#<-i wanted to throw in some weird time travel bullshit like in Tales

[solargeist]

Sobbing I remember the superhero stuff

i wanna try to bring it back one day

change the villain up as a cowboy catgirl with explosives or something

[falling-pages]

Friday Night: Bakugou x Reader

Little one shot for the birthday boy!!

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Summary: Your Friday night becomes upended when you have to tend to an injured Bakugou.

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"And if you’re not careful, one day you’re going to come in with an injury I can’t fix. Where would we be then, huh? What would we do if you didn’t come back?”

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Student Katsuki Bakugou x Student Reader

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Warnings: Language (because it is Bakugou)

Genre: Fluff, Mutual Pining, Enemies to Friends to Lovers

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Having a delirious Bakugou tangled up in your sheets certainly was not how you planned on spending your Friday night.

You had just sat down with some tea and your favorite comic when Aizawa showed up at your dorm, dragging the angry blond by the scruff of his neck. Once you looked through your quirk and determined his injuries nonfatal, the teacher flung him at you and explained that Recovery Girl was on vacation, so, naturally, you got to be the lucky babysitter.

Stupid quirk.

He squirmed, he yelled, he cursed, but you frankly didn’t have enough time for his bullshit. You tried to take it all in stride, focusing on your shaky hands wrapping his sweaty, bloody skin, but you couldn’t stop thinking about how he was shirtless and how hot his breath was as it growled in your ear. He was injured, and you had a job to do--suppressed feelings, annoyed or otherwise, had no place here.

You knew better than to disobey Aizawa, so, despite how scary and angry Bakugou was, you followed orders.

“Stop staring at me and heal me,” Bakugou snapped.

You glared at him as you rubbed the hydrogen peroxide on a cotton ball. “That’s how my quirk works, idiot. I can’t just touch a cut and heal it.”

“Then why did Aizawa bring me to you?”

The hiss of pain escaping his mouth as you pressed the alcohol into his gash--technically harder than necessary--made revenge sweet. “Because I’m the only student with some sort of healing quirk. Stay still.”

For once he actually obeyed. You blinked, activating your power to look within him. It wasn’t x-ray vision exactly, but you could see how his health progressed, how deep his injuries went and if there were any broken bones. You watched his heart pump, saw white blood cells travel up through his blood to aid his bleeding wounds. Internally, he was fine. Externally...he was a piece of work.

“Okay. You have no broken bones, and your internals are fine.” You switch back to normal vision, trailing your eyes up to his face. “But you have a fever, so you need to stay here for the night.”

You would have thought you just destroyed his most prized possession by the way he thrashed. “No way! I’m not wasting my Friday night sleeping in some extra’s dorm!”

“Hey! You think this is how I want my night to go?” You gather up your supplies, satisfied that he was finally bundled up enough that he wouldn’t tear open any wounds. Nothing was deep enough to require stitches, but part of you wanted to jab him with a needle just so he would shut up. “Stop moving! You’ll bleed on my sheets.”

“You can’t keep me here!” he roared.

“Don’t make me call Kiri.”

That caught Bakugou’s attention. Sure, he was much stronger than you, but no one could outlift the Human Brick Wall. Not only would he trap Bakugou in place, but he would talk, too, annoying him with anecdotes and Crimson Riot tales all night. On second thought, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Maybe you could get a decent night’s sleep.

“You have no right to complain.” You snip the last bit of bandage with scissors. “At least you can sleep. I’ll be up all night tending to your fever, so you owe me big time.”

Bakugou growled lightly. What was with this guy and his weird obsessive growling? “You don’t need to take care of me. I’m fine. I’m not some damn infant.”

That’s it. All the years of healing him and listening to him rant snapped something in you, making you squeeze the cloth too tightly around his leg. You had worked on him more than anyone else, except maybe Deku, but at least he didn’t go flinging himself head-long into battles and fights without a back-up plan.

“You really don’t get it, do you?” you yelled over his howls of pain, fingers clenched against the bandage cutting into his skin. “All the work I do, healing you every time you have a scrape, all the training you accomplish--you just throw it away, you throw away Aizawa-sensei’s wisdom and directions because of your stupid pride!” Frustrated tears gather in your eyes. “You don’t appreciate any of it! You do what you want, because ‘I’m Bakugou fucking Katsuki, no one can defeat me,’ and I’m so, so upset that we need you. God, we need you so fucking much, because you are the most powerful student UA has ever seen, and you’ll be the Number One hero one day and--”

Blood tickled your palms, and you looked down through misty vision to see your nails digging into your own flesh. Your throat burned from the snarled tones you needed to mimic his raspy voice. “And we need you so much, Bakugou, and I hate that it inflates your ego, but we do. And if you’re not careful, one day you’re going to come in with an injury I can’t fix. Where would we be then, huh? What would we do if you didn’t come back?”

It was morbid, sure, but the truth had been burning inside you so long, buried beneath thoughts and feelings you’d die before articulating, that you needed to tell him. He needed to know that it wasn’t just him out in this fight--he wasn’t alone, and, dammit, as much as you tried to avoid it, you had gotten attached.

You meant to make it sound like you were worried for the future of the nation if he died, but your tears gave away the fact that you’d be a wreck if, one day, he came back with a wound you couldn’t cure.

“I’ve never heard you curse before.”

You sniffled, looking at the boy reclining in your bed. A smirk arched against his bruised face. The shoddy lamplight pervaded your otherwise dark room, forcing shadows in a patchwork across his body. Even in the silence, you could feel the warmth radiating out of his red eyes as they scanned you.

It was an unfamiliar warmth, not like his fire, not like the heat within his hands. It was softer, likeable. An arrogant compassion.

“You bring out the worst in me,” you whisper, cracking half a smile to match his.

He snorted. “Maybe if you didn’t annoy me so much, I wouldn’t be such a bad influence.” His words had no malice, and in the silence, you felt something crackle.

For a few moments, you both just sat there in the lamplight, ignoring the feeling stirring in your chests and listening to the air conditioning. Gathering your supplies busied your hands so you didn’t have to think about what you were feeling, and the boy focused on the dull pain rattling through his body to sidestep the rush of attraction centered in his mind.

Bakugou ran his hands through his pale spikes of blond hair, took a deep breath, and whispered, “Thank you.”

Whether he meant for you to hear or not, you don’t know. You had just returned from putting away your medical kit when you heard him, the words leaving you rooted in the doorway, midway through dusting your hands. He should have seen that coming--his voice wasn’t exactly made for whispering, after all--but your eyes froze wide open.

“What?”

Bakugou frowned. “Don’t make me repeat it.”

You noticed his flushed face and licked your lips, intending to savor the moment you made the Bakugou Katsuki blush. “You’re welcome.”

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[fanfoolishness]

in the long night (Hawke x Varric)

Written for @oneshallop and also up on AO3.  They requested Hawke and Varric on the Deep Roads expedition with some early hints of pining.  I hope it fits the bill!  2836 words, Hawke, Varric, Act 1 of DA2.

***

It was dark.

Varric almost roared with laughter at the thought.  Of course it was dark.  It was the Deep fucking Roads, wasn’t it?  

Sure, maybe in old dwarven tales these tunnels were supposed to be awash with red-gold, welcoming light, but every kid in Hightown’s dwarven quarter knew the Deep Roads had been overrun centuries ago.  There were still some intact corridors here and there where you could see the magma channels lighting the way as they’d been intended… but there were far more lonely and dangerous areas, where the magma had long ago been freed in cave-ins and cooled into just another kind of rock. Those corridors sat empty in the long-forgotten dark.

The thing was, though, it wasn’t pitch black, at least not where they’d set up camp for the night.  They had the torches and the campfire made of magelight to thank for that.  The orange-yellow of torchlight, the blue-white of mage-fire, they cast deep and disturbing shadows in the dark.  It disquieted him.  He almost wondered if it wouldn’t be better to let the lights go out, except that was complete crazy talk.

He hunkered down, trying to find a comfortable way to sit.  He could sit on this broken lump of rock, but then there was no back support.  Sit on the ground and that would take care of his back, but then his ass would start aching.  He decided on the floor, groaning under his breath.  

This lead of Bartrand’s better pan out , he thought sourly.  He cast a glance over his shoulder, where Bartrand and his crew had taken over most of the lower level.  Their torches lit the place up a little more, but the murmuring echoes of the mercs he’d hired were weird and distorted in the high open ceilings.  He tried to ignore the sound and the way it made his spine tingle.

A rustle at his side.  He nearly reached a hand toward Bianca, but this sound was familiar, somehow.  Safe.  He followed it to the source and saw the elder Hawke slipping out of her tent to tend to the fire, her hair mussed, her robes rumpled.  

“Trouble sleeping?” Varric asked.

A startled look crossed her face, followed by a shrug once she realized it was only him.  Shadows pooled along her cheekbones, dark semicircles cupping her keen eyes.  “I could ask the same of you.  Isn’t your bigshot brother paying for extra guards?  No need to keep watch, I thought.”

Varric chuckled, letting discomfiting thoughts about the long tunneling dark fade away.  This was a good distraction.  “You really think Bartrand managed to convince quality muscle to come along with us?  Oh, Hawke, he talks a big game, but I wouldn’t trust him farther than I can throw him.”

Her eyebrows leapt up somewhere in the vicinity of her hairline.  “You do realize this doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the expedition.  Or in the Tethras name.”

Varric waved her protestation away.  “Bartrand not having an ounce of charm in his body is his problem.  I, fortunately, do not suffer from the same issue.  Ergo, I was able to find some decent people for this thing.  Such as yourself, partner.”

She let out one of those sharp-edged laughs he was beginning to know well.  “You do have quite the silver tongue, dwarf, I’ll give you that.”  She bent over the fire, concentrating.  It flared up before her, dancing bright blue-white against the shadows.

“Thanks,” said Varric.  

“I can’t stand it being so dark down here in the lower levels,” she said, leaning against a chunk of paving stone that had been torn from the main floor.  “It’s unnatural.”  Then she glanced at him.  “Er, I mean, for humans,” she said clumsily.

Varric held up his hands.  “Believe you me, Hawke, I’ll moan and complain about the Deep Roads as much as any human.  Dwarves get some things right, sure -- they know what they’re doing when it comes to smithing and bullshitting -- but living underground forever, it’ll never play right for me.”

“You were born on the surface, then?” Hawke asked curiously.  

“Born and raised,” said Varric.  “Family had a nasty fall from grace in Orzammar when Bartrand was a little kid.  They were forced to run from their fuckups down here up to the surface.  My dad died not long after I was born, and my mother never recovered from the move.  Not sure if Bartrand ever did, either.”  He gazed into the fire.  Silver-white sparks leapt from its flames.

“Oh,” said Hawke, first looking taken aback, then her face softening.  “I’m sorry -- I didn’t realize.”  She could be startlingly empathetic when she wanted to be, he’d noticed.

She sighed, shaking her head.  “Family.  Dreadfully inconvenient, aren’t they?”  Then again, she was just as likely to laugh the big stuff away, just another joke.  He liked that about her.  Liked it in himself, too.

He chuckled.  “You realize Carver is literally five feet away, right?”

She glanced over at her sleeping brother.  He’d said he felt claustrophobic, setting up a tent in a closed tunnel, and had instead opted to sleep out in the open.  She watched his chest rise and fall for a few beats.

“Carver’s different,” she said, “despite the way we fight.  It’s our fighting, right?  That’s the important bit.”  She flashed Varric a too-tight grin.

Varric thought of Bartrand, all family name and getting ahead, all Brother, you have to take this seriously or they’ll eat you alive.   He thought of just how often he’d been an absolute shit of a little brother, and how much Bartrand had really deserved it (completely, most of the time).

“There’s something to that, I suppose,” he said cautiously.  “But Bartrand really is an ass.”

“So’s Carver,” Hawke laughed in that bright, airy way of hers.  For a moment, though, her face slipped into genuine fondness. “That’s part of his charm.”

Varric snorted.  “That’s one word for it.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” said Hawke in mock-offended tones.  “As the eldest sibling, I’m the only one permitted to say such dreadful things about my own brother.  Which I have before, and which I’ll do again, thank you very much.”

Varric shifted positions, sitting up on top of his chunk of rock, seeing if that would help his aching back.  Eh.  Not much difference.  

A thought struck him, one he knew he shouldn’t say.  You never talk about the other twin that way.   But that was something private, wasn’t it, something he’d only gleaned from weeks of dropped references in casual conversation with the Hawke siblings.  At first he’d wondered if Bethany was a cousin back in Fereldan; a distant relative long-forgotten.  It’d taken an overheard conversation between Hawke and her mother for Varric to figure it out, and an aside with Aveline, plied with more than a little ale, to confirm it..  

He stuffed the information back down, watching the firelight flicker in her eyes.  If she wanted to tell him about Bethany, she’d do it, and it didn’t gain him any advantage anyway, knowing the blow she and Carver had suffered.  He held his tongue.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she observed.  “You never did say what you were doing out here.  Something nefarious, I’m certain.”

“Oh, you know me,” said Varric loftily.  “I’m just here for the scenery.”

Hawke giggled, loudly enough that Carter grumbled and rolled over before lapsing into a loud snore.  She stifled her laugh, just barely.

“Ah, yes.  Creepy empty caverns, moldering ruins, the endless dark.  You really know how to show a girl a good time,” she teased.

He shivered.  Or was he blushing?  He wasn’t sure.  Something squirmed in the pit of his stomach.

“Where better than the ass end of Thedas for a little romance?” he asked, in a voice that felt a good deal less smooth than he’d meant it.

Hawke wiped a tear away.  “This is why I like traveling with you.  You’re right.  If Bartrand had been doing the talking, Carver and I would never have thrown in our lot with you.”  She let out a long breath.  “Ah, thanks for that.  I’ve been feeling rather uneasy down here, to be honest.  A good laugh’s a bit of a relief.”

“Varric Tethras, at your service,” he said cheerfully.  Funny, though, that little bit of disappointment threading through his words.  Why was he thinking of Bianca now?  He shook his head.  “Well, Hawke, you’re not the only one with the creeps down here.  I thought maybe keeping an eye on camp would make things feel more normal, but turns out the place is damn spooky no matter where you sit.”

She nodded.  “I could see my fire fading through the gap in the front of my tent.  Didn’t feel right to let it go out.  So I’m keeping an eye on it, for now at least.”

“Seems like you’re getting better at them to me,” said Varric.  He didn’t know much about magic, but he’d long noticed that Anders was the one running around throwing fireballs while Hawke was much more likely to somehow conjure up a miniature earthquake.  

“That’s sweet of you to say,” said Hawke. “Anders is much better at elemental magic than I am, but since he’s still up surface-side, I figured now was a good time to practice.  It wasn’t my father’s strength, either, as far as I know.  Or maybe he thought it’d be harder to hide fireball lessons out back of our farm.”  She shrugged.  “But I’m learning things, much as I can with the Chantry breathing down my neck.”

“Maybe it’s for the best Anders isn’t here.  I gather he’s spent way more time in the Deep Roads than any sane person would ever want to,” said Varric.  He could just hear Blondie’s complaints starting up in the back of his mind.

“It’s one reason why I didn’t ask him to come with us,” said Hawke cheerily.  “Felt sorry for the poor fellow.  I’m sure he’s enjoying the sunshine from Darktown.  ...come to think of it, it’s not that far off from being down here, is it?”

Varric laughed.  “Good point.  Though sometimes I swear you can see the sun through holes in the walls there… and it smells better here.”

“Do you miss it?  Not Darktown, obviously.  Kirkwall,” said Hawke.  “It’s been… what, a good three weeks now?  It’s the longest I’ve seen you away from the city.”

Varric considered.  He’d gone on long journeys before, been away from Kirkwall for weeks, even occasionally, months at a time on Guild business, especially after their mother died.  Bianca flitted through his thoughts again, Bianca and intrigue and furtive meetings in shitty towns.  But none of that felt right to bring up here, not to Hawke with the fire’s reflection in her darkened eyes.  

“I miss the Hanged Man,” he said honestly.  “Every time I try to lay down for bed here, I just think back to my bed back in the inn, and think ‘Tethras!  You’ve gone insane.’”  

“Ugh, you and me both,” said Hawke.  “I think I’ve got bruises on bruises from all these rocks.  Hopefully we’re not down here too much longer.”

“We can always dream,” said Varric, but the words felt hollow in the dark, and he drew his coat closer around himself.

Hawke nodded, but she seemed pensive.  “I suppose,” she said.  She shifted, sinking deeper into her robes.  “Hmph.  Well, as long as we aren’t sleeping, care to join me in a snack?”

“Depends,” he said cautiously.  He’d had her cooking before.  Carver’s was far and away the better meal.  

“I’ve been saving these.  For a special occasion, as it were.”  She rummaged in the pack beside her.  “I figured the special occasion would be for when I absolutely couldn’t tolerate another bite of Lowtown hardtack, but what d’you know, sharing it with a friend sounds all right, too.”

“You actually have something good in there?” Varric asked in surprise.  The perishable stuff had all gone a few days ago, and he’d started his grumbling about the salted pork that morning, right on cue.  

Hawke pulled free a waxed paper bundle, tightly wrapped.  “I may have tried a spell of stasis on these,” she said.  “I’m still working on the technique, but I think I’ve got it down for little things like this.”  She unwrapped the bundle and a tiny flash of light dissipated from the contents, the spell breaking at its maker’s touch.

“Chocolate almond biscuits, from Camille’s in Hightown,” she whispered, looking downright conspiratorial.  “It was the end of the night, that last night in Kirkwall.  The bakery was just about to close, but I saw them packing these up off the cart outside.  The baker’s girl told me they were getting a bit stale, but did I want to buy them anyway, half price?  Carver ate his straight away -- didn’t see the point in them getting staler -- but I wanted to save them.  Don’t know why.”  

Two biscuits sat in their waxed wrapping, delicate golden squares worked with scrolled lustrous chocolate, stamped with the Kirkwall crest.  He’d passed them up a hundred times, sweet sugary nonsense meant for nobles with more money than sense.  Bartrand would have scoffed.  But they smelled amazing.

“Aw, come on, Hawke,” tried Varric.  “They’re yours.  You should have them.”

“A good biscuit’s better shared, or at least it’s what my father used to say.  Probably so as to keep his children from fighting amongst themselves for the last one, but it’s a nice sentiment regardless,” said Hawke.  She shoved the biscuits at him.  “Go on, then.”

“All right, all right.  If you insist.  Only because you’re a powerful mage and I don’t want to get on your bad side.”  He reached out and took the top biscuit. It was a solid thing, sturdy in the hand.  The chocolate beneath his thumb tip began to melt, soft and silky against his skin.

“Cheers, Varric.”  Hawke took up the other biscuit and nudged it against his, then took a bite.  “Mmm,” she hummed, closing her eyes.  “Just as I’d hoped it would be.”

Varric bit into his biscuit.  It snapped satisfyingly against his teeth.  He tasted buttery almonds first, then a deep, complex sweetness tempered by smooth bitter chocolate.  He paused, savoring it.  “Damn.  No wonder they charge an arm and a leg for these.”

“Worth every copper,” Hawke agreed, a silly grin spreading over her face as she finished her biscuit.  Varric finished his a moment later, regretfully licking the last of the chocolate from his fingertips.

“Thanks, Hawke.  You didn’t have to do that.”

“Oh, I know,” she said, her eyes twinkling.  

The fire rolled and flared, almost a living thing, fighting against the shadows.  He half thought he could see a pattern to it, a heartbeat, a touch of Hawke herself within the flames.

Silence grew between them, a comfortable, familiar thing like the weight of a good blanket.  Or the taste of secret chocolate in the dark.  It felt good, until it was broken by a yawn Hawke tried to hide.  

“You should get some rest,” Varric said softly.  “The fire’s a good one, Hawke.  You don’t need to worry.”

“Hmm, but I worry all the time,” she chuckled, yawning again.  “But don’t tell anyone.  It’s a secret.”

He felt a pang, though he wasn’t sure why.  “Dwarf’s honor,” said Varric.  “Assuming you put stock in such things.”

“In yours?  Of course I do,” she said.  She gave him a tired smile.  “All right, then.  I’ll get some sleep if you promise to do the same.  It wouldn’t do for us to be too tired to carry back our fabulous treasure.”

“Imagine if we’d have to leave it behind due to exhaustion.  It’d be a crying shame.  We’d never live it down,” said Varric.  “All right, you’ve convinced me.”  

He got to his feet, his back and ass aching as predicted.  He reached out a hand to Hawke and she gripped it, hard, her calloused hand small but steely against his own as he helped her up.  “Thanks, Varric.”

“No problem.  See you in the morning, Hawke,” he said.

“If you can call it that,” she said.  “But I’ll see you then.”  She slipped back into her tent, and Varric returned to his.

He stretched out on his bedroll, staring up at the ceiling.  The blue magelight -- Hawke’s light -- seeped in through the cracks of his tent flaps.  He watched its delicate choreography through drowsy eyes.

They had this.  He knew it now in his bones.  Bartrand had his team and his map, and that was all well and good, but Varric had Hawke and her people, and he’d put the money on them every time.  No matter what they found on this crazy expedition, they’d be ready.

He smiled tiredly.  Yeah.  He had Hawke.

The tent was still and quiet.  His eyes fell shut; his breathing slowed.  He drifted off to sleep in the long night of the Deep Roads, still tasting chocolate.

[anarkhebringer]

So I’ve rambled about Felix in the Miitopia AU before, but I haven’t rambled about anyone else, so I’ll start with Dimitri. Under a cut for length reasons, like always.

This man is such a damned Black-and-White type of person it’s actually surprising. He may have the Cool personality, but in truth, that only applies on the battlefield and in serious situations. But when the battle is over, and there’s been a break in between serious matters... He is a huge, dorky ray of sunshine who is far clumsier and emotional than you’d expect.

If you EXIST wrong around him away from the battlefield, he’ll likely say the following: “If you so much as breathe on me aggressively, I WILL cry, and I WILL call for Claude to rescue me. I WON’T HESITATE!”

or, when doing a patrol and giving it a clear of being safe, but hearing a random noise:

“Who goes there?! I am armed, and I WILL accidentally plunge this sword through my middle if you dare to approach me!”

Oh, the tales told of him, though. “He is a warrior who never loses a battle. He will tear through Hell itself with ease to prevail.” or “the Savior King is a brave and fearless man, who will stop at nothing to fight for his honor and bring peace to the land by his own hand!” or other chivalry-clouded bullshit that none of the party wants anything to do with at this point. Having Claude as their leader, and Felix as his best man and partner in crime for the Golden Deer, has changed their views in some key ways. But even though these stories are all recounting his victories and painting him in this light, he’s to the side crying because he accidentally bit down too hard on his Golem Steak and bit his tongue, and also burned his mouth because he wasn’t listening when he was warned about how hot it is.

The very moment a situation turns serious, though, even if he was crying about something, he snaps into that Cool personality and can get the job done. He’s pissed Felix off countless times with this, since he was all hyper and emotional, then immediately switched to Game Mode and had his head in the game.

Even when he’s in the Cool frame of mind, he’s super affectionate to Claude when he can manage it. These two use Assist Skills with each other at every other turn, and help each other out in battle. When Dimitri can’t dodge an attack in time, or when Claude doesn’t notice in time when Dimitri warns him and gets hurt more than he would otherwise, they both rush to the other to make sure they’re OK. On the many occasions that Claude has been killed by any sort of Fiend or Terror variant, Dimitri is immediately charging in to tear them apart with his bare hands in a fit of blind rage. Seeing him like this reminds Felix of what Dimitri had become shortly after discovering who was behind that Flame Emperor mask. Claude had helped him heal through those things, and get better mentally, but when Claude falls in battle he reverts right back to where he was before, even if it’s only until after the battle itself and Claude can be revived very easily. If Claude is revived mid-battle, Dimitri eases only just enough to be coherent for a few moments as he voices his obsessions to keep Claude safe, and how he’s willing to rip apart ANYTHING AND ANYONE in his way. But once the heat of the battle is gone, he calms himself and usually breaks down into tears, repetitively apologizing for what he’s done and for letting himself show that “disgusting and beastly” side of him again. But Claude always comforts him and assures him that it’s alright. He stopped himself in the end, he managed to quiet that rage in him once the deeds were done, and that’s a very good thing. And Claude makes sure to let Dimitri know how proud he is that Dimitri can catch himself like this now, and how big of a step this is in his healing.

But on less angsty topics, he’s a big softie who loves Claude more than anything. He loves Claude, he loves all his friends, he loves travelling together with everyone, he loves so many things! His joy and excitement can be almost child-like in innocence sometimes, and to most of the party (AKA everyone except Felix) it’s downright adorable. If he were asked what his favorite part of something is, more often than not he says that he’s just happy to be there. Even when in the Cool frame of mind, he’ll be that way, albeit he’s much more calm about how happy he is. Where he’d be a bit peppy in his step, he’s calmly navigating, but he still has that big grin on his face. Where his tone would be extra excited as he gushes about his joy, he’s still happily talking about it, but it’s more a “I’m so excited right now.” instead of a “oh my goodness I am SO EXCITED! This has me so happy and feeling so chipper! This reminds me of the time of-”

Claude as an Imp throws him for a loop sometimes. When wearing the Goat Costume, instead of looking down at him, he can keep looking straight forward since Claude is now eye level with him. Claude being the same height as him when a Goat Imp shakes him up a lot. Claude’s overall bluntness and occasional anger issues also do so, especially when Claude even can get a bit violent in his aggression when pushed too far. He’s watched many a person have their souls stolen from them with no concern to their lives by Claude if they wrong him, and he takes them to a shady merchant he knows to trade them for a bag of some really yummy corn chips he likes. His favorite brand, to be exact. This merchant sells some really weird dark trinkets and equipment, but oddly enough, the snacks are perfectly normal and safe. You could go to him and buy a portable torture device and a Moon Pie in the same interaction. And that just makes Dimitri completely speechless as he tries to figure out “WHY...”

Though there IS a lot of upsides to Claude being an Imp, some more subtle than others. Like after Claude shows Dimitri some special Skills of his, after shifting to be a Vampire for a while, Dimitri’s first thought isn’t anything like “is he going to suck blood now?” but would be “I wonder how Claude’s gonna find ways to use his powers to charm me this time...?” That one’s subtle in more ways than one for very good reason. That’s all I’ll say.

But all in all, Dimitri’s a big and gentle soul underneath that cold exterior he has on the battlefield as he joins his love to save the faces of Miitopia. And with that, I will close this down. There’s more to him than this, so I may pick this up in the future.

[tren-fraszka]

Parallels 2018 letter

Dear creator,

Thank you for taking your time to check my requests. I know my requests can sound a bit tricky, but please don’t be discouraged. I wish you will have good time writing first and foremost!

I like humor and tropes, which is probably the only thing you really need to know about my general likes.

I’m very picky about sex tropes, so generally I would be grateful for no graphic sex (unless specified otherwise). Also, if you go for a shippy fic, I don’t want any stuff happening without consent. I like consent a lot. Other dislikes include ABO, mpreg, soulmates, and situations where stuff is happening because destiny said so and nobody questions it.

Also, I included what ships I’m okay with in each fandom. Please do not include any ships that aren’t canon or I have not mentioned in those sections.

REQUESTS

FATE/APOCRYPHA

While I will be first person to admit that this series really could have had a better plot I loved the characters and would enjoy seeing more of them.

Mordred | Saber of Red (Fate/Apocrypha)

I love angry girls with gender issues, so I knew I would love Mordred and boy do I. There’s just something refreshing in seeing characters like her having a healthy amount of anger at the bullshit the world throws at her.

I really enjoyed her interactions with Shishigou, but I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing her interact with other cast members. Her specific circumstances make her a good foil for a lot of characters.

Additional info

I would be very okay with AUs, both Plot Divergences and complete setting changes, since as I mentioned I’m not overly attached to Apocrypha’s plot. So feel free to play with the idea of Mordred being Shishigo’s actual adopted daughter in a modern AU or some interesting what if scenario. Maybe Mordred getting her wish upon the grail, only to discover how terrible the life of a king is.

I’m okay with pretty much any pairing except Sieg/Jeanne (but if you went for an AU where Jeanne and Leticia are not sharing the body I would be pretty okay with Sieg/Leticia). Also, no shipping Shishigou and Mordred, because I much prefer them as a found family. 

Out of things I actually do ship I have a very soft spot for Shirou/Semiramis.

TALES OF BERSERIA

I played Zestiria, so you are free to throw some references to it if you want.

You don’t have to include all the characters I requested, please feel free to concentrate on just one of them.

Eleanor Hume

I really like how much Eleanor changes during the course of the game. And how sincerely she approaches everything. It’s refreshing to see a character who is willing to judge things on her own. Sure, she’s slightly stubborn at first, but Eleanor had really grown on me over the course of the game.

I would probably be happiest with a fic that tracks just how much her attitude changed. It can be about her general attitude or about her relation with someone else in the party. I’m not picky. I just want to see Eleanor discovering that the world is bigger and much less black and white than she thought. But at the same time, even if there are cruelties she was not aware of, there is also kindness she had not seen before.

For some other random ideas: Eleanor helps Laphicet make a present for Velvet (or they outright collaborate on it), or Eleanor has a moment when she realizes just how much the whole party grew on her and how much she enjoys being with them..

Rokurou Rangetsu

I would love any look at Rokuro’s life. I love how it is slowly revealed that he was a very terrible human being, that it is no wonder that he turned into a deamon as a result. The pre-canon look at his life in Rangetsu family and how he turned into a daemon would be great (bonus points for including his mom if you decide on this). As would be his perspective on canon events with some more interactions with any party members. Or post-canon and Rokuro’s journey in search of stronger and stronger foes, during which he meets lots of colorful foes.

Velvet Crowe

Velvet Crowe is one of the most enjoyable Tales protagonist I have witnessed yet. She’s a complicated mess of emotions and trauma, barely held together by her drive for vengeance. Seeing her struggle with all the tragedy, while desperately pushing forward, and waiting to see whether she cracks under the pressure of it all or not was much more interesting than standard Tales hero journey.

I would enjoy an introspective piece for her, since she hides so much of her emotions. That being said, Velvet interacting with other party members is fun too! Whether it be her being demonic bros with Rokuro, butting heads with Eleanor or not having patience for Magilou’s antics, Velvet has an interesting relationship with all of them and I would be happy to see any of those connections explored.

Additional info

I would be pretty okay with the AUs, both Canon Divergence and setting changes. In case of canon divergence, please, just don’t save Velvet with deus ex machina. I’m not opposed to her being saved, but please build that plotline properly. The game sets her demise very strongly throughout the whole game and I need to be properly convinced that there is a chance for her to live through this without becoming a miserable malevolence factory. This is not a problem in different setting AUs.

As for the ships. I do ship Elanor and Velvet, so if that’s you jam I would be happy to see them getting together or just enjoying being together. They have very interesting dynamics throughout the game and I would love to see some more romance in it. I would also be okay with more risque content for this ship.

TALES OF XILLIA

Who loves Tales series more with each new game they play, this gal over here. Also, I’m currently playing Xillia 2 and while I’ve gone through most of the game, I may not be able to finish it before this exchange ends due to the real world responsibilities. So while referencing Xillia 2 would be okay with me, please avoid endgame spoilers for it.

As previously you don’t have to include all of the requested characters.

Jude Mathis

Jude is one of my favourite protagonist for being just plain relatable. I love how he develops through the story and how much his issues rule over his decision before he gets his act together.

I would really love a look at Jude’s life before the game. I find his relationship with his parents very interesting and would love to see it explored more deeply. How did he go about applying to Talim and how his parents reacted? What about Leia? How did Jude manage in Talim?

I’m also very okay with a more indepth look at his journey. What were his feelings at the beginning? How did he feel revisiting his hometown and having to face his parents to be able to help Milla? Any and all snippets from this time are fine by me.

Elize Lutus

The best child character in video games I’ve seen in a long time. I would love to see more of her adventures and how she learns to open up to other people.

I probably would love a post-canon story the most with Elize trying to fit into a normal school. I would love to get a glimps at her attempts to make new friends and not appear to be too weird. I would especially love if Elize and her friends ended up getting into some sort of trouble. Maybe they decided to investigate some rumours and run into a monster or bandits and Elize saves the day with things she learned while travelling with the team. Bonus points if the knowledge from her travels is very questionable.

Just like with Jude, I would also be very open to some insights into her feelings during the plot of the game. Especially, how she slowly starts opening up to others after joining the party.

Additional info

I’m okay with AUs, both canon divergence and setting changes. Given that Xillia 2 enables any and all divergences you really, really shouldn’t hold back in that regard. On that note I would be very partial to any member of Chimeriad surviving, because they all deserved better. For setting changes I don’t have any specific.

I’m okay with ships: Jude/Alvin, Jude/Milla, an OT3 involving all of them, Leia/Agria and Gaius/Wingul.

FATE/EXTELLA

I will be honest. I have a lot of complaints about the characterization of some of the characters and the plot of this game, it gave me one thing I really love and damn do I want it.

Jeanne d'arc | Ruler (Fate/Extella) & Gilgamesh (Fate/Extella)

The interactions between Jeanne and Gilgamesh gave me life, watered my crops and made me laugh a lot. Those two get along in that they reinterpret each other’s words completely whenever they interact. It’s incredible.

I love the grudging respect they have for each other, because while they both heavily don’t approve of each other’s worldview and lifestyles, they can’t dismiss the will and dedication the other has.

Additional info

I’m okay with AUs and canon divergences. The subscenarios for both of them were painfully short in the game, so I would definitely be up if you expanded on them or just had some wacky adventures involving both of them. Just please don’t include Titan!Altera, Charlot!Tamamo or Elizabeth acting like she did in that game. I still have trauma from their characterization. Servant!Altera, and Elizabeth&Tamamo with characterization from Extra or Grand Order will be very okay. If you really need one of those characters with the characterization from this game, then I understand, but please, don’t linger on the scene where that happens. Just get it done quickly.

As I said, I’m not a big fan of Extella’s plot, so if you want to throw it all away and just have fun with the characters I will definitely approve. Gilgamesh and Jeanne meeting during a Grail War could be interesting. As well as, some Grand Order shenanigans if you played that game.

If you want to just have fun with their characters without the whole Servant stuff then, I’m also very open to it. The idea of Jeanne and Gilgamesh as childhood friends who are now forced to share a flat as students is an idea that I absolutely love, because they would find those arrangements very challenging and definitely have a lot of complaints about each others’ lifestyles.

I will limit myself to the ships involving the people I requested, which means absolutely no ships for Jeanne. For Gilgamesh I’m okay with shipping him with both Enkidu and Kirei, but well, we all know how he is, so feel free to have him sleeping around if it fits your fic.

MAHOU SHOUJO ORE

Yamo Konami

I found Konami’s misadventures very amusing. I love how completely mismatched his position and goals are. I would love to see more of his shenanigans, whether it be him making terrible management decision during the canon or him “repenting” after the canon. Maybe he attempts to become a mascot, because what better way is there to express his passion for magical girls? I also wouldn’t mind a pre-canon look on how he came to love magical girls as much as does.

All ships are crazy in this series so I’m okay with whatever direction you want to spin them, as long as you acknowledge the canon crushes the characters have. By which I mean, if the character has a canon crush make sure to do some build up so that it doesn’t feel strange if they find a new object of affection.

[merrymemori]

The Poetry Club at the End of the World

To @infernalandmortal from @maskingtapepoetree 

Because I can’t resist sticking these kids in alternate post-apoc settings, or babbling on about ghosts. This one is a very-near-future dystopia nearly reaching its end. 

I tried to fit Bukowski into it, but he ended up only getting an honorary mention. Keep your eye out for it

Merry Christmas, friend! 

There are ghosts in this place. 

There always have been. The world is a spinning marble of ghosts, of anger and pain and the ways we deny ourselves love. They are made of fire and air and memory, and we keep them walking. We give them their breath, their steps. 

And like everything else, the world will fade. 

What will the ghosts do then?

“I dread the time when your mouth begins to call me hunter.” 

The woman freezes. The words are soft but they scatter around the abandoned shopping mall. An audible echo, something broken. A cracked voice. A breath. 

This is an unsettling place, even without disembodied voices. It’s full of half-closed shops and silent, fully-clothed mannequins. The inhabitants of this city may have been the first to know about the comet, but makes sense to not take the time to disintegrate your businesses, your home, your power structures. Pack your favorite things, get in the ship, and to hell with the rest. 

(She knows what she would have taken, had she the chance. She almost wishes she had given them to her brother. The separation hadn’t been anticipated, but she can’t think too hard about that, not yet.) 

The woman knows that to say hello? would be an invitation to an even-sooner death than the one awaiting. The faction gangs still around in the other areas of the state are violent, fractured. She would know. This wealthier city might be all but abandoned (and, for all intents and purposes, boarded up) but the condemned will probably all file in sooner or later like she did. 

Still, she creeps forward, wishing the former inhabitants had at least dimmed the fluorescent lights when the switched off the music and bailed to the nearest port. This is a strange place to be, this city. A city of hope. 

Hell. She has four knives hidden on her person, she can risk it. “Hello?” she decides on, and the voice drifts off. 

She waits a minute. There are birds in this place, nesting near the ceiling and the tops of pillars. White, hungry things that twitter stupidly at her words. They have no idea, or maybe they have every idea.  

“Hello?” she says again. “You scared or something?” 

That warrants a low chuckle. Something she can work with, at least. 

“I don’t scare easily,” the voice says after a moment’s pause. A smile twists onto her face. 

“You alone?” she asks, keeping the amusement out of her voice. If this is a game, it is an intangibly comforting one.  

“Something like that,” he says. He has a wry, faint voice. It’s coming from a nearby kiosk and the woman makes her steps lighter, softer. 

“This is my place to squat,” he continues, voice rising, “and to eventually die. Get your own.” 

When she ducks around the corner and crouches in front of him she is met with wide, surprised eyes– blue like some sort of lightning, and his face sharp, and his hair tangled. His hands are closed around a paperback. His knuckles are whitened and he doesn’t blink, just stares at her. 

Her breath halts in her throat for a moment. 

“Sure. It’s a big mall,” she finally says, smiling slowly. Then she grabs his book and runs off. 

—

The man thinks, I should probably go after her. 

He thinks, That book was all I had left. 

It’s funny how fucking pointless possessions are. They always have been. They live on a whole planet of possessions, just shit that no one has ever needed to use. And now the rock is coming, and the ships have left, and everyone can probably watch their shit grow smaller and smaller as they travel whoever the fuck knows where. 

It’ll all be gone in three days.

The man doesn’t move, even though he can hear the woman’s faint footsteps retreat. Her face– something warm and strange in her eyes, and that faction tattoo curling over her cheek. He wasn’t one to appreciate or even notice beauty, but if it did indeed exist, well…

He liked this kiosk a lot when people actually ran it. It sold small bobbleheads of dogs and cats and guinea pigs and they all looked kinda frantic and demented and maybe there’s some sort of kinship there. He stares at a bobblehead of a dog with its tongue sticking out. 

Go after her, the weird dog seems to say. Get your pointless shit back. Why not? You’re gonna die anyway. 

“You make a good point,” he says conversationally, and then throws the plastic dog over a railing, noting the faint plastic thud it makes upon impact. He wonders if it’ll leave a ghost. Then he decides to find the woman. 

It is a book of poems by Leonard Cohen.

The woman finds a nicely-lit corner of the mall, on the second floor near a glass window and an arcade, and reads. Her life before (back when there was life left) had been full of running and stealing and killing. Cities didn’t have room for people like her. She’d barely finished school, but there was something about the quietness of books that always comforted her.

She knows the man will find her eventually. She anticipates it. So when she feels him approaching, she begins to read aloud.

“There are some men who should have mountains to bear their names to time.” She looks up. He’s standing across the room, a disheveled spector.

“Can I have it back now or what?”

“What’ll you give me for it?” she challenges. He reaches into a bag slung across his wide shoulders and tosses her a water bottle. It’s cold. “The fridges are still on,” he explains, and she sips it gratefully.

“Thanks,” she says. Then she says, “I’m Emori.”

“You’re crazy,” he counters, and sits next to her, back sliding against the green glass. “How’d you even get in here? The city was boarded up after the announcement.”

She remembers; the comet, hasty departures worldwide. This city had the main ports, and people rushed to them. It was why the walls were secured. To keep people like her out.

She and Otan had a whole plan to sneak aboard. It had backfired. This city was famous for keeping out the outsiders; she was lucky she’d made it into the city limits, and that her brother had made it aboard the ship. The last ship on earth. She still remembers it in fractures: The running and running,  the doors snapping shut. The roar of engines, the ensuing silence of televisions and radios.

Everyone was gone, and there was only violence left. An empty city, and the unproven possibility of factions waiting outside the walls. All of them with three slipping days.

“My brother and I bribed the guards,” she said. “He made it onto a ship. I fell behind.” She tries to say it casually, to solidify it in her mind. Her brother was going to survive the apocalypse and she wasn’t. It was that simple.

If something in the man softens, he’s good at hiding it.

“Sucks,” he says. He’s young. Probably no older than her. Younger, even.

“What about you?” she asks. “Why didn’t you make it onto a ship?”

He looks at her briefly, a flicker of something, and then looks away.

“I tried,” he said. “But they don’t let murderers on board.”

Ah. “How many?” she asks, studying his face, interested now. Their society has a low tolerance for homicide.

“Two,” he responds. “It doesn’t matter. I had my reasons.”

She looks at him and decides to show him. There’s ostracization written all over his face, a feeling she knows too well.

“I’ve killed too,” she says. “But this is why I could never live in a city.” She takes off her glove and he looks at her with something like softness, and runs a finger down her hand, tracing the fused digits and crooked nubs. This should make her uncomfortable.

Instead, she feels something solid in his touch. A puzzle piece clicking in place.

“Well, that’s badass,” he says and she laughs in relief, not realizing there had been a tightness in her chest.

“You gonna give me your name or what?” she asks.

“M–” he starts, and cuts himself off. He looks at her, decides something. “John,” he says.

John Murphy remembers talking to his best friend about soulmates.

He had scoffed at it because he didn’t believe in that shit. “Fairy tales,” he’d said, simply, “for people who would rather be miserable than alone.”

“Shut up, Murphy,” she’d said in that super nice way of hers. “Just because you’ve anesthetized the parts of you that feel things doesn’t mean everyone else has.”

He looks at Emori now. There are a lot of things he doesn’t believe. A week ago, he wouldn’t have believed the planet would be destroyed so quickly, so casually. A month ago, he wouldn’t have believed he’d be falsely accused by his friends of a murder, and maybe he wouldn’t have believed he’d hurt and kill in retaliation. Maybe.

The woman is quiet, and the faction tattoo is dark on her golden skin. He doesn’t want to wax poetic, not when life has been such bullshit for him. He doesn’t want to be proven wrong and then die, like some sick joke.

“Which one are you reading now?” he asks.

“It’s about Isaiah,” she responds. “Something about him realizing the condemned city is beautiful.” She looks him in the eye and laughs, a bitter sound that still comes out warm, strong. “What a joke.”

In spite of himself, he grins.

“This your only book?” she asks, turning back to it.

“Yeah. Took it from my house before it burned down.” He doesn’t elaborate and she doesn’t press.

“It’s beautiful,” she says. “I never read enough poetry. You know, before.”

“Too bad I only have the one poet,” he says, and it sounds like an offer in his voice.

She looks up at him and there’s a spark in her eyes, something warm and full of life. “John,” she says for the first time and god help him, his first name sounds actually kind of nice in her low, rich voice, “this entire city is abandoned.”

He can’t stop looking at her, her smile and the mischief in her face and he hates himself a little for that. “Yeah, and?”

“This is not your only book.”

The streets are quiet.

Emori has only seen a handful of movies in her life, and she’s never visited a soundstage, but she would imagine this is what one would feel like. There isn’t even a breeze in the air and the walls around the city seem to tighten strings around its confines, making everything feel smaller, eerier. There’s a row of apartment complexes across from the mall, flowers still littering the balconies along with chairs and laundry. Might as well start there.

“Did you hear that this city is haunted?” her companion asks mildly. She turns to him, looking up at him with a grin. He’s a bit taller than her and something about his presence behind her feels right, a strange mix between comfort and thrill she’s never quite experienced before.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” she says.

He chuckles. “Good. If I’m going to spend the end of the world with someone, I’m glad she’s not a nutjob.”

“Says the boy who was reading poetry to no one,” she answers and he looks down and laughs. The end of the world. She feels an itching in her palms, the need to escape, to climb or run or hide. But there is no escape, not from something of this magnitude. “Let’s start with that one,” she says, indicating the first apartment with her gloved hand. Its porch is lined with flower pots, which are filled with wilting yellow buds. “I’ll teach you how to pick a lock.”

“Who’s to say I don’t already know?”

She studies him. “You don’t.”

A self-deprecating laugh. “Okay, I don’t.”

Why is this so easy? Her shoulder pressed against his shoulder. That shielded, sweetbitter grin in his eyes, like he doesn’t know what to make of her, like he’s afraid to let his guard down because then it’ll never come back up again.

She can see it so clearly because it’s there for her too, living between her shoulders. Living in her lungs. Almost like this stranger belongs next to her, dissolving her, letting her dissolve him.

Trying not to think too hard about it, she takes his hand and leads him to the door.

The first apartment has only a few books. Nora Roberts, a couple cookbooks (one of them is on Indian cooking, he notes with interest), a self-help book about codependency. There is a small volume of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets and Murphy pockets that, but the pickings are otherwise sparse.

Structurally, this kitchen is very similar to the one in his old apartment. He remembers his parents unbidden, struck suddenly by images from the past. His father’s worn suits, his mother’s empty vodka and pill bottles. They’d paid dearly to live in this city. He doesn’t want to think about executions and overdoses so he slinks out to the living room. Emori has made short work of the couch. He watches her for a moment, the quick, methodical way she piles the cushions atop one another. A metal bar protrudes, part of a broken fold-out bed, and she grabs a knife from her pocket and swiftly stabs between the structure’s folded joints. He can imagine her attacking someone in that same methodical way, a quick, harsh job as a means to an end. It’s terrifying, but also a little bit of a turn-on. “I doubt they’re hiding poetry in their couch,” he says. “Unless it’s the dirty kind.” She doesn’t seem startled by his voice, which confirms a suspicion of his: she can hear anyone coming from a mile away. Maybe he shouldn’t feel so comfortable around her. And yet. “Who’s to say we don’t want that kind?” she says with a grin, glancing over her shoulder at him. Her eyes are warm and dark, piercing his with a kind of casual mischief. He definitely does not blush.  

At the second apartment, they have more luck.

Its bulk consists of an entire room of bookshelves. Emori gazes up at it, marveling at the fact that she can savor this job. Her work for her previous employees had been quick, subtle. She never got to truly understand the people from whom she was stealing.

This person must have loved history. Aeschylus, Thucydides, Sophocles– plays and histories and epics from the classical world live side-by-side, clearly read to the bone. There are stories living in how the pages are tattered and thin and folded. Emori almost doesn’t want to reach out and touch the worn spines, but she does anyway.

“He’s missing one,” John says. He’s been taking this apartment in with a strange expression, part anger and part fondness. “I guess he took The Illiad with him.”

“A friend of yours?”

“Used to be.” He’s guarded again. This person must have hurt him. She takes his hand, instinctively, not even noticing which hand she’s using, and he tightens his grip for a moment before letting go.

“Hey, this looks poetic,” she says after the moment passes over them. Fragments of Sappho. It’s a small volume, well-read like the others. She opens to an arbitrary page. “‘Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.’” The words feel weighted with something, meaningful and sparse, but then she frowns. “That’s the whole poem?”

“It’s called a fragment for a reason. Throw it in the bag and let’s get out of here.”

She looks at him. He’s haunted by something here. When she takes his hand, she feels haunted too.

After perusing Sonnets from the Portuguese (Emori’s voice framing the words: “‘A heavy heart, beloved, have I borne from year to year until I saw thy face…’” And a pause. “It seems a little much, doesn’t it?”) they sleep for a couple hours on the kitchen floor of the fourth apartment, stiff and strange.

She tells Murphy about her favorite cons and he finds himself amazed at the quickness of her mind.

“So you stole someone’s house, basically,” he says. She laughs, digging through the low piles of books in the apartment they’re in, their fifth.

“It was a trailer,” she says.

“So basically a house.”

She grins up at him and he feels that twisting in his stomach again.

Murphy has been apprehended by ghosts ever since the last ship left. The ghosts were living at Bellamy’s apartment, and the street corner, and in the way everything is abandoned and broken. Like him, he thinks wryly.

There’s a ghost story to this woman too, to the way she carries herself, to her weirdly beautiful hand, to how skillfully she can steal things. But something about her feels more present than the pain, more solid. A living heartbeat. He doesn’t want to look at her in awe, to look at any human being like that, but he finds himself staring, over and over.

The seventh apartment, which they reach by the evening, has a loft and he watches her climb the ladder, trying not to make it obvious he’s watching.

“Throw me the bag,” she says, reaching out, and he does so. The loft is more like an alcove, a slight second story with a bed and a window. Her face is dark and beautific in those shadows, in the stain of the sunset through the window. Two days down, almost. His stomach turns at the thought of his life, of how much he has survived only to be counting down the hours.

“I’m gonna check the fridge,” he says. She waves at him from the loft and he wonders… well.

When he comes back, it’s with a concoction of mushrooms and pasta.

“Did you make that just now?” Emori asks with interest, taking the plates he hands up before swinging onto the ladder.

“Yeah. It’s nothing.”

She takes a bite and closes her eyes. “Fuck,” she says softly and something in his stomach warms and he hates that, hates how good and comfortable this is because it doesn’t make sense. It’s getting a glimpse at something beautiful right before an execution. It’s life, twisting its noose and laughing.

He settles next to her on the bed, where she has turned on a small light. The books are nested around them: Sonnets from the Portuguese, Fragments of Sappho, a thin book of poems called Portrait of my Lover as a Horse, an isolated copy of The Annotated Song of Songs, an ironic volume of Bukowski’s The Last Night of the Earth Poems and some other contemporary poets obtained up from the large, professorial stack of books at their last target.

And of course Stranger Music. Leonard Cohen stares at him from the cover like a surly son of a bitch.

Emori is paging through a volume of e e cummings, sipping from the water bottle he’d given her earlier. She knows how to conserve her resources. “Was this guy high when he wrote… all of this?” she asks.

He peers over her shoulder.

This is the garden.   Time shall surely reap and on Death’s blade lie many a flower curled, in other lands where other songs be sung; yet stand They here enraptured,as among The slow deep trees perpetual of sleep some silver-fingered fountain steals the world.

They read silently.

“John,” she says after a moment, “there has to be a way to survive this.”

He looks down at her, her head nearly leaning against his chest, a tangle of dark hair caught in her lashes, and wishes there was.

They fall asleep side by side after reading about half of a volume of Anne Sexton. 

(Emori read a verse aloud as they drifted: “‘The end of the affair is always death. She’s my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.’” His eyes seemed to fall closed, like someone listening to music.) 

When Emori wakes up from a dream about her brother, the room is still and half-broken by moonlight.

The mind has shed leaves alone for years, she finds herself silently quoting. A Robert Bly poem. She looks at John, calm in the midst of sleep. The sharp nose, the knotted hair. She can see his collarbones protrude from his shirt and she wants to run her fingers over them, over every bit of him.

But when she runs her thumb softly over his lower lip, he starts awake and grabs her wrist, fingers digging into her skin.

Her eyes widen. His eyes are sleep and fire. When he meets her gaze he swears and lets go, clambering halfway down the ladder before she can react.

“John,” she calls in futility. She can hear running water and climbs down to find him in the bathroom. “John,” she says again, but he won’t meet her eyes in the mirror as he splashes water on his face.

Then something settles over his features. A mask of some sort. He turns around and stares behind her.

“I’m fucked up,” he says simply, and pushes past her.

She leans against the doorway and thinks. The act of aggression hadn’t prompted a defensive response in her; she knows when she’s in true danger and is perfectly capable of escaping it. It’s a useful skill she has picked up over the years out of necessity, after hard lesson upon hard lesson.

He’s sitting in the living room, flicking a lighter on and off. The flame appears and snaps away. Soon, the sun will be up but Emori doesn’t look at the window, just at the lean curve of his spine, the way his thin long-sleeved shirt hangs off of him. 

“When my brother and I were kids, there was this man,” she begins. It shouldn’t be hard to say this by now. It shouldn’t. “He would beat us every day, just to keep us on our toes. We had to steal for him and his crew. It’s why we became what we are, why we’ve done what we’ve done.” 

He doesn’t say anything, but he snaps the lighter shut and doesn’t open it again. 

“Whoever hurt you… “ she begins and drifts off. She isn’t good at this, doesn’t quite know how to process this twisting feeling of sympathy in her gut. Feeling someone else’s pain… this feeling is alien, it doesn’t belong in her. She wants to run but she sits down carefully on the other side of the couch where he rests. 

“I… had a really shitty relationship,” he says finally. When he looks at her, she can hazard a guess as to what shitty relationship entails. 

“Can I kill her?” she asks softly. “Or him?”

“It was a her,” he says shortly. She wants to take his hand. Almost as though reading her mind, he looks up at her and reaches out, and she realizes her left hand isn’t wrapped and she doesn’t care. The rough warmth of his skin is there. 

How could they have found this now? This quietness, this solace? 

“I shouldn’t have done that,” she says. “Earlier.”

That wry grin is back and something flips in her stomach at his laugh, the shadows in his face, his hand on hers. “No, you absolutely should have.”

“When your touch gets betrayed, it makes sense that you would no longer want it.” 

“I want it,” he says. His eyes are so sharp, almost predatory, but the surge of energy coursing through her is far from fear. “And I want to stop talking about them. They can go to hell.” 

“They don’t matter,” she says. “This matters.” Whatever this is. 

He kisses her briefly, hungrily, a taste of tongue and sleep and pain. That sharp lean body warm and so near hers without quite touching. 

“As long as you want to,” he says, pulling back leaving her lips cold, and she sees a sliver of insecurity pass through him. She wants to cry out, to surround herself with everything that he is, everything she knows and doesn’t know.

“Come here,” she says. 

Murphy has never had particularly good associations with sex. It’s just another place where the ghosts live.

But, pulling Emori towards him, he feels like he could set a thousand fires at once. Why we’ve done what we’ve done. There’s something fucked up in him, and she’s clearly done some fucked up things too, and all of that courses through him as he grips her waist. That understanding mixes with the feeling of her body against his like a flint.

He loses himself in it, kissing her neck, her jaw. She cries out and he likes it, that gasp, that startled laugh.

If she wanted to kill Ontari for him then he wants to tear apart everyone who has ever hurt her, that man she mentioned, anyone, but that sense of rage is nothing compared to this. Her eyes closed, her hands tangled in his hair. He wants to show her every rough instinct and every gentle one too, and groans into her neck, pulling them backwards.

She settles on top of him, legs curled around his hips. He wants to unpeel every bit of her. As it is, his fingers stroke the soft skin of her hip and she moans. A low, pleased noise.

“Can I–?” he asks, almost desperate. He’s straining against his jeans and he lifts his hand to her breast carefully, gently. A question.

There’s something evaluating in her eyes, distanced for a moment. “I don’t usually do this,” she admits. “I’m not…”

He realizes she’s evaluating herself, showing a vulnerability she’s used to hiding. There are a lot of things she hides, aren’t there? He would say he doesn’t trust her but he trusts her in this moment absolutely, explicitly.

He takes her left hand in his and lifts it to his mouth, kissing the soft and rough skin, watching the look in her eyes dissolve.

And why the fuck not. “I dread the time when your mouth begins to call me hunter,” he starts, softly, hardly believing he’s quoting poetry right now but she’s worth it, she’s so worth it. “When you call me close to tell me your body is not beautiful, I want to summon the eyes and hidden mouths of stone and light and water to testify against you.”

“That was the poem,” she murmurs, a warm force of nature. “Thank you,” she says and he knows she’s thanking him for reading that poem aloud just yesterday. God. He wants to call her beautiful in every way he can.

“It’s called ‘Beneath my Hands,’” he offers, tracing her breast again, which makes her laugh, and it’s honestly a really nice sound.

“Subtle.”

“Never one of my best qualities,” he says, making her laugh again as he flips them over. There’s a fumbling handful of moments where they struggle out of their clothes and then she takes his hardness in her hand, and he wants to kiss and lick and bite every inch of her skin, scarred and not, the curve of her hip, the slope of her thighs, the warmth therein. He wants to keep it, every second. Her fingers tracing his collarbone. The warm laughter in her eyes. Everything gentle and everything rough.

They fuck like it’s the end of the world, which of course it is. 

This time, Emori wakes up with John’s arm slung around her. His fingers rest idly against her navel.

It is mid-morning on the last day of the world. She rolls over and nudges him awake carefully, not bothering to pull her thin blanket over herself. He stirs and regards her with a bit of morning hunger.

“Want to go again?” he says, voice thick with sleep.

“We fell asleep,” she says, but she grins as he runs his fingers down her arms, tracing her skin. Unbidden, she remembers his fingers curling inside her, and how tightly she had gripped his hair when she…

“You should get up,” she informs him, climbing off the couch.

“In a sense,” he agrees, and she smacks him on the arm before rummaging through her clothes, which are scattered on the floor. Half-dressed, she finds the earrings that fell off with her shirt and stares at them for a good moment. Long chains, frail coins dangling from the ends.

“They’re nice,” John offers, still reclining on the couch. “I mean, they look nice. On you.”

She scoffs a little. “I guess. Otan made them for me.”

“Your brother?”

She realizes she’s never mentioned him by name. “Yeah. I should have sent them with him. So part of me would survive.” She shakes her head, throwing her shirt on, tugging her left hand through the narrow cloth. “What a stupid thought.”

“Nah,” he says. “I get it.”

“Anything you wish?”

“That my friends hadn’t hated me,” he says, “before they left.”

She looks at him, at the beautiful, pained anomaly that is him, lying there on the couch. He looks back. Has anyone really seen her like this? Has she seen anyone like this? 

“They were fools,” she says, truthfully. 

“I did a lot to them. I lost it and killed a couple of people, I hurt my best friend…” his voice drifts off. “But yeah. They were.” 

“Tell me about your best friend.” She curls next to him on the couch and he puts a bare arm around her and grins, a little bitterly, a little fondly. 

“You would have liked her. She was smart, like you. Still is, I guess.”

She nestles into his arm, savoring his warmth. “I don’t think you would have liked Otan.” 

“You loved him. I would have managed.”

The words are there, hanging between them, silent and unspoken, their own kind of poetry. They’ve only known one another for two days. What a cruel trick life has played on them. 

“I’ve been wondering why I’m not running,” she says.

“Hmm?” 

“It’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. Running, trying to survive.” Stripping away pieces of myself.

“Yeah? Me too.” He looks down at her. “It’s been a bitch.” 

She smiles a little and finds his hand. This mix of joy and sorrow pierces through her, something exquisite, something strange. “I think I’ve found it, though.” 

“Found what?” 

“My survival. This. You.”

He squeezes her fingers. His face is damp against her hair. 

When the end comes, the sky is a flare of fire. The spinning marble changes quickly, structurally, the atmosphere shifting to accommodate new gases, whirling to accommodate the far-flung potential of new primordial life.  

And so when the spirits of a man and woman awake after the storm of fire and water, they realize they are the only ghosts that remain in this place. 

The woman reaches out her hand, which is beautiful and strange, and the man takes it. They are ready to wander this ruined planet. 

They will take their time.

[hellcatchvalley]

before we lost our fairy tales

day 1: non-romantic pairing: kashaw vesh & vex’ahlia de rolo words: 3.5k+ summary: what starts off as small talk turns into something more and vex and kash realize they’re not so different from each other. notes: i had this random urge to write something awhile ago and then it aligned with @critrolerarepair week AND the first prompt!! so i gave a whack at it and hope u enjoy it <3 

[ao3]

When Zahra had asked Kashaw to go to Whitestone with her, he almost told her to 'fuck off.' Almost. 

"No offense, Zee, but it's not like that place holds a lot of good memories for me," he'd said on the way to the sky port. Zahra had rolled her eyes and patted his shoulder.

"Then it's a good thing we're not going for you then, isn't it darling?" She'd hummed, smiling innocently at his glare. "If it helps, you can just stare at me and avoid contact with everything else like you normally do."

He'd scoffed, and looked away, a small smirk on his face. "Business as usual then."

"Business as usual indeed," she'd replied.

So they'd flown over to the godforsaken cold country (courtesy of a few connections since the city's functioning sky port was still under construction) and within minutes of touching down Kash insisted on renting his room at an inn.

("I'm sure Vex'ahlia would allow us a guest room in the castle," Zahra had tried but he shook his head.

"Nope, a man needs his own place, Zee."

She'd shrugged a shoulder and headed for the castle herself. "Suit yourself, Mr. Man. Oh, and don't let the bedbugs bite your ass, dear." 

"I'll give them your regards.")

Her words had made him paranoid, and in the end he rented a small house not too far from the city's beloved Sun Tree. He had no idea how long Zahra was planning to stay, but he wasn't about to be uncomfortable for that amount of time either. 

For about three days, Kashaw hadn't seen even a glimpse of Zahra. He was sticking to his guns about not wanting to see any more members of Vox Machina, but after exploring the local market and now having a burlap sack's worth of souvenirs and fresh food, he knew he was getting bored.

Just as he's packing away some of the things he'd want to take back to Vasselheim into a burlap sack on his bed,  he hears a knock on his door. There's only one room in the entire place for the kitchen, wooden dining table and a bed up against the wall, so he calls out, "Who is it?"

The sing-song voice that responds makes his eye twitch. "Housekeeping!" 

Before he can tell her to go away, the door swings open to reveal the city's Lady and consistent thorn in his side called Vex'ahlia. Kash takes a deep breath before turning halfway around to look at his intruder. Despite her lavish quarters and series of titles, she's wearing hunting gear today, a bit of sweat on her brow and pieces of hair sticking out of her braid. There's a big smile on her face as she leans casually against the door frame and he stares at her.

"No, please, come in," He deadpans, turning back to what he was doing. She clicks her tongue and strolls in, and he doesn't bother teasing the idea that her boots aren't tracking dirt into his humble temporary home. 

"Cashew, if I didn't know any better I'd say you were avoiding us," she says, her voice coming up close behind him. "Zahra's been studying for days and we've still not seen a sign of you."

"You lose your eyesight in the weeks we've been gone? Because I'm pretty sure you're looking right at me," he says, still keeping his back facing her. 

"Oh, my apologies, I didn't realize how hairy you'd gotten after all this time! Such a shame, your eyes were such a pretty color." 

Kash rolls the aforementioned eyes, and finally gives her his full attention, crossing his arms.

Vex mock gasps in surprise, "It's a miracle! You've changed back!" 

As his frown gets deeper her smile only grows. She always was his least favorite twin. "How much would I have to pay to get you to change into your brother?" He asks, and she snorts, propping herself up onto the counter.

Vex leans back on her hands, crossing her feet at the ankles as if the place is hers (hell, it probably is. Vox Machina doesn't go ruining people's days for free, and Kash is still convinced the white haired guy gave her a city block already.) 

"If that's something within your power, you go first," she snaps back in easy banter. 

He ignores the comment. "To what do I owe this... Luxurious company? Did Zee send you?"

Vex's smile finally dims and she raises an eyebrow. "You can't really dislike us so much, Kashaw."

Kash nods in mock understanding. "You're right, I'm sorry-- I forgot the big heroes aren't used to that sentiment anymore." 

Vex chuckles and he smirks when he hears a bit of impatience in it. "You're such a dick." 

He shrugs. "It's in my job description, baby."

"Never call me that again."

"Then stop calling me Cashew."

"There isn't enough gold in the world."

"Wow, that’s a first." 

He dodges the bread roll she throws at his forehead and turns around to continue his packing. 

"Not for nothing, but you look like you fought an owlbear and won," he continues, for -gasp- lack of conversation. Zahra would be so proud.

"Just got back from one of my hunts," Vex explains, the wood of the table creaking as she swings her legs. "I'm the protector of this city, remember?"

"I try to block anything involving any of you out of my daily life, if that's alright with you," he mutters. and the bread roll hits its mark this time. "Stop wasting my bread - so what, you decide to visit me on the way back from your errands?"

"Yup," she says. "Because I'm just that nice."

He pauses to stare at the ceiling for a moment, begging for some god to give him strength and her giggles behind him don't help.

"Toss me the bread roll back, would you?" She asks, and he lunges it back without a glance, sucking his teeth when he hears her catch it perfectly. "Cheers, Cashew." 

The only sound in the room for awhile is the rustle of fabric as Kash continues to stuff things into his burlap sack, but for once in his life the silence isn't awkward. The small talk is unfamiliar, but he's almost okay with it. Despite only knowing her a short time, Kash felt that Vex was one of the few people in his life that knew when to shut up (most of the time anyway), and knew when silence would be better than the taste of foot in your mouth. Not that those who didn't know were so bad. They were just appreciated a little less. Sometimes.

He quashes the warm feeling spreading in his chest by clearing his throat, causing his guest to sit up straight and cross her arms. He pretends to ignore the way she's boring holes into the back of his shirt until he hears her inhale to speak.

"Cashew--"

He grumbles under his breath, "That's not my name--"

"Do you... Ever hear her sometimes?"

The protest dies on his lips and his shoulders tense. Oh great, a subject he's obviously not gonna wanna talk about. Now, this, this is familiar.  

He wonders how long she's been sitting on that question and pauses his packing. Unconsciously, he twists to his left to look at her through the corner of his eye. Or, well, Her eye. The glance is brief and he grunts and turns back to the bag, shrugging one shoulder. 

He tries to play it off. "Who, Keyleth? All the time, she never shuts up-"

"Cut the bullshit, Kashaw," Vex snaps, holding her crossed arms closer to herself and her gaze away from him. The sudden tone shift makes him drop any attempt at deflecting he was going to pull out. She continues in a quieter voice, so much that he's glad for the silence outside otherwise he'd have to ask her to repeat it, "You know who I mean."

Kash exhales sharply through his nose. He likes her idea of no eye contact and stares at the sack instead, gripping it tight in his hands. "I know exactly who you mean. I'm just wondering where the hell that question came from." 

She doesn't answer him for awhile, and he starts to really see the resemblance with her brother until-

"Did you... Have a choice? With her," Vex asks, the words leaving her lips kicking and screaming if her hesitation is anything to go by. "Did she give you one?"

Kash finally decides to man up and face her, grumbling all the way until he's perched on the bedside, mimicking her posture and crossing his arms. 

"You're gonna have to be more specific than that," He says, rubbing one palm against his forehead to ease the space between his eyebrows. Zahra said he'd look eighty by the time he turned half that if he didn't stop frowning. He'd flipped her off then but with the oncoming headache he was getting he was starting to see her point.

Vex rolls her eyes, already impatient with the pace of the conversation she started. 

"Your wife," she spits out, and he appreciates the contempt, "that creepy bitch that lives in your eye or some other weird godly shit. Do you ever hear her? In your head, I mean."

Kash puts his hand down and looks at her. She's biting the inside of her cheek, and her fingers pinch the edge of her sleeves, seemingly feeling the texture but he's been this fidgety before and knows that her hands have gone numb.

"What's this about, Vex?" He asks with an exasperated exhale, tone just as low as hers. He isn't good with emotions, but Vox Machina travel together too much not to pick up each other's habits. When they want to discuss something serious, they all start talking like rabbits who've lived for a thousand years -- solemn and small but get too close and you could spook them away from the entire conversation. He can relate to the feeling.

Vex lets out a soft laugh, lifting and dropping her shoulders in a helpless shrug. "I don't know," she says, shaking her head and waving a hand. "You know what? Forget I ever said anything--"

"I do," Kash says before thinking. She goes still and turns her head to finally look at him, eyes wider and almost shimmering. He straightens his shoulders out and holds her gaze. "Hear her. When you've only got one follower, I guess you like to remind him you're there." 

She purses her lips and looks down at his feet, taking a deep breath. She nods and starts to twist her unkempt braid. "You remember when we went to the Feywild, right?"

"When you all went to the Feywild, you mean?" He rubs at his forearm with an unsettled frown. "Yeah, I was still getting blood out of my hair and had to sleep in the library."

She has the decency to wince. "Sorry about that."

"Yeah, whatever."

"Anyway," she continues, "when I got my bow, we had to fight this Feywarden, and he... He could see in my head." 

Kash raises an eyebrow. "And... how did he-

"I don't know how!" She explains, waving her hands and letting them land on her thighs. Bringing them back up to to rub at her face, she sighs and it reaches her bones. "Old magic or some other mythical shit - Fact is, he just. He knew things about me that I didn't want anyone to know. Things that I would've rather had been buried forever if I could help it." 

The hands come down and she moves back towards the wall the table was up against behind her to lean against it herself. "And the things that he'd said to me..." She trails off and looks more tired than he's ever seen her - and he's seen her dead. The line of her shoulders slump and he thinks that she'd lie on the floor if her pride allowed it. 

Still, he has to ask. Shifting his weight on the bed, he says, "Not that I try to understand anything any of you do, ever, but why are you telling me this?" 

The corner of Vex's mouth twitches up in a half hearted smile and she shrugs. "Maybe you just have one of those faces, Cashew." 

"I have a lot of faces and they all scream, 'don't talk to me,'" he says, and her smile breaks wide for only a moment before leaving just as soon. "Try again." 

Vex looks like she's debating something in her mind and she says, "Keyleth told me what happened to you." 

Kash frowns and kicks a little at the ground. "You mean she told you what I told her, anyway."

"Of course," Vex says quickly, sitting up a little straighter. She tilts her head, fixing her cunning half-elven gaze on his own and he has to look away. "I just thought that since you had lived with this... Darkness for so long, that you'd... I don't know, have some idea of how to get it to shut the fuck up."

Now he really has to snort. "If I knew how to get rid of voices I didn't want to hear," he says, "we wouldn't be having this conversation, trust me." 

"I'll drink to that," Vex agrees, patting the counter around for an invisible mug. 

He sighs again, and he wonders if there's a being out there that counts the amount of times he gets tired of talking in an hour. He hopes they're busy. 

He really doesn't want to talk about Her. He never has, and never will, and the room has felt ten times smaller ever since the pointy eared menace in front of him began talking, and the welts and scars on his arm burn under his skin and there's a migraine in his left eye and every hour he's ever spent training feels like nothing because he can barely hold himself up at even the thought of his betrothed and--

"Kashaw?" 

Vex's voice cuts through the monologue in his head and he opens his eyes, blinking frantically and scowling. 

"What, what, what do you want from me?" He snaps back because it's the only way he knows how, rubbing his temples. His hands are sweaty but his breath is dangerously calm, almost as if he hadn't bothered using it in the past couple minutes. Kash swallows the lump in his throat and only gets more irritated. Even after all this time he still can't shake the fear of her. 

Vex, still quiet in wake of all this, doesn't say anything and hops off the counter, wiping her hands on pants.

"I shouldn't have bothered you with this, I'm sorry-"

"Shut up and sit down, Vex, I'm getting there, okay?" Kash interjects, pushing the heel of his palms into his eyes. He doesn't need to see her to feel the cold stare fixated on him from his words but he hasn't cared about people's looks before and he sure won't now - not when she came to him.

"Vesh isn't a voice in my head," he starts, crossing his arms yet again. He's a man of few gestures. He's not avoiding Vex's eyes but chooses to look out the window instead anyway. "She's my wife. She gave me my scars, I gave me my scars, and now I'm stuck with her till I get the pleasure of dying and hopefully sealing her evil ass to a dimension even Bird Boy's lady can't reach."

"She's not just a voice, she's everywhere, and part of her is me," he says as plain fact. "Sure, she's all locked away now, but..." He shakes his head and squeezes his left forearm riddled in his wedding vows. 

"She doesn't always need to whisper in my head. There's shit she's done to me that I won't ever get back, things that were worse than-- And I wish-" His words break off and it takes him a minute to fight the urge to stop talking altogether, to swallow the bile building his throat, to quell the burn in his stomach that makes every inch of him sick. He bites the inside of his cheek nearly hard enough to draw blood and glares at the floor. "Part of me wishes she'd only killed my family, because, you know, that's what she gives me to wish for." 

The room is so silent he thinks his guest has left and he tears his eyes away from the floor. At this point Vex is across the table from him, and there's a recognition in her eyes that makes him pause. Her hands subtly clutch at her sides and it's there, that fight-or-flight Vox Machina guarantee. Her shoulders are raised, she has a foot stepped back and he can tell she's holding her breath from the way her eyes stare not at him but past him, a little further than the surface. 

Kash takes a deep breath and stands up to his full height, closing his eyes. He tries to calm his nerves, which he's never been good at but has never failed to try, and rubs the back of his neck. When he opens them again, her hands are tucked to her chest, and she's looking at the ground again. 

"Something tells me... You already know about something like that," he says, so low and quiet that he isn't sure she heard. Vex shifts a little and moves her head slightly enough to recognize as a nod and he sighs. 

"This world fucking sucks," he mutters for good measure, and there's a little exhale from Vex's nose that sounds enough like she agrees. They stand without saying anything, each reevaluating whoever they see across from them. 

Vex opens her mouth to speak first, "I--"

 "Look," Kash interrupts, holding a hand up, "I know you came to me for... Some kind of help, and I'm not going to lie - that was pretty dumb because, like I keep telling you people, I don't know what the hell I'm doing either but..." There's a small smile on her face again and Kash figures he's doing something right so far. He takes a step towards her and uncrosses his arms.

"There are memories in my head that I don't even know who's are whose, or which ones actually happened, but I do know one thing about the bastards that won't leave us alone." He leans forward, and as he does, he lifts his hand and lets it hover, ignoring the way his fingers tense and tremble. Vex chews her bottom lip and, hands still close to her heart, squeezes her fingers twice before exhaling a shaky breath and reaching out to take his hand. Kash lets both of them rest on the table between them, and moves his head until he's sure that they're eye to eye. 

"The voice in my head, and the voice that stays in yours? They lost a long damn time ago, because their first mistake was sticking around," he says, and Vex's are eyes strong and forward. "Life, remember? The dead don't grow. We do."

Vex looks away from his face down at their hands and he pretends not to notice how quickly she wipes at her eyes. She shakes her head solemnly and there's a small smile on her face.

"You know, I'm starting to understand where Keyleth was coming from," she says softly.

"Gross," he says at full volume, and she breaks into a laugh so infectious he can't help but join her. When they finally calm down she lets go of his hand and moves some of her hair out of her face, standing up tall and just as confident as she walked in. He does the same and they have a brief battle of the eyebrow raise before he breaks.

"Well," he starts, exhaling and feeling like he's run a mile. "You get everything you wanted?"

Vex clears her throat and pats his cheek, very reminiscent of their tiefling friend. 

"I did! A very nice talk we had here, Kashaw," she hums, taking a step back. There's still some dirt on her face and Kash stares at it before grabbing the top of her head with one hand and rubbing the other on her cheek. She protests at the rough treatment but he eventually gets it off and lets her go, leaving her huffing with one cheek redder than the other. 

"What the hell was that?!" She complained, holding the side of her face. He only offers her a shrug in response and she rolls her eyes, stomping to the front door.

"Gods, I'm never letting you hang out with my brother ever again," she mumbles, opening the door and looking back at him. 

He stares at her in question and she gestures for him with her head. 

"You're coming with me," she says, her tone not accepting any refusals.

"Says who?" He scoffs.

"The Lady of this motherfucking city, that's who," she declares, puffing out her chest and holding an arm out for him. She even sticks her nose in the air and he thinks she's having way too much fun. "Now get the hell out of this property and join us for dinner."

Kash groans and huffs and grumbles all the way out the door, protesting when she kicks him in the butt for good measure, but the laugh she lets out when he reaches for her makes him feel a little less reluctant. Definitely his least favorite twin. 

[curodole]

TL;DR: it’s irrelevant whether he is but this surely opens new possible manifestations for his delusions we know already

Let’s say Father the Institute leader has never been Shaun the infant taken from Vault 111 and is instead some random guy. How would this affect the rest of game? 

First, let’s assume this is the only “change” we add to the game plot. So, Father the random guy still does the following:

- opens Sole’s cryochamber remotely (otherwise we can’t even start) - baits Sole with Kellogg and S9-27 to find Shaun (otherwise no way to go look for Shaun properly) - follows Sole’s progress throughout the Wasteland (otherwise no ability to prepare for their coming) - insists on calling Sole his parent (otherwise no reason to think of him as Sole’s son, whether it is truth or not) - assigns Sole as next Institute leader (weird flex but ok)

Such decisions and actions require plenty of planning and many resources. If Father’s mind is not clouded by any bloodbond delusions, why would he bother with all that - from start to end? 

1) Wonder of what would happen if you set a person from two centuries ago into modern world. 

“Let’s throw a pre-war person into a world they were not adapted to and see what they mold into!.. Oh shit, they’ve adapted too well! Quick, we need to make them be on our side!”  Given how Bethesda wrote Institute scientists as Think Tank sans comedy,  easily replacing people for shits and giggles crop testing and inducing identity crisis, it wouldn’t be past them to do just that and then, furthermore, try and play with their parental instincts just to see how they worked in past society (with a good option of using them). But then, honestly, being relatives or not, it would be much better tactics for him to act confused at first and then “go look for and accidentally find” some hidden data that confirm their relationship, happy tears, sentimental reunion, new Long Lost Family episode to finish it off.

This, however, is not the case.

Father didn’t even bother with covering the fact he’s been willingly observing Sole getting mauled by Wasteland when he was sure they’re his parent, leave alone pretending to be a shocked but happy man who just found True Family™ he lost long time ago. Why would he try pretending to have feelings he couldn’t?

2) Getting way too charmed by commercial posters showing American Dream.

You know them better than I, a Russian, do. A man, always in fancy shirt and bridges inside, consuming Whatever The Commercial Is About and reading a newspaper in a chair if consuming Whatever The Commercial Is About allows it. His wife, doing menial tasks in the background. A couple of kids - always a couple, always smiling, always clean (unless Whatever The Commercial Is About is meant for cleaning) playing around. 

50 years into the future, even people who lived there already forgot all the drawbacks, forgot how real life was rarely like the picture, what to say about those who never did? It’s easy to imagine the amount of daydreaming (and quantity of bullshit in it) for 200 years in the past, for world that is completely different from yours. 

So, whether Father the random guy grew up within white walls of the Institute, only knowing of the Wastleland from tales of ever-hungry beasts and corrupt folks, or (way less likely) seen ot for himself, it would be easy for him to fall into hopeless drooling over fancy imagery of carefree prewar bliss, nevermind all the “past shall be forgotten, into the future we dive” talk. 

And then, what sheer luck! He’s able to get elaboration from someone with memories fresh and intact! Surely they will want to reenact that same picture after being given the opportunity (and being ensured trying the same on surface is useless, to save him need for travelling to surface to indulge in it... what settlement system?). Oh, but to make it even better, he’ll have them consider him part of their actual family, one way or another (through S9-27), to ensure he gets to be a part of the pictire as well. You couldn’t possibly hope his wish for them “being a family” would mean sending him to Wasteland or having the same life within Institute walls everyone else there does, right? 

There are, however, not many roles to take in said picture. Man’s position is undoubtedly hard to fill without knowing that world’s traditions well. Wife’s position is reserved for Sole, regardless of gender, since they would have to be the one creating the atmosphere. Which really leaves him with a position, real or metaphorical, of a child, enjoying the world carefully built around him. (I’m horrified at writing this, too.) 

3) Kellogg - now with 120% more devotion! (Or case 1 but intentional from the start)

From what I know, that one’s, while unpredictable and giving an opposite result in many cases (can’t find the poll but it said people were roughly equal in getting endings for and against the Institute, because this is what they boil down to), generally considered as a canonical intention of this whole Institute plan: molding a person new to this world into what you want them to be by carefully ruining their mental health first with shocking, traumatic nightmare of a post-war world, and then groom them into working for you with promises of comfort. Gaslighting (I am an old man who needs no parent but I’ll still call you one), severing ties with possible powerful allies (Go become enemies with only powers that have definite stances on world differing from ours and make others be for us, too), emotional rollercoaster (I wish we could spend more time together! I wanted to see you struggle for me! No, there’s more to that than just experimenting! I am going to die soon! You are my heir!) - it’s all here. It wouldn’t be hard for a dying old man to keep the facade of caring at least for a little while but, as said earlier, he didn’t, of course he didn’t, it’s like Bethesda seriously thinks he could be a late-stage abuser without any reprecussions. 

Ah damnit, that’s a theme for its own lengthy reflection.

Now what?

So in the end we get this: while Father the Shaun is a sentimental prick, Father the random guy who is interested in reunion with Sole would be either ultimate pranker [gone wrong], a fetishist for old times or your regular manipulative bastard. Either way, even without whatever bond he’d think he had Father’s points towards performing such elaborate plan would be very much the same as they are when assuming he was also once that infant snatched from the Vault, but explained more weirdly... 

...which now feels like I’ve really said nothing new about him. Look, I’ve genuinely tried to put myself into his shoes here, and there are really not that many reasons to pretend like that specifically, and if he wasn’t interested, the entire plot would be ruined at point one, with Sole being left intact in a cryopod (obviously). 

Well, all that or I just didn’t have enough creativity to create him any reasons not existing already.

Tell me your thoughts/theory discussion:

Father isn't Shaun

[joannawillshrink]

shower thoughts

only this is a thought coming up while watching a Dr Who special called the end of the world part two. 

Which I think is a humorous title. End of the world, PART TWO. anyway

The Master character is the baddie and he has a drumming in his head, constantly, driving him crazy. The Doctor says he could help. And the Master replies in a misty voice, “I dont know what I’d be, without that noise.”

Made me immediately think about myself and current life, without my Mom. Like when people lose someone close to them, common advice or like, motivational talk is “go make them proud” and whatnot. And I’m thinking, I wonder if she can see me and see what I’ve become. So bored and depressed and stagnant, different. Because I really do feel very very different. I’m changed. And I dont like it. 

But I then went on to think about myself in a break up. How I want the other person to miss me. How I, in a twisted way, think its kindof flattering when someone is fucked up after losing me. Which is partially why I’m having a hard time knowing Jesse is fine and has moved on. Because I want to be mourned more. I want to have more visibly affected him. 

And I wonder if, and I’m not saying that my Mom is in any way twisted, or thinking maliciously... this is just my weird thought trail, 

But like, if I died and my family were really “fine” quite quickly afterwards, I feel like I’d be a bit bothered! Is that so immature of me? Like of course I’d want them to be functioning and get out there and do their thing, but not like... too soon! I guess everybody copes differently... I feel very out of touch with what other peoples’ lives are actually like. But just, I feel like my world is much more shattered than I was ready for. But is that my fault? For not “getting over it” faster? But Mom was everything, beyond words of worth or value, her love was like gravity. And it was August 9th, 2015 when it happened. Wow, I just had to look up the year. I guess its been longer than I thought? I dont know. I just feel like my processors are broken. 

Anyways. I feel like I have so much to unpack about this. “I dont know who I’d be without that noise.” Like, I am now a girl without her Mom. I am Joanna without my Mom. And I dont know who I am. I held on to what I thought was normal, with my relationship with Jesse. But now that ending obliterated the false bonds I had convinced myself were working. The phantom ties. 

Theyre gone, and I feel untethered. More purposeless than ever. 

When I didnt know who I was before, I leaned against trying to be a good daughter. That was a wall of my definition of self. But now that wall is gone, with her. I still want to be a good daughter, but showing up for her and having her love and friendship is gone. I know the tra-la-la “she’s always with you” but I mean, in real-time, its gone. 

And its like, a break up. If you get over it too easily, it kindof seems like it wasnt that big of a deal to you. 

But unconditional love is different, right?

I dont even think I know what unconditional love means. I dont think humans are that perfect. I dont think its genuinely possible to unconditionally love someone. 

I find it hard to believe that Jesse cared for me that way. I dont think he thinks of me, I think he nothings me. You know? When its like, I dont like you, but I dont dislike you. I nothing you. 

I wish I nothing’ed him. I dislike him right now. I dont want bad luck to befall him, but I wish I didnt have to witness his happiness. Because I’m jealous. I want to be happy. When I’m upset and other people are happy I feel like theyre bragging about it, rubbing it in my face. Especially when its a partner or friend, and especially especially when its an Ex. 

I used to fear talking to my mom on the phone because if I was sad and needed help or support, she was always more sad. Sadder. And needed MY help. Or if I was happy, and wanted to share it, I was afraid it would sound braggy or she’d feel lesser-than compared to what I had going on. Like, at the beginnings of things with Jesse, I’d mention a detail about kissing or holding hands or something, and she’d get weird about it and throw in some comment about “I wish your father still kissed me” or “goodness, I miss that”  or something. 

I worry thats rubbed off onto me. If I’m upset, like, deeply bothered, I dont want other people around me to be good at walking away. I want to be seen, and to effect others. If I’m crying I want someone else’s mood to change if they see me or hear my story. I want to be respected for enduring the things that are happening. I feel like when people hear a sad personal tale or listen to what youre feeling at the moment, and get up at the end and are fine and just walk away, its incredibly rude and unfeeling and gross. Offensive, even. Maybe thats playing too much of the victim. 

The lawyer in me immediately says “stop wasting your energy trying to get other people to be sad like you, to see you for how sad you are, and use that energy to do something about your own sadness” 

but if youre sad, and just put in the energy to make it go away, is that fixing it? or just ignoring it? 

is ignoring pain the secret to success? just, get on with it? never let it catch up to you?

I wonder if thats everyones suppressed secret. That they ARE in pain, but just running from it. 

I want to be heard and to share my story before I can move on from it. Its like airing out a ghost. Giving it its proper attention and respect so its existence is justified, giving it love, really. I want even the sad parts to be loved. 

So when someone just gets up and walks away unphased from a story I’m explaining, I dont feel love or connection or anything at all. It almost adds to the pain itself. Setting it further back down the hill with even more to climb to escape. 

I stay in bed a lot. I’m not sure how to air out being upset about my ex Jesse. I want to run my mouth about the shit he was in our relationship. I was lousy too, but different. Definitely no saint, but I understand the quiet spectrum in the motivation of cheaters. Not all cheaters. But I get why some do what they do. Because I seeked out attention from other men, men from my past, because I needed more, but didnt want to give up what could maybe be built with Jesse. I was scared to lose the potential of him. But he behaved so coldly, often cruelly emotionally to me, both in obvious but also very quiet subtle ways, that I needed to be around the energy of men who knew me before all that. Old friends who knew my sparkle. Because I needed to remember it, myself. I wished and wished and wished Jesse saw my sparkle, at the beginning of our relationship I thought he did. Which is why I decided to move to his city from my own, and really give it a try. 

But I felt like just another hobby in his life, another thing that needed his precious time. I felt juggled between work, his band, and his motorcycle. Literally, if I saw his eyes light up because he ordered another guitar pedal or motorcycle part, I knew it meant less time/money/enthusiasm for me or our time together. This literally happened, time and time again. 

And after losing the one person in my life who I knew I was their everything, 

I needed to be loved more. I needed to be loved more than a new amplifier. I needed to have someone look at me and get excited like they would when something new would arrive from Amazon. 

I needed to be appreciated for more than just when I was game to have sex. 

I needed to have my sparkle be seen and fanned. 

So I diminished, and I felt, after a while, that he didnt deserve me. That he didnt deserve my best. So when I traveled or was around old flames or friends who I knew understood me and made me feel great just being me, I gave THEM my best. Which, in black and white on paper, is cheating, and isnt cool. 

But my heart needed it. I shouldve broken up with Jesse so much sooner than I did. 

But now, we ARE broken up, and I’m super fucked up about it still. I’m glad we’re not together, but in a way like...  he treated me this way when we WERE together. Indifferent, not seeing how special I am. How great we could be. 

So its like... I guess he’s acting exactly the same. It hurt this much within the relationship, too... but when we were together at least I could yell at him about it. It felt good to yell at somebody for what hurts. His lack of attention still hurts, but now I have no right to get into a fight with him about it. 

Its all to be expected. His behavior. He left his wife to be with me. Someone of 8 fucking years. And he never talked about her really. So why should I be surprised that he doesnt talk about me, or miss me, or seem forlorn. He didnt seem forlorn for her. He was barely single. He wasnt single. He jumped right from her to me. And now he’s very shortly on to the next. I really shouldnt be surprised. 

It would be easier if he wasnt so entrenched in all the people I know. 

Theres always a risk of seeing him out. I wish I was more mature about this. But honestly I’d feel the same even if we were just friends from the start. Its like seeing someone you just simply dont like, regardless of context. If someones a jerk, you dont want them to be where you are. 

I may leave Austin. Its weird, being trapped by comfort. My house is pretty good. Like, the shape of the house itself is cute. Theres a porch. Theres a patio, and a coffee shop across the street. 

But I dont feel happy here. I have no idea where I’d go. But I’m sick of living in a pot house. EEEVery day its bowl bong weed pot cough cough sneeze laugh lame joke bong bong lame joke bad pun leaving dishes fucking everywhere hoarding objects and never using them leaving dirt and coats and shoes and opened mail and bullshit all over the place. 

I feel like I cant bitch because I dont have a job. I’m lazing around sleeping 80% of the day because... of what? Because of sadness, because I dont really want to go out there. I dont want to interact with my roommates who I find annoying. I dont want to take a walk around the neighborhood that I think its pretty boring. I dont want to go to bars and feel less than my past self. Fatter. Older. Uglier. I dont want to go feel my inadequacy proven right. Jesse treated me that way. I moved here five months after my Mom died. Brand new city. 

And I didnt get a job. I didnt do a whole lot of anything. And he hated me for it. He didnt understand and it leaked in. It absolutely showed. 

So now its February 2018. So many months have passed. And I’m still not doing anything. I just dont want to. I dont know where to get a job here, I dont want to commit my time to something that doesnt feel like anything. I want to exercise but it requires a 15 minute drive to get there. I want to cook but our kitchen is so fucking cluttered it drives me nuts. 

Am I too uptight? Like, is this coming off like I cant function unless somethings perfect? 

Im sure it sounds that way... I just... feel no spark. When my new roommate cleaned the bathroom and had music going and was doing the shit I normally do, I felt so pleased and relatable, it was marvelous. But then other two roommates come home and toss their coats all over and smoke weed and plop down watching stupid shows, and it just.. 

Should I try to be more of a leader? Force my way through it and burn my own trail? If theyre watching dumb shit, suggest something better? Take an active interest in life?

I definitely have been passive. I want other people to be interesting. I want to be intrigued by someone’s starting something. Somebody to already have the breadcrumbs laid down and I get to follow them and add to the adventure. I dont know if I have the energy to take the risk of being bold and leading the way, not knowing the caliber of people I’m talking to or bringing with me. Like, I want to spend energy being great around someone I already think is great. I miss having crushes. If I think someone is awesome, I feel like I then get to be super awesome too, in hopes that showing my favorite self, enjoying my own shine... that they’ll notice and enjoy it too. 

But like, why shine for boring people? I dont have any interest in that. I dont want to impress people that dont impress me. 

That sounds super bitchy but whatever. 

Anyways. I’m way off track. 

I just remembered that I need to call my Aunt Carol, who I think is mad at me, because she retired today and I’m overdue to call her. I really dont want to but it needs to be done. Calling a family member that you know is disappointed in you is NEVER fun. I feel the weight on my chest already. Okay, gonna call her. I’ll write again soon. 

[flauntpage]

Morning Wood: Sleeve of Wizard

This post is brought to you with limited advertising and no surveys by Michael Parisano. Are you looking to buy or sell your home? Are you a first time buyer looking to buy your first home? If the answer to one of those questions is “yes,” please consider contacting Michael Parisano of Coldwell Banker Preferred. Over 70% of Michael’s clients are first time buyers. Michael Parisano is a native of Delaware County and a graduate of Cardinal O’Hara High School & Temple University. He works with buyers, sellers, renters, and landlords throughout the city of Philadelphia, Delaware County, Chester County, and Montgomery County. Michael is driven, honest, and always strives to be the hardest worker in the room. His main goal is to help his clients find their dream home and to make that process as stress free as possible. Please contact Michael at MParisano@cbpref.com or call him at 610-348-9931.

  The truth is, I was going to use that headline win or lose. A win would’ve been better, but at least we can now link our lede to headline by saying that the Wizards kept the Sixers at arm’s length.

Welcome to the Wood. The last time I did this on any consistent basis was 2012, before the Phillies totally shit in their beds and began a five-year hibernation in it. The purpose of Wood, besides making it generally difficult to pee, is to regale in tales of the previous night and celebrate our superior team. We don’t do it for all the teams because it’s a lot of work (a grind, if you will) and something is lost when you’re trying to make tongue-in-cheek, not-so-thinly-veiled sexual references of sports conquest for dreadful teams. It just wouldn’t work with a team who counted among its standout stars Jerami Grant, or had Alexey Shved on the roster. But this team, your team, your town… well, they’re worthy of such loosely scheduled morning posting.

For those of you who are new here, strap in, because the last time this series had its lifeblood pumping, we wound up making a t-shirt of a pissing horse. And for you OG CB readers, WELCOME BACK. I’ve missed you. Let me grind up on your hip as we awake from our slumber.

Let’s Wood!

  Start it off right

First, the necessaries: The Sixers lost a tight game, 120-115. Joel Embiid had 18 and 13 in 27 minutes (!!!), while Ben Simmons was borderline LeBron-like with 18, 10, 5 and 2 in 34. Markelle Fultz was, somehow, better than expected. And Robert Convington I think just hit another three-pointer from that deep, well-formed shooting pocket of his.

A loss is a loss is a stupid fucking phrase. But consider the Sixers were rolling out units that had literally never played together in a game, and two players who hadn’t yet played an NBA game, and Joel Embiid’s minutes algorithm, and Jahlil Okafor and new free agent signings, and players returning off injury against a well-formed, veteran, experienced team, on the road, and, well, yeah that was impressive. Unless of course you’re from the old school Philly sports mindset, in which case you have to FUCKING HATE EVERYTHING:

Sixers showed great promise in opener last night, but it's not enough. After 4 putrid seasons, they need to win games. And they didn't.

— Angelo Cataldi (@AngeloCataldi) October 19, 2017

This team should be beyond talking about positives in a loss. https://t.co/sfkMZCVxo2

— Reuben Frank (@RoobNBCS) October 19, 2017

It was their first game together. Their three best players had a combined 31 games playing experience. Their point guard was coming off a near season-long injury. Their shooting guard just arrived here. And they were leading at the half against John Wall and the Wizards.

Sure, I get that this might get old if they start 2-10, but let’s give them some time – I don’t know, like A GAME – to gel and get to know each other. JJ, I’m Joel, this is my friend Jahlil. I’m just kidding, nobody likes Jahlil. Want to grab a burger?

  The A team

Mike Breen – “A FOUL!” – and Jeff Van Gundy calling a Sixers game. God that feels good. No Mark Jackson last night, as Doris Burke joined in the three-man (er, person) booth. She’s great, actually. I like Jackson, too. A good “Mama, there goes that man” gets me horned up for hoops action like no other. Burke gets a full-time color commentator role. But Jackson will remain a part of the A-team once the playoffs come around.

Still, seeing the Sixers get the A-team treatment from ESPN feels good. I can’t imagine this crew has called a Sixers game over the last four years. I’m too lazy to look it up, and don’t know where I would, but suffice it to say, this was rare and, I guess, unexpected. We’ve arrived. And hearing Van Gundy gush over Simmons’ height was something to behold. Otto Porter is 6’8, and Simmons is much taller than him. He might be 7’0! Or hearing Breen remark that Simmons was playing “point center” as the biggest guy on the floor. Yeah, I’m all fucking in on that.

The halftime show, on the other hand…

Paul Pierce on Joel Embiid:

“I’m tired of getting a little taste of him . I want the whole load” http://pic.twitter.com/2VUpSZKKju

— BLACK ADAM SCHEFTER (@B1ackSchefter) October 18, 2017

Delicious.

That group, besides mispronouncing Embiid’s name and not knowing how long he’s been in the league (four years), was hit or miss, though I did appreciate their loss of words at the don’t call it a minutes restriction.

  Rebranding the minutes restriction

I LOVE how the Sixers have rebranded a “minutes restriction” to call it a “plan.” Nothing escapes the arm of their very large (according to this Philly.com story about their sales and marketing efforts) marketing department.

The last two days have been dominated by coverage of the incorrectly referred to minutes restriction, which, to be fair, was a phrase born more out of media branding than the Sixers themselves (Brown was clear this week that Embiid would have a range and not a hard cap). So what do the Sixers do? Let’s, ah, tweak the phrasing on that.

Brett Brown after the game:

“The rigid… whatever… pick a number. It’s more of a plan that we have this year rather than a restriction.”

And Joel Embiid:

“We gotta stop calling it a minutes restriction. I think the plan is to get out there, play, see how I feel. There’s gonna be some games where I’m gonna be tired… but yeah, we gotta stop calling it a minutes restriction. It’s a plan.”

Got it? Plan. Not a restriction. Or you can call it “fucking bullshit.”

  Markelle Fultz’s free throw form

Markelle Fultz’s free-throw form still looks a bit weird.

http://pic.twitter.com/wtMSQWM9a7

— NBA SKITS (@NBA_Skits) October 19, 2017

Yuck.

But, I thought Fultz actually played well. I think that observation is based partly on the fact that we’ve all reset our expectations with him. He’s not Simmons or Embiid. Few are. Those guys are both freaks in their own regard, and it’s unreasonable to expect any rookie, even the number one pick, to come out and look like a vet like those two guys have. Fultz is not only younger, but certainly more raw. Throw in the fact that he has some sort of shoulder injury and hasn’t been around an NBA coaching staff for 12+ months, and there’s going to be more of a learning curve with him. And despite his -18 number last night, I thought he played quite well. Attacked the rim, defended adequately, and wasn’t a liability out there.

But he’s not going to be the player we expect until he gets comfortable with his shot again. I mean, SHOOOOOOOOOOOT:

He didn’t.

  Robert Covington

I want to live in his shooting pocket. Just pitch a tent there and have wild sex parties. Everyone’s welcome. He shot lights-out. That pace isn’t sustainable, but him and Redick are a dynamic 1-2 three-point threat. Add in Embiid eventually getting more of his to fall and Fultz, you know, like taking one every once in a while, and that Sixers gravity is going to be full John Mayer.

But new rule: Robert Convington should never put the ball on the floor. Just shoot it or look around and pass. Never dribble.

  Almost throw it down

Oh if this had gone in… http://pic.twitter.com/dXSGbkUrk4

— Dan Levy (@DanLevyThinks) October 18, 2017

so close, joel http://pic.twitter.com/xo0bV0Xuen

— ALSO, KEITHFUJIMOTO (@vineydelnegro) October 18, 2017

This would have broken souls.

  Travel

Joel Embiid getting Sixers Fans FIRED UP in DC!!!#joelembiid #TrustTheProcess #HereTheyCome #nba http://pic.twitter.com/d9dlwW8klo

— Jeff Skversky 6abc (@JeffSkversky) October 18, 2017

Philly fans are the best. How many times did Breen and the rest of the crew comment on the Trust The Process chants? And it didn’t hurt that this guy was wearing a beautiful hoodie:

You can get that right here.

  So close

I think he meant Markelle Fultz.

  Embiid is the best

Joel Embiid does not care about your convention.

  Simmons

Ben Simmons was LeBron-like. The way he moves up the court, passes the ball, drives. It all looks so familiar.

LeBron’s per-36 stats in his NBA debut (he played 42 minutes) were 21, 8, 5 and 3. Last night, Simmons had 18, 10, 5 and 2 in 34 minutes. Not bad.

  Merch

You know what to do. Right here.

  Morning Wood: Sleeve of Wizard published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[samuelrodgersfutureworks-blog]

Story of Khutulun

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=822456431891

In the swirling, blood-soaked melee of a 13th-century battle against the Mongol Empire, it wasn’t all that weird to gaze into the ranks of the most overpoweringly-dominant land army ever fielded in human history and notice that, hey, check it out, a couple of the warriors currently massacring all my friends actually happen to be women.   At a time when most of the world’s female population would have just been happy to have the legal right to tell their husbands to stop hitting them, Mongol women were some of the most socially, politically, and militarily badass chicks anywhere on Earth.  They ran cities while the men fought on campaigns, built public works, helped manage the largest land empire of all time, had seats in the Kurulurai (basically Mongol Congress), and even occasionally fought in battle, a detail that was particularly scandalous and unacceptable to writers from Europe, the Middle East, China, and basically any other country that got the fucking piss stomped out of them by the Mongol Horde.

But while it wasn’t particularly bizarre to notice that one or two of the enemy archers may have had a pair of boobs, it was significantly more unsettling to encounter the warrior princess Khutulun on the field of combat.  Because while most warrior women of the Mongol Empire may have been expert snipers, firing their composite bows with deadly precision while riding a horse at a full gallop, Khutulun preferred a significantly more direct approach:  She would charge out at the head of her warriors, ride straight up to the biggest enemy officer she could find, grab that asshole off his horse with a one-armed choke slam, slap him in a fucking half nelson, and drag him back to the Khan while he screamed and pleaded for his men to save him.  Once that fucker was ripped from the battlefield and firmly in the Khan’s custody, Khutulun would go back to her primary combat duty – commanding a regiment of Mongol heavy cavalry.

This is the tale of Genghis Khan’s great-great-granddaughter.

Khutulun never met Genghis, and by the time she was born most of the great Mongol Conquests had already stomped nuts all the way from Beijing to Baghdad, cleaving a bloody smear across the map that ended up becoming the largest contiguous land empire in the history of humanity.  Her father was a Khan named Khaidu, and he ruled a fief of land near the Tian Shan Mountains, which is in the realm of present-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan (or however the hell you spell that), and northern China.  Khaidu was from the line of Great Khan Ogodei, who was Genghis’ third son, and Khaidu was basically the last of the old-school badass, “let’s ride our horses over this guy’s ballsack in front of his entire family and then throw all of his compost garbage into a recycling bin” Mongol barbarian motherfuckers who shanked faces first and didn’t want to be asked questions by anyone besides a fast food cashier or his favorite bartender.  As a good Mongol Prince, he constantly asked himself one of the most important questions any man can ever ask himself:  What Would Genghis Do?

The #WWGD lifestyle netted Khaidu tons of land, plunder, death, destruction and mayhem, and it also led to him having fucking 15 children – all of them boys, except for his youngest.  He named his lone daughter Khutulun, meaning either “Bright Moon” or “All White” depending on how you want to translate it, and then proceeded to give her the exact same badass Mongol warrior training he gave to her fourteen older brothers – how to ride a horse, shoot a bow, kill someone with a sword, wrestle, punch, tie knots, milk a yak, build fires, drink blood, sleep in a yurt, and mean-mug motherfuckers who are stupid enough to step to you.

The Princess of the Bright Moon was pretty over-the-top badass at everything she attempted, but out of all the bone-crushing military pursuits she excelled at, she was the most successful when it came to straight-up wrestling.  Having fourteen older brothers is probably a gigantic pain in the genitals, and you can be damn sure that Khutulun learned how to fight pretty early on, but this woman was so hardcore that no man or woman on earth could beat her in a straight up bare-knuckled throwdown.  It didn’t matter how tough you thought you were – this princess was going to hip-toss your dumb ass through a plate glass window onto a campfire and then everyone was going to laugh at you for getting your balls kicked off by a girl.

Now, I should mention that wrestling is the national sport of Mongolia – they fucking love that shit there.  Of the Olympic medals won by Mongolia, over half of them are won in wrestling events.  These are big, tough people who love to fight, and and Mongolian wrestling is intense:

This is literally just two grown men kicking the crap out of each other.  There are no rules in Mongolian wrestling – anything goes.  Bare knuckles, little padding, and there are no weight classes or any of that lame handicapping bullshit.  It’s just two big angry motherfuckers wailing on each other until someone falls down.  Once a guy hits the ground, he’s out.    Thing Greco-Roman wrestling meets Rocky IV.

From a very early age, Khutulun made a name for herself as being completely unbeatable at an ultra-violent sport that involves white-knuckle fucking hand-to-hand combat with a big angry man twice your size.  She was basically Ronda Rousey meets Ann “The Wall” Veal, and every man who stepped into the ring with her found himself getting flipped for real and eating a face-full of dirt.  Mongols loved placing bets on these fights, and the Princess was making a killing by powerbombing fools who underestimated her badass cred.

Once Khutulun reached a certain age, it became time for her to get married off to a nice boy with a killer smile, tons of cash, and an excellent track record of slaughtering the Khan’s enemies on the battlefield.  Khutulun’s dad and mom were pretty desperate for her to get married, because marriage in the middle ages was a good way to link your family in to another powerful family, but Khutulun was a warrior and would only stand to be with a man who was worthy of her badassitude.  In a very Atalanta conversation, she told her folks, “Ok, sure, I’ll get married, but only to a man who can beat me in a wrestling match”.

The Princess was rich, powerful, cool as hell, and apparently very beautiful, and it didn’t take Dad too long to find a bunch of guys willing to throw down for love.  One by one, they found themselves hurtling through the air as she snapped bones and swept legs and basically demolished any wimp idiot who thought he was man enough for her.  After all the good suitors were done, Khutulun issued a general challenge – she’d accept a challenge from any man, but if you lost you had to give her ten horses (a couple conflicting sources say the entry fee was a hundred horses, but think about how many damn horses that is!).  Everyone from foreign Princes to local blacksmiths saw an opportunity to marry into the family of Genghis Fuckin’ Khan, and they came from all around to face her.

When Marco Polo met Khutulun in 1280, she claimed to have a pasture with ten thousand horses.  She was still single.

Pioneering travel book writers Rashid al-Dun, Ibn Bhattuta, and Marco Polo all met Khutulun, and when Marco Polo was there he talks about one foreign prince who arrived at the court of Khan Khaidu looking for the hand of the princess.  This guy was tall, handsome, and successful, and he bet the insane sum of one thousand horses on the match.  Khutulun accepted.  That night, the Prince found the Princess alone, and pleaded with her to throw the fight – please, let me win this one, and I will be so good to you forever.

She looked at him and, according to Polo, said she “would never let herself be vanquished if she could help it,” but that “if, indeed, he could get the better of her then she would gladly be his wife.”  Then she walked away.

They had the match the next day in the Grand Hall of the Khan’s palace.  People from throughout the city and the surrounding villages came to watch.

“The damsel threw him right valiantly on the palace pavement.  And when he found himself thus thrown, and her standing over him, great indeed was his shame and discomfiture.”

Around this time, a Mongol Civil War broke out between Khan Khaidu and his cousin Kublai Khan, who was the ruler of Yuan Dynasty China.  Despite being massively outnumbered and outgunned, Khaidu resented his cousin for going soft, giving up the old Mongol traditions like arm-cleaving and head-popping so that he could become some Buddhist hippie that was into lame things like sleeping on gold-embroidered silks surrounded by sexy naked ladies while consuming delicious food and expensive wine.   The two argued, bickered, then went to war, and Khutulun was brought along to help command the Mongol Heavy Cavalry on the battlefield.  Again, according to Marco Polo, “Not a knight in all his train played such feats of arms as she did.  Sometimes she would quit her father’s side and make a dash at the army of the enemy, and seize some man thereout, as deftly as a hawk pounces on a bird, and carry him to her father.”

Makes sense to me.  If she could hip-check a guy to the turf on level ground, imagine what she could do if she got the drop of you in a live-fire combat situation.

Despite torching some border towns, defeating main line Chinese infantry in battle, and face-shanking Mongol warriors on the field of war, the fighting between the cousins proved indecisive, and really the only thing that came out of it was that the Mongol Empire started to shatter into smaller kingdoms that didn’t wield nearly the same power as Genghis once had.

Khutulun did eventually get married, although not to a guy that beat her in battle.  Instead, she chose her husband – a “lively, tall, good-looking man” named Abtakul who was from a few towns over.  Abtakul was an elite soldier who had been hired by Kublai Khan to kill Khutulun’s dad, but the Khan’s guards caught this guy, threw him in jail, and sentenced him to death by beheading.  Well Abtakul’s mom was so upset her son was going to die that she threw herself at the Khan’s feet and begged that she be killed in her son’s place.  The Khan said “Ok, fine, whatever, as long as someone is decapitated that’s fine with me”, but then Abtakul stepped forward and said “fuck that, no way am I letting my mom die on my behalf.  I will face this like a man”.  The Khan was so impressed with this family that he immediately released Abtakul from jail and hired him to be an officer in the Khan’s army.  Abtakul fought in the war, was wounded in combat, and while he was recuperating in the hospital he met the Princess, who fell in love with him immediately or some shit.  Anyway, that’s the story, and it’s a big deal because medieval women typically weren’t lucky enough to choose who they got to marry.

Khutulun’s father died in 1301, and right before he died he appointed Khutulun to succeed him as the new Khan (technically the female version of a khan is called a Katun).  She declined, because she had fourteen older brothers who were all pretty fucking upset that they’d been passed over for the chiefdom, and instead she made a deal with one of her brothers – I’ll back you in your claim to be Khan, if you’ll let me command your army on the battlefield.

Much like her dad, she didn’t have time for palace life – she wanted combat, like a true badass.

Khutulun did end up taking over as General once her brother became Khan, but she wasn’t commander for very long.  After just five years as the Clan’s military commander, she died, passing away violently at the age of 45.  The sources are unclear whether she fell in battle or was assassinated, but I’d argue both methods are equally badass.