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liketwoswansinbalance · 2 years ago

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Fall Countdown Day 2: Midas

Not what I'd expected in that I had expected he'd present as Good or more Everish. Again, a potential Rhian love-interest candidate.

Ok, I really appreciate the likely intentional Hamlet reference! Love it. The skull that he looks at, so morbid. All related to the brevity of human life, the fleeting nature of life, that old memento mori theme. I bet he will be a strong carrier of that mortality theme in the book.

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times."

This reminds me of how Rafal figuratively supports Rhian. Alas, poor Yorick! But really, in this context: Alas, poor Rhian and Rafal!

Even the greatest, most powerful people one day die and are buried beneath the earth, to be feasted upon by the worms. Hamlet has the best wit. I loved his “mad” dialogue when I read the play. Anyway, for the purposes of Fall, we all end up in the same place. Physically interred, underground.

And, of course, we're getting imperial Roman vibes from this picture. Midas also has the potential to single-handedly shoulder the themes of greed or avarice in Fall, according to the original myth of King Midas.

Then, there’s the use of purple, a color only worn by the rich in ancient times because it was such a painstaking process to collect the dye and dye the fabric. Also, there’s some version of a laurel wreath at his brow, which is more fitting than a regular crown. The cravat is a good masquerading-as-an-Everboy detail though. Like, it’s definitely believable that Rhian will fall for it. Also, the swash-buckling, pirate-esque boots are the perfect disguise.

Then, there’s the idea of another boy-king. Oh great. He’ll probably be a bit like Tedros but worse. I expect some immaturity in his characterization if the plot goes in this direction. But, he’ll probably be unstable. Definitely emotionally unstable. Yeah, emotionally unstable boys in positions of power are exactly what this duology is all about. So, I wouldn't be surprised at all if he did turn out like this.

Also, I expected Midas to have more of a ridiculous, pompous, Everish personality, but he looks so brooding, so maybe, he'll be more Never-like than I expected. I mean, he's holding a skull, and looks kind of morose.

The mist looks similar to the mist that surrounds the Schools on the cover of Fall. I wonder if it’s significant?

The cage is definitely present and more obvious in this picture as well. Must be some kind of symbolism, or hinting at the actual plot and possible themes of confusion and tainted judgment in war. Actually, I've had ideas about this before.

⸻

The way I could see it playing out is this:

Before they enter Midas' court, Rhian tells Rafal to be polite, if he's capable of it. However, Rafal refuses to bow before a man with less power than he has.

Rhian tells him they are not in the best position to argue, and he'd better keep quiet, submit, and not mouth off to the royalty in the room because they need support to win against Hook. Also, they are in a weakened state because they’ve lost their immortality.

Rafal: And who caused that problem by letting Hook in?

Rhian stops talking. They are not playing the blame game again. Hell knows they've been doing it since the end of Rise, since their students disappeared.

So, Rafal and Rhian enter Midas' court.

Then, Rafal eventually reaches a point where he doesn't respect Midas as a Never. He treats Midas with condescension.

That strikes a nerve in Midas, and Midas doesn't take Rafal's comments in kind.

Rafal says true Nevers like himself take no prisoners, and that Midas is too merciful to have lived this long, and to not have been overthrown. If he didn't have a battalion of advisors and lord-regents to rule for him, since he was a boy, it surely would have happened by now.

And, Midas also reacts with contempt, saying that he'll be merciful, all right!

Rhian is startled, and Midas has him dragged away. And, Midas either encases him in gold to put him in a sculpture garden, or imprisons him in a giant bird cage, likely a golden, gilded one.

Now, Rafal is absolutely gobsmacked, flabbergasted, at how his own plan backfired. He’d only intended to threaten Midas to get what he wanted, an army or support or something else along those lines. But, not for the first time lately, he's underestimated his new foe.

And then, Rafal is dragged away to the dungeons probably, and has to solve this new problem.

⸻

Or, alternatively, this hypothetical could involve Rafal turning into a bird, maybe to infiltrate Midas’ palace, being caged, and Rhian humiliating himself by pleading with Midas to release his brother.

Midas probably agrees to it on one condition: Rhian stays with him. And, in response, Rhian says something like "Never! I must remain loyal to my brother!"

Midas doesn't budge. And, neither does Rhian. After some time passes, and is wasted, Rhian decides to agree, pretends to come around to it, and pretends to fall in love.

Rhian does it so convincingly that Rafal thinks Rhian has abandoned him, and is going mad and lovesick again.

And, this is doing serious damage to their trust.

Until, Rhian gears up to have his heroic moment. The moment Rafal is released, he plans to escape, get both of them away from Midas.

So, Rhian pretends to be seduced, promptly stabs Midas in the back, deserts Midas, and takes Rafal with him.

Rafal is in shock, and is simultaneously so relieved, but still can't fully relax.

He thinks he might be able to trust Rhian now, but is still unsure, because, well, the acting came so easily to Rhian. And, Rafal thinks like a Never, of course, and probably projects intentional Evil intentions onto Rhian (not the accidental: Oops, I went too far and extremist for the sake of Good, and was led astray and manipulated. Not Rhian's somewhat justified victim complex either, no, but real Evil. Or, that’s what Rafal thinks.)

Because, just look at how good Rhian is at acting! What if this was Rhian's plan all along? What if Rhian was pretending this whole time? Because, Rafal’s Rafal and he's paranoid.

So now, Rafal is forever on the lookout, and is observing Rhian more closely than ever before because who knows if he can trust Rhian? Just because Rhian saved him once before doesn't mean he won't try to kill him (again). Then, this could lead Rafal to thinking he has to make the first move, to betray first, so he isn't the one betrayed, who ends up in the losing position.

Meanwhile, Rhian is wondering what is going on in Rafal's head because his brother keeps looking at him strangely. And, not as covertly as Rafal thought. And besides, you can read a person exceptionally well after living with them and knowing them for over a century.

Rhian worries that Rafal doesn't trust him, and only tries harder to make it up to him. But, the continual efforts of "This is why you should trust me" only serve to make Rafal more suspicious as time passes because Rhian is trying too hard to repair their relationship and smooth things over artificially. It certainly doesn't look right, but he's mostly sincere. Rafal just isn't perceiving things correctly because his judgment is clouded by Rhian's earlier display of acting.

Like, how in the world can Rhian switch so quickly? Appear so real. But not be? It's all an act. But still. How? Just how? It's like he's flicked a switch. That's how easily the acting comes. And, it’s unnerving to Rafal.

Rhian is probably innocent though. And, he starts to feel hurt that Rafal won't believe in him or trust him, like ever again, and he starts to become depressed. And, that depression causes him to act unlike himself. Or rather, unlike his usual self, the self that Rafal knows and trusts and is familiar with.

And because Rhian is different and quieter than usual, this only reinforces Rafal's misperception that Rhian is untrustworthy and has something up his sleeve to doom Rafal or be the death of him. Rafal fully believes the betrayal will come from Rhian. That it’ll be dealt by the one person he used to trust. So, he's hurt too, but his pain is in response to his own anticipations, his dread, and his negative, held expectations. Rafal’s not hurt by reality. And, the fact that he's hurt by this, the unreal, and what lives in the realm of possibility, means that Rafal is hurting himself. Sure, there are external factors involved, reinforcing his misperceptions. But, his own mind is working against him. To cause these errors in perception. And, it's just sad.

And, Rhian doesn't know about the prophecy from the Sader who planted the seed in Rafal's mind, to start all this havoc and chaos and unrest. And, that Sader is partly, heavily responsible for the brothers' unraveling.

But, Rhian still worries more than ever because he sees something off or broken in his brother and wants to try to fix it. Yet, the more Rhian does, the more he tries to talk to Rafal or broach the subject of Rafal's mental state, the more Rafal utterly shuts down. And, all this continues to reinforce the problem. But, Rhian is doing it unknowingly, because he's really only trying to put his best foot forward. However, Rafal feels like he has zero people he can be vulnerable with, even if that isn't true.

Basically, each brother acting out-of-character, or revealing other sides of themselves that the other hasn't seen, is what causes them to act out-of-character. It's a vicious cycle, tearing them further and further apart.

Also, keep in mind that I'm thinking about this through a bit of a psychological lens and so, maybe, the plot will be more action-based yet still complex in terms of the brothers' relationship and their characterization. I don't know. But probably, there’ll be more action than this.

It (their downfall) could also be a more simple misunderstanding. It (the eventual ending/fratricide and/or betrayal) could be the result of such a thing, like a real argument, or anything really, no matter how small.

The tipping-point is often the smallest act, the thing that throws everything off balance, to trigger all the rest of the catastrophe, because just jostling something fragile can throw it off balance, in terms of physical objects. And, naturally, this can apply to a relationship too—if it even turns out to be a single, little moment that is possible to pinpoint and identify and define.

This is just one idea. That I somehow feel is likely? Because, at least, I believe in it. The fact that Rafal’s (or Rhian’s) descent into insanity could potentially be paranoia-driven.

I could be completely wrong or off the mark here, but I feel like this makes sense at the very least, and I could be partially right in the end. Partly, because this is based on my "It's not who we are. It's what we do" theory from my post, “Why Rafal Might Still Be a Never and Rhian Might Still Be an Ever.” And, I'm biased toward that theory. In fact, Rafal’s thought patterns in this hypothetical are based off of that other post, discussing his self-inflicted isolation and paranoia.

And, if Rafal’s characterization here seems exaggerated, it could be. But consider: instead of focusing on the positive, on how Rhian rescued him, and appreciating his brother’s heroics and skills as a diplomatic and maybe, more-shrewd-than-he-looks-Ever, Rafal fixates on the negative. Which is understandable. Humans dwell on the negative. We are wired to do so. And, Rafal is probably a pessimist by default.

⸻

An extension to this line of thought:

This is just speculation, but maybe, in TLEA, Rafal projects Rhian onto Sophie, in how Rafal perceives her. See the: “No one will ever love you but me” line. This is given the fact that every time Rhian has fallen in love, it has gone tremendously wrong, and that the only reliable person Rhian has ever loved is Rafal.

In Fall, Rafal could treat Rhian the way everyone treated Sophie in AWWP. Like a ticking time bomb, an inevitability that will only end in disaster because he can’t be trusted. Like he could go off any minute.Because, honestly, Rafal is shocked and astounded at Rhian’s capacity to act and betray others. What dictates that he won’t be Rhian’s next victim? Their love, I suppose, if it's still there. But, I’m sure Rafal will forget about his love for Rhian at some point.

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risu-risa · 16 hours ago

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What your favorite JoJo character says about you

No minor villains or tertiary characters

JoJoes, JoBros, and JoFoes only.

Jonathan Joestar: You See the potential of an all-good superman type character (the old ones, not the modern ones,) but you're also into older media

Speedwagon: If you played Baulder's Gate, you love to see characters that stick by their friends, no matter what, but if you didn't there's a chance you're saying it for the memes, or you too pine for a man who's already engaged.

Erina: You probably don't exist, but perchance, you wanted to see her kick Dio's ass, and you have ideas for a fanfic where she does

Antonio: You have memorized the funeral speach from How To Train Your Dragon 2

Dio Brando: I have never seen someone who likes Dio who weren't already abducted by the "stands are peak combat" hivemind. If you aren't in that, you are here for the chaos, or you empathize with his sense of ambition.

Joseph Joestar: You like his gimicks… and you hate that he cheated on his wife… that's it

Ceazar: Your favorite part is Golden Wind but choosing an italian from the italian part is too hard.

Lisa Lisa: You are self-destructively curious about how she ended up going down and dirty with her step-bro, or you are really REALLY lesbian. If you are AMAB, then you are trans.

Eisidisi: You don't exist.

Wammu: Your favorite trope is fighting fair, and when someone breaks the rules, you refuse to break them in turn. You just hold the grudge in until you pop.

Kars: You have a kink for the "ultimate life-form" trope, and you probably had a crush on Cell or Shadow the Hedgehog.

Jotaro Kujo: You have the blandest taste imaginable, and you probably had a crush on Sasuke or Shadow the Hedgehog.

Noriaki: You are thirteen and you know he was MVP in the DIO fight. You were also pissed that he was retroactively replaced with a dog for serveral arcs.

Avdol: Black solidarity, and you know he was MVP in the Vanilla Ice Cream fight.

Polnareff: You call him "The Only French Person I'll Ever Love" and you are a fan of all the chariot arcana from persona games.

Iggy: You prefer his OVA face, over the half-human deal he was redrawn with. And you chant "Who's here for the chaos!" every day before pestering your friends.

Josuke: You love Persona 4 and you're always making references to it that nobody else understands.

Okuyasu: Himbos are peak

Koichi: Always making "reliable guy" jokes even if others don't understand, or if they would understand, you'll use something a little more niche

Yukako: You ignore people saying that the yandere trope ending well is toxic, but I need to write something good, so you probably wrote fanfics about her getting some kind of help and getting together with Koichi without being aggressively abusive.

Hayato: You have childhood trauma

Yoshikage Kira: You have a massive boner for Patrick Bateman, and sometimes you pretend like he had depth

Giorno Giovana: You have one of few correct choices, but you also get really mad when someone says "he has the mixed personality of Jonathan, and Dio" and there's an off chance that you are that someone.

Fugo: You actually read Purple Haze Feedback

Naracia: You have gaslit yoursef to thinking he survived the Diavolo King Crimson fight, which he did.

Abbaccio: You like the idea of a "dommy mommy" but saying that when refering to a man

Bruno: Either you're able to make discussion about his depth, or you only make jokes about him being a mom. I don't know, I'm neither.

Diavolo: You love that King Crimson is just so contradictory and complicated, and Dopio's facade was just creepy to make you cringe with your entire body when he was carying Bruno up those stairs. Oh, wait, you just like the Metalica fight.

Jolyne Kujo: You either want to kiss her, kill her, or be her. Also you have a nice appreciation for her ingenuity and ruthlessness.

Ermes: You are lesbian as fuck, and you hevily empathize with those Shadow the Hedgehog memes about loving latinas, which ironically dips its own toes into race-fetishization, but ignore that

Foo-Fighters: You saw that one fan-comic about them in pergatory talking to the person who's body they stole and you can't get over it. You give no shits about canon, as long as it's good. Either that, or you lover overalls, and that makes you go "YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" Also you probably make jokes about FF and Mikitaka being autistic

Anasui: You also liked Yukako, but you acknowledged what makes her gross, so you latched yourself onto the respectful version of the unrequited love trope.

Emporio: See Hayato

Weather Report: You knew he was a means to an end, sigh also you saw his backstory and gave him an honerary black card, but you know damn well he wouldn't use it.

Enrico Pucci: Black Solidarity again but you like part 6 more, or you think Made in Heaven is the coolest design for a stand, which it is.

#jojos bizarre adventure #Primary Universe Only #Because I didn't/wont read part 8

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calling4glaives · 2 years ago

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Personnel File 4: Titus Drautos

While technically if we continue to go alphabetically by first name, Drautos should appear later, he is referred to more often as Drautos and so we're doing him next. :P Sorry for the late posting; there were too many rabbit holes that caught us up, especially regarding his name. *grumble grumble* As always, pictures are courtesy of @capsource, who is a blessing.

Titus Drautos

From the Facebook blurb:

Name: Titus - Latin: the name of the co-ruler of Rome with Romulus, the Sabine (native tribe) king Titus Tatius, thereafter a common Roman name: an Emperor known for his martial skill (including the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem); Titus Andronicus, a fictional Shakespearean character who commits terrible acts of revenge; a fictional tyrant with good intentions; and many others. WARNING: this is a tvtropes-level time suck. Drautos - ??? - This one is harder. Google translate tells us it means insurance in Lithuanian, though I think we can probably disregard that one. It could be many words that have been Latinized into a name by adding "-os" to the end, including English sources like draught or drought, or Greek ones like dragon, drao - a verb for action that also gives us the term drama, or drax - a handful. Using the Japanese spelling, it could also be Doratos, meaning “of a spear or shaft of wood”. Germanic/Norse sources have a similar word draugr that can mean both the undead creature we’re most familiar with through games and stories but also a trunk of a tree or a fighting man. Following that back to older roots, we get the reconstructed words dreugana which means to deceive or a retainer (which is appropriate) and druhtiz which means a band of retainers, a troupe. Derived from those, and somehow even more on topic, is the Old Norse drótt which means a household, a people, or the group of bodyguards of a king and all sorts of other fun ideas for sources. Do I think Square thought this hard? Probably not. Is it fun anyway? Yes.

Equipment: Drautos is one of the most colorful people we see in Insomnia, with his red leather jacket and panels. (As Drautos he uses black and red with purple and silver highlights, and as Glauca silver and purple with black and silver highlights). In some ways, his look is reminiscent of Genesis from FFVII, albeit played much more seriously.

His uniform seems to be a combination of the Kingsglaive uniforms - the cuffs around the wrists and upper thigh, identical boots, what looks to be the base of a hood in his wide inner collar, the symbol down the front (though whether he wears it in honor of his glaives or they of him is a bit of a chicken and egg debate, and we don’t see that long version on the Royal Guards or the Kingsglaive after the fall, as best I can tell) - and the common markers of status among Insomnian/Lucian elites - the high collar (though very exaggerated in his case), the asymmetric longer left sleeves, the hint at longer robes via the skirt panels – and his own personal style - the overlapping jacket front (and the requisite Square fashion zipper, which is how you know he’s a main character), the mail and reinforced leather piece over his shoulders, and the braids connecting his shoulders and mail sleeves.

His necklaces and medals have the feeling of formal awards, though we see literally no one else wearing them. In the field, he wears the symbol of the Kingsglaive on his many necklaces, though this is replaced by some sort of cross-like medal when he dresses up; this, with the addition of the other medals somehow attached to his jacket, is the only difference between his field and formal uniforms. (He wears the field uniform again during the fall of Insomnia; I guess he had time to remove the medals and change the necklace when he was missing during the panic over Luna)

The only comparison with Drautos’s medals are the ones won for Chocobo racing, though the medallion portion of those appears flatter and simpler. The chains and braids might have a parallel in the pair that cross Nyx’s chest, though his is worn much differently that Drautos’.

The leather shoulder piece almost resembles the leather and reinforced collar of Nyx’s field uniform, but is still much larger and differently shaped. The pattern inside the high collar almost appears to match the dickies from the Luche-style uniforms.

When he is driving in Noctis's car with Nyx, he appears to have ditched both the high collar (which seems smart, just for the peripheral vision) and the shoulder piece, mail, oversleeves, shoulder braids, and medals. I wonder if this is why he can tell Nyx to drop the formalities – he’s “out of uniform”. [[NB: unlike the bros, Drautos enforces seatbelts in the car]]

He has a classical western straight-edged sword belted at his side, just as his glaives carry theirs sheathed on their persons rather than in magical storage as Clarus and Cor do. Unfortunately, he never uses this sword in the movie.

ETA: Drautos also wears his sword on his right hip, implying he is left-handed, while Glauca wields his sword in his right hand or with both. As we never see Drautos as Drautos use his sword, which hand is actually dominant or if he is ambidextrous is unknown.

He also, unlike most of the glaives, has an actual cell phone rather than ear pieces.

Background: Drautos is from Cavaugh, the island where Insomnia sits, but not actually from Insomnia. His village is destroyed about 30 years ago during the war, and then he is taken in by Regis. Despite this closeness, Cor and Noctis both refer to him as Drautos rather than Titus in the audio drama and opening scene respectively, which implies a sort of distance, but he is trusted implicitly by them all. He clearly resents the wall being withdrawn by Mors and how Regis is running the fight (“For the honor of my home, I fought and killed under a king I loathed. And still, he betrayed me. He betrayed us all.” - the betrayal is presumably the treaty and Insomnia being sacrificed for Noctis, because it comes after the loathing and fighting, plus Regis didn’t pull back the wall himself, he inherited that position and didn’t change it).

After that, he rises to be one of the top three swordsmen in Lucis, along with Cor [[and presumably Clarus?]] and takes over the Kingsglaive at some point in the fifteen years between its founding and the present. He was probably the founding leader, but it’s never outright stated. Sometime in there he became Glauca. He could be the original Glauca, who is presumably the one who killed Queen Sylvia, or there could have been many over the years. It’s hard to tell under the armor. Clearly he’s been doing this long enough to recruit fellow traitors and put this plan in motion, but that could be anywhere from a year to a decade to two. What assurance does he have that Niflheim would keep its word, and how did he get the armor?

The man is running two armies, one from quite the distance. If he’s done so for long, it is both a sign of competence – that’s a huge amount of work, even if one is small and the other is mostly automated, and on top of that he has managed to do so undetected – and possibly of incompetence – when he holds all the cards, he still hasn’t been able to bring Lucis down yet. [[How did this man have any time to sleep?]]

Rank: The shoulder tabs he wears are slightly fancier than the rest of the glaives’, and appear to have a wide/narrow/narrow pattern that matches, if anything, the common sleeve insignia for vice admirals across many navies. Though he is called "Captain" throughout the movie, he appears to be of higher ranking for practical purposes, based on his status in Lucis.

Death: There is debate over whether the psychomancer who has Nyx’s kukris is Nyx or Drautos, who had Nyx’s kukri in his chest while Nyx had none. I tend to think the streaks and reddish eyes (though it could be the light of dawn) as Drautos dies indicates demonification, as is the fact his eyes crack open as we last see him.

Personality: Drautos clearly cares about his past and his responsibilities very much. He is a harsh leader, but has the respect and loyalty of his soldiers, and is capable of moments of relative softness in private. He has a tricky mind capable of assessing those around him and taking their actions into account in his plans, and is capable of projecting an image and living a double life for years. He is unbelievably determined and dedicated to his idea of right.

Relationships: The facebook blurb says he is a hard man to please, but he clearly has some relationships with his soldiers and superiors.

-Nyx Ulric: Drautos is Nyx’s mentor, and seems to care for him as well, though less than his cause. The car ride seems a last minute attempt at feeling out Nyx’s loyalties, and minutes after he orders Nyx’s death and Nyx is shot on those orders, he holds his hand and seems to have some reason to still want Nyx’s good will - either as a way to ease his death, or perhaps merely as a key to the ring and the princess. He has multiple opportunities to kill Nyx from the signing room onward that he just doesn't take.

-Regis Lucis Caelum: Drautos’s issues with Regis seem to be personal as much as political, but he seems to respect him as well. Regis is unsurprisingly shocked by the reveal of Glauca’s identity moments before his death, but though he contemptuously shoves Regis’s body to the ground, Drautos does no further damage, nor does he draw out that death. And while the bow before might be mocking, the salute after seems sincere. Otoh, he misses several chances to kill Regis without him knowing that Glauca was the one who killed him, including right after removing the ring from his hand.

-Luche Lazarus: Drautos trusts Luche with everything from running battlefields to what his true intentions are, but due to the time constraints of the movie, we don’t get to see moments like Nyx’s where they actually talk. Is it a commander-loyal subordinate relationship, one of true trust, or is Luche yet another tool?

Behind the Scenes: Drautos is portrayed, voiced, and given his face from the wonderful Adrian Bouchet, who is very nice to us all. If you don’t know him by now, check him out on twitter.

Everyone has theories about Drautos, and most of his past is left for us to fill in. Please share your theories and speculations, or things we might have missed! We'd love to hear it. (Or, you know, see you explore them during Legends week)

2022/7/14: Edited to fix some information surrounding Regis's death.

2022/11/2: Edited to add information about handedness.

#kglegends22 #deep dive #Titus Drautos #kingsglaive #ffxv #ff15 #edited

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cursingtoji · 3 years ago

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Royals

Pairing: Gojo x Roality/Sorcerer!Reader

Summary: Yuji was told by his sensei that someone very special was coming to evaluate his new cursed energy.

Warning: fem pronouns, slightly suggestive, hickeys, established relationship.

a/n: naruto's anbu uniform is what i based reader's outfit off, so keep that in mind i guess? i apologize if i forgot some tag in the warnings, feel free to point anything out to me. thank u and enjoy <3

“How pontual” Gojo smiled when he felt your presence on the top of the building he was standing along with Yuji.

“Huh?” Yuji looked around confused till he saw a black silhouette behind him.

“Hope you don’t mind Yuji-kun, I wanted a professional opinion and called a friend”.

“Are you sure this is the best place to do this Gojo?” You asked going around the boy with pink hair staring at his figure and sensing his cursed energy.

The building you agreed to meet him was one of the tallest in Tokyo, you could barely see the people on the streets from here.

“Sensei, is your friend a ninja?” Yuji asked, staring back at your figure, your black outfit left no skin to be shown while the kitsune mask covered your whole face and two swords remained crossed at your back.

“You worry too much Princess, don’t you believe I am the strongest?” You frown upon the use of the pet name. Yuji tilted his head to the side.

“I just don’t want things to go out of control” you moved your hands to remove the kitsune mask, your identity would still be protected by the mask that covered your nose and mouth beneath it, but Gojo stopped your hands as soon as you approached him.

“Keep it on until we finish okay?” He smiled, although he did not say anything else this was enough for you to understand he did not want the curse inside Yuji to cross eyes with you. “I’ll explain later, Yuji, now can you give us ten seconds with Sukuna?” Gojo stretched his arms preparing for a quick battle.

You moved to the corner of the building to give him space but still keeping an eye on the pink haired kid.

He was so young...

Black marks soon appeared on the kid’s body and the new cursed energy overwhelmed you making a shiver run up your spine.

As the heir of a clan that for centuries has the ability to control cursed energy, this scared you.

Sukuna’s energy was enough to destroy a big city like Tokyo as easily as a snap of a finger. In the past your clan helped Sukuna by increasing his cursed energy during battles but in the end, your clan also helped destroy Sukuna by suppressing his cursed energy as much as they could. Gojo asked you to come watch a quick demonstration, if the plan succeeded and Yuji managed to live long enough to eat all Sukuna’s fingers, it would be just a matter of time until the king of curses took control of the vessel and attempted some kind of mass destruction. If the time comes you wanted to be able to perform the same act that your clan did in the past.

Although, since Sukuna’s downfall your clan did not act as sorcerers anymore, instead they turned into rulers and politicians, living in big cities as Tokyo and controlling cursed energy just by existing there, a natural balance to the modern world, they would tell you, but none of this changed your mind when you decided to break the chain and become a sorcerer almost ten years ago.

The fight started when Sukuna ran towards Gojo murmuring something about seeing him again. Gojo controlled the situation fast by immobilizing Sukuna on the floor, far enough to not harm you.

“So?” Gojo asked, looking at your direction.

“You asked me to not do anything so I can’t say for sure, but I think it’s possible” you answered the white haired man.

Sukuna’s attention now was brought to you, he tried to read your cursed energy, you sensed that, but with the kitsune mask covering your face and eyes you doubt he recognized you as part of the clan that caused his downfall one thousand years ago.

Gojo again smiled at you, proud of you being able to take such a fast reading without messing with Sukuna’s energy, which he asked you to not do.

It would be better for everyone if Sukuna doesn’t make a target of you so soon.

“Alright, guess we are done for now” Gojo raised as soon as Yuji took back control of his body. You watched amazed as the cursed energy came back to a normal level.

Gojo asked Ijichi to drive Yuji back to the school and promised to talk to Yuji in the morning.

“I don’t know, Satoru. There’s only so much I can do alone, and I’m sure the rest of my clan won’t get involved with Sukuna if he returns. This is a huge responsibility for me...” you stopped talking, not even wanting to consider the possibility of such a powerful curse having complete control to do whatever he pleases and you not being able to do much by yourself.

“I won’t put you in danger, but for now it would be good if you could stick around Yuji, just to observe... I can put a good word for you with Yaga” Gojo dropped his arm around your shoulder playfully.

“You really want me to stay at jujutsu tech Tokyo just to keep an eye on him?” You removed the kitsune mask, now allowing Gojo to see your teasing eyes.

“I have my own selfish reasons too”.

The next morning Yuji crossed his path with Nanami around the school, having worked together once Yuji felt comfortable with asking Nanami about his sensei’s friend.

“Oi Nanami, do you know Gojo-sensei’s ninja friend? I met them last night but still don’t know what happened”.

Nanami stared at Yuji like he was speaking some foreign language “...Ninja?”

The elder was about to ask him to elaborate when the said sensei turned around the corner with you by his side.

“Gojo-san, Ojou-sama” Nanami bowed low when he noticed you coming closer.

“Ojou-sama?” Yuji looked at the person walking to them alongside Gojo. He did not recognize you at first, you now were using a colored Yukata and nothing covering your face.

“Nanami please, you know me long enough to drop this title” you smiled at your friend.

Yuji quickly made the connection between Nanami using the princess title and Gojo calling you Princess yesterday.

“Oh sensei, I didn’t know you had a girlfriend. You two make a beautiful couple” Yuji smiled.

“Itadori, show respect, Y/n-sama is an actual royal” Nanami whispered to Yuji.

After the downfall of Sukuna your clan reigned for a while, being the heir of the main clan branch and if your clan was still reigning that would technically make you a princess. Nanami insisted on referring to you as Ojou-sama in public even though you two attended school together years ago and long passed the formal titles.

“Sorry” Yuji bowed, still confused.

“It’s okay Itadori-kun, we will have enough time to get to know each other” you assured the pink haired boy.

“You are moving here?” Nanami asked.

“Isn’t it great?” Gojo smiled widely, now placing his arms on your shoulders and Nanami’s. “It will be like old times again”.

“Yaga accepted my request to stay on the campus and assist the kids,” you explained Nanami. Of course he knew that by ‘the kids’ you mean Itadori and his new found cursed energy.

“What a great set of teachers you will have Yuji-kun” Gojo tight his grip around you and Nanami “Why don’t you go find Fushiguro and Kugusaki while I show y/n her room?”.

“Yes, sensei!” Yuji smiled and bowed again before leaving to find his team mates.

“Let’s keep y/n secret between us, okay Nanami?” Gojo asked now that the three of you were alone. “Sukuna might not find out about y/n’s origins if she doesn’t mess with his or Itadori’s energy, the elders agreed to keep her around for now as protection”.

“I see… Well let me know if you need anything, Ojou-sama” Namami replied and fixed his tie.

“I need you to stop using that title, Kento” you smiled again at your stubborn friend and dropped Gojo’s arm from your shoulder going back to the path that led to your dorm.

“Always so polite, Nanamin” Gojo teased “Just don’t forget I’m the only one allowed to get on my knees for her” he released Nanami’s shoulder leaving his fellow sorcerer flushed.

“What did you tell him?” you asked Gojo when he got back to your side.

“Nothing he doesn’t know already” his large palm touched your lower back.

Your arrangements with Gojo were something known only by the heads of your clan, the two of you and few close friends. A promise made almost ten years ago allowed you to attend jujutsu tech and become a sorcerer if the only descendant of the Gojo clan married you by the time both of you got to your thirties. There was nothing in it for Satoru, but he agreed even though he barely left his teenage years.

“Satoru, What are we gonna do now?” you asked looking at your feet.

“We can start by getting you a pretty uniform, maybe a short skirt and a v-line” the hand that wasn’t at your back moved to the collar of your Yukata exposing more of your neck and collar bones and all the purple and blue marks painted there “A masterpiece like that has to be shown”.

“You are shameless” you slapped his hand away and adjusted your Yukata back. His flirty personality taking your mind away from the new responsibility of being Yuji’s guardian. “You know, we are two years away from the arrangements and I still wonder why you accepted it” you confessed, stopping in your tracks.

“Oh Princess, I’ll always be taking the side of rebel soul and you so happened to be the one that stole my heart from day one, you are not getting cold feet now, are ya?” he leaned and placed his arm on the wall behind you, an old habit that made you flushed when you two were younger, but now you can only bite your lips and raise a hand to lower his blindfold and meet his shining eyes full of admiration.

“Marrying the prince that saved me and the strongest jujutsu sorcerer? How could I get scared of that?”.

“Prince huh? I can get used to it”.

#gojo x reader #jjk x reader #jjjk #gojo satoru x reader #gojo x y/n #jjk x y/n #jjk gojo #gojo satoru #cmc.fics #jjk imagines

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hchollym · 3 years ago

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So you don't think Brandon was the father of Ashara's baby?!

No, I don't. I'm not completely against it, so if it ends up being canon, then so be it, but I personally think Ned was the father.

Let's look at what we know about Ashara's relationship and the baby:

The crannogman saw a maid with laughing purple eyes dance with a white sword, a red snake, and the lord of griffins, and lastly with the quiet wolf . . . but only after the wild wolf spoke to her on behalf of a brother too shy to leave his bench.

We see her dancing with Ned, because Brandon asked for him, but it doesn't make any mention of Ashara dancing with Brandon.

He looked at her uncomfortably. "My aunt Allyria says Lady Ashara and your father fell in love at Harrenhal—"

Allyria Dayne - Ashara's sister - thinks that Ned was the one that Ashara fell for. Edric doesn't say anything about Brandon, which implies that Allyria didn't talk about him, but if Brandon was the father of Ashara's child, then don't you think Allyria would have at least mentioned him? And if she did, then it seems strange that Edric wouldn't at least comment on the fact that Ashara loved Arya's father but was pregnant by Arya's uncle (with a baby that would have been Arya's cousin), if that were actually the case.

"Aye, he told me. Lady Ashara Dayne. It's an old tale, that one. I heard it once at Winterfell, when I was no older than you are now."

The story about Ashara and Ned is one that plenty of people have heard about.

Is it possible that Ned used Ashara as a possible red herring for Jon's mother? Unlikely, given this situation:

That was the only time in all their years that Ned had ever frightened her. "Never ask me about Jon," he said, cold as ice. "He is my blood, and that is all you need to know. And now I will learn where you heard that name, my lady." She had pledged to obey; she told him; and from that day on, the whispering had stopped, and Ashara Dayne's name was never heard in Winterfell again.

That doesn't seem like a man that's encouraging rumors for the sake of throwing people off Jon's trail. Which means the rumors didn't start from him, and chances are, there was at least some truth to them. It seems to be the general consensus, even by Ashara's family, that there were feelings involved on both sides.

So could Brandon have slept with Ashara despite Ned's feelings for her? Yes, but I doubt it. Brandon was reckless and promiscuous, but he was also very family-oriented. I don't think people give him enough credit and recognize his loyalty to his family, but I have a hard time believing that he would betray his brother like that.

It seems to me like we see a lot of evidence for Ashara & Ned (not Ashara & Brandon), yet I usually see three arguments for why people don't believe Ned was the father:

1. Ned wouldn't dishonor someone.

"I doubt there's any truth to it. But if there is, what of it? When Ned met this Dornish lady, his brother Brandon was still alive, and it was him betrothed to Lady Catelyn, so there's no stain on your father's honor. There's nought like a tourney to make the blood run hot, so maybe some words were whispered in a tent of a night, who can say? Words or kisses, maybe more, but where's the harm in that? Spring had come, or so they thought, and neither one of them was pledged."

We also don't know that Ned didn't intend to marry Ashara eventually. Neither one was betrothed yet, so it was a definite possibility. And Edric Dayne implies that Ashara's heartbreak had something to do with her love for Ned, so it's very possible that she was as blindsided (and upset) by Ned's marriage to Catelyn.

2. Ned doesn't think about her in canon.

First of all, Ned has a tendency to push unpleasant thoughts away (we see Sansa do something similar), because it's too difficult for him to deal with. We don't see him think about his father or mother either, but that doesn't mean that he didn't love them.

Plus, there's only two times that someone brings up Ashara to Ned. The first time (with Catelyn), we don't see his own inner thoughts, so we can't say for certain what was going through his mind at the time, but we do know that he gets angry about the rumor.

The second time, this is what the conversation looks like:

"Honor," she spat. "How dare you play the noble lord with me! What do you take me for? You've a bastard of your own, I've seen him. Who was the mother, I wonder? Some Dornish peasant you raped while her holdfast burned? A whore? Or was it the grieving sister, the Lady Ashara? She threw herself into the sea, I'm told. Why was that? For the brother you slew, or the child you stole? Tell me, my honorable Lord Eddard, how are you any different from Robert, or me, or Jaime?"

"For a start," said Ned, "I do not kill children. You would do well to listen, my lady. I shall say this only once. When the king returns from his hunt, I intend to lay the truth before him. You must be gone by then. You and your children, all three, and not to Casterly Rock. If I were you, I should take ship for the Free Cities, or even farther, to the Summer Isles or the Port of Ibben. As far as the winds blow."

We don't see any inner thoughts from Ned at that moment, and it's obvious that he's focused on this very crucial situation happening at the present time, so I don't think his lack of reaction to Ashara's name here means anything.

3. Barristan Selmy only refers to Ashara's lover as "Stark."

But Ashara's daughter had been stillborn, and his fair lady had thrown herself from a tower soon after, mad with grief for the child she had lost, and perhaps for the man who had dishonored her at Harrenhal as well. She died never knowing that Ser Barristan had loved her. How could she? He was a knight of the Kingsguard, sworn to celibacy. No good could have come from telling her his feelings. No good came from silence either. If I had unhorsed Rhaegar and crowned Ashara queen of love and beauty, might she have looked to me instead of Stark?

I don't know; this seems like a weak argument to me. Barristan obviously sees this "Stark" as his rival for Ashara's affections, so I don't think it's all that important that he's thinking about him by his last name, which is less personal and can be attributed to his jealousy.

My last thought is that I don't see any narrative purpose for Brandon being the father of Ashara's baby. I don't like the idea of Young Griff as being their child who is just being passed off as Aegon (for a lot of reasons), so what other good would it be for this detail to be revealed in later books? To be fair, there isn't really any narrative purpose for Ned to be the father either, but there is more evidence so far pointing to him, and I tend to doubt that we are going to see anything new in future books about this. I think this is one of those topics that is just going to be left open-ended.

To summarize, this is all just my opinion (so take it with a grain of salt), but I think Ned was the father of Ashara's baby, and I don't think that diminishes or undermines his love for Catelyn in any way. Ultimately, I don't think this topic will be revisited or confirmed either way in future books, so I guess it's just left up to the readers to decide what we believe 🤷‍♂️

Thanks for the ask!

#ashara dayne #ned stark #brandon stark #ashara x ned #asoiaf #speculation #ask me #anon ask

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erazonpo3 · 3 years ago

Text

WOWM

so What Once Was Mine came out and I read it.

My General Thoughts are that this book was something of a rollercoaster but in like a pop up carnival with dubious safety regulations and diseases in the DIY log flume water kind of way. I had some fun reading it but I also feel like I picked up a rash.

If you're like me and you enjoy picking a book apart for morsels of interesting concepts then you might enjoy it, if you think holy shit why the fuck is a literal real historical serial killer in this book I need to see this then you might enjoy it, if you care about engaging plots and character beats then you probably won't.

If you want to ask me anything specific go ahead, but otherwise for more in depth thoughts: spoilers ahead

Basic Summary of the Plot

Okay so here's the deal. The story has the framing device of two siblings in a cancer ward, where one tells the other a story. I'll get into that later, but that's how it starts. Our actual story starts with a pretty long prologue: We learn that the King & Queen got the Moonflower thinking it was the Sunflower, Rapunzel was born with silver hair, and then baby Rapunzel kills a maid who accidentally hurt her when brushing her hair.

Oh, by the way, Max is a human man named Justin Tregsburg. Yeah.

Anyway, the royal family puts out feelers for legit witches who can safely take care of Rapunzel because the baby is too dangerous, and Gothel shows up to take her away. Queen Arianna visits Rapunzel once (but is only allowed to watch through a peephole) and decides watching another woman raise her child is too painful and throws herself into restoring the kingdom's orphanages instead.

Now we're in the present. Rapunzel is nineteen and she wants to go and see the lanterns (a mourning tradition of the Dead princess in this story). She tries to argue with Gothel but gets shut down, and Gothel makes her kill a chicken to prove the point that she can't go outside because she's too dangerous. However we as the audience already know Gothel plans to sell Rapunzel off as a bride or a servant or a weapon to some other nobles, because she's evil.

Also by the way Gothel still has access to our Sundrop Flower and is using it to live forever that's just a thing that happens in the background.

When Gothel is gone Rapunzel watches as a man (Flynn) stores a satchel in a tree outside of her tower, and that motivates her to leave the tower for the first time. Then she goes back inside the tower with her prize of a crown, and a skink she found and named Pascal. Rapunezl and Gothel have another spat, and Rapunzel decides she will run off to see the lanterns and she will find Flynn and make him her guide.

She ends up at the Snuggly Duckling and she doesn't find Flynn but she does find Gina, a young career criminal girl looking to break the glass ceiling. Gina agrees to help her find Flynn. They find Flynn, and he agrees to help guide Rapunzel to see the floating lanterns for a split reward of the crown with Gina.

The Snuggly Duckling gets burned down by Countess Bathory (yes that Elizabeth Bathory) and the Pub Thugs are pissed about it and also they're helping Rapunzel even though she didn't sing the I've Got A Dream song don't worry about it. We learn that the nobles that wanted to buy Rapunzel are now hunting her down so she can go to auction.

Gina takes them to her adopted mother's cottage. Gina's mother is a white witch, who goes by the name of Goodwife. She doesn't get an actual name she's just The Goodwife. Anyhow, the cottage is a magic safe space (for now) and Goodwife teaches Rapunzel that her hair isn't inherently evil and may not even be all that deadly! Rapunzel learns that her hair has other powers too, like the ability to turn skink Pascal into a sentient Chameleon. Yeah.

Also Goodwife tells Rapunzel she's the dead princess but this isn't like, an immediate call to action. Not a lot happens until we get this story's version of the Mother Knows Best Reprise where Gothel finds Rapunzel again but has to flee, but this Rapunzel has a bigger support network and isn't buying it. Flynn and Gina decide the safest course of action is to bring Rapunzel to the castle, but along the way she gets kidnapped by the Countess.

Gothel is pissed because she still wants the money for Rapunzel, so she rallies the armies of all the opposing bidders. Flynn and Gina convince Max the Man to send for his troops, and he joins them in going to the enemy castle. Flynn tries to sneak in, gets caught, and meanwhile there's a bloody battle out the front between the noble armies. Max jumps into the fray, Gina turns around and rallies the Pub Thugs.

Rapunzel uses her shrinking magic (!) to disappear half the castle and escape with Eugene, and the Pub Thugs arrive and basically end the battle. The Captain is dying but it's okay! Rapunzel turns him into a horse :) Also Rapunzel sees Gothel and tells her to fuck off.

The story ends with a tearful reunion between Rapunzel and her parents, Eugene and Gina are implied to be biological siblings, and things are good but of course in direct parallel to Cass Gina leaves at the end to become an adventurer. The end.

(There are a few other smaller plot beats, but you get the idea.)

MY THOTS

So here are my thoughts™.

Framing Device

I'll just state that I didn't like that the story was told via the vehicle of an older brother telling his 16 year old sister a different version of the Tangled Movie in a cancer ward. From what I've heard it also isn't normal for the Twisted Tales series to use a framing device for the AUs either.

I sympathise with the author's personal story, of course I do. That doesn't mean I'm stirred with compassion every time the flow of the story is interrupted to remind you to be sad because this is a story being told to a girl sick with cancer. It feels more than a little tragedy-porny rather than emotionally touching, and maybe that's because I'm too burnt out on real life tragedy to waste emotional energy on fictional cancer patients but we don't need to do Fault In Our Stars discourse again.

Real World References

This story goes heavy with Real World references. And another issue with the framing device as above is that you do feel like this is a story being told by someone namedropping every historical figure they know which makes it harder to get into the story.

There's like... a lot of references to Christianity, particularly in the prologue. There's a priest that thinks Rapunzel's hair is the work of the Devil or whatever. It's a lot. The Patriarchy is a thing. And that's not even getting into the Countess. I put it very succinctly in my notes so I'll paste it here:

I wish she’d just been an OC who could exist to chew scenery because the fact that she was a literal historical serial killer is super. Off putting. Like, she could have been an obvious reference to Bathory, but it feels like Miku Binder Hamilton levels of uncomfortable to me.

I miss Lady D.

Which basically sums up my problem with trying to take the setting of Tangled and put it somewhere in the Real World and somewhere on the Timeline. Who thought this was a good idea.

Misc. Thoughts

So, I used the five highlighter colours my ipad allows to organise my thoughts and organised them accordingly: Yellow for out of place IRL references, Blue for worldbuilding/character points that aren't plot relevant but still interesting, Pink for when something I find personally amusing happens, Purple for when the story feels like it's trying to 1-up the movie in some kind of way and Green for Heterosexual Nonsense. I'll touch on those last two in the Character sections but be prepared.

Also: for a book about giving Rapunzel killer hair, her hair isn't very dangerous. I wanted to see Rapunzel kill someone, and I'm disappointed that I didn't.

Characters

I'll do a deep dive into my thoughts about the characters before wrapping it up. I'm starting with Gina because she's honestly the easiest to get through.

Gina

Gina is a new character introduced for the story. She's a young woman trying to make it as a career criminal but keeps hitting that glass ceiling. So here's the down low, for all those who want to know: Gina is basically Cass, only not really. She's implied to be Eugene's biological sister, as previously mentioned, but you can imagine she's Cass the entire way through without breaking your immersion because if you imagined Cass if she were adopted by a Goodwitch rather than the Captain and had a looser, more wilderness survivor than trainee guard upbringing then you get Gina.

I liked Gina! I think she's fun as her own character too, and her best moments are when she's interacting with her mother Goody Goodwife, and she of course picks up a natural sibling rivalry with Eugene, but I was disappointed with how little she really bonded with Rapunzel because she needed to make room for Eugene and Rapunzel's romance.

Rapunzel

Okay, here's our protagonist. There's a notable effort to make Rapunzel more active in her destiny and whatever, and sometimes it works but sometimes it doesn't. I was worried they'd try to go full butt-kicking girlboss with her but I was pleasantly surprised that Rapunzel was pretty useless in most scenes, genuinely love to see it.

With a more intimate look into Rapunzel's psyche through the medium of prose, we see Rapunzel really questioning Gothel's behaviour even before she leaves the tower, and while I appreciate that she can develop her own cynicism I feel it starts unnecessarily early. This is my purple colour; the movie needs to be "fixed" by showing the readers that this Rapunzel is quicker to distrust Gothel. She's also quicker to hatch a plan to go outside of the tower on her own, and she makes a plan to make Flynn her guide for the lanterns even though he never stumbles upon her in the tower- and even though she has a perfectly rational reason not to trust him which is that he is a stranger and a Wanted Thief.

In the moments where it does work is when Rapunzel is surrounded by her new support network: Flynn, Goodwife and Gina, who encourage her to question Gothel's sincerity, and Rapunzel comes up with her own defences for Gothel so that she can poke through them herself.

I have some other thoughts about Rapunzel's hair and her powers, like how the story provides the interesting concept that her hair gets different powers with the different phases of the moon, but a lot of the powers are uhhh stupid and also I feel like it really robs the story of the whole gripping conflict of "Yes I'm Rapunzel Yes my hair kills people what of it".

In as far as just Rapunzel herself though, she still felt pretty in character nonetheless, and maybe that's all I can ask.

Flynn Rider / Eugene Fitzherbert

My boy I am so sorry. They neutered my boy.

Long story short: Eugene in this story is the sexy lamp. He contributes nothing to the plot except to be there for Rapunzel to drool over. And of course because he won't get any character development, he starts from the very beginning as a sweet soft boi with none of the Flynn Rider characterisation from the movie because we don't have time for that, he needs to be husband material stat.

His whole character is the colour green for Heterosexual Nonsense.

So, here's the problem. In the movie, there's not a lot of time for ~friendship~ between Rapunzel and Eugene because they kind of immediately see each other as a romantic prospect. And whatever, it's a movie and there's only so much time. But this book had the opportunity to take things a bit slower and instead chooses to make Rapunzel get jealous whenever Eugene and Gina interact and for her to be constantly wishing he was holding her hand.

Say what you will about Lost Lagoon, but it tells a good romance story just by virtue of not intending to be a romance story, because the author is trying to convey a strong bond between Rapunzel and Cassandra without using "and they kiss" as a cheatcode. What Once Was Mine says "he was a boy, she was a girl, could it be any more obvious?" and leaves it at that.

Now as for how this all pertains to Eugene's character? Well, it just robs him of any flavour. In the movie there's a clear distinction between Flynn and Eugene, when we learn Eugene's real name about halfway through. We see a clear difference between the Flynn we knew- kind of an asshole, wanated to drop Rapunzel off at the Snuggly Duckling and get rid of her- and Eugene, who is sincere and chooses Rapunzel as his New Dream in opposition to his Old Dream of living alone on an island with a bunch of money.

This version of Eugene is basically Eugene all the way through, because the plot doesn't really need Eugene there but he has to be there because it's a Tangled AU so there's no Rapunzel rescuing Flynn from the guards and healing his hand scene, he just loves her immediately and that's that. They have a little spat at one point but it's cleared up later and not because they actually communicate but because they kiss.

Rapunzel only learns Eugene's real name at the very end of the story, and gives a speech about how Eugene is the real him, but it's just so flat because 'Flynn' has been sincere this whole time? Anyway he does nothing of value for the entire story except be there for Rapunzel to lust after. Eugene I'm so sorry.

Gothel

Gothel's sort of the Big Bad and is characterised as an abusive asshole, the usual. I wish there were a bit more nuance to her character but then again in this story she's not just being passively evil- taking care of Rapunzel for selfish reasons but nevertheless maintaining the status quo- she's being actively evil in trying to sell Rapunzel off.

It's notably funny that Gothel sees the Countess Bathory and is like "what the fuck".

Anyway Gothel in this story also feels very weak in part because this Rapunzel is more critical and in part because this Rapunzel has a new support network. It's for that reason the Mother Knows Best Reprise scene doesn't really work, because the original has Gothel pit Rapunzel against Eugene, whereas she can't do that here so it remains a Gothel vs Rapunzel thing.

She gets a boring death as an epilogue addendum that someone rips out the Sundrop flower, which tbh? lame. It would be a lot more fun if it were open ended but I am also preferential to Rapunzel actually using her killer hair to kill someone. Please

Captain Justin Tregsburg

It's Max. He was a human but then he got turned into a horse. what the fuck you guys

#how did you spend your day

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sanstropfremir · 3 years ago

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episode 9 baby!!! dear lord that was a lot!!

frankly, i'm still in shock that i full on manifested an opera stage, AND it was a rock opera stage at that! plus i got a jazz stage AND a taemin stage??? if they’re pulling out all my favourites now then what on earth are they gonna do in the finale??? this was a very overwhelming crop of stages, i thought i was going to be prepared, but oh no i was not prepared. i'm just going to get right into it because this one is gonna be long and i have many words. i'll discuss in airing order first, and then put my personal rankings for this round at the end.

btob

costume

changsub, you absolute king. spectacular. stunning. incredible. zoot suit riot playing in my brain on repeat. will i finally get the zoot suit revival of my fucking dreams instead of this current drab ill-fitting suit trend? for those who are wondering why in the fuck changsub is dressed like that and what on earth i’m talking about, the specific cut of suit that he’s wearing is called a zoot suit, which were popular in mexican, black and italian american communities in the 30s and 40s, until they were outlawed by the united states war production board as a fabric rationing method as part of the war effort in 1942. there was a huge amount of mob violence surrrounding the wearing of them (there were actual zoot suit riots) as they were direct counter culture fashion to the predominant drab trends of white americans at the time. i'm actually very impressed they got a proper (modernized) cut of zoot suit instead of just putting him in an oversized one; there are actually specific structural differences. the pegged trouser legs, large should pads, and knee length single breasted jacket are key features, and they were often in much more flashy fabrics than a pinstripe, but they get points for effort. i wish they had put all of them in zoot suits but he’s playing the ‘lead’ actor so i will begrudgingly forgive them.

eunkwang those are the stupidest sleeve garters ive ever seen i love them never take them off. they’re like someone decided to repurpose a suspender in the worst way. excellent. i do love that they’ve got three of them in oxford saddle shoes, another great touch.

love the three piece and the fedora* on peniel. it's also in a relatively close period cut; waistcoasts (vests) were generally cut much higher in the neck pre-war, we only start seeing the neckline slide down in the 60s (i think? i don’t remember when exactly). also love to see a proper sleeve and jacket length, it's good practice to have at least a finger’s width of sleeve cuff visible ahead of the jacket sleeve when hanging at rest. also looks like there’s french cuffs on everyone, which is also great.

minhyuk in his slutty lowneck shirt....thank you. in addition to the zoot suit revival i would also like a revival of those ultra low necklines on mens’ shirts from like 2010-2011. i don’t think those are the same boots from the backdoor stage but those are some beautifully cut boots. i also loved the little details of his crewmember look, especially the chunky watch and the string bracelets; those are super realistic, i know so many crew with them and i had several for many years. and who doesn’t love a visible button fly?

none of any of the other costumes are period in any way shape or form but i’m forgiving it because there’s several layers of meta in this stage, and they explicitly based it on la la land, even though we don’t respect la la land in this house. do i wish they had gone more strictly period with at least the jazz club ‘actors’ a little more? absolutely, but i'm not mad about it.

set

again we’ve got a good delineation of the two different ‘stages,’ there’s the club itself in the smaller stage and the soundstage set in the larger space. you can pretty clearly see all the ‘pieces’ of the set on the soundstage, especially the obvious set painting techniques on false prosc frame and the window facade from that first little scene. also the you can see the castors (wheels) on all the setpieces too, which is another nice little versimilitudinous** (triple word score!) touch, as old hollywood movies were made still using theatre stagecraft techniques.

i love how the visual shorthand for ‘this is a set wink wonk’ is just...leaving a ladder on stage. i see it all the time and it's so funny. it doesn’t always make sense because as soon as there’s actors on set the ladders are the first thing cleared because actors cannot be trusted, but yes there are always ladders, so. also psa ladder safety is no joke, please be careful on ladders.

nice streamline of the mnet deco into the club. i’m consistently surprised at how well the designers have been able to mask it or use it to their advantage, because in the normal kingdom stage lighting it is SO obvious and stylistic that it always sticks out.

i'm going to ignore the fact that they implied changsub and miyeon were drinking wine out of martini glasses.

lighting

no complaints, it does its job. everything is visible and super clear. love that the ‘scene’ changes are made through the lighting, it's a really simple and effective device to change atmosphere. purple/blue/amber are the most flattering colours on human skin and that’s why you see it so commonly in stage lighting. also blue/lavendar is the best way to show nighttime/moonlight.

really nice and subtle projection work, especially with the billboard bit and the blue moon sign in the club. despite being obviously meta/’world breaking’ it’s actually very seamless and fits well into the flow of the stage.

sound

i love love love the big band feel in the intro, combined with the piano lead. very duke ellington, as all things should be.

no complaints. i love big band. i love eunkwang’s voice. i have nothing else to say.

staging

i LOVE this movie within a movie within a performance meta nonsense! it's such a fun concept and it is exactly what i wanted ikon’s first round stage to be! i also love to see btob consistently coming up with concepts that are inventive and fun and allow them to showcase their technical performance skills without the aerobics the younger groups are putting themselves through. it provides a really lovely variety and it just goes to show that you can make impressive, dramatic stages without having to be serious or ‘dark.’

i do wish they had leaned into the band director/lead singer with eunkwang a bit more; this could have been a really excellent place for a tap number a la the nicholas brothers or an homage to cab calloway. i know i know this was meant to be la la land themed but la la land is a cheap and whitewashed version of jazz and look me right in the eyes and tell me this isn’t the greatest tap routine of all time. i know i’ve typed this out somewhere before but la la land is just a conglomeration of old hollywood tropes and so stylistically cheap that this would have such a better visual core if they had actually looked back at the real old hollywood musicals like stormy weather. even singing in the rain and an american in paris have such phenomenal visuals and are really beautiful examples of the scope you can pull off with a limited technical capacity and sticking to these old techniques.

now that i'm thinking about it, oh my GOD i would DIE for a lindy hop routine in kpop PLEASE. i know it would never happen because kpop doesn’t like partner dancing and not a single kpop boy has the chops but oh you think fourth gen has too many acrobatics?

this got off track but i think you see my point.

---

ateez

costume

these are really sharply cut suits. and the detail work on the beading??? so beautiful. i'm disappointed that they gave me a rock opera stage without the true ridiculousness of rock opera costuming, because they could have pushed this a lot farther if they really wanted. a tragic lack of gay little outfits, seonghwa’s lace choker is just not enough! two favourite suits: hongjoong’s and yunho’s.

that being said i do actually really like these. this stage is actually very modern opera with a kpop twist and i'm a little surprised by that? i continue to be impressed by the ateez team who are clearly doing their research.

i'm absolutely not going back through their stages to check all the choreography but i wonder if you can track all the ‘wound’ placements to places they’ve been ‘hit.’ i wouldn’t put it past them to have put that thought in but also i’m not expecting that much either.

who is this white grim reaper bdsm executioner chain arm man. where did he come from. i have no idea and i love it.

why is honjoong blindfolded. it was such a fast beat, if youre gonna blindfold someone give it a little longer and some more obvious narrative weight!

seonghwa does that quickchange, runs across that massive stage to the smaller set, and gets into places in like 45 seconds. it's not the hardest quickchange in the world but still, under a minute is fast for any quickchange, especially when there’s travel time involved. i think the fastest, most complex quickchange i ever did was in university which was a 50s cocktail dress into a flannel and culottes with a shoe, hair, and jewelry change in 35 seconds. and that took three dressers. quickchanges are always impressive. the added bonus of this review being later is that i can specifically reference that you can see him book it the fuck off stage in the full cam!

cute moment with the backup dancers dressed in costumes from the previous stages. i'm assuming this is a time travel reference? i'll get more into my thoughts on this in the staging section. regardless, love to see that iconic seonghwa moment again.

set

this is such a restricted space! they really pared down their dancing space with those staircases and ....arms? honestly i have NO clue what these are supposed to be. the only thing i can maybe think of is flying buttresses??? but why?? i mean, i'm 90% sure theyre just there for drama and i agree but i do still have questions.

there’s a lot of moving parts in this set? the buttresses, and the upstage centre staircase. i don’t think the staircase is totally automated because i spotted some dancers securing it in place, but it’s still a moving part. i do really like that we get that expanding upwards energy, because it's really tough to get functional level movement in this kind of a performance, mostly because of its length and because it moves so quickly. so seeing the downward vertical movement and then the upward movement was actually a really nice visual contrast that made use of how tall those fucking ceilings are, and the fact that they had less horizontal space. in sort of similar way to sf9’s jealousy stage, using long, narrow vertical lines really makes it feel like a castle space. the interiors of castles, especially the really old ones, are a lot smaller than you think they would be.

i’ve actually seen that type of small house/tent/thing several times in various types of performances before, but i think this is the first time i’ve seen it used as a time travel device (other than in the say my name mv). aesthetically it's a bit incongruent but i dont really mind because i'm used to watching rock operas that look a lot weirder than this.

lighting

there is so much happening. i have NO clue what the projections are doing. i dont hate it though, so that’s a plus? there’s a clear-ish colour arc even if it does get a bit funky in the middle, which is why the projections dont feel as insanely distracting as some of the other stages we’ve seen.

the climax is a perfect example of how to light a busy stage with primarily red but still maintain clarity on the performers. a little bit of red goes a long way; the spark stage from last week would have looked so much better if they had done what the ateez designers did here.

sound

i know it's only ode to joy, but answer already gets my motor running and then i get so gassed by the guitars and then by the time those vocals come in i'm inconsolable. i don’t know why i wasn’t expecting a rock opera stage but i'm so glad i got that surprise because i genuinely love rock operas so much. it's two of the most dramatic genres in music, what more could you possibly want?

staging

the choreo for answer is so goofy that I'm kinda glad this was mostly terrible mnet boom shots. i love it, but you can't deny that it's goofy. i spotted a couple of moves from their other choreos as well?

choreographing dance fights is just as difficult as choreographing real fights and i think they did a fairly good job here. i think it was a solid mix of dance and conflict that erred on the side of dramatic rather than accurate and i prefer that over trying to be ‘realistic.’ i’ve only ever seen one truly realistic fight scene on stage and that was for a deeply naturalist play (boring and a waste of the medium), but the best fight scene i’ve ever seen was in the prague national ballet’s adaptation of kafka’s the trial where three ballet dancers beat the absolute snot out of the main character with the most beautiful leg extensions. that whole show was probably one of the best pieces of dance i’ve ever seen, holy fuck it was so good.

despite how insane the music and the visuals were going, i actually really liked how sedate this was, on the part of ateez’s performance. there was a really sophisticated and resigned energy from them that is very different from what we’ve previously seen and i think that was a pretty admirable risk to take. reaching the top and then throwing away the crown? especially in a competition where every other stage has involved stealing crowns or royalty and there’s a group competing that got here through that very concept? that shows a real maturity, peace of mind, and foresight that i did not at all expect from a bunch of 22 year olds.

here we come to a very interesting comparison. both ateez and tbz are very heavily leaning on previously established group lore. we all know my thoughts on why it isn’t working for tbz, but here’s why i think it is working for ateez: it's because it doesn’t matter to the audience’s understanding of the stage. i had absolutely no fucking clue what was going on the first time i watched this, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying the music and all the weird shit they were doing. i totally believed that they understood what was going on. there’s a loose enough established conflict right at the beginning that draws us in, and really it doesn’t matter who they're fighting because they win in the end. the key here is that they’re so earnest. they believe 100% in every move they make on that stage. there’s no winks to camera, there’s not a drop of irony. they really deeply care about the ridiculousness of it all and that’s what makes it work. i sure as fuck dont know what’s going on, but i can see that they do, and i trust that. this is what i meant when i talked about convincing the audience you belong on stage in my stage presence post. i’ve never once believed that juyeon was anything other than an idol. he’s talented and very beautiful and he may occasionally stand on that stage like he owns it but it's always as juyeon. as an idol. but when hongjoong flaps around in that gigantic fur coat i 100% believe he’s a pirate captain. I believe he’s a punk rebel leader. i believe him a resigned king. there’s always a level of irony you have to fight as a performer because we all start from a place of disbelief. acting is not just lying to the audience, it's lying to yourself too. and if you succeed in convincing yourself? well, you’re already halfway to convincing us.

i checked it out because i wanted to see if they did the blindfold how i expected them to and was genuinely surprised by hongjoong’s fancam. the boy is EMOTING even when he knew the camera wasn’t on him; that’s a real dedication to craft.

ok i'm finished talking about this stage, this is over two pages in my document, there’s so many things i have not covered here but that’s fine, i'm quite sure any further thoughts will end up out there at some point.

---

sf9

costume

let’s get it out of the way......crop top. crop top? crop top. crop top.

ok, besides the crop top, i think i might actually like the backup dancer outfits more...? i find mannequin adjacent looks really fascinating and i thought there was a lot more they could have done here in connecting the two thematically. i actually think a change of costume on the boys would have been very interesting, especially because there was a lot of inference and direct reference to changes of colour.

ALL the backup dancers are wearing the same wig and i LOVE that.

special mention zuho’s.....jacket? the right idea but it absolutely should have been one of those extreme french cut bodysuits, you COWARDS. don’t come at me with this ‘male version of venus’ if you don’t have your whole torso out! come on!

set

not sure if this is meant to be a department store, a factory, or a white cube gallery. honestly you could make the case that they’re all the same place anyways. more on this later.

i loved the movator and wish they had used it more! that sequence was so good and they could have done some more interesting repetition sequences to further highlight the ‘sameness’/the breaking of that sameness.

i feel like the set could have been used more as a whole? i would have loved to see some mannequin interactions with those boxes, because all they did was dump colour everywhere.

....why did they feel the need to include the rain bit? i know it's likely because it's in the mv and at the 2018 dream concert taemin does perform move in the rain, but with the standing still and the box walls with the words it just looks like a department store ad. which i...dont think is what they were intending?

lighting

nothing really to say here. it has a similar feel to the mayfly rap stage, which is fine because the lighting for that was good. i could tell what was going on all the time and that’s the most important part. notable standouts are the lips sequence, that's fun use of pop iconography and very effective, and the scanning lasers at the beginning.

the repeating sequence in the edm dance break is actually done pretty simply, it's just what happens when you point a camera that’s livestreaming to a monitor directly at that monitor. it's a very cool effect and it was neat to see it used intentionally, especially with the handheld leds.

actually i also really liked the lightbox tables, those were cool.

sound

the remix was fine for the most part, it was about what i expected it to sound like. i did however greatly dislike that unnecessary edm break in the middle. what was the point of that? it didn’t add anything to the overall sound or arc of the stage because it was SO out of place. there was no connective tissue around it.

oh i was also not a fan of the effect on zuho’s mic. no one else had a discernible vocal effect so it felt a little out of place. also for some reason his cadence and tone right at the end made me think of some of the voices that bo burnam uses for his vocal masque sketches/songs, especially repeat stuff, weirdly? took me right the fuck out of it. i listened to it again after i slept and i’m still getting it, so maybe i’m just going insane so best ignore this part.

staging

loved the mannequin tree, not a clue why it was there.

do actually think this is a successful cover because it does what i was hoping it would, which is take move completely out of the taemin context and put it into an entirely new one. however, i’m really struggling to figure out what exactly that new context is? and what theyre trying to say with it?

obviously they went for a ‘show your own colours/individuality’ vibe, like i said in the set section, where exactly is this supposed to be? from the start i get factory/mechanized environment, which is fine and grand because mannequins and making repetitive motions and products and all that, makes sense. but then there’s stacked shelving type units happening and curtains and that combined with the mannequins give me pretty big department store vibes, which is also fine, because that’s still a comment on commercialization and the mass production of product. but then we get to the movator and the repetitive movements of the dancers say pretty clearly factory, but the lighting and projections are very pop art referential, plus combining that with the white set, just makes me think of an art gallery. so now is this a comment on the commercialization and commidification of contemporary art? are they making a statement about being ‘real’ artists among the others who have lost the critical understanding of why pop art was even a thing in the first place? and then the rain bit at the end literally looks like a department store ad, so are they then making another statement that they still are that packaged product? maybe the episode has more clarity in it but i’m genuinely a bit baffled by what the underlying statement is here.

i suspect it is not as deep as i'm making it, but i did say that i was likely to be hyper critical of this stage AND i am a grad student, so here we are.

---

tbz

costume

ok of all the ‘fourth gen’ style costumes we’ve seen, i actually like these ones more than most. i'm not entirely clear on the theme but i'm assuming it's meant to be post apocalyptic, and i'll take that.

backup dancers in black!!! we’re beyond this!!!

this will be a running theme with this stage, but i’m disappointed these don’t have more depth.

set

compared to every other stage, the set here seems especially plain. there’s so little set dec that it's disappointing. i do like the movement of the pieces themselves combined with the blocking; that first slide underneath the arches was slick and i would have liked to have seen more of that.

yea ok the big snake was cool and also a fairly complex build, but the transitions around it were a bit awkward for my tastes. especially the turn around, why did they even show that at all? you have control over what the audience sees, you can totally not show scenic transitions. skz were super smart about hiding theirs in last week’s episode.

also if you have a bigass puppet like that, i wanna see some more movement from it! it doesn’t have to be complex, we literally just saw a kraken balloon arm wave around aimlessly, but at least there was movement! that snake had a long ass body, why didn’t they at least take a pseudo dragon dance movement with it, that would have been such fun to watch with the iridescent scales. there was a lot of opportunity here!

lighting

i don’t hate it but also.... not a lot to say about it on the whole.

there were two really smart ideas here, the first being the front projection section, which i was SO glad to see! i explained in a previous review, but the projections in kingdom are not actually projections per se, because they’re actually massive led screens. there are two common types of projections in performance, rear projection and front projection. rear projection is when the projector is behind the screen, and front projection is ‘normal’ projection. rear projection can produce a crisper image because you have full control of the light values, because the projector is in a separate room from the performance space. but the downsides are that the projector has to be in a separate room from the performance space. so if you’re short on real estate, it's not ideal. front projection is much more common, because the tech is a lot cheaper and easier to access, especially now, and it requires less real estate because you can ceiling mount about the audience (you can move a projector wherever, this is just the most common spot in commercial theatres). but! in order to get an actually crisp image, you have to be really careful with your light bounce. it’s exactly the same principle as how you kinda can't see a projected screen when you have all the lights turned on, but when you turn them off it's a lot clearer. front projection works best in pitch dark, so when you use it in a theatre you gotta be smart about it. i use front projection a lot in my personal art practice as a singular light source, and that’s what tbz did here in that traveling/snake intro sequence. it’s a really fun technique that they used as a good gimmick because it’s not something we’ve seen before, and you get some great shadow effects because the projector is throwing light directionally at the performers (they have it set up close to the floor, it’s probably on a wheeled cart of some kind). however i did not like the snake intro. a bit too cheesy and out of place, especially because the asset quality didn’t match the rest of landscapes that we have been seeing.

the second smart idea, which is partially also a set and blocking thing but whatever, was that final image of the eclipse within the circle architecture with all the members standing in front of it. it was a great shot and a great ending pose, but it felt like a concept photo. like someone had that image as the idea that they then built the stage around, instead of a narrative first and then imagery after.

sound

this remix had SO much promise! those first two minutes were SO GOOD. i love that dirty discordant strings bit, it's gross and right up my alley. but it really fell off in the back half and i'm sad about that.

staging

i'm sorry tbz but.....what did you actually do differently than exo here? with the exception of the continual game of thrones references? nothing here felt transcendentally different from the original monster. and especially coming RIGHT after sf9’s move, which did go beyond its original context. this feels more like an awards show stage cover than a stage at the level of the others we’ve seen just this episode.

again like with the skz stage, there’s no conflict here. no tension. yes they do a great job covering the dance but it just isn’t enough! this is obviously personal preference and i'm sure lots of people liked the fact that it was uncomplicated, but even just a hint of narrative tension could have pushed this into more engaging territory. and if they didn’t want to do that, i would have loved to see them make up for that with extra visual spectacle. this is the no limits round! ikon is putting a full jungle on stage and these are grey cubes!

i think this is a perfect example of what i talked about at the end of my tbz section in my episode four review; this is a good performance, there are good elements at play and good ideas at their genesis, but the core of the issue is that nothing about this is transformative. all of the ideas here are just exaggerations of the original song. fuck, the snake was even IN the mv! and they didn’t even include the best part which is the lip chains! ive said before and i'll say it again; being a good artist has two steps, the first is understanding the material and its context, and the second is elevating the material from that context and synthesizing something new. tbz are really good at the first step, but terrible at the second.

---

ranking

btob - the cleanest and the most fun of the round. everything i wanted.

sf9 - fun and a good cover, despite being conceptually baffling.

ateez - very extra dramatic nonsense with an unexpected dose of sincerity. and it’s rock opera, of course i love it.

skz - fun, with some good thematic devices but generally lacking in arc. also australian accents, that’s an automatic ding.

tbz - honestly the first two minutes of the remix and the costume are holding this above 6th. it just wasn’t fully formed.

ikon - aesthetically this is a great set design and although i do love the opening and closing moments, everything else scrapes me the wrong way. super personal preference here, i’m not expecting anyone else to agree with me.

i feel like my rankings were probably pretty easy to guess if you’ve been around reading the reviews for long enough. i do have very specific tastes after all. i know sf9 ranked first in the episode but i have no idea what the other slots are. i’ll find out when i watch the episode in a couple of days, but i think yea a first for sf9 is fair. i do think its mostly because it’s a taemin song and you have to do something horrendous in order to fuck up a taemin song, but there is a lot of thought and work that went into that stage.

ok i'm done now, sorry this was later than usual, but i was busier and there were four stages that i had to review. also technical difficulties because tumblr is a garbage platform and nothing works properly. comments/questions/opinions always welcome, i know i didn't expand on a couple of points that i could have so hopefully y'all have some thoughts too!

* the type of hat that ~society~ has told you is a fedora is actually a trilby. what peniel is wearing is a real fedora, i felt the need to correct this unjust hat malignment.

** meaning ‘the appearance of being true or real.’ you do sometimes hear it used by normal people, but it’s more commonly used as a descriptor in film and theatre. it’s also one of the five rules of neoclassical theatre, which are: versimilitude, purity of form, five act structure, decorum, and purpose. the most prominent playwrights from that era are moliere and racine if youre interested in what those look like in an actual text.

#kingdom #kingdom review #btob #ateez #stray kids #the boyz #sf9 #tumblr is so broken it would NOT let me save this as a draft #does my constant hyperlinking make you angry tumblr? too bad im gonna keep doing it #i played in a jazz band in school for seven years #which is another indicator as to why i am like this #one of the first songs i remember learning was zoot suit riot #i have very strong memories of yelling RIOT during performances #i will however forever question the logic of our band teacher making us learn a song written by 'the cherry poppin daddies'#christ on a bicycle this is TEN pages #and it took a full eight hours last night and then i did like two hours of editing after i woke up #maybe i should go back to bed #ah i forgot to tag ikon again lmao #ikon #kpop analysis #text #if there are any spelling errrors do not tell me im tired of reading this #im pretty sure this is my longest review so far i decided to hate myself and did a wordcount #its 5.2K you're welcome you better get a snack for this one #i hope this is an interesting read for people ive lost all objectivity at this point #pls enjoy my semi-comprehensible word vomit!

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skellebonez · 4 years ago

Note

Let's have some fluff. 14 or 22 with Xiaotian and Wukong

Here's a fun fact: During my last rewatch of the series I took the time to pay attention to all of the times Monkey King addressed MK. The only time Monkey King calls MK by name in the English version is when it's Jin pretending to be him in the Calabash. He only refers to him by Kid or Bud. ALWAYS. What I saw and could pick up by ear of the Mandarin version? Total opposite. Every time an English line had him say Kid or Bud he called him Xiaotian like the other characters. (Xiaotian also uses Sun Wukong in the lines where he called him Monkey King so either that is what he always refers to him as or he also calls him something else I could not pick up by ear. I’m going with the former for now.)

Also you get both because they go SUPER well together!

“You are my family.”/ “You made me a better person. Thank you.”

"Xiaotian, you forgot your jacket!" Sun Wukong shouted, throwing it at a force hopefully not enough to knock the poor guy over.

Luckily he had calculated this properly and when the jacket hit the Monkie Kid smack dab in the face it only made him yelp and tilt him over slightly before he managed to straighten up. Xiaotian pulled the jacket down, laughing. "Aw man, I can't believe I almost forgot this! Thanks daaaa-" Both of their eyes widened as they realize what he was about to say and Xiaotian flailed wildly before continuing. "-aaAAAANG I just remembered Pigsy needed me to pick up another shift tonight ok thanks BYE!"

Well. That was new. And he only had a few... days to mull that over. Oh dear.

----------

“Sun Wukong!” Xiaotian yelled as he landed on the sandy beach surrounding Mount Huaguo. “I’m back for training! Hello? ...hello?” He looked around, taking in the surprisingly empty surroundings. Lately the Monkey King had been greeting him upon arrival, either ready to start a sparring match or with some kind of lesson or instruction to tell him on their way to wherever they were training for the day.

Now there wasn’t even a single baby monkey around.

“Sun Wukong..?” He whispered out in confusion, making his way to the waterfall that hid the little house the ancient being now called home (he still had no idea what happened to his palace, he was certain all the stories said there was a palace back there). There were almost no monkeys around here, and the few he did see seemed to be chittering amongst themselves.

The walk to the little house past the waterfall was a wildly different visage. Monkeys littered the entire area, similarly chittering amount themselves, and many seemed to be just... amused? Somehow they seemed amused.

He’d never been invited inside the house before. He had never been told he wasn’t allowed inside, but he had never been invited in before. But as he stood at the slightly open entryway he smelled... something sweet? He leaned forward, breathing in deeply...

And then he was being jolted forward by the weight of multiple monkeys jumping on his back, seeming to laugh as he rushed forward and pinwheeled his arms to keep from hitting the walls or falling over completely. As soon as they were there they left, rushing off and slamming the door shut.

“Hey!”

“Xiaotian? Is that you?” The man froze, realizing he had been caught and this was probably the monkey army’s plan all along. “Aw, sh-, UH... come here, I didn’t realize I lost track of time...”

Odd... the Monkey King sounded... sheepish? This was plenty to get Xiaotian to venture further into the house. He took in his surroundings as he did so and it was... plain. Shockingly normal. He didn’t know if he expected portraits or treasures or what, but it just looked like a normal old fashioned house. If a little messy in some places.

Eventually he realize that the Monkey King was inside the house’s kitchen... in an apron... in front of a steaming basket... which he was pulling steamed buns from and piling on a nearby plate.

“Uh... What?”

“I made snacks!”

Yeah that... answered nothing. At all. “You... never make snacks?”

“Sit down, Xiaotian, I think we need to talk.”

And if those words didn’t make him feel instant anxiety like nothing else. There were so many things this could mean. Was he not doing good enough? Did he need to take training more seriously? Did he mess up super bad? DID SUN WUKONG REALIZE HE ALMOST CALLED HIM DAD AND GET OFFENDED!? HE DIDN’T MEAN IT(at least he didn’t mean to say it) THAT JUST SLIPPED OUT!

Xiaotian did not voice any of this and instead sat down and tried to keep himself from dying inside. The second he was seated the Monkey King placed a plate with a bun on it, slightly purple filling showing through a small slit on one side.

“It’s taro,” Sun Wukong explained, sitting down with his own plate. “I’ve been wanting to eat taro for a while, you like taro right? You’re not allergic to it? Are you allergic to anything?”

“No... I’m not,” Xiaotian said slowly, picking up the bun to take a careful bite. It was slightly under seasoned, but properly cooked and shocking light. “It’s good.”

“Good.” Wukong took a bit of his own bun, making a pleased sound. “So... Dad?” Barely able to keep himself from choking, Xiaotian quickly swallowed down his bite and was prepared to apologize when his mentor continued. “I think I might ok with that eventually.”

There was a moment of silence between them, Wukong looking pointedly at his student who sat in stunned silence. “Look... Xiaotian. I’m going to be honest here, when I took you on as my student I didn’t expect to get... attached. At least, not to this degree. I expected us to maybe become buddies after you were ready, hang out every once in a while. But I think that was kind of stupid of me to assume. I don’t really let myself get attached to anyone anymore, not after DBK and I fought 500 years ago, but I used to get attached so easily. I thought of Pigsy and Sandy as my actual brothers once, DBK and I used to consider each other almost as close as brothers too along side a bunch of other demons, and now I... I’ve changed.”

He took a bite of his bun, looking off to the side and nodding to himself as if making up his mind about something. “Not in the last 500 years, though that changed me too. I think you changed me. Training you, getting to know you more as Xiaotian than as ‘my successor’ made me reevaluate a lot of stuff when I wasn’t even aware of it. I think of you first over myself now, I worry if you’re going to come back hurt, I started actually keeping my lawyer’s emails up to date instead of letting them die a slow death in my inbox! You made me a better person. Thank you. As far as I’m concerned? You are my family... If you want to be. Was that too mu-WHY ARE YOU CRYING!?”

Xiaotian sniffed loudly, tears streaming down his face against his will. “Do you mean it? We’re family?” He hadn’t known until that moment how badly he had wanted to hear something like this deep down, even if he still didn’t dare allow himself to think anyone would think of him as family he still hoped.

And Wukong smiled softly, standing to pull his student into a strong hug. “Yeah. Yeah, we are... but yeah, I dunno if I’m ready to be ‘dad’ though.”

Xiaotian snorted through his tears. “We can start with ‘vaguely fatherly figure’?”

“Yeah. Let’s start with that.”

125 notes · View notes

lillywillow · 4 years ago

Text

Paper Faces on Parade

Summary: A royal masquerade is being held with the purpose of finding you a husband, however, your heart is already being held by one man

Word Count: 1457

Square Filled: Royal AU

Pairings: Bucky x Female Reader

Warnings: An assassination attempt

Written for @star-spangled-bingo

From a young age, you were trained to take over the throne from your mother. You were taught everything from politics, to dancing, to sword fighting. Your mother wanted you to be fully prepared for anything a queen would be expected. When you came of age, she had been pushing you to find a husband, which was a royal requirement. Every potential suitor your mother set up ended the same way, a polite kiss on the hand and a broken promise to meet again. There was only one man you had in mind for your royal consort; your best friend and confidant; James Buchannan “Bucky” Barnes.

Ever since you were children, the pair of you had been close. Bucky had trained to be in the knights and worked his way up from page to sergeant. He had taught you to wield a sword and ride a horse. Whenever you had dance lessons, you requested him as your partner. Every chance either of you had, you used it to be with each other. After he had lost his arm in the war, you spent every second you could by his side and went as far as to resource a mechanical one for him so he could resume his position.

When your mother had announced that she was holding a royal ball with the sole purpose of you choosing a husband, there was no doubt in your mind who would be your choice by the end of the night.

The night of the ball had finally arrived, the night you had been partly dreading. It wasn’t that you hated these kinds of events per say, it was just that they were full of the same tedious characters you forced to mingle with. There were the clout chasers who were more interested in being seen with you than anything you actually had to say. Then there were the old blowhards who believed you should be seen, not heard and be grateful whatever man was chosen for you. In those cases you would oh so politely remind them that’s not the way your mother did it and you wouldn’t stand for it either.

One of the things you did enjoy about these formal gatherings is seeing everyone in their finery. Fabrics shimmered and flashed and jewellery sparkled in the light. There was a certain magic about it, especially tonight with everyone wearing masks. Despite the fact their faces were hidden, it was easy to spot who was whom.

Surrounded by a group of women was the inventor from the noble house of Stark. He was dressed in a metallic costume of gold and red, possibly one of his own creations.

Then there was Countess Natasha Romanoff. Her dress was obsidian save for the silver stitching which was woven throughout the fabric like spider-webs. In her hand was a plain black mask on a stick which had the symbol of a red hourglass.

You spotted one of the Asgardian princes in an emerald and gold costume with a feathered raven mask. He was speaking to Lady Wanda Maximoff. Her scarlet gown billowed around her like smoke, a lace butterfly mask daintily perched upon her face.

You could see the Wakandan king in a traditionally carved African mask in the shape of a panther. He was wearing all black although there was something unusual about the fabric in the way it shimmered purple under the light.

Throughout the night, you danced with many eligible bachelors. Some were sweet and genuine, others you found utterly droll but the one person you wanted to dance with eluded you.

Eventually, you managed to sneak away to the veranda to steal a few minutes alone to yourself. You were enjoying the cool night air when you heard a voice behind you.

“I thought I might find you here, princess.”

Smiling, you turned around to face the person you had been longing to see all night. Bucky was clothed in all white with silver trimming, complete with a white wolf mask. You thought he looked rather dashing.

“It was starting to get quite stuffy in there...”

“Indeed,” he said, joining you and placing his hands on the veranda railing, his gloved fingers brushing against yours. “Have you danced with many tonight?”

“Too many to count... none of them have reached my standards.”

“You must have pretty high standards...”

“That I do... in fact, I have already made my choice in who I want to make my consort.”

“Is that so?”

“It is... you may already know him. He’s tall, handsome, has beautiful blue eyes, he’s in the knights...”

“I see... well I wish you and Steve a long and happy life together.” You playfully nudged him.

“I think we both know who I’m referring to...”

“I think I do too... but I’m afraid to let myself hope...” When Bucky heard you were supposed to be choosing the man you were going to marry, it broke his heart.

“Then how about a dance?”

“Shouldn’t I be the one to ask you?”

“Do you want to dance with me or not?”

“Yes, your highness,” his voice had a playful lilt to it. He offered his arm to you and escorted you to the ballroom floor as the music began.

As you glided across the floor with Bucky, it felt like you were the only two people in the room amidst the swirling colours and glittering lights. There was no denying it. You were totally and hopelessly in love with each other. When the song ended, your lips moved closer to his but a voice interrupted you.

“May I have this next dance, princess?” You turned to see a stranger fully clad in black with red tentacles embellished on the shirt and a mask in the form of a red skull. There was something about this man that sent chills down your spine, however, it was your duty to dance with every gentleman who asked. You knew almost everyone at this party but you couldn’t place him. He was clearly skilled at the waltz but his grip was tight and hurting you. Bucky watched his every move and stayed close by just in case.

“I have been very anxious to meet you princess...”

It all happened so fast. The stranger pulled a knife concealed in his belt and brought it down towards your heart. Bucky quickly ran over, managing to push you away and put himself between you and the assailant. The knife let out a sickening clink as it got stuck in the panels of Bucky’s arm. All you could do was stand there in shock, the palace guards rushing over to apprehend the attacker. The man tried to get away and in the scuffle, his mask clattered to the ground revealing his identity. It was Johan Schmitt, an enemy to the royal family and leader to a group of rebels. He screamed profanities and antiroyalist speech as he was dragged away to the dungeons to be dealt with later.

“Are you alright, princess? Did he harm you at all?” a nearby servant asked. You shakily showed your bruised wrist and they ushered you to a doctor. You turned back to see Steve helping Bucky remove the knife from his shoulder.

From that point on, the party was well and truly over.

...

The following day, the palace was abuzz with gossip about the events that unfolded at the ball. There was only one thing on your mind. You went to your mother to let her know your decision.

“Mother, I have made my choice... I want Sir James Buchannan Barnes as my consort.”

“Are you sure you don’t have false feelings because he saved your life last night?”

“No, Mother. I have been in love with Sir James since I was a teenager. He has proven himself worthy to be my partner time and time again, not just to me but to the kingdom. He is a knight of high status and by our laws; he is eligible for my hand. Nothing you can say or do will change my mind.”

“This is your final answer?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“Then it is decided. I will make the appropriate arrangements. You may go.” You couldn’t stop smiling, having to stop yourself from running through the halls to go tell Bucky the good news.

In the months that followed, you and Bucky were finally married. You finally got the man of your dreams and Bucky got the princess of his.

#ssb2021 #royal au #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #Female reader #Princess #Knights #masquarade #queens #costumes #masks #Marvel #Marvel fic #Paper Faces on Parade #Royal Ball #assassination attempt #royal marriage

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loyalannister · 4 years ago

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UNDER THE LENS : Eddard I, A Game of Thrones

Eddard I, A Game of Thrones, starts with the arrival of King Robert Baratheon and his retinue to Winterfell and ends in the crypts where the dead Lords of the castle stare with disapproving eyes as Robert asks Ned Stark to be his Hand.

• Tyrion is present in the King's party and not lingering in a brothel when we see him for the first time in the series. Tyrion is in the Winterfell library when we first see him in his own PoV. Book! Tyrion does frequent brothels often but it speaks volumes about what the author wanted the reader's first impression of Tyrion to be in contrast to how the writers of Thrones wanted to present Tyrion to the viewers for the first time.

• I know that this excerpt is often considered as foreshadowing for Jon Snow becoming King:

Ned jested [...] “Kings are a rare sight in the north.”

Robert snorted. “More likely they were hiding under the snow. Snow, Ned!”

But also it's ironic that Ned says Kings are a rare sight in the North when his own son Robb will soon be declared King in the North although Ned himself wouldn't be alive to see it :(

• This PoV is rich in imagery/references to the dead Starks, the crypts, the Others but also it provides hope : hope that the Starks will eventually triumph against against all odds :

“The Others take your mild snows,” Robert swore. “What will this place be like in winter? I shudder to think.”

“The winters are hard,” Ned admitted. “But the Starks will endure. We always have.”

Unbeknownst to Robert, his words will come true - the Others will take away the mild snows and bring a much harsher & fiercer winter which the readers will shudder to read about in A Dream of Spring.

Later when Ned tells Robert to return to the castle from the crypts as his wife would surely be waiting, Robert says, “The Others take my wife,” - will this come true as well? (This actually reminds me of a favorite personal theory of mine which I was lowkey hoping to see in the show - Jaime would kill Cersei after being converted to a wight, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of the valonqar making it seem less like a heroic deed on Jaime's part and more like a gruesome one!)

• George does an excellent job of giving the crypts of Winterfell a very horror filled mystical vibe in this PoV - the crypts are almost personified in every other line starting from the very stairs leading down to them :

He could feel the chill coming up the stairs, a cold breath from deep within the earth.

[...]

He swept the lantern in a wide semicircle. Shadows moved and lurched.

The stone statues in the crypts seem to come alive eerily as the light from Ned's lantern illuminate them:

The shifting shadows made the stone figures seem to stir as the living passed by.

When Robert laughs uproariously at a joke, his laughter echoes through the darkness and :

[...] all around them the dead of Winterfell seemed to watch with cold and disapproving eyes.

In fact, George chooses to end the chapter on a very ominous note, as if the inhabitants of the crypt know the fate of Ned if he fulfils Robert's wish to be his Hand:

He looked at the stone figures all around them, breathed deep in the chill silence of the crypt. He could feel the eyes of the dead. They were all listening, he knew. And winter was coming.

• Jon Snow's parentage has long been a subject of discussion and debate in the fandom. Although it's widely believed that he is Rhaegar's son, other theories claim that he is Ned and Ashara's son.

Robert Baratheon had always been a man of huge appetites, a man who knew how to take his pleasures. That was not a charge anyone could lay at the door of Eddard Stark.

If Ned had really been with Ashara and birthed Jon as a bastard, it's unlikely that he would think along these lines. Although the events occuring at the Tower of Joy unfold later as a part of Ned's fever dream, in this PoV, he distinctly recalls Lyanna in his full senses beseeching him to promise her something (it might not be about a son, some might argue, but then what is the 'promise' all about? It definitely seems like a dead end if it's not about Jon.)

• Aside from their beauty and wildness, one Arya/Lyanna parallel I always really liked was when Arya searched for some purple and green flowers & brought them to Ned while they were crossing the Neck on their way to King's Landing. This would have undoubtedly reminded Ned of Lyanna:

“I bring her flowers when I can,” he said. “Lyanna was…fond of flowers.”

• The long dead lords of Winterfell are associated with further ominous symbolism:

By ancient custom an iron longsword had been laid across the lap of each who had been Lord of Winterfell, to keep the vengeful spirits in their crypts. The oldest had long ago rusted away to nothing, leaving only a few red stains where the metal had rested on stone. Ned wondered if that meant those ghosts were free to roam the castle now.

Not only would the iron longswords keep the dead Lords at bay, they would protect any possible people hiding in the crypts from the Others as well! As Old Nan puts it:

“They [the Others] were cold things, dead things, that hated iron and fire and the touch of the sun...”

Interestingly, some swords are missing from the stone statues currently as they were taken by Bran and his companions while fleeing from the ruined castle.

• Early on in the series, it becomes evident that Rhaegar did not rape Lyanna; Ned doesn't harbour any ill thoughts about Rhaegar when Robert speaks about him. Furthermore, he remains silent & his inner monologue provides no ill feelings about the silver prince :

“In my dreams, I kill him every night,” Robert admitted. “A thousand deaths will still be less than he deserves.”

There was nothing Ned could say to that.

• Rhaegar's rubies are brought up time and again in the series with various people actively seeking them out:

When Ned had finally come on the scene, Rhaegar lay dead in the stream, while men of both armies scrabbled in the swirling waters for rubies knocked free of his armor.

Arya and Mycah later team up to look for Rhaegar's rubies on the ford and later in A Feast for Crows, the Elder Brother informs Brienne that six rubies have been washed up with the water. Might these rubies have any significance in the future? Can they be used as a glamour by someone to appear as Rhaegar?

• The Starks belong to Winterfell and Winterfell belongs to the Starks:

For a moment Eddard Stark was filled with a terrible sense of foreboding. This was his place, here in the north.

This is why, I feel extremely skeptical whenever I hear of King Bran endgame in the books. Bran is a Stark through and through, he is connected to Winterfell & the North like no one else. All signs point to him being King in the North rather than of entire Westeros. This is also why Sansa as Lady of the Vale in the end seems unlikely unless she marries someone from the Vale, given that Sansa herself has no claim to the Vale.

TRIVIA :

• Cersei Lannister rode to Winterfell in a wheelhouse pulled by forty (40) horses. It was too wide to pass through the gates of Winterfell.

• King Robert brought fruits from Highgarden for Ned to taste.

#asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #a song of ice and fire #asoiaf meta #loyalannister rereads asoiaf #Ned Stark under the lens #jon snow #Rhaegar targaryen #Lyanna Stark #my agot reread #text from loyalannister

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trashyswitch · 4 years ago

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The Adorable Slimy Stranger

Chapter 2: Holidays With The Sides (& Pumpkin!)

The sides are nearing Christmas, and are getting ready to celebrate and share the joy with their new companion, Pumpkin!

This fanfic was suggested by an anonymous user! Thank you for the prompt for a sequel!

And this fanfic is also dedicated to Pumpkinpaw! Love you sweety!

Pumpkin had become a regular household companion within the next few weeks. When deciding what pronouns to use, the sides had put down papers that said ‘Boy’, ‘Girl’, and ‘both’, to mean they/them.

“Do you wanna be a girl? As in, a good girl?” Patton asked, pointing to the pink card.

“Or perhaps a boy? A good boy?” Logan offered, pointing to the blue card.

“Or maybe you wanna be both! Maybe ‘buddy’, or ‘good pumpa’?” Roman asked, holding up the purple card.

Patton gasped. “That’s such a cute nickname! Pumpa! I love it!” Patton cheered, hugging Roman.

Pumpkin looked at the three cards curiously for a few seconds. Right as someone was gonna speak up, Pumpkin picked up the pink card, pointed to it and tried to gurgle the word ‘girl’ as best as it could!

Patton and Roman both squealed excitedly, while Logan smiled proudly. “Girl it is. Pumpkin shall now be referred to as a female, until she shows us otherwise.” Logan declared.

“I’m still gonna call her lil’ pumpa tho! It’s perfect!” Patton added, giving Pumpkin a big hug.

“And she has at least 1 new nickname.” Logan muttered proudly with a chuckle.

To make things greater, it was nearing Christmas and EVERYONE was getting into the christmas mood!

Patton has been watching all the Hallmark movies and decorating the house with all the tinsel and lights he could summon. He also took time to hang up the advent calendars and had an elf hat on his head every second of the day!

Logan has been drinking out of christmas mugs, determining the holiday board games they could play together, and has been listening to different christmas music covers to determine the most beautiful and/or most classic versions. Using that knowledge, Logan successfully came up with the most christmassy playlist he could make, which also included songs from classic christmas films! And let’s not forget Bing Crosby and Pentatonix!

Roman has been singing christmas carols himself and wrapping up endless amounts of presents to fill the bottom of the christmas tree. He’s also spent lots of time making ornaments to add to the tree and was even sewing up adorable christmas outfits for Patton and himself! Remus even got an early Christmas outfit, which included a ‘King of Naughty’ original Grinch shirt.

Meanwhile, Virgil has been enjoying the heck outta the christmas sweaters that came out each year. This year? Thomas’s brand new Virgil-themed sweater merchandise Thomas came out with! Well...minus the scarf. Virgil found the scarf to be too much with the sweater. So, he gave it to Patton. Virgil has also been enjoying the holiday slippers! This year, Virgil was sporting a pair of hilarious shark slippers! Sometimes, Virgil would joke that ‘The sharks are hungry for feet!’

Janus has been enjoying watching the christmas baking shows and has been playing lots of christmas flash games that are always around. Super Santa Kicker, Christmas Race, Christmas Shopper Simulator (10/10, Best game of 2014!), Tattletail, Santa’s Rampage, even that crappy christmas wii game called ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’! All of those games were common-place.

Last but not least, Remus has been doing the elf on the shelf this year (with a small list of rules, of course.) and has been surprising people with singing and dancing christmas decorations everywhere! There was the animated singing rudolph, the twerking Santa Claus toy (Yup...Of course…), the singing and jingling christmas hat, that cringey but funny dancing/singing poop toy, an animated dancing tree, the animated singing santa in the bathtub, and everyone’s personal favorite: The Snoopy dancing plush toy that wobbles back and forth!

But everyone found that Pumpkin was ALSO in the christmas mood! The sides enjoyed seeing her reactions to the dancing toys the best, and even danced along with the toys sometimes! She waddled along with snoopy, danced left and right with the dancing tree, and sang to the Rudolph song while Rudolph sang the classic song!

Meanwhile, Patton had sewed up a christmas hat for Pumpkin. The hat had a more burgundy red color, a traditional white bottom and a white pom pom on the top. When Patton first gave it to the orange blob, Pumpkin placed it on her own head and let the pompom flop onto her face. Upon seeing the pompom, it looked as if her eyes could’ve dilated and she started playing with the pompom like a kitty. That was the best reaction they could’ve gotten from her!

One of the days, Pumpkin was sitting in the living room with the sides, watching The Polar Express on TV. This was a holiday classic that the sides loved to watch together. So joining Pumpkin in on the fun was a must! The train had just been saved from falling into the ice, and the train climbed up the spiral to the high road to the north pole. Pumpkin had slid herself over to Roman and Patton, and snuggled under the extra blanket that was beside the boys. Pumpkin was also wearing her santa hat!

Watching the pretty lights in the sky over the sea, Pumpkin watched curiously as the big conductor man talked to them about them and then uttered the following words: “There...is the north POLE!”

Pumpkin ran as quickly as her body could to the TV and reached up to the north pole on the TV. She backed up a little and held her hands on her chin as the train approached the Santa Village and The Polar Express song started playing! The song was so quick and fun, and it didn’t take long for Pumpkin to start bouncing up and down to the song while she watched the camera move under the twisting train road arches.

“Oooooo!” Pumpkin reacted to seeing the Santa city for the first time.

Patton’s heart was all warm and gushing at Pumpkin’s reactions. Roman was visibly excited about the village as well!

The christmas spirit went uphill from there. Pumpkin learned about the big old man in red known as Santa and his big bag of toys, his deers with horns, and about the big man’s magical powers! He especially loved the amount of joy that filled the sides when they talked about the man wearing red. Whoever this red-coated man was, made the sides so happy! Almost as happy as she makes them! And not only that, but the man in the red suit had a hat just like she did! She was bouncing around and clapping about that!

But excitement soon turned into disappointment when she found out she had to wait for the man in the red suit to come. She didn’t want to wait for the happy old man to come! She wanted to see him now! NOW! She whimpered and paced around the house as she struggled to wait for the old man to come. So while they waited, Logan grabbed a paper and some crayons and let Pumpkin draw a picture for Santa. While that happened, Logan wrote a short christmas letter out for her which read:

[Dear Santa Claus;

Hi Santa! My name is Pumpkin! I just found out about you and the elves in the north pole, and really wanted to see you! I’m sad that I have to wait for you to come, but I’ll try to find fun things to do while I wait for you. For Christmas, I would like lots of candy! Candy is so yummy! And skittles are my favorite! I also love Patton’s crunchy gingerbread cookies! That day, I discovered icing! And it made me bounce off the walls! I would also like for everyone to be extra happy this Christmas. I’m making people happy everyday, but now I can let you make everyone happy too.

Love; Pumpkin! ]

Logan put the letter down, and looked at the picture Pumpkin drew. It was a picture of herself tickling Santa Claus’s belly. Logan couldn’t help but giggle at how Santa’s belly in the picture made him look like he was pregnant. He also giggled at the big smile that was all spread out on Santa’s face. Logan praised her on a drawing well done, and decided to add something to the letter:

[P.S: Your belly looks very big and ticklish!]

Logan grabbed the drawing Pumpkin made, photocopied it, and put the copied version of the drawing in the envelope along with the letter. With everything ready, Logan sealed it shut. “There. Off to the North Pole!” Logan declared to Pumpkin!

Logan mailed it off in the post office a day later.

With Christmas on its way and Pumpkin stuck in a bit of an antsy wait for the magic, Pumpkin started to tickle people a little more often than usual. Any other time of the year, Pumpkin would tickle at least 1 person a day. But with Christmas around the corner and Pumpkin growing hyper, Pumpkin had started tickling all the sides at least once a day! So her tickle attacks jumped from 1 or 2, to 6 every single day!

“NAHAHAHAHAHA! PUHUHUMPKIHIHIHIHIN! NAHAHAHAT MYHYHY AHAHARMPIHIHITS! TOHOHOHOO TIHIHIHICKLIHIHIHISH!” Roman laughed hysterically!

Pumpkin tilted her head curiously, and chose to remove her pods from the armpits like he begged. Roman quickly tried to gain back his breath, but Pumpkin still wanted to hear laughter! So, she made her pod super thin like a pencil and dipped it into his belly button.

“aAAAAEEEEEEHEHEHEHEHEHE! *snort* HAHAHAHAHAHA! *snort* NOHOHOHO FAHAHAHAHAHAIR!” Roman yelled through his laughter.

Pumpkin playfully stuck her tongue out at him and started to playfully nibble and ripple her blob-like body all over his belly.

Roman’s snorts grew more frequent and his laughter turned cackle-like. It was so ticklish! He was struggling to properly breath! But it was so fun! Roman had been tickled many, many, MANY times by Patton in the past. But THIS!

Holy cow!

Patton’s tickling was NOTHING compared to this!

Pumpkin decided to give him another ticklish, jiggly raspberry to get him squealing. And squealing, she was rewarded! Roman squealed so loud and so high-pitched, that Pumpkin stopped immediately just to process the strange sound!

Roman was a laughing, snorting mess after the squeal. And Pumpkin was loving every millisecond of it. As much as she was enjoying it however, Pumpkin knew when to give the man a long, giggly break. This would involve cuddling her ticklish victim and gently tickling a much less ticklish spot on their body to keep them giggling, but also let them breathe. For Roman, this was his neck.

“Ohohohohohokahahahahahay. Thahahahank yohohohou Puhuhumpkihin!” Roman told her.

Pumpkin smiled and gave his neck a tickly kiss on the neck. Roman giggled more from that, and calmed down the moment her ‘lips’ moved away from his neck. Pumpkin kept up her giggly tickling for a little bit longer before she went for Janus next.

Now, Pumpkin didn’t quite know Janus nearly as much as she knew the rest of the sides. She had even grown to know Remus quicker, than compared to Janus! The half man half snake in yellow, was more mysterious and...preferred his lonely time. So, she gave him his lonely time for the most part. She did come around to see if he was up for a tickle or two, but often walked away empty-handed, yet gaining some progress.

Finally, after weeks and weeks of trying, Pumpkin finally gained the courage to tickle Janus for the first time. She walked up to Janus’s side very quietly...geeently snuck her pod hand under the snake man’s shirt...and gave it a quick tickle.

“eeEEP! WHAT-” Janus turned around and immediately calmed down. Pumpkin made a surprised yip sound, and backed up a little to give him space. “Hi Pumpkin. Sorry about that. I...totally heard you come in.” Janus told her.

...Oh yeah...and then there was the strange way he talked to her and the other sides. He said things backwards. Like just now: if he actually heard her come in, then why was he so surprised and jumpy?

Things like that didn’t make sense to her. But what did make sense, was his calming face. “You tried to tickle me today. You...finally tried and tickled me. And it worked.” Janus told her.

Pumpkin didn’t really know what to do. She was confused. Was anything he was saying, supposed to be backwards? Or normal? Pumpkin couldn’t tell. But all that thinking went right out the window when Janus held his arms out for her. He wanted a hug from her! There was no saying no to THAT! Pumpkin quickly slid up to him and hugged him tightly.

“Wow! You have a very snug and firm hug for a jello being.” Janus admitted.

Jello? Like that blue jiggly stuff that Logan made once?

Pumpkin let him enjoy the hug for a bit. She wanted him to feel safe in her grasp. And perhaps, she may not get any tickles in today. But the only thing that mattered now, is that Janus could be hugged now.

“...Aren’t you gonna tickle me more?” Janus asked.

Pumpkin widened her black eyes. Wait, REALLY?! HE WAS GONNA LET HER TICKLE HIM?! This was what she was waiting for! 16 days of working up to this! And now, she can tickle him!

Pumpkin happily started skittering her pods all over his sides and ribs almost immediately! “Ohoho bohohoy! Hehehere wehehe gohohohoho!” Janus giggled and let go of her so she could get more access to more exposed ticklish spots. Pumpkin happily took the offer and made more pseudopods so she could tickle more spots at once. This was like a special attack that Pumpkin would pull on someone. “aaAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOHOHOU’RE SURPRIHIHISIHIHINGLY GOHOHOOD AHAHAT THIHIHIHIS!” Janus reacted in surprise.

Pumpkin gurgled happily to Janus and continued to tickle Janus wherever she could reach. The upside to having such a jiggly form, was just how well she could kneed the soft spots on her humans! This included the sides and his belly the most. Janus held his fists against his chest as his giggle fits, squeals and laughter filled his bedroom.

Pumpkin absolutely loved his laugh! It was much more bubbly and higher than she expected! It was such an amazing laugh, that Pumpkin chose to give him jiggly raspberries as well! He seemed like the kind of human that would love them! Pumpkin blew a raspberry on his sensitive belly and let her blobby, jello-like body flubber and jiggle to increase the ticklish sensation.

Janus fell into long fits of cackles! He couldn’t stop cackling! Now that he had reached the cackle-stage, there was just no going back! His laughter somewhat reminded Pumpkin of Patton’s laughter: bubbly, childish, and the musical representation of happiness. Though Janus’s wasn’t exactly like his, it was close enough.

“OHOHOKAHAHAHAY! CAHAHAN IHIHIHI HAHAHAVE AHA BREHEHEHEAK PLEHEHEHEASE?” Janus asked.

Pumpkin nodded her head and stopped tickling him almost immediately. As much as she enjoyed the sound of his laughter, she didn’t wanna overdo it. So Pumpkin snuggled herself into Janus and cooed softly.

Janus giggled at this and wrapped his arms around her. “Growing tired?” He asked.

Pumpkin nodded and snuggled herself even further into him.

“That’s ironic, considering I was the one getting tickled.” He joked.

Pumpkin let out a giggly little gurgle as she slowly succumb to her sleepiness. It didn’t take long for the tiredness to start dripping right off her and onto Janus, effecting him as well. Now Janus was growing more and more tired by the second. Janus decided he minus well cuddle himself in and get himself comfy.

It didn’t take long for Janus to fall into a full and deep slumber. It lasted a long while too. Janus didn’t expect to wake up to the smell of garlic or the sounds of something boiling. The garlic was an obvious thing to put together: garlic bread. But boiling? That could be anything!

This boiling sound would end up revealing itself to be spaghetti noodles in a deep pot. As it turned out, Patton was making spaghetti with garlic bread on the side. For Pumpkin, she was gonna have gummy worms with a new little christmas treat for Pumpkin: a Peppermint Pattie! Patton gave her one to try, and had a few unwrapped in a bowl in case she loved it and wanted more.

Pumpkin picked up the peppermint pattie first. She looked at it curiously, split it into two pieces, and ate one of the halves hesitantly. But the moment she chewed on it and actually tasted the pattie, her eyes widened and a HUGE smile grew onto her face!

Remus giggled as he spun his spaghetti. “Ihi think Pumpkin likes the peppermint pattie!” Remus told him.

Patton looked over and sure enough, Pumpkin was standing below him and eagerly reaching her pods out for more peppermint patties! Patton laughed and happily put more peppermint patties onto her dinner plate. Pumpkin happily bounced in place as she ate the gummy worms and enjoyed the taste of the brand new holiday treat.

#lee!janus #lee!roman #ler!999 #ticklefic #christmas #the polar express #santa claus #tooth-rotting fluff #literally...there is so much fluff #i swear i'm not trying to kill people #there's just tons of fluff

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deputy-videogamer · 4 years ago

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Gemini |Part 2|

Pairing: Geralt x Reader, Yennefer x Reader, Geralt x Reader x Yennefer

Summary: The White Wolf has come, but so has a certain lavender eyed witch. Both has gotten word about the poor princess that has 'lost her mind and out for blood'. But there is more that meets the eye

Part 1 Part 3

"So what's this contract about again?" Jaskier asked Geralt for the- actually Geralt lost count on how many times Jaskier had asked about the contract.

"For the last time Jaskier, this contract is about a cursed princess that needs to be slay." Geralt hissed out of annoyance.

"Why do you need to slay her? Is she cursed?" Ciri asked. She has been traveling with Geralt throughout his journey ever since they finally met in the forest.

"Something like that. The girl was borned with powers, but as she grew her powers made her lose her mind." He briefly explained to the duo.

“Then the king wants you to release her daughter from the curse then?” Geralt didn’t respond. The king requested the opposite for Geralt; he wanted her to kill his daughter.

“Something like that. Let's just go, we're almost there.”

It wasn’t long before the trio had reached the king’s castle. Waiting for them was the king’s mage who waited for his arrival.

“Geralt of Rivia, We've been expecting you." The old man greeted the trio. "Please, come this way."

The three had followed the old man through the castle. It was only then Geralt took notice of the painting that was hung.

"I'm guessing that's the queen and her daughter." The mage froze in his steps. Geralt had taken note on how he was hesitant when he mentioned the queen and the former princess.

The mage turned towards him and gave him a tight smile. "You aren't a wrong witcher. Lovely isn't she?" The mage was referring to the queen in hopes to avoid talking about the princess.

"Oh yes lovely indeed. Shame that she married a king I would've loved to meet." Jaskier flirted, not caring that the royal mage was with them.

"Their marriage was one way anyway. The queen died after giving birth to her daughter. May her soul rest and find someone better than the king." This was what Geralt was surprised at.

"You seem to hate the king." Once again the mage froze up when he realized his mistake. The mage tried to think of a way to answer him, but the sounds of heels clicking against the wooden floors had interrupted him.

Looking at the direction where the sound of heels were clicking at. All three pairs of eyes looked up to see who was heading towards them, only two out of the three pairs had already known who she was.

Geralt couldn't believe his eyes when he saw a familiar raven hair female.

"Yennefer." The words almost sounded unfamiliar to him.

How long has it been since he last saw her familiar purple eyes, the sweet smell of gooseberries and lilacs. The guilt and memories of them on the hill had flashed through his eyes.

He now wishes that he could have punched his past self for saying those things to her for she wasn't wrong when she stated that he had lost her.

The pair of lavender eyes met his golden cat like eyes. It was then the air around had suddenly felt suffocating and time had stopped all around him.

“Hello, Geralt.” Her sickly sweet voice almost made him feel sick.

“Is this the Yennefer you mention?” Ciri innocent eyes gazed on the raven beauty. In return Yennefer looked at the small princess with shock; she then had a sharp gazed on why a child was with him, in return he gave her a look that he explained to her later about Ciri.

“I thought you needed a Witcher?” Geralt turned his attention back at the mage.

“Yes, but when due to the former princess…..um..condition there could be a chance that she could attack you. So I requested the help of Yennefer.” The mage answered.

“He’s not wrong. I assume Lucius has already informed you about the job right?” Yennefer looked at the mage or Lucius.

“I was about to get there.” Lucius cleared his throat and briefly explained about the situation.

Apparently, when the princess had turned 12, she started to lose control of her magic. The mages tried their best to help her regain control of her powers, which had worsened her case leading to her magic to take control over her mind. She had killed the people in the case including her own father if it was for Lucius stopping her rampage, her father’s guard tried to seize her, but she had ran into the forest for refuge.

“Has anyone entered the forest?” Geralt questions Lucius. There was something about that story that didn’t make sense to him. From the story to Lucius' tone about the voice it all sounded all too suspicious.

“Many mages including myself have tried to enter the forest, all of them have either ended up dead or seriously injured. We believe that she has support from the creatures in the forest.”

“Is that even possible?” Ciri’s innocent eyes stared at Geralt where he let out a simple ‘yes’ to his daughter.

“If you have any more questions that will be answered later, I have already let the king wait enough. I’ll let you bard and your…..” Lucius looked down at Ciri. “Daughter to their rooms once we reach his studies. Come.”

Unaware that a crow had overheard their conversation, while its blood red eyes had stalked their every movement. Before soaring its way out of the widow’s ledge then disappearing back into the forest. The raven gilded down on a branch-like hand, the silent monster stared down at his black feather minion as it silently cawed to his master. The creature didn’t say anything, the only gesture it had made was stroking his minions body before the creature had left to return spying on the Witcher’s group.

The forest creature had watched the raven fly away, then walk towards the center of the forest. During his little journey he encounters a few nymphs, everytime he encounters a new nymph he silently grunts about what his crow has seen in the castle. Their facial expressions had turned grm, each one knew a witcher was very serious, but teaming up with one of the most powerful sorceresses had made things much worse. Some of the nymphs had disappeared to warn other woodling creatures about the upcoming trouble while others had started to prepare attacks.

It wasn’t long that the creature had reached his destination. In one of the trees there was a little treehouse that was built within the branches of the great plant. The creature could hear a small humming coming inside the structure. The woodling creature had summoned one of his ravens to grab the attention of the person inside. A head had popped up as (e/c) eyes were peeking down on him.

“Oh! Hello there, Aspen.” You used a rope to get down to greet your strange creature friend. Unlike your godling and nymph friends, your skull head friend had no ability to talk. How he communicated was by drawing pictures in the dirt.

“So what brings you here?” Aspen had used his branch fingers to start drawing in the dirt.

His twing finger had drawn five people, one had long hair wearing a dress, another had long hair but he had a sword strapped on his back. The third one was a bard since he had a lyre on his back, the fourth one you immediately knew was Lucius one of your many teacher you had taught you to control your powers when you were younger, he was also one of the few who didn’t create the potion that stole your powers The last figure was strange, unlike the other people this one was more childlike. It made you wonder who would bring a child with them?

“These people are with Lucius?” You guessed at his drawing, Aspen then drew a crown next to the group of people. “Oh, my father had requested more help to kill me right?” His skull head nodded.

“Do you know them by any chance?” He then drew the woman and the long hair man only this time, the woman had sparks surrounding her while the man had drawn his sword out as there was a beast in front of him.

“The long hair woman is a sorceress and the man is a slayer of some sort or more precisely the Witcher right ?” Aspen nodded again. “Why bring a bard and a child though? Nevermind that it seems like my father is desperate to kill at this point if he is bringing a slayer and sorceress.” You growled at the last part.

Aspen turned his skull head to you. Your eyes had started to become red signifying that your other personality is coming out.

“If that crown bastard thinks that he can just kill me because he now has a slayer and a mage on his side. He is dead wrong. I have killed many hunters who have tried to kill me all have ended up dead. “ You walked towards a tree that was filled with multiple daggers embedded in the bark with a carving of your father on it.

“Well...let those two come here if they dare. Besides~ it’s been a while since I had visitors in my forest. I think I know exactly where I place their bodies~” You threw the knife straight dead center into your father’s head.

“Thanks for the information Aspen, now that I know of my lovely visitors I should prepare a welcoming gift for them.” You were about to climb back up into your home when you turned back to your friend. “Before I leave...how did my friends react to it?”

Aspen slides his thin twig finger across his neck. “I see...hmm protective as always.” Your eyes reverted back to your original eye color.

“Thanks for visiting Aspen, next time you visit I’ll make you some fruit pie.” Aspen watched as you climbed back to your home as Aspen started to leave. Unaware that he had made it to the edge of the forest where it reached the edge of the kingdom. He noticed that there were a few farmers trending their live stocks, as much as he wanted to attack and devour the flesh off their bones, he knew how much you loved your people even after your banishment. He summoned a flock of crows around him as he pointed to the nearest farmer.

He won’t actually kill them, but if he wanted to make sure that the Witcher and the sorceress doesn’t go after you he had to make some kind of reuss to let them focus on him instead of you. He watched as the crows had attacked the poor farmer before another one had come to his aid, he then ordered the flock to attack another farmer in the area.

He only hopes that this will be enough to attract the duo. And if that doesn’t work, there are more woodling creatures who will risk their lives to protect the ‘mad princess’.

TAGS

If you want to be tag for up coming chapter or previews let me know.

@whitewolfandthefox @dreaming-about-starfleet @seanh-boredom

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mermaider00 · 4 years ago

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No4forLotor || VLD!Lotor/DDP!Lotor

Note: This pairing is two different Lotors, one from Voltron: Legendary Defender and the other from the Devils Due comics. DDP!Lotor will be referred to here as “the Prince”

If this pairing is not for you, then don’t read it and go about your day. Happy No4forLotor, everyone

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This is the craziest thing he’s ever done.

There was only one great tear. Lotor isn’t sure if there are more and no one has yet discovered it, but the one great tear was something neither reality could ignore. One rip that created one entrance, like a door opening to a very mysterious room that was always meant to be closed securely, with those on the other side not meant to mingle. It is still unknown to scientists on both sides how this great tear occurred, but now two realities have bled into one.

There are now two Zarkons. An Emperor and a King. There are two great races, the Galra and the Drule. Lotor was certain there would be a declaration of war almost instantly for supremacy, for all the power of two realities that could no longer be separated and sealed away. In a shocking turn of events, the Emperor and the King came to an agreement, to work together for the time being to completely conquer both realities with the resources and knowledge of the other. The Emperor and the King look nothing alike, are of a different species and home world, but there is something inside them that understands the other. Lotor is convinced both Zarkons don’t intend for this to be a permanent truce and are only biding their time until the other is no longer useful, but there are also two Voltron’s trying to stop them.

Each Zarkon has a son. Prince Lotor.

His father the Emperor was not against him meeting the Drule Prince of another reality. Lotor was certain that he would not be able to stay away from his alternate self even if he was forbidden from meeting him, he would simply find a way and knew in his heart the Prince would want to meet him with equal desire. They are so alike and yet they are so different in many ways. As soon as his blue eyes met the golden hues of the Drule Prince, there was a gravitational pull in his body and mind and soul that he would never be able to avoid. Not that he would want to.

So he didn’t. Lotor gave into it, his curiosity and the explorer trapped inside him his father the Emperor had tried to destroy vibrating with excitement and thirsty for knowledge. This person was him but he was also not. They shared the name, the title, the tyrant father. They were the same height and had the same voice. Their mothers were gone and were neither Drule nor Galra, but the blood of both women was strong in the veins of their sons.

They were the same and they also were not.

Lotor wondered if this was how his father the Emperor felt when speaking with his alternate self. Was the deep understanding Lotor felt with the Prince the same as Zarkon felt with the King? Was there a strange unspoken bond there? Lotor hoped it was not the same.

Lotor was drawn to the Prince. The Prince was equally drawn to Lotor.

Their bond eventually would evolve into something like attraction. And then attraction became desire. One that was impossible to ignore.

And it is the craziest thing he’s ever done.

There is something about the Prince that Lotor is weak for. They look alike but yet the Prince is a completely different man with his own attributes, like the blue of his skin or the gold of his eyes. They are different but yet the Prince understands the struggles he faces, the abuse at the hands of their evil fathers, the burdens of doing what must be done and how sometimes those burdens keep them awake at night. The Prince is a handsome man who does not flinch at the sight of the scars along Lotor’s back put there by his father the Emperor. The Prince is not appalled by the things Lotor has done in order to survive and the Prince does not judge him. He does not think he’s a monster like many believe him to be because the Prince knows his true intentions without Lotor having to speak them.

The Prince is someone Lotor has longed for his entire life, and a great tear in the space between two realities has granted his wish.

Who could ever understand you more than your own self? Someone who is you but also not?

It is a crazy thing, to get involved in such a way with the Prince. It almost feels taboo.

It feels…

Forbidden, is what Lotor thinks when the Prince finds him in the halls of a Drule ship where there are no guards, when he stares at Lotor with his golden eyes as he struts closer to him in his ridiculous Drule outfit and presses him against the wall. They are quiet as they stare into the intense eyes of the other.

Leaning forward slowly, the Prince kisses him.

They did not plan for this to happen. They hadn’t looked at each other the first time they met, a miracle on its own, and decide to become intimate. Lotor had not been with a man in a long time, he has always preferred women. The Prince had been far more comfortable for this strange surprise than he had been, and Lotor had wondered at the time if it was some perverse kink, to bed his alternate self simply to say that he had. An odd victory.

But the way the Prince kisses him is the same way Lotor kisses him back. And when Lotor kisses him, he feels more peace than he has ever felt in ten-thousand hard and lonely years.

Perhaps the only person who could ever truly understand him… is Prince Lotor in another body.

It feels forbidden, taboo. It is also exhilarating and wild and good.

To be with the Prince… Lotor can finally feel some pleasure.

In his ridiculous Drule outfit with his battle helmet set firmly on his white hair and his cape draped behind him over his shoulders, the Prince caresses Lotor’s neck, opens his mouth for the other man’s tongue. When his lips find the other side of his neck to nip on, Lotor’s claws sink into his waist, his fangs bared in pleasure.

“Stay here for the night,” the Prince rumbles against his neck, the tips of his own fangs softly pressing against purple skin.

“I can’t.”

“Can’t you?” The Prince kisses up his neck to his jaw, his hand sliding down to rest upon Lotor’s pectoral. “You enjoy my comfortable bed. Your night terrors aren’t as frequent when you’re with me.”

“This is getting complicated. Any moment now our fathers could turn and suddenly demand the head of the other. What do you think happens to me if the King finds me in your bed? Again?”

The Prince’s golden eyes darken. “I will take his head myself if he were to harm you.”

“But you haven’t,” Lotor replies with a slight desperation in his voice. It is easy to be himself and feel the things he feels when with the Prince. “You haven’t done that, in countless years. You hate your father as much as I do mine. And the King still stands and rules.”

One way they are different is the great arrogance within the Prince, one that sometimes makes him a bit careless. Arrogant and careless are things Lotor does not have the privilege of being. The Prince sighs and rolls his beautiful eyes, his hand rubbing at Lotor’s chest. “So much fear for a few measly hours. Your reality has made you so afraid.”

They may have a bond that has now gone deeper than either had ever intended, but there are times when Lotor finds him simply infuriating. His blue eyes go hard and he releases his hold on the Prince’s waist, feeling defiant. “You are a spoiled brat.”

The Prince chuckles darkly and yanks Lotor against him, taking his mouth quickly before their lips smack away. “That’s right. A rotten spoiled brat who thinks of nothing but you. You have consumed me, Prince Lotor.”

“Don’t sweet talk me. That mouth of yours will get you killed. It has already gotten you hurt.”

The Prince and the King don’t have the same relationship as the Emperor and his son. Lotor learned long ago to lie to his father with obedient words, to kneel for him as he cursed him dead within his heart, to carry out his orders as he gave his own meant for sabotage. The very few times Lotor has snipped back at the Emperor, it was always met with devastating sacrifice. Sacrifices Lotor can no longer endure.

Especially now, when his heart aches for a man who shares his name.

But the Prince, Lotor knew firsthand, does as he pleases in the halls of his ships, in the palace on his home world. King Zarkon hates his son more than he is ever proud of him, but the Prince’s back does not carry the scars Lotor’s own does, inflicted there by the hand of the Emperor. The Prince suffers, but not as Lotor does.

He has been hurt, however.

Both men think of a time recently, when Lotor had been on his way to see the Prince. He’d been told to go to his personal chambers, and with clearance as he passed Drule guards, Lotor had made his way there as if he had every right to. He’d been excited to see the Prince again, his heart already jumping in his chest at the chance to touch him again. To feel that peace that took away all the hurt inside him.

Lotor had opened the door to see King Zarkon’s big hand around the Prince’s throat, holding him up in midair by his neck, his feet dangling far from the ground.

Fury had instantly consumed him, his fangs already sharpened and bared with the intention of ripping the King’s throat out for putting a hand on the Prince in such an awful manner. And seeing that fury inside the man who was not his son as instantly as it had taken Lotor, King Zarkon dropped his son to the ground as he would an old cloak.

The Prince, not caring about his wounded throat, had rushed to Lotor’s side to stop him from making a grave mistake. Attacking the King would call for execution, he’d said to Lotor as he took his shoulders, forcing him to meet his eyes and not the apathy in the King’s. The Prince had caressed his cheek, whispered into his ear, unmoved by what his father would think of such intimate actions.

“I’m fine,” the Prince had told him, his voice a little hoarse. “Calm down, Lotor. If you don’t, he will kill you. Please.”

Why must they both suffer, no matter the reality? Were there other Lotors in other realities being hurt by their fathers and without their mothers? If Lotor had not barged in, would the King have strangled him?

As the Prince tried his best to hold Lotor back, King Zarkon walked passed them, big and powerful and strong. He sneered at them, scoffed, rolling his eyes and also completely unsurprised that his son would embarrass him this way. “You disgust me, both of you,” he’d said to them before exiting.

Why is it that the only person who will protect them be someone they could never ever meet under normal circumstances? Lotor had wondered.

He wonders it again now as he stares at the hopeful Prince, knowing he’s playing off his need to be with him, to be able to protect him, as nothing more than desire.

They want to be together. They want to protect the other from their fathers.

It is a crazy thing, what Lotor feels in his heart for this man who shares his name and title.

The Prince squeezes his shoulders, wraps his arms around Lotor’s neck. He presses their bodies close and softly kisses his lips again. “I want you. Please stay with me.”

Does he feel what Lotor feels when with him? Lotor knows the truth when he’s kissed by him. The Prince couldn’t hide it even if he tried.

Later that night, when the Prince’s legs are spread around him and his hands grasp at his arms, Lotor knows staying with him was the right choice. The way the Prince moans and looks up at him, the way he sinks into his very comfortable bed, the way he snuggles against his back to spoon him when they’re done… Lotor understands that the Prince needs him as much as Lotor needs the Prince.

One Prince Lotor is all they have. The only peace and love and acceptance they feel is with each other. It shouldn’t be this way. It’s a crazy thing. Crazier than a tear in the space between realties.

The Prince holds him close, breathes into his mussed white hair. With Lotor’s scarred back against his chest, the Prince always makes sure to be the one closest to the door, should anyone want to end their affair because of embarrassment or disgrace or even jealousy with an ambush. The Prince will shield Lotor with his own body if he must.

Better for Lotor to be with him than without him.

“Don’t be so afraid,” the Prince whispers into his ear, their naked bodies pressed tightly against the other. His hand rests on Lotor’s chest, and Lotor is quick to take it and hold on. “No terrors for you tonight, my love.”

This is the craziest thing he’s ever done, Lotor thinks again as he kisses the Prince’s hand.

And it is the best thing that has ever happened to him.

#lotor #no4forlotor #Lotorcest #devils due lotor #vld #voltron #m/m

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aellynera · 4 years ago

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Mors Non Est (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

MORS NON EST (Nathan Bateman x Reader)

(so. um. this was inspired by a dream i had? because my brain does weird things at night and then sometimes i write them.)

Word Count: almost 4k oops

Summary: “Of course, you don’t die. Nobody dies. Death doesn’t exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world.” — Henry Miller, author

Or, what my brain offers as alternate theory on why Nathan made AIs.

Warnings: Leaving this mortal coil (sort of), angsty musings, maybe a swear or two. Okay there’s definitely a swear or...several. (also a disclaimer that I finished this at like 3am and there was a bunch of stuff out of order but I think I got it all worked out now and proofread and all that, but apologies if anything is still wonky)

The rain fell steadily against the wall of glass that faced towards the forest. Sometimes it was soft, like the tickle of a feather, the softest caress of a kiss on your hair, the skim of fingertips against the velvet red petals of a flower. Other times it was harsh, a violently crashing wave on the rocky shore, electricity ripping the sky asunder, an unbridled fierceness like a wild animal frightened and possessed.

It changed without warning.

Soft, hard. Quiet, loud. Calm, violent. Back and forth and back again.

How long had it been raining?

He turned as he heard your footsteps fall on the wooden patio planks behind him. You watched in slight fascination as he unwrapped his hands, used the cloth to dry them, and stuck a hand out to you, your attention half on him and half on the pure beauty of the surrounding scenery.

“You must be the new assistant,” he said, sounding friendly enough although his smile stayed a bit reserved.

He wasn’t expecting you to just show up on his deck. Yes, he was expecting you to be dropped off by the helicopter, that had all been arranged, but for some reason he had...he realized he wasn’t even sure what he was expecting. But you had clearly followed the pilot’s (and soon after, the house’s - that the house told you what to do amused him in the strangest way) instructions and here you were.

He knew his new assistant was more than capable (he had seen your resume, reviewed your coding and debugging history, had meticulously poured over every single little detail of work you had done for his company for the past three years not that he was obsessive about it or anything) but he wasn’t prepared for the person that now stood before him, an intriguing combination of impressed, unsure, interested, and underwhelmed.

You were fucking beautiful.

You nodded. “That’s what they tell me,” you replied, shaking his hand and supplying your name, even though you knew he already knew it. You knew enough about Nathan Bateman to know he knew everything about you before you even heard the head of HR back in the corporate office announce that you got the job.

You later admitted you didn’t know what to think about him either, and you hadn’t really expected anything, since you didn’t know much about him. He was a genius, everyone knew that, and he lived all the way out here by himself. And...that was about it. That’s what you knew.

And you thought he was...kinda hot.

And also an asshole, you liked to point out as the days went on. Nathan didn’t really mind.

It was an odd feeling, this feeling of dissonance and uncertainty.

There was so much that needed to be done. There was so much that he didn’t feel like doing.

He came to the door and paused. He spent most of his waking hours in this room - and to be honest, most of his hours were waking at this point, he rarely slept anyway and for as long as he could remember now he had barely slept, except when all that whiskey and vodka kicked in - and yet there was always a moment, the briefest flash of time, where forward momentum paused and he wondered if non-linear time was reality and he would find something different when he opened the door.

It wasn’t, and he never did.

He wandered into the lab and over to the table at the farthest end. Components were spread out before him and he idly reached over to the single chip laying in the center of the mess. It was the last piece of this particular puzzle, the last bit that had to be installed and configured and then…

Then suddenly it became too quiet and too loud all at once. Thoughts were screaming through his brain and he just wanted it to be quiet for a moment.

Quiet so he could go over his calculations in his head. Quiet so he could double check his math. Quiet so he could concentrate on his theories and his expected outcomes. Quiet so he could revel, just for a moment, in his monumental achievement.

There was a sweater hanging on the back of the door. He’d forgotten it was there, even though he had just seen it mere hours before. No, not forgotten, he realized. Blocked. He didn’t forget, he just purposely didn’t remember.

The silent noise became a full-blown cacophony.

Was it still raining?

“So how exactly are you going to solve it?” you asked one afternoon, idly twirling your pen in your hand.

“How would you do it?” he bounced back.

You sighed. His behavior was so typical. The man was a certifiable genius but that was usually the problem and not the solution. It was never straightforward. “The AI. How are you going to solve the issue of making it able to have an actual conversation with you?”

“How would you do it?” he asked again.

Shrugging your shoulders, you kept twirling the pen. “I dunno. I guess you’d have to have some way to...maybe cross-reference a database of expressions and emotions and an actual dictionary.”

Nathan paused and considered you, deep in his own forest of thought. He wheeled his chair over to his computer desk and started rapidly tapping keys. “How do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” you huffed. “Like...like some kind of mass well of every available, possible interaction. Honestly I would try to figure out the mechanics of everything else first, like motion and movement, You know, walking and running and sitting and standing.”

“Hmmm.”

“But since there are literally infinite combinations, I don’t even know how you would go about even attempting that kind of data pool.”

“I did actually have an idea about that,” he muttered. Nathan didn’t even turn from his multiple computer monitors and his fingers never stopped clacking away at his keyboard. “But you’re not going to like it.”

This time you groaned instead of sighing. He knew you could feel it coming before he asked - he always told you that you weren’t going to like it before he asked you to do something incredibly stupid that in any other circumstance would get you arrested and you’d never see daylight again.

But this was Nathan Bateman, and of course he was going to ask anyway. And of course you would say yes. You always said yes, it was one of the things he enjoyed most about your company, and even when you did say no, it gave way to a lively debate and a genuine argument over facts and merits, downsides and advantages, and it was fucking amazing.

It had been that way from the start, grown steadily over the weeks and months, and neither of you could really complain. Nathan quickly found that you could keep up with his train of thought even when the track switched abruptly and it was so engaging. Captivating. Enticing.

But this man. This amazingly intelligent (if almost insufferably arrogant) man was going to be the death of you. You told him that at least once a day. He took it as a personal challenge to give you a reason to keep living.

“What did you have in mind?” You doubted you wanted to know.

“What if…” he replied, clicking away, not looking up from the screen as he spoke, “we used the video and audio coding in Bluebook, and patched it through all the cell phone carriers, and rerouted all the satellite signals back here into the lab.”

Before you knew what was happening, your pen flew across the room and connected with his shoulder with a small *thwap*.

“What?” he finally looked up, mock annoyance in his voice.

“Are you absolutely fucking insane, or is this just an extra special occasion?”

He left the lab with no real idea of where he was going.

Okay, that was a lie. It was his house. He knew his way around and he knew where he needed to be next. There was an actual agenda but his focus was off.

He walked past the living room and noticed the chess set was still set out on the coffee table. The pieces were still fairly evenly matched, his green dragons maybe just slightly at a disadvantage to your purple ones (because, as you had mentioned at one point, why have a standard chess set when you could have a fun one? And Nathan knew you were anything but standard.)

He knew it was his turn and contemplated the board for a few minutes. No matter how he strategized it, how he worked it out, how he tried to plan it, you had forced him into a checkmate. Again. For at least the sixth time in a row, and probably at least the eight-seventh time out of the last hundredth you had played. He chuckled, softly, briefly. He could do anything with technology and science, but he rarely could beat you at a centuries-old board game.

He made his final move for this round, sacrificing his king to your queen.

He grabbed the notepad setting next to the chess board, and your pen that lay nearby on the table. He scrawled a quick note to you - checkmate - and placed it on your side of the board, next to your fairly gained draconian horde, even though he was certain you were never going to read it.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a drink.

He stared out the window wall, out past the deck, to the running river and the dense groves of trees, off into the distance towards the waterfall.

He should be heading to the room. He should be taking care of the final chip install and making sure everything was online. Instead he simply stood in the kitchen and stared out into the rain.

It occurred to him that the agenda was more of a guideline and his knowledge of his surroundings was merely functional.

Nathan briefly considered that standing at the doorway to your bedroom was the last place he should be, but then decided he didn’t care. But that wasn’t true either.

He could just walk in, it wouldn’t be the first time - once you had been wearing only a towel, having just gotten out of the shower and that hadn’t been awkward at all - but that small bit of his conscience that he usually tried to ignore, told him to be polite.

He knocked.

“What do you want, Nathan?” You sounded muffled, like you had your face partly covered by a pillow. You were probably in bed. He shouldn’t be bothering you.

He had to bother you, just this once. “Can I come in?”

He could picture your face on the other side, eyes rolling and the sigh as it left your lips, and even though he heard the door hiss quietly as the latch released, his feet suddenly stuck to floor outside your door and his body made no further move.

“I did open the door, so if you’re going to, do it before I change my mind,” you called after a few minutes.

Nathan got his feet to cooperate and entered your room. You were in bed, face half-behind a pillow, your visible eye glaring at him. He stopped at the edge of your bed. His brain started calculating risk factors for the current situation, gains, deficits, advantages - anything it could think of, there were always factors involved, no matter what the situation was, it was just that some factors were more complicated than others. Some required more delicate, cautious manipulation to solve the equation and…

“Are you just going to stand there all night and look at me? Because I swear I really will kick you out, and then change all your passcodes.”

Of course, you teased him later about how much fun it would have been to watch him try to get back in. You swore you were going to do it one day, just for the hell of it. He didn’t mind.

“Do you regret what happened after dinner?” he finally asked.

Your glare softened and you moved the pillow away from your face. Dinner was fine. The company was pleasant as usual, the wine was frequent and flowing. The two of you had started a very animated debate about gender and sexuality as it pertained to artificial intelligence and if any of it were a necessary component or if it was just something you would prefer (he would later tell you how wonderful the expression on your face was when he told you he would be ready to start building a prototype in the next few weeks) and then.

“I don’t regret it at all. Do you?” you arched an eyebrow at him.

Nathan blew a long breath out from his nose. Did he regret kissing you? Nope. Not in the slightest. Did he regret that you might regret it (he was slightly relieved that you said you didn’t) and that nothing would come of it? Yes. And he couldn’t calculate the actual result, just potential outcomes with no concrete denouement, and that made him extremely uncomfortable. He didn’t want this to be an experiment. He wanted an absolute, not a thicket of random. Not in this case.

“No.” He still didn’t move.

“Frankly we should have done it months ago.”

He shook his head and turned just the slightest bit before your reply registered and he processed it. “Wait. You...what?”

You exhaled and sighed as you rolled over, facing away from him and trying to get comfortable in the bed again. “You know, Nathan Bateman, for being the smartest man in the universe, sometimes you are a complete idiot.”

“I’m not going to argue that. This time, anyway.”

“Thank you, because it’s nearly three in morning,” you replied. He could hear the smile in your voice. “Can we talk about this in the morning? Like, later in the morning. I’ll see you for breakfast.”

He nodded and really did turn to leave this time. He was still trying to process. “Okay. Yeah, sure. I, uh...I’ll see you then.”

“Good night, Nathan.”

The rain had finally stopped.

He looked out over the landscape, now reflecting and refracting tiny bursts of sunlight in the lingering blanket of droplets.

Trees crowded both sides of the rushing river, leading towards the top of the waterfall. There was a small clearing there, one that almost wouldn’t be found if someone wasn’t looking for it. It was one of your favorite spots.

Nathan found you there fairly often, after he had shown you where it was. If the weather was cooperating, and you weren’t in the house, then nine times out of ten, that’s where Nathan would find you. Sometimes you were reading a book, sometimes you were just stretched out in the grass, looking up at the tips of the timbers as they reached to the sky.

Sometimes he would join you. Those were times that deep conversations would happen, about the projects back at the house and technology and your odd fascination with disco music, which Nathan truly did not understand but tried to humor.

Sometimes he would just smile and let you have your peace. Those were times he would go back to the house and quietly await your return.

He knew that’s where he would find you now.

“I’m back from Anchorage,” you called as you came in the front door.

Nathan was in the kitchen and poked his head around the doorway. “Hey. Perfect timing,” he said, brushing his hands off on his pants and flipping a dish towel over his shoulder. “Dinner is almost ready.”

A tired sign escaped your lips as you flopped down on the couch, taking one of the throw pillows and covering your chest and half your face with it. “Thanks. Not hungry.”

“How was the trip?”

You snorted softly. “Wet. Raining. Absolutely miserable.”

It wasn’t what you said that made Nathan stop. It was the way you said it. Your voice sounded so tired, so empty. It didn’t really sound like you, not the voice he’d come to expect to hear every day. It was not the voice that engaged him in conversation, that drew him into theories and concepts and philosophies. It was not the voice that argued about codes and programs and why that would not work no matter how much he insisted it would (to be fair, you were usually right, but he wasn’t going down without a good fight, and neither of you would have it any other way.) The voice that was leaving your body through your mouth wasn’t you.

It sounded hollow.

He leaned against the doorway. The air in the room suddenly felt heavier and he couldn’t quite get his feet to move forward to the couch where you sat. “What did they say?”

Nathan noted that you didn’t look at him. You looked everywhere but him. Like you were trying to keep everything from falling to pieces, maybe? You were definitely not acting yourself either. Suddenly he wanted to take himself outside and kick his own ass. He should have gone with you. You’d been talking about it, for weeks now, he realized.

How tired you were. How you were never really hungry. How things felt like they were getting harder when they shouldn’t have been. How you couldn’t go quite as far on the hikes you loved taking so much, together.

He should have gone with you.

Your face did not move from its half-protected shield behind that tasteful throw pillow.

He doesn’t register most of what you said. He remembers the words “bad” and “already done everything” and “months, maybe”. Maybe. No definite conclusion.

He finally managed to take a few steps towards you.

His brain was kicking into overdrive but not a single one of that rush of thoughts would make an appearance on his tongue. There had to be another answer. Another answer that wasn’t the one he could already see in your eyes.

Your eyes. His favorite feature (at least from the neck up), the ones that showed how much life you had, your spark, your fire.

And he realized the hollowness of your voice had traveled up into those beautiful eyes.

Words stopped making sense in an instant. Everything around him got fuzzy, jagged at the edges, but also intensely focused at the same time.

He finally crossed the room and sat down carefully, warily, on the couch.

Neither of you said another word. His arms slipped around you and you curled into his chest, pulling your knees up to your own. No tears from either of you. No sounds. No words.

He didn’t know how long you stayed on that couch.

The next thing you knew you were in bed, Nathan’s arms still wrapped around you. He must have carried you to the bedroom at some point. You felt the coolness of the sheets contrast with the warmth of his body; you mustn’t have been out for long. You were about to drift off again when Nathan finally broke the silence.

“We’ll figure out a way.”

A sigh escaped your lips, half drenched in sleep.

It was the last place he wanted to be. It was the only place he wanted to go.

He slipped into a hoodie and pulled on a pair of shoes and stepped out onto the deck. The air was still somewhat saturated, humid, but the rain was holding off for now. It was warm but he wasn’t, so the hoodie stayed on.

His feet took him down the deck stairs and onto the path paralleling the river. He followed it slowly, breathing in the summer air but not really seeing his surroundings. Like in his house, he knew where he was heading, and this was just the agenda.

At some point (minutes, hours, he really didn’t know how much time had passed) he came to that small clearing of trees.

And there you were.

Nathan took a jagged breath and sat down next to you. His pants were soaked in an instant, but he didn’t care. He was more annoyed that you were cold and wet (he briefly considered how funny you would find the double entendre, and probably tell him that you were definitely wet but he never made you feel cold) and chuckled again when he could hear your scoffing insistence that you were fine here in your special spot.

You weren’t fine. He knew this and wished desperately that you could tell him, tell him anything, say something.

He wasn’t fine. And he definitely did mind.

Nathan didn’t know what else to do, so he just started talking.

“So, uh...I know it’s been a while. I’ve just been really busy, trying to get the AI just right, and...I’m sorry I’ve been away. That’s not what I meant to happen. I’ve been working pretty much non-stop, I know you would be nagging me to get some sleep and eat better and all that shit. And...I wish you would. I would listen to you, for once.”

Silence and the far-off chirp of a bird were his only reply, so he continued.

“I know I shouldn’t be working so much, but I kinda have to. It’s the only way I feel close enough to…”

His throat was acutely, suddenly dry. He did his best to clear it. He was only marginally successful.

“So anyway, that idea I told you about, with all the cell phone data rerouting it here? It worked. Please don’t be mad at me, I know it wasn’t your favorite idea, but I’m pretty sure that’s what finally broke this open. Well, that and all the ideas we worked out together. I can’t thank you enough for what you did for me, and I know I never really did, and I probably never will…”

He had remembered to grab one thing before he left the house, stashing it in the pocket of the hoodie. He pulled it out now, a single red rose. Cliche, maybe, but they were your favorite flower.

Nathan placed it gently against the stone on the edge of the clearing. The stone with your name. It only had your first name, no dates. He could never bear to put any indicator of time on it; it was too final. Conclusive. Terminal.

He stood and started walking back. He never could stay here very long. It was absolutely ridiculous, but he usually had the feeling you would pop out from behind a tree and tease him about how impressive your joke was and he would never top it.

It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t funny, and he wished he could prove you wrong.

But there was still something he might be able to prove. To make a few things right.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing.

“I have someone else coming to the house this week. He works for the company, he’s a coder...he looks like a good kid. I’m gonna use him to test this model. This really could be the breakthrough we’ve...I’ve...been looking for.”

Nathan turned his head back briefly, to say one last thing before he headed back to the house, before he had to get back to his work.

“I promise I’ll come back soon and tell you all about it.”

The rain started softly coming down again.

~end~

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