#also i would run the risk of having non-fandom people speak to me about the show and i am so not up for that lmao

[coldflasher]

currently so unable to be alone with my own thoughts that im 10+ episodes into a podcast about the vampire diaries, a show i have never watched

[doctorofmagic]

Sage: We're sorry to have snuck in, but-- Domino: --we can't walk through the front door of any building right now. Sage: We know our presence here is a risk to you, Dr. Strange, and we appreciate your-- Domino: Help us figure out this @#$% ring and we'll leave. Dr. Strange: Show me. And as for your current status in the world, the embittered politics of humans don't particularly concern me. You're welcome here.

I really need to talk about this for a moment because it's important not only to break some biased opinions on certain fandoms but also as a whole characterization for Stephen.

I mean, I'm on Twitter, it's hell everyday. But in particular there's this habit of certain X-stans of jumping into certain groups' throats like the F4 and the Avengers. And there are indeed... takes that make me believe some people don't actually read the stories. A common one is always accusing this or that character of siding with or supporting Orchis, the anti-mutant group responsible for the genocide in Krakoa and the mutants' current illegal status on Earth.

I don't have the total picture/knowledge of the aforementioned groups, despite knowing they are heroes and thus would never fight alongside fascists (no matter how hard Bendis wanted them indeed to look like fascists in CW I and II). But I can and will speak on Stephen's behalf. And these people will never have anything to support this biased idea that every non-mutant hero is against mutants, especially when it comes to the Sorcerer Supreme. He has helped them MANY times, including moments of conflict between humans and mutants (or inhumans and mutants or whatever). Point is, at least, Stephen is safe. I wish I didn't have to make this kind of post since it's pretty obvious that Stephen vowed to protect all lives, has practically a daughter figure in Illyana and fully supported Wanda when she still was a mutant. And yet, here we are.

Stephen has broken the law before (New Avengers v1 post Civil War, Civil War II, Cates' run when he worked as a veterinarian, when he stole a whole dinner table from a hotel to feed the homeless in Defenders v1 etc). The truth is, he does not care if it means to help people. He's not afraid of it. And I'm always glad to have canon proof of that.

X-Force #45 (2023)

[kg-clark-inthedark]

Has machine translation really gotten good enough to translate fiction/fanfic in a readable way? I just remember how terrible it was in my youth but technology does change... (Asking here so i dont clog up op's notes haha)

(long reply alert i am so so sorry i do not shut up lmfao)

I tend to use the integrated chrome browser webpage translator when browsing ao3 on desktop because it seems work more seamlessly than other browsers. It definitely does best when things are written in Latin script, but I’ve found its translations of Cyrillic and Hangeul to be quite understandable as well. Abjad, Han, and Kanji scripts are where I do tend to run into much more of those “translation idiosyncrasies” I mentioned in my tags though. A lot to do with commonalities between English and the other languages I believe, but I only know partial Spanish as a kind of second language and it has absolutely no issues with that one so I’m no expert.

Lmao like I said though I definitely don’t think it’s cultural erasure or anything for people to skip fics not in their language. Like the fics obviously still exist. But tbh I think maybe I feel strongly about the concept of English speakers filtering them out entirely bc there are non-english-speaking readers who’ve told me they translate my fic to read it. And idk man, I find that to be such an act of care and love towards fandom and written works as a whole (and my heart explodes every time I think about it). Fandom spaces, especially surrounding writing, have gotten so low effort when it comes to consumption lately. Everyone wants things catered specifically to them and I think that’s lame as hell, so yeah that led to me venting excessively in the tags as per usual… and now rambling excessively here 😅

(Also this little corner of the dh fandom I’ve found myself in the past few years is profoundly European lmfao so I would never want to risk missing a work were any favorite writers of mine to choose to write in their home language.)

[tarotofbadkitties]

Whenever I decide to watch or read something, I always make a point of completely avoiding looking it up on social media first.There’s a variety of reasons, but the main reason is to avoid spoilers. That also has the side effect of me finding out how both the fandom and the general public feel about a thing AFTER consuming it, rather than having it in my head while I’m reading or watching.

The most recent thing I checked out is the Scholomance trilogy by Naomi Novik. I read through the trilogy, thoroughly enjoyed it, and then got curious what folks had to say about it...and found pretty intense accusations of racism. I thought that was kind of strange, because nothing jumped out at me, but I’ve read and watched a lot of problematic stuff and didn’t notice so I decided to check out the claims. A couple of them I was like yeah, that was some problematic wording, okay, makes sense I missed this other thing because I don’t know enough about the culture in question to be offended by this, alright...then we hit the one about El’s race. I saw a bunch of people say that because El (biracial half Indian half Welsh protagonist) lacks connection to the Indian side of her family, and thus lacks obvious Indian cultural markers, she “might as well be white.”

That’s a WILD claim, in my opinion, and I’m surprised it flies with people. The notion that white is the default, and if a character is going to be non-white there needs to be a “reason” is intensely racist. It’s also untrue in this specific case that there is nothing significant in El’s characterization or in the plot connected to her race. But even if it was true, and it didn’t come up in the plot at all, why should she be white? Nobody ever asks why a particular character is white, or suggests if a white character isn’t interested in stereotypically white things that they should be another race. There are plenty of non-white people who assimilate into the white-majority cultures they live in, anyway. But El doesn’t even really fall in that category.

El’s mother makes sure that she speaks her father’s native language, and it pays off for her in the narrative with the first person to trade with her and later, her first friend being Aadyah, a character who is Indian. Language is a huge part of the world-building and narrative, with characters having a tendency to form bonds and clique up based on what languages they speak. It tracks that they would do this, given the school’s tendency to give you spells in any language you have any knowledge of, deciding that qualifies well enough as a language you speak. I would avoid spending too much time with people that speak a language I wasn’t prepared to learn in that situation, as gaining a passing familiarity is enough to run the risk of suddenly having all of your coursework in that language.

It’s also a huge plot point that speaking less-commonly used languages gives you access to less-commonly used spells, and that’s a HUGE deal. Marathi, her father’s language, is related to Sanskrit, and the most important spell in the entire series is a spell written in Sanskrit. It’s a thing with languages that it’s easier to learn another language if you’re already familiar with a similar one. She would not have been given that book at all if she didn’t already have a passing familiarity with Sanskrit based on her fluency in a similar language leading her to be willing to try to take it on.

Besides the language aspect, it’s also mentioned as part of El feeling alienated, that she grew up surrounded by people that didn’t look like her, and it’s pretty significant that people not know who her mother is. People would likely guess who she is if she looked more like her mother. But...even if there was nothing plot-relevant about her father’s culture, and she wasn’t interested in it as a character, it would still be fine for her to not be white just because everyone in a narrative doesn’t have to be white. Non-white people don’t need a narrative justification for existing in fiction. It’s not “checking a box” for non-white people who are assimilated into white cultures to be allowed to exist in fiction the same way they exist in incredible numbers in reality.

[babyjamiebarnes]

Build-A-Bear

Part One

Featuring: Bucky x Stark!reader, dad!Tony, Peter Parker (platonic), background MCU characters

Warnings: [chapter] language; [series] language, smut, violence

Summary: The only people who knew she was actually a Stark were her dad, her step-mom Pepper, and her “uncles” Happy and Rhodey. A promotion within Stark Industries takes her from an already-sought after position in the Weapons Anaylsis Unit straight to the Avengers as a Weapons Enhancement Specialist... which means her dad is her new boss. There’s only one rule at work: no fraternizing with coworkers. There’s one more rule at home: no dating any Avengers. So what is she supposed to do when a grumpy super soldier becomes not-so-grumpy around her? At 25, do her dad’s rules still apply? Or is her entire livelihood at risk?

Author’s Note: I’ve written a decent portion of this but know I won’t keep writing it or post it unless I hold myself accountable and get it out there in the first place 🙈 I haven’t written much for Marvel yet but I’ve read plenty and have written for other fandoms in the past (not to mention the writing degree on my wall lol). I’ll try to post every 2-3 days to keep this moving! And if you like it and want to, buy me a coffee!

No one knew Tony Stark had a daughter. No one but Tony Stark and his daughter. Well, and her step-mom Pepper. And her godfather Rhodey. And her uncle-not-uncle Happy. But no one in their everyday lives knew. She was given her mother’s maiden name and kept a secret, even when she turned 17 and moved to a small apartment near NYU’s campus (with Happy stationed right next door, of course) to start life as a truly normal adult, or as close to normal as an undercover Stark could be. When she graduated with her PhDs in robotics and electrical engineering at 25 — proving brains really do run in the family — she moved into her own apartment in Manhattan, funded by her father under the pseudonym “Michael Myers.” Subtlety was never his strong suit.

Fortunately for you, growing up without the Stark name let you live a relatively normal life. It also allowed you to apply for a position within Stark Industries without being ushered past any red tape because of who your father is. Outside of the financial advantage you had, you worked for your spot in a STEM career. You suffered through every man in your field belittling your work despite knowing less than you. You dealt with the constant interruptions and ��well, actually” because of your gender. You powered through late nights and early mornings when your mind was flowing too smoothly to quit.

The last thing you wanted to do was have all that work disregarded because you shared a name with genius billionaire playboy philanthropist Tony Stark. So you filled out the application, sent in your resume and cover letter, and attached three letters of recommendation from your professors. You went through hours of interviews, background checks (conveniently redacting your father’s name), and polygraph tests until that offer letter showed up in your email. You even had to sign the Non-Disclosure Agreements that would bar you from discussing *anything* work-related with anyone outside of your department.

You spent your first year in the weapons analysis department, evaluating alien weaponry and determining how it worked and how to disable it. You had your fair share of mishaps, of course. Holes blasted into walls, fried robot dummies, even burnt animal carcasses. By the end of your first year, your supervisor sent a commendation and proposal for you for an undisclosed promotion. After Pepper Potts “thoroughly examined your resume, cover letter, and accomplishments during your tenure with Stark Industries,” as the letter read, you were awarded a position working on the Avengers’ weapons as a Weapons Enhancement Specialist. You’d never see a fight in-person, but you were assigned to work on advancements and post-battle repairs for everyone, from the Winter Soldier’s arm to the Falcon’s wings to Vision’s... everything. The only heroes you wouldn’t work on were Iron Man and War Machine (those were your dad’s territory) and Spider-Man.

On your first day in your new position, the one and only Pepper Potts showed you to your new lab on the 47th floor. It took all your willpower to look your step-mother in the eye and say, “Wow, Miss Potts. This is amazing. It’s such an honor to meet you,” with a straight face to convince any passerby that you had no outside affiliation with her. Even if her eyes stayed steady on you, you could see her mentally rolling them.

Once you were alone behind the doors of the elevator, conversation changed course.

“You’re going to be sharing a lab with someone else,” Pepper said.

“Sweet. As long as they’re competent, that’s fine by me,” you shrugged. Part of earning your degrees was learning to share a workspace with others, even those who bumbled and fumbled with no idea what they were doing. You’d had more hair singed by nearby explosions than you’d like to admit.

“He’s still in college so he’s not here as often as the others. Most of his work will be on Spider-Man’s gadgets and suit, but you can use him for any help you need.”

Walking past the familiar faces of Dr. Banner and Dr. Cho in their respective labs, Pepper ushered you into your lab, where you were met by your father and put on the same excited facade you did with Pepper.

“Oh my god, you’re Tony Stark! This is incredible! It’s such an honor to meet you, sir!”

He shook his head at you and reluctantly accepted your outstretched hand. Oh, the jokes you’d be making at family dinners.

“Yeah, anyway, this is your new lab, Miss [Y/L/N]. Make yourself at home. This lab rat over here is mister Parker. If you have any questions, he can at least bullshit an answer for you.”

The young man on the other side of the lab perked up at the sound of his name. He tugged the goggles off his face and set down his soldering rod to rush over to you.

“Hi. Hi, I’m Peter,” he said, reaching his hand out to you.

“I’m [Y/N]. It’s nice to meet you, lab partner.”

He looked to be a bit younger than you and at least relatively smart, if the MIT sweatshirt peeking out from under his lab coat said anything. If your dad gave him an internship like this, you knew you shouldn’t question it. He had to be a genius.

The kid just smiled at you, continuing to shake your hand past what most would deem socially acceptable.

“Okay, enough of that,” Tony said, pushing on your joined hands to separate you two. “Mister Parker might be in and out of the lab from time to time. He joins the Avengers on the occasional recon mission for immediate repairs but since he’s on break from classes, you’ll see him more often than not. Play nice.”

When he noticed you surreptitiously looking Peter up and down, he added, “Remember, no fraternizing with coworkers.” He pointed a finger directly at you before he spun and pointed to your fellow lab mate, realizing he should warn Peter too to save face.

“All the blueprints you need for the Tin Man’s arm are in the system. We’ll have you start on that and see what you can do about minimizing the sound that thing makes. Any other questions, give Pep a call.”

“Thank you, mister Stark. I really do appreciate everything,” you said genuinely.

“Yeah, well… don’t let me down,” he replied, patting you on the shoulder on his way out. Pepper followed close behind, leaving you alone with Peter Parker.

“So Peter,” you started, sliding onto the lab chair next to where he remained standing, “tell me about yourself.”

“Uh… what do you want to know?” he asked as he shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

“How old are you?” you asked immediately.

“I’m 21.”

Only four years younger than you. So you’d probably get along just fine.

“I assume you’re at MIT?” He nodded. “What are you studying?”

“Biomolecular and mechanical engineering.” He said it so casually, you’d think he was talking about the last song he heard on the radio.

“Damn,” you responded, eyes wide. “I thought robotics and electrical engineering was wild but fuck, that sounds like hell.”

He laughed and nodded, letting a bit of the tension in his shoulders fall. “Yeah, it’s not easy. But it’s worth it.”

He shot you a small smile before gesturing back at his project. “I should probably get back to work and let you get started.”

For the rest of the day, you familiarized yourself with the Winter Soldier’s arm to figure out how to… turn the volume down? You assumed it was the gears inside causing the noise, but part of you wanted to outfit an audio jack and speaker just to fuck with your dad.

You and Peter worked in relative silence, aside from the playlist he had quietly playing through the lab sound system. When lunch rolled around, however, you finally spoke up.

“Hey Peter,” you called, his eyes flicking from the chemical beakers in front of him up to you. “First of all, what are you doing?”

“Um, it’s Spider-Man’s web fluid. Just trying to find more durable combinations.”

“Interesting.” As much as you wanted to touch the stringy substance, you knew better than to fiddle with someone else’s lab work. “Okay so second thing, in my last position, I’d just order food and have it brought to my floor but now that I’m on an exclusive floor, what do you do for lunch?”

“Oh, there are a couple security guys who have clearance to come into this floor. They just can’t get into any rooms so you’d have to meet them at the elevator. But I usually find something in the kitchen down the hall.”

“Oh, sweet. Thanks!” you said as you made your way out the door. Before you could fully exit, you turned back to see if Peter wanted you to grab anything. Once he promised he’d take his own break ‘once I get this one thing figured out,’ you continued to make your way to the kitchen.

As you drew closer to the doorway, you could hear three voices speaking over each other. They didn’t sound angry, but they were definitely arguing. You opened the door anyway and almost immediately froze in your tracks. The Falcon stood with one hand on his own head and one on the Winter Soldier’s head while Captain America rolled his eyes before those same eyes landed on you, along with the rest of the room.

“Perfect,” Sam started. “Hey new girl, between the three of us,” he said, pointing to himself, the Soldier, and the Captain, “who has the best hair?”

“First of all, my name is [Y/N]. Second,” you continued, making your way past them to the fridge you hoped your dad kept stocked with goodies, “that’s an unfair question.”

You grabbed a soda and popped it open before turning back to the three men. “Your hair suits each of you. Cap wouldn’t look good with Winter Soldier hair and Falcon wouldn’t look good with Cap’s hair.” You took a few steps closer, leaning against the island counter between you and eyeing each of them. Your eyes settled on the Winter Soldier, unashamedly flitting across his face and admiring the sharpness of his features. “You,” pointing at him, “could probably pull off either of their looks, though.”

Bucky smirked at you, but his rosy cheeks gave away a hint of embarrassment at your compliment. Steve and Sam, on the other hand, weren’t taking it quite as gracefully.

“What?!” Sam shouted. “Okay, now I know you’re lying. I could pull off Cap’s hair for sure.”

“You know, I think shaggy hair would really suit me,” Cap said, only half sarcastically.

You giggled to yourself as the three of them started talking over each other again, all dead set on their own hair being the best of them and positive they could pull off the others’ looks. While they bickered, you searched the pantry until you found a snack to at least get you through the remainder of the day.

“Alright boys, it’s been fun but I have work to do,” you said as you walked past them again. “Actually, wait. Bucky — can I call you Bucky?” He nodded even though you continued anyway. “If you could stop by lab six today, I’d love to check out your arm in person. The digital renderings aren’t quite the same.”

“Uh, okay. Sure. I’ll find you,” he said quietly.

“Sweet, thanks!” And with that, you skedaddled back to your lab.

[krreader]

seven sins | chapter six.

pairing: bts x reader ; kim taehyung x reader fandom: bts warnings: non idol!au ; historical!au ; princes!bts ; concubine!reader ; mentions of sex genre: fluff ; angst word count: 2.3k+ previous: 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5

summary: even in times such as yours, you still led a privileged life with nothing to ask for. that is until first your father, then your mother died and you were left to care for your two younger sisters. the position for royal physician seemed to be open and with your father having been a general and your mother having been a maid for the queen, you thought you might be able to get it.. little did you know that your visit to the palace would put a completely different offer on the table.

a/n: WE’RE BACK TO POSTING REGULARLY BITCHACHOS! ♥ and this deserves a fucking update, still one of my fav originals to date

“Stop it, this isn't funny!”

You smiled from ear to ear when you could hear your sisters bickering with each other, walking up the familiar stairs to your home that you haven’t walked in weeks now, before carefully sliding open the doors.

Your youngest sister was annoying the older one with a stick, acting as if it was a sword, while the older one just wanted to be left alone.

Funny how so many things had changed... yet others stayed exactly the same.

“You should treat your older sister with a little more respect, you know?”

“(Y/N)!” both of them ran into your arms the moment you had finished your sentence, you hugging them as hard as you could, breathing in their scent that you missed so much, "You’re finally back!”

“I'm sorry I wasn't able to come sooner,” you kissed both of their heads, then showed them the bag that you were holding with a grin, “But I brought you a lot of treats!”

Were you allowed to take them? Probably not. But the kitchen staff always prepared too much for you concubines anyways. It’d be a shame to throw it all away when you had two wonderful sisters sitting at home who’d devour such things.

And indeed, the fact that you were gone for a while seemed to have been forgotten while they stuffed their faces.

For a moment you were afraid that maybe they haven't had enough to eat, but they looked healthy.

“Hey! Why are you eating so much, you make it seem like I haven't fed you at all!” Jun entered with crossed arms, “I've been cooking every day for you brats!”

“Sorry, Auntie Jun, but it's really good,” the youngest said.

She scoffed, but then quickly pulled you into her arms to greet you properly. After all, you also hadn’t seen her in a while.

“I got you something as well,” you whispered, pulling out a bag full of coins and sliding it into the pockets of her dress.

“No, no, no, I don't want this.”

“They give this to us every once in a while to buy new clothes, but I don't need that. You've been clearly taking care of them, Jun, I want you to have this. If not for you, then for your parents.”

She didn't like to take, she usually only gave, but.. she sighed in defeat when she knew she had to take it this time. Like you said, if not for her sake, then for that of her family.

“Thank you,” she squeezed you in her arms once more, then looked at the children to make sure they were still busy with the treats, before pulling you further away from them to have a private conversation.

What she was about to talk to you about shouldn't be heard by them.

“How are you? How are.. things?”

“I'm alright. They haven't found out why I'm there yet, but I think the queen is getting suspicious.”

“Because you're not pregnant, yet? The herbs work?”

“As well as I thought they would, yes. I've slept with four princes so far, so I should be pregnant by now. The good news, though, I heard that because Prince Seokjin is the heir to the throne, he is the one who needs to get a child as soon as possible. So the king ordered that nobody but him is allowed to get me with child and.. he hasn't been one of the four yet.”

“So as long as you stay away from him..-”

“Yes. At least it gives me an excuse. Not a good one, the queen knows men too well, but it's better than nothing.”

“Why haven't you talked to the king yet? You've been up there for a while, haven't you had the chance yet?”

“He's very reserved. Just like I had expected. My father used to tell me that he only saw him so much because he was pretty much the only person he ever trusted. I need a chance to speak with him when he’s alone.”

“Why can't you just tell anyone else? What about one of the princes? Maybe they could help you?”

“I don't know them well enough, Jun. Yes, some of them seem to like me a lot, but I can't take that risk. If I'm wrong, they might give the order to kill me. But with the king, I at least still have the card of my father to play. He will listen to me when he finds out who I really am and then all of this will finally be over.”

“So.. none of the princes could be an ally?”

“Well.. Prince Seokjin might be. He's.. troubled, these days. The weight of becoming the leader and bringing an heir into this world is crushing him. I talked to him once and I feel like he might understand me the most.. of what it's like to trying to look out for your family.”

“Then why not try that?”

“I've only seen him twice. I don't know what he's doing, but he doesn't seem to be much interested in me, to be honest.”

“Well, you managed to sleep with four princes so far. That's more than half of them. If anyone can do it, you can,” she put her hand on your shoulder, “But you need to be careful. I told you that the whole thing about you not being pregnant would cause a problem.”

“I know. But that is why I need to be careful with Prince Seokjin. If I see him and I really do end up sleeping with him but not get pregnant, then people are going to seriously ask questions. That is why the king is still my first option and Prince Seokjin only the second.”

“Whatever you do, you need to hurry,” she turned her head and looked at the two girls sitting on the floor, still eating and chatting about which treat they like the most, “They've been alright, but they ask questions that I don't know how to answer. They know you're working at the palace now, but not what you do there. Neither does anybody else. Yet. But if people do find out, I'm worried that they might treat the two differently. You know how the town folk looks at concubines.”

“I know. Which is why I'm grateful that you haven't said anything to anyone.”

“You know I'd never do that.”

As much as you would have loved to stay the whole night and talk more with both Jun and your siblings, time wasn’t something you had much of these days.

Concubines, especially those with your rank, were only allowed a short period of time in the village. Nevertheless, you spent every second that you could with your family, had your sisters tell you about what's new, cuddled a bunch with them and assured them that you'd be back soon.

However, this time saying goodbye wasn't as hard as the last time, because now they knew that you’d indeed keep your promise of returning to them.

You were not like mother, you would not abandon them.

“Can you bring more treats next time?” the youngest asked with big eyes, making you chuckle and kiss her forehead, “The red ones with the pretty flowers on top?”

“I'll bring you as many treats as you want.”

“YES!” and with that, she ran back into Jun's arms who smiled as well.

And you took that opportunity to kneel down in front of the older one, “Tell me honestly. Are things alright?”

“Yes,” she nodded, “Jun takes good care of us, don't worry.”

“You haven't had any problems? Did anyone try to come in here?”

“No, people leave us alone,” she hugged you tightly, “We're alright, (Y/N). Really.”

God, she has grown up so much.. how long hadn't you seen her? What happened to your baby sister that always tried to get guidance from you? Now it was almost like you could ask her for guidance instead.

“I'm so proud of you..”

“Just come back to us safely.”

“I will,” you kissed the top of her head and then got up from the floor, “I will see you all soon, alright?”

And with that, you walked back to the palace, your heart not as heavy as the last time, thankfully..

..only to run into Eun and..-

“Prince.. Taehyung,” you bowed, but couldn't help the smile that spread on your face when you saw how Eun had her arm hooked with his.

So.. this was her secret Prince, huh? Definitely not a bad choice... but then again... none of them were a “bad choice”. 

“There you are! I thought I might see you at the market,” she smiled, “Where did you go?”

“I uh..- I was just.. taking a walk,” you lied with a nervous chuckle that you quickly covered up by switching topics, “Anyways.. did you enjoy your day?”

“Ah, it was so nice, we had a lovely time.”

As much as you liked seeing her this happy, something about this picture in front of you was making you furrow your eyebrows.

Eun had been the one to scold you for sleeping – genuinely sleeping – with Jimin. She had been the one to tell you that it 'wasn't your place', yet she had her arm hooked with Taehyung's and was looking at him like she loved him.

Whereas he seemed to be.. not nearly as interested in her. 

And why did she never tell you about her prince? Why had she kept it such a secret? You had told her about all of the ones you had slept with and now that you thought about it.. she seemed to have been relieved.. and now it all made sense. She had been relieved because Taehyung hadn't been one of them.

“My brothers told me quite a lot about you, (Y/N),” you three walked back to the castle, three guards in front, three guards behind you, “Good things only, of course.”

And see, you saw the way he looked at you, but Eun didn't. She just continued to look at him with those loving eyes and.. it hurt you. Because out of everyone at the palace, she was the only one that you truly cared about.

“Thank you, your majesty,” you said plainly, “I very much enjoyed my time with them.”

You needed to talk to her. 

“Can I talk to you for a moment?” you pulled Eun aside at dinner later that night.

You thought about doing this some other time and giving her a bit more space, but you hadn’t been able to think about anything other than this. If she was truly in love with Prince Taehyung, then she needed someone to wash her head and tell her that this wasn’t a fairytale. 

“Of course,” she followed you into the gardens, a place where you thought it’d be best to have such a conversation. Most importantly, because of the privacy.

“If I ask you a question.. will you promise me to be honest about it?”

“Yes. We're friends, aren't we?”

Which was exactly why you needed to have that conversation with her. Because you might end up being the one breaking her heart in the end. Because if Taehyung wanted to have you, he would. 

“Eun.. why did you never tell me that Taehyung was your designated prince?”

“It.. just never came up.”

“It did.. a lot of times, actually. I kept asking you about it and you kept laughing it off. It was as if you wanted to keep it a secret.”

“Don't be silly,” she fidgeted with her hands, “Why would I keep that a secret?”

You stopped walking and gently grabbed her arm to make her stop too, “When you first met me, you said you wanted to be my friend because the other girls were all very competitive over their princes and that they had this mindset that they might change them and make them fall in love with them,” when she lowered her head, you knew you were right, “Eun.. did you fall in love with Prince Taehyung?”

It didn’t take more than ten seconds for her to burst into tears, confirming your suspicions.

You immediately pulled her close, rubbing your hands up and down her back, trying to comfort her as best as you could. You pitied her, really. 

“Everyone else has at least two girls.. but Taehyung only has me. I thought.. I thought I was special..”

“But you are special,” you immediately leaned back to look into her eyes, “Don't you ever let a man not make you feel special. No matter who he is. You are beautiful, you are kind, you are intelligent and every man out there would be a fool not to see that.”

“But Taehyung..-”

“Is.. a different case,” you shook your head, “You said it yourself, Eun. These princes aren't looking for love, they're looking for sex and someone to give them children.”

“Not with you.. you aren't like that.”

“Yes, Eun, I am exactly like that. I'm just like you, just like every other girl here.”

“No,” she wiped away her tears and took a step back, “I overheard Taehyung talk to one of his brothers..”

“So..?” you furrowed her eyebrows, not knowing what she was trying to tell you here.

Eun straightened her back, “I don’t know which brother it was, but one of them told Taehyung that they had fallen in love with you.”

[agerefandom]

Restrained

Fandom: Death Note

Words: 4,150

Characters: Regressor!Light Yagami, Caregiver!L/Ryuzaki. Brief appearances from Soichiro Yagami, Shuichi Aizawa, and Watari.

Summary: Set during Light and Misa’s imprisonment (episode 16-17). Classification/Regressors Are Known AU: Light was classified as a regressor when he was fifteen, but has fought the identity ever since. L is classified as a caregiver, but has never used those skills further than calming people in interrogation situations. Things come to a head in the second month of Light’s imprisonment.

Warnings: Imprisonment, irresponsible use of restraints, mentions of death and murder, nightmares, panic attacks, involuntary regression, hidden regression being revealed non-consensually. Ominous ending. 

Author’s Notes: I usually take issue with Classification AUs, because regression is a coping mechanism and not a fixed part of someone’s identity. Regression can change, and regressors can also be caregivers, and the idea that it could be ‘classified’ as part of someone’s political identity is kind of distressing. All of that said, it’s also a very comforting trope: it’s nice to imagine that you were ‘meant to be’ a regressor, naturally given that role, and that there are natural caregivers who want/need to take care of you. So, there are pros and cons to this kind of universe, as long as you remember that it’s an AU for a reason! Anyways, that’s my soapboxing done. Please note the warnings before reading! 

Light was not a regressor.

It didn’t matter what the letter he received at age fifteen said. Didn’t matter that his age range was listed as ‘2-3’ and a permanent caregiver was recommended. Light Yagami was a neutral, collected, and precocious teenager. He was mature for his age, and always had been.

Admittedly, Light occasionally sucked his thumb to help him sleep. And he convinced his mother to buy him more expensive sheets because he liked to run his hands across the texture. And maybe he cast side-glances at the adult playgrounds all around the city, at the regressors who were happily running and playing on the swings.

But Light Yagami was not a regressor. He got top marks. He wore stiff, professional clothes. He didn’t cry, not even when he stubbed his toe. He turned his nose up at sweet drinks and packaged candy. In short, at seventeen, Light was a model young man.

Which was when the notebook fell outside his classroom window, and everything got a lot more complicated.

--

Could a regressor do this? Collectively bring the world to its knees, the news outlets humming with one story? Could a regressor kill hundreds, save the general population from the evil in its midst?

Light Yagami was Kira, and Kira was not an age regressor.

--

Light Yagami was not Kira.

Light was trapped in a cell, his arms shackled behind his back, and he was absolutely certain that he wasn’t Kira. What kind of idea was that, marching in and saying he thought he was subconsciously Kira? Absurd. He wouldn’t do that kind of thing.

He yelled at the ceiling, pleaded with Ryuzaki, and received cold answers in return.

How had Light sat here for a week, believing that Ryuzaki had been right to lock him away? It was absurd: he couldn’t have committed the murders without knowing at all, it just didn’t make sense.

“You told me to keep you in there, no matter what you said,” Ryuzaki repeated calmly, his voice crackling through the cheap speakers outside of Light’s cell. “I’m only doing what you told me.”

“Well, stop!” Light shouted, tugging uselessly against the leather cuffs that held his arms behind him. His shoulders ached from the position. “Listen to me now, I’m not Kira!”

“We don’t know that,” Ryuzaki said. “Until we can be sure, you will stay in that cell. I’m sorry, Light.”

Light felt tears well up in his eyes, and he jerked his head down to hide it. With his bangs hiding his expression, he tried to wrestle himself under control.

He felt scared and helpless and he just didn’t understand what he was doing here. Let me out! a voice was screaming inside him, younger and just as frightened as he was. Please, I can’t take it anymore!

What was he thinking? He was Light Yagami, part of the taskforce dedicated to catching Kira. He could withstand this. He would have to.

He didn’t bother to hide the tears as he raised his eyes again to the camera.

“Fine. I’ll stay. But you’ll see that I’m not Kira! I don’t know what’s happening, but I believe that my innocence will be proven one way or another.”

“That’s exactly what Kira would say,” Ryuzaki drawled into the microphone, and then there was a short sound of feedback as the conversation cut off.

Light rocked back to lean against the side of the bed, feeling exhausted but satisfied. He’d made his statement, and he had fought off the despair. He was Light Yagami, and he would deal with this imprisonment with all the dignity he could.

--

This was awful.

Light had never been so bored and anxious in his life. The days stretched on, with only Ryuzaki’s occasional check-ins to keep his mind busy. Out of lack for other things to do, Light started sleeping more than usual. His days were hazy, short bathroom trips out of the cell and the clatter of the food tray his only reference points for time. The lights shut off for seven hours every night, the cameras equipped with night vision to watch him toss and turn in his restraints.

There was nothing to do but ruminate, worry, wonder. Light tried to run through lectures in his head, even tried his hand at mentally writing a story. He wondered if he could convince Ryuzaki to play chess with him over the speaker system, but found himself worrying about whether that would make it seem like he wasn’t taking his imprisonment seriously.  

It had been a month, and Light was suffering.

The nights were hardest. In the dark, Light cried, trying to stay quiet. He couldn’t bite his thumb, he couldn’t feel his soft blankets, and sometimes he couldn’t sleep for the tug of the restrains at his wrists and shoulders. He wanted to kick his legs, flail around, scream at the top of his lungs until they let him out. But he was Light Yagami, and he had dignity. Even with cameras fixed on him twenty-four hours a day, even with his wrists and ankles contained, even under the constant scrutiny of Ryuzaki and the other members of the task force.

He almost made it to the end.

--

Things that Light didn’t know:

-it had been a month since Kira had begun killing again -his father was in a matching jail cell, several blocks away -the task force had been pressuring L for weeks to let Light and Misa go, convinced by the new wave of murders that the two were innocent -L had a plan, and was simply waiting to contact Light’s father to play his part

(Light would never know most of these things, because before they became relevant, everything fell apart.)

--

L sat in the same place he’d been sitting for weeks, watching the same scenes play out on the same flickering screens. Misa sagged against her restraints, Light laid curled up on the bed, and Soichiro sat in his chair, staring down at his hands.

Nothing had changed, but everything was different.

Light and Misa were Kira, or at least they had been. L had never been more certain. Now they both seemed utterly convinced of their innocence, and L wasn’t comfortable with the implications of that. Were they truly ignorant of their role? Had their ability to kill been passed onto someone else, or had the two of them been unwitting puppets to some new and yet-unseen player?

Misa took a struggling breath, and went limp again. Light shifted. Soichiro got up and began to pace. His cell would fit eight of his steps before he had to turn around and begin again in the other direction.  

L missed nothing. But the pieces weren’t coming together.

He tapped his fingers against his knees, a syncopated rhythm as his eyes flashed from one prisoner to the next. Watari had brought him a plate of fruit, not yet touched, with icing sugar sprinkled over them. They would make L’s fingers sticky, and he didn’t want to get juice on the controls. He would have to eat with one hand, and operate the microphones with his other. He was just about due his check-in with Misa-Misa.

Just as L began to reach for the berries, a movement on-screen caught his eye. He didn’t currently have the audio on for the cells, but from the visual, he would guess that Light just woke up screaming. L has had a few of those nightmares. They weren’t pleasant.

L switched the audio on, and listened to Light trying to calm himself down. He was talking out loud, a mutter only loud enough for the microphones inside his cell to pick up on. (Light always yelled to the camera when he was talking to L, as if he weren’t aware that the cell was bugged well enough to hear every last breath he took. They could take no risks with Kira, when they still didn’t know how he was committing the crimes.)

“I’m okay,” Light was muttering. “Don’t… don’t do this. I don’t need anything. I’m okay.” His breathing caught, paused, and then resumed. “I’m okay. Please, please- don’t.” His voice was trembling, and L leaned closer. He’d seen Light crying, of course, trying to hide it by turning away from the cameras. But this seemed… different. Light was on the edge of something, and if L was lucky, it might be some kind of confession, fuelled by a terrible dream that brought all of his crimes rushing back with the sudden weight of guilt that Kira never felt.

Yes, L had enough self-reflection to know that he was kidding himself. But it had been a long month and a half.

He remained crouching, one hand poised above the plate of strawberries and the other hand hovering above the microphone that would let him speak to Light. And he listened.

“I don’t wan’ do this,” Light whispered to himself, his words slurring together in a way that L had never heard from the other man. The distressed voice hooked its claws into his chest in a way that was both foreign and familiar. Was this… “I don’ wan’ do this,” Light repeated, and then burst into tears.

It wasn’t anything like the quiet, hidden tears of the night-time. Light was sobbing, pulling at his restraints, tossing on the bed. Unable to wipe them away, tears and snot made a mess of his face. L watched as the teenager struggled to his knees and pressed himself against the wall, as if he were trying to get some kind of comfort from the pressure. The tears wouldn’t stop, even as words started making their way through the sobs.

“Lemme out, I wan’ out, I can’t, I can’t. It’s too dark, I can’t. Please, I’m too… I can’t feel my hands!” Light wailed, collapsing in on himself, his shoulders straining against the cuffs.

L was dimly aware that his hands had dropped to his sides. He knew he was staring. He knew that Aizawa had come running to stand behind him, alerted by the cries coming through the speakers. His ears were ringing, and he could feel Light’s sobs in his own chest.

The truth was unavoidable: Light Yagami was a regressor, and L had not known.

How was that possible?

Light was registered as age-natural on his official documents. L had watched him for weeks, and he had shown no signs of regression, not at home when he was unaware of being observed, and not here in the prison cell. Until now.

This was a harsh involuntary regression, from the looks of it, and the part of L that had made them stamp ‘caregiver’ on his own documents was aching.

“Oh my god. Is Light a regressor?” Aizawa said behind him. “That looks like regression, right?”

“It isn’t on his file,” L said, pleased that his voice sounded even. He hadn’t been around a regressor in distress for a few years, and he’d forgotten how much it made his chest hurt. Knowing that he’d been the one to put Light in that situation made it worse. Rationally, he knew that Light being a regressor meant nothing to the investigation. In fact, it made L even more certain that he was Kira. To conceal his headspace that thoroughly, even under investigation, made it clear that Light was no ordinary teenager. That must have taken an immense amount of willpower and planning.

“You have to let him out,” Aizawa said. “You can’t hold a regressor in a place like that, and his innocence has already been proven.” Light was still sobbing, his harsh breaths providing an undercurrent to their conversation. “Ryuzaki, you can’t possibly let that continue.”

“I… think he knew this might happen,” L realized. “This is what he meant when he asked me not to let him out, whatever happened. He knew that he would regress under the pressure.”

“All the more reason to release him! He still doesn’t know that Kira is killing again, it’s not fair. You’ve put him under way too much stress. Let me talk to him.” Aizawa reached for the microphone, and L struck his hand away.

“No. The last thing he needs is more sensory input from the speaker system.” Aizawa recoiled from the physical interception, eyes wide. “And you could jeopardize the investigation,” L added, slightly belated.

“You can’t do this. I’ll call the rest of the team,” Aizawa threatened, reaching into his pocket.

“There’s no need for that,” L sighed. He knew that the rest of the team would agree with Aizawa. The legal system was more lenient for regressors, and keeping them in solitary confinement was widely considered cruel. “I’ll go myself.”

Just because Light couldn’t be held in the cell anymore didn’t mean that L was prepared to let him go without twenty-four-hour supervision. Luckily, he had a set of unusually long handcuffs that he’d already been prepared to use after Light’s release. He could just speed that process along… and tell Watari to order some more regressor-friendly accessories for their room, of course. Maybe pad the cuff that Light would wear, so he didn’t accidentally hurt himself.

L shook his head, pushing his chair back from the table with a sigh. His caregiver mind was getting in the way again. Light was Kira, regressor or no. He wasn’t keeping Light close so that he could take care of him, but so that he was unable to hurt anyone else.

“We’ll discuss Misa’s release when I return,” L added over his shoulder as he headed for the door, reaching into his pocket to call Watari with the car. Light’s prison was a short drive from the base, and the sooner L got there, the better.

--

Sure enough, the drive was agony.

L stared out the window, the seatbelt Watari had forced him to wear digging into his chest and disrupting his thoughts. He was trying to make plans, trying to think back to all of his interactions with Light and wonder if he should have known. Was that why Light had always sharply refused any kind of sweet drink, even something as simple as fruit juice? Was he afraid that he might slip into regression? Was that why he had been crying at night, quietly regressing just enough for his childish fears to come to the surface? How confused was he, how disoriented in the cell? He seemed to know he was trapped, but did he remember what he was accused of?

L barely noticed when the car came to a stop, but when Watari opened his door for him, it took genuine effort not to go running into the building. Instead, L moved even slower than he usually would. Each gesture would be planned. Each word intentional. Just because Light was a regressor, it didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. L had to be on his guard, even more because of his natural caregiver instincts.

He made his way down the cold concrete stairwell, Watari a few paces behind him. Hands tucked in his pockets, breathing slow and natural. No worries about what he might have missed in the two minutes he’d been away from the screens. Had Light hurt himself? Was he safe? Was he still crying? L should have brought water, he’s sure to be dehydrated-

They stepped onto the cell block, and L had a brief conversation with one of the guards to obtain the keys. He’d already texted ahead, and they knew to expect him.

Watari stayed behind, just within earshot as L padded down the line of empty cells to the one that held Light.

It was strange to see the cell in person. For the first time, L could see the camera that Light had shouted at so often. He could see the details of the walls more clearly here, the chipped tile of the bathroom corner and the scratches in the concrete that didn’t come through on the long-distance video feed.

And there was Light, curled into a ball on the bed with his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms still tied behind him, much in the same position that he had been napping in before his nightmare.

L had approached soundlessly, and Light’s eyes were closed. He didn’t open them until L put the key into the lock and turned it.

“N—no, I don’t-” Light stuttered, and then looked up. “Ryuzaki? Ryuzaki!” He tried to get up, but the cuffs on his ankles made him stumble and fall. L heard his knees hit the concrete with a harsh crack, and Light teared up again. “No, no, don’t come in. M’sorry, don’t come in.”

“I’ll let you out of the cuffs,” L told him, his hand on the door but waiting to open it.

“No, I don’t want it,” Light managed. “Just… go.”

“Light, how old are you?” L pressed.

Light made a sound that resembled a squeak, and very slowly raised his eyes to L’s.

“How old are you right now?” L asked again. He watched Light’s expression twist from surprise to embarrassment to conflict, then Light started crying again.

“I don’t wanna be,” Light sobbed. “I don’ wan’ it.”

And there went L’s chest again, twisting and aching with the sound of a regressor in distress. He regulated his voice, unwilling to let it sound too caring. It came out flat instead.

“There’s no shame in regressing, Light. Two percent of the population isn’t an insignificant number. You’ll be more comfortable with your arms free.” Light shook his head, tears flying with the gesture.

“No! Don’t come in!”

“How old are you, Light? You’re young, I can tell that much. Probably in the toddler range, if I had to guess.” From Light’s glare through the tears, L had hit the nail on the head. “I thought so. Stop fighting me. I was going to let you out soon anyways.” Well, L hadn’t been meant to say that. But he could probably use that to his advantage.

“But… but you think I’m Kira,” Light mumbled. Interesting: he did have his full memories, then. Very little disorientation for such a young age range.

“I do,” L admitted. “But the taskforce doesn’t. They want you back on the team.”

“Me?” Light blinked up at him, and his eyes were even wider than usual, framed with perfect dark lashes, and L was in agony being separated by bars. This regressor was going to be the death of him. “But… I thought the bad things stopped ‘cause I was here.”

L was fascinated by the limits of Light’s mental reasoning while he was regressed. He would have to do some experimentation at a later time, but for now…

“I lied. Kira has been active for almost a month. I wasn’t convinced it meant you were innocent, but it makes a good case.” L watched that news hit home, but in a very different way than it would have hit an adult Light.

“You lied? Why? I thought… I thought I was bad, maybe, but you were lying!” Light tried to wipe his tears on his shoulder, only partially succeeding. “I don’ wanna know why. Probably a good reason, ‘cause you’re L and you do all the good things.”

Hmm. It seemed that Light’s certainty that he wasn’t Kira didn’t extend to his regressed self. Perhaps he was speaking more candidly in this headspace.

“I’m not fond of unnecessary cruelty,” L sighed, hooking one hand through the bars. “If I had known, Light-”

“You never woulda had me on the task force,” Light said, quite viciously. “Never ever.”

“That’s not true.” L traced one thumb against his lips. “I’ve known regressors who are exceedingly intelligent. Everything would have proceeded the same.”

“Even though I’m three?” Light asked, and L fought the urge to smile. Information, at last. Three. He stored that away.

“Even though you’re three,” L confirmed. “Your input is valuable to me. In fact, I would like to invite you back to the taskforce after you’ve recovered from this imprisonment.”

“Yes!” Light shuffled forwards on his knees, wincing at the movement. He probably bruised them earlier when he fell. “Yes, please! I wanna help catch Kira! And all the bad guys!” His eyes were shining with excitement and the tears from earlier. Looking down at him, L’s mind caught in a loop.

Light Yagami was Kira, but this… this was not Kira. What that meant about Light, or Kira, or the nature of Light’s regression, L couldn’t say, but he was certain of one thing.

“Can I come in now?” L asked.

Light visibly hesitated, then sank back onto his heels and nodded.

“Thank you.” L left the keys in the lock as he swung open the door and entered, making his way to Light briskly. It was easy enough to get the cuffs off his wrists, and Light whined when his hands were free, struggling to move his shoulders back into a natural position. “Give it time,” L advised, pressing at his spine with experienced fingers. Massages were one of his lesser-used skills, but easy to pick up with his wide knowledge of the human body. “They’ll hurt less in a few minutes.”

He wasn’t expecting Light to shift forward and wrap his arms around him, but that was exactly what happened.

L froze, his hands raised in the air as if in surrender. He’d comforted regressors before, at crime scenes and over interrogation tables. A few of the children at the orphanage were regressors, and he interacted with them when he visited. But none of them had dove into a hug like this. L was a detective, a mentor, a little too strange and intense to be approachable. Now there were arms wrapped around him, holding him tightly, and L didn’t know what to do.

Falteringly, L returned the embrace, the tips of his fingers resting lightly on his own forearms. Light had lost weight over the last month, and his body felt almost frail against L.

“Had a nightmare,” Light whispered.

L wondered if Aizawa was listening, back at the base. He wondered if Watari had wandered closer, after hearing the cell door open. He wondered what kind of things Kira dreamed about.

“Do you want to talk about it?” L asked, and didn’t lean back from the embrace.

“It was bad,” Light said. “I was running, and there were hands, and a fence, an’ there were… bodies. On the fence. And they were… they were…” L could feel Light shaking, and he held the regressor just a little bit closer.

“Just a dream,” L said. He wondered how much blood was on Light’s hands, how much of it he remembered. “You’re safe now. It was just a dream.” L held Light in his arms, the ache in his chest finally fading as he looked down at him. There, the regressor was safe, and L could finally relax. Light’s breathing slowly evening out, his grasp on L’s shirt finally loosening. “You’re safe.”

Light blinked up at L sleepily, and then his eyes slid closed. A natural reaction to stress, and having a caregiver close by. Even if L hadn’t disclosed his classification, his actions combined with Light’s instincts had likely made it clear. L cradled Light in his arms, like a puzzle piece fitting into place, and watched him fall asleep. He would have no more nightmares with a caregiver so close by, and even if he did, L would be there to calm him down.

L knew that this was trouble. Light was Kira, and Kira was death. L’s instincts as a caregiver could only blind him further as he continued in the investigation. If he were being rational, he would attach Light to someone else for the rest of his surveillance period. Prevent the caregiver/regressor bond that had been formed between them from strengthening into something difficult to break.

But L didn’t like being rational. He followed his instincts, and they were always right.

Right now, his instincts told him two things.

I will not let go of Light Yagami.

This will be the death of me.

[pearwaldorf]

If I never see another post from Franzeska aka olderthannetfic here it will be too soon. How dare she answer questions about racism and AO3 like she wasn’t one of the people who helped build it into the very structure of the site? I am quoting this directly from her post (emphasis mine): 

We picked the archive warnings from things that were common on older fic archives. Which, yes, reflects what fandom cared about at the time and is not neutral. (And when I say “we”, I do mean me specifically. I can’t remember how much my committee chose those and how much the Board and others drove the exact selection, but I did a lot of the research into older archives at the time. Including something about racism straight up never occurred to me in 2008.)

And sure, our views can evolve a lot in a decade. But Racefail happened in 2009, and none of the topics discussed at the time are different than those we’re focusing on today, 11 years later. For shits and giggles, here is my archived Livejournal post about the entire mess. If you click through to the other links (synedochic’s in particular), I think you will see this is something that didn’t just pop up with Tumblr and the SJW/anti contingent. (I’m not comfortable with conflating antis/fandom fundies/purity wankers with fans legitimately criticizing racism in fandom, but that is how a lot of it gets lumped together as a dismissive tactic.)

Which brings us to That Piece of Shit Meta in 2016. I am linking to the Fanlore entry for context, because the Actual Piece of Shit Meta is archive-locked (you can access it from Fanlore if you really want to read it, but it’s 16K of garbage).

A selection of commentary about it:

Guys, this was the problem all along. I’m doing fandom wrong by falling in love with the wrong source text. If I’d only understood that this wasn’t my space to enjoy non-white and/or non-male characters, because the majority of characters are white men, imagine how much happier I’d be in my life. (allofthefeelings)

they’ve been spouting yt apologia while fetishizing asian culture for years, this is nothing new. i’m pretty sure i’ve read franzeska saying the same things back when racefail ‘09 was going down. like most of this isn’t surprising bc it is exactly what we saw yt lj fandom peeps spouting in 2007-2010 and i’m personally not shocked that these people learned absolutely nothing. they don’t want to learn and being accountable for their actions. (astro-projection [edited to correct quote attribution and link])

Franzeska goes deep into the history of AO3 to talk about why slash is represented heavily there... But in 16,000 words over 13 chapters, there is not one mention of Racefail ‘09. Not a single reference to the time a popular Harry Potter LJ community used a racial slur as a prompt in 2007. Nothing about the Supernatural RPF Big Bang story that used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a backdrop for a J2 love story (THAT’S A REAL THING THAT HAPPENED). Nothing about the time in 2006 that comics BNF Te pointed out the marginalization black characters faced on two then-juggernauts of white m/m slash fandom, Angel and Smallville. (snarl-furillo, the entire comment is worth reading so please click through)

This erasure of context and history is violent. Because many of the women of color who originally (and still) critique/d and resist/ed fandom’s normalized racism/misogynoir did so to their own detriment and with not insignificant risk to their personal well-being, safety, and privacy. Women of color were ‘outed’ by other fans for speaking out (doxed). They were attacked and silenced from all sides. They lost friends and community. They had to, with great vulnerability, cut themselves open and drag out their own private, internal experiences to air for all the (white) people who disbelieved them. They often found themselves speaking directly to a fucking wall of over-sensitive whiteness that would just as easily topple right on top of them. If anything in fandom is precious, it’s white feelings. And it always has been. (halfhardtorock)

In 2017 she was part of a Kickstarter to do a film about fangirls and fandom. I asked (you’ll need to hit “show comment” to see it) her to publicly comment about That Piece of Shit Meta, which she did. 

But before she did, Chelsea Woods, the co-creator of the project, emailed me about the comment. I don’t remember what exactly the email said, because it was a really long time ago, but she wanted to talk to me about the meta, perhaps to help formulate a response. Chelsea also reached out to somebody else outspoken about the issue at the time, and this is from a DM exchange I had with them:  

I understand why Chelsea reached out, as the head of the project and probably because she thought I would be more likely to respond instead of Franzeska. But tbh it feels like Franzeska's trying to get somebody else (a woman of color) to do the legwork for her. To the best of my knowledge I don't have F blocked on Twitter or Tumblr, and it's not like my email is hard to figure out.  I don't exactly relish the thought of talking to her, but as the one who fucked up, I feel like it is incumbent upon her to make the gesture...

I basically told Chelsea the same as you, that at this point there is very little she can do to demonstrate she understood what she did was fucked up, and that she has learned anything from the experience.

And when I tried to reblog her response, I found out Franzeska had blocked me, if that gives you any indication of how much she honestly wants to engage in discussion. 

Which brings me to now. I was literally today years old when I learned that Franzeska was head of the Abuse team for A While. (Bess says 2008-2012.) So suddenly a lot of things make sense, especially the lackluster (to put it politely) response about racist nonsense I’ve heard over the years, like in male hockey RPF. [edit: additional context in this post, ty Rukmini]

Certainly Franzeska is not responsible for everything racist about AO3, but she has definitely had a hand in shaping a culture that sacrifices the well-being and comfort of black users (among others) on the altar of “maximum inclusivity of content”. To turn the phrase back on them, who is “our own”? Why is it important to preserve an environment where a racially fetishistic fic that objectifies a black hockey player can stay up but a black fan basically has to go in like Viago checking for sunlight?

There is a balance between draconian content restrictions and letting racism, sexism, transphobia, etc run rampant on the site. I’m not saying it will be possible to find it immediately, or that it won’t change over time. But we have to try, if the AO3 is truly committed to making it a place that includes everybody, and not just the specific group of people who designed the site.

[sukumen]

sorry if this is a loaded question, ofc you don’t need to answer! what’s your take on the argument that dark content is harmful to reality, and that it romanticises traumas? personally i like reading some dc, but when i see posts about how it’s harmful to both survivors and readers (smth to do with psychologically normalising it) it kinda makes me feel guilty, like i’m doing something wrong? when i know i can distinguish between fiction and reality?

hey! so i’m going to keep this under a read more to avoid upsetting anyone - also because this is literally - and i mean, literally - an essay LMAO. i had a lot to say!

any anon hate will be deleted and blocked, but you’re free to engage me off anon (and kindly on anon) if you want to! anon, you’re also free to come chat with me in dms if you want to speak more freely about this :) 

warning for rape mentions, murder / mass murder mentions, dub / noncon mentions.

so, i want to preface this by saying that i don’t think that anyone is obligated to like or be comfortable with dark content. it truly is your prerogative not to be interested in it and you are valid if it makes you feel uncomfortable. so nothing i’m saying here is to convince people that anyone should like it or is wrong for not liking it.

but i don’t agree with the argument that people should be shamed for liking or writing it, that it romanticizes trauma, etc. i understand why people feel that way 100%, but i don’t agree.

sometimes, it feels arbitrary. “dark content” has become a pseudonym for dub/non-con fic, but is the the only type of dark content there is? dark stories can include murder, horror, gore, etc. yet, despite us knowing that murder (for example) is a crime and morally wrong, most people don’t bat an eye when a chara in a fic does it and is still protrayed as attractive or is the reader’s lover. we go crazy for mafia aus where characters kill and show power --- we love those characters, those scenes where they kill and go take their lover all covered in blood. i mean, even in the jjk fandom, one of the most popular characters is a cursed spirit whose first words in the series are about massacring women and children. and we love him. more than that, we love the gory, arguably dark world he comes from - we hypothesize about these characters, we sympathize with them, and we lust over them.

so it’s hard to reconcile that with telling fans who write dub/noncon that they are impacting people’s sense of reality. we’re all experiencing this series together - if written fan fiction is what desensitizes morality, what about the images from the anime and manga? would we make the same argument for banning it? would we say that the people who like sukuna are romanticizing mass violence or that gege is normalizing it for us psychologically by making the character who does it hot and engaging or showing/referencing it so much in the manga?

i just don’t think we would. i think we all understand that those things are wrong and like him knowing that, and can readily say he’s a villain or that the things we’re seeing is wrong. so, i don’t think there’s a black-and-white argument that seeing x in media will make you think y is a-okay or make you more comfortable with it in real life.

i do get that there’s a difference here: a big part of this argument is the sexual aspect of non/dubcon - it’s hard to feel like it’s not normalizing rape when people find a scenario like that hot (whereas no one is like...lewding a mass murder scene, haha). but i think that, at the end of the day, brains do what brains do and people just have dark fantasies. like it’s really as simple as that. rape fantasies in particular are common and talked about by psychologists all the time and i have never been able to find a common thread of them condemning people having them or even writing about them. what they DO talk about is the fact that consent is actually key to the fantasy - that the person fantasizing is the person controlling the situation, that the fantasy, despite being “dub/noncon”, is inherently exactly what they want because THEY are creating the situation, and that, in the end, it’s the absence of actual danger that makes it. ultimately: there is a difference between real life rape and an imagined fantasy or roleplay. so much so that it might not even be fair to call them “rape” fantasies at all.

“It’s crucial to recognize that real-life rape is anything but erotic for a woman. Being at the mercy of someone who’s so outrageously violating your will, holding you down, threatening you with bodily harm (or even death), and physically forcing himself upon you induces arousal all right. But not that of sexuality, but of utterly petrifying anxiety and panic. Contrast this to most imagined rape scenes, which are so electrifying precisely because they’re expressly designed by their female creator to stimulate the illusion of danger—which can, in fact, be positively arousing.”

>  from this article.

to me, this is ultimately what dub/noncon fic is. people writing out those fantasies for people who share those fantasies to process those fantasies.

you can make the argument that that it’s harmful to survivors, but that has its own issues when doctors have reported that some survivors have rape fantasies or find comfort in acting out those rape fantasies (and writing, in my opinion, is a form of acting that out). like are they not valid victims because they are contextualizing their trauma into something that they can control and can process on their own terms? i think the issue there is that the argument uses survivors as a monolith to make an argument on their behalf; but every individual survivor is valid in what they think about this because no two survivors process what happened to them in the same way.

i myself am a survivor and have no real issue with dark content (obviously). i don’t read it often and only write it now because of sukuna; but when i do read it, i draw the line at certain things because i personally cannot stomach it. but would i demand that person delete it from existence because of that? no, i wouldn’t. because again, at the end of the day, that’s the entire basis of the fantasy. i control what i’m fantasizing about, and if something that i do not want to happen to “me” as the reader occurs, i do not read it. i don’t consent to that experience or that fantasy, so i stay away. but at the same time, that other person’s fantasy isn’t mine to control or infringe on and it doesn’t make me a better person than them for not sharing the fantasy.

SO ALL OF THIS TO SAAAY: i don’t think you should feel bad for enjoying dark content. i don’t think the argument about whether or not you’ll know how wrong it is in real life anymore really applies because you could make the claim that any type of fiction runs the risk of distorting people’s perception of reality and making them desensitized to something. and i don’t think that’s what people’s struggle with this is. 

what it boils down to, to me, is that people can’t understand why anyone would find dub/noncon arousing, and think that they condone rape because of it. which, again, is understandable. rape is a horrible fucking thing to experience - it isn’t sexy, it isn’t hot, it isn’t arousing and it’s hard to see any nuance when you see “noncon” and “wow this was so hot” in one post. but based on the way psychologists talk about “rape” fantasies, i think the two things (the fantasy and the real life act of violence) can typically be distinct for people, even survivors, and it just comes down to whether or not it’s a fantasy you share. if you don’t, completely your right! block the tags, block the writers, do whatever you have to do to protect your peace and your limits! but the discourse about it always seems to go into the realm of shame or arguments about someone’s moral compass, which i think is unfair. 

hopefully this helps and wasn't an annoying thing to read! like i said, don’t mind talking about it more if need be!

[stillness-in-green]

Thoughts on Chapter 314 (and surrounding events)

Being a loose summary of several things I thought about in relation to the leaks, what they say about the series as a whole, a bit of new operating headcanon on the Peerless Thief, and a dash of how fandom is responding to the revelations. Spoilers, obviously.

This chapter makes it quite clear that the HPSC absolutely would have gone in and eliminated the PLF quietly, lethally, and wholly unlawfully if Hawks hadn't reported back the numbers that he did. The only reason the raid involved non-Commission-affiliated heroes at all is because the PLF's manpower was simply too much for the Commission to deal with via their usual methods. I'm both appalled that the disregard for human rights in HeroAca Land is somehow even worse than I thought it was and smug that that tiny little piece I recently posted criticizing the PLF's treatment has turned out to be totally justified and supported by the canon.[1] (Note that this does not absolve Horikoshi of the responsibility to, himself, treat the PLF better than paper dolls tossed into the incinerator of Plot Irrelevance when they cease being convenient to his story.) The fact that the Commission was forced to involve heroes might mean Re-Destro, Mr. Compress and the others are somewhat safer than might otherwise be the case. Because of the involvement of the unsuspecting stooges law-abiding heroes, and because the botched raid became such a huge disaster, there’s far more public scrutiny on this than would otherwise be the case. Of course, "accidents" can still happen,[2] especially in a chaotic environment, but the factors above (combined with Clone!RD murdering the bejeezus out of the Lady Prez) do, I think, suggest that there probably isn't an organized push for quick solutions going on behind closed doors.

I don't think Nagant has been around for a terribly long time or that there was an uptick in vigilantism in recent years—I think the scene where she mentions vigilantes becoming accepted as heroes is just in reference to the early history of heroism. It's in keeping with what Tsukauchi Makoto described in Vigilantes, and forms the basis of the current system—the current system that Nagant was a single cog in a big machine grinding away to preserve.

Speaking of Nagant and the system, it's interesting to me that one of the groups Nagant apparently targeted at the HPSC's behest was corrupt heroes—those who colluded with villains or specifically goaded/incited civilians into using their quirks illegally, thus turning civilians into capital-V Villains in the eyes of the law. One might easily say that targeting corrupt heroes (albeit using a much broader definition of "corrupt") was Stain's whole shtick, but it actually puts me more in mind of the Peerless Thief, Harima Oji. Harima punished greedy or corrupt heroes with theft, and presumably with a measure of declaration and exposure,[3] then distributed their money back to the streets. Someone who ridicules those who abuse their power, and gets away with it for long enough to build a reputation: that right there is a recipe for a folk hero. The HPSC, in whatever form they existed at the time, obviously couldn't let that go on—such repeated humiliations would weaken peoples’ faith in (and obedience to) the system the HPSC was trying to build. At the same time, though, it would also weaken faith in the system to openly acknowledge that system's flaws, to acknowledge that some pretty awful people had found their way into the heroics business specifically for the power and ability to abuse it that the title of Hero afforded them. Public trials would make it a matter of record that some heroes—and, accordingly, heroes at large—did not deserve the public's unquestioning faith. Obviously in a system that was built from the ground up on faith, that was unacceptable. And so Harima was branded a supervillain for exposing the system's flaws, while the corrupt heroes who embodied those flaws to begin with were—and continue to be—quietly disposed of at the HPSC’s discretion.

There's a lot of talk around about how Lady Nagant is stupid, or hypocritical, or delusional, or whatever other dismissive adjective people want to use, because she expresses a preference for AFO's rule over the HPSC's. Firstly, I think it's dubious Lit Crit to fault a character for not being a Paragon of Rationality, especially when they're under the cascading stressors Nagant has been under since she was, what, 13? 14? Forced to live this dichotomy of smiling gallant hero and ruthless covert assassin, had her life threatened by the man who'd taken her in,[4] probably dumped in Tartarus until such time as her trial could be held,[5] and kept in those ghastly, dehumanizing conditions for who knows how long? How shocking, that her objectivity might be somewhat compromised! Secondly, it's not like she's saying that AFO's rule would be a sunny walk in the park. The kanji she uses doesn't even mean "better"; while it can mean serene or tranquil, her more likely meaning is clear/transparent. Her phrasing indicates that she's aware it would be pretty bad; she's simply of the opinion that at least his rule wouldn't be a sham, a pretty lie. It would be bad, but everyone would know it. No one would have these comforting illusions they could lose at any time; if you stepped out of line and got shot in the head by an assassin, well, at least you would probably know you that being defiant was running that risk, rather than never seeing it coming because you'd been told all your life that Heroes Didn't Do That To People. Again, this is a woman whose life was shattered no less than three times by the duplicity of the highest acting authority in this comic.[6] She doesn't have to be Objectively Correct By The Standards Of Ethical Utilitarianism—nor do you have to agree with her choice that because she doesn’t want to live in the Matrix, no one else should get to either—for her opinion to make sense from her own perspective! Thirdly, while I think it's fair to say that the HPSC and AFO actually use fairly similar methods to recruit followers and punish dissenters, we have no idea how much Nagant herself knows about AFO's recruitment tactics other than her own brief experience of it. And while AFO is a controlling and manipulative bastard, at least in his case it's coming from a man who openly styles himself as a Demon King, not an organization positioning itself as lawful regulators of the protectors of society at large while secretly training child soldiers to flagrantly violate every law protecting the human rights and due process of that society's people.

Overhaul's presence is delightful, and yes, he is a victim of Hero Society, if only because Hero Society could have put him in some kind of prison-based rehab facility after Shigaraki was through with him, but chose to dispose of him in Tartarus instead, for absolutely no justifiable cause. I suspect it's only due to Horikoshi not being very interested in the harsh realities of the trauma caused by enforced isolation[7] that Overhaul is the only Tartarus escapee that talks to himself and has dissociated from reality almost completely. Overhaul's maiming was not the fault of Hero Society, nor did Hero Society force him to torture Eri and repeatedly commit cold-blooded murder. But his madness? Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable laying that one at Hero Society's feet, actually. I can’t wait for Deku to have to face the victim that Chisaki Kai has become due to levels of systemic cruelty and negligence that really ought to be criminal—and which, if this were real life, would be.

--------Lately, footnotes are really popular with us!--------

[1] Lady Nagant: *talks about how the Hero Society everyone believes in is illusory, a thin fake over a brutal reality, and that returning to the false simplicity of that status quo will only cause history to repeat itself* Me, two weeks ago: Hero Society will never stop creating its own villains so long as, every time it fails people, it does nothing but shrug and write off the victims as unavoidable, inevitable sacrifices for the greater good.

[2] Yes, I'm still highly suspicious of the "Destro committed suicide in prison" claim.

[3] Compress tells us Harima “preached reformation,” but regardless, you don’t dress up in a modified kabuki costume and waltz midair through nighttime cityscapes raining cash out of the sky if you’re trying to keep your activities a secret.

[4] And her family situation couldn't have been much better than Hawks', if she was targeted by the HPSC to begin with. I would guess she was an orphan in the childcare system, easy to move from whatever alternative care arrangement she was in, be it an orphanage, a group home, or simply mature enough despite her relative youth that she lived alone on government support payments—that kind of thing isn't as unbelievable in Japan as it is in the U.S.—to the HPSC's care.

[5] And given what we learned between this chapter and 297, I doubt she was even allowed to be present for it. Japanese law states that everyone by default is supposed to be present for their own trial, but as in the U.S, that right can be waived if the defendant proves themselves to be a threat to the safety of the judge, court staff and other attendees. And of course, what a threat the HPSC could have painted her as being!

[6] At least until Hori deigns to show us a damn Diet session.

[7] To say nothing of the physical consequences of spending six months stuck in a tiny room with no natural light while frequently being strapped into a straitjacket, of which there should also be several.

[the-insomniac-emporium]

i stumbled upon ur writing looking for lady d x non-binary reader fics and ur work has just been a godsend i’m obsessed. it’s inspired me to start writing my own even though i’ve never written for fandoms before. i’ve never written for other actual characters before either so i was wondering if u could spare any tips for writing for lady d and her daughters? 🙏🏻

:D

I can certainly try! I'll divide the tips into lil sections for each characters. Might be less tips, more character observations that help me figure out how to write them? Putting under read-more for length. Also! If you ever want someone to look over what you write before you post it, I offer my services! I can't guarantee how fast I can respond, but I've been editing/proof-reading/giving general feedback for my friends for years, with everything from fanfiction to college level essays.

Alcina:

Large and in charge, literally. Regardless of the situation, Lady D wants to stay in control, or at least look like she's in control. Okay, minor exception being anything involving Mother Miranda, since she's the one person Lady D has any real respect for. Otherwise, Alcina maintains a good grasp on any situation, looking for ways to put herself in control.

For example, she often uses her height as a means to establish dominance, even within RE8 canon. If you watch a video of the Four Lords meeting, Alcina stands up once she starts arguing with Heisenberg, towering over him in an attempt to intimidate. We also see the aforementioned exception in this scene, as Lady D sort of "shrinks" a little when Miranda responds.

As much as Lady D wants to be in control, she's not always actually capable of it. In the game, we see her struggle to contain her emotions, and often releases them in outbursts. Such as the infamous vanity throwing scene (god I love that so much). It can provide some nice contrast in scenes, having Lady D be so in control one moment, then as soon as she's behind closed doors she's letting it all out.

Uses the most old-fashioned language out of her whole family. It's kind of hard to describe how one goes about writing this way, but I recommend trying to find some journals that were written in the early 1900's and reading them. Or just some classic novels (not Moby Dick, tho, that one's a bit much, in my opinion). One thing I can say is occasionally swap contractions (can't, don't, I've, etc) for the full version of the word (cannot, do not, I have, etc). Something about that always makes dialogue feel older, though I can't really explain why. Whatever you do, just don't rely too much on using synonyms. Replacing common words with their cousins can make dialogue feel "fancier", but you often run the risk of unintended connotations (feelings, positive or negative, associated with a word) messing with how a text is interpreted.

Puts up a front/facade around most people, as part of her noble background and need for control, with words like "stoic" and "composed" coming to mind. Very rough with troublemakers, no mercy. But!!! So very incredibly soft with her family/loved ones. I've seen some people accuse her of "faking" her love for her daughters, but these people either played a different game than I did, or they can't read emotions as well as I can. Gentle touches when she's checking if her kids are okay, little glances and gentle nods for reassurance, pausing a chase just to help her daughters, etc.

Bela:

Wants to make her mother proud. Legally obligated to make her mother proud, because she's the eldest daughter. Not that I know how that feels, being the younger of two children. Regardless, Bela is the most well behaved of the daughters, even when her mother isn't around. However, she does resent this position to some degree, based on in game dialogue/dialogue files that are in the game but aren't used. Personally, I see her as someone who's willing to let certain things go in exchange for favors/blackmail ammo.

Cleans up after her sisters a fair bit, sometimes literally. Feels responsible for them, to the point where their mistakes are her mistakes, and she's forced to compensate on their behalf. Because of this she ends up complaining a lot, though almost only when her family isn't around.

Still very protective of her family, she simply does most of her protecting behind the scenes. Knows how to manipulate a situation, which she probably learned from her mother, and can be quite convincing when she wants to be. Less likely to use violence to solve a problem than anyone else in the family. Will she use violence if need be, or if someone fucks up enough? Yes, absolutely, but she'll focus more on efficiency than misery (unless someone really fucks up).

Generally speaking she's more eloquent than either of her sisters, though not by much unless she's trying to impress someone (usually her mother).

Cassandra:

Two words: Angry. Horny. To her, they might as well be one word. Horngry. Cassandra struggles with her emotions more than either of her sisters, being a pressure cooker ready to pop basically all the time. It's not hard to set her off, but it can take ages for her to cool back down. Let's her frustration (of any variety) build up until she can bludgeon someone to death with it. Harshest on the servants, and spends the most time toying with others in the dungeon.

Like Bela, Cassandra wants to make her mother proud, but it's less of an obligation and more of a "I'm the middle child and feel like I don't get enough attention" type deal. Is more than willing to stoop to "tattle telling" activities in order to get the attention she craves. Usually sticks to obediently following her mother's orders or hunting down enemies, though.

Bit of an artsy type, and the most likely to take trophies from her victims. Gross ones, usually. Okay, well, that's debatable, but I'm talking about general consensus rather than my specific tastes. Personally, I don't care if she's got some weird blood paintings. Hell, I've got extra blood, and also am clumsy and bleed a lot anyway, she can have mine!

Hides her non-anger emotions as best as she can. Hates talking about her feelings (even if it helps), to the point where it's usually impossible to tell how she's feeling deep down. Remember, anger is a secondary emotion! No one is ever just angry, there's always something else hiding underneath, such as: Sadness, disappointment, loneliness, jealousy, etc. Keep this in mind when you're writing her. Make sure you pinpoint the center of her anger, and hint at it, letting her actions show her true goal.

Swears the most, easily. Tends to speak in shorter sentences than her sisters, and prefers being blunt to being eloquent/flowery.

Daniela:

Love, love, love, love, love, ahhhh deep breath... love. Loves love, or at least what she processes as love. Would do anything for romance. Except she also craves "natural" romance, creating a sort of paradox that adds to her delusions, as she engages in the pursuit of unintentional romance (not to be confused with "The Pursuit of Unintentional Humor", a song that I very, very much enjoy). Wants to be loved for who she is at the same time that she attempts to mold herself into a more lovable shape. Struggles with intimacy, wanting to feel vulnerable without actually being so.

On some level she understands that draining people of their blood, and then drinking said blood, is not equatable to a healthy relationship. But seeing as this is the most common form of supposed "intimacy" that she experiences, she refuses to acknowledge the true nature of what she does. Instead she clings to the idea of "forever bonding" with her partners, pretending that each one is still with her, even when she no longer remembers their names.

Hates being rejected, no matter how gently. "Ugly" cries, but only if she's alone, often turning her pain into anger, just like Cassandra. However, her outbursts don't seem to last as long. In reality, her breakdowns simply occupy the inside of her existence, rather than the outside. Sure, she's giggling and causing chaos, like usual, but on the inside she's breaking a record for most depressing internal monologue.

Reads a ton, but not always "quality" books. Goes through a dozen books or more a week, often rereading her favorites several times, mainly within the romance genre (obvs). This affects her speech a fair amount, making her both cheesy and occasionally smooth as hell.

[alexaplaysgames]

Nodus Tollens

Pairing: June x F!Traveller (Celeste)

Fandom: Andromeda Six (I know the fan base isn’t huge so I encourage those who haven’t played to read these and see if you’d like to try it out!)

Warnings: Angst, minor mentions of gore and death.

Words: ~ 1800

Description: When Traveller tries to save June instead.

Notes: I chose my traveller for this little fic but will totally take requests if you’d like me to use yours. Just pop into me DMs and make a request! Also, this is one of several fics for A6 that I have so let me know if you’d like to be tagged.

This is self indulgent nonsense and I am sorry. I will do better next time. Actually I probably won’t.

Tags: @amlovelies @writersgonefishing @oatssss @kimberrrrr @femmeshep @serana-spring

There’s a sort of weightlessness to death.

An instant where you rest suspended in the between. Passed from warm hands into a cold, steel grip, there’s a split second where everything stops. Life no longer holds meeting and death has yet to make known its cruel face, so you are left...

Waiting.

It takes a moment for Celeste to realize that this isn’t the weightlessness she’s feeling. The sensation of suspense is not one due to hovering between life and death. The strength which holds her is not of some otherworldly being.

She looks up and sees kindly grey eyes. June cradles her head with gentle, reserved strength. Tawny strands of his hair fall against his forehead as he looks down at her with an expression of fear and unbridled concern, one that is utterly unfamiliar on the usually calm gunman’s features.

His fingers press against her side and withdraw, sticky and crimson with blood.

“Celeste,” June whispers, though it’s faint with the ringing in her ears.

Her name on his lips sounds sad, agonized even. The feeling that knowledge invokes within her is foreign. Once, existing only as the youngest child in a line of royals, fated for a life in the shadows, she held the belief that no one would mourn her death. Now, the look of anguish on his face makes guilt flare in her gut; she doesn’t want to hurt him like this.

He pulls her close against his chest, draws her into his arms as easily as if she were, truly, weightless. She knows of the strength that lies hidden under the layers of his sweet, gentle exterior, buried under his warm smiles and soft, thoughtful gestures.

Her fingers’ weak grasp finds his wrist, delving into the crisscrossed scars written in his skin. In them, she finds the affirmation she seeks.

Even if it drains her of blood, life, and spirit, it was worth it. For in this, just once, he will remain untouched.  

**

She wakes to metal tables and blinding white light.

“Hey, easy now,” comes Ryona’s soothing tone. Her pale blue skin and soft, pretty features follow as she stands from her desk before rushing to Celeste’s side.

Ryona immediately starts fluttering around, reading numbers on screens and pressing buttons as Celeste puts her hand over the bandage on her newly-sewn side with a wince.

“You’re in the med bay. Came in pretty banged up, if I do say so myself. June had to carry you back.”

The incessant ringing has cleared to the steady beeping of the surrounding machines. For the second time, it occurs to Celeste in her clarity, that man has pulled her back from the brink of death and carried her toward safety in his arms.

“I’ve never seen our cowboy quite so upset,” Ryona adds, her tone full of meaning. “He really cares about you. Remember that if he-“

Celeste shifts on the table. “If he what?”

“I had to give you eight stitches, and you lost a lot of blood. You should-”

“Ryona.”

Golden eyes, filled with conflict, meet green.

“June doesn’t handle strong emotion well. He’s afraid it makes him volatile, destructive. Dangerous.”

“Oh.” The plastic sheet crinkles as Celeste settles back against it. The non-answer makes her nervous. “Okay.”

“He’ll be fine,” Ryona comforts, squeezing her ankle softly as she sits down by her feet. “Luckily, so will you. I was worried.”

Celeste stumbles in her attempt to formulate a reply. “I- thank you.”

The words stir some strange sentiment within her, an immense wave of affection threatening to drown her in their wake. Never in her life did she imagine she would be lucky enough to be cared for so deeply by people so utterly kind.

Suddenly, a knock sounds at the door, startling both women where they sit.

“That’s probably June. He sat by your side for hours until he went to get a blanket. Said you looked cold,” then, louder, “come in!”

June almost has to duck under the door, given his immense height, and he enters carrying a stack of blankets high enough to clothe a small army.

“I didn’t know which ones-“ he begins, setting the stack of fabric on the countertop, then trails off as he registers the sight before him.

“You’re awake.”

Silence ensues. Ryona’s eye flit between the two of them before she stands, says, “I’ll be outside if you need me,” and excuses herself with a warm, supportive smile over her shoulder.

“June-“

“I am so, so sorry,” he breathes, air rushing forward from his lungs, coming to kneel by her side. His eyes search her face, looking for what, she doesn’t know.

“What do you have to be sorry for?”

“I should’ve protected you. I shouldn’t have let you get hurt.” He looks disgusted with himself. This, this self-loathing, is something she recognizes. “There are a lot of things I should have done,” he adds softly.

Celeste moves to sit up and hisses as the skin around her bandages stretches.

Realization dawns in June’s eyes before they shift to her side. “Can I?”

She nods, lifting the edge of her shirt to reveal the expanse of fabric that hides her wound. Looking briefly into her eyes for confirmation, June lets his fingers brush against her skin, tracing the edges of the bandage and sending a tingling feeling up Celeste’s spine. At every point where their skin meets, warmth trickles outwards from his fingertips, seeping through her skin and settling in her veins. She can feel his breath, the unmistakable warmth of it, against her bare skin.

“You’ll have a scar,” June murmurs.

“So? You already have so many.”

He frowns. “I don’t want you to be like me, Celeste. I don’t want to make you like me. How could you- that’s the last thing I want.”

“You told me to run and I chose not to. You didn’t make me do anything. I’m responsible for my own actions. Did you really think I would leave and risk you getting hurt?”

That seems to throw him for a loop. His jaw drops slightly, eyes wide. “You- you wanted to protect me?”

She traces a featherlight touch along his cheek with a shaking hand. June’s eyelashes flutter, briefly, at her touch. “Of course.”

“You’re delusional,” June says, though it lacks any bite. He simply sounds lost, a little confused. “I’ve survived much worse than a back-alley gunfight. I can handle a few more scars.”

“But you shouldn’t- you shouldn’t have to.”

She swallows, jaw working as she looks toward the ceiling, yet she can see how he shakes his head, features pulled between frustration and overwhelming torment. “You shouldn’t have to put yourself in danger for me. I’m not worth that.”

“But you are-“

“I am not.” And the finality of his words draws her gaze towards his once more. She sees something there that she’s only seen once before, the day she stood outside his cabin and he shut the door in her face .

Anger. Fire, bright flames quickly smothered with a brush of his large palm over his face.

He breathes deep, chest rising with the motion under his vest. His grey eyes look more like steel than rainclouds as he speaks. “If you can’t follow orders, I won’t be able to take you on supply runs any longer.”

“June, please. You don’t mean that.”  

She doesn’t know what she’s asking for. Acceptance? His friendship? His love? Would she dare?

Could he even give her such a thing?

“I’ll see you in the morning, Celeste.” June stands again, sleeves shifting further up his forearms to show his scars. “Get some sleep.”

He doesn’t once look back once as the door closes behind him.

The metal table beneath her feels so much colder without him there. How cruel he is, to let her taste what it’s like to have him by her side, then rip it away. Left with nothing but the hum of machinery and her thoughts, she begins to wonder if she’s broken, or he is.

Or maybe they’re both broken, she thinks. Maybe they both have jagged edges, and no matter how hard she tries to fit them together, there will always be a little space in between.

It’s an uncomfortable thought, one that lulls her to sleep under fluorescent lights and the weight of her own fractured heart.

**

Outside, June slumps against the wall, running his hand through his hair with a sigh.

How his heart ached when he turned her affection aside, how he wanted nothing more than to relish in the feeling of her caring for him, for him, to bask in it and soak in it and let it fill all of his cracks and crevices and make him whole.

And how he knew, just as deeply and with equal certitude, that that was the last thing he could ever let himself do.

He is no stranger to pain. But the hurt he feels now is different, gnawing at a part of himself he didn’t know existed. Not since he closed it off, so long ago. Not since-

No. Not going there. No amount of time will strength long enough for him to open those doors again.

Just look at what you’ve done to her already. All you’ll ever do is hurt her.

June presses his fists into the wall by his sides, hands trembling with the effort not to leave dents in the metal. It’s so easy for him to break and ruin, so difficult to build. And that is why he cannot have her. He won’t let her become another beautiful thing shattered by the strength in his hands.

How difficult she makes it, when she looks at him as if he’s fragile, when her lips form words like care and protect and things he never thought a monster like him could ever hope to receive. He wants to lay himself down at her feet and thank the gods for giving him something so sweet.

But he is dangerous and he is deadly and he has no idea how to love someone the way she deserves.

“You could stand to let someone in, every once in a while.”

Ryona crosses her arms as she leans against the wall beside him, one eyebrow raised.

“I won’t kill you to let yourself feel, June.”

“It’s not myself I’m worried about killing.”

June tries not to flinch as she lays a hand on his shoulder. “You’re not the monster you think you are,” she says.

A part of him wants to scream, to say that she doesn’t understand, that’s she’s wrong, but that part is smothered by the warmth that bubbles in his chest at her words.

He lets his head hit the wall and closes his eyes. “I don’t know if you’re right.”

“Am I ever wrong?” Ryona grins, eyes twinkling.

He has to admit, she does have a point.

“I hope you’re able to work this out,” she says, pushing herself off the wall. She walks back into the med bay and June keeps his eyes scrunched closed until he hears the door slam shut.

More than anything, he hopes for that too.

[ot7always]

Fractured (part 1)

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Word Count: 2.8k 

Pairing: OT7 x Reader (platonic); future Yoongi x Reader

Genre: Mafia AU, angst, fluff, (future) smut

Chapter Warnings: Mentions of violence including murder (non-explicit). Mentions of sex (non-explicit). Mentions of drugs, guns, neglect, physical abuse, parental death. Toxic household, implicit mentions of mental illness (depression).

Rating: 18+

Summary: You’d always known something was strange and different about your “family,” but it wasn’t as though your environment encouraged curiosity from you. You thought you wanted to know all the answers, but nobody ever told you that the more you learned the more pieces of yourself you would leave behind.

A/N: This is my first story in this fandom, and I haven’t written anything for any fandom in years. This plot came to me all of a sudden last night and I decided I needed to write it. Please let me know what you think!

Masterlist

--

You used to be naive.

You were 11 when you first held a gun.

12 when you first made every shot through the centre of the target.

13 when you first noticed the fathers’ proud eyes rather than empty ones.

14 when you first defeated one of the boys in a spar.

15 when you first learned the details of why this was all necessary.

16 when the boys last saw you smile for real.

17 when you first participated in a mission, knuckles bloody for the first time.

18 when you first gave yourself to a man, only to later drug him and strangle him in his sleep.

They say ignorance is bliss, and you can’t help but to agree. Knowledge is not always power – you understand that better than anyone. Because the day you sought more knowledge was the last day you might have considered yourself truly happy.

--

“I said no. You’re not going anywhere.” The man looked at you, stone-faced in the doorway to his office. You had sought him out for permission to attend a classmate’s birthday party, but already regretted trying. It wasn’t as if you were ever allowed to go anywhere but school and back, escorted by the man’s driver.

Your neck had to crane upward to give him the pleading looks that often worked on his wife, but to no avail. With your head barely reaching the man’s waist, his cold stare had your six-year-old heart pounding, tears filling your eyes.

“But-“ you started, however it appeared there was no room for negotiation. The door was slammed in your face, door rattling in the frame. The noise was enough to make you jump, hands rising to wipe away the wetness that you could no longer hold back after being denied again.

Wanting to hide under your covers for the rest of the night lest you run into the man again, you turned around but instantly collided with another body. Gasping, your eyes immediately fell to the floor, hands falling to your sides.

“I’m sorry,” you uttered with as clear of a voice as you could manage, unwilling to invite the anger of another in the household, especially not the other adults. But the response was not one you expected.

“Y/N?” a soft voice questioned, reaching for your trembling hands. Your eyes rose to meet those of Namjoon’s, who only looked at you with more concern once he properly saw your state. His eyes swept over you quickly, assuring himself you weren’t hurt. He was only a few years older than you, but he worried for you greatly. “What happened?”

Hearing a kind voice after such an icy rejection only caused you to cry harder, stepping forward to wrap your arms around Namjoon’s waist, head buried in his chest. He accepted you without hesitation – it isn’t as though this is the first time this has happened. His hand rose to rub at your back, his warm touch calming you down some. But still, you did not offer an explanation. You knew the rules in this house, and it was your own fault for wanting more, after all. As you begun to pull away, still seeking the safety of your bed to avoid the rest of the world, Namjoon’s hands remained on your shoulders.

“Did my father say something to you again?” he questioned, sympathy in his gaze. You breaking eye contact was answer enough for him. And while he wished he could do something more for you, approaching his father about this would only invite him to unleash his anger on both of you.  

Instead, he grabbed your hand, lacing his fingers with your own. When you peered at him inquisitively, he was glad to see that while your eyes were shiny and nose runny, you were no longer crying. Unwilling to let you mope for the rest of the day, he begun leading you away.

“I’ll make you some pasta, okay? I’m sure you haven’t eaten dinner yet,” he said, continuing the long trek from the upstairs rooms down to the kitchen.

While no, you hadn’t eaten, the last time you ate Namjoon’s pasta you ended up throwing up into the toilet hours later. But unwilling to reject his kindness, you allowed him to seat you at the dining table as he looked for ingredients in the fridge. You had planned to sit and watch him quietly, until you felt somebody collide with you from behind, arms wrapping around your neck.

“Y/N! We need one more person for Mario Party!” an excited voice yelled right by your ear, making you wince. After giving you the appropriate 0.3 seconds to formulate a proper response, hands begun shaking you at the shoulders hard enough to whip your head forward and back.

“Taehyungie…” you started, ready to deny him, unsure if you could handle the raucous of three young boys yelling at each other for stealing stars.

“Pleeeeeease! Please please please pleaseplease,” he begged, rocking your smaller body back and forth in the chair. His enthusiasm had you cracking your first smile since returning home from school.

“Y/N! We’re waiting for you!” a softer voice called from the living room. While you had been thinking about denying Taehyung, you never would’ve been able to deny Jimin. While mischievous, he had never been anything but kind to you growing up, leaving a huge soft spot in your heart for him.

Namjoon let out a small laugh from the stove, where he was stirring a pot that seemed to be letting out a suspicious amount of smoke for what he claimed to be pasta.

“You’d better join them or you’ll never hear the end of it,” he chuckled, giving you a wide grin when he saw you looking significantly happier than before. He was thankful that even if each of their parents might give you a hard time, at least you had seven brothers who only wanted to make you happy.

--

By the time you were ten years old, you had grown to accept that your life would not be like the lives of your classmates. You would not bake cookies at other girls’ houses, you would not join the after-school volleyball team, and you would not walk with friends to the ice cream shop down the street from school. That isn’t to say you hadn’t been invited. You had, years ago, but a child can only be told no so many times before they stop trying. After all, who wants to ask a question knowing the answer will always be rejection?

You were friendly with your classmates, but they knew you were some type of untouchable. You heard the whispers. She says she likes us, but why won’t she hang out? Why does the same car with tinted windows pick you up everyday? Why were you always alone on Parents’ Day?

While others had always wondered about your life, nobody dared to ask you. Whenever anyone mentioned family, the friendliness stopped. “It’s none of your business,” you would always answer, ending the conversation then and there. If your teachers ever tried to get information out of you, you would tell them not to worry. You always had an excuse for your parents not being there.

“They’re away on a trip.”

“My mother is ill.”

“They need to work during the day.”

The staff at school thought your parents were government officials, and you had likely been instructed not to talk about it. They were half right – your entire living memory you have been instructed not to talk about your family or your living situation no matter what.

It was easy to lie about why your parents weren’t there when your parents were dead. After all, who was there to refute your claims when the only family you had to speak of wasn’t even related to you by blood? The seven young boys – teenagers now, you supposed – had always been close to you, but you weren’t family.

No, you had been told that your parents were business associates of the seven families, but they had unfortunately died in an accident shortly after your birth. Unwilling to send their friends’ newborn to an orphanage, they instead took you in and allowed you to live with their families, where they raised you.

If raising you was the right term. In fact, many of the boys’ fathers ignored your existence. Namjoon’s father seemed to loathe you, though you didn’t think you did anything to cause such hate. However, you supposed that since he was not a kind man to his own son either, you could not complain. He was the head of the household, after all. You didn’t dare anger him, preferring to keep out of his way than to risk his booming voice and hard gaze.

It was not an ideal life. This much you understood, after seeing your classmates boast of their grades to their parents, happily shoving their report cards in their faces. When you see fathers raise their sons above their head, making obnoxious noises and pretending they’re an airplane, something deep inside you mourns something you’ve never had. You’ve never laughed at your father’s jokes, nor picked out an outfit with your mother.

It was not an ideal life, but at the very least you had the boys. They were perhaps the only people you could ever call a friend. They were loud and annoying, but also the only people who made you feel that you had a home.

--

By the time you were eleven, you had become curious. After all, every television show you’ve seen only had one family in one house, sometimes two. Seven was unheard of as far as you knew, and your adolescent brain with a newfound passion for science and mystery novels needed to know why this was. Of course, nobody could know about his goal of yours. This was top secret.

It started with casual eavesdropping. Before, you had tried to avoid the men in the house at all costs. Their serious looks scared you, and though the majority never specifically targeted you with their anger, you dared not risk it. However, you knew the men of the house frequently gathered behind closed doors, sometimes their wives too. It almost seemed like a business meeting, based on the dramas you’ve seen Seokjin watching in his spare time.

It was surprisingly easy to sneak around in the house, considering your presence was ignored by most. Even the maids didn’t look twice at your antics, knowing how teenagers always seemed to play weird games.

It was difficult to listen well, and you didn’t want to risk getting caught. You’ve only heard snippets of conversation, but it was enough to raise suspicion. The words you’ve been able to catch recently – “mission,” “warehouse,” “armed,” had you furrowing your brows, but what confused you most was “Bangtan,” or what you thought was Bangtan. You didn’t know what that meant. But what surprised you most was how often the others boys’ names seemed to come up, particularly Seokjin and Yoongi, the two eldest.

Your sleuthing continued through the weeks, but the words were hard to hear and you didn’t gain much from it. In fact, you considered giving up and trying to figure things out based on what you already had, but you figured one more try couldn’t hurt.

Perhaps you should have stayed in your room. Not that you knew now whether that could have helped you or not.

On one Wednesday after school, you returned home quicker than normal, traffic having been light for some reason. You figured you may as well use the opportunity to listen to any conversations that might be going on. After all, you made it home earlier than expected, so perhaps nobody would think you to be there to hear anything at all. Not that anyone paid attention to your schedule at all.

So there you sat – squatted, more accurately – outside Namjoon’s father’s office. You heard two muffled voices inside, but could not place who the other belonged to. What you did not expect, however, was to hear your own name coming from their lips.

“We’ve waited long enough. Y/N is useless right now, a liability more than anything,” a gruff voice said. The domineering tone itself told you it was Namjoon’s father, even if you couldn’t see anything at all.

“She’s still young-”

“And your son was years younger than her when he learned of everything. Stop babying her.”

Hearing a conversation centered around you was definitely not the norm. You leaned closer, hoping to hear better, but that was your downfall. Your shoulder brushed against the door – barely a touch at all, but enough to shake the door, and clearly noticeable to the men inside. Before you could even think to stand up, the door swung open, your eyes meeting those of Taehyung’s father like a deer in the headlights.

You felt as though your chest was going to explode, bracing yourself for the worst berating of your life. Would they kick you out? Would they hit you?

“I-I’m sorry,” your voice trembled along with the rest of you, “I thought I heard my name and I was curious, I promise I didn’t mean to,” you let out all in one breath, flinching and preparing yourself for the yelling, the fists, for anything.

What you didn’t expect was laughter. Namjoon’s father’s laughter, to be exact.

“The choice has been made for us,” he declared, directed toward Taehyung’s father.

“Sit.” he instructed you harshly, gesturing toward a chair across from his desk. There was just enough distance between you and him to feel that you were miles away. It made the man seem even more powerful than before.

“Do you remember what we told you about your parents?” he said as he fixed his stare on your wide eyes, more a demand than a question. You nodded, afraid a verbal answer would only get caught in your throat.

“Then you know we were in the same business,” he continued. You nodded again. This is the nicest he’s ever been speaking to you, and that had you relaxing some.

“You see, the boys here are all involved in this business as well. That is their responsibility to their family. Their duty. And it is time for you to fulfill your duty as well. This is what your parents would have wanted, and it is what we need from you in return for sheltering you all these years,” he went on, taking in your expression. The confusion and wariness must have been apparent on your face, because he kept on without waiting for a reply.

“You will train. After school for four hours everyday. You will become part of this business. The boys will help you,” he stated firmly, and you clearly knew these were not requests. These were commands, and you had no place to deny them, despite the questions you wanted to ask. You turned your head to look at Taehyung’s father, who had been one of the only people in the house who treated you as human. He nodded at you reassuringly, hiding his own hesitation well.

“Yes, sir,” you managed to get out, the first words you’d spoken since you entered the room. Even those were a struggle considering your shock.

“Good. You start tomorrow. Now leave.”

And train you did.

--

You were 11 when you first held a gun.

12 when you first made every shot through the centre of the target.

13 when you first noticed the fathers’ proud eyes rather than empty ones.

14 when you first defeated one of the boys in a spar.

15 when you first learned the details of why this was all necessary.

16 when the boys last saw you smile for real.

17 when you first participated in a mission, knuckles bloody for the first time.

18 when you first gave yourself to a man, only to later drug him and strangle him in his sleep. That was the first night you’d made yourself vulnerable in years, sobbing into Hoseok’s arms lamenting what you had done.

19 when you finally seemed to earn the respect of Namjoon’s father.

19 when you finally seemed to realize you would never be happy, never hold a real job, never get a real education.

You were no longer just part of the house, invisible to the powerful men and their wives who lived there. You had skill, talent.

No, you were no longer just a thing. You were a weapon, an asset. A tool to be used.

But a tool can only be used for so long before its shine fades.

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[phenomenalcosmicpowers]

Some Preliminary thoughts on MLP Generation 5

I was considering waiting for a Trailer before speaking on this. I assume one will probably come out any day now, heck the way things are coming out I probably won't be surprised if I end up sort of jinxing things and we get our first trailer smack-dab in the middle of tomorrow or something. But I do want to sort of give my current thoughts heading into G5. As we've gotten alot more tidbits then the rather vague details from the first few months since our first look at the new characters back in Feburary. If we do get a trailer, depending what is shown. Maybe I'll make a follow-up post.

I will first say that I do plan on giving both the movie and series a shot, none of the concerns that I express in this post will make me hesitate in at least checking how the movie and show goes on it's own merits. There is a possibility the movie and/or show ends up being fun despite the underlying concerns I'm about to say. Without further adieu, I'll begin.

((More thoughts after the break))

We are now almost 80 days from the premiere of G5. And most information up until recently have been fairly vague on what exactly is the G5 world. With a brand new cast, and even some vastly different design from the G4 pony design we knew it feels like at least from a visual standpoint that this is supposed to be an entirely new generation. The same way G1 or G3 is not the same universe as G4. However, both some vague information and recent information sort of dropped the bombshell that no, G5 is actually supposed to be in the same world that the G4 Equestria is. Which lets get to the general point of this:

Even if the G4 world that we loved in Friendship is Magic is sort of now this ancient past in which for at least thousands of years there was harmony between all the pony races and non-ponies alike as shown in the future of The Last Problem until perhaps some sort of slow collapse later on happened (Presumably long, long, LOOOOOONG after assumingly everyone of the Main 6 sans Twilight have died from old age). It... might be a bitter pill to swallow for any fan of G4 that loved the show's happy ending. Sure, at the very least it doesn't look like they're trying to say that at some point Twilight failed, as heck Sunny is probably sure to look at Twilight as this legendary hero to aspire to be like. But still, it just doesn't feel like a good look when while I get why G5 is having it's premise of Sunny and the others making the world a better place. Upon seeing the initial synopses of the show. It very much feels like it was Hasbro taking note of last year's George Floyd/BLM Protests. Which I will say is potentially a good direction. But it'd help if this was an entirely new universe that is having this divided world problem. Not a long time after G4 itself ended on the positive note on just about every notable species pony or non-pony alike are living in harmony where Sunny's goal had already basically been achieved.

I get the idea behind having G5 mentioned as the same world as G4. It's an attempt to have their cake and eat it too where they're trying quite a bit new and also try to keep many of the fans of G4 that proved to be a lightning in a bottle. It's a big truth that Friendship is Magic is going to be a hard act to follow even if G5 turns out great on it's own merits. Having an entirely new universe from Hasbro's perspective I also get have some risks. You toss away a world so many people love for one that the fans might find it hard to find an interest in flocking to like the previous one. At the same time though, taking G5 as the far future of G4 runs the risk of heavily feeling like everything Twilight and the Mane 6 did eventually fell to ruin and the ponies became divided again anyway despite the very finale showing they may have very well ended it for good. With even non-pony species part of the harmony that exists.

I guess the counterpoint may be that in if they must have G5 a follow-up in some way of G4. Then there must be some sort of conflict as otherwise the show would feel boring without many villains and/or adventures to save the day going on. The cost of G4's massive success is that no matter what direction they take G5, it's going to be a struggle for it to find the same footing. But what's worse: Making a new world which while it may potentially disinterest fans of G4 with a lack of familiar faces, it can have potential to grow in it's own fashion and maybe just maybe you'll get something of a following even if it's alot smaller. Or possibly saying it's in the same world where the world of Equestria has somehow gotten to the point that it got worse then when Celestia was ruling Equestria by herself (Because at least under Celestia even with Luna banished to the moon and Twilight was either not there yet or still training. The three pony races were generally united as they have been for more then a thousand years. Not segregated as they are implied to be in G5.)

And while it's too early to tell and could easily be still very much a part of G5 is the non-ponies that were featured in the later seasons. Will Changelings, Dragons, Kirins, Hippogriffs, etc. still play a role? Or will it only focus on ponies? Because the less there are of the non-pony species, the less it will feel like this truly is supposed to be the same world of Equestria we knew. Unless you want to say in a really dark direction that most non-pony species went extinct ever since G4 happened. Even if they're never going to explain how Equestria collapsed into the G5 world (Which I have something of a suspicion that they might never explain it completely)

And another question that is sure to follow... are all the Alicorns from G4. Whether it be Celestia, Luna, Twilight, Cadence, or Flurry Heart... all dead at this point? We never really got much lore about Alicorns even throughout all of G4. So while it's certainly still possible that the Alicorns are more mortal then the fans have been led to believe. That doesn't mean it's not an important question to think about. As if this supposed to be a follow-up to G4. G5 is well within it's right to tell us that maybe we overestimated the immortality of the Alicorns, though because G4 never gave us a straight answer... it means it's entirely on G5 to tell us it's own interpretation. No matter what they say will alienate some fans because the topic of Alicorns has always been a touchy subject even before Twilight herself became an Alicorn or even arguably before the introduction of Cadence due to the many, many, fan interpretations of Luna until we finally got a look at canon Luna in Luna Eclipsed and the fear of how many headcanons it'd destroy (Didn't turn out as bad as people thought it would, but just that the fear was there sowed the seeds of what discourse the Alicorns in G4 was going to cause)

Before we got the detail from the book that G4 is considered ancient equestria in G5's world. There was speculation on the possibility that G4 is actually fictional in G5 world. In other words, the G5 world is in fact an entirely new world but in a meta sort of way is a TV show that Sunny and others were a fan of. Which would explain both the changes that are much different from Equestria (With stuff like horn and wings being different colors from the coat) and the fact Sunny had Mane 6 figures and merchandise in her room. This in retrospect might of been the smarter decision because even with the slight possibility of making some G4 fans mad that they're entirely tossing out the previous series and only having it being mentioned in a fictional context. It wouldn't run the risk of overriding the happy ending. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if say if they took that direction they'd pull a Daring Do and have it that yes in fact G4 was once G5's past. But in order to show that, they'd have to bring back the G4 Mane 6 in some fashion. Perhaps in a pulled out of limbo-like fashion like they did for the Founders. Though that in itself comes with the problem that they'd want the Mane 6 to be actually recognizable and thus young looking. And if they come out of a limbo while still looking fairly young, it means they weren't around in the past for much long for some odd reason.

That's all I have for now at least on the top of my head. If there's a trailer coming soon I might make another of these as I said. And I'm also open to any responses whether if you want to tell me you have some of the same concerns or do anything that might calm my own concerns about the way G5 might be stepping on G4's toes whilst trying to maintain G4's fandom into the coming generations. Thanks to anyone who bothered to read. I wish good luck on G5, but if concerns aren't addressed and/or they end up correct on some fronts. There's a chance I may have quite the baggage clouding my mind even before the movie and series starts...

[gamebird]

Lazy Sunday in front of a three-day work week for me. :D There’s also no jujitsu this week, so not only do I have evenings free, but I don’t have to feel guilty about skipping the gym.

One of my partner’s relatives gave us a gift card to Netflix, so I’m going to binge through Witcher, Season 2. My dad gave me a huge bag of cracked pecans, so I’ll pick them out during it. I can’t watch at the moment as my partner is watching a soccer/football match. Hence, I’m writing this.

I’m expanding my chicken pen by building a second run. The idea is that I can separate chickens if necessary. It’s not a quarantine, but like if I have two hens hatch chicks as I did this summer, I can keep them penned but separate and thus safe. There was a disaster this summer because I was leaving them out, unsupervised, because I couldn’t safely pen them up together without risking them attacking each other in an excess of mommy hormones. Instead, they were attacked by a dog and I lost one hen and fourteen chicks. So the pen situation is being updated. This will also allow me to rotate the chickens from one run to another, which might allow them some green grass if I don’t let them overburden the ground.

I’m enjoying writing an ongoing Gingerpilot story. I have 14k words published and I think I’m about a third done. I must say, I really enjoy the nice comments, kudos, and hits in Gingerpilot, instead of the relative silence I get when I publish something in TOG.

I’ve been watching the latest TOG drama from afar. I made one comment to start with and have otherwise kept my mouth shut, because it’s hard for me to tell when I’m supposed to say something to be supportive, and when I shouldn’t speak because I’m ‘taking up space’ or ‘distracting from the people who count’. The arguments in question being 1) are Italians white in the way that the US considers white? 2) is it morally wrong for Luca Marinelli to promote a charity that would help non-white people (ie, he’s being a ‘white savior’, but on the other hand he’s trying to help people)? 3) regardless of history, should we pretend the Crusades were race-based just because most Americans think it is? 4) should an American movie promote American views on race issues or should it reflect those of a more global take? And if so, which parts of the globe, and which fans get to decide that?

At least, that’s my take on it. There are probably a lot of posts I’m not seeing because I’ve blocked so many people. The core of it in this case still seems (to me) to be about control and not racism, as well as ship wars - ‘joeicky is gross, so I hate anything that isn’t related to the ships I approve of’.

I’d blow it off as TOG drama, but I see echoes of the same stuff in other fandoms. By echoes, I mean the same basic argument about the American take on race issues used to promote some ships and actors, and disparage others. So, again, it’s not about specific actors, pairings, or fandoms. Not even the same fans. Did Stitch put out a new article or something instructing people to assess their fandom for X signs of racism and then start shit about it? It’s like there’s one central media source giving instructions for this stuff, like how most of the antivax crap comes from a only dozen accounts.

Eh, I think I’ll go back to my good life and ignore it. I have food to prepare for the next week, laundry to fold, and Christmas lights to see tonight after dark. We might stop at the Krispy Kreme and get our free donuts due to being vaxxed. I think I’ll get out there and start driving nails on the chicken pen. :D

[myghostmonument]

13xReader: Inhibitions

Notes: I’ve been writing a lot more “canon” pieces recently (non-readers, posted on my ao3), but it feels nice to go back to my fandom roots, so to speak, and finish off some requests like this one! Each style has its own challenges to work through, and it’s fun to move between them and keep things interesting. I plan to keep writing for both, so no worries to anyone who prefers one over the other. This is, as always, gender-neutral for the reader, and is also border-line a disaster!reader fic, a loose characterization style created by the incredible @lilaccoats​ that I stole bc she loves me 

Summary: The Doctor takes you and the fam to a trendy bar, promising a night of relaxation and fun. Shenanigans ensue when you maybe-not-so-accidentally get a little too inebriated. 

Warnings: Alcohol consumption, drunkenness, hangovers, mentions of vomit, and attempted assault. It’s more an uncomfortable conversation than anything, and nothing graphic happens, but please be warned!

WC: 7500 please don’t look at me like that I just picked at it to unwind as I worked on my zine piece and it got entirely out of hand honk honk goes the clown mobile 

The decision to go to a bar had been Ryan’s. That alone, that the destination had been picked during his turn, ought to have been enough forewarning; it seemed that whenever a trip went sideways, it almost always fell on Ryan’s turn (or the Doctor’s, but you and the others excluded that data — her choices were always catastrophes and not worth including in the risk analysis amongst yourselves).

But faced with the usual question of “where and when to next?”, Ryan had requested a bar, and the Doctor had delivered. You had landed on an asteroid, which according to the Doctor was the location of a top-notch bar, situated along a very popular intergalactic trading route. It was certainly busy, as you all left the TARDIS in an alley and approached the sleek, shiny building; there was a short queue to get in, but people — aliens and humans both — congregated in clumps around it and as you moved through the line and entered the bar, you even looked up and noticed people on the roof.

“So,” Yaz said, propping a hip against the bar counter and taking in the sights. “This is where the great Ryan Sinclair works his magic.” She let her eyes rove around the noisy crowd, and grinned over at Ryan. “You feeling right at home then?”

Ryan shot her a scowl, his hands shoved firmly in his pockets. “Ha ha,” he said. “This is not what I had in mind when I suggested drinks.”

“What?” The Doctor asked, looking around at him. “Really? I thought I did all right.” She put her hands on her hips, surveying the crowded, noisy bar.

“Well I think it’s great Doc,” Graham said, already perusing a menu with interest. She beamed at him.

“Thank you, I try my best,” she said. She had her hands in her coat pockets, something that usually indicated she was being (or feeling) cautious. In this case, you thought she was merely trying to avoid knocking into anyone, or any drinks; the bar (if that’s what it was, it did seem more like a sort of club) was packed with people, and it would be all too easy to hook an elbow or bump a precarious drink.

Yaz and Ryan were still bickering, and although you generally enjoyed wading into those sorts of things, a menu caught your eye and you pulled it closer. You could read it, thanks to the TARDIS’ help, but translation could only go so far.

“Are these all alcoholic?” you wondered aloud, frowning at something listed as a Greyhound.

“Are they even all drinks?” Graham added, and you glanced up with a smile, knowing he was hoping for food.

“I think so,” the Doctor answered, moving over to you. She reached over to pull your menu towards her, and her sleeve brushed against your shoulder. “Hmm,” she said, still standing very close. “Sorry Graham, all liquid.” She didn’t actually sound all that sorry, you noted. Graham obviously noticed it as well, because he gave a theatrical sigh.

“Every drink has an inebriation agent of some sort,” the Doctor continued, scrunching her nose. “Different sorts for different races and species, this is a very diverse bar.”

“Are they all safe for us?” Yaz asked, also crowding your shoulder to look at the menu.

“Y-e-s,” the Doctor said slowly, followed by an “actually no,” and an eye-roll from Yaz. “Well, sort of. Depends on what you mean by safe. Humans are common enough here, but some drinks will still have a stronger or weaker effect than they would for their intended consumer. They’re coded, see?” She flattened her (your) drink menu on the counter and pointed. “This is the symbol for human, with standard colour rankings. Green means intended for you, yellow means it will have less effect, and red more.”

“Get in,” Ryan said, and you knew without having to look that he was perusing the red-coded drinks.

“You don’t want to try a Red,” the Doctor said sternly. “It could have any number of effects.”

“That’s what I’m counting on,” Ryan muttered, and then it was Graham’s turn to bicker with him while you and Yaz  scanned the menu.

“How do you think we order?” you wondered, after deciding to try the Greyhound, which was coded green. Yaz had decided on yellow-coded drink, which cited a lack of alcohol. Its kick came from the flavor combination and carbonation, apparently. Yaz’s particular choice sounded disgusting, and you were very much looking forward to watching her try it.

“Yeah, I don’t see a barkeep,” Graham added, craning over the counter and apparently done with trying to persuade Ryan to make good choices. “Though I suppose you might not be able to pick one out from this mess.” It was true; though you were congregated around a counter, there was no discernible life-form keeping tabs or otherwise running it, and the crushing ebb and flow of the crowd was a confusing riot of clashing voices and species. Over it all thrummed the heavy beat of music, alien but still somehow recognizable as upbeat and catchy. You had the distinct sense that this was a trendy bar, and wondered how the Doctor even knew about it.

“It’s simple,” the Doctor said, and she bent over you to again point at the menu, her arm resting against yours. “You see this bit here? You press it with your finger, then press the box next to the item you want.”

“How’s that work then?” Ryan asked dubiously.

“It’s DNA activated,” the Doctor said calmly, as if that were in any way a normal thing for a drinks menu to be. “We were all scanned when we walked through the doors, didn’t you notice?”

“Did we notice the DNA scanners in an alien bar filled with aliens?” Graham asked. “No, must have slipped my mind Doc, no idea how I missed them. ”

“Well,” the Doctor said loftily, “you were scanned. So order your drink like I said, and it’ll be brought to you.” She bent over her menu, some of her hair brushing against your face. You sat very still, swallowed, then reached for a menu and dragged it towards you (seeing as how your own had been commandeered.)

After some consideration you ordered your Greyhound, and it arrived in an interesting, fluted sort of glass, delivered by a waiter. The drink was a pleasing sanguine colour, complete with a wedge of fruit on the glass rim. The whole effect was quite good, too, which was more than Yaz could say for her yellow-coded drink, which she almost choked on. You didn’t deign to try it after that, but Ryan and the Doctor both made a big show of tasting it and being subsequently horrified. Graham, equable as ever, took the abandoned yellow in hand and sipped it serenely, something the rest of you took in with an impressed sort of horror. The Doctor drifted away shortly after with no drink of her own, which wasn’t too surprising; you rarely saw her ingest anything more than a taste of food or drink before flitting away, like some sort of overgrown and absent-minded hummingbird. Ryan and Graham wandered off too. You lingered at the counter with Yaz for a while, as she ordered a new (and improved) yellow-coded drink. You found your own glass empty, and after some hesitation, shrugged and ordered another Greyhound. It hadn’t been too strong; you simply felt warm, and bright. It was nice. Second drinks in hand, you and Yaz decided to do a circuit, it was dark and loud and you were quickly separated in the swirling crowd. No matter, you thought cheerfully, as you took another sip. You’d catch Yaz up eventually, no doubt. The music was blasting, and you unconsciously matched your footfalls to the beat, feeling it warm and sizzling in your blood along with the drink. You tipped the glass in your mouth at the end of the song, and were surprised to find it empty. “Well that’s rude,” you told the empty glass, which flashed  in your hand in a thoroughly unimpressed manner. You pivoted in the press of bodies around you, trying to find a free table and a menu. You needed replacement drink, seeing as how your current one was clearly faulty. “Must’ve shorted me,” you mumbled to yourself. “Typical. Think I can’t handle my glasses - I mean, hounds. Dogs. Drinks.” You stumbled as you pushed through a group of people, but regained your stride easily enough. You even spotted Ryan in a shadowy corner, chatting with a very lovely alien indeed. She seemed to be trying to entice Ryan to dance; you wished her the best of luck. Ryan was a hilarious dancer. Not bad, but definitely hilarious, and he took some convincing. You reached a table on the edge of the dance floor, and pulled a menu towards yourself. It took you a couple of jabs to correctly order your Greyhound — your finger kept slipping. Or maybe it was the menu, actually. “Faulty drinks, faulty menus,” you complained to the room at large, leaning back against a pillar as you waited. The people swirling around you were difficult to focus on, and you wondered suddenly if the room was tilting — surely the room itself wasn’t faulty! “Have to get the foundations checked,” you informed the alien server who appeared with your drinks. They gave you an odd look and vanished. You reached for your drink, but paused, hand outstretched as you considered the not one but three glasses set before you. Two Greyhounds, and one that was something else, a smaller, opaque glass. The liquid shimmered in a very interesting way indeed, and it was difficult to look away. Well, perhaps they had brought you the extra drinks on the house, in order to make up for all the faults you’d been uncovering left and right. You stumbled as you pondered this, which as far as you were concerned was proof enough of the foundational flaws; you were, after all, standing still, so what other reason would you have to stumble? Unbelievable. You reached for the Greyhound, but your hand paused, then changed course halfway through and grasped the smaller, shimmering cup instead. It was very light in your grip. You tasted it and stumbled again; it had hit your tongue with a wallop, your entire body was fizzing with a bolt of what must be pure electricity, there was no other possible explanation. Everything around you was abruptly brighter, louder, richer. You blinked, fascinated. “Not too many humans can handle their reds,” a voice said next to you, and you set the cup down with a thud, squinting as the alien next to you came slowly into focus. “You usually so squiggly?” you asked him, and he titled his head, dark eyes moving from you to the half-drunk cup, and back again. His smile flashed in the low light, and for a moment it was all you could see, becoming somehow the brightest, sharpest thing in the room. “It’s a curse,” he said, and you nodded sagely, taking another sip. His eyes followed the cup, and his smile sharpened. “Could cut myself on that,” you observed. “Teeth,” you added, when he looked confused. Perhaps he was drunk; it was ridiculous how many people couldn’t hold their liquor! “Want to try?” he asked, and his hand was on your arm. You weren’t sure when it got there. “Excuse me?” you said, loftily, aiming for a bit of the Doctor in your speech. You thought you did quite well, but the alien didn’t look as annoyed as anyone on the receiving end of one of the Doctor’s questions usually did. Rude. “Do I want to try what?” you asked belatedly, and realized that you were being towed towards the dance floor. When had you made that decision? Time seemed to be leaping ahead and then stalling out in great lurches, and everything was fuzzy and dull. You felt the glass taken from your hand, and were vaguely surprised to find that it was empty again. Another faulty glass? Really? You might have to register a complaint. “Not a lot of humans here,” the alien said, and his hands were on your sides, moving you to the music. People pressed all around you, bumping your shoulders and making it difficult to get your bearings. Your shoes squelched on the slightly sticky floor as they moved. You wanted to stop and see if you could get the room to stop spinning so much, but the hands on you kept you in motion. The alien was speaking again, close to your ear so you could hear him over the din. “You come here alone?” he asked, his fingers warm against your side, and tight. You tried to pull back to get a better look at him but he kept you where you were.“No,” you said, blinking as you tried to orient yourself. Your eyes kept sliding in and out of focus. “Came with m’friends.” “And they left you all alone, to drink a red?” he murmured, and his grip tightened. He was pulling you across the dance floor; the light was fading, and you realized all at once, as you moved into a more shadowed section of the room with only the gleaming crescent of his smile visible, that you were actually quite drunk, and didn’t know where any of the others were. “Should - should get back to them,” you tried to articulate, and he laughed, one of his hands sliding lower. “You’re right where you want to be.”  You stiffened, and tried to pull away. “No, I want to find my friends,” you slurred, jerking back. He held your arm, and pulled you into him in a great twirl, and suddenly your back was against a dark, slightly sticky wall. He loomed over you, one hand still vise-like on your arm, the other pressed against the wall by your head. He smiled down at you, except it didn’t really look so much like a smile anymore, but just a lot of very sharp, gleaming teeth. Your face was very cold, and you wished the room would stop spinning enough that you could push him off and find the others. “I could be your friend,” the alien said, his breath fanning across your face, his hand sliding lower again. The hand on the wall touched your hair, curled a lock of it musingly through his fingers. “I just love red-drunk humans, all alone and lost and looking for a friend to help them.” You struggled again in his grip, and this time he let you go. You lurched sideways along the wall, falling against the corner in a heap. You thought you should feel sick, but you only felt annoyed, and cold, and something else, something like confusion that was tipping towards fear. The alien lifted you back up, hands on your arms, then pressed you back against the corner, his weight against you. Annoyance flared and you tried to push him away. “Let go,” you ordered, but he only laughed, touched your face. “You don’t want to be alone right now do you little Red?” he asked. “I’m sure that’s true,” a new voice interrupted. It had a familiar, lilting cadence, but you didn’t recognize the sharpness to it, or the way danger simmered beneath the surface. The alien didn’t glance away from you. “We’re busy,” he said, touching your face again. “Find your own —” but then he was ripped away from you in swirl of grey fabric and flashing eyes. You swayed, then jerked back as hands touched you again, but — “It’s okay,” that voice said, “it’s alright, it’s me,” and you recognized it this time. The Doctor tucked you against her side and you inhaled that familiar scent of tea and vanilla, and it cleared your head a little, enough to let out a shaky breath. “He’s being - rude,” you told the Doctor, your voice muffled as you glared at the alien. “Yes, he is,” she answered. Her voice was still light, and soothing, and you weren’t able to see the way she was looking at him.  He scowled, gaze darting from you to the Doctor and back before making a dismissive sort of hand gesture and melting into the crowd. The Doctor stood very still for a moment, and you all you could hear was the thunder of her hearts. She let out a breath, then turned you. Again you found your back against that wall, only the hands on you were gentle, and cool. The Doctor touched your face as she looked at you, and that was better too. “Are you okay?” she asked, and you wondered at the appearance of that crease in her brow. She looked dangerous, in the half-light, but her hands were still so light. You nodded, and suddenly her grip on you was tight as she kept you from toppling over. “Wouldn’t - leave me alone,” you told her. “Rude.” “You already said that,” she observed, removing one of her hands to fish in a pocket for her sonic. You blinked at her, swaying on your feet as she ran it over you. She read the output and exhaled. “Tell me you didn’t drink a red.” “I didn’t drink a red,” you repeated dutifully, and watched as her entire face scrunched up in exasperation. It was nice.“You’re so pretty,” you informed her. It was important that she knew in that moment how pretty she was, with her face all scrunchy and the flashing lights making a halo of her head. “So pretty. Too pretty.” You stumbled, and again she caught you. “Okay, I think it’s back to the TARDIS with you.” “Says who,” you slurred, even as she steered you away from the wall and towards the exit. “You’re not — you’re not the boss of me.” “I certainly am,” she muttered. “Especially when you’ve gone and had a red, and I explicitly told you it was a bad idea.” Her grip on your arm was firm and cool, and infinitely preferable to the alien’s. The other alien, that was, because obviously she was alien too. So many aliens! “You’re the best alien though,” you mused aloud, and she darted a quick look at you, tongue poking briefly out of her lips. You liked that quite a lot. You wanted her to do it again, in fact, but she had drawn her lips back into a thin line as she watched you. She steered you towards the exit, but the crowd seemed to have doubled in size, and she was forced to shove her way bodily through the dancing, yelling patrons. A much larger person staggered into her and she grunted as she took the blow. “I think I hate bars,” she said, her voice all but inaudible over the din. “That’’s new. Maybe.” Someone else knocked into her, and the force was heavy enough to jar your arms from her grip. She receded from you in a blurry tunnel of light and sound, and then it was just you, pressed between strange bodies on the dance floor while the music thundered through your bones. Huh. Almost everyone was taller than you, and you had no idea which way the exit was, or the Doctor. You didn’t care much about the exit, but it’d be good to find the Doctor; you had felt less…. fuzzy, when her hands had been on your arms, and more like yourself again. And also she was just so pretty. Wandering in a blurry haze of music and voices, you began to wonder if maybe you might locate another drinks menu. You weren’t so sure about another red, but it also didn’t seem like quite as bad of an idea as it had an hour ago. That was interesting. Weaving and stumbling, you tried to push through the press of bodies, and had made a little bit of progress when — — hands, there were hands on you again — You lurched sideways as you tried to bat those hands away, but there was nowhere to go, the wall of people bounced you back, and the lights were flashing and people were shouting and there were hands on you again — “ - alright? Hey?” The hands succeeded at spinning you around, and a person loomed out of the crowd. Two things followed in short order: you recognized Yaz, and you threw out a defensive fist. They didn't happen in the optimal order, however. “Oi!” Yaz cried, dodging your fist and catching it in her own. “It’s me, what the hell?” She was still sliding in and out of focus, but you were aware of the fact that she was quite pretty too. "’M sorry,” you told her, wondering why she was pulling away from you. You hadn’t actually hit her, after all. Had you? “Sorry,” you repeated, swaying.She was peering at you, her hands firm on your arm. Her eyes were very dark, but they reflected the dancing lights all around you and you blinked, fascinated. “Are you okay?” she asked cautiously. “Absolutely corking,” you slurred, proud to remember the phrase you had heard Graham use (and Ryan mock) earlier. You weren’t sure why it made Yaz look so alarmed. “Yaz — oh, good —” The Doctor popped into your view as she squeezed between two dancing aliens who took no notice of her, which was probably good because her expression was quite stormy indeed. She still looked quite pretty. How’d she manage that? It wasn’t fair. “Doctor,” Yaz said, turning, “I think something’s wrong —” “Someone decided that they should have a red,” the Doctor said, grim. “I also had two - three - I had - greens!” you told them both, proud. Yaz’s look of alarm deepened, and it was so comical that you couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up. When that did nothing except make her and the Doctor’s brows both snap into synchronized, angry little v shapes, you only giggled harder. “Right, TARDIS,” the Doctor said ominously. “Yaz, can you find Ryan and Graham and let them know?” Yaz nodded and between one blink and another, she had vanished again. “Just like magic,” you told the Doctor, wondering why your lips were numb. She gave you a swift, searching look, her eyebrows still angry little vs and her tongue still poking between her lips. “Come on,” she said, wrapping a cool hand around your wrist. The contact was steadying, and very nice. She kept you close, clearly not wishing to be separated again as she towed you towards the exit. “Don’t want to go,” you told her abruptly, and you couldn’t hear your voice over the crowd and the music. You didn’t even know why you said it; it wasn’t true, strictly. You still felt like you could fit in another drink or two worth of fun, but you didn’t really care where you went, not if the Doctor was with you. Even if she looked so angry as she glanced back over her shoulder. She had heard you, evidently. She had very good hearing; you and Ryan and Yaz had been working on an experiment to test the limits of it, but hadn’t put it in action yet. Someone bumped into the Doctor hard and she grunted, but her grip on you remained iron-clad and she pulled you closer, actually folding you into her arms to protect you from the jostling crowd.“This is not what I had in mind,” she muttered, her lips very close to your ears as she spoke. It was nice, and extraordinarily distracting. “Do people actually enjoy these places?” “Ryan does apparently,” you said, remembering him chatting up that pretty alien. “This was his idea wasn’t it?” the Doctor mused, moving again and pulling you with her. You were still very close. “I don’t suppose we’ll be letting him choose the next adventure. Ah. That’s better,” she added as she stepped out of the bar and into the night, towing you with her.  A blast of cool, humid air hit you, wrapping around your body and cooling your cheeks. Even though the bar itself had been fairly dark, your eyes still relaxed as the flashing lights fell away.The Doctor let go, and the sobering effect of the night seemed to pull back, a little, as if you’d lost your anchor. The world tilted around you, the stars overhead wheeling and dancing. It made you feel a little bit sick, but it was also beautiful. The Doctor was talking, and you struggled to focus.“Think we parked just over there, yeah, must’ve. Let’s go — where are you going?” The last was delivered with an air of extreme exasperation as she turned in time to witness you bolting away. “I want to be colder,” you told her as you stumbled through the night. You were on pavement (alien pavement, anyways) but in the distance you could see the shadow of what had to be trees (alien trees) and maybe some grass (alien grass). You wanted nothing so much as to lay down on that grass. The Doctor’s protests followed you as you reached the tree and hurled yourself down at the cool earth. Well, not earth. Whatever passed for earth here. What was dirt on an asteroid called? A shadow fell over you, blocking the stars, and you turned your cheek in the grass to look up at the silhouette of the Doctor, hands on her hips, stray hairs blowing in the wind.“You’re sick, you need to get back to the TARDIS,” she said. “You’re sick, you need to get back to the TARDIS,” you replied cheerfully, and even though you couldn’t see her expression very well in the darkness and swirling stars, you could feel the scrunched-up scowl she leveled at you. “Come on,” she said, and her voice was exasperated but her hands were gentle as they lifted you off the ground. Gentle again, as they caught you when you stumbled sideways. “Careful, now. Come on.” “Don’t feel - so good -” you told her, and it was true; the fuzzy, warm glow was fading and the whirling of the stars wasn’t so much aesthetically pleasing as it was now sickening. “I expect not,” the Doctor muttered. “What could have possibly possessed you to drink so much? To drink a red?” “I didn’t mean t’ order it,” you defended yourself. “It was just - just there.” “And you drank it? Something you hadn’t ordered?” the Doctor demanded. “Surely you know not to do that!” “Just trying to have fun,” you mumbled, guilt rising up in you alongside the nausea. “Just wanted —  didn’t mean to — I wasn’t —” “Okay, it’s okay, I know,” the Doctor said, her voice softening. She shifted you against her as she spoke, and you realized she was fumbling for the TARDIS key. The blue box was humming at an almost inaudible frequency, but you could feel it moving through you bones, cooling your blood, steadying you. “Thanks,” you said weakly, patting a hand on the wood as the Doctor steered you through. The interior slights dimmed as you came in,  and it was a soothing balm on your eyes and raw nerves. “She’s spoiling you lot,” the Doctor muttered, but you could hear the fondness threading through her voice. “She likes us,” you thought, or maybe said. The Doctor made a soft sound, not quite a word, and you weren’t sure if she’d heard you. Weren’t sure if you’d spoken. “Okay, try and eat this,” the Doctor said a few moments later. Or maybe hours, you still weren’t entirely sure how time was progressing. Her fingers brushed your lips as she placed a fizzing sort of tablet on your tongue, and you realized all at once that your lips weren’t numb anymore, but blazing with sensation. “Swallow it, it’ll help,” she added. You blinked, looking into her face, so close to yours. There was still that furrow by her eyebrow but she didn’t seem angry, anymore. Not like she had with she’d stared down that rude alien. Her eyes were bright, glittering like the star field outside of the bar. “Too pretty,” you complained, then promptly choked on the tablet you had forgotten on your tongue. “Swallow,” she repeated, placing two fingers on your mouth. Your breath hitched, which did not help the choking one bit. You did, at least, in the midst of the resulting coughing fit, manage to swallow the tablet,  but it burned and your eyes streamed as you blinked at the Doctor. “Good,” she said, placing fingers under your chin. Her touch was somehow both cooling and blazing, comforting and so very distracting. You made an indeterminate sound, and her eyes flicked to yours, a brief touch, before flicking over your face. “That should kick in soon,” she said, dropping her hand. “Is it — gonna cure me,” you asked, and the breathless quality to your voice was due to the lingering affects of drunkenness, surely, and not the Doctor’s touch. She snorted, pushing hair out of her eyes.“It’ll speed up the process, burn the chemicals out of your system faster,” she said. “And it’ll make for a quicker hangover.” She fixed you with an amused look. “Quicker, but not easier. You’re in for a fun night, I think.” You groaned, throwing yourself down on the couch. You regretted it at once, as your head spun and your stomach roiled, but the drama of the moment had dictated.“I didn’t mean to,” you complained, shutting your eyes as the lights spun around you. The spinning didn’t stop, in the darkness behind your eyelids, but it was a little bit better. Maybe. A cool hand brushed your forehead, and that definitely was better. “I know,” she said, and you could hear the gentleness in her voice. “Am I going to die?” you asked, not because you thought that you were — you’d been sick before, though admittedly not from alien alcohol — but it had the right flair of drama to it. It also made the Doctor snort again, and regrettably, her hand slid from your brow. “You’re drunk, not dying,” she said, and her voice was receding as she moved around the room.  “Humans and their substances, honestly.” Something was placed on your brow, cool and damp and soothing. The Doctor tucked the cloth against your head with deft, gentle fingers even as she continued to explain her thoughts on humans and all of their myriad of flaws. “You’ve never been drink — you don’t drunk —” You stumbled over the words, and felt her fingers still, then fall away from the cloth. You opened your eyes and with the room spinning and the dim light and the serious, difficult to read expression on her face, she looked as remote and otherworldly as she actually was for all that she was your friend. “Time Lords are an advanced race, we certainly don’t have the same genetic predispositions towards inebriation or the desire to attempt so,” she said finally, still looking down at you. You grunted, considering her words as they slid in and out of your head.“Didn’t answer the question,” you observed, and were rewarded with a scowl. “Hm,” was all she said, but she was smiling slightly. “Try to rest now, and if you need to be sick —” she kicked something on the floor that gave a hollow thud. “Try to aim in here, yeah?” “I am not going to be sick,” you said firmly, and the Doctor’s smile flashed in the dim light. “I hope not, the pill’s supposed to help with that but,” she shrugged expansively, and even through the spinning room you were able to focus in shocking clarity on the pull of her shirt across her frame she did so, “I don’t really know what combination of ingredients you drank, and how they’ll react to the other things you drank or your own biology. So. Bin.” She nudged it with a boot again. “I’m going to check on the others, and you’re going to stay here. I’ll be right back.” You didn’t want her to go, but you were feeling worse by the moment as the alcohol was burned out of your system and, as far as you could tell, migrated to your head. You could feel each heartbeat rattling in your skull like knives, and your roiling stomach kept speed with it. You moaned something that the Doctor took for agreement. Time passed, although you weren’t in any way able to keep track of it. You suspected it had been a century based on the pounding in your head, but it could have only been a few heartbeats. Either way, you were still alone when you realized that what you really needed was some water. Nobody was around to hear you, but you still complained and groaned and generally made a spectacle as you swung your legs off the couch, sitting upright. Your stomach made a solid pass at leaping out of your throat, but you steadied yourself with a snarl; you were not going to need the bin, you were not going to be sick. And you were right; all thoughts of nausea fled as you pushed yourself to your feet, because your skull might as well have shattered. Your headache pounded so violently that you thought it might be slamming you through the floor; it felt too heavy, too thick, too white-hot with blinding pain. Death was infinitely preferable to this miserable thing called life. “Never — drinking — again —” you vowed, swaying, hoping the floor might just swallow you whole and end your suffering. “A noble sentiment,” the Doctor said from behind you. “But one rarely adhered to, I suspect. What are you doing off the sofa?” She appeared at your side, a steadying hand on your elbow. “You didn’t sick up somewhere did you,” she added with sudden trepidation, looking around your feet apprehensively. “I just wanted something to drink,” you told her, wretched. Your head was still pounding, and even the dimmed lights were still too bright. They stabbed your eyes with sharp, splintering shards of pain. You groaned, and leaned your head instinctively against the Doctor’s shoulder. “I think you’ve had quite enough to drink,” she said, with a touch of asperity, but her hand was gentle as ever as she smoothed hair back from your forehead. “Water,” you clarified, your voice muffled from the folds of her coat. It was soft, and cool, and smelled like home. “Ah,” the Doctor said, steering you back to the couch. She eased you down again. “Stay, I’ll get you some water and a new cloth.” “Where are the others? Are they coming?” you asked miserably as she reappeared, setting a glass of water in your hands. It had a truly spectacular bendy, swirly straw that was almost as long as the glass itself, a vibrant purple and orange that hurt your eyes to look at, but you appreciated the gesture as you lifted it to your mouth with weak hands. “They’ll be here soon, they’re trying to find Ryan,” the Doctor said. The cushions dipped as she settled on the other end of the sofa. “They might have to expand the search,” you said, thinking of that alien he had been speaking with. You groaned as your head gave another spike of pain, and slid down the couch as sitting became too much effort. “Just rest,” the Doctor said. “It’ll pass.” “Promise?” “I promise,” she said, and your eyes were closed, but you could hear the slight smile in her voice. “I am the best alien, after all.” You could definitely hear the smile, now, and something niggled at your memory; you suspected that the Doctor was poking fun at something you had said while in the bar, but the memory was sliding in and out with tremendous spikes of pain and you let it go. You suspected that you had said many unfortunate things, and you could only hope that the Doctor hadn’t heard or remembered most of them. You drifted for a time, after that, surfacing to occasional bursts of pain or nausea or, more welcome, cool hands on your brow as they took your temperature or readjusted the the damp cloth. Clarity — and more importantly, an absence of that all-encompassing pain — arrived abruptly. You sat up gingerly, feeling weak and shaky and not even remotely good, but it was a normal not-good, not I’m going to die and if not I wish it would hurry up about it not-good. “Ah, here we are,” the Doctor said, and you looked over to see her curled up at her end of the couch, a book in her hand.  She closed it and tucked it in the cushion. “Feeling better?” “Yeah,” you said, peeling off the now warm and dry cloth from your head. You looked down at it, then the mercifully empty bin at your feet. Something else rolled in your stomach, almost worse than the earlier nausea: shame, with a side of guilt. “Ah. Sorry, about all that,” you mumbled, darting another look at the Doctor. She was watching you, a slight smile curving her lips, but her eyes were sharp as they flicked over you, still assessing. “Accepted,” she said, scooting over to you and fishing her stethoscope out of her pocket. “Deep breath,” she said, resting it against your chest. “You don’t have anything to apologize for anyways,” she added.  “It’s not your fault you got served a red, or that someone tried to take advantage of you for it.” You had forgotten about that, had forgotten about that other alien and his heavy, unwelcome hands, and his sharp, hungry smile. You shuddered, and the Doctor’s eyes touched your own, a welcome distraction. “I’m okay, you don’t need to waste time on me,” you muttered, but she was pushing a fresh glass of water into your hand. “Drink. And yes I do, or do you not remember bolting up and trying to climb the  TARDIS console?” You goggled at her. “Apparently not,” she said with a wicked grin. “No, don’t apologize again, it’s okay. You got me out of that bar anyways, I really wasn’t vibing with it. ”You had been awash in horror at your actions, but the Doctor’s last words snapped you out of it. “Vibing with it?” you repeated, incredulous.   She shot you a look, tongue poking slightly between her lips.“Yeah, am I using that right? Ryan taught me.”  You were still goggling at her, but the sound of a door opening and a rush of voices distracted you both. “Ah, finally,” the Doctor said, brushing off her legs and standing up. “I wonder what kept them. We’re in here,” she added, pitching her voice to carry to the others and making no effort to define where “here” was; it was obvious to her, and that apparently was to be enough for everyone else. It was very her. Everything she did was very her, you mused. Not just because it was her doing them, but because she did everything with such one-hundred percent commitment, energy, and enthusiasm. You smiled slightly, watching her as she stood with her hands on her hips. She’d taken off her coat at some point, and she looked smaller without it, more wild and fleeting, something ephemeral. She glanced over her shoulder at you and smiled when she met your eyes. That smile was also wild, fleeting and ephemeral, but it grounded her, a little bit, in the here and now. And you, too. “Hello,” Yaz said, stepping into the room. She looked tired, her hair coming out of its braids, her jacket mussed, but it was a happy sort of tired. “Have fun?” The Doctor asked as Yaz threw herself down on the couch next to you. “Yes,” Yaz said, leaning her head back on the cushions. “Not as much fun as some other people, though,” she added, and turned her head to fix you with her dark, glittering eyes. “How are you doing?” “I feel like death,” you told her, and stuck out your tongue when she grinned. “That’s what you two get for going off-book,” she said smugly, wiggling her shoulders deeper into the couch and kicking off her shoes before lifting her legs and curling them up on the couch. “Oi, I didn’t drink a red,” the Doctor said, indignantly. “Not that I would have been affected, if I had. You humans are so — ” “She been going on like this the whole time?” Yaz asked you, and the Doctor gave her a dark look. You giggled, and it only made your head split down the middle a little bit. It was worth it, for the expression on the Doctor’s face. “Definitely,” you confirmed, wincing as you lifted a hand to rub your temples. “This is the thanks I get, for spending my night chasing after red-drunk humans? Mockery and false accusations?” “Not you,” Yaz said, rolling her eyes. “I was talking about — “ “Hellooooooo TARDIS!” “That,” Yaz finished, turning to watch as Ryan crashed into the room, with an aggrieved Graham in his wake. The Doctor groaned, throwing her hands up. “Ryan! Not you too!” “Guilty your honor,” Ryan crooned, spinning a wild circle and narrowly avoiding the couch with his flailing feet. You hastily copied Yaz, drawing your feet up onto the cushions and settling in to watch the show. “I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love! Congratulate me.” “You’re not in love, son, you’re drunk,” Graham said wearily, trying to grab Ryan, but he spun out of reach. And fell over. The room shuddered. You gasped, Yaz clapped a hand over her mouth, Graham cursed. The Doctor closed her eyes. “Ow,” Ryan said, but he was smiling beatifically up at the ceiling. “What happened?” The Doctor asked resignedly, crouching by Ryan and taking his pulse, then pulling out her sonic. He ignored her, still smiling happily up at the ceiling, his toes clicking together as he hummed. He was still firmly in the “fun” stage of the Red inebriation, it seemed. “What do you think, Doc?” Graham answered tiredly, moving to stand by them. “He wanted to impress a pretty girl.” “Did he?” you asked, interestedly. The situation was a lot funnier when it wasn’t happening to you, it turned out. “Well, he chugged a red and challenged some bloke to a dance contest,” Yaz said. She was grinning, and it was the grin of a sober woman witnessing the carnage wreaked by foolish friends. “We almost didn’t get him out of there.” The Doctor stood up, pinching her nose. She came to a decision.“Right. I’ll get him a pill, but I’ve done my babysitting duty for the night. He’s your problem after that.” She stode from the room, and you heard her mutter something about never going to a bar again. Yaz heard her too, and you shared a grin. Ryan, it turned out, had very little interest in taking the hangover-speed-up pill from the Doctor. It also turned out that red-inebriation or no, he could still move very quickly, and it took the combined efforts of Yaz, Graham and the Doctor to get the pill in his mouth. You filmed most of on your phone you'd fumbled quickly out of a pocket, which as far as you were concerned did just as much to help the situation as any of them. The Doctor threw herself down on the sofa next to you with an explosive sigh. “I am never,” she said, tipping back her head, “taking humans to a bar. Ever again.” Ryan moaned from the floor, punctuating the statement with eloquence. Yaz sat down on the Doctor’s other side, then scooted over to make room for Graham who was looking silent and shell-shocked. You found your shoulders rubbing the Doctor’s, and you curled your feet up under you to make more room while leaning your head against her shoulder. You could hear her twin heartbeats, and after a moment she rolled her head so that her chin was resting in your hair.“You’re all on probation,” she said, firmly. You hummed skeptically, and Yaz snorted. Graham was still grimly silent, but you knew he’d come around. Silence, for a moment, interrupted only by Ryan’s increasingly pathetic moans.“Shall I pop in a movie?” Yaz asked finally. “Go on then,” the Doctor said, resigned, but you could hear the smile in her voice. “We’re going to be here for a while.” “‘’m never drinking again,” Ryan groaned from the floor.  He clapped his hands over his ears as you all began to laugh, which did exactly nothing to help. “Humans,” the Doctor said to the TARDIS ceiling, but she was still smiling. “You love us,” Yaz said, standing up and moving to put on a movie. “Yeah,” the Doctor said after a moment, so softly that you thought you might be the only one who heard it. “I do.”