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that-one-anxious-mango · 1 year

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You + Me = Us (1.5: The Filler)

Summary: The aftermath of what you’ve done hasn’t fully sent in..because just as life happens and things occur that will everything seem dark and silent.

Contents: Brunch. Angst. Crying. Medical Emergency. Friends. Allusions to Abortion 🚨 Flashback scene.

A/N: Hello beautiful humans! Hope you’re all well! I wanna first off give a huge thank you to you all for all the love and support you’ve shown the series. It means the world to me that you guys enjoy my little ole’ stories. So in celebration I thought I’d release this filler installment to get you pumped for the ULTIMATE ANGST that the next and final chapter of YM=US. holds. Happy reading!

P.S feel free to send me a letter about the series or comment how you feel or what you think will happen next! Also comment if you wanna be added to the taglist!

Much love *hugs* 💚

Arie

Taglist: @purejasmine,@wacoshuffle

---

Somehow after reading the letter a hundred times and crying fifty more, you'd still managed to pull yourself to together to get up and get dressed.

How? You truly don’t freaking know.

But today you'd agreed to go out to brunch with Alana and, Avery, who was a friend from college you'd just reconnected with at the Glamour party awhile back that you'd went to with Austin.

It was just to catch up with each other for a little bit.

And you were still a woman of your word, so you were honoring the plans.

You were meeting up at the Upside Down Teapot shop down the way in downtown LA.

Since you felt like you couldn’t really drive you paid the expensive ass uber fee from your condo to downtown to meet the ladies.

Once you arrived you ordered a simple green tea that you were certain you weren’t actually about to touch and ventured out to the patio to find your friends waiting.

They both got up embracing you with greetings and love before you took a seat.

" So, Y/N. How is everything going? Wedding planning, job, new actor fiancée." Avery giddily asked poking your in shoulder.

Still not taking off the sunglasses you had wore you looked to her nodding, “ Everything is cool. Work is Work. Got offered a promotion though. Beatrice has been helping with most of the bridal stuff and Austin.” You cleared your throat when it had suddenly become dry, “ Austin’s okay. Working right now per usual...so yeah.” You finished.

Avery’s eyes lit up, “ Woah wait a promotion at the script house. That’s exciting. What is it? “

“ Um. Just one of the people who works there is retiring and threw my name into the hat to take their spot..it’s not a big deal.” You lied.

Only it was a big deal. It was actually a huge fucking deal.

Two weeks Prior:

You were a script writer and worked in a writer's room with a few other folks everyday trying to piece together everyone's individual ideas to make the next best possible Oscar worthy work you guys could. You'd walked into your office today at Simon & Tills expecting the day to go like any other. You even had a killer idea that you had prepped to share for the script the B team was currently working on for a Spike Lee small film.

But once you'd got into the room you immediately noticed the way that all of your colleagues were eyeing you down. Some had looks of encouraging smiles while others glanced once at you and quickly shifted your eyes their eyes back to their computers.

Wrapping the hazel sweater around yourself tighter. You could feel your palms starting to get clammy and eyes began to hurt. You already hadn't been feeling the greatest the last couple of days, so whatever this was you hope that it wasn't that bad.

What was going on? What had you done.

Putting a pep in your step you were just about to reach your desk when the door of Cecelia Klinger, the Editor and Chief, pushed open.

" Y/N, do you mind popping in my office for a brief moment." She called out.

Shit. You'd thought.

Instantly a lump the size of a coconut was beginning to form in your throat while you shook your nodded trudging forward while still trying to ignore the dozen pairs of eyes that followed your every move.

Once you shuffled into the office and both of you were seated you started to mentally brace yourself for what was about to happen.

It would be the first time in your life you'd ever gotten fired and you were about to take it like a champ....maybe.......

It really depended on how stern her voice was going to be.

" So Y/N. " She started, " By the way that you're tensely sitting in the chair across from me I can tell that you probably weren't expecting me to call you into my office this morning. " She spoke.

At her statement you started to move around trying to look less uptight.

It only made it worse.

" Well let me start by saying there's no need to be nervous. In fact, I hope you'll find yourself elated by what I'm about to tell you next. "

" Okay." You replied watching her reach down into her desk drawer and pull out what looked to be the rough draft copy of a script alter you'd submitted to be in the final copy of a part of a script for a upcoming project for sony productions.

You didn't know who was producing or directing cause that hadn't been announced yet but you were given some characters and historical background. From there you researched on your own and wrote what you could. What you felt was right.

" This was turned into me by Calum." She stated referring to the office's Junior Editor, " Now. I have to tell you that rarely does Calum ever personally hand me over a single person's work to read. But he did yours. And I can say that I am more than thoroughly impressed. "

oh-oh damn.

You could feel the pit of your stomach start to feel like hills rolling.

Struggling to contain the look of shock on your face, you thanked her

" This prompted me to take a closer look at your portfolio and I must say I never knew that you were behind some of the work I was seeing. The works I liked. " She emphasized.

" And as you know Calum is retiring to spend more time with his husband and children. And when the topic of his replacement came up. So did your name." She dropped.

Now this facial expression of shock on your face, you couldn't hide. You'd never thought your work was that good. I mean you'd written a few things your were largely proud of. But this was completely unexpected. And as far as Callum went, you didn't know he knew your name.

" The way we feel you approach things and this certain insight that you have to you. Is especially refreshing. You don't write what's expected of you by the book. You write with your imagination and feeling. And I need someone like that to oversee the office. But more importantly I need that aspect for our publishing." She explained.

Still you sat amazed waiting for your alarm clock to ring or Adam Sandler dressed in spandex riding a dragon to pop through the wall. Because this had to be a dream.

" So Y/N. I am formally extending you the position of Junior Editor. It’’ll be more hours and more responsibility of course to take in. You can take the time you need to consider. I will need a answer by the end of the month when Callum fully resigns. Though, I truly hope that you'll choose to fulfil. Because I see a great deal of potential in you young lady. " Cecilia stated.

---

“ Y/N that’s amazing! Congratulations!” Avery happily clapped.

“ Thank you but it’s not a huge deal.” You passed it off once again, “ And I haven’t accepted yet. I still have a week to decide.”

A scoff came from across you, “ Don’t let her be modest with you, Avery. Y/N just got offered the junior editor position at the house if she accepts she’ll be the youngest junior editor ever while being one of the most powerful script editors in California.” Alana gloated on your behalf stunned, “ With that being said. Hun, what’s the hold up. Why haven’t you accepted?” She pressed.

“ Well Lana there are a-lot of things to consider now. There are things and people this could affect.” You said hoping she’d catch your drift.

Eyes bucking Alana said, “ Woah wait a minute. Y-you’re not actually considering saying no are you? After all the work you’ve done.”

Shaking your head in discomfort you said, “ I don’t really know just exploring my options as you love to say.” You replied.

“ Bu-” Alana started.

Feeling the table tense Avery quickly interjected with a question to steer the conversation elsewhere, “ But speaking of options. Lana aren’t you suppose to be doing the PR for the Met and Diamond Ball this year. How are you going to do both without outshining the other? “ She asked knowing it would send Alana down a deep black whole of explanation.

And it did giving you a break to just sit and think while looking around.

Were you really about to give up your dreams for a man and a child?

But not just any man and child, your husband and baby?

Did you wanna have this baby?

Is that the right decision? Had you become that type of woman?

When you looked over a bit away from you, you seen a small family of three people. A woman and a man who in his lap was holding a baby who could've been more than five or six months old. Her mom was playing around with her trying to feed the babe what looked like mashed fruit.

But every-time she'd bring the spoon to the child's mouth she turned her head making them both laugh. It was almost as if she thought it was a game. Trying again she put the spoon up to her daughter's mouth only this time the man had tickled the little girl under her chin making her laugh and open her mouth. Sliding the spoon in quickly, you watched as the child ate her food and in return her parents clapped along with the smiling baby before leaning over to kiss one another.

Seeing this scene unfold before made you experience a warm and gooey feeling and you couldn’t help the grin that graced your face.

From the way the man and his wife looked at each other, to the laughter the three of them shared at the small little things happening. It made you feel good inside, like this was something you wanted. You couldn't help the way your imagination ran to instead of the man and woman sitting there with their baby, what if it was you and Austin with yours.

Your baby.

The little chickpea sitting comfortably inside your womb.

Something that was made simply from the way you and Austin looked at each other...okay maybe more than just looked.

But still the thought of that made your heart swell because you wanted that.

You wanted that. You realized.

And nothing else would matter if you had that.

Feeling light headed all of a sudden at your epiphany, you decided to go to the bathroom and get some air so you could muster up the courage to send a text to your husband telling him that when he got home, you were ready to talk.

Getting up you braced yourself on the back of your chair, " H-hey I think I'm gonna go to the bathroom and get a little bit of air. " You informed looking around at your surroundings that as of recent seemed a little less clear.

From where they were sitting both Alana and Avery took note of your shaky stance and flushed appearance. They were immediately concerned.

" Y/N, boo? You okay? You look a little flush." Avery called out.

" Yeah hun maybe you should sit back down." Alana chimed in.

But still you waved them off moving to take some steps, " I'm fine just need so-mme a-"

You never got to finish your sentence because in that moment the entire world went dark and silent.

All from around gasps of horror and concern could be heard as not only Avery and Alana rushed to you, but others around also.

“ SOMEONE CALL 911.SHE’S NOT RESPONDING. LANA SHE’S BARELY BREATHING.” Avery yelled holding you in her arms. “ Y/N..baby..come on...come on honey.”

In shock Alana made the call practically screeching into the phone to the operator.

From there everything seemed to move in slow motion.

They continued to trying to wake you until the paramedics showed up and whisked you up and away onto a gurney.

" Ma'am is there someone we should call as her emergency contact." The EMT asked Alana while the others prepped you to be placed in the ambulance.

" Ummm...." The thought of telling them Austin's name and number had popped into Alana 's brain first, but when a pang of resentment washed over her, she pushed it aside and went a different direction, " Grace Kildeen. It's her older sister. The number is (469) 388-5670. " She informed.

" Okay we'll have someone give her a call. In the meantime would you like to ride in the ambulance with her, ma'am? "

" Of course. Let me just let our friend know. She's over there talking to the store owner right now." She motioned to where Avery was conversing.

" No problem."

Alana then went to go and talk to a shaken Avery who informed she'd be right behind you and had already made arrangements for the cars and everything else.

And before she knew it Alana was in the back of the ambulance holding your hand.

#austin butler x black reader #daysofourlove #angst #austin butler imagine #austin butler fanfic #austin butler fic #austin butler #austin butler x reader #TheMangoWrites

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performativezippers · 1 year

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My biggest struggle is figuring out whay to have the characters doing between plot points. I've been trying to write an audiodrama and I've got all the plot points outlined I just can never figure out how to tie them all together in an interesting way(I have this problem in novel writing too)

I would say that everything should be a plot point, but the question is simply which plot. If you're writing a detective/mystery that has romance, for example, there is the A plot (mystery) and the B plot (romance) and probably a tiny C plot (friendship with someone, or a kid, or shenanigans at work).

So each scene should be moving forward either (or several at once) of the plots. If we've just hit a big A moment (a new suspect!) then before the next big A moment, maybe we have a B moment (the love interest patching up the protagonist's injury in a very Totally Gratuitous Totally Gay Touching way.

Then maybe another A, then a quick C (her boss is trying to get fired!) then B (a SMOOCH), then A, A, A, kiss at the climax of A (which of course is also B).

So essentially, if you're looking for filler, that might mean you're lacking a cohesive or compelling B (or C) plot. Every scene should matter for character development and moving the plot forward, but not every one should be on the same topic.

I dunno, does that help at all?

#ask zipps #writing advice #MFA from tumblr university

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tyrantisterror · 2 years

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As has become tradition for the release of my novels, it’s time to do a trivia thread for Wizard School Mysteries Book 2: Tournament of Death (available now at amazon.com!). That’s right, I’m going to make a long, self-indulgent post about all the nerd shit I did while writing this book, for you to gawk at in abject horror.

(Shit, did I not do one of these for No Sympathies? I should correct that, I packed so many references to classic literature in that bad boy. But that’s for another time!)

For now, let’s talk about wizards, tournaments, and the long term side effects of being a child of the 90′s anime boom. Oh, and there will be spoilers, so if you haven’t read the book yet... probably don’t read this until you do? I mean it’s a mystery story, I assume you want to go in blind.

- Wizard School Mysteries as a whole is intentionally patterned after anime and JRPGs. I’ve touched on this before when talking about the series, but when thinking about trivia for this second book it becomes pretty clear that elaborating on this point is warranted. I mean, it’s pretty obvious if you know some of the more prominent influences within that sphere - the a great deal of the series’s overall structure is ripped off from patterned off of the Persona series, for example, particularly the tarot motif (although that’s not exclusive to Persona - a LOT of anime and JRPGs use tarot motifs, from the prominent use of them in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure - which in turn heavily inspired Persona - to the subtle application of it in Fire Emblem Three Houses). You’ve got Serena Takeuchi, whose name is a big homage to Sailor Moon and whose use of a wand and glittery crystal magic should at least visually call back to the Magical Girl trope, I could go on but we should narrow our focus a bit. The two big anime/JRPG elements of this particular book are as follows: The Tournament Arc, and The Filler Episode. Got it? Ok, let’s expand on that in the next two bullet points.

- I wrote a lot in the forward about why I chose a tournament arc as the basic structure of this second book so I’m going to try to keep my thoughts on it here brief. Tournament arcs rule! Obviously they exist outside of anime, and indeed predate the existence of animation itself, but the structure of the tournament arc here is very heavily based on the ones that appeared in shows like Dragon Ball, Pokemon, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which, incidentally, were part of the 90′s/early 2000′s anime boom that I grew up in. The basic setup of heroes fighting a bunch of really weird opponents one after another, each more dangerous and bizarre than the last, while simultaneously trying to unravel a villain’s crazy scheme (ok that didn’t happen in Pokemon’s but it holds true for the other two) is just really fun and compelling, and I had fun trying to capture that magic while showing off the zany powers magic grants you in my fantasy setting. The fight scenes should ideally make you feel like you just got home from school and turned on the TV to catch some weird but fun Japanese cartoon on Toonami.

- Now, Filler Episodes... again, it’s a term that extends to stuff outside of and predating anime, but I want to talk about this idea in the context of anime. A lot of anime is adapted from manga, as you probably already know, and a there have been times where the anime adaptation of a manga runs out of a material to adapt. So, while they wait for the manga to give them more of the “main” plot, they’d make episodes and even entire story lines to fill in the gap. Hence, filler episodes. Filler episodes get a bad rap because, by their nature, they can’t be too relevant to the plot - you can’t kill the big bad in a filler episode, because then you can’t adapt the material from the manga that hasn’t been written yet where the big bad is still alive. A filler episode is, by its nature, expendable.

...that is, if you think the only important part of a story is the plot.

A good writer or writing team, however, can use a filler episode to their advantage. Because as important as plot is to a story, it’s only one core element. Characters, setting, and theme are all just as important, and you can easily use a filler episode to expand on those elements in important and intriguing ways. Like, for example, I spent this weekend watching Revolutionary Girl Utena for the first time, and if you were focused solely on the main plot of Utena dueling people to protect Anthy, then you could cut, like, half of the episodes out and still have a functional story. But some of those episodes are the best episodes! While light on developing the main plot, they do so much to flesh out the characters, setting, and theme, and without those episodes the series would be so much less impactful.

And I feel a well-utilized filler episode can in fact strengthen your main plot. A story that’s focused entirely on its main conflict may neglect to stop and flesh out its characters, and that’s a problem because to care about a conflict, you kind of need to care about the characters involved. If the conflict threatens the world they live in, then you need to care about that setting too. And if you really want that conflict to resonate with your audience, you need it to have well developed themes that make it matter beyond “the hero is fighting the bad guy!”

Now, of course, my book is, well, a book, a novel, and not a TV series, so there aren’t really “episodes” in the TV sense. But there are chapters, and scenes, and subplots, and one of my goals with this series and this book in particular was to make sure there were the equivalent of filler episodes here, moments where the main plot paused just long enough for our characters to catch their breath, and for us to see who they are when they’re not dealing with some murder mystery bullshit. Maybe in one of the next volumes I’ll figure out how to do a beach episode (at the moment I’m unsure of how to get over the hurdle that, in a vaguely medieval fantasy land, most people’s equivalent of a beach trip would be skinny dipping...)

- The first WSM book was focused on introducing our core eight meddling kids, which was a pretty big task in of itself, and as such the setting took a bit of a backseat. I mean, it was still there, obviously, but it wasn’t the focus. While the characters are still very much the focus of book 2 (as they are in all my writing - I’m a character-focused storyteller), I really wanted this one to give the setting more spotlight than the first. Book 2, more so than book 1, is the proper introduction of our setting - of the nations of Midgaheim, of the staff of the AAAM, and indeed, of the nature of that school itself.

Like, in the first book we have four teachers, and as a result of all the stuff that book had to pack in, those teachers end up fitting a simplified sort of Goofus and Gallant dichotomy: Oomlowt’s our good teacher, Gernderf and Alys are different shades of awful, and Mewcosa starts out as bad but eventually makes a turn with some student help. It’s the kind of approach most school stories take to their fictional teaching staff - one good teacher and a sea of dull to actively bad ones around them.

Now, if you know me and the fact that I’ve worked quite a bit in education, you should not be surprised to learn that I dislike this kind of reductive portrayal of teachers. It really couldn’t be helped in book 1, but that was ok, because this is an eight book series, and with this second entry I wanted to complicate our teaching staff. We get Juno Panopte, who is a good teacher with a very different style and approach than Oomlowt’s (enough that it briefly throws our heroes off when they first meet her). We get Lacey Spidergrin, who only has one scene but is hopefully enough of a presence in it to establish her strange but kind personality. We get bombastic Heka Tlancheb and acerbic Prospera Bubos, both of whom clearly hold some differing views but care deeply about their students, and we get a scene of (most of) the teaching staff hanging out together away from the students to show who these people are when they’re not teaching. My aim is that by the end of this book, or barring that then at least by the end of the series, the teaching staff of the AAAM aren’t cookie cutter good and bad teacher stereotypes, but, well, people, you know? There’s not a lot of fiction where teachers get to be people.

- The wizard students descending onto a nearby town and changing it utterly is an exaggeration of my own experience in college at Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, the city that WMU resides in, can be kind of cleanly divided into the parts that are a more or less normal city, and the parts that are a College Town Filled with College Kids. Of course, college kids being college kids, which is to say, young adults who suddenly have the ability to go wherever the hell they want and do more or less whatever the hell they want with their time, there was nothing stopping you from wandering out of the college part of town into the non-college city parts, and I always found that an interesting experience. And there were a LOT of businesses in both the college and non college parts of Kalamazoo that actively courted (or preyed on, if you want to be more cynical about it) student customers, which I again exaggerated for my own book. The name of the town in WSM, Calampen, is even a play on Kalamazoo. Kalam. Zoo. Zoo = place where you hold animals = pen. Kalam Pen. Calampen. Clever? No, not really, but it makes me smile.

- There are some nods to other stories I’ve worked on and/or have in the works in Calampen market scene. Fans of Offbeat Melody might recognize a certain golden-haired curio seller, for example, and we have more than a few mentions of the dread wizard Vormadon, who you’ll all get to meet when I finish writing Maude and Mordi (it’s high on the docket, don’t worry!)

- Serena and James splitting off together serves two purposes: first, it lets Gretchen and Margot have goofy jealousy antics, which I think is fun. Second, it makes up for a fact that Serena is the only member of the team who didn’t get a solo scene with James in book 1. Poor girl was so left out!

- James Chaucer identifying with snakes is not only an homage to my own love for the scaly beasts AND a fun metaphor for coming out, but also a bit of shade for the Terf Queen’s opus, where the magical boy hates being associated with snakes because he’s a huge loser who hufflepuffs farts or whatever.

- All of the youths have different skills to bring to their detective enterprise, and I like to think Serena’s is her Columbo-esque ability to throw people off by posing a seemingly innocent question. I watched the entire series of Columbo while writing this book, it had to bleed out somewhere.

- Let’s talk about some obscure Tarot shit! Helseng refers to the villain of the previous book as “The Apostle,” and likewise refers to the villains of this book as “The Centurion” and “The Thunderbolt.” Now, if you have a basic grasp of the major arcana, that may seem odd to you, because those aren’t among the twenty two arcana cards. Except they actually are! Sort of! See, there have been a LOT of different tarot decks over the centuries, produced in different countries with different languages in different time periods, and as a result the total number of arcana, the order of the arcana, and yes, the very names of the arcana themselves, have varied a bit. While initially I only mapped out twenty-one main characters to the major arcana of Tarot, as I researched into the history of the game I saw these variations and thought it would be interesting to try and make some of the other supporting characters fit them as well, and the first ones that came to mind were the series’ villains.

The Apostle is an alternate name for The Heirophant, which represents a patriarchal authority figure. Oomlowt Schwaa is our heirophant proper, and showcases the benign elements of that card, taking on a sort of fatherly role with James and the youths as a whole. The Summer Prince from book 1, by contrast, showcases its negative qualities, being conceited, condescending, and oppressive, with the power structure he both leads and represents making him a terrible force in the narrative as a result.

Our villains for this book at the Centurion, which is an alternate name for the Chariot, and the Thunderbolt, which is an alternate name for the Tower. We’ll talk about them a bit more later in this trivia post, but for now I ask you to think about the heroic counterparts here - Margot is a heroic Chariot, and Polybeus is a heroic Tower. God what a weird sentence that is.

- I also wanted there to be some supporting characters who are never directly involved with the plot but still had roles to play in our heroes life, because again, going off of that screed I wrote about filler episodes, the stakes can actually feel higher if you know there’s more to the hero’s life than just the core conflict. So I made some supporting cast members based on alternate arcana names as well - Columbina and Godfrey, for example, are the Juggler and the Magus respectively, which are both alternate names for the Magician. The Magician is a friend and ally to the fool and likes to get into schemes and plans, many of which are too clever by half, and that’s very much what Columbina and Godfrey are, just to a lesser degree than our main Magician, Ivan Muromets. I like to imagine that in an alternate timeline either one of them might have been the Magician to the Fool in the story. But maybe that’s too self indulgent a thought even for this trivia post.

- If the joke of Lord Dhenregirr’s name was too subtle in book one, I’m pretty sure chapter four of book two hits it with a big hammer so it’s impossible to miss. Not-coincidentally, this chapter is all about introducing red herrings - not just Lord Dhenregirr himself, but the many, MANY characters involved in the tournament, from the contestants to bystanders like Prospera Bubos and Grammy Crumblebuttons. Which is the real villain and which are the red herrings? Well, hopefully you heeded my advice and didn’t read this until after reading the book, and thus already know the answer to that question.

- Heka Tlancheb’s speech gives us as close to a unifying creation myth for Midgaheim as you will get, given that there are multiple pantheons at play here. It’s basically a nod to the idea of a prototypical monomyth, i.e. the theory that the original humans created a first mythology that evolved with them over time into the many we have today, possibly explaining several odd similarities between otherwise unrelated mythologies, like the prevalence of thunder gods, big floods, etc. The idea that there was some force of chaos that the gods had to kill, dismember, and/or overthrow is a common one, especially in European mythologies, and Heka’s assertion that magic is its breath, and wizard in turn are chaotic by nature for using it, is a nod to the similarly common belief that magic is a dangerous and somewhat sacrilegious force. The second half of her speech, meanwhile, is just an homage to the opening speech of Elden Ring.

- Heka Tlancheb herself is a joke at the expense of my own crush on Cate Blanchett, particularly when she plays gothy witch roles like Hela or Galadriel in that one scene where she makes Frodo shit his pants.

- We get to meet another member of the Claw Gang in this chapter! If you don’t remember them, they were a group of recurring background extras in book one, and if you followed closely you could see the broad strokes of their own mini-adventure running parallel to that of our Meddlesome Youths. I like the idea of stories where the adventure of the heroes is just one of many in the setting, with others clearly happening outside the book’s focus. It makes things feel more full, and I feel that making it so the world doesn’t always revolve around your heroes actually makes it more impactful when the heroes make a stand for that world - because while they may only be a part of it, they care about the whole, you know? Anyway, we’ve named two of the three Claw Gang members in the books so far, and we’ll name the final member in book 3. They may not be important to the central conflict, but they’re important to my heart.

- Oh, speaking of obscure Tarot bullshit again - there’s a card game that’s considered a parody of Tarot called Minchiate, which took the major arcana and then added a whole bunch of extra bullshit to it somewhat haphazardly, including the four elements and the Western Zodiac. So, when I set about making a cast of minor character students for WSM, I decided what the hell, let’s include the Zodiac arcana (along with all the minor arcana, i.e. the number and court cards). Shere Statchel, Andreea Vacaputere, and The Great Nyaa, who appear in this book as contestants in the tournament, are three of those Zodiac characters, being the Scorpio, Taurus, and Leo respectively. Not sure when the others will show up in the later books - they’re all part of a large pile of minor characters I draw from when I need a crowd to be filled, and there’s more than sixty of the fuckers so I can’t guarantee they’ll all have memorable roles, but at least these three got a little spotlight.

- This is Lord Dhenregirr’s only scene in this book, but I made it a juicy one to compensate. Him referring to his skeletons as “children of the dragon’s teeth” is a reference to Jason and the Argonauts - not just the myth, mind you, but specifically the Ray Harryhausen movie, which calls them “children of the hydra’s teeth” verbatim. The fact that they’re skeletons rather than flesh and blood men is another sign this is an homage to the Harryhausen take (in Midgaheim canon, you can use this spell to make either flesh and blood humans or animate skeletons, and Dhenregirr chooses to do the later purely because he’s goth and likes the idea of having skeleton henchmen).

- Structure-wise, I wanted the fight with Dhenregirr to not only be fun, but to refute some of the things other characters have claimed about magic. Earlier in this chapter Miguel Esmerejon chides Ivan for reciting magic words to cast spells, claiming that strong wizards don’t need to do that. We’re also told that most wizards couldn’t make a homunculus in the arena because it would take too much time and power to pull off. Yet here Dhenregirr both manages to pull off that very feat, and does so with a big long poetic chant no less! And while he may have some personality quirks that soften the threat he poses, the fact is that Dhenregirr is a very skilled and deadly wizard when he has his head in the game. In this chapter we get to see a glimpse of Dhenregirr’s other purpose in the narrative, beyond being a red herring joke villain: he’s the counterpoint to the dean’s philosophy of education, right down to being the one who (possibly accidentally, possibly on purpose) encourages James to try all four elements of magic where Gernderf had tried to make him stick with one. Gernderf and Dhenregirr aren’t just hated rivals, you see - they’re foils.

- This is also where Dhenregirr, like Polybeus before him, takes a radically different direction than the Henry Pansley Herbie Porber Harry Potter character he’s a loose analogue of. Harry and Voldemort begin the narrative hating each other and just increase in that hatred as the story goes along. Here, James and Dhenregirr come to an understanding of sorts, and while they’re still on opposing sides, it’s clear their relationship from here on out isn’t going to be as clear cut as hero vs. villain anymore.

- I first thought up the specifics of Lord Dhenregirr’s fight scene while listening to Man on the Internet’s Lyrics for the Chaos King song from Deltarune. Music is pretty important to my writing process, especially action scenes, and I always end up making soundtracks for my books to help with the writing and revision process. In this case the song for this scene was so helpful that I gave it a little nod, having Lord Dhenregirr paraphrase its rawest line: “You lost before you picked this fight.”

- Gyrion Clodson, the first victim (though luckily for him, not in a lethal sense) of the villain plot in this book, gets his first name from two different iconic fantasy works. The bulk of his name comes from Tyrion, the (human) dwarf character from A Song of Ice and Fire, aka Game of Thrones. Swapping out one letter of that name to make a new one is itself taken from the naming conventions of the (nonhuman) dwarves in Tolkien’s The Hobbit - you know, Gloin and Moin, Kili and Fili, Dwalin and Balin, etc. There’s no deeper meaning intended here, I just thought it was slightly amusing. I should probably note here that the equivalent of fantasy nonhuman dwarves in my setting are called gnomes specifically to avoid confusion with real life humans with dwarfism - in a similar vein, giants are uniformly called ogres so I can avoid confusing them with, like, the adjective for things that are big.

- Chapter Five’s title is “The Sundown’s Shine” for a couple of reasons. First, a good chunk of it takes place in the afternoon, and it’s a breather chapter - sundown is often when we stop working and catch our breaths. Second and more importantly though, it’s when we introduce Geoffrey Travers, who, in addition to being our Moon Arcana character, is something of an extended reference. See, Wizard School Mysteries is built in part by mixing aspects of college life with high fantasy, and so one of the questions I asked myself when planning it was “What would your average high fantasy uber wizard who’s seen the shape of the universe and has knowledge beyond comprehension be like when he was a college student?” And, perhaps because of the popularity of this movie among college kids, at least in my day, my answer ended up being: The Dude from The Big Lebowski, but in his twenties. So that was my baseline for Geoffrey Travers: he’s The Dude, as a college kid, and also a wizard. Even his name is a play on it - Geoffrey is the dude’s real name, but also, Geoff = Jeff, Travers = Bridges, Jeff Bridges is the actor who played The Dude, you see what I did there? And one of the iconic songs from The Big Lebowski is “I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In),” which contains the lyrics “I woke up this mornin' with the sundown shinin' in...” Eh? Eh? See what I did there?

- Extended Big Lebowski reference aside, Geoffrey plays a vital role of being a peer who opens our heroes’ minds to new ideas. Professors do a lot of teachin in college, don’t get me wrong, but some of the most valuable lessons I got during my college years came from the older kids I met there, who had been what I was going through just a few years prior and kindly decided to give some advice and guidance of their own accord on how to deal with, like, just life stuff in general. Which, again, goes with the idea of “what is the college equivalent of the next level wizard who has seen things you’ve never dreamt of” - it’s the older student who knows how to be a functional and independent adult who gets what they need.

- The game the gargoyles, mudmen, and scarecrow are playing isn’t D&D. It’s Pathfinder, first edition, invented by the great wizard Pie-zo. I included this scene both as a gag and to show that the homunculi of the AAAM aren’t mindless automatons, but rather sapient beings that most wizards treat like mindless automatons because they don’t understand the full scope of what they’ve done in making them. It’s not a big plot point in this book, but it will be later!

- We get a glimpse of Gretchen’s life outside the youths here, namely her rivalry with a fellow nerd, Joan Tatou. Joan is a bit of an in-joke, as she’s an amalgamation of some ideas that I initially wrote down in my series outline only to reject. As I said before, Margot’s name was originally going to be Joan, both as a reference to Joan of Arc and because of my own fondness for the name, but I changed it when I realized people might see it as a reference to the Terf Queen. I also initially planned for the character who would become Gretchen to be Frankish and for the one who would become Margot to be either Ruslovakian or Germanorean, but it seemed a bit too stereotypical for the bookish girl to be from the fantasy equivalent of France and the big buff girl to be from a land of hard consonants - I like the idea of big, intimidating Margot having a soft voice with gentle inflections, while bookish Gretchen has all these fierce harsh consonants when she speaks. So Joan is proto-Gretchen with proto-Margot’s name, which might be why she and Gretchen don’t get on so much - Gretchen stole her part!

- The book Gretchen and Joan fell out over, the Nosfero Ex Mortis, is a combination of some of the less-well-known alternate names for the malevolent grimmoire in The Evil Dead series, which you probably know best as the Necronomicon, in part because that’s what it’s called in the third film, Army of Darkness. Army of Darkness, of course, was the Evil Dead movie that takes place in the middle ages, and involves (among other things) a kingdom led by Henry the Red, and a big fight against Kandarian demons. So in other words, Joan and Gretchen’s feud is over whether or not the events of Army of Darkness are canon in Midgaheim. Listen, I had an Army of Darkness poster in my dorm room and Bruce Campbell was one of the big reasons I chose to attend WMU and make short horror films with my friends during summer vacation in college, I had to pay the Evil Dead series homage in my book series about college.

- The Sanguine Dormitory is the perpetually trashed party dorm, because if you know anything about the four humors, that’s very much what you’d expect from a place with a lot of people who have sanguine temperaments.

- Ok, another stupid joke for you. So, in tv shows and movies that take place in colleges, it’s common for the dorm rooms to be, like, LUDICROUSLY huge, which anyone who’s attended a college knows is fucking ridiculous because real life dorm rooms never get much bigger than a walk-in closet. There’s a reason for this: shooting scenes in a room the size of a walk in closet is a pain in the ass, and if you’re setting your entire story in a college, you kinda need to have those little quiet drama scenes in a location that, you know, isn’t comically cramped and shitty. So in WSM, our heroes start off with realistic cramped shitty dorm rooms, but then, through the power of physics defying magic that makes dreams come true, manage to get a spacious cool dorm room like those that appear in 90% of media set in a college. Because that’s the only way you’d ever get a dorm room that big.

- Chivalric ballads are the equivalent of trashy romance novels and soap operas in WSM - and, also, their equivalent in the real middle ages. The ones Margot lists in chapter 6 are all made up by me, but the different versions of her favorite ballad (and her staunch favoritism of one version over the other based on how the characters were interpreted) is loosely inspired by the way Arthuriana is composed of different authors who clearly have WILDLY different takes on certain characters and deeply despise the takes that came before theirs.

- Margot’s opponent in this chapter, Sarkani Charmil, has a few references mixed into her. Her first name is derived from a dragon in Slavic mythology, Sarkany, which, combined with her status as the heir to a tyrannical monarchy that rules a kingdom called Kastelvania (or, if you prefer, Castlevania) makes her a loose homage to, who else, Vlad “Tepes” Dracula, with her distinctive red armor drawing on the iconic red armor worn by Count Dracula in the beautiful-yet-terribly-written Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula movie. Her last name, Charmil, is a double reference, with Char being the red-clad charismatic antagonist from the original Gundam, while Carmil is a shortened version of Carmilla, the most famous female vampire in literature. Sarkani Charmil, child of dragons, heir to a warlord’s kingdom, possible vampire? Only time and the remaining six books will tell.

- Hey, guess what time it is? It’s Harry Potter rebuttal time! Ok, so, Harry Potter had a tournament arc of sorts too, namely the fourth book, Goblet of Fire. And the structure of the Harry Potter series is that everything has to revolve around, well, Harry Potter. So obviously Harry has to win the tournament, because otherwise this story wouldn’t revolve around him, right? That’s not necessarily a flaw - I mean, there’s tradeoffs here, namely how the tension of “will Harry win?” that the book tries to build falls flat if you think about the structure of things for more than five seconds, but in return for that you have the narrative satisfaction provided by things being focused.

But there’s no reason that tradeoff can’t work the other way, right? Till this chapter in the book, I’ve tried to set you up to think we’re following that same pattern. James Chaucer is our lead character, our first boy, our protagonist. Obviously he’s going to make it to the final round. Obviously he can’t lose his fight, especially not in the second round. He’s the main guy!

Then he does, because this isn’t Harry Potter. This is not a story that revolves around one character. This is the story of the Meddlesome Youths, and while James may be their leader, he’s not the only one that matters, and that means he can lose. And if he, the main guy, can lose, then doesn’t that mean any of our heroes could lose? Yes, we lose some of the focus that the more famous wizard school story has, and with it I risk losing the narrative satisfaction that simpler, more straight-forward structure provides - but the tradeoff is that we have a bit more uncertainty, and uncertainty can make for a very fun mystery.

- Speaking of Goblet of Fire, remember how Cedric Diggory was a big bland nonentity of a character whose death was more or less an afterthought once that book was over. A plot device more than a character, really. Gabriev Zelgad is my attempt to... well, not do that. Again, don’t mistake this for a criticism. Murder mysteries don’t need to flesh out their victims to be effective. A murder mystery victim’s primary job is to establish and/or raise the stakes of the conflict while also providing both clues and questions for the detective figure to notice. If they manage that without having a personality to speak of, the mystery is still functional, and you can compensate with different elements of your story.

But, that said, there is a benefit to giving at least one of your murder mystery victims some sympathy. I mean, fairly obviously, right? The emotional impact of murder and the threat it presents is going to feel far more stark if we actually give a shit about the people who die. You want an emotionally invested audience, and making us care about the victim is a way to get it.

It just also means that you have to juggle elements of your victim character that don’t have to do with their plot-specific role. They have to have dimensions that don’t serve their bare minimum narrative role. You need to be willing to, you know, take a narrative diversion, which is risky. Some people hate “filler,” after all. But I wanted to take that risk. I wanted Gabriev’s death to hurt, and I didn’t want him to be an afterthought. For Polybeus at least, his death has weight, and it’s going to keep having weight well after he’s gone.

- Gabriev’s chivalric code is paraphrased from the chivalric code in Dragonheart. “It was a good [story]! Had a dragon in it.” Dragonheart was one of the first fantasy movies I ever saw and one of the things that cemented my love of this genre, and also that code is fucking badass.

- Gabriev comforting Polybeus by showing him a different form of heroism by way of the medieval concept of chivalry is loosely based on my own experience of reading medieval chivalric ballads and finding them to be very different than the modern masculine heroes I grew up with, and specifically different in ways that resonated with me. For all the violence of medieval tales, chivalric heroes spend a great deal of time crying, pining after pretty women, and talking about their feelings with their friends in great and vulnerable detail, which is a far cry from the stoic murder men society told me to view as Peak Masculinity when I was a kid. This isn’t to say there’s nothing of value in those modern day masculine heroes, or for that matter in the Greco-Roman mythic heroes that are standing in for them in Polybeus’s story, but just that learning there are different forms of heroism and masculinity is, well, freeing.

- I wasn’t sure initially when we were going to properly meet the Justice Arcana, Maxeral the head gargoyle. I had loose plans for him to step into the narrative proper in either book 3 or 4, but in the process of writing this one I realized there was a natural place for him to slip in. Maxeral’s tricky because he’s designed to fill that “friend on the force” role you often get in detective stories, because that role is both narratively useful and a fun character dynamic to explore. But I also wanted him to be, like, firmly not a cop, because I know my audience and I know myself, and we both think ACAB. So I tried to make Maxeral an anti-cop in as many ways as possible, in that the limits to his authority are literally written into his brain, and the fact that he cannot view himself as above the people he protects, but rather as beneath them. He, like all homunculi at the AAAM, is a servant, and while that might be an injustice in itself (we’ll explore it in a later book, don’t worry), the fact remains that Maxeral is incapable of lording his power over his charges. He calls you sir, not the other way around, and as a protector he understands his role is that of a servant, not a master. Maxeral also thinks the boundaries between him and his charges are just, and values people who work outside the scope of his power if they do so for good reasons. So yeah, not a cop, hopefully.

- You might have noticed that Maxeral is unique among the gargoyles we’ve seen beyond his size and rank. He’s far more serious, for one (in fact his dynamic with his underlings is patterned on the stoic and stuffy version of Ultra Magnus from the comic Transformers: More than Meets the Eye), a bit better at his job, and lives in very spartan quarters. While you could claim the bare nature of his room is a result of him being a homunculi that was designed to have no interests beyond the purpose he was written with, remember how we saw gargoyles playing D&D earlier. Is there more to homunculi than even Maxeral is aware of? Probably not a question you considered since it’s not relevant to this particular book, but remember this is an eight book series...

- Ivan’s conversation with Polybeus builds on/responds to the one Gabriev had with Polybeus earlier, albeit unintentionally on Ivan’s part. If Gabriev vocalized my own revelation at reading about chivalric heroes, then Ivan likewise illustrates what I learned about modern heroes when I looked at them with older eyes. As a kid, the hero narratives sold to me seemed pretty unappealing - superheroes like Batman and Superman were fit, conventionally attractive jocks who beat up ugly out of shape guys who liked snakes and dressing in dark clothes. There was more of my bullies in the heroes sold to me, and more of me in the villains they tormented. But when I grew up and revisited those stories, and the comics they were based on for that matter, I realized there was more to them than the initial shallow impression I got as a kid. As tormented by the normative masculine heroic ideal as I was as a kid, an adult me could see nuances and interpretations where I could fit. It wasn’t necessarily the fault of the heroes of my time, but with the way those heroes had been sold to me, if that makes sense.

And I think the Greco-Roman mythic heroes are a good stand-in for that. Shallow, simplified modern versions of their myths will reduce them to Good Heroes Who Slay Ugly Monsters, and that can feel alienating if you relate to the monsters more. But if you explore their roots and see all the different versions of them, you can see they are complex, nuanced, and more than just a simple ideal. Just because the stories now make them stoic manly men doesn’t mean that’s all they’ve ever been, or all they could be. They can cry, they can love, they can feel, they can be human. It just depends on how you want to look at them, and what version of them you want to see. And sometimes the thing you need to appreciate a story you’ve heard a million times before is to see it through the eyes of someone else who’s fresh to it - sometimes a Polybeus needs an Ivan.

- As I said, I’m a character-focused storyteller. The first thing I tried to hash out in outlining this series, before even figuring out how many books it would be, was what the personal arcs of our eight main kids would be. I wanted them each to have a hook of their own outside the main conflict and we’d examine and resolve them throughout the eight books. Some haven’t been fully exposed yet (either because I’m rethinking them or have decided they can just wait a bit), while others are already pretty prominent.

Margot’s was the first I figured out, and her duel with Alys here was the first scene I outlined in detail for this series. So to say I REALLY wanted to get to this chapter is an understatement. There are several other big moments I planned for this series that I’m excited to get to, and we got to one of them before this (James Chaucer tricking the Summer Prince into buying his dead name), but man, I am happy to have this moment out there for your perusal.

- When figuring out how the eight Meddlesome Youths differed as spellcasters, I thought about them partly in JRPG terms, and partly in anime archetypes. When it came to Margot, the muscle of the group, I felt there was one style that fit better than most: she fights like a DBZ villain, to the point where her ultimate attack is basically Freeza’s Death Ball. In final fantasy terms, she’s the Black Mage, i.e. the character who is almost exclusively limited to offensive magic, though after this battle she’s on the path to diversifying her magic portfolio.

- There’s a moment in this book and in the previous where the idea of teachers being taught by their students is brought up in a pithy way, but I’d like to note that this is actually a true phenomenon. One of the best ways to learn something - that is, to reinforce your knowledge of it and deepen your understanding of it - is to teach it to someone else, and an interaction with students can illuminate things for teachers just as much as it can for their pupils. Education is by its nature a communication process (the education philosopher John Dewey has whole books that explain this better than I could), and communication is by it’s nature a two-way street. So while these moments function as little jokes - “the teachers need to be taught” - I also feel there’s a truth to it, and a lesson to learn, I guess. Education’s a lot more complicated than fiction often makes it seem.

- Yes, our wizards kids hit the bar, like college kids are wont to do. I tried to make them responsible about it without getting into after-school PSA territory, because I want this story to feel authentic (as much as a fantasy story filled with dragons and magic can) while not glamorizing dangerous behavior to any theoretical young people who might read this. Did I succeed? Who can say.

- Hey, another stupid joke! So the story of Achilles and Patroclus is very clearly one of two men romantically loving each other, but over the centuries writers have tried to patch that out because of, well, homophobia, with many versions saying their affection was because they were cousins. You know what other story that happened to? Sailor Moon, albeit with two girls who loved each other rather than two guys. So in Midgaheim’s version of history, the real historical figures of Achilles and Patroclus had their romance covered up in one version of their tale by a writer named Forr Kydd. Four Kids, as you may know, dubbed various anime, and while they didn’t dub Sailor Moon, they were notorious for bowdlerizing the anime they dubbed to make it more child-friendly, and also to remove references to Japanese culture that Americans might not understand. Hence we have Forr Kydd, the translator who tried to de-gay the story of Achilles and Patroclus.

- Charlotte expects to get drunk off caffeine because spiders in real life are intoxicated by it, spining really shitty webs when under the influence. Poor girl had no reason to suspect her human body would react so differently.

- I tried to work in a MLM romance into ATOM volume 2, but it quickly became clear to me there wasn’t room for it with all the other stuff going on in my story. So I decided that the first canon consummated romance of WSM would be MLM to compensate. Rodrigo and Ivan’s romance is the first one to be hinted at in book 1, and they’re the first couple to get together as of book 2.

- While most of the ballads listed in this book are made up by me, Tam Lin is real, being one of the famous Childe Ballads, and a personal favorite of mine thanks to the awesome version of it the Fairport Convention did.

- Geoffrey Travers teaches James Chaucer about using magic for passive buffs, a thing I have to constantly remind myself to do when playing RPGs (left to my own devices, I just spam attacks).

- Chungo Maximo’s knack for turning into animals homages a number of ogre folk tales, but primarily Puss in Boots.

- If Margot is a black mage, then Serena is a blue mage - a less well known Final Fantasy class, which draws its power by absorbing magic from others and reflecting it back at them. I mean, she’s not just that, she can attack on her own just fine, but I thought it’d be a fun way to customize her battle set, and play off the idea of crystals being able to magically story energy and channel it back to the user.

- Ivan’s fears about his sillylusions not being worthy in the eyes of a teacher who’s taught him a lot about realism echoes some of my own academic anxieties, as I had many great teachers who taught me about serious non-genre fiction texts, and were very supportive and encouraging of me as I analyzed them without knowing that what I really wanted to use their lessons for was to get better at writing silly stories about fire-breathing dinosaurs and magical wizards. Like Ivan, I accidentally had this side of me exposed to one of my respected mentors when I submitted a short story I had written to the campus’s english studies congress (not even of my own volition, I was encouraged to do so by a pretty older girl on campus I liked), got it in, and then found one of my professors in the audience. He loved it, though, and asked me a lot of questions, and a couple years later, when I got an award from the English department for my five years of work, he presented it and talked not only about my achievements in class, but about how I had also written fiction on the side of it all. It was a scary but ultimately gratifying experience. Ivan’s fears about his sillylusions lacking value because of their non-realistic nature also mirrors anxieties I had about my art back then - I strived for realism for a while, but ultimately found stylization worked better for me, even if it meant my art would never be taken as seriously as stuff that’s, you know, more detailed or whatever.

- Clowns being a variety of half-demon sprang about from me wanting clowns to be a gothic horror monster on par with vampires or werewolves in my setting, and since we’ve got at least one clown-themed demon in this universe anyway, it seemed like a natural choice.

- Of course Gernderf ponders orbs. He’s a wizard.

- Godfrey and Columbina filling the dean’s office with ballons is inspired by a similar prank my friends pulled on our RA during my freshman year of college. We liked our RA, though, she was cool, and she took the prank in good humor.

- The fun thing about creating and publishing your own fiction is that you don’t have people above you who can slap your hands and tell you “No that’s stupid” when you want to do something silly like make a war with mimes a canon part of your in-universe lore. A bad part of creating and publishing your own fiction is that there’s no one who can stop you from doing something stupid like making a war with mimes a canon part of your in-universe lore.

- Though he doesn’t know it, Eruz Tobael is a nephilim, i.e. a half-angel. His appearance and spell of choice give you a hint to what kind of angel his mother was. I like the idea that angels and demons are an outside-of-context problem in this setting - all these pagan wizards are running around with their pantheons of gods and wildernesses of magic monsters, and every now and then a Biblical beastie pops up to throw everything they know on its head. We’ll get more of that in the next book.

- Aldonza Dulcinea was originally going to be one of our major arcana characters! Originally Charlotte would have been the Hanged Man in her place, but in the planning stages one of my friends suggested I should do a parody of Voldemort to match the Dumbledore parody I made with Gernderf, and the more I thought about the idea the more I felt he had to be a major character, and, if that was the case, he’d have to be the Hanged Man. Because who’s a better rival to The Judgement than the card that faced it and inexplicably survived? That left Charlotte in need of an arcana, so Aldonza got the boot and Charlotte got the Star. To make up for it, I establish Aldonza as the hero of her own story here - albeit one we’ll only ever see glimpses of. Her name comes from the love interest of Don Quixote - Dulcinea is what Don Quixote calls her, while Aldonza is her actual name.

- Having Polybeus meet Gabriev’s mom to discuss his death SEVERAL chapters after it happened was another attempt on my part to avert the Cedric Diggory situation here. He might not have had a big role, but it’s going to leave a mark - and now Polybeus has a helmet to forever remind him of the man he only knew for one of the most important moments in his life.

- So, our two villains! Richard Rainsford, the Centurion, is named for King Richard III (specifically Shakespeare’s take on the nasty fucker) and Sanger Rainsford, the protagonist of The Most Dangerous Game. Richard III (as written by Shakespeare) is a tormented and haunted man who has chosen to become a villain because of his daddy issues and anxieties about never living up to what his family expects of him, and excels at putting on a kind and friendly persona while plotting to stab people in the back. Sanger Rainsford, meanwhile, is a great hunter who prides himself on bringing down dangerous prey who unexpectedly finds himself getting a taste of his own medicine. In short, Richard is well named. The Centurion is an alternate name for the Chariot, a card that represents moving forward and victory, among other things. Richard shows how the desire to constantly win and excel can be poisonous.

Miguel is the Thunderbolt, an alternate name for the Tower. The Tower has a LOT of negative connotations, representing chaos, destruction, and sudden & violent change that disrupts all around it, which is very much what Miguel has achieved by setting the sabotage plot in motion.

- Polybeus claiming that “This time, the disaster will be theirs!” is a little nod to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, where, after several different moments where the Phantom screwed things up for the opera, including creating a lethal accident, the heroes finally decided to set a trap for him in turn. The way Raoul says the line is deliciously hammy, at least on the original London cast’s soundtrack, so it felt like a fun line to give Polybeus.

- Serena’s second costume transformation and powerup is a reference to a pretty common trope in Magical girl anime. Often such powerups come from the hero realizing how much they’re loved and/or how much their friends love them, which is kinda true here to, albeit in a more mundane way, where it’s Margot’s friendly act of sharing her magic that gives Serena her well-needed boost. I like the idea of the heroes winning because they’re friends while the villains lose because they’re squabbling selfish assholes.

- As of this book, Margot has said two of the four one-liners her friends offered her in book one. I don’t know if she’ll ever say “magic, shmagic” or “abra-ca-fuck you.” Probably not that last one, since I’m trying to avoid using direct profanity as much as possible with this series, but who knows. (abra-ca-fuck you is, of course, a reference to The Adventure Zone).

- Richard declaring he is the wizard slayer is an homage of sorts to Admiral Zhao in ATLA, who similarly shouted “I AM ZHOU THE MOONSLAYER!” in the height of his villainous hubris, shortly before being taken down a peg.

- If you’re horrified at Gernderf sucking our two villains into an amulet, good, run with that feeling as we go into the next six books please.

And that’s it for this trivia round! I hope you enjoyed, and thank you for reading all my self indulgent waffle!

#Wizard School Mysteries #Tournament of Death

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soaps-mohawk · 8 months

Text

Cherry Red, Crimson Blood

Chapter 3 - Speak Their Language

Summary: You get something to aid you in your attempts to bond with your pack. Unfortunately, your ideas have consequences for everyone.

Pairing: Poly 141 x reader

Warnings: Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics, Alternate Universe, a/b/o typical classism and sexism, some brief violent imagery but nothing worse than what's in the game, lots of military inaccuracies

Author's Note: Did you know there’s Scottish translators online? I do now lmaooo. Those military inaccuracies are really coming through in this one so...if you’re here for accuracy...I am so sorry. This one's a bit shorter, more of a filler for the next one but there's some important stuff that happens that you'll need for the next chapter. Also a lot of good ole easter eggs and references in this one. If you can find them all, I’ll give you a cookie.

MASTERLIST | <- Previous | Next ->

You perk up when a knock sounds at your door. You hop off your bed, eagerly swinging the door open. Price is standing there, a package in his hands. The corner of his mouth twitches as you smile, almost bouncing on your toes in excitement.

“Kate said you’d be expecting this.” He says, amusement shining in his eyes.

You nod, holding out your hands. “Yes, sir!”

You take the package, holding it against your chest. You had sworn Kate to secrecy about what was in it, after a long explanation of why you needed it and why you were asking her for it and not Price. She said she threw in a few other things, things you didn’t realize you’d miss once you moved to the UK. You knew she likely did that so she wouldn’t have to lie to Price when he asked.

“Don’t have too much fun.” He says, giving you a smile.

“I’ll try not to.” You grin. “Thank you, sir!”

You close the door, not bothering to lock it as you bound back to your bed. You open the package, digging through the snacks to the bottom of the box. You move the box to the floor, holding the book in your lap. You run your hand over the cover, excitement thrumming through you.

“The Powerful Omega.”

You’ve spent the last few days running through what you remembered from the book the last time you read it almost four years ago. There wasn’t much, only a few things sticking with you. Things you thought would be helpful.

That was long before you knew you’d be placed in a military pack, though.

You curl up on your bed as the others head out for the afternoon, the familiar sound of boots disappearing down the hallway fading into the background as you dig into the book. You’re determined to find some way to get Ghost to at least be tolerant of your presence. You don’t need him to want you, you don’t even need him to like you. You just know the entire process will be easier if he’s at least accepting of the fact you’re going to be part of the pack, whether either of you like it or not.

He’s a big, tough, military alpha who doesn’t like to show his face. There has to be something in the book that might help you, or at least give you ideas on what to try. You know the best you can do with Ghost is try. He’s an enigma on purpose, and it seems like he’s going to stay that way, regardless of how close you try and get to him.

You could use Soap to get close to him. Ghost’s protective aura practically envelopes Soap whenever they’re in close proximity, laying a claim without even having to touch one another. You know getting close to Soap could force Ghost to get comfortable with you, or it might make him more territorial.

But that scene at breakfast a few days ago, when he’d gotten defensive over that soldier staring in your direction.

You let out an exasperated sigh, opening the book. “Alphas are so infuriating for literally no reason.” You murmur to yourself.

You read until another knock sounds at the door, signaling lunch. You use your note pages as a bookmark, stuffing the book into the back of your underwear drawer before opening the door.

“Hungry, pup?” Price greets you as he usually does when he’s escorting you to a meal.

You nod, stepping out and closing the door behind you. “Always, sir.”

Like most omegas, you have a healthy appetite. It always gets bigger close to your heat, and you never quite feel satisfied and full during that time. You wonder how you’re going to manage on a military base with such a rigid schedule. There’s always snacks in the rec room, but you’re going to need a lot more than chips and protein drinks to keep you happy when the time comes.

You follow Price to the mess, his arm brushing yours as you walk. You’ve noticed them getting closer to you over the past few days, at least in the literal sense. It started with Soap and Gaz. They walk closer to you, sit closer to you. When you join them in the evenings in the rec room they’ve started putting you between them. Price has now started getting closer, walking closer to you, standing closer to you, often looming behind you like a shadow.

Ghost is the only one who hasn’t changed much, still regarding you with disinterest and speaking shortly to you when you’re forced to interact.

“Don’t worry about ‘im lass. He'll warm up tae ye.” Soap had reassured you after a rather cold shoulder from Ghost.

You’re not entirely sure that’s possible. You’re determined to at least try to get on amicable terms with him, and you’re hopeful the book will help with that. Even if he’s nothing more than just another alpha in your pack, if you can get him to stop being so icy around you, perhaps you’ll be able to settle in better.

And maybe you’ll be able to fix your lack of instincts.

Dr. Keller said there was nothing wrong with your lack of instincts at this point in the transition, but everything you had learned at The Institute goes against what she said. You’re an omega. Your job is to be obedient, to serve your pack, and follow your alpha’s commands. Good omegas do what’s asked of them without question, putting their trust in their alpha. No one knows what’s best for you like your alpha.

Your alpha hasn’t asked much of anything of you.

You don’t know how to feel about that.

“I’m startin’ tae think that sandwich insulted ye, lass.”

Soap’s voice pulls you from your thoughts. You have been sitting and staring at your sandwich for a while, lost in your thoughts. It’s not a terrible sandwich by any means, certainly better than the ones you got at The Institute.

They’re all staring at you, four pairs of eyes watching you. You’ve barely touched your plate, and you hardly remember going through the line.

You shake your head, picking up your fork to poke at whatever mushy vegetable Price had added to your tray. “No, it’s fine. I was just lost in thought.”

“‘Bout what?” Soap asks, taking a bite of his own sandwich.

You shrug. “Just something Dr. Keller said.”

“Ah, omega secrets then.” Soap grins. “I’ve heard rumors that omegas know the true meaning of the universe.”

“Yeah, it’s 42.” You say, earning a chuckle from Price.

If you hadn’t been looking, you wouldn’t have noticed the shift in Ghost’s shoulders, the slight softening of his gaze for a moment as he stares at his own sandwich.

He's laughing at you again.

He’s an enigma, a confusing presence in your life. You have no choice but to have him in your life, just as he has no choice but to have you in his life.

You finish your food quickly, wanting to get back to the book. You’ve already got some ideas floating around from it, things that might help you ease into their world a bit more.

Gaz walks you back to the barracks after lunch, the area between the two buildings more crowded than usual. You both slow a bit as a whistle sounds through the air, your head turning as a rather crude comment reaches your ears.

“Ignore them.” Gaz says, putting a hand on your back. “Bunch of cocksure alphas. They’re always rowdy after the weekend. They go out, surround themselves with omega barrack bunnies, make themselves feel important.”

“Have you...been with a barrack bunny?” You ask hesitantly, mostly out of curiosity. You know they likely have. They've had their entire lives they've been able to dictate for themselves.

“Not since joining the team.” He answers honestly. “None of us have. We don’t usually have the time, or the need. We have each other now.”

And now they have you.

“Do they, the other soldiers...do they know why I’m here?” You find yourself asking as you enter the barracks.

“Not specifically.” Gaz says. “Most of what we do is classified, even to them. I think some of them have begun to put two and two together. And before too long, they’ll be able to figure it out.” He says, giving you a look as you stop in front of your door.

“Yeah...” You say softly, your stomach churning nervously at the thought of your approaching heat. There’s still quite a bit of time before then, but you don’t feel ready. You don’t feel ready to spend a heat with an alpha, you don’t feel ready to be claimed.

“Don’t worry too much.” He says, pressing his finger between your brows like he might be able to smooth out the frown that’s formed between them. “Price will take good care of you. Besides, we’ve got plenty of time to work out the kinks.” He chucks you under the chin gently before he leans down, pressing a kiss to your rapidly warming cheek. “I’ll see you later, yeah?”

You still feel a bit like you’re floating as you close your door behind you. Your face is warm, not just from the forwardness of Gaz’s actions but also his words. You let out a quiet sound as you fan your face, trying desperately not to think about how soft his lips are, how easily he had ignited a fire within you with some words and a simple touch.

Gaz is trouble, you think as you pull out the book again, settling down at your desk to read.

You open the book, starting at the next section.

Bonding With Your Pack.

This is what you need, ideas on how to do exactly that. Even though you’re already beginning to feel close to Soap and Gaz, you still feel as if there’s a chasm keeping you from Price, and an ocean between you and Ghost. You just need something, anything that will start building that rope bridge and maybe a boat.

Learn To Speak Their Language.

You pause at the chapter title, pulling out the notebook you’ve been taking notes in.

“As much as we want to think it can be, not everything can be about us all the time. Just like in any relationship, we have to put effort into others as well. If you find yourself struggling to connect with your alpha, the first step is to figure out something they’re interested in. Sports? Video Games? Food? Get to know your alpha, and make it a point to learn about something they’re interested in. Learn to speak their language.”

You read the passage thrice over, the realization dawning on you. You knew from the beginning that getting them to adapt to you was not going to be possible. You were going to have to adapt yourself to fit into their lives. Their lives of fighting and war and violence and guns.

An idea begins to form in your head as you brainstorm, scribbling page after page of notes. It’s not perfect, but you’re in no rush to perfect it. After all, you’ve got nothing but time.

You sit next to Soap at breakfast, close enough his arm is brushing yours. You wish you could see Ghost’s face, or, well, his eyes at least.

“So what do you guys do between breakfast and lunch?” You ask, all four of them pausing as they look at you. You continue to eat, pretending not to notice their looks. You know mornings are for their workouts before breakfast, but what they do between meals is almost entirely unknown to you. You assume it’s some sort of training, maybe meetings and briefings.

“Training, usually.” Price answers after a moment. “Running simulations, training courses, weapons training, hand-to-hand. Keeps our skills sharp. Today they’re running a routine course to make sure they’re not getting lazy in our time off.”

“Can I come?” You ask, their gazes snapping to you again. “To watch? I’m getting kind of bored sitting around.”

Price’s gaze burns into you as you meet it, not looking away despite the tickling at the back of your neck telling you to yield. Tough alphas like a challenge, the book said. Don’t back down, even when you want to.

“I don’t see why not.” He finally says, picking up his cup of coffee. “Give these muppets another reason to compete with each other.”

The table erupts in chaos as Gaz and Soap immediately start betting with each other. You can’t help but smile, used to their bickering and competitiveness after spending time with them doing literally anything together.

This is certainly going to be interesting, if nothing else.

“There’s two rules for you being here.” Price says as you walk with him down a line of hangars. “You do everything I say, and stick close to me. They’ll be using live rounds, and the last thing we need is you catching a stray bullet in some freak accident.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” You say, saluting him.

He stares down at you for a moment, amusement shining in his eyes. “Cute.” He leads you into the hangar, a sort of building made out of plywood set up inside. “Over here.” He leads you to where a sort of command center is set up.

There’s screens showing feeds from cameras set up inside the mock building, a timer and an intercom system set up. You look it over in amazement, Price coming to stand next to you.

“How does it work?” You ask.

“They enter there.” He points to what you assume represents the front door. “Work their way through both levels to clear the house.There’s targets in some rooms that pop up when certain pressure triggers are hit on the floor. Hit every target, clear the house, exit there,” He points at a spot on the side of the house in front of where you’re standing. “And reach that red line in 60 seconds.”

You blink in surprise. “How fast can they do it?”

“Gaz holds the record currently at 19 seconds, Ghost in second at 19.5, and Soap at 20.5.” He says.

“Wow.” You say under your breath, looking over the cameras again. “I’m not sure I could even think that fast.”

Price chuckles. “I wouldn’t expect you to be able to, sweetheart. We’ve had years and years of training and experience. Stay here, I’ll be right back.” He says, heading back down the steps to where the others have gathered, wearing light gear.

It’s not the first time you’ve seen them all geared up, but the change is always palpable. Gone are the laid back betas and alpha, and instead they’ve shifted into battle-hardened soldiers. It’s almost mesmerizing how easily they can shift between the two.

And you can hardly handle your instincts getting a little twitchy.

Price joins you again, turning on the intercom system. “Alright Gaz, at my go sweep the house and clear the rooms.” You hold your breath as Price pauses, Gaz in place at the front door. “Go, go, go!” Price says, the timer starting as Gaz enters the house.

You watch on the cameras as he goes through the lower levels, jumping slightly as the first gunshots echo through the hangar. They’re louder than you had expected, even with the hangar doors opened partway. You feel a bit anxious as you watch the time and his progress, almost as if you’re watching an intense movie.

17...18...19...

Gaz slips through the side door, racing for the red line marking the end. You stare at the timer as Price hits the stop button. Twenty one seconds. You wonder how often they don’t meet their previous records, or if their break really is having that much of an effect on them. You hear Gaz curse quietly as he passes, heading back to stand by Soap as Ghost gets ready at the start.

The nervous anticipation doesn't lessen any as Ghost makes his way through the house, moving swiftly and silently as he always seemed to do. For such a large being he can move so quietly with an ease unlike you’ve ever seen.

You watch the timer as he crosses the red line. 21.9.

You catch a whiff of his scent as he passes, the hint of ozone burning your nose. He’s frustrated. They have to know they’re not performing as well as they know they can. Part of you wonders if it’s your fault they’re not even meeting their best times.

Soap is up last, moving with an ease and focus that you’re not entirely surprised he’s capable of. Though he tends to be the most lighthearted of the four, and the most unserious, he made it on the team for a reason.

Again you watch the timer, still held at rapt attention in the intensity of the moment as he crosses the red line. 25. He lets out a loud string of curses, most of which you don’t understand as he moves back to the start.

“Wait here.” Price says before descending back down the steps.

You’ve seen the change in him as well, a bit more subtle as he always seemed to be in the Captain mindset to some degree. You wonder if he’s ever not the Captain, if there’s a time where he gets to just be John Price. You wonder what he’s like when he doesn’t have the weight of his responsibility constantly on his shoulders. You wonder when the last time he got to let go like that was.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” You say as he joins you once more. You’re beginning to think maybe you made a mistake in asking to come along.

“Most likely.” He says, resetting the timer. “But that’s something we need to know. This is the new normal. They need to learn to work through it.”

Especially if it’s you they’re trying to get to.

You knew there was a risk. Just being associated with them puts you at risk. They’re hidden, anonymous, deeply classified for a reason. You’d gotten that briefing during your time training with the CIA, after Laswell had told you where you would be going. Just knowing their names, who they are, where their home base is, is enough to put you in danger. You were hidden just as much as they were now, your entire existence now hidden beneath layers of security clearance.

You could still be a target, if anyone found out. They might think you have information, details about their missions, about the things they do.

The likelihood of that happening was low, but never zero. There was still risk involved in being around them, a risk you were assigned to take. It was your duty, though, as an omega. Do what you’re told, go where you’re sent, follow your alpha without question.

Institutes really are like the military, you think. Only you’re fighting a different battle than they are.

You’re seated on the couch in your usual spot, curled up with a book. Your pack was having some downtime as Price had an emergency meeting he had to attend. Your heart had jumped a bit at the news, at the thought that they might be pulled away early. They weren’t supposed to get called off on a mission until after your next heat to allow for the adjustment and claiming, but if they were needed...they could be called away before then.

So you’d settled in with a book in the rec room to try and calm your nervous energy.

“Mind if I join ye?”

You look up as Soap enters the rec room, a smile on his face. “No, go ahead.” You offer a smile back.

He joins you on the couch, lifting your legs over his lap. You flush a bit at the bold move, but you were growing used to his boldness. “What are ye readin’?”

“‘Lord of the Flies.’” You say, holding up the cover.

“Did ye finish the other one already?” He asks in astonishment.

“I’ve already read two books since I got here.” You say, laughing a little.

“Och, yer a bright wee lamb, aren’t ye?” He chuckles. “Ye like tae read?”

You nod. “Yeah. It’s good for passing the time.”

He hums, grabbing the remote. “Ghost likes tae read too. Dinnae tell him I told ye that.” He holds up the remote. “Ye mind?”

You shake your head. “No, go ahead.”

He turns on the TV, keeping the volume low as he sits with you. His hand is warm where it rests on your calf, his thumb absentmindedly stroking circles over the fabric. You try to focus on the book but you can’t help the fluttering in your stomach at the proximity of the beta. You keep catching whiffs of his scent, and you’re beginning to feel an urge to ask him about Ghost. If anyone can give you answers, it’ll be Soap.

“Soap?” You ask, closing your book.

He hums, turning to look at you. You stare into those bright blue eyes, your heart fluttering a bit. His eyes are so warm and expressive, shining with something you can’t quite put a name to.

“Does Ghost...hate me?” You ask quietly, knowing with your luck as soon as you start the conversation, the man in question would appear out of nowhere.

Soap’s lips tug up into a smile, a quiet chuckle rumbling through his chest. “Nae, lass. He doesnae hate ye. Ghost is...” He makes a face, trying to find the right words. “Ghost is very guarded.”

He slips his arms around you, lifting you into his lap. You let out a quiet sound in surprise, wrapping an arm around his broad shoulders out of instinct. His arms wrap around you, his tactical vest digging into your side a bit, but you’re too focused on the sudden proximity to really care.

“He's no an easy man tae get close tae.” He continues. “I know. Couldnae stand me when we first met. I broke him down, proved myself. We spent enough time together, and that bond just formed naturally.”

“He sees me as a threat.” You say, voicing the opinion you’ve been coming to over the last few days.

“I wouldnae say a threat.” Soap grins, his hand squeezing your side. “A wee yin like ye. He just needs time tae adjust. He's gonnae dae it in his own way.”

“I don’t even need him to really like me.” You say, tracing the Union Jack on the front of Soap’s vest. “I just need him to tolerate me.”

“This is him tolerating ye.” Soap deadpans.

You give him a look. “Well he’s got a funny way of showing it then.”

Soap chuckles, the sound vibrating through your body. “Nah, dinnae worry too much about him, hen.”

You hum, leaning your head on his shoulder. “You’re right. It’s Captain Price I need to worry about.”

“I dinnae think ye need tae worry too much there either.” Soap grins. “The Cap’n is head over heels for ye already.”

You give him a look of disbelief, eyebrows raising. “What?”

Soap nods. “Oh aye, I havenae seen him smile this much in all the time I’ve known him.”

You continue to stare in disbelief. You knew Price at least tolerated the idea of you becoming his omega. He’s been nothing but polite, cordial even with you. In the traditional sense he’s already begun courting you, providing and protecting. You still have yet to move beyond the polite tiptoeing, even with how things have been shifting the last few days.

You have the beta’s approval, which you know is an important step in pack formation.

You bite your lip, your fingers curling around the edge of his vest. “You really think he...”

“Mhm.” Soap nods. “Cannae blame him, pretty omega like ye strutting around the base.”

He’s getting closer to you. You can’t do anything but stay still as his face lowers towards yours. Your stomach is fluttering, but you can’t tell if it’s nerves or excitement. His hand slides down your side, following the curve of your hip before it settles on your thigh. He’s so warm, his scent amplified with your close proximity. You feel a bit dizzy, your head spinning a bit. You understand now how betas can still win over both alphas and omegas.

“We all feel lucky havin’ ye.” He says quietly, his breath fanning your face. His forehead presses against yours, so close to you your noses are brushing.

You wonder what Ghost would do if he walked in and saw you this close to his beta. Would your body fly through a window or a wall? Or would he tackle you, wrap his hands around your throat and squeeze until your head pops or your airway collapses? Or, was Soap right and he would do nothing?

Or would he like it?

The thought sends a shiver down your spine. Soap likes you, both of the betas in your new pack like you. It’s good, you know, having the approval of both betas, even though you don’t technically need both. Price could claim you with only his and Gaz’s approval, though it would be easier if all four approved.

You wonder if Ghosts supposed tolerance of you is because of Soap. The alpha is very protective of his beta, though you don’t doubt Soap would go to bat for you if he needed to.

He might have already.

Soap hasn’t moved, both of you frozen where you are. He wants to kiss you, you think, your brain pulling up all the movies you’ve seen in your life. You’re gripping onto him tightly, your stomach fluttering. You’re nervous, unsure of how to move next. Do you let him kiss you? You’ve only been kissed once before, but that was hardly more than a childish peck on the lips. He wants to kiss you like they do in the movies.

Will Soap be upset if you pull away? Will he force you back and take what he wants? There would be no stopping him. Even if the others were in the building, even if they heard you, would they come to your rescue? Or would they let it happen because it’s your purpose? What would Ghost do if he walked in and saw you? What would Price do? Would Price be upset that he wasn’t the first to kiss you?

You are his claim after all.

You slowly draw yourself back, removing your arm from around his shoulders as you turn slightly to face the TV. You hold your breath, not wanting to catch the souring of Soap’s scent, the tell that he was upset at your decision. You wait for his grip to tighten, for his body to force you back onto the couch. His hand moves from your thigh and you tense, waiting for the reprimanding to come, but instead he simply wraps his arms around your upper body again, holding you like he had been before.

Your heart is still thudding in your chest as you quietly watch the TV, the silence in the room thick but not uncomfortable. You lean your head back on his shoulder, letting yourself relax into him. The almondy scent of beta is thick in the air, likely his doing to diffuse the tension he must be able to feel.

“British TV is weird.” You say, trying to follow along with what’s going on, on the screen.

Soap laughs, squeezing his arms around you for a moment. “Aye, it really is.”

You continue to sit with him, letting his scent relax you. You’ve given up following what’s on the TV, his warmth and presence slowly lulling you until your eyes are drifting closed.

The scent permeates the air everywhere he goes.

Caramel. Vanilla. Strawberries.

No amount of scent blockers can keep it from seeping under his mask, permeating his senses. He’d spray the scent blocker up his nose if he thought it might work. You’re stinking up the base, his beta, his life. Even now he can smell it, the sweet cloud of your scent wafting through the halls.

He can pick up the sharp tang of anxiety on the edge of it, a low growl rumbling through his chest in response. It burns his nose and he hates it. His boots are quiet on the tile floor as he makes for the rec room, following the cocktail of scents. Your pungent sweetness layered over Johnny’s warm spice.

Images flash through his mind of what position he might find you both in. He can smell the musky undertones of Johnny’s desire in the air, a scent he’s very familiar with. He knows how much his beta wants the new omega that’s been forced on them. They don’t need an omega. He knows how much Price fought against it, but even the Captain has begun to fall under your intoxicating spell.

You don’t even know you’re doing it.

His hands curl into fists as he steps into the rec room. The TV is playing some daytime rerun, but his eyes are drawn to the couch. Johnny is fast asleep, his head leaning against yours. You’re asleep in his lap, hand under your cheek, resting against his chest. You’ll have imprints on your skin from your hand and his vest. Johnny’s arms are wrapped tight around you, looking more peaceful than he has in a while.

He’s already comfortable enough to sleep with you.

“MacTavish!” He snaps, startling both of you.

The only thing that keeps you from flailing to the floor is Johnny’s quick reflexes, his grip tightening around you to keep you on his lap. Johnny blinks the sleep from his eyes, squinting up at him for a moment.

“Let’s move.” He growls, turning and leaving the rec room.

He refuses to look at you in your sleepy haze, not quite as quick to wake as Johnny. He doesn’t want to watch the way Johnny eases you to your feet, how small you look leaning against him as you grumble sleepily. He doesn’t want to watch as Johnny guides you to your door, easing you into the safety of your room while they leave to do their jobs.

He hates the way he turns back to look as Johnny speaks quietly to you, those big, shiny puppy eyes staring up at him. He hates the churning in his stomach as you soften at Johnny’s kiss to your forehead, the way you watch Johnny walk down the hallway. Ghost opens the door for his beta, letting him out, but he can’t bring himself to move until he hears the click of the lock on your door sliding into place.

NEXT ->

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@bobaprint @ashy-kit @anunintentionalwriter @mockerycrow @hayleybarnesx @protokosmonaut @fruitymoonbeams-blog @blue-blue0 @hindi-si-ikay @hanellokey @thatonepupkai @redwites @kattiieeee @141trash @ghostlythots @lothiriel9 @dillybuggg @beebeechaos @konigsmissedbeltloop @kaoyamamegami @thychuvaluswife @idkkkkkkk8363 @wallwriterstuff @bisky-business @smile-child-13 @anomiatartle @dangerkittenclaws @bless-my-demons @mystic60 @evolutionarry @red-hydra @lunaetiicsaystuff @cadotoast @linaangel @rancid-wasp @codsunshine @thriving-n-jiving @slayerx147 @ferns-fics @spicyspicyliving @cityoffallencrows @puppyel @ttsbaby01 @heeheehoohoohahahihi @sleepyoriana @ihatethinkingofnames10

#call of duty #call of duty fanfic #alpha/beta/omega dynamics #a/b/o #141 x reader #task force 141 x reader #poly 141 #john price x reader #captain john price x reader #soap mactavish x reader #soap x reader #john soap mactavish x reader #ghost x reader #simon ghost riley x reader #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #x reader

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ne0nlightzz · 1 year

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CW: oddly aggressive self-directed criticism cuz im a dumbass with temper issues and lack of responsibility regarding my writing? also just a ranty rant cuz im kinda stressed out over random shitz- idk if this needs cw but here we go- also does this count as a progress update? again i dunno-

so i should be writing or at least working on requests- but after writing a whole chapter 5 of DFTS [the creepypasta x ftm!reader ive been writing] to the point that only touch ups, editing and double checking for major grammar/spelling errors was needed but then deciding i didn't like how it was written and felt it was a bit to cliché i went and deleted nearly the whole chapter [when it wasn't exactly that bad nor did it mess with/alter the plot that much and was fine since its just a filler chapter anyway] and decided to basically start from scratch.

normally this isn't that big of a deal, ive done it plenty of times with this story because not only do i want others to like it and enjoy the story, i also want to personally like it and enjoy writing the story, so again not really that big of a deal right? yeah that would be if i didn't procrastinate and put it off for like FOUR+ FREAKIN MONTHS- ive been working on that part little by little for like over four months because i went through a writer's block n health issues and family issues and setbacks cuz my life is just a total shitshow but i just deleted four+ months of on and off work cuz i didn't like it- AND IM SUPPOSED TO POST MONTHLY- and ykw i don't have time for a dumb lil personal dislike of a mostly decent FILLER CHAPTER- [not even a super important chapter!!] cuz i have school shit to do and requests to write and a deadline for the next part of another story ive been writing [that i have to get written, edited and posted before october cuz once its october it'll be a year since i update and whenever i update a year later i always lose hope for the story-].

i lost where i was going with this rant but im highly considering closing requests until i can get what is in my inbox written and posted along with at least one of my other works updated- i dunno i might just go try to figure out how to scene kid/emo-fy my furby and see if thats less stressful- [i say as i got mad paint a shelf last week- even simple projects are driving me insane and aren't going well- n imma stop ranting now cuz omfg why did i type so much- ALSO REQS ARENT ACTUALLY CLOSED- IF I CLOSE REQS I WILL MAKE THAT ITS OWN POST-]

[btw nothing negative or anything towards anyone whos sent reqs, i love getting them n they make me happy and usually help motivate me! im just stressed with myself for procrastinating so much with writing and pushing it all off for so long and also for not trying to push through that writers block sooner- also just with school cuz i skipped out over the summer which was supposed to be used as time for me to catch up and also just stressed and angry as my shitshow of a life for never calming down or giving me or my family a break, like i haven't solidly worked on a hobby and enjoyed it in a while- mk imma stop the dumb rant again cuz i need to stop and go calm the hell down and take my focus off of writing n all for a lil bit-]

#ne0nlightzz rantz #idk man #trans writers #fanfic writer #writing community #im dumb asf istg #wtf am i even doing #why is writing so hard #sometimes #why is it so stressful #at times too #im stressed #requests are open #idk what else to tag #idk anymore #im tired #and my furby is going to be a scene furby now

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4dtk · 3 years

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“32, 37 hand holding and 3, 26 kissing with rookie actor mark and experienced actor s/o on their first drama together?” yes sure!!! excuse me but i don’t watch that much k-dramas so i’m doing this purely from youtube videos LOL + if it mirrors any other k-drama or is similar then it’s purely coincidence!! just conjuring something up in my mind lol

hand-holding, 32 & 37: not really paying attention, both doing something else, but still holding hands / not realizing they’re holding hands till someone points it out

kisses, 3 & 26: smiling while kissing, giggling while kissing

“what’s that supposed to mean?” mark glances down at you in the field, saying his line that he’s practiced with you countless times. the poor boy was so worried about the outcome of it, having only acted as side or filler characters for the past year. although, with every gig he gets, you’re there to help him reach his fullest potential: practicing his lines with him, going through the different variations of how he could’ve executed it, accompanying him to sets.

even the staff couldn’t mask their shock when they see you walking together with a boy who was sweating his ass off, the familiar murmur of his few lines said under his breath as someone led you two to a common break room.

“don’t mind me,” you raise a hand, used to the starstruck faces that looked your way once the door opened. patting mark’s arm, you said something about supporting your boyfriend before settling beside him to work on hair and make-up. you conversed with him easily, briefly stopping at times to entertain autographs or pictures from the other side actors in the room.

it’s been like that since mark made his debut a year ago, taking up many gigs that you always supported. mark struck jackpot when he lucky to have someone to catch onto his talent, running an audition by him that got him the job (with a bit of persuasion on your side).

a job with you, where your embraces and kisses were not just reserved for the two of you in the comfort of your home, or where your affection was held back due to the intrusive cameras. this was an entirely new variation: of moments taken in private mixed with the recognisable traits of korean drama.

the touch of your skin is familiar to mark, but the words that come out of his mouth feel foreign instead. it’s not often that he spouts something so poetic written by the hand of skilled scriptwriters, but at least now he has more words to tell you when he can’t do it in his normal, unique way.

“exactly what i said. why do you need an explanation?” you giggle, hand wiggling out of the expensive coat that your stylist put on you for this scene.

you can tell mark’s arms are struggling to hold himself up, with a teasing glint in your eye that suggests you’re making fun of his strength. your laugh deepens when you realise he’s waiting for you to say your line, pleading with his eyes. he's not used to it yet.

you wait for dramatic effect. “after all, my love for you needs no explanation,” you swear you see mark release a sigh of relief, able to finally lower himself to you while he rests half of his body weight onto your person. his character’s kisses are soft, not much different from your own boyfriend’s as he deepens the kiss.

“remember how i wondered about how you taste like?” he pulls away to ask, the line referencing an interaction from one of the earlier episodes where his character said the same thing.

“what do i taste like, han jiwoo?” the foreign name rolls off your tongue easily now.

“hm… if i’m being honest, i forgot. i might have to kiss you again to find out,” mark delivers the line perfectly and doesn’t hesitate to lean again for another kiss. you’re sure he’s not acting now.

your mouths do a great job of hiding things, before his tongue swipes across your lips. there’s a squeeze from your hand when he does that, but you grant him access either way, melting into it with a cheeky smile that grows and a heart that feels full.

you can taste the incoming snort from mark but he manages to hold it in with a mere giggle. your kisses start and stop, struggling to get in even a bit of contact from how much you’re laughing. like always, you two hold your kisses to make sure there’s sufficient footage, but you have to admit that it was partially indulgent, too.

the scene was almost over, and when mark brings you to your feet you’re able to breath easier, both from your boyfriend’s weight on you and the released tension in having laid in wet grass for the past fifteen minutes.

his hand twines around yours, dragging you along the field as you run off into the distance, shoving and pulling playfully while the camera prepares to pan up. the last shot is of the two of you holding hands, swinging it like a pendulum before the green of the field disappears and the blue of the sky appear. soon, it fades to black.

“and that’s a wrap! thank you, everyone!” the director shouts. claps are heard and you’re dragging mark by then, stripping off the coat that’s overheating your body. it drapes over your elbow easily, responding to the other’s searching hand as you take it in yours. all the way to the dressing room you head seemed to permanently stay down, continuously bowing to directors, producers, staff members.

all you’re focused on is getting to your next schedule, promising to the cast that you’ll treat them to a meal soon as your shout resonates throughout the space. everyone cheers and you reply with a grin, slipping into the dressing room.

as you remove the hairdo with one hand, you ask randomly, “so? what do you think of han jiwoo?”

mark looks up from his phone, pulling a face while he thinks of an answer.

"well, for one, i'm jealous of him for kissing you." that elicits a laugh out of you, giving him a squeeze with your hand before he goes back to his social media with a smile, "but he's a cool kid. i'm glad i got the chance to portray h..."

a thud from the doorframe snaps you out of the moment.

"ah! s-sorry, mark-sunbaenim, (y/n)-sunbaenim," they bow immediately.

"i hope you don't mind b-but, i just came over to tell you how much i loved your chemistry on screen! it's such an honour to be on set with the both of you, especially you, mark-sunbaenim."

you grin as the other flushes at the compliment, but the side actor continues. you don't mind.

"i'm hoping to get a big role like you too, mark-sunbaenim! i've been watching your other shows, too. the way you give life to a character is always very refreshing," your boyfriend takes refuge in your connected hands.

"and i can't help but notice the love you have off-screen too! it's endearing, (y/n)-sunbaenim. i hope i'll have a love as strong as your hands are held right now!" mark barely manages a thank you as the actor excitedly bows again before making his leave.

once he's out of earshot, you giggle at the scrunched up expression, face warm from the comment about him to your interlocked hands and your relationship.

"that was unexpected," similarly, you packed your things again with a single hand when mark reluctantly stands up, overwhelmed.

"y'know, i didn't even know our hands were connected for that long until he said something." mark groans. you laugh.

"please stop talking, i might actually explode," your lover calmly says, letting you drag him out the back door with your hand in his.

with a small peck, your lips meet the back of his hand, "well before i do, i need to tell you that i vouch for every little thing that guy earlier mentioned. talent in every bone in your body, mark lee."

you flag down your manager's car too fast to see the smile on mark's face, but he's grateful for your heartfelt words as he thanks you with kisses and cuddles later in the night.

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domjaehyun · 2 years

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hello miss jewel! was wondering what your writing process is like (if you get asked this alot sorry!!!! i was just curious 😄)

omg no i don’t get asked this a lot idt!!! uhhhh okay i’m gonna try and make this make as much sense to not-me as possible and i apologize it got long!! answer under the cut

BRAINSTORMING STAGE.

my ideas come from random stuff tbh; a random au, a dialogue line, a song (big inspo from songs tbh) but before i start outlining or anything i just open up either a note on my phone or a google doc and just write down ideas for the fic as they come to me! sometimes if i need more ideas for some reason, i’ll scroll through prompt blogs and see if those spark anything for me!

OUTLINING STAGE.

when i think i have enough to start outlining, i do my lil paper slip method where i write out each scene idea on little paper slips and cut up like 10-ish other slips of paper and leave those blank. then i put the slips in the order i want the scenes to happen in and the blank slips are for new ideas or filler scenes to go between other scenes!! then i take a picture of the layout and type everything up!! my outlines do go crazy like i get really into it dfjkgsdjk

WRITING STAGE.

okay this can go a couple of ways :O i’ll either write in order (which is very rare and i usually only do this when i don’t want the fic to be too long) or in a random order where i pick random scenes via a wheel picker or picking slips out of a jar or smth to write (i do this one very often) or in a certain order where i pick what scenes i want to write first (usually easier, shorter, or more exciting scenes) and make an order that has nothing to do with the order of the fic, OR (last one sorry) i’ll do a mix of the last two, so random and certain order where i go in by what i want to write and if i can’t choose what to write, i pick randomly!! sometimes i’ll write out just dialogue in a script like format, like this:

person A: hey watch this *does an action*

person B, doing another action: hey that’s pretty cool

and then flesh it out but i only really do that if i have a lot of little ideas that aren’t, like, a whole scene !! usually i just go right for it and start writing dfjkgsdhjk

EDITING STAGE.

before i send it to a friend (which i usually do) for beta reading, i read the whole fic over and look for plot inconsistencies, plot holes, grammar inconsistencies and typos, or just general things i could add to the fic. if the fic is really long, like i had with pussy fiend, i read it through once without touching the fic (minus grammar/typos) and make notes on a separate page of what to edit then i’ll go back in and read it again and make the edits! then i’ll read it again and then i’ll send it to a friend!! once they read it, i go in and read their suggestions and make my lil changes!!

FORMATTING/POSTING STAGE.

then i paste it into the tumblr post editor! i add my banner pic(s) and my lil splitters/dividers and format the beginning info like the member/pairing, genre, contents, etc. (i try to keep a running list while writing of the contents, namely the smut contents/warnings, so i’m not scrambling to remember everything, but sometimes i forget tbh)

THEN I POST IT AND SCREAM IN RELIEF AND HAVE A DANCE PARTY AND THEN START THINKING ABT MY NEXT FIC BC I’M A WORKAHOLIC WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING.

THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!! i loved answering this i am cuckoo about writing and i love talking about it as it pertains to me 💖

#answered #anon #writing process

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polarbearaone · 4 years

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✯𝖬𝗂𝗋𝗋𝗈𝗋𝗌✯

✞ synopsis: Yachi has always felt unconfident about her body. You being the best girlfriend, decided to show her how amazing her body was...

✞ pairing: Yachi x big tiddy! gf

✞genre: smut, no proof read!

✞ warnings: nsfw! Yachi + character as 18+ , mentions of wlw sex

Yachi wasn’t a confident girl. When she began dating you, her confidence was solely based off what you gave her. You showered her in compliments every.single.day , yet yachi felt worthless. Her insecurities ran wild that night. The night her mother was away from town and she managed to bravely ask you to have a movie night. Now, Yachi adores you for you. She isn’t the one to based her liking of people on their appearance but to her, you were a goddess. You made her feel as if she was the only girl in the world. Your body on the other hand, your body drove her crazy. Her chest had always been small and her eyes could never seem to be off yours. Her dream has always been to lay her head on your chest, it just seems so soft. Seeing your chest makes her insecure of hers. They’re very small compared to yours and even when you two have had a heated make-out session and you decided to touch her chest , consensually of course, she wiggled out of your embrace. Her breasts are small to where she doesn’t wear a bra sometimes and this was one of their time. The way you softly cupped her breast and grazzed your fingers over her nipples made all her insecurities rush in. Despite having those insecurites, she loved the feeling. The burning feeling of you touching her in her most vulrable areas excited her. She wondered what your chest best like, to grab and fondle your breasts. Her thoughts her halted when the doorbell rang. Opening the door, was you with a bright smile and a bag full of snacks. “ Ready ,baby?” you asked. She let you in with an excited squeal, despite seeing you in school, she missed you. After taking off your shoes, she jump towards you, engulfing you in a hug. Yachi was particularly clingy when it was the two of you in private. “ Princess, yes I want to hug you too but we need to get the snacks ready, get me some bowls and then you can sit on my lap” you ordered her as she eagerly left to the kitchen. From the small opening on the kitchen door, Yachi stared at your body. You were plump in all the right places, god she wanted to touch you. “ Take a picture, it’ll last longer” you said taking the snacks out the bag, Yachi was never discreet when it came to staring at you.

Roughly ten minutes later, the lights were out and yachi was snuggly placed on top of your lap. The way your hand was barely under the hem of her shirt burned her skin, she needed more. Yachi didn’t care about the movie that was playing, you filler her head. What she didn’t realize is that the movie that you choose had a sex scene in it. “ Wanna lay down princess?” you aksed innocently. Yachi loved off your chest as you layed down, getting on top of you. She was nervous when she realized this position meant for her head to be on your chest. Her sudden pause caught your attention. “ Whats wrong?” you ask. “ Nothing” she said, not knowing where to place her chest. “ babe if you dont rest your head on my boobs-” before you can finish the sentence, Yachi’s head plopped to your chest. Yachi was on cloud nine. Your chest felt like a pillow for her face, she left pure bliss. Again, her thoughts where distracted, but not by the doorbell, by the sudden loud moans on the televison. Her eyes shot to the TV and behold was the sex scene. The two female protaginist where having sex on the big screen and Yachi felt her whole face go red. “ What’s wrong baby? You’re acting like you’ve never seen a naked girl.” Your comment made her realize she was too insecure to ever look at her body. “ Baby you have seen yourself whats the matter?” you ask worryingly. All Yachi replied was a shy shook of her head. “ Baby, you’ve never looked at your body in that way?” you ask, softly touching her arm. “ I’ve never been pretty like that, I have nothing to my body.” she softly spoke. Gently grabbing her body, placing her on your lap, you cupped her face. “ My princess, there is no need for you to be insecure, you’re so fucking gorgeous Hitoka, do you want me to show you?” you aksed, knowing the answer. She only felt two moods, embarrassed and turned on. After a minute of silence, she softly nodded.

Already knowing the way to her room, you softly picked her up. Connecting your lips as you carried her to her room, you softly kneaded her behind. She moaned into the kiss, showing she indeed liked what she was feeling. Carefully letting her down in front her full-body mirror, you stood behind her. Wrapping your arms around her, you softly whispered into her ear, “ For every piece of clothing I take off your body, I’m going to mark it and you’’ll see how beautiful you are ok?” It had seem as all the words left Yachi’s body, she could only reply with a soft whimper. Pulling out her desk chair, you ordered her to sit down. Getting behind her, you softly moved aside her hair, “ Starting off with this gorgeous neck”. Yachi let out a moan as your lips were attached to her neck. The room was filled with Yachi’s moans as you marked her neck. You sucked and bit at the sensitive skin, “ (y/n) please” Yachi moaned into the air, “ patience baby, I’m barely getting started”. After being satisfied with her neck, you hands grazed their towards the hem of her shirt. “ This needs to come off” you told her as you softly pushed up her shirt. After her shirt was off, you softly kissed her stomach, “ You’re not going to leave hickeys on my stomach right?” she asked while she panted. “ Of course I am” you said, connecting your lips to her soft stomach. Your lips nimbling on her stomach made her giggle. “ Fuck baby. keep giggling like that, it drives me crazy” you practicaly growled. Two hickeys later, you looked at her in the eye. “ Will you let me take off your bra princess?” you asked softly, knowing she was nervous. She nodded, feeling herself get wet in her panties. You softly unclasped the back, carefully removing her bra. Her nipples had gotten perky from the previous actions. Your hands came up slowly to cup her breasts. The skin to skin contact made a moan leave Yachi’s mouth. Her whole back arched as she felt your mouth wrap around her sensitive nipple. Lapping your toungue over her nipples made Yachi moan uncontrollably. While you tended to one breast with your mouth, your hand made sure to not leave the other lonely. Vice versa when you mouth landed on the next mound. Yachi’s eyes looked into the mirror. She saw her girlfriend, marking the chest she was so insecure about. After pltering her chest, you moved out the way. Wrapping your arms on her breats through behind her, massing her mounds, you whispered into her ear. “Do you see how beautiful you are, you see all my marks, you’re mine, say it”. If you massaging her breasts was not enough to make her scream, then your whisper was.

Slowly returning to front. Your hands landed on her hips. “ First the skirt, then the panties ok baby?” you told her. You began to see worry in her eyes, “ Would it make you feel better if I take off my top too?” you asked, trying to ease her nerves. She nodded frantically as you removed your tops. Both your chests were exposed to one another now, surprisingly, Yachi’s mouth dove straight to your breasts, as if a baby, Yachi sucked on your nipples. Moaning, you slowly pry her off, “ Today isn’t about me baby, its about you” you remind her. Taking off her skirt, you are left with her glorious covered sex. The sight of you staring at her clothed sex had Yachi squirming. “ Please (y/n) please” is all that left her mouth, over and over. Spreading her legs . your lips connected to the skin on ther outer thigh, “ I told you I was going to mark everything”. The marks you left on her thighs were the most pleasing to make, her juices her practically covering her thighs, giving you a delicious treat. Slowly looking up you ask, “ I’m going to take off your panties ok?” you ask her again. “ please” is all she could whimper back to you. Slowly pulling down her panties, her juices stringed off too. Pulling her more towards the end of the chair, to kissed the skin surrounding her sex. Holding her hips down had to become necesarry, she was squirming too much. “ Please (y/n) please please” Yachi whimpered. “I’m the first one to eat you out right baby?” you said, striding your tongue right through her folds. The moan Yachi let out for sure woke up the neighbors. Sucking her clit and entering you tongue into her drove Yachi crazy. Lapping your tongue in and out of her sent her into a frenzy. “ Look at the mirror baby” you managed to tell her before pushing your tongue into her again. Opening her eyes, she saw herself in her most vulnerable state. Her girlfriend in between her legs as the rest of her body different in purple shades. You knew Yachi wouldn’t last long, not with how she was clenching her walls against your tongue. Yachi let out a loud moan as she climaxed on your tongue. Cleaing what you could with your tongue, you tasted all of her. “ Trust me baby we have to do this more often, you taste delicious”. Yachi’s body was close to giving up, you slowly carried her to her bed. Heading to her restroom, you softly wet a towel and got a glass of water. “ Up up baby come on you need water.” you said, slowly raising her head. As she layed back down, you cleaned her body to help her muscles relaxed. Yachi was snoring softly as you put on some comfy clothes and cleaned the room. Putting on one of your hoodies that Yachi often wore to bed, you carefully wrapped your arms next around her, not trying to wake her up. “ Goodnight baby, I love you so much” you managed to say before your eyes slowly fell as well.

a.n : I didn’t proof read because I WAS SO FERAL WRITING THIS LIKE FUCKEKSKEKKS AHHH IMSONSKSKSKS PLZ @royaigarbage I HOPE YOU FOAM AT THE MOUTH PLZ also this is my first nsfw work so plz be nice

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu fluff #haikyuu x reader #hq #hq x reader #yachi #yachi smut #yachi hitoka #yachi x y/n #yachi x reader #yachi hitoka x reader #Haikyuu smut #haikyuu angst #smut #plz yachi lemme KISS you #Can you tell I love girls hehehe

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wndrcarol · 4 years

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daddy’s favorite | ceo!c.d. | part 4

prev. parts — one | two | three

summary: working for your fathers company has its perks. But one of those perks is being able to gain connections.

a/n: the long awaited part four! no, no smut (yet ;) ) buT here’s some more filler and a lil surprise at the end lmaO. I hope you guys enjoy and sorry for any typos! x

au: CEO

pairings: Carol Danvers x F!Reader (Stark!R)

other characters in chap.: Sam Wilson, Tony Stark

warnings: some teasing ahem 👀 but nothing too serious

———

You genuinely didn’t know what was going on now. It had been a couple days since .. that happened and you just left confused on what the next move was from either you or Carol.

The following days from that night, you had been in contact with her as she would call you about contracts and what to ask your father for clarification but that would be all. You usually would be short with her on the phone and she immediately took the hint that something was wrong.

It didn’t feel good to know that something went sideways that night. Carol kept thinking back and wondering if she had been too bold but for some reason she couldn’t help it. But of course, maybe she shouldn’t have pushed it onto you.

Your father had planned for a meeting to happen between his board and Carols which meant you’d have to see her and it only put a bit of pressure on you.

Dialing the phone in your office, it rang twice before the line was picked up. “IT Department” Sam said as a small smile grew on your face.

“Hey nerd, I was just checking to see if the screens working in the conference room since it was having trouble earlier” you said as you heard him chuckle on the other end.

“You should be lucky that I like you enough that I let the name ‘nerd’ pass” he said as you felt your face heat up a bit. “The screen should be good to go. Let me know if it freezes or anything, I’ll be up there quick” he finished as you nodded.

“You got it” you smiled as you hung up the phone.

Letting out a breath, you walked over to the conference room, walking in and taking a seat next to your father as you waited for Carol and her team to walk in.

“Everything alright?” Your dad asked, turning towards you as you looked at him, smiling and nodded.

“Yeah, all good” you said as he looked at you a bit longer, seeing right through your lie but not wanting to push you. Giving you a soft smile he patted your hand lightly before hearing the door open.

Looking up, you see Carol smiling as he team walked in before her eyes met yours. You stayed looking at each other before looking down at your notepad, fidgeting with the pen ontop of it as your father stood up to shake her hand.

“Carol. It’s good to see you” Tony said, as she smiled and shook his hand before letting go.

“You as well. Glad to be here” she said as she quickly looked over at you and felt that small guilt rise up in her again. Looking away, she smiled at everyone before taking a seat nearest to her that was empty.

“So” you father said as everyone else sat down and opened their folders with the presentation slides. “Let’s get started” he smiled at Carol as she nodded, opening her file and standing up. Her slideshow popped up on the big screen as she began to go over the percentages and recent benefits that the companies have had.

The whole meeting seemed to drag along. You couldn’t bring yourself to look up the presentation at the fault of meeting eyes with Carol. You took notes every once in a while as you thought about approaching her to clear the air. Part of you missed her flirty and cocky nature but the other part of you knew that confrontation was going to have to happen if you wanted that energy back.

“Uh” You heard Carol pause as she kept trying to click the remote to change the slide but it stayed stuck as you looked up and saw the screen freeze and glitch a bit.

“It’s been freezing up all morning” you said, standing up insitinctly and went up to Carol, motioning for the remote in her hand. Pausing, she looked at you a hit stunned as you were stunned at your quick actions before you registered what you were doing.

Putting your hand down, you chuckled before putting your hand out again. “May I?” You asked as Carol placed the remote in your hand softly, still staring at you. You broke eye contact as you felt everyone’s eyes on you and began fiddling with the remote, eventually getting the screen to turn off from its glitched state.

“I’ll have IT look at this. In the meantime, the slides are on the file” you father said, looking at you before looking around the table then to Carol. He found that interaction a bit weird and his fatherly instincts had heightened a bit, feeling like something was happening but ultimately brushed it off.

“Yes” Carol started, clearing her throat before facing the people around the table with a smile. “It’s all on the folders. I was meant to show the last slide but I guess the screen doesn’t like good news” she chuckled as everyone else began to chuckle a bit.

“That’s good to hear! I guess the meeting is done. Thank you all for coming” you father smiled as everyone began to pack up.

You stepped aside and pulled out your phone, sending Sam a quick text about the screen freezing up, just as he predicted, you quickly revived a response.

Sam: alright, the nerd will check on it for you ;)

Smiling down at your phone, you quickly composed yourself and cleared your throat as you looked up and saw Carol’s eyes on you while she was talking to someone you didn’t recognize. Pulling her eyes away, she smiled at the man infront of her and shook his hand before packing up her bag on the desk.

Clearing your throat, you felt as though this was your opputunity. Time to clear the air between you both. Grabbing your things from where you sat at the table, you walked over to Carol, tapping her on the shoulder and catching her attention quickly.

“Ms. Danvers, can I speak to you privately about something?” You asked which caught the attention of your father as well from behind you as he was in conversation with his colleague.

Taken aback, Carol nodded her head slowly before fully comprehending what was happening.

“Uh, y-yeah sure” she said as you smiled before following you out the conference room and over to your office. Tony watched you both and couldn’t help the feeling that feeling come back to him. He pushed it to the back of his mind as he went back to the conversation, smiling but his mind began to race a bit.

Walking over to your office, you let out a nervous sigh as you walked in, motioning for Carol to take a seat to which she shook her head as you sat down behind your desk.

“I’m alright, thank you” Carol smiled at you before looking down at the floor. Right when she began speaking, you began at the same time before your both laughed.

“Please” Carol said, feeling her hands get a bit sweaty from how nervous she was.

“Thank you. I um-“ you started, pausing before leaning your arms up against your desk. “I want to talk about the other night. Carol, I-“ you started but Carol shook her head and cut you off.

“I want to apologize for that. I don’t know what came over me. I just want to say I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable in anyway from my actions and-“ she continued on as it was your turn to shake you head

“No it’s just-“ you started, cutting her off and sighing while looking away “It took me a bit by surprise” you chuckled as Carol nodded lightly before walking over to the desk and taking your hand in hers and giving it a slight squeeze.

Looking up at her, she was looking at your hands before looking back at you. “To say I’m not attracted to you would be a lie” she started, smiling at you as you chuckled.

“But, I won’t do anything in that matter anymore if you don’t want me to. I’m sorry if I over stepped anything” she said, squeezing your hand lightly as you smiled at her, placing your other hand ontop of hers just staring at her.

“Thank you” you said, rubbing your thumb lightly against the back of her hand. It felt nice having her hand in yours. As cliche as it sounds, it felt as though it fit perfectly and it only made your stomach feel light butterflies.

“I too can say that you are very attractive” you chuckled as Carol let out a soft laugh before you stood up, letting go of her hand. Carol frowned a bit from the loss of touch, she felt happy on the inside just holding your hand.

“And if you let me” you said, grabbing her hand again and pulling it to her side as you stepped close to her. Carol’s breathing hitched as she watched her movements. She could feel your breath lightly fanning her face as a smirk grew on your face. Her body pressed against your desk, the complete opposite of how it was the other night.

“I want to show you an apologize for keeping you on your toes for so long” you said, leaning in before placing a small kiss against her jawline. Your free hand moved to grip her hip and she couldn’t help the small moan that came out of her. Closing her eyes, she relaxed her body as you continued to let kisses down her neck before pulling back to look at her.

“What do you think of that?” You smirked as she opened her eyes to look at you, a small smile growing on her lips. You started to lean in to press your lips against hers but you were interrupted by the door opening.

“Hey, (Y/N) I just came to tell you-“ Sam paused as he saw the scene infront of him as his eyes grew wide. “Holy shit”

———

yup, a cliffhanger 🤪

taglist: @marvelbbyx @mynameispurple @sat-yrr @antiant-inferno @natasha-danvers @depressed-bi-bitch @cpt-bolter @fayhar @thatssocamryn @the-most-unicorn-of-them-all

feedback is appreciated!

#carol danvers #carol danvers x reader #carol danvers imagine #carol danvers one shot #captain marvel #captain marvel x reader #captain marvel imagine #captain marvel one shot #sam wilson #tony stark #mine.txt #wndrwriting #daddy’s favorite fic

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marmie-noir · 2 years

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The Trials of Loving a Tenakth - Kotallo x OC Fic - Chapter 1

Hi all!

I finally got the first chapter wrapped up! I’m terrible at adding filler, my ADHD brain does all the dramatic/smutty/funny scenes and leaves them hanging with no connections.

I tried to edit but tbh was sick of looking at it, so if there are errors I apologize!

TW: Detailed wound, medical care, flirting, feelings.

“Erend, you can’t strong arm it. It’s a hologram, light, not something you can punch.” I chided the man, leaning against his side and showing him how to gently touch the little buttons that appeared before me thanks to the focus. I was working on studying anything about the old ones that Aloy had been able to gather as well as general data that Gaia had even without the subordinate function APOLLO. Watching him repeat the motions I pulled back a bit to sit normally next to him on the couch in the main area with a little smile. Yes, this was sometimes frustrating. I was more of a do it versus learn it girl, hands on if you will, but watching someone else struggle made me feel a bit better about my lack of progress. Zo was a literal genius I swear and she seemed to get everything the first try. Erend, Varl, and I all were not so fortunate.

“I’m the guy you call when it’s time to break stuff.” Erend almost pouted, his mood obviously soured from his rivalry with the small machine on his temple. “But reading? Smoke and steel, I am no good at this ‘Nara.”

“You’ll get it, big guy.” I said, patting his arm before waving my hand and pulling up all the data on another subordinate function. “Just… it takes time.” I was interested in ELEUTHIA, the mother function. Reading up about the plan to reintroduce humans back to the world from a preserved stock of embryos was so interesting, the mere thought of a cradle facility is something out of legend. The idea that my ancestors came from such a location had me wondering who their descendants were, which of the old ones was I made from.

There was so much information, so much raw data, I often felt like I would never be all caught up. Learning a little of everything seemed the best option to me although a few of the others seemed to want to master every bit of information before moving to the next. Clutching to my knee to my chest I leaned in a bit as if that would make the information absorb better into my poor abused head, my temples already giving the tell-tale tingle of a headache.

As if all the gods in the sky felt my pain and the now familiar hiss of the automatic door sounded. Varl stepped in, his usually chipper face drawn a bit in stress, glancing over his shoulder. Behind him walked one of the largest men I had ever seen in my entire life. The Tenakth was well decorated, his skin covered in both tattoos and paint, his features strong but his expression one of careful watchfulness. He had a woven top that exposed his well built middle, the muscles there showing a strength made through years of training versus the exercising I had seen some of the male workers do for defined muscles. He had only one arm, the other one cut near the top of the bicep, wrapped in a blue cloth of some kind. I didn’t linger there, too distracted by the rest of him. Bright dots of color stood out amongst his chest and down the wrap he wore over what appeared to be a short pair of shorts, each movement flashing a bit of thigh equally tattooed as the rest of him. Sliding my gaze up I found he had surprisingly pretty dark eyes and they were looking right back at me. They were a stunning mix of hazel and something darker that reminded me of a specific tree bark I had no name for.

Blinking in surprise I raised my eyebrows but kept my thoughts to myself, not shy about being caught looking at the new man at the base. His pale gaze lingered where I sat on the couch for a moment, my spine straightening as he glanced me up and down before turning his attention to Erend, and then Zo in the far corner.

The Utaru woman walked over with a soft smile, moving to stand next to Varl before greeting our new Tenakth friend. “Welcome to the base.” She was always sweet and kind, an admirable trait for someone with so much strength. I admired the Utaru for multiple reasons even though their lifestyle was not exactly for me. “I’m Zo, I assume you are Kotallo.” Sliding off the couch slowly, Varl and Zo both seemed distracted by the Tenakth standing tall before them to be concerned with me. With light steps I walked around Varl, removing the small satchel with the spare focus’ from Aloy from his belt with practiced precision and moved it behind my back, walking around Zo and standing next to her to face Kotallo with an innocent smile.

Kotallo’s eyes narrowed slightly at me and I wondered if he’d seen my move. It was quick, I hadn’t even missed a beat in my step, but he seemed to be looking closer than the average person did. He didn’t say anything about it, though he was suspicious, instead focusing back on Zo and nodding at her question. “I understand that you all are helping Aloy with the current enemy.” Looking once more he gestured to his temple, obviously seeing we all had that little triangle of white metal in place. “She mentioned something about that tiny machine, a focus?”

Varl reached back and found the space empty, the small leather pouch held behind my back as I glanced over with a little smile. His panic was not long lived as I held up the little bag, tossing it and catching it a few times until he noticed. His panic turned to annoyance and he swiped at it, having me take a step back with a little laugh. I plucked one from inside and tossed the rest back at him.

“I’ll take it over from here.” Gesturing Kotallo to follow me he paused a moment, looking at Varl a moment before following behind me.

The heat of him let me know he stayed close as we went into a side room, the door sliding closed behind us and the lights turning on to dimly light up the room. I spun but he was closer than I thought, my chin nearly brushing against his chest. I took a step back, tipping my head back to look up at him. I held my hand out flat, the focus on my palm looking harmless as I offered it.

“When it touches your skin you will see lights and hear some sounds but that is normal.” I didn’t know how he would react and I wanted him alone in a side room away from the others in case he lashed out. This Tenakth didn’t seem the type but I wasn’t risking Varl, Erend, or Zo. He took it, large fingers lifting it delicately. He was warm, the heat of the brief touch lingering on my skin and I watched as he put it next to his right ear. It snapped into place like they always did, sticking to his skin immediately.

I had to hand it to him, he took it well. His breath caught slightly but that was the only tell he had, eyes shifting back and forth, no doubt taking in all the Focus’ primary introduction information. I stayed silent, letting him take it all in, ready to move at any moment.

“What is this?” His voice was gruff, deep, and he glanced down at me. I liked the way he sounded, deep and masculine, but with somehow a slightly gentle edge. He didn’t give the impression of a man who raised his voice at others, at least without reason. I appeared to have been caught staring because he raised his brows. “Anara?”

“Yep, that would be me.” I said, hand on my hip.

“You are of the Vari tribe?”

“Mhmm, focus tell you that?” He simply nodded before looking around, no doubt taking it all in. The focus highlighted random bits of the room and while I was also a relatively new user myself it had become almost like background noise. I no longer looked everywhere at once when I entered a new room trying to understand every bit of neon color overlapping each room. “Wait until you see what they do to machines.”

“What do they do?” I liked when he looked at me, it sent a zing of awareness down to the tips of my toes. Was I attracted to the Tenakth? He was a large man, my type honestly, but I’d never been so aware of someone after a few moments of meeting them. Perhaps I was just more aware because of the absolutely predator vibes he gave off. Even following me in here he didn’t make a noise, and I was willing to bet a whole lot of shards he was faster than he looked. Normally larger fighters went for strength, like Erend, but not Kotallo. He looked strong and fast, a dangerous combo. I was thankful that he was on our side. Plus, if Aloy trusted him, I would too. She had a pretty good people radar.

“They show you a machine’s weakness. Highlighting where to hit to do maximum damage.”

“Truly?” His brows rose.

“Truly. Now, if you tap it here,” I tapped mine, a display popping up. “It opens the main display. You can use this to navigate through the menu, options, and all the information that Aloy has been able to gather.” I gave him a rundown of the basics like I had helped Erend with earlier, helping him set up a few different settings before stepping back with a smile. “If you need help just let me know. I’m still pretty new myself but I’ve figured quite a bit out alone.”

He nodded but didn’t say anything for a few moments, lost scrolling through everything now literally at his fingertips. “What is this room?”

“Hm? Oh, I believe it’s a leftover room. Gaia?” Glancing around I looked at the raised table in the middle with some sort of screen on top. “What is this room?”

“This was made to observe terraforming efforts from inside the base. I am working to restructure it to something useful with our current mission.” Her voice came through both mine and Kotallo’s focus and he looked around before touching the machine again.

“It can be used to communicate?”

“Yes. It’s very useful. Oh, also, you’ll need to meet Gaia soon.” Giving him a little shrug I pulled up a map of the base. Pushing it towards him it popped up from his focus a moment later and mimed everything I did. “This is the room we are in. The main room you walked into. Here is the kitchen, the personal facilities, Varl and Zo’s room, Aloy’s room, my room, and Erend stays in the barrak style room.” They briefly highlighted on both maps as I poked them, showing him exactly where everything was. “You can stay there or we can make this your room, whatever you’d prefer.”

“I do not need much space. I would like to establish some sort of war room for planning. Aloy advised the enemy is more advanced than we could imagine.”

“Gaia?” I asked, wondering if she could accommodate this request.

“That should not be a problem. I will work on rebooting the holograph table for up to date scans of the land.” The machine table whirled to life at her words and began to load, a few other lights coming up in the area to show strange unknown devices on the walls. “It will take some time for the updates to be set up and the data configured. Please check back in a few hours.”

“While she does this,” I said, swiping away the data once more and sending him a smile. “Let me show you where you will be staying.”

It had been an eventful day since Kotallo had arrived that morning, his introduction to everyone and Gaia, as well as setting up a little base in the ‘war room’ taking up most of the time. A few more days passed in relative ease, some of our makeshift tribe filtering in and out to help Aloy or go run their own personal errands. Erend came back mid day, covered in dust but with a wide smile talking up a place called “Vegas” with an enthusiasm that was purely Erend.

Everyone seemed to be settling in a bit for the night. Well, everyone besides Erend. “Tenakth drink blood, Anara!” He hissed to me the first night he was back at the base with Kotallo. “It’s common knowledge, how do you not know?” His panic had me smiling and I looked away to hide it.

“So now is not a good time to advise you two are staying in the same quarters?”

“What?!”

I couldn’t stop my laughter and it rolled from me, bouncing off the sides of the large round room we were seated in. “What is so funny?” Varl asked, obviously drawn out by the loud Oseram and my laughter, walking over from his room with a smile.

“Nothing!” Erend said, crossing his arms across his chest. He was pouting. The visual had me laughing once more, hand pressing to my side as I tried to stop from cackling at his misfortune.

He continued to throw me dirty looks and I patted his arm, moving to stand. “I’d take him in my room if he wanted.” I teased, watching Erend’s face morph to shock when I winked. Honestly I enjoyed Kotallo’s silent presence and wouldn’t turn him down as a bed partner, having spent a majority of the past few days by his side. We silently worked side by side, his presence for some reason comforting in a way I didn’t fully understand. Plus, a girl gets lonely. Varl had Zo, Erend was madly in love with Aloy even the blind could see it, and I was in my big bed all alone.

“ANARA!”

I couldn’t stop laughing at him, walking towards the kitchen Zo had set up and was currently cooking in. Before I could get far the man of the hour stepped out. The last few days had made me really like Kotallo. He didn’t speak unless he had something valuable to say, his stern nature endearing and really fun to tease. I loved to send him a flirt to watch the confusion flash across his face, sometimes completely misunderstanding my innuendos. Varl thought it was humorous but that was probably because he was courting Zo and she often left him speechless as well. Erend was always shocked how easily I teased the Tenakth Marshal, even more when he simply brushed me off or continued talking as if I never had. He seemed to at least tolerate me which is more than I expected from the Marshal of a supposedly blood thirsty tribe.

“Anara.” The man of the hour approached, seeking me out once more. My name from his lips did funny things to my tummy that I had no interest in dissecting further at this time.

I turned and smiled up at him, my face still warm from my laughter. “Hello Kotallo. Need something?”

He looked at me, intense gaze no less unnerving now, taking in my rosy cheeks and genuine smile. Whatever he found there seemed to satisfy him. “I need your assistance, if you are free?”

I nodded, gesturing for him to lead the way. He was silent as ever, walking through the dimly lit hallways of the base, away from the group of people in the main room. Stopping before the bathing area he paused and glanced down at me before the automatic door hissed open and he stepped inside. I followed still, curious on what he needed help with here. There were a few deep baths that I personally enjoyed soaking in, and a heated waterfall that Gaia said was called a ‘shower’ which apparently was the main bathing method of the old ones. I had to admit it was a glorious invention.

The room was small, the lighting bright, and I squinted a bit looking around. “What did you need help with?”

“This.” He gestured to the shower, his lips pressed to a thin line.

I glanced at the shower, using it as an excuse to look away and hide my smile. I would never make him feel foolish, Kotallo explained a bit about Tenakth society to me as well as a few things he had learned on the focus. He never made me feel stupid or little. Surprisingly, he was a good teacher so the least I could do is return the favor, his calm steady voice often helping me understand focus data or breaking down an attack strategy he was playing with on the holo-table Gaia had booted up.

Waving a hand in front of the shower display I showed him a few buttons as well as ran him through how to change the temperature as well as the shower head setting. “This is like a massage, this is like a rain, there are a lot to choose from.” Looking over my shoulder at him his expression was intense as he took in everything I showed him. I wondered how many people saw this side of him, and how many would find it as adorable as I did. “Make sense?”

He nodded, stepping back and letting me slide past him. The desire to offer to scrub his back pecked at my brain and I turned to throw the flirt at him when I caught sight of what remained of his left arm for the first time. He normally kept it wrapped up in the blue cloth, now tossed on the counter, his hand already working on removing the top he wore that was covered in beading and armor. The skin around the wound looked angry and I realized that the exposed flesh was burned closed. Cauterized, and not kindly either. It looked angry, painful.

“By the Stars Kotallo.” I said, moving back to his side and putting a hand on his right arm to stop him from stripping further, leaning in slightly to look at his wound. I was no doctor but I knew basic first aid and when something looked irritated or even potentially infected. “I had no idea your wound was so fresh, you move as though you’d been born without your left arm.”

“I lost it a few weeks ago.” He said, moving to turn from me, to shield me from it. I reached up instead to grab the front of his armor, stopping him from turning further as I continued to look. I was not shy around wounds, blood and gore did not phase me. I had grown up Vari until I was nearly 10 winters, sold into slavery for Star’s sake, this wasn’t going to make me shrink back from him.

“It doesn’t look well.”

“Washing it will help.”

“As will treating it.” I said, pulling back to look up at him. That careful mask was back in place, always so careful as always to hide emotions. Even though I had spent little time with him I had noticed in a few days he normally shielded his emotions and reactions from others. At times I saw hints of amusement, of amazement, or even mild annoyance, but nothing stronger than that. Men had that annoying habit of not discussing feelings but the Tenakth seemed a whole other breed, not even acknowledging actual physical pain. “Does it hurt?” The question felt almost childish leaving me but I couldn’t take it back, concern bubbling in my chest.

He waited a few moments, contemplating if he should answer, before he shrugged. “At times. Sometimes it feels as though I still have my arm, and it pains me. Like there are blades being driven through a hand that is not there. Most of the time there is just a dull ache as it heals.”

Nodding I recalled a few of the Brothel’s patrons who had come back from the red raids maimed. A man with his leg missing from the knee down often complained that it felt like he was stepping on pins and needles. Compassion had me frowning at him, wanting to soothe his pain. “Well… you bathe. Find me after, I have some medicine I can apply to at least numb the pain and treat it just in case infection is trying to set it.”

“That is not necessary.”

“I’m not asking.” My tone was hard, leaving no room for argument. The staring match was intense and he held my gaze for a few moments before looking away.

Giving me a nod instead of speaking as usual, but regardless I was still satisfied with my small victory.

I released his armor and took a step back, not realizing how in his space I had gotten. At least I had the chance to treat that wound, I did not like how it looked. Leaving him to bathe I grabbed my staff and a small basket, calling to Zo as I trotted out of the base to search for some medicinal herbs. It was getting late, the sun beginning to set, but there should be enough time to grab a few things. Being native to the area Zo made quick work on pointing out what I should use. We talked a bit but I was more focused on my worry and tried to hurry to make sure Kotallo didn’t try to avoid having something applied to help with the healing process.

“There should be focus data on how Kotallo lost his limb.” Zo interrupted my thoughts as we made our way back to the base.

“What?”

“Aloy was there, was she not? There may be a data file of what happened.” She shrugged, her small pack filled with herbs nearly spilling with the movement. Catching it with a grace that was all Utaru she kept going up the fairly hidden path to the entrance of the base.

I hadn’t even thought of that. I bet Gaia knew exactly which one too. Filing that away mentally I thanked her for her help before moving to the room I had taken as my own. I lit a few candles, not liking the bright automated lights, and got to work on processing a few berries into a paste. I added a bit of water, a few roots from the East I had brought along that I knew had a numbing property, and began working the small grinding wheel with a bit of pressure to mash everything together.

The door hissed and Kotallo stepped in, his form taking up the doorway before he moved over to where I sat on the floor working away at the mixture. I gestured for him to sit on the bed and he did, sinking down on the edge to perch and watch me as I continued to move the wheel back and forth. I worked a few moments longer in the silence, wanting the right mixture of the herbs and berries as well as the right consistency so it stuck. If it was too watery it wouldn’t work, if it was too thick it would be painful to spread across the freshly burned skin.

“Okay,” I said, standing and shaking out my slightly achy legs from sitting in such an odd position. “this might sting a moment but after will go numb.” I scooped the remedy into a small jar I’d set aside for the very purpose, walking to sit down on my bed on his left hand side. “Let me know if you need me to stop, okay?” He simply nodded, glancing around the room as I applied the paste as gently as possible. He didn’t even flinch although I knew it had to burn from experience. His shoulders did relax a bit once the numbing feeling kicked in after a few seconds and I stood up, wiping my hands on a cloth while inspecting the wound. After the shower it did look a bit better but still had a bit of pink around the edges that I didn’t like. On a wound this large infection was sure to be a problem and the idea of him catching fever and getting sick did not sit well with me.

I walked over to the trunks against one wall, one already opened and lengths of cloth spilling out in a messy fashion. I had many outfits, my crates shipped here from Meridian due to this whole adventure starting out as a trip for my mistress. She always overpacked for me, ‘Just in case.’ I could almost hear her say, like always. Picking up a layered dress that I personally didn’t care for with a nice thick natural fabric I tore it down the middle, having Kotallo look at me with a raised brow.

“You didn’t need to ruin your dress.”

“I don’t even like it.” I said, waving away his concern and moving to wrap it around his wound. “Plus, I have enough clothing. My mistress always has me pack heavy, regardless of the occasion.” The cloth strip was clean and thick enough to protect the wound from dirt while also letting it breathe. “I have a bit of the paste left, so I can keep applying it until any risk of infection is gone.” Putting a cork in the jar I sat it down on the floor next to the low bed, moving back to wipe my hands once more. The herbal smell wasn’t unpleasant but it was slightly greasy on my fingertips.

“You do not need to.”

“I don’t need to do anything.” I responded immediately, knowing he would try to dismiss my help. “I do things because I want to. Now store that Tenakth stubbornness for when we will need it.” Smiling at him I glanced up and noticed for the first time he wasn’t covered in the war paint, his hair down and slightly damp. Those sharp cheekbones and full lips were distracting, especially up close and not covered in that pale paint he was normally bathed in. “Oh, um,” Swallowing I felt a blush rising to my face and bit my lower lip for a moment. “Do you… need help? With reapplying your paint? Or your hair?” His brows drew down and he went to decline and I cut him off. “Not out of pity or anything, I was wanting more Tenakth history. I’d like to learn a bit more about the Marshal in our midst. I’ll take some Kotallo history in exchange for helping to paint your back?”

That had him confused. “Why?”

“Don’t you want to learn about me-uh, us?” Smooth. That came out normal, right? We basically all lived together, a mini-tribe, it was natural to want to know about the people you were around all day.

He pondered over it a bit before nodding and I let out a breath I wasn’t aware I had been holding. “The paints are in my corner. Come.” He stood, glancing down at my handiwork for a moment before leading the way from my room. He and Erend stayed down the hall, the room truly set up like a barracks with four beds and storage areas. I personally wouldn’t stay here, Erend snored like a rock slide, but Kotallo had turned down the offer of his own room when I brought it up. Said as a Marshal he had worse sleeping accommodations in the past.

He grabbed two little pots, handing them to me, and grabbing a water skin hanging from the wall. Glancing up he gestured I sit on the bed, which I did, and he sat before me to give me his back. Tearing my eyes away from his well built back I took the lid off one of the jars to reveal a pale clay like mixture. The paint was like none I’d seen before, fairly dry, but he took one little pot and added a bit of water from the skin he’d grabbed. Using a brush he swirled the water in, mixing it, and the clay mixture turned into a thick paint in a few moments. He repeated the same mixing technique with the other jar before handing them both back to me. They had a slightly herbal scent, not unpleasant, but more bitter than the medicine I had made.

Raising the rather large brush I paused a moment, wondering if it would be cold, before just going for it. He was silent as I slowly moved the white paint across his skin, the brush soft and the paint slightly cool against his warm skin causing lines of goosebumps to form after each stroke. Watching every swipe cover more and more of him had me wanting to touch him even more, feel that warm skin against my palms, my fingers digging into the muscle to pull him closer.

“So,” I started, working slowly to make sure the paint wasn’t patchy in it’s coverage. “You're from the Skyclan?” He glanced over his shoulder, a little surprise showing, before I gestured to the focus on my temple. Kotallo nodded, turning to face forward again. “Tell me about it?”

“What do you wish to know?”

“Anything you wish to share.” Sliding the wet brush down his spine I had to dip it once more into the paint before going over my line again. “I know very little about the West.”

He was silent a bit longer, thinking over what to say I think. “It is…cold. Far North.” I hummed in response, not wanting to take any attention away. “I was born in the Bulwark, the capital of the Sky Clan lands. It is a massive wall of stone, you need a lift to even get up.”

“It sounds impressive.”

“It is.” He rolled his shoulders slightly causing my line to go a little crooked. I worked on fixing it as he continued. “It has stood tall among many attacks, protecting my people from both Tenakth and Rebels since the birth of our clan.”

“You sound like you miss it a bit… why did you leave?” Realizing I may be pushing too hard I leaned in slightly, swiping the brush across his left shoulder. “You don’t have to answer, I’m just curious.”

“I do not mind.” He was quick to put my anxiety to rest. “My parents were killed in a raid, my squad took over the duty of raising me. I was strong. Happy to serve. My commander Tekotteh was proud of me for a time, until he began to fear that I planned to take his position.”

“You cared for him.” His tone gave that away, Tekotteh was at one point an important person to the Tenakth before me. Going over a few spots that were patchier than I liked, I continued. “What had him change? Was it always tense?”

“No.” He was quiet now, as if deep in thought. “No, I am loyal to my clan. Loyal to my commander. I never wanted to rise above my position to commander.” Shaking his head slightly he flexed his back as if tense from the memory. “He sent me to the Kulrut- a challenge to become a Marshal and serve Hekarroh directly- knowing I would either die, or survive and not be able to return.”

Words died in my mouth at that confession, compassion making my heart hurt for him. That was a betrayal that one did not easily shake, a hurt that did not heal without great effort. “Kotallo…”

“It was exile, disguised as an honor. He was not the man I had come to respect.”

I felt bad for bringing it up but was grateful he told me. Leaning back slightly to make sure that there were not empty spaces I sat the pot down. “I heard Aloy helped destroy part of the Bulwark with you.”

“Yes. It was glorious.” Seeing the small smile touch his face had me smiling as well, pleased to see he wasn’t bothered by that turn of events. Watching the paint dry it didn’t crack, obviously a well tested recipe, and I wondered briefly what it was made of.

This felt intimate, personal, I realized suddenly, and I didn’t want to break the mood of the small dark space and the spice of his skin with the herbal mix of paint on top. It had been some time since I’d taken anyone to my bed, having traveled to the Forbidden West unaccompanied. Was this the reason I was reacting so strongly to just painting someone’s back? The way his muscles moved under his skin with an alluring grace was distracting, my brain turning to static at times from him simply moving or turning a certain way.

Deciding to not dwell on it I handed him the pot of white paint. His fingers brushed mine a moment, lingering, and I pulled back with a little frown. Was I not the only one impacted? Did he also feel this pull between us, was that the reason he was so open? I decided not to ask, thankful for the quiet moment we had alone. As usual they always seemed too brief, his back covered in paint, my job done. Just as I went to speak Erend walked in.

The Oseram froze, looking at my sitting on Kotallo’s bed, the warrior in front of me shirtless, and his eyes widened a bit. “Oh-um, I’m sorry, I’ll-”

“Erend, it’s all right.” I couldn’t help the laugh at the awkward man, his cheeks dusted with an adorable blush. “I was just helping Kotallo paint his back.” Looking at the man in question I tilted my head slightly. “Need anything else before I retire to my room?”

He shook his head, glancing up at me a moment before focusing back on painting his chest and stomach. I stood up, walking past Erend with a little smile at my friend’s awkward nature before heading back to my own bed. The base had certainly become more interesting.

#kotallo #HZD #Original Female Character #kotalloxoc #horizon #aloy is sassy #aloyxerend #ZoxVarl #romance #fanfic #idekfam

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Day 72

of @the-wip-project’s 100 Days of Writing

Do you have filler scenes in your WIPs? How do you fill them?

I tend to think of all my stories as filler, if we’re going by the ‘slice of life’ or ‘seemingly unimportant moments’ between the Big Events in people’s lives definition of that term. I like writing within the drudgery of everyday life, I guess? Like, cool...you saved the world. But who does the dishes?

The things I’m less excited to write, that actually feel like filler to me, are the transitional ‘summary’ paragraphs to try and contextualize these interactions and to get me from one of these little moments or scenes to the next. The big epic events that allow my characters to eventually get to the issue of who will be doing the dishes...I just really struggle to sit down and write those kinds of things.

---

I got tagged by @blarrghe and @noire-pandora today for WIP Wednesday (thank you both!), and I’ve been feverishly trying to draft a quick one-shot after seeing this brilliant post cross my dash again and being suddenly inspired...to cry a little, I guess?

So here’s some Loghain and Stroud* in the Deep Roads together again, 15 years after Inquisition I guess?, for one final Stroghainoff adventure:

"It's not really you, though, is it?” Loghain mutters, more to himself than to the very life-like apparition of Stroud standing before him, mustache and all.

“Of course not.” Loghain answers his own question and turns away from the hallucination. “My mind has begun to go, it seems...I suppose it won't be long now..."

He continues trudging along, muttering to himself and following Maker-knows-what sense of direction he’s got left down here. He hasn’t decided if he’s trying to avoid the Darkspawn and the inevitable for as long as he can, or rush headlong toward them for a quick and brutal end. But he can’t seem to pinpoint the direction the Archdemon’s song is calling him to, so he supposes it doesn’t matter, anyway.

"Did you hear the one about the Grey Warden who packed up everything and moved to the Deep Roads?" the imaginary Stroud-ghost asks.

Loghain stops.

"He said it was his --"

"Don't," he whispers, shaking his head.

“That got a laugh out of you once.”

“The last thing I need down here is a Spirit -- or...or...whatever you are -- following me around and retelling his worst fucking jokes.”

"It's me, Old Man."

He finally turns back, peering at him again through the darkness. He seems more solid than before, but Loghain still doesn’t dare to reach out and try to touch him.

"My brain could have easily just conjured you up with the same terrible sense of humor that the real you had," he sneers.

"So what difference does it make, then?”

“Well, one of you was real, for starters.”

Stroud chuckles, and it’s perfectly infuriating, just as he remembers it. “A long time ago, I promised you that we'd do this together, didn’t I?"

"And you broke that promise when you decided to play the hero and stay behind in the Fade."

"You knew that I was already hearing my Calling then. I wouldn’t have been able to keep that promise, even if I hadn’t stayed behind." Stroud thoughtfully strokes his mustache. "But while I was there, I met some...spirits, I suppose. Justice. And he introduced me to Devotion...and Patience.”

Loghain watches him, looking for any kind of break in the illusion.

“How long has it taken you to catch up to me, Mac Tir?”

"Fifteen bloody years…" Loghain grumbles.

"Oh."

"Yes."

"And you've been alone this entire time?"

"Of course I have!"

"Loghain…” Stroud reaches for his hands, whispering, “I'm so sorry."

Loghain stares at his hands, being held by a ghost. A ghost whose thumbs rub circles into him the way Stroud always did whenever he had gotten lost in one of his many rants.

"I'd have taken care of you, you know?" Loghain blurts out.

Stroud smiles. "I know."

"I’d have held you through the nightmares. Force-fed you mush if I had to. And talked as much sense as I could into you for as long as you’d let me. And when the time came..."

"I know." He nods, pulling Loghain into the very real-feeling steadfast sturdiness of his embrace.

*This Stroud got left behind in the Fade, but like, IDK...who’s to say he, or at least some part of him, didn’t make it out of there somehow? Not me. I don’t know how any of this works.

The rest of this is just going to be them bickering and lots of bewildered letters from Orlesian Wardens regarding two old men seen fighting Darkspawn together before disappearing into a half-collapsed tunnel.

Tagging @serial-chillr, @pinkfadespirit, @paraparadigm, @cleverblackcat, @funkypoacher, @juniper-tree, @convenientcoma, and anyone else who has any art or writing or other WIPs you want to share!

#100daysofwriting #dragon age #stroghainoff #stroud/loghain #stroud #loghain #warden things #the calliing #loghain gets a hug #sorry i don't make the rules #ok wait i do #my writing #WIP #After Adamant...#is probably gonna be the title of this thing if/when i finish it #also sorry something broke when i edited it and it put everything out of order so it should be fixed now

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whyjm · 4 years

Text

Why I did not like the Spn finale

This is gonna be a long post..

I cannot get over my thoughts about how it ended and how bad I feel about it. I am so angry, sad and feel so utterly disappointed, I cannot wrap my mind around how this was supposed to be a satisfying tying up emotional archs ending??? Bc it was so far away from satisfying I would laugh if I was not presently crying over it..

There are several things that irked me a lot. Many people have voiced the problems of this show and its ending much more eloquently than I will ever be able to do.. But I gotta get these fucking thoughts and feelings out of my system.

I have been with Spn since the first episode aired. I am a straight woman, I don’t have to fight for representation, I don’t have to worry about coming out and being accepted for who I am, I don’t have the daily struggles of feeling anxious or depressed or suicidal or not being able to be who I am. I am lucky that way!

To me love is love and all love should be equal! And I stand with all who struggle and all who are not free to be who they are. I see you and I love you and I support you fully!!!

To see my friends having to fight, and then on top of that have a show that has meant so much to so many people be butchered and have a negative last message sent out, in its last 36 minutes of its life … It is a hard pill to swallow.

Cas and Dean

In 15x18 we got to have a beautiful confession from Cas to Dean where Cas tells Dean he loves him and we know this is romantic love bc Cas begins by saying that the one thing I want I know I can’t have and then later I love you. Also Misha confirming it! This scene made me ugly cry so hard bc FINALLY.. (BUT what is missing from it.. the editing is strange.. bc Cas pushes Dean to the right but he falls to the left. Dean has no tears in his eyes while he looks straight at Cas when he talks, but he has tears in his eyes when he looks over his shoulder and see the empty. So what in this scene has been cut away and WHY?) Misha and Jensen did a great job with this and Cas got to find peace in just speaking his truth... And it was beautiful to watch and after having seen Dean sitting sobbing on the floor the natural and logical continuation of this would have been to in the next episode address this, but in episode 19 no such thing happened. And I wondered where did Dean’s grief go where did his CARE for Cas go?? Dean who has been depressed and suicidal when Cas have died before is all of sudden cold and act like nothing have happened at least nothing that affected him very deeply.. It felt disconnected and strange. And it continued on like that and it felt very strange to NOT address such a HUGH plot point. It’s not enough to have Dean say to Chuck to bring Cas back or to see him wasted out of his mind, or hugging a dog like his emotional wellbeing depends on it.. This is not resolution or addressing it.

All of season 15 has felt like the relationship between Cas and Dean has been in focus and important to the overall arch of the season, and explored and then all of a sudden all traces of it are just ripped away, erased completely.. To have a confession like this go unacknowledged to me is poor writing bc you do not leave this big of a thing hanging in the air without resolution (fine you can argue Cas got resolution but I feel that no Cas did not get resolution either bc his feelings SHOULD have gotten a response no matter what that response was.. Dean did not, we never got to hear or see his version or his thoughts about it.)

I was thinking narratively they HAVE to address this, Deans thoughts and reactions to this gotta be shown. They HAVE to resolve this, acknowledge it. I have been sure a long time they would NEVER have Dean reciprocate Cas love but keep it in subtext bc they are too fucking chickenshit to do that but at least have Dean talk about Cas….. that I expected him to do.. But it was not done in 19. I got the horrible feeling in my gut that they are not gonna resolve this they are gonna fuck this up, they are gonna go full brothers only and not give a fuck they are gonna push Cas out and show no care. Then we come to the final episode and boy howdy is there a lot to unpack with this episode.

(I had watched the long road home before the finale and when I watched that I KNEW that the end was going to be a letdown I felt it in all of me that I was gonna be disappointed. And I was proven right. And I have so many thoughts all jumbled up around each other that I don’t know in which end to start so sorry if what follows is incoherent and rambly.. )

15x20 - The end

20 felt like a FILLER episode, right up until Dean’s death scene I was bored and was seriously considering turning my computer of and just not watch. (A finale should be as engaging and emotionally packed like episode 18 was. I refuse to acknowledge 20 as the end.. To me it ended on 19. That wrapped things up. Not completely satisfying but hell of a lot better than the disaster that 20 is.) But then Dean was impaled on that rusty spike thingy and I was watching with attention. I GET why they did Deans death the way they did, even if that is one shitty death for Dean and could have been fixed so he did not die.. I get what they wanted to get out of it: a brothers sad moment that they turned into a irksome thing. I actually cringed about the head thing and the hands and the farming of it all just urgh I got sick to my stomach watching that. What should have been a beautifully sad moment was put together in a romantic coded way and that to me ruined the heartfelt goodbye. Bc you do not touch and hold a dying family member like that. I KNOW I have said goodbye to my fair share of loved ones that I have loved soo deeply, but the thought of touching like that NO no way.. And also they have NEVER done that forehead touch in previous deaths, so to do this now just felt irksome.

They killed Dean a character that has struggled his whole life with being daddy’s blunt little instrument, who has self-worth issues and are suicidal, who has never lived for his own sake but have only ever lived to protect and raise another, he continues to put others before himself though (up until the last couple of seasons where we have seen them both break away from this toxic behavior). Finally he was allowed to LIVE and have a life that was not controlled, not running in a hamster wheel like a fucking puppet on a string. He was Free of all of that. He was free to go after what HE wanted for himself and what Dean wanted was LOVE, in my mind its perfectly clear that Dean loves Cas back bc that is what the story have been telling us.. its right there and the story do not make sense without it. Many others have done a great job at talking about this and describe this way better than me. So I leave further discussion about that topic to them.

Dean was looking for a job. The angel Dean has loved since purgatory told him that he loved him and then died sacrificing himself to SAVE Dean yet again and then Dean dies a few days later.. How is this doing justice to Dean and what the hell kind of message does this send out to the ones watching?? They are saying it does not matter if you fight, your destiny is written for you and the only relief and comfort you will have will be death. They are saying Meh don’t fight it’s better to die bc it does not matter what you do. This is one of the fucked up messages this godawful ending sent to all those who have identified with Dean and Cas throughout the years.

They also say Cas who has been part of the story for 12 years is not important enough to have there, they IGNORED Cas, a mention in passing does not do justice to a character that has been crucial to the boys lives for 12 years. Dean Screamed in Sam’s face CAS IS FAMILY, Dean was destroyed when Cas died, he was hurt when Cas left bc everyone leaves Dean, Sam missed Cas etc… but still not important enough to show up in heaven in the last episode greeting first Dean and then Sam to heaven.. PFT…

To leave Cas and Misha out of the FINALE of a show that he has been part of for 12 years is so fucking disrespectful to Cas, to Misha and ALL the fans who love and adore both. It also makes no sense since they all say how beloved Cas and Misha are. and don’t go fucking covid made it impossible bc the last scene with all those people without masks.. No that is just lying liars who lie…Covid my ass! This angers me a lot.

Family do end in ONLY blood apparently…..

(And maybe lead to a lot of viewers for walker??? hence this very nice shirltess Sam scene............. ) shirtless Sam is always good though so no complaining here.

We see Sam and the dog give Dean a hunters funeral.. NO OTHERS are there? How is it possible that none of the found family wouldn’t want to be there and show up?? Jack has restored everyone but still only Sam and the dog are there, no Eileen, no Jody and the girls, Donna, Garth, and the list goes on and on. Bc they wanna hammer in harder that supernatural has ever only ever been about two brothers and no one else matters ever.. It does not matter that this has not been true since the earlier seasons. The show of course is about Sam and Dean’s lives and journey through life, and I have loved to follow along on their journey. BUT it was a long time ago this was the ONLY thing that mattered (bc if it had only been about the brothers the show would NOT have gone on for this long). Along the way they have picked up FOUND Family, and the message of the show has been Family don’t end in blood, Always Keep Fighting. But this last episode reverted back to season 1 and disregarded ALL character growth and storytelling of the past 12 years and went with fuck it ONLY Sam and Dean are important. So the next fucked up message they sent where: There is no Family don’t end in blood.. The only family that matters is blood. And then they have the balls to say Always Keep Fighting.. Are they fucking kidding????

Character development…….. who????

Sam lives on after Dean dies and we get a montage of his life where he look miserable and is shown to not being able to get over that Dean died. We get a blurry wife and a kid named Dean. In his house there are photos of ONLY himself, Dean and their parents and maybe one of his son? Don’t remember all the details and refuse to watch that episode ever again. But no friends, no family, no happy moments are shown, it looked like a very lonely life. He dies with only his son there.. WHERE are Sam’s friends??? This montage of Sam’s supposed happy life is NOT happy bc he is not able to get over that Dean is dead, he can’t live a happy life bc Dean is not there - again something that irked me and felt disrespectful to all the growth Sam and Dean have gone through. It was toxic codependency all the way through and that is not satisfying to watch. Especially since the brothers had actually broken that dependency. Sam had broken free, Sam have through the years wanted to get away from Dean and live his life as he wants and then he was happy…We have a moment way back in season 5 maybe? Where Sam runs away and this is shown as one of his happy moments in dark side of the moon.. No Dean in his happy places, Sam having thanksgiving with his girlfriend and her family, Sam alone with a dog. We have Sam and Amelia when Dean was in purgatory. So Sam IN text have been shown being able to be happy without Dean so why could he not do it this time?? Makes no sense! You can grieve but still have a good life.. But they CHOSE to show it like Sam was miserable bc Dean was dead and life was not worth living happily without Dean there..

The brothers have lately interacted like two individual adults, separated from each other, making their own decisions and trusting each other in making them, they wanted different things in life. And seriously WHERE DID EILEEN GO?? Why was Sam not reunited with Eileen that he some eps previous was shown to love, no instead they had blurry wife which feels like such a cop out. Sam did not get to live a happy fulfilling life and why did Sam not deserve to live a happy life with Eileen??? I know they are blaming corona for a lot of things missing in the finale that they intended.. BUT and this is a BIG BUT remember Jensen did not like the ending it did not sit well with him, he had a hard time digesting it, he objected to the ending! He spoke about that dying in battle would not be a satisfying ending - see the video of him talking about this at SDCC 2019. There is so much more to say about this but other people have voiced it so much better than I ever could so I move on to the next issue.

Dean in heaven

Dean when he first arrives there happens upon Bobby who tells him John and Mary lives down the road and that Rufus and Arheta lives around there too. I hope Bobby’s wife was indoors, and that Jack with the help of Cas fixed heaven. To this Dean only smirk/smiles.. and then Dean sees baby and goes for a drive ALONE with the words he will be here soon from Bobby again Sam is the only one that ever matter PFT. Dean who found a home in the bunker alongside Sam, Cas and Jack who told John: I have a family and that he was happy with himself and his life…. Spends his time endlessly driving around alone just waiting for Sam to appear.. ALL of Deans growth is thrown out the window.. he is reduced to salad dressing. Deans only purpose is to live for his brother and cannot possibly have what he WANTS for himself not even in death. He drives around for who knows how many years until Sam dies. HOW is this justice to DEAN? How is this a good and satisfying ending for Dean. Dean who wanted to LIVE, Dean who wanted to experience people in new ways, who had let go of Sam and saw Sam as his own person, now in heaven only drives around waiting for Sam to get there having no life or meaning of his own. It pisses me off to no end that they reverted back to toxic codependent Sam is all that is important to Dean shit.. They have broken away from this shit years ago and this is how they choose to end it right back at the beginning..

Now what is the point of telling a story of growth and love and life if all that that journey amounts to is ending up at the exact point it started on?? You can watch season 1 and 2 and then this finale and it makes sense.. But having watched season 1-15 this ending does great injustice to the characters and the story. Again many others have written way better posts about this that expresses the great disappointment and hurt that is being screamed everywhere right now.

The Actors

I want to add the performance of all actors through the years, the love and care they have poured into their characters are amazing I have loved every bit of that journey. I love Jared, Jensen and Misha, and all the others for their amazing work and that is maybe why it hurts so much it ended in this way!

#spn 15x20 #Supernatural #Jensen Ackles #Misha Collins #Jared Padalecki #dean winchester #dean #sam winchester #sam #castiel #cas #spn 15x18 #spn 15x19 #rambly thoughts about the end #the end

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