#I need to start paying attention to their characters they’re so funky | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pocketramblr · 4 years ago

Text

The followup to the Thought™

"Ugh." You say, waving to the screen. "Look at that, now that's who should have been the main character-"

"Oh?" I say, a small glowing figure appearing in front of you. "I can show you that if you want, wish granted." I wave my magic wand, and you blink to find yourself watching a different universe's show.

It's about a blond boy, with a minor superpower that's difficult to work with. He only has one friend, with major anxiety. Both of them want to be heroes, which is about the coolest and nicest thing anyone can be in this world.

But the blond boy is only in middle school. He doesn't get the best grades, he's a bit of a class clown, a bit of a delinquent. He's not exactly cool or over powered, but his earnest, bright nature endears him to the watchers and readers of the story. He's nice, and not worried about competition. He'll put cheering up his best friend over studying- and he'll put just enjoying video games together over training his power on his own.

He doesn't, by the way, train on his own. He makes meager progress in the class provided, and works hard when he's thinking about it, but he honestly doesn't even know where to start with his power.

He takes the entrance exam, and by some manner of luck, manages to permeate through blasts and rubble while shoving other students out of the way. He's used to watching out for his best friend, at least, and that carries over in his natural, if clumsy, attempts to help others here.

With more luck, he is accepted into the school on those points. So is his best friend, though they're in different classes. He still doesn't have many friends, but they meet a new girl in his bf's class: she's gorgeous and powerful- the most raw energy in any of their quirks, and no anxiety or complications holding her back.

She's a bit of a ditz, though, a bit much for others to hang around all the time, so even though she should be a shoe in fit the most popular, she slides easily into their group instead.

The fandom likes her a lot, and you feel impatient. This isn't the story you wanted to see, not really.

"Don't worry," I say. "Time flies when you're actually a school story instead of a daily battle with villains story."

And it does- they compete in the first sports festival. The main character, to little surprise, doesn't do well. But he manages to keep himself and the others smiling and laughing through it, and that brings the attention of the mentor.

The mentor that you like, of course, the mentor you believe was right.

The mentor trains the main character. It's hard, but he can actually break down what exactly he needs to improve on, and now that he has support, the main character takes it seriously. Like all children do, he rises to the expectations on him when he's given the material to do so.

Not made to find the material. The kid would have never dreamed of just assuming and asking such a high ranking hero to focus on him. Rather like another boy, but we'll get to him later.

It's another year. The girl tried her best at the beauty pageant. The best friend tried his best at the liscence exam. The main character has still been training at his internship.

"His second year." You say, thinking. "Now this is when All Might shows up in the timeline, ten months before February in what would be Mirio's second year."

I raise an eyebrow, but wave my magic wand.

All Might does appear. The mysterious top hero, always in the background- ads, all over the mentor's office. They used to work together, but no one in this universe knows anything more than that.

The mentor and the principal happily tell the main character that the number one hero wants to meet with him directly! The boy is nervous, of course, excited, of course, and a tad confused.

But meet they do.

And offer his quirk, he does.

The episode and chapter end on that, of course, and you feel a surge of excitement. Finally!

You look around and realize others in this fandom do not see it that way. Many critique the twist as coming out of nowhere, with no build up that it was even possible, breaking the established rules for no reason. Many others are proud of how much the main character has to work at the difficult power, and do not want him to have a second before he masters this one. Some feel it's a trap- a secret test of character, or a villain in disguise who will ruin him. Some wonder if it's more metaphorical- he's offering the power of support and more guidance, maybe a connection, but not his literal superpower.

You do not know how to feel about it, but you know this will be for the better. He will be perfect for it.

At the beginning of the next update, the boy turns down the quirk. Grateful, more than he could say, but he's worked so hard for his own power and he's not even up to snuff with it yet. He's unsure he's the best option. The girl, after all, is used to weilding such power, maybe he should try her, maybe he should keep looking.

The top hero nods, and asks if he can visit again later, if he can find no other. The boy is a good hero after all, and maybe he needs to believe in himself as much as he is telling his friend to. It will be hard to train a second quirk, yes, but he can manage. It will make him stronger and pay off, after all.

The boy agrees, tentatively. No one can really say no to the number one hero, after all.

"Ok." You say, nodding. "There's an opening. It can build more, since that's how the story is here, way more slowburn."

I shrug. That's what happens when you start the story three years early, but whatever.

The story goes on. The main character does better in the sports festival, but not by any measure good. His friend finds a mentor, a character popular. Much warmer than the blond's mentor. The girl gets a really good mentor, a top tenner.

And then they start to get really good. They're used to training now, and getting it all bit individually and together. The mentor is motivated as of by fury, pushing more and more. And the main character grows to reach it.

Another year. They're seniors, now. Just one year left before they're pros, but they're already about at that level. They're called the Big Three.

The third year is different. Chaos every few weeks. A class of first years attacked.

"Oh, because All Might is still looking for a successor among the students- checking over the freshmen but they won't be able to compare."

I hum in a way that could be interpreted as agreement.

The sports festival. Finally, real victory. They do so well, even with one anxious at crowds. And one that is seemingly allergic to staying clothed. They do well.

The chaos continues, always at the sides. The others in this universe who follow the story talk about that and the offer the top hero made. Is he getting weaker? Did that power leak somehow and now someone wants it?

The tension grows, especially for you. If the hero doesn't give the main character the power before the summer....

The main character doesn't get the power before the summer. The hero falls on tv while the blond and his friends watch in horror.

After the summer, the main character decides to meet the freshmen. You wonder who will replace a certain someone's seat, or if this is playing the original quirkless hero storyline.

When the main character challenges the class of freshmen and you see that sparking green, you seethe.

"I said I wanted Mirio to have OfA! Why is he-"

"Actually," when I speak, you cannot. "You asked for him to be the main character. He still is. A beloved one, even."

"You know what I meant!"

"Perhaps. But then you asked for another change, and so I allowed All Might to meet with him a few days before he would have in the old timeline. He had a chance, he turned it down. Why are you mad at him having his own ambitions and autonomy?"

"He was supposed to take it! He's the worthier option, and you know it."

"What makes him worthy?"

"He works hard!"

"So does Izuku."

"He worked hard before he was offered everything by All Might!"

"Yes," I will admit. "Though, that's only because he met Sir before he met All Might. Were you so focused on how slow it was going that you didn't actually watch what he was doing?"

You will not admit to anything, still angry.

"He'll get another chance." I remind you.

You huff, but the story continues on.

The main character takes a liking to the boy you despise. So does the fandom, dubbing him the cutest little kohai. He's awkward and eager and sunny, like a fusion of the main trio.

He's also impulsive, and on their first patrol together they run into who will obviously be the big bad of the arc- and his abused daughter.

The fandom is split on if the story is going to go with a "In this arc, the blond must pass his experience on patience to a boy who it all about speed and too naive" or if it's "In this arc, it's the mouth of babes- the boy will inspire the main character to do good more impulsively."

You sit and wait for it to be "the boy will finally fork over the power he's now spent over a year working to hold and use to the real main character."

The raid happens. We finally see how the main character met his best friend. It's very sweet. The girl is a lead character and gets focus on her fight too, though the two freshmen working with her don't really. There's another funky freshman boy who turns out to be more like the best friend than we thought.

Finally, we get to the main fight.

And the main character is shot, quirk erased. For good, if the villain who's really not actually that good an example of a scientist is to be believed.

"Oh. What if the former top hero offers his power again, after this arc? It's about loss but always moving on?" The fandom asks. They aren't sure if the buildup to this is better than before, but it's certainly am interesting turn, and not as controversial as the last time.

The best friend saves the day by awakening right at the perfect moment to drag the teacher in. The quirk is kinda super deus ex machina for this arc though.

At the hospital, the mentor dies. The former number one hero is there.

The fandom wonders whether to hope or fear how long he'll wait to replace the mentor and the quirk.

You wait, knowing it's soon.

Then the freshman offers his quirk, and the fandom flips again.

"We should have known!" They cry. "He had super speed and strength the whole time, maybe the sparks are from his own quirk, but it's the same power! Oh, this hurts much more than just if it had been the retired hero!"

Once again, the fandom divides. Many can't bear to see the kohai they love shoved aside after this one moment. Will be be able to use his original power? Then they won't mind the strength for the blond. Some say to wait for his power to come back. A few pipe up about the possibility of him doing it quirkless. He has trained physically too, after all these years.

"No thanks," he says again. He does smile though- just like Sir told him to- and tells his kohai that he’ll do great things with the power, just like All Might did. Tells him that he already has.

You're past the point of fury now.

"Why?" You demand.

"Keep watching." My tone is cold. "Keep watching, the next five months where he does nothing but babysit a girl in hopes she'll magically make himt not quirkless again. He doesn't even ask if he can be a quirkless hero. He doesn't even go to school to keep training. You demanded the other boy figure it out himself. This boy doesn't. He just hopes the same thing that did this to him can undo it."

You don't know what to say about that.

"Neither took it seriously in middle school. That's the nature of middle schoolers. Neither of them tried to go solo quirkless, when no support was provided. But they're both good kids. Hard workers. Heroic. They love each other, honestly, they're friends. It's sweet. And it's sad that it took me doing this for you to see it."

I shake my head.

"Sir Nighteye never saw how Mirio was much more like Izuku than All Might. That was his mistake, because he didn't know the meaning of worthy. Not that it was his choice to make even if he had. There's no magic to this. OfA isn't Excalibur or Mjölnir. All sorts of people have had it. And All Might wasn't doing much to train before he found Nana ether, as much as he got into trouble. OfA is more about connections they have to each other. It's about people's relationships. As it happens, that just doesn't include Mirio and wouldn't be at its most meaningful if it did."

"You just are too much a Deku stan and hate Mirio-"

"Accuse me of hating Mirio again, and I will leave you here." I threaten, pointing my wand at you. "Now. Did you learn your lesson?"

You grumble, but you do nod.

"Good." I say, before waving my wand one last time. You're back where you were before, not a trace of me or magic.

The lesson, though, sticks.

#i said i was going to 'it's a wonderful world' you and so i did #hmcmverse #other main characters meta series

125 notes · View notes

azucanela · 4 years ago

Note

Hey, can I get an Bakugou/Shouto/Shinsou hcs where they have a crush on their classmate that haves an astronomic quirk? I had seen an artwork where the guy is just like an universe force full of stars on his body and I've just had this idea. I hope you having a good day✨✨✨

REACTING TO S/O WITH ASTRONOMIC QUIRK [GN HEADCANNONS]

ft. bakugo katsuki, shinsou hitoshi, todoroki shouto

SUMMARY: in which Y/N has an astronomic quirk and the boys can’t help but fall for her.

WORD COUNT: 2.3k

WARNINGS: mentions of threats, fluff, really pg tbh

A/N: there is a total of two gifs for shinsou hitoshi that exist so for the sake of fairness we shall move away from gifs! also i hope you have a nice day too bb <3

BAKUGO KATSUKI

the volume in this bus is

astronomical.

okay but fr you have an astronomic quirk that essentially allows you to do anything in relation to the universe, so you’re out here making black holes with your hands and shooting out some cosmic energy at your opponents, your lil super weapon is a supernova

whenever you use your quirk your body literally glows, like it looks like a galaxy on your body, your skin literally looks straight out of a photo from NASA, its almost as if your hair becomes a liquid as it floats into the air, defying gravity, wisps of energy occasionally coming off, speaking of defying gravity you can fly because gravity happens to not exist in space um float float woo

moral of the story, you are POWERFUL, scoring in the top five amongst your class, depending on your control over your quirk and creativity, you may have even outdone katsuki

he hates you for this, and despises you because you’re just so good at being a hero, and yet everyone is still a student. unlike him you hopefully have your emotions in check, and are far more capable of social interactions, which are very important as a hero! for rescues, and interviews, and team ups! collaboration is key.

as he grows as a person, he also grows out of this mentality of despising those who are better than him and instead begrudgingly seeking their assistance to improve. so congrats, you earned his respect! you are one of few that his managed this task!

he just kinda forces himself into your life, not that you mind, but it is a little random when he just kinda plops down beside you during lunch and starts eating, looking at you as though he’s daring you to say something

you just raise a brow and move on, continuing to speak with your friends who remain baffled by his sudden presence

katsuki is gonna be asking you to train 24/7, he wants to improve his skills and you are one of few he considers worthy, you don’t mind because he’s also talented and your quirks are pretty well suited for each other in combat practice

realistically you could just suck him into one of your black holes but he doesn’t need to know that

anyways during one of these training sessions, after a while of actually getting to know you and stuff it just kinda hits him that you look really ethereal when you’re using your quirk, and wow you are beautiful

and now he’s been hit in the face by one of your cosmic blasts, and he is cursing and you are apologizing, coming over to his as the stars on your skin fade and your hair returns to normal

katsuki is BLUSHING as he realizes his mistake and he is desperately hoping you did not notice why he screwed up, swatting you away as you attempt to help him up from the floor, the remnants of your quirk’s glow still in the training room

he was here to be a hero. not to have stupid crushes.

you are definitely his first crush oh god. this boy is an emotional mess, he’s never felt like this, he never had the time or the desire to feel like this, katsuki has always felt like nobody else could keep up with him so why should he like anyone?

until someone could keep up with him, that someone being you

he likes you oh no. oh no. oh no. panic is all that is katsuki bakugo and he’s going to try and storm out but you’re like omg what the hell man???

everytime he sees you, especially when you’re using your quirk, he’s gonna get all blushy, and everyone is gonna notice how flustered he is, they’ll catch on pretty quick

accidentally stares at you in class and it frustrates him to no end when he begins to focus again and realizes he allowed his gaze to fall onto you

“you’re staring again bakugo 👀”

“SHUT UP.”

when you two start dating he’s gonna want to ask you to use your quirk when you’re alone just because he wants to admire you and how pretty it looks, but it is going to take a LOT of bullying and pushing to get him to reveal this

let him touch your starry skin he’ll be freakishly calm, and his touch will be so gentle because it is just so pretty and its you and it seems really out of character for him but your quirk is just so coming because at the end of the day it is you

moral of the story is stars calm our boy baku

SHINSOU HITOSHI

the only person who hasn’t seen your quirk in action because he doesn’t get accepted into the Hero Course until later on. but he’s probably gonna see it for the first time at the UA Sports Festival.

you two are friends already! you wormed your way into his life, initially to his dismay but now he likes you as a friend, thats about to change

you probably just started sitting down at lunch with him randomly and he got really confused and you just kinda shrugged and were like, “you have nice hair.”

that was it.

in all honesty, the purple color of his hair lowkey reminded you of your own quirk and you kinda just wanted to meet him and that’s what you did, after a while of hyping yourself up and backing out several times

regardless, it became a daily thing and you found yourself determined to befriend him, and you did! it was lovely, he was slowly accepting you and everything was going great, he was finally talking about stuff with you during lunch and he’d wave in the halls and woo!

anyways, the UA Sports Festival, you’re like the only person he knows so he’s paying attention to the festival purely for you, even when he gets eliminated

you’re about to go up against bakugo and allow me to explain some of the other wonderful parts of the universe

a wormhole = a white hole and i think its still rather theoretical and not proven but right now in this instance they are definitively real! so you can teleport with you quirk basically! not that anyone knows this because you’ve been saving this lovely ability

there is also black holes but that is a little excessive for a festival, and cosmic blasts, but bakugo has blasts of his own so

shinsou is watching and then you begin GLOWING AND HE’S SO SHOCKED MAN, like your skin looks like a picture of the galaxy, and your hair is glowing and floating in the air, hands sparking with wisps of energy radiating off of you

its beautiful, you’re beautiful, bye bye platonic feelings, shinsou just fell in love by accident

he probably liked you already but it took this moment for him to realize that he liked you.

shinsou is watching in astonishment as a white hole opens up in front of you, bakugo blasting forward at an incredibly quick rate and shooting through the hole, just to end up outside the arena

that’s the story of how bakugo almost killed you on camera and you won the sports festival :D shinsou thinks you are so COOL but he’s gonna be really nonchalant about it and be lowkey when he asks you about your quirk

tbh he’s gonna be bashful, but he’ll ask for a demonstration of your abilities because he really just wants to see that again, and when you say yes he’s pretty ecstatic though he isn’t expressing it.

“hey.. why didn’t you tell me about your quirk?”

“you never asked”

“would you mind uh..”

you’re looking at him like what you want boy

“would you mind showing me your quirk?” the words come out quicker than he’d wanted but you don’t seem to notice

“sure! right now?”

you two are in his room and he doesn’t know why but seeing your body begin to glow, beautiful stars lighting up your skin, it feels rather intimate, and he finds himself blushing

you’re giving him a demonstration of your other abilities but he can only really focus on just how pretty you look because WOW

in general, he’s gonna try to catch glimpses of you using your quirk as often as he can, though it is difficult since you are in different classes

when you two start dating it’s probably around the time he gets accepted into the hero course, and he feels like he’s behind so naturally he asks his girlfriend and best student in the class for help training!

get’s distracted the first couple of times he sees you use your quirk in class, but he manages to get over it after a while, mostly

not ashamed to blatantly stare at you in class, because you are his girlfriend and he is VERY proud to say that

TODOROKI SHOUTO

welp

this boy

is probably an astronomy nerd, idk why but i can see it, he just knows an odd amount of things about the universe and stuff or anything astronomy related

where’s this constellation? oh ask shouto for some reason he knows

honestly though, he had a lot of tutors growing up since he spent most of his time at home “training” with his father, shouto didn’t go to school and was instead taught by these tutors, and astronomy happened to be a very prominent subject

due to his blunt personality, he’s the only person who is gonna outright say that you look really beautiful when you use your quirk, and everyone is gonna think they’re hearing things, but he has no shame repeating it when asked

you’re blushing this time around ma’am

like you’re all demonstrating quirks as Aizawa pretends to determine if you are going to get expelled or not, and you kinda just begin to glow, your skin looks like the literal galaxy and your hair is glowing a variety of colors, becoming an liquified thing as wisps of energy radiate off you and yoU’RE JUST FLYING ACROSS THE FIELD WOW

space has no gravity because people go float, this is why you also float, but it is a controlled float! you also have cosmic blasts, a funky black hole, a white hole that definitively exists in this universe, yeah astronomic quirk looking good rn

“that’s incredible.”

“im sorry what did you say?”

“her quirk is very impressive.”

later on probably after the two of you are slowly befriending each other, shouto finds you interesting and he wants to learn more about your quirk, and he thinks you would be a decent training partner seeing as the two of you are at the top of your class, so he starts associating with you

and associating with you becomes sitting with you during lunch, sharing his food, studying with you, training with you, he’s spending a lot of his time with you and the entire class notices because shouto is normally way more withdrawn what is this??

its not until one particular training day that uraraka wonders if the dekusquad should get involved, you’re using your quirk and she, todoroki and the others are on the sidelines just watching as they wait for their turn to spar

shouto is staring at you, eyes wide, mouth open with wonder and he just says, “wow. that’s beautiful.”

uraraka is like DID I HEAR YOU RIGHT HAHGAS

he likes yessir, that is a gorgeous person that i simp for look at them glowing so pretty yes yes

idk who approaches who first, either shouto is so confused by this weird feeling he gets whenever he is around you and starts avoiding you, opting to visit midoriya since he’s knowledgable and asks what is wrong with him. or uraraka insists on an intervention since homeboy is clearly in love with you and someone has to tell his deku smh

once he realizes he likes you hes probably gonna be quiet about it for a hot minute, and you find his silent behavior odd because to everyone else he’s like this, yes, but with you he tended to talk more and now you’re like??

shouto is trying to figure out what to do about this situation because this was an ACCIDENT and he does fear losing you since you are like the only person he considers a friend at this point.

you confront him and he’s kinda like, “apparently im in love with you.” he cracks pretty fast about whats going on and he is really upfront with you and you’re just like WELP

thats how you start dating icy hot :)

only one that is not ashamed to ask you to use your quirk because PRETTY SHINY WOW gorgeous just art. definitely takes time to just stare at your glowing skin, connecting the stars with his fingers in astonishment he’s gonna tell you how pretty you are 24/7 even if you don’t use your quirk because you are just that beautiful

loves telling you random astronomical facts, tries to see if the things he learns can be used by you since your quirk is based off space

accidentally finds astrology and is now lowkey obsessing over zodiac signs and nearly got his ass beat by bakugo because he had a temper tantrum and shouto was like “this is just because you are an Aries.”

power couple woo

you aren’t just his world, you’re his universe <3

1K notes · View notes

liibrii · 4 years ago

Note

I have been curious and may I ask your favorite characters from each team of Haikyuu?

yes, yes, please do, give me an excuse to talk about my faves!! 💕 I didn’t do every single team because it would be too long and tbh for some teams I just don’t care that much 🤷‍♀️

Karasuno

Hinata (he's my fave hq character, and just might be my fave character in anything ever; I love his sunny personality so much, and when he goes feral, boi, yes go crazy you tiny little ball of sunshine. “I sprouted from the concrete“ ?? we don’t talk about the pure rawness of that line enough. chills. and his growth through the series is just 👌 💯✨ unmatched. the ball boy arc made me tear up (Hinata bby, he’s so good at making friends) and then the receive in Inarizaki match?? proud tears. him going to Brazil to train?? 🤧 when the line "I'm home!" gets animated I will cry)

Inarizaki (if you've been around my blog a while this will have no surprises)

Omimi (if u didn't see this coming let me elaborate, he looks scary ok but he's a sweetheart, have u seen his current concern? adorable 🥰 also he's so freaking tall I know he gives the best bear hugs 💓 also did u know Suna looks up to his blocking? this might be my biased interpretation but let's ignore that he’s in the same class as Kita, and explains his little rituals to his underclassmen, he finds Kita’s observation skills kinda scary but boi does he respect his captain. also did u know he’s actually born the same year as the 2nd years? aka the same year as me in conclusion, Omiren hand in marriage please 💍 also since he’s a side character with so little canon information he’s so much fun to just make wild hc’s for)

Kita (I sure did sell my soul to the scary fox captain, the Mr-no-gaps-Kita-Shinsuke; everything about him is just 💗💓✨, his dutiful personality, his absolutely adorable relationship with his grannie, the respect team has for him despite being only a bench warmer before his 3rd year, how well he knows his teammates, how proud he is to be on the same team as them, his friendship with other 3rd years 💗 he's such an interesting character. and his introduction in the anime? ✨ legendary ✨ his timeskip occupation? perfection 🌾 “I am build upon the small things I do every day“ Sokrates who? Confucius when?)

Akagi (he's a cutie and pure unbridled bringer of chaos, we know Twins are a handful but who do you think enables them?? also who let this man be a teacher love how during the Karasuno match Akagi is the one trying to keep the team on their toes when Kita isn't on the court. he's a good senpai 🎉 also he's on first name basis with Kita so they're close friends & it's my hc he's the trouble child of the 3rd years, you can't change my mind)

Aran (this poor dude has been putting up with Twins for years and if that doesn’t buy your respect then, idk maybe him being one of the top 5 aces will? him being the on-court captain? of all the Inarizaki players Ukai being the most worried about him? Hinata comparing himself to him in that one absolutely hilarious panel? his friendship with Kita? also have u noticed he’s the only one that makes Kita actually laugh (not just smile, laugh)? his current concern? so relatable, I’m wearing socks with holes all the time, Aran we’re obviously soulmates, hit me up anytime 😍)

Atsumu (for as much as I love the prettiest of pretty setters I sure don't talk about him that much. his passion for volleyball is just 💗 his relationship with Osamu is perfect, the rivalry and constant arguing, the support and love they have for each other, that’s just how twins are I know I have two in my damn house he's the perfect combination of someone I wanna punch and hug and give kisses to. also his jokes are hilarious y'all just don't appreciate them 😤)

Seijoh

Oikawa (he’s infuriating. because he comes off as this annoying pretty boy whose shins I want to kick twice an hour but then his complexity starts showing and I fell, never got up, but I’m still pissed about it. the amount of passion he has for volleyball? off the charts. the attention he pays to his teammates? only matched by Kita. annoying Iwa-chan all the time? relatable af, I too annoy my best friend to show my love. him going overseas to follow his dreams? as someone who left her home country for school I know how hard it can be so he has my respect and support. u go you funky little setter boy, kick everyone’s asses 🥇)

Shiratorizawa

Tendou (I love him!! I love his goofy personality, I love his 0% or 120% blocking technique (Furudate where is my stz vs Inarizaki match, I wanna see him go up against Omimi so bad, I want to hear the banter between him and Atsumu, I wanna see him blocking Suna, Furudate when??); I love how friendly and close he is with everyone on the team. he’s such a good friend. everyone should have a friend like Tendou. especially his friendship with Ushijima, it warms my heart. also his time skip occupation is just 👌✨ amazing. and I want to fight everyone who bullied him, those bitches gonna catch these hands)

Fukurodani

Bokuto (it’s Bo. how can u not love him? he has the brightest smile to warm your heart and big arms to warm you with hugs; also his quote “It’s not impossible, it’s just hard“ like yes he’s so supportive, we all need a Bokuto in our lives. the entire training camp arc is just one big Bokuto show, him just straight up proclaiming Hinata his protege and then years later they’re on the same team 😭 and he’s so friendly with everyone, please he just wants to play volleyball and make friends. the only one who shines brighter than Bo is Hinata. also, big beefy arms 👀 )

Kamomedai

Hoshiumi (he's the definition of 'poison being in small bottles'; I love this tiny feral seagull; his rivalry with Hinata? amazing. my only complain is we didn’t get more of it. his words to Hirugami when he was feeling down and fed up with volleyball? yes Hoshiumi, ur so right!! also time skip Hoshiumi is wow wow wow a revelation indeed 👀 )

Bessho (I read the line ‘Goody McGooders’ and I haven’t been the same since. I stand on the edge of falling in love with him too. he's cute, his inner monologue is hilarious, his current concern makes me laugh. what more do u want in a man? except being real)

Msby

Meian (I'm a simple gal, I see big beefy man, I simp 💓 he puts up with almost all of my faves so, he got my respect. also him big. can u imagine what a perfect pillow he’d be??)

#anon was here #wow this got longer than expected #libri speaks #hinata #omimi #kita #aran #akagi #atsumu #tendou #oikawa #bokuto #hoshiumi #bessho #meian

29 notes · View notes

thanksjro · 4 years ago

Text

More Than Meets the Eye #29 - The One Where Everyone Gets Super Shiny

Our issue opens up with Swerve laying down the Story So Far in the Exposition Dimension.

Fantastic, you funky little man.

If Swerve looks like he’s been tossed through the car wash a few dozen times, it’s because this is where our new colorist comes in! Everyone, please say hello to Joana Lafuente- known for her love of gradients and attention to light sources, this actually isn’t the first time we’ve run into her. Lafuente worked on colors for several issues of The Transformers (2009), Last Stand of the Wreckers #3, and a few issues of MTMTE Season 1. However, she was matching the styles of her co-colorists on a majority of these, so we haven’t seen her style properly until now.

Getting into the story proper, Cyclonus is busying himself with staring out the window at a PNG of space, as he is wont to do, when he hears the tell-tale sound of tires squealing down the hall towards his room. Oh, goodness, whoever could that be?

Nearly forgot about him, didn’t you? Yeah, it’s a little difficult to follow up on things like a character’s recovery from a horrific disease when you’ve got comic event contract obligations to deal with.

After getting tackled by Tailgate, who reminds us all about the time he stuck his dirty little fingers into a dude’s brain meat, Cyclonus takes the little nerd on a walk through the ship.

You’re not going to convince me to reread “Dark Cybertron”. I don’t care how much of a marshmallow you are, it’s not happening.

They’re passed by Megatron and a bunch of crew members carrying that coffin we saw at the end of last issue down the corridor, Tailgate has a moment, and we get a taste of Cyclonus’ distaste for the Autobots as a whole. Tailgate is mildly offended by this, as he gropes his chest in distain, showing off his shiny new Autobot badge- a gift for not dying a terrible, gruesome death.

Good job, Tailgate. Proud of you.

They’re also passed by an absolutely blitzed Jackpot and Mainframe, the former singing Tailgate’s Tyrest-stopping praises as the latter carts him over to the Medibay to deal with the almost alcohol poisoning he’s got going on. Cyclonus remarks that Tailgate was missed, though Tailgate can’t help but wonder if that’s really true.

Y’all like slowburn romance, right? Because these two dumbasses have been roommates for two years, and we’ve just gotten to the point where physical contact can happen without one of them needing to be dying.

Anyway, it’s been a good day for Tailgate so far. Let’s hope it stays that way for the little dude.

...And that’s a series wrap on Tailgate! Let’s give him a hand, folks!

Hopping back in time to Megatron’s trial, things get underway, as Optimus Prime takes a nap in the judge’s bench as Gripper- whose name you don’t need to remember, as he’s not actually important- tells everyone about how brutal the Decepticon Justice Division is, even to Autobots. Which isn’t really supposed to be their deal, given their, y’know, name, but I suppose nobody’s perfect.

Up in the stands, in an… opera box, I guess? Rodimus is watching the proceedings, when Atomizer walks in. Which I guess you can just do in a Cybertronian court case. Sure.

Atomizer, in case you forgot, is the dude who has a bow and arrow, and used to be an interior designer.

Say, didn’t Whirl has a bow and arrow in the last issue when he attacked Megatron? Mighty curious, that.

Rodimus and Atomizer briefly reflect on the DJD, recalling the horror that was Vos- not that Vos, the other one. Rodimus would really just rather this all be over with so the Lost Light can get back to finding the Knights of Cybertron, and it’s at this point that Atomizer breaks out a thing he really ought not have- the count for the vote on whether or not Rodimus should stay on as captain. Rodimus doesn’t want to look at it, because it was supposed to be anonymous for a reason, and tells Atomizer to destroy the list entirely.

Hm, that’s not a terribly determined face there, Rodimus.

Back in the present, specifically in Swerve’s, Groove is threatening to break Streetwise’s arm, as we get the downlow on just what exactly our Legislator buddy’s deal is. Turn’s out, Swerve got one of the things reprogrammed, so that he follows not the Autobot Code, but something else entirely.

Hey, Swerve?

I don’t expect you to know this, because I don’t think you were present when they revealed this information to the readers, but… your new bouncer is made of people. He’s a dude made of other dudes, namely the Circle of Light. There’s a chance that you reprogrammed a sentient being, my good bitch.

Anyway, Swerve’s in a fucking mood because his shoulder hurts, someone’s stealing his shit, and Megatron has joined the narrative. Over at a nearby table, Skids, Nautica, and Riptide take a gander at the tabloids. Trailcutter, who is positively smashed, to the point where he’s just leaking booze out of his face like it’s his job, isn’t terribly interested in that, however.

What an astute observation, Riptide. And people say you’re stupid!

Trailcutter wants to drink some more, because it’s very likely he’s got a problem, but the mention of “Megatron’s super fuel” makes him feel like it’s time to stop hounding Swerve and start performing crimes.

Back during the trial, we get to Starscream’s testimony. He’s wearing his crown. He’s acting like a self-righteous asshole, as he defends Megatron.

Well, “defend” in the technical, legal sense, I suppose.

But really it’s more about him insulting Megatron’s intelligence, strength, and courage, in front of a LOT of people, while also trying to make himself look better in the war crime department. Megatron doesn’t appreciate this very much, if his murder-face is anything to go by.

Megatron lets Ultra Magnus (his defender, if you’ll recall) know that he wants a private word, and court goes into a brief recess.

Back in the present, Nightbeat’s busy looking at a pin-up of Rung’s alt-mode, when someone knocks on his door. That someone is Chromedome, who’s trying to solve the mystery of The Missing Declaration of Love. Not that he says that specifically out loud.

You two were married, why- okay. No point in yelling at this digital copy of a comic book.

Anyway.

So, the whole screaming thing only happened the one time, and everything was back to normal on subsequent plays of Rewind’s message. Nightbeat seems to be leaning towards the depressive isolating getting to Chromedome, which Chromedome responds to by telling him to get the fuck out. Alas, someone’s blocking the door!

YO WHAT THE FUCK-

Back with Trailcutter’s subplot, our drunken friend is in the middle of breaking into the Medibay. Our trio of cool-colored pals watch him from back at the bar, by way of a laptop that looks like it was built the same year I was born.

As Trailcutter attempts to commit a crime, Megatron, Ultra Magnus, and Ratchet pass by, trying to figure out how to handle the whole coffin situation. Trailcutter’s about to punch the locks off a door, and Nautica decides that this is where she’s going to draw the line today, leaving the gaggle of fools to their shenanigans. Then Tailgate glomps Skids, throwing the computer to the ground and breaking it, as Trailcutter finds the door to the Medibay magically open.

If you don’t know what glomping is, there’s a 60% chance that you’re not old enough to vote in the US.

Trailcutter sneaks into the Medibay, we get a reminder that Ambulon is super dead, and Trailcutter commits theft from a food bank. What a guy.

This is the point where security shows up, armed with a great deal of guns, one of which is Megatron himself. Trailcutter, instead of feeling super powerful, actually feels positively awful after consuming Megatron’s rations of “super fuel”. Because he, as an Autobot, doesn’t want to be within 50 yards of Megatron, Trailcutter breaks out the forcefields the moment the guy approaches him. And oh, what a doozy this one is.

Trailcutter’s gotten himself a fancy new trick- this forcefield he’s broken out lasts for a solid half-hour, and he can’t turn it off. I’m sure that won’t bite him in the ass at any point in the near future, no-siree!

Back in the past, Rattrap is commending Starscream on playing the field and getting the public slightly more on his side, but Starscream’s too busy patting himself on the back to really pay attention. He knew damn well that Megatron wouldn’t like what he had to say on the stand, and now things are finally looking up for ol’ Screamer.

Over with Optimus Prime, Slamdance is showing off how the general public is really into this whole “folks being held accountable for their actions” thing.

In the present, Chromedome and Nightbeat seem to have remembered they have alt-modes and are driving down the hall back to Nightbeat’s room- wonder what the speed limit for the Lost Light is?- and discuss just what the hell happened. The current theory is that the Rewind they saw was a Data Ghost- a collection of information so dense, it had a not-quite-physical presence that wasn’t 100% removed when he died.

Which is a little fucked up, but let’s see where this goes.

Nightbeat undoes the 40,000 locks on his door while Chromedome bleeds guilt all over the shag carpet over the fact that he hasn’t been looking for Dominus Ambus like he said he would.

C’mon James, gimme that Chromedominus endgame.

Nightbeat finally opens the door to find a small problem.

Hm. That’s… not normal.

Over in the Medibay, Trailcutter’s bubble has burst, allowing Megatron to slap him in the back of the head. This head-slapping induces his FIM chip permanently, making it so that he can never get drunk again.

Weird party trick, Megatron. Kinda shitty, really.

Megatron then gives Trailcutter the job of director of security, because he needs direction in his life. Trailcutter just sort of takes what he’s given, because I suppose you can’t really argue with a guy who can literally slap you sober, and also threatens to destroy you if you fuck up even once. Nice, Megs. Nice.

MEGATRON THAT’S BEEN SITTING LIKE THAT FOR OVER HALF AN HOUR YOU FUCKING WET NOODLE

So, since there’s mystery juice all over the floor and no one’s died, Megatron assumes that the coffin ought to be fine to crack open.

Please note that Megatron is not a medical professional, and his views are now peer reviewed by medical professionals. Megatron is in no way endorsed by the WHO.

Anyway, Rodimus is in there.

Pretty fucked up.

Back in the past, recess is over, and Ultra Magnus comes bearing bad news- Megatron wants to change his plea to “innocent.” This gets about the reaction one would expect from just about anyone.

Well, except Rodimus, who’s too busy reading that list that he wanted destroyed. He’s very sad about it.

I know, what a bummer!

#transformers #jro #MTMTE #world shut your mouth #issue 29 #maccadam #Hannzreads #text post #long post #comic script writing

117 notes · View notes

icharchivist · 3 years ago

Note

hello icha!!!!! learned from my mistakes and typed this out in a separate document. first i have to say im feeling a very deep connection with citron as of late bc i was giving myself a pep talk abt like physics and i told myself "face up and man the music!" and was like "...is that wrong. theres that song called man against the music isnt there... yeah it must be right" and. well i realized later. i also think the phrase "dont cry because it happened, smile because its over" is very good. also I’m halfway thru creating a very eclectic list of like. a Pokémon team for each a3 character which is… something. kinda knew it would happen to me. might take a while for me to finish it tho now that I’m halfway bc I’m suddenly having a crisis like “wait shit I’m only confident on my understanding and characterizing of like 4 characters am I good enough” so… it’s slow going lol. anyways. i finished that damn physics thing I was giving myself a pep talk about and so am treating myself to autumn/winter. happens that watching these events is also like. the only thing which reminds me to actually like. log into a3 lol. i am so bad at gacha games. probably a good thing in the long run. ok starting from the top!

hisoka going "zzz" as his reaction made me immediately go... oh dear, please dont fall asleep in the bath and guess what happened. yeah. good thing homare was there lol. speaking of i fucking adore homare and his poetry. id buy his collection. i also wish there was a collection like if there was a master list of every poem he says in like. at the very least main story. if not i will literally do it myself. i love homare so much im like him in that back when i had to play dodgeball id always be like kufufufu they cant hit me if im friendless enough that no one pays attention to me but like in my case it actually worked out. on the subject of the pillow fight tho, hisoka's crazy strong pillow fight throw... one more mark on the list for suspicious, maybe assassin occupation. this event made me realize how much i missed winter like. i saw the stranger pretty recently (which has caused the effect of be being like "taichi!! thats my boy!!" in my head everytime he shows up lol but anyways i havent gotten to a winter play yet so im VERY hype. especially bc this seems like it stars hisoka and homare??? like oh!! oh!!!! also detective fiction... im swooning. i also just enjoy the hisoka homare dynamic a whole fucking lot i think its nice how homare was like "yeah im ride or die for this funky lil amnesiac, why wouldnt you be?" and its just like. nice. feel like hes always reaching out to hisoka which is like. man homare is so nice.

back to chronology. ofc sakyo goes cheap for the hot springs lol. on brand as ever. was very hype for the azuma sakyo dynamic bc all i remember is like azuma trashing everyone including sakyo at some game or the other in one of the winter chapters and it was very good. or was this a clip in like a stage play? either way it was delightful. at first i misinterpreted taichi going "…" after azuma and sakyo said theyd never been on a field trip bc like. taichi being quiet or noncommunicative... after going thru autumn troupe act 1 it makes me fear for my life a little lol. anyways im glad he was just like planning fun times. speaking of taichi tho we got a tasuku taichi pair for etudes!!!! im not spoiling myself for later events but i hope to GOD tasuku and taichi do like a lead co lead in SOMETHING or at least like some mixed troupe event i want them to talk!!!

also dunno if this is an intentional pun but i enjoy that its called high spirits at the hot spring bc like oh theyre having fun but also bc like. "spirits" is used to refer to a certain type of alcohol i think? which is cool. dunno if its intentional but i liked that. anyways the talent show. taichis moving rendition of single ladies... ok i know it said single fellas but like. we know. wonder if that line was a different song in japanese? its not too old at ALL tho imo. anyways the way banri and juza being themselves Are the entertainment... flashback to when banri slaps juza live on stage instead of doing a stage slap lol. my reaction to azuma essentially went:

azuma: I can offer to bare my soul, and a little more ;)

izumi: what do u mean by that???

me: hey tasuku and omi were shirtless what's ur problem with azuma

anyways i reread and from what i understand they were maybe only flexing and doing a gun show? which like. no wonder it didnt last too long then lol. also explains why they didnt have shirtless sprites i suppose lmao. i am SO curious abt what azuma ended up doing tho that fade to black is so mysterious! did he tap dance? did he pole dance? the world will never know...

oh also im not like super familiar with azuma yet but my read on his personality is definitely like "I am so touch starved All The Time but I will be chill. :) :) this is fine :)" like he just seems to rly like being around people! just like basking in presence whether or not hes rly talking that much.

i enjoyed that juza mentioned pillow fighting with his lil brother... thats nice! i think a lot of this event was just focused on ppl having fun over the drama lol bc it got wrapped up sooo quick. i liked the bit where sakyos worried that izumi was out late searching for him tho it was so sweet. table tennis match was very fun although id argue calling hisoka and juza the two quietest tho lol like... banri exists so juza isnt quiet. just like inevitably. finally, the event cg!!! azumas hair tied up... so nice! thats how I tie my hair up sometimes tho it doesnt look nearly as nice lol. taichi rambling abt his first love for so long tho... lol. ill be honest i have to reread autumn bc i was not aware of this whole situation until it came up in the stranger and i like inferred from there. the end of this event was nice! it was cute. i dont rly have much thoughts on it but im so hype for the winter play

Hello:!!! so good to see you again, freshly learning from your mistakes then :3c

the connection with Citron is a BLAST to read about. I am glad that Citron is there, on your mind, supporting you at every turns of language. It's beautiful.

AND OH THE POKEMON LIST!!! thrilled to hear about it being a wip ongoing! take your time ofc and i hope you'll feel more confident as you go for your characters interpretation! i believe in you!

lmao i'm glad the events help you remember to play a3, i'm sure that by the time you'll be done with the events you will have unlocked so much of act 2 you won't have to worry too much about it. Anyway i'm glad you treat yourself to good things :3c

of course Hisoka fell asleep in the bath. tbh this event was a lot of "Hisoka almost dies in a spring house multiple times if it wasn't for his troupesmates". Between sleeping in the bath and almost swallowing the table tenis ball... where would we be without Winter, and especially Homare, taking care fo him.

I'm SO GLAD you like Homare that much! he's so so good! i'm sure there must be a masterlist somewhere, or well. can be done anytime i guess?? but yeah Homare is fantastic and LDJFDLKFJDF the evil plan to avoid dodgeball from both of you.. this is incredible DLKJFDLKF. But yeah alas he's loved by his own so he gets hit smh.

And yeah Hisoka is just acting sus huh.

BUT YEAH... YEAH... WINTER... BELOVED.... I feel regular and normal feelings for Winter as you know, s o .

(i'm so delighted that you feel that way about Taichi though, as he deserves!! what a good boy!!!)

But yeah Winter play next!!!!! i love the winter plays so much i hope you'll like it as well!! aND YEAH HISOKA AND HOMARE AS A DUO... for a DETECTIVE story?? so good.

I'm sO GLAD you like their dynamic! yeah i adore it too. Homare was so quick to leap into taking care of Hisoka? Like i mean he immediatly called him sleeping beauty when they first met, and immediately decided to be his roommates to watch over him, and then he did everything to take care of him and it's just so sweet. Homare has such a big heart he's so gentle with Hisoka. Homey and comfortable, whenever Hisoka admits it or not ahah.

ahah wouldn't be Sakyo if he didn't need to stay cheap. BUT YEAH the Sakyo/Azuma dynamic is pretty good. oh the event you talk about i think is in some of his very first backstage storyes (that you can read if you have them since they're at this point of the chronology). There's one where they play a mafia game and Sakyo is warry of Azuma because "people like him are those you need to worry about the most" and Azuma is just ":) you wound me :) i would never :)" and then Azuma wins the game and starts to mess with everyone. It was so fun. and yeah i see which clip you mean for the stage play!! it's so so fun they have such a neat dynamic and i loved to see it in this event as well.

and omg worrying about Taichi while he was just there preparing a fun time! this child really would have worried us all back then huh

but AHH YEAH TASUKU TAICHI.... It's such a neat dynamic! ofc i won't say anything but man i love the potential of their stories, as the two ex Godza boys. To see them bond and be comfortable with each other always make me so soft.

OH NICE CATCH FOR THE PUN! i think it must be the reason for it tbh, i love it! thanks for pointing it out!

The talent show was really fun yeah ahah! I wonder what it is in Japanese too but at least the localization was hella fun!

"anyways the way banri and juza being themselves Are the entertainment." THEY'RE SO SILLY I love them so much

AND LMAO YOUR REACTION AT AZUMA I LOVE IT. YEah i think Tasuku and Omi are just flexing (which is Still. SO FUNNY. Just there saying "our talents is.. our muscles...") meanwhile Azuma is like "my talent is that i'm crazy hot :)"

But YEAH Azuma... AZUMA WHAT DID YOU DO....

your read on Azuma's personality feels pretty spot on to me ahah omg. Staying with what you know about him, the fact that with his job and all, he seems like he's starving for connection while also terrified to make himself emotionally vulnerable. He loves staying with people, listening to them, caring for them, and he's touch starved as hell (i mean it's his job) but he doesn't seem to really know how to be on the receiving hand of affection. there's a flair talk, i can't remember where, with Omi at some point, where Azuma compliments him, and Omi is just "mhm.. but you know i think that it's more about you" and ends up complimenting Azuma in depth and it let Azuma dumbfounded because he didn't expect Omi to trick him at his own game, while Omi just genuinely don't get why Azuma is reacting that way. He gives he gives he gives, and he's genuinely happy with that, but he seems to have difficulties to take, or to demand for something, while also starving for it. I have so many emotions for Azuma.

Any mentions of Juza's little bro are the best things. I love this type of mention TwT

And yeah it was such a laid back event. Honestly deserved after the crying fest that was The Stranger imo. It's good to relax once in a while and it was nice to have them have fun. There was the bitterness of both Azuma and Sakyo's past that was always a bit looming but everyone was working so hard for them to enjoy themselves that the joy just overtake any sadness i loved it.

Sakyo worrying about Izumi is always adorable TwT

And yeah the Table Tennis match was so fun and chaotic LMAO. I love the dynamic between Juza and Hisoka. Just two usually quiet boys who like sweets. Except that yeah like you say, as long as Banri is around, Juza cannot be 100% quiet. Rip.

THE CG WAS SO PRETTY i loved seeing it. And omg you can share your hairtips with Azuma how nice :D Azuma manages to make everything look beautiful smh....

Oh yeah Taichi and his first love! if i recall he mentions it quickly at the begining, that Yuki reminds him of his first love, and he says that again at some point - then the fake Portrait he does he mentions his first love again. And since then it's been a reccuring topic so yeh :3c

but yeah! this event was really sweet and laid back, not much to say about it, but it was nice to have it at all!

Hope you'll like the winter play :3c

Take care and thank you again for your thoughts <33 i love reading them!! bless you!!

#ichafantalks a3 #sonnets of beauty #ichareply

2 notes · View notes

memoriashell · 4 years ago

Text

with age comes wisdom ( or at the very least, entirely unneccessary celebrations )

Characters / Pairing: Fukawa Touko / Naegi Komaru ( focused ), Syo / Komaru, Warriors of Hope

crossposted on ao3

Notes: happy @tokomaruweek week everyone!! i love these funky wlw so i am going to try and have some stuff up this week, but i probably won’t manage to do the whole week / i'll go back to do the ones i miss afterwards? we’ll see.

for today i decided to combine the birthdays + warriors of hope prompts.

i’m also just ignoring canon’s timeline bc god knows i did not want to figure out that bs sorry dr3 ily but i dont love you that much just know it is somewhere post sdr2 / pre dr3 probably?

i also use they/them for syo ( nonbinary hc ) and while there aren’t any specific trauma mentions, given the group of characters this revolves around, there’s refrences to the fact they have shit lives. and some lighthearted murder jokes and self-deprication?

Summary: nothing says happy birthday quite like babysitting her ( favorite ) group of brats

It’s just her luck that this would happen— a coincidence for sure, but that doesn’t make Touko any happier about the whole thing.

This is the situation: they don’t usually see the ( former ) Warriors of Hope much. The kids stay on their side of Towa, and her and Komaru tend to stick closer to the adults. The adults are the ones that need to be kept under supervision, in her opinion. Not that the kids are blameless, but is there much reasoning with brainwashed kids? No. Of course not. Are the adults also practically brainwashed and hard to reason with. Yes. Would this all be easier if Future Foundation was involved? Yes. Yes it would, but for obvious reasons they are not ( they have all agreed to omit some information from public record for the sake of those involved, and right now Naegi’s stunt with the Remnants have Future Foundation’s attention away from them ).

Sometimes Komaru takes some of the things that they get over to the kids because things are rough enough as it is, and Syo will go with her because they can keep the Monokuma off their tracks better. Or you know, because Syo is generally more helpful to Komaru when it comes to things like that. She’s not jealous.

Allegedly— Touko does not know this for a fact herself since she hadn’t been fronting, and only learns this second hand while she is in the middle of typing up a report to send back to the foundation— Kotoko is the one to bring it up, casually handing off some of her share of the cookies Komaru had made for them, to Jataro. An early birthday present, she had said ( pointedly ignoring Nagisa, who’d pointed out she had given Jataro the ones he hated ), before turning to Komaru to ask if they could throw a party. A small one. With no murder, because that would be ‘totally not adorbs’. And no adults, because they stink ( it goes unsaid that Komaru and Touko themselves are the clear exception to this rule, which is some kind of progress, supposedly ).

That seemed like a fairly reasonable request, according to Komaru, who’s only response was to ask when his birthday was. And then accidentally lets it slip that hey, that’s the week that Touko-chan’s birthday is! And that’s how Touko finds out that apparently, she’s having a joint birthday party with the kids because Masaru managed to turn a party into a competition, somehow? Touko has no clue what that actually entails, because Komaru refuses to elaborate.

( Also, at one point before leaving, Komaru had tried asking Jataro if there was anything she could get him; to which he’d remarked, “A new mask?”

...Yeah, Touko can’t blame her for not knowing what to say to that, even if Komaru had spun it as not the most self-deprecating thing he could have said, which was an improvement? She personally disagrees, but whatever )

Here, she should point out the obvious fact that she does not want to really celebrate her birthday, let alone have a party for it. Because those kind of things lean so far into the zone of things Touko doesn’t really know how to handle, that it makes her close to uncomfortable. And if— if she had humored herself in imagining how she would ideally spend her birthday this year; quite frankly, it would be very quiet and boring and only with Komaru. Not with a group of ten year olds. Ten year olds that she might think of rather fondly, but ten year old brats all the same.

( It’s not like she has any alive friends: if Touko acknowledges the other survivors, justifiably they are too busy with more important matters to fuss over a birthday. They aren’t kids anymore. Some of them hadn’t ever really been like normal kids to begin with, but that’s besides the point )

“Look at the bright side,” She starts, and she bites back a snide what bright side and remark about how that’s all Komaru’s good at ( it’s not. She’s more talented than she gives herself credit for ). “None of you probably have really positive memories when it comes to birthdays or parties, so even if it isn’t the greatest, at least the bar to please should be pretty easy to clear!”

Touko thinks she probably gets the point she is trying to make here, but Komaru’s complete and utter lack of tact doesn’t make for the best delivery. “Are you trying to...to make me feel bad? S-So sorry my life was complete sh-shit growing up.”

“No! That’s not what I meant at all!” Komaru pouts at her. “Does that mean you’re not interested in having a party?”

It’s not like she’s so cold-hearted and selfish that she’s going to say no to that. Well, no, that’s not quite true, Touko might be just that; but it doesn’t really matter either way, because Komaru gives her best kicked dog impression, so she says ( a less than enthusiastic ) no, she doesn’t mind, yes you can have a party; even if she thinks she’ll probably regret that choice.

Okay, if you are to be honest with herself, some part of Touko that never got to be a normal child doesn’t entirely mind the thought of a party, even if it’s...not the most ideal scenario, the impractical fantasy situation that lives in her head. But if she says that aloud, Komaru will either take it too seriously, use it as an excuse to celebrate things more often, or something else that probably has consequences that she doesn’t want to think about. And also admittedly because if she says it aloud, she has to acknowledge it, and maybe she doesn't want to get her hopes up over something as stupid as a party.

( There’s also the fact that, deep in her extremely repressed memories of Hope’s Peak before the tragedy, she does remember parties. Birthdays. Celebrating things with her classmates, if somewhat forcibly so. She has no desire to remember those things, so those feelings remain repressed with most of her trauma )

It’s easy to not acknowledge any of that when she has to deal with the sudden onslaught of a headache that is Syo forcing themselves into their shared headspace, hand rubbing at her temples. Not trying to co-front, she can tell they aren’t trying to snatch control from her ( for now ), just forcing her to pay attention to them. It works, even though Touko has told them to not do this specifically because of how irritating it is for her.

I could scare the kids into cooperating? It’ll save us a headache and a half! Syo offers, maybe too eagerly. Their ideas of scare and cooperate are probably different from her own. Still. She also knows Syo is aware of more than they are letting on, given that they had been present when this conversation had occurred, but she doesn’t think she’ll get much out of them in that regard.

No. Touko tells them firmly. It’ll be counterproductive, Komaru won’t let you do that, and they’re all traumatized enough without you adding to that.

Boo, you sure about that? Consider it a birthday gift from me!

No. She repeats herself sternly, and she feels them withdraw a bit after that. Ugh, Syo hasn’t had a chance to front much recently, now that she thinks about it. Since they usually only take over when she’s in danger, and she hasn’t really been in ( as much ) danger now that things are starting to calm down. Well, relatively speaking. Syo is probably just looking for an excuse to be allowed to front, since it’s probably rough going from being very present to rarely getting the chance to be out: akin to going cold turkey on an addiction. That’s not exactly her fault ( or theirs ), but maybe she’ll ask Komaru if she’d be okay with hanging out with Syo more, if only to placate them a little, before they try something more drastic.

“Everything okay? That was Syo, right?” She hears Komaru ask after a few minutes, and Touko rubs her eyes and blinks. “You looked a little frustrated.”

She considers telling her the truth, but no point in getting her concerned over nothing. She’d like to figure out what she wants to negotiate with Syo firstm so she’ll leave that conversation for another time. “Fine. They just...ugh, just wanted to make sure I was okay with it.”

“And you are okay with it, right? You aren’t agreeing just because I asked?” Touko thinks she begged more than she asked, but she’s pretty sure Komaru will only sulk if she brings that up.

“I wouldn’t let you if, if I was really opposed to it.” Probably. She...trusted Komaru, or something like that, so she figures she’d probably be more honest with herself and not mentally torture herself by putting herself through something she has no interest in. “But...what are you even planning on doing to celebrate? I can’t im-imagine we’ve really got much around here that we can use for a party.”

“Ah. Uhm.” Komaru looks a little embarrassed at that. “About that. I was kind of hoping you and Syo might help pitch in. You don’t mind, right?”

You’re hopeless, she wants to mutter, but—

Yeah!!!! Syo wakes right back up upon being mentioned, no sense of self awareness at all, much to your annoyance, but it’s not like you completely disagree with the feeling that is shared between you two.

“You— You really bit off more than you could chew, hm...? Good thing this wasn’t supposed t-t-to be a surprise.” She quips, leaning over to peer at the paper she’d been making her notes on. “We’ll help, just tell us what we...what we need to do.”

“Thank you, Touko-chan! And Syo too!” Komaru sounds somewhere mixed between grateful and relieved, and casually plants a kiss on her cheek as if it’s no big deal—

She said my name last, so the kiss was for me! She knows Syo is intentionally trying to provoke her and get a rise out of her ( yeah, a rising sense of jealousy ), but puts that aside for the time being because Komaru’s blabbering on like nothing happened.

“I know we probably won’t have the whole day to ourselves to do whatever—” Correctomundo, Dekomaru! “— but I’ll make it up to you on your birthday, okay? We’ll do something that you want.”

“You don't...there’s no need for that.” She forces out between gritted teeth, trying to ignore the flustered feeling in the pit of her stomach, chewing around a fingernail ( what an unattractive sight to follow that ). “Because— ugh, don’t repeat th-this, okay? What I want to do is spend time with...with you. That’s all. So don’t go...you don’t need to go out of your way trying to do s-s-something over the top. Stick to being normal.”

“Really? You’re sure?” Komaru sounds a little uncertain, but happy enough to pull her into a hug, despite her grumbled complaint. “Oh, but Syo has their own birthday, don’t they? So I should probably ask them what they want as well, right?”

“Don’t make me repeat m-myself. It’s embarrassing...” Touko huffs, but lets herself be held against her side, just for a moment. It’s nice, though she won’t admit it ( it is better than any real gift that she could receive ). Syo is kind enough to back off long enough to let her have this moment. “You can ask them later— focus on, on what you need to plan.”

By something short of a miracle, they are able to pull together a party that is not a complete disaster, even if Komaru probably has a point when she says the bar to clear is a pretty low standard for all parties involved. The closest she has to an actual concern is the very narrowly avoided fight that almost breaks out when Masaru and Kotoko fight over which one of them should give their present first— which is apparently the competitive aspect of the party? It’s probably meant to be heartwarming, if it were not such a foreign thing to Touko. Which Nagisa is quick to put an end to: because this is how they would treat Monaca, which is not inherently healthy, and she’s glad that at least one of them can recognize that fact now. Jataro spends the entirety of the fight trying to hide behind her long skirt and, relatable kid, and rubs the top of his head while Komaru tries to both scold them for fighting and appease them because they’re, well. Kids. Who still need to learn some things and have time to unlearn things.

So yeah, it’s a good party— for not being on her actual birthday, she’ll consider it one of the better memories Touko has associated with the day. The start of many, she’d like to hope.

#tokomaru week 2021 #tokomaru #toukomaru #komaru naegi #toko fukawa #touko fukawa #danganronpa #udg #dr:ae #* zhi writes #glad to have the excuse to finally post something w/ these girls.#i have several long wips w/ them w/ no motivation to finish :/

16 notes · View notes

steve0discusses · 5 years ago

Text

Yugioh S4 Ep1 Part 1: Yugi Ditches Algebra, Cards Become Real

Ah, a new season a new day. It’s Season 4. And we’re going to start of with:

A deep sea sub. Sure, why not?

So Yugi’s unofficial other grandpa, Arthur Hawkins, AKA one of the member’s of this show’s only really happening OTP has decided to kinda ditch his Granddaughter Rebecca and go to the bottom of the ocean. Don’t blame him. Down here is where, I guess, he will come across this very Grecian looking structure.

Like Yugioh nonchalantly passes a lot of bad history at me but like...he’s in the Atlantic Ocean and there’s Grecian style stuff everywhere?

Why? I mean at least he’s not in the Pacific but like...Yugioh. Anyways, we’re not in Greece but the show had very little time to invent a brand new ancient architecture style although I would be super down for that.

But like...here’s the thing about columns--you can go really deep into column lore and people are really freakin picky about columns and what they mean, and this could have been a low key hilarious place to make an entirely new column order just for Yugioh. They could’ve done it and they decided not to. It’s OK, I’ll save it for the Marik’s Boat Time spinoff they’ll never ever make.

But I just want to bring up just real super fast that Noah and Gozaburo must’ve known about this place for years right? Like they super lived underwater and had robots poised to attack mankind stationed all over the sea floor so...we can pretty much guarantee they already knew about this place?

Just gonna bring up what a shame it is Noah freakin died.

Also want to bring up what a shame it was that Arthur didn’t show up at the beginning of S3 and be like “hey Yugi, I was just in the neighborhood, noticed you got picked up by an undersea gang, what’s up?”

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, there he is, our 70 yo adventurer, who has more energy than I have at under half his age. Arthur Hawkins needs to take it down a few pegs.

Or is it Hawkings?

Wtv.

Anyways, I gave Hawkins this tweed colored font that I just realized is nearly the same as Joey’s so it’ll change if he ever comes back.

Thanks for that prologue, Yugioh. Anyway, apparently no one on this side of Japan freakin cares, because despite finding what looks exactly like Godzilla’s lair on the bottom of the sea, we’re gonna instead fixate on Rex and Weevil.

Y’all I was going to make a joke about “why does this show fixate so much on Rex and Weevil at the beginning of so many arcs?” when I remembered that Bakura basically murdered all the other mean mini bosses from S1 except for Bandit Keith, who probably got deported by now.

I had to think long and hard just now about whether or not I’ve used that joke before because it is S4 and y’all I just don’t even remember.

(I have a very long story about Warby Parker that I just deleted fyi)

Rex is a Christmas plaid now because there are too many characters in this show.

Now that Rex and Weevil have been reunited, which is surprising because I just assumed these two have been Bert and Ernie-ing it up in some condo in the NYC, They say:

I almost forgot about the secret side-plot of Yugioh, that everyone is a cheese monger and very open about it.

So anyway, they’re off to have a very simple storyline of “I will try and Challenge Yugi Muto for God Cards” which...good luck with that, it only took 2 seasons for Yugi to finally accept his challenge from Seto Kaiba. Have fun following around Yugi Muto for 2 seasons.

When there’s a...really bizarre twist that happens. Just a very weird turn of events. Like recall that it’s the middle of the day, and the sun is shining, and there’s people and cars everywhere, and it’s a good neighborhood, and then, like playing Pokemon in tall grass, this guy just appears in front of them.

And guys, I’m from the Bay Area and I have slipped and fallen right on top of my phone on Fillmore which was DEVASTATING so like...their unstoppable speed walk down this 12 degree slope is...

I think they wanted to run into them, I really think they did. I think people in this town are so desperate for any excuse to fall into a horrifying disaster that they are just magnetically attracted to anyone wearing an oversized blanket.

Also this guy’s look is...kind of forgettable. It’s somehow weird and also forgettable at the same time. Hit that sweet spot for me. I don’t even remember this guy’s name, it was so forgettable. I’ll look it up later. Maybe bro will do it. I dunno. He wears a Monocle so like...that’s all I can say about this guy.

OK so I just checked in with Bro and then Bro made a weird rant about this guy being called Gurimo and how bro had some strong opinions about Season 4. Then Bro said a statement that really stuck with me, although I only remember part of the statement which was: “...this guy can just go get more monocles from Forever 21 and Hot Topic...” which made me very quickly realize my adult brother has never entered either a Forever 21 or a Hot Topic if he thinks a cultist in a monocle would purchase monocles from there.

I learned a lot and now you have to know this too.

And in case you’re wondering “did Rex and Weevil deserve this?” No. He just immediately decided to steal their soul on the sidewalk in front of Women’s Foot Locker from what I assume is just down the street from Yugi Muto’s house/game shop.

(how did this storyboarder nail the 3/4 degree angle on Weevil here? Do you know how hard that is to do with not just glasses but weird ass chunky glasses?)

Ah, a duel disk that can stab yourself in the stomach with two very poorly laid out barbs.

Very nice rival to Kaiba’s duel disk that will behead you if you don’t fling your arm out just right.

So like...did he steal a duel disk from Kaiba and then mod it? Is that what they did? The whole point of duel disks is that you’re linked up to the Dueling Facebook or whatever...so did this Cultist buy a normal duel disk from Toy’s R Us and then say “ahahah I’m going to do so much card crime!” and then start modding it with help of a cosplay forum? Like what’s the story here of how this guy spent all of last year (and definitely all of last season) modding this duel disk over a computer desk, some metallic acrylic paint, and a sauntering iron, feverishly asking his forum if anyone can 3d print some sick ass runes for his soul-sucking duel disk?

And then I guess this guy dueled both Rex and Weevil at the same time? Like this was all off screen...but why didn’t Rex and Weevil just leave? Just don’t pull out your duel disk and you’re probably good?

Just so many ways to have avoided losing your soul in the first ten minutes of Yugioh.

Anyway, on the other side of town, Tea is worrying about Yugi which is basically her normal.

Joey and Tristan decided to meet up with her, not because she was clearly in distress, but because Yugi isn’t around, and why worry about Tea when instead your friend Yugi is probably going to destroy the world the moment you turn around (and he did. Yugi absolutely effed everything up the very moment these three took their eyes off of him)

And what was weird is that it took Yugi until, I dunno...several streets over to kind of come out of the ether and be like “heeey Pharaoh...um...what’s up?” Like it took him this long to say something. Probably so that by the time they would have walked back to school math would have been over.

So...did Yugi just not notice at first? Like it’s sort of amazing what these two don’t know what the other one is up to. Including this situation that little Yugi absolutely should have picked up on.

As it turns out, the cards are speaking very audibly to Pharaoh. This should have been somewhat of a...youknow...red flag...since Yugi can’t hear them but Pharaoh can. But, Yugi’s like “well...we’re so used to everyone just giving us the answer and that being the right call, I guess this must also be the right call.”

And...although he had quite the head start, These three are more than willing to drop the hell out of class and rack up those absences. I’m gonna assume they had to make up another wild excuse about Tea’s cat to that one teacher to get out of school just like last time, but they did all that offscreen.

And then Tea just kind of snapped, and she did so with a smile the entire time.

Her wording was somewhat different, but she did basically say something along the lines of “if you don’t remember me telling you this a million times, you are an idiot” and Pharaoh didn’t have an answer and so it was like he said without saying anything “yes, I am.”

Which he will further prove like five minutes from now.

Like Y’all, bless his cursed perfect ass, but Pharaoh is the biggest idiot in this show. Sometimes he’s brilliant, but if he’s ever left to his own devices, just the biggest idiot. He got duped by some guy pretending to throw his voice so that his cards looked like they were talking to him. Pharaoh thought cards can talk.

And so that’s how Pharaoh freakin caused the Apocalypse. The first of many.

He did so just so very easily.

His cards started wigging out, the tablet started icing over--it was like “hey remember what took 2 seasons to build up to? Well screw it.”

Also this happened, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand cards are real.

I mean they’ve been real for a few seasons but now the cards are officially real and they’re not cute like Pokemon. They’re all really gross and roided out and they probably have a funky smell. All of them.

I knew we’d get here eventually I just didn’t know it would be SO fast.

When no one was paying absolutely any attention--when my entire focus was inside of this museum, that was when cards became real.

Well...

...time to shove em into little balls I guess. Anyways, that’s it for this update because this episode was a lot of stuff so I’m gonna split it so y’all have it easier and so I have it easier too.

And if you just got there this is S4, if you want to start reading these from S1, here’s a link to the collection in chrono order, it’s basically like reading a Victor Hugo length of book except its just me ranting about WTF is going on in OG Yugioh for 100+ episodes, knock yourself out.

#Yugioh #ygo #recap #photo recap #episode recap #S4 #S4 Ep1 #Yugi Muto #Joey Wheeler #Tristan Taylor #Tea Gardner #Arthur Hawkins #Rex Raptor #Weevil underwood #I can't believe I remember both of those dummies' last names #Gurimo #a single monocle

18 notes · View notes

gem-rewatch · 6 years ago

Text

SU rewatch- S1E8- Serious Steven

It’s this point of this season (both this ep and the last) where the characters, humor, and overall tone of the show first starts to truly mesh, I think, giving us a representative human-focused story and Gem-focused story.

This episode in particular is actually a personal favorite of mine, too- I always love the way the writers/board artists structured it, hinting towards the flashback sequence early on and then later returning to that thread to influence Steven’s outlook and decisions of current events. Starting with an out-of-context glimpse at Steven’s Funland disaster immediately acts as a curiosity hook to the audience and establishes his internal desperation to get this mission right.

Steven, probably: “Welp, I’m grounded!”

But on a more serious note, the context we learn later in the episode about what happened here is a prime example of Steven’s lack of focus on the consequences of his actions. He’s still very young, after all- only twelve. And like most twelve year olds, he’s more concerned with how he can have fun in the present than how his decisions will affect the future. It’s only to be expected.

Pearl: (about his ukulele) “Why did you bring that?” Steven: “I don’t know! I was excited, and it’s mine, and I like it!”

This episode, however, is where this kid makes his first steps towards maturity. Towards thinking before he acts. Towards letting his past inform his present. In my opinion, this is where his coming of age truly begins.

Initially, just like the teacup incident, Steven seems to have chronic unwise decision disease- he’s far more preoccupied in keeping his belongings safe or running away from bugs, etc etc. He’s distractible, and it’s to the point where Pearl’s genuinely questioning his safety on this mission. After all, this is the first time they’re bringing him on a mission that involved legitimate stakes and danger- the Sea Spire doesn’t count, because they took him there as a test. Garnet advocates for him, though. She probably has been catching faint glimpses of the future, of a Steven who’s more well rounded, more focused- and gets the sense that whatever happens today will lead him towards this.

We gain our first glimpse of the Strawberry Battlefield! One of the most stunning locations in the show. It’s highly suggested that this is the first time they’ve returned to this place since the war.

Pearl: “Unbelievable! This was one a Gem battlefield. Now it’s wild strawberries as far as the eye can see! Oh, that’s what I love about the Earth.”

We’re also treated to our first major dose of Gem history, through the murals inside the inverted pyramid.

Both the new Great Diamond Authority symbol seem on the floor (the three clustered triangles design) and the subject matter of these murals suggest that this pyramid was constructed at some point during the height of the war, just after Pink Diamond was “shattered.” It’s to be assumed this structure was then intended as a death trap for rebel Gems.

These images laud White Diamond as Gemkind’s savior, with hands outreached towards her in celebration and worship. There’s an image of Rose Quartz and her army facing White- perhaps holding out Pink’s gemstone as if taunting her- but White is depicted in the more powerful stance in this mural, attacking in retaliation. Below are small glimpses of the trials our Crystal Gems face later in the episode. None of the little mural people survive in these, a hint of the danger to come

Overall, what we’re seeing here is Homeworld war propaganda.

Steven may not have fallen gracefully, but he’s pretty dang durable for making a belly flop onto solid stone like that and walking away. As many people have pointed out, this sequence is paralleled in Change Your Mind but with Steven lightly floating to the ground, representative of him both growing into his powers and confidence in himself.

I just think this screenshot is hilarious- Pearl’s carrying him under her arm like a dang briefcase! Helicopter mom alert.

Pearl: “But this could be the teacups all over again...” Steven: “Hey! I’ve put that behind me.”

The thing is, he hasn’t. I get the sense that internally, behind all the hammy goofs and his guise of confidence, he’s incredibly, self-consciously aware of the fact that this mission is imperative to his future as a Crystal Gem. It’s redemption for his first screw up, for his mistake at Funland. If he messes this up too, there’s every possibility that the Gems might not let him go on missions for a while longer, and that’s the last thing Steven wants. He looks up to these three so much and he wants to spend time with them, wants to learn more about this part of his heritage, wants to be like them.

A large part of Steven’s coming of age is also rooted in his realization that these missions aren’t just “fun times.”

Steven: “Woo-ho! That was, uh- seriously dangerous.”

Up until now, I don’t think it’s fully hit him exactly how life-and-death Gem missions have the potential of being for him yet. As the others are saying, he legitimately needs to take this more seriously- for his own safety.

Garnet: “But be careful. You might trigger a trap with that gun show.”

Garnet, I love you.

Steven: “Maybe there’s a clue hidden in these ancient drawings.”

SU theorists be like...

No, but actually though- that’s kinda a clever way to blatantly hint to the kiddos watching this show that they should pay attention to what’s carved into the walls.

Even if this idea kinda backfires for Steven, it was at least a good idea!

Of course Amethyst can sleep on spiny teacup rides. And Pearl, what- what are you even doing. You’re not even- god, Pearl, what did you think this teacup ride was FOR?

Steven: “I think I need to get off this ride now-” (heckin... just... jumps off the teacup while it’s suspended in midair.)

Me internally: “YOU FRICKIN FRICKS! WHEN WILL YOU REALIZE-!! THAT YOUR ACTIONS! HAVE CONSEQUENCES!”

See, his issue here is that he only thinks as far as he can see- how can he solve his current problem? A whole lot of his personal growth is learning how his actions have ramifications, and beginning to recognize what those might be.

Garnet: “It’s okay.” Steven: “No! No, it’s not! You were all right about me. I wanted to do this so bad, but now I feel like I’m gonna throw up. This is just like the teacups!”

Despite his distractibility, one of Steven’s greatest strengths has always been his unique perspective. No Gem would ever notice what’s wrong with this pyramid because no Gem would get motion sick. But since he’s half human he’s able to feel its effects. Subtle but clever.

I can’t believe Pearl Gemsplained Steven.

Steven: Garnet, I need to get off the ride now!”

He’s taking a moment to warn her of what he plans on doing. Which means he’s also spent time considering his action’s possible consequences- for the first time, he’s taking the risk seriously! My little baby’s growin’ up! ;D;

This lil pyramid on top looks exactly like an artistic depiction of White Diamond. It’s spooky.

This whole scene is beautiful. What good, more-fluid-than-usual animation. The lighting in it is so cool aaaaaa :DD

Pearl: “I’d say you handled that adventure very well.”

AAAAA LOOK AT HIM, HIS FIRST RETRIEVED GEM ARTIFACT ON A MISSION!!! Well done you funky lil’ kiddo, you did it!

*wipes away tear* They grow up so fast...

#su #steven universe #su meta #serious steven #garnet #pearl #amethyst #jen rewatches su

229 notes · View notes

franklongbooty · 5 years ago

Text

hi harriet again I swear this is it

hi hi here is my boy frank, his about is long, connections down the bottom!!

Statistics Page

Pinterest character basics

full name: Frank Joseph Longbottom

birth date: June 21st, 1957 (He’s a Gemini/Cancer cusp lmao)

blood status: Pureblood

3 key positive traits: Sincere, sentimental, attentive

3 key negative traits: , impulsive, critical, single-minded

FC choice (2 or more, please!): Matthew Daddy-ario

academics

primary wizarding school & graduation year: London School of Witchcraft and Wizardry 1975

degree & cohort: Auror Academy

house & year: Gryffindor, 1st Year Masters Student

rooming

Frank was very excited when the flat above Honeydukes Sweetshop suddenly became vacant at the start of this third year. He has a notorious sweet tooth (brought on by his mother not wanting them in the house when he was young), and went there enough during exam periods (and the rest of the year, let's be honest) that he knew the owners by name, and so they gave him a great offer on the place, despite being able to afford whatever rent he would’ve needed to pay without any discounts. He makes up for their generosity by buying way more sweets than he could ever get through. So come to his flat? You’ll be sure to have been offered pretty much anything that’s available in the shop below.

The space is quite big, due to the size of the shop below, but I picture it to be super airy and quite open plan (ie the only door is to the bathroom, everything else is arches and half walls, high ceilings). He’s not big on decorating, and he’s got his neatness that his mother has instilled in him from a young age, but he does have a wall completely covered in book shelves, and his dad's favourite armchair in one corner.

extracurricular activities

Former Head Boy, former member of the duelling club, former captain of the Wizards Chess Club, Warlocks of Great Britain

all about your kiddo

Frank Joseph Longbottom was raised by a stern mother, and a loving father. A mother who had a place for everything, and a father who always seemed to forget where those places were. A mother who spent hours of each day making sure the house was perfect, and a father who would come home and forget to hang his coat up after a long day at the Department of Mysteries. A mother who couldn’t help but smile anyway when her husband cracked his jokes, forgetting the mess for a moment, and a father who tried his best to remember to wipe his shoes before stepping into the house. A mother who, when her husband didn’t come home, only got worse, and a father who was never seen again. Frank was only eight years old when Joseph Longbottom disappeared. The day had started like any other, with a kiss to Augusta’s cheek and a ruffle of Frank’s hair. He’d left the house whistling his favourite tune, and that was the last anyone saw of him. He never showed up at work, and by the end of the day Auror’s were swarming the Longbottom house, looking for anything that could be amiss. The disappearance of his father has played on Franks mind ever since that day. What started as a child not quite understanding, turned into a burning desire to find out what happened. That burning desire is what first led Frank to consider the Auror Program at Hogwarts. Now through to the Auror Academy, Frank finally has the resources to start looking into his father’s case. He knew he had to be discreet. Until he knew what had actually happened - whether he had been taken, or, possibly worse, simply left them, Frank knew it was important to lay low and do this slowly, if he wanted any chance of finding answers.

Without his father there to help, Augusta Longbottom’s perfections slowly turned into obsessions. Although they had a house elf, she spent much of her time reorganising the house, re-stacking bookshelves over and over again until they were exactly how she wanted it, and then once more for good measure. As Frank grew, her need for perfection turned on him. His clothes were always perfectly pressed, his bed had to be perfectly made every morning before his classes, and his hair was always cut to the same length without fail. But he took this in his stride. As a child, Frank had always strived for greatness, wanting to be the best out of all his peers. It started as a need to be able to run the fastest when playing with his friends and to read the longest books during primary, eventuating in the role of Head Boy in his final year at Hogwarts. This grew a deep confidence within himself, but it also caused him to be hypercritical of all the small things that he couldn’t control. And although his hair is now a little longer, he still has to make sure his quill and ink pot are perfectly straight on his desk, his parchment smooth, and his bed made every morning before he goes to class.

Where his mother had instilled the hard side to Frank, the time he did have with his father nourished a soft side within him that continued to grow as Frank got older. A side that made bad jokes, that was sentimental, that loved sweet things, and that fiercely cared for those close to him. Perhaps contradictory, the confidence that grew from his mother pushing him only fueled his desire to help others in the only way he knew how. The growing war did nothing to quell Franks need to excel in the Academy. His strong convictions and the anger that was bubbling within him at the injustice of it all made him want to do something. Whispers around the castle and a cryptic conversation with Dumbledore has led Frank to believe something bigger is coming -- something to help put a stop to the war that is beginning to bubble around them. With half of him feeling a pull to follow Dumbledore into that unknown, and the other half increasingly focused on trying to find out what happened to his father, Frank is finding himself at a crossroads.

The unexpected always threw Frank. Something about Alice Shafiq was completely unexpected, but it was an unexpectedness he welcomed with open arms as soon as he saw the way she smiled. She made him feel at ease, and as the years went on and friendly study sessions turned into stolen kisses, it was easy to understand why. The touch of her hand on his arm always helped ease him, and he suddenly didn’t mind spending his nights awake, as long as they were with her. Ask him, and Frank would tell you she’s a good friend. But ask anyone else, and they’d probably disagree.

extra credit

Frank feels all his emotions with fierceness and certainty. If he disagrees with something his blood will boil and he won’t sit quietly - he’s got them strong convictions. Similar so, when something makes him happy it’ll be impossible for anyone not to notice. Think loud exclamations, lots of opinions, stubbornly standing up for whatever it is he is currently fighting for. He’s also quite impulsive, and these go hand in hand. He believes in his emotions to the fullest (maybe to the extent he acts like a bit of a know-it-all at times). Also has a bit of a saviour complex tbh, and doesn’t like asking for help. He can do it himself, thank you very much !!!

Frank has the fashion sense of a Grandpa. He loves his funky socks, and they’re all perfectly matching and rolled up (he has a whole drawer of them). He loves baggy jumpers over blue denim jeans (thanks 70’s). He loves his funky socks perfectly matching his baggy jumpers. He also wears glasses, but! They’re reading glasses, so during class/study only

His patronus is a buzzard

Armortentia is oatmeal cookies, burning fireplace, lavender

Wand is Rowan, unicorn hair, 13 inches, rigid

Likes: funky socks, sweets, oatmeal cookies, mustard, earl grey tea, elaborate chocolates, muggle movies, the smell of lavender, bad jokes, satchels, his owl Whetherby

Dislikes: quidditch (but no one knows this), ketchup, coffee (see elaborate hot chocolates), messiness, laziness, messiness caused by laziness, unpredictable change

Whilst Frank is nowhere near as bad as his mother, he’s definitely inherited some ticks. He keeps his sock drawer perfectly tidy. If he’s sitting, he bounces his leg whenever he’s anxious, or stressed, or worried; if he’s standing, he paces like a madman. Someone get a fitbit on this boy. He always feels like he needs to be in control, which leads him to be critical of things when it means he’s not going to be in control of them. And critical of himself when he lets things get out of his control.

Possible connections

A good friend he’s had since childhood - maybe a family friend, maybe a neighbour, someone who was there through it all, his #rideordie. This person helps Frank fkn chill out

An ex-girlfriend, or fling, who ended up dumping him for being weirdly close with Alice, despite his insistence that they’re just friends

Fam bam - some cousins would be lit

Frank is a competitive boy, something that comes from needing the be the best of the best, so someone who is his competitive rival would be fun!!

And also the good old enemies! Frank doesn’t think his fathers disappearance was a coincidence, and now all these things with Voldemort have come up he’s extremely suspicious of people

#frank #introduction #sleepingdooc

4 notes · View notes

lcgendcfzvlda · 5 years ago

Photo

☆ — wait , is that ZELDA KING ? dean lockwood has been looking for them . you didn’t hear it from me but , apparently the JUNIOR might know something about the whole omega chi & kappa tau situation . while they can be BRASH & IMPULSIVE , they’re far too WELCOMING & COURAGEOUS to be involved , right ? those who know them say they’re reminded of FLANNELS WRAPPED AROUND THE WAIST, THE CLICKING OF A CAMERA, A COMPUTER SCREEN ILLUMINATING A PITCH BLACK ROOM, THE “IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA” THEME, BAGPIPES PLAYING IN THE DISTANCE whenever they’re around . honestly , the DIGITAL MEDIA major should try to keep their head down . after the events of last semester , lockwood is out for blood . did you know that ZELDA is a member of GAMMA RHO ALPHA ? that might explain why their name is being brought up .

you’re an explosion , you’re dynamite playlist. pinterest. to listen as you read. like for a plotting dm on tumblr , react for a discord dm rocky lynch lovebot / hylia.#0329 on discord.

WOOOO I really can’t keep myself from holding only one muse can’t I. WELL. This is Zelda , a bit more of a happy-go-lucky muse compared to Sam !! She’s both her own character mixed with a few others I have - I love her dearly , so please please please feel free to come at me for plots !! <3 HERE WE GO :

HISTORY

Zelda’s backstory isn’t anything special - growing up in Scotland her parents had a nice marriage , she grew up an only child , always got good grades

But she always felt... average. She never was really anyone to anybody , so Zelda had a bit of a knack for wanting attention and trying to get her voice out there. So some took this as endearing , some took it as annoying.

In high school , she was lucky enough to be selected for an exchange student program in Salem , Massachusetts - and then she’d meet the FIRST person who would make her feel special in SAGA ( Sexuality And Gender Acceptance ) Club , a cheeky blonde boy named Cyrus who had a tendency to hide in the corner of the room and not talk to many people. And they’d date for about a year , up until Zelda would have to go back to Scotland.

They had to break up when Zelda would leave , but remained extremely close and communicating daily through digital connections.

ANYWAY , that little one year romance sort of gave her more confidence to use her voice and try and light up the room - since if she could do it for one person , she could do it for multiple people. That’s what gave her the idea to pursue a career in DIGITAL MEDIA - namely , film & video ( with digital art and photography on the side ) in the more comedic aspect. Screenplaying and the technicals behind sketch-comedy skits. Stand-up comedy , even though that was more performing.

Think like Saturday Night Live - and then think of all the technical stuff that goes into it besides the acting. The script-writing , camera angles , etc. Zelda just wanted to make people laugh.

Soooo… when she told her parents that would be what she wanted to do , her average home-life would turn sour CONSIDERING they didn’t want her to explore such risky career choices. An easier life would be to become a lawyer or a doctor - more stable. But that’s not what she wanted. So after a LENGTHY argument with her parents , Zelda would be thrown out of the house with only the money she saved ( thankfully , she’d always been the frugal one ) , and would call . . . her ex-boyfriend and his mother. Since even though they’d only been communicating digitally over the past two years , it still felt like home in Massachusetts.

Her ex’s mother would pay for a flight for her to go back to the United States , and after some time of adjusting , she’d get into Hollingsworth to pursue her career in Digital Media - staying there , but often traveling home ( being where her ex and his mom lived ) routinely.

Pledging to Gamma , her insistence for encouraging people to live their life to the fullest and readiness to include people in her free spirited antics would leave a great impression on the sorority - eventually even leading to her current position as its president.

CHARACTER / FACTS

So again !! Zelda is my trans female pansexual bby , 5’11 bc tall girls make the world go round and she is the LIVING EXAMPLE of the Halcyon label. She’s loud , carefree , optimistic - never really known to pass up an opportunity to have fun.

...that’s so basic of an intro to her personality BUT IN MY DEFENSE IT’S EARLY

BUT YEAH Zelda ?? Does not give a shit about anything. She holds no grudges towards anyone , waaaay too chill - but she flips from extremely chill and laid back to “HEY HEY LET’S GO DO THESE TEN THINGS” and it’s. Definitely a 360. But nobody’s ever seen her angry and it sort of makes people wonder if she even feels anger or if she has a secret dark side nobody knows about.

...She doesn’t. Zelda’s only habits when angry are that she’s short , to the point , and WILL call you out if you’ve done something wrong. But making her mad is extremely hard and she’ll only remotely get upset if you prove time and time after again to be a shitty person.

Which , can sort of lead her to get taken advantage of because of her chill nature - that’s how the previous issue with Gamma getting in trouble at one of their parties happened. Zelda got pissed. She knows she’s chill but she doesn’t think about how that could lead SOME people to thinking “oh I can do anything I want and she’ll be fine with it” because she doesn’t. Get angry about much.

ALSO THAT DOES MAKE HER A BIT NAIVE - just again. She’s easy to take advantage of because she believes the best in everyone and automatically assumes people will do the right thing as people. Doesn’t really understand why people will do things to hurt others and doesn’t really want to.

Also kind of jumpy like she’s a social person and definitely flips between lax and loud but it is SO easy to startle her.

AS FOR HER INTERESTS IN DIGITAL MEDIA - she is extremely talented with the entire Adobe Creative Suite , especially Premiere , Photoshop , and After Effects.

She has an Instagram dedicated to posting manips , edits , etc. she made in both PS & AE. You know those funky Insta edits you see all the time ?? Zelda makes those.

She ALSO does a lot of editing and promotion for Gamma - a lot of times they’re memey little videos or advertisements or skits that display how welcoming Gamma is , and they do a great job at leaving a good impression on possible recruits.

Her BIG thing though would be a little YouTube channel she runs where she often posts videos just around campus - think Billy On The Street , which is what she really wants to do with her digital media career.

“I’M RUNNING AROUND HOLLINGSWORTH WITH A PACK OF WILD LESBIANS”

“LET’S GO LESBIANS LET’S GO”

She either wants to do that - or mockumentaries to put on Youtube ( or even documentaries in a whole that she approaches with her extremely sunny demeanor on conspiracies or the like ). She’d also like to film her own show to put on TV , either something like reality comedy , a reality show spoof , or even something like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or The Office or Brooklyn 99. Comedy film is her passion.

Commentary videos are ALSO something she’s considered , much like iNabber or Strange AEons , but she thinks mockumentaries , skits , and her other work

Also that person who Photoshops heads on people’s bodies and makes memes for all the group chats she’s in

She really doesn’t take herself seriously often but frankly that’s just Gamma as a whole so it WORKS.

A good portion of Zelda’s existence is a meme tbh I honestly adore her

She has a LOT of tattoos that were designed by her ex-boyfriend since he was an art major and now is a tattoo artist in Salem - I’d point you in the direction of Hannah Pixie Snowdon’s body art as a reference , just Zelda isn’t nearly as covered as she is.

This would be the best reference I can think of rn , lots of pretty designs and some animals, maybe some symbols and references from stuff.

Olivia doesn’t have any tattoos but WE CAN CERTAINLY PRETEND

A lot of her spare money is made doing either graphics commissions or even photography from whoever needs her services !! The majority of her stuff has been done for cosplayers , budding models , budding actors and actresses , and even for other fraternities and sororities around campus. Zelda knows no rivalries when it comes to these things.

She’s also 100% that person who keeps around a polaroid camera so she can hang up pictures she takes she’s just That Person

Decorates the Gamma house with a lot of polaroids she’s taken and memey edits she’s done in Photoshop

INSIDE JOKES ARE HER THING

She also plays guitar and is fairly good at it but doesn’t have a band or anything rn bc she’s just someone who does it bc she wants to look cool ( and also bc the guitar’s a neato instrument but yeah she started it out just bc she wanted to play SOME kind of instrument at least )

,,,but she also knows how to play the bagpipes

and she owns a pair.

they’re in the gamma house. zelda plays them at meetings.

Also I can’t 100% guarantee she didn’t get her name from the Legend of Zelda series if y’all know me u know how much I adore that series so yeah

WANTED PLOTS / CONNECTIONS

GIVE ME A COMEDY SQUAD PLEEEEEEEEASE maybe even ppl she works to make a webseries or something with ?? give me people who work constantly just to make other people laugh

People she routinely takes photographs of !!

Whether they pay her or she uses as a muse for whatever

OTHER PPL FROM THE GREEK ROW THAT JUST DON’T… LIKE ZELDA FOR WHATEVER REASON

Maybe they think she’s too chill. Maybe they think she’s hiding something. Maybe they don’t like how she’s running Gamma but for whatever reason they just DON’T LIKE HER and I want enemies so fucking give me enemies

This is so general but more Gamma sisters would be lovely Zelda’s so eager to bring in more people to make their sorority feel like home

Give me crushes Zelda pines over !! Crushes that pine over Zelda !! Gimme that skinny love shit bc my god it gets me going !!

Hookup plots are also 100% acceptable bc again Zelda’s a carefree spirit and gives No Fucks

Also 100% down 4 cute romantic plots too - Zelda is ur regular poly pan babe w/ room in her heart for 12000 suns

it’s very on brand of me to place the romance/sex plots right smack in the middle as I’m thinking of what to put down

Okay when I was in high school we had majors and I was a Digital Art major and all the Visual Art majors had this bond with us for no reason so I’d really love some Vis. Art buddies that Zelda gets along with much like the bond she has with her ex-boyfriend now

OTHER PEOPLE TO DESIGN MORE TATTOOS FOR HER PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE one day she hopes to be a coloring book

I’D LOVE SOME UNLIKELY FRIENDS TOO JUST SOME GRUMPS ZELDA’S CONSTANTLY BOTHERING W/ HER SHIT

Memey group chat pls

THATS ALL I CAN THINK OF FOR NOW maybe i’ll do a more detailed / organized list soon but yeah !! Come at me !!!

#hworth:intro #* &. about / ☆ 𝐫𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐠𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧 #* &. ooc / ☆ 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐇𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐚 #I got the worst headache @ work but we got this done at least #very on brand of me to namedrop ocs i'll never bring in here 2 include them somehow #but i'm so excited i love love love LOVE zelda so much and the last uni group i was in she was only an npc #i'm rly happy to write her in full : ' )

8 notes · View notes

scriveyner · 5 years ago

Text

Unfinished and Incomplete, Week 1: VLD AU

Good evening, and welcome to “Unfinished and Incomplete Fic Saturday!” Every Saturday for the foreseeable future I’ll post an unfinished, incomplete, and likely never to be done fic so that it stops languishing on my hard drive and haunting me forever.

Tonight’s entree: nearly 2000 words of a Voltron AU that was spun off from Shining Like the Stars that I started, fiddled around with and never actually completed or posted anything for. This series and AU originated in mid-2017, and the background needed is that: Shiro’s a clone, we all know he’s a clone, but what if there are other clones of Shiro roaming about?

[There is a tie-in in slts, where a cage is opened while everyone’s fucking around in that extra-long battle about 2/3rds of the way through - and that cage held a Shiro clone. This one, in fact.]

Anyway this Shiro clone was kept in the gladiator ring after eventual paladin!Shiro escaped, no one knows they’re clones yet, and he escaped on his own and is trying to find the Holts before attempting to get back to Earth. He stumbles across a cargo pilot who decides to help him, and they cavort across the galaxy nearly running into but never quite being in the same place as Voltron until the Paladins faces start showing up on wanted posters.

An important note: this AU was conceived of, and written, before Shiro was officially confirmed as mlm. Given the nature of this fandom, if you don’t want to see Shiro interacting with a female character in a friendly and flirtatious manner, this probably isn’t the fic snippit for you.

Background now established, have some scenes from this unfinished, untitled Voltron AU:

"Nothing ever happens on Listea," Kit repeated dutifully, crouched behind the shallow cover that the metal fence gave her. There was the distinct stink of ozone in the air, the aftereffect of blaster discharge, and she had pulled the bandanna around her neck up over her nose to help counteract it. "It'll just be a quick stop, Kit, nothing to get all excited about." Kit rose up and set her blaster in the grooves of the fence, firing at a cluster of Galra soldiers who were chasing several of the inhabitants native to the planet in their direction.

"I didn't say it like that," Shiro said, sitting with his back to the same fence and slapping a chargepack into the soldier-issue rifle he had grabbed off a Galra sentry during their hasty exit from the dive bar. "You don't have to exaggerate."

She had squeezed off a handful of shots before Shiro finally got the rifle together and rose up on one knee. Like Kit he rested the barrel on the fence-line, unlike Kit he actually aimed through the scope. "What's the count?"

"Seven-four," Kit said. "Any more charge packs?"

"Seven-five," Shiro said, as another of the Galra sentries crumpled, a smoking hole where its head used to be. "And how do I know you aren't fixing those numbers? I've seen you play cards."

Kit's response was lost to the roar of wind as one of the Galra starfighters blew by overhead, flying far too low to the ground. Its passage blasted snow flurries into the air, and before they could recover a second ship followed it with enough speed that the sonic boom nearly flattened them.

She spat snow and pushed herself to her feet. "Great plan," Kit said dryly. "Let's just waltz into Galra-occupied space when your face is plastered on every wanted poster from here to the Outer Quadrants."

"I'm pretty sure that this isn't about me," Shiro said. He had reached out a hand as if he was intending to help her up but had paused, realizing that the hand extended was his right hand. Instead, he pointed up, toward the second craft. "I'm pretty sure it's about them."

The craft that had been pursuing the Galra fighter certainly didn't look like any of the fighter craft she had ever seen before. It was large and red and feline-shaped; it had the wing of the Galra ship in its jaws like a toy. All that remained of the doomed starfighter was a curlicue of black smoke on the distant horizon; the lion circled and dropped the wing, tail lashing as it turned to face the next flight of sentry craft.

"What the heck is that," Kit said, and then dropped back below the fenceline as a spray of blaster fire reminded her that they were in the middle of a live firefight. The ground around them shook again as the lion-shaped craft shot through the air and was gone, a pinprick in the sky just that quickly. "That is the weirdest cat-looking—"

"Voltron," one of the aliens who had taken cover behind the metal fence said reverently, staring at the sky. "That's Voltron, they've come to save us!" Kit glanced over to it, and then back to the once-cloudless blue sky; now streaked with trails of exhaust and thick black plumes of smoke where the sentry fighters had detonated in atmosphere.

"See?" Shiro said, and when Kit looked back to him he was staring back through the scope of his rifle. "Told you they weren't here for me." The passage of another Galra ship flying too low blew more snow into the air, whipping their loose hair about in the wind, but he didn't move from position, firing several precise shots through the flurries and disabling the remainder of the Galra sentries before they could shoot any further civilians. "Seven-nine, by the way."

"Bullshit," Kit said, but she had watched the descent of the Galra craft. That hadn't been a starfighter that went down, it was too big. "Hey, I think a shuttle went down." She braced her blaster on the fence and used it as leverage as she stood up, her other hand grabbing at her belt, looking for her macrobinoculars and coming up empty.

"Not a starfight?" Shiro looked over at her and blew some of his escaping bangs out of his eyes. "You're sure?"

"Positive it's not a starfighter, at least," she said. Shiro glanced back at the milling natives, clearly torn — and Kit rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm. "Come on," she said. "Voltron will save them, right? The whole reason you wanted to come to this stupid backwater planet was to try to snag intel from a barely-guarded Galra outpost. Let's go get, you know, recent intel from a downed freaking Galra shuttle."

Shiro nodded. "Yeah, you're right," he said, and got to his feet smoothly.

"Ha, I'm gonna want that in writing," Kit said as they ran from their cover.

The downed shuttle had hit the ground at a hard angle, somehow missing most of the village's outlying buildings and leaving a large scar across the landscape. Natives had fled from the area, although no Galra had straggled their way outside the ship. Thick black smoke poured from the rear of the craft. "Think it's gonna blow?" Kit asked Shiro as they stared at it from a safe distance, back against one of the low-cut buildings.

"We don't have much time," Shiro said, holding his rifle over his chest as he ran out from beside the building. Kit rolled her eyes and followed, keeping a weather eye on their six as Shiro put his right hand on the hull of the shuttle. The surface would still be white-hot, having come through an atmosphere burn, but the sensor plate read the biometrics in Shiro's prosthetic hand and were at least functional enough to acknowledge him and cut the shuttle door open.

***

Shiro sat in the small, cramped bridge of the ship, his right arm braced on his leg. He'd removed the plate from the inside of his wrist and connected the wires to the ship's main computer, studying the output on an old screen. “You're gonna wreck your eyes squinting at that from like, two inches away,” Kit said as she climbed up the ladder from the hold. “Can you read Galra? Is that a stupid question?”

“I can read Galra,” Shiro said without turning from the screen.

“Is that another of the funky brain things they did to you? Because, I still can't read Galra for shit. I know like fifteen languages and the language of our supreme overlords is not one of them.” Shiro still didn't move or respond, and she flopped into the pilot's seat in the forward part of the cockpit. The ship had its navigation locked in currently, there was no need to steer or otherwise interfere with it until they popped out of faster-than-light travel. “You're chatty.”

“Hm.” Shiro wasn't actually paying any attention to her. Kit shrugged and hiked one leg up, dropping her boot on the console and managing to avoid hitting every important switch and toggle with the motion. They were headed for some of the inner planets, a much riskier proposition than their jaunt around some of the quiet parts of the Outer Regions. Galra rule was sparser there – present, but not with sentries at every spaceport scrutinizing every passenger. Things were bound to get more interesting.

“There's nothing in here about me,” Shiro said, sounding a touch disappointed. “Or the Holts.” He sat back from the screen and rubbed his left hand over his face, brushing his hair back as he did so. “Listea was a bust after all.”

“Eh, not entirely,” Kit said, leaning back enough in her seat so that she was looking at Shiro somewhat upside-down. “I got to see what Voltron looked like. A giant fuckin' cat. Who decided that was a fearsome weapon, anyway?”

Shiro made an amused noise as he disconnected his arm from the computer. “I'm glad you're satisfied with our stopover, then. Are we still on course for the inner planets?”

“Two days out at speed.” Kit hit the console with the heel of her boot, targeting the toggle that threw a map up over the forward cockpit display. “Headed for another ice planet. Why can't you take me anywhere subtropical, Shiro?”

“Last I checked I wasn't the pilot of this ship,” Shiro leaned over Kit's seat and looked at the map, and she wrinkled her nose.

“Oh god, you smell like an old sock.” She sat up as Shiro straightened, and grabbed he the front of his shirt to sniff it. “You didn't even get doused in that gross purple goo, I probably stink worse than you, why didn't you say something?”

Shiro furrowed his brow. “I didn't notice,” he said. “Do I smell like a sock? I can't tell.”

“I'm taking a shower,” Kit said. “Watch the sensors and make sure those spot repairs I did on the line don't send us through a star or a planet's gravitational mass or something, okay? I don't want to die in the shower.”

“Wait, that's what you were repairing?” Shiro looked alarmed as Kit hopped up and headed for the rear of the small ship.

"The coolant line, not the navcomputer, Shiro," Kit said. "If the coolant blows we skip out of lightspeed, and if we're in the gravitational shadow of a planet, well." She made a noise that sounded like a garbage disposal coughing up potato peelings.

"Are you sure we're safe at lightspeed?"

"Just for that, I'm using all the hot water," Kit called, and Shiro blinked, turning all the way around as Kit climbed the later to the cramped quarters.

***

"You know, you can just drop me on Yahsa," Shiro said when Kit emerged from the head. "You don't have to keep ferrying me around the universe." He was seated at the table that took up 90% of the galley, both hands wrapped around a cup that was steaming and staring thoughtfully at a screen.

"That's very sweet of you," Kit said, and yawned. "But then I'd feel guilty when you trusted the wrong person and got your ass handed right back to those Galra scientists." There wasn't a whole lot of room to squeeze past Shiro on that side of the table so she didn't even bother, going the long way around to where the sink was. "Did you make coffee? Do you even realize how little of that I have left?"

Shiro made a noncommittal noise and she sighed, pulling a cup from the secured cabinet and pouring herself some, since he'd gone ahead and made it. "So what's on Yahsa?" Kit asked, turning around and leaning against the counter instead of sitting at the table. "More outposts?"

"A research facility," Shiro said, and took a sip from his cup. "It's actually on the ground, too, not on a ship in orbit."

"Shit, that's gonna mean hella security." She watched Shiro scroll through data on the display. He wasn't really listening to her, he tended to tune out everything when he got focused on the research data in front of him. A man on a mission, even if she wasn't entirely sure what that mission was. "You got a plan yet?"

"Outside of just giving myself up? No."

"What!?" Kit almost sprayed coffee. "Shiro, do not just go hand yourself over to the Galra, what the hell—"

"It's not exactly an ideal plan." Shiro looked up finally. He looked more tired than Kit realized, his damp hair forming a bit of a curtain when loose like that. "But with the security measures they have in place, any sort of infiltrating is likely going to result in capture anyway."

#voltron #unfinished and incomplete #untitled #au #everyone wave to shiro he's the only vld character in this bit at least #please don't judge my unfinished fic too much #i hope someone enjoys it at least lol

4 notes · View notes

ravenvsfox · 6 years ago

Note

Prompt: When they get to earth, lance wants to stay.

You were the first in line, so you get prompt numero uno!!

Outside the cabin of the shuttle, pebble stars are tossed out into the dense, black lake of open space, so dark that Lance’s eyes start teasing out imaginary colours. It’s always so still out in the yawning nothingness. If he didn’t know how a bucking shuttle felt beneath him it might be hard to tell that they were moving at all.

Inside, the glow of tech is cool and purple, and if he squints at the light and not the Altean characters, its almost like the Garrison simulators, or the speedometer of the only car on the road at night.

Pidge is punching in coordinates next to him, and she twists her fingers over the frame of her glasses like she’s trying to make them zoom. For all he knows, she might have engineered binoculars into her glasses just like she tucks lifts into her shoes, making modifications to herself just like she does to everything else she can get her hands on.

He squirms, digging his toes down into the unyielding bottom of his boots, wanting to feel something real and movable, something not so claustrophobic. His hands shake on the controls, and he clenches his fists until they can’t.

They’d left the lions on the nearest neutral planet, defences up, Romelle and Krolia at a nearby base. Coran was on patrol duty, winding between their massive paws and craning his neck to speak earnestly up at them. It’s comforting to think of the lions as as they left them, a circle of statues and their sentinel.

It’s the weirdest thing, but sometimes Lance thinks that the way the lions talk to him is the way Gods talk to prophets, and everyone else in the cosmos just has to trust his blind, bruising faith.

He pushes a hand into his hair and just holds it there, steering left-handed and feeling his pulse push anxiously against his fingers.

“Uh oh, are we getting introspective?”

Lance’s hand jerks back to the controls. “Oh—uh. Sorry. We’re just,” he taps their trajectory on the luminous map between them. “So close.” He hadn’t realized how close until he’d checked, but his chest had been getting more and more crowded, like all of Earth’s radio waves and clutter was close enough to hear.

“Less than a light-year,” Pidge agrees quietly. The look in her eyes is so terribly far from home. The part of her that riffled through the desks of authorities and cut all her hair off is still with her brother in the guts of the resistance.

“Then why doesn’t it feel like we’re going home, huh?” Lance asks, smiling through the weirdness in his head. “Where’s the fanfare? Where’s the galaxy-wide fireworks display?” Pidge smiles tightly back at him.

“I didn’t think we’d get to go home until our mission was done, and, well, I don’t know. Maybe we don’t deserve all of that yet.”

“Maybe you don’t,” Lance corrects. The shaking’s only getting worse. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen when they touch down and it’s making his hair stand on end and his teeth chatter. “I’ve deserved it since day one.”

“Oh yeah?” she says, laughing. “All that winking at instructors and seeing how many peanut butter m&m’s you can fit in your mouth paying off for you?”

“Only in every way possible,” he says. “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention but I’m a galactic superstar. Seriously.”

“Seriously,” Pidge echoes. They lapse into silence, and Lance’s body kicks up a fight when he sees the luminescent blue shape of the Earth drifting into view like a tossed frisbee.

“Jesus,” he breathes. He eases up on the speed, and they spend a suspended minute floating, watching, breathless. “Is she beautiful or what?”

“Usually I don’t trust your taste, but this time—“ she chokes up suddenly, surprising herself, and she tries to shield her face from view. Lance crows at her, his own vision blurring.

“Pidgey,” he says joyfully “We’re home.”

“Shut up.”

“Pidge,” he croons. She looks at him, eyes bright and wet, and neither of them can keep from grinning.

“We were born right down there,” Lance informs her. “The doctors wept with joy when they saw me.”

“They probably didn’t think your big head was gonna come out.”

Lance ignores her, feeling the jitters get brighter, harder to fight. “One moon, seven seas. It rains the kind of water that’s safe to drink. There’s barbecue pizza down there, Pidge.”

“I know,” she says.

“I can’t believe this. My mom’s right there.”

They’re still knee-deep in a revolution. They’ve been hurtling through space at warp speed in close quarters for weeks, and the only home they’ve ever known out in the black was blasted out of the sky, but the idea of setting foot on Earth without crawling into his mother’s arms is unthinkable.

The shuttle comms crackle, and Hunk’s voice comes through, “you guys seeing this?”

“Oh yeah,” Lance says. “You feelin’ as misty as we are, buddy?”

“He’s been crying since we passed pluto,” Keith says flatly.

“Oh yeah, that was an emotional gut-punch,” Hunk says.

“Paladins,” Allura interrupts smoothly, “I trust you’re happy to be home. I know it might be hard to believe considering my situation, but I’m happy for you as well. Pidge, can you set a course for where your father has taken those schematics? It’s of the utmost importance that we not waste any time.”

His heart sinks. “Funny, that feels like all we’ve been doing. A lot of autopilot and Altean uno and drinking whatever was in that funky bottle under the console.”

“Lance,” Allura says disapprovingly. The empty air hums and someone breathes out quickly.

“Princess, you’re not saying that we won’t be able to visit our homes, are you? Our families?” Hunk asks.

“I wish you could,” she says, sighing. “But we’re still fighting a war. I don’t think it’s practical—or safe—“

“No,” Lance says, aborted. “I mean—no.”

“Lance,” Keith says quietly.

“I’m not talking to you,” Lance seethes. “Pidge, put in the coordinates 23° 8′ 22″ N, 81° 17′ 10″ W, will you? I’ve got a couple of errands to run.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Allura says firmly. “I’m so sorry Lance, but the team is more important than—“

“Than my family?” he says, disbelieving. “Sorry, no, absolutely not, agree to disagree. I know that I’m supposed to save the universe or whatever, but I promised my mom—“ he chews his lip savagely, watching the whole world rush up to meet them and feeling helpless want thrash in his stomach. “I won’t be any help at the Holt’s. No one needs a guy with a rifle when you’re trying to put together a whole new teladuv, right? You don’t need me.”

“Yes we do,” Shiro says firmly, and Lance closes his eyes, fleeting. He’s having trouble focusing with his dearest wish and his nightmare both grabbing for a half of his brain.

“How about I go with Lance to Cuba and keep things on schedule,” Hunk offers. “I’d love to see his mom again. She always brings us empanadas.”

“We need your brain,” Shiro says regretfully. “We can’t do anything without your eyes on this.”

There’s a long silence, and Lance eases the thrusters to a more manageable intensity, muscle memory.

“I’ll go,” Keith says finally.

“What?” Lance asks at the same time that Allura says “pardon me?”

“I’ll go,” he repeats, stronger this time. “I’m also a fighter, not a scientist. I don’t have a home to go to, but I can take Lance.”

Lance flushes, not really understanding why. The way Keith said “also a fighter” like they’re cut from the same reversible cloth, red and blue. Sometimes the hot and cold of the two of them gives him whiplash.

“Is that… I mean, Lance,” Allura addresses him directly. He wishes he could see her expression, the wide eyes, the forehead that never really creases no matter how elastic her reactions are. “Is that what you want?”

He doesn’t even care that it’s Keith. He’s staring down the barrel of a mission where he’s fixed permanently in the background, tethered to the earth an eight-hour plane ride from the only place he’s ever felt consistently needed. “Definitely. Keith and I can stay in touch with you guys, and we basically have a super fast private jet if you need us.”

“Sorry, did you just say ‘Keith and I’ without bursting into flames?” Pidge asks, and Lance gives her a sidelong look.

“Right now, Keith is the only one of you who isn’t on my shit list. If Cubans are away from their families for too long, they drop dead. Do you want me to die?”

“Kind of a little at all times,” Pidge says, and he shoves her so hard that she would topple if it weren’t for the harness holding her to her seat.

“Alright,” Allura says definitively. “We’ll touch base at the Holt’s, but really… if I saw Altea again, no one could dream of keeping me from it.”

“Thank you princess,” Lance says gratefully, his chest aching, sweat cooling on his upper lip, hands finally still. “You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

______

Careening through the atmosphere is so surreal that Lance holds his breath all the way down. The clouds swarm the windows like eager fans, and it’s better than any welcoming procession he could have dreamt up. When they sink through the last of the low-slung wisps of water vapour, the burst of smoke-blue sky and human-made buildings stretched out below makes his steering stutter. Pidge laughs brightly at him.

They touch down on earth with the sunset crying out to be noticed, submerging everything in easygoing orange light.

The first step he takes on Earth in a year, and he falls to his knees.

His suit crunches against the dirt, and he takes his gloves off so that he can fist the grass and muck and smell the tang of it in the air. The oxygen is perfectly tuned for his lungs, and even though his body is off-kilter in the gravity, the ache matches the one inside of him. The breeze ruffles his hair, and he feels perfectly understood.

“You gonna kiss it, too?”

He looks up and sees Keith towering over him, looking imposing and amused at once. The rest of the team is staggered behind him, stretching their legs out and moving crates of supplies.

“That’s between me and her,” he sniffs.

Keith rolls his eyes. “Oh, because even the Earth is a girl to you, right?”

“Ge,” Lance says.

Keith blinks. “Uhh…”

“As in, the goddess?” Keith shakes his head. “Man, the amount of time we spend up between constellations and you don’t even know your mythology? She’s Earth? Mother of the Titans? Whatever dude, Ge is a hot goddess and I missed her sweet curves.”

Keith raises an eyebrow. Lance spreads his hand in the dirt and watches the way little buds of weeds and grass fold under his fingers.

“We haven’t even been here five full minutes and you’re already being gross,” Pidge calls.

“This is the prime time to be gross,” Lance calls. “Let me have my sloppy reunion, please and thank you.” His armour sighs as he eases himself down fully onto the Holt’s front lawn, heavy with gravity. He hears a rustle and looks up to find Keith sitting cross-legged a few feet away. He’s tearing out handfuls of grass with both hands, gaze tangled up in something Lance doesn’t think he’d be able to see even if he looked.

Lance watches him over one of his outstretched arms, but Keith catches him.

“What?” he asks.

“Two years,” Lance murmurs, and Keith’s face shifts dramatically. “That’s a long time away from home.”

“I haven’t been back to Earth in three years,” Keith corrects, annoyingly patient, completely obtuse.

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Keith, Lance,” Allura calls. Her hair is pulled back tightly, and she’s still wearing her flight suit. “Stay for a briefing, and then choose whichever shuttle you wish. Pidge assures me that there are supplies inside, and an extra—what was it? cellular phone? If you don’t want to wear your helmets for continuous correspondence, you can instantly message us from this device.”

Lance grins. “Yeah, I’m familiar. Can’t say the same for Keithy boy here. Body of a buff twenty year old, mind of a confused old man.”

“I know what a cellphone is,” Keith says impatiently.

“Good,” Allura says quickly, before they can devolve into bickering. “Use it. Stay safe, stay smart. Do not forget why we’re here.”

“I think the background threat of annihilation should keep us on our toes,” Lance assures her, and Keith snorts. Lance smiles slyly at him.

The briefing is swift and painless.

Watching Pidge reunite with her parents is bittersweet, and he keeps imagining the way his own mother is going to swear and slap him and kiss him. He’ll apologize over and over to her for how he’s made her worry and how he’s going to make her worry.

He’ll call his abuelita, surprise Marco and Luis in their shared bedroom by doing the secret knock on the doorframe, and bring Veronica the shard of sea glass he found on a planet called Luvesh (the sea was literally made of glass, and when you walked out onto its glittering surface, it spidered like ice. He bent down and picked a piece like a flower).

After the initial business, they change into street clothes and eat homemade lasagna, and Lance almost cries when the tang of tomato and basil hits his tongue. He winds the perfect stretch of real cheese around his fork and raises it in toast: to the only planet that does pasta right.

He and Keith carry fresh supplies between them in a cleaned out cooler, and they climb up into the cockpit of the smallest, fastest shuttle. They squabble briefly about who’s going to pilot until he reminds Keith that he’s the only one who knows where they’re going.

They wave goodbye to their team, and cruise somewhere between commercial jet speed and the full thrust of an alien vessel, watching the clusters of cities below slither away, like a sheet being continuously pulled out from under them.

_______

The sun is nearly below the horizon in Varadero, but Lance knows every gnarl in every road and every stupid resort, and he knows the way everything intersects at his family home, the beating heart of it all.

Gliding low over the jewel-blue stretch of the ocean is so overwhelming that he’s worked himself up halfway to tears before he remembers that Keith’s with him, that Keith’s seeing the best place in the world for the first time while it’s drooping to sleep for the night.

He starts pointing things out, identifying distant shapes with even more distant memories attached to them.

That’s the street market where I tried to haggle a boombox down to three dollars. Those are the beaches that the tourists swarm during the day. Most of them are too scared to swim in the ocean at night, so that’s when we always used to go. Somewhere in that block is the gelato place where I broke my tooth on a waffle cone.

That’s the little theatre where Veronica used to dance. I used to go to all her practices, and I said it was to look at the pretty girls, but it was also to watch my sister out-dance everyone else on stage. We had chickens when I was nine, and we bought them at that farm down there, the one with the hook-shaped driveway? I was obsessed with Celia Cruz and Britney Spears so we called one of the chickens Miss Celia and one of them Brit.

It’s starting to hurt to talk about it. Everything out of his dreams is tangible again, and even though it’s hugged by darkness and silky quiet — not raucous and sunny like it always is in his memories — it’s so close that voltron seems like the dream.

“I didn’t know you could be this genuine for this long,” Keith says honestly, and Lance doesn’t look at him.

“You haven’t really met me until you’ve met me here,” Lance says slowly.

“Well…” Keith starts awkwardly. “Nice to meet you?”

He does look at him this time, incredulous, and when he smiles, so does Keith.

______

As soon as they step foot on his property, he starts crying for real. He’s been tightrope walking over an absence so large that he wouldn’t even look at it. Every time he overcompensated for his grief and did something stupid like fell in love with a complete stranger, he felt like he was lurching over that chasm, trying to find his balance.

It’s impossible to describe the feeling of reaching down to graze your knuckles against the sand outside your favourite place in the world, and feeling the heat from the day baked into it, spotting little footprints tracked up to the rickety staircase.

Keith walks a stride and a half behind him, quiet, pretending he can’t hear the sounds that Lance is making out of the deepest place in his chest.

“Keith, you can’t look at me right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because vulnerability is ugly.” He brushes his fingers over where his own name is written on the mailbox. His bike is propped up against the deck. Luis is probably using it, the bastard.

“I don’t think it’s ugly,” Keith whispers.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he pretends he didn’t hear. He can hear the waves unrolling on the shore like messy, misshapen carpets, the hiss of them wrapping themselves back into the surf. The air has that salt and citrus smell that lived in all his clothes before they were sterilized by months in the gasping, impersonal corners of space.

He walks up the front stoop, and he had really imagined this in the daytime, with the sun at his back, instead of the moonlight and Keith, both of them lonely but constant.

The door is unlocked, and he lets himself in, not breathing.

“Should I wait outside?” Keith asks, and it’s uncharacteristic of him to be so delicate about something.

“I need this,” Lance says quickly, grabbing Keith’s wrist impulsively. “I want— I need someone to back me up if… if they don’t believe me.”

Keith’s brow is an entire storm, thunderclouds and twisters of confusion and fear and discomfort, but his fingers curl to touch the hand Lance has around his wrist, and he nods.

The little clock on their front table ticks merrily, and there are lanyards strewn over the side of the little ceramic meant for keys, messy like his mom hates. His own face is ghostly in the Garrison cadet portraits lining the hallway, and he can see Keith peering at them out of the corner of his eye.

He reaches the place where the hall opens up into the living room, and stops. His mom is curled up in the recliner, asleep, and the home phone is clutched in her hand. He holds his own face in his hands, shoulders shaking, and all the gravity on his head feels like way too much. His knees give out, and Keith steadies him at the last second.

“I really don’t know if I should be here,” he hisses. His arm is around Lance’s waist, and there’s a weird dissonance to it, like he never left home or the castle of lions, or he’s not sure that they’re really that different.

He feels weirdly like Keith belongs here, that he’s still an arm and Lance is still a leg on one cohesive person, and they could move giants together.

“Then who would’ve caught me just now?” Lance counters. His gaze finds his mom again, another kind of gravity, and he creeps closer, seeing the oven clock and the drawn blinds and feeling familiarity so acute that it’s like deja vu.

He stands over his mother, hand to his lips, ribcage quaking, and reaches down to shake her awake.

“Mamá,” he says hoarsely.

She doesn’t wake up immediately, and the longer he looks down into her lovely, worried face, the more his own face crumples. He can’t help the wounded sound that leaves the back of his throat, and she wakes at the noise, her face dazed and concerned.

“Mijo, what’s wrong?” she asks, her hand halfway up to his face before it hitches and drops.

There’s a beat of disbelieving silence, and then she surges upright, pulling the string on the lamp and squinting hopefully through the flood of light. When her eyes find Lance again, she gives this wavering gasp, her lower lip sucking inwards like it does right before you start sobbing.

“Lance?” She holds him by both his arms, shaking him, and he sinks through her grip to his knees. “Oh darling. My baby,” she says in Spanish. “How could you?”

“I’m sorry mamá,” Lance says, head bowed. “I’m so sorry.” She pulls his face up and smooths both thumbs across his brow.

“Don’t be sorry, mijo, just tell me where you’ve been. We’ve been looking for you. Searching the whole desert. All the stupid Garrison would tell us is that you were missing, presumed—“ she cuts herself off and shakes her head, jaw tight.

“I mean, you’re not going to believe this, mom.”

“My ghost son is sitting before me,” she says, hands in his hair, “more beautiful than ever. I dare you to shock me.”

Lance nods quickly, looking down at his own hands, trying to find a loose thread that will unravel a year’s worth of stories. “There’s… there’s a war.”

“There are many wars,” she replies gently. “Always.”

“No, there’s—do you remember the Kerberos mission, the crew that went missing?”

“It was in the news,” she says distractedly, combing fingers through his choppy bangs. “The boy you like, right? Takashi?”

“Yes,” Lance says, swallowing, hyper-aware of Keith in the doorway. “They didn’t die, they got caught up in a—in a war.”

“I don’t understand.” She’s looking at him with such open concern, and he wishes desperately that he could make thing simpler.

“Your son and I are soldiers,” Keith says from the doorway, and she startles hard, holding a hand to her chest and cursing in Spanish.

“Who—“

“Keith Kogane, former Garrison pilot, current paladin of Voltron.” He frowns. “I think.”

“He’s a friend,” Lance says simply.

“And?”

“And,” he takes a deep breath. “We’ve been fighting pretty much an evil empire in space, and we each pilot these sort of ancient, um, sentient cats, with the help of this princess we found in cryogenic stasis—“

“Ay, lance. Slow down, start again.”

“Mamá,” he says, exasperated.

“You should probably explain again,” Keith says helpfully.

“Thanks Keith,” he says hotly. “So we’ve been fighting in an intergalactic war, right? I’m sort of the unofficial red pilot, and my bayard is a rifle but one time it was kind of a sword which was—“

“Lance,” she interrupts, flicking the back of his head.

“Okay, okay, lo siento, I’ll go slow.”

It takes a long time to lay everything out properly, but his mom is never apprehensive or lost, she just wants to hear the facts, concisely, from different angles, until she finds some sort of solution. She’s always been good at peeling fact from fiction and plucking compromise out of thin air.

At some point, Keith gravitates over to the loveseat and makes himself comfortable, knife glinting from the holster around his thigh so noticeably that his mother purses her lips.

Sometime after midnight, Luis drifts down the stairs wearing boxers and a bathrobe, and when he sees Lance he trips down to the main floor and picks him up off the floor into a crushing hug. They stumble in an awkward square, shaking with euphoric laughter that might as well be crying, until Lance pokes him hard in the side, and they collapse apart, grinning.

Marco must hear the ruckus because he comes skittering down the stairs a minute later, already crying, and he tucks his head in Lance’s shoulder when he hugs him. By the time Veronica comes upstairs, her hair in a long loose braid and her face nearly unrecognizably gaunt, Lance can’t even speak. He nods jerkily and opens his arms, but she shoves him in the chest.

“Nothing to say, little brother?”

“Veronica,” their mother warns.

“They said you were dead,” she hisses.

“They also said I had an attitude problem, which we both know can’t be true,” he jokes. She shakes her head until a tear runs down her cheek and she has to rub it away.

“You are a problem child. I told mamá to stop having children after me, and if she’d listened we could’ve avoided so much mess.”

“But who would’ve gone to see you dance?” and he means it as a joke, but the idea of no one seeing her twisting like a rose towards the sun makes his throat close up.

She holds him by the neck, and then by the back of the head. “Bobo,” she scolds. “Don’t do that again.” She hugs him so carefully, and he screws his eyes shut, thinking about picking up to leave again, sailing back up into the stars and never coming back.

He’d forgotten what it felt like to be warm and safe and missed.

“I should probably leave you to it,” Keith says, rising abruptly, looking so uncomfortable that Lance feels a surge of fondness like flash rain, quick, heavy, and gone.

“No,” his mother informs him, getting to her feet and squeezing Lance’s face tenderly on her way by. “You brought my son home. I’m making you something to eat.”

_______

No one every warned him how intimate it would be to show someone your childhood bedroom. It’s the same feeling you get when you dig up a time capsule, uncomfortable awareness of what you thought was crucial when you were a whole different version of yourself.

Everything that he mentioned in passing in the trenches of the war is suddenly up close, scrutable, and Keith is taking it in like a museum patron, skirting the edge of the old messes, leaning politely in to look at portraits of friends and family.

“You have a picture of me in your room,” Keith points out, and Lance’s shoulders tense until he sees what he’s gesturing towards.

“A class photo, Keith. It’s not exactly a shrine.” He spreads out on the blue plaid bedspread and holds his hands to the pills of the fabric, worn exactly how he remembers.

Keith looks guilty. “No, I know, I just. I don’t know. It’s kind of… nice. To think that I’m this tiny part of your room. It’s stupid.” Lance looks at him blankly. “Forget it,” Keith says forcefully, crossing his arms and scowling.

Lance shrugs, uncomfortable. There are polaroids of him slung between Hunk and Pidge, lopsided from the extreme difference in the heights of their shoulders. He has peace thrown up around their shoulders, and he’s laughing.

He has a cutout about the Kerberos mission on his desk, and the Shiro with dark hair and young eyes stares up at the ceiling. He has the X-Files “I want to Believe’ poster above his bead, which covers Allura and Coran, so the only person who doesn’t really have a spot is Keith. Except one tiny pointed chin and bad haircut in a sea of young, pouty faces.

“Hey,” he says softly. He scoops his polaroid camera off of the desk and fiddles with the buttons, ears burning, heart turning over with the aching slowness of the wounded. “Come here.”

______

He gets up when the first fingers of sun peel back the horizon, red and orange like fire. He leaves Keith in his bed, his chest bare and his face young and pink in the sunrise. He still doesn’t understand anything.

He meets his mother in the kitchen, and she hold him an arm’s length away from her body to trace his features with her fingers. She passes him the perfect café cubano, and he makes a big show of getting on his knees to thank her.

Orange, filtered light comes in through the half-drawn shutters in distorted stripes. His mother recounts her phone conversation with Lance’s father using sound effects and tripping Spanish slang, and something vital inside of him detaches and spills blood-hot feeling everywhere.

He leaves his mother to wander down to the beach. His skin responds to the sun, hair standing on end. His whole body has been like a limb that’s been trapped in a cast, shrunken and pale, and the air and light against it is a terrible relief.

He lets his fingers brush the tall, feathery grass on either side of the path as he walks.

The feeling in his chest is the same one he got when he walked up to the stocky outline of the Galaxy Garrison, or when he settled into Blue’s cockpit for the first time, a sense of rightness so acute that he doesn’t have a name for it.

He scuffs off his flip-flops and sprints down to meet the surf, laughing when the spray gets his shorts wet and spritzes up to his neck. The chunky shells underfoot and the chill on his sleep-sensitive skin is background noise. He wades thigh deep and watches the red of the sky echoed by the churning mosh pit of the waves. He closes his eyes and lets the breeze paw at his hair and clothes, holding his arms out so that his loose buttoned shirt billows out behind him.

He’s out there for a long time, dawn turning into early morning, pale, with spectacular clouds. Red skies always promise wicked storms.

He settles down into the sand, enjoying the little discomforts, the sand tucked just under the hem of his shorts where his skin is clammy wet, the breeze getting a little too forceful with his hair and forcing it in the wrong direction. His house just a little too far away at his back, everything he cares about a few minutes out of reach.

He’s been to so many galaxies and he’s never seen anything like a sunrise over the ocean.

He thinks, I am the best version of myself, right here.

He knows he’s been a liability for the team. He shows up and makes noise and tries to look cool so that it won’t feel so much like the losing battle he’s fighting is coming to a sad, inevitable end.

He’s the extra pilot that they cycle through the roster and try to find a place for, but he’s not the red paladin. And he’s never going to belong to Blue like Allura does, like her family always will.

Being at home like this makes it really clear that he hasn’t fit anywhere in a very long time. There are so many ugly things twisting and shooting out in space, and he’s seen so many people suffer. He shoots galra sentries dead and he follows his gut instincts to the wrong places and he dreams about home.

It’s so stupid that he thought he could be some sort of soldier. Like he would ever be the guy that saved something instead of ruining it.

He puts his hand out in front of him and watches sun creep between his fingers. Nothing feels real in space. It’s easier to lie to yourself, somehow.

“Hey,” says a voice behind him. When he glances back, Keith is staring at him with the saddest expression he’s ever seen on his face, and only then does Lance realize that he’s crying.

“What are you doing here?”

Keith ignores him. “You’re crying again.” He really sounds like it’s bothering him.

“No I’m not.”

“Your face is wet,” he says matter-of-factly, sitting down close to him in the sand, blotting out the sun.

“I was in the sea, Keith.”

He pauses, then breathes out all at once. “I hate seeing you like this.”

“Well I’m not so fond of looking at you either,” Lance snaps.

“I think we should go back tonight. I texted Allura and she said has a mission for us while the rest of the team is working. Some recon, I think.”

“The rest of the team,” Lance repeats hollowly.

“Yeah,” Keith says. “I mean. We can still be useful. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like sitting still for too long.”

“I do, actually,” he lies. “Harder to break things if you’re not moving around so much.”“What?” Keith looks confused, his eyes darting all over Lance’s face.

“I’m not going back with you.”

He jerks back like he’s been slapped. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I quit,” Lance announces. “I quit voltron, I quit galaxy-saving and jumping in front of laser fire and putting on a fucking— show all the time, I quit killing people because they’re wearing the galra uniform.” Keith flinches. “I quit you. Okay?”

Keith sits, stunned, across from him, and when his head dips, the sun gets into Lance’s eyes, sharp. He looks away.

“Not okay,” Keith says firmly. “Really not— really not okay, Lance, what the fuck? How did you think I was just going to, what, hop on a shuttle without you?”

Lance shakes his head at the ground. “I thought you’d be psyched. You won’t have to deal with me anymore. The red lion is yours. She always has been, actually, she was basically trying to eject me like a disease the whole time.” He looks up at Keith and finds him looking down furiously at him.

“We already talked about this,” Keith says impatiently. “I don’t care how many lions there are, we’ll figure it out. You’re part of the team.”“Only technically though, right?” he says bitterly. “I’ve always been more of a sidekick. Look, you don’t have to pretend to want me here just so you can tell them you tried when you show up empty handed, alright?”

Keith is looking more agitated by the minute, and Lance isn’t used to seeing him in natural light, without his gloves or his jacket or tense, self-assured energy. “I do want you,” he starts, and then he kind of bares his teeth and snaps his head away, fighting through something that Lance can’t see or understand. “You’re a paladin of voltron,” he struggles to say, like it explains everything.

“I tried to be a paladin,” Lance says. “I’m no good at it, okay? Can we stop rubbing it in. I’m being very real with you and you’re being very weird.”

“But you’re our sharpshooter,” Keith says, defiant like a kid. “No one fights like you.” That pulls Lance up short, and he’s shaking again, hands and chattering teeth, and the patches of water on his clothes are suddenly much too cold. Keith’s face is wide open in the plain light, and Lance realizes that he’s not lying, that he’s never been very good at that at all.

All the drawers in his chest shake out over everything, and he’s losing all his reasoning in the mess. He keeps looking back at the horizon and thinking about waking up in his room every day to the smell of coffee, but the image keeps getting confused with the image of Keith, roseate, rolled in his blue comforter.

“I can’t go back,” he whispers. “I won’t survive, and then my family will fall apart.”

“Lance, If anyone’s going to survive, it’s you, do you understand me?”

“No,” Lance says, frustrated. “I don’t know what’s happening right now, at all, actually.”

“You’re smart, and you’re selfless. Do you know how deadly those qualities are in a war? Your plans are low casualty, fast and brilliant, and they save lives. There are entire colonies, entire species that would have died without you.” Lance shakes his head, trying to keep from crying again and embarrassing himself. “None of us would’ve made it this far without you, idiot.”

“My family needs me,” he argues. “You saw them, you know, you know—“ He thinks of his mother trying to memorize him with both hands, his little brother crying softly against his neck.

“Anyone would feel that way if they knew you and lost you, Lance. You can’t honestly think that we wouldn’t be just as messed up without you,” he says incredulously.

“Keith,” Lance says lowly. There’s an epiphany tottering in his chest, and he can’t quite get a grip on it before it slips and bobs away.

“You can’t stay here,” Keith says, and he’s on his knees, reaching for both of Lance’s wrists, eyes wide, almost purple in the sun. “Who’s gonna keep me in line?”

“You—you need to keep yourself in line, dude, you can’t just expect—“

“I know you can’t stay here when the action’s out there. People like us can never sit out on fights.”

“Why do you keep doing that?”

“Doing what?” Keith asks, bewildered, hands tight on Lance’s forearms.

“Acting like we’re the same!”

“How are we different?” Keith demands. The wind ruffles his hair so that a piece gets caught in his mouth, and Lance looks distractedly at it.

“We’re opposites,” he says. “That’s like our whole thing.”

“I’m tired of pretending like we don’t like each other,” Keith sighs.

“I don’t understand,” Lance says quietly, except that he does, all at once, looking at Keith’s hands still squeezing his wrists, his blocky knuckles and uneven fingernails. “Why did you volunteer to take me home, Keith.”

“Honestly?”

“Yes please.”

“I love you,” Keith tells him miserably.

Lance turns his face towards the tree line meandering off to the edge of the coast, feeling every system in his body light up simultaneously. “Keith.”

He lifts his wrists and Keith’s hands follow them up. He shuffles closer on his knees, brow furrowed, mouth turned down, desperate.

“So you can’t expect me to leave you here,” Keith says, “I know that I’m asking you to walk away from your home. But you’re asking me to walk away from mine.”

“Keith,” Lance repeats, choked up. “I don’t know—“

“You don’t have to know, god, you don’t have to know anything, you just have to get on that shuttle with me tonight.”

He looks up at Keith, wild hair, broad shoulders, eyes like swatches of deep space. He remembers seeing him sitting alone at the Garrison and wondering what it would be like to be made for piloting like that, to have that sort of magic in your hands.

Those hands are still steadying him, gripping the tender insides of his arms like he’s trying to steer him in the right direction.

After his first mission with Red, he sat in the hangar, breathing hard, picturing Keith’s battle-flushed face and missing him badly.

“Don’t do it for me,” Keith says hastily. “I know you like to make people happy, and this isn’t like that. I think staying here would be a mistake. I think you’ll see us leaving the atmosphere and you’ll regret everything. You won’t be able to sit still when you know we’re out there fighting. You’ll be here with your family but you won’t really be here.”

“You’ve really got me figured out, hey,” Lance says ruefully.

“I try to pay attention,” Keith says. “When it matters.”

“I’m trying to do this for you,” Lance tells him, shaking his head, annoyed at his full head and watery voice, the way the force of the ocean has infected him. “You belong with Red, doing your blade gymnastics routines, holding a knife in your mouth or whatever, winning obnoxiously all the time.”

“Then you belong next to me,” Keith counters viciously. “It doesn’t have to be either or. We’re a team.”

The sun punches out from behind a low-hanging cloud. Lance’s vision clears.

“I think we’re probably more than that,” he says.

Keith falters, and his grip slides down an inch, so he’s holding the bottom of Lance’s hands. “You don’t have to—“

“Do you know what I thought when I saw you in my bed this morning?” he asks. Keith’s hands are clammy but fixed, and he has this sweet little mole on the side of his nose, and Lance can’t believe he’s been so stupid. “I thought — it’s not fair that he looks like that when I’m trying to leave. Like, how rude is that.”

Keith’s face does something hopeful and twitchy, a lifting chin and anxious brow. “You’re one to talk.”

“You had all this sunrise in your hair, like, all the places where the light hits you were red. It was so you. I mean, I must’ve been sleep-deprived, because I really thought I was attracted to a mullet for a sec.”

Keith smiles slowly.

“And I was already feeling all mushy from the way you held onto my mom so tightly when she hugged you. It really didn’t look like you were hugging someone’s mom who you’d never met, Keith. You weren’t even uncomfortable in a stranger’s house, do you know how rare that is? It was like you just belonged in my breakfast nook eating pastelitos. God, and the taking me home and listening to my stories. Do you know— in that stupid picture we took? I’m not even looking at the camera. I’m looking at you.”

“Come back with me,” Keith says, pulling Lance’s hands around his neck, hoisting him into his space. “I’m never going to leave you behind now.”

“Kiss me, and I’ll go,” Lance says, bold from the way Keith is all over him like he’s never been touched before.

He cups Lance’s face in both hands. He hasn’t had this much focus on just him for months, and his face goes hot as he reaches up for Keith’s wrists.

When he kisses him, his rushing blood matches the tossing ocean, and nothing else has any sound at all. It’s fatal, the way Keith kisses him like he’s trying to pin the two of them together for good.

They’re both on their knees, and Keith’s hands slide down to grab him closer around the waist, gathering the loose fabric into his fists. His tongue is searing, and his breath is sweet like over-sugared coffee.

All of his suppressed feeling flies up to meet him, double-sided anger and want, rivalry and respect. He finds himself bobbing towards the glow of Keith’s body, chest full and light as a balloon.

He breaks away gasping. “Why have we been fighting?”

“I don’t know,” Keith whines, and Lance can feel the spread of his fingers flexing against his waist. “You started it.”

“I think I wanted you to notice me,” he says, like he can’t believe it.

“I did,” Keith grumbles.

Lance kisses his lax mouth, enjoying the instinctive flicker of his tongue, the scorch of embarrassed desire in his cheeks. “Oh man, If I die in space, you’re going to feel so bad.”

“You’re not gonna die,” Keith says. He pushes their foreheads together with the insistence of a labrador, and lance sighs.

“It’s a war, dude,” he points out.

“I’m not letting you die,” Keith insists. “I’m going to bring you home again, after we’ve destroyed the galra empire and freed everyone. I’m going to bring you back to this beach.”

“Well I’m not letting you die either,” Lance says defensively. He puts a hand against Keith’s chest and feels his heartbeat buck, almost too fast to be human. “Two-way street, buddy. We continue the mission. We’re a little less reckless. I hang that picture of us in my lion. We fight back to back and make out with explosions behind us, I don’t know, I’ve still gotta iron out the details. You keep loving me, I keep loving you.” His voice wobbles. “Everyone wins.”

Keith lowers him all the way back into the sand to kiss him, and the warmth on all sides is almost as disorienting as the weight of Keith’s body, the give of his mouth. Keith breaks away to say, “I can do that.” He swipes a thumb over Lance’s cheekbone and smiles.

A raindrop flattens a piece of Keith’s hair on its way down to Lance’s face, and then another two find his cheeks and parted lips. Keith rears back, propped up on both hands above him like a shield, and rain winds up and starts pouring down, whole torrential sheets of it. Lance lets his head loll back when he laughs, giddy. He twists his hands in the hair at Keith’s neck.

“Isn’t this a bad omen?” Keith asks, voice raised through the chaos of the downpour.

“No,” Lance says, thinking of red mornings and storms blowing in off the coast. “I love the rain.”

#this is the first voltron I've written I'm still learning the ropes hello it's 7.5k #klance #vld fanfic #voltron #prompt #mine #I'm sorry this isn't aftg or trc I swear to GOD that's coming #Anonymous #ask #voltron fanfic

307 notes · View notes

sailor-cresselia · 6 years ago

Text

Zi-O 21; both raw AND subbed~!

Advance Warning: I have never seen Ryuki, and it’s probably going to show. A lot, if only because I have no connection to whoever the Guest Characters are, and what any issues they bring in could mean. I’ve seen Marcosatsu’s History Of Ryuki though, so that should help a little. (three links, because he wound up doing it in three parts)

Starting off with watching the Raw!

BlackWoz’s Storytime Vault doesn’t have much to offer, aside from a worrying angle at the end.

I’m impressed by Uhr’s control with reversing the damage he’s doing to that mirror. Of course, he’s paying almost zero attention to Schwartz in the process, but there’s a method to his being a little brat this time.

He’s trying to get the attention of some guy in Ryuki’s mirror world.

Sounds like his idea is “So, my new candidate? He’s from another world. Remember how that Tsukasa guy traveled? It’s kinda like that, but not.”

(What was going on in Ryuki?! Also, how many endings is this going to make for that season? Because I seem to remember hearing that there’s like, five? At least?)

I like the touch with Another Ryuga’s name and year – they’re backwards, like you’d see in a mirror.

Sougo’s DEFINITELY using Gun Mode a lot more recently. I like it’s finisher with Double, though – it’s basically a smaller scale version of the CycloneTrigger Memory Break. … What was that one called? Ah, there it is. Trigger Aerobuster.

Names are important. I’m doing my best to get them right.

But it’s basically that, with purple shots in the center of the wind bursts.

… of course, it gets reflected right back at them, because MIRRORS, but still. Points for fighting at a distance, especially with that dragon arm – that was doing some damage, it looked like.

Geiz’s Drive armor is back! (I’ve missed the shift cars, so it’s nice to at least see Max Flare, Funky Spike, and Midnight Shadow’s tires again.)

But again, mirrors.

Tsukuyomi: So, you lost him?

Sougo: Well, yes, but also we had to help the injured construction worker.

Geiz: And everything got sent back at us, so…

blah blah, ‘whats the deal with the time jackers’ blah…

“What IS this Day of Oma you mentioned, anyway?” Good question, bud.

“Well, in our history, it’s the day that Oma Zi-O took over the world.” Geiz, I get that you’re upset. But. Um. What did you just do to that chessboard?

As far as I know, you’re not able to cause shockwaves. Not just by symbolically slamming a chess piece down. ...I don’t know anything about chess, but I’m assuming that piece is the Black King. Wiping out all of his opposition in one strike… along with all of his allies.

Sougo retaliates with “And the one WhiteWoz is from, says that you stopped that from happening.” He uses the White Knight to knock down the Black King, leaving the Knight alone on the board.

And then we have the Time Jackers, trying to get someone else altogether in charge. Black Bishop takes out the White Knight. The Time Jackers are from the same timeline as Tsukuyomi and Geiz, after all.

That day is when the world’s future is decided… ooh, ominous.

… drat, have to skip the next bit of exposition, but while they’re outside talking about… victims? I think?

I hear that same sound that heralded Geiz’s Time Mazine arriving back in Episode one.

Okay, so the victims are all connected to the magazine/journal/website from Ryuki? Makes sense.

Oh man, Shinji’s already dead?! Welp, that’s it, arc over, time to go home. (dusts off hands)

Hm. He covered up all the reflective surfaces – which would include windows and vents. Because Mirror World.

Of course, that poses a problem when you use a gas heater.

Okay, so at this point, while I was watching, Over-Time posted their subs. So I just got the script, went back to the beginning, and started over.

Well, at least BlackWoz is going along with the nicknames for now. I guess he understands the need for the distinction.

Hm. Schwartz seems to think that Geiz is going to be trying for the throne on the Day of Oma. But, sir, have you met this kid? Yes, yes you have, we’ve seen you interact with him. There is nearly no way that Geiz would ever want to be in charge.

...I say nearly, because time travel and predestination and all of that jazz. WhiteWoz is screwing with the kids head.

HUH. Uhr’s logic isn’t even “it’s kinda like that Decade guy”, he was specifically told about the Mirror World by Tsukasa. (insert a certain 10-year-old meme here.)

And what’s even more interesting than that… is that Schwartz didn’t know about the Mirror World.

And we’ve already seen that Schwartz can go to other timelines, as per when he created the Another Shinobi Watch.

Hm, looks like we’re in for another variation of ‘not the Another Rider you think he is’, aren’t we? Another Ryuga has the last portion of his name covered by what appear to be burnmarks. Much like how Another OOO’s year was cracked, so it could appear to be 2016 while actually being 2010.

Oh dear GOD they’ve been fighting Another Ryuga for a WEEK. He just keeps showing up and disappearing. (Because mirrors, not that they know that.)

“Why do they keep getting harder to fight?” Well, Sougo, it’s probably largely because we’re about out of Phase Twos, and the Earlier Heisei Riders were pretty brutal, from what I’ve heard. Plus, you keep getting teleporters involved, so that doesn’t help in the slightest.

Thank you for finally asking what the Day of Oma is, though.

(Low INT, high-ish WIS.)

“Well, what future do the two of you want?” Asks the noodle with a pretty decent Charisma stat. And neither Geiz or Tsukuyomi actually have an answer for him.

(Ow, my heart.)

Okay, all the victims followed Ore Journal online, but it has since gone completely under, since it just couldn’t keep up with the times.

I was right on the money about Shinji, though, he clearly knows full well about the reflection teleportation, and now so do The Kids.

GEIZ I UNDERSTAND YOUR LOGIC. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO LIKE IT.

“Beat him in the time before the attack returns.” Because there’s a lag before the mirror shield shows up, so there’s a brief window of time. But an attack that would take it out that quickly would return just as powerful… directly at where it came from. Also known as the Rider who launched it.

And also also known as Geiz, if he gets his way.

Because a soldier who can’t defeat his enemies isn’t much of a soldier, now is he?

(Thanks a lot, eps 15 and 16. Thanks.)

Aaaand Uncle Tokiwa doesn’t actually know Woz’s name! All he could do for the Watch was clean it up… oooooh...

Sougo’s next powerup has an awful lot of that burnished gold on it. The same, or almost the same, tone as Oma Zi-O’s.

“Hello, my overlord~!” “Not. Now.”

Good boy, Sougo. And you even met this weeks tribute, and didn’t realize it!

I still don’t buy the “he doesn’t remember” thing, by the way, especially given the mirrored surfaces – how would he have known without having been Ryuki? Does he know about all the other victims? I don’t think you’ve actually talked to him yet. But I’ll let the memory ‘detail’ slide for now, since it looks like BlackWoz is actually being straightforward at the moment…

Aaand Sougo’s desperately trying to ignore him. Fair. Since that second Zi-O watch is tied to him becoming evil and all. Decent WIS stat, and also BlackWoz’s idea of ‘subtle’ is very much not so.

Meanwhile, with Geiz and Tsukuyomi… Yeah. He doesn’t plan to come out of this fight. Because what good is a soldier who can’t win?

And also, he, too, knows he is being stalked by his own personal Woz.

“What’s your end goal? If I come out on top, what’s your future like?”

“Just like this, a peace as if time has stopped.”

… Hi, yeah, not here for that phrasing at all, actually. Having just come out of HUGtto! Precure, wherein ‘stopping time so that despair can’t happen’ was kind of the villians whole thing, I’m trusting you even less than before.

Nothing can disturb the peace if nothing moves again, now can it?

But for Geiz and Tsukuyomi, literal veterans who have seen armies destroyed in the wave of an arm… they don’t have that frame of reference, now do they? They might just hear the “a time not unlike the one here” aspect.

“Hey, think I can use that notebook?”

“Nope, nuh-uh, OP reality warper powers are mine and mine alone.”

OOF. Right. Uhr contracted Mirror World Shinji, didn’t he? Which, of course, means that his existence is tied to Regular World Shinji’s existence. Can’t defeat the Another Rider? Take out his other link to living.

WhiteWoz and his “Obstacles are for killing” attitude does not sit well with Geiz.

“Hey, other me! You want revenge on that guy, right? The one who attacked you? Of course ya do! Why not!”

Meanwhile, Regular Shinji looks like he’s having thoughts along the lines of “I’m not going back to the belt! I’m out, man! I finished! I’ve finished like FIVE times already! Let me retire!”

Huh. The smudge over ‘Ryuga’ is gone. Neat. (aaand at which point I realized i’ve probably been spelling it wrong, and went back to fix all the places I used two ‘u’s on instinct.)

Clever, clever Uhr. “You can’t get a watch from a person who never existed, from a world that no longer ever was.”

...well, Schwartz could go to alternate timelines, so… Hey, Geiz, Tsukuyomi, Sougo, did any of you happen to get Tsukasa’s contact info?

Also, Tsukasa, did you have to clue the Time Jackers in on the ‘other worlds’ thing? I’m just saying, that might come back to bite you.

You are coming back, right? You don’t get to drop cryptic ‘I’m destroying this world first’ comments, and give tips to the assorted groups, and then just never come back.

It’s rude.

We need some sort of follow-through on this stuff, at least.

Geiz attempts his suicide attack… but Sougo knocks him out of the kick before he can gain momentum…

“I’m not letting you die, damnit! You still need to make sure I don’t go evil, and I’m definitely tempted by this watch right now...”

and then said watch doesn’t even try to activate.

Aaaand then Sougo gets wrestled into the Mirror World.

(Isn’t that place supposed to be super fatal if you don’t have an Advent Deck?)

Aaaah! The backwards writing, and the fact that some of it is glitching is bad enough. But the lack of sound? Nope, I’m not here for that at all. That’s never a good sign.

Although Kudos to O-T for getting the subtitles for some of those signs. Well done.

So, yeah, sorry Sougo, it’s not 3-Days-From-Now You this time. (But seriously, what happened to him?) This time it’s Evil You.

Not even 50-Years-From-Now Bad-Ending Evil You.

We’re talking a “Terran Empire Enterprise” type of Evil You. … well, at least he doesn’t have a goatee.

OH GOD AAAAGH GO BACK TO SILENCE PLEASE

Distorted belt effects are not okay! Agh! NononoNO!

Oh, and uh... Hey! Remember literally yesterday? When I said I’m loving the ‘parallel self’ juxtapositions that Zi-O’s been doing?

I should probably have remembered that the Ryuki tribute was next, and that I’ve seen the preview screenshots with Mirror Sougo being super creepy.

I may have changed my mind a bit on that juxtaposition love.

MISTAKES WERE MADE.

#kamen rider zi o #kamen rider ryuki #sailorcressy says #...i'm probably going to be making an Updated Faction List after 22 #aren't I?

8 notes · View notes