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mlundertow · 1 year ago

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Pulling a Haruka

tl;dr: Muv-Luv Undertow hasn’t been abandoned. I just have a lot going on right now.

So… long time, no write, right?

Yeah, it's probably been, what, a year and a half since I posted a chapter to Muv-Luv Undertow? You’d be fully justified in thinking it’s an abandoned fic.

Thing is, it’s not abandoned. It’s not dead.

It’s just… resting…

So… this is going to take some explaining. Content warning for severe medical conditions.

So, maybe the first thing to know about the author of Muv-Luv Undertow — that'd be me — is that I'm old, at least relative to most anime fans. Really frickin’ old. Long past the point where individual birthdays are interesting and you have to do math in your head to remember your exact age because it kind of doesn't matter anymore.

Like, seriously, the first election I could vote in was Reagan vs. Mondale, and I voted for whoever the Libertarian was, because I was still in the thrall of both-sides-are-bad poseur contrarian bullshit that took me far to long to outgrow. (That college friend that Noah mentions during the trial in book 3, the one with weirdo political opinions? That’s me trashing my younger self.)

Anyways, when you burn through your 30s, 40s, and 50s, one popular thing to do is to have kids. Both our societal traditions and contemporary media tell us this is an important, heartwarming, and even fun thing to do.

And sometimes it is!

But also, sometimes your kid is born with a congenital heart defect.

And sometimes that acts up with severe side-effects when they grow up.

And sometimes when they're in the hospital for that, a scan discovers cancer.

And sometimes when they're undergoing chemotherapy, they have a stroke.

And sometimes all of these things happen at once.

So… yeah. That's a big part of where I've been (there's more, which accounts for 2022 and why we had to move out of our house, but this is the current problem). I actually had to take four months off work — I'm lucky I work at a company where I even can do that — and I'm still not back to work full time. The kid requires a lot of care, and it has drained all my free time, between caring for him, doing my job, and giving my wife a break.

And free time is the one thing I need to work on this fanfic.

I do think I'm eventually going to get back to it, as the kid improves and life here stabilizes, but I can't put a date on that. I’d hate to set expectations and let readers down even more than I already have.

But it pains my heart to want to finish this story and not be able to. I think about it almost every day.

Still, it’s worth assessing where Undertow is, and what it’ll take to finish it once I can.

Muv-Luv Undertow was always planned as a series of five books. I wrote in that format because I wanted to mimic the light novel format that Schwarzesmarken and Total Eclipse used. I also thought it would be good discipline to have to pay off novel-length plots while spinning the tale of the larger series. I think it's intimidating to see some fic on AO3 that’s like 500,000 words or more. Even though Undertow will probably end up close to that (it’s already at 300K words), being able to see it broken up by book may be more appealing than diving into some big, potentially-unstructured sprawl.

Three books are completely done, at least as first drafts:

Broken Ship — AO3, epub

Jour de Gloire — AO3, epub

If You Tolerate This — AO3, epub

Then we have the in-progress book four:

Join the Parade — A03, epub

And speaking of “progress”, how is this actually going? Well, book four is at 72,964 words across twelve numbered chapters (not counting the front matter that AO3 counts as separate chapters, like the cover image or the epigraph). As I thought I was getting the book rolling again last December, I finally outlined the end of Act II and all of Act III, filling in a lot of gaps I had been putting off making decisions on. Book four has been the least plotted-in-advance story in the series, and that made it harder to write even back when things were moving along. It’s pretty clear that I'm a plotter, not a pantser.

One thing I did in outlining these chapters was to do virtual index cards for key beats — the things that have to happen and the things I want to happen (ideally, the Venn diagram of these should be a circle) — so I could move them around the last few chapters to see how different arrangements worked out, in terms of plot, theme, and feel.

In fact, here’s a PNG of how I ended up breaking Act III… with spoiler protection provided by the Gaussian blur filter in Acorn 7. I let a few cards go through unblurred so you can speculate about what's happening between here and there. It might read a little dull in this format, but I promise you that several things explode before we're done.

So, seven more chapters and a one-scene epilogue get us done with book four.

After that, the story ends in book five. Payoffs for stuff I've been building since the first book, some twists that you won't see coming (oh, but they're coming), and connections back into the main Muv-Luv timeline that’ll show why this story was worth telling in the first place. One thing that’ll help book five is that since so much of it is natural consequences of what’s come before, the plotting should go faster, because everything that happens is now inevitable.

You know, like when you hit Act V in any good tragedy.

One of the themes of book four has been about our protagonist Noah being pulled back to his normal life. Whatever route he chooses, the end of the current book will bring him to the point of no return, and then beyond.

Book five is titled Autumn Closin’ In. I'll save you the trouble of looking up the epigraph; it’s from the song “Night Moves”, because you can’t set a story in the woods of northern Michigan without eventually dropping in a Bob Seger song. Literally. I think Gov. Whitmer signed that into law a few years back.

Ain’t it funny how the night moves, when you just don’t seem to have as much to lose? Strange how the night moves… with autumn closin’ in.

I’ll post here in this Tumblr as things come back together. I also plan to start a Mastodon account (possibly on the anime-themed urusai.social instance, if they’ll have me) to replace the @ml_undertow Twitter account, because Elon has ruined Twitter, and everyone should be migrating off it by now, if you haven’t done so already. As things get closer to starting book five, I’ll also need to commission Hirei to do one more character design and a matching book cover. (Now that we’ve done Noah, Adrienne, Kimmy, and Don, who do you suppose will be on the final cover, and why?)

I don’t know when, but we’ll get there. And it’ll all have been worth it.

Even if it does mean suffering through a three-year Haruka-like coma.

#fanfic #ao3 author #muv-luv

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paradisetemporarilymisplaced · 4 years ago

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So I was being a basic bitch the other day and listening to my true crime podcasts when it occurred to me just how suspicious Nile’s “death” would look to everyone not in the Guard, leading me to a train of thought that, 2200 words later, absolutely got away from me but I can’t let go so I’m inflicting it on all of you!

To set the stage, we know the movie takes place over approximately a week. Here’s what happens to Nile from the military’s point of view:

She dies is very seriously injured

She heals without a scratch

Just before she’s supposed to be shipped out to Germany, she vanishes, leaving two men concussed (and presumably reporting being knocked out by a woman with short hair wearing civilian clothes)

She goes AWOL for several days

They get word from the CIA that she is to be reported killed in action (details unclear)

So, at the beginning of this very weird week, the USMC has to tell Nile’s family of her death critical injury. What her family was told depends on how long she was dead – a Google search tells me that family will be notified in person within 8 hours of a soldier’s death, but we don’t know how long her first death lasted. For an injury, however, they’d get a phone call to notify them and the unit would arrange for them to visit as soon as the soldier is transferred out of a combat zone. Like I remember when I was in high school, a guy from my church who was a Marine was really seriously injured in a helicopter crash in Iraq and from what I could tell, his parents were told immediately and were flown out to Germany to see him, so it stands to reason that Nile’s family would have been informed relatively quickly after her throat was slashed, one way or another.

And then, she goes AWOL. Her family would be notified while the USMC tried to figure out where she went, not least because the military would want to know if she’s contacted them. (And it’s possible that her family may have been on the way to Germany to see her since we know that’s where she was supposed to go!) So for several days:

Nile’s mom and brother have no idea where she is

They know she was seriously injured and most certainly should not have been moving around on her own

They can’t get a hold of her

The military can’t tell them anything

And the next thing they know for sure is that she was “killed in action.” After being injured and vanishing into thin air. And they presumably cannot produce her body or any concrete evidence of her death. In any case, something sketchy is going on, so they’re like. SMELLS LIKE A MILITARY COVERUP.

In a surprise to probably no one, there is a well-documented legacy of mysterious US military deaths, particularly of women of color (TW for sexual assault in these links). The cases of LaVena Johnson and Vanessa Guillenin particular have made national news because of their families’ persistence in seeking justice. Likewise, Nile is a Black woman, and her mom and brother are most certainly hypercognizant of (a) state violence against Black people and (b) these high-profile cases of suspicious military deaths. So her family are seriously side-eyeing the situation, knowing that (a) the military has a serious incentive (and a documented history) of covering up things that make them look bad and (b) nothing about Nile’s disappearance and supposed death are adding up.

And Andy’s right. Nile does come from warriors. And you know who else does? Her brother.

Don’t get me wrong. Nile’s mom would absolutely not back down. She’d know something was up and want to get to the bottom of it. But based on what I know about Gen X parents (mine), they’re not the most technologically savvy. Like they can use the internet, but they didn’t grow up with it the way we young millennials and Gen Z did. So Nile’s brother takes the lead. And what do zillennials do best?

Social media.

Nile’s brother starts going hard on any site he can, trying to get the word out to see if anyone knows what happened to his sister. He starts a Reddit thread. He starts a Facebook group. He reaches out to the media and true crime bloggers and podcasters à la Sarah Turney, getting loud and being a general nuisance in hopes of getting some answers. He gets his friends and Nile’s friends involved. Maybe eventually Dizzy, Jay, and others from Nile’s unit hear about it and reach out, telling him what they saw and how weird it all was. He’s drumming up interest, and soon “Nile Freeman” becomes a household name (at least among the true crime fans).

Copley is, of course, trying his best, but at this point there is just so much that it’s impossible for him to scrub everything. Sure, he can erase new footage of Nile and the Guard, but what can he do about Reddit threads and podcast episodes that are speculating something weird has happened? Maybe he could hack the sites and shut those things down, but honestly, that’s the last thing he’d want to do, because that only adds weight to the theory that Nile’s disappearance is a military coverup. So eventually he has to tell Andy what’s going on.

Andy, obviously, does not take the news well. However, she is also completely computer illiterate, because that’s Booker’s job and he’s the only one who ever bothered to learn what the internet is in any meaningful way. (She probably calls Booker for advice, and for the record, I think Booker would have no qualms about shutting down conspiracy threads, tinhats be damned, but Copley is too concerned about the consequences. He’s ex-CIA for crying out loud, he knows how it’ll look if they scrub every mention of Nile’s name from the internet.) Maybe she confers with Joe and Nicky but, let’s be honest, they’d be equally unhelpful. So at this point, she knows they have to bring in Nile.

But the thing about Nile is that she, too, knows how to use the internet (duh). Aside from her being a young millennial/digital native, we know from the cave scene where she’s giving Booker suggestions on how to track Copley that she clearly is even more computer savvy than the average person. And for that reason she almost definitely took over the day-to-day tech stuff after Booker’s exile. So I think it would be foolish to expect her to be unaware of what’s happening. She’s not contacting her family or posting on the message boards or anything, but she knows what’s up. So Copley and the team probably sit her down to “break the news,” but we know the girl does not have a poker face (see: literally shooting herself in the foot and not being able to play it cool whatsoever) and cracks immediately, telling them she’s seen everything about her case – she’s not interacting with any of it, she certainly didn’t instigate anything, but she knows. (And she is so goddamn proud of her brother.)

At this point, I’d like to pause and consider Nile’s role in the overall narrative of this movie. She’s set up as a foil to Andy, obviously, but she’s also a foil to Booker. Booker, who, like Andy, is a serious pessimist, but who, unlike Andy, still has very fresh memories and trauma associated with being the new kid, which have destroyed him. In his mind (and Andy’s), if Nile communicates with her family, she’ll become just like him in a century or two – bitter, alone, and stuck with her grief and memories of watching her family die and knowing they died resenting her. It’s a small sample size, but this is the only experience they have to go off of.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

There’s been a lot of discussion of TOG being a fundamentally queer movie – a group of people brought together because of something inherent about themselves that is different, that must be hidden, that causes others to hate, fear, and reject them. Booker’s backstory is the archetypal traumatic “coming out” story – his family learns who he is, hate him for it, and attempt to cast him out of their lives. He’s stuck with his trauma, his pain, his loss, and it consumes him.

But what if Nile’s family would be the opposite? What if her “coming out” to them as immortal is met with acceptance, love, celebration? What if her family is just overjoyed to have her back, and they don’t care what the circumstances are? I'm reminded of this incredible post from @shitty-old-guard-deaths a while back, where Nile’s mother hits Booker with a frying pan because “my baby let me believe she was dead for FIVE YEARS based on your bad advice???” (which may or may not have inspired this whole tangent). Nile takes the advice of someone who did the same thing she wants to do because she doesn’t want to risk her family’s rejection. She wants the good memories with her family and is afraid that showing them her true self will bring her unbearable pain, forever replacing those memories. But, with high risk comes high reward.

Anyway. Nile and the team are trying to come up with a plan for how to handle this whole thing, but she’s not really participating because she’s too afraid to hope. Until finally, quickly, so she doesn’t lose her nerve, she suggests she reach out to them, knowing that, realistically, that’s the only solution before things snowball even further out of control. The team is shocked, but realize that she has a point. They decide that Copley should actually be the first point of contact, posing as a US government official to talk with them and test the waters.

So Copley goes to Nile’s family’s house to talk with her mom and brother. They’re probably distrustful and apprehensive, but nonetheless secretly ecstatic that their work has paid off. They talk and review all of the information that they’ve collected, including testimonials from the people on Nile’s base and recent sightings (along with photos) of Nile (with the same three people) over the last few years that people have sent them but they haven’t posted publicly. At this point, Copley’s like, yeah this is about to blow up, we gotta put our cards on the table. He convinces them to come with him to some safe house/black site/whatever he can get that is technologically impenetrable (I’m picturing them in like, an interrogation room at a police station kind of deal), takes their phones, locks the doors, and brings in Nile.

What follows is the most delightful reunion scene of all time, bringing Joe, Nicky, and even Andy to tears as they watch and listen from outside the room. With Copley’s help, Nile tells her mom and brother about her immortality and what’s been going on since she died (within reason, of course), and they are thrilled. They don’t understand why (because no one does) but they don’t question it and they see it as a gift from God – she’s been resurrected, she will live, and she has a purpose. Her mother and brother are so happy to see her again and are willing to agree with pretty much anything to stay in her life as long as they can.

So. They set up some complicated agreement (they bring in the other three for support/intimidation as needed) setting the terms of their relationship. They swear Nile’s family to secrecy, maybe bringing up the lab to show how high the stakes are, and they readily agree. They come up with some cover story for Nile’s brother to share on the message boards (maybe that the government has opened an investigation but because it’s an open case he has to shut it all down? Tells people to direct their tips somewhere else? Something to that effect). There’s still speculation, of course, but without Nile’s brother at the helm providing the energy, the hype dies down as news stories are wont to do without any movement. And Nile’s family goes to work for the team. The experience has taught them that Copley can’t possibly do everything himself, especially when it comes to social media, so Nile’s brother takes the lead on the day-to-day tracking/social media while Copley and her mom focus on finding jobs and scrubbing their traces afterward.

So there you have it: Nile gets to integrate her biological family into her found family and spend the rest of their lives with them as it should be, Copley gets some badly needed help managing the reality of social media, the team finally has a positive narrative surrounding outsiders Knowing About Them AND about interacting with people from their previous life, and the audience gets the happy ending to this very lovely and very queer story to counteract the pain associated with Booker’s family.

Plus, you know, I’m a sucker for both a good government conspiracy theory and for Nile getting every good thing she deserves.

#the old guard #tog #tog fanfiction #tog meta #immortal family #nile freeman #mine #damn look at me contributing to a fandom! that’s new #pls reblog if you like this my self esteem could really use it #I just love nile so much and I’m being the nile-centric content I want to see in the world #it is just genuinely nuts to think abt how this situation would be perceived by anyone outside the narrative #she just mysteriously heals from a fatal injury and then VANISHES!!! this should be national fuckin news #also I do think there’s a major hole in the story when you think abt social media #like the only time it’s even hinted at is right at the very beginning when Andy erases that girl’s selfie #and the concept of fuckin Reddit is not even brought up despite Copley’s stalker board being analog Reddit #there’s just a lot of places one could go with this which is very much what we got here #1k

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scorpionyx9621 · 3 years ago

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Do you think Jason Todd fandom is kinda toxic? Because it seems like NO MATTER what DC do, there'll always be complains. Forget the bad adaptation like Titans. Even Judd Winick cannot escape the criticism with how he potrayed Robin!Jason. They just never satisfied.

SORRY, IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO RESPOND TO THIS. I just moved from Washington D.C. to Seattle, which, for my non-American friends, that's 4442km away. And I DROVE THERE ALL BY MYSELF. And now I'm trying to find new work in a new city and trying to stay mentally healthy and positive. Life is exciting but hard and scary.

*sighs*

As someone who was a fandom elder with V*ltr*n. I've seen some of the worst when it comes to fandom behavior. I'm talking people baking food with shaving razors and trying to give them to the showrunners. I'm talking leaking major plot details and refusing to take it down unless they make their ship canon (I am looking at you, Kl*nce stans) For the most part, DC Comics has had a decades-long reputation of treating their fans like trash and not caring what they think so from what I've seen, we all just grumble and complain in our corners of the internet about how we don't like how X comic portrays Jason Todd.

The challenge with Jason Todd is that he's your clinical anti-hero, the batfamily's Draco in Leather Pants, he's a jerkass woobie, and on top of all of that, he's a Tumblr sexyman. It's a perfect storm for a very fun but frustrating character to be a fan of. It doesn't help that every writer decides to re-invent the wheel every time Jason comes up so his canon lore is confusing at best and inconsistent as a standard.

I guess starting with a general brief on who Jason is and what is uniform about him with every instance he's appeared in comics/media.

Grew up in a poor family in Gotham with a dad who was a petty-mid-level criminal, and a mother who dies of a drug overdose.

Survives on the street on his own by committing petty crimes and potentially even engaging in sexual acts to keep himself alive.

Is cornered by Batman and taken in after Dick Grayson quits/is fired

Becomes the second Robin, but is known for being the harsher, more brutal Robin.

Is killed by Joker after being tortured, but somehow comes back to life and regains senses through the Lazarus Pit

Resolves himself to be better than Batman by basically being Batman but kills people.

Where there has been a lot of conflict in the fandom is the fact that Jason Todd is not a character that is written consistently. DC Comics loves to go with the narrative that Jason was "bad from the start" and was the "bad robin" when, yes, he has trouble controlling his anger, but he also still is just as invested in seeing the best of Gotham City and trying to be a positive change for the world as any other DC Comics hero.

Where I get frustrated with the fandom is its ability to knit-pick every detail of a comic they don't like while completely disregarding everything that makes the comics great and worth it to read. My example being Urban Legends. To which most people had pretty mixed reactions to. I was critical of the comic at first but as it went along I ended up really liking it. I have a feeling DC Comics went to Chip Zdarsky and told him he had 6 issues to bring Jason back into the Bat Family, and honestly he didn't do a bad job. Did it feel rushed? Absolutely. I wish there was more development of Jason and Bruce's characters and their dynamic as a whole. However, where I see a lot of people being angry and upset with Urban Legends is that they feel Zdarsky needlessly wrote Jason as an incompetent fool who needs Bruce to save him.

Whether or not that was the intention of Zdarsky is up to debate. However, and this may be controversial, but I don't think he wrote Jason Todd out of character at all. For as fearsome, intimidating, and awesome as Red Hood is. Jason is a character who is absolutely driven by his emotions. Why do you think he donned the role of Red Hood? As a response to his anger towards The Joker for killing him, and towards Bruce for not taking action against The Joker and for seemingly replacing him so quickly after he died. Jason didn't care about being the murderous Robin Hood or for being the bloody hammer of justice against N*zi's and P*d*ph*les. He only cared originally about making The Joker and Bruce pay. It wasn't until he trained under the best assassins in the world and realized most of them were horrific criminals who trafficked children and were p*dos that Talia began to realize that the teachers that she sent Jason to train under started dying horrific and painful deaths.

The entire story of the Cheer story in Batman Urban Legends was started because it finally forced some consequences upon Jason. Tyler, aka Blue Hood's father was a drug dealer who gave his supply to his wife and kids. And when Tyler's father admitted he gave the drugs to Tyler, it immediately made him fall within the self-imposed philosophical kill-list of Jason Todd. And Jason, well, he proceeds to kill Tyler's father. When this happens, Jason is in shock. Tyler's dad fit the bill to easily and justifiably be killed by Jason. We've never seen Jason having to deal with the consequences of being a murderous vigilante on a micro-level. When Jason realizes what he's done in that he's murdered Tyler's dad, he's shocked. He tells Babs the truth. He does a rational thing because he's in shock. He doesn't know what to do, he never has had to face the consequences of his actions as Red Hood and now the gravity of befriending a child as a vigilante hero who kills people just set in when he killed the father of the same child he was just introduced to.

(Oh here's a little aside because it had to be said, Jason would not have been a good father or a good mentor to Tyler and absolutely should not have been his new Robin. Jason is a man who is in his early 20's (not saying men in their early 20's can't be good fathers at all) who is a brutal serial killer using the guise of a vigilante anti-hero to let him escape most of the law. the complications of having the man who murdered your father adopt you and make you his sidekick are way too numerous for me to explain in a long-winded already heavy Tumblr essay post. There's a reason why we don't advocate for a story where Joe Chill adopted Bruce Wayne or one where Tony Zucco took in Dick Grayson.)

The next biggest argument is that they feel that Jason is giving up his guns as a means to just be invited back into the Bat-Family. To which I will tell anyone who has that argument to go actually read Urban Legends. Already have and still have that argument? Please re-read it. Don't want to? That's okay, I will paste the images from the comic where Jason specifically says that he doesn't want to give up his weapons for Bruce and his real reasoning down below since the comic isn't exactly readily accessible.

Jason gave up the guns because he felt the gravity of what he had done and knows how it'll effect Tyler. Thankfully his mom is alive and in recovery. But Tyler doesn't have a father anymore. And Jason killed Tyler's father. It may have been in accordance to Jason's philosophy, but it was a case where it blurred the lines. Jason Todd isn't a black and white character, just very dark gray. He doesn't kill aimlessly like the Joker. If you are on Jason's list you probably have done something pretty horrific, and also just in general, being in his way or being a threat to him. Mind you, in early days of Red Hood and the Outlaws (Image below) Jason almost killed 10 innocent civilians in a town in Colorado all because they saw him kill a monster. That being said, Jason isn't aimless in his kills.

(Also can we just take a moment to appreciate Kenneth Rocafort's art? DC Comics said we need to rehabilitate Jason Todd's image and Kenneth Rocafort said hold my beer: It's so SO GOOD)

That being said, the key emphasis in the story of Cheer asides from trying to introduce Jason Todd back into the Bat Family and give an actual purpose for him being there, other than him just kind of being there ala Bowser every time he shows up for Go Kart racing, Tennis, Golf, Soccer, and the Olympic games when Mario invites him, is that Jason and Bruce ultimately both want the same thing. Jason wants to be welcomed back into the family and to be loved and appreciated. Bruce want's Jason back as his son and wants to love and protect Jason. Both of these visions are shown in the last chapter of Cheer while under the effect of the Cheer Gas. It's ultimately this love and appreciation they both have for each other that helps them overcome their challenge and win.

Jason Todd is a character who, just like Bruce, has been through so much pain and so much hate in his life. The two are meant to parallel each other. While Bruce chose to see the best in everyone, giving every rogue in his gallery the option to be helped and give them a second chance, hence why he never kills, Jason has a similar view on wanting to protect the public, but he understands that some crimes are so heinous they cannot be forgiven, or that some habitual criminals are due to stay habitual criminals, and need to be put down. But at the end of the day, the two of them both try to protect people in their own ways.

I am aware that through the writings of various DC Comics authors such as Scott Lobdell and Judd Winick, the two have had a very tumultuous relationship. And rightfully so, I am by no means saying that Scott Lobdell writing an arc where Bruce literally beats Jason to within an inch of his life in Red Hood and the Outlaws, nor Judd Winick's interpretation of Under the Red Hood where Bruce throws the Batarang at Jason's neck, slicing his throat and leaving him ambiguously for dead at the end of the comic is appropriate considering DC Comics seems to be trying everything they can to integrate Jason back into the family. That being said, a lot of these writings have shaped the narrative of Jason and Bruce's relationship and have an integral effect on the way the fandom views the two. It doesn't help that Zdarsky acknowledged Lobdell's life-beating of Jason by Bruce at the very end of Cheer by having Bruce give Jason his old outfit back as a means of mending the fence between the two of them. That does complicate a lot of things in terms of how they are viewed by the fandom and helps to cause an even greater divide between the two.

Regardless, I want to emphasize the fact that Jason Todd is a part of the family of his own accord. Yes, he's quite snarky and deadpan in almost every encounter. However, Jason is absolutely a part of the family and has been for a while of his own will. There's a great moment in Detective Comics that emphasizes this. Jason cares about his family because it is his found family. Yes, they may be warry about him and use him as a punching back and/or heckle him. At the end of the day, we're debating the family dynamics of a fictional playboy billionaire vigilante whose kleptomania took the form of adopting troubled children and turning them into vigilante heroes. Jason Todd wants a family that will love and support him. This is a key definition of his character at its most basic. This was proven during the events of Cheer and is being reenforced by DC Comics every time they get the opportunity to do so.

Now, none of this is to say that I hate Judd Winick. I do not, I don't like the fact that in all of his writings of Jason, he just writes him as a dangerous psychopath, and Winick himself admits to seeing Jason as nothing much more than a psychopath. Yet Winick is the one who the majority of the fandom clings to as the one true good writer of Jason Todd because 'Jason was competent, dangerous, smart' Listen, friends, Jason is all of that and I will never deny it. However, what I love about Jason isn't that he's dangerously smart of that writers either write him as angsty angry Tumblr sexyman bait or that they write him as an infantile man child with a gun. There's a large contention of this fandom that has an obsession with Jason Todd being this vigilante gunman who is hot and sexy and while I definitely get the appeal. It is very creepy and downright disturbing that all of you hyperfixate on his use of guns and ability to be a murderer. It is creepy and I'm not necessarily here for it.

What I love about Jason Todd is that despite all of the pain, all of the heartache, all of the betrayal, and bullying, and death, and anguish. Jason Todd is one of the most loving and supportive characters in all of DC Comics. Jason has been through so much in his life, but he still chooses to love. He still chooses to see the bright side in people. Yes, he takes a utilitarian approach and chooses to kill certain villains, but at the end of the day he wants to see a better world, and he wants to be loved. It takes so much courage and so much heart to learn to love again after one has been abused or traumatized. I would not blame Jason at all if he said fuck it and just went full solo and vigilante evil. He has every right to, but he still chooses to be with the Bat Family of his own accord. That's something that I see a lot of in myself. I have been through a lot of trauma and yet I try to be a better person myself in any way that I can. It is extremely admirable of Jason to allow love back into his heart when he really doesn't need to. He kills and he protects because he has this love of society. It may have been shaped by anger and hatred, but Jason has found his place amongst people who love him and value him. I think Ducra, from Red Hood and the Outlaws put it best in the image given below.

To end this tangent, I love Jason Todd and all of his sexy dangerousness, but it's far more than that. As much as Jason may be dangerous and snarky, he loves his family without a shadow of a doubt. I look up to Jason Todd because despite all of his pain and all of his trauma, he still choses to love. Jason Todd is a character who is someone I love because despite all of his flaws and having a very toxic fandom, he still serves as a character filled with so much heart and so much passion. I wish more writers would understand that. But for now I will live with what I have. Even though the fandom may be vocal about it's hatred for his characterization, I choose to love Jason regardless because he is a character who chooses love and acceptance regardless of his pain. Jason Todd is by no means a good person in any sense of the word. He has easily killed upwards of 100 people by now. He is a character who is flawed and complex but ultimately is one who powers forwards and finds love and heart in a place from so much pain and anguish. That is what I love about Jason Todd. After all, to quote a famous undead robot superhero, "What is grief, if not love persevering?" Jason Todd chooses to love despite all of the trauma and pain and grief. Yes, he is hardened in his exterior, but inside there is a man with a lot of love to give and someone who deserves the world in my eyes.

#Long post GOD #Jason Todd #Red Hood #Bat Family #Batman #red hood and the outlaws #RHATO #RH:O #Batman Urban Legends #Red Hood Lost Days #TW Voltron #TW Death #tw murder #TW Klance #Gotta love how i am pouring my heart out onto jason AND calling out the Voltron fandom #Regardless love Jason Todd people

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jj-babebank · 3 years ago

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Camp Willowdale / JJ Maybank AU / PART 8

Synopsis: Camp Willowdale is buzzing with new campers. It’s Caroline Windsor’s first year as a camp counsellor after attending the camp as a camper for ten years. Little does she know that this year Willowdale Lake is going to be a little different from what she is used to it being…

Warnings: future chapters may include curse words, mentions of drugs, mentions of alcohol, mentions of sexual activities, mentions of death.

Pairings: JJ Maybank x fem OC Part 1 ; Part 2 ; Part 3 ; Part 4; Part 5 ; Part 6 ; Part 7

Masterlist

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

Part 8 –

49 days of summer camp left

Caroline sat in her bed, hugging her knees against her chest. Her and JJ had the afternoon off and despite his attempts to lure her into hanging out, and her infatuation with the boy, she’d turned him down, wanting to spend a few hours alone with herself to compose her thoughts. It had been exactly two weeks since the night Madison disappeared. No one had bothered to mess with the campers since then, the bonfire area hadn’t been touched and no dead animals were found in anyone’s suitcase. To the rest of the camp, this seemed like victory; to Caroline – it seemed like the calm before the storm.

During their first day at Camp Willowdale, all of the counselors had been given a Willowdale-branded set of items they’d have to use during their stay. It came with the obvious STAFF t-shirts, sweaters and hats, but it also consisted of other things – such as the thermoses Caroline and JJ were still using to sneak whiskey into their daily routines, and notebooks in which they were advised to plan out their group’s daily schedules. Caroline however had been using her notebook for other purposes. She’d become so obsessed with Madison’s case, that every little thing that happened on camp grounds and seemed even a little out of the ordinary, immediately became a clue to her, which she’d hastily scribble down in her notebook. It had only been two weeks since the disappearance of Madison Hague and Caroline had already filled about a quarter of the pages of her hefty notebook with potential clues and leads. She kept rereading her notes, trying to think of something – anything – that they could do to help them solve the mystery, however nothing was coming to her. Ever since the dress incident, Caroline and her friends hadn’t found anything else that could relate to Madison, though Caroline was glad that none of them had given up on their mission.

Caroline was so deep in her own thoughts, she nearly jumped at the sound of a sudden knock on the door. She quickly closed her notebook and tucked it under her mattress and went to open the door, revealing a panting JJ leaning on the doorframe.

“Hey, C,” he breathed.

“JJ, what’re you doing here? I told you I -”

JJ cut her off by pushing past her and walking into her cabin, “Yeah, yeah, you wanna be alone, I know,” he sat on her bed, taking his snapback off, “but I was thinking… you’ve been so busy with the kids and with the whole Madison thing, and believe me – I really appreciate you for being like that, but -”

Caroline crossed her arms, “Where are you going with this?”

JJ sighed, “You’ve just totally forgotten how to have fun, C,” he said, “The primary reason that we all came here was to have fun and look at you – you barely eat, or sleep, or do anything other than your counselor duties and this whole Madison investigation thing…” JJ sighed again, looking at the hat in his lap and playing with its adjustable strap, “All I’m saying, C, is what if Madison really did go home and you’ve just wasted all this energy on nothing…Thing is,” JJ looked up into her eyes, “I miss you, the old you, and I know that that you’s still somewhere in there, it’s just this whole Madison thing blocking it.” he placed the hat back on his head and stood up, walking towards Caroline, “Hang out with me now,” he said, stopping directly in front of her and lifting her chin up so that she was facing him, “And I promise we’ll think about Madison later,”

Caroline couldn’t really process what was going on. JJ was touching her and standing in such an intimate distance from her, that she could basically feel his breath on her face. For a second she forgot all about Madison, and the dead owl, and the bonfire area. All she could think about was JJ Maybank, who had just told her that he misses her and wants to “hang out with her”. Caroline stood there, lost in thought. What if he was right? What if Madison really did go home and that dress never even belonged to her? What if it was Jenna Kinley’s all along and Sarah had just gotten the perfume wrong? What if JJ really did miss her because he liked her as more than a friend? No, no, that couldn’t be it. But what if –

“Um, Carrie?” JJ’s voice suddenly broke her out of her trans, “So d’you wanna do something together or -”

“Yes!” she said, a little too excitedly for her own taste, of course I’d like to hang out with you, JJ, she thought, “What do you want to do?”

JJ’s face immediately lit up at her words, “Well I was thinking perhaps a picnic?”

Caroline raised an eyebrow, “Don’t picnics require food? We don’t have access to anything unless it’s mealtime,”

“Yeah, but we do have whiskey,” JJ winked with a mischievous look on his face, walking towards the storage room of the girls’ cabin where they still had a few bottles of alcohol left.

Caroline rolled her eyes but smiled nonetheless – this was going to finally be her first date with JJ Maybank. Well, sort of.

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

The afternoon sun was low in the sky, casting a beautiful orange reflection onto the peaceful water of lake Willowdale. Caroline and JJ had taken a seat on the lakefront, drinking their whiskeys and admiring the sunset, reminiscing the days when they were kids again.

“D’you remember that one summer when Rafe Cameron got food poisoning and ended up barfing on stage at the Will-all-hail banquet?” JJ laughed at the memory.

Caroline frowned, thinking about it, “Beats having Rafe Cameron as your counselor by a mile,”

JJ turned to look at her, eyebrows raised, “Rafe was a counselor here?” his tone almost sounding amused.

Caroline nodded, “Oh yeah,” she smirked, “For the same reason as Sarah – too stuck up for his own good so their dad shipped him over here as a punishment,”

JJ snorted, “I mean that family is pretty far up their own ass,”

“They have a sister too,” said Caroline, “I haven’t seen her around here though, so we at least know that one of them must be doing something right,”

The pair laughed at the thought of their spoiled friend and her older brother.

“Man, I missed this place,” said JJ suddenly, leaning back on his elbows.

His tone sounded different as he looked at the horizon and Caroline could sense that something wasn’t right, “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask -”

“Parents got divorced,” JJ quickly explained, “And unfortunately for me, my dad got custody,” he sighed, “Somehow my mom was deemed ‘incapable’ of taking care of me because she couldn’t financially afford to. Load of bullshit, if you ask me,”

“But my mom -”

“Yeah, they still talk,” said JJ, knowing what Caroline was about to say, “I still see my mom every other weekend, you know, it’s not the end of the world,” he smiled at Caroline reassuringly, “It’s just living with my old man meant working for my cut at home, which also meant summer jobs back in Kildare,”

“So that’s where you’ve been all this time…” whispered Caroline, mostly to herself, however JJ heard her.

“Yeah,” he responded, “Now that I’m old enough to be a counselor here and actually get paid for coming to summer camp I thought why not? Besides, your mom did tip mine off that you’d be here too,” he winked at Caroline, making her blush.

“Yeah, about that,” she said apologetically, “My mom likes to yap a lot, I wouldn’t take most of what she says seriously,”

“Well you are here, aren’t you?” said JJ, his face slightly leaning in towards Caroline’s.

Holy shit, this was it. Caroline was about to kiss JJ Maybank after a decade of fawning over him. Shit, shit, shit, she hadn’t really kissed anyone since that idiot from her class planted one on her at prom. What if she was a bad kisser? What if she’d forgotten how to kiss? As JJ closed his eyes and leaned even closer, Caroline decided to push the doubtful thoughts to the side as she closed her eyes too, leaning in towards him too. Their faces were inches apart, hearts pounding in their chests and, just as their lips were finally about to meet –

“There you are!” Sarah’s loud voice came from the hill behind them, startling them and making them both jump and immediately pull apart and straighten up. John B stumbled after her.

Caroline coughed awkwardly, trying to cover up the shame and embarrassment she was currently feeling, “Sarah… what are you doing here?”

With a knowing smirk on her face, Sarah put both hands on her hips, “Nothing,” she sing-sang, obviously finding the whole situation hilarious, “I’m sure it can wait,” she winked down at Caroline, while John B was waving around frantically behind Sarah at JJ, mouthing the words “DID YOU BONE?!” quite obviously.

JJ groaned as he stood up, helping Caroline up as well, “We’re all yours now, Sarah, what’s up?”

“Well me and John B had the afternoon free as well, so we went out front to his van and you’ll never believe what was taped to the door,”

“Wait, why’d you go to his van in the first place?”

Sarah rolled her eyes, “That’s beside the point now, Carrie, look” she shoved a piece of paper in the girl’s hands.

As Caroline unfolded the paper, the group gathered around her to look at what was written on it - 41° 56’ 54.3732” N, 87° 39’ 19.2024” W.

“I have no idea what that means though,” confessed Sarah.

“Looks like coordinates to me,” said JJ.

“Hey, that’s what I said!” gasped John B, “But Sarah didn’t want to believe me,”

“Does anyone know how to read geographical coordinates?” JJ looked at his friends.

“Do I look like Google Maps to you?” asked Sarah.

“You’re right,” Caroline said as an idea sparked in her mind, “We can’t read coordinates, but I know someone who can,”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

“I’m just saying, Miss P,” JJ spoke confidently once the group was inside Pricilla’s office, “Now’s about the best time to host the traditional yearly treasure hunt,”

Pricilla squinted up at JJ through her pink glasses from where she was sat at her desk, “Keep talking, Maybank,”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit odd that it’s already been two weeks and none of these kids can read a compass yet?” continued JJ, earning a slow nod from the camp director, “Think about it, Miss P – Willowdale ain’t Willowdale without its treasure hunt,”

As JJ spoke, the rest of the group were silently praying behind him that his charismatic way with manipulating will work on Pricilla, giving them an excuse to ask her to decipher the mysterious coordinates they had gotten their hands onto. The old lady leaned back in her old leather chair and looked at JJ skeptically for a while, adding to the already built up tension.

“Give me a few days to map out the course and set up the coordinates,” she finally spoke, causing everyone in the group to silently cheer behind JJ. As they thanked her and turned to leave, she spoke up again, “Oh, and Maybank,” she called, everyone turning to look at her, “No funny business,”

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

A/N: Finally some normal camp activities. Thank you for reading so far, I would greatly appreciate you letting me know what you think about the story and the characters xxx

tags: @k-k0129 ; @hayleyy-l ; @marvellover04 ; @dumbasscorn ; @thrown-off-her-rhythm

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shreddedparchment · 4 years ago

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A World of Our Own Pt.07

Decrepit Old Grump

9/29/2020

Pairing: Bucky x Reader Word Count: 5,510

Warnings: language, smut, fluff, angst

A/N: Y’all, I have not edited this chapter much at all. I edited the first part and that’s about it. I’m too tired to edit and I may come back and edit later but I didn’t want to make y’all wait anymore as I already made y’all wait a long time before I came back to it. I’m sorry if it stinks. <3 If you happen to reblog, thanks so much for helping me spread my work. xoxo

Bucky is gutted.

He can feel the weight of his guilt growing as you sit there on the beach staring out at the crashing waves, sky turning an inky purple where it kisses the sea as the sun sets.

Your skin is enveloped by ocean wind, briny and thick it coats you with sea salt making you sticky with its humidity.

In this light, you’re glowing. A beauty. With tears slowly rolling across one cheek then the other as your sorrow wounds you repeatedly. Over and over you play it all in your head. Remembering the sounds of the chopper, the violent swish of tall grass and palms, gunpowder saturating the air as he lays on the ground and you panic over him pressing your hands against his wound.

Reaching up, he feels the spot, pressing his palm flat against the spot now healed and only a little sore.

The slump of your shoulders, the dead weight of your hands as they rest at your sides on the sand without moving, Bucky can see it all from where he stands by the hut.

You’ve given up. All hope gone. Not only are you stuck here on this island forever, but you were betrayed by Ryan.

Someone that Bucky suddenly wonders might have meant more to you than he realized. A real spark.

Of course, Bucky knows that you love him. It’s in your eyes, or it was before you were both permanently marooned here because of him—this is all his fault after all.

Still, maybe you cared more for Ryan than you were willing to admit? Could you have loved him too?

The two of you had been close. Despite your suspicions, your gentle guarding against him, could your spark have turned into real feelings?

Bucky hates this thing, this oozing pit of green sludge he knows is jealousy.

He knows he shouldn’t feel it. This is bigger than who anyone might be attached to emotionally or attracted to physically. This is life and death.

With being left here, all hopes of a real future are gone.

No jobs. No family. No friends. No children…Why had he gone and told you he wanted to have them with you?

How much must that be hurting you now?

Idiot.

Of course, with you hating him now, maybe the very thought of having kids with him is repulsive? He’d never been able to see himself as a father before you. Maybe this is all for the best? No matter how much it hurts to think.

He hesitates, waiting to see if you’ll turn or rise. You haven’t eaten all day and he knows its depression keeping you anchored here to this beach. A final depression. Dark and consuming.

However, he also knows that despite your giving up, even now your eyes scan the horizon for possible ships. Not in hope, merely habit.

When you continue not to move, he breathes in deep to gather his courage and moves towards you slowly.

You don’t even twitch at the sound of his approach.

You don’t even care that he’s there. Do you?

You’ve been so distant since Ryan left, sleeping in his now empty room on the floor. Bucky was willing to give you space at first.

How you must not be able to look at him…

The pit in his stomach widens, bringing with it painful aches of missing you pressed into his side. He misses the smell of your skin and the touch of your lips against his throat when you’d wake up in the middle of the night, searching for comfort.

He's lost you and he has only himself to blame.

However, whether you hate him or not, he can’t let you keep neglecting yourself the way you have. He can’t keep his distance anymore. Not completely.

He’s still responsible for keeping you alive, even more so with Ryan’s deception.

He'll force you if he has to. He needs you. Even if you can never love him again, he needs to see, hear, and know that you’re well.

~~~~~~~~~~

The hiss of the sand as he walks to you is soft with deliberate steps taken towards you then he stops.

Beside you, Bucky crouches and he penetrates your peripherals, filing you with wretched agony at the scowl in place on his beautiful face.

That face had smiled at you once. Kissed you. Assured you of safety. Loved you.

Now…how can he not despise you after your misguided trust?

How can he not hate you for your reckless friendship with that stupid man. You’re so angry at him you can’t even think his name.

You don’t want to remember him, but your heart will not let you forget.

You’d thought it so many times. So often. He’s a good man. A good father. He’s my friend and he’d never do anything to hurt us.

How very wrong you’d been. How foolish and trusting and generally stupid.

“Get up.” Bucky orders, his voice hard like it had once been so long ago when he’d dragged you up from the beach and through the trees where he’d put the fuselage.

You thought you’d heard the last of that voice. If he hates you, you suppose it makes sense that he’d adopt it once again. Why would he speak with love to you when he clearly can’t trust you or your judgement?

It hurts to hear his dislike of you, you can’t bear to see it to. So, you keep your eyes trained on the horizon, looking at nothing.

You don’t answer him either. This upsets him.

“You can’t keep ignoring me. And you can’t keep sitting here, crying your eyes out, not eating.” He huffs, gets to his feet and towers over you, legs spread slightly as he waits for you to look at him maybe, hands flexing in and out of fists.

What does he want from you? How can he expect you to respond to him when he’s like this after months of feeling his love?

He hadn’t even stopped you when you came back to the hut and told him you were going to sleep in the other room.

“Whatever you want.” He’d said in monotone, sitting stiff by the fire after you’d just cleaned, stitched, and dressed his wound.

He let you go; let you sleep away from him. You’d almost hoped he’d ask you back into your room, but he didn’t, and you weren’t bold enough to ask to come back when he so clearly didn’t want you.

“This isn’t helping anyone, Y/N. Get up.” Bucky chastises, driving a nail through your heart with every stern word. “Are you seriously just going to sit there?”

Your lips twitch tempted to shout at him to leave you alone. Very nearly you look up at him and yell at him to let you starve and die because that would leave him unburdened and free of you. But you picture it, his face, all scowly and angry. A hate in those steel ice eyes that had once overflowed with adoration and love.

No, you can’t look at him. It’ll break your heart more than it already does to wake up in the mornings without him at your side.

You mash your lips together, refusing to answer him and tilt your chin up in defiance.

It happens so quickly and you’re all of a sudden upside down, or…close to it.

Bucky swoops down and grabs you, tossing you over his shoulder and you’re not sure how he does it but he won’t let go and he doesn’t seem to have trouble lifting you—he pulled a literal piece of a plane inland so why would he?—as he turns and marches towards the tree line.

“Bucky! Let me go!” You scream, startled as you bounce against his back.

Trying desperately to find a hold on something, you push yourself against his waist but your hands keep slipping over his hips where you finally take hold of the loops of his jeans and use them to anchor yourself so that you’re not bobbing up and down as much.

“Bucky please-” You begin, an attempt to plead with him because this is the closest you’ve been to him in a month and you can smell him. The heat he radiates, just a bit hotter than normal, penetrates every fiber of clothing you’re wearing.

“I don’t know where the hell you got the idea that this behavior is alright. You want to starve yourself? You do it once I’m dead. Do you have any idea what you look like? What you smell like?” Bucky argues, strutting faster as he swerves between the trees.

The embarrassment you feel overwhelms you into silence because you don’t know what you look like or what you smell like. It must not be good if it’s made Bucky this angry. You feel shame suddenly that the man you love is seeing you like this.

For it to get so bad that he breaks whatever distance he’d wanted to keep between the two of you, it must be disgusting.

Your heart is suddenly thrumming for a whole new reason, and you’re very aware of how close to your butt Bucky’s face must be and with his enhanced senses, just how well he must be able to smell.

“Bucky put me down.” You squirm, pushing against him and pulling yourself up enough to grip his shoulders and hold yourself up a little straighter as the fear in you builds.

His arms only tighten around your legs and waist, refusing to loosen his grip as he continues to march forward.

“Bucky…” You push against him harder, a frenzy taking you over as you kick and squirm, hoping to maybe knock him off balance but instead he stops and suddenly, you’re weightless.

You fall for what feels like forever as your face is overtaken with shock. You see his frown as you fall, his eyes boring into yours until you hit water and sink down into cool green waters.

You gasp, swallowing water but quickly find your footing and push yourself up from the floor of what you realize is the bathing pool that Bucky had rebuilt closer to the hut.

You gasp and choke as you surface, eyes wide with panic as you push the water out of your face and try to catch your breath.

“You wanna let yourself fall apart, you do it on the other side of the island where I can’t watch you do it, because I won’t sit here and put up with it, Y/N. I can’t.” Bucky points at you, his finger firm.

“What the fuck, Bucky?!” You gasp, still wheezing from swallowing water.

“I get that this isn’t exactly an ideal situation.” He starts, pacing a step away from you before coming right back up to the lip of that pool and presses his hand to his chest. “I’m not innocent. I’ve been paying for the crimes I’ve committed ever since Steve pulled me back from the brink and I know that I’ve done a lot of wrong since. Getting you stranded here on this island…if I could take it back, I would. If I could fix it so that you weren’t on that plane when they blew it up, I would do it in a heartbeat.

“I get that this is my fault. I understand that them wanting me dead has put you in this fucked up situation, stuck here with no possible escape, and hate me if you want to. That’s fine, I’m used to it. I get it if you never want to speak to me again, but please stop neglecting yourself. If you want to punish me, I’ll think of some other way for you to do it, but please…please don’t make me the reason you die here because I couldn’t stand it, Y/N. I’ll find you a way off of this place.

“I’ll build a raft or a bigger fire or…I’ll think of something, just…I need you to eat something. I need you to take care of yourself. I need you to care. Don’t let what I did hurt you more than I already have.

“I’ll fix this. I promise. Alright?” He’s still fierce in his words, but slowly his anger has receded into begging.

Before you stands a desperate man, asking you to keep living and all you can think about is one thing.

“I…” You swallow hard, fighting the knots in your stomach and the aching squeeze of your heart as a fleeting hope takes shine within it. “I don’t hate you, Bucky.”

The words are mostly air, still too stunned by his speech and certain parts of it in particular to catch your breath fully from the sudden dunk into very cool water.

He takes a breath, staring at you as you look at his feet, shaking your head before finally meeting his eyes.

You blink against the water still dripping down from your hair into them and wipe at the drops that get trapped in your lashes.

“What?” He asks, his own voice rising in pitch in confusion.

“I don’t hate you.” You repeat, this time strongly with a voice so clear that the birds making nest for the night go quiet. “I could never hate you. How could you even think that?”

You lick your lips, wiping more water away from you face while Bucky stares at you, blinking as he processes the words you’ve spoken. It’s clear in his expression the flurry of thoughts that must be speeding through his mind.

“But you moved out of ro-” He begins, but you don’t let him finish, wrapping your arms around yourself to battle the chill that’s begun to set in.

“Because I thought that you were angry with me…because I trusted him. I kept insisting that he was our friend and I was so…so stupid for believing him.” Your voice breaks, pent up sorrow breaking through as you look away from him because you can’t bear to see the look of disappointment on his face when you admit your crimes.

He says nothing.

“If I’d been more careful maybe we might have noticed something sooner? If I hadn’t been so won over by the story of his kid or the way that he pretended to be nice, I’m sorry, Bucky. I’m sorry that I didn’t-”

There’s a splash and you blink against the rush of water. You have no time to search for the source because he’s there, in front of you, his hands wiping away the water from your cheeks.

He presses himself so close that there isn’t a part of you that isn’t touching him. You tilt your head to look at him, meet his eye and see a desperation in his own as his lips curl into a small sad smile. His eyes are soft, his brow is raised at the center as he drinks in your own expression of surprise.

“You really don’t hate me?” He wonders, voice soft and sweet and full of fading anguish.

“No.” You nearly sob, shaking your head as much as you can in his vice-like hold. “I could never hate you, Bucky. I’ve told you before. You’re my hero. My savior in more ways than one stupid. I love you.”

He closes the distance between you, fierce hungry lips painfully pressed to yours until he gets his fill then pulls back to sweep more water away from your cheeks.

“I’m not angry.” He whispers, reaching down to wrap his right arm around you. “I could never be angry with you for seeing the good in people. How can I when that’s what made you dumb enough to love me?”

You laugh, ecstatic and slightly insulted. “Did you just call me dumb?”

“Fuck yeah, I did.” Bucky shakes his head. “Stupid, lovable, dummy. You’re a hothead too. I hate that in a woman.”

His teasing fills your belly with butterflies and sweet warm tumbles.

You laugh again, then reach behind his neck to pull him down for another kiss, this time holding it for longer as you let your lips meld with his. Soft and fluid as a month’s worth of insecurity washes away in the water of the pool.

He sighs, angling your head with his metal hand as he parts his own lips and the heat of his breath parts your own. He deepens the kiss and you welcome him, a small whimper breaking the silence as you melt against his chest.

He pulls back to tilt his head the other way, “Will you come sleep in our bed now?” He asks, before meeting your lips again.

You nod.

“Mmmph.” He moans, pushing you back until you hit the pool’s wall.

He nudges your legs open and you lift yourself easily in the water and wrap them around his waist as he presses in against you, flesh hand sliding down to your bottom to grab a firm hold.

You break the kiss, gasping as his lips drift to your neck until a sudden flash draws your eyes upwards followed by a sudden boom.

Bucky pulls back, staring up at the sky with you.

“This’ll hit in half an hour.” Bucky guesses, and you know it might hit sooner.

“Bad?” You wonder, dropping back down to your feet as you continue to stare at the canopy as it begins to sway more strongly as the wind picks up.

“Bad enough.” Bucky frowns. “I need to go get the tools secured in the hut and check the nets.”

“I’ll help.” You offer and begin to move around him, but he turns back to you, planting you firmly against the wall.

“No. I wasn’t lying when I said you need a bath. You don’t stink as bad as I made it seem, but you haven’t been taking care of yourself, kitten. I’m not okay with what.” He’s stern again but this time, you can’t blame him.

“I’m sorry.” You allow, feeling shame once again for your inability to be strong through this.

“Don’t be.” He shakes his head. “This isn’t your fault. Or mine. We’re just here and we lost our way for a bit. I should have spoken up sooner. We’ll do better, right?”

You nod, eager to move on from this hiccup. “I’ll do better.”

“We’ll do better, Y/N.” He corrects, reaching up to caress your head. “There should still be some soap in the basket. I’ll bring you a change of clothes.”

He pulls himself out of the pool, untying the basket where you keep the soap you’d made up in the branches of a tree away from where animals might find them. He places it beside the edge and as another flash fills the sky, he hurries back towards the beach to prepare for the coming storm.

~~~~~~~~~~

The hut shakes, a charge fills the air, and you sit up gasping. Clutching the thing almost worn blanket close, you turn your head this way and that, searching for the chopper.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Warm arms wrap around your shoulders, pull you closer as the thunder rumbles into nothing.

The rain is still pelting the outside of the hut, a constant stream of white noise as rain and wind thrash the beach and your island home.

The storm has gotten worse over the past few hours, the waves are loud and chaotic, rising higher than they’ve risen since you’ve been here. The beach and campfire where you usually sit and cook are under water.

Bucky building the hut on stilts has paid off and you curl into him as he drags you back down to lay in the plane cushion bed.

“It’s alright, it’s just the storm.” He promises, still half asleep.

You turn towards him, wrapping your arms around him, placing your palm flat against his chest.

“The storm.” You repeat, still mostly asleep yourself.

As your heart begins to slow, you reach up to trace the shape of his ear, slipping your hands up into his hair you pull him down for a kiss.

He gives it to you, his lips gentle and coaxing as he responds eagerly to the attention.

“Bucky…” You fret, thunder overhead shaking the hut once more as lightning flashes and illuminates the inside of the room.

The sky is a black void of weather, scary and unyielding as mother nature asserts her dominance over both your lives.

“It’s okay…” He promises, traces the curve of your body from hip to shoulder, then back down to your hip.

You snuggle closer, pulling him down for another kiss and this one he holds, his tongue slipping past your lips.

Toes curling, you sigh, pushing yourself up over him for only a second before he rolls you onto your back.

Already mostly naked, Bucky pushes his briefs down then pulls your panties aside and without hesitation pushes into you, stretching your heated cunt with his thick throbbing cock.

Both of you freeze, feeling each other for the first time as the sky flashes and thunders.

His mouth finds yours swallowing your moan as you both give in consequences be damned because you’re both here. You’re stuck, deserted, with no hope of rescue and you love him so much.

He thrusts into you, burying himself deep.

It’s a hazy dream, the pleasure his body pulls from you, until he’s pushing your legs open wide and you obey because you want him closer, deeper.

Suddenly the world is crystal clear. Sharp and detailed and you can feel the tip of his cock sliding against the walls of your cunt, prodding and sliding making your legs quiver and flex.

“More…” You beg, hands raking against taut shoulders, tracing cool metal. “…Bucky…”

He pushes himself onto his knees, angling himself up further until he’s mounted you and you’re trapped in the cage of his arms.

He grunts, driving you mad with the sounds he’s making because they’re better than anything you could have dreamt up.

You pull him down until he’s got his full weight on you, crushing you down as his hips continue to thrust.

The wind grows more violent, the rain falls harder. The lightning feels endless and the thunder never stops but you hear none of it as Bucky’s lips kiss your neck, his tongue tracing circles before his teeth bite into your throat.

The heat in your belly swells over, down into your hips and pelvis and your body is overwhelmed with pleasure. Toes curled, arms locked around Bucky’s shoulders, you stop breathing.

Bucky keeps pumping, drilling into you faster as he chases his own release then he stutters, hips clapping against your thighs as he spills into you, grunting with every thrust.

He doesn’t stop. He won’t stop. Even when he’s finished, his lips trail across your skin, searching for more.

He reaches down and pushes the bottom of your shirt all the way up, exposing one breast which he takes into his mouth, nibbling gently.

“More?” He checks, moving to the other, never once pulling away.

“Never stop.” You hope, pushing him until he’s on his back.

As you settle over him, hands pressed against his chest, he licks his lips and traces your sides. Stopping at your hips, he licks his lips in anticipation.

~~~~~~~~~~

“Bucky!” You call, searching the beach in the distance, too tired to walk all the way out to the nets.

“Yeah?” He calls back, his shout distant enough that you know he’s in the water just beyond the rocks.

“Lunch is ready. Come eat before it gets cold.”

“Let me just finish with this trap.”

“Okay but hurry up.” You relent, knowing that he won’t come until he’s satisfied.

You move the fish away from the flame, careful and quick as they’re hot. Placing the extras on one of the trays you’d salvaged way back when from the plane, you move to take your usual seat beside the fire.

Ten months.

It’s been ten months of being stranded on the island. The two made bearable by the fact that Ryan’s betrayal had helped you and Bucky push into a new stage of intimacy.

You have sex often. Maybe not everyday as sometimes you’re both too exhausted to do more than sleep, but often enough that you’ve begun to wonder if you’ve made the right choice to give in.

There is no doubt in your mind that should a baby come, you and the child would be safe and well kept with Bucky at your side. Although the fear still lingers that something could go wrong, with either you or the baby, you’re sure that if you weren’t around to care for it, Bucky would do an amazing job as protector and keeper.

He doesn’t talk about it, but you know he, like you, wonders.

You’d stopped having regular periods well before you and Bucky began to have sex, so there would be no real way for you to know until you got big enough to show.

With a sigh, you push these thoughts away. This worry is only one of many and there are others much more important than a possible child.

With the storms getting worse, and hurricane season almost over, Bucky is sure that the island will see one more storm before it’s really over.

The idea of being caught in more scary weather fills your tummy with big bats and you want to forget the worry almost as soon as you remember it.

You unwrap your fish and pull it apart, careful to avoid the bones as you pick it to pieces and begin to eat.

You’re almost halfway through when Bucky finally settles in across from you, sighing with relief as he smiles and reaches for his plate.

“Everything good with the nets?” You check, mouth full of fish.

“Yeah, they’re fine. Just had to cast it out a little farther. Season’s changing so we might have to look for new fishing spots.” He explains and tears into his fish hungrily.

“We need to find more boar.” You sigh, pulling more bones from your fish. “We need the protein.”

He meets your gaze, blinking slowly as he watches you eat before nodding.

Neither of you has to vocalize your worry about protein and your health in case of a pregnancy.

“I think I spotted some yuca root on the far side of the island too. Some nopal and jícama too. We’ve been eating a lot of fruit; we’ll need to mix in some vegetables…for…it’ll be good for you.” He smiles, trying so hard to be relaxed.

“Vegetables…” You lament, moaning with desire for the long-forgotten tastes.

“I know. I’d love some good french fries.”

“Oh my-why would you bring up french fries?!”

Bucky chuckles. “Sorry. Just popped in there.”

Nervously, you lick your lips of the flavor of fish and set aside your leaf and tray.

“Bucky?”

“Yeah?” He doesn’t look up, focused instead on his food.

“We should make plans, just in case.”

“Not yet.” He sighs, the corners of his mouth curving down.

“We need to.”

“Not yet.” He insists.

“Bucky.” You press.

“Damn it, Y/N,” He looks up at you, shaking his head in resistance. “Not yet.”

“We have to, babe.” You smile sadly, shrugging your shoulders. “You may not want to think about it, but we have to. We gave in and with that comes the chance that the two of us could turn into three and we can’t afford to put this off. If something happens to me while I’m giving birth-”

“Okay!” He cuts you off, nodding. His eyes a little wild as he thinks quicky. “I agree, we need to make plans, but right now I’m not worried about what could happen in months. I need to find the caves Ryan was talking about and take some rations over there so that we have somewhere to go when this hurricane inevitably hits.”

“It might not come.” You argue, more hopeful than right.

“It will.” Bucky assures you. “And I can’t afford to get distracted until we’ve gotten all that setup. We will have this conversation just not yet. Okay? I know you’re worried. So am I.”

“And excited?” You check, a little timidly because yes, although you’re worried, you can’t deny the appeal that having Bucky’s baby holds.

A little one running around that looks like him? Sounds like him? The baby could very well look like you and sound like you too and that wouldn’t be so bad, but a little Bucky is too appealing not to hope for.

Bucky leans towards you, reaching to place his hand over yours as his eyes soften. “Of course, kitten. Yes, I’m excited too. It would be much sooner than I was hoping but I meant it when I said that I wanted this with you.”

Relief washes over you and you’re able to relax a little.

“But we’ll have time for that after I make sure I have somewhere safe for us to go.” He takes his hand back, focusing on his food once again.

You allow him to eat in silence for a bit, leaning back against the palm log as you watch the horizon with unfocused eyes.

A terrible thought has been growing in your mind for a while now. A thought you’ve been too scared to speak aloud for fear of robbing Bucky of his hope. The more determined he gets though you know you can’t avoid it any longer.

“Bucky?”

“Hm?”

“Bucky what if he lied about that too?” You try to subdue your fear as best you can, but you know you can’t hide it all. “What if he was dropped off on the island at some point and then came and joined us as the co-pilot-”

No, wait. You do remember seeing him on the plane though. He really was the co-pilot. Still…

“What if he jumped out and got picked up and then sent back to make sure you were dead? What if there are no caves? What if there’s nowhere safe on the island to sit through a stronger hurricane than the one when we crashed here?”

“The mountains on the other side of the island are large and they go on for almost the entire shoreline. Even if he made up his caves, I’m sure there are some. There has to be.” Bucky insists, determination invigorating his voice. “I’ll find us somewhere safe, kitten. I promise.”

“You’ve been promising me somewhere safe since we landed here. I’m starting to think you mean it.” You tease and hope it’s enough to draw a smile after the cloud you just summoned.

Lucky you, it works, and Bucky huffs a small laugh.

“I love you.” He tells you, voice low and soft.

“I love you, too.”

As the two of you stupidly get lost in each other’s eyes, the sudden sound of a voice echoes in the heated air.

You can’t make out what it says, but it’s clear though distant.

Both your faces are overcome with confusion as you continue to stare at each other.

“What was that?” You wonder, and Bucky shakes his head.

The voice is louder this time, still unintelligible but still clear enough to be a voice.

Bucky suddenly bolts up, turning and running down along the beach from where he’d come.

“Bucky?” You hurry up, chasing after him.

He stops suddenly and squints towards the rocks that jut out into the water blocking the side of the island where you have the nets set up.

“What is it?” You gasp, tired from the run to keep up.

“Shh.” Bucky orders and you swallow hard, trying desperately to quiet your breathing.

“Can anyone hear me?” The voice says, deep and easy. “I am looking for a decrepit old man, probably grumpy. Most definitely surly and usually wearing a frown. Long hair. Needs a cut. Worse looking than me.”

From around the rocks comes a boat, a small vessel meant to travel from a larger ship to land. On it is a whole crew of marines. At the bow holding a steel gray megaphone to his lips is a handsome black man, sturdily built wearing a familiar red and gray suit.

“Bucky…” You gasp, your heart nearly seizing as your brain tries to process the fact that there is a boat full of soldiers right offshore.

“Sam?” Bucky whispers, too shocked to speak any louder.

As this Sam spots the two of you, he breaks into a smile and drops the megaphone to slap against his thigh. He’s ecstatic to see Bucky and when he lifts the megaphone back to his mouth, he laughs once.

“You are a pain in my ass, Barnes.” Sam says, smirking at him from the boat as it stops far enough out that it’ll be an easy swim to reach them. “Why am I always looking for you and why can’t you make it easier? I’m putting a chip in your ass as soon as we get back home.”

#bucky x reader #bucky x reader fanfiction #castaway au #bucky barnes x reader #winter soldier x reader #marvel au #marvel fanfiction #bucky x you #bucky x you fanfiction #bucky x reader fanfic #bucky x reader fic #bucky barnes x reader fanfiction #bucky barnes x reader fanfic #bucky barnes x reader fic #deserted island au #desert island au #a world of our own #awooo

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shutupaboutandraste · 3 years ago

Note

“Hear this now — I will always come for you” for Fenders? <3

OKAY so like. I saw this and was just immediately inspired and knew exactly what I wanted to write so I hope you like it!

It's more pre-ship, buuuuut still Fenders.

Words: 3203 Pairing: Fenris/Anders For @dadrunkwriting

ACT I

To say Fenris didn’t trust Anders would be an understatement. An abomination through and through, he would never understand Hawke’s trust in him. Perhaps, it was because of her sister-- Bethany always seemed to vouch for him, something else that made Fenris’ head spin. Never before Bethany Hawke had he seen a mage so in control of themself. Yet, there was Bethany who shined in beauty, grace, and kindness all without being possessed or resorting to blood magic. He had only known her for a short time since he was approached by Hawke’s motley crew.

Still, he stuck by them, despite it all. Hawke had become a good friend in the short time he had known her. Even if her taste in women was… questionable. Anyone with eyes could see the tall warrior had affection for the Dalish blood mage of all people. Of course, that did exclude the elf in question. Merrill seemed entirely blind, even when Hawke told her that she was free to call her Aingheal. To everyone else, that name seemed off limits and Merrill seemed content to leave it that way for herself. Strange woman…

There were days he thought about leaving. Danarius could arrive any day on the doorstep of his borrowed mansion any day. The thought of leaving, however, left the taste of ash in his mouth. Little things were what he would miss-- Hawke coming to check in on him, coming back to the mansion to find little plates of food from Merrill, Isabela’s flirting, all of it. Loyalty threaded into Hawke’s group, evident in the way they watched each other’s back in battle to those little gestures Fenris had grown fond of in the past few months. Echoes of his days with the Fog Warriors sang softly within him.

These thoughts tumbled and toppled over each other with each passing day. Fenris took each one in and compartmentalized it within. These were the people that he had thrown his lot in with, for better or worse. Yet, he never knew if Merrill would be possessed by a demon, or whether Anders would suddenly turn on them to fulfill the desires of Vengeance. So, when Anders was still glowing after an encounter with a Tal Vashoth mercenary group on the wounded coast, Fenris leaped into action.

His brands lit up as he reached for Anders. Justice’s glare flashed his way, but he did not flinch. The only thing that stopped him was Hawke’s sword in his way. His heels let him skid to a stop just in time to avoid phasing through it. There was always a chance that phasing through a weapon would just wind up with him impaled.

“What the hell, Fenris?”

Varric whistled, “Easy, Broody! That one is friendly.”

“Hardly,” he snarled, “Why is your demon still active, mage?”

“I AM NO DEMON,” boomed that voice that both was and was not Anders. Still, it didn’t argue further, seemingly releasing Anders for its thrall.

Anders snarled at him, “Justice was fine! You could have killed me!”

Fenris crossed his arms, holding his head high, acting as if he could stand down the taller man, “And you could have killed Hawke.”

Hawke scoffed, “I can fight my own battles. Thanks. Justice doesn’t scare me.”

There she went again, trusting the fool mage and his demon. Even though Fenris had warned her of all he saw in Tevinter, Hawke insisted that she knew better. One day she might live to regret it. Fenris hoped that he didn’t live to see that day. For all his terse nature, he did want Hawke to be right about Anders. So, he let the argument brewing inside him die.

Hawke was a harsh woman. When she spoke, there was no argument, one simply followed. That did not make her unkind, simply firm. It was one of the many things Fenris found himself respecting, all but in awe of. Leadership decorated Hawke like well-fitted armor. There was very little she could do now to waiver his trust in her. The group began heading out, Varric and Hawke immediately taking to counting out the loot as they walked.

Fenris came up to walk beside Anders, “You may have favor with Hawke, mage, but hear this, should you betray her--”

“Why are you so sure of my guilt long before I’ve committed a crime?”

“Should you betray her, hear this now-- I will always come for you. That is a threat.”

ACT II

Putting trust in Hawke was far from misplaced. Long after the Deep Roads, she still remained his friend, helped him when Hadriana came knocking, and trusted him in return. Fenris was a regular member of her party, trusting him even about Aveline whom she had known for far longer. Hawke was a natural, but ruthless in her efficiency. Fenris respected that, even when he wasn’t sure he agreed. Sometimes, Fenris caught Hawke with a wild, angry glint in her eye as she plowed through enemies with an almost sadistic glee. Fighting was the happiest he had seen her bar her time spent with Merrill or after she was permitted a visit with Bethany at the Circle.

Yet, still, Hawke persisted with Anders. The mage had only grown more rebellious and unstable since they had met. Fenris did not despise him, but Anders set his teeth on edge in a way Fenris had not known in some time. Yet, she had left him to deal with the wounded as healer and protector while she fought the Arishok.

Upon the kill, Fenris thought she might cut off the Qunari leader’s head and hoist it up as a trophy. If she was, she never got the chance as she was rushed upon. The word ‘Champion’ echoed about the halls of the Viscount’s Keep. Before Fenris’ very eyes, the city seemed to be turned upside down. In the chaos, he managed to stumble out of the building, attempting to follow Merrill and Varric as they both rushed after Hawke.

Bethany was outside, tailing Orsino under the watchful eye of Meredith-- Shit. Where was Anders?

Templars milled about outside, keeping watch over mages who were working on healing the wounded while Aveline’s guard began lining up the dead, human, dwarf, elf, and qunari alike. There was no mess of dirty blond hair among them. No matter what he thought, Anders did a service in Darktown. Without him, the Ferelden refugees would be worse off. Instead of following whatever parade was forming around Hawke, he ducked down a side street, attempting to search for Anders.

Smoke still filled the air, making Fenris cough as he attempted to plunge ahead. Loud wailing was still echoing in the streets, amid the cheers of victory. Loss had still struck everyone fiercely. While he searched for Anders, he also kept his eyes peeled for Isabela. Wherever she had left to go to, he had a sinking feeling that she was never coming back.

Neither deep black curls nor a dirty blond mop was what caught his eye. Instead, it was Aveline’s flash of bright ginger hair. And, safe from templars, Anders was next to her. Fenris found himself surprisingly sighing with relief. He had worried for nothing. Carefully, he approached them.

“This is your fault,” Anders snapped, teeth grit as he tried to control Justice.

Aveline snarled, “What? Saving you from templars?”

“No! The Qunari attack!” he replied, “Much as I appreciate you getting me out of there.”

“Isabela stole that tome,” muttered Aveline, crossing her arms, “That’s what started this.”

“Isabela stole that stupid book ages ago. Then you let that… that monster get away with raping a girl!” Blue crackled at the edges of Anders’ eyes, which he shut, quickly as he tried to slow his breathing. His self-control after a long day of casting and healing was reaching its limit.

Aveline rubbed her nose bridge in frustration, “Anders, honestly, I don’t know what you expect me to do--”

“Punish the guard?” offered Anders, “Or would that be too much effort because the victim was an elf? I didn’t realize we were in Tevinter.”

“That was uncalled for,” snarled Aveline, clearly close to losing her patience.

Quickly, nearly fade-stepping to get there, Fenris went forward, taking Anders by the shoulders. Justice flashed, but Anders merely looked alarmed at being touched. His eyes narrowed on Aveline, who instead just looked relieved that someone else had interrupted them. He nodded at her slowly.

“Hawke asked me to escort him back to Darktown,” he said, “Go to your guards.”

“Be safe,” she said before turning to leave.

Anders scoffed, pulling away from Fenris and trudging ahead, “I should be out there healing.”

“You can deal with the injured that make it to the clinic,” sighed Fenris.

He crossed his arms, trudging forward, “Did Hawke really ask you to come check on me? I figured she’d send someone else. Varric, maybe, or--”

“She’s too busy entertaining the masses,” admitted Fenris, “I wanted to make sure you did not get caught by the templars.”

“Me?” Anders scoffed, “Why do you care?”

Why do you care about the lives of elves? Fenris wanted to ask. Yet… He knew why. While the Spirit within Anders could ebb and flow between Justice and Vengeance, Fenris knew that the Anders had originally allowed a spirit in him. Anders had stories of Justice and their time with the Grey Wardens as separate people. Letting the guard go unpunished was unjust, no matter who the victim was, but as usual it was elves who saw the short end of the stick.

Despite every notion Fenris had of the other man, Anders continued to prove himself dedicated to the people, even if those people were usually mages. Everyone was welcome at his clinic, from refugees to the Seneschal himself. Many things Anders did annoyed Fenris, but his dedication and passion were to be admired. To see a spark of joy when healing, that was something Fenris could respect. Maybe he even wanted to, if he would just let himself.

Hawke expected his loyalty-- she had it, of course, but she still expected it. When that loyalty was questioned, she made sure you knew about it. When he had run off after killing Hadriana, she had made her position known. If Fenris wanted to do that again, he better damn well wait until they got back to Kirkwall so they weren’t romping across the Wounded Coast without help. Her anger had shamed him.

A few nights later, he had brought Anders dinner. The practice was not uncommon among the group, but it happened when Anders failed to show up at the Hanged Man. Usually, they played a round of Wicked Grace to see who took the meal. Fenris had been the first out, thus the man to take the meal. Anders had been finishing up with a patient-- a little elven girl with a scraped knee. The injury was hardly worth the time of a healer with Anders’ caliber, yet Fenris watched as he distracted her with jokes while healing her knee. Once he was done, he patted it, making her smile before he dug around for a bit, pulling out a sweet. Most of them were stale, but the refugee children hardly cared, always pleased that the healer had candy for them.

When he saw Fenris, Anders had asked him if he was okay. There was no yelling about Fenris’ comment about how magic spoiled everything--though Anders had made a snide remark when he had spoken it. No, concern lined the wrinkles of Anders’ face as he graciously took the meal, double and triple checking that Fenris didn’t need healing or something to help. Once that was over with, Anders huffed, told Fenris he was stubborn, thanked him for the meal, and reminded him to clean the up mansion before he caught something from the corpses.

“Hear this now,” he said, “I will always come for you. That is a promise.”

ACT III

Smoke had a horrible, overwhelming scent. After the Qunari attack, he didn’t have the stomach to even enjoy a good campfire anymore. But watching the rubble of the Chantry smolder before him sent a revulsion through his gut. Why did Anders always have to be such a fool? Why couldn’t he just wait for the conflict to run its inevitable course?

Hawke did not ask for their opinions. Sebastian was furious-- so was she. Merrill had her hands clasped at her heart as they watched Aingheal Hawke walk around Anders like a predatory animal. For prey, he looked remarkably calm, sad, even.

Run, you idiot. Petrify her and run for your life.

Anders didn’t move. He wanted to die. Fenris felt sick.

“I trusted you,” hissed Hawke, “I made you part of my family; I protected you. Then you LIE to me, have me help you do this.”

“The war is inevitable,” said Anders, “Justice and I have done what had to be done. Kill me if you will and be done with it.”

“You put my WIFE in danger! You put my SISTER in danger!” Hawke raised a fist, bashing it across the side of Anders’ head.

“Vhennan, no!” exclaimed Merril, “Don’t kill ‘im. He can help us protect the mages, please.”

“He doesn’t deserve to live!” bit back Sebastian.

Hawke growled, “Do not speak to her that way! Merrill, I can’t. He’s too dangerous. He’s… He’s not the Anders we knew. Not anymore.”

Fenris felt his fist clench at his side. These theatrics were ridiculous-- there was a city to save. And, to be frank, either they chose Anders to die as he pleased or they went with Merrill’s plan. Hawke had seemingly chosen the former. Tears streamed down Merrill’s cheeks as she looked away, her wife hoisting her greatsword high. Fenris felt his insides twist.

He remembered the Anders he thought he knew. Once upon a time, that man had been an abomination, just a foolish mage playing Maker. Then, things had shifted. As much as he wanted things to be simple, Anders never allowed anything to be so. With his manifesto and ranting, came the healing and the gentle touches. Even when he himself forgot to eat, he never let anyone else forget. He would risk hair and hide in battle to protect others.

One night, not long after Hawke had been dubbed the Champion, Anders had admitted to Fenris that he had not always been so selfless. Justice was what brought out the best in him-- that if Fenris hated him now, he would have loathed the Anders of the Circle or the Grey Wardens, all flirt and wit and self-serving. Somehow, Fenris doubted that was the whole story.

Each passing day over the last three years, he found he craved it more. Was Anders really so different? Or was he exaggerating in an effort to self-loathe everything about himself? One minute he was witty and charismatic the next he seemed to gain ten years from exhaustion. Yet, each day, that wit and charisma faded away. A demon-- not a traditional one, but some sort of sickness of the mind-- had taken hold of the healer. Had anyone tried to help him?

Varric, perhaps, refusing to give into such demands like taking a pillow that meant so much Anders. Yet, no one else knew what to do. None of them knew how to cope with this shell of their friend. But he was still there. After Danarius, Hawke had clapped him on the back, asked him if he was alright, and went on her way.

Anders had shown up that night, barging his way in, double-checking injuries he had already healed while Fenris pushed him away. It didn’t work, of course. The mage had always been too stubborn for that. No matter how easy it would be for Fenris to kill him, Anders had never feared him. He treated him like any other friend. Only a week ago, he had invited Anders to eat dinner together… privately.

And then Fenris, cowardly, had failed to show.

Showing up would not have changed this event. No, Anders was too far into this plan, he was sure. Yet, now, he could not find it in him to overthink. Firelight glinted on Hawke’s as it arched its way down. Far faster than he knew that he could run, Fenris found himself knelt at Anders’ side. His hands clutched the other man’s shoulders, before shoving him forward. Lyrium flickered to life.

Hawke’s sword passed through him. Phantom sensations touched him, but did not harm him. Anders looked at him from where he had fallen, gathering himself up as he stared at them all. His feet slid backward, his mouth attempting to make Fenris’ name. Behind him, Hawke seethed.

“Run!” he ordered, urging Anders, “Run! Hear this, I will always come for you! I will find you! Go!”

Anders nodded quickly, life suddenly seeming to spring forth in his eyes. Oh, how long had Fenris longed to see that glint again. He had not realized he had ached for it until he saw its gleam. The mage took off, rushing away and into the chaos of the street. Once he was out of sight, Fenris turned to face them. Sebastian had his bow cocked at his head while Hawke looked disgusted.

“You bastard,” she hissed, “What had gotten into you?”

“What has gotten into you?” he repeated, “Anders was your friend. More-so than he ever was mine.” And yet, his stupid, treacherous heart and all of its longing had found the sympathy to save him.

“You were right,” she sneered, “He was always an abomination. I was blind.”

“Your wife is a blood mage,” snapped Fenris, “Shall you put her to the sword next?” Merrill gasped, but he glanced at her, trying to show her that it was not something he wanted. Hawke looked appalled at such a suggestion, thank the Maker, and lowered her sword.

Hawke did not circle him like a prey animal as she did Anders. No, instead he raised her nose to him. Golden eyes, just a bit hazel and always piercing, cast their judgement down on him. In an instant, without thinking, she saw what he had done as throwing away her loyalty to save Anders. And Hawke always expected his loyalty.

“I loved you like a brother,” she said, shaking her head, “Get out. Get out of my sight. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you both.” Merril sobbed, Varric quickly tending to her, looking unusually surly at Hawke. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t so unusual. Hawke was always funnier in his tales than she was in person. Perhaps Fenris had been blinded to something Varric had always seen.

Fenris did not say goodbye. Instead, he walked away with pride, head held high, a free man who would not be tethered to a woman who confused loyalty with ownership. Fenris owed her much, but she did not own him. And a free man was allowed to walk into whatever fate he damned well please.

Fenris chose Anders, and he knew he would keep choosing Anders every day after. All he had to do was find him.

#dadwc #fenders #da2 #fenris #anders #da drunk writing circle #da

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dying-suffering-french-stalkers · 3 years ago

Note

For the ship game: prime numbers for Lupin x Jigen!

HERE YOU GO GHOST, THIS WAS FIVE PAGES IN A GOOGLE DOC AND TOOK ME SEVERAL HOURS

Under a cut, allegedly, though mobile has been known to just IGNORE THAT. Sorry in advance if this gets goofed for anyone.

2) Who is always horny and will have sex at any time, in any place?

Lupin, obviously (and canonically). Just the horniest man you ever did see. Jigen knows what he wants and when he wants it, but he has difficulty keeping up with Don Juan Triumphant over there. Lupin is also far less picky about locations and times than Jigen is. Jigen still has a FEW standards, thank you, and also a stronger sense of self-preservation. Lupin sometimes tries to start shit in public or during a heist and Jigen is like “I REALLY, REALLY APPRECIATE THE SENTIMENT BUT CAN WE NOT.” The closest to public anything Jigen will put up with is bar bathroom/back-alley hookups, and he doesn’t really tend to do that with Lupin or Goemon since they have secondary locations far more suited to such activity (or at least the damn Fiat, if nothing else). That said, Jigen is a spiteful bastard and gets a huge kick out of riling Lupin up over the walkie-talkie during jobs. He is more than happy to get jumped by his boss after they make it out and secure the loot.

3) Who is more into taking showers/baths together? Who tries to make it relaxing and who tries to make it sexy time?

Honestly, while I can totally see Lupin and Jigen doing this with their other partners, I have a harder time imagining the two of them doing this together and I’m not sure why. I feel like these two on their own both like the privacy bathing gives them, whether it’s to clean wounds or decompress from a job.

On the occasions when they do bathe together, I feel like it’s an unspoken kind of thing, where the other person quietly slips in the tub/shower with them and they just don’t bother protesting. I think Lupin is more likely to join Jigen in his bathing, but if Jigen is sleepy enough or lonely enough he might do the same. There is a lot of mutual appreciation of scars. They’ve definitely smoked in the tub before (Intricate Rituals™). Lupin is probably more likely to get handsy, because Lupin, but two can play that game if Jigen is feeling it, and also Jigen gives Lupin a run for his money in the staring department. No hat to hide behind now.

Lupin has also 100% done the whole “Hey Jigen, do you know if—stop screaming, it’s me—do you know if we have any more instant dashi? Goemon’s gonna slice up the sofa if I ruin soba night again.”

5) Who sleeps on the couch when they get into a fight?

Jigen, but to be fair, he canonically sleeps on the couch most nights (possibly to keep an eye on the door, possibly because he knows that place, at least, is always “acceptable” for him to occupy). It’s an odd night if you don’t see Jigen out there with a glass and a bottle of scotch and an old movie on TV. The main difference is that if he and Lupin have been fighting, he won’t bother with the formality of a glass and the TV will be playing far louder or not at all.

7) [A] Who said “I love you” first? And [B] who ends their arguments in a fight with “Because I love you”?

I hate to take the coward’s way out here, but I think the answers are A) either one - depends on the headcanon/fic/version of the characters I’m feeling that day, and B) both.

For A, they’re both the sort of people to show their love—true love/affection, not just flirtation/infatuation, LUPIN—in action, not words. Lupin is a man of many words to a fault, generous with his verbal and physical affection, so Lupin has to find a way to make sure Jigen knows he means it and how he means it. He may rightly fear that Jigen won’t believe him (or else believe him but take it platonically) if he says “I love you” to his face, so first he’ll show him through every little action he can. Jigen is a man of few words to a fault, so saying personal stuff like that out loud is both a last resort and the point of no return. Getting him to say it at all, unambiguously, and while sober is like pulling teeth. Once one of them finally spits it out, though, I think the other is quick to reciprocate (again, if they manage to say it clearly and under good circumstances and not ambiguously/while drunk or wounded/etc. They’re both idiots and selective cowards so this is a big if). The mutual relief is palpable and immediately followed by sex, because they’re both (horny) idiots and selective cowards who do not want to talk about Emotions and Personal Things any more than strictly necessary.

For B, ohhhh man, if it isn’t that same emotional avoidance coming to bite them in the asses! Looks like talking about deep emotions is strictly necessary after all! You know it’s a Big Important Argument for them if this is what it comes to. This is going to tie in somewhat to the answers for 11, 17, and 23, so stay tuned. “Because I love you” coming from either of them should give the other pause, but if they are angry enough, they’re both quite likely to storm off after that declaration anyway. They’ll come back and have a real discussion later, but the shock or frustration of that arresting declaration dropped in the middle of an argument is something neither of them are great at dealing with. Hearing that from Jigen might be enough to stop Lupin in his tracks, but Lupin might also be so dead-set on something that he’ll steamroll right over it even if he knows he’ll regret it later. Hearing that from Lupin probably only makes Jigen angrier because of his awful self-esteem (see answers 11 and 23), and even if he’s been working on that, his instinct will be to snarl “Yeah, right” and storm out the door. I like to think that one day they are able to get to the heart of the argument sooner (because this is almost always it) and work on the behaviors that worry the other so much, but alas, they are a mess.

11) Who makes fun of the other for having a crush on them, and who has to remind them that they are in a relationship?

Once again, either of them depending on the day.

As you mentioned in your JiGoe post, Jigen says it partly because he thinks it’s funny (“You have a crush on me, Boss? Fuckin’ embarrassing”) but also because he’s fishing for validation. His self-esteem/confidence in anything outside his shooting skills is shit and he still can’t quite believe that Lupin isn’t lying/he hasn’t conned Lupin into something. This is rather overestimating his conning skills and underestimating his many good qualities, but, well, genuine, lasting affection is kinda new for him. Much to Jigen’s annoyance, Lupin figures out exactly what Jigen’s up to after the first few times and answers him seriously (and positively) instead of continuing the “joke”. Lupin loses patience for this particular tactic over time but I like to think that Jigen finally begins believing in the affection, too, so it comes up less and less and one day Jigen might actually play the quip straight without the self-deprecation. Ideally he would just take the damn compliment, but it’s LupJig and banter is one of their love languages.

When Lupin says it, he typically is playing the quip straight and fondly giving Jigen shit for showing an Emotion and motherFUCKER I just realized Jigen could probably be considered a tsundere. I hate this. ANYWAY. Jigen then immediately snarks back that yes, Lupin, considering we’ve been travelling the world together and actively fucking for X years, it’d be damn awkward if I didn’t by now.

13) Who initiates duets? and who is the better singer?

Lupin absolutely initiates duets, or rather, he tries to; whether or not Jigen actually chimes in is another matter entirely. Lupin is also the better singer by far (when he’s sober). He loves singing along to pop and rock in the car (“This is the reason God invented America!”).

Much as it would please me personally to give Jigen a smooth operatic baritone, there’s no way in hell he sounds good after smoking a pack a day for twenty-something years. I think Jigen can carry a tune and he’s a decent hummer and whistler, but his singing voice isn’t spectacular.

Lupin occasionally succeeds in getting Jigen to join him in car karaoke, though as in all things, Lupin is much louder and more impassioned. Jigen frequently hums along under his breath, though, and Lupin loves hearing Jigen’s a cappella renditions of classical music (complete with hand motions).

When Queen starts becoming popular, car singalongs become much more involved because it’s MY silly headcanon and You Are Not Immune To Queen. Jigen cried the first time he heard “Bohemian Rhapsody” and he will kill Lupin if he ever tells Goemon or, God forbid, Fujiko. When the four of them are in the car it’s a full-on Wayne’s World headbanging party. (Pops is the drunk guy they pick up along the way. Also, seeing Payless Shoe Source in this clip dealt me psychic damage.)

Lupin and Jigen (and Goemon) are the living embodiment of the drunk friends singing “Sweet Caroline” post, and Jigen is specifically this version of “Sweet Caroline”.

17) Who is more protective?

THAT IS THE QUESTION, HUH, GHOST? Jigen’s job and, to a certain degree, raison d’être is protecting Lupin, but (to cheat slightly and quote your own DM to me), if you think Lupin won’t raze everything to the ground to keep Jigen (and the others) safe, you don’t know him at all. They are this meme to the deepest of faults. They are both so desperately afraid of losing what they have (and in Lupin’s case, this is tinged with a bonus, even more concerning “what is his”) that they will go full self-sacrificing, scorched-earth policy. This is, in fact, my favorite reason for Lupin to do the worst thing he does: fake his own death to protect his partners. Lupin never stops to think that maybe, JUST MAYBE, he should trust his partners to fake grief and keep the secret long enough for whoever’s on their tail to give up or let their guard slip. Lupin is willing to hurt them in an effort to protect them, so in that way, I suppose Lupin is the “most” “protective”. Jigen’s self-abasement to the point of unhesitating and perhaps even hasty sacrifice is painful, too, but Jigen would never dare go to the same level of deception (except in Goodbye, Partner, apparently? But 1) I haven’t watched it yet and 2) while awful, I still feel like fake betrayal pales in comparison to very convincingly (AND MAYBE REPEATEDLY) faked death).

19) Who drives and who has the window seat?

They split driving duties, but Lupin genuinely loves driving and Jigen is more than happy to prop his feet on the Fiat’s dashboard and smoke or sleep the hours away.

23) Who thinks they are not good enough for the other’s love? and who’s more afraid of losing the other? Who thinks they keep messing up, only for the other to tell them they don’t need to worry?

HERE WE GO AGAIN!!! I think the answer to all of these is ultimately Jigen, but that’s not to say Lupin doesn’t share the exact same worries.

Jigen has a very difficult time believing that his partners’ love is genuine, and since Lupin is the one he knew first, that’s where it first manifests. Jigen has had very, very few good romantic connections in his life (if any). He doesn’t know what Lupin could possibly see in an older, prickly hired killer with a drinking problem and a head full of demons. He’s willing to believe that Lupin keeps him around for his skills, for protection, and for sex, sure, but anything past that? Doubtful. This ties into the other two parts of the question: Jigen is afraid that if he fails in his sharpshooting or his protection, he will be cut out of the gang, or worse, Lupin will end up dead because Jigen slipped up. As mentioned in question 17, Jigen cannot bear to lose Lupin and he would never forgive himself if he believed it was somehow his fault. Accordingly, Jigen takes “failure” that exceeds his usual margin of error very seriously in the early days. Later, he is better about this, but the worst-case scenario still stands.

Lupin, on the other hand, has had plenty of romantic connections, some good, some bad, though it is perhaps telling that Fujiko is his longest romantic relationship other than Jigen. He is afraid that if he doesn’t put on the world’s greatest show at all times, no one will give a rat’s ass about some scrawny grandson of an old French thief (or the perhaps unwanted/disliked son of a ruthless crime lord, because I love that fanon for Lupin the Second). He must live up to and indeed surpass the previous Lupins, he must shower his partners in money and adventure, he must always, always come out on top no matter how south the plan goes, or else what is the point of him? It takes time for him to turn his persona off for more than a few seconds, to let the quieter, sometimes contemplative side that slips through the cracks come to rest out in the open. Years down the road, Jigen finally gets up the courage and the words to tell Lupin that he would love him no matter what he did or where he went, even if that was nothing and nowhere. And again, see question 17 re: losing Jigen.

29) Who does some crazy stunt to try and impress the other and who ends up driving them to the emergency room after it backfires?

Lupin is by far the most guilty of this. He’s constantly pulling dumb shit, whether that be for World-Renowned Gentleman Thief reasons or just He May Be Stupid reasons. Case in point: the tunnel scene in The First, after which Jigen was duly impressed. Fortunately for Lupin, Lady Luck must be head over heels for him because the bastard keeps surviving, but sometimes even she can’t save him from medical consequences. Jigen bulk-ordered “Stupid Hurts” band-aids specifically for Lupin. Jigen’s bad choices are more likely to literally backfire on him, but Goemon more than makes up for Jigen’s slack in the Crazy Stunt department.

#I CARE THEY #hope this is comprehensible bc i honestly cannot tell #i have many thoughts on these two human disasters #lupin iii #jigen #asks #the-golden-ghost #long post #meta #I GUESS #can you believe i wrote five pages of meta about 1970s comedy anime characters? fucking hell. i love this fandom.#ship meme

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crispyjenkins · 4 years ago

Text

dream clouds, ghost ground (real friends, dead hometown)

an accidental jangobi au

( and also @batsutousai and @the-mandalorian-clone-lover but it won’t let me tag you :(

i uhhhhhh plotted this from my prompt roster without rereading the actual ask, so this is completely out of timeline for the anon’s prompt? and i didn’t realise until i was halfway through?? so here’s this??? i already have ideas for a sequel???? (and it’s 3157 words gl)

some context: there’s no age-out, but obi-wan is still sent to the agricorp and stays there. yarael poof inspects the facility 7 years later, and obi has visions of korda 6/galidraan and finagles themself onto the rescue mission of the true mandalorians. cue chaotic, still-has-the-impulsivity-that-got-them-kicked-out obi-wan. who is also nb just for funsies.

title from start//end by eden

Obi-Wan Kenobi is not as Yarael had expected, but then, he had never met them while they lived in the Temple.

The young Jedi breaks away from their group of friends on the other side of Bandomeer’s main greenhouse as soon as they catch sight of Yarael, the other novitiates trying and failing to hold Obi-Wan back from running through the dark green garden beds right up to him. They don’t seem to care that they’ve interrupted Master Fodvam’s tour of the facility, and ignores her to glare at Yarael with a fire in their eyes that he vaguely remembers as being the cause for their failing the initiate program. Stocky and toned with dark freckles on every bit of exposed skin from working the desert Enrichment Zones, Obi-Wan glares up at Yarael with a set to their lips so very like Master Yoda (and Qui-Gon Jinn, for that matter) that Yarael raises a placating hand to the Kubaz master at his side and smiles back down at Obi-Wan.

At first flush, he might have thought Obi-Wan approached him to beg to be allowed to return to the Temple and become a knight —it would not be the first time an old initiate had done so, though they usually attempted such an action much sooner after their reassignment— but instead, Obi-Wan wastes no time in demanding, “You have to go Korda 6, the lives of thousands depend on it.”

“And why is that, young one?” Yarael returns calmly, though Obi-Wan must be pushing seventeen standard; everyone is young to him these days.

Master Fodvam sighs, reaching out to put a hand on Obi-Wan’s arm, but they shake her off. “Obi-Wan,” she admonishes softly, for all the good that does.

“There’s going to be a genocide,” Obi-Wan insists over the sound of their friends trying to call them back across the greenhouse, “Death Watch is going to kill the Mand’alor and slaughter the True Mandalorians, and no one here will listen to me.”

Curious about their absolute certainty, Yarael gently pushes against their mind, but has to jerk away when the Jedi shoves him right back out, Yarael’s second brain fizzling like it had been shocked by a bad power coupling. Perhaps Master Yoda had been too hasty in handing this one over to the Council of Reassignment, when even though Yarael can sense their fear and hurt, their lingering doubt in the Jedi Order, Obi-Wan has not a single crack in their shields. Not a single doubt in themselves.

Master Fodvam shakes her head, but it appears more out of a helplessness than disappointment. “Master Poof,” she says, “Novitiate Kenobi has spoken of this premonition for the last standard tenday, and I’m afraid none of the masters here are versed in the Unifying Force.”

“At all,” they stress.

Interesting indeed, that Master Yoda would nominate Obi-Wan for the Agricorp over the other branches, then, for surely they would have shown precognition as a crècheling. “Novitiate Kenobi, you clearly have complete faith in such a vision.” Yarael doesn’t try to enter their mind again, but does open his senses between them, benignly inviting Obi-Wan into his own instead. “Show me.”

Obi-Wan is bewildered for all of a moment, eyebrows pinched, but then they blink in understanding and snap their eyes closed. A flurry of images is all but shoved into Yarael’s lower brain, a confusing mash of forests and armor and blasterfire, but, yes, there is Vizsla, and there is Mereel, and there is a Mandalorian in blue armor leaving Mereel to die on the battlefield.

“How are you sure this is Korda 6?” Yarael asks, opening his eyes to Obi-Wan’s mentally-drained expression, tanned skin sallow under the freckles.

“I’ve heard some of the mission report,” they say, and let Master Fodvam gently support them where they had pushed her away before; Yarael will certainly have to teach Obi-Wan to strengthen their mental stamina. “Every night for the last tenday I’ve seen this battle, I’ve seen ten different ways it could go, and all of them end with the True Mandalorians’ slaughter, unless we do something.”

The Quermian looks Obi-Wan up and down once more, reaching as far into the Force as he can manage, and he doesn’t have a lifetime seat on the High Council for nothing.

“Then we’ve not a moment to lose, do we?”

If Obi-Wan is surprised Yarael insists on taking them to his ship to join him for his update to the Council, they don’t show it, and don’t appear nervous at all as the holocall connects. In fact, they stand off to the side with their arms behind their back and a serene expression on their face, right until Master Rancisis admits a contingent of Jedi had just left to help a planet deal with a violent insurgence of Mandalorian commandos, led by Jango Fett.

And then Obi-Wan only blinks before turning his gaze up to Yarael. “Then we are too late for Korda 6. We must make for Galidraan.”

The holo of Master Rancisis flickers as he winds and unwinds his appendages until he finally says, “We did not tell you the planet’s name.”

On Rancisis’ left, Master Yoda taps his cane against the floor. “Clear it is, that truth in Novitiate Kenobi’s visions there is. To what extent, we do not know, but great pain I sense if act quickly we do not.”

After meeting each of the other coucilmember’s eyes, Master Rancisis leans forward in his seat and points one undulating finger at Obi-Wan. ”You will go with Master Poof to Galidraan, Novitiate Kenobi; if you leave now, you may make it in time to prevent the Jedi from having a hand in this massacre.”

Obi-Wan checks with Yarael first, their deference almost endearing as they look up at him for confirmation; Yarael cannot help a small smile, and if the Council has not guessed his intentions by now, then they are as blind as a naked womp-rat. “Well, Novitiate Kenobi?” he prompts, “Are you prepared to see this through properly?”

Obi-Wan drops their shoulders to raise their chin instead. “To be truthful, Master Poof, I would have been disappointed to be left behind.”

Obi-Wan is already at the hatch of Master Poof’s cruiser when they finally land as close to the coordinates the Council had given them as they dare, and Obi-Wan sorely wishes they had asked Master Fodvam for a blaster before leaving Bandomeer. Nothing can be done for that now, and there is the more pressing matter that Master Poof had been unable to contact the Jedi already planetside, but perhaps they shouldn’t have expected the Force to make it easy on them.

As soon as the cruiser is settled, Obi-Wan elbows the control panel for the landing hatch and drops right down into the snow; they’re not quite dressed for this weather, not coming straight from the desert Enrichment Zone, but they can hardly feel the cold over the cloying, suffocating fear that saturates the air until even the trees tremble with it. And they might be stronger in the Unifying Force than anyone else in the Agricorp, but Obi-Wan hasn’t been wrist-deep in soil for seven years to come out of it without feeling the Living Force just as strongly.

Run, the trees tell them, and they do, pushing themself up onto more compact snow and taking off for the True Mandalorian camp. Master Poof calls after them, but they don’t slow until they reach the top of the nearest ridge, a sheer drop on the other side right into the camp, and Obi-Wan is forced to look out over their worst vision come to life.

The Mandalorians stand as one facing the opening to the ravine on Obi-Wan’s right, where the Jedi spread out among the tents as Master Dooku reads them a list of false wrongs, and Obi-Wan knows the Mandalorians will not surrender. Mand’alor Mereel’s son stands before Dooku in newly-painted blue and red armor, raising his blaster as Dooku ignites his ’saber, and Master Poof halts abruptly at Obi-Wan’s side and lifts a four-fingered hand, but he won’t be able to Force-suggest anyone in beskar, and—

And he has a lightsaber hanging from his belt.

Obi-Wan had not failed their Jedi training, they were bright and talented and wanted absolutely nothing more than to become a Jedi Knight, but their temper had seen Bruck to the Halls of Healing, and their impulsivity had seen them to the Agricorp despite the potential they had shown in their seven years in the crèche.

Their temper, they have control over that now, Obi-Wan is rarely even angry these days, but their impulsivity has been the, ah... cause for many of the Bandomeer masters’ grey hairs, so to speak.

So Obi-Wan does not think before grabbing Master Poof’s ’saber, barely able to even lift the hilt almost as long as their arm, and leaps from the crumbling snowbank with as much Force behind their feet as they can muster. Sound snaps to silence in their ears, vision narrowing on the scant yard between Jango Fett and his death, as Obi-Wan yanks the Living Force around themself and hauls it up right from the ground, grabs it by the roots of the nearest tree until it sings.

By a miracle of the Force, Obi-Wan lands perfectly between the new Mand’alor and the Jedi, igniting Master Poof’s unusually-yellow lightsaber just in time to deflect Jango’s first blaster bolt right into the ground — the ground that shakes and splits, exploding snow into the air to make way for the evergreen roots that surge through the cracks and grab Dooku’s entire arm, sending his ’saber flying.

Obi-Wan inhales once, twice, before allowing their other senses to flood back to them, and the Force sees fit to immediately make them aware of Master Poof stumbling down the bank after them with his upper hands raised in surrender.

“Peace, Jedi!” he shouts, successfully pulling the gaze of everyone in the ravine away from Dooku’s limb held aloft by mud-slick roots and to himself instead. “We have been misled,” he presses on, almost seeming to glide over the packed snow to stand at Obi-Wan’s back and place a palm between their shoulders, “These Mandalorians know nothing of what you speak, Master Dooku, we are both being played by the Governor of Galidraan.”

Jango Fett growls over his external comms, close enough to make Obi-Wan shiver. “What the kriffing fuck is going on?” he snaps, not bothering to drop his blaster as Obi-Wan glances at him and can just see the shadow of his eyes behind his visor.

“Death Watch had the governor call the Jedi here under false pretences, your grace,” Obi-Wan says, and doesn’t know what to make of the way the Mand’alor twitches at their voice. They can feel their shoulder weakening from hefting such a massive hilt, unwieldy even gripped at the balance point, but Obi-Wan refuses to let their arm shake, not with both sides holding them under such scrutiny; Maker, maybe they should have changed into Jedi robes instead of their dark tunics and kama? It gives them a silhouette neither wholly Mandalorian nor wholly Jedi, and certainly only adds to the confusion.

Nothing to be done about it now.

“The governor lied to the Mandalorians about their targets, to perfectly set them up for a Jedi arbitration,” Master Poof explains. “And of course knew that the Mandalorians would never surrender to the Jedi.” He looks slowly around at both parties, letting his words sink in until the Jedi are shutting their lightsabers off in disgust.

The Mandalorians don’t put away their blasters, obviously, but they do lower them enough to be an act of good faith; only when Jango lowers his own does Obi-Wan power down Master Poof’s ’saber, and is all too happy to hand the weighty thing back to him with a shallow bow.

Master Poof smiles in amusement, clipping the hilt back in its rightful place on his belt, before calmly nodding to Dooku. “Novitiate, you may release Master Dooku now.”

Startled, Obi-Wan immediately calls on the Living Force to pull the roots away from the man and coax them back into the ground, hoping they hadn’t damaged anything enough for the evergreen just up the ridge to suffer.

Dooku massages his red wrist and eyes Obi-Wan carefully, the clouds of breath before his lips casting strange shadows over his face in the dying sunlight. “I was not aware the Agricorp was still teaching Consitor Sato to its novitiates. Nor so... successfully.”

“... Master Fodvam would appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to the High Council.”

“I am on the Council, Novitiate Kenobi,” Master Poof chortles, but turns back to the Mandalorians still effusing bewilderment before the new Mand’alor can decide they really are all better off dead. “Mand’alor Fett, I presume?”

Jango shifts subtly, still close enough for Obi-Wan to watch his eyes dart to the Quermian. “For all of a week, jetii; how you are aware of this already does nothing to convince me to trust you. Any of you.”

Master Poof just smiles serenely. “There is little one cannot gather from the Force upon first meeting, your grace. However, you are correct, and I would not be aware of Jaster Mereel's death if my companion had not told me of it.”

Jango doesn't get the chance to ask him to clarify just what that means, the girl padawan at Dooku's side cutting in rudely,

“And Master Poof, just who is your companion?” as if she can’t tell from Obi-Wan’s attire that they were a Jedi Knight washout.

So maybe Obi-Wan doesn’t have complete mastery of their temper just yet, but they don’t get to snarl back before Master Poof answers cheerfully, "They are my new apprentice!"

Oh.

“Master Poof...?”

“I cannot very well leave a novitiate so strong in the Unifying Force untrained, can I?” Master Poof shakes his head. "As the matter stands, our duty to Galidraan is not yet complete: the governor has pulled both the Jedi and the Senate into his personal affairs, and has allied with a known terrorist group. Master Dooku, might I suggest we make to arrest the actual perpetrator of these crimes?”

“Vizsla will be there,” Jango interrupts. “And he must know his plan has failed by now, you'll be walking right into a trap.”

Obi-Wan raises a brow. “A trap meant for you, your grace. When we engage Governor Martinet, it would be unwise for the True Mandalorians to still be on planet.”

“Why do you keep calling us that?" he snaps, the blue-armoured Mandalorian at his side grabbing his shoulder to hold him back from... striking Obi-Wan? From removing his helmet? Obi-Wan isn't sure.

They are sure that, if the Jedi succeed in apprehending Vizsla, the New Mandalorians will make themselves known much earlier. “One day, soon, you will need to make the distinction between yourselves, and those that will use ‘Mandalorian’ as a ploy for cultural reform, as claim to an identity that is not theirs,” Obi-Wan says, finding Jango’s eyes behind his visor once more. “The Children of the Watch will choose ‘True’ as that distinction of your people in retrospect, some fifty years from now.”

The Mandalorian holding Jango’s shoulder tenses. “Are you some sort of prophet, kih’jetii?”

“Hardly,” they smile, because the Force promises to back off a little after this mess is all said and done, whenever that may be. “But the Force decided I was the most likely candidate to make it here in time to stop a genocide, though I’m not sure if it knew how much information I actually needed. Irregardless, everything from today is now changed from any visions I had seen of it, I’m no more a prophet than you are.”

Jango twitches again strangely, and his companion tightens their grip on their blaster.

“Novitiate Kenobi is right,” Poof interjects gently. “You should take your people to regroup and recover, your grace, you will be of no use to the galaxy dead.”

“Wait,” Jango grits through clenched teeth. “It would... be unfair for us not to aid you in this, not when this was our disaster, too.”

“There is no need for that,” Dooku says regally, Force-calling his ’saber back to his hand. “This has become a Senate matter, and to involve yourselves further would be an unnecessary risk.”

“So you... want us to just leave?”

Dooku raises a single eyebrow, expression blank otherwise, but Obi-Wan still shudders at the dark anger in the man, the rage that had hit its boiling point upon first meeting Jango and believing he had slaughtered almost two hundred innocent activists. The Force warns Obi-Wan about that darkness, the way Dooku has not yet released it; it also gives them hope, though, that the master can be pulled back into the light, with a little persuasion and lots of tea.

The conversation has moved on without them when Obi-Wan tries to focus back on the crisis at hand, Jango’s commandos already starting to pack up the camp while Dooku and Master Poof quietly discuss the Jedi’s next moves. Neither seem to have realised Obi-Wan hadn’t been paying attention, which is just fine by them: Master Fodvam is already at wit’s end trying to keep them focused on anything but plants, somedays.

A heavy gaze pulls their own to look up, across the camp to where Jango oversees his people’s retreat, but Obi-Wan knows the Mand’alor’s attention is on them alone. Obi-Wan gazes right back, refusing to the first to look away, and is somehow thrilled rather than disappointed when Jango does just that.

He does not say goodbye, but that’s alright, Obi-Wan knows they’ll be meeting again soon.

Following a stomping Jango up into Jaster’s old ship, Myles won’t stop laughing at him.

“‘The one who will speak of the truth,’” he quotes gleefully, just as jovial in his punching of Jango’s sides as he attempts to unbuckle his helmet, and he doesn’t back down even when his Mand’alor growls at him. “Kriff, who knew that witch would end up being so literal?”

“I told you I don’t believe in that osik,” Jango snaps, trying to shove his best friend off of him. “I don't believe in that old hag's ‘prophecy’ any more than I believe in Jedi competence.”

“Ah ah, Jang’alor, you shouldn’t speak of your ba’buir like that, what would Jaster say?”

Jango finally gets his helmet off and yanks his hood down so he can get right in Myles’ face to snarl, “That adiik is not the future of Mandalore, kriff whatever the fuck Jaster’s buir says! One dream and one crazy old enby witch spouting oracle nonsense does not make Obi-Wan Kenobi my destiny.”

Jango doesn’t need to see Myles’ face to know it lights up in victory. “Nobody said their full name, Jang’alor.”

“Finish that thought and I’ll throw you out the airlock.”

Mando’a:

Mand’alor — “Sole ruler”, contended ruler of Mandalore.

jetii — “Jedi” sing, pl. jetiise

kih'jetii — “Little Jedi”, highly offensive

osik — impolite form of “dung”, shit

ba'buir/e — “grandparent/s”, gender neutral

adiik — a child aged from 3 to 13, used here as an insult

Cansitor Sato — Traditional High Galactic for “Plant Surge”, a Living Force-related technique of controlling plants (usually vines) to ensnare or slow an enemy; in legends, this was taught to Agricorp members as well, headcanoned here to be usually only taught to master/older members.

Novitiate — personal headcanon for the form of address for non-master members of the Jedi Corps.

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talkfantasytome · 3 years ago

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Going to delete ask posts that directly linked other people's posts, based on this feedback and suggestion (which I thoroughly appreciate!), as I'm not trying to point fingers at anyone or directly tell a specific person they're wrong. I'll repost the general content, with a summary of what was asked, starting with this post.

Anon Ask: Some people are saying that SJM has confirmed Vassien by saying that she'd like to do retellings of firebird legends, swan lake, and Vasilisa the Beautiful, using some shots of her comments. What are your thoughts on this? And the time on facebook that Sarah said E\ain and Lucien have a lot of "tension, growth, and healing to be found (together)".

The most important thing to consider here is timeline. Both of the twitter shown were made in April of 2015. The first one is, honestly, fairly irrelevant. First of all, she's just saying fairy tales she might like to retell. And, for the record, she has also said she'd like to do a retelling of The Little Mermaid, yet often people disregard that as an argument for Gwynriel. So, either her comments on what she'd like to do a retelling of matter, or they don't.

And, if they're saying that those comments are foreshadowing a Vassa + Lucien book, then clearly The Little Mermaid comments are foreshadowing a Gwynriel book. And then...where's E\ain's?

E\ain is getting a book, so which fairy tale gets the short straw?

Or, maybe, the story won't be exactly like the fairy tale.

I do think that both of those comments are important, but Sarah said she wants to do a retelling.

That could literally mean anything. All that tells us is that she will take themes and ideas from the story. I'm not saying Vassa won't be important in a later book, but Sarah can retell the story any way. She could have Vassa betray E\ain, get Koschei to transfer the curse over to the middle Archeron, and now E\ain is the swan on the lake (cause, come on, E\ain's def. a bit swan-like), and Lucien has to rescue her. Or, maybe Jurian is the one that rescues Vassa while Lucien and E\ain deal with Koschei?

There are so many options in a retelling that to say SJM telling us she wants to do a retelling of these stories is a clear sign that Vassa + Lucien are endgame is, honestly, not a very critical analysis.

I'm going to address this tweet next:

This twitter exchange happed April 30, 2015. ACOMAF was published in May of 2016. This post can not be used as foreshadowing of Vassa + Lucien, because it happened before we found out E\ain and Lucien are mates. That "at some point further down the road" literally means "any time after book 1".

People keep using this tweet and presenting it as if Sarah's response came recently. They're spreading misinformation - it may not be purposeful, they may not have seen or noticed the date, but this twitter exchange can't be used as proof that Lucien's person has to be someone other than E\ain, because when it was made we did not know about the Lucien and E\ain possibility.

That doesn't mean it definitely is talking about E\ain, but my point is that this is not proof of Vassa + Lucien, of someone else + Lucien, because of when it was posted.

As for other comments on retellings Sarah would like to do - it's the same argument as the first one. Sarah said she wants to do a retelling of the firebird and swan like. We all know this. It's not new information. People who are saying Vassa + Lucien won't happen aren't ignorant of this fact. We're well aware, and we're also well aware of every other thing Sarah has said, mentioned, foreshadowed, and we're tying it all together. Focusing solely on stories Sarah has mentioned she'd like to retell - not confirmed she will retell - and ignoring everything else doesn't provide a solid analysis. You have to weave how those stories would fit into the grander scheme, and look at the other surrounding factors as well.

And, again, we need to remember that Sarah can do whatever the hell she wants in terms of the story and how she chooses to retell a fairy tale. I mean, how often is Little Red Riding Hood turned into a werewolf story? And sometimes even Red is the wolf?

Writers use fairy tales as a base, a foundation, but then they make it their own. No writer is going to tell the fairy tale exactly how it first was. They're going to adjust it...a lot...to make it their own story.

I'd also like to point out that both times she mentions Vasilisa, she says "Vasilisa the Beautiful". The first time she also said 'the Brave', but the second, solely 'Beautiful'. Vassa is beautiful, of course, but one of E\ain's defining characteristics is her beauty. Even in ACOSF it was again mentioned, discussed, about how her beauty made others hate her.

Could Vassa be Vasilisa...of course. However, I think people are a bit blinded by the similarities in names. Remember, Vasilisa the Beautiful wasn't the firebird - those are different stories. And, honestly, after doing a bit of research into the tale, I'm starting to get more and more sure of the thought that the character who would portray Vasilisa is E\ain.

I think I'm going to do a post on it...

In the later comment on retellings she'd like to do - which we know came after the first as the first came out in August 2015 and that story she's telling was given after the second set of books was confirmed - I also find it interesting that she said Vasilisa the Beautiful (specifically) and Swan Lake, subbing out the firebird.

Why would she do that? Perhaps because she's already brought in the firebird pieces she planned to bring in. We already know that retelling, and how it's come to play. Vassa is a firebird by the curse.

I'm not saying it couldn't end in a Swan Lake thing, as that is what the curse reminds me of. But, personally, I think the fact that she's saying Swan Lake now is also symbolic of something more, possibly another character getting trapped by Koschei.

As for the other piece you asked about, I don't have much to say about it, because it feels like the closest we'll come to an elucien confirmation.

That was also posted a while ago, back when ACOMAF came out. So, it's not like this is recent information Sarah is providing us. However, we know that Sarah can sometimes end up choosing endgame based on gut and things that just hit her. Cassian and Nesta - literally didn't know about them until she wrote them on the same page and was like "oh shit". So Sarah saying that she and Lucien didn't see E\ain coming...I'm sorry, but that feels almost more telling than even the next part of the sentence - where she says they have growing and healing to do together.

That's so huge. And we haven't seen that yet. We've only really seen the tension.

Sarah said this back when ACOMAF came out. And it was around writing or publishing ACOWAR that she got the okay for the second set of books (I think?). Which means she was likely thinking about the longer-term stories before that. Which would explain why we didn't get that growth and healing in ACOWAR.

Instead, she left them in a spot where it seemed like a possibility, and then for the later books has just added more tension. But that journey is still there. She's had it planned for so long. And yes, maybe she could change her mind, but we only know of two cases where she did just that:

Az and Mor

Nesta and Lucien

For Az and Mor it was because she decided to make Mor bisexual and unable to be in an emotional relationship with a male. This was due to complaints over diversity. It's the closest Sarah's probably come to 'fanservice' - except, admittedly, this is so not fanservice. Fanservice is doing something like, say, having Voldemort and Bellatrix have a secret love child despite the fact that Voldy never once came off as having any form of romantic or sexual feelings for her or anyone, ever. (Seriously, that guy was asexual and that is a hill I'll die on.)

Adjusting a character due to legitimate complaints and concerns on diversity, not just fanservice. It's more a full on social service, really, to try and provide that representation better. Yes, it wasn't done in the best way, but she did make an attempt.

The second one - Nesta and Lucien. That was her general plan, until she put Nesta and Cassian on page together. Then it all went out the window. Just like all of Nesta's thoughts when she saw Cassian. Just like Cassian's entire brain when he saw Nesta. 👀

And we get it, because we see it too.

So, while Sarah could have changed her mind about E\ain and Lucien, the only reasons she'd do that don't yet apply. She's already made a change for the diversity complaints, and I don't see her doing that with these two. As for finding out they actually belong with someone else when she sees them on page - well, that hasn't happened yet. She made the E\ain + Lucien decision after we see E\ain and Azriel interact, so clearly Az is not that for E\ain. And we've seen Lucien and Vassa on page together. There's nothing there except Lucien being pained about her curse - which, yeah, she's his friend. How often is one IC member described as looking pained for another? Or thinks about how much it hurt them to see their friend hurt?

But we know what it looks like when the chemistry is so undeniable it will adjust Sarah's plans. And if you're not sure - go back and read all the Nessian scenes in ACOMAF. And then see the one scene where Lucien and Vassa are on page together - I think you'll find there's another male there that, with Vassa, rings closer to the Nessian home.

There was no on page chemistry between Vassa and Lucien, and certainly not enough to change Sarah's mind. Which would also mean E\ain already wasn't meant for Az, which is likely why no one arguing for Vassa + Lucien seems to care as much about that, because most people who ship them are already dead set on E\ain + Azriel.

So, there you have it, my point of view/rant on those two pieces. But it's always important to look at the context of a post, and especially the "source material" people use to provide proof. It's why I tend to stick to the text where I can, and only use SJM statements that don't have an expiration date to their importance. SJM saying something about how she loves happily ever afters, for example, no expiration date. SJM telling us in 2015 that there is someone special for Lucien down the road - an expiration date after the first sign of a possible love interest for Lucien. Once E\ain was declared to be his mate, that statement became irrelevant, because regardless of whether it will be E\ain or not, you can no longer state that it's clearly hinting at someone else, since E\ain is a love interest for Lucien.

#ask box #acotar #acotar thoughts #acotar theory #elucien #antielriel #anti elriel #anti vassien #elain archeron #elain and lucien #elain x lucien #lucien vanserra #gwynriel

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neoptolemid · 3 years ago

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Neoptolemus super doc ? ??

ARE WE ABSOLUTELY SURE,, , ,, ,

uh okay, I pull together my super document of Pyrrhus, have pardon cause it's a bit old and i'm gonna spread it through like 3 or 4 posts probably , , so uh enjoy and I'm sorry for all grammatical errors

Skyros

Pyrrhus was born by the name Pyrrhus and this was based either on his red hair or due to Achilles name of Skyros being Pyrrha.

When it comes to appearances I generally describe him as a good mix of both Deidamia and Achilles’ traits, having inherited Deidamia’s red hair and Achilles Blue/teal eyes. He is around the middle of both of his parent’s height as I make Achilles 6’0 and Deidamia 5’3 when full grown, Pyrhhus rounds out to be 5’6. He also has a number of beauty marks which are similar to Achilles’.

It is unknown how long Achilles stayed on Skyros or when Pyrrhus was born. Either way Achilles did know about his son, we know this from the fact Achilles makes references to his son within the Iliad and Odyssey.

I like to believe that part of Pyrrhus growing up with his mother and aunts is that he has a lot of appreciation for women’s crafts and what they do. That he as a younger child would simply sit and be by his mother and/or aunts as they worked enjoying their company.

He would try his best growing up to join into their songs and dances, and at least once dressed himself in girls clothes to show his mother and aunts which got a good laugh out of them.

From Quintus ‘Fall of Troy’ we are informed that learning to fight and it was Odysseus and Diomedes who came with their black sails to ask him to join the war cause. He was promised to marry Menelaus’s daughter Hermione, he was also promised to have Achilles’ armor and gold, riches, and glory for coming with them.

While work will generally age him to being a young man or simply portray him to be very well spoken, if you follow along with the time line it is very possible that Pyrrhus is only 11 or 12 when he leaves Skyros, I tend to write him as being 13 for my own comfort.

Another thing to note form Quintus’s piece on Pyrrhus is they depict this being especially sad for Deidamia, she is written as having weeped and weeped. She doesn’t want him to leave because she doesn’t want him going to war and leaving her. She doesn’t want him hurt and she doesn’t want another person she loves leaving her again.

Deidamia Pyrrhus’s mother is written as loving him and I interpret bits of this story as Pyrrhus is the only tie to Achilles she has. Generally I prefer the idea that Deidamia did care for Achilles and so it did break her heart that he left and she had hoped that he would return eventually to her and their son.

Over the years she understood more and more that he would not return, so all she had was her son, and then eventually they come and take him from her as well.

Mattering on the version of the story, it is fully possible that Deidamia may have never seen her son again once he left the island.

Dawn climbed the wide-arched heaven, straightway they rose from their beds. Then Deidameia knew; and on her son's broad breast she cast herself, and bitterly wailed: her cry thrilled through the air, as when a cow loud-lowing mid the hills seeks through the glens her calf, and all around Echo long ridges of the mountain-steep; so on all sides from dim recesses rang the hall; and in her misery she cried: "Child, wherefore is thy soul now on the wing to follow strangers unto Ilium the fount of tears, where perish many in fight, yea, cunning men in war and battle grim? And thou art but a youth, and hast not learnt the ways of war, which save men in the day of peril. Hearken thou to me, abide here in thine home, lest evil tidings come from Troy unto my ears, that thou in fight hast perished; for mine heart saith, never thou hitherward shalt from battle-toil return. Not even thy sire escaped the doom of death -- he, mightier than thou, mightier than all heroes on earth, yea, and a Goddess' son -- but was in battle slain, all through the wiles and crafty counsels of these very men who now to woeful war be kindling thee. Therefore mine heart is full of shuddering fear lest, son, my lot should be to live bereaved of thee, and to endure dishonour and pain, for never heavier blow on woman falls than when her lord hath perished, and her sons die also, and her house is left to her desolate. Straightway evil men remove her landmarks, yea, and rob her of her all, setting the right at naught. There is no lot more woeful and more helpless than is hers who is left a widow in a desolate home."

Lemnos

Pyrrhus agrees to go with them and on the way they stop by the island of Lemnos to get Philoctetes. Odysseus makes Neoptolemus lie to Philoctetes because he knows that he hates Odysseus because he is the man who abandoned him on Lemnos and he knows that Philoctetes doesn’t want to go to Troy but back to Greece and to his home.

This causes a Pyrrhus strife because he has been taught to be noble up until now, in the play Philoctetes by Sophocles we are shown multiple times how this causes him strife because he is having to lie. Philoctetes also considers Pyrrhus to be a friend because Pyrrhus lies and says that he wants to go back home to Skyros because of the way he is treated by the other Greeks even though he hasn’t met any of them yet to our knowledge.

Good lines from this play that I personally characterize him are

‘It would have been better if i had never left scyros. Everything around me oppresses me ..’

‘He’ll (odysseus) claim i’m too soft-hearted’

‘I can’t. It is right and in our interest to listen to those in authority’

Some of the best development to see from this is how he was raised to be noble and how he doesn’t want to trick people or lie, he wants to be honest.

Another thing I find interesting to read from specifically this play is how Pyrrhus is very rarely called by his own name, he is almost always referred to ‘son of achilles’ and also in this play he is often referred to as ‘child’ or ‘boy’.

While none of these things are brought up as an issue in the play I do think it is a detail you can play with, like how it might weigh on an individual to be always referred to by your famous father or how people don’t recognize you by your name but by your father’s.

I think these are things that would weigh on Pyrrhus he wants to live up to his father but it also oppresses him to be referred in such a way. He wants to be like his father but he is still his own individual which he doesn’t feel recognized by as people continually anything but his own name.

To the idea of playing into the fact he is also often called ‘boy’ or ‘child’ These could be names that eventually upset and anger him. He is being dragged into this war like he is old enough to fight, which he is not and yet he is not recognized as such by those around him.

It is a case of a child feeling indignatinge by being called terms which denote being naive, though I like to think there is some justification for his anger because this isn’t just a small thing but he is being taken into a man's world.

In Philoctetes he is referred to by the name Neoptolemus, he was given this name by Phoenix, a man also considered to be a father by Achilles. Phoenix is one of the oldest men in the Trojan war and he is either involved with Pyrrhus coming from the island to Skyros to the war or some time later down the road. He gave him this name because it means ‘new war/warrior’ it is meant to reflect how Achilles himself was a young man when he entered the war.

It is honestly more common to see Pyrrhus referred to as Neoptolemus by the Greeks and Pyrrhus by Roman sources to my knowledge. (i’ll be using Pyrrhus just for simplicity)

Troy

There are a lot of various stories that have to do with the fall of Troy, we have records again from Quintus “Fall of Troy” and the “Aeneid” by Vergil. There are also a number of plays by the three tragedians of Ancient Greece(Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylus) that have to do with the end of the war and various stories of the aftermath.

While Pyrrhus doesn’t appear in these very often they still help to give more insight to his possible character.

Pyrrhus makes a minor appearance within the play of ‘hecuba’ and is in the background of ‘andromache’, he makes no appearance within this story but he is directly related to things happening in the play.

Back onto the subject of the fall of Troy, he is regarded as the killer of both Astyanax and Priam. These are generally agreed upon details and sometimes Odysseus fills the role of Pyrrhus when the story decides they don’t want to introduce more characters.

He is generally described as being ‘battle-eager’ ‘Fierce-hearted’ and a few other epithets relating to fighting. In general he is not described as being worse than anyone else. The fall of Troy is a greek work and all the Greeks within this work are killing and fighting people. He is by all means a competent fighter within the text.

In the Odyssey when Odysseus goes into the underworld and speaks with the dead, and when Achilles comes to speak he asks about his son.

Odysseus describes him as

‘but I can tell you all about your son Neoptolemus, for I took him in my own ship from Scyros with the Achaeans. In our councils of war before Troy he was always first to speak, and his judgement was unerring. Nestor and I were the only two who could surpass him; and when it came to fighting on the plain of Troy, he would never remain with the body of his men, but would dash on far in front, foremost of them all in valour. Many a man did he kill in battle- I cannot name every single one of those whom he slew while fighting on the side of the Argives, but will only say how he killed that valiant hero Eurypylus son of Telephus, who was the handsomest man I ever saw except Memnon; many others also of the Ceteians fell around him by reason of a woman's bribes. Moreover, when all the bravest of the Argives went inside the horse that Epeus had made, and it was left to me to settle when we should either open the door of our ambuscade, or close it, though all the other leaders and chief men among the Danaans were drying their eyes and quaking in every limb, I never once saw him turn pale nor wipe a tear from his cheek; he was all the time urging me to break out from the horse- grasping the handle of his sword and his bronze-shod spear, and breathing fury against the foe. Yet when we had sacked the city of Priam he got his handsome share of the prize money and went on board (such is the fortune of war) without a wound upon him, neither from a thrown spear nor in close combat, for the rage of Mars is a matter of great chance.'

In general from the greek sources he is described as nobly.

He is noted for killing quite a few people during the fall of Troy but his most notable kills are Priam, who he kills within the throne room (to my knowledge) and Astyanax who is killed after Troy has fallen.

In the Aeneid by Vergil he is described in ways that frame him a more villainous or evil way

‘The fatal work inhuman Pyrrhus plies,’

During when Pyrrhus is about to kill Priam there is a line that I believe characterizes him as more of a tragic character than anything else. Before killing Priam, Priam berates him about how Pyrrhus is about to treat Priam because of how Achilles showed him humanity and how Achilles gives Priam his son’s body back. This is partly brung up because Pyrrhus getting into the throne room kills one of Priam’s sons in front of his face.

The line basically translates out to be Pyrrhus telling Priam that when he dies and sees his father to tell him of the terrible deed of his son, of how terrible his son is.

In the translation that I read they use the line ‘Tell him of degenerate Neoptolemus’

When in the context of the Philoctetes I think this paints Pyrrhus as being a rather tragic and sad character, because prior to going to the island of Lemnos Pyrrhus tried to act most noble, he wants to be noble like his father. When on Lemnos he has his morals questioned and is forced to go against his morales at the hand of Odysseus.

I interpret this as him vocalizing how he might be upset with himself as he is forced to look at the reality of war which isn’t noble or glorious at all. He wants to live up to the noble idea of his father and everything he is forced to do makes him feel terrible.

I personally think that Pyrrhus probably doesn’t know a lot about the terrible things that Achilles has done or he tries to ignore them. When fighting in the war he might realize his idea of his father might not truly be acturte, he was raised on stories from his mother telling him of his outstanding father.

In terms of justifying his actions during the war because going off my own headcanon he probably wouldn’t be so interested in killing so many people, I imagine he kinda just turns off his head and acts purely on his emotions and just acts like that of a soldier. (Is this PTSD?)

He follows the orders given to him and acts without questioning and lets all his emotions out. I personally don’t assign Pyrrhus that much pride but I like to think he inherited some of his fathers famous anger. All of his anger at what he is being forced to do comes out when he is forced to fight.

That is where the brutality of his portrayal within the Aeneid comes from.

#super doc sorry #my thoughts #my terrible terrible thoughts of my boy #I am sorry some of these thoughts are kinda old and need to get updated lol #neoptolemus #pyrrhus #the iliad #(I guess)#my super doc of all things

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lizaloveslevihan · 4 years ago

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Hii!!! Many people are feeling kinda mixed meh about the latest chapter, especially due to the way Levi-Zeke rivalry thing ended. Did you read the official version? What do you think?

Hi! Thank you for bringing this up because I was meaning to post my thoughts on this regardless. I’ve seen a lot of discourse regarding this matter, especially when it came to Levi’s character. I’ve done my best looking at it in an unbiased way because the truth is, who you ship him with tends to cloud your mind from his real intentions as a character. I’ll also do my best to talk a little more about Zeke, even though I honestly still have a hard time figuring out him out .

Levi’s promise to Erwin has undoubtedly become a large part of his character and has been what was driving him for years. But to say that it’s all he has, to reduce him to this mindless, revenge-seeking machine for me is just so wrong on so many levels.

My take? That his intentions have always been about doing what was best for humanity. That along with these intentions is his sense of duty to carry the hopes and dreams of his dead comrades. These things have always been the embodiment of his promise to Erwin, which is to kill Zeke.

When he made that promise to Erwin, they were under attack — the Beast Titan was throwing rocks and they would have failed in their mission to secure Shiganshina. By killing the Beast Titan, Levi would be able to secure their front and make sure that the sacrifices all those Survey Corps members made were not in vain. This was for the sake of both humanity and his comrades. When he wasn’t able to do so, this created a sense of guilt inside of him. And of course, we can’t deny his bond with Erwin. We can’t deny that he cares deeply about him, that he was about to choose him over Armin. But he chose the latter, and so the only way he can pay tribute to his fallen comrade, to the person whom he respected deeply and introduced him to his life in the Survey Corps — was to fulfill this promise.

But then we enter the final arc. If Levi was really a mindless, revenge-seeking machine people ought him to be, if killing Zeke was just all in the name of revenge, then he would have had no hesitation to kill him back in the forest. Let me remind you, Zeke had turned all of his subordinates into titans and forced him to slaughter every single one of them. But despite that, despite feeling incredible loss and hatred, Levi still didn’t kill him. Why? Because he believed in the secret plan he had. Why? Because they all believed that was what was best for Eldia and because it was what was seemingly going to help free their race. He didn’t kill Zeke yet because that was what he believed to be best for humanity. In the end, no matter how you look at it, he was looking at the bigger picture. Yes, he still wanted to kill Zeke to satisfy his promise, but he was willing to see to it that his death would be through him getting eaten by a titan of their own.

And then we come to the Alliance. His objective is to still kill Zeke, yes, but killing Zeke aligns with the interest of the Marleyans and is potentially the key to stopping the rumbling. And of course, he had just lost his subordinates. He has to give their deaths meaning as well, on top of all the others. But then Hange died too, and more than anything their final wish was to stop the rumbling. So I’m going to reiterate this for the nth time: the promise has always been about saving humanity and giving meaning to his comrades’ deaths. Chapter 136 also confirms this.

If keeping Zeke alive was the key to stopping the rumbling, however, then I’m sure Levi wouldn’t have killed him.

Now we have the actual part where he does what he’s been wishing for so long. Personally, I need more context for this and I hope we get some insight into his thoughts next chapter, but you can tell that killing Zeke didn’t give him the fulfillment he ought to have. He’s pained and distressed the entire time. Did he recognize Zeke's sacrifice? I can’t tell. But I think that this all points to the fact that he’s just tired.

The entire time we see him in his crippled state — from Chapter 126 till now — he’s just, to put it quite plainly, dead inside.

Yelena pointed this out to him in Chapter 128, and you can just tell how tired he is. All his life has been about violence. He’s thrown into every single conflict, over and over again, and honestly, I’m having a hard time right now expressing my thoughts over this because my heart just hurts revisiting these chapters and thinking about it. He’s disassociated so much after Hange died and went as far as to say he’ll see them later. He’s just so done.

And I think that’s what he was thinking when he finally did it. He gave Zeke as much of a quick and painless death, despite all those years of wanting to savor his demise. Perhaps he didn’t realize how easy it would be. (Damn okay I thought it would be easier now to talk about this but I guess not, I’m just incredibly attached to Levi if you can’t tell.)

Regarding Zeke, well, I thought his last statement to be rather beautiful. How for so long he’s always thought of things somewhat in a black or white perspective. I love how Armin made him realize that life was all about those little moments, about those small things that give us joy in our everyday lives. He rose up and finally appreciated the beauty and simplicity of the day. And his interaction with Levi, saying how he wanted to meet him but he couldn’t say the same? How he just openly goes “Hey! I’m right here! You can kill me now, buddy!” like two old friends seeing each other again? I wouldn’t go as far as saying they were friends, but the light and comedic moments they always share amid their difficult and brutal relationship is something I truly appreciate and will miss.

I really would love, however, if the situation with paths would be explained more. That whole dimension is so tricky and difficult to understand, and as much as I love reading other people’s theories, it sets me up for disappointment should my expectations not be met. And if I’m being completely honest, I also would have liked to see more of Zeke. He was out of commission for almost, what? A year? But then again, the manga timeline itself isn’t that long so I suppose it makes sense.

To wrap it up, Levi isn’t just a mindless tool for revenge. His promise to Erwin perfectly embodies his consistent intentions and principles as a character -- to help humanity and give meaning to his comrades’ deaths. His bond with Erwin is also something we can’t deny being there, and though it heavily influences him, it’s not what makes up his entire character. He’s incredibly tired of violence, which may be the reason why he looks the way he does in this chapter. Zeke is such an interesting and well-developed character and though I would have loved to have seen more of him, his epiphany and death were beautiful for me. Wouldn’t it be interesting if this was Levi’s last act of violence? Hopefully, the next chapter would give us more insight into his thoughts and explain things in regards to the bigger picture.

#i hope i was able to convey my thoughts properly #sometimes i feel like i'm all over the place #aot 137 #snk 137 #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan spoilers #levi ackerman #levi #zeke #zeke yeager #zeke jaeger #my thoughts #ask box

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dreamersscape · 3 years ago

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In Which I Attempt to Wreak Havoc Upon Panharmonium's Heart. Or Something.

Because I am an awesome friend, clearly, and possibly making people sad/verklempt is definitely an excellent way to (belatedly 😔 but I did start before the 15th!) celebrate Kakashi's birthday, right? ;)

I will admit up front that this is nowhere near as deftly structured and compiled as your Kakashi fanmix, @panharmonium, but that is precisely why I'm not even going to try to organize all these songs into individual playlists. Yet. Plus, I have a tendency to over-explain so this way I can better expound on why certain songs remind me of certain characters. Sorry that I sorta went a little... overboard?

Everything--except a few that aren't available on spotify, I'll link to them directly--can be listened to HERE.

What I'm Looking For - Brendan Benson | Kakashi → I may be a little biased with this one because it fits SO many of my favorite characters so well, somehow, but there's just something about the upbeat/tongue-in-cheek musical cues/delivery of lines such as 'I visit hell on a daily basis, and I see the sadness in all your faces' that just feels so Kakashi to me.

Happy Ending - MIKA | Kakashi → This is presumably a breakup song, but I enjoy it so much more in a non-romantic context (and the song itself isn't really boxed in with overtly romantic framing, so I appreciate that!). Anyway, some very important instructions IMO for listening to this with Kakashi in mind: everything before the bridge is about Kakashi up through his ANBU years, but when you get to the 'little bit of love' refrain, picture Kakashi meeting Tenzo, and then becoming Team 7's sensei, opening back up to Gai, adopting all the other leaf genin, assimilating Sai and Yamato into Team 7, and it keeps building with Kakashi gaining more and more loved ones to fill the hole in his heart, and then cry tears of joy with me! Just my personal suggestion. :D

Light - Sleeping At Last | Kakashi & Team 7 (/all his kids)

with every heartbeat I have left I will defend your every breath

→ I've seen this song used for ship vids and I'm all ????? about that because this is clearly a song about the love you have for your child! But I suppose if one of my favorite pastimes is aggressively re-interpreting love songs in non-romantic ways, I can't begrudge the opposite process... too much, lol.

Heroes - MIKA | Team Minato

your blood on me/and my blood on you/but to make you bleed/the only thing I wouldn't do/.../I wish there was a way/to give you a hand to hold/'cause you don't have to die in your glory/die, to never grow old

Long Lost Friends - Transit | Kakashi & Obito

how long/do you have to say that/this is not the person I used to know/you are not the person I used to know/.../because lately, you've been looking at me like you've seen a ghost/and isn't it obvious who's been missing who the most

→ What the heck! What the heck! What the heck! What the heck! What the heck!

Against the Voices - Switchfoot | Kakashi

'cause everybody knows/the hardest war to fight/is the fight to be yourself/when the voices try to turn you into someone else

Out of the Darkness - Matthew and the Atlas | Obito? Yamato? Kakashi? Itachi & Sasuke? Naruto & Kurama? → I'm a bit undecided about this one, or if I should just not worry about choosing one character and just let myself feel all the "inner darkness is not an innate characteristic, Danzo! They're just grieving/in a lot of pain, and they can find their way out of that dark place!" feels.

Save A Place - 1969 | Kakashi & Sasuke

so I'll keep away and save a place for you/and I'll only make the same mistakes as you/.../when all the blood all over your fingers is dried up/the pain will still linger

→ I'm not uber-confident in picking out really fitting Kakashi & Sasuke songs yet, but I hope this hits a lot of the right notes for you. :)

Thrive - Switchfoot | Kakashi

I'm always close, but I'm never enough/I'm always in line, but I'm never in love/I get so down, but I won't give up/I get so down, but I won't give up

→ See, it says right there that he's never in love! Not the crux of the song, and he's not always 'in line' either, but still! :)

Disarm - The Civil Wars | Kakashi & Obito

the years burn, burn, burn

→ I don't know how I keep collecting fictional relationships that work so well for this song, but literally every single line of this song hits so hard for these two?? Will never recover from this. (Also, I usually disregard when 'my love' pops up in the last line of the chorus, as the mood dictates. :) It's pretty incidental as is IMO.)

Renaissance - Paolo Buonvino & Skin | Sakumo & Obito & Kakashi & Naruto

let me show you one last time/let me show you one last sign/you can find it/I can't say that I can change the world/but if you let me, I can make another world for us/let me suffer all for you/make this vision all brand new/we can fight them/I can't say that I can win it all, [but] come with me and I will make my words stand tall

→ Okay, this is a very odd choice given that it's actually the theme song for a different show about the Italian renaissance (if you happen to see this, Mirjam, don't hate me!), but this could be IT! The "those who break the rules are scum, but those who would abandon their friends are worse than scum" anthem that's all about building a better world based on these principles! I really hope our sharing-a-brain talent translates to listening to this song in this way because I am feeling SOME KIND of way about this!

The Lament of Eustace Scrubb - The Oh Hellos | Kakashi → I really liked the song you chose from this album for your fanmix, so now I've feeling a tiny bit too on-the-nose with my choice, but I guess this is just a Kakashi album all around. 😆

Glass Heart Hymn - Paper Route | Kakashi(+ Obito) & Sasuke(+ Itachi)

memories as heavy as a stone/ I am empty, in my end you are my beginning

This Is Home - Switchfoot | Yamato & Kakashi (+ Team 7)

and now, after all my searching/after all my questions/I'm gonna call it home

→ All finding-where-you-belong songs are actually Yamato songs. True story!

Faust, Midas, & Myself - Switchfoot | Obito

you have one life left to leave/you have one life left to lead

→ Could this be any more perfect for Obito? It even has creepy-old-man!Madara!

Pluto - Sleeping At Last | Kakashi

Always Gold - Radical Face | Kakashi & Obito/Sasuke & Itachi/Naruto & Sasuke

all my life, I've never known where you've been/there were holes in you, the kind that I could not mend/and I heard you say, right when you left that day/does everything go away?/yeah, everything goes away/but I'm going to be here till forever/so just call when you're around

→ ...but mostly Kakashi & Obito because 'there were holes in you' 😭😭😭

Lemon Boy - Cavetown | Yamato & Kakashi → You already know the delights of this song of course, but I gots to be comprehensive. :)

Everywhere I Go - Lissie/cover by Sleeping At Last | Kakashi & Team Minato

danger will follow me now everywhere I go/angels will call on me and take me to my home/well, these tired eyes just want to remain closed

→ I chose the Sleeping At Last cover for maximum angst, 'cause sometimes it be like that.

Uneven Odds - Sleeping At Last | Kakashi

maybe your light is a seed, and the darkness the dirt, in spite of the uneven odds, beauty lifts from the earth

→ ...just like an earth style: mud wall :') Okay, okay, bad jokes aside, the seed metaphor of course makes me want to associate it with Tenzo, but this is clearly a Kakashi song!

Twenty-four - Switchfoot | Kakashi & Obito

life is not what I thought it was twenty-four hours ago/and I'm not who I thought I was twenty-four hours ago/still I'm singing spirit, take me up in arms with you/you're raising the dead in me/I wanna see miracles/to see the world change/wrestled the angel for more than a name/for more than a feeling, for more than a cause/I'm singing spirit, take me up in arms with you/and you're raising the dead in me

I'm Still Here (Jim's Theme) - John Rzeznik | Kakashi

and how can they say I never change?/they're the ones that stay the same/.../they can't tell me who to be/'cause I'm not what they see/.../and their words are just whispers/and lies that I'll never believe

→ Yeah, I might've accidentally imprinted on Treasure Planet as a 14 year old, and then someone made sure this song would forever live in my heart by making a fanvid of it with my favorite character from my robin hood show, but! He's still here!

See You Again - Wiz Khalifa (feat. Charlie Puth) | Kakashi & Obito/Team Minato

how can we not talk about family when family's all that we got?/everything I went through, you were standing there by my side/and now you gon' be with me for the last ride

→ I am being very unoriginal here, and there are in fact already fanvids made for these relationships set to this song (along with many others featuring different Naruto relationships), but I don't think I'll be able to rest until I translate the movie playing in my head whenever I hear this song now into an actually watchable format. After all, they have come a long way from where they began, and I intend to make that both as touching and ironically hilarious as possible!

Goodnight, Travel Well - The Killers | Kakashi → Admittedly, I got this idea from a magnificently crafted fanvid done for my robin hood show, but I genuinely think it would be really interesting to make something similar for Kakashi centered around the time he technically died but got better? I don't know how to explain it, but I think it fits quite well.

30 Lives - Imagine Dragons | Kakashi & all the people he's loved and lost → can be listened to here.

A Pound of Flesh - Radical Face | Kakashi

then today I wake up feeling easy/and find I'm on more familiar roads/I got a darkness wrapped inside me/but now it ain't so hard to let it go/so keep a candle burning in the window/I'm almost home

Hold Back The River - James Bay | Kakashi & life getting in the way of him being with his precious people (you may be sensing a pattern here) → @the road of life: Let! Kakashi! And his People! Hold! Each! Other!!! Also, 'tried to square not being there, but think that I should have been' is absolutely about Sasuke's defection and Kakashi adding it to his long list of undeserving self-recriminations.

The Fall - Imagine Dragons | Yamato & Kakashi → 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

Shadowman - K's Choice | could work equally well for Kakashi or Obito, I think

any time tomorrow a part of me will die/and a new one will be born/any time tomorrow/I'll get sick of asking why/sick of all the darkness I have worn/any time tomorrow/I will try to do what's right/making sense of all I can/any time tomorrow I'll pretend to see the light/I just might/.../and doesn't it make you sad?/to see so much love denied/see nothing but a shadowman inside

Paint - The Paper Kites | Kakashi & Team 7

still there's a wound and I'm moving slow/though it don't show, though it don't show/I've got a hole where nothing grows,/how little you know, how little you know

→ A song for just how much Team 7 doesn't know about their sensei.

Always Find Me Here - Transit | Kakashi → ...most likely at the memorial stone. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (why am I like this)

Taste - Sleeping At Last | Kakashi

it’s bittersweet, it’s poetry/a careful pruning of my dead leaves/it’s holy ground, a treasure chest/I'm on my knees and only scratch the surface/like fists unraveling, like glass unshattering/we’re breaking all the rules, we’re breaking bread again/we’re swallowing light ’til we’re fixed from the inside

Help - Hurts | Yamato & Kakashi

take my hand and lead the way/out of the darkness and into the light of the day/.../'cause I know what I've been missing/and I know that I should try/but there's hope in this admission/and there's freedom in your eyes/.../I can feel the darkness coming/and I'm afraid of myself/call my name and I'll come running/'cause I just need some help

→ NO ONE TOUCHE ME.

Your Soul - RHODES | A mish-mash of Kakashi & Tenzo and Rin & Obito & Kakashi and Gai & Kakashi vibes? → So like, 'oh you know when you're alone/I'm holding on and on and on and on/to your soul' reminded me of your 'when you're all alone...the only thing you really think about is dying' 'but when there are two of you...the only thing you can think about is surviving.' and now kakashi - who just saved his life - is asking him 'did you want to die' and yamato is saying 'no' there are two of them and yamato wants to SURVIVE. tags as well as Gai's steadfastness as a friend, and 'I just wanna hold your hand' made me think of Rin's "Well then, I'm just going to have to connect the two of you." while holding their hands, and the sunlight/'soul shine'/'your light' motif is just A Lot in this song!!

7 Years - Lukas Graham | Kakashi → Alright, yeah, there are already approximately a gazillion pre-existing Naruto AMVs for this song and even one or two focusing on Kakashi, but they don't capitalize on all the angst possibilities in many of the lyrics or reach the fluff potential of 'will I think the world is cold or will I have a lot of children who can warm me [when I'm old]' and I cannot abide that!

Putting The Dog To Sleep - The Antlers | Kakashi & Sasuke → Okay, on one hand, this song is One Big Oof. But I do like the (potentially odd) way I've conceptualized it for Kakashi & Sasuke? Like, the first half is Kakashi going through all the tragedies in his life and getting lost in ANBU, but then in the second half it transitions to him wanting to prevent Sasuke from having to be as alone as Kakashi once was and they can face life together? It makes me emotional!

Trust Me - The Fray | Kakashi & Obito

I found a friend, or should I say a foe?/said there's a few things you should know/we don't want you to see/we come, and we go/here today, gone tomorrow

→ There are a few lines that call Tenzo & Kakashi to mind, but mostly it's Obito & Kakashi.

The Lightning Strike (What If This Storm Ends?) - Snow Patrol | Kakashi → I had to, right? My mindscape is a little murky/scattered about what specifically I want to think about when I listen to this, but obviously it has to do with Kakashi in one way or another.

Kettering - The Antlers | Team Minato(???) → Honestly not sure if this will make any sense, but yeah, vague team minato vibes?

Swans - Unkle Bob | Kakashi & Obito/Rin/Minato/Kushina/Sakumo → They should be by his side always!!!

Looking Too Closely - Fink | Kakashi → I honestly feel rather ambivalent about this one too, but I can't deny 'truth is like blood underneath your fingernails/and you don't wanna hurt yourself, hurt yourself/looking too closely' always destroys me because... well, you know. I love suffering. :(

Souvenirs - Switchfoot | Kakashi & Obito & Rin

wolves - Switchfoot | Kakashi

snowfall for the battlefield/roses for the father's sons/see them red on the ground:/bleeding/when the revolution came/we were more than hungry men/we were hoping for more:/bleeding/end. begin again./all of my world is collision and spin/hope is a world that has yet to begin/awaken, oh sleeper/awaken, oh sleeper/a new day begins

→ I wanted a wolf-related song too. :)

PRODIGAL SOUL - Switchfoot | Obito, Itachi, & Sasuke; just all them wayward Uchiha boys

Coming Down - Dear Euphoria | kid!Kakashi & his relationships

the shell/that I wore/it wasn't for fun/it wasn't to make you/stick around/it was for survival/it was what I've learnt/it was for the sun/.../our love has grown/our love has flown

→ Another one I'm a little unsure of whether it makes sense outside of my head or not, but I like the vibes?

Ghosts That We Knew - Mumford & Sons | Kakashi & Yamato? → Hmm, can I maybe submit this as a Kakashi-&-Yamato-just-need-to-mske-it-through-this-war-so-they-can-have-a-bright-bright-future song?

All Is Well (It's Only Blood) - Radical Face | Kakashi → ...he said as he's bleeding out or after he's thrown himself in the line of fire protecting someone he thinks is a better person than himself...

Bleeding Out - Imagine Dragons | Kakashi

when the hour is nigh/and hopelessness is sinking in/and the wolves all cry/to fill the night with hollering/when your eyes are red/and emptiness is all you know/with the darkness fed/I will be your scarecrow/you tell me to hold on/oh, you tell me to hold on/but innocence is gone/and what was right is wrong

→ In a similar vein to the previous song. But goodness gracious! Were they NOT straight up describing Kakashi here?

Amaryllis - Shinedown | Yamato & Kakashi → Just tossing this one out there, not sure if it will make sense or if it's a reach... but I like it?

lost 'cause - Switchfoot | Kakashi & Sasuke

are we a lost cause?/or are we just lost 'cause/we won't be the future we refuse to see?/and if I'm your lost cause/it'll be your lost 'cause/you won't see me as I am, the possibility/that I'm not the enemy

→ 214 feels. (And before and after that, but yeah.)

Through the Ghost - Shinedown | Kakashi & Obito

so many silent sorrows/you never hear from again/and now that you've lost tomorrow/is yesterday still a friend?/.../everything that mattered is just/a city of dust/covering both of us/did you hide yourself away?/I can't see you anymore/.../did you hide yourself away?/are you living through the ghost?/did you finally find a place/above the shadows so the world will never know?/the world will never know you like I do ... like I still do

Little Talks - Of Monsters and Men | Kakashi → Just Kakashi having little chats with his ghosts, totally the most heartwarming way to conclude this section. 😅

Sleepyhead - Passion Pit | Kakashi → Just kidding! Here's a slightly less morbid song for the Most Tired Boy Of Them All.™ (Random aside: this was my customary song to listen to on my walks to 8AM organic chemistry classes; I found it strangely soothing! On a different occasion, after a particularly long day for her, one of my roommates didn't have the energy to make it to her bed but nevertheless requested a lullaby from us. So I obliged by playing this song for her, but she didn't seem to gain the same peace of mind from it as I did. 😄 I know it's not my place to propose anything like this, but it does amuse me to imagine bookends!Kakashi in these situations, even though it's not OChem classes he has to go to.)

General/Miscellaneous:

Rise Above It - Switchfoot | Ensemble

don't care what they're telling me/we can be what we want to be/.../just because it's law doesn't mean that it's fair/.../don't believe the system's on your side/.../the curse is spoken/the system's broken; rise above it

→ I mean, how could I not think about Naruto when this song also has the lines 'hear us sing tonight like the last night on earth/we will rise like the tide/like dead men coming back to life/we are rising, rising'? It's fun to be literal sometimes!

Doorways - Radical Face | Allllll the traumatized children → Someone has to put all those tragic childhood flashbacks to good use, after all.

Ghost Towns - Radical Face | take your pick of Itachi, Sasuke, or Post-Kannabi-Bridge!Obito

there's no comin' home/with a name like mine/I still think of you/but everyone knows/yeah everyone knows/if you care, let it go

Blinding Light - Switchfoot | Hey, Hiruzen? You may have coined the phrase, "children are the king" but I don't think you truly understand it... (insert Princess Bride joke here)

hey boy, don't believe them/we're the nation that eats our youth/.../still looking for the blinding light/still looking for the reason why/still looking for the sun to shine/all my life I've been living in the darkest night/still looking for the blinding light/to take me higher and higher

Brother's Blood - Kevin Devine | EVERYONE → ...but certainly so much you could do with Itachi & Sasuke, Obito & Kakashi, Shisui & Itachi, even Hashirama & Madara! Sakumo's teammates turning their backs on him and saying 'I don't know one thing about my brother's blood'?!?! There are SO MANY ideas I have for this song! It gives me chills and makes my brain scream.

We Need Each Other - Sanctus Real | Ensemble → Already mentioned this one to you, but I have to include it here for thoroughness' sake!

Whispering - Alex Clare | the Hidden Leaf's lost/ostracized children/orphans

who will care for the falling?/who will care for the falling leaves?

So this is probably a strange concept to come up with and apply to this song, but the 'whispering, whispering, whispering' parts brought Konaha's virulent gossiping/passing judgement about others and often kids they don't even know problem to mind, too, and yeah?

The World You Want - Switchfoot | Ensemble → If I were to make a fanvid set to this song, I would definitely keep a broad focus, but I can't deny that the lines 'you start to look like what you believe, you float through time like a stream, if the waters of time are made up by you and I, I could change the world for you, you change it for me' FOR SURE has strong Obito & Kakashi/Kakashi & Tenzo vibes.

Red Eyes - Switchfoot | Ensemble, but definitely many dashes of Uchihas 😄 → I would like to thank Masashi Kishimoto for creating a world where red eyes are a Thing of Importance so I can one day make a fanvid using this song in not just the tired or teary bloodshot-red eyes way, but in a very literal sense too.

TAKE MY FIRE - Switchfoot | The Will of Fire → 'Cause I think I'm sooooo clever. 😄

Above The Clouds Of Pompeii - Bear's Den | various parent & child relationships → This obviously derives from the not-caring-about-your-female-characters problem, but it always gets me that all the single parents in the Naruto universe are almost invariably the fathers! I guess sometimes you can safely guess that the mothers are still alive/exist, but either way we hardly ever get to see them. :/ The one exception I can think of right now is Kurenai, but maybe I'm forgetting another conspicuous single mother. Anyway, I don't know if this helps or hinders more a potential Naruto fanvid for this song, but regardless, it still gives me feelings?

Who We Are - Switchfoot | Ensemble → It just makes me inordinately happy that the chorus for this song starts with 'who we are (in the fever of our youth)', you know? :D

Brother - Kodaline | all the friendships we can stuff in here and then some → Quite a well known song I'm pretty sure, but I love how many dynamics one could showcase in a potential fanvid of this. And, not gonna lie, 'oh brother, we go deeper than the ink beneath the skin of our tattoos' deserves to be used in some sort of Tenzo 'n' Kakashi or Team Ro fan creation!

Special Bonus:

Shake It Out - Florence + The Machine | Kakashi & Obito → I'm not sure whether I would have realized how well this works for Kakashi & Obito on my own, funnily enough, but then I found this fanvid of it (containing only scenes you've seen naturally!) and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It's so well done!

youtube

#I do apologize for all the switchfoot/other repeated bands or artists #I wanted this to be really varied but switchfoot just has my number I guess?#I'd like to say I got it all out of my system now since I'll likely have to do a part two at some point #but that's not completely true *rubs back of head sheepishly*#also all the mentions of fanvid creation are just because I've always been a heavily visual learner/how I process stuff #--ironic given my visual disability--#so I suppose when my brain gets attached to something that's in an auditory medium it still has to find a way to add in a visual component?#anyway I hope this 60+ songs behemoth of a playlist is not too overwhelming and that the musical styles are somewhat up your alley!#I swear I'm going to jump back into our Kakashi & Yamato conversations now!#turns out I really suck at multitasking sometimes /0\#kakashi hatake #obito uchiha #team minato #kakashi 'n' obito #kakashi 'n' rin #kakashi 'n' tenzo #gai 'n' kakashi #sakumo hatake #naruto uzumaki #kakashi 'n' sasuke #kakashi 'n' sakumo #kakashi 'n' naruto #kakashi 'n' minato #Itachi 'n' Sasuke #itachi uchiha #itachi 'n' shisui #yamato #tenzo #sasuke uchiha #sakura haruno

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