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cherrychilli · 1 year ago

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Slip of the Tongue

A mini series I 18+ I Enemies to lovers

Chapter three

Chapter Summary: Things turn sour in the days after you scramble out of Eddie's trailer, leading to an interesting confrontation at your old alma mater.

Chapter warnings: Oral sex (m)

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It’s been a week since that day in Eddie’s bedroom.

During that time, you hit the books, powered through your shifts, made it to every lecture and finished your midterms, now holding the fruit of your labor in your hands.

You managed to score in the 90’s again, relief filtering into your lungs with deep, calming breaths because it accounted for 25% of your final grade. With your academic progress still intact, you slipped the glowing results sheet into your bag, allowing yourself to think of your neighbor again.

And as weird as it is to say, you do feel strangely grateful for his contribution.

You’d awoken the day after bolting out of Eddie’s place with your head already crowded with thoughts of him but admittedly, having slept better than you had in a long time. He’d talked a big game and he delivered – the encounter having unwound you enough to get back to work with renewed focus.

So yes, you were grateful but also, you were furious.

Seven whole days had passed by and you hadn’t seen Eddie once.

You tried not to read into the fact that for that entire week, you didn’t hear him play his guitar once. Tried not to let your chest cave in when you didn’t catch him outside working on that tetanus trap on wheels he called a van when you took off for work. Tried not to grit your teeth when you didn’t run into him even when you returned home. Every trace of him gone.

It wasn’t that you wanted to see him exactly, but you couldn’t ignore how his absence made you feel – like a mistake he was trying to run away from.

On day four, the day after your exams, you’d even gone so far as to try wheedling some answers out of Wayne when you passed by the older man on your way to work, attempting to be as inconspicuous about it as possible.

It wasn’t uncommon for you to share a few polite words with Wayne whenever you ran into him but it was out of the ordinary for you to bring up his nephew in any other context that didn’t have to do with a noise complaint.

Segueing into it as gracefully as you could manage, you tried to make it sound as offhand as possible, like a casual observation rather than the heavily rehearsed thing that had consumed your mind all day.

“It’s been pretty quiet in the park lately. He sick or something?”, you asked him while toing at some nearby gravel like your own interest in the question was waning.

You refused to say Eddie’s name, afraid that just by mentioning it, it might put a crack in the eggshell thin mask that holds your hurricane of emotions at bay.

As you had expected, Wayne regards you with some surprise – catching his nearly imperceptible squint, his craggy brow crinkling too. It was both unavoidable and understandable. You would have reacted the same way if you were him.

The weight of his second long silence borders on excruciation, something almost surgical about the way he assesses you. Dissecting you is what it really felt like but thankfully, he shows you mercy.

“Says he’s got things to do at school – doubt there’s any studying involved though”, he lets out a huff, a dry, almost laugh that conveyed his long suffering history with his nephew’s unbeaten record for flunking.

Eddie willingly spending more time at school? The same boy who once climbed down out of a second story window, slipped and hauled ass on a sprained ankle just to get out of taking a math test?

So he was avoiding you.

Despite the bitter taste clawing at the back of your throat, you mustered up a laugh of your own and hoped it was convincing enough, waving goodbye to Wayne as you parted ways.

For those seven days you blocked out the thought of Eddie as best you could but now that your exams were no longer a concern, you were finally free to confront the spineless louse.

If he thought he was going to be safe holed up at your old alma mater he was dead fucking wrong.

Treading fire onto campus, you marched through waves of highschoolers, making a steady beeline for the drama room, remembering that was where he held those weird meetings with his weirdo friends in their weird matching t-shirts.

The teenagers hastily parted off to the side in an effort to get out of your way, some of the seniors who recognized you beginning to whisper, speculating as to what brought you back and looking so incensed.

Stomping up to the room, you let loose all that had been simmering inside you – all that frustration from being evaded and those acrid feelings that felt too close to rejection, parting the doors open forcefully with both hands. It makes for your desired entrance when they swing back and bang closed behind you like a thunderclap, startling the boy who’d been busy scribbling in his notebook getting ready for his next campaign.

His pen clattered to the floor from where it flew out his hand and bounced off a nearby theater prop. You can’t be sure given how abrupt it was but you think he might have yelped too, a high pitched eep like some sort of puppy who had its tail stepped on by mistake.

Sitting askew on his carved wooden throne, Eddie’s cast in warm hues of orange and yellow underneath stage lights and candlelight but nothing shines brighter than the sheer surprise overwhelming his face. It pleases you more to recognize the unmistakable tinge of fear he’s incapable of hiding behind his wide eyes when they land on you.

Good. He should be scared, your mood far from friendly as you turn to lock the door behind you and retrieve the key, clutching it tight in your palm.

Was this overkill? locking him inside with you? You didn’t think so. Not after he’d weaseled his way out of talking to you for an entire week. You weren’t about to leave room for him to plan an escape route too.

You stepped closer to where he cowered at the D&D table, your lips pulled into an imitation smile, curved up exactly like one but so clearly absent of any sweetness or warmth, only radiating danger.

To Eddie, your menacing saunter resembled a cobra leisurely winding its way up to cornered prey, jaw seconds away from unhinging to swallow him whole.

He flinches when you slap down your results sheet on the table, now crumpled from how you had it clenched in your fist on your way over here. Better the paper than his neck you supposed although truthfully, you were still on the fence about that.

“Uh, what’s this?”, he finally dares to speak, a nervous croak of a sound that scratched its way out of his throat, cautiously leaning closer to examine the paper. The spiteful devil perched on your left shoulder chittered and sneered, whispering all sorts of encouragement to make you reply with spite, to make some underhanded remark about how you’re not surprised he couldn’t recognize anything that didn’t have a row of F’s stamped all over it given it’s his second time repeating senior year.

But the lenient angel on your right shoulder leaned in and spoke reason into your other ear, dulcet but insistent reminders that you only came here to inquire, not injure.

The devil withers away with a snarl when you clench your jaw, holding your tongue at bay, unable to spit that kind of venom at Eddie.

Before now, your main gripe with him was his disruptive influence, the way he wedged himself into your life like a splinter caught underneath your fingernail with his head rattling music and blood boiling snark. Grinning like his biggest pleasure in life was annoying you enough to darken his bedroom window day after day with a face full of fury and a mouthful of fuck you’s. He was too carefree for your liking as well, able to shrug off his plummeting grades when a minor slip of yours would have you digging out your emergency pack of cigarettes to chain smoke the stress away in secret. But taking shots at his intellect like all the other assholes you went to school with felt too…slimy.

The same assholes who had looked down on you and your trailer park background. The same assholes who rolled their eyes when you got accepted to your College of choice. The same assholes who cackled when you had to enroll in a nearby Community College instead when your family’s finances fell in the red.

Maybe you weren’t a cobra after all, only masquerading as one.

“My midterms. I passed”, you answered him flatly, watching recollection flash across his face.

The stress it had caused you was the reason why this all started in the first place after all.

“Couldn’t have done it if you hadn’t helped me out”, you added pointedly, tone almost accusatory.

Even under the vivid stage lights that paint his complexion like a sunset, you can still make out the way his cheeks pink up at the vague mention of what had happened in his bed that day.

“Oh, uh– that’s great”, he offered you something that resembled a smile, face so twisted with nerves that he couldn’t get his lips to curve up the right way. Jesus, you’d never seem him like this before. He was barely recognizable and for the first time in your life, you found yourself preferring his usual tornado presence and boisterous anti charm.

“Yeah. So, why’ve you been avoiding me?”

His jaw tensed at that, throat bobbing as he swallowed. Obviously, you hadn’t come by to say thank you.

“Listen, the club will be here in an hour. They already know I’m in here so just give me the key and…we’ll talk about this later, okay?”, he attempted to negotiate with you in the same way one might try to approach a skittish horse, overly cautious with an undertone of fear, holding out a shaky palm to collect the key but you weren’t about to give in now.

“What, so you can find somewhere new to hide?”, you sneered.

To show him you’re serious about seeing this conversation to the end you make a show of dangling the key to the drama room in front of his face – his only hope of escape, but it’s what you’re doing with your other hand that gathers his attention.

Hooking a finger into the neckline of your t-shirt, you pull it low enough for your cleavage to show, soft swells sitting high on your chest, framed by pretty lace. And despite the dread trickling down Eddie’s spine, thick like tar, one thing becomes abundantly clear in that moment.

He’s only a man.

The little flash of tit is enough to trigger his hormones. Stupefied, he takes in an eyeful, committing the contours of your breasts to memory – the newest entry into the sordid vault of his spank bank before he’s able to snap out of it. He attempts to snatch the key from you but he’s too slow, stomach cartwheeling as he watches it disappear into your cleavage when you tuck it away for safe keeping in your bra cup. Honestly, he can’t decide if he’s more upset about it or turned on.

Face twisting with exasperation, he locks his eyes back on yours.

“You’re being ridiculous!” he accuses with increasingly reddening cheeks.

Unbothered by the claim, you shove a couple of dice and a few of his notes aside to sit yourself on the edge of the table, arms crossed underneath your breasts, showing your defiance.

This isn’t like when he’d gotten you to beg for your release, chipping away at your resolve with his touch and tongue until you crumbled under the weight of ecstasy. You’ve molded yourself into an imposing shadow of the girl who came undone on his sheets, obstinate and immovable and it’s clear that you’ll sooner wear him down for an answer even if it means being stuck here in this room all night than leave without one.

Eddie’s hardened expression falters as he realizes this, sighing. Relenting.

“Fine”, he slumps back in his chair.

“I didn’t mean to…I didn’t know what to say– “

“Bullshit”, you cut him off with an icy scoff. Eddie Munson at a loss for words? Sure. And Steve Harrington’s a bald virgin.

“It’s not bullshit”, he attempts to deny, some heat behind his words.

“Do I need to remind you that you’re the one who offered to help me “relax” in the first place?” you bit back with heat to match.

Your rebuttal has him silent – both of you knowing he can’t argue otherwise.

“Where’d all that bravado go, Munson?” you poke again just to see the vein at his temple bulge but he doesn’t answer, jaw set firm.

You’d hoped to scare it out of him at first or even force it out of him by locking him in here but for once that metalhead menace is tightlipped and damn good at it.

Taking another moment to consider your options you gird yourself to ask the one question you’ve been dreading. Casting your eyes down, arms tightening under your breasts, the key shifts into an awkward angle, jabbing your soft flesh but it’s not nearly as unpleasant as what you have to say next. You weren’t sure if you wanted to hear the answer but you force it out, tongue turning more sour the longer the question sat there unasked.

“Do you regret it?”

It’s the way your tone loses all of its heat, crumbling slightly at the end of your question that makes him feel like the world’s biggest jackass. Another awful second of silence passes before you’re startled by him shooting out of his seat, chair screeching noisily against the floor as its forced back so quickly, his hand reaching for yours but he stops short of your fingers touching.

This close, you can smell him again. That same scent that clung to his bed. That same scent that hung on your hair. The same scent you reluctantly washed away in the shower that night you got back home. It makes you feel woozy, like a cloud full of pheromones to the face. If he takes one more step, you’re afraid you might leap up and bite his chest through his shirt like an animal in heat.

“I don’t regret it”, he answers you, gentle. Honest.

And just like that, all the anxiety you’d carried around for a week unravels with those four words. In its place, relief strummed on your ribs like nimble fingers plucking strings on a harp, a hopeful tune building up to a crescendo inside your chest. But you don’t let it show – forcing an impending smile away, keeping your expression unreadable because you liked the way he looked back at you, sweating with uncertainty.

“Okay – then you wouldn’t mind me returning the favor, would you?”, you rose up from the table, placing a palm in the middle of his chest.

“Huh?” he stumbles back, the back of his knee connecting with his chair.

“Fair’s fair right?”

With a little effort, you push him back into his seat, dropping down to kneel between his legs when they spread for you.

“Shit shit wait- really?”, he sputters as your fingers climb up to his belt, working open that damn handcuff buckle you’d become curious about to the point of near infatuation in the last few days.

You roll your eyes in reply like his question is a nuisance to you, growing excited under the surface.

Popping open the button on his jeans and pulling down his zipper, you can see that he’s already half hard underneath his boxers, a thick outline of his cock growing more prominent.

He’s warm in your hand when you pull his jeans and boxers down to grasp him, watching it spring up, feeling him grow harder by the second. Your fingers are dwarfed by the size of him although you already expected that after what you had seen in his trailer.

Eddie tenses when you bring your face closer, lips parted, breath puffing against his flushed, throbbing tip. Just a little more and-

“But before I do, you’re going to tell me why you avoided me”

He blinks back at your wicked smile and sharp eyes, plummeting.

“You’re fucking evil, you know that? First you hold me hostage and now you’re going to interrogate me with your fist around my dick?”

You grin back, squeezing him mostly gently, the warmth of your hand alone enough to make him feel compliant.

“Do it or I’ll stop”, you threaten sweetly.

Somehow, he likes the sound of that even less than the fear of you doing something like snapping it clean off.

There’s something so perversely satisfying about getting to use his words against him – withholding his release in the same way he had done with you. Being on the other side of it, you now understand why he enjoyed it so much, the potent thrill of being in control.

“Fuck okay”, he lets his head fall back to thud against the back of his throne, the column of his neck stretched and bared for you to see the way his Adams apple bobs in his throat with a thick swallow.

“I thought about you all the time…” he starts, tipping his chin down to look at you again, eyes dark and shadowy from this angle. “Shit, I couldn’t sleep after what happened in my bed – had to get away because I knew if I saw you again, I’d just drag you back there”

Something about the image of him manhandling you, maybe even hauling you over his shoulder, all overcome with unbridled cave man lust for you as he takes you back to his bed brews excitement in your bones. You only hoped it didn’t show on your face.

“And I knew that- well, I thought, because you didn’t actually say, but all you wanted was a one time thing…right?”, he asks, a hint of disappointment in his tone.

That was your intention when you first climbed into his bedroom, yes. But now…

“You seemed to hold back just fine when I came in here”, you skirt around the question in favor of focusing on what he’d said before that, starting to stroke him slowly as a small reward for his honesty.

“You scared the fuck out of me”, his breath grows shorter now that you’re moving your hand. “And we’re in school – didn’t think you’d actually come down here. You liked this place less than I did”

That’s true, you did. You just didn’t expect him to have noticed, let alone have remembered that fact. Guess all that ganja didn’t total his memory completely.

“Well, I couldn’t just let this go on after everything that happened”, you state plainly, twisting your wrist slightly around his base before pulling back up to trace his tip with your thumb.

This time he doesn’t shy away from the vague mention. You can almost see the memory reflecting off his umber eyes as it replays in his mind.

“Didn’t even want to throw my sheets in the laundry”, he admits, a throaty timbre to his tone that makes you stroke him faster.

“That’s gross, Eddie”, you deride, nose wrinkling but he can see right through it. He recognizes it easily – the same forced disgust you’d showed him when he flicked his tongue at you and offered to get you off, trying to hide how much you liked it.

“Could still smell you on them even after they were washed you know – even though I knew they were clean. Like one of those subconscious things or whatever. Every time I thought of you, I felt like I could still taste you on my tongue”

He’s clearly done holding back, no longer the shrinking Dungeon Master you’d stormed in on not too long ago. This is the Eddie you knew well and knowing the thought of you had affected him to the point that it impacted his senses, haunting him even, makes you rush with pride.

“I never got to taste you”, you suddenly recalled, surprised you’d forgotten even for a moment considering how much thought you’d given it in the few days prior.

And with that you leaned forward, lips parting, tongue seeking his cock, licking from the bottom of his veiny shaft up to the head.

The slow, wet drag of your tongue along his sensitive skin is the kind of sensation that will not leave him quietly, groaning around all kinds of expletives as his palms clamped down on the armrests of his chair, knuckles turning white.

Taking the first few inches into your mouth, you wrapped your lips around him and sucked slowly. Swirling your tongue around the leaking tip, you get a proper taste of him, collecting a dribble of precum before pulling off. The texture of it is silky on your tongue as you sucked the mix of tangy and salty sweet onto the roof of your mouth, letting it slide down the back of your throat like honey and swallowed.

“What else did you think about?”, you asked, missing the sound of his voice as you moved to lick along his shaft again, tongue feeling around the veins adorning it.

How he’s able to keep up a conversation when you’ve got your mouth on him like this he doesn’t know. Maybe it’s the fear that you might threaten to stop again. Maybe it’s the way your eyes look up at him all cloudy with need and your thighs clench together when he talks about the thoughts he’s had about you.

“Everything we didn’t get to do that day. I know we only agreed on helping you out but after watching you tidal wave my bed I couldn’t help myself”

The crass description nearly makes you snort against his dick despite yourself; your whole face going supernova with a mix of amusement and embarrassment. It makes Eddie grin.

“I thought about this a lot. I couldn’t believe it but I knew – you wanted me in your mouth back then too, didn’t you?”

Imparting a little honesty of your own, you answer him with a whisper, licking off another clear bead of precum from his slit. “I did”.

Eddie's eyes lit up, lips turning up into a smirk. “Watching you leave after that was torture, you have no idea. You’ve ran that smart little mouth of yours at me for years – hated missing my chance to shut you up for once”

That earns him a deadpanned look and calls for a warning.

You bring a hand down to squeeze his balls and smirked when he groaned, this time nearing on pained, hands releasing the armrests with his palms held up in surrender.

“Okay okay! Easy. You’re a soft spoken delight, alright?”

With a pleased chuckle bubbling up your throat, you relinquish your hold to massage them gently instead, rolling them in your palm, continuing to stroke him with your other hand.

“Did you think about fucking me?”

“Yeah…”, he answers at the end of a thick gulp.

“How?”

“Huh?”

“How would you fuck me, Eddie? rough?”

He considers it before answering. “Not at first…but yeah, I’d – fuck, do that again? – I don’t think I could be gentle for very long because I know you can take it”

It’s like he’s reached inside of you and flipped a switch you hadn’t even been aware was there. You’d been wound so tight for so long. You needed him to use you.

“Could you be rough with me now?”, you asked, triggering a sly quirk of his eyebrow.

“You asking me to fuck your face, sweetheart?”

There’s that cocky edge again and you're quick to spar with it.

“Yes or no, Munson?”, you return, all stony faced. There won’t be any begging from you today.

He frowns when you pull out his last name again.

“Aren’t we beyond that now?”

You grin back, too stubborn for your own good.

“No”

Eddie's frown fades, a grin stretching across his face to match your own.

“Open your damn mouth”

Ringed fingers weave into your hair as you part your lips for him, allowing him to breach the wet velvet of your mouth. His girth puts some strain on your jaw but you’re able to accommodate him, tongue cradling the underside of his cock as it glides over the muscle. You’re doing well so far, letting the hand on your head, firm but gentle, guide you down until the tip of his cock bumps the back of your throat and you gag.

“Go on – choke a little for me”, he grunts.

Tears wet your eyes as you try to breathe through it, throat squeezing back against the intrusion, saliva pooling in your mouth as it begins to drip past your lips.

Eddie starts to thrust into your mouth and you take him as far into your throat as you can manage. Your nails dig into his thighs through the short, ragged pumps, past even what you thought to be your limit when your nose presses close to his pelvis, brushing the thatch of hair at his base. You find that you like how he smells there too – musky and masculine.

The sounds you pull out of him make your core ache – every hitch of his breath, every choked off moan, every rumbling groan and throaty grunt. But you stamp down the hot roiling in your belly and ignore the sticky need pooling in your panties because you really did mean what you said about returning the favor. It was your turn to please him, sidelining your own pleasure for the time being in the same way that he had done for you. Not that there wasn’t any pleasure to be derived from being in your position.

The part of you that was greedy savored every sound and liked knowing you were making him feel good – that all those noises he was making was because of you. And the part of you that was competitive took pleasure in knowing you were proving he wasn’t the only one here with a skillful mouth.

Growing more and more used to it, you take it well as he fucks your throat and he tells you as much.

“Knew I was right about you. Knew you could take it – Christ, yes, just like that”

The praise makes you bob ardently, saliva soaking his cock, trailing down to his balls. You’ve adopted a pace of your own now, Eddie’s fingers still tangled in your hair but no longer guiding you.

"Shit– I’m gonna cum. where do you– "

You pull off his cock, his eyes trained on your wet, swollen lips gasping for air, your hand taking over to pump his spit-soaked length.

“Do it in my mouth”, you finish for him, desperation staining your tone.

You take him in your mouth again, not all the way this time, using your hand to stroke what you can’t fit past your sore lips anymore.

“Fuck – oh g- fuck”

Eddie’s hips jerk and then it happens – you feel the hot lines of his release begin to spurt onto your tongue, tangy and creamy thick. You swallow it down with his dick still in your mouth, throat contracting around his twitching, spent length. You pull off slowly until it’s just his tip your lips are wrapped around, lingering on it, sucking it like you don’t want to let go. You’re forced to let it slip from your mouth when his groans near pained again, sensitivity proving too much for him now.

Sitting back on your haunches, you watch his chest puff up and down while he recovers, head thrown back against the back of his chair.

When he’s able to, he puts his softening cock away, redoing his jeans before he pulls out a bandana from his back pocket and offers it to you.

“It’s clean I promise”.

The sweetness of the gesture makes your stomach flutter. Managing a meek ‘thank you’, you use the dark material adorned with bones and skulls to wipe your lips and chin of the sticky mixture of saliva and Eddie’s spend.

Next, he offers you a hand and you take it, letting him help you off your knees and on to your feet.

“Listen, I’m sorry for last time. When you had to leave, I mean. And for avoiding you after that”, he informs you, much more tender than you're used to with him.

“I didn’t even get to uh…”, patiently, you wait for him to finish but he doesn’t, watching his face twist, all conflicted. You can see the thought ping pong around inside his head, wishing you could just reach in and pluck it out for yourself but he brushes it off before he’s able to share it with you, leaving you wondering.

“Never mind. Jeff and Gareth are going to be here soon and you probably don’t want to be seen in here with me like um, thisss”, he drags out the single syllable, unsure of a more tactful way to phrase it.

You don’t need to ask him to know that “thisss” means you look like a fucked-out mess because that’s exactly how you feel with your unruly hair and your sore jaw.

Just as before, there’s too much that’s been left unsaid but the threat of another close call has you reluctantly fishing the key out of your bra, tossing it at Eddie while you attempt to tame your hair back into something presentable, wiping off your damp cheeks too. You’re yet to realize that you haven’t returned his bandana, still clutching it in your hand.

Eddie catches the key though he doesn’t make a move towards the door, staring down at his palm like he’d just been gifted a bar of gold.

“It’s warm”, he says quietly, one of those thoughts that wasn’t meant to be said out loud but slipped past the barrier of his lips quicker than he could notice, you surmised.

It’s kind of cute actually – that dopey, spellbound look spilling over his face.

“Unlock the door, Eddie”, you sigh, subduing a laugh. At least you didn’t accuse him of being gross again like you would have an hour ago.

“Oh, right”

He steps over to the door while you gather yourself, daylight shining into the dingily lit room when he unlocks it and pulls it open.

After a quick look around outside to make sure no one sees you leaving, he steps back and holds the door open for you but you linger.

…all you wanted was a one-time thing…right?

No. Not anymore.

You weren’t sure what the two of you were now. Neighbors who got each other off? Former enemies but not really friends with benefits?

The specifics didn’t matter. At least, not right now. All you knew was that you didn’t want whatever this was to end.

Turning to Eddie, you say something you never thought you would. Not to him.

“My family’s gone for the weekend. You can come over tonight…if you want”

The smile that crosses his face is both warm and cocky, much like the one he’d flashed you from his window when this all began.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah”, you soften but only slightly. Unsmiling but not inimical.

“Oh, and if you stand me up?”, voice heating up, you jabbed a finger against his chest, right between the L and the F of his Hellfire shirt. “Try to run away again?”, you jab again and he staggers a step back, wincing when you press over the same sore spot again. “I’ll nail your balls to your front door, understand?”

For a moment he stares back at you. Stunned. And then, true to the freak riddle that he is, he smiles back even brighter.

Tag list - @honey-flustered @cryingglightningg @cadence73 @taccobelle @mrsjellymunson

#eddie munson smut #stranger things smut #eddie munson #stranger things #eddie munson x reader

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lizzybeth1986 · 8 months ago

Text

A Child of Babel

Book: The Royal Romance

Characters: Kiara-centric. Hints of Drake x Kiara (unrequited) and Hana x Kiara.

Word Count: 3, 484 words

Summary: The five times Kiara uttered the proverb of a language under her breath, and the two times she did it to someone's face.

A/N: I really wanted to try out a 5+1 fic format but somehow it became a 6+1 fic instead haha

Tagging @kiaratheronappreciationweek for KTAW Day 3: Languages, @choicesficwriterscreations for FoTW, @choicesmaychallenge24 for Hermes: Travel

Wolof

Princesses Lerato and Lesidi will never forget the exact moment they knew Lady Kiara Thorne would become their friend.

At lunch today, it was hard initially to tell if the meal today was to her liking. She'd made all the right noises, said all the right words. Rich. Meaty. What bold flavours. But how does that count? She's the kind of girl who has likely been coached enough in courtly propriety and gastrodiplomacy (at age 11. Eleven!), that you can't quite tell if she genuinely enjoyed the food or just wanted to please her hosts.

The sisters shift uncomfortably in their plush seats at the dining hall of their palace, their eyes barely leaving the young girl's plate. Benachin jollof rice was hardly for the weak of heart (or stomach) but that never stopped the royal family of Orphys from showing pride in this particular dish. It was, after all, the jewel in the crown of their ancestral Senegambian cuisine.

So it would pierce the Orphysian soul to its core, in very specific ways, if one didn't like their jollof. Probably just as much as it would shatter a Cordonian's spirit, if you told them you thought their Cordonian Rubies tasted vile.

"Ohhh," Lady Kiara mumbled, visibly relaxed at last. "Xifuma wante samay bët suruñuuuuu". The final word comes out elongated by a leisurely moan of satisfaction. I’m not hungry but my eyes aren’t full.

For a moment, the two girls are stunned to stillness in their chairs.

Little Kiara - Lerato is beginning to recognise - is trying to utter an old Wollof proverb about the joys of their ancestral cuisine. It's said so softly you can barely hear her, and both she and her sister can hazard a guess as to why.

Of the five words said, she pronounced three wrong. Kiara knew that, and felt ashamed.

The sisters pass each other a look of knowing affection. Not many in Europe, outside of Orphys, know this proverb that well. It is indeed the kind of phrase you will chance upon only if you've been consistently trying to learn.

She had to have been learning for over a year to get to this point.

Terrible pronunciation be damned. Next time they meet Kiara again, Lerato and Lesidi sure as hell know they're gifting her the recipe.

French

"Dammit," Kiara hisses at...well...no one in particular, and especially not to the retreating figure of her longtime (and forever clueless) crush. Now that he's gone, the urge to kick herself is becoming increasingly more difficult to suppress.

Drake Walker's loose overshirt flaps against his back as he walks out of the stable, in quick, sure, decisive footsteps. There has always been some sense of purpose in his movements whenever he leaves someplace, even if - to Kiara's knowledge - he hasn't exactly had a job as such ever since that stint he took at the stables the summer she turned fifteen.

It's almost as if that is the only thing he's certain he wants to do here. Leaving.

Kiara presses her head against the door of the stable, his fists balled up so she can resist the unnecessarily dramatic urge to bang it against the wood. She's done everything - everything her admittedly-gauche, relatively-inexperienced 18 year old brain could think of - to catch his attention.

Educate herself on horses (for obvious reasons).

Read up on woodworking (Olivia had mentioned once in passing that he adored good carpentry - nothing much was said about whether he liked practicing. Still, not a bad idea for a conversation starter)

Tried to enjoy whiskey. (Didn't get past half a mug, unfortunately. It was...interesting. She treated herself to her favourite bottle of Tempranillo later).

Came to the stables today for what she tried to pass off as a friendly chat about the winning stakes at the upcoming Derby. (She could have been talking to a haystack for all it mattered. He just looked up from his saddle tack set, took off his disgustingly well-disguised earphones, raised his eyebrows and said, "You were saying something??" before leaving without an answer)

(She'd worked so fucking hard to sound like she knew what she was talking about)

Kiara groans again against the door, weakly punching it one final time before she opens it, muttering furiously underneath her breath.

"Just give it up, Kiki," she scolds herself, hands jammed into the pockets of her coat. "C'est comme pisser dans un violon."

"Eww," a high-pitched, rather sweet voice says behind her, "That sounds like an...uncomfortably specific preference for a place to piss."

Kiara tries - and fails - to hide her grimace. On any other day, she'd be proud of Savannah for coming this far in just a few months. She's certain that her dear friend's rather successful attempt at translation is more a miracle of guesswork. A combination of remembering the few words she has been taught so far, and figuring out the ones that sound closer to their English counterparts.

(And that is how it must be. That is how Kiara knows that Savannah is serious about learning this language)

On any other day she'd praise her. But today... today she just wants to erase the last ten minutes from her brain. The last person she wants to know about her deep, tragic humiliation is the sister of the man who had crushed her umpteenth attempt to impress him to dust. With his fucking headphones.

"Forget you ever heard that," Kiara mumbles, "come, let's go see what snacks they have for tea. I'm starving."

Darija

On the day Prince Leo and his fiancée, Countess Madeleine, visit Castelserraillan after their engagement tour, there are only two members of the Thorne family waiting to receive the entourage. Kiara, and her father.

Ezekiel is barely - if ever - noticed and he would rather leave it that way. But Maman...they had to create a story for her.

The official excuse is that she'll be hosting an immensely important international art fair around the same time - one that heralded the work of Cordonia's local artisans. One that was time-sensitive and couldn't possibly be shifted around, Crown Prince or no.

In reality, her mind had been made up, the moment Lady Kaouther - the young woman her parents had sponsored for the social season this year - returned to the province in tears, swearing to never set foot in the Capitol again, reluctant to even tell Maman and Baba what had gone so wrong.

But Maman had found out anyway. The press was loath to criticize the countess' treatment of her ladies-in-waiting, drooling like sick horses over every scrap of charm and quotable quote she threw their way.

But when Ana de Luca is close enough to you to have your number of speed dial, there's no end to the tea that'll be willingly spilled at your table.

Poor Kaouther was still getting threats and harassment from afar. Mostly to keep her mouth shut about her former employer's exploits. Both midly annoying and deeply sadistic. Both sober and rum-fuelled. Some may be impressed at how Countess Madeleine managed to maintain such secrecy, from even the royal family she is marrying into.

Maman cursed and swore she would never entertain a viper like that in her presence, and who could blame her?

Kiara swallows as she sees the entourage approached. Baba knew his relationship with the royal family was already hanging by a frighteningly precarious balance. He couldn't afford any further damage, and he hardly wanted to expose Madeleine's misdeeds without Kaouther's consent either.

So yes. They were going to go through the motions of greeting the royal entourage. They were going to be perfect hosts. But Madeleine would know. Madeleine would hear their words - cascading in waves of poisoned honey - and know. And be unable to tell anyone anything. That will be Kiara's unsaid, unheard promise to Kaouther, and to herself.

The Countess is stopped by the press before she walked over to their manor, her smile perfectly in place and her hand on a rather diffident Prince Leo's arm as she answers their questions. Yes, we are in love. Yes, our economy is strong. Yes, my aim is to build strong relationships with my people wherever I go. To let them know I do it all for them, and them alone. To be the Queen that Cordonia needs, that my subjects can trust.

Kiara has never heard so much horseshit spill out of a courtier's mouth, and she's been part of enough royal courts to see the worst.

"Shakuwn daha fik alhurirat 'aw albalbulat nahar aleid!" Kiara says roughly in Darija as the entourage - led by the Crown Prince and his future consort - approach. She thinks she's so special, but really she's only about as special as a plain harrira soup served at an Eid-ul-Fitr banquet.

Hakim gently nudges his daughter's shoulder with his own. "But ya Babba," he teases, probably to lighten her mood a little before the group arrives, "I thought you liked harrira soup."

Kiara gives Madeleine one last glare before schooling her face to a more neutral expression.

Her next words are going to be quite nasty by Castelserraillan standards, but for all the sacrifices they are making today her father can surely afford her this one luxury. "Not if it wears a face as sour as her's."

Greek

Just a five minute break, Penelope had promised, thirty minutes ago.

Kiara has only herself to blame for believing that nonsense, after being in close quarters with her for an entire month - but there's something about that woman that makes most people want to keep giving her the benefit of the doubt.

('Me,' Kiara wants to say, 'I'm people')

The beam she is carrying for the barn-raising is small, but heavy enough that you'd get tired out quickly if you didn't take help. By ten minutes Kiara has to will herself to move ahead. By fifteen her thighs begin to cramp, and by twenty her head is swimming and she has a brief spiteful thought about making Penelope carry twenty beams as a belated apology. Though knowing her (and it pains Kiara to admit this; she likes Penelope too much) she would find some way to make herself the victim.

Thirty minutes have passed now, and the only energy she has left is wasted in gritting her teeth and groaning "Just...a few more...steps...till I can drop this...stupid plank...Mon Dieu!!!"

Kiara's mind goes blank for several seconds as she feels the weight of the beam falling on her, a dull pain already throbbing on her ankle.

"Ohhh thée mou," she hears a rough, gravelly, rather disgruntled voice above her, its sound causing her heartbeats to pound violently in her chest and its owner already using his strong, strong hands to save her...

"Ópios den théli na zimósi," she whispers, completely drained, "déka méres koskinízi."

It's a proverb Kiara has often heard in the Capitol - specifically for procrastinators - and she has now lost count of the number of times Penelope has left something she doesn't like to do "for later"...often leading Kiara to finish the job alone.

Drake stares back at her, confused. Mentally, she kicks herself. Again.

Of course. She should've known. Drake Walker is familiar enough with Greek that he'll maybe cuss or blurt out a phrase he'd learned from his childhood in the palace, but clearly he has no patience for metaphors, allegories, idioms or proverbs.

"Oh, uh...merci beaucoup," she backtracks, awkwardly.

Drake shakes his head - his eyes, amused, still on her face - and throws the beam away. It doesn't mean much, but that ten-second glance is fuel enough at this point for a month's worth of dreams.

Almost as if from a great distance, she thinks she can hear Esther's voice, low and concerned. "Kiara? Are you okay??"

Kiara locks eyes with Drake, and for once he meets her gaze. Doesn't say anything, doesn't even show a reaction - but at least he isn't looking away like she doesn't matter.

She smiles brightly. "I am now."

Gujarati/Mandarin

Married as they have been for six months now, Kiara can tell by several small, subtle signs when Hana is nervous.

Not that Hana makes observing a very hard task, not at all. She has an immensely expressive face.

Kiara massages the soft parts of her palm - just the way she likes it - while Hana takes several deep breaths.

"This is the first Parsi wedding I'll be attending, ever," Hana says slowly. "The bride is my cousin. This is supposed to be my family, and yet all of this feels as alien as if I never had a mother from this community." She closes her eyes then opens them again, gazing at the wedding sign on the gate. Delnaaz weds Zubin. "What if I mess this up?"

"You won't," Kiara takes both Hana's hands in hers. "And even if you do make a sliver of a mistake, Delnaaz is not going to judge you. And she's the bride; she's the one who matters. She's nothing like your mother or your uncle Cyrus."

Hana lets out a shaky laugh. "God I hope not." Her finger strokes lightly against Kiara's cheek. "One last kiss? For luck?"

Kiara presses her forehead against Hana's after they're done, sighing gently. Mon Dieu, how I love this woman.

"Remember that saying you hear from practically all the nice people in Bethulia," Kiara winds her arms around Hana's waist. "It's so prolific they should start painting it on their coat-of-arms. In Gujarati."

"Khavanu, pivanu, majja ni life." They both laugh gently as they whisper the phrase, hugging each other tighter. Eat, drink and be merry, indeed.

Hana seems to take that advice to heart once they go in, and most of the family (whether enthusiastically, or under duress - the latter perhaps a result of Delnaaz having a stern talking-to with relatives who had rejected Hana earlier) openly welcomes Hana into the fold.

The wedding goes terrifically: Delnaaz appears resplendent in a gorgeous white silk-and-lace Parsi Gara sari (that, Hana informs her, has been the family heirloom for five generations now), her (now) husband looking very distinguished in his white dagli and a black fetah atop his head. Once she finds herself comfortable among people who should treat her like family, Hana practically shines in her interactions - scintillating at conversations, singing and dancing and joking with the rest when she can.

Her Gujarati is a little shaky still, but that's hardly a problem. After all, this is the first language we're going to learn together, ma moitié, Kiara had reassured her once.

A few hours later, when the party started winding down, Hana and Kiara shifted to a smaller, more secluded alcove within the wedding venue. Dinyar - another of Hana's Bethulian cousins - pointed it out to Kiara, whispering conspiratorily that very few in the wedding party noticed this place at all and they could have all the privacy they wanted. Hana made sure they carried a sweet along.

And so here they are, now, inside a romantic little gazebo, sitting together - Hana taking a spoonful of Lagan nu Custard and raising it to Kiara's lips. They close their eyes as they savour. Silky. Creamy. Decadent.

"Look at us, playing hooky at an event when you were so worried about behaving right just yesterday. Yet won't you say this little moment by ourselves was the best one?"

Hana winks. "You know me so well."

"Only as well as you do, darling," she says, cupping Hana's cheek, "My soulmate."

When they kiss, Kiara can taste hints of cardamom and nutmeg on Hana's tongue. She laughs into their kiss.

"Zài tiān yuàn zuò bǐ yì niǎo..." Kiara says, the grin hardly leaving her face when they part.

"...zài dì yuàn zuò lián lǐ zhī!" Hana wipes the last bit of custard on the tip of Kiara's nose, then uses that as an excuse to gently bite it off her.

They tighten their arms around each other. That saying has always been a favourite with both of them.

In heaven let us be two birds flying ever together, and on earth two trees with branches interlocked forever.

Bonus: English (with a tiny side serving of Cajun French)

Queen Esther seems almost transformed when their entourage sets foot in Louisiana. In some ways, she seems even more at home here than she had ever seemed even in New York. And to think, everyone thought that place was her home!

"It is," she'd explained once, when Kiara had asked her, "but NOLA was where I was born. I spent my entire childhood here. A part of me will always remain here."

She takes them to an old favourite of her parents', a mom-and-pop shop that's still miraculously standing and - according to Esther - that still possesses the same incredible flavours. Hana is already all praise for the gumbo and the bananas foster.

"Try the beignets, Hana," Esther suggests, her eyes sparkling at her open joy. "Dip them in the hot chocolate. Best that way!"

She does...and next thing they know, Hana's best friend and wife are treated to a happy dance on a chair.

Kiara's eyes are set on what seems to be a more humble (but moist, glistening, crisp on the outside!) preparation. A croquette of some sort?

"Boulettes de chevrette," the server replies, closely watching her face.

"...shrimp?" Kiara says, after a pause too significant for Esther to miss. The server nods.

"You certainly took a little extra time to mentally translate that," she says. "Is it called something else in French?"

"Yes," Kiara replies, "We call it crevette. But that's not the part I find interesting."

Intrigued, Esther raises an eyebrow, nodding at her companion to continue.

She clears her throat. "I'm beginning to find that certain words in your French have retained their original form from older versions of our language. And with others, they've evolved over time into different words, while in our language that word remained the way it was. Chevrette was what we used to call shrimp before we started using the Norman regional variant, crevette."

"Oh wow," Esther says, amazed, "I had no clue."

Kiara smiles. "Now you do."

Later that evening, the queen confides in her.

"You know...I used to be nervous speaking French in front of you."

Kiara's eyebrows are knit together in confusion. "Pourquoi?? You spoke very well."

Esther sighs. "It's silly."

"Tell me all the same."

Esther laughs, almost as if at the foolishness of her younger self. "I thought you'd make fun of me for "speaking French all wrong". That you'd look down on me."

Kiara's heart sinks to her stomach. "Did I really sound that snotty back then?"

"Oh no. No," Esther reassures her. "Especially not with languages."

Kiara is familiar enough with Esther now to teasingly nudge her arm a little with her elbow. "At least not unless you're asking me to sleep with you. You can't imagine how many people would just say voulez vouz coucher avec moi ce soir to my face, and think they could get away with it. And this was even before Hana introduced me to Lady Marmalade!"

Esther rolls her eyes, chuckling ruefully. "I introduced her to that one."

The laughter doesn't last very long. Lines of humour then dissolve into lines of tension on Esther's face. She isn't quite done explaining yet. "I guess I was just...feeling a little out of place. So I may have projected a little back then."

Kiara nodded. She did remember how hard that season, and the subsequent engagement tour (which she often things of with a little regret), had been on Esther. And she'd never allowed those fears and insecurities to show on her face. "That makes sense," she says, "but you know there's this saying I read a while ago..."

"What?" Esther asks, her curiosity now piqued.

"'We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly.' It's a quote by a Hungarian translator mamed Kató Lomb."

Esther seems to open her mouth to protest the appropriateness of the quote, when Kiara stops her. "For the record, it doesn't correctly apply to your use of Cajun French. That is a dialect. It has its own rules. En vrai, I'd love to learn more."

The Queen relaxes, even smiling at the casual reference to her - something she knows Kiara will only use when she's sure they are friends.

"I'm just saying that even if you did get phrases in a language wrong, that wouldn't be reason enough for me to scoff at you. I'd be a hypocrite if I did that. After all, I wouldn't be this good at ten languages if I weren't constantly making mistakes."

As she often does since that eventful first meeting in Orphys, she remembers the kindness Lerato and Lesidi showed her, despite her terrible, terrible attempt at saying something in Wolof. The recipe for Senegambian-style jollof, that they gave her the next time she had visited their kingdom, still holds pride of place in her personal collection of precious things.

"I think what I'm saying is," she says, taking a deep breath, "when you make mistakes but the result is that I'm hearing a new language come out of your mouth, it's a wonderful thing. To me, it means you want to learn. And everyone's pace is different, so I'm no one to judge if you take more time to learn it than on someone else. There is never anything wrong with that."

Esther smiles again, softer this time, and more admiringly. "Noted," she says softly. "And we should definitely pack some fried alligator and remoulade sauce from here to snack on later."

Kiara grins. Her mouth is already watering. "We certainly will."

Translations:

Xifuma wante samay bët suruñu (Wolof) - I’m not hungry but my eyes aren’t full (basically the food is really really delicious). Source: Grace in Senegal

C'est comme pisser dans un violon! (French) - It's like pissing inside a violin! (Used to describe something useless and ineffective, or to complain about not being listened to after asking somebody to do something. Pissing in a violin is ineffective, it won't make a sound.) Source: Untranslatable

شكون داها فيك الحريرة (أو البلبولة) نهار العي

(Darija)

Describing someone who is incredibly pleased with themselves, but in actuality they are like Harrira on Eid al Fitr. Used to criticize someone who thinks very highly of themselves but has no justifiable reason to do so. Kind of like saying "you think you're hot shit in a champagne glass when you are really cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup". To explain the cultural context a little, Harrira is the soup Moroccans eat every day during Ramadan. On Eid, it stays in the fridge and people eat a lot of sweets. Source: Arabic Easy Language blog

Όποιος δεν θέλει να ζυμώσει, δέκα μέρες κοσκινίζει (Greek) - "Whoever does not want to knead, sifts for ten days". It is used to describe a procrastinator who finds every reason not to engage with their assigned task. Source: GreekPod 101.

Khavanu, pivanu, majja ni life (Gujarati) - khavanu refers to eating, pivanu refers to drinking, majja ni life means life is fun/amazing or to enjoy life. So it's basically "eat, drink and make merry". It's a popular Gujarati saying, I think, but it's associated most with the Parsi community.

在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为连理枝。(Mandarin) - In heaven as two birds flying together, On earth as two trees with branches interlocked forever. Basically a romantic proverb about soulmates. Source: China Plus

Notes:

The full quote from Kató Lomb goes like this:

"We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly. If someone knows how to play the violin only a little, he will find that the painful minutes he causes are not in proportion to the possible joy he gains from his playing. The amateur chemist spares himself ridicule only as long as he doesn’t aspire for professional laurels. The man somewhat skilled in medicine will not go far, and if he tries to trade on his knowledge without certification, he will be locked up as a quack doctor.

Solely in the world of languages is the amateur of value. Well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless. Indeed, it is better to do that than to remain uncertain and silent and end up back in Budapest rather than in Milan."

The line about chevrette/crevette is something I read from the LSU website, from their Department of French Studies. This is what it says:

"Change is inevitable for living languages. It would be unreasonable, however, to expect change to happen in the same way in places remote from each other. In some cases, Cajun French has maintained words, structures and pronunciations which the French have long ago abandoned. For example, Cajuns have maintained the original chevrette to refer to shrimp, while the French adopted the Norman regional variant crevette as their standard word. In other cases, Cajun words or pronunciations have evolved while the French word remained stable. The French recevoir, for example, has become reçoir in Cajun French."

Source: LSU Department of French Studies

#kiara theron #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #kiaratheronappreciationweek #KTAW #KTAW 2024 #KTAW Day 3 #KTAW Day 3: Languages #content: fanfic #lizzybeth1986

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leggerefiore · 3 months ago

Note

In relation to your N poll since it refused to fit in the comments: I firmly believe that N is a human. Ghetsis probably lashes out at him because he can’t accept defeat (his enraged speech about N after he failed to defeat the protagonist in BW, completely shutting down in B2W2, pushing and taking Lillie hostage in USUM, while other bosses were rather chill) and is jealous(!) (I think that both of them are distantly related to King Harmonia, and N is the one to inherit his ability to speak with pokémon, aka the chosen one. So the only logical thing to do (I condemn) in Ghetsis’ mindset, is to berate N for his uniqueness and make him think of himself as inferior). Also it’s easier to shift the blame for failure and redirect agression on someone else (coping). <— I don’t think any of this proves that N is a pokémon. Ghetsis sees pokémon as inferior beings and tools, so he degrades N to their level. The only healthy Ghetsis imagine I can come up with: is him being dragged by his partner to a psychiatrist (I am not in position to diagnose anyone, but from what I’ve read from books, I think Ghetsis may have ASPD). I like both Ghetsis and N (admittedly, I am thirsting for like Ghetsis more) because they provide so much room for theorizing, I wish we had more info on them. Now that I am thinking about it, I wonder how Ghetsis treated Anthea and Concordia, and at what age they both were adopted. Don’t remember seeing anything related to that in the first game. And what happened to N in the alternate universe USUM Ghetsis is from? What a messy family our old man cooked.

Anyway, now that I am here, I absolutely love your writing! The characters are written so… in character, it’s obvious you love all of them, and it makes your imagines so delightful to read, thank you so much! (I began adoring Lear because of you too, haha.) Don’t reply if you don’t see the need in it, just wanted to let you know my opinion. (Also I made a meme a while ago about writing Ghetsis content I was too anxious to send to you, but after your last post it now seems outdated. Sorry in advance for bad English and chaotic thoughts flow.)

Eh, you can send in whatever. I don't like Ghetsis, but I can laugh at him. Honestly I think the only times I've ever been like "??? No" was when people asked for actual child characters, like Alistair.

I would love for some more backstory on either of them, too. Why does Ghetsis have a ninja group under him? Why is he like that? Who are N's supposed real parents? Literally anything about Concordia and Anthea. Colress? How did Ghetsis meet him? A canon (not Masters) interaction between N and Colress is something desired. Also, any actual canon discussion about the King Harmonia those two are supposed to be related to. So many things to be desired.

Off-topic a bit, but one line from the previous post was from USUM Ghetsis about humans being easier to control. N probably still ended up having a change of heart in that universe... He also notes confusion at Colress betraying him, meaning Colress was at play somewhere there. I want to see all the USUM verses kind of. Maybe not Archie's or Maxie's. 7.8/10 too much water (and sun).

To be honest, Ghetsis's dialogue alone wasn't enough to really sway me. It was more Masuda's comment on N's possible backstory.

Granted, it's just a rumour, but I do find the thought experiment fascinating seeing as there are apparently people born from pokemon? Like the Froslass guy in the Alabaster Icelands in PLA. Ghetsis doing some freaky science experiments to make a Zoroark hybrid kid perfect for his plans really doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility. (I want to explicitly state that I do not pull any of this from his personality and character traits. He is a socially uncertain, sheltered, and brainwashed guy trying his best – That does not make him something inhuman.)

Thank you for your kind words! I try so hard to learn about the characters as much as I can before I write them. I'm ready to write a dissertation on Cyrus's lore (which has now been mostly confirmed). And don't be afraid, I don't get mad at discussion. It's healthy for any theory, no?

#interna fi #n.ima #pokemon.ima

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phantomdialogue · 4 months ago

Text

˗ˏˋ. ݁₊ ✶ ˖ 𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐞𝐥𝐬𝐢𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐫 - 𝟒.𝟐𝟓/𝟓 ☆ . ݁ ˖ˎˊ˗

chestnut springs book five

premise: since beau eaton came back from his last, and final, deployment, he hasn't been the same. he's lost his purpose and feels adrift from his family. bailey jansen has always been the black sheep in chestnut springs, cast out by everyone for her family's criminal history. when beau makes a bet with bailey that her last name isn't what the problem is, that her luck wouldn't change if she took his instead, he quickly learns that faking an engagement might not be as hard as he once thought.

couple: beau eaton and bailey jansen

tropes: fake engagement, age gap, virgin fmc, (small amount of) betting, military/veteran mmc

available on kindle unlimited

review below!

review:

i am pleasantly surprised by this book. i burned through it in two days and really fell so in love with the characters. still can't rate it as high as theo and cade as they are extremely near and dear to my heart but i really found myself loving beau. i've seen a lot of people rank this as last or second to last for the series but i think that it deserves a little more love. admittedly, i went into the book with a little bit of apprehension simply because with the way that beau was set up in book three and then ignored in book four, it felt odd to come back to him. however, i completely understand why elsie silver did it now that i'm done.

beau was a surprise of a love interest for me. i was worried that the book was going to lean into the over the top tortured veteran trope and i feel like there wasn't a lot of that. obviously he's got some pretty deep trauma as anyone would but it felt really natural instead of just pouring on the angst. bailey was in a similar way. i think it can be so easy to read a character like her with self-worth issues and want to yell at the book telling her to just get her head together but it's handled really beautifully. rather than finding her constant doubt annoying, the way that it's written really makes you sympathize for her and understand why she thinks like that.

i love this series... i wasn't expecting to love this series half as much as i did. it's easily a 5 star series for me and that really did shock me but i'm so so happy about it. i could read about 10 more books with these characters. i want a harvey book even if his story was covered as a b plot in some ways. i want a book that is literally just the girls all going out and having fun and stuff. i'd read a book just of the men being stubborn idiots and corrected by their wives/fiancees all the time. i'll read the spin off series' eventually but i truly am just so in love with these characters that saying goodbye to them is incredibly bittersweet.

q & a:

are they endgame? - they need therapy. without a doubt. BUT i don't think they break up and i think they are happy together endgame. i think the need for therapy comes on an individual level rather than them needing to seek it as a couple. they have done a good job at helping each other up to this point but i think long term they'll need professional help and there is nothing wrong with that. so yes, they are endgame but they will both need to seek therapy eventually.

did i cringe? - i don't think so. there were some awkward moments but nothing that outright made me cringe.

favorite part? - this was the perfect ending to the series - an ending that made me cry and was perfect. it really felt like the closing book in a comforting way. i feel like a lot of the plot lines for the majority of the characters were finished in reckless but then this went ahead and finalized everything with beau and bailey (because elsie silver doesn't just introduce a character and then throw them away. i've been waiting for bailey's moment since she appeared in flawless all the way at the start) along with any little tidbits left over for everyone else and of course, sweet harvey. it wrapped everything up with a beautiful bow and i am so heartbroken to leave these characters in the most bittersweet way.

least favorite part? - i wish that beau and jasper's friendship was explored a bit more. that's the main thing that stood out to me as something that irked me a bit. i liked the way that the virginity aspect was handled because i feel like that can often be poorly done but i just wish there was a bit more jasper and beau. i think it was set up in book three a lot but we didn't quite get to fully see their dynamic in person and so i was hoping to see it here. we got some small moments but i would have liked a little more.

favorite quotes (some spoilers here, of course, but minimal):

One who starts pulling up a stool every Sunday through Tuesday to drink chamomile tea until midnight, so I don’t have to close by myself.

“If we’re struggling, we’re still in motion, yeah? Heading somewhere better. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.”

“I know you’re scared of losing control around me.” Her chin tips up as though she’s told me something that will make me back down. Run me off. It doesn’t. “No, I’m scared of you becoming something I can’t live without.”

“Bailey. I’m not ignoring you.” She licks her lips. “You should.” “Impossible. I’m memorizing you,”

“You’re relentless, you know that?” And I just give her a salute and a wink. Because yeah, I am. No one has ever showed up for Bailey, but she’s about to get the full experience. “No, sugar. When it comes to you, I’m downright hopeless.”

"That’s how I know I’ll love you in every version of yourself, because we’re all constantly changing. Growing. Becoming."

"Without you, this version of me doesn’t exist. Without the next version of you, the next version of me doesn’t exist either. We’re going to grow together."

“This is . . . this doesn’t feel like alone together. This just feels like together-together.”

#⊹₊ ⋆ᯓ★ book review #bookblr #review #book review #elsie silver #hopeless #hopeless elsie silver

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warrior-cats-rewritten · 8 months ago

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I think my most controversial Warrior Cats opinion is that I actually really like the Cinderpelt-heart reincarnation plot. Or at least I would really love a version of it without all teh ableist implications. StarClan realizing that teh “no kits for medicine cats” rule is hurtful, and also that disabled cats are often pushed into roles they don’t want and aren’t suited for, and they reincarnate Cinderpelt for those reasons, not because a disabled life isn’t a full one. Cinderheart feeling pressure from teh clan, maybe even her family or even Lionblaze, to be a medicine cat when she finds out. It has potential idk.

I liked it at first, because... Admittedly, I read Po3 before I read TNP and before I finished TPB.

So Cinderpelt was this mysterious, not quite known character to me. I went and read TNP and thought "hmm. I wish it had been more 'this is happening because your life is going to be cut short now due to the move to the lake and that isn't fair because you were supposed to live a long time so go become your niece, really sorry about the badgers, xoxo PS sorry about your mom slowly starving to death in the forest'"

Instead it hinges on her having had "not a full life", which.... When I went EVEN FURTHER back and finished TPB.... She did. She loved Medicine. It was HER choice. The Erin's forgot, made a weird retcon that has become her entire character: "I loved my teacher and didn't tell him", and had Lionblaze be the... Reward for that?

I liked it, it was just done for a stupid reason. Another one of those "we wrote this plot point to make sure a character does xyz" instead of just... Writing it. Snowkit's death is the most egregious example of these writers pretending they have no control over these fictional cats.

I have some controversial opinions of my own.

The Lake territory is cool but also sucks. We need to either leave the Lake or start redoing things about it. It has no landmarks to hang out at or have what I call 'set pieces' whatsoever, and more importantly no threats (thunderpaths, snake rocks, gorge, the tree with a huge Owl, Carrionplace) and I'm pretty sure the writers feel this way too since we leave the Lake once an arc. I wouldn't mind moving territories again, to a more dangerous but still natural place.

Breezepelt should be a permanent Queen. I know it would mean seeing less of him (which I dislike) but him being a gentle parent and helping others raise their kits would be a PERFECT wrap up to his arc. As much as I desperately want Breezestar I think he would fit more as a perma-queen.

A trip to the distant future or past would be both good and bad. A whole new cast would be kinda cool but let's be honest, these writers suck. What is needed is a whole new writing team of people who actually LIKE the books.

I never really liked canon!Riverstar that much, we really didn't know anything about him because DOTC is less Dawn of The Clans and more "pwease like our power trip fantasy oc who knocks up a girl his son's age 🥺". I genuinely cannot remember anything River Ripple even does. He just... Isn't there. Maybe more prevalent in the last 2 books but I never got past the first 3 chapters of book 5 and never opened book 6 aside from looking at its last scene and rolling my eyes. Petal's death was where I drew the line, the narrative bending over backwards to make Clear Sky a poor sad baby crossed it.

• I've come around thanks to Bonefall but I genuinely hated Star Flower as a kid. The way she was described was uncomfortable, annoying and made it feel like the writers were trying to force you to think she's this gorgeous, perfect cat, it made her boring, bland, and anything with her in it a slog to get through because of the way Thunder spoke about her, going on and on about her beautiful she was, getting worse when Moth Flight's Vision described her with purple eyes to go with her star-shaped pupils... Also, I was really attached to Petal, who died suddenly when Star Flower entered the picture, and I was on the assumption Clear Sky and Petal were going to get together, while I didn't like Clear Sky, I just wanted my favorite to stay alive unlike every other female character. Starf also suddenly becoming a helples damsel in distress added to the annoyance so badly that I actually never finished DOTC, and it made me take a break from the series altogether. I really wanted her to be playing the long game. A sincere thank you to Bonefall for helping me reread who this character is, and while the way our 'Camera' describes hee is still annoying, I can at least look past that and see the roots of this character.

I love Leafpool, and Hollyleaf. Met a lot of Leafpool fans who seem to think Hollyleaf is this monster when she very much reads as someone who cannot handle their religious and emotional abuse based trauma and lashed out at the wrong person. What she did to Leafpool was awful but she was basically an irrational teenager. Just like apprentice does not always equal child, warrior does not always equal "grown ass adult who should get over it". Her own existence went against every single thing she believed in and was told by her own mentor to never ever question.

As sweet as the scene with Dandelionkit and Juniperkit in Starclan was... There was really 0 point in giving Squilf 2 dead kids, other than "the writers hate her". The only thing I can see a point for it is for a long-shot setup to Squirrelstar for some lives seeing as you just know they absolutely forgot about Squish's friends.

• I think Ivypool has somewhat of a right to be upset with Dovewing. HEAR ME OUT. She is allowed to be upset, NOT take it out on Dovewing. She also needs to learn that she helped drive her sister out, but the writers are allergic to that kind of thing in favour of "make character a background conservative. If female = mom. If mom = soft until politcal debate scenario." She is allowed to be sad and upset that her only sister is gone, she just needs to acknowledge she messed up, as well as lots of Thunderclan cats messed up.

It's time to kill Brightheart, Brackenfur, Thornclaw and Cloudtail. Enough is enough, start retiring cats who were full warriors when TNP started. Tawnypelt should be in the Elders den and Oakfur should be rotting in hell for what he let happen to Berrynose. On that same note, I hope Russetfur went on trial for that and her attempt on Firestar's life. I like her but good GOD, that was egregious, and looks even more pathetic when Yellowfang's Secret reveals she herself wasn't Clanborn.

Tigerheart's Shadow is a good book (aside from that one 'territory' bit, you know the one) and this series could go FAR if they embraced the mysterious mystical elements they set up, people are far too harsh on the experimental things.

Moonkitti makes good points sometimes but I need younger fans to stop taking everything she says as gospel and start thinking for themselves; case in point the recent Mapleshade drama that REEKS of "if I was Orpheus I wouldn't have turned around". The writers call the Moonstone the Moonpool every time we revisit the forest, do you really think they remembered The Bridge? Did YOU remember the bridge or did Moonkitti point it out? Also, with how cosmically doomed from the start the story was, the water probably would have overtaken the bridge and STILL swept them away. For every one good take Moonkitti has they seem to have more than a few bad ones.

My silly one. FERNSONG SHOULD HAVE BEEN NAMED AFTER HONEYFERN AND BEEN A HONEYFERN CLONE APPEARANCE WISE. No problem with him being named for Ferncloud but could they PLEASE acknowledge that Cinderheart is Honeyfern's sister too? Poppyfrost named her baby boy after Molekit and Lilyheart named her daughter Honeykit despite never having met Honeyfern, and those don't feel like coincidences.

I dislike the Tribe as its concept, but I like some of the characters that came from it, know what I mean? I like OG Stoneteller (though I always pictured him very differently. I saw him as gray tabby with white paws!) I think he is an interesting character, and Outcast was a huge letdown with having him be wrong. It would be a nice change in story if the Clan cats had tried to push their way, only for it to NOT work, for there to be a different way to do things, or a trick the Tribe used in the past that they "could give another crack at", and for the Clan cats to learn that their way of life is not a golden standard. Could you imagine Hollypaw learning this? I also really like Brook. I dismantled her and I know she is a play on the stupid "Indian princess" trope. I love how sweet she is, though I hate how it was painted against the Tribe. I plan to keep that wisdom and kindness, while also making The Tribes just as good a place to live.

I don't think Tawnystar would've been a good idea, as good as a name like that sounds. She, like Bramble, is too old, and the writers can't stand killing off Arc 2 characters in favour of killing off Arc 3 and 4, we would have been stuck with her and the writing for leaders atm SUCKS. Tawnypelt also just... Isn't that great. While I like her, I don't think she would be a good leader. Same goes for Mothstar, though I feel like they could have it done better if they do have it happen by making her not want the 9 lives. After the absolute Christian slog ASC has been about "non believers" it would be cool to see her prove that wrong and put this shitty arc's hinge point in the ground once and for all.

I'm tired of Med Cat protags. We've had one since TNP barring Dawn of The Clans when arguably it would have been the most beneficial from Pebble Heart or Dappled Pelt. Leafpool was cool because she was the first, Jayfeather was kinda cool still because of blindness and being part of the Prophecy, and while his POV in OOTS was a necessary evil, we did not need Alderheart. There is no reason to have Alderheart be the POV when Sparkpelt has the objectively more interesting setup and Alderheart's "anxiety" works better when we can't see through his eyes, as the authors don't know what actual anxiety is. Shadowsight and Frostpaw are alright, through Frostpaw's pov suffers around Nightheart and she does suffer from Camera POV Syndrome at times... Not helped by her being a Female Warriors Character with all the lovely things that come with it. Shadowsight was cool until the writers completely fumbled the bag and made him rude, argumentative, and dropped his epilepsy for no reason. All this is NOT helped by the new retcon that you're just "born different" with some kind of inherit special connection to Starclan, like it wasn't some kind of learned thing, hence Cinderpelt struggling with it as a lot of the time she was on her own!

Let Daisy retire and let Sorrelstripe take over the nursery. These new characters are in desperate need of personality, let Sorrelstripe be a feisty, confident midwife who won't let Queens be bullied into things.

#warrior cats #warriors #warrior cats rewrite #wcr #asks

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msunitedstatesjames · 1 year ago

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I finally finished Light Bringer. Here's my thoughts (obviously, spoilers incoming):

-First and formost, RIP to the king of my heart, Cassius Bellona. The worst part about his death is that you know it's coming the whole book. You don't take a character like him, a former enemy, give him a solid redemption arc, make him the most ABSURDLY likeable character and source of all humor in the book, and then not kill him off. But still, I held out a tiny bit of hope. I really dreaded getting to the end of this book just because I knew it would be coming. But, you had to respect the way he went out at least. Dude's gonna be legend if that counts for anything.

-So, The Abomination was WORRYINGLY absent from this book, aside from a couple of mentions and that (maybe) he's Virginia's mysterious source of intel? Like, everyone is worried about how Atalantia is sitting around building up her power while everyone else is duking it out, but what about the Abomination? I know he's not anybody's most immediate threat in this book, but is anybody else extremely worried about what he's going to get up to in Red God?

-I was happy with the Virginia chapters we did get, but I hope she gets more time in Red God. Also, same to Victra. She was awesome in this book, as always, but like, I want to see you do even more destroying, girl. We love you. I also missed Electra.

-The Bromance in this book was next level, even by the standards previously set in this series. I loved having a little break from the relentless battles and death in Dark Age, to just get the dudes (and Lyria) hanging out and trying to work out their differences. This also helped get back some of the old humor I missed from earlier in the series.

-This was Lyria at her best in my opinion. She was great. I only wish we got to see more Lyria and Cassius because they were just so heart warming.

-Sevro is back! I loved getting to see the old Sevro make his triumphant return for the last third of the book or so. Sevro walking up to Gaia au Raa and just going, "shut up, crone," really made my day.

-Lysander has killed my favorite character of the book two books in a row now. And both times with a gun. I love how this dude talks about how he's secretly really good with a razor, but every time he's confronted with someone who's actually good at using one he just shoots them point blank. I know I've said this before, but seriously guys, fuck Lysander. I mean, even Atalantia is becoming more likeable than him. She may be an evil, power hungry tyrant, but at least she's pretty much honest about it. Everyone knows she's the worst and she barely bothers to pretend otherwise.

-Admittedly, it's been a few years since I've read the other books in the series, but this might be my favorite of the bunch. Pierce Brown really hit every emotional note and character perfectly in this one, and it felt a lot more balanced compared to the (necessary) bleakness of Dark Age.

#light bringer #light bringer spoilers #lysander au lune #cassius bellona #sevro barca #virginia augustus #darrow of lykos #lyria of lagalos #pierce brown #red rising series #red rising series spoilers #red rising #red rising spoilers

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arcane-vagabond · 1 year ago

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✨

Okay, so kind of a personal post, but I wanted to get my thoughts down, and I will end up deleting this later lol

For my whole life, I have loved books and stories. I have literally been writing stories since before I even knew how to read and write. Somewhere at home is a picture frame that my great-aunt put together of a drawing I made when I was like two or three, and it was a sloppy finger painting, but it's clear that it's meant to be two people and some kind of creature. And she typed up a caption for it, and I guess it was the description I had given her of what the painting was supposed to be.

"A prince saves a princess from the scary dragon, and they live happily ever after."

Not my best work, admittedly, but it's the first documented time of me making a story, and I looked at that picture frame with fondness. Who knows where it is now, probably tucked away in some box in the attack after my parents moved.

But, then I got super into writing in like the third grade when I came up with my first original story, and then my love for writing snowballed from there. I can't tell you how many stories would flit in and out of my brain over the years, but somehow I think y'all have an idea just based on the ideas I pitch on here. But, just know that the ones I put on here are only a fraction of the ones I come up with.

I don't know why I'm so in love with writing and stories exactly. Maybe it's the thrill of making my own worlds where my problems aren't so present and overwhelming, or maybe it's because I love to find the magic in different possibilities. That sounds kind of smarmy, doesn't it? But, I think it's still true.

But, something that's been part of my personal journey as of late is the idea of doing things for myself and not others. My whole life, I've been such a huge people pleaser, and now at my big age, I've decided that I don't want to live my life like that anymore, but I'm faced with the problem of: how do I stop?

I'll start off by saying that I love my parents a lot. They've made a lot of sacrifices for me and they do a lot for me, and I'm forever grateful to them. But whether they meant for it or not, there was a lot of pressure to be a certain thing growing up. I could have hobbies like writing, acting, painting, drawing, singing, etc. But I had to be realistic, and that meant that I wasn't allowed to pursue those things as my main goal. I had to find a way to stuff myself into the box of "STEM, business, or something that would make money." And I get why. Financially, life was rough for a really, REALLY long time growing up. Both of my parents came from households where their parents worked more than one job to make ends meet, and this was back in the 60s and 70s.

So, for most of my life, I allowed myself to have those hobbies, using them as an escape for the growing pressure I was feeling at needing to be "perfect" for my family. And that's just it. I was never "perfect" enough. I could have won first place at a tournament for speech and debate, and I would be given critiques on how I could have done better. They always told me they were proud of me, but the word "but" always came after their words of praise.

"You did such a good job, but..."

"That was really good, but..."

"It would have been even better if you just..."

I didn't hear the words "I'm proud of you" by themselves until I was 12 years old and it was from a family friend. I remember waiting for the "but" to come, and when it never did, I had to excuse myself to go cry in the bathroom.

So I escaped further into my little worlds, and sometimes I would share them with my friends who would always tell me that they loved my stories, but there was always the nagging feeling in the back of my head that they were lying. They had to say that because they were my friends, but also because the stories weren't...perfect.

I've always been a perfectionist, and it's something I'm learning to get over as time goes on. These past few months have been such a journey for me because I've been allowing myself to be bad at shit.

But then I started posting on here, and it made me feel so good to know that literal strangers thought my writing was good too. You guys didn't have to lie to me and tell me that it was, you genuinely thought my writing was great! And it makes me so happy! It refueled my love for writing, and I hope I can keep writing for years to come!

But I've also been telling my mom about all of this (leaving out the 18+ bits lol) and the other night she looked at me and asked me if I had considered actually getting a story published.

Now, this was a bit of a blow for me for a couple of reasons. Yes, I'm so happy that she's finally taking an interest and seeing how passionate I've always been about writing, but...

But why now? Are you asking me that because you genuinely think I'll get published, or are you asking me because you're hearing that people actually really appreciate my hobby and you think I can make money off it? Why are you suddenly so enthusiastic about something I've made clear that I always wanted to do?

Idk, I'm probably just overthinking the whole thing, and I know she's genuinely happy for me, but it still kind of heart. Yeah, the dream is to one day be a published author. It always has been, but who knows if I'll ever finish anything good enough to be published, ya know?

Anyway, if you stuck around this long you can breathe out a sigh of relief lol I'm done rambling and ranting for now. I'll get some of the updates out to you guys when I can

#personal #long post #y'all do NOT have to read this lol #I will more than likely delete this later #gonna start using this website as my diary lmaoooooo

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caliburn-the-sword · 1 year ago

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final cress thoughts!!!!

i absolutely inhaled that book holy shit lol. got winter at the bookstore today because shipment just arrived and i gotta say it's HELLA chonky. i am EXCITED. of course fairest will have to come first

since the plan has been explained to us the readers, that means it's DEFO gonna go wrong (note: it did - sybil ambushed them)

god why is cress married to everyone. first thorne now wolf

rolling my eyes sighing bile is rising in my throat. i CANNOT take this alpha nonsense. admittedly when cress says it in a brightest star of a constellation way, that's cute. unfortunately the omegaverse connotations cancels it out completely

OMG CINDER AND KAI FINALLY. I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SO LONG. rip to everyone that was reading these as they came out because i can't imagine how PAINFUL it would have been to wait two years for them to see each other again as opposed to me just binging the books across like 3 weeks max by the time i finish the series

respect for torin holy shit that must have been SUCH a hard choice for him to make to not only let the prince go but to reveal his tracker chip

NO ERLAND IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE LETUMOSIS AND HE'S NOT ALLOWED TO DIE AND HE HAS TO REUNITE WITH CRESS. CRESS NEEDS TO KNOW. I AM LITERALLY IN STUDIES OF RELIGION CLASS RN I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS PAIN

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT THE PLAGUE IS BIOWARFARE. i'm a genius. but the mutated strain was just genuinely a coincidence judging by levana's reaction LMAO

was absolutely baffled why tf thorne was kissing cress before i remembered the promise he made. i feel sickly and nauseous. get off that minor rn

as much as i hate thorne. gotta admit that the shooting scene was badass

YES SYBIL TAKE THAT, BITCH

wonder who the queen is married to

i respect every ounce of rebellion in erland's bones. yeah piss off the queen!!

grossed out by cress and thorne some more. please man keep pushing her away. literally his responsibility as an adult. ew

holy shit scarlet actually lost her finger

it's nice to properly meet winter

something very strange seems to be going on with winter. master and pet lunar stuff?? weird af. wants to be besties?? girl are you even understanding the situation?? also has she never met a ranga before??? is she HIGH????? and what's with the role playing games??? she's somehow more delulu than cress, acts even YOUNGER than her actual age than cress does

winter seems to THINK that she was friends with cinder. interesting. once again i want cinder to get her memories of pre-fire back real bad

winter is a SIMP for jacin

OH I'M SO DUMB HOW DIDN'T I REALISE THAT SHE WOULD BE DELULU BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T USE HER GLAMOUR. respect for winter has increased. this means that ALL the time scarlet spent thinking about how beautiful winter is was the truth LMAO. gay gay homosexual gay. is it too much to hope for a polycule?? they'd literally be like parks and rec. "i'm wolf andthis is my gf scarlet, this is her gf winter, this is winter's bf jaycin".

ofc a lake on the moon is gonna be called artemisia lake LOL. now we've had one moon titan and one moon goddess reference. chang'e when????

NOT FARAFRAH. i bet you all found it downright HILARIOUS when i went on about how much i love farafrah back in one of the other posts

ngl think it's too early for cinder and kai to be eating each other's faces. kai got over his issues REAL fast lol. idk how i feel about it but willing to see where winter takes us

i didn't even think of the implication because i don't consider kai and levana legitimately engaged so i find it HILARIOUS that the silly family tree of kai being engaged to one woman and then making out with her niece. reminds me of ouat

revolutionary cinder ftw

speculation for fairest:

i did the maths and realised that since levana is like 30 and cinder is 16 then she was about 17 years old when she decided that cinder just had to go. I'M 17. cannot imagine killing a 3 year old. cray z. and then she was even YOUNGER than that when she killed her sister for the throne. ALSO insane. that will be one deeply disturbed mind to dive into in fairest

read the blurb and don't exactly have anymore thoughts other than trying to figure out who the in universe equivalent to her REAL husband would be since we're defo getting backstory on that. since she's the evil queen then it must be winter's father "the good king", however because of the blurb i reckon it's some kind of "mirror mirror on the wall" figure. idk what exactly that would entail. some kind of royal adviser???

speculation for winter, because i don't want to forget everything i'm thinking by the time i'm done reading fairest:

mother reveal for cress - i don't remember if any lunar scientists have been mentioned or named yet, but i WILL be keeping an eye out. i suspect someone who has something to do with the wolf soldier hybrids, she might even know wolf. regardless hope the bitch dies

father reveal for cinder

from the way jacin calls garan linh's device an equaliser, it's DEFINITELY gonna be reproduced in this book, ESPECIALLY with winter going all delulu, and the way cinder is concerned about becoming like levana

jacin pov chapters now that miss marissa doesn't have to make his motivations and loyalties ambiguous

ngl i HATE prequels, ESPECIALLY when they're about the villain of the story, and i often skip them. i'm a bit apprehensive about going into fairest, but i want to have the proper reading experience of tlc, and it's important to the story. putting my personal feelings aside and hoping for the best!!

@eddisfargo @francforever @winterrhayle @winterpinetrees @shellyseashell

#the lunar chronicles #tlc #cinder linh #marissa meyer #carswell thorne #emperor kai #crescent moon #tlc cress #scarlet benoit #ze'ev kesley #tlc wolf #winter blackburn #jacin clay

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boilingrain · 1 year ago

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Rain Draws Squirrelflight, Leafpool & Bramblestar a Few Times

Since these three won my poll on which protagonists I should draw, here they are!

They don't get as much art per character as Ashfur did, because that was one character and this is three. Trust me, this was faster and more do-able

So anyways, first up is the Squirrel herself!

I draw Squirrelpaw generally softer & bouncier looking than I draw Squirrelflight, because at this point in time she's just a kid. She has not yet witnessed the Horrors(tm)

Even when I was reading The New Prophecy for the first time as a kid, I always imagined Squirrelpaw/Squirrelflight as having little round ears. Maybe it was just the "Squirrel" prefix, but that trait has always stuck with me and I've always drawn her with small ears.

This isn't a trait unique to Squirrelflight with my designs though! In her family alone, Cloudtail, Alderheart, Lionblaze and Nutmeg also have small, rounded ears (Princess might also have them, but I haven't decided yet. I also haven't decided if any of Cloudtail or Lionblaze's kits have the rounded ears, but at least one probably does)

I wish that she had kept her telepathy thing with her sister, I honestly thought it was interesting. It's a shame that the Erins quickly ran out of uses for it and decided to pretend it never existed. This may or may not be why in my rewrite of Warriors that exists in my head (like many others in this fandom), the telepathy thing didn't stop existing as soon as it wasn't super useful the plot anymore.

Admittedly, she's always been my favorite of the cats who journeyed to the sun-drown place (though tbf, most of them didn't really get any proper development, and the other one was Brambleclaw. I do have a soft spot for Stormfur and Tawnypelt, though).

Also I... forgot to color Squirrelkit's mouth. Whoops

The lady with a somehow worse taste in men than her sister, Squirrelflight!

Please Squirrelflight, you could've done so much better than Bramblestar. You deserve so much better than Bramblestar.

That aside, Squirrelflight has been one of my favorites for a long time. I just think she's a fun and interesting character

I think I said basically all of the things I was going to say when I was talking about Squirrelpaw, tbh. Also, much like a lot of the fandom for some reason, I don't really remember much of what happened during OotS? I don't think Squilf was particularly relevant during that arc, but it's possible she was and I just genuinely do not remember.

Why is Omen of the Stars basically just a void in everyone's memory. What's going on there.

Anyways, those aren't the final designs for Lionkit, Hollykit & Jaykit in that little doodle. Those are just kind of rough concept designs for them, and when I eventually draw them they'll probably look different. Also this is tortie Hollyleaf propaganda

If Lionblaze can be golden (though I typically draw him as cream) when both of his parents are functionally black (brown = black when it comes to cats. Also Leafpool shouldn't be a brown tabby anyways, because her dad is red and her mom is cream, which is a dilute version of red. I should stop talking now, before I get too deep into rambling about cat genetics), then Hollyleaf can be a tortie. (Jayfeather's fine btw. Gray is a dilute version of black, and both of his parents carry dilute. Crowfeather from Ashfoot & Leafpool from Sandstorm)

Okay, I'll finally shut up about cat genetics now

If Squirrelstar doesn't happen, I will eat my hat. I will eat several hats.

I actually don't even know how old Squirrelflight is currently in the books. It doesn't help that the Erins are weird with ages and don't seem to know how cats work.

For my purposes, I choose to believe that the Clans have been at the lake for at least a decade, making Squilf at least 10 1/2 - 11 years old, depending on how old she was when the Clans left the forest territories. And putting her around that age would, in fact, make her a senior (for a house cat, at least. Real feral cats don't typically live that long, but tbf the clans have medicine and stuff, so their life expectancy might be longer than regular feral cats. But cats are considered seniors once they hit 10 years old)

Also all things considered, she's probably been stressed as hell for a while and experiencing the Horrors(tm). So she gets some gray on her muzzle from a combination of age and stress.

Honestly she deserves to go on a nice, relaxing vacation where she doesn't have to deal with the Erin's less than good writing choices and shitty treatment of female characters.

Anyways Squirrelstar's leader mark is her nose spot becoming star shaped, because I love it when leaders are depicted with some sort of star shaped marking. I eat it up every time.

I'll talk more about leader marks and how I do them at a later time, though.

Leafpaw! My sweet baby Leafpaw!

My version of Leafpool is big and very fluffy, and you can't stop me from drawing her that way

Right off the bat, you'll probably notice that her design has changed a bit from the original concept design that I posted, as she's now a tortie instead of a regular brown tabby. Admittedly, a big part of why she's a tortie now is that I just love torties & calicos haha

If anything, her name makes even more sense now, because the combination of brown and orange makes her look more like leaves during fall! :)

Why's Leaf a tortie but Squirrel isn't? Maybe Squirrelflight is a secret tortie, or maybe she's trans, who knows? (The actual answer is that I had already finished all the Squilf art when I randomly decided to have Leaf be a tortie, but I didn't want to go back and change Squilf's design because I love it)

I hope it's obvious that I love Leafpool a whole lot

Once again, Holly, Lion & Jay's designs in this are not their final designs and when I eventually get around to actually drawing them, they'll definitely have at least a few design changes.

Also it's really hard to draw tiny little newborn kittens on a small scale like this.

Anyways I've never actually read Leafpool's Wish, so I don't know if it proves or disproves what I'm about to say, but I think that with how much Leafpool loved her kits, I believe that she would've raised them herself if she had the ability to.

I also personally believe that if Squirrelflight hadn't decided to take in the kits, or if Leafpool had decided that she wanted to raise her kits instead of her sister doing it, Thunderclan wouldn't have done shit about it. I mean, she definitely wouldn't be as trusted as she was before, but I don't think she'd lose her job (at least at first) or be exiled. She was their only medicine cat, they literally couldn't do shit about it. Additionally, she's Firestar's daughter and also related to Sandstorm and Squirrelflight, who are both individually forces to be reckoned with.

She'd probably have to train an apprentice as soon as possible and then have to step down from her role as medicine cat, but I definitely don't think she'd be exiled or anything.

Leafpool but she sparkles

For anyone who didn't see my Ashfur post, some of the rules I have for Starclan designs is that Starclan cats are lighter in color and have sharper & more star shaped markings compared to when they were alive. They also have their appearances change over time in a way connected to their names, which is why Leafpool is starting to grow leaves out of her neck fluff.

Additionally, Starclan cats will typically have a sharper shape, to go with their sharper markings. You'll notice that while she has the sharper markings, Leafpool's fur is still soft and rounded.

I feel like Leafpool's whole thing with her trial would affect her Starclan appearance, but that's not really something that results from a trial, so her not becoming sharper in shape is the exception rather than the rule.

I didn't design a Dark Forest Leafpool, but I imagine that the changes she'd get there (because my DF cats have their appearances change based on their crimes) would be that she would still grow leaves out of her body, but she'd also grow feathers and would have particularly long and sharp claws that she wouldn't be able to sheath. Each of these things is representative of the "crime" that she was sentenced for (even though Spottedleaf, a Starclan cat, literally encouraged her to do that)

The leaves would specifically be holly leaves (representing, well... Hollyleaf), the feathers would be a mix of jay and crow (representing Jayfeather & Crowfeather) and the claws would represent Lionblaze (though for this one I went with something meant to represent his power instead of his name. With Leafpool being a medicine cat, I think it fits)

If Leafpool doesn't give Squirrelstar a life we riot

The bramble man

Honestly even as a kid Brambleclaw wasn't exactly my favorite character. I wasn't really old enough to really process how he sucks, honestly I just kind of remember thinking that he was boring. Maybe that's just the fact that I've always liked Squirrelflight & Leafpool way more than him, but I just didn't really care for his POV chapters during The New Prophecy

I did love the Hawkfrost scene, though. Because I wasn't on any warrior cats forums or anything as a kid, I didn't get spoiled about stuff like Hawkfrost's death or the Fire Scene (along with many other important scenes), so I think those scenes hit way harder for me.

When I was a kid reading Po3 for the first time, I genuinely didn't even suspect that Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw weren't Hollyleaf, Lionblaze & Jayfeather's biological parents. So you can probably imagine how shocked little elementary school me was

But anyways, yeah. While I didn't hate Brambleclaw as a kid, I just didn't really care about him.

On another note, my Brambleclaw/star design is pretty similar in shape to my Lionheart design (just with extra toes and not as big of a mane). Since Lionheart was Goldenflower's brother, I thought it would be interesting if while everyone else just saw Tigerclawstar in Bramble's appearance, Goldenflower didn't.

My Tawnypelt design has a more similar shape to Tigerclawstar, though.

Bramblestar!

Leader marks are usually an already existing marking that becomes star shaped (like how I made Squirrelstar's nose spot star shaped), but sometimes a new marking entirely will appear as the leader mark.

While I easily could've made one of the spots on the backs of his ears into a star shaped for his leader mark, I have plans relating to Bramblefake/The Imposter and Bramblestar's mark.

You'll see said plans in a moment, but what I will mention about it is that my Ashfur design has a broken heart shaped marking on his chest.

On an unrelated note, Bramblestar should have someone else name warriors for him because great Starclan is he bad at names.

There's totally nothing wrong with Bramblestar, what possibly could've made you think that

Anyways, a combination of the whole being possessed thing & Ashfur's broken heart marking have caused Bramblestar's leader mark to "break". It actually doesn't get fixed after he's no longer possessed, his leader mark stays that way.

The Imposter's fur is darker and droopier than regular Brambkestar. I don't have a real reason for the darker color (other than that it looks cool), but the fur is Ashfur's doing.

Another thing that is Ashfur's doing is the blue pupils. Bramblestar is supposed to have red pupils (due to him training in the Dark Forest in TNP), but being possessed kind of overrides that and so The Imposter's pupils are blue. They do turn red again after Bramblestar is no longer possessed, though.

Honestly, I still kind of wish that the theory that Bramblestar had rabies was canon. The possession was interesting, but I don't think rabies has even been mentioned in the series. Which is a bit surprising considering that it's basically a soap opera with cats, but then again the Erins sure do love taking the opportunity to ignore possible interesting new plots. Why do anything interesting when we could instead have a billion more badly written romances

But I will admit, it was interesting to have Ashfur come back to be awful again. I'm still mad that he got let into Starclan after trying to kill at least 4 people because he "loved too much" and that gave him more of an opportunity to pull this shit. They absolutely butchered Yellowfang after she died. Not really even recognizable as the same character as her living self.

I'm not doing more art for this post. I'm tired and I'm going to go get some sleep. Tomorrow I will get back to work on hypokit requests, but for now it is time to put away my art supplies and lay in bed.

#warrior cats #squirrelpaw #squirrelflight #squirrelstar #leafpaw #leafpool #brambleclaw #bramblestar #ashfur #(b/c of Bramblefake/The Imposter)#warrior cats art #rain's art corner

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ayearofpike · 1 year ago

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I recently read/re-read some of Pike's books and came across this blog in the process. I love your analyses and comparisons of plot and character similarities among his books. Among the ones I read, Monster was my favorite - forgive me if you've said this somewhere, but do you have a personal favorite or least favorite of his stories?

I started answering this a while ago, and then mindlessly navigated away from the page and lost like twenty minutes of work. It was so frustrating that I abandoned the question, trying to give myself space and time that I wanted to invest again.

Because this is a great question. I actually meant to consider this in a sort of wrap-up post, with a summary and personal reflection. But after close to 100 stories I was so burned out on Pike that I wasn't in any place to think about it. (Kind of the same as what happened with the first version of this response.)

So four years later, here's my bests and worsts of the whole experience.

My top 5 favorites

See You Later. A heartfelt love story that unlocks all the feels. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I can't help myself with this one.

Master of Murder. More nostalgia, but it actually is genuinely clever, making the suspense novelist figure out the crime he's been subconsciously reporting for a year.

Monster. Dude, I knew I liked this and was creeped out by it back in the day, but I did not remember how tight and how chilling this story was. Maybe his actual best.

Whisper of Death. Creepy and delightful. Character motivations work, activities and actions and repercussions work, and even the sense of "wrong place, wrong time" feels right.

Die Softly. This book is fucked, but in a good way. I love how we're rooting for one thing and slowly come to realize it's all wrong.

other good ones

Bury Me Deep. A tight story with minimal characters and set. Believable and not overused.

Remember Me. It's a classic and a best-seller for a reason. Just … like, ignore the sequels.

Last Act. Even though I don't love the "ladies be crazy" conceit, this is a solid suspense mystery that we actually have a chance to unravel.

Weekend. Yeah, I like the mysteries. This one is realistic in characters and actions. And yeah, admittedly, I have a soft spot for my first Pike book.

pleasant surprises

Execution of Innocence. I don't know if it actually aged well, what with the crazy-gay trope, but I was grateful for the realistic crime story.

Gimme a Kiss. I remembered this one being simplistic and uninteresting. Maybe because I was a dumb kid. As an old man, I appreciated the thoughtful plot and agency of the female characters.

The Visitor. The first time around, I was mad at how short this book was. The reread revealed that it had exactly as much as it needed.

Spooksville in general. I hadn't read these before, and was expecting disconnected slime monster horror. It was nice to stick with one group of kids and one setting, even if the "scares" were diverse.

unpleasant surprises

The Lost Mind. I remembered this one being such a great story with a killer structure and an amazing twist, and was really bugged when, upon reread, I discovered it had a MASSIVE plot and character hole.

Falling. It was creepy in a good way the first time I read it, but coming back to it made it creepy in a bad way. Also, all his strong female agency in the good books goes out the window in this one.

The Star Group. One I loved at the time, with the whole idea of high school friend groups forever until we die, but upon reread the death wasn't actually a payoff.

books that don't include enough

Magic Fire. We needed more backstory, particularly on the love interest, since she was the whole reason for the story happening and we just plain don't know why.

The Tachyon Web. More about the characters (not to mention societies and interstellar politics) would have made this a deeper and more satisfying story.

The Grave. It has a lot of promise, but there's not enough about how they end up where they are and what might happen next or what it means. Seemed like he tried again with Witch World, which is ... sort of better? But still not great.

bottom 5

(tumblr won't let me do a numbered list in reverse)

5. Chain Letter 2. Throwing away a thoughtful portrayal of a kid with cancer-induced mental illness in order to move some books on the power of Satanic Panic.

4. Black Knight. It's The Hunger Games, except … not good.

3. The Wicked Heart. I can't with the fuckin' Hitler, Kevin.

2. Witch. I can't tell if nobody cares or if everyone cares too much. Either way, it sucks.

1. Remember Me 3. Not just the unnecessary-sequelness, though that's part of it. Shari Cooper didn't remember herself, and becomes a racist asshat, and I don't want anything here.

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applestorms · 1 year ago

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morality in the world of good omens

so i wrote another (admittedly very messy) essay on good omens not long ago right after watching season 2 but after finishing that, rewatching all of both seasons multiple times, and reading through the book, i have a couple more distinct ideas to get out...somewhere...if only for my own sanity. this is me throwing my thoughts into the internet before i pop, if you will. just 3 sections, below the cut.

1. environment, characters, & transformative fandom creations

to start this post off a bit more broadly, i've been thinking a lot recently about transformative fandom and the reasons why we write fanfiction/create semi-original works in the first place, as well as why certain aspects of fandom (writing, art, analysis, etc.) will be more appealing to me for certain shows/series than others. correct me if you have a totally different view of this, but in my experience i've found that i tend to naturally gravitate towards different parts of fandom depending on what the original medium of the story was- podcasts tend to lead to some of the most interesting art trends, for example, since there's more room for interpretation and character design tends to be more of an ongoing community project than something set in stone like for a tv show with live human actors.

in my own observation, i've noticed that a lot of the really big & excitable fandoms, the ones that generate tons & tons of fanworks more naturally (a.k.a. just because of the story itself & not other factors like a pre-existing franchise or hype about new great gay representation, etc.) tend to surround stories that fall into a kind of "sweet spot" that makes the creation of fanworks really appealing. if you've ever wondered why there are so many ravenous artists bending over backwards to draw gorgeous fanart for stuff like homestuck or south park or even minecraft youtubers, it's likely because those stories all fall into a sweet spot for drawing, with character designs that are recognizable at a glance and yet still simple enough that there is plenty of room for personal creative touches. (think also, if you're familiar with such kinds of homestuck terms: hyperflexible mythologies, A4:1524, and/or this archive link cause the official thing is down now for some reason)

the conclusion i've come to is thus that even something as basic as the original medium of a story can dictate a lot about what kinds of fan activities are more common or popular within said story's fandom.

so, back to good omens- for me, this all relates back because of a question i've been messing with in my head recently, about why i've been less interested in fanfiction for good omens than i have been for the last few fandoms i've been, almost all of which have basically broken my ao3 bookmarks.

this question has been fucking with me for a while now, largely because i'm not entirely sure what's motivating it. a lot of times i can figure out pretty easily why i might personally not be interested in some parts of fandom, but that's not really the case here. from what i've seen this fandom seems to be pretty mixed in terms of age, & the writing that i have read is certainly no worse than i've seen elsewhere, perhaps even better in some places- and yet, i can't seem to get entirely into it, even getting frustrated as i can't find something to my tastes for an ao3 bedtime story as i've grown so accustomed. what caught me off guard is that this was an issue that i ran into while watching season 1 as well, back when the series was still quite popular but not blowing up like it is right now.

a lot of this may seem like (and likely is, at least in part) basic overthinking, but i mentioned it all here because the answer i eventually came to is reminiscent of my previous reflections above on the nature of fandom & how/why fanworks are created.

a couple paragraphs above, i used the example of art as an example of how fandoms that generate a lot of original artwork will often do the most when the original story falls into a sweet spot of character design, but notably i think that this sentiment applies to a lot more than just art. if you've ever seen the copious amounts of kpop & hockey rpf fanfiction that lives on ao3, it should be clear that this applies to writing too.

i wrote this essay a while back responding to an observation about the lack of a more extensive symbolic language in fanfiction & i've toyed around with the idea more since, particularly in considering the question of why a lot of what we see as the staples of fanfiction exist in the first place. in that post, my response largely revolved around an argument of why we create fanfiction- namely, that fanfiction is created as in tandem with deeper analysis of the original story/series, as a way of trying to practically apply character analysis to a new context.

the key part of that last sentence to me is how a lot of this revolves around character analysis (and shipping, but really it's the characters that motivate the shipping in most cases so. same difference).

i tend to instinctively separate fanfiction into two separate categories: fanfiction that is based out of the original world/canon of the story (including but not limited to fix-its, deeper analysis fics that take a scene & extrapolate from it, continuations, etc.) and fanfiction that takes the characters from the original story & plops them in an alternate universe/AU. while i separate these out as two distinct categories of fanfiction, i should also clarify that i don't think these two groups are necessarily equal in terms of number of fics- rather, the vast majority of fanfiction tends to be AUs, keeping the original characters & changing any & all aspects of the world around them. again, this may vary depending on the story & Vibe of the fandom at the time, stories like game of thrones or harry potter or homestuck might have a lot more in the canon category by nature of any major dissatisfactions the fandom has with how the original story was told, but in most cases AUs are more popular. this was a lot of the basis behind my argument that fanfiction is created as character analysis in fact, since the characters are the most important part that carries over from original story to fanwork, as well as can end up being one of the most debated/scorned parts when it comes to fandom drift (i.e. "that's out of character"/"he wouldn't do that"/and all other such arguments about fanon vs. canon characterization).

basically, my conclusion in this case was that i was a lot less interested in gomens fic largely because i have a really hard time separating the characters from the world in the case of this particular story. aziraphale & crowley being an angel & a demon and dealing with all of the bullshit of their world when it comes to heaven & hell are such integral parts of their characters in my mind that i have a much harder time getting behind AU fanfiction that plops them in a totally different context. it's just a much harder sell for keeping the characters in character for me. (i also tend to not like s2 fix-its just cause, idk they're just not my style, which is where a lot of the recent blast of energy has led us.) to clarify, this is not a judgement, just a matter of personal preference and a reflection of why, even if a lot of fandoms will look the same from the outside/involve the same things like art, fic, etc., an individual's mileage can vary wildly when it comes to how they interact with different things online.

*additional note, also for clarification: i do want to acknowledge that a lot of this depends on pure popularity as well, popular fandoms will often end up with basically everything in terms of fanworks just by nature of how many people are interacting with & thinking deeply about the story. my point here is more along the lines of the fact that even within the more well-populated fandoms, certain types of fanwork will often Stick Out more to me than others, or even be visibly much more common than in other fandoms, due largely to the original medium/structure of how the story.

so, speaking of aziraphale & crowley in more depth now- why does the world of good omens feel like such an integral part of their personalities when it comes to characterization? up next, let's talk about morality within the context of good omens' perhaps surprisingly secular take on heaven & hell.

2. the amorality of heaven & hell (ft. the crowley quote apples you know the one)

(warning in advance that this section may be a bit limited since i'm not going to get super far (or very far at all, really) into the whole religious-analysis aspect of good omens.)

i've been binge-reading the original pterry & gaiman book for good omens over the last few days and it's been very fun seeing all the slight changes between the tv show & the original. you can really see the hand of the original creators in how the tv show was translated, even just by looking at which parts made it and which parts were deemed worth cutting out. i suppose having one of the original creators right there helping build everything really helps make a book -> show translation work, since the ASOUE tv series was also pretty well received- something about knowing what's the core of the series & truly important to keep in, and having more time to tell the story itself?

anyways, i have a short list of notes that i've been taking as i read, conversations that stand out to me or footnotes that particularly amused me, but i keep coming back to one line that stood out to me quite early on. in context, this line comes from crowley during the conversation where he is first attempting to fully convince aziraphale about stopping armageddon, specifically when they're talking about exerting equal forces on warlock to make him normal:

"You're saying the child isn't evil of itself?" [Aziraphale] said slowly. "Potentially evil. Potentially good, too, I suppose. Just this huge powerful potentiality, waiting to be shaped," said Crowley. He shrugged. "Anyway, why're we talking about this good and evil? They're just names for sides. We know that."

(pg. 67)

"They're just names for sides." if i had to pick one line to sum up the view on religious morality of this series, this would likely be it.

on the one hand, i tend to interpret a lot gomens' take on heaven & hell within the context of its political stance, something that is particularly obvious through a line from gabriel in s2e2 where he tries to clarify to aziraphale that heaven isn't trying to hurt job directly, but instead is just not stopping hell from doing horrible things to him. while there may be some additional nuance to add to this take within the context of british politics that i don't really know well enough to add about, i'm inclined to see this from the side of my own familiar american politics, which might hold some weight considering how long mr. gaiman's lived around here. point is, my current interpretation of that line is that it helps in more clearly establishing the analogy of heaven & hell as the story moves forward into newer seasons and thus more contemporary politics, equating heaven with mainstream liberal politics & politicians and hell with conservatives.

this stance seems to be emphasized even more in the tv show than the book which makes sense considering its been coming out more recently, and especially in season 2 which is still quite caught up in a lot of quarantine-based reflection. (the tv show puts a lot more emphasis on heaven & hell in general, actually, perhaps initially a byproduct of actually being able to see those environments in their entirety and all the angels & demons that populate them- but we'll get to that.)

the book takes a slightly different stance that, fittingly, seems more reflective of the time it came out. in particular, i was struck a lot more when reading the book by adam's rise (fall?) to power, and how much of it was motivated by a burgeoning nervousness/pessimism about climate change and the anxieties of younger generations that comes with inheriting an earth that feels so fucked up. honestly if anything it's only gotten more relevant in that respect, what with the current vibe on the internet & the hopelessness of the doomer gen z gang, but it also has a distinctly different flavor to me from the tv show, which i think is largely because it's less connected to Formal politics since again we see a whole lot less of heaven & hell as such distinct, bureaucratic entities.

instead, there is a very distinctly amoral aspect to heaven & hell that we get through lines like the one above and especially from characters like crowley. this is why i argue that good omens, despite having so many religious elements, is such a deeply secular take, especially when it comes to its ethics & morality- Good and Evil, notably with the capital letters in this case, has very little to do with actual actions and much more to do with the name that you stamp on top of said actions. heaven & hell and the angels & demons that we see directing and watching and generally fucking with aziraphale & crowley throughout the story are distinctly separate from humanity, and as we see even more as the story progresses, distinctly unaware about what it even means to be a human, in both a deeper philosophical & very basic and literal sense. Good and Evil is simply another name for the sides- and thus the true ethics is something separate, and based in a deeply human experience.

in my opinion this is also why aziraphale & crowley, lovers of humanity and also to some degree spokespersons of it from how much they've "gone native," tend to be so deeply at odds with both heaven & hell and always end up agreeing with each other over their own supposed sides. what makes aziraphale & crowley so distinctly different is that they ascribe to the same ethics & morality that humanity does, or at the very least are trying to figure out ethics & morality & How to Be a Good Person in the same horribly messy way that humans do, separating them from the black & white "this side Good & this side Bad," logic that the rest of heaven & hell instinctively ascribe to.

there's a lot of nuance here, which is also why i think there is such an emphasis on moral ambiguity (and love, but we'll get to that) throughout season 2. the story of job, grave robbing, & questionable attempts at matchmaking- aziraphale is working through a lot of Shit right now when it comes to trying to figure out what the Good thing actually fucking is, and i think it's key that a lot of that is motivated by crowley himself. crowley might'e been cast out of heaven for asking too many questions, but aziraphale is there & listening to them & giving them the serious thought they deserve, and that can't be overlooked.

sidenote: i couldn't figure out a place to shove this in, but i also wanna point out that a lot of this is tied to the idea of growing over time too. on the same page as the quote transcribed above is another line from crowley leading up to aziraphale's question that puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that warlock is going to be a product of nurture, not nature. again, this is an argument against basic black & white assigned-at-birth morality for the ability of humans to grow & change over time and be influenced by the people around them.

it's notable that despite adam's supposed origin as a Son of Satan, what really gets him to stop the apocalypse in the end is the fact that he doesn't really give a shit about all this big plans but instead just wants to hang around his friends. there's a lot of emphasis in the book placed on how beautiful & nice tadfield is as a place for a young kid to grow up, how well loved & fiercely protected it as as something beloved to adam. while he might be overwhelmed when faced with the full picture of how horrible the world can be, ultimately what he cares about is loving & taking care of the people & places that he grew up learning were precious, and the only way to do that is to keep growing & changing yourself within that world and trying to help it also grow into something better, not throw it all away just for the slightest chance that you could restart. a message worth taking the time to think about, at the absolute very least.

3. finding morality w/in humanity: crowley & aziraphale and speculation for s3

i have complicated feelings about both aziraphale & crowley throughout a lot of the show and especially in season 2. i think a lot of people, myself included, are inclined to see crowley as the voice of reason in this season, and for good reason- as i mentioned before, a lot of aziraphale's deeper questioning of the status quo and goodness (Goodness) as a whole is motivated by questions from crowley.

i kiiind of mentioned this in my previous essay, but to state it more clearly, my take on crowley is that he's arriving at the right answer for the wrong reasons, and, conversely, aziraphale is arriving at the wrong answer for... kind of also the wrong reasons but also slightly for the right reasons. let me explain.

crowley is clearly much more aware of the flaws in both heaven & hell than aziraphale is, which seems to be the basis behind a lot of his motivation in asking aziraphale so many questions in the first place. he's also, as maggie & nina point out in s2e6, deeply lonely, often running away or getting ready to fight literally anyone that isn't aziraphale (or humans, but that's a little more complicated). from his reaction to beelz & gabriel getting together, i think it's pretty clear that he still hasn't entirely given up on the whole alpha centauri idea, and it makes sense- as i said in that last essay, crowley basically won the argument at the end of the previous season when it comes to aziraphale & crowley, "making [their] own side," so he doesn't have much reason to face any of his personal fears until maggie & nina basically point out that they exist directly to his face. once they do point it out, however, he's very motivated to act & does so almost immediately, even after hearing what aziraphale has to tell him and being pretty thoroughly devastated by it.

my point here is that crowley is correct in seeing the toxicity of both heaven & hell, he's just flawed and largely motivated by fear (up for debate if that's all it is, but i certainly think it's a big part of it) in his desire to run away from it all. it's not quite armageddon, again he's going more flight > fight here, but he's still ultimately giving up and that's not a great conclusion.

on the other hand, as some others on this site have pointed out, aziraphale is certainly showing a lot of strength in his willingness to keep fighting & try to change things for the better, but it's not hard to see how that belief has been twisted. one of aziraphale's biggest flaw in motivation at this point imo is that he doesn't just believe in goodness but Goodness, the kind that's tied to heaven always being right & all actions being morally Good so long as they're done under the name of heaven, and that clearly also isn't great.

thus what i think the both of these two really need ultimately is that deeper connection to humanity, and the ethics born from humans interacting with humans. we can already see how strong these two are when they collaborate, even when they're doing their absolute best to be as subtle as possible, but what i think they need is to once again be grounded by humanity, not to get so caught up in the bullshittery of heaven & hell and Good & Evil, but once again find a goodness defined by the world that they mutually love so much and stick with it.

i keep tossing a question around in my head about whether or not aziraphale & crowley are going to end up human by the end of this series. it feels natural that they would, they're already so at home and in love with earth & around humanity, but i'm also not entirely sure if that would be a happy ending for them considering how long they've watched & loved the world as it's changed. perhaps taking this post into account is another push towards humanity as a happy ending, not running away to a cottage to get away from the world (i just can't see running away to a cottage to be together as as happy ending, sorry- it might work for beelz & gabriel but not for aziraphale & crowley), but choosing to settle down within that world that is so dear.

#'just three sections' LAFFS. YEAH #astronaut rambles #good omens #gomens #no but i like this one a lot better than the last attempt at a gomens essay #this one feels a lot cleaner. more focused?#got a bit sappy at the end but i don't mind humanity is always worth loving #also off topic but i read this really interesting paper at work the other day #about pratchett’s writing in discworld & zizek & religion #forget what it’s called now but it was an interesting take on how fiction/fantasy can allow for deeper insights/reflection of reality #got some discworld books today so looking forward to reading those once i slurp up the last hundred or so pages of good omens #also thanks to my dad for having some interesting commentary on the job interpretation in s2e2 today #i all but literally slept through sunday school so i think a lot of the more noteworthy religion takes in this show go over my head =3=‘’#man i am so very much looking forward to how season 3 continues this story #i feel like a lot of the big conclusions there are really gonna be important for the direction of the story’s main message #season 2 is just. such a transition season it’s hard to get super distinct conclusions sometimes #like it’s still going somewhere there’s shit developing #it’s not like sherlock where it just teases deeper meaning forever but gives you nothing #but. it’s just so obviously Not Over Yet and I Need More #anyways much love i need to go to bed now arghfjdkd lots of shit to do in the future but all i wanna do is keep writing gomens essays. sigh #brainrot central #oh yay my phone’s at 69% now ☺️ wheeee #good omens meta

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princkleeatscookies · 1 year ago

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personal cookie run headcanons!! :0

My drawing tablet's arriving soon so I guess I'll have to share some of my personal headcanons in cookie run as promised (most of them are clotted cream cookie's,,,, ehehe-)

admittedly, it's a pretty "short" list but I will update this once I thought up with new ones :>c without further ado, let's start those headcanons~! ٩(⊙‿⊙)۶

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- Clotted Cream Cookie owns a stuffed teddy bear/jelly bear as a gift from his mom from childhood / v \ He still holds onto it to this day and doesn't want to admit that he still owns that due to embarrassment ahaha.. He hides it in his room (specifically under one of the pillows in his bed) and pulls it out whenever he was having such a hard time

- Clotted Cream Cookie doesn't know modern slang or anything that Cookies around his age do for fun in the casual. He was raised in a much higher-class so he was only taught proper manners and eloquence. If he was exposed to such stuff, he'll be extremely confused or fascinated and wanted to mimic it himself (basically he's a young boomer lmao, but he is learning~!)

- Clotted Cream Cookie is a bit of a book nerd, as he always reads books (ranging from fantasy books to history books) during his leisure time. He also has his own reading area in his room!

- He never shows it to anyone, but Clotted Cream Cookie is surprisingly vocally talented (in other words, HE CAN SING-). Though he never does sing in front of anyone because he's self-conscious ahaha. He usually sings alone whenever he's in his room or during work aaa,, though Financier Cookie did hear a little bit of it (although it was very faint and didn't believe it was Clotted Cream Cookie at first) (uhuhuhu this is just me inserting the "secretly vocally talented but is too afraid to show it in front of anyone" hc ;v;)

- I'd imagine Clotted Cream Cookie to be around in either in his early 20s or just about to turn 20 (19 years old)

- Clotted Cream Cookie does have a biological father... but let's just say he isn't in the picture anymore, although Clotted Cream Cookie is very much traumatized. not gonna elaborate on that due to how dark it is. (well not yet at least)

ok that's enough Clotted Cream Cookie headcanons for this post HHSDSJDFDK let's continue~!

- Espresso Cookie and Affogato Cookie are related as brothers, but they have long been since separated each other. They don't even know if they know of each other's existence as brothers, but Affogato Cookie does recognizes Espresso Cookie a bit and has a soft spot for him, just a little bit. (I'd like to imagine that only some of the coffee cookies are indeed related to each other. not all but some.)

- Financier Cookie being a big sis to, not just the orphan cookies, but to other cookies as well ehehe (Kouign-Amann Cookie and, to a lesser extent, my cookie run oc for example)

- There were a lot of times where Licorice Cookie kinda regrets being in the Cookies of Darkness All he ever wanted is some sort of validation.. He had no other option after all. He wanted to turn to the good side but Licorice Cookie just believes there's no way for him to be good. I mean, Licorice Cookie isn't all that evil- He's just now trapped on his own decision.

- Cream Puff Cookie sometimes visits the shore to play with Peppermint Cookie during her days in the Parfaedia Institute. Though ever since she became an alumna and busied herself with studying her magic further, alongside protecting the city. She never had time to visit the shore, Which made Peppermint Cookie a little sad.

- I'd like to see that Madeleine Cookie and Financier Cookie are a little bit older than Clotted Cream Cookie (maybe 24 or 25 respectively)

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【☆】 ★ 【☆】 ╰── ⋅ ⋅ ── ✩ ── ⋅ ⋅ ──╯ 【☆】 ★ 【☆】 I think that's it for now ahdshasd, I told you this is gonna be a short list, ;v; thank you if you read this far ~! I'll probably think of some stuff but for now, here's the current list this definitely tells that Clotted Cream Cookie is my favorite character lololol

notes:

fun fact, the bit about Clotted Cream Cookie being secretly talented at singing and is reluctant to sing in front of everyone is based on the crk 2nd anniversary stream where his eng va, aaron dismuke (aka miyuki shirogane in kaguya-sama love is war s1-s2 and william james moriarty in moriarty the patriot), was asked to sing in-character but he straight up refuses HAHSHSAHD

the last headcanon was based on the drawing I saw on twitter where young Madeleine Cookie disturbed baby Clotted Cream Cookie. In the drawing, Madeleine Cookie was depicted to be a kid and Clotted Cream Cookie being a baby Which means that Madeleine Cookie is older than Clotted Cream Cookie and I just personally find it both cute and hilarious

The bit where I mentioned my cookie run oc... I might reveal it here on tumblr sometime. But not right now.

once again, thank you guys so much for reading these stupid headcanons of mine ahahsdhsd

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longislandcharm · 1 year ago

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PARTIES:@longislandcharm @the-lil-exorcist TIMING: Mid-August, right before this thread. SUMMARY: After being told the Ballards were the ones to go to for ghostly advice, Winter goes to the Bread Cemetery to talk to them. She finds Lil and a deal is made. WARNINGS: I don't think there are any other than death talk concerning ghosts.

Information seemed to be easier to come by in this little town than she had previously thought. It was a little strange that most of the people Winter had spoken to about her search didn’t seem to bat an eye at the idea of her researching ghosts but then again none of them knew she was trying to get rid of an actual entity that was following her around. Still, the fact that she didn’t have to go far for someone who was supposedly knowledgeable on the subject, much less a whole family, was something that kept puzzling her. She was about to find out if the person online was pulling her leg or not though. For all she knew, she was involved in an elaborate prank.

It was warm as she stepped into the Bread Cemetery, Winter shrugging off the thin lace cardigan she had thrown on at the hotel. She took in the beautiful pastries that she passed on her way to the counter and made a mental note to grab a few on her way out. But something more important was at hand and she turned her head back to the person who was manning the front end, only pausing to glance at the ethereal man who had entered the store with her. He kept staring at her with the hard gaze he’d been giving her since he first appeared. Winter let out a huff directed towards him as she walked up, not realizing the person she was about to address might think it was towards her.

“Hi…I don’t know if you can help me but I’m looking for someone by the name of Ballard.”

Lilian tried to stop a yawn as she opened up another monster sitting idly behind the counter on a stool. Despite herself, she had gotten used to her shifts, and this was admittedly the slow period of the day. She should be doing something, maybe restocking or asking if she can get food for the others - but Lil was exhausted most of the time. She would do it in a little when her bones didn’t feel so heavy.

She was going to take a little break and read her book and drink her monster instead until the door opened. Moving the can to behind the register she waited for the other to approach closer, trying not to look too terribly tired. Instead of speaking right away though Lil decided to wait, noticing the ghost behind the other. It wasn’t uncommon for ghosts to be in the front of the shop, although Lil had a habit of ignoring them when they came. After all, most were waiting for Jonas not her - and she didn’t exactly know what they wanted anyway. Still, her eyes glanced over to the man that seemed to be annoying the woman who was coming up to her now. In any case she didn’t think she was here to buy pastries.

Which was confirmed pretty quickly. “Hello,” Lil said, her head tilting slightly at her last name. It wasn’t particularly odd for people to not know individuals in her family, after all the last name was famous. “I think I can. You’re talking to one at least. I’m Lil. What can I do for you?”

For some reason, Winter had been expecting a grizzled old woman or a gruff man who had no concept of manners, much like her, when she found whoever the Ballards were not a pretty young woman who seemed to be around her age. She wasn’t sure if the surprise was written on her face or not but she quickly gained her composure as she cleared her throat. “Lil, nice to meet you. I’m Winter.” Winter took a second to look around the store and make sure no one else was there. Sure, she went on television and claimed to talk to ghosts and she wrote about it online but this was different. She could actually see this one and he scared her. That type of information didn’t need to get out, not with her career and the image she tried to keep. “I was told that your family could help me with some research. I’m looking into ghosts and was curious about a few things.”

Eyes landing back on Lil, for once a hopeful expression was clear. From what she’d seen of this town so far it seemed like someone could help her with her very strange problem but for all Winter knew she was given bad intel. But she had brought her great grandmother’s book just in case this tip had been legit so she pulled it out of her bag but hesitated to show it to Lil. She would wait to hand it over until she knew this person was who she was looking for.

“Since someone told me to check in with you, I’m assuming you believe in spirits. Do you think a lot of people are able to see them?” Winter should have come with a list of questions in mind because she was failing to think of a good way to start this conversation. Her mind kept telling her that she was going to be laughed out of town for believing this stuff or once someone found out that she thought she was being followed by a spirit then they would send her to a shrink but she had to start somewhere, right? And she was never one to be shy about anything ever so it was time to bite the bullet. “Because one is following me around and I don’t know why.”

Lil tilted her head examining the other in front of her, wondering exactly what was happening. It wasn’t that she was necessarily weary - Lil was actually pretty good at talking too and sympathizing with clients which was what she felt Winter might be. Still, it was always good to be cautious. Which was proven right when the other asked about ghost research, causing Lil’s face to stiffen for a second before returning neutral.

She didn’t like ghost researchers - or whatever they called themselves. Most of the time they ended up getting themselves in trouble, and didn’t have any sort of mediumship to speak of. They made her look worse - and while she had given up the anger with that, it was at least a little against the usual code with supernaturals to give information on them. Lil made plenty of exceptions to that rule - she figured people knowing where to get help when there’s ghosts around was never a bad thing - but she was a little put off by how it was asked until the other mentioned being followed around by a ghost. Then she realized what it might actually be about.

While Lil wasn’t about to tell people how to exorcize ghost - mostly for their own safety as they wouldn’t work without the proper training - she was more than willing to help someone who had a problem and making sure they weren’t scared through the process.

So, Lil didn’t want to not help, in case it was more of a question about the ghost behind Winter than seeking out a dangerous path. She was at least more honest than the fake mediums, so with a sigh and a bit of a nod she finally spoke, “I mean if you're asking if I believe in them I’d have to say I don’t believe in air it’s just that they exist. I can see your guy and also the old lady sitting outside on the bench that died I think in 1975?” She could see others around of course, but it was something Lil easily ignored. Unlike her brother she couldn’t hear them, and if they didn’t want to bother her it was pretty easy to let them be.

“Most people can’t see them no,” Lil said softer, trying at least to be a little bit comforting. “Mediums are pretty rare and exorcists are even rarer. Is this the first ghost you’ve seen? Do you know him?” She nodded to the ghost, not bothering to ask him. It was probably rude of Lil, but she didn’t want to terrify Winter more. “Because sometimes they stick around people that they know. Although, if you can see him you should be able to hear him so you can always ask why he’s following you.” Lil couldn’t hear him in any case - something she didn’t really want to tell the other at this point. “I can answer some of your questions too, but do you want to come back? The Iron and the salt back here will keep him out here - Sorry man but sometimes it’s private business.” Lil said, focusing on the ghost again with a shrug hopping off her stool.

Winter whipped her head around to look outside, now seeing the slight outline of the older lady that Lil was talking about. She couldn’t see too many more than the one following her around and the ones she could see were blurry most of the time but the more she was around her favorite ghost the stronger the outlines were getting. It seemed being a medium was a skill to be worked at when it came to her and the more she interacted with them the more clearly they started to form. “I…hadn’t noticed her.”

The one thing that came with Lil’s answer other than a little embarrassment was the reassurance that Winter was definitely in the right place. This girl could help her. She looked back to who Winter hoped would be a mentor as her eyes widened with the amount of information that was being hurtled towards her. “What is an exorcist? You mean like a priest who takes care of demons?” So demons were real too? What the hell had she gotten herself into with that stupid ritual? “He’s the first one…I think. Is it possible that I’ve seen them before and never knew it? And I don’t know him. That’s the main reason I’m trying to figure out why he’s following me around.”

Sighing softly, Winter picked the book up from the counter and brought it into her chest. Why wasn’t any of this information in her ancestral book? It was mostly diary entries from her great grandmother but the one page she’d found that explicitly stated the symbols and the chant she’d performed the night this ghost showed up. “He won’t talk to me. I can hear him when he grunts my way, or when he laughs at me or something but he refuses to talk to me. I thought I was stubborn until I met this ass.” She glanced over toward the ghost who was rolling his eyes until Lil mentioned the back room. His head tilted in her direction and Winter once again felt her eyes widen. “There’s ways to keep them away?” Salt and Iron, she definitely had to remember that. Especially when it came to her hotel room. Maybe she could start locking him out so she could get a good night's sleep for once.

Yes, she was definitely in the right place now and more information could be provided. As long as this girl didn’t go onto any message boards for her show and start blabbing about everything they spoke of today, Winter felt like this would be a huge success. It was a definite breakthrough after falling short so many times before. “I think I was definitely reading the wrong books about all of this. I would love to come back and talk more about this with you.” Being the assertive person she was, she waited for no more invitation before she made her way back behind the counter. Good riddance to the man who hadn’t left her side in months.

Lil nodded slightly that the other hadn’t seen the woman, watching lightly to see if she did focus her attention to where the woman was - and confirming that she did Lil couldn’t help but tick a box. It wasn’t unheard of, that people didn’t know that they were mediums for most of their lives if they were lucky, but just seeing one ghost didn’t mean you had the gift either. It had been more likely that Winter had just messed with something that got a Ghost to cling to her.

Lil blinked at the question, wondering exactly why the other had come if she hadn’t known she was an exorcist and couldn’t help but chuckle at the idea. “Do I look like a priest to you? No, I deal with ghosts.” Lil was pretty sure the answer was no, most people hardly found her professional let alone Godly. She had to admit it wasn’t the first time she heard that, and she didn’t answer the implied question about demons. “Hm. Have you always seen blurry things out of the corner of your eye? Heard whisperings by people you couldn’t match?”

At the idea of the fact she wanted to know why he was following her Lil nodded lightly, willing enough to help with that at least. Listening carefully she did wonder what the guy was trying for. Most ghosts were cryptic, but hell Lil would have been annoyed by it too. Before she could say much about that though the conversation - and the person started moving quickly.

“Not indefinitely,” Lil said, not bothering to stop the other moving across the counter and shrugging to the ghost. “He’ll probably be waiting for you after you leave.” Still she moved to let the other into the backroom, not bothering to flip the sign that they were closed. She would hear if anyone came in and she said softly, “If he gets stronger it’ll be harder to keep him out. So I wouldn’t say you should get too comfortable with either. Still, yeah if you wanted a few hours alone a salt line in an unbroken line with any opening will keep you from seeing him for awhile. Here, take a seat probably not by the oven.” Lil pointed to one of the many stools around for the other. “What book are you talking about? Did you read something before all of this started? Do you mind if I ask you some things to see what’s going on?”

The little quip about looking like a priest only served to make Winter feel more comfortable around this girl. Her lip rose on one side, amused by the tiny amount of attitude behind the rhetorical question. Maybe they had more in common than she had initially thought as she would have reacted the same way. She decided not to comment though, still reeling in her own personality. If Lil was anything like her, that attitude came with a temper as well and there was no reason to test that theory just yet. “Not really whispering but maybe the corner of my eye thing. When I was a kid mostly. A lot of strange things happened when I was a kid but they sort of stopped.”

Of course he would be waiting for her. After trying to ditch him for so long, the girl knew that there was no getting rid of him easily, if at all. It seemed he was destined to be the thorn in her side for as long as she was breathing. Taking a seat on one of the stools farthest from the oven that Lil had pointed out, she situated herself as she listened to the other girl speak about the salt lines. That was definitely useful information for sure. Sometimes a girl needed some alone time. But something did catch her attention, Winter letting a groan die in her throat. “What do you mean by ‘gets stronger’? Is he not already annoying enough?”

For some reason, Winter wasn’t quite ready to give up her great grandmother’s book even if she had it in her hands so she held it tighter to herself when Lil’s string of questions reached her ears. She knew that if she wanted answers then she would have to show the journal to this girl but not yet, not immediately. Winter had other questions she could focus on. “I was reading anything I could get my hands on that claimed to know about real paranormal situations and how to solve them. Not until he showed up though…” She trailed off, her fingers running absentmindedly over the spine of the text in hand. “At least not as intensely as I am now. But none of it is really helpful.”

If she skipped over the second question then Lil would definitely know that Winter had done something. She wasn’t ashamed of doing a ritual without knowing about it per se, and she really didn’t care what Lil had to say about it in the long run, but something was nagging at her. This book was the only thing that Winter had of her great grandmother and reading through it over the years made her feel close to the woman even if she had never met her. Maybe something inside of her was afraid that Lil would want her to get rid of it. Not that she could make Winter do anything, but even the idea of such a thing tore her apart inside. “Ask away.” Ultimately, she wanted to put it off just a little longer even if she knew it wouldn’t last.

Lil hummed slightly at the answer, thinking that it did add up that the other might be a medium after all and not just haunted. It wasn’t a sure fire way to know - combing through someone who obviously now believed in ghosts about their childhood and what signs were there- but well hardly anything Lil did was an exact science. “Did it stop or did you stop looking?” She said lightly, knowing that there was a difference. It wasn’t uncommon for Mediums without others around them to want to push out the ghosts - even if it wouldn’t ultimately work.

At the question and grown Lil shook her head, a little more serious then she had been. “No. He’s not as annoying as he could be,” She said, glancing back to the lobby before shutting the door. She wasn’t sure how far ghosts could hear, so she didn’t exactly want to give him the idea of becoming a poltergeist. She wasn’t sure that ghosts could choose it - something more philosophical than she had ever bothered to learn - but she wasn’t about to risk it either.

At the information Lil nodded, sitting on her own stool carefully considering what the other was saying without showing too much on anything. “I’m not surprised, although I’m sure there are some books out there that most people could get their hands on that do have facts right - most mediumship things aren’t written down like that. It gets all smashed with what people think it is, you know?” Not that most of the rituals would be helpful to most people. As far as Lil knew, if you weren't Medium rituals wouldn’t work for you. Just like she couldn’t create a potion or shapeshift, you had to be specifically touched by death to tap into anything.

Still didn’t mean that nothing would come through with a ritual though, it just meant that the chanting wasn’t what brought the spirit - but the fact that someone was opening themselves to them. At confirmation that she could ask questions she started, “Have you had times where you don’t remember where you were? Did you ever feel like the ghost out there was in your head, not right next to you?”

If she wasn’t a medium, Lil was certain that the ghost would have at least tried to possess her at some point if he was insisting on following her around. “Do you ever feel cold even if it’s warm out? Feel like there’s more voices in a crowded room then there should be? Seen flickers of light in a fully lit room? ” Those would be less commonly known mediumship questions.

The question stunned her. It was like the girl knew the happenings of her past already and was just trying to confirm. Winter hadn’t exactly been frightened as a child but more pushed into letting things go by her father. “More like…I was forced to stop looking. My father sent me to therapy as a kid and I didn’t like it so I pushed it all away.” With no plans to elaborate on the why’s of why she went, she sighed as she looked away from Lil. Forgotten memories were threatening to invade her mind, memories that she didn’t want to think about considering she was about to be forced into therapy again by her production team and she was sure they would go over them then no matter how much WInter resisted. Right now she was here for the present.

“You’re not someone who elaborates very often, are you?” Pot calling the kettle black there. But Winter didn’t miss the way Lil had shut the door as she answered and she really wanted to know what the other had meant. “How exactly can he get stronger? Should I be worried?” Did ghosts touch people or something? This man had yet to come into contact with her but could he in the long run?

That seemed to explain why her great grandmother didn’t write much about her own abilities. If it wasn’t common for a medium to do so then how was all of this learned over time? “So, I’m guessing that means a lot of mediums have to figure things out on their own? Is this not a hereditary thing?” That would also explain why her mother never showed signs of actually seeing ghosts. Winter knew that the woman had been faking her abilities since she was old enough to understand but how had this gotten passed to her and not the two generations before her?

When she’d agreed to let Lil ask questions she hadn’t expected the ones that came out of her mouth. Her eyebrows knitted as confusion took over, Winter not exactly sure what Lil meant. “No, why wouldn’t I remember where I was?” Thinking about her other question, she shook her head to indicate another no. “There’s not a single time where he didn’t seem like just another person standing next to me if that’s what you mean. And no voices in my head or anything, he won’t even talk. Is that like a different ability or something?”

“You saw the shrug I was wearing when I came in, right? It’s not exactly chilly outside. I never really noticed other voices though, not until he showed up. But they’re not all the time and they’re not always very loud. Kind of like they’re whispering.” Why did this conversation seem like it was producing more questions than answers. With the natural curiosity that flowed through her, Winter felt like she could counter each of Lil’s questions with five of her own and she had to resist doing so. “The light thing has happened since I was a kid. I always thought our electrician at home sucked.”

Lil’s jaw twitched slightly when she heard that the other had been forced to stop looking. That wasn’t uncommon either, but it nevertheless pissed Lil off. While she’d never experienced it - quite the opposite type of treatment had happened to her if she was being honest being forced to look into the shadows - she knew that it could mess a kid up. It wasn’t the others fault though so she said softly, “Yeah, It can be scary if you don’t know what's happening. Sorry if I touched something personal.”

Lil raised her eyebrow at that, but it was fair enough to say. She wasn’t used to telling someone more than what was necessary - not because she particularly cared about the secrecy of ghosts or supernaturals- but because once you knew something it stuck with you forever. It was something that could easily worry someone to death and she wasn’t quite sure where on the scale that the woman across from her could handle. “Worried? No. You’ll be fine.” Lil would make sure of that at the very least.

At the other questions Lil decided it wasn’t too much at once to talk about them and said, “ It can be a hereditary thing. Most of my family is Mediums, but it’s not only a hereditary thing. Sometimes people are just Mediums out of nowhere. It can also skip around generations.” It was frustrating to not have clear answers on that, but it wasn’t something most Mediums thought to really experiment on. “So if you were born into a family - one that actively practices you probably would have known, but sometimes that doesn’t happen and people have to figure it out on their own or find other Mediums.”

At her confusion Lil felt a bit of relief and said, “No not a different ability. I was making sure you hadn’t been possessed. It doesn’t sound like you have, and I don’t think he’s capable of that to be fair.” At least for the moment, but she really didn’t want to say that and freak out the already probably on the edge Winter.

“Yeah you’re a Medium,” Lil said softly mostly to herself and sighed after a moment realizing she was going to have to say more and not just leave it vague. These talks always sucked. “Well Your electricity might have sucked. I don't know that for sure but those are all pointing to the fact that you have mediumship and were just repressing it to - well have less problems in society probably. I’m guessing someone else in your family saw ghosts because you keep asking about hereditary but yeah. That’s probably one of the reasons he’s following you around, ghosts are able to sense us like we can sense them and they - well get attached. Now that its happened though, you’re going to have to learn at least some stuff to keep them from causing havoc around you. I’m sure you have questions, so I’ll try to answer as many as you have. But yeah you’re not being haunted.” It wasn’t a congratulations, not at all. While Lil liked her job mostly, being a Medium wasn’t exactly easy or filled with the glamor that people seemed to think it had. It was limiting and at times awfully scary. Still, she wasn’t trying to imply that Winter was doomed or broken either.

She shrugged the apology off, not even wanting to confirm or deny if it was too personal or not but knowing she probably did so by staying silent. Those memories were still trying to creep their way in and Winter had to shake her head when the face of a little girl popped into her mind clear as day. She didn’t want to remember her, didn’t want to remember what had her dad pushing her towards something she hated. It was a sore spot and if it had been anyone else who had brought up that part of her past she would not be sitting there being nice about it.

Vague again. This was going to be a challenge in itself. Trying to get information from this girl was a torture in itself and she had half a mind to go grab the ghost she was currently hiding from. But she liked the reprieve from his cold glare as well so Winter was inclined to try and weasel what she could from Lil for as long as she could. She was throwing things at her like possessed and it could be hereditary but could also just show up out of the blue and it was only causing more frustration in the long run.

But it was the confirmation of being a medium that caught Winter’s attention the most. “I didn’t know there was any doubt.” She was almost offended, her tone saying as much, but she had to remind herself that Lil didn’t know her. She could have been that fake medium from months ago just trying to get information for her show so that she could exploit this that much more. Hell, the girl could have seen her show before and known she was bullshitting the whole time.

She only confirmed that her dad had something to do with why Winter hadn’t been able to do this her whole life. Well, at least by the time she was ten. It made her angry knowing that she could have had this stuff figured out by now, could have actually been helping the people on her show, but she also knew that her father had probably just been scared as well. In the same breath though, Lil confirmed that she would start answering whatever questions Winter had and she suddenly felt like she’d just been let loose in a candy store. This rollercoaster of emotions culminated as she looked back at the book in her hands. It was time to bring it up.

“In that case, I think it’s time I told you about this.” So, maybe he was following her around because he could sense what Winter was but something deep down told her that it had more to do with this ritual. She didn’t know what it was when she had touched it, thought it was a fake incantation that her great grandmother had made up, but after that night Winter had become a believer. She turned to the page she’d used the night her friend had showed up and turned the book to show Lil. “This was my great grandmother’s. It’s mostly journal entries but I found this incantation or ritual or something one day and when I performed it with the symbols drawn on the ground…he showed up. He hasn’t left my side since.”

Lil sighed and said, “If you were being haunted, you might have seen him because of that. It’s not that I doubted what you saw but possession and haunting is different than being a medium.” It would have been easier too. If she was being haunted, well Lil could have solved that. Now she had to be careful not to just get the other on a blacklist like she was. She couldn’t just exorcize the man outside, because well Winter would be on the hook too.

Lil paused as she moved to show the book she had been lightly guarding away from Lil. Moving so she could look at it and not touch the book she was careful not to read the page out loud. “Yeah that’s a ritual alright, but - huh,” Lil said softly looking at the symbols not quite knowing how the other had done it with no training. It was reckless for sure, but - well she wasn’t exactly going to blame Winter for it.

“You read this and he came? You’ve never done this before?” Lil asked her eyes looking up from the page to look at the other, a little startled it had worked. “I can’t read all of it, but this is fairly advanced for your first ritual. I also got a couple ideas of what it might have been, and if I’m right - well you got lucky.” After all, rituals could be dangerous and could have disastrous effects.

She also wasn’t sure how much she could help Winter. Sitting back on her seat Lil said, “Do you want to practice then?”

That made sense actually, Winter’s bravado dying down a smidge when Lil confirmed that there were other possibilities here. She hadn’t thought she was faking this after all and she needed to remember that Lil was the expert here.. “Do ghosts usually haunt people they didn’t know when they were alive? And do you mind explaining possession because I don’t like the sound of it.” What had she gotten into? This was starting to turn into the plot of a very weird paranormal movie and it was making her uneasy.

Advanced? Well damn, her thoroughness towards the material she used on her show was coming back to bite her in the ass wasn’t it? She shook her head when asked if she’d performed this ritual before, Winter starting to feel as if she would be in trouble if she told this girl the whole truth. But she wasn’t going to hide things if it would do any harm to herself. She needed to understand what happened that night. “I have a show…it used to be my mom’s but I took it over about three years ago. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Spirit Speak…” The medium paused to let the name sink in. Never in her life had she been ashamed of being part of the production but now that it was affecting her she couldn’t help it.

“Anyway, um, when I found this I decided that I was going to include it in the show. One thing you need to know about me is I am a sucker for details and I want to make sure I’m doing things right.” When she wasn’t overconfident in what she was doing and she was dedicated in fooling others into thinking that Winter was the expert. “So, I researched how to say everything correctly, copied the symbols exactly…what do you think it is?”

Practice? That one threw her. Winter had not expected Lil to offer to help her further than giving her information. It was a pleasant surprise and she felt her nervous energy start to shift into an excitable nod of her head. “Yes, yes I would like to.”

“Ghosts aren’t known to be any more rational than people. They pick people to haunt for reasons you might or might not, you know,” Lil said with a shrug. She’d honestly not considered why ghosts did anything, in the same way she didn’t really think about why people did anything. It seemed like a pretty useless thought experiment. At the question she sighed and said, “Exactly what it sounds like. Poltergeists - corrupted spirits - can possess people. What I actually do for a living is destroy poltergeists in a ritual commonly known as an exorcism. He didn’t look like one, but I still wanted to make sure. I’d have exorcized him for you if he was.”

Lil hadn’t been expecting this as she froze a little on her stool realizing why the other was probably familiar to her. She also really didn’t know what to say for a moment, realizing that she probably shouldn’t be involved in this anymore. After all, her reputation had been in the gutter for this long, and working with someone who was famously a fraud wouldn’t exactly put her back into a good light with people. She was cashing in a lot of favors at the moment just to try to find her family after all, and she wasn’t particularly interested in jeopardizing that.

Still as all the reason came to her on why she shouldn’t help the other and instead tell her to leave, Lil knew she wouldn’t do it. While she didn’t have any notion that she’d be any better then the people that had kicked her out, she at least wasn’t going to do the same to someone who needed help - and the other needed help. Specifically, she needed to know what she did and that the ghost was going to be stuck to her before she did something stupid to end up blacklisted like Lil was.

“Yeah that’s - you got really lucky then,” Lil said softly, considering her words carefully before she said them knowing that there were going to be a lot of questions. “I can’t tell exactly what you said, but it seems like you made a pact with the ghost outside. I’m pretty well read and I’m not exactly sure what she did here but - my best guess is she might have made her own ritual to do it. Essentially you made a contract with the ghost there - and he gave something up and now he’s bound to you. He won’t turn into a poltergeist which is good but -” Lil let her fill in the rest. It wasn’t uncommon for ghost to be bound to mediums, something she knew well enough as Blue was technically bound to her brother, but this was a stranger case. “If you want more answers, I’ll have to get a scan or something of that page and try to translate it properly.”

Lil paused for a moment, and realized that this was probably going to be more complicated than writing down the number to the ghostbusters. “I - so there is a group that you can go to learn, but I’m not sure how much they will like your show,” Lil tried to say amicably, “Not judging on my part just trying to let you know the dynamic. They can pair you up with someone who can help you with mediumship though if you follow their rules. You also probably shouldn’t mention that you’ve talked to me.” After a beat she continued, “They also won’t let you get rid of the guy out there, and to be honest if you want to be a practicing medium no one will. But - I can at least look into the ritual and see how strong the contract is, you might be able to get out of the pact if you really want or learn to communicate with him.”

Looking at Winter she said softly, “Normally I would offer to exorcize him, but it wouldn’t be fair to either of you to do so. So the two things I can do is help you figure out what exactly you did in your ritual to understand it and teach you some things I know, or send you on to the ghostbusters. If you go onto the ghostbusters, it would be best not to associate with me though.” After all, Lilian Ballard was the Reaper, and probably on a wall of ‘do not associate’ with.

As expected, Lil’s reaction to her show wasn’t particularly a good one. It didn’t seem like it was wise to bring it up to any mediums with the she was talking about this so called group that could help Winter but it was out there and there was nothing she could do about it. They probably saw it as Winter mocking them but she liked to look at it as paying homage in a way even if she had no clue something like it had existed. Hell, she hadn’t even been sure that mediums were real until she was able to see the man currently locked out of this room.

All of the new information continued to bring questions to mind. So, ghosts could be malicious in nature, they didn’t need reasons for anything that they did, and there actually were exorcizing rituals that could be done that could get rid of them. This definitely was turning into a movie. There were still so many things Winter didn’t understand, so many questions that she wanted to ask but she really didn’t know where to start. She would be at this bakery for days if she asked them all right now. It was overwhelming to say the least. “Maybe, um…maybe we should take this slower? This is a lot to process and I’m not sure everything can be explained today. I could write down more questions in a notebook and we can take them one at a time, if that would make things easier? And you’re willing, of course.”

She noticed that the other had gotten more uncomfortable after Winter had mentioned Spirit Speak but she hoped it wouldn’t deter her from wanting to help. She was talking about that group, saying something about sending Winter to them, but she shook her head each time Lil mentioned that. “I’d actually feel more comfortable if you taught me what I needed to know. I don’t know you but…you know everything now and they don’t. From what you’re telling me they wouldn’t like that I was doing the show and that’s something I’m not willing to give up so they probably wouldn’t want to help me anyway. Besides, I’ve never been great with rules. I get the feeling that’s why you think I shouldn’t mention you to them…because you’re the same, right?”

What would happen to her great grandmother’s book if she went to these people anyway? The ritual was apparently an original one that the girl in front of her couldn’t quite understand yet. For all she knew, this group would try to take it away from her to be able to study it or something. “And I would like you to try and understand the ritual more if you don’t mind. But the book stays with me.” That was non-negotiable. Winter valued it more than most things in her life.

At the fact that Winter wasn’t sure what was going on, Lil nodded and for the first time in a while smiled and laughed lightly, “Yeah, I am just throwing stuff at you. Sorry, I’ve grown up this way so I don’t know what you don’t know. I also haven't, you know, been asked so much.” It was true enough. She didn’t usually talk about mediumship in any sort of way that would make someone a mentee. Only the odd question here and there from someone who didn’t want to deal with ghosts. “Sure, I don’t mind answering things.”

At Winter’s explanation, Lil wasn’t quite sure what the right thing would have been to do. She probably should insist the medium go through the Ghostbusters and get proper training, but at the end of the day Lil was a pragmatist. If Winter wouldn’t stop doing her show, then the Ghostbusters probably wouldn’t take her. Then she might be stubborn enough to continue to do rituals and not know what their effects were. So, while Lil might not be the best qualified - hell Jonas probably would be better although she didn’t want him to lose his license if she could help it- she was probably the only one in the area that would or could help. “Yeah, I got kicked out actually. What the hell, sure. I will say though, you’ll have to keep me on track cause I might think you know something you don’t. I’ve never mentored someone who’s starting out. You’ll have to tell me when you don’t understand, or I might not realize you don’t, you know?”

That was true as well, Lil had helped other mediums at times, but normally they were trying to become exorcists - not starting out. At the request Lil nodded and said, “Sure I just need a picture of it. I would just suggest not doing any more rituals out of it until you know what they're doing. For most people they won’t work so you don’t have to keep it under lock and key like it's the necronomicon or something like that, but well if it’s a ritual it’s going to work if you do it. Does that make sense?”

Winter being mentored by someone who’d gotten kicked out of some secret organization for ghosts just felt right in her mind. It was exactly the type of thing that she gravitated towards on most days and she was thankful that Lil was willing to do this for her. And to be her first? That was special on it’s own. She could feel the unease of this whole situation starting to ebb away, her smile only growing as that feeling of discomfort became non-existent. Ghostbusters be damned, she had a Lil on her side now.

“Trust me, I’ll have no issues in asking questions. You’re probably going to get sick of them actually, so fair warning. I’m a nuisance.” The fact that she was grinning at Lil as she said that should have been a clue to the other that Winter enjoyed being as such as well. By the time she met Lil again she’d have a whole notebook full of things she wanted to know and she was sure once the ritual was translated properly she’d be able to fill another. It occurred to her that Lil had no idea what she’d just gotten herself into. Oh well.

“I'll have copies to you as soon as possible. Or if you just want to take one on your phone I’m fine with that too.” She was eager, ready to know everything about this new part of herself and ready to learn more about why Lil was not connected to the ghostbusters anymore. She closed the book in her lap, leaning onto her arms as Winter draped them across the object, and spoke.

“First question: How do you tell whether it’s a regular ghost or a poltergeist?”

#Threads #Thread: Lil #With a Little Help #death tw

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