#and you can't tell me they didn't experiment in the golden age

[burningcheese-merchant]

I think more ppl need to see this

Yeah for real lol. That's exactly what it is with him. Not to toot my own horn too much but I believe this post I made ages ago hits the nail on the head haha

"I'm bored" is... technically true. In a sense. Personally, I think it's a very simple and vague allusion to the real problem. That thin sheet of snow coating a massive, freezing cold iceberg. Just barely obscuring it from proper view.

imo it's been a bit disappointing seeing people take to extremes with Burning Spice's character. I've seen people either woobify him, downplay or excuse his actions by saying "he's not evil! He's hurting! He's depressed! He doesn't hate people, he's lashing out because he can't internalize his pain anymore!", or just demand he be put to death immediately on sight without trial. You can like a morally repulsive character and sympathize with their issues while also acknowledging that they're repulsive and need to face justice for their crimes. Burning Spice is one of my favorite characters, I love everything about him, he's sexy as fuck, I understand why he's the way he is, I'm still happy to see his ass beat because he's a piece of shit and he deserves it lol.

Not to throw shade at "simpler" villains ofc. I love me some assholes that are assholes just because they can be. Like Jack Horner in Puss in Boots 2. But Burning Spice isn't Jack Horner and he honestly shouldn't be. The deeper, sadder, more complex reasons governing his actions suit him better than just "I'm bored fuck this shit" and nothing else ykwim

and of course, he's still wrong. Burning Spice's view of the world is wrong. Does a book begin just to end? Does a song play just to finish in a few minutes' time? No. They begin so that we may read, listen, and enjoy. So that they may make us laugh, or have us shake our heads in disappointment, or tell us some hidden truth. Make our days and lives a little more interesting than they were before. Life is beautiful BECAUSE it is fleeting. Born, grow, wither, born, grow, wither. Yes, that's how it goes. But there's so much more to those things than just what we can gather from those three words. Every day is different. Though the sun rises every morning without fail, it's never quite the same color, is it? Always a bit of a different shade of yellow, orange, red, bleeding into the sky a little differently each time. There are so many things to see and do, games to play, people to meet and love and cherish. Maybe some of those things and those people won't be here someday but that doesn't mean their existence never meant anything. We are not born to die, we are born to live. We must die for those who are to live, and live for those who have died. Regardless, we must never lose sight of the intrinsic value of all that surrounds us. Burning Spice very much did. Underneath his bitterness and anger and (not unfounded, to be fair) lamentation for the unstoppable cycle of life and death is a deep-rooted selfishness and fundamental lack of understanding and appreciation for life and other people. In the face of despair, he gave in and chose evil. He was and is wrong for doing so, regardless of why he did it. He could've stepped down. He could've just admitted he didn't have what it took to be the Herald of Change. Hell, if he really hates being alive so much, he would've committed suicide a LONG time ago. But he never did any of that; instead he chose to inflict an equal or greater suffering on everything and everyone else, even the undeserving. And for that he MUST pay. And Golden Cheese, with her personality and her experiences and the wisdom she came to attain when faced with the exact same despair as Burning Spice, is exactly the right person to make him do that

[love-quinn]

THE GOOD WITCH

featuring . . . ! patrick zweig, art donaldson, remus lupin, rafe cameron, steve harrington, spencer reid, aaron hotchner, tasm!peter parker, dodge mason, dave lizewski

─── hello hello how are we ??? i’ve been a huge maisie peters fan for a few years now, and since she’s been teasing her next album i thought i’d do something fun to kind of commemorate the good witch before we move on to MP3. i’ve also been experiencing some major writers block :/// so! to combat that, here are some fics that are VERY VERY loosely inspired by some of the songs from the album <333 i hope you enjoy !!

TRACK ONE : THE GOOD WITCH [patrick zweig x reader]

when all i do is think about the past, create a universe that you can live in

you’ve done a lot of growing in the 4 years you and patrick have been broken up. you’re hoping he has as well because you’re still desperately in love with him.

TRACK TWO : COMING OF AGE [dave lizewski x reader]

baby i am the iliad, of course you couldn’t read me. so i’ll leave you behind but that don’t mean it’s easy

dave’s had a crush on you since he could remember, but he’d driven you away with his superhero duties. you’re the TA of his class and he’s determined to get it right this time.

TRACK THREE : WATCH [spencer reid x reader]

nobody actually happy and healthy has ever felt so desperate to prove it

you’re trying to show the team that you’re fine after spencer’s return from prison. if you were coping well, you probably wouldn’t have to try so hard.

TRACK FOUR : BODY BETTER [art donaldson x reader]

i can’t help thinking has she got a better body? has she got a body better than mine?

your boyfriend patrick is convinced that you have a thing for tennis players. you say the same about him. it doesn’t help that you’re both sleeping with one.

TRACK FIVE : WANT YOU BACK [remus lupin x reader]

and what was cheap to you, to me was all i had. the issue is i know all of this and i still want you back

remus was punishing you for something that wasn’t your fault. you should hate him. unfortunately, you can’t bring yourself to.

TRACK SIX : THE BAND AND I [dodge mason x reader]

told her you were just a friend, told her i was homesick. i hadn’t thought of home twice

after moving across the country to go live with your aunt and participate in panic, you’re wary of the boy who works at the diner she owns. he’s wary of you too.

TRACK SEVEN : YOU’RE JUST A BOY (AIKTM) [aaron hotchner x reader]

don't you see what i'm giving up and you can't even text? don't be surprised now i'm giving up, god, what did you expect?

aaron isn't a bad boyfriend, he just tends to get caught up in his job. you wouldn't mind his constant abandonment so much if he didn't always forget to tell you.

TRACK EIGHT : LOST THE BREAKUP [tasm!peter parker x reader]

so, i'm feeling and i'm dealing with the heart you broke, while you do press-ups and repress us and take off her clothes.

for peter parker, you're it: the one that got away, the best thing that ever happened to him. now that you're broken up, he expects that you hate him. he could be right; you can hate someone and still need them to save your life.

TRACK NINE : WENDY [rafe cameron x reader]

then you're evasive on the phone until you're sorry on the floor. so i'm throwing you a bone cause you want me and you're sure. if i'm not careful i'll wake up and we'll be married and i'll still flinch at the sound of a door.

it's been unspoken and set in stone for as long as you'd known each other: you and rafe were in it for the long haul. you've loved rafe since you were young. now that you've grown up, your feelings haven't changed, you're just waiting for him to grow up as well.

TRACK TEN : BSC [steve harrington x reader]

i'm gonna throw you down the river, your mom can watch it over dinner, golden boy you've dropped the ball. i am annie fucking hall. if you don't love me, what was april?

steve thought breaking up with you after his experience with the upside down would be his best bet of keeping you safe. unfortunately for him, you don't know how to keep your nose out of his business.

these will come out every so often depending on how well they do lmao i hope u like them ik this is different than the stuff i’ve done so far :]]] ty to @robinsgrl and @xxepherr for letting me yap abt these as much as i like :]

[uramakimochi]

MY DREAM

Charles Leclerc x Reader

Warnings: long fic (i'm never doing something like this again istg), a lot of use of Y/n because the story is written in the third person pov, the plot is the same as the movie i just cut some scenes, i didn't want to make it too different and distort the original story, if you know what i mean. Maybe ooc Charles? I tried to mix his and Flynn's personality.

English is not my first language so feel free to correct me.

Okay so... since i saw a few people on tiktok saying that Charles could be considered a good Flynn Rider, and i honestly tell you i kinda see it too👀, i thought i'd write a story about it. After all, why not combine Formula One and Disney?? It seemed like a nice idea to me^^

This is an experiment i wanted to try, lemme know if you liked it~

/////

Legend has it that one day a drop of the sun fell from above onto a small simple flower. It thus acquired magical powers, healing powers that were capable of healing any wound.

No one knew of that flower's existence, no one except Gothel. Gothel had understood that with the power of singing she could awaken the powers of the flower and so she used it to ensure that she could always remain young and beautiful, effectively blocking the flow of time in her body.

At that time there reigned a king and a queen, much loved by the citizens of their kingdom. The queen was expecting a baby. But alas, during the pregnancy she became seriously ill. So all the citizens of the kingdom searched for a cure that could save their queen. And as if by miracle, they managed to find the magic flower. With the cure prepared with the flower, the queen recovered, until the princess was born. Do you want to know what her name was? Well, her name was Y/n and that sweet little girl was born with long golden hair that fell to her little shoulders (doesn't matter what's your natural hair colore, it's just for the story). And to celebrate her birth, the king and queen released a lantern into the sky. Everyone was happy and everything seemed to be going well... Until the worst happened.

Gothel knew that now that the flower that could cure her of her old age was no longer there, her only option was the little girl's hair filled with magic. So one night, the woman slipped into the castle, kidnapped the little girl and disappeared into the darkness.

People searched and searched for the princess everywhere, but no one could find her. Gothel had taken the little girl to the top of an abandoned tower, where she raised her as if she were her own daughter. Gothel had found her magical flower again, but this time she was determined to keep it hidden.

But the walls of that tower could not hide everything. Every year on her birthday the king and queen released thousands of lanterns into the sky, in the hope that one day the lost princess would find her way back home.

"Why can't i go outside?" little Y/n always asked, while Gothel combed her hair softly in front of the fire.

And every time, Gothel always gave her the same answer, so as to convince the little girl to always stay with her.

"The world out there is a very dangerous place, full of horrible and selfish people. You need to stay here, so you will always be safe. Do you understand little flower?"

"Yes mommy"

/////

Years passed and Y/n grew into a beautiful girl. She had never left that high tower and besides the woman she believed to be her real mother, the only other thing that kept her company was her passion for painting. Y/n painted and painted and painted every day. Her favorite subject? Take a guess... Yes, i'm talking about the lanterns that flew in the sky every night on his birthday. Y/n was enchanted by their beauty every year and wanted so much to be able to see them in person, even just once. It was her only true dream.

But she knew she had to convince Gothel to do it, yet after (almost) 19 years, she still hadn't succeeded.

But now let's go to the present. And although the main character of this story is our beautiful Y/n, another equally important character steps forward. You've already figured out who it is, right?

/////

"Oh shoot! Oh shoot! Oh shoot!"

At that moment, inside the forest, a young man with light eyes was running at full speed on his legs, trying to escape the group of soldiers on horseback who were chasing him.

"Get him! Quick!" the leader of the soldiers shouted, pointing his sword in the direction the man was running away.

The man continued to run like hell, when suddenly his attention was drawn to a flyer hanging on the trunk of a tree and he stopped to look at it. He looked at the picture of himself, decorated with the words WANTED in large letters over his head. Usually he paused to look at himself with a vain smile, but this time an annoyed grunt left his lips when he saw the image.

"Oh, come on! They got my nose wrong again! What's so complicated about it?!" he exclaimed, tearing the paper from the trunk with one hand.

He would have liked to stay and complain, but when he heard the loud sound of horses' hooves beating on the ground getting closer and closer, the man started running again.

When he reached a blind spot, he began searching through nature to find a good spot to try and hide. He thought he was screwed, that they would capture him and hang him once and for all. But fate had something else in store for the fugitive. Hidden behind a curtain of leaves and creepers was a passage carved into the rock and the boy wasted no time in entering it. Did he have any idea where it was leading? Absolutely not. Was it risky? A lot, but as long as it led him away from the soldiers, he was more than fine with it. So he continued walking in the darkness, until he saw the light at the end of the tunnel. And when he went out, he saw with great surprise a tall lonely tower illuminated by the sun.

It was perfect: he could hide in the tower and even stay there until the next day. Who would ever look for him in an abandoned place like that?

So, he quickly reached the tower and not seeing an entrance door from which to access, he reluctantly began to climb, not noticing two eyes that were spying on him in terror from the window.

Once inside, the man wasted no time looking around, not noticing that, contrary to what he believed, the tower was not uninhabited at all. Instead he only thought about rummaging in his satchel to extract the object that was the main reason why the soldiers had chased him.

"Ah..." he murmured with a smirk, admiring the jewel in his hands. "We're finally alon-"

SBANG!

The man fell to the ground, hit by a blow to the head. Behind him, our Y/n looked at him with wide eyes and her heart pounding in her chest, while in her hands she held the pan that she had used as a weapon to hit him. Who the hell was he? And why did he sneak into the tower?? Did he perhaps want her?? Did he want the power of her hair??

Y/n remained silent, looking at the unconscious stranger's body lying on the ground. Then she slowly bent down to look at him. Touching his cheek with the pan handle, she turned his face so she could see him better.

It was at that moment that Y/n felt a strange feeling arise in her chest. He looked... Cute. In fact, very cute, for a scoundrel.

Suddenly she heard a light, pained grunt coming from the boy and, fearing that he might wake up, she decided to lift him in her arms, as much as her strength allowed, and push him towards the wardrobe. It took several attempts, but once she managed to get his body stuck in the closet, Y/n quickly closed the doors, and then pushed a chair in front of it, so as to block them.

Oh my god... Oh my god!

"I beat a man..." she murmured, feeling a small, satisfied smile rise on her lips. "I just hit a criminal! With a frying pan! Haha!"

Y/n started bouncing on the spot. She was so proud that she had done it all on her own and without her mother's help to boot! And she even managed to lock him in the wardrobe! Oh, she really had to tell his mother this.

Y/n stopped in her tracks when a brilliant idea came to her mind: with this courageous feat of hers she could prove to her that she was capable of protecting herself and that she was ready to face the outside world. And if she was ready to face the outside world, then that meant maybe her mother would let her go see the lights, right? Yes, it was perfect!

While Y/n was thinking about her brilliant plan to convince Mother Gothel, something glimmering under the sunlight caught her attention. She noticed that the stranger's bag was left on the ground and a strange object was coming out of it. Curiosity took over and when Y/n bent down to pick up the object, her eyes widened. It looked like a jewel. It was golden and filled with diamonds and colored pearls. It was beautiful. The girl had no idea what it was and tried to wear it as if it were a bracelet. No, it was too wide. Maybe it should have been worn around the waist like a belt? Well no, definitely not. So he tried putting it on his head. Y/n tried to look at herself in the mirror and when she saw her image with the golden jewel decorating her hair, she was enchanted looking at her reflection. She had never felt so beautiful. Not to be vain, but she would have been staring at herself for hours when...

“Y/n!”

Y/n jumped when she heard her mother's voice calling her from outside.

"Let down your hair~"

Quickly Y/n took the crown off her head and leaned out the window, to look at her mother.

“Just a second, mother!” she exclaimed with a nervous smile and then disappeared back into the tower.

"You know i don't like it when you keep me waiting, my dear" Gothel replied with an impatient smile.

Y/n hurriedly put the jewel back into the bag and then hid it under the stairs. Then she wrapped her long hair around a handhold and let it fall out the window, so that Gothel could use it as a means of climbing back up the tower.

“I have good news for you, little flower” said the woman, climbing over the window.

“I have one too” Y/n retorted, making the other giggle.

"Oh, i'm sure mine is better"

Gothel approached the girl with her arms wide open and then placed both hands on her shoulders and gave her an affectionate kiss on the forehead.

"My news is: that tonight i will prepare the hazelnut soup for you! Your favorite. Aren't you happy?" Gothel asked and Y/n nodded.

"Thank you mother"

Gothel smiled back and then walked away and headed towards the table, placing the ingredients and tools to prepare that evening's dinner on top of it.

"What did you want to tell me instead?" she asked, starting to cut vegetables.

Y/n glanced at the closet blocked by the chair, which Gothel hadn't noticed yet.

"Well... It's about my birthday present, mother..." she murmured with a smile, not noticing how her mother's face seemed to become more serious as the seconds passed.

“I hope you're not referring to those stars Y/n”

Y/n began to play with her fingers.

"Mother, you know that the only thing i've ever wanted is to be able to go and see the lights floating and-"

"I thought we had this cleared up a long time ago" Gothel interrupted.

"You always say you think i'm not strong enough to handle myself out there and-"

"Oh my dear, i KNOW for a fact that you're not strong enough to handle yourself out there."

"Yes, but if only you-"

"Y/n, stop. We're done"

"Trust me, i-"

“Y/n”

"Let me explain-"

"ENOUGH Y/N! YOU WILL NEVER GET OUT OF THIS TOWER, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!"

Y/n fell silent, while Gothel looked at her with anger in her eyes.

"Oh, great. Now i look like the bad guy"

Gothel let out an exhausted sigh, running a hand over her face, while the girl cast a disappointed look at the painting of lights that she alone had created with her hands. Apparently, she wouldn't have seen the lights this year either, except from the window of that tower.

“What i meant was…” Y/n murmured sadly. "That for my birthday i would really like some new colors to paint. You know, the ones made with the white shells that you once brought me"

“But it will take me almost three days of travel to get those for you, Y/n” the woman said.

“I thought it was a better gift than… The stars” Y/n looked at her with an uncertain smile.

Gothel looked at her and then moved closer to her again, smiling back.

“Are you sure you'll be okay here alone?” she asked, placing her hands on her shoulders and Y/n nodded silently.

Gothel hugged her, giving her a kiss on the head.

"I'll be back in three days. I love you, little flower"

"I love you more, mother"

"And i love you most"

So, Gothel set out on her journey. And after Y/n was sure that the woman was far away, she turned again to look at the closet where the stranger was still locked up. There was still one thing to take care of.

/////

When the man slowly reopened his eyes, he didn't expect to find himself tied to a chair. But when he realized what was keeping him tied up, he looked around in confusion.

"Hair...?" he murmured, still feeling some pain from the blow to his head.

He began to squirm to try to free himself, when suddenly a voice coming from the darkness made him stop.

"There's no point in doing that. Y-You're stuck"

"What?"

The man managed to glimpse someone moving in the shadows.

"I know why you're here. And i-i'm not afraid of you" the voice stammered.

He was about to answer her when the owner of the voice came out into the open. He looked at her, amazed that a beautiful girl like her could be found in such a tall and abandoned tower.

"Wow..."

Y/n bravely looked into his eyes, clutching the pan in her hands.

"Who are you? And how did you find me?" she asked narrowing her eyes and he looked at her confused again.

"Uh?"

"I said, who are you? And how did you find me?" the girl repeated.

He raised his hands in surrender as much as the hair binding him would allow.

"Look, I don't know who you are and i didn't come here for you. But i can say one thing..." he replied.

There was silence for a couple of seconds until the man looked at her with a flattering smile and raised eyebrows.

"Hi~"

Y/n looked at him slightly taken aback by his change in behavior, but despite his pretty face and his bright light eyes, she wasn't enchanted.

"My name is Perceval" the man continued, finally revealing his name. "How are you doing, chérie?"

“I will not be enchanted by your pretty words, Perceval” Y/n replied, taking a step towards him. "I want to know why you came in this tower. Were you looking for my hair?"

Perceval shook his head, making the flirtatious attitude disappear.

"Why on earth would i want your hair?? The only thing i want to do with it is just get rid of it! I swear!" he retorted.

Y/n walked around the chair he was tied to, swirling the pan menacingly.

"Then why are you here?" she continued to ask and he sighed.

"I was running away, okay? I wanted to find a place to hide and i ended up here" Perceval replied, when suddenly he realized that he was missing something. “Wait, where's my satchel??”

Y/n looked at him crossing her arms.

"I hid it"

"Give it back to me! That stuff is mine!" he retorted. "Listen chérie, if you give me back what you took from me, i swear i'll leave and you'll never see me again. And i won't tell anyone that you live here. It'll be as if we've never met. What do you think?"

Y/n fell silent and turned away so he wouldn't see her expression of hesitation. Should she trust this Perceval and let him walk away with the jewel as if nothing had happened? What if he was lying? But it seemed like he was telling the truth.

What do i do now?

Y/n looked around for an answer and when her eyes fell on her painting of the stars, another bright idea came to her mind.

"Okay, Perceval" she replied, looking back at him. "You will get your satchel back"

Perceval let out a whispered "Yes!", as Y/n climbed up until she got to the painting.

"But just-" she said and he rolled his eyes with a small groan. "If you'll take me to see these!"

“Are you talking about the lanterns?” he asked and she nodded.

"Tomorrow evening there will be those lanterns. You will accompany me to see them and you will bring me back here safe and sound. And it will be then and only then that i will give you back your satchel"

"Chérie-" sighed Perceval.

“My name is Y/n”

"Y/n. I'd like to help you, but the kingdom and i don't really get along, you know?"

“Oh…” Y/n looked at him with a fake sorry expression. "Then it means you will never get your satchel with your beloved jewel back, Perceval"

Perceval looked at her with unimpressed eyes, until he let out a desperate groan, tilting his head back.

"Argh, all right! You win! I'll take you to see the lanterns!" he exclaimed, making her smile. "But then i want my satchel back, let's be clear"

Y/n nodded with a satisfied smirk.

"It's a promise, Perceval. And i always keep my promises"

/////

Thus began the journey of the two protagonists. To tell the truth, the road from the tower to the kingdom wasn't that long. But having no horses or means of transport, the two had to go on foot. But for Y/n it was better this way. Walking in nature the girl could admire things she had never seen until then. She could hear the sounds of the forest animals, touch the leaves of the trees with her fingers and dip her feet in the cool stream. She had never felt so alive, that was the best day of her life.

Unlike her, Perceval looked at her more and more strangely.

"It's like you never left that tower" he murmured. “Have you never seen a tree or a bird?”

Y/n giggled nervously.

"Something like that..." she replied.

It was at that moment that only one small detail came to her mind: Gothel. For the first time in almost 19 years, Y/n had lied to her mother and broken the rules. Oh, what if she found out? How angry would have she been? How disappointed would have she been with Y/n's behavior?

Y/n stopped in her tracks and felt her bottom lip begin to tremble. Perceval also stopped when he noticed that she had stopped and as soon as he turned to look at her, she burst into tears, catching him off guard.

"WAAAH!"

Perceval's eyes widened, not expecting something like that so suddenly.

"H-Hey! What happened??"

Y/n fell backwards, sitting on the grass and pulling her knees to her chest as Perceval bent down next to her.

"Did you get hurt?!" he asked frantically, holding his hands in the air because he wasn't sure what to do.

Y/n nuzzled her face into her knees, wrapping her arms around her legs.

"I'm a terrible daughter!" she whimpered. "My mother will be so disappointed when she finds out what i did! She always worries about me and i disobeyed her!"

Perceval remained silent, letting her cry for a few seconds, but then placed a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder.

"Y/n. You just want to see those lanterns, right?" he asked her and she nodded. "Well, then i say you should focus on those and forget about your mother for a moment. You know, this is the thrill of life. You don't always have to do what people tell you, you have to do what your heart says"

Y/n sniffed, lifting her head to look at him and he gave her an encouraging smile. Then he stood up, offering her a hand and after a couple of seconds of hesitation she took it with a small smile, standing up.

"You're right" she said, wiping the tears from her face. "I want to see the lanterns and that's what i'll do"

"Great!" exclaimed Perceval. "And now-"

The sound of a bush starting to move interrupted him from finishing his sentence and Y/n ran to hide behind him with a cry, while with one hand she pointed the pan she had brought with her at it.

The two stared at the bush moving again, until an innocent little bunny popped out of it. Y/n let out a relieved sigh, while Perceval looked at her unimpressed. She immediately pulled away from him with a sheepish smile and red cheeks. She wasn't used to the outside world yet.

/////

“Perceval” Y/n called him suddenly.

"Mh?"

"Are you not hungry?"

He looked at her, seeing her rubbing a hand over her rumbling belly.

"Actually yes, it's better if we stop and eat something. I know the right place, let's go"

So the two arrived at an inn, which was called The Prancing Pony (this is a cit🤭). When Y/n opened the door and entered first, the music inside stopped. She didn't expect to see all the eyes of those present glued to her. Oh and she certainly didn't expect to see men who all looked mad criminals.

While she remained frozen in the doorway, Perceval casually passed her and she followed him glued to his back.

"Is... Is it normal all these men are here?" she whispered fearfully and he nodded.

"Oh, of course"

The two arrived at the counter behind which the owner was. Charles sat on a wooden stool and Y/n sat next to him.

“Sebastian, nice to see you” Charles exclaimed with a smile.

Y/n looked at Sebastian, who however didn't seem as happy to see Perceval.

"Perceval. Are you here because you got hungry after one of your thefts?"

Perceval rested an elbow on the counter, leaning forward.

"Something like that. Give me a jug of wine, please. And some water for the lady. You know, we have to go to town and we can't go there on an empty stomach"

Sebastian glanced at her, but then got to work and handed them their drinks. She thanked him quietly and then both she and Perceval began to drink.

"You shouldn't be here" Sebastian said, looking at Perceval.

"Huh?" the other replied from behind the mug. "Why no- AH!"

"That's why"

Someone behind Perceval grabbed him by his clothes, pulling him backwards and Y/n's eyes widened.

"Perceval!"

All the men in the inn surrounded Perceval, pointing their weapons at his throat.

"You have some nerve showing up here Perceval" one growled.

“Yeah, especially knowing the big price on your head” another continued.

Perceval chuckled nervously.

"P-Pierre, Esteban, hahaha. Come on, we are friends, right?"

The two, Pierre and Esteban, gritted their teeth, while another man stepped forward, making Perceval's eyes widen.

"Carlos! Hola mi amigo, how are you doing?" Perceval exclaimed with an uncertain smile, raising a hand in greeting. "I didn't see that you were here today too. S-Shall i offer you something?"

The man with the tanner skin and dark hair narrowed his eyes at him.

"You know Perceval, we still remember all the times you betrayed us to save your own skin. But now that you are here we could reclaim ourselves by giving you to the guards and take our reward"

Perceval swallowed fearfully, while Y/n tiptoed towards the group of men, lifting her beloved pan in her hands.

"C-Can't we talk about this in a civil way over a mug of wine? Huh?" Perceval tried to ask with a chuckle, but Carlos' only response was his dagger pointed at his cheek.

Perceval closed his eyes and just when he feared the worst, a loud noise rang through the inn.

SBANG!

Perceval suddenly opened his eyes again and like everyone else present, he turned to look at Y/n, who had just slammed her pan on Carlos' head. But alas, after that blow Carlos had not fainted at all like she had imagined. But Y/n, was not intimidated.

"L-Leave him alone!" she exclaimed, looking one by one at the men surrounding her. "He has to take me to see the lanterns tomorrow night, b-because it's the only dream i've had since i was a child! So i advise you to let him go or-or you'll deal with me and my pan!"

All the men looked at her in silence, surprised by her determination. Perceval and Sebastian, however, looked at her proudly.

"That girl has guts" Sebastian muttered with a smirk, crossing his arms.

Y/n's eyes widened when she saw Carlos walking towards her with an enraged expression on his face and she backed away in fear.

"Carlos, no! Wait!" Perceval tried calling him, but was ignored.

When Y/n came face to face with Carlos, she was almost on the verge of trying to smack him in the face again, but before she could, Carlos changed his expression.

“I have a dream too” he said in a pained tone. "I would like to be a farmer. I would like to marry a beautiful woman and live with her in a farm and be happily ever after"

Y/n slowly lowered the pan, looking at him with pity.

"Oh..."

Carlos sighed.

"We all have a dream" he said, then pointed with one hand to a boy sitting at a table. "My friend Lando would like to become a musician"

Lando raised a hand to greet Y/n with a shy smile, which she returned sweetly.

"And George knows how to sew beautiful clothes. He would really like to be a tailor" Carlos then continued, pointing to a man who was a little taller than the others in the middle of the group.

"I want to be a baker!" another of them then exclaimed, raising a hand.

"And i want to be a florist!"

Y/n smiled tenderly when she saw all those people who at first glance seemed like bad boys express their desires.

"And what is your dream?" they all asked in chorus, turning to look at Perceval, who had remained watching the scene with his mouth wide open.

“I-I…” he murmured, glancing at Y/n, who smiled at him. "I want to live surrounded by money and jewels! They are my only passion. Haha"

Everyone looked at him unimpressed, some even shaking their heads, while behind them Y/n hid a small laugh behind her hand. But then she composed herself.

"Your dreams are all beautiful" she said softly, looking at them all. "When i go to see the lanterns, i will make a wish for all of you and pray that your dreams come true"

All the men let out cheers, making her laugh.

“It's time to celebrate!” exclaimed one of them, whose name was Daniel. "Let's sing in honor of our dreams!"

So the music began again, accompanied by the out-of-tune singing and uncoordinated dancing of all the men present in the inn. But Y/n continued to laugh and celebrate with them. She had never attended a party like this, it was too much fun!

As Y/n and Perceval returned to sit at the counter, Carlos approached her again.

“Y/n” he called out to her.

"Yes?"

Carlos flashed her a smile.

"You have a good heart, girl. I hope you can see those lanterns"

Y/n smiled back.

"Thank you, Carlos. And i hope you find the love of your life" she replied.

Carlos then glared at Perceval.

"And you" she said, pointing a finger at him, making him jump. "Watch out for her. Protect her properly, otherwise me and the others will come looking for you"

Y/n giggled, while Perceval gave Carlos a couple of pats on the shoulder.

"Come on Carlos, who do you take me for? Y/n can't be in safer hands than mine, i swear"

Carlos rolled his eyes and without saying anything else he walked away to go celebrate with the others. And the exact moment he left, someone else took his place.

“Y-Y/n?”

Y/n turned around, meeting the eyes of a short Asian boy.

"My name is Yuki, nice to meet you" he said with red cheeks she smiled warmly.

"The pleasure is mine, Yuki"

Yuki smiled, then pointed with a finger at the long golden hair falling from her shoulders.

“May i ask why you have such long hair?”

Y/n nodded and so she and Yuki began a conversation under Perceval's tender eyes.

Suddenly, the door of the inn flew open and the party stopped.

"Perceval Leclerc! We know you're here!" a guard shouted from the doorway.

Both Y/n and Perceval stood up in fear, while a small group made of George, Esteban, Nico and Fernando, remained in front of them to cover them from the guards.

"Psst! You two!" Sebastian exclaimed softly from behind the counter. "Come down here, quick!"

The couple climbed over the counter, hiding at Sebastian's feet, while the guards began to search the inn. Y/n looked at Perceval, having no idea what to do, but he shrugged.

It was at that moment that Sebastian pressed his feet on a small lever under the counter and a trap door opened on the floor.

“A secret passage” whispered Perceval. "Brilliant"

Sebastian lowered his head to look at them.

"Go and live your dream" he whispered with a smile and Perceval turned to look at him.

"I will"

Sebastian glared at him.

"Your dream sucks. I was telling her"

Perceval slipped into the passage and before Y/n could follow him, she turned to look at Sebastian one last time with a smile.

"Thank you guys, for everything" she said, then stepped into the passage, leaving the voices of those she might consider her new friends behind.

"Yes, i believe this is the man you're looking for" Lando said, placing his hands on Oscar's back and making him take a step towards the guards. "Look at him, he's identical!"

/////

The sun went down and the stars painted the blue sky completely free of clouds, enveloping our two protagonists in darkness and the evening breeze, who after leaving the secret passage had returned to the forest, and then camped for the night.

Perceval was currently busy lighting the fire to keep warm, while Y/n watched him in silence from sitting on the ground. And the more she looked at him, the more she noticed details she hadn't noticed before. Despite the darkness, his large light eyes that shone in the sunlight during the day enchanted her, like the small mole he had on his cheek and the deep dimples that appeared at the sides of his mouth when he smiled and-

"Ouch!"

Y/n jumped, snapping out of her thoughts when she saw Perceval pulling away from the fire, which was now lit, while holding his hand.

"Is everything okay?" she asked worriedly, moving closer to him.

"Yes, nothing serious, just a minor wound"

Y/n took his hand, looking at the small cut on his palm. After a few seconds of hesitation, she looked into his eyes.

"I can cure you if you want"

"Pff, i appreciate your willingness chérie, but i don't think you have a magic potion that can make a wound disappear in seconds"

Y/n bit her lip, afraid that what she was about to do would have ruined everything. But she decided to try anyway. So she started wrapping his hand with her hair and he looked at her confused.

"What-"

"Trust me, please" she interrupted, looking at him. "But you have to promise me you won't panic. Okay?"

“Er, sure” Perceval replied, shrugging.

When Y/n was done, she started singing.

Flower, gleam and glow

Let your powers shine

Make the clock reverse

Bring back what once was mine

It was a little song she learned from her mother when she was combing her hair. As she sang, his long hair began to shine and Perceval's eyes widened.

Heal what has been hurt

Change the fates' design

Save what has been lost

Bring back what once was mine

What once was mine

When the song was over, Y/n moved her hair from Perceval's hand and he saw that the wound on his palm was no longer there.

He opened his eyes and mouth wide, lifting his head to look at Y/n.

"Y-You have magical hair?!" he exclaimed.

"Shh!"

Y/n quickly covered his mouth with her hands, while Perceval continued to look at her in surprise.

"You said you wouldn't panic!" she said, earning a string of words from him in response that she couldn't make out with her hand over his mouth.

Y/n let out a sigh and removed her hands, letting him speak.

“How can i not panic after seeing that your hair is magical??” he asked, this time in a more normal tone of voice, but still surprised.

"I don't know why it's like this, my hair has had this power since i was little. And when you cut it..." she reached behind her neck, tilting her head and moving the hair, so as to show Perceval a short lock of dark hair. “They turn brown and lose their power”

Y/n turned her head to look back at the fire, playing with her fingers.

“A-Are you…Are you afraid of me now?” she asked shyly.

Y/n hoped with all her heart that he wasn't. Perceval had become her first real friend in 19 years and if he abandoned her because he thought she was strange or if he told someone else... No, she didn't want to go back to being alone.

Her doubts were swept away when she suddenly saw his hand covering hers, then their fingers intertwining. Y/n looked up and when she met Perceval's sweet smile and dimples she felt her heart start to beat.

“I could never be afraid of you, Y/n” he said. "You are a strong and courageous woman and i know that you would only use your power to help others if you had the chance, just like you did with me. So no, i'm not afraid of you. In fact, i'm glad that fate brought us together"

Y/n looked at him with eyes shining in the firelight, as a relieved smile spread across her face. Perceval looked at her for another couple of seconds, then turned to look at the crackling fire as their joined hands slowly let go.

"You know, i have a secret too" he murmured and she looked at him curiously. "My name is actually Charles. Perceval is my third name"

"Third? How many names do you have?" Y/n asked him, her eyes widening.

"My full name is Charles Marc Hervé Perceval Leclerc. Nice to meet you" he said, looking at her with a smirk.

"Wow!" Y/n giggled. "I didn't know people could be born with more than one name"

"Oh and you haven't heard Carlos' other names. He has even more than me"

"Really??"

The two giggled again and then looked back at each other.

"Are you angry with me?" Charles asked suddenly.

“Why would i be?” she replied, tilting her head.

Charles shrugged.

"Well, because i lied to you. And i'm a thief, a criminal. Because of me you could get in trouble"

Y/n placed a hand on his knee, stroking it with her thumb, and smiled at him, just like he had done to her.

"I don't think you're really a criminal, Charles. Because otherwise you wouldn't have agreed to accompany me to see the lanterns. And thanks to you i'm discovering a world i've never seen and i've met new people. So i tell you that i am happy that fate brought us together too"

Charles looked at her and it was at that moment that he began to feel his heart beating a little faster than expected, but he paid it no mind.

"And i don't care how many obstacles we find, because i know that me, you and my pan together are invincible, don't you think?" she then said, raising her fist, making him laugh. "Of course, now i'll have to get used to calling you Charles, but honestly i like it better than Perceval as a name"

“I'm happy to hear it” he said then stood up and Y/n looked at him confused.

"I'm going to look for more wood. You stay here, i'll be right back"

Y/n nodded, watching Charles disappear into the darkness of the forest. She stayed looking at the fire with an enchanted smile, when suddenly she heard a noise coming from behind her.

"I finally found you, little flower"

Y/n jumped up and felt a pang in her heart when she saw Gothel's serious face light up from the fire.

"M-Mother! What are you doing here??"

"You dare ask me this question, Y/n? I'm the one who should ask you why you didn't stay in the tower, in your home"

Y/n clasped her hands together, feeling afraid of the icy eyes of the woman who was approaching her.

"I-I..."

Gothel let out a sigh.

"Never mind, now that i've found you we can go home. Come on, let's go"

As Gothel closed a hand around her wrist and began to walk towards the forest, Y/n planted her feet on the ground, causing her to stop.

"Mother no, wait!"

Gothel turned to her.

“Y/n…”

The girl looked at her with a pleading look.

"Mother, please. Tomorrow evening there will be the lanterns and i am so close to seeing them in person. Char- Perceval, he-"

“Let me guess, that criminal will take you to see those lanterns?” the woman asked, crossing her arms.

Y/n nodded with a small smile.

"Yes!" she exclaimed.

Gothel burst out laughing in her face.

“Oh my dear, do you really think someone like him actually wants to help you?”

Y/n looked at her puzzled and Gothel continued.

"Y/n, he's a thief. And he only thinks about money, he doesn't care about you"

Y/n clenched her fists.

"You're only saying that to convince me to go back with you! He is different from the others, mother, he is a good person"

Gothel rolled her eyes.

“Tsk, do you really believe that?”

It was then that the woman showed something from behind her back and Y/n's eyes widened. It was Charles's satchel which she had hidden.

"This the only reason why that man is taking you to see the lanterns. He's not doing it for you. Do you understand me now?"

Y/n remained silent as doubt began to invade her body. There was indeed a possibility that his mother was right. And also thinking about the dream he had expressed at the inn... No, Charles really wasn't that selfish... Was he?

Gothel approached the girl and dropped the bag into her hands, then leaned towards her ear.

"Give him back his treasure and you'll see how he'll run away like hell. And when you're alone, don't come crying to me, little flower" the woman hissed, making Y/n tighten her grip on the satchel.

Gothel walked away and she and the girl looked at each other one last time.

"And remember, mother always knows best" the woman said, then disappeared into the bushes.

Y/n stood there motionless, with a conflicted soul. Her mother's words swirled in her brain like a tornado, filling her with fears and insecurities as the seconds passed.

"Here i am!"

Y/n jumped, turning and encountering the figure of Charles holding a pile of wood in his arms. She didn't realize she still had a nervous expression on her face, because Charles looked at her slightly worried.

"Are you alright?" he asked her, dropping the wood to the ground.

Y/n nodded frantically, hiding his satchel behind her back.

“O-Of course” she replied with an uncertain smile. "Um, i think i'll go to sleep. I'm feeling tired. 'Night!"

Charles saw her lie down on the ground, on a bed of hair that she had improvised and turning with her back to him. He frowned, but then shrugged with a sigh.

"Goodnight"

/////

The next morning, Y/n shot her eyes open and jumped up with a yelp. She was happy and excited, not only because it was her birthday, but because she would finally have been able to see the lanterns.

"Charles!" she exclaimed, turning towards the boy, who was still sleeping soundly and running towards him, shaking him with her arms. "Wake up Charles! Wake up!"

Charles opened his eyes in fear and sat up.

"I'm awake! I'm awake i swear!"

Y/n smiled and grabbed his hand, lifting him to his feet and starting to drag him towards the street.

"Let's go! There's no time to waste! Hurry!"

“Y-Y/n, wait!”

/////

When Y/n entered the city, her eyes widened like never before and she spun around to look around.

The walls of the houses were covered with flags and garlands, music sounded everywhere and people dispersed among the various stalls selling objects and foods of all kinds. And while the girl was busy admiring the spectacle around her, behind her Charles took down a WANTED flyer from the wall showing her face, hoping no one had noticed.

When he looked back at her, he noticed that her long hair trailing down the street was attracting quite a bit of attention, not to mention how cumbersome it was for all the people passing by. Charles' eyes fell on a group of little girls who were braiding each other's hair and he smiled when an idea came to mind.

"Hey girls!" he called them.

The little ones raised their heads to look at him and their eyes widened when they saw the girl with long golden hair. Y/n greeted them with a wave of her hand, while Charles nodded towards her hair.

The girls smiled and after sitting Y/n on the floor, they got to work, starting to braid her hair. It took a while, but when the job was done Y/n turned to Charles.

"Charles"

Charles, who was distracted, turned towards her and his eyes widened when he saw the girls' work. Y/n did a little twirl, showing him her hair which was now tied in a long braid, decorated with many colorful flowers.

"Y-You... You look very pretty, chérie" Charles murmured enchanted.

Y/n smiled shyly, feeling her cheeks heat up, while the girls who were watching the scene high-fived each other with their hands, proud of their work.

Later, while Charles was busy buying something to eat, Y/n's eyes fell on a mosaic shining in the sun, in front of which people gathered to admire it. The mosaic represented the king and queen, who were holding a little girl in their arms.

How strange... Y/n thought, looking into the little princess's eyes. Was she wrong or did they look alike? But it could have been just a coincidence, right?

Y/n's attention was then attracted by someone who dragged her to dance and so the girl forgot the mosaic, abandoning herself to the music.

She saw Charles a little further away looking at her with a smile and his arms crossed and she invited him to dance with a wave of her hands. Charles shook his head with a laugh, but Y/n decided to gather courage and jumped towards him, grabbing his hands and dragging him onto the dance floor.

So the two began to dance and although they were literally surrounded by all the other dancing couples, for them it was as if there was no one else present.

When the song ended, Charles and Y/n stopped, looking into each other's eyes in silence. And they would have remained in that position looking at each other if it hadn't been for someone who announced that they were heading to the boats, for the time of the lanterns, forcing them to move away with shy smiles and red cheeks.

/////

As Charles rowed to sail the small boat through the water, Y/n sitting in front of him looked at the castle rising before her eyes with her heart beating with emotion. Finally the moment had come! The lanterns!

Silence reigned throughout the kingdom and as the minutes passed, the sun sank to the horizon, while the sky began to turn blue.

And suddenly, a single lantern rose from the castle and began to fly higher and higher into the sky. Then, a multitude of other lanterns followed her on their journey to the stars.

Y/n opened her eyes wide, admiring the light show that was taking place. And when she didn't think it could get any better, a little touch on her shoulder made her turn around. The girl saw Charles smile at her, while in his hands he held two lanterns, which were just waiting to be released and she delicately took one in her hands.

“Are you ready chérie?” he asked her.

Y/n nodded and together the two released the lanterns. They rose up into the sky, spinning as if in a dance and joining the immense luminous cloud that was filling the sky at that moment, until they lost sight of them.

Y/n watched them move further and further away, while inside she knew that she had now realized her biggest dream. Oh, obviously he didn't forget to think of the boys at the inn and expressed the wish that their dreams too could come true.

It was at that moment that a more important detail occurred to her.

"I have something for you, Charles"

Charles watched the girl bend down to pick up something at her feet and his eyes widened when he saw her clutching his satchel in her hands.

"I should have given it to you sooner, but i was afraid. But... Now i'm not afraid anymore, do you know what i mean?" she asked him.

Y/n thought that Charles would take the satchel and even if that happened, she was ready to accept it. But to her surprise, Charles placed a hand on the bag, lowering it to her legs. And with his other hand, he moved a lock of hair that fell on her forehead behind her ear, then rested it on her cheek.

"I'm starting to"

Charles leaned his face forward and even though Y/n had no idea what was about to happen, she did the same, letting the moment guide her. She closed her eyes, ready to feel his lips on hers and then-

"I have to do something" he said suddenly and she opened her eyes, looking at him.

He looked serious, so Y/n nodded with an understanding smile, trying not to show the disappointment she was feeling. Had she done something wrong?

"Oh, okay"

Charles rowed the boat towards land, out of the city and after it had docked he got out of the boat, taking his satchel in his hand.

“I'm sorry. Everything is fine, really” he said hastily, clutching his bag, while Y/n looked at him in confusion. "I'll be right back"

/////

When Charles approached he saw one of the two red-haired twins, the ones with whom he had stolen the princess crown before the beginning of the story, sitting on a rock, waiting for him.

"Heyyy guys~" Charles said with a fake smile, swinging his satchel. “It's been a while since we've seen each other, right?”

The twin with the eyepatch raised his head to look at him.

"Yes, since you left us in the hands of the guards so you could keep the treasure, Leclerc. We remember it well"

Charles chuckled nervously.

"Exactly haha... Um, you know what? I was thinking, how about we make up and put this thing behind us? There you go!"

Charles threw the bag containing the crown at the man's feet.

"I leave you the treasure. Keep it, i don't need it anymore. And now i'm leaving so-"

Charles turned around ready to go back to Y/n, but the other twin, the one without the eyepatch, appeared behind him, blocking his way.

"You're not going anywhere, pretty boy"

Charles swallowed, while his blindfolded brother stood up, walking towards him.

"You know, someone told us that you had something much more valuable than a jewel with you"

"And now we want her"

Charles grit his teeth and clenched his fists.

"Of you touch her, i swear i'll-"

"Pff, please" one of them interrupted him.

"What do you think you can do against us two alone?"

That was the last thing Charles felt before he received a strong blow to the head that knocked him unconscious.

/////

After a few minutes of Y/n waiting for Charles leaning against the boat, she suddenly heard the sound of footsteps approaching and stood up straight.

"Hey, i thought you were going to take the jewel and leave me here, haha" she giggled with a relieved smile, which however fell as the seconds passed when she realized that the shadow that was approaching her had split into two shadows.

Y/n saw two red-haired twins she had never seen before approaching and she took a step back in fear.

“That's what he did” the one with the eyepatch said with a smirk.

Y/n clenched her fists.

"Y-You're lying..."

The other pointed out to sea with one arm.

"See it for yourself"

Slowly Y/n looked back, taking a couple of steps towards the water. From there she saw a small boat that was moving further and further away. And above it, despite the distance, she was able to perfectly recognize the figure of Charles, with his back turned and his hands on the rudder.

"No..."

Y/n felt like her heart was breaking. It was not possible. He had really done it.

"Charles! Charles!" she tried calling him, but received no answer.

"It was really rude of him though" one of the twins said then. "Leaving a girl here alone and defenseless"

Y/n turned to look at them and felt fear invade her body when she saw them approaching her with menacing grins.

"A girl with magical powers too"

"Who knows how much people would be willing to pay to have someone like you"

Y/n's eyes widened when she saw one of the two men pick up a bag, big enough to fit her body.

"No, please!"

The girl turned on her heels, running away from their clutches, but suddenly her braid of hair got stuck on the branch of a trunk lying nearby and she began to pull it, trying to free herself. Y/n closed her eyes when she saw the twins approaching her, fearing the worst. But then she heard grunts of pain, followed by a familiar voice.

“Y/n!”

Y/n opened her eyes and they widened when she saw Gothel standing behind the bodies of the two twins, who were now lying on the ground unconscious, while the woman was holding a large tree branch in her hand that she had used as a weapon to hit them.

"Mother!"

Gothel quickly approached the girl, then closed her arms around her body.

"Oh my little flower, are you okay? Did they do something to you?"

Y/n shook her head and hugged her back, letting out a small sigh of relief.

"I'm so glad you're okay, but we have to go now. It's best to run away before they wake up" the woman continued, still referring to the two men.

Gothel took Y/n's hand and tried to drag her towards the woods, but noticed that the girl was still standing in her tracks, as if she seemed undecided.

Y/n looked one last time at the boat Charles was leaving in. And she realized that it would probably be forever. Then she turned to look at Gothel and saw the woman open her arms, inviting her with her. It was at that moment that Y/n felt her bottom lip begin to tremble and her eyes become teary. And she ran towards the woman he thought was his mother, hugging her for comfort.

"You were right, mother... You were right about everything. I'm sorry" Y/n cried and Gothel hugged her back, while together the two started walking home again.

“I know, darling. I know”

/////

Y/n remained lying on her bed staring at the ceiling of her room at the top of the tower. She couldn't help but think about Charles. And the more she thought about it, the more what she had done made her mad.

"Like everyone else. He's just a criminal like everyone else" she snorted, then stood up and began pacing the room.

"Idiot. Selfish. Stingy" she muttered angrily.

Sweet. Thoughtful. Fun. She even thought, before shaking her head to get those thoughts out of her head.

“The only thing he cared about in the first place was that stupid jewel!”

Y/n crossed her arms, thinking back to the crown Charles had stolen and thinking back to the time she had wanted to try it on, just out of curiosity.

And it was at that moment that she felt as if a boatload of memories were filling her mind. The crown, her hair, mother Gothel, the city, the mosaic of the royal family.

Y/n walked out of her room, joining Gothel, who was preparing food.

"Oh honey, there you are. I-"

“I am the lost princess” Y/n interrupted.

Gothel looked at her confused.

"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"

"I said" the girl repeated, with a more resolute tone, looking into her eyes. "I am the lost princess. Aren't i?

Gothel giggled nervously.

“Hahaha, don't be stupid Y/n”

Y/n marched towards the woman, clenching her fists at her sides.

"It was you! It was always you mother! Or maybe i shouldn't even call you that?"

Gothel's smile slowly fell.

“Everything i did was to protect you” she said.

Y/n pushed past the woman with a small push, angrier than ever.

"Protect me?? Protect me?! I've spent my whole life in this tower, hiding from people who would use me for my power!"

“Y/n!” Gothel called after her, but the girl continued.

“But the only person i had to hide from was you!”

"And where on earth would you go out there without me? Uh, my dear?" Gothel asked from behind her. "Your beloved Charles will no longer be there for you!"

Y/n turned to her.

"What do you mean?"

"That man will be sentenced to death for his crimes. You will never see him again"

Y/n let out a small gasp of fright and felt as if someone had pierced her heart with a sword. Charles going to die?

"No no no, don't be sad little flower" Gothel murmured in a fake sweet tone, moving closer to the girl. "Besides, he left you, it's better this way. Don't you think-"

Y/n quickly blocked the woman's hand that was about to caress her head, squeezing her wrist between her fingers.

“Enough, mother” Y/n hissed through gritted teeth. "I will no longer be your prisoner"

Gothel tried to free herself from the girl's grip but it was no use.

"Now you will let me go out of this tower and i will go and free Charles. You and i will part forever and i'll return to my real family. Find yourself a new flower"

Y/n let her go and Gothel, taken aback, staggered backwards, hitting the nearby mirror, which fell to the ground, shattering into many pieces. Y/n looked at her fake mother for what she thought was the last time and walked towards the window so she could get out.

“You want me to be the bad guy?”

Gothel's voice murmured behind her and Y/n felt her blood freeze in her veins.

"Fine, then i'll be the bad guy"

/////

Meanwhile, at the kingdom's prison...

As Charles walked down the prison corridor escorted by several guards, he felt as if his heart had been ripped out of his chest and trampled on. Because of him, Y/n was suffering the consequences of his criminal actions, just as he feared. And above all he had abandoned her. Just when everything seemed to be going well, Charles had left her there, alone on that beach, in the hands of the two twins. He could only hope that she was okay and had managed to escape.

Charles glanced out the window and saw the hangman's rope waiting for him in the middle of the prison yard. Then, turning his head away, he saw two men with red hair locked in a cell next to him. He recognized them immediately, they were the twins. But how was this possible?

Charles broke away from the guards and approached the bars, grabbing the eyepatched twin who was nearby, pulling him as close as he could.

"Where is she?! Who is the person who told you about her?!" he shouted, wanting to hear news of the girl as soon as possible.

"It was an old lady! We don't know where she is, we swear!"

Old lady...

Charles realized that they were definitely talking about Y/n's mother, but he couldn't sit still and think about it because the guards grabbed him and started dragging him again. Charles began to squirm.

"Wait! You don't understand, you have to let me go! I have to save her!" he said, but of course it was useless.

Of the three guards who were with him, as soon as the one in front opened a door, he found himself lying on the ground due to a punch to the face.

The other two guards let out a cry and drew their weapons, ready to fight the intruder, while Charles widened his eyes with a smile.

"Pierre!"

Next the other two guards were hit from behind, taken by surprise.

SBANG! SBANG!

Charles laughed in surprise when he saw George and Alexander with two proud smiles on their lips, while both of them were holding...

"Pans! Brilliant!" Charles exclaimed.

Pierre approached him, freeing him from the chains that bound his hands.

"I specify that we are doing this for Y/n. Not for you" the frenchman murmured, looking at him with a smirk and Charles rolled his eyes.

The four went out into the courtyard, where Carlos and the others were waiting for them.

"Quickly! Over here!" Lando exclaimed, leading them towards a rope hanging from the prison walls.

Charles looked at the rope and then turned to his rescuers, smiling sincerely at them.

"You guys, thank-"

But before Charles could cling to it and climb over the walls, the army of soldiers began to invade the courtyard, rushing towards them.

"You'll thank us later cabron!" Carlos exclaimed, and then ran towards the guards together with the others, so as to buy Charles time.

The only one who remained with Charles was the english Lewis, who looked at the younger man and pointed the rope with a nod.

"We left you a horse out there. Go to her. And be careful"

Charles nodded with determination and grabbed the rope in his hands, ready to climb.

"I will"

/////

Charles had never run so fast in his life. I mean, it was actually the poor horse that had galloped all the way, but you know what i mean. He arrived at the tower and rushed under it, his heart beating anxiously to see the girl again.

"Y/n! Are you here?!" he shouted with his head tilted towards the window.

Charles received no response, but he did not give up.

"Y/n! Let your hair down! Y/n!"

And finally, after seconds of silence that seemed infinite to him, he saw a long golden hair fall towards him. Charles let out a sigh of relief and, clutching her hair in his hands, he climbed back up the tower.

"I thought... I thought i lost you, chérie" he gasped, climbing through the window with a smile.

Smile that vanished when he saw the girl tied to a chain and gagged in front of him, who was trying to talk to him, to warn him. Charles started to approach her, but didn't notice how Gothel had slipped out of the darkness behind him.

Y/n watched with terrified eyes as Gothel stabbed Charles, piercing his abdomen with her dagger. She screamed his name from behind the gag, watching him fall to the ground and pressing his hand to his wound.

"Good. Now our secret will die with him" said the icy voice of Gothel, who was clutching the still bloody dagger.

The woman returned to Y/n and after taking the chain she began to drag her away, trying to take her towards the exit of the tower.

"You and i, on the other hand, will go where no one can find us. Never again!" she said, while Y/n began to squirm more than before, with the sole intention of reaching Charles.

"Y/n! That's enough! Let's go!" Gothel exclaimed angrily,

But the girl didn't listen to her and continued to move and move until the gag covering her mouth slipped down her neck, giving her a chance to speak.

"No! Please!" the girl exclaimed desperately. "Please let me heal him"

Gothel stopped to look at her suspiciously.

"If you let me heal him, i'll come with you. I'll follow you and stay with you forever, like you always wanted"

Y/n looked at her with a pleading look, praying that the woman had still some mercy inside her heart.

"I'll do anything you want, i promise" the girl said looking the woman in the eyes. "But please, just let me heal him"

Gothel remained silent for seconds that seemed endless to Y/n, but then she bent down to free her from the chain, then she went to Charles and tied him to the stair railing.

“In case you get the idea to follow us” the woman hissed after chaining him, then she walked away and left room for Y/n.

"Charles!"

Charles squeezed his eyes shut with a groan of pain, but opened them again when he felt the girl kneel next to his body.

"Let me see" she murmured hastily, making him move his hand away from the wound.

Y/n felt her heart beat quickly in anxiety when she saw the blood stain that was slowly spreading under his clothes and she tried with all her might not to panic.

"O-Okay, it's okay" she said nervously, lifting a shaking hand to stroke his hair, then resting it on his cheek. "I'm gonna take care of you and you'll get better, okay Charles? It's okay, don't be afraid"

"Y-Y/n-" he tried to call her, only to stop due to a cough. "Chérie..."

"Shh, everything's going to be alright, i promise. You just have to trust me" she murmured in fear.

Y/n started to wrap her hair around Charles' body, but stopped when she saw his hand covering hers and raised her head to look at him.

“No, i-i can't let you do this, Y/n” he said, gasping in pain.

"And i can't let you die" replied the girl, looking at him with shining eyes.

Charles shook his head.

"Y/n i... I can't lose you"

Y/n gave him an encouraging smile, squeezing his hand.

"It's going to be okay, Charles"

The two looked at each other for the last few seconds and Y/n opened her mouth to start singing, but was interrupted by Charles' voice.

“Y/n” he called softly, making her open her eyes to look at him. "Wait..."

He raised a hand so he could move her hair behind her ear, in the same sweet and delicate way he had done on the boat. Y/n saw the man lean forward and so she did the same, believing that what they were about to exchange was their first and last real kiss of her life. But before she knew it, Charles gripped her hair with one hand, while with the other...

ZAC!

Y/n's eyes widened, immediately putting a hand to her head and her heart fell when she realized that her long hair had just been cut.

"NO! WHAT DID YOU DO!?" Gothel suddenly barked.

The girl turned around quickly and saw a fragment of the mirror that had broken, on the ground next to her hair. Gothel, in desperation, began to pick up Y/n's hair, which was darkening second by second, in the hope of being able to hold on to the last second of youth she had left. But when even the last tip of her hair turned brown, Gothel began to feel the strength abandoning her body and saw her hands losing color and fill with wrinkles.

"No! No! No!" the terrified woman screamed, taking steps backwards. "NOOO!"

Y/n reached out to her by instinct and when she was about to stand up and reach her, she saw her kneeling on the ground with her hands pressed to her face. Gothel let out one last scream before her body disappeared in a pile of dust on the carpet. And Y/n would have loved to stay and mourn the passing of the woman who had taken care of her for 19 years, but there was another even more important person she was about to lose.

"Oh no, no no no..." she murmured hastily, looking back at Charles. "Charles!"

She took his face in her hands, looking with fearful eyes at his which were tired and on the verge of closing forever at any moment.

"Look at me, Charles! Stay with me!"

Y/n grabbed his hand and ran it through her short, dark hair, then quickly spoke the words to the song.

"Flower gleam and glow, let your powers shine"

“Y/n-” Charles called with a cough.

"Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine"

“Y/n”

The girl looked at him, letting out a sob when she realized that there was nothing left to do.

"Why did you do that? You fool…" she muttered, but what she earned in response from him was a simple, light smile.

Charles wanted to tell her many things at that moment, including how beautiful he found her even with her eyes full of tears. But he only squeezed her hand one last time.

"You were my new dream"

Y/n smiled tenderly.

"And you were mine"

Those of Charles were the last words that the girl heard before he took his last breath, while the grip on her hand loosened until it completely disappeared. Y/n looked at his still chest and his face now free of any pain with her trembling lip and then she began to sing again, pushing through the pain she felt in her heart with the passing seconds.

Flower, gleam and glow

Let your powers shine

Make the clock reverse

Bring back what once was mine

Heal what has been hurt

Change the fates' design

Save what has been lost

Bring back what once was mine

What once was mine

She had lost him forever. She closed her eyes and began to cry, lowering her face to his and letting her tears fall onto his cheeks.

Long seconds passed before Y/n noticed a glow coming from Charles' body, more precisely where he had been wounded on his abdomen. Her eyes widened when she saw long rays of light coming out of his body and enveloping the entire room, as they took the shape that looked like a flower. The girl watched that beautiful sight until the lights finally disappeared, along with Charles' wound.

Then she heard the sound of breathing and Y/n whirled around looking at Charles' face.

“Y/n…”

Her heart began to beat again with joy when she finally saw his eyes open again.

“I... I think this haircut looks suits you so much better, you know?” he asked with a smile.

"Charles!"

Charles was taken aback when he felt her threw herself against his body, hugging him around the neck. But he couldn't help but do the same, wrapping an arm behind her back and holding her close, with his face bent on her shoulder, not wanting to let her go for anything in the world. It was in that moment that he realized how much, in those lifeless seconds, he had missed being able to be close to her, comfort her, hug her and above all love her. Charles had truly found his new and only dream.

Y/n pulled away so she could look into his clear eyes, her hands tightening on his clothes. Charles smiled at her and reached out to her face to wipe away the last tears that had fallen from her eyes.

And then she suddenly kissed him. But he didn't object, on the contrary he accepted her lips with joy, not expecting anything else. And it didn't matter if the two had only known each other for a few days. It was fate that brought them together. They had both found someone who truly loved them for who they were and each willing to do anything to protect the other.

They were soulmates.

/////

Y/n looked anxiously at the castle doors, playing with her fingers and moving her feet nervously. But she stopped when she felt Charles' warm hand wrap around hers, making their fingers intertwine to calm her anxiety. She turned to look at him, meeting his eyes and his smile.

“It'll be okay, chérie” he murmured, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb.

She took a deep breath, looking at him with a smile and nodding.

Suddenly the doors in front of them opened and the girl's heart sank as she saw the figures of the king and queen before her eyes. Everyone present stood still for a few seconds, still shocked. Then the first to step forward was the queen, who advanced towards Y/n, followed next by her husband. Y/n in turn walked towards them, dragging Charles' hand behind her until he slowly let go.

When she was in front of her, the queen placed her hands on the girl's cheeks and looked her straight in the eyes. But despite the different length and color of her hair compared to her birth, the two royal spouses recognized her. Their beloved daughter had returned.

The three hugged each other and Y/n couldn't stop herself from crying silently against her mother's chest, feeling the warmth of the two parents enveloping her after a long time.

Charles watched the scene with a tender smile, preferring to remain on the sidelines and leave the sweet moment to the family. But then he saw the queen lift a hand from her daughter's body, offering it to him. Charles took it, believing that it was just a gesture to thank him for bringing the princess home, but the woman dragged him into the group hug, catching him off guard.

Y/n giggled, looking at Charles and he looked back, tilting his face so he could rest his forehead on her head. Finally she was home.

/////

Well, now i think you may have understood how our story ends. And what would a happy ending be without a beautiful wedding?

Charles abandoned the identity of Perceval the Thief, in order to return to living the life of the real Charles, free from all crime. He and Y/n got married and their wedding was one of the most beautiful weddings in the entire kingdom. They celebrated for days, both to celebrate the union between the two protagonists and to celebrate the return of the princess. And you can imagine who was invited to the wedding as a sign of thanks from Charles and Y/n, to those who had helped him escape from prison, right?

It was during the celebrations that Carlos met the woman he fell in love with, who became the love of his life. Lando managed to become a musician, George got a job as a tailor and so on... Everyone achieved their greatest dream. Everyone got their happy ending that they deserved.

Oh and if you're wondering who between Charles and Y/n proposed to the other...

"She asked me. Several times. So i couldn't say no to the poor girl, if you know what i mean"

"Charleees..."

"Okay, fine... It was me. And of course she said yes, i mean, have you seen me? How can you not marry a guy like me?"

So they lived happily ever after.

/////

Lemme know if you'd like more F1×Disney stories🥰 (if you liked this one obv)

[bluemirrorangel]

Tim Shepherd HC's Masterpost

all of my Tim Shepherd HC's

Runs his gang like the U.S. Navy.

Is canonically attractive in a model kind of way.

became 'the man of the house' at nine after his dad died.

became his siblings' guardian around sixteen after their parents walked out on them.

Doesn’t do much crime himself out of fear of being taken from them permanently.

Like Darry but a delinquent.

Deeply threatening.

Lives in constant fear of dying too young.

Taught Curly and Angela how to fight.

is in the middle of Sylvia and Dally's constant fighting.

secretly believes it's punishment for introducing the two to each other.

Tim and Darry had ponyboy and Curly’s dynamic.

Not entirely the same but in my head there was a brief period in time where they went to high school together so I imagine Tim being a lot like Curly and Darry being similar to Ponyboy,

but Tim looked up to Darry more than Curly does to Pony.

he was constantly trying to warn Darry of Paul's behaviour because a majority of the greasers that Paul and his friends jumped were from his neighbourhood.

Darry didn't listen, and Tim began to resent him a little bit.

because Darry was able to shed his greaser label and almost get treated the same as the Socs.

But I feel like that changes after the Curtis’s die and Darry becomes a parental figure because then it’s him looking up to Tim and asking him for help (because Tim’s been looking after Angela and Curly by himself for years.)

Tim is conflicted about this because while for the most part he feels just as bad for Darry as everyone else does because he was almost broke down when his dad died and was just as beat up when his mom and step dad left.

and they weren't even good parents, so he can't even begin to Imagine how it feels to lose parents who actually loved and looked after you.

but a tiny spiteful part of him feels a sick sense of satisfaction.

because even Darrel Curtis 'golden boy of the east side' and borderline class traitor can't escape the fate of living on the east side.

THE WHISTLE BOTH GANGS DO TO SEE WHOS THERE STARTED WITH THEM❗️❗️❗️

constantly stressed.

loses his goddamn mind when he finds out Pony and Curly are seeing each other.

he's so scared that they'll get careless and something will happen.

freaks out when Angela tells him she might be pregnant.

and goes ape shit when he finds out how her husbands treating her.

him and Darry secretly love hanging out with each other because they both get to experience things that they usually don't.

Tim gets to be the youngest in the room and doesn't have to take responsibility for everything.

and Darry gets to finally act his age.

cries for the first time since he was a kid when he finds out Dallas died.

gets shot in a bar fight that exact same night and almost dies.

was in the world's worst love triangle with Dallas and Sylvia.

I'm talking worse than challengers.

REFUSES to go to therapy

not because he doesn't believe in it just because he can NAWT begin to unpack his trauma.

i don't really have any modern hc's for him because I believe he'd stay the same tbh.

that's all of them :)

please please please talk to me about the outsiders 🙏🙏🙏 I AM BEGGING.🧎‍♂️🧎‍♂️🧎‍♂️🧎‍♂️

[firequeenofficial]

This weeks submission for @mcyt-soulmate-sweepstakes is for the prompt illusion. Me and my wonderful amazing soulmate @arabella377 (go show her love or die by my blade - her piece is here) successfully melded our minds this week and chose the same prompt!

This is a continuation of the Ranchers fics I did ages ago, set between this one in DL where Jimmy tells Tango about the other Life Series and this one in LimL where Tango tells Jimmy he still remembers Double Life (I've decided there was a chance Tango's memories could get wiped at the start of LimL so I get to write two reunions cause I'm normal).

Just a warning: this goes into some heavy topics regarding friendship, grief, and how much missing someone can hurt. If you're not in a place mentally and emotionally, I would not recommend you read it now, since it comes directly from my own experience and I was nearly crying writing it. Take care of yourself <3

If you want to read it on ao3, the link is here, and if you want to read the version with shipping and kissing etc (but the exact same plot and mostly the same wording), that one is here.

Without further ado, I present to you, illusion!

Tango remembered Double Life.

That was the first thing he noticed when he woke up on Hermitcraft when it was over. Pearl had won, and he had lost, and - as predicted - he remembered every second.

Every wonderful, short, spare second. There weren't enough, not nearly enough. He needed more time. More time to live, more time to fight, more time to-

Oh, who was he kidding. He just wanted more time with Jimmy. He wanted to hear him laugh, to watch the sun rise on his golden wings, to see that amazing smile just one more time. He wanted to show him how much he meant to Tango, how Tango would have done anything, anything at all, to have just a little more time with him. 

And now he'd lost his last chance.

The first thing Tango did after respawning back in his bed in the Citadel was double over and scream like a wounded warden.

Then he forced himself to get up and keep moving. He made himself act normally. When Etho showed up at his base a little after the respawn, he wasn't acting like a part of him had been ripped away. When Bdubs and Impulse joined them, probably acting out of FOMO, their interactions looked just how they always did, like they hadn't been soulmates just minutes ago, like their last death hadn't been in tandem.

But then Pearl sent a message in chat.

<PearlescentMoon> Tango can I borrow you a sec

"Oh, sorry, gentlemen!" Tango grinned like his heart wasn't about to burst out of his chest, like he hadn't spent the entirety of the conversation counting breaths in and out, like it wasn't taking all his concentration to keep his hair from flaring so high it would scorch his ceiling. "When Pearl calls, one must answer!"

Impulse laughed. He was the closest to Pearl out of the four of them. "Of course! Can't keep her waiting."

Tango took off without waiting for the others to fly together to Pearl's.

He worried for a second that Impulse might follow - he shared a base with Pearl after all - but an anxious glance over his shoulder showed him heading with Etho and Bdubs toward xB’s base.

Pearl was waiting for him at the end of her bridge when he arrived.

He could tell immediately, from the look in her eyes, that she remembered too. Just like Jimmy predicted.

"Oh, Pearl," he said, and pulled her immediately into a hug. She was taller than him, but that didn't matter when she fell to her knees, letting him crouch so they were level. Double Life hadn't gone well for Pearl, not for one second.

She was so young. Tango had spent an entire lifetime in the Nether before he'd even stepped foot in the overworld, far too many servers ago. He was older than most of the Hermits even knew. But Pearl... She was so, so young, only a few servers old. She shouldn’t have even been in the Games.

"It's over now," he breathed into her hair, holding her tight as she sobbed. "It's over. We're out."

"H- how can I look at Cleo again?"

Oh.

"I can keep her away if you want," Tango offered, not sure what else he could do. "Just for a little bit."

"She stole him!" Pearl gasped. "She stole him from me! I need to-" She made a sound that was eerily similar to a dog growling. How much time had she spent entirely alone with Tilly? The sound was followed by another shuddering sob. "I can't do this, Tango. How can I live with this?"

Tango swallowed and held her even tighter. All he had to offer was the truth. "I don't know. I'm sorry." After a moment, he added, "The best we can do is try, I think. I don't know that there is anything else we can do."

All things considered, Double Life had been amazing for him. Almost like a mini paradise. All he regretted, really, was his first death and his last. And not getting Scar with the warden. He would gladly go back and relive each and every moment. If he could go back and never leave, he'd do it in a heartbeat.

But Pearl should never have to go through any of that again. She never should have gone through any of it in the first place. He'd never been that fussed about the drama happening between the four of them, her and Scott and Cleo and Martyn, but he wished he had been now. He wished he'd done something to help. He wished it hadn't been necessary.

"It's gonna be okay," he promised. "I'm here, whatever you need."

"Th- thank you."

Before Tango could say another word, the sound of an elytra reached them, followed by the worst possible voice to show up at this moment.

"Hey, Pearl, is Gem around?" Cleo was chipper, not immediately registering the scene before her.

She noticed, however, when Pearl wrenched herself out of Tango's arms, sword already out and swinging, screaming, "YOU STAY AWAY FROM HER!"

"Woah!" Cleo launched herself into the sky to get away from Pearl as Tango rushed to grab the moth-hybrid's arm to stop her from following. "What's going-"

"I think it's best if you leave." Tango's voice was colder than he'd meant it to be, but it got the point across.

Looking confused and worried and hurt, Cleo turned and flew off, looking back only once.

As soon as she was out of render distance, Pearl collapsed again, and Tango knelt beside her, pulling her in as tight as he could.

Neither of them spoke for a long time. Pearl didn't mention how, the longer Tango held her, the closer the embrace got to unbearable warm. Tango didn't mention how every tear that landed on his skin stung and hissed as it evaporated.

He missed Jimmy's feathers wrapping around him every time he hugged Tango.

Finally, when Pearl trusted herself to speak again, she whispered, "I can't lose her, too."

"I know."

"She's my best friend."

"I know."

"How are you doing this? Jimmy was-"

Tango swallowed. "I know."

He knew. Jimmy was amazing. He was kind and gentle and funny and just the right amount of self-deprecating to match Tango, and he was such a good builder and he never blamed Tango for anything and he was just. Perfect. He was perfect.

And Tango missed him.

"I know," he repeated.

He was glad he couldn't cry. It would make staying strong for Pearl - who so clearly needed it more than him right now - impossible.

"Hey, Pearl?"

"Hm?"

"You'll never lose me."

Pearl's shoulders hitched, and she buried her face deeper in Tango's shoulder.

"I'll always be your friend," he swore.

Pearl sniffed, then repeated, "You'll always be my-"

"-soulmate, my Rancher."

Tango's head whipped up with a gasp, his attention immediately pulled away by a familiar voice, speaking familiar words. The words Jimmy had said to him in their final moments side by side, in the brief seconds where they were together in the void after Pearl's win.

There he was. Jimmy. His Jimmy, his Rancher, his soulmate, standing behind Pearl, just inside her base, that adorable smile on his face.

Tango froze, unable to believe it. "J- Jimmy?" How was he here? How was this possible, he wasn't a Hermit, and yet, there he was, clear as day, on Hermitcraft!

"Hm?"

Pearl looked up, then over her shoulder to try and follow Tango's gaze. But, instead of looking excited or asking what was going on or encouraging Tango to go to him, she just turned back to him, brow furrowed.

"Did you say Jimmy?" she asked.

"Y- yeah! He's right there!" He looked back to Pearl for a second, and when his gaze was immediately, instinctively, magnetically drawn back to Jimmy, he found-

Nothing.

Startled, Tango launched to his feet, rushing to the spot where Jimmy had just been, he was just here! "No, where did he go?! Come back!" He looked around, expecting to see him standing somewhere else, hiding just behind a corner or a column, ready to just out and scare him. He was here, he was just here! "Jim!"

Pearl's voice was so gentle, far too gentle, when she said, "Jimmy's not here, Tango."

"No, no, he was here, he's here, I saw him! I heard him!"

"I didn't hear anything, mate."

"Well, you weren't listening! I heard him, I know I did!"

"Tango. It's just your brain playing tricks on you, man. He's not here."

If he could cry, he would be a mess right now. Instead, his flames roared, reaching up like they could somehow reach Jimmy like that. He was here. He had to be.

But he wasn't. He was- he was gone. He was gone, maybe forever, who knew? Jimmy said there had been previous games, but Tango didn't know if there would be subsequent games. What if they'd lost for nothing? What if he was stuck remembering Jimmy forever but never seeing him again? How could he live with that forever?

"Tango?"

The blazeborn jumped. Pearl sounded a million miles away - he'd forgotten she was even there.

"Sorry, uh, what were you saying?"

Pearl gave a sad smile. "Go home, mate. I'll be okay. Take care of yourself."

"But you-"

"I'll be fine." She pulled him in a tight hug. "Thank you for coming."

Tango squeezed her as hard as he could. "You'll come to me if you ever need anything, right? Promise?"

"I promise."

They pulled apart, and Tango took just one second to squeeze her hand. "We'll get through this. You'll see."

She couldn't muster up another smile, just sighed and wiped her eyes and breathed, "I hope so."

With one last shared look that contained words that didn't exist in any overworld language that Pearl would be able to understand, Tango opened his elytra and shot into the sky, flying in a straight shot back home.

As soon as he landed - fell, really - in front of his citadel, he staggered inside, barely keeping his knees underneath him until he reached the main hall, where he'd found sound echoed the best. Then he planted his feet, tilted his head back, and shrieked. Immediately, his hair turned icy blue, his skin paled and the flames at the end of his tail turned to sparks. And then he went on screaming. On and on and on and on, until his throat burned and his lungs were empty and his fire was almost all the way to the top of the high ceiling. The citadel wailed with him, echoing his voice around a million times until it was all he could hear, until the wardens far below awoke and joined in, until every mob within his walls was joining in the symphony of pain.

Only when he physically couldn't scream anymore did he finally fold in on himself, dropping to the floor.

The citadel returned to sleep, leaving behind a silence that pressed on him, making breathing difficult.

The missing him hurt. It hurt so much, worse than a creeper explosion, than an arrow in the back, than an enderman fist around his throat. It hurt worse than anything he'd ever felt in his life. Even when Jimmy had become distant after their second death, it hadn't hurt like this. That was fear. This was... agony. It was torture, pure torture. He'd had his heart sliced clean in two, and he could feel it so keenly, the other half of him unknowable servers away, unreachable.

And then-

"Tango? What's wrong?"

Tango's head shot up as he stood faster than ever before.

He was there! Jimmy was there! Tango knew he'd seen him, he was right!

"Jim!" He gasped, rushing right at Jimmy, so relieved he started laughing.

He threw open his arms, ready to toss them around his Rancher and never ever let go again, but.

But.

But he fell right through.

He just barely managed to catch himself before falling splat on his face, then turned around, panting, eyes wide.

Jimmy was smiling at him, just a little, like he couldn't make it reach any further.

"Pearl was right," Tango breathed.

"I'm sorry."

Tango squeezed his eyes shut. He couldn't bear to look at Jimmy, knowing it wasn't really him.

"Why couldn't you just leave properly, like Joel or Scott or-" Tango's voice broke, and he swallowed, crouching as he made himself keep going. "Why did you have to hang around like this? Why did you have to get my hopes up?!" He was shouting again, and he caught himself before he could keep going. Even though he wasn't real, Tango didn't like shouting at Jimmy. He pressed the balls of his heels into his eyes, trying to ground himself.

"I'm sorry," not-Jimmy said again, his voice perfectly matching the regret Jimmy would have had in his voice. But then he said something Jimmy wouldn't have said: "Technically, you're doing this to yourself."

It was true. And yet, Tango couldn't help blaming the illusion on itself. It was just his own stupid brain lying to him, Tango knew that, but it was easier to blame the spectre than himself. So he screamed, punched the floor so hard a bit of rock chipped off, and opened his eyes so he could toss the rock right at not-Jimmy. It passed right through, of course, but it also made not-Jimmy disappear.

Tango was alone again.

He allowed himself five minutes to sob tearlessly. No more, no less.

Then he buried himself in his work. When he was fixing redstone, he didn't have space in his head to think about anything else. When he was building, he was too busy doing calculations about distances and muttering to himself about palettes to notice if a certain blond avian was standing nearby. When he was test running with Hermits, their terrified screams and confused questions easily drowned out any other voices that might be trying to talk to him.

It became easier, with time. Easier everyday to ignore not-Jimmy, though it nearly killed him every time. With practice, he stopped looking away in the middle of conversations whenever the hallucination spoke, though his heart still skipped a beat at the sound of his voice. After many, many attempts, he learnt not to reach for him when he wasn't focusing entirely on his actions.

He visited Pearl often, the pair getting closer quickly. She was the only person who knew Jimmy still followed him around, which was why she trusted him enough to tell him she occasionally saw Scott, too. She joked that they'd have to make the two meet up sometime. Tango, who still felt like there was a beast clawing at his ribcage every time he even thought about the way Jimmy looked at Scott sometimes, hadn't laughed.

The pain never faded. Most days, it was... manageable. Something he'd simply learnt to live with. With Pearl and Impulse and Etho's help, he learned to smile again, and then laugh. He knew Impulse and Gem were helping Pearl too, though none of them had any idea what was going on. He knew Pearl was talking to Cleo again.

He knew she still had to leave her sword at home whenever she knew she would be seeing Cleo.

Some days, though, the pain was unbearable. It would hit out of nowhere, while he was relaxing or working quietly or even laughing at something. Xisuma once joked Tango was neglecting his livestock (which did not exist) when he was spending all his time down in his hole, and Tango had laughed, finding it genuinely funny. But then he'd remembered the cows they had on the Ranch, and with no warning whatsoever he was on the ground, his entire body running out of strength to keep going in an instant as he gasped for breath. Xisuma had panicked above him, and not-Jimmy had knelt beside him like he could help. It hadn't helped even a little bit.

It felt like grief, he realised. Jimmy was alive, he knew, and some part of him was certain he'd get to see Jimmy again, maybe even soon, but still the missing him was so strong the only word that fit was grief. He didn't know how much longer he could go on. How long could a creature of the Nether, far from home, live with only half a heart?

"Tango?"

"Hm?"

He looked up at Impulse, realising he'd been speaking. They were sitting in the Nether, just chatting about nothing in particular.

"Sorry, what?"

"You good, man? I lost you for a minute, there."

"Y- yeah. Yeah, I'm good." He could almost feel not-Jimmy's hand on his shoulder. "Just been a long week, you know."

"Tango, it's Wednesday."

"Right. Long day, then."

"It's noon."

"Right."

Impulse gave a small smile. "If I'm boring you-"

"No, no, no, no!" Tango interrupted, horrified. He'd never meant to upset Impulse with this. "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry, no! No, it's not that, I swear."

But Impulse just laughed. "I'm teasing, man! I know how you get, it's fine."

Tango sighed and lay down, arms spread to the side, fingers digging into the soft, clay-like netherrack. He stared at the ceiling, far above. The overworld was beautiful, and he wouldn’t give it up for anything, but he usually felt safer here, where he couldn't see the sky, like he was less likely to float away.

"What's bothering you, buddy?"

Tango took a minute to try and think it through, to figure out how to explain it to someone who would never remember how it felt to have a soulmate. Finally, he asked slowly, "What does it feel like when you miss Skizz?"

Tango had never met Skizz - at least, not that could remember, he was less sure now that he knew there were gaps in his memory - but he’d known Impulse long enough that he’d heard plenty about him.

Impulse looked down at him, shocked. "What's brought this on?"

"Just..." Tango sighed again, frustrated with his inability to put it into words. "Just answer the question. Please?"

The other man was silent for several seconds. Tango knew it wasn't entirely fair. After all, there was a reason Impulse rarely, if ever, spoke of the angel who had pulled him out of the Nether. The angel who had quickly become his best friend. But Tango couldn't think how else to explain to Impulse what he was feeling.

When Impulse spoke, it was with barely disguised pain. "It feels like a part of me is missing. Like, the only thing I want is to see him, but I don't know what I'd do or say to him if he wasn't standing in front of me right now. I'm scared, sometimes, that he wouldn't want me anymore, that maybe he's found someone else, someone better. Some days, it hurts so much I can't get out of bed. Some days, I'm terrified I'll never see him again, even though I know he'd do anything to get to me if he could. And I would too. But the pain is always there, no matter what. I've learnt to live with it, but... but it still hurts. It doesn't ever stop." Impulse paused, his breath hitching. Like Tango, he couldn't form tears, but that didn't mean they didn't have some other way of crying. Tango screamed. Impulse simply stopped breathing altogether.

As a nether golem, Impulse wasn't a creature of fire like Tango was, so he didn't need air as much, not like Tango or most of the other hermits. He could go hours without breathing. And, apparently, he sometimes did.

Eyes still trained straight above, Tango nodded.

Another long silence, and then:

"When I joined Hermitcraft, it felt like I was abandoning him." Impulse spoke quietly, breathless in the same way Tango would have shouted. "Like I was going on to something so, so much better and leaving him behind after he'd refused to leave me down here. It felt like I was telling him I didn't care about him. About everything he'd done for me. He told me to go, and I knew it would be better for me, for both of us, in the long run, but I couldn't shake this feeling that, if I never saw him again, it would be my fault. I'm worried if we meet again and I tell him how amazing it is here, he'll think I prefer it over any server that has him in it. But really, I would give entire servers just to see him again."

Impulse swallowed, and Tango glanced at him to see his hands over his face, his back completely still. Not a single breath stirred him. Tango let the silence stretch out so Impulse could work through whatever it was he had to let out before he could go on.

When he was ready, Impulse finished, "For a long time, he was all I had. Now, I have everything except him. And I hate it. It doesn't make sense, cause I love my life here, and I love everything I've built, and I love you and all the others, but..." He trailed off.

"But you love him more," Tango finished for him, voice soft.

"Yeah." Impulse turned his head to meet Tango's eyes. He still wasn't breathing any more than he had to to speak. "Who is this about?"

Tango let his eyes gaze slide away. "You don't know him." Impulse didn't remember Double Life, and he wasn't on Jimmy's list of people who remembered the others. He had no way of remembering Jimmy.

Tango still hadn't managed to build up the courage to talk to Grian, the only other Hermit who would have any memory of the Life Games.

"You love him?"

Tango's throat closed up, a sure sign that a scream was just one breath away, so he just nodded instead, pulling his arms into his chest.

After a moment's hesitation, Impulse leaned back to lie next to him. On Tango's other side, not-Jimmy mirrored their position.

Impulse's next question was wary, probing. "Does this have anything to do with whatever Pearl's going through?" When Tango didn't answer immediately, Impulse added, "Only, you both started struggling at the same time."

Tango swallowed down the scream. "Y- yeah. It's... something like that. How is she doing?" It was easier to talk about Pearl than himself.

"I thought she was doing okay, but then she snapped at Cleo again the other day, so I don't know. She wasn't even doing anything, just talking to Gem, but Pearl nearly ran her through. I don't know what's going on with her."

"Every day is a step further," Tango said. "She's... We're getting there."

"If you need to talk-"

"Thanks, man."

They were silent for several moments, Impulse not breathing and Tango smothering screams, before Tango turned to him and said, just to watch his eyes light up, "Hey, did you see what Grian's been doing?"

"Incredible, right?!"

Impulse never missed an opportunity to rave about Grian's building. 

*

The pain never stopped. It never went away. Some days, it pinned him to his bed. Sometimes, he did nothing but scream all day. Once, he saw Etho come up behind Bdubs and hug him in just the same way Jimmy used to do to him, and he'd had to excuse himself before he could make a fool of himself. But still, it got easier. He learnt to work around the pain. These days, his eyes passed right over not-Jimmy, his voice registering only in the very back of his brain. If his heart skipped a beat, making his fire flare up in the middle of a conversation, then the other Hermits didn't mention it. If his eyes sometimes stared at nothing, whoever he was speaking to just waved a hand to catch his attention back. If he sometimes just curled up with Pearl, neither of them saying a word, then Gem and Impulse gave them all the space they needed.

Some days, she showed up at the citadel and begged him not to let her anywhere near Cleo. Sometimes, he would spend hours in her base, eyes squeezed tight shut, his own fire giving him flashbacks so vivid he could feel not-Jimmy gripping his arms, holding him still.

It was hard, and it would probably always be hard, but more often than not these days, it wasn't impossible anymore.

Then Grian announced The Rift had come to life, and they were being called to another server.

Tango was just as excited as the others - this season of Hermitcraft had lasted far longer than previous ones, and while they were all still having fun, they were still eager for something new, to meet new people and have new experiences. In the days leading up to the date they'd decided on for passing through the rift, rumours spread like wildfire about what the new server would be. Would it be somewhere any of them had been before? Would they recognise anyone from their time in the server hub, or in other servers? Gem especially seemed ecstatic, though she refused to tell anyone why.

It seemed like a lifetime passed before the morning finally dawned where they could step through the mysterious portal in Grian's basement. As they gathered around it, Tango noticed Gem was gripping Pearl's hand tight. Pearl's clinginess over the past few months, rather than scaring Gem away, had instead brought the two closer together, and they were rarely seen apart these days. Cleo had learnt to spot when Pearl was feeling especially territorial and was keeping a carefully wide berth, talking animatedly with Joe.

The gathered Hermits were excited, curious and anxious, which was a recipe for disaster when you wanted to get their attention. After a few attempts, Grian gave up and turned to Impulse. No words were needed before Impulse held out an arm for Grian to fly up to and perch on so he could fling his voice out as far as possible.

"Guys, can we just chill for a second?!" he shouted.

A kind of silence fell - with this many Hermits together, it would be impossible to get a complete silence - and all eyes turned to Grian.

"Right, I know a few of you know this already-" his eyes held Pearl's for a second "-but mysterious portals can be dangerous, so we need to be on our guard. The most important thing, of course, is to have fun, but I don't want to come back with any less Hermits than we went with, okay?"

Nods and agreeing cheers from the Hermits got the small avian grinning.

"Last one there's a rotten dragon egg!" he announced, and leapt off of Impulse's arm to fly straight through the portal, disappearing.

Impulse chuckled, shaking his head fondly, before rushing after him. The other Hermits followed with cheers, and Tango, laughing, was swept along in the tide, straight through the portal.

*

Right off the bat, Empires looked amazing. Everyone he met was so friendly, and there were even a few familiar faces - Joel was loud as usual, and Scott was painfully awkward around Pearl and Cleo, the former of which did her best to avoid him, and the latter seeming very confused about the whole situation. Gem laughed as she was welcomed like a returning hero, and Pearl and False were confused when they received the same treatment.

The tour was a lot of fun. Tango enjoyed seeing the creativity of the players in this world, and how it differed from that of the Hermits'. Unlike the patchwork that was Hermitcraft, everything here seemed to somehow fit together perfectly. And yet, every single build showed the unique mark and style of its builder, like a signature on a piece of art.

In fact, the entire server seemed to be one huge masterpiece.

He laughed when they arrived at Tumble Town. Something about it was familiar, like home, even though he'd never seen anything like it on Hermitcraft, and it was certainly nothing like the Nether. Still, something settled in his chest, a monster whose roaring he'd learnt to ignore returning to sleep at last.

When he first saw him, Tango's eyes simply slid right over him like they'd done so many times. But then he heard the gasp, and he whipped around to look back fully, heart pounding.

Because Jimmy was staring back at him, eyes wide, like he was seeing a ghost, like he couldn't believe it.

Immediately, Tango started noticing other things. Like how he wasn't wearing the outfit not-Jimmy was always wearing - a sheriff's uniform rather than his Rancher getup. Like how, despite this, his bandana was still around his neck, just like how Tango's was under his cloak. Like how his eyes still held that same sparkle, his mouth still quirked up at the side in the same way, his wings still shone like the purest gold.

"Is that-" Tango gasped.

"Is that my Rancher?!" Jimmy's voice was high pitched, excited, squealing in a way not-Jimmy had never done, not once.

Tango's feet were moving before he knew what he was doing, running right at Jimmy without holding back. For one horrible second, he worried he'd just fall again like he had that day what felt like years again. But then Jimmy caught him, and they were a tangle of limbs and wings and a tail and both were laughing and Jimmy was crying and Tango thought he'd never let go. Instead, he lifted Jimmy up - the avian was taller than him, but weighed next to nothing - and spun him around and around, overjoyed.

When he put him down again, Jimmy pulled back a little so he could cup Tango's face and look into his eyes. He was beaming, and Tango couldn’t resist reaching up to brush a lock of hair from his forehead that had escaped the usual confines of his fringe.

Finally, finally, he was back with his Rancher, and he couldn’t smother his smile. This was how it was supposed to be, how they were supposed to be, and he couldn’t put into words how much he’d been missing it. It was…

It was perfect. It was everything he'd been dreaming of for far too many months.

With a shaky laugh, Jimmy leaned down and lifted Tango’s face just enough to press their foreheads together.

"I missed you," Tango breathed.

Jimmy hummed. His arms had fallen down to wrap around Tango’s back, keeping him close. "I missed you too. So much."

"Yeah?"

Jimmy swallowed, nodding against Tango’s forehead. "Yeah."

Tango’s relief was immeasurable. He’d never admit, but when Impulse had mentioned being afraid Skizz wouldn’t want him back, the same fear had bloomed in Tango, too. But it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true, Jimmy had missed him just as much as Tango had! He burst out laughing, too happy to hold it in. "We’re sticking together from now own, big man."

Then Grian cleared his throat, and the two jumped apart - mostly, only their hands were clinging to each other now - and turned to look at the audience they'd forgotten they had. Tango's hair was burning bright with embarrassment, and Jimmy's hand was warm and clammy in his.

They'd never held hands in Double Life, Tango realised. They'd curled up together in bed, clung to each other after dying, fell asleep draped over each other, but they'd never held hands.

He forced his brain to focus, to meet Grian and Scar and Scott's gazes and not grin completely like an idiot.

Scott was grinning. "Awww, this is sweet!"

"I take it you two know each other, then," Scar said casually, and Grian burst out laughing.

He could hear the smirk in Jimmy's voice when he answered, "We've met."

Grian only laughed harder.

Tango couldn't bring himself to mind. For the first time in far too long, he felt like he was exactly where he needed to be - at Jimmy's side. 

[jordanthejaguar]

Some freewriting I did to ease species dysphoria hope you enjoy

Being a werewolf is weird.

Werewolves sit in a really awkward position when it comes to therianthropy. I'm neither human, nor animal, kind of this weird in between. I don't really fit in anywhere. I don't fit in around most “normal” people, cause, uh, I'm a genderfluid girl who likes to pretend she's a werewolf. But I can't relate to other therians either. I haven't had these profound shifting experiences or past memories or anything. I just picked up a book one day (the esteemed author R.L. Stine’s Werewolf of Fever Swamp), and thought, WOW BEING A WEREWOLF SOUNDS SO FUN!

I began to wish that one night I’d transform into some monstrous beast and be able to prowl around for a while. Not hurt people or animals or anything. Just run around and have fun. Maybe visit a few of my friends in the middle of the night and… then just hang out. Just a werewolf girl and her human besties, running through the woods and generally having a good time. That became a fantasy for me. Through the rest of elementary school I daydreamed about werewolves. Every tingle in my body, any strange sensation, and I’d start to think “This is it! I'm finally turning!” I'd make up fantasies about my parents taking me outside one full moon and revealing that our family is part of a werewolf bloodline which only manifested once I came of age, or something like that.

And then I hit high school. That's when it became a full blown obsession. I started reading every piece of werewolf literature I could find. Scoured the internet. I read a ton of pretty good werewolf books, most notably the Vesper series (check it out. seriously) and a few other werewolf themed books from the aforementioned R.L. Stine. There were some pretty bad ones too. Stupid sappy romances. But throughout all this I didn't feel fulfilled. I wanted more. What was driving this obsession? Yes, I wanted to be a werewolf. But that isn't possible. So why can't I just stop thinking about it?

It was a year ago today when I found out about the therian community. I met another werewolf for the first time. He explained how therianthropy works, and I was like “Dude. That's literally me!” This whole time I didn't have a word for how I felt. That's when I started identifying as a werewolf.

Since then I've met a ton of interesting therians. Among my best friends are a dragon, a golden retriever, and an alien lemur. And I've met many, many werewolves. You guys have probably heard that wolfhood is a spectrum. Well, I may look like I'm on the monster part of the spectrum, but, yeah, I’m just a big lonely puppy at heart. A typical full moon for me would probably consist of a nice walk through the woods. No running, because I have a stupid lung condition. Then after the walk I'd just watch StarCraft videos on YouTube while cuddling my pet rabbit. Just this big-ass werewolf curled up in her blankets with her snout deep in a jar of peanut butter and a wee little snow white bnuuy on her lap. You can't tell me that doesn't sound cozy.

So, yeah. Fuck the stereotype that all werewolves are bloodthirsty killers. I'm just a wolp. A really big one with huge fangs and glowing yellow eyes. So, uhh, I hope you enjoyed my half asleep ramblings about being a werewolf. I’m always open to make new friends, so anyone reading this, feel free to shoot me a DM. I don't bite.

[laxmiree]

[CN] MLQC’s Lucien - Flooded ASMR - English Translation

⚠️ SPOILER ALERT!! ⚠️

This post contains a detailed spoiler for a date that has not been released in EN yet! Feel free to notify me if there are any mistakes in the translation~

Lucien’s 2024 CN Birthday Event (Golden Love Ratio)✧ Birthday Story | Birthday Prologue + Birthday Date | ASMR (You're here)

⚠️ This ASMR is NSFW and NOT suitable for individuals under the age of 18 due to its sexual nature. It is recommended that those who do not meet this age requirement refrain from proceeding beyond this point.

Twitter link [click here]

Transcript under the cut~

[Transcript]

[soft creak of a door opening, followed by a gentle click as it closes]

I'm home

[his footsteps drawing closer]

Mmh

Today is indeed a little more tiring than usual.

Hm?

You want to help me relax a bit?

Of course I have no reason to refuse

[squelching noises]

[chuckles]

Are you using essential oil and wood chips for massage?

Hmm, this feels very novel

I can really smell the fragrance of the wood and the essential oil

very relaxing

[chuckles]

I need to take my clothes off?

Hmm...

[light creak of the bed as he sits down]

[whispers] But I'm feeling a bit lazy, can you help me?

[rustling of fabric as his clothes got taken off + faint zipper unzipping if you listen closely🤪]

[contented exhale] Hah...

I've laid down obediently like a good boy now

Next,

you can do whatever you want—

I’ll go along with everything.

[chuckles] Sit a little closer,

it'll be easier for you that way

[sound of liquid being poured]

[some sus squelching noises + his comfortable soft moan]

Maybe it's because your hands are so warm

but I already feel much more relaxed.

Mm

I was indeed feeling a bit irritable earlier because of work.

It wasn't that I didn't want to tell you...

maybe it was more like...

I purposely wanted you to pick up on it.

[sus noises linger, followed by his delicious gasp]

[hoarsely] Your technique is really good

[gasps] I just don't know—

when did you learn all of this?

Hm?

Is this a surprise you've prepared for my birthday?

[chuckles] But,

you’ve already given me so many gifts.

[sound of his soft, breathy moan accompanied with the sus noise in the background]

Hmh

Okay

I'll behave

[comfortably exhales]

Go on

No matter what you do

I won't resist

[His breathy moan continues

but then a surprised gasp escapes as she touches... a certain place]

Here too?

[chuckle] Of course you can

However

I’m afraid that because it feels too good,

I'll become even greedier.

[the sus wet sounds and his comfortable moan leave no doubt where her hand is exploring right now🤪]

Hmh

feels so good....

Can you...

come a little closer?

[oh GOD the slippery sounds mixed with his desperate and breathless gasps... (๑/////๑ " )]

[he rolls over, and with a thud, now he's on top]

…This gift is so special,

I don't want to be the only one to enjoy it

The way you helping me relax— so serious,

so adorable,

It makes me uncontrollably

want you to experience it too.

Let me help you relax as well,

Okay?

[chuckles + rustling noises of her fabric, only god knows where he's touching]

Can't I?

I'm just purely

want the person I like

to feel the same joy as I do

Since I’m the birthday boy

I naturally have the right to share this 'joy'

Don't turn me down

teach me how to do it

[rustling of fabric as he takes off her clothes]

[the sounds of wet and sus noises as he's simply... returning the favor]

Is it like

this?

It seems like there's not enough oil.

I'll add a little more.

[sounds of the oil being poured then something chaotic happens and now the oil spilled]

Sorry,

I'm clumsy

It’s all spilled—

so much oil all over

Looks like it’ll need a thorough cleaning later.

But,

I'm no different.

[sus squelching noises continues again]

It seems like this

is a bit more relaxed than before.

What do you think?

[wet kisses join the mix, but I'm 69% convinced it is NOT on her lips 🤪]

There's no need to hide any emotions,

whether it's joy

or what you desire

just tell me everything

After all

I'm starting to become less patient

[Is he maybe... going in? HIS MOANS IS NOT FOOLING ANYONE]

Research has kept me busy these past few days

I’ve been missing you all the time.

I want to be with you just like this...

always stay together

and doing some interesting things

[HIS KISSES AND PANTS, he's really going at it—aren't these wet noises a bit too fast for a simple massage?]]

H-hah...

Just like now

gazing at you like this,

sinking into your warmth and softness

without thinking about...

anything at all

Do you know

the you right now

look very tempting

and very beautiful.

[the way his kisses became more and more DESPERATE, with the sus noises still playing in the background🫣]

Making a greedy man like me

unable to help

but want to devour you whole

[something... unstated happens and he gradually calms down]

...Thank you

I really like this gift

[chuckles and kiss]

Give me a little more time,

Allow me, bit by bit,

to share it all with you.

[the bed creaks, followed by kisses as he continues into the second round]

[scientia-rex]

Read some more of Toxic Parents tonight and wow!!!! the amount of anger I have!!! and the incredible unwillingness I have to actually remember my childhood and feel associated feelings!!!!! Like, there are events I keep telling over like talismans, because these are the events that prove I'm not crazy. These are things that happened that should never have happened. The time Dad kicked the door in is the biggest one. The time I spent twelve straight hours cowering in the far back of our station wagon with my fingers jammed in my ears so I wouldn't hear my father screaming at my mother and my mother sobbing as we drove to a different state. The time I told my mother I had gotten accepted to graduate school and her first words were, "How are you going to pay for it?" instead of "Congratulations" or "I'm proud of you."

But these aren't all of it. They're so far from all of it. One memory I have is not of the presence of abuse, but the sudden, bewildering absence of it: my sister drove me to the nearest town with a mall, an hour and a half away. We were stopping to pick up snacks for the drive back, I think at a Safeway. I picked up a box of Golden Grahams cereal and nervously asked my sister if I could have it. She said, "Of course you can, you know what you want." In the limbus of a childhood spent being told I was picking the wrong soda for myself when I gave my order at fast food restaurants, suddenly being told I could have what I wanted T-boned me emotionally. It was like running into a wall I hadn't known was there. What? I can just want things? I can just get things and have them because I want them? I don't have to justify it, or lie, or hide what I want? No one is going to tell me I'm stupid for wanting something or that I'll regret it?

Just an incessant drip-drip-drip of emotional abuse, sometimes punctuated by a flash flood. "If I leave your mother, how do you think you're going to eat? You're going to end up on the street."

And now, reading the section on how children end up feeling about the passive parents who enable abuse, I just think, oh, there's me! There's me. I hated her and pitied her and loved her and wanted more for her. I didn't have the adult emotional capacity to understand how much of her life she was complicit in, but damningly, I did vaguely, tangentially understand that she was constantly making excuses for Dad--coming to my bedroom to sit on my bed and tell me, while crying, that he was sorry, while he never apologized. Making it my job to comfort her. I said to her once that I remember, "If he was really sorry, he'd stop doing this," and she just looked at me with something that looked like sorrow but I could tell was rage--she was angry at me for not forgiving him and letting us snap right back into the "good" phase between angry outbursts, where we could, for however long it lasted, pretend to be a normal family.

And how she always resented me. She resented that I was separate from her, she resented that I could do and see and understand things she couldn't, she was angry when I went into Psychology, even angrier when I went into medicine. She's been throttling down her anger at Dad for as long as I've been alive, pretending to be malleable, having vague health complaints and maladies mixed in among the real ones, forever retiring to her bed with a washcloth over her eyes instead of interacting with me.

And now that I'm an adult, and not just an adult but a middle-aged doctor, why don't I call? Why do I insist on bringing up the past? Why do I expect Dad to apologize? I'm hurting his feelings, after all.

The past. Sure. When I graduated from medical school, he named the worst doctor we ever met and said, "He went to medical school, too. Don't get a big head."

And when we were talking, once, not long ago, maybe two years or so, about how he used to stand there and yell at us--I can't remember any of the words anymore, just the way he looked, the tone of his voice, the experience like being buffeted by a strong wind--he said, "At least your sister fought back. You just stood there and took it."

I can't imagine a clearer illustration that he doesn't actually regret his behavior. He doesn't regret his actions. He still feels justified. We were disappointments, we were failures, we weren't him, we weren't what he wanted for us, and more than that, we were convenient targets for his rage. You can do almost anything to your children and get away with it. And he didn't hit us, so it was okay, and the fact that we were hurt by the actions he took with the intent to hurt us means that we were weak. And it's okay to hurt the weak.

Christ! This is the man who, in a fit of sullen self-pity, when I gave him a mug that said "World's #1 Dad" for Father's Day when I was probably eight or nine, talked about how we both know that's not true. As if a child is your therapist. As if it were my responsibility to reassure him.

My mother has read Toxic Parents. My mother has read Why Does He Do That? She has a bachelor's and most of a master's in psychology. She has an IQ of 150. She is a bad mother. It feels like the worst judgment you can make, a bad mother. It feels worse than calling someone a bad father. Because we expect less from fathers. But a bad mother is unnatural.

But lots and lots and lots of mothers are bad at being mothers. And I love mine and I hate her, and I'm angry and I'll always be angry, and I'll die angry, and I have to try to carve what happiness I can from a world I entered into under false pretenses. I was always told I was wanted. I knew I wasn't. I may have been intentional, but I wasn't wanted.

My mother's mother just died last week. I didn't know her. She chose not to know us. I hadn't seen her since I was twenty-two and graduated from college. My mother is struggling with her relationship with her mother. She often tells me her mother was a narcissist. I want to ask her what she thinks she is. She's not a narcissist, but she's an enabler, she's a doormat, she's a classic case of codependency, and I don't think she sees it that way. I always got the sense she was just waiting for us to grow up and go away so she and Dad could go back to being happily miserable alone together.

I asked her, this last year, if she'd read Why Does He Do That? and she said she had, and she asked me carefully why I was thinking about it, waiting for me to confess to her that my husband of ten years was abusive. She's been gunning for this relationship since the beginning--I'd been with him for maybe a year when she mailed me a copy of He's Just Not That Into You (or maybe it was the sequel, It's Called a Breakup Because it's Broken) along with an article on how to date as a single older woman. I was 23. She was flabbergasted when I said I thought Dad was abusive. Denied it immediately. I listed examples and she didn't even say words, just made simultaneously pained and exasperated noises.

She wants me to be single and a career failure and pathetic so she can feel good about herself in comparison. Dad thinks he wants me to be like him, but if I actually behaved like he does, I think he finally would belt me.

I had to hide everything good in me from them so they wouldn't deliberately ruin it. I couldn't tell them about my writing. The first time I finished writing a novel I told Mom and she didn't even acknowledge it, just told me to do the dishes. I was sixteen. I can't tell them what I love about my husband because it would be like speaking to them in a foreign language. They think it's a performance, like their performance, and they're always waiting for me to slip up and reveal the misery they're sure is lurking just underneath.

I've done well. They don't own me. I wish I had real parents, but I'm going to try not to shop for oranges at the hardware store anymore.

[wildwinterlunas]

My (hopefully) last complaint about Junkertown and the Junkers before my inevitable Re-write post

Junkers vs. MAD MAX

Alright I'm already on a roll with this and I've already committed myself to doing a rewrite of Junkertown and the Junkers, but I have one more thing to complain. That being the fact that they butcher the media they are referencing, that being Mad Max. For more context this is also coming form an Australian who has never watched these movies, this doesn't mean I didn't do my research, this is just to give context that I myself have never seen these movies.

If you don't know Mad Max is very much Australian media, written by, acted by, and taking place in Australia. Not only that but it very much relies on the world building of the fact that one, Australia is very isolated, and two, the rest of the world is like this. Something that Overwatch fails egregiously off the bat with considering that the rest of the world is not an apocalyptic wasteland and the fact that the thing that caused Junkertown and the radiation was an Omnium. You know, the thing that multiple countries had? There's also the fact that Junkrat and Roadhog are international criminals, how big Austraila is and the travel time between areas are never considered, it's exceedingly easy to leave the damn country (Junkrat and Roadhog again but also Hammond in his new short story). They want to be a Mad Max reference without actually considering the fact that the isolation inherent to Australia is important to Mad Max's setting.

There's also the fact that Mad Max relies heavily on visual story telling, Mad Max: Fury Road not even having a screenplay, it was fully laid out on storyboards. There's also the fact that Mad Max was not about the Australian experience but rather the human experience, this isn't a problem until you realize that every other characters references are very much biased off that characters origin. That or their place of origin is considered when writing them even if the reference for said character isn't from that country.

Another thing is that Mad Max communicates the brutality and disfunction of humanity, society has collapsed and we are left with the worst of it. The theming and messaging does not work with the rest of Overwatch's theming, it also doesn't make sense in universe considering that Overwatch was one, very environment focused, and two, was already sending forces to Australia to help with the consequences of radiation. Why did they let the Wasteland and Junkertown get so bad? Especially in the early Golden Age, and you can't say that it was because of the Junkers cause Overwatch have handled worse. Even before that point. We also have better examples of "the worst of humanity trope" with Talon, and they actually fit the story and world.

The theme they also completely miss in the soulless copy that is the Junkers is the individual connections and the theming or regaining humanity after great tragedy. In all honesty the best way they could have done this would have been to make Howl's rule itself the Mad Max Reference while Odessa's rule was the healing process from that, but no, they made her an overtaxing dictator instead. The gave the Junkers storyline the theme of desperation but no theme of hope, leaving it empty.

The only thing they unintentionally get right is that your environment doesn't necessarily change you, you do. Yes, a change of environment can assist in giving you space to make that change, but you are you no matter where you go. Junkrat and Roadhog don't change cause their out of Junkertown, they stay the exact same. Which is unfortunate because this is just due to them lacking any real depth in canon, an no, Junkrat actually being incredibly smart isn't character depth.

Back to the whole human connection thing, tell me, outside of fanon interpretation, out side of Junkrat's unreliable narration, outside of the interaction with characters he hasn't met in canon yet. Does anyone like Junkrat? Roadhog is there because Junkrat is paying him and because he seems board, the rest of Junkertown hates him, JQ especially. Roadhog doesn't seem to care about anyone, Junkerqueen's only true connection we see is with Hammond, and Hammond contiues to be my favoutite Junker by literally negating all the complaints about Junkertown I've had so far.

Honestly when I started looking at Junkertown lore I did not expect to be coming out saying that the fucking hamster was the best written character but here we are.

This is all also only referencing Mad Max: Fury Road by the way, which is probably what Junker Town is based off of considering its popularity and the time of release compared to Overwatch's. Honestly I might re-do this analysis/complaint if I ever watch the Mad Max series myself. Though I don't think my feelings will change of this, and that is the Junkers are an insult of a reference to MAD MAX. An empty copy at best. This is also coming from the person who often defends Overwatch's writing, I can't defend the Junkers, it's just bad writing.

[whiteraven87]

Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed - 60. Journal

The Unstoppable Series - Masterlist

Four parts. Two hearts. One love story.

pairing: Toto Wolff x Miriell Joschke (Original Character, female F1 driver)

Series warnings: long fan fiction/series, slow burn, age gap (23 years), woman racing in F1, boss/driver relationship, difficult and painful past, death, angst, recovery after trauma and loss, love after loss, sexual tension, sex scenes, illness, pregnancy, memory lost.

full series word count: 218k words of speed, scars, slow-burning love, and everything in between.

----------------

chapters until now of Part 4: Driven by Desire: Fire and Speed

Prologue

Return to Life

YES!

We are back

Third World Championship Title

The Night That Changed Everything

The Inevitable Conversation

Now and Forever [18+]

You Are the Reason

Our Place

The New Driver

Night Experiments [18+]

In His Power [18+]

Memories

The Royal Couple of F1 [18+]

New Era

The First Race of the Season and Rumors

Mercedes – Power, Style, and Authority

Triumph of a Young Champion

Shadows of the Night

The Sea, the Silence, Us [18+]

Unexpected news

Oasis of Peace

Loss

Emptiness

Painful Truth

Breakthrough [18+]

The Fourth

Liberty Media Banquet [18+]

The Austrian Casanova

The Calendar[18+]

Unmatched [18+]

Shared Moments

Her Path [18+]

Madness in the Bieszczady

Awkward Discovery

Christmas in Austria

Finally Alone [18+]

Birthday Gift [18+]

Observations

After the Meeting [18+]

Season Opener[18+]

Unexpected meeting

Sound of Dominations [18+]

Stormy Meeting [18+]

The Last Moments

The Accident

Everything Fell Apart

Coming Home

Emptiness in My Mind

Without Her

Return to the Track

Traces of the Past

We Were Close

The Dream

A Loss I Don’t Remember

Painful Closeness

It Doesn’t Make Sense

I Can't Lose Her

previous Parts:

Part 1: Driven by Speed - A Diamond Among Stones

Part 2: Driven by Success - Golden Girl

Part 3: Driven by Love - Rebirth from the Ashes

-----------------------------

60. Journal

PRESENT TIMES

Bieszczady

POV Miriell

These days without Toto feel empty. I can't explain it. I have no memories, I don't remember our love, but my heart and body long for him. It's irrational, and yet it's true.

I feel his absence everywhere – in the empty hallways, in the silence that wraps around the house, in the bed that feels too big and cold without him.

I don't want to think about it, so I throw myself into cleaning. I go through documents, things I've accumulated over the years in my study. And then I find something I didn't expect.

A journal. I didn't know I had been keeping one.

I open the first page. At first, I see only technical notes – car settings, track characteristics, notes about the team's work. Nothing that stirs any emotions.

But then... Then the words begin. Words I never expected to read.

It's not just a journal. It's a record of my story. A record of my feelings.

Toto.

His name appears on every page.

I read about the first time I saw him. How fascinated I was – his piercing gaze, his composure, the way he led the team. How he made me feel respect, admiration, but also something I didn't want to name back then.

I read about how I was afraid of my feelings.

How I thought they were inappropriate. He was my boss. He was older, experienced, closed off in his own world, still mourning Susie. I was convinced he would never see me as a woman he could build a future with, that to him I'd always be just a part of the team, a talented driver.

I wrote about how I tried to suppress those feelings. How I kept telling myself it was just a passing infatuation, and yet, they kept growing.

Every meeting, every conversation, every glance – perhaps unnoticed by him – made me fall in love even more.

I read and feel something breaking inside me. I feel my heart start to race, my hands tremble as I turn page after page.

This is not the story of a stranger. This is my story. This is my love.

I still don't remember, but I know. I know that feeling was real. I know I couldn't have made it up.

And I know that if I ever loved him this much, how could I ever stop?

I close the journal and clutch it in my hands. My heart pounds in my chest, and there's only one thought pulsing in my head.

I need to get those memories back.

A few days later

With a trembling hand, I reach for the computer. I don't know what's driving me, but I feel like I need to find something.

Toto said I performed and sang publicly a few times. I don't remember that. I don't remember myself on stage, but if it's true—if there are recordings somewhere...

I click on a folder, scroll through the files, and suddenly two titles catch my eye.

"Blinding Lights in Monaco"

"You Are The Reason – for TW"

TW. Toto Wolff.

My heart skips a beat.

I play the first recording. A stage appears on the screen, lights, the hum of an excited crowd. And then... me.

I'm standing in the middle, confident, microphone in hand. My lips move with the rhythm, and the music fills the room. My face seems both familiar and foreign—but that's nothing compared to what I feel when I play the second recording.

This one is different. I'm sitting at the piano here, in our home in Bieszczady, my fingers gliding across the keys, and my voice sounds like it's singing from the depths of my heart.

"I'd climb every mountain, and swim every ocean... Just to be with you and fix what I've broken..."

The melody and the words... they're so close to me. I close my eyes.

And then it happens. Images hit me like a wave.

Toto holding me in his arms after I won the first title.

The yacht railing in Monaco. Silence between us, and then his warmth, his scent, as he wrapped me in his embrace without a word.

Toto holding me all night after I told him the truth about the assault.

His gaze, full of concern, as I fought for every fraction of a second on the track.

My own fear of loving him, and then his voice: "I want your happiness. Whatever happens, I'll always be for you."

My crash in Spa. The pain. The darkness. And then him – his hand gripping mine, his quiet, emotional whisper.

Toto, chopping wood shirtless, unaware of my stares.

His hand on my cheek, his breath near my lips: "I love you."

Our first kiss.

The scars I showed him, full of fear and shame. His eyes – not filled with disgust, but love. "You're beautiful."

His touch. His caresses. My whisper, as I gave myself to him completely.

Our love. Our happiness.

Then his illness. The tumor. The fear that paralyzed me more than any race ever could.

His surgery. My tears when he woke up. The joy that he was alive.

His proposal. The moment we told the world we were together.

Our wedding. Our marriage. Tenderness, laughter, love.

And then... The pregnancy. The miscarriage. The pain.

The news that I'd never be able to have children. The despair.

And him, always by my side. He didn't leave. He didn't let me get lost in the darkness. Always.

Tears stream down my face. I remember. God, I remember everything.

I feel the emptiness that tore me apart inside fill with everything I had lost.

But he's not here. Toto is gone. I pushed him away.

And now... now more than anything in the world, I want him to be with me.

-------------------

NEXT -> 61. I need to see Him

-------------------

"I put my armor on, show you how strong I am."

Read the story here:

AO3 Unstoppable Series

Wattpad: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

🇵🇱 Dla Polskich czytelników [for Polish readers] [PL]:

Seria Niepowstrzymana AO3

Wattpad PL: Part1 I Part 2 I Part 3 | Part 4

[hamletisabitch]

I'm at the airport and I hate it so I'm challenging myself to write something on my phone before I board. Bone apple teeth. //

Ed can't help but get a little teary-eyed sitting at their gate. He knows, on a rational level, that air travel is safer than getting in his car every day. But knowledge as cognitive understanding and knowledge as belief are two very different experiences. He thinks about dying, and he thinks about the fact that he needs to write a will, he thinks about never seeing his friends again, never seeing Stede again, and that's almost too much to bear except--

Except Stede is right next to him, looking happily out the big window to where planes are being prepped and landing in the golden sunrise.

Ed thinks of Stede briefly as an NPC with a never-ending scroll of dialogue, all the airline facts Ed could ever want and more waiting for him should he choose to ask. And he will ask, but he's hanging onto that until those terrifying first 15 minutes of flight.

For now, he watches Stede watching. Keeps his attention right there with Stede's pretty curls and not six feet under.

"Did you know," Stede says, reaching for Ed’s hand without looking away from the takeoff happening in front of them. "That there are, on average, 10,000 planes in flight?"

"I didn't know that, babe," Ed says, leaning his head on Stede’s shoulder. Stede plants a kiss on his temple. Ed squeezes his hand, thinks deliberately about the pink clouds on the horizon and the smell of Stedes conditioner, and nothing else.

"Did you know," Stede starts again, in the gentle voice Ed knows means I'm here, means we're safe, "that air travel is statistically much less likely to lead to injury than even taking the subway?"

Ed feels his throat constrict, and he swallows.

"Knew it was safer than highway travel. Didn't know it was safer than like, taking the bus," he says.

"It is," Stede promises, resting his head on Ed’s.

"And," he adds after a moment, "if we do die in a terrible crash, I bet we'll be the coolest ghosts around. A haunting for the ages!"

Ed giggles. "We could wear sheets, like they do in Beetlejuice, to really mess with people."

"Ooh yes. And write stupid messages to people playing with ouija boards!"

"Classic, gotta do that, I mean they're literally asking for it," Ed agrees.

"Do you think we'd be linked to a particular place?" Stede asks.

"That is a part of the typical ghost laws," Ed says.

Stede crosses his arms. "That's unfair! I died traveling, I should get to be a traveling ghost!"

"Sorry mate, nothing I can do, rules are rules."

"Well that's bunk. I think we need to lobby for new haunting legislation. Power to the poltergeists!"

Ed laughs, and kisses Stede on the cheek. He rests back down onto his shoulder.

"Will you tell me your airplane facts during take off?"

"Gladly," Stede says, settling into Ed.

Ed takes a deep breath. He sqeezes Stede's hand and watches the sunrise bloom from baby pink to orange. It's beautiful.

[selfaware-promise-au]

Hello! I just read you forsaken deity concept which I find very interesting. I was thinking about this fit a while now. However the zzz world isn't as magical or supernatural compare to genshin and honkai. So me personally i feel like it would make sense if the majority of yhe citezens couldn't recognized the Reader as the real deal. However are there some characters besides the proxy siblings that could tell the Reader is the real deal? For example could Miyabi pontetial identify the reader as the real deal since she has experience with spirits due to her sword and can feel the reader's aura is benevelont and gentle or maybe Trigger who despite can't see she does have good senses and can smell the reader because the reader has a particular scent? Or maybe other characters who feel something is off and decided to do their own investigation. Since I assume the reader has power but doesn't want to hurt anyone in this concept

Useful links: AU's Backstory

Explanation about Carole's bit

------

It's a good point. Technically, only a few number of people in New Eridu should recognize Reader.

However, the situation is a little bit complicated.

In New Eridu there will be no problem with realizing, that Reader aren't completely human. There will be problems with seeing Reader as a human.

Let me explain.

Technically, Reader are a demigod, a descendant of Creator's experiments on making an artificial god who could control people's minds and take away negative emotions. Creation of a demigod included fusing flesh of multiple divine (or close to divine) beings (Tyrant's included) with embryos and their parents.

In the Real World, they are just a normal person. They might have better health, but on every level they are humans.

In Honkai and Teyvat, with time, they will gain a connection to these worlds, awaking new powers in them. The process will be slow and "harmonious". Reader would still look human.

New Eridu is different. In this world, Creator tried to make people evolve into demigods. They fused the world, made with their powers, with powers of different divine beings. All from the same beings that were used while creating Reader's ancestors.

What worked with a person didn't work with the whole world. Hollows appeared, and people still didn't evolve into demigods.

But powers still remained. And when Reader got into New Eridu, multiply powers started to change them, "charge" them with powers.

Reader's powers skyrocketed. They could spend weeks in Hollow Zero without protection; they could turn Ethereals back into humans, they could regenerate if they lay on ether crystals for a few minutes.

They started to change physically. They become taller; sometimes, their hair moved on a magical breeze. Their eyes would randomly start glowing from time to time.

Others will see that Reader aren't completely human. All playable characters will see it.

Any Thiren, thanks to their senses, will notice, that your walking are strange, that your breathing are strange, that your heartbeat are unnatural.

People and intelligent constructs will see, that Reader aren't completely human.

At first, people will just wonder about Reader....

-----

In Forsaken Deity AU:

Until The Exaltists learned about them.

Unfortunately for Reader, The Exaltists have seen Creator, they knew the sign of divine being, and they are aware of a wrong child, whose birth delayed the Promised Golden Age.

They have enough evidence of Creator's existence. They will twist the narrative, painting Reader as an evil, vile deity.

People of New Eridu are tired of living in a world of Hollows. In their eyes, gods left them. And then they got Reader. Deity, they can touch. Deity, they can hurt. Deity, they can take their revenge on.

Actually, Miyabi and Trigger will be the first ones who see Reader as a human.

Miyabi's connection to spirits let her realize that Reader's aura aren't bad or evil. They have an aura of a kind person. Of a human.

Trigger will feel that Reader, while powerful, are still a human. And a kind one.

Not even once did they hurt their attackers. They continue helping people. They are healing Ethereals, returning people to their families.

Trigger and Miyabi will try to make others see Reader as a human.

Reader will also have another ally. Mayor of New Eridu. Carole knew Creator on a more personal level, and she told him what she learned about their experiments. However, at first, Mayor will also assume that Reader are more of a human, then a deity. He would like to help Reader, and he will try. While citizens will try to get them.

-----

If we aren't talking about Forsaken Deity, Reader will have it easier. There won't be a narrative about them being an evil god. Their kindness and deeds will make people think, that gods finally decided to return to their world and save them from an apocalypse.

And this time, Miyabi and Trigger will see Reader as an benevolent god, on top of being a great person.

[crimson-flash]

TOA Anniversary Munday Post

haha i haven't even been here for a month

Celebrating TOA and the people who contribute to make our group what it is.

Repost, don't reblog. Only fill in what you feel comfortable sharing!

Happy anniversary, TOA! Here's to many more years spent together.

Name: Penny

Pronouns: She/them

Birthday (no year): 8/19

Where are you from? What is your time zone?: I'm from the United States of 'Merica, Georgia in particulary.

How long is your roleplay experience? Uh, outside of Roblox, and a little bit of Amino, I basically have none, so a month!

How were you introduced to roleplaying as a whole? I was introduced to roleplaying when I entered a Big Brother RP amino thingy when I was 12, and I won the whole thing while mascaraing as like double my age. It was crazy back then.

How were you introduced to TOA?: I was looking at Joshua art, and then I stumbled across an old Joshua muse which lead me to TOA. I know it sounds a bit crazy.

Do you have any pets?: I have a dog named Mellow! I will protect him with my life. He is my pride and joy.

What is your favorite time of year and why? (Season, holiday, general period): Favorite season is Fall, favorite holiday is Christmas, and my favorite general period of time is whenever I don't have school.

What is your IRL occupation? I don't have a job at the moment, I am just a simple high school senior.

Some interests and things you like/enjoy? I enjoy coding little games, I like romhacking and just seeing my edits change the game, it's kinda like magic, lol. I enjoy going for walks, and racing other people, I also enjoy sleeping, who doesn't.

What non-Fire Emblem games do you play? Pokemon, Stardew Valley, Wildermyth, Ace Attorney, Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Kirby

Favorite Pokemon type & Pokemon: Water, Vaporeon (NOT IN THAT WAY)

Tell us some funfacts and trivia about yourself! Oh, a fun fact? uhhhhh

How did you get into Fire Emblem? I wanted to know where Marth from Smash Bros came from, so I decided I was going to play Awakening, and now I'm obsessed.

What Fire Emblem games have you played? I have played FE7, FE8, FE11, FE12, FE13, FE17

First & Favorite Fire Emblem games: FE13 was my first, and FE8 is my favorite!

List your 5 favorite Fire Emblem characters across the series! Nooo, I can't choose between my bab- Marisa, Henry, Clanne, Joshua, The 7th Platoon is it's own character right?

Who was the first character ever to make you go “ooh I like this one in particular” and why? Can be any context and reason! It was Clanne when I was playing Engage and got really good growths and he MVP'd like the whole entire game.

Any Fire Emblem crushes? 😳 A certain green-haired woman from a game I haven't even played yet.

If you’ve played (or are familiar with) the following games, who was your first S support? Who would you S support nowadays? - Awakening: My first S support was Anna, and I would probably S support my baby Henry now. - Fates: N/A - Three Houses: N/A - Engage: My first S support was Ivy, but now it's probably Panette.

Favorite Fire Emblem class? Armor Knight

If you were a Fire Emblem character, what would be your class and stats? Would you be playable? I would be a reclassable very flexiable unit, but I would always been just below-average in everything, so just like very disappointing. One speed from doubling, and one attack from killing, but I force that luck will always be in my favor.

If you were a Three Houses character, what would be your affiliation? Yellow Team! Uhm, I mean Golden Deer

If you were an Officers Academy student, what would be your boons, banes and potential budding talent? Boons: Reason, Faith. Banes: Axes, Flying (fear of heights), Heavy Armor, Budding Talent: Bows

If you were an Engage character, which nation would you originate from? Solm! I really love Solm and it's characters, it's like Jehanna if it was cool, and didn't have a queen who died in a pretty stupid way and didn't fight back EVEN THoUGH SHE'S A TRAINED SWOR-

How do you pronounce TOA? 🤔(separate letters, to-ah, other?): T-O-A, I will not accept any other pronouncations. 

[we-keep-odd-hours]

I'm definitely taking liberties with "Diamondback was from the Dustbowl in the Great Depression," by saying that's where Jesse found her, but not where she was actually living at the time.

But I'm (oddly?) more familiar with the bootleggers and rum runners of the mid-Atlantic, and spend time each year in NC, so I felt it would feel more lived in if I set it there.

I know that I want to write her as turned in 1934 (her "death" aligning then with Bonnie & Clyde's, John Dillinger's, Baby Face Nelson's) , her brother's "gang" going down in late 1931 (early enough in the "golden age" of bank robberies and outlaws that she'd feel left out, but not so early that they were groundbreaking). This also let me set her backstory as "too young to remember much more than fear during the Great War and the Spanish Flu, but a teenage and young adult in the 20s/"Jazz Age" before Black Tuesday.

Can't miss what you never had; and if the idea behind the director and actress's styling of the character was "glamour gone bad" (and that hair, tell me to my face that doesn't look like a 1930s long bob with finger waves grown out and teased out) then I wanted to get her close to that mythic Gatsby world that never was. She never would have known the parties of the Broadway racketeers and mob bosses, but she would have gone, if only to deliver booze, to mansions and the homes of old-money (plantation money, blood money) that managed to hold it. The Great Depression (for the most part) didn't hit old money the way it hit the middle class and the working poor.

Setting her there with the background in bootlegging gangs also ties back into the film itself: vampires at the time of the film's release conjured images of Old World opulence, there was a glamor to it, but the "reality" in-universe for the film, is so much more mundane. Even the most famous/infamous examples of Jazz Age/Great Depression gangsters weren't half as romantic as the movies make it look.

Women fell into the life alongside lovers, husbands, brothers, and a lot claimed love, some cited force, but most said running with the gang was better than staying at home.

Plus, sure, she could have learned all her skills with the vampires, but if not then she had to have experience from somewhere on operating in a small gang, something that had become second-nature enough that she is the only character who is never given orders in the movie--not that she's not listening, but she's in-tune enough with the others she doesn't need them (her eyeing of the waitress, getting Jesse's attention so he sees her too, Jesse not starting his bit until he sees Diamondback pull the knife).

In reality, given what we know from the film dialogue, and how (I believe) her and Jesse were originally meant to be foils, respectively, to Mae and Caleb (even if in the final cut of the film, they read more as foils to Caleb and Mae), I think she was turned the night they met. Diamondback said or did something on the highway shoulder that made Jesse want her, and she didn't get a say--both were just lucky then, that she was into it. The Dustbowl then makes perfect sense, if she was desperate to do anything if her family was one struggling to get by as that portion of the midwest was rendered a wasteland.

It just wasn't something I could stretch into enough of a character study of just her--and at least in the structure I went with, it lends elements of the film noir to her backstory (though not really, it's not that glamorous, they're kind of pathetic, but that's the point), and a chance to give it the opposite of a redemption arc. What kind of woman would willingly commit to a life of requisite murder, forever on the run? What kind of woman managed to be the mother of a band of outlaws despite being the youngest (until Mae) in years and experience? What kind of woman rolls her eyes at a guy like Jesse and thinks nothing of giving him orders?

[fancyfade]

I saw the post saying Batman fans think dc intentionally make Bruce a terrible parent to give Damian angst…just…have these people seen what dc writers and editors in interviews?

A lot of writers and editors revealed they see Damian not more than an arrogant and entitled brat that needs to learn his place and follow the status quo…which is hilarious as a lot of modern writing heroes make fucking frustrated with their holler than thou personalities.

Heck I remember the writer got Tim Drake last recent book said she liked Damian but he can be difficult at times

Oh like Ra’s and Bruce? Almost like he related to the some of the most complex mainstream comic book characters.

And from my experience, a lot of writers want to write the idolized version of Batman that made up as a kid. Which unfortunately makes Bruce treat Damian as afterthought unintentionally.

Now I don’t expect Bruce to be the perfect dad, but as you stated months ago. A lot of modern Batman writers have a fundamentally lack of desire to have Bruce act like a parent/figure. In fancy I notice this with the other batkids where their bonds with Bruce have been extremely watered down. Can you confirm that as you read more older comics than me.

Sorry for a long anon, I don’t think Bruce is meant to be a terrible father. Just a lot of writers project their personal bias against Damian into other characters…which in turn make a lot of them worse as writer forgot Damian is a child…not to mention Bruce bio son. Not saying parents and kids have 1:1 of personalities. But do writers remember Bruce can be an asshole too?

yeah a lot of the writers do project their personal biases - as well as they personally don't view Bruce's adopted kids as his actual kids* and it's more comfortable for writers to just have them do different things when batman doesn't "have" to be a parent. like dick and bruce have pretty good rapport in silver and bronze age.

for older comics its strange. like I'd say even tho golden/silver age bruce didn't refer to dick as his son, he still definitely had "dad like" qualities. like we see a golden age bruce knock dick out to stop him from following him to his presumed death**, and silver age Bruce encourages dick to spend time being a kid and enjoying basketball and for example 1 comic dick goes to his school's spirit night instead of on patrol.

bronze age dick is college age, so their dynamic is different. dick's out of the house in college, and honestly I wish writers would do this more if they just didn't want to write Bruce being a dad. Like for Damian's situation instead of Bruce being criminally negligent/stupid why can't we just see Damian living with Talia he literally has a mom. you don't want to write bruce being a dad there are options.

jason we see him being a good dad but also his tenure as robin is pretty short, and then for a while the robin of the time (tim) is important in that he is not bruce's son. he's a trainee. Bruce doesn't have any minor children for a while, and only after OYL (occurs 2006 in our world) do we see him adopt a nearly adult tim.

For which Batkids have had their bonds with Bruce watered down, I'd have to read more current batcomics. The old comics I'd say we do have phases where Dick and Bruce don't talk much, mostly due to the annoying post COIE retcons of how Dick becomes nightwing (Bruce initially tells him he can't be Robin after he gets shot, then immediately adopts Jason to make him Robin, and then later that is retconned for Bruce to kick him out). I've spoken multiple times about preferring pre COIE retcons where Dick had more agency.

Cass I am not sure if we've seen her interacting a lot with Bruce lately, due to the aforementioned not keeping up with current batcomics that don't have Damian. She does show up in spirit world but :P that's about Xanthe.

From what I hear from people who read current Tim comics, Tim's bond with Bruce is very strongly emphasized, tho I haven't read those comics myself so I can't comment firsthand.

Overall I think a lot of portrayal of Bruce as straight up negligent or abusive*** is due to writers just not caring about portraying him as a dad, they care about loner batman which maybe is the version from their head as kids? or could just be because that's a lot of what DC likes to emphasize. also the general "men express emotions by being angry and violent" thing many writers like. and DC was going to set up Damian as the villain for 5G, so they had to put him in a place where Bruce couldn't have seen this and stopped it, so they decided that he was going to claim any level of ignorance in order to not look bad (because I guess just not knowing what's going on with your child is fine)

*for a similar thing not in batman comics: i think that if Death of a Prince writers viewed Garth as Aquaman's ""actual"" kid, even though Garth was adopted by him and raised by him for a large portion of his childhood, they wouldn't have had aquaman being willing to fight aqualad to the death to save his biological child, arthur jr, at black manta's threats.

**which is also what Talia does for Damian in Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul - she knocks him out to take him away from battle and protect him

*** as opposed to realistically emotionally unavailable for his character, which I think works especially post Jason's death. but also WRT for why I think the negligent stuff is OOC (here - post)

[andreabaideas]

Djats beauty : Part two

Aka when my teen cousin (16) ask silly things about our shared fandoms (Djats and Twilight ) and then I transform It into a social genre experiment XD

Disclaimer : No animals were harmed during this process...though a (my) family was bothered with the superficial questions of a teen... helped by the too curious Adult (aka me) XD. 

It was also my experiment , to see if men and women find the same people pretty in the same way...I'm very serious about this kinds of experiments. 

Part two was between the men... Or you thought we were going to ask just about the women??? No,no,no. We're equals in my agenda!!!

We took as pretty source the actors that played the characters : Billy, Graham,Eddie, Warren, Nicky at first. I wanted to include Teddy and Rod, but my cousin said they are too old...I (obviously) won in the end or else I would help her convince the others to listen to her XD.

We divided It into categories (I told you very serious about It XD) :  eyes, face, hair , body, skin, and finally : as a whole (the one with better everything). 

Eyes : 

Women : Billy ("those eyes are wow!" "So light Green" "not they are blue" "no they are Green"...they were like the Golden White black blue dress internet meme issue..."They are beautiful let it be") , then Nicky (light and so pretty), then Rod ("his eyes look like melting caramel", "super pretty Hazel"), then Graham (again blue or green... sigh), then Eddie, then Warren, then Teddy. 

Men : "We don't care". Cousin : the women voted for the women too. M: "You women are mean to one another, thats why you judge,  we just dont give a crap about each others".... Finally they voted XD

Fiiine: Billy, then Nicky. 

Winner : Billy. 

Face :  

Women : tough Battle between Billy (perfect bone structure) and Rod (simetrical and very beautiful).  Then Nicky. Then Graham. Then Eddie. Then Warren. Finally Teddy. 

My mom and aunt liked Rod the best. My cousins Billy. 

Men : as they didn't care particularly they said :  Billy again, and then Nicky. Third was Rod. Graham IS too baby faced ,  Eddie looks "too girly for being a man, like an badly man filtered version of Karen with short hair (🤨?!). Then Teddy and Warren "they aren't hot, you women are weird".  

Winner : Billy 

Body : 

Women: Billy (Six pack perfection, wow. Me: "He said he was starved while shooting". The Girls: "We also half starve ourselves to fit in the bikinis too, he did It for humanity's benefit , he should be proud"... I can't with my family I swear. 

The rest: Nicky , Rod, Eddie, Graham, Warren,Teddy. 

Men: Billy. Rod. And the Gastón mean looking one (Nicky). 

Winner : Billy. 

Hair: 

Women : (with long hair better) Billy, then Nicky, then Eddie, then Graham, then Teddy , then Warren , finally Rod* Note : with the actors real hair Rod goes third position , but with the shows wig not ("Its atrocious kid" XD) 

Men : Billy. 

Winner : Billy.

Skin: We took into account the actors real age VS their skin appearance to judge , the glow , the color shade (uniformness and health) and the texture (acné, wrinkles...) to vote...When i tell you this was super pro XD. 

Women: Graham, Nicky, Eddie, Billy & Rod, Warren and Teddy. 

Graham looks 18, so yeah his skin IS good (1996) Nicky (1992) looks very good too. Rod Its looking fantastic for his age, way younger than his real age. Eddie looks younger too. Billy looks older than the character he plays but looks his age skin wise, not more (listen Twitter listen those wise words)...but not much less :( " Darling he looks in his middle thirties between 33- 35 years" "Yup more or less, Mom, he IS from 1986". "Close enough". 

Winner : Graham. 

As a whole : Let me count.... everything except the skin?...Who am I kidding? 

Winner: Billy. He destroyed the others... There wasn't a competition at all XD. 

It was easier with the men . Also my bratty 16, Almost 17! years  cousin was very surprised about Rod,  but like...My mom, my aunt/ her grandma, her mom (my eldest cousin) and our other aunt (half of the female votes) are his age or slightly older, between 42 to 60...what she expected?🤣. 

Hadn't there been our adopted cousins (our male cousins's wives) between 33 to 39 (I call them cousins too... once you enter my family Its like the Mafia: you belong to us and you can't really escape XD) and her best friend was there too (18), to complete the younger vote  (that voted all for Billy)... Rod would have won. 

Curious enough women can vote about other women (without any sexual attraction) while the men didnt care about voting for other men. 

Weird right?

Thats It!