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defilerwyrm · 3 years ago

Note

For the ask meme: burning bright, anything about the parts at the table with the Nein. You write their banter so well!

FIC SPOILERS BELOW!

Burning Bright on AO3

The entire dinner scene hit me like a bolt of lightning while I was working on this fic. It started with Beau’s outburst, and then Veth’s willful denial and subsequent fit, and I built the two scenes around that.

Diving into particulars….

“Uhm,” he said, intelligently, but quickly recovered and flashed his friends a smile. “It is most impressive. Certainly a step up from a tiny hut.”

A direct reference to the name of the spell. Originally it was Leomund’s tiny hut. I have no clue why in 5e Wizards decided to 86 the attribution names on so many spells like Otiluke’s resilient sphere and Tasha’s hideous laughter. Things like that always made me curious about the (what I assume were) PCs the spells were named after. I had thought maybe it was because the characters who diegetically invented them were specific to one setting, but in that case I don’t know why Bigby’s hand is still Bigby’s but Evard’s black tentacles are no longer Evard’s. I don’t like it. As an aside, Widowgast’s Nascent Nein-Sided Tower is, mechanically speaking, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. Anyway. Moving on!

It was delectable that Caleb wanted to impress him.

This boy hungry and not just for soup

Flustered, Essek tried to fend them off, but it was Caleb that did him in. It was always Caleb. The human took a large roll from his own plate, broke it in half, and offered one of these parts to Essek, who tried his best not to choke.

“You need to keep your strength up, ja?” Caleb implored him quietly.

The steady hand that accepted was a point of pride because it very much wanted to quake. The Kryn weren’t bread people, but...did he have any idea what this gesture would mean in Rosohna? Any inkling at all?

This is another one of those places where I delight in playing to cultural differences. What I’d had in mind for what that gesture—breaking food into two pieces and offering half to someone—WOULD mean in Rosohna was a bit nebulous, as I like to keep the reader guessing a bit and let their imagination fill in the blanks; but my rough idea was that it’s a courting gesture that signifies “I can and will provide for you, even if it means less for me.” An expression of selfless caregiving and an offer of partnership. Not wholly unlike a bird bringing food to a prospective mate.

And actually it’s a little bit funny coming from Caleb, who has fuck-all to his name but his name, when Essek is a rich bitch who answers directly to the Bright Queen.

Not that he was about to say it out loud, but he was a quick convert to this whole bread thing. To say that it won him over would be an understatement. That seemed to be a recurring theme here.

I imagine if I’d grown up never really eating bread and was introduced to it in adulthood I’d be like “Where have you BEEN all my life?!” But also: the bread is friendship, the bread is the Mighty Nein, the bread is communion in the spirit of sharing rather than politics and appearances and power plays—things he thought he was fine without until they were foisted upon him.

Somewhere in the course of the multiple conversations going on at one time, Jester got an Idea, as she was prone to doing. He became increasingly aware of her talking about kissing, of all things, and this culminated in her shouting above the din, cheeks flushed purple though he hadn’t seen her touch any wine: “I have an idea you guys! Why don’t we all go around and say how many people we’ve kissed?”

Jester is the most wonderfully convenient deus ex machina if you ever need to insert an awkward or embarrassing conversation among the Mighty Nein, because this is exactly the sort of shit she would do.

Jester leaped up and slammed her hands onto the table. “Caduceus you’ve never been kissed?! That’s so sad!”

The firbolg was unfazed. He merely shrugged and said, “It hasn’t come up and I haven’t gone looking. Not something I’ve ever thought about, really.”

Jester’s tail lashed back and forth behind her like an overstimulated cat. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

Fjord went a bit wild-eyed at this. Caduceus smiled gently and said, “No thank you.”

Three things about this part:

1) Jester’s tail doesn’t get NEARLY enough mention in fic! If I’m playing (or writing) a character with a tail you can be damn sure you’re gonna know what it’s doing! Makes me wanna play a tabaxi tbqh.

2) Cad’s “No thank you” is the sum total of his sexuality, lol. Jester was raised in a pretty highly sexualized setting, didn’t really get out much before she fled Nicodranas, and can be pretty naïve, so she doesn’t really get the whole aroace thing; but it never crosses Cad’s mind that this would be “abnormal“ or ”sad” in any way—it causes him no distress, as it shouldn’t. This is yet another “Same planet, different worlds” moment.

3) Fjord is physically restraining himself from yelling “JESTER WHAT THE FUCK” lmao

Veth kept picking at it. “So you’re um. You know. Into the fellas?”

Beau snorted. “I could’a told you that months ago.”

“Yeah you could’a!” Veth pouted with a self-conscious curl to her shoulders.

I saw a comment on Tiktok that said Veth was being borderline homophobic, but that wasn’t my intent! It’s just that she inherited a certain blind spot for male queerness from her player, and as hard as she’d been trying to encourage Caleb to hook back up with his female ex, it never occurred to her that he had a male ex, too—and given that they’ve been so close for so long, she’s feeling pretty self-conscious about the fact that she never figured out that Caleb is bisexual in all that time, as well as kind of upset that no one—Caleb especially—told her. She’s having a moment of “Why didn’t I know this? Did you think it was going to change things between us? Did I make you feel unsafe?” And also a little bit of “Okay well, now I have to get him to hook up with TWO people AT ONCE because my boy deserves threesomes 😤”

Jester went goggle-eyed at him. “You’ve only been with one person?” she exclaimed. “But you’re like a hundred years old! And very handsome. I would have thought you’d get like, all the ladies.”

Ladies. Right.

Veth might not be the only one with a certain blind spot.

Beau gave her a funny look, snorting. “I dunno, he seems like the kinda guy who turns down those offers left and right.”

..…But Beau’s got his number, for more than one reason. She’s got super gaydar, for one, and has him pegged as the type who’s very choosy about his partners (also mind you, this was before demi!Essek was canonized by WoG, so I was still rolling with my hc that Essek got around when he felt like it).

The uproar was instantaneous. Everyone—almost everyone—started talking or shouting at once. Beau’s voice rang out among the din with, “HOLY SHIT ESSEK FUCKS.” Strangely pleased with himself, he downed the rest of his wine in one gulp and spent the next few minutes fending off increasingly prying, personal questions until the Nein grew bored with his lack of answers and someone changed the subject.

There it is, the line that spawned two entire scenes!

He was not a war mage, but he was experienced and wily, and he was damned good at what he did, and as long as there was breath left in his body, the Mighty Nein would not fall here.

Joke’s on me, motherfucker literally has the War Caster feat -_-

But like in my defense, that’s just what it’s called in the book. The feat just means that you have either the training or experience to cast well during a fight, which I see as not necessarily the same thing as a war mage, which was my way of saying an arcane caster who is a soldier.

Veth stared at her blankly as if willing herself not to understand. “Caleb? With who?”

She breathed steadily. “...Essek. Caleb and Essek.”

Beside her, Jester squealed and brought her fists to her face.

Veth was less enthused. “WHAT.”

Beau’s mental commentary here is dead on. Veth still doesn’t really trust Essek at this point and has been pretty vocal about that…despite being the one to declare him part of the Mighty Nein? Eh, she’s allowed to have complicated feelings on the guy, all things considered. But I find it kind of comical and very Veth (and very Sam) for her to be all full of zest for trying to get Caleb back together with the frigging Volstrucker who is actively working for his abuser and worst enemy but balk at him hooking up with Essek.

Jester “explained” in a delighted yell: “Caleb and Essek are gonna fuuuuuuck!”

I don’t know, is this too unsubtle to call foreshadowing? The line flowed naturally in the dialogue, but it’s also letting the reader know exactly what they’re in for next, lol.

“...He’s going to break that little elf twink, you know,” Veth said, sounding distant. Seemed she was having some difficulty processing. Not too surprising, considering how adamant she was about wanting their wizard to hook back up with his old flame, the fucking Volstrucker. “We’ve all seen his dick.”

This was 100% taken from Sam’s little throwaway line “It’s above-average” but it turned out to serve two purposes other than reminding the reader that all of these people have seen Caleb naked:

1) It’s yet another thing Veth thinks she understands about him but doesn’t. Caleb’s a top like Dalmatians are purple and if you disagree then I respect your right to be incorrect ;)

2) That said, it is, in fact, foreshadowing for the sequel, in which Essek experiences a great deal of frustration. (I haven’t touched the damn thing in weeks, feels like; I’ve been too busy with work, being exhausted from work, and being in a tizzy about my upcoming surgery.)

Fjord blurted out, “I’ll join you.”

Poor Fjord has had such an uncomfortable night!

Hoo boy that was a lot. Thanks for the ask, this was really fun!! And sorry it took so long; I work Saturday nights and things got really busy for a bit there.

#shadowgast #ask box games #before long my song is dying #critical role #plz how do i fandom

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lemonysharkbait · 5 years ago

Text

Here for Me - Mo Guan Shan x Zhan Zheng Xi

A year after Jian Yi's sudden disappearance and He Tian's subsequent mysterious departure, Zhan Zheng Xixi and Guan Shan start hanging out. Feelings get complicated.

Made this because I have headcanons about how the relationship between Mo and Xi will be after the other two disappear (it's only canon that Jian Yi will disappear, but it seems heavily implied that He Tian might depart at some point as well.) I think they genuinely like each other (in a bro way) in the Manhua. Add in a dash of angst and some feelings and you've got yourself some delicious fanfiction.

Tags/warnings: angst, hurt/comfort, non-typical pairing, minor violence, aged up characters, there was only one bed, feelings

Read on AO3

---

Guan Shan gripped the banner tight, too tight. His knuckles went white and She Li’s words seemed to go white too.

Which way do I go?

Sweet snake with a tongue like honey. It had been lashing him with words, threats, ever since Jian Yi and He Tian disappeared like the pop of a chewing gum bubble.

“Well? It’s a year since graduation, Guan Shan, and where are you now?”

He knew he shouldn’t slide there. It was the last little gift that he grasped onto. Images of a cut palm and blood soaking a white jacket flooded his mind.

Guan Shan turned to answer and face the torrent of cold rage. But instead a heavy hand landed on his shoulder, sending his heartbeat off in a flutter. He Tian?

No, this hand was different, the scent of the person different. The voice had a different rumble and cantor.

“Guan Shan, there you are. Let’s go.”

Zhan Zheng Xi’s grip was strong and sure as it turned Guan Shan, tugging him away. She Li, surprised at the intervention of a friend– god, when was the last time he’d had one of those?– took a minute to catch up.

“Where are you going?”

Zhan Zheng Xi’s voice was even and flat as he spoke, brokering no argument. “Playing video games.”

She Li looked like he wanted to argue but they were in the midst of a crowd now and he was unbalanced. His eyes, sharp and angry, made contact with Guan Shan before he walked off in the other direction. Diverted. For now.

They walked in silence through the crowded streets like floating underwater, both slipping through the eddies. After awhile, Zhan Zheng Xi’s hand slipped from Guan Shan’s shoulder. They didn’t speak.

“Well, here’s my place, you can come hang out if you want.”

Guan Shan looked up at the nondescript block of apartments stretching high and long into a too bright sky. “Only if you’re ready to be obliterated in Super Smash.”

This brought back memories. Sprawled out on the floor, junk food and soda scattered around, the only light coming from the television. Guan Shan’s thigh was warm where it pressed against Zhan Zheng Xi’s.

Xixi’s little apartment was equal parts sterile and dirty. An unused kitchen next to a living room strewn with old carryout cartons. A neatly made bed next to a night stand filled with half-drunk water bottles. An uncluttered bathroom sink that needed to be wiped down.

He had never seen this space, having only spent time at Zhan Zheng Xi’s family house. The smell was still comforting. A hint of sweat, a touch of generic men’s body wash, no cologne. It brought him back to that summer.

The game pinged defeat. Guan Shan tossed his controller down in mock annoyance.

“You cheated fucker.” He shoved Zhan Zheng Xi.

“Maybe you’re just not as good as you think you are.” There was a little pause and a smile that you would only see if you knew Zhan Zheng Xi.

Guan Shan sat up “Ok, that’s it!” Arms locked around in a tackle, an embrace that was a struggle for control. Flailing, a bottle of coke went rolling across the floor and Guan Shan’s world flips. Zhan Zheng Xi is more solid than he was even a year ago, hours spent at the gym between college classes. Guan Shan’s wiry strength, culled from working on his feet at three different jobs, is no match. Flipped on his back and pinned, Guan Shan finds himself laughing. He can’t remember the last time this sound has come out of him.

They still.

“What were you doing with She Li?”

Fuck, now isn’t that a question.

“Nothing. He approached me. Fucker keeps finding me.”

“Are you going to work for him?”

“No.”

“Is he bothering you?”

Guan Shan looks up into those intense blue eyes, represses a shiver. “What would you do if he was?” It’s a challenge. Always is.

Zhan Zheng Xi releases Guan Shan’s wrists and sits up a little. His lips are pursed and he looks at Guan Shan like he already knows enough.

“Don’t get involved Zhan Zheng Xi. She Li’s not a nice guy. He’ll leave me alone when he gets bored. Always does.” Guan Shan sits up on his elbows. Looks around. Sighs.

“I should go, I got work early tomorrow.” He reaches for his phone. Notices that Zhan Zheng Xi hasn’t slid off his thighs yet. Doesn’t mind except for the tricks it’s playing on his mind. It’s been awhile and having someone so close is sending signals he’s working hard to repress.

“You can crash here.”

Guan Shan glances at him from the corner of his eye. Wishes he hadn’t as soon as he sees that intense stare. His eyes dart back to his phone, pretending to be entranced by the time. “Thanks man, but I really should go.”

“I’ll go with you.”

Guan Shan barks out a laugh “Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t mind.”

God, the weight of this man’s stare is too fucking much. And they’ve spent an awful long time pressed together staring at each other. It’s the only reasoning Guan Shan can come up with for his stupid impulse, surging forward and capturing a taste. Warm lips and a moment where nothing happens. And then Zhan Zheng Xi starts kissing back and that’s when Guan Shan’s sense comes flooding back to him.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t– I’m sorry.” Guan Shan scrambles out from under Zhan Zheng Xi, snatches his jacket and keys and starts slipping on his shoes.

“Guan Shan–”

“Thanks for everything today. Text me some time.” And with that he slips out the door and nearly jogs down the hallway, a chorus of “stupid fucking idiot” running through his mind.

*** They hang out again and Guan Shan successfully keeps his hands to himself. He does not think about the way Zhan Zheng Xi siddles up next to him, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder. He does not consider staying when it’s late and his eyes are heavy and maybe they could share the one bed. And he definitely does not linger on Zhan Zheng Xi’s lips when the other man sees him to the door.

They don’t say much out loud. That was what Jian Yi and He Tian were good at. But they text. A lot. They text about video games. Work, school and basketball. And when they’re really feeling bold, they text about them.

“Who are you talking to?”

Guan Shan looks up from his phone, his mom’s question cutting into his little world. “No one.”

“You were smiling at your phone.”

She has the all-knowing mom smirk sitting lightly on her features. Guan Shan shovels more food in his mouth. Bounces his leg. “Just looking at stupid stuff on the internet.”

She looks like she wants to say more but doesn’t.

“Work’s supposed to go late tonight, so don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll always worry about you, it’s my job.” She says it fondly, lightly teasing. Guan Shan pushes away from the table grabbing his duffle.

“I’ll see you later mom.”

“Be safe Shan-Shan.”

*** This wasn’t exactly safe, but that was the thrill of it. Hands wrapped tight, lights in the makeshift ring blaring down on him, Guan Shan bounces on the balls of his feet and lets the energy of the crowd roll through him. There’s something hot and vicious prickling under his skin, the kind of feeling that keeps him up all night, makes his heart flutter when he gets a message notification and has sent him on long jogs with no relief. Time to release the tension, relieve some of this pressure that sits in his belly.

He passes a hand over his face, then balls them up in front of him, ducking into a defensive position. His opponent is pretty like a quarterback, chin chiseled like Clark Kent. Guan Shan snarls, bearing his mouth guard, spits out an insult and tenses for the bell, the signal to the start of this dance.

It comes and he goes.

He doesn't feel most of the blows as they happen, high on adrenaline and something else he doesn’t have words for. Maybe it’s all the late nights finally catching up with him. The other guy has a size advantage but Guan Shan feels unhinged. They go all three rounds and by the end of it, both can barely hold up their arms. Guan Shan wins by decision. He clasps his opponent’s wrapped hand and thanks him. The guy raises his eyebrows.

“This your therapy kid?”

Guan Shan barks out a harsh, unhinged laugh. And that’s when he finally feels the shooting pain in his right hand.

*** The call to Zhan Zheng Xi rings twice before he picks up.

“Hey, you’re awake.”

There’s a pause before Zhan Zheng Xi answers. His voice is flat as ever but it sounds strangely controlled. “Where are you?”

Guan Shan feels his stomach clench in a funny way, like he’s done something wrong. “Uh, actually, it’s ok, sorry if I woke you.”

The voice on the other line is tighter now “Mo, tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.” There’s a pause then “Please.”

*** Guan tries to clean himself up as best he can. There’s more cash than he’ll make all month in his duffle bag. The water in the shower runs red for awhile before finally clearing up. He looks at his face and it’s not pretty. They taped him up, but it’s gonna take awhile for the swelling to go down on his left eye. There’s also a cut on his forehead that keeps opening and dripping thin rivulets down his face. Nothing will leave permanent marks. Guan Shan prods at the swollen skin and grimances. The worst part is his right hand. His knuckles are split– that’s normal –but the stiffness and strange way his pointer finger now sits are not normal. Pulling on a shirt takes a little more work than he’d like but at least now he finally feels hollowed out, completely empty, all the fire and flame gone. The restlessness is replaced with a bone-tired ache.

Zhan Zheng Xi pulls up in a little beater, a hand-me-down of a car that looks like it’s nearing its last leg. The brunette hops out the car as Guan Shan walks up. The spike of excitement at his presence is completely involuntary. Guan Shan tries his best to taper it down and go for relaxed and normal. As though his face doesn’t look like ground beef right now.

“Hey.”

“Who did this to you?”

That was not the first question he was expecting. Maybe a “what the fuck did you do?” or the classic: “Guan Shan, what did you get into this time?” But the look Zhan Zheng Xi was giving him was making his belly do funny little flips.

“No one.”

Zhan Zheng Xi raises an eyebrow. His normal thousand yard stare somehow looks absolutely murderous.

“It was just a friendly fight. I won.” Guan Shan grins and his taped lip splits open. “You should see the other guy.”

A muscle in Zhan Zheng Xi’s jaw jumps but he seems to swallow whatever impulse has him staring daggers into the exterior of the building. Wordlessly, he slides the duffle bag off Guan Shan’s shoulder and heads towards the car.

***

City lights pass by in a blur. A soft summer storm breaks across the sky. The air smells like ozone and the night feels still.

“Which hospital do you want to go to?”

It’s another question Guan Shan was not expecting. “None of them. I’m fine, really, I just, can I crash at your place tonight? I just want the swelling to go down a little before my mom sees me.”

There’s a long controlled exhale but Zhan Zheng Xi turns onto the highway toward his place. Guan Shan settles into the seat feeling warm from the free alcohol he drank– winner’s choice –and comforted with the rocking of the car.

*** They arrive and Guan Shan finds himself feeling stiff. His ungraceful exit out of the car has Zhan Zheng Xi by his side gingerly lifting and guiding.

“I’m really fine, just gonna be sore.”

“You were drinking.”

Their faces are close as Zhan Zheng Xi supports Guan Shan. He’s also holding his bag.

“Oh, yeah, winner gets a bottle. The rest is in my bag if you want it.”

Zhan Zheng Xi doesn’t say anything at that, just smoothly maneuvers them inside to the kitchen and leans Guan Shan up against the counter. He busies himself with getting a glass of water. Guan Shan watches with his good eye appreciating the other’s sure build.

“It’s probably best if I just crash on the floor, this thing keeps busting open,” Guan Shan points to where he thinks the cut is. It’s hard to tell now that his left eye has completely swollen shut. “I don’t want to make a mess–”

Zhan Zheng Xi is suddenly there, filling his vision. Guan Shan realizes a moment late that he’s inspecting his wounds. He blushes despite himself.

“It’s really fi–”

“Stop. Stop, stop saying it’s fine.” A muscle jumps in Zhan Zheng Xi’s jaw.

Reflexively, Guan Shan narrows his good eye and tries to jerk away from the inspection. Zhan Zheng Xi boxes him in.

“Mo. Please. I lost him. And then He Tian disappears. I can’t just, don’t ask me to think this is fine.”

Oh. oh.

Guan Shan stills and the little butterflies that flit in his stomach any time he’s around Zhan Zheng Xi kick up into a feeling that has him exhaling unsteadily.

Zhan Zheng Xi leans his hands on the counter on either side of Guan Shan and he hangs his head. He stays there for a moment, breathing unevenly. Guan Shan wants to reach out and touch him, comfort him, let him know that he’s really ok.

Zhan Zheng Xi pushes up suddenly and hands Guan Shan a glass of water and an ice pack. “Drink this and hold this on the worst parts of the swelling.

Guan Shan obeys. He lets Zhan Zheng Xi wipe the dried clots of blood from his face and smear more antiseptic on the cuts. He lets him lift off his shirt and tries his best to not reassure Zhan Zheng Xi that it’s really fine. He lets him brush gentle hands over the bruising on his torso. He lets him look into his eyes for a long moment. Lets the frustration seep between them.

“I’m not, I’m not cut out to help with this, Guan Shan. I’m not like him.”

Guan Shan mentally fills in He Tian’s name. No one is like He Tian, a kid who could stitch a wound, fight off a group of grown men, survive a landslide.

“I know you’re not. And guess who’s not here right now. That’s why I’m here, with you.”

The words are a little too raw but they do the trick. Zhan Zheng Xi pulls himself together.

“Let's get you settled in bed.”

“Just let me take the couch, I don’t want to mess up your–” Guan Shan cuts himself off at the stern look that Zhan Zheng Xi gives him. He follows him over to the small bed, taking his ice pack and water. Zhan Zheng Xi is watching him like any moment he might collapse.

The TV is on a pause screen, whatever game Zhan Zheng Xi had been playing when Guan Shan called stopped without hesitation. Guan Shan gingerly lowers himself onto Zhan Zheng Xi’s bed, propping himself up on pillows. The smell of the other man overwhelms him surrounded as he is by his bedding. Zhan Zheng Xi fusses with the blankets before grabbing something from the bathroom.

“Take this.”

Guan Shan takes the pill without protest. It’s not long before a relaxing warmth spreads throughout his body and the pain fades into the background.

Zhan Zheng Xi is applying ice to Guan Shan’s hand and Guan Shan suddenly feels giddy, watching wisps of soft hair fall over Zhan Zheng Xi’s brow.

“I thought you just tolerated me for Jian Yi.” It’s the first time he’s utter the other’s name. It feels wrong somehow.

“You’ve always been nicer than you let on.”

Guan Shan feels like his body is thrumming, levitating, the adrenaline crash and painkillers making everything feel unreal. “You’re more perceptive than you let on.”

“Do you miss He Tian?”

Guan Shan exhales like he’s just taken a punch to the gut. “That fucker. I know he’s alive out there somewhere and he’s just going to fucking show up like nothing happened. And I’ll, I’ll let him.” Guan Shan says the words like he’s been dumbfounded. It’s the first time he’s ever admitted the hold He Tian has on his past. His future. But not his present. Because He Tian isn’t here.

“Xixi, that fucker left without a word and hasn’t been in contact with me since. I don’t care if it was to protect me or because of duty, it was shitty. It is shitty. I’m tired of putting everything on hold for him.” Guan Shan grasps his face with his hands, winces, watches the colors bursting on the backs of his eyelids.

And Zhan Zheng Xi, the practical ass, gently takes Guan Shan’s hands and places the ice back on the right one. Condensation soaks through the sheets and Guan Shan sighs, gives in, snags Zhan Zheng Xi’s face with his left hand. Searches his face. “I remind you of him?”

“Yes.”

Guan Shan snorts “How? Blonde asswhole was actually nice.”

Xixi’s stare is so flat Guan Shan feels lost in it. Anchorless. Like shopping in a new grocery store– everythings in the wrong spot and he’s wandered through the entire building.

“You’re both very bright. He covers himself with happiness. And you do,” he pauses, continues. “Something similar.”

Guan Shan knows what he means. His anger. His sharp looks and resting bitch face. He Tian had seen right through it too. Their memories are all mixed up together and Zhang Zheng Xixi is the only person on this earth that knows what it’s like to have your crush ripped from your life suddenly without a trace. But not dead. Just gone.

It didn’t feel like hanging in indefinite space. It felt like falling. And where was the fucking bottom of this fall? Being around Zhan Zheng Xi felt like setting shoes on stable land. Guan Shan dropped his hand.

“Come on. Turn off the lights and get in bed. Don’t give me the “I’ll take the couch shit”. There’s enough room here and I don’t want to keep you from being comfortable.”

Zhan Zheng Xi moves around the apartment flipping off lights and putting things away like it’s just a normal night and there isn’t a man taking up too much space in his bed with a swollen face and a hand that might need more than tape.

Guan Shan is relieved when he crawls into bed next to him, letting out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Just don’t do anything. This is just sleeping. Totally normal. Just crashing at a buddy’s house. Think about things that make you tired. Go the fuck to sleep.

All of Guan Shan's efforts are blown out of the water when Zhan Zheng Xi’s leg presses against Guan Shan’s and it’s just south of innocent. The only acceptable solution is to escalate. Not like Guan Shan could ever just leave something be.

So he shuffles into the touch, rolling onto his side and using the movement as an excuse to press more of himself against the other man. The movement also jostles his hand and he sucks in a little breath, waiting for the jolt of pain to subside.

“Your hand.” Zhan Zheng Xi sits up and leans over Guan Shan to look and Guan Shan feels his heart flutter– which is absolutely ridiculous. It’s middle school all over again only confusing for entirely other reasons. “Guan Shan, are you ok?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” It’s not my hand that’s the problem.

“It’s not?”

Shit. Zhan Zheng Xi has an eyebrow cocked and a little smirk on his face. Guan Shan looks away. “Just, lay down.”

Zhan Zheng Xi does, but with an arm wrapped around Guan Shan’s waist. He noses into Guan Shan’s hair, breathing deep.

And it feels so comforting.

Every line of taunt question, curled like the curve of a question mark, relaxes in Guan Shan’s body. “What do we do when they come back?” He whispers it into the dim room, half expecting for some reason for no answer.

“They’re not here. We are.”

---

Notes: And then He Tian and Jian Yi come back and they all make one giant angsty poly family. The end.

I know this is not a normal or even popular pairing. But I saw the potential and just had to go for it! It just sort of flowed out into the word vomit you see here. I don't think I have the timeline perfect, but I'm shooting for when Zhan Zheng Xi has started college right before Jian Yi reappears.

Thanks for your likes, reblogs and comments! They feed my little crushed soul during these strange strange times.

#Canon? Never heard of her #19 days #19 days fanfic #Mo Guan Shan #Guan Shan #zhan zheng xi #Xixi

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okaybutlikeimagine · 5 years ago

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Imagine Joyce comforting Billy? Like Billy misses his mom so much, and he opens up to Joyce and she just kind of holds him and let’s him cry on her shoulder? And no offense to Steve, but Joyce is the Number One Mom, hands down.

okay 1. I 100% agree. Love Steve dearly, but Joyce is just the Best Mom Ever

2. aLRIGHT my friend @imdeaddear2 and I were talking about how Joyce is basically a Miracle Worker Mother. Not to put her on a pedestal or anything but I love her w/ all of my heart and i just headcanon her as being so Healing for Billy. Like that one scene from Lilo and Stitch where Lilo puts the little lei on Stitch and he just falls over in total calm??? That’s Joyce and Billy. Like Joyce is able to just put a calming hand on Billy’s shoulder and asks what’s up and he just melts into Soft Boy BillyTM who’s like: Well now that you mention it, it all started when I was 7 years old…

aNYWAY legit Joyce calms Billy down like No Other and I really mean that. Like, even hanging around with Steve doesn’t calm Billy down as fully and consistently as Joyce using her Mom Powers on him does. And i like to think he used to be SUPER formal with Joyce. Always calling her Mrs. Byers and being almost a little cold but uber respectful with her bc this boy was trained to do that. Ever since his mom left his life and Susan entered it, the idea of a mother was gone and the image of a woman he’s obligated to be-nice-to-or-else entered. He was forced to be on his very best behavior, to be ‘picture perfect son’ around her, bc if not then he was being “disrespectful”. And that’s absolutely all he can think about when he’s around Joyce at the first. He turns on the Good Respectful Boy schtick without even trying because that’s what he thinks he needs to do to keep himself safe.

And you bet Joyce hates it with her entire being. She can sense it’s a defense mechanism but 1. It hurts her heart to think about that and 2. It makes her incredibly uncomfortable to be called Mrs. Byers all the time. To constantly have doors held open for her. To basically not be allowed to lift a finger bc Billy is always there saying “Oh, I’ve got the dishes”, “Oh, no, I can make dinner”, “Oh, no, I’ll clean that up.”

And she can just see how tense Billy is about it too and that’s probably the worst part for her. It doesn’t matter what he’ll be doing or what she’ll be doing, the second he sees her, he’s on edge. He straightens his back out and bows his head a bit and turns into this weird shell of who he actually is and it’s heartbreaking to her. Like he’s been trained for this and the reality is he has.

And i dunno how often people talk about this but i really truly feel like Joyce would absolutely love Billy. Like she thinks the real Billy is a very good kid who’s funny and well-intentioned and smart. Hop says he’s a brat but Joyce thinks he’s just got a sassy sort of confidence. Billy may never admit it himself, but he’s very kind hearted. It’s evident in the way he treats El and Will and Jonathan. In the way that he acts when he’s with Steve. In the way that he banters with Hop. He’s just such a good kid who gets such a bad rap and it’s not fair to her. She hears the way people in the street whisper about him when he walks by. She sees the way women will touch him completely unsolicited. She just wants to fold him into a hug and help him.

And eventually she’s able to and it’s so lovely!! Bc Billy is happy for Jonathan and Will that they’ve been able to have a mother like this their whole lives but also holy shit, he’s so fucking jealous. And he doesn’t necessarily feel bad about it, he just feels upset. He feels it bubble up inside of him uncomfortably. He watches the way she interacts w/ them and every day it’s a reminder that he fucking lost that. Lost any chance at that. Lost any chance at a mother at all bc it’s so hard at this point for him to believe that he even deserves one and so he’s lashing out and he’s yelling at Hop and he’s being a brat and Hop has had absolutely enough and when Billy leaves, Hopper goes to Joyce like: “I don’t even know what to do half the time. He won’t listen to me and he won’t talk and I don’t think I’m ever going to get through to him.”

And Joyce has been asked so many questions about Billy and has noticed so many things about Billy that the next time she sees him and he starts to act up and talk back a bit more venomously and Hop starts to get a little more hotheaded, she’s asking if it’s alright if they can go outside to talk. Her and Billy. And he’s still a little stiff, still a little cold, but he’s also fuming with irritation and Joyce can tell and they sit down on the little furniture outside and she asks:

“Would you like to talk, hun?”

Billy shakes his head, mouth tight and eyes tight and shoulders tight.

She gives him a gentle smile.

“We don’t have to talk about what’s upsetting you. We can talk about anything you want. We can just… talk.”

And Billy…… is confused as all hell.

Bc Hop always tries to get right down to the source, is always trying to shrink him, so he doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t understand the… small talk.

He gives her a strange look. He can’t help it. He’s trying to evaluate the reason behind this. She looks to him innocently and gives a small smile.

“Alright?” He responds, voice dubious.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“I have no idea.”

Joyce hums for a second before she’s saying-

“Tell me about your favorite peanut butter.”

And Billy huffs out a laugh, looking her in absolute disbelief.

“Wha-? You wanna talk about peanut butter?”

She laughs a little and nods.

“Yeah, Hop says you have a favorite type of peanut butter. I wanna hear about it.”

And Billy is laughing disbelievingly now, overcome with nervous huffs of air but Joyce just looks at him with amusement.

“I’m serious! Tell me about it.”

Billy shakes his head. Tells her about how he’s always loved crunchy peanut butter. She asks why and he furrows his brow in confusion before he explains he just likes the texture. As a kid he always preferred crunchy things over softer things. He’s always hated applesauce. He says that his mother used to tell him that he would reach for her solid food whenever she would try to feed him baby food. He gets really quiet by the end of his sentence, shies away from the subject of his mother, shrinks a bit.

So Joyce asks him about his car. How long he’s had it? How fast does it go? Billy kind of chuckles again at how silly these conversations are, but he’s less nervous about it. He explains his car, how it goes pretty fast. a little too fast for Hop and Will. how his dad gave it to him to hold over his head.

And he doesn’t know why he says it. He doesn’t know why he mentions his parents at all. But there’s something about Joyce’s kind eyes and the way she looks at him not like he’s broken or injured but like he’s safe.

He stutters around his sentences, spitting out more and more about his parents like something’s pulling it out of him. He’s breathing harder.

Joyce puts a hand on his knee and rubs her thumb on it gently.

Motherly.

It’s alien. It feels dramatic to think that but it is. The last time he had someone to call “mom” was so long ago. Was laced with fear and anxiety and near mourning.

And now here’s someone who’s willingly stepping into that role. She’s purposefully inviting Billy into her life and treating him like he’s one of her children. She didn’t adopt Billy, she has no legal attachment, she could be just like Susan and treat him like a dangerous animal that she has to be nervous of… but she doesn’t. She gives him the same kind eyes she gives Will when he’s had a rough day at school and tells him it’s alright.

“Whatever you wanna talk about, you can talk about. I’m here to listen.”

Billy takes a deep breath.

“If it’s serious or silly, I’ll listen no matter what.” She adds.

Billy wrings his hands a bit.

“I just… it fucking blows.”

“What does, honey?”

“Everything. Thinking about everything. Going out and knowing… knowing I might see him.” Billy feels the hot weight of tears in his eyes. “And… and… I don’t know. Other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

“Stuff like… like…” Billy feels his chest tighten up, like someone’s winding it up with a key. “You’re… so good with Will. And El. And I… Why are you so fucking nice to me?”

“Oh hun. Because I care about you.”

“Yeah sure but why?”

“Why wouldn’t I, honey?”

“Because not even my own fucking mother cared enough to- not even my own mother stuck around. And I just… I don’t get it. I’m an asshole-”

“Stop that.”

“It’s true-”

“No it’s not. You’re a good kid. You’re a good, smart kid and you’re so kind to Will and Jonathan and I can’t thank you enough for that.”

“I bother them constantly.”

“You talk to them and laugh with them and protect them from bullies!”

Billy pauses.

“Those little punks told you that?”

Joyce laughs. “Yeah. I kind of forced it out of them, but yeah.”

Billy shakes his head. “Why would I let them get bullied they’re my brothers now.”

“Exactly.” She gives rubs her thumb on his knee again. “So… I can be your mom then, right?”

Billy starts shaking a bit.

“I… I guess so.” He says, heavy tears weighing his eyes again.

Joyce smiles warmly, tears watering her eyes as well as she hugs him. She feels Billy’s chest heave a little every now and then. She holds him in a hug until they’re gone.

(And i just had to put this before Jim and Joyce get married bc NOW we need to think about Billy being one of the kids to dance w/ Joyce at Jopper’s wedding bc ♥♥♥♥!!!!!!!!! THAT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING!!!)

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thelightofthingshopedfor · 5 years ago

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@kiwimeringue replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

ok I'm super curious now, feel free to message me if you want to talk about it all stealthy-like~

@veliseraptor replied to your post “I know it’s generally rude and very unwise to reply to a fandom...”

i'm so curious

apparently I did want to talk about it, because this got looooong (also please do not add more discourse to this post, it’s probably kind of shitty of me but I don’t super want to have a dialogue about it, I just want to barf out my thoughts and defend my own faves on my own post, so if you want to argue with me I would really rather you didn’t and just made your own post instead)

(I also only just realized that I only put “tony stark negative” and “tony stark critical” in the tags, not anywhere before the cut, so here’s your warning now if you didn’t see the tags that this is me being frustrated with a lot things about how Tony is written)

I can't find the actual post now to screenshot or link because I just came across it on my dash, got annoyed, scrolled past, and then made my post when I couldn't stop grumpily thinking about it (so at this point I also don't remember who the OP was or who reblogged it onto my dash, which is probably just as well), but the gist was that almost all MCU title characters have storylines establishing that they're wrong about something and they show growth by accepting that and working to improve...except Steve, who never acknowledges that he might ever be wrong about anything, with the implication that this makes him a bad, self-righteous character who is basically incapable of growth. several other characters--Tony, Thor, Dr. Strange, Peter Parker--were mentioned, but the state of fandom discourse makes me assume any Steve-negative post exists at least in part to show how much better Tony is, which...may not always be a fair assumption on my part, but I do think it's fair to say that's still a relevant context. and of course Steve is one of my favorite characters, so anything even mildly Steve-negative puts me at least somewhat on the defensive right away, which again is not necessarily fair. (the other post that’s already sitting in my notes is about Ragnarok, which is probably even less surprising.)

anyway the post made me grumpy to begin with and then doubly so because I couldn't think of a good way to refute it aside from "yeah well maybe Steve's just a better person than your faves and he doesn't need a whole character arc about realizing he's been an asshole and needs to change because he didn't start out as an asshole to begin with, bet you didn't think of that huh" which is of course VERY unhelpful. but then I started thinking about how I don't think OP is right about the changed characters to begin with, given that a) it's not really fair to compare a character who's only had one solo movie (Dr. Strange) with characters who've had more, b) Spider-Man is kind of an edge case because he's a teenager and a lot of the problems in his movies stem from a combination of him being a fucking teenager and Tony dumping him with tons of dangerous tech that he doesn't have the training or adult impulse control to use safely and then blaming him when disaster inevitably results, and c) the characters who have had multiple movies and arcs focused on realizing they were wrong about something (just Thor and Tony, really) are...maybe not actually great examples because like 75% of that character development seems to reset after each movie and, actually, the narrative still operates under the premise that these characters are basically right even if some other characters don't agree. like...I mean, the only lessons Thor really, consistently seems to learn are "humans are at least not totally worthless (but lbr they're mostly silly and cute)" and "Odin is extremely wise and probably right about almost everything despite mountains of evidence--that grow with every single film he's in--to the contrary".

and Tony, well--yeah, that's his arc, in theory, and in theory I don't have a problem with flawed characters who keep making the same mistakes because let's face it, that's a very human thing to do. but with posts like this, it's like...you're effectively arguing that he doesn't really make mistakes overall, though, because it’s really just an opportunity for growth? and that when he does, the narrative shows he's wrong, he admits he's wrong, and he makes consistent efforts to change? which...again, obviously I have my own biases, but I have to see this as a weird interpretation because he's basically been the main character of the entire MCU thus far, which means he's likely to get sympathetic treatment and justification from the narrative even if he's ostensibly being called out for fucking up, and that's something I've definitely seen. his entire first movie is about him realizing how wrong he was and working to do better, definitely, but he ends up being his own worst enemy half the time and other people suffer for it. like...he wants to protect the world, okay, that's a reasonable goal. you can argue that the vision Wanda gave him made things worse, and that's possible, but I don't know how much that might be true given that I'm pretty sure he was working on Ultron before that too (and her mind-magic mostly seemed to work by emphasizing something that was already there, not planting new ideas). so he ends up creating a murderbot, with good intentions but he still does it and he keeps it secret from the other Avengers, and now-sentient murderbot immediately reaches the conclusion that humanity is awful and they won't need protecting if they're all gone, and everything breaks very bad, and then Tony...basically does the exact same thing again, without telling anybody else, in hopes that it'll work out better this time because JARVIS? and it does but that seems like mostly luck? and everybody manages to defeat the murderbot, barely, but a not-insignificant number of civilians die anyway because that tends to happen when a sentient murderbot goes on a rampage, and Tony feels really guilty about this when it's shoved in his face, so he deals with his guilt by kind of...spreading it around and allowing the possibility of other major problems down the line so they can hand over some of that responsibility and he can feel less guilty. (that’s not the most charitable interpretation, yeah, but I also don’t think it’s an unreasonable one, based on what’s there in the text.) and then of course things blow up and other problems get dragged in and it's a huge mess and half the Avengers are fugitives, and the general consensus sort of seems to be that nobody was completely right or completely wrong but Steve is the only one who actually apologizes for any of it (no wait, I guess Wanda and Vision apologized but just to each other) and Rhodey reinforces the idea that the Accords were a good idea with no major drawbacks...and then Thanos shows up and things get SO VERY MUCH worse.

and Tony is once again stricken with grief and guilt (not to mention half dead), so lashing out at Steve is understandable, but what he actually says is basically that this is all Steve's fault because he wasn't there (even though he immediately sent Tony that phone, which means Tony could have contacted him at any time but hesitated to do so even when monsters were basically falling from the sky), and he was right about the Accords and Ultron even if the latter didn't work out so well in ways that probably could have been predicted, and...that's what we're left with. nobody else has a meaningful opportunity to say "now hold on a second, you cannot possibly be arguing both for accountability and for your right to decide for the entire world that exchanging some freedom for some potential security is a good trade, and also how are you saying you were essentially right about Ultron when Ultron is what kicked off the desire for the Accords" or, like, anything. (does the world need a security blanket? going by the evidence...yeah, probably? but again. Tony. you tried that and you made a sentient murderbot instead so like, your track record is not great!!)

and then it all culminates with Tony sacrificing himself to save the universe, which I do at least think was a climactic, thematically resonant send-off for such a major character--for the final time, in the most final possible of ways, he reaches a point where there's no more clever tricks and he reacts by selflessly taking the entirety of the consequences onto himself. I can't say I'm happy with it, because I'm not a fan of character death in general even when it doesn't involve my top faves, and it absolutely would have been possible for the filmmakers to keep him alive if they hadn't gone into this with the specific intention of ending Tony's arc with his death. (ditto on all the other major character deaths, which is a big part about why they make me mad--none of them really, honestly had to happen, some even less than others.) but regardless of my feelings on whether it had to happen, it's inarguable that his entire arc from Iron Man to Endgame is that of a brilliant but selfish manchild who changes and grows until he doesn't hesitate to make the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of the entire universe.

BUT THEN THERE'S SPIDER-MAN AGAIN.

spoilers if you haven't seen Spider-Man: Far From Home but like, the entire conflict of that movie was based on two major things: a bunch of disgruntled Stark Industries employees, at least some of whom had to have legitimate, recent grievances (and frankly that whole mess demonstrates--among other things--that Stark Industries must have unforgivably lax security around its arsenal of world-ending weapons); and Tony's decision at some point to essentially REMAKE ULTRON AND THEN DUMP THAT RESPONSIBILITY ON A FUCKING TEENAGER WITH ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE WAY OF WARNINGS, TRAINING, OVERSIGHT, OR EVEN BASIC FAILSAFES, like holy shit my computer spends more time making sure I definitely want to delete that file than EDITH does about confirming that yes this random teenager is a legitimate target for IMMEDIATE DEATH. all the other adults involved in this clusterfuck bear a good share of the responsibility for this too, given that not one of them ever seemed to think either "hey, maybe saddling a smart and very good but basically normal sixteen-year-old boy with the power and responsibility (but not the resources or experience) of a grown-ass adult with unlimited resources is not the smartest move here, and yelling at him when he inevitably fucks up this power and responsibility we dumped on him with no training whatsoever is not actually fair or reasonable" or even "maybe before giving a piece of massively powerful and dangerous tech to a sixteen-year-old boy, we should spend at least 15 minutes going over the device's major functions and how to not accidentally kill someone, even if we figure things like ethics and privacy rights and knowing when not to use this tech aren't that important".

but, but, Tony still made the decision to give it to him, and he did so without building in any precautions at all, which is the exact same thing he did in CW/Homecoming with Peter's new suit (yes, the Training Wheels protocol was a good step, but the fact that it could just be turned off that easily--and that Tony isn't shown even trying to tell Peter to use the training programs or safely practice with the suit--shows that it really, really wasn't good enough) except even worse because EDITH is about 100 times more invasive and destructive than the suit. and he pretty much scolded Peter in Homecoming for getting ahead of himself, but then the second Peter did well in a bad situation Tony was right back to making this teenager an official Avenger and giving him all this power and responsibility he'd just decided Peter hadn't really earned, and Peter turned him down because at that point he had a better idea of his own limits and need for growth than Tony did, and then!! in what must have been one of his last acts alive!! Tony dumped an even bigger, more dangerous power/responsibility combo on him!!! way way bigger than the one he'd already turned down and maturely decided he wasn't yet experienced enough to handle!!! without even giving him a chance to say no!!!! and did not take any of that (or the mess with Ultron and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or the mess with the Accords and the lessons he theoretically learned there, or for that matter the lessons he theoretically learned in his three solo movies about treating his employees well and making sure he knows exactly what his company is doing at all times) into account when designing it, handing it off to other adults who also should have been more responsible about it, and leaving it to a teenager against that teenager's stated wishes, thereby ensuring that this teenager will follow Tony's footsteps in being unable to have a normal life!!!!!

...................but, okay, the point of the original post was that Steve is generally deemed to be Always Right and therefore he never has to change, and that makes him unrelatable at best and also not a great character. which...well, that's part of the point, that's why he was picked for Project Rebirth in the first place because he's a good dude dedicated to doing what's right; even before the serum, he was literally willing to die to protect a few people he barely knew (the grenade scene, remember). he was already starting from a point of selflessness and an understanding of responsibility that the others lacked, so it would be tough to give him a similar character arc without undermining or ignoring the whole point of the character. sure, though, even a character like Steve is imperfect and human and bound to be wrong sometimes, and when that happens he should acknowledge he was wrong and take steps to make amends, and if he's never shown doing any of that, it's true that it's not great even if part of the issue is that he's never really put in a position to do so.

except, except DID YOU ALL COMPLETELY FORGET THE ENDING OF CIVIL WAR

like, sure, if what you wanted was to hear Steve say "I was wrong about everything and Tony was right about everything, and I will humbly submit to whatever you think is best regardless of my own convictions, my very good reasons for having those convictions, and my personal concerns for my friends, or at the very least I will humbly ask for forgiveness and accept whatever you throw at me, because Tony Was Right About Everything," then...yeah, I'm sure it was a disappointment, especially if you figure Tony was right about the Accords and at least the intentions behind Ultron. it's true Steve doesn't really address any of that, which indicates he definitely still believes he’s right about those parts. but...look, the last time he saw Tony, he was fighting to save his lifelong friend from being murdered from a crime he didn't necessarily remember and really wasn't responsible for. once again I don't blame Tony for reacting emotionally and lashing out at the nearest targets instead of the people who were really at fault, but that doesn't change the facts of the situation, which are, Steve was fighting to save Bucky's life. and when he did that by incapacitating Tony, he didn't go any further; he took Bucky and left. and then he almost immediately sent Tony a letter of apology and a means of contacting him in return if an emergency comes up--and again, yes, his apology wasn't "I'm sorry for everything because I was wrong about everything," but it was a genuine, compassionate apology for the ways he'd hurt Tony even if his intentions were basically good. (this of course assumes that he really did know for a fact that Bucky killed the Starks and consciously chose to hide the knowledge from Tony, and frankly I'm not convinced that's true, but it's not really the issue here.) honestly, I thought his letter was kind of funny because it so closely followed the format of the apology-note meme--you know, "I was trying to do X, but I see now that I hurt you because Y" and everything. he didn't apologize for opposing the Accords or protecting Bucky or fighting in Germany so he could get to Siberia in time to stop what he had every reason to believe was a much bigger threat, because all those actions stemmed directly from his convictions and sense of morality and he wouldn't be Steve Rogers or Captain America if he was willing to compromise his most foundational convictions--but he absolutely did apologize for hurting Tony and recognized that he'd made at least one big mistake where Tony was concerned.

Tony...didn't. even before doubling down on the Accords and Ultron, I don't think he ever really said, hey, at least some of this was my bad; most of what he said boiled down to "okay this situation isn't ideal but I'm sure if I throw more money at it things will work out fine, more or less". in the Raft and in Siberia he got close to saying that maybe he'd been wrong about a few things, but that all went out the window pretty quick, and I don't think there's ever a point where he--just for instance--at least apologizes for trying very very hard to kill Bucky. and by Endgame, apparently he’s pretty much walked back what little he did kinda sorta think he was maybe wrong about. so.

that's...basically what I've got, OP’s interpretation is wrong because their facts are actually wrong and I was apparently annoyed enough to barf out all these words when I could’ve been doing anything else, the end

#tony stark critical #tony stark negative #I mean I think I'm being reasonably fair here but just to be safe #conversations #veliseraptor #kiwimeringue #marvel cinematic universe #steve rogers #meta #my meta #captain america: civil war #avengers: endgame #spider-man: homecoming #spider-man: far from home #avengers: age of ultron #avengers: infinity war

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artificialqueens · 6 years ago

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as the stars align 2/? (branjie) - rujubees

A/N: also on ao3

It was seven am on a Monday in late March, the first day of production on As the Stars Align, and it just had to be the day that Brooke’s cat Apollo decided to fall ill. He had been vomiting for a few hours now, and Brooke didn’t want to take any chances, deciding to call the vet when she was ready to leave for set and he still hadn’t stopped.

Naturally, her next step after that was to call Nina.

“God, what if he ate something poisonous? What if he’s really sick?” Brooke asked, tears filling her eyes at the thought.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, sweetheart. Can you imagine if you called the doctors every time you threw up? He probably just has a hangover,” her friend teased.

“That’s not helping, Nina.”

Brooke placed her on speaker, ushering Apollo inside of the cat carrier.

“Dammit, there’s no way I’m getting to work on time. Fuck,” Brooke cursed. She positioned the phone between her ear and shoulder, carrying Apollo out of the house.

“Relax, I doubt Katya Zamolodchikova has a single angry bone in her body, or Asia for that matter. No way are they gonna care about the star of the show being half an hour late.”

“God knows how long his appointment is gonna take, though.”

Brooke slammed her car door shut, thinking about how it was way too early in the morning to be this sweaty and this exhausted.

“Um, Brooke? Don’t act like you don’t have someone on speed dial who can take care of him for you.”

“I can’t force him to socialise, not right now. He hates people, he barely likes me.” Brooke let out a noise that was somewhere between a chuckle and a sob.

“Can’t you at least get a chauffeur or some fancy shit?”

“They don’t drive fast enough. Too concerned about safety and laws and shit.”

Nina laughed.

“Brooke Lynn, I love you, but if you land your speeding ass in a cell they’re gonna set your bail super high and I don’t think I could afford to pay it, even if I wanted to.”

“I gotta go. I love you too.”

—

Brooke made it to set at exactly nine twenty-two am, nearly two hours after her call time of half seven. It could’ve been worse, especially as they didn’t have much to shoot that day, but by the time her hair and makeup would be done it would already be approaching afternoon. It was a significant delay for sure, and some people would be pissed. Thankfully, Brooke had made some phone calls while waiting at the vet’s, and Katya and Asia were perfectly understanding. Even Michelle, who came down hard on punctuality, was able to sympathise.

What still sucked, though, was that she didn’t know what was wrong with Apollo yet. They’d kept him around to do some tests, and Brooke had reluctantly left his side, knowing that she was of no help anyway if she stuck around. At least work might serve as a distraction.

It was easier said than done, however, as she showed up to work unable to focus on anything but her baby, feeling like fragile glass that could shatter at any moment. It was a situation that was sure to culminate in either a mental breakdown or a lashing out aimed at the first person she came into contact with.

As soon as she saw Vanessa’s fiery brown eyes looking her up and down in a judgemental stare, she decided it was going to be the latter.

Before anything more could happen, Brooke felt a hand on her arm, and turned to see Katya inviting her into a warm hug.

“I’m so sorry,” she said warmly.

“It’s fine. I’m sure it’s nothing,” Brooke reassured her, squeezing back, trying to convince herself too that it would all be okay.

They let go and Brooke went off to take her place in hair and makeup. She made easy conversation with her makeup artist, Yvie, while waiting for her hairstylist Shuga. Yvie showed her a portfolio of looks she had put together, leaving Brooke in awe of her creativity.

“I should paint you like this for the movie, bitch,” Yvie said, pointing to various gruesome effects she had used in her makeup. “Can you imagine Michelle’s face when I stick you on set looking like a fucking Cyclops?”

Yvie let out a deep, contagious laugh at the mental image, and it wasn’t long before Brooke was joining her. It took her a minute to notice that Vanessa had also entered the trailer and sat down a few feet away in her own makeup seat, looking especially irked at the scene before her.

“Really, bitch? Two hours late and all anyone wants to do is fuckin’ cuddle and kiki with you.”

Vanessa was pissed as hell, and Brooke could feel her own face heating up.

“Mind your own fucking business,” Brooke snapped, wishing she was able to come up with a wittier response.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?! Out here wasting all of our times and you don’t even have the decency to apologise or feel bad about it.”

Shuga, along with Vanessa’s makeup artist Aquaria and hair stylist Kameron, started shuffling into the room. Brooke decided to hold her tongue and simply direct Vanessa with the most venomous look she could muster. She was surprised when her co-star didn’t back away in response with even so much as a flinch.

As the minutes traipsed by, keeping quiet was harder than Brooke thought it would be — all she wanted to do was go at it with Vanessa, sparring insults back and forth for hours. She wasn’t normally the confrontational type, but Vanessa was testing her.

They both kept to themselves for the rest of their time in the trailer, the silence being filled instead by the hair and makeup artists talking among themselves, clearly sensing the tension between the two leads.

Brooke couldn’t comprehend why Vanessa was being so harsh on her for being late one time. She doubted that anyone had told her the reason for her lateness, but Vanessa was hardly in a position to complain — she had been paid to sit around doing nothing while Brooke had been worrying her damn guts off. Okay, sure, she hadn’t been the most friendly to Vanessa the first time they’d met, but she’d remained perfectly professional. Since the chemistry read, her mind had flashed back to her first encounter with Vanessa an unreasonable amount of times. She couldn’t stop thinking about her annoying smug smirk that had seemed to be mocking her or those long, thick eyelashes fluttering all over the place, acting like she was all innocent. She knew she was making no sense, but something about the girl had just irked her from the start, and Brooke couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

Much to Brooke’s relief, she received a text from the vets at some point during the time she had been mentally cussing Vanessa out: Apollo was going to be fine. She let out a shaky breath but wasn’t gonna let herself get emotional over this — at least, not now in front of the damn trailer party.

After a while, Shuga, Yvie, Aquaria and Kameron left the pair alone, instructing them to wait for their makeup to dry or something that was probably a load of bullshit.

“If y’all lock this door on us on your way out, I swear ima whoop your ass,” Vanessa warned them.

Brooke turned to her, feeling calmer than she had been earlier, but Vanessa still had a lot of work to do in order to get on her good side.

“Can we go film this shit?” Brooke said, cringing as it came out more coldly than intended, even to her own ears.

Vanessa clenched her jaw, paused, and then stood up.

“Fine, but know that I don’t like you.”

She took off without a second look back, and it all stung just a bit more than Brooke was expecting.

—

“A’keria was right. She’s the worst,” Vanessa conceded a few days after she first started working with Brooke Lynn. She had been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt after their initial encounter, everyone has off days after all. But not only did she have the sweet nerve to show up late to their first day on set, she also followed it up with no apologies or explanations and instead went snuggling up to Katya and giggling with Yvie. Vanessa had felt a stab to the chest when she walked in on Brooke with the latter, the pair acting like they had known each other for years and laughing without a care in the world. Vanessa knew she was a handful and that her personality wasn’t for everyone, but Brooke hadn’t even made an effort to get to know her. Vanessa couldn’t wrap her head around it. It made whatever Brooke had against her feel all the more personal.

“I never said she was the worst,” A’keria corrected her, pulling Vanessa from her thoughts with her annoyance at either being misquoted, or having her favourite reality show interrupted, or both.

“Well, she’s the most rude, stuck up, unprofessional hoe I’ve ever met,” Vanessa huffed dramatically.

“I mean, if it doesn’t affect her acting…” Silky offered pityingly.

“I dunno, I feel like it’s fucking with mine. I’m surprised Michelle hasn’t fired me yet. How am I supposed to pretend to be in love with the bitch when all I wanna do is rip that stupid blonde hair out of her pretty little head?”

A’keria and Silky exchanged a glance Vanessa couldn’t decipher.

“Just… channel all of that anger and turn it into a different kind of passion,” Silky advised with a shrug.

“Whatever,” Vanessa said, feigning indifference, her cheeks warming at the thought of the passionate scenes she would be sharing with Brooke soon enough. She couldn’t let herself think about that yet, forcing her mind to practically shut off whenever the topics of Brooke Lynn and Kissing would start to overlap. She’d cross that bridge when she got to it.

“Speaking of passion…” started A’keria, wiggling her eyebrows unsubtly. “How’s your man, V?”

“He’s fine, but what does that have to do with passion?”

“You’re so romantic it makes me sick,” Silky quipped sarcastically.

A’keria chuckled in agreement before turning serious again.

“Seriously, Vanj. If you’re that bored, just stomp your little legs over to that white bread boy and say, ‘I dump your ass!’”

“I’m not bored!” Vanessa argued defensively. “Things are nice between us, you thirsty hoes would get it if either of you had been in a relationship that lasted longer than three months.”

“Okay. Then tell me, when was the last time you got laid, girl?” A’keria questioned with a knowing look as Silky pursed her lips.

“I — I…” Vanessa stammered and inwardly scolded herself for being so obvious. She loved A’keria and Silky, but also hated them for always seeing straight through her. Moreover, she hated herself for actually needing to think back in order to find the answer to that question.

A’keria turned her attention back to the TV, clearly satisfied with herself, while Silky gave her a look that screamed ‘I told you so.’

“Fine. You know what?” Vanessa stood abruptly as Silky and A’keria watched on with bemused expressions. “I’m gonna go see him now and we’re gonna have the hottest, steamiest fuckin’ sex, the sun is gonna wish she was me, bitch.” She stalked off on a mission, too embarrassed to seek out her friends’ reactions but feeling their confused expressions on her anyway.

—

When Vanessa walked through her apartment door, she was already regretting ditching her friends in order to prove a point. It was a particularly muggy evening for spring in LA, and she wasn’t in any type of mood to be getting even sweatier.

“Oh! Hey babe,” Matt said, surprised to see her home so soon just like she had originally hoped for. She’d had a whole plan to show up out of nowhere and seduce him, right there and then, hoping that the spontaneity would mean that they would actually go through with it for once instead of scheduling sex into their busy diaries and putting it off each time. Vanessa would be lying if she said she was still feeling her original idea, but decided to try and slowly ease herself into it instead of jumping his bones right off the bat.

“Hi,” Vanessa greeted him with a peck on the lips.

“You’re back early. I thought you were hanging out with the girls tonight.”

“Yeah, well… I missed you,” Vanessa replied weakly.

“Oh?” Matt asked, a hint of flirtation in his voice as he pulled her onto the couch with him and brought his lips down to meet hers. They made out for a few minutes, and it was comfortable. It was nice. Silky and A’keria were wrong; Vanessa had no reason to get rid of this. So maybe it wasn’t a love story on par with The Notebook, but Vanessa knew better than most people how fake and constructed those were. If there was one thing her and Brooke could agree on, it was that the two of them were a testament to that fact.

Vanessa was thankful when Matt pulled back; she could tell this wasn’t going anywhere tonight.

“How was work? You seem stressed lately.”

“You would be too if Satan’s daughter was your colleague,” Vanessa sulked.

“Aww, I’m sure I can make you feel better,” Matt answered in a voice Vanessa was sure he thought was sexy. He began sucking at her neck as she sat there, her hate boner for Brooke rekindled now that he had brought the subject back up.

“She’s just so fucking infuriating, you don’t even know. Whenever it’s just the two of us, the bitch lets me have it, but then we get on set and she’s a fucking angel because she knows that I can’t just switch it on as quick as her and I’m left looking like a hateful bitch.”

“I’m sorry, V,” Matt responded with genuine concern, before ruining it by latching onto her neck again. Vanessa rolled her eyes and pushed him off of her.

“I’m at breaking point here, Matt!” Vanessa snapped. “Could you stop coverin’ me in drool for one goddamn second and listen to me?”

Matt looked hurt, and Vanessa instantly felt guilty. She hadn’t meant to take her frustrations about Brooke out on him.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I — it’s just been a long day.”

“It’s chill. I get it,” Matt sighed. Vanessa’s heart ached as she realised just how much she didn’t deserve him.

“I’m gonna go to bed,” Vanessa decided, squeezing Matt’s hand briefly.

“Night. Love you, V.”

“You too,” Vanessa called back automatically. It wasn’t all that late, but she needed the sleep; hating Brooke was becoming a full time, all-consuming job, and she was tired.

—

Brooke and Vanessa carried on at each other’s throats for over a week — fights in their trailers, digs at table reads, and even a collision between the two women at the canteen which almost resulted in a vicious food fight. Brooke tried not to let their feud ooze into their time on set, opting instead to keep a polite, professional demeanour around her co-star that sometimes strayed towards subtle taunts at how worked up Vanessa would get over her.

It was almost as if Brooke was in her own angry bubble with Vanessa, and she was pretty sure she hated her almost as much as she loved fighting with her.

It was naive of her, really, to think that the animosity between the two of them would go unnoticed by the hundreds of people she was with each day as much as she was with Vanessa. The fact that it came as a complete shock to them made the eventual intervention that was staged all the more humiliating.

Brooke and Vanessa were seated at opposite ends of the couch, while Michelle and Asia stood before them, both of them attempting to look strict with only Michelle managing it with any level of success. In a slightly out of place scene, Katya simply sat on another couch curled up to a blonde girl Brooke didn’t recognise. Plastique and Scarlet, two other actresses on the movie who were apparently also being affected by Brooke and Vanessa’s rivalry, were also present, along with Yvie, Shuga, Kameron and Aquaria, each of them looking various degrees of disinterested. A few minutes in, even Nina joined them, and a woman named Ra’jah, who introduced herself to Brooke as Vanessa’s manager.

“So, I’m sure by now we all know why Brooke and Vanessa are here with us today,” Michelle began curtly.

“Would somebody care to explain it to us?” Brooke asked feebly, wondering whether there was any hope of getting out of this with her dignity intact.

“Don’t play dumb, bitch,” Vanessa retorted. If she wanted to do this in front of everybody then so be it, Brooke thought.

“This is exactly why,” Michelle said with a sigh, stepping in before Brooke could clap back.

“Now, you two don’t have to be girlfriends in real life,” she continued, and out of the corner of her eye Brooke noticed Vanessa’s little hands balling up into fists at the patronising speech they were being given.

“You don’t even have to be friends. But this war that you guys have going on is disrupting the atmosphere on set and off. I don’t know whether you had noticed, but you’re not the only ones working here and this negative energy is putting your cast and crew in a bad mood and making everyone’s jobs and lives a lot harder.”

Brooke swallowed, staring into her lap, the shame beginning to settle in.

“Vanessa? I’m Nina, Brooke’s manager and friend,” Brooke heard, looking up to see Nina pulling a chair up so that she was sat in the gap between Vanessa and herself like a goddamn mediator. Asia quickly followed in her footsteps and Brooke couldn’t believe it had actually come to this.

“I really think it’d be in both of your best interests to put this… tension between you in the past,” Asia started. “And while Michelle here has reassured me that it’s not your acting that she’s concerned about, imagine how much more you could be capable of with a little less hostility inhibiting your performances?”

Vanessa snorted and scowled at that as if she was deliberately trying to remind Brooke why she had disliked Vanessa to begin with. At least Brooke was taking this seriously.

“Moreover, it’s not a cute look for the movie’s leads to be enemies, especially since this could be groundbreaking as far as gay representation in mainstream Hollywood goes, and you two are our romantic leads. Sure, we could use it to generate a few headlines, but that’s not the narrative we’re trying to create here. This thing is Katya’s baby and she’s hoping it will be a source of light in a lot of people’s life. Don’t let it be clouded in darkness, because you know that nothing stays a secret in showbiz,” Asia finished.

“And let’s not forget about the press tour. And the premiere… y’all will get coupled up for interviews the whole time. If nothing else gives your drama away, those will,” Ra’jah chipped in. Brooke could feel herself relenting, the reasons on top of reasons starting to prove that the pros of ending this pointless feud outweighed the cons.

“Brooke,” Nina appealed to her directly, “I know you feel how important this story is and I know you don’t want its legacy to be tainted. You’ve always been outspoken about the media and how they pit women against each other and if you keep this up, you’ll be making their job a lot easier, far easier than it deserves to be.”

Vanessa’s eyes finally met hers for the first time in what felt like forever, and until then Brooke hadn’t realised how badly she hated it when Vanessa behaved like she wasn’t there.

“I… shit, I agree with Nina,” Vanessa confessed, much to Brooke’s surprise.

“You do?” Brooke asked quietly, needing the confirmation.

“Don’t get excited, girl, I don’t like you all of a sudden,” she snipped. “But… I guess I can stop acting like I want to kill you so much.”

Brooke wanted to laugh at that. She had to give it to Vanessa — she may have only been five foot three, but Brooke didn’t think she’d ever met anybody so fierce.

“I suppose I could try that to,” Brooke replied. She gave her a nod in affirmation, thinking that a smile might be going a little far.

“Well, now that that’s been dealt with, you’re all free to go,” Michelle announced and most of the room got up to leave — Brooke was pretty certain that at least half of them had tuned out for the majority of the intervention anyway. Nina gave her a wink, signalling that she would meet her outside.

“Just one more thing, ladies,” Michelle added, gesturing for Brooke and Vanessa to stay behind. “Now that you’ve cleared the air, I’m sure you’ll be delighted to hear that you’ll be shooting your first on-screen kiss later this week. I’ll see you then.”

Brooke froze, damning Michelle and her poor timing. Just as she and Vanessa were starting to patch things up, she had to go and make the air thick with friction again. Brooke was expecting an insult, a barb, but instead —

“I can’t wait to find out if you’re as good at kissing as you are at picking fights,” Vanessa deadpanned, her voice even lower and more raspy than usual, before strutting off without waiting for a response.

Which was a good thing, because at that moment, Brooke didn’t think she could find the words if she tried.

#rpdr fanfiction #brooke lynn hytes #vanessa vanjie mateo #branjie #lesbian au #fluff #smut #angst #enemies to lovers #friends to lovers #as the stars align #rujubees #concrit welcome

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posthumanwanderings · 6 years ago

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while I was on the train to Nakano Broadway to collect more Heisei era Godzilla toys, I thought I’d make a personal list of the best to worst Godzilla films (up until Godzilla 2000 cause that’s around the time I stopped caring, I’ll try again tho) since the new Godzilla film is around the corner and maybe some of you are interested in giving the Big G’s archive a shot (you can delete this caption too if you just like the pic! and yes Morrigan counts as a kaiju, a beautiful one at that)

1. Terror of Mechagodzilla - last of the Showa era, ending with one of Godzilla’s most deadly foes. and I love how fucking big Titanosaurus is, god damn. the cyborg girl was cool too, loved her arc and how she controls both monsters.

2. Godzilla Vs. Mothra (90′s) - Mothra’s Heisei debut, and looking more dazzling than ever and also alongside her evil twin Battra. the fight in Yokohama (after its real life modern expansion when Japan’s economy was at its best) was a nice fresh setting for the climax. this one perfectly balances campyness and just a good kaiju film altogether. 3. Ghidorah: The Three Headed Monster - Ghidorah, besides Mothra and Mechagodzilla is probably the next most recognizable kaiju even to nonfans. One of the best moments in Godzilla history is when Mothra desparately tries to convince Godzilla and Rodan to team up against an even bigger menace, then they can get back to their typical kaiju businesses. 4. Godzilla Vs. Destroyah - like how T.O.M. ended the Showa era with a bang, this is the one that ended the 85-95 era with a monster that really beats the shit out of zilla who is already on the cusp of exploding like a nuclear reactor... it ties together the very first Godzilla movie too for plus points. for those looking for a more serious, borderline horror movie kaiju experience. 5. Godzilla Vs. Mothra (60′s) - yup two Mothra movies in the top 5. Mothra fights with Godzilla are always so tense, since Mothra being a giant graceful butterfly appears so delicate against big boi Godzilla, plus her kids are under his threat as well. and on top of that Godzilla moves and fights like a drunkard the whole time. 6. Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla (70′s) - Godzilla faces his robot clone for the first time who has one of the largest movesets of any other kaiju, a true force to be reckoned with. instead of Mothra being summoned by an ancient race, we have King Caesar, a stone guardian puppy dog lion to team up with zilla against the bigger baddie. fun fact: this was filmed right after Japan gained back Okinawa from America since WWII, and makes once again another fresh setting.

7. Godzilla 1985 - I’ll be honest, the lone Godzilla movies with no other kaiju weren’t the top of my interest especially being an ADHD kid, but from a film perspective this is shot really well, the miniature city set had a nice upgrade since T.O.M. from a decade before, and I love the laser beam special effects from the upgraded Japanese Defense Force in this.

8. Godzilla Vs. King Ghidorah (90′s) - Not to be confused with the other 5ish Ghidorah encounters, this was the Heisei debut of the 3 headed monster mixed into a time travel plot since movies like Terminator were all the rage in the early 90′s. The tie in plot about WWII had more to be desired and felt very nationalist, but as a kaiju film the special effects were top notch especially with Mecha Ghidorah.

9. Destroy All Monsters - the ULTIMATE Showa era kaiju crossover fest has just about every giant monster Toho made up until the point because why not? It’s another typical story about mysterious aliens mind controlling kaiju to destroy Earth, but this time when they say Earth (and not just Tokyo) they mean it. Plenty of things get destroyed, nice big battle at the end, only thing lacking is they gave Baragon and Varan 3 seconds of screen time and they both are some of the coolest looking kaiju there are out there. big shame

10. Godzilla Vs. Mechagodzilla (90′s) - in this Heisei take on MechaG, his role goes from super deadly alien robot menace to kinda still deadly robot guardian built by the EDF. he looks cool but just seems more weak compared to the more sinister alien engineered one. Rodan makes a long awaited return and basically has a custody battle with Godzilla over a mysterious kaiju egg. no spoilers

11. Godzilla Vs. Hedorah - probably the scariest Godzilla movie with Destroyah placed next. he fights an alien pollution monster who has been taking big rips from factory smoke stacks only making him bigger every time. Japan’s take on an environmental awareness film and I see nothing wrong with it one bit.

12. Godzilla Vs. Biolante - zilla sees another type of counterpart to himself, this time essentially a ‘PlantZilla’ after a scientist thought it might be a good idea to merge Godzilla cells with a plant for some reason. the story is a bit odd, but this remains in middle ground territory because it debuts Miki Saegusa, the super adorable psychic girl who appears in every 90′s film afterwards and the special effects of Biolante in final form are sick.it also has a disco version of the zilla theme for some reason.

13. Godzilla: King of The Monsters - someone would bash me big time for having this any lower on the list, but this is the one that started it all, grimly filmed in black & white a decade after the end of WWII. fans know this already but it’s the atomic bombs themselves which devastated Japan that influenced the idea for Godzilla, a force of mutated nature that lashes back on humanity for making really bad decisions. I like this and all but it lacks zero charm or kaiju style ‘fun’ but for good reason, since it was meant to be more of a horror flick.

14. Godzilla Vs. Gigan - for those that do want the campiness, this is one of the best the series has to offer along with a couple more below. Godzilla’s ol pal Anguirus returns for his last Showa effort as they team up against space monsters Gigan (who is edgy af) and once again Ghidorah (who sadly has been fighting on his own the whole time while other monsters always team up to bash him). being in the 70′s, it’s got shades of James Bond / spy films in it and the fashion is on point. we get to hear Godzilla talk for the only time ever too.

15. Godzilla Vs. Megalon - probably out camps #14 for several reasons: this entire time there have been an ancient race of humans living below the Earth who feel enough is enough between pollution and expansion of society and finally unleash their protector, a giant cockroach monster with drills for arms to destroy just Japan all modern civilization (where was he during Hedorah’s visit tho?). 2nd reason is there’s copycat Ultraman who also looks like Jack Nicholson, then there’s the edgy middle-school bully like relationship between Megalon and Gigan and then lastly the infamous Godzilla dropkick you might’ve seen in GIF form, if not well here you go:

16. Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero - probably the 1st 90% campy zilla flick because of the Godzilla victory dance alone, but this was also because as time went by more kids cared about the movies and not the original target audience of war torn adults. the aliens (at least in the dub version) speak super monotone even when they are being huge bad asses, and we get to see G and his on-and-off lover buddy team up again but this time IN #&$%#% SPACE. the setting on Planet X was real cool to see as a kid, but sadly we haven’t seen any kaiju fighting back in space ever since. the NES Godzilla game fixes that itch.

17. Son of Godzilla - well I’ve only ever seen this movie twice, which means it maybe just isn’t that good, even for G fans. it debuts, of course, the son of Godzilla who looks like a cross between the Cookie Monster and Michelin Man. I’ll give this movie credit for distancing zilla away from the city setting in replace with his tropical home territory in Monster Island which only gets glimpses in the other films. the ending shot is real sweet too.

18. Godzilla Vs. SpaceGodzilla - back to spaciness, we do see one last alien monster come to Japan in the 2nd to last 90′s Godzilla movie, appropriately called SpaceGodzilla. while he lacks agility (when not flying on his giant meth crystal) he makes up for it with telekinesis and other long range attacks. the story / acting / mostly everything is pretty so-so and we all know deep inside the only reasons to watch it still are the scenes with baby Godzilla stepping on land mines and more Miki Saegusa wardrobe changes, but the final battle in a crystal filled Fukuoka is really awesome.

19. Godzilla’s Revenge - wow well I just noticed I put 3 baby zilla focused movies all in a row near the very bottom of the list, my bad. this one takes the cake tho for pure cringe. but it’s better than the last 3 so it can’t be super terrible, right? once again no spoilers but the only thing that bumps this stock footage filled movie more up then from being the worst of all time are the super silly fight scenes against baby Godzilla’s bully Gabara. you know Godzilla has to do it to em.

20. Godzilla Vs. The Sea Monster - even tho the former movie just reviewed uses stock footage of almost all the fight scenes of this one, it is somehow worst than #19 because it focuses way too much on a 60′s party cruise, and Godzilla gets a lil King Kong-ish during a scene with the love interest of the movie, and the giant lobster monster with no lasers / projectile claws just doesn’t seem as threatening as all the previous monsters zilla has fought since.

21. Godzilla Vs. King Kong - I’ll admit, I never liked King Kong and probably never will, and because he moves faster than Godzilla they had to use non-slowed down footage to make the monsters fight like kids on a playground slapping each other, and just looks weird. real talk, Godzilla would beat the shit out of Kong with a single radioactive blast and the movie would end right there. but that’s not the ending we got.. let’s start a patreon to rewrite the movie we all wanted.

22. Godzilla Raids Again - alright we finally made it, thee very worst Godzilla movie of all time according to the loser typing this. why? because it went against everything the first Godzilla movie represented, but like... suddenly, since it’s the sequel to the movie and the big G was never meant to return after, which luckily wasn’t the case. it’s superrrr campy but on the acting side, and the fights with newcomer Anguirus are super sped up even more than the Kong fights, and just seems tacky overall in a non-funny way. the suit for Anguirus is honestly one of the coolest kaijus ever tho, and they made little changes to him every time he came back cause it was just that good.

anyways, thanks for coming to my TED Talk. if I were to recommend just 3 Godzilla movies to someone who has never seen them before to represent each side of the series, I’d pick Terror of MechaGodzilla for the serious pick, Ghidorah The Three Headed Monster for the balance / kaiju fest pick, and Godzilla Vs. Megalon for the most campy and fun one overall. hope this big list can help those who are curious! next up: Godzilla game reviews :)

#feel free to delete caption #godzilla #kaiju #long post #japan #tokusatsu #review #text #had to show some love to a big part of my childhood #mothra

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years ago

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Three Tides Turning

Odina was, perhaps against her preference, an expert on magical things of all kinds. Academic knowledge, with a lot of firsthand experience, and the joke was that she had approximate knowledge of pretty much any magical thing.

She was very surprised to have Toast, of all people, asking her advice; she was pretty certain the little robot hated her guts, and would in fact have been happy to SEE her guts spread all over the wall. It wasn’t personal, he simply hated every single human to ever exist. It was a democratic sort of loathing, an almost genteel hatred that ignored cred and origin and country and deeds, all in favor of resenting the great teeming mass of humanity and proclaiming them all equally guilty of being absolute bastards.

She’d never asked why he hated her species so much. She had her suspicions. The magic that powered him was fueled by his own hatred and anger, but the special kind that came from pain. Emotion magic had its own flavors, and he reeked of suffering, and in his impassioned rants she heard the echoes of absolute despair so painful the only sensible response was to make it into kindling. He had suffered, and given the reputation of humanity among its mechanical offspring, and the optic that had been torn out of his head, she could guess what KIND of suffering he had endured.

Even at his most sociable and miserably lonely, when he had no choice but to seek out company that might include humans, he tended to avoid her. So seeking her advice out was, well, a really big damn deal!

Toast hunched over on a small overturned table, a little red robot apparently designed for a quadrupedal stance. Here and now he looked a lot like a mechanical dinosaur, but one that was oddly cute. He was just so… small, and compact. His wiry tail lashed around, and his boxy head tilted around, his single remaining eye blinking as he twisted his head around to see her.

Both his arms articulated as he tried to explain himself. One arm was slender and ended in a kind of paw. The other was a massive taloned gauntlet, larger than he was, the obscene mass built around an elemental fire core that fueled his various powers. It made him a truly fearsome heavy hitter, but it also severely hobbled him, and only now did she appreciate just how awkward he moved with it; his claws alone were a painful sight, when all his other movements were fluid, if so jittery you could expect he was impatient to finish moving and making little gestures.

“It’s… it’s my friend,” he managed, and pointed, and some of the things he had been telling her clicked. Ah, she thought in the back of her head.

Looming behind them was a monstrously huge figure, apparently the size of a house, draped in a tent crudely worked into a rough cloak. Atop it was a feral head, snout poking out of a projecting head but still obscured by a massive set of puffy lips.

God, it was so big. No, she was so big. Femininity radiated from it, like the psychic tide you couldn’t help but hammer you with pleasant vibes and sudden surges of hormones, and the desire to… do things. Animal things, rutting and breeding and delighting in the most basest of pleasures...

Odina’s absorbing powers sucked away the worst of it, so that she was a whirlpool of negated essence right there. Her total lack of interest in sex of any kind also provided a defense. The great mother-monster noticed this somehow, and turned to see them. A massive pair of breasts, big enough for Odina to fit inside them, shifted behind the cloak, and were so large they dominated the heft of even this hulking frame.

An aberrant hand, or perhaps a paw, raised its two webbed fingers. Claws longer than Odina’s arm wiggled playfully at her. “Sup, hun,” she rumbled, her voice deep, resonant, like an echo of the primordial sea.

Odina waved back nonchalantly. “Hey, terrifying monster lady.”

The eldritch monster mother - Tiashar was her chosen name, according to Toast, who had made himself an expert on her - chuckled at that. It was hard to make out details with that big cloak she wore; Odina could make out a massive mane of hair, or perhaps feathers, growing down her neck and shoulders and expanding outwards into a huge floor-dragging cloud several times larger even than she was. Some bits of it had become little tentacles, or tongued mouths. There were eyes, many of them, beneath it, but were quite invisible behind the long bangs. She did see a hint of multiple floppy ears, tweaking vaguely in response to stimuli no mortal senses were capable of perceiving.

Most of the exposed body was deep black. The shade differed; upon her face and the smoother parts of her skin, it was the color of ancient tar. On the patches of scales, a blue-black like the deepest parts of the sea. The armored plates on her shoulders, forearms, or the enormous tube that was her tail? It seemed to be even darker than all that, oily and rich. And oh yes, there were patches of other colors here and there; the gills lining her neck and sides were the same magenta as her mane, her huge lips and various other parts were a brilliant green… and in fact green seemed to be a secondary color, as if to offset her other shades.

Pebbly scales, slabs of chitin, features of ten thousand different phylums all mashed together in a strangely ideal form with her, and she suspected that was the key to understanding her. So many things that didn’t seem to belong, but with her, they did.

Presently, she seemed content to now ignore Odina and laid down, cooing at the dirt. Apparently whispering to the bacteria.

“...I’m worried about her, “ Toast said, his smaller hand rubbing its claws against a single digit of his big hand, his normally grouchy expression winding up into something forlorn and distressed. “She’s being so… so weird lately!”

“Weird by what metric.” Odina indicated her vaguely. “This is the same lady who spent half a month living in an attic, eating our garbage cans and screaming at mega-possums.”

It was amazing how Toast instantly shifted into hostility; he flared up, flames exploding around him, and a fireball appeared in his hand. “You talkin’ shit about her!?” he snarled, embers flying from his mouth like spittle.

Odina let herself instinctively eat the magic he was throwing off, but if he noticed his flames dying, he didn’t notice. They just flared up again, and her butt expanded, shelf rising over her waist and her skirt creaking in protest at it slid up, her hips expanding sideways. ‘Do NOT push him,’, she reminded herself, he absolutely would try to kill her instantly if he felt even slightly irritated, regardless of needing her help or not.

It didn’t come easily to her to play nice, but she would do her best. “I’m not making fun. I’m just saying, she’s kinda weird. Like the rest of us?”

He grunted, depowering. The local magical quotient went down, though her backside scale remained embiggened. “Yeah, okay.”

“So what do you MEAN, she’s acting weird?”

“I don’t know. The other day, she’s all calm and serene, hanging around with the men and women that wanna be around her all the time. Y’know, she feeds ‘em, gives ‘em baths in her milk and stuff, sometimes they feed themselves to her and she pops ‘em out as monstery versions of their old selves, but mostly they just… adore her?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, its weird. It's like… she needs it?”

“Sounds like they’re worshiping her,” Odina said vaguely, an idea coming to mind.

“Seems legit.” he tweaked his fingers, popping them off and chewing on them anxiously. “Then the next few weeks, they do none of tat, they just hang out with her and we go exploring? Fighting monsters together? The other folks, they fuse together and stuff, its like its a big adventure party? And it's fine, but then, just a few nights ago, she got hungry. Really hungry.” he looked uncomfortable. “And horny. Like, even more than usual.”

“Sounds like a lot of effort,” Odina said, who regarded all things sexual as an alien endeavor way more trouble than it was worth.

“She just wanted nothing but sex, twenty-four/seven, for almost a solid week! With all of them! And then they let her gobble them up, and now…” he gestured at her. Odina noticed her belly was very ripe, round and projecting outwards. A gravid, super-pregnant belly, with both the offspring sired with them, and the cultist’s reborn souls. “She just did nothing but eat continuously, barely speaking a word. I tried to talk to her and she looked at me like… like she couldn’t remember how.”

He paused.

“She kissed me.” He hugged himself, looking faintly lost, like he couldn’t quite understand how anyone would want to do that to him. “She couldn’t talk anymore, but she was happy to see me.”

“She’s talking now.”

“Yeah, I mean, she’s back on her regular mindset, where she’s being a chill mom and stuff but… shit. She keeps going through these phases and! And! And I’m really freaked out, is something wrong with her, is she sick, is she going to go away and ascend or something!?”

He shook Odina by the neckline desperately. “I can’t deal with that, okay!? How do I help her!?”

She gently but firmly pushed his claws off. “Calm down, she’s okay. She’s just trying to balance herself out. It’s part of what she is, okay?”

Toast stared at her. “Part of… what she is? What, a chimera monster girl?”

“No. You… do know she’s something else altogether? One of those things that…” she gestured vaguely. “Come from Outside?”

He stared blankly.

“The far realms?”

His optic blinked, slowly. “Nuh uh.”

“The parts of the multiverse that exist outside the set that has anything at all to do with mortals or our understanding of reality?”

“I’m drawing a zero here.”

“...The mad things that were here before the gods?”

“Still nothing.”

“...Okay, she’s an eldritch abomination that decided to be like a mortal, okay!?”

He nodded. “Ohh, right. Like that. Got it.”

“...You really get it?”

“Honestly, no.” He shrugged. “Could not give a shit, to be honest.”

She sighed. “It’s like this. Creatures like her tend to develop certain traits in common, because they’re forming minds like ours, but they’re still working in a totally different way. They’re not exactly elder beasts, they’re a little bit like gods, but they’re something a bit in between. And SHE is learning her way around that. Every day, and sometimes backsliding or losing her sense of what she is.”

Toast seemed to understand that, at least. He nodded.

Odina sighed. “Right, okay. So, if she’s like the other sorts of things I’ve heard about, she’s basically formed a mental state made out of three different parts that influence her in different ways.”

“What does this have to do with her being weird?”

“Because these are giving her contradictory urges, and she has no impulse control! She IS her desires!” Odina snapped her fingers, producing a little magical sign that said ‘get it??’. “Firstly, what you probably think is her ‘regular self’ is really just the parts of her mind she’s forced to think like a mortal.” A troubling idea came to her. “Or… what she thinks mortals are like. But she’s so different that even that is just guessing games, and she’s forced her brain into patterns completely unnatural to her, and it's always shifting around and trying to become something else. Because change is what she DOES.”

Toast looked baffled.

Odina tried again. “Look at it like this. When she’s worked out some kind of balance between her natures here, this side of her is the one that probably wins out and makes a happy medium. She wants to please herself and please other people, in moderation; it comes off to us as weird and constantly hungry, but that’s just what happens when godly hungers get curbed. That’s still moderate, by HER standards. The kind of things she doesn’t really get, like abstract causes, and long term stuff; she’s able to deal with those things more easy. She’s able to think more like you can.”

“Okay, I get THAT, at least.” Toast scratched his metal ears sheepishly.

“Now, you probably noticed her gathering people to her. That’s just a function of what she is; she’s a sort of proto-god. Gods want to be worshiped and admired; she needs a cult, and it's her nature to build them. So that's the bit of her that’s the most divine coming out. Probably also why she goes off and fights monsters; she probably sees it as protecting her people.” She paused, thoughtfully. “Or maybe she’s just getting into the ‘guardian kaiju’ vibe. She does have the look.” Another pause. “And getting people to breed with her might also be a god thing; she’s probably compelled to do it, as a function of what she is.”

“And you said something about a beast, earlier?”

“Right, her third nature. That’s the part of her that’s… well, monstrous and ravenous. A beast, nothing but hunger and desire. Not that its bad or evil!” she said hurriedly, noticing Toast’s temper starting to rise on Tiashar’s behalf. “Just… she’s already impulsive, but that part of her is literally nothing but instant gratification and satiating herself! Like…the bit of her that wants to be pleasured and satisfied all the time, that wants to be constnatly gestating monsters and having sex whenever she’s not eating? And then eating them right afterwards, and turning their souls into MORE things to gestate so they can stay with her forever in new bodies. ITs the part of her that runs on instinct and animal hunger, forever.”

He nodded, in a dour sort of way. “Okay, I think I get it. So…” he tried to process it all. “She acts weird because she’s got a whole bunch of competing drives and urges, some of them at odds with each other, constantly changing how she thinks and feels?”

Odina shrugged. “Her actual feelings are probably pretty, uh, consistent. The way she responds to them and acts on them does change, depending on which way her brain is working. Like if she likes someone and she’s pure beast, she probably wants to just jump on them and rut until the sun goes down, and them nuzzle them for a full month. And when she goes full god, she wants to shower them with blessings and love. And if she balances it out and can think properly? Then she just wants a friend, or maybe a tiny spouse. As long as she can hold onto that scale.”

He looked uneasy. “God… and she has to live like that…?”

“I don’t think it bothers her,” Odina said, not sure if she was actually trying to reassure him, or herself. “It’s just the way she sees the world and prioritizes stuff changes. She probably doesn’t really notice her perspective shifting. It’s just part of what she is. The tide turns, because that’s what it does; same thing with her.”

Toast looked troubled. “But..”

“Most eldritch entities, the ones that are making an honest effort to really understand us, wind up something similar. Plenty of them strike up a balance. The trick is them holding onto it.”

Toast wiggled. “So… Mama Tiashar…?”

She noticed, but didn’t say anything about it, his use of the honorific.

A small slip of the tongue, but a big, big deal for someone so miserably spiteful and suspicious of the whole world.

“Nothing’s wrong with her,” Odina said. “Her nature is just to change to different extremes. Sometimes she’ll be wild and ravenous. Sometimes she’ll be weird and think like an old goddess. And sometimes, more often than not, she’ll be like a regular weird mortal thingy. Just depends on the way her tides are turning.”

He whimpered. “But I want her to be happy.”

Odina looked at him, with something she didn’t dare admit might be pity.

It was a hard thing, to find out what love was at this point in his life, and to be afraid to know it.

There was a heavy stomping noise nearby.

Tiashar had stood up and slowly approached. Her massive tail lashed around, her enormous thighs slapped together as she approached, and slowly she leaned down, her head looming over Toast’s body. Her mouth opened, and she whispered softly.

“Toast, buddy,” she said, the words sounding distant and carefully picked. “Something bothering you?”

He shivered, and suddenly hugged her lip. One arm too skinny not to just sink in and instantly vanish, the other a huge and awkward club that started to fall on its own weight. “I’m just worried about you,” he whimpered.

She giggled, and gave him a soft kiss, pulling him right off the ground. She stood up, to her full height, and with another smooching pop, deposited him neatly into her cleavage, where he immediately snuggled up. “Aww, you’re a sweetie, little buddy. Don’t you worry. Mama Tiashar has herself figured out.” She gave her gravid belly a hug. “Be chill, my little dude, and don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Can’t,” he said shortly. “I just worry a lot about you…”

She chuckled. “I don’t worry about nothin’, and I’m totally chillaxed forever. Try it some time, sweetie. It’s fun.”

She nodded at Odina. “Later, short stuff.”

Odina waved vaguely at her, trying not to instantly butt-bloat up to the size of a building just from being in her presence. “Later.”

Tiashar skipped off, her gargantuan butt jiggling like literally all the gelatin there ever wars, her tail even smacking it possibly by accident, as she cooed gently to the still fretting Toast.

And Odina thought about the tides turning, and how they were fortunate to have wound up with an eldritch horror that seemed perpetually stuck on the ‘be a sweetheart’ side of things, regardless of her current flavor of impulses.

#my writing #fics #my OCs #twitchy!tiashar #twitchy!toast #twitchy!odina #queued

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loverontheleft · 7 years ago

Text

Ready to Leap (4)

AU with B as a band teacher and reader as an English teacher. Fluff and smut anticipated. Chapters 1-3 can be found on my Masterlist.

Brendon x reader. Warnings: language and implied sexual situations. ALSO SOME KILLER FUCKING DIALOGUE; I LITERALLY HIGH-FIVED MYSELF A FEW TIMES (I looked like a goddamn seal). Lesson of the day: it’s important to notice your strengths and validate them.

Word count: 4.2k. Also, I tried some new formatting with the internal thoughts; honestly I was just too lazy to italicize them in the first three chapters but if y’all have a preference just lmk. I don’t think I love it but I’ll do what you want.

—————————————————————

“MS. MILTON. DO YOU KNOW WHAT I HEARD?” You wince at Jessica’s volume.

“Too early to be so loud Jess. We’re in 1st block and you’re at 3rd block volume.”

“I HEARD THAT YOU AND MR. URIE WERE MAKING OUT ON THE MARCHING BAND FIELD YESTERDAY.”

“That’s not true,” Caroline argues from across the room. “They kissed but they weren’t making out.”

“Well, I heard they hooked up.” You can’t tell who that is. Probably Eric.

Caroline comes to your defense. “No, you guys, they only kissed!”

“No, they definitely hooked up.” Brian smirks from the back row. “I saw it.”

You’re done with this. “Everyone.” They freeze at the tone of your voice. You never raise it; you don’t have to. “First, all of you are wrong. I brought him a water bottle. Second, consider your environment. This is a classroom and a place of learning. Respect it as such. Your current topic is inappropriate.” You’re calm and you look at everyone in their desks. “I don’t want to hear anything else about it, understood?”

“I’m just saying Ms. Milton, no one would judge you. He’s so sexy.”

“Jessica!” That’s Caroline. Bless her.

“I mean have you seen his face?” Anna is joining in now. “And his butt? Lord!”

“Anna!” Caroline is probably planning to become a teacher. Or a nun. You’re not sure which.

“He’s super hot Ms. Milton, you should get it.”

“Beth!”

“Ladies! What did I just say?” You’re annoyed now. They can tell. They turn back to face you, chagrin clear on their faces. “I’ll ask again. Am I understood when I say I don’t want to hear anything else about it?” The entire class nods. “Good. Moving on. We’re going back to Beowulf, Canto 11. Brian, you’re up first.” A groan from the back. “You had plenty to say about me, I want to hear what you have to say about Grendel in Canto 11. Don’t make me ask again.” Your voice is level but they can hear the restraint. Everyone, including Brian, knows better than to fuck with you right now.

The rest of class goes much more smoothly, and you feel your shoulders drop. The bell rings. Maybe second block won’t be so - ah, shit. “Ms. Milton, do you know what they’re saying about you and Mr. Urie?” Emily’s eyes are wild and she’s come flying into the room with Stacy and Josh, two other band kids, right behind her. You hold up both hands, hoping to cut her off but it’s no use. “They’re saying you KISSED.”

You laugh. “Oh, is that the worst you’ve heard?” Her jaw drops and you continue. “You three were there and you saw that nothing happened. Don’t let what other people say bother you. I’m fine.” You smile reassuringly and Stacy looks unsure. “Really.”

“Well. If anything did happen -” Stacy starts, and Josh cuts her off.

“The band leadership board supports it.” You act quickly and stifle your laughter. Maybe the worst is a twitch of your lips. Good to know you have their blessing. “After you left, Mr. Urie let us go home 15 minutes early. He’s never done that.” Josh looks impressed.

Hope he went home to take a cold shower after that eyefucking you gave him; you know you did, that white shirt plastered to his chest with sweat had you all - BRAIN. FUCK. Knock it off. “Well, thank you guys. That’s kind of you. I’m sure I had nothing to do with you getting to leave early; you probably earned that with your hard work.” The three of them look at each other and it’s clear they don’t believe you. “Anyway.” You make eye contact with each of them. “If the class isn’t quiet during SSR because they’re discussing this rumor, you three are going to shut it down, yes?” They all nod eagerly. “Good. Thank you.”

There’s some chatter, but the three of them and a few other band kids in your second block quell the gossip and you transition to Beowulf with more ease than first block. You have good students, all in all. The annoying ones don’t ruin it for everyone, and you count yourself lucky.

When the bell rings for third block, you snatch the print-out of the pop quiz you’re giving tomorrow and book it to the copier. You’re feeling lucky; today’s a good day; you’re only going to say nice things to the stupid fucki-...hardworking and tired machine. You round the corner and the juxtaposition of your emotions is harsh. On one hand, Brendon’s back is to you. On the other, he’s writing a sign that says “Out of Order” and taping it to the stupid fucking bitch machine. It’s like your heart went on Tower of Terror. Yanked up, then sent crashing down. Fuck.

“Nooooooo,” you moan, sliding to the floor. He turns, sees you, and smiles wanly.

“I’ve done my best and I can’t get it. I let Jess in the main office know, so hopefully we’ll get a repair guy out here later this afternoon.”

“In time for me to make copies of a pop quiz I’m giving tomorrow?” You look desperate. Copy machines in this school are on strike, if Brendon can’t get this one to work and the repair guy doesn’t come, you’re fucked. He shrugs and offers you a hand.

“Come with me.” You take it and let yourself be pulled to your feet.

“Brendon, cookies won’t fix this.” He grins and shakes his head.

“I have something better than cookies.” You gasp playfully but you follow him back to his office inside the band room. “I have this.” He points to the corner and you turn to him in awe. And then, you’re annoyed.

“You jerk!” You hit his chest lightly. “You’ve been hiding your own copy machine?” He grins and catches your wrist.

“I’ve been saving the public copy machine and saving you time by not making you walk all the way here to me.” You consider this. “It’s for all of the sheet music I have to print. The school didn’t want me holding people up by using teacher’s lounge copiers, so this was a gift from the Band Boosters. You’re welcome to it for as long as you need.”

“This walk isn’t bad. I’d walk a lot farther to get to you.” Fuck. That was out loud. You walk briskly to the machine and start running copies, your head down, praying the comment will go over his head.

He makes a thoughtful sound and says nothing else for a moment. Then, out of nowhere: “You’re wearing pants today.” You give him a weird look over your shoulder. “You can climb the tower this afternoon then. I mean,” you glance again when he pauses and he looks almost nervous. “If you don’t have anything better to do.”

You turn fully, leaning back against the machine. “It’s a Tuesday. What else could I possibly have to do?” He shrugs and you just want to go hug him, he’s blushing and he looks so insecure right now.

“I don’t know, I mean, maybe you’ve got plans with some-”

You cut him off. “I don’t have any plans. With anyone except for you now. I’ll be there.” He breaks out into a smile and the confidence is back. He eyes your outfit and tells you you look good. Your turn to blush. “It’s different. I mean, I am just so used to the skirts…” you trail off, running a finger over the pattern on your ankle pants.

He shrugs. “You look great all of the time. I mean...the students say so. Someone joked you’d win Best Dressed for the senior superlatives.” He grins. “And yeah, it’s a departure from your normal look, but it’s not a bad one by any means.” You’re not sure what to say.

“Thanks.” You collect the copies and look at him and the door. “Any other secret food-based missions we’re going on today?”

He shrugs. “Nothing on my calendar.” Your eyes meet and you blush again. Why are you like this? It’s never been weird before. Those stupid rumors.

“Have you heard th-”

He interrupts you. “The rumors that we kissed and/or made out and/or had sex on the marching field yesterday?” You feel your shoulders drop and you exhale. “Yeah I have.” He looks up at you and grins. “I’d like to think the two of us have a little more class than to go at it on the field.”

You laugh, and the tension is broken. “It’s like they don’t know us at all.”

He stands, stretching. “Exactly. Come on Milton, let’s go get a cookie.”

Turns out there’s a fridge in the student council room too, and you both audibly gasp with glee when you see the carton of 2% milk. You turn to him, looking conflicted, holding a ten dollar bill in your hands. “It’s only Tuesday. Debbie will notice before Friday that they’re running low, right?”

He nods seriously. “She comes in here every day during 4th block. We’ll be fine.” You tuck the ten under the coffee pot and look at him expectantly. He looks back. “Am I making the cookies?” He seems amused when you nod. “Y/n, you know they’re not really better because I dropped the hunks of frozen dough onto the hot surface, and you didn’t, right?”

You shrug, filling two mugs with milk. “But why risk it?” He laughs at your serious expression and gives in, dropping the dough and setting the timer.

“Alright Milton, spill.” You look dubiously from him to the mug of milk in your hands and he rolls his eyes. “Not what I meant. You know,” he nudges your hand with his mug lightly, “your story. It’s been a whole two weeks and I know your name, what you teach, your age, you’re single, and your favorite movie. And,” he grins, “sometimes you disappear on me. I look over and you’re just staring into space.”

You blush. Oh, I could tell you where I’m at, all you have to do is ask. Shut. Up. Brain. “I’m not great with giant vague topics. What do you want to know?”

“Well, I know this isn’t your first year teaching. Where were you before this? What brought you here?”

You look up at him through lowered lashes. “I killed a man.” You can tell from his eyes he doesn’t know whether to believe you or not and you burst out laughing. “Dang Urie, they did a background check on both of us to get hired, remember?” He nudges you again and you fold. “I taught in Texas for 5 years. I grew up there. My parents died when I was 10 and my grandma passed in early February two years ago. Couldn’t stand to be in the area so I moved from Austin to Amarillo. So when my ex from Austin showed up, I did what I do best.” You give him a rueful smile. “I ran.” He is looking at you so softly and you feel the need to comfort him. “I mean. He wasn’t abusive or anything like that. It was just a messy end and he wanted to get back together and I couldn’t - well, wouldn’t. I respect myself too much.” He gives you an encouraging smile. “But he didn’t like hearing ‘no,’ and kept showing up and I just got tired of it. So I called my best friend, she came from Austin, and we starting packing up my apartment. I gave my notice of not continuing my lease, declined to renew my contract, and I sent out my teaching resume, said I’d move really anywhere, and liked y’all the best. So here I am. New start.” He nods slowly, considering this. “What about you? How did Mr. Brendon Urie end up in glamorous Putnam, Connecticut? I know you’re not from here; Tracy in the English department knows everyone and everything from Putnam and she’s got nothing on you except you’ve been here for five years. Hermit.” You point at him playfully.

He shrugs. “I’m a west coast transplant too. Napa Valley, born and raised. Just got tired of it, I guess. Did the same thing as you; except I’ve done all five years here. Got my teaching license and sent out the resume nationally.”

You look at him in disbelief. “You got tired of Napa Valley, where the air smells like wine and the sun is shining almost all the time?” He shrugs again, meeting your gaze. He certainly doesn’t look like he’s got anything to hide. “Okay then.” You nod decisively.

He glances at his watch. “I don’t want to steal all of your planning period. Mine is really a break; we have band after this, so my prep work is minimal. You have to teach.” He looks cautious and you wave away his concerns.

“I’m an insomniac and I’m here when the building opens at 5. I’m super productive in the morning so this is also my break.” He relaxes a little.

“Next question.” He pauses. “I’m going back over the annoying ones your kids asked. Uh. Where do you get your clothes?” He grins. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like someone’s daydream from 1950. You know, the pencil skirts, the sheath dresses...”

You laugh. “That’s the best one I’ve heard yet. My best friend, the one who helped me pack, is a seamstress and she works for the performing arts center in Austin. We both have a very particular style, so she’s made all of my skirts and dresses. The tops and pants are from wherever.” He looks impressed.

“That’s really cool.” He thinks for a moment. “What music do you like?”

You consider. “I’ll really listen to anything. I like most everything, but give the choice, I’ll usually go with some form of alternative pop/rock. Oh, and showtunes. I’m a huge Broadway nerd. Being so much closer to the city is amazing. 3 hours in the car is nothing.”

He nods. “I love Broadway. Do you have a favorite show?”

You groan. “That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child.”

“Wait, do you have kids?”

“Nope. Unless you count the 73 I see on a daily basis.” You grin at him. “Favorite show...favorite show. Uhm. I relate so much to If/Then, but I also love Next to Normal. Fuck, I can’t choose. That creative team is so talented.” You must really look distressed because he places his hand over yours and you shiver at the contact.

“You don’t have to choose a favorite. I’ve seen both of those and they are incredible.” You return the question to him and he thinks for a moment. “Of the classics...probably RENT. Of the contemporaries...Maybe Book of Mormon?” You nod approvingly and he checks his watch again. “We’ve got time for one more if we want to sneak out between lunches. Speaking of lunch, what’s your favorite food?”

“Again, favorite child scenario. I love all food.” You grin and pop the last bite of cookie in your mouth. He laughs and stands up. “And yours?”

He smiles. “Same answer but I’m going to attempt partial credit and give you a restaurant suggestion. The Stomping Ground on Main Street if you haven’t been already. So fucking good.” He extends a hand and you take it, rising to your feet and you leave the room. You stealthily move from the front of the cafeteria to the back, though stealth might not be necessary since the cafeteria is empty except for staff, and you slip through the arts hall door. You pause at his room and he gives you that crooked smile that makes you warm all over.

“I’ll see you later Milton. Practice starts at 4:30 and we’re done at 7:30. Glad you wore pants so I can get you on my tower.” He gives you a quick wink and then he’s disappearing into the room. You’re certain you’re blushing. He knew what he was doing that time. He had to have known.

The fourth block gossip circuit isn’t as bad and yet, in some ways it’s worse. There aren’t any band kids in this class, so no one has even somewhat accurate stories by this point in the day. As a result, the stories are so outrageous, even the students repeating them don’t seem to believe it. They do seem to like Beowulf though.

The bell rings and it’s 3:35 and they’re flying out the door. You’ve officially got an hour til marching band practice starts and that might be just enough time when you factor in traffic.

You end up being exactly right; you’re pulling in beside what you assume is Brendon’s car and it’s, according to your car, 4:20. You open the door, muttering “blaze it” to yourself and grab the cooler from the backseat. You wore shoes with more traction this time so getting down the hill and dragging the cooler isn’t half as bad as yesterday.

He meets you at the base of the tower. “What’s all this?” He looks behind you at the cooler and back at you. “You look great by the way.”

You give him a weird look. “I literally haven’t changed since you saw me two and half hours ago…you on the other hand…” he’s changed into something similar to yesterday’s outfit and he shrugs, either not noticing or reacting to your appreciative glance.

“Thought you should hear it again. What’s in the cooler?”

You smile and bite your lip, feeling the blush creep up your face. His question finally processes. “Oh. I brought you water yesterday so I brought them water today. And snacks! For when they’re done for the day of course.” He looks so happy. It’s a small band, maybe fifty students tops, so this wasn’t a big deal - two packs of water, a bag of ice, and two variety packs of granola bars. You tell him this and he shakes his head.

“No, it is a big deal. I appreciate it. So much.” If you could capture the look on his face right now, you’d look at it every day for the rest of your life.

“It’s the least I can do since I’m hijacking your copier for the foreseeable future. The repair guy didn’t come today.”

He pretends to look annoyed. “Oh no, you’ll be coming to see me all the time and I’ll have to talk to you. Gross.”

You laugh. “I’m not coming for you, Urie,” fuck; phrasing, do better brain, and this time it’s a serious fuck-up because he smirked and raised one eyebrow - fuck fuck fuck. “I’m coming to see that copier of yours.”

“You’ve wounded me. I’ll never recover.” He looks around. Marissa is the only student even remotely nearby; everyone else is unpacking their instruments and talking to others. You can tell she’s waiting for instructions. “Marissa, please start the group warmups. I want the trumpets at least 20% louder, let them know, please. You can use your judgement with the others. Listen closely and remember what we talked about in identifying the ones who are sharp and who are flat. Now go get’em.” She nods eagerly and he sends her off with an encouraging smile. He turns to you. “She’s an excellent drum major and a very gifted flutist. She’s only a junior, so she’s got time, but she’s looking at Berklee in Boston, Juilliard, and Oberlin. I think she’s gonna get in at all of them but I’m biased.” He grins and shakes his head a little. “Sorry. I’m bragging. Let’s get up there. After you.”

You turn to give him a playful grin. “Trying to get a good view, Urie?” Oh, you are shameless.

“No!” He looks horrified. “Honestly, it’s a safety thing. I don’t want you to slip and fall without anyone to catch you.”

“Oh. Well thank you in advance for catching me. I’m accident-prone and I will fall.” You are sure you look embarrassed, not considering the safety of it and saying what you said out loud.

He smirks. “Well I’ll catch you as needed. Also the view thing might also be true, yeah.” You’re laughing as you climb the ladder and he scampers up behind you, sunglasses in place and an extra pair you hadn’t noticed before tucked in his shirt collar. “Here you go.” He hands the other pair to you. “It can get kind of bright when the sun starts to set, if that makes sense.” You nod and accept them gratefully. “Now Ms. Milton.” You look up at him and he looks very serious. “I’d like for you to listen to the trumpets and give me some feedback, and then I want your general opinion on the show.”

“I think I can do that.” Just as the words leave your mouth, the warmups start and as promised, Marissa has the trumpets louder. You smile appreciatively and nod as they run through their scales. “They have a lovely tone. You’ve got one or two who are sharp.” You both wait and Marissa, without hearing you, gives the same feedback. It isn’t long before the show is starting and you’re honestly blown away. You’re leaning slightly over the edge to watch, and your jaw is dropped. Eyes wide, you turn to him excitedly, hitting his arm repeatedly. “Did you see that?!” He grins and nods. The band transitioned seamlessly from interwoven triangles to a full company forward march and it was stunning - you’d never seen it done that well before. “Brendon, this music!” Your eyes are welling up. The show is called Heroes and Villains and what started with a jazzy Superman theme and a riff on The Incredibles has been a wild ride; you’ve just been transported from a full-band, raging interpretation of Dies Irae with something you can’t quite place before it to a soft, lone trumpet playing Taps. “This is gorgeous. Really.” He smiles softly.

“Do you really think so?” You look at him in surprise.

“Uh, yes! It’s amazing!” His smile gets a little bigger but he tries to contain it. It dawns on you. “Did you do this arrangement?” He just looks at you, beaming, and you poke him in the side. “Brendon I don’t know your middle name Urie, did you do this arrangement?” When he nods, you shriek. “Brendon! Damn you for being both so talented and attractive it’s not fair! This is truly incredible, really.”

He grins at you. “You said I’m attractive.” You roll your eyes and shove him lightly. You did say that. Fuck. You wave a hand in front of his face.

“Focus on what’s important here, Urie.” He nods and grabs his megaphone.

“Sounded great everyone. Pack up and enjoy your Tuesday night. Make good choices. Ms. Milton brought water bottles and snacks for you, so grab something on the way out.”

You and Marissa are both staring at him. “Mr. Urie it’s 4:50...we only warmed up and ran it once…” her voice is cautious like she wants her Tuesday night but also doesn’t want to risk her Superior ranking at State. Everyone else meanwhile is either packing up or already packed and flying up the hill.

He beams down at her and drops the megaphone. “And it sounded great. You did wonderfully. Now call that guy you like, Jason or Justin or whatever and let him know you’re free.” She’s gaping at him and he just grins and makes a shooing gesture. “Go on. Text him if you must but make contact. Go go go.” The teenage girl in Marissa’s brain takes over and she’s off the podium, stuffing things in her bag, and racing toward the parking lot. You turn to head down the ladder and he stops you with a grin. “I set them free, not you.” You shiver a little, enthralled. Okay. You’ll bite.

“Fair enough. Okay, first of all, that opening with Superman as a jazz rendition was so fucking cool and it blended into The Incred-what are you doing?” He’s got one hand on your waist and he’s drawing you closer, eyes blazing.

“Focusing on what’s important.” And his lips are on yours and you’re pretty sure this is real. You moan and arch into the kiss, reaching a hand up to get his hat off so you can run a hand through his hair, pulling gently. He gasps into your mouth and his teeth tug at your lower lip, the hand on your waist bringing you closer still.

“God, Urie,” you sigh against his lips and he pauses, using his other hand to cup your face.

“Yes, Milton?”

“Oh thank god. This is real.” You kiss him again, flicking your tongue out over his and when he responds eagerly, really exploring your mouth, you feel your knees start to buckle. You cling to his shirt and he tightens his hand on your waist, wrapping his arm around you now and holding you up and against him. “Told you I’d fall.” You whisper this and he smiles down at you.

“Told you I’d catch you.”

#brendon urie x reader #brendon urie imagine #brendon urie #imagine #fanfic #ready to leap #work in progress #my work #we’re racing to smut #can you feel it #I fucking can

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softboywriting · 7 years ago

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Superpower!Shawn // Scrapped Work

A/N: So I liked this idea of Shawn having a power where he can like burst into flame and control it. (Like the chick in Hellboy) but this didn’t come out how I wanted it to. It’s not finished and I’m not gonna finish it. But here’s a concept in 3k words.

A/N 2: In this world there are people who have powers and they’re just like normal people like everyone else.

You look down at your assigned room number and up at the doors lining the hall of the Graceburg dorms. Room 120A. You put your hand on the door knob and turn slowly, nervous to meet your roommate for the year. The room is empty when you step in. There is a backpack laying on one bed and you can only assume your roommate must have left it there.

Dropping your bags and purse on the opposite bed, you decide to go snoop a little to maybe just get a name of your roommate. Graceburg dorms were coed and you were really hoping you would get a female roommate, but this backpack screamed guy. It was old as hell, tattered around the zippers, and it smelled like cologne. You unzip the top and sure enough there is a pair of boxers crammed into the bag. Gross. You hope they’re clean. You turn the backpack over a few times, hoping there would be some sort of name tag or any form of identification. The only thing you can find without digging too far was a keychain with the name Mendes on it.

The door handle to your room door turns and you jump away from the backpack, heat rising on your cheeks as you busy yourself with your own bags. In walks your friend Jane and she immediately knows something is up because you’re just pushing shit around in the tote bag in your hands.

“What did you do?” she asks, coming around to stand with her hands on her hips at the end of your bed.

“I didn’t do anything!” You dump the tote on the bed and start unrolling a bed sheet. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jane laughs and you narrow your eyes at her. “You’re the worst liar ever. Did you snoop on your roommate? I assume that is their backpack on the bed over there.”

“Okay fine, I snooped a little. I didn’t get much though.”

“Oh no, you got plenty. Spill the beans.”

You groan and fall face first onto the bed. “It’s a guy. Last name, I’m assuming, is Mendes.”

“Ohh girl you’re so lucky!”

“I’m not lucky! I didn’t want a guy! They’re so messy and gross and just ugh why does Graceburg have to be coed?” you roll over and stare at the ceiling.

Jane sits on the end of the bed and pats your shoulder. “You could always put in a request to move to the Yates dorm?”

“I can’t afford it, it costs more to house over there because it’s private or what the fuck ever. Snotty bitches.”

“True. Well, see how this guy is. Maybe you’ll end up becoming very good friends. You haven’t even met him yet, don’t be so hard on him.”

“You’re right,” you grumble and Jane just laughs.

“I’m hungry. Let’s skip unpacking for now and go see what free food we can scrounge up at the Welcoming Fair.” Jane gets up and pulls your arm. “Let’s goooooo!”

The welcoming fair isn’t as big as last year and you and Jane can’t find any food. That is until she spots a booth that is serving mini sub sandwiches as advertisement for their new shop opening just off campus. The two of you make a bee line, starving and desperate for free munchies. The guy behind the table starts chatting Jane up immediately and you stand there awkwardly nibbling your sandwich. You survey the area, looking for familiar faces or even another food booth when you see him. The guy you spot is tall, has dark messy curly rich brown hair and a black leather jacket. He looks annoyed as hell as he strides toward the booth you’re at.

You turn to get Jane’s attention but it’s too late. Tall boy is already grabbing your shoulder and turning you around. A wave of heat courses through your body and you turn to look at the tall guy. “Hey-” he stops, looking you over and losing his train of thought for a moment. “Would you mind not going through my shit?” he asks and your eyes go wide.

“Um, what?” you ask as you swallow the last bit of your sandwich.

“My backpack? In the dorm room. I know you dug through it.”

So this was Mendes. Wow, well, he was not what you expected. Honestly you hadn’t known what to expect but this man standing in front of you was not even in the realm of possibilities. He was gorgeous, beautiful brownish hazel eyes, soft looking hair, a cute little scar on his cheek. How were you supposed to live for over half a year with him? You’re so caught up in his face that you don’t realize Jane has stopped flirting with the sandwich guy until she pushes Mendes’s shoulder and tells him to back off.

“I didn’t dig through anything,” you lie as you are snapped back to reality. “And how do you know I’m even your roommate?”

Jane crosses her arms and steps in front of you a bit. She had always been your best friend and stood up for you. Her super strength made her an excellent fighter and there had been times when you were thankful for it. She was only just over five feet but she was feisty when provoked and you’d seen her take down men nearly twice her size during the self defense class she taught on sundays. “Yeah, how do you know she’s your roommate and not me?” Jane asks eyeing Mendes up and down.

Mendes balls his fist up and a soft blue flame engulfs his hand. “I looked through-”

“Whoa dude, careful,” Jane says, pointing at his hand and he brings it up and flexes his fingers within the flames. “You’re going to hurt somebody with that!”

People nearby notice the burning blue fire spreading up his arm and they start to move away and chatter nervously. You swallow thickly and watch as he puts it out and shoves his hands in his pockets. He looks around and glares at the people staring at him before he walks away from the two of you.

“Jane, he’s like me,” you whisper softly as the crowds start to reform and go about their business in the courtyard. “Do you think he knows?”

Jane puts her arm around you and walks you back toward your dorm. “I doubt he knows. You’ve kept it hidden so well and you are still on your medicine right? The one that negates your powers?”

You shake your head. “It got too expensive. I took my last dose a few days ago.”

“Okay, well it should still be in your system then. We’ll find a way to get you more. Until then there shouldn’t be a problem if you remain calm and say out of trouble. Have you had any flare up’s since taking the medicine?”

“No, I’ve been fine.” You look down at your hands and curl your fingers up. “What if he finds out and tells people?”

“He won’t find out.” Jane stops walking with you as you enter the main lobby of Graceburg dorms. She grabs your shoulder and you look down. “I know you’re scared of people finding out you’re a fire starter, but it’s fine. No one will know. We will get your medicine.”

“I just don’t want people to treat me like an outcast because they think I’m dangerous. You saw what happened to my brother, how he ended up having to move away just so no one knew who he was after he accidentally set fire to the high school.”

“You’ll be fine. Go on, get unpacked. I have to go finish my unpacking as well. If anything happens, call me and I’ll come over.” Jane pats your shoulder and leaves you to go to your dorm and face Mendes alone.

That first couple days in the dorm is rough. You find out Mendes’s first name is Shawn and after telling you his name he’s quiet the rest of the first day. You both unpack in the most awkward silence ever and you end up curling up in bed on your side without so much as a good night a little after 8pm. The following days were quiet, the two of you only chatting if it was absolutely necessary. You find out from some friends that Shawn was supposedly bad news. He had a reputation of picking fights. A girl you met last year said she went to high school with him and he was just the worst and lashed out all the time on teachers and students alike.

Sometimes you catch Shawn staring at you while you do your homework, sitting on your bed with your laptop on you knees. He doesn’t think you notice but you do. How could you not? His gaze was almost as hot as the fire he held within him. You didn’t mind that he stared, because you stared at him too. He would come back from the showers and you’d watch the way his back flexed as he pulled a shirt on. You would watch as he stripped down to his boxers to get in bed. The guy wasn’t shy, he really didn’t seem to mind you were in the room all the time.

A few weeks in, you notice Shawn had been waking up with a hard on. Now, you know this is normal if health class was to be believed. But the way he got real flushed when he saw you were awake while he was sporting his morning wood made you think maybe he had as much of a thing for you as you did for him. He would always hurry out of the room, or just roll over to face the wall until his problem went away.

Shawn was always sweet with you. Not like, bringing you flowers or something. That would be weird. No, he’s sweet in the way he talks to you. You noticed this one day when you were sitting with a group, including him, in the library after class. Shawn had tagged along because it was a class you shared and he need to do some research for his paper.

“Did you bring him along?” your friend Josh asks and you look down the table to where Shawn is scribbling something down in his notebook.

“Yeah? Why?” you ask curiously, confused as to why Josh cared if Shawn was there.

“Y’know if you don’t like me being here with you, I can move to another fucking table.” Shawn says and looks up from his book with a scowl aimed at Josh. “Am I that distracting?”

Josh swallows hard and picks his books up to go to the other table with a couple of your other friends. Shawn gets up and moves his books down to where Josh was sitting across from you. He gives you an almost shy look as he sits down. “Do you mind if I sit here?” he asks quietly and you shake your head with a little smile. He smiles down at his book and bites his lip as he begins to take notes again.

Days later you stumble upon Shawn and a guy who you think is named Chris. He was in your english lit class. The two of them are squaring up outside Graceburg hall and there is a crowd forming to watch the fight. You know that Chris has super strength and loved to boast about it. Honestly, you’re sure him talking shit is what probably started the fight.

You hurry down the steps and push through the crowd just as Shawn’s hands become engulfed in blue flames. Chris says something you can’t make out over the chatter of the crowd. “Shawn, don’t,” you mutter and grip your books tight to your chest.

“Your book is on fire!” the girl next to you exclaims and you drop the book to the ground.

You step back and stuff your hands into your pockets, hoping the flames would go out. Shawn catches sight of your burning book and you look at him, eyes meeting his as he pushes past Chris. You turn and run into the dorm, your heart racing. Surely people had seen the book ignite in your hands.

You struggle with your key in your door and Shawn comes up behind you, turning you around roughly. You let out a little yelp and he pins you to the door. “What the hell was that about?” he asks, tone dangerous and low.

“W-what?”

“Are you a fire starter?”

Your eyes dart around his face, down his neck, his chest...you couldn’t come up with a lie. Not now. He had seen the book on fire, he knew it was from you. “I-I am.”

Shawn lets out a breathy little half laugh. “Do you know how long I’ve hoped to meet someone else like me?” You shake your head. “And you’re so pretty,” he says softly and you look up at him, a blush on your cheeks.

“What? I’m pretty?”

“You’re so damn pretty and I’ve wanted to make a move on you since we met. I’ve been so scared to because of my powers, I was afraid I’d hurt you.”

You bite your lip. “You want to ask me out?”

“I wanna do more than ask you out. Much more,” he says with a playful smirk.

It’s after midnight when you wake up and find you’re far hotter than you should be. You quickly kick off the blankets and crawl out of bed to stand in the middle of the room. Heat is radiating off your body and you start to shake. Your hands are glowing softly, illuminated in the dark room. Panic sets in and you don’t know what to do, how to stop the way your body is superheating itself, only moments away from bursting into flame.

“Shawn,” you say softly, voice trembling. He stirs a bit, legs shifting restlessly on the bed the two of you ended up sharing last night. You find your voice, raising it though you’ve started to cry and it’s shakier than ever. “Shawn! Wake up!”

Shawn sits up in his bed and looks around the dark room. He scrubs a hand over his hair and mumbles a soft ‘what the fuck?’ as he tries to understand what is going on. He feels around on his night stand and flips the light on. He grabs a pair of black framed glasses and puts them on to see you standing there with small white flames dancing across your palms. He registers the fear on your face and climbs out of bed to stand in front of you. “Oh no, you can’t control it can you?”

“No I can’t!” you cry and step back. The floor has light scorch marks where your bare feet once stood. “Help me, please,” you whisper and hold your hands out.

Shawn takes your hands in his and sparks fly, literally, as he ignites your hands with his blue flame. His whole body starts to glow and you can feel his heat as it surrounds you. “Take a deep breath,” he instructs softly and you do as you’re told.

“I’m scared,” you whisper and he just nods.

“Breathe.”

The flames slowly die down and you swallow hard as the burning heat dwindles down to just a comfortable warmth. “I don’t know how to control it. I’ve always had medicine to stop it.”

Shawn threads his fingers with yours. “I can help you.”

“You would do that? Because I can’t afford my medicine anymore and I haven’t had it for weeks now.”

“I don’t want you to take medicine. It fucks with us, with our genetic makeup.” Shawn pulls you toward him and wraps his arms around you. “I was on medicine for a while but it just made me so tired and irritable. I hated it. As soon as I was old enough that my parents couldn’t force me to take it, I was done. I learned how to control the fire on my own and I’ve been okay ever since.”

You wrap your arms around him and lay your head on his chest. “Can we cuddle some more?” you ask softly.

“Anything you want.” Shawn gets on his bed and pat it for you to join him. “Do you like cuddling?” he asks as you slot yourself against him and he puts his arm over you.

“I love it. I’ve never really gotten to cuddle with anyone before. I tried once with my first boyfriend but I ended up getting really hot and I had to pull away before I burst into flames.”

Shawn hums and the sound vibrates through your chest. “I know the feeling,” he says softly and tugs you closer.

#scrapped work #scrap #im not even gonna tag this cuz i dont like it

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arctiinae · 7 years ago

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Anger headcanons for Fallout 4 companions

I actually sent @zirawrites an ask about anger headcanons for the different Fallout 4 companions but then I ended up sitting on the idea for a while and decided to write some out myself. Been wanting to write again, so this is a good excuse. Not all companions are there bc I'm not familiar with all of them yet, but feel free to add to this! (also please let me know about spelling mistakes!)

Cait: Is angry a lot, and at a great many things. Her anger is aggressive and very strongly externalized, but not dangerous unless you happen to be something that's been trying to kill her. When angry, Cait rants, raves, snaps aggressively at people, says things that are meant to be demeaning or hurtful. She goes looking for fights and often gets hurt in the process, deliberately. She vents her anger very openly but it dies down quickly, too, and she will not hold grudges over petty things. It's entirely possible that she would break your nose and then invite you for a drink, because once her anger at a specific thing or person has been vented out, it is gone.

Codsworth: Does not really get angry. He can be plenty indignant, scoffing and loudly wording his displeasure, but his programming does not really allow for full blown, boiling anger. His irritation is quickly forgotten and his mood defaults very much towards cheerful. If he dislikes people, it is mainly because the Sole Survivor dislikes them, in which case he will be either icily polite or snarky towards them, depending. He holds grudges, but only from slights against the Sole Survivor, not against himself.

Curie: Had to learn about anger very suddenly when she acquired her new body, along with a wide range of other emotions. The first time she got really angry, she ended up crying and hyperventilating, frustrated beyond measure at both the situation that set her off, and her inability to get a hold of herself. She is uncomfortable with being angry, because she feels it clouds her judgment and ability to act rationally. But despite her overall cheerful and enthusiastic behavior, she get angry a lot. At mundane things - like her body not working the way she wants it to, or not understanding a joke - as well as bigger things, like the state of the world and the loss of knowledge. She rarely acknowledges the feeling when it happens, though, and pushes it aside in favor of trying to rationalize the situation and focusing on what is important. If she feels her anger is justified, she will confront people about it, expecting them to cede to the voice of reason. If they don't, she is as likely to disengage as she is to break down crying. Curie does not deal well with anger and human idiocy. She is very quick to forgive, even after multiple offenses.

Danse: When angry, will be snappy and short, somewhat aggressive but not violent. Despite what you could expect from a guy who's constantly parading around in power armor spouting army propaganda, he has a pretty good grip on his emotions, and doesn't take them out on his companions. He's not too likely to vent it out in battle, either, aware that clouded emotions can and will negatively affect a soldiers performance. If he needs to blow out steam, he will do so by sparring or training. He will be much less in control of his anger when around non-humans, though, and much more likely to snap at them and react to perceived slights with violence. He holds grudges, but gives people a chance to redeem themselves through positive actions.

Deacon: Is practically impossible to get truly, aggressively angry. Deacon is snarky, distrustful and deceitful, a trained liar and excellent actor, and as such he needs to have a really good grip on his emotions. He will play along, provoke, taunt, flatter, flirt and threaten his way out of any situation, and does an excellent job at not letting anything get to him. Or, rather, at stomping down and bottling up any emotional responses he might have because they do not fit his plan. It takes a lot to break down Deacon's emotional walls. It would require earning his trust and then betraying it in the worst possible manner, or seriously hurting someone he is attached to, and there are not a lot of people this applies to. But if you manage to make him snap, he fucking snaps. Deacon angry - truly, deeply hurt and angry - is a terrifying, murderous whirlwind of destructive rage coupled with professional, deadly competence. When he took down the Deathclaws, it was messy and gory and an absolute bloodbath. Now he has years of Railroad experience under his belt to top it off, and getting on his bad side enough to make him loose it would mean a slow, excruciatingly painful death, and no one would ever find your corpse. As for grudges, Deacon will hold them pretty much indefinitely, but be surprisingly cheerful about it. It won't stop him from working with someone, but he will make sure to be completely insufferable the entire time.

Dogmeat: Much like you would expect from a dog, an angry Dogmeat is a growling, snarling mess of teeth. He bites, and he bites hard. It doesn't happen very often, though, and mostly out of self-defense or to protect his favorite humans. Dogmeat remembers humans that he registered as thread before, and will remain wary and threatening around them.

Nick Valentine: Much like Deacon, angering Valentine is a herculean feat, although not for the same reasons. He is not easily provoked, having heard every kind of insult ever that you could throw at a cop, at a detective AND at a synth before. If he does get angry, it will be a quiet, seething but driven sort of rage. He does not raise his voice, doesn't rant or rave or lash out, but rather sits down and quietly, efficiently breaks down the problem and sets out to solve it, stubbornly keeping at it even if it seems hopeless. Valentine's anger is the kind of anger that gets shit done. In truth, though, you are more likely to disappoint him than you are to truly anger him. But let's face it, no one wants to be on the receiving end of one of Nick's disappointed looks. They are too powerful. Contrary to what one would expect, though, Valentine does holds grudges. It takes a lot to make it into his bad books, because he is always inclined to see the best in people, but if you make it onto his shit list, you're probably stuck there for the rest of your life. It also might not end well for you. Ask Eddie Winter about it.

Piper Wrigth: Gets angry fairly often, and like Valentine, her anger is the kind of anger that pushes her forward, drives her to take action and get shit done. However, unlike Valentine, Piper's anger is loud, outspoken, biting and very much in-your-face. She will rant, she will shout, she will provoke and get all up in people's personal space and yell and threaten and terrify. She is scary when she is angry, and you do not want to stand in her way when she gets worked up, because you will be collateral damage. Piper holds grudges and will absolutely drag your name through the mud if you give her a reason to. This woman knows the power of the press, and while her greater goal is the pursuit of the truth, she is not above using her skills for petty revenge.

Preston Garvey: Tends to internalize his anger a lot, and redirect it at himself. It does not show much towards the outside, other than his tone getting more cold, more formal. He will express disagreement, and put his foot down and try to defuse or fix the situation, but he very rarely shouts or gets loud about it. But he will often be angry at himself for longer than he is angry at whatever set him off in the first place, replaying the situation in his head over and over, poking holes at his own behavior and trying to find what he did wrong, what he can do better next time, how he misstepped or misjudged or failed, even if he really can't be blamed for what happened. Much like Curie, Preston is quick to forgive and trust again, eager to believe in people and give them another chance. Slight him often enough, and he will be wary and tired, but still can be bullied into giving people one more chance. Just one more. One more.

Strong: Is angry pretty much all the time, and proud of it. Anger is an inherent part of his personality. Perhaps a side effect of the FEV-virus, since most super-mutants tend towards volatile and murderous. Strong's anger fluctuates between a quiet, rolling wrath and an all out screaming rage, and can be directed at nothing and everything, depending on the situation, but it never really goes away. Surprisingly, he does not hold grudges much. Maybe he considers humans unworthy of such attention, but his feelings towards them range from disdain to begrudging respect, and leave little space for angry resentment. People are worth his time, or they are not. Simple.

Companions I skipped because I am not familiar enough with them yet: Hancock, MacCready, and X6-88.

#fallout #fallout 4 #Cait #Codsworth #Curie #Danse #Deacon #Dogmeat #Nick Valentine #Piper Wrigth #Preston Garvey #Strong #… you can totally tell which ones are my favorites by how much I wrote xD

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21stcenturymen · 7 years ago

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Women Do Not Want to Be Raped

RATING: Mature

I want to be clear about this week’s rating. The content I’m going to reference is the worst kind of hateful misinformation, and it’s not healthy for… really, anyone to be exposed to. That said, the post itself is only mildly “mature” in content. I want men in particular to read all the way to the end, but for anyone who’s been victimized by men who spew hateful, misogynist rhetoric, this post may not be for you.

I’m going to begin by discussing the man who essentially started the “Red Pill” movement. It would be easy to call folks like Robert Fisher “garbage” or “toxic” or any of those epithets for people we wish we could block from taking up space in our minds. But there’s so much more to this than the quality of person he is. Robert Fisher is a symptom, not a cause. His belief - that women want to be raped or that there’s some magic potion (e.g. the red pill) that would make everyone see that subservience to cis-men is the right and just state of being for humanity - didn’t begin with him. It began ages ago, and for who knows what reason.

Perhaps somewhere in prehistory a dude realized that men couldn’t give birth and insisted on holding women accountable for all of humanity’s flaws to make up for it. It’s likely this jealousy is part of why Abrahamic religions latch onto the Eve story: women suffer childbirth because Eve was foolish and took the apple from the serpent. But let’s be real, here. That’s bullshit. That story was passed down through oral tradition as an allegory for having faith in the design of a creator, and inked into permanence as Eve’s sin (as opposed to Adam’s) to ensure we blame women specifically instead of just the poor schmuck who happened to be tempted first. If it’s an allegory for lacking faith, it shouldn’t matter who sinned. But as it’s clearly a tool for creating subservience, the choice of Eve as the sinner is no mistake.*

Fast forward a few millennia, and we have Return of Kings, The Spearhead (thankfully, now defunct), A Voice For Men (‘cause we’re lacking, apparently), The Red Pill, and a host of other cellar-dwelling sites that cater to our basest fears of inadequacy. If we can’t succeed with women, it’s clearly their fault, and these sites will not only tell us why, but arm us with all the tools we need to win** every internet debate about gender rights. I’m going to tell you right now, they’re wrong.

Shocking, right? Yeah, this isn’t one of those “I see where they’re coming from, but…” types of situations. These guys are wrong. Their hypotheses are flawed, their arguments contradictory, and their evidence not only lacking, but completely fabricated. It requires an advanced course in cognitive dissonance to even comprehend how these guys hold the competing thoughts they do. While I wish to encourage debate, free thought, and compassionate discourse, I will hold no quarter for out-and-out lies, distortions, and self pitying slander of half the human race. The men who run these sites are sad, pathetic men. And here’s what they do.

Men like Paul Elam take their own failings, fears, and inadequacies, align them with those of other men, and package and sell a solution - of sorts. Elam coined his ex’s dislike of him “misandry” and packaged it as an explanation for any time a woman doesn’t do whatever the hell he wants. And that’s easy, right? We take our own failings and blame them on other people as a quick way to feel better about ourselves. But it’s not a permanent one.

As a metaphor: When you want to build a house on an already-developed plot, you don’t just start building on the ruins of the previous structure, do you? Of course not. That’d be a surefire way to collapse your new structure. Elam, Fisher, and the soon-to-be-discussed Roy Den Hollander would tell you otherwise, though. You just blame your neighbors for not care-taking land they didn’t own, build on top of the ruins, and keep piling on junk until there’s the appearance of something stable. This is true both of their paper-thin arguments and their personal lives.

Admitting you’re wrong and seeking to change is the moment when you clear off the junk and fix the foundation. It sucks. Personal growth is hard and sad and disappointing at times, but the long-term result is much more structurally sound. These men sell ideas and prop up their personal lives with garbage, and it shows.

Roy Den Hollander has filed federal lawsuits over such things as NYC “Ladies Nights” and forcing women to register for the draft. He continually has his suits thrown out due to a complete lack of legal footing, and the fact the courts consistently determine he’s basing the suits on his own personal preferences. Elam started A Voice For Men as a way to pile vitriol on top of his own failings, and Fisher started the Red Pill as a way to push his completely fictional agenda for subjugating women.

They preach hate as a salve for self doubt, and for a painfully vocal number of men, it’s quite appealing. This hate is rooted in fear. The fear of being bad, of being “less than,” of not meeting the desires of others. We turn fear around as loathing of those who might reject us. This is a self defense mechanism, and a very poor one, because we just keep heaping that shit on top of an already dysfunctional foundation.

And there's a difference between playing on fears and discussing subject matter that makes people afraid. For example, when CNN, NPR, or Al Jazeera talk about the U.S. President threatening nuclear holocaust on North Korea, that's not "playing on people's fears." Though there are certainly sensationalistic ways to present it, the information itself isn't playing on pre-existing fears. There's a narcissistic, ignorant man with access to the nuclear football. As a human who enjoys existing on this planet, you should be afraid of that.

When I say "playing on fears" in reference to sites like Return of Kings and the others, I'm talking about creating news and sensation out of things you were already afraid of. Everyone is afraid of losing their job. Everyone is afraid of being emasculated and made to be subservient when we haven't given consent to do so. Everyone is afraid of feeling "less than." So, in come these hate sites, knowing you're afraid of those things, and whether your fear is legitimate or not, they already know who to blame. Convenient, isn't it?

Women taking over society isn't real, and it couldn't be even if they wanted to. And here, for the first and only time, are you allowed to compare feminists to Nazis, because if actual fucking Nazis couldn't take over the world, do you really think women or people of color who want the right to vote without being intimidated are going to accomplish what the Third Reich couldn't? And with far fewer firearms? Because, let’s face it, white men own more firearms than anyone else. Supposedly to protect themselves from… something? Trust me. Feminists, LGBTQIA folks, and people of color are not attempting to take over anything except their own peace of mind and personal safety.

Where these sites want you to take stock of all your faults, all your frailties, and all your fears, and lay the blame at women as if it's common sense to do so, I want you to use actual common sense and say, "Yeah, that's ridiculous. A forced takeover of half the planet's population is super unlikely, so I should get back to managing my own damn life."

PURPOSE: Take responsibility for your fears and failings. If you think someone’s going to ‘take something away’ from you, odds are you just fear that and the threat isn’t real. Don’t lash out in search of conflict where there isn’t any. Keep your own house in order. In fact, knock it down and fix the foundation and remember that’s your task to undertake. No one else’s.

Learn to spot bullshit. When you see news, or websites, or resources that identify a specific cause of an issue (a corporation that pollutes a reservoir or a jerk who defrauds investors and takes advantage of sick people) and they have legitimate sources to cover their asses? You can probably trust them, but always keep a watchful eye. When you see links and content that blame entire groups of people (Like FOX news blaming Muslims in general for violence or any of the sites above blaming women for… really anything) don’t just turn it down. Turn it off. Familiarize yourself with bullshit enough to spot it and refuse to give it your time or attention.

Women do not want to be raped, and if you have a friend who starts quoting Robert Fisher, Roy Den Hollander, Paul Elam, or any of their hateful acolytes saying women do want to be raped, call them out. Tell them they’re quoting hate mongers. Tell them they’re seeking to avoid blame for their own feelings of inadequacy. Tell them they’re on a dangerous slope toward true emotional annihilation and alienation. Tell them you smell their bullshit and you won’t stand for it.

Next Up: Misdirected Rage

*I’m aware most established religions and denominations of Christianity in general try to shy away from blaming Eve specifically. If your church is referring to this story as gender neutral, awesome! I understand not all believers are cut from the same cloth. This is about the many denominations and sects of the Abrahamic religions who do choose to subjugate women and use Eve as one of the many reasons why. Also, it’s just an example. Try not to get too hung up on literality.

**Does anyone ever really “win” an internet debate?

#21stcenturymen #red pill #men's rights activism #MRA #bullshit #a voice for men #original sin #EveWasFramed #personal responsibility

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mutualhighmaintenancemachin-blog · 6 years ago

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I need a fix cus I'm going down

Made the mistake of appraising myself sufficiently healthy to attend a bonfire with normal decent tax-payer type folks. Stood up too fast in my chair and blacked out completely, hit my head on concrete. When I came to i had no earthly fucking memory of having driven to the bonfire, nor could i really recall the names of the three concerned hipsters perched over my limp doughy abscessed jaundiced shit heap of a body. Told them it was a problem with blood sugar, i had forgotten to imbibe my afternoon orange juice! Translation-haven’t slept in four days, taking in roughly two hundred calories a day all in ginger ale. Meth heads opt to sustain themselves on a diet of paranoid resentment in lieu of proteins and grains. The cook gets super spun and lectures us like we’re babes about the dark leftist forces presently waging war on the masculinity of the white man-for one thing, he's convinced that jews run the porn industry and that fucking pornhub is riddled with overtures both overt and subliminal intended to brainwash white guys into identifying as weak and feminine and to associate men of color with heroism and strength. He also believes that soy causes gender dysphoria. All of these batshit crazy delusions act like stars in the broad constellation of the cooks worst dystopian fears-a workforce with no room left for traditionally male-centered leadership characteristics dominated from top-down by a host of future ladies who make their trade in creative collaboration, rather than fear and theft of other peoples ideas. Without a need for a provider, our nazi-bespectacled methamphetamine cook envisions a new sexual economy in which women will jettison their attachments to the family structure in favor of like, industrialism, i guess, and men will have no other resort but a desperate turn to cross-dressing and dick-taking and i guess maybe stitching scarves. It was at this point that i was really tempted to tell the cook something he needs to hear-if you really believe that large shadow societies are orchestrating history just cus they want to make you some dudes boyfriend, its probably cus part of you wants to be. I get that, sucking dick is a blast. if you’re terrified that you can’t compete in a post-modern job market, it might just be because you aren’t. There’s no place left for cowboys or outlaws or methcooks cus those professions only make sense in the context of an insanely violent frontier. You feel obsolete and useless because you are, but make no mistake, that hurt has nothing to do with the world everything to do with your soul being severely malnourished. I know cus mine is too! Real moral christian courage is showing up to your crucifixion with a smile on your face ready to graciously thank the romans for every nail they put through your wrist. You feel empty because your a paranoid fascist meth cook, i feel bad cus I'm a junkie. We are bad. The nazi pilots who blitzed france in two sleepless, speed-fueled nights probably felt fucking fantastic, as if they were aloft on the trade winds of history itself and their momentum across europe must have seemed like proof enough of the moral righteousness of the german cause. But then the morning comes and the meth wears off and your skin smells like piss and your back aches and you can’t stop grinding your jaw and the first wave of survivors begin to trickle out from the camps and presumably in that moment a few nazis had the epiphany-that the very same starved beaten traumatized jewish women and men and children they had aspired to extinguish from human memory were now going to tell the story of what had happened. Power loses, grace is its own kingdom, etc etc. Furthermore those german officers who managed to transition back to civilian life and start families must have experienced a very strange new parental dynamic-can you imagine a family at a dinner table and the proud head of household instructs his small son to finish his vegetables and after pausing to mull it over for a few moments his son turns to him and says Father having thought about it a great deal i don’t think ill be following your instructions-after all you were only following instructions yourself when you helped to engineer the greatest cruelty in human history! To which ostensibly the father mumbles to clear his throat and asks his wife to pass the potato salad. Not even to invoke the possibility that the Fuhrer himself Mr. Adolph Hitler probably died surrounded by a swarm of shadow people, fucking hilarious just the thought, him yelling in that distinctive manic patois of his that he’s the leader and the abeyance of his will is sacrosanct blah blah blah while the little invisible mites under his pale skin shift and swell and scratch and the shadow people dancing around his peripheral vision taunting and cajoling and ridiculing him and the absurdity of his final solution and because he didn’t know speed the way we now know speed he probably didn’t know anything about the shadow people at all from his perspective they might just as well have been the ghosts of his victims come to taunt and ridicule him in his lowest hour pointing and laughing and daring him to pull the trigger!

The same entitlement motivates the mass shooter who imagines a world full of seven billion perfect strangers as an attack on his rightful pursuit of happiness. No one will sleep with him and he can’t make sense of his place in a world built on fucking so he begins to indulge in fantasies of coercion, revenging himself on the very public space he so craved Now if our hypothetical douchebag had any pretense of self-awareness he might have looked into the possibility of adopting several dogs, and in turn coming to see his life as a story about caring unconditionally for animals. That’s a helluva life-Saint Francis got into the catholic hall of fame for doing not a whole lot more. Or perhaps he could adjust his expectations of intimacy in consideration of the countless plain-to middling-to ugly folks who are forced to come to terms with the truth early on that all of our bodies are grotesque and hideously deformed billboard advertisements for our big beautiful impossibly dense souls-come see a kernel of divine inspiration made self-aware, shimmering in the glory of creation, just two exits past the tits and chin and ankles and all the rest of our faulty parts.

Now a discerning reader(however unlikely you’d be to find one in an audience consisting of absolutely fucking nobody lol) might have already begun to detect a certain heady strain of hypocrisy in this authors conclusion. Because while I'm not much of anything the one thing i certainly am is a self-destructive drug addict. So maybe its one thing for me to make fun of the cook for his wrath-filled flu-stricken infants tantrum of a way of viewing the world, assigning to his solipsism a generation-hopping solidarity with his nazi forefathers who came before and identifying in his politics the germinal seed of fascisms future, a politics so personal and self-contained that every divorce will be debated as if it were a stand in for larger cultural decay, every morning hangover a portent of spiritual decline, the vitals of the stock market remeasured and reassessed each time someone finds on the sidewalk a loose dollar bill. Political assemblies with real largesse exclusively devoted to trolling the instagram of a nebraskan man named doug’s now ex-wife for pictures of her maui vacation with husband number two drinking mojitos on a beach with sand bleached white as bone and both of them grinning with surgical precision an opulent almost confrontational kind of public grinning Doug couldn't recall that bitch ever having felt for him and the kids off playing in the surf and well how could any concerned and conscientious citizen fail to see the basic threat to democracy that whole scene represents? Donald Trump is probably the loneliest man in the world. He’s never met another person. He spends his time wandering the halls of his head checking for reoccurrences of his own reflection, a lifetime spent pathologically re-telling the same story about how he came to be the most powerful person in the world, so that by the time he really became who he had always pretended to be, the most influential figure in the free world, he had long-since bought into his own fraud to such a great extent that even the real thing couldn’t compare. Only a selfishness and self-centeredness as grandiloquent as his could explain the mindset of the modern mass shooter and the micro-politics informing him. He confuses his head for the world and then becomes enraged when it won’t do as he wishes, cursing the rain for its cold lash against his shoulder where he’d rather there have rested warm summer glow, furious at the thought of all the people he would never meet in far-off places he would never see who never paid him any attention whatsoever. Playing peek-a-boo a little bit of cheating peer through chubby fingers arrayed like a geisha’s fan and for the first time see that objects don’t disappear without our gaze to ontologically anchor them to earth. What a hurt. Now it might be technically correct that my addiction does to my loving family what the selfishness of the mass shooter does to public space. It intrudes like an alien thing and turns the air chilly in our childhood home and it transforms the medicine cabinet into a contested territory in need of defensive fortification and now that Cassies marriage has crashed on the rocks of addiction nobody could blame her if she never allowed another addict to darken her doorstep again and there was the sight of Jan opening my trucks passenger side door and a few rigs fell out onto the floor and all the spoons in the house have one side burnt-and-bruised like a black-eye you say you got from falling down a flight of stairs despite body language that says something entirely else why is it we don’t have a single spoon in the house what ghost spends all night punching the walls full of holes

recently went to an Alanon meeting to sneak a glimpse of how the other half lives...this lady said my addiction is to loving my addict. Bawled rivers out from red raw-rubbed rubber eyes and said my addiction is to my addict Not her person or qualifier or partner but her addict. Syntax almost seeming to suggest that something about the existential plight of the addict gets her intoxicated dizzy on pain. It’s quaint though cus that sort of sentiment is for fucking rookies-guarantee you no ones crying over me like a romantic. Not anymore. My thing these days is of a distinctly more shakespearian strand of tragedy, with wittgenstein and derrida’s influences also undeniable. I’m sick now in a way where people stop crying and praying you’ll find God and change and decide instead it’d be easier to just cross the street. Schizophrenics lost in a chorus meant only just for them, apocalyptic street preachers who stand on soap boxes while reeking of shit and give voice to visions of an America not our own, an alternate dimension where european arrival at the shores of the new world stalled out somewhere halfway across the pacific ocean on a wave so tall it scraped the heavens and America grew up a nation of nomads who set their watches to the rumbling migration of herds of buffalo and not even the highest priest could dream of a more beautiful idea than that of motion, movement without cease, the only acceptable fixed still frozen property being the burial mounds where the dead went after all their motion had gone-if they could view us on the other side of the looking glass stolen away in our own personal homes they would almost certainly come to the conclusion that this place where we live is just the land of the dead, a negative photograph of everything vital and good. Who would i be to disagree though, right?

The point is anyway that some alchemical reaction of A. Mental illness and B. Amphetamine abuse has more or less stranded me in words. Verbs and nouns and adjectives and adverbs in place of sky and grass. What Fredric Jameson called the prison house of language. Where derrida’s difference goes to play for eternity, never quite meaning what it had meant to say. What shook wittgenstein speechless. The president’s rhetoric so hollow that you can almost see him suffering a kind of dementia or spiritual torpor that results from the badness of his faith. Chewing and chomping consonants and sounds till they all are made to mush and shearing syllable after syllable off the network of signification until all that’s left is one satellite pinging a distress call hello is anyone there off of its own side. It’s own side like Adam plucked Eve from his rib and said put on this dress-after they ate the fruit and God cast him/her out to walk the world alone reportedly God said have fun all alone you worthless slut. Imagine trumps final state of the union-i am very sick, i have been alone for as long as I can remember, i wish i hadn’t lied so often, i wish i had occasionally told the truth, i would trade all of it to have known just one person.

Anyways, barring that miracle of political theater, the body gets sick and dissolves while the spirit is lost in words. I’d like to die in a bathroom stall in haughville with a rig stuck in my arm and the words I'm sorry stuck at the tip of my tongue and God decides to show some compassion and makes me a deal says you were never much good to people didn’t believe in a thing but you sure could do some impressive vomiting up of nonsense words and so what ill do is your soul will dissolve and turn into ink and for the rest of eternity you’ll be a naughty joke or a half-scribbled doggerel scrawled on the wall of a piss-soaked bathroom stall in the ghetto or you could say call this number here for a good time and don’t forget to ask for large marge and nobody’d ever suspect you were trapped in there or maybe a joke like this favorite of mine about my son it goes something like Jesus Christ was a God-awful carpenter, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Christ was a God-awful, couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. Couldn't pull a nail. Christ was God-awful. Couldn’t nail his own couldn’t save a carpenter terrible couldn’t pull god-awful a terrible carpenter he couldn’t pull a nail to save his own life. I can’t pull this nail to save my own life. It’s right there sticking out of my wrist, but for whatever reason I just can’t find the right words to pull it out he was a carpenter who couldn’t pull a nail even if his life depended on it couldn't save his own life he couldn't-

For a good time call this number 1-555-555-5555 and don’t forget to ask for-

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wavemaker9 · 8 years ago

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Me: Kyle and Mel having a good close friendship that makes them both happy Also me: Make them fight and have kyle jeopardize that like everything else he loves

(it got long sorry)

So Kyle doing the cornered, ‘animal in a case’ thing with mel. Unlikely if she won't press but if it did happen that'd prolly hurt mel so much if the thing she values most about her friendship with him is not feeling judged, just feeling like a lot of her perceived flaws are accepted without question. Because I've mentioned when kyle argues back defensively, he gets nasty. Just like Austin will lash out physically if pushed hard enough, if Kyle feels cornered in a convo, even if it’s only in an attempt to help him, he will turn on them verbally to get them to back off. He's not always aware of everything (see his relays with summer/doug that he dismisses the aggressively negative behavior yet his relay with art who he's frustrated with for just not displaying that art cares in a way that kyle gets), but he's pretty good at spotting people's insecurities and then using them during heated arguments without thinking about it. He wouldn't genuinely mean anything he said, he just knows. Well, his insecurities and/or fears are being brought up and he wants out of the convo more than anything, so if he does the same to them, they'll back off too. Again, Mel not being the type to press or call out specifically because she doesn’t want it back, so it's not like Cami or something where it'd be relatively likely, but if it did ever happen, suddenly this second person ever that mel has had that hasn't judged her is listing every problem and flaw she has, searching for the topic that gets the sharpest reaction and focusing on that. I remember Khep and I discussed this with Cami and Kyle and then other stuff too (during the 2p event in Hetalr, Austin said some mean stuff to Cami because he considered all the 1p nations imposters trying to fuck with them so that plus her refusing to leave because this is her friend but like super wrong finally irritated him enough that he asked her how alone she had to be to be desperate to spend time with him. basically he hopes to never see this woman again so who cares about being polite when she won’t listen to his requests), she ended up just popping him in teh face and storming off, and I have to imagine it’d be like that at least. Mat least those first few moments of accusation and betrayal and /hurt/, there’s gotta be a surge of anger that bubbles up enough to swing at least one punch his way, yeah?

Which actually speaking of that, that might be more likely to make kyle and mel clash like that since if his mood dips hard enough he’ll also get instigatory without being provoked first. It’s another self-destruction method. He gets a mindset that he deserves punishment for fucking up so badly about something and getting beat up in a fight works for that. How does he get someone mad enough to kick his ass? Make them furious with him, make them /hate/ him. And of course he doesn’t think about long term ‘do i really want them to hate me forever? No! Will they understand i was just being the world’s biggest dick to them because i was in a low place? Probably not, especially if I don’t tell them!’ so he’ll regret it later but he’s not thinking clearly now, his brain is full of bad time thoughts right now, so that’s all he can focus on, especially since in that headspace if he /does/ consider it, his brain justifies it away that he doesn’t deserve them anyway and he’ll finally send them off which will be doing them a favor and blah blah blah

Actually actually, even when he’s not in a bad place, like if he feels someone’s holding back in a fight, even if it’s just sparring, he’ll try to push them and provoke them because when he’s angry, he’s willing to fight harder, so clearly the same must be true for them. I think it was mentioned the same is kinda true for mel and that she instigates or at least instigated stuff with austin a lot in the hope it’d get him to fight her. He’s very much teh same. If he can piss them off, they’ll actually fight and that’ll be more fun than them going easy on him (I had this thought because of the taz xover since griffin had said avi was so nice he went easy on the thb when training against them and that’d annoy kyle quickly. You’re my friend and I love you but if you don’t fight me with your all that’s at best a weird unneeded secret about what you’re capable of and at worst an insult in that you think I can’t handle it, and i won’t stand for either. Gimme your hardest punch, damnit. )< ). He’s usually less emotive and fight-or-flight-y there, though, so he’ll be more careful about what he says in that he won’t aim for the comments he knows would cut deep, but he’ll reach for a lot of more shallow careless insults then and that can still get irritating very fast.

Anyway, Kyle is always super regretful and apologetic afterwards once his fight or flight reaction eases, but the problem is that he's already said those things and cannot take them back. He can apologize to mel all he wants and assure her he doesn't believe anything he said before and she shouldn't either, but he still said them. Even if mel recognized at the time that this was him being aggressively defensive, that doesn't ease the hurt of still hearing it. If she thinks about it logically, she could probably figure it didn’t mean anything and was him just being a childish asshole, but it’s hard to be 100% objective with this sort of thing. He can tell her he didn’t mean it but that doesn’t undo the hurt she felt when he said those things. It's something I never want to make canon for any of kyle’s relays because he does seriously like fuck up these good things of trust he has and that can’t easily be undone, but it’s always interesting to consider. Pushing away people he loves is something he's very good at.

Also, the one person that doesn’t tend to happen with is ivan and I think that’s very much a case of ivan never wanting to make kyle mad so he’d back off before things got that far. If he sees either of them are genuinely frustrated, he’ll back off until things cool down or switch to seeming more accommodating so that kyle doesn’t feel the need to fight as much. Besides, ivan probably would forgive kyle even if kyle said some mean shit. There might be a limit but Ivan’s super good at forgiving kyle. On the other hand, kyle would do the same if it was reverse and ivan said some super mean shit. Honestly, no matter who said it, kyle would 100% forgive the person eventually if he even remotely liked them. again, kyle took like months after being cheated on and manipulated in an old rp to even consider for longer than 3 days that maybe he should leave the relay. you have to /try/ to push him away. He wouldn’t really get past the hurt either, but it wouldn’t be a betrayal of trust or anything like I feel it would be if he was the one attacking them. Doug has gotten him really used to constant criticism and just blatant insults and has conditioned him to see that being ‘honest’, so if another friend spent 5 minutes suddenly tearing into him. Like it’d hurt and crash his mood but he’d never blame /them/. It’s /his/ fault for being so shitty. If he were better, they wouldn’t have anything to talk about, he can’t be mad at them for telling the truth, what kind of asshole does that? (see him when anyone who /isn’t/ a friend suddenly criticizes him; he’s the kind of asshole who does that) And like, he rarely fully trusts that a person 100% genuinely likes him so hearing someone suddenly flip and be overly aggressive to a hurt point like. He knew that was coming, he’s surprised they didn’t reveal how annoyed they are with him sooner. It’d never come back to the other person; it’d shake the relationship up badly enough but, unlike the reverse in at least some cases, it’d get back to where they were, and if the person showed enough effort to apologize, he’d treat them and view them exactly as he did before, no blame on them. Again, though, the exception to this is if he didn’t already like them before hand in which case it falls to the grudge level. As i’ve mentioned, poor ludwig in hetalr criticized kyle once during a bad mood time (and that time it was just genuine issues not even just aggressive argumentative callouts) and kyle has never forgiven him.

Other stray thoughts! If he did end up doing that to mel, not just mel fucking pissed off at him, but micha when he finds out what kyle did. Two friendships one stone, whoops. Micha probably even worse? Like Mel’s probably not happy with kyle but suddenly dealing with a lot of self-critical thoughts again. Micha wasn’t the target though, not dealing with that, just full on ‘how dare you make my sister feel like that’ anger. Remember that ‘bitch was talking shit, now bitch can’t talk no more’ ask micha had a while ago? That. Micha 100% killing kyle brown, fucking finally. Even if mel recognized why kyle did that and eventually got even partially past that, i feel like micha wouldn’t ease up on that even after some time because that wasn’t at him, that was at mel. He liked Kyle, a part of him still wants to like him, but that man hurt his sister terribly and so Kyle can suck a fucking big one.

Also, less expected, but like. austin would def kind of side with mel, too. Mainly because he’s just so annoyed by kyle constantly, it’s very much the burr vs hamilton ‘i just want him to stop talking and acting so confident, that’s what i’m here for’ thing, but also. Like in family au especially, kyle gives /a lot/ of shit to austin. Like /a lot/. I’ve made at least a couple posts about how kyle knows how to get under austin’s skin and knows austin doesn’t have the strength to get him back so he fucks with austin constantly. Austin’s in a bad combination zone in that he’s family so teasing/being a dick as a form of showing love is acceptable to kyle, and austin’s cold and selfish personality makes him seem like a dick to kyle + he’s not trying by kyle’s standards so it falls under ‘the asshole has it coming’ category. Austin tries hard, just like mel, or kyle, or anyone else. It’s not always obvious and there are some times sure where he’s not trying as hard as he could, but more often than not, austin actually is doing his best to just manage here. he’s not an overachiever or anything. when he cares, it’s barely and surprising, but just because he’s not putting his all into it every second doesn’t mean he isn’t trying at all. But he’s cold, he’s selfish, he’s asocial and solitary, he’s not charismatic or kind or loyal or empathetic, he’s passive and he takes for granted the things /kyle/ sees as austin’s best assets in life (his family), he’s all the things kyle looks down on, and there aren’t many things kyle /does/ feel like he can look down on, so kyle looks downon them extra hard. I said how kyle is very much the ‘as long as you’re trying your best, that’s fine!’ person, but the catch to that is that /he/ has to accept that you’re trying your best. Just like how he’ll not always catch on that someone loves him as much as they do because they’re not showing it in ways he recognizes as affectionate or caring, he also is clueless to the idea of someone trying in a way he doesn’t recognize. It’s really something i guess most if not all teh australias show, but while with aus and aud, that conflicts with people like mel, for kyle, he wouldn’t get aus or aud. That’s why he totally gets mel is trying, it’s very much in the same way he is. But austin’s trying is by being reserved and proper, and it doesn’t make sense so clearly austin just /isn’t/ trying. Kyle is very aware of only the things he can recognize. He understands that people have different views and ways of handling things like scientists understand how the brain works. He knows it’s technically there, and he understands parts of that to a point when given the chance to learn, but if you really look at how much he gets that, it’s surprising how little he actually understands for how open minded he tries to be sometimes. Which is another thing i don’t like about him. I gushed before and said i was too hard on him but right now nah i remember why i don’t like him, i’m probably about right in how hard i am on him.

Anyway, austin deals with kyle’s shit constantly and, as i’ve mentioned in the hp au talk, he’s well aware that kyle’s charisma and charm and loyalty and people-pleasing nature all make people like him more. He’s obnoxious and irresponsible and reckless and instigatory and has about a billion double standards that are shitty as fuck, but kyle tries to make friends and is passionate enough to win people to his side, so people tend to not acknowledge kyle’s shitty behavior as much when he’s an asshole to austin. They're easily swayed by the ‘he was an asshole and had it coming. Besides, we’re cousins so it’s fine’ argument. He knows Kyle has his ‘good’ sides, but he also is aware of kyle’s negatives, sometimes seemingly more so than kyle is. Which makes the ‘austin’s not trying’ conclusion kyle reaches even worse because austin’s trying specifically to keep his more negative sides on lock, like his bad temper. Kyle lets that shit run free and then has the nerve to criticize austin for not trying?? And I don’t think austin would be annoyed in any cases where mel and micha befriend kyle. Again, he expects that, and while mel and micha are his best friends, he doesn’t fully see them as such and certainly not in a ‘tehy’re /my/ friends, you can’t have them’ way. They’re adults, if they want to befriend kyle great. Maybe they can distract him so he stops trying to hang out with austin all the time, that’d be nice. But austin probably mentioning that to mel when she and kyle are first going to meet. She’s an adult and can choose her own friends but kyle is (“objectively” austin says which he isn’t but to austin he is) terrible and she should have all the information and understand how fucking annoying kyle is sometimes before she meets him. Of course he’s bad at clearly listing all the reasons why with examples, and he complains about everything, so it probably comes off as a ‘oh he’s just annoyed because kyle’s all energetic and fun and austin hates fun’ thing.

But then kyle reveals the shitty child he is underneath and it turns out austin was actually somewhat right? I also think, if mel was confronted by just how aggressively hurtful kyle can be in his worse moods, that’d surprisingly not be an ‘I told you so’ moment from austin (provided she didn’t make a huge deal of dismissing any early comments he made. If she did, she’d get a little ‘i told you so’ then). Because again, people being charmed by kyle happens all the fucking time, it’s not their fault they made a shitty friend. If he wasn’t asocial and totally aware of how bad to be around kyle can be, he’d probably like him more too. It’s not an ‘i told you so’ thing at this point, it’s just a ‘finally someone else sees what a jerk he can be sometimes thank god. Unfortunate it was from him messing things up again but silver linings and all that’. Austin that’s a silver lining for you, not for mel, cmon. Though on the other hand, It might be an ‘i told you so’ at /kyle/. Mel didn’t do anything wrong by befriending him, but austin’d absolutely use this as a ‘hey, get off your high fucking horse and acknowledge that you’re a piece of shit!’ thing which is relatively ironic coming from austin. I mean, just because austin’s trying doesn’t make him any less of a piece of shit too, since he doesn’t actually regret a lot of the hurtful things he does to people and, as mentioned with the cami thing, he’s willing to do hurtful things if he feels they’re necessary to his best interests, he just also doesn’t pretend like they don’t exist. Austin thinks the positives of his personality outweigh the bad, sure, but he still has some bad he knows about and tries to handle and he’s also fully aware not everyone would view all those positives as positive. He knows he has a bad temper so he avoids things that irritate him and 90% of the time it’s /kyle/ pushing him into those situations that set him off. Kyle should recognize by now how aggressive he himself gets when defensive, how much he can hurt people, but does he try to avoid those cases? No, of course not. That would take being responsible and mature! Half the time, kyle purposefully tries to provoke people as some self-destruction attempt that he doesn’t care about dragging someone else down with him on.

I think i’ve mentioned before that this is why i prefer austin to kyle despite, weighing the pros and cons of their personalities, how kyle would more likely be the ‘better’ person than austin is. Kyle has a lot more pros and they are to a far higher extreme, but the negatives are equallly as low and he ignores them completely. Refuses to acknowledge them, very irresponsible about that. Even when called out, he gets dismissive or instigatory or that ‘can’t you take a joke’ bullshit that I think I still hate most about his personality. Austin is a dick but he’s usually aware of it, knows he’s not a total victim in life. He’s more responsible and part of that is accepting bad behavior in oneself. Changing bad behavior is usually the best option, but neither boy does that. Austin at least accepts and acknowledges it and tries not to go out of his way to let it affect others. He’s polite in most cases if he has to socialize with someone, and besides that he does try to stay on his own most of the time. That’s also, again, the asocialness, but he sees it as a win win for everyone. I’m going to be annoyed by them, they probably won’t appreciate me, it’s best we keep to ourselves. Kyle hides it before springing it on someone and, again, I know that’s not 100% his fault, it’s very much a side effect of his childhood and a nasty combination of disorders he’s struggling to deal with, but that doesn’t make it 0% his fault either. Cool motive, still murder, except not murder of course, just being an asshole, but i still very much like that phrase for that kinda thing. It’s great that he has a reason to explain why he feels the need to behave like that, but he’s not unaware. It may feel hard or impossible not to choose that option, like, say, staying up late again for 2 weeks in a row when I definitely know I need more than ~5 hours of sleep a night- but that’s still me failing to go to sleep on time. i might have to fight myself on it some nights, but i’m still making that choice, y’know?

In most au’s, someone points it out to him at some point, and he refuses to change that bad behavior and worse, it’s often times not even a ‘i’m trying but I can’t’ situation, he just doesn’t want to acknowledge another flaw of his and that is. That’s why he drives me up a fucking wall sometimes. He always tries to portray himself as super friendly and understanding and accepting and good, he tries so hard to be good. like i said, when he cares, it’s so much and over the top and to the point of sacrificing at a moment’s notice, but he can get a holier than thou mentality on morals and yet either isn’t aware enough or just doesn't care to see both the attempts other may make using methods he’s not used to as well as how necessary it is to address and try to change his own major and friendship-threatening flaws. I have my own high standards for others that I myself don’t meet, but I don’t fuck over people who don’t meet those standards either, y’know? I go ‘maybe we’re both shit’ and I move on with my day. He’s literally the ‘when he’s good he’s great’ line except instead it ends with ‘but when he’s bad i wanna kick his fucking ass’

#ignore this #amusing muse musings #aus being a dick #kyle being the biggest dick

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flauntpage · 6 years ago

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We’ve Devolved To Being Dopes

Just like fucking clockwork!

Just like fucking clockwork we’re back to inhabiting a world where dipshits hate the Eagles because the notion of serenity in their lives* doesn’t exist.

Angelo Cataldi:

The coach must know by now that there is nothing more important to fans than the daily updates on the health of the stars, and especially Wentz. If the media asked Pederson 10 different ways to assess the availability of the young quarterback, he owed it to the fans to answer every variation of the same question.

Instead, he lashed out on two separate occasions at perfectly legitimate inquiries, actually parroting agent Drew Rosenhaus on Sunday by snapping “Next question,” over and over to reporters who were trying to find out whether Wentz had been cleared to play. This is not the understanding coach of the first two seasons – not even close.

Over that period, I had to ask Pederson countless tough questions during his weekly visits on my show, and he handled every one with a respect for the fans that he had demonstrated throughout his entire career, both as a player, assistant and head coach. What has changed? The only obvious answer is that success may be spoiling one of the class acts in sports.

After seven months of pure adulation – including the parade, national talk-show appearances, and even a book tour – Pederson may have lost his appreciation for the passion of this city. Wentz will not play the season opener. Everybody knows that. Heck, the first opponent, Atlanta, put the report of Nick Foles starting Thursday’s game on the home page of its website.

Pederson was delusional if he thought he could keep Wentz’s status a secret for an entire week leading up to the game. If Pederson needs a reminder of how things work in Philadelphia sports, here it is: The fans always come first. The media is doing its job. Now do yours. Answer the questions.

We’re, if I’m not mistaken, still more than a day away from the Eagles kicking off their SUPER BOWL DEFENSE on a night where they’re going to raise a big fucking banner and celebrate something the team and city has never enjoyed before. They’ll probably lose. For starters, the -2 line sucks, and defending champions typically lay an egg in these emotion-filled openers– see the Fat Man’s drubbing of the Patriots last year as a recent example. But an 18-point output and season-opening loss hasn’t even happened yet and we’re already, collectively, shitting on the champs.

Make no mistake, our media has no clue how to cover sports without pandering to the lowest common denominator by fomenting fear and outrage. Cataldi is, obviously, one of the biggest offenders. But then there’s also fellow dipshit, Poop Head Marcus Hayes, whose whiny piss drivel posited that Pederson has already reached his breaking point.

The beat writers – who oh so badly want to be Woodward but would struggle to comb Bernstein’s hair (or their own, for that matter) – treat covering the Eagles like a life mission rather than the job of entertainment reporter, which is actually what every sports reporter, writer, host, pundit, blogger, and podcaster is. And while it’s commendable to have that sort of dedication to the craft, in most instances it represents a chasmic disconnect from the audience, which cares little-to-none about the intrigue surrounding the painfully obvious starting quarterback decision, out of which the local media expectedly got more than a month of mileage from. I was there on the day training camp opened and watched in AWE as more than 30 writers sat around for three hours, including a literal tent of NBC Sports personalities and pundits (I know because I was in it), watching 10-10-10 drills, just waiting to try out their new refrain on Doug Pederson: When will Carson be cleared? And then they’d all go on to write the same article, or produce the same live shot, every day, for the next 40 days. Even Jesus would’ve gotten bored with this rote monotony of sameness.

They’d remix the verse 50 times over that stretch until its beat was so familiar that you’d just turn off the radio when you heard it. As expected, they lost sight of the forest through gorgeous redwood that is the franchise quarterback, while the fan base yearned for something… better.

But no, we’re not better. This town doesn’t know how to cover a winner. Celebrate it, sure, but cover it, no. Our media appeals to its worst negative instincts and finds news ways to invent controversy where none exists. It’s all part of the big circle-jerk of sports, which is undoubtedly well chronicled in Mark Leibovich’s new book, Big Game, which shines light on NFL owners and the ecosphere of the league.** Cataldi can systematically shred Pederson over… things… and then welcome him on his radio show, on the flagship network of the team, built around the institution of the franchise itself, without even thinking twice about how disingenuous the whole charade is.

Make no mistake, I was the biggest hater of Doug Pederson prior to, oh, say, last December. But his balls grew on me, and eventually swelled to a Lombardi Trophy. He won’t be above criticism, and perhaps was a little out of line the other day, but can you blame him when faced with the same nonsense day after day?

The Eagles haven’t even started the season yet and, right on schedule, the media has already reverted to their natural state: shit-stirring. They don’t know how to be better.

*Public-facing, as even our resident chuckleheads can’t feign true outrage anymore.

**Leibovich’s book This Town, which goes deep inside Washington to dismantle the incestuous nature of the nation’s capital, is one of the best, most insightful and funny books I’ve read. His ability to cut to the heart of absurd characters is unmatched, and he undoubtedly does this to NFL owners in this new book. I’d recommend you go read this.

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