#LITERALLY THAT'S THE WHOLE REASON PRIM DIED??? | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

robininthelabyrinth · 3 years ago

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Spite in Misery - ao3

(rather silly AU of Delight in Misery, only even more petty and passive aggressive, and also slightly more JC/LWJ)

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“What do you want?” Jiang Cheng asked.

“Sanctuary,” Lan Wangji said, prim and proper as he always was, the perfect untouchable iceberg as always, except maybe for the small child he was holding. “For me and my son.”

“Wait, you fuck?”

Wait, that wasn’t the right question.

“Why do you need sanctuary here?” Jiang Cheng asked, utterly bemused. “There isn’t a single place in the cultivation world you wouldn’t be welcomed –”

Except here.

“– and anyway, your brother, his sworn brothers, and your sect would demolish anyone who even thought about hurting you. Who in the world could you need sanctuary from?”

“My brother,” Lan Wangji said. “His sworn brothers, and my sect.”

Jiang Cheng stared at him.

Lan Wangji stared right back at him.

And then he collapsed.

“No,” Jiang Cheng said to the unconscious or possibly dead body currently lying across the threshold of the Lotus Pier and the small feverish-looking child in barely better state splayed out beside it. “I refuse to take responsibility for this!”

“You will not say anything about the room I have chosen to house you in,” Jiang Cheng said. “You will not complain about the food, the amenities, or make any requests whatsoever. Do you hear me?”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said.

Jiang Cheng ought to have expected as much.

“And don’t think this means I’m going to like you or anything,” Jiang Cheng added self-righteously.

“I despise you with every drop of blood in my body,” Lan Wangji said.

“…so noted,” Jiang Cheng said.

After a moment, he added, “I don’t care!” and stormed out.

After yet another moment, he came right back into the room where he’d put Lan Wangji – it was just a convenient room, not specifically Wei Wuxian’s room, and if putting Lan Wangji in there meant he could delay having to clean out all the personal possessions left in there and actually repurpose it, that was his business and no one else’s – and said, “Why do you hate me, exactly?”

“Do you care?” Lan Wangji asked. He was examining the small cot Jiang Cheng had set up to put the still-unconscious and therefore nameless child on.

“Obviously,” Jiang Cheng said. “Or I wouldn’t have asked.”

“Mm,” Lan Wangji said.

Jiang Cheng waited a few moments, moments that grew longer and longer, and finally he realized – “You’re not planning on telling me?”

“I despise you,” Lan Wangji reminded him.

“Oh, you – you…!” Jiang Cheng ground his teeth together. “I’m the one giving you sanctuary, remember?”

“I came to you because you were the only one powerful enough to accomplish the task and spiteful enough to do it. I did not come here to owe you any favors.”

“Well, you’re going to owe me one anyway,” Jiang Cheng said, scowling at him. “You – you – ugh. Forget it!”

He stormed back out.

And then he realized he hadn’t actually brought the medicine that he’d intended to bring to Lan Wangji, so he had to go in and drop it off, but then he was finally able to storm away properly.

“I was under the belief we had agreed it would be best for us to see each other as little as possible,” Lan Wangji said, his voice even icier than usual – which was saying something.

“That’s right,” Jiang Cheng agreed, eying him warily. “I’m only here personally to drop off your medicine because it means fewer people know that you’re here.”

He’d thought that he would need to bring in a doctor for Lan Wangji’s injuries, but it turned out to be whip marks from a discipline whip and Jiang Cheng – well. Jiang Cheng knew everything there was to know about injuries like that.

Sure, he’d had to take A-Yuan to a doctor, he didn’t know shit about pediatric illnesses, but that was fine, it didn’t give the whole game away. Jiang Cheng was able to pass him off as some random sad orphan he’d taken pity on, which wasn’t far from what he suspected to be the truth.

“In that case,” and Lan Wangji’s voice was even colder, which how, “why do you live next door?”

“This was the only room available,” Jiang Cheng lied.

Lan Wangji glared death at him.

“Beggars can’t be choosers. I’m giving you sanctuary, aren’t I?” Jiang Cheng scowled. “Anyway, I told you that you weren’t allowed to complain about the room.”

Lan Wangji did not appear impressed.

“How’d you know I was next door, anyway?”

“You have nightmares.”

…right.

“I’ll invest in better soundproofing, then,” Jiang Cheng said haughtily. He wasn’t ashamed of having nightmares. After the life he’d lived, it was only to be expected.

“I don’t want to be around you at all,” Lan Wangji clarified.

“Too bad.”

“I don’t want you spending time with A-Yuan.”

Oh, so that was the real issue here. Well, in that case, the answer was still – “Too bad.”

“He’s my son.”

“He’s in my house,” Jiang Cheng said. “In my sect, in my lands, in my part of the cultivation world, which is the only reason you came here rather than literally anywhere else, remember? Because I’m a territorial bastard with a paranoid streak that won’t let anyone come look for you in here without hovering over their backs like a shadow, making it impossible for them to actually find you – sound familiar?”

Lan Wangji’s face twitched. “I did not say that.”

“You thought it,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji’s silence proved he was right. “Anyway, I don’t care if you don’t like me spending time with A-Yuan. He’s one of the only people who can make Jin Ling laugh.”

“He wants to be his big brother,” Lan Wangji said. He sounded like he had swallowed glass.

“Okay,” Jiang Cheng said, not understanding. “Good for him?”

Brothers didn’t have to be biological, he thought, and that old pain tore through his heart the way it always did when he thought about Wei Wuxian.

“Worthless,” Lan Wangji said, glaring at him, and Jiang Cheng almost agreed with that assessment of himself – thoughts of Wei Wuxian usually had that effect – except of course it was Lan Wangji saying it, so naturally he had to disagree.

It was oddly reaffirming, actually. He might beat himself up as being worthless, useless and pathetic, a broken shell of a man who couldn’t keep a single member of his family alive, who had nothing and lived for nothing and existed purely for the sake of his sect and Jin Ling –

But the second Lan Wangji said that he was worthless, Lan Wangji who was wrong about everything, Jiang Cheng was immediately convinced that he was the best thing that had ever been invented.

Wait, was this how Wei Wuxian used to feel all the time?

No wonder he was always tormenting Lan Wangji.

“I brought you some books on physical rehabilitation,” Jiang Cheng announced. “No, don’t thank me - the sooner you’re better, the sooner you can leave.”

“It will not be too soon,” Lan Wangji said.

Personally, Jiang Cheng didn’t think Lan Wangji was going to be leaving for at least another year, maybe a few more years, not with that many strikes of the discipline whip to heal and his disordered qi to straighten out, but it was nice for both of them to see a destination at the end of the road in which they didn’t have to see each other all the time. Either way, he agreed, so he wasn’t going to ruin the rare moment of complete harmony by being persnickety.

“You should knock before entering,” Lan Wangji added, prissy as always.

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. He probably should have, yes, but he always had the ‘it’s my house’ thing to fall back on. This was the Lotus Pier where the rules of the Lan sect didn’t apply, and as far as he was concerned, that was reason enough to ignore etiquette. Anyway, Lan Wangji was here alone and healing just the way he’d been doing the past few months, what exactly was he going to be doing that Jiang Cheng might walk in on –

“Oh,” Jiang Cheng said when Lan Wangji attempted, with dignity, to extract his hands from inside his clothing, which was unfortunately not something he could do subtly. “Were you trying to jerk off?”

Lan Wangji looked mutinous.

“…were you failing to jerk off?”

Lan Wangji now looked like he wanted to rip Jiang Cheng limb from limb, even though it ought to have been clear enough that Jiang Cheng would only think to ask the question because he’d had a similar issue for a while there. The time after his family had died had been brutal, and he couldn’t even use getting off as a shortcut to fall asleep because every time he tried he couldn’t keep it up; it’d been awful. He’d been terrified that he’d broken his own dick somehow, which led to worries that he wouldn’t be able to have kids in the future and thereby fail his parents and ancestors in a brand new and yet unexplored way, which led to even more panic and even less sleeping. It hadn’t been until someone (he suspected Nie Mingjue, bizarrely enough) shoved a medical treatise about trauma reactions under his door that he’d realized it was a fairly normal aftereffect and managed to calm down a little.

Nie Mingjue had also given him so much work to do that Jiang Cheng hadn’t had time to even think about that sort of thing until nearly half a year later, at which point everything was working again and he’d completely forgotten it was even an issue until halfway into the afterglow.

Good man, that Nie Mingjue.

“If it’s a symptom, you need to tell me these things,” Jiang Cheng said, taking far too much wretched enjoyment out of the whole thing. He’d give Lan Wangji the trauma book, of course – he still had it – but he had to get his wins in where he could against the perfect iceberg, cheap shots or no. “As your current attending doctor, I’m responsible for your care –”

“It is unwanted but necessary. It is simply something that I must endure,” Lan Wangji said grimly, and Jiang Cheng raised his eyebrows.

The book had covered that, too, although that hadn’t been his problem, personally.

“Oh, I see,” he said. “You keep getting hard, is that it? And then retraumatizing yourself when you try to jerk off, which means you can’t satisfy the need, which means you can’t solve the getting hard all the time problem, which in turn affects your cultivation and so your healing…yeah, I see the issue. You should probably get someone else to do it for you if you get really desperate.”

“I see no one but you,” Lan Wangji said through gritted teeth.

A problem, Jiang Cheng admitted.

Still mostly Lan Wangji’s problem, though.

“Well,” he said with the smarmiest smirk he could manage, “as your attending doctor –”

Lan Wanjgji threw a book at his head.

“What are you planning on doing once you’re better?” Jiang Cheng wondered.

“Why are you talking to me?” Lan Wangji replied.

“Oh come on,” Jiang Cheng said. “How can you say such a thing after taking advantage of me? I let you into my home –”

“You will not be able to rely upon that fact forever.”

“I will be able to rely on that fact for eternity,” Jiang Cheng disagreed. “I let you into my home, I hid you away from the world – which isn’t actually as easy as I make it look, just so you know! Your brother is practically scouring the earth –”

Lan Wangji looked like he’d bitten into something extremely sour.

“I’m sorry, did you think he was not going to do that? And recruit his sworn brothers to help him?” Jiang Cheng asked. “I thought the whole point of this was – well –”

“It was.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I do not enjoy hearing of it.”

“Listen, if you’re going to decide to torture someone by turning your back on them and disappearing without a word, you should at least have the guts to own it.”

“You speak from experience, I take it.”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Did you somehow forget everything that happened back then with Wei Wuxian?”

“…you were the one who turned your back on Wei Ying.”

Jiang Cheng laughed disbelievingly. “Oh, yeah, sure,” he jeered. “Because I was so well-known for my backbone when it came to Wei Wuxian. I definitely was the one to come up with the idea to throw him out of my sect and cut ties, yeah, definitely, that’s completely what happened. I mean, obviously, I always got my way when dealing with him, every time, that’s how it always was between us. He had nothing to do with it.”

Lan Wangji was glaring at him. “Not then,” he said, each word cutting like a sword. “The Nightless City.”

“You mean the time he arrogantly and completely without warning started a fight that got my sister killed and then murdered three thousand people, including some of the very few family members and friends I had left?”

Lan Wangji was silent.

“You do mean that time,” Jiang Cheng said, marveling. “Are you insane? Even if I wanted to, if I took his side then, I’d have had no claim later on to grab him as a prisoner before anyone else did. The Jin would have executed him for sure! And slowly!”

“The Burial Mounds –”

“He imploded in front of my face!” Jiang Cheng shouted. “I had to see – when he – he died! He was – he did – you don’t even know – no, you know what, I’m not talking about this. Not with you of all people; you hated him.”

Lan Wangji’s hands were fists. “I did not.”

“No? You did a good job of acting like you did,” Jiang Cheng sneered. “Always talking about how you wanted to drag him back to Gusu just because it would make you feel better –”

“Better than leaving him.”

“I did what he wanted! And yes, fine, maybe that was my mistake. Maybe I should’ve ignored what he wanted, maybe I should’ve dragged him back to the Lotus Pier and locked him in a little room for the rest of his life the way everyone knows your dad did to your mom – ”

Lan Wangji flinched.

In fairness, Jiang Cheng was exaggerating about everyone knowing. He only knew about it because he’d heard his mother spit it out at his father during one of their nastier fights, and he was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to have known about it, either.

“– but stupid me, I thought he’d be happier being free and alone than stuck with someone he clearly didn’t want to be around him anymore! But what do I know? Maybe I should ask you, you selfish bastard. You’re the one in his position this time, you’re the one who’s doing the turning away – I bet you don’t even know what it’s like to be the one that’s not wanted.”

Lan Wangji stared down at his hands as Jiang Cheng jumped up to his feet, Zidian crackling to life in his hand despite himself, persisting even though he tried to suppress it.

“I’m going to go hunt down some demonic cultivators,” he said, trying in vain to keep his temper even a little bit and knowing it was a lost cause. “And then I’m going to bring them back here and make them scream somewhere you can hear it. You can chew on that with some glass for all I care!”

“You handled that last one well,” Lan Wangji said. It sounded like someone was pulling teeth from his head.

“You’re sick,” Jiang Cheng announced. “I will go get some fever medicine at once. Are you experiencing any other symptoms in addition to hallucinations? Or should I be checking for signs of possession instead?”

Lan Wangji was back to glaring at him.

“I don’t know what drove that sudden spurt of niceness and I don’t care to know,” Jiang Cheng informed him. “I don’t need your approval.”

Lan Wangji ignored him. That was more customary.

Also unfortunate, because Jiang Cheng managed to get less than half a shichen of work done before coming back into Lan Wangji’s room (not Wei Wuxian’s room) and saying, “Okay, what exactly did I do?”

Lan Wangji looked at him sidelong.

“Seriously,” Jiang Cheng said. “What did I do that was so impressive that even you approved of it?”

“The demonic cultivator. The last one.”

Jiang Cheng frowned, thinking about it. “The – stupid one, you mean?”

Lan Wangji stared at him, and then looked at the ceiling, long-suffering. “The one from Yunping.”

“The stupid one,” Jiang Cheng confirmed, and then he was ranting again because he couldn’t seem to stop ranting about it. “I can’t believe the idiot got into demonic cultivation as a way to make money! That’s just – it’s just – if I ever figure out who paid him, I’m going to rearrange their guts with my sword. Lousy rotten opportunistic…!” He coughed, realizing he’d gotten started again when he’d promised Jiang Meimei that he’d stop. It apparently got old after the sixth repetition. “Anyway, what’s so notable about that?”

“You accepted him as an outer disciple of your own sect.”

“Well, yeah. What else was I going to do with him? He’s clearly got some talent for cultivation if he figured out demonic cultivation without dying. It’d be a waste to send him back to be a fisherman or a dockworker or something.”

“You didn’t kill him.”

“I’m not going to kill someone who got into demonic cultivation as a way to raise funds to get medicine for his sick mother,” Jiang Cheng said, rolling his eyes. “The idiot’s on tomb-sweeping duty for the next year to make up for having manipulated corpses the way he did, that’s punishment enough. It’s not at all comparable to the usual sort of amateur demonic cultivator, the ones that summon corpses to torment former lovers or murder business partners or that sort of thing – those are the ones I use as an example to warn everyone else. What’s the big deal?”

Lan Wangji said nothing.

“Fine, keep your secrets. Can you watch Jin Ling today? I have a – uh – important meeting.”

“Another woman that you have no intention of actually marrying?”

“Shut up and mind your own business.”

“No, but seriously,” Jiang Cheng said. “What are you going to do once you’re better?”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Lan Wangji said, his voice muffled on account of his face being firmly in his hands. “Go away.”

“Listen, we’re still neighbors, we still need to talk. There’s no point in being suddenly shy about it just because you’re still in the acceptance phase of grief in connection with the whole me helping you with getting off business –”

“Never speak of it.”

Jiang Cheng sniggered. He wouldn’t have pegged the Lan sect as having uncontrolled libidos, much less Lan Wangji, but apparently the situation had gotten truly dire. Anyway, really, getting mockery rights was totally worth an arm work-out and having to put up with Lan Wangji, the latter of which he had to do anyway.

“You really are taking advantage of me now, though! My poor virtue –”

Lan Wangji looked at him through his fingers. “You don’t have any virtue.”

“Really?” Jiang Cheng asked, suddenly curious. “I strike you as someone with a lot of experience –”

“I meant morally.”

“Oh. Hey!”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes. “Pathetic.”

“Not as pathetic as someone who won’t answer a straight question,” Jiang Cheng said. “What’s your plan for after you’re healed? Are you going back to the Lan sect? Or start traveling as a rogue cultivator?”

“Why do you care?” Lan Wangji asked.

“I can care!”

“But you don’t. Not about my affairs.”

Jiang Cheng had to admit this was correct. “Fine,” he said. “I need a name.”

Lan Wangji frowned at him.

“For A-Yuan,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s been a year. The kid’s as healthy as he’s ever going to be, and he’s old enough for me to shove him in with the rest of the younger generation now that we’re starting lessons back up – cultivation, swordsmanship, shooting, etiquette, all the usual. But I can’t register him in the class without a surname, and I need to know if that surname’s going to be Lan or if you plan on changing it to something else.”

Lan Wangji was frowning at him.

“I know, I know, you’re in hiding,” Jiang Cheng said. “It’s fine, it won’t give you away even if you do pick ‘Lan’. I can register him as a Yunmeng Lan instead of a Gusu Lan, the surname’s common enough that no one will suspect anything unless you make him start wearing a forehead ribbon, which I don’t think you lot do at this age yet anyway. But if you’re planning on continuing to hide from your family after you get better, you’re going to need to do something about all of that.”

Lan Wangji looked sour.

“Anyway, long story short, that’s it. Your plans, I need to know them.”

Lan Wangji looked even more sour.

“Well? What is it?”

“We will return to the Lan sect,” Lan Wangji said.

“Not that hard, was it,” Jiang Cheng said. “I knew you were just throwing a temper tantrum.”

Lan Wangji rolled his eyes.

After a moment, he said, “What do we do about Jin Ling?”

“What do you mean, ‘what do we do about Jin Ling’?” Jiang Cheng asked suspiciously. “I had to fight half of Lanling Jin for the right to raise him here, we’re not doing anything about Jin Ling – anyway, who’s ‘we’? He’s my nephew!”

“A-Yuan sees him as a little brother.”

This was true.

“They will not want to part.”

…also true.

“Moreover,” and here Lan Wangji looked especially sour, “I believe A-Yuan has taken you as something of a – second parent.”

“Well, that’s nice,” Jiang Cheng said. “He’s a cute kid. Anyway, don’t take it so personally. Kids just do that, they adopt any adult in the vicinity as their own. I mean, certainly Jin Ling thinks of you as…wait. Wait. Are we co-parenting?!”

“Mm. Took you long enough to notice.”

It had been a bad day, a bad week, and a bad month, and Jiang Cheng’s temper, never good, was on the verge of imploding, so naturally that was when he completely lost all self-control he might have had and marched over to Lan Wangji’s room to blurt out, “Why do you hate me?”

Lan Wangji’s hands stilled over his guqin.

“I know why I hate you, even putting aside the fact that you’re a jackass with the emotional capacity of a brick,” Jiang Cheng said. “But I really have no idea what I did to you to make you hate me.”

There were so many options, after all. He was a cruel, vicious, and bitter man – he was a terrible parent, unlikable as a friend, barely sufficient as a sect leader, and such a failure at connecting socially with anyone that he’d been blacklisted as a marriage prospect despite being handsome, young, rich, and powerful. There were so many reasons to hate him.

But he didn’t know which one was the one that made Lan Wangji look at him with disdain, even if he thought that perhaps there was slightly less of that these days than there had been before.

“I hate you because you abandoned Wei Ying when he needed you,” Lan Wangji said. “He was your brother, and you left him behind – more than that, you led the charge against him, resulting in his death.”

…that was a good reason.

Jiang Cheng wouldn’t mind being hated for that reason, actually. It was a nice change from all those people who congratulated him for having done the right thing: all those smug sect leaders that comforted him for having raised a white-eyed wolf in the family, the ones that said his actions showed that he had a good backbone and a righteous bearing, the ones that had the gall to send him gifts of congratulation on the anniversary of Wei Wuxian’s death to thank him for his contribution to the cultivation world when all he wanted was to be left alone to mourn…

“That’s fine,” he croaked. “Okay. Yes. That’s – fine.”

“Why do you hate me?” Lan Wangji asked in turn. “You said you knew.”

“Oh, that,” Jiang Cheng said. “Same reason.”

Lan Wangji stared.

Jiang Cheng shrugged. “I mean, I know you were always harsh on him when we were together at your uncle’s lectures, which was completely fair given how much he was always bothering you. But he really did try sincerely to help you when we were all the Wen sect’s camp, and in the cave with the Xuanwu – but after, in the war, when he showed up with his demonic cultivation, you suddenly turned on him even though he was just doing it to help. You kept telling him he had to stop, even though you knew he was doing so much for the war effort, and you wanted to take him back to Gusu to do who-knows-what to him…you even snatched him away during the battle of the Nightless City! I saw you. I was so afraid you were going to kill him, I completely lost my head. I looked for you everywhere – I really don’t know how he was lucky enough to get away from you that time.”

Lan Wangji stared at him.

“And then you didn’t even bother to show up to the siege of the Burial Mounds in person,” Jiang Cheng added, feeling bitter. “After I heard from the Lan sect that he escaped from you, I briefly thought that you’d changed your mind and let him go. I was counting on you to be at the Burial Mounds to support me in claiming him as a Jiang sect prisoner – I had Chifeng-zun signed on, if reluctantly, and with you leading the Lan I could’ve made a decent argument. But then you didn’t show, either you or your brother; instead you sent your uncle, and of course there wasn’t even any point in asking him, was there?”

“…I didn’t know,” Lan Wangji said. His voice sounded strangely hoarse. “I wasn’t informed. It was shortly after…”

He nodded at his own shoulder, meaning the disaster on his back. Jiang Cheng hadn’t asked how it happened – he really wanted to know, as in really, really, really wanted to know, but even he was aware that actually asking would be unbearably rude. Still, he was surprised by the timing of it. How had Lan Wangji managed to end up in the hands of his enemies then? Who had even been left to do it to him?

“Yeah, well,” Jiang Cheng said, shaking his head to try to kick away his curiosity the way he would something clinging to his foot. “You were still a bastard to him when he needed you, so I hate you.”

He frowned.

“Also, you hate me,” he said. “So I hated you back just for that. Though I guess, since your reason for hating me is valid, maybe I should stop hating you back for that?”

He considered it.

“No,” he decided. “You’re too annoying not to hate.”

“The same for you,” Lan Wangji said after an unusual hesitation.

Jiang Cheng nodded and, feeling oddly relieved at not having found a new basis for self-hatred, departs.

“So once you’ve reestablished yourself at the Cloud Recesses, we’ll exchange extended visits on a regular basis so the kids can see each other,” Jiang Cheng said, and Lan Wangji nodded. “A minimum of three weeks per season, whether in the Lotus Pier or Cloud Recesses, and preferably double that.”

“Agreed.”

“In the meantime, you’ll work on getting the trade agreement we hammered out through your brother and sect elders as recompense for the time you spent here.”

“Mm.”

“An agreement whose source you will be disclosing very carefully because the Venerated Triad will not hesitate to murder me if they figure out without adequate warning it was me that was housing you for all this time.”

Lan Wangji said nothing and promised nothing.

Bastard.

Still, after nearly three years, Jiang Cheng was pretty used to it.

“Okay,” Jiang Cheng said. “Is there anything I’ve left out?”

“Joint night-hunts.”

“Right, right, we’ll make a point of regularly going on joint night-hunts – wait, why are we doing that? You don’t need me to watch your back now that you’re fully healed.”

Lan Wangji’s gaze wandered.

“Oh,” Jiang Cheng said. “So we can keep having hate-sex on the regular?”

“…mm.”

“Why didn’t you just say so? It’s not like I’m doing anything else – or anyone else. Blacklisted, remember?”

“Unsurprising,” Lan Wangji said, like the bastard he was.

Jiang Cheng rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, whatever. The set-up works, doesn’t it? I’m blacklisted, you’re apparently eternally pining for Wei Wuxian of all people – your taste is the worst – so who’s going to call us out on it? Go on, get out of here already. I’ll see you next month.”

“Well,” Jiang Cheng said, looking between the newly resurrected Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji, abruptly made of an issue he had hitherto not considered based on Lan Wangji’s screaming body language. “This is. Uh. Awkward?”

#mdzs #jiang cheng #lan wangji #my fic #my fics #spite in misery #delight in misery #sometimes you get a silly idea #and then you write it

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tastesoftamriel · 4 years ago

Note

So you know how it's human nature to do really stupid shit just to see what our bodies will let us get away with, including dumb food challenges? What kinda dumb extreme food challenges do the people of tamriel get up to?

I'm of the belief that stupidity extends to all things, right down to food itself. While I strongly suggest not trying any of these challenges yourself, you're always welcome to watch people making a fool of themselves by doing...

Altmer

The prim and proper High Elves don't so much participate in dumb food challenges, but they are competitive when it comes to their food and wine. Gastronomy gurus in Summerset often "duel" each other with blind tastings to demonstrate one's superior palate, from types of rice to extremely specific vintages. It's pompous, pretentious, and downright ridiculous to an oafish nebarra like myself, but as a chef, I can say they're arses.

Argonians

Black Marsh is home to a whole host of delicious seafood, but Argonians like to test their luck with what they call Sithis' Kiss, made from the flesh of the poisonous Michinitl. The fish is served raw, and sliced thinly with expert precision. While preparing the fish properly removes the dangerous toxins, unskilled chefs have unintentionally killed many a tourist and fellow Argonian alike with this dish.

Bosmer

The Wood Elves are brilliant hunters, but sometimes take things a little far in the name of a meal (unthrappa being a case in point). There's a common saying that the more dangerous the catch, the better the meat tastes, and this has led some to participate in ridiculous, and at times disastrous hunts. One story that haunts me is a hunting party that accidentally led a wild timber mammoth through a village, where it gored an old woman and grievously injured many others. Pick on something your own size!

Bretons

Rivenspire hosts an annual competition where a huge prize wheel of sharp Northpoint cheese is rolled down a very steep hill, and Men and Mer alike roll themselves after it to the finish line. The first to reach the bottom of the hill wins the cheese, but injuries aplenty occur during the cheese race- I will personally stick to buying my Red Northpoint from the store!

Dunmer

For some reason, the Dark Elves quite enjoy eating live things, and sometimes with dire consequences. It has been a trend on Vvardenfell to catch small octopuses, which are served live with a dip of salty saltrice sauce, pickled comberry, and saltrice vinegar. As you can imagine, the application of sauce generally incites rage in the octopus, which will sometimes choke its eater to death from inside the esophagus. Please don't do this, and eat your food dead.

Imperials

Wine is one of Cyrodiil's major exports, and the Province is swimming in it- literally. Wine-diving is a sport where a bunch of grapes are tied to the bottom of a vat of wine, and contestants must swim to the bottom and bring the grapes back to the surface with their teeth alone. The winner is whoever does this is the shortest time. As the hands are often tied behind the back to prevent cheating, this game has also led to a boozy demise for a few poor souls, who presumably died doing what they love: being submerged in wine.

Khajiit

It's no secret that Elsweyr cuisine is often loaded with chilis, and the Khajiit love challenging themselves and their guts with increasingly spicy chili eating contests. Participants are each given a glass of milk with moon sugar and are given up to ten different levels of fiery Oblivion to pass through. You don't normally win a prize beyond being known as that crazy jeek who can breathe fire, but it's a reputation that might just be worth the pain (not that I'll ever come close to winning).

Nords

You've heard about the famed eating contests of Skyrim, but do you really know about it? Participants starve themselves for days before the contest, or stretch their stomachs by gorging themselves, or just have naturally voracious appetites. There are only two rules: no throwing up, and no cheating, especially with magic. Everything else is in the hands of Ysmir the second you take a bite of turkey thigh. Only the truly gluttonous will win an eating contest among Nords. Attempt at your own discretion.

Orcs

The tuskiest of Orcs often step up to the plate when it comes to eating dangerously, but at the expense of one's teeth. While it's not common, bored Orcs have been known to challenge each other to chewing and swallowing increasingly hard foods, like tough jerky to whole solid dried bonito blocks. Unless you have teeth of steel and a stomach of malachite, it's not advisable to attempt this.

Redguards

The Alik'r is home to many dangerous creatures, including vipers and giant scorpions. Some crazy Redguard once upon a time mixed the venom from these two creatures, poured it into a glass with a shot of double rum, drank it...and survived. Many others have not been so lucky. While this dangerous drink has been decried by the law for years, you can't stop people from doing dumb things when they've really set their minds to it!

#Asks #Tes #the elder scrolls #Food #food challenge

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quackisinnit · 4 years ago

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Men in Black au! with Dream, George, Sapnap, Karl, Quackity, c!Technoblade, and Wilbur

Notes: this is for 900 clebration:)) THIS IS SO LONG DKSHS. also i wrote this cause i watched men in black:international the other day

Genre: fluff, romantic, they/them

Warnings: mentions of guns, bombs

Dream

when you first started working with him, he was very friendly and would teach you anything you needed to know

like where the guns are, etc

but from time to time he would be unintentionally flirty

or just make flirtatious comments (sometimes intentional)

"you look good in a suit y/n😌"

"i always wear a suit but thank you"

everytime you hugged or shaked hands after a succesful mission, his touch would always linger

like he would hug you for much longer than anticipated

it would make you flustered but you just brushed it off

soon dream made flirty comments all the time

like all the time

you both layed down on the ground and took deep breaths, that alien was terrifying. "you know, you looked good whole fighting that thing earlier."

"what?"

"nothing."

this kept on going until you (sorta) catched on to what he was doing

"clay, do you like me?" you said out of the blue. "what? no- our relationship is strictly professional and platonic."

yeah you didn't believe him

and he didn't himself

but then again, he said it himself,

he doesn't like you, right?

okay maybe a little bit

he finally confessed when he thought it the was the end for both of you

the alien threw you against the wall, roaring loudly. it ringed through your ears, causing you to yelp. the alien grabbes clay with its other hand and raised him above its mouth.

"y/n since this is the end," clay yelled, "i want you to know that i like you! a lot!"

you looked at him shocked, you opened your mouth to say something but the creature's scream of pain cut you off. your other colleagues had come to save the both of you.

you both watched as they brought the alien back to where it came from.

"so, you like me?"

"uh, yeah. i really, really do."

"good, cause i feel the same." you smile and kiss clay's cheek.

George

he would act very prim and proper

and he'd want you to act the same

he would do little things like fixing your tie, fixing your hair, etc

but on missions he would be very rowdy and make bad decisions from time to time but still calm

"y/n, let's drink with them!"

"but what if the-"

"i heard a yes, let's go."

but then the bad guys showed up

"i told you they'd come!" you said with a slightly panicky voice.

"don't worry, the alien is safe and we just need to get out of here. let me think of a plan."

and boom with george's calmness and smartness you survived😎

but you both got a warning cause you drank on the job-

anyways,

he started acting strange after a few months of working with you

for example, everytime you passed him a weapon his hand would rouch yours

and he would just blush and continue what he was doing

you wouldn't really notice tho since he was subtle with it

george finally confessed after a mission

"get yourselves cleaned up at the headquarters."

"yes ma'am." you both said synchronously. once you were both back at the headquarters, george tapped your shoulder. "uh- so i really like you, can we go on a date?"

you just looked at him, not saying a word. george started to feel more nervous, thinking he did something wrong. "it's fine if you don't want to, i understa-"

"no no no no george, i wanna go on a date with you." george just smiles and grabs your hand, caressing it.

Sapnap

as soon as you became partners, you both got really close a your personalities just matched

anyways, every mission crazy and very chaotic

sapnap cracks jokes all the time

"oh my god, is this alien pussy??"

"sapnap... I THINK SO!!"

its so fun working with him

at the start of your relationship, he made flirty comments here and there

but the longer you both knew eachother, he made flirty comments all the time, like dream

"sooooooo has anyone told you how hot you were earlier?"

"i mean- no? we literally almost got eaten alive"

"well since no one's said it, you looked pretty hot earlier"

for some reason he likes saying those comments everytime your both about to die

or when the situation is just bad

"hey you look pretty attractive right now..."

"SAPNAP SHUT UP AND GIVE ME THE GUN, WE'RE GONNA DIE??!??!?!"

"WHY ARE YOU SAYING THIS NOW SAPNAP"

but when he confessed it was during a normal time

you were both talking about a mission you had to do in a few days

and sapnap just blurted it out

"okay so we have to be in paris next week. i think we should ask-"

"i like you y/n. a lot, with my whole heart" you smiled, "i like you too." sapnap smiled and and leaned in, "can i kiss you?" you just nod and bring him closer to your chest.

Karl

people called you and karl childish and immature during work

but in reality he just made lots of jokes and you both laughed easily💀💀

missions with karl are very fun

fun but at the same time serious

like he thinks very quickly

so if your ever in danger, karl will be there to help

but after you both make jokes directed at each other

"you were the one that dropped the bomb"

"you would've died if i didn't save you🙄"

but its all light hearted and you care for each other

anyways he started to act more serious and calm around you

sometimes nervous

like after every mission you hug

and everytime you both do it you could just feel karl's heart beating so fast

"karl are you alright? you're heart is beating really fast"

"oh uh- yeah. just shocked from the mission and all"

he would also ask you if you're hurt/okay way more

"oh god y/n, are you alright?"

"yeah it's just a scratch"

"okay, if you're hurt just tell me"

he confessed while you were both undercover during a mission

you both sat in the cafe, eyeing the alien that disguised itself as a human. "psst, y/n."

"what is it?" you say, not taking your eyes off the creature. "i like you." karl says quietly. as if he was a kid whispering a secret. for the first time, you take your eyes off the alien.

you look at him, mouth agape. you smirk and chuckle, "so do i." karl smiles and starts giggling, you reciprocate this. "now let's go back to- WAIT WHERE ARE THEY?"

Quackity

chaotic but at the same time quiet duo

during missions its crazy and some times gets out of hand

but at the headquarters/office, you're both very proper and organized

its just so that you both get assigned into more missions together tbh KSHSJ

missions with him is just

*chefs kiss*

one time you were both fighting the alien and somehow he convinced them for a break?????

"HEY WAIT WAIT. i have to piss, let's take a break"

alien: "piss? break?"

"i have to pee."

and the alien just agreed!?!??????!?!

SO YOU JUST STOOD THERE, WAITING FOR HIM TO COME BACK

AND THE ALIEN JUST SAT ON THE GROUND

fortunately, he came back quickly

"okay, i'm back, let's do this😎"

in the end you both won

cause he's alex quackity, what do you expect?

soon he started to act very nervous at random occasions

like you were both just talking about a recent mission you both just done

and you complimented him on defeating the alien

"that was so cool alex!!"

and he just stands there like 🧍‍♂️ "thank you y/n"

HE'S JUST SO FLUSTERED KSJSK

and it's not like your first time complimenting him

he just started acting like this out of nowhere

he confessed while you were doing a mission

you were in the passenger's seat, holding onto dear life. "alex, slow down!" he just glances at you in disbelief. "slow down? we're gonna die if i do slow down!"

after a few turns, you reached a long road with a fiver at the end. alex looked aroud to find another road for you to go on to avoid drowning. unfortunately, there was none.

the buttons that cotrolled the car currently weren't working. so you kept on pushing them. "y/n, before we die, i wanna say something!"

"we're not gonna di- oh nevermind, what is it?" you yelled. "i like you!"

all you could do was to push the buttons more aggresively, hoping to get out alive. to your surprise, the car started to float of the ground.

once you had both reached the sky, you both started clapping and cheering. "lets go!"

"we did it y/n holy shit"

"so... you like me?"

"what? no, i didn't say that. what do you me-"

"its fine alex. i like you too"

Technoblade

he would be quiet and professional

also a little intimidating

like on your first mission he did almost all the work

and in a way you were kinda his assistant

at first you thought this was how missions worked

1 leader and 1 follower/assistant

but then you talked to your colleagues about your missions with him and they told you it was meant to be 2 partners, not leader and assistant

so you confronted techno about this

which left him a little surprised

cause he was the one supposed to confront people, not the other way around

this made him intrigued about you

so techno spent more time with you to learn more about you

which caused the both of you to get closer

when people saw this, they were really confused

cause he was so soft, caring, and nice around but around them he was cold and intimidating

but then techno started to act very flustered and nervous around you

he tried to hide it, but failed

like you would just be talking to him and he would just randomly act flustered

"okay so since he's in [street name], we should turn left to catch up." you said while holding onto the steering wheel. "uh huh..." techno just looked at you, not saying a word.

"techno? are you listening?"

"oh- uhm. yeah, sorry." he said as he opened the sunroof and got out his gun.

this kept happening so you decided to confront him about it

(the same way you first confronted him)

"techno, are you alright? everytime we're in a mission or just talking you seem really out of it"

"i'm fine, just tired."

which isnt true?? his whole brand was like staying up and still having enough energy for a mission

so you were suspicious but didnt think much of it

he confessed while you were at a diner talking about an upcoming mission

you drank some water and cleared your throat. "do you think we need a disguise?"

"uhm, i think we need to..."

"need to?" you waited for his answer. "i like you." he blurted out, looking down at the ground tp avoideye contact. all you could was smile, "i like you too techno, a lot."

technoblade looked back up to you slowly with a small smile but with a shocked expression. you cup his cheek from across the table and caress it, smiling.

Wilbur

he would be a combination of george and dream

prim, proper, and friendly

missions with him would be fun but still professional

he'd crack jokes all the time but at the same time he can finish the mission

idk why but for some reason he loves timing himself during missions

"aye y/n, we got 3 days and 7 hours! not as good as last time but still alright"

"wilbur why do you even keep track-"

anyways

all of a sudden, he started to be more messy during missions out of nowhere

like instead of having everything in control, everything would be out of place

one time you both almost let the alien escape

"wil are you alright? you've been a little off lately." he rubbed the back of his neck, "yeah, i'm fine, completely fine."

you were worried so from time to time you would ask him if he was alright

and he would always answer with the same thing

"i'm fine, y/n. don't worry about me"

or something along those lines

he confessed during an argument

"wil we could've died! we and many people could've died." wilbur paced around the room, rubbing his neck and running his hand through his hair from time to time.

"i know, i know."

"if you know then why did you do that?" you said, raising your voice. "because-"

"beacuse what wilbur? you're feeling a little tired but you're fine? wil please tell me what's goin-" you were yelling and your eyes started to become moist. "because i like you, y/n. so so much."

he cupped your face with both of his hands as his eyes began to moist as well. "i-i like you too wilbur." was all you managed to choke out. "but please be more careful. you promise?" wilbur placed his forehead on yours, "i promise."

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swinging-stars-from-satellites · 3 years ago

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thinking about "death for shock value" again tonight bc i just watched all four Hunger Games movies this week and Mockingjay pt. 2 always just. messes me up.

I get Prim. i get it, i do: her death meant something, it meant something both thematically - because everything Katniss has done comes back to Prim - and plot-wise because without the second wave of explosions, without Gale's confession, without Primrose's death Katniss wouldn't have known the depth of Coin's corruption. she wouldn't have had that thought of those children, her sister, pure and innocent and loving and represented in the eyes of every. child. she. meets. so close to the forefront of her mind when Coin called that meeting. she would have had a living sister, a living light in her life, and heard Coin say "symbolic Hunger Games" and voted yes for the justice of it all and because she's just impulsive like that. she'd have killed Snow and been done with it, and who knows what Panem would have become under Coin. Prim died so Katniss could learn and feel and understand the truth that Coin was more dangerous than Snow at that point. because everything Katniss does comes back to Prim - Rue, her romance with Peeta, every single choice she's made can be tied back into one girl's love for her sister.

what i don't get, what i never can understand or be alright with, is Finnick's death. i can't write a big pretty-sounding paragraph for him like i did for Prim because his death is just. a thing that happens. i can't find the purpose in it. it's senseless and useless and meaningless and Finnick Odair was the best man in the series and he deserved a life. he deserved a life with Annie and his son and he deserved to see the world reborn. he was the most genuinely good person in the whole series - he was always so soft and gentle with anyone who needed it, even Peeta after he was hijacked, and i know maybe i'm letting my own personal preferences (Finnick is, along with Johanna, my favorite character) color this but i can't come to terms with the fact that he died so senselessly. Suzanne Collins could have made it mean more, or tie into some other aspect of the series either literally or just thematically - heaven knows i adore thematic parallels - and maybe then i could accept it, but it DOESN'T. it doesn't mean anything other than a loving, gentle, genuinely sweet man - the guy who cared for Mags until she made the choice to give up her life and afterwards was so devastated that he had to be draggd out of danger, the one who took to Katniss even though she's prickly as all heck and treated her like a younger sister through everything (he calmed and comforted her and she did the same in return, honestly they're one of the healthiest relationships in the series and it's entirely platonic), the one who was still gentle and friendly to Peeta even when everyone else was calling him traitor and mutt and threat - killed for......... what? emotional impact?

or, like i said at the beginning of this post, shock value?

listen, i don't have a whole lot of coherent thoughts about like... the cultural trend of senselessly killing characters for no justifiable reason, but it's something that exists and usually i roll my eyes and move on but THG is basically my comfort series (both movies and books) and for some reason this specific thing just really upsets me and i wanted to rant about it, so.

(additions are greatly welcomed if anyone has more thoughts on this, whether about THG or anything else)

#Lu rambles #the hunger games #mockingjay part 2 #thg spoilers #finnick odair #primrose everdeen #feel free to discuss #death mention #tw death

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lightrises · 4 years ago

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"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight)#hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

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katnissmellarkkk · 4 years ago

Note

General #7

Hiiii! Okay, well I bet you thought I forgot about this! Or, more than likely, you forgot you even requested this back in Decemeber. But never fear, my child. I remembered and have been thinking of this fic and what to write for months.

And so I’m so sorry, I’m a total perfectionist and I started and discared like 3 ideas for this before deciding on this oneshot sooo if this sucks, I’m at least comforted by the fact that I accomplished something in writing this itself? That sentence made zero sense but... I’m tired 🤷🏼‍♀️😅.

Prompt : General # 7 :

“Is that blood?”

“Yes but that doesn’t matter right now, what does matter is-”

“You are literally bleeding.”

Anyways, thank you for the prompt and here we go!

Whispers Of Light

I don't know exactly how I got roped into this. How exactly Delly Cartwright, Peeta's best friend—and alright, my friend now too—managed to convince me to help her and Leevy and about three dozen other members of the community with sorting boxes.

Sorting boxes. Organizing contents. Decorating with "found treasures".

The type of activities Prim loved doing with our mother. The type of activities I refused to do after my father died, to punish my mother for her depression.

The type of activities I now kick myself for walking out on, that I'll never be able to take back. I'll never be able to get those moments back with my sister. I'll never know what those hours between her and our mother entailed, because I chose to exclude myself, just so I could hold onto my petty anger for something that was out of all our control.

Maybe that's why I agreed to help Delly and the others with sorting through boxes upon boxes of debrief, of the items that scarcely survived Twelve's bombing almost two years ago. Maybe I only agreed out of guilt, both for never doing this type of endeavor with my sister and for being the direct cause of the bombing itself.

But whatever my reasons were, I agreed to help nonetheless, and I always follow through my promises. If there was one part of me forged in the war, if only one minor aspect of me was amplified in the smoke and haze and blood of revolution, it was the importance of keeping your promises, against all odds.

The dire consequences of a broken promise has long lasting aftereffects, beyond anything either Haymitch or I wish to dwell on.

"Katniss!" Delly calls, holding up an old, half-ripped paper book that is completely void of a front cover. "Look! I think this book is from the old Apothecary Shop!"

I squint at the dusty, decimated item, not entirely convinced. "I don't think so?" I murmur, unable to even decipher the words on the now melted, conjoined pages. "I'm pretty sure my mother kept the only apothecary book in her family?"

Kanon Bagley turns to inspect the battered item in his girlfriend's hands as well. "I don't think this is a medicinal plant book, Dells," he says sheepishly, a small smirk playing on his lips.

She gives him an incredulous look. "What do you mean medicinal?"

I peer up at him too, not comprehending his meaning any more than Delly. "What kind of plants do you think are in here?" I ask, taking the nearly destroyed object myself and flipping through the worn pages again, seeing odd herbs that neither of my parents ever mentioned or had on hand. "These don't look like the poisonous ones my father told me about?"

Kanon bites back a laugh now and I can't help feeling a little perturbed. As kind and soft-spoken as he usually is, I'm foreign to the feeling of him laughing at me. "What?" Delly snaps at him before I even can.

He still chuckles though, in spite of both our nasty glares. "You guys, it's a book of plants that'll get you high."

It takes a full minute for the meaning to dawn on me. Long enough that Leevy and a couple guys I used to go to school with come over to inspect the book as well. Long enough that they confirm Kanon's assessment just as I realize we're talking about plants that'll make you feel akin to how the morphling made me feel while confined for I killing Coin.

While everyone else snickers—and Delly full on chortles—I pass the book back to Kanon, sliding out of the crowd and moving towards a brand new box of savaged items.

It's not that the mention of plant-based drugs is a trigger for me. It's not something I ever truly gave any thought to before, to be honest. My father likely knew of them but it's not like he was about to bestow that kind of knowledge on his eleven-year-old and my mother perhaps felt it was inappropriate to mention.

No, it wasn't the subject in itself that hit a sore spot for me. But like so many times before, it's where the subject led my mind. It's where the topic took me back to.

Snow's Execution Day. The day I chose to kill President Coin instead. Being thrown back into my old tribute room. Getting high on the morphling.

Trying to forget all that I'd lost. Trying to forget my little sister becoming a human torch before my very eyes. My district engulfed in flames. The ambiguous loss of my best friend.

The connection between me and Peeta that I believed then would be permanently severed. That I believed then to be irreparable.

I suppose I believed then I was irreparable too.

And I miss Peeta suddenly, even more than I already did. Because he always knows what to say when my thoughts turn dark, when I'm suddenly triggered out of the happy, every day events and suctioned backwards to a war torn bird with her wings clipped.

But he's not here to talk me down or scare away the ghosts haunting my mind. He's not here to comfort me or even shoot me a supportive glance. No, he's at his very busy business today.

Peeta's bakery—the Mellark Bakery—has only proven to withstand the test of time these past few months. Since someone accidentally burned down the place, with nothing more than a croissant and a fancy Capitol toaster, the rebuilt bakery has been nothing but a success.

And also extremely time-consuming, I grumble internally, as I begin to pull out stuffed toys that once belonged to dead children.

"If any of those are still intact, we can donate them to the community home," Leaf John says as he opens the box across from me.

"And what exactly are we supposed to be use as decorations from these boxes?" I murmur, peering into another cardboard container, full of half-charred papers and cloths.

The general idea of today, as Delly had pitched it to me last week, was to help the community of Twelve finally sort through these boxes, donate what we could to those in need and decorate the new Justice Building with the leftover contents inside.

Somehow though I can't imagine pinning up terrible drawings of plants that'll inebriate you or headless teddy bears is going to bode well with the district.

Delly rolls her eyes in my direction—a whole new kind of response that I never thought I'd be receiving from the girl who skipped through the town square until she was fourteen years old—before nodding towards boxes on top of the ladder. "We're decorating the Justice Building with the surviving photos from those boxes, Katniss."

"Oh." Then why am I sorting these grimy, dirt-covered playthings? Why didn't anyone give me more clear instructions on today?

And why has it taken almost two years for Twelve to get a group of people together to organize the surviving items from the bombing?

I have no idea how Peeta's managed to get two bakeries built in the time it's taken for thirty-eight of us to come to the Justice Building and look through fifty cardboard boxes. And if I'm being honest, I have no idea why I'm even still here helping. I'm clearly not contributing much to the event. There's definitely more than enough volunteers without me.

And, of course, I could be at the bakery right now. Without a doubt, I'd be of more service there than I am here, digging through dusty knickknacks. I could be helping Peeta and Thom and the other part-time employees, exerting more knowledge and authority than I have here.

After all, Peeta did say the bakery was partially mine. In his mind, at least.

The ulterior motive of getting small, fleeting moments with my boyfriend, of basking in the feeling of safety with him beside me, of the occasional stolen kiss or hand squeeze when no one is looking, runs through the back of my mind.

And sways my decision immensely.

I open my mouth to tell Delly and the others that I'm about to head out, that they clearly have it covered here and I'm just in the way, when at the worst possible second, Leevy kindly murmurs, "Katniss, do you mind starting on the box on the ladder? Seeing if any of the pictures are in decent enough shape?"

I hesitate for a long moment, realizing immediately my predicament. It'd be rude to leave right after someone just essentially assigned me a task. I did agree to be here today, to help out with this tedious project. Leaving right now would only come off as rude and inconsiderate.

This is the reason I never did enjoy group assignments in school. The longer I'm here, the more I'm rediscovering this fact about myself. The division of the workload, the bore of the standing around, not knowing if you're doing the right or wrong thing, the lack of total control.

But I still nod after waiting a beat too long and agree with the nicest flare in my tone I can manage.

I'll go through the one box at the top of the ladder and then subtly make my exit afterwards. The image I unintentionally conjured up of Peeta and the bakery is still pulling at me, making me anxious to get back to him, to see him again even though we were together only three hours ago.

Since we officially became a couple a few months back—though Haymitch scoffs at that notion, claiming we've been together since Peeta first started sleeping over in my bed—I've found myself growing far more clingy to him than I ever could have anticipated. I hate when he leaves for the bakery in the mornings now, even as I still revel in the solace I find inside the woods. I look forward to his return home every night. More than even look forward to it, I'm usually at the bakery around the closing hours, helping him clean and inventory, asking him when he's coming home. Maybe looking somewhat unconsciously flirtatious as I say it.

I grab the box sitting on the ladder's top stair and pull it open, easily maintaining my balance one rung down, the same way I maintain my balance on a tree branch while hunting.

Inside pours out a plethora of photographs, mostly of Twelve's now past citizens. Near the top of the pile I see images of Greasy Sae's daughter, Dolly. The mother of her granddaughter. The daughter who died of croup a few years before the war.

Those photos must belong to Sae, I realize. Which means more of her items are probably scattered throughout the boxes here. And despite the fact that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that she'll tell me not of be impractical, that if she's made it two years without these things she doesn't need them now, I still make a mental note to return her lost items. If nothing else, I make a mental promise to give back to her the photos of her daughter.

I know better than anyone what kind of comfort photographs of the deceased can provide.

As if in line with my thoughts, as if I alone manifested it somehow, the next image that catches my eye is one I entirely do not anticipate.

It's a shiny photo, on the kind of glossy paper my family could never afford. In the image is a blonde man with broad shoulders and a tall build. Wrapped in his embrace stands a petite girl, with long blonde curls and mascara accentuating her already long lashes. The couple both have eyes that match the color of the sky and are dressed up in some of the nicest clothes in all of Twelve. A white dress with lace. A gray suit with a black vest. The pretty girl wears jewelry and lipstick and there's a familiar glint in the male's eyes and I find myself mesmerized.

And I can't pretend I don't see my boyfriend in both of their faces. I can't pretend Peeta isn't the spitting image of both his parents.

He has his mother's smile, I realize with startling assurance. I never saw the witch smile personally, at any point in my life so I suppose I wouldn't know where he got his charming, sweet grin from.

The mannerism looks so out of place on his mother. The kind smile Peeta has, the one that could light up a blackened sky, doesn't bode with the woman in the picture, even on her wedding day. The charming smile doesn't fit with what I know of the woman's character. With what little about her Peeta chooses to share.

But I'm even more surprised to find how much Peeta has come to resemble his father. How much Peeta has grown to favor the now deceased man.

The last time I saw the baker—the original baker, that is. Haidon Mellark—before the Quarter Quell, I resented the fact that Peeta wasn't as tall or as broad as his father. I privately believed if he'd inherited those traits, he'd be even more likely to win the games again and I could worry about him less.

Peeta was always taller than me and was always remarkably strong, after working in the bakery since childhood. But his father was a whole different level. Haidon Mellark, I'd forgotten until now, had a body that could only rival my own father's.

And as it turns out, Peeta did inherit Haidon's physicality. He just also happened to be a late bloomer. Like his mother, I imagine, staring at her tiny frame in the picture.

The change in Peeta's form occurred so gradually I barely even noticed until a couple months ago, when I woke up with my head against his heart and abruptly realized just how broad he had become. Until I couldn't even reach to kiss his jaw on my tip toe. Until he started laughing at me and had to lift me up in order to properly embrace the way I like.

"Katniss?" I hear Delly beckon, trying to bring me back to reality. Trying and failing, that is. I hear her but only in a vague, distant sense. My mind is still stuck on the image in my grasp. Still stuck on the novelty that I managed to find a remembrance for the boy who still at times questions if his memory is full of lies.

"I still cry about my family and somedays I can't even remember their faces."

I never even considered the possibility of finding a token of Peeta's departed family here. It never occurred to me, the potential finds in this box at my fingertips, that I could take home to my boyfriend. I never imagined finding him something to hold onto when the inevitable dark day came again like a storm cloud, full of thunder.

I'm so entranced what this could mean for Peeta, so lost in my own little world, that I'm barely even hanging onto the ladder. I'm definitely not as steady as I should be, standing near the top rung.

And I'm definitely not steady enough to hang on when Delly gives it a rough shake, trying to catch my attention.

The boxes break my fall. Sort of. Kanon and Leaf John had taken the liberty of placing the empty cardboard, already looked through and emptied, beneath the ladder.

Falling headfirst into a large, void box is better than falling plainly onto the filthy, concrete tile floor. But not ideal. Not as helpful as falling into a box of surviving clothes or toys would have been.

Delly apologized profusely for shaking the ladder. She'd even begun to cry when she noticed the blood seeping from my forehead.

Thankfully Kanon was there, as I didn't have the energy to console her much. I don't even know how I managed to cut my head at all, but it stung a fair amount and it provided me the excuse I wanted minutes prior, to escape the group project and head for the bakery.

Even after the fall, my mind still was cemented on the newfound treasure. My first instinct was still to show this memento to Peeta as soon as possible.

Kanon though, like a good friend, insisted on walking me home, despite my many protests that it was unnecessary, that I was just fine, that I could walk home blind if I had to. He insisted, foiling my intention to walk directly to the bakery and not wait for Peeta's return home, which still remained hours away.

Kanon was surprisingly stubborn when he felt strongly about something and I chose to relent, to give in and allow him to accompany me back to what used to be Victor's Village—where he now resided with Delly, inside Peeta's old home—without much fight.

Fighting for your independence and autonomy doesn't exactly present you as rational when there's a bloody gash in your forehead.

"Doesn't that hurt?" Kanon asks as we make out way up my porch.

I look up, maybe a little startled, from Mr. and Mrs. Mellark's wedding photo. "My head?"

"Yeah," he says carefully, looking at the blood like it's a mutt in an arena.

I shrug, doing my best not to indicate how dizzy I actually feel. Either from the fall or the blood still dripping out despite my attempt to plug the wound up with old cotton rags someone sorted into the trash box. "I've had worse."

He chuckles, a little sardonically. "Yeah, so have I."

I thank him for walking me home—for it was as inconvenient as it was sweet—and close the door slowly behind me, before leaning my ear against the wooden frame, waiting. Waiting for him to climb the steps down from my porch and make his way back to the Justice Building. Waiting for him to be far enough out of sight that I can sneak back out without him also trying to accompany me to the bakery.

It's not that I don't appreciate Kanon and Delly and all of my other friends' concerns. It's the fact that I wish to bestow a likely loaded item upon my boyfriend and I really don't need an audience to do it.

It's not the easiest feat, to slyly time it so Kanon won't hear me opening and shutting my front door again. And it's probably not my smartest plan, to walk alone along the rocky cobblestones and the uneven concrete, with a less than level head and body.

But I make it to the back door of the bakery still, just as I knew I would. It takes three times as long, but I make it there nonetheless.

Still clutching the photograph of his parents between my fingers too. Still with the same primary focus on my mind. To give him a token of remembrance, a token of the imperfect family he lost so tragically, that he still greatly missed, even when he can't say their names. Even when he can't conjure up their faces.

"You don't remember your family?"

"Sometimes I do... I'm not so sure other days. My memory isn't exactly top notch, if you know what I mean."

I push open the heavy-weighted back door, using all the energy my body can muster up. To my relief, Thom is already in the back room, sweeping flour off the floor.

"Hi, boss," he greets slyly as I walk in, barely glancing up at me. I shoot him an over-the-top eye roll, though I can't help smirking myself at the stupid nickname, when he beckons Peeta. "Hey, your girl is here!" He yells loudly. Too loudly to be packed with customers at the counter.

I take that to mean the daily rush has come and gone. Which would be very convenient, as it means I can present Peeta with my finding that much faster, without having to worry about his business—or our business, as he teasingly calls it—being held up.

I hear the sound of my boyfriend's quiet laughter from the front. The sound that I akin to my father's singing or my sister's squeal of delight. The last sound still alive that can make my heart do a flip.

But it dies out the second he peaks his blonde head into the back room. The moment his baby blues, the same color as both his parents', meet my silver ones and then trail upwards.

Almost as if remembering the gash in my head, I reach to my forehead, to ensure the makeshift cloth bandage is still in place.

"Katniss?" Peeta says, his eyes looking far more nervous than I anticipated. Which I can only take to mean the red liquid has seeped through the plain fabric. "Is that blood?"

I don't want him to focus too heavily on that fact though. Like I told Kanon, I've had much worse injuries in my life. Me and Peeta both have.

Just look at his prosthetic leg.

"Yes," I reply easily, before moving closer to him, pushing the glossy photograph towards him. "But that doesn't matter right now. What does matter is-"

"You are literally bleeding."

I sigh, feeling slightly perturbed now. "Peeta, look," I insist, thrusting the image of his parents towards him, waiting for it to take anchor.

And it does. It takes a beat longer than I expect, but it happens nonetheless. I watch silently as the image captives him, as the shiny photograph takes him back to a time when this exact location was the only home he'd ever known and this business was run by the two people inside the picture.

He touches the photo, as if to test it's realism, before looking up at me in disbelief. "Where did you find this?"

"The Justice Building today. Inside the boxes, with all the things lost in the bombing."

There's a long pause as Peeta process this. The silence makes me antsy, finding myself abruptly uncertain of what could be going through his mind.

Finally, he whispers softly, "I never thought I'd see this picture again."

And the awed, tender smile that spreads across his face swiftly encompasses me in its warmth.

And I suddenly don't even feel the gash in my head anymore.

Read The Rest On AO3

#everlark #thg #the hunger games #everlark fics #fanfic #everlark fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #play with me 🥰

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mallowstep · 3 years ago

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(Reed anon again)

Just--wtf did Riverclan do with Reedpaw when everyone was rescued? Even in Canon? Like, poor fucking Mistyfoot--two of her kits are with her, but her third and final kit is still in enemy territory, still underneath Tigerstar's paw, Blackfoot is still his mentor. If even a *hint* of Reedpaw's true parentage got out, he'd be fucked. He and Leopardstar would both probably be dead, Leopard carrying Tiger's legacy or not. Tbh I wouldn't doubt Tigerstar'd be petty enough just to kill all of Riverclan itself. Like...Greystripe, you fucking LIVED in Riverclan for a few fucking MOONS. How do you forget or at least NOT recognize/remember the queen that nursed your kits' own kits? You told Firestar you visited them every chance you had. Like...Grey, I get you were worried for you daughter, but dude...you left a child who you saw as a baby to a toddler (thereabouts) under a war criminal. Someone you KNOW had a subordinate who was not against poisoning kits with deathberries. Someone who tried to kill his OWN apprentice. Then, in the Leopard AU, this kid is stuck in the apprentices den during the rescue. Leopardstar and Mudfur cannot get him out without alerting Shadowclan Apprentices. They chose Mistyfoot and Featherpaw's heath and safety (which, at this point it's better than nothing.) And Misty has to choose Feather when Mudfur leads them out of their prison. He then gets to see the absolute horror of his LEADER, murdered, loose a life, to this Monster, see her go through what his mother did, only that IT'S far, far, worse than anything that'd been done at this point. He sees his clan's medicine cat turn against their leader, verbally agreeing and harassing her...just... this poor boy.. In Canon, Misty Au, Leopard AU it all sucks. Dark AU, not so much--still horrific, but Blackfoot is Reed's father in that one, so as his mentor Reed's safety is somewhat assured had Tigerstar not realized Reedpaw was Misty's kit, and that Misty's kits had not all died.

oh my god anon why r u so Damn Good at making me feel things

okay okay okay hm. i'm just gonna -- yeah i'm just gonna put the whole thing under a cut bc i'm a lil too tired to do the thing where i start with the pg-13 and below stuff and then do a cut.

cw: sexual assault, parent being involved in sexual assault of child

heck if i know. i'm like. 100% sure mistyfoot's kits were forgotten about. they were nameless characters for a Long time. reedpaw isn't in any of the allegiances for riverclan in tpb. i...like. i've read tpb how many times? and i honestly didn't know mistyfoot had kits until i checked out the warriors wiki and was like. oh. she had kits? with blackclaw? what the fuck?

i wouldn't put money on it, but i have a feeling the scene involving mistyfoot and her kits could be read as riverclan kits in general. again, wouldn't put money on that, it's just a hunch.

anyway, i kind of just. mistyfoot could have had another litter in the year between tpb and tnp, or during po3, or literally any other time and then we wouldn't have the reedpaw problem (tm).

WAIT

WAIT WAIT WAIT I WAS LOOKING AT THE WARRIORS WIKI AND

HE'S AN APPRENTICE IN TNP

what the FUCK

he's fucking like. several YEARS old. he's 2 and a half years old and he's a fucking apprentice oh my god just give mistyfoot a second litter it is not that hard.

actually. since mistyfoot's litter isn't named...new hc that reedwhisker is a different litter? hm. anyway.

my tangent on the reedpaw problem aside;

oh yeah, he's so fucking dead. imo prob not him and leopardstar -- riverclan would Riot if their leader was killed, and tbh, so would part of shadowclan -- but him and blackclaw. damn.

and yeah? idk? god. i don't know. tbf he's not in prison i don't even know. altho. actually, to give greystripe some credit -- the fact that mistyfoot doesn't ask to go back for him and how risky the riverclan rescue is, i think "not going back" is actually a reasonable choice.

honestly do we have an erin statement that reedwhisker is part of the same litter as prim and co. it's not on the wiki. i want to know. because i think everyone just assumed he was and -- maybe there is a statement but i want to see it.

because mistyfoot is not the type to abandon her kit. like. what? no. mistyfoot? mistyfoot? my brother just died but i am fucking fine get me the hell out of here mistyfoot? no i know i'm starving but like hell you can apprentice featherpaw to someone else mistyfoot? you're telling me SHE would leave a kit behind without so much as a word about him? fat fucking chance.

in conclusion, unless someone can provide evidence an erin said reedwhisker was part of mistyfoot's first litter, i'm going to assume the intention was that he was a second litter.

and back to the actual topic, now that i'm done for real hopefully.

yeeep. he can't be rescued. and -- mistyfoot has very few choices here. featherpaw is dying, reedpaw is safe for the moment, she won't get another chance. she's not happy about it -- she misses him so terribly much -- but she doesn't. yeah. god. that angst. i hope like. someone somehow just Tries to let reedpaw know it wasn't voluntary.

(i'm not Much One for "you left me you didn't love me" angst if you Can't tell. a pinch of it for flavour, but not as a main plot line, y'know? nothing wrong with it it's very good i just don't like writing it.)

god -- god. in my mind tigerstar takes the life from leopardstar privately bc riverclan would fucking riot but just. reedpaw realizes what's happening. so he follows bc of course he does. he's not the reason tigerstar knows what's going on, but he thinks he is.

and he's there hiding and he sees tigerstar kill leopardstar and hears him tell mudfur what's going to happen and he's sitting there in a bush or something just trying not to so much as twitch because he's so dead if tigerstar finds him. he's so fucking dead.

so he just sits there until long after tigerstar and leopardstar and mudfur have left and when he gets back to camp everyone wonders where he went and he can't explain.

and it feels terrible but he realizes tigerstar is still gloating over everything because as pissed as he is that he lost mistyfoot -- now he's truly taken out every thread of riverclan's leadership.

(frankly no i still think tigerstar's most effective control method for riverclan would be to tell stonefur that if he messes up, he'll kill the apprentices and/or mistyfoot and/or rape mistyfoot, and do leopard au on leopardstar, therefore getting all 3 riverclan leaders in blind obedience to him. he'd have to be much more discrete about leopardstar, maybe convince the clans it's a political thing, i'm not sure. the point is, nothing would Visibly be wrong, all three leaders are just going for this, and so of course riverclan would go along with it. but tigerstar's too much of a prideful asshole to appreciate another culture in enough depth to manipulate them effectively.)

anyway. so reedpaw realizes like -- ah yes. i'm escaping punishment because tigerstar is distracted. and -- god. yeah. oh my god.

and at first like -- he doesn't like. witness anything. tigerstar has some sense of subtly. not a ton -- but enough. direct evidence would be a problem. so no, reedpaw is just sitting with this knowledge in his head. mistyfoot escaped and she was carrying tigerstar's kits (was she? he hadn't seen her he misses her so much he hopes prays she's safe), so now leopardstar is going to.

and the thing about letting things sit like that is that the brain is very, very powerful.

(He called my mother a whore, Reedpaw thinks, and he wants to throw up when he remembers it.

Tigerstar and Leopardstar and Mudfur are having a conversation again and Reedpaw thinks of how Tigerstar would wrap his tail around Mistyfoot, like they were mates, and he wonders what Tigerstar would say if he didn't have to pretend.)

so. you know. yeah. good angst oh my god.

and now mudclaw has flipped from -- one of his best protectors to a great enemy. see, here's the thing. tigerstar only tells mudfur he's going to make him watch. leopardstar ain't dead that long. so reedpaw doesn't know what shadepelt knows and shadepelt would tell him but if shadepelt tries to talk to reedpaw...bad for the both of them.

and reedpaw is around blackfoot and blackfoot is a good guard and how long until -- reedpaw is asked to tell blackfoot something while blackfoot is on guard and he hears mudfur say, "You're a slut like your mother" and he -- can't. maybe he freezes, can't remember what he was supposed to tell blackfoot.

("Spit it out," Blackfoot says, but Reedpaw can't remember why he's even here.

"Even your own father thinks you're just a useless whore," Tigerstar says. He's not speaking loud -- Reedpaw would have to strain to hear the words if his entire world hadn't narrowed down to them.

"Reedpaw," Blackfoot growls. "Spit it out.")

hm. yes. god. bad. good. damn.

and yes the dark au seems like. once again "the angst is very different so i don't know how to rank its magnitude because emotions don't work like that" but. on one hand -- his dad. protection. safety. good. on the other -- his dad really did let two of his siblings die and his mom get raped, huh.

hm. good stuff.

#ask #anon #reed au #misty au #leopard au #dark au #yeah we hit all of them #mine

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period-dramallama · 4 years ago

Text

Spanish Princess Episode 5: many many thoughts

Strap yo selves in

-WHERE WAS THE APOLOGY?? Lina’s just back with Catherine like nothing happened??

-Katherine, I get why you’re upset, but you kind of should be unsurprised?? Your dad was unfaithful to his wife, most kings were. Henry VII and Richard III were the exceptions, and even they had illegitimate sons before their marriages. Many kings also had official mistresses that everyone knew about, so by the standards of the time Henry and Bessie are actually being pretty tactful in at least trying to keep their affair out of sight. (Sexy dancing aside).

-Honestly it would have been so much more moving if KoA was like “I know kings take mistresses...but I thought...I was so sure... he would be different...”

-”they gave me a purse of gold!” It’s expected that you give the monarch lavish presents, lmao Ursula and Stafford would do that even if they hated each other and you

-”everybody loves a masque” the only sensible thing Henry has said so far in this show. Also court probably had way more masques than we see in the show, and it would standard to have a masque every holiday.

-”she is not a boy” hurry up with your character development and learn to love Mary already i am so TIRED of this miserable BS

-seems a rather depopulated masque? If the Chateau Vert pageant is anything to go by putting on a masque was a court activity, with most of the ladies performing.

-Bessie Blount in her cute masque costume... sweet mother i cannot weave Aphrodite has overcome me with GAAAAAAAAAAAAY

-”I never enjoyed carousing...my mother scolded me” look i love the Neville sisters with my whole heart but a) Margaret was 3 at most when her mother died, how does she remember her? She’d have clearer memories of her double-uncle and double-aunt, Richard III and Queen Anne b) Isabel Neville in the White Queen was established as very prim and proper, a well-bred girl who cared about enforcing decorum, she refused to ‘carouse’ and she certainly would never bring a 3 year old to a party c) we saw little Margaret as a girl at the end of the White Queen and she didn’t seem at all shy.

-”she died young, didn’t she” ...yes? most people did?

-”they both did” understatement of the year. Isabel Neville died young because she was ill, George died young (in the universe of The White Queen, at least) BECAUSE HE WAS FORCEFULLY DROWNED IN A VAT OF MALMSEY WINE. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT THE SAME! I do at least trust the writers of this show that the understatement was intentional, I’m sure even Emma Frost couldn’t forget a major character getting violently drowned.

-So the court only noticed the plague when one of their own got it so obviously and then died? Yes, plague could move fast, but if there was a whiff of plague the court would flee with the speed of the Looney Tunes road runner. If an acquaintance of an acquaintance of a cook had a cousin who saw someone with the plague, the court would flee to the country. How have these people not died of terminal stupid?! Like Compton was in the same building as the heir to the throne

-To be fair, it makes sense that they’re surprised Compton’s dead. Because the real Compton died of the sweating sickness. In 1528. Also he was involved in Buckingham’s downfall so... you just wrote yourself into a corner.

-Oh wow an actual good reason for More and Pole to be quarantined together i am amaaaaaazed

-”attend the queen” Boleyn, what do you think your daughter’s been doing all season if not attending the queen? Playing tetris?

-Katherine helping Anne into the wagon...I actually like that little moment. Like it does make sense, because the two have no reason to hate each other yet. (And who couldn’t like Anne? She’s such a babby!)

-Thomas More in the Tudor equivalent of casual clothes... much better. Shame about the 1930s lady’s wig.

-”what else should we do?” Maggie, this cannot be the first epidemic you’ve ever lived through. Have you forgotten the sweating sickness of 1485? You’ve probably lived through more epidemics than Oviedo has, you should know the protocol better than him.

-Oviedo continues to be the only man with rights. I wish we could see him crying and missing his wife and babies, but then my lil heart would break so maybe it’s for the best.

-They burn Maggie’s weird blue hood AS THEY SHOULD! IT WAS UGLY AND STUPID! I NEVER HAVE TO LOOK AT IT AGAIN NOW! THANK YOU SO MUCH! yes they also burned her nice dress with the strawberries on it but honestly it’s worth it, bc now i can rest easy, knowing the evil hood has been defeated.

-”you were a plaything” Katherine is so obviously insecure. I’m getting second-hand embarrassment. Like if she really was certain Bessie wasn’t important, she wouldn’t need to say it, would she? Except to rub it in. Which this KOA would absolutely do.

-literally all Bessie said was good morning?? Like Bessie is doing her best?? The masque was Henry’s idea, not hers, she hasn’t shown off about her affair, she hasn’t demanded money or titles, she hasn’t demanded any status to rival Katherine’s, she doesn’t flirt with or even speak to Henry when Katherine’s around, she acts like they’re strangers, she doesn’t even react when Katherine loses her temper...someone please please stick up for Bessie!

-”the rocking of the cart is unsettling to the stomach” is Anne naive, or is she covering for Bessie? I hope it’s the latter, in which case Anne is the one person looking out for Bessie...the babby is Soft, I repeat the babby is Soft!

-the irony of Mary being cold to Bessie when she’s next in the firing line...

-”it is not the rocking” Thank you Lina, where would we be without your gift for stating the obvious?

-”where did Wolsey get his money”...He’s a churchman...at the top of the church hierarchy...how do you fuckin think he got wealthy. Have y’all not been in the sixteenth century for five minutes? Why do you think Luther is so mad at the church?

-”I know of no other man in her bed most nights” Honestly wow I’m surprised KoA wasn’t like “well :/ a girl like that :/ who knows how many men process in and out of her bed :/” KoA gets half a point for being less bitchy than usual. Also Bessie looked so uncomfortable with Henry groping her stomach in front of Katherine. I pray the next man in her life treats her right and that Fraham don’t prematurely kill her off like they did with Compton.

-”the future king” if you’re regent on his behalf, then he’s already king! “Civilised companionship” back at it again with the Scots-are-barbarians.

-Laura Carmichael is utterly stunning this episode, with her hair down. The cinematography was beautiful in general this week.

-”freedom to speak and licence to speak are two different things” hey look at that one of Thomas More’s actual beliefs. I am giving all the credit to the historical advisor for that, I don’t believe for one second Fraham knew that beforehand.

-Maggie I love you but no, God does not sanction adultery. For any reason.

-KOA smirking and gloating about Bessie’s pain...she has never been so punchable. I would understand, if not condone it, if Bessie was manipulative, or greedy, or ambitious, or trying to supplant Katherine. But Bessie’s been betrayed by Henry too, and there’s no concrete evidence she ever gloated about her affair, to anyone let alone Katherine.

-”You think only of your own fate while London is struck down with plague” Earth to Katherine?? What concern have you shown for the Londoners?? Also calling Bessie selfish...Bessie’s not the one who lashed out at Lina, was jealous at Lina for having twin boys, and who wanted to continue a war for personal reasons. And then Bessie proves KoA wrong 5 hot seconds later by sticking up for Mary. Bit rich of KoA to be all “how dare you leave my daughter unattended” when she herself won’t even hold Mary.

-”Louis didn’t last a year” What! Is! The Timeline!

-Meg in that cloak reminds me of the Scottish Widow adverts. Georgie is so greedy- she steals every single scene she is in! Even when she’s raging she has more dignity and more presence than KoA ever has.

-”YOU LYING SOD” i burst out laughing it’s really not the little two-timing shit’s day, is it?

-Mary receiving Charlie B in the most Extra way possible. A++

-Why does Wolsey look like he’s about to cry?

-”thoughts are not actions” Lina I love you but... that is NOT what the New Testament says. Jesus said evil thoughts are very very much sins. I’ll give you a pass because maybe you haven’t been Catholic as long as Katherine has? Idk your backstory.

-Aaand now she’s wishing death on Bessie and her unborn baby and Lina isn’t disgusted? At least Katherine is feeling guilty. AS SHE SHOULD.

-”must it always fall to me to be magnanimous?” Katherine, you think only of yourself, for 23 out of every 24 hours.

-”God wants me to be compassionate to Bessie because of my sins” God wants you to be compassionate because that’s how Christianity is supposed to work. It’s not very selfless of you to decide to be selfless so that you can get what you want.

-oh wow look at that! She’s getting some self-awareness, i never saw that coming.

-”you betrayed Bessie” 5 points to Katherine of Aragon for standing up for Bessie when Henry screwed her over. Finally, some positive character development.

- MINUS 20000 POINTS FOR BABY STEALING

-WHAT THE FUCK

-is henry so dumb he thinks that baby is Katherine’s? Katherine was so obviously not pregnant

-When a baby’s born his skin needs to touch his mother’s skin so they can bond. They should have at least an hour’s cuddle time. Katherine of Aragon is literally traumatising a baby the very minute he is born. For her own selfish, selfish desires.

#the spanish princess

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bumbleberrysky · 4 years ago

Text

alexa, play candyshop (bass boosted) | 01

pairing: gabriel x reader genre: soulmate au, canon divergent around s13, hurt/comfort, humour, future smut (probs) wc: 3.2k rating: sfw warnings: none except the appearance of battered gabriel fresh out of asmodeus’ hold notes: welcome to my first dive into writing for supernatural! i saw someone say that s13 lit a fire under their ass like nothing else and honestly i don’t think i could have described it better. i binged so much while catching up the past few weeks idk who i am anymore

You knew there was a reason some divine power brought you to the Winchesters all those years ago, but to this day you still have no idea what that reason is. It's something you're destined to find out soon though, especially when you return to the bunker after months away and find not only a new face, but one that belongs to someone who up until that point you'd thought was dead. What does his return have to do with the changes you're suddenly experiencing in yourself? Will you finally find out the reason you'd been brought here in the first place? Maybe...

Chuck works in mysterious ways after all.

next.

“Honeys, I’m home!”

The bunker has the same light aroma of musty air and metal as you let yourself in through the heavy front door, feet carrying you, out of habit more than anything, to the steel landing that marks the entrance to the fortress. It’s been so long since you were last here that the two men you used to hunt with regularly have likely forgotten they gave you a spare key. Well, they hadn’t exactly given it to you so much as you’d made a copy on the down-low and kept it for occasions such as this.

One hand keeps pressure on your arm, an attempt to stem the bleeding, and the other carries your single carry-on bag. You make it about halfway down the stairs before your gaze swings out over the foyer and you freeze, mid-step.

Sam and Dean, the two figures you expected to find here, are standing stock-still with their guns half-poised (not directed at you) and expressions on their faces that are a combination of shocked, pissed, and extremely confused (mostly directed at you). Following the line of their weapons leads you to the other two occupants in the room, most definitely unexpected and completely unfamiliar.

One is in rags, cowering, and whimpering, unrecognisable underneath filthy tangled hair that covers his face, and the other is in a prim suit marred only by blood and a bit of dirt, barely a single strand of dark hair atop his head out of place.

“Twinkletoes? What the hell are you doing here?!”

It’s Dean’s stupid, old nickname for you that breaks you out of your shock, a glare already falling onto your face with the practised ease of muscle memory.

“I’ll answer that when you tell me what the hell I just walked in on—” You come the rest of the way down the stairs, slower and more cautious now, with your gaze trained on the two at the other end of the table. It’s when the man in rags finally looks up from where he had been cowering and you catch a glimpse of his face, bloody and bruised but instantly familiar, that your words swell and catch in your throat.

“… Gabriel?”

The brothers in front of you heave a great, unanimous sigh, a look passed between them telling you that you’re about to be on the receiving end of a very ludicrous and typical Winchester story.

x x x

The first time you met Gabriel was not long after you’d gone through the biggest plot twist of your entire life. You’d gone to sleep in your bed, in your home, and woken up in a completely different part of the world, like some magician had snapped their fingers and you’d been the punchline of their very next trick. Much to your regret and distaste, some minor investigation revealed that where you’d woken up in the backseat of a car on the side of the road was in some state in the US. You’d sworn to yourself that you would never step foot here in your entire life and then, like God or whoever reigned above was laughing straight in your face, you’d just up and woken up in some random car in a place that made you long to be literally anywhere else.

Preferably somewhere where the occupants didn’t have such easy access to guns.

…like the two men who screamed and pointed theirs at you when you popped up from their backseat after they climbed into the cabin, fast food in their arms.

That was the first time you’d met the infamous hunting brothers, the Winchesters, and the first time of many you’d nearly died in their company.

It had taken a while for them to trust you, but after you inviting yourself onto a few of their cases and saving their asses a handful of times (ignoring the amount of times they saved yours because you forgot that almost every American slept with a gun beneath their pillow) they’d eventually taken you under their proverbial wing. It helped that you had literally nowhere else to go and nothing but the clothes on your back and a bare handful of belongings to your name. Once they figured out you weren’t hiding anything up your sleeve and that you’re just naturally annoying and a little dumb, they’d happily invited you to become an official-unofficial part of their little hunting gang. This means you’re also familiar with the hilarious angel they have in their back pocket. Castiel is a riot and one of the things you miss most when you go off to hunt on your own.

Having been around during the whole ordeal of Lucifer and Michael going through the motions of continuing their family spat on an apocalyptic scale, you too grew to be familiar with their youngest brother, the archangel Gabriel. Of course, while you’d been there for a fair amount of the angel-turned-trickster’s shenanigans, you weren’t there for the final appearance he made at a hotel in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. In complete juxtaposition to the fact that you could count on one hand the amount of times you’d interacted properly with Gabriel, the sensations you experienced at the news of his sacrifice, his death, were unlike anything you’d ever felt before. You like to consider yourself much more emotionally healthy and with an emotional range far larger than that of a teaspoon and the Winchesters’, but that… that news was something that it had taken you months to recover from fully.

And even then, apparently your recovery wasn’t as complete as you’d thought, because hearing what the boys have told you now has made your eyes burn and your stomach turn into a nest of manic bees, your insides lined with flowers and pollen. You think, for a moment, that you just might be sick.

You’re sitting in the library, Gabriel having been taken to a room of his own by one Winchester while the other fills you in before they’re both reunited before you, and you’re in the kind of mood where you sort of want to just sit there and dissociate for a few hours, truthfully. You can tell you’re not going to get that opportunity though, so in the wake of the bombshell they’d just dropped on you about all you’d missed in the past few months—that they had apparently forgotten to tell you over the phone when you checked in occasionally— you do the next best thing you can think of for the moment.

Put it on the backburner, baby.

You massage your temple with your fingers as you lean your head into your hand, a sigh escaping through your nose. “See, this is why it feels like I have been brought on as a babysitter—I leave for a few months and you old men manage to dig up another almost-apocalypse and find and raise Lucifer’s kid?”

“Alright, first of all,” Dean whips out a finger to point at you, filling you with glee. You’ve barely been back a few hours and already you’re stepping back into your favourite “stir-the absolute-shit-out-of-Dean” pants. As always, he is almost pitifully quick to rise to the bait. “Old? Who are you calling old? Alright so maybe we have a few years on you but that’s just because you’re a toddler and w—”

“Dean,” Sam places a placating hand on his brother’s shoulder, a look that seems to be a mixture of amusement and exasperation crossing his features. “You’re making it too easy for her.”

The older Winchester pauses, turning to pin you with an accusing look. You smile, not even attempting to appear innocent. After staring at you for several long moments, Dean makes the ‘eyes-on-you’ gesture with his fingers before turning away, rolling the tension from his shoulders as he takes a seat across from you.

“You were gone for almost a year this time, did you have any luck, well, leaving?” Sam brings your attention back to him, the question dragging out a sigh that feels like it’s been dredged from the very depths of your being.

“No,” you answer, sounding somewhat petulant even to your own ears. “Why is it so hard to leave this god-forsaken country! I hate it here. I’m sick of trying to make a run for it and being zapped back into a swamp, or—or a pool at the top of a penthouse suite in the middle of some random city! It sucks balls.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dean waves his hand, enjoying the dirty look you give him. “So you still haven’t found whatever purpose you’re meant to fulfil while here?”

You huff, shaking your head. “No. It’s been years and I still have no idea why I woke up here that day. Or why I can’t leave.”

Over the time you’ve spent with the Winchesters, a few things became apparent to the three of you about your stay here. One, it was indefinite. You’d discovered quickly that you are, quite literally, unable to leave. Every time you get close to escaping this country you black out and wake up back inside. Sometimes in a helpful place, sometimes…. Not.

Two, the three of you had thrown around and entertained the idea that maybe you’d been brought here for a reason, that like them maybe you’d been divinely allocated a role to play. But you’ve been through a lot with the Winchesters, whether in person or by association, and still…

You’re no closer to being able to leave and return from whence you came.

You have no idea why you’re here!

This is something that has really contributed to your temporary career as a hunter here. That isn’t to say that this profession isn’t something you were involved in before you came here, but you’ve really… you really dove into it, whether as a distraction or as an ongoing investigation as to what on earth was going to set you free of your tie to this place. A part of you thinks that each case you take on, each person or family you save and creature you slay might be the one reason that brought you here, and the one task that with its completion will grant you freedom. You’ve never been a fan of being caged; just because this one spans a grand total of 9.834 million square kilometres doesn’t make it any less of one.

This most recent expedition that led you to part from the Winchesters for such a long time was another of your failed attempts to leave. You think you’ve tried escaping at every possible point along the coastline and border by now, with a definite lack of success.

“Well, if it really is some divine intervention keeping you here, then it’s better if you just sit back and settle down, twinkletoes.” Dean huffs a laugh, leaning back in his chair with an accompanying creak from the wood. “Those divine types have proven to be… kind of assholes.”

You frown, but he isn’t saying anything you haven’t already thought. It’s part of why you’d settled so easily into hunting here, actually. ‘When in Rome…’, as they say. You’re familiar with the hunting grind and there is comfort in familiarity.

“Are you going to stay a while?” Sam asks, opening the first-aid box he’d first brought over when you’d settled down. Ah, right—you’d almost forgotten about the injury on your arm, despite the fact that you are still pressing a palm to it. You listen as he speaks, almost swearing you can detect a hint of hopefulness in his voice. “You still have a room here for you, of course. We haven’t touched anything inside.”

“Yeah, mostly because we didn’t wanna deal with the mess and the booby-trapped doors—” Dean’s under-the-breath mutter is cut off by your coo, a wide smile pulling your lips.

“Oh, you two missed me, didn’t you?” Instantly, you are successful in ruffling Dean’s feathers— Sam might take a bit more work, though. “I know I really light this dark, dingy place up but I didn’t know it was that bad without me! Ah, perhaps I will stay a while. You know, out of charity.”

“Sammy,” Dean says, beseeching. “It’s not too late—you hold her back and I’ll find her key. It’s not too cold, she’ll be alright outside.”

An appalled and affronted look slips onto your face and Sam has to clear his throat so that he doesn’t laugh and add to his brother’s torment.

“I’m not a misbehaving puppy,” you say, holding your arm out for Sam as he comes over and finally freeing your bloody hand. “Wait, unless you want me to be. Been broadening your horizons beyond animated tentacle porn have you, Deanie-bo-beenie?”

On cue, Dean’s face flushes light red, whether from anger or a brief spritz of embarrassment, only God knows. You can see Sam’s face grow tense from the effort of holding back noise in your peripheral as he tends to your arm.

“You know what? I’m better than this. I’m gonna let it go.” Dean rises from his chair, making a show of dusting off your metaphorical drama. His light eyes flick to you, squinting. “I’m tired; I have a date with my memory foam pillow and nice, warm, feather duvet and a good night’s rest, so goodnight. I hope your bed has bed bugs, twinkletoes, and I hope they bite.”

“I hope you sleep well too, Dean!” you call after him, deciding you’ll have to give him a break from the bullying tomorrow or else he’ll explode before you can have much fun. “Do you want me to come tuck you in?”

“No! Goodnight!”

His yell and disappearance down the hall is followed a few moments later by the familiar sound of a door slamming shut,

“That’s not very fair of you,” Sam announces, sounding strained and very much like he’s trying not to laugh lest Dean has an ear pressed to his door. “He’s too tired to fight back right now.”

“I know,” you answer, wincing as he wipes down the laceration on your bicep and cleans the blood away with an alcohol wipe. It burns, but it’s definitely not the most painful thing you have ever experienced. “I hadn’t seen you guys in so long, though. I couldn’t help myself.”

Sam simply snorts, reaching for the needle and thread to being stitching the skin back together, and you breathe harshly through your nose as you reach for another topic to distract yourself.

“Are the two—sorry, the three of you actually dads now? To… to Lucifer’s half-angel kid? I thought angels getting frisky with humans was, uh… illegal up in heaven.”

You feel rather than see Sam roll his eyes, your own pointedly directed away from your arm where he has begun to get to work. “It’s Lucifer, y/n, I don’t think he cares about what’s illegal up in heaven.”

You purse your lips—he makes a fair point. Honestly, you feel a little silly for questioning it. “Right, and he’s… trapped in some other dimension? An alternate world where the apocalypse really happened.”

“Yep,” Sam says, hitting a particularly painful spot with his needle. You hiss, giving him a glare.

“I wasn’t even gone a year! Just hearing all this shit is stressing me out so much, dude.” You sigh, attempting to adjust your position in the wooden chair without jostling your arm too much. Thankfully, practice has made Sam quick at his job and already he is almost done piecing you back together. He finishes up with a knot, snipping the thread and then placing a large bandage carefully over the wound. He dusts his hands once done, standing from where he was leaning against the table and proceeding to loom over you like a T-Rex.

“You’re blocking my light, bro,” you inform him, narrowly avoiding a subsequent good-natured smack to your good arm. “Damn, what the hell! Didn’t you take an oath or some shit? I’m your patient!”

“I was studying law, not medicine,” Sam retorts dryly. He turns to leave and put the first aid supplies away, his back facing you but not before you see how his lips twitch. “So your annoying ass is free game.”

“Maybe so,” you acquiesce, rising from your seat with a light grunt as you jostle your arm. You consider asking Sam where Castiel is, to see if you can get a hit of the good stuff and skip the healing process, but think better of it. You always feel a bit bad asking him to heal you, though you barely ever have to since he’s like a rabid mother hen the second he sees blood on any of you. “God, I’m beat. I didn’t think I could get any more tired than I was before, but as always catching up with you two has aged me a few years and now I’m just about as tired as you two are all the time.”

Sam doesn’t rise to the ‘old man’ bait you dangle in front of him—never really does, if you’re being honest; that’s mostly Dean’s vice— but he does offer you a smile that is unexpectedly sincere and fond.

“Go to bed, toddler,” he retorts, before continuing in a softer tone, “… It’s good to see you again, y/n. I’m glad you’re here. Dean and Mom are going out on a hunt in the next few days and I think you can really help with, uh… the whole Gabriel thing.”

For a moment, you don’t say anything. You’d sort of been trying to avoid thinking about the elephant in your mind, for the very same reason that makes your eyes burn once more. It hurts, a lot, thinking and imagining what he must have gone through at the hands of Asmodeus. It feels like your heart is going to tear itself to pieces in your chest from the sheer extent of your empathy and how terrible you feel for him. The Gabriel you saw cowering before you earlier is nothing like the confident feathery asshole you used to know.

Even having only seen him once, it’s enough to make you fearful of the possibility that… he might be too far gone to ever return to that last echo of his previous self.

“I’m not sure what I’ll even be able to do to help,” you respond, approaching the doorway to the hall with your bag in tow. You pause to finish what you’re saying, meeting Sam’s puppy-like gaze from across the room. “But I’ll try. It hurts to see him like that, so… I’ll stay a while, to do whatever I can.”

Sam’s answering thankful smile and nod is all you can ask for in response as you turn and head further into the bunker, dragging your bags back to the room you’d come to call your own over the years. Your gaze strays on the way to one of the doors that has a little note taped on saying, ‘please do not open suddenly or loudly’, undoubtedly the room that they have allocated to Gabriel for the time being. Heart heavy in your chest, you continue on down the hall and tear your gaze away.

You’re not sure how much you can do for him, but you hope you can do something.

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bettsfic · 4 years ago

Note

i remember you made a post on your instagram story about the ending of thg and i was wondering if you could elaborate more on your thoughts about it?? do you like it do you think it does right by the characters etc etc etc. (honestly i just love hearing you talk about Things)

anon is referring to this:

my answer and the full livewatch under the cut.

the entire trilogy sets up a constant subversion of tropes. collins got a lot of flak iirc for the whole “strong female protagonist in a dystopian YA novel” thing, but one of the reasons i feel the series is successful is because the text is fully aware of itself. it exists in part to introduce conventional tropes and then repeatedly defy and distort them in order to refocus our attention on the real meaning: there is no good in war, and children are the ones who suffer most.

collins repeatedly asserts that this book is not meant to entertain. it is meant to horrify and appall. it’s a criticism of the frivolity and romanticism of war narratives.

at no point can you buy into the peeta/katniss/gale love triangle because every time it gets even a little juicy, the narrative pulls back. it takes your expectations and twists them. for example, gale and peeta are not jealous of one another. they’re friends, and they both see katniss in conflicting but not wholly incorrect lights. peeta sees katniss as something innocent to be protected. gale sees katniss as a cutthroat survivalist. katniss isn’t given the agency to see herself as anything. peeta and gale are amazing characters, but they do important thematic work in order to give us altering perspectives of the greater themes of war.

another example of trope subversion: katniss does not rise above and overcome all obstacles. she is beaten down and destroyed by the conflict. thg is the story of a character who is strong and means well, but who is completely overrun by greater events. every time she stands up, she gets knocked (and at one point, literally shot) down, until eventually by the end she loses total control of the narrative.

here’s where my craft conundrum comes in. by the time the climax of mockingjay arrives, when it’s katniss and gale trying to assassinate snow, we have 2.5 books that tell us, repeatedly, “take your expectations of what this story should be and shove them up your ass.”

if this were a hero’s journey trilogy, katniss would have gotten separated from gale, invaded snow’s mansion, had a final showdown with him, and shot him. but no. we have president coin in the picture, a leader just as insidious as snow. coin throws a huge wrench in the hero’s journey. she is not the aragorn “rightful king” type character, katniss isn’t the frodo “throw the ring in mount doom” character, and gale is absolutely not samwise gamgee. coin exists to say, thematically, that the opposite of the capitol’s hedonism and entitlement is equally bad. that all systems of government are inherently flawed, and become deadly tools to be wielded by power-hungry assholes.

katniss, in any other narrative, would have succeeded in her mission. end of story. everyone’s happy. but coin steps into the narrative. she bombs the children in front of the mansion. not only does she stop katniss from killing snow, she ends katniss’s entire story. from the moment prim dies, katniss no longer has agency in the story, except to kill coin. and that lack of agency is reflected in the events that follow. katniss doesn’t recover. she becomes a trauma bot. peeta never really recovers either. gale nopes off to do his stuff. and that’s it. the story told us it would destroy all of its characters, and it succeeded in its mission.

but god does it suck to read. that’s where my question comes in. you get to the end of mockingjay, and you’re not supposed to be satisfied. i don’t believe any author has an obligation to its audience to offer catharsis or satisfaction, but in this case i think collins made a bold choice: she chose her themes over her characters. she said, this book means something, and by the end of it, you will see the world in a new way. you’re just gonna be big mad about it.

none of the characters got what they deserved, and so the audience is totally denied a cathartic ending. we don’t even know how snow dies, because katniss never finds out. we don’t get a romantic reunion between katniss and peeta. we don’t get a resolution in the love triangle. in the hero’s journey, the hero is supposed to return to a homecoming, but the narrative destroys katniss’s home, so she returns, but at the cost of everything.

i think a more character-driven ending would have gone like this:

finnick doesn’t get torn apart by sewer lizards. peeta doesn’t nope off to become a distraction. the final four are katniss, gale, finnick, and peeta.

they make it into the mansion. peeta leads them where they need to go.

they’re split up: peeta and gale are forced to work together, and katniss and finnick go a different direction.

katniss and finnick confront snow together. finnick’s role is important here because he’s the only other character who has been through what katniss has been through. katniss’s character represents what happens when you objectify a hero. finnick’s character represents what happens when you celebritize (if that’s a word) a hero. they’re two sides of the same coin.

snow has anticipated the ambush but not the bombing. finnick and katniss both get captured. as they’re escorted out to be executed, the bombing happens. i thought prim’s death was a little outlandish but if it had been set up differently, i could have been sold.

katniss is mad at gale but not salted-earth mad. gale realizes the toxicity of his line of thinking and knows he has to redeem himself somehow.

coin pitching the hunger games was totally out of left field for me, but i agree something needs to go here that lands the idea that coin is going to be as bad as snow.

at snow’s execution, katniss directs her shot to coin. finnick comes out of the crowd and kills snow.

finnick and annie go home to 4. katniss and peeta go back to 12, with a little more emphasis on their relationship. gale aids in reconstruction but eventually returns to 12 to make amends. instead of babies and meadows, it ends on the three of them finding peace together.

i really love and value this series, not just for being amazing in its own merit, but for opening these kinds of questions for me. thg is risky and unapologetic. it knows exactly what it is and what it’s doing. but for me as a writer, i think i might have been more invested in my characters than my purposes. but i don’t know for sure.

here’s my full livewatch:

#thg #bosas #ase #meta #writing advice #Anonymous

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