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bleue-flora · 3 months ago

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do you think c!drunz used the revival book pre or post prison, I used to think pre but now I think they started using it post.

things that line up: in dreamxds vid it’s said that they don’t know how to use it yet, preparing for staged finale they would have had no time, c!Dream seemingly panicking over c!tommy dying in exile, c!dream worrying in general about death, testing it in prison like he claimed. In disc finale he could have lied about knowing how to use the revival book but still had access to it. However c!drunz already had vikk and lazar captured prior to c!dreams imprisonment maybe they were working out the revival book there and later post prison they used it on them. What do you think becsuse it’s never stated anywhere what date they had been testing the revival book on those two and there’s definitely things that go against it happening pre- prison arc.

You do realize this topic got me caught in an essay “war” ;) a couple months ago [here] right? You really trying to get me booted out of dreblr for my opposing thoughts huh?… thanks a lot…. welp I hope you know anon this has been plaguing me for weeks…

See this is a thing of much controversy because there are lots of variables and just as many if not more unknowns so honestly my opinion on the matter has shifted a quite a bit over my time here, but here are my current thoughts.

Originally, my theory was that they tested on Lazar and Vik before staged finale, and then themselves (if they even did - we don’t necessarily have direct evidence of that to be fair… but that’s besides the point) after prison. This made sense to me for the following reasons. a) I don’t feel like Dream would go into staged finale without knowing that if things went super wrong and they did kill him, Punz could bring him back. b) I’m pretty sure Vik and Lazar go missing before Doomsday. c) Wouldn’t you want to make sure your leverage is legit before you get thrown in a box. d) It makes sense with the timeline of his spiral. e) There is no evidence that suggests the book can revive multiple lives back so how would Dream then have all three lives for the staged finale. Plus the genuine sounding fear in his voice both in the staged finale and in prison makes a lot of sense if he had tested it on Lazar and Vik learning how terrible limbo is and hadn’t yet died and experienced it for himself. And then there’s f) given the comment in the finale about them dabbling in mind controlling Ranboo using the revival book, the scenes we get in the Revival Book video that shows Ranboo (implying there is at least some connection between the enderwalking and revive book), and Ranboo’s first known enderwalking (see now you know why I was asking ;D) starts not long before Doomsday we can then reasonably determine that they likely were experimenting at minimum with mind control before prison as Dream used that during prison - and why would you be experimenting with a Revival book to mind control without also testing if it could actually ya know revive -> hence at least testing with Vikk and Lazar….

Anyways I think a) is the main reasoning in my mind as to why I think he at least tested the book before putting himself in a position to be killed. Though I do think perhaps revealing he had the revival book was his last card to play and not his plan A. I mean after making sure he talked on and on about how secure and stuff the prison was in his monologue, it’s likely he assumed they’d put him in there automatically instead of permanently killing him. I mean he’s not an idiot and revealing he had the revive book was likely going to lead to someone trying to take it from him (aka torture). He just wrongfully assumed Sam wouldn’t let that happen. But this is what I think he means when he says “Your means was getting the revival book. Uh, fair enough, you know, you need- you need to value- it’s a valuable thing. I knew the risks when I had it. I knew the risks when I told people… that I had it. But… you know, I—I accepted the consequences and it—it happened.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, them putting him in Pandora’s Vault was for only one purpose and that was to get the book. They can pretend all they want that it was for another reason but the truth is that they would’ve let Tommy kill him if not for the book and we know already that they have shone in the past that they are more than willing and capable of torture… and I think Dream considered it a possibility, but he didn’t necessary plan on revealing he had it in the first place and depended on Sam to not let torture happen. Anyways, I guess also why have the revive book and not test it? Especially when you think the entire server is trying to kill you. It doesn’t make sense to only test it after…

However, I do think that the experiments they may or may not have done on themselves more likely happened after prison. When Dream cares a lot less about his own pain and suffering having spent months being tortured, plus maybe after he sees DreamXD come to the cell, hears about this Egg, and Foolish having powers… etc it would make sense for them to dive back into experiments this time not to test if it works but what other secrets and answers it holds like limbo and such…

This post [here] actually does a great job going into great detail about the timeline of experimentation. My only counter points to it would be that I think they didn’t experiment on animals as he says it’s “one of the rules” to Sam in Daedalus that it doesn’t work on animals and Sapnap’s book has a list of rules for usage so it would make sense to me for the revival book to have the same (though an angrument could be made that they ignored the rule and tested it anyways…). Also I think Dream helping Techno get totems that Techno conveniently has to use in his execution, highlights that Dream likely knew of Techno’s execution before it happened, which I think would actually be the turning point and perhaps the moment he started thinking about putting himself in the prison. Because it seems to me that he already made up his mind before speaking to Punz (right after the execution) and filling him in on it vaguely and forming a plan of separation [vod]. I’m also not sure if it’s ever confirmed that Dream’s death (any of them) in the first disc war are confirmed to be canon, yes he says you killed me in the finale but also death is referred to throughout even non canonical so I’m not sure that means it counted as a life. (Having said that I do actually love that death being canon as it means Dream was the first to lose a life and makes his actions and his outrage in the finale about it make a whole lot more sense)… so to answer your question: Vik and Lazar right before prison and Themselves after prison.

Or so I thought when I wrote this essay, but then as I combed through the Revival book video I noticed some things that blew my mind show I was in fact wrong, but as this is already long, I’ve put it in a separate post [here].

#yea… so I think a bit of both basically but I feel like there are things that make some testing preprison make sense #c!staged duo #or I at least thought made sense….#c!stagedduo #c!dream #dreblr #dsmp #dream smp #dsmpblr #hello there #dishing up lore #dsmp finale #dsmp analysis #staged finale #no one does it like c!dream

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voloslobotomyservice · 9 months ago

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BG3 Tav Backstory Bash by Kelandrin

This is a challenge to help people flesh out their Tav's backstory by exploring their past. It is organized into four sections with seven prompts. You can treat this as a monthly challenge or a general project. You can write headcanons, fics, or share art based on the prompts! You can interpret the prompts however you want. If you want to share use the tag #bg3backstorybash

thank you for the tags @rolansrighthorn @charmedcleric @jessfromouterspace @lolthslover @auspex-author ‼️

I asked you guys who I should feature in this post and my girl Mythrae got the most votes! She is my first durge so she's a bit special to me and I'm very glad she was chosen :) some of these questions might have slightly alternate answers bc they don’t exactly fit in her timeline but I’m excited to participate either way! there are a couple triggering sections that have been labeled, so please read with caution!

(I’m too scared to tag anyone in this lol)

Part One: Baby

Parent(s):

Being the child of Bhaal’s own flesh and blood, she is a Bhaalspawn. But as far as who raised her? Well, that would be none other than Lua’nna Helvitlar, a Seldarine drow wizard who fled from Menzoberranzen many years ago.

She fled the city and Lolth due to her brother’s wrongful death, and she found employment with Ramazith Firesinger in Baldur’s Gate.

Birth:

Not much is known about Mythrae’s birth, but in the year 1353, Lua’nna found her as an infant in the sewers of Baldur’s Gate with a piece of paper with just her name (yeah I did this with Salome too I’m unoriginal). Not wanting a drow child to get in the wrong hands and become a servant of Lolth, she rescued the infant and brought her home.

First Word/Tantrum/When They First Walked/First Sickness

Her first word was “mama,” which Lua’nna was overjoyed with. Definitely cried happy tears for hours on end.

She was a well-behaved toddler, who was also very inquisitive and ask a lot of questions. The tantrums she would have would usually be because she got an answer she didn’t like (ex. “Mummy, why can’t the sun stay up all day?” “Why does it get cold outside?”).

Mythrae took her first steps after living with Lu’anna for 10 months, while they were playing together. Lua’nna most definitely cried the rest of the day over it.

She got a cold when she was a toddler, and her mother was worried sick she would pass from her virus. She was sick for two weeks, but with Lua’nna’s thorough care, she made a full recovery.

Part Two: Childhood

Friends:

Mythrae was born with heterochromia (one grey eye and one red eye) and was bullied for it (also for being a drow — they have a bad rep on the surface after all), so it was hard to make friends in school. There was one other drow boy in her class, Kalandrin, who would defend her from these bullies. They became fast friends and stayed close even into their teenage years. (Kalandrin would become her dream visitor later down the line)

Siblings:

Mythrae did not have any other siblings, the only family she had was her adopted mother (and Bhaal plus his spawn ofc but it’s not like she knew that at the time)

Getting Into Trouble:

For the most part, Mythrae was a very well behaved child. But as she began to discover her affinity for magic, especially storm sorcery, she would sometimes pull pranks on Lua’nna that would result in her being punished (ex. putting a cloud over mom’s head and causing it to rain while she was in the garden, using a lightning bolt to help speed up cooking, etc). Sometimes she tried to do these out of a genuine desire to help around the house, but other times… not so much

Birthday:

Though Lua’nna doesn’t know Mythrae’s actual birthday, they celebrate her “gotcha” day on the 7th of Eleasis (equivalent of August in Earth months)

Games/Learning Something New:

Mythrae wasn’t huge on games (unless it was something thought-provoking like chess lol)

Being an inquisitive child, she enjoyed school and learning. Lua’nna, being a studious wizard, helped Mythrae with her schoolwork and also taught her about the many intricacies of magic. She also taught her about the history of drow, which was left out of schoolbooks, because she did not want her child to fall down the wrong path and become a servant of Lolth.

Trauma:

In her dreams (or night terrors?), a large skeleton head or ghastly creature would visit her and tell her to kill everyone she knows and anyone that gets in her way, for her father’s sake. These visions scared her greatly, and made it hard for her to want to fall asleep. Usually, Lua’nna would have to sleep in the same bed as her so that Mythrae felt safe.

Part Three: Teenager

⚠️ TW - mentions of canon-relevant violence and suicidal thoughts ⚠️

First Love:

Over the years, Mythrae developed deep feelings for Kalandrin. Looking back, she suspected he may have felt similar feelings for her, but they never acted on them and thus were never romantically involved. But they were very close, and they even got matching tattoos on their face and neck.

Rebellion/Running Away:

Not long after her thirteenth birthday, the nightmares consuming her were all too powerful, affecting her mood and thought process. She became very anxious that these urges would soon take over, and she would hole herself in her room, away from others. Sometimes she would find herself arguing with Lua’nna, too afraid to confide in her about the visions she was having. This did drive a wedge in their mother/daughter relationship, and Lua’nna tried to chalk it up to typical teenaged hormones.

Otherwise, there wasn’t any specific rebellion or running away that she would do.

Reckless Behavior:

One fateful night, the urges finally took over and she had her first killing spree. First, she stabbed Lua’nna to death while she was sleeping in her bed. She then left their house in the Upper City, electrocuting any passerby that crossed her path. She snuck into Kalandrin’s house by climbing into his bedroom window. She had planned to stab him as well, yet he was awake in his room, reading a book. He thought that she was finally confessing her love for him, but instead, she cut his head off, keeping it as a prize for herself.

Her urge faded as she held Kalandrin’s head in her hands. Appalled by the grotesque scene, she quickly dropped his head, fleeing his bedroom as fast as she could. She didn’t stop running until she was at the docks of the Grey Harbor, debating whether or not she should let herself drown for her crime.

Peer Pressure:

While she was debating whether she should jump into the harbor, Sceleritas Fel arrived, telling Mythrae that everything would be fine, that she was destined to become a cold-blooded killer for her father, Bhaal. He pressured her away from committing suicide, and instead, starting her life anew in the Temple of Bhaal. Knowing that her reputation would be tarnished come morning if she didn’t go with him, she accepted, following him back into the sewers where her mother found her so many years ago.

Taking Responsibility:

In a way, Mythrae never publicly took responsibility for the lives she took that night. If anything, she was encouraged to continue her slaughtering, which she did to please Bhaal. But internally, she knew that she had wronged them — and so many people after — and she hated herself for it. She secretly wished for her old life back, and that her urges could fade away into nothing.

Part Four: Adulthood

⚠️ TW - mentions of rape/sexual assault ⚠️

BEFORE THE NAUTILOUD…

Serious Relationships:

Her first and only serious relationship was with Lord Enver Gortash, who had approached her about hatching a plan between the Chosen of the Dead Three. He had a charm about him that immediately drew her in, and they fell for each other quite quickly while working together to enslave the Elder Brain. He had even proposed to her with a ring she wore throughout most of the game events.

Their ��First Time”:

Mythrae has pledged herself to celibacy until Bhaal instructed her to sire a new Bhaalspawn, originally planned to be with Gortash. However, Orin had disguised herself as the Chosen of Bane and attacked Mythrae, taking her virginity in the Temple of Bhaal before knocking her unconscious with her blade.

Work:

Up until Orin had attacked her, Mythrae was the leader of the Church of Bhaal, acting as the High Priestess over the congregation, preaching her father's word and leading various rituals.

Leaving Home:

A bit unique for Mythrae, considering it wasn’t her choice to leave home in the first place. She had no intention of ever leaving Baldur’s Gate or the Temple of Bhaal. So, when she woke up on the Nautiloud flying through the Hells, she knew something wasn’t right and that (at bare minimum) she was not meant to be here.

Aging:

Mythrae never really gave much of a thought to her age. She was young for an elf (around 139), and since elves can live for hundreds of years past that, she knew she had plenty of time to live a full life (devoted to Bhaal).

Finding Your Place

Mythrae was made to believe that the Temple of Bhaal was her place. That she would spend the rest of her days here, following every command her father gave to her. Thought she thought that maybe, just maybe, she was destined to do more with her life.

Starting A Family (Found or Otherwise)

She found family with the other Bhaalspawn in the Temple, however, her relationship with her siblings was very strained. They all wanted to be their father's favorite, especially Orin, who did not think Mythrae was worthy of her title.

Of course, she had planned to have Gortash as her husband when he became Archduke of Baldur's Gate so they could rule together, and also produce as many Bhaalspawn as father desired. Then, Mythrae was to kill Gortash, and become the rightful ruler of the city.

DURING GAME/AFTER THE ELDER BRAIN…

Serious Relationships:

After she escaped the Nautiloud, Mythrae didn't even give any thought to a potential serious relationship, as she was just trying to survive. However, she and Astarion grew very close, sharing similar traumas and feelings about the world. She didn't judge him for being a vampire, and he didn't judge her for the murderous urges, even after she tried to kill him. Their relationship further blossomed into a deep bond and they helped each other become better throughout their journey.

Their “First Time”:

Her first time (that wasn’t part of a planned attack) didn’t even happen until Act 3 with Astarion, after they had defeated Cazador for good. He had tried to seduce her before (Act 1 romance scene), but the trauma of her previous attack prevented her from moving forward, which the memory of it was explicitly shown to Astarion via tadpole connection.

But by the time Cazador was defeated, both of them felt comfortable and ready to share their first time with each other at his gravestone (and it was great. might write about it someday)!

Work:

After she rejected Bhaal, Mythrae found herself with nowhere to go. So, she and Astarion begin life in the Underdark together as mercenaries for hire. With her powerful spells and his sharpshooter skills, they become infamous throughout the land, with some Lolth-sworn drow ending up on the hunt after them. But as long as they have each other, they’ll be more than happy.

Leaving Home:

It wasn’t the easiest decision, but Mythrae's biggest concern is Astarion living somewhere where he did not have to worry about the sun scorching his skin, so she told him that she would be willing to leave Baldur's Gate to be with him in the Underdark, where he would be safe.

Aging:

Nowadays, the thought of her aging comes up a bit more often. She knows that she can still live for hundreds of years with Astarion by her side, but at the same time, one day she will die, and he will live on without her. But she doesn't want him to think about it yet, so she tells herself it's a conversation they'll have further down the line.

Finding Your Place:

At first, Mythrae was cautious to move to the Underdark with Astarion, truth be told. Lua’nna had never taken her there, though she shared her stories of her adventures down there. The only time she had gone were with her other companions on the way to Baldur’s Gate, and it was… a bit much, truth be told. But with her love by her side, they are able to find a home to make their own, getting into the routine of mercenary work and traveling through the lands to find any vampires that might need their help.

Starting A Family (Found or Otherwise):

To her, the party members she’d grown so close to over so little time had become her found family. Sure, she and Astarion may not be able to see them as often as they’d like, but they continue to gather every six months so they can catch up on their lives and remember the good (and bad) times. Mythrae also kept correspondence with Gale often, as he is researching the cure for vampirism at Blackstaff Academy.

Mythrae and Astarion know the risks that having a dhampir child could bring and the potential of bringing about another Bhaalspawn to the world, so they decide to not have children. They do have a sphinx cat, named Fluffington, that they treat like their own child, though. They’re the kind of cat parents to dress their pet up in cute little outfits for holidays and festivals!

#bg3backstorybash #bg3 tav #bg3 durge #the dark urge #bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #tav: mythrae #oc: mythrae

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lovesick-boyz · 1 year ago

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hi.

well… after being stalked and harassed for the past couple of months, i am finally back!! stay tuned lol i got some fics lined up for y’all 😁

anyway if you read that first line and thought to yourself “WTF?!?”, here is the full story for my curious readers (just a warning, it’s long and i rant a lot):

a couple of months ago, i started getting tagged by random accs on tiktok and insta that posted vids accusing me of the most random and heinous shit. honestly, it just baffled me the first time i saw them bc they made absolutely no sense whatsoever.

when the first ones popped up, i just blocked them thinking it was a random troll and went on with my life.

but then i kept getting spammed by other accs with new posts where they not only involved me but also my friends, and accused us as a friend group of being horrible ppl.

i had enough (i can’t even remember how many accs i blocked) and deleted ALL my social media apps for a while (i.e. more than a couple of months, oops) and basically isolated myself from ppl so that i could focus on other things to distract me (i ended up making daily exercise a habit so ig that’s one good thing that’s come out of this lol, i also rewatched all the marvel movies in timeline order hehe). i wish i continued writing so i could’ve at least had more content to share by now, but i was feeling so negative and pissed that i couldn’t even bring myself to write anything (i even uninstalled notion from my phone and that’s where i keep all my drafts and fic ideas)

i only found out the full situation less than a week ago when i reinstalled tiktok bc i missed it, only to find more burner accs harassing me. i finally had enough so i reinstalled insta to rant about it on my spam acc for my friends to see and to my surprise a couple of them knew who it was and explained the whole situation to me.

it was my first time interacting with ppl outside of my family in months lol, when i tell y’all i isolated myself i really did mean it 🙃 my irl friends didn’t even know anything out of the ordinary was happening bc i’m notorious in my friend group for going off the grid for months at a time bc of how bad my mental health gets sometimes, they know to just let me be and let me deal with it alone bc they understand that’s how i work best. (they won’t see this bc they don’t know this tumblr exists but i wanna apologise to my dear friends for my disappearing acts, my bad, i love y’all for being so understanding and still being my friend after all this time 🫶🏼)

anyway, it turns out the culprit was this guy that my friend had rejected previously and he’s so bitter and hateful that he decided to harass me bc he knew i was one of her bffs (the ppl he targeted were the ones in her closest friend group which included me)

but here’s the kicker: I’VE ONLY TALKED TO THIS GUY TWICE!! AND EACH TIME WE TALKED FOR LESS THAN 5 MINS ABOUT IRRELEVANT SHIT!!! WHY AM I INVOLVED?? YOU DON’T KNOW ME!!!!

youtube

when my friend found out she was so surprised and appalled that he was harassing me too, bc him, my friend, and the other ppl he targeted all go to the same college together (and i’m the only one in the friend group that goes to a different college, so to reiterate once again: this guy barely knows me! the last time we spoke was at my friends bday party 3 years ago!! he’s literally insane!)

she knew he was harassing my other friends since they’re all in the same school and know him in person, she didn’t think i would be involved too and i couldn’t believe i was.

anyway, i just wanted to rant about this whole thing bc i’m having a hard time processing it tbh. i hope that guy rots in hell and also finds a job there bc he was acting hella unemployed like who has time for this? he made me feel so confused and paranoid for weeks and i hope he gets all the karma he deserves in the universe.

y’all wanna know something funny tho? i started writing a changmin stalker fic in june, way before this whole situation happened. life imitates art ig 🤪 anyway i finally finished it and i’m gonna release that fic next after i fine tune it, at least now it’ll be somewhat realistic lmaoooo

#cupid speaks #literally the most ridiculous thing that’s ever happened to me #i went from having the most fun time in 🇵🇭 only to come back to this #i should’ve stayed at my grandma’s house that had no wifi for the rest of the summer instead 😒#anyways i’m going to sleep i’ll check back in the morning

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bereft-of-frogs · 1 year ago

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ao3 wrapped [writers edition] how about 10,11,29, or 30?

10. What work was the quickest to write?

It was either closure or the lack thereof, which I technically wrote 2 drafts of and posted over a weekend but I did have that idea kicking around since 2021, so from concept to post it was probably either with teeth we've come this far or I feel like I'm borrowing all my time, because I came up with the ideas for whumptober and finished them. All the others existed as idea bulletpoints or little jotted down paragraphs before Sept 1 but those two were completely contained.

11. What work took you the longest to write?

While the dark ocean duology did take me all summer after I'd initially thought it would take a couple weeks tops, the winner has to be the first chapter of omens and all kinds of signs which was at 60% done for 2 years. I honestly don't know that I would have finished it if I hadn't decided to post it serially, so yeah little plug for writing serially. It was really just to get back on the horse after having an off year last year.

29. Favorite line/passage you wrote this year?

I really like this bit where Greez is like 'wtf' in 'I feel like I'm borrowing all my time':

This all feels like an overwhelming, insurmountable task. Greez wishes he hadn’t been chosen for it. He knows how important it is, wants desperately to find the kid before he can be hurt, but it really feels beyond him. He misses the Mantis, misses the rest of the crew, even the little droid and the stowaway bogling. He misses feeling like he understands his place in the universe. His mind struggles to keep up with how long it’s been. A couple of hours? Days? Five years but wound in reverse? He knows it shouldn’t feel like five years, but it kind of does. It feels like the warmth and safety of home is something he lost long ago, or perhaps never had. Now that Cal’s missing from his proper place, it all feels like none of it ever actually happened. It both exists in his memory and doesn’t, like a distant dream. Greez shivers. All of this is very, very wrong. Cere is staring at the fire again, an inscrutable look on her face. Greez decides to fill the silence with: “I guess we have to hope they didn’t take him to Nur.” Cere whirls on him abruptly. “Of course we have to hope they didn’t take him to Nur.” “I just mean that…” Greez swallows. It’s started raining harder, raising more steam and smoke from the fires. The smoke makes his eyes sting. Cere waits for an explanation, brow furrowed. “Don’t we have to avoid…I just mean…you shouldn’t meet yourself, right? That’s one of the rules of this sort of thing, isn’t it? At least, it was in the cheesy dramas my grandmother was always watching…” “Oh.” Cere turns back to the fire. “I hadn’t considered that.”

Apologies for the length of it but I like it both for the 1) 'it shouldn't feel like five years but it does' bit, just leaning into time travel being WEIRD. Also I think I slipped up a couple times responding to comments and referred to 'timelines' but as best I can come up with for fitting time travel into SW worldbuilding....there are no alternate timelines really. Because time isn't really...real. So Greez is right, once things have started changing, they change in the future as well so it all both does and doesn't exist at the same time...idk if I ever went further on the time travel concept it would be along these lines, rather than having distinct alternate timelines.

2) the very human moment of filling an awkward silence with the exact wrong thing. XD It's such a little thing but I ended up LOVING the "Greez decided to fill the silence with" dialogue tag. XD

30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?

I'm going to answer this one with a screenshot of my ideas list I found while cleaning it up this weekend:

I don't want to sound like too much of a curmudgeon (though the ship has probably said on that one)*, but I can't stress enough how surprising it was that one of my biggest 'nope, would never write' became one of my favorite fics of the year. Now I feel like I can't said I'd never write something. Growth?

(*and just to stress, like...for me writing/reading, don't take this personally. I use the exclude tags but please don't take this as like a judgement, I just have never really liked them and got a bit grumpy about just how popular they were when I came back to reading Star Wars fic a couple years ago)

[ ao3 wrapped ]

#ao3 wrapped #ok i have to go continue cleaning but feel free to send more :-)#thanks for asking!

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plantdonutwrites · 2 years ago

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happy new year! sooo some context: i started my own 365 days of writing challenge (i created myself for myself, so i can’t link to it) and i thought i would post at least some of them on here when they are directly relevant to one of my fandom ocs, since that is what this blog is for. most of them are just going to be (kind of unedited) streams of consciousness or little passages or small scenes without much context outside of them. so, without further ado, enjoy!

🌿 🍩 🌿 🍩 🌿

Laying the large and worn down coat on the back of her desk chair, Min-ji took a step back and properly inspected the old thing. It had been her uncle’s, and he had lent it to her a few years ago, and for whatever reason, he never asked for it back. She wasn’t quite sure if it was an oversight on his part, or if it was simply an article of clothing he wasn’t particularly attached to. Either way, by all pretenses in her mind, the coat was hers, and it almost never left her person. The old thing was a deep, cool toned brown with half a dozen deep pockets, possibly more than that. The collar of it was creased but in a way that flattered the rest of its shape; whenever Min-ji washed it, there was a very obvious line on the collar where it was folded, and she made no attempt to change it. It had a sturdy zipper and a few buttons that snapped into place, and the cuffs were thick and ribbed as well as the bottom of the coat. Obviously, being a men’s coat, it was rather large on her, swallowing up her form and reaching down to mid-thigh, the cuffs easily covering her hands when she wanted them to.

Min-ji was no seamstress, but she did her best to keep the coat in good condition, learning the bare minimum steps it took to sew up small holes that developed in the seams of the pockets or the sleeves. The coat felt like its own person, some days; someone who always embraced her and quite literally always had her back. The coat, to her, embodied safety and security. She thought back to when she first became closely acquainted to it… the day or at least the week of the subway bombing. Many parts of the timeline of her ‘accident’ was still blurry to her, but she remembered when her aunt and uncle visited along with her cousin Yunsol, her uncle had left his coat with her, grumbling about how hospitals were always so cold. And she was very, very cold back then. How much of it was due to her severe injury, her mental state, or the actual functionality and frequency of the hospital’s air conditioning system, she couldn’t exactly say.

She remembered being helped into the coat, how the interior fabric was so warm and how it had absorbed the smells of her uncle’s cologne and her aunt’s cooking… how one arm fitted into a sleeve as the other remained empty. The sensation, or lack thereof made her on edge, nauseous. But that hospital room was so… so cold. She remembered Yunsol used a couple of her hair clips to fold and tuck the empty sleeve of the jacket so that it remained out of the way, unobtrusive… out of Min-ji’s immediate line of sight. The coat also felt incredibly heavy, even as the pillows behind her back kept her upright despite her complete dead weight on them. The coat felt like an interlude and an epilogue all at once. Even now, thinking about its proper introduction into her life made her uneasy. She picked the coat off her chair and hugged it to her chest, tight enough to feel the zipper and buttons press uncomfortably into her ribs and chest. She inhaled deeply, burying her face into the coat. Nowadays, it smelt of old paper, something like vanilla, and either cooking spices or lemon-like varnish.

Min-ji went to sit on her bed, and dropped onto it heavily with the coat in her lap and in her hands. One of them felt the material of the coat while the other only presented that it could, in theory, if you didn’t look too closely. She looked at her left hand, splaying the cybernetic fingers there and rotating it to scan along her wrist. A conscientious inhale as she slowly lifted her arm, not made of flesh until it hit her mid upper arm. It was as close to her skin tone as the builders of her prosthetic could manage—however, no one could make up for the fact that alloy and metal and plating wouldn’t properly reflect the way flesh looked in person. More rigid, slightly more luster, less soft and curved. She smiled faintly as she recalled Yunsol’s suggestion to draw a few moles on the prosthetic limb, to more closely resemble her right arm. Part of her wished that she had thought to make that request before her surgery, if it was even doable to begin with. Though… even only a few mere years later, cybernetic prosthetics continued to advance and be honed in ways she still barely understood. Perhaps at her next appointment, she could broach the subject; a few small cosmetic changes would surely be on the table in some way. Plus she didn’t know if permanent markers would quite appease her occasional dysphoria.

A prominent buzzing resounded from under one of her bed pillows, and Min-ji leaned and reached back to rifle a hand through them until she found what she was looking for: a shell-cell. She sat up again and inspected the surface of it before opening it up and checking the group chat. She smiled as a wave of warm calm washed over her, the stream of emojis and all-cap messages bringing her comfort in the way watching loved ones from a distance always did. Another message separate from the group chat caught her attention, and she backed out and opened it up. It was Leo asking if she would be ready to be picked up in a half hour. Min-ji blinked and glanced out her window, brows rising as she realized it was already sunset. She smiled lopsidedly and hummed, nodding to herself and typing out a text to answer him in the affirmative. Placing the shell-cell on her bed, she stood up again and pulled the coat on, with both sleeves. She picked up her guitar and placed it in its case, setting it on the bed as well and beginning to get ready for whatever evening ahead of her and her friends would unfold.

#tmnt oc #tmnt ocs #tmnt 2003 oc #oc: min~ji seong #pdw: min~ji seong #f: tmnt 2k3 #pdwrites

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agentreynard · 1 year ago

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Couple weeks ago I posted a little Red White and Royal Blue fic, and the other day I made a royal family family tree with, yes, the extra members I referred to in it, but also (obvs) those who appear in the book and the movie, and I think it can be made to comply with either canon with only a small number of slight adjustments.

Readers who are not interested in my fic will disregard everyone on the right side of the diagram, beginning with Princess Louise b. 1964 and all the way to the edge of the page. But otherwise, reading from the bottom up, check it out:

The film calls Philip Duke of Cambridge, but the book seems to suggest Cambridge is what Henry will be created duke of when he marries, so I gave Philip the dukedom of Kendal instead. (The film also makes Henry the middle child, so swap them round if you want.)

I believe making Catherine the Princess of Wales and her late husband the Duke of Edinburgh works for both the film and the book; in the book Henry says they all used Wales as a surname at school, but even if a monarch with no sons created their eldest daughter Princess of Wales they wouldn’t make her husband Prince of Wales, so Arthur can be imagined to have accepted the dukedom of Edinburgh out of necessity—so when film!Henry tells the kids in the oncology ward that his mother is the Duchess of Edinburgh, he’s not wrong (I mean, why would he get his own mother’s title wrong, but you know what I mean).

I’ve made Henry’s grandparents James and Mary so they can be either King James III (shown here) as in the film or Queen Mary III as in the book. (She wasn’t numbered in the book, but there have been two Queens regnant Mary, so.) I threw in John II for book!Henry when he yells at Philip that they had a great-uncle who abdicated because he was a Nazi; he’d have had to abdicate because he had been a Nazi or else he’d have had to have been much older than James Or Mary, but that’s fine. Lop him off the tree if you’re film-only and don’t care about that line in the book.

Take the previous generation or leave it; I needed that layer to get the extant Cumberlands into the royal family whose schedules Alex was looking up, but they’re not necessary for the film or the book, so it’s fine to stretch the generations out a few years if you like and make Helena Victoria the kids’ great-grandmother rather than great-great; then you can give her husband whichever surname you prefer, Mountchristen (book, and assume it hyphenated with Windsor after the royal family changed it to Windsor in WWI as happened in real life) or Hanover-Stuart (film, and I think that name had to come back in from outside, because in a world that has the Victoria and Albert Museum the Hanover and [especially] Stuart dynasties were both long gone).

Queen Helena Victoria is the furthest-back person I invented myself; I made her the matriarch of this fictitious (counterfactual, nonhistorical, whatever) royal family by suggesting that in RWRB world (a) Prince Albert Victor, the eldest son of Edward VII, did not die in 1892 as he did in ours and (b) Edward VII himself did die of the appendicitis that in our world only delayed his coronation ceremony by a few months. That gives us a solid year of Edward VII cementing the role he’d pretty well established for the whole royal family in his long tenure as Prince of Wales (he really instituted the “appearance” as we now know it) but gets him out of the way eight years earlier than in real life to make way for his fictitious heirs.

I have allowed this Prince Albert Victor, who isn’t dead after all, to marry his true love, Hélène of Orléans, who I assume in this timeline was allowed to convert to C of E to marry him rather than forbidden by both her father and the Pope to leave the Catholic church. That being the case, it could be that his younger brother Prince George—known to the real world as George V—would have married Mary of Teck (who in real life had, before she married George, been engaged to Albert Victor at the time of his death) and had the same children and grandchildren he had in real life, only nobody cares? But even more likely is that Mary of Teck never entered into the matter, because Albert Victor married Hélène so Mary wasn’t called for, and this fictitious spare George married Marie of Edinburgh, whom he proposed to first. Or maybe he died young, rather than surviving typhoid as he did in real life in 1892 around the same time pneumonia got his brother. In any event, given a surviving Albert Victor, George’s descendants would be as peripheral by now to the fictitious royal family as the descendants of Victoria’s younger children are to the real one. (That is, it’s probably been enough generations that they could marry back in, but otherwise, pfft.)

#hello again #red white and royal blue #fictitious royal family #fic by me

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lady-writes · 3 years ago

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Lykon is Hercules and also Odysseus and also the first werewolf and NO AMOUNT OF INST. RACISM WILL STOP ME FROM STANNING.

❤️🤟🏾🤟🏿 POC LOVE MONTH BEGINSSSS 🤟🏿 🤟🏾 ❤️

I know I’m starting late (for shame!) but this write up turned into a BEAST in ways I fully did not expect holy SHIIiiiiit….and in the interest of dealing with my own guilty conscience I’ll post sources later or if asked. BTW there be mild Force Multiplied spoilers with so....

SO LYKON THEN

Third Known Immortal, First Male Immortal, First Black Immortal and the Last of the Ancient Immortals.

I’m making all of my assumptions on Lykon based on the two most solid bits of background that we have for him 1) The Old Guard Through History featurette from Netflix and the few lines and panels that we get of Lykon in the Comics, particularly Issue 2 of Opening Fire and 4 of Force Multiplied.

What feels like forever ago now I dove headfirst into figuring out time and place for all of our Immortal family and getting an idea, primarily at first of how long Andy had truly been alone, but ultimately of where in time our other prehistoric/ancient immortals fell in the history of the world.

Opening Fire gives us the best bit of historical placement that any of the Ancients have.

All of the imagery that the comics give us of Lykon is undeniably Greek in its references.

So Perhaps that helmet in the cave was originally Lykon's, not Andy's (or Hector’s)?

Either way, since the timeline from the featurette actually provides a perfectly clear span of Lykon’s first lifetime, 359-332 BCE, I started there. Regarding Lykon’s first death we can be super specific, Thanks to the fact that the campaigns of Alexander the Great were so well documented we know Ya boi Alex the G and his armies laid siege to Gaza for 2 months. Gaza fell in late October, Alexander took Egypt without a fight at Pelusium in even later October and was in Memphis to be crowned Pharaoh of both kingdoms by November 14th. The trip from Gaza to Memphis had to have taken 3 weeks or less altogether.

Andy says that by a stroke of luck Lykon was only alone for “a couple weeks.” We see Lykon take an arrow through the neck in battle- presumably the wound that killed him. We next see Lykon, alone, in a posture that almost perfectly mimics Andy at the end of Force Multiplied, sitting inside the walls of Gaza. Alexander and his armies have presumably moved on, Lykon was left behind and that is the state that Andy finds him in sometime in between the 24th of October and the 14th of November 332 BCE.

Easter Egg: Despite the fact that Noriko and Andy aren’t supposed to meet in the comics canon for almost 1000 more years after Andy meets Lykon- here the homegirl is tits out and living her best life.

So those are the basic “facts” of the start of Lykon’s immortality….. What’s much more fun though (and 10 times as frustrating) is sussing out his origins and life/culture before he ended up fighting with Alexander.

When I first looked into Lykon’s probable lifespan to make my timeline,I did a bit of cursory looking at the sorts of racial divisions that might have been present in Ancient Greece and the results are deeply inconclusive. The simple fact of the matter is that the sheer weight of our modern, post Trans Atlantic Chattel Slave Trafficking perspective makes it impossible to get an accurate read on race relations in antiquity. Everything from the ingrained reaction that we have to the word “slave”, to the existing historical analysis that we have of first hand accounts up until approximately 1960-70 is vastly colored by the Eurocentric white supremacist views that have permeated western culture. I was pretty discouraged12345 by that, so I moved on to looking at other things that I could get lost in wikiholes on.

So with that in mind, when I started writing this I did my best to keep a distinctly neutral view of the few first hand accounts that I could find and a certain amount of patience.

That did not last because well… racism makes me mad.

In depth breakdown of the failings of academic documentation and HELLA Lykon thoughts/HCs/crack theories behind ze cut...

Looking for historical records of pre-colonial Africa, especially the many parts of Africa that aren’t North Africa, is a nightmare. Colonialism actively destroyed cultural heritage and history as part of its mission to assimilate people living in their own homelands into the mold of “civilized, moral” western society. Prehistory is even harder, because the accounts that would usually make up the register of prehistoric information are not only missing but have in many cases been actively overwritten. And then as a compounding factor a general lack of investment from academia in this area makes it crazy hard to find reputable resources. So any and all research has to be taken with a grain of salt and checked to see what interest the source might have had in portraying native populations and indigenous cultures as savages, whether backwards and primitive or the equally repugnant humble and noble.

It’s exhausting, considering I do this fandom shit for fun and still have a job and shit. But I like learning and I love cultures so I kept at it.

I made a couple basic assumptions that I think suit the general way the pattern of immortality appears to work. Lykon wouldn’t have been anyone particularly special, not broke, not rich and not necessarily singled out. All of our immortals are average joes amongst their neighbors and compatriots right up until they really aren’t.

So that meant the first thing I had to try and figure out was where black people were in Greece and how they were treated/ received. Which led to having even more questions to answer because the historical register is a mess and everything is disputed. The answer turned out to be, “BECAUSE TRADE ROUTES,” but I’m getting ahead of myself.

After a lot of tiresome reading about slavery and several instances of white and rare but equally annoying black nonsense I had my answer…. ish.

This is a pretty big digression from fandom fun for me by now. It’s more like a challenge has been posed to me by the internet. “Can you make a reasonable reconstruction of the life of one (1) black man in North West Africa in approx. 400 BCE?”

Ultimately there is a Massive Metaphorical Fucking Wall that drops down and effectively closes off the West Center and South African sub continents 3400 BCE and lasts until between 700 and 1100 CE. The 3400 BCE date more or less coincides with the point at which the Sahara reached its current state of desertification and is considered by historians to have been impassable. The historical focus on Egypt reflects this impassable state, for sure. Incidentally, this is also the period where groups start being referred to as civilizations and historical focus shifts from benchmark points for the human race as a whole to achievements that are being attributed to specific cultures.

It’s a 4,100-4,500 year long black hole in the center of world history.

Everything that happens beyond Egypt and Mediterranean North Africa during that time falls into a deeply frustrating contradictory state where pretty much all historians seem to agree that there were at minimum 10,000 distinct states and kingdoms of both centralized and decentralized societies, but none of them are considered to be of any sort of Empire or Civilization of note.

We know that by 1500 CE, barring areas that had been abandoned due to poor soil/lack of rainfall/otherwise inhospitable conditions, essentially ALL of Africa was populated and controlled by indigenous groups. The fact that the academic world at large understands this but still has not shifted its focus to filling in this crazy gap in the historical register of the world and its civilizations is a travesty and should be seen as an indelible embarrassment for any and every academic institution that claims to have any kind of historical or anthropological prominence.

Consider the following: We know that all of human life on this planet originated from the African continent. We know that the continent, which is the second largest landmass in the world, was fully settled and populated by 1500. We know that approximately 26.6 million human souls were callously and wantonly transported against their wills from that continent over ~800 years; a rough estimate of the African diasporas population today is almost 1.1 million people (1.3% of the world population). We know that 17.4% of the current global population is made up of the current inhabitants of Africa, the second most populated continent. And we have as a global culture written off 4,000+ years of that continent's history.

By comparison, the Mediterranean, accounting for approximately 3.88 percent of the current world population, has such a richly investigated history that there are entire academic departments devoted to studying specific pieces of its cultural register. Across 6 rigidly defined eras, spanning only 1,400 years, at multiple universities worldwide, culminating in a wealth of knowledge so inequitably balanced that it turns my stomach as I’m typing this.

The prehistoric Mediterranean, from an academic standpoint, ends at the 8th century BCE. For West, Central, South, and East Africa, everything before colonization is considered the prehistoric era reaching all the way to 1500 CE, in casual parlance.

It’s yet another atrocity that continues to be done against Africa and all of her people.

I’d be lying to say that I don’t have any skin in the game, I’m a first generation American Nigerian, of Yoruba/Esan ethnicity with immigrant parents. And I’m legit hungry to know more about the place and cultures that comprise my ethnic history.

But more so than that, I am fully aware of the sheer amount of work that I put into my attempts to recreate Andy’s background. I’m aware of the cultural richness that I’ve been able to imbue my research into Quynh with, despite similar but blessedly less severe issues. I’ve read an ungodly amount about 11th century Genoa and Tunisia. I would feel wretched presenting only the confirmed and verified info that I've found on Lykon, as minor a character as he may be. Because the history of west Africa and Africa at large deserves the same respect as Iran, Ukraine, Vietnam, Genoa and the Maghrib.

Lykon is portrayed in the comics as a generic “white” presumably Greek or Macedonian man. I have no idea if there was a reason for casting a black actor in his role in the movie, but even with all of this. I’m glad it shook out this way.

I’m miles away from sweet fandom serotonin now, but in a large way this is wholly the reason why things like TOG POC Love Month need to exist.

I didn’t mean to do this when I placed Lykon at the front of the month or when I sat down to start writing this post almost 7 days ago but it's painfully fitting.

ALL OF THAT BEING SAID…

This is what I’ve been able to find.

So, the same as Joe and Quynh and Nile, I based Lykon’s ethnic group on the identity of his actor. Michael Ward is Jamaican, so that meant finding out where the bulk of the enslaved people whose descendants make up the Jamaican population came from in the 17 and 1800’s and where their ancestors were in the 4th century BCE.

It got murky quick but in the spirit of The Old Guard, (which is 100% just semi-realist superhero fiction anyways) I chose to pick all of the best/most coincidental/ #PoeticCinema origins for Lykon. I did my best to stick to what simply makes sense for this character along with some cultural trivia that screamed out to me as shit that would be cool for Lykon, for my own HCs and also some shits and giggles.

In other words: If history won’t give me proper comprehensive information about cultures of the Horn of/Central/West Africa- I’LL MAKE MY OWN HISTORICAL CANON WITH BLACKJACK AND HOOKERS!!!!

Lykon, born in around 359 BCE, would have probably been descended from the Bafour people of the Neolithic era. According to their oral tradition, they were a settled people living in modern Western Sahara and Mauritania. In terms of physical evidence, it's likely that they were an accidentally Nomadic people gradually migrating southward as the climate got more arid during the late holocene era (3050 BCE).

The Bafour would have moved into the dhars (sandstone cliffs) of Southern Mauritania (now called the Tichitt-Walata and the Tagant cliffs) and establishing the stone settlements of Dhar Tichitt, Dhar Walata, Dhar Nema among others between 2500 BCE and 2000 BCE. At the time of settlement, these would have all been oasis areas. Archaeological testimony supports that they were among the first peoples on the continent to produce stone settlement civilizations.

As a way of dealing with the relatively catastrophic weather changes that brought them to the dhars, the Bafour developed a strategy of continuously shifting thier building sites away from the growing Sahara along with moving from the stone structures on the cliffs in the wet season to temporary lowland camps close to water sources in the dry season. As far as the social structure was concerned, the dominant theory is that the culture had a stratified social system involving polygamy or living with large amounts of extended family. Due to the increasingly inhospitable environment where fertile land and pasturage were at a premium, as the population grew they developed a relatively large-scale system governing organizations that can be seen as the precursors to the militarized hierarchical aristocracies that emerged in the same area several hundred years later. During this era, iron smelting and metallurgy started to spread and become common among the West African people (900 BCE). There’s not a conclusive answer as to where this knowledge came from; it was most likely an independent invention.

Dhar Tichitt was what we currently think was the earliest large-scale, complex organized society in West Africa, paving the way for future state formation in Africa. Some of these settlements had massive surrounding walls while others were less fortified but altogether hundreds of stone masonry settlements with clear street layouts have been found. These remnants of sites represent “a great wealth of rather spectacular prehistoric ruins” and “perhaps the most remarkable group of Neolithic settlements in the world” according to some archaeologists.

Archaeologists have found art depicting and/ or physical evidence of the following:

houses with enclosed, turiform gardens and courtyards (ca 1894-1435 BCE)

Hoes and fish hooks made of bone

Millet flour and semolina

Reservoirs and dams to manage water from nearby rivers (wadis).

Burial mounds

art of three trotting giraffes

art of man sitting on an ox with a lasso, bow, or shield

art of man using a throwing weapon on an oryx

art of person holding a basket

art of oxen pulling chariots or carts

iron smelting furnaces and slag heaps

The Bafour might have been the first to domesticate African rice and definitely domesticated millet and sorghum. There is also evidence that their patterns and methods of herding spread into Eastern and Southern Africa and the pastoral cultures that exist today.

Most importantly to Lykon’s story, the Bafour had a copper-based agro-pastoral society that traded in jewelry and semi-precious stones from distant parts of the Sahara and Sahel, establishing pathways for what would become the Trans-Saharan trade route in the early CE. In response to the new opportunities afforded by north-south diversity in ecosystems across deserts, grasslands, and forests, trade developed with people to the north and south, with the Bafour offering the meat and grain and possibly strong but rudimentary fabrics. Their desert nomad and forest dwelling trade partners would have supplied salt and higher quality fabric along with furs wood and iron respectively

In the middle of the Neolithic period (~550 BCE) another intense dry spell started the cascading collapse of the Neolithic agro-pastoral system at large, leading to the abandonment of the dhars and the start of a new migration pattern. Dhar Néma, the last built and inhabited of the Neolithic Dhar sites collectively referred to as the Tichitt culture. As the most southeastern-most of these sites, Dhar Nema may have served as a transitory area for the Bafour people /Tichitt Culture as the area Dhar Tichitt started to be abandoned due to the people trying to get away from the continually encroaching desert. Additionally there was a dominant theory that most scholars are beginning to challenge due to a clear bias, that the Bafour people were conquered by an unspecified Berber population from the north. Those Bafour who continually fled southward would be the ancestors of the Soninke people who are most commonly associated with the Dhars and Tichitt culture. This transition from the Bafour to Soninke people and the Tichitt culture that they straddle is one of the many points left unclear by a lack of historical attention.

Regardless, Dhar Nema’s existence and placement point directly to the last stop on the historical journey that has been decoding Lykon’s origin’s. Dhar Néma’s governmental and physical organization was also a likely precursor to the proto-egalitarian civilization of Djenne-Djenno in Mali, which came into being around 250 BCE, and is still populated now. The Soninke people are an offshoot of the larger Mande ethnic group that is the parent culture for no less than 16 ethnic groups on the Gold Coast area of West Africa.

The Soninke are largely known for being the founders of Djenne-Djenno in 250 BCE, but for our purposes we’d be looking at the Soninke people living at and around Dhar Nema in the specific area of Bou Khzama. This is now the twilight of the era of the Tichitt culture, which is considered to have ended in 200 BCE, but before the existence of Djenne-Djenno.

There are two major milestones in this period that would be relevant to Lykon’s life. First, with a century of environmental migration starting in around 400 BCE we get the first recorded contact between West Africa and the Mediterranean, specifically the culture of Carthage, and mutually beneficial trade begins. This trade involved the export of gold, cotton, metal, and leather in exchange for copper, horses, salt, textiles, and beads. The second milestone is the emergence of the Soninke people themselves. By the 1st millennium BCE, environmental migration has caused the Bafour people to fade from the historical register and the Mandé ethnic group is beginning to make itself known. Beginning in 1000 BCE, the early stages of a massive migration referred to as the Bantu Expansion begins. As various people groups migrated away from the Sahara to the east as well as down the West African coast they began to break into groups that would form new ethnic groups. Two of those groups were the Mandé and the Akan people of Ghana.

The Akan people made up the vast majority of indigenous Africans shipped to Jamaica as slaves so this is more or less where I decided to place Lykon. That was the final end of that starting thread that I started this whole thing by pulling on.

The Mandé languages belong to a divergent branch of the Niger–Congo family, and are divided into two primary groups: East Mandé and West Mandé. The Mandé peoples and the Akan people share a long history of trade and many similar cultural elements.

It's likely that the Mandé and Akan people intermixed, considering they were culturally coming from the same ancestral groups, but there's nothing to actually verify that.

However the Mandé people and their subgroups have some fantastically appropriate qualities as far as Lykon’s background is concerned.

The Mandé are noted as having been among the first on the continent to produce woven textiles (by a process known as strip-weaving), and as well as the founders of the Ghana Empire and Mali Empire, as well as being responsible for the expansion of the Songhai Empire across West Africa. Historically, fabric has been used as a form of money in African cultures, a fact that European colonizers took advantage of to devastating effect, so it's not a reach to assume that this tradition goes back to the era of Trans-Saharan trade. It actually might have formed the basis of a valuation system for the use of fabric as money at some point.

I took note of the Mandé tradition of fabric arts, specifically because I’ve seen the HC previously that Lykon may have come from a family of weavers. The blue strip of cloth wound around Lykon’s spear (which can be seen in the historical featurette as well as Lykon’s promotional images from that feature) is distinctly reminiscent of adire, an indigo resist dyeing art that was wildly valuable, generally done in a familial setting and is still produced today. The earliest existing piece of adire is a men's hat from around 1100 CE but oral accounts and common sense indicate that the method is considerably older. Notably, the weaving tradition was seen as exclusively masculine work while the dying of fabrics was exclusively feminine.

In addition to this bit of headcanon influenced placement the fact that Lykon is born during this particular transitory phase makes the Soninke subgroup of the Mandé people a very interesting choice specifically due to the existence of a specialized ethnic group of note in the Soninke Wangara.

Across the Mandé diaspora there is a notable tiered system of socio economic classes: Nobles, Farmer/Vassals, and skilled professionals. In the Soninke culture there is a fourth particular class that in Lykon’s time would have been treated as a cross between the noble and professional classes: the Wangara traders.

The Soninke Wangara eventually operated all throughout West Africa Sahel-Sudan fostering regionally organized mercantile trade networks and were referred to later as "[one who] engages in trade and travels from one horizon to another.” But originally, they were known as both the vendors and the secret keepers of the gold veins that would eventually make the Gold Coast famous in the medieval period on account of “the great quantities and good quality of that metal.”

The Wangara were noted for their honesty and industry and were instrumental in setting the basis for what would become the Ghana, Mali, and Songhai Empires in the coming centuries. In particular, Herodotus tells of silent trade between Carthage and unspecified regions to its south. If true, trade with Carthage possibly started as early as the 6th century BCE. In Lykon’s time they made contact with almost all West African people groups at the time and would have been facilitators of trade between them. Long distance trade contributed to the development of an ethos of migration among the Soninke, arguably making them the most traveled people of the whole continent.

The decline of Carthage after the Punic Wars would have left the Wangara in need of new business partners since Carthage kept their source of African gold secret- a vital tradition for the Wangara to protect their monopoly. By the time Lykon was an adult, the Wangara gold traders would be operating out of the progenitor city of Jenne, controlling the gold trade between the goldfields, their African neighbors to the south and east and the outside world at large. The geographic location of the Soninke/Wangara/ Mandé people at this time, between the Sahara and the Sahel, would place them in an ideal position for access to trade routes from their ecological zones into the West African forest, East African plains/grasslands and the North African desert and beyond in an considerable advancement of the same trade network that their ancestors developed.

In the same sense that the Soninke Wangara were known as the protectors and purveyors of one of the most valuable natural resources of the area- the Wangara were also referred to as courtiers to nobility. Based on that description, it seemed likely to me that there may be some element of martial training that these people may have also undergone to make them a more formidable or even simply an equal threat to those who may present a threat to the ruling class or the trading ability of the Soninke people.

In the same way that Andy’s immediate associations are to horses, and Quynh’s are to water and the color red, Lykon’s could be to trade and gold, along with perhaps weaving, iron smelting or the indigo trade.

Lykon would have been a kid who grew up in a large family of pastoral weavers and dyers or possibly crafters of some other type. Perhaps his family had a history of contributing to the work of the Wangara class or maybe Lykon opted to become a part of that tradition in an attempt to see more of the world outside of his settlement and its way of life. The Lykon who we briefly see, seems to be quite the adventurous type after all. He probably trained as a caravan guard to protect his people’s products and wealth. As he begins to travel and experience a more multicultural life, maybe he decided to explore further away from his home.

Depending on his family, he might have been one of too many sons or maybe he simply wanted to get away from the place he grew up and realized that becoming a trader was an ideal way to do that.

It’s not unlikely that he might have been sent to a trading outpost on the Egyptian coast and decided to join up with Alexander’s army to see more of the world. He’d be more than equipped by his culture for long journeys on foot or riding.

Maybe his caravan was ambushed and the survivors of the attack were sold as fighters along with the goods. Maybe he got arrested or into debt over the course of his travels and was press ganged into military service.

One way or another he ends up in a hoplite citizen army. The general makeup of such and army would be people not at all dissimilar from Lykon himself: Merchants, farmers, and artisans, but most of those people would be untrained. We don’t know what type of member of the guard Lykon was a part of: the experienced fighters or the “I don't know how I got here but it was Not My Intention.” Regardless we do know that Lykon was on the March with Alexander the Great.

That finally brings us back to Lykon in the Mediterranean where Andy finds him.

As far as Lykon possibly settling in Greece, particularly with regard to the way he’d be received by Greek culture, he’d be treated perfectly normal so far as I can tell. Ancient Greeks didn’t see in black and white as we do. They saw Free or Servile, and were relatively free of melanin-based prejudice. The Greeks also thought that the African continent more or less ended after the Sahara.

And the catchall term they used for every dark person who walked outta the Sahara at this point in history was “Aethiopians".

After Alexander the Great dies in 323 BCE there’s an increased knowledge among Greek people of Nubia (in modern Sudan), Egypt’s neighboring kingdom along the lower Nile. Cosmopolitan metropolises, including Alexandria in the Nile Delta, and others on the East Coast and Horn of Africa become centers where significant Greek and African populations are living together. Prior to that though the only contact that the Greeks had with “Aethiopians" was as traders. And the thing is there is hard evidence that the ancient Greeks REALLY FUCKING LOVED BLACK PEOPLE.

From Jstor

Think of teenagers plastering their walls with boy bands…. Or even just the way people always marvel a little when a distinct new accent joins a group of people speaking. Except obviously you can’t shut your skin color up so everyone will stop looking at you funny. Essentially, the Greeks made first contact with New PoC for the first time in their history and completely lost their chill.

It is worth noting that the Greek and eventually Roman fascination with black people did get REAL fucked up, particularly when it began to form the backbone of the system that became the infamous Trans Atlantic Murder Machine Slave Trade. Continental slave trade of Africans within Africa became the exchange of slaves from different nations for the novelty of seeing/being served by people who looked different. This happened in BOTH directions for a time. Using black bodies as currency for goods on the Mediterranean market became a thing. It is VERY important to note that the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade is nothing like the Indian (Ocean)/Atlantic Slave Trade (which is distinct from the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade) that came into being in the 1000’s and lasted into the 1400’s. But it would also be disingenuous to say that it didn’t contribute.

By 5 CE the Trans-Saharan trade route that Lykon would have traveled ~300 years earlier had expanded to account for the trade of black slaves to Rome directly from West Africa. Black people were expensive and fancy ~exotic household slaves who would have worked off an indenture and then regained their freedom and assimilated into the population. This was the expectation of slavery, more or less world wide up until it became necessary to invent racism to ensure the perpetual existence of free labor. One of the more well-known examples of this is the mixing of the East, South and Central Africans into the people of the Iberian peninsula.

But anyways THAT’S NOT HAPPENING YET!!!!

So when Merchant/Trader Lykon comes to town, buys wares, sells wares and pays proper taxes, no one has a problem with him. Even if Lykon entered Greece as a slave or prisoner it’s far more likely that he was treated better than his “Greek looking” compatriots than worse by nature of simply looking different.

For the geek in all of us I did far too much looking at the gear Lykon would have had, because Michael Ward’s choice (I hope) to play Lykon as a reckless dude who’s too cool for a shirt is a delight for my eyes but also like…. The man was a soldier at one point, he’d know not to go into battle with all that exposed skin.

Looking at his armor and arms when we see him with the army, he’s almost certainly a Hoplite soldier and an elite one at that.

(Note the decorated shield, chest armor, and helm. Some money went into that gear at the very least)

If Lykon was the kind of guy who loved a good fight it's entirely possible that he worked to become a Hetairoi, one of the elite cavalry that Alexander himself chose to ride with in battle. It's equally likely that after a few battles where Lykon performed better than average he might have gotten noticed and drafted into the ranks of the _. But what we see in the comics is a man who looks to have plenty of experience and some rather nice armor.

The hoplites were primarily represented by free citizens – propertied farmers and artisans – who were generally able to afford a linen armour along with a spear and short sword. The wealthier members of this group might be wearing bronze armour instead but would otherwise be outfitted the same. Comics Lykon is armed very similarly to the Hetairoi heavy infantry who wielded weapons like the single-ended spear called a xyston, meant to be used from horseback along with a kopis, xiphos, and secondary standard issue hoplite spear called the dory. They got ya boi armed up! So even though we never see Lykon on horseback, it's a fair guess he was part of that upper echelon of soldiers.

For my personal headcanons, I like to think that Lykon has a perfectly comfortable life as a merchant and when the time comes to go to war for Alexander, not only is he pumped to go (he’s only been training his whole life right? And he’ll get to see so much MORE of the world!!) but he has the funds for the sweet armor we see in the comic. Once his CO’s see that this guy is actually TRAINED and CAN RIDE??? Bye-bye Hoplite, Hello Hetairoi, it's time for some ~Destiny. Our dude Lykon is tearing it up as heavy infantry in Alexander’s army one fateful October day when he takes an arrow to the throat and dies, changing his life 5EVA

A note on the movie continuity- The scene where Lykon dies in the movie is meant to be happening sometime in the 1200’s in central Asia, based on shooting notes and the like…. That directly contradicts the Netflix featurette which is again weirdly precise about Lykon in particular. The 1200’s date for his final death splits the difference between the featurette and the comic which states that Lykon dies in the 1400’s during the various wars between Italian city states. This particular continuity snarl introduces yet another fun potential bump in the guard’s history: Joe and Nicky and Lykon…. Did they ever meet? Did NicoJoe dream of Lykon as they made their way to Andromaquynh(kon) only to have him suddenly disappear from their minds? Did NicoJoe dream of Andy and Quynh’s terror as their brother in arms / lover bled out inexplicably and wake up to clutch each other close terrified by what they had witnessed and praying for the first time in a century (or more perhaps) that somehow this dream was less true than all the others they had dreamed thus far?

Just food for thought

Speaking of which, all that stuff above? It’s all reasonable and cool I guess, but here’s some Mary Sue Ass shit for Lykon because WHY SHOULDN’T HE BE A FUCKING DEMI GOD?!?!

There are whole bunch of semi-mythical Greeks who could arguably been described as black and therefore could be based on myth, legend or hearsay about Lykon.

Odysseus, Achilles, and Memnon are all in varying places referred to as black/wooly haired/or darkened. Memnon in particular is supposedly from an Ethiopian kingdom

Herakles/Hercules is depicted as black in art dated to 510 BCE. Various legends and myths about Herakles can be attributed to translations of earlier Egyptian myths. If Lykon got up to any famous fighting exploits perhaps he may have been called Herakles reborn? I would personally love to see Andy and Quynh scoffing about this

In accounts of the battles at Troy there are 3 different Lycon’s who get killed in battle. Not subtle my dude…

Also Lycon: one of the leaders of the satyrs who joined the army of Dionysus in his campaign against India because why be a person if you can have horns instead?!

For any Lykuynh(???) lovers out there: please take this lovely myth about Omphale to go along with the Herakles tidbit. She became the mistress of the hero Heracles for the period of a year during which he was required to pay her via servitude, which writers and artists obviously wasted no time in exploring sexual roles and erotic themes. The entire thing reads like Lykon may have lost a bet, and I would LOVE to read that story.

Across West Africa, forges are considered to be female, and the act of smelting iron is equated to the gestation period. Thus the male smith is often considered the “husband of the forge.” Though women are involved in many aspects of the metallurgic process, they almost never work the forge. Interesting given the fact that Quynh could also be a student of metallurgy

And speaking of myth theres of course Lyacon the fucking OG WEREWOLF and Lycon the actual guy who was a king of a place somewhere or smthg. I have no idea about the timing for any king shit and I would never accuse the Best Bean Lykon of cannibalism BUT the fact that there are not 10,000 stories about Lykon in canon being a werewolf and doing only god knows what??? A CRIME

I also like to think that maybe there’s an alternate universe where somehow Lykon staying alive stopped the whole damn Trans-Atlantic slave trade and chattel slavery from happening. Especially because the timeline given for his death in the comics and the unconfirmed Asiatic battle, are RIGHT as slavery in Africa is about to transition into its final and worst phase. Maybe if he he’d been alive between the 1100’s and the 1500’s he would have put his foot down and dragged his team to go burn every seafaring vessel that the Dutch East India tea freaks, Muslim slavers, and Portugal had between them and helped East Africa get some forbidden cities shit going on. #Wakanda

(Which of course raises this question: how did Nile’s parents meet, and where did Nile grow up in this alternate universe where her ancestors weren’t kidnapped and forced to build white people’s wealth in North America?)

And a final question that truly keeps popping into my head:

Do the Guard get new people at the moment of massive culture paradigm shifts? It’s got to be that or near to minor revolutions in travel. All of our immortals match both of those respective categories and I am inordinately fond of the travel theory if for no other reason than to think about SPACE PIRATE! Nile.

So that is my sojourn into history and the full story of the life that Lykon might have lived. Go forth and make canon for the homie cuz God, knows Nile could use a black immortal friend.

#TOG POC Love Fest #the old guard #tog meta #Lykon #meta post #racism in academia #institutional racism #africa #prehistory #long post #ITS FINALLY FUCKING FINISHED HOLY SHIT #now its Quynhs turn XD

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flames-bring-a-ton-of-ash · 3 years ago

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Irresistible Danger - Part 60

Synopsis: After being caught outside the compound on your own, Negan decides to punish you in the best way possible ;)

Words: 3,229

Warnings: nsfw, smut, swearing

ID Masterlist can be found HERE

Masterlist of all my fics can be found HERE

Author’s Note: We’re back! Omg y’all...I finally have a path to the ending for this fic! After this chapter, I’m planning for there to be 5 more chapters until the end, which will give ID a total of 65 chapters. I’m still working on writing and editing these last chapters, but I’m pretty confident in that timeline :D I also plan to post each Friday again, so there should be chapters now through September 10th, if all goes according to plan.

PDA

You woke with a smile the next morning, partially because of the happiness filling your chest like a balloon. The other part was because the warm body behind you, accompanied by a rasp of beard on your shoulder and soft lips on your neck, signalled that you weren’t alone.

The florid orange rays coming in the large windows told you that it was still early, the sun barely risen above the horizon. Turning over onto your other side to face Negan, you took in his tousled hair and heavy-lidded gaze.

“Mornin’ doll,” he said, voice raspy with sleep.

“Morning,” you whispered back, pressing a kiss to his irresistible mouth. “No crack-of-dawn meetings today?”

His lips quirked against yours. “Nope, thank fuck,” he murmured, before rolling atop you and spending a good portion of the morning taking you apart with pleasure, then putting you back together piece by piece with cuddles and toe-curling kisses.

When he later glanced over at the clock and saw that it was almost 10am, he gave a groan and flopped onto his back with a forearm covering his eyes. “Much as I’d love to stay here all day, I gotta go with a couple Saviors to check out one of the nearby outposts. They reported some concerns about their fucking security measures, and also requested a few more men be stationed out there to help divvy up their shifts, so I wanna go see if there’s any fucking issues for myself.”

While you felt a tiny thrill that he was so willing to tell you this information, to let you know about his duties as leader, you also had a moment of worry about him possibly assigning more men out to work the outpost. “Is that the one you brought Simon in from a couple weeks ago?”

Knowing exactly where your thoughts were headed, he said, “Don’t get your fucking panties in a bunch, doll. If the outpost needs more hands, I was planning to send a couple of my newer Saviors.”

Pleased at this response, you smiled and leaned in close so your mouth was hovering mere millimeters from his, before whispering, “I’m not wearing any panties to get in a bunch.”

Before he could react, you rolled out of the bed and strode to the bathroom, putting a little extra swing to your hips. The growl and unmistakable rustling sound of sheets being thrown off was your only warning before Negan scooped you up into his arms and marched into the bathroom.

An hour later and you were both sufficiently clean (after first getting extra dirty against the shower wall), and you saw Negan off from his rooms with a kiss and warning to be careful. He gave an arrogant smirk at that, which got him an eye roll and playful shake of your head as a response.

You watched as he strode down the hall towards the staircase, shoulders encased in leather and his whistle echoing off the walls. While they’d never dare ask him about it, you couldn’t help but give a little smile at the thought of his men wondering why the hell their usually punctual leader was almost ten minutes late to leave for the outpost...and why he seemed so happy about it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Unable to contain your excitement over the events of the night before, you headed over to Ben’s room not long after Negan left. Thankfully he was there, having just returned from finishing up serving breakfast. His roommate was out this time, so you were able to huddle across from one another on his bottom bunk and catch him up on your conversation with Negan.

Ben listened intently, mouth slowly falling further and further open as you went on. When you got to the part about Negan admitting he wanted only you, and called you his partner, Ben let out a whoop of joy and threw his arms around you in a hug.

“I knew it!” he exclaimed. “That big lug is head over heels for you.”

The two of you chatted happily for a bit, before you left and wandered back down to your own room. It had felt like forever since you had a chunk of time to just relax in your bed without over analyzing or stressing over something Negan-related. Gone was the weight of that padlocked box of questions, which made both your brain and subconscious very happy. The three of you snuggled up on the bed and spent the next couple of hours finishing your re-read of Harry Potter before it was time to head down to the kitchen for dinner prep.

Today’s menu consisted of lasagna using leftover deer meat thawed from the freezer, with the signature side of rolls. Trixie had unofficially promoted herself as being in charge of roll duty, making sure the dough was the right consistency and the ovens at the perfect baking temperature. She wasn’t rude about it, but the little bit of authority she showed when instructing another staff member how to properly knead the dough seemed to fulfill her need to be seen as a knowledgeable and important part of the staff. And in all honesty, none of her feedback to the others was incorrect, so rather than reprimand her or say she was out of line, you had caught her eye at one point and given an almost imperceptible nod of approval. This caused her smile to beam so bright that it was a wonder you didn’t need sunglasses.

As it turned out, you weren’t the only one who had noticed Trixie’s presence and been keeping a stealthy eye on her. Andrew, a member of the food prep crew, had been not-so-subtly following Trixie with his gaze lately, and today was no exception. He was an attractive man in his early 20s with shoulder-length black hair and kind brown eyes, a much more appropriate candidate for Trixie than her previous choice.

It seemed safe to say that Trixie was aware of the attention as well, as she found every reason possible to flounce past where Andrew was busy loading trays of lasagna into an oven. At one point, she even stopped to chat briefly with him, and out of the corner of your eye you saw her toss back her head and laugh at something he said. If it seemed a bit overly dramatic to you, well, Andrew didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her reaction caused him to fumble with the tray of pasta he was holding, almost spilling the entire thing onto the ground. He thankfully saved it at the last second, otherwise you would’ve had to interrupt and lecture the two of them about focusing on their work and not chit-chatting. And you didn’t want to do that, not when Trixie finally seemed interested in a guy more her age who was actually available and seemed to genuinely like her.

Despite your initial tension with Trixie, you now realized that she had just been struggling to find where she fit in, to feel like an important part of the community. She’d initially been scooped up and led astray by Amber, but thankfully she had found her way back on the correct path and was making progress at getting along with the others, rather than isolating herself and using condescension as an emotional wall. Someone like Andrew, who was kind-hearted and considerate, not to mention absolutely captivated by her, was exactly what she needed.

Focusing your attention away from young romance and back to meal prep, you spent the next forty-five minutes making sure everything was baked to perfection before sending out the first trays of lasagna and rolls. However, your mind kept randomly returning to Negan, almost unable to contain a secret smile each time you remembered where the two of you now stood. The usual worry and second-guessing had been replaced by the stability of knowing how he felt, and each time you remembered his words from last night a flutter of butterflies went off in your stomach.

Negan had told you this morning that the outpost he and a small team of men were going to was less than an hour’s drive from the Sanctuary, so he planned to be back around dinnertime. Sure enough, about 20 minutes into when the first round of food was being served, you saw a small group of Saviors enter the cafeteria and settle down at a table. You guessed that they were the ones who had been out on the mini mission, and breathed a sigh of relief at seeing them back safely and with jovial expressions on their faces. You could always tell when things went wrong on a run, due to the overall aura of the men who returned, but this time they were smiling and talking animatedly with one another. Hopefully this also meant that Negan was in a happy, and perhaps affectionate, mood when you went to visit him later...

It was as if your thoughts had conjured the man himself. You were out in the cafeteria with a large water pitcher, making rounds to refill empty glasses for people, when a hush in conversation made you still and look up.

And there he was, standing at the entrance to the cafeteria with his signature leather jacket unzipped just enough so that the edge of a white tee peeked out over the top. He scanned over the tables like a king surveying his domain, looking both intimidating and absolutely delicious with the arrogant way he held himself, as if he had no cares in the world but was also ready to take on anything.

When his eyes landed on you, those sinful lips quirked upwards at the edges, and you swore that even from the distance of half a cafeteria you could see his golden gaze light up at the sight of you. He moved, striding with determination and purpose to close the space between your bodies. The breath caught in your chest at his beauty, at the raw masculinity and almost animal magnetism that surrounded him.

He stopped mere inches away, and you gazed up at him in both welcome and a bit of confusion. Trying to act calm and unaffected, and not show how much you wanted to grin and launch yourself at him, you said, “Welcome back.”

Your eyebrow cocked in question when he shook his head with a low chuckle. “Oh no, doll, that won’t do at all.” And with that, he wrapped an arm around your waist and lowered his head...

And kissed you in front of the entire Sanctuary.

A wave of shock jolted through you, at the same time as your body automatically responded, molding itself to his. Your brain was flatlined on the floor from the unexpected move, while your subconscious ran around it in circles screaming with excitement.

You could practically feel all the astonished stares from community members, as they watched their all-powerful leader break one of his cardinal rules and kiss you to within an inch of your life. And dear god, what a kiss it was! His lips were firm yet gentle, his tongue just barely tracing your bottom lip, as if he couldn’t help but steal a little taste. He wasn’t holding back, and the primal part of you recognized that he was publicly staking his claim for all to see. There could be no question after this moment that you were his, and that he wanted everyone to know it.

When he finally pulled back, you could only look up at him with what must’ve been an utterly dazed expression, if his pleased smirk was anything to go by. Glancing to his left and then right, his brow furrowed and expression turned serious as he bellowed, “What the fuck are you all looking at?”

His words had the desired effect, as eyes dropped back to their plates and the community stuttered back to action, obviously trying and failing to act like something monumental didn’t just happen. You’d have given a lot of points to know what they were all thinking, but you didn’t see any angry expressionsand no one had said anything or acted out of line, so hopefully that was a good sign.

Negan’s warm hand rubbed comfortingly up your bare arm, and it was then that you noticed he didn’t have his gloves on. That also sparked the realization that he wasn’t carrying Lucille, which was strange since he always had her on his person when making an appearance in front of the community.

Now that you’re thinking about it, did he even have her this morning, when he left?

You thought back to when you had kissed him goodbye and watched as he walked down the hallway. Surely he’d have taken her with him to the outpost...but you honestly couldn’t remember seeing her up over his shoulder. You had to just be forgetting, because there was no way he’d leave her behind.

That train of thought was brought to a halt when the hand on your arm trailed down along your waist and settled possessively on your hip. “I wanted to put in a request for one of your staff members to bring two servings of dinner to my room, for Simon and yours truly.”

Before you could ask if he needed time alone once you were done with dinner, he provided the answer. “We need to go over the fucking outpost inspection results, but I’ll come and find you once it’s done.” It was the second time he’d done that today, answering a question before you had the chance to voice it out loud, which was a sign of how well he was coming to predict your thought process.

You were still a bit in shock at all of this, especially how he was discussing his evening plan with you so publicly and audibly, as if to show that you were more than just his in a physical sense. He was broadcasting to the community that you were what he had already told you last night: his partner. His voice had been low enough that only the nearby tables would’ve heard, but you knew every moment of this interaction would be spread across the entire community within minutes after he left.

Giving a smile and trying to look like ‘yep, this is completely normal, no big deal, I am totally not internally screaming with joy and wanting to climb his fine ass like a tree’, you replied, “Of course. I’ll have it sent up immediately.”

“Thanks, doll,” he said with a final smirk. Then his face morphed back into the intense, badass expression of the Sanctuary’s leader, and he strode out of the cafeteria.

You were left standing there, still a bit shell-shocked by what had just occurred, but also giddy as hell over it. That emotional high was only slightly dimmed by the awareness that now, with Negan gone, you were the sole center of everyone’s attention. A quick scan of the cafeteria showed that most community members were trying not to openly stare. However, the lack of chewing and frequent side glances thrown your way as your legs finally unfroze and started back towards the kitchen were proof that they had all seen Negan’s display of affection.

While the rest of the community might’ve at least been making a feeble attempt not to obviously stare, the same couldn’t be said of the kitchen staff. At least a couple of them must’ve witnessed what happened when serving trays of food, and those members must’ve scurried back to the kitchen to report it to the others. Every single one of them was staring in wide-eyed silence with a mixture of shock and fascinated curiosity when you walked back through the swinging doors.

Even though your face felt heated and you were a bit off-kilter, you still managed to sound slightly firm when announcing, “Alright folks, back to work. And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

You breathed a sigh of relief when they didn’t argue, but a couple of them did give knowing grins, Trixie included, though at least they all seemed good-natured about it. Trying to act as though your world hadn’t just been spun off its axis with that public kiss, you went over to Ben, who was the only one that had stayed fairly composed the entire time. In fact, his eyes danced with mirth and he was obviously trying to hold back a smirk, so you felt only minimally evil when telling him of Negan’s request that two servings of dinner be taken up to his rooms for him and Simon. Ben gave a playful glare when you told him to take up the food himself, saying it loud enough that some others heard, making him unable to say no without looking a bit suspect.

When the tray was ready to go a few minutes later, you quietly murmured to Ben as he passed by on his way out of the kitchen, “Say hi to Simon for me.” The words caused a hint of pink to flare in his cheeks as he gave a halfhearted glare. You almost felt guilty for teasing him, but knew Ben would more than forgive you when Negan came through on his promise to get Simon his own room.

Though the kitchen staff still threw glances your way here and there, they quickly fell back into their usual routine and no one made any direct comments. You were safe from scrutiny...at least for now. At least no one seemed to have any extreme concerns about what had happened, making you wonder how many of them had suspected what was going on between you and Negan before now.

Once dinner and cleanup were over, you headed back up to your room. Negan had said he would come find you when he was ready, so you planned to just lay back and relax until then.

Oh, who were you kidding. After that kiss, you were totally going to sit on your bed and think about all the dirty things you wanted to do to him the moment the two of you were alone.

Trying to convince yourself that you could be at least semi-productive and pretend to have a hobby other than fantasizing about the leader of the Sanctuary, you pulled the copy of Harry Potter off your bedside table. You were just opening to the first page, planning to restart it again from the beginning, when a firm knock sounded at your door.

Pulse jumping with excitement, you rose from the bed and didn’t even hesitate to cross the room and reach for the doorknob. It never occurred to you that it might be anyone other than Negan, let alone for it to be the last person you’d have ever expected to see at your door. But things had been going so well today that it was almost as if fate was bored with your happiness and wanted to add some drama to the mix.

Totally ignoring the warning prickle that ran up your spine, you opened the door with a welcome smile. It quickly died on your lips at the sight of who was standing on the other side, hands on hips and eyes throwing daggers your way.

It was Amber...and she looked pissed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

#negan #ash writes #negan's thirst squad #irresistible danger #negan fanfiction #negan fanfic #negan x you #negan x oc #negan x reader #fanfiction #fanfics #twd #the walking dead #jdm #jeffrey dean morgan #twd negan #negan slow burn

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imaginesupply · 4 years ago

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Homecoming - Chapter One

Chapter Two can be found here

(Gif’s not my own.)

Summary: The day has arrived, Captain Syverson is going home. For good, this time. He is going home to a civilian life he can hardly remember and a wife he barely knows, with memories of the war still fresh on his mind. Love might not be able to heal everything on its own, but it’s a good start.

Genres: Romance, drama.

Story warnings: Smut (always fully consensual), mentions of PTSD and nightmares and mental health, angst, hurt and comfort, fluff, mentions of war (minor), mentions of cheating (minor), mentions of pregnancy (very minor), police appearance (very minor), violence (very minor).

Notes:

It’s my first time writing for one of Henry’s characters and I’m unsure I did Sy’s character any justice.

This is a Capt. Syverson x OFC (Ada) story, written in 3rd person POV but OFC’s physical description is very limited so it could also be read as Capt. Syverson x Reader, I think.

English is not my first language, so there might be some mistakes. Proofread, but not beta’ed. We die like men and all that.

Timeline is a little wacky: The movie takes place in 2003 and the U.S. forces were withdrawn from Iraq in 2011, but I never set a precise date because I don’t think it’s essential for this story. However, some elements might not be realistic because if we set this story in 2003: Phone cameras quality was not as good as it’s now, but for the purpose of the chapters, I will need you to imagine you could film great videos with your flip phone haha. Plus, it says Sy is coming back after being deployed for more than three years which makes no sense unless we set this in 2006 or later. I am asking you disregard any time inconsistencies 

Also: I am not American. I only lived in the US for six months and it was in the Midwest, not Texas so please bear with me if I write something stupid.

Finally: This is pretty much a Christmas fic and I intend to post the last chapter (there will be seven in total) on or before Christmas. However, religion is never mentioned in this story and the Christmas-sy elements of this story are limited to family gathering, gift giving and tree decorating.

Chapter One starts after the cut. Let me know if you wish to be tagged in the new chapters.

Chapter One

Chapter warnings: Badly written smut (consensual), marriage awkwardness, alcohol consumption. Maybe OOC Sy, I don’t know. We never saw him being casual.

Sy checked his phone again as he waited for his bag by the baggage carousel. The airport was even busier than usual, it was taking ages and he was impatient to get out of there... and maybe even never set foot in an airport again for the rest of his life.

He read her text again, short and sweet. He sometimes called her that, short and sweet, just to tease her. Ada was considerably shorter than him and full of sugar, when she wanted to be, that was.

'I'm waiting by the gate for you, with a warm cinnabon :) So excited to see you again <3.'

Just then a notification popped up from Harper. It was a photo of the soldier at the airport, finally reunited with his wife and his two rugrats. It made Sy all the more excited to see Ada again, and then as if on cue, his camo bag appeared in the carousel and he groaned with relief.

He stood restless amidst the line, it seemed people in front of him were dragging their feet, but when they noticed his green beret uniform, most parted and let him through. Sy tipped his head gratefully.

His wife was there, just outside the gate. Sy spotted her instantly in the crowd of people. She was wearing a red dress under her open coat and her hair looked fresh out of the hairdresser. He caught himself grinning at the sight of her. Then, once she spotted him making his way over to her, she started waving her hand excitedly as if there was any way his eyes hadn't already landed on her. He wished he still had his phone in hand to capture this moment for all of eternity, but his memory would have to do, he decided before casting his arms open for his wife. Fuck, did he love her!

°°°

Ada had been biting her nails nervously for the past two hours. She had arrived at the airport way too early. The parking fee would hurt but she couldn't find it in herself to care at this point.

Three weeks ago, she had received a call informing her that her husband and part of his unit had been ambushed. There had been an explosion in some building they were scouting only God knows where.

Only a full week after that did she receive a call from Sy himself. He was coming home. For good, this time. They were sending him home early, a full eight months earlier than what he had originally negotiated with his superiors. She hadn't been prepared for the news. She had spent the days following the call asking herself whether she had heard him right, making sure her mind wasn't playing tricks on her.

Now he was here, stopping right in front of her, his thick arms inviting her right in for a hug. Ada wouldn't have been able to resist the invitation even if she had wanted to. Within a second, she was enveloped in his embrace, her cheek pressed against his chest. She was overjoyed to feel his heartbeat again. Sy kisses the crown of her head before putting her down, his hands never leaving her lower back, his fingers big enough to reach the swell of her bum from there.

They pulled away a few inches to take each other in. His beard has grown a little long, but it was not enough to hide his apparent dimples as he smiled. He looked a little older too, she hadn't seen in seven months, except through a shitty quality facetime call once or twice. Her careful gaze spotted the new scar by his temple, it was the only visible physical evidence of the explosion he had been caught in. She dreaded what she might under his uniform.

Sy caught her eyes and she found herself blushing under his stare. It was always like that the first few hours when he was back, until she got used to his overwhelming presence again and to the fact that this handsome bear of a man was indeed her husband.

"You're looking good, darlin'," Sy grinned, making her spin for him. "I missed you."

Ada couldn’t resist his smile. "I missed you too, Sy." She confessed, handing him the still warm cinnamon roll in its paper bag.

He accepted the pastry with a smile and started eating it immediately but not before throwing his arm around her shoulders as they began making their way to the parking lot. Sy was eager to get her out of the crowd and have her just to him himself.

"So, what's the plan, darlin'?" Sy inquired with mischief to his voice, balling up the paper bag with his free hand and throwing it inside the trash can. "Did you book that hotel with the jacuzzi in the bedroom again?"

It had become a tradition of some sort between them. They would always spend his first night back at that hotel: they'd order some room service and eat in the jacuzzi. Though, usually, they would first end up on together on the bed.

Ada stopped suddenly in her tracks, making him still behind her. She smiled sheepishly. "Don't be mad," she started, his smile falling at once, "but your family is waiting for us in the parking lot. Your mom insisted that we celebrate your homecoming at the restaurant. Something about you missing Thanksgiving just by a couple days."

Sy groaned, thinking about the evening that now expected him. He'd been flying for God knows how many hours, all he wanted was a warm bath and Ada whichever way she'd let him have her, not a damn dinner party.

"I'm sorry, Sy."

He shook his head and leaned down to kiss her forehead again. "Don't worry, darlin'. I know it ain’t your fault."

As soon as they reached the open-air parking lot, Sy's nephew and niece start running up to him, having escaped their parents' grasp. His family was waiting for him with cheers and a 'welcome home, soldier' banner. Sy hated that kind of attention and she found it cringy as well, but she had been unable to stop his mother. Ada watched him hug the kids and lift them up into the air, making them laugh as she walked up to the machine to pay the fee.

Her hand trembled as she inserted the ticket into the slot, missing the opening a few times. She was happy - no, scratch that - she was ecstatic to have her husband back. It's just that, could you really say 'back' when there was never truly a 'before', a 'there'?

They had met when he was already deployed, but on a short leave back in Austin. They spent three weeks together, got married and he returned to Iraq. Since then, the longest stretch of time they had been together had been twenty days. Neither of them had ever gotten settled into married life and now he was 'back'. For good. Which was wonderful and foreign and overwhelming all at once.

Ada paid the fee and returned to join them, finding Sy hugging his mother. She smiled at the sight. She walked over to greet her sister-in-law and her husband, confirming that they'd meet up at the restaurant. With that, she went to the car, deciding to give Sy some more time with his family, and herself an occasion to take a few breaths and calm her buzzing heart.

"You didn't tell me my mom had gotten herself a boyfriend." Sy grumbled immediately as he sat down next to her in the car, putting on his seatbelt.

Ada turned on the engine and backed out of the spot. "I knew you wouldn't like it," she defended before casting a side glance at him. "Besides, I figured it wasn't my place to tell you."

Sy hummed noncommittally, removing his cap to rake his hand through his cropped hair.

"Though, as much as I don't exactly like your mother," Ada added quietly, "she's been on her own ever since your dad passed a couple years ago. With your father gone and you away, she must have felt lonely.”

°°°

Sy spent the rest of the drive mulling over her words in his head. The fuck was that supposed to mean? As soon as a woman feels lonely, she takes up a boyfriend?! Was Ada lonely too while he was away and… He wanted to ask if she was implying anything but then one look at her and he decided against it. Breathing out deeply, he forces himself to relax. He was just stressed out and on edge.

It was inevitable that things would have changed while he had been away. That was something he thought about frequently late at night when he got to be alone. Still, he hoped things hadn’t changed all too much. Ada still looked just as she had on their road trip to Vegas, focused on the road but leaning back on her seat, just one hand on the wheel with a grin on her lips. His wife loved driving.

"You got your nails done." Sy commented, already hoping the whole dinner thing would be over quickly so that he could go home with her.

Ada turned to him with a chuckle for a second, wriggling her graceful fingers and red painted nails, her wedding band reflecting the light. "I wanted to look pretty for you."

Sy huffed. "You always look pretty to me, Ada," he said and then watched her scoff.

"Or maybe, I just wanted to make sure I'd be able to scratch you up nicely," she wife winked.

Yeah, this dinner thing couldn't be over fast enough.

°°°

Ada saw him eat so much over dinner, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was going to be sick later. And, of course, the double serving of smoked ribs had to be accompanied with generous amounts of beer and whisky. She didn0t blame him, though. Out of curiosity, she once researched what they ate while on deployment and it looked anything but tasty. If she had been in his shoes, she'd have been eating her own weight in pizza and brownies right now.

It also didn’t help that his brother-in-law and his mom's new boyfriend, Phil from the hardware store, kept asking him about Baqubah and even touching on the subject of the explosion. It was obvious how uncomfortable the subject made him, his grip tightening around his knife and his jaw tensing up so tightly, she could imagine his teeth grinding.

So, Sy kept asking for refills, raising his glass, and giving them vague answers, but it seemed they didn't get the hint. At least, the subject changed when his sister interrupted the conversation to announce she was expecting again. A little girl.

Ada used the moments of cheer that followed to excuse herself from the table and go to the restroom. She was still somewhat nervous and her face was damp. She would have given anything for a glass of scotch at that moment but she was driving tonight.

Helen, Sy's mom appeared right behind her just as she was washing her hands. She hoped the woman would just disappear inside a stall but she wasn’t that lucky.

"Jack is back." Helen stated, arms crossed. A shiver ran through Ada's spine, damn she hated that woman. "For good."

Ada dried her hands with a paper towel, looking back at her mother-in-law through the mirror. "He is."

"Now's the time to prove yourself to this family and show us that Sy was right in marrying you.”

Before Ada could ask what the hell that was supposed to mean, Helen finally disappeared inside a stall. Rolling her eyes, Ada went to leave the restrooms when Helen decides to add some more venom. "Maybe a good start would be calling him by his first name, as a wife would."

°°°

"When do you start at Camp Mabry?" Ada asked, looking away from the steering wheel to glance at him for a second. Sy looked exhausted, not that she could she blame him after three different flights and a seemingly endless dinner. They had finally called it a night once the kids had started getting fussy.

"January 15th." He replied. "But they want me to stop by before then to have a look around the base and sign the contract."

"You're going to boss the hell out of the new recruits," Ada laughed, getting him to lighten up and even chuckle.

"You'd be surprised to know I'm actually a fair and considerate captain," Sy defended himself.

Next to him, Ada huffed as she tried stiffing the bubble of laughter, trying not miss the right exit off the main road.

"I just value discipline and compliance a lot," he added, his tone growing teasing.

This time, she was unable to stop her laugh. "Believe me, I know you do."

The drive was a short one to their house in the suburbs and she was soon parking her in their driveaway.

Ada fumbled with the key as she tried opening the front door, nervousness setting back in as she felt Sy standing behind her, holding his duffel bag. He followed in quickly after her, once she had finally managed to open the door.

"Welcome home, captain!" Ada cheered in her silliest tone as he discarded his bag on the floor.

Then, before she could even react, Sy was on her. His arms lifted her up, his body caging hers against the wall before capturing her lips in the most ferocious kiss she could imagine.

Out of instinct, her legs locked around his waist and her hands dug into his shoulders, unwilling to let go of him now that he was finally there. Sy grinned against her lips, amused by her fervour, not that he felt any different.

He broke off the kiss as he pulled them away from the wall, freeing a hand to shrug her coat off her shoulders. "You ain't gonna need that, darlin'," he promised, throwing the coat in the direction of the kitchen, not caring where it landed.

Then his mouth latched on to her throat, forcing a delicious moan out of his wife as he carefully manoeuvred them upstairs, still steady on his feet despite the alcohol. Sy was almost surprised when he pushed open the door to their bedroom with his foot and it didn't squeak, but that thought was fleeting as Ada started rolling her hips against his. Suddenly, nothing else mattered. Not the war, not the explosion or his guilt, only the woman in his arms.

Unceremoniously, he let her fall on the bed, the urgency now flowing through his blood keeping him from doing things the gentleman way. Ada didn't mind, giggling as she unzipped her dress and slid the red thing over her head, along with her bra. Apparently, she had decided to forego panties. Sy stood there, almost mesmerised as he watched her, suddenly not certain if he dared tainting her with his touch but Ada quickly made that decision for him as she got up on her knees.

"A little less staring and a little more undressing, captain," she purred with a smirk, her fingers determined as they made quick work of the buttons on his shirt.

"That's it, darlin'. You're in for it now," Sy roared, pulling her in for another furious kiss before pushing her back against the mattress, making her land on her back as he got undressed in record time. Fuck, was he hard.

"Open up for your captain." Sy ordered and Ada complied instantly, her legs falling open for him as she peered up at him, holding herself up on her elbows and worrying her lower lip between her teeth. "That's a good girl," he praised.

Without losing another second, Sy settled in between her legs, wrapping his strong arms around her thighs and parting them to their limits. He wanted to worship her body the way she deserved, show her exactly just how appreciative he was of her, how much he craved her, but it had been months and Sy was a starving man who had just been presented with the perfect meal.

"Fuck Sy!" Ada screamed out, her back arching off the bed the instant he licked her just where she craved him most. He chuckled against her, marvelling at how wet she already was for him.

She tried closing her legs around his head, rejoicing at the feeling of his beard rubbing against her sensitive skin and never wanting him to leave again, but his arms were too strong for her clenching thighs. She was left defenceless against his assault, with no choice but to obscenely moan her pleasure and let herself cum against his tongue as his thumb expertly massaged her clit.

The coil inside her snapped and her body tensed up before letting go just as suddenly, her now damp back falling back on the mattress. "Fuck, Sy." Ada breathed out, her chest heaving as she tried to reopen her eyes only to find her husband playfully gazing up at her, smirking with her arousal glistening on his beard. The sight alone almost made her cum again. "I'll never let you leave again!"

He smiled in response, placing a kiss on her lower stomach before crawling up her body. "I've no intention to, baby," he promised.

Ada caught a glimpse of his hard, flushed erection as his body slid over hers, realizing in her post-orgasmic haze that she was in for an even bigger treat now. She could taste herself in his mouth as they kissed, his hand slithering behind her back to seize her shoulder and hold her closer. Teasingly, he started rolling his hips, his hard clock rubbing against her slick cunt, coating himself with arousal before finally, he found his way inside her, burying his head next to hers in the pillow.

Ada whimpered as he did so, her eyes tearing up as his clock slid inside her. She had evidently grown unaccustomed to his girth and length in his absence. Sy paused immediately, his muscles tense as he looked at her with concern. “You okay?” She nodded in silence, wanting him to start moving but Sy looked unconvinced, using all his strength to keep still despite his desire to fuck her right into the mattress. Without a warning, Ada tightly wrapped her legs around his hips, making him go deeper. Sy let out a reverberating groan. “God, darlin’. I missed you.”

He started thrusting into her with such vigour, such determination it felt as if he was trying to bury himself so deep inside her, no one would ever be able to pry him away from her again. It did hurt, her cervix was getting battered with each of his hard movements but she found herself enjoying the pain because it was him; it was Sy and he was right there with her, back in her arms, and she could feel his heart beat beneath her fingertips as her hand gripped at his chest.

"Fuck, I'm... I’m," Ada gasped incoherently, her nails now scratching the skin of his back. Sy was sure there would be marks there in the morning which made him enjoy the sensation even more.

"I got you," he rasped. If possible, he pulled her even tighter to him, his pubic bone now rubbing against hers in that delicious way only he was able to do. Her slick walls were now contracting around him, her second orgasm impending. "Fuck," he groaned, his breath coming out in a stutter. "Are you...Can I...?"

Sy didn't have to word it, she knew what he meant. "Cum in me, Sy. Please," she almost begged.

Her words did it. His hips stuttered as he pushed in deep just when his orgasm washed over him, exploding inside her. His face contorted with pleasure and that sight alone had her fast tracking her fall over the figurative edge. He had his face buried on the crook of her neck, muffling his groans and moans against her skin as the dam gave way within her.

°°°

Sy grunted against his pillow, slowly waking up the following morning. He was convinced he was just rousing after a very nice dream and he was ready to toss his alarm clock across the room, furious at the object for interrupting his dream, that for once, had been a good one. With a startle, Sy realized that no blasting alarm had woken him up but the sunlight on his face. Opening his eyes, he felt almost as if on foreign ground. He was home.

As quietly as he could manage, Sy turned around in bed, seeking his wife only to find her side empty. Just at that moment, he heard cursing coming up from the kitchen and scoffed. He’d bet his life Ada was cracking eggs, something she hated.

Feeling rested and in a much more relaxed mood than the previous day, Sy got out of bed and started searching for a pair of boxer briefs so he could go join her downstairs when he caught a sniff of himself. Fuck, did he stink. How Ada hadn’t thrown him out of bed, he didn’t know.

Out of habit, Sy hurried to the en-suite bathroom, wanting to shower as fast as possible before realizing that this time around, it was different. He wasn’t going back, he didn’t have to rush, their time together wasn’t counted. With that in mind, Sy forced himself to take his time, enjoying the act of brushing his teeth in a bathroom that smelled nice and showering with warm water. Ada had purchased his usual brands of shower gel and toothpaste, he noticed, even putting a red bow around his brand-new toothbrush by the sink. Even though he initially wanted to take his time to enjoy it, Sy still ended up rushing as he dried himself with a blue fluffy towel he didn’t recognize from his previous stay. He didn’t bother putting on anything more than his boxer briefs before heading downstairs. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t keep them on for long either.

Sy walked into one of the best sights he had even seen, when he entered the kitchen. Ada was standing in front of the stove, rhythmically tapping the black spatula against her naked thigh as she focused on the eggs and bacon she was preparing. The thin negligee - or whatever she called it, he always forgot - barely covered her ass and that outfit alone was one of the reasons he never minded that she always cracked up the heat so high, he felt like he was back under the hot desert sun.

Silent and stealthy like a predator despite his stature, Sy sneaked up on her from behind and wrapped his arms around her waist, feeling her startle before relaxing once she noticed it was him. She smelled heavenly, Sy thought, resting his chin on the top of her head. "Watcha got cooking, darlin'?"

"Obviously breakfast," she sassed, making him softly pinch her ass in response. Ada squealed and jumped up. "Good morning to you too, Sy," she said but not before slapping the handle of the spatula against his thigh. He decided to let it slide... for now.

"Morning darlin'," he answered, kissing the crown of her head before darting his fingers into the pan and picking up a piece of bacon. It was sizzling hot, but the taste was worth it. He had missed being home! Speaking of being home... "What do you say we take the food and coffee upstairs and have ourselves breakfast in bed?" His tone failed to hide his true intentions.

Ada scoffed, the back of her head rubbing on his hairy chest and she shook her head. "Nice try but I actually intend to feed you. Your mother will have my head if I let you go hungry."

It was Sy's turn to laugh, his hands now roaming her body as she leaned forward to turn off the stove, pressing her ass against his crotch and eliciting a husky groan from him. "I'm hungry enough to eat both breakfast and you, don't worry."

Ada turned around, a huge grin on her angelic face. "Alright, you win. What do you say, we have breakfast, we do the kinky and then go grocery shopping?"

Sy tried hiding his smile but it was a lost cause. He loved it when she talked like that. He loved her, point. "Yes, ma'am."

#henry cavill smut #syverson smut #henry cavill x ofc #syverson x ofc #henry cavill x reader #syverson x reader

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jamiiviper · 4 years ago

Text

The Jamil Essay

this is a reupload of a post i made a couple of weeks ago - previously it was an external link to a google doc, so it never showed up in any of the twst tags, but i worked so hard on this and i would really love it if more people read it, so i’m reuploading directly to tumblr.

to put it simply, this is a 3.7k word character analysis purely about jamil. and even with a word count like that i wasn’t quite able to cover everything i wanted to say, so who knows, maybe there’ll be a part 2 one day. i’ve also decided i do want to write a kalim version, so i’ll probably start working on that sometime soon! stay tuned!

trigger warnings: mentions of child abuse

jamil is the vice dorm leader of scarabia, who’s been kalim’s caretaker practically since birth. he puts on a facade of not standing out, preferring to remain completely average, and plans his life around kalim’s antics. as we learned in chapter 4, however, his true feelings are that he bears a lot of resentment towards kalim, and that he wants to stand out - he just wasn’t allowed to, as he can never surpass kalim.

in this essay i want to cover not just my personal interpretation of jamil, but also some common misconceptions that people tend to have about him. twitter doesn’t have this problem as much, but with tumblr i’ve found that there are very few jamil stans, especially in the theory and writing communities - meaning it’s quite common for people to misunderstand his character. in the fandom as a whole, it’s common for people to only acknowledge him insofar as “gay for kalim”.

firstly, jamil’s character development in the main story - i would say he’s arguably the best-developed character in twst, since yana now has enough chapters available to flesh out characters after their main story arc ended. jamil holds very deep-seated resentment against kalim, to the point that he plotted to betray him for probably several years. he plotted to have kalim not just thrown out of nrc, but thoroughly ruin his reputation in the process. after his overblot, those feelings did not magically vanish - far from it. i think earlier twst chapters suffered from arcs being wrapped up a little too neatly post-overblot, but pomefiore’s arc has already proved itself to be the exception and thoroughly covers not just jamil’s continued dislike for kalim, but also the wider consequences for what he did.

since the twst school year begins in september, we know jamil is about 9 months older than kalim. from literally the day kalim was born, jamil’s life has been dedicated to kalim. possibly since the day jamil was born, and he was always fated to be kalim’s caretaker. it may even have been the reason he was born at all. either way, it’s not like he remembers those 9 months. all jamil has ever known is that his sole purpose must be to serve kalim. he must not have desires of his own, he must not do anything for himself - from childhood he was expected to be ready to give up his life for kalim at a moment’s notice. he can’t be good at anything - kalim must always be better (i’ll cover this in more depth in a later paragraph, this philosophy is key to his character). his own parents drilled this into him, even going to the extent of hitting him if he didn’t comply. it seems he has a normal relationship with his family despite this - he bickers with his sister like regular siblings, and pre-overblot he indicated that his desire to be free from servitude wasn’t just about him, he wanted to free his family. nonetheless, the psychological damage his childhood caused him is severe. is it any wonder his unique magic is mind control, when he’s never had an ounce of control over his own life?

moving onto his early teen years, we know both jamil and kalim were severely poisoned at one point, both falling into comas for around two weeks. although we don’t have a timeframe for jamil’s coma, we know kalim’s was when they were around 13 years old. if jamil’s was around this age too - probably a short while afterwards - i think it’s plain to see why jamil’s resentment began to build. he’d have been around the age where he first started to question why his life has to revolve around kalim. why should he be expected to die for someone he doesn’t even like, who’s spoiled and doesn’t realise how much jamil does for him? kalim takes everything for granted: status, friendships, freedom, and jamil is meanwhile left in the shadows with nothing. then one day kalim gets poisoned so badly he falls into a coma - how much do you want to bet jamil was blamed for that, at the age of 13? after that he’s expected to taste-test anything kalim eats beforehand, and eventually starts making all his meals for him because the risk of poison is so high otherwise. then one day he slips up, or it’s an undetectable poison, and jamil is the one to fall into a coma. is anyone blamed for that? does anyone pity jamil outside of his immediate family + kalim? no, probably not. after all, he’s just doing his duty, right? it’s truly… no wonder jamil’s resentment became so intense. he finally has proof that his life truly does not matter. although kalim certainly cares about him, he doesn’t understand jamil’s position. he sees jamil as a friend, an equal; jamil knows this can never be the case, and he also knows kalim is too privileged to ever hope to understand.

fast forward on a couple of years to jamil receiving his nrc acceptance letter. he thinks that finally, finally he’s going to be free. four years of freedom - and who knows, maybe after that he can be free forever! he can finally excel at his classes and be his true self, without fear of upstaging kalim!

and then kalim gets accepted a month late. for no reason other than his surname.

and then kalim gets sorted into his dorm.

it’s a miracle he didn’t just overblot on the spot - but that’s his nature as a scarabia student. careful foresight and planning. this moment was, undoubtedly, the moment he started planning his betrayal. he had his one month of freedom ripped away, just like that.

oh, don’t forget the fact that not long after, kalim was made dorm leader not because he notably embodies scarabia values at all, but because of nepotism. (side note: most scarabia stans agree kalim does actually reflect scarabia values, just not as obviously as jamil does, but either way jamil himself wouldn’t see it this way. this is a jamil essay so i won’t go in depth about this unless asked to!)

under kalim’s watch, scarabia - known for its intelligence and cunning - is turned into “the party dorm”. this seems to be the fandom’s perception of them too - i mean, just ask any non-scarabia stan what goes on in scarabia, that’s probably the answer they’ll give you. jamil would have probably loved the original scarabia; although we don’t know much about it, we know scarabia students are on a par with octavinelle when it comes to intelligence (paralleling azul’s constant interest in jamil). yet by winter break, scarabia is doing so badly in those same exams that they didn’t even place in the rankings…? without meaning to, kalim clearly harmed scarabia. instead of getting chance to study magic and show off, jamil is now essentially an unpaid, full-time party planner by the time his second year starts.

a few months later, winter break finally arrives, and jamil executes his plan to dethrone kalim. i may have just spent the last two pages defending jamil’s grudge, but his actions themselves are still indefensible. there’s evidence to suggest kalim knew what was occurring on some level - refusing to answer jade’s question about who was hypnotising him proved that 1) he probably had some idea deep down that jamil was betraying him 2) he doesn’t want jamil to get in trouble for it. nonetheless, this does not make what jamil did okay in the slightest, even if kalim allowed it to happen. jamil is, undoubtedly, the bad guy in this situation, no matter how sympathetic his childhood makes you feel. i could go into detail about why kalim acted the way he did, but again, this is jamil-focused.

i’ll skip talking about his overblot, because i covered his hatred for kalim in a lot of depth already and i want to talk about the general aspects of his personality like his desire for praise later on. so moving onto the end of chapter 4, we see jamil’s true self: a snarky, heavily opinionated boy who honestly just wants to be free to be himself.

but just like his freedom, that side of jamil once again only lasts for a brief moment. jamil almost loses everything after his overblot. practically every scarabia student hates him and wants him thrown out of the dorm - even kalim, his sole defender, can’t call him a good person. he’s a traitor. he says he trusts the scarabia students to work out that it’s better for them if he stays, but that day won’t come any time soon, and until then he’s keeping his distance from them all, because their hatred is that strong. if azul truly had been streaming to more people than just jade, his life would have been ruined beyond repair. so what does jamil do? he goes back to serving kalim. as a scarabia student, his foresight is good enough that he knows the option he hates the most is the only one that’ll be good for him in the end. for jamil, being himself is nothing short of a death sentence.

now i’ve talked for far too long about the timeline of his character arc, i can finally get to the good stuff: jamil’s personality, and how it’s changed throughout the stories we’ve seen so far.

the first thing that springs to mind when you think of jamil, other than “snake”, is probably “tired”. or “he’s going to snap”. something along those lines. which... yes, we know he is. he did snap. after chapter 4, this doesn’t seem to have changed too much, but i do get the impression that he’s somewhat less stressed out by kalim. his resentment has dissipated, for the most part (he does still openly insult him, though), so while he does grumble at kalim there’s no suppressed fury behind it. what replaced that fury?

guilt.

in 5-10, jamil tells azul that he intends to continue to obediently follow kalim around in order to restore his reputation, both inside and outside of scarabia. this does of course make him sound pretty selfish (as per usual), and in classic jamil fashion he doesn’t let his true emotions show, so it’s easy to take this at face value and assume he just doesn’t really care. i think in this case, we need to look more at his actions that we see throughout chapter 5. namely, the way it’s being emphasised how he’s silently watching kalim from afar - something he’s always done, yes, but yana seems to be really making a point of it in chapter 5. it’s not just kalim he’s distancing himself from, either. he’s staying away from the rest of the scarabia students too, as mentioned earlier. he never had any friends at all to rely on, even before his overblot. so by doing this, he’s effectively completely isolating himself. he clearly has a lot of thoughts about everything that he’s not sharing with anyone - just listen to the way he sighs at the end of the flashback in 5-10, how annoyed and frustrated he seems. if jamil was telling the truth about just wanting to restore his reputation, he’d probably appreciate kalim’s efforts, even if he dislikes kalim himself. he shouldn’t be upset by kalim persuading the scarabia students to give him another chance. not if he truly just wants to get back to normal. i think on some level, jamil feels incredibly guilty over his actions. he might not have even admitted to himself yet that he feels this way, and by saying things like “i just want to restore my reputation” he’s just trying to convince himself. after all, that’s something he has a history of doing.

ever since jamil’s first introduction, we’ve known jamil lives his life by the philosophy of “not standing out is the best way to succeed”. he hates standing out or receiving any kind of positive attention at all, because he thinks that it’ll only attract trouble. or so we thought, because as we learned from his overblot, jamil desperately wants to stand out. he’s powerful and intelligent, and he wants people to acknowledge that. he wants the praise and recognition he knows he deserves. this means that whenever he said he didn’t want to stand out, he was lying through his teeth - he probably constantly tried and failed to convince himself of this throughout his childhood. during his lab SR story, he even repeats it to himself in his thoughts, like a mantra - “I want to avoid standing out. I can’t be satisfied with this. I cannot be too good, nor fall behind, and neither should I get satisfactory grades or fail. This is the best shortcut to success.”. much like his feelings of guilt, jamil refused to acknowledge how much he truly wanted to show off, even in his own thoughts. he is awful at being honest to himself.

post-ch5, we find out that despite everything, jamil does still hold this philosophy, to some extent. he of course shows off his singing and dancing skills enough to be chosen as a main vocalist, and he says he wants to make a name for himself and show various people just how talented he truly is: kalim, his family, the asims and MC, to name a few. yet in the chapter before that, when kalim compliments his singing and dancing, he’s like “i don’t really want to stand out, but…”. which is honestly a little confusing at first because he does want to. i’d probably interpret it as something along the lines of he wants to show off to the people he cares about, but he still wants to keep his head down in general. so i think that to some extent, maybe he actually has internalised that philosophy now. the one time he truly expressed his desire to stand out, it ended in catastrophe for him. he has this tiny seed of doubt within him now, telling him his parents were right all along. but... he’s working past it, and applying himself as and when he’s comfortable doing so.

going back to him being bad at being honest, jamil’s a pretty big tsundere. there’s one person he does regularly receive praise from: kalim. yet despite desperately wanting to be praised, he often gets annoyed at kalim and tells him something like “this isn’t about me right now” or “what does that have to do with anything?”. plus when the praise is coming from kalim, it’s often in the context of kalim praising him to other people - as a servant, he can’t be seen accepting all these compliments, right? he can never be better than kalim. so he has to reject kalim’s praise. when it’s just the two of them alone, though, is when jamil gets embarrassed to the point he has to hide his blush under his hood. given his childhood, chances are that he doesn’t really know how to process being praised. he knows he wants people’s approval, but when he actually gets it, he just short-circuits. it was the same at his birthday celebration; although he wants to be the centre of attention, when it actually happens, he gets all embarrassed and tsun. i was trying not to let my own personal feelings spill in this but oh my god he’s so cute i can’t

next... this isn’t really linked to any previous topic, but i want to talk about jamil’s cooking! jamil cooks all of kalim’s meals, and regularly cooks entire feasts for kalim’s parties, too (as well as being in charge of getting any animals kalim wants to show off, decorating the dorm, making sure everything runs smoothly… you get the idea). his cooking is very good, and he has a lot of technical knowledge about cooking too - azul, whose parents run a restaurant, didn’t know about emulsification, but jamil was able to explain it to him. despite being so good, though, according to his dorm SSR homescreen lines he doesn’t actually like cooking very much. he says the fact that he cooks so much is “just how things turned out”. of course, he could just be being a tsun, but i do feel like he’s being honest with this - what reason does he have to seriously enjoy something he was forced into doing his entire life? However there is evidence that he might enjoy it after all; he’s particularly good at alchemy because of his cooking knowledge, and according to magical archives he’s completely neutral in motivation for both flying and history lessons, but has slightly higher motivation levels for alchemy, indicating that he can’t stop himself from putting a little bit extra effort into that class. i think it can be interpreted either way with the canon info we have currently, but regardless i would not say he’s the cooking fanatic people often depict him as.

also, when jamil cooks, although his cooking is good, visually it’s usually very boring, to the point he and his sister would bicker over it. he has the technical skills to cook good food, but no idea how to present it. similarly, in his fairy gala SR he was told that although he perfectly memorised the dance, it was boring to watch - it looked like he was just executing the routine without any passion behind it. jamil is so emotionally repressed that he has no idea how to express his individuality. even in his bedroom, the only truly personal items he owns are a first aid kit (related to his servant position, not him as a human being) and a stereo + headphones set for dancing. he doesn’t have any other hobbies or interests - he doesn’t even know what people his age do for fun, because he’s never been allowed to think about such things.

dancing is all jamil has that’s not directly related to serving kalim, really - but even that ties into his servant status. although he genuinely enjoys it nowadays and dances by himself for fun, he only picked it up as a hobby because kalim wanted to go to dance practice, and of course jamil had to accompany him. when his flashback after his overblot talks about him deliberately losing to kalim, the story focuses specifically on a dancing competition. which is why it’s honestly so important to jamil’s character that chapter 5 focuses on a singing and dancing competition. jamil finally has the chance not just to show off his skills in general, but his skills at the one thing he’s been allowed to love throughout his life. the one thing where losing to kalim at it hurt so much that it was such a prominent memory for him. when jamil was chosen as a main vocalist, he instinctively tries to say kalim would be better suited for the position, but stops himself and accepts it. it clearly means so much to him that he was chosen for this.

okay i started to scare people with how long this was getting when it was only 50% finished, i think if i write anymore people will actually be concerned for my health so i’ll leave it here. if you read all of this, thank you so much for putting up with my anime boy brainrot for over six full pages! i really.. really like jamil. again, i most certainly do not think his actions should be defended, but god if they’re not fascinating to read about. and i hope i covered the other sides to him well enough, the things that you’d never ordinarily pick up on because so few people talk about him outside of him and kalim as a pair (both platonic scarabia + romantic jamikali, i mean). he has so much depth to him that people don’t see and god i could easily have gone on for another few pages if i wasn’t forcing myself to stop. but please please talk to me if you want to hear more...

yana has treated him so well, jamil stans get too much food if anything but i’m absolutely thriving off it as you can see! thank you for allowing him to exist, yana-sensei!

having said that, i couldn’t stop myself from adding some extra facts about him below. please enjoy.

some fun jamil facts for your soul:

his sister used to bake him cookies on his birthday - specifically, these!

when jamil and kalim went to eat at the cafeteria with ruggie and leona, leona took one look at jamil and went “you look like you’d kill kalim in his sleep”

sebek and jamil find each other’s positions enviable. sebek wishes he could have been by malleus’ side from birth as jamil was with kalim, and jamil just… wishes he served someone he respected as deeply as sebek respects malleus (but he does think sebek is too enthusiastic)

jamil hates surprises with a burning passion, and despite being with kalim for 17 years is still not used to them. for his previous birthday, kalim held a huge surprise party, and i think he still hasn’t recovered from the shock

i think a lot of people already know that in his birthday SSR story he said he wanted a parrot after graduation so he could teach it to call him master, but it goes a bit further than that? it was actually first mentioned during his lesson chats, when kalim gets a parrot. jamil has to research how to care for it, and ended up wanting one of his own afterwards (but got too tsundere to admit it at the time).

also, he heard that the sorcerer of the sands’ parrot (iago) could speak as fluently as a human, and he got excited and watched a bunch of parrot videos on magicam, but was of course disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

he frequently uses flattery to try and get his way, like when he attempts to flatter vil during his SSR story - unfortunately he misjudged vil, as vil’s actually the type of person who hates meaningless flattery. because he does this so frequently, when he genuinely does give compliments people don’t always believe him.

according to the halloween event, jamil is surprisingly environmentally conscious, and insists on holding a sustainable halloween theme. after organising so many parties and seeing the waste they probably produce, i think there’s no wonder he’s so concerned about it.

#twisted wonderland #jamil viper #twst jamil #scarabia #twst #kalim al-asim #twst kalim #i'm a busy uni student so don't expect the kalim essay to be finished anytime soon #i procrastinated way too much writing the jamil one #and i would not do the same for kalim ajdfjshsjhs #also i know people have said they'd like to see my take on other charas but please consider:#the only reason i have this deep an insight into jamil's character is bc i never think about the others #there's only jamil in my head #so i don't think i'm the best person to go to for interesting analysis about anyone else #but again who knows #tw: abuse

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2manyfandoms2count · 3 years ago

Text

Sleepless in Paris

I ended up not posting anything Ladrien in June when I'd planned to do something, but then I saw the last prompt of @ladrienjune (Speechless), and since it tied in with an idea I had a couple of weeks ago... Here you go!

Established Ladrien, Adrien receives a text from his girlfriend and overthinks its meaning. Thankfully Ladybug comes and clears things up.

Loosely based on a quote from Le Discours, a novel by Fabrice Caro.

Read on AO3

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Adrien, we need to talk.

Adrien read the message over and over again, like an overworked student stuck on a paragraph whose meaning just won’t register.

He tossed his phone aside and lied back down, rubbing his eyes as he did so.

Oh, how much he regretted ever getting Ladybug a private phone so they could communicate. It had seemed like a good idea after their third close call, when she had almost swung into his room like she owned the place (and maybe she did, she was his girlfriend, after all, anything was possible), in the middle of an impromptu piano recital his father had requested. Thankfully, the false notes he’d made upon seeing her almost crash into the window had covered any sound she’d made as she changed course, and made sure his father and Nathalie’s attention was on him, and not on the red blur just outside.

She’d laughed so prettily when she’d unwrapped the box and noticed that he’d painted little black dots on the back of the red phone case. She’d insisted on paying him back in kisses and sweet nothings. Even if he’d wanted to, he wouldn’t have been able to refuse; his girlfriend was convincing like that.

Yes. Those had been the good old days.

The ones when the messages he received from her didn’t come as a blow that made his stomach tie into knots and question if he was going to be okay (although that might not have been entirely true; the feeling he’d gotten when he’d read “I love you” on his screen, written down, not just whispered between two makeout sessions or before she left, a permanent trace of her feelings, could definitely have fit that description, but the difference was that he’d questioned if he was in heaven, then).

The timestamp of the message read Monday, 4:36pm. He’d managed to type a “when?” at 5:58pm, which she’d seen at 5:59pm. Nothing since. That was new, too. Even messages that didn’t require an answer always got at least a couple of emojis in reply.

It was now Tuesday, 6:12am, and he hadn’t slept a wink, dissecting the five words, twenty characters, like they were a long lost spell that could fix hunger on Earth.

The first thing he’d noticed was the full stop. That didn’t bode well - even he knew that nobody ended a text like that these days.

Then, the comma. A pause. Not great either, in the context of a relationship.

Especially when it came before a “we need to talk”. He didn’t need to have seen many romantic comedies to know that this was probably an end of the line warning.

Even his name was a sign.

Adrien.

Not “my prince”. Not “my love”. Not even “my Adrien”, like she’d taken to calling him recently. Just plain old boring Adrien . Until the message had arrived, he hadn’t realised they’d been on a downward slope, but maybe he’d been too busy burying his head in the sand to notice. Maybe deep down, he’d known that it wasn’t viable.

That Ladybug, basically a goddess among men, had no business being in a relationship with a commoner like him, however much she tried to fool herself by calling him her prince. Adrien. The more he read it, the more emphasis he put on the second syllable. Ad- rien . Ad rien. Towards nothing. Maybe she’d known they were doomed from the start, that they had no future, but she’d tried anyway.

Maybe he was reading too much into it and the lack of sleep was making him delirious.

Whatever the outcome, he supposed they’d had a good run. He’d cherish all of the moments they’d spent together.

Actually, he thought, sitting up again, maybe that was what she needed. Maybe he could change her mind if he reminded her of all their good memories. There was no way she couldn’t be convinced, or at least persuaded, by his plea. He hadn’t gone six months playing a double game of putting on a fake insensitivity mask over the one he wore with Chat Noir's to avoid her seeing through him, when she deserved to be showered in compliments at every moment of the day, for it to end this way.

He loved her.

He picked up his phone again and pressed the dial button.

One tone. Two tones. Three.

Adrien suddenly remembered the time, hastily hung up, and facepalmed audibly, making Plagg roll over in his sleep and hiss.

“Sorry,” he whispered, before turning his attention back to the phone.

If his call hadn’t woken her up, then his mistake would be the first thing she’d see when she did.

This was bad. It wasn’t like he could go delete the evidence. He didn’t know where she lived, and since he doubted that she slept while transformed, there was no way to track her. Which would also be bad, he reminded himself, but maybe this emergency would justify it.

Anyway, he couldn't cry over spilt milk, but maybe he could escape. Just move somewhere, preferably on the other side of the world. He could change his life, his name (actually, could that alone change the outcome of their relationship? If he changed it before planning anything, could they pick up as if nothing happened, and would the timeline be fixed? He wished he’d thought about it before calling her), and raise hamsters in the mountains. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him, right? And then he could live happily ever after in the sweet, sweet illusion that despite them being miles apart, he still lived in a world in which he was Ladybug’s boyfriend.

He didn’t know if he preferred the idea of her never coming after him, or her seeking him out, even if it was to deliver bad news, but it didn’t really matter. The plan sounded good. Foolproof.

He hopped off of his bed and pulled a suitcase out of his closet. He’d always wondered why his father stored them there when it really seemed like an unnecessary temptation, but at least it was useful now.

If he was to start over somewhere, he needed to leave Adrien behind. The guy was a train wreck anyway, but unfortunately for him, a train wreck people would want to find, when he just wanted to be left alone to mope.

No more white shirts, then. They were too recognisable. He found a collection of dark hoodies at the back of the closet and stuffed them in the bag, along with t-shirts (they’d be hidden under his hoodie so he could keep those), a pair of jeans and some shorts.

He came back into his room and put his suitcase on his bed, scanning his surroundings for other essentials. His eyes landed on the fencing cup he kept his Ladybug pictures in. He’d definitely need those. It would help maintain him in his illusion. He also needed his Ladybug pyjamas, which he kept hidden since he wasn’t sure his father would approve of them. They’d be perfect for his new life.

Plagg stirred on his pillow. Before Adrien could ask himself whether it was reasonable for the small god to come with him, there was a knock on the window, and he froze. He turned around slowly; Ladybug stood in the window frame, looking glorious in the soft dawn light. He noticed she was holding a small paper bag in her left hand. He was sure it could fit everything he’d ever gotten her.

“Going somewhere?” She frowned, hopping inside before he could even move.

Adrien stared at her, before guessing he’d better bite the bullet. “Well I just figured I’d rather not stick around if you’re going to break up with me.” He crossed his arms over his chest.

He watched her face fall and started to doubt his conclusion.

“Break up with…” she muttered slowly, as if tasting the words, before shaking her head. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Adrien, we need to talk.” He airquoted. “I get it, it’s fine. I’m-”

“Adrien, I’m not here to break up with you. At all.” She shook her head again and took a step forward. “What would make you think that?”

“Adrien, first of all,” he stated.

“Your name?...” She tilted her head inquisitively.

“You used to call me my Adrien. Or sweeter stuff.” He pointed out.

“Oh Kwami.” She shook her head, trying to repress a smile, although the blond didn’t notice.

“And then don’t think I didn’t notice you being less present lately.” He waved a finger at her, feeling himself blush. He knew his accusation was a tad hypocritical; sure, their date hangouts in the previous few weeks had been less frequent than they’d been at the beginning of their relationship, when she’d drop in practically every day, but they’d also been full of Akumas and photoshoots, what with his father’s new collection dropping. She’d managed to beat him to his room most days, hanging out around the windows as she waited, which had made it very difficult for him to sneak back in.

But on the occasions they had seen each other, she’d also seemed more lost in her thoughts than usual. Nervously wringing her hands together while they chilled in front of a movie, despite him soothingly raking his fingers through her hair. Being even more elusive about what was going on in her life, if that was possible. Looking at him with determination in her eyes, opening her mouth to speak, only to close it and shake her head with a sigh.

“I’m really sorry about that, my love .” She gave him a pointed look as she took his hand. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately, about you, me, our relationship. How, you’re right, it might seem like we’re spending less time together to you , but…” she trailed off, biting her lip.

“How could that statement have a but ?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Well, um, I had this sort of crazy idea, because we’ve only been dating for six months and it’s totally not like I ever imagined us getting married and having three kids and a hamster or anything…” she mumbled nervously, and Adrien felt his heart flutter in his chest. “Anyway, I’ve been trying to get a hold of Chat Noir all night to check that he approves the idea, and also because I feel like it’s kind of an unspoken agreement that unless it’s an emergency and it really feels right, we’d do this together first, but he’s not replying and I was awake and you were awake and I thought…”

“Okay my… Lovebug, breathe.” Adrien’s caring boyfriend instinct kicked in as her rambling gave him confirmation that their relationship wasn’t in immediate danger, and he placed his hands on her shoulders, taking a deep breath to show the example. She mirrored him, and they breathed in sync for a couple of cycles, until he was satisfied that she’d stopped hyperventilating. He lead her to his couch and helped her sit down.

“Croissant?” she asked shyly, presenting him with the bag she’d brought. A pastry bag. Not a bag with his belongings. He really needed to stop jumping to conclusions.

“You know me so well.” He smiled brightly as he took one of the baked goods. They were still warm. The croissant didn’t last long in his hands. “Anyway,” he gulped down the last bite, “if you don’t mind me asking, what was your miraculous idea?” He smiled at himself, proud of his pun.

“Well, I was thinking that I could reveal my identity to you,” Ladybug replied, daintily wiping the corners of her mouth with a tissue.

It was a good thing Adrien was already sitting down, else more than his jaw would have ended up on the floor.

“Your… Your identity. Reveal. To me.” He asked seriously, hoping his words would make sense to her. It was better than remaining speechless.

“Yes, I am considering it,” she laughed. The sound made his brain tangle even more.

“Why?” He croaked.

“Well, as I said, it would enable us to spend more time together.” He raised his eyebrows, but she didn’t elaborate. “And I don’t know, I feel like it would be right. You’ve got something, Adrien.” She smiled tenderly.

“I… I do?” He felt himself blush.

“It’s just a croissant crumb, there, let me get it for you.” She leaned forwards and kissed the corner of his mouth. The contact jump started his brain.

“Ladybug, this is serious.” He backed away slightly. “Why me?”

“Fine.” She sighed. “Well, you're my boyfriend, but I know you a lot better than you might think. Before you say anything, no, I can’t tell you why yet, I need to speak to Chat Noir first. But there is something about you, Adrien. I feel like I can trust you. With this. Because of course I trust you otherwise.”

Adrien looked down at his hands and twiddled his thumbs, pouting as he thought.

“Adr- Sunshine? Is everything alright?” Ladybug placed a concerned hand on his thigh when his silence stretched to a slightly uncomfortable length.

“When you talk to Chat Noir, and he agrees to your plan…” He looked up and met her gaze.

“If,” she corrected him, but he waved her interruption away.

“...Will you guys reveal your identities to each other? Will you ask Chat Noir who he is under the mask?” He felt almost feverish as he searched her eyes for a hint of the answer before she could speak.

“Um, yes, I guess that’s how I saw the discussion going.” Ladybug frowned. “Are you concerned that it will change our relationship somehow? Because I promise it won’t, I-”

“Oh Bluebell, it definitely will, but not in the way that you think.” Adrien pecked her lips, a mischievous smile spreading on his as he pulled away.

“Oh?” Ladybug blinked a couple of times. Adrien tried to hide his smugness at her speechlessness.

“Yep. You see, I’m one hundred percent paw-sitive your dearest partner will agree to your plan.” He grinned, watching the realisation dawn on her face.

“How hard was refraining from making cat puns in the past six months?” Ladybug finally sighed, a small smile tugging at her lips.

“Very, my Lady.” He pouted. "But not as hard as refraining from kissing you on patrol."

“Maybe you can help him pay up all the Camembert he owes me for sitting through him ranting about all the missed opportunities,” Plagg called out, making her jump slightly. Adrien rolled his eyes.

“Anyway, you were right, your plan really will allow us to spend more time together!” His face lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning.

“You don’t know the half of it.” Ladybug shook her head, before looking back up at him, an indecipherable look on her face. “Need a lift for school?”

“That’s all you’ve got to say?” Adrien looked at his girlfriend with kitten eyes, disappointed that she hadn’t held up her side of the bargain.

“Well, it’s time to go if you don’t want to be caught by your bodyguard.” She shrugged, stood up, and extended a hand toward him, the twinkle in her eye the only tell in her poker face.

“Ladybug…” He whined, pouting.

“What, Chaton?” Her smile finally broke free. “It’s very literally on my way. I can drop you off at your seat, and then walk to mine… Right behind you.” She booped him on the nose.

Once again, Adrien was thankful he was already sitting down.

As she carried him to school, Adrien decided sleep was overrated. Sometimes reality was the best dream of all.

#ladrienjune #miraculous ladybug #the miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir #mlb #miraculous fanfiction #miraculous fanfic #ladrien #ladybug #adrien agreste #day 30: speechless #identity reveal #established ladrien #elle writes

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