#a.k.a. run with the wind

[ylangelegy]

unknown / nth ⭐ minghao x reader.

your boyfriend gives you a language lesson before bed.

★ minghao x translator/interpreter!reader a.k.a the lost in translation couple ★ word count: 1.9k ★ genre/warnings: established relationship, fluff, conversation about mandarin (my reference). takes place post-lost in translation! not entirely necessary to have read the fic prior to this. title is from hozier's song of the same name. not proofread. ★ footnotes: minghao did a brief weibo live and i've been missing lost in translation for quite some time now, so i jammed this out really quick 🚬🦆 may write more for/about this couple in the near future, so take this as the first of many! ♡

“I think Cold Love really represents me well. It’s probably because I’m an INFJ.”

You press your palm to your mouth to stifle your laugh. Minghao doesn’t react visibly, but his hand waves at you off-camera. A wordless reminder of Be nice. 

The two of you are across the room from each other— him, perched on the couch of his hotel room, while you’re already tucked in bed. Minghao had promised his fans a quick Weibo live to discuss his most recent EP, leaving you to your own devices for the next hour or so. 

You didn’t mind. It was one of life’s simple joys, listening to your boyfriend talk. 

He spends the next thirty minutes or so discussing his creative process and answering fans’ questions. You don’t bother him, knowing you’ll have all the time in the world later to tease him for some of his remarks. Like his indignance at growing taller or his jabs at his age. 

As you busy yourself with mindlessly scrolling through your phone, you relish in the familiar sound of Minghao’s Mandarin. It’s probably your favorite version of white noise, really. The mellow tone of his voice contrasts the rapid, sharp way that he speaks. Despite being well-acquainted with the language, there are still some words that elude you. You make a mental note to ask Minghao about them later. 

Less than an hour has passed before you hear Minghao beginning to wind down. “Good luck on all of your exams. To the people working, keep working hard! Make lots of money,” he says hurriedly. “And good luck with love, too. I hope you all find someone who loves you back so you can experience all sorts of feelings.” 

He’s never been the type to drag out his goodbyes, so you’re not surprised when— after a final heart sign and wave to the camera— Minghao is finally clocking out of his live. 

Immediately, he slumps back onto the couch like the whole thing had drained him. Sure, lives weren’t necessarily one-sided, but he did have to hard carry when it came to the talking part of the affair. You flash him a sympathetic smile as you sit up in bed. 

“Done, xīngān?” you call out. 

Minghao doesn’t respond right away. You don’t hold it against him. He sometimes needed a moment, needed a minute or two to pull himself together. 

After staring at the ceiling for what feels like forever, Minghao lets out a shuddering exhale. “Done,” he responds, and he’s moving before you can register it. 

He gets to his feet and crosses the room in a few, quick strides. Once he gets to the bed, he wastes no time in reaching for you. His knees sink in the mattress; his hands dart out. 

You let out a slight squeal when Minghao tugs you into him. 

“Sorry,” he says, not sounding very sorry at all. This had been a premeditated act. You can tell in the way his arms immediately snake around your waist. 

You let out a defeated sigh against his chest, but make no move to pull away. “Tired?” you ask, your hands resting on the small of his back as you return his embrace. 

He hums a quiet ‘mhm’. “I’m not built for this anymore, xīngān,” he whines. 

The two of you know that’s a bold-faced lie. Still, you indulge your sulking boyfriend lest he begin to pout even harder. “My poor baby,” you coo, running your hands up and down Minghao’s back in a show of comforting him. “Gonna blame it on being an introvert?” 

“Shut up.” 

You let out a small laugh. You can’t see it, but you swear you can feel the curve of Minghao’s smile as he presses a chaste kiss to the top of your head. 

“Thank you for being here,” he says after a moment of comfortable silence. “It means a lot.” 

A part of you wants to insist that it’s nothing. It’s not every day that you can steal away to his hotel room, though. In between your own work of interpreting for the boys and working on subtitles for videos, there’s also the added layer of keeping your relationship on the down low. 

Tonight, Minghao had just tried to asked. Texted a couple of hours ago that he wanted to see you. And you could never really deny him anything, not even on your best days. 

“Anything for you,” you respond as you stroke the short hair at his nape. 

Minghao buries his face in the crook of your neck, his smiling mouth warm as he mumbles against your skin. “Don’t give me that much power,” he warns. “I’ll abuse it.” 

You chuckle. “I don’t doubt that.” 

The two of you lapse into another bout of quiet. This had always been your way, even back when the two of you were friends: Comfortable silences, unspoken agreements. Your new relationship had only given you two the carte blanche to be a little more touchy during your shared moments of peace. 

You’re fairly sure that Minghao has fallen asleep when he speaks up again. “How do you think I did?”

“With the live?” 

“No, with cuddling. Yes, with the live.” 

“Ask nicely.”

“Please?” 

You put Minghao out of his misery by returning his earlier gesture— leaving a quick kiss, this time to the line of his jaw. “Stellar as usual,” you reassure him. “I didn’t pick up on everything, though.” 

“That’s new.” Minghao shifts around on the bed until he can prop himself up on one elbow. He rests his chin in his hand but doesn’t stray too far. He stays hovering over you, his free arm remaining around your waist. 

He goes on to goad, “Your Mandarin must be getting rusty.”

You can’t help but roll your eyes, shooting him a half-hearted glare. “How can it be rusty,” you retort, slipping into the language as if to prove a point. “When you’re always insisting that we use it?” 

No matter how many times that you speak to him in his mother tongue, Minghao always seems momentarily startled. The surprise always fades into affection, evident in the fond way that he gazes down at you. 

He matches your code switch without missing a beat. “I’ve told you, haven’t I? I love it when you speak Mandarin,” he says, punctuating his words with a quick pinch to your side. 

You swat his hand; he giggles down at you.

“Which parts did you miss out on?” he asks. 

It takes you a moment to recall the terms and phrases you’d wanted to question him about. “撒娇?” you ask, the unfamiliar word sounding almost hesitant on your tongue. Sājiāo.

A thoughtful ‘ahhh’ escapes Minghao. “Think of it like aegyo,” he offers delicately. “It’s— often in the setting of a relationship. Acting cute to be endearing.” 

“Like when you gripe about me not responding fast enough.” 

“Examples aren’t necessary,” he says wryly. “But, yes. Like that.” 

You flash Minghao a grin before snuggling a little closer to him, entangling your legs. The added touch makes his expression softens in the way it only ever does when it’s you. 

“Anything else?” he prompts. 

It’s not everyday that Minghao gets to play the ‘teacher’ role in your relationship. In the beginning, you had been his Korean tutor. In the longer run, you had helped him translate and transpose words that he couldn’t reach. Every so often, you would run to him for some Mandarin help, and you could tell that he relished in the shift in dynamic. 

The thought pushes you to keep asking, even though the words are inconsequential. “You used the term 暖男,” you note. “What was that one?” 

“Nuǎnnán,” he echoes, correcting your intonation. You repeat the word as he said it, and he gives a small smile of approval.

“It’s our version of ‘nice guy’,” he explains. “But it’s rooted a lot in culture. A nuǎnnán is a man who can be considered inherently warm-hearted in an otherwise patriarchal society. And no—” Minghao’s tone takes on a more chiding quality when he sees you about to interrupt. “Do not try to call me a nuǎnnán.” 

You jut out your lower lip slightly. “Why not?” 

The arm that Minghao had around your waist rises, just enough so he can tap the tip of your scrunched nose. “Don’t pull out sājiāo on me,” he scolds. 

It’s not necessary for you to act cute. Your boyfriend would be endeared by you either way. 

You chuckle at being caught, and Minghao’s sternness mellows. “One last.” You hold up a finger as you try to nail the phrase that had first caught your attention. “裸婚?” 

There’s a flicker of surprise on Minghao’s expression. “That was from a fan making a joke,” he warns before repeating the word himself. “Luǒhūn translates to— hear me out, okay?— ‘naked marriage’.” 

The sight of your raised eyebrow draws a sharp laugh from Minghao. “It’s another one of those cultural things,” he says. 

When he doesn’t add onto his words, you shoot him an incredulous look. 

“What?” he asks with feigned innocence.

“That’s it?” you prod. “You’re not going to explain what ‘naked marriage’ means?” 

“You have access to the internet, don’t you?” 

“Xīngān.” 

“That’s me.” 

At Minghao’s continued evasion, you merely huff and give up. It’s getting late, anyway, and he has to be up early in the morning for sound check. Come tomorrow, you’ll have to slip away before anyone can come looking for either of you. The boys aren’t privy to your relationship yet, and God forbid any of the other staff find out.

“Fine,” you say, unable to resist the urge to just be a little haughty. “Let’s go to sleep.” 

Minghao is undeterred by your contempt. If anything, it only makes him smile a little wider, gives him an excuse to pull you into his chest. He goes to cradle the back of your head, his fingers playing with the strands of your hair. 

You lean into his touch, burying your face into the front of his shirt. There it is again. Those few, precious moments where the two of you can just bask in each other’s presence. 

The silence stretches on this time. You’re properly drowsy by the time Minghao speaks up, his words quiet as he mumbles them against your shoulder. 

“No house, no car, no fancy ring,” he murmurs, his tone contemplative and sleepy. “Luǒhūn.” 

“A naked marriage,” you respond mid-yawn. 

“Mhm.”

“Nothing but love.” 

“You got it.” 

The conversation feels like it’s teetering on the verge of something consequential, something of value. But with the two of you already halfway asleep in each other's arms, there’s not much you can do besides exchange some light pecks and mumbled words.

“I think I’d want at least a house before getting married,” you say. “Or, like, an apartment.”

“What, you wouldn’t live out on the streets with me?” he teases lowly. 

Your eyes flutter close. “You would have to convince me,” you shoot back. 

Minghao responds with a lingering kiss to your forehead. 

“How long will it take to convince you?” 

It’s a little too early in your relationship for the topic of marriage to be seriously brought up. It’s fun to dream about, though. To talk about in hushed tones, to toy with in Minghao’s mother tongue. 

To imagine a time where this might be your every night— falling asleep in each other’s arms. 

“Might take you years and years,” you answer, a giggle rising from the back of your throat. 

Minghao’s arms shake as he laughs. His lips stay on your head, almost like he can’t bear to peel away from you for a minute too long. 

“I don’t mind,” he says as the two of you begin to succumb to sleep. 

The last thing you hear is his affectionate, soft promise of, “I’ll start working on convincing you, xīngān.” 

[rhysdarbinizedarby]

‘Our Flag Means Death’: How Blackbeard & Stede’s Fantastical Underwater Reunion Came Together

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Our Flag Means Death, Season 2, Episodes 1-3.]

It doesn’t take more than a single second to recognize Kate Bush‘s haunting and heartbreaking tune “This Woman’s Work,” as Blackbeard, a.k.a. Ed (Taika Waititi), is pushed from a clifftop to plunge into the ocean’s depths below in Our Flag Means Death‘s Season 2 installment, “The Innkeeper.” But how did the pirate heartbroken over Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) wind up in this position? It’s a delicate and winding path that starts with the infamous pirate’s unraveling over the course of the latest season’s first two episodes.

Believing Stede intentionally abandoned him after planning to run away together at the end of Season 1, Blackbeard embraces the version of himself so many have conjured up in their minds as he leads the Revenge’s “new” crew to pillage and plunder on the high seas. His unhinged behavior eventually forces Jim (Vico Ortiz), Izzy (Con O’Neill), Frenchie (Joel Fry), Archie (Madeleine Sami), and Fang (David Fane) to violently take control of the ship and neutralize Blackbeard — or so they think — after he steers them directly into a storm.

When Zheng Yi Sao’s (Ruibo Qian) Red Flag happens across an eerie-looking Revenge on the ocean, Stede dives overboard in his excitement over the possibility of seeing Ed, only to be told various excuses for his absence by the crew aboard. When Stede directly addresses Izzy regarding Blackbeard’s lack of presence, the now peg-legged pirate claims the Revenge crew dropped Ed on a beach.

This seems to ring true as we see Blackbeard wash ashore and cared for by his own former captain Hornigold (Mark Mitchinson). While together, Blackbeard and Hornigold discuss the mutiny that took place and Blackbeard’s hopes for the future. When a role-playing scenario testing Blackbeard’s ability to be an Innkeeper, a profession he’s interested in, goes awry, he attacks Hornigold, killing the tarp-clad pirate. But when Hornigold rises again, Blackbeard realizes something is off.

Aboard the Revenge, Ed’s body is uncovered below deck. Believing him dead, Zheng Yi Sao is forced to consider killing the Revenge crew for mutiny after initially welcoming them aboard the Red Flag. And Stede has to cope with the idea that his love may be gone forever.

After hatching an escape plan for the Revenge team, Stede and pals return to their former ship, leaving Zheng stranded without a wheel. Going to sit with Ed’s body, Stede wonders why he had to go and get himself killed. Meanwhile, Blackbeard begins to realize he’s stuck somewhere between life and death, a place this Hornigold manifestation calls a “gravy basket.”

As the two men banter about the pros and cons of choosing life over death, Hornigold ties a boulder around Ed’s waist and throws it from the cliff they’re standing on, pushing Blackbeard into the ocean. Just as it seems as though he’ll succumb to the waves, Blackbeard proves Bush’s song right: Perhaps there’s a little life in him yet. When Stede lifts the cloth from his face on the Revenge, underwater Ed reacts to the change. Peering into the water, he sees a light from which a fantastical mermaid version of Stede emerges.

In the real world, Stede reacts to Blackbeard’s twitching hand, taking it in his and pleading for him to live as a montage of their moments together rolls alongside Bush’s still-playing song. The final seconds of the episode see Ed’s eyes open, giving Stede hope.

So, how did this moving turn of events come to pass? A team full of creatives was responsible for bringing the captivating and satisfying reunion.

Stede’s Mermaid Tail

“It’s a huge process,” putting together Stede’s practical mermaid look, according to costume designer Gypsy Taylor. She says “it started with me begging everybody” to avoid visual FX and make a tail for the sequence. The orange and glittering look could have followed several different styles, but ultimately, Taylor notes, “I thought if Stede is going to turn into a mermaid, and it’s in Blackbeard’s dream, it’s sort of his vision of a mermaid.”

Considering this, in Taylor’s mind, Blackbeard wouldn’t envision some epic fantastical creature; instead, Stede would “just be like a goldfish. He’d just be like a sweet harmless goldfish.” In putting sketches together of the ensemble, Taylor acknowledges the symbolism of the goldfish motif: “There’s a huge Chinese element that we have coming through, and goldfish in Chinese culture is considered lucky.” As this vision of Stede was responsible for helping bring Ed back to life, that luck was certainly there.

“I thought that was a pretty beautiful thing, that they meet each other under the ocean and then they find each other,” Taylor gushes. “And so I went a little deep on that, but really he’s just a goldfish.” In order to achieve the goldfish mermaid look, Taylor teamed up with props master Hayley Egan, who’s based out of Australia. “She happens to excel at making mermaid tails,” Taylor shares.

After securing Egan’s involvement, Taylor says, “We fit Rhys in a jumbo stretch long skirt and made sure it was really tight so he could still sort of do this dolphin [swimming] action. And then we bought these mono fins, which you can purchase online and put your feet in.” Safety was key, though. “He had to swim really deep and for a really far distance, and he’d never done anything like that before,” Taylor explains. “So it had to be really safe and doable.”

Once that was figured out, Taylor says Egan “cast something like 3,000 hand-sculpted silicon scales. There’s something like five kilograms of glitter in the whole thing. And then we hand-dyed pleated chiffon for all the fins, so that when he was swimming through the water, it would have this magic feel.”

While the scene may play as emotional and romantic, the story behind getting Stede’s mermaid look from Australia to New Zealand was actually quite comical. “[Egan] sliced two suitcases in half, filled [them with the mermaid tail], and then when it went through customs, the customs guy said to her, ‘Are you bringing fish into this country?’ And she’s like, ‘Yes, yes I am.'”

In total, there were four tails, including “a practice tail, a stunt tail, because Rhys had to do quite a few lessons before we got the real one on. And the real one was super precious, and chlorine’s very strong, it eats fabrics away, so we wanted to save the hero one for the hero shot,” Taylor reveals. When it came time to film, “We put him in [the tail], and it was just amazing.” In order to get Darby into the pool, Taylor says a ramp had to be built and the actor was placed in a wheelchair while costumed “and pushed in.” As unglamorous as it sounds, she adds, “it was like Rhys’s dream come true.”

How Kate Bush Entered the Music Mix

It’s safe to say Kate Bush has been having a moment on TV since last year’s “Running Up That Hill” needle drop on Stranger Things, but music supervisor Maggie Phillips says, “This Woman’s Work” was selected before Netflix‘s hit made headlines with their use of the aforementioned song. “When we were placing [the song in the season lineup],” Phillips says, “it was maybe weeks after Stranger Things, and I was worried that we would look like copycats.”

Phillips maintains that the song was in the mix before, but it ultimately “doesn’t matter because really what matters is that Kate Bush is a queen and more and more people need to know her music.”

She says, “From what I heard from David [Jenkins], it was a song that Taika was attached to.” At first, Phillips was reluctant to go with the song due to its prior uses, but “David told me not to worry about [that], that people have short-term memory when it comes to music.”

While she debated with the team over cutting it, “[David] has the visuals in his mind. I don’t. I’m just hearing it with a script and I had no clue how it was going to work until I saw the first cut, and it was beautiful and they picked a part of the song that worked really well with the visuals, so they sort of made it their own,” Phillips explains. “They added a different context to the song that I wouldn’t have been able to imagine myself. So they proved me wrong for sure.”

It’s hard to imagine the scene without Bush’s song. “It changes the way you listen to the song,” Phillips notes. “I got chills watching it and I know that song so well and haven’t gotten chills like that in a long time.” With all of the buildup, “You’re waiting for them to have their romantic moment. You’re waiting for three episodes for that to happen. And so it’s so cathartic when that song comes on, and you see them come together in this fantasy world under the sea. It’s just perfect.” This led her to email Jenkins. “I was like, ‘You were right. I was wrong. But this was beautiful, and thank you so much.'”

Blackbeard’s Wet Wig Woes

Anyone watching the scene unfold would have to notice Blackbeard’s silver tresses weaving through the water, a feat much more difficult behind the scenes than the seemingly simple sequence onscreen. “We filmed that quite late in the season, and so we were really planning and thinking about that all the way through [filming]. I was a bit nervous,” hair and makeup designer Nancy Hennah admits. “I knew that he was going to have to be under the water with his wig on for quite a long time.”

Even with high-quality wig glue, Hennah says, “You can do everything you can to make that wig stay on, but there’s a limited amount of time that the glue will last. So we had to use different products than we would normally use to get the wig down.” Because the product Hennah normally uses to keep hair back in a wig is water soluble, “it melts, and the hair starts coming out from the lace, and it can ruin the whole look of the wig.” She had to come up with a creative fix.

“I glued his own hair back, and then we glued the lace on top of that, and wildly, it lasted right until the very last shot when they were dragging him through the water by the ankles,” Hennah reveals. “The wig just came off completely after they’d finished shooting. And so he came up out of the water, and the wig was off to the side, [and he goes], ‘I think my wig came off.'” She calls the success of the wig “incredible” and “just a fluke really.”

When it came to capturing Darby’s underwater look, it was all about blending the mermaid tail with his skin. “With Stede, Gypsy had a beautiful mermaid tail made, and we did a whole lot of practice with different types of silicon and things that we had to blend that piece between his skin and the tail. We made these pieces of silicon with glitter and things in them that we individually stuck over the top of the mermaid tail,” Hennah details.

Again, there were concerns about getting “things to stick underwater,” but watching the scene come together from behind the camera eased those. “[When] we were standing there on the set that day and watching the monitor, it just was so beautiful that we were all blown away by it, and that tank that they were filming in was a couple of stories deep, and to be out there in that water, it was challenging, and they both did so well. It just went off without a hitch. It was one of those great days where it just worked for everybody.”

Don’t miss what else is in store for the season. Stay tuned for additional interviews and content as the second season of Our Flag Means Death unfolds.

Our Flag Means Death, New Episodes, Thursdays, Max

Source: TV Insider

[dameronology]

liar (bucky barnes)

based on the paramore song of the same name lol a.k.a the one where bucky barnes is scared of his own feelings a.k.a jazz is back in her bucky era

warnings; language

enjoy!!

-jazz

Bucky Barnes had never considered himself a liar.

If anything, he had a hard time not telling the truth. It escaped from his mouth before he even had the chance to think about; no, Steve, I think your new hair cut sucks and sorry Sam, she wasn’t actually checking you out, she was waving at the guy behind you. Call it a product of his years as an assassin - because he couldn’t recall being this truthful back in the war - but it was part of who he was now. Sometimes he thought it meant he should come with a warning; something to say don’t pull the pin on this grenade, because he won’t lie to your mum about liking her food. Would that have been the worst Tinder bio ever? Yeah, no doubt.

Bucky had a hard time even lying to himself. That had become clear as soon as you whirl-whinded into his life. That day was still as crystal clear in his head six months later. It had been an early morning at the SHIELD HQ - the F-train had been delayed an hour and he’d come sprinting into a national security meeting, Starbucks in one hand (he was already late, he figured five minutes more for a frappuccino wouldn’t hurt) and a jumbled apology ready to offer. Then, not two seconds later, you’d come sprinting through the door, smacking into the back of him and launching the iced coffee from his hand, into the air, and straight into the lap of the British prime minister. 

Bucky was late, but you’d been even later. He liked that about you.

You were a whirl-wind in his life; his best friend from that day forward and the reason he could let go of the breath he’d been holding for so many years. Meetings were never boring with you, nor was the paperwork after long missions or the early starts. Every time he was late, he knew you’d take even longer because maybe his commute from Brooklyn was long but you lived three blocks away from work and managed to sleep through every goddamn alarm you’d set. 

It was clear about exactly three seconds after you met that you and Bucky were not destined to just be friends. You knew it and he knew it but neither of you wanted to talk about it. Avoiding the truth wasn’t necessarily lying - Bucky was thankful for that, because he knew that if you asked, everything would come out. He wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready for love. 

So, you both left it to rest (and maybe to rot). 

“I hate meetings,” you grumbled. It was eight o’clock on a Monday morning and thanks to a national security threat, you once again found yourself in the SHIELD meeting room earlier than you felt to be natural. “Can’t they just put this in an email?”

“Probably,” Bucky replied. “Hi guys, there’s a terrorist threat. If you see something, say something. Lots of love, the security council.” 

You snorted. “Did you know I have all of their emails sent straight to my spam?”

“I would do the same but I can’t work out how the Facebook app works,” he muttered. “Why are there so many buttons? What are cookies?”

“Buck, why would you have the security council on Facebook?”

“Isn’t that…” he paused, scratching the back of his head. “Isn’t that where emails go?”

You dropped your head in your hands and let out a groan. “I only just got you used to Twitter. I’ll leave it a few weeks before I overwhelm you with any more social media apps.”

“What about TikTok?”

“I am never letting you download TikTok,” you said. 

“Sam said that I should make thirst traps-”

“- please no!” you cut him off. “Never take life advice from Sam.”

Sam was sat across the table from you, a scowl on his face. He was a morning person - hell, the man had already been for a run that morning - but the combination of you and Bucky at any point in the day was enough to drive him up the wall. He glanced between you both, brown eyes calculating for a second, before a grin spread across his face. 

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t,” Sam chirped. “Remember last week when I told you to do that thing, Buck?”

Bucky’s eyes widened. “Shut up, Sam.”

“What thing?” you frowned.

“It’s not mine to share,” Sam shrugged. “But based on the last five minutes’ worth of interactions alone? I think it would be best to listen to me-”

“- I swear to god if you don’t stop talking!” Bucky cut him off; then he glanced at you, blue eyes wavering for a second. “Don’t listen to him.”

Sam knew that he was doing; playing devil’s advocate because a) it meant he could piss off Bucky and b) hopefully get two of his best friends to finally get together after months of pining. It had gotten to the point where him and Steve had literal bets on it. Not necessarily on if you would get together, but more on when. 

“I’m not, but you’re acting weird,” you said. “Want to share with the class?”

“No,” Bucky firmly said.

“Buck,” you warned; it was clear by your voice that you weren’t fucking around. “I don’t know what immature high school bullshit is going on right now but I don’t appreciate it.” 

“I’ll talk to you about it later, okay?” he said. 

“You’re an ass,” you replied.

Picking up your bag and coffee, you shuffled over to the other side of the meeting table where Steve was sat. He hadn’t said a word in any of this; you quite often cursed the lack of boundaries amongst the four of you, but you couldn’t fault Steve that morning. He’d kept to himself, simply watching in awe at the chaos that had just unfolded. 

You stopped in the seat beside him, glancing over at him. “If you say a word, I’ll hit you.”

“I’m not saying anything,” he held up his hands in defense.

The meeting was quick, thankfully. Even worse, it definitely could have been put in an email. You also couldn’t help but notice the British diplomats watching your coffee carefully every time you moved - that was a joke you could have made to Bucky, had he not managed to get himself into your bad books.

You’d barely been out the board room five minutes before you were practically wrestling him by the ear into a quiet corner. The meeting had been quick, thankfully. It hadn’t felt that way for Bucky, who’d been sat opposite you the entire time, barely avoiding your dagger-y gaze. If looks could kill, his vibranium arm would have had a fair few dents in it. 

“So?” you asked. “What was that all about?”

“It’s nothing,” Bucky quickly replied. “I promise-”

“- bullshit!” you cut him off. “Why are you keeping things from me, Buck?”

“I’m not.”

“You are!” you exclaimed. “Look, I don’t even want to know what you and Sam were talking about but at least have the common decency not to keep me out of a conversation that’s about me!”

“Why aren’t you mad at Sam too?!”

“Believe me, I have it out for Sam too but it’s worse when this stuff comes from you!”

Bucky thinned his eyes at you. “Why?”

“You know why.”

He sighed, shifting from one foot to another. Eyes to the ceiling for a second, he took a deep breath. 

“Sam told me last week that I should ask you out,” he said. “Said something about how everyone around us can see what we don’t, and that we’re kidding ourselves, and…”

You sniffed, trying to stay composed. It had been a long time coming, there was no denying that. Bucky had been avoiding the conversation because he wasn’t ready but you’d been avoiding it because you were terrified of the answer. Rejection from literally anyone else in the world would have been fine, but from him? There was no metaphor for that pain, or that fear. 

“And what?” you asked. “What do you think of that?”

He shrugged. “I think it’s…”

You both waited for a second, the tension in the air almost suffocating.

“...dumb.”

Your eyebrows shot up. “Dumb?!”

“Yeah?” Bucky sounded unsure. “We’re best friends, and-”

“- that’s bullshit!” you snapped. “Buck, I know you can be confusing but…if there’s one thing I am certain of, it’s that we are not just best friends and you know it!”

“Do I?”

You took a step back, sniffing. “Yeah, you’re right. It’s dumb. Forget I said anything.”

“Wait, don’t be like that-”

“- it’s fine, James,” you sniffed. “I’ll see you around.”

“Are we good?”

“Yeah, we’re good.”

(You weren’t good.)

“Okay, I’m glad. Call me later, yeah?”

“Yeah, of course,” you forced a smile.

(You weren’t going to call him.)

–

Five days.

That’s the longest Bucky had gone without talking to you since he’d met you and also the exact amount of time you’d been ignoring him for. He’d given in calling you after three days, and considered coming around your apartment after four, but then he got a last minute call onto a mission where your name was at the top of the call sheet. Fab. 

Bucky liked to consider himself a good flier, but it certainly would have been easier to co-pilot a jet with someone who was actually willing to talk to him. It was quite amazing, actually, to see the lengths that you were willing to go to all in pursuit of icing him out. 

“This is Barnes to air traffic control on QJ564. We’ll be approaching our destination in about five minutes, currently at 10,000 feet, over.”

“This is ATC to QJ564, you’re cleared for landing in Munich, runway four. Over.”

“This is Barnes to ATC on QJ564. Runway four confirmed, thank you. Could you also tell my co-pilot that I’m sorry and that I miss them? Over.”

“Uh…this is ATC to QJ564. Barnes says he’s sorry and that he misses you. Over.”

“This is Barnes’ co-pilot on QJ564, tell him that I think he’s a cun-”

“- this is Captain Rogers monitoring the channels for suspicious activity from the headquarters. May I remind the pilots aboard QJ564 of the appropriate workplace manners over professional channels? Over.”

After Steve’s voice, the lines went silent. Bucky glanced over at you, eyebrows raised. 

“That was rude.”

You continued to ignore him, attention turned to landing the jet safety. It wasn’t hard - Tony Stark had built a jet that practically landed itself, but it was still a good enough excuse to blank out your best friend for the next five minutes. Still, none of that conversation was worth the absolute castigating you were about to receive from Captain America as soon as you were back in New York. He was no fun sometimes. 

With the jet safely on the runway, you parked up at the airport and made your way down to the tarmac where the agents were waiting. All you had to do now was await instructions from headquarters on what to do next. That gave you more empty time with Bucky, who was stood next to you. So, you moved away and leant against the wheels of the plane, pulling out your phone to play Doodle Jump.

The call came through eventually, but it was to Bucky’s radio instead of yours. 

“Right, agents,” he began, though it was more a sigh than anything. “Coulson is currently ten minutes out on another quinjet to lead the mission. Agent (Name) and I have been removed from this operation for the foreseeable future so that we can sit in the jet, man the communications systems and re-take the online seminar about appropriate workplace language.”

“What?!” you exclaimed. “Nice one, Barnes!”

Bucky forced a smile, trying not to crack up in front of the fifteen junior agents stood in front of you. “Why we have to retake it is a mystery to me.”

“Good luck out there, guys,” you huffed. With that, you spun around and stormed back on board the jet. 

Bucky was hot on your heels, closing up the door behind him as he went. He didn’t really know what to say - somehow he’d made you angrier, now - but apolgoising profusely felt like a pretty good place to start. 

“So you’re talking to me now?” he asked, following you through the fuselage. 

“No!”

“You just did!”

“Fuck off, Bucky!”

“And again!”

“Leave me alone!”

He grabbed your arm, stopping you in your tracks. “I’m sorry, okay?”

“Sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it,” you huffed.

Taking a seat, you curled your legs up in front of you. You didn’t try and swat (or hit) Bucky when he leant down in front of you, which he took as a good sign. It was time to pull out the big guns. 

“Can I talk for just…maybe five seconds, possibly ten, without you interrupting?”

You nodded.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. I never want to hurt you because you’re the last person in the world I’d ever want to upset but I was put on the spot by what Sam said, and then by what you said, and it freaked me out a little,” he began. “You and I both know that he’s right - but never tell him I said that - and honestly, the silence you’ve given me over the last five days made me realise that more than ever.”

You smiled. “What are you saying, Buck?”

“I love you,” he said. It was plain and simple, completely without hesitation and entirely with conviction. “I’ve known that for a while but I just didn’t want to admit it to myself, but like I said…five days without you made me realise I don’t even want to go five seconds without you.”

“That’s how you apologise,” you gave him a watery grin, poking him in the chest. 

“So?”

“So what?”

“Anything you want to say to that?”

“Oh, yeah!” you exclaimed. “I love you too.”

Bucky pulled you into a kiss; he held you flush against him, one hand holding the back of your neck, metal one gripping the back of your tac-vest. Despite everything, he was warm and you were certain then that you were never going to let him - if not a little ecstatic that you’d found a new way to shut him up. 

You both jumped back when you heard the doors to the jet go, only to turn around and see Phil Coulson on the phone, a glare on his face.

“What is it with you two and inappropriate work place behaviour?”

[raaorqtpbpdy]

Made of Meat

Danny Phantom/DC (Animal Man) crossover (thank you @stealingyourbones for the prompt)

When strange, faintly glowing meat creatures start rampaging through the streets of San Diego, there's only one man to call. And when Animal Man could use a helping hand, Phantom swoops in to assist. Or, Danny Phantom and Animal Man team up to fight the Lunch Lady

Read it on AO3

[Warnings for minor violence, mentions of vomit, and repeated mentions/descriptions of raw meat]

When strange, faintly glowing meat creatures started rampaging through the streets of San Diego, there was only one man to call. 

Absorbing the power of flight from a hawk overhead, Buddy Baker, A.K.A. Animal Man soared toward downtown to confront the monsters wreaking havoc on the innocent civilians of his city, his blond hair fluttering in the wind.

By the time he arrived, the chaos was well underway. Just like the reports had claimed, several unidentified creatures were causing the brunt of the damage, each of them about four feet tall and composed entirely of raw meat, still dripping with blood and already attracting flies, with glowing red eyes and fleshy teeth. Animal Man could see pools of vomit on the sidewalks from people who had evidently been too disgusted by the creatures to hold down their lunches, but he'd seen far worse himself and wasn't bothered by the creatures' grotesque appearance.

He swooped down to snatch a little girl out of the way of one of the things and take her to the nearest screaming woman—her mother, just as he had guessed—and urged them to run. There weren't as many people downtown as Buddy would have normally expected to see at this time, probably most of them already had already run away, but a few stragglers still remained, most of them filming the incident on their phones, some hiding, none of them in immediate danger.

With his bird's eye view, Animal Man had spotted a peculiar woman in the center of the commotion. She looked confused and sickly, with greenish skin. It wasn't her appearance that bothered him, though. Something about her felt off, and it unsettled the hero in a way he couldn't quite put into words. Using the sharp ears of a bat from the nearby zoo, he could hear her even from high in the sky, demanding to know where she was and what was for lunch.

Whoever she was, Buddy was pretty sure she was the woman in charge, and these meat gremlins were her doing. If he could knock her out, or better yet, peacefully convince her to stop, her creatures would stop too.

With the strength of a charging rhino, Animal Man plowed through her meaty minions with little trouble and slammed his whole body into her, sending her flying a few feet to land sprawled on the ground. He rushed forward to pin her so she couldn't get away, and it was then that he began to realize what was so off about her.

Her skin was cold and green, her eyes glowed red, and her clothes were about forty years out of date. But even more strange that that, he didn't feel any connection to her through the Red. The Red connected all animal life, from the tiniest single-celled organism, to the biggest blue whale, and humans were included in that. Through the Red, Animal Man could absorb the powers of any living creature. 

Not this woman, though.

She looked human, and acted human... but she wasn't human.

Animal man dug deeper, trying to feel out a connection to the Green, or the Rot. It was harder for him to sense them, but all three elements were connected, and they encompassed all living things, even after death.

Except for this mysterious woman.

She wasn't fauna, or flora, or decay. And now that he was feeling through the Red, he realized that her constructs weren't connected to it either, even though they looked like they could have crawled right out of it moments before they showed up here. Buddy didn't know how that was possible, but right now, what she was didn't matter half as much as stopping her.

"I don't want to hurt you anymore," he said firmly, "but you have to stop what you're doing, or I'll be forced to. I can't let you keep attacking innocent people with your creatures. It has to stop." 

The woman scowled and stood up, her body passing right through Animal Man like he was made of air, and a chill ran down his spine and he shuddered as he fell a few inches onto the asphalt below.

"What the...?" He tried to grab her again, but he couldn't even touch her. His hands passed right through her, like he was trying to catch smoke.

"You think you can stop me?!" the woman demanded, her hair standing up and writhing like snakes on her head. The meat monsters turned as one and began to converge on Animal Man. "Today's menu is doom, and now, it's lunchtime!"

"It's four-thirty!"

Animal Man snapped his head up toward the sound of the new voice, and saw a teenager flying into view. He wore a black and white jumpsuit, had white hair, and the green glow of his eyes was visible even from a distance. The teen rocketed down and slammed his fists right into the strange woman's face, sending her skidding backwards.

"You!" she hissed, her eyes widening and pulsing red—it was terrifying in person, but Buddy couldn't help the thought that it was reminiscent of a really angry Loony Tunes character.

Immediately, her creatures turned their attention away from Animal Man, and toward the newcomer. Evidently, she and him had a history. And she'd determined that the kid was a higher priority than Buddy was.

"That's right, Lunch Lady, it's me again," the kid said, grabbing a thermos that was hanging off his belt. "And I'm here to tell you that the only thing on the menu for you today is soup!"

Whatever he planned to do with that thermos, he didn't get the chance, as one of the meat gremlins morphed its arm into a long whip and knocked it away from him.

"Ew!" the kid said, dropping a few feet to punch the nearest creature and then dry-heaving for a second. "Are these things raw? Why—eugh!" he cut himself off with a shudder as another one got close and he had to punch it. Clearly the creatures were not his bag.

"Hey kid!" Animal Man shouted, ready to offer his help.

"It's Phantom," the kid shouted back. "Wait, who're you?"

"Animal Man," he replied. "I'll keep the meat things occupied if you can deal with her."

"You sure, dude?" Phantom flew back out of the meat things' reach with a grimace, and dodged the sprays of blood they spewed up after him looking almost as green as the Lunch Lady. "These things are pretty gross. Way grosser than the last time I fought 'em."

"I've handled grosser than them," Buddy assured. "They're not a problem—but I can't fight someone I can't touch."

Phantom turned slightly to look at the Lunch Lady, who was laughing triumphantly, and got splashed in the back of the head by one of the meat creatures still bombarding him. He yelped in disgust, and Buddy pressed his lips together to keep from laughing.

"Alright, deal!" Phantom agreed, wiping the back of his head with a gloved hand. "I'll leave 'em to you, just don't let them merge with each other, or her, they become a much bigger problem that way."

"Got it!" 

Animal Man summoned up some elephant strength, leopard agility and the reflexes of a fly and ran at the creatures. The force of his punches caused them to burst apart instantly, and in the time it took one to reform itself, he could take down three more.

Meanwhile, Phantom shot upward, firing a green beam at the Lunch Lady. His head turned frantically, like he was looking for something, but he didn't seem to find it. The Lunch Lady screamed as he dive-bombed her again, this time sending her through a wall—the wall itself undamaged. She came back through it moments later, back on her feet and angrier than ever. 

As much as he wanted to keep an eye on the kid to make sure he didn't get hurt, Buddy still had to focus on his own fight. Phantom was clearly familiar with this enemy, had apparently fought her before, and he seemed like he could handle himself. None of that stopped Buddy from worrying. None of his worrying changed the fact that he had a job to do.

In his moment of distraction, one of the creatures slammed into the side of Animal Man's knee, knocking him down. He used his elephant strength to throw it off and watched it splatter into a bloody, fleshy mass against a concrete wall. 

As he rolled over to get back on his feet and resume the fight, he saw the thermos Phantom had dropped. It had rolled out of sight under the bus stop bench. That must've been what the kid was looking for! Although Animal Man had no idea what Phantom could need it for, he darted forward like a cheetah on all fours and snatched the thermos up.

"Hey Phantom!" he shouted, jumping to his feet and kicking another creature into pieces. "You need this, right?"

Phantom turned, and grinned widely when he saw what his new ally was holding. Animal Man threw it up to him and he caught it easily and uncapped it right away, aiming it at the Lunch Lady.

Animal Man punched out another meat gremlin as a blue light shone from inside the thermos, and the Lunch Lady screamed and shouted in protest as she was sucked inside. As soon as the cap was back on the thermos, the remaining creatures collapsed into piles of raw meat, covered in rocks and dirt and buzzing flies. How this mess would get cleaned up was anyone's guess.

Fight ended, Phantom flew down to where Animal Man was standing, surrounded by a ring of red meat and plucked poultry, but did not touch down on the ground. A strategic choice, although it was a bit too late for the other hero to do the same.

"Eugh, I smell like a butcher shop and I have entrails in my hair," Animal Man commented, sniffing his sleeve with a grimace. "My wife isn't gonna so much as wave hello until I take a shower, and it's gonna be hell getting the stench outta my suit."

"Oh, uh... here." 

Phantom put his hand on Buddy's shoulder, and a cold empty sensation wracked his body for a few seconds. All the gross chunks and fluids dropped to the ground, falling through him like he was made of air, just like the Lunch Lady had moved through him earlier. When Phantom took his hand away, Buddy was clean. Even the smell didn't seem to be coming from him anymore, although it still definitely surrounded him.

"Wow, thanks," Buddy said, marveling at the distinct lack of red stains on his white gloves which had been absolutely soaked in it a moment before. "That trick must come in pretty useful for you."

"Yeah, well, it's the least I could do after you helped me out," Phantom said. His shoulders hunched and he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. "It was all my fault the Lunch Lady attacked in the first place. I was stupid and forgot to make sure the thermos was empty before I left Amity Park."

"Hey, you're not stupid; don't say that. Everyone makes mistakes, what's important is that you were able to fix it," Animal Man argued. 

Phantom smiled gratefully, and it wasn't until he took his hand away from his neck that he seemed to remember the splatter of blood and juices he'd gotten from one of the creatures and he wrinkled his nose at the red stain on his own glove. He hardly seemed to think about it as he turned himself intangible like he had to Buddy before and let the viscera fall to the sidewalk with a splat.

"So... what was she anyway?" Buddy asked, doing his best to keep a straight face. "The Lunch Lady I mean. She definitely wasn't human, I could tell that much."

"Oh, she was a ghost," Phantom replied. "I'm a ghost, too, but I'm a good guy, I swear. Sorry, I forget not a lot of people have seen ghosts outside of Amity Park. They're super common where I come from."

"A ghost, huh?"

Animal Man considered that. It would make sense. A ghost was dead, but not decaying, not made of flesh or vegetation. Not fauna, not flora, not rot. It tracked with what he had sensed from the woman before. But if Phantom was a ghost too, that meant he'd died at about the same age Buddy's own son, Cliff, had, and that sent a pang of heartache through the man's chest.

One thing didn't make sense, though. Phantom claimed to be a ghost, like the Lunch Lady, but unlike with her, Buddy could sense Phantom through the Red. It was a thin connection, like the kid was hanging onto it by a thread, but it was a solid one, too. If this kid really was a ghost, he wasn't the same as the one he'd just trapped in that thermos of his.

For a moment, Buddy thought about pressing for answers, but he quickly decided against it. It could be that the truth was too personal, or embarrassing, or even dangerous for Phantom to reveal, especially to a virtual stranger, even one who'd helped him out. Besides everyone was entitled to their secrets. Instead, Animal Man smiled at the kid and clapped him on the back.

"That's pretty cool," he said. "Say, do ghosts eat? You should come over to my place for dinner. After a hard-fought battle like that, I'd say you deserve it."

"You can eat after fighting those things?" Phantom looked down at what remained of the meat creatures and gagged.

"Trust me, if I wasn't already a vegetarian, I would be after this," Buddy replied. "My wife's making some meat-free lasagna, and we always have tons of leftovers. She usually doesn't like me taking hero stuff home with me, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind in this case."

"She knows you're a hero?" 

The open shock on Phantom's face was a bit of a surprise, but then again, he had said he was from out of town. Just because Buddy was often swarmed by local paparazzi, didn't mean he was any more than regionally famous.

"Everyone knows," he said with a shrug. "I don't keep my identity a secret. It can get annoying sometimes, but I don't really have any reason to. I'm not one of the big-shots, like Batman and Wonder-Woman. You're not from around here, so I bet you never even heard of Animal Man before today."

"Well... no...."

"Exactly," Buddy made sure to grin wide enough that the kid knew there were no hard feelings about it. "So what do you say? You coming over for dinner, or what?"

"I'd love to, but I can't," Phantom said apologetically. "I have to deal with all this meat and then my—uh... I just have other plans tonight."

"You need help with the clean up?"

Phantom frowned down at the piled of meat still surrounding the two of them. 

Maybe this really hadn't been the best place to discuss dinner plans. Man, Buddy really was desensitized to this kinda stuff wasn't he? For a guy who didn't eat meat, he sure spent a lot of time surrounded by it, both in the Red, and now here.

"Nah," Phantom decided finally. "I think I can just turn the ground intangible and phase everything down under the street level so it can decompose."

"Just turn the ground intangible, huh?" Animal Man huffed a light laugh and shook his head. "Yeah, alright, if you're sure. I should get going anyway. Stay safe, kiddo. Maybe I'll see you around again before you head back home."

"Uh..." Phantom blinked owlishly at him. "Y-yeah... you uh... stay safe too."

Animal Man smiled and nodded, and took off toward his home, borrowing the power of flight from a pigeon on a telephone wire. The way Phantom had reacted, it was almost like no one had ever said that to him before. Stay safe.

Where had he said he was from? Amity Park?

Maybe Animal Man should keep tabs on him from now on, just in case. After all, ghost or not, he was still just a teenager, and all heroes needed allies from time to time.

[honey-minded-hivemind]

I just imagined: What if there's an AU where Logan and Reader are experiments, maybe for the Weapon X scientists, maybe for something else, or for some mutant-experimenting group, and Sabretooth (a.k.a., his brother) ends up taking care of them once they've been busted out?

Let's look at it this way:

Logan has been in that place for Heaven only knows how long. He's seen sh*t, he's heard all sorts of awful things, and he's lived them. Then there's a kid thrown in with him, and suddenly he's a dad now. (Who else is going to parent this random kid/teen? The scientists? F*ck no!) So he's now trying to keep himself and this kid alive, biding his time until he finds the best opportunity for them to leave.

Reader is this random kid/teen who's been put into this program/experiment, and they've been tossed into the mess with no safety net... Until they end up with Logan, or as everyone else calls him, Wolverine. And Reader, seeing a feral, growly, possibly dangerous individual... tries to be gentle. Tries to treat him as a person. (This guy is covered in wounds and reeks of blood, and obviously needs care, and they're all in this together, aren't they?) And Reader is soon met with someone who is their protector in this H*ll they're living in, someone who'd kill for them and die for them, if the situation called for it. Too bad Reader would do the same for him...

(They become cellmates/cell-buddies. Logan, when he's not chained to the wall or floor or restrained in some way is curled around Reader. Reader tries to keep his humanity intact, and tries to maintain both of their sanities. The moment someone tried to take Reader away, Logan bit someone's arm off-)

Sabretooth comes into play when he finds out about this secret program trying to make or recapture mutant experiments, wanting soldiers or guards or weapons... And when he catches wind of a rumor, that his baby brother is in there... He decides to make it his business. And realizes he's going to have to get involved if he wants to get him out mostly intact.

Trying to act the part of a willing subject... oh, it grates on his nerves... Having to act like he's loyal, or controlled. Doing what they say when they say it. But the reward... tearing out their throats and getting his brother away from them, causing chaos, too... is too sweet, too much of a good thing, to pass up. Then he finds out his brother is attached to another subject, and suddenly he's now trying to figure out if he needs to keep them alive, too.

And what he finds... it convinces him to keep Reader alive.

They're the only good thing to his brother in this h*llscape. The only one treating him with any respect or decency. And that earns them his protection. Not to mention they're a small pup, just a cub, in a den of snakes and lions... And his brother likes them. Those are enough reasons for him to add Reader into his plan, to the list of people to break out. (If he roughs up or sets up a few jerks so they can have a taste of what they've given his runt or the cub, it's no one's business-)

And finally, the day comes and he can break them out... Except something goes horribly wrong, and he's now trying to make sure Reader is alive while struggling to keep his brother from running off with them. (Neither of them are in a position to survive alone, or to go another week without proper care and for and safety). So that leaves him with hardly any choice but to kidnap his brother and hide him and the kid where no one can get to them. They can all fight it out when they're well again, but that isn't going to be for a long time, and he does miss taking care of his brother... And he gets to care for the cub, who needs extra careful care and gentleness... So he's going to be busy for quite awhile now, isn't he?... He can't wait to get them warm and cleaned up and fed. They're just going to have to be kept very sleepy and relaxed while he works his own brand of healing and caring for them, 'kay? Just let good ol' Victor take care of everything...

(If you have any questions about this idea, please ask them!)

[princecharmingwinks]

Sterek Fic Rec - April & May 2023. Sorry team, I know I am late and now combining months. Been busy with other things so while I hope to keep doing rec lists, they may be less monthly overall. But I promise I am still here! :)

Orbit (yours is the only one i'd follow) by whenwordsmakesense (1/1 | 1K | Teen)

Stiles flashes back to the nights and mornings he has spent in Derek’s bed, only because he’d fallen asleep researching the latest trouble in their town and Derek hadn’t felt like waking him up, only to drive sleepily and more than likely end up on his computer again once he got home. And he thinks of this pack, his family, has tied them to each other—all of them—and he thinks of how love has filled them up where the holes of loss have taken place.

OR

Stiles muses on what love is.

The Ink Under My Skin by rainsoakedshoes (1/1 | 10K | Mature)

Derek is looking for an Emissary. What he finds is Stiles Stilinski; resident witch.

Stiles would do whatever it takes to protect the Hale pack and his Alpha.

***

“I want to protect my pack as well as I can,” Derek continued. “Emissaries traditionally keep balance, having someone who wants to tip the odds in our favour may come in handy.”

Figure it Out by Gia279 (1/1 | 5K | Not Rated | Podfic by josilverdragon)

“He isn’t cursed,” Derek said suddenly, “I am.” As he spoke, no less than three lizards tumbled from his mouth. He caught them before they hit the ground, clutching them in folded fingers.

Dream Mate - Real Mate by TheyDraggedMeInNowIAintLeaving (1/1 | 4K | Teen)

Stiles is hired to put magical protection on the Hale house, Derek is incapable of making words in his presence. Somehow they still manage to get a happy ending

Derek Hale--Even in the Wind His Hair Is Perfect by literaryoblivion (1/1 | 2K | Teen)

It’s not the greatest job in the world, but someone’s gotta do it. And Stiles makes the most of it, okay?

Writing captions for the live broadcasts as well as helping run and write the copy for the online news stories can get rather tedious and boring, but Stiles tries his best to keep himself entertained. Slipping in a movie or comic book reference inside a human interest story just to see if someone comments about it, putting up a funny headline to see if someone catches it and puts it up on reddit, you know harmless things that to the casual viewer and reader will go unnoticed but to those that actually pay attention, they might get a kick out of it.

Recently though, he maybe has been… abusing his power.

(There's) no smoke without fire by Ark (1/1 | 6K | Explicit | Podfic by  pricklywhicket)

They kiss for entirely too long. If anyone found them in the woods just then they would be like, dudes, this is excessive.

“Stiles, I was talking about the lasagna” by quackquackcey (1/1 | 2K | Teen)

The time Stiles thought his dad could read minds and ended up confessing his inner most thoughts starring Derek—twice.~ 🐺💝

Couldn't find the words by Tails89 (6/6 | 21K | Teen)

*Complete*

John stands, holding out his hand for Melissa. “I never thought I’d be happy to see my son dating Derek Hale."

“They’re good for each other.” Melissa lets John pull her up onto her feet. “I’m happy for them.”

a.k.a

Five times someone thought Stiles and Derek were dating (plus one time they finally used their words and were!)

all my blossoms by WeAreTheLuckyOnes (1/1 | 7K | Mature)

Stiles has to nudge Derek over as he climbs into bed and under the quilt, but Derek goes easily, rolling onto his side and curving around Stiles's body when he settles. He puts his face into Stiles's throat, nose nudging against Stiles's jaw, arm sliding around Stiles's waist. Stiles is asleep in mere moments, comfortable and warm and safe against Derek's body.

Or the one where Stiles and Derek just get to be happy.

You Always Make A Bloody Mess by Sweetsyren (1/1 | 5K | Explicit)

Stiles is used to hiding his scars.

princecharmingwinks special mention (the found family vibes are so sweet!)

here is the deepest secret nobody knows by owlpostagain (1/1 | 22K | Teen)

“Derek,” Stiles groans. “You have me. You’ve always had me, you absolute moron, how many physically impossible feats of life-saving heroics do I have to perform before you get it?”

See you next time team! Hopefully not as long before the next list. Remember to send all the love and kudos to our fabulous writers (and podficcers!).

[shuamorollss]

drop-tower crisis — k.sy x gn!reader

after a whole hour of gushing about your fear of the drop tower ride while on a date with your boyfriend, you suddenly felt the urge to try and ride it... just to face your fears and have fun, right?

fluff, established relationship, reader doesn't have fear of heights, just has the fear of the ride alone. warnings/notes— none ... <1k wc + reblogs are greatly appreciated!

note— literally just a drabble i wrote under 15 minutes... only bc I'm so love deprived from the book i currently finished 😴 wrote this as like a moment in my head to my own WesLiz happy ever after anyway hehe that's all g'night or g'morning wherever u are!!!?!

"Do you think mom would mind?" You asked curiously. Somehow, Kwon Soonyoung perks up a light grin in amusement on how you were suddenly shaky as you finally take a grasp this whole thing.

a.k.a your whole idea.

"That was out of nowhere." He raised a brow.

"I'm just saying!—like, you know... if I do this, will my mom be alright with it? Will she worry the hell out? or—" You let out an exaggerated gasp, squeezing your eyes shut as your seat finally secures itself in place. Keeping you from ever standing up or escaping as your now bethrothed to this god-damned drop-tower ride.

Soonyoung lets out a loud chuckle, his eyes never leaving to look at you as you lowly squeal in terror. And the ride hasn't even started yet.

"You pushed me to try this ride, I just ag—"

"You agreed yes, yes!" you nod repeatedly, myriads of questions wandering in your mind as to how and why you even thought of this in the first place.

Whenever you go to amusement parks, this was the very ride you avoid your gaze to.

Just by looking at a distance, having the seats suddenly raising up and acceleratng back down—and up again, has your stomach churning.

And now you're going to be experiencing it in real time.

Real. Fucking. Time.

"Soonyoung." you loudly call out in pure fear as the seat lightly shook, and up it finally went.

You took a glance at your boyfriend beside you to see him watching your very reaction. His face plastering an awful smirk and low breathy chuckles that were running along with the swift breeze of the wind as it continues higher.

And higher...

"Soonyoung." You squealed, squeezing your eyes tightly shut once more as you could see a whole mountain from up here.

You couldn't even look down it was that bad.

The way your feet couldn't even feel any flat surfaces at the bottom and the thought that you would fall off and meet your untimely demise sent numerous amounts of shivers down your spine.

All of this because... you wanted to try this ride. After years of avoidance.

Then, after a few seconds of accepting your fate, you felt someone's warm hand started intertwining with yours.

Just like that, you open your eyes, seeing none other than your boyfriend's hands holding yours.

From what was an unbearable smirk airing visible teasing and mockery from him a moment ago. Now turned into something mellow and genuine. His eyes laying onto you, and hands squeezing yours in comfort, he says, "You said face your fears, right?"

You nod reluctantly, both heartbeat and seats were still raising.

"Open your eyes, look around, or look at me, and have fun. 'kay?"

He squeezes your hand tighter, darting your gaze to your intertwined hands and back to his visage putting up the lightest beam for you.

Only for you.

And at that moment, his words that were so simple have easily broken you out to your room of fear. Suddenly you don't feel so scared anymore.

Still nervous, but not as before.

Then, the ride stops for a brief second.

You wanted to slide your hands out of Soonyoung's grasp, earning him a quick look of concern.

You give him your warmest smile, "I'm okay now."

Yet, he didn't let go.

"Nah."

He'd be damned if he would.

"It's not safe." You warn.

But he had to.

He breathes out a sigh. "Fine." he says, disappointment filling his nerves that will definitely dissipate in a matter of—

3... 2... 1.

And... take off.

© shuamorollss. please do not modify, edit, copy or reproduce any of the works published.

[audreyscribes]

Ω PJO MISCELLANEOUS DEMIGOD HEADCANONS: 🍃 ZEPHYROS: GOD OF THE WEST WINDS, PERSONIFICATION OF THE GENTLE WEST WIND AND SPRING. 🌷

A/n: Another Popular minor god let's go! Zephryos or Zephryus will always pop up like a random but welcome breeze, so it was only fitting to do a demigod imagine on him. Also either I'm not looking in the right direction or I see a lack of Zephryus demigods. No idea if he would make a good godly dadza. Now to see if anyone picks up the references I've put in from another fandom. MISCELLANEOUS DEMIGOD H/CS MASTERLIST LINK: [TUMBLR] || [AO3]

If you’ve ever heard of “Spring is in the air”, there is no better term used for Zephyros because that essentially sums up his entire existence. This also applies to you every time you make an appearance. Whether you bring love in the air or smell like flowery perfume (the good kind that brings you ease and happiness), it ranges a bit.

When you get claimed, you can hear the singing of swans as the wind blew gently from the west, carrying the smell of Spring almost like a herald…even if it’s not even Spring anymore. Unironically, your claim in Camp Halfblood takes place at Zephyros Creek…the creek that is literally named after him that runs through the entire forest.

As one of the more popular, minor gods, your presence as a demigod and your powers are also notable…which isn’t as much of a problem if it wasn’t much of a learning curve. Unlike where it’s pretty simple for the major gods where it makes relative sense of their domains and concepts, for Zephyros it’s less on the nose and requires some actual studying; from the winds, horses, spring, love, and etc.

As a child of Zephyros, you obviously have the power of the winds at your command. However, he is also technically a god of springtime, you also have the power to grow and manipulate plants, though not as much as the child of Demeter. Makes sense if you think of the wind carrying the pollen, helping the growth of flowers and the Spring wind heralds the changing of the seasons from Winter. If you’re at Camp between the seasons of Winter and Spring, you’ll find yourself in the company of the children of Demeter. A welcome change from growing decorative gourd to strawberries.

What no one tells you at first, despite being a god of the winds, you expect to have some connection to birds like the Swans from earlier, you learn you also have a connection with horses; as Zephyros has turn into a horse and had pulled Zeus’ chariot with his brothers against Typhon. So Pegasus flying is almost like second nature to you but slightly left field. Good thing you have the children of Poseidon because you two can gossip and complain with the pegasus…though why is that you feel a certain draw to certain pegasus…?

You also find yourself being drawn to and from the children of Iris; where you learn that Iris told them to make you feel welcome and extends you an invitation to drop by her Organic shop anytime, the children of Apollo surprisingly; once everyone got over the fact about their parents’ thing over Hyacinth, they welcomed you greatly and especially appreciated you spirit over any injured patients over or simply growing some well-need plants at that moment. Plus, every so often, you all get together to have a small music break and not surprisingly, you find yourself gifted at wind instruments.

You also meet Lester or a.k.a. Apollo as well around this time. He welcomes you as much as he can and while you appreciated the gesture, you knew he carried guilt and awkwardness towards you, forcing himself to show you that he had no qualms and in extension, show Zephyros that he regretted blaming your godly father for Hyacinth's death and to show he wouldn’t be petty and harm his own kid; even if he knew that received help during his own powerless moment. Luckily for you and him, Zephryos written a letter for Apollo that you gave to him, explicitly stating that Zephyros that was sorry as well and forgave Apollo long ago. You find yourself having another father figure in your life through Apollo, who constantly invites you to his and his children’s activities.

You find yourself being in the company of the children of Aphrodite. Zephryos famously has a connection being in the service of Eros, bringing Spring (i.e. romance) in the air, but there’s also his and Iris’ son; Pothos, the God of Sexual Longing, Yearning, and Desire, who is also an attendant of Aphrodite. So whether or not you have a particular interest in romance or whatever, the children of Aphrodite are more likely to share their secrets and gossip with you and even help you from time to time. Or you’re going to be the one spreading those juicy gossip and spilling the tea to the people of the Aphrodite cabin (and those who feel so inclined) about So and So being seen together while holding hands.

You quickly figure out that Zephyros is rather well-known around Camp, outside of his presence in Greek Mythos, as you find out that from Annabeth, like her, a lot of them were brought to their mortal parents from their godly parents by Zephyros. Somewhere down the line, you find yourself able to find out whose unclaimed demigods’ parentage is because Zephyros touch lingers on them, leaving you in a dilemma if you’re allowed to say it.

In terms of physical attributes inherited from your father, this is what’s going to be a nightmare for you. At first you thought you might inherit wings because Zephyros is often depicted with wings, but if your claiming doesn’t trigger it, then you might not have wings at all. Though this is not a problem with flying as you can manipulate the wind to help you fly. No, what’s a nightmare is that Chiron sat you down and told you that you might be able to turn into a horse because Zephyros has been known to turn into a horse, so you may be able to turn into that…but what really threw you in a loop is that you may possess the characteristics of a tiger because he’s also the sire of Tigers. So Tiger, Horses, and Birds oh my! good luck with that!

On the other hand, you’re going to have an animal companion; whether its a tiger, horse, or birds; though usually swans but not limited to it. Afterall, pegasus are considered horses too; so there’s that. For all you could know, you may have crows as your companion(s); though they’re a rather chatty bunch so you are probably going to call them as Chat. Or Bryan- for that one crow that can speak rather human like. 

Everyone stared at you with open gaped mouths as the claim of Zephryos floated above your head. The swans were singing and flapping their wings in Zephyros creek. The wind gently blew from the West as if Zephyros was gently running his hand over your hair, giving you a light kiss on the forehead. There was a waft of floral scent also coming from the West, and it smelled familiar to you. 

Everyone was staring at you with a range of awe, surprise, and absolute recognition. The weight of the stares was starting to make you awkwardly hot and uncomfortable. Silence gradually filled in when the swan singing started to fade off into the distance, only the wind swaying of the trees with the sound of the water running through the creek. It was then you remembered that you had the flag in hand, the fabric flapping in the wind earlier like some epic painting when you reached the goal. It was a whirlwind of events when you felt yourself flying, your feet carrying you like you were absolutely nothing. At first you thought you were definitely a child of Hermes, with your feet running like you had wings on your feet but then when you were getting pincered from all sides. You were cut off by the enemy side and the only exit was a cliff and the next thing you knew you jumped off the cliff in a run, and as you fell, panic hit you as you realized you couldn’t land safely and the creek wasn’t that deep to sustain your fall. 

It was at that moment the wind blew from the West and swirled around you, carrying off into safety into the waters. You botched the landing and did a couple stumble but you took that then going SPLAT.

You wondered if you should say anything when people weren’t really moving, whispering amongst themselves, until you heard a whistle that came off rather musically impressed and then a clap of rhythm. Your eyes turned to the source to see a boy with brown hair and eyes but when the sunlight filtered through the gap of the branches, you swore you saw blue instead. 

“Well, certainly Zephyros knows how to make an entrance, not that I wouldn’t do either of course” said the boy and you heard that one child of Demeter with a temper scoff. “I think we can say Capture the Flag is over right Chiron?”

The centaur shook out of his stupor and cleared his throat, regaining his composure. “Yes, that would seem to be the case” he said before he turned to the other campers to say that Capture the Flag was now over and your team cheered in victory. 

You were rushed over by your teammates for securing the win and congrats on being claimed. You thanked profusely, still not sure who claimed you until you saw the boy from earlier, that your brain hazily remembered as some from the Apollo cabin. 

“Well I never expected to see a child of Zephryos to appear, much less when I’m at camp. I guess there’s no real bad blood anymore if he’s open to claiming his kid in front of me.”

“Uh, wait Zephryos? He’s my dad? But isn’t he the god of the West wind-”

“Yes, Zephryos, God of the West Wind as well as the personification of it and a god of Spring you can say” he said, before gently gesturing you out of the water and that’s when you realize your shoes and socks were absolutely soaked and very uncomfortable as they squished with every movement. 

“I don’t think he would have a demigod” you admitted. 

“Well, Zephryos and I were both interested in a lovely human man named Hycanith, though he got jealous that Hycanith accepted me as a lover. It’s a long story but it seems like he had moved on some time to have you” smiled the stranger. 

“Wait, I remember that story…but you? The story had Apollo-” you started to say but you cut off your words when it hit you. You turned to the stranger beside you and now you could feel it.  “Ah yes, it’s a rather long story but I’m in my mortal form. Here, I’m called Lester Papadopoulos but those who know, know me as Apollo.”

[shy-nightmare]

OMG, YOU GUYS! HELP ME! 😱

Before you ask, yes, I had another dream. And yes, I'll tell you all about it. I'm just walking in town, minding my own business, and it's such a lovely evening. The wind is a gentle breeze, the stars are sparkling bright, and the moon is still and serene. For a moment, the night is peaceful and quiet.

But then, I hear a blaring siren, I turn around, and I see them.

I'm not playing with you, the weasels have infiltrated my sleep again. And it's not one or two of them. The whole pack. ALL FIVE! 😨

There's no one else around. Just me and them. And before I could blink, I'm literally being chased. Like how they chased Eddie, Roger, and Benny, they are now chasing me. Guys, this is not a joke. They're closing in on me. They've been haunting me for almost three months now. Everyone in that movie wants me to break.

I hate to say this, but...*sighs* It's time to take a vote.

I know it's been over two months since I started having these dreams, but as I continued being tortured and pursued, I started thinking. Everyone who I've interacted with has been so kind and welcoming (and yes, I'm tagging @trashogram, @just-kit-ink, @basiabd and @los-angeles-toon-patrol because they've been kind to me too 😊), and showed me nothing but kindness and compassion since I joined. And you've all liked what I've posted; my artwork, my chapters, and even my updates and moon photography. To me, it feels like I'm making a lot of progress and you guys really like what I've been sharing so far.

That's why I'm making this very first poll post. I want to hear what you think. @weaselnerd, @lastofautumn, and @imaginarytoon1, you're also invited and your opinions matter too 😁!

And @marinerainbow and @slashingdisneypasta A.K.A. @wicked1will0sparkles, if you're seeing this post, I'm sorry. The weasels got me 😔

Now, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to go run and hide now. 🏃‍♀️

[hoeforhao]

Rusted Away 🍂|| Kwon Soonyoung ||

🍁pairing : ex!soonyoung × fem!reader

🍁genre : exes to lovers, bakery shop au sort of, mostly angst, fluff towards the end, mild smut, mutual pining, slow build up.

🍁warnings : none for this part. will be added in the later ones!

🍁summary : you and soonyoung broke up almost two years ago because according to him sharing a common interest point with each other, to talk about at the end of the day was a necessity. How will things turn out for the spiriting away lovers now that their friend group has assigned them both the common job of baking muffins for the fall party!

🍁part : 1/3 [for fall-ing for u collab ]

🍁word count : 0.8k

🍁author's note : this is my first ever collab and am so excited!!! also i'm posting a full blown fic after a long break for writer's block and i don't know how this has turned out. please let me know your views ♡ last but not the least thanks to @playmetheclassics for beta-reading this for me! ily <3

"Y'all can't be serious right now" you sounded quite disgruntled with your two minions on other side of the conference call, plotting against your sanity, for universe knows how long!

"Well I mean you two quite literally run the two most loved bakeries of our neighborhood. It shouldn't come as a surprise that we will team you up." Steph's plain and unbothered voice echoes right into your ears, specially the 'team up part'.

"Yeah it shouldn't have been surprising or disappointing if it was someone else Steph. But it's with him. With Soonyoung. The Kwon Soonyoung. Out of all the people out there, you two would at least know best about what he did" your voice started shaking with each word it got closer to mentioning his name ; again ; after 2 whole years.

You still were in disbelief that your two most close ones did this to you. After being with you all those nights you cried till you couldn't breathe anymore, holding your trembling body whenever you had the worst breakdowns to seeing you slowly heal from the scabs and stabs left by him, Steph and Niall were with you the whole time. Them now setting you up with him again, for a silly little fall party felt nothing but seriously insensitive to you.

Pressing down on the side button of the phone, you were now sitting on the bed, all covered up in your comfort blankie with a blacked out screen laying on your lap ; the glass of which reflected the browns and caramels of the backdrop outside the misty windows, onto your own ones.

Fall was finally around the corner, which meant that the roads will now be iced all rusty, drizzled with honey leaves and sprinkled on by dark wine twigs. Fall also meant one more thing...the one very thing that was like the warm covering on your wounds, that meant the most to you above anyone and everyone. Your sycamore tree!

Pushing away the fluffy blanket on your legs, you quickly pulled down your pyajams to get dressed into something more appropriate for the weather outside, something more comfy and something that made you feel like you're back home once again a.k.a soonyoung's brown hoodie. While havocing through your entire wardrobe to take out all his belongings and leave back not a single essence of him around you and on you, the idiot missed out on that one brown hoodie he owned...rather the one he loved the most and the one he gave to you on your first date - under the sycamore tree.

You knew that the only thing, the only friend that could soothe the burns on you right now was that tree, the one true buddy that has stood by your side through the pains even your best friends couldn't heal, the big brother that shadowed you whenever the world's bright rays tried to scorch on your skin. So without wasting any more seconds, you hurriedly ran down the stairs leading to the hall. Upon reaching the main door of your small apartment you twist on the knob to pull open the door, and quite instantly a gust of cinnamon flavored wind engulfs all your senses.

Fall was truly your soul season. No matter how much turmoil your life was going through, or how much clogged your brain was to come up with new ideas, a walk down the leaf stained path of your favorite garden while the season's cool breeze flowed through your hair, definitely helped the caged Robin in you fly free finally.

Since the day Soonyoung broke your heart and left you all alone amidst the rusted haze, you've been visiting this sycamore tree every fall, to reminisce all the warm happy moment spent under its shade. To feel the same happiness as the day you planted the tree with your best friend, when you both were only 8 year olds, with the person who held you like the softest cotton bud dispersing away in the breeze all these years only to tear you off the stem at one go now.

You were consumed in your thoughts about how crazy love was, about how the twigs that have seen two people be in love for so long, hang around it for years, the branches that have been painted with countless giggles and soft kisses, now had its leaves shedding themselves from the agony of seeing its spiriting away child standing beneath it to shelter herself from the bleeding marks left by its other child.

Just as you were about to sit down on the dewy grass covering the entire ground below, your phone notification sound blew up suddenly. Drawing the device out from your tote, your eyes fell onto the lit up screen to see the name you've been running away from all this time.

[tchiaseeds]

waves

by tchiaseeds, 2021 (a.k.a. tiara dias)

“Remember when we were younger?” I asked my companion.

“Definitely. We were happier, freer.” They responded wistfully.

We sat in peaceful silence as we looked out at the sea in front of us. The wind could’ve been softer, but we didn’t really mind. The scent of the salty sea water was relaxing. 

I took a deep, hearty breath of fresh sea air. I exhaled letting all my woes and worries leave my body. 

“Wouldn’t you want to be a wave?” They asked. 

“Ha! Are you quoting that book?” 

“Sort of but for real. Wouldn’t you want to be a wave?”

“To not feel the pain.” I teased quoting the iconic phrase from the great Angolan book ‘Quem Me Dera Ser Onda’. 

They looked at me unamused as I laughed.

“Sorry, sorry.” I said assuming a more serious demeanor. “Honestly, yeah. I think I would. To be free and unworried. To let life take me where it pleases. I would like to be a wave.”

“Yeah. To just come and go as I please would be satisfying.”

“Why do you ask?” I turn to them.

“Just a random question that I thought of.” They shrug off. “Sometimes, at some point, you wonder if the life you’re living is truly the life meant for you or if it’s just the life fate gave you and you’re forced to live it.” 

“You’ve been having deep thoughts lately.” I tease, to which they snort.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well,” I begin with a sigh, “I believe that the life fate gives you is the life you’re meant to live. You can change your fate and your life if you want to.”

“Can we though?”

“Of course. It’s your life. No one's gonna live it for you so might as well live it the way you truly want. It’s true that there are some aspects that we can’t control but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the best of what’s given to us.” 

My companion’s expression changes to one of reflection. Curiosity grows in me as I wonder what could be running through their mind.

“Well in that case, you wouldn’t really want to be a wave then, would you?” He says.

“I would, actually. Cause being a wave is still a lot more freeing.”

“But you said that you can change your life. Why not change it and make it easier?” They counter.

“Life isn’t made to be easy and though I can change my life to what I want it to be, there are still going to be things in my way to make it difficult. Waves don’t have anything in their way to stop them from moving forward and whenever they want, they can move backwards. They don’t depend on anything but the water and there is an abundance of it, so there’s nothing to stop them. Whereas, we have one hundred and one obstacles to overcome in our average lifetime. The first might be harder than the next and the next might be easier than the first… it's unpredictable.”

“Life isn’t made to be easy,” They echo, “Why though? What’s the point of living a life that is not only not what you want but is also difficult?” 

“I don’t know,” I chuckle “I don’t have the answers to those sorts of questions, and I doubt you’ll ever find someone who does.”

“Well, you seemed to have some answers.”

“No. I don’t have answers, at all. I just have…ideas of what those answers could be. When it comes to these sorts of things, there is no right or wrong answer. Just ideas.”

“Oh. Then I have the idea that there is no point in living a difficult life.” I look at my companion taken aback by their words. The words that confirmed an underlying and subconscious suspicion.

“What’s the point of living an easy life?” I ask, my demeanor is a lot more serious. 

“I don’t know, it just seems more appealing to me.” 

“Why?”

They grow silent before looking back at me with tears glossing over their eyes. “I’m tired of a hard life. Of the stress and pain that comes with it.” 

“I know that the pain of a difficult life is not something anyone wants to feel but I believe that it’s part of what makes us human… what makes us real. It’s all the hardships and triumphs we go through in life that makes us, us. There is no point in living an easy life because that’s not living. Not for me at least.”

“How much hardship can one take before they break?”

“I don’t know how to answer that question for you, but for me, as much as life gives me, I guess, because I like to believe that there is always hope for a better tomorrow even if it’s five, ten years from now. I have the patience to wait that long.” I look ahead at the sea that seems to be a bit more agitated than when we first arrived. 

“I don’t think I have the patience to wait that long, nor the strength to deal with everything alone.” Their voice cracks a bit at the end of the statement.  

Wrapping an arm around them, I look at them with a soft sympathetic smile as tears slowly roll down their face. With my free hand, I wipe the tears away assessing the pain in their eyes. 

“Who said you had to deal with it alone?”

A pause…

“Now that I think about it, waves aren’t alone. They never are. They don’t move alone either. The wind helps them. So no, you don’t have to deal with whatever you’re dealing with alone. If you want to be a wave, I can be your wind. Just ask me when you need me to be.” 

Warmth spreads through me as a small and tearful smile splits on my dear friend’s features. The agony in their eyes isn’t completely gone, which is expected but the sight of a smile is enough.

Sniffling, they wipe away their tears and lean closer into my embrace. We both turn back to the sea, the calming and peaceful sea. The setting sun reflects beautifully upon it. 

We sit in a comfortable silence as we look on to the horizon. My heart, still heavy from my friend’s words but I don’t let it distract me from the beautiful moment.

Oh, to come and go like the waves

Oh, to rise and fall like the tides

The freedom of the masses of water 

 unparalleled 

It is enviable

desirable

preferable.

Oh to be a wave,

to feel all yet nothing.

Do not repost, alter, or claim this work as your own without express permission.

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 3)

Trying my absolute damnedest to finish this one and part four sooner now that I've finally covered the Pearson backstory. *Ehem* Hello again! I hope you're ready for more yelling about a certain spiky-haired Blackbird aficionado, because I sure am.

To get some things out of the way first, though, here come the usual disclaimers:

This is part three of a series of posts about hpw Crow's character was handled during 5Ds' whole run. You can find part one here and part two here. Reading them technically isn't required, but things sure will make a whole lot more sense if you do. (Bring snacks, they're long.)

This post isn't meant as a Crow hate post, nor is it meant to convince people who didn't vibe with his character to change their mind. This is my very long winded-attempt to analyse the writing decisions surrounding his character as best I can, without too much bias. That said, full disclosure, I do personally like Crow, so there's a good chance that will shine through whether I want it to or not. But also, I'm trying to have fun here, so please cut me some slack.

In case you haven't read my previous Crow posts (no shade there) and/or still believe the many, many production rumours that have been haunting the 5Ds fandom since the show's original run, please let me burst your bubble(s) with some insanely comprehensive research by someone over on Reddit (thanks again to @mbg159, who's also here on tumblr): No, Crow was not meant to be a dark signer, or the final boss of season 1, and his spike in screentime has nothing to do with his cards. And also, No, Aki didn't get less presence in the narrative because her VA got pregnant. What if you don't have the time to read either of those long posts? In that case, please take away this simple, very easy rebuttal of why the above theories are bullshit: Their would-be "key points" don't line up with the 5Ds production timeline. At all. Not even vaguely. So please, ditch them, let them die, seeing them still talked about makes me feel like I'm gonna break out in hives. And for the love of god, don't use this post or in fact anything else I post to pit Aki and Crow against each other. Both characters have their strengths and their reasons to love them. I am not the least bit interested in starting any character discourse. So please, spare my sanity. Ok? Thank you.

And now, we can get to the good part at last. In my previous post in this series, I stopped my analysis at episode 95, a.k.a. part two of the Pearson backstory. In this post, I will thus be picking up right after, at the very start of the WRGP—with the Team Unicorn match. The goal for this post is to analyse Crow's part in this particular arc, then provide some food for thought/ideas on how things that rubbed some people the wrong way could have been improved.

More below the readmore, and I give you not just my usual warning, but an extra warning, too: The universe will not let me write short things, so tread with caution, stay hydrated, and expect a veritable dissertation below, because this post feels long even to me, who has long since lost her sense of length when it comes to text. (But I'm well aware this is the result of me refusing to split the WRGP part into two separate posts, so I take full responsibility for that.)

Since we left off right after I chewed through all the issues with Crow's rather belated backstory and especially Black-Winged Dragon last time, we jump right into the thick of things now, with episodes 96 and 97, which serve as the preamble to Team 5Ds' first WRGP duel against Team Unicorn. Crow only gets two major things to do during this short stretch of episodes, the first being that he's Team Unicorn's gateway into roping Yusei into a duel during practice, which helps them set up a ruse that baits the 5Ds gang into sending Jack as their first wheeler because they think Jack's deck is best suited to countering Andre's—which, as it later turns out, it is not.

(Arguably the screenshot where Crow gives off the strongest Youngest Sibling Vibes during the entire show. Look at him, all chastised.)

Crow's second role is an odd one that I argue only he out of the main three guys could fulfill at this point: He's the one to get injured right before the Team Unicorn match, rendering him unable to compete, which leads to Aki offering to take his place for that particular match.

(Pictured: Bird Boy regretting all his life choices up until that point simultaneously.)

Here's the first moment I have to talk about in greater detail. See, the thing is, I don't know what the fandom consensus on Crow getting injured here is, but I argue that this moment was a (rare) strategic decision made by the writers at this point. Crow's injury accomplished several things: 1. It sets up the mystery of why his back wheel locked up out of nowhere, which is later paid off through Team Catastrophe's shenanigans. 2. It organically allows Aki to take his spot without introducing any argument about which of them is "worthier" of having that third spot. 3. Through this, it also allows him to actually bounce off Aki for once (a point I will come back to below, during the Team Catastrophe section). And 4. It allows the show to (TECHNICALLY) pay off the setup they did in letting Aki get her turbo duelling license and train with the boys. (Generally, Crow's and Aki's character writing intersects a bit during the pre-Diablo incident WRGP section, something I'll touch on below.)

Moreover, I think this is also the only match where they could have done something like this, and the reason for it is very simple: Team Unicorn are one-off opponents whose presence in the narrative is only relevant as far as it concerns the WRGP, and they are also one of the first teams the 5Ds gang faces. If we think about the opponents Team 5Ds has after this, it becomes very obvious why Crow could only be injured during this duel: If they had tried pulling this stunt later, it would have forced the writers to pull Aki centre stage during a much more plot-relevant duel than this one (which they were apparently allergic to, but let's not go there), not to speak of the fact that it would have forced them to sideline someone they were definitely trying to sell as the third portion of their protagonist trifecta, which would have probably been awkward. (If not for the fact that they literally did this to Crow later in the show, but I'll get there. Yes, I know there's a lot already that I'll still be "getting to".)

The thing is, whether or not it feels like an awkward writing choice to make so early in the big tournament of this arc (you be the judge of that), Crow's injury finally allows him to have a few interesting character moments for once. For one, there is his immediate disappointment about being forced to stay on the sidelines. Aside from the fact that this is a human and relatable reaction to his injury, it stings even more for the character than it does for us as the audience, because Crow got a moment where the Satellite orphans he previously took care of cheer him on for the tournament literally within the same two Team Unicorn preamble episodes.

(Say what you will, this is just stupid cute.)

So when Aki eventually offers to take his place during the match, he's understandably apprehensive—and again, this is human. It may seem mean in the moment, but from a character writing standpoint, it's a natural response. Plus, it's certainly more interesting to watch the group have a bit of conflict among themselves, rather than everyone immediately jumping straight to acceptance. It introduces tension, and, for however brief a moment, raises the question of whether Crow might refuse to let Aki take his spot. This is also the point where Aki and Crow's character writing officially intertwines, at least for the stretch of episodes between the Team Unicorn duel and the Team Catastrophe duel. And you know what? Say what you will, but I think it does a world of good for both of them. The 5Ds cast, as lovely as it is, doesn't get a lot of room to bounce off one another where it concerns personal matters anymore, once the WRGP starts. Arguably, they get little time to bounce off one another outside of plot-related discussions at all once this portion of the show comes around. The characters are treated as "fully developed", and thus, the writing largely doesn't take the time to show us how the group naturally interacts with one another anymore, especially not with how many side characters (chiefly Bruno and Sherry), antagonists, and duels the show now has to juggle. So Aki and Crow getting even a smidgen of personal conflict here is honestly a breath of fresh air. The interaction kicked off by Crow's injury isn't completely plot-irrelevant, like most character interactions during the pre-WRGP were, but it's not something that feels like it's only there to explain the machinations of the antagonists to the audience, either.

Let me go through this in a little more detail to illustrate my point.

So, episode 97. Crow storms off after Aki offers to take his spot, while Aki heads out to prepare her runner, intent on helping her team. The personal motivations here are already very nice and reflective of these characters as we've gotten to know them up until this point: Crow's angry and disappointed (mostly at himself, which is noteworthy!) because he can't compete. And specifically, he's angry because not being able to compete in the first match means he can't show the kids his duelling like he wanted to. Then there's Aki, whose offer to take Crow's place is every bit as much of a strategic suggestion as it is a bid for acceptance from her. Acceptance, which is the thing she's been all about ever since she was introduced, basically. So she pleads with her friends to accept her, see her as an equal, and allow her to duel for the team, which they do. And Crow initially throws a fit, but then...

(Listen. You have no idea how much Crow and Aki getting to actually be friends means to me.)

He comes around to the idea and not only gives Aki his express permission to take his spot, he even coaches her a bit right before the match. Moreover, as his text states above, he literally entrusts her with the kids' hopes, as well as his own. This quickly brings both of them full circle: Crow, who already has a theme of legacy attached to him, passes the torch to Aki for this match, and in so doing, offers her the acceptance she asked her teammates for. (Frankly, stuff like this makes me wonder why on earth people were so eager to pit these two against each other, when their shared moments are actually some of the best-written during the often rocky WRGP arc.) So, though this injury pulls Crow out of the duel, it, funnily enough, ties him better into the story and to the other characters.

From there, we then dive into the Team Unicorn match proper. And well, being injured as he is, Crow doesn't exactly get a whole lot to do there. However, since we're in the portion where his and Aki's writing overlaps a bit, I do need to go on a quick tangent about what Aki's portion of this duel means for Crow.

(Sigh. Okay, buckle up for a quick and rough detour.)

First, something I need to get out of the way and off my chest: I have made no secret out of the fact that I hate Aki's portion of this duel, save for the moment where she summons Stardust. Hell, this duel segment is pretty much universally hated by anone who has even a smidgen of sympathy for Aki. It's regarded by many as the very moment the writers axed Aki's character, and for good reason: After all the buildup surrounding her getting her turbo duelling license, the supposed "payoff" of it all is that she gets to duel against Andre for a depressing four turns before being defeated immediately, which leads into Yusei's frustrating portion of this duel, which, to my knowledge, isn't regarded any more kindly by fans than Aki's segment. It's a massive let-down, simply put. But the thing is, it's not just a let-down for Aki. After all, the brief character conflict she had with Crow about taking his spot here can and should be regarded as part of the setup for this moment, and as such, it can also be considered to be wasted the second Aki leaves the track after barely making an impact whatsoever.

However, I do need to mention that I have a theory on why this segment was handled the way it was, mostly because I feel like Crow's later interaction with Aki, shortly after she's out of the duel, underlines it (mind that this is just my personal theory, though, after having watched the show perhaps more times than can be considered sane): I think there is a cultural aspect to this duel. See, the word ganbaru, which anime subtitles often like to translate with "do your best" or something along the lines, has a greater significance than the translation implies. Though it's not inaccurate per se, there's more than just the idea of doing your best behind ganbaru, because it's something like an umbrella term not just for doing your best and succeeding, it's also the idea that you have to keep trying, even if you don't succeed. It's related to tenacity, to persistence, even in the face of terrible odds. And make no mistake, I don't mean the Japanese equivalent of "if at first you don't succeed, try again" here. I genuinely do mean "you have to keep trying, even if you fail". There is no guarantee of success here. And for that reason, the idea behind ganbaru is also that it's not simply the success that has value, but the effort made in the attempt to attain it, regardless of the result. (Side note: I tried to scrounge up a resource I could link to that nicely explains this concept, but unfortunately, all the promising articles were paywalled and the ones I learned it from require institutional access to lecture materials.) And this is where I will posit the tentative theory that this is exactly what the 5Ds writers were going for with Aki's segment of the duel—it was very much meant to be the payoff for her turbo duelling license setup and her plea to take Crow's place, but it wasn't so much her success that was meant to be valued, as the effort she (and by extension, Crow) made for and during this duel. And this is where Crow's little pep-talk with Aki after she's out of the duel comes in, because it feels like it supports exactly this interpretation:

(This is essentially the whole sequence. Note how Crow, despite so fervently entrusting Aki with his and his kids' hopes prior, doesn't admonish her for making a bad showing in the slightest.)

I don't think it gets any clearer than it is here. During this sequence, Aki is painfully aware of how poor her performance was against Andre, especially after she was so insistent on duelling at first, and despite having been entrusted with Stardust by Yusei, to boot. Yet, Crow doesn't have a single word of criticism to offer her. Instead, he even tells her she did well and that nobody's perfect. It very much reads as valuing Aki's effort over the result she achieved to me, and thus seems perfectly in line with the idea behind ganbaru.

However, if we assume I'm correct about the intentions behind this writing choice, we come back to why Aki's segment of the duel is so hotly debated and why it may have arguably been a disservice not just to her, but to Crow, too, character-wise. Because the majority of non-Japanese watchers of the show culturally don't have a 1:1 applicable concept like ganbaru, this writing choice was more likely to fall flat for them, because to someone who wasn't raised to understand the idea behind it, Aki's portion of the duel doesn't register as a payoff; it registers as a massive disappointment, because it feels like the writers, who had so much setup already done for her, let her fail on purpose, just to later let Yusei attain his arguably dumbest victory of the entire show. Thus, they also essentially waste the conflict she had with Crow about whether she would be allowed to take his spot in the first place, because with how little she achieved during the duel, she may as well not have gotten on the track. (Figuratively speaking. Please Do Not take this to mean I would prefer a version where Aki hadn't duelled at all. That would be worse. It would be infinitely worse.)

(Also, side note: If this post reaches anyone who's actually Japanese and still remembers this duel, I would genuinely love your input on whether my interpretation is feasible or just wishful thinking. Did you interpret Aki's part of the duel the way I did here? Or did it fall flat for you, too? If what I'm saying here feels like an absolute reach, please tell me. I'm honestly just trying my best to make things make sense here and remembered this concept from some classes I took in Japanese studies at uni.)

With all that in mind, it doesn't come as a surprise that some people were just as frustrated with the way Crow was barred from duelling here as they were with Aki's segment or Yusei's later victory. But it is what it is—the Unicorn duel concludes the way we all know it to, and with that, the show begins setting up the following duel with Team Catastrophe.

The only other, non duel-related, noteworthy thing that happens between the Unicorn and the Catastrophe match is a brief appearance at the Poppo Time by Sherry, who admonishes the signers for celebrating their victory early and warns them about Iliaster. Why do I bring this up? Because it's one of less than five times that Crow is in the same room with Sherry. Remember, Sherry. The girl he later, during the finale, talks out of working for the big bad evil guy because he suddenly seems to have such a deep understanding of her motivations and character that he can accurately deduce what argument will make her understand that working with Z-ONE won't give her what she's looking for. So, does Crow get a meaningful interaction with her during this scene, then? Nope. Not even in the slightest. Crow says exactly one sentence that is aimed at Sherry during her appearance, and that sentence is this:

(What a meaningful conversation!)

And yes, I will come back to Crow and Sherry's dynamic in particular. But we'll save that for the Ark Cradle arc post. For now, just keep it in mind as we move along to the other WRGP duels.

So. Team Catasrophe.

During the duel against this team, which was previously only hinted at ominously, the writing for Crow and Aki overlaps again, and this starts with the writers essentially doing a complete switcheroo of what came before: Instead of Crow getting injured and being unable to compete, it's Aki who crashes, ends up in the hospital, and is thus forced to give up her spot during the duel. (This also goes hand in hand with her suddenly losing her powers, which we are given absolutely zero explanation for, but let's not talk about that clusterfuck here. If you're interested in my opinions about that particular trainwreck, I have a rant for you.) Additionally, it's during this stretch of episodes (103-105, which is a whopping four episodes less than Team Unicorn got) that we find out that not only Aki's crash, but Crow's previous one, too, were both sabotage, caused by the rather unscrupulous Team Catastrophe by way of a special card that can cause real damage even when there is no psychic duellist present. (A card we also find out was given to them by Placido/Primo, but this is irrelevant for both Aki and Crow.) Crow's reaction to this piece of information, particularly once Aki gets injured due to the same thing, is where things get interesting for him again, because he gets pissed, to say the least.

(A moment I imagine firebirdshippers must have been positively delighted about.)

Here, I have to reiterate an earlier point: Think what you will of Team Catastrophe, of Aki's crash, and of the sequence where her powers suddenly don't work, but this moment here, where Crow gets angry on her behalf and swears to duel Team Catastrophe into submission—not because he wants his kids to cheer for him, or because he wants to prove himself, but as revenge for his friend—is one of sadly only a handful of moments the writers use to show the strengthened relationships between the individual members of Team 5Ds after the dark signers arc. It's one of the precious few scenes that actually shows, rather than tells us or lets us search for scraps in the subtext, that the signers, and the members of Team 5Ds as a whole, care for each other outside of revolving around Yusei like planets around the sun. Even if it's laughably small, it's at least a hint that there are individual friendships between the other signers, too, that they all stick around one another for reasons beyond gravitating towards Yusei for one reason or another. And for that alone, I'm grateful that they put this here, even if Team Catastrophe was otherwise so ridiculous and made such a bad showing at their actual match that they could barely be taken seriously as antagonists at all.

Speaking of which. The actual meat of the matter. The Team Catastrophe match. What does Crow do here? Well, he duels! Even though he wasn't supposed to, for injury-related reasons. What both his participation as well as the actual duel accomplish, though, are that they not only showcase previously established character traits of Crow's again, but they also make a (possibly unintended) callback to a previous, major duel Crow took part in: His dark signer duel against Bommer/Greiger. Where and how? Let's see.

Firstly, Crow's participation. The reactions of the other characters to this make it very evident that Team 5Ds did not plan for this, with Yusei and Jack even going as far as to say they "had no choice" but to let Crow duel, because he insisted. This is perfectly in line with the stubbornness we already know from him at this point—a stubbornness that was also a major reason for why he took Bommer on and later continued his duel with said man, despite Yusei showing up and telling him he shouldn't be duelling a dark signer.

Secondly, there's the manoeuvring thing, and here's where I can call attention to a fun tidbit: The WRGP isn't what introduces the concept of manual mode during turbo duels to the audience. It's Crow. During his duel with Bommer. Being crafty and a bit shrewd as he is, Crow, during said duel in the DS arc, purposefully switches to manual mode when he duels Bommer, because he figures that attacks that can deal real damage can probably be evaded if you actually have control over your runner and aren't stuck in autopilot.

(Don't believe me? Here it is. And frankly, it is somewhat hilarious, yet also very fitting that Crow is the only one who thinks to do this during a duel with a dark signer.)

The reason this particular bit is relevant during the Team Catastrophe duel is because Crow essentially repeats this trick here. Of course, it's a bit less impactful now, given that manual mode is standard for WRGP duels, but still: Due to Hook, the Hidden Knight, Crow is forced to pay attention to the track and manually evade the monster's attempts to make his back wheel lock up during the duel, mirroring how he thought to manually evade Bommer's attacks during the DS arc.

Thirdly, there's the revenge angle, and this one is a particularly juicy callback. Remember, Crow's major reason for taking on Team Catastrophe, despite being injured, is that he wants to get revenge for Aki. This directly parallels how his major reason for duelling Bommer during the DS arc was that he wanted revenge for his kids, whom he believed to be dead at that point in time. (It also, interestingly, establishes a bit of a connection to his deck, which boasts a fair amount of revenge effects, but I'll not get into that here, seeing as I've talked about Crow's cards a bit before.)

Keep in mind, despite all the things listed above that this duel accomplishes, it's also by far the shortest WRGP duel. It lasts a whole six turns, total, which is ludicrous compared to the likes of 27-turn Team Unicorn, 26-turn Team Taiyou, or 25-turn Team Ragnarok. And I don't think it's controversial to say that the Catastrophe guys are probably the most forgettable WRGP Team, too. Yet, somehow, despite all its shortcomings in terms of memorable antagonists and plot relevance, this is one of the best duels of the WRGP where Crow's character writing is concerned. Now, I'll be perfectly candid: Coming into this post, I did not expect the Team Catastrophe duel, of all things, to end up being as good at actually showcasing Crow's character and his ties to other characters (who aren't Yusei) as it was, but here we are. And we had better hold on to the good the Team Unicorn - Catastrophe segment did for Crow, because the next thing that's coming up is a harsh break from the WRGP, starting with the sudden appearance of Placido's home-engineered army of killer duel robots. And what does Crow get to do during this part?

Uh. Well.

(Pictured: Bird Boy being demoted to benchwarmer while the city's being ransacked by murder duel robots.)

Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, is what.

During the duel robot invasion, we only ever flash back to Crow to ascertain that he is, in fact, useless during this part of the show, something he shares in common with Ruka, Rua, and Aki here, because all of them get pretty much nothing to do while Yusei finally gets the hang of accel synchro. Granted, Aki gets to save a little girl at the hospital, but in comparison to Yusei's lengthy, plot-heavy duel with Placido, this feels like a consolation prize. And for once, Jack is only marginally better off, too, because sure, he gets to beat up a couple of robots, but that's it, really.

Where Crow is concerned, his plot relevance doesn't actually resume once the Placido duel finishes, though. (And neither does Rua's, Ruka's, or Aki's, while we're at it.) Because wouldn't you know it, the next big thing directly after the duel robot invasion are the Red Nova episodes, where three out of five signers (Crow, Aki, and Ruka, unsurprisingly) are removed from the screen almost in their entirety again while Jack gets his much-needed dragon upgrade so he can keep up with Yusei, in order to uphold his status as a classic, almost-evenly-matched yugioh rival.

Speaking of upgrades and dragons, let's make a quick detour while our protag and rival duo take their express vacation to the Nazca plains. It is, of course, no secret that no signer outside of Yusei and Jack ever got a dragon upgrade within the anime. (No, I'm not forgetting about Life Stream Dragon. But that one, unlike Shooting Star Dragon and Red Nova Dragon, was a.) teased all the way back in the DS arc and b.) didn't have a unique summoning method or some other gimmick that made it an "elevated" synchro. So I'm discounting Life Stream as a "proper" dragon upgrade on purpose.) Is this the point where I start arguing that Crow should have gotten one, then? Well, not quite. Not with the writing the show canonically gave us, at least—after all, with how late Black-Winged Dragon was introduced, it would have been bonkers to upgrade him here already, if even at all. However, I do argue that the way the show hands only Yusei and Jack upgrades seems a bit... off. Now, I know why only those two get upgrades, or at least I think I do. After all, they're the central protag/rival duo, and within the framework of the character archetypes the larger yugioh canon has created for itself, this would have always made them the first, if not the only candidates for dragon upgrades. What feels a bit off to me, though, is that specifically the 5Ds cast feels like it... chafes a bit against those character archetypes, for lack of a better word. The problem is this: The signers, as far as the first two arcs are concerned, are sold to us as equals who all have very powerful ace monsters. Yes, Jack and Yusei are still undoubtedly the best duellists among them, but not on account of having uber-powerful extra special monsters that were acquired through supernatural means that are categorically inaccessible to the other signers. However, with the appearance of Shooting Star and Red Nova, this changes. While Yusei and Jack were previously and would have always been the two guys who had a Special dynamic with a capital "S" on account of their character archetypes, their acquisition of the dragon upgrades—and even more so, the lack of upgrades their fellow signers receive—now decidedly puts them in a different power bracket and skews the balance between previous, supposedly "equal" characters. (Which, unfortunately, is yet another thing that makes everyone else easier to sideline.)

Why do I bring all this up in a post dedicated to Crow? Because this new power imbalance arguably impacts him more than the other signers—because he's Team 5Ds' second wheeler and doesn't miss another WRGP match from here on out. Thus, that power imbalance is felt in the upcoming duels, where Yusei and Jack bust out Shooting Star and Red Nova like it's nothing, while Crow is left manoeuvring with the somewhat underpowered Black-Winged Dragon and whatever else he can come up with. This is also why I claimed that the show did sideline Crow in some aspects further above. Because while some parts of his writing go to great pains to establish him as part of a protagonist trifecta that is now supposed to take centre stage before the other characters, he also permanently lives in Jack and Yusei's shadow, ultimately barred not just from reaching equal status as a signer (due to his late and rocky introduction and dragon acquisition), but also barred from becoming the equal of his foster brothers as a duellist. Frankly, I'm surprised the show didn't make this a plot point, because the first thing my mind jumps to when I think about this is whether Crow felt left behind after his brothers acquired such immensely powerful, special cards. But more on my personal writing ideas later. For now, let's just put a pin in the power-imbalance thing.

So, when is Crow back on screen in any meaningful role, then? (Note that I mean this as literally as possible. As per my discussion about "screentime" and my gripes about it in part two, I gloss over the parts where Crow is on screen, but could be traded for any other signer or even a lamppost without affecting the scene at all.)

Well, the next thing Crow gets to do isn't exactly glorious, but it sure is funny.

(I want you all to remember that he has to wear this costume and play this part in Team 5Ds' absurd plan to capture Yaeger/Lazar because he lost at rock-paper-scissors. This will never not be funny to me.)

Ignoring the hilarious outfit and Crow playing the bait at a fabricated cup ramen promo event meant to lure Yaeger in, bird boy does actually get something that's not just for funsies to do during the two episodes where Team 5Ds is trying to get more information about Iliaster: He gets to have a duel revanche against Yaeger, who, if we remember the DS arc, ditched him the last time they squared off. Much like the Team Catastrophe duel, this one, too, calls back to previous duels Crow has had: For one, it's the obvious conclusion to his unfinished, first duel with Yaeger. And for two, Crow repeats a "trick" (for lack of a better term) here that is also unique to him: losing on purpose, which we remember from his duel with Lyndon.

(Identical-looking clown family jumpscare be upon ye.)

And again, much like getting injured for the Team Unicorn duel, I argue that this story beat here is something that could also only have been accomplished with Crow. Because he's the only one who has previously duelled Yaeger, firstly, because not wanting to make a child cry by beating their dad in a duel makes sense for him as a character due to him being a family-oriented person who loves children, secondly, and because losing on purpose in this scenario is a tactic that would seem out of character from anyone else, thirdly. (We recall, the only times Jack and Yusei, respectively, ever consider/offer to lose on purpose is when the lives of people close to them are on the line, in the shape of Carly/Rally. As for the others, aside from not being present, Aki, Rua, and Ruka are so heavily sidelined at this point that they would have never been an option for this. And if his writing is anything to go by, Bruno is mostly purposefully forbidden from accomplishing Plot Things, especially through duels, while he's Bruno.) But hey, due to the way this episode is set up, losing on purpose works out for Crow, because it convinces Yaeger to stop hiding and actually share his knowledge about Iliaster. This, by the way, is the second scene where Crow gets to be in a room with Sherry for a longer stretch of time. And look, him joking that Sherry might kill Yaeger if he doesn't spill the beans about Iliaster soon is fun and all, but in light of the Ark Cradle duel later, I have to point out that he, again, doesn't get to have so much as a shred of a meaningful conversation with Sherry here. Again. But moving on. The scene with Yaeger at the Poppo Time then leads us first to the small sequence in the arcade where the gang has to win a simulated duel to get Yaeger's encoded intel, then to episode 116—the Moment Express episode, where, due to this being a Yusei, Sherry, and Bruno-focussed episode, Crow gets nothing to do again. (And also doesn't get to interact with Sherry again.)

Congrats! We've survived the WRGP break. This leaves us with three more WRGP duels before shit hits the fan and the Ark Cradle arc commences. And full disclosure, I'll be doing a bit of a quick-fire round of those three duels. Why? Because despite them all having their merits in their own rights (they're the better liked duels of the WRGP for a reason), there honestly isn't that much focus on Crow during them. He duels, yes, and I've seen people point this out over and over again as the supposed smoking gun that shows how Crow had so much more relevance and screentime than Aki and yadda, yadda. We've been there. And it's not that I can't see where this argument is coming from—I'll be the first to tell you that it's a travesty that Aki never got to duel in the WRGP again outside of the Unicorn match. But I want to use the final three matches to dig into how the way these matches—and especially the opponents to go with them—were set up made it nearly impossible for Aki to replace Crow again during any point of the WRGP finals.

First, episode 118. This is the only preamble episode we get for the first two WRGP finals teams, and here, our group is split in two: Yusei, Bruno, and Rua introduce us to Team Taiyou, while Jack, Aki, and Crow introduce us to Team Ragnarok. There isn't much to say here, because the only thing this episode does for Crow is a shallow repeat of what the Team Catastrophe duel did: By putting him in a group with Aki and Jack, and letting them decide among themselves, independently, to check out the exhibition match, it implies that he voluntarily spends time with signers who aren't Yusei. Thumbs up. Gold star. You made an effort (I guess). Then, the real fun starts.

Round one. Team Taiyou.

(Pictured: The sweetest country bumpkins to ever grace this earth. Yes, I'm biased.)

So here's the deal with Team Taiyou, from a narrative standpoint, as best as I can grasp it: They are a callback to Team 5Ds' roots. Specifically, to the boys' Satellite roots. The Taiyou boys come from humble origins, have only one, mostly home-engineered duel runner, and play using old cards that are widely considered shitty, as 5Ds canon tells us. They are essentially the non-signer, countryside version of what Jack, Crow, and Yusei once were, which is why this is the first duel where the duellist constellation on Team 5Ds' end couldn't possibly have been altered. Team Taiyou is there to remind us where our boys started, so it has to be our boys duelling them. This also goes for Crow, even though this duel otherwise doesn't accomplish much for him, character-wise. Instead, it's more of a narrative wink at the audience, as well as providing a breather between otherwise extremely tense, plot-focussed duels. But yeah, Crow's part in this match isn't much to write home about; he doesn't get any verbal interactions that are very meaningful to his character, can't get so much as a scratch in on Zushin, even with Black-Winged Dragon, and is defeated so Yusei can take out the legendary giant.

Round two. Team Ragnarok.

(Behold the pizzazz of at least two contenders for Haircuts With The Most Spikes in the show.)

Though this duel is framed as being even more so aimed towards bolstering Jack's character writing than Crow's, given the inclusion of Dragan's personal history with Jack, Team Ragnarok gets significantly more interesting for Crow again than Team Taiyou did. This is, of course, mainly because of Brave/Broder. Where Team Taiyou were a callback to the 5Ds boys' roots, Team Ragnarok are their narrative foils. Dragan is the duellist who lost his pride to contrast Jack, who's brimming with pride at all times, and Harald/Halldor is essentially the rich, "destiny isn't bullshit, actually" version of Yusei. Meanwhile, unlike the first two, who highlight our 5Ds boys' characteristics by contrasting them, Brave acts as Crow's mirror. Through Team Ragnarok's flashbacks, we see that he gets almost exactly the same, lovable-rogue-type backstory that Crow did during the DS arc, just in a different setting. The only, major difference between them is that while Crow is more down-to-earth, Brave likes to be pretty flashy.

(Keep in mind that he's doing this on a runner. Is there such a thing as courses on how to do acrobatics on your runner? Like there are courses for vaulting on horseback irl? I'm overthinking this again.)

Unsurprisingly, the duel thus ends up addressing the similarities between Crow and Brave, mostly through two things: One, the duel essentially becomes a contest of who can out-trickster who, culminating in the famous, ridiculous-in-the-good-way sequence where Crow activates a trap from his graveyard, to the shock of pretty much everyone present. And two, despite being on opposite sides, the two bond over their concern for the children they took care of and their concern for children in general, which is expressed most clearly in the scene where Crow's kids, in an attempt to hold the poster they made for him higher, very nearly fall over the barricade in the WRGP stands. Despite the hefty length of the full duel, these are pretty much the only things actually related to Crow's character that come up, though. They're good, don't get me wrong, but in a duel that is otherwise this dense with plot, Aesir shenanigans, and Iliaster foreshadowing, it's no surprise that the duel doesn't add that much to Crow's character, outside of giving him someone he can bounce off very well and relate to. Again, though, we are faced with the same situation as with Team Taiyou: Due to the way the members of Team Ragnarok are written, meant to contrast/parallel one male duellist each from Team 5Ds, nobody other than Crow could have taken the third spot here, either. It would have felt awkward from a narrative standpoint (as much as I would have loved to see Aki duel more).

Now, finally. Round three. Team New World.

(Welp. Here come the robots.)

I had to check to make sure I wasn't misremembering this, but due to the way this duel was set up so José/Jakob could bust out Meklord Emperor Granel with a ridiculous amount of attack points, Crow gets a resounding four turns total in this duel. (Gee, I wonder which other character got this treatment during a WRGP duel.) During those four turns, there are only two things he accomplishes: One, leaving behind two combo pieces Yusei later uses, and two, showcasing the shrewd tactics that earned him the label of "trickster" during the Ragnarok duel by bringing out a non-synchro monster that can take advantage of a synchro monster's attack points and effects—Aurora the Northern Lights. And arguably, this is a very smart play, moreover, it's the only time anyone in the show has the bright idea to not use synchro monsters against the known and feared synchro-killer Meklords. Unfortunately, as smart as it is, the narrative doesn't reward Crow for this play—José all but shrugs what could have been a turning point in the duel off, then proceeds to steamroll Crow the next turn, leaving Yusei to score the win, as usual. To get back to the "Crow got so much more screentime than Aki during the WRGP" thing for a second, of all the duels in the WRGP finals, this is arguably the one where Aki could still most easily have taken Crow's spot again, because here, it doesn't matter whether it's him or someone else, as this duel isn't tied to his character in any way. Unfortunately, due to the Granel-steamroller-strategy, this is also the duel where letting Aki take his spot again would have been the biggest shot in the foot, because unless they had changed Team New World's strategy, Aki would have gotten brutally guillotined here, same as Crow—something I can't imagine anyone, not even people who hate Crow, being happy about.

With that, though, we've finally made it through the WRGP. So, what's the bottom line here? Frankly, speaking from my own interpretation, Crow occupies an... odd spot during this tournament, to say the least. Though he does get to duel the majority of the time, few of the duels actually cater to his character in any way. Moreover, he only gets to be the star of the show in a WRGP duel once, during the by far most forgettable match against Team Catastrophe. And mind that I use the term "star of the show" very loosely here, because the problem the WRGP arc as a whole has, in my opinion, is that the rather lame Team Catastrophe duel is the only one in the whole tournament that isn't won by Yusei, which categorically means that any of the other character's big moments are usually undermined by the fact that they ultimately still need him to save the day. Thus, moments like Aki summoning Stardust Dragon and Crow using an anti-synchro-killer strategy that for once actually forgoes synchros are somewhat cheapened by the fact that they're not actually the turning-point moments they're initially painted as, because ultimately, Yusei always has to be the one to save the day. What's worse is that this almost feels like a bit of a non-issue that could have easily been fixed—given that the show tells us that teams can shuffle around their line-up for a match any time. But unfortunately, the writing never interacts with this as a possible strategic element, nor does it ever seem to consider letting Yusei lose, or forcing him to give up his spot for a match. I feel the need to say that I don't put the blame at Yusei's feet here, though: This strongly feels like an oversight by the writers, and perhaps a disproportionate need to have a nigh-infallible protagonist (on the duelling side of things) that their audience would never run the risk of calling "lame". For Crow, though, this chiefly means one thing: In any duel other than the Catastrophe one, it was always clear that even if he partook, he would never finish the match. And yes, this is technically an issue Jack has, too. But this is where the character writing outside of the duels comes into play, too.

Unlike Jack, who actually gets to do something during the Diablo invasion (albeit very little), who gets his very own dragon upgrade and who gets a very personal, pre-duel plot with Dragan, the show's writing doesn't bother giving Crow a lot of plot- or character-relevant things to do, once the WRGP starts. This is also why I was so surprised at how much the Unicorn and Catastrophe duels embrace his interactions with Aki—compared to the later duels in the finals, this portion still makes Crow feel genuinely relevant and interwoven with the other characters. Meanwhile, out of the three final duels, only the Ragnarok one actually tries to establish a connection to his characterisation, through Brave. The Taiyou duel only sets itself up in such a way that Aki partaking instead of him would have been awkward. Meanwhile, the New World duel just has him being treated like a floormat in a sad parallel to Aki during the Unicorn duel, seeing as they both get a nice moment where it looks like they might turn the duel around (Aki summoning Stardust Dragon and Black Rose Dragon onto the field at the same time; Crow summoning Aurora the Northern Lights, which couldn't be absorbed by the Meklords), only to have their hopes dashed as they're mercilessly cleared off the track. Outside of the duels, many scenes sadly give the impression that they may as well not have included Crow, though—he often gets so little to contribute to a moment or even to say at all that substituting him with a cardboard box seems like it would not have impacted the scene in any way. And that's without addressing his non-existent connection to Sherry, which feels extra glaring, given his later interactions with her on the Ark Cradle.

All in all, the WRGP feels like a very mixed bag, where Crow's character writing is concerned. His belated backstory, which I talked about in part two, is front-loaded and asks as many questions as it answers. Then the tournament commences, gives him some actually decent character interplay with Aki for once (at the cost of letting her succeed in the tournament, it seems), only for him to be basically irrelevant during the WRGP pause again. And once the whole thing resumes, it becomes this hot-and-cold thing where some duel aspects seem tailored to him, while others treat him as completely expendable. The end result is an arc where I'm left wondering why exactly the writers felt the need to make it seem like Crow made up one portion of a protagonist trifecta, if they never actually bothered treating him as equal to the other two. (The answer, I believe, lies somewhere between the fumbled setup they did for him during the Fortune Cup and DS arc, and the way yugioh in general treats its character archetypes. But that's just speculation on my part.) The one, saving grace the WRGP (outside of the Pearson backstory) has for Crow is that it at least doesn't introduce any new character- and/or timeline inconsistencies. In fact, his character stays remarkably true to form once the tournament begins.

Okay, onto the final bit, then. As I've done in both previous posts, let me delve into completely subjective territory and offer some ideas on how this arc could have been handled to make it seem a little less all over the place with Crow. And since his writing here canonically intersects with Aki's several times, let me try to do it while offering the best of both worlds to both characters, if I can.

As far as Crow's backstory is concerned, I've already offered my solutions to that in part two. Now, to stay consistent with my own suggestions, I'll try to branch off what I wrote in the last post. This means that, as per my previous two analyses, we're dealing with two scenarios again: One, Crow stays a signer and we try to touch canon as little as possible. Two, Crow isn't a signer and we adjust canon in whatever way we need to to make him feel interesting and necessary despite/because of that.

First, though, let's get two adjustments I personally would have made in both versions out of the way:

The way the WRGP is structured puts every character that isn't Yusei at a massive disadvantage, where character moments in duels are concerned. Thus, I propose an overhaul. Among the changes I think could have benefitted the characters (yes, all of them) are: One - Aki actually getting to accomplish something during the Unicorn duel (she can and should still have her moments with Crow, but maybe let her portion of the duel end in her thanking him for coaching her, creating a more upbeat scene that strengthens their friendship, which could double as good setup for their later double-duel against Sherry). Two - letting the Team Catastrophe duel actually play out properly (as in, they become more meaningful as opponents by having a better strategy, for example, and Crow could stick it out longer against them, in order to make this more so his win than Jack's. Also, why not let Aki actually see him get back at Team Catastrophe for her?). Three - giving Crow an actual character moment during the Taiyou duel (what if one of the country boys had played a card or two of the ones he learned to read from? It could have helped drive the parallel between the two teams home.) Four - letting Crow's anti-Meklord strategy get at least a little payoff, if only for two turns (show us at least proof of concept, damn it!). Yes, the Ragnarok duel is the only one I wouldn't rewrite (unless special circumstances are introduced, see below). Additionally, let Team 5Ds alter their line-up more than once, damn it. Let them actually strategise about the duels, let them take into consideration who should go first when and whose deck might be better suited to which scenario. Also, remove Yusei from at least one duel. Doesn't matter how, just let him not partake once. Perfect setup to let Aki duel again, and would also allow for spicy character interactions. (Arguably the best duels where this could have been done would have been any of the final duels, though it would have also required rewriting the antagonists somewhat in any case.)

For the love of god, give Sherry and Crow some setup. Let them actually interact, let them introduce their philosophies to one another, just do something, anything to make Crow understanding and talking sense into her during the finale seem earned. A few chance meetings, or maybe even a tiny side-plot could have done so much here. And if you can't let them interact outright, at least let Aki and Crow talk about Sherry! Double whammy! The two characters who end up duelling against her are made to seem even more like a team, and Crow actually gets to find out what Sherry's deal is on-screen. Just. Set. it. up. I beg you.

There we go. Now, onto the two branches.

Option A: Crow stays a signer and obtained Black-Winged Dragon.

Seeing as Crow's signer status, funnily enough, isn't all that relevant during the tournament itself (save for two notable exceptions), there aren't that many fixes to be made here. Crow can still get injured, miss out on the Unicorn duel and be the star of the Catastrophe duel. But giving him something to do during the duel robot invasion that isn't standing around and hoping Yusei will fix everything would also be nice. It's fine if he can't drive out there and duel, but why not let him do something else? He's a crafty guy, why not let him find, say, a way to fry the Diablos' runners, taking a few of them out even from a semi-stationary position without duelling them? He could at least get as much of a consolation prize scene as Aki got with her saving that child. Then there's Team Taiyou, which, save for what I proposed above, is a duel that doesn't feel like it needs changes. Crow does his thing here. That's it. The same goes for Team Ragnarok, especially given that they're specifically written to oppose an all-signers Team 5Ds. Finally, there's Team New World, which, if I'm being completely candid, I would personally overhaul to change the cyborgs' strategy entirely in order to actually let all three members of Team 5Ds shine. But this is the version where I touch canon as little as possible, so... Aside from what I wrote above, no changes needed. Just make Crow seem a little more relevant, make his strategy have at least a little payoff, even if Granel's back out and menacing literally two turns later.

Option B: Crow, as per my previous posts, isn't a signer and doesn't have Black-Winged Dragon.

This is the version that would categorically require heavier changes, though they honestly don't arrive until the break in the tournament. Unicorn and Catastrophe stay the same, I would still propose that Crow gets to be a little more useful during the Diablo invasion. But! In this version, seeing as he never acquired BWD, the break in the WRGP would be an excellent spot to let Crow acquire an upgrade for his beefy Blackwing ace monster of choice. Give him a little side-plot, too, something to do, something where he proves himself. Maybe let him run into Iliaster here, or maybe call back to Pearson again and introduce the new Blackwing upgrade as a treasure Pearson stashed away before he died (maybe this could have even been the card Bolger was actually after; the world is our oyster here). Then he's beefed up, too, and actually feels a little more on the same level as Jack and Yusei. The tournament recommences and again, the Taiyou duel could stay mostly the same, I think. Ragnarok and New World are where it gets really interesting, though. The way I see it, Ragnarok could go two ways with Crow not being a signer: Either he partakes as he did in canon and his non-signer status is called out as a peculiarity by our Swedish boys who happen to be obsessed with fate (which would make his performance against Brave seem all the more impressive), or, due to this being a duel all about destiny and celestial pissing contests, Crow's spot is given to Aki again for this duel due to her signer status (this would, obviously, require rewriting Brave, perhaps even switching him out for a Ragnarok lady instead). As for Team New World, this duel would honestly be a lot more juicy with a non-signer Crow, because much like he was for the dark signers, a non-signer Crow would essentially be an unknown in their plan for the cyborgs. He would be the guy who's Not Supposed To Be Here. Granted, he would still be beaten, but he could still get an excellent moment where his out-of-left-field anti-Meklord strategy genuinely seems to turn the tables for a bit, angering José and providing even stronger setup for Yusei to win later.

Aaaaand that's that. Somehow, I get the feeling the WRGP had the least things that needed fixing because it also had the least actual character writing. But that might just be me. It's late and I have been writing for A While. But hey, I got out part three faster than part two! I consider that an achievement.

Now, while I get my talking points in order for part four, I hope you'll have fun chewing on this one. See you in the grand finale to my Bird Boy dissertation.

[trentcrimminallybeautiful]

Hi 👋🏻 you generously offered to give me some fic recs once you're back home if I gave you some more details as to what I'm looking for. Basically, anything tedependent that's close to, around or after canon. Open to personal favourites that deviate from this, though. Thanks in advance. Seeing the tags made me so happy! ❤️

oughh sorry this took forever, long story short getting back home ended up being a 24 hour comically terrible disaster and then i was just. tired :( but HERE I AM NOW!!!!!!!!!YAY

okay! OKAY.

tedependent

near/around canon

i'm going to assume leaning away from nsfw since it wasn't specified

no preference towards complete/incomplete, but i tended for the former

let's start with a ⚡LIGHTNING ROUND⚡!

these are fics I think at least somewhat fit your description (not sure I'm a great judge of 'close to canon') that i don't have any extra commentary to add about (that's not a bad thing!) they're all good!

A Mighty Nice Shine by turingpatterns - oneshot (complete) (trent's daughter! cute fic!!)

For As Long As We Can by ShutUpGwen - longer fic (complete) (post-canon getting together, kinda)

All Publicity, as they say by JessJessTheBest - medium sized fic(?) (complete) (very cute and funny social media centered fic)

if music be the food of love, play on by literary_lesbian - medium sized fic (complete) (great author, mae pov deserves more love)

Take My Whole Life Too by ItsClydeBitches - oneshot (complete) (adorable valentines day fic)

it's nice to have you here by foxwatson - longer fic (incomplete) (excellent 'there's only one cottage' fic, not s3 compliant as it was written before s3)

Holding Pattern by Wildgoosery - oneshot (complete) (honestly worth it for the ending alone--not that the whole thing isnt' good)

Nothing’s as Easy as Riding a Bike When You Don’t Know How by r_n_g_are_dead - long fic (complete) (trent falls in looove)

closer to your request (i think)

richmond is for lovers by confessionofaking- series (complete)

[summary for the first fic in the two-fic series] “So you do laugh!” He heard himself shout. Trent blinked, and then he was standing. “But you don’t do it until page—,” he crossed the room and peered over Ted’s shoulder “forty-three? And it wasn’t even a big laugh! That was more of a loud nose breath,” he paused, trying to recall the proper word. “An exhale.” Ted put a halt to his nervous rambling in a matter of seconds. “Hey, Trent, look. I know folks are divided on the actual police these days, but all human beings are opposed to the laugh-police.” or, the 'laugh police' scene fix-it fic, except i made it worse.

notes: an eventual post-canon fix-it, as well as a fix-it for the "laugh police" scene. excellent fic, excellent author (HI CADE!!!! HI!!!!! ILY!!!!) i would also reccomend from him... well, any of his fics, but for a quick round-up of a few more sfw tedependent fics of his:

twist of fate

red light

i’ll catch you, darling

just can’t get enough (more nsfw in themes but very cute)

The Lasso Effect by earlybloomingparentheses - oneshot (complete; part two of a series)

Dating Ted Lasso is a wonderful thing. There are, however, certain downsides. For example, Trent no longer has control over when and where he smiles. He apparently cares about Roy Kent's opinion of him now. And he's been having the most ridiculous urge to tap dance. It's the Lasso Effect.

notes: there's several bits in this for trent's characterization that live in my brain rent free.

number four was always you by thefaceofno - long fic (complete)

Ted’s phone rings. He looks away from the window, where he was watching the tree sway in the wind, to see Beard’s face splashed over his phone screen. He thinks about not answering, but if he doesn’t answer then all he’ll have done today is run to CostCo for no reason. He doesn’t need eight pounds of almonds, but he has eight pounds of almonds. a.k.a. the post s3 fix-it where Ted does some intense mental healing.

notes: THE post-canon tedependent fix-it. excellent. please read it immediately.

constant as a northern star (constantly in the dark) by laiqualaurelote - medium sized fic (complete) (technically part of a series but this is standalone)

“I just met Ted Lasso,” Sachiko Crimm says bluntly when her ex-husband picks up. Trent is silent for a while. “And?” he says finally. Sachiko gives it five seconds, and then she bursts out laughing. “Stop it,” says Trent wearily.

notes: one of my favorite incarnations of trent's ex-wife ever. also always a sucker for pov outsider. also, excellent author, and you should absolutely read their post-apocalypse theater/shakespeare au. please.

nothing worth doing comes easy by pocky_slash - medium sized fic (incomplete)

First Ted Lasso is a joke, then Ted Lasso is a story, and then, suddenly--mortifyingly--Ted Lasso is something more. (Or: Trent doesn't want to be Ted's friend.)

notes: excellent, loving it, basically, to quote the author's note, "trent's deeply awkward gay spiral in the [s2] finale". however, word of warning: it is, tragically, unfinished.

Architecture With a Human Element by ItsClydeBitches - oneshot (complete)

“There has to be something,” Trent muttered, furiously scrolling through his feed. Each suggestion he found was debunked by the next post, with many parents swearing up and down that certain techniques made the whole thing worse. Trent stopped on a video of a mother taking scissors to her daughter’s curls and bit down on an actual sob building in the back of his throat. It was right before Trent let it fly that his mobile rang. Coach Ted Lasso (from America). Trent couldn’t say what possessed him to answer with his throat thick and his eyes prickling, but his traitorous hand had already swiped while his mouth said, “I have to shave my head.” Or: 5 times Ted got to touch Trent's hair and one time he returned the favor.

notes: losing my mind at the tenderness in this one. ough (positive)

time may change me by rockinhamburger - oneshot (complete) (part of a series)

Trent’s writing a book, so he’s in the room, generally, whilst [AFC Richmond’s magical season] fucking happens. These are the kinds of days when he curses single fatherhood. Trent debates whether he can just skip work for the day, but the West Ham match is a mere week away. Nothing else for it. “Mia, how would you like to come to work with me today?”

notes: very sweet, good series. this particular work is pre-relationship, but i love crimmlet so much, and their interactions with the team.

Independent by TheBasilRathbone - medium sized fic (complete)

Trent Crimm might only recently be an independent journalist, but he's had no one to rely on but himself for far, far longer. And most days, it feels like he's barely keeping it together. So it only seems fitting that the conclusion to the worst period of his life is for the whole thing to go up in literal flames.  Luckily for Trent, help comes from a (not so) unexpected source.

notes: one of my favorite tedependent fics, not gonna lie. just. wow

some all-time favorites!

a man arrives on thursday by clementines_and_colorful_things - medium sized fic (complete)

The capture of a friend prompts notorious outlaw Ted Lasso to take on the crooked leadership of Nelson Road, Kansas, with his motley crew of castoffs, cowboys, and criminals. When English-born historian Trent Crimm finds himself unwillingly swept into the fast-paced world of Lasso and his outlaws, he gradually begins to unravel the enigmatic Ted Lasso’s complicated ties to Nelson Road’s most prominent players. Tensions run high as Ted evades arrest and plots the downfall of those who have wronged him, and Trent worries that Ted will meet the same abrupt end that most outlaws do: with a length of rope and a rather short drop. — A Ted Lasso Wild West AU

notes: a very good cowboy au from a very good author. not close to canon by any means, being a cowboy au, but very, very good nonetheless.

read our constellations by ShowMeAHero - long fic (complete) (series)

[summary of the first fic in a four fic ongoing series]

And Trent’s not a mess! He’s not. He’s got his life entirely together. He chose to reveal his source and give up his position with The Independent. He chose to start chasing book authorship as his new branch of his career tree. He chose his flat, and his car, and his life, down to the brands of tea he buys and the sorts of people he spends time with and the sheet sets he puts on his and Beatrice’s beds. He’s an adult man, for Christ’s sake. Of course, he’s got his life together. Everything is under his control, and it’s all fine. It’s entirely, completely, fully fine. Taking one last steadying breath, Trent opens his eyes and looks over the line of seven tests on the counter: the first he took a few hours ago, and the six he just took since. Each and every last one of them says he’s pregnant. Some have plus signs, some have two lines, some simply have the word pregnant. All of them may as well come together to form a little sign reading, Congratulations, Trent! You did it! You’ve finally made a goddamn bloody mess out of everything! Just wait until you have to tell Ted! Trent’s stomach turns for more reasons than one.

notes: what is there to say??? one of my favorite fics from one of my favorite authors. it does somewhat follow along canon, with a pretty obvious deviation of their relationship and trent (a trans man) getting pregnant. but i truly cannot recommend their fics enough. another lightning round of their more sfw tedependent fics:

to seek solace (exploration of trent and past abuse that makes me wanna bawl (positive))

you'll never walk alone (HEARTWRENCHING soulmate au, happy endings all around, i adore it)

you know (i love you so)

darling, i love you

come what may

birdhouse in your soul

[idontknowreallywhy]

Resurface 10 - Recall

Maybe could be the next instalment of Resurface (a.k.a. the psychotic Virgil fic) or maybe could be a standalone - any thoughts? Inspired by a song which, it turns out, fits the situation rather well. Some sad Earth&Sky… given I’d managed zero words for days and have found that very irritating I’m gonna run with whatever! Edit to add: Yeah I’m calling it. So what if the fic has a random songfic chapter… it’s Virg…

💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚

He floated in the darkness, weightless yet weighed down. There was nothing to see, nothing to feel. Nothing to smell. Yet he could SEE the dark in an overwhelming level of detail and his nerves rejected the empty tactile nothingness and told him cold instead.

There was sound in the void, but it was intermittent and muffled, as if he was underwater. Voices… familiar but unhappy bubbled past him. If only they’d speak more clearly perhaps he could fix whatever the problem was… but he found he couldn’t move his arms or… his head or… anything so fixing was probably out of the question. He wondered if there anything of him left to move?

He wondered if he was… gone… and found he couldn’t feel too strongly about the idea. Hello darkness, Virgil was ready to succumb.

Oh… Virgil. He had a name. Well there it is.

He knew he was supposed to fight the dark but he was so tired. He was also aware the reason he kept fighting was no more. Although he wasn’t entirely sure what that had been… it nagged at him. It had been important. He was pretty sure it had been everything - there was just a hollow space where he imagined his chest would be. Was odd he couldn’t remember. If he could move his face he’d frown at that.

Maybe it was just that Afterwards you didn’t remember Before?

He only hoped this nothing wouldn’t be everything - the lack of comprehensible sensory input was maddening. Not to mention he had an irritating earworm that was disproving his theory about not remembering. And that would be really annoying to think about for eternity. What even was it? Some kids’ film…

Can there be a day beyond this night? I don’t know anymore what is true.

Huh. Pretty dark for something aimed at children.

Mind you, children felt things pretty strongly. He’d always done so, as far as he could tell. It’s why art and music worked for him. He remembered that too. Alright, memory was a thing then. Given the lack of anything else to do he cast his mind back, trying to recall something, anything… about who he was.

Trees. He could picture trees and feel the drop in the wind as he stepped amongst them. One in particular which was taller than the rest… a pecan. The scaly bark scratched at his fingertips as he peered up into the rustling branches overhead. Wait! He tried to shout but no sound came out! Wait! He wasn’t tall enough! He couldn’t follow! He stood on his tiptoes and stretched towards the hand that reached down out of the leaves but his fingers only brushed the air. He gasped, a bigger hand landed on his shoulder and it all went black again.

He was on his knees on the dusty tarmac and his knees were stinging but not as much as his eyes. The back of the big yellow bus blurred as he cursed his little legs for not being able to catch up with it. He squeaked in horror as a truck thundered past, horn blaring and then large hands were pulling his shoulders, dragging him to the grass. Sharp words, scared words. They told him he couldn’t follow. He wasn’t big enough for big school yet. He couldn’t always follow. He lifted his hands from his knees and stared at the redness that highlighted the wrinkles in his palms. A sob choked him and the red spread out and covered everything.

That large hand was tugging at his elbow, but Virgil wasn’t easy to move against his will. He relented and took one pace backwards, moving his right foot down one of the stone steps leading away from the ornate doorway with a lone figure standing in it. The others had gone back inside to continue the celebration. But one remained, watching them leave, smiling. The stupidly massive doors made him look small and he’d never looked small before. The left foot wouldn’t move. The arm tugged at him but he couldn’t. He couldn’t not follow. The figure waved again, straightened the smart blue coat with the silver buttons and gave a cheeky salute before turning and walking away. Virgil had no breath to cry out to him to stop, he could only reach out silently towards the retreating blue.

I follow you around, I always have, but you’ve gone to a place I cannot find.

No. The song was wrong. NO! He thrashed against the nothing and gagged on the bile that rose up in a throat that could suddenly feel, could suddenly burn, could agonisingly scream out loud:

“SCOTT!”

💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙💚💙

Whole story in order

[sailormoonandme]

Stripes a.k.a. HOW SAILOR COSMOS BECAME CHIBI-CHIBI

Ao3 Collection: Sailor Moon Cosmos Movie Epilogue

Excerpt:

Sailor Cosmos.

The embodiment of the living universe.

The most powerful Senshi of all.

She had no right to the name, nor the title. Deep down she knew that. Deep down, she knew this was in its own way cowardice. She was running away. Running away because she could not let go, could not bring herself to throw away what was left of the universe as she had known it. Running because she was too weak to embrace everyone and everything that might be reborn anew from the remains of the old universe.  

And yet… might her cowardice be justified if this worked? If she could end the cycle of suffering once and for all? 

She hoped so but… committed as she was… she could not truly be certain.

She was certain of one thing though. She was lesser than she once was. Lesser than she had been when she first, undeservedly, arose to the mantle of guardian of the universe. Perhaps lesser than she had been as a naive teenaged warrior of love and justice. Most definitely lesser than a brave little girl she had known long ago who had also fled to the past. 

Falling through time she suddenly became aware that her body was changing, her thoughts made manifest. She felt herself shrink, her strength dwindle, even as her vitality surged. She saw her long streams of white hair retract and change colour in tandem with her clothes. Her long cape was replaced with a sailor’s neckerchief and her silver staff morphed into a floral pattern umbrella. Most of all though, her thoughts began to reshape too. They became simpler, more energetic, and far less melancholic.

As all she was began to fade, replaced by something similar yet new, she almost laughed. How ironic that this would be her final transformation. The last form she would ever attain in her existence as a warrior. Or… was this fuschia haired form what she had looked like as a child? She could not remember. She could have sworn she’d been… blonde? Silver haired? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she be accepted without being recognized. 

Accepted by her younger self and, her now stripless skirt ruffled amidst the temporal winds, all her friends...

Summary: Each stripe upon Sailor Cosmos's skirt represents one of her friends, and a bittersweet memory of each of them. Now, memories are all that are left of them in the wake of Sailor Chaos's rampage across the galaxy. But, could there be another way? Could Sailor Cosmos perhaps alter the path destiny has taken her down?

Ao3 Collection: Sailor Moon Cosmos Movie Epilogue

[honey-minded-hivemind]

I've been thinking on where Gambit fits in the mutant Mutant Au. Because our favorite Cajun hasn't been brought in yet.

Maybe he's a human thief that accidently met the mutant family and got dragged along for the ride of their crazy adventures, him wondering when his life got so weird while Logan threatens him the entire way.

When he doesn't hear or see from the mutants fam for a while he's relieved at first, but then he realizes that he's a bit lonely without them. Then Evan and Reader bust into his safe house and give him a very rushed run down of what happened and now he's running around New York trying to figure out how to save his future jellyfish girlfriend, her absolutely terrifying dad, and her overactive siblings. (She doesn't take him seriously when he flirts, but he is 100% into the whole translucent, pastel, electric, murder mermaid thing she has going on.)

Or maybe he is a mutant, some sort of sneaky animal like a racoon or rat, who can get anything from anyone for anyone, if they pay the right price. He's one of the only inhabitants of the Hidden City that regularly goes to New York to steal. He's gotten in trouble with Charles and Erik because of it, but a guy's got to make a living.

When the fam first visits the hidden city, he tries to swindle them out of their few valuables, making Rogue so angry she shocks him by accident. It's okay because he lying fried on the ground mentally picking out wedding rings.

He meets the fam a few more times until he's called to meet Charles and thinks maybe he crossed a line in his thievery and now is getting banished from the city.

But no, turns out Charles just brainwashed his friends/enemies/ whatevers convenient and now LOST one? And he wants Gambit to find them?

Gambit does have a line he doesn't cross, and that line was crossed by miles as soon Charles mentions brain washing, no matter who it is. So he agrees, takes the payment up front, then leaves to go find and warn Reader so they can fix his Cherie and her family.

(Crap this is long. Sorry please take ur time!!!)

Okay, okay. Both of those ideas are valid and amazing. But... I have some ideas that can make this au even darker if we go your first idea...

Remy, a.k.a. "Gambit", has been a friend/ally to the weird mutant teens for a few years, amd tends to act like they annoy him, when he finds them highly amusing and, dare he say it, the most welcoming group he's ever met. Because sure, he's human, but so is their friend, a younger teen named Evan, and the fam is made up of entirely diffent mutants. So they're pretty inclusive, and are only mad when he maybe tried to flirt with Rogue. (He loves that jellyfish mermaid siren wonder, she's so bright and electrifying and could kill him, and he's down bad for her).

When he hasn't heard from them in a while, he feels a small bit of relief: finally, he can get some rest! But... a few days turns to a week, a week turns to two, and then Evan and Reader wind up at his door, Reader wounded, and both their and Evan's eyes are haunted, and he's quick to drag them inside. And what he hears from them is that Reader was separated from their family during an accident, then their family ended up in some underground city that brainwashed them, and they forgot about Reader and Evan entirely. And now they're either after them, or have decided to imprison them.

And now all Remy sees is red...

Okay. Some evil alien thing has captured his weird found family; the others wounded Reader in their fight; Reader had to leave in order to save themself amd find help; and now they and Evan are in hiding, knocking at his door in the hopes he can help them.

Woo boi...

It's time to go rescue their weird little group, no?

(Yeah... let's just say, I'm darkening this au! Mwahaha!)

(Ask any other questions you think of, okay, sugar?)