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partystoragechest · 1 year ago

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A story of romance, drama, and politics which neither Trevelyan nor Cullen wish to be in.

Canon divergent fic in which Josephine solves the matter of post-Wicked Hearts attention by inviting four noblewomen to compete for Cullen's affections. In this chapter, Trevelyan tries to find Dagna's delivery.

(Masterpost. Beginning. Previous entry. Next entry. Words: 3,457. Rating: all audiences, except for a swear.)

Chapter 12: Unloading Baggage

Trevelyan cascaded through the bowels of Skyhold, sent with special purpose by Dagna. There was a delivery arriving this afternoon, and by the Ancestors, her order had better be there!

Trevelyan had optimistically come this way because she thought—incorrectly—that it might be quicker. Absolutely not. Beneath the main hall, Skyhold wound itself in circles, a grand labyrinth of servants’ quarters, kitchens, larders, and washrooms.

A kind laundress pointed her out of one such room, along a better-suited corridor. It was down this route that Trevelyan finally found her way into the particular kitchen that she had been promised had an external door.

She had hoped to confirm this with the staff working there—but when she wandered into the room, it was remarkably empty. All except for one elven woman, hunched over two jars.

“Excuse me,” Trevelyan said, pointing to the door across the room, “is that the way out?”

The woman looked up. She had funnily-chopped blond hair, incorrectly-laced clothes that did not look like a worker’s wear, and a grin that could only be described as wicked.

Her eyes flicked to the door, then back. “Yeah?”

“Thank you, I will—”

Maintaining eye contact, the woman picked up one of the jars—labelled ‘salt’—and poured its entire contents into the other—labelled ‘sugar’. Trevelyan blinked, mouth hanging open.

“Um…”

“You didn’t see nothing, yeah?” the woman said, a mischeivous glint in her eye.

Trevelyan smiled. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.”

With a cackle, the woman slipped into the shadows. It was this that made Trevelyan realise she’d seen her before—up on the mezzanine, during the gala. She was suddenly very glad she hadn’t eaten anything that night.

Regardless, she had her answer for the door. Trevelyan pushed it open, to the welcome sight of gleaming sunlight, shining down on Skyhold’s courtyard.

Specifically, the stable area, which the kitchen connected to via a small flight of stairs. Trevelyan hesitated to journey down them; their height gave a good vantage of the storeroom entrance below—and the caravan of carts encircling it.

The quietness of the kitchens was at once explained. It seemed that all hands were on deck, scurrying to and fro like industrious insects, helping to unload barrels and crates and sacks. Skyhold had many mouths to feed, and large stores to fill. Finding a small shipment for the Arcanist in the midst of this commotion was no easy task.

But Trevelyan endeavoured to find it anyway. She squeezed her way through the crowd, to arrive at the foot of one of the carts.

A human man stood atop it, well-built, no doubt from many years at this craft—for he slung boxes and barrels into waiting hands like it were an art form.

“Serah!” Trevelyan called, to catch his occupied attention. “Do you know if any of these are for the Arcanist, Dagna?”

The man slid a crate toward a servant with pinpoint accuracy, and puffed out air. “Sorry, miss, not seen that name”—he passed off another box—“and you’re not likely to find it here. Better off asking your quartermaster once all this is unloaded.”

“I suspected as much. Thank you, regardless!”

Trevelyan retreated as he prepared another sack, yet noted when she did that no one came to claim it. Though as many of Skyhold’s staff as could be spared were aiding the delivery, there were about a dozen carts, all piled high. Only so much was possible.

“Would you like me to take that?” she asked.

The man shrugged. “You’re not busy?”

“Finding that shipment, yes—and it seems the quickest way to do so is by helping things along!”

The man chuckled, and hefted the sack towards her. “Can always use more willing hands! How much you carry?”

Very little, since leaving the Circle. Trevelyan certainly hoped her old strength would still remain, but acknowledged privately that she might need a little… assistance.

A week ago she’d never have dared to cast anything in such a public setting, but her work with the Arcanist had somewhat relaxed her attitude. And so she snuck a hand behind her back, and traced a rune against her spine. The energy of the Fade found her little opening, and trickled on through.

The old strength returned, and more. Trevelyan clapped her hands around the sack, and with ease, lifted it onto her shoulders.

“Take it to the storerooms,” the man instructed her, “should be someone down there to say where to drop it.”

Simple enough task. The confluence of other servants would guide her where she needed to go. Weaving betwixt them, Trevelyan exchanged a smile with every passing face. Maker, it felt good to shed the tedium of idle nobility!

Except one of those faces, she recognised. Trevelyan dropped her sack, and turned.

“Lady Samient?” she sputtered. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be meeting the Commander?”

Lady Samient smiled. “We just parted. I saw you from afar. Lady Trevelyan, what are you doing here?”

“Oh!” Trevelyan patted her hands against her smock, to wipe off the dust. “Well, there’s a shipment I’m hoping to locate, but it doesn’t get found until the entire delivery is stored and catalogued, it seems. So, I thought I might help.”

She tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. Like it was actually common for noblewomen to randomly muck in.

But Lady Samient appeared unfazed: “Do you need help?”

She couldn’t seriously be offering..?

“No, no, it’s quite all right,” Trevelyan tried to say—but Samient was already loosening her cuffs, and rolling up her sleeves. “You needn’t trouble yourself.”

“No trouble,” said Samient, untying a leather strap from her wrist, to pull her hair into some kind of rudimentary ponytail—though cleverly without unveiling her ears. She positioned herself by the sack. “Lift on trois.”

Shaking off her bewilderment, Trevelyan accepted that she was not to win this argument, and thus, on three, did lift.

Truly, she could have carried it alone, but she did not wish to reject Lady Samient’s offer—especially as the Lady turned out to be quite the capable worker. The descent into the stores was made with ease, despite how narrow and dimly-lit the steps were. Endless, too—they journeyed far further down than Trevelyan had even for the Undercroft. How deep into its mountain plateau did Skyhold burrow?

Eventually, they reached the bottom. No sunlight here—it was a large, torch-lit hall, of which Trevelyan could barely see the other side—if not due to the distance, then due to the amount of containers already consuming the place. Skyhold was stocked floor-to-ceiling. Even the stores at the Circle hadn’t been this well-equipped.

Following directions given by waiting pantlers, they found where they were to deposit their load. Job done, they braved the lengthy climb.

“Did you do this sort of thing, at the Circle?” Samient asked, to pass the time. “You said you worked in their storerooms.”

“Not this, per se,” Trevelyan admitted. “Well, sometimes I moved things—but I was more involved with taking stock and keeping ledgers.”

“Like the quartermaster.”

“Like the quartermaster’s assistant.”

Samient chuckled. “You seem to do a trade in being an assistant.”

Trevelyan smiled. “Stick to what you know.”

Emerging onto the surface, she found herself particularly empathetic towards the reluctance of dwarves in Orzammar—what ought to be gentle sunlight burned into her retinas, glaring and harsh. Blinking it back, she turned to Lady Samient:

“Thank you for your help. I won’t intrude upon your time any further,” she said, despite Samient being the one to have offered it in the first place.

Lady Samient glanced at the carts, still plenty full. “I am not so pathetic that one measly sack would put me at rest,” she replied. “Come, allons-y.”

In a feat of industriousness that put Trevelyan to shame, Samient strode up to a cart, and awaited her next assignment. Trevelyan hurried after her.

She could not help but wonder (for the Baroness had put her in mind) what could be the reason for Lady Samient’s willingness toward such manual labour. Her sheer comfort with such a menial task, and the lack of concern over how it might reflect upon her social image, was all terribly curious.

They were the sort of traits that, perhaps—were the rumours true—might belong to a woman born of a servant; who did not have that haughtiness of high breeding that saw them think themselves better than lifting a barrel. Perhaps that was why, instead of the title that ought to be her birthright—Duchess—she went by the lesser Lady.

But Trevelyan hardly cared from who or what or where Lady Samient originated. Because, regardless of the cause, Trevelyan quite liked this side of her.

“Ey up, you’ve got a recruit!” the deliveryman called, upon their arrival. “Maker’s breath, you ought to be here every week, if you can multiply like that. Here.” He rolled a barrel towards them, and stopped it with his foot. “This do ya?”

“Thank you,” said Samient. She directed Trevelyan to, “take that end.”

Un, deux, trois—up. With scarce strain or struggle, they hauled the barrel to the stores. And the next, and the next. Indeed, they proved quite the formidable pair—a modicum of practice under their metaphorical belts meant that each subsequent task was completed faster than the last.

They were able, even, to loosen their focus, and communicate not about what steps to take or when to drop, but of people and scandal and gossip:

“Is he a mage as well?” Lady Samient asked, upon hearing of Trevelyan’s acquaintance with Dorian.

“Yes, he is,” she confirmed.

Samient hummed. “And where have I heard the name Pavus before?”

“Noble house in Tevinter,” Trevelyan said, “part of the magisterium.”

Samient’s eyebrows flicked upward. “Well, if you’re not quite interested in the Commander, you could do far worse than that.”

“Oh, no,” Trevelyan laughed, “I’m certain he’d be quite flattered, but I’m afraid he doesn’t like women.”

“Oh. How rude!”

“No, no—I mean, he likes men.”

“Oh.” Samient rolled her eyes at herself. “Of course. I see how that would be something of an obstacle.”

Trevelyan quite agreed. “Yes—call me an optimist, but I would prefer my future husband to actually want to marry me.”

Lady Samient did not, as Trevelyan had expected (and hoped), titter at this comment. Instead, her vision trailed across the courtyard, to somewhere behind Trevelyan.

Following it, the curious Trevelyan found a rather disappointing sight. No wonder Samient’s face had soured—there was a group of soldiers loitering near the carts, whispering and laughing about something they apparently found uproariously funny.

That would be innocent enough, if not for the fact their eyes kept flicking in the Ladies’ direction, accompanied by what Trevelyan could only assume were supposed to be subtle points.

“How childish,” Lady Samient scoffed.

Trevelyan rolled her eyes. “Pay them no mind—it must be a good sign! Thedas must be saved, if they have the time to be doing this.”

The remark put a smirk back on Samient’s face, and they returned to their cart—which, thanks to their labour and others’, was nearly bare.

“Are those louts even helping?” Lady Samient asked the deliverer, as he skittered a small crate towards her.

He glanced at the soldiers, and clicked his tongue. “No. Here for the show, I s’pose. Heard ‘em laughing about some ‘noble skirts’ playing pretend at being working folk.”

Lack of creativity aside, it struck Trevelyan that only she was in a skirt, and that it was a plain smock—so the insult did not quite apply.

“Don’t see any nobles ‘round here, though,” continued the deliveryman, quite obliviously, “but let ‘em play, if they are. So long as they’re doing the work, who gives a toss?”

The Ladies chuckled, exchanging a look, as the deliverer went in search of something for Trevelyan to carry.

“Go,” she told Samient, “do not be idle on my account.”

“You’re certain?”

“Of course—we do not wish to be accused of playing pretend, after all.”

Lady Samient laughed, with devious and wicked joy that Trevelyan quite shared. She dutifully parted, off to the stores once more. Trevelyan turned, to collect the sack the man had dropped for her.

A hand fell upon it. Gloved in black, and sudden enough to startle her. She looked to the arm to which it belonged—and then to the man whom that arm belonged to.

The Commander stared back at her.

(And beside him, a small platoon of sheepish-looking soldiers).

“Forgive me,” he said, releasing his grasp. “I hadn’t realised. Take it.”

There was a growling sort of undercurrent in his speech; a shortness, far more pronounced than even when he had scolded Lady Montilyet. Someone, it seemed, was in trouble.

Trevelyan smiled. “No, no,” she told him, “it’s yours.”

With a nod—again, more curt than usual—the Commander hauled up the sack, and slung it into the waiting arms of a soldier.

“We are all the Inquisition,” he lectured, “and instead of aiding our cause, you mock those who do. Save those barbs for the enemy. We work as one.”

To Trevelyan’s great satisfaction, each soldier was saddled with cargo and sent marching to the stores, with the Commander’s disapproving stare burning into their backs. She could not help but smile.

“I apologise for their conduct,” said the Commander.

Or lack thereof. Trevelyan shook her head. “Quite all right. I do not care for the opinions of those who do not know me.” Like his, for example.

“Very well.” He hesitated, as if mulling over his words. “May I ask, are you… well?”

That imperious air sloughed from him once more, and left only the tenderness of their previous meeting. In that moment, Trevelyan recalled the magic she had cast upon herself, and felt it still, quietly coursing below the surface. Yet, nothing on the Commander’s face suggested he had sensed it.

“I am fine,” she assured him. Again.

The sudden thud of an apple-crate beside them was a welcome distraction, as the deliveryman announced, “That’s the last of it.”

Though Trevelyan reached for it, the Commander took up the handles first. “Allow me,” he said.

Trevelyan would have protested—the soldiers’ mockery had not left her so fragile that she could not lift a box—but she had not the chance. For, out of the corner of her eye, she could approximate the shape of Lady Samient, observing them from afar.

“Twice in one day, Commander,” the Lady purred, strutting closer, “to what do we owe this pleasure?”

She spoke her words like honey, moved her body like silk. It was quite at odds with the plainness and practicality Trevelyan had seen of her during the last half-hour. Perhaps she had not been lying about her time with the Commander, and he responded well to such affectations.

Or perhaps not. For the Commander did not respond at all to this velvety question, muttering instead, “I should, ah, get this to the storeroom.” Entertaining not even another word from either of them, he fled.

Though Trevelyan was quite amused by this, Samient appeared rather bemused. She fixed Trevelyan with a peculiar stare, that Trevelyan almost interpreted as suspicion, until she realised that his presence, to Samient, remained a mystery.

“Well, since he shall not deign to explain himself, I shall,” Trevelyan told her. “The Commander was here to scold his soldiers. Quite furiously, too.”

Lady Samient’s mouth sank into a smile. “Ah, I see. Good. As they deserve.”

“A shame you missed it.”

“Yes, but unlike them, I was far too busy working.”

Trevelyan chuckled, and rested herself against the cart. Its bed lay bare, as did those of its brethren. For that, she felt they had quite earnt a break, yet the bustle did not cease—she noted plenty of staff still to-ing and fro-ing, fetching more barrels and crates and chests. Except—these came from the kitchens.

“You take things from Skyhold, too?” she asked the deliveryman.

He was perched on the side of the cart, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Aye,” he said. “Sometimes they have deliveries for us, but usually it’s the empty bits we take back, and fill ‘em up again.”

“How often do you come?” Lady Samient wondered.

“Every week, supposedly—but the Maker has other ideas sometimes. Got delayed this week by weather. No problem, though; I hear you’ve got stores enough to last months.”

Sounded about right to Trevelyan. Any defensible castle did, just in case the enemy ever tried to starve you out.

Lady Samient hummed. “All sounds very efficient. Do they not worry about something untoward sneaking in through these deliveries, though? Seems like you could fit a man in one of those barrels.”

She wasn’t wrong. You could certainly fit a man. Or a Trevelyan. If things ever got too dire, she might squeeze herself into one of those things, and be shipped out on the next delivery to… wherever these carts went to.

But the delivery man shrugged. “I s’pose they check’em. You’d have to ask the soldiers.”

Tsk. There went that plan.

And, as if that weren’t enough disappointment, it seemed the mere mention of soldiers summoned movement in her periphery. Their aforementioned tormentors trudged on up, out from the stores, tails between their legs. But without their Commander’s instruction, they seemed quite at a loss for what to do next.

“Such idleness,” whispered Lady Samient, apparently of the same mind as Trevelyan, “more the sort I would expect from those work-shy nobility.”

Trevelyan laughed. “How fortunate we are not—”

She stopped, on noticing nearby a maid, huffing and puffing and red in the face, attempting to roll an empty barrel towards a cart—entirely by herself. All it took was one wordless glance at Lady Samient, and the two were traipsing off in her direction.

“Do you need help?” Trevelyan asked the maid.

“Oh—yes, please! Thank you, miss,” she replied, releasing her quarry into their capable hands. Though grateful, she fixed them with a curious stare. “Sorry, but... you’re the Ladies here to see the Commander, ain’t you?”

Lady Samient raised an eyebrow. “What of it?”

“Nothing, your Ladyship! Well, you’re such an ‘elp, and—you know, there was a lot of sugar in that delivery.” The maid waited to see their faces change, but the Ladies’ expressions spoke only of confusion. “Well, we need a lot in, you see. Because the Commander—he has something of a sweet tooth, is all.”

Perhaps that was where his sudden sweetness had come from. “Good to know,” said Samient, “thank you.”

“’Course, your Ladyships.”

Armed with this newfound knowledge, they prepared to haul the barrel away—but Trevelyan hesitated. She considered herself for a moment, and whether or not she owed loyalty to the little prankster in the kitchen, or the kind woman she’d just met. It wasn’t a hard choice.

“Excuse me,” she whispered, “just before the cook uses any of that sugar—perhaps a little taste test, may be in order. Your kitchen had a rather impish visitor, earlier.”

Though the maid seemed almost bewildered for a moment, and Trevelyan worried she had misspoken, her face soon resolved into recognition, then annoyance. “Oh, that Sera!”

Trevelyan recalled the name—Dagna had mentioned it on a few occasions. From the description she’d been given and what Trevelyan had caught her doing, she safely assumed that they were one and the same.

Leaving the maid to deal with her mischief, Trevelyan seized her side of the barrel. With Lady Samient’s aid, and practised ease, they hefted it up, and paraded it past the loitering group of soldiers. One bravely asked if they needed help.

The answer was no. And a scathing look.

***

Ser Morris delivered—in the literal sense. Hours after she’d left, Trevelyan raced back to the Undercroft, an intricate little chest in her hands.

Dagna was surprised to see her: “I won’t lie, I kind of thought you just quit for the day.”

But Trevelyan was quite able to explain, and Dagna was satisfied that she had used her time with noble purpose. It did help that finally seeing her order put the Arcanist in something of a good mood.

She placed it upon a workbench, and with great reverence, opened the chest. Even Trevelyan recognised what was inside.

“New enchanting tools,” Dagna said, “straight from the finest smiths in Orzammar. With these, I can do things a little more delicately. Which means the time for theory is over—tomorrow, we enchant!”

Trevelyan grimaced.

Tomorrow she was with the Commander.

#cullen rutherford #cullen x trevelyan #commander cullen #unwanted #unwanted fic #i keep getting in my head about this fic #like theres been so little cullen so far because we were in the 'two leads seeing each other across rooms' stage #and im like idk is this boring #im writing chapters the length of my university dissertation for bag moving scenes lol #but at the end of the day you write fics for yourself first and i'm having fun #posting this is my way of actually committing to writing the whole damn thing lmaoo #edit 25/9/24: this was the real challenge. i knew when i first wrote it that one day i'd have to streamline it. today is that day

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thatnewweeb · 4 months ago

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Childhood Sweethearts | Bakugo Katsuki

Summary | You moved to America when you were young, having to leave behind your childhood sweetheart. After moving back to Japan, you'll find out if things have changed between you two

Content | Fluff, honestly I can't think of any warnings for this so let me know if you see anything that needs a warning

Word Count | 1.7k+

A/N | I love the idea of Bakugo being in love with someone through his whole life, I have no idea why. At the time of posting, I wrote this forever ago

It had been almost 5 whole years since you moved away. You missed home. It wasn't like you'd wanted to move away in the first place, but your dad's job took you away from Japan all the way to America.

Finally, at 18 years old, you finally convinced your parents to allow you to move home. Having attended an elite hero school for the past 2 years, you managed to have some special arrangements made for your return home.

And so, that is how you got to where you are now, nervously walking down the halls of UA next to Principal Nezu. He had spent the first half hour of the morning before classes began showing you around and explaining a few things to you.

At the start of homeroom at 8:25AM, he walks you to the classroom of Class 3-A, the class you will be joining, starting today.

Everyone looks over as the door opens, the principal strolling in and standing at the front of the class. You follow nervously. These people have had nearly 3 whole years to get to know each other, and here you are, the new girl joining in the final year, not knowing anyone.

At least, you didn't think you knew anyone, until you force yourself to look at the class properly.

Your eyes immediately fall on a blond boy in the second row. His own eyes are widened, locked onto you. A moment later, you rip your eyes away from him, prompting him to look away also.

When you realise Nezu has stopped speaking and is now looking at you, you snap out of it and look at the whole class.

"My name is Y/N. I have two Quirks, which I am sure I will have more time sometime soon to explain. I look forward to spending this year with you." You say and bow slightly to the class.

Your homeroom teacher, Aizawa, points you to your assigned seat, so you sit down quietly, not saying another word.

It isn't until lunch, almost four hours later, that you say anything else, besides answering questions in class. Your fourth period was English with Present Mic. Having lived in an English-speaking country for almost 5 years, it was quite an easy class for you.

Almost as soon as you are dismissed from class, you're surrounded by people, wanting to talk to you, get to know you. You're fine with that, but you did have someone else you wanted to talk to. They already walked out the door though.

"Y/N!" Someone says, popping up in front of you out of nowhere.

"Izuku!" You smile, excitedly throwing your arms around your old friend.

You see a brown-haired girl blushing as she watches you hugging Midoriya.

"I can't believe you're here! I didn't know you were coming back!"

You nod. "I know, I'm sorry I didn't say anything."

He shakes his head, wanting to reassure you. "It's okay! We fell out of touch, that's not anyone's fault."

Izuku invites you to spend lunch break with him and his friends, being introduced to them all, him explaining a little about how he got into UA at all.

After classes have finished for the day, you don't give Bakugo the chance to run. As soon as you're dismissed from class, you walk over to his desk, standing in front of it and resting your hands on the surface.

"It's nice to see you again, Katsuki." You smirk.

He looks up at you from his chair briefly, quickly looking away. “Yeah, it is.”

You lean down so you’re closer to his height, him still avoiding eye contact. “Would you mind walking me back to the dorm? I haven’t actually been there yet, Nezu didn’t have time to take me.”

He tuts but stands up, picking up his bag and slinging it over your shoulder. Not saying a thing, he leaves the classroom, you following him. You know what he’s like, you know to follow.

As soon as you're out of the halls and outside, he decides to say something. "I didn't know you were coming back." He mutters.

You're just happy to hear him say something to you. "Yeah. I know."

He takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

You pause where you are, stunned. You hadn't expected him to apologise to you.

When you don't say anything, he sighs and turns to you, also stopping walking. "I shouldn't have stopped responding. I was upset you were gone, and I went about things in the stupidest way. I... I regret it."

It takes a moment for you to say anything, blinking in shock. "It's okay." You smile brightly up at him. "I understand. It was hard on both of us, after all."

"Yeah, but I ghosted you. I shouldn't have done that. Not to you, you don't deserve that."

"I agree you shouldn't have done it, dummy. But I'm saying I understand, okay?"

He smiles a little, looking down at you. "Come on, let's go to the dorms." He tugs on your backpack, indicating that you should take it off. When you do, he slings one strap over his shoulder, carrying it for you.

"Since when did you become a gentleman?" You ask with a small laugh, making him grunt a 'shut up' to you, his cheeks going slightly pink.

Finally reaching the dorms, Bakugo opens the door for you, letting you into the large building.

Everyone else is already there, the people in the communal area looking at you as you enter. Other than Izuku, people seem a little surprised to see you with Bakugo, and even more surprised that he doesn't look as annoyed as he typically does.

With everyone staring, Katsuki shoves your bag back into your arms before walking over to the stairs to go to his room.

You smile a little as you watch him, shaking your head.

Izuku is the first person to come up to you, smiling. "Everyone wants to get to know you a little. If you have some time, come sit with us?"

You do what he says, walking over and taking a seat between him and a boy with a black streak in mostly blond hair.

You end up spending a couple hours with them, telling them about your Quirk and what it's like to live in America. When they ask about you seemingly already knowing both Izuku and Katsuki, you tell them that you grew up with them.

A girl with pink skin, who you learn is Mina, asks you for some stupid stories about them as kids, Izuku going red and telling you that you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, trying to save himself the embarrassment.

Even though you're unsure if Bakugo will be annoyed at you for telling them this, you also tell them a few stories from when you and him were dating before you left for America.

Everyone seems surprised, a small uproar coming from the class. No one had ever even seen an indication that he had ever been interested in anyone, yet alone had a girlfriend. It appeared to be a ludicrous idea to most of them.

Kaminari seems to deflate a little upon realising you dated one of his best friends. Guess he thought you were pretty.

Not long after, you go find your room, needing to unpack. Right before you close the door, a foot stops it from closing. A second later, Bakugo comes into view.

"Well, hello there." You smirk a little, looking up at him.

He smirks back, placing a hand on the doorframe, standing in front of you. "Hey. Care if I come in?"

You move out the way for him to come in but tell him it's a little messy because you're still unpacking.

He doesn't even look at the room, closing the door as soon as he's inside and standing close to you, essentially pinning you between him and the door.

That's when you really realise how much he's changed. He's so much taller now than when you last saw him, his shoulders broader, entire body more muscular, a few visible scars now. The whole thing makes you a little flustered.

"So, do you have a little American boyfriend now?" He asks with a slight snarl, expression turning into a smirk as soon as you shake your head. "No? Then, would you mind if I kissed you?" He whispers in your ear.

You don't verbally respond, but the look on your face gives him the answer he needs. He keeps one hand on the wall, the other coming to rest on your waist, leaning in and pressing his lips against yours. Your own hands find your way to his chest, gripping onto his shirt.

A moment later, he pulls away a little, smirking. "Guess we haven't missed a beat, huh?"

You laugh, not letting go of his shirt. "Suki, you're an ass." You say, making him laugh too.

"Yeah, but you love it." He whispers, leaning in to kiss you again. "It's starting to get late, and you haven't finished unpacking yet. If you wanted to stay in my room tonight, you're welcome to."

You look up at him, a little surprised by the proposal. When he sees the look on your face, he panics a small amount. "I didn't mean it like that! I meant we can spend the night sleeping together- no, not sleeping together! Not like that! I just meant- we- we can- I meant-"

You giggle at his nervousness, making him look a little angry. You move your hands to rest on his cheeks, standing on your tiptoes and smashing your lips against his.

When you finally break the kiss again, both a little breathless, he stares at you, mouth open slightly.

"Sorry, I had to find a way to shut you up." You smile. "I'd love to cuddle tonight, Suki."

He looks relieved, taking your hand. "Come on, let's go."

You spend the rest of the night in Bakugo's dorm, cuddling and eventually falling asleep in his bed.

Before he falls asleep, he spends a few moments just watching you, barely being able to believe that he got lucky enough to get you back into his life. He gives you a soft kiss on the forehead, holding you tighter, closing his own eyes and falling asleep.

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shurisasthmaticgf · 4 months ago

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oh baby he down bad: charles leclerc x black fem! reader

summary: three times when you realized you truly did have your boyfriend wrapped around your finger

warnings: crying, period mention, swearing

blog moved to @delewlew

author's note: this is the first charles fic i've written so please be kind...i hope you all enjoy it. i'm sick with covid and i was loopy on meds when i wrote this so i hope it makes sense 💀 comments and other feedback are welcome and appreciated!

whoisyn uploaded a story!

you laid in your bed curled into fetal position with your phone mere inches from your forehead. the room was dark but light enough to see half of your face as your eyes welled with tears. you rambled, "a few weeks ago when i was visiting new york i bought a bunch of takis and nerds clusters because they don't sell them over here in monaco and i went to go get a bag of both and i didn't know i ran out! i'm so upset i don't even want to settle for anything else." you wailed loudly, mixing in a few laughs at how ridiculous you probably looked but you had no shame as you hit post.

the entire day had been going pretty shit from the moment when you woke up and bled through your favorite pajamas to nearly passing out when you wanted to have a relaxing hot shower to make you feel better. now you were just laying in bed clinging to your body pillow that had lingering notes of your boyfriend's cologne. it was early in the night but your entire body felt like it was hit by a bus and you were one tylenol away from needing a stomach flush yet it didn't actually feel like it was helping. to make things worse, all you wanted was your boyfriend but he was supposed to be going out right after he got off of work.

you laid stiff in your bed in an obscure position because you found that was the only one that didn't make you feel worse. the door to your bedroom opened and your boyfriend entered wearing pajama pants and no shirt. you squinted through the dim light and mumbled, "babe? thought you were going out tonight? you had that thing." charles placed two bags of your favorite snacks onto your nightstand and responded, "i was but i found out through twitter that my girlfriend was crying at home." you turned your face away from him out of embarrassment because you were literally crying over chips and candy. he turned your chin back to him, "why didn't you call me, mon cœur?" you shrugged and reached for the bag of candy, "it wasn't that serious." he pulled you closer to him and you shifted positions so your head was against his chest. charles pressed a kiss to your forehead, "anything that bothers you is serious to me, darling. but, i am here and you have your snacks so we can watch your movie like we always do, yes?" you nodded and turned on Princess and The Frog which was one of your comfort movies since childhood.

whoisyn posted a story!

replies:

lilymhe WHP IS YOUE DEALER PLS 🙏

↳ whoisyn lemme ask charles

francisca.cgomes feel better bby <3

↳ whoisyn thank you so much ily ily ily ❤️

logansargeant i still have like 3 bags of hot cheetos and those nerds things for you from when you asked me to grab you some when i had a layover in new york

↳ whoisyn omg i forgot abt those! i'll get them next week if u bring em. ty ty.

alex_albon lily wanted me to ask you who your dealer is? she said you'd know what she meant

↳ whoisyn oh my bad pookie i forgot...but charles said he just has a stash of american snacks at his place for me. i'll bring her some next weekend tho dw ❤️

↳ alex_albon THANK YOU OMG I COULD KISS YOU RN - lily

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

you cut through one of the alleyways out of street view once you noticed someone had been recording you as you walked through the streets of monaco. most of the time you managed to sneak through the city without being spotted but today you had to make a trip to the mall where a handful of people recognized you immediately. as someone who was never in the public eye and lived as a "regular" person you were still getting used to people recognizing you and following you around. time and time again you'd gone viral for your fan responses when they asked for pictures or autographs, usually a laugh and "why, i'm not the famous one?" you were genuine with your interactions and were known for helping fans get autographs or deliver fan letters to charles at grand prix weekends. although you enjoyed this aspect of his fanbase, sometimes it was too much and you just wanted to live in peace like you used to. so you'd learned every back road and sidewalk to your shared apartment for quick escapes.

the alleyway was quiet and away from the few people that were walking and talking beside you. just as you were to round a corner you heard a soft meow. stopping dead in your tracks you looked around confused to where the sound was coming from. there was silence then another meow, and another, and another until you realized a small orange cat a few meters away was the culprit. the tiny kitten was shaking and wet in some fluid you only hoped was water, but by the smell it was definitely sewage, pipe, or garbage juice. you wrinkled your nose and held the helpless fur ball in your palm, "shit...what the fuck do i do?" the kitten nibbled on your thumb and you stretched your finger away, "don't do that i don't want rabes or whatever cats can carry." you looked over your shoulder and sighed, "well i guess i have a cat now... let's go."

once back in your apartment you put the small kitten in your bathroom tub on an old rag. the small animal meowed and mewed the entire time you rinsed it off with the only soap you had that was safe according to google. instead of drying it's fur with your blowdryer you just towel dried it which he continued meowing. you'd never had a cat and didn't know what it meant when kittens meowed so you just started rambling, "well that's so interesting you feel that way because i literally said the same thing too! like i don't even know why that would make sense because when you really think about it they always want you to think that but in reality the truth is the complete opposite of what they want you to believe." the orange kitten looked at you with its head turned to the side and you sighed, "i don't know what you want from me man i just met you." the cat meowed louder and you mumbled, "that was definitely a cuss word but i'll let it slide."

an hour later you had given the kitten a small amount of some canned tuna and it fell asleep curled into your neck against the towel you kept it wrapped in.

charles entered your apartment with his eyes on his phone as he called out, "i'm home- oh." he usually expected you to be in your room so when you were out in the main room on the sofa he was startled. you sipped from the smoothie you'd gotten from the fridge and looked up from the book you were reading, "hi baby." charles stared at the kitten on your chest then back at you, "hi beautiful." he waited for you to say anything about the new addition and when you didn't he prompted, "what do you have there?" you looked at your hand and held up the cup, "a smoothie." you took a long sip and the straw crackled loudly, "oh yeah i figured out how to make that one hailey bieber has at that overpriced place in LA. it's actually really good i see why people lost their shit over it."

your boyfriend nodded slowly and pointed to the kitten on you, "my love, please tell me why is there a cat on you." for a minute you looked at him as if he was making it up but then you realized you never got around to actually texting him what happened. he waited for you to explain because the story had to be good if you, notorious anti-pet owner, came home with a cat and let it sleep on you.

you told him while looking at the kitten, "yeah, you're a daddy now." charles replied with too much ease, "i know that you call me that but that cat does not." you looked up with an exasperated glare, "can you be serious for one minute please." charles chuckled and apologized, "okay okay you go, tell me why i am now both of your daddys." you raised your hand to throw one of the clean rags you hadn't used at him which he shielded his face from, "okay i'm sorry go ahead." as you retold the entire thing charles just stood there with a fond smile, finding the whole ordeal quite amusing. at the end of your story he reached for the kitten and pulled back his hand, "why is it slippery?" you answered, "i put coconut oil on it so it didn't get ashy." charles started laughing once more and you smacked his shoulder lightly, "hey i never had a pet besides a fish okay! i'm trying my best here." charles pulled you into a hug and pressed a kiss to your lips, "and you're going to be a great cat mom too, you've already done a good thing."

whoisyn

liked by charles_leclerc, f1, and 44,304 others

whoisyn happy birthday son to my son chisme octavius nortorious C.A.T. l/n-leclerc

view all 12, 079 comments

username1 WE THOUGHT IT WAS JUST CHISME LMAO WHY WOULD YOU NAME HIM ALL THAT-

whoisyn chisme bc if you pretend to gossip he'll immediately listen and start spilling tea too. octavius because charles said it sounded regal, and notorious C.A.T. for the culture.

↳ username2 LMAO YALL KINDA ATE NGL

charles_leclerc my two loves ❤️

username2 i need limited edition chisme x ferrari merch @/scuderiaferrari

↳ scuderiaferrari 👀

olliebearman i miss my brother

↳ whoisyn he misses you too <3

username3 i remember when y/n first found him, i can't believe he's a year old already :( he's so big now

username4 i thought charles said he wanted a dog

↳ whoisyn well i didn't find a dog, i found a cat. so we have a cat.

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

the video had circulated on twitter only a few hours after it dropped and you'd noticed your name trending on the internet. after making the mistake of checking why you were trending once, you'd never really paid much attention to it again. the first time many people were shaming you for dating your boyfriend and making jabs at your physical appearance. rather quickly you realized it would be better to just keep up with silly memes your friends sent to you opposed to stalking every corner of the internet to see what people were saying about you.

this specific instance was charles in an interview and he'd mentioned you briefly while playing a game of this or that:

"do you prefer a weekend getaway to the coast for a snorkeling trip or the mountains for a skiing adventure?" the interviewer quizzed charles on his current vacation preferences. the driver asked, "is this by myself or with people?" the interviewer answered with a small smirk, "you and one other person- can be anyone, best friend, sibling, girlfriend, mom, etc." charles let out a laugh and knew what the interviewer was getting at and chose to went along with it for fan service. he thought for a moment then answered, "i think the snorkeling trip, my girlfriend likes this kind of thing with the fish, sea animals, and the diving in the water. that and she is better of a skier and snowboarder than me so..." out of the frame the interviewer laughed and joked, "a little mermaid moment, i love it."

you looked at the video and laughed when you noticed the small hello kitty band aid on his hand. earlier that week he'd gone with you out to the sea and you'd found a small cove to swim around in. somewhere along the way back charles had cut his hand on a rock and you'd put a little band aid on it from the only stash you had, and he had no complaints over the pink cartoon design. he found it cute and whenever he looked at it he was reminded of you.

whoisyn

liked by charles_leclerc, sanrio, and 53, 432 others

whoisyn oh, he look so cute wrapped around my finger 🎀

view all 12,855 comments

username1 SLIDES 5 AND 6-

alex_albon drop the link for the shirt

username2 CHARLES GOT THAT SHIT AWNNNN 😤😤😤

↳ comment pinned by creator

hellokitty we love to see this 🤩

↳ whoisyn omg pls sponsor me 😍

↳ sanrio check DM! ❤️

f1 i'd play mermaids there

↳ whoisyn we did 🤭

↳ landonorris WITHOUT ME? 😞

↳ danielricciardo X 2 💔

↳ georgerussell X 3 😪

↳ whoisyn my bad...next time we'll send a text

username3 oh baby he's down bad

username4 no way in hell she got this man in hello kitty pants after a long day of playing mermaids 💀

↳ username5 just say ur a loser who doesn't know how to have fun

comment has been liked by creator

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

the end.

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david-talks-sw · 4 months ago

Text

The OTHER type of Star Wars fan

We've already covered (through this longer post and this addendum) that research shows George wasn't that involved or interested in the derivative material of the Star Wars franchise, also known as the Expanded Universe (EU). Aside from approving a few points, he let Howard Roffman and Lucasfilm Licensing handle it.

He is the first to say that he ain't as knowledgeable about Star Wars lore as we fans are.

Thing is... he's also not as passionate as we are.

Recently, I was watching some Q&A videos of George R.R. Martin, the author of Game of Thrones... and it occurred to me:

Martin is what most Star Wars fans wish Lucas was.

Think about it.

He's a talented writer who likes to focus on morally "gray" characters and complex political plotlines,

who created a series of novels for a mature audience in which his narrative merely asks questions and lets the reader draw their own conclusions,

knows and engages in the lore behind his creation and will often respond to those lore-heavy questions, and has gone on record stating that canon is the glue that holds a story together and keeps it coherent.

Contrast that with George "continuity is for wimps" Lucas, who:

Wrote a movie franchise which is also, partially, political... but he makes it for kids, and he's explicit about how this is thematically a clear-cut story about how the conflict of "good vs evil" is really about "compassion vs greed",

with flat dialogue, boring cinematography,

and whose approach to lore and canon can be summed up in his answer to how Anakin got his scar:

"I don't know. Ask Howard [Roffman]. That’s one of those things that happens in the novels between the movies. I just put it there. He has to explain how it got there. I think Anakin got it slipping in the bathtub, but of course, he's not going to tell anybody that." - Pablo Hidalgo’s set diary, August 2003

And as a Star Wars fan, I will admit that some of his casual retcons felt disrespectful, growing up.

"Boba Fett is NOT Mandalorian?!"

I had the same reaction when I saw an interview of Kathleen Kennedy stating she was a fan of Star Wars... from a filmmaking perspective. That seemed like such a finagling cop-out for me, at the time.

"Just say you're not a real fan, God!"

And it's easy to divide it in two camps, like that. You have 1) the fans, who will delve into deep lore, and you have 2) the average moviegoer.

But looking back on it... holy shit, that is actually a completely valid way of being a Star Wars fan.

Yes, Star Wars is a transmedia franchise, it's books, it's video-games, it's deep lore, it's lightsabers and Jedi and Sith and bounty hunters and Ewoks and Jabba and High Republics and Tython and Revan etc.

But before it was that, Star Wars was a filmmaking revolution. A juggernaut of innovation for the silver screen that inspired most of today's filmmakers.

So, sure, George Lucas isn't an avid lore-loving Star Wars fan like you and me. But he is a movie fan.

"I'm not that passionate about this story. I like it, it's fun and I enjoy doing it. But it's definitely not my life. I'm a bigger movie fan than I am Star Wars fan. I like making movies. At the end of nine years of making Star Wars, I was not ready to continue it. I was completely burned out on it. I was more passionate about raising my kids than making movies and especially making Star Wars. So I made other kinds of movies and TV shows and advanced the technology I needed. It's not a matter of passion. My passion is for filmmaking. I'll go and do filmmaking that is easier to do, where you can realise your ideas better. And nine years is a big part of your life, and to commit to another nine years, I didn't wanna do that right away." - EMPIRE, 1999

And you can tell this, when you watch the Star Wars films.

There are honestly so many homages and interesting filmmaking techniques, peppered throughout the six films, which only a nerd for cinema history like George would know how to implement.

C3-PO being based on the droid from Metropolis (1927) is a perfect example of this.

And that's interesting.

Because there's essentially this entire other dimension to the films, where it's not just the story unfolding, but to filmmakers it's also a series of techniques that make them go "I wonder how they did that!" or homages that make them go "OH! I know where that's from!" like we do when an comics characters appears in live-action.

Here's other examples:

CINEMA HOMAGES

All of Star Wars is absolutely littered with homages to cinema history.

I mean, you may already know this, but Flash Gordon is what George originally wanted to shoot, but the copyright holders said they only wanted Fellini to direct it (ironically, George wasn't artsy-fart enough for them). So he decided to write Star Wars instead.

As such, the inspiration from Flash Gordon is also present visually and spiritually throughout the two trilogies.

"It was like a Republic serial, a 1930s-style matinee adventure. The idea was that you came in, saw Episode IV, had missed the first three episodes, and wouldn't get to see the rest of it." - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

The dialogue that a lot of people refer to as "campy" and "flat" is actually a mix of George being an experimental filmmaker who doesn't give much of a fuck about dialogue (and is by his own admission, not the best at it)...

"I'd be the first person to say I can't write dialogue. My dialogue is very utilitarian and is designed to move things forward. I'm not Shakespeare. It's not designed to be poetic. It's not designed to have a clever turn of phrase. [...] I just wanted to get from point A to point B. This film doesn't lend itself to that sort of thing because it's not about snappy one-liners. I think that Lethal Weapon-style dialogue is overused, it's a necessary aspect of high action films where you have to have the smart retort. You have to say "I'll be back baby" and stuff. It's not my style. It takes away from the integrity of the movie. [...] I'm aware that dialogue isn't my strength. I use it as a device. I don't particularly like dialogue which is part of the problem." - EMPIRE, 1999

... which is convenient, because it helped him simulate the dialogue of 1930s matinee serials, such as Flash Gordon.

"Let’s face it, their dialogue in that scene is pretty corny. It is presented very honestly, it isn’t tongue in cheek at all, and it’s played to the hilt. But it is consistent, not only with the rest of the movie, but with the overall Star Wars style. Most people don’t understand the style of Star Wars. They don’t get that there is an underlying motif that is very much like a 1930s Western or Saturday matinee serial. It’s in the more romantic period of making movies and adventure films. And this film is even more of a melodrama than the others." - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

But beyond that, literally it's everywhere.

The scene where Palpatine ascends to being Emperor as Anakin slaughters his political rivals parallels the final scene in The Godfather, where Michael becomes the Don while his goons do the same thing.

This video compiles all the tributes beautifully. Check it out.

youtube

Even The Clone Wars has whole episodes that are direct homages to cult classics. The Zillo Beast episode is a clear reference to Godzilla, the episode The Wrong Jedi is inspired by The Wrong Man, etc.

"CINEMA VÉRITÉ" CINEMATOGRAPHY

I've already written a whole post (one of my favourites) showing how his fascination with cinéma vérité documentaries is reflected in the cinematography of all six Star Wars films, and it's part of what makes the entire franchise feel so immersive.

You can check it out here:

KUROSAWA

We've gone over how he's a big fan of Akira Kurosawa, and how big an influence Hidden Fortress was on both the Star Wars trilogies...

... but so is the mise-en-scène and the way George approaches production design. The reason Star Wars feels so "lived in" is also a lesson George learned from Kurosawa, which is that by making everything just a bit off-kilter, a bit dirtied-up and imperfect...

... and yet keeping it all consistent, in a way, you manage to make the film feel grounded and immersive, no matter how alien it is.

"[It] may sound odd in a movie like this, but credibility and realism, even in the most unrealistic situation… to sorta create that sense of realism is very important to making the story work and making you feel like you’re actually in the environment that transports you and gives you the suspension of disbelief that you need in order to enjoy a movie. [...] Kurosawa used to call it “immaculate realism” which is to make it slightly off-kilter, slightly eccentric, like things are in real life. Even if it’s a very predictable situation, give it that little funny edge that takes it away from that and makes it realistic. And I had to struggle very hard, in the Star Wars films, to make them appear to be realistic, even though they’re totally fantasy." - The Phantom Menace, Commentary Track #2, 1999

POST-PRODUCTION & VFX

Another one of the more impressive aspects of the first Star Wars was the dogfights and the trench raid of the Death Star. The camera pans with the spaceship, the dynamism of the cuts. The space battles is what made George creat ILM in the first place.

He was determined to do the opposite of what 2001: A Space Odyssey had done with that opening scene where the space ship moves into frame slooooowly...

... so he gave the team a collection of WWII dogfight footage to give them ideas.

(note: this was the same approach he would take years later with Dave Filoni, when teaching the latter how to edit and craft dogfights in The Clone Wars)

The attempt to film the trench run eventually led to the creation of the first motion control camera dolly.

Best analogy I can think of, when describing George's approach to Star Wars, is the following:

An avant-garde esoteric contemporary artist - y'know, the type who puts a blue dot on a white canvas and calls it art - creates a comic.

Why? Because he wants to make this one art installment for a gallery exhibition. After that, he intends to move on to other things.

But the comic is really good! And like, its audience quickly expands beyond just gallery visitors, no, everyone likes it.

Suddenly, the comic develops a cult following, and the entirety of comic book geek culture has zeroed-in on the artist and they're all asking him to make more art! And he makes more! And more!

Then he stops for two decades, moves on to other art projects, raises his kids. Years later, he discovers new ways of drawing, and he's like "I'm making a Prequel to the comic, y'all wanna see it?"

Everyone cries out gleefully: "Oh God, yes! Finally! Show us!"

But this motherfucker makes a manga.

Why? Because he feels like it.

And of course he does, he's just creating art, right? He discovered the graphic tablet, so he's having fun with it, because he's always innovating and pushing the envelope with his art.

And the movies are fine, by manga standards. But by comic book standards, they obviously suck! The comic book audience is mad. They wanted another comic book, not a manga. Why is it in black and white? Why is read right-to-left? This comic sucks!

(And arguably, they have a point... as a savvy businessman, he's made a whole lot of money off this comic, he built a media empire out of it, and instead of giving them what they want, he made something else)

But again... this guy isn't a comic book illustrator, and has been very explicit about saying this.

He's an artist who - for a very specific project - drew a comic.

Many things can be true at once:

the fact that these creative decisions didn't always hit their mark for the average moviegoer, or fans of "Star Wars, the space fantasy movies and expanded universe" (usually the lore-loving geeks like myself)...

... and the fact that they were meticulously and carefully crafted in a way that fans of "Star Wars, the revolutionary film" (aka fans of cinema and filmmaking) can appreciate.

There's a spectrum of the fandom, and there is a spectrum in the way we can appreciate Star Wars. Which kinda reminds me of that scene in Chef (2014) where Carl goes on a rant explaining the intricacies of making his chocolate lava cake to a food critic.

It's not just undercooked chocolate.

It's molten.

Conversely, it's not just flat, campy dialogue. It's an homage to the 1930s matinee serials à la Flash Gordon.

It's not just boring cinematography. It's a reproduction of cinéma vérité documentary-style camera work which effectively grounds the film.

Having considered all this, when I hear that Tony Gilroy or Kathleen Kennedy were more in the latter camp, I go "fair enough".

First of all, because like it or not, so was George. He clearly didn't give a single crap about the comics and books, besides signing off on minor plot points. He's not a "sci-fi movie director", he's an experimental filmmaker who makes movies set in space.

But secondly, because - aside from children - it's clear the audience he was targeting was these cinema-savvy folks who'd get his references and would be inspired by the filmmaking techniques.

Not the fans or the critics.

#george lucas #star wars #long post #meta #cinema #kurosawa

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bunniwords · 4 months ago

Text

໑ৎ ׁ ׅ♡ ALIBI 🌀

part xv - masterlist - part xvii xvi. prettiest girl

︶︶　 ˚ ᡴꪫ synopsis — you are known for your brain rot anime content on twitter. so much so that you caught the attention of txt’s soobin on his secret stan account and became mutuals. what will become of this new friendship?

bunni speaks — WE BACK and with partial written chapters! i'm not great at writing fluff so bare with me... also i have a bit of writer’s block… so please be kind to me… i’ve wrote this like last week but was really beating myself over it but i decided to just post it…

ONE MONTH.

just one more month before soobin was going to see you in new york. was he ready for it? not exactly. probably far from it actually, but one thing was for sure is that he wanted to see you.

there isn't really a day that goes by without him calling and messaging you. the two of you actually started this thing where you'd each send a series of random photos taken throughout the day while the other was sleeping and it’s not helping him calm down his feelings for you at all. he saved every single one of those photos and put it in an album on his phone to look back at on. he loved imagining you taking each picture with him in mind.

now, this new routine has him developing a bad habit of looking at his phone first thing in the morning. soobin knows he read some sort of article about looking at your phone first thing in the morning isn't really good for you but science didn't account for the feeling of waking up to twenty notifications from the girl you like. waking up to your messages gave soobin profound excitement for the day. his eyes could barely open but his first instinct now was to look at his phone and see what photos you took. his favorites were the ones where you'd take your outfit of the day in your full length mirror in your bedroom or maybe the ones of you posing with your food.

you’ve asked him about his great face reveal and soobin felt bad about not showing his face because you actually asked him a lot about it... to the point where you concluded that he was ugly as a joke. a joke he finds no joy in hearing as he defended his good looks to wits ends.

but you were too deep in your feelings that you were pretty sure you would be okay with however he looked.

i mean, if he was a total predator... you'd definitely reevaluate, but soo was not that. you think.

"are you working from home today?" soo asked you over the voice call.

"yup! i just made breakfast. wanna see?" you asked as you wiggled your bowl in front of the camera.

god, you were so cute.

"let's see. let's see."

"it's just cereal," you laughed, "they had the txt cereal at the store so i grabbed it for funsies since i'm seeing them next month."

"oh, right. haha."

every time txt came up in your conversation, soobin definitely started thinking about revealing the truth and the guilt that came with that. he still isn't sure how you'd react. would you feel betrayed that he didn't tell you? or would you be happy? what if you just leave the restaurant after finding out? or start blackmailing him for having a fan account?

okay, that last thought went a little wild side, because you wouldn't do that. he knows you wouldn't, but his mind definitely wondering about what you’d think about any of this. thinking about you being mad at him and leaving him was probably the worst scenario he could think of. he could already feel someone digging into his chest with a tight grip on his heart from the thought of you hating him.

"damn, okay. i know it wasn't that funny but you could've reacted a little," you joked.

"ha. ha. ha.”

" you’re so annoying…”

soobin laughed with a quick apology and lame excuse saying he was distracted.

you rolled your eyes but accepted his apology anyway. “well, how was your day? you're in japan right?"

yes, txt was doing their japanese comeback before the start of their world tour. but to you, soo was simply on a work trip.

"yeah, i am!"

"how is it?" you said before taking in a spoonful of cereal.

"busy... but fun. my team had a few work events today and i'm so tired," he said.

he was really downplaying his 'work events'. he had a group interview, magazine solo interview, a photoshoot, and to top it all off, there was the music show and fan interaction at the end of the day. he was beyond exhausted but still wanted to talk to you by the end of all of it. although, he didn’t really want to talk to you about work.

"did you want to turn in early? we can always talk in the morning for you," you offered, but you could already hear him grumbling.

"no, just another hour... i couldn’t even talk to you this morning."

oh, were you weak. you weren't going to say no. absolutely, not. you know, he didn’t say that he needed to talk to you everyday, but for him to basically imply that he couldn’t go to bed without talking to you once today almost sent you into a coma.

"oh, uh, yeah, okay, one more hour and then you go to sleep,” you stuttered, thinking you really played that one off.

"right before i forget… japan. did you want anything from here?"

and immediately, your ears perked up.

"oh, yes if i can ask you to look for a few things! i have a list," you bursted out into a fit of giggles from the thought of you being able to get your hands onto anything you got on this anime list.

"you... have a list?" he sounded as if he was judging you.

"hey... it's not as accessible here in america," you pouted, "leave me alone. you want my list or not?"

"give me the list," soobin smiled and you could hear the endearment in his voice.

"also, with all due respect, shut up. i know you got a list. you just wanted to judge me," you fussed.

"hey! that's not true!"

it most definitely was true (to both him having a list and him judging you).

that's alright though because while you were forging your annoyance, you were trying to calm your heart down from imagining this man scouring through the streets of tokyo in search for your most wanted anime merchandise.

TAG LIST: @hoonatic @paegesoobin @lun4kazumii @noraimp @isa942572 @yourenzoo @soobjvn @besciitos @sakiimeo @kumabeom @yyeonzi @bunnisoobin @girlz4jaem @msorriluv @wonderstrucktae @thing89 @dreeener @arep4con-qu3sp @otblous @luvvvash @huethusiasm @starryeyedluv @304files @kang-ulzzang @thisrandombitch @nocturnal-lanturn @bbeomgyucafe @virgo-and-libra @mumeimei @jinostooth @gy0th-yawnzzn @pinkhor1zon @film-sea @daechwitonguetech @jakesbubu @pagetammgyu @hanniemylovelyquokka @s0urcherry @bee-the-loser @sol3chu

#soobin x reader #txt x reader #soobin smau #soobin x y/n #soobin x you #txt imagines #txt smau #txt x you #soobin fic #txt x y/n

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hadesnumber1daughter · 11 months ago

Text

Pretty like the sun

Pairing: Percy Jackson x Apollo daughter OC (she classes as an oc cause I gave her a name but you can just read it like your name or Y/N if you want, I just feel better when I'm writing and the characters have names :)

Summary: Percy has always felt something for you, something that you had felt aswell. These quests of life and death finally knocked some sense into you two.

Warnings: Blood, Pain, Agony, Violence, Weapons, Wounds, Wound treating, Curse words, Oblivious idiots, Fluff, Angsty??, Sexual tension, Mutual pining, Almost death, Non-Canon, Hugs, Kisses, Holding hands, Ooc Percy??? Cerberus as a violent dog (ik she isnt really but this is my imagine so idc), Not proof-read, GUT-WRENCHING LOVE, IDK how i wrote this considering I've never been in a relationship OR have ever had an actual crush in my 16 sad years of life

Words: 6.3k

Notes: This is my first imagine so I'm sorry if its bad😭😭. Also if anyone would be willing to give me a few pointers when it comes to working this app as a creator please do cause, yeah I've been using this app for years but I have no idea how to use it when it comes to posting things. I would be very grateful. ❤️❤️❤️. Also, if anyone wants to request something else for me to write I would love to write something for either Percy or Luke, I'll probably make a list of people who I'm willing to write for later today cause it is 10am rn and I haven't slept so I'll just go bed after this 😭😭😭

As soon as percy got handed this quest, with Grover being part of the cloven council and Annabeth being gone to spend time with her family, Percy knew his immediate first choice would be Aurora, there was no doubt about it. The Apollo girl had a spark about her that has drawn him in the second he laid eyes on her.

He had deemed it because she was a daughter of Apollo so there would always be some sort of light that would draw him in, but he hasnt been very sure of that for a very long time. Every time he laid eyes on her, it felt as though time stood still and she was the only source of light and happiness in this dark, gloomy world.

They had became extremely close when he first came to camp, she taught him the ropes in archery as to put it plainly, he was absolutely shit at it. He had no aim and his stance was awful, in her own words.

When she first said that to him, he wanted to throw her in a dumpster, but then he saw her, he properly saw her. He didnt know what Aphrodite looked like, but he was sure she would be a spitting image of the girl. He was even more sure that she was a daughter of Aphrodite but instead she was not, which made sense as to why she was hanging around the archery booth. From that day forward, she helped him freshen his archery skills, and he helped her with her sword skills.

He has never understood why she wouldnt ask Luke as he was the best swords-man and would probably be a better trainer. However, when he brough it up to her one time her cheeks flushed the tiniest bit and she stated how she was helping him, so he should do that same.

That's how they have ended up here. In the middle of nowhere, trying to find and 'kill' a beast that has been accidently lost and let out from the underworld and send it back. Although quests always have 3 people on them, the oracle specifically stated that this was only a 2 person job. Percy had never been so sure in picking Aurora at that moment in time.

🌊

"Are you sure we are going the right way Perce, I swear I've seen this tree 3 times already" Aurora stated this time taking a dagger and marking said tree with an X so if they do cross it again, she would be right.

"You never trust my navigation skills sunshine, why is that, is it cause you always get lost in my eyes" he says turning to look at her with a smug smile on his face. The girl abruptly stopped at his turn and could feel the blood rush to her cheeks in that moment, her honey-brown eyes immediately locked with his water coloured eyes and she broke the gaze, not letting him have the satisfaction of being right.

"You wish seaweed brain" she muttered and walked past him knocking into his shoulder in the process which led to him letting out a dramatic gasp.

"That hurts sunshine. Where are you going, it's getting dark, we should stop, set up camp and get some rest so we can re-think and re-strategize." The girl slowly stops her steps and turns her back to the boy who is standing there leaning against a tree with his arms crossed giving her a cocky glance that makes her want to die and kill him at the same time.

The two had a stand-off for a bit before one decided to speak up.

"As long as I don't have to scavenge this creepy forest for wood then its fine by me" the girl said walking back to him while his eyes following her every movement till she was a few steps away from him. The girl went to grab something from her pocket with her left hand and with her right, she grabbed the boys arms and dragged her hand down it, to his hand which automatically opened up. She placed something cold into it with her left hand.

He looked at her and she had a glint in her eyes he hadn't seen for the past 12 hours, looking to his palm, he was a coin. Not just any ordinary coin or ordinary drachma. It was a coin from sea life, the one coin they give to one another which can be used for many thing, they talked it over before the quest. The coin can only be used for 2 things during this quest, to make sure the other doesnt die, or the person who has been handed the coin has to do what the person giving the coin wants no matter what.

He looked up at her with a confused look but seeing the mischief in her eyes gave enough away. Sighing he pocketed the coin and stepped away from the tree which only left 3 steps in-between the two.

"What do you want me to do" not even bothering arguing.

"I want to see you fail at making a fire" she said just giving him the brightest smile, basically oozing sunlight from her. The boy felt like a deer stuck in headlights in that moment, he almost forgot the reason for her heavenly smile. He wanted to tell her he loved her right there and then, that he could never get enough of her, that he searched for her in every room he ever walked into, that she was the one and only constant source of light in his life, that she was the sun and he would orbit her in every universe no matter how close he got, no matter how much it destroyed him. He was utterly inconsolable without her. He loved her.

"Aurora" the boy started to say, in a serious tone which immediately made the girl's smile falter as she looked into his eyes, he didnt need to say anything. His eyes spoke more words than he would have liked, enough for the girl to get the message and understand him. All of the glances, the subtle touches, the comfort of each other like no other. She felt and understood it all.

He was about of continue when a roar sounded, echoing in all directions and rustling the trees. The two could hear the howl of Cerberus all around them. Percy immediately uncapped riptide while Aurora unclasped her bracelet which turned into a bow and an unlimited supply of arrows.

The both circled back to back, covering each others blind spot like muscle memory. They could feel the ground shake with each step the otherworldly creature took.

"How are we going to do this?" the girl asked while keeping an eye on all of her surroundings.

"You distract with your arrows as they are long-range and while she's focused on you, I'll go for the kill shot"

"She can't die" she could feel him rolling her eyes as the words left her mouth.

"You know what I mean"

They could hear the low growl from the side of them. The three-headed beast emerged in all its glory with its 6 menacing eyes ready to rip these two teens to shreds and send the wrong beings in this equation to the underworld. Percy turned to stand next to Aurora and the girl grabbed his hand and squeezed to which he immediately responded. There were many unspoken words that had been said in the past 10 minutes and this was another addition 'dont die, be safe, come back to me'.

Slipping through her fingers, his hand left hers and quietly stalked away before the beast could get any idea there were 2 of them. Wishing the best for the boy, she instantly got the dogs attention by shooting an arrow at the middle head's nose.

It did not like that.

They all barked at once and got ready to run at the girl. She didn't like to admit it but she was fucking terrified. Cerberus ran at her and she leapt to the side and ran as fast as she could not looking back until she could feel he's a little away from her. She got another arrow ready in her bow and blindly shot it behind her.

She heard a small whimper which brought a smirk to her face but that was immediately wiped away as she heard the barking intensify. Hiding behind a tree the girl caught her breaths and looked for the hound and she couldnt spot it or Percy. She got another arrow ready and looked behind the tree once again but was faced with the thing she was hunting.

Fear spread to every part of her body and she had no time to brace the impact as the dog clawed the tree which in return clawed her. She let out a bloodcurdling scream as she was flung into another tree. The bark from the destroyed tree splintered her, her head hit against a tree on impact and the large gash on her side felt like a fire that was melting her skin off. The girl felt her breath stick in her throat, she felt as though she was dying as immense pain filled her and black spots invaded her vision. Only one other thing was on her mind.

Percy.

The ocean eyed boy lost sight of Cerberus immediately as it began to chase Aurora, his Aurora. He followed as fast as he could not wanting anything bad to happen to the girl he loved before he got any chance to be with her, to confess and to just live a life content with his feelings.

As he heard, the whoosh of Aurora's arrows increase, he could feel himself being uncapable of keeping up with the beast from the underworld and he cursed himself for it. He lost sight of Cerberus and it scared him, it was too quiet. He couldn't hear the creature or the girl he loved.

His heartbeat quickened as he looked all around him trying to see a glimpse of either of them.

Then all blood drain out of his face when he heard the one sound he wished he did not have to hear, ever. Aurora's scream made his heart almost leap out of his chest. He didnt know what to do, he didnt know where she was, he couldnt see the hound, its his fault, she going to die because of him.

She most certainly is going to die if you dont get a fucking move on, that one voice in his head said. And he pushed all the doubts to the back of his head and focused on 2 things. Defeating Cerberus and finding Aurora.

He could hear the three-headed dogs footsteps and instantly ran to it. It didnt see him coming and it's tail was on the ground so he didnt the best thing he could think of. He ran up the tail onto the body of the beast.

This elicited loud barking from the beast and Percy could only do one thing. Repeatedly stab the dog until it dissolved.

Now... admittedly, this was not a good strategy. It was fucking awful. There was no thought to his stabs, they all just angered the beast and considering she was quite resistance to stabs, it wasnt helping. He was just tiring himself out.

He then has the genius idea of stabbing the beast in the eye, or eyes. He started with the left head. The beast let out a large whimper, and stumbled which cause the boy to almost loose his grip on it. He wasnt going to stop now, he needed to send Cerberus back and get to Aurora.

Aurora. Her scream was echoing in his mind. Bouncing around his skull like he has no brain inside, only her gut-wrenching scream.

He subtly shook his head. As much as he was dreading where she was and if she was okay. He needed to secure Cerberus and he needed all attention to so it as fast a possible to get back to his sunshine.

He then stabbed riptide into both the right heads eyes. Percy knew what to expect this time so he braced himself and held on as tight as he could. He could not fail now. He was too close.

The dog slumped onto the floor which made percy's last task much more easier. With agility and caution the boy leapt onto the middle head and punctured the eyes out which evoked a whimper which made the boy feel bad for the animal and it slowly turned to dust.

In an instant the boy caught his breath and his mind raced with only one thing.

Aurora.

"Aurora! Sunshine! Where are you?" The boy felt as though he could not breathe. His head was spinning trying to find her in the mountains of trees and in the darkness of this forest, he has never needed to see her more now than any other time.

"Aurora! Please if you can hear me make a sound! Anything so I know you're alive" He would never leave her. He would die before he left her to rot in these woods. He would never be able to face the guilt and loss.

"Please! Say SOMETHING" he could feel himself getting frustrated. "HELP! SOMEONE, ANYONE" tears welded in his eyes trying to find her.

There was a rustle of leaves from the left side behind him. He was running to the sound before it even registered in the back of his mind. He kept hearing the rustling and a small whimper.

He saw a faint glow of light behind a tree and he held his breath for the sight that was to come. He skidded to a stop and fell on his knees infront of her.

His heart dropped to his stomach when he saw her. Her face was significantly paler than when he left her and she had a wood splinter sticking out of her thigh and worst of all, the 4 claw marks across her abdomen with blood everywhere, it seemed to have stopped pouring, but it was a nauseating sight to see. He didnt know what to do.

"Aurora, darling, open your eyes" his hands reached her cheeks and his thumb rubbed circled on her cheek and his two fingers made their way to her neck to check her pulse. He let out a sigh of relief when he felt a pulse. It was faint but not too faint to the point it would slip too far out of his grasp.

He reached for his bag on his back to get some first aid supplies, ambrosia and nectar for the girl, when she let out a pained gasp.

The girl had barely an recollection of anything, the only thing on her mind at the moment was the immense pain shooting through her whole body, It felt like she was on fire and couldnt breathe. She wanted to die.

Then her vision cleared and she saw the golden haired boy looked at her like she was the only thing in the whole world, he held so much worry in his eyes that she thought for a second if she was already dead and it was her spirit seeing his reaction to her death.

"Gods, Aurora, you're okay. You had be so worried, I was terrified, I cannot lose you. If I lost you I would lose myself" The boy held one hand to her cheek while speaking so intently to her.

In that one moment she could feel his stare, like clockwork, bubble something inside of her. It almost made her forget why she was on the ground, why she could taste something metallic in the back of her mouth, why she couldnt move her right leg. It almost took it away. Almost.

That fire spread throughout her body again and she couldnt stop the wail that left her mouth. The pain was nauseating. A flood of curses left Percy's mouth as he grabbed the bottle of nectar and opened it.

"Okay, sunshine, I know you're in a lot of pain but I'm going to give you some nectar, you need to drink it but you need to sit up a little straighter." The girl immediately shook her head as a no in response to the boy.

"I know. The amount of times we've both had to do it but you know deep down that its the only thing that will fix it." The girl tried to harden her stare at the boy but she was too weak to even look at him properly.

"O-okay, but... I can't" she inhaled sharply as she tried to move the slightest bit. She didn't have to finish her sentence for the boy to understand what she was trying to say. He took one his flannel button ups from his bag, scrunched it up and gave it to her. She could only give him a confused look.

"Put it in your mouth, bite down hard cause I'm gonna move you into the right position and its gonna be a pain. I'm sorry sunshine but I have to." She took it with her shaking hands and was about to put it in her mouth when she smelt it, sea salt and musk, then the girl really looked at what the item of clothing was.

"this is yours" she said in a hoarse voice, looking up at him, confusion plastered all over her features.

"Well I dont exactly know where your bag is so next best thing." he gave her a weak smile and moved closer to her but she weakly grabbed his hand.

"I'm scared" she whispered so pathetically but the boy understood, he knew her. He knew that he needed to keep talking to her, to make sure he is doing something close enough to her for her to know that she's still alive.

He only interlaced their fingers and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand.

"I won't let go, I promise. You aren't leaving me, not after everything we have been through together" the girl's eyes welled with tears but she nodded and stuffed her mouth with Percy's flannel.

He wrapped his arms around her from the side, where he was sitting and placed a kiss in the hair before counting down.

"3...2..." the boy didnt get to 1 before he pulled her up so she was sitting not laying down and with the movement came muffled screams and tears that flowed down the girls face. He was whispering sweet nothings in her ear as she lent into him and he repeatedly kissed her hair or forehead.

"I'm sorry sunshine, I really am. When you're all better I promise you can hit me" he tried to uplift her but she could barely hear him. Her body shook and agony filled her every sense. He couldn't even express the guilt and regret he felt for the girl, immediately grabbing the nectar, and slowly taking his flannel out of her mouth.

"You're doing great sweetheart" he says while slowly pouring the nectar into her mouth. Her head is resting against his shoulder as she swallows the drink down in small sips. After she drank it, Percy put it away and the girl began to close her eyes.

"Hey, hey, sunshine you can't be doing that right now. Come on I need to patch you up and then we need to get back to camp, I'll call blackjack. I know how much you like riding on him" he lifts her head off his shoulder and places her on the tree, but this time sitting up so he has easy access to her abdomen.

She opened one eye and slightly smiled at the boy.

"You're gonna call blackjack?" the girl asked a bit delirious but seemingly in less pain. This brought a instant smile to him as he let out a chuckle, nodding his head while grabbing gauze and 2 bandage rolls.

"I promise I will, but you have to make sure to keep fighting okay. Once this is over, I have something special to tell you" He came loser to the girl and her breath slowed for a moment.

He looked at her abdomen and a thought crossed his head that made blood rush to his cheeks, he was thankful the girl was delirious and it was dark or else he would simply wallow away. He cleared his throat and looked back up to the girl.

"I'm going to have to cut your shirt off so I can access the cuts and clean them properly" he looked into her eyes once but couldnt face her after that.

"okay" she whispered in return, locking her eyes onto his every move.

The boy went back into his bag and grabbed a pair of scissors then faced the girl again. He could feel her watchful eyes on him the entire time and he hated to say it but that small voice in the back of his head was wishing she was a bit more delirious right now so he wasnt under her scrutiny while undressing her. Clearing his throat again, he begins to speak.

"Just tell me when to slow down or when to stop, if it gets too painful for you and I'll stop and slow down, okay" he looked to her for reassurance and an okay, to which she nodded.

He didn't know how to position himself so he just opted for kneeling next to her, facing her. He then grabbed the scissors and started to cut her top. Starting from the bottom to the top. As he reached the first claw mark the girl hissed as the shirt was stuck to the wound due to all the dried blood. Percy automatically stopped what he was doing.

"No, no, keep going, don't stop now otherwise we will never get this done and I can't go back to camp cause I'll be dead" her honey-brown eyes were glossed with tears and the boy just wanted to hold her in his arms until the end of time in a place where they aren't fighting monsters all the damn time and in a place where they can settle down, have fun and just enjoy their life like regular teenagers.

"Don't say that so casually, you are not going to die. Not when you have me. Not when I'll always be here for you, patching you up, nursing you back to health forever. I will never in a million years let you die. I swear on the river Styx."

She couldn't say anything to him, he will always render her speechless. She just nodded her head as tears cascaded down her cheeks to which he wiped away and placed a kiss on her forehead. Feeling the warmth off eachother brought a sense of peace to them that no one else could ever fill.

He finished wiping her tears away and then continued cutting her shirt away from the wound. Every time she hissed, winced or flinched, the boy had the overwhelming urge to stop everything he was doing as long as it stopped bring her more pain. Whenever this would happen, the girl would softly squeeze his knee, as her hand was resting there to make sure he was still close to her and was still okay and breathing.

This reassured him immensely but it did not stop him from the guilt that was drowning him. This would not have happened if it wasn't for him. She would not be in this position right now if he just chose someone else to go on the quest with. She had almost died due to his decision making. He chose her, he told her the plan, the plan that put her straight into danger, he didnt even second guess his choice, he put her into the battlefield without even asking her properly. Whatever he said went.

The boy had not realised that during his intense self-loathing session, he zoned out and stopped the task at hand.

"Perce?" the girl asked while bringing her hand from his knee to his bicep. "Are you okay? whats going on in your kelp filled brain?" she said with a half smile as the boy looked up at her.

"Nothing, its okay. Just zoned out for a sec" he replied in an instant, looked away from her and continued to cut her shirt away. He was almost at her breasts and he could feel himself getting a bit hot. Obviously, there was no reason to in this situation but just being so close and intimate to her in a non sexual way made him flustered, he couldn't even imagine of it was in a sex- STOP. He shouted at his brain.

She let out a whimper of pain and a few laboured breaths as Percy carefully peeled her shirt of off the biggest wound she had. Her hand squeezed his knee harder than he would have liked her to but it didnt matter, not anymore, not when he caused this, not when he was the reason for her pain.

He finally got it off the biggest cut and last cut and now he just had to cut the rest of the shirt off. No big deal right?

WRONG.

The boy was telling himself to suck it up and just cut the rest of her shirt off but he was flustered. It was times like this that made him remember he was just a boy. He was just a boy with a silly crush. Except it isnt a 'silly crush' he was utterly in love with the girl. He tried to clear his head and at the same time, cleared his throat while he cut higher.

He could feel her eyes watching him, he could feel how fast her heart was racing and he could feel how fast his own was racing. It was as though their hearts were in sync. Every beat was the same.

Yes the girl felt flustered in this situation, she also couldn't help but want to tease the boy she loved. The girl had always grown up with a life where she never 'loved' anyone, not truly. To her love was always a very strong word in her dictionary but whatever she felt for Percy Jackson it was so powerful she felt as though she needed a word more meaningful than love.

A word that expressed how everytime she thought of him, that specific memory of him will be branded in her brain forever to the point where even Hera could never make her forget him or forget the way he makes her feel.

He makes her feel alive, the most alive shes every felt in her 16 years of life.

"Are you blushing water boy?" the girl asked him with a half smile on her face and eyes half opened as she felt a sharp pain run through her, while also trying to control her own breathing at the same time. Percy didn't respond, he only kept cutting her shirt off, fingers lightly brushing over the material of her bra.

She held her breath when he did that, whether it was on purpose of not, the feeling it sent through her body made her want to repeatedly bash her head against a solid wall while ripping her eyes out... in a good way of course.

Percy finally cut her shirt fully off and it just slid down her arms and bunched at the bottom, near the tree. She felt exposed and could feel the goosebumps on her exposed skin. Percy didn't waste any time and grabbed a clean towel and his water bottle.

Before he could drenched it in water, she stopped him by kicking him with her uncompromised leg to indicate he needed to stop. This instantly stopped him and caused him to look at her.

"Give me the water bottle before you soak the towel, if the water is warm it will work better and not hurt as much so i'll just heat it up" Percy thought about it for a second before he retaliated.

"You already aren't well enough to get off the ground, how on earth are you going to make it back to camp if you drain yourself of more energy. I know its going to hurt but it will either way, but getting you back to camp is the priority at the moment" Percy didnt want to say those words to the girl, he felt so bad for her and he couldn't help but blame himself. And when he looked into her eyes, like really looked into her eyes after he said that, he wished he could take it back.

Just looking at her made him want to give into her.

"I can take it, I promise, I'll be okay enough to get back to camp, but I'm telling you now Percy, if I feel anymore extreme pain, I will just end up passing out. Please just let me do this." she tried to move closer to the boy but forgot about the fact that she literally could not move a single inch without his help.

This just lead the boy to wrap his arm around her back and lent her against the tree again. He looked at her with a stern look.

"Okay, you win. But you have to promise on the river Styx that you will preserve every other bit of your energy for the ride back home."

"I swear on the River Styx that I will preserve every other bit of my energy for the ride back to camp" He gave her one last look before giving her the water bottle. She focused some most of her energy to her hands and they started to glow. She took the bottle from percy's hand and he could feel the warmth radiate off of her.

He looked at her in awe but if anyone else was there they would have told you that the boy was love struck. She opened her eyes and made sure to not boil the water. As it was simmering, she gave the bottle back to the boy and he instantly uncapped it and poured the, now warm, water onto the towel.

"This is going to hurt... a lot, and by a lot i mean a lot, you might want to brace yourself" the boy said as he gave his flannel back to her and some ambrosia for her to eat before they start the painful part of fixing her up.

Aurora took both and muttered a small thanks under her breath before eating the ambrosia which was very pleasant to chew and then stuffed percy's flannel in her mouth again. She felt so weird but if she didnt and someone heard her scream bloody murder, they would get caught and the police would want them... again.

His ocean blue eyes met her honey eyes and he shared a look of regret and guilt before he wiped the dried blood away, starting from the bottom of her abdomen. She instantly clenched her jaw and recoiled as agony ran through her and her hand immediately shot out to grab Percy's wrist in a painfully tight hold to stop him from further cleaning the wounds that caused her pain.

"Sunshine, I know its painful, but I have to do this, I'm going to do this as fast and gently as I can but I will have to be rough at times" he gently takes his freehand to clasp over hers and took it of him and intertwined them while speaking to her.

In his favour, it seemed that the energy it took the girl to warm the water up finally caught up with her as her hand lost most of its grip and her eyes closed slightly. He chuckled slightly and placed her hand back down next to her before continuing what he was doing.

He carefully but efficiently cleaned the areas surrounding her wounds while she was rejuvenating. He would hear muffled noises from time to time but other than that she was essentially knocked out. As he finished she seemed to feel less tired and her eyes opened wider than they did before.

"I'm almost finished sunshine, did you like your nap?" the boy questioned with a smirk but deep down he was glad that she kept her promise and she would have enough energy to go back to camp.

The girl nodded and looked at her abdomen. It was really clean and the wounds were barely bleeding anymore but she was fucking freezing. She shivered a little bit and percy could tell instantly.

"I've just got to bandage you up then you can put a jumper on. Okay?" he reassured her while taking the sterile dressing, he placed it over the 4 slashes and began to unwrap the dressing to bandage her up.

They both soon found the position to be quite awkward.

Percy needed to bandage her whole abdomen which needed him to wrap the dressing over her back but she was lent up against the tree without a shirt on and unable to move to do it herself. He stopped to think of a good way to do this.

"Okay, I've got it. I'll lean you up against me and bandage your abdomen from behind." The girl thought for a bit before she agreed and the boy got up so he was only seen in her peripheral vision. He hooked his arms under hers and moved her along the ground to sit inbetween his legs. The position felt very compromising for both of them but it needed to be done.

She could feel his warm breath on her cold neck and she felt the urge to pass away because if thats how she passed, she would not mind. She held her breath as Percy begun wrapping her abdomen, she could barely feel the pain cause all she could think about and feel was him.

His breath on her neck, his fingers brushing her skin, how carefully he was handling her, like she would break at the wrong touch. He was everything she wanted, everything she needed. Everything they both deserved.

He quickly finished wrapping her up and he mentally called Blackjack from where ever he was right now. Before he could move or start to get things sorted he just looked at Aurora. She was peaceful. She looked ethereal under the moonlight, though she did look better under direct sunlight.

He decided to just stay still for a bit and wrapped an arms around the girl loosely as to not injure or hurt her more. They just needed some rest, no matter how long or short it was.

Both Aurora and Percy could hear the flap of Blackjacks wings so he quickly moved the girl back to lean against the tree while he packed everything away. Not before making sure to torniquet the girls leg where the wood piece was still protruding out of it. He made the decision before to not take it out as they both did not know how severe the injury underneath it was.

Percy grabbed a warm, woolly jumper from his bag and a blanket and gave both items to the girl before zipping it up.

"I'm going to find your bag and your bracelet before we leave, and before you say anything. I'm going to call Blackjack here to be with you before I look for them" he stated as he got up.

"Thanks a lot Perce, but before you look, how am I meant to put this jumper on without raising my arms and disrupting my bandages" Percy felt like an idiot. He dropped his bag back on the ground and knelt next to her carefully putting the jumper through one arms hole, then the next, then her head through.

Percy would never admit it there and then but he always loved when the girl would wear his clothes. It sent a warm fuzzy feeling through him knowing she was wearing his clothes, especially when she was willingly wearing his clothes.

Similarly, Aurora would never admit it there but having Percy help her get changed into his clothes and help clean her up made her fall even more in love with him if that was even possible. She felt as though she was just falling into deep pit everytime he did anything for her or even just looked her way.

He finished by wrapping her up in the blanket and chuckled when he saw how she looked... Exactly like a burrito.

Blackjack came down and the girls eyes instantly widened at the sight of the creature. To which the boy just smiled at. Before he left to retrieve her bag and bracelet which were very easy to find. He quickly arrived back to the girl and Pegasus and was met with an adorable sight.

The Pegasus was on the floor next to the girl and was almost hugging her with its wing. Percy didnt think he could fall in love with the girl again but she has gone and proved him wrong, like always.

"I've got your things sunshine, and I know its going to hurt but I'm going to have to pick you up to put you on Blackjack. Is that okay?" He knelt next to her and she nodded.

He wrapped an arm around her back and one under her knees, making sure not to hit the piece of wood and picked the girl up, quite easily, bridal style. It make them both feel fuzzy and warm inside. Even blackjack could feel the warmth.

He placed her sitting on the Pegasus so she would be infront of him when he got on. He then grabbed both of their bags and got onto blackjack himself.

"You'd normally need to hold on tight to blackjack but I'll hold you okay? Just rest" The boy whispered in her ear as he gave her a peck on her cheek while she slowly drifted off and leaned her head back onto the boy's shoulder.

"Blackjack, No crazy flying today. We aren't at war today, its a rest day. Just take us back to camp, quick but not to the point we normally fly." Blackjacks reply left Percy with pink staining his cheeks and they made their way back to camp.

______________________________________________________________

OH MY FUCKING DAYS, I AM NEVER WRITING ANYTHING THIS LONG AGAIN

(such a fucking lie)

But I have to honest, apart from the small mental breakdowns. This was really fun to write. I love these two soo much.

When I went into this, I wanted to actually get them back to camp and I wanted them to confess but it was getting tooooooo long for that so if anyone wants a part 2, I'll gladly make it. Please dont critique me too much, this is still my first imagine 😭😭😭

I LOVE YOU ALL ❤️❤️❤️

unless you piss me off

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sweetkpopmusings · 4 months ago

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felix coworker headcanons <3

a/n: i've got headspace focus music playing and i'm in my stray kids feels today so here is another coworker headcanons post !! this one realllllyyyy catapulted me into felix feelings, so i hope it brings you comfort and serotonin as well <333 pics not mine !!

content: fluff, nonidol!au | wc: 0.9k | warnings: none really! some mentions of food | pairing: coworker!felix x gn!reader | requests: open

oh sweet felix!!

you’ll never forget his first day–the receptionist was walking him through the workspace, introducing him to everyone, and explaining their roles. felix, a genuine ray of sunshine on that gloomy monday morning, smiled and waved at everybody with pure enthusiasm :’-)

when the receptionist introduced you, felix pointed at the mug on your desk and commented on how cute he thought it was ! you could practically hear the exclamation points in his voice when he spoke :,-)

later in the day, you noticed he was struggling with the coffee machine how rude of the coffee machine

you offered to help–though admittedly, you didn’t know much about it either–and he was so so grateful someone was being this kind to him

like he actually was so touched he ended up telling his friends about it that night :,-(

but anyways back to you and felix vs. the coffee machine

eventually you did get it working…you just pressed different buttons a ridiculous number of times until felix’s hot chocolate came out properly

once his mug was full, felix cheered and high-fived you, promising to pay you back one day for your service

you assured him that he doesn’t owe you anything and that you’re happy he isn’t defeated by the coffee machine on his first day

that led you two into a conversation about what it’s like to work here, the do’s and don’t’s of the office, the cool people, tips and tricks for boring meetings, and so on

felix looks up to you so much after this interaction :,,,,-)

he calls you his mentor <333

it doesn’t matter that you work in completely different departments–even the person who is supposed to be mentoring felix refers to you as his mentor lmao

at the end of his probation period, felix bakes brownies for you because he swears he wouldn’t have survived this long without you to keep him company <33333333

you two share the brownies during your lunch break while watching silly little videos

it’s so cute that everyone is jealous but they wouldn’t dare interrupt because they know for a FACT that you’re felix’s favorite

aside from being your personal baker, felix loves to play little pranks on you in the office

they’re super harmless–i’m talking pranks like leaving stickers in random places around your workspace, so you can transfer them to your laptop or water bottle whenever you find them–but he is THRILLED every time you get a surprised look on your face as a result of his antics

there’s no doubt in your mind that felix was behind it, so you look over to where he’s sitting and he’s just staring at you like >:^)

while he’s too far away for you to hear him, you know that he’s doing his classic little heh heh and plotting his next attack :,-)

felix also has cute polaroids at his desk !!

you get him one as a gift :,-) and he cherishes it so much !!!!

it’s displayed at the center of all his polaroids and he even wrote “from y/n <3” on the bottom of it so everyone knew it was his most special one :-(

he encourages you to decorate your desk because he thinks it's important to have things that make you smile while you're working !! and he's so right for that

if you don’t know where to start, felix will dedicate an afternoon to making a mood board for inspiration

he loves nothing more than shopping online with you for the perfect items

felix gets so invested that he helps you to organize everything and workshops all possible setups before you both decide on the best one though honestly he’s more concerned about it being the optimal arrangement than you are lol

after your new desk decorations are complete, felix proudly takes a picture of you at your redesigned workstation

when you make that your profile pic for your work chatting platform, felix just about faints from happiness

he’s practically twirling his hair, giggling, and kicking his feet when he messages you “nice profile pic!!” :,,,,,-) <3333

felix, though known as being happy-go-lucky, is far more in-tune with your emotions than you realize

if you come in sleep-deprived, felix is the first one to ask you if you would like coffee/tea/a pick-me-up

when you’re feeling stressed due to an upcoming deadline or having a pile of work upon your return from vacation, felix stays late with you to prioritize all your tasks so you have a clear game plan

he’s also always, always, always reminding you to take breaks !!

it’s a mini tradition for you two to do desk stretches together :-( like you just look at each other from across the workspace and do the same stretches while making funny faces at each other and holding back all your giggles :-((((

activities and conversations with felix become so embedded in your daily routine that you can’t imagine how you got through the workday before he started here

one quiet afternoon when you two are hanging out in the breakroom, you ask him why he takes such good care of you

without missing a beat, felix smiles and answers, “i promised you i’d pay you back for helping me out with the coffee machine on my first day, didn’t i?”

all you can manage to do is smile and i’d be tearing up if i were you because, just by stepping into the breakroom and offering a hand, you met the brightest, sweetest, most loving man on the planet

little do you know, felix also can’t believe his luck in meeting someone as caring, reliable, and wonderful as you <333

this is why, sitting in the breakroom where your friendship began, he pinky promises to stay by your side through coffee machine problems, stressful workdays, and whatever else life has in store for you :,-))))

oh i love felix so much i'm inconsolable my sweet baby angel </33

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becauseimswagman1 · 8 months ago

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Toxic Love

A/N:.... it's been forever since I've posted...I'M BACK WITH THE SMUT GUYS. Don't be afraid to comment either!!!

A/N#2: he got some pretty teeth y'all

This for you @itsbackwoodsbby 🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾🫶🏾

(She wrote something for me. Gotta get her backkkk)

------------------------------

To say that you and your man are a toxic couple is downplaying just how toxic y’all actually are. He cheats and cheats, yet you stay. “Why?” is the million-dollar question. You could say you love him, but you could also say you love the money he makes. See your man is a drug dealer, but not just any ole drug dealer, he’s feared. He’s not to be messed with in any way, so what made you finally get his lying and cheating ass back? The most recent bitch he cheated on you with.

Her name is whor- Hazel. Hazel been tryna get at your man forever. You’re surprised he even fucked that fuck-anything-that-walks, homewrecking ass girl, but niggas will be niggas you guess. You’ve come to realize that they’ll fuck anyone and anything.

Anyways, you got him back by fucking his fine ass, big dick-having-ass cousin. Guess it really does run the family, but the dick was trash and the head was bomb, but if your man asks then all of it was better than him.

You could only imagine how crazy he acted once he found out, but he was almost done with his drops for the day so you’d find out in a minute or two.

---------------------------------

You hear a car door slam and shortly after the front door slam too, “Ayo what the fuck am I hearing bout you fucking my cousin Dre?!”

You almost laughed, his anger was comical to you. You admit you did act like this when you found out he cheated the first time, but as smart as he is… you figured he would’ve figured everything out by now.

You shrugged at him, “Oh they talking about that already? Damn word get around fast. And don’t be slamming the doors in this house!”

“It’s true? You sit up here living this lavish ass lifestyle and you decide to act like one of yo lil friends and fuck anybody with a pulse.”

Okay, he was doing too much now. It’s not like you slept with half the motherfuckers in his gang unlike someone (Hazel).

You stood up off the couch, “Nah, Trevante fuck you! I don’t know why you tryna make me out to be some type of hoe but that shit not gone fly. Yo black ass acting like I fucked yo brother or something. It was just your cousin so back up off me.”

He walked over to you and got in your face, “Tell me that shit not true. Tell me it’s not so I can go pop the nigga that told me.”

Damn, did he have the grill in today? Top AND bottom too? Mhmmmm.

You stared up into his eyes as innocently as you could while he looked down at you, “Sorry baby, but… it’s true. And it was sooo good, too. He fucked me way better than you.”

God, he’s wearing the cologne that makes you soak your panties in record time.

“Oooooh now he’s better than me? I’ll murk that nigga right now, blood or not. Keep on testing me, ma.”

He’s gonna fuck you up. He’s no longer mad at the get back, but the thoughts of another man fucking you better and that you could possibly leave him because of that haunt him now.

“I’ll be here to wash your clothes when you get back. Just don’t come in here dripping blood and shit. It’ll be a bitch to get out our new carpets.”

Trevante could see how unphased you were about this whole thing and it only pissed him off more. You gave away your pussy and that belonged to him.

He grabbed your neck and got real close to your face, “Say he’s better than me again, and watch what happens to you.”

You smirked, this is exactly what you wanted, “He’s better than you. Maybe this will teach you not to fuck with dirty ass hoes.”

He chuckled, tightening his hold on your neck a little, “So you mad I fucked one of yo lil friends?”

“She’s not-” He cut you off, “Right. She’s not. But you really went out and did what you did as a get back? You put on your big girl panties and took a shot at me? That’s a mistake, baby.”

He pecked your lips then threw you over his shoulder, “You gone regret that shit.”

“Baby-”

“Nah, don’t “baby” me now. You was just talking all that shit, it’s time to put your money where your mouth is.”

Trevante took you to your shared room and sat you down on your feet then grabbed your neck again, making you look at him, “You gonna be good for Daddy?”

“Mhm.” you avoided his heated stare. You knew what he had in store for you was gone have you acting right...for now.

He tightened his grip on your neck, “Words ma, or you not gone get what you deserve.”

“I’ll be daddy’s good gir-” he adjusted your head to look at him in his eyes, “Good what?”

“I’ll be daddy’s good little slut.”

He pecked your lips and let your neck go, “Take your panties off. Ass up, face down.”

------------------------

Taglist: lmk if you wanna be added or taken off

@prettyisasprettydoes1306 @thatone-girly

@blackerthings @roguekiki @enigmadivine

@novaniskye @ziayamikaelson @twocentuar

#becauseimswagman1 #x black reader #smut #trevante rhodes #trevante rhodes x reader #trevante rhodes smut #black fanfiction #black fanfic writer

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prettyinpwn · 4 months ago

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Mabel Pines: How Well Was She Written... Really? (GF Writing Analysis Pt. 3)

GF Writing Analysis Series: Pt. 1 - Ford Pines: A Masterclass in Writing a Good Flawed Character Pt. 2 - How Gravity Falls Could Have Been Better + Poor Ford and Wendy

Like my previous post in my GF Writing Analysis series, I am a bit nervous to post this, to be honest. I love this fandom, but there are two main topics in it that tend to draw the most debate: A. how Gravity Falls ended and its length/pacing, and B. Mabel's writing.

I already tackled the former in my last post, so today, I'm tackling the latter: Mabel. I like to live fandom life on the wild side, what can I say?

Let me preface this post by saying that I am very neutral on Mabel as a fan. I never especially liked her, and I never especially disliked her. It's nothing against Mabel. I'm just personally more drawn to characters like Stan and Ford the most, and if I'm honest, the only reason I'm drawn to Dipper more than Mabel is likely because I relate to him more.

*Gestures at, you know, this blog's over a decade long history of theorycrafting and analyses.*

So... I'm coming at this post with a very neutral eye and an open mind, and like my other analyses, it will be based as much as possible on writing theory I learned in college and over the years in personal study.

But unlike Ford's post, where I already had a viewpoint in mind and wrote it around proving that thesis, Mabel's is going to be more exploratory, and I will reach a conclusion at the end. Is Mabel really that badly written? Is she written pretty well with just some flaws? Or... is she actually a really well-written character and just misunderstood?

Let's discover the answer together.

Mabel's Introduction + Who is She?

I will quote my general method of analyzing character writing from my Ford analysis post to start:

"When I took writing classes in college (and over years of writing in general and drooling over writing advice podcasts and blogs), I found that the best method for me, personally, when it comes to crafting characters is to focus on two major things:

1. Their want.

2. Their need. On the surface, these look like the same things, but in character writing, they can be vastly different. For example, say that you have a character that greatly desires fame and recognition. They want these things.

But what’s the real reason behind it? Is it because they had a parent that was famous and want to live up to their example? Is it because they want to be adored by people? Is it because they were told they’d never amount to anything by someone and want to prove them wrong?

This real reason behind it all is the core need. Yes, they want fame and recognition, but they need it because, say, they have low self-esteem and need copious amounts of outside validation to boost it.

Tied to this need is usually a backstory reason (sometimes called their wound). Say your hypothetical character was bullied a lot as a child. Or abused by a parent. Etc. Whatever the wound was, it caused a big, painful hole in their heart that they try to fill and fix with their want.

So they go on a journey. The want is often the external journey. The need is often the core journey / character arc. Our example character seeks fame and recognition on an external journey, but deep inside, they realize they need something else, which is to understand that their past trauma/wound doesn’t define them, and fame and recognition will not be the balm they expect it will be. Often, they realize they had what they needed all along. They grow past their flaws associated with their seeking this want through understanding and instead pursuing the need."

So... what is Mabel's core want and need as a character? And what's her wound? Who is she? Let's identify these things by looking closely at the very first episode, Tourist Trapped. Tourist Trapped establishes the following things about Mabel:

Optimistic; likes to look on the bright side of things. ("Yay, GRAAAAAASSS!", "Check out all my splinters!").

Go with the flow / easy-going / accepts things at face value. ("Yes, you can keep chewing on my sweater!", learns Norman is a bunch of gnomes and instead of punting them immediately she tries to gently turn them down).

Romance obsessed. No examples needed. *Gestures at whole series.*

Assumes the best in people / accepting of others. (e.g Norman).

Naive / overly trusting (e.g Norman again).

Cares about her family (protecting Dipper).

Clever (ever notice how she tricks the gnomes almost like how Stan tricks Bill near the end of the series?).

(Quick side note because this part always blows my mind: Tourist Trapped is a microcosm of the whole series, by the way. Two siblings get into an argument, one gets swept into the paranormal, and the other saves them from it. The former tricks the paranormal in a clever way to stop the paranormal threat from harming them both, and the two make up at the end and go on more adventures. Sound familiar?)

Back to Mabel, let's identify her core want and need and wound from her character traits. I struggled a long time with identifying this, because Mabel seems like such a laid back character that it's harder to pin these down for her compared to, say, Ford (false validation given to use me vs. honest but selfless love) and Stan (earning worth vs. knowing inherent worth). But I think I pinned it down...

Yins and Yangs

And guess what? Hers and Dipper's wants and needs match Stan and Ford's, but not in the way you think. Dipper has Stan's struggle, and Mabel has Ford's. Just like how Tourist Trapped is a microcosm of the whole series where one twin gets whisked away into the weird (Ford and Mabel) and the other needs to save them from it (Stan and Dipper)... their wants and needs are the same.

Granted, it manifests in different ways. Using Ford as an example, Ford's want is love and acceptance, but in a "praise me and my science and my accomplishments and accept me for who I am" way. Mabel's want is love and acceptance, but in a "must find boyfriend and keep loved ones close" way. Or in another way of explaining it, Ford desires introverted love, and Mabel desires outgoing love; makes sense for their characters. Ford is a Mabel if she were an introvert, and vice versa. Just like how Stan is a Dipper if he were an extrovert, and vice versa.

So... yeah. Ford and Mabel are the same character... sort of. Because as much as Ford pursues the unknown, Mabel pursues love (both romantic and familial). And Stan and Dipper are the twins that chase after them, anchoring them back to reality, sometimes even literally.

And that's where we come to the concept of balance, AKA why the twins are good for each other. You ever notice how the Pines at their worst is always when they're alone? Stan alone is a depressed criminal. Ford alone is both paranoid and naive. Dipper alone is insecure and pessimistic. And Mabel alone is also too trusting like Ford and delusional.

What fixes this? Their twin. Stan with Ford is happy and with purpose again, Ford with Stan is protected (thanks to Stan's people smarts) and grounded, Dipper with Mabel is more confident and optimistic, and Mabel with Dipper is protected (thanks to Dipper's logical smarts) and realistic.

THAT'S why the show had Mabel and Dipper stick together at the end. THAT'S why there was such an emphasis on why Stan and Ford being apart caused so many issues. THAT'S why Dipper chose to stay with Mabel over the apprenticeship. Because time and time again, the show states the thesis that a Pines without their twin is a dysfunctional Pines. Agree with it or not, that's the theme with their characters.

Because - and I say this lovingly - the Pines are kind of stupid at times without their twins. Stan's purposeless and turns to crime, Ford's too naive and trusting, Dipper's too pessimistic, and Mabel's too optimistic. Ford gives Stan purpose, Stan gives Ford some actual common sense, Mabel gives Dipper some needed levity, and... Dipper gives Mabel a reality check (GEE, I WONDER WHY MABEL'S WEIRDMAGEDDON EPISODE WAS CALLED 'ESCAPE FROM REALITY', AND WHY DIPPER WAS THE ONE TO BREAK HER FROM IT? *Cough beats people over the head with a theme but somehow people still didn't get it cough.*).

Sorry, Caps Lock rant aside, honestly, I should just make a chart to explain the Pines. We'll be using four scales: introverted (I) vs. extroverted (E), gravity (G) vs. levity (L), active (A) vs. reactive (R), and book smart (B) vs. people smart (P).

(Yes, we're gonna make our own Gravity Falls Myers-Briggs, because I'm that insane.)

This system also reflects the Pines on a layer level: Stan and Mabel's outside personas (E and P) seem more similar, but their cores are different (GR vs LA); the same goes for Ford and Dipper (shared outside persona of I and B, but different cores of LA and GR).

This is why, in the fandom, we often look superficially at the Pines and say, "Dipper is the Ford twin because smart nerds, and Mabel is the Stan twin because outgoing fun ones". No, my friends: Dipper is the Stan twin, and Mabel is the Ford twin. Dipper is just Stan in a Ford coating, and Mabel is just Ford in a Stan coating.

We'll come back to this later for the next section, but for now, let's focus on answering the main question: is Mabel written badly, or is she written well?

Well... she has core wants (fun and love and escapism and childhood). She has a need (reality and gravity and facing the future). And... well, they never really explored her wound AKA her reason why she desires these things like they did for Stan and Ford.

But... my guess is that reality has often wounded her and popped her bubble in the past (maybe bullying at school, hence her desire to not face growing up alone without Dipper), so she avoids it in order to keep her optimistic fantasy alive to avoid pain. Just like... I dunno... that whole episode that centered around that thing called Mabeland? Metaphors, people.

So so far, Mabel checks the same boxes as my earlier analysis on why Ford is a well-written character:

Want? Check. Need? Check. Realizes she had what she needed all along (Dipper to ground her)? Check. And our last point, I'll refer back to my quote from earlier: "They [well-written character] grow past their flaws associated with their seeking this want through understanding and instead pursuing the need."

Yeah. Mabel has flaws, associated with her pursuing her wants. They manifest in that, yeah, sometimes she's selfish. And that's the flaw most people in the fandom have criticized her for.

But guess what? ALL of the Pines are selfish at times.

Stan? Ford gets captured in Weirdmageddon and Stan - although we get why he's bitter - is reluctant to save him again.

Ford? Ford received a college grant and made no attempts to reach out to Stan who was poor and struggling - although we understand why Ford was bitter, too - and reaches out to Stan not to make amends but to ask him to do him a favor.

Dipper? Probably the least selfish of the Pines, but still... at times he's selfish, too. The Time Traveler's Pig explores this. He repeatedly rewrote the day of the fair because he wanted a chance to be with a girl we know he never would have gotten with anyways. Did he think about what Wendy wanted when he did that? No. Did he think about what Mabel wanted? Well, no, at least until the end, but the moral of that episode is that Dipper learned to sacrifice his selfish want to make someone else happy.

So if people dislike Mabel for being selfish, well... they should dislike all of the Pines, then. And there are times she gives up her wants for Dipper, too, albeit shown less often. She trashes her sock puppet show - her chance at impressing a guy and compromising her core want of love - to save him, inspired by all the times he sacrificed for her. She lets go of a land of perfection and her delusion - albeit one that really wasn't real - to help him fix Weirdmageddon and save Ford.

Because here's the thing: a well-written character has flaws. There'd be no story if they didn't. A character without flaws has no arc and is poorly written. Mabel - just like the other Pines - is flawed and that's great. Because it means... she's well-written. I'll quote my post on Ford again:

"This is why Ford is a well-written character. He has flaws and suffers for them until he makes up for his mistakes. They are understandable flaws, but like in real life, just because it’s understandable why we act poorly at times - be it because of trauma or upbringing - it doesn’t mean we’re justified in continuing to hurt others or ourselves because of those flaws. We must acknowledge them, grow past them, and do our best to do better in the future, as well as apologize to those we hurt along the way."

Just like Ford, Mabel has flaws - albeit understandable ones based on who she is and her history - and she suffers for them. But in Escape From Reality, she acknowledges them, grows past them, and does her best to do better in the future.

As for the other hate on her I've often seen, including the way she gave the Rift over to Blendin/Bill... my friends... she did the same thing Ford did. And the flaw Bill took advantage of to do this was the same flaw she had in Tourist Trapped: her naivety.

Bill: "Hey, naive Pines twin, I have something you want (for summer to never end / validation and knowledge). Just give me something (the Rift / possession and build this portal) and I'll let you have it. I swear I'm innocent and on your side and have your best interests at heart!"

Bill is a master manipulator. So if we don't judge Ford for the way he was manipulated at the age of his late twenties, then why the hell do we as a fandom judge Mabel for falling for the same trick as a 12 year old?

And so we return to Tourist Trapped. Mabel's flaw in that episode was the same as the flaw she had by the end of the series. Drawn into a fantasy, lacking realism and logic about it, sibling saves her, apology to sibling, and working together to fix the mess. The difference is, is scale and stakes, and at the end of the series, it's a permanent change of growth. Mabel learns to accept reality; that life won't always be love and rainbows and sunshine, and that's okay.

I also want to highlight how the Pines' flaws are often their greatest strengths, too. Dipper often pops Mabel's fun bubble with his pessimism and realism; sometimes it rains on her parade, and sometimes it breaks her out of a delusion. And vice versa: Mabel often is too optimistic and naive, and that leads to Dipper having to save her from some manipulations and delusions, but sometimes she's the one who lifts him up when he needs it and he's too pessimistic and insecure. Case in point, Gideon Rises, where Dipper insists he needs Journal 3 after Stan takes it, and Mabel tells him, "You're a hero whether you've got that journal or not.".

And as for the hate on her "holding Dipper back from his apprenticeship", I'll quote this here, said by Mabel after Dipper convinces her to leave Mabeland:

"Hey, Dipper? I appreciate what you said back there, but if you want to take Ford's apprenticeship, I won't get in your way."

She offers him a compromise; she allows him to go for it. Because she learned her lesson of accepting the reality that, sometimes, people grow apart instead of things staying the same forever. She's become selfless. And at that point, it was Dipper's responsibility and choice to take it or not.

So if you're upset that Mabel "held Dipper back", no. She gave him room to leave, and he said no and stayed. If he'd wanted it that badly, he'd have gone for Ford's apprenticeship. And remember the series' thesis on the Pines I stated earlier:

"A Pines without their twin is a dysfunctional Pines. Agree with it or not, that's the theme with their characters."

So... we've now arrived at our conclusion about Mabel's writing based on the points we've explored above:

Once and for all, and I'll bold and make this big to emphasize my point, because I hope it quells some of the Mabel dislike: Mabel is a well-written character. She's flawed, yes, but that's the point. So... Why the Mabel Hate, Then?

There have been some ideas thrown around as to why Mabel has received extra scrutiny compared to the other Pines characters. One theory that's been thrown around is her gender, as she's the only female character of the four Pines, although I would lean towards that this isn't the likely main cause, due to the fact that there are other female characters that are liked in this fandom. Wendy receives little to no hate that I've ever seen (and in fact, I mostly see wishes to have gotten more writing featuring her character). Pacifica is liked, especially when it comes to shipping her with Dipper. So... why Mabel, specifically?

I would argue it's not her gender, specifically, but more her femininity. Mabel is very stereotypically "girly". Wendy is a tomboy, and Pacifica - although "girly" - is more of an aggressive character before her growth. Mabel is feminine and passive. She also is into many stereotypically "girly" things, like romance, knitting, crafts, etc. So people that are uncomfortable with the stereotypically feminine might have a subtle, unconscious "ick" reaction to Mabel for that reason.

And... combine Wendy's tomboy quality and Pacifica's association with a male main character (at least, when shipped with Dipper), well... er... I think that may be one potential reason why Mabel is disliked more. She's A. "girly" and B. she has no inherent "value" to a male character.

Dear God, I feel ick even writing that. But when you think about it... that could be one potential reason why she's the most disliked female character in the series. She's girly and is not a prize to be won to add value to a male's life. I shudder to think that this may be the case in today's world, but that may be the unconscious bias some people might have against her, and instead of realizing that, they blame it on "Mabel's selfish / poorly written".

Or, it could be the expectation that women need to be more selfless than men. Let's take after Ford for a moment and do some science: "The reward and learning systems in our brains work in close cooperation. Empirical studies show that girls are rewarded with praise for prosocial behavior, implying that their reward systems learn to expect a reward for helping behavior instead of selfish behavior. With this in mind, the gender differences that we observed in our studies could best be attributed to the different cultural expectations placed on men and women. This learning account is also supported by findings that indicate significant differences in the sensitivity of the reward system to prosocial and selfish behavior across cultures." (Credit/source).

Translation? In society, we praise women for being selfless, and we praise men for being selfish.

Getting this back to Dipper and Mabel, many have viewed their character conflict as "Dipper's being ambitious, and Mabel's holding him back". And with Dipper being a boy, and Mabel being a girl, fans might judge her overly harshly for her selfishness yet are easy on Stan, Ford, and Dipper for their selfishness because, yes, possibly... gender bias. "Mabel should have been less selfish!", they yell, yet people who criticize this flaw of hers are awfully quiet when it comes to addressing this same flaw in the male Pines.

Another reason why I think this is a strong contender for the most common reason why Mabel is disliked, is because of the parallelism between the two sets of Pines twins. Stan does the same thing as Mabel does: wanting his twin to stay with him, not wanting him to pursue his ambitions, wanting things to always stay the same...

So why do people not criticize Stan for the same thing? Why does he get more sympathy, yet Mabel gets ire? When Stan does it, he's a loving brother who just wants his brother to stay. When Mabel does it, she's "too selfish".

Feminist literary lens aside, sometimes I think Mabel's dislike can also be defense of one Pines twin over the other. I've seen this a lot with Ford and Stan in the fandom, where people vilify Ford yet see Stan as innocent in their squabble, as was common shortly after Ford was revealed at the time of airing.

Added to that was the fact that Ford got less attention from the writers and less time in the show to justify his flaws and understand his character (see my previous Gravity Falls writing analysis here that covers this topic), and, well... of course there's a high likelihood people are going to sympathize with Stan more than Ford. The show gave us more reasons to. But that doesn't mean Ford is inherently more wrong or more flawed than Stan. It's just that... people might like Stan more than Ford, so give him more stink-eye.

So I think the same happens with Mabel and Dipper, although Mabel and Dipper got roughly the same amount of airtime, so that leads me to my next point:

I have a little side theory here I want to test (but I could very likely be wrong) regarding why some characters in Gravity Falls are well-liked by certain people and vice versa, as well as why some characters are more vilified or idolized in this fandom. Let's return to my Pines personality chart:

Please ask yourself these questions honestly:

Who is your favorite Pines?

Who is your least favorite Pines?

Now, write these letters down depending on your answer:

Are you introverted (I) or extroverted (E)?

Are you a realist (G) or an optimist (L)?

Are you someone who goes after what you want (A) or waits for it to come to you (R)?

Are you more book smart (B) or people smart (P)?

Now, create your four letter Pines personality (e.g ILRB).

With your Pines personality, count how many letters you have in common with each character.

Now, answer this: do the Pines you share the most letters with happen to be your favorite Pines, and do the Pines you share the least letters with happen to be your least favorite Pines?

Personally, my favorite is Ford, and my least favorite is Mabel (although like I said earlier, I do not dislike Mabel, I am just neutral at worst with her). My own four letters are ILA/RB, meaning I'm introverted, trend towards optimism/levity, am split on active and reactive, and am more book than people smart.

I share 3-4 letters with Ford, 2-3 with Dipper, 1 letter with Stan, and 1-2 letters with Mabel.

And lo and behold... my favorite Pines is the most like me, and my least favorite Pines is one of two least like me.

So here's my theory as to why there's Mabel hate, since we've already established why Mabel is actually technically written very well: a combination of possible unconscious gender bias and personality matchup. Because if there's one thing us humans are good at it, it's, "Ape like me, me like, but ape less like me? Me throw rock! Insert war/hate/prejudice/online fandom hate, etc here.".

Therefore, in final conclusion: Mabel is well-written, and she's criticized unfairly. Anyone that criticizes her as "too selfish" needs to honestly analyze why they might not apply that same criticism to Stan, Dipper, or Ford.

#gravity falls #gravity falls analysis #mabel pines #but also some analysis on Dipper and Ford and Stan too #I even added charts and science this time because I'm insane #and there's a bonus personality test!

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ghostsvacuumcleaner · 1 year ago

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Shades of Red

art in the cover by @ave661 and @shkretart !

chapter one | chapter two | ao3 | masterlist ✦ Pairing: Simon "Ghost" Riley x civilian f! reader ✦ Summary: The sole survivor of a terrorist attack that killed over a hundred. The soldier responsible for saving her. He wants to help you, but his own trauma make him withdraw when he wants to get closer and intoxicate when he wants to remedy. He kisses your scars and hopes you'll runaway. He wants you to run away. But you won't. ✦ TW: NSFW, explicit, f!reader, little to none f! physical appearence descriptions, canon typical violence, mentions of abuse and trauma/PTSD, bit of gore, mental illness mentions, slowburn;

A/N: Hello girlies! This is the very first time I get the courage to actually post something I wrote. I've been reading y'all fics behind my screen for so much time now I figured I could start postingggg; so please be gentle with the feedbacks, but be also sincere ♥ also, English is not my first language and although I'm fluent, there might be a mistake or two along the way. Don't feel shy in pointing it out if you see any! Moreover, this will be a long ass one I'm pretty sure, but I might get myself some more courage to post my smut oneshots in some near future. Hope you enjoy! x

Chapter 1 - The Incident | 3.3k

There was ash in the air everywhere. That scenario didn’t frighten him – in fact, Ghost was absolutely sure that at that point in his life, almost nothing could fright him. He had seen much worse things before, he thought silently as he walked towards the building completely destroyed. There was debris everywhere – the building had not collapsed completely, but some parts did not survive the flames and now there seemed to be not even a little bit of life in that place. There were still small portions of flames spread through a few heaps of debris, a terrible smell of wood and burnt concrete; but nothing of that could be worse than the smells of dead, flattered human flesh that once or again invaded his nostrils.

His eyes rolled around in search of any record of life. In vain, he knew: there was no chance that any civilian had survived that. A cruel, dark bombing, a violent and destructive terrorist act. The only goal was to destroy any form of life that could inhabit there, and possibly it had been obtained without any further circumstances. When Price sent the radio search order to all members of the 141, he made it very clear that those efforts were in vain. They would find nothing. We lost today, he said. We could not foresee this, nor can we remedy it. It was a burden they had to cope with on a daily basis - the often inability to do something, to act, was a burden that a soldier should carry. It was part of the job.

Ghost pressed the point button in his ear. “Is anyone listening?” He asked, his eyes checking the entire perimeter of the building behind the skull mask that covered his face. “Have you found something, LT?” Soap answered, his voice hushed by the efforts. “No. I’m making an entrance, there’s nothing out here.” the lieutenant stated, kicking off a few remaining pieces of concrete from the front of his feet and laying the rifle in his hands. Ghost stood in front of the main entrance to the building – that place that should have looked like a reception at some point in the near past - and the movement of his boots against the ground caused the roof above his head to shake a little, and some ash particles fell onto his helmet. He observed the movement, standing still for a few seconds, only for warranty; he did not want to end up becoming one more of those burial victims.

When the concrete whisper finally stopped stirring his ears, he entered. The lamp of his helmet lit up, and he looked around. His eagle eyes did not lose an inch of that entire perimeter, his ears attentive as those of a bat. He was looking for a sign, whatever it was: a presence, a scream, voices, calls for help. Anything. Anyone.

All he could hear were the sounds of the structure of the building, apparently ready to give in. Ghost tried to enter one of the apartments; his boots sole hit the semi-destroyed grinded surface of the door, and he broke in. He looked around. An enormous smashed chandelier rested violently against the bloody body of a child.

Many people said Simon was the type of man to have no feelings anymore. That time, scars and trauma had taken from him all and every kind of humanity. He had become a soldier—one of the good, one of the invincible, but nothing aside from that. Nothing but a soldier.

Perhaps that sentence became so repetitive that at some point, he, himself began to believe it. His face remained motionless. The sound of the blood drops hanging on the floor filled his ears, and he snorted for a moment, pressing the point into his ear. “First floor, apartment 102,” he said, coordinating other operators to head to start collecting the bodies.

His eyes went up to the ceiling, facing the huge blunt in the structure that caused the luster to fall. Maybe the parents' bodies were still there somewhere to be found, he thought. But that wasn’t his job, and unfortunately he didn’t have all the time in the world. He then traced his steps out of the apartment, looking around. As he kept going upstairs, the lantern lit up one hand or another thrown out of a pile of debris. Broken legs, the kinds of horrors that haunt the dreams of ordinary people.

As Price had said and as he imagined to be fact, there were no survivors. Even when he reached the last floor, without any hope that he would find any movement that were not spasms of lifeless bodies, he tried. He tried to find someone, to do his job with all the mastery he could. His voice echoed through the entire floor, looking for anyone who could answer, but as expected, there was no response.

All that was left was the subsoil, the garage. When he came down the lobby again and found a portion of the staff dragging out some bodies, placing them in black bags, one of the doctors caught his attention. “Lieutenant. Have you finished checking around? Nothing up there?” The man asked, pulling his glasses from the tip of his nose. Ghost is negative. “No, nothing,” he said bluntly.

The doctor seemed to bite his own jaw with some strength, in disappointment. He has baffled. “You don’t even have to check down there. If those above didn’t survive...” he said, giving on his shoulders. Ghost watched him in silence for a few seconds, before finally answering, “Focus on your work, doc. I’ll finish my own.” He said in a nod before starting to push with his crude hands the stones that covered the entrance to the stairs that led to the garage.

His steps echoed. Ghost walked through the parking lot, passed pillar by pillar, checked every car. There were bursting pipes releasing hot steam, a gas leak as well he could tell – and he didn’t want to be there to see what would happen if some kind of ignition occurred. He hastened his steps. He took a deep breath; he was about to press his point and give up, claiming that there were no survivors, but a stifling sound interrupted his action. He looked around, looking for the source of the heavy breath and the little grumbling of pain he heard. His eyebrows cracked almost instantly and he turned around himself, looking around. All his senses were activated at that moment – he began to walk through among the few cars there, following the sound he had heard and then, a hand hitting the air dropped debris to the side of what seemed to be a body. He approached cautiously, throwing the light from his helmet’s lantern in the direction of the sound, and to his surprise, although not perceptible, there was the only survivor of the bombing: you.

A small, female frame shrunk from a pile of debris. Your hair was covered in ashes, your face - the dirty cheeks with the blackness of the material, your arms painted in the scarlet of your blood flowing freely to the ground, glass blades attached painfully to your soft skin. There was a cut down from the top of your forehead until the beginning of your left eyebrow. The completely messy strands of your hair fell against your face, opaque, bright. The expression of fear on your eyes turned into pure terror the moment they met his own, those small cold orbs inside the mask. You instinctively tried to move away from him, push your body away from those debris, away from that huge and frightening man.

When you threw your body to the side, all you could feel was your back against the cold floor, your left leg refused to work. You felt nauseous, stupid, your head turned. Your mouth trembled in a failed attempt to say something, the silence already lasted for seconds enough for you to fear his frame standing ever so tall and quiet. “Please don’t hurt me.” You managed to say, your voice engulfed in a cry that refused to go out. It wasn’t as if it was going to work; if he was one of the terrorists who caused this incident and really wanted to hurt you, then you were at his mercy and there was little you could do about it.

Maybe, if you were in a better mental and physical condition, you’d be able to identify that the rifle in the hands of the man in front of yourself was of a military model. That all his gear pointed out that he was an operator, someone willing to help. Your mind could not process all the necessary information about him at the given moment, although.

“I will not hurt you, lass.” He explained, and for a moment you felt your chest swell in air and it was hard to contain the immense desire to cry. The heavy steps of the man were made against your small, wounded body. He lowered himself, letting the rifle rest next to him quietly. You gulped in dry, still nervous with your eyes raised to his, now a little closer to you. He wasn’t looking at you — he was looking down, seeming to assess how hurt you were. “I’ll tell you what’s happening now. Okay?” He asked, slowly and calmly, his cold eyes now facing your own, visualizing your soul behind the cover of this hurt shell of yours. You stumbled, and he continued. “I’ll take that away from you, and I need you to help me helping you. Alright? You will be well. I just need you to hold your leg and when I push it over, you roll. Understood?” The man asked, his firm and deep voice being the first source of human contact you had since the lightning caused you to wipe out unconscious hours before. You came in for confirmation.

Ghost nodded back and raised his fingers, counting to three. Contrary to what you might have imagined, he didn’t need to do much to lift the huge concrete block that blocked his left leg from moving — he even had some ease in doing so. He held the concrete above his body, his arms backed over you, he sat down. “Roll.” he commanded, and you obeyed as you could. You leaned her hands on the ground and gave a boost; one of your hands instinctively went to the wounded leg, in an attempt to warm up the pain now felt by finally having released it from the rubble. You couldn’t hold a moan of pain, but he was quickly stifled by the sound of concrete hitting the ground when Ghost let it fall back.

You mentally begged that you could endure that. Your eyes were filled with tears, and a certain despair arose through your throat, your mouth. The anguish of finally feeling the unpleasant smell of the environment, the nervousness of realizing that very possibly, few other people survived that disaster, it was overwhelming your already troubled mind.

Ghost didn’t lose a second in time; he finished positioning the rifle around his body and you felt his arms wrapping you by the waist and the folds of your knees, and he lifted it up with immense ease – it was as if you were featherweight. The gloves in his hands were rough against the sensitivity of your skin, but his touch was as cautious as possible. You could say without a doubt that this soldier of at least twice your height was doing his best not to hurt you any more than you’re already wounded.

“What is your name?” He finally asked, his rifle resting on his back, and you resting over his arms. He wasn’t looking at you – his eyes were fixed ahead, in the direction he was carrying you to, the exit. You answered, and he nodded in acknowledgement. “You can call me Ghost. I am a soldier, yes? We will take care of you.” He said in a clear tactical attempt to calm your nervousness down.

You sat down with your head. “Amelie Miller... Did you find her? My friend, she... did you find her?” You asked, your body trembled as you came to realize his eyes were now boring into yours.

He seemed to look for words that would not hurt you as much as the ones he had to say, but he for one, was not good with words or comforting.

“I’m sorry, girl,” he whispered, in a sigh. “there are no more survivors. You were the only one.”

~ x ~

Your head hurt. Everything hurt; body, arms. There was a blanket around your shoulders and a bottle of water still sealed in your hands. The look in your eyes was empty, blurred; there were a lot of people there. Many doctors, many operators - soldiers like Ghost. One of them wore a mohican, the other had thick eyebrows. The captain was talking to them in an isolated corner, the doctors were talking to each other about your condition, about what should be done from now on. There were agents from the British intelligence surrounding the site, and there were about hundreds of black bags stretched on the floor, closed. You still felt pain, although the healings now prevented blood from flowing freely through your forehead as before. The glass pieces had been removed from your arms, your face was clean now and even so, you never felt so dirty in your entire life.

Every time you dare to blink, you could swear that you would faint. Your hands were getting weaker, loosening around the bottle. The sudden sound of the bottle falling to the ground caught the attention of one of the men there – the captain. As far as you could realize, he called himself something Price.

“Miss.” He said, coming closer to you. Suddenly, there were eyes on you from every angle possible; all of the other soldiers turned to the ambulance where you were sitting now. You slowly raised your face to look back at Price, and he continued. “I’m not going to ask if it’s okay, this question is rhetorical. You need to be hydrated.” He was bowing down in front of you, taking the bottle he dropped and opening it, offering it to you. Your eyes checked at the bottle for a few seconds and your trembling hand finally grabbed it, drinking until the last drop you could - all at once. You could feel your throat burning, your skin seemed to be in living flesh. The appearance of your wounds was not as unpleasant as the feeling of having them, but you knew that all that would leave you some ugly scars.

You could not care about it now – in fact, couldn’t care about anything at all. Your mind was empty and you never felt so apathetic in such a distressful situation.

“What am I going to do now?” You asked, in a whisper, your eyes completely lost. “I—what am I going to do...?,” you repeated, and there was nothing but an absolute feeling of raw pain and loss in your voice right at that moment, for as much as you tried to hide it.

Price swelled his chest, and his lips compressed into a line. “You don’t have to worry about anything now. We’ll take care of everything,” he assured. “The government has a great defense program for disasters like this, you won’t be without a roof,” he finished, trying to calm you down. You closed your eyes and shaken your head, but you did not respond. There was nothing to say, nothing to do; what could be done besides trusting that everything would go well? Trust that they would have a plan for you, a shelter, doctors, a chance of living after you were supposed to die in such a horrific way?

You didn’t even know if you wanted all that. Didn’t even knew if you wanted to be the only survivor. Surely not: at that time, you would rather have died among the other more than a hundred people who were now in black bags scattered on the floor in front of you. You felt so much - you felt gratitude for their work, for saving you, but at the same time you couldn’t help but to feel like a fraud for surviving while other died. Others that, somewhat, deserved more than you to live. There was so much in your mind now, but little that you could really synthesize and make sense of.

You drowned your face between your hands, unable to cry, but wanting so deeply to hide from them, from those men, from doctors, from the press, from everything. Wanting to be away from everything, wanting to be dead for once.

A little further away, Ghost observed you. His broad arms crossed, his posture relentlessly perfect as always. His eyes looked at your gestures, scanned your body —all those wounds, poor girl, he thought. Although he was sure there was no more of a heart in his chest, he felt comprehensive towards your emotions. The horrors you had lived in such a short space of time, the unbearable consequences that that meant for your poor mind. The trauma. The pain.

He could not help but think that he saw a bit of himself in you. Not a bit of Ghost – a little bit of Simon. A little bit of the little Simon who felt an immeasurable strain in his chest, a void that could not be filled.

When the doctors finally helped you to get up in the ambulance and sit on one of the available chairs, your face turned over your own shoulder and you found his eyes stuck to yours. It felt intimidating in some way; perhaps the way his confidence didn’t allow him to look away while you stared at him, or something in the way he seemed capable of reading right through you like a good book of his. He was a savior to you, and somehow it still seemed his persona was conflicting with the one of a savior. He was something else, perhaps still a benefactor, but somehow, a very dangerous man.

There was not a single feeling in his eyes, quite the opposite. There was pure coldness, and yours on the other hand carried some gratitude and ingratitude at the same time. You felt grateful that he had saved you, but at the same time, felt angry at him for not having let you die. You entered the ambulance, and your eyes continued to lock a gaze against his until the moment someone closed the car door from outside.

Ghost turned his eyes at last, and saw Price approaching.

“Fuck.” The captain whispered, laying his hands on his waist, looking at all the misfortune that the incident had caused to that place. “How many bodies?” He asked, looking at Simon with the corner of his eyes.

“A hundred and two so far.” Ghost answered quietly.

“And have you found the bodies of the sons of bitches who did this?” Price said with some disgust and hatred attached to his voice. Ghost assented positively, which made Price crack the dust almost instantly into a distressed expression.

“Motherfuckers.” He grunted, turning to the rest of the team. Soap, who had been remaining in silence for thorough all the search, dared to finally speak.

“We have a lot to report, hm?” He raised his eyebrows, and received a Price assent in response.

“To the headquarters." The captain ordered, making his way to the helicopter that awaited for them, and they left.

#simon ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #simon riley #ghost cod #ghost mw2 #simon ghost riley #cod ghost

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hello-vampire-kitty · 4 months ago

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Servamp April Fools' event

Tanaka Strike reposted the event from 2023 that was about voting for characters' abilities/techniques. The first time I didn't look into the the event and I was surprised to see that among the abilities that were listed, there were a few that were revealed later in the manga, for example Kuro's Wiedergänger (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust) that appeared in chapter 133.

In March 2023, chapter 128 was published, so it was 5 chapters later when the name of the ability was introduced in the story.

For the event, some characters have abilities that were marked as “lies” because they didn't appear in the manga however, Kuro’s ability was marked as a lie but that was actually true after all!

So yeah, Tanaka-sensei was playing with us. xD Abilities have two readings and you'll see that some of them either have one reading which is different or they some readings were assigned to other characters.

Mahiru: “Why is truth and falsehoods mixed in? Only the actual abilities should be voted!

Kuro: “Mahiru…In this world, you can’t survive on truth alone...

Kuro offering words of wisdom xD The abilities that were marked as "lies" have conversations or comments from characters which I translated.

Note: I listed the abilities based on the characters' names in alphabetical order.

GEAR

Mister Violence (Antique clock of night trick)

This is a reference to “Gear of Night Trick” on TanakaBox and that’s why I worded the translation like this. The clock referenced here must be Hlidskjalf. I wrote about it here when I posted chapter 96.

Youtarou: It's not an ability, it's just brute strength, isn't it?

Gear: I'm a wolf so I have no choice. It's a world that's tough to live in for someone like me.

Youtarou: Honestly! You always act like a wolf at times like this!

HYDE

Cute aggression (The Taming Of The Shrew).

Hyde: This is the most powerful ultimate technique that charms everyone! Kyui!

J-just joking...I don't have a technique like that... I'm s-sorry...I said I'm sorry...

JEJE

Mary Magdalene (Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring)

In chapter 125 when Jeje was given his name by Mikuni, his contract item was the winding key from the music box that Kiriko gave to Mikuni and I read that fans discovered that the song it was playing was "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"

Jeje: This technique isn't... It's a lie...

KURO

Wiedergänger (Ashes to ashes, dust to dust)

Mahiru: Hey! If you're gonna lie, you should make it sound like it's… obviously a joke, or it'll just confuse people.

Kuro: Yeah...I don't really have a cool technique name. I'm just a humble cat...

LILY

Turandot (None shall sleep) Like I mentioned in the beginning, this is one ability that was given a different reading. The actual one is "The king is absent today as well." "None shall sleep " (Nessun dorma) is an aria from the final act of Turandot.

Mahiru: You had a technique like that?

Lily: Fufufu...Well… you could say it exists, or you could say it doesn't. Reality is such an uncertain thing. You should also be careful.

MISONO

Bridge falling down (The king is absent today as well)

So yeah, it's Misono and Lily that had their ability names switched and were also given different readings. The different reading is most likely a reference to the nursery rhyme "London Bridge Is Falling Down". And we don't have Misono, we have Mikado who comments about the ability xD

Mikado: Didn't Misono have a powerful technique like that?! Did you make it sound like it existed, Dodo?! Dodo: I included it as an option. Mikado: Nice work! Just for today, even a lie is permitted. I can’t believe Misono had only one technique, and it was from ten years ago (in real time)…As a parent I must do behind-the-scenes... Dodo: Young master is already in high-school...It's about time you... Mikado: This is a parent's duty! Should I add another one?!

SAKUYA

I will die yesterday by your side (Five-minute hypothesis theory)

Sakuya used this ability in chapter 139, however in the manga it says five "seconds" not minutes. The first reading sounds weird...Like, I haven't found a reference for it. "To die" is in the present tense even though it says "yesterday", so yeah, it's weird. I expected that it would be the name of a novel but I haven't found anything, so if some of you might have an idea about it, let me know!

Sakuya: I used this ability in the fight against Mahiru, didn’t I? It was such an emotional technique where I self-destructed to protect him. Tsubaki: Have you actually been reading Servamp??

TOUMA

The Beast of Gévaudan (The beast that crawls in a windowless room) (note, for the first part it's actually in French, La bête du Gévaudan)

Touma: What’s the deal with finishing moves? Aren’t you too old for this?

Iori: You're the one that has the most of them though....

Tooru: Shh!

TSUBAKI

Mahoroba (Under the moonlit night, rain and carnage)

Mahoroba isn't something that can be translated. It's a term that refers to an idyllic or perfect place, often associated with paradise or a beautiful land. The dictionary defines it as "great and splendid land (of Yamato)"

The other name of the ability is the title of chapter 84, which I initially translated as "On a moonlit night, rain and bloodshed"

Tsubaki: I don't recall mentioning such a technique name, but it seems okay as it is.

Ultimate Super Wars (Super Ultimate Form-Tsubaki-)

Tsubaki had another ability and when I googled アルティメットスーパーウォーズ a novel, I assume, showed up but I couldn't find much about it. Based on the cover of the book, I thought it was adapted based on a videogame but I didn't find a game with that title, so yeah, the name of the ability might not be related to it. Regarding these kanji 津薔鬼, they spell Tsubaki.

Tsubaki: Are there people who actually call me by such uncool name?

Get ready for an awesome technique in the next issue! Or perhaps the one after that.

YUMIKAGE

Valkyrie Brunhilde (Swan Lake)

Yumikage: This is actually my brother's...But I have many cool name ideas for my own abilities.

#servamp #april fool's event #kuro #tsubaki #gear #misono alicein #lily #sakuya #jeje #hyde #touma taishi #yumikage tsukimitsu

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vidavalor · 4 months ago

Note

Do you have anything on the way Aziraphale says pennies in the scene when he gets the record from Maggie? I love your posts and saw that you wrote about that scene. It might be a dumb thing to focus on but thought you might have some ideas. Thank you!

Hi there! 💕 Hope you're having a fun day today. Thanks for the kind words & the ask. I'm glad you like the posts. It's not a dumb thing to focus on-- there's no such thing. I'm tickled to have this question, in particular, as I almost included something about Aziraphale's use of pennies in the Shostakovich meta you mentioned but left it out of that since the coin-related wordplay is really its own topic.

On "eight pounds and seventy-five pennies" and coining a phrase or two (groan 😂) in Ineffable Husbands Speak...

In the Bible, a penny is a denarius, which is...

...an ancient Roman, silver coin.

The denarius was worth ten asses. That coin, in singular form, was called an as and, while it had nothing to do with human posteriors or donkeys, that is definitely not going to stop Crowley and Aziraphale from working that homophone. It's worth mentioning probably that the bookshop is referred to in Demon's Guide to Angelic Beings Who Walk the Earth as Angelic Embassy X and the Roman numeral for ten is X. Things relating to the letter X or the number ten = the bookshop.

So, a penny is a denarius and a denarius was worth ten asses, meaning: Aziraphale is sure this record is getting him some love in the bookshop later with his redheaded, ancient Roman, silver coin here because he tells Maggie that the symphony is actually worth eight pounds and seventy-five of those denarius pennies. Shostakovich is going to get them three-quarters of the way there. 😉

The amusing part of the bookshop's Heaven name being Angelic Embassy X is that it seems very evident that, even though that means ten in a human way, there were not nine, other embassies before it. X is a Roman numeral that can be used as a kind of filler as well-- an indicator of something that is first of its kind or for an unknown. The latter of those would be funny with the way that they use know/knowing with the Biblical connotation intact as an euphemism for being lovers. Angelic Embassy X keeps them unknown to Heaven but the word contains know and known and would also then mean that in their speak as well.

It is also because of what else it stands for that Crowley and Aziraphale likely picked it:

X, an independent variable in mathematics...

X, sometimes the indicator of a collaboration in artistic endeavors; X, as in adult content; and X, as in part of XO, the hugs and kisses sign off in a letter, email or text. The bookshop itself is made up of Os-- built in the round with a compass theme. The compass theme and its directions, plus Crowley's use of them in this same part of the Demon's Guide entry add to the idea that Angelic Embassy X/the bookshop is all X's and O's-- the place for hugs and kisses and all the stuff of life to be had in peace, made funnier by the fact that they're using a very common form of symbolic language to describe it. Further suggestion of this is Bildad's "XO" joke:

Denarius also sounds a bit like dinner, us, which fits the whole sneaking around, hiding Crowley's presence in the shop after dark thing, which Crowley also referred to as nightlife in 2.06 (when describing Alpha Centauri-- the plan, not the planets-- as being a "couple of decent planets. No nightlife to speak of.") The words containing the word us and the etymology of dinner and to dine are whole other topics that overlap with lunch, breakfast, fast and dangerous in their speak. It'd be going in a different direction from your ask, though, so we'll save that for another post.

Aziraphale talking about pennies is also not the first time that money-- including the denarius-- has been used in wordplay in the series. Given that Aziraphale is a business person and that Crowley is the local black market, what a business usually spends, takes in, makes as change, and seeks, in general, to make, is money. A lot of words related to types of modern money have linguistic origins in the same place that Crowley and Aziraphale's sexual relationship had some origins-- ancient Rome-- which is likely why they use a lot of words with ties to it.

It is, one might say, a bit romantic to do so.

Crowley uses a reference to the denarius back in S1 in his response to Aziraphale in the Seeds of Destruction scene, where we see a word-within-word reference to the denarius in a money-themed sentence, using the modern monetary term that evolved from denarius:

the dinar.

Ordinary: Contains or and dinar. Or is homophonic for oar-- what one uses to row a boat, in keeping with their whole fish and the sea sexual metaphor. To respond to Aziraphale wording him with an entire paragraph of very hot Ineffable Husbands Speak with a reference to the mess they're talking about on the surface being just "an ordinary cock-up" is actually to pretend to sound unaffected while saying in their speak that Aziraphale's got this ancient Roman silver coin ready to get into Aziraphale's pockets at the first available opportunity.

Other uses of ordinary and extraordinary, the latter of which includes the X of the above Angelic Embassy X/ten meaning:

Crowley doesn't "feel anything out of the ordinary" when Aziraphale starts going on about flashes of love...

...and when he wants to go home and shag each other senseless in 1.01, he says he's in the mood for...

...quite extraordinary amounts of alcohol.

Money, which Crowley specifically used in the Seeds of Destruction scene as we noted above, is also a word rooted in ancient Rome that ties to other bits of wordplay we've looked at before related to the mint tea, Maggie and Hell, and also a very Good Omens-y bit of Greco-Roman mythology.

Money comes from the Old French moneie, off of the Latin moneta, which meant both money and a mint where coins were first produced in ancient Rome. Moneta is either or both the title or surname (it's unclear & differs between stories) of the Roman goddess Juno. The grounds for a temple made to worship Juno was where coins were minted in Rome and, some speculate, where they might have also been stored.

One of the stories of Juno-- whose Greek equivalent is the goddess Hera-- has some interesting ties to how Good Omens describes Crowley's fall and might be a mythological story to which they are alluding. There are a lot of interpretations of these myths and some really terrible misogyny in the way that Juno and Hera are are treated by a lot of scholars but if we just take the skeleton of the myth itself and look at that, you'll be able to see something of a comparison here to Crowley's story.

The story goes that Juno and Zeus, the god of lightning, had a son, Vulcan. [The etymology of Vulcan is muddled & not worth rehashing here.] Juno rejected Vulcan as her child and tossed him off of Mount Olympus, causing him to have this very long, horrific fall that crashed him down below the surface of the Earth. This is part of the origin story across different Greco-Roman myths for volcanoes, as Vulcan would wind up being the god of fire and an artist who eventually would harness the power of fire to invent metalworking and blacksmithing as a result. Vulcan's fall-- both the psychological trauma of it and the physical pain of it-- left him broken and paralyzed him from the waist down.

He was rescued by a sea nymph who brought him to her underwater grotto and healed him. They lived there together for years, with Vulcan making art and jewelry out of combining together his knowledge of fire with pearls (the product of mollusks, like oysters) and other jewels of the sea.

He would also share the products of that knowledge with others and taught them to wield the elements of fire and water the way he does.

He also would make the Crowley-esque thrones and chariots.

Later on, Juno came to learn that he was her son and sought to have a connection with him, only now that he was renowned. Vulcan laid a trap for her by making her an ornate throne which, when she sat in it, held her trapped for a few days until her husband, Zeus, could be bothered to intervene. Zeus negotiated with Vulcan and told him that if he freed his mother, he could marry the goddess of love, Venus (Aphrodite, in Greek mythology.) Vulcan said fine and gave up his mom and mom-related trauma so he could go marry Venus, even if the myth gets a tragic ending of sorts, since it is said that raging fires would erupt whenever she was unfaithful to him.

So, if instead of a baby rescued by a sea nymph who acted like a mom to the child, you spun this around a bit and looked at it as Juno is God, Crowley is Vulcan and has been implied to have been a throne/dominion when he was an angel, the drop from Mount Olympus into the volcano is Crowley's fall, the paralysis is metaphorical for the anorgasmia story that is the turnip & the inkwell metaphor and which we looked at in Fish, and Aziraphale is both the sea nymph and Aphrodite/Venus, with the bookshop as their underwater grotto, then there are some allusions to the myth in Crowley and Aziraphale's story.

Aphrodite, for what it's worth, is also the goddess who is almost always drawn naked on an oyster shell and whose name is the root of the word aphrodisiac, speaking, as we have been, of ancient Rome.

Zeus is also the father of Persephone and the other Roman myth to which Crowley's story appears to be alluding is Hades and Persephone. You can follow the link in the mint paragraph above if you have not read that post and would like to read more about that.

Adding to this is what little we know of the literal part of Crowley's fall, which he described as "a million-light-year freestyle dive into a pool of boiling sulphur." Sulphur is mined from volcanoes and referred to by miners as "The Devil's Gold."

On a more humorous note, the denarius was eventually replaced in ancient Rome by another coin called-- I kid you not-- the antoninianus.

So, Aziraphale is standing there in Maggie's record shop, with his symphony with the Saint Anthony's Sermon to the Fishes joke in it, silently cracking himself up over the etymology of money-themed words tying to Rome and all that naked Anthony that Aziraphale knows this record is about to get him later on.

The history of the penny in the U.K. versus in America also makes the fact that Aziraphale said pennies in his sentence interesting.

While the penny has been a form of money in both places for a long time, how it is measured and what it is worth changed in the U.K. in 1971 when the British decimalized the pound. This meant that the penny became worth 1/100th of a pound, in the same way that a penny in the United States is 1/100th of a dollar. Changing how the British pound was measured was an act of government in the U.K. that aimed to make it more like America, which probably bemuses Crowley and Aziraphale and led to Aziraphale's love of the word pennies.

Even though America itself is far from perfect (like every country they use symbolically), America equates to freedom and liberation so Aziraphale probably was amused to use a word that relates to a moment of the British admitting for once that the Americans had done something better than they had. This is also because there's a real 'Heaven is the British Empire' parallel happening for them and in the show as a whole. As a result, Crowley and Aziraphale have a tendency to align themselves with countries that have complicated histories with England (The U.S., Scotland, the love for France, etc..).

(I would argue that while we probably have a good system of measuring money over here in the States, the rest of the world has measuring things like temperature far more under control and we desperately need to start following all of you on that.😂)

Crowley and Aziraphale, though, have a thing about using words related to forms of measurement that are used in America rather than other parts of the world. Despite being English-presenting beings who have lived in England for forever, they both use the word mile, for instance, instead of kilometers. The dashboard on The Bentley is even set up to show miles instead.

(I do always think it funny that Aziraphale says "ninety miles per hour" in this scene. It is the correct way to phrase how it's measured in the United States-- miles per hour, or mph-- but it is more common when speaking aloud to say: "ninety miles an hour." Aziraphale and his fussy formality-- intentionally or unintentionally-- is saying the American thing in the most English way possible and it's very cute.)

Part of the use of mile is probably also linked to its etymology being tied back to ancient Rome, which is also reflective of the influence of the Roman government and its system of laws, etc., on the founders of America. There's a bit of a direct thru-line historically between the two that also aligns with Crowley and Aziraphale's own history together and shows up in their speak.

There's also the fact that mile, as we looked at in another meta, comes from mil, which means one thousand. Aziraphale said "seventy-five pennies" to Maggie, which is 750 denarius-- 3/4ths of the way to a mil, in the etymological sense. Part of the joke there is that the homophone of mil is mill, a word that is at the cross-section of several different categories of words within their speak.

A mill is the machinery used to grind up flour for bread and other dough (see: the proofing banter in 1941 below) and it is also a factory where textiles are made (a bit of the seamstress-related language at work in there). Amusingly?

It also has a direct connection back to coins.

In terms of minting coins, to mill a coin is to mark the edges of coins with protective ribbing as a way of helping them to keep their luster and not disintegrate over time. To rib is to affectionately tease, all made funnier by the fact that these two have a certain history with some ox ribs and a bit of a focus on the edges of, ah, coins.

Adding to this a bit is the etymology of the word coin itself.

It comes from the Latin cuneus, which meant a wedge (which contains edge.) In ancient times, a wedge-shaped tool was used to form designs onto metal when making coins. This actually relates back over to the music theme of this post, as we'll look at below. The Latin cuneus has etymological links to cunnus, the basic Latin word for the vulva, and-- unsurprisingly to women everywhere lol-- an archaic, derogatory slang word for a woman that is basically equivalent to (and an ancestor of) negative use of the word cunt today. The word cunninlingus is from cunnus plus the Latin lingere, which meant to lick. The word coin is from the same roots as getting your garden box watered, and contains the Old French coi and its modern English-used spelling of coy, meaning demure or modest now but originally from the Latin quietus, meaning free, calm, peaceful, and restful.

Plus, coy's homophone... the koi fish. 🐟 They live in water gardens and koi ponds-- see: pounds and its connection to pond-- and are a form of carp.

A wedge is also just another name for the musical term of a dash, which is a direction in musical notation that signals that the note is to be played in a staccato manner. Staccato manner is notes played with emphasis but separately and with pauses in between. It's edging described in the language of music.

In modern musical notation, a dash actually refers to a note to be played staccatissimo, which is just very, very staccato. A dash is also the longer signal in Morse Code, making it also another reference to coded language. Aziraphale's magic words are actually all of the parameters of their hidden language spoken *in* their hidden language-- likely why he's repeating them to Crowley at every turn in 1941. A mark used to signify the notes to be played as staccato or staccatissimo is called a pike, which is also a type of fish, and is one part of the wordplay in the word Armageddon.

Within Armageddon lies the word ged, which is a term in heraldry for a type of fish-- the pike-- used to make visual, language-related puns on coats of arms. Various heraldry-inspired crosses and coats of arms are in the background in different scenes in the series.

Anyway, we just went in a big circle, so back to the "eight pounds and seventy-five" bit of the pennies line...

The number eight is a homophone for the word ate, which Crowley is referencing in a scene that parallels this one but took place in 1941:

Crowley and Aziraphale are wording each other a bit in this scene and here's an use of another monetary word with a Rome-to-America history-- cent-- in percent. Crowley uses eighty here which is, phonetically: ate, tea and is referring to their use of food and drink as sexually euphemistic in a scene in which the two of them are using improving (i'm proving/proofing), proving, and proof in ways that refer to both the measurement of ethanol content in alcohol and the activation of yeast or a fermentation process causing a rise in bread and other dough as an arousal metaphor. Probably made more evident when you look at Crowley's "lovely bottles of joy" comment above with the knowledge that the original definition of joy was actually sexual ecstasy.

So, Maggie innocently says that Aziraphale's pile of records- the only one to which he's given any attention being the Crowley-linked Shostakovich symphony-- would cost him "eight pounds", a phrase that is sort of funny in Crowley and Aziraphale speak, since eight is both a number and a reference to food and pound has a history ripe for the wordplay picking.

Pound comes from the same etymological roots as pond, giving it a tie to their bodies of water/fish metaphor. It's slang for fucking and also originally meant pint, a form of measurement that is also the name for an ale or a beer, which is alcohol, more on which can be found in the link.

At one point, the pound, in monetary form, was specifically a way to measure only a pile of silver... just, ya know, while we're chuckling at Crowley-related things. He even refers to himself using silver to Shax in S2:

Additionally, the word pound as a form of measurement came from the Latin word libra, which also meant a balance of scales and is from where the zodiac constellation comes.

Even scales in Ineffable Husbands Speak is also funny-- as scales are a musical term referring to a range of notes and also what fish have. In the magic shop scene in 1941, Aziraphale flirts with Crowley by way of a fish joke, saying he's looking for "something with scale, something climactic." (Scale also contains a form of alcohol in ale.)

Even, referring to a sense of balance in their fish world, and Aziraphale uses the word even with Maggie in this same mash of even scales/libra-related words, telling her that, where value is concerned, there is a balanced exchanged in her rent for the records and that they can "call it even."

Even is also part of the wordplay around seventy, in "seventy-five pennies", as it's one of the words contained in that word, along with seven.

Seven has been regarded as a lucky, magical and/or perfect number and there are a variety of reasons that could be all applicable here and in the overall symbolism of the show. Others have looked at it and it could be its own post. I think one of the funniest ones from an Ineffable Husbands Speak perspective, though, is that seven is the root of septentrion, which refers to the seven stars of the rather innuendo-laden-in-name The Big Dipper in The Great Bear, which has real language of The Dark Priesthood of Ancient Mu-type vibes. The word septentrion comes from a mashup of the Latin septem (meaning seven), triones (meaning-- I'm not kidding-- plow ox) and the root of terere, which means to rub.

One wonders if, in the Good Omens universe, Crowley and Aziraphale might have possibly had a hand in influencing the naming of constellations. 😂

In the opening of Good Omens, God says that The Earth is a Libra-- a phrase that could be a whole exploration on its own but which I thought I'd also mention in here since we're talking about the pound and scales.

Five in the "seventy-five pennies"-- especially with the way that Aziraphale emphasized the "iiiiive" part of it a little-- seems likely to me to just be the fact that it includes I've, which then makes "I've pennies" out of the end of what he's saying. Pennies as denarius-- bookshop sex with Crowley, Aziraphale's favorite ancient Roman silver coin, is vavoom sordid/sorted, thanks to this record-- but also that within pennies lies the very old penis euphemism of the pen.

Aziraphale and Crowley are using pen and ink euphemistically in a bunch of scenes-- Crowley's response to Aziraphale's French (the gardener doesn't have a... pen); the "tartan's stylish" on the park bench in S1 (stylish from stylus/pen); the turnip & the inkwell, etc..

Additionally, a pen is an animal enclosure so the bookshop, full of literal pens and books penned by others, is a pen in the sense that it's a dwelling for these ancient, word-nerdy dorks to get their animal on.

"Eight pounds and seventy-fiiiiiive pennies" is Aziraphale joking over how metaphorically (for now lol) hard getting the record has him and his excitement for the eight pounds' worth of fun he and Crowley are going to have that evening over it. Or would have if not for, ya know, the rest of S2.

"I know what I'll be doing for the next twenty-one minutes."

Next, actually comes from nigh and words relating to it that mean near or soon, as opposed to referring to the very next immediate moments. It also has links to Anglican nesta, and sounds like nest (which did emerge otherwise independent of next.) Theoretically, it can refer to the then-near future in their nest that is the bookshop.

Twenty, from the Old English twegan, meaning two, and tig, meaning a group of ten. Twenty-one = the two of them (he and Crowley) are a group of ten (the Angelic Embassy X group), and this record is going to be quite the muse for getting them to be literally one for a bit later on.

While making these coin jokes, Aziraphale is buying a symphony-- a bit of musical score. A score to help the angel score with his ancient Roman silver coin over here 😂... not that he needs any help in that department but a little music never hurt.

Music, from the Greek mousike techne, meaning the art of the Muses. In ancient Greece, the Muses were the goddesses of the arts and science, and considered by people to be the sources of knowledge that inspired all works of art, literature, poetry, music, and scientific experiments.

The wordplay in Crowley's line in 1.01 is that, in that moment, Mozart = Most art. The line is really "Because most art's one of ours," a reference to the two of them as akin to the Muses and, also, to being two beings whose own muses are the humans and their scientific and artistic endeavors.

From muse also comes the word amuse... and what could be better than something that both makes you crack up laughing but also turns you on? Crowley in 1827 had certainly found the perfect bit of amusement for Aziraphale, as Aziraphale recounted in their speak in his journal:

Dear Diary,

Last month, Crowley and I both happened to be in Edinburgh and he insisted that I visit a local graveyard at midnight. He said he had come upon something [ahem lol] that might amuse me...

Here is where we can also note that during The Meeting Ball That Was Totally Not About Maggie and Nina, Aziraphale had Gabriel circling with trays of free, tiny versions of the sometimes more dinner-sized vol au vents, which would be classified as an amuse-bouche-- literally: "to please the mouth"-- the French term for an appetizer selected by and often crafted by the chef out of thought that it would be an inspiring appetizer that would compliment the meal still to come.

So, Aziraphale's original intention was to woo Crowley with the music of that particular performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5 and obtained the score on record to do so. The term score comes from its original definition of keeping tally. Score, from the late Old English scoru, meaning twenty-- thought to be because tallies of things with large numbers were thought to be done in batches of twenty...

...or, in Ineffable Husbands Speak, two people living one, shared existence, who make up the group of ten/X.

Or, they would have been if not for, you know, an unexpected, if very amusing-- in all definitions of the word-- arrival...

There's Shostakovich in the South Downs in your future, Crowley, just hang in there...

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#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #good omens meta #good omens 2 #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands speak #etymology

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hiraethwa · 11 months ago

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one summer day

02 fly high. where you have yet to realize what ushijima will mean to you.

<< 01 clear skies. | >> 03 shining light.

pairing: ushijima wakatoshi x reader a/n: double post this week, I'm feeling like i need some motivation to keep going. i wrote this a while ago, and am super excited with how this part ends, but i still feel like the flow isn’t the best here… word count: 1.4k warnings: some angst if you squint terms: furoshiki -- cloth that is used to wrap bento

june, first year

“curry rice!” you grin at the ash blonde haired boy, plopping a neatly wrapped bento on his desk as you slide into the seat in front of him. ever since your brother introduced you to him, he has become a constant in your everyday school life to the point that the two of you are almost inseparable.

“are you coming over after practice again? we have that japanese homework that i need your help with” you shrug off your jacket, sweat sticking to your skin from the walk to school. summer is coming on quickly now, coaxing the spring blossoms that you loved so much away.

semi hums in agreement as he unties the furoshiki and opens the bento excitedly. “it smells amazing, y/n! i am hungry thinking about it now even though i had breakfast.” he pouts at you.

you laugh wholeheartedly, feeling something like satisfaction. it is one thing to have your family compliment your cooking, another to hear such sincere praises from your friends. you think this might just be it. high school might be better than you thought after all. after all the disappointments and heartbreaks from junior high and even before that.

“thanks, eita. now keep it before you make the whole class hungry.” you poke fun at him as you pull out another set of wrapped bento, this one in plain cat print. it was the plainest, non-feminine-screaming furoshiki you could find after the one with crashing waves that you wrapped semi’s bento in.

you didn’t normally bring bentos to school since both your parents are always busy with work. even this furoshiki is a recent addition after you graduated from junior high, when you started packing some meals for yourself.

“so, you remember how ushijima-san helped me with my wound a few days ago?” you sound hesitant even to yourself. inside, you wanted to kick yourself for following through with this now that you are actually in the process of it, but it is too late. so you might as well get it over with. “i made an extra portion for him to thank him for his help… could you pass it to him at practice?”

“ehhh, why does he get one too? i have known you for two months now and it’s only my first time receiving a bento from you.”

you roll your eyes at the boy. “if you help me, i will make you a strawberry shortcake.” bribing him is easy when you knew he enjoyed the cake you shared last week. you breathe a sigh of relief when he does not pursue the topic any further.

semi is quite the competitive persona, so it did not surprise you when that was the tangent he went off in, instead of the typical, do you like him? that other people would assume. this is good for you. you do not want him to misunderstand your intentions, and it’s not like you harbor those feelings for ushijima. you just strongly dislike the feeling of being in anyone’s debt.

“how is practice for interhigh matches going anyway?” you smile at your newfound friend who you got along with as naturally as breathing.

yes, high school will be different. i will see it so.

it is pouring outside later that afternoon regardless of how clear the skies were when you walked to school in the morning. the sound of volleyball practice fades into the background as you pull out a blank music sheet and start scribbling the tune that has been rattling around your head today.

today, when you climbed the stairs to the gymnasium and watched the practice match your school is playing against the college team that came in, you had expected to experiment with the melody when you get home later. you note that the usual starting lineup were on court, with the exception of one of the wingspikers being subbed out for ushijima. even though he is just a new first year. perhaps this is the lineup that the coach has in mind for the interhigh tournament, you had thought.

and even though you have seen countless of your brother’s matches over the years, this one felt different. the spiking form of the player as he begins his approach, swinging both arms backwards before leaving the ground, feet kicked out behind him, and making contact with the ball with his left hand, sending it back into the opponent’s courtside, felt different.

it had felt like you were given wings to soar high above the clouds when all life did was cover up the blue skies that you loved so much. it had felt like coming up for a full breath of fresh air after being dunked in water. it had felt like you were alive again, for once in a very long time.

and the melody that you had been crafting takes on a life of its own, taking its first flight from your hands and rise high up into the sky. twisting, turning. triumphant. the notes flow onto the sheet as your hand struggles to keep up with your mind.

before you know it, you hear semi calling your name from the court. eh, the match is over? you glance at your watch, showing two hours after when you arrived at the court. “yes! be right there!” you yell back, swinging your belongings onto your shoulder and making your way downstairs.

music sheet in hand, mind far ahead of yourself, wanting to play it on your violin already, you venture to find your friend. semi is standing at the bottom of the stairs, arms crossed while waiting for you. “were you paying any attention to the game, y/n?”

“what– take a look at this first,” you shove the paper in his hands, excitedly waiting for his response. one could say one of the reasons you two got along so well is your love for music.

he takes his sweet time reading your rough draft and giving you a “hmph” before returning it to you. “fine, i forgive you for missing my set. this is an acceptable excuse, i suppose. it is no small feat to overcome a creative block.”

semi shoots you a mischievous smile before slinging his arm over your shoulders and messing your hair up with his other hand. “SEMI”

“well done! but no next time though” “no promises”

another voice cuts through the air, stopping both of you from making a bigger scene. you had resorted to trying to make his hair stick up vertically as revenge.

“miyamura-san…” ushjima holds out the cat clothed bento to you, slightly amused by you and semi. “thanks for the curry rice, it was delicious.”

“waa, a compliment from ushijima-san, your cooking must have been amazing, miyamura-san,” a red-haired boy pokes his head out from behind ushijima, whom you would later learn is none other than tendo satori, a troublesome boy who always seemed to be able to see through you.

you beam at his compliment, “heh, thanks guys.” swinging your bag to the front, you shuffle the things around in your bag to make space for the box. he had neatly tied the furoshiki around the box, which caught you by surprise, as semi had returned his to you in a clumsily packed fashion. you surmise that the rising ace in front of you is an athlete who probably likes to keep his life neat and in order, he seems like the type.

“so what are you up to later, semi-semi?”

“ah, i am going to y/n’s to study”

“can i come with? i have nothing else to do.”

“no! if you’re so free you can practice more volleyball.”

semi banters with the red-haired boy, which sounds like a regular occasion to you. you chuckle to yourself, picturing ushijima, the stoic spiker, playing the referee between the two boys. now that would be entertaining to watch.

your eyes meet ushijima’s, to which he raises his eyebrow at you as if he’s saying what’s so funny? you shrug, feigning innocence before turning away from him.

neither of you realized it at the time, but ushijima gave you wings to fly, even before you really knew each other.

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theforsakenprince · 1 year ago

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okay okay before I lose my train of thought. The way Destiny uses the dichotomy between Light and Darkness is so fucking interesting to me and way more complex than just "light good, dark bad" (and just for clarification, I'm talking about the Traveler vs. The Witness here, not the actual light and dark abilities themselves. that's a different post.)

The Traveler and Witness represent several different things, but the things that are most focused on are 1. simplicity vs. complexity and 2. choices and the lack of choices. These two go hand in hand because more choices make things more complex inherently and less choice makes things more simple. The Traveler obviously represents choice, and The Witness wants to take it away; to make the universe more simple.

The sword and bomb analogy demonstrates this pretty well. A sword is made with very few materials and has a single edge for one purpose: to slice and cut and stab. A bomb, however, has many more moving parts, with each individual part having some sort of function. It's more complex and probably does a lot more damage, but it won't work if even one part malfunctions. More choice offers complexity, but with the caveat that more things can go wrong. Less choice makes things simple, puts everything in neat boxes that serve a single purpose.

The Witness wants things to be simple. It wants an answer to every question and wants things to act in a predictable way. That's why it tries to convince us that the Darkness is the only way to salvation. Why the worms forced the osmium siblings to follow only their nature; Oryx can only seek more knowledge, Xivu Arath can only be war, and Savathun must deceive to keep their immortality.

The Traveler gives the Lightbearers the exact opposite. It wipes their memories clean and gives them a fresh start, to make their own choices whether they be good or bad ones. It gave them a second chance, to be better than they were in their previous lives without the burden of those memories. And of course, some chose to be awful people, but that’s sort of inevitable when giving so many people so much power. Most Lightbearers did decide to be better as shown with the Guardians today, and they decided that by their own free will.

Which brings me to the reason I wrote this whole thing, Savathun. She, frankly, doesn't give a shit about either Darkness or Light, she just sides with whatever will give her what she wants with the least amount of strings attached, which is immortality. So she gets rid of her worm and gets a Ghost to revive her. And what’s the first thing she does? Get her memories back. The second? Go right back to being her old self, and doesn't even stop to consider her history of genocide and lies. She remains the same. She's still the same person she was billions of years ago when she first became Savathun, which goes against the entire philosophy of the Traveler. Savathun doesn't want to change, and you can't force someone to change if they're completely set in their ways.

It's just interesting to me how Savathun rejects the Darkness and embraces the Light now without understanding (or, more likely, caring) about why the Traveler created the Ghosts and the Lightbearers.

#if this makes no sense/has mistakes it's because it's just one entire stream of consciousness #destiny 2 #destiny #destiny the game #savathun #the witness #the traveler #destiny analysis #? I guess

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sailing-through-hawkins · 2 years ago

Text

i got a much bigger response to my Harrington Charms Hellfire post than i expected so i wrote a little something that was along the lines of what i was thinking!

Part 1 ✧ Part 2 ✧ Part 3 ✧ Part 4 ✧ AO3

Sometimes Eddie thinks the real Upside-Down is his life after they close up the gates and pulverize Vecna ("they" in this situation being superhero Jane Hopper and the rest of her merry band of warriors), because past-Eddie would probably have a breakdown over...well, everything.

For one thing, Eddie is currently in the passenger seat of none other than Steve Harrington's Beemer, at the man's very request himself.

"Wait, I'll drop you off."

"'Preciate the thought, Steve but -"

"Munson. It's been like two weeks since you even started walking by yourself, sorry if I'm kinda worried about letting you go across town without me."

"Uh...just you?"

"Any of us, but me specifically since I'm clearly everyone's chauffeur. Might as well play the role, right?"

It's been like a month and every time Eddie wants to go anywhere in the slowly rebuilding town, Steve's right there with him. It'd be infuriating if it wasn't so obvious he liked doing it. If Steve wasn't so intent on just making sure Eddie's alright and yeah the mother-henning should have gotten old by now but if Eddie even thinks about telling him to stop, all he sees is sad eyes and hunched shoulders hiding under a complacent smile and wave bye-bye. God those eyes are fucking weapons.

They're heading over to Gareth's garage for a light-hearted band session. It's funny because Dustin was the one who convinced Eddie to "get your head out of your ass and talk to your friends, dick" and actually reach out to the rest of Hellfire about the whole 'not a murderer OR dead' thing. After some apologizing (ugh) and grovelling (double ugh), the rest of his sheep were willing to forgive him for ignoring their calls and visits while he was in recovery. Provided, of course, that he continue to check in with them on a bi-weekly basis at minimum. It's unfortunate that Steve, for all his head trauma, makes sure that Eddie actually sticks to that basis.

The things he does for love.

Or no, not love, definitely not love, it is way too fucking soon to call this teensy little infatuation anything as huge as love. No. Not love at all.

They're about to reach Gareth's place, that's important. By the time Steve rolls to a stop outside the garage, Eddie's panic (not panic, just a strong argument, this is not love) has simmered down. He has to take his time getting out of the car today, thank whatever deity is out there for quick-feet Steve, who runs around the front to help Eddie out onto his two feet. It's been a rough week but he had way worse back in that first month at the hospital, not to mention needing a little Steve-assistance isn't the worst thing in the world.

"Hey!"

Eddie blinks as Steve helps him lean against the car, the spots in his vision fading away to reveal Gareth right up in his space with a murderous gaze directed right at Steve.

Eddie worries that he's gonna start a fight even though it's been months since he's introduced Steve as his live-in-nurse (nobody takes Eddie's hints at a sexy nurse uniform to heart thankfully, he doesn't know what he'd do if Steve caught on that he's only half-joking) and Steve's been doing the best he can to make amends with Hellfire.

At least the guys aren't walking on eggshells around him anymore, judging by how Gareth barely took a glance to assess Eddie's wellbeing before going back to glaring at Steve with eyes ready to kill. Well fuck you too Gareth.

He crosses his arms, eyes burning with resentment as he continues go stare down a pretty nonchalant Steve who is very much in Eddie's space as he also leans against the car, fuck he's so close. When Eddie glances at him to scope out what the fuck is happening, he sees that gaze again. The gaze that reminds Eddie of Steve's days as King, looking over his reigning population with a boredom teetering on malicious negligence. That gaze used to send Eddie's mind into hysterics, painting images of crowding into the King's space just to see those big brown eyes waver. But that's not how it is anymore, Steve's eyes are usually brimming with concern, irritation or a spark of contentment as he watches his little nuggets run around screaming about Eddie's latest one-shot campaign.

Right now, there's no screaming teenagers. It's just silence for a few moments, a tension building in Eddie's bones until he thinks this must be what it's like to watch a sports match, head running back-and-forth between the two teams and waiting with baited breath.

"So?" Gareth spits out, squinting at Steve, just tilts his head in response and lets a few strands of perfect fall into his eyes, damn that bastard. Gareth grits his teeth and takes a breath, "What did you think?"

Steve watches Gareth, as if assessing his line delivery, shifting so he fully faces him but is still totally in Eddie's space with a hand on the car roof behind Eddie and the other crooked up on Steve's hip. The motion lets Eddie smell his aftershave and fuck, Steve still runs so warm. Whatever he finds in Gareth has to be what he wants because he gives them both a half-lidded smirk and shrugs his shoulders. "Eh, wasn't that into it."

Gareth sputters, face turning crimson and Eddie is like super confused because what the fuck is going on right now?

Steve is the one to fully break his brain with a laugh that throws his head back, his neck stretching out so the light hits his jawline perfectly, that bastard. He looks back at Gareth's flushed face with a sunny grin that sets fire to Eddie's veins. "You totally liked it, didn't you?"

Eddie snaps his head to Gareth, who squirms before dropping his shoulders. His little mutter of, "Yeah, I did," sounds so defeated that Eddie feels a second-hand guilt, but over what? He has no fucking clue.

That small pit of guilt quickly dissolves into even more confusion when Steve laughs again, kicking himself off his car to land a hand on Gareth's shoulder and fucking wink at Eddie. "The miracle of Grease, huh Munson?"

Record-scratch. Sorry, what?

"Sorry, what?" Eddie snaps his eyes from the grinning god that is Steve and the sulking fluster that is a member of his club, one of his friends, one of his very overprotective sheep who has hated Steve's guts for a long time and is now letting the guy give him a fucking noogie in broad daylight with empty complaints.

"Looks like I've been corrupting your crew, Eds, if Gary being a Greaser -"

"I am NOT a Greaser, I just -"

Gary? Steve calls Gareth the Great...Gary? And he doesn't even comment on it? Last time Jeff tried that, Gareth threatened to hide a spider in his guitar case. But Steve Harrington, someone Gareth has had no qualms about verbally tearing apart, does it and it's fine?

"Eds? Hey, Eddie." And now Steve's looking at him with that concern-rotten gaze, eyes flitting over every inch of Eddie's face as if to pinpoint what's wrong and fix it with a smile and a soft you're okay now, I've got you. "Back with me?"

Swallowing down an incessant I'm always with you, sweetheart, Eddie nods. In his peripheral, Gareth is watching him with his hands out as if to catch Eddie from falling. Which is stupid because Eddie hasn't fallen from light-headedness in like two days (Eddie shuts up the part of his brain that reminds him Gareth wouldn't know that with a part that says Dustin probably gives the whole club daily medical chart updates) and wait fuck is that Steve's hand on his neck right now?

"So!" Eddie claps his hands, eye twitching as Steve's hand slowly trails to his shoulder, lingering for a moment before he takes it off entirely. Stupid jock bastard with his touchy-ness and his smile and - "What's this I hear about Grease, Gary?"

Oh yeah, there's that livid face of watch out for the tarantula bitch, Eddie's missed that. Well, Gareth still does it everyday but not at Eddie for a while there, probably because of the whole intensive injury recovery shit. Oh well. "None of your -"

"Gareth and I made a bet," Steve clamps his hand back onto Gareth to shove them closer together, pointedly ignoring Gareth glare of betrayal. The space on the back of Eddie's neck still burns with the ghost of Steve's touch, something ugly in his chest snarling at how that touch is now on Gareth's arm. He wonders if the bats left him with more than bites sometimes. "About some movies we recommended each other. And since I won, that means -"

"No way, I'm not -"

"Uh yeah you are, I won so -"

"Fuck you, Harrington -"

"Not on the first date, hotshot," Steve laughs as Gareth tries wrangling out of his hold, holding onto him by his shoulders with one gloriously bulging forearm. Eddie's starting to think the light-headedness might be a symptom of something other than his brush with the bats. Oh don't think about the bats, bad move, bad move. "Didn't know you raised a cheater, Eddie."

Steve's eyes are glowing with mirth, his grin wide as Gareth threatens to bite him with a smile of his own. And that's. Huh?

"And I didn't know you two were so close," Eddie manages to cough out, snapping his gaze to Gareth with a raised eyebrow. He squirms again, ducking out of Steve's grasp (Eddie can't imagine why anyone would want to) and dusting off his shirt. "Holding out on me, Harrington?"

Steve shrugs, his eyes fixating right next to Eddie's eyes. He steps closer, a firm and warm presence right in Eddie's space, right in front of him, and raises a hand to caress Eddie's hair, that fucker. Eddie stifles his gasp because he knows Steve's just getting something out of his hair, like he does every goddamn time he sees a leaf or dust or fucking anything in Eddie's mass of curls. "Just being friendly. Now giddy up, you two've got a session to do."

"Not sticking around?" Gareth looks back at the garage, the forced nonchalance in his tone nothing compared to the shadow of King Steve's gaze. "Frank wanted to ask you about those threads from last week."

"Shit," Steve slapped his forehead, looking into the garage at Frankie who - fucking waves at them?! Mr. "Do what you want but I'm never falling for that Harrington charm bullshit" is waving at Steve. Who, incidentally, waves back with an apologetic smile. "Sorry, Frankie, I can't make it today, got a shift with the supply run! Rain check on the wardrobe?"

And Frank the Unwavering, notorious for sticking to his guns with a grip tight enough to choke a man, gives Steve a thumbs up before going back to strumming with Jeff. What the fuck.

"Wardrobe?" Eddie chokes.

"Don't worry about it," Steve waves a hand in the air and gently pulls Eddie off the car, settling his arm around Gareth, who takes Eddie's weight with ease. "I'll tell you later. You'll be good to take him, or should I?"

Gareth scoffs but his eyebrows aren't scrunched with any irritation or anger. "I think I can handle it, Harrington. Go handle your hero shit."

And here's the thing. Steve has a thing about that word. Eddie's noticed because, well, he's always watching Steve and he has a rocky relationship with the word "hero." Sometimes his whole body glows with the praise, smile so wide and eyes so sparkly it makes Eddie want to scream. Other times, Steve shrinks just a little, barely noticeable, and his smile dims and his eyes are shadowed with something Eddie doesn't understand. Or can't understand. He's not sure.

This time, Steve seems to be on the glowing side of things but it's so subtle compared to usual that Eddie just has to blink and all that golden haze is gone already. He blinks again and Steve's waving bye to him, blinks and Steve's in his car, blinks and he's driving back on the road to wherever people need him to be.

Gareth snorts, tugging Eddie out of his daze and shuffling them both toward the sofa at the back of the garage, the brown beauty it is. "Wipe the drool, man, you're getting it all over my hair."

"Oh like you're one to talk," Eddie waits until Gareth settles him on the sofa and fully stands up before fluttering his eyelashes up at him. "Gary."

"Shut up!" Gareth flushes, stomping over to his (barely holding together, but Eddie likes to think they're made of the same stuff Steve is, to keep going after a fucking averted apocalypse) drums. Jeff laughs when he fumbles with his sticks and Eddie grins when Gareth's attempt at throwing them lands the fuckers right at Frank and that sets them all off.

Yeah, maybe some stuff has turned on its head, Steve and the town and Eddie's general worldview, but he's still got his inner circle and that's good enough for him.

#i may write more if people are interested? depends on this one's reception #sailor✧writes #steddie #eddie munson #writing #ficlet #corroded coffin #i don't wanna tag hellfire because the focus in this is the band but idk if it matters much for people #also AHA unnamed freak now has a name and i say he's into fashion because fuck yeah giving the band hobbies outside music and dnd #au content #sailing✧harrington charms hellfire #if this is all over the place with the whole town rebuilding process and timeline then whoopsie #but again it's in that nebulous au so i wanted some details vague for folks to assume their own ideas while still maintaining my own #idk if it worked but i tried so yay

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