#I think I talked about Percy a bit more than Demon! Reader

[candysparks]

Imagine Demon! Reader x Neglected! Wayne x Neglectful! Batfam

[This is the prologue for what might be a series. Also this does involve a Wayne Oc. This is NOT proof read, so sorry for any grammar/spelling mistakes I make] There is another part for this Imagine if you wanted to check that out as well! Just click [This]

[Warnings for Death, cult talk, blood sacrifices and all that jazz, child neglect, demon stuff]

So basically what I'm thinking of at the moment is Neglected! Wayne is Bruce's bio kid from some one off fling. He fools around and has a one night stand with this really pretty woman and she ends up pregnant, but doesn't tell him. Months go by and she's the proud mother of one healthy, rambunctious, baby who she lovingly names Percy.

But wait! Since she's a prominent business woman so she has to have a rival who wants her to fail. This rival won't get a name, but they use her pregnancy against her by claiming she's been sleeping around so her reputation takes a slight turn. This, of course, isn't enough to bring her reputation or her business down so the rival takes a step up.

They get in contact with some shady people who start messing up her business. Just some light vandalism to ward off people from working with her. One night they break into the building and smash some stuff, just to get her scared, but it ends up going so wrong.

You see, it was a long day at work and she was just swamped with paperwork so she had to stay late. Of course Percy, freshly aged 9, was working on some homework right next to her because he loves his mother and can't stand being part from her more than necessary.

[And when I say Percy loves her, I mean he admires her the most in the whole world. If anyone where to ask who his hero was he wouldn't say Batman, or Superman, and he might say Wonder Woman if he gave it some more thought, but to him? His first instinct would to say "My mom!" much to her delight.]

But now you might be thinking, where does Demon! Reader come into this whole thing? Well as it would turn out, one of the people who broke in was a paranoid person with a trigger happy finger, and the other was ragging cultist who was just looking for a reason to try out this new cursed tomb he got.

Percy decides he needs to get up and stretch, get his legs moving. It's like his mother always said 'Sitting in one spot for too long leads to a slumped mind, and a curved back' so it was better for him to get up and move his legs once in awhile.

But what's this? The paranoid robber happens to turn the corner just as Percy opens the door and BAM! Percy's mother, who was standing right behind him, falls to the floor and starts bleeding out. Percy freaks out and tries to put pressure on the wound, just like those books he liked to read said to do.

Her blood is everywhere, its all over his hands, his shirt, oh god it's all over him and it wont stop. The robber is also freaking out. He just shot this woman and her child was right there, he felt so so bad about it all.

And then the other one turns the corner and gets a good look at what's happening. So he pulls out his phone and makes a few calls before turning to his partner who was still freaking out, leaving Percy to hear his mothers final words before she goes limp.

The cultist decides 'Yo this is a great time to test out this blood sacrifice page in this wicked old tomb!' and knocks Percy out and drags away his mother. Of course he can't just leave Percy behind, no that would cause unwanted issues because Percy is now a witness, though the robbers forget about the security cameras entirely.

So they shove the two of them in their get away van and instead of driving back to their boss they end up at an unused warehouse. The cultist one gets right to work, drawing out this huge elaborate circle with the mothers blood. Of course he lights some candles, but to make it all the worse he uses drops of Percy's blood instead of his even thought it's what the book says not to do.

The circle glows red and out pops Demon! Reader. Of course this is also the moment Percy wakes up and is rightfully horrified to know he's bleeding from his hand, and Percy is a smart kid so he can put two and two together. He knows his blood was used along with his mothers. Tears are falling from his eyes now because he can't seem to wrap his mind around everything fast enough.

This gets Demon! Reader's attention and so they end up shoving past the two robbers and sits in front of Percy. Demon! Reader is simply fascinated with this crying child. It's not every day a demon sees a living child, especially one that's so full of life and is currently crying.

Doesn't help that Demon! Reader can feel the blood bond between them. Demon! Reader can't hurt Percy, even if they wanted to, due to the fact that the cultist used Percy's blood in the summoning. Just demon things, you know?

This of course, pissed the cultist off and so he starts shouting. Though the shouting and insults don't really bother Demon! Reader, they can tell it's bothering Percy. So they do what they always do and simply devours the cultist.

Buuut that freaks out the other robber so he tries to shoot at Demon! Reader but that obviously doesn't work. So Demon! Reader eats him too! Percy has long since passed out due to the shock of it all, so Demon! Reader changes into the form of a cat and snuggles right up to him.

Demon! Reader can tell they're going to enjoy being tied to this human child. They've already taken it upon themselves to raise them into a strong and healthy person.

[Just gonna flash forward real quick and list out some stuff that happens.]

Percy gets discovered all alone in the warehouse and sent to the cops cause he's covered in blood. Demon! Reader gets to go along because Percy refuses to let go of them and they're still in cat form. Blah blah Percy gets sent to an orphanage who doesn't really care about him but notices the cat that's stuck to him like glue and that his eyes are very similar to Bruce Wayne. They do a blood test and gets shocked that he is a Wayne and then they ship him off to the Wayne Manor.

Though at this point in time Bruce is too busy with mourning the loss of Jason to properly take care of, or even look at, Percy. Then Tim comes along and he get's too busy with bat stuff, and then so does everyone else. Dick doesn't pay attention to them either cause he's always in Blüdhaven and all that jazz. But that's okay cause Percy has Demon! Reader and Alfred to look after him.

Then comes Damian and it all goes to shit from there. Damian, being Damian, pulls a sword on Percy to try and fight him for the title of blood child or whatever. Percy gets cut, right along his left hand [his right hand is the one with a cut from the summoning] and starts to panic because he knows what Demon! Reader would want to do in revenge.

So Percy runs off to his room and does everything he can to keep Demon! Reader from flipping the fuck out and throwing hands with a literal child. But that only makes Damian think less of Percy, seeing him as a coward who only runs away instead of fighting back like a "true" Wayne.

Percy is at least 16 at this point, so he decides to throw caution to the wind and GTFO, much to Demon! Reader's delight. But what's this? Everyone is taking an interest in this forgotten Wayne and don't want him to go.

But who is this stray cat that keeps following him around the manor? And his weird/feral friend who constantly wears a red headband that has demon horns and has a bad habit of biting people? No, no, this simply won't do, Percy needs to make new friends, better friends.

Or better yet, forget the friends, Percy needs to stay with his "Family" and not run off into the big scary world all alone. Moving? Why would Percy move when he has a home at the Wayne Manor?

Cue Demon! Reader flipping their shit and trying to convince Percy to let them kill get rid off his annoying "family" so they can finally travel the world like they'd planned.

[And that's all I can think of at the moment. But just to clear up some stuff, Demon! Reader adores Percy like their own child. And due to Demon customs, Demon! Reader has taught Percy all about being a demon. From how to fight his battles with his own nails and teeth to even manors and habits of demon kind. In this AU Demons are very clingy and affectionate with their family, similar but also different dynamics compared to a wolf or a cat pack. The Strong protect the weak and all that jazz, and in Demon! Reader's eyes Percy is weak but has potential to be strong. So Demon! Reader mother cat's him, picking him up by his 'scruff' when they feel he's in danger, or that he's been away from them for too long.] [If you have any questions about this au, or if you wanna request some more lore/character stuff, my ask box is open!]

[aphroditesmoon]

Heyy I love your Clarisse work!!! Can I get a Clarisse being protective over fem reader when Percy Jackson arrives and he tries to talk to us? Thank you!!!!

back to you

clarisse la rue x fem!demigod!reader

warnings: ep2 spoilers, protective clarisse, kissing.

a/n: thank you for reading n enjoying my clarisse fic! I hope this is to ur liking<3

wc: 1.7k

---

The new kid was lost. That much was easy to tell. He had been clamied as Poseidon's son, and yet no one had the thought of actually directing him to his new cabin.

You've been watching him from the corner of your eyes as you help fix your cabin siblings' stance for a spar. He's been walking back and forth in circles like an abandoned kitten. It was honestly amusing to watch.

It was about 2 minutes later when you hear his footsteps nearing you and turned ariund to meet the boy's face. "Hey." He greeted breathily like he's been running a marathon.

"Fish boy." You responded, making him frown. "Um, I'm actually- never mind, I was wondering if you uh, know where the Poseidon cabin is?" You cross your arms and studied the confusion on his face. "Did Chiron not show you?"

"He did, I just, forgot?" Of course he did. "I'll show you, come on." You walk past him to where his cabin is at, the whole map of this camp is engraved in your mind.

"It's really not that far." You tell him as you kept moving. You had to slow down a bit when you remember he's carrying his bags with him.

Percy Jackson looks less threatening to you now than he did before. It's almosf hard to believe that this is the same kid who destroyed a minotaur and broke Clarisse's spear. He was just a boy, and not even a mean or bratty one.

How is it that Mr. D and Chiron both founded it totally fine to let this 12 year old boy live in an empty cabin alone is beyond you, but that's not your problem to think about.

He's quicker on his feet than you expected and asked questions less stupid that others have.

"There shouldn't be a curfew if I'm the only one here, right?" He ask as he drops his bag on the floor by the bed. You watch him from the door, leaning against the frame. "I mean, technically, I'm head of the cabin."

Your brows raised at that. "I don't think that's how it works."

"The curfew is probably the same as any other cabin's curfew, though like you said, it's not like there's anyone else to tell you when to go to bed here." He gets the implication you're making. You weren't going to tell him that he could go around and do as he likes, but he could actually do it if he wanted to. There's not much supervision here.

You turn on the lights from where you're at, the switch button being on the wall by the entrance. The walls of the place were blue and white, it seems more well kept than the other cabins. How disappointing that he wouldn't have anyone to share the space with.

Percy had stood up from his bed to walk over to you to say his thanks when the both of you were interrupted by a familiar voice. He flinched at Clarisse's presence. But you, as surprised as you are, is used to her sneaking up from behind.

"What does this punk want with you?" She questions boldly. You spin around to find her a few steps away from you. Percy physically shivered, walking deeper into the cabin. "I was just asking her for directions." He explained before you could.

She's looking him up and down like predators do to their preys with a demonic glare in her eyes. It's been less than 12 hours since he broke her spear. And losing dessert privileges and her spear wasn't exactly a recipe to making Clarisse happy.

You pat her shoulder with your hand, in which she quickly shrugged off as she steps closer to the cabin, standing next to you and eyeing Percy suspiciously. "You expect me to believe that no one else has shown you the direction here."

"I forgot." He spoke at the same time as you told her, "Clarisse, he forgot."

“Forgot?” Clarisse turns her gaze from him to you and then back to him with a frown. "Well, you've already led him here, haven't you?" You gave her a look that says 'can you not?' She easily ignores your meaning of course, glaring at the boy again.

"Yes, I have. So I'll go now, come on Clarisse." You announced loudly, pulling your girlfriend by her arm to leave Percy alone.

She remains unmoving at first, sizing up Percy, until you tugged at her arm again, calling out her name. “Clarisse, please. Let's just go back to training.” Finally giving in, she lets you drag ger away from the blonde boy. You could almost hear the sigh of relief leave his body.

"Thanks for the help-" you hear the fish boy shout from behind hesitantly.

"Absolute brat." Clarisse mutters under his breath once the two of you are away from him. "He was just asking for help." You felt the need to defend him.

She put her right arm over your shoulder, pulling you closer to her as she scoff at your words. "Great, you're already siding with him after what he's done to me. Really? Are we forgetting that he broke my spear?"

You did chase him around with it like a lunatic, you thought of telling her. But you knew better than to upset her even more.

"I'm always on your side, you know that." You replied gently instead, letting your own arm wrap around her waist as the two of you make it back to the training grounds.

"Good, you're the only one I want on my team, so that better be the last time I see you around him" You smiled at that and leaned closer to her face to place a peck on her cheeks before other people could see you two coming over. "Yes, ma'am." You teased her.

She pulls your face back to hers before you could fullt pull away and kisses you harder, cupping your cheek with her free hand, uncaring of anyone's eyes on you.

[wri0thesley]

hopeless romantic - percy (yandere demon oc) x reader (4.6k)

valentine's day has snuck up on you. somehow you don't think this one is going to be as pleasant as last year's.

cw: this is primarily a horror work. kidnapped reader, captive reader, mental torture. food warning, claustrophobia. mentions of (non-explicit): insects, emetophobia, dental trauma. general hopelessness and manipulation. REALLY fuck this guy!

a/n: for a very quick primer on percy, please read this, and/or see this!

(also i mentioned this last time i wrote something for lucas but getting a commission for one of my own ocs is so WILDLY exciting and flattering. waaah!!!)

this was a commissioned work.

You didn’t consider yourself a hopeless romantic. 

Perhaps you consider yourself a bit of a romantic, in that you’d always enjoyed a classic love story; re-read your copy of Pride and Prejudice until it had fallen apart, had occasional daydreams of handsome suitors and the swirl of a masquerade ball, had perhaps watched Labyrinth too often as a young woman and wondered ‘what if’ about the Goblin King and his domain--

But you had thought you knew enough not to expect fiction from real life. No balls for you; no impassioned declarations of love soaked to the bone, no royal promising he would move the world for you if only you asked. You had thought you would be content with a bouquet of flowers - a smile, a squeeze of the hand whilst watching a romantic comedy, a kiss goodnight that was a little awkward with a clash of teeth and tongue. That was the kind of life, you told yourself, that waited for an average person like you - and that, too, would be enough. Because companionship would be enough; somebody to walk through life with, somebody who understood you, somebody who would cuddle up to you at night. 

And then you had met Percy. 

You hadn’t been able to believe your luck. 

A man almost exactly like you’d imagined? Someone who held the door open for you and smiled so softly it made you ache, who would sit with you and talk about books and whatever else passed through your minds for as long as you wanted? Always seeming to know what to say, always there for you - he’d brought you a bouquet of roses for your first date, for God’s sake. And though you’d been anxious about the ostentation of them, holding them at the restaurant, the way people seemed to be staring at you from every table . . . you had bit back the nervousness and given him a shaking smile and let yourself be swept off your feet. 

You wish that you’d seen the signs then. 

Maybe you had? Maybe you’d noticed them all and simply let them roll off of you instead, water off a duck’s back, because if you let Percy go you’d surely never find anyone like him again? And they had seemed such little things, too. Waiting just a fraction of a moment too long to comfort you when you were frightened or anxious - almost as if he was letting the moment shimmer in the air, develop as far as he could. Always being awake after you’d had a nightmare (you’d bought the chronic insomnia excuse at the time, but . . . surely someone who never seemed to sleep should be more tired than Percy ever seemed to be?). Nightmares, coincidentally, you don’t remember having so vividly or so regularly before you met Percy-- 

“Hey,” he’d murmured, soothing you, pulling you into him, warm hands rubbing up and down your back as he’d whispered sweet nothings into your hair. “Shh, sweetie. Just a nightmare. Nothing to worry about.”

And those nightmares - the ones where you thought you’d woken up, eyes as wide as saucers, body pinned to the bed by some unknown force . . . and slowly, slowly, the creature of spindle limbs and glowing eyes and sharp bright teeth had crept into your view, sharp fingernails running over the duvet and the blankets, Percy’s presence beside you in the nightmare non-existent--

You curl your body around yourself on the hard wooden floor; there’s a bed, in the corner of the room, but you preferred nowadays to stave off sleep for as long as you could. 

Looking back on it, you think you should have known. Should have run for the hills - your friends had loved him at first, citing his warm smile and the way he treated you like a princess . . . but before you knew it, your friends had dropped away, because you were spending all of your time with him instead. If you still had your cell phone . . . how long had it been since you spoke to your best friend? What was the last thing you said to her? 

Your stomach rolls uncomfortably as you think about how it was probably something about Percy. 

You were such a fool. 

You pull yourself off the bed, your body aching with the effort of it. You don’t get much exercise nowadays; this little room, with a bed and a desk and no windows and the strange sigils scrawled on the floor in paint (definitely paint, you tell yourself fiercely, though it shines strangely when the light hits it and is a dark, dried out red that makes your stomach roll) is all of the space you have. You can stride from one wall to another in fifteen paces. Thirty floorboards. 

You’ve counted all of these. 

You lower yourself onto the chair by the desk, your back crying out in pain. Even if you had been sleeping properly on the bed, it was hardly comfortable - and when one is as racked with nightmares as you are, tossing and turning and twisting and begging . . . Well. No wonder you hurt so much. 

You tread carefully. You have seen this room become a thousand things; have seen a dark pit open up in the middle of the sigil and all manner of creatures crawl out of it, crowding up to you with gaping maws and blood-shining teeth and great pits of eyes. Spiders. Bugs. Screaming. Three days when all of the light in the entire room - your entire existence - had gone from the world, and you had fumbled and stumbled around the room without direction. 

(Into Percy, a couple of times, who had laughed and held you tight and whispered sweet nothings into your ear that might have been romantic, once upon a time, but now just lilted with mockery. 

“Oh,” he’d murmured, soft and silky against your ear. “Poor thing. Are you scared of the dark?”

You had not thought yourself scared of the dark - but until those three days, you suppose, you had not known what the dark was. Had not known it could settle so thick and heavy like covering your entire world with ink; had not known it would muffle everything else so completely. Percy had kissed you demanding and hungry in the middle of the nothingness and you had hated yourself as you’d clung to his shirt in between the kisses and begged him not to leave you there. 

He had, of course). 

There is one other thing you’ve counted. 

As best you can, anyway; it’s hard to keep real track when Percy’s comings and goings can be so sporadic. He remembers to feed you, you think, most days - but with no window, no way to tell the time truly . . . days can blur into one another. And so, though you think it’s February, you wouldn’t have known for sure that it was the thirteenth of February, unless--

“Friday the thirteenth,” Percy had hummed, that what-might-have-been-morning, as he’d held you softly in his arms as you writhed and whimpered, the walls closing in on you. It’s a dirty trick, what Percy can do, you think; the hallucinations, the untruths . . . interspersed with the truth, just so you never quite know what is real or not. You’d known in some primal part of you that this one had to be one of the tricks - walls do not really cave in on you, you are not living in some ancient Egyptian-themed action movie where walls are booby-trapped to crush you into tiny pieces - but when the threat of death looms over you in such a way, you suppose that your mind cannot truly be reasoned with. 

You hadn’t thought you were claustrophobic before this, coincidentally. It’s amazing how Percy can somehow bring out fears you didn’t know you had. 

The times he uses whatever power he possesses to play with you like a spider with a fly trapped in its web are preferable. At least, you think, probing tenderly with your tongue the spot at the back of your mouth where you used to have a molar before Percy had shown you the glint of pliers and murmured for you to ‘be still now, sweetie, or it will hurt more - oh, don’t tremble like that, you’re making it awfully hard to concentrate--’. 

“February,” you’d told him, and he’d laughed. 

“Yes,” he’d said. “Valentine’s Day tomorrow, then? I’ll have to think of something special for us.” 

The very words had sent a tingling shudder down your spine. You hadn’t bothered smiling for him - for someone who had gotten you where you were with a faux tilt of his eyebrows, with pretty lies wrapped in sugar, with promises he never intended to keep . . . he doesn’t like artifice. He’d told you, that first night you had found yourself bound and gagged and trapped, that he had never found you so pretty - and then he’d smiled at you and pinched your cheek hard enough to bruise and promised you that you were going to be wearing that expression rather a lot. 

He’d been right. 

The fear of what he was going to do must have crackled in the air; Percy’s eyes had gone half-lidded and he’d sighed, pleased, before he’d pressed a kiss onto your forehead and let the walls recede back to where they were supposed to be. 

“Something very special,” he’d said, letting go of you; watching, amused, as you’d scrambled away from him. 

You’d tried to ingratiate yourself to him at first; had tried to be well-behaved, not to snap and fight back at him, in the hope it would make him ease up. You’d learnt very quickly that there was no point in doing such a thing; it doesn’t matter if you struggle. Percy will treat you the same either way. 

If anything, the outright shows of fear - the proof that you’re terrified of him - seem to please him more. The more scared you get the quicker, the sooner he usually ends the torment. 

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly something you can pretend. Not with a man - a thing - that can sense your emotions on the air, that hungers for the terror that runs cold through your veins. You can pretend to shudder all you want - and you’d tried - but Percy just clicks his tongue and pulls you back to him and murmurs; “Well. That’s not going to do, is it?”

So he leaves you, that Friday the thirteenth of February, to stew in the fear of what a Valentine’s Day with a demon might entail. 

You and Percy had begun to date, officially, at the beginning of January after meeting at a friend’s New Year party. Neither of you big drinkers (as it turns out, stimulants like alcohol have very little effect on a creature like Percy, but you had not known that at the time), you had found yourself feeling frazzled and frightened by all of the new people and the laughter and the whirling out-of-control dancing, and had been hiding out in that friend’s cloakroom amongst other people’s coats with a book you’d smuggled in in the pocket of your dress. Percy had found you there.

You know now you must have been a buffet; perhaps the most scared thing in the whole room, your anxiety leading him directly to you and setting your life on track for . . . this. But at the time he had recognised the battered old paperback in your hand and been all-too-eager to talk to you about it, smile on his face, his voice kind. You had thought him handsome - and when he’d told you he owned a bookstore, you think you fell in love a little bit right there and then. You’d shared a kiss at midnight and been found afterwards by the mutual friend who had invited you, who had effusively shared praise of the man - he’s magic, she’d promised, cured my insomnia with nothing more than a tea blend! Gave her a couple of nightmares for a few nights, but after that - poof! - and you had really thought . . . 

You had really looked at Percival Thacker and thought; oh. There he is. 

So of course, this wouldn’t be your first Valentine’s Day. 

Your last Valentine’s Day, Percy had gone all-out for - after you’d admitted to him that you couldn’t afford much, that you hadn’t been dating that long, that you were nervous about it . . . He’d told you earnestly that he simply liked you so much, afterwards, and he’d wanted to show it - but of course, now you know his true nature, you know that the shame that must have come off of you in waves and the fear that he thought you cheap and the nervousness that you could not match his energy must have all been a veritable feast for him. 

The gift of hindsight, you suppose. 

So you see, you had a point of reference for what a Valentine’s Day with somebody you thought you might love would be like; you had that thought of roses and a fancy dinner and a trip to the ballet and a first edition of your favourite book. That’s what you’d thought a Valentine’s with Percy would be like, perhaps for the rest of your life. 

And then he had shown himself to you, in all of his true colours, and there had been far more pressing concerns than making sure you remembered to budget enough to at least buy him a card. 

But what he might do, now, as a ‘Valentine’s Gift’ . . . knowing how much he likes you crying, whimpering, begging and frightened out of your skull . . . the very thought of it makes you want to bury your head into the thin pillow and sleep the day away entirely. What a pity that he’s just as capable of getting to you whilst you’re sleeping as he is anywhere else. 

You know that you’re feeding into what he wants by agonising over it; that he can probably feel your anxiety over what is going to happen to you from everywhere in the house, the force of it is so strong. But you simply cannot help yourself. Considering he’d been the first to admit, easy and smiling as ever, that his greatest flaw was a tendency towards laziness, he’s been ever-inventive when it comes to ways to make you feel like you’re going to die of a fear-induced heart attack. 

The whole day, you feel yourself hovering on a precipice; your throat ready to close up at a moment’s notice, your entire psyche balanced on a fragile tightrope ready to snap. Every tiny sound from somewhere in the house makes you jump, sets you on edge, straining for the sound of Percy’s footfalls. The house is not always so noisy, of course - it bends to whatever Percy wants. Sometimes you wonder if this little room is even a part of the cramped little townhouse Percy lives in at all, or if it does not exist in some other dimension - but you are not permitted to step foot outside of it, so it does not really matter. 

You even toy with the idea he’s going to do nothing. He’s going to let you stay here, stewing in might-have-beens and maybes, instead of letting it all build to a crescendo. 

When you do hear his feet on the floorboards, the click of a lock . . . you scold yourself for thinking that at all. Such an outcome would have been far too kind for Percy. 

He walks into the room with a smile on his face. You do not often see him without it; that soft-eyed, careful smile that had so enchanted you at first but has seemed to grow more and more mocking the more often he has used it as a weapon. The door clicks closed behind him, and though he does not touch the handle you hear the noise of locks clacking shut, one by one. Even if you tried to run - to overpower him and go for the door - you know that it would not open for you. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says to you, with that mocking smile you hate so much. He makes a great show of looking around the room; the bare walls, the floorboards, this prison cell of a home that he has engineered to be your own personal hell. “Oh, this isn’t going to do at all.” 

You’d had some thoughts about the idea of magic, before all of this. You’d always hoped it existed in some capacity - the problem, you suppose, with being a voracious reader and a fantasist - but whenever you had thought of it, you’d thought . . . Wands, or snapping fingers, or little incantations. Percy moves the world around him without blinking; the only feeling you get after he exerts himself to use a little of his power is a faint sickness in the pit of your stomach, the taste of iron lingering in the back of your throat. 

And then there is a little table in the middle of your room; two chairs, and a tablecloth, and silverware glinting in the light. 

“Well?” He asks, and your head bounces from the table and around to face him. In his arms, once more are a bouquet of roses - and you could cry, you could vomit, you could tear him into pieces. You recognise the soft rose hue of the tablecloth; the design of the chairs, the centrepiece in the middle of the table and the dozen red roses that Percy holds in his arms. “I thought we had such a wonderful time last year . . . we can’t quite replicate it, but I’ll do my best.”

It is exactly the same as last year - if last year’s Valentine’s had taken place in a jail cell. He takes your hand and guides you none-too-gently to the table in the middle of the room (it looks silly, there; the prison you call your life is too small for the ostentatious chairs and the dining table). Your eyes frantically scan over the chair and the table, just to ensure there are no secrets lying in wait there. 

(A scorpion, ready to crawl from underneath a plate. Rotting meat, ready to give you the worst attack of emetophobia you’ve had in your life. Some kind of venomous spider on the chair, waiting to bite you and paralyse you and have its poison destroy you from the inside out). 

You take your seat at the table - and nothing happens. You watch Percy warily as he takes his own seat, as he gently places the bouquet to one side - you’d been so rattled to see it, you realise, you hadn’t even taken it from his arms. He doesn’t say anything about it, though. Simply sighs and stretches, looking around your little bare room as if it is the restaurant you two were in only one year ago. 

“I didn’t think we’d need a menu,” he tells you, with a small smile. “I thought we’d simply have everything we had last time.” 

He’d ordered for you, last time - you’d felt so overwhelmed at the restaurant he’d made reservations at, by the class of people around you and the glimpse of the prices on the wine menu, that you’d been glad of it. Looking back, you know he did that on purpose - but at the time, you had only been able to gush about how generous he was. 

There is no waiter to bring your food. There’s that iron again, the tang in the back of your throat - and then the plate of appetisers is before you, your glass full of viscous red wine. It looks far too much like blood, now, for you to want to drink it. 

Through every course, you wait for the sting. 

This cannot be all of it. There must be something more; something hiding behind the sighs of pleasure that Percy makes and the attempts to call back to conversations you’d had. He doesn’t seem to mind you have very little to say in return - he’s happy to talk about how his cat is doing, how the bookshop is faring under this cost of living crisis, a new book he bought last week and is enjoying--

But nothing comes. Nothing happens. For all intents and purposes, the two of you are simply reliving your first Valentine’s date - only this time, in a windowless room, after your boyfriend has kept you captive for months and brought you to the brink of death and manipulated you and used you and hurt you--

The food looks exactly the same on the plate; beautifully presented, and delicious. Your stomach rumbles in hunger, but the thought of what still might come flashes through your mind.

You can’t bring yourself to eat a thing.

“My compliments to the chef,” Percy chuckles, dabbing at his mouth with a napkin. “A pity you’ve barely eaten anything.”

“I’m not hungry,” you whisper, into the air between you, and Percy gives you a sympathetic look. How could you be hungry, when you’d feared everything you might put on your fork would turn to ashes or organs or worse in your mouth? When you’d spent the entire meal wondering about what he was going to do next, what he was going to say next?

He clicks his tongue, tutting at you sympathetically.

“Poor thing,” he says, voice dropping with that faux sympathy. “We can’t have you losing your strength, now. I’ll make sure you have your favourite tomorrow - just to see if we can tempt you into eating.” He leans forward, catching your chin in his hand, still smiling. “I’d hate for you to waste away into nothing.”

This close, you can see the slitted pupils of his eyes, and you know he must feel the way that you swallow. You’re so vulnerable like this - he could do anything to you, use this moment to break you in any way he chooses. 

The moment passes. He lets go of you. 

“Well,” he says, “that was pleasant, wasn’t it?” He sees you staring, helpless, and laughs. “Oh, sweetie. Did you think I would hurt you on Valentine’s Day? When you know how much I adore you? How I couldn’t bear to be without you?”

“It’s never stopped you before,” you whisper to him, a quiet, barbed little thing - and Percy lets you say it, and then throws his head back and laughs. 

“Ah,” he says, “but I’m absolutely stuffed. You’re a meal all on your own. You’ve been terrified of what I might do the whole time! Anything else would have just been greed, I fear.”

You look up at him, barely daring to believe it. He’s really just going to leave? He’s going to take what he did from the meal, from the trembling edge of fear you’ve felt all day, and simply . . . let you think that was enough? 

“Th-that’s it?” You ask, hating how small your voice sounds. You clench your fists atop the table cloth, the few bites of food that you did manage to get down churning in your stomach. 

Percy tilts his head to the side, and then laughs again. 

“How silly of me,” he says, and your throat constricts. “No, no. I have another present for you. I almost forgot!”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper, crumpled, folded over and over. He unfolds it for you, and you see that it is a sheet torn from a newspaper - his smile does not budge as he leans over and places it before you on the table. 

You take a moment before you look down at it. You don’t know what it would be, after all; and it would not be the first time something that has seemed perfectly harmless has turned out to be anything of the sort. Percy waits, patiently, and you finally bring yourself to look down and read the small, cramped letters. 

That’s a photograph of you. 

You stare up from the page, caught in mid-laugh, your dark hair blowing across your face. In the background is a sunny day at the park; it takes a moment for you to remember it being taken. It takes a while, now, to remember you had a life before these four walls. 

There are other photos of you, too. One with your family. A baby photo, posed perfectly in a photographer’s studio. A picture of your graduating class, with you circled--

Your eyes scan desperately over the words. You can’t quite take it in. You try to read it properly, but your vision skims and sputters and spots, and only certain phrases make it through the haze of terror and confusion that you feel descending over you. 

‘Missing for eight months’ . . . ‘Every effort has been made to locate her’ . . .‘Family have called off the search’ . . . ‘Presumed dead’ . . . ‘Memorial service to be announced’ . . .

That’s it. 

They have been looking for you - apparently in all the wrong places. There’s something about a forest being combed over, a river being strained for a body. No mention of a townhouse owned by your boyfriend. No mention of a boyfriend at all. 

They’ve been looking for you, and now they’re not. They’ve thrown you to one side; they’ve said ‘that’s enough, we’d rather just act as though she’s dead’. There’s nobody coming to save you. 

You hadn’t realised how much the idea that someone might find you, that you could go back to your normal life one day, that people were out there looking for you had sustained you until you’d read in stark black and white that it wasn’t going to happen.

The future that stretches out in front of you now is simply Percy, and these four walls, and what it feels like to be afraid.

“Why do you look so frightened?” Percy asks, as you sit there, trembling. The table and the chairs and the remains of the dinner fade to nothing around you, and your legs buckle - before you know it, you are knock-kneed and awkward on those awful floorboards, the sheet of newspaper still crumpled in your hands. You can’t breathe. 

Any hope of escape, any hope someone was looking for you, any thoughts that perhaps they’d find Percy’s little house and break it open until they found your prison cell - gone, like that. Nothing to think about. No hope to cling to. 

And he’d called it a present!

He kneels down before you, reaching out - and his arms are wrapping around you, pulling you closer, holding you against him with a grip like a vice. 

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” he murmurs, against the top of your head, as the tears refuse to fall and the certainty that you are either going to be stuck here until you die, or until he wrings you dry, washes over you. “Isn’t it good news?” 

A kiss. From out of the corner of your eye, you see the red roses he had brought you; they’re on the floor now that the table and chair have been removed. A fat spider crawls from the inside of one of the roses, inching closer and closer to you both. Percy croons softly into your ear, fingers running through your hair. 

Is there a point, you wonder, where you will stop being afraid? Where all of this will become background noise, and you’ll be a useless shell of a person? Because at this moment, with the thought of who-knows-how-long stretching on in front of you and all of the things that Percy could do to you, all of the ways he could fuck with your mind and your heart and everything in between--

You think that perhaps being a shell would be better. Percy clucks, rocking you against him like he’s trying to soothe the fear out of you, though both of you know it is the opposite--

“It’s wonderful news, isn’t it? We get to have the rest of your life together.”

[antigne]

ok final disorganized thoughts. writing this on mobile so hopefully tumblr adds a “read more” thing automatically. TSATS spoilers below obviously

i liked the book. as in reading was an enjoyable experience for most of the time

the strongest part was definitely the dark pages with nico’s recollections of being in tartarus by himself

i also enjoyed all the tartarus bits in general which is why it’s a shame that it took like half the book to get there

also a fan of mr. d being nicer and helping campers with their mental health

once i got past the state of delirium of reading canon percy and annabeth again i realized that their conversation was so ass. like what the fuck were they even saying that entire conversation sounded nothing like anything they would say

especially at the beginning it was blatantly obvious when it was rick versus mark writing. i thought it became less obvious by the end but then sometimes i would read something and be like ok this is mark. i think the main mark-isms i could identify were the ridiculous pet names and talking about being gay

the pet names drained the life out of me. i think the only one that was actually cute and funny was night light but the other ones made me wanted to scratch my eyes out ESPECIALLY “my little bundle of darkness” or whatever

tell me HOW nico has the a) life experience and b) emotional maturity to lecture piper about labels and being queer etc etc. like that conversation between the two had me dying

i think this is mainly a mark problem but everything was SO on the nose. the cocoa puffs are a glaring example of this but like every little thing has to be explained twice over to the reader and in the corniest way possible and as a reader i felt a little condescended to but whatever

the cocoa puffs. i enjoy the concept in theory. like your demons will be with you regardless so you might as well learn to love and accept them except that wasn’t what the metaphor was, was it? because nico was like i’m leaving my demons behind, and the fact that he didn’t EXPLICITLY (like everythibg else) say that actually i can’t they’re gonna stick with me leads me to believe that this is where we were meant to land

another thing that was really on the nose was the son of darkness vs son of light or whatever. like nico complains about the fact that the hades cabin is decorated as if everyone who lives there is a goth teen but that’s LITERALLY how he was written

i struggled with figuring out what was motivating will’s fluctuating wellbeing in tartatus. like he would get these jolts of energy out of nowhere and i was like where did that come from guven that nothing has changed in your environment

speaking of will. don’t like him. <3

“say hello to the sun and the stars for me” vs “my sun and my star” was cute BUT once again too on the nose

i appreciate the discussions of queerness and like understanding yourself as a young queer person etc but once again HOW did nico learn all of this. who taught him that stuff. is he on tumblr engaging in online discourse about microlabels or whatever. like i think there’s something harmful about us jumping from him being embarassed and in denial to him being knowleadgeble about all that stuff and being able to offer sound advice to someone older than him about it

also his “coming out party.” what. what

everyone wants to be percabeth but no one can be percabeth. kisses

finally, it is clear who understands the characters better and it’s riordan and i wish he’d written the whole book

ok that is all. i might add to this later when i’ve processed but anyway. 5/10

ok i’m gonna make a longer post when i finish the sun and the star but oh my god could this chapter with the “cocoa puffs” and the whole leaving your demons behind thing be any more on the nose be honest

[sunshine72699]

Note: I update this frequently as life changes for me :)

Hello! 👋🏻❤️

In case you manage to find my little corner of this god forsaken app thought I'd introduce myself 👋🏻 oh I don't necessarily post anything NSFW or anything but if you're a minor pls DNI, I'm in my mid 20s, I'm a grandma. Go find friends ur own age 🩷🩷🩷

Call me M! 🥰👋🏻 (she/her)

I'm 25 years old & I'm a graphic designer 🎨 (which heavily implies I'm obsessed with art)

I have probably the world's most patient and amazing HUSBAND ever & I talk about him frequently. Sorry, not sorry 😘💚

^We're high school sweethearts ❤️

besides design, I am also heavily obsessed with music 🎶

It's easier for me to link my stats.fm page to explain that mess: https://stats.fm/sunshine72699 << there

Favorite band of all time is Muse, followed closely by bring me the horizon. But I'm also a swiftie. You never really know what you're getting with me.

I love general nerdy things, I'm coming into it more as an adult with an almost fully developed brain than I did as a teen. Although, y'all should be glad I wasn't here when I was 13. Had a serious Doctor Who phase. It was bad. Here's an obligatory list of things I am interested in and love learning about

Movies:

I'm a huge James Bond nut. Hence M.

I like DC better than marvel. Harley quinn is my queen.

Marvel is cool tho. Don't get me wrong. I find DC more fascinating at the moment. Just how it's going. I love DC villians 🥰

TV:

Umbrella Academy is my favorite non animated TV show. I've also been into Doctor Who, lie to me, TURN Washington Spies, broadchurch stuff like that. I don't watch TV often. The animated Harley Quinn series is frickin hilarious. I like family guy and south park on occasions.

Anime:

I came into anime when I was 18 after my fiancé begged me to watch it. I was very late to the party & I regret being stubborn!!!!

Favorite is Tokyo Ghoul. Its not going anywhere anytime soon. It's frickin amazing. Juzo is my favorite character (hence my header) I love everything about it and if you let me I'll never shut up about it.

Others I've seen are: Demon Slayer, MHA, place to place, FMA: Brotherhood (1st one)

I'm currently attempting to watch Naruto and overcome years of oppressed cringe to it. Be patient with me. Pls.

Books:

Not as big of a reader as I used to be, but I am always open to suggestions!! Might be trying to read the Percy Jackson series for the first time soon (bfs fave series) so we'll see! I like design-related books & mental health topics too.

Other interests:

I'm a little bit spicy but you won't see anything like that on here🪶😚🌶 I love psychology & mental health, I love history, I like Journaling and crafting and anything art 🎨

If I think of anything else interesting or that I forgot, I'll update but yeah :D that's basically meeeee nice ta meet ya 👋🏻

[kineticallyanywhere]

got tagged by @writingondaisies! 

How many works do you have on AO3?

14 (there’s one I should move from ff.net soon, but it’s not there now)

What’s your total AO3 word count?

270,817

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

In order of recencey... Dungeons & Daddies, RWBY, Red vs Blue, The Flash/Arrowverse, Danny Phantom, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, (back into ff.net days, Kim Possible, American Dragon: Jake Long, a Percy Jackson one-shot... another thing... Warriors)

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Mind over Matter (Red vs Blue)

Fourteen, and four thousand, years old (RWBY)

Flying, falling, stand your ground (RWBY)

The Way Out (Red vs Blue)

Washin’Boose (Red vs Blue) 

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I try to for long-running fics and for especially long or intense comments, but I’m usually just so nervous ;<; they all warm my heart tho, there is not one that I haven’t read more than once

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

I’m typically allergic to straight tragedy, but... I think probably Put your Stampler in a box (D&Dads), since the whole thing is a hypothetical lead-up to a magic teenager going on a rampage. Mind over Matter has a really emotional ending, but I like to think it’s more bittersweet than straight angst. Fourteen, and four thousand, years old swerves into angst, but nobody’s dying or anything so... yeah!

Do you write crossovers? If so what’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Heroes Under Drinking Age is the incomplete MASSIVE thing which is supposed to ultimately crossover Danny Phantom, RC9GN, American Dragon, and Kim Possible. I hit a hard writing wall on the ADJL and KP side and just never got over it :( I still dream of finishing it

Oh I guess there’s also a TMA-D&Dads crossover I’ve put some thought into, where after s5 Jon and Martin land in Faerun to replace The Library, and they get to decompress in this strange world, meet the Likelys, and hear about the eldritch-adjacent beings from other worlds. 

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! (knocks on all the wood) at least not if you’re not counting someone pointing out spelling stuff unsolicited or stuff like that. 

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

n o p e 

when I did Demons not sold separately (D&Dads) they kiss like two times and talk about the prospect of doing more, but it doesn’t go anywhere cause there’s kids nearby. I tagged it as ��ace writing allos” just in case, cause boy howdy do I not know what I’m doing in that department ^u^’

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that I know of? I wouldn’t know where to start checking for that and if it’s happened, no one’s told me about it

Have you ever had a fic translated?

only in my dreams

Washin’Boose got a pod-fic tho!! 

What’s your all time favorite ship?

I don’t ship too much and I slide around a lot when I do, but Clark KentxLois Lane 4ever

Whats a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Heroes Under Drinking Age, my beloved...

I’ve also got a number of AUs for DnDads, some with enough written that I may as well post some of the stuff as one-shots to maybe expand on later. One is a high school au where Hen (14) comes to Earth early, another is an exploration of what it might be like to be a sort of demi-god descendant of a chaos entity with the Doodler Cult coming back (called Puberty, ????, and You). Idk if Done Sons and Dragons counts, cause that’d be a whole comic. I’d love to publish something of at least one of these

And then there’s a half-baked idea for Yet Another Oscar Time Travel AU for RWBY, that would take place starting after v8 and would feature Oscar and Emerald traveling back to the series start (on purpose.)

What are your writing strengths?

I’ve gotten quite a few compliments on my prose and scene pacing! I like writing prose like it’s the thought process of the character I’m following, and I often find myself getting a bit poetic about it. I’m a big fan of parallelisms and using repetition for impact. 

I also put a lot into trying to match the original tone of the content I’m writing fic for, and have gotten quite a few compliments on my character dialogue. I just get their voices in my brain and they don’t leave. On only one occasion have they paid rent. The freeloaders. 

What are your writing weaknesses?

I bite off more than I can chew and never finish 

I worry a lot over making sure emotional beats connect, and that it doesn’t feel like I’m jumping from point A to point C, and I’m afraid that makes me over-explain point B. Like I was rereading HUDA: Alpha after I posted it to ao3, and I have a lot of grace for my high school self, but some parts of that fic could have been smoothed out quite a bit. Parts of Mind over Matter are a bit wordier than they needed to be, too. 

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I feel like it’s best done by people who are fluent in a language. Language isn’t just changing words from A to B, it comes with cultural connotations and altered meanings and layers that are only going to come across perfectly when it comes from someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about. so like if I were ever to use more than a few words or a common phrase in another language in a fic, I’d find someone who actually speaks it to help me out. 

as for how to format it... if the meaning needs to be understood by the reader, you may as just put it in the fic’s main language and alter the formatting (like with itallics) or dialogue tag to denote that they’re speaking another language. If it’s small bits, I don’t super mind footnotes at the bottom or just leaving it untranslated, like a special bit for people who speak the language or are willing to look it up. 

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

warrior cats! me, my best friend, and my older sister all had OCs and were part of RainClan, our OC clan. Their camp was made in the trunk and branches of a big willow tree that made a kind of sheltered dome. I didn’t even know what fanfiction was back then

What’s your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Mind over Matter. Hands down. For one, it’s actually done. That would put it in contest with The Way Out, which is also multi-chapter and complete, but MoM is WAY longer and took SO much more work but was SO worth it. It started as just scratching an itch and then grew into something that helped me prove to myself that I can do a long-term project, including themes and foreshadowing and narrative hootenanny and character arcs and character relationship arcs. the html coding. It was a great time, I’m so proud of it, editing it helped build one of my best friendships, and there is nothing I would trade that experience for. 

tagging @aryashi, @cinaed, @hedgiwithapen, and @glowstickia

[mysteryartisticwriter]

I Tried // Adam Milligan X Reader

A/N: I remember seeing Jake Abel in ‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Theif’ and loving him. Then when I found out he was in Supernatural about a few years ago I flipped bro. He didn’t deserve all those years stuck in the cage, I feel so bad for him :(( bUT NOW HE’S BACKKK

TAKES PLACE DURING 15x08 (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVENT WATCHED IT YET)

REQUESTS ARE OPEN BTW

Requested: No

Warnings: Mild angst, some talk about death, cursing

Not my gif!! (Please tell me if you, the owner, would like me to take the gif down!)

-

Five years ago...

You sat at your computer in the bunker’s library. The library was dark, the only light being emitted from your screen. It was almost 6am and you weren’t getting anywhere with your research. You angrily closed a tab in your computer and rubbed your face, fighting sleep.

You took a deep breath and went back to your research. Just then, the lights of the library turned on, making you jump. You looked over to one of the entrances and saw both Winchester brothers standing in the doorway.

“(Y/n)?” Sam asked. “What are you doing up so early?”

You stammered, trying to look for an excuse or right words to say.

“I-I was looking for a case. We haven’t had one in at least a week so I-I figured I would do you guys a favor and search for one.”

Dean sighed, knowing you were lying.

“Hey,” The elder brother pulled up a chair next to yours. “What’s going on?”

“I already told you. I’m searching for a case-” You lied.

“Tell us the truth.” Sam pressured.

You sighed in defeat and pushed your laptop over to the men. They were able to see the many tabs you had pulled up about different types of spells for something.

“Do you remember what day it is?” You asked them.

Dean suddenly looked at you in panic. “Oh god, it’s not your birthday, is it? I could have sworn it wasn’t for a couple more months-”

“No, Dean. It’s not my birthday.” You interrupted him.

Sam, who was still looking through the tabs on your computers, looked back to you.

“Then what day is it?”

You gulped, forcing any upcoming tears or sobs that were trying to make its way out.

“It’s May 13th, the day that Adam was thrown into the pit with Michael.” You told them.

A harsh silence echoed throughtout the whole bunker. The three of you stared at each other while you waited for an answer from the two brothers. Sam could see memories flashing in his mind about the day that he threw himself, Lucifer, Michael and Adam into the pit. Guilt wallowed inside of him, remembering that he and Dean were forced to leave their half-brother in the cage.

They never really tried to get him back, thinking that they couldn’t bring him back or save him at all. It’s been five years now, and not a day didn’t go by when you didn’t think of the boy.

You had only known each other for a couple days before he said yes to the archangel. He was a sweet and funny guy even if he did have that Winchester attitude, the two of you got along very nicely since you were just a couple years younger than him. You weren’t together, but flirtations were exchanged, it was definitely one weird relationship.

When you were told by the brothers that they couldn’t save Adam too, you were crushed. It was strange, you barely knew Adam but your heart still ached knowing that you couldn’t save him.

A small tear slid down your cheek until you wiped it away as fast as you could, pretending as if nothing happened. You grabbed your laptop back from Sam and went through a couple tabs.

“It’s been five years now, and we haven’t brought him back yet. I’ve been up for the past few nights trying to search for another way to bring him back...”

“(Y/n)...”

“I know that I’m this close to finding the solution to getting him out of the cage, I swear it. I just need more time to find it and-”

“(Y/n)!” Dean called out to you, causing you to turn your head to him.

Dean had a guilty and bleak expression on his face, Sam looking at the floor, away from you.

“We can’t bring him back, you know that.” His words sympathic.

You shook your head. “No, no we found a way to bring Sammy back, didn’t we? If we brought Sam back then we can find another way to get Adam.”

“(Y/n), we were lucky to raise Sam out of Hell. You heard Cas, one person out and that’s it.” Dean insisted.

“We got Sam out! We can get Adam back out too! We have to get him out of there, he’s been there for five years now and...” You choked out, shielding your tears from the boys with your hands.

Sobs came from you and the two men slowly, but surely, wrapped their arms around you in a hug to comfort you. Tears cascaded down the two brother’s cheeks as well, a heavy pit in their stomachs from the constant guilt.

“He’s never coming back, is he, guys?” You whispered in between sobs.

Sam and Dean took glances between each other, sadly.

“No. No, he isn’t, sweetheart.” Sam admitted.

You felt like a failure. You were the one who was supposed to keep Adam away so he couldn’t say yes and now he was stuck in the cage for the rest of his life. He’d be totured for eternity all because you couldn’t save him.

The only sounds in the bunker were your cries.

-

Present time...

Somewhere inside a small diner, Jaci’s Red Wagon, a man sat at a booth waiting for his food. A waitree brought him his first order, a cheeseburger with fries. She sets the food onto the table and left the man to eat.

The man, Adam, grabbed his food and took a large bite into the burger, hungrily. He moaned in satifaction at the taste and happily chewed on his meal.

“You know that stuff will kill you, right?”

“Worth it.” He replied to the voice. “Michael, I haven’t seen a burger in 10 years.”

A hand from the other side of the booth grabbed a french fry from his plate and inspected it. Michael, inside of Adam’s mind, chuckled a bit and set the fry back on the plate.

“Go for it, kid.”

“You know, I know I don't need to eat. It just tastes so damn good.” Adam said as he picked up a fry and ate it.

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t know much about any of this. You'll be my guide.” Michael looked around the diner to all of the people eating and talking to people.

Adam saw the same waitress come back with a pan of pepperoni pizza, pushing his burger plate aside to make room for the pizza. The lady gently set the food onto the table in front of Adam, whose breath hitched at the sight of the delicious food.

He quickly thanked her and she responded with a smile and nod. Once she walked away, the blonde boy sniffed the amazing aroma of pizza and started to shake on some parmesan cheese and pepper.

“So, what about you? You gonna go back to heaven?” He asked the archangel.

The angel inside Adam’s head pursed his lips.

“I don't know. My brothers are dead. My father never returned. In so many ways, I'm alone.” He answered.

Adam thought about his own family. His mother and father were dead, and his half-brothers that didn’t even care about him.

“Yeah. Same here. It’s not like I have family waiting to see me.”

“You have the Winchesters, your brothers.” Michael added, a little confused on why he didn’t think of them first. “I met them once, and they let me rot in Hell.” Adam corrected him, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

“What about the girl? (Y/n) (L/n)?” The angel pondered.

Adam remembered the kind (h/c) hair colored girl who was a close family friend to the brothers. She was about his age, maybe a couple or few years younger, but he remembers liking her a lot. (Y/n) always made sure he was comfortable and occupied, and man did he feel guilty about disobeying her to say yes to the archangel inside him now.

“I...I don’t even know if she’s still them. Most likely she is since she was friends with them first but,” Adam thought carefully about his next words. “I doubt she even remembers me anymore. It’s been 10 years, anyway.”

Adam and Michael looked at each other knowingly. Both having similiar situations and because they had been left in the cage for so long, the two had become almost like friends. They’d created a sort of relationship within each other, neither completely taking over the other.

“Family.” Michael scoffed.

“Family sucks.”

A little while later after finishing all his meals and then ordering some cake for desert, Adam laid back in the comfy booth, looking around at all the people. He glanced over to some of the waitresses working, picking up plates and cleaning tables for their job.

“Maybe I should pick up some kinda little job.” He blurted out.

“A little job?” Michael asked, a little confused.

“Yeah. Yeah, I mean, these are the same clothes we went to hell in. We're gonna have expenses, right? And whatever change I had, I spent on food, so, it's not like I can go back to college,” Adam chuckled. “Not with an archangel inside of me.”

The man hadn’t noticed someone sneaking up behind him, and a hand rested onto his shoulder. Adam looked up to the person and saw a blonde haired woman smiling down at them.

“Hello, Michael.”

Adam’s eyes glowed a bright blue, signifying that he was no longer at the wheel, but instead the angel.

“Lilith.” He growled.

The woman let go of his shoulder and walked over to the other side of the booth.

“You’re dead.”

“Was. Now,” Lilith turned to him and swung her hips. “I’m back, baby.”

She sat down at the other seat, her face turning serious. “And I’ve been sent to fetch you.”

“I'm not accustomed to being fetched. Who sent you?” Michael questioned, his voice low.

“You have to ask? Your daddy. God. Yeah, he'd like a word.” Lilith answered him, Michael’s expression turning to mild shock and confusion.

“You're lying.”

“Really not.” The demon took a finger full of cake frosting into her mouth.

“Then why would he send you, a demon, a speck of infernal bile?” He spat at her.

Lilith’s face turned mockingly sad and offended. “One, ouch. Two, maybe because we worked together before. Remember? Setting off the Apocalypse?”

“To try and bring God back.” Michael corrected her.

“Right. Didn't work then, but then he came back on his own. So, win?”

Michael’s face grew closer to her but remained emotionless.

“If that's true if...he can come talk to me himself.”

The female demon just rolled her eyes.

“Yeah. Except, I'm not supposed to leave without you.” Lilith told him, staring into his eyes.

“Get out.” He threatened, voice dripping with venom.

“Michael,” Lilith reached over and grabbed his wrist firmly. “I can’t fail him.”

Michael stared hard at the hand at his wrist then turned to face Lilith, eyes glowing blue once more. The demon started to glow a bright yellow and bright light, enveloping the whole diner.

Once it had disappeared, all that was left in Lilith’s place was a piece of black clothing. Michael carefully looked around the resturaunt to see everyone staring at him in awe. People started to whisper about what had just happened and the archangel sighed.

“Remember nothing.”

With that, he snapped his fingers and all the customers and workers went back to doing what they had done before, as if nothing had even happened. Michael and Adam pushed away the plate of cake, no longer hungry.

-

Michael and Adam could hear Castiel praying to them, well mainly Michael but technically it was both since they shared a body. Michael felt himself get angry at Castiel’s words about his father. He believed that God, their father was their enemy? The archangel could only scoff at that.

Still, he sent a message to Castiel through the angel radio. He told him to meet them at a warehouse, someplace where they could talk alone and privately.

The trenchcoated angel was walking around the warehouse, waiting for his brother. He could sense that he was near, but not visible yet.

“Michael?” Castiel called out.

The sound of flapping wings came from behind him so he turned to find Michael, still inside Adam’s body, standing there.

“Thank you. Thank you for coming.” The archangel only stared at him. “Do you remember me?”

“You called me ‘ass-butt’ and set me on fire. And then you helped send me to Hell.” Michael replied, menacingly.

Castiel looked down awkwardly at the floor, remembering the moment. “I did.”

“And now what? You've come to tell me that God, my father, creator of all things, is my enemy?” Michael glared hard at the angel. “Or maybe you just came to beg for forgiveness.”

Castiel lightly smirked.

“Oh, I didn’t come to beg.”

A lighter flicking open in Cas’ hand caught the man’s attention. He dropped it onto the floor of the warehouse and a ring of fire began to burn around Michael, trapping him inside.

Michael looked around the fire in a slight panic before returning his gaze to Castiel, whose face showed slight regret. The sound of plastic curtains moving made him turn towards the entrance, three figures emerging from the dark.

Adam and Michael could see the figures turn into Sam and Dean Winchester, but what caught Adam’s eye inside of his own mind was the (h/c) short haired female standing beside them. (Y/n) had definitely aged, but not too much, still looking as beautiful as the day he met her. Her hair much short and a little taller than before.

Your breath hitched as you saw Adam, or Michael since that’s who was in control at the time. Ten years and he hadn’t changed that much. Older, yes but he still looked like the boy you left in Hell all those years ago. Keeping a straight face, you held up a pair of angel cuffs and showed it to him.

Knowing what was about to happen, Michael turned to his brother with a sneer.

“Castiel, what have you done?”

-

After capturing Michael and taking him back to the bunker in cuffs, you all stood in one of the interrogation rooms. You could feel the tension was so thick that even an angel blade couldn’t cut it. The four of you stood on the opposite side of the room, facing a powerless archangel as he stared back at you.

“Even for you, especially for you, this is stupid.” Michael commented.

“Good to see you, too Mike.” Said Dean, sarcastically.

Michael looked at each one of you, looking at Dean then to his brother.

“Sam. You look well. Last time I saw you in the Cage...”

“Yeah, it doesn’t matter.” Sam said in an almost whisper.

You could feel Michael’s eyes on you as he came closer to you all. There was a brief silence as you felt his eyes staring down at you. All you could do was just look away, wanting to see Adam, not Michael.

“We need your help. God-” Sam began to say until he was interrupted by the archangel.

“I’ve heard. Repeatedly.” Michael glanced over to where Cas stood as he sat down in the chair.

“Well then you’re aware-”

“I’m not aware of anything. You're asking me to trust you. You, who doomed me, you, who let Lucifer walk free while your own brother sat in hell.” He barked, feeling protective of the youngest Winchester he grew close to.

You were close to crying. You had tried for years to get Adam back but failed. Eventually, the brothers had convinced you that there was no way of getting him out. Dean looked down at the floor in guilt.

“Doing what we do, we've had to get used to losing people.” Sam tried to tell him.

“Probably a little too used to it.” You added, speaking for the first time.

Cas glanced over to you in concern, but you just looked to him with your lips in a thin line then back to Michael. Adam, inside his own head, could feel himself getting a bit jumpy inside after hearing your voice after so long.

“With Adam, we said goodbye because we thought we had to. We were wrong.”

Michael stared down the man with hard eyes. He always wondered if the brothers ever tried to get Adam back, but apparently not. But if the Winchesters didn’t try, did (Y/n)?

“Well, don't tell me.” Michael said, shaking his head. “Tell him.”

You all stared at him, confused, not understanding what he meant by that. Suddenly, his eyes flashed a blue glow, his body straightening up. Adam glanced to Dean, to Sam, then finally you. He pulled his lips into a short smile.

“Hey, (Y/n),” He then looked to his brothers. “Sam, Dean.”

Your lips formed into a wide grin, happy to hear the real Adam’s voice. It was deeper than when you first met him but that didn’t matter. You just wanted to go up to him and give him the tighest hug ever then never let go.

“Adam.” You said in a small whisper.

You were just about to go run up to him when you were stopped by the arm of Castiel. His eyes telling you stand down and wait until they were done talking first. Hesitantly, you silently agreed. Adam felt a bit upset, he wanted to hold you more than anything as of right now.

“Adam?” Asked Sam, trying to confirm it was really him.

Adam jokingly raised his hands, pretending as if he was about to attack. You would have laughed if it weren’t for the current situation.

“Wait, Mic-Michael lets you talk? I mean, he lets you be?” Questioned Dean.

You were actually just as surprised as the boys, remembering when Dean said yes to Michael to kill Lucifer and he ended up being overriden by the angel for a while.

“Uh, yeah.” Adam nodded. “In the Cage, we came to an agreement. We only had each other.”

Needless to say, you were kind of impressed, actually. You’ve never seen an angel and a vessel come to an agreement or be at peace within each other. It was always the angel being the one at the wheel, never really the vessel.

But it also pained you as you heard Adam’s words. It was just the two of them for so many years, only them in the cage after Sam and Lucifer left. If you had tried harder, maybe they both could have gotten out earlier.

“Adam, look, I know we bailed on you, okay, and there is nothing that we can say to fix that.” Dean admitted to him.

The blonde just sighed.

“How about an ‘I'm sorry’?”

After being trapped in Hell for so many years, all he wanted was an apology from his family. Your heart broke, thinking of the toture he must have gone through and how much pain he felt about being abandoned. Adam was strong, a humble man for only wanting an ‘I’m sorry’.

Adam’s eyes glowed blue for a moment and he grunted, moving around in his cuffs and seat. Michael was back now.

“Enough. Why am I here?” Michael questioned.

Cas spoke up after being quiet for a while. “Michael, we needed to speak with you because God is back. You didn't think the Cage just opened on its own, did you?”

“If my father is back, he will usher in Paradise.”

“No, he won't.” Michael turned to you. “Because Paradise is boring, and your dad...he's just looking to be entertained.” You explained, recalling about when Chuck killed Jack.

“Which means we're his puppets. All of us, especially you.”

The archangel stood up furiously, his face brooding.

“I won't hear this. You're lying.” Michael pointed each and every one of you. “I don't know what your agenda is, but you're lying.” He swore, not wanting to back down on his loyalty to his father.

“Michael...” Cas began to say until Adam managed to switch back with the archangel.

“Hey. It's Adam.” He chuckled, you smiling softly at him.

“I'd give it a rest. He's not listening.”

You and the boys sighed in defeat. Michael was too loyal to his father, not wanting to believe anyone who questioned God’s orders. This was going to be tough.

-

Later, after the you and boys had left Adam and Michael, Adam, still in the angel cuffs, tried to convince the archangel about joining his brothers.

“So, I've been thinking. Maybe they're not lying.” Adam said as he sat down at the desk in the middle of the room.

Michael, standing on the side, scoffed at his words.

“H-Hear me out. Sam, Dean and...(Y/n) try to be on the right side of things. They actually do. They tried to talk me out of taking you on, for example, out of all of this.” Adam began.

“So, you forgive them?”

“Oh, hell no! No. But that's not what this is about.” Adam faced Michael. “It's...look, if they tell you something's off with God, it's because they believe it's true. And if they believe it, it probably is true.”

You were about to come into the room to talk to Adam with a couple beers, you could hear him talking to someone. But you knew no one else was in the room because no one was replying to him, it was just his voice. You paused before entering, waiting.

“You and I have been together for years. My father and I have been together for eternity. I exist because he willed it.” Michael exclaimed, though you couldn’t hear it.

“So he's having a mid-eternity crisis!” Adam turned to his friend. “Or!...Or, maybe you don't know your dad as well as you think you do.”

You snickered under your breath, now realzing he was probably talking to Michael in his mind. He made a point, Michael didn’t know his father all that well, just like how you and the Winchesters thought you knew him too.

In the room, Michael was about to go off on Adam but instead just turned to face the wall. He walked up the small pairs of steps up to the upper floor.

“The point is parents keep secrets, right? Does it hurt to ask the question?”

Gripping the railing tightly, Michael snapped.

“Yes! It would! It would mean that I doubt him. The good son, the favorite, doubts his father.”

Adam leaned in as close as he could to Michael.

“You still care about that? After he left you in the Cage?” 

Adam knew he had truly set off something inside of Michael. He could see his nose flaring from anger and his neck began turning a slight red. Hearing no more talking, you took your chance to enter the room.

“Glad to know that at least one of you believes us.”

Adam looked away from Michael to see you entering the room, two beers in hand. He straightened himself up in his seat, smiling slightly.

“I brought some beers, hoping we could maybe talk.” You asked, setting the alcohol onto the table.

“Yeah, I guess I could use a beer after not having one for 10 years.” Adam teased you.

It wasn’t very funny to you, though. Ten years without Adam, ten years he had suffered. Five years ago when you officially gave up on trying to bring him back, you remembered Sam and Dean telling you how nothing could be done. You lived those next five years thinking you would never see him again. And now, here he is.

“Adam-”

“Did you ever try?” You looked up to him, his expression more serious. “Did you at least ever try to get me out?”

“Oh Adam, if you knew the amount of times I tried to make a deal, looked up a spell- hell anything that would even have the slightest chance to get you out of the Cage...” You stopped for a moment. “I didn’t give up until Sam and Dean had to get me out of my spunk. I spent so many nights of research for you that I still have the eyebags.”

Adam laughed at your joke, you joining him as it echoed throughout the room. When it died down, a comfortable silence replaced it. You and the blonde male just took a moment to stare at one another, taking in each other’s presence.

“I tried, Adam. I really did. But...it was never really enough. I was never enough to save you. I am so, so sorry.” You cried softly.

A tear escaped down your cheek and your controlled breathing was the only sound. Adam could see it in your eyes, you really did try. His brothers, the ones who didn’t even try, were the ones who convinced you otherwise. Out of the corner of his eye, Michael stood behind you, looking at the blonde. He lightly smiled and nodded.

“Well...you did try more than I think my brothers could,” You peeked at Adam through your tears. “I forgive you.”

You stared at him in shock, he just forgave you that quick? If that were you, it would have taken probably years to accept an apology from being left in the Hell. Adam was really something.

“Now, you gonna share a beer with me or are we just gonna sit here all day?”

You giggled. “You’re still in the angel cuffs. Am I gonna have to hold the beer for you?”

“Or you could just hold my hand and I hold the beer.”

The two of you laughed together, you blushed at his words.

“Then you wouldn’t be able to drink, idiot.” You countered.

“Any excuse to hold your hand is fine to me.” He winked.

“You’re so weird.”

“You love me, anyway.”

You smirked. “Of course I do. I didn’t wait for you for 10 years to end up not loving you.”

“You love me?”

You haulted in your tracks. Fuck, you really just outed yourself didn’t you?

“Yes.”

“Well then,” His mouth formed into a grin. “I guess I love you too.”

-

A/N: Tbh, I don’t really like how this ended but it’s the best I’ve got so deal with it lol. Stay safe, loves!

TAGGED:

@shortwinchester​

@coltcas​

@urlaslongasafalloutboysongtitle​

@xsweetnsour​

@irinazatyk​

[tsundanire]

WIP MONDAY (Tuesday or whatever)

I was tagged by the amazing @shealwaysreads to share with you all my current wip status. Dear lord. I was hoping to keep my shame a bit more…hidden. Thanks of course to @bixgirl1 for starting these shenanigans in the first place (lol jk)

Recently finished:

Well as some of you all know, it’s been a busy week (and a bit) for me: 

Draco Malfoy as random things I’ve overheard at school [Drarry; 1.4k]

Far too young to die [Wolfstar; 1.2k]

Fireworks [Drarry; 1.5k]

Obedience (To the letter) [Percy Weasley/Barty Crouch Sr; 2.6k]

Little Bunny [NottPott; I dunno, it’s a drabble~]

The foley of spring [Firenze/Whomping Willow; 1.3k]

(And yes I’ve left the links for the tumblr links. Makes my life a little easier right now, sorry~)

Alright moving on to my current list of wips… For the sake of brevity I’m only going to write about the pieces I’m actively working on:

(I have two anon fics that I can’t talk about, but you should see those between now and in the next two months.)

Lord Neville gets fuuuuucked fic - (wc: 1021) Yeah the premise came from an idea of Courtesan!Neville, but I played with it a fair bit and now it’s evolved into a whole boys gone wild in Regency England lmfao. Oops. Neville just wants to get spoiled okay? Like. Let the boy live.

Working title: LA Devotee - (wc11.7k + a bajillion words in dms with my alpha/beta reader) Why yes, I did in fact get inspired by Brendon Urie. Again. Why do you ask? That being said, this is really just about a desperate Draco, stuck in a war he cannot win, minutes away from being executed by Voldemort, and decides it would be a great idea to summon Demon!Harry. There’s a lot of intricacies with this, and a lot of planning and hashing out semantics because it’s an au to an extent. There’s some similarities to what happens in the main stories but also some big changes and twists. It’s a whole new world folx.

Move me, Baby - (wc: 1.6k) This is an extremely belated birthday gift for a friend. It’s got Blaise/Ginny, Blaise/Mirror, Fleur/Ginny, possibly Blaise/Fleur, and definitely Blaise/Fleur/Ginny. It’s porn meets Ginny having an existential crisis about her sexuality - AND I DON’T MEAN IN TERMS OF LABELS. I literally mean, her sex drive. It’s an exploration of women and sex, how often women are expected to behave a certain way, even if that’s not always the way they feel. Ginny understands that her mother wants her to get married and have kids, but honestly? Ginny would much rather explore these budding new feelings, and take control of her own pleasure.

Wolfstarbuck Fight club. - Honestly I wrote a few ideas down for this. I still don’t know what this is and I might just end up leaving it for a bit and coming back to it when it makes a bit more sense in my head lmfao.

My dueling assassins/hitmen drarry trilogy - honestly I’m not gonna say much more than that. I’m hoping that Drarry big bang happens next year because I’d really like to write this for that.

And finally...the thing I’m most excited to share with you guys. FROM THE WRITERS WHO BROUGHT YOU: Have yourself a Kinky little Christmas, and Catching the Niffler… @keyflight790 and I are back on our usual shit of writing down smut and feels and pretending like we don’t absolutely adore it. (Okay who am I kidding, neither of us pretend that.) Seriously. We love writing together, and we think we do well enough at it. This time however, we are bringing you the story of Theo and Harry, in a modern University Au. Without giving too much away… What happens when you accidentally wank on a voice chat with your best friend? What happens when he starts doing it too? (Wc: around 2k)

If there’s any of these that you want more clarification on, want to be tagged when it’s posted or you know, just want me to ramble about, feel free to inbox me, or dm me~ cheers yall

Tagging: @keyflight790 @fantom-ftnoise @maesterchill @cheekytorah-laceybauthor @gnarf @letsdothepanic @sugaredsundrop @gracerene09

[takaraphoenix]

Let’s talk about character death for a moment.

Because I’ve been thinking about One Piece all day long. And for me, personally, One Piece will always be king of character death.

But before we go into that, let me clarify some things about character death.

I’m not a fan of character death. I don’t want to see characters I love die. That being said, The Thing (show/movie/book/whatever) does not exist to please and make every viewer happy and feel fuzzy. Especially when it features heavy action elements, character death is kind of a very important element and tool.

Nowadays, character death is kind of... a joke.

No one stays dead anymore. When a character dies, the viewer very often isn’t even under the illusion that this character might be dead in the sense of “gone forever”, which death kind of should imply. Instead it’s more of a “Well, how/when are they going to bring them back?”.

In Shadowhunters, for example, Jace dies for a full three minutes of screen-time before being brought back from death. They could have milked this for some suspense and feelings by killing him off in a cliffhanger for the season - not EVERYBODY has read the books before watching the show, you know. You could have pretended that he stays dead by killing him off in the season finale and waiting with the “Oh, I’d like to have him back, please” for episode one of the next season, to keep the viewers on their toes as to how and when the character will be brought back.

Sebastian. Killed off, immediately summons his mom who promises to bring him back.

And even on the slim off-chance that a character is killed and actually stays dead - Jocelyn Fray - it is not really... handled.

She’s been dead for a little more than a month now. That is no time at all. Yet when Clary had the angel summoned, bringing back her mother and only good relative doesn’t even cross her mind. It’s not like Jocelyn’s death has been years ago and she is well-settled with never seeing her again. It’s only been a handful of weeks now. I find it highly unrealistic that she got over losing her mother that quickly.

Luke too. The supposed love of his life died a bit over a month ago but he’s already flirting up the next woman. Like. Where’s the grief-period...? I’m not saying he ought to wear black and mourn for the rest of his life, but... more than two months, maybe?? You spent twenty years loving this woman. Somehow, I feel like that should have a longer grief-period and a harder impact than chatting up a woman after not even two months.

Not to mention the part where the show just opted to completely ellipse the grief-sharing between father and daughter. Luke and Clary addressed Jocelyn’s death in passing.

And it was mainly just used to fuel a tiny bit of Alec angst - but really only a tiny bit because he literally completely stopped being guilty about it right after he tried to kill himself over it. And while the suicide attempt was mainly the demon, it still rooted from his deeply seated guilt for having killed Jocelyn. But after that, it was kind of just... done.

Jocelyn’s death was all in all completely horrendously handled.

And horrendously handled death is kind of what brought me to this topic, as I had just recently ranted about Kevin Can Wait and how they just fridged the female lead because they didn’t know how to further the plotline but also added a time-skip of a year to assure no grieving will happen and we can move on to the “fun part” again.

That’s the two big bad Hollywood ways of handling character death.

Either you avoid handling it by just... bringing the character back to life.

Or you avoid handling it by simply not having the characters grief and deal with the death.

Both of those are awful options.

Look at Marvel. Avengers was kind of a movie you walked into expecting no real major stakes - there was just NO WAY they would actually kill off an Avenger during the very first team-up movie.

But they killed off a secondary character very effectively.

And by Coulson not actually being a character anyone was close to, you got to avoid the grieving process. Yet still the movie made that death impactful, gave it meaning and an appropriate reaction.

...I am still intensely salty that they fucking retconned it out of existence by whatever the fuck they did to justify that TV show. Like. I genuinely don’t care for it and it absolutely ruins the rewatchability of the movie for me because now when Fury goes drama queen over Coulson’s death, I just shrug and go “Meh”, knowing full-well he is still alive.

Prior to the retconning bullshit, it was a really good and effective way of adding stakes and feelings.

And that is what character death should be.

It adds stakes to a situation. Knowing that your protagonists are not invincible. That something can actually happen to them. The “no one is safe”-principle.

It’s why I absolutely adore the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series.

It had stakes. I spent hours crying over the final book, because Rick Riordan put the effort into making you grow attached to characters like Ethan, Charles, Silena and Luke. You cared about them, their deaths were not throwaway lines, they were impactful on the reader, the story and the characters in the universe.

He gained a shit-ton of respect from me for that book. Genuinely.

Granted, he lost all that respect with the sequel-series where he did the literal opposite and just did not kill anyone. Oh, yeah, nameless, never-before-appeared characters in throwaway line-mentions, a failed comic-relief death for Octavian and the “No worries, we spent the whole entire fucking book setting up the Death Cure”-death of Leo. It was pathetic and insanely boring.

There was absolute emotional detachment toward the final battle, while in the original series, I could not put that book down reaching with bated breath as some of my favorite characters died or risked their lives respectively.

After Beckendorf blew up, when Silena sacrificed her life, all bets were off. I could not stop reading. I had to know. Had to know if Nico and Clarisse and Thalia and Percy would make it out alive of this series. What other twists would come. It was incredibly engaging, both plot-wise and emotional.

That is what character death should do. Make a situation feel real. Make it feel emotional.

It’s one of the many, many reasons why I love and always will love Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Oh yeah, sure, this show is like the OG sinner of “Oopsie daisy, brought back from the death”-protagonist and it was ridiculous on that behalf.

But even Buffy’s death had impact.

Dawn, who started stealing and acting up because she did not know how to deal with her feelings and her frustrations. The utter... loss.

Spike fucking a robot, because the woman he loved was gone. But also Spike working with the Scoobies, Spike being an anchor for Dawn and being there for Buffy’s orphaned sister.

The utter despair of Willow trying to bring Buffy back.

Literally the only plotline of an entire season is them dealing with Buffy’s death. Buffy included. It’s not just “Oops, dead - aaand we’re back online!”. There is grief, heartbreak, confusion, the... “What now?”.

Even as real consequences as how to pay the fucking rent with the “woman of the house” dead.

And it’s not even just this “We will literally dedicate a whole entire season to this character death and it will ACTUALLY work and be brilliant”.

The Body remains one of the best episodes in TV history to me, as it deals with the death of Buffy’s mother, because it is... mundane. It’s a normal, human death and it’s... normal, human griefing.

Or... even smaller things. Kendra. She was only in literally three episodes. She wasn’t a big character. Yet even seasons later, Buffy still had Kendra’s stake, the stake that meant so much to Kendra and you were reminded that Buffy is still thinking of this dead friend. It wasn’t just a one-off character who was shrugged off and discarded.

That’s how you should handle character death. That’s how you make it work.

And now back to where all of this started.

One Piece.

Because there is actually a third option available on the “Death doesn’t matter” scale, aside from bringing them back from the dead and just not having characters deal with the death.

Simply not killing anyone off to begin with.

It’s usually the anime go-to thing, but also typical for cartoons. Generally, the animated medium where violence is hilarious and did you see how this Normal Human just walked straight through a wall and should technically now be dead? Hahaha.

Yeah. That.

One Piece used to be one of those.

In fact, One Piece went out of its way to show you just how ridiculously many characters survive ridiculously deadly situations in the Impel Down arc. We were reunited with so many characters that I genuinely had thought had just died an off-screen death in conclusion to the prior battles.

And then my favorite character died.

Died and stayed dead.

In conclusion to a story-arc that literally reintroduced a handful of characters I thought had died, making me feel even surer that this all would be fine. That Luffy would be on time to save his brother’s life, that they would leave, together, reunited.

And then they killed Ace off. Actually, on-screen, fully. Dead.

I cried for months over this death. It was intensely impactful.

For one, due to the world-building so far that has set it up that no one really dies. All actual character deaths laid in the past - being shown in flashbacks. But no one ever actually died from a battle-wound. Crushed by an entire fucking building? Shrug it off, dude.

This... inversion of an “avoiding death”-trope can make a character death intensely effective, because it really does hit you out of left field then.

But it wasn’t just that.

Luffy’s reaction to it was so intense and real and deep and argh, I cried so much. So, so much. And I was so angry about this. Stopped watching/reading for a solid two years of grieving period for myself.

I’m not good when you kill off my favorite character.

And I gotta admit, I have never really managed to get back into it since Ace’s death. I think that’s less due to the death and more due to the time-skip. I didn’t like that at all.

But yeah, it was hella effective and well-written.

So, in overall conclusion, what I want is for them to stop with the cop-out deaths.

If you don’t have the balls to actually kill your characters off, then don’t fake it either, because it’s uncreative, uneffective, boring and annoying.

Kill them off or don’t, there can’t be an in-between, the in-between has become an overused trope at this point.

And when you kill them off, fucking deal with it and have your characters deal with it too.

[la-knight]

Books I Read in 2018: Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi

“Maybe that's why superheroes wore capes. Maybe they weren't capes at all, but safety blankets, like the one Aru kept at the bottom of her bed and pulled up under her chin before she went to sleep. Maybe superheroes just tied their blankies around their necks so they'd have a little bit of comfort wherever they went. Because honestly? Saving the world was scary. No harm admitting that.”

“It is not failure to fail.”

“This is what we get for thinking that scaley orange skin and fake hair could keep that former demon out of elected office.

“You are the Daughter of Death," hissed Aru. "You don't walk into a telephone pole because of a boy.”

“Aru was twelve years old. Even she knew that half the time she didn't know what she was doing.”

Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from her latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur? One day, three schoolmates show up at Aru's doorstep to catch her in a lie. They don't believe her claim that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, and they dare Aru to prove it. Just a quick light, Aru thinks. Then she can get herself out of this mess and never ever fib again. But lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Her classmates and beloved mother are frozen in time, and it's up to Aru to save them. The only way to stop the demon is to find the reincarnations of the five legendary Pandava brothers, protagonists of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, and journey through the Kingdom of Death. But how is one girl in Spider-Man pajamas supposed to do all that

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I first heard about Roshani Chokshi when her novel The Star-Touched Queen debuted back in like 2016. The elevator pitch I’d heard for it was “Hades and Persephone but with Indian mythology.” I’m a HUGE sucker for Hades & Persephone, always have been. So of course I snatched that up, and fell in love with Maya, with the beautifully lyrical and poetic prose, and with Roshani Chokshi’s way of painting her different worlds. Out of the four books she has out right now, I only have one left to read (A Crown of Wishes). She’s brilliant, and when I found out she was expanding to Middle-Grade, I knew I had to see what was up with her newest book

So what can I say about Aru-Shah and the End of Time? Well, some people might compare it to Percy Jackson - it’s a somewhat similar concept, the children of gods fighting monsters to save the world. Probably why Aru Shah is the first book from Rick Riordan’s new imprint from Disney Hyperion (the man is doing the Lord’s work, not gonna lie). But if I were to compare Aru Shah and the End of Time to Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief...it’s better. It’s SO MUCH better (no offense, Rick).

See, I like Percy. I like the series and I like him. But the first book was a bit shallow. To be fair, it came out at a time when middle-grade was still fighting to be allowed to hold the same depths as some of the “more risque” YA of the time, like having queer characters, or characters with mental health issues, or what have you. At the time PJ:LT came out, most middle-grade fantasies weren’t allowed to have that kind of stuff. Thankfully Rick Riordan helped pave the way for publishers to realize, oh, shoot, middle-grade can have a lot of the same depth as YA, holy gosh (other helpers in the cause are Tahereh Mafi and JK Rowling, although more points go to Ms. Mafi). So why is Aru Shah better than Percy Jackson?

It’s deeper. It’s richer. It’s more diverse. Some of you might think, well of course it’s more diverse, it’s Indian mythology. No, no, no. You don’t understand. It’s amazing. We have two Indian girls teaming up to save the world, one with extreme anxiety and OCD who wants to be a doctor, who casually mentions her gay hero brother without it being a big deal. We have a series set up to put together a team of five young Indian women who fight monsters and save the world. 

There’s a former villain who learns to love, who does honor to the two female leads. The tasks and challenges are clever and fun, with a touch of whimsy but still as action-packed and engaging as any adventure in Artemis Fowl or Harry Potter. We have a girl from a single-parent home who’s always wanted more of a family, and she gets one - as soon as Aru meets Mini, one of the other reborn Pandavas, they start calling each other “sister” and vow never to turn their backs on each other. There’s a brief moment where this is put to the test, but the girls get over it and reconcile easily.

One of the best things about Aru, the character, is how accepting she is of Mini after they meet. Mini can be a little high-maintenance, and at first Aru’s a little exasperated, but it doesn’t take long for her to realize Mini has severe OCD (instead of high-fives, they bump elbows) and anxiety. In fact, Mini’s a lot like me. And while sometimes Mini will say something and Aru will be like, “Wait, really?” after a minute she’s just like, “Okay, sure. If that’s what you need.” 

When they pull off some daring-dos near the end of the book, Aru offers her elbow for a bump without having to be reminded of the no-hands rule. Even better, Mini doesn’t just decide to high-five Aru at the end. She’s still OCD, still freaks out over germs, and Aru doesn’t mind. And while Mini does sometimes panic, Aru is mostly very understanding and helps her get through her panic attacks. When Mini expresses fear that Aru will abandon her because of her anxiety and “other flaws,” Aru not only promises she won’t, but puts a spin on it that helps sooth Mini’s fears (Aru gets hung up about this and wonders if she’s lying; I’ll touch on that near the end).

The villains were interesting, the mythology is fairly new which means explanations can be provided in a fun way and it’s not stuff we readers have been told ten million times. I was honestly surprised by the identity of Aru and Mini’s fathers (who aren’t their biological fathers; these Indian gods imbued the girls’ souls with...soul DNA? That’s not what they call it, I just don’t know if I can explain it any other way). Also, as a fan of The Star-Touched Queen, I had to wonder - did Maya have anything to do with Mini’s powers?

You know how in Percy Jackson the kids get neat doo-dads that turn into magical stuff? Like a pen into a sword, Thalia’s bracelet into that one shield, Luke’s winged sneakers, blah blah? Aru gets a golden tennis ball and Mini gets a purple compact. Not a big deal? Ah ha, au contraire. Those items are the glamoured belongings of the god of thunder and the god of death, and they’re actually pretty cool - but also pretty!

This book is just...fun. It’s SO FUN. The monsters are new, the tasks are original, the characters are cute, and I loved it.

Let’s talk about the thing I love most: Aru Shah. Roshani Chokshi has the interesting ability to create characters that are basically me. Not physically, not according to age or race, but with Night, with Maya, and now with Aru, she creates female leads who speak to me on a fundamental level. 

This time, it’s Aru, who’s basically Loki from Loki: Agent of Asgard except female instead of genderfluid, 12 years old, and Indian. In L:AoA, there’s a scene in the final bindup where Loki indentifies themself (first in femme-presenting form, then in masc-presenting form) as the moon goddess, the god of stories. Aru is the personification of that. 

Something that gets said a lot in the book is, “You’re a liar, Aru Shah.” But she’s not. She’s a storyteller, a world-changer, someone who refuses to view the world as bleak and terrible and uses the gift of words to make it better for herself and the people she’s loves. She’s an optimist who fights with words and thinks fast on her feet. She’s a daughter of Lord Indra the Thunderer and a reincarnation of the greatest of the Pandava Brothers. She’s the moon goddess, the god of stories, someone I would’ve idolized (or possibly gotten a crush on) if I’d read this as a kid, and I love her. I will follow her to the end.

Also she better get as many books as Percy did (so like...15 books).

There were only two complaints, really. One, Aru was rather preoccupied with boogers (it came up like 5 times). I mean, I know she’s a tween, but still. Two, I saw the plot twist with her dad coming from a mile away.

Plot: ¾ star Characterization: 1 star World Building: 1 star Word Choice: ¾ star Realism: 1 star 

- ¼ star for copious snot (ew)

+ ¼ star for positive portrayal of a character with anxiety and OCD

+ ¼ star for having a 12-year-old girl in Spider-Man pajamas saving the world, okay? 

In total: 4.75/5 stars

Would I Buy It: I did! Now I need the next one!

Would I Recommend It: READ THIS BOOK, PEOPLE!!! It’s so cute, seriously.

I was asked to tag @magic-in-every-book so here’s my Aru review! :)

All pics were stock photos manipulated by me in Photoshop or in the public domain. Except the painting of the Pandavas. That’s from Wikipedia.

[crookedtalks]

Bookish Thoughts: If You Come Softly

Book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/159903.If_You_Come_Softly

Goodreads synopsis:  Both Elisha (Ellie) and Jeremiah (Miah) attend Percy Academy, a private school where neither quite fits in. Ellie is wrestling with family demons, and Miah is one of the few African American students. The two of them find each other, and fall in love -- but they are hesitant to share their newfound happiness with their friends and families, who will not understand. At the end, life makes the brutal choice for them.

TW for the book: police brutality

Romeo and Juliet is a very well loved play with numerous iterations in books, tv and film, and most people are very well acquainted with its “star-crossed lovers” trope. I remember reading Romeo and Juliet about 7 years ago as part of the curriculum, and as a person who is just not into romance, not really getting the whole “love at first sight” schtick. At that time, I didn’t particularly feel sympathetic for any of the characters, and scoffed at them for acting (in my opinion) so foolishly for nothing. In fact, my class did both RnJ and Julius Caesar that same year, and I definitely liked Julius Caesar a lot more. I didn’t get what was so special about RnJ and why it was so beloved and remade into so many different versions; to me it was just a love story about two irrational people who couldn’t end up together in the end. 

Reading if you come softly however, was a drastically different experience to reading RnJ. Knowing that it is a RnJ retelling, together with the first chapter of the book, does give the reader a little glimpse of the ending, a little foreshadowing if you will … but from my experience doesn’t lessen the blow and impact of what happens in the book. I was reading the end of the book in public and I was surprised to find myself with tears in my eyes (with a few people giving me weird looks for that), mainly because I didn’t think I would have that reaction after my prior experience with RnJ as well as my general greater apathy towards romance-themed books. I don’t think I would have read this book if not for it being the first book of the Life’s Library book club. I’m glad I did in the end.

What really worked for me for this book (and didn’t for RnJ) was the more modern setting - it made the characters feel less distant temporally and more relatable. IYCS was also written such that we learn more about the inner thoughts and feelings of our two main protagonists, which I think made it much easier for me to accept the “love at first sight” bit which was an issue with me for RnJ. I kind of wish I knew of this book when I first read RnJ; perhaps it would have allowed me to understand the orginal characters in RnJ a bit more.

As for the themes of this book, I really identified with this deep seated sense of loneliness of the two main characters. I think both Ellie and Miah had a need for connection for many reasons (which I will not reveal because of plot reasons) but wanting to feel understood by someone else is something I think most can relate too. Their backgrounds and what they went through during their childhood also make them a bit more alienated than others their age, Miah more obviously than Ellie, being the only African American student in their school. Race is the important central theme of this book, and we see Miah and Ellie struggling with issues that arise from being in a bi-racial relationship on top of exploring their budding romance. I feel like the theme of race was written very brilliantly here, and is also the reason why this book feels so painfully timeless; sadly, the micro-aggressions that happen in this book first published in 1998 is still very real today. 

~*POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT*~

There is a sense of grief over the loss of what could have been at the ending of this book (those who know the story of RnJ would know what I’m talking about) which is why I think I cried in the end even though I didn’t think I would. The romance of RnJ is notoriously short with the action of the whole play taking place over a period of less than four days; similarly, IYCS is a pretty short read. I know some people in the Life’s Library book club wished that the book could be longer so we could see more of Ellie and Miah’s interactions and see their relationship develop over time, but I think the tragedy of both RnJ and IYCS is precisely that we don’t get to see that; that the characters do not get to enjoy that journey together that so many other couples do, for reasons that were outside of themselves, and reasons that didn’t need to be. The hope of a young love being crushed is where the tragedy is, and I finally understood that with this book. 

~*END OF SPOILER*~

I think this is a great book, especially if read as a companion to RnJ. I also think this is an important book to read to understand the impact of racism on young lives, and this book will be as relevant for as long as the Black Lives Matter moment is relevant. Let me know your thoughts on the book if you have read it! I definitely have more than what I covered here would love to know what you think.

(P.S. You can sign up for the Life’s Library book club here! There are paid and digital subscriptions where all profits will go to Partners in Health, and you get to discuss books with nerdfighters. DFTBA :))