t seem to understand conversations as it stared off blankly into space. It’s not acting the same way anymore.

Next, there’s the rule of Chekhov’s Gun: "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there." Which we have in the form of the snake.

We first see it when Viren comes in to tell Harrow that he found a way to save Harrow’s life and is utterly convinced that this will work to fool the bands. He’s not fifty percent sure or ninety. He KNOWS this will save his life.

Then we get to the night and Viren makes his way to the king’s chambers with the basket in tow. In his talk with Soren before he enters, he makes it clear that he’s going to give his life to save Harrow since he makes it clear that it’s something that might upset Soren in the end.

Finally, we get to THE scene. The one where Harrow and Viren talk for the last time. Viren walks in with the snake basket then tries again. It’s not going well with Harrow angrily rebuffing him, but then the bird lands on Harrow’s shoulder. It hits him that he doesn’t need to sacrifice himself since the bird is there.

Also, Viren has clearly snapped at this point. You see on his face that he’s come to a decision. That isn’t the face of a man who is just going to walk away.

Then he comes out without the basket. There’s no way Harrow would just let him keep it in there. Also, we’re never shown Harrow or his reaction to the fight, probably because he’s trapped as a bird right now.

After that, Callum starts laying down the harsh truths when Viren decides to steal his voice. Yeah, the creators said stealing Callum’s voice was always a part of the plan, but he didn’t know Callum would be there since it was assumed he’d be heading to the winter lodge. He was planning on doing that later. Yet, he just so happens to have some voice stealing ingredients on him.

Then remember what he said to the bird? He asks it mockingly why it doesn’t sing for him. That’s because it can’t since it doesn’t have a voice.

So now we get to the scene where the moonshadow elves rush in and fight all the guards to try to get to the king. All four of them rush in, including Runaan and pretty much take the guards by storm.

Skip a couple of scene to Runaan killing “Harrow”. There are a couple things extremely wrong with this scene. Such as the other three assassins are missing. We can see the leg of one elf in the background while Runaan is limping out to the balcony, but the rest aren’t here. You would think the others would be there with Runaan if they were okay, and we know they didn’t go after Ezran since we never see them again.

Most likely, they were turned into coins since we have three missing elves and three coins that are underneath Runaan, but it’s still odd that they were captured, if they were, since they were overpowering the guards.

On top of that is the fact that Runaan isn’t in his illusionary form and is gravely injured. When we last left them, there were five elves who had the upper hand since no one could see them in the darkness, except three are missing/captured, one is presumably dead, and the other is extremely wounded. He shouldn’t have a single injury, except he does.

Of course, it’s not all that strange when you realize that the guards who are on Viren’s side can see them perfectly. You can tell because this guard ducks and easily dodges a blade strike from Runaan.

And if you watch Soren, you can see through the entire fight that he’s not swinging blindly and is making direct eye contact with the elven fighters.

It becomes especially obvious here when they’re cornered and the other elf comes to attack. Soren watches them approach then catches the blade with one hand while keeping Runaan at bay with the other.

Then there’s something else that’s strange. We see them try to get through the door, only problem is that it’s locked, though that doesn’t stop them from continuing to attempt to fight their way through.

We are shown that they eventually get into the room, but that means for some reason, they’d have had to abandon their fight with the guards, jump out a window, and then scale to the balcony where a dozen archers were waiting. Except, if you notice, the door hasn’t been forced open and there’s a guard slumped against it, meaning that they had to do the balcony move.

Only there’s no forced entry on the balcony doors either. Also, the guards are slumped oddly. The one on the balcony slumped against would’ve died closer to the edge as they would be fighting forward. Then the second one fell with his head against the balcony. If they came over the sides to attack, he’d be facing the other way.

Also, the room behind Runaan is spotless despite all the dead guards. Nothing is broken or out of place. It’s exactly as we saw it previous scenes. If there was a serious struggle, the room would be in pieces.

So, why wouldn’t Harrow defend himself against severely injured elves? Why wouldn’t the guards fight to their fullest capacity? Because almost everyone was already dead when they got there.

How were they already dead and what does this have to do with the bird? Glad you asked. I’d like to start with shifty Viren and the way he just squeezed out of the door, not letting anyone see what’s behind him as he left. Yes, that’s right. Viren killed almost everyone and staged the scene.

Let’s start with the guards. If they saw what Viren did to the king, they’d try to stop him or arrest him. And I’m sure they did, which is why they were dead and arranged by the time Runaan got there. Look, you can see them all here, and they all are taller than the balcony.

Except then night falls after Viren’s visit and we’re greeted to this scene. There’s no one there even though we can clearly see guards on the other towers. This is because they’re already dead and arranged so he can pin his crime on the elven assassins.

But what did Viren do with the bird and Harrow? He didn’t walk out with either one of them. That’s because he didn’t have to. Since he stole Harrow’s voice, he didn’t have to worry about him warning anyone. Notice Pip’s stand in the center of all the guards?

Well, after Viren’s visit, it’s gone. All Viren would have to do is chain Harrow to the stand and the bird could remain in the room, out of harm’s way with no way to alert anyone that something was wrong. It’s also a bit morbid, because that means Harrow watched his own murder.

All that leaves is Pip. How do you get Pip to act like a human? You don’t. You turn off the lights and shut the door, hoping that he goes to sleep. As you can see when Runaan looks at it, the lights are off while the door is closed, even though previously it was open so Pip could fly in and out.

If you remember, Pip sleeps like a log. He doesn’t wake up until Viren throws open the curtains to wake up Harrow in the beginning. So, Viren would know if Runaan was stealthy enough, he’d kill the bird in its sleep without ever waking it up.

Then there’s the fact that Viren is gone while Soren and all the other guards were late to the party despite the fight going on right outside of the door and the complete quiet as Runaan makes his way towards the edge of the balcony. That makes everything seem planned.

Also, before I move onto my next point. Out of ALL the birds they could’ve used to be the shadow that delivered the message, the animators decided to use one that looked exactly like Pip.

So, I know now someone is going to go “But the band! It only falls off if HARROW is dead!” Nope, sorry. Wrong. That’s a moonshadow band. It’s base magic is illusion. The definition of illusion: “perception of something objectively existing in such a way as to cause misinterpretation of its actual nature”. That means that moonshadow magic is about perception, not facts.

What does this mean though and how does it apply here? The bands work because the user perceives the intended target without a shadow of a doubt as dead. It’s why they have to go do the killing themselves. One of them has to witness the death so that their perception will change and the magic woven into the band changes.

We see the first use of illusion magic after they discover that the human guards are coming and Runaan breaks his necklace.

The elves’ camp never actually goes anywhere. Instead, it makes them all look like trees, because that’s literally what he said when he invoked the illusion.

It just changes the guards’ perspectives to not see them, and when they look in, they only see a forest as that’s what the illusion told them they’d find.

Then, as soon as the last guard leaves, the illusion wears off since there is no one’s perception that they need to alter any longer.

The moonshadow “invisibility” is also an illusion. It only makes people think that they don’t see them rather than having them disappear, which is why they have a slight physical form. The full moon helps strengthen their magic, so it’s easier to manipulate someone without the use of the pendant that they can’t see them.

This is further backed up as we learn more about illusion magic on the mountain. Like Rayla feels the leeches rushing over her, even though they’re not real. It’s because her mind is telling her that it’s real.

We also see them having trouble with the spider webs that aren’t actually there and Rayla cuts through the wrappings of the mummy, feeling her knife slice through as she cuts.

And there’s Ava, who looks like she has four legs, appears to run as if she has four legs, and everyone can feel a paw that isn’t actually there.

That brings us to the band and Rayla’s band. As you can see, all the bands were originally one string. That’s why there can be six of them instead of one of them. Just one has to succeed and kill their target. It wouldn’t make sense for all of them to see the body. Also, you can see that’s not a flesh or blood spell, since they don’t use any material to lock onto the person, meaning it’s all mental. If Rayla had killed Callum, it might have actually worked since she believed that he was Ezran.

There’s the scene where Ezran falls through the ice. She uses her band as a reason he’s still alive. He is, but that’s not the reason is doesn’t fall off.

Rayla doesn’t see Ezran’s body, so a small part of her hopes that he’s still alive, never completing the requirements for the band to turn red. And if she honestly believed he was dead then she wouldn’t have stopped to look for a reason that Ezran was alive.

You might think that her hand turning purple and hurting is proof, except it’s not. The band is telling her brain that her arm is getting weaker, so it does. It changes color because that’s how it’s supposed to look when you don’t kill the person you were hired to kill. The band never grows any tighter, just the illusion and pain increases as time goes on.

But despite growing worse by the day, there’s never a “What’s happening to your hand!?” moment, even though the bruising is clearly noticeable. But watching the scene where they’re on ice, you can see her reflection that the bruises on her hand just aren’t there. It’s a hint that it’s an illusion.

Then after Zym pulls off the wristband, her hand instantly returns to its regular color, which further confirms that this was in fact an illusion.

We do get a snide comment from Viren when he has Runaan prisoner, but he has to take in the arm twice and then squint before he realizes that there’s something up with it. Also, if you’re this far, you already know that Viren has spells that can see illusions from my previous points, so it isn’t a surprise that he takes the time to comment on it.

And if you’re wondering about Runaan and the mirror, we, the audience, never see his reflection ourselves. All times we look in, we’re looking in as or with Runaan, so it’s always through his perspective, which is why we can’t see through the illusion.

Finally, the reason why Zym can pull the band off and she can’t even cut it? Because the illusion never told him that he couldn’t. So it comes off fairly easily when he decides to tug on it. In fact, Zym is the only one we see other than Rayla attempt to remove it since Callum and Ezran trust Rayla at her word that it can’t be cut by regular means.

So, in conclusion, Harrow isn’t dead and I really hope that was able to prove it. Also, thanks to @cheritsundere again for the hq pics. And if you liked this meta, please check out my other metas!

#the dragon prince #harrow tdp #viren tdp #runaan tdp #meta tdp #my metas #tdp spoilers #long post #alex posts

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mychemicalimagines · 6 years

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The Walking Marauders (1) Remus Lupin

No Magic. As soon as the dead starting walking, Melissa Potter just wanted to find her family. After waking up from a coma she finds herself in the world of the undead. She goes into the city and finds Remus Lupin. How will they go on in this world? Will they fight together or fight each other?? Please read everything before the cut below.

As stated before this is a Walking Dead AU. I’m basic going the way the tv show did. A few things will definitely be different like Just putting in the Marauders instead of the Grimes and co. I will keep some people from the Walking Dead to have more people in the story. You don’t have to watch the show to read this. Characters from Harry Potter will be completely different then they are in the series and other fics written about them. The Marauders did not meet while in school. They become best friends from being in the apocalypse. THE WALKING DEAD AND HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS AND EPISODES DO NOT BELONG TO ME. If no one likes this series after reading the first couple chapters I can write the other concept you have voted for. If people do like this I will continue to write. Please comment and let me know what you think. If i get no feed back I will not continue.

Taglist: @itshelaodinsdottirbitch @iluvharrypotter172 @rosesarestriped

Series Warnings: Cussing, violence, blood. Slow Burn Romance

If you would love to be tagged comment, message me, or submit an ask. I’m sorry if you asked before hand to be tagged, I kept thinking about how to write this. Please just ask again. Submit some gifs of “Remus” if you want to see certain ones featured in this series. If you ever have any questions about the series please message me. I will not allow my readers to be confused in anyway. You also can message me with any ideas you have.

I look around an empty room. Confused of what has happened and how long I’ve been here. The last thing I remember was doing my job. I’m a Sheriffs Deputy for the Hogwarts County Police Department and my partner Sirius Black and I were chasing down a couple of men who robbed a bank.

Flash Back

I look over at my partner Sirius as he tries to make a funny joke to cheer me up. “Two Hungarian Horntails walk into a pub. The first one says, “Sure is hot in here.” The second one snaps back, “Shut your mouth!” He says laughing to himself. I giggle quietly and say, “Sirius, that’s it. You’re not allowed to watch anymore of those stupid dragon movies.” “I’m sorry darling,” He smiles looking over at me, “I’m just trying to take your mind off whats his face.” “His name was Serverus and Its okay. We broke up officially last night. He was way into his science projects. He’s trying to make a medication that will make sure you can never tell a lie. We all know that will never happen.” I sigh to myself looking out the window. “How long were you guys together?” Sirius asks taking a bite out of his burger. “We were together for about 9 and half months.” I say grabbing a french fry. “You know I have this friend-” He goes to say. “No you are not setting me up again. Last time you did that-” I go to say but the radio cuts me off. “All available units, high speed pursuit in progress Hogwarts County units request local assistance. Highway 18 south GTAAD W217 243. Proceed with extreme caution. Suspects are two male Caucasians. Be advised. They have fired on police officers. One officer is wounded.” The radio transmits. I put my car in drive and I turn the car around quickly as Sirius throws the trash in a garbage can as I turn. “Unit 1 is now on route,” Sirius says as we drive on the highway toward the car in questioned. As soon as we get far down the road the guys are driving on we get out of the car and put down barbed wire so it will pop their tires. We drive a little bit down and open the doors to hide behind. Sirius and I look at each other and nod. I grab my Colt Python and he grabs his shot gun and we stand waiting there for the car to drive down. 3 minutes later we see the car speeding toward us. They did as suspected and drive right over the barbed wire and their tire pops and they swerve off the road and flip down the side of the road. I walk around my car and walk slowly toward them. They climb out of the car and start shooting at us. We shoot back and the driver falls down due to a shot from me and Sirius takes care of the passenger.I turn to Sirius and smile. “Why does everyone always think we can never hand-” What Sirius and I did not see was a 3rd passenger in the car. He climbed out and sees Sirius and I talking. He grabbed his shotgun and shots me in the back, under my arm. The bullet went side ways and came out the front of my chest. Right where my bullet proof vest is not covering me. Sirius grabs his gun and shoots the man in the chest once and the man falls. Sirius calls for an ambulance and puts pressure on my chest. I don’t hear a word he is saying but I know he is talking. My eyes get blurry and I lose consciousnesses.

Flash Back Over

I look around the room once again and I can tell I’m in a hospital room that hasn’t been taken care of in a long time. “Hello?” I try to call out but my throat is too dry. “Hello,” I try again. Nothing. I stand up but fall straight down to the floor. So I have been here awhile if my legs aren’t working. I use the bed to help myself up and I look down at myself. I’m wearing a sweat old hospital gown and some underwear I don’t think are mine. I walk slowly into the hallway. There lights hanging off the ceiling and blood all over the walls. I start walking slowly down the hall and look around. Bodies, everywhere. Some half gone, some torn apart. I reach the end of the hall when I see double doors. They are locked with a huge padlock and chains. It says Don’t Open Dead Inside. Something happened while I was asleep. I had to have been asleep. How long was I asleep. I find an exit and walk outside. All I see is bodies in tarps and in trucks. I walk slowly up a hill until I find a car. I look for keys and try to start it. It starts right up and I drive straight to my house and I open up the door and there is a gun right in my face. “Whoa,” I say. “What is going on?” “Is that a bite?” He snaps. “What are you talking about?” I ask “You’re wound. Is it a bite?” The man asks again. “No I was shot. What do you mean a bite?” I ask. He puts the gun down and looks at me, “Gunshot?” “Yes. Now let me in. This is my house.” I glare at him. He turns and looks at a picture of me and my twin brother on my wall. He backs up and I walk straight inside and he closes the door. “You have no idea whats going on do you?” He asks. “No. I woke up in the hospital this morning.” I say sitting down on my couch. He explains everything. People coming back from the dead and eating other people. He calls them walkers. A Little boy runs up to us. “Dad, who is this?” He asks looking at me. “This is the woman who owns this house.” He looks at me. “My names Melissa.” I say, “Whats your name?” “Neville!” He says smiling at me. “I’m Frank my wife Alice is upstairs, sleeping. She takes the night shift watching out for walkers.” Frank says sitting down putting his gun on the counter. We talk all night until Neville looks at me, “What did you do before all this Miss Melissa?” “I was a Sheriffs Deputy. I caught bad guys.” I smile at him “I found some of your uniforms upstairs,” Frank says. “I thought it was for the male in the pictures.” “No thats my brother James. He was a teacher in the next town over. I gotta find him and his family.” I say. “Tomorrow, I’ll take you and your family to the police station. They usually have guns hidden in the place.” The next day that’s what we did. The station has its own pilot light so we all took a hot shower. I also gave them some guns that were here so they could defend themselves. I’m wearing one of my uniforms. Hopefully someone notices it and believes me. I look at Frank, Alice and Neville. “Thank you for all of your help. Maybe we’ll see each other again.” I put my hand out to Frank. “Maybe. Remember go for the brain” He smiles and shakes my hand. I wave to the others and I get into my police car that was parked at the station and I drive toward the city. Hours later, I run out of gas so I have to walk. I grab the bag of guns I grabbed from the station and walk. I find a horse at someones house. I turn when i hear growling behind me. An older gentlemen is limping toward me, bloody and has the white glazed over eyes. Yep walker. I see a baseball bat in the yard and I grab it. I walk toward the walker. “Sorry sir,” I swing the bat as hard as I can and hit him right in the head. He falls to the ground with a thud but he growls a bit more and tries to crawl. I swing the bat down crack him in the head once again. That killed it. I turn toward the horse and walk toward him. He tries to get away but I start petting his head. “It’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” I whisper petting him. He realizes I’m not a walker and I put his saddle on him and I climb on. The horse and I walk for another couple hours until we get to the city. Its quiet and I look around. We walk further down and go to make a left turn but there is at least a hundred walkers standing there. The horse nays and jumps up and turns. All the walks turn toward us and start walking. They smell and hear us. The horse runs back the way we came from. We get down the road but another group get in front of us and the horse jumps up again and I fall off. “No!” I say landing on the ground. I look around for some cover. I see a tank and I crawl toward it making sure I have my bag of guns. I get under it. Walks follow me and tries to grab me but I kick them in the face. I look up and see a hatch. I open it and climb in. I close the hatch and I sit next to a dead man. Well I think hes dead. I see a grenade in hand and I reach for it. The man opens his eyes and looks toward me and growls. I pull my gun out and put it under his chin and shoots. The sound disorients me and I can’t think. I hold my head. Ow. Very very bad idea. After a few minutes it goes away and I sit in the tank. What am i going to do? I need to get out of here but not with all them walks out there. Suddenly I hear a voice over the radio. “Hey dumbass. Yeah you. In the tank. You cozy in there?” The voice asks. I crawl over to the radio, “Hello?” “You cozy, or would you like to get out. I can help you.” He says. “Please help. I need out of here.” I plead. “I’ll help you but you have to hurry. Most of the walkers at having a feeding frenzy at the horse. Go out the top and go left. There’s less walkers there. I’ll cover you from where I’m at. Theres an ally as soon as you get off. Go down it and theres a fire escape there. I’ll meet you there! Hurry.” He says quickly. I drop the radio and I grab the bag of guns and I open the top hatch. I crawl to the left like he says and I run. I don’t stop until I almost run into a man. “Not dead! Not dead! Whoa. You’re female. Forget it. Follow me.” He climbs the ladder and I follow behind him. We get to the roof and he turns to me. “What were you thinking coming into town on a horse?” He asks. “I’ve been in a coma for months apparently. I was told to come into the city because the man didn’t know if it was over run yet.” I say out of breath. “Well you were smart not to use your gun,” He says. “I’m Remus.” “Melissa. Nice to meet you.” I put my hand out. He shakes it and we catch our breaths from the running. I take a look at him. Wow he is very handsome. Maybe he will help me find my family. “Come on I’ll introduce you to some of my group.” He says nodding toward a door. “Thank you.” I say following him. He walk down a hallway until we see a couple people. A woman turns and sees us. “Remus. Is this the dumbass who brought the horde over to us,” She asks glaring at me. “Relax Andrea-” I take off my Sheriffs Deputy’s hat and my long hair falls down, “I’m sorry ma’am. I didn’t know the city was full of them. I’ve been in a coma for awhile and Just woke up yesterday.” Her eyes get wide when she sees I’m a woman and a Sheriffs Deputy. “Are you really a cop?” She asks. “Yes ma’am. Over in Hogwarts County.” I admit. “You lead the walkers right to our vehicle!” She snaps. “i’m sorry.” I say looking away. “Andrea stop. Well figure out a way out of this.” Remus says to her. She rolls her eyes and walks away from me. I look out the door. “Wait. Someone told me that the walkers can’t tell the difference between us but our smell right?” I say “I guess so. They smell dead, we don’t” Remus says confused a little bit. I walk straight to the back door Remus and I were near. I grab a hatchet from the ground and I walk out the door. “Where are you going?” Remus whispers after me. I see a couple walkers and I bring the hatchet it down on one of there heads. He falls dead. I turn to Remus. “We gotta make it so they can’t smell us,” I smirk at him. All his friends run out to us. “We have a problem. Theres walkers everywhere near the car and the front door. They’re close to breaking in.” Andrea says toward us. “Do we have any ponchos or tarps?” I ask kneeling down next to the dead walker. “Yeah here.” A man says handing me some ponchos that were in his bag. “Remus wanna help me?” I ask holding out a poncho. “Oh god. You’re not doing what I think what you’re doing.” he says as i put the poncho on. “Yep.” I say swinging the hatchet up and back down onto the walkers chest. Blood flies everywhere. Remus gags a little but puts the poncho on. We cover ourselves in the blood and guts as everyone gives us weird looks. I turn to Andrea. “Get everyone to the door toward the other side of the building. We’ll get the van over there.” I say standing up putting my hat back on. I hand the gentleman my bag of guns. It fully closed so they don’t know whats in it. “Who put you in charge?” She asks. “Me when I came up with a plan and you didn’t” I say and i look at Remus. “Ready?” He nods and we walk down the ally way, passing a bunch of walkers slowly. Walkers look at us and keep walking. Remus smiles over at me and we make it to the van. Remus gets in the drivers seat after taking off his poncho. I take mine off and I get in the back. Remus drives over to the ally I talked about and everyone gets in. We start driving past walkers making it our safe. “Thanks for helping us back there. I’m Arthur.” the gentlemen from before says putting his hand out. “Melissa. Nice to meet you” I say shaking his hand. He hands me my bag back and there was also one more female and male with them. Theres Jackie and Michael. Another hour later we will up to a camp sight in the mountains and everyone but me gets out. I sigh to myself. I have to find my family. I hear Arthur talking to someone and then I hear, “Walker Girl. Come on out.” I step out of the van and walk forward. “This is my wife, Molly. Molly this is-” “Aunt Mel!!” I hear someone yell. I turn and I see Harry run toward me. “Harry” I whisper and kneel. He runs straight into my arms and I fall backward holding him. “I was searching everywhere for you,” I whisper. “I missed you!” He whispers back. I stand up with him in my arms. I look up and see James and Lily looking toward me with shocked looks on their faces. I put Harry down and I run toward them. “James!” I yell. “Mel!” He yells. I jump into his arms. I wrap my legs and arms around him. I’m finally with my brother. He hugs me tightly to him. I drop my legs to the ground pulling from the hug. “I can’t believe you’re here.” He whispers. I wipe my eyes not realizing I was crying. This was the longest I’ve been away from my Twin brother. We were always side by side. The longest we were apart was when he had his honeymoon. I turn to Lily and smile. “Hey Lil.” She smiles and wipes her eyes. “Move James. Its my turn,” She lightly pushes him and hugs me. We pull away from the hug and giggle. I turn around and look for Remus. He’s watching us with a smile on his face. “Thank you,” I mouth. All he does is smile at me. I turn back to my family and I look down at Harry and smile. I found them.

Thank you for reading. Like I said above please comment or message me letting me know what you think. If no one likes it, I won’t continue to write it. I can write the other concept.

#remus lupin #remus lupin imagine #remus lupin x reader #remus lupin x you #remus lupin x oc #harry potter imagine #the walking dead imagine #walking dead au

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bat-besties · 6 years

Text

On Impossibility - 6

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9

A popular!Logan and loser!Roman high school AU based on @2pointomg’s idea with eventual Prinxiety.

impossible

ɪmˈpɒsɪb(ə)l

adjective

· not able to occur, exist, or be done.

Eg. It is impossible to fund both the sports and drama programmes with the school’s limited budget.

· very difficult to deal with.

Eg. The situation which Logan Sanders, Student Body President, is in after he convinced the school board to cut the unsuccessful drama programmes is impossible.

· (of a person) very unreasonable.

Eg. Roman Prince.

To Roman, nothing is impossible. Not following his older brother Patton to acting college, not being a loser taking on the school’s popular Student Body President and definitely not writing and performing an epic school play with no money and six cast and crew members.

Edited by @alpacasarethegreenestanimal, who has an amazing fanfiction on AO3! If you like superheroes, sarcasm and Virgil angst then you’ll love this

@toolazytothinkofcreativename

@entitydark

@romanasanders

@barclays-sides

@cashmeredragon

@jughead-is-canonically-aroace

@immacrazyfangirl

@narniasfinestavengingsociopath

@featuredfander

@what-a-catch-joe

@mightaswellenthuseaboutbooks

@candiukas

@whatamessofwords

@zoalis

So close. They were so close.

‘Then this I say, oh noble knight, if you let go of your anger then you could be great. Give up the light – it is so comfortable here in the dark. Vines to hold you close, the canopy to shade you, thorns to protect you. Does the light not burn you?’

Kyle had a blanket cape round his shoulders and was jutting his chin confrontationally towards Roman. His pose was perfect, he knew his lines inside out, and his emphasis was just as Roman had imagined it when writing the speech late at night in his bedroom.

Roman suddenly broke out of character, running his hand through his hair. ‘That was great – really, really. Could we run it again? There’s just – you’ve just got to really feel it.’ Roman hated to be that guy – Kyle had been great, and their priority was to get a feel for the new set and adjust their blocking for the stage. But he had to be perfect. Roman would make him perfect no matter what it took, for although he knew the role was one which stretched his friend he had faith in him to get it right. All through workshopping a boy called Raphael had dominated Ombretto, throwing him into dramatic confrontation with Rosso and drawing him back into introspective monologues. To be honest, it had hurt Roman greatly when Raphael left ‘due to creative differences’ and Kyle had to be pulled from the role of Giallo, but he much preferred his friend’s delivery because he had learnt from Patton the importance of an actor subordinating themselves to the character.

It was six o’clock on a Saturday night and they had been there all day assembling the set, but Kyle ran the lines again - with more feeling. It wasn’t good enough for Roman, but then again hardly anything was. They moved on and he saw Talyn give Kyle encouraging finger guns from the wings. Kyle returned a small smile. Everyone was tired, but Roman had asked them to run through the whole thing again, so they had. While Patton’s entire year would go to the moon and back for him, Roman’s few friends would paint the Kuiper belt rainbow if he asked them to.

They should have gone home and caught up on homework after putting up the set, but the beauty of the set had transported Roman into ecstasies of inspiration, and he doubted Virgil would leave until the building was shut. The boy for once in his life was not scrolling through Tumblr, listening to music or fiddling with his sweater paws. He just sat starry-eyed in the front row of the seating, hunched forward in his over-sized hoody as he tried to hide a grin behind his hands.

The set Virgil had built was amazing. Fate had finally given the theatre troupe a helping hand as Dahlia’s neighbours had spare planks of wood from a loft extension they had not technically forbidden her from taking. Virgil had understood the aesthetic of Talyn’s designs and had decided to play around with the handmade nature of the set. Basically, it looked like the child of a Victorian toy theatre and the illustrations in a book of fairy tales raised by a goth/steampunk in the hedge of thorns from Sleeping Beauty. Or that’s how Virgil had pitched it. Originally there had been a scaffolding tower, but they had to improvise with the tall metal balcony from West Side Story Patton had once sung on so happily.

Virgil was weirdly proud of himself. He tried to be self-deprecating about his set, however he couldn’t help but be happy with it. Logan had always been complimentary about his work, but he did not have a great understanding of art, and Virgil had suspected the positive feedback was a key bullet point in the Word document ‘How to Get Self-doubting Friend to Apply for College.’ In contrast his new friends had very high standards, so a single nice word from Talyn would go around his head for days and days. Roman had been extremely exacting – a picture of the cliff from the Nightmare before Christmas had literally been ripped off Virgil’s mood board because the smoothness of it ‘didn’t fit the vibe, the emotion’ of the play – and now he was playing in the set like a kid in a candy store. Virgil understood it now, Logan and Roman’s drive for perfection. Oh sure, Logan was a textbook perfectionist and Roman was slapdash and confident in his own abilities, but in his own way the actor was just as meticulous about his work. The play – not yet named because there was not something which fit it well enough – was his baby. And while the set was a part of that brainchild it was Virgil’s own – baby was a weird comparison, it was just…he just had lots of feelings about it he hadn’t had for anything else before, OK? The exercise in 3D space was interesting.

At 22:00, a janitor finally came around. He peeked his head into the auditorium, then walked into it fully. Kyle was perched on the balcony, which was festooned with sequinned purple fabric vines, and Roman was kneeling in centre stage entreating him to come down, framed by chaotic brambles the size of tree trunks and twisted metal spider webs throwing bizarre shadows onto the wall behind him, covered with sheer green fabric donated by Mrs Damon. He looked at Virgil, who was entranced by the scene.

‘Hey kid, you part of this?’ he spoke quietly, not wanting to disturb the actors. Virgil looked up at him and nodded with a grin.

‘Good on you, kid. I told you that you shouldn’t use your drawing skills for rude caricatures. And now look at you!’

Virgil was rapidly beginning to lose his sense of mystery and magic. ‘That…that was not me. I told you, and I told the principal that that drawing wasn’t by me.’

The janitor took off his hat and sat next to Virgil in a fatherly manner. ‘If you didn’t draw that cartoon, then why was it on your locker, heh?’

Trying to be absorbed into the tear in the seat covering, Virgil gave the man an exasperated look.

‘Well, I’m here to ask you guys to leave. You need to sleep!’ replied the janitor brightly, completely unfazed by Virgil’s silence. He leaned in even closer to him. ‘How long is there left?’

‘Fif-een min’tes.’ was mumbled from behind a wall of purple hair.

‘Fine. You guys promise to look up, then you can have the time.’

‘Thks.’

‘Careful of that balcony. Bit rickety.’ With that Malcom headed into the hallway again, marvelling at the impact that simple sentence of his had made on that punk kid. Permanent sharpie and Tipp-ex on that locker as well. Sometimes kids just need a bit of self-belief.

Exactly fifteen minutes later, Roman bounded off the stage and thundered up to Virgil. Ignoring the fact that Virgil was putting into practice everything he’d learnt trying to disengage Malcom, he grabbed his hands and pulled him to his feet. ‘A cheer for Virgil!’ he yelled to the others.

There were scattered cheers from the cast and crew as they cleared up. ‘Visionary, visionary!’ shouted Roman, throwing his hands in the air.

Virgil blushed. ‘What does that even mean?’

Roman threw himself down on the gangway, pulling the emo down beside him. ‘One who has unique visions!’

Virgil looked at him sceptically. ‘I’m sure that’s not the exact definition.’

‘We can’t all be the calculator watch, can we?’ The annoyance entering Roman’s voice was jarring.

There was a beat of awkward silence as Virgil refused to forgive Roman or defend Logan.

Brightly, Roman grabbed Virgil’s hand and admired his nail polish. He looked up at Virgil and whispered, ‘Visionary, visionary.’ Over his knuckles.

Virgil recoiled and stood up. ‘What the ever-loving fuck was that?!’

Roman face-palmed. ‘It was meant to be…friendly.’

‘It was really weird! And not friendly! That was not in the realm of friendly!’

Roman rocketed to his feet, ‘Sorry to break it to you Virgil, but just because I’m gay, it doesn’t mean that I’m flirting with every straight guy I talk to!’

‘How is that-? It wasn’t- I didn’t even know that! Anyway, I’m not straight either.’

‘Well, fine. I’m not.’ Roman put his hands on his hips.

‘Fine!’

The two stood angrily staring at each other before dissolving into laughter.

‘How could you think I was straight?’ howled Roman, ‘And you’re not either? Yes!’ he punched the air.

Virgil was bent over, clutching his stomach. ‘I…I didn’t want to assume…’

Dahlia came up the gangway halfway, since the rest of it was blocked by two dorks rolling around on the floor. ‘We’re going to head, if you guys could lock up.’ Breathlessly, Roman waved her on.

Once the two came to they sat up, lounging against the seating.

Roman studiously didn’t look at Virgil as he spoke to him. ‘Your set – I love it.’

‘I know.’ The emo smirked at him, ‘you spent all evening playing in it.’

Roman’s hand shot to his chest as he gasped, ‘PLAYING! How dare you? I was acting!’ he made a point to gesture dramatically to signal his thespian talent. He put his hand down and turned to Virgil. ‘I do, though,’ he said earnestly, ‘it’s beautiful, and dark, and creepy, and fantastical, and better than I could ever have hoped for. We can do this – we can put on this play.’

Virgil’s insides twisted as he looked at the boy across from him, his face desaturated and pupils dilated by the dark. He wasn’t so sure of success. The costumes needed to be big and bold, and that meant lots of fabric and shiny things in elaborate designs. They had asked to use the black fabric which backed the curtain but had unsurprisingly been turned down, and money from rainbow T-shirt sales had covered enough for a dirndl for Margherita bought online and a shimmery brown and green leotard for the malevolent fairy (nicknamed Bob) after the set had been built, but for now the magnificent hoop skirts of the Evil Queen and flowing robe of Ombretto were impossible to realise.

‘Virgil?’

The emo snapped his eyes from Roman’s face. ‘Yeah. Let’s not count on…let’s not give on up this.’ He made eye contact again. ‘I believe in you. Or whatever. Dork.’

Roman smiled to himself a little. ‘And here I was thinking you were some massive edgelord.’

Virgil raised his eyebrows. ‘You saw my Nightmare before Christmas poster.’

‘True.’ Roman grinned, ‘But you were too cool for my Randy Newman impression.’

Virgil giggled. ‘You had a cowboy hat. And a pink plastic radio. And you were fifteen.’

‘I took it seriously! I wanted to be your friend.’ Roman emphasised each word.

‘Well, I wanted you to stop singing before I cringed myself a six-pack.’

They sat in silence for a while, neither wanting to suggest leaving.

‘I don’t know what I’m going to do with my future.’ Virgil’s head was flung back to look at the set, and his voice was soft.

Roman rolled onto his stomach, supporting his head on his hands. ‘What do you want to do?’

‘This.’

Roman put his hand on Virgil’s and smiled at him reassuringly, ‘Then do it. This is good.’

‘I…’ Virgil took a shaky breath. ‘I can’t. I’m not good enough.’

‘Virgil. I have been to four Broadway shows and twenty-three shows in other towns. I watch bootlegs like other kids watch let’s plays. I read about this stuff. I think you could easily design for a smaller show, and once you go to college…Broadway, baby.’

Virgil felt something suspiciously like hope rise to fill his chest. ‘Why would they take someone like me? From a school like this, which isn’t particularly keen on the arts, if you hadn’t noticed.’

‘Virgil – you have Mrs Damon who would write a book about you, let alone a recommendation letter. You’ve got this production, which will make one hell of an essay. The school is academic, and your grades are good. Besides, Patton did it – my older brother.’

‘I guess. But wasn’t he like some genius or something?’

It was Roman’s turn to break eye contact. ‘Yeah, he is. But we don’t need to be scholarship holders like him or anything. Just good enough.’

Virgil sat up, ‘You’re worried about acting school, princey? Big brother in New York and half-a-billion extracurriculars. Please.’

‘No extracurriculars now. But yes, of course I’m worried. I want to go to the same place as Patton, when we went to check it out with him it was…magical. These past few years it’s like he’s living every single dream I have. And I’m happy for him! I am! I’m super proud, but I don’t want to apply and be rejected, and he’ll be super nice about it…you know.’

‘Do your parents compare you a lot?’

‘No, god no.’ Roman shook his head emphatically. ‘They’re incredibly proud of both of us. It’s me. I do. And I know I shouldn’t…’

He broke off and tried to hide the fact that he was crying. The emo scooted closer and awkwardly pulled him into a loose hug, at which point Roman attached himself to Virgil’s hoodie like a baby koala.

‘Aw, jeez. Come on, dude. Don’t make me give a heartfelt speech. Just like, know, that I think you’re - good.’

‘Huh! Yeah, I am pretty good! Thanks for reminding me, J-Delightful.’ Roman pulled himself up and punched Virgil in the shoulder.

‘Alright, dudebro.’

The boy slumped again. ‘Arggggg. Now you think everything is fine!’

‘You do not look like everything is fine.’

‘Well, yeah, no.’

Virgil just wanted to paint and listen to emo music and be left alone. Why the hell was he landed with looking after overachievers?

‘Wanna come to my house tonight? We could watch Disney, or whatever. My parents would be happy I have someone to invite over.’

‘I would love that! I’ll text the old parents…Odin’s eyepatch! It’s eleven already! We’d better hurry!’

That night as Roman was spread-eagled on his bedroom floor, Virgil tried not to think of the lack of money for costumes, but they joined the usual procession of Logan’s eye bags, situations in which his set would collapse and his plan for the future which marched round his head whenever he tried to sleep.

Increasingly old-school Disney songs sung in bass, a voice passionately and loudly delivering lines or unaffectedly and quietly trying to explain ideas had echoed around his darkened bedroom too, but he preferred to not think about that.

#roman sanders #virgil sanders #logan sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #sanders sides au #prinxiety

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luisaaronopez · 6 years

Photo

Angel and company are preparing to battle androids who look exactly like them.

The androids slowly walked to the heroes.

“Um…professor, you don’t really remember me at all. First of all, I have a flower in my hair, and its placed on my right side. You gotta fix that android version of me.” Venus pouts.

“Are you serious loudmouth? That missile is aiming at us and all you care about is the android have one detail different from you? Jeez, you’re worse than blondie over here!” Aki insulted.

“HEY!” Both Angel and Venus shouts.

“Girls, now’s not the time to argue, we must win this.” Angel tells Aki and Venus.

“There you go again, giving us orders like if you’re the leader.” Aki insults Angel again.

“Look Aki, we got you out of prison, and this is how you repay us?” Angel told Aki off.

“Aki, for once listen to Angel.” Mai said to Aki.

“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” Aki screamed like crazy.

Prof.Bolty laughed at this.

“This shouldn’t take long, losing your companions trust is what’s gonna cost this challenge for all of you.”

“G-girls! Please stop arguing!” Jeff yells in panic.

“Tell miss loudmouth to stop whining!” Aki insults Venus.

Venus began to flare something fierce “Call me loudmouth one more time or I’ll…”

“QUIET!” Jeff yells.

Everyone looks at him.

Aki had a surprised look on her face.

“Was that you?” Aki said to Jeff.

“I-I’m s-sorry….” Jeff stuttered.

“Sometimes you surprise me Jeffy dear.” Venus said to Jeff withan endearing smile.

“We are wasting time! We need to think of a way to beat these androids or else we’re doomed.” Thomas said as the androids were really close.

“We can’t simply kick or punch them since these androids are high advanced metal!” Venus whined.

“Actually they’re not quite ‘highly advanced’, we can’t afford such technology. These robots can break easily if something heavy falls on them but I don’t think there is anything heavy here to stop them.” Jeff said as he sounds like he’s giving up.

Angel began to look up. She had an idea.

“I got it.” Angel shouts as she snaps her fingers.

“Ooh, what is it?” Mai asked.

“First, does anyone have walkie talkies?” Angel asked everyone.

Everyone just stared at each other.

Aki then said “I do.”

Angel looked at Aki. “You do?”

“Yes, but on one condition. If you’re gonna be the one leading us, you need to be reliable. I don’t know you that much 'Princess of Whatever Kingdom’. But because that coward has a missile on his side, I’m counting on YOU to be positive that this plan will work. Are you be a reliable person or not?” Aki asked to Angel in a serious tone.

Angel is not sure herself if this plan will work, but since everyones lives are at stake, she says “I am.”

Aki pulled out two walkie talkies and tossed them both to Angel.

Angel caught the walkie talkies and gave one to Venus.

Angel whispered her plan to Venus.

Venus passed the walkie talkie over to Thomas and Angel whispered the plan.

It kept going until it got to Aki.

Now that everyone is onboard with Angel’s plan, she tossed both walkie talkies to Aki again and she puts them away in her vest.

Prof.Bolty was impatient “Enough goofying around, now my androids go for the kill.”

The androids eyes begin to flash red as they ran to the heroes.

The Angel android began to shoot mechanical arrows at Angel. Some of the arrows gave Angel cuts while she’s avoiding them.

The Venus android began to throw flames at Venus. Some got into her hair.

“My hair!! It took me half an hour to make it curly!!” Venus whined as she put the flames out of her hair.

The Thomas android was swinging its sword pretty fast and gave Thomas a few cuts on his elbow and legs as he was trying to avoid its attacks.

The Jeff android was shooting lasers at Jeff. Jeff kept dodging side to side while trying to shoot it himself. The android shot his gun away and Jeff began to scream like a chihuahua.

The Mai android was swinging its katana very fast. Mai couldn’t move very fast, she used her katana to defend herself. But the android was strong enough to make Mai drop her katana.

The Aki android was swinging punches at Aki. Luckily, Aki has good reflexes but the robot began to rapid punch.

“Aw, now you’re just being cheap.” Aki mumbled in anger.

The heroes are getting tired of dodging every one of the androids attacks.

“Ha ha ha ha! I see you’re all still standing. But you’re too pooped to even fight back. Unlike you, my androids are never gonna tire themselves out and will attack anytime they want. And now children, you are now gonna watch helplessly as my missile obliterates you all at once! Ha ha ha ha!”

Everyone was taking deep breaths.

“We’ve failed….” Mai said in sadness.

“This…this is the end of all of us..” Thomas said in a sad tone.

Aki began to yell like crazy again. “No! No! We can’t let him win! We can’t..”

Mai reached out to Aki’s hand.

Angel began to laugh.

Everyone was confused.

“Hey blondie, we’re gonna die and your plan isn’t even in motion so what gives?” Aki shouts.

“We’re not gonna die today.” Angel said with a grin.

“Huh?” Everyone said in confusion.

“What did you say?” Asked the professor.

“Aki! You gotta take a chill pill.” Angel began to insult Aki.

“Hey! What are you…” Venus is wondering what Angel is doing.

The others shushed Venus.

“Hey, I heard that you have a thing for Rudy.” Angel kept insulting Aki.

“SHUSH! SHE’S LYING!” Aki shouts while somewhat shifting her eyes.

“I know that face, you DO like him!” Thomas began to play along.

“Yeah, is it because has no shirt under that jacket?” Venus mocked Aki too.

Aki became so furious that she summoned her gauntlets and slammed the floor with force.

It caused a huge earthquake.

After the tremor, Angel looked up.

Nothing happened.

Angel looked down sadly, she thought her plan would work.

“What was that? You’re just wasting time insulting your allies. Now its time to launch.” Prof.Bolty said as he’ about to press the button until…

The ceiling began to break and collapsed on the androids.

Prof. Bolty screams “What? NO! MY POOR ANDROIDS!!”

The androids were all destroyed by the heavy ceiling.

Everyone celebrated.

Angel looked at Aki and said. “Your temper saved our lives Aki and we’re sorry about the insults.”

Aki said as she was calming herself down “Wow! Your plan actually worked! You’re alright Angel.”

Angel smiled at Aki.

Prof. Bolty was shocked that the heroes destroyed his androids.

His defeat frown became a psychotic grin and shouts “TIME FOR LAUNCH!!”

Everyone gasped.

“See you later fools! FIRE!” The profesor shouts as he launched the missile at the heroes.

“NOOO!” Doll shouts as she’s seeing her friends about to get blown up.

The missile blew up the entire room.

The professor cackled at the heroes demise.

As he looks on, he sees Aaron as a huge dinosaur, shielding the heroes from the explosion.

Aaron transformed back into his human form and glared at the professor.

“Why are you still ALIVE!!?” Prof. Bolty shouts while having a breakdown.

“Your meager missiles have no effect on a immortal like me, but my magic will have effect on YOUR SOUL!” Aaron shouts as he used his magic on the professor.

The professor tried to run away but Aaron’s magic shatters the mans soul and he screams in agony.

Everything went black.

Everyone was on the ground.

As they got up, they are free. They noticed the professor unconscious on the ground.

“Dad!” Jeff shouts as he runs to his father.

“What’s gotten into your dad?” Venus asks.

“His heart was corrupted!” Said a voice.

Everyone turns to Aaron.

“Anybody with a negative side to them will be victims of corruption, just like your dad and Venus.” Aaron said as he looks at Jeff and Venus.

Something clicked in Venus’s head.

“I remember now, you were that man at the beach!” Venus shouts and points at Aaron.

Everyone gasped again.

“You really were under a spell!” Thomas said in fear.

“I know, I couldn’t do anything. This is too scary, my heart is pounding very fast.” Venus whined as she puts her hand on her heart.

“Thank you Aaron again for saving us from that missile.” Mai thanked Aaron.

“And thank you for saving Venus and my dad.” Jeff thanked Aaron too.

“Yes, thank you so much.” Venus agreed.

Aaron just looked at everyone with a stoic expression but a tear came from his eye.

“What’s that on your cheek papa?” Blossom asked.

Aaron just let out a remorseful sigh and walked away.

“What’s his problem? Is he another jerk or he's just grumpy?” Aki asked.

Angel answered “Yes.”

Aki dosen’t know why Angel said that.

Aki began to apologize “I’m sorry about saying those things.”

“Its okay.” Angel tried to reassure Aki.

But Aki continued “Its not okay. I’ve been in Maurice’s dungeon for almost a year and it already damaged me. It’s driving me more mental than juvenile hall ever did. Not everyone deserves to be in prison Angel. It can do real damage to the human mind.”

Everyone looks at Aki with awe.

“But I’m now grateful that you freed me. For that, I will fight by your side.” Aki said as she smiled.

This is the first time anyone has seen her smile.

Mai hugged Aki.

“Now that’s the Aki I love!” Mai said while rubbing her cheek against Aki’s.

“Ok, ok, OK! That’s enough mushy stuff!” Aki said as she slowly pushed Mai away. “Come on everyone, let’s take my dad to the Healing room.” Jeff said as he and Venus carry the professor.

“Wait! Where’s Doll?” Mai panics.

Everyone looked around until they see Doll unconscious on the ground.

The explosion from the missile must’ve destroyed the capsule she was in.

And so Angel and company took Doll and the professor to the Healing Room. How does Aaron know about corruption? That will be in a later story.

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lilacmoon83 · 6 years

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Dreaming Out Loud

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Chapter 53: Roots

David's legs burned in protest, but he ignored it, as he chased George. Fortunately, he was much younger and faster, so it didn't take him long to catch up to the disgraced King. He pulled his gun and cocked it, making the King stop, as they reached the beach.

"Put your hands where I can see them. You're under arrest for murder," David stated, as the King did so and slowly turned to face him.

"You think you've really won, shepherd?" George goaded.

"Good always wins...even if our victories are harder to achieve," David retorted.

"So sure of yourself...so sure that you're good," the former King spat.

"As opposed to you...yes. The people have never come first to you. Power is all you care about," David countered.

"You are such a fool...power is how you get everything in this world...in any world, boy," George spat.

"I tried to barter a deal that would have made my Kingdom prosperous for centuries to come. But you ruined it all and just so you could be with your precious Snow White. Who is really the selfish one here?" George challenged.

"Some saw what I did as selfish, you're right...but I never stopped fighting for the people. And don't act so noble...you wouldn't have lent any of the riches you acquired from Midas to the people. Only the nobles and elite would have benefited from that deal," David argued.

"If that's what you need to tell yourself every night when you lay next to your precious Snow White, then so be it. That doesn't change the fact that you will never be fit to lead anything, let alone this town," the disgraced King spat.

"You're wrong," Snow interjected breathlessly, as she and Red arrived behind him.

"Am I, Princess? Just because you say so?" George goaded.

"No...because of the kind of man my husband is. The opposite of you. You have to use fear and lies to get people to follow you. Such leadership would only lead this town to war and ruin. David leads by example, as a man that gives his all to protect his family and the people of this town. He doesn't need to rally them into a frenzy to get them to follow him," Snow countered, as she looked up at him.

"They follow him, because they see themselves in him. He's a person that cares about others and loves his family. You could have had that. But you chose hate over love and family," Snow implored.

"Love is for children, you foolish little girl. Even your father knew that. He was well known for saying that love makes people do very foolish things. Too bad he did not manage to impart his wisdom to his naive daughter," George hissed.

"As much as it hurts...my father, the man that raised me is no role model. He is not a man I look up to now that I know the truths about the things he did in his past," she admitted, but then smiled.

"Fortunately, my husband is the kind of father that my daughter can and does look up to. This town's protection is in good hands with both of them," she said.

"At the end of the day, despite anything else, you're just a cold blooded murderer that deserves nothing less than to be locked up for the rest of his life," she added. David smirked.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," he agreed, as he holstered his gun and cuffed the old man.

"You think you have won? With Cora and the Queen on the loose?" George challenged.

"Or what about your mother's husband? Do you really think Hades will not come to finish what he tried to do upon the day of your birth, Snow White?" he ranted.

"Shut up," David snapped.

"Yes...your precious wife won't be ruling this town long if he has his way. With the Queen gone, I'm sure the Underworld could use a Princess to lord over them," George growled.

"If you don't shut up...you'll be the one going to the Underworld," David growled back, as they marched him back to town.

"I need to get back to the library. I kind of chained your mother up with magic proof chains. She is probably not happy with me at all," Red stated. Snow winced.

"Probably not...I'll go with you," Snow agreed, as she kissed David tenderly.

"I'm going to lock him up and then I'll meet you at home," he said, as he put George in the patrol car, while Red and Snow set off for the library.

~*~

Emma tried to calm her heart, which was pounding, as they walked back to his apartment building in silence.

"So you're not going to tell me what exactly I need to see? Surprises aren't my favorite thing, you know," Neal mentioned.

"Oh, I'm sorry...did I forget to tell you that I give a damn about your sensitivities?" Emma snapped coldly.

"Damn...okay, maybe I deserve that," he said and then winced, as she looked at him sharply.

"You think?" she growled. He sighed.

"Emma...I told you that I'm sorry. But you know as well as I do that I could have never known that you knew your parents or that you were from there," he replied.

"But you did know after August told you. So what that you hated your Dad. I hated my parents at the time. We still could have found them together," she said.

"It's not the same!" he snapped, as they stopped walking and faced each other.

"The difference is that you really didn't hate your parents. I really do hate my father! Do you have any idea what I went through?" he questioned. She crossed her arms over her chest and cast her gaze downward for a moment.

"There is a book...it has all the stories in it. From everyone in town, so yeah, I read it the first chance I got, cover to cover. So yeah...I'm familiar with the story of Baelfire," she admitted.

"Then you know what happened. He chose all that crap over me! And before I got to this world, I had some pretty unpleasant experiences in others," Neal explained.

"He screwed up! Don't you think he at least deserves a second chance?" she asked and he looked at her in disbelief.

"Are you defending him?" he accused. She sighed.

"No...what he did was messed up! It destroyed my family!" she assured.

"Then why the hell does it sound like you're defending him?" he shouted.

"Because...he helped my Dad," she confessed. Neal rolled his eyes.

"He doesn't help anyone unless there was something in it for him," he stated. Emma sighed.

"You're right, but it went down in a way that I think helped your Dad realize that friends and family might actually do things for you without expecting something in return. That's who my parents are...they help people without expecting to be rewarded for it," Emma explained.

"That's nice for you, Emma, but my Dad isn't like that. If you need his help, then you better expect to pay the price," Neal argued.

"But my father didn't pay a price...that's what I'm trying to tell you," she argued back. He seemed intrigued and nodded his head for her to continue.

"A man named Jefferson, who worked for your father back there was cursed to be awake during the curse. It was his punishment to remember everything and have to watch another family raise his daughter. But that also meant he had time to discover things that Regina was hiding," Emma began.

"Like what?" Neal asked curiously.

"Like the fact she told your father that a woman he fell in love with died, but really she just locked her up in the psych ward," Emma replied. He chuckled and Emma looked at him incredulously.

"Are you laughing at me?" she demanded to know.

"Yeah...because you're crazy if you expect me to believe that my father, Dark One extraordinaire, fell in love," he drawled.

"No...no...I amend that. You've cracked if you expect me to believe someone actually fell in love with him!" Neal added.

"The only thing that's going to be cracked is your teeth if you call me crazy again," she growled, as she started to walk away.

"Okay...I'm sorry, but come on! My father loves power and power only," Neal told her.

"Yeah, I know he loves power, but it's not the only thing he loves. Trust me, based on everything I knew about him before I got to Storybrooke, I would have agreed with you," she said. He shrugged.

"Then what changed that?" Neal asked.

"My father...he gave my father back his real memories when he woke up from the coma and gave him a potion to keep him immune to any false memories Regina would have tried to plant. She planned to give him false memories of being married to someone else to keep my parents apart," she explained, as tears gathered in her eyes.

"He gave me my Dad back...and not just in my dreams. For the first time since you...I wasn't alone," she choked, as a few tears slipped down her cheeks.

"My Mom didn't remember yet, but it didn't matter. She was so lonely and thought she was nothing...a feeling I know all too well. But Dad swept in and became her Prince Charming again," she added. Neal let out a breath.

"And that's great, Emma, but I know him. He got something out of it," he replied.

"He did...he got Belle back. My father helped him get back to the woman he loved, because your father helped him. But it went further than that...they actually became friends," she pleaded. He chuckled.

"My father doesn't have friends and if your Dad actually thinks my father is his friend, then he's an idiot," Neal said.

"Don't call my Dad stupid!" she snapped, taking him aback a bit and he held up his hands in surrender.

"Okay...I'm sorry," he apologized again. But she scoffed.

"You know what...I'm starting to think that you don't deserve to know the other thing I have to tell you," she said, as she turned away.

"It will be hard to here, but I'll tell him the truth about what you really are," Emma replied.

"Who are you talking about?" Neal asked in confusion.

"I already told him the truth...thanks to my Mom. I wanted to lie...I wanted to tell him you were some firefighter that died a hero. But nope...I told him the truth and he took it pretty well. Better than me," Emma replied.

"Emma...what the hell are you talking about?" he asked.

"I told him that you sent me to jail. I was honest and said I wasn't completely innocent in the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure all he heard was you sold me out and he was born in prison," she answered. His eyes widened.

"B...born?" he questioned.

"And now...I get to tell him that Baelfire is actually Neal Cassidy and he decided to abandon us again, because he can't get over his daddy issues," Emma spat.

"Emma!" he shouted and she turned back to him.

"What do you mean...by born?" he asked, with bated breath.

"I mean my son...our son," she replied. He was stunned to speechlessness.

"We...we have a son?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yep...but I didn't get to raise him. I was in prison, remember? And I knew that I couldn't give him what he needed when I got out. So I gave him up...and guess who adopted him? None other than Regina Mills," Emma replied.

"The Queen adopted our son?" he asked. She nodded.

"Yep, we share a son with the Evil Queen...so thanks for that," she retorted.

"Emma…" he started to say.

"You know what? I'm done...I don't care anymore. Come, don't come...I'm over it. I'm going back to get my son and we're going home to my parents, because we're a family and it's pretty great," she admitted.

"Once I worked through my anger and hurt with them...things were wonderful, even when we were only together in our dreams. Too bad you're too good to give your Dad the same chance," she said.

"It's not the same!" he insisted again.

"Dammit...your parents are good! They didn't want to give you up, did they?" he asked. She shook her head.

"No...they only did, because of him! Because he wanted to get me back! Never mind that he destroyed countless other lives to do it!" he cried.

"Fine...so what do I tell him?" she asked.

"Oh, I'll tell him to piss off myself...I'm still going with you," he replied. She looked at him in surprise.

"You are?" she asked.

"Emma...I just found out that I have a son. Do you really think I'd do the same thing to him as mine did to me?" he questioned. Her face was a mask of indifference.

"You want me to really believe that it would have changed things if you knew that I was pregnant?" she asked. He shook his head.

"No...I don't. I don't deserve that belief from you right now, but I'm going to earn it," he replied. She actually looked impressed by that, as they started walking again.

~*~

After locking George up in a cell in the basement of the hospital, David headed home and found a quiet loft when he got there with takeout ready. After the three of them enjoyed dinner together, Persephone retired for the evening, leaving Snow and Charming to their own devices. Snow kissed him deeply, moving her lips over his in a passionate rhythm, as her hands busied themselves on the buttons of his shirt.

"Not that I'm complaining...but you're especially feisty tonight," he purred, as her lips were busy on his neck. She smirked at him and pushed a hand to his chest, as he lay back. She straddled him and then leaned over him again.

"What can I say...I can't seem to keep my hands off you, handsome," she purred. He sought her lips at that and kissed her passionately.

"Like I said...no complaints here, my darling," he said in a husky tone. She bit her bottom lip, as she got his shirt off and let her hands roam his bare torso.

"Mmm...then you won't mind if I have my way with you, Prince Charming," she purred, as they melted into each other...

~*~

When Emma and Neal got back to the apartment building, they walked into the lobby.

"You're back!" Henry called, as he ran up and hugged Emma. She smiled and hugged him back, dropping a kiss on top of his head. The boy poked his head out to look at the person that was with her and his expression was brimming with curiosity.

"Are you Baelfire?" he asked. Neal could only stare at him for several beats.

"Uh...yeah, I suppose I am. I don't really go by that name anymore though," he answered when he found his voice.

"What do I call you then?" Henry asked. His eyes darted to Emma, who gave him a curt nod, while not looking very happy at all.

"Well, in this world, I've been going by Neal Cassidy," he replied. Henry looked at him in disbelief and then up at his mother.

"Isn't that the name of…" he started to say, as he trailed off. She nodded.

"Yeah kid...I'm as surprised as you, believe me," she replied.

"So...you're my Dad?" Henry asked, as Rumple took a sharp intake of breath. Neal glanced at him, only to see pure shock on his face. There was some small satisfaction at that. For once, his father had failed miserably to predict the future and thus control it.

"Yeah, it would appear so, kid," he replied.

"Bae…" Rumple interjected, but Neal put his hand up to silence him.

"Firstly, it's Neal...and don't even for a second get the idea that I came back here for you," he said harshly.

"I'm here for him, because now that I know about him, I won't abandon my son like you did yours," Neal hissed, as he turned to Emma.

"It's getting late...I have a guest room for you and the sofa folds out into a bed for him if you want," he told her. Emma sighed and looked at her son, who clearly wanted to know the man before him. So she nodded in acquiescence.

"Henry, go on up to the apartment with Neal. I'll be there in a minute," she assured. He nodded, as he got on the elevator with Neal.

"Emma...you have to talk to him for me," Rumple leaded.

"I have...why do you think I was gone so long?" she countered.

"The only reason I got him here at all was when I told him about Henry. Otherwise, he'd be in the wind again. I tried to get him to give you a second chance. I even told him how you've made friends with my father and found love...but he's not budging," she lamented.

"Rumple...let him cool off a bit and spend some time with Henry. Maybe he'll start to see things differently," Belle suggested.

"And if he doesn't?" Rumple asked brokenly.

"Then you back off...at least he'll be close. He'll be coming home with us now that he knows about Henry," Emma replied and then sighed.

"Look...go back to the hotel and I'll see if I can get him to agree to meet you for breakfast in the morning," she offered. He nodded.

"Thank you," he offered back, as he started to hobble toward the exit.

"Emma...are you okay?" Belle asked. The blonde smiled thinly and blew out a breath.

"Yeah, I guess...it's a lot to take in," she replied. Belle nodded.

"I can't imagine...and I'm here if you want to talk, but I think you might benefit more if you call Snow," she suggested.

"Yeah...it's late," Emma said. Belle squeezed her hand.

"Emma...call your Mother. She won't care what time it is," the brunette replied, as she left. Emma sighed and pulled out her phone. She pressed a button and Mom appeared on the screen, as her phone dialed.

~*~

Regina sighed, as they rummaged through Gold's shop, but turned up empty again.

"We've searched everywhere...the woods, the clock tower, this entire damn town and it's not here!" she complained.

"No...I'm beginning to think it's not anywhere at all," Cora responded.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Are you sure he wouldn't have taken it with him?" Cora asked.

"Sidney said that his phone records show a call to the airlines. He would have never gotten something like that through security and onto an airplane," Regina replied.

"Unless that was a ruse or there was a change of plans," Cora surmised. Regina looked up at her.

"And they decided to drive...he took it with him," she realized. Cora pursed her lips.

"What are we supposed to do now? If he has it with him, we'll never get it away from him now," the former Queen said.

"Patience darling, this is just a minor setback. There are still ways to get what we need," Cora replied.

"We can't kill the Charmings...no matter how much I wish we could. Even if Persephone wasn't standing in the way...Henry would never forgive me," Regina said.

"And we will get the dagger and do away with all of them. Then Henry won't blame you," she assured.

"Then we need to be ready for them before they cross the town line and somehow get the dagger away from Gold. Cora smirked.

"Which shouldn't be too difficult," she responded.

"How do you figure? Even outside Storybrooke, Emma is armed with a gun," Regina warned.

"Because love is weakness, dear. We threaten Rumple's little bookworm and he'll do whatever he must to save her," Cora responded.

"And Emma...she'd do anything to save her parents," Regina realized.

"Yes and fortunately, we have Hook at our disposal as well. If he were to take Henry's grandparents hostage, the boy would still see you as blameless," Cora added. Regina smirked.

"The Captain should be with his ship...but we'll need a diversion for Persephone," she said.

"And I have just the one," Cora replied," as she poofed them to the harbor. But they frowned when they arrived, finding the Jolly Roger to be missing.

"He's gone…" Regina uttered. Cora's face was marred by a deep frown and she clenched her fists. She regretted now not keeping Hook on a tighter leash.

"He's gone to New York...he's gone to skin his Crocodile. He could ruin everything…" she hissed. Regina sighed.

"What now?" her daughter asked.

"The giant I brought along would have been a nice distraction. Fortunately, I have another one that might just drive a wedge between Snow and her mother. It's a start anyway until we figure out what do and what damage Hook might do to our plans," Cora replied. It was a setback for sure, but it only delayed the inevitable as far as she was concerned. And that was her possession of the dagger and the complete destruction of Persephone's entire legacy…

~*~

Snow giggled, as she lay entangled beneath the bedclothes with her husband and he kissed her neck.

"You do know I'm not food, right?" she teased, as her husband seemed intent on nibbling on her all over.

"Yep...you're better. You taste like cinnamon...and vanilla...and Snow…" he purred. She giggled.

"I taste like Snow? What does that even mean?" she asked playfully.

"Mmm...I don't know. You taste like you...and it's heaven," he replied, as his head disappeared beneath the blankets and she gasped, as he made his way down the valley between her breasts.

"David…" she whimpered, as she raked her fingers through his hair, while he busied his skillful mouth on her chest. Snow lost herself in the sensations and writhed beneath her husband's hard body. Gods...this man knew exactly how to bring her unspeakable pleasure. Unfortunately, her phone chose to ring at that moment and she grappled with it on the nightstand.

"Charming...it's Emma…" she warned, as he emerged and spooned her against him, as she answered the phone.

"Hi honey…" she said, as he pressed a kiss to her shoulder.

"Hi Mom...sorry, I know it's late," Emma replied.

"It's never too late for you to call me, sweetheart, ever," Snow assured.

"I found Baelfire," she revealed.

"That's wonderful…" Snow replied, but heard silence on the other end.

"Isn't it?" she asked.

"Uh...yeah, there's just way more to it and I'm kind of freaking out right now," Emma fretted.

"Honey, say the word and your Dad and I will leave for New York right now if you need us to," Snow assured.

"It's tempting, but I don't think there will be much reason to stick around New York much longer. We should be heading home tomorrow," Emma said.

"That's good...does that mean Gold worked things out with his son?" Snow asked, as Charming listened with her.

"No...he wants nothing to do with his father. But that's only half of it. Baelfire...Mom…" Emma started to say.

"It's okay Emma...whatever it is, your Dad and I will be here for you," Snow assured.

"Baelfire is Neal Cassidy…" she blurted out and Snow was silent for a moment, trying to process that statement.

"Neal Cassidy…" she uttered and she saw her husband's face darken at that name.

"Baelfire is Neal Cassidy?" she continued, as her eyes met Charming's and she watched his blue eyes widen.

"Yeah...insane, right?" she fretted.

"A little bit...how did Gold take it?" she asked curiously.

"He was as shocked as me. He and Belle went back to the hotel. We're at Neal's apartment and Henry's getting to know him. He wants nothing to do with Gold, but Neal said he won't abandon Henry now that he knows about him," Emma explained.

"Well, that's noble...so he'll be coming home with you?" Snow asked.

"Yeah I guess...I have no idea what any of this means. I never expected to see him again," Emma replied.

"I know sweetheart, but your Dad and I are going to be here for you, no matter what. And we'll figure all of this out together," Snow promised.

"Thanks Mom...I love. Tell Dad I love him too," Emma said. Snow smiled.

"I will...we love you too, sweetheart. Be safe and call us when you're on your way home," Snow requested, as she hung up the phone and blew out an unsteady breath.

"You realize what this means, right?" she asked him and he gave her a questioning look.

"We share a grandson with Rumpelstiltskin," she said. He blew out a breath too.

"Good thing we're friends now or that might suck," he quipped. She hummed in agreement and chuckled, as he kissed her cheek.

"I will feel so much better when our baby and our grand baby are home," she confessed.

"Me too, my love," he agreed, as they settled down in each other's arms and finally let sleep take them. At least in their dreams, they would see Emma and Henry.

#Snowing #SnowxCharming #Charming family #Swan Believer #Neal Cassidy #Baelfire #Rumpelstiltskin #Belle #Rumbelle #Persephone #greek mythology meets farytales #season 1 retelling #now season 2 retelling #romance #adventure #Swanfire

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fightersagainstnarccistic · 4 years

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Scrutinizing Valkyrie’s Bullshido

Let’s first talk about Randy Packer, who is the founder of Valkyrie and creator of their training curriculum, which is basically like the Scientology version of HEMA.

Randy Packer’s first involvement in HEMA comes from doing rapier classes with Devon Boorman in the SCA, and eventually they started a club in Vancouver, British Columbia together called Academie Duello to teach historical fencing. Eventually Randy decided he wanted to teach HEMA in a different way than Devon did, and so he left Duello to start his own club. He started Nova Spada first and then Scatha Combat Guild, and now Valkyrie.

Devon continued to develop Duello into one of the largest HEMA schools in the world, operating out of a space in downtown Vancouver across from the Gastown district.

Randy did not gain any similar success with his various clubs.

This is all fairly well known information.

What is not seemingly as well known is what exactly Randy wanted to teach and why he was not able to teach that at Duello. And this is very important to understand to put Valkyrie’s current accusations against Duello into proper context.

Randy wanted to start a personality cult around himself that taught bullshido. That is why he left. And now he’s formed one such cult by advertising his school as a “safe space” for vulnerable people, specifically members of the LGBTQ community who may have limited or no prior experience with martial arts and cannot call him out on the dangerous stuff he teaches and believes.

What kind of danger, do you ask?

Let’s talk about what happened in 2008 before Randy left Duello.

Randy decided to have a duel with another Duello student in public with real sharp blades and no protective equipment except sunglasses. So Randy convinced Justin Ring (who is now one of his coaches at Valkyrie today) to participate in a duel with sharp swords where they cut each other for real.

This duel is documented on Justin’s own blog from back then.

https://scienceofdefence.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/duel/

And we’ve documented the entire blog post here in case they try to delete it now but here is a few key quotes from it,

So even as far back as 2008 Randy was able to manipulate a person such as Justin to engage in an extremely dangerous sword fight with him that if any one of them had made just one mistake, could have killed or seriously maimed them.

This is important to take note of. Even that long ago Randy was able to manipulate someone against their own self interest so he could say he had a match with sharp swords using no protective gear. This is toxic narcissism at work, as well as a strong indicator of his mental illness since he put his own life at risk by doing this with Justin.

Now, take note that Justin records the event on his blog as being amazing and positive for him, but was it truly?

Narcissistic manipulators will often use trauma bonding tactics in order to build relationships with other people. And that we believe is precisely what Randy does, and this is an example of one of the ways he recruits his cult members into his sphere of influence; using martial arts as a way to trigger dopamine releases alongside the adrenaline to get people to attach themselves to him.

As quoted from the following article, https://blogs.psychcentral.com/recovering-narcissist/2019/03/narcissists-use-trauma-bonding-and-intermittent-reinforcement-to-get-you-addicted-to-them-why-abuse-survivors-stay/

We’ll talk more about these manipulation tactics the Valkyrie cult uses later. Let’s get back to the specific bullshido they teach as self defense.

You see, Randy does not actually teach HEMA anymore. Actually he feels superior to everybody else in the HEMA community because his art is so much better.

Valkyrie has a reputation in the Vancouver HEMA community that maybe not everyone is as familiar with in the rest of the wider HEMA community. They don’t show some of their more extreme stuff on their YouTube videos however.

Randy has created a cult at Valkyrie that teaches a lot bullshido, some of which is actually aimed at teaching “self defense”courses. Courses that teach things like how to fight gun wielding robbers with knives instead of just running away like a reasonable person.

Swordfighting from a “self-defense or police control tactics point of view”.

Just let that sink in a moment.

This is a neat post here that illustrates some of the rabbit holes Randy goes down in developing his “modern” HEMA inspired self defense stuff,

Sure, Randy, make some kind of magical mathematical equation to prove you can beat a gunman with a sword by being faster than the bullet.

In this blog post from 2014 Randy outlines his updating of historical fencing to make it more relevant for self defense in today’s world,

http://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2014/10/15/leaving-past-behind/

Randy is making a sword based martial art for "future fighters”.And here I’ll bet you thought we were joking about “Scientology of HEMA” thing, didn’t you?

However they have done some of their more extreme bullshido training at events like Vancouver International Sword Symposium. Here is one workshop they did in 2017

https://www.vancouverswordplay.com/changes-to-viss-instructor-lineup/

The key part of this is “differences between fighting in school settings versus fighting on the street” and “part two will apply the same approach to swordsmanship.”

That will be SUPER relevant if you intend to carry your sword around town to defend yourself in case of a possible mugging, right? RIGHT??

Yet what the session actually devolved into was Kaja and Randy trying to teach people how to get angry enough to make themselves trigger the Fight-or-flight response and enter a “hyper aroused state” so they could practice “realistic sword fighting” by swinging at people in limited safety gear as hard as they could. The workshop was deemed so dangerous for participants it was shut down early.

But Valkyrie doesn’t want you to focus on that part of VISS 2017. They just want you to focus on their newly invented accusations against others in attendance at the event who were very critical about their unsafe training methods (i.e. Academie Duello).

They were also allowed to teach a similar workshop at Swordsquatch last year too, which should really surprise nobody given the organizers are heavily under the influence of the Valkyrie cult.

http://boxwrestlefence.com/valkyriewmaa/the-valkyries-are-going-to-swordsquatch/

This type of training is probably one of the biggest bullshido things they teach right now, and despite their claims of it being “safe” it is anything but.

From the workshop page,

http://www.swordsquatch.org/2019fridayworkshops/2019/5/31/the-violence-ladder-a-stress-testing-model-for-realistic-training-kaja-sadowski

Emphasis on the highlighted parts.

Why the hell does anyone need to learn how to fight in a life or death struggle for historical fencing? Well it’s because Valkyrie thinks sword fighting is relevant for modern day self-defense, that is why. So go do some dangerous bullshido with them where people swing wildly at you while pretending to be in “hyper-aroused states”.

You know actual real hyper-arousal is a state people go into automatically during heightened stages of fear. It is triggered by fear. Even if you feel angry, that anger comes from being in a situation that makes you feel like you are not in control and afraid.

This is the exact opposite of what real combat oriented training is. Real combat oriented training teaches you how to calm down and mitigate the effects of hyper-arousal so you don’t have tunnel vision, so you don’t have severe loss of fine motor control and so you breath normally and don’t hyper-ventilate yourself in a couple minutes. To restore your ability to employ some critical decision making.

And yes, while the military and law enforcement do have some training scenarios designed to allow soldiers and police to experience to experience a degree of stress that can invoke hyper-arousal the point of this training is to weed out those who cannot cope with the stress in an even artificial environment. It’s not for them to wildly attack each other with uncontrolled strikes while pretending to be a berserker.

And they market their training courses as self-defense for women, too.

Three people with no law enforcement experience, no military experience and no experience whatsoever using their martial art to fight against people that truly want to kill them, are going to invent their own training course that is “absolutely unmatched by any other self-defense course in Vancouver”.

Yeah, we rather doubt that, considering the source.

The below post below is a fun one.

Amazing. Who would have ever thought that fucking around with gymnastic tumbling exercises could add “20% more power to my punches”? Clearly you are such a gifted coach that you should be training professional boxers. So why don’t you?

Oh, that’s right. The sport of Boxing requires validating your beliefs in a competitive environment where others could destroy them. And you don’t like that, because it would reveal your nonsense is bullshido.

That would be too honest for you though. So naturally you re-frame this to make it sound like you hate competitive tournaments because they aren’t “realistic enough” for your bullshido to work.

He wrote a blog article about this as well,

https://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2017/03/14/balancing-reality-and-fantasy-in-martial-arts-practice/

This is basically Randy bad mouthing competitive environments he knows are stress tests that his art will not be able to survive in, as well as Randy feeling intimidated by martial arts instructors who have far more experience with real combat situations given their professions.

From the bottom of the same blog post,

Like most of Randy’s writings this part is is a’bit incoherent and disconnected from the other things he says but looking closely you can pick out that Randy believes only certain types of martial art techniques work depending on the local community. He also thinks reality based martial arts are a “great avenue” to finding new training ideas he can use in his martial art, which is true we suppose but also somewhat contradicting other things he is saying elsewhere in the same post.

Which is probably why the training program at Valkyrie is such a mess.

Here is a video clip of their instructors screwing around with training knives, going full contact, with no protective equipment at all. One takes a hard shot to the throat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRLfEq1a-T4

They call themselves a “safe space” but engage in very unsafe training behavior like this. People wear a gorget to protect our necks in HEMA for a reason yet you do your classes with little to no protective gear while labeling them as “intense sessions”.

Also they use spinning attacks with weapons, here is one depicting some of their “stick fighting” featuring a spinning attack delivered at close enough range the person could be struck in the back of the head if they tried this against a real person that actually wanted to hurt them

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFx4Nok19_4

You should also note they disable comments on their YouTube videos so nobody can point out their BS.

But here is a clip of what Randy means by his supposedly high intensity workouts that are so much better than everyone else.

youtube

And another,

youtube

Their conditioning program is....unique among martial arts claiming to be focused on reality based combat.

It is described by Justin Ring in his blog,

https://scienceofdefence.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/in-the-middle/

I don’t know about you but Capoeira and break dancing doesn’t really scream “reality based combat conditioning” to us.

The video below showcases some of this “original” unarmed combat fighting style that Randy teaches. A highlight of the video is around 1:17 where Randy starts crawling around on the ground, while reffing, for some reason.

youtube

You should notice how neither student knows how to do anything but try to attack the other. Neither have learned how to form a proper guard or how slip a punch. Their grappling is also unimpressive for something claiming to be “reality based”, and in reality the mounter could have ripped into his opponent’s testicles many times over with his free hand while the other guy attempted to recover after losing control with his guard. Anyway the guy in guard keeps losing control regardless.

It’s also worth noting toward the end of the above video, the students engage in high intensity free play with rapiers without using any protective jackets. This is fairly dangerous, since just as with foil even rapiers blades can snap, and if they break the jagged broken end of the blade from where it snapped can fly and puncture someone with a lot of force. That is why fencing equipment in both Olympic and HEMA fencing uses puncture resistant materials for jackets and pants.

Also in the process of crossing blades, the blades can chip as they clash against one another, creating small jagged edges that can easily cut open the skin. Therefore no exposed skin should be seen during high intensity fighting with any sword.

While some light driling or slow very controlled sparring without jackets on is perfectly okay, free sparring without puncture resistant fencing jackets is not safe.

Yet this high intensity matches without proper gear is something Valkyrie engages in all the time.

Here is more clips of Valkyrie students and coaches engaging in free play with rapiers without using proper protective equipment.

youtube

And if you still had any doubts at all about whether this was intended to be highly competitive sword play, here is a tournament that they hosted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw1H9z599aE

Again, no fencing jackets were used in the tournament for rapier fencing. The only jackets seen were for side sword fencing.

Here is Kaja in an interview with Guy Windsor. At 18:07 minutes into the audio they talk about Valkyrie’s methods and she says safety equipment is a ‘last line of defense’ in her mind, that she doesn’t want students to feel they are relying on safety equipment during training and that “trust” is more important.

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-sword-guy-podcast/id1520556121

Safety equipment is not a “last line of defense”. It’s the first line of defense. When you don’t practice proper safety, irreversible damage can occur. Also this is what happens when people rely heavily on “trust” between students and instructors (which is prone to human error), instead of trusting their safety equipment as a first line of defense.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2018/09/man_stabbed_through_the_eye_by.html

You’ll note she speaks with a lot of pauses and hesitation about what specific equipment they use. This is because she is lying about what she is saying, as anyone who has looked at the videos we shared about on how they actually run high intensity fighting can see for themselves. Kaja is at least consciously aware their training methods are unusual among the wider HEMA community because Valkyrie has been criticized for it in the past.

Again at 24 minutes into the podcast, Kaja talks about people getting concussions because fencing masks aren’t resistant enough. Guy is surprised she is referring to rapier fencing as he assumed at first long sword. The missing context here is because Valkyrie does ‘hyper aroused state’ bullshido they end up using more force than they should even with specialty training rapier blades intended to bend in the thrust, and numerous Valkyrie students -- including Randy himself -- have had concussions from training sessions.

(Also to nitpick, their comparison to boxing gloves is inaccurate, boxing gloves aren’t to prevent concussions but rather to protect the bones of the hand from breaking while reducing chance of inflicting cuts to the face, as well as preventing eye gouging attacks that were common to bare knuckled fighting. Using boxing gloves to justify the fencing mask discussion is a bad comparison and the problem is they use more force than is necessary in training)

It is also interesting how she says she has had “5 or 6″ concussions. If we take her at face value that is a lot of traumatic brain injuries for someone who is not a professional athlete. Just saying.

So let’s contrast this.

Here’s some free play fencing at Academie Duello, with Devon Boorman as one of the fighters.

youtube

So who really is a safer environment between these schools?

Also Kaja participated in a supposed “devil’s advocate” podcast debate with another martial artist, Randy King (ironically a different Randy). Here is a link to the YouTube video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SENFiYSUrYA

While Randy King tries to setup the debate with it just being a “we might not agree with what we are defending” setup, the thing is Kaja is saying things that Vakyrie teaches in order to defend the argument. Statements such as fighting only being 20% about physical ability and so on, is all part of the rabbit hole of stuff Valkyrie teaches.

Here is some additional insight into how Valkyrie’s training program was created.

Justin Ring would leave Duello with Randy to form a few different clubs, and remains among his coaches at Valkyrie.

On Justin’s blog you will also find his account of some of his training with Randy since leaving Duello and the bullshido that Randy was inventing. Here is a key part,

https://scienceofdefence.wordpress.com/tag/scatha-combat-guild/

So basically, despite no prior experience with modern combatives or even law enforcement or military experience, Randy decided to make his own self-defense martial art.

How original.

Now there is nothing wrong with wanting to invent your own martial art, in and of itself. The problem arises in WHY you are doing that.

Firstly, almost everybody who invents a martial art today is doing so because they don’t want to put in the work to get certified in another martial art. That is usually been the situation.

Secondly, if you don’t have any prior experience with REAL COMBAT such as from the military or law enforcement, you probably have no business inventing your own “self defense” oriented fighting style. Because you have no experience validating your art as effective against people actually trying to kill you, for real. Martial arts that teach realistic self defense are based on techniques originally created by people with extensive experience with people trying to kill them for real. These are the kinds taught in modern militaries today.

Randy has no business inventing his own martial art for modern day self-defense. He has no experience with using his skills to protect his life in real life or death situations. He is teaching Bullshido in the very real definition of the word and he been able to fly below the radar because when people look at his school they think it is a HEMA school and don’t look closer at what he actually does and teaches.

Of course, we have more of his public postings that provide insight into this very unique and special brand of bullshido he teaches his cult members at Valkyrie,

If you still had any doubts that Valkyrie under Randy does not teach historical based martial arts and is leeching off the community to teach dangerous ideas and promote unsafe training habits, read this.

http://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2020/05/26/gravitas-and-the-rainbow/

Here is yet another article he wrote about why he believes sword fighting is relevant for modern combatives,

http://boxwrestlefence.com/blog/2016/04/26/modern-ancient-moving-forward-with-historical-martial-arts/

The thing here to point out, that those from outside of the HEMA community may not readily realize is that nobody sane is seriously studying HEMA for real combat in today’s world.

The goal of HEMA is to reconstruct lost martial art traditions for modern day sport purposes.

Trying to make sword fighting relevant to combat scenarios of the present day has nothing to do with HEMA!

The “Old masters” are focused on so extensively because we want to recreate THEIR MARTIAL TRADITIONS as closely as possible as part of the sport. Whether they could be “more effective” with your own inventions is entirely missing the point. This would be like saying Kendo or Olympic Sport Fencing needs to change their rules to be more “realistic” and missing the entire point of why people do these sports.

No sane person studies swordsmanship for self-defense or battlefield combat in the present day. Randy’s ideas and the Valkyrie training program taught by their coaches are very eccentric and not aligned with the rest of the HEMA community.

They are leeching off the HEMA community to promote a cult.

Randy is a narcissistic mentally unstable person driven by a deep need to feel superior to other people. That in itself would not be a terrible thing except he has decided to create a cult around himself that teaches bullshido and then turn his cult upon a rival school he is competing for students against -- a school which actually teaches HEMA, and is consequently FAR MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN HIS SCHOOL.

Academie Duello is a well organized HEMA school that welcomes everyone regardless of race, gender and is very accepting of differences. That is why they are successful.

Valkyrie is a bunch of bullshido and ran by abusive narcissists who try to love bomb and bully people into their cult. That is why they are less successful.

And Randy cannot accept this, and nether can his cult followers, either. So therein is part of their motivation to ruin Duello’s reputation. They cannot compete with them honestly so they will now employ dishonest tactics.

Yet the truth remains.

Duello is a legitimate HEMA school; one of the largest in the world.

And Valkyrie is one of the worst schools that does not even attempt to teach historically based martial arts, but instead leeches off the novelty of the HEMA community to teach Randy’s special brand of bullshido.

In the next article we will show how Valkyrie operates as a cult.

Why Valkyrie is a Cult https://fightersagainstnarccistic.tumblr.com/post/624517817683886080/why-valkyrie-western-martial-arts-in-vancouver

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