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tardexlanoche · 3 years ago

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Well, this won’t leave my mind and it turns out that in order to create an AO3 account i have to wait for an invitation, so meanwhile i’m gonna give this abandoned acc an use and update this here just so i have accountability for it. i’ve never published anything in here so i hope i don’t mess this up.

Enjoy!

——————

It’s her first day of class, and she’s already late.

“Excuse me, ma’am, could you help me? I need to find the lecture hall where Dr. Myriad is giving the International Law master’s introduction, but it doesn’t say where we’re supposed to go in the schedule,” Kate begs, practically shoving her phone on the poor woman’s face, “I’m really late, I can’t keep wandering around”.

The clerk adjusts her glasses further up her nose and squints at the screen, “Oh dear, that lecture is to be given in the Aularium, see?” She zooms in a small red footnote at the corner of the document, where it clearly states that all the master’s classes will indeed take place in the Central Aularium.

The Central Aularium, which happens to be at about fifteen minutes away – running - from Law School, where she is currently standing.

It’s her first day of class and she’s already late. And nowhere near to where she is supposed to be.

Kate takes off so quickly she almost forgets her phone, barely shouting a “Thanks!” above her shoulder.

She’s close to the building when she sees a big ass sign with blue, bold letters welcoming the new I.L. master’s students, clearly indicating where her lecture is scheduled.

Yeah, great help now. Assholes.

“Wait!” someone yells behind her, making her stop and turn around. A guy around seemingly around her age is running after her almost out of breath. She wonders if she dropped something on her way here, checking her pockets frantically for her phone.

“You’re also late to Myriad’s introduction, right? I overheard you back there,” says the boy now stopping in front of her, a little out of breath, “We’re classmates. Name’s Peter,” he says extending a hand.

Kate shakes it hurriedly, giving him a small smile, “Kate. Nice to meet you, Peter. Ready to be -” she stops to check her watch “twenty-two minutes late on our first day?”

“It’s totally my thing.”

She pushes the door with so much force she worries for a minute about denting the wall with it. Mom would love to hear about that, she thinks fleetly to herself, focusing now on finding a way to enter the classroom as discreetly as possible.

“Okay, any ideas?” whispers Peter to her right from where he is peeking through the window. The professor is already writing on the board, the rest of their classmates taking notes or tipping away on their computers.

She thinks of the feel of eyes on her, the burning sensation in her cheeks when she is the center of attention, and curses herself. Shit.

“Yes, I say we confidently leave now and just come to the next class,” Kate answers pitifully, but before she has time to turn around a lithe body crashes into her.

“Ow, sorry” a sweet, high-pitched voice apologizes while Kate takes a couple of steps back, adding distance between her and her aggressor. It just turns out to be a very cute, redhead aggressor.

“Fuck me, the class has already started?”

A very cute, redhead aggressor with a very cute accent who also happens to be late.

“Yeah, welcome to the club,” answers Peter in camaraderie, “I’m Peter, and the one you just pushed into the wall is Kate,” he says pointing at her. The mention of her name makes her blink, and she forces herself to get her shit together. Stop being a fucking mess when there’s a pretty girl around, Bishop, she berates to herself. She lifts her hand and gives what she hopes is a welcoming smile to the girl, who thankfully looks just as flustered as Kate feels.

“Oh god, yes. Sorry about that, I was so worried about making a fool of myself in front of our class that I didn’t even see you” she says sheepishly, “I’m Wanda, and I guess I’m now a member of your late club.”

“Cool, at least we get to know each other before we’re thrown in there” replies Peter tilting his head to the closed door behind them.

“Nice to meet you, Wanda,” finally, her brain seems to regain its normal functioning, “I was just telling Peter we should ditch introduction and come later to our first class, what do you say?”

“Introductions are always just nonsense talk, anyways. We can just ask someone later if Myriad said something relevant,” Peter joins her cause, and she can already tell they’ll get along fine alright.

Wanda bites her lip casting a glance through the door’s window, but the corners of her mouth turn up in a second, “Well… My best friend’s inside, so I guess I can pass whatever notes she takes to you guys. We’re already more than half an hour late, anyways.”

“Awesome,” Peter does a kind of lame kind of cute fist pump in the air and links both his arms through theirs, “Let’s go then, ladies!”

They end up sitting on some stairs drinking black, sour coffee from a machine, but it’s nice. She fins out Peter studied law in New York, too, just a couple of years ahead of her, and that Wanda came to the U.S. as a refugee from Sokovia, went to a community college, and was so amazingly bright she was awarded a scholarship here. The conversation flows naturally with Peter’s energy and Kate’s blabbermouth tendencies, and though Wanda seems to be more on the introverted spectrum, she holds her own.

Despite what her open and friendly behavior may make it seem, Kate hasn’t always had the easiest of times making friends since she left school. There, everybody knew each other since practically kindergarten, but once she got to high school things started getting kinda hard for her.

So right now, Kate feels kind of glad she didn’t see those stupid red letters on the schedule.

———

“Okay, let’s get moving girls. We don’t want to be late again,” Peter says after checking his phone and adjusting his backpack, helping both of them to stand up.

As they approach the classroom again, Wanda seems to get a bit worried, “Do you guys think we’ll get in trouble for skipping introduction?”

“I hope not, I didn’t even know there would be one.”

The three of them turn to the source of the voice, a girl around their age sitting on the floor, legs crossed in front of her and back to the wall. She seems to be fighting with her hair, curly brunette strands escaping her attempt at a ponytail. Kate may not have exactly the same curls, but she totally can relate to the frustrated huff their new companion makes before giving up.

“Well, we did and we missed it anyways,” Kate shrugs, and remembering her manners adds, “My name’s Kate. They are Wanda and Peter.”

“M.J.”

“Nice to meet you, M.J.,” Wanda shakes her hand and wiggles her fingers with a cute smile scrunching her nose, now seemingly more relaxed seeing yet another classmate missing their first period. Power in numbers and all that, Kate guesses, “I’ll ask my friend if there’s anything we need to know, and I’ll let you know.”

“Cool, Wanda. Thanks,” says M.J. standing up, offering a hand up for the redhead to high-five.

Kate watches the exchange smiling and shaking her head, turning her head to share a wasn’t that cute look with Peter when she suddenly sees the boy almost petrified next to her. His eyes - fixated on their new friend - almost bulge out of their orbits, his hands firm around the straps of his backpack, knuckles white with force. His words seem to have abandoned him, as she now realizes he hasn’t spoken since they introduced themselves, not even to say hi.

Needless to say, Kate takes this great opportunity to mess with her classmate, “If you keep looking she will notice your little… problem,” she whispers next to his ear, pointing subtly to his pants.

That seems to snap him out of his trance, quickly letting go of the backpack to cover his groin on instinct only to realize a second later that it didn’t get to be that kind of obvious. He punches her on the arm, “Fuck you, Kate. Not funny,” but even then, he can’t help but let a nervous laugh go.

The other two girls stop their conversation probably to see what they are bickering about, but just then the classroom door opens and students start getting out. The four of them nod at each other and Wanda, unsurprisingly, ends up being the bravest one entering first.

It ends up not being a great deal at all. Their professor barely castes them a glance as they go through the door, more focused on turning the class projector on.

“Well, totally a good decision getting that coffee,” nods Kate with a self-satisfied smile. Peter claps her shoulder and Wanda winks at her, and all the dread that she had been feeling these past days about starting anew in this city has now melted away giving pass to a giddy happiness. She’s managed to score two almost friends in just the first hour without making a fool of herself, yay her.

“Hey, my friend’s over there. Let’s go sit with her, see what they talked about,” Wanda points to the fourth row, left corner, and Kate loses her breath a bit.

See, she has met tons of pretty women in her life, she has even had the chance to be with some of them, but this girl… She might quite certainly be the most beautiful woman Kate has ever seen.

Her blonde hair hangs down her side in a perfect braid, some loose strands of hair framing her heart-shaped face perfectly. Bold, pink plump lips pursed as she mindlessly scrolls through her phone, chin resting on one hand as if she were posing, her high cheekbones resembling those of a renaissance painting. She has an untouchable aura around her, like she is not interested at all in what’s happening around her, like she’s actually gracing them with her presence there.

She totally is, though.

And when she looks up, Kate swears those big green eyes steal all the light in the room.

For a second she worries this magnificent stranger is looking at her - because with this creepy staring she has going on, she as well might - but luckily her eyes trail after Wanda, clearly happy to see her friend as the first sign of emotion crosses her face.

And oh god, she has dimples when she smiles.

A chuckle to her right snaps her out of her admiration, “Well, who would be in deep trouble now if she was a dude?” breathes lowly Peter, mockingly hiding his mouth behind his cupped hand. The burning cheeks Kate was worrying about earlier come with vengeance, worsening when her classmate starts almost choking on his laugh.

“Shut up.”

“Great comeback, Romeo. Glad to see blondie over there didn’t steal your tongue,” and with that, Kate does give him a good deserved shove. It only makes him laugh more, but well. At least now she has something else to focus on.

“Come on, Kate. Let’s find out the name of our new friend,” and if it weren’t for his arm around her shoulders, Kate is pretty sure she would have spent the rest of the day firmly planted on the second stair, not moving one bit. The predicament of having to talk to this girl seems quite terrifying.

When they make it to the fourth row, Wanda is already talking to the girl, M.J. next to them listening politely. And with Peter’s not subtle at all throat clearing, the three girls turn their heads to them.

Wanda smiles and places a delicate hand on her friend’s arm to get her attention, “And those are Peter and Kate, my other late-to-class club mates,” she says pointing at them.

Peter lifts his hand and salutes the girls, and Kate would totally make fun of him if she could concentrate on something else than not tripping over her own feet while standing still. She manages what she hopes comes out as a friendly smile and a curt hi, before Wanda officially introduces her, “Guys, this is my friend, first-class-atendant and savior, -”

“Yelena. Nice to meet you. And don’t worry, you didn’t miss much.”

Okay, Kate was not expecting that voice at all. A deep, rich tone - can a voice remind you of chocolate?- also subtly marked with a foreign accent. She wonders if perhaps she and Wanda are actually from the same place. Is that how they meet? And is she also the same age as Wanda? How is she not working as a model somewhere? Does she like chocolate? What’s her favorite kind of music?

Questions start pilling out on her head, and she has to bite her tongue to keep her mouth shut. She wants to know more about this girl, but it would be cool if she could, you know, not scare her off the first time they meet. So she just nods to the girl - who stopped looking her way a few seconds ago already - and sits down next to Peter, who just cocks an eyebrow up at her but abstains from teasing her further.

Yelena.

She mouths it quietly to herself, just to see how it feels in her tongue.

Yelena.

Kate has a feeling that name is going to be etched on her memory for a really, really long time.

#yelena x kate #kate x yelena #kate bishop #yelena belova #bishlova #black widow #hawkeye #hawkeye 2021 #wanda maximoff #natasha romanoff #fanfic #marvel

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cafffine · 3 years ago

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Hey guys, I’ve decided to stop publishing Saltcoats for a number of reasons. I'm aware that many of you are going to initially be let down or confused, but hopefully once you’ve read through this post you’ll understand why this had to stop. I’ll try to hit all my points, but of course if you have any questions pls feel free to dm me or reply to this post.

DISCLAIMER: Ending this fic was a decision I came to by myself! No one asked me to do this, though many did help, and if you have something to add please do not bring other tumblr or ao3 users into the conversation unless they’ve explicitly said they’re ok with that. It’s a draining and heavy topic (not to me, but for those affected) and I don’t want to cause anymore unneeded distress.

Also, I’m the only author, all the problems with this story were created by me, and were biases I should have recognized and acted on much sooner. I’m very thankful to all the people that have reached out to me about the negative impacts on this fic, but it really does come down to: I wrote and published a story that was fundamentally ignorant of its setting and racist. So now I have to do my part to apologize and educate myself/take accountability.

First off, this was a flawed concept to begin with because I was trying to do a low fantasy setting with aliens in period clothes and a work of historical fiction at the same time, and those are not things you can go halfway on.

Historical fiction that centers around people of color has a long history of simply going race-blind and faking diversity by giving poc the roles of white people in Eurocentric stories and erasing their identities. (This article about Bridgerton explains the problem better than I could.) And it was something I tried to avoid by still having the Fetts written as immigrants from Aotearoa (NZ), but completely missed the execution on because I didn’t commit to full historical accuracy in all characters and aspects of the story. Meaning, I might as well have gone race-blind because you can’t pick and choose what to include, it’s just as racist.

This creates situations like the Fetts being immigrants facing real life oppression while the Organas, also people of color, are unaffected by the social climate and living as members of the British upper class. That’s not accurate to any version of history and ends up wiping clean any point I was trying to make about race and oppression. That also extends beyond the Fetts, I was not addressing how the american characters come from a country that still allows for the ownership of slaves, the British oppression of Scottish people and their culture, or even an in-depth look at real Queer communities of that era. (and more)

Given the real life historical climate in the 1850s, a multi-racial story like this one is not successful, and is racist in its ignorance of the struggles of poc, immigrants, and the intersectionality that had with class and crime.

In addition, the Fetts being written as criminals, even if it is framed as a morally correct choice*, is still playing into negative racial stereotypes that shouldn’t have been ignored.

* I should add, I don’t mean to make it sound like i’m creating excuses for myself when I give explanations for some of these choices such as “but it was framed as morally correct”, that doesn’t lessen the damage being done, it’s still racist, I guess I'm just trying to show why so many of these things went overlooked for as long as they did, and how easy it is for white/privileged people to find mental loopholes around racism when you’re not being sufficiently critical of yourself.

On another note, the Fetts being indigenous immigrants to Britain in the 1800s is not something I should have tried to tackle in fanfiction - a medium that often lacks nuance and can easily end up romanticizing or glossing over most heavy topics. This goes for period typical homophobia, addiction, and class struggles as well.

That being said! I’m not implying that any of those things should be completely ignored in fanfiction. Addiction, for example, is something very close to me that I do still want to explore in fanfic for the purposes of education and normalization, I’m not telling anyone what not to write, just checking myself. Because in a story like this where literally everything is so heavily dramatized and also applied to characters of color by me, a white person? It’s only going to end up being out of place, lacking in historical accuracy, and wholly disrespectful.

Another major problem I wanted to address is the relationship between a rich white person and a poverty stricken poc. That's a bad stereotype to begin with, but then I tried and failed to frame Obi-Wan as ignorant and biased to a point where his social status plays into the theme of class critique. But, if he’s still being written as Cody’s love interest, all his negative characteristics are ultimately going to be ignored and excused by the narrative (by me).

I’m not trying to end this conversation, I’ll always be willing to talk about this to anyone who’d want to say/hear more, but I don’t want run the point into the ground with over-explanation.

So, in conclusion, this fic had to stop and be broken down into the problem that it was. All white authors who write for the clones need to be hyper-vigilant about the fact that we are creating narratives for poc, and that our inherent racism is always in threat of being baked into in the stories we publish and spread to an audience. I was in the wrong when I wrote this story, and it should never have gone on for this long. I apologize for both my actions, and to anyone I may have hurt along the way.

This is getting posted on ao3 in the fic, and then, for now anyway, the fic is going to be deleted after a week. I’ll leave this post up and answer everyone unless it's someone trying to change my mind. Also, if I ignore an ask please send it again, tumblr might just have deleted it. I don’t want to try and bury this or run from my mistakes, I just don’t think that leaving the fic up where it can still find an audience will do anyone any good. Thank you for reading

If you're interested here's some resources I've been using to educate myself further:

What caused the New Zealand Wars? - An excerpt of the book by Vincent O'Malley of the same title. It gives a good summary of the violent colonization and oppression of Māori people and their culture by the British empire.

NZ Wars: Stories of Waitara (video) - Very educational documentary about the NZ wars and British colonialism. There are some historical recreations that get violent so pls watch with caution.

Historical American Fiction without the Racism - Tumblr post by @/writingwithcolor that talks specifically about Black people in the 1920's, but makes a good point about race and historical fiction in general. I'd recommend any post from this blog, especially their navigation page just a lot of great resources

Who Gave You the Right to Tell That Story? - An article about writing outside of your race that includes a diverse series of testimonials

History of Scottish Independence - Details the colonization of Scotland by the British empire, sort of long, can cntrl + f to "The Acts of Union" for a more direct explanation.

The best books on Racism and How to Write History - A list of well written and diverse works of historical fiction and why they are good examples of representation

I have a lot more that I can share if you're interested (x x x x) but this post is getting a bit too long.

#I proofread this a lot but I'm sure there's problems with this post too #If anyone has something they want me to change or of theres anything I said that was offensive I'd appreciaite any help fixing it #but also I'll be rereading this all night and it will likely change before I put it on ao3 #saltcoats #racism

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plant-flwrs · 4 years ago

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some of my ao3 wolfstar recommendations!

i have been reading so much on archive of our own recently, so i thought i’d share a few of my absolute favorites!

also this is only wolfstar rn because i’m obsessed, and most of them are 18+, so, just a warning.

also, if you’re not on ao3, please do yourself the favor and check it out. it’s so amazing and has so much to offer. i have an account that I hope to start posting on over there, right here, so feel free to keep up with me over there!

(and yes, this post IS an open invitation to message me to talk about any of these fics or just wolfstar in general because I need someone to talk about these fics with)

the works are linked, as well as the authors’ accounts. go and show them some love!

The Barista, the Burglar, and the Sofa by SeasOfTrees: Genuinely one of my favorite fics I’ve ever read. The writing is so dry and witty and so absolutely Remus-like, I couldn’t get enough of it. Part of me wished it was an actual series just so I could never stop reading it, but it’s still perfect as a one off.

All The Young Dudes by MsKingBean89: This fic RUINED ME. I am going to be completely honest and say that I haven’t been able to bring myself to finish it just because of the PAIN it caused me. If you told me this was a published piece of work and all the Harry Potter books were just fanfictions based on All The Young Dudes, I would believe you with no question. I have come so close to printing and paying for this fic to be bound into a physical copy just because it is so worth it.

Text Talk by merlywhirls: I found this fic one night after crying my body weight in tears because of All The Young Dudes, and I’ve always found texting fics to be fun and lighthearted and just an all around easy read. Remus is a kid with a chronic illness and Sirius is a wholesome pansexual who loves Remus more than anything. Truly adorable. :)

Solntse by lumosinlove (@lumosinlove on tumblr): Oh my god. Okay. So, I’ve never been one for super creative au’s, but this converted me. The idea of Russian!Sirius and a Callboy!Remus makes me melt. In most wolfstar fics, writers use Sirius’ and Remus’ trauma to give them issues in communication, and its done wonderfully, but this fic gives an entire new version of that. The language barrier acts as such a creative hurdle for them to get over, and I loved it so, so, so, much. Also, have google translate ready if you want some extra heart wrenching action. Also, I am in love with @lumosinlove and everything they make <3

Meet You At The Bottom by Remy_Writes5: This made me obsessed with Uncle!Sirius somehow even more than I already was. Also, porn with plot, basically (my kryptonite).

Sweater Weather by lumosinlove: OH MY GOD!!! This fic had me going through a roller coaster of emotions. Once again, never been one for creative au’s, but THIS. This absolutely beautiful piece of artwork had me hooked from the very beginning. The writing is beautiful, the idea is so well executed, and the characterizations are so amazing. It also has a spin off based on some of the original characters, and they are so adorable! Basically, just read everything lumosinlove has ever written, please and thank you.

Casting Moonshadows by Moonsign: Okay, so, I have yet to read this one, but from what heard, it’s like All The Young Dudes but with a different characterization of Remus...? I wanted to give it a try, and I’m adding it here because other people have recommended it to me.

The Kitchens by lumosinlove: Yes, another lumosinlove. I can’t help it. This fic is so beautiful. It has no hesitation in blatantly showing both Sirius’ and Remus’ flaws, while also being so adorable that it hurts. I’m a sucker for royal au’s and this did not let me down.

The Annunciation by bigblackdog: This fic!!! I have little to no knowledge of catholic history, but this fic made me want to. Sirius and Remus are monks set in the Italian renaissance, forbidden love, of course, and the storytelling is so captivating and descriptive. I may not have understood 50% of the religious references, but I sure did enjoy the wolfstar in it.

Dress up in You by MsKingBean89: The ever so talented author, MsKingBean89, my lord and saviour, blessed us with this amazing non-magical, modern, wolfstar, Remus is poor and in a band, Sirius is hot and a hairdresser, masterpiece. Adorable Jilly content in this. It says its incomplete, and usually, that puts me off, but the way this ended is completely fine with me and a genuinely happy ending.

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okay! so, there are some of my favorite wolfstar archive of our own fics. i beg you all to read them, just so I can have someone to talk about them with. i also beg you to create an ao3 account, just because it truly is so amazing. i also may or may not be posting my wolfstar greek island au fic over there relatively soon :0 okay love u guys I hope you enjoyed let me know if you want more compiled lists of my fav fics bc I am more than willing to share.

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freudensteins-monster · 4 years ago

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You Say “Mad Scientist” Like It’s A Bad Thing

Based on my own tumblr post: 3am thoughts… Has anyone written Jane Foster as a mad scientist, I mean like a villain?

Chaotic neutral Darcy and Jane featuring modern/human SHIELD Agent Bucky.

Available on AO3.

Content Warnings: Implied/Referenced Torture, Aftermath of Torture, Amnesia, Memory Suppressing Machine | The Chair (Marvel), Dark, Sort Of, Ambiguous/Open Ending...

In a world full of megalomaniacs, straight up supervillains, and fricking aliens, mad scientists were a dime a dozen. Dr Foster was one such scientist who was quickly moving from mildly irritating to SHIELD’s Most Wanted.

Dr Foster’s gimmick was portals. She first gained international attention when she claimed responsibility (via an untraceable Instagram account, @dr-mthrfckng-foster) for diverting LA’s 405 to a dirt road in rural Australia. Then came a string of impossible robberies – bank vaults and the private collections of the world's richest assholes stripped bare in seconds. Then she created a portal that caused an Indonesian typhoon to bear down on Wall Street, flooding the trading floor. And then she robbed a top secret government black site of some classified technology.

And that’s when Director Nick Fury made finding and stopping Dr Foster SHIELD’s number one priority.

Agent James Barnes had been stuck on suspension for two weeks, with two more to go, and was itching to get back into the field. He had way too much free time on his hands: he’d caught up on his sleep and everything in his Netflix queue. He’d cleaned out his refrigerator, done laundry and enough meal prep to last him until next month. He’d caught up with his family, cleaned his whole goddamn apartment twice, and now he was well and truly bored.

He was out for his fifth run of the week (and it wasn’t even Wednesday) when his work phone rang.

“Thank Christ,” he muttered before answering.

“Barnes.”

“It’s Hill. How’s the arm?”

“Fine,” Barnes grunted, rotating his metal shoulder irritably. “You got something for me?”

“Are you up for a recon mission?”

Usually he would have protested. He headed tactical units. He was an elite ‘first through the door’ kind of field agent. Not that he couldn’t be stealthy and patient - he’d been a sniper in the army for christ's sake - but going unnoticed in public was kind of a problem for him these days; he’d have to wear jackets and gloves in the middle of August to hide his prosthetic for starters.

On the other hand, his mother had been calling him every second day to feed him carb-heavy meals in exchange for help around the house, all while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he should start dating again. Requests for more grandchildren couldn’t be far behind.

“I’ll be there in thirty.”

Thirty-five minutes later Agent Barnes was back at his desk at SHIELD HQ perusing through the increasingly large file of one Dr Jane Foster.

She had been a brilliant student and had earned a PhD in Astrophysics from Culver University by the age of 25. By all accounts she should have been one of the leading researchers in her field, and if doctoral programs handed out superlatives Dr Foster’s would have been “Most Likely To Win a Nobel Prize By 30”.

Unfortunately for Dr Foster, and the rest of the world, she had been forced from that path by a sexist tenured professor who publicly denounced her theories, and the woman herself, as crazy, discredited her published work, and used his influence to ensure she was denied all of the more lucrative research grants.

When federal agents went to interview him after the 405 incident they found his office looking like a tornado had gone through it and the professor himself was nowhere to be found. A few weeks later he stumbled into a US Embassy in Russia after being found wandering in from the forests outside Vladivostok, half mad and still decrying the evils of allowing women into scientific fields.

He had been placed into witness protection and promptly admitted into a psychiatric facility under his new name, and was being monitored by several undercover agents in case Dr Foster felt like punishing him some more.

Anyone else who had a part in ruining Dr Foster’s legitimate career was also under surveillance, as was her mother in London, a terrified ex-boyfriend in Boston, and a handful of known associates, though Dr Foster hadn’t been in contact with any of them in years.

SHIELD and other federal agencies had tried the usual methods of tracking down a rogue mad scientist. They tried to find out where her base of operations was, firstly by looking for any properties in her name, but Dr Foster had been a broke student with an impressive amount of debt (until the day she decided to wipe it, and the rest of Culver’s student debt, out). So if she had property it would definitely not be in her legal name and all but impossible to trace back to her. Then they tried to look for drains on the powergrid. However she managed to generate her portals - SHIELD scientists still hadn’t figured that out - it surely had to be using huge amounts of electricity. So far they’d found six grow labs and two server rooms running illegal god-knows-what, but no Dr Foster.

Agent Barnes read the file twice, reviewed all the transcripts of the interviews with her known associates, and came to one very important conclusion: she had an accomplice.

As smart as Dr Foster was there was nothing in her academic history to suggest that she had a background in computer science that would account for the notable hacks and the untraceable nature of her activities. To add to that several interviewees had made passing remarks about her not having a cell phone for most of her academic career, and how she had zero interest in social media.

Two days later, after getting the okay for a field trip from Hill, Agent Barnes made his way to Culver University to speak to anyone who had even the vaguest recollection of Dr Foster. And that’s how he learnt about the intern.

He’d started by dropping by one of the physics labs where Dr Foster had spent most of her time, and by pure chance met a doctoral candidate who remembered her, and her intern.

“I think her name was Darlene. Glasses. Always on her phone.”

…which led him to the academic advisor who put the two of them together...

“Darcy. Darcy Lewis. She was actually a PoliSci major but left it too late and Dr Foster’s internship was the only one available. She had only been working with her for a few weeks before… before Dr Foster’s funding was revoked and she was asked to leave.”

...who pointed him to one of Darcy’s former professors…

“Average student. Good debater. Often late, and always had a coffee in her hand.”

...who gave him a few names of some former classmates who might remember her…

“Not the worst person to be stuck with on a group assignment. Pulled her weight. Obsessed with her stupid iPod.”

“I swear she lived off pop tarts and coffee. And not Starbucks either. Some stupid hipster chain.”

“Deja Brew. Serious problem. Went through one of those loyalty punch cards every week. Always complained about having to go home for the holidays and resort to big chain coffee shops.”

...which had him driving out to Darcy Lewis’ hometown, located a few hours south of Roanoke, Virginia, stopping first at the local high school to speak to the school principal…

“She’d always been good with computers but wasn’t allowed to use them at home for some reason so she spent a lot of time at the local library using theirs. We had to suspend her once. One of her classmates accused her of accepting payment from other students to hack the school’s records and alter their grades. Their grades were definitely getting altered, but we couldn’t get any concrete proof it was her.”

...who was able to find a photo of 16 year old Darcy in an old yearbook and told him what bar he could find Darcy’s mother in.

“She knows not to come to me if she’s in the shit, because I would call the cops in a heartbeat. Especially after that stunt she pulled before she went off to college…”

“What stunt was that, Ms Bennett?” Agent Barnes asked patiently, hoping he wouldn’t have to enable her alcoholism to get some useful information.

“I made some mistakes, okay,” she slurred defensively. “I was having an affair with my boss. Don’t know how Darcy knew. She told her stepfather but he didn’t believe her. Then a few weeks later we went out to dinner for my boss’s birthday... all the tv’s in the bar start showing security camera footage of us falling into offices and motel rooms. Took her all of a minute to ruin two marriages and a law firm.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied diplomatically. “Is there anyone she could turn to for help? Her father, perhaps.”

“He died when she was about twelve. They were as thick as thieves,” she recalled with a tinge of bitterness.

“Was there any place that was special to them? Someone she might go to ground?”

She shook her head. “He used to rent this old cabin near the Catskills off a buddy of his every other year. Winter or summer, Darcy loved it. But it's long gone. Forest fire, I think, the year before his accident.”

Back in his car Agent Barnes reviewed the data points.

Dr Foster had a base of operations somewhere. Had to be private, and as best SHIELD could guess it must be off the grid and Dr Foster must be generating her own power.

Dr Foster was a space nut at heart, and while an abandoned observatory might be too much to ask for, she’d probably want somewhere with minimal light pollution.

And while they could portal anywhere, neither of them spoke any other languages and had no familiarity with any international locations, so they were most likely still State-side. (Dr Foster’s mother had moved to London when Jane was twenty-three, but she’d never found the time to visit.)

Miss Lewis was familiar with the Catskills area. A base of operations there could be very isolated.

Dr Foster was most likely building and modifying her own own equipment so she had to be able to access materials. Sure, she could portal to her local hardware store, but having Darcy drive into the nearest town for supplies would attract less attention.

Miss Lewis had an addiction to coffee procured from Deja Brew, a small hipster chain with only a handful of locations along on the east coast. While she could have found another way to get her caffeine fix, people were creatures of habit.

Miss Lewis was also known for stocking up on poptarts. In one of the only images of the other side of one of Dr Foster’s portals there was what appeared to be, if one squinted, a box of limited edition pop tarts on a counter.

He plugged it all into SHIELD fancy search engines and got a few results back. The most promising was an abandoned ski chalet turned abandoned research station halfway up a mountain, an hour drive away from an up and coming tourist town, whose main street hosted a Deja Brew cafe. They also had a small mom and pop hardware store, as well as a post office, and a grocery store that had still been selling pumpkin pie pop tarts around the time Dr Foster’s portal had been caught on camera.

Agent Barnes came to with a groan. The flesh of his shoulder where it met his prosthetic felt like it was on fire, and he was pretty sure he could smell fried wiring.

The research station had come up in SHIELD’s initial search for a potential mad scientist's lair, but had been dismissed for not using any power and for not sending back any heat signature readings. Perhaps they’d found a way to fool the scanners. Or maybe they just weren’t in the day the readings were taken. Whatever the reason, Agent Barnes had a good feeling about it. He filled his tank up at the nearest gas station and got on the highway, forgoing checking in at the Triskelion on his way past in favour of driving all night. He’d call Hill when he had something solid.

** *** **

“Fuck…”

He willed his eyes open and came face to face with Darth Vader.

Barnes reeled back at the sound of the synthesized voice. “Who sent you? Who do you work for?! The Rebellion?”

“What the fuck!”

It took him until his eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting to realise that Darth Vader was wearing a grey knit dress and black tights. Darth Vader laughed and ripped off his mask to reveal a smiling bespectacled brunette underneath. The accomplice. Darcy Lewis.

“Sorry, I was just messing with you, dude,” she teased, tossing the mask over her shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to do that. But seriously, who do you work for? Who knows you’re here?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” he lied. “I was just camping in the woods, man. I saw the lights and decided to check it out,” he rambled in a lazy Canadian accent. “How the hell did I get here? Did you electrocute me?”

He used his not-quite fake panic to test the limits of his restraints. He’d been strapped into some sort of junkstore barber chair, with thick metal shackles locked around his wrists, ankles, and chest. His metal arm could probably make quick work of them but the damn thing was not responding. His panic became a little less fake.

“Just camping, huh?” she echoed back with a raised eyebrow, leaning forward to the point where Barnes couldn’t avoid getting a good look down her top and the 15-carat pink diamond (worth about 40mil and reported stolen in one of Dr Foster’s vault heists two months ago) hanging around her neck. “So that wasn’t you poking around town this morning?” she asked pointedly, drawing his attention to the wall of monitors he hadn’t noticed showing various street cameras around the town. “I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, dude. You got into town bright and early in a beat up looking truck with plates that didn’t exist two weeks ago and started flashing my yearbook photo around. So, who do you work for?”

He levelled his best steely-eyed agent stare at her and switched back to his native pissed-off Brooklynite accent. “I ain’t tellin you shit, sweetheart.”

“C’mon now,” she cooed, taking a seat on his lap. “Who do you work for? FBI? Interpol? SHIELD? Crawford County Library Services? Listen, I was totally going to return Eat Pray Love, but we had to skip town in a hurry and it got lost in the move. I will totally pay to replace it.”

Years of training (and regular poker games with the Black Widow) had taught him to school his features, even if that last one threw him for a loop.

“Nothing? You sure you don’t want to talk to me? Fine,” she whined. “Jane!”

It was only then that Barnes switched his focus from his captor to his surroundings and realised that there was another occupant puttering about on the other side of the large telescope that took pride of place on a hydraulic platform underneath the research station's retractable roof. The infamous Dr Foster.

“Jane!”

“What?” came the irritated reply.

“Come over here and practise your monologue. Look! You’ve got a captive audience and everything!” she announced, laughing at her own joke.

“I don’t have time, Darcy,” the disgruntled voice argued.

“Hey! I spent two days writing up that monologue, the least you can do is spend twenty-five minutes reading it out loud so I can make sure it doesn’t make you sound too much like a cartoon villain.”

“Twenty-five minutes?! Are you kidding me?” Dr Foster stormed out from behind the telescope to wave a wrench at her assistant. She looked less put together than her ID photo, appearing to be long overdue for both a shower and a nap. “I’m in the middle of something. I’ve almost figured the problem with the mobile portal generator, and… Darcy, why is there a man tied to a chair in my lab?”

“This man?” Darcy snorted, taking Barnes’s chin in her hands and wiggling it about. “This is the intruder. You remember the intruder alert, like fifteen minutes ago? Lots of flashing lights and alarms? Well, I found this guy passed out on the lawn. For most people, hitting my force field would be like getting lightly tased, but this bad boy,” she continued, tapping a fingernail against his dead metal arm, “meant you ended up getting the full 50,000 volts to your heart. Thanks for letting me practice my CPR by the way,” she added with a wink.

“It’s not a force field, Darcy. It’s a glorified invisible pet fence, upsized and modified so it reacts to the electrical impulses in the human body.”

“It keeps people out; I’m calling it a force field.”

This was definitely the weirdest interrogation he had endured by a large margin, Barnes mused as he followed their bickering like a pingpong game.

“Who is he, Darcy?” Jane sighed wearily. “What is he doing here?”

“Fiiiine. Janey, meet Agent James Barnes of SHIELD.”

“What?! SHIELD?!!”Jane screeched. “Why did you bring him here?”

“He found us, Jane. What was I supposed to do?”

“Something other than bringing him inside our secret hideout.”

“I am not killing him and burying him in the woods; I just did my nails.”

Jane scowled, turning the full force of her overtired fury on James. “Why can’t you SHIELD issue jackbooted thugs just leave me alone? Can’t you understand how important my work is? I am challenging the very foundations of modern science - of the laws of the universe! I am on the verge of a breakthrough! And if you or Nick Fury think you can stop me, you’ve got another thing coming!”

Before his mouth could betray him and ask how the hell they knew his boss Darcy spoke up.

“A little off script, but I like the energy, Jane. Very much the mad scientist vibe we’re going for. But next time, try not to make it so personal – we’ve got to hide the target of our frustrations, remember? Instead of saying “SHIELD” say “government”, instead of saying “Nick Fury” say “president”.”

“Right, right,” Jane nodded absently, tapping the side of her head with the wrench she had just been waving around like a weapon.

“Now, go back to work. I’ll handle this.”

“Okay, thanks Darce. Oh, have you seen my soldering iron around?”

“It’s in the locked cabinet because you’re not allowed to use it unsupervised, you know that. Gimme ten minutes, I’ll bring it to you.”

Jane wandered back to her side of the observatory, muttering under her breath, leaving Barnes at Darcy’s mercy.

“She’s not the criminal mastermind here, is she?” he wondered, his eyes roaming over the strange cupcake of a woman in his lap.

“Not exactly,” Darcy admitted. “I mean, it’s not like she set out to be a mad scientist. I kind of rebranded her after that little freeway incident.”

“Rebranded?”

“Yeah. She was in a bad way after New Mexico and then when the first live test of her portal engine went a little sideways I didn’t want dudebros on the internet coming after her, so I changed the narrative. Instead of ‘girl scientist makes mistake, should stick to making sandwiches’ I changed it to ‘Dr Foster, genius astrophysicist, causes chaos, totally on purpose.’”

“And all those robberies?”

“I may have encouraged that. I’m all for sticking it to the one percenters, and Jane needed to fund her experiments somehow,” she added with a shrug.

“So Jane’s the absent-minded professor and you’re the brains behind this operation, huh?”

Darcy laughed and slid out of his lap causing a distracting amount of friction. “I’m really not. So you, Coulson, and Fury should be really, really scared.”

“How do you know those names?” he had to know, cover be damned.

“You don’t know? Of course you don’t,” she huffed. “Fury and his clearance levels. I’d tell you to ask him about New Mexico sometime, but you’re not going to be able to.”

“Why not? What are you going to do to me?” Barnes fretted, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was in big trouble; she wouldn’t have told him anything if she intended on letting him walk out of here.

“Oh, relax. I’m not going to kill you. I’m just gonna scramble your brain a little.”

She circled his chair, flipping switches as she went, and something behind him started humming ominously.

“So, admittedly I didn’t major in hard sciences. I had an ex who did, but he also fancied himself something of a cat burglar, so when he went to jail I liberated all his college textbooks and gave myself a crash course in electrical engineering. And it helped that those HYDRA designs were really easy to follow.”

“HYDRA?” Barnes cursed.

HYDRA had been the scientific branch of the Nazi regime and believed that discovery required (human) experimentation. They were supposedly eradicated at the end of WWII but Project Paperclip saved some of HYDRA’s greatest minds, giving them immunity in exchange for their genius. If Foster or, more worryingly, Darcy had aligned themselves with some surviving HYDRA faction the results could be catastrophic.

“Yeah, I found them in that SHIELD warehouse when we recovered Jane’s stolen research.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They just call it ‘The Chair’, which is totally not creepy at all,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “And this is the Halo,” she added, drawing Barnes’s attention to the whirring circle of metal that was lowering itself over his head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, renewing his efforts to break free of his restraints. “Get that piece of scrap metal the fuck away from me!”

“Hey! Don’t mock my work. It may look like I raided a junkyard for the components - and I did - but my welding game is on point. It’s totally safe. Mostly safe. It’s just going to send focused electrical pulses to your…” she paused to consult some smudged writing on her hand, “hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.”

The Halo stopped moving and two metal plates extended, pressing against the sides of his head, holding it like a vice.

“Please… don’t do this,” he begged as she approached him with a rubber mouthguard.

“C’mon, open wide. You don’t want to end up braindead and unable to chew your food,” she jested, waving the thing in front of him. “Oh, just one question before I fry your brain,” she added just when he was about to give in. “How did you find us? I was so careful,” she whined.

Agent Barnes, terrified as he was, still managed to look smug at his small, short lived success. “Deja Brew coffee.”

“Curses!” she wailed theatrically. “Betrayed by my one true love!”

Darcy huffed and quickly returned her attention to the matter at hand.

“Thanks for that,” she said with a smile as she forced him to bite down on the mouthguard. “I’ll know better for next time. Start making my own coffee at home… but it never tastes as good,” she muttered to herself.

She stepped away from him and bent down to pick up a similarly frankensteined industrial remote with long wires snaking back to the chair and a clichéd big red button at its centre. He began struggling anew, screaming around the foul tasting rubber, begging for mercy.

She took great delight in his terrified expression and put on her best supervillain voice, “Give my regards to Nick Fury.”

Nick Fury observed his agent from behind a two way mirror as he sat behind a table in an interrogation room. Barnes had been sitting there for the past hour as still as a statue, except for his unfocused eyes which flitted about the room.

In true horror movie fashion, Agent Barnes’ screams echoed down the mountainside like an avalanche, sending animals fleeing in terror for miles around.

** *** **

Local LEO’s had found him wandering aimlessly down a stretch of highway just outside the ruins of what had previously been Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, and ten minutes after they ran his prints Agent Romanoff had been on a quinjet to collect him. She’d been directed to the nearest hospital and found him sitting up on a bed but not responding or reacting to any of the medical staff as they buzzed around him. Agent Romanoff took a cautious step forward and held her breath as his unfocused eyes settled on her.

“Hello James...”

An excruciating minute later the veil lifted and he attempted a smile.

“Hey Tasha.”

She’d brought him back to base and dragged him to SHIELD’s medical bay for more tests - not that Barnes put up much of a fight, in fact he was terrifyingly compliant. The SHIELD doctors confirmed what the New Mexico doctors suspected: the bruising and electrical burns around his temples and his memory loss were indicative of some back alley version of electroshock therapy. His memories should come back in time - how long was anybody’s guess - but for the moment Agent James Barnes had no memory of the last four weeks.

Fury picked up a tablet with depressingly little information on its screen and stepped into the room, waiting for Barnes eyes to focus on him before taking a seat.

“Agent Barnes.”

“Director.”

“I know you’re probably sick of questions by now, but I have a few more for you, if that’s alright.”

“Yeah, sure…”

It rankled Fury to no end how meak and passive Barnes seemed. Heaven help him, he missed the argumentative sonofabitch.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Being called into your office.”

“What for?”

“I punched Rumlow.”

“Why?”

“He was bragging about taking advantage of a drunk woman at a club when he was last on leave. He didn’t like me calling out his shitty behaviour. He punched me, I punched him back.”

Fury sighed. He hadn't gotten a straight answer out of Barnes at the time of the incident and he couldn’t feel happy about getting one now.

“Do you remember what happened once I called you into my office?”

His brow creased and his eyes zipped back and forth like the carriage of a printer as his mind searched for the elusive memory.

“You suspended me?”

“I did,” Fury confirmed. “For a whole month. But two weeks into it I pulled you in for a special assignment.”

Barnes tensed, shrinking in on himself. The confusion about his lost time seemed to be the only thing that got under his skin, but only when someone brought it up. Once the moment passed he forgot to be concerned about it.

Fury took pity on him. “For the past two weeks I had you running down leads on the whereabouts of Dr Jane Foster.”

“The scientist with the portals? Did she do this to me?”

“It’s not exactly her MO, but then again no law enforcement agency’s ever managed to have a confrontation with her. Never had the chance. Those portals of hers let her keep at a distance. You might have been the first person to have a face to face with her, but I can’t confirm it because I don’t know where the hell you were when this happened,” he grumbled, letting a little more of his usual exasperated tone filter through. “You missed check in by two days. The last we heard from you, you were at Culver running down leads on what you said was a potential accomplice. We found your car in Tromso, Norway, a day after you were found on the side of a road in New Mexico. You don’t appear on any security footage or speed cameras in the area. There’s no activity on your work or personal credit cards. Your activity logs on our highly secure system for the last two weeks are nonexistent, as are your call logs on your work phone. Even the messages you sent Romanoff from your personal phone complaining about your assignment have since been deleted - from her phone too. She’s real pissed about it. As far as your digital footprint is concerned you disappeared from a gas station outside Roanoke, Virginia, last week - do you know how weird it is to know you were headed out towards a place called Roanoke only to up and vanish?” He sighed at Barnes’ painful silence. “Is there anything you can remember, anything at all about Dr Foster or her accomplice? Anything that will help us catch up to you without talking to everyone on campus to figure out what you discovered?”

Barnes’ brow creased in painful confusion.

“I think… I think I saw Darth Vadar.”

Director Fury blinked. “Right…” He took a deep breath to stop himself from venting his frustrations at Barnes, the sorry bastard looked like a kicked puppy as it was. Instead he got up and tapped the tablet against the metal tabletop harder than strictly necessary. “Well, I’ll just go put out a BOLO out for Darth Vadar then.”

“Okay,” Barnes murmured, and promptly zoned out again.

Agent Romanoff exited the viewing room looking uncharacteristically unsettled.

“I want a full detail on him at all times,” Fury ordered as he stormed off towards the elevators. Hill had just stepped off and was looking even more grim than usual. “Until his memories come back he’s vulnerable, and once they do he’ll be a target.”

“I’ll get a STRIKE team on it. Not Rumlow’s.”

“Get another one along with any assets currently not on assignment. Flood that campus, interrogate everybody. I wanna know who the hell Dr Foster’s accomplice is, and I wanna know yesterday. Understood?”

“I think we might have more pressing concerns, sir,” Hill reported, tapping at her tablet as it beeped erratically. “Coulson’s said there’s an issue with the Tesseract. Dr. Selvig read an energy surge from it fifteen minutes ago.”

“NASA didn't authorise Selvig to test phase,” he grunted, taking the tablet from Hill.

“He wasn't testing it, he wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous advancement.”

“Motherfucker.”

#you say mad scientist like it's a bad thing #freudensteins-fics #mad scientist jane foster #competent assistant darcy lewis #shield agent bucky barnes #torture #aftermath of torture #amnesia #winter soldier memory wipe chair #darcy lewis #jane foster #bucky barnes #natasha romanoff #nick fury #maria hill

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itstittycitybaby · 4 years ago

Text

From the Ashes We are Born (Part 3)

A/N: Finally caught up to my ao3 account! All the chapters on there have now been posted here. New chapters published on ao3 should follow here after a day or two, just depends on what I am doing. Unrelated, but am I the only one who finds this gif hot? Hgghhh something about V’s leather gloves just hit different. As always enjoy!

Summary: A few months have passed. You and V are holed up in the Shadow Gallery together. V realizes he is infatuated with you and you have ensnared him in your cunning grasp. (Basically this chapter is in V’s perspective and reflects on the times you’ve had.)

He disliked how afraid you were. V didn’t see you as weak or fragile, but he hated how nervous you were. Of him. No, he couldn’t blame you of course. After all, you were now stuck in the Shadow Gallery, a place you were very unfamiliar with (not to mention being stuck with a wanted criminal). Anytime V would try to make conversation with you, it would be struck down. He could sense the uneasiness in your voice and the fear in your eyes. Any loud bump or noise made you tense up and rapidly search for the disrupted silence. It reminded him of all those years ago of Larkhill. Every time V looked at you, he could see the old soul of himself. Angry, hurt, and scared. The V with terrible trauma from the aftermath of Larkhill (sure it was still hard for him to function some days, but vengeance was the therapy he had found).

V wasn’t particularly excited about a new person in his home. He had been alone for years in the cold and loneliness of his house. It took him a decade to spruce the place up, decorated with stolen reclaimed contraband and suits of armour throughout the Shadow Gallery. Not to mention all the books stacked upon one another. V had a sense of pride as he paraded about his home. What he had created despite being in that terrible place. There was pride and satisfaction of being reborn from nothing but ashes, V felt something else. Isolated. Depressed. Rage. The unbearable and deafening silence. V craved a human connection (not that he would ever admit it). V wanted someone to talk to instead of making remarks with his victim before stabbing them multiple times. The void in his heart was always there, whispering and crying out for someone, somebody to listen to him so he wouldn’t go mad. Then you came. Something new, someone different. How could it be you were easily scared, but you were one of the most courageous people V had ever met? You were passionate about doing the right thing and stood up for what you believed in. Whenever V would actually get you to talk to you for more than five minutes it was delightful. You were snarky and witty. Whenever the telly or the radio hosts spat out some nonsense about V, your tongue was very quick to banter. You were sharp and god how V loved to see your eyes light up with a fire as you vented. From art, movies, books, to the injustice of Chancellor Sutler and the awful people he had hired. “They’re cowards,” you snarked at the news.

“She’s scared,” you said as the news host prattled on about the new precautions against the masked terrorist. “Oh?” The both of you were sprawled out on the leather couch with a few feet between the two of you. Your brows were furrowed as you watched the blonde woman smile and laugh with the news guy. “She’s nervous; she’s laughing too much and smiling like a dumbass.” V just hummed as the news casters changed the subject.

His sword thwacked against the dummy. It was late at night and you were already asleep. Or, so he thought. “V?” He turned around to see a very adoring sight. There was the fluffy blanket you had liked so much wrapped around your shoulders. Your hair was ruffled and your pajamas wrinkled. The sleepy look on your face made V smile. “Yes?” “It’s 3am. What the hell are you doing?” V tried not to laugh at the grumpy look on your face. “Fencing, mademoiselle.” You scoffed, “At 3am?” “It seems so. I apologize if I had awoken you.” The blanket moved as you shrugged. “It’s fine man, hard to sleep anyway.” V’s head tilted slightly. Your eyes were droopy as you stood there with the soft blanket pooling at your feet. “Something on your mind?” V felt like he overstepped a boundary once he said that. You paled a bit and twiddled with the blanket in your fingers. They scrunched it up tightly and let it go, repeating its movements. “Kinda yea,” you mumbled, shifting on your feet. You looked nervous and gulped. “Today is.,,an anniversary of sorts. A very hard one.” V didn’t press, he tried to look as welcoming as much as he could. Comfort was not in V’s fortie, but he would try to in every way he could. “Just a lot of memories,” you muttered after a while. “It’s hard to talk about.” It felt awkward between the two of you. You could joke around with each other and talk about nothing, but this was something different. “Would you like a cup of tea,” V asked, breaking the silence. “If you don’t mind. I’d feel bad about you making some this late.” “Of course, to the kitchen shall we?”

Progress. Slow and steady progress. You were slowly opening up to V and to his surprise he was also. He was out late tonight and warned you he’d be gone for quite some time. You didn’t seem to mind, though there was a quiet sadness as you said goodbye. Maybe you did mind, but for what reason V couldn’t figure out. What was weirder is how much he enjoyed your company. He had been alone for so long. Memories of his family, his childhood were gone. They rose into the air like smoke’s wispy tendrils and disappeared. For so long V had found solace into the silence of his life. But ever since he had met you desparity’s hounds had caught onto the trails of his cloak and bit down like a harsh winter. V was desperate to find someone who wouldn’t make his world so lonely and cold. He was elated by the progress that the two of you made. You had enthralled him with your cunning grasp, like snakes slinging themselves around their prey. V was infatuated with you, enamoured with you. His heart fluttered and felt so much warmth like he was a bloody teenager. Something he hadn’t felt in years. V was convinced love would not be something he experienced, let alone felt after everything he has been through. But here you were, frollicking around like it was nothing. Did you feel the same? Were you infatuated with him as he was with you? What if you saw how ugly V was? How his skin was pink, raw, and scarred so horrendously. You would shriek in terror at the sight of his skin and be disgusted. V was sure of it. You saw his hands already, and sure you didn’t scream, but you didn’t see his face. God forbid you ever did. V snapped out of his thoughts as he heard the music once he got to the door of the gallery.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long.” The sound of your voice captured him. His heart twinged as your lovely voice drifted through the walls of the Shadow Gallery. It was fluttery like a songbird and so heavenly .He softly closed the door behind him and snuck to where your voice led him. V would regret interrupting this wonderful moment. “And wouldn’t it be nice to live together in a kind of world where we belong.” There, V saw a sight he never expected to see. A white bandana was folded and tied behind your head. A baggy t-shirt reached your mid thigh. V hoped you had something underneath it he shuddered and his face flushed at the thought. Paint was smeared across the shirt and your arms and legs. A canvas lay on the floor with a towel underneath it. Various paints and brushes lay discarded on the living room floor. It was a rare and very cute sight. “Oh my god,” you shrieked as you turned around to find your masked friend witnessing his living room a bit in disarray. V didn’t fail to notice the way your cheeks became a nice shade of rose red. “H-how long have you been standing there?” “Not for very long,” he replied. The voice of the singer carried on as the both of you stared at each other. What an amusing sight this is, V thought. His ward covered in paint and dancing around the gallery. V couldn’t help but compare himself in his infamous “battle” attire, the hat and everything. “May I see what you are painting,” he asked after the two of you eyed one another. “Uh sure,” You shook yourself out of your daze and bent down to grab the canvas carefully. He couldn’t help but notice how disheartened you sounded from the question. Don’t look down, don’t look down, V had to tell himself as you squatted down. However tempting it was, he wouldn’t dare to rake his eyes over your delightful- “The paint is still drying a bit but uh it was gonna be a surprise...here it is.” You timidly raised the canvas and showed it to V.

His heart stopped as he observed it. It was a painting of him. His mask was tilted downwards and his hair swept forward; its strands like an inky curtain. The most noticeable thing, however, was the red rose grasped in his left hand. The nose of V’s mask was “smelling it.” You had captured him in the most beautiful light, something he would never say about himself.“I-it’s alright if it’s bad, I can redo it or just throw i-it away-” “It’s perfect,” V whispered. He was floored. “O-oh thanks!” You were relieved that he had finally said something. “Can I ask you something, mademoiselle?” “Yea of course.” “Why did you paint me?” Your eyes widened at the question. The tips of your ears went pink and you dropped V’s gaze. “I-I just..as a thank you. For everything really. I k-know this situation isn’t exactly i-ideal for you either and well I….I just wanted to try and do something for you. You’ve done s-so much for me and I know it’s not that big of a deal but...it’s the least I can do.” V was moved;here you were putting your time and effort to create something for him. Did you share mutual feelings towards him? You were so nervous, after all. “You know,” V said after some time, “You sell yourself short. Your art is incredible.” Your lips tugged into a soft smile, “Thank you, V.” You looked around the mess of his living room floor. “Sorry you came home to such a mess, I’ll clean it up.” “Nonsense, mademoiselle, I’ve seen worse in my time.” Your brows furrowed at that but you decided not to push it. Maybe another time. “After the sitting room is cleaned, I advise you to go to sleep.” “But I wanna hear about your kick ass fights,” you pouted as you set the painting on the coffee table. V tutted, “Not tonight my dear, it is late. In the morning you shall hear of them.” “What are you, my dad,” you teased as you cleaned up your mess.

Oh, how wicked you were. You strutted to the kitchen tauntingly, pouring out your cup and cleaning your brushes. V chuckled darkly, “If that’s how you would like to play it, then I won’t stop you.” You felt heat rush to your core at those words. “W-what HEY!” V’s arm snaked around your waist and he gently hung you over his shoulder. Your head felt dizzy as the ground moved beneath him. Your fists smacked softly onto his chest and your feet dangled in the air. “Put me down V!” His arm was snug around your waist as he made his way to his room. “Not until you have a good night’s rest my dear.” Huffing you hung there helplessly. “Fine fine I’ll go to sleep! I promise!” Your head spun and you felt hazy as you hung there upside down. Seemingly satisfied, V plopped you on the ground. Your hand clutched his arm tightly as you stood there regaining your balance. Your arms trailed down to the mask’s lips. Something that didn’t go unnoticed by V. Your cheeks tinged once you realized you had been caught staring. “Night V.” His arm was free from your grasp as you turned to the bedroom door. “Goodnight, mademoiselle,” V replied. You gave him one last smile before softly shutting the door. A night without sleep seems to be ahead.

#v for vendetta #v for vendetta x reader #x reader

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nekoannie-chan · 4 years ago

Text

No option

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Mutant enhanced!Reader & Brock Rumlow X Sinthea Schmidt

Word count: 1117 words.

Summary: For two years you and your best friend were planning you revenge, now the plan was for Steve to be on your side.

Warnings: Reader is HYDRA.

A/N: This is my entry to the @fangirlovestuff‘s Birthday Challenge with prompt #19:

“Partners in crime.”

Also my entry to the @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall‘s 500 Follower Challenge with song lyric:

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun.”

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistake please let me know and I will correct it.

I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics be posted in other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don’t steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other’s people. The only exception is the ones I gifted ‘cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and is not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don’t own Marvel’s characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

My other media where I publish: Wattpad, Ao3, ffnet.

If you like it please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou @navybrat817 @angrythingstarlight @shield-agent78 @saiyanprincessswanie @charmed-asylum @pandaxnienke @real-fbi @smokeandnailz @adriannajackson

You last checked the list, you already carried everything you needed, you walked the streets trying to keep your profile low, you had stayed hidden from a few months before, however as you went through a newspaper stand you stopped, and a headline had caught your eye, smiled.

"We were trying hard when everything was easier," you thought as you bought the paper. You rushed to where you lived, you needed to tell your best friend the news, in the end, the last plan had been successful, now they would probably never look for them again.

"Brock, I have great news!" You exclaimed when you walked into the house.

"Unless you've found a mutant who can heal wounds or the Avengers are dead, it's not great news," Brock growled.

"Almost," you responded by putting the paper in front of him.

Brock opened his eyes surprised as he read the header, a crooked smile appeared on his face.

"I always thought you were the best, even before Strucker subjected you to experimentation.”

"That only enhanced my powers, I suppose we should tell your girlfriend...”

"Sin's too busy, rather we should think we'll do now that they're separated.”

"Maybe it's time for my come back, Steve's probably very desperate and he'd do anything, in the end now he's one of the most wanted fugitives," you said.

"That means they're not going to look for us anymore.”

"No, that means you're legally dead and I'm still missing.”

"The only thing I would worry about would be Maximoff...”

"Maximoff is no match for me, I've been in her mind, its chaos, she thinks his twin is dead, well everyone believes that not counting that our plan worked perfectly," you interrupted him. “It would also be nice if we got the Soldier back...”

“First Rogers and then the Soldier will be easy.”

"Then we have work to do.”

One week took you to find out Steve's new location, you already knew all the details of what happened in the Civil War, then you would figure how to get Barnes out of Wakanda without anyone else noticing or if things went well you would do it with Steve's help.

"Y/N, are you sure about this?” Brock questioned.

"Of course, they think they've already defeated HYDRA, but they've all done what we wanted.”

You were walking down the street, you knew that was the day Steve went to the market to buy some food and find out what was going on. Steve was watching the paper holding a person at the front table, they were still looking for him, they probably would do it all his life, he wasn't sure when he could stand running, contacting the others was complicated, if they weren't careful, they could leave some trace and find them. He wasn't sure if they'd go back to the Raft, although they'd most certainly take them to another prison more safely to prevent them from escaping again.

He turned and felt his heart beating fast, blinked several times, couldn't believe what he had just seen, you were missing for just over two years, he immediately got up, left the money to pay the food and hastened his step, all that time he thought you were dead, he didn't know if it was a hallucination or if you were there.

“Y/N!” He called you.

You stopped when you heard your name, you turned slowly until you face him.

"Steve, it's been a long time.”

"Where have you been? I thought that day...”

"I had to run away, you may not understand, but my best friend and I have been hiding all this time," you replied.

"That is not possible, Rumlow is dead and because of him, they created the Sokovia Accords.”

"Dead? No, I can assure you he is not.”

Steve didn't understand what was going on, yet he agreed to go with you, when he got to the house and saw Brock practically pounced him, you managed to separate them.

"What's wrong with you, Steve?”

"It's all his fault...”

“What? But we've been here the last few months.”

"How do you explain Lagos?” Steve exasperated.

"What happened in Lagos?”

"Rumlow, don't ask stupid things...”

"Steve, we don't know what you're talking about, Brock doesn't get out of here, and don’t you see his condition?”

Steve showed you the videos of that incident, both you and Brock pretended to be surprised, of course, they knew what had happened, and that was the first part of his revenge plan.

"Steve, that's not Brock, I'm pretty sure that was a trap, there are mutants who can change their shape, they can even look like people we know," you explained.

"What you mean?”

"Probably, maybe Ross just needed a pretext for the Accords," you replied.

"We did belong to HYDRA, but we had a good reason," Brock said.

"I can't find any reason for that," Steve refuted.

"Brock and I were neighbours since we were kids, we've known each other all our lives, my parents died, they'd send me to an orphanage, and I decided to escape, while Brock's father beat him, that's when we ran away.”

"Two children alone in the world is not the safest thing, a HYDRA agent found us and that's when we found a new home," Brock continued.

"But you were able to choose...”

"And that's what we did, after the battle at the Triskelion I escaped, but I found out Brock was in the hospital, the doctors said it was a miracle that he survived, then we hid, we knew everyone would look for us.”

"I thought you were dead, I was looking for you too, you could have asked me for help," Steve complained.

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun.”

"Rogers you're wrong, they weren't even going to listen to us, they'd immediately lock us up in the Raft.”

"I can’t leave my best friend behind. Steve, you're wanted too, you're a runaway like us, you're nothing to them but a criminal," you said.

"Accept it, we are now partners in crime," Brock said.

“Partners in crime”, it didn't sound so bad to Steve, you were right, now it didn't matter what he did in the past for his country, all they cared about now was that he hadn't signed the Accords. You put your hand on Steve's forehead and entered his mind, very easily you started manipulating everything that was there, and Captain America no longer existed and would never come back.

“What is the next step?” Brock questioned.

"Make the Roxxon Company explode, I hear you have... a very interesting experiment," you responded as you smiled.

#BTFW500challenge #fangirlovestuffbdaychallenge #Steve Rogers #steve rogers x reader #reader is hydra #steve rogers one shot #steve rogers fic

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thegrandkinghimself · 4 years ago

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who is oikawa tooru?

i guess that’s a weird way to start off a post, considering just how popular oikawa is in this fandom. i’m absolutely certain that he’s still one of the most popular characters if i can take the #oikawasear trend on twitter a couple of weeks ago seriously. (i will be mourning that iwaoi is no longer the top ship in this fandom. it’s devastating to me on a personal level). and i can’t say that i’m any different, either, otherwise i wouldn’t have made this blog or this post. but i guess the reason i’ve been itching to write this is because i’ve been in this fandom--and more specifically, a fan of oikawa--for about four or five years now. i devour the content available, and i can assure you that i’ve read too many of the fanfictions on ao3 to be healthy, and never before have i seen a character whose characterization is so hotly disputed.

and i get it. he’s a complex person. he’s kind of awkward in that there is a very clear disconnect between his outward personality and who he is alone. it’s a very hard balance to strike, especially when you consider just how much conjecture goes on in his characterization among fans and in discourse. he’s really easy to project and certain traits, correct or otherwise, are amplified based off how authors perceive him. there’s plenty of presumptions that can be made based on his on-screen actions/thoughts/beliefs that can be taken to some very logical conclusions.

but i’ve also seen people write him in ways that don’t strike me as particularly truthful. he’s type casted into stereotypes that don’t do him justice, or made into something that is vaguely like oikawa, but not quite. in the following post, i’ll be trying to dispel misunderstandings of his character, if only for my own sanity.

tl;dr i think that oikawa is chronically one of the most misrepresented characters in fandom and i want to fix that

exclaimer: i am solely an anime-watcher; i have seen snippets of the manga and therefore have a general idea of what is going on.

let’s establish some very very basic stuff. just to keep it simple, i’m not going to talk about anything beyond what has been published via the anime (as of season four).

Oikawa Tooru | 及川徹

gender: male

d.o.b.: 1994.7.20. or 20 July, 1994

height: 184.3 cm

weight: 72.2 kg

occupation: high school 3rd year, class 6

position/number: setter, 1 (captain)

here’s something that’s never pointed out: oikawa is in class 6 which, if we go off the trend of every other school in haikyuu!!, means that he is in a college preparatory class aka he’s pretty dang smart. it’s not confirmed or anything, but it a. follows the trend of every other class 6 student and b. is the highest class available among seijoh 3rd years (classes 5, 3, and 1). don’t get the idea that he’s dumb or unintelligent, or even that his strengths only lie in the classroom because that would be a gross understatement of his skills.

anywho.

generally speaking, i like to start with the building blocks of his personality because there’s so much room for assumptions. here are the things that i think make up his core personality:

intelligence/knowledgeable: not only academically speaking, but he’s also well-versed in people. he knows how to play them--what will make someone more confident, more doubtful, what will help his teammates succeed. clearly, oikawa is very knowledgeable in human thought patterns. or he’s dedicated a lot of time to knowing them.

loyalty: of all of oikawa’s traits, i think this one gets talked about the least, but we know it to be true. we make jokes about “you should have come to shiratorizawa” but it really shows you exactly how loyal, how much trust, oikawa has in this team that he has spent three years shaping. he never stops believing in the work that he has put in, and especially the hard work that his teammates have put into their volleyball.

hardworking: one of the most well-known things about oikawa. most fans already know that his white knee pad is actually a knee brace. ‘nuff said. i salute you, good sir.

insecurity: oikawa’s insecurities are perhaps his most notable trait. in a sense, he’s sort of the underdog--so good, but never quite good enough to accomplish what he’s set out to do. and we know that he’s struggled with his doubts since junior high, literally since he was 12 or 13, and that’s informed all of his character from the moment he ran into ushijima. oikawa is someone who is defined by his insecurities.

oikawa is a lot of things. he’s introduced as someone who is very flamboyant--he’s built up by kageyama as the best setter, his senpai literally and figuratively, his initial shots are all of smug smiles and easy, unfaltering swagger in the face of this new team. even his theme, all rambunctious brass and jazzy, is meant to be all in your face, here’s the big boss! he’s someone who is petty and silly and seems to favor shallow conversation. but he’s oikawa, so there’s a surprising amount of depth in the little time that we have with him. there’s a reason that, in any other franchise, he’d probably be the protagonist.

he is someone full of contradictions. he’s childish and he spends time with a bunch of girls and is very clearly someone who likes to project a certain image of himself to the public (see: his cute lil’ humming run after his yell in s4e23 to make him seem kind of normal). but he’s also spent a lot of time with himself. in fact, if we take the few scenes we have of him alone and his bedroom (bare, spartan, meticulous) into account, oikawa actually is much more solemn and/or serious than the image he projects. he’s comfortable in the silences between all the white noise. he’s alright just being with iwaizumi. he allows himself to dwell on the past and his shortcomings, while also looking forward to the future. his ambition and passion to improve drive him, but his past failures weigh him down. they haunt him.

personally, i think that he’s naturally a pretty silly guy when given the chance. it’s not just for show. iwaizumi would even corroborate this à la oikawa’s introduction speech in s1. he likes having fun when he can with his friends. if we assume that oikawa is most himself with iwaizumi, then we definitely know that’s the case (see: “are you my mom, iwa-chan?”), and there’s nothing wrong with that. but i think that the most basic traits of his character, combined with his experiences in volleyball, have pushed him to be this person who is mired in doubt. it’s forced him to go down a path where something that he once loved for the fun of it has now become the source of his ire. it’s really just that simple. maybe in another life, things would be different and oikawa wouldn’t have to struggle as much. but that’s really just a part of the human experience, isn’t it? and, in all honesty, would we really love oikawa as much without all his vices?

and maybe this is getting into speculation, but i don’t think it’s a difficult argument to make that oikawa is really mature. he’s introspective. i say introspective because the revelations that he’s had in regards to his own strengths and weaknesses--those are things he’s had to confront and deal with since he was in junior high (starts at 12 years of age). it takes someone with a lot of maturity and self-awareness to realize those kinds of things about himself.

and he’s stronger than he gets credit for. most people depict him as a crybaby, but he’s really not. he doesn’t cry or give up in the face of ushijima or kageyama’s unfettered growth and successes, he doesn’t cry when faced with defeat. oikawa is there to support iwaizumi in his own doubt as ace, and lend support to his teammates. and oikawa doesn’t get stuck on the what-ifs or has-beens. driven by his infamous ambition, he looks forward to the future.

it’s kind of a double-edged sword. it’s pushed him this far--he’s put in this much effort to be one of the best in the prefecture--because of his competitive spirit, but it’s also something that has caused him serious injury. oikawa’s motto (”if you’re gonna to hit it, hit it until it breaks!”) is the very epitome of this mentality. it’s a message to work hard to finish what you started, but i also think that you could interpret that hard work breaking you, too. he’s steadfast—obsessive, really—to the point that oikawa will let his passions break him before he would ever give up. it’s the point of all the strife in his life, because he would never have the problems he does if he were even a little less enamored by this sport.

and you really have to wonder where he would be without ushijima and kageyama as his obstacles. his drive will always be there, that is an intrinsic part of him, as are the standards to which he holds himself, but you really have to wonder just how good oikawa would be if he didn’t have such direct competitors. this is an incredibly important question to ask about kageyama and oikawa in particular. yes, oikawa does loathe ushijima: for his disregard for oikawa’s decisions, for his disregard of oikawa’s loyalty, for his flippant attitude of seijoh, who oikawa has poured his blood and sweat into creating. but ushijima is an opposite hitter. oikawa is a setter. those are two very different positions with little crossover. but with kageyama--that is a clear rivalry. they push each other to be better, made all the more potent by their differences as players; one setter’s growth as a player directly impacts how the other performs in each subsequent game. seijoh’s defeat by karasuno in season 2 just feeds into oikawa’s drive for the future. he has not intention of giving up. a light was lit under him, pushing him forward, to do better, to be better.

this is something that has been pointed out in a different analysis (linked below) but, narratively speaking, oikawa is kageyama’s foil. their interactions inform their characters and are a major cause of tension in their development. their relationship is really the most complex in the story that i have noticed, and is something that has not been appreciated enough. the iwaizumi-oikawa thing has been expounded and studied in every facet possible (i love the alexander the great/hephaestion allusions), but it’s true that kageyama has impacted oikawa the most. they begrudgingly respect each other’s talents, what it is that they bring to the court, while also envying what the other has in spades that they do not. in oikawa’s case, his strength clearly lies in his interpersonal relationships--his ability to intuit exactly what his teammates need to be at their best. kags is just a fount of overwhelming technical skill who has a really hard time getting to know those around him. living up to the standards that oikawa places on himself, in tandem with kageyama threatening his position as setter, leave oikawa floundering, fearing his own incompetence against opponents who are naturally much better than he. so he’s left with the knowledge that maybe his best isn’t good enough, but he still continues on anyway. he pushes himself past a seemingly unreachable threshold just to go toe-to-toe with this monster. it’s the purpose of his character--to tell this story of the ordinary v. the extraordinary--and it is perhaps the most relatable arc that a story like haikyuu!! can tell.

their connection naturally causes oikawa to seek out help, seen in the flashback scenes where he is talking to an unspecified coach/adult. that coach’s words then become the creed upon which oikawa plays, maybe even more than what iwaizumi has taught him, and is the final push that completes oikawa’s character arc in s2ep24. that change in mindset allows oikawa to see kageyama’s unbridled talent not as an obstacle but as a challenge. it’s very nuanced, but it makes all the difference. it’s why, following seijoh’s defeat, oikawa has the audacity to declare to kageyama and ushijima his plans for the future. in a sense, karasuno and kageyama and ushijima have won the battle but not the war. it’s the tipping point in his story and, more than anything, what makes oikawa so compelling. we have seen what has led up to the change, but now we want to know what he’s going to do to meet that challenge. what will he be doing beyond the story when he is no longer relevant to the narrative? we don’t know the details at this point, but we know that oikawa’s love and ambition for volleyball have been reaffirmed in this moment.

but to bring it back, the kags-oiks connection also makes us question what it is we are watching, makes us as the audience think: what qualifies someone as a genius? are there any limitations to what that genius can do? what can ordinary people do in the face of those geniuses?

these are questions that exist beyond the reality of sports and transverse into other disciplines. for me, those are very real questions that i have had to ask myself as a musician. i have dedicated nine, almost 10, years to my practice but there are still 10-year-olds who are just better at it than i ever will be. part of it is time and practice to be sure, but some of it is just innate. and i think the more appropriate version of those questions would be this: what qualifies someone as a prodigy? are there limitations for prodigies? what can we do in the face of prodigies?

oikawa is a genius player--he knows the ins-and-outs of his sport better than anyone, and he can accomplish great feats that others in his same position can’t. but even with all that veritable experience and skill, he is ultimately still overtaken by a prodigy whose talents seem endless. it’s why he can hate ushijima but fear kageyama. one is something he can actively fight against, the other is inevitable.

and really, i think that’s the beauty of oikawa tooru, why he’s so beloved by the fandom, even years after he has stopped being relevant to the narrative. beyond the fluff and goofiness and hijinks, there’s someone there who is really, truly, human.

an aside with much less significance/why do people think this??

so here’s one thing: even though oikawa has fangirls, i wonder what he actually thinks of them. for one, it’s only natural for anyone to be super flattered if people think you’re hot stuff. that’s just... i don’t think he’s weird if he pays attention to them. but i think that people are conflating his being kind to them to being genuinely egotistical due to the attention. actually, i think these are opposing ideas and a contradiction of who oikawa is. when you’re an arrogant person, you think that you deserve all the attention you’re getting and you’re not going to bother with the people who worship you.

but that’s not at all what oikawa does. he’s rather kind to his fans. i would never say that he’s self-effacing, but knowing what you’re worth is different from being pompous. and think about it. it’d be a real jerk move for oikawa to not say nice things to them and thank his fangirls when they spend time, energy, and effort to make him food and see his games. he would just be a genuinely awful person if he didn’t at least give them thanks. it’d be more alarming if he didn’t talk to them, at least in my opinion. more than anything, we should consider this: why is it that oikawa has the fan club and not anyone else on the seijoh team? i’m sure a part of it is because he’s attractive and the captain of a team, but i think it’s more than that, too. we see these interactions from other perspectives, but i think that reflects more on those around oikawa than oikawa himself if they don’t understand why he acts the way he does with those girls.

another thing: i don’t think that anyone can question that oikawa is very pretty, or handsome, or whatever descriptor you would like. it’s prevalent in fandom (see: pretty setters squad), but he is also the only person in canon to be acknowledged by other characters as being particularly good-looking. maybe the miyas count at this point? i’m not sure. but i don’t really understand where people get the idea that he is particularly focused on his appearance, though. there is literally no indication of that from the material that i have seen. and maybe he uses that to his advantage with his fangirls, but i highly doubt that, in all honesty. i think that it’s fun to imagine him being into these things as a hobby, but it irks me greatly when i see that people spend time saying that oikawa wakes up extra early just to fix his hair or slather on foundation/concealer just to look presentable.

he’s a teenaged boy who clearly has other things that worry him, he’s a full-time student, and volunteers to coach at lil tykes volleyball classroom in his free time. he wouldn’t have time to spend on his hair or makeup. and we even seen in the hanger tooru special that he even wakes up looking like that.

he is au naturale, my friends. and we even know how little he gives thought to his own body, if you take into account his knee brace. for oikawa, his body is merely the medium through which he can accomplish his goals. we even have evidence of this when we see oikawa up all night studying karasuno game play or via his knee brace. he doesn’t know how to stop or understand when enough is enough. he breaks himself if there’s no one to watch him.

also, just... how would makeup work, logistically speaking? i don’t wear makeup, but i’m thinking that foundation and concealer and hair product would be, um, really bad. like, it’d run down his face and stuff. also, it’d probably get into his eyes, too? seriously. i’m not against oikawa wearing makeup in the slightest cause he’d be even prettier, but we know that oikawa would absolutely not jeopardize his chances in any way.

thank you for reading this long-winded, probably awful look into my favorite character of all time. and i do mean that. he is my favorite character in all of media. which, like, says a lot when he’s competing against the casts of a:tla, call me by your name, and my actual favorite book, the song of achilles. after all of that, if you would like another (better) analysis of oikawa’s character, i suggest this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/haikyuu/comments/94irsi/character_analysis_16_oikawa_tooru_discussion/

#oikawa tooru #haikyuu #character analysis #i'm so sorry about this #i just had to get this off of my chest #thanks for coming to my ted talk

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akimmito · 4 years ago

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Heroes are made by the path they choose

AO3 | Next

______________________

Summary:

Seven years have passed since Hawkmoth, now a new villain rises, but this time, the heroes are ready.

They are successful adults, but above all, trained warriors.

________________________

Six years have passed since Gabriel Agreste was arrested and convicted of crimes committed like Hawkmoth, but it didn't happen the way Paris expected it to happen.

It was not the heroes who exposed him, it was he himself when Nathalie Sancoeur's murder was made public, along with the news that the Miraculous Butterfly was stolen and the truth about Emilie Agreste, who was still alive, but in a coma. Paris exploited in news, questions and conspiracy theories, but, above all, in a lot of hysteria because the nightmare was not yet over.

The months following that event were a mass of collective stress, the city was waiting for the new villain to decide to attack at any time. Meanwhile, the miracle team was preparing for everything... or what was left of it.

The last years before the Hawkmoth exhibition, Marinette devoted herself to magical learning to fulfill her role as guardian, she also dedicated her time to combat training from all possible sources, resulting in a very good relationship not only with Kagami but also with Tomoe, her mother. Trustworthy people with whom her could create a local surveillance network.

Marinette founded the MT a week after Gabriel Agreste's trial, after taking the prodigy from Adrien Agreste and choosing new and old headlines to deal with the possible new threat. This time, she was not going to allow herself to be outdone by the villain.

The MT became a group of vigilants, the prodigies remained in active rest in case at some point the butterfly miraculous arose again. Marinette was very cautious that the three identities were secret to the public, making it seem that the Miraculous Team left the MT in charge so as not to leave the city alone and that they have no relationship other than a mutual agreement by the city. The best thing is that nobody suspects their civil identities. They created a good image for themselves.

Two years after the founding of the MT, at age 19, Marinette founded her fashion company Lady Black under the name Marie Lenoir, wanting to leave Marinette Dupain-Cheng's life behind after a horrible fight with her parents, she still doesn't understand what went wrong and doesn't dare to approach them, they made it very clear that they didn't want to see her again. But with the birth of her brand and the clients she had already secured, her name soon made itself known in the fashion industry.

At 23 years old, Marinette could already be considered a celebrity and when she appeared at Lady Black's fourth anniversary gala with a little nine-year-old boy with deep green eyes, the news flew everywhere, despite the fact that the media didn't they got to know his face.

Damian Lenoir caught the world off guard.

Almost as much as the return of the miraculous of butterfly at fashion week in Paris a year later.

___________________

Just Robert @PoorButterflies

I never imagined meeting a child with an expression of disgust worse than Gabriel Agreste's, the mere thought is terrifying.

#LenoirSon #NotOtherAgreste #SaveParis

Flowers likes sun @ SolarBeauty_09

@PoorButterflies @MarieLenoir is light made person, that child is being blessed by the sun. We must give our support to the young mother!

Chloe B. @BourgeoisQueen

We would never allow Damian to become someone infamous like GA, @MarieLenoir is an excellent mother. We have had the child for a month and he already treats us with more respect. He's a very adorable little hate ball.

#LittleDemonChild

Marie L. @MarieLenoir

@BourgeoisQueen Stop giving he more attention than it should, that's why I didn't want to introduce him yet.

Alix @LostHeroBunnix

@BourgeoisQueen @MarieLenoir It was the decision of the little demon boy. Only nobody expected Paris to go crazy! It's hilarious to see it trending.

Epic Kim @Epic_originalChampion

@BourgeoisQueen @MarieLenoir @LostHeroBunnix It's best to see him grumble about unwanted attention! Poor boy, leave him alone xD

Damian @DamianLenoir

I will sue you all.

Marc @MarcAC_twt

@DamianLenoir LOL

Nath @NathanielKC_twt

@DamianLenoir Let's see

Epic Kim @Epic_originalChampion

@DamianLenoir @NathanielKC_twt To the cinema hahaha

Nath @NahanielKC_twt

Someone should do the world a favor and close @Epic_originalChampion's account

_______________________

This fic already has 6 chapters published in AO3, but I wanted to bring it here too. I hope you like it and thanks for reading.

#dickinette #maribat #mominette #ml x dc #dick x marinette

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museaway · 5 years ago

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Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of calls for fic readers to leave comments, and while I absolutely agree that leaving feedback is good practice and everyone should do it, we need to nix this idea that a reader is obligated to leave the kind of feedback authors want (or any at all).

Bear with me.

Fandom is a gift economy. Instead of services for money, we exchange fanworks for a response. Reader response comes largely in two forms because of AO3: comments and kudos. Receiving these can be a huge morale booster for authors. A lack of feedback from readers can make you feel like you’re writing in a void. Sometimes writers stop writing because they don’t feel it’s worth their time, or they find fandoms where feedback is more plentiful. A single meaningful comment can change that. Seriously. Someone liked a fic enough they figured out how to leave multiple kudos? That author is going to have a great day.

Beyond supporting their writing, leaving feedback on an author’s work can also lead to friendship if a reader and a writer hit it off. And if the reader also creates stuff, a writer might even check it out (that shouldn’t be your motivation for leaving feedback and please don’t advertise your own stuff in a comment — that would be pretty rude — but it’s a neat side effect).

So feedback is important. Feedback feeds the fandom economy by validating writers’ time, and in turn, those writers will probably churn out more fic. (Not surprisingly, positive feedback is considered the most valuable since it contributes to good feelings, and happy writers are usually happy to keep writing.) It’s also polite to thank someone for a gift. Just like you might send a thank you if someone sent you a birthday present, if you enjoyed a fic you read, consider pressing that kudos button or dropping a comment. For most fic writers, that interaction is the only reward they get in exchange for the time they put into writing.

But no reader is obligated to leave feedback any more than a writer is obligated to write fic. To put it another way, writers are not entitled to a reader’s feedback any more than readers are entitled to a writer’s fic. If readers may not demand what authors write about or how often we publish new chapters, then authors may not demand certain types of feedback from readers (or any). The gift concept goes both ways. A gift is given willingly, without the expectation of anything in return, even a thank you.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s rude not to acknowledge a gift, but there can be no obligation in the giving of one, otherwise it wasn’t a gift in the first place. Did you ever receive a “gift” with expectations attached? Tacky. Same concept.

Most fic writers I know adore feedback. It’s natural to hope for it and feels terrible when you don’t receive it, but if we turn commenting into a chore, I honestly think we’ll see less of it. So if you want to encourage feedback, let readers know you’d love to know their thoughts. Reply if they leave you a message. That’s all we can do.

I do wonder if some people might feel shy about commenting or not know what to say. If you fall into this category, know that there is nothing wrong with saying simply “Loved this” or “Thank you for sharing.” You do not have to write an essay. And for anyone who would like to support an author but wants to avoid comments for any reason, here are some alternatives:

Leave kudos. There is nothing wrong with only leaving kudos. You don’t need an AO3 account to do this. Just click the button and your kudos will be given anonymously.

Share the fic with your friends. If the author made a post on their social media, maybe reblog or retweet it.

Respond to an author’s fic post on social media with a brief message or an emoji. (I’ve been told some authors don’t really like feedback on Twitter, but I’m really happy if someone will talk to me in public.)

Make them something. If you are an artist and you loved a fic, but you don’t know how to express that, maybe doodle something from it. Do you make podfics? Record a chapter. I can almost guarantee the author will scream out of excitement.

Subscribe to the author’s AO3 account or follow them on social for updates

Also: It’s 100% okay to leave comments on older fic or to leave comments on multiple fics. Absolutely no author will find this weird. You’re not bothering them.

#I don't know how to tag this #fanfiction

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thoseindarkness · 4 years ago

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Deceive the Deceiver NEWS!!! Oct 2020

I have GOOD NEWS and BAD NEWS. Since I'm the storyteller I choose where we start for the greatest dramatic effect!

THE BAD NEWS

I don't have an update for the story.

THE GOOD NEWS

I have spent every month since May of 2019 working on this story. I have not gone a single month without making a note somewhere about DtD since I published part 1. No other fic – no other story I've ever written – has unrelentingly taken up this much of my mental energy for so long. Nothing.

More importantly, I love every second of the journey I've gone on with Deceive the Deceiver. There's a lot of personal backstory here. Things like my learning curve, why I write fan fic, the original spy fic that started me off, bla, bla… I'm trying to keep this short and to the point.

WHY I'M WRITING THIS UPDATE

It's been more than year since I first posted Read Between the Lies (6-JUN-2019). Soon enough it will be a year since I completed posting on Mistrust Goes Both Ways (4-DEC-2019). A few people have reached since to inquire about part 3. Mostly through comments on AO3.

I love all of you brave souls with my whole fucking heart. It may be a desiccated mass of shriveled, black, broken pieces but it's completely yours. I know some authors don't like those comments. They are fire in my soul. I feel burning shame which I alchemically convert I into white hot fury that I shovel straight into my creative furnaces.

Knowing you guys are waiting kills me. I hated, hated, hated, waiting for fics. I know your pain. It drives me. I love you for being brave enough to take the leap. Your pleas genuinely make me happy.

To that end. The Reylo community has kinda fallen apart after TRoS. There are a few groups holding strong in spheres that I still haunt. I wanted to consolidate and start checking in monthly with anyone who's waiting for updates on this story. It's not even an inconvenience because I'm already messing with it every month.

Primarily I'll be posting to Tumblr. Responding to questions and comments. I'll cross post to Twitter. If you at or DM, I'll see it. I'm still responding to comments on AO3. I think I'll get faster now if this works out. I'm still in a few Reylo Groups on Discord. I'd love to be invited to more! At me or message me if you'd like. I don't have Facebook, and I have no intention of joining it. I'll take cheerleaders, town criers, candy stripers. If anyone wants to spread the word in the Book of Faces, I would greatly appreciate it.

What I hope to accomplish is to keep a steady connection to the people who are waiting for the conclusion of this story. Again, I've been in your shoes and I want you to know that I'm not going anywhere without publication. This is me showing you and holding myself accountable.

CALL TO ACTION

If you'd like to get my monthly updates on this story, I recommend picking Twitter or Tumblr and checking in on the first of the month (I don't post much on either platform so getting notifications shouldn't create SPAM from me). If I have any short stories to post I may jump into Discord and share those, too, but largely I won't be updating there.

Once you've done that, if you know someone that's waiting for updates on this story, point them this way. Let them suffer in silence no longer. They can annoy me about it directly. If you don't. That's cool.

STUFF I’M GOING TO DO

I’m going to keep writing. :)

That will now expand to include these updates (which actually started within the writing process and I found I could use some of this to share information with you guys). I don't anticipate these updates will be long, unless it's been an interesting month. I'll try to share little nuggets of things. If nothing else, this keeps me engaged with you guys and give you an open door to keep me thinking about it.

As soon as I have something to publish I'll be making regular announcements through these same channels.

Finally, please, be patient with me. There are a lot of moving parts. I'll fill you guys in next month because this shit show – which I am affectionately calling "DtD: from 2019 and COVID-19" – turned out to be too long for this update. In it, I'll also let you know where I am with Deceive the Deceiver.

The point is, this one is big and its going slowly. It is going, though. This train hasn't really stopped since it left the station 2-Nov-2018. Now that the format of our fandom has changed, I wanted to extend an open-ended olive branch for anyone still curious. I'm still here. I'm still working on this one thing exclusively. I don't know that I'll get fully sucked back into the fandom, but I don't want to leave it either. I want to stay plugged in until this job is done.

If you want to stay plugged in with me, Tumblr and Twitter will be my primary update locations. I hope you'll hang in there and help keep me honest.

Thanks.

Fari.

#deceive the deceiver #reylo #reylo fanfic #reylo fan fiction #modern au #spy au #fan fic #fan fiction

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aerospace-agenda · 5 years ago

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Ok, so, just... since the “ao3 is bad for asking for donations” bs is going around again, theres a bit of new stuff mixed in, but it seems to largely be the same “why dont they pay the authors” type stuff, with the usual insinuations of the people running the site just pocketing the money and doing nothing.

they made a bit over $700k in donations last year, but let’s bump that up to $750k for estimation purposes.

As of several years ago, they were running with about 750 volunteers, on ao3 alone.

there’s also 18 committees that they run, which are headed by a total of about 30 people, and let’s say there are 3 or 4 other people on each committee on average.

on top of that, they’re one of the most visited and active sites in the world, with almost 6 million fics stored there, and they regularly hit in the region of 250,000,000 distinct visitors a month. these numbers are very significant, because to operate smoothly servers need to be able to quickly access the data for a page, and then pass that data to you.

lets say there are... hm. about 60kb of data that they need to pass to you in order to generate a page. at 250 million visitors, if each person loads a single page and does nothing else, that’s 15TB a month, easily, since i’m taking that estimate from directly loading a single short chapter, no searching or browsing or visiting different author pages or looking through bookmarks. which most people will probably do to some degree each time they visit, each of which is another system that needs to be queried, and is reliable and fast about it.

for reference, i can’t get an estimate on how much this must cost, because i havent been able to find any hosts to compare against that even have hosting schemes that allow numbers as high as ao3 delivers reliably and efficiently.

i work with databases for my job, and i frankly have no idea how the fuck ao3 manages to be what it is on the budget that it gets, im half-convinced there are fucking wizards back there or something.

purchasing the kinds of servers that they need to be using must be costing them well into the tens of thousands on the up-front price, server maintanence costs can run well into the thousands per month, and their reliability must mean they have sufficient redudancy to take them out of commission on the regular.

anyway. let’s say that the hosting, maintanence, and replacement costs for all this only cost them $150k a year. based on everything i know, this is an absolutely absurd underestimate to the extent that it’s frankly laughable.

anyway, that then leaves $600k.

no matter where you assume that goes into the pockets of people behind the scenes, this would require complete complicity of everyone behind the scenes to keep under cover, as well as passing their false financial statements through audits and such. by and large, conspiracies like this don’t work very well!

so, that $600k should go to the people who “actually” bring value to ao3, the writers, then?

does everyone just get an even share of it? in that case, as there are about 2.6 million accounts- everybody gets about 23 cents a year. sound worth it?

no? ok then, what about for each fic someone writes, they get an even share of it? after all, there were “only” about a million fics published in 2019. that’s about 60, maybe 70 cents per fic, doesn’t that sound good to you?

im guessing you think that’s still a bit low. in that case, should it be based on "quality” of fics? how should that quality be determined? kudos, hits, reader interaction? should that be an ongoing thing, or assessed at a particular time since publication? what about very long-running fics, how should that be assessed? should people just get paid a flat amount per chapter?

if the metrics to determine how much a fic is “worth” are transparent, then they’ll be abused- how should that be be determined? poor language quality? short chapter length? if they’re not transparent, how do you justify to authors why they aren’t paid more?

what about disputes regarding fanfics being “stolen”? right now, i dont think many people care much about if someone else writes a very similar fic to theirs. but would they feel the same way if someone else writes something inspired by, or with the same premise, or generally similar, to one of yours? what about if someone writes a story and incorporates someone elses OC? should the person who created that OC get a cut?

if you want to increase funds to pay authors, how should you approach that? ask for donations? if payment metrics are transparent, then that means that anybody who performs well on them are likely to actively drive away donors. make it a subscription site? would you pay a monthly subscription fee just to access the site?

and so on, and so on. and that’s before any issues with backlog and such should be resolved. tbh, there are so many precedents that’d need to be set and potential issues that this would raise that even if ao3 responded with “fuck you” to every person who currently aren’t happy with the system, it would still probably be less unpopular than literally any change to allow them to pay authors.

honestly, at the end of the day, most people who are actually interested in financial support and who write fanfic? generally have a blog with a donation button. or a patreon. or something similar, along those lines. and there’s nothing stopping you from just going and doing that directly if you’re actually interested in supporting them.

it’s worth noting that there’s also a legal aspect to this, which im not particularly familiar with, but, for starters- a commercial aspect to works can make a big difference in whether or not something is considered “fair use”. whether or not something is, indeed, fair use, can also be pretty subjective. do you want to toss that litigational coin? and do you have the money and lawyers to press the issue?

#oc? on this blog? its more likely than you think!#long post #mostly me rambling about how the outcry against ao3 asking for donations is kinda silly.#How long IS this queue...?

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miracalicethebookgirl · 4 years ago

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The Phony and the Famous Pt. 5

AO3

Pt 1. Pt 2. Pt 3. Pt 4.

Summary: Lila spreads lies about being famous with worldwide connections to increase her local popularity. She’s confident that Marinette will never be able to prove otherwise. What she, and even Marinette herself, don’t realize is that Marinette won’t have to do any of that to come out on top. - A story in which everything Lila lies about, Marinette turns into reality for herself, usually unknowingly (our girl is quite the lucky one, after all).

A brief explanation: The last chapter was a bit confusing as to how Mister Bug appeared. When people turned into animals, all their clothing and accessories were left behind. When Marinette turned into a hamster her earrings fell off, so Tikki took them to Chat. Adrien switched out his Miraculous since it’s still unknown if something happens by wearing both the Ladybug and Cat Miraculous (not sure if Gamer 2.0 counts). After the fight he switched back and Tikki returned the earrings to Marinette.

…

“I'm good friends with the best manga publisher in Japan, you know. I can talk to them about your comic book project if you like.”

Season 3, “Ladybug”

…

“Name?”

“Oh! Uh, Astruc, Thomas.”

The girl hummed thoughtfully as she shuffled through the festival passes on the table. “That name sounds familiar. Did you work on a recent film or something?”

“Yes, actually! I was the director of The Adventures of Lady—”

“Here it is!” the girl exclaimed, pulling out the lanyard pass from the stack and adding some pamphlets to her hand. “Keep your pass on you at all times. The first pamphlet will provide you with a general map of the Champs-Élysées. The area is split up by genre and your second pamphlet will tell you which film categories will be playing on which day. If you have any questions just ask a volunteer. Welcome to the Young Artists Film Festival!”

With that, Thomas Astruc was ushered along to allow the next person to check in.

He was a little put out that he was yet again dismissed despite his role in the production of a movie that was widely popular in France. But what could he do besides shake his head and accept it? He could brag all he wanted about it but unless he made as big a name as Steven Basielberg, people would simply continue to shrug and dismiss him.

Rather than spoil his mood with such thoughts, Thomas figured he’d keep a low profile and just enjoy the festivities. It always intrigued him to see what new edgy or comedic or introspective pieces the young minds of France could create. So he spent an hour watching several animated shorts created by students and noted interesting stylistic choices and the most popular narratives. He debated going to see one of the feature length films that were highlighted for the day when he heard someone excitedly call out his name.

“Oh my gosh, Monsieur Astruc! Monsieur Astruc!”

He turned and saw a pigtailed teenage girl wave and run up to him, followed by—he blinked owlishly—Adrien Agreste, who had another girl latched to his arm. He looked back at the girl who called to him.

“You look a bit familiar to me. Have we met before?”

The girl didn’t seem bothered by his question. “It was only briefly, but we met at the Ladybug and Chat Noir movie premiere a few months back. I was the person you gave up your seat to. I’m still so thankful that you did that for me! Aside from the akuma—no offense—and a couple other people…the premiere was actually kind of fun.”

The other two teens finally reached them. The girl on Adrien’s arm gave a small gasp.

“Oh, Marinette, you were at the Ladybug movie premiere? I heard you went as one of the waitresses. I would have been there too, but I told the movie director that I had another movie project lined up. You see, being Ladybug’s best friend, I had a big say in how the heroes in the movie were portrayed so they could be as accurate as possible.”

The other three stood silent for a moment. One in confusion and the other two in exasperation.

“Who did you say you were again?” Thomas asked, wondering if he really did forget such a person.

“Oh, silly me,” the girl tittered, “where are my manners? I’m Lila Rossi, sort of an expert in all things Ladybug. And in case you also didn’t know,” she pulled Adrien closer to herself, “this is Adrien Agreste. He voiced Chat Noir in the movie but he’s also a model for Gabriel. We actually model together.”

Adrien brought a fist to his mouth and gave a small cough.

Is he covering a smile? Thomas thought to himself. Well, he couldn’t blame the boy. This girl obviously didn’t know whose company she was in. Thomas would have also laughed if the thought didn’t make him feel so dejected.

“Um, Lila,” Adrien politely began, “let me introduce you to Thomas Astruc. Monsieur Astruc is the artistic director of The Adventures of Ladybug and Chat Noir.” He paused. “The Movie.”

As they all watched the emotions play across Lila’s face, it was the other girl, Marinette’s, turn to try and smother a giggle. She wasn’t as successful as Adrien but at the fury that passed across Lila’s face, she quickly brought the conversation elsewhere.

“Sir, I never did get to introduce myself to you, which I guess was a little rude at the time. My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. I admit, I was a little skeptical when I first watched the trailer because Ladybug and Chat Noir didn’t sound anything like the real heroes. But once I watched the movie, it was actually really good!”

Thomas laughed good-naturedly. “That’s quite alright. I knew some people would be disappointed that the movie wasn’t an account of true events. That was the point of the disclaimer ‘based on Ladybug and Chat Noir.’” He took a moment to discreetly eye Lila. “The script writers and I didn’t want to confine ourselves to real life. We took our artistic license and ran with it, if you will. Especially since we don’t know everything there is to know about the Miraculous or the identities of the main players. Can you imagine Ladybug being scared of cats? Or if Hawkmoth were actually Chat Noir’s dad?”

Marinette laughed with him at those hypotheticals. Adrien chuckled along a bit more nervously, though Thomas figured the young man was just trying to imagine Gabriel Agreste as a supervillain, considering Adrien voiced the aforementioned hero. Lila had taken on a stoic face, and he guiltily hoped she learned some humility from her embarrassment.

Then something from earlier clicked in his mind.

“Did you say your name was Marinette Dupain-Cheng?”

Marinette stopped laughing and looked at him questioningly. “Yeah, I did.”

Thomas’s eyes lit up. “So you’re the Marinette Dupain-Cheng whose designs are sought after by several celebrities and whose talents caught the attention of one of the biggest film studios in Europe?!”

Face turning red at the acknowledgement, Marinette nodded timidly. Adrien reached out and put a hand on her shoulder as he smiled proudly. “And those are only some of her accomplishments. I bet she’ll go even further in whatever she does.” His eyes twitched a little when Lila gave a small noise of derision.

Thomas agreed with the boy. Miss Dupain-Cheng may be a relatively new name running in Parisian circles, especially with the crocodile debacle and zoo fundraiser, but she was proving to be more than just a flash in the pan. If anything, she was gaining more momentum in her fame as time passed, due in part by the recently confirmed rumors of her association with Graham Films. Thomas thought hard.

The animation studio he previously worked with for the Ladybug movie was offering him a contract for a new animated film. The studio anticipated that the project wouldn’t receive as much attention as the Ladybug movie did, but Thomas acknowledged that it was a given. However, if he could attach some big names to the film, that might be even better promotion than the simple “from the producers of the hit film Ladybug!” tagline could provide. Bringing Marinette on board would be a more than stellar start.

“What is the project that you and Graham Films working on right now?” he questioned, genuinely curious. “And when is post-production? If you don’t have any other film projects lined up, I happen to be gathering a team right now for an original animated film and we would love to work with someone of your talents!”

Thomas was disappointed to see her shake her head apologetically.

“I’m sorry, Monsieur Astruc. The movie with Graham Films is a one-time thing since I’m hoping for more fashion-centered work.” Her tone then turned thoughtful. “What kind of movie is yours going to be?”

“It’ll be a new superhero movie. I’m considering integrating it into the same universe as the Ladybug and Chat Noir movie.”

Adrien’s eyes lit up. “That sounds really cool! I hope you’ll let me voice Chat Noir again if he and Ladybug make a cameo or maybe even have a sequel!”

Thomas laughed, appreciative of the boy’s eagerness. The cameo bit wasn’t a bad idea at all.

“Monsieur Astruc,” Marinette began tentatively, “would you be opposed to taking on other young talent since I won’t be able to?”

He blinked. “Unless they have an exceptional portfolio and prior experience, I don’t think it would be very likely that they’d be hired. But,” he added when he saw the girl slump, “I’m very open to bringing some interns to the team.”

Thomas noticed Adrien perk up, looking like he knew exactly what his friend was leading up to. Lila merely turned her head away, seeming to be ignoring the rest of the conversation.

“I know some people who would love that!” Marinette exclaimed. “And I can speak for their talent in both writing and drawing about superheroes.”

Intrigued, he figured it wouldn’t hurt to hear her out.

…

A week later at the studio, Thomas and his production team stood up from their chairs to shake hands with the young men who they would be taking under their wings as interns.

“I look forward to working with you two gentlemen,” he said to them. “Your ideas are great and hopefully this internship and stories of my own journey from character doodling to filmmaking can help you get your own comics off the ground.”

Marc Anciel blushed. Nathaniel Kurtzberg beamed and replied, “I can’t wait to tell Marinette about this. I can’t believe she thought of us when you originally wanted her. I heard she couldn’t accept anyway, but still!”

“Marinette is always looking out for her friends,” Marc added softly.

When Thomas formally met Marinette, he recognized her for her fame and her talents. Since then, he began to realize just what a remarkable person she was. And so young too… He briefly pondered how old Ladybug and Chat Noir were. Surely not as young as his movie made them?

“People like that are hard to find but they do exist. Hold on tight to friendships like this. And remember that even though Marinette might seem amazing all on her own, being her friend means helping her out too.”

The boys seemed oddly sad (ashamed, in Nathaniel’s case?) for a moment, but Thomas only had a second to wonder about it before they smiled and nodded in agreement.

#ml fic #miraculous ladybug #marinette dupain-cheng #adrien agreste #lila rossi #thomas astruc the character #minor appearances of #nathaniel kurtzberg #marc anciel

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lady-niennas-traphouse · 4 years ago

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“A Proposal in Carpathia”

Writer: Lady Nienna (@lady-nienna / @lady-niennas-traphouse)

Genre: fluff

Warnings: none

Age limit: I don’t know, all ages I guess, just cute things? Cute shit for all ages? Some swear words but fuck if I care

Rights issues thingy: Tiffany Valentine is not my character, I’m not getting any money of this, I’m not selling this

Pairing: Tiffany x reader

Published 07/2020 on Tumblr, may appear on my AO3 account “irtokarkki666” at some point

Title: a modification of Cradle of Filth’s song “Funeral in Carpathia”

(In Tiffany’s view now because my poor finnish brain cannot function in writing both in english and in third person) (also some editing mistakes may occour, read every “they” as “you”.) also i made up the movie, Lillian Gish was a real silent film actress but the synopsis is completely made up. Also the bath bomb named soft pink dreams does not exist, i think, i just "named" it ~~

“A PROPOSAL IN CARPATHIA”

I slam the car’s door shut, hassle a bit with the keys, get the damn car locked. It lets out two little blinks of yellow light and a beep, the car’s own way of saying “bye for now”. My feet are hurting. I’ve hoppled around since 7 am in my 12cm heels, and it’s currently 5 pm. And I don’t even go to work. Just some errands I needed to run, the puppet is still lost or in pieces, little do I know and little do I want to know, although the latter is much harder to admit.

The house stands silent like a oversized version of the mess you find in the bottom of your bag. All kinds of leftover things formed into walls, doors, roofs, floors, furniture. I should paint the house pink, I think. I should paint it pink and get a new, cute tiling on the roof. Maybe get a glass ceiling window. Like this, the house looks old and cranky, like someone’s forgotten grandma wandering around in the semi-countryside.

I manage to open the door somehow while not dropping my handbag, grocery store’s plastig bag, some designer logo-ed fancy looking bags with lots of wrapping paper, bubble wrap and a couple of Nice Things that cost a lot, but also look good.

Inside, the first thing I do is kick off my heels. One falls down and shows its red sole, like some vulnerable little animal alarmed at a passerby. The other shoe stays up but turns it’s toebox to the opposing side from me, showing some anarchy to its owner. Red bottom heels, Vivienne Westwood dress, Vuitton handbag. Vintage car with modern V8 engine, perfect for high speed night cruises. A girl’s gotta live with style. I’m not made for anything lesser.

I fling the entire grocery store bag into the fridge, get the Moët bottle out. I hunt for a glass first from the cabinet and then from the dishwasher. I resist the urge to shake the champagne bottle, only to pop it neatly like a waitress. I place the cork onto the sink egde, the wire I toss next to it. I take the bottle and now filled up glass with me, make it to the bedroom. I empty my entire bag onto the bed, the Vuitton shows it’s entrails hesitantly and I manage to find Your phone number written on a slip ripped from a newspaper. I never was the one to remember numbers.

I put my hair up into a little bun, break the perfect 60’s style I created this morning. The back combed part of my hair keeps reminding me of its existence, so I give it a couple of gentle strokes with a hairbrush. Then I take a big sip of my drink. The bubbles tingle gently and remind me of the fact that my secret admirer pays for this too, not because I need it but because you want to, and I am a girl who likes to be treated with gifts.

I smile at my reflection on the mirror. I look good, honestly. Then I begin to giggle a little when I strip tease myself out from my clothes, being both the teaser and the teased. Now naked, I take out my ring, earrings and necklace, all Tiffany’s, strangely prophetic, and put the jewelry carefully into a ash tray made from 1700’s Chinese porcelain, too old and fragile to use as an actual ash tray.

I open the showerhead let the bath run and turn on my little TV, surf on the channels a bit, news, weather, sports, hairspray advertisement, stupid-ish comedy, more news, more advertisement, until I land a vintage, black and white silent movie. I think the actress is Lillian Gish, but I am not sure, since I got only a little glance of her. I shut the water source and pop in a bath bomb, it’s named “Soft Pink Dreams”, it begins to give off rose and vanilla scent and a lot of different pink-shaded bubbles. Now confirmed of Lillian Gish, I get the Moët closer to the bath tub, place my glass on the little table and get into the bath.

I let my body relax, try to get my lower back stop hurting, wiggle my toes a bit, get another sip of champagne. I reach for the phone, it’s boringly normal black thing, but it does its job. I start to dial the numbers, first checking them on the paper slip.

The phone keeps ringing for the time to Lillian start a conversation with some handsome gentleman, get flowers, and when the man leaves, she smells the roses and the screen goes black, and with violins now in crescendo, paints out the words “I just love him so much”, You answer the phone.

First I hear a formal “Hello?”, and then a surprised, happy “Oh it’s you babe!”.

“Hi sweetheart”, I say, immersed into the blooming love both on the TV and on my life.

“I think you should pay me a visit more often, your girl is getting lonely..”, I do not mean to get my tone so desperate, but it does. Hopefully the line is bad enough to cover it up.

I listen to the answer. I do not hear properly, since I am reaching for the Moët and messing with holding the glass and pouring the champagne, but Your tone is sweet and slightly flirty.

“Oi! Stop that, I’m in the bath!”, I giggle and watch Lillian read a letter from someone else entirely to her lover. She frowns, little does she know that the mysterious woman is the gentleman’s sister, I know since I have seen this particular film more than twice.

Then You make a comment on something you’re watching, and I have to ask if You are watching a Lillian Gish -movie.

I get a “yes”.

I look at my reflection on the glass, a bit wonky,and rose tinted, but me. Now or never, I think. I take in a deep breath, and while You are contemplating the movie’s possible plot twists, I just blurt it out without any self control.

“We should get married.”

Silence.

Then, after two long seconds, another “yes”.

I fill up with bubbles, little happy bubbles that begin from my chest and flutter down my belly, my arms, wrap up my brain.

“So you do?” My tone now silenced down into a whisper. I dare not to speak any louder, the moment could burst like a soap bubble.

“Tiffany, I do, by God, I do..”

I make a little sound, something between a sigh and a small gasp. I need air, I need anything, I am beginning to cry, I can feel them on my eyes, pricking and waiting.

“We should elope like in the 1800’s...”, You say.

“Elope?”, I ask, little bit teary. “Like in the movies?”

“Excactly like in the movies, white dresses, running in the fields, small town legal offices, have a pink painted carriages with white horses...”

“No”, I say, now certain both about my future and my voice. “I want the horses to be black, and a black parasol”

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