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gogodollie · 7 months ago

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Sister Imperator and Papa Nihil Romance Masterpost

Saw someone the other day claim that Sister Imperator was a bitch for leading Nihil on and although I blocked them instantly, it haunts me because genuinely what are you smoking to EVER get that vibe.

These two are old people and they’re crazy. Nihil is just really into the chase and Sister still thinks that playing hard to get is sexy. Once again, they’re old.

Chapter Media

Chapter One: New Blood

Sister Imperator: “Not here… not now- not like this.”

At this point I don’t think there’s much from the prequelle livestream that would confirm the two in a current sexual/romantic relationship so that means that is the first instance where there’s an insinuation that there is in fact something sexual going on between them. Sister redirects Nihil rather than shutting him down entirely just makes it clear that this is a mutual thing and not just Nihil being a horndog. Also, the fact that this was a direct result of the sexual charisma spiel and involves a lot of heavy breathing (and several glances downward from Imperator.)

Chapter Five: The Call

Papa Nihil: “You have always had excellent critiquing of films, Sister.”

Sister Imperator: “Papa… Tell me, are you alone?” “And what are you wearing?”

Sister Imperator: “I’m just trying to- forget it.”

This is one of my favorite scenes ever but the secondhand embarrassment it gives me is so bad (my poor girl Imperator has been in that hospital for WEEKS I can’t even blame her for attempting it). Anyways, another clear example of Sister being receptive to Nihil’s flirting and even going on to (very poorly) attempt to reciprocate. She wants to get fucked sooooooo bad it makes her look stupid. If Nihil was a little smarter this could have worked but unfortunately Sister has no game and Nihil was on the toilet.

Chapter Eight: Kiss The Go-Goat

Papa Nihil: “Why can’t I have another chance?”

Sister Imperator: “Do I have to remind you what happened last time?”

This part gets quoted a lot in reference to Sister rejecting Nihil and her lack of forgiveness towards the cheating incident. However, all things given, I don’t think those lines directly are about their relationship given the context that they’re said in (but they can definitely be taken that way when considering the KTGG sequence and ending). This reads more as Imperator reminding Nihil of his failed attempt to lead the band after he criticizes Copia

Chapter Nine: Tomb It May Concern

Sister Imperator: “Ugh it’s perverse: Papa.”

Sister Imperator: “I…had his balls.”

This is the first instance that Sister brings up a sexual connotation with the title “Papa” which she clarifies in Chapter Ten: Home Coming & Special Guests when Copia asks if she won’t call him Papa because of “the old guy.” Then obviously she just straight up says she had Nihil’s balls in a metaphorical and literal sense much to Copia’s horror.

Non-Chapter Media

Prequelle Promo Sermon

Papa Nihil: “Well Sister you’ve never made a mistake in my eyes.”

Sister Imperator: “Isn’t he sweet? Very generous man, he always was.”

Dance Macabre Music Video

I take this mv with a grain of salt because nothing about it aligns with the 60s and to me it feels more like a retelling of their meeting from Copia’s memories, rumors he may have heard, and whatever misinformation Sister and Nihil had spread about the event themselves. That being said, I do know there are a lot of people that accept that this was the actual first meeting and wedding of Imperator and Papa which actually is insanely romantic. They’re like if Romeo and Juliet were cult leaders and also in their mid-twenties. Love at first sight! Also the first insight into a past relationship between the two.

SIOSP Promo Live

Papa Nihil: “Oh Sister, I wish you were here- I wish Sister was here. She’d be so proud of me.”

Just a guy missing his girlfriend nothing to see here folks.

Ghost on Ghost

Literally just look at them. The context of the scene they’re recreating is enough to sum everything up, the video being posted on Valentine’s day, those old people were getting NASTY.

Mary on a Cross Music Video

There’s a lot of things about this music video that make me crazy and I would like to begin with the confirmation that the two did in fact live together in a non-abbey setting (PLEASE peep the two empty glasses and wine bottle on their porch table). Aside from the violent aftermath of Nihil’s little on stage scandal, the two obviously were seriously together in some sort of way that would both warrant this reaction from Sister and also would involve them living together (mind you it’s still the 60s and this sort of arrangement between an unmarried couple would be uncommon but also they’re fucking satanists so. whatever). A little peak into Sister being the one to initiate intimacy even after the cheating and what their messy future will look like together (but this time around she doesn’t forget her bra).

The Future is a Foreign Land Music Video

This is mainly just about Nihil’s perspective on the breakup and the instant regret he has once realizing that Sister is gone for good. Though he may be an idiot, Papa is genuinely willing to give up everything to have her again and in his little drug induced haze is dreaming about a future where she does forgive him for all that he’s done. Also the way that dystopian Sister/Papa fucking explode and old futuristic Sister/Papa just fade away makes me think that perhaps there’s an essence of moving on in a physical sense in the future but for my sake (needs to see those old people as much as possible) I pray this is not true.

Final thoughts:

In my humble opinion, I think by the time Maralyn took over as Sister there was a shift in her relationship with Papa Nihil that made them go from strictly sexual to romantic again- the next few chapters and RHRN make them seem almost domestic as they take on more parental roles. This could be because of Nihil’s death and Imperator being able to forgive him because she is quite literally one of the few people that can see/interact with him (she was NOT risking another cheating incident, who knows what that 80 yr old was capable of when he was still alive OR she was just finally able to make peace with it because Nihil in some sense is an entirely different person than the man that cheated on her all those years ago (aka a fucking ghost without a physical form).

At the end of the day these two are STUPID and despite the assumed breakup in the Mary on a Cross music video, I don’t think they’re capable of being away from each other for long. God knows they fucked at least twice directly after watching Papa Nihil kiss three different women in front of her so I really would not doubt that they were still hooking up from the time after the moac mv and before their first older appearances.

#i started tweaking because when i went to rewatch the chapters. a few of them are no longer available in my country #if there’s any scenes i missed it’s because i can’t view half the fucking chapters AKXBWKCHKD #the phone call chapter is so funny god #the way young imperator says papa and giggles always gets me #ghost #sister imperator #papa nihil #scripture

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deliverred · 6 months ago

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Look, Sylvain was perfectly aware that the festival’s theming was, in the end, meant to evoke and celebrate the macabre and the tales of horror that graced the night. That while the range offered for costumes has become more lax and allowed for ideas that do not necessarily step into the lines of morbid or terror, the idea of ��being spooky’ was encouraged.

But this takes the proverbial cake. Even with that one guy running around looking like a murder victim, in Sylvain’s eyes this thing was by far what caused his brain to take a moment and evaluate what his eyes were seeing due to how primal the reaction felt.

“Uh…I know that we’re meant to be a little scary but…that mask of yours is a bit on the verge of uncomfortable…” It was scaring the girls…and hell it would scare him too. “It’s gonna give me nightmares looking at it, I can feel it!” Yikes!

Sylvain wasn’t blind, though. He had seen this guy without the mask. And he had seen him talking to his father earlier.

“Extra points for the creepy factor I guess, you win this one for real. Want to get some candy together? I think the dog and fox duo can at least be a good match for the hunt.”

Lukas hadn't dealt with Sylvain very much, mostly during classes, so it was a little jarring to see him in such...different attire. If it were any colder, he wonders if it would be uncomfortable to wear something so...revealing in certain places. It does stand out, however; with the fox draped across his shoulders, the gold and furs, and wrapping vines.

Lukas laughs lightly at that, shifting his weight from one foot to another in what might have translated as sheepish if not for the disturbing grin plastered on the mask's face.

"Beggars can't be choosers, as they say," he responded, inclining his head slightly. "I was late in figuring out a proper costume, so I went with what was available...I must say, I didn't expect it to garner this much of a reaction, though." And most of it was -- well, effective for scares, but it did make it surprisingly difficult to interact with others without making them uncomfortable.

There wasn't the same sort of harshness in Sylvain's face as there was in his father's, but it was impossible to not see the family resemblance.

"Is your costume something original, or were you inspired by something?" Lukas asks, genuinely curious considering Matthias' costume. It seemed House Gautier took such challenges and celebrations with as much heart as they did their other endeavors. He would have accepted Sylvain's request anyways, but thinking back on the favor his father had asked and Lukas had agreed to, he couldn't help but think this was a rather silly way to carry it out.

With an overly theatrical bow, Lukas he says, "If this cursed mask can help you hunt down some candy, it would be my pleasure to trick or treat with you, Sylvain. For who could deny the combined efforts of the fox and the hound?"

#toajuicy #toajuicy2024 #[cant believe this is how these two properly meet]

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five-rivers · 2 years ago

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Ancestral chapter 16

Written for ectoberhaunt 2023 day 20: danse macabre.

The room was silent as everyone listened intently, straining to hear Mr. Kynbaz’s (his first name was Kevin?) response.

"An extraction? Why? Isn't she in hospital for a medical condition?" There was a pause, not quite long enough for Joanna to interject, but long enough to hear. “How do you even know about that?”

“You left the team on read and the emergency system kicked it to Matthew and your second, but Matthew has it set to forward things to family members if he doesn’t answer and it’s flagged as an emergency.”

Another brief pause. “Why do you want Princess Alicia extracted?”

“We think that–” Joanna visibly collected herself. “There’s evidence that Revyvtech is involved in the poisonings and responsible for Alicia’s condition.”

“Joanna–”

“My judgment was poor as a teenager, but don’t you dare hold that over me when my family is in danger!” snapped Joanna. She closed her eyes. “I– I’m sorry, that was inappropriate of me.”

“What kind of evidence? Would it hold up overseas?”

Joanna’s eyes flicked over Danny, Jazz, and their other cousins. “No. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.”

Mr. Kynbaz hissed softly, the sound barely transmitted by the phone speakers. “I’ll get back to you.”

“Kevin, wait, I–”

The end-call tone played.

Joanna let her hand drop to her side. Her eyes flicked over Danny, Jazz, and their other cousins. “How many of you have prescription medication?”

Everyone but Jazz and Danny raised their hands. Jazz elbowed Danny. “You have that stuff you were prescribed for your eyes,” she said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Danny– Danny. Do you think you could tell if this… if this poison - blood blossoms? - was in something? Like you did with the aconite?”

“Um,” said Danny. “Maybe. That was mostly Gw– the ghosts, though. They saw the poison being added. If it is blood blossoms, though, I think I should be able to. Or- or they should be able to," he added, glancing at the ghosts. He didn't want to ask them to, though. Not after what had happened to Gwensyvyr’s arm. "I should be able to."

“Good,” said Joanna, “good. Everyone, go get your medications, and bring them here.”

"Why are there so many?" asked Danny, intimidated. The little bottles practically surrounded him.

"We're part of the oldest royal lineages in the world," said Iris. "It'd be weirder if we didn't have any weird genetic disorders."

"What even are all of these for?" asked Danny, knowing it was rude, but not being able to help himself. It was his family medical history, anyway.

"Blood disease," said Iris and George simultaneously.

"Specifically anemia," said Iris.

"Specifically Avlynyse recurrent macrocytic anemia," said George.

“Called that because normal macrocytic anemia is supposed to be caused by something else, like hypothyroidism or alcoholism, but we don’t have those problems and it always comes back.”

“You guys probably have it, too,” added George. “It’s super common in the family, but it.”

“Along with Avlynyse defective melanin syndrome,” said Iris. “Purple eyes are pretty, but they come with problems, you know?”

“I knew about that,” said Danny. “But you don’t take medicine for that, do you? Mom has that, and I don’t think she takes anything for it.”

“Usually you don’t,” said George, “but melanin has a lot of functions beyond just skin, hair, and eye color, and sometimes ADMS affects those things as well. You remember how Iris and I would, ah, shake a little, all the time? And our eyes would scan back and forth? We couldn’t stop it. That’s what we take medication for.” He made a face. “We actually first got this in a drug trial from Revyvtech a few years ago. It’s new…”

“Oh! Don’t forget the epilepsy,” said Iris.

“Yeah, can’t forget the epilepsy.”

“You have epilepsy?” asked Danny. “But I’ve sent you flashing videos… Memes…”

“No, no, Lewis is the one who has epilepsy. I’m just saying it’s relatively common.”

Lewis made a face. “I could have told him myself. They’re only focal seizures, anyway.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Danny. “I’ve sent you flashing videos, too.”

“It’s fine,” said Lewis. “Focal seizures don’t make you lose consciousness all the way, and I’ve got a filtering program on my phone.”

“Mostly he shows them to me, first,” said Leo. “I have the anemia and a heart condition and low blood pressure and poor circulation and also eczema, which sort of makes my skin break out in hives if anything is touching it the wrong way for too long.”

“Still not a good reason to not wear shirts,” muttered Lewis. “Eugene?”

Eugene blushed, then looked down at the medicine bottle in his hand. He looked back and forth between Danny and the bottle, then the bottle and Jazz. The bottle was a slightly different color than everyone else’s.

“Um,” he said. “I have bipolar disorder. And I have auditory hallucinations. It’s not– It’s not schizophrenia, though. I don’t have the other symptoms.”

Joanna put her hand on Eugene’s shoulder. “I also have bipolar depression. And anemia.”

Now Danny just felt bad. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.” (Also, wow, why was he suddenly thinking about the time his parents tried to ‘spin the crazy’ out of him?)

Eugene laughed a little. “It’s fine. I mean, we’re showing you all our medications.” He held out his bottle towards Danny.

“Still.” Danny took the bottle. “But… have you ever considered that the hallucinations could be…?” He trailed off as Gwensyvyr and the other ghosts started shaking their heads.

“Oh,” said Eugene. “No, definitely not. There are ways to check if you’re hearing ghosts, assuming they’re cooperating. We tested it.” He sat down on the floor across from Danny. “So. How are you going to do this?”

“Um,” said Danny. “I was just going to phase my hand through each of these and see if anything happened? That way, I’m not screwing up good medicine by taking it apart or anything.”

“Is that safe?” asked Jazz with a slight frown.

“I– Nothing has ever happened to the stuff I’ve phased through before?”

“For you,” clarified Jazz.

“Might give me a burn,” said Danny. “But the blood blossom cream is already out, so… I’ll be okay.”

“If you say so,” said Jazz.

Danny nodded and held up Eugene’s bottle with his right hand and swiped his left hand through it.

(It was so strange to just do that in front of so many people, and in human form.)

“Nothing,” he said, handing the bottle back to Eugene.

“That makes sense,” said Eugene. He turned the bottle so Danny could see the logo imprinted on the bottom, a simple eye with an apple in place of a pupil. “Avl Ayg does more psychiatric medicine than Revyvtech.”

Danny nodded, and hunted through the bottles to find Joanna’s. It also didn’t have anything in it that Danny could detect.

Then, he started working through Leo’s medication. The heart stuff was fine, but when he passed his hand through the anemia medication, he flinched back, hissing.

“Blood blossoms?” asked Jazz.

“Yeah,” said Danny. “Ow.” He shook out his hand.

Jazz held out the cream to him.

“It’s such a tiny amount,” said Danny. He examined his hand. It wasn’t even red. “It was just, like, touching something too hot, rather than all-consuming agony.”

“Your standards for all consuming agony are off,” said Jazz. “Put on the cream before you do more.”

Danny grumbled but did what Jazz said. Then he tested the eczema medication, and…

“This feels weird, but not like blood blossoms,” he said. There was something ectoplasmic in it, but only in trace amounts. “Could be ectoplasm contamination?”

“Could you tell how even it is?” asked Jazz.

“No,” said Danny. “Do you think… If they are getting things for their medicines from Andyr, do you think that there could be ectoplasmic stuff down there? From the ghosts, maybe?”

He saw Gwensyvyr’s face screw up, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but then shook her head.

“That would make sense,” said Jazz, slowly. “But that would be incredibly dangerous. Ectocontamination made a cooked turkey come back to life.”

“What,” said Lewis, flatly.

“Never mind,” said Jazz.

Danny moved on to Lewis’s. His anti-seizure meds were fine, but he had a jar of anemia supplements, just like Leo. Again, there was something in it. He set it aside.

He moved on to Iris and George’s. They had a larger number, but theirs were largely identical, so he did them all at once. Again, most of them were fine, one of the melanin ones was weird, and the anemia supplement had blood blossoms in it.

“These actually have more than any of the others,” said Danny, nodding at the bottles while rubbing more cream into his hand. “It’s still tiny, the ghosts aren’t even affected by it being near, but…”

“But we’ve been getting slowly poisoned for who knows how long,” said Joanna. “All of us.”

“It does cast some doubt on it being what killed everyone, though,” said Iris. “Since none of us have keeled over in anaphylactic shock any of the times we’ve taken these. It’s possible that there’s a legitimate medical use.”

“I don’t know. I guess there are some things… Mom and Dad wanted to use it to purge ectocontamination.” Danny looked up. “Did Martin have this? Do you think any of his medication is still here?”

“Maybe,” said Joanna. “If he did have any here, it would probably be in his room, or the master bathroom.”

Getting everyone into the master bathroom was a squeeze, but no one wanted to be left out. Joanna opened the cabinet and moved aside a woebegone toothbrush and a few boxes of band-aids before pulling out three bottles and a weekly pill organizer. The organizer was mostly full, with only Sunday morning empty.

“Ferromultyx, melanyorata, and escitalopram?” she read from the bottles.

“Huh,” said Iris. “I didn’t know his melanin defect was bad enough to take melanyorata.” She sounded a little congested.

Danny, not quite in arms’ reach of Joanna, between all the people in the room, made grabby hands. “Let me see.”

Joanna passed them over, and Danny phased his hands through. The melanin deficiency drug had the same weirdness as Iris and George’s. The anemia drug on the other hand…

“There’s nothing here,” he said. “It’s clean.”

Iris chewed her lip. “None of this makes sense.”

“I think it does, actually,” said Danny, turning the bottle over and over in his hand. He wriggled his way out of the bathroom.

“How?” asked Lewis, who managed to get out before the others. “Why poison us just a little bit, and kill everyone else?”

“I don’t know that it’s just about that,” said Danny. He put Martin’s medication on a nearby shelf and pulled the small bottle of the medicine he’d been prescribed from his pocket and passed his hand through it. It burned. Badly enough to make him hiss and drop the bottle.

“Danny?” asked Jazz, alarmed.

“I’m fine. I just had to check something.” He cradled his hand near his chest. “I don’t think they want you dead. They want me dead. They don’t want you ectocontaminated.”

“You guys keep saying that,” said Leo. “What is it?”

“Ectoplasmic contamination. Ectoplasm. Ghost magic.” Danny licked his lips, then stepped sideways to get a better view of Gwensyvyr. “That’s what’s actually in Andyr, isn’t it? There’s a source of ectoplasm. There’s a portal.”

Gwensyvyr gazed at Danny for a long moment, then nodded.

“There’s something that happens in the Trials that makes you… more spiritual. Or something. More like a syvyr.” And Danny hoped beyond hope that ‘something’ wasn’t dying like he had in the portal. He could almost imagine it, all of them, all his family, walking, practically dancing down into the dark, into glowing, deathly green. A tableau. A danse macabre. A memento mori. Except no one really died…

… until now.

“That,” said Danny, “that’s what they’re trying to stop. They’re trying to keep that from happening. Because if it did– if it did…” He trailed off, unsure, then looked at Gwensyvyr. Her eyes were sharp, expectant. “Well, what we thought before, about them using stuff down there for medical research is probably still true, but… There are probably parts of the Trials you can’t do without having ectoplasm. Things for the ancestors. Things for…”

If there was a portal beneath Avlynys, the ghosts here should be as strong as in Amity Park. They weren’t. But they were gaining strength from Danny’s presence.

“Things for the portal,” Danny continued. “Like, unblocking it or something. Fixing it.” He shivered, remembering the last time he’d tried to fix a portal.

“A portal?” asked Joanna. “To where?”

“The, you know, the afterlife,” said Danny.

There was quiet.

“Unfortunately,” said Joanna. “We can’t do anything about that until we take the Trials. Except for not taking any more of these things.” She snatched up Martin’s medication and put it back in the cabinet.

Leo groaned. “Fainting town, here we come.”“For now… I think all of you need some sleep.”

#danny phantom #ancestral fic #ectoberhaunt23 #ectoberhaunt 2023

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ineffableigh · 2 years ago

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Timeline of Suspicious Events Brain Dump - PART 2

Ran out of characters. See previous post here! [linky]

We resume during Muriel's initial visit to the bookstore. They're having a nice look at a cupperty.

Crowley arrives in a bluster with all his plants - we've only seen him angrily say No about the Bentley and yet he seems to be going along with it anyway. He asks the important question: why not take the train? Why go by car? It's an eight hour drive each way! Train or even plane is WAY FASTER!

Crowley's the one that does the 'humans are weird/a few days' line for some bloody reason. Crowley what are you doin' man lol pick a better lie!

It feels Important that we see so many one on one moments with Nina, but not Maggie. Like we're building Nina as a character, but not really Maggie, y'know?

The show also really wants us to see how uncomfortable Nina is with discussing her love life at all, but everyone in the story just kind of blows past it.

"Dance Macabre" in the Bentley eh? A tone poem about Death calling the dead from their graves to dance for him? Like, I dunno, Gabriel says later in his Tempest line? A piece that quotes Dies Irae?

I love the musical conflict going on in the background once Crowley takes control of the Bentley's Vibes back lol.

Interesting that we have an entire moment to see that Beez is unhappy with the status quo in Hell, and the lack of recognition for all the work they seem to constantly have to do down there. Especially since we hear later they're very 'short staffed'.

Crowley moving seemingly random books from upstairs to downstairs, cosplaying a bookseller (ostensibly). Seems very chill about chatting gravity with Jimbriel, and we get our first Direct Fly Callout. Might be the second, not sure re: 'flyswats' when the archangels visited.

Pub imagery: Jesus raising Lazarus on one side, and the 'butcher' Dalrymple on the other side. Hmmm two sides of Heaven anyone?

It has to involve Aziraphale somehow because the Production Designer had that painting of Jesus done with the tomb opening being exactly like the 'eastern gate' of Eden in s01. Seems like a big effort to go to if not to draw parallels!

I find it interesting that Aziraphale a) seems super excited to hear about the 'Masons' b) there's a lodge next door to the pub, but c) we don't investigate that OR the person Gabriel was with. Y'know, the little shaggy haired demon with a bowler hat covered in flies? Normally would be quite conspicuous, yes? We know that Azi knows what Beez looks like from the end of S01.

Post-minisode we cut DIRECTLY to Aziraphale at the graveyard. What did he do between the pub and then? Did he walk there, drive there? Another huge gap to account for that's just swept under the rug.

Convenient that No Regerts and Friend are there, both being comically intense tough guys openly talking about Grindr lol. Just hanging out in the fog with no phone minutes left like ya do. Very convenient they were there, though I'm not sure what the advantage of that phone call even was. It's so strange a scene across the board that it feels like something is missing.

Back in town, Maggie is chasing Nina to talk about getting stuck in the cafe. I don't know what it is about their talks but to me they feel strange, or at least Maggie's side does. Might just be a by-product of us not seeing Nina 'acting like it's Maggie's fault' but it all feels very out of the blue, y'know? Always when Nina's busy working and can't really escape.

"I'm not your type." "You have no idea." Maggie SHE HAS A PARTNER AND SHE JUST SAID THE PARTNER SUSPECTS CHEATING, NOW IS NOT THE TIME LOL. See what I mean about Weird Vibes though?

Sudden Tempest Prediction from Gabriel. Very weird that he has these moments, either by forcing himself or these triggers. Do you have to be Empty to channel God?

Multitude of Shax Visions - this sequence seems odd to me. We've seen Shax impersonate a human once, yes, but this back to back thing seems unusually competent for her. I do wonder if we're getting a Crowley's Very Stressed Perspective thing going on here. Poor lad sure is stressed.

I was wondering how Shax figured out where Aziraphale was, but I bet she probably just tried to teleport to the Bentley like most demons seem to when Crowley was in it, but probably got punted outside by the Invitation Only magic. Or something.

The interaction with Shax here is really weird, though. It seems purely designed to freak Aziraphale out rather than actually get information. She says now she knows Gabriel is in the bookshop, but nothing about the discussion actually pointed to it any more than she would have known beforehand.

Shax then goes on to tell Beez that Gabriel is in the bookshop. Why she's so confident, I still don't really know, like I said above. All she knows is both the Husbands are being obfuscating dorks, but maybe that's enough.

Also like, Beez, you maybe should have just. Gone to the bookshop? Instead of attacking it? When you know Hell is short staffed? This is a Weird Plot Point too, if Beez just wants Gabriel. Why go straight to war?

As they're bringing Crowley's plants back to the car I hear glass shattering??? What's up with that??

Azi you dingle why are you hiding the Shax visit from Crowley. They really DON'T talk and for no good reason.

Next Instalment: [Linky]

#good omens #good omens 2 #ineffable husbands #good omens meta

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bloodonmysqueegee · 2 months ago

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Sleeper! Please yap endlessly about the Faith Is Mine AU!!!!! I am love with it, and love reading your many, many clever ideas!! Share your fun thoughts!!! Please?

I have so many thoughts its hard to put into words :(( so heres just some various ideas in no particular order with no theme:

John is both concerned and intrigued by the nature of the ghouls. When he learns Copia is so close to the ghouls and has been since he was just a little guy (i think some of the elder ghouls babysat the boys sometimes) that really bothers him, because it's hard for him to not look at the ghouls and see just a demon. John likely assumes for a while that they're all mindless, only following orders, and only starts rethinking that when Copia literally snaps at him that 'how dare he call them that'

Ouggh the angst potential here is smth. Copia owns up to things faster than John can about his issues, but it still takes a minute. Depending on the timeline if Copia admits that he's worried he'll be killed, John will not be able to let that go. It fuels the small part of his brain that wants to get his (dare he say, friend) out of that cult immediately, even though he knows Copia won't ever do that. Ough my brain

dont even get me started on the antichrist copia theory and if i want to make that canon for this au. i will lose my shit

I KEEP MAKING AUS WITHIN AUS I SWEAR help me. im insane. because theres so many different ways to take an idea like this or things to consider from both lores. like they could be friends and i really like that idea of kinda forbidden friendship but theres another part of my brain thats like "jdfhjh crackship. what if they had a dance macabre moment" and then I lose my mind again

anyways thank you for being here to listen to me

#ghost the band #ghonst #faith game #faith is mine au #sleepertalk

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sheyri · 6 months ago

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Happy Birthday!

“What are you doing for your birthday?”

“What do you mean?”

“Celebrate? Fun activities? Throw a huge ball?”

“Why would I celebrate?”

“It's your birthday! It's a special occasion!”

“It's just the day when I'm officially one year older. But we're ageing every day, with every experience.”

“Very philosophical, but also very boring.”

~~~

“She never had a birthday party, you know. Her parents didn't even acknowledge it.”

“I... shouldn't be surprised. But that sucks!”

“Yes. She deserves better.”

“Do you think she would enjoy a little surprise party? Just the three of us?”

“If it's nothing big.”

~~~

The next few days Ash and Callum spend plotting. They agreed that Ramsay would probably spend the day at work away up in the Downs, since it was a weekday. So they needed a convenient excuse to get her to come to Riverside.

In the end they decided to be at least somewhat honest about their intentions. “It's your birthday, at least take the day off.” Miraculously, it actually worked and Ramsay agreed.

Then there was the matter of the cake. “I was thinking a plum cake, for a personal touch”, Ash suggested. Chocolate cake was wonderful, but Ramsay had demonstrated her love for the fruit many times.

“Oh, yes! That's a great idea! I know where to get the best plums in Kensington. Just tell me how much you need, I'll take care of it.”

As for presents... “Maybe we shouldn't overdo it the first time.”

“You just don't know what to get her, admit it!”

“Guilty as charged. But I also stand by what I said. We don't want to overwhelm her, do we?”

“Yeah, okay. But we have to get her something small at least. It's not a birthday without presents.”

They brainstormed ideas for a bit until they settled on something they were sure she would appreciate.

“Also, I have an idea. But I'm not sure she would take it the right way...” Ash explained his plan. When he was done, Callum thought for a while.

“It's a bit macabre. But I don't know, it could go either way. Either she's really upset, or she'll find it hilarious.”

“Only one way to find out. Though first I'd actually have to manage it.”

“I think you should try it and then see how you like the result.”

So they set on getting everything ready. Callum arrived they day before Ramsay's birthday to help Ash with the cake. Ash showed him the present he'd made and they agreed he should just do it. They also wrapped the other present, then set them on a side table in the sitting room.

~~~

They only had a quick breakfast in the morning. Ramsay wouldn't arrive for another couple hours, but then they would have a proper meal. With plum cake.

Ash went outside and plucked some flowers for a fresh bouquet, which he then set on the table next to the presents. When they were expecting Ramsay to arrive, Callum set the table and they put out the cake.

And then the star of the day came home.

“Happy Birthday!”, Ash and Callum called out in unison. Ramsay stood in the doorway, stunned, then a grin spread on his face.

He came over and hugged them both. “You guys. You tricked me into celebrating!”, he said, still locked in the embrace. But he sounded happy, so Ash counted that as a win.

They exchanged kisses, then Callum cut in. “We got you something.” He handed Ramsay their present. He took it curiously and unwrapped it. Inside was a fairytale collection. “You probably know all of them already, but it's a new illustrated edition and the paintings are really beautiful.”

“I haven't read any fairytales in ages”, he replied, a bit of longing in his voice. “Thank you.” He kissed both of them again.

“Okay, so, I made something for you!”, Ash started, a little nervous. “I was practising my creation alchemy and... well, anyway. Just promise you won't be mad!”

Ramsay took the present from him with a raised eyebrow and carefully unwrapped it. When he saw what was inside he burst into laughter.

“So you're not mad?”, Ash asked carefully.

“No! No, this is perfect.” Ramsay grinned. He held a model of a human skull in his hands.

“His name is Gresham”, Ash began, but was interrupted by another round of laughter. “What! You need someone to discuss your research with when I'm not around. Or when I am. Because Source knows I barely understand half of what you're talking about.”

“He's certainly a good listener”, Ramsay replied, still giggling. “Though I best keep him in my private rooms. But I might take him for a walk when I have very special visitors.”

He sat the skull down gently, then hugged Ash again. After a moment he pulled Callum into the hug as well. “Thank you, guys. You're the best.” There was an odd tone to his voice, almost like he was about to cry. Ramsay pulled away and indeed rubbed his eyes. But he was smiling. “Seriously. I love you.”

“You don't even know the best part yet”, Ash teased. “There's cake. Plum cake.”

“How dare you keep that for last!”

This would truly be a great first birthday party.

Happy Birthday, Snacho!

#infinity alchemist #kacen callender #fanfiction #ramsay thorne #ash woods #callum kendrick #do we know when the cuddle puddle's birthdays are?#when i wrote ramsay laughing i actually pictured my good friend #he has the exact kind of laughter i imagine for ramsay #bedtime stories for snacho

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nagdabbit · 2 years ago

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What season of Dimension 20 should a noob start with I want to understand what the FUCK you're talking about

oooooooo yes, welcome, come on in, were all fucking weird here!

get ready to have Extreme Feelings about one (1) loud, white man

but also, you can kinda start wherever you want? i haven't even watch every single season, anyway. here's the seasons, out of airing order, probably

fantasy high - the original, the og. teens in fantasy high school, having hijinks and saving the world. honestly, if there's like an established place to start, this is it. there's a second season, and a couple of live shows that are so fucking fun. griffin mcelroy's live ep is fucking WILD, i love ficus

pirates of leviathan - fantasy high adjacent, post fh season 2. i didn't actually finish this one. i dont remember why. i dont super have a strong attachment to fh season 2, so the setting for this one just didn't interest me, but it's pirates having hijinks on a floating pirate city

unsleeping city 1 & 2 - urban fantasy weirdness, urban fantasy fun times. the magical world that lives beneath and alongside the new york we all know. like fables, maybe, but more fantasy archetypes than folklore. really fun, really enjoyable, i have no memory of season two but i know i watched it

the seven - another fh spinoff, but a little more tied into the first season. a fantasy party of all the people they spent season one trying to save. it is SO FUCKING FUNNY, and SO FUCKING GAMEPLAY CRUNCHY, and I CRIED SO FUCKING HARD. need some emotional healing? exquisite. i miiiight suggest watching fh first, just to understand who they are, but also you don't *need* to

tiny heist - borrowers and fairies and thug bugs and living toys, trying to run a heist. so goddamn fun. highly, highly recommend. i love a fuckin heist. its the mcelroy family season, so if you like them you can look forward to that. just mcelroy is just. he's fucking batshit.

a crown of candy - game of thrones ass campaign, but the characters and kingdoms are all based on the different food groups. for real and honest, this season didn't hit me and i didn't finish it. but i do enjoy compilations of it on youtube

the ravening war - crown of candy spin off. i also didn't watch this at all, but it has cr's matt mercer as the guest gm, and im sure he's a great guy and all, but i just don't vibe with his dm style. deffo the least amount of levity of all the seasons, i think

mice & murder - a sherlock holmes, agatha christie ass murder mystery where everyone is in the house trying to solve the murder. also everyone is woodland creatures. another highly recommend if you're into murder mysteries like that

escape from the bloodkeep - what if lotr was told from the baddies pov. it's so stupid, so silly, so much fun. highly recommend

shriek week - monsters on their final week of college. despite my love of guest gm, gabe hicks, this season just Did Not Hit Me. not even ify nwadiwe could hold me

misfits and magic - hogwarts ass magic school for little wizards, but without the transphobia and racism. need some kids upsetting an unjust society based on classism? this for you. so, so good! guest gm aabria iyengar, she fucking knocks it out of the park. there's also a christmas episodes and a live show with a different cast

a starstruck odyssey - did you know that brennan lee mulligans mom elaine wrote the comic starstruck? this season is based on the comic and its very fucking fun! scifi shenanigans out the ass

neverafter - horror themed season, about macabre fairytale characters and the enduring nature of stories. it took me a bit to get into this season, but it's so good! you gotta like horror, tho. that's important to remember. it's a dark season

coffin run - draculas followers try to get an injured dracula back to the castle before his enemies catch up. sooooooo so so fucking funny, one of my favorite seasons. guest gm jasmine bhullar kills it. absolutely unfuckinghinged season

a court of fey and flowers - EASILY my favorite, second favorite season. aabria is back, the fey are having a party, someone is trying to do something terrible, they need to navigate jane austen era ass court politics to figure it out. so, so fucking stupid and fun

dungeons & drag queens - i havent finished this season, cuz i got Depressed As Shit earlier this year and just couldn't, but im about to jump back in. honestly, the plot doesn't matter, it's monet x change, alaska thunderfuck, jujubee and bob the drag queen. do you need to know anything else? no, you don't

mentopolis - the current season. a good place to start it you don't want to binge anything, as only one episode is out. it's a noir detective mystery taking place within the brain of a scientist and is already climbing the ranks of my favorite seasons

godspeed, you little nerd. go forth and have fun

#asks!

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resmarted · 3 months ago

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it's 1999 and we are in eighth grade, class of y2k, baby. we are in that weird stage of adolescence where i hate myself for existing and you're starting to learn your power as the beloved class clown and most eligible valentine all the girls crane their necks and bend over backwards for. meanwhile, everything bores me. i don't like anyone and they don't like me and we all sort of co-exist in this hell realm together, but nobody else ever seems to feel as bad inside of it and i resent the way they can all just vibe it out without the weight of the world hovering over them as it is an ever-present dark cloud over me. so i bide my time ignoring the conversations to write weird things in my notebooks that are often stolen and rifled through by classmates for entertainment. and to be fair, i am insufferable in a lot of obvious ways. i wear too much black and read girl, interrupted instead of participating in p.e. and i spend recess helping teachers file papers just for a respite in the ac where i can successfully avoid everyone without the humiliation of visibility.

everyone loves you, and i mean everyone. it's a little disgusting but understandable, you're funny and smart and helpful in ways other kids don't know how to be, you can draw everyone as comic strip versions of themselves and hack tamagotchis to save the lives of beloved electronic pets, you're good at every sport and every subject, it all seems so effortless. what's wild is we were best friends in kindegarten, way before i became like this. we constantly got in trouble for laughing too much but how could we help it? one look across the room and it was uncontrollable giggling during the more boring lessons, quite literally had to be separated into different groups and eventually classrooms for years moving forward. one of the last memories i had of us up to this point was after they held some end of the year dance party for us newly graduated kindergartners which resulted in a slow song at one point, and looking back it's like, what the fuck was that? like what were they even doing? we were five and six. but anyway, the slow dance comes on and it starts this big drama because i want my partner to be my ultra mega crush michael ortega but he wants to dance with my best friend lucy lieberman who doesn't want to dance at all, she just wants to play outside because this whole thing is getting stupid but really i think she wants to dance with you and you want to dance with me. and we do, but we are laughing the entire time because honestly, what kind of weird fucked up school was this that they put a slow song on for us? plus i am experiencing my first very real feeling heartbreak that the boy of my dreams does not wish to touch hands to shoulders with me and you are maybe feeling the same but trying to cheer me up about it because you've always been nice and helpful in ways other kids don't know how to be. we are subsequently separated after this and our personalities start to change from there. we are both experiencing things at home that no one else knows about but we deal with it in different ways. i become macabre and increasingly more difficult to manage while you embody the opposite, eager to please and be validated and approved of by anyone who is meant to love you regardless. we are both treated as servants.

there's another factor at hand that neither of us know about at the time. we are children of seemingly opposing war families in verona unbeknownst to either of us. your family hates me because i am in class reading everyone's palms one day in second grade, and it becomes this whole thing. the teachers get calls from the parents and i am further isolated because i told becky mcallister that she was going to be married twice and have three kids, one girl with the first guy and later a set of boy girl twins with the other, and we don't practice that devilish behavior or promote divorce in this town. my mom scolds me for letting on that i know about this world, that i am to keep our family secrets private lest i get kicked out of school and run out of town. your family does the same kind of thing to you in a less obvious way. by this point you are having more frequent dreams that are intricate and deeply meaninful. you see things before they happen and get premonitions on the real intentions of strangers and those closest to you. you have no clue what your mom is up to when the lights go out or that when she reads scriptures to you it's a form of spellwork from a very famous book of spells disguised as the one true word of the lord. over time you are subdued because fitting in is a lot more important to you and i am repeatedly punished for always questioning and fighting everything no matter how hard my dad tries to beat me into submission. neither of us have any idea they're all apart of the same coven and our gifts combined are their greatest threat.

but enough about that, back to eighth grade. one day during recess you come into the classroom to grab a new ball because you kicked the last one so hard it flew over the fence and off the property. of course you did. i am in there alone writing out my magnum opus in a composition notebook, probably a poem about the depths of my despair with multicolored highlighters to really get the point of my pain across, and for a moment you are startled by my presence before simply going oh, it's just you. i am neither pressed nor perturbed by your very predictable rude behavior and don't even look up when asking if you ever found it weird that evil backwards spelled live. i know this is surely enough to make you run off in a panic to tell everyone that i am witch to be burned, but to my surprise you actually stop for a second and are like huh, i never thought about that. i press on without looking up in my most monotone expression and say careful, the watchers don't want you waking up. luckily, you do respond in your normal tone this time and simply say you're weird before going about your business. at some point you're digging through the chest of sports gear trying to find the one you're looking for, or maybe making an excuse to stay longer aimlessly shuffling things around while saying something to the effect of you know, for such an evil sorceress you sure do love britney spears. for the first time in i don't know how long, i laugh harder than i have, maybe in years. this is a topic i am very defensive about at this point in time. britney is not cool by the standards of my people (alt goth girls on the internet) and i very notoriously wrote an essay siding with christina for english class where we had to form a debate and pick a side that had everyone talking and discussing their own views. the teacher was horrified i wrote that she was a nymphet and promoted lolita culture in a way that distracted from mediocre vocal abilities, it was a whole thing and i'm surprised nobody got a phone call over it. knowing this would get me heated, you're hiding a smile waiting for me to fly off the handle into a meaningless rage, though quite the passionate tangent. and i do. of course i do. i'm all, first of all, no i don't. her place in the current zeitgeist is that of a - and this part we both say in unison - shallow, subservient demigoddess who's a reductive stain on society at large. my jaw drops and you're grinning from ear to ear, real proud of yourself for having memorized my words like your favorite song and you use this rare moment of my being speechless to note that you saw me correcting some of the other girls in homeroom on one of her dance moves. you also know about the parody website i run, spending crazy amounts of time just to make fun of her for an internet following of twelve, and that you don't think i hate her at all but that i actually just have a big lesbian crush on her. you walk out the winner on this one, smugly saying that nirvana is dead so just accept it already, spinning that stupid fucking ball over your finger so proud of yourself as i am maybe for the first time ever left unable to retort anything at all. i quietly have an identity crisis about my sexuality for the remainder of the period while you similarly are floored by the whole evil/live thing. when your friends ask what took you so long you make some passing remark about the evil hag was being a weirdo obsessively talking my head off and they're all like yeah, yeah dude she's insane.

cut to eleventh grade. by this time you're a fucking nightmare. and i mean you are so praised, so loved, destined to become everything you want to be, and you pride yourself on having hooked up with the majority of our grade. i have relaxed significantly and found my own gang of freaks by now and while you are still the antithesis of my core values, at least i'm a little less of a hater in general about things. I have had two serious girlfriends by now and am currently deeply in love with sam rogers, a very poetic boy who doesn't know i exist but he has long hair and plays wonderwall on guitar at parties which I find very dreamy and impressive. at this point my dad has secretly ripped up acceptance letters into colleges I've applied to and awards I've won for short stories I've written, even going so far as to put his own name on my work and send it off for the same credit and any cash prizes he can get out of it. I live in this constant state of being too aware of the world around me and being completely naive to it all at once. my mother prides herself on being the cool mom and lets my friends smoke in the house, refers to one of my guy friends as the hot one, and other disconcerting things that plague me later in my adult life. yours are very different, seemingly very normal with strict rules, christian values, controlling your decisions in small ways that don't seem like a big deal but add up over time. we are at the same party one night and i am weeping in the bathroom after seeing my best friend make out with dreamy mcdreamboat sam rogers even though she doesn't even like him or appreciate his deep sensitive nature and at the time i can't really grasp that she has issues with power and domination, and even more on the nose with severe kleptomania as she constantly steals meaningless things from people and places just to brag that's how she got it. when we are young this is cool and funny but it warps into a full blown career for her later in life, but that's beside the point. i'm crying in the bathroom because my shaggy haired teen dream has fallen prey to becoming another one of her conquests and you're red faced from doing handstands at the kegger, just stumbling through trying to take a leak. and for a minute you look at me startled and almost seem like a human being. i am too emotional to think of anything snarky to say at you and when you ask me what happened i am suddenly sobbing that this is the worst night of my life and lucy is the worst friend on the planet. you touch my shoulder for the first time since kindergarten and say with full confidence that sam is a mediocre hack and lucy has wanted to be me since the day i got picked to be april at recess and she had to play donatello because that was the only spot left during a very intense game of ninja turtle tag. and suddenly i am teary-eyed laughing and your arms are around me and my mascara morphs into little black rivers connecting our cheeks. you look at me with a heat in your eyes i have never seen and before i can even tell what is happening sam walks in and sees us making out and immediately tells everyone what a fake slut i am while lucy is already on the lap of some random football player in the next room. it becomes a whole fucking thing. everything in high school is this whole fucking thing.

in the hallways you ignore me, everyone ignores me, i am once again the evil witch they all wish to burn while lucy somehow comes out on top and remains miraculously unscathed in the social landscape. some of your goons spray paint whore onto my locker which is weird because you have quite literally slept with the entire school but no one calls you that. later when no one is around you find me in the parking lot and swear you didn't know they were going to do that and i'm like oh i'm sooo sure you give a flying fuck about anyone but yourself and your super cool status with a bunch of dorks who cater to your every whim you people pleasing little bitchtard. and now we are screaming at each other like an old married couple and you're like oh god, sorry i don't get off on being the evil villain recluse and actually like people and i'm screaming back that you don't like people you don't even like yourself you just want people to like some fake shallow surface level version of you to distract yourself from that fact. you yell very abruptly and stupidly that when i am doing the thing again and i am like what THING you moronic asshole?? and you're like the thing where you're so mad you're half-dancing out the rage and waving your hand like there's a magic wand in it. and suddenly it's like, do you want to get out of here? yeah, duh, yeah i do. we spend all night eating gas station burritos watching the sunset from the trackfield bleachers and you divulge the gory details of all your most embarrassing sexual escapades in which you couldn't get it up or tried going down on a girl but never found the clit and in absolute disgust i am like, why are you telling me all of this? and you're all, so i can set the bar low before you see my actual dick. first of all, gross. no. secondly, why do you even bang all these girls if you hate it so much and you're that bad at it? and you say it's because you're trying to get enough practice in to get better for me but i say it's because you're at least a little gay and don't even really like heteronormative sex to begin with. besides, i'm not trying to help you fill some empty void you have inside yourself with meaningless sex when the boys in the locker room can jerk you off and call you a king with a lot more gusto than i can. and here it starts, your hands are groping my face and tits, and here i am just letting it happen, just being the big whore everyone says i am, and please god don't let this be some kind of setup, i'm genuinely so terrified of you at this point. you are swearing to god over and over again that it's not just meaningless with me and i can't tell if i believe you or if i just want to believe you so i let myself pretend that it could be true, but now my pants are off and your tongue knows its way around a clit after all and you're right, downselling yourself really helped amplify the surprise, that was a smart business move, did you learn that in econ? and the sun is going down and you're inside of me looking into my eyes telling me you cut the wires in the breaks of sam's car during third period today, and i cum so hard in that moment i think i'll never speak again. moments later i am dizzy and begging you to please tell me you're joking and you are, but only halfway. you cut the wires of his guitar which is more of an inconvenience than a deadly crime, but the sound of your voice saying it lives in my head for days after that.

the next few weeks are spent with very subtle interactions, mostly very brief exchanging glances and the suppressed smiles that follow, because god forbid anyone saw. god forbid the hounds come out and circle us with their claws and fangs, the very sounds of weapons sharpening at the slightest thought of losing a single precious moment with you to the likes of me. i am back to being besties with lucy like nothing happened and settling for being a secret because this is my level of self-esteem and i haven't learned how to set boundaries with anyone so gracious enough to bestow me with an ounce of love. at some point we realize no one would think to find you in the library, which becomes our safe haven where only edgar allen poe and mary shelley are there to witness us making out with the raging passion of two lovers caught in a war zone that might get bombed to death any second now. it is on a wednesday that our now regularly scheduled rendezvous is interrupted in the most life altering way. i am flipping through l. frank baum going, you know glinda was really the bad witch, right? she was only good at seeming nice to get what she wanted, she just used dorothy as a pawn to take down the other powers and gain full control over oz. what was the witch of the west's crime other than being kind of ugly and weird? and cranky that her sister was killed by some rando transplant which honestly reeks of colonization at it's finest. right? i look up to see you with tears streaming down your face and the whole room shifts. you can barely say it. you can barely utter it, the words choking out in labored breaths: i got becky pregnant. it happened months ago and meant nothing and now my ears are ringing and the bombs are going off all around me but i don't wish to survive this war zone anymore, i want it to take me. she's really pretty and your family approves of her and you both look really good in pictures and on paper, and suddenly our lives are never the same again. you get a job working for her dad right out of high school and at some point sam writes me a song to prove he loves me after all but i move to a school in another state with a handful of clothes in my bag because fuck all of you, every last one of you. and this lives in me, i move on and away but this eats at my soul for years to come in ways i can't identify, and i successfully avoid ever looking back until the day dad finally dies and leaves me what little is left of all that he stole from an inheritance no one ever informed me was mine. your daughter is my cashier at the winn dixie where sam also works now and i can't tell why she looks so familiar until realizing she has the same magical looking eyes as you. she is around the same age i last saw you and for a moment i am beside myself with grief at the life i lost and also in awe of what a smart beautiful young lady stands before me. on my way out the store i bump into your mother who looks just as displeased with my existence as the day becky's mom called her to tell her i was filling her precious son's mind with heathen thoughts and heresy with my second grade palm readings. she is curt and begrudgingly polite, gives me her condolences about my dad and i am a little nicer back because i have this sick desire for the approval of women who will always hate me no matter how right i get everything. i leave the same dejected child i was a hundred years ago.

a week later i am at a diner we spent all of our time at after school, my friends and i usually were on the other side of the now defunct smoking section, and it has a new paint job and doesn't feel much the same now. nothing does. i am ruminating over the time spent in this place and what it even means to be young and alive, reading over the local paper and what i begrudgingly wrote for my dad in his obituary. if i thought i couldn't wait to get out of this town as a kid it sure felt a lot more dire as a thirty-something just white knuckling it through the whole trip. i consider all the ways in which i am not who I was back then and also how I am exactly who I was. for a moment i have flashes of old fantasies i played out in my head during fifth period in mr. welcher's physics class where the town blows up from a faulty oil rig and it never gets put on the map again, just becomes a distant and long forgotten memory after our children's children die. i snap out of it and look up to find you hovering over me like a ghost in a fitted baseball cap and that all-knowing smile. you say something very on brand of you like, don't you know ain't nothing in the news but the blues? and i am startled out of my skin. you pick the paper out of my hand and point to the obit i wrote and point to a line you've already memorized, finding it to reference without trying, saying you like the part where i likened his silence to the trees and his wit to the fire that burnt them for warmth, how it got progressively nicer considering it was coming from me, and a few other notes that are still lost on me because i can't believe you read it or have an in-depth review of it and i can't believe you're here in front of me. my mouth is agape and i am shell-shocked, and you of course, you're just amused as ever. you bop me on the head with my own paper and just sort of look at me and we sit there for a minute, maybe an hour for all i know, in complete silence before the waitress comes to ask if you'll be dining with me or sitting in your usual spot. it's deidre lawrence who gives me just as evil a glare as she did when we were in high school and you tell her we are actually going somewhere else and i'm like, we are? and you look at me and say you came to pick me up, remember? and i am slow to play along because what in the hallmark movie is happening right now? so you tell her to put my bill on your tab and i make a disgusted noise because of course you have a tab, of course you're still the adored golden boy of this town, of course you still look the same and it's probably because you feed off everyone around you like the demented vampire you really are. i follow you anyway because i am just as entranced as everyone else even though i would love not to be, would love to be the one who is different that can deny you without trying or thinking twice about it, but i haven't felt a sense of calm since i've been back and now i am the smoothest river and the oldest rock.

it's hard to explain what happens here because it happens in a blur and doesn't seem like it lasts anywhere near as long as it should. we are in your truck headed to what I can only guess is my untimely demise, and you start babbling on about something that I sort of zone out from because it's been so long since I saw a landscape like this, the greenery goes on for miles and I can't remember the view being this breathtaking, concluding to myself that perhaps it is the fog of the city that has clouded my brain and I am suddenly beside myself with grief that I could even miss this place at all much less feel the pit of my stomach deepening over my sudden yearning and fondness for it. and then I hear you say something in a questioning tone and when I snap out of it you repeat, do you remember that? when we saw the vandals at warped tour? and I am like wait, what? we didn't go to warped tour together and I definitely didn't see the vandals with you. and we are suddenly fighting like time has not passed and you, in your ever-temperamental tone pop off and are like yes, I was definitely there, and you proceed to name everyone that was with us that day, the route we drove to road trip three states away just to get there, and how I fawned over the lead singer when he talked to me from behind a chainlink fence, and we both in unison say "right before christy anderson barfed from drinking mad dog in the summer heat" and I look at you and am stunned like, wait you were there? and you are so much more annoyed now, whirring the truck down this endless road going yes! yes! I was always fucking there! you were always just so obsessed with yourself and your cool friends you didn't even see me half the time. and I mean, I don't know, maybe you're right, what do I know? I am still in shock you even know who the vandals are, and you're like well I didn't but you were into them so I got into them, and I unintentionally laugh from surprise and this annoys you even more. I'm not laughing AT you, I'm laughing at the whole situation, I'm laughing because I'm uncomfortable and thrown off guard and you are a ghost driving me back into the past where I left all my buried memories that were never meant to be dug up like this. you pull over to a river where the view is even more serene and when I get out alongside you we stand there in silent reverence to the locusts and dragonflies. and then you just do it, you just take what you want like you always do and I let you either because I am vulnerable from all the death and nostalgia or because I am still in love with you, I really can't tell. and we are seventeen again, making out under an oak tree where ants congregate to discuss our forbidden love and bring the news to their queen. and im not thinking to ask you things like aren't you married? don't you have fifty kids now? isn't your mommy going to be mad at you for going anywhere near the likes of me? I just sort of let you take me the way many other girls have done the same because I am just like them and we all fall prey to your heavy hands that yank hips and lift chins until we have no choice but to surrender. and I hate you for this, by the way. I hate that I like the way that you touch me and I hate that I like the way that you look at me like a starving wolf, but I would be lying if I said i hate that I am here in this moment letting you paw at me and feeling the reverberation of moans echoing into the back of my throat.

there are three more key instances we share like this while I am in town. one is at an empty baseball field where you insist on trying to teach me how to hit the ball for once because in school I would blatantly refuse to try and we spend this excruciating amount of time where I am still sulking and saying this is stupid, please let's do literally anything else, and you're like no come on you need to at least try. and I try, and I try and I try, efforts which are first half-hearted but become more determined the more you pitch at me, and suddenly after the ninety-seventh swing I hit it and wait, I did? oh shit! I did it! and you yell at me to run just so you can chase me around the field and tackle me to the ground and we do the thing again where you have me pinned down and I have all kinds of dust and dirt in my hair, way too far lost into the labyrinth of emotion and nostalgia to turn back now. we go to the theater and see a movie we don't even watch or pay attention because you are holding my hand and staring at me with that doofy fucking look you get when you are too excited to act like a normal person. you take me back to my room and hold me up against the door where we make out furiously and suddenly my clothes are off and my legs are up over my head and when we are done you are smoking a joint, sprawled across the floor building an intricate house with playing cards, and you fill me in on all of the gossip with everyone in town. stacy daniels has three kids from three different fathers, two being brothers, jennifer lotts has every std in the book, gina ellsworth has every mental illness in the dsm-5, and good god, do you have anything else to say besides low vibe bullshit about the townies? and you're like excuse me this is very productive and highly intelligent information. the five of spades flies out of the deck and I laughingly tell you without thinking that that actually means you're just starting shit for the sake of it and it's going to backfire on you. you look at me with suspicion and toss three more in front of me going, what about this? ace of hearts, two of hearts, two of clubs, and I sit up very seriously and ask if you got someone pregnant and ditched them. your face turns red and you say no but you're lying, and suddenly this game isn't fun anymore and you have to go. who was it? no seriously, who was it? you insist it's not a big deal. you're rushing to get dressed and the house of cards falls as you swish past them. and suddenly we are fighting like time never passed when i ask you who it was that you knocked up and you're like I thought you hated small town gossip? and our voices are raising when I want to know how long you were seeing her for and you're like jesus christ you're presumptuous and here comes the stingers and the low blows you're so good at. I'm miserable and I'm neurotic and I think I'm better than everybody and always have and that's why I have no friends and everyone hates me, oh is it? oh is that why? no no, tell me more. and suddenly you blurt out it's Becky, Becky is who you are leaving. she's four months along. wait, what? and I start to follow you out the door but before I can dig in for more, a pack of your finest cronies are standing outside the door waiting for us. it's rob ackerman in full police uniform, josh abraham, tyler kinsley, all of whom look like they want to be anywhere else but here in this moment, clearly dragged in by their respective wives diane, ashley, jessica, and then of course becky. you are noticeably alarmed and as they drag us off we are screaming at each other louder, our hands being pulled behind our backs and im screaming at you for setting me up you snaky motherfucker and you have a panicked look in your eyes when you swear to me you knew nothing about this but before I can lash back out my mouth is gagged and I am kicking up as we are pulled apart and thrown into the back of two cop cars.

at the station we are sitting across from each other, still bound as josh and tyler hook us both up to a lie detector. you look terrified and apologetic in your gaze at me but I want to kill you. I was so stupid to trust you after everything I knew about you, to think this could be harmless, as becky and her pack of bitches bark at me with various homewrecking comments, calling me a town witch, saying I killed my father, and my eyes burn a hole through yours, a raging heat boiling inside of me. they tell me something fell out my bag at the diner the other day and lay a deck of tarot cards in front of me. becky says something to the effect of let's see a magic trick, witch. nice one. very classic. when you beg them please don't do this I'm like no, let's do this. who wants to go first? suddenly everyone looks a little hesitant but not me. I'm ready to set fire to this whole place Carrie style. how about you? I look at you and you're like no please no. i have no mercy when i look at you and the whole room can feel it. shuffle.

our arms are unbound and you beg me with your eyes but fuck you. fuck all of you. I flip each one down harder than the last and when I read them my voice softens. you're right, let's not do this. this riles everyone up, now they have to know. no, this is stupid. becky demands to know what it says, witch? and shoves me until I start talking. alright, fine. there's a woman outside of your marriage that you never got over and your feelings have only developed stronger over time. you don't love your wife anymore and haven't for a long time. she is psychologically abusive and maybe even physically. you feel trapped in a situation that is long overdue for a change. this is something you've kept going long past the expiration because you are unreasonably loyal despite a wandering eye and constant temptation to run off and start a new life. becky laughs dismissively but rob looks nervous when the needle moves steadily back and forth. she's telling the truth. becky smirks smugly and demands you to say that I don't know what I'm talking about, that im a phony just like my mother. you swallow back and very quietly deny it, which of course sets off the detector to a rapid wobble, only to even more quietly confirm that it's accurate. the detector stabilizes and all hell breaks loose. she starts screaming and everyone sort of braces themselves in the line of her fire.

but wait, becky. we haven't even done yours. she lets out a high pitched cackle, saying she's not touching those things, she doesn't play those devil games. oh but don't you? because I think you do. I think you've been playing them for a long time, actually. another comment of what am I going on about now, witch? but I don't need the cards to read you, becky. it doesn't take much to see that you've been kitchen witching your way in and out of situations since high school. you get off on playing this role of the head soccer mom with the perfect family but you've been cooking for that family with your period blood and controlling them and the rest of this zombie eyed town through means of witchcraft for years now. after all, you're my mom's highest paying client. the lie detector says I'm right. she gets visibly upset but I'm not done. you were so jealous that we were together in high school that you lied about getting pregnant by him but that's not even his baby. it's his best man's. all heads turn to rob and suddenly he doesn't want to confirm or deny the lie detector. my voice becomes a soft whisper when I suggest it's in everyone's best interest that we are both uncuffed and let go before any other skeletons get loose. when becky responds with a callous fuck that, i shoot her a glare and the lights start to flicker.

this is where things get kind of weird (oh really? this? this is where things start? to get weird?). papers fly off the table and the needle starts moving back and forth rapidly beyond what is even remotely normal and Becky becomes livid, hurling insults at me as I calmly watch with hair blowing back to no wind in the room. I am just trash and so is my family, that I should even be so lucky to be in the room with the likes of town royalty, that I always act like I'm better than everyone but everyone knows the truth about me, that my dad was supposed to live longer but took the hit when "we were trying to take you out instead" meaning through the use of magic with my equally demented mother, gloating that now she has the chance to do it the regular way. she barks at the boys to sic me and just as they move to do her bidding, holding me back and pulling a gun from its holster to hand over to her, the lights are flickering like strobes across her wide-eyed smile. as soon as it touches her hands, you spring into action, pulling your own out along with a badge, and wait, you have a badge? oh god of course you have a badge. yes it's one of those. you scream fbi get down on the fucking ground and I have never been wetter in my entire life than the moment I see you not only stand up to becky but defend my honor and right to live. she is floored and confused, and you keep screaming get the fuck down on the fucking ground, move! nearly kicking her into her place. the mental boners. the fireworks. I can't believe my eyes as the boys back up their double agent spy extraordinaire. this has been an ongoing investigation for years now where no one was the wiser. becky once ruled this town but is now having twin babies in a jail cell, still by another father, neither of them being you but you do still care for them like your own and she does marry someone in prison who found her on the news and worshipped her in letters accordingly. regardless, the palm reading in second grade was accurate.

I'm not really sure what happens to us. I kind of knew where this was going and how this ended up to this point but I never knew if I stay or move on because sometimes I think I hate you and want to see myself as this evolved person who can move away and not look back. other times I am like oh I definitely return to become a townie and open up a spiritual shop to foster a sense of belonging for the neighborhood freaks, and we have our own kids and a little farm and you magically don't need to dick down everything that walks anymore and somehow we become these healed people all wrapped up in a nice tidy little bow. I didn't say it had to be realistic. however we end up, it is important that you know I will never tire of you no matter how reckless your antics or illogical my perception of your true nature tends to be. I could never fault you even if you ended up letting becky murder me with your own gun. you could wear a hundred different faces and tell a hundred different lies but even at your darkest hour, you need not be king of the castle to be loved so dearly and you make a house of cards so much more stable looking than anyone else has ever managed to do it. besides, i really need to believe you wouldn't have actually let becky kill me, or anyone else for that matter. if there is one thing everyone can agree on, it's that you have always been helpful in ways other kids don't know how to be.

#long reads

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sdyuteiaok · 5 months ago

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Finally got a different--totally different--deck today: BW. I got TWO of the 2WW Angels that get counters and draw when you gain life, plus TWO Serra Angels! I didn't have too much life gain support or payoffs, sadly, so I wasn't fully doing what BW seems to want to be doing in this set, but I had one lifelink Hawk, which I picked pretty highly, and boy did that pay off, even two of the 1/3 Vampire that drains when it attacks. I took a Goldpick with the logic that I needed that Bird to be able to plink in on demand, and if not, I needed those Vamps to be able to swing, and getting them to 4 toughness also spared them from many blockers and removal spells--you'd need to blow real removal on them, which is ultimately good for us, since we have such incredible threats that need to survive, but can wrap the game. On top of that, I also included a Macabre Waltz since I knew these bomb creatures would make or break my matches, and dealing with them twice could easily put the game out of reach--though reach, the ability, is a bit of a hurdle. So these somewhat questionable picks did work out, and I'm glad I scooped them up. I only got 5 wins, but one loss was because I seriously flooded out after a Chandra wrathed me--crucially, that pick on my Vamp ate a lot of the 8 dmg, and I never drew my Disenchant to get rid of the Legit Businessman enchant on my Serra, which woulda deal the finishing blow--he was at 1 life for the entire rest of the game, some five or so turns--and I drew five or so lands in a row. I had that game, even another Vamp woulda won just on the attack. So many outs, but never drew anything. And then those rare counter-draw Angels also were quite scarce--I only drew them a couple times. But I was always so hesitant to deploy them--they aren't huge, initially, just 3/3, so I always wanted a lifegain source available immediately, which was maybe the wrong call. I dunno. The one time I jammed one, it ate a Bake into a Pie immediately, as I had suspected. I shoulda just slowrolled--I had a good number of threats my opponent would have to contend with and blow removal on, so maybe that game I shoulda just been a little mana inefficient and deploy my slightly less frightening, but still non-negligble 3/3, the first strike guy and stuff. I dunno. I hate that whatever the correct route is, I always pick the exact opposite--should I hold back? I do; I shoulda jammed. Should I jam? I do; I shoulda held back. Annoying. This felt like a trophy deck, but I can't complain about 5 wins--that's an infinitivo, so our next draft is paid for, and that's what it's all about. Can't buy a win in constructed, anyway, so not drafting is quite torturous. But, man, that last game with the flood-out was also such a gross way to go out. I absolutely had that one--he even almost decked cuz Chandra burns through 3 cards per uptick, and he was quite liberal with her use, including playing and cloning ETB looters. I did draw one creature, and he had the counter for it. But otherwise, he was also drawing nothing relevant. Disenchant, another Angel, my Vamps, he was dead to so much, but stuck it with one life and Chandra. Yuck.

#studies #gesture drawing #traditional

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sharonisthebettercarter · 1 year ago

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the people in denial about this genuinely worry me.

billy butcher is genocidal.

i love him (both actually) as a character, he's very intriguing and entertaining, utterly fascinating as a case study. but that sumbitch knows he's a horrifically evil person and chooses to do whatever horrible act that comes to mind anyway.

homelander was raised specifically to not be able to tell the difference/believe that he is above humanity and therefore 'exempt' from limitations/rules of morality (ironic, because he still obeys them most the time, unfortunately people taught him how to disobey and get away with it, and now with crowds of people makin' him realize they don't give a shit...)

because he doesn't even believe he is human. he's been dehumanized and preconditioned to that level.

but billy is legitimately genocidal over a group he *knows* includes innocent people and *children* over the actions of a *single* person.

"punish only he who has committed the crime"

collective punishment is a literal war crime and also billy's favorite--

he gives absolutely no shits about any other victims. his revenge boner is 100% driven by his pride 'as a man' because another man 'sullied what was his' or 'touched his property' or 'invaded his territory'. take your pick of poison phrase, but that is the play.

that is the only play for butcher...

had he really *really* cared about what becca/becky had to say?

he'd fucking *listen* to her, the actual voice of the actual victim, instead of amassing piles upon piles of dead bodies she never asked for nor wanted, and plastering her name at the top of the macabre hill he's built.

she would have felt *safe* enough to confide in *him*, instead of keeping it a secret/going to vought because she was *afraid* of his reaction.

it still disgusts me how just how fucking little fandom seems to care about what *becca/becky* actually wanted, and how billy treats her as a result. like this shit ain't hidden, it's literally outlined in *plain site*, *shown* to us in the fucking story.

he *adds* insult to injury. he makes everything *worse* for her. and that doesn't even begin to cover just how much his dependency on her was *destroying* her to begin with.

and the thing is, he fucking knows.

but fandom misogyny rears its ugly head again, guess what--to protect *the man*. nevermind kimiko or starlight. and who were those other women butcher mistreated? not important, right? or y'know? let's just blame homelander. billy does and he's the 'main character', hughie doesn't exist so butcher *must* be right--

instead, billy makes it about himself and what *he* wants. he uses what happened to becca, the actual victim, as an *excuse* to be his worst self--which she fucking hated!

world's shittiest fuckin' husband--.

and then there's the genocide. that shit actually scares me. we shouldn't have genocide apologists in the world, let alone in *this* fandom of all things, the boys fandom, the comic AND show that make the clear cut point that *GENOCIDE* is *UNJUSTIFIABLE*, in every and all circumstances--no excuses.

you throw in the fact that billy is also a fuckin' rapist in the comic and homelander isn't even *the* rapist who hurt becky, he was after the wrong guy from the start, and it just goes to show.

we could have rational, reasonable, and understanding *non-ableist* people that could get that homelander is confirmable as *clinically* criminally insane and needs *help*. not a madman purposely trying to make him explode and destroy the world.

we could have the grooming apologism with madelyn stillwell addressed instead of purposely ignored so people don't feel bad about being horny, when they can *very easily* be horny *and* address that shit respectfully. (AND tag their shit accordingly!)

we *could* have people not excuse literal fucking genocide because they are so damn media illiterate that one of the biggest, SIMPLEST, messages of the series just flies right over their heads.

THIS AIN'T HARD. GENOCIDE = BAD. WAR PROFITEERING = BAD. CAPITALISM = BAD.

we could have nuance and conversations about this shit that actually give it the time of day, spread awareness, bring that understanding, and then move on with our lives with people as free to be as horny as they want!

and i'll be fair, i'll give credit where it's due that it at least happens *sometimes* for *some* things.

but no.

we can't have nice things... for... some reason i guess.

mm is better than both these motherfuckers--

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korn-y-copia · 3 years ago

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Popia at Disney World (feat. the ghouls, Sister Imperator, Papa Nihil, and Mr. Saltarian)

So I am at Disney this week, but the Copia brainrot is so real he has seeped into every thought and every scenario in my head, so here are some headcanons I came up with while in the parks!!!

Starting off with Epcot: on “living with the land,” the ghouls (Aether specifically) go wild.

There’s a section of the ride where produce is being grown, and there’s always a banana tree. Aether gets a little hungy, and jumps out of the boat to absolutely devour the fresh fruit. The ghouls follow behind, climbing out of the boat, eating edible (and inedible) plants alike until they are promptly escorted off of the attraction

Meanwhile, Copia remains seated pinching the bridge of his nose like a disgruntled chaperone.

Copia absolutely loses his shit on “Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure.” I mean, ‘nuff said, the guy loves his rats, and the idea of sitting in a rat-shaped ride vehicle while being (literally) surrounded by rats, is just the neatest concept to him.

He would definitely be all “oh, haha!”—kind of like how he is at the beach house in Chapter 13. It would definitely be his favorite ride (because, as part of the fandom has headcanoned, I wholeheartedly believe “ratatouille” is his favorite movie, or up there in terms of his favorite movies anyway)

On that note, he probably sings the song from the movie—“Le Festin”—to his rats before bed every night, but definitely stops when he finds out the meaning of the song, and sobs.

Magic Kingdom: I think Copia would get a set of Mickey ears—like the classic ones (with “Cardi” or “Cardi C.” Embroidered on the back)

He also buys all the snacks: popcorn, Mickey ice cream, you name it—and yes, it gives him tummy aches, but it heals the inner child in him who didn’t to get to have these kind of experiences with, well, anyone 🥺

Haunted mansion: enough said, this is the ghoul’s favorite ride—Copia too enjoys it. (Ghosts dancing in the mansion? Call that “dance macabre” 🥴🥴🥴)

Hollywood Studios: While it’s no longer there, Copia would’ve loved “The Great Movie Ride.” In this ride, you got to go through recreated scenes from classic movies (I’m still not over them getting ridding of it, so maybe I’m projecting just a little bit?) and I could just see him being so excited, and epically misquoting them with not a care in the world ❤️❤️❤️

In the “alien” portion, where aliens would pop out of the ceiling and the walls, I could def see the ghouls screaming their heads off, Copia too probably.

This one is kinda mean I am so sorry, but I feel like Copia doesn’t like roller coasters and I could see the ghouls convincing him that the “Tower of Terror” is not a roller coaster, despite the screams that are coming from it as they approach.

He is totally inconsolable afterwords and refuses to talk to the ghouls so they have to buy him a Mickey ice cream or a churro to make it up to him (which it does) but now he just has another tummy ache again.

Okay, now let’s add Nihil and Imperator + Mr. Saltarian to the mix (briefly)

Even though Nihil is a “phantasm,” he’s complaining about all of the walking he has to do, so he makes Copia wheel him around instead because he wants to spite him or hate him or both idk what the fuck is up Nihil

Imperator makes Copia put on sunscreen every two hours because he has sensitive skin

She also maybe, but definitely does (albeit begrudgingly) carry around snacks for Copia and the ghouls—probably Scooby Doo fruit snacks or some shit

Copia is definitely internally screaming because he can’t just get one goddamn vacation without Nihil or Imperator inserting themselves

Saltarian is there too probably, but what is he doing? I have no idea, the man is an enigma.

I hope these are okay. If they are so absolutely ooc, please let me know! I just thought of them and wanted to share, thank you for reading!

#ghost #ghost headcanons #Copia headcanons #cardinal copia #papa emeritus iv #nameless ghouls #sister imperator #papa nihil #Mr. saltarian #you have permission to take me out—whatever that means to you—if these suck #if they’re alright tho??? maybe I’ll do a part two in the coming days #maybe some x reader headcanons if anyone wants?????#Popia headcanons #papa emeritus iv headcanons #Cardinal Copia headcanons

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somnambulants · 4 years ago

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i love your writing!! could you maybe do something with exes to lovers with nat?

word count: 3.9K notes: thanks for the request! i’m glad you like my writing! i also may...have started thinking about writing a second part because im super attached to this fic. let me know if thats something you guys would be interested in!

“Barton, you’re such a –“

Your world stops turning at the sound of that voice, everything else becoming static. It doesn’t matter that you’re standing in a room full of people that you’re supposed to be impressing.

It’s been over ten years since you’d last heard that voice.

Vaguely, you know that Captain America is speaking to you but the only thing you can pay attention to is her.

You turn slowly, and the second you lay eyes on her you know for sure.

It’s definitely her.

You see it the second she spots you too.

In all the time you’d known her, she’d always been so much more proficient at hiding things than you but you still see the way her eyes widen as she takes you in and the way her face shifts into something that resembles shock before she manages to mask it.

“Nat!”

You startle a little, having now somehow completely forgotten that Captain America was next to you and that you were in the middle of a tour of your new workplace the second you’d landed eyes on her.

Oh god.Your new workplace.

Your new workplace that was also clearly her workplace.

As she approaches, you futilely look for every possible way you can escape. “This is Y/N. Fury’s informant while Agent Emery is on reconnaissance. Y/N this is Natasha Romanoff.”

Natasha? Romanoff? Absurdly, you have the sudden urge to laugh.

She really couldn’t have come up with a better name after fleeing the country all those years ago? It’s a surprise to you that you hadn’t heard about her sooner with that alias.

Pushing that thought away and hoping that your face shows the professionalism you’re trying to convey, you straighten your spine and clear your throat. “Nice to meet you.”

Captain America’s eyes flick between the both of you. Maybe you’re not doing as good a job as you’d thought.

Natalia-Natasha takes the hand you extend to her and shakes it. “Likewise,” she says, and you hate the way your body still reacts to her voice all these years later; hate the way her touch still makes you feel.

Even more so, you hate that you don’t know what it is you’re feeling more of as you look into her eyes: fury or heartbreak.

She makes a flimsy –well flimsy to you – excuse and leaves the conversation after that. You watch her walk away, clenching the hand she’d touched into a fist as you resist the urge to put it through the wall next to you.

Somehow you think you’d have a hard time explaining it to the man still standing next to you, who is now watching you with a thoughtfully puzzled but not suspicious expression.

Not yet, anyway.

Your dreams that night are fitful and full of her. The first time you’d met, you’d been nothing more than children.

There are no children in red room though. Only fighters and a fighter, she definitely was.

You? Not so much. You’d never been designed to last more than a day in that place and you wouldn’t have, if not for her.

Natalia throws you back against the mat, again and then again and again. Each time you stand up with more difficulty until eventually, she throws you down so hard your vision blurs for a second.

You never had a chance against her, something you knew before you even stepped foot into the room and you know they must have known that too when they set you up against the most experienced fighter here.

It’s abundantly clear you’ve been set up to fail.

The next time she hits you, your legs give out beneath you and you can’t bring yourself to get up this time, even though you know what’s going to happen to you if you don’t.

You know how this works.

Bracing yourself for impact, you close your eyes and wait. It’s pathetic. You know.

The final blow never comes. When you finally crack open an eye, you find Natalia, arms crossed, just gazing down at you.

It might have been your imagination but her eyes don’t seem quite as hard as they had been before.

She extends a hand after a second of her just watching you and you watching her. A little part of you is convinced it’s a trick; that the second you take her hand, you’re going to fail whatever test this is.

Still, against your better judgement you take her hand and, rather than the macabre images playing out in your mind, instead she actually helps you stand, surprisingly gentle as she does so.

She gives you a second to reorient yourself and then her whole demeanour changes, turning cold and stiff as she crouches down back into a fighting position.

“Try again.”

Just as abruptly, you’re thrown into another and another. Quick flashes of the past that still haunt you.

Natalia taking you on your first mission.

Natalia holding your hand as you cried over the body of the first man you’d killed.

Natalia lying beside you on your mattress, running her hands through your hair gently when your nightmares became so bad you’d go days without sleeping.

Years and years of training. Years of bruises and broken bones. Mission after mission. Somehow, it’s all maybe not-quite worth it but it almost is – almost – because of her.

When you kiss her for the first time, you think that might be the first time either of you has had any control over what you do with your bodies.

You can't remember a time where you'd had something you'd ever wanted and you wanted her so badly.

You can’t get enough of it. Or her.

And then, one day, you wake up and she’s just... gone.

The next morning, feeling irritable and exhausted from your disturbed sleep, you walk into the avengers training room and find the one person you’d been hoping wouldn’t be there.

Of course, your mind spitefully whispers because of course it wasn’t enough for the universe to thrust her back into your life but it had to throw her in your face too.

When you enter, she has her back to you but you know she knows you’re there by the way her back stiffens slightly.

You watch as she stands up straighter at the words you throw at her back, unable to help yourself: “What is this? Babysitting duty? I think we’re passed that, aren’t we?”

She turns to you. “I usually come here early,” is all she says. She doesn’t respond to the bite in your voice.

You make a non-committal sound and then just decide to ignore her, stomping past her to make your way to the far corner of the room. You work by yourself in peace for about ten minutes before you hear the sound of footsteps and all of a sudden she’s in front of you.

“I need a partner,” she says.

You have the urge to laugh in her face, before it strikes you how cathartic it would be to punch her right now, no matter how childish it might be, so you stand, letting the weight you’d been holding drop back to the floor with a loud thud, and follow her across the room.

You both crouch down in anticipation and you take a second to really look at her.

Her expression is unreadable. The pang you feel when you realise that surprises you.

There had been a time when you’d known her like the back of your hand and now she's nothing more than a stranger standing in front of you.

It hurts a lot more than you’d thought it would.

This continues for weeks. You don’t know why you let it happen but you do. You get up early; you go to the gym; you spar with her and then you fulfil the duties you’d been hired to do.

It’s almost easy to slip back into that headspace of your whole life revolving around her. Because it does. All you do is think about her when you’re not around her.

Over those weeks, you still barely speak a word to her because at least if you don’t speak, you have some kind of power.

To your surprise, she lets you ignore her, lets you pretend you don’t hear her whenever she speaks and you resent her a little more for that. You’d rather she hated you as much as you want to hate her.

It would make it all so much easier.

Eventually, though, you break.

You’re not strong enough to ignore your desire to know everything; to know how she’d ended up here. And why she’d clearly cared enough to stick around and try and save the entire world when you, a single person, hadn’t even been worth enough for her to stay.

“Why,” you pant, mid spar one morning. She’s kicking your ass, as usual. “Why here? Why the avengers?”

You’d sworn to yourself you’d never ask her this question but the yearning to know has been burning inside you since you’d walked into this building over a month ago now.

Equally as breathless, Natasha drops the careful façade she’d had up and looks at you with those eyes; the ones that could have made you do anything at one point in time. You’re not convinced they still couldn’t. “I wanted to do better… be better than what we were…. Isn’t that why you’re here, too?”

That answer hurts you more than any of the hits she’s landed on you this morning. And there’s been a lot. She’s still the superior fighter, even if she had left so long before you.

God, those words hurt to hear. Especially to have you lumped in with the clearly bad part of her life, whether it was her intention or not.

Maybe that’s why you say what you say next. Maybe there’s a little part of you wishes this whole situation would hurt her as much as it hurts you.

“How… uncharacteristic of you,” you ignore the last part of her sentence because honestly: you don’t know why you’re here. You feel like you’ve been lost and drifting your whole life and the only thing that had ever made sense to you was her.

You know your bitterness has bled into your voice with your words but you don’t make any effort to mask it. And if you can hear it, she definitely can too.

In the blink of an eye, she stops sparring with you, straightening up quicker than even you can catch. You let out a breathless huff of air as she grabs the front of your shirt pulling it so you’re forced forward until you’re almost nose to nose with her.

You hate that for a split second, before you can control yourself, you lean in slightly. As much as your mind can’t stand her, your body has no such feelings and it still wants her. You know you have no hope of hiding it from her so you don’t even bother.

“You don’t know me,” she says. The words come out of her mouth fiercely but the look in her eyes is soft, beseeching, like she wants you to hear her. “I'm not that person anymore.”

Like it matters.

It’s like you’re suspended in time for a second, and all you can think of as you look into her eyes is of the woman you knew.

You hate that you still miss her.

There’s a flicker of something in her eyes that you want to believe mirrors the torrent of emotions currently taking over you – the sadness, the anger, the grief – but you know better than to have hope when it comes to her.

You know all too well how it ends. And you’ve had enough of false hope.

Typically, in a fight, you know Natasha would come out on top – has every time -- but she’s never had your anger directed at her the way it is now and she isn’t expecting the way you’re practically vibrating with it as you shove her away, so hard that she stumbles backwards, only just managing to stay on her feet.

“Clearly,” you spit at her as you straighten up, and start walking towards the exit.

You know she’s still just standing there in the same spot. You can feel her eyes on you.“Yeah, run away,” she mutters under her breath.

It’s the first time she’s shown you the attitude you’d been giving her for weeks and her reaction is justified, you can admit it, but you don’t care.

You spin around, fury overtaking you as you advance on her until you’re pinning her against the wall behind her. “Sorry,” you hiss, glaring into her eyes. “I forgot you’re the only one who can do that.”

“That was different.”

You laugh. It’s not a nice one. It sounds like an injured animal trying to claw it’s way out of your throat.

“Why? Because it was you doing it? Excuse me for not being —“

All of a sudden, she’s kissing you. Or you’re kissing her.

Either way, you’re kissing and you don’t know how exactly it happened but you know that you can’t get enough of her; can’t get her close enough even though there’s no longer even an inch of space between you.

She flips your positions, tugging you closer, and you’re abruptly bathed in cool air as she rips your shirt off you, shoving you against the wall.

Your heart picks up rapidly as she kneels in front of you, easing the rest of your clothes off in one fluid moment.

“I hate you. So much,” you tell her as you step out of your pants and it’s not convincing even to you. Still, you repeat it again and again as she kisses down your body – so tenderly and gently that your voice starts to wobble.

You hate it. You hate her.

She looks up at you from in between your legs, now on her knees. It’s such a vulnerable position that you find you can’t look at her and you have to close your eyes. Natasha digs her nails into your thighs as she forces them apart.

“Look at me,” she demands. Her grip tightens until you obey; you know you’re going have crescent shaped bruises tomorrow. Her gaze is soft and tender and just all consuming. You know there’s no coming back from it. You’d never had a chance, even back when you didn’t mind not having one. “Don’t look away.”

You don’t, not even when she finally, finally, touches you and your head falls back against the wall.

You hold her gaze the entire time knowing how incredibly stupid this is and not caring at all about how much you’ll regret it later when you’re thinking straight.

And regret it, you do.

You stop working out early. You walk the other way in the halls if you see her. You know people are catching on that something is going on between the both of you; have caught multiple avengers giving you quizzical looks whenever you’re in the same room and it makes you feel even worse than before.

You channel all that regret into something more meaningful and commit to doing a damn good job at what you were actually here for. And you do. You can admit you do a fantastic job.

Every time you hand a report in or come back from a mission, you swear see a glimmer of approval in Fury’s eyes. Something you’d heard was notoriously hard to come by.

You must have done something really shitty in a past life though because after weeks of throwing yourself into your temporary duties, you walk into your temporarily office and are immediately flagged down by Fury, who debriefs you on the details of a mission he’s sending you on.

You’re thrilled for about three seconds until you see the name of the person you’re going with.

Agent Natasha Romanoff.

Fury is looking at you with a scrutinising expression when you look up from the file. Every time he looks at you it’s like he can see inside your soul. “Is that a problem?”

You grit your teeth and force yourself to smile. “Of course not, sir.”

It is a problem. A big problem, in fact.

You don’t speak to her on the flight there. Even though it’s only the two of you confined in the aircraft. You don’t even so much let yourself look at her. You can feel her looking at you multiple times, though, even though she’s piloting and should only be looking at the course in front of you.

There are no words exchanged between you all day beyond the times you absolutely have to speak.

At least not until you reach the tiny hotel room you’d been given.

The second the door closes behind you both, she turns to you and opens her mouth and maybe it’s cowardly but you cut her off before she even start speaking.

“I’m going to have a shower,” you say and flee the room with your entire carry-on, worried that if you pause to sift through your things, she’ll keep talking.

Still in the same spot, the look on Natasha’s face when you emerge from the bathroom is full of clear exhaustion. You hate the way it makes you feel. Empty. Sad. It’s exhausting for you trying to convince yourself you hate her.

“I’m sorry I left,” she says and you freeze. “I wanted to come back. Find you. I just didn’t know - i didn’t know if you even wanted me to.”

You’ve wanted to hear those words for so long. Now you have you don’t know what to do. “Why did you leave?”

She hesitates. The look in her eyes tells you you’re not going to get a full answer. That as open as she’s trying to be, you still don’t get to know why she abandoned you. “It’s a long story.”

The evasion stings. “An apology means nothing if you won’t tell me why.”

It’s an unfair thing to say. You know that but you don’t really feel like being fair right now.

You chance a look up when she doesn’t respond and find her looking down at the floor. It makes you wonder what — or who — she must still be protecting by not telling you.

It becomes apparent that she’s not going to say anything else after the silence between you drags on long enough that the tension in the air becomes almost unbearable.

You don’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing the tears in your eyes so you flick the light off and turn the lamp on your shared nightstand off, throwing the both of you into immediate darkness. It’s definitely too early to be sleeping but you don’t care.

Eventually, after laying there rigidly for what feels like hours and listening to the sounds of Natasha tossing and turning in the other bed, you finally fall asleep and are immediately thrown into dream after dream that quickly turn into fitful nightmares.

Nightmares that may be more aptly called memories. After one particularly bad one that thrusts you back into consciousness, you bolt upwards, still half asleep.

You only narrowly manage to avoid bumping straight into Natasha, who’s hovering above you, because of her hand on your shoulder holding you in place.

You flinch away from her instinctively and she backs up to give you a little space.

The only sound in the room is your heavy and desperate gasping for air. Natasha, now perched on the very edge of the bed, bites her lip, looking at you as if she knows exactly what you’d been dreaming about.

She probably does. It doesn’t take a genius to guess.

“Are you –"

“I’m fine,” you say flatly. You stare up at the ceiling, absently counting the tiles as you try to slow your breathing.

You’re hyperventilating, you know it, you just can’t get yourself to stop. You’re also sweating, it’s disgusting. You can feel how all of your clothes are stuck to you. Your hair flattened to your neck.

If you hadn’t been dealing with this for so long, you’re pretty sure that you’d think you were having a heart attack instead of a panic attack.

But you have. Been dealing with it. It’s just something you’ve come to expect now. You just never thought she’d be here to witness it.

All of a sudden, as you’re still trying to calm your breathing, the bed dips below you.

Your eyes fly open in shock to find Natasha sliding onto the mattress beside you, still on top of the covers.

Gingerly, she rests her head on the pillow next to your head and fixes her gaze on the ceiling.

It’s slight but her hand brushes against your own a few minutes later.

You suck in a breath between your teeth, but despite yourself, you let her move closer, until she’s so close you’re almost touching, and you can hear her quiet breathing.

Against your better judgement, you let your eyes slip closed again. Seeming to understand you’re not going to push her away, Natasha shifts closer, until you’re both shoulder to shoulder, the way she used to lay next to you when you had bad dreams when you were kids.

She grabs your hand, and slowly, hesitantly, she moves it to her chest where you can feel her heart thrumming rapidly under your fingertips. Surprisingly, it still works; you breathe in and out, in out in out, in time with her heartbeat.

You must at some point fall asleep because all of a sudden you can hear birds chirping outside the window and the sounds of people outside in the street.

When you open your eyes, you expect to find the spot next to you empty and the covers unruffled, as if she’d never been there at all but to your shock she’s still there beside you, awake and on top of the covers.

The circles under her eyes make you think she must not have slept at all.

You slide out of the bed and head towards the bathroom without saying a word, where you turn the shower on and just sit under the spray for what must be at least an hour, letting the water run over you and trying not to think.

This time when you return, she’s gone.

The rest of the mission goes smoothly. If nothing else, you both work well together as a team. You can still read her movements like a book, and she knows to anticipate what you’re doing before you even know yourself.

The days go fine. The nights not so much. You don’t speak about it but every night you’re woken up by the same dreams and every night you wake up to find her kneeling beside you.

If you were stronger willed, you would’ve shoved her away the first time, but you can’t bring yourself to. Maybe it’s a little selfish but you can’t find it in yourself to care.

The last night of the mission is when you finally break, though. Something shifts in the air when you wake yourself up gasping and meet her eyes. The same eyes that had been blank and lifeless in your dream.

You know she feels the shift as well by the way she’s looking at you, cautiously hopeful.

You don’t say anything though and neither does she. You just lay there, side by side, and watch each other carefully for what could be seconds, or it could be hours.

Her eyes are begging wordlessly: Truce?

Despite yourself, as you gaze back at her, you find yourself giving in. For tonight at least.

Truce.

#natasha romanoff x reader

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