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serendipitous-magic · 3 years ago

Note

What is your writing advice for young people who want to write fanfiction and original stories in the near future?

If this is just Way Too Much, skip to the end (#16). My most important piece of advice is there. I also happen to think #5 is pretty good.

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1) Literally just write. Write whatever you want, and do a lot of it.

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2) You don’t have to post everything. In fact you don’t have to post anything. You can, don’t get me wrong, but it can be intimidating to sit down and think “I will now write something that other people will see and read and judge with their eyeballs.” Because that’s probably gonna lead to nerves and writer's block. Just write down the ideas that you have, the things you want to write, whatever’s in your brain that you want to explore and expand upon and make into something. And then if you want to, share it. Or don’t share it. I have plenty of half-baked ideas and documents and random story chapters and shit hidden away on my Google Drive that will never see the light of day, for a whole number of reasons. I wanted to write it but it wasn’t ~Spicy~ enough to warrant posting, or it’s only like an eighth of a good idea, or it’s like one scene with no story around it, or it’s just something incredibly self-indulgent I just wanted to write for my own enjoyment.

Point being, don’t write for other people. Don’t write so that other people can read it; write what you want, write for yourself, and then if you want to share it, do.

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3) You can pretty much ignore any and all of these for fanfiction. In fact, you can ignore pretty much any rules or guidelines you want for fanfiction. Fanfic is a sandbox. You don’t have to be a “professional writer” to post fic. No one expects you to be Stephen King or Margaret Atwood. Fanfic is just for playing in a fandom and having fun. If you wanna write a 50 chapter slow burn with very little plot aside from the OTP slowly getting to know each other, and no real stakes or central conflict, I guarantee people would read that. Really, fanfiction is the Old West of writing: lawless, wild, unpredictable, and free.

However, here are the rules you must follow:

-Separate your paragraphs. (I’m sure you know this already, but I’m gonna say it anyway just in case.) Do not post one big block of text. Make a paragraph break when someone new is talking, when the characters are in a new place, when a new event occurs that changes the scene, when a chunk of time has passed, and when there’s a major change in subject.

-I know it’s obvious, but... grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. They exist to make writing easy for readers to read, and more people will read your stuff if they don’t have to stop and try to figure out what you meant.

-Use tags and labels, as is possible with whatever site you’re using. Especially if you include possibly triggering content in your story. Again, I know it’s obvious, but it’s common courtesy. Bonus: tagging the themes and content of your story helps readers find it and read it :)

-If possible, limit the use of all-caps and exclamation marks / question marks. 99% of the time, one ! or one ? will do. If you overload the page with a lot of all-caps and long rows of exclamation marks or question marks, it hampers readability.

... That’s literally all I can think of. And, like I said, it’s all pretty basic stuff. You were probably rolling your eyes like, “Uh, yeah, Gwen, I know.” But that’s literally it. You can pretty much do whatever you want in fanfic.

That being said, here’s my advice for both fanfiction and original work...

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4) A quick and dirty rule for coming up with a plot, starting a story, keeping up pacing, or maintaining tension: figure out what dreams, desires, and goals are nearest and dearest to your main character’s heart (see #16). Then set up the main conflict to be directly in opposition to that goal. It doesn’t have to be in a tangible way, though it could be. But, if your main character wants more than anything to reach the ships on the southern coast of your world and sail to a new life, make sure the main conflict immediately prevents them from doing that - in fact, make sure to send them north. If your main character just wants to keep their loved ones safe, kidnap the loved ones. If your main character just wants to date their best-friend-turned-crush, make sure they think they have no chance - or, make them cocky about it, and make sure it makes Person B determined not to ever like them. You get it. Figure out what your character most wants, and then keep them from having that. Boom - your conflict now ties in with your character's motivation. It's like instant yeast for plots.

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5) If you’re anything like me, you want your first draft to be Good, despite all that advice about how the first draft doesn’t have to be good and it’s just to get words on the page, yadda yadda. And if you’re somewhat of a perfectionist (like myself), it’s easy to get stuck looking at a blank page because you don’t have The Perfect Words, and you want what you write to be Good the first time.

Here’s how I cheat that:

Instead of trying to write a Good First Draft from a blank page, hit the enter key a few times, skip a little down on the page, change your ink to red (or blue, or whatever - just something immediately identifiable as Not Black) and just thought vomit. Write whatever the hell you’re thinking, exactly as you think it. Don’t worry about it being readable, don’t worry about narrative flow for now, don’t worry about covering all the details, don’t worry about anything except either a) getting all the details of your idea out onto the page, whether that’s a lot or whether it’s just a sentence or two, or b) if you don’t have an idea yet, finding your way there.

Because this method is also very good for finding your way to ideas when you’re stuck in writer’s block.

Because of how human brains work, getting this stuff out onto the page - in all its messy, stream-of-consciousness glory - will likely spark more thoughts. As you write your original idea about the scene, it’ll likely spark more ideas. Creation begets creation. If you just start thought-vomiting your ideas onto the page, chances are you’ll think of more things as you go, and you’ll start filling out description or dialogue or tone or action or whatever, and pretty soon the scene starts writing itself.

Not sure where you’re going with the scene or which ideas you wanna use? Use a lot of ambivalent language in your “thought-vomit draft.” My pre-writing notes are chock-full of the words “maybe,” “perhaps,” and the phrases, “At some point...” and “...or something like that.” In this way, I don’t tie myself down to one idea; it’s just an idea, and I’m keeping it on the page in case I use it, but I might chuck it in the trash or change it or whatever.

And then, once your ideas for the scene (or story, or chapter, or whatever) are on the page, then go back to the top and start translating them into a “real” first draft. Use black ink, and start copy-pasting chunks of the thought-vomit up into the top part of the document and translating them into Draft 1. Separate out paragraphs where paragraph breaks should be. Add the correct punctuation and whatnot. Change “describe the lobby here - include potted plants, fancy carpet, blood stain, etc.” into an actual description of the lobby. Flesh it out, or condense, or whatever it needs. And if you’re still stuck, change back to red ink and ramble some more until you find a path that feels right, then plug that in. This keeps you from looking at a blank page, and it allows you to generate a kind of Draft 0.5, somewhere between a plan and a first draft.

You don’t have to use every idea. Like I said, jot down whatever comes to mind, put a “maybe” before or after it, and keep working. If the idea grabs you and you wanna keep expanding on it and exploring it, cool. If you just wanna jot it down so you don’t forget it and then move on, also cool. Red-ink draft / “thought-vomit draft” is your time to jump around in the timeline, add or finesse details at whatever point your brain moves to, etc. Don’t try to do it exactly in story order, because you will get tangential thoughts and ideas, and you will not remember to write them down five pages later when you finally get to taking notes on that scene. Trust me. On that note...

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6) Write everything down the moment you think of it. Seriously.

“I’ll remember it when I get around to writing that scene in a couple days / weeks / months (/years).”

You won’t.

Write it down.

Phone, journal, google docs - hell, my family regularly laughs at me for grabbing a napkin during dinner and scribbling thoughts down alongside pasta sauce stains.

And then, once you have it written down somewhere...

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7) Consolidate your writing ideas in one place.

Maybe this isn’t really your style, and that’s totally chill.

Buuuut, if you’re Type-A like me - or if you tend to be somewhat unorganized and you know you’ll lose track of your writing notes if they’re scattered across multiple notebooks, journals, napkins, phone notes, etc. - having one consolidated document of notes is a life saver. I keep mine on Google Docs so I can access it, add to it, and look through it for inspiration anywhere at any time. When I have one of those Shower Thoughts that I jot down on my phone or on a napkin during dinner, I set myself a reminder on my phone to type it up in my Story Ideas document later.

(Or, if the idea I had was for a story of mine that I’ve already started planning / drafting / whatever, I put it in the document for that story instead of the Big Random Story Ideas doc. You get it.)

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8) Have other ways to collect and save writing ideas, besides just writing stuff down. If you like Pinterest, make pinterest boards of your characters or stories or settings or whatever. If you’re big into playlists, make a playlist for your character / setting / story / etc. Or both. Or something else. I’m not good at drawing, but maybe you are, and maybe you like to draw your ideas. Whatever form it takes, having another way to save ideas and think about your stories is invaluable.

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9) Some writers can just start writing with no idea where the story is going, and they just kind of figure it out as they go. I envy those writers. And I do that sometimes for fanfiction, where the stakes are somewhat lower and the audience is reading more for scene-to-scene enjoyment (and to see their OTP kiss) than for a Driving And Compelling Narrative.

But here’s the thing: especially if you’re just kind of starting out, writing without some sort of plan is really, really hard, and will likely lead you into a slow, meandering narrative that will likely frustrate you.

Even if you think you’re someone that just can’t write with a plan (and again, I have the highest respect for pansters out there - I don’t know how you do it, you crazy bastards, but you keep doing you) - even if you think “I can’t work with plans, they’re too prescriptive, I just want to write and see what happens -”

Try at least making the most skeletal of plans.

Even if you have no clue what 90% of the story is, yet. That’s fine. But you need to have some idea of what you’re building to, even if that’s nothing more specific than a feeling, or a turning point for your character. Even if your entire plan for everything beyond Chapter 1 is, “At some point, Charlie needs to realize that Ed was lying to her.”

This is where those Draft 0.5 notes come in handy. Because, more than likely, working on your current scene that way will spark ideas for later scenes, which you can put down at the bottom of the document and save for when they become relevant. In my experience, the line between planning ahead and making a Draft 0.5 is exceptionally thin. One can quickly turn into the other.

If you’re really, really resistant to the idea of planning ahead, that’s okay. It’s not everybody’s style. But for the love of all that is holy, write down your ideas for future scenes, even if you’re a person that doesn’t like to plan and writes only in story order, because you will not remember that idea once you get to that scene.

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10) You don’t have to write in order.

Here’s the thing: I’m a person that can only do my Draft 1 in story order (meaning, chronological order). I just have to be in that flow; I need to write in story order for me to best channel where the character is at from scene to scene, both narratively and emotionally.

But my Thought Vomit Draft is another thing entirely. By using the brain hack of putting my notes in red (or another color, it doesn’t matter) and going down to the bottom of the document / page and taking notes there, and then integrating them into whatever plan I have, and then translating them into Draft 1 once I get there in the story - by doing that, I can get my good ideas onto the page (and expound upon them and let my muse carry me and ride that momentum while I’m in the moment of inspiration) without writing out of order.

Maybe that’s just me. But if you’re a person who really prefers to write in story order, that could be hugely helpful to you. It is to me.

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11) Emotion and motivation will do more for your story than technicalities of plot.

If your characters really care about something, and their journey through the (shaky or weak) plot is emotionally engaging, it will be a much more compelling story than a story with a “perfect” plot and unrelatable or unmotivated characters.

If your characters care about what they’re doing, and it means something to them, and their goals and actions are driven by dreams or fears or emotions that are integral to who they are, your audience will care too. If you have a perfectly crafted plot that hits all the right beats and has high stakes and fast pacing and drama - but your characters don’t connect with what’s happening in a way that’s deeply meaningful or emotional for them? You’re gonna have a hard time engaging readers.

When in doubt, prioritize character emotion and motivation over plot. Emotion is what drives story.

This power is highly exploitable. (Just look at pulp novels and shitty but entertaining movies.) You can even use it to glaze over plot holes or reinvigorate a limp narrative. Use it that way sparingly, though. It’s a band-aid, not a surgery.

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12) Evil villains are hard to write - mostly because there are very few truly evil people in the world. (There are a few. Billionaires and several big name politicians come to mind.) But by and large, there aren’t that many evil people. There are plenty of bad people, but bad people have some good in them, somewhere in there. Trying to write an evil villain is hard, because they often turn very cartoony.

Here’s a tip: it’s much easier to write antagonists who aren’t evil. Even if they’re bad people. Of course, there’s no reason you can’t write a villain that’s just truly evil - a serial killer, or an abuser, or a billionaire, or someone who legit just wants to hurt people or blow up the earth or stay in control of an oppressed population, or whatever. But chances are, it’s gonna be really hard to make them feel real, and even harder to create a plot around them that doesn’t feel forced or contrived.

Instead, try writing an antagonist / villain whose motivations and goals directly clash with your protagonist’s - but not because they want to take over the world or see people suffer. Write an antagonist who’s chaotic good, but whose perception of the situation is completely opposite from your hero’s. Write an antagonist whose only desire is to save people, and who will do anything to achieve that goal - anything. Write an antagonist who believes in the letter of the law, and will hinder and oppose the hero’s methods even if they agree with the hero’s motivation. Write an antagonist who got in way over their head and did some things they regret, and now they don’t know how to get out, and they’re doing their best but whatever they set in motion is too powerful for them to stop now.

Write villains who are human. Write a killer who thought they were doing the right thing by taking their victim out of the equation, who vomits at the sight of the body and sobs over the grave they dig. Write a government leader who truly believes she’s doing what’s best for her people in the long-term, even if it might hurt them in the short term, and is willing to endure the hatred and belligerence of the masses if it means securing what she thinks is a better future for her people. Write a teenage bully that thinks they’re the one being picked on by the world, and they’re just fighting back, standing their ground. Write a scientist who will break any code of ethics and hurt anyone he needs to - in order to bring back his baby sister from the grave, because he promised her he’d protect her and he failed. Write an antagonist who is selfish and self-centered and capricious - because in order to survive they had to look out for Number One, and that habit ain’t about to break anytime soon.

Write villains who aren’t even villains. Write antagonists who oppose the hero because of moral differences. Write antagonists who are trying to do the right thing. Write antagonists who treat the heroes with kindness and dignity and respect and gentleness.

They don’t have to be good. They don’t have to be Misunderstood Sweethearts who “deserve” a redemption arc. They can be cruel and nasty and dismissive and callous and violent and etc. etc.

Just hesitate before you make them Evil-with-a-capital-E. Because evil is hard to write, and honestly, boring to read. Flawed human beings with goals and motivations that directly oppose the main characters’ are much easier to write and much more interesting to read.

Ask why. Why is your villain trying to take over the world? What does that even mean? Are they trying to create a Star-Trek-like post-capitalism utopia, but they know that won’t happen in a million lifetimes, so they’re trying to do it by force? Are they actually super in favor of human rights, but they got very impatient waiting for the world to do anything about poverty and war, so they decided to take it into their own hands? Are they determined to fix the world - no matter the cost? Are they terrified and overwhelmed, but committed to see it through to the end? Or - maybe they’re just doing it on a dare. Maybe they don’t really give a shit about world domination, they were just a mediocre rich white guy who decided to fuck around and find out, and now he’s kind of curious how far he can take this thing. And now he’s kind of an internationally-wanted criminal, so he’s kind of stuck living on his hidden private island in his multi-billion dollar secret base, strapping lasers to sharks’ heads for the hell of it. Gross, selfish, uncaring, and dangerous? For sure. Evil? Depends on your definition. See, now we’re getting somewhere.

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13) It’s tempting to let the plot control the characters. It’s easy to drop your characters into a situation and see how they react. But here’s the thing: that doesn’t drive plot. In fact, it bogs down pacing. Instead, try to build you plot off of your characters’ actions and decisions. Let your character build their own situation. Not to say it should go they way they wanted it to go; in fact, usually, their grand plans should go to hell very quickly. But having the characters take action and make decisions, and letting the plot develop based on that, is much easier to make compelling than making a rigid series of events and then trying to herd your characters into them.

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14) Having trouble justifying a character’s actions? Consider having them make the opposite decision, or having them approach the situation in a different way. For example: you need your character to go meet the bad guy, for plot reasons, even though there’s no way it’s not a trap. If the character goes, readers are gonna be groaning with their head in their hands, because c’mon man, that was really fucking stupid. But he’s gotta go, because the plot needs that. Two ways you might handle this: a) He knows it’s probably a trap. He decides not to go. The plot conspires to get him near the villain anyway. Or, b) He knows it’s a trap. But he needs to go, for (insert reasons here). So, he approaches it in an unexpected way. He brings backup, recruiting a side character we met earlier in the story. Or he arrives on the back of a dragon, because ain’t nobody gonna fuck with a dude on a dragon. Or he goes - early, and ambushes the villain. It may work, it may not. He may get himself kidnapped anyway. But it moves the plot along without having Stupid Hero Syndrome.

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15) This is a legit piece of advice: if all of this sounds overwhelming, literally just ignore it and write what you want. For real. Writing should be fun, and every single writer operates differently. If you’re sitting here like “I’m getting stressed just reading this,” just flip me a good-natured bird and get on with your life. I promise I won’t take it personally. Same goes for literally any other writing advice you see. Lots of rules and guidelines can very quickly make anything thoroughly un-fun. Just write. If you’re passionate about it and you do it for long enough, you’ll start figuring out the tips and tricks on your own.

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16) Here’s the best piece of advice I can give you: know your characters. More importantly, know what’s important to them. Build their personality and decisions off of that, and build your plot off of their decisions.

I see a lot of character building sheets that ask a shit-ton of questions like “What’s their most prized possession?” “Do they like their family?” “What’s their favorite food?”

And while these are good questions, my problem with this type of character building is that if you start there, with the little stuff, you’re building on nothing. IMO, to make a truly strong character (not strong like Inner Strength, strong like effective), you need a strong foundation.

Here are the things you must know about your character:

a) What are their greatest fears / deepest insecurities? And I don’t mean “wasps” or “heights.” I mean the deep shit. I mean fears like “living a meaningless life,” or “turning out just like their parents,” or “that no one will ever love them,” or “being powerless.” You may say, “But they’re really scared of wasps! They fall into a wasp nest when they were little and got stung so much they almost died!” Great! That’s a fantastic bit of backstory. They should absolutely be afraid of wasps, and that should absolutely be an impediment later in the story. But dig deeper. What about that event actually scarred them? Was it the helplessness? Stumbling around, swatting at the air, not being able to do a single thing to stop what was happening to them? Was it that they were alone, and no matter how loud they screamed, no one was coming? Was it the bodily horror of feeling themself turn into an inhuman creature as they swelled up from the stings, unable to move their fingers or face normally anymore?

And don’t forget insecurities, because those factor in, too. Are they deeply insecure about their identity? Do they believe, deep down, that they’re ugly? Did they grow up poor and they’ve always been really touchy about that? Why? Dig deep. Figure out what really, really bothers them.

b) What are their hopes and dreams? What do they truly want out of life? What do they consider the most valuable to their experience here in this thing called life? Is it the freedom to forge their own path and be independent? Is it the approval of their family or peers? Is it a home? Is it knowledge, or understanding? Spiritual fulfillment? Is it deeply important to them that they contribute to their community, or protect those they love? What do they need in order to feel truly and deeply fulfilled in life?

Figure out those two things (each one encompasses several things, btw, you don’t have to stop at just one for each), and then use that to inform how they behave and the types of decisions they make within the story.

It also informs character behavior and personality.

Let’s say we have a character who’s afraid of helplessness. They’re probably gonna be the person that always wants to do something, try something, no matter how hopeless the situation seems. They’d despise just sitting and waiting, probably, because it makes them feel powerless. They might even be the person that makes rash decisions and acts impulsively and puts themself in danger unnecessarily, because in their mind it’s better than being at the mercy of fate. This is one way you could use a character’s personality to inform their decisions, which in turn helps to inform plot.

Or, let’s say we have a character whose greatest fear is being left behind or forgotten. We may have a chatterbox on our hands. They might be obnoxious. They might love the spotlight, constantly vying for attention no matter the situation, because deep down they’re so afraid that they’d be forgotten otherwise. Or, it may go the opposite way. They may be so afraid of people leaving them that they’re terrified of bothering people. They don’t want to do anything that could annoy people, anything that might give people a reason to leave them. They might be exceedingly polite, quiet, accommodating. A push-over, really.

These are two nearly opposite types of personalities, both stemming from the same core fear/insecurity. You can go a lot of different ways with it. But if you build on that strong foundation, you’ll have a strong character, and a stronger plot.

Likewise, the structure of your story can and should inform the design of these character traits. If you need your characters to team up near the end, it may be impactful if you give your main character a deep fear of commitment, an insecurity about being unwanted or left behind, and make them highly value independence and freedom. That could make their team-up for the final battle very meaningful. Conversely, you can use your character’s deepest fears and desires to help design the plot. Is your character deeply insecure about voicing their opinions or taking a stand, because of trauma they faced in the past? Make them face that. Build that into the climactic third act. Give them the big inspirational speech where they stand up and talk about what they believe to be important, what they think the group should do. And then design that character arc to run through the story, giving you more handholds and stepping stones, more pieces of foundation on which to design the plot.

In this way, character should inform story as much as story informs character. It’s a feedback loop.

Bonus: if you build your character and your plot off of each other in this way, it automatically starts to build in the foundations of that emotional investment I mentioned earlier. If your character’s decisions are based on what they most want and do not want in life, you basically have your character motivation and stakes pre-built.

Note: you need to know these things about your villain, too.

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I’m genuinely sorry about the length of this, lmao. But you did ask.

Best of luck!

Edit: I forgot an important one:

17) Start when the scene starts and end when the scene ends.

What do I mean by that?

If your notes say “Danny asks Nicole out after school and majorly flubs it,” start the scene when Danny approaches Nicole after school. Better yet, cold-open the scene on “I was wondering if, you know, you’d wanna. You know. Hang out some time?”

Don’t start that morning when Danny goes to school, unless you’re gonna cover the school day in like one or two sentences. Don’t spend whole paragraphs going through the school day, unless it’s to cover other plot points first (in which case apply these same guidelines there), or if the paragraphs are there for a specific reason, like to illustrate how stressed he is and how it seems like every little thing is going wrong. Even then, trim the fat as much as possible. Expounding and describing everything Moment-to-moment is for the meat of the scenes, not the leading-up-to and coming-away-from.

Here’s my rule of thumb: study how and when movies cut from scene to scene. Movies have exceptionally strict, limited time for storytelling; they’re excellent examples of starting a scene when the plot point starts and ending when it’s over. If you can’t picture a movie showing everything you showed, start the scene later and end it earlier.

#asks #anon #writing advice #writing tips #writing #fanfic writing #fanfiction #character creation #plot development #character development #my advice #original writing

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commander-diomika · 3 years ago

Text

Pspsps come get your angst and inevitable betrayals. (Part One) (Part Two) Part 3 - Fandom: Rusty Quill Gaming Pairing: Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde Rating: Upped to Mature for graphic depiction of blood/injuries Word Count: ~2200 Additional Tags: Slow Burn, 18-Month Time Gap (Rusty Quill Gaming), Rating Will Change to Explicit in Later Parts, Opposites Attract, Blood and Injury, Angst

Summary: "The longer they stayed, the more it delayed real progress on the mission. Hope had borne them this long, but Zolf knew by the heaviness in his heart, it was time to consider saying goodbye. In more ways than one.

He didn’t want to have this conversation. He didn’t want to be the one to tell Wilde that it was time to stop gambling on the chance that they might see the party again. There was a tragedy in the shape of an executioner’s axe hanging over them both, and Zolf was about to give the nod to drop it."

It's all fun and games until someone loses their smile.

Six days after Bosie’s arrival.

Zolf was walking back to the safe house from the temple of Hephaestus. It had been locked up tight, and there was no response to his hammering on the door.

I think it might be time to move on from this city, he thought. The ringing of his unanswered knocks at the temple had rung with a kind of finality. Both he and Wilde had held on here longer than they should, making any excuse they could to stay put in their current safehouse. Hoping to hear from Hamid and Sasha. Zolf and Wilde clung to Damascus, praying that any day word would come through. If they just stayed in the last place the other party members had been seen, it might make them easier to find. Hoping, hoping, hoping.

But the longer they stayed, the more it delayed real progress on the mission. Hope had borne them this long, but Zolf knew by the heaviness in his heart, it was time to consider saying goodbye. In more ways than one.

“Ho, Wilde!” Zolf called, coming through the door. He sighed as he unslung his pack from his shoulders, thinking about how best to broach it.

When a few silent moments passed, Zolf surfaced from the depths of his thoughts, noticing that there was no response from within the townhouse. “Douglas?” he added uncertainly.

There was every chance the two of them were cozied up in Wilde’s room again. Zolf had seen a lot less of Wilde this week than usual, and he wasn’t looking forward to prying Wilde out of his torrid nest to have a hard conversation. Whilst it wasn’t any of Zolf’s business who Wilde took to bed, it was Zolf’s business that Wilde was... distracted. And if Wilde was planning on keeping Bosie around...

Depressed about the notion of so many hard conversations threatening, Zolf clanged his glaive into the weapons rack in the entry hall and threw down his bag, heading to the sitting room.

Shock has a way of warping perception, of making a mind skitter when it should seize. For instance, as he reached the door, the first thing that Zolf noticed was that the settee was the wrong colour, instead of Wilde’s bloodied body atop it.

Zolf swore, feeling like his legs wouldn’t respond, like everything moved slowly as the view properly hit him.

It felt like an age before he could move. Wilde’s upper half was drenched in blood, the couch dark and dripping with it.

“Wilde?” Zolf asked, almost inanely, as if expecting a response. Wilde had fallen back as if pushed, limbs splayed. The blood was leaking from multiple messy slices across his torso, darkening the soft turquoise shirt to a purple-black. That was shocking enough, but the real horror was Wilde’s cheek, sliced from temple to lips in a vicious, loose flap. Already Zolf was pulsating with healing light as he ran over, years of combat experience overriding the dumb shock. He nearly slipped in the growing pool of blood.

The wave of power emanating from Zolf slid like oil around Wilde’s body, none of it sinking it.

The cuffs! Zolf could have screamed. He yanked up the hems of Wilde’s pants. He snapped the cuffs off with strangely steady hands and blasted the man with magic.

“Don’t move!” Zolf cried. Can he move? Will he move? Zolf’s hands were slick within moments of touching Wilde’s face, the blood still oozing from the wound. Zolf’s stomach lurched, but he remained focused. He drew the two loose parts of Wilde’s cheek together before slamming more magic through it, his mind a horrified buzz. The point of a safehouse was that it was safe!

Wilde was trying to speak.

“Don’t! Just let me- don’t talk, Wilde, just wait.” There was so much blood- this kind of precision surgical work was better done by, well, surgeons, not hackneyed ex clerics who weren’t even sure why their magic still worked.

Zolf felt the loose pieces of skin begin to knit themselves back together beneath his hands, and no more blood flowed from the chest wounds. Zolf had a brief and horrifying flashback to Sasha, in pieces, her organs floating like a halo around her lifeless body. He didn’t want to keep getting his friends' blood on his hands, even if it was in the service of saving them.

Wilde weakly tried to push Zolf’s hands away and went to speak again through the ruin of his face.

“Don’t worry about me,” he managed this time. “Go after Bosie!”

“Stop! Talking!” Zolf replied, besides himself with anger, incredibly relieved that Wilde was conscious. “Wait- Bosie did this?”

Wilde was awake enough to hold a hand over his cheek and sit up. His face was painted stark red from the bridge of the nose down. His head had slumped to one side, wound facing up, blood flowing down; the effect was like he was wearing a shiny maroon bandana over nose and mouth. But his eyes were remarkably clear and angry.

“Yes. I don’t know- he turned, it wasn’t him anymore, or something took over him. He tried to take me with him and I- I fought back and-” Wilde went to stand, hand still clasped over his face. “I think he heard you- shit, Zolf.” Wilde’s eyes flicked around frantically, looking for the man who attacked him.

“Easy, easy.” Zolf stopped Wilde from rising and as he did, Wilde’s fire seemed to go out. Zolf kept talking. “It’s alright. It’s not important right now.” Zolf’s gut swooped with guilt as he looked at the wound. He’d gotten here just in time, but Wilde wasn’t walking away from this without scarring. “Just let me take care of it, ok?”

Zolf reached and cupped Wilde’s bloody cheek in one hand. Wilde half-closed his eyes and leant into the touch, breathing shakily. Zolf had been about to push more healing magic through the cheek, but he froze at the sensation of Wilde’s lips and breath against his blood-slick hand. Alive. Zolf had gotten here in time and his droll, irritating, shallow co-conspirator was alive.

Suddenly Wilde’s eyes flew open. “No!” he shouted and leapt to his feet, knocking Zolf’s hand aside. He looked completely deranged. “Get away!” Zolf backed up a few steps, hands outstretched as if he were taming a wild animal.

“I- Argh! He was infected!” Wilde clenched the tattered shirt to his chest, as though trying to hold his whole self together. “We spent this whole week together, in bed, fucking, kissing! You need to stay away!”

The wind went completely out of Zolf’s sails, his breath leaving him in an instant. Wilde was only semi-conscious and still reeling. Zolf would be impressed at Wilde’s acumen whilst distressed, if the point he had made wasn’t completely terrifying. Zolf took a few steps backward without realising.

“Wait, Wilde, just wait.” Zolf was still catching up. “You said, he tried to take you away. If you were already infected all he had to do was wait, righ’? A week, Curie said, all of her double agents lasted less than a week before they turned on people.”

“We can’t know that! Maybe he was just getting a head start! Fuck!” Wilde’s cheek started to bleed again with the strength of his swear.

Zolf had backed all the way to the other side of the room, only noticing when his arse gently bumped the wall. “The cuffs, Wilde.” He was grasping, but he desperately needed to find the right words to say to take that hellish look off Wilde’s face. “If it’s at all magical in nature, maybe the cuffs protected you.”

Wilde’s head snapped around frantically. In the carnage, he hadn’t realised they’d been taken off. He spotted them, discarded by the low table and moved to them.

“Wait, at least let me-” Unwilling to come closer, Zolf simply radiated as much healing as he could muster. Wilde, eyes unfathomably dark, nodded his thanks as he snapped the cuffs back on. He’d been on the brink for a moment there, terror threatening to snap him, but Zolf’s words, and the Stockholm-syndrome familiarity of the weight around his ankles had brought him back from whatever edge he’d been teetering on.

Wilde’s mouth twisted. He’d taken as much healing as Zolf could jam into him, but the scar was there to stay. “Here’s what’s going to happen. Zolf, you’re going to go up to my room and bar the window. I don’t care how you do it, move a wardrobe over it, stone shape it, whatever, but make it tight. Then I am going to go into that room, shut the door-” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “-and wait for seven days.”

Zolf gulped. “Righ-…. Right. That’s a good idea. I can bring you food and-”

“No. No food.” Wilde snapped. “No opening the door. Not if I beg, not if I scream. Not for anything.”

Zolf’s mouth was agape, trying desperately to catch up to Wilde, to meet him wherever he had gone. “No food? Don’t be daft, you’ll die.”

Wilde’s head snapped to the side, then to the other. It was unclear if he was shaking his head or simply processing with his whole skull. “No, I won’t. I’ll need water but I can live without food, or whatever we’ve got in the house. What are you waiting for? Do it now!” His demeanor had snapped from terror to fury. “Every second we waste dithering about it makes it more likely that this could take you too!”

Zolf obeyed. His hands had started to shake as the crest of the crisis passed, and he stilled them by taking action. He washed the blood off himself and dutifully collected all the vases from about the place to fill with water, grabbing any food in the kitchen that wasn’t raw ingredients. It amounted to some bread and dried fruit, but Zolf was still obscenely grateful there was any ready-to-eat food in there at all. The horror inherent to spending seven days alone in a single room was starting to spread like a dark inkblot in his mind. He kept moving, as if he could outrun a stain.

It was trivial to stone shape the window closed; the townhouse wasn’t particularly big or lavish. When he stepped out of the room, Zolf was met with the ghoulish sight that was Wilde waiting for him down the corridor. He had put a jacket over his slashed shirt but hadn’t even tried to clean the blood off his face.

Zolf paused in the door, looking Wilde over. “Curie said something about- about blue veins?” he said softly. He didn’t want to ask. The last thing he wanted to say was I told you so.

“What? Everyone’s veins are blue.” Wilde’s voice was flat, emotionless. Shock was setting in properly, Zolf diagnosed.

“I dunno. It weren’t clear, but… did you notice anything? On Bosie.” It felt horrible pushing Wilde right now, but knowledge was power. Wilde in his right mind would understand.

Wilde’s eyes shifted in either shock or deception. “No. I didn’t. But we spent a lot of time with the lights off.” Wilde gave his head a little shake, as if to dislodge a memory... or stop one from surfacing.

More than the blood, it was the blankness on Wilde’s face that was most unsettling. Zolf couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Wilde without a smirk or an arched brow or, more frequently these days, a soft little smile, usually when he thought Zolf wasn’t paying attention.

“What’s done is done. Worry about the “how” if I come out the other side of this.” Wilde took a step forward, waiting for Zolf to back off. “Go to the end of the corridor. Once I’m inside, I’ll shut the door. Bar it from the outside.” Metres between them, they performed a grotesque mockery of a tango step, Zolf stepping back, Wilde stepping forward. When Wilde reached the door, he stared into his room.

“And Zolf?” Wilde didn't look over at him, considering the darkness inside as though it held a secret. Perhaps pondering the poetic implications that his love den of the last week was to be his prison for the next.

“Yeh?” Zolf knew this had to happen. Knew it was a good idea. But gods, he wouldn’t wish this on his worst enemy. Wilde had just been betrayed in the most vile way, and now he had to sit in the dark with that for a week. Zolf hadn’t wanted Douglas around, but he certainly hadn’t wanted this.

“At the end of these seven days... if it’s not me in there-” Wilde finally tore his eyes away from the room and turned his gaze to Zolf’s. “-if I’m, monstrous or sick, if I try to hurt you...” He didn’t finish the thought.

“I won’t let you.” Zolf whispered through dry lips. Wilde didn’t have spell it out; they understood each other well enough by now.

Wilde nodded once, satisfied, and stepped into the dark.

#hank writes #zoscar #zolf smith #rqg oscar wilde #rusty quill gaming #rqg #rqg fic #zolfwilde #just angst this installment sorry not sorry pals #i'm sitting here with my tropes bingo and you know this one was on it

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im-the-punk-who · 4 years ago

Note

Hi! I’m new to the fandom and I’m simply curious (not trying to start a feud or anything), why don’t you like Steinberg?

Hello dear anon! And welcome to the fandom!

Oof. That’s a question. xD

I’m going to try and stay as uh. neutral as possible. Because I’ve already written the post I know I failed but, the intent in answering this is also not to start a feud or hurt anyone’s feelings.

Okay, so I got fairly negative in this chilis tonight, so I want to start by saying that even in light of the opinions I’m about to express, Black Sails is one of, if not my number one, favorite TV shows of all time. Certainly in recent memory - I’ve been hyperfixating on this show for 18 months with no sign of stopping, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for everyone who worked on the show - even Steinberg. (The one exclusion is Michael Bay, he can go twist.)

AND I think Stienberg is an incredibly talented writer. Black Sails is one of my favorite shows because it does such a wonderful job of weaving stories, creating characters, and melding things in a way that is both unexpected and makes sense narratively. I have changed as a person because of the show, and they will have to pry James McGraw and Thomas Hamilton from my cold dead knives-attached-to-them hands. None of what I’m going to say is meant to detract from that.

I will also say that a lot of these issues are not particular to Steinberg and are in fact a systemic problem with American TV + Film. And I’m not leaving Robert Levine out of my criticism, it’s just that Steinberg had the biggest hand in the pot(he wrote a full half the episodes) and a lot of what I’ve heard as far as talking about the show comes from Steinberg. So, he gets the brunt. But it isn’t that I think Steinberg was the only problematic element of the show.

Also, these are all my opinions and are colored by how I interact with my fandoms. I am not only a fandom veteran, but I work and pretty much live in the entertainment industry. I work in indie film and theatre and am surrounded by artists and creators of all walks of life, like, constantly. I know what is possible, and when I see something that can be improved, I want to note it because it is important to me to always be striving forward. Like Miranda says about Thomas, this isn’t out of malice, or out of hate. It’s because I genuinely love this show, and I love entertainment as a whole, and I think in order to get to a better, more inclusive industry we have to have hard conversations and look critically at the media we consume, and it is frustrating to me to time and again see the same faces in the room.

But if that isn’t your cuppa, that’s fine! Fandom isn’t meant to be stressful and if all you want to do is watch a show about gay pirates that is your tomato and I applaud you. Have at it you funky motherfucker.

OH! One more. At some point I’m going to talk about Silverflint. When I do, it is NOT meant as a ‘you shouldn’t/cant ship this’ or ‘this pairing is bad’ or any negative attack on the people who ship that pairing. My criticisms in this post are exclusively about what it means for Steinberg as a writer and Black Sails’ representation of gay and mlm men. While it’s not my cuppa, this is a sail your own ship blog.

OKAY! SO!

My main criticisms of Steinberg & Co boil down to:

The homozygosity of the writers and directors shows a complete lack of desire to include marginalized people in the writing of a show that is about them. Which leads to:

The centering of white men while choosing a historical setting and time period that was in fact dominated by people of color and specifically a black woman,

The gratuitous inclusion of violence against women, particularly sexual violence, and again, that the female characters are often sidelined for the central male characters.

SO.

Black Sails is a show centered around queer, female, and black leads, and yet there were only two non white-male directors (one bi-racial man and one white woman) and only 7 female writers - one of whom was Latina. The entire rest of the major creative staff was white men. I’m not going to comment on sexualities but none of the writers or directors are out as queer according to a quick google search.

Let me reiterate the important bit there.

In Black Sails, where the last two seasons specifically feature around a real, actually-happened-in-history event that shaped black history in the Caribbean, there was not a single black writer on the entire show.

This is the main difference between inclusion for inclusion’s sake, and actually centering marginalized voices. Black Sails has a ton of gay, POC, and female rep in front of the camera but practically zero representation behind it, which leads to storylines and implications that Steinberg and his writers, as white men, simply would never realize.

It’s like why Silver and Miranda never realized the true reasons James was waging war on England. They just did not have the life experiences to realize they were missing a piece of the puzzle, and so they filled in their own without even realizing they’d done so.

Because no one in the room of Black Sails was a part of these marginalized identities, nuances get lost or mistranslated, motivations get muddled through a white man’s gaze(or a straight person’s) and implications that someone within those communities might think is obvious won’t even come up.

And again, because there were no writers or directors of color in the last two seasons (the biracial man directed episodes 2x02 and 2x04 - WHICH MAKES SENSE IMO) the entirety of the historical lore that the show bases itself on in its latter half is filtered through a white man’s lens. And so there is no discussion of how changing something changes the meaning, how leaving someone out or changing their role to be more minor might affect people for whom that is their heritage. How the entire story they’re telling might change with one simple exclusion or addition.

So, how does this relate directly to Steinberg, you ask? Well, simply, because it was his show.

Steinberg(and Levine) were involved in every major decision about the show, from its conception, to the script, to choosing the writers and directors. They chose how they wanted the show to look, to think, what stories to tell and how they wanted to tell them. Their decisions(and the biases that formed those decisions) are woven into the show.

And look. I don’t for a second believe any of this was willful or malicious. I don’t think that John Steinberg and Robert Levine sat down one day and said ‘you know what would make the gays really angry? If we locked the only two canonically gay men up in a prison camp.’

But the decisions that were made in the show were based in ignorance in a way that shows more than just simple negligence or laziness(especially given the attention to detail in everything else). The things they leave out or change in the Maroon War plotline for instance are not small details easily missed. They are big, giant waving flags. They are things that are irreplaceable to still have the same events and stories and tell them respectfully.

It shows an insane amount of privilege to, for instance, write a show airing during a time when the Black Lives Matter movement was at the forefront of the American conscience, include black characters and black storylines, and yet not include a single black voice on their creative team.

In a show that centers a gay man’s love and his journey in attempting to process the horrible things done to him and his lover because of it, we are given just forty minutes of the entire show dedicated to their relationship - and just fifteen of those minutes actually feature the lover!

(Relatedly, the entirety of the gay romantic rep is two kisses, and a forehead touch. That’s the entirety of your gay intimacy representation. And yet there are in the first two seasons alone - because that’s all I’ve clocked so far - something like twenty seven minutes of scenes involving a naked or half naked woman. Five minutes of that is explicitly wlw sex.

Again, I just want to reiterate this because it’s important in recognizing bias.

There is fully twice as much female nudity in the first two seasons, as the entirety of the time the two gay characters have together on screen. )

Steinberg is a perfect example of how a lack of understanding why the diversity you are representing is important, matters. I dislike Steinberg because he, just like every other straight white cis man I have known, profited off of marginalized voices without including them or creating with them in mind.

Art does not exist in a vacuum. You cannot create something - especially something as back breakingly, intensely a labor of love as Black Sails - without putting several pieces of yourself into it. But those pieces color your narrative. They will expose things about you that you don’t even realize. And it’s in these places we are weakest, and why a diverse group of writers with a diverse group of experiences can help a piece be stronger. But for whatever reason, John Steinberg thought that he could make art with only people who looked and thought and experienced like him.

The lack of representation behind the camera in Black Sails was evident in front of it and yet Steinberg is out here getting to pretend like he created the most inclusive groundbreaking show that ever existed. It is important to me, personally, to acknowledge that. And that it kind of makes my skin crawl in the way all media made by straight white (cis)men makes my skin crawl. I wish I didn’t have to feel that way about my favorite tv show just because it was created by a man of privilege, but here we are.

SO. I hope that helped? Feel free to take what you want and leave what you don’t!

Below the cut is a more in depth look at things that I think show what I’m talking about, but that up there ^^ is the gist. <3 |D

SURPRISE!

The Maroons and the Maroon War

So the first thing I want to point out is that the Maroon War was a real thing that happened. It lasted ten years, and resulted in the most substantial victory the Maroons ever achieved against the British. Not only that, there was in fact a KICKIN’ badass female leader of the maroons named Queen Nanny, who is to this day honored as a national hero in Jamaica. While they weren’t able to drive the British out, the outcome of this war led to a mostly self-governing Maroon population in Jamaica from the mid 1700s on. This was a long term fight that had a very tangible and real outcome, even if it didn’t end in the destruction of colonialism.

And what is this war turned into in Black Sails? A white ‘madman’s revenge’ that is doomed to failure after six months.

That, my dear pirates, is a problem for me. (And those familiar with my brand of spiceyness know that I do not ascribe to the ‘Flint is a Madman’ trope, but that IS what Steinberg ascribes to, what he seems to have written the show thinking.)

There was no narrative reason to include the Maroon War in the narrative of Black Sails. The Maroon War didn’t happen until a decade after the Golden Age of Piracy, and aside from Silver’s wife being a black woman there is no mention of Silver ever having contact with them. To me, this feels like the choice of a showrunner who found a cool historical event and saw a chance to up the stakes of their white male heroes while getting in some sweet sweet POC rep.

Except that they then took the major events of the Maroon War and gave them to their white characters, Flint and Silver.

Here’s the thing. If you’re going to take a piece of culturally important history and use it for your show, you NEED to have sensitivity writers. You need to have people who are at least familiar with those events and who care about them to do them justice. Have an expert come in and read your script or go over your ideas. Or just like. Hire a black writer. Hire ONE black writer. As a treat.

The important Maroon figures, Nanny, Cudjoe, and Quao, all get sidelined or ‘sexified’ and then used as plot points for the white characters. Nanny gets split into two women - the older mother queen and Madi, the young naive warbent visionary. Quao(Mr. Scott is the closest, or Kofi possibly) gets killed off because the writers realized they didn’t exactly have a place for him in their writing. Cudjoe(Julius) gets a few scenes and one good speech but his entire role in the war gets given to Silver. And THEN. That sexy Queen Madi figure gets used as emotional bait for Silver and then has to learn he has betrayed her and destroyed the hope and freedom she had wanted to bring to her people.

Gross, pirates. Gross.

Anne Bonny/Max/Mary Read - a heads up, this section includes a semi in-depth discussion of both Max and Anne’s sexual assaults. If that bothers you, the paragraphs talking about that begin with a ***

COOL NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT LESBIANS. Words my 20 year old self would never have imagined coming out of my mouth.

Specifically, I want to talk about Max, and Anne, and their backstories both involving extreme sexual trauma at the hands of men. And then Mary Read and the once again sexification of female characters.

(Actually while I’m here another criticism I have of Steinberg is that his writing does not seem to recognize how queer people existed in the past - again, likely because he didn’t have any gay historians to be like ‘actually buddy that doesn’t make sense also why is Anne not dressing as a man? If you want to fuck with anything and insert modern day terminology and ideas into this show, make her non binary and REALLY piss off the hetties.’)

(This same ficitonal gay dramaturg who is definitely not me has also questioned John Steinberg repeatedly about where Mary Read is, unsatisfied with the answer ‘well we wanted her to be hot so we made her a sex worker and then had Anne have to rescue her but then we realized it would be weird not to include her actual character so we gave her a five second cameo at the very end of the series and also made her like 13.’)

Anyway! So my main point in bringing up Anne and Max is the sexual trauma they are exposed to in the show, particularly being that they are the two primary wlw in the show, who Steinberg has said he views as being completely gay, and what THAT whole unexamined idea looks like.

***Max. My dear Max. There was literally no reason to have her be repeatedly r*ped(and for the love of god there was even less reason to make it that gratuitous and graphic). Max being assaulted like that did not add anything to the gravity of Eleanor’s betrayal. The traumatic event was being tossed aside by Eleanor, and that could have been just as emotionally damaging without the sexual assault. And the only reason for her to be continually assaulted was to bring her and Anne together.

***The reason imo that Max’s r*pe plot was added was because it was the only thing these white straight men could come up with that felt emotionally damaging enough to them. The act of betrayal itself wasn’t enough, the act of being thrown away, of having a lover put your life in danger because of her own ambitions wasn’t enough, they needed her to be r*ped to really drive home the point.

***Anne, on the other hand, is never shown being sexually abused, but we are given an explicit account of her own traumatic history and how Jack saved her from this vile beast who was passing her around to his friends.

But here’s the thing pirates - that never happened. According to every account we have of Anne Bonny, she chose her husband, and married him against her father’s wishes. They were probably relatively happy until her husband started being a pirate spy and Anne started cheating on him with Jack.

And yes, when they were found out. Her husband had her beat. That’s not fucking cool, and if they really wanted to go the damsel in distress route they still could have had Jack ‘save’ her from that. But at no point was she sexually abused by her husband(at least not in any accounts I’ve read.)

You know who did likely sexually abuse her or at least manipulate her and Mary for his own benefit? If you guessed our Rat man Jack Rackham, you would be correct, because when he found out about Mary and Anne’s (supposed, but probably real) relationship, it’s implied he extorted both of them into fucking him to keep their secret from the crew.

The addition of sexual abuse to Anne’s past isn’t done to be true to her character and was in fact explicitly untrue. Now of course I don’t know the reasons why they chose to do this, but I can guess. Just as with Max, the most traumatic thing a male writer can think of for a female character is for them to be sexually abused.

And the most disturbing part of this to me? The parallels it has to the real world of why straight men think lesbians exist. These characters who would be called man haters in present day are given these incredibly traumatic man-centered histories. It brings up something very uncomfortable in me about particularly wlw sexuality being viewed as a reaction to trauma at the hands of men. It’s just gross, I dont like it, and honestly there is no fucking excuse for it besides a room full of white straight men writing this bullshit. A room that Steinberg chose, because they fit his ideas.

In Fact heck, the women of Black Sails in general

***I honestly struggle to think of a single female character who I think was treated fairly in Black Sails. Miranda and Eleanor are killed for taking sides and not understanding their partners, Madi is betrayed in the worst way possible, Max is given a pseudo empowering ending but has that fucking terrible start. Idelle ends off fairly well, but tied to a man she may or may not have any actual feelings for, in what is essentially a political marriage. And Anne has her entire identity tied to a man who will be dead in two years as she is robbed of any agency whatsoever without him. (Oh, and the whole r*pe thing. And also her support for Max’s r*pe or death until she started having fee-fees. Who wrote this stuff. >_>)

Even though the characterization of each and every one of these women is PHENOMENAL - and again I will repeat that I absolutely LOVE these characters as they exist in a vacuum. I think they are well rounded, real, feeling people given motivations and drives and FEELINGS and they SHOW THEIR ANGER and i LOVE THEM.

But the show punishes them for it. Miranda is essentially fridged to move Flint’s storyline along, and to make room for Silver. Eleanor is killed for the emotional damage it will cause Rogers. Madi is placed at the center of a conflict she explicitly says she is willing to die for and then not only is her entire cause taken from her, but when she tells Silver to fuck off he - in possibly the most predictable white man move ever - says ‘no i will stay until you change your mind. I will never leave you. I don’t care about your choice in this matter, I will wait forever for you. I’m your biggest fan. I’ll follow you until you love me. papa, - paparazzi.’

And I touched on this before, but I want to talk in more detail about what is possibly my hottest take to date, the sexification of Mary Read and Queen Nanny, as they are presented in the show.

Max is to Anne what Mary Read is, historically. She is the lover that Jack Rackham discovers with Anne, and then he joins them in their bed. They form a triumvirate that upholds Jack at the expense of the women. But for some reason, Steinberg didn’t want to just include Mary Read as an actual character. For some reason he needed to make Anne’s love interest a sex worker who was in need of saving (and who, coincidentally, we never see working the brothel after she becomes lovers with Anne, because she is now a madam. :) Gross.)

And Madi. My dear sweet fucking Madi who didn’t fucking deserve any of this bullshit send tweet.

So, historically, Queen Nanny was the Queen, spiritual advisor, and the military tactician of the Windward Maroons. She would have filled both Madi and the Queen’s character roles(and Flint’s, but who’s counting. A BLACK GAY LEAD? Inconceivable. I digress.) But, I guess, because they were wishy-washing with Silver’s sexuality or felt they needed to give him a female love interest because of Treasure Island, or because they were leaning a bit too hard into the gay shit and needed to backpedal, they took Queen Nanny and split her into a character who is for all intents and purposes powerless in the war and Madi, who is young and naive and does not have any real world experience outside of the Maroon camp.

Because that’s sexy, or something. They could have had the Maroon Queen be a fucking badass lady who works and fights alongside Flint and Silver and one ups them and teaches them shit and has her own ideas about where the British can stick it, but instead they made her into the perfect caricature of a female monarch, letting the big strong men handle the dirty work or something. Because white male power fantasies.

Just let women be powerful and not nubile and let them have character arcs over fucking thirty and let them be CENTERED in their own. fucking. narratives.

God damnit Steinberg.

James Flint, mlm extraordinaire

Oh, my love. My most amazing child. The light of my life. My purest cinnamon roll.

~~And now we’ve come to the dreaded Silverflint criticism part of our programming. Please please know and remember this isn’t a criticism of people who ship Silverflint. As I said up top, Your Tomato Is Not My Tomato and that’s cool. Please don’t take this next part as an attack on Silverflint as a fandom ship.~~

My criticism of Steinberg as it relates to Flint is related to:

What a romantic/sexual relationship with Silver being the basis of the tension and plot means for Flint in particular as a gay or mostly mlm man.

Refusing to confirm Thomas and James being alive at the end and honestly the whole finale in general but like I’ll try and focus.

The major problem I have with Silver and Flint being coded as in love with each other is the implications there in terms of gay men’s relationships to other men.

From every corner, men are inundated with the idea that any close relationship between them must be gay. That intimacy cannot exist unless there are sexual feelings involved. That a relationship cannot be close, deep and soul shattering and life altering, unless one guy secretly(or not so secretly) wants to bone the other dude. That two men cannot value each other as partners or friends or truly know each other unless they are gay.

Seeing both of the meaningful relationships Flint forms with other men be sexually coded feels a bit the same way as Anne and Max’s sexual assault plotlines does vis-a-vis being wlw. (Even with Gates, Flint never spoke about Thomas or his plans - Silver is absolutely the closest person to Flint besides Thomas and Miranda.) And this is just as true for Silver. Having both Flint and Madi - the two people he trusts - both be people he’s in love with also just feels. I don’t know.

It feels like a confusion between male intimacy and male love that is so so familiar to me as a gay man I could choke on it. Where they wanted these men to have a deep and really lasting connection, but could only figure out how to do it if they were in love. Friendship wouldn’t have been enough - only romantic and sexual love is enough for the gay man(or men, at all).

Just because it isn’t queerbaiting doesn’t mean it’s good rep, and I would have liked to see truly deep male friendships that did not center on sexual attraction - particularly for Flint as a confirmed mlm(and Silver too, if you’re counting him. The same arguments for why I dislike Flint being paired with Silver are also true in the reverse.)

Even if both Flint and Silver were confirmed mlm I still would have LOVED to see a platonic relationship between them. In fact I would have loved that EVEN MORE. Men! Who fuck men! Not needing to fuck each other to be important to one another! Who made this. Very delicious.

But because there weren’t any queer writers on the show, writers who understand this kind of struggle that gay and mlm men face, they thought ‘oh, let’s also have them be in love with each other. More gay rep is better gay rep, right?’ False. THOUGHTFUL gay rep is better gay rep.

Okay and here’s my last thing. The fact that Steinberg refuses to say whether or not the explicitly mlm men are alive at the end of the show - that the words he specifically uses are ‘up for interpretation’ is. Fuck, it’s gross, okay? It’s fucking gross.

I have been around enough men, enough people in power, enough people with leverage who also know how to play the field, to know that when someone wants a group’s support but does not agree with them, their go to phrasing is that it is ‘up for debate’ or ‘up for interpretation.’

Say the gays are alive. Steinberg refusing to acknowledge the reality of the ending of his show to maintain his own sense of artistic integrity is what, honestly, really sets me off about him and I don’t care if this is a nuanced take.

Like yes, death of the author. I honestly don’t care if he thinks they’re dead or alive. What I care about is that he thinks he can get away with being clever and leaning hard into a story is true/untrue’ - doesn’t realize what the implications of that are, and didn’t when he was writing, and didn’t have anyone else in the room who would think about it either.

ANYWAY. So this is....my long drawn out explanation for why I do not like Steinberg. Uhhhhh tune in next week for more of my totally unpopular opinions!

#good....fucking lord #i am so sorry #how many opinions can milo fit in one post #i mean i have more but yknow lmao #black sails #behind the black sails #milos black sails meta #long posts #my increasingly devoted attempts to find tumblrs word limit #Anonymous #john steinberg #js critical but the js is jon steinberg

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tsarisfanfiction · 4 years ago

Note

A little more challenging...Drabble Challenge

77: Scott Tracy & Trafalgar D. Water Law

An Uncomfortable Meeting

Fandom: Thunderbirds/One Piece Rating: Teen Genre: Hurt/Comfort Characters: Scott, Law

77) Must be a coincidence

Okay, so this startled a laugh out of me when I first saw it, and I have been musing possibilities for this crossover all day. There is literally so much I could do with this, depending on how AU I want to go (ideas have ranged from IR being a neutral org in OP, to Flevance being a thing in TAG, to ‘let’s just go straight up medieval AU’) but - for now at least, I think I’m gonna stick with short and mostly-simple.

And some good old universe-collision because why not. Also, as a little warning to Thunderfam readers, One Piece characters, including Law, have what is (very) basically personalised superpowers, and Law’s are based in surgery. This’ll be Scott’s PoV, so you can be confused about it along with him :D

I honestly never thought I’d be crossing over these two fandoms, but here we are. I know 99% of my followers don’t know both fandoms, but I hope you still enjoy it!

Drabble Challenge: 1-150 (feel free to specify a fandom/character)

Scott was pretty sure he was dead. There were some things the human body just couldn’t survive, and he could distinctly see his leg - yes, that was definitely his leg - floating in the air, covered in blood and in no way attached to his body.

Speaking of his body... that was his body, over there. Also covered in blood, and diced up into what looked rather like neat cubes. Weirdly, there didn’t seem to be anywhere near enough blood for that, especially the neck. In fact, the neck didn’t seem to have any blood on it at all.

He blinked.

And then blinked again, because what? If he was dead - and he had to be, after that point-blank explosion and now his body floating in pieces across the air - he shouldn’t be able to blink, should he? Dead people’s eyelids didn’t move.

It also... didn’t hurt. Which was a point towards him being dead, because he was fairly sure being in pieces was supposed to hurt. At least his neck.

“He’s awake, Captain!” The voice came from somewhere behind him. Scott tried to turn his head to look, but apparently being just a floating head stopped that from being an option.

“Doesn’t matter,” a second voice drawled. “I’m almost done.”

Done? Done with what? Was this an afterlife, because if so Scott wasn’t sure he liked it.

His other leg sailed up to join his hips, and Scott blinked again because they just merged together seamlessly. The urge to kick out crept up on him, and he followed through with it.

His leg moved.

What?

“Hold still,” the second voice ordered. A man came into view - if Scott had to guess, he’d put them at about the same height, and probably similar age, too - but that was about where the similarities ended. A messy shock of black hair that clearly hadn’t been brushed for days, sharp golden eyes - actual gold, were they contacts? - and a similarly unkempt goatee gave off the instinctive urge to not trust this man.

The golden earrings - two small hoops per ear - and flashes of black ink on the exposed skin of his arms and collarbones did nothing to pacify the urge. He looked like he wouldn’t be out of place in those old pirate films.

Must be a coincidence. Just an aesthetic. Pirates had stopped existing in that sense a long time ago.

His arms floated towards his torso, and just as his leg before them, melded seamlessly back together. His final leg followed suit, and then it was just his head that remained separate.

A palm pressed against his chest - and now he was concentrating, he could feel that - and then-

“Mes.”

Pain. A sharp jolt right over his heart and right now Scott had no idea if he was dead or just in a very vivid nightmare but some sort of squishy cube burst out the front of his chest and was that his heart?

“I saved your life,” the man said. The hand now cradling the gelatinous lump that seemed to contain a living, beating heart had more tattoos. A letter on each finger - H, T, A, E. He couldn’t see the thumb from that angle. He didn’t need to.

DEATH.

Grim Reaper felt like a more appropriate assumption than pirate right now.

The index finger of the other hand pointed straight at his head, then flicked towards his body. Scott’s sight blurred, and he got the distinct idea that he was moving, and then he was sitting up, fully intact and-

Well, mostly intact. His arm - bandaged, uniform still stained with blood, and his mind briefly flashed to the explosion he hadn’t got away from in time - moved and his hand found a hole in his chest.

“So answer my questions,” the man continued, sitting down on a chair opposite him - he was sat on a bed, Scott realised. A bed in what looked like some sort of infirmary. “Who do you work for?” A blue tint in his vision Scott hadn’t even registered vanished, and at the same time an awareness of dulled but present pain returned.

There was a grinning face on the chest of the man’s clothes. Simple, but with a grin that was anything but reassuring and spokes sticking out of it that made the whole thing look like a grinning virus symbol. A man next to him - ginger hair, hat hiding his eyes - wore the same symbol in miniature on the left breast of his off-white uniform. It wasn’t a familiar one.

“Who are you?” he demanded, finding his voice and somehow surprised when it came out raspy.

The calculating look that slid onto the man’s face didn’t look friendly. Not in the least.

“You don’t recognise me?” Scott wracked his brain, but no, he definitely didn’t recognise the man - or whatever technology he’d just used to reassemble him like a jigsaw and then take his heart out. “Trafalgar Law.”

“You know,” the ginger interjected, before Scott could react, his own face twisted into a smug grin. “The Surgeon of Death.”

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #one piece #one piece fanfiction #crossover #crossover fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #trafalgar law #shachi #heart pirates #ope ope no mi #drabbles #janetm74 #thunderwhump #behind the scenes

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sheliesshattered · 5 years ago

Text

Fic meme

I was tagged by @primarybufferpanel -- thank you darling, this was a ton of fun to do!

This got a bit long, so I’ll put the people I’m tagging here at the top: @claraaoswald, @ambitious-witch, @someillplanetreigns, and @junoinferno, if you feel like playing!

My AO3, my old non-updating fanfiction.net

Fandoms I’ve made fanworks for: Oh lord. I’m only going to count fanfiction that has actually been posted, but if I tried to count up every fandom that I’d started writing for and left unfinished fragments languishing on various harddrives and googledocs over the years, it’d be at least double this list. I have two pseuds on AO3, with the fics roughly organized by fandoms that I post about on this Tumblr account (sheliesshattered) and fandoms that pre-date my time on Tumblr that I don’t post about very much (glasscannon). Putting all the fandoms together in one alphabetized list:

Black Sails - 5 Doctor Who - 8 Firefly/Serenity - 1 Game of Thrones - 1 The Hobbit - 1 The Hunger Games - 1 Iron Man - 2 Law & Order: Criminal Intent - 1 Mad Max - 2 Once Upon A Time - 1 Poldark - 3 Star Wars - 3 Twilight - 7 The West Wing - 1

Number of fics: 38, including a big unfinished epic that I never moved over from ff.n, and don’t plan to unless I finish it someday.

Fics I spent more time on: I’m not even quite sure how to measure this. I’m a slow writer, and a single story can easily hold my attention for years at a time, or be something I return to when there isn’t a newer fandom temporarily consuming me. I don’t tend to keep track of how many hours I put into a fanfic, though. The unfinished epic I mentioned is probably near the top of that list, and was a huge part of my life from 2009 to 2013. Other contenders would be the All Hands series (written with PBP!), and Truth Universally Acknowledged, particularly if you include all the massive world-building that went into that one.

But really probably the one I’ve poured the most hours into, between research and writing, is a Doctor Who epic that hasn’t yet seen the light of day, called Home The Long Way ‘Round. Because I have such a habit of starting long stories and then not finishing them, I’m making myself get that one completely done before I post any of it to AO3, so I don’t have anything to show for it yet, but I’ve put a ton of time into it over the last five years or so. Hopefully someday I’ll actually get to share it. :)

Fics I spent less time on: Like I said, I’m a very slow writer, so any time I can turn out a story in a matter of days I’m just absolutely shocked. I wrote The Message over the course of about 24 hours, which is probably the fastest I’ve ever finished anything in my life ever, lol.

Longest fic: The All Hands series is sitting at 126,800 words, and PBP and I have more finished for it that we’re hoping to post soon-ish. The unfinished epic made it to almost 119,000 words before I ran out of steam. Truth Universally Acknowledged racked up about 54,000 words before my co-writer and I took a break from it, and probably triple that in world-building bibles and timelines, etc. On the works-in-progress side of things, Home The Long Way ‘Round is sitting at about 40,000 words currently and only about a third of the way done, and the For As Long As We Get series is at 21,000 words between what I’ve posted and what I’m still working on, and will definitely continue to grow.

Shortest story: 10 Seconds, at 208 words. Also one of the very first fanfics I ever finished and posted online.

Most hits: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by like a factor of 20 vs anything else I have on AO3. It’s the only time I’ve written for the main pairing in an active fandom (tho my purview in the co-writing was more on the secondary pairing), and that translated to a stupidly large number of hits. Fanfiction.net doesn’t count hits the same way, but the unfinished epic is sitting at about 3500 favs.

Most kudos: Setting The Stuns’ls, the first in the All Hands series -- which is SHOCKING considering that’s a tiny rowboat of a fandom, for a non-canon background pairing that has literally about 30 seconds of shared screentime, and the two romantic leads don’t so much as kiss over the course of 94,000 words (longing looks, significant hand-touches, mutual pining, definitely, but kissing, not so much).

Most bookmarks: Truth Universally Acknowledged, by a long shot.

Fic you want to rewrite or expand: I don’t tend to edit a story once it’s been posted, beyond correcting a typo or adding a missed word. Once it’s published, it’s finished and I don’t change it significantly. I do have quite a few (so, so many) unfinished stories that I would love to finish up at some point.

Total words combined: Counting only published fics, including the unfinished epic (and a companion piece for it) that lives only on ff.n, I’m currently at 376,542 words total.

Fav fic you wrote: How can you make me choose between my children like this, honestly?? Siiiigh. I’m with PBP, whatever I’m working on currently is usually my favorite. I’m having a ton of fun with For As Long As We Get, and can’t wait to publish the next part of that, hopefully sometime this month. I’m incredibly proud of All Hands, and that occupied such a specific time in my life that I’ll always think of it fondly. I’m exceptionally happy with the character voices and use of language in both Breathe Again and Upon This Rock Will I Break Myself, Until It Shows Me Your Beloved Face, and tend to feel like they don’t get enough love vs how much I love them. But my one true favorite is and will always be Home The Long Way ‘Round, and hopefully I’ll actually be able to finish it and post it someday.

Share a bit of your WIP or idea if you have anything planned: Again, how can I possibly choose just one?? Even just within the Doctor Who fandom, I currently have more than half a dozen stories actively in progress. But since I’ve talked it up so much without being able to link to it at all, and just declared it my all-time fav, I’m going to break one of my own rules and post the whole first chapter (eek!) of Home The Long Way ‘Round behind a read more:

Chapter 1: Orange Dreams

The sound of the wind is whispering in your head Can you feel it coming back? Through the warmth, through the cold, keep running ‘til we’re there. We're coming home now, we’re coming home now. —Home, Dotan

The winds shrieked and howled around her. Clara had never been in a tornado, but she imagined it would feel like this to stand in the eye of one. She could see gusts lifting the tops off the sand dunes in shimmering ribbons, gold against the orange sky. The waves of airborne sand dissipated a few feet from her, leaving only a jagged grittiness in the air.

A woman with long blonde hair was yelling at her, her words ripped away by the wind.

“Tell me again!” Clara called back to her. “Tell me how to find home!”

“It’s just physics!” the other woman shouted, taking a step closer; they were nearly the same height. “No information can ever be lost! Start from zero, and run the math! We’ll be waiting on the other end of that equation!”

There was something Clara desperately wanted to tell this woman who looked at her with kindness behind the steel of her eyes, but in that moment, the words wouldn’t come.

“Look!” someone yelled behind Clara, and though she didn’t want to take her eyes off her, she instinctively looked up, following the line of the other person’s arm up into the gathering storm-whipped dusk. There, silhouetted against the last of the light, was the unmistakable blue boxy shape of the Doctor’s TARDIS, spinning quickly as it flew away—

Clara jerked awake, her heart hammering against her ribs, already sitting up and pulling off her sleep mask before she realised what had woken her was the sound of the TARDIS materialising in the sitting room of her flat. She took a moment to catch her breath, trying to hold onto the details of the dream. In the other room, the TARDIS’s familiar wheezing and groaning came to a stop with a soft thud, followed by the squeak of the door.

“Doctor?” Clara called, not bothering to hide the sleep nor the annoyance in her voice.

He poked his head around her bedroom doorframe, grey hair awry and his most innocent expression plastered on — which meant he knew he was waking her and felt at least marginally bad about it. “Hello, Clara. It’s Wednesday,” he said pleasantly, by way of explanation.

“Is it?” she asked, deadpan.

“Technically.”

“You do know that I have to work today, don’t you?”

“Not for another six hours. So come on, up-and-at-‘em, plenty of time to go out and save the universe and still be back in time for your morning coffee. I’ve an adventure that simply won’t keep, so come on!”

His excitement was infectious, as he must have known it would be, but Clara clung to her annoyance a little longer, mostly for show. “You have a time machine: everything can keep,” she replied, but waved him off before he could launch into a lecture on all the ways that statement was false, at least from a temporal physics standpoint. He lectured anyway, hovering outside her bedroom door as she dressed, though Clara expected it was mostly to keep himself from pacing in anticipation. She followed more than half of it, and worried a bit over how often she let him babble on about the minutiae of time travel these days.

By the time the universe had been set to rights — or at least one small blue world, home to a race of sentient seahorses, that had been facing imminent extinction in the form of a rogue exoplanet — she had nearly forgotten her unsettling, vivid dream.

Given the recent events on Skaro, Clara was unsurprised when bits of her experiences there began to filter into her dreams. Truthfully, she had expected to dream of it more often than she did, but in the weeks that followed, more nights than not her sleeping mind instead conjured up the strange orange landscape. She revisited that screaming sandstorm so often it became almost comforting, and before long, other dreams joined it.

Clara was leaned against a railing on a high balcony, overlooking a large city coming alight as dusk crept on, a rusty sunset that stretched the width of the horizon bathing the world in amber. The woman with the serious eyes and long, straight blonde hair stood beside her, in the middle of a conversation, as happened so frequently in dreams.

“Alright, but what about the last stage?” Clara asked, elbows resting next to hers on the railing. “That bit depends on us actively doing something, and you know we can’t rely on my knowledge. I can’t take any of the engineering or navigation with me, so it’ll be down to him.”

“And he loves a good puzzle,” the other woman said confidently, flicking her hair over her shoulder with a twitch of her head. “He’ll want to find us. He’ll figure it out.”

“Before I die of old age? Are you sure? My mother was one of his professors at the Academy, I’ve seen his test scores. I think we need a fail-safe.”

“He did graduate,” she pointed out reasonably.

“He passed his exams with a fifty-one percent on his second attempt! No, we can’t assume he’ll have all the baseline information to even consider such a solution, much less actually accomplish the maths. We have to find some way to hide it with me,” Clara said. “Or in his TARDIS.”

The woman was silent for a long moment, her mouth set in a thoughtful line. On the distant horizon, the sun had finished its slow descent, but below them the city was coming to life, the light not so much fading as changing sources, becoming ever so slightly more golden.

“By that point in the timeline,” the blonde woman said, speaking slowly, still thinking it through, “you’ll have been exposed to his timestream and to the crack in the universe, so some of your memories will probably start leaking through. If we structure the extraction the right way, we might be able to embed a particular thought or moment into your consciousness before you go into the Schism.”

“What’d you have in mind?” Clara asked, turning her head to look at her.

“This conversation?” she suggested, laughing, her broad smile transforming her face. “No, a phrase would be cleaner, I think.”

“‘Run the math, you idiot boy’?” Clara suggested, also giggling.

“Oh yes, that’d go over well! No, if you want him to do something, call him clever. Works every time!” she laughed, leaning her shoulder into Clara’s.

“The horrid thing is that I know the temporal physics for this is part of my mother’s coursework,” Clara groaned. “If he hadn’t slept through so many of her classes, this would be a non-issue!”

“Ah, but a Doctor who was always responsible? What a boring universe that would be!”

Above them, the stars were beginning to come out, though the glare of the city obscured them. Through the haze of the dream, Clara couldn’t find any constellations she recognised. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I was the one who helped him steal that box in the first place.”

“And if he could take half a moment to remember that,” the blonde woman said seriously, “he might realise the role of his TARDIS in all of this, and start to think of the solution that way.”

“‘Run the math, you—”

“Clever.”

“—boy, and remember when you met me’?”

The other woman nodded, considering. “That could do it. Your chronodeterminate conjugation won’t work until you come into contact with at least a little regeneration energy. Assuming you choose regeneration on Trenzalore, it might start kicking in then, in plenty of time for the last stage.”

“Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me,” Clara whispered up to the distant stars, cradling her chin on her arms against the railing.

The woman mimicked her position, the golden light of the city and the silver light of the stars catching in her long pale hair. “It’s just physics,” she murmured back. “Start from zero and run the math. I’ll be waiting at the other end of that equation. We’ll all be waiting.”

As unsettling as they were, at least the orange-tinged dreams were better than nightmares of Daleks, of being locked in the Dalek casing, unable to convince the Doctor that it was her, it was her, she wasn’t a Dalek, she wasn’t a Dalek! Dreams of the Doctor peering at her down an eyestock, this face or the last, or any of the others buried deep in her subconscious, hearing her but not knowing her, seeing her but not saving her.

Clara grasped for that orange sky, let it carry her away in bronze sandstorms, golden cities slowly coming to life, and starlight caught in tawny hair.

Monday morning third period found her Year 10 students taking an essay exam while Clara doodled on a scrap piece of paper, trying to pull images and phrases out of the orange haze that had taken up residence in her slumbering hours since Skaro. There were bits that tugged at her memory, like a song she couldn’t quite place but whose tune was intensely familiar.

She’d written Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me across the top of the page, and her eyes strayed to it every few seconds. The phrase had stayed with her after she woke, and had been on the tip of her tongue ever since, as though it was a message she was meant to deliver. Below it she’d rewritten the phrase, but crossed out six words: Run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me.

It was too close for comfort to the phrase that had, in retrospect, changed her life, sent her on her current course. The Maitlands’ mnemonic for their wifi password, which she’d said out loud during that first phone conversation with the Doctor, had caught his attention somehow, and it wasn’t until she jumped into his timestream that she understood. It was the last thing she’d said to him before sacrificing herself to save him. Every fragment of her scattered through his timestream had said it to him at some point as well, the words reverberating endlessly up and down his timeline.

Why her dreams would dredge it up now, and in such a strange context, Clara had no idea. They didn’t feel like random images, but more like memory-dreams, like the bits of echo lives that filtered through to her sleeping mind from time to time. It had to mean something.

Half way down the scrap paper she’d written: It’s just physics. Start from zero and run the math. Below this was the very helpful ??? and Clara idly traced over the question marks again. Physics was still a foreign language to her, despite how much the Doctor prattled on about it at times. She could bring this to him, she mused, but what was it, really? Her subconscious doing backflips in the wake of Skaro, that was all. No grand mystery to solve, no universe-altering secret code, just her. She wouldn’t bother the Doctor with this quite yet.

Besides, she was certain she could tease this apart on her own, follow the clues to their logical conclusion without his assistance. The dreams were insistent, and felt familiar, but Clara was sure she’d never dreamed of the blonde woman and the orange sky prior to Skaro. That was the next clue, then, and she jotted it down on her scrap paper. Something had changed after Skaro, something that caused her subconscious mind to dredge up these particular buried memories.

She needed more information. Dreams about her echo lives were always stronger when she was aboard the TARDIS travelling in the Vortex, sharper and easier to remember. Maybe these orange dreams would be, too. And maybe the TARDIS itself would have some answers for her.

Of course, she didn’t sleep aboard the TARDIS very often, with her insistence on returning home for a week of Real Life in between their Wednesday trips. But the Doctor was never adverse to her sticking around longer than she’d planned, and in the end it didn’t take much to convince him:

“I’ve a staff meeting at work that I’m dreading,” Clara told him on that next Wednesday, when they returned to the TARDIS after their latest outing. “So what do you say I have a little kip and then we squeeze in another adventure before you take me back to face my workday?”

She thought for a moment that the Doctor might question the change in their routine, but he seemed thrilled about the idea. When he announced that he had some tinkering with the engines he’d been putting off that should keep him occupied while she slept, Clara made an excuse to linger in the console room — “just going to finish reading this chapter, then off to bed” — until after he’d gone. Once he’d disappeared down the corridor and around a corner, she quietly set aside her book, then slipped out of her armchair and down the stairs towards the console. The rotors hummed overhead, and somehow Clara knew the TARDIS was aware of her, and was curious to see what she would do.

Carefully clearing her thoughts, she made her way over to the telepathic circuits, pushed up her sleeves, and slid her hands into the strange interface. Focus was the key, she knew, and she was nothing if not focused. She closed her eyes and held two very specific thoughts in her mind: the sand-whipped orange sky in her dreams, and the clear question, Where, please?

She hoped the please would help.

It was a long quiet moment with the circuits warmly cradling Clara’s fingers, and then something on the console beeped. Her eyes flew open and she carefully extracted her hands from the telepathic interface before pulling the monitor down to eye level.

Gallifrey the screen read in English, below an image of a startlingly red-orange planet. Immediately prior to the Time Lock.

Clara felt her heart thud painfully against her ribs as she read the brief text again. She’d been dreaming of Gallifrey? She knew she’d had an echo life on Gallifrey, but she remembered that interaction with the Doctor, and it happened indoors. She had never before dreamt of the Gallifreyan sky. Had it been buried somewhere in her subconscious with the rest of her memories of that life? Why surface now?

More confused than ever, she clicked the screen back to the desktop, unreadable Circular Gallifreyan floating idly across the display. Perhaps she should bring this up with the Doctor — it was his home world, after all. But the whole point of this had been to dream while they were in the Vortex, and if she didn’t get a move on, he’d be ready for their next adventure before she’d even managed to fall asleep. She could talk with him about it later.

And if things worked tonight as she hoped they would, maybe she would even have a bit more information to bring to him when she did.

“Fire suppressant in Pod Four!”

The frantic call was quickly overwhelmed by the sound of the requested suppressant dispensing from the ceiling. When it ended, the speaker, dressed in the dark red uniform of a technician, brushed soot and foam off his shirt.

“It hates me, that one,” he said, nodding at the unassuming gray cylinder in the open pod in front of him. It was devoid of features, even its doors invisible now in the wake of the fire, two meters tall and one meter in diameter, just like all the other patients in the workshop. But somehow it did seem to be glowering at him.

“And it always will, stop wasting your time,” his coworker said flippantly. He was perched in front of a console on the other side of the room, deep in his own repairs. “Just get the Impossible Girl to do it, she’ll have it eating out of her hand by lunchtime.”

Their conversation occurred in the time it took Clara to enter the large oblong workshop and make her way to the far end where the two were working. “I heard that,” she said seriously, earning a guilty-looking jump from the man who had spoken most recently. She continued over to Pod Four and leaned against the outer casing, arms folded over her uniformed chest, one booted ankle crossed over the other. “What did you do now?” she demanded of the first technician.

He looked at her with wide eyes, more out of genuine fear than mock innocence, in her estimation. “I just told it—”

“You what?” she snapped, in a tone she usually reserved for misbehaving students.

He wilted a little but started again “…I told it to—”

“Told it?”

“…to give me access to the logs,” he mumbled, dropping her gaze.

“Told it to give you access to the logs?” she asked, voice harsh. “Well first off, Number Four here prefers male pronouns, respecting that might put you on better footing. And secondly, as with all TARDISes, you’ll get a lot further if you ask rather than tell.”

Behind her, the other tech scoffed. “They’re machines, we shouldn’t have to baby them like that. An access request is an access request.”

Clara turned her head to pin him with an icy glare. “Some days I cannot believe I let you work here,” she told him bluntly. “They aren’t just machines, as you very well know. Yes, there’s hardware we need to be able to work with, but that’s nothing more than a radio, at some level — only instead of radio waves, we’re using oswin waves to talk to pan-dimensional beings so large, they can’t have a physical form in this dimension. Who, with a little extra energy, can take us and an infinite amount of folded space to nearly any point in spacetime. Just think about the massive intelligences that speak to us through each of those machines!

“But more to the point,” she said, turning back to the tech still covered in soot, “you have to understand their viewpoint of the universe, and their understanding of time. A Time Lord telling a TARDIS what to do is akin to creating a fixed point in spacetime. It’s in their nature to want to avoid fixed points. Ask instead, let him find his own way ‘round to it.”

Before the beleaguered technician could reply, there came a polite knocking from the far end of the room, and Clara turned to see a soldier standing in the doorway of the workshop, looking a little out of his depth. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have a message for—” he paused to glance down at the datapad in his hand, “for the Oswin. From the Lady President. Top priority.”

Clara was moving towards him before he’d finished speaking, curious and concerned, her attention focused on the message in his hands. But the dream faded out before she reached him, her mind moving on to something more abstract, more difficult to hold on to.

When she woke in her bed aboard the TARDIS, she stared at the ceiling with fond frustration. “If that was your attempt at help,” she whispered to the ship, “then I do not understand the message.”

It still wasn’t enough to bring to the Doctor, she decided later that day, watching him spin around the console room in the afterglow of a successful adventure, people saved, the universe bettered. So she was dreaming of Gallifrey, what of it? Many of the details in that last dream matched up with what she remembered of her interaction with the Doctor in that life. And while he occasionally enjoyed comparing memories of all the times her echoes had met him, she’d found he wasn’t especially keen on discussing the one in which she’d helped him steal the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey. Susan continued to be a point of pain for the Doctor, all these centuries later, and Clara understood him well enough to know better than to pick at that particular scab.

Still. That phrase was on a loop in her head: run the math, you clever boy, and remember when you met me. The emphasis on their meeting hadn’t been part of the original phrase, and now she was dreaming of the life in which they’d met face to face for the first time, from the Doctor’s perspective. Clearly they would have to discuss it at some point.

Eventually, but not yet.

#long post #about me #my writing #like seriously all of it #fanfiction #fandom life #AO3 #Home The Long Way 'Round #For As Long As We Get #All Hands #Truth Universally Acknowledged #et al #if you read that chapter let me know what you think!#❤️

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the-purple-martin · 5 years ago

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Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Fallout 4, Fallout (Video Games) Rating: Mature Warnings: Rape/Non-Con Relationships: Paladin Danse/Female Sole Survivor Characters: Female Sole Survivor, Paladin Danse (Fallout), Arthur Maxson, Scribe Haylen (Fallout) Additional Tags: Post-Blind Betrayal, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Heavy Angst Series: Part 3 of Beauty from Pain

Summary:

In the wake of the events at Listening Post Bravo, Sole Survivor Jacqueline struggles with the consequences of her choices, while Danse is prepared to let the Commonwealth burn on his path to seek vengeance for not only himself, but for the woman he has devoted his life to. Except the road righteousness isn't what it seems. Will the bonds of love and friendship be enough to save them both?

“Are you angry?”

In the aftermath of her confession, Jackie couldn’t bear to look at him. Twisting and churning, her gut was in knots; this place held enough heartache, but she couldn’t keep this from him.

“I don’t know,” Danse admitted, his gaze fixed upon the ceiling. Even from her peripherals, she could see the pensive expression that hijacked his features.

Since Jackie had stepped into this place, condemned to be his personal prison, Danse hadn’t made eye contact. He’d barely acknowledged her presence; staring at nothing, staring through her, until she slunked over and slid down the concrete wall to nestle beside him. Jackie thought he'd been making progress, healing even, but it seemed he hadn’t fared well in her absence. It broke her heart when she had returned, to see Danse’s decline since her previous visit—he sat slouched on the floor, hiding in the dark, with his head in his hands.

Even though Jackie had managed to keep Danse alive, the days immediately following his execution had been wrought with endless silence and meaningless existence. And then one night, Jackie awoke to the sound of muffled sobbing. Across the room, Danse sat on the edge of his bed, his face buried in his hands. Even through the darkness, Jackie could see the unsteady rise and fall of his shoulders, hear his stuttering breath as he attempted to smother his weeping.

She had gone simply to sit beside him, to offer quiet comfort with her presence. After a while he’d looked at her; hopeless and broken, and finally admitted that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing anymore. She’d contended that maybe it was okay not to have a plan and promised that whatever life threw at them, she would be there for him.

You watch my back, I’ll watch yours, she reminded him.

When she stood to go back to her bunk, Danse caught her arm and tugged her towards him, pulling her into his arms with such force that they toppled over onto the mattress. When his trembling subsided, Jackie gently held Danse’s face between her hands and he told her he would be lost without her.

During the weeks that followed, Jackie took him to the nearby settlements and put him to work fortifying their defenses and training the residents how properly to defend themselves. Little by little, Danse had been reclaiming the humanity that had been stolen from him. Slowly he was finding the way back to himself.

The days turned into weeks and Jackie had laid the Brotherhood to rest, deciding that she wasn’t going back. Before long, nearly two months had passed before the Brotherhood came to claim what was theirs.

Backed by the setting sun in early May, a vertibird and a familiar face, clad in ridiculous aviators and enough arrogance to sail the Prydwen to the moon, a lancer had come under orders to bring Jackie back. She assured Danse that she wouldn't be long. She'd show face, go along with the pomp and circumstance, and promptly hand in her resignation. A few days, maybe a week, she promised.

Now, Jackie couldn’t stand to look at Danse because it was a lie. She had failed him. Abandoned him in this miserable bunker because her hand had been forced and the burden weighed heavy on her heart.

Finally, Danse looked at her but still she refused to meet his gaze. For she feared what he would discover from deep within. Under it all, she was terrified and ashamed. Maxson had broken her. Played to her weaknesses and sliced along her vulnerable underbelly, threatening to make her bleed by destroying the man she'd sacrifice anything to protect.

Danse’s eyes immediately focused on the discoloration of her neck that her jacket didn’t quite hide. He swept her hair aside and tugged at the collar of her shirt to see the extent of the blue and purple splotches that stained her shoulder and chest. She had waited a few days in hopes that bruises would fade, but like a tattoo, they were branded on her skin. His fingers ran along the markings and she winced at his touch.

Shameful proof of her violation.

“Did he hurt you?” Danse’s voice betrayed nothing except the clinical calmness of a bedside examination.

Jackie shrugged away, an abstract smudge of dirt on the floor the focus of her attention. Try as she might though, his voice confirmed what she didn’t want to admit. This had happened. It was real.

There was no escaping what she’d done. The admission hurt like hell and no amount of attempting to swallow her shame could keep the tears from streaking down her cheeks, “Just my pride.”

With a sigh, Danse went to catch her tears, “You shouldn’t-”

“Everything has a price,” she pawed his hands way. “I threatened him, shoved my gun in his face, backed him into a corner… Did you really think there wouldn't be consequences for my actions?”

“This…” he shook his head, hands retreating to his side, “the price was too high. I– it wasn’t worth it.” At least he had the decency to catch himself and not defile her by saying he wasn’t worth her sacrifice.

“Don’t!” This time she did look at him. Her head snapped around and she could feel the heat of anger, flushing across her cheeks, “Don’t you dare patronize me by devaluing my decision to fight for you! I made my choice and so did you. We did this together. Now we pay the price.”

It was his turn to look away and hide. To cower in his corner. Slip into himself where no one could reach him.

“You aren’t the only one who lost something here,” she wrapped her arms around her ribs, holding herself and staring at her knees. “If you care about me—even in the slightest—you won’t let my sacrifices be in vain.”

“I'm not okay with this.” It was mumbled, but with conviction, like his words actually meant something. As if he could put action behind what he said.

She shifted and drew up her knees to press her forehead into the knobby join of her legs, “And you think I am?”

The question went unanswered but she didn't have it in her to press the issue. Instead, she let the tears continue to track down her face and run along her thighs before plummeting to the floor.

Fragmented pieces of her former self splintered in her chest, the jagged edges scraping and tearing at her with each squeeze of her heart. Who was this woman she had become? On the outside, she looked much the same but an ugliness had consumed her. A disease that festered within and ruined everything it touched. Her insides were boiled and black. She had become infected by the sickness of this godforsaken world. And to think, she now called it her home.

This place, where the wicked and the damned reaped the fruitful rewards of their lawlessness. They sat high and mighty upon their spoils of war, taking the desires of their flesh, without care for who they trampled in their merciless, single-minded path to obtain it.

A world where innocence and humility were violations of the human condition because here you were conditioned not to think, not to feel. Because independent thought and emotions would get you killed or left for dead in a ditch. The idea that it was okay to desecrate the body and take the life of another simply because they looked at you wrong was commonplace here. It was disgusting and vile and somehow Jackie had found herself surviving, even thriving in this new world. It was ruining her, bending and molding her, and desensitizing her to forsake her humanity. What scared her the most, though, was the thought that maybe she was okay with that.

She couldn't help but wonder what Danse thought of her now. It was impossible for her to rise to meet his expectations. She was damaged. Not worthy of his compassion.

‘I'm not ok with this.’

Could he forgive her for her transgressions? Would he leave her? Could she live with herself if he did?

Selfish. She was such a selfish woman. This had all been about what she wanted. He deserved better.

Jackie dared to turn her face toward him, to steal a coveted glance at the man she had sacrificed everything for—everything including herself. She had laid out all her cards on the table and in the face of victory, she'd still lost. Now she had to live with her choices, live with herself, as did he. Danse was entitled to so much more than she had to give. It wasn’t fair to either of them.

“I just thought you deserved to know the truth.” It was a meager excuse and she wasn’t worthy of staying here any longer, “I should go.” Though she made no attempt to leave.

Danse sat much the same as her: hunched over, elbows resting on his knees, and fingers knotted in his hair. Still, she saw the twitch of his lips and tensing of his jaw as his eyes squeezed shut, and she knew.

“You’re angry.” The statement hung in the air, but he remained unmoved. Unflinching. Unyielding.

The impact of what she had done was finally beginning to settle in. He was angry. She would not be forgiven. And why? Why would he forgive her? Why on earth would she even entertain the idea that he would? The trap had been set and she had foolishly walked straight into it. Now she would lie with the devil, sign his pact, and give away her soul. All in the name of honor and glory. All to save Danse's own soul.

“I don’t belong here. I don’t…” she turned away and held herself closer, trying to fall deeper into the cavern of guilt that chipped away at her humanity, “...you deserve so much better.”

Before the fresh tears could even form, Danse tugged at her arm and his fingers closed around her chin. He jerked her face toward him, forcing their eyes to meet. There was determination in his muddy browns, a fierceness she hadn't seen in quite some time.

“I’m only angry with myself,” he held her gaze, searching her eyes to make sure his message was received, “that I couldn’t protect you from this.” He was gentler now, releasing her chin to press his hand against her cheek.

Jackie gravitated toward his touch and closed her eyes as she leaned into his warmth. A beacon of hope that all was not lost.

“Look at me.” Both of his hands cradled her face and reluctantly she opened her eyes, “this isn’t your fault.” The fierceness in his eyes shifted to reveal something more sinister, “I’ll burn down the entire Commonwealth if he lays a hand on you again.”

She almost had the decency to smile at his conviction, but she was reminded, “You don’t have the luxury of making that promise.”

The determination that was present before quickly faded. In the seconds it took for Danse’s expression to shift, she could see the desolation of defeat hover across his brow before he could erect the facade.

“I will find a way to make this right.” Again, his words held no value, but maybe she could pretend they did. Maybe it would ease the raw and achy feeling.

For a moment nothing happened. Neither of them moved or even breathed. They sat in an eternity of silence and Jackie allowed herself to drown in the warm pools of his brown eyes. Perhaps if she lingered there his empty promises would chase away the devastating reality that she had failed.

Danse shuffled and slipped his arms around her shoulders. There was the briefest hesitation. A resistance where Jackie contemplated if she would let this happen. It didn’t take her long to arrive at her conclusion. She would allow it.

In a single movement, he pulled her to him and folded her into his embrace. Jackie shifted her weight, curling up into him and relaxing against his chest only to feel the slightest tremble within his own body. It was too much to bear so she clung to him and wept in his arms because there were no words to ease their pain.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered after a while and loosened his hold on her to run his thumbs across her cheeks.

“Yeah,” she didn't doubt him, but she also wasn't blind to the fact that he didn't control their fates anymore, “me too.”

There were choices to be made and she'd sowed her seeds, chose her path. She didn’t regret what she had done; she would do it again without hesitation. In the end, though, there was a price to be paid for her transgressions and it just might cost her own life.

#fallout 4 #fallout #paladin danse #danse #sole survivor #fallout oc #jackie #jacqueline dixon #the sacrifices we make #rewrite of sacrifices #chapter 1

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justlikeeddie · 6 years ago

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black sails fic

I always think I’ve written loads in this fandom, but what that actually means is that I have written More Than One Fic (loads for me). And that I have at least three other things that I am convinced I will pick up and finish Any Day Now. But until Any Day actually arrives, this is everything I have done:

Whatever this is Flint/Silver, during S2

“But I think we ought to discuss this most recent development.”

“Do you?” said Flint, managing to sound both bored and faintly affronted by the prospect. He moved to the desk, where he shrugged off his coat, hitching it only a little stiffly over his shoulder, and hung it on the back of the captain’s chair. He pulled the dagger from his belt and laid it on the table’s surface. “And what makes you think that?”

Silver found himself rather fascinated by this piece by piece removal of Flint’s most recognisable attire, of the things that made him strong: except, of course, they were not, and their removal in Silver’s presence was a demonstration of the fact. Flint, lest he forget it, had taken this warship barefoot and in his shirtsleeves. When Silver had watched Flint pull off his boots on the beach outside St Augustine, it had been rather like watching him shed everything extraneous, strip himself down to a tough, necessary core. There was something about this that was less like that. He was more a man at the end of a long day, to whom Silver did not register as enough of a threat to prevent him from making himself more comfortable.

A thing of any relevance Flint/Silver, during S2

There is no we, Silver had said, earlier; spat it into the ground at Flint’s feet, testing his strength. It was true enough: but it was also true that it was Silver who had forced into existence whatever we there was. Over the Urca’s schedule in Eleanor’s tavern; then on the deck of the warship, sailing for Nassau, their voices low in the night; and then in Flint’s cabin, two days past, on his knees. Wasn’t it true, then, that any we was in Silver’s power to destroy, when the time came— and wasn’t that what he had done today, the moment he’d gone out to meet the launch on the beach?

Some Affair James/Miranda, James/Thomas, pre-series Illustrations by @toastie-the-know

This conversation lingered in Miranda’s mind throughout the evening. McGraw’s gently barbed tone had not held any of the triumph she was used to hearing when listening to men win arguments. It had been a small exercise of power either purely for private entertainment, or for her benefit. She was not entirely sure which possibility was of most interest. But she had enjoyed it, and she would have liked to see him do it again. It had not quite been like watching Thomas do the same, although the ease and precision with which McGraw had chosen his words was familiar enough.

“He is not so dull as all that, then, is he?” she asked Thomas, in the dressing chamber between their bedrooms, in the early hours of the morning. She was unpinning her hair, while Thomas sat a little lopsidedly in a chair, reading. He liked, he had once said, the familiarity, the ritual, of watching her prepare for bed, even when he was not actually watching.

“Who?” Thomas asked, and then, when she raised her eyebrows, said, “Well— why would you have thought otherwise?”

“I couldn’t say.” Miranda shook her head, put down the last pins, and picked up her hairbrush. “Men are a constant surprise to me.”

#bsaaw #black sails #fic #silverflint #flinthamilton #flintmiranda #my fic

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sasha-whos-askin-racket · 6 years ago

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BTHB - Big Brother Instinct

Bad Thing Happen Bingo - Square 9 Square - Big Brother Instinct Fandom - Ritchieverse Sherlock Character - Sherlock Holmes Ship - Holmes/Watson (Also Irene’s kinda there for a little bit) Requested by - N/A.

A/N: This is a prequel to Cry Into Chest (also for this challenge), so I’d read this one, then that one to get a good idea of the plot. I’ll hopefully publish a 3rd part soon, so look out for that too.

The initial blast had knocked Holmes to the ground, but he’d been back up on his feet again in a moment. He’d stopped, momentarily unable to tell which direction the explosion had come from, and which direction it was heading. In the end, he just picked a direction and ran, his feet skidding out from under him as he came to an ungraceful stop next to Irene, who was curled behind a crate along the edge of the wharf. He grabbed her, and the two clung to each other as they battled their way in the direction the explosion had started. Holmes’s only intention was to get to Watson, was to somehow make it through the wall of flames and smoke, but another explosion tore through the air, and Holmes and Irene tumbled away.

The second time Sherlock Holmes got knocked down, it took him considerably longer to get back up. He rolled onto his hands and knees, raising his head slightly. The explosions had stopped, the smoke mostly dissipated. A glance to his right showed him Irene had disappeared, most likely run off to whoever she was working for. A glance to his left revealed the carnage and rubble that had once been the main part of the wharf, the little pieces that had survived being completely eaten up amongst the flames were now laying in crumbling piles and blackened with soot. There was something he was forgetting, something important, but he didn’t have time to think about what it was as a hand grabbed the back of his jacket and yanked him upright.

He was face to face with Clarky, who was saying something Holmes didn’t quite catch because he was too busy trying to remember what he’d forgotten. It was something important, he knew that. Something really important. No. No, not a something. A someone. Watson!

He pushed against Clarky roughly, but the Constable stood his ground, repeating whatever it was he’d said the first time, but Holmes didn’t care enough to even try and listen. Somewhere, in front of him, was Watson. Somewhere, scared or hurt or dying or dead was Watson, somewhere amongst those charred splinters of wood and cracked stonework was the only person who really mattered to him, lying in broken and bloody pieces, distant and alone, and no Scotland Yard lackey was going to keep Holmes from him. Holmes tried to swing an arm forwards and shove against Clarky’s shoulder, but he was still somewhat unsteady on his feet, and with a surprising strength that Holmes hadn’t given him credit for, the younger man shoved back. “Watson’s alive, but there’s nothing you can do for him at the minute.” Clarky told him, and Holmes sagged and allowed himself to be dragged out of sight. “Now, Lord Coward has issued a warrant for your arrest. Go, sir. Go!”

Holmes stumbled but turned and sprinted away, head still pounding. He wouldn’t go far, he’d wait a few minutes and double back on himself. He had to see Watson, even if it was just a quick glance, just enough to reassure him Clarky had been telling the truth. He sat at the water’s edge for a moment, and looked out across the Thames. There was a boat, sleek and black, sailing smoothly across the small waves.It didn’t look like Tanner’s boat, but Holmes was unsure who else would be on the river this late, unless it was somebody who had heard the explosion and was coming to help. He entertained that idea for a few seconds before realising the boat was moving away from the wharf, not towards it. Having exhausted all deductive possibilities around him, Holmes stood up and made his way back to the main section of the wharf.

All sign there had been anyone there a few minutes ago was gone. Clarky was gone, any other members of the Yard had gone. The tell-tale mark of a certain bootprint in the damp mud along the waters edge showed Lestrade had been there only minutes before, but now he had gone too. The explosion had started from a pile of crates, from here the tripwire used to activate it caught the light from a streetlamp. It was thin, a dark metallic colour. Watson would have been running, he wouldn’t have noticed it. It wouldn’t even have crossed his mind to check before he stepped out. Watson. Holmes moved his gaze to where his friend had been standing, then adjusted his position accordingly. Watson had been thrown backwards and off to the left, so if Holmes turned slightly this way he should be able to- Oh.

A few barrels were left standing, but most of them had been smashed to pieces, torn outwards in jagged splinters from the force of the blast. The wooden panelling on the wall had also been ripped to jagged lances, and darkened gouts of blood splattered brutally across the little that remained in its proper place. But what had caught his attention most was the slick section of stonework barely visible between the stained debris, the cracks in between each set of stones running free and heavy with blood, spreading in an ever evolving labyrinth. Watson’s blood. All of that was Watson’s blood. There was a burnt scrap of fabric caught on a splinter; a shred of light brown tweed soaked through with blood as well, and Holmes took an instinctive step back, unable to tear his eyes away from the carnage.

There was a hand on his shoulder, gentle and reassuring, and he finally glanced away from the wreckage to see Irene at his side, a streak of blood trailing down her face from the cut next to her eye. She trembled slightly in the cold, and Holmes pulled her closer to his side. The two stood there for a moment, like frightened children, and then Irene spoke. “Watson?” Holmes didn’t answer, and Irene’s hand found its way into his. “Watson’s alive. Coward has a warrant out for my arrest. I’m assuming there isn’t one out for Watson.” “We need somewhere we can lay low.” Irene told him. “The Grand is too obvious, and we can’t go back to Baker Street.” Sherlock turned to look at Irene in something like surprise, “We?” he echoed. “What about your employer?” Irene shrugged. “Circumstances change. We adapt. Right now, you need all the help you can get. Besides, I haven’t been on the run from the law in at least a few months. I miss it...Now, please tell me you have somewhere we can wait this thing out?” Holmes considered Irene suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. “Follow me. And keep your head down, the last thing we need is a price on your head as well.”

Sherlock had been pacing the small attic for almost an hour now and Irene was growing frustrated. “It’s not safe.” “I know damn well it’s not safe, Irene.” Sherlock replied, folding a hand into his pocket. “Then why are you so insistent on going back out there?” She asked him, having a feeling she already knew the answer. Holmes stopped his pacing and shot her a glare out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not going to dignify that with a response.” Irene swung herself forwards on her chair. “I know what you’re thinking, okay? But you told me yourself what the Constable said, there’s nothing you can do for Watson there. The best thing you can do is focus on stopping Blackwood.” “I have to see him.” “You can see him when this is all over-” Irene didn’t know how easy it was going to be to rationalise with Holmes, but she had a feeling it would be harder than she anticipated. “-right now, Watson needs you out of prison to be able to fix this mess, okay? He needs you safe and he needs you alive.” Holmes whirled around with a speed and agility Irene hadn’t expected. “You think I don’t need the same for him?!” His voice cracked and he swallowed. “You think I don’t need him safe? I don’t need him alive?” “I didn’t say that.” “You think I wouldn’t give anything to undo what’s just happened out there?” Holmes raised his hand to point at the grubby window behind him. “I’d let Blackwood tear London to shreds if it meant Watson would be okay. Hell, I’d pick up a revolver and I’d help him bring the city to its knees if it made even the smallest bit of difference in the end. Don’t tell me that he needs me alive, Irene, because what good does being alive do me if I have to scrape through every day in this world alone?!”

Irene didn’t say anything for a moment, simply sat back and allowed the trembling Holmes to catch his breath. “Are you honestly considering it?” “I’m long past that.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Use a disguise, at least. Don’t stroll around looking like that; you’re practically pleading to be taken into custody by the first officer who spots you.” Holmes looked over his shoulder at Irene. “Disguises take time. I don’t have time. I need to see him. Besides, Lestrade knows I’ll check up on him, with any luck he’ll have known enough to station Clarky doing the rounds there. He won’t take me in, he had the chance at the wharf but he warned me instead-” Holmes stopped, a sudden thought dawning on him. “Do you think someone’s told Mary? Watson was supposed to be meeting her this afternoon, she’ll be wondering where he is.” “I’m sure it’s been seen to.” Irene tried to reassure him. Holmes nodded then picked up his coat and made his way over to the door. “I’ll be back soon.” “Where are you going?” Irene asked, knowing full well where he was heading, but deciding if she did end up getting caught by Scotland Yard’s finest, it wouldn’t hurt to have a small alibi in place. “I couldn’t possibly say.” Holmes replied calmly as he reached for the door handle. “Sherlock?” “Yes, Irene?” “Be careful.” Sherlock opened the door and looked down at the staircase. “Stay in here,” he said by way of answer. “We’ll be of no use whatsoever if we’re both in chains.”

The door slammed, Irene heard his descending footsteps on the heavy wooden stairs, and then she was alone in the silence.

#bad things happen bingo #square: big brother instinct #fandom: sherlock

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wilwywaylan · 7 years ago

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Boredom

Fandom : Black Sails

Set around end of Season 1, Jack x Anne x Charles, 1311 words

Prompt was : “Things you said sitting still”

For @kujaku-myoo ♥

It’s very OOC, don’t eat meeee !

To see Charles spread out in a chair, a leg going over the arm, his own arm thrown above his head and on the back of the chair, bottle in hand, has quickly become a staple of Jack's life, and he's not surprised anymore by this finding in his apartments. The only thing changing day to day is Charles' state of clothing. If one may call it "clothing". Jack would rather call it "vague pieces of frayed fabric having seen way more than their share of saltwater and not enough washing, haphazardly thrown on his captain's body and held there by a fucking miracle". But then again, no one asks for his opinion (which is a shame, really).

He braces himself for a second before pushing the door, trying to guess Charles' current state. Will he have found the energy to put on a shirt ? Will he still stink of yesterday's alcohol and excess ? Will he even be conscious ? Behind him, Anne growls, probably because he's not moving fast enough. He opens the door before she slaps him around the head, and enters.

He was right, Charles is still in this armchair. As if he didn't leave at all. Which, then again, judging by the almost empty bottle he's holding, he probably didn't. But he's wearing a shirt, which is an interesting contrast with the two days before, and... has he shaved ? Jack is not too sure, because the blinds are pulled - they are always pulled, as if his captain is a fucking bat and requires darkness at all hours - but maybe he did. Well, this is new.

He crosses the room, sits in his own armchair (elegantly, he's not some kind of *peasant*), Anne coming to sit beside him, on the arm of the seat. It's only then that he notices something weird. Charles looks curiously... alert. Not that he isn't, you don't become a captain as feared as him by being careless and stupid. But compared to the last days he spent in some kind of drunken stupor, it's a stark change. There's something else, too. Usually, when glaring at someone and trying to look relaxed, he's moving. Be it swaying his leg, or the bottle he's holding, there's always some movement in him, some way of expressing the tension in his body, like a warning that he could pounce on you and kill you on the spot.

But not right now. Right now, he's holding perfectly still, watching Jack with his usual piercing intensity. It's unnerving, and makes him want to run away, out of this room, back into the brothel, anywhere but here. He doesn't, of course. First, Anne would make fun of him, probably for the rest of his life. Second, because he wouldn't get to the door before Charles catches him... probably. And third, because as much of an idiot as others think he is, he still has a hint of self-preservation. And pride. He would maybe survive it, but he would have to live with it for the rest of his life. So no.

The silence is streching, and Jake starts to feel nervous. More to fill the air than because it interesses his captain, he starts babbling about the brothel, rattling numbers and spouting stories in a weird tangle of words that doesn't really mean anything. It seems to be Charles' opinion too, because it doesn't take long before he cuts him :

- Shut up.

- As you wish, Jack retorts, tilting his head.

The silence falls again, louder this time. Jack waits a minute, and since his captain doesn't seem to want to go on, and he doesn't expect Anne to keep the conversation going, he finally asks :

- Is there something you wanted to tell me ? Is this why you're here ?

Conveniently forgetting that Charles has been "here" for at least a week, maybe more. The slight inclination of Charles' head clearly shows that it didn't get past him. Nothing gets past him, Jack thinks. No need to be polite, it doesn't work with him.

- Are you bothered with me being in your room ? the captain inquires, his tone sweet and dangerous.

- Of course not, captain. You know I delight in your presence.

Charles frowns, and for a second, Jack thinks that he has offended him. Beside him, Anne tenses a little. But Charles doesn't move, doesn't throw his bottle at him or tries to kill him, just looks.

- So ? Jack asks when all danger seems to be avoided. Can I do something for you ?

- Well yes, you can, Jack.

- And what can it be ?

- I'm bored.

Jack doesn't know how to answer to that. So he doesn't and just waits for Charles to go on.

- I've been fucking bored for a fucking week, and I want to do something to change my mind a little from...

He gestures, and Jack and Anne both mentally complete the sentence.

- And what do you want to do ? Jack asks.

Charles watches him with a grin that would be more appropriate for a shark than a human, making him suddenly want to run very, very far away, very fast.

- Well, Charles finally answers. Fuck you, Jack.

*It's weird to hear the usual sentence say in that tone* is the first thing that comes to Jack's mind. Then it hits him full force, and he can only gape at his captain, trying to make sense of what he said. What ? He wants *what* ? Well, not to say that the idea hasn't crossed his mind once or twice, especially when he was very drunk and Charles very shirtless, because let's be honest, his captain is far for the ugliest man on the island. But right now, when they are all quite sober, to hear that from him... He doesn't know what to think. Or what to say. But Charles wants an answer. Now, the bottle is moving against his leg, a very slight movement that makes the few inches of wine inside slosh around. He won't wait for long. Either he'll go, or he'll take whatever he wants. But what does *Jack* want ? Does he want to ? A little voice tells him no, it's not a good idea, and Charles is just an annoying pain (he'd rather not think of *what* kind of pain). But the more he thinks about it, the more he finds that he can silence that voice. There's something oddly flattering at the idea of Charles Vane wanting him, even for just a moment. Something tempting, too. Like playing with a flame, getting very close with danger and risking being hurt. He's always liked playing with danger. And if danger when looking at him with steel-cold eyes...

Anne moves, and he's pulled out of his thoughts. Damn him, he almost forgot that Anne was there here. ANd she won't be happy. Won't be at all. Someone wanting to touch her man like that ? Probably won't go smoothly. He looks at her, expecting her to be the usual combination of furious and barely restrained, as if she's only seconds away to jump on their captain and tearing his throat out, and only his authority is protecting him. To his greatest surprise, she looks... thoughtful ? Like she's considering it ?

- So ?

Charles' voice cuts through the air like a blade. Jack opens his mouth, but Anne is quicker than him.

- Why not. Could be fun.

She looks at Jack. Charles looks at Jack. They are all looking at Jack, waiting for his answer. After an agonizing second, he finally makes his mind.

- Well, he says with a grin, what are we waiting for ?

#black sails #jack rackham #anne bonny #charles vane #I TRIIIIIED

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sunwukong-stoaway-blog · 7 years ago

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Oh shit, 3AM, time for a hot take on the FNDM from the perspective of someone who’s drifted in and out of it for years now. And yeah, spoilers, it involves Sun, the Bees, and experience therein.

We do need a few things set for the record before I dive further in. First, there is indeed a difference between normal Bee fans and flat out Wasps. Y’know, the psychopathic harassing jerks. There is also a segment of the Blacksun fndm that is more than happy to be as harassment heavy and take things too damn far. The problem in judging which is bigger is that you’ll only ever see the size of whatever groups you happen to be in contact with, which means if you’re a normal fan of one side, you’re likely to only see the hate-filled opposite side. And if you’re removed, then it’s a roll of the dice whether you see Wasps or... whatever the BlackSun equivalent is. And whichever side is bigger, they both still exist, which is the main problem. Now let’s take a stroll down memory lane and acknowledge a few things.

First and foremost. The Bees as a ship only exists as it does because people were throwing the first characters on screen at each other and held to them. This was true of Ruby and Weiss after the Red and White trailers, then true of Blake and Yang after the Black and Yellow trailers. We didn’t know anything about any of these characters, (in fact it completely flipped Ruby and Weiss’ personality traits, making Ruby a cool and aloof sniper chick and Weiss a soft melting princess) but the ships were already cemented and beloved by the community.

This kept going into the first season proper. Sure, we had alternate blends of ships, like Ladybug, Freezerburn, and Monochrome. Even Enabler, Ruby/Yang if anyone remembers that incestuous ship, before it was burnt to the ground by canon. But Whiterose/The Bees were the biggest game in town. Seemed to be backed by the canon too, to an extent. All the characters introduced were paired off and sent on their way, including JNPR, but this didn’t stop FNDM from laughing and enjoying themselves. (One particularly popular joke during the Jaune Arc was snickering that Yang and Blake were doing the do offscreen instead of running for help, for instance.) It didn’t matter Yang and Blake didn’t have a single conversation that didn’t end in Blake snubbing Yang and Yang writing Blake off as a “lost cause,” they were the pairing and nobody else was around, so, that was canon. And then episode 15 rolled around.

Everything broke down with episode 15, though not all at once. It introduced Sun and Penny, and FNDM wasn’t entirely sure what to do with them. Some, like myself, found the new characters and their dynamics fun and interesting. Some, on the other hand, declared immediately that Sun was a rapist/stalker/murderer/assassin of the White Fang, sometimes all at once. Some people had been a little bored of Jaune by this point but Sun was the first morally good character the FNDM declared a monster, and to this day, has received the roughest ‘welcome.’ And, among the accusations, the declaration that Sun was nothing but a genderbend of Yang for a hetero ship. And so the tensions began to mount.

Bear in mind, up until this point the Bees had grown to be the de facto biggest ship in the FNDM. Nothing against Ruby, Weiss, or Whiterose, but Blake and Yang were the most mature/adult of the team, and consequently, got the most attention, desire, fanart, et cetra. Now here comes the first character to make contact with Blake in a definitively different fashion and connect with her. Without question, they saw Sun as a threat and an excuse to attack the show for not giving them the Bees. Hell, it’s no surprise they even shipped him with Penny (Optimal Primates) for a time, just because they debuted the same episode, to try and get him ‘away’ from Blake in the fandom’s eyes. The response to Sun by these proto-Wasps, otherwise known as ‘the entirety of the Bees at the time’ was swift, overwhelming, and nothing short of cruel. Especially when they started harassing Sun RPers, those who defended him, liked him, and so on. People who drew those first few pieces of Blacksun art were flat out attacked and screamed at to shut down their channels. (Similar attacks started appearing at this time too at artists for other pairings, noticeably Ladybug.) And for a time, that oppressive and painful atmosphere was reality.

Then, I put up a post pointing out how little canon the Bees actually had, and compared it to Blacksun. In V1? This was an overwhelming difference. I outright called the Bees a “Ghost ship,” a ship that had absolutely no basis in canon yet sailed anyway... And attacked others. Needless to say, this was not taken well by the proto-wasps.

It didn’t matter that I actively shipped Whiterose, passively Ladybug, and eventually Nuts & Dolts. It didn’t matter if what I said was true, that the emperor had no clothes (or canon.) All that mattered to these people was slamming me down and declaring me to the world a homophobic monster for not shipping their ship. To do everything in their power to break my spirit, break my connections with people, and break any place I had in this fledgling FNDM of comfort. All for their blatantly bullshit moral highground arguments.

This went on for a good three weeks after that first post. Round the clock attacks, harassment, and vile displays of power. It really did break me, all things considered. That much negativity drove me into a deep depression, to the point I could barely leave my dorm room in university for food, let alone class. I’m still hesitant to use the term for fear of it’s overused impression, but this made the Bees ship into a full on trigger for me. Triggering every emotion of fear, depression, and anxiety that constant bombardment thrust upon me around the clock. To an extent, it still is such a trigger, and so I can admit without issue I’m biased.

Thankfully, it did all have a silver lining. I became a lightning rod of hate, but the heavy atmosphere was broken. Bees no longer were unchallenged rulers of the FNDM, and people legit began to call out the behavior of these proto-wasps as full on bullying, or at least stopped acting like the Bees were canon. There was room to move forward now. But... of course, it didn’t stop there.

V2 rolled around. On the one hand we got Yang and Blake having the first dance, as well as actually having a real conversation on screen and developing some kind of unique bond, flimsy as it may be to some. (Seriously, Blake’s having severe overwrought depression and anxiety over Adam and the White Fang, Yang makes it about her. Yeah, that can show solidarity for the cause, but it does little to assuage Blake’s issues. I do see it as a good scene, but it’s still not a great relationship.) On the other hand, we were confirmed halfway through the year, and thanks to Sun/Neptune being cut from that last part of the Paladin fight, Blake had to be the one to ask what Yang’s Semblance was. ...Yeah. Half a year of being partners. And she doesn’t canonically know yet what Yang’s Semblance is. Hell of a partnership, yeah?

And on the other side of the coin. Sun and Blake had their full on dance, came to it as a date, and it included Yang stepping aside to give Blake to Sun. This on top of meeting Sun’s team for the first time and solidifying his place as being right there with RWBY and JNPR. ...And to counterbalance, we got Neptune. Seriously. Wasps had Neptune pegged as Sun’s “actual girlfriend” from the second his name was dropped. Then the design came in, they declared Neptune FtM trans, and that Sun was dating him. I mean, clearly, right? Then Neptune actually showed up, he turned out to be the most aggressively straight-showing guy on the show yet, and the FNDM HATED him for it. Pitched him into the same bin as Sun right then and there, while shouting they’d be a better couple than the alternatives. (This also ended up, for the first time, generating enmity from Monochrome shippers for Sun. Before, Blacksun and MC shippers were effectively “ship and let ship” considering both had suffered under the Bees, but since that stranglehold had been broken after V1. Now Neptune came to town and fucked that peace up too.) Seriously. Just like the Bees, Seamonkeys only exists as a ship because the FNDM slammed the characters together without a clue what they were even like. Same as with Optimal Primates, remember?

Overall, V2 ended up being more or less like the aftermath of V1 the whole way through. Salty and bitter Wasps bickering and yelling about Sun even being in the same frame as Blake, trying to reaffirm their position, while everyone else just relaxed, some bitched about Jaune existing, and others enjoying the moment. ...Then V3 happened.

V3 was a powderkeg of moments for both Blacksun and the Bees. From the fingerguns/blushing/”dork” scene, to Blake tearfully holding Yang’s... one remaining hand, to the questions of where Blake was going after the ending. And consequently, the ship-to-ship combat had grown once again. Things like editing the fingerguns scene into a gif of Weiss proposing to Blake, or conspiracy theories that Sun was a mole for the WF hiding in plain sight, or just generally arguing back and forth over how important Blake holding Yang’s hand and Sun’s poppy love song were. The thing was, by V3, enough new fans of the series drawn in to all the Bee fanart that didn’t have the Wasp mentality existed to properly differentiate between the two groups. And consequently, some would-be Bee fans were surprised when their open appreciation for the pair was met with negativity and disdain by those who were used to liking the Bees being associated with far worse. The Wasps still existed, without question, but their presence muddied the waters and turned what was once a straight-forward fandom war into messy, vile person-to-person conflict, with bystanders dragged into the fighting. This, to my knowledge, is where the wasp-equivalent of Blacksun fans ended up coming to be, unable to differentiate between the Wasps that they hated and the Bee fans that they shouldn’t. In short, V3 was the most divisive and painful of the seasons for this warfare.

As we approach the modern day it should be noted that the longer the show runs, the less and less these ship-to-ship combats make an impact on the FNDM as a whole. This is a good thing, realistically, but it comes from an unfortunate division in the FNDM in general, with camps splitting off into effective echo chambers, and generally only interacting to spit hatred at each other.

V4 was easily the single lowest point for all of the Bees. With Blake and Yang canonically split apart, and Sun hanging around Blake full time as her only traveling partner, the Bees had effectively nothing to do but sigh and hope for a reunion soon. The Wasps, on the other hand, eagerly took to instead tearing into Sun’s character again, this time jumping on the questionable decision to shadow Blake and keep her safe, and characterizing it as flat out stalking... even without full knowledge of the situation. The Wasps just painted the scene as “Sun has spent months following Blake in a coat,” and a large part of the fandom picked it up in turn. Then, as a follow-up act, decided to screw with Sun a different way and ship him with, of all people, Kali, or Blake’s mom. Yeah, it was creepy and fetishism, and had no purpose other than to break Kali’s implicit acceptance of Sun as a partner for Blake into bizarre OOC lust. It’s telling that there was far and away more porn and pure shipping for Sun/Kali than Ghira/Kali for a while, despite the Bees laughing to themselves that “of course YANG would be accepted by Ghira, unlike Sun~.” Legit, Sun/Kali was just another attempt at slamming Sun together with the nearest character that wasn’t Blake. Just like Penny. Just like Neptune. But, V4 was the volume of personal growth and discovery for each of the main cast... And consequently, this journey down each of their four paths was panned by many “rwde” fans for not having the inter-team connections they wanted. Funny how the volume most about each member of RWBY and their personal stories gets panned as the one least about them. Whatever. All of this led to V5, however, and where we are now.

And where we are now is... Right back to how we were in V3. With giddy Bees squealing over Yang and Blake exchanging eye contact and words, while Wasps re-characterize Sun’s connection to Blake (including pushing her back to the team that she ran away from because it was time to reconnect and he knew that) as “pushing Blake to be with Yang.” It’s kind of absurd, right? Well... That’s what this FNDM war has been to me. Just absurd.

I’ve watched wasps shout down Micheal Jones because they don’t like Sun being close to Blake. I’ve seen wasps countless times call out RT as queerbaiting for not giving them the Bees right fucking then. I’ve heard directly from Wasps that it doesn’t matter to (the ones I talked to) whether any other LGBTQA+ people/ships/focuses appear or are naturally featured in the show, unless the Bees are made canon, they believe RT lied to them.

And that astounds me. RT did not lie to you. Either you were lied to by fans from that Trailer era, the original proto-wasps, or you lied to yourself. You were told the lie that the Bees were canon, had to be canon, needed to be canon or something was wrong. That Sun is a monster. That you are owed anything. Hard fucking stop.

So where does all this leave us? ...Hopefully, understanding that this fighting has been going on for far too long, and is over far too little. I want anyone in the FNDM who has ever been affected by the ship wars to read this, to share this with others with similar experiences, on either side of it. Because ultimately, I’m only on one side, and I’d love for Bees to give their take on all this. To get both sides to come to an agreement to ship-and-let-ship, to put to rest the anger and frustration and fear of the other side that fueled Wasps and, perhaps, myself for so long.

This shit’s gone on long enough.

#ooc #rwby #fndm #shipping #I truly hope this goes over well.

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onlymorelove · 7 years ago

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Fic: I See Fire (1/2)

For @gwennieliz , who gave me this prompt: “You can’t keep it all inside, you know? Bottling it up won’t do any good,“ from this list of sentence starters. Thank you for prompting me, sweetness! If anyone else sent a prompt, I promise I haven’t forgotten you; I’m just a painfully slow writer when it comes to fiction. <3 If anyone else wants to send me a prompt from that list, feel free. Happy Pride month, everybody!

Title: I See Fire (½) Fandom: Timeless Ship: Garcia Flynn/Lucy Preston/Wyatt Logan (garcyatt) Rating: PG-13 Summary: Lucy has a nightmare. [Set sometime in the future. Lucy, Garcia, and Wyatt are in a relationship. Yes, all three of them.]

Read under the cut, on AO3, or at FF.net.

Tagging @grey-haven , @gwennieliz , @extasiswings , @inbetween-the-moon-and-you , @nevergrowupnevergrowupnotme & @qqueenofhades . (Happy to untag or tag you; just let me know.)

If you read this, thanks. Feedback is treasured; constructive criticism is welcomed.

Lucy’s eyes opened on the wild current of a nightmare: trapped in her car, she watched it fill with water cascading through windows that were cracked open several inches but wouldn’t respond to her frantic grip. Already her body quaked from the chill of the freezing water, which was now up to her chin. Her head thrashed left and right, panic grabbing hold of her and shaking her like a rag doll in its inexorable grip.

To her right, in the passenger seat, sat a partially decomposed skeleton wearing a cowboy hat tipped at a rakish angle. Empty black eye sockets winked at her above ruined cheeks where the some of the flesh, warped and raw, dripped like melted plastic, exposing the bright gleam of ivory bone beneath. As she watched, the jaw dipped open and a swarm of maggots bubbled forth from the gaping maw.

Her head and her ears pounded with laughter that built and built, climbing until it climaxed in a shriek. She swore her ears were bleeding. Slammed by the grotesque image and the terrible laughter roaring in her head, on instinct Lucy inhaled, sucking river water into her mouth and deep into her lungs, coughing and choking on the burning scream that wanted to rend its way out of her tender, pink throat with razor-tipped claws.

The skeleton raised a bony hand, fingers rolling in a beckoning gesture before they reached out and stroked her cheek, shooting bolts of ice down her spine. As blackness swirled and whispered on the edges of her vision, Lucy slammed her car window—once, twice, three times—with the sharp point of her elbow. Pain echoed through her arm….

"—Ow! Damn it.”

Someone screamed. Loud and shrill as a whistle blast, the piercing cry penetrated the bony plates of Lucy’s skull and burrowed into her brain.

The terror and grief layered in the cacophony clawed at Lucy, drawing hot tears from her eyes. They spilled, scalding, in rivulets down the sides of her face and into her hair. Her eyes shot open to find Garcia leaning over her, straddling her hips. She tried to move her hands only to find they were pinned. “Garcia?” she asked, her voice like two thin, dry sticks rubbing together, and Garcia immediately released her hands and moved aside, sitting back on his haunches next to her. “What happened?” Her hand flew to her chest, where her pulse thundered loud and unpleasant, echoing in the marrow of her bones as her gaze searched the dark room. A single lamp on a bedside table cast an anemic circle of light and a plethora of eerie shadows. Lucy gasped. A hard shiver reverberated through her, making her teeth clack together.

Garcia frowned and pulled at the puddled blanket, pulling it up until it lay over her chest. Then he swept his thumb through the wetness on her face before he responded to her question. “You tell us, Lucy. You were screaming and thrashing around. Did you have a nightmare?” Worry inscribed deep furrows on his forehead.

Bits and pieces of what she’d seen floated back to her. Being trapped in her car again, like in her sophomore year of college, with water pouring in… A gruesome skeleton next to her… Just flotsam and detritus from the depths of her mind and her personal history. A nightmare. Yes.

“—Either that or I did something to piss you off,” Wyatt said from his perch on her other side, a wry note pealing in his voice.

She snapped her head in his direction. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, stretching his jaw.

“What?” she asked, frowning in confusion.

“You got in a couple good shots at me,” Wyatt said with the barest hint of a smile edging his lips. Wincing, he fingered his cheekbone gingerly, eyes squinted in discomfort. “Nobody warned me I’d need protective padding if I slept with you.” He stroked her hair back from her forehead. “I thought I was the reckless hothead in this relationship.”

Lucy groaned and started sitting up. Garcia lifted her pillow upright against the headboard and helped her settle back against it. Dread curdled in her stomach. “Oh no.” She shook her head and stretched a hand toward Wyatt, stopping just short of touching his face. “Tell me I didn’t hit you.” Her fingers wavered near Wyatt’s cheek until he caught them with his own and lifted them to his mouth for a soft kiss.

“It’s fine, Lucy. Don’t worry so much,” Garcia said, tucking the blanket around her hips. “Knowing Wyatt, he had it coming.”

“Ha ha, asshole,” Wyatt said, brandishing his middle finger in Garcia’s direction. “Real funny. Ladies and gentlemen, Garcia Flynn: comedian and douchenozzle extraordinaire.”

Lucy rolled her eyes.

“Sorry, didn’t realize you couldn’t take a joke, Logan,” Garcia said, emphasizing Wyatt’s last name.

“Oh, I love jokes, Flynn.” Wyatt grinned in challenge, flashing a lot of teeth, and Lucy braced herself for whatever absurdity was about to charge out of his mouth. He waggled his eyebrows. “Let me tell you the one about your mom—”

“Guys. Come on,” Lucy said, cutting Wyatt off before things completely disintegrated. Garcia’s mother was a sore spot for him, even in the context of ludicrous banter.

“No no. Please, Wyatt,"—narrow-eyed, Garcia climbed off the bed and stalked toward Wyatt—"why don’t you finish your joke?” Hands balled into fists at his side, Garcia stopped mere inches from where Wyatt still sat on the bed and tilted his head to look down at the other man. His lips twisted into a thin-lipped and insincere facsimile of a smile. “Then I can give you a bruise on the other side of your face. You deserve a nice, matching set.”

Wyatt rose from beside Lucy and advanced on Garcia, rolling his shoulders, back straight and sharp as a knife edge. “You could try,” he said with a pugnacious tilt to his chin and a smirk that made the fine hairs on Lucy’s arms stand on end.

The atmosphere zinged and snapped, teeming with livewire tension. Pregnant with the threat of violence. Lucy tugged at the scoop neck of her nightshirt; their bedroom felt ten degrees hotter than it had five minutes earlier. A bead of sweat skipped down her body and pooled uncomfortably at the small of her back.

The two men stood toe-to-toe, an air of waiting hovering over them, coiled energy vibrating from their tensed muscles. They looked like nothing less than two fighters awaiting a ringing bell to signal the beginning of their bout. They appeared to have forgotten she was in the room; the entirety of their attention focused, laser-like, on each other. Their chests rose and fell on a synchronized cycle of breaths. Each man’s exhale ricocheted off the man standing opposite. Their bodies cast hulking shadows on the gray-blue walls they and Lucy had agreed upon. Blue is peaceful and calm, she had told them when it was time to pick a paint color for their bedroom walls. They had shrugged and agreed that it was a nice enough color.

Lucy had to stop this—whatever nonsense was about to explode in their bedroom.

Bedrooms were meant for sleeping, cuddling, sharing secrets under cover of darkness, and fucking. All of that, yes. But not brawling.

The thing was—the thing was, Lucy loved Wyatt and Garcia. This life they shared, it wasn’t anything like what she’d expected to have when she’d been a girl imagining a future love. But it was real and hers and true. She knew they loved her, and she knew they loved each other, too, the same way she knew the sun would rise every morning. With that love came an intimate dossier replete with ways to bore under each other’s thin skin and cause an itch that would just have to be scratched.

A blind, deaf, and mute person could see neither Garcia nor Wyatt was going to back down from a direct challenge. (Lucy Preston was none of those things.) Garcia and Wyatt, on the other hand, well, they were idiots. But they were her idiots, and she wasn’t going to watch them follow each other like two lemmings sailing off a cliff into a valley of flaming refuse.

Wracking her brain for a solution, Lucy came up empty-handed. Not to be deterred, she grabbed the pillows on either side of her and launched them at Garcia and Wyatt, nailing them both in the face. Take that, she thought. It seemed her aim was better than she’d thought.

Both men swiveled to face her.

“What the —?”

“Lucy!”

With a nod of satisfaction, she threw off the blanket Garcia had snuggled around her with such care, hopped off the bed, and marched over to her idiots. She schooled her face into as severe lines as she could manage, then skewered both men with a diamond-hard glare. Neither held her gaze, choosing instead to stare at the floor as if it held the secrets of the universe. Their faces folded into identical expressions of sheepishness.

She tapped Garcia on the arm to get his attention. When he looked up from the floor, she crooked a finger at him, beckoning him down to her level. He acquiesced, and she stood on tiptoe and grasped his earlobe with her thumb and forefinger. Giving it a good tug, she pulled him toward the bed.

“Ah!” Garcia said, grimacing. “Is this really necessary, Lucy?”

“Yes, it is,” she said, releasing her grip on his ear and pointing to the bed. “Sit,” she added, and there was titanium in her voice.

Garcia sagged down on the bed, arms crossed in front of him, expression distinctly pouty. All the belligerence and swagger had left his posture, siphoned out like air from a leaky balloon.

Wyatt snickered behind Lucy. She rounded on him so fast his eyes widened. Though his hands shot up in front of him in a placating gesture, Lucy still took him by the ear and tugged him to the bed. She wasn’t going to treat him any differently than she’d treated Garcia.

“Ow. Luce.”

“Don’t you ‘Luce’ me, Wyatt Logan,” she said, releasing him and tilting her head toward the bed. “Sit,” she said. Her voice was a one-word command Wyatt dared not disobey.

Her blue-eyed lover sat poised on the very edge of the bed, his hands folded demurely in his lap, while the green-eyed one curled his body into a question mark, his upper body slumped and his bare feet flat on the floor. They so resembled naughty school boys facing a stern headmistress that Lucy fought a mighty battle not to smile. Marshaling her defenses, she set her hands on her hips and pinched her mouth into a thin line.

What, she thought, looking at their bowed heads, am I going to do with these two drama queens?

#nbc timeless #garcia flynn #lucy preston #wyatt logan #garcyatt #timeless fanfiction #prompt fic #gwennieliz #onlymorelove writes fic

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thebookkeeperslibrary · 7 years ago

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The Time Page’s Wish - Ch. 1: Happy Birthday

Fandom: Time Warp Trio

Author: The_Bookkeeper_96

Rating: G

Summary: It’s been four months and Uncle Joe is still missing. On his twelfth birthday, Joe decides it’s time to track him down. One wish lands them in the middle of a revolution. And it seems the only way to get them home is with the help of some untrustworthy thieves. As long as they don’t take The Book for themselves.

A/N: So this is my first dive into fanfiction. Putting this out there as a feeler to see what you guys think! Please feel free to leave a review and some constructive criticism!

Read on AO3

"Happy birthday!" Fred and Sam cheer.

Joe beams at his two best friends and blows out the lone candle on his slice of cake. He can't remember a time in his life when they weren't by his side. Most kids his age would want to have an over-the-top party with hundreds of guests. But Joe's perfectly content to sit around his house with his long-time friends. Currently, they are sitting around his bedroom, torn wrapping paper is scattered around the room. Each boy is holding a plate with a piece of vanilla cake on top of it. The daily news drones on in the background.

"For those just tuning in, we are reporting live from the American Museum of Natural History. This morning, the museum discovered some of their oldest items on exhibit had vanished. Officials are still investigating the scene for signs of a break-in, but no evidence has yet been found. This robbery follows a string of recent events at several museums throughout the country. Museums have not been the only victims. Private collectors have also-"

The TV screen flicks to black.

Fred tosses the remote back onto Joe's bed. "How can you listen to that stuff?" Fred groans. "It's so boring."

Joe shrugs. "My dad's been really concerned lately. He doesn't want any of his relics from his trips getting stolen. He has a lot of valuable things downstairs. Masks, shields, a sarcophagus, all one-of-a-kind stuff.

"Fred, you should be concerned. A lot of historically priceless items are going missing." Sam sighs and shakes his head. "They're culturally and scientifically important."

"It's not like they're gone forever. Someone just stole them. The police will find them and bring them back. Things don't just vanish out of thin air." Fred swallows a large bite of birthday cake, and continues to speak with a full mouth. "You worry too much."

Sam rolls his eyes, knowing he isn't going to get through to Fred. He turns his attention to his other friend. "Aren't you concerned, Joe?"

"About my dad's artifacts? Sure, but he installed a new security system, and very few people know what he has."

"No." Sam looks out the door to make sure no one is listening in. He wants to argue that whatever security system his dad had bought was probably not better than what the museums use, but he has another point to make. "About The Book. It's basically a historical artifact. That thing is likely to be thousands of years old, if not millions."

Joe glances at the locked box on top of his dresser. Two years ago, he had received a mysterious blue book as a birthday gift from his uncle. He, Sam, and Fred had quickly discovered that it was more than just a book. It was a time machine, but even that doesn't sum up everything it's capable of. Not that Joe was aware of the amount of power it holds.

He hasn't messed with The Book in a while. Four months ago, he warped to Scotland with his younger sister and great-granddaughter, Jodie. His uncle had shown up as well, but on the return warp home, he had oddly vanished, leaving only a note and a pocket watch behind. Joe had been promoted to a Time Page, whatever that meant. He has so many questions for his uncle, but no way to ask them. Joe's beginning to worry. He had hoped his uncle would show up today to wish him a happy birthday, but there's been no sight of him so far.

Joe glances at his doorway, hoping to see a familiar face appear. Maybe he just got caught in traffic. He has to show up today. He wouldn't forget his favourite nephew's birthday.

Sam notices his staring, a small frown forming. "Still no word from your Uncle Joe, huh?"

"What?" Joe snaps out of his thoughts and turns to Sam. Reluctantly, he answers, "No. It's been months and as I far as I know, he hasn't come back. I'm sure he's fine. He can handle himself."

Both Fred and Sam hear the doubt in his voice. A quick smile lights up Fred's face. "I have an idea. This will definitely get your mind off of things." He gets to his feet and walks over to the lock box. He flips the lid open with ease and pulls out a small blue book with silver designs on the cover. "How about we take a little trip? Wherever the birthday boy wants to go. What do you say?"

"I say no!" Sam jumps up and away from The Book. He looks at Fred like he's holding a gun to his head. "When has using that ever gone well for us?"

"Oh, come on, Sam. Joe's a Time Page now. He's like a super warper! Besides, we've been doing this for two years." Fred waves The Book back and forth, teasing his friends. Not realizing how dangerous his actions are. "It'll be more fun than laying around here all day."

Joe eyes The Book. Truthfully, he's more worried Fred's going to send them back to the dinosaurs. He hops off his bed and grabs it out of Fred's hands before anything bad happens. "I don't know, Fred. I haven't used it in a while. I'm sort of out of practice."

"So, get back in practice!" Fred throws his arm over Joe's shoulder. "Hey, we can even try to find your Uncle Joe."

Joe pauses at that. He does want to find his uncle to make sure he's okay, and he does miss warping. "Well…"

"No, no, no." Sam crosses his arms. "We're having plenty of fun here. We don't need to warp anywhere. With our luck, we'll end up in the middle of the Revolutionary War!"

"But I'm a Time Page now." Joe lifts his chin high. "I can take us anywhere, no problem." Joe starts to like the idea of warping to find his uncle more and more. Sam isn't wrong. They had had some crazy mishaps before, but that was in the past. Besides, everything always turned out all right in the end for them.

"Joe," Sam warns. He continues to inch away from the book in Joe's hands. He's really the only one of the three who fully understands the power The Book contains. He's rightfully afraid of it.

Joe grins, his mind made. "Guys, we're going on a trip."

"You are out of your mind," Sam groans. He holds up his hands, as if that would stop him from being sucked away into the green mist.

"Calm down, Sam." Joe flips open The Book and scans for a page that would help him find his Uncle Joe. He has no idea where to start. He should have read it a long time ago. Summer break is about to end, but there are still a few weeks left. Maybe he can read a few chapters before he goes back to school.

"So where do you want to go?" Fred's grin is so wide it practically falls off his face. "Borneo? Maui? Oh! How about Jamaica?"

"Maybe…" In truth, Joe doesn't want to go to any of those places. Sure, they're nice, but they aren't going to help him find his uncle. He could try going back to Scotland. He doesn't really want to relive getting shot from a trebuchet though. And Uncle Joe left on the warp home. He probably isn't there.

"Nowhere. He wants to go nowhere," Sam pleads. He stares at Joe with wide eyes. "I really don't want to die today."

"We won't die, Sam." Joe chuckles. "We'll have a few near-death experiences, but we won't die. If anything happens, I'll use my amazing Time Page skills to take us home."

"How is that any better?" Sam's voice rises in pitch.

Joe continues to flip through the pages of his magical book. He finds a picture of his family tree. It traces all the way back to the first owner of The Book, some girl named Shanti. He traces his finger down the trunk until he finds his Uncle Joe. He tries tapping on the photo, but nothing happens. No mist, nothing. Maybe there's another way to find his lost uncle. What are some of the ways they had triggered a warp in the past? Palindromes, magic squares, wishes…

"You want to travel? That's fine. Let's do it like normal people. We'll book a flight somewhere." Sam stands behind Joe's bed. He glares at Fred, as if this was all his fault. "I'll even pay for it."

"You can afford to take all of us on a tropical vacation?" Fred crosses his arms, his eyebrow raises. "Why have you been holding back on us, man?"

Joe closes his eyes, blocking out his friends’ bickering. I wish I could find my Uncle Joe, he thinks. It seems childish, but it worked in the past. The first time they had ever warped, it was because Fred had wished they could find buried treasure and sail the seventeen seas. Next thing they knew, they were stuck in a tree staring down at Blackbeard.

Joe waits, but nothing happens with The Book. Maybe he isn't wishing for the right thing, or maybe he has to say it out loud? Joe speaks with a sigh, "I just wish I knew what I was supposed to do."

On cue, green mist pours out of The Book, swirling around the boys. It slides up their legs, eager to take them somewhere and sometime new.

"What did you do?" Sam jumps onto the bed, trying and failing to avoid the magical fog. It wraps around his waist, like a person reuniting with an old friend.

Fred laughs. "I hope it takes us somewhere fun. No Antarctica, no African desert. Please, take us somewhere tropical."

Joe grins at the time travel machine with sparkling eyes. He honestly didn't expect that to work. Unlike Fred, he doesn't care if The Book takes them someplace fun or exciting. As long as it gets him on the right track to find his Uncle Joe, he'll be more than happy.

In the blink of an eye, the mist pulls them away.

#time warp trio #twt #kellie fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #joe #sam #fred

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elarawritingtrash · 6 years ago

Text

Fandom: One Piece

Written in 2016/2018

Summary: A girl from our world literally falls into the One Piece world. Seventeen years old, without the usual One Piece absurd physical capabilities, she... does her best.

Warnings: Canon-typical violence, implied/threatened sexual assault

Part 1

Crap, crap, crap, crap, crap.

In a horrifically anime-esque beginning, I was late. Not to school, though; to my part-time after-school-and-on-the-weekends volunteering job at the hospital. Because I was gonna be a doctor. Yeah. In ten years once I’d finished all of the schooling and my residency, anyway. Volunteering at the hospital was practically a requirement, because, with all of the competition I knew I’d have getting into medical school, I needed my résumé to be the best it could be.

But it had been storming hard last night, which had knocked out the power at my house, which had reset my alarm clock, which had caused the alarm to not go off. So it was obscenely early on Saturday, I was late, and I was running through the rain to get to the train because I didn’t have a car. I was going to be soaked when I got to the hospital – at least I wasn’t wearing my scrubs yet, so I could change when I got there.

That was about the only even marginally good thing about the day so far. And, ugh, there was a puddle in the way. It was in a large dip in the ground, far too wide for me to go around and too long for me to jump. I’d have to go through it. It didn’t look too deep, but it was probably deep enough to submerge the entirety of my feet, which would make my shoes and socks all soggy. I didn’t even have any replacements.

Ughhh.

There was a certain way it was supposed to go: I slosh my way through the irritating puddle, continue to the hospital, and have to deal with squishy socks and shoes for the rest of the day.

Because karma hates me, that was not what happened.

Instead, my first step landed in the supposedly shallow puddle – and kept going. With me unable to stop without steady footing – which, with one of my feet still falling, I certainly didn’t have – my momentum carried me face-first into the puddle. What might have been a very painful meeting between face and ground instead found me fully submerged in the dirty rainwater.

Down, down, down, I went. It must have been more than my own height deep. I knew that these were a thing, ‘puddles’ that were actually water-filled holes deep enough for people to disappear into them – there were videos of it happening on the Internet, after all. I just hadn’t expected it to ever happen to me.

Keeping my eyes closed to avoid getting who-knew-what in them, I thrashed my way to the surface. Once I broke the surface of the water, I took a deep, grateful breath of fresh air, then, my eyes still closed, flailed around in the puddle in the hopes of finding an edge. Half a minute, far more swimming than the relatively small in diameter sinkhole should have allowed me, and the realization that I was being moved around by a current later, I opened my eyes regardless of whatever might be in the water.

What I saw was definitely not the city I had been in previously. It wasn’t even a city. It wasn’t even land!

There was water as far as I could see. It was stormy and raining like it had been before, but I was in a much larger body of water. There were large waves splashing around me, dragging me around inside them. It was a miracle I hadn’t been submerged by one of them while my eyes were closed.

What?

I spun from side to side frantically, confused and bewildered and panicking and all of those other synonyms to the same thing: I had no idea what was going on. In most directions, there was just more of the same, more wave-filled water.

Finally, after spinning around almost completely, I saw something different: a ship, sailing towards me, and land behind it. The ship was kind of odd, wood instead of metal, and it had actual sails. A small, distant, oddly calm part of my mind wondered if there were actually still ships with sails. I had thought that we’d mostly moved on to engines, but apparently not.

Too relieved to question it further and too confused to care, I swam in the direction of the approaching boat, keeping a tight grasp on my messenger bag as I did. Everything I’d had in it was probably ruined, but I didn’t want to lose it. After a couple of minutes of swimming towards the ship as it sailed towards me, wherein it was doing the majority of the getting-closer, I noticed something… odd. Well, odder; it was already pretty odd. The ship was flying a black flag.

But isn’t that…?

Once I got a little closer, I was able to distinguish the flag a little better. It was, in fact, a black flag…

…with a skull and crossbones on it.

I stopped swimming, startled.

Pirates?

But that was ridiculous; even if pirates were still a thing, the skull and crossbones flag (a Jolly Roger?) hadn’t been used in hundreds of years. It couldn’t be real pirates.

…That was a lot of work to go to for a cosplay, though.

As I got even closer to the (pirate?) ship, I noticed that there was a weird, white line around the skull. Kind of like the outline of a half-circle, disappearing off the bottom of the flag.

That was weird, too. Not an important kind of weird, but weird.

Well and truly wigged out, I stayed where I was instead of continuing in the direction of the ship. To my chagrin, however, it continued getting closer at about the same speed. My swimming had apparently not been effective at all.

As freaked out as I was by the weird ship, I didn’t actually have a choice. It was either the ship or the land I could see behind it, which, judging by how quickly I’d been swimming before, would take quite a while to get to. Plus, I’d just fallen into a puddle and ended up in the ocean. The weirdness of the ship was nothing compared to that.

It turned out that I didn’t have much choice either way, though. The pirate ship continued sailing in my direction – very perfectly in my direction, and I scrambled to get out of the way before it hit me. I didn’t know what would happen to something hit by a ship in water, but I didn’t want to find out.

I did manage to get out of its path, thankfully. As I’d moved, the sailors on the ship had apparently noticed me, and a giant uproar started on the ship. Somebody dove off the ship into the water and swam up to me.

He didn’t bother with words or anything, merely grabbed me around the waist with one arm and started swimming back to his ship. His one-armed, dragging-a-person speed was faster than my alone, using-both-arms speed.

Too overwhelmed by the WTF-ery of the situation, however, I couldn’t handle his brusque, potentially pirate-y behavior. A small, logical, calm part of my brain noted that his briskness could only be because we were in the water, I probably seemed to have been drowning, and he wanted to get back to his ship quickly. All logical reasons.

The majority of my brain, illogical and far from calm, screamed that this was a kidnapping, he was kidnapping me, I should be freaking out, freak out!

So I… freaked out.

“What – what are you doing?” I asked, well aware that I was being loud and shrill and unable to help it. I started squirming and thrashing, kicking and shoving at him in an attempt to get free. “Let me go!”

But the (pirate!) man just ignored me, not responding to my words or my actions. His one arm was apparently stronger than all of me, as my attempts to get free accomplished exactly nothing.

Relatively quickly, we made it to his ship, and the others threw down a rope. Rather than scale it one-handed while carrying me as I’d been a little afraid of, the man tied the rope around my waist. Still ignoring my verbal and physical protests while doing so, of course. As soon as the rope was secure, I found myself being lifted out of the water.

I yelped despite myself and stopped trying to untie the rope in favor of holding on to it for dear life. As it turned out, the weird, wooden, old-timey, Jolly Roger-flying, actual-cannon-possessing ship was actually rather tall. Being lifted that high by nothing but a rope was really scary, okay.

The men on the ship dragged me on board and untied the rope from my waist. There were a lot of men on deck, all of them big, muscular, grimy, and particularly ugly. Seriously, they all had disproportionate limbs and other features; they were ugly in a way I’d never seen before. I was dimly aware of them dropping the rope back over the side as one man, as ugly as the rest and with a relatively impressive, unkempt, beard stepped right up into my space. He grabbed my chin with one hand before I could back away.

“Well, well, well, what have we here?” he said, disgusting, rancid breath right in my face.

The man didn’t seem to expect a response, continuing, “An attempted escapee, hmm? Hah!” With that sharp bark of laughter, which caused me to flinch, he stepped back. “I, Captain Getsu of the New Moon Pirates, have never allowed anyone to escape, and that has not changed! This little drowned rat will meet the same fate as the other inhabitants of Royal Peaks Island!”

The crew cheered as Getsu drew a sword from his waist and pointed it at me. The tip of it brushed against my throat, opening a thin cut. Ow! I clapped my hands against the wound instinctively.

Wait, what?

I shrieked and stumbled backwards away from him. Heck no! I was not going to get stabbed. I’d rather take my chances with the ocean despite my crappy swimming ability. I didn’t make it very far, though, before I bumped into the guy who’d retrieved me from the water.

He grabbed me before I could flinch away. Even with one hand, he was stronger than I was – annoyingly enough.

“You know, Captain,” he said idly, drawing a hand through my still-wet, scraggly hair. I tried and failed to squirm away because wow creepy. “She’s not too bad lookin’ underneath all that drowned rat.”

Oh no. No, no, nope.

He was a creep. I felt severely creeped on.

“Let me go!” I said again, thrashing and fighting to get away from him. It was to no avail, however, as his grip didn’t budge in the slightest. “Let me go!”

Getsu gave me a contemplative look, sweeping his eyes down and up my body lecherously. I was suddenly glad I was wearing a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt rather than anything more revealing. “That’s true, hmm,” he murmured, lowering his sword. “It’s not too common to find a looker like this ‘un in East Blue.”

East Blue? He’d said it like it was a place, but I’d never – wait. I had heard of it; it was just… fictional. It was one of the oceans of the One Piece world. But that was ridiculous; One Piece was an anime/manga. I couldn’t be in the East Blue of One Piece.

But then again… puddle-portal. Plus it would explain the pirates and their old-timey pirate ship.

Well. All right then.

It didn’t even matter what I was in anyway; whether I was in my world or the One Piece world didn’t change the fact that I’d been captured by pirates. Even worse, pirates who were apparently actual bad guys, rather than the mostly-good-guyness of, say, Luffy’s crew.

What do I do? I wondered silently, panicking.

And ohhh, crap, crap crap I hadn’t been paying attention and I’d missed the end of their conversation. Now I had no idea what was going on because I was an idiot. My attempts to get away failed utterly as one of the other crew members tied my hands together at the wrists with rope.

“Stop it! Let me go!” My continued protests fell on deaf ears as they tied my ankles together. I couldn’t protest anymore after that, however, as they shoved a piece of horrifically dirty cloth in my mouth and tied it around my head, effectively gagging me.

The guy who’d retrieved me shoved me forward, and, my ankles tied together and unable to separate, I had to hop a couple awkward steps forward to stay standing. Thankfully (?), rather than spend the time forcing me to do that to get wherever he wanted me, the guy just picked me up under one arm. He then dropped me into a corner made by the design of the cabin, where I collapsed unceremoniously onto my side.

The crew then proceeded to ignore me.

What the…?

I struggled to get upright. With my hands and legs tied as they were, however, the best I could manage was to get to my knees. But, since it was more dignified than being on my side, I stayed in that position. Surprisingly well-protected by the walls of the cabin as I was, at least I wasn’t getting sprayed with sea water anymore.

But I was far from safe. The pirates had just been planning to kill me, had just been commenting on my physical attributes; I didn’t trust for a second that they’d suddenly had a change of heart. Plus, the fact that I was tied up made it rather obvious I was a prisoner.

Since I had the time, I quietly had a panic attack. Because what was going on how had I fallen into a puddle and landed in a different world why was I kidnapped by pirates what.

When I could breathe again, I forced myself to think. There was no point in freaking out; I needed to figure out how I was going to get out of this. With my arms and legs bound, I couldn’t exactly just jump off the ship. I could probably make it to the edge, true; however, since I wouldn’t be able to swim, I’d just drown. If they didn’t fish me back out first.

Belatedly, I realized that I still had my messenger bag. They’d never taken it.

…

Idiots.

Not that I was complaining, of course. I had a knife in my bag. Of course, I still needed a plan for after I cut the rope tying my hands and legs. It wouldn’t help anything if I couldn’t actually get away. But at the same time, I really didn’t like being unable to fight back. Not that I could with my hands and legs free either, though…

I was pretty close to the cabin door. It might be possible for me to hide in there and lock them out. Except that wouldn’t really help; it was more of a stalling method. And stalling for what, exactly? I had no guarantee anyone would come. But, even so, it might be better to have something to do when they stopped ignoring me, even if it wasn’t quite an exit strategy.

With that in mind, I maneuvered my bag into my lap so it hid my hands, then went hunting through it for the switchblade I knew was in there. Once I found it, I flipped it open. The locking gear to hold it open clicked loudly into place, and I froze for a moment. None of them seemed to have heard it, so I continued.

I awkwardly twisted the knife around so that I could slide the blade against the ropes around my wrist. Hopefully I wouldn’t accidentally cut myself, since I couldn’t see it. The rope was very thick, it turned out after a couple minutes of attempting fruitlessly to saw through it. I couldn’t even tell if I was making any progress at all.

“A ship!” came the sudden shout from the – what was it called? Eagle nest? Hawk nest? Whatever, the lookout position. “There’s a ship coming this way!”

The pirates all snapped to attention.

“They’re flying a Jolly Roger!” the lookout reported.

“A pirate crew, hmm,” Getsu muttered to himself. Then, louder, “Prepare for battle!”

Well, okay. That seemed rude. I hoped the other crew won. And were nicer. It would be just awesome to be saved from my captors only to be captured again.

The pirates all retrieved weapons – mostly guns and swords – and some of them got to work loading canons. Once everything was finished, there was a long period of waiting. To make sure the other ship was in range, probably.

After what felt like a long time, they started firing their cannons. Cannons were, it seemed, actually very loud in reality. By now, our ship and theirs were apparently close enough that I could hear the other crew shouting even over the cannons. I couldn’t see what was going on, though.

The first round of cannon fire ceased, and confused, angry muttering started up in the crew.

“What the f –“

“What just ha –“

“Did they just –“

Then Getsu spoke, sounding weirdly unnerved himself. “Don’t get discouraged! Keep firing! The New Moon Pirates have never lost before, hmm? We won’t start now!”

The pirates cheered in response, though it was much weaker than the last time.

The cannon fire resumed.

I wondered idly what had freaked out the pirates so much. Knowing the One Piece world, the other crew had probably knocked all of the cannons out of the air before they could be hit. Luffy’s crew loved doing that.

I kept sawing at the ropes with my knife. Hopefully, whoever won, I could get away while they were distracted. Unfortunately, I didn’t seem to be making progress very quickly, and I didn’t know how long this battle would go on for; it wouldn’t do much good if the battle ended before I could get free.

Finally, the other ship came into view. It was smaller than the New Moon Pirates’ ship, but newer-looking and cleaner-looking. It didn’t have a figurehead (that was what they were called, right?), and its flag was, obviously, a skull and crossbones. Theirs was apparently overlaid on a… spade? Like the card suit? And had a weird line horizontally across the skull, right above its eyes, with two blue… balls? Right above the line.

Well. That was possibly even stranger than the New Moon Pirates’ Jolly Roger – which, I now realized, was supposed to represent a new moon. It just didn’t work very well.

The ship continued its steady approach. The New Moon Pirates reloaded their cannons and fired yet again. At least I’d get to see how the ship was completely undamaged despite the barrage of cannonballs.

The cannonballs flew towards the other ship. People started jumping off the ship to attack the cannonballs, causing them to blow up midair and somehow not getting hurt as they did – not to mention the insane, impossible heights they had to be jumping to manage it. They did it at different times and places, so I couldn’t tell how many there were total. A couple cannonballs blew up without any visible interference. A long-range member, maybe? Or just faulty cannonballs – I didn’t know enough about them to know if that was possible.

I don’t know why I’m surprised, I thought. I really didn’t. At least it was all but confirmed, now, that I was in One Piece.

As their cannonballs continued getting destroyed, the New Moon Pirates got more and more freaked out and worried. The other ship continued approaching.

“Keep at it!” Getsu ordered. “They’ll make a mistake eventually!”

Spitefully, I hoped that they didn’t. Maybe the other crew would be worse and I’d regret it, but I wanted them to win.

In the meantime, I continued making no progress on cutting through my ropes. And my legs were starting to hurt from the way I was half-kneeling half-sitting on them.

The New Moon Pirates, for their part, continued getting more and more frantic.

“What the f –“

“What kind of monsters –“

“No way they’re human!”

“This is getting ridiculous, fu –“

In a climactic turn of events, three people from the other crew jumped off their ship, deflected the most recent batch of cannonballs – and landed on this ship instead of their own. They were all men: a huge man sporting impressive sideburns and, in place of a left arm, a machine gun; a relatively normal sized man wearing a domino mask and an open jacket with no shirt, revealing his not unimpressive abs; and another normal sized man, this one somewhat younger than the others, wearing a bright orange hat and a button-up shirt with none of the buttons done.

I squinted at the youngest, sure that I recognized him. He looked incredibly familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.

The New Moon Pirates got off a couple more cannon shots before catching up and turning to fight the three men. The cannonballs, however, all exploded mid-air; this time, I thought I caught bullets traveling through the air to hit them.

Horrifyingly quickly, the three men obliterated the forces of the New Moon Pirates. Within ten minutes – probably even less – all of the New Moon Pirates, with the exception of Getsu, were on the floor, the luckiest of them still conscious to groan in pain. Or maybe they were unluckiest?

Getsu and the youngest man started fighting; although it was definitely the longest fight any of the New Moon Pirates had put up, it seemed obvious that the young man was better. He had a wide, cheerful grin on his face as he dodged around Getsu’s sword strikes, occasionally dancing close enough to throw a punch. So far, Getsu had managed to block all of the punches with the side of his blade, but he was being overwhelmed quickly. Every time the younger man landed a hit on his sword, Getsu’s arms buckled, implying that the other man was a lot stronger than he looked.

The other two men didn’t interfere, instead standing back and watching. Both looked apathetic, and maybe a bit exasperated, as though tired of their crew member's antics.

Sideburns, apparently bored with watching the fight, glanced around and met eyes with me. He looked surprised, the first expression I’d seen on him, and hurried in my direction with surprising speed, skirting the edge of Getsu and the other man’s fight.

I panicked, stupidly and without reason. As Sideburns got close, remaining hand (not the gun) already reaching towards me, I reared backwards – ow, my legs – and dragged my hands from my bag, brandishing my knife threateningly at him.

He stopped in his tracks, switching to holding his hands out in front of himself harmlessly and backing away a couple of steps.

Belatedly, I flipped the knife around in my hands so that it actually pointed at him. My hands, I noticed, were already shaking, because I was a weak seventeen-year-old with too few muscles to hold the weight of my arms up this long. Or maybe it was because I was freaking out. Heck if I knew.

Also, the rope was actually most of the way cut. If I’d had a couple more minutes, I would have been able to cut it completely.

Behind Sideburns, Getsu went flying backwards as the other man finally landed a punch straight to his face. Getsu didn’t get up again, apparently out for the count after a single hit. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know exactly how strong the young man was.

“Hey, Aggie 68, what’s up –“ the young man started as he turned towards us. Once he saw, well, the situation, he cut himself off. “Oh,” he uttered.

The man with the domino mask turned too, and his eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

It was stupid to hold a knife on Sideburns, I knew; I didn’t even know if they were bad guys or not yet. Plus, if they were, it would probably just annoy them… It wasn’t like I actually had a chance of fighting them, anyway.

Yet I still couldn’t get my shaking arms to lower the knife.

The youngest man and Domino-Mask-Guy both approached. Domino-Mask-Guy stopped a couple of steps behind Sideburns, while the youngest continued a couple of steps closer than him. Almost without my doing, my arms turned to point the knife at him instead.

He crouched, holding his hands, open and empty, out harmlessly. “Hey there,” he said softly, carefully. I resented the treatment a little, but, well. With the way I was acting, it made sense. “I’m Ace. We’re not gonna hurt you, okay? You’re safe now.”

…Huh?

I stared blankly at him for a moment, the epiphany smacking me in the face that he was Portgas D. Ace. Luffy’s older brother! Well, adoptive – whatever. No wonder he looked familiar. So. One Piece universe. Definitely confirmed.

After another moment of glancing back and forth between Ace’s patient, expectant face and my knife, I forced my arms to curl in, lowering the knife. Ace beamed at me, looking unreasonably happy about something so small. He leaned forward, dorkily scooting closer without standing up straight when he couldn’t reach, and carefully took my knife. That – well. That was fair.

Then, still ever-so-careful – I was a little amazed the other two men hadn’t said anything yet – Ace reached to untie the cloth from around my head one handed, still holding my knife in the other. Once it was untied, I let it drop from my mouth – tossing my head so that it would land to the side of me.

Ace grabbed the rope around my wrists, his eyebrows raising a little for a moment before he cut straight through what was left, using my knife. I was a little jealous – he’d managed the same amount of progress in, like, a second, that had taken me several minutes. He gave my knife a funny look, then ran his thumb along the blade.

After examining his perfectly uninjured thumb, he turned back to me. “This knife sucks,” he said.

I let out a startled laugh. “Well –“ I coughed, realizing very abruptly how dry my mouth and throat were, and had to take a moment. “Well, I wasn’t really planning to have to use it, I guess.”

Ace grinned at me for a moment, apparently pleased with the pathetic retort. “What's your name?” he asked.

"Alyssa," I said honestly. My name didn't matter much. Hopefully it didn't, like, stand out as a name that didn't actually exist or something. That would be horrible.

Ace nodded. "Nice to meet you," he said politely. Somehow, it came across as rote, something he'd learned to say.

I supposed that made sense, given his backstory; hadn't Makino had to teach him to be polite?

"I wish I could say the same, but, well," I said awkwardly.

Fortunately, it seemed to surprise another laugh out of Ace.

"Yeah, no, I can see that," he said. He sobered. "What happened? Is there somewhere we can take you?"

I faltered for a moment. I flailed mentally - which direction did people supposedly look when they were lying? I didn't remember, so I just looked down. I couldn’t exactly tell him the truth, after all. But then, Getsu had given me the perfect lie, hadn’t he?

Thankfully, Ace spent a moment cutting through the rope around my ankles with enviable ease despite still using my knife, giving me time to get my story straight.

“I’m from Royal Peaks Island,” I said – lied, shifting into a more comfortable position. Ace nodded, and I continued, indicating the fallen crewmembers, “They… attacked us.” Horribly guilty about lying and just wanting to get the false story over with, I spoke quickly, “I – I tried to get away, but I couldn’t get to any of the ships in the port without going past them, so I – stupidly, I guess – just tried to hide in the ocean, but I guess I was unlucky, and they passed by me when they were leaving and they must have seen me, and…”

I took a breath, aware that I was rambling, and finished awkwardly, guiltily, “I don’t even know what happened to anybody else.”

That was true, at least. I really didn’t know what had happened to the real inhabitants of Royal Peaks Island. Getsu had implied that they were all dead, which was horrible. I didn’t want an entire island of people to be dead, but… if any of them were alive, they would know that I was lying. That just made me feel worse.

Ace nodded again, looking solemn. He stood and stepped back, offering me a hand. When I took his hand, he pulled me to my feet and calmly let me use his hand to steady myself when I stumbled.

“Well, we have to go check it out,” he said authoritatively.

Domino-Mask-Guy smirked. “And that has nothing to do with the fact that that’s where we were going anyway, right?”

“Of course not,” Ace sniffed with a baleful look at him. He turned to me. “Want to come with?”

Well, it was either go with them or stay with the New Moon Pirates. Huh. Hard choice, that.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding.

Ace nodded back, then turned and walked away without another word, obviously expecting me – and his crewmembers – to follow. We did.

Their ship had sidled up beside the New Moon Pirates’ in the meantime, and the fourth man I’d seen was standing at the edge of it. Ace and the two others jumped across the gap to it easily – which made sense; they’d jumped a lot further before. But it was a big gap, maybe ten or fifteen feet. There was no way I could jump it.

“Umm. I can’t… really jump that far?” I called to them, twisting the strap of my bag awkwardly. Ace never had given my knife back, I noted.

They turned back, looking comically surprised.

“Oh, really?” Ace asked.

He jumped back across easily. “Is it okay if I…” he trailed off, holding his arms out towards me in an obvious message.

I glanced from him to the gap and back. I sighed.

“It’s fine,” I said.

Ace grabbed me around the waist, and the next moment I found myself midair. I very carefully didn’t make any embarrassing noises.

We landed more lightly on the other side than I would have expected. I let out a quiet breath of relief for that as Ace stepped away to a more respectable distance.

I got my first look at the fourth member of the crew, the one who'd stayed to protect their ship. Another man, of course; that wasn't even a surprise, although I was personally disappointed by the lack of bad-A pirate women. He was very tall and thin and carried an awful, old-timey rifle.

He gave me a curious look, and I shrunk automatically to hide behind Ace. It seemed these ones were actually kind-of-good-guys like the Straw Hats, since I doubted Ace would have been the captain of ordinary evil pirates, but they were scary, okay. Except for Ace himself, who had a pretty normal character design thanks to being main character adjacent, they kind of had typical minor bad guy one-off pirate designs.

"What's going on, Captain?" he asked

Ace glanced at me. I didn't know what I looked like, maybe like a sad drowned kitten, but Ace looked surprisingly sympathetic.

"It seems that those pirates--" he jerked his head to indicate the ship of the New Moon Pirates, "-- attacked Royal Peaks Island. This is Alyssa, who they... abducted instead of killing."

I couldn't help but look down at my feet, unable to meet any of their eyes as my lie was repeated. Even though I had no other choice, I found myself wishing I hadn't agreed to go with them to the island. There, we would either find people who would contradict my story or we would find an entire massacred island.

It was awful, but I found myself selfishly hoping for the latter.

The tall man frowned. "How horrible," he murmured. He circled around Ace to get to me, but stayed a respectful distance away. "My name is Mihar."

"Oh yeah," Ace said as though just realizing something. I stepped away from him as he turned to face me. That was a little too close to bare chest for me. He gestured to Domino-Mask-Guy. "That's Masked Deuce--" a gesture towards Sideburns, "-- and that's Aggie 68. And I'm Portgas D. Ace!"

It was a little weird, he introduced himself last name first, which was the Japanese order, but everybody had spoken English so far. I would have thought the name order was just because the One Piece series was originally in Japanese.

Still, I couldn't help but smile. "You already introduced yourself," I pointed out.

"Well, yeah, but not my full name," Ace said with a shrug. "Is Alyssa your full name?"

I really had to think about that one. Obviously, I did have a last name, and usually I would introduce myself with my full name, including my middle initial, like Ace had, but. Did it really matter in this world if my last name was the same? It wasn't like any of my family was around for me to be related to.

Not to mention that, while it was fine in my original world, my middle name was Diane... which did, actually, make my middle initial 'D'. Here, that meant something, supposedly, which it didn't in my old world. So, I decided, might as well just leave it at first name.

"Well, it's the only name that matters," I said belatedly.

For some reason, they all looked very sad about it.

"Well, we should go to Royal Peaks Island to check it out," Ace said authoritatively. He sent me a softer look. "There might still be some people there."

That was very true. There could be. It didn't seem all that likely that a pirate crew would kill an entire island for no reason. If it was true, I was doomed.

So all I could do was clutch my bag close to me and give a short nod.

Fortunately, they didn't seem to think it was all that odd. They went about their business, surprisingly good at managing such a big ship with only four people. Before long, we were sailing closer to Royal Peaks Island. As we got closer, I noticed that it was aptly named; it did in fact have several tall mountains.

I stayed off to the side, as out of the way as I could get. Fortunately, they left me alone. I could practically feel them talking about me, but they kept it out of my hearing range.

We were on the correct side to land at the port town, but once we got close enough, it became apparent that it was on fire. Not the town itself, but the port. The dock, I thought it might be called? In any case, since we couldn't exactly dock (?) at the... dock, the others dropped anchor (?) off to the side, far enough from the flames to be safe.

I eyed the distance to the ground. It was... far. And scary. I was already getting premonitions of falling and dying.

Meanwhile, Masked Deuce, Aggie 68, and Mihar jumped casually off the side of the ship, landing easily. I was extremely envious.

Without so much as a by-your-leave, Ace scooped me up practically bridal-style and dropped to the ground. Startled, I could not restrain a shriek as the wind blew past me on the way down, wrapping my arms around Ace's neck in a death grip. Even carrying me, though, Ace landed just as easily as the others, smoothly enough that I hardly felt a bump at all.

I self-consciously unwound my arms from Ace's neck as he let me down.

Before I could apologize or anything, I noticed some bodies that were visible even from here, sufficiently distracting me. Horror rose up in my throat, but the instincts that had led me to want to be a doctor in the first place wouldn't allow me to leave them. I hurried over, checking each person.

They were all dead.

That led me closer to the main road through the town, revealing even more bodies further in. I started making my way through. In between checking bloody corpses for life, I noticed that the town was very pretty. It was all blues and feathers and other decorations. According to some signs, it was a tourist-y party town. A lot of the decorations reminded me of New Orleans and Mardi Gras.

It was marred, however, by the bodies and blood seemingly coating the town. There was a somber air as I walked through, Ace and the others trailing behind respectfully. That made me feel bad, too; they were giving me allowances I didn't deserve under the belief that I knew these people.

As we got further, it seemed less likely that we would come across any survivors.

There didn't seem to be any form of police station, I noted. A small island like this probably relied on the World Government, and therefore the Marines, for protection. But there was no Marine base, leaving them vulnerable.

This was my world now, too. What a horrible world it was.

Whether it was the thought of all of the people who'd died or the thought that I was stuck here, I felt tears prickling at my eyes. Unable to stand this horrid funeral march, I got faster and faster until I was all but running between each body. Finally, I'd made it through the entire town and circled around to be near the burning dock.

I was in front of a small doctor's office. Inside, visible through a broken window, there was an old man with a kindly face and a white doctor's coat lying on the ground, covered in blood.

Suddenly, the tears overwhelmed me and I choked and started crying quietly. It was so stupid, I didn't even know these people. At the same time, though, their entire town was dead. Possibly everyone any of them had ever known. Didn't they deserve to have someone, anyone, cry for them?

And maybe I was crying for myself, too. My home, my family and friends, all my aspirations to be a doctor, were gone.

The others were still there behind me, I could tell. Probably, they were keeping their distance now less out of respect and more out of awkwardness. After a while, Ace, brave man, approached. After a moment of visibly struggling for something to say, he patted me on the back gently.

"I was going to be a doctor, you know," I said for no reason. It just kind of fell out.

I couldn't help staring at the dead old doctor in the building. Had he had an apprentice? Were they dead, too?

"Was that guy your teacher?" Ace asked hesitantly.

I wouldn't have thought that Ace did hesitation.

Still, I had to hesitate, then. He wasn't, of course, but I couldn't exactly say no now. There likely wasn't another doctor on the island.

"Yes," I lied, shoving down the guilt. "I was apprenticed to him, but."

But he was dead. But now any hope I had of going to my world's medical school was gone.

I swallowed around a lump in my throat. I hated crying.

"Now I have nothing," I said quietly.

The tears were encroaching again, but I forced them back. My eyes were going to be uncomfortable and achy enough already.

Ace was standing in front of me now. Though I was looking down, at the ground, I saw as he looked over my shoulder at his crew, obviously communicating. I'd always thought it was cool how people (fictional ones, anyway) could do that.

"You're a doctor?" Ace said.

I flicked my gaze up to look at his face. "I was going to be a doctor," I said. It wasn't quite agreement; the difference was, in my opinion, huge. I was a year of high school and seven years of medical school away from being a proper doctor.

Ace, however, seemed to think differently.

"Okay, so, look. We can drop you off at the nearest island, which we need to go to for supplies anyway," he added this almost sheepishly. "You can... try to make a life there, I guess."

He paused long enough that I was about to agree, since that was my best bet at this point and it was actually pretty nice of them to even offer, when he started again.

"Or you can come with us," Ace finished.

I stared. That sounded... like an offer of piracy. Like something Luffy might have said if he wasn't such a rude person. It was kind of interesting to find that Ace didn't bully people into joining his crew like Luffy did.

"Come with you?" I asked, just to be sure.

Ace nodded, seeming more confident now that I was definitely not crying. "Join my crew."

The fan in me was screaming. The chance to be a pirate! On the other hand, piracy was obviously quite dangerous and I didn't actually want to die. But then, the people on Royal Peaks Island hadn't been pirates and they'd still died. Maybe it was actually safer to be on a powerful pirate crew.

Of course, Ace had to also know exactly how useless I was. Why would he offer that? I'd be dead weight.

"Why?" I said. When Ace's face crumpled a little like he'd been rejected, I hurried to add, "Why would you ask me? I'm not... I wouldn't be very helpful."

"We need a doctor," Ace said.

"I'm not actually a doctor yet," I said.

Ace shrugged. "Closer than any of us," he said, including his three crew members with a gesture.

And, the fan in me pointed out, you can keep Ace from dying.

Because he would. If I decided to become a civilian here, Ace would go on to be a pirate captain, join Whitebeard's crew - and die at Akainu's hand in three years. But I could change things. Maybe. Either way, it might be interesting.

"Okay," I said. "I'll join."

Ace was starting to look entirely too smug, so I added, "But I still think you'll be disappointed in my abilities as a doctor."

"Nah, that won't happen," Ace said with a snort. "You need to pick some stuff up?"

I thought about it. I did need clothes, which, given I didn't actually live here, I'd probably have to steal from a store (because there was no way I was going into a house and stealing a person's clothes). Plus, my lack of actual doctoral ability meant I should probably take some, or a bunch, of books with me.

"Yeah. I do. Umm." I paused, trying to think of a polite way to tell them that I didn't want them to come with me.

"We'll wait for you at the ship," Ace said.

I blinked. That was perfect. I decided not to question it. "Okay," I said.

They were already walking away. I didn't bother staring after them, turning to go into the doctor's building instead. It was an awful feeling, tiptoeing past his dead body and the blood on the floor and looking around to find all of his books, and trying to find some kind of bag to put them in.

Fortunately, I found both of those things easily, and fled back out into the street. Not that it was any better there. And I still needed clothes. I found the least tourist-y store I could and went looking for clothes (and another bag to put them in). It took some looking to avoid all of the blue, feathery, and otherwise themed clothes, but eventually I put together a fair spread. On my way out, I saw, under the broken window where the pirates had likely stolen everything on display, a mask.

It was kind of a masquerade mask, shaped almost like a butterfly with massive wings arching out to the top and bottom away from the center. It was mostly silver, with blue lining around the eyes and blue gems set in the wings of the butterfly. It bordered on gaudy, like much of the other stuff in the store and, honestly, in the town as a whole, but I liked it. On impulse, I added it to the bag.

Then I went to meet up with the others.

I hummed to myself quietly. Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me.

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