#and i will still be shipping my improbable pairing while doing so!!!

[thatgirlwithasquid]

i engage with media in probably an objectively weird way cause any plot things that happen i give 110% suspension of disbelief, i fully put myself in the characters shoes and feel the stakes of the world, i will cry when characters i dont even like die. HOWEVER. this willingness to be the audience the writing is hoping for does not extend to shipping. about 80% of the time when i can see that a film or show or whatever is guiding me towards a certain pairing i just go ‘nope. no thanks. im gonna decide to like the most narratively improbable ship instead and spend all my time for my first watch imagining scenarios where they could work!’. and i love doing it.

[gunsatthaphan]

agree on everything you said to anon except one point, that o's best option is to leave gmmtv. honestly i don't think that would change anything. whether he is in gmmtv, joins another agency or goes independent, the crazy "fans" are the same. so the chances of him getting another partner are low if they fear they'll be as abused as l was by the on delulus. staying or leaving, as you said, he loses anyway, but at least in gmmtv he has his friends to support him. i'm so mad for him, this people really potentially damaged his bl career beyond repair for a ship that's been over for years now.

personally i think his best option is to take 1-2 years out of main lead roles, take a step back into side characters - token single friend if you will - and hopefully the "fans" will dispers or loss hope with time. so he's still working, but not in a ship and what that entails. he's also gotten into racing, i think, so side roles would give him more free time for that. and considering how long he's been in the bl world, and what he's had to go through the last years, boy deserves a break.

with l and the future projects, i hear that at least mu te lav he'll keep, since he's been in the workshops for weeks (which o didn't attend) and the director(?) has confirmed it. so my guess is o will be recast and l will have a new ship (rumors are it might be barcode). with only friends... it's an unknown. while it's sad that o loses both projects (i wish he could keep of, he fit the vibe so well) it's looking impossible as it would require a new partner for him and we have established how improbable that is. so either the whole couple gets recast, or l and his new partner do it.

hey there!

obviously the crazy fans would stay but at least it wouldn't interfere negatively with other productions and ships and their fandoms within the company anymore. Things like this require recastings and various internal reorganizations which are annoying and time consuming and a hassle for everyone involved (even if production hasn't started yet), which is why I think it's best if at least Ohm would not be associated with gmmtv anymore. Because like I said, he will lose either way. And leaving the company doesn't mean he will be cut off from his friends lol plus the support he is potentially getting inside the company doesn't matter anyway if the higher-ups only care about profits and not the well-being of their artists and are being so easily influenced by fans.

He already has a few projects outside of gmmtv so this definitely won't hurt him. At the moment I don't think Leng is leaving, he's still kind of a newbie and I hope they will give him the chance to evolve in further projects. He deserves it. Ohm said yesterday on Twitter that he will continue to be an actor and treat racing as a hobby so if that means that he will stay with gmmtv or not remains to be seen but I think him laying low in side roles for the time being sounds like a reasonable idea.

You sent this before they announced AouBoom and SurfJava as their replacements in Only Friends and Mu-Te-Luv respectively which I assume you saw by now. I guess those 2 pairs are good choices although I'm sad to see Leng leave Only Friends as I was very excited to see him as Raffy. but I trust AB to do the roles justice. They've been kind of a salvage couple for a while now anyway lol. They will ace it for sure. SurfJava are a new ship but I loved Java in Summer Night so I'm sure they will do good too. Remains to be seen. It's been a wild 24 hours 🫡 lol

xxx

[swallow-the-bird]

Do you have any favorite Harry Potter ships?

Well, besides my all-time favorite Grindeldore, I’m actually quite eclectic in my tastes! 🤣

Snarry, Snamione, Snily, Jily, Hedric, Dnarry, Sirry… I’ve read fanfictions about all of them, and I’ve enjoyed them. Perhaps it’s because the Harry Potter fandom has so many talented writers. As long as the story is captivating, I’m thrilled to read it!

There’s another pairing that I initially thought was improbable, but later became infatuated with—

Harrymort/Tomarry!!

***** ‼️ LONG post alert ‼️ Oh, whenever I get to a topic that excites me, I always end up being such a chatterbox🤣Please also be aware of what I say below is only my VERY SUBJECTIVE opinions ‼️ *****

While Harrymort/Tomarry seem to have a lover-enemy dynamic similar to Grindeldore, the premise for each is vastly different. Gellert and Albus once passionately loved each other in their youth, while Tom/Voldemort and Harry share deep animosity and are destined adversaries. How could they possibly be together? Moreover, I once believed that Tom Riddle was an emotionless monster. (But I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense!)

While Gellert might be categorized as a sociopath, capable of true loyalty and emotions towards a select few - Albus Dumbledore- and taking a lifetime to learn how to love, he at least has the capacity to love. This is evident when he ultimately understands the true meaning of remorse and willingly sacrifices his life to protect another’s grave.

But what about Tom?

In my eyes, Tom is a complete psychopath. Perhaps his traumatic childhood twisted his moral compass, but some characteristics seem innate and psychological. Tom’s emotional blunting seems more pronounced. He inherently lacks empathy and remorse. Even if he can comprehend others’ emotions and manipulate them, he doesn’t genuinely understand or empathize with them, which is why he can’t grasp the concept of remorse. Hence, he chose to become Voldemort. This made me question:

How can such a person love? He doesn’t even understand what love is.

This mirrors Gellert’s scathing taunt to Voldemort, “…there is so much you do not understand—!”

Yes, Tom Riddle—Voldemort— does not, and cannot understand love. But can he?

Some of my favorite authors have remarked:

“Yes, Tom Riddle—Voldemort— does not understand love, and he may never be able to. But just because you don’t understand something, does that mean you can’t have it?”

Harry is like a reflection of Tom Riddle. While Tom Riddle, in his hatred and fear, denied love and chose to become Voldemort, Harry, despite facing the same hatred and fear, came to understand what courage meant and chose love.

“Just by letting Harry see even the tiniest hint of Voldemort’s humanity, he will bravely embrace that one-in-a-million hope.”— Oh yes, hope. This is how many Tomarry/Harrmort fictions begin their stories.

Harry might harbor hatred for Voldemort for a lifetime, but the essence of forgiveness isn’t the absence of hate; it’s about learning to move on. If there’s anyone willing to embrace a shattered soul with such heinous crimes, it would be Harry Potter. Just as he has embraced death with the same courage, it’s this Harry who, when confronting his lifelong nemesis, still chooses “Expelliarmus”.

This love-hate story is inevitably not just about the hopes and courage of love, but also about its pain and despair. It makes us question the nature of love, hate, life, death, and humanity.

Harry understands love, so he believes in humanity, which gives him hope and courage, especially when mired in human flaws and tragedies.

“You see the world in such a unique way; I believe even despair seems colorful to someone like you.”—this is a line from one of my favorite Harrmort stories, “One thing he will never know”. In it, Harry chooses to cling to that sliver of hope in Voldemort and falls hopelessly in love with him. When Harry grapples with guilt, Dumbledore leaves him with this wisdom.

"It may seem terribly wrong, but if I may venture a guess, it must also feel so right," were Dumbledore's last words to the boy, "Harry, I don't think there is any shame in love. You must never doubt that when someone has been loved like this, it always leaves a mark, and that it will eventually change everything. You are much braver than I ever was.”

Thanks to these brilliant fanfictions, I’ve come to believe in the heart Voldemort thought he never had. Even if it’s fractured, it still exists, and a sliver of humanity remains. Perhaps we all need a broad perspective to see the world:

Not understanding love doesn’t mean you can’t have it.

I just realized I wrote so much! Maybe it’s because I’ve never shared my love for Tomarry/Harrmort with anyone after Grindeldore. Here’s my chance!

PS One of my favorite fanfictions, “One thing he will never know,” is written by a talented Taiwanese author in Chinese.If you’re interested, you can check it out here:

(* I've taken the liberty of translating some of the lines that impressed me most into English, as I wrote above.)

I also have read many excellent Tomarry/Harrmort stories from the English fandom. If you have any recommendations, please share them with me!

[kcscribbler]

D, L, and Z for the ask game.💖

Full Ask List Here

D: What’s the most personal fanfic you’ve written?

Living in the Shadows Characters/Pairings: Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Enterprise crew. AOS canon relationships only, but as always you'll find very little ship but the Enterprise here, folks Word Count: 21K Rating: T for movie-level language and discussion of mental illness

Summary: Five times Jim noticed one of his officers wasn't doing well, and one time they returned the favor

L:  Which of your fanfics was the most emotionally challenging to write?

However Improbable was the first fic I ever wrote for Star Trek TOS, and why the hell I chose a very niche crossover to make that jump between fandoms, during NaNoWriMo no less, I have no real idea. It was a wild whirlwind of an exploratory fic that I still love, to this day.

Z: Is there a story you’ve written that doesn’t seem to get much love?

While I certainly can't complain about the level of engagement I'm fortunate enough to get as a rule, this one for some reason didn't land as well as my others.

I liked it, but it clearly didn't resonate like it could have, so. Might be the subject matter or time period, or just an exercise in remembering I write for myself first. :)

Coda in E Major Characters: James T. Kirk & Spock Tags: Gen or Pre-Slash, Post-Movie: Star Trek I: The Motion Picture (1979), Missing Scene, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, James T. Kirk Needs a Hug, Breaking Up & Making Up, ish Word Count: 3300 Summary: Despite the events of the last three years, the important things don't change. Two variations on a theme, for the prompt of "Rhythm."

Thanks so much for the asks, this was super fun!

[kookiecrush]

ig this is kinda triggered by the “as a jikooker, taekookers r deluded” comment…

im a taekooker but i rlly have these moments where i think we all must just be deluded (jkkers, tkkers, other shippers etc) bc everyone believes SO strongly that their ship is right and we all feel like we can back it up w “evidence”. jikookers genuinely see something btwn jm and jk and us taekookers genuinely see something between v and jk. i do feel like taekook makes the most sense logically (especially during the solo era) and i feel like i did a lot of research to come to that conclusion (including watching videos on a lot of other pairings like jikook), but i could rlly just have underlying biases that are making me see things between tk that my brain wants to see. to other shippers and fans tkkers r insane, to tkkers others r insane. so honestly aren’t we probably all insane lol ? ik it’s POSSIBLE that tk are together but it just seems so improbable. i often try to talk myself out of taekook bc like rly what r the chances of two members in the biggest band in the word actually secretly dating for like many years ? and they’ve been able to successfully hide it all this time ? and we believe they still are together ? idk it sounds too good/far-fetched to be true and like i can’t imagine a day coming way later on down the line where it would actually be confirmed or like super super obvious even without confirmation. but i can totally imagine a day where it comes out that jk is officially dating some girl or something like that and then we’d all be proven wrong. ik that leans into assuming heterosexuality is the default which is not good and i don’t believe that but i can’t help but to feel like nah we’re all just delusional and fantasizing and tk r not together. i do definitely believe v is queer in some way but maybe that’s all.

Maybe we are all delusional? I certainly thought the taekookers that actually believed taekook were together were delusional when I first started delving deeper into the ship. For a good while I was very resistant to the possibility of them being real. Because that's ridiculous, right? The clearer it became to me that there was actually something going on between taekook, the more and more I tried to deny it. So while confirmation bias is very much real, and I have no doubt that I'm guilty of it at times, it doesn't really apply to my actual belief in taekook because the foundations of that belief are built on a healthy amount of scepticism and doubt. I was looking for ways to disprove taekook, not confirm they were real. Yet here i am 🤷‍♀️

Is the idea of taekook so improbable, though? Wouldn't their situation have made it more likely, in fact? It's pretty obvious that there was an attraction between taekook when they were younger, that is something I'm confident of, and it's pretty easy for close friendship to turn into a romantic relationship when attraction and feelings are involved. Surely there's a higher chance of falling in love with someone when you spend all your time with them? It sounds like the perfect environment for something to develop to me.

In terms of them keeping their relationship a secret all these years, I highly doubt taekook's is the only hidden relationship going on. There's plenty of dating and relationships going on in secret within the industry. Idols have alluded to it many times. People have even got married or had a baby without anyone finding out, so I don't think taekook's situation is that much of a stretch.

You seem kind of bothered by the fact that you have doubts about taekook, but that's completely normal, anon. Realistically speaking, we can't say with 100% certainty that taekook are real, can we? You don't need to come to a concrete decision about taekook. You don't even have to believe in taekook at all. It doesn't have to be black and white. Think of it more like a spectrum. Maybe you're only at 60%. Maybe you'll never be sure about them. There's nothing wrong with that. I truly believe taekook are together but I also leave a little room for the possibility that I'm wrong.

At the end of the day, what everyone else believes is irrelevant. Just focus on what you believe, anon. There's no right or wrong decision. Honestly, I think some doubt and uncertainty is far better than just blindly believing everything. If we just accepted every random taekook theory without ever questioning anything then we really would be delusional.

[dearweirdme]

i’m sending this to a few tk blogs bc i’d like multiple people’s perspectives…

im a taekooker but i rlly have these moments where i think we all must just be deluded (jkkers, tkkers, other shippers etc) bc everyone believes SO strongly that their ship is right and we all feel like we can back it up w “evidence”. jikookers genuinely see something btwn jm and jk and us taekookers genuinely see something between v and jk. i do feel like taekook makes the most sense logically (especially during the solo era) and i feel like i did a lot of research to come to that conclusion (including watching videos on a lot of other pairings like jikook), but i could rlly just have underlying biases that are making me see things between tk that my brain wants to see. to other shippers and fans tkkers r insane, to tkkers others r insane. so honestly aren’t we probably all insane lol ? ik it’s POSSIBLE that tk are together but it just seems so improbable. i often try to talk myself out of taekook bc like rly what r the chances of two members in the biggest band in the word actually secretly dating for like many years ? and they’ve been able to successfully hide it all this time ? and we believe they still are together ? idk it sounds too good/far-fetched to be true and like i can’t imagine a day coming way later on down the line where it would actually be confirmed or like super super obvious even without confirmation. but i can totally imagine a day where it comes out that jk is officially dating some girl or something like that and then we’d all be proven wrong. ik that leans into assuming heterosexuality is the default which is not good and i don’t believe that but i can’t help but to feel like nah we’re all just delusional and fantasizing and tk r not together. i do definitely believe v is queer in some way but maybe that’s all.

Hi anon!

I think it's important to realize that it's okay to not actually believe in Tae and Jk being together (or any ship for that matter). Them being together or not does not actually effect your own life. So if you're in a state of "well, I definitely see some stuff going on, but I have no clue what it is exactly" that's totally fine. Uncertainty isn't a bad thing, you just have to be able to cope with it in a healthy way. Sometimes uncertain shippers do not know how to cope with the uncertainty very well, those are the ones who scrutinize every detail of every moment we get.. trying to find proof. I get it, but it's not the way to go, because that uncertainty will always return and you'll end up in a loop with no end. I think there's people that get actual anxiety because of this at times.

I know to non-shippers we (and other shippers) must all look insane. I don't think we actually are. Even though there are insane-ish tkkrs out there, that doesn't mean there can't be some truth to it as well. When you look around on twitter, youtube, instagram, Tumblr, you find all sorts of different Tkkrs. While we all fall under the term 'Taekooker' i'd say there's many different categories, which very different outlooks on the situation. For instance, technically I'd rather call myself a Taekook believer, while I suppose you are an actual shipper. There's also those that believe, but do not ship.

I'll tell you my reasons for not thinking I'm insane (😂😂). This sounds super stupid and arrogant (and I'm actually cringing while typing this up)... but I consider myself smart and insightfull. Have been all my life, and others have also told me they think of me the same. Basically, I trust my instincts and judgement. I've gone through life experiencing many different feelings, emotions, situations.. and I feel I just understand life and people. When it comes to Tae and Jk, I don't need all the overanalyzed stuff. I just see the way they look at each other and the way they interact and I feel I recognize romantic love there. I understand why it must seem 'too good to be true', but is it really? People so often fall in love with people they are in close proximity to. Coworkers falling in love isn't odd, best friends falling in love isn't odd, celebrities falling in love isn't odd... so why would Tae and Jk be the exception? It isn't even weird for two members in the same band to fall in love or be married... it is just odd to see two members of a K-pop band in love... but is the reason that it doesn't happen, or that it isn't made public?

When you look at celebrities that have come out, you will very often see that they as well have kept it a secret for many years. Idols are expected to keep their relationships hidden anyway, so for Tae and Jk this isn't very much different in that aspect, only there's an added reason. I don't think Namjoon, Jimin, Yoongi, Hobi, and Jin have been single the last ten years.. and we know nothing of their relationships either.

I don't think their relationship has been easy and I expect there have probably been many difficulties along the way. But when I see how they are together this year.. I definitely think their love was stronger than the things that got thrown in their way.

I think it's good to be sceptical. I try to be as well.

[nefastum]

Saw your reblog about not ignoring canon and not adhering to it, and I wanted to ask; how do you feel when canon conflicts with your headcanons? For me it makes it hard to stick to them if the source says it's wrong :/

Hello there, Anon~

I totally understand how that can steal the thunder from writing/drawing/headcanonning. I am sorry you felt like that, love <3

For me, it doesn’t really matter if the source manga/show or whatever can “back me up” on my opinions or not. I am more inclined to just roll forward with my headcanons regardless. Like, making Griffith bi in my writing and art is most entirely because I am bi. So I enjoy making him bi, too. I am not overly concerned if I can fit it into canon. Only because I am not the one writing the canon, and to me, it is just a fun little hc that makes me feel validated. Of course, I reference canon for other things, like what kind of armor they’re wearing and things of that sort. But, if someone wanted to hc that they wore completely different armor, more power to them.

How one interacts with fiction should be up to the individual, and fandom should be enjoyable. So if you have a hc, maybe it's for validation or representation, I say go for it even if the source “says it’s wrong”. Like, who are we hurting with a gay or trans hc, really? The showrunners or mangaka are still in charge of the canon regardless, so I see no issue in having fun.

While I totally get why canon might make you discouraged if you feel your hc is improbable, I don’t think that means you are not valid in your takes. For me, at least, I enjoy the canon separately from my fan work. I don’t believe it is necessary to look to canon for the correct character to like or ship to support or anything like that. People are going to have their own reasons for why a character, or trope, or pairing emotionally moved them.

Just do what makes you feel safest and happiest, love ♡ That is the most important ^ ^ Feel free to send along your headcanons if you ever feel like it~

[thebadgerclan]

True Identities

Pairing: Nikolai Lantsov x reader

Requested by Anonymous

Summary: Both you and your captain reveal your true identities...

His eyes should be fixed on the horizon, scanning the endless sea for movement, for enemy or friendly ships, but Strumhond’s gaze was firmly fixed on you.  Your hair fastened back in a knot to keep it from blowing in the sea breeze, your roughspun tunic cinched at your waist with a belt, your hands moving with practiced movements as you secured ropes on the masts.  There wasn’t a thing about you that Sturmhond didn’t admire and adore: you had an incredible work ethic, kind, funny, sweet, everything Sturmhond could want in a girlfriend or wife.

Tolya approached you, saying something that made you throw your head back with laughter, and Sturmhond’s heart skipped several beats.  He was beyond denying it, but the fact still somewhat surprised him: he’d fallen for you and fallen hard.  Tamar was manning the starboard side of the ship, the twins, he, and you being the only crew aboard the Volkvolny.  It was a simple trip from Kerch to Novyi Zem to pick up a few crates of jurda, no need for a full crew.  Besides, what danger was Sturmhond or his ship in in Zemini waters?

“Captain!” Tamar shouted, her voice panicked.  “We’re being boarded!”  “Shit!”  Sturmhond scrambled down from the crow’s nest, drawing his pistols as he did.  Apparently, they were in danger, and by the looks of it, outnumbered.  10 Shu pirates were climbing over the hull of the ship, all manners of weapons in their hands: sabers, long swords, rifles, shotguns.  “What the hell are Shu pirates doing out here?” Tolya cried, knocking one of them back into the water.

“Who cares?” you called, drawing your owl revolver from your pocket.  “They’ll overrun us if we don’t do something!”  The four of you fought hard; the twins using their power primarily while Sturmhond and yourself used weapons.  But only a few moments later, Tamar lay on the deck unconscious, Toyla was clutching a wound on his arm, and Sturmhond was out of ammunition.

There was only one way out of this, there was only one way you could save your friends and the man who you’d found yourself falling for.  You knew there would be no going back from what you were about to do, and you found yourself thanking the Saints that there were only four of you aboard.  Breathing deeply, you called to your power, a power you hadn’t used in centuries.  You arced your hand out, the shadows forming a deadly sharp blade that sliced all nine Shu pirates in half.

Sturmhond startled, yelping in shock.  He watched as their bodies crumpled to the desk, shadows leaking from the wounds you’d created.  He looked at you, mouth open in shock Sturmhond’s face, the face you’d come to adore, was contorted in equal parts fear, awe, and surprise.  “Tamar,” he said, seeing the Heartrender stir.  “Are you alright?”  “I’ve felt better, Captain, but yes, I’m alright.”

“Good.  Tend to your brother.  Y/N, might I have a word?”  “Of course, Captain.”  You followed Sturmhond into his quarters, nervousness filling you as he shut the door.  “First, thank you for saving us,” he began crossing the room to stand behind his desk.  “We’d be dead if you hadn’t done….that.  Now, I ask you this: what the hell was that?”  You sighed, pinching the bridge of your nose.  “You won’t like it,” you said, and Sturmhond laughed.

“That remains to be seen.  Please,” he added in a softer tone.  “Tell me what happened up there.”  You held out your hand, letting shadows pool in your palm.  They fell to the ground like ink in water, dispersing like fog, and Sturmhond gasped.  “Saints, are you…”  “A Darkling, yes, I am,” you finished for him.  “That means you’re related to-”  “He is my brother,” you said.  Sturmhond went silent, and you wondered if he was thinking about chucking you into the sea.   But a few moments later, he spoke.

“Why would you hide this?”  “Why wouldn’t I?” you countered.  “Everyone knows what my power means, it’s a target on my back.  If I were a Tidemaker of a Healer, then no, I wouldn’t have hidden my power.  But because of what I can do, it’s safer for everyone if I keep it hidden.”  Sturmhond was surprised, but he understood.  He understood what it meant to have to hide who you were, for your true identity to put a target on your back.  And you’d come clean, trusted him with this secret, so maybe he could do the same.

“You should know that I am not my brother,” you continued.  “What he’s done...what he’s made, it sickens me.  And I’ll do whatever I can to heal the damage he’s done.”  Sturmhond nodded, taking a step towards you.  “Thank you for telling me this, Y/N,” he said.  “There’s something I’d like to tell you, too.  I haven’t been completely honest about my true identity either.”

“What do you mean?”  “Tamar!” he shouted, and the Heartrender appeared a moment later.  “Yes Captain?”  “Undo it.”  “Sir?”  “Undo it,” Sturmhond repeated, and Tamar, though she looked wary, nodded.  She came to stand between the two of you, facing him.  She raised her hand, and when she stepped back, you gasped.  Gone was Sturmhond, the privateer, and in his place was Nikolai Lantsov.

“Saints and their mothers,” you swore, a hand over your heart.  “And this isn’t all,” he said, stepping closer to you, taking your hands in his.  “I have fallen in love with you, Y/N.  Every single thing about you, I love, and I would be honored if you would be mine.”  You shook your head, but didn’t step back.  “Moi tsarevich-”  “Nikolai, please.”  “Nikolai,” you amended, feeling improper for addressing a prince so casually.  “You’re… this isn’t a joke?”

“No, darling, it isn’t a joke.  Stumhond is an alias, a way for me to leave Prince Nikolai in Ravka and let me be free for a while.  I know you know what it’s like having to hide yourself.”  You nodded, looking at your joined hands, eyes travelling up to Nikolai’s face.  His nose was no longer crooked, green eyes now a beautiful shade of hazel, ruddy hair a golden blond.  “I do,” you responded, inching closer to him.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, Y/N,” Nikolai went on.  “Kind, sweet, funny.   I felt that way before you sliced those men in half and I feel that way now.  You are not your brother, and, if you’ll let me, I will love you more than you’ve ever imagined.”  You flushed, bottom lip coming between your teeth.  “You’re a prince,” you said, looking into his beautiful hazel eyes.  “Ravka can’t have a Grisha princess, let alone a Darkling.”

“No, but she’ll have a Grisha queen.”  Your eyes widened, and you shook your head.  “Are you mad?  The people won’t stand for that!”  “Don’t worry yourself just yet, sweetheart,” he said, testing out a few nicknames.  “I have Vasily to take care of first, make him see that I’m the better choice for the throne.  And you on the throne, letting the people see that Grisha, yes, even a Darkling, can do good, that can only help the people’s opinions on Grisha.”

You were silent for a few moments, standing before Nikolai, your hands still clasped in his.  “This is crazy,” you said, and Nikolai nodded.  “Just a bit.”  “It feels impossible, you and me being together.”  “Now Y/N, you know how I feel about that word.”  He was smirking, and you laughed, a beautiful sound.  “Alright, improbable then.”  “It is, but I’m notorious for beating the odds.”  You smiled, and Nikolai put his arms around you, pulling you into his chest.  You rested your head on his shoulder, your arms wrapped around his waist.  “You’ll be a queen, Y/N,” he said, stroking your hair.  “I promise.”

[powertaco]

Death’s WhiteRose

So for those of you who care DWR or Death’s WhiteRose is the pairing for Ruby Rose/Weiss Schnee/Maria Calavera (young). 

I’ve had some people basically ask why ship it at all and so here we go. Please of course remember this is for fun and my own interpretations of things.

Outside of the fact that they’re all pretty, which to be fair they are, I find that they work absurdly well as a trio and have a lot in common.

To start with they’re all huntresses with a missing/deceased mother. Ruby’s mother is dead (at least at the time of writing this) or missing, Weiss’s mother may as well be and hasn’t been her mother in over a decade and in fact is reduced to a laughing shadow in ice queen, and Maria only ever has mention of her father which is listed as unnamed. 

These losses have helped shape them into who they are. Weiss strives to be perfect, Ruby strives to help people, and Maria is an interesting mix of both. She helps people and eventually buys into her own hype of being the Grimm Reaper and is the perfect fighter who thinks she doesn’t need others. 

Much like Weiss Maria thinks she’s fine enough to stand on her own, but unlike Weiss, Maria didn’t have anyone to help show her that she needs others no matter who skilled you are.

Her hubris leads to her calling herself a failed huntress even after she still manages to kill her attackers but loses her eyes in the process. 

The idea of Maria feeling like she has to stand on her own only to be met by someone like Weiss who had the same idea but found solace in her team, and partner Ruby and decides that maybe that’s the thing to try and slowly opens up and starts trusting people and letting them in is a great narrative. 

Maria gets to trust and confide in others and see that teamwork does make the dream work, Ruby gets a silver eye mentor, and Weiss gets another silver eyed harem girl. A joke but she gets another person to rely on that has a vested interest in her as a person rather than as her family name as Maria much like Ruby just doesn’t seem to care about things of that nature and they both get a more experienced training partner to help them grow while Maria gets a pair of people who can teach her to work with others, and trust again to make her even better than she was alone. 

In another amusing note in music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm. 

And wouldn’t you know it the three share a counterpoint with their theme songs which at first seems highly improbably until you realize counterpoints aren’t as exact as you’d imagine. 

Maria doesn’t have an “official” song but we do have Grimm Reaper which I think we can all agree is basically a stand in for her at this time but if they want to release an official song for her then by all means gimmie. 

The first minute of the song is a gentle intro which fits and slots neatly into Weiss’s mirror mirror, and then at around the one minute mark is ramps up into an action beat that syncs well with Red Like Roses II aka Ruby’s song. After that at the end it transitions back to a more somber song. 

And of course if you listen to the lyrics much like has been said more openly in Ice Queendom Ruby and Weiss are both very lonely people despite being surrounded by others, and very clearly Maria is as well. She’s spent decades punishing herself for her mistakes and even before then lived alone going around fighting as nothing but a machine. 

The idea of the three of them getting a chance to be happy together, of filling in the holes each leaves to make a whole is a great one. 

Is it crack because Maria was born decades before them so young Maria isn’t really a thing outside of fanfic? Yes, but I write fanfic, and well who’s to say Weiss’s time glyphs, and Ruby’s semblance don’t have a misadventure and they end up back in time to save Maria from losing her eyes? (Yes I wrote that fic and no I feel no shame about it)

At any rate that doesn’t even get into all the other great ways their fighting styles mesh. With Maria’s up close and personal style and predilection for showboating something both WR have shown before, or birthday significance or the fact that Maria has two weapons (and two hands!)

And again have I mentioned how cute they are?

(Scene from Radio Grimm where Ruby and Maria are playing the Hunters trading card game and Weiss who is new to this is just kinda enjoying being there) Thank @amelia-yap​             For that one.    

So yes it’s basically a crack ship but remember this from the Vol 9 teaser

I’m not saying that has to be maria, but if it is she’s looking mighty taller than before, and the skin is about the right shade. 

So if young maria is on the island I think we have a real chance at making crack fic real fic. WHO IS WITH ME?

Write letters to your congressmen today and thank you for coming to my TED talk. 

[lesetoilesfous]

sensory overload with fenders for the bad things bingo? (specifically fenris, if you’re up for it)

Godddd I had too much fun with this and I very much hope you enjoy it. Also I hate with a burning passion the fact that Hawke can give Fenris back to Danarius. I hate it so, so much.

@badthingshappenbingo

Fandom: Dragon Age 2

Prompt: Sensory Overload

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Sensory Overload, Slavery, Panic Attack, Vomiting

Pairing: Fenders (pre-relationship)

Characters: Evil/Red Marian Hawke, Fenris, Anders, Varric Tethras, Isabela, Danarius

Additional Tags: Hawke tries to give Fenris back and the KWC says no thank you, Angst with a Happy Ending

Word Count: 1,503

“Take him.”

Fenris feels as if he’s been hit in the head with a sledgehammer. “What?”

Danarius smiles: a slow, creeping sort of smile that Fenris has seen him wear a thousand times. “Interesting. I’ll make it worth your while, of course. The power of the Imperium will be at your disposal.”

Feeling dizzy, Fenris stares at Hawke. Her pale features are set and rigid with cold disdain. “Don’t do this, Hawke. I need you.” The words fall out of his mouth like pulled teeth, dragging at his insides with a sharp ache.

Hawke's lips curl back in a sneer. “You’re on your own, Fenris.”

Everything inside of Fenris collapses. It reminds him of something he’d read, recently - a book by a Qunari philosopher about the stars - a woman who hypothesised that sometimes, when a star died, it collapsed into an inverse of itself, dragging everything around it into darkness. Behind him, Danarius’ voice sounds both far, far too close and impossibly far away.

“What shall it be, Fenris? Will you throw your life away?”

Fenris can’t breathe. He feels is if the floor is swaying beneath him, shaking like a ship at sea. He remembers dancing on these floorboards, with Isabela...Fenris looks up, but the gold and brown and cream of the Hanged Man’s interior is a spinning kaleidoscope of colour. His mouth moves, and his tongue feels numb and fuzzy with static. “No, I will go with you.”

One of the guards moves, and the clanking scrape of their armour sounds painfully loud. Fenris sways away from them as they drop a purse heavy with coins into Hawke’s hand. Danarius speaks again, his voice cutting through the fog of sound and colour, weaving through Fenris’ ears like a thread pulled through his brain. “Lovely! Here’s a token of my appreciation, Champion. I’m sure I can arrange to have something more...appropriate sent along soon.”

The wooden floorboards beneath Fenris tilt, and he finds himself stumbling forwards toward his master and the red-headed elvhen woman, Varania, his sister. Fenris stares at his feet, which seem far too far away from him, and tries to remember how to breathe. His face feels hot, and his lungs are aching, desperate for more air. Danarius smiles, and the hairs on the back of Fenris’ arms and neck lift. “Come along, everyone! The boat leaves for Minrathous within the hour.”

The group begins to move, and Fenris feels as if the entire tavern is folding around him like a Rivaini paper flower. His vision tunnels, surrounded by darkness, but everything is still too loud and too bright and too hot and how had he never noticed the smell in here? Every time he breathes he feels as if he’s inhaling a thick stew of sweat and leather and steel polish and sex and alcohol and piss. He gags, falling forward. Behind him, Hawke doesn’t even move. Beside her, Fenris can’t make out Anders, Isabela and Varric in the blur of colour and noise. He still can’t breathe. The past ten years feel unreal, rapidly fading from his memory like a dwindling dream.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

Varric’s drawl is immediately preceded by the familiar thunking of his crossbow, and Fenris thinks for a moment with relief that the rogue is going to shoot him in the head and end this nightmare before it begins. But the bolt doesn’t hit him, or Danarius, and he turns - slowly, too slowly, as if he’s moving in treacle - to see Hawke’s eyes rolling up into the back of her head as she collapses like a sack of potatoes.

Isabela draws her knives. “Oh, thank the Maker.”

Anders swings his staff from behind his back, twirling it in a wreath of blue fire that leaves burning imprints on Fenris’ irises. “You took the words right out of my mouth.”

Fenris turns back, forcing himself to lift his head despite the ten tonne weight that feels as if it’s resting on him, and sees Danarius’ face twist into a mask of fury. He sees Danarius’ hands claw, and the mercenaries charge, and shades bleed up from between the floorboards of the tavern like oil dragged from the earth. Then everything shatters into a swirling kaleidoscope of shattered stained glass and colour. Fenris can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t hear. Everything is too much: too loud, too bright, every movement feels like a needle in his eyes, every sound like a knife stabbed into his ears. His tongue feels heavy and burning with the overload of spice and salt in the air, and his nose is thick and choking on smoke and sulphur. His heart is thudding so hard in his chest, Fenris thinks he must be trembling with it. Blindly, he moves towards what he thinks might be the door, and doesn’t care if someone stabs him in the back for it.

Fenris makes it three feet into the cool Kirkwall night before he crumples to his knees and vomits, retching again and again until his stomach is spasming and his eyes are burning with useless, burning tears as if he’d pressed his face into a chimney full of smoke. Arms shaking, dripping with cold sweat, he kneels on the cold white sandstone of the street, washed silver by the moon, and shudders until the world stops spinning. It stops slowly, the brightness in his eyes turned unnaturally light, every colour too saturated and too vivid, even out here in the dark. The barking of Fereldan mabari, normally a strange kind of comfort, punches his skull every time they break the night, leaving Fenris shuddering with recollections of Hawke and her mabari and every time he’d saved her life, every time she’d saved his. He’d trusted her.

The sea breeze is too salty on Fenris’ tongue, which feels as if it’s been coated with grease and spices. He spits until his mouth is dry and his throat is sore, and doesn’t know how long it takes before he can breathe easily again.

When, at last, the world is no longer a Fade-saturated parody of itself, Fenris realises two things. First: the sounds of combat from inside the tavern have long since faded. Second: he is not alone.

Slowly, he forces himself to look up from the familiar sets of black and brown boots to Anders and Isabela. Isabela looks uncharacteristically sincere, and Anders’ wrinkled features are creased with worry. Twenty feet away, Varric is talking to a small huddle of Carta dwarves next to a cart with Hawke’s unconscious body. Fenris nearly throws up again, and Anders starts forward, totally ignoring the puddle of bile and vomit on the stone in front of him. Fenris flinches back, violently, and Anders freezes.

Finally, Fenris finds his voice. “Danarius?”

Anders’ jaw tenses, and some of the worry clears from his features. “Unconscious, in chains, supervised by Merrill and Aveline. We drugged him with magebane, too.” Anders hesitates, and glances at Isabela before going on. “We thought - we wanted you to have the final say. On what we do with him.”

Fenris nods, and breathes, pushing himself further away from the sick to sit on the stone. He glances towards Varric and the carta. “Hawke?”

Isabela’s lips purse into a thin line. “Varric drugged her. I say we slit her throat. Varric’s keeping her drugged in a safehouse until we come to a group decision.”

Fenris nods again. The breeze pulls across the open stone courtyard, tugging at Anders’ and Isabela’s hair, and cooling the sweat on the back of his neck. He looks at the pirate, and then the mage. Varric is walking over to them, now, too, Bianca loose in his arms. “Why?”

Isabela’s features flicker, briefly. Anders’ expression crumples. “Andraste, Fenris, because we love you.” He says it so easily. As if it’s something they’ve said to each other before. And then he keeps talking, because it’s Anders, and he always has more to say. “Also, I don’t know if you’ve been listening to me at all for the past ten years but, "the right of every man, woman and child to freedom in Thedas" does, in fact, include slaves. I know, I know, a manifesto about freedom being anti-slavery, it’s improbable right? You’d think I was healing all those elvhen slaves over the past decade with my own sweat and blood and tears for some secret evil agenda. But no, it’s actually pretty simple. Slavery’s one of the foulest, most cursed, pus-infected tumorous boils on the Maker’s taint, and so’s anyone who fucking supports it.”

Fenris thinks it’s a strange world, indeed, that he finds himself comforted by the mage’s rambling. Varric steps forward and reaches out, offering a hand. “What Blondie’s trying to say, Fenris, is that we’ve got your back.”

Fenris hesitates, staring at Varric’s hand, his mind full of Hawke’s bright blue eyes and strong jaw. Isabela unfolds her arms from where they’d been tightening across her chest. “No slaves, no masters.”

Fenris takes Varric’s hand.

[johaerys-writes]

Fandom: The Song of Achilles

Pairing: Achilles/Patroclus

Summary:

Patroclus is a sailor, and Achilles a merman that saves his life when his ship is caught in a storm. The two end up on a deserted island, and the friendship that develops between them will change both of their lives for good.

Chapter 3: The Nymph Who Became Star, the penultimate chapter of my Merman AU Fall Into Your Tide is up! Art is by the wonderful @katartstrophe​ :)

Read on Ao3! Or read from the beginning

Once upon a time, deep in the Laconian mountains, there lived a nymph. The forest was her home; she walked the woods and swam in the streams, protected the animals that lived there and helped the trees and plants grow strong.

One day, she met a young man from a nearby village. He was a healer’s apprentice, and had ventured deep into the forest in search of medicinal plants. Touched by his gentle manners and dedication to his craft, the nymph decided to help him and share her knowledge with him. The man returned the next day, and the day after that, bringing her gifts of flowers and honeyed sweets. His visits became a regular occurrence; they would spend hours together, talking and gathering herbs, exploring the forest. It wasn��t long before the two fell in love.

Months passed in peaceful bliss. However, when the next summer came, a terrible war broke out with a neighbouring state, and the man was called away from his village and sent to battle.

Endless days rolled by without him. The nymph waited and waited, fearing the worst, for she knew well how fickle and short the lives of humans were, winked out in a fateful instant like the flame of a candle. Finally, after several months, the war came to an end. The men who had gone to battle returned— or what was left of them.

The young man did not come to her. Overcome by worry, the nymph decided to approach the village in hopes of seeing him, even though she had always kept her distance from humans and their settlements. When she finally found his house amidst the multitudes of others, she hid in the trees of the garden and peeked inside.

She was overjoyed to see that her love was still alive, but her relief was short-lived. He had been grievously wounded, and his life was hanging by a thread. The healers of the village had done what they could, and all that was left was prayer. Incense burned around him night and day, while he lay on the bed, pale and unmoving.

The nymph's heart ached with longing and grief, such that she had never known in her long life. Tearful and distraught, she returned to her forest, determined to find some way to help him.

She searched for the other nymphs, much older and more experienced than her in the art of healing. None knew of a way to bring back someone that was only a breath away from crossing Hades’ rivers.

“Death cannot be healed,” they admonished her, “and it should not.”

The nymph listened to no one. She kept asking, kept searching. Only a dryad, knowledgeable and wise and older than the forest itself, her skin tough and leathery like an oak tree’s bark, knew of an answer. She told her of a herb, one that grew on Olympus’ highest peak. It was the rarest plant there was, unmatched in its potency. It could mend the deepest wounds, cure the most severe of illnesses.

"The gods guard their home well," the dryad warned her, "and do not tolerate trespassers. No one dares enter the Olympians’ realm without their consent. Anyone who does, must pay the price.” T he nymph thanked the dryad for her help. There was nothing else for her to do other than to brave the long and arduous journey to Mount Olympus.

She was quick and silent as she travelled, yet her movements did not go unnoticed. Zeus' eyes were on her long before she'd reached the foot of the mountain. For an oread, a mountain nymph, to leave the safety of her forest and travel such great distances, to cross rivers and plains and deep ravines and pass so close by so many human settlements was unheard of. So he watched, curious, and waited.

When the nymph reached the middle of the mountain, he disguised himself as a centaur, and presented himself to her. When asked where she was going, the nymph told him the truth:

"I have come to gather a herb, to heal the one I love. It grows on Olympus' highest peak."

Zeus was angered by her boldness, but her earnestness intrigued him more. He warned her, not unkindly,“If you continue on your quest, you will make the gods angry. They do not take kindly to such insults.”

The nymph thanked him for the warning, and continued on her way.

Zeus kept following her, taking on many disguises: a deer, a hunter, a satyr. Each time, he told the nymph the same thing, and she responded in the same way: she thanked him warmly, and continued.

When she finally reached the peak, and her satchel was filled with the precious herb, Zeus presented himself to her. He thundered and shone, blindingly bright, in all his menacing godly glory. I nstead of cowering before him, the nymph stood tall.

“I am aware that this is your land,” she told him, “and this plant belongs to you. Whatever price you command for it, I will gladly pay it.”

Zeus thought long and hard. The nymph’s insolence was unparalleled, but he found her bravery refreshing. In the end, he decided to let her go, allowing her to take with her not only the rare plant she had gathered, but also enough provisions for her journey home to Taygetus’ misty peaks.

The nymph returned to the young man’s village as swiftly as she could. In a matter of days, he had regained his full strength; he was lively and healthy again, as bright and fair as he had been before he had left for the war. They were both so glad, that their love shone like a midsummer sun.

It was then that Zeus reached down and plucked the nymph from the earth and her lover’s embrace. He placed her among the stars and tasked her with guarding the very plant she had stolen, for all time. Before he left, he set one of his fearsome eagles upon her, to make sure she would never shirk her duty.

The price for saving her lover’s life had finally been paid.

The Guardian star shines in the midst of the constellation of Aquila, Zeus’ eagle. The star shines the brightest during the summer months, when the plant is in full bloom.

~

Achilles let out a sigh after I had finished. The sky had darkened while I recounted the story, and the stars were now twinkling above us. We were lying on our backs on the sand, still warm from the sun that had been beating upon it all day.

“Olympians,” he muttered darkly, “and their cruelty.”

Many times before had Achilles expressed his dislike of the Olympians. The nereids were Titan-born, and the Titans had not been on good terms with the powerful and arrogant sons and daughters of Cronus for millennia. By the way Achilles’ brow furrowed whenever I told him tales of their many transgressions or fierce punishments of those who displeased them, I could tell that this animosity between the old and newer gods was far from forgotten.

“Why did not Zeus simply let her take the plant?” he asked. “He didn’t need it. He wouldn’t miss it. What could one mortal’s life have meant to him, in the grand scheme of things?”

“In truth," I said, "I do not think it was about the plant at all."

“What was it about, then?”

“Perhaps it was because the nymph attempted to hold on to something she was never meant to have," I told him earnestly. "She wasn’t meant to have a long and happy life with that man; he was dying. Nothing could change that other than this plant, and it was forbidden. She wished to avoid the pain of losing him, therefore she was punished."

Achilles frowned. "Anyone would wish to avoid that. That doesn’t sound like that serious of a crime to me.”

I took a breath, letting my gaze drift over the dark sky above. Achilles’ scent of ocean currents, of salt and sand filled my lungs, warming me. His hand was so close to mine, I could feel the faint heat emanating from his skin, yet I did not dare close the distance between us. Something held me back. It always did.

"Pain is only a natural consequence of living,” I said, and the words sounded dry to my ears, harsh. “Death, separation; those are the rules. Life is the exception. This is how it’s always been, for humans. If the souls in Hades’ halls were released, they could fill the earth ten times over— there are so many more souls down there than up here, an infinite supply of them. The only certainty for any mortal is that, one day, they will die. For gods, it’s different. Life is guaranteed; death is but an improbable outcome. The nymph wished to defy this rule, to give her lover something that wasn't hers to give, or his to keep. In so doing, she would have challenged the order of the world itself. It could not happen. The gods could not allow it.”  

Achilles turned his head to look at me, his large, feline eyes piercing me to the core. The light brush of his breath against my shoulder sent a roll of warmth cascading through me.

“Do you think she shouldn’t have done it, then?”

I stayed silent for a moment, pondering his question. "That is not for me to say," I said after a short while. "I'm not sure it was a matter of choice for her. It is said that, when you love someone, you act to keep them with you for as long as you can." I shook my head lightly. "I have never loved someone like that before, the way the nymph loved this young man. But I think… I think I can imagine what it must have been like, for her.”

The truth was, I had never let anyone too close to me. I did not know what it was like, to care about someone deeply enough to risk everything to keep them by my side, the same way that no one had ever fought to keep me by theirs. My father had given me up when I was far too young to know the difference, and since then I'd had to largely rely on myself for my survival. I always tended to keep my distance from most people I met, and never lingered in any one place or ship for too long. Xanthos was my closest friend; we had known each other for years, but even he would go away for months at a time to return to his family, while I stayed at sea. I had always been alone, and I always told myself I preferred it that way.

I had thought my life peaceful, comfortable, even. A life of hard work and few luxuries, yet it was mine. I was a free man, depending on no one. I had thought myself content. It wasn’t until I had come close to losing my life in that storm, until I had found myself on this island, until I had met Achilles, that I realised how drab and colourless my life had truly been.

Achilles was looking up at the night sky now, his profile illuminated by starlight. The stars shone bright, like a multitude of silver pins on a dark blue canopy, keeping it in place. He lifted his arm, pointing at a cluster of stars right above us. "Is this the nymph's star?"

"No," I told him, "it's this one." I took his hand and moved it slightly to the left, until it was pointing right at the Guardian star, the smallest of the bunch.

He gazed at the star for a long moment. Then, he asked, "Whatever happened to the young man? The one she fell in love with?"

"I don't know," I replied. "That was where the story ended. I never learned the young man’s fate."

He sighed. “I would have liked to know what happened to him,” he said. “What his life was like, after the nymph was taken.”

“You would?”

"Yes." Achilles tilted his head to look at me. “It is the greater grief, after all, isn't it,” he said softly, “to be left behind when another is gone?"

The nightbirds cooed above us, and the chill breeze stirred the leaves of the cypress trees that lined the coast. The world was peaceful, and in the silence that lingered, I thought I could hear his heart beating, a quiet and steady thump between us. His skin reflected the pale moonlight, and in its feeble glow he looked very nearly transparent. When his eyes focused on me like this, soft and dreamy, almost wistful, I knew that I wanted nothing more than to be where they could see me.

I swallowed, willing myself to meet his gold-flecked gaze. Gods, I could drown in those eyes. I would gladly let their shifting currents swallow me whole.  

"It is," I whispered.  

Read the rest on Ao3!

[romance-addict]

As an avid Tomarrymort shipper, who loves both parties of the ship equally, Tom/Voldemort and Harry (not necessarily their canon depictions), I admit that I’m biased about them (as a couple as well as individually). 

While I do my best to avoid content that annoys/unsettles/depresses/angers me whenever these two are involved it is inevitable for me to accidentally stumble across things that manage to upset me. 

I’m aware that not everyone will see things my way about ships and fictional characters and I (grudgingly) respect that, but it would be unrealistic (and hypocritical) to say that I don’t feel like raging whenever I stumble upon undesirable content. 

Oh, my rage would never be overtly targeted at the person who wrote the upsetting things, I would never write anything hateful to the person or negatively interact with their content (after all it’s their content, their platform, and they can say what they please without feeling like they can’t say something for fear of getting hate), but I would rant on my own in my room, until the worst of my dissatisfaction was over and, if I felt brave enough (like now), voice my discontent in an abstract way on the internet on my own platform.

So, what’s all this about... well, I found a few tumblr posts discussing Tomarry and not being the biggest fans of the ship (if at all) and being in favour of one character more than the other from the ship. 

Again, the logical part of my brain is telling me that it’s normal for different people to like and dislike different things - just like the saying goes: a hundred people; a hundred tastes - and that I’m ridiculous for getting emotional over fictional characters, but the emotional part of my brain is telling me that what I’ve read in those posts is blasphemy and hypocrisy at its finest, or at the very least, the way certain things were presented rubbed me the wrong way. 

For example: 

Discussing Tom and Harry’s similarities (which are used as a basis for this pairing). 

Apparently, they don’t have many or, if they do, they’re more of a technical and superficial nature rather than of any real significance that could be used as a base to build a plausible romantic relationship. According to them, Tom and Harry’s childhood situations were nothing alike, because Harry hadn’t grown up in the middle of a war like Tom and had a Gringotts vault filled with money and was famous unlike Tom who was dirt poor and had been presumed a muggleborn nobody/penniless orphan. 

Oh, they acknowledge neither of them receiving any love from their respective guardians, but apparently Harry had it better than Tom. Forget that he didn’t have his own clothes until he started Hogwarts, suffered from neglect, malnutrition, emotional/verbal and mild physical abuse at the Dursleys, treated like a freak for being a wizard, being made to live in a cupboard for ten years. Nothing Harry went through can compare to surviving what Tom went through at the orphanage and during the war. 

Now, is spending your summers at the orphanage while world war II is raging around you horrible? Fuck yeah. It’s terrible and scary, since you never knew when something deadly could drop on you and kill you. But guess what, Tom technically spent the Blitz at Hogwarts, because if you look at the dates for “The Blitz” on Wikipedia (7 September 1940 - 11 May 1941), it basically covered Tom’s third year and since Tom only spent the summers at the orphanage well... according to the Wikipedia, there was no way for him to have personally experienced the worst of the bombing in Muggle London. I’m no expert on World War II and how many bombs the Germans dropped on British soil and at what exact intervals, but if you only look at those dates, you can clearly see that Tom was spared the worst of world war II.

Does that mean that his fear of dying during the summer after year 3 is invalid and improbable? Hell no. The chances, however small, of him dying could still have turned against him and he had every reason to fear death, as well as being recruited by the Home Guard, formed in 1940, which encouraged men as young as 17 to join as the last line of defence. Hell, he could have been recruited into Dad’s Army at 16 because with how much Mrs Cole disliked him, she could’ve easily signed him up for it, because on 27 September 1942, the minimum age for a boy soldier was lowered to 16 and Tom turned 16 that same year on New Year’s Eve.

However, to suggest that Tom’s circumstances and situation make Harry’s circumstances and situation pale in comparison is like saying that if you don’t suffer certain types of abuse that you aren’t really abused or can’t be traumatised in the same way. Like, why should we even compare this? Both Harry and Tom were abused, both of them suffered great emotional distress as children, they both didn’t have things of their own, they both suffered from malnutrition, they were both ostracized, they were both mistreated by peers and adults.

Just because Tom never reached the level of fame at Hogwarts upon entry as Harry, that doesn’t mean that Harry was treated well by students and teachers. Hell, people acted all creepy about Harry and his supposed heroism... like they didn’t even treat him like an actual person with thoughts and feelings. Just how some people still treat celebrities in real life. Fame and hero worship are, in a way, another form of ostracism. The moment he said something controversial that didn’t sit well with them, what did they do? Slander him, harass him, invent crazy shit about him. Hell, when he spoke Parseltongue, people looked at him like he was a serial killer ready to slaughter Muggleborns at Hogwarts.

I don’t doubt that the pureblood pricks in Slytherin gave Tom a hard time and called him mudblood and bullied him for his presumed blood status and his financial status, but Tom was vicious and didn’t hold back when it came to defending himself. If he kept children at the orphanage in check by killing Billy’s rabbit and messing with Amy and Denis’ heads, then he could have been vicious with his Slytherin peers. Maybe his methods wouldn’t have worked on older Slytherins but who knows. 

In any case, both Tom and Harry had fucked up childhoods and summer holidays, had people treat them like garbage and let us not forget that Voldemort himself had mentioned how similar they were in many ways. 

Tom and Harry’s equality

What does it mean to be equal to someone? Equality could come in a variety of ways: biological age, sex, gender, intelligence, personality, mind-set, beliefs, values, social status, blood status, life experiences. Apparently, if it weren’t for the prophecy and Harry being the Chosen One, Tom and Harry could never be equals. Not only is there a massive age gap between them, but because of that same age difference, their life experiences, knowledge and magical power would never be on an equal footing without involving time travel. Do you know who apparently is Voldemort’s equal (according to some)? An obscure Pureblood contemporary from Slytherin. Just because he might have known the circumstances behind Voldemort’s situation (the orphan status, the poverty, the blood status, etc) doesn’t mean he actually knew how being in Tom’s position actually felt. They might come from the same era and the same Hogwarts house, but they most certainly don’t have remotely similar/equal experiences to even suggest that some random rich Pureblood dude from Slytherin knows more or is more of Tom’s equal than Harry because of that. It’s like saying that because you’re someone’s classmate you are more deserving of being their partner than a potential several-years-younger partner the person might choose. Just because you go to the same school and are of the same age doesn’t make you an equal, just like how people of the same ages go through different shit in their lives. Some might have a job, some may be jobless, some may have spouses and kids, some may not have either, some may live on their own, some may still live with their parents, etc. You get the drift.

Sure, by the time Harry was born, Voldemort had already travelled the world, experimented with all kinds of magic and was on his way to winning a bloody war. What could he possibly have in common with Harry at that point? It isn’t until he decides to “prevent” the prophecy from happening (really, Tom, you should have read Oedipus Rex before you went and decided to go against the prophecy, you would’ve seen that nothing good happens when you try to go against prophecies, because then you make them come true), that he marks Harry as an equal and even then one is left wondering in what way. Harry is still 54 years younger than Voldemort and with far less experience in life and knowledge of magic. However, by going after Harry, Voldemort made Harry his equal. Maybe Harry could never have been Tom’s equal, but after Voldemort attacked him, he was... at least in Voldemort's eyes.

Harry may never experience the things that Voldemort experienced (orphanage, war), he may never be Voldemort’s peer, but damn it, he wouldn’t have come even close to it, if Voldemort hadn’t killed his parents. Granted, it was Dumbledore who condemned Harry to a miserable childhood by leaving him at the Dursleys, but Tom’s actions led to this so... 🤷‍♀️ 

Again, if Tom and Harry are equals, it’s because of Voldemort’s decision to go after Harry and he had to have had a reasoning (however superficial) to pick Harry and not Neville, so really, it’s not that the prophecy makes Harry special, it was Voldemort, who decided to make him special.

Tom and Harry’s compatibility 

In another post, Tom and Harry’s compatibility is brought into question. Apparently, Tom/Voldemort could never find anything remotely attractive about Harry to pursue a genuine romantic/sexual relationship, because they’re just too different - at least their morals - and Harry would hinder Voldemort with “killing is bad; don’t kill” spiel.

I may love Tom and sympathise with his horrible treatment at the hands of so many people, but if we’re going to call Merope, who also suffered terribly at the hands of her father and brother, out for drugging and raping Tom’s father, and Harry for almost killing Draco with an unknown lethal spell in a heat of a duel, using the Cruciatus on Bellatrix and one of the Carrows and the Imperius on a goblin, then yeah we can absolutely call Voldemort out on how he went about dealing with his anger as a kid, teen and an adult. 

I love Tom/Voldemort, but I also don’t pretend he’s a saint. The same goes for Harry. I love him, but he’s no saint. They can both be mean and cruel. They can both be hotheaded and impulsive. The difference is that Harry isn’t actively trying to kill anyone (he talked big in PoA about Sirius, but yeah... in the end he didn’t even let Pettigrew get killed so... there’s that) while Voldemort is actively killing and trying to kill people who oppose him (not just Harry). Harry could have killed Voldemort with the Killing curse or any other lethal curse, but instead he decided to do so indirectly through Expelliarmus and making the Killing curse rebound. 

Also... I find it hypocritical for people to want to see character development yet in the same breath yell OOC for characters who go through significant change in character, be it Harry or Voldemort, either because of the drastic change in their circumstances or because they become a couple. I can understand people getting upset over enormous changes in behaviour and personality traits when they happen in a very short amount of time (see: a week or so), but if it takes anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic and for personality to be susceptible to change several times over a single life span then I don’t get how people expect for Harry and Voldemort to remain unchanged (whether separately or as a couple) if the fic spans months, years, decades or even centuries. If anything, I would say them remaining static or going through little change is unrealistic as fuck. At this point it’s much more believable to write Voldemort who is a happy, peaceful and sympathetic person and a loving, devoted husband and father who practices Shintoism/Buddhism/yoga or whatnot than the same angry, hateful and murderous person as in canon.

I love Dark Harry and Too-Nice-to-be-realistic Harry. I love Violent/Murderous Tom/Voldemort and I love Redeemed/Not-Evil Tom/Voldemort. Whether the redemption comes from Harry’s influence and Tom’s love for him or simply having a better childhood than he had in canon and consciously making a better choice instead of choosing torture or murder whenever he encounters significant opposition, I don’t care. But to suggest that Harry, who isn’t okay with murder as a coping mechanism, should inherently and automatically be fine with accepting Voldemort’s murdering tendencies for the ship to work or for Voldemort to find Harry attractive or consider him as a worthwhile partner is very shallow thinking.

Harry can disagree with Voldemort on how he goes about things and still love and support his husband. Voldemort can disagree with Harry’s view on things and still find him attractive and a worthy partner to spend his life with. Just because their views don’t align in every aspect, doesn’t make them any less compatible as a couple, because even in real life you don’t always agree with your partner and that doesn’t make you any less worthy of their love or them less worthy of yours. So, for some to say that Bellatrix or any other Death Eater character has automatically a better compatibility because they’re equally dark and murder-happy as Voldemort or that don’t judge, condemn or challenge him or his actions and that’s what Voldemort wants because he’s who he is is like saying that if someone you know and care about has an eating disorder (anorexia or bulimia) that you’re there encouraging them to keep having that disorder instead of seeking medical help. It’s like saying: yeah, you want to vomit after every meal, sure, go ahead, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. Oh you want to starve yourself? Yeah, go ahead, who need calories anyway, am I right? Or if someone suffered from self-hatred, did self-harm and had suicidal thoughts? Oh, you want to kill yourself, that’s so amazing. Please do that. I support you 100%. You want to harm yourself, here, have this knife, I just sharpened it. Please, let me look, while you make yourself bleed (please, note the sarcasm and the absurdity of previous statements).

The same should apply here. Why would you want Voldemort to stay the same murder and torture happy person, when it should be in his best interest to want to change how he goes about things? I’m not saying he should suddenly become a human right’s activist or a humanitarian or a politician and go about things the “right” or “legal” way, I’m just saying that if he’s already going to kill, let it have meaning, let it have purpose, and while Harry may not like it, he could eventually come to understand and accept that sometimes violence and assassinations are the only answer to achieve something, but still feel uncomfortable about it. It’s not as if Harry will stay an emotional teenager with black-and-white morality forever.

Adults change. Sometimes there’s an external incentive for that change and sometimes it’s a conscious decision because it benefits the person or it’s simply the right thing to do. And sometimes people change because of time. It’s ridiculous to expect Voldemort and Harry to always be the same, think the same, act the same whether as individuals or as a couple. So yeah, just because Harry and Voldemort are a hero/villain ship with a large age gap doesn’t mean that they aren’t compatible or don’t have things in common. 

Loving one character more than the other (in this case loving Tom more than Harry)

Like I said. I like both equally, I want both of them to be happy (on their own and together), I write fics from both their perspectives, sometimes one character’s perspective is more prevalent than the other, usually it’s a narrative choice, and one character’s perspective will suit the story better than the other’s etc. I also understand liking and disliking characters from a ship (as individual characters or as a couple), but to be like: Tom is my baby, he’s the best, I know he’s done some horrible shit, but he’s been through so much and Harry is a terrible friend, has anger issues, is the Chosen One and rich because of who his father was and that’s awful, I hate him... that’s where you fucking lose me. 

During the entire series Harry is a fucking teen, just because he fights in a war and becomes a legal adult according to the wizarding law at 17, doesn’t mean he’s not a fucking teen that’s still developing and maturing biologically, emotionally and mentally. It’s said that the human brain is maturing until we reach 25. So yeah, he’s going to fuck shit up, intentionally or unintentionally. He’s going to make some terrible and questionable decisions and learn consequences to his actions the hard way. Voldemort on the other hand is 70 by the end of the series, his brain has reached its peak. He’s had decades to improve and change himself to be the best version of himself, to learn the basic principle that for every action there’s an equal reaction, and did he do that? No. Does that make me love him less as a character? Hell no, but again for someone to be all heart eyes for Tom and him alone and whatever minor, obscure secondary character from the same series or a character from some other series you ship him with is ridiculous to me.

Then again just like how I ship Tomarrymort and don’t really understand or like other ships involving either Harry or Tom, no matter their arguments, I suppose people no matter the arguments I present will still firmly like and defend their own ships... and that’s fine. I don’t want to fight with other people, I’ve had to listen to too many discussions of the same kind over and over in real life to see that nothing good can come out of it when both sides firmly believe their arguments and don’t even consider the other side, so yeah. Ship what you want, I still am not going to like your ships if it features Tom and Harry with other people, but other than have rants in the privacy of my room and this little corner of the internet, I don’t wish to start any fights.

(Damn, that was long, but I got to let off some steam and now I’m good again.😇)

[mst3kproject]

Planet of Dinosaurs

This movie is blessed with some pretty cool stop-motion dinosaurs and absolutely nothing else, and it’s got a Rifftrack.  That’s… that’s it, really.  Press play.

The spaceship Odyssey suffers a reactor meltdown and blows up with only just enough warning for the crew to launch a single lifeboat shuttle.  Luckily, there’s a life-bearing planet nearby where the spandex-suited survivors can land, but unluckily, it turns out to be inhabited by giant reptiles, not unlike the prehistoric fauna of Earth!  There’s also a spider the size of a Yorkshire terrier, for no particular reason.

There’s not really any plot from there, it’s just bad actors shooting toy laser guns at plastic dinosaurs, interspersed with Rock Climbing. At last the characters manage to kill the inevitable T-rex that’s been threatening them, whereupon they declare themselves to have conquered this planet.

There are a few attempts at human conflict but they’re pretty watery.  The first possible b-plot has to do with the vice president of the space-shipping company, Mr. Baylor, who was along on this trip for some reason and is among the survivors. So they’re not just stranded on Dinosaur Planet, they’re stranded on Dinosaur Planet with their boss.  He’s a jackass and his secretary quickly gets fed up with him and quits, which doesn’t do her a whole lot of good since they are, as I mentioned, stranded on Dinosaur Planet.  The writers run out of things to do with Baylor about halfway through the movie and kill him off, to everybody’s relief.

The second involves the bearded guy, Jim, who’s starting to take issue with Captain Lee’s command style.  Lee is trying to keep them all alive and uninjured until help can arrive.  Jim doesn’t think help is coming and wants to go full caveman and start slaughtering things. It starts to look like he’s gonna foment a mutiny, but eventually he and Lee overcome their differences and come up with a plan to kill the T-rex.

Finally, of course, the survivors inevitably pair off in heterosexual couples.  Sure is lucky there weren’t more men than women or vice-versa.  Very fortunate nobody’s left with no-one to bone but someone they’ve never gotten along with.  Quite improbable that nobody on the entire command crew was gay.  When one member of one of these couples becomes a dinosaur victim, the other thoughtfully dies a few scenes later, not because he commits suicide out of guilt or something, but just by coincidence.

One thing the movie actually does pretty well is day-for-night.  It’s not great, in that you can still tell it was shot in the daytime through a filter, but they chose the right filter to cool down the warm tones of the sunlight, and had the sense to keep the sky out of shot.  It never looks like somebody just turned the brightness on your screen way down and called it ‘night’, and I’ve seen so much worse that I want to at least acknowledge their competence.

The other thing Planet of Dinosaurs does well is the actual dinosaurs, which are a lot of fun. They’re lumpy and out of date, but some real care seems to have gone into building the detailed puppets and their movements are fluid and sometimes very lifelike.  There’s a nice variety of them, too.  As well as the T-rex there’s a smaller therapod that might be intended to be an Allosaurus, a couple of little Ornithomimus­-like animals, a Brontosaurus complete with the wrong head, a Stegosaurus, a Centrosaurus, and some kind of ankylosaur.  In real life these are a jumble of Hell Creek and Morrison dinosaurs who never met each other, but eh, it’s supposed to be another planet, it’s cool.

Unfortunately, there are several points where the effects people try to show us something they probably should have implied instead.  I commend their ambition, but knowing your limits is a big part of making special effects work.  In the first episode of Walking with Dinosaurs, the Postosuchus attacks a Placerias… but we don’t see as much of this as we think we do because our view is blocked by the body of the prey animal.  They knew their CGI wasn’t up to making the attack look good, so they tricked us into thinking we saw more than we did.  In Planet of Dinosaurs, a character stabs an injured Ornithomimus with a spear, and it’s painfully obvious that the stop-motion creature was just superimposed on top.  They could easily have set up the shot so we didn’t have to actually see it go in, but they didn’t.

The dinosaurs are clearly what they spent their budget on, which was wise – as I said in my review of Twelve to the Moon, if you can only afford to show us one cool thing, best make it the one in the title. Sadly, when I say spent the budget I mean the entire budget.  The rest of Planet of Dinosaurs looks like it was made in somebody’s backyard using stuff from the garden shed.  The spaceship that briefly appears in the opening had a previous career as a vacuum cleaner.  When it ‘explodes’ it just flickers red and vanishes with no further attempt at an effect.

The costumes look kind of like if they made the original Star Trek series ten years later but on the same budget, with producers who didn’t think they wanted this to be a porno but preferred to keep the option open.  The designated Himbo, Chuck, doffs his shirt within the first few minutes of the film and never gets it back.  The blonde who goes for a swim and is eaten by some water monster was wearing a bikini under her uniform for some reason.  By the end, they’re all dressed in cartoon caveman garb and Chuck is still shirtless.

Besides the dinosaurs, the main effect we see is the laser guns, which are among the most ineffective sci-fi weapons ever committed to screen.  They fire a beam of very slow red light which does absolutely nothing to any of the dinosaurs, even when the characters observe that one has been injured.  I think this is supposed to show us that the animals are tougher than the technology, but for that to work we would have needed to see a laser used effectively, perhaps to destroy something blocking the path. Without that, we have no basis for comparison.

If this were all Planet of Dinosaurs did wrong, it would be a bad movie classic.  Even the abysmally bad acting has its funny moments. What ruins the enjoyment is the movie’s lack of a proper story.

Planet of Dinosaurs is supposed to be a Cast Away or Robinson Crusoe sort of a film, about unprepared people thrust into the wilderness and forced to survive as best they can.  Such a narrative doesn’t need an overarching conflict per se.  It can be a series of smaller survival stories strung together, but Planet of Dinosaurs doesn’t manage to do that.  The ‘plot’ with Baylor depends on him being a petulant fool, and the characters are not sufficiently well-developed for us to have any interest in the ‘love stories’ that don’t affect the overall course of events.

The rivalry between Captain Lee and Bearded Guy Jim turns on how to keep the rest of the survivors safe from the large predators in the area, particularly the T-rex.  Lee wants everybody to hole up on a rocky plateau behind a ridiculously flimsy stockade to keep the animals out, while Jim wants to hunt down and kill the dinosaurs, to teach them to fear humans as wolves do on Earth.  The main problem with this is that we just don’t see enough of the predatory dinosaurs to justify this treatment of them.

We see the T-rex fairly early in the film, and it fuels the humans’ decision to see high ground where they hope such a large animal will not go. The much smaller Allosaurus shows up at one point to make a woman scream, is ‘injured’ with a laser, and the T-rex then eats it.  And just before the climax, the T-rex breaks through the stockade to chow down on Baylor’s secretary.  In between these incidents, we do not see and rarely even hear about these animals.  If we’re supposed to imagine them constantly lurking around outside, the movie makes no effort to reinforce that impression.  The T-rex is treated as the Final Boss, but the movie just hasn’t earned that.

At the end we see the survivors a few years later.  They’re building a farm, making their own clothes, living off the land, and raising their children.  One of the women asks the other if she thinks they’re ever going to be rescued, and the other replies that she doesn’t think it matters anymore. The implication is that they’re now happy here.  This is really not a bad little denouement, and ends the movie on a warm, optimistic note.

If you want to see some ridiculous 70s mustaches and ugly 70s dinosaurs, you’ll probably have fun with Planet of Dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, the movie was a little too ambitious in some places and not ambitious enough in others.  If I’d seen it at the age of six I probably would have become immediately obsessed with it for the dinosaurs alone, but as an adult I’m afraid my standards are just a little too high.  Unable to afford to be good, and unable to commit to being bad, it’s just another meh.

[ohwaitimthewriter]

Ner naak (My peace)

Pairing : Din Djarin x earthling!reader

Warning : Is baby Yoda a warning? 

Summarize : Din Djarin meets you, an earthling, with no idea of the existence of an outer space

Words : 1285.

A/n : I really feel this story is going to be long! Sorry for any English mistakes and enjoy your reading!

Masterlist. // Ner naak Masterlist. 

The sun was beginning to ride down into the sky. Twilight was not far away but you were still perched on the wing of the ship, as your mind was focused on the engine's fuse panel. Your leg was swaying gently in the void as you were absorbed by the ship's advanced technology. 

You had spent the rest of the day studying the structure of this fascinating tin can and came to the following conclusion: this scrap metal pile was not much different from an airplane. 

It was reassuring for you, because even if you had never put your hands in an airplane, you had already studied the plans of a certain number and you could already recognize similarities in the layout of the electrical circuits. 

You've seen enough for one day. You had a good idea of the problem and were already thinking about which store or workshop could provide you with some of the parts you needed to repair the aircraft. 

You closed the small hatch that housed the main circuit board, and then a child's laughter caught your attention. You looked down and saw your dog walking around with the child on his back. He proudly trotted under the wing of the ship as the child tried as best he could not to fall. You laughed slightly in front of this improbable scene and stood up, walking on the roof of the ship to join the trapdoor that would bring you back to shore. 

Your hands were covered with soot and grease and you hardly dared to touch the rungs of the ladder. Your dog was waiting for you at the foot of it and as soon as your foot touched the ground, he brushed his body against you, happy to be reunited with his favorite human. 

The little one hadn't left your dog's back, his tiny fingers were wrapped in the long fur and he grabbed onto it hard so he wouldn't fall. 

"A real little cowboy" You joked and the child started laughing. 

You crouch down next to your dog, observing the child. 

"I'd rather not even imagine what they'd do to you if they ever found you..." You thought aloud.  

You were really worried about that little guy. He looked at you with his big eyes, tilting his head to the side as if he was trying to understand you better. He seemed to be looking for something in your eyes and then, as if he had just found it, he reached out his small arm to you with a big smile. 

You could have melted in front of such tenderness and although you suspected that he wanted your arms, you gently waved your filthy fingers in front of his eyes. 

"I can't, my hands are all dirty, look at this! If you ask me, this ship may be super cool, but it deserves a good spring cleaning! » 

The child babbled with amusement and his hand perched again in your dog's fur. This child was precious and when you thought of the human horror that the people of this planet could bring, a wave of determination fell upon you. 

"I'll do my best to get this piece of junk off the ground, but you, sweetheart, I want you to stay with Banjo. "You took a look at your dog who seemed to quickly understand the message. "He will protect you." 

The child listened carefully to you before yawning. Fatigue weighed on his eyes and he snuggled into Banjo's fur, your dog, to fall asleep. 

It didn't take you long to find the man in armor. His head was plunged into the mechanical arm of the ship that served as a landing foot. He heard you coming and looked at you. Before you even said anything to him, he handed you a cloth so you could wipe your hands. 

"Oh, thank you. "You said. 

He didn't answer anything and just watched you clean your hands. 

"I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of work to be done.”

"Is it manageable? "He asked you.

"Yes. Mostly it' s about finding the parts that will be complicated but hey, you just made Star Trek real so from then on, there's nothing impossible in there! "You said. 

Once again, he remained silent. You just saw him tilting his head towards your dog and the sleeping child on his back. You saw a tension settling on the man's shoulders. He was obviously holding back from picking up the child and it was probably the intense look your dog gave to the man that prevented him from making a movement. You were wondering why he was so suspicious of your dog, but you decided it was time to stop torturing him like that. You leaned over to gently hold the child in your arms, doing everything possible not to wake him up before putting the child back in his father's arms. The man relaxed almost instantly and it clicked in your head.

"Tell me, have you ever met a dog before?" 

"I've met stranger things. "

"Well, you should know that dogs are humans' best friends here. They are the only ones who will never fail you." 

"He didn't stop you from following me, though. "He said. 

"That's exactly why I followed you."

You smile at him gently, scratching the head of your dog who had sat next to you. 

The night had completely fallen. The only lights were coming from the ship and you felt the air cooling down. A shiver crept under your jacket and it was no longer warm enough to protect you from the cold of autumn nights. So it was about time you came back home. 

"I'll see you tomorrow."

He nodded and as you began to turn back, you suddenly wondered if you were doing the right thing by leaving them alone in the middle of the forest, at the mercy of curious looks. You looked back, the man was coming back into his ship and it was bothering you. You didn't know why, but your instinct told you that leaving without them was not the way to go.

You looked down at your dog who stared at you with curious eyes and you could not bring yourself to do so. 

"Excuse me! "You called him out. 

The man turned to you, waiting for you to talk. 

"You have nowhere to go, have you? "You asked him, walking back. 

"The ship. "He said. 

"You should come to my house. » 

Din was caught off guard. If you could have seen his face, you would have seen him widening his eyes in astonishment. To him, there was no reason to find a dwelling place on this planet. He had checked, he knew there was nothing dangerous, he knew he could stay in his ship without fear of being found by mercenaries or other bounty hunters. He already thought it was honourable enough of you to help him and he found it even more incredible that an Earthwoman would trust him. Because that wasn't what he read about the people of Earth. 

"That's not necessary."

"I won't let a poor Daft Punk imitation refuse my offer. "You argued.

"... Who the hell are Daft Punk?" 

" That is one more reason! "You stated.

And indeed, you left him no choice. You crossed your arms on your chest, staring at him while waiting for him to decide. That, on the other hand, he had read about it, earthling stubbornness. 

He gave in faster than he would have liked. He sighed deeply, going down the ramp to join you. 

"Thank you. "He said. 

Actually, he had hoped you'd ask him to sleep in a real bed. 

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[rhaenyratargeryn]

EXIT WOUNDS (CYBERPUNK 2077) Ch. 2

Pairing: Takemura Goro x (female) V Rating: Mature Summary: When his plans for revenge fail, V and Takemura are left right where they once started. A dying thief and a disgraced soldier, with as much in common as they lack and an improbable bond that holds them to one another. Notes: Post-Canon, Nomad ending. Spoilers for post-game! Read on AO3 Read Ch. 1

The first awareness was that of light. Warm and bright behind his lids. The second awareness was ache. Persistent, painful and sharpened to a razor’s edge at every small movement.

Takemura begrudgingly accepted consciousness, finding the will somewhere inside him to open his eyes and look towards where the offending ray of sunshine was being allowed in.

The tent flap was being held open, just a sliver, and a pair of soft brown eyes, large and doe like in the middle of a tan-skinned face stared at him with interest. She had full round cheeks, youthfulness in every aspect of her cherub like features. The child froze as their eyes met, but slowly she smiled, a dimple in each corner of her mouth.

It was the height of spring, when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom and their petals scattered over the still pond in the gardens of the estate. Small pink ships, sailing endlessly on the vast sea.

Takemura was twenty-nine, three years dedicated already as an elite Arasaka soldier and known for his discipline, his dutifulness and his loyalty. When he did not pace the nearby halls, or stand at attention near Saburo-sama’s side, he was allowed to sit kneeled on a small mat on the wooden floor. His hand would remain on one hip, poised over his katana and another over his gun, his eyes sharp and his cyberware readings keenly attuned to every person who may move within the family halls.

It should have been a point of great shame for him then, that the tiny stumble of socked feet did not catch his attention until he found before him a small girl, her cherub cheeks puffed with a smile. She held up a drawing, or rather, scribbles upon paper in varying shades of black and red and tanned peach, all forming together to make a familiar silhouette.

“Taka-san, I drew you!”

In his duty, Takemeru was not to engage with others. He was meant to be as the room, as furniture or a tool left out. A knife on a table. What he was not meant to do, was speak to Saburo-sama’s three year old daughter. She was Saburo-sama’s joy, his greatest treasure, a child he doted on and who went everywhere at her father’s side.

Takemura looked to him now, for guidance, he told himself, but the look he gave Saburo-sama was more aligned with pleading.

“My daughter has presented you with a gift, Takameru. Be polite.” his master said without another glance, turning his attention back to his tablet.

Hanako waited patiently, expectantly. Takemeru found it difficult to even bring the words forth, his tongue sluggish and thick from so long hardly speaking much at all.

“Thank you, Hanako-sama. It is… lovely.”

She beamed, her smile drawing wider until a tiny dimple dotted high on her cheek. With insistence, she held it out for him and with equal amounts of hesitation, Takemeru took his hand from his blade and slipped the paper from her hands.

A voice called out a name, the sound hazy and muted on Takemeru’s ears. The girl turned, answering the call without looking back, leaving only the sway of dropped tent flap to ever prove she was there at all.

Takemeru let his eyes drift back closed, trying to recall the lines, the colors of the drawing. He had kept it, folded and safe beneath his armored vest for several days… but where did it go? What had he done with it after? It had been eighteen years since the blossoms and yet the few months he had spent alone, masterless and exiled, felt so much longer.

The tent opened again and Takemura groaned when the light flashed into his pupils.

“Morning.” a voice spoke, the man who had sewn up his shoulder and his side coming to sit near the cot Takemura was still shackled too. The man, too his wisdom, kept a good distance between them still.

“Is the pain bad? We scrounged up some MaxDoc to help take the edge off if you’re needin’ some.”

Takemura did not reply.

“Also need to change your IV. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways when it comes to saline and good ole H2O…. unless you’re feeling up to drinking some water?”

Water. The very word drew Takemura’s attention to how dry his throat was, how paperlike his tongue felt against the roof of his mouth. Water. His body pleaded to his mind. Water.

Takemura nodded, short and curt.

“Great. Hold on— “

Takemura watched the man as he moved around the tent, doing a good job still of keeping out of arm's reach. As his eyes traced his movements, he noted a change to the room.

There was a second cot set up at his other side.

In the second cot, was V.

Takemura felt a snarl build up near his teeth, a look of disgust and outrage ready to mar his features… until his eyes caught up with his emotions.

V looked terrible. Worse than terrible. Her skin had an unhealthy pallor to it, greyish and clammy. Her breaths were short and slow, as if her own lungs were too tired to make more of an effort. Some strange band was attached around her head, monitors fixed to her temples as a nearby computer beeped and monitored large spikes and numbers that made no sense to Takemura.

The doctor caught him staring as he returned with a cup of water. Takemura sat up as best he could manage, unsurprised when the doctor called in another to stand guard with a gun in their hand while he held the cup for Takemura to drink from. He was not to be unrestrained it would seem, though his prey lay but a scant few feet away.

“Another seizure. Hit her hard. Been out as long as you now, but… well. We’ll see what happens.”

Takemura frowned, “‘What happens’?”

He cursed himself for speaking, but the words were out before he could catch himself.

“If she wakes up. Every time it seems she has one it takes longer and longer… one day I figure she just won’t.”

V had succeeded in removing the relic, had rid herself of her demon and in doing so had thought to free herself from impending doom… and it had all been for nothing. Saburo was dead. Hanako was dead… and V was still going to die.

Takemura refused food when offered and drank only a little, the pain of his wounds a welcome distraction for the turmoil in his chest.

He never would have thought nomads would have such tech available to them, but in the large tent there was enough equipment and cases to fill a small clinic. This man is what Takemura could only imagine was their version of a ripperdoc, but he didn’t have to worry about the man trying to invoke his sympathies towards V for long. A young woman entered the tent and the ripperdoc gave her a respectful nod.

“She good, Tom?” the woman asked and Tom nodded, “Okay. Take a breather.”

She shrugged toward the tent entrance. Tom frowned, but he didn’t argue, getting up and exiting the tent and offering Takemura a quick view of the guards outside. They were still present. Not a good tactical advantage.

The woman set her fists on her hips, eyes narrowed as she scrutinized him with dark brown eyes. She has no visible cyberware to speak of, but it was common for Nomads to reject enhancement, at least in his limited experience.

Takemura, despite his feelings, spoke politely enough.

“I am Takemura Goro. If V has not already informed you.”

The woman looked a bit taken back by his easy words, but after a moment that surprise resumed an expression of suspicion.

“She did. Now you wanna tell me how you found us? And who else knows where we are?”

Takemura frowned, “It is considered extremely rude not to introduce oneself. Even to enemies.”

The woman’s face flushed red down to her neck and her teeth set against the inside of her cheek. She had a short-temper, but also a position of authority and respect given how the ripperdoc had so easily relented to her requests. She was a leader, but a potentially weak one, Takemura set that information aside for later.

“You attack my people and you wanna school me on manners, Corpo?”

“...You have someone I want.” Takemura stated, a simple reasoning for why the young Nomads he encountered were threatened.

“Too god damn bad. Now who else knows where we are?”

Takemura fell silent again, a sigh held back in his throat. V stirred slightly on the cot nearby, drawing both of their attention to the other woman as she flinched and jerked slightly in sleep. The monitors sped for only a moment and then slowed again, whatever neurological event passing quickly.

The Nomad woman’s expression had broken apart quickly from one of stubbornness and annoyance to worry… colored with affection and familial concern. She cared for V. She cared for V very strongly. That would complicate any attempts of persuasion or negotiation, but then again, Takemura had not considered those to be strong tactics to begin with.

The woman looked down at her boots and then, curtly spoke, “I’m Panam Palmer.”

“It is good to meet you, Palmer-san.” Takemeru said, but his words were filled with polite detachment that would make it quite evident even to Panam that they were simply a platitude.

“How did you find us?”

“Simple reconnaissance. I visited towns. Spoke to people. It was difficult for several weeks, but then…” Takemura paused.

“Then?”

“You and your people became lazy.”

Panam sucked in her cheek again, but controlled her emotions.

“Are there others coming?”

“No.”

“Wow… I mean, wow. Didn’t expect you to just offer that one up.”

“I have no reason to lie. My purpose is simple. You and your people are responsible for the death of one I held in utmost regard and respect. I am duty bound to end the life of the one who commanded it.”

Silence followed the end of his words, the steady beeping of the monitor filling the room. Suddenly then, Panam scoffed out a laugh and Takemura jerked his head up to glare at the young woman, forgetting himself.

“Jesus christ… you Corpo’s are really crazy, you know that? You’re ‘duty bound’? By who? You aren’t Arasaka. You aren’t anything. You come here and try to kill my sister because of some deluded belief you owe a buncha criminals and psychopaths? Who don’t want you?”

With each word her volume increased, the look of revulsion so prominent on her features that even if she had chosen not to mince her words, her distaste would have been clear. Negotiation it would seem, was not a viable option.

Takemura felt her words, but only in that they stoked a growing tension edging through his limbs and fueled a gnawing want to snap this crude woman’s neck. He let his anger stream out from his chest and into his hands, clenching them a bit tighter to try and relieve some of the pressure his growing anger exuded.

“This is what is gonna happen,” Panam began, her voice having grown colder, “We’re gonna dump you out on the sand with a quart of motor oil and a pistol and take bets on whether you shoot yourself before or after the thirst makes you crazy enough to drink it.”

The image was certainly— vivid. The sadism of such a statement catching Takemura slightly off guard.

“Wow. ” said a voice instantly recognized by both of them as V’s , “I mean, that is one stone cold line. I think I’ll steal that.”

---

“Shit, V— you need me to get Tom?” Panam had all but forgotten about Takemura, moving around to V’s cot to try and prevent the other woman from getting up.

“No.”

Yes. An indignant Johnny-Silverhand-induced auditory hallucination said quietly in the back of her mind. Maybe one day she’d get lucky and forget what the guy sounded like, then her head-voice would go back to just being her voice.

More importantly, she was nauseated as all fucking get out and Panam’s hand on her arm was doing a great job of making V feel a bit more grounded. She heard a faint click, the sound of someone chidingly clicking their tongue against their teeth and looked up to see Takemura had turned from them both, staring pointedly at nothing. But it was nothing away from V.

“No execution by desert, aight?” V said, lulling her head back towards Panam.

“Sure. Fine. Execution by bullet works just as well.” Panam said, shooting Takemura a dirty look that went unnoticed.

“Talkabout it later.” V said, only slightly slurring her words as she pulled the band off her head and peeled the monitors off a moment later. The computer made an alarming noise and V had a funny feeling it was becoming quickly overcrowded and overly loud for the former Arasaka bodyguard.

“Got an idea to make everyone happy.”

Takemura’s interest had been piqued. V caught him casting a look out of the corner of his eye at her.

---

What the fuck, V. Panam's voice still rang in her head, rolling around in her ears and in her skull and fueling an oncoming headache. For once, the voice didn't sound like Johnny though and maybe that was a good sign.

Of course Panam would hate the plan. But in the end, it wasn’t her choice. It wasn’t her life and although it had gone over about as well as V expected, for now, things were set. When she came back inside the tent, Tom had provided Takemura with an old t-shirt, the design on the front so faded it was barely more than a static of print.

His hair was down, which shrouded the grey near his temples and made him look somehow… younger. Less stiff. The look in his eyes though had not changed. Steel resolve and hardened granite. He had built a wall between them and V could hardly blame him for it… in the end, she hadn’t kept her end of the deal. But then again, she was still right where she was at the start. Sick, dying and Arasaka’s most wanted. So he could hardly say he kept up his either.

“Option one,” she began, “I’m dying. So honestly, killin’ me at this juncture would be a relief from what I got coming for me. It’s gonna be slow. It’s gonna be awful. I’m offering you front row seats to watchin’ my body slowly eat itself alive.”

Takemura’s eyes narrowed.

“I know what you’re thinkin’. ‘But you’re lookin’ for a cure’. We are. Which brings me to option two. We let you stick around while we look. If we find one and I get fixed up? You get your pistols at dawn or whatever. Get the satisfaction of knowing you got to kill me when I’m not already dead. Hell, not gonna lie. You killin' me after all this bullshit and then after I save my life too? That would be... well, I’ll give you a genuine fight for my life. If that’s what you want.”

V shrugged, “And you’ve already heard option three.”

“These options require me staying with this caravan for an unknown amount of time.”

“Six months, actually. Or five rather. So yeah. Five month wait..”

“How do I know they will not kill me before either of these things happen?”

V grinned.

“I asked them nicely.”

“Why?”

Her smile faltered.

“Why not pick option three for yourself?” Takemura said, offering the most practical and simple solution. The one she was sure right now, if they were in reverse situations, he would take.

It was a good damn question too. And V was certain she had a good damn answer half a second ago, but now with Takemura staring at her, grey eyes shrewd and with just a flicker of uncertainty… shit, seeing him at all… it made the words sound so ridiculous.

“I told you I didn’t mean for what happened to happen. I owe you, for a lot and this is the only way it’ll… sit right. For us both, I think. You don’t seem the type that would get much satisfaction outta killing me how I am now.”

V laughed, a nervous bubble of sound as she turned her eyes away and picked at a frayed thread on the knee of her pants.

“Also...guess cause we were friends once I feel like I should give you some closure. Not somethin’ I’ve gotten much in life, but welp. Here is my chance to give some.”

“...You wish to die with some honor restored.” Takemura’s voice for once held no trace of disgust, no edge of hatred. His voice was quiet, resigned. Understanding. It was not a tone V had ever thought to hear again from the man.

“Yeah, sure... if you’ll let me.”

Neither of them met each other's eyes. Two people, staring holes into opposite sides of a tent, as if refusing to acknowledge one another would somehow make them feel less.

“It is two options, not three.”

V looked up at the remark.

“Option one is, remain to witness your death or be the cause of it should you recover. Option two is motor oil and pistol.”

V held back a smile just barely. How could someone remain this pedantic even when discussing such a morbid topic?

“I accept option one.” Takemura met her eyes, only briefly, “I am patient man. I can wait.”

“Plus it gives you time to actually heal and then say fuck it and off me in my sleep or something.”

Takemura wrinkled his nose, “I could ‘off’ you now if you’d like.”

He pulled up his arm, revealing that at some time during all this chatting and debating he had gotten out of one of the cuffs.

Takemura casually used his other hand to put his thumb back in its socket, finding it impossible to miss how V did a full body shudder at the sound.

“Hard pass.” she said, still cringing.

“I will honor my word,” Takemura said, easily making work of the other handcuff and tossing it aside. He flexed his fingers, bringing them up to begin pulling his hair out of his face. V, for some reason, felt compelled to avert her gaze. It felt weirdly intimate, like she was watching him undress. Takemura brushed his fingertips over his wrist, frowning to himself before letting his hair go, falling back around his shoulders.

“You need a scrunchie?” V asked, unable to stop the small smile from forming at the corner of her mouth. What could she say? Johnny had tried to kill her once and she forgave him. Her standards were never exactly high. And a part of her, a small hopeful part of her thought maybe there was still time to make something right before she died.

Wrong city for happy endings. Her inner voice chided in Johnny's flat tone. But they weren't in Night City anymore.

[sinfulwonders]

bandaid for the quarantine asks?

Sorry this took so long. Also requests for this ship meme are closed as I try to catch up on my inbox. Thanks!

Bandaid (Ibuki x Mikan)

Who adapts easily to working from home, and who's climbing the walls?

Mikan adapts easily to working from home (although realistically she’d probably be on the front lines as a nurse) whereas Ibuki is absolutely bouncing off the walls. Ibuki is usually go go go, so staying put is really strange at first. But don’t worry, Ibuki can always find something to keep herself entertained!

Who wants to take advantage of not having to stand apart when they go outside on a walk because they've been quarantined together anyway, and who's so paranoid of getting yelled at by strangers (whether that scares or just irritates them) that they insist the pair of them still walk six feet apart?

Oh Mikan is super paranoid because she hates being yelled at, so she’s really nervous about it the first time. Ibuki on the other hand has absolutely no qualms with hanging all over Mikan during their walks! :P

Who gets really into cooking?

Ibuki actually! Out of a mix of boredom and love for Mikan, she takes up cooking so that Mikan can have some home cooked meals after she gets done being exhausted from work. (Ibuki suddenly has a lot of time on her hands, since her band’s tour has been postponed.)

Who gets really into a TV show they'd never thought to watch before?

Neither actually watched that much TV because of their extremely busy schedules, so they’re both surprised when they start bingeing shows together!

Who starts doing improbable musical performances on the balcony/fire escape/by the front window/in the backyard?

Oh for sure Ibuki. She’d do this without a pandemic, so the neighbors aren’t too surprised. it definitely goes more appreciated now during these times! Also Mikan sometimes even gets in on the performance, playing the triangle or tambourine or something like that!

Who gets the idea that now's a great or at least practical time to get a buzzcut, and does the other try to talk them out of it, sigh "it's your hair" and relinquish all responsibility, or offer to help so it's even?

Oh man, Ibuki seems the most likely candidate to get bored and either dye her hair or just cut it all off. Mikan doesn’t mind at all, since Ibuki switches up her look so frequently and when it comes down to it Mikan is in love with Ibuki’s personality, not her looks.

Who starts keeping a journal and calling it their apocalypse log?

Ibuki 100% lol

Who makes sure they can video chat with everyone else in their lives and who is baffled by technology?

I feel like they are both technologically inept, so they both struggle hardcore with setting up video chats. Mikan is probably a little better at setting it up, mostly because she has the patience to do so, while Ibuki has a tendency to get distracted.:P But they both video chat a lot, both together and separately!

Who gets into social media arguments reminding strangers to self-isolate?

Maybe Mikan, just because she gets passionate on health related issues! But she doesn’t really mean to start the argument. She really has the best intentions in mind.

Who starts making weird videos two days in?

Ibuki! She’s constantly making videos and streaming (once she figures out how to set it up) for her fans! She also has Mikan record her performing at home covers of different artists to tide her fans over until her tour is back on!

Whose sleep schedule goes totally off the rails?

Mikan probably. Ibuki has never been one for a consistent sleep schedule, while Mikan tries really hard to keep one up.

If they're in a relationship, do they start sleeping together more often?

Yeah! Ibuki is often on tour or doing shows all over the world, while Mikan has crazy nurse hours, but now that they’re home they definitely do it more often! Especially since it’s an excellent