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airlia-moonchild · 2 years ago

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Welcome to the 10-Year Reunion of the Hawkins Tigers Class of 1989

The following is a very sad version of a Stranger Things where are they now. A big departure from my typical ideas.

Trigger Warnings: death, self-harm, mental illness, hot takes

The party as it was died the day El died. It’s been approximately twelve years since the collection of misfits witnessed El’s destruction of Vecna and the elimination of the threats of the Upside Down. The gates were closed, and the group was expected to go back to their lives as if they hadn't spent the last few years fighting unimaginable monsters. They resumed living their lives with the addition of an abundance of shared trauma. They had lost Eddie, they lost El, and they almost lost Max.

With the start of Sophomore year, most of the party returned to Hawkins and the little semblance of normalcy they could cling to. Though they tried to keep the party together, some drifted further than others, with no anchor strong enough to hold them together when some would rather forget what the others represented. El had made the ultimate sacrifice, and it hit them all hard. They all grieved in their own ways.

After graduation, Nancy and Jonathan began working together as independent travel journalists. Utilizing Jonathan’s photography and Nancy’s writing to travel together and avoid the dredge of the 9-5. There was no returning to civilian life for them, so they made a life of their own. Making it up as they went along. They have never married and don’t want children.

Robin and Steve moved out to California together when Robin decided to go back to school. Robin majored in music and eventually joined an orchestra that accompanied a Ballet company in San Diego. She was finally able to date. To go out to gay bars, attend PRIDE, and meet people in her community. She's still looking for that special someone, but until then, she has her roommate and best friend, Steve.

Steve began working in the kitchen of a popular french restaurant, ultimately investing in the business and becoming an equal partner. Allowing him to work part-time and spend more time as an organizer in the social justice movements he’d become involved in. Steve dates but has developed a bit of a commitment phobia. It's hard for him to connect with someone who will never understand what he's been through.

With Hopper’s miraculous return came questions they would never be able to answer in Hawkins. Joyce and Hopper were relocated to a small town in Maine. They welcomed a baby girl in 1989, naming her Ellara after El and Sara. Soon after her birth, they tied the knot in a small quiet family ceremony.

Will continued pursuing his artistic endeavors. He studied art and developed an interest in digital art in college, becoming a video game artist. He relocated to Portland and found himself surrounded by queer culture a year after he finally came out to his friends and family. Soon after, he met a programmer on a job and fell in love. After a year together, they held a commitment ceremony proclaiming their love and partnership in front of their loved ones.

Mike stepped into the shoes of Eddie, becoming the new DM of the Hellfire club. Eddie’s death had been a major blow, but El’s death devastated him. His grief cocooned him. He grew depressed, cynical, and dark. He succumbed to the depths and hit rock bottom, attempting to take his own life in his junior year but thankfully survived, with scarred wrists as a reminder that he was meant to be here. He built walls like fortresses, keeping everyone out. Even his closest friends. Everyone except for her. He moved to New York for college, eventually dropping out when his first novel was published. A collection of deeply disturbing horror stories about the nature of humankind and the battle of good versus evil.

Max would never recover fully, being left blinded and with severe chronic pain due to the extensive damage done to her nerves when her bones were broken. Additionally, she suffered from severe mental health issues. Struggling with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, the trauma of her accident and the death of her best friend haunts her. Over the years, Max began to grow closer to Mike. They could confide in each other in their darkest moments. They found solace in each other’s deep love and grief for El. Everyone else seemed to make it through the grieving process and seemed to be moving on with their lives, but they couldn’t. They felt stuck in it. Lucas could see what everyone but Mike and Max could see. They were in love. Eventually, he put his heartbreak aside and let Max go. It took them another year to confront their feelings and begin a relationship.

Post graduation, she continued to live with her mother, helping her provide through her disability income. With her time, Max began gardening and embracing holistic medicine. She takes pride in the garden she’s curated. They relocated to Indianapolis with Susan after Mike’s publisher offered him a three-book deal.

Lucas was never able to bring himself to continue team sports after the events of 1986. He developed a passion for medicine and rehabilitation as he supported Max through her recovery. He went to a medical school specializing in physiatric medicine. He joined a successful private practice, priding himself on the pro bono work he did with the less fortunate. Within the practice, he met a brilliant, beautiful, and strong doctor named Helena. They married in 1998 and welcomed their first son soon after.

It took Dustin some time to get himself back. He grew apart from Suzie, and the relationship fell by the wayside. The grieving process was arduous and brutal. However, he made it through the woods. He grew close with Wayne Munson, and the two held an annual memorial for Eddie. Knowing he was a hero despite his name never being officially cleared.

At the end of high school, he had his choice of scholarships. He decided to attend the California Institute of Technology and follow Steve to the West Coast. He continued developing as a scientist and inventor, eventually becoming a leading force in the engineering industry while also playing a large part in creating a famous virtual reality company.

After college, Erica attended Berkeley for law. She graduated top of her class and joined a prominent firm specializing in constitutional law. She is a regular contributor to the International Journal of Human Rights. After law school, the group celebrates by taking Erica to dinner, after which she finally gets up the nerve to do the one thing she’d been too scared to do; ask Dustin on their first date. They’ve been together for over a year now. She plans to propose soon, not knowing he will beat her to it.

With the class of 1989 10-year reunion coming up, the majority of the group will already be returning to Hawkins. They decide to take this opportunity to get the entire group together for the first time since graduation.

Fanfic idea, worth exploring?

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sevenofsorts · 4 years ago

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Monday:

She’s started baking again. The other members of the Syndicate drop by sometimes to taste-test her recipes, and she shows them the progress she’s made in the construction of her underground city. They compliment the flower paths outside the city, the bridges and floating lanterns and the gorgeous high ceilings and furnishings within, the little subterranean forest and the waterfall, the decorations and details that make the cavernous space cozy. They see what she’s built and they praise her for it and it is exhilarating. She’s grown stronger day by day with the Syndicate in her corner; they pull her up to stand on equal footing with them, and when she expresses her concerns, they listen.

There are days, however, when she can’t bring herself to bake; on those days the heat of the furnace crawls uncomfortably against her skin and the knife block rattles in the corner with each item she sets down on the countertop. On those days she’ll climb. Buildings, mountains, trees—anything that’ll get her to a height where her lungs strain from lack of oxygen and the ringing in her head eases. She jumps, sometimes. They don’t know she does this. They don’t need to know; she’s strong enough to deal with that herself.

Yesterday was their leader’s birthday, and she’d left the party with leftover cake and cookies and brioche. Today is a good day; maybe she’ll share the cookies with Jack.

—

Tuesday:

He’s called the harbinger, the omen, the angel of death. Crows perform at his bidding and the great, lumbering bears of the north shake the ground as he directs them. He emerges from impossible battles with nary a scratch on his body. People across the earth have speculated that he’s a demon, or contracted with a demon, or one of the acolytes of the Blood God like the Blade. He likes to collect these epithets and rumors; when his crows perch on his shoulder to recount the news of the land or messages from his allies they update him on the tales they tell of the angel. They’re all wrong, in the end. Death herself graced him with her favor long ago to act as her representative on the mortal plane.

She’s been dormant recently; her absences had never affected him so strongly before, but ever since he’s entered this land, he’s felt weaker, more fragile. He watched his son destroy the country he founded with a haze across his vision, and then he killed his own son, and the act of it didn’t register until days later. Months fly by in a blur and the only person who can enforce any sort of focus is the Blade and so that simmering anger became his own and it fed into his own pain. There was something rotting in the land and it killed his son and he felt it his duty to purge it with the same TNT that destroyed his wings. He doesn’t regret it.

Today, he finds some measure of peace in building his training room. His son is back and everything is not-quite-broken and his body still aches.

—

Wednesday:

There are too many variables, too many uncertainties. He’s placed his fingerprints on too many projects and lives, and the guilt of his cooperation and his associations claws at his lungs. Dream, neutrality in the midst of war, Dream and his prison and the damned prison rules, Quackity, Las Nevadas. He doesn’t know what he considers his worst fuck-up: Tommy’s death, the torture he’d permitted in his collaboration with Las Nevadas, his betrayal of Ponk’s love and trust, or his inability to save anyone during the banquet.

The hotel stands as a testament to his failure to protect the youngest resident of the land. He plans detours around that plot whenever he travels between the bank and the prison; the little robot stationed by the hotel tells him the boy doesn’t come by anymore, and he knows automatons don’t feel emotions, but he grieves for it anyway. He sees his valentine walking along the wooden pathways and his heart aches to see the damage he had caused. He checks the prison’s security footage and he tells himself guilt has no place in his heart for what happened. He’s surprised the captain and the god and all the rest of the banquet victims still talk to him. But they do, and it gives him hope. His friends are back and free and even though one of them is trying to start a little scuffle with a god, today he’s having fun throwing weednip around and sliding down the pyramid with his closest friends.

The present’s a gift, and he intends on cherishing this moment.

—

Thursday:

He’s building a pub because Wilbur owes him a pint. He knows that man can’t be completely trusted, not now. Not since he died by his crossbow. But it feels good to be acknowledged as someone worth an apology, someone important. He has been abandoned and pushed aside and pushed into lava pits and into hell all within the span of a few months. No one cared. He hates it, he hates the way he’s been made irrelevant and a shadow of his friends’ stories. Even his plans for revenge had been inconsequential, unfruitful: the boy had lived and his accomplice had left him to brood in his own anger.

He’s held his grudges close to his heart and he’s let them fester and he won’t admit he’s tired of it all. If he lets go, then it all disappears and he’s really, truly dead, and if this is his afterlife, if all he can do is lag after the people he cares for, then it’s a fucking shit deal. So today, he’s continuing his work on the pub because he burned down his own home and because the hotel feels too sterile and empty, because he wants to have a space built with his own two hands where he can speak and someone will finally, finally listen. It’s not quite moving on. He’ll take it anyway.

—

Friday:

She tries to live by the code of kindness and reciprocity; that’s how she lived on the high seas of her youth, or so she suspects, based on the journal she found at the site of the shipwreck. Since the day she joined this land, she has made friends and found love and taken the young residents under her wing and vowed to fight against evil. She gives stacks of items to those who need them and she fixes up the holes in the road and offers therapy on difficult days.

The world isn’t as kind as she is. A country was erased from the map for grudges she still doesn’t understand, and no one will tell her the why discs, of all things, are so important. Two boys would have lost their lives to a monster she housed, had it not been for the money Tommy paid a mercenary for his aid. She mourned the loss of Tommy’s life as she fought to keep the hotel in his name, and when he requested therapy upon his resurrection, she was horrified at the effects of trauma he’d exhibited. The friends she’d tried to pull out of the Egg’s influence celebrated a young boy’s death and killed her son. And now this man has taken her friend’s turtle hostage for no reason she can comprehend.

She’s tired. She’s breaking; they’d presumed her kindness was a weakness and maybe it is. Today, she plans on destroying the red menace on the edge of her son’s land. It’s her turn.

—

Saturday:

He’s not sure how many sandstone blocks he’s carved out of the desert at this point, nor how many quartz chips and gold nuggets he’s pulled out of the Netherworld. The villagers know him by name and chat with him when he stops by to trade for emeralds and other goods. His hands bleed gold ichor from the opened blisters dotting his hands, and burns line the edges of his fingertips. Lately, his whole world is rushing by in colors of beige and yellow, green and white and blue. The color red started it, the scramble to build more and more—and it stopped it too, if only for a little while. Ponk asked him for permission to build on his land, told him it was a gift: a peace offering and an apology and a new beginning. It’s a silly build and it doesn’t match the aesthetic of the rest of his summer home, but it warmed his heart, to see the giant red refrigerator rising up from the top of the sand dunes for the first time. Ponk built it just for him. Quackity told him he was alone, and that he didn’t matter if he didn’t assert his powers like he did in the past, and he was wrong. Ponk stays, loves him for who he is now and not for the destruction he wrought.

He doesn’t know what to do now; his father destroyed the build for some grudge she holds against his friend, and he’s exhausted. He’s tired of being pulled into conflict. A vacation from all the tension occurring on his land would not be unwarranted, at this point—a few days, a week. It sounds relaxing—and he’ll do it, he’ll take a vacation, and he’ll tell Ponk that he’s in charge of the summer home later today. He has some packing to do.

—

Sunday:

He likes to splash around the pools and fountains in Las Nevadas when he has to visit. Sometimes he’ll climb up the needle and lean on the bannisters to feel the fresh air ruffling his hair and he thinks about jumping—the air turns hot and stale and the ground burbles up in orange and red—but his brother pulls him out of it, usually. Otherwise the place is boring. He’s not allowed in the gambling den or the club, so he hovers around the forests away from Las Nevadas when Wilbur and Quackity want to speak alone.

Today is one of those days. It’s fine by him; dealing with the two of them together makes him uncomfortable, with the way they push and pull him to their sides. The cigarette smoke lingering on their breaths remind him of the ravine, the explosions from the first war-second -Logstedshire-doomsday-nukes-prison. He’s escaped, for now. The air of the forest is crisp; he can spot flowers in the meadow ahead and he plucks them to form a careless bouquet. Alliums, lilies-of-the-valley, daisies; poppies and cornflowers and dandelions. He threads them together to form crowns and rings, places one on his head and cradles the rest to his chest to stash at home. It’s been a while since he’s made them; before he moved to this land he’d make them for his brother and his brother’s father, the dogs and cows and sheep around the farm. He feels like a child again and his lips twist at the bittersweetness. He’s found himself a bubble and soon Wilbur will barge his way in to speak of his loyalties and Dream and whatever the fuck he’s stormed up with Quackity, but for now, he’ll pick flowers and make chains and chains and chains that, for once, won’t drag him down.

—

Monday’s child is fair of face.

Tuesday’s child is full of grace.

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.

Thursday’s child has far to go.

Fridays’ child is loving and giving.

Saturday’s child works hard for a living.

And the child born on the Sabbath day is bonny and blithe, good and gay.

#again not accurate to the cc's story i just wanted to write something #based on the nursery rhyme but with twists #dsmp #nihachu #philza #awesamdude #jack manifold #captain puffy #foolish gamers #tommyinnit

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wickwrites · 4 years ago

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Burning as a Motif for Humanity in Violet Evergarden

I think, when watching Violet Evergarden, most of us picked up on fire as a motif for Violet’s trauma – the violence and destruction she witnessed in the war, and the violence and destruction she engendered with her own hands. I’m not going to go into this too much because it’s all pretty self-explanatory, if not trite, but here are some quick examples of fire as a motif for her trauma just to lay the groundwork for the rest of the essay:

In frame 1 (episode 8), Violet draws first blood on the battlefield, and the once contained fire from the felled soldiers’ lanterns spread quickly through the forest, a symbol for how one small act of violence can cascade into large scale destruction. In frame 2, Gilbert stares at the carnage in front of him, horrified. In frame 3, the major is shot, and all we get to see is a screen of flames. In frame 4 (episode 12), Merkulov stares into a fire as he schemes about re-kindling the war.

I want to follow this (well trodden) opinion up with a more encompassing statement. That is, fire, in Violet Evergarden, is not limited to representing the destructive power of violence and trauma. Instead, it is a motif for humanity itself – an embodiment of the full range of experiences and emotions that make us human.

To show this, I’m going to start off at the beginning of Violet’s journey, focusing on how her disconnect (from herself as well as others) is illustrated in episode one. For instance, her initial struggle to move her now mechanical arms as she sits in her hospital bed in the opening sequence is an excellent embodiment of her dissociation from her own body and lack of agency. I want to, however, focus on two scenes that are particularly relevant for our discussion:

First, the scene where Violet spills tea on her hand:

And second, the scene where Hodgins insists that Violet is burning:

These scenes are similar: in both, someone asserts that Violet must be in pain, specifically due to burning, and in both, Violet rejects that statement. In the first, however, that burning is physical. And in the second, that burning is emotional. Regardless, Violet is so removed from her own body that she is incapable of feeling either. Her mechanical hand is therefore an embodiment of her inhumanity (ie. her “dollness” or “weapon-ness”). Like her, it is cold, mechanical, insensitive, without life or agency. After all, up until now, all she’s been doing is killing on command, without the ability to think for herself, experience her own pain, or sympathize with her victims’ pain.

When the screen shows that Hodgins is indeed correct, that Violet is literally on fire (frame 1), that fire is depicted with restraint. Flames engulfs Violet’s body, but those flames are from a streetlamp enclosed in glass. It is controlled and distant. This encapsulates Violet’s current state; she is literally on fire, but that fire is so compartmentalized and suppressed, and she is so far removed from her own experience, that she is incapable of feeling it.

In frame 2, we are viewing Violet in a flashback, from Hodgin’s point of view. Although we’re offered a close up shot of her bloodied hands, we see, about two cuts later, that Hodgin is actually observing Violet from afar (frame 2.5). This distance demonstrates that he cannot bring himself to reach out to her, something that Hodgin confesses he feels guilty about literally 5 seconds later. They were, at that point in time, and perhaps even now, unable to connect.

In frames 3 and 4, Hodgin is speaking again. We get this super far shot of Violet’s body. The camera is straight on, objective, and unfeeling. This unsympathetic framing has two functions. First, it distances us from Violet. Our inability to see the details on her face and her relatively neutral body language gives us, the audience, no real way inidication her thoughts. Second, it distances Violet from herself. As someone who experiences dissociative symptoms from PTSD, this is a very poignant way of framing what it feels like to be removed from your own experience. Hodgin’s line, “You’ll understand what I’m saying one day. And, for the first time, you’ll notice all your burn scars,” further drives home the sense that Violet is completely estranged from herself. It almost feels like we are looking at her, from her own detached point of view.

We’re going to move on now, but we’ll get back to these frames later in the analysis, so hold onto them.

Throughout Violet’s journey, fire comes up again and again. Specifically, it shows up in moments of emotional intimacy, connection, and healing. Let’s see what I mean by this:

I have here a collection of moments that all occur at the same narrative point in their respective mini-stories: the moment where one character reaches out to another, sympathizes with them, and literally pulls them of their darkness. For example, frame 1 (episode 3) shows Violet bringing a letter from Luculia to her brother. It expresses Luculia’s gratitude and love for him, and ultimately mends their relationship. In frame 2 (episode 4), Violet and Iris share a moment of emotional intimacy and connection, which is the beginning of Iris’ story’s resolution. In frame 3 (episode 9), Violet’s suicidal despondency is interrupted by the mailman, bringing her a heartwarming letter from all her friends. In frame 4 (episode 11), Violet comforts a dying solder by a fireplace.

It’s not that other modes of lighting do not exist – modern looking lamps show up repeatedly in the show. Even Iris’ rural family has them, so I can reasonably assume that, no, the above moments do not all coincidentally use lamps because that’s all there is in this universe; the usage of fire during moments of catharsis is deliberate, and establishes that fire can also bring hope, kindness, and love.

Now that we’ve explored the dual nature of fire as both destructive/constructive, painful/cathartic, let’s go onto the thesis of my essay. Why do I say that being on fire is to be human? Let’s go back to the scene where Hodgin tells Violet she’s on fire (episode 1, on the left), and compare it to the scene where Violet finally realizes that Hodgin was right and that she is on fire (episode 7, on the right):

In these sequences, there is a notable shift in framing and perspective. In frame 1b, we finally get to see Violet’s blood-stained hands from her point of view, as opposed to from Hodgin’s point of view in 1a. Violet becomes aware of her past as an actual agent choosing to kill, shown through the first-person point of view. Similarly, the medium, straight on shot of Violet looking down at her hands (frame 2a) is replaced with an intimate first-person, close-up view (frame 2b). In shots 3a and 3b, the difference in framing is most pronounced. In 3a, we get this straight on, long shot. In frame 3b, the camera’s detachment is replaced by a claustrophobic closeness. While this framing does an excellent job at conveying the panicked feeling of “everything crashing down all at once”, it also demonstrates Violet’s new-found awareness of herself. While before, the camera was used to alienate, now it is used to create a sense of painful awareness and intimacy.

These series of shots are the first in the entire show, I believe, of Violet's body from her own point of view. Their co-incidence with her awakening self-awareness characterizes the state of “being in one’s body” as a precondition to self-connection, or more specifically, to Violet’s understanding of herself as neither a weapon nor a doll, but as a human. Correspondingly, this pivotal moment serves as a catalyst for her subsequent emotional development. From this episode on towards the finale, we’re launched into a heart wrenching sequence of events: Violet’s desperate grieving for Gilbert’s apparent death, her attempted suicide driven by newfound grief, and most importantly, Violet receiving her first written letter, an act that is strongly representative of genuine human connection. Following these events, Violet’s emotional connection to both herself and others only continues to grow; during her two final jobs of the story, she breaks down crying in response to the suffering of her clients, demonstrating a level of compassion—if not empathy—that she seems to have never been able to tap into before.

At the same time, Violet acquires a new sense of agency, making plot-driving decisions that no longer require other characters’ validations. Most poignantly, in episode 12, she chooses to stay on the train to fight Merkulov, explicitly going against Dietfried’s order for her to leave. Her reason?

She doesn’t want anyone to die anymore.

And it’s this moment, for me, that consolidated her as a character with true agency. Up until now, all her major decisions have been framed in relation to Gilbert: she killed in the war because Gilbert ordered her to, and she became an Auto Memories Doll because she wanted to understand Gilbert’s enigmatic “I love you”. Now, however, her motivation is purely her own—she fights, simply because she doesn’t want anyone else to die. It’s a line implies an intimate knowledge of loss. It’s a sentiment motivated by compassion. It’s a raw and extraordinarily human thing to say.

When Violet embarks on her journey to decipher Gilbert’s love, she is devoid of many traits we consider inherent and possibly even unique to being human—suffering, compassion, altruism, love, agency, and the interplay between them. As an Auto Memories Doll, she learns to live, experiencing all these emotions she had never had the luxury to experience before, and we quickly realize that she cannot know what love is without simultaneously wrestling with her trauma. She learns that yes, sometimes the fire destroys and sometimes it burns, but sometimes it thaws too, and you cannot have one without the other. You cannot choose what the fire does to you; you cannot choose what you want to feel. Thus, to be on fire is to know the anguish of its destruction, but it is also, and more importantly, to know the catharsis of human connection, to be the warm flame that pulls someone else out of the dark, to be pulled out of the dark yourself. To be on fire is to be human.

#violet evergarden #violet evergarden analysis #anime analysis #anime #anime essay #anime meta #violet evergarden meta #analysis #w.writing #w.analysis

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thefallenangelsgang · 3 years ago

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I think I found the man I would have married if I didn't know I was queer...

There's this feeling I get in my chest when I see him. I've realized it's nostalgia and a painful longing for something I've never known. We have this rapport together. We always have even though I've known him for less than 4 years. He's just so sweet and wonderful. And a great person. We've got the same jokey humor and niche interests (he is way into sword fighting, I was a star wars nerd as a kid and knew all the lightsaber forms. We're both musically inclined, love acting, both know a little too much about FNAF that everyone kinda goes WTF when we talk about it. Him because he took a dumb bet that he has to beat all of the games, me because my brother never stops watching game theory.) We can tease each other and randomly wail on each other with our fists without it triggering any of our collective trauma. Yeah he's a dumbass sometimes. I have to tell at him to do stuff and not to do stuff. But he's a teenaged boy. They're all impulsive dumbasses.

We refer to each other as husband and wife after we did a musical where our characters played parental roles to the Lead Male. And even after almost a year we still joke that we need to get our divorce papers filed. And now we're playing two characters getting engaged in the Senior Class Play. And he's gonna be my first kiss because of it.

And I know for certain if I wasn't very much not into men I would be 100% into him

Who am I kidding! I'd be head over heels for him!

But I'm not. I never will be.

And I keep thinking "Thank God I knew I was ace and gay before I met him." Because if I didn't... Boy if I didn't.

If I was the perfect little small town Christian like my old church and school want me to be. I'd image we would be dating. And I imagine we'd have been already dating for a while by now. And I'd be rethinking my career to stay close to him while he goes to school for surveying. And fuck, maybe we'd end up like our characters from the play. Young and engaged and stuck in our shit hole tiny ass hometown. And I know right then is when it would click.

I don't love him romantically. I don't even find him all that attractive either. I'd realize I'd dread having sex. And I would feel like something is deeply wrong with me. And the church would too.

But there isn't. There never was, never has, never would be anything wrong with me being a Genderqueer Asexual Lesbian. And there isn't anything wrong with me loving him platonically. I'm just sad because I've met someone who would be the love of my life under different circumstances. Because for all I know it could be another 17 years before I actually meet them.

I've always loved and loved fiercely. But now I understand why heartache comes with love. And why loving so flippantly can be dangerous. Will I continue to love everyone in my life frankly? Yes. Will heartache stop me? No.

Just be gentle with your heart and everyone else's. Allow it to grieve. But let it feel joy too. And childlike wonder. Life isn't all that bad. I promise.

#a love letter to everyone

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fernsplaysthings · 4 years ago

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Here’s about 2.7k words about Birds.

There’ll be more. Eventually.

Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider.

“He must know we could just kill him? I’ve killed Gods. He’s just an overstuffed Ether pinata.”

Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider.

Roost’s shell shivers like the wings of an agitated insect and he turns his single eye towards his Guardian, squinting across at them in judgement. The ornament, a tiny replica of a Vex Harpy, does make the whole spectacle a little sillier than he wants but the impact, he hopes, will be the same. Nestled in the seat of their jumpship Kestral swings their vision away from their descent into the tattered islands of the Reef to take in the scolding Ghost.

“I’m not going to kill him,” they almost whine defensively, “He just needs to know I could if I wanted to. Especially if he tries anything shitty with you. ”

The impression of a sigh sounds from the little light, “Nothing’s going to happen to me, Kes. I know we’ve seen a lot of loss and pain. Sundance, Sagira, Glint. I know some ghosts - the other kind - are showing their faces and it’s...it’s hard for you to put your feelings together. But…” Roost presses into the crook of Kestral’s neck with some force, finding rest in the collar of fur that covers their shoulders, “...You’ll always have me. We’ll have each other.”

Silence. The Ghost’s eye swivels upwards towards his Guardian’s face after waiting a moment to see if the prolonged quiet pulled a reply from them. Their face was blank and stoney and it took a moment for them to realise they were being watched intently.

Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider. Be nice to Spider.

“Stop trying to make me cry while I’m concentrating, you fuck.”

---

“Alright Kestral. The line’s secure. It’s just you, me and Roost.”

The Young Wolf sighs heavily, “Glint is it really a good idea for me to keep coming back here?”

They’d been jumping back and forth to the Shore for a short while now, meeting up with Crow for a run down on the Wrathborn situation and where they were in the general scheme of things. It’d be fine. Once the Celebrant was dead they could part ways and the Young Wolf could go back to their normal day to day activities. And their own normal thoughts. Because holy shit debating the morality of what they were doing and juggling the complex feeling of seeing the former Prince of the Reef’s face regularly, with the fact that the New Light had nothing to do with…

...that.

It was stressful. And not ‘God slaying’ stressful. Not even embracing the Darkness stressful. Wading into the depths and heights of the fabled Deep Stone Crypt, although unique in it’s inflicted trauma - poor Artemis - hadn’t put them in the same situation. Killing came with it’s own special kind of low. Grieving was a totally different monster.

“I understand why you’re worried but he remembers nothing. Plus, he looks up to you,” the little Light sounds concerned, his synthesised voice with a pleading edge. He obviously and proudly loved his Guardian, “You’re the first kind face he’s seen and I - we would appreciate it. A lot, Kestral.”

Another heavier sigh and the Hunter kneaded at their temples, bracing themselves to see that face again. Reliving the moment - moments? - over again in their mind. Cayde’s final rattling words. Uldren’s futile attempts to reason his way out from the sights of Petra’s gun. The new confounding idea that they now felt something aside from pity for the man that had been laid out on the floor unready to die.

“We’ll be in the lair in a few minutes. Let Spider know we’re on our way.”

“Will do, Guardian. We’re looking forward to seeing you!”

---

Coming face to face with the man that inhabited the body of Uldren Sov was a little less jarring these days and, although still entirely uncomfortable and a little like walking on eggshells at all times, they did kind of look forward to the quick wit - without the underlying loathing he’d always had before - and how damn earnest he was. A real Guardian, determined with all his heart to help people around him.

It was endearing. Unfortunately.

Mostly because it reminded them a little of their early Guardian days. Way back when things were somehow both simpler and more difficult. When they’d known that they wanted to help wherever they saw pain and danger but unsure of who they were and what cause they were fighting for aside from the driving urge to protect...

Even when they’d end up carrying the resulting hurt with them when they left.

Long before the ‘Young Wolf’ was an icon amongst Guardians, Kestral had been sweet and earnest themself. Driven but alone. Aside from Roost, of course. And despite the fact that the face and voice of their newest member of the flock had haunted their nightmares for months they still didn’t want ‘Guardian-hood’ to break him down too. For him to succumb to the slow process of losing himself to the need to help, whatever the cost.

Shared burdens and all that.

Plus Kestral liked to think that they had a good bit of experience under their belt to pass on to him so perhaps he’d find himself happily surrounded in the Guardian ‘culture’ one day soon.

“With Savek defeated and a good number of Wrathborn taken care of I think our next target is somewhere near the mines to the north.”

Crow stands over his cluttered desk, a map somewhat resembling the Tangled Shore spread beneath his hands and marked with crosses in seemingly random locations. One of them they recognised, Sjursrest, where the Wrathborn Eliksni Savek had been called. She hadn’t been the worst enemy to fight and Spider had left them alone for a while afterwards. Apparently he was mildly generous after they’d achieved a small goal.

Naturally the generosity only lasted until another of his shipments suddenly vanished and then it was straight back to work for his poor underling.

“You think the smaller Wrathborn might lead us straight to them again?”

He turns his attention to the Hunter at his side, a head shorter than himself - if you didn’t include the nest of hair in their high ponytail - and catches their gaze. They really wanted to hate that glowing yellow stare but...it was softer than Uldren’s had ever been when looking at them. Held less contempt for what they were.

It didn’t feel like he was sizing them up for a coffin.

Realising he’d been looking a little too long, perhaps uncomfortable with the Hunter’s unnervingly steady returned look, Crow cleared his throat, “If you try the lure at the Cryptolith again we can see where it leads.”

“Sounds good to me,” they reply, stepping back from the map and holding out a palm for Roost to transmat into, “I’ll keep in touch. Unless you’ll be joining me this time?”

The slightly clunky sound of Glint’s shell as he twisted in alarm snapped Kestral away from Roost and they arched an eyebrow.

“Crow, I know you want to help but you have to stay out of sight.”

His shoulders visibly slouch and Kestral hated how defeated he looked when, knowing the ache of feeling useless, they understood how much he wanted to be out there. It made sense to keep him secreted away though, just in case a single Guardian out on the Shore recognised his face and matched him to his former life. Just in case they felt the need to let him know that they knew what he’d done. If Kestral hadn’t been sure that Uldren deserved death even at the end of their hunt, this man, completely unconnected in everything but appearance, definitely didn’t deserve the abuse he’d suffered at the hands of other Lightbearers like them.

Why did Glint have to mention them being the first friendly Guardian he’d seen?

Crow straightened up, his momentary lapse in drive apparently a small hiccough and shot a grin over to his Ghost, “I see, you want to keep me all to yourself. I can’t blame you.”

With that Kestral decided they’d seen enough wholesome Light interactions for the day and threw up a lax salute before turning on their heel and heading for the exit.

“Glint has our feed, if you find anything new let us know.”

---

The following week happened to be the beginning of the Tower’s Dawning celebration. Having taken down yet another of the big Wrathborn, a heavy shank that decided to be the biggest pain in their ass, Kestral assumed that Spider could give the newest addition to his collection a small break to enjoy a mini version of the festivities. Since Glint had explained that their last Dawning had been ‘difficult’ - Kestrel preferred the term ‘emotionally scarring’ - they’d taken it upon themself, with a little prodding from Roost, to see to it that Crow at least received some traditional cookies from at least one Guardian.

Sadly, letting the rest of the fireteam know that the body of Uldren Sov walked again and that of all people Kestral, bringer of his demise, was taking him cookies…

Yeah they didn’t have time to unpack that.

So one tin of cookies (varied flavours), a string of tiny lights shaped like engrams, two servings of powdered hot chocolate (marshmallows stored separately) and a small gift wrapped delicately in a bow made their way aboard the jumpship storage before they travelled to the Tangled Shore.

A mote of panic made its way into their mind as they landed and gathered the items; what if he didn’t like any of this? They could just leave the goods on the ship and not have to worry about being mocked...or making him feel patronised by their silly traditions. Roost’s slitted glare forced them to continue though. He completely believed Crow and Glint would appreciate the gestures and Kestral hoped that he’d been speaking with the new Lightbearer’s Ghost to confirm as much. Either that or Roost had far too much faith in his goofy Guardian’s ideas on ‘welcoming’ and ‘festivities’.

Of course all that was immediately followed by the slap in the face that was ‘realising they wanted Crow to be happy’ and decided to focus on fitting everything in their arms instead.

Naturally the easiest way to get everything to the lair would have been to transmat it all at the same time, but something had to be said for riding up with a stack of goodies. Plus Spider hated it when they rolled in on their sparrow and ditched it in the corridor for a while before sending it away. He’d not been impressed on seeing that his (least) favourite Guardian seemed to have something other than work on their mind but he said little about it. Kestrel strode by quickly regardless because any conversation with Spider that could be avoided, should be.

Glint heard them before they’d rounded the corner, floating just out of view of the entrance, little eye lighting up brighter when he realised who’d turned up. And that they had stuff.

“You didn’t warn us!”

Kestrel struck an awkward pose, upper body ladened with their bounty, “Surprise?”

Crow’s head peeked around into the corridor soon after they’d spoken, a small tilt of the head and raised eyebrow as he glanced towards Glint questioningly. The Ghost simply rounded on Kestral and Roost, nudging them into the room before spinning excitedly.

“What is all this?”

Although trying not to meet his confused face - for fear, embarrassment or shame - the Hunter realised they’d need some extra arms to sort things out. Especially since Crow’s work surfaces seemed to be partially covered in machinery and scrap, with the other parts covered in grease and...Hive gunk? No matter what it was, it was no place for cookies. Placing the small stack in his arms Kestral quickly slung the lights over...something...and powered them up.

The small ‘oh’ could’ve come from either Glint or Crow, they weren’t sure.

“Do you have somewhere sort of clean to sit?”

Glancing over to a seat fashioned from assorted stuff Crow made a pained grimace, “Not going to lie I’m not exactly used to having guests.”

No matter. An ‘only slightly ruined dust sheet’ thrown over it and Kestral was satisfied that it would do for something to sit on for a bit. They took the mini festive haul back from Crow and gestured for him to perch as they held out the tin of cookies.

“I wasn’t sure what flavour you like so…” their smile was awkward, “Yeah. I made a bunch.”

“A bunch of what?”

The Ghosts’ simultaneous outbursts made both Lightbearers startle a little and when Glint settled into a very gentle description of Dawning cookie traditions Kestral took their seat beside him, swinging their legs up to hug their knees.

“Dig in. I bought hot drinks too.”

During the time taken for Kestral to find a comfortable position and for Roost to nestle into his favourite resting spot - Kestrel’s fluffy shoulders - Crow had taken bites of, what looked like, one of each cookie flavour and Glint was telling him which flavours they probably were. Once again Kestral found themself forgetting some of the weird past involving the body beside them, and investing themself in how engrossed in trying cookies he was. How much fun Glint was having talking about festivals now that they’d both finally been able to experience a bit. How much more there was to come and-

“Sorry, do you want some?”

The Hunter blinked up at him, “They’re all yours. I don’t want to help myself to your gift.”

“Glint sa-” the little Ghost tapped a point of his shell against Crow’s face and the New Light stuttered, “Thank you, Kestral. Roost.”

A saccharine warmth filled their chest for a moment, Roost’s shell fluttering again at the shared happiness and pride. They wanted to hate it so much. ‘Past Kestral’ screamed internally about grief and pain and weariness. ‘Present Kestral’ was tired of that and kind of liked the soft smile on their companion’s face - just because they knew they’d helped, nothing else of course - and the way his little Light seemed to buzz with the sheer affection at seeing his Guardian content.

“One more thing,” they press the small gift into his hands, “Don’t get too excited.”

The Awoken’s slightly blank stare prompted Glint into another explanation about how ‘the paper’s actually meant to be removed’ and so on, Kestral mesmerised - oh no - watching him deftly undo the bow they’d worked quite hard to form, reel the ribbon into a roll and then carefully unwrap the paper, Glint all the while egging him on to tear it open since ‘gifts are supposed to be exciting’.

It wasn’t an exciting gift but they did what they could.

On the Crow’s lap lay a folded pile of thick wool and fleece, edges neatly stitched into tidy seams. The deep red of the main body of fabric seemed to be the ideal colour based on what he wore but...well, Roost had said it was a good idea. He’d unfolded it with care, running his hands over the plush underside of the item, that same soft smile on his face.

“Aha, a cosy blanket.”

“I’m sorry if it’s not much I-”

“No! No, it’s...nice. Spider doesn’t supply much in the way of luxury, and…” his voice was a kind laugh as he gestured down to his lap where Glint had already made himself a nest in the folds of the blanket, “...I think it’ll be well used.”

Kestral hadn’t intended to spend almost a full day on the Shore chattering with Crow but somewhere along the way, later into the evening, they’d dug out a camping stove, filled a pan with water and made up two hot chocolates by the colourful glow of the string lights. The pair had settled down, opposite ends of the makeshift bench, feet messily thrown somewhere on the ‘seat’ between them, warm cups in hand. And at some point while immersed in talk of other festivals celebrated at the tower, the blanket had made its way from just covering Crow’s knees to being shared across them both.

Underneath the lively Guardians’ conversation the pair of Lights quietly decided that this might become a little more complicated than they’d anticipated.

#destiny 2 #d2 #young wolf x crow #kestral //

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kkeidawrites · 4 years ago

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Betrayed

A/N: Please be advised, this chapter contains post Season 3 (which I still think should have never happened), post trauma, panic attack, and anxiety. If you are uncomfortable or go through this presently about reading this chapter please feel free to leave the chapter, I understand wholeheartedly.

Happy Reading and here’s Part 8!

Trevor had set Alucard in a living room Esmé remembers seeing when she first stayed with Alucard, sitting him in a lounge chair. He stood behind the dhampir, his hand still wrapped tightly on the handle of his whip while Sypha took a step close to him and Esmé hanged back a bit to watch Alucard’s still form.

He had yet to come out of his unconscious state and Esmé was growing anxious. She saw the look he gave when she called out his birth name and with that she felt he was breaking out of his angered state, even for a few seconds.

Suddenly, Alucard’s eyes shot open and he looked around in a panic, hissing from the sting of the blessed whip that still kept him bound.

“Please, remain calm, Alucard. We don’t want to hurt you, my friend.” Sypha raised her hands up in defense and Alucard reared back in fear. His amber eyes were filled with terror, something very uncharacteristic of the dhampir.

“Please, Alucard...tell us what has happened to you. Why were you attacking Esmé?” Alucard didn’t answer as he looked at Sypha, in his shattered state his eyes and mind did not see his former travelling companion but, Sumi instead.

Sypha (Sumi) reached a hand out towards Alucard and the dhampir hissed at her making the speaker take a step back from how he hissed so harshly at her. Oh, yes, something definitely wrong.

“Don’t touch me!” the roar made everyone jump and Esmé felt her heart shatter.

“Alucard, we’re here to help you,” Esmé tried and Alucard shook his head, turning away from her.

“Liars!”

“Oy! Quit this shit, and listen!” Trevor pulled on the whip and Alucard grunted in pain.

“No! You’re just like them! They are the ones who lied!” he continued his rant and the three humans looked at one another in concern. Esmé felt it appropriate to address him.

“Who were they, Adrian?” Esmé tried, her voice was quiet, coaxing him to tell them more.

There was silence when Esmé asked the question and Alucard was back in his memories once more, that fateful night once more playing through his mind.

“Release me...” the plea startled the three humans and they watched as his head dropped in defeat.

“Please let me go...I didn’t lie to you...” he whimpered.

Esmé couldn’t take it anymore, the state he was in frightened her. She took a hesitant step towards him and then another until she was by his side. Kneeling down beside him, Esmé watched as tears rolled down his cheeks, she wanted to find out what was causing him so much pain.

Then it hit her, she could what he sees. One of the many abilities she had learned when staying with him all those months ago. Psychometry.

Esmé’s face turned serious as she stood back up and looked at Trevor.

“Let him go.” she said calmly.

“Have you lost your sanity?!” Trevor bellows looking bewildered by her proclamation and Sypha’s face mirrored his expression as well.

“Just trust me. He won’t hurt us.” Esmé told her companions as she folded her hands in front of her.

Still hesitant to let the whip loose, he turns to Sypha who shrugged and Trevor looked back at Esmé who was watching Alucard calmly and collectively.

“And what if he tries to kill us?” Trevor questions.

Esmé’s eyes turned to Trevor’s and she frowned briefly then returned to Alucard her facial features relaxing once more.

“You’re a big boy. I’m sure you can handle yourself against a vampire.”

“That isn’t a good enough reason to-”

“Trevor!” Sypha’s voice interrupted his retort and the man turned to his lover who held a glare and he gritted his teeth in annoyance.

“Fine,” he began unraveling the whip around the dhampir.

“But, if he kills us-”

“Then you can haunt me until the end of time, nagging to me about being right.” Esmé says and watched as the final length of the leather whip left Alucard’s body.

The golden haired man sat still in the chair, tears still rushing down his cheeks and Esmé took a small step towards him and Alucard raised his hands to block any type of physical contact with anyone.

“Adrian,” Esmé called in a hush tone and slowly got down on her knees.

“Adrian, I want to do something, that will help me see what you see. Do I have your permission to do this?” she asked.

Esmé waited patiently as the man before her still cowers, his tears had been stopped but, the look of fear remained in his eyes.

“S-See w-what?” he questions.

“To see your pain. To see who ‘they’ are. I won’t do anything without your full consent, Adrian. You know me.” Esmé says, keeping her voice even and hushed.

Alucard watched her for a few seconds and for just a fleeting moment his tormented mind did not see the apparitions of either Sumi or Taka. His eyes finally focused on Esmé, the Esmé he had been longing to see since she departed from the castle two months ago.

This was the woman who had helped him grieve, and heal after the passing of his father and doing everything in her power to make him feel better.

His mind filled with memories he and Esmé spent together in the weeks they spent in the castle after Dracula’s death. All the times they spent in his mother’s garden helping it flourish again, the hours they would spend in the library reading a book together, training and sparing the endless games of tag or hide and seek they would play in and out of the castle or the little spells that he would teach her.

And how could he forget how he fell in love with her. Her headstrong attitude and doting mother hen like personality is what made him want to grow closer to her, to learn her. After they would have a large fight, she was always the first one to know how to tend to a wound. Using the herbs she could find as they traveled and adding it to her collection for later use even teaching Alucard and the others what each plant and herb entailed.

In a way she was like his mother, Esmé would stand for what she thought was right, never took anything for granted, or let anything stop her because of her gender.

Magic and any other arts of spells and medicine was apparently forbidden in this day and age but Esmé, she didn’t care. Someone was learning and writing these spells and what best way to use them is by learning?

Nothing could stop her and he knew that nothing would stop her, as long as she lived and breathed on this Earth, no man, or creature could tell her otherwise.

Alucard’s eyes slowly morphed into the warm golden irises she was familiar with and Esmé gave him a small smile.

“It’s you...Esmé.” his breathless declare came out of his twitching lips.

Esmé felt her heart soar with merriment and she nodded in affirmation.

“Yes, Adrian. I have come to see you once more; to help you as I have done in the past.” Esmé felt herself begin to choke up as he was finally breaking from his shelled state.

“May I?” Esmé asks once more and Alucard looked a bit hesitant. The last time he allowed someone to touch him, they wanted to hurt him and he moved back in fear.

“I swear to you, Adrian. I will not hurt you. If you feel uncomfortable at all then...you may kill me.” Sypha gasped at her friend’s declare and turned to her.

“Esmé you can’t!”

“Sypha, I trust him, and besides...” Esmé took a deep breath as she thought about the next words she would tell the group.

“I know what the risks are, I trust Adrian,” Esmé looked up at Alucard again who was watching her carefully.

“And I hope he trust me as well.” she said her smile returning to her lips.

The final say had to come from Alucard and everyone waited in anticipation to hear the dhampir’s answer.

With a hesitant nod, Alucard gave her his silent answer and Esmé slowly rose to her feet. Alucard’s eyes followed her up, taking her in as he did the first time they met.

Esmé slowly raised her hands and reached out to touch the top of his head.

Alucard flinched again at the close proximity and Esmé immediately halted.

“Whenever you feel uncomfortable Adrian, you may do what you must to fight me off.” she tells him.

Hearing the sincerity in her voice, Alucard’s head titled forward invitingly and Esmé placed her hands on top of his head. Her hands began to glow a soft white and she closed her eyes in concentration.

“Just guide me through your mind, Adrian. I will follow you.” she whispers to him and Alucard felt his eyes grow heavy as a weird sensation hummed around his body.

“Take me inside Adrian, and let me see the pain that torments you so.”

End of Part 8

1// 2// 3// 4// 5// 6// 7// 8// 9// 10//

#betrayed pt. 8 #fanfiction #my writing #Alucard #castlevania!alucard x reader #alucard x reader #adrian tepes x reader #adrian tepes #black oc #black!reader #black reader #Castlevania #castlevania oc #castlevania x reader #netflix castlevania

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thegizka · 4 years ago

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Swift as Wind, Soft as Shadow

Chapter 7: Future

Three days after the end of the war, Temari is preparing to return to Suna, but there's one task to complete in Allied Shinobi camp before she can return home with a clear conscience.

Inspired by ShikaTema Week 2019 Day 5: Surprise Gifts.

Note: Sorry it took over a year to get an update, but for some reason, this chapter felt like pulling teeth. I restarted it several times until I found something satisfying enough to continue the story. Thank you for your patience! I'll do my best not to take so long with the next update.

Read it on Ao3.

Temari wandered through the Allied Shinobi Camp. It was much smaller than it had been before the war. The Iwagakure and Kirigakure forces had already returned home, and the bulk of the shinobi from the other countries were rebuilding their villages. Gaara and Kankuro had left her to take care of Suna’s remaining matters in the camp.

Three days of collecting the final effects of the deceased and packaging them for delivery to their next of kin. Three days of gathering all Suna documents and securing them to return to the village. It was meticulous, emotionally draining work, but someone had to do it.

Right now, though, she had given herself a different assignment. As the camp settled down for the evening, Temari wove through the tents looking for someone. She hadn’t expected to see him here, but mentions of him and glimpses in passing were hard to deny. She had a few things to say to him before she returned to Suna tomorrow.

She pinpointed his spiritual pressure as the last streaks of golden sunset faded into lavender and blue. Shikamaru was sitting on a stack of crates at the edge of the camp, his head tilted back to look at the emerging stars. She watched him take a drag from a cigarette. Since when had he started smoking? That made her hesitate for a moment. She hadn’t been able to speak to him since the end of the war so she wasn’t sure what his mental state was like. She could only surmise based on glimpses and whispers, and the fact that he was here and not home. She shook off her hesitation and strode forward.

“Come with me,” she said in a low voice, hooking her arm around his and not breaking momentum.

“What the hell?” Shikamaru sputtered, resisting her pull. “Temari?”

“Obviously,” she grumbled. “Come on.”

“What are you doing?” he sighed, though he reluctantly plodded after her. She dropped his arm when she felt he wasn’t going to run away.

“Just come on.”

She could feel his eyes studying her with a mix of amusement and exasperation. She was thankful for the rapport they’d built over the years. A normal shinobi would never follow someone from another nation to an unknown location in the middle of the night. At least, normally they wouldn’t. Things were different now that they’d united to fight a war. Something had shifted in shinobi society, and it was both thrilling and frightening.

“How far are we going?” Shikamaru asked with a heavy exhale. The smell of tobacco smoke drifted around her, making her nose wrinkle involuntarily.

“When did you start smoking?”

He didn’t answer, so she glanced over her shoulder at him.

“Does it matter?” he sighed.

“I’m not judging you,” she said, which was mostly true. He’d been through a lot. She couldn’t judge if he had found his own coping mechanism.

“Then why did you ask?”

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t ready to admit that she was a little upset that she hadn’t known. Or that she thought there were better ways to deal with trauma. There were other things she wanted to say first.

“Okay,” she said instead, climbing over a mound of churned earth into a large crater littered with downed trees. “This should be good.” The war had altered the landscape, which was to be expected when literal gods took to the battlefield. Those proficient in earth-style jutsus had helped to clear the main travel paths and nearby settlements, but the world would carry the scars of this war forever.

“Now what?” Shikamaru asked, grinding what was left of his cigarette under his heel. Temari turned to face him.

“Fight me.”

“What?” he scoffed. She never broke eye contact. He looked tired. There were dark circles under his eyes and stubble on his chin. He looked worn and a little broken.

“Fight me.”

“You brought me all the way out here for sparring practice?” The attitude was leaving his voice. “It’s nearly ten thirty. You should be back at your tent getting ready for bed.”

“No, I should be right here fighting you. Now come on!”

“Why?” he demanded. “You don’t even have your fan.”

“I don’t need my fan to fight.” She punched, and he reacted on instinct, turning aside and blocking. She didn’t give him a chance to back away, pivoting to send her knee at his side, but he stepped into her and shoved her with his shoulder. She used the proximity to grab his arm and flip him, but he rolled with the momentum and brought her tumbling after him.

“Temari, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded while she kicked at him. He grunted as her foot connected with his hip.

“What do you think?” She rolled away before he could grab her ankle and popped up onto her feet.

“Why are we fighting?” Shikamaru was gritting his teeth, a sign that he was frustrated. Good. He hadn’t shut down his feelings.

“You tell me.” She kicked at him again and he dodged, but she didn’t slow down, keeping him on the defensive.

“Stop it,” he growled, trying to grab her next punch, but she pulled back before he got a good grip.

“Make me.”

“Why are you being so troublesome?” He threw a fake punch to throw off her rhythm, following up with a strike at her stomach, which she easily deflected.

“Why aren’t you in Konoha?” she shot back, glad that he was actually attacking her now.

“Why aren’t you in Suna?” he mimicked.

“Why are you smoking?”

“Why does it matter?”

“Why aren’t you sleeping at night?”

“How is it your business?”

“Why is it so hard to admit you’re in pain?” Temari kicked some loose earth into his face, distracting him long enough to kick the back of his knees and pin him down with his arm behind his back and her knee on his spine.

“Is that what this is all about?” he groaned. “Yes, I am in pain. Your knee is breaking my back.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“What do you want from me, Temari?”

“I want you to talk to me,” she admitted with more emotion in her voice than she would have liked. “I want you to prove that you won’t let this eat away at you because I’ve been there, Shikamaru. I’ve lost two parents. I sat on my grief until it festered into an empty anger and a perverted sense of duty. I neglected my brothers. I neglected myself. All I focused on was not disappointing a mother I barely knew and a father who didn’t know me. That’s been a burden I’ve carried since I was three, and I still struggle with it.”

“Temari,” he said softly, but she cut him off.

“I’m not done.” She took a shaky breath. “I saw my father during the war. I came face-to-face with him for a minute, and you know what? I said nothing. After five years of wondering if he’s proud of me, if I’m living up to the legacy he left behind, I had nothing to say to him. Because he no longer has a right to my life. My mother doesn’t, either. They’re dead. I’m alive. My life is my own.

“Your father was a great man,” she continued. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t want him to be proud of you. But you’re still alive. You get to choose how to live. And part of that is choosing how you grieve. You can sit on it and carry it for the rest of your life, or you can let yourself embrace it and learn to move on. I think you know which is the better option.”

Temari focused on regulating her breathing while Shikamaru absorbed her words. She didn’t like talking about her parents. It brought a lot of mixed emotions and complicated memories to mind. But she also didn’t like not knowing if he’d be okay. Last time he’d lost someone close to him, it had taken time to find a healthy way to grieve.

“Temari,” he said in a low voice, and she braced for whatever deep conversation would be coming, “could you get off of me now? My arm’s falling asleep.”

She shuffled aside so he could sit up, shaking out the arm she had pinned.

“Did you really have to drag me all the way out here and fight me to tell me that?”

“I needed to be sure you would listen.”

He stopped his stretching to look directly at her.

“Temari, I’ll always listen to you.”

“When you want to, sure.”

“I’m serious.” He leaned forward, and she was thankful for the dim light which hid the emotions on her face. “We don’t always see eye to eye, but I value your perspective and your friendship. You tell me what I need to hear, so whenever you talk, I will listen.”

“So if I tell you smoking is a bad habit and you should stop, you will?”

“I said I would listen. I never promised to obey,” he chuckled.

“Well I still have time to change your mind.”

“What a drag,” he said with something like affection.

They lapsed into silence for a moment. Night bugs buzzed in the background, a promise that life would continue after the ravages of war. Despite the dim light and the fact that she had just opened up about her parents’ deaths, Temari didn’t feel uncomfortable. She and Shikamaru were well beyond the bounds of a typical friendship.

“So you are okay?” she asked eventually.

“Yeah, I will be.” He leaned back to look at the sky. The stars were blinking into recognizable constellations. “I’ve learned how to grieve and I know how to live while honoring those I’ve lost.”

“There’s no route to revenge this time.”

“That’s fine. I’m actually kind of glad. There’s been enough death and vengeance in the past few days.” He reached into his inner vest pocket. Temari expected him to pull out a pack of cigarettes, but his hand emerged holding the battered lighter that used to be Asuma’s. He fiddled with it in his hands but didn’t ignite the flame.

“Are you okay?” Suddenly he was looking at her intently. Even in the dark, she could feel the weight of his gaze and knew she couldn’t hide the truth. Memories of the war that had kept her up at night flooded into her waking thoughts. There were faces of shinobi she hadn’t known but whose deaths she had witnessed. There were her brothers, hurt and exhausted but prepared to fight facing their own deaths. There were the empty eyes of her reanimated father, bereft of pride and all but the faintest recognition. There were those desperate moments when she had felt Shikamaru’s life slipping away and been helpless to save him.

But they had won the war. Her brothers were safe. Shikamaru was alive and beside her now. In time, this reality would overcome those memories, and she would heal, too.

“I will be,” Temari promised, echoing his earlier answer.

He nodded, apparently satisfied with her response. He returned to observing the heavens and fiddling with the lighter, and she counted the stars while sneaking glances at him. Now that she had the time to look past the signs of fatigue, she could see the calm and intention in his features. The tragedy of his loss was still there, but it was different from what she had seen after Asuma’s death. She wasn’t worried that he would go rogue in an attempt to alleviate the pain. He was grounded and purposeful. Not for the first time, she was aware of how much he had grown and matured. Her heart swelled with a warm feeling that was both unfamiliar and intoxicating. She had to look away before it overwhelmed her.

“So you’re returning to Suna tomorrow, right?” he asked.

“I am.” Temari thought of her home and her brothers who were waiting for her. She missed the sand and the sun and the wind. “It will be nice to get back to something like normal.”

“Whatever that looks like now.”

“Yet another thing we’ll have to figure out.”

Shikamaru grunted in agreement. The lighter in his hand stilled. A moment later, he sighed and tucked it back into his vest pocket. He stood and stretched a bit before offering her a hand.

“Come on. There’s something I want to show you.”

Temari knew it was late, but it was only fair to go along with him after she’d hauled him all the way out here to fight. She let him help her to her feet. Did his hand linger on hers a little longer than necessary? Perhaps, but she didn’t pull away. He let go when he turned to lead her back toward the camp.

“How’s your mother doing?” she asked after a few moments of comfortable silence.

“She’s hanging in there,” Shikamaru sighed. “It’s not easy to lose the person you love.”

“You’re not in Konoha with her.”

“She doesn’t want me there. I have a job to do.”

Temari tried to see his face, but they were moving too fast and it was too dark to read his expression. Normally she’d expect families to grieve together, but the Naras came from different stock. Shikaku had always had a strong sense of duty, and his son had inherited that same will. Yoshino wouldn’t let either of them shrink away from their responsibilities, even when she was heartbroken, even when it meant sacrificing her family. She was the strongest woman that Temari knew, but even the strongest needed someone to lean on sometimes.

“I probably won’t be able to visit for a while. Give my sympathy to your mother. And look after her.”

“Yeah yeah, I know.”

“Shikamaru, please.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll tell her,” he promised. “You should write to her, though. She’d appreciate it.”

Temari didn’t think a few pages of writing would be sufficient to convey sympathy and comfort, but it was all she could do for now.

They slowed as they reentered the camp. Temari followed him towards the Konoha tents, her curiosity buzzing. What was he planning to show her? Had he intended to share whatever it was from the start, or was it an afterthought from their conversation and fight?

“In here,” he said, holding aside the flap of a tent. She hesitated a moment, aware of how entering his tent might be perceived by others. But there were few people around at this hour, and she and Shikamaru were known friends. She stepped inside.

Temari wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but his tent was decidedly plain. He lit the lamp hanging in the center of the small space, revealing a cot, a tiny foldable table and stool, and a travel pack. He hadn’t tidied his bed after last night’s rest, and he’d thrown one of his vests on top of his pack. There was just enough laziness evident to be on brand, but not enough to significantly hinder a speedy exit if necessary. She supposed her tent would look much the same, albeit tidier.

“Have a seat,” he invited, indicating the small stool. She balanced on the wobbly little seat while he dug through his pack to find whatever it was he wanted to show her. Her curiosity peaked when he pulled out two scrolls and a handful of papers, passing them to her over the small table.

“Take a look at these and let me know what you think.”

Shikamaru took a seat on the edge of his cot while she looked over the papers. They were covered in his somewhat lazy scrawl, and the edits and margin notes indicated he had revisited the text several times since first setting pen to paper. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he just gestured for her to keep reading, so she did.

Temari could feel his eyes on her as she made her way through the papers and scrolls. No doubt he was searching for any reaction to give him some idea of what she thought, but she was good at keeping her reactions neutral. Not that she wanted to disguise her thoughts from him. There was a lot she wanted to discuss in these pages, but she knew he would patiently wait for her to organize her response. She wanted to be thorough.

Several minutes of silence passed before she set the final scroll down on the little table. Temari looked at Shikamaru with his tired eyes and the weight of his grief with a new respect. She was impressed with his work, especially given the current circumstances.

“So?” he prompted, eager to hear her thoughts.

“It’s a good start,” she said, flipping through some of the pages, “a really good start. Have you talked to any of the kage about this?”

“Not yet. Like you said, it’s just a start. I want to get a more comprehensive plan outlined before submitting a proposal.”

“You don’t want to wait too long to get the process started,” she warned, drawing on her many years of Suna politics to inform her advice. “Cooperation between the nations could wane as we start returning to our villages. You’ll want to capitalize on the general goodwill as much as you can. And get Naruto to help when you talk to the other nations.”

“You don’t think I can convince them myself?” he asked wryly. Temari looked at him. He probably could. He’d earned respect throughout the shinobi world for his actions during the war.

“The kage like him,” she said with a shrug. “Plus it’ll mean less work for you.”

“Thanks for looking out for me,” he smirked. The way he smiled, strangely soft behind the amusement, made her feel warm. She looked away, letting the papers in her hands provide a distraction.

“A shinobi union of all of the hidden villages,” she mused quietly. Shikamaru had been thinking of the future even while dealing with the aftermath of the war. Reading through his notes and ideas, she could see the future he wanted to build. She wanted it to come true, and if anyone could make it happen, she was sure Shikamaru could.

“Suna will support the proposal,” she promised. “This is exactly the sort of thing Gaara would want to come out of the war.”

“Can I count on your help, then?” He shifted forward, looking at her intently. The earnestness surprised her.

“It’s pretty late,” she said. Suddenly she didn’t want to return to Suna right away in the morning. There was so much more work to be done.

Shikamaru burst into laughter, catching her off guard.

“I’m not going to figure all of this out tonight,” he chuckled, gesturing to the pile of paper. “But it will take me twice as long if I try and do it all myself. There’s also value in a contributing perspective that originates outside of Konoha. If this starts in collaboration, it would provide a better foundation for the shinobi union. I could use your help, Temari. What do you say?”

She remembered his promise to always listen when she spoke. He was offering her a place in the future he was building. Would she be up to the task?

“I say that I’m going to need a copy of what you have so far if you want me to help,” she decided. “Do you have an extra scroll?”

He grinned as he pulled the requested scroll and a brush from his pack and handed them to her.

“Glad to have you on board.”

“You’re just happy to have someone else to do the work,” she teased, starting to copy the main points of the plan onto the blank paper.

“Maybe, but you always say yes when I ask.”

She hated how confidently he said it but delighted in the implied trust between them. Still, she couldn’t be too predictable or she’d lose her reputation for being troublesome. She’d make an effort to keep him on his toes, whatever future they built together.

#shikatema #naruto #nara shikamaru #temari #kaze queen #my words #fanfiction #allied shinobi forces #the fic lives!!#sorry for the wait!#sawsas

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dansiere · 5 years ago

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LITTLE CHARACTER THINGS

Just a fun little character game. Fill in the below categories with 3-5 things that your character can be identified by. Repost & tag away !

TAGGED BY: @reantte & @chaoswilled, who both like to see me suffer. TAGGING: it’s a wonderful meme thus I encourage you all to go ahead & steal it [just tag me when you do]; @handspoken / @balletshoes, @huntershowl, @kissafist, @spiraledheart, @mettatoniic, @inhumanistic, @breselin & @carvedbones get a tag nonetheless.

EMOTIONS / FEELINGS:

001. Nostalgic; struck by an all-consuming kind of grief.

002. Passionate, severely dedicated.

003. Compassionate; loving & caring fiercely.

004. Insecure; self-depreciation is her greatest vice.

005. Courageous, recklessly so.

GREETINGS:

001. a small wave, brisk & efficient.

002. a handshake, maybe; usually of the awkward kind.

003. a petite nod, occasionally; whenever she is busy or otherwise occupied.

004. greeting someone by saying their name or an enthusiastic “hello / good-morning / good day” etc.

COLOURS:

001. pastel pink, any shade of pink & even red really, but its pastel version holds the greatest value.

002. peach; perhaps even shades of orange.

003. (pastel) blue; several shades thereof. Turquoise & a tint of green.

004. ivory; see her skin, the base colour of sheer fabric.

005. grey & variations thereof.

SCENTS:

001. freshly washed laundry.

002. the ocean; the scent of the sea.

003. lush forests; a Spring breeze, bit of an earthly hue.

004. flowers; anything rose-y, really.

005. polished steel.

CLOTHING:

001. as a servant / Homeworld: typical leotard & sheer skirt + ballet slippers kept in white, black & shades of grey (while serving White Diamond), later frilly, multi-coloured dress with sheer fabric wrapped around her hip & a pink underskirt, ballet slippers & juvenile, “rosebud” shaped hair (while serving Pink Diamond).

002. during the rebellion / War for Earth: major change in attire; tight grey sheer top + blue vest underneath combo, peach coloured shorts & orange-tinted boots; sleeveless. Wild, unkempt hair resembling her earlier “rosebud” cut but far more dishevelled; sabre in hand.

003. post-war: hair a tad more ‘tame’, same tight shirt & shorts combo but a shift in colour with sheer sleeves + overthrow worn across the shoulders. Legwarmers paired with ballet slippers, heart-shaped cleavage.

004. post Rose’s death: same shirt with slight variations; star on her chest, sleeves again gone. Colour shifted to bright turquoise with sheer skirt & pastel coloured shorts worn underneath (reaching down to her knees), low cut socks + ballet slippers, very, VERY neatly kept hair with not a single strand out of place. Later, she dons a swift alteration thereof; the star on her chest is more strikingly depicted, sheer skirt replaced by a ribbon / bow tied around her hip; yellow shorts instead of pink. Hair a tad more unkempt.

005. post “CYM” / Future: wears a denim-esque jacket with a star on her back. Long, high cut trousers revealing her shins in addition to pink ballet slippers. Wears a turquoise, shoulderless top underneath the jacket with a heart-shaped cleavage. Hair resembles her war-haircut; more dishevelled, rebellious.

OBJECTS:

001. various swords & sabres neatly cared for & stored either in her gemstone or room. She has amassed quite the collection of ancient & legendary weapons over the centuries, ranging from simple marine sabres & battle axes to Excalibur (which she, at some point, pulled out of the stone).

002. her gemweapon, aka lances & variations / modifications thereof.

003. a mobile phone she got shortly before “CYM”; one of the few items she does not store in her gemstone.

004. dried roses at the back of a journal; one she wrote & sketched in back before the war. Hidden deep within her gemstone.

005. an array of other, different items stored in her gemstone (first-aid items, car keys, tools, various instruments, telephone numbers, various weapons such as shotguns, etc).

VICES / BAD HABITS:

001. Inferiority Complex / Low-Self Esteem. Pearl automatically deems herself inferior to others or simply not good enough, falling victim to hysteria whenever failing to succeed on her first try. -- this usually triggers sentiments of extreme self-decrepitation or emotional fits. Additionally, these feelings of deeply seated insecurity & self-hatred turn her bitter / petty & coerce her to crave validation in any shape or form. She can come across as a know-it-all, as condescending or arrogant given how she will continuously bring up her achievements, knowledge & countless justifications as to why (e.g) she did what she did or why sth. did not work to counter these ever-looming feelings of utter worthlessness.

002. Obsessive / Borderline Neurosis. A vice that goes hand in hand with 001; Pearl is obsessed with the past (may it be in the shape of mistakes or ‘happy memories’), symmetry, cleanliness & people per se; especially Rose has always been a sore topic in that matter. In fact, her obsession went as far as to turn into a serious neurosis / the unquenchable urge to hyperfixate on something & mercilessly obsess over it in turn. Without something to obsess over, Pearl breaks apart. While she loves fiercely, this kind of behaviour is prone to “smother” those in her care. May it be through overprotectiveness or overly critical / a “mother knows best” kind of demeanour.

003. Terrible Coping Mechanisms / Living in Denial. Pearl is guilty of “trauma compartmentalizing”; she represses her traumatizing experiences & memories in a self-destructive way. As demonstrated in “A Single Pale Rose”, her mind is structured in layers; the deeper “in” you go, the more she unravels & falls apart; on the surface, she tries to keep it all together but is well-aware of the mess waiting on the brink. -- Pearl additionally keeps amassing problems / trauma rather than facing any of them.

004. Stuck in the Past / Unable to Let Go; Probably a given one that does not require further explaining given what I already detailed further above. -- ever one to fondly remember the War & the role she had in it, she cannot let go of what once was. This is especially true whenever the casualties of war (guilt complex) or Rose Quartz are concerned; the latter coerced her to live the greatest half of her life (post Steven’s birth) trapped in a perpetual state of grieving & yearning for all she has lost.

005. Liar / secretive. Pearl has been prone to lie & twist her words ever since she was given to Pink Diamond 8000 years ago. What started as an attempt to protect Pink from the Diamond Authority soon turned second nature. While she usually lies out of a good reason, partially due to having been “forbidden” to talk about certain matters, lack of social skills + her compassion & eager will to spare e.g. Steven from harsh truths or to protect herself, it is a terrible vice she cannot shake.

BODY LANGUAGE:

001. gestures quite a lot; may it be with her hands or expressions. Usually underlines her points by sweeping arm or hand movements; prone to “put her whole body into it”.

002. Arms wrapped around her body, predominately her waist. Usually a sign of discomfort or tension that she simply cannot brush aside. Often paired with her glare wandering aside / avoiding eye contact.

003. Broad stance / legs apart as opposed to her feet usually positioned in First Position. Radiates rare moments of confidence, often paired with her hands either on her hips or wrapped around her lance / sword. She usually places said weapon on her shoulder or sprawled across it.

004. Head held up high (e.g.: confident / disapproving) or head kept low (e.g.: insecurity / doubt); a gesture often affecting her entire stance - spine straightened & shoulders squared whenever poised, posture hunched whenever insecure.

005. balled fists out of anger / arm lifted & body positioned in front of someone she ought to defend.

AESTHETICS:

001. The Art of Slowly Falling Apart. “everything is perfectly fine”: a cursed phrase on the tip of your tongue; repeated endlessly. The paradoxical sentiment of deeming onself above all else. -- above the past, the pain, your former life -- & failing to realize that you are anything but, that control has long slipped from your grasp; that threads hold your broken self together, that you are so close to falling apart & yet play pretend.

002. All-Consuming Love. ever devoted, passionate / obsessively loving with all your heart. The yearning, mutual & unconditional dedication to something beautiful but fragile. You live in a fantasy alongside her / the kind you dreamt about ever since you freed yourself from Homeworld’s shackles. -- it is the kind of love that demands & demands & demands all you willingly give.

003. Dance. a part of your very identity, even the part of the past you ought to loathe; a fact that leaves you aching. It is embedded in your very code. A love for beauteous choreographies even integrated into melee combat; pristine, elegant, flawless; dancing to the mellow melody of some piano piece playing in the background.

004. the Ocean. may it be the aesthetic of giving oneself to the depths or wuthering emotions crashing down threatening to smite you into pieces / but also its power, the very effect the scent of salt & the sound of cascades have on you. -- something you ought to oppose but can’t.

005. the Battlefield / Revolution. swords clutched in aching hands; breathing heavily. The thrill of battle, the dirt under your nails; ever listening to the beating of a drum at the back of your head. You are Fire, Passion incarnate: cutting the cord, shattering those that wronged you, overcoming opposition & the conditioned voice inside your head, fighting against all odds / one step away from a cracked gemstone. Breaking the chains, literally.

SONGS / PIECES:

001. Running up that Hill -- Kate Bush.

002. Both Sides Now -- Joni Mitchell.

003. Eight -- Sleeping At Last.

004. Romeo -- Until the Ribbon Breaks.

005. My Boy Builds Coffins / Blinding / Over the Love -- Florence & the Machine.

Bonus: Cut the Cord -- Shinedown; not her style but boy does this give me Renegade Pearl vibes.

#[[ I am cheating in the music section I know I know #but I just have so many songs I relate to Pearl #hence why I did not list any pieces #even if I could write down a million gah. But yeah I got carried away again as per usual. Mobile users pls forgive me. ]]#vii. 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝗽𝗶𝗲𝗰𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗼𝗹𝗲.

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aurilis · 5 years ago

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Known you before, chap 4 Thightening a bond part 3

Little separation thant brings trauma for Chase.

It was now six months she was living in Poitiers with Chase. All was well in the best of worlds, or so she thought.

“ Carmy.” called Chase this evening.

“ Yes ?”

“ Listen, I … I’ll have to go on a business trip. I’ll be absent for a while.” he announced.

“ Oh.”

Both had a little sad face. Chase said that, when it was actually a mission to arrest a criminal.

“ That’s why I asked Isabelle to take care of you while I’m gone.” he added.

“ Gee Chase ! When are you going to understand that I’m perfectly able to take care of myself ?” exclaimed Carmen.

“ I know, but I’ll be more comfortable knowing someone is watching over you.” he said softly.

“ Fine.” she sighed.

He smiled too. But in fact he was worry. This was a dangerous mission. There could be dead people. He hoped not. Three days later, he was saying goodbye to the teen. The latter was a bit grieved to be separated from him, and not fooled either. She knew he was a cop and had to arrest dangerous people. So they were hugging on the door threshold.

“ Be careful, okay ?” she said to him.

“ Don’t worry, I’m coriaceous like weed.” he answered.

It was time to go. Chase passed the door. Carmen watched him descending the stairs. They exchanged a last look before he disappeared from her sight. She sighed. The house was empty and a bit cold all of a sudden. Carmen was already missing her friend, and worry about this so-called business trip.

“ Maybe it really is one.” thought Carmen.

She fell on her bed. Did Isabelle knew the true reason behind his departure ? She’ll have to question her. For now, she was alone. Dining on her own wasn’t funny. She was about to finish when the telephone rang.

“ Allô ?”

“ Evening Carmy. It’s me.”

“ Chase, I’m glad you call.” she smiled.

“ Is everything okay ?” he asked.

“ Yes, don’t worry. So how are you ?”

Carmen went on her room, lying on her bed. Chase arrived on site and wanted to ensure she was fine. Which made her giggle. But since she was missing him she was happy to hear his voice. Devineaux was also alone on his room, enjoying this moment of peace while he could. He felt anxious about the mission, and calling his friend was reassuring him. Before he realized it, he got attached to her. She was bringing him peace, allowing him to think about other things than work, crimes, failures, stress … once home he let all this outside. Carmen welcomed him with a smile, and her innocence was comforting him. All wasn’t rotten in this world. There was still hope. They chatted for one hour, before hanging up.

“ Man ! And I only left this morning.” he noticed, surprised.

But … he was already missing her. Devineaux stared at his ceiling. Who could have thought he would end up sheltering a teenager coming from god knows where, and having affection for her ? And here he was. He closed his eyes with a smile. It was quite good in the end. Carmen stared at her phone, thoughtful. After her failure at graduating in crime school on VILE Island, and losing her friends right after their first mission, she resigned to be alone and friendless, apart from Player of course. Until she met Chase. He was the first friendly face she saw since her evasion. The first willing to help her, to take care of her without bad intentions. Someone good for once. She believed she could fight emotional attachment. Chase just ruined it all. Carmen sighed. When was he going back already ?

Three weeks later, Devineaux entered his building with a sigh of relief. It was over. It was finally over. Or so it seemed. Because the mission went wrong. He could still hear bullets hissing, exclamation of pain, bodies falling … blood on the floor and the walls … the fear … A wave of adrenaline crossed his body. Chase ascended the stairs fast. He searched for his keys. Quickly … quickly … he had to shelter. He dropped the keys, cursed, collected them before finally opening his door, his hands shaking. The detective closed his door, leaning on it.

“ Chase ! You’re back !” he heard.

Chase startled. Carmen. She was coming to him happily. She frowned before his expression, in between fear and worry. Before she could ask anything, Chase caught her in his arms, hugging the young girl. Peace. Innocence. Hope. Happiness. She represented all this for him. Sandiego blinked. Something was wrong. He was hugging her a bit strong. She gave him back his hug. In the end she was glad he was here.

“ Hey.” she said after a while.

Chase seemed to regain his senses. He separated from her.

“ Brrrm. Hum … It’s good to see you Carmy. How was it during my absence ? Were you bored ?” he questioned.

He brought his luggage to his room.

“ No. Isabelle paid me some visits.”

“ Good.”

Carmen watched him undoing his luggage. His moves were nervous. What the hell happened. He was preoccupied. Sandiego turned her back to head the kitchen. She prepared lunch. Suddenly, she dropped a bottle.

“ AH !” yelled Chase.

By reflex he went for his gun that he didn’t have of course. He rushed to the place.

“ What is it ?” he asked a bit panicked.

“ Nothing, I just dropped a bottle of oil.” replied Carmen, said object in her hand.

He sighed deeply, a hand passing on his face.

“ Just …”

He looked at her.

“ Be careful okay.”

Chase went back to his room. The man remained silent for the whole day. Devineaux did his best to act like nothing ever happened. Carmen pretended to not notice his forced smiled, the shadow in his eyes, his startling at every noise. But it’s during night that Carmen saw a difference. She heard a shout that awoke her. Immediately, she jumped out of her bed to go in his room. Chase was breathless, eyes wide opened, shaking. The teen approached him. He turned a haunted face to her.

“ It’s okay, you’re safe here.” said softly Carmen, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“ Oh, sorry Carmy. Didn’t mean to awake you.” he made, rubbing his face.

“ Don’t worry about me. Tell me how you’re feeling instead.” continued the girl, sitting on the bed.

“ I … I’m fine, that was just a nightmare.” answered Chase.

“ But it’s because of what you’ve recently been through.”

“ Carmen I’m fine I said. Go back to bed.”

Devineaux laid down. Carmen sighed, then left him alone. She heard him awaking one more time. She sighed. She’ll have to make him talk.

#carmen sandiego #carchase #Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego #chasexcarmen #carmeneaux #chase devineaux #inspector devineaux #carmen sandeigo netflix #fanfic

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

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Den of Geek's Best Books of 2019

https://ift.tt/2F47xc4

Here were the 20 books that meant the most to our Den of Geek contributors in 2019.

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To cover and consume popular culture in this era of #PeakContent is to constantly be making choices. This means it is more important now than ever to reflect on the ways in which "best of" lists, just like pop culture itself, are subjective—shaped by a group of people with specific identities, interests, and storytelling sensibilities.

Therefore, in presenting our list of the Best Books of 2019 to you, we note that these stories are not just what may have felt Important in a year when we are more desperate than ever to understand the seemingly increasingly destructive forces at work in the world, but also what meant the most to us personally.

Here are 20 books, in no particular order, that broke through the #PeakContent cacophony to mean something to our Den of Geek contributors this year...

The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

A time travel novel that soundly rejects the Great Man Theory of history, The Future of Another Timeline is uninterested in telling the same old story about a singular white dude traveling through time to heroically and simply save the day. In Annalee Newitz's second novel, making positive change in the timeline is mostly conducted by women and people of color, must be done collectively, and is a heck of a lot of work.

Told in alternating perspectives, The Future of Another Timeline follows middle-aged, time-traveling academic Tess and 17-year-old Beth, a high school student exploring the punk scene in 1992 California. Both characters are deeply informed by their interpersonal contexts. For Tess, that means the support of the Daughters of Harriet, a group of women and non-binary folks fighting to stop a group of time-traveling misogynists known as the Comstockers from securing a timeline in which women have no rights over their own bodies. For Beth, this means her high school friend-group, which represents an escape from her abusive home until they start seeking violent "solutions" to the abusive men in their communities.

read more: Autuonomous by Annalee Newitz — Robots, Love, and Identity Under Capitalism

Wonderfully nerdy and refreshingly radical, The Future of Another Timeline is the angry feminist time travel novel 2019 both needs and deserves, a speculative fiction experience that feels all too real in its depiction of how fragile women's rights can be while also representing the kind of collective action organizing that stands the best chance at saving us all.

"We deeply need hope right now because we're in a very precarious, self-destructive historical moment," Newitz told Den of Geek this year regarding the hopepunk movement. "I think of hopepunk as narrative therapy for historical trauma—it's a way to ease pain, to tell stories about the healing process as well as what has hurt us." The Future of Another Timeline is a story about what has hurt us and what can heal us.

- Kayti Burt

Read The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

An assassin and a dragon-rider need to save the world from a dragon horde in this doorstopper. The Priory of the Orange Tree’s scenes more remarkably quick compared to the intimidating length of the book, with the author demonstrating a keen understanding of cliffhangers, dramatic timing, and creating characters who care about each other and their world.

Ead Duryan has been assigned to protect Queen Sabran of Inys, but also has to wrestle with the way Inys twisted a true story into an oppressive religion while hiding her true mission and her attraction to the queen. On the other side of the world, the dragon-rider Tané finds that her path to becoming a great warrior isn’t as straightforward as she had hoped, and that her choices will have global ramifications. Side characters, especially the grieving and miserable alchemist Niclays Roos, stuck with me long after I finished reading the book.

High fantasy is a hard sell for me lately. Monarchy, destined heroes, elves and dwarves—It doesn’t feel comfortable, it just feels old. I picked up Priory on the promise of dragons, though, hoping for something new to be done with the quintessential fantasy creature. Samantha Shannon delivered with fantasy that both embraces and improves on tropes. The world is a loosely changed version of our own, with fantasy cultures drawn from and paralleling real ones. It offers beautiful imagery and lush characterization. Explanations for how the magic of the world works and how it’s connected to that world’s history are smoothly threaded into the plot. The book also doesn’t lose sight of wonder, with enough cinematic fight scenes and detailed description of clothing for any HBO adaptation.

- Megan Crouse

Read The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez

If you don't regularly read middle grade fiction, you may recognize Carlos Hernandez's name from his beautiful and well-received short story collection The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria, which came out a few years ago (or from his entertaining Twitter account). If you do read middle grade fiction, especially if you've been following the really excellent middle grade fantasy from the Read Riordan imprint, you've probably already met two of my very favorite characters of 2019... Sal and Gabi were breakaway leads in my fiction reading, and they're welcome to break my universe any time (especially since they're promising to fix it in May 2020).

Here's the conceit: middle school magician Sal has this uncanny ability to accidentally breach the multiverse. Sometimes this means he can do some pretty nifty tricks (which he passes off as illusions), like putting a dead chicken in a bully's locker. But it becomes a big problem when he keeps accidentally bringing back his Mami, who died several years ago. His father has remarried, and Sal loves his American Stepmom, but he misses his mother.

Sal is also a Type 1 diabetic, and when his ability to breach the multiverse makes him forget to regulate his blood sugar, he ends up in the hospital—something he's unfortunately used to. Initially, Gabi doesn't know about any of this, but she's the student council president, future journalist type who's not about to let any mystery lie without figuring it out. Because her baby brother is also in the hospital, fighting for his life, her story and Sal's become intertwined, and while multiverse hopping hijinks ensue, so does a story with so much heart that it's hard to put down.

I can't wait to spend more time with these characters as their adventures continue.

- Alana Joli-Abbott

Read Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

At first glance, Leckie’s newest book could not be more different than her Ancillary Justice series, not least of all because she’s smoothly stepped from science fiction to fantasy. The Raven Tower is a standalone fantasy novel, and a slim one at that; instead of a whole universe, its action encompasses two cities across a strait, and one family within them. But it’s how the story is told that cements this as Leckie’s brand of unique invention: A sentient rock god narrates in second-person to a trans protagonist.

Like with Breq, the spaceship AI constrained to one body, Leckie has once again pulled off a cunning experiment in giving voices to the most unusual of genre characters. The passages in which the stone god details its centuries of existence, and evolving relationships with human petitioners and priests, are some of this year’s most daring fantasy writing: slow and unhurried, filled with complex discussions of the power of language to change the very molecules of the world. Despite its brevity, The Raven Tower is wonderfully dense and thought-provoking.

What’s more, the human side of things is so authentically lived-in, a fantasy retelling of Hamlet that nonetheless is full of twists. In the city of Vastai, the Raven’s Lease, a human whose lifespan is entwined with that of the Raven god’s Instrument (an actual bird), has disappeared without paying up. As soldier-turned-heir’s-attendant Eolo investigates the truth, he and his master Mawat confront divine debt, issues of personhood, and the troubling disillusionment that the old ways and religions might be no more than cold comforts in an inexplicable world.

- Natalie Zutter

Read The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

Normal People by Sally Rooney

From the jump, it's easy to understand why Sally Rooney's second novel, Normal People, has taken the literary world (and much of Book Twitter) by storm. It's a story of two teenagers, Connell and Marianne, growing up in vastly different circumstances West of Ireland. The book follows their magnetic pull on (or perhaps dire fascination with) one another as they grow up and make their way in the world.

At only 28, Rooney writes through her two protagonists to get at incisive commentary on that strange, fleeting feeling of obsessive youthful love, as well as class, family, what it means to "get out," and the many small ways people are awful to one another, while also loving one another rather tenderly. Considering how often love stories and the (young) women who tell them are diminished, it's also lovely to see Rooney discussed (mostly) with terms like "intellectual rigor."

Hulu is adapting Normal People as a limited series in 2020, so there's still time to read the book before the show starts. Reviewers talk of page turners, but Normal People is one that forces readers to cancel their plans and stay up until first light, ruining their ability to function for the next day, just to squeeze in a few more chapters, a few more lines of Rooney's entrancing prose. Much like the plot summary, the text might seem simple or even commonplace at first glance, but that is Rooney's great deception: she's working overtime to make sure you don't ever see her sweat. Normal People envelopes readers quietly, completely, and so steadily that you might not realize anything has happened until you come up for air hours later, or see the drip of a tear on the page.

- Delia Harrington

Read Normal People by Sally Rooney

The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen

Elaborate YA fantasies are all the rage right now, and 2019 had several great ones. But Margaret Owen’s debut novel The Merciful Crow is far and away the best of the lot, combining immersive storytelling, a diverse cast of characters, rich worldbuilding and a truly unique magical system into something that will stay with you long after you turn the last page. In short: Everyone in Sabor is divided into castes named after various birds and based on their particular Birthrights, or magical ability. The Crows, the lowest caste of undertakers and mercy-killers, perform magic using the teeth of the dead. It’s…very grim and very cool.

The story is fast-paced and exciting, and for all that it deals with typical fantasy themes (a girl coming into her power, a kingdom on the brink of revolution), The Merciful Crow fearlessly tackles issues of racism, persecution and the difficulties that face any marginalized group that’s mocked and looked down upon for being Other. Even better we see characters openly grapple with their own beliefs and question the things they’ve been taught to believe about others in a way that feels both compelling and natural. The book’s sequel, The Faithless Hawk, is due out this summer, and if it’s not already at the top of your most anticipated books for next year, it should be.

- Lacy Baugher

Read The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

Kameron Hurley’s The Stars Are Legion was one of my favorite books in 2017, so when I heard her next endeavor was a space marine time travel story, I could hardly wait. The Light Brigade delivered. It’s an exploration of the military industrial complex, the psychology of a soldier named Dietz, and a meticulously organized time travel story. The action scenes are vivid and grim, the dialogue energetic, the stakes clear. Hurley has a lot to say about the nature of war, of trauma, of the psychology of being thrown into unexpected battles every day. (The “light” of the title is a teleportation system that Dietz is experiencing as time jumps.)

This is a writer’s book, with an impressive structure: scenes end at what could have been abrupt moments but instead become a tool to increase suspense throughout the novel. The author has posted images of the chart she used to keep the time jumps in order, and you can tell the process of outlining the book was a feat of not just writing but also a kind of engineering, resulting in a convoluted but utterly understandable sequence of out-of-order events. It’s hard science fiction rooted in classics but utterly suitable for today.

- Megan Crouse

Read The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

In a future generations after humanity has fled an uninhabitable Earth, humans live on January, a tidally-locked planet with two declining cities living in the twilight in-between the two extreme climates of the world...

Bordering the blistering side of the planet, we have Xiosphant, an authoritarian city with a constructed diurnal cycle where "timefulness" is sacred. Bordering the frozen side of the planet, we have Argelo, a libertarian society ruled by nine family-affiliated gangs who keep the city locked in a cycle of violence. As the generation ship technology brought with humanity decades before begins to fail, decline feels inevitable for both examples of human society.

We follow two main characters through the story: Sophie, a working class student studying at Xiosphant's university who is exiled into the night after taking the fall for the upper-class object of her affections Bianca. Rather than dying a lonely death, Sophie is saved by the crocodile-like telepathic aliens native to January. Elsewhere, we follow Mouth, a jaded smuggler from an otherwise extinct nomadic people known as the Citizens.

An exploration of working towards radical change in the face of climate catastrophe, personal and collective trauma, and interpersonal complications, The City in the Middle of the Night is a classically science fiction novel tapping into the most anxiety-inducing of contemporary struggles, and somehow finding a measure of hope there. "I can't do this thing anymore, where we live in a tiny space and pretend it's the whole world," Sophie tells Bianca in the novel. "People always have brand new reasons for doing the same thing over and over. I need to see something new."

- Kayti Burt

Read The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

If you know the names Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly it is likely only due to the reason for their deaths. These five women are the canonical victims of the infamous Jack the Ripper, and are generally only considered remarkable because of the fact that they died violently at the hands of a serial killer no one ever managed to catch.

Author Hallie Rubenhold’s book changes all of that. In the world of Ripper lore, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed By Jack the Ripper feels revelatory, in that it focuses on life, rather than death. It tells the real story of each of The Five, who they were, where they came from, and the tragic reasons that led them to a life on the streets of Victorian London. And it gives them their voices back, possibly for the first time since their deaths.

Meticulously researched, this book brings to life a group of women who have too long been silenced, or worse, reimagined in a way that suits history best. The majority of these women weren’t prostitutes, as the contemporary papers positioned them and history likes to remember them. They were women who struggled and scraped, who suffered repeated hardships and abandonments, who struggled with poverty and alcohol addiction, and who deserved better than deaths that left them forever in the shadow of a monster. Read this, and remember them.

- Lacy Baugher

Read The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper

The Grace Year by Kelly Liggett

In a year where Margaret Atwood herself wrote a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, it’s probably not that much of a shock that some of 2019’s most affecting stories have to do with female rage and empowerment. The Grace Year is a technically a YA novel, but it packs an outsize punch, reckoning with a dystopian future that nowadays feels far too much like it could in some way become reality.

read more: Feminist Science Fiction Novels to Read after The Handmaid's Tale

In the world of Garner County, young women are banished on their sixteenth birthday, condemned to spend their “grace year” on an isolated island to purge themselves of the dangerous and manipulative magic men believe they possess. The bones of Kim Liggett’s story are familiar ones, particularly the harmful culture these girls are born into and the cruel things they’re willing to do to one another in the name of maintaining it, but its story is ultimately one that points a way toward a future where change is possible. It’s not often you finish a story like this and genuinely feel hopeful, and yet, The Grace Year accomplishes this feat – all without giving anyone what you might call a happy ending.

- Lacy Baugher

Read The Grace Year by Kelly Liggett

Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

The Beatles' film Let It Be appears to be a documentary on the breakup of a band. The album they recorded after it, Abbey Road, has always been touted as the album they made to go out on a high note. Kenneth Womack's Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and The End of the Beatles, says that's not the case. They were recording what they thought was just their next album when they happened to break up. The band was especially excited about playing with new musical toys.

As should be evident by the name, the book starts with the sound board. The only eight track recording console at EMI. It was bright and shiny and new, and only a privileged few engineers were allowed to tinker with it, and they had to wear lab coats. The band was far away from the caper-chasing characters they played in A Hard Day’s Night and Help! but they were still fab enough to abscond with the apparatus and produce their flawless farewell to studio albums.

Almost the entire book is set in the studio. We learn about a car crash John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and their respective children survive from how it impacts the sessions. Paul McCartney's marriage happens barely out of reach of the soundproof panels and the Bed-In for Peace is placed far away from the mics. Even the breakup itself is captured as the same kind of ambient noise McCartney recorded on George Harrison's Moog synthesizer for the segues between songs. Like the surround sound created for Ringo Starr's only credited drum solo, the music is front and center.

Womack is a thorough researcher and interviewer who casts new light on old Beatles mythology. Several stories which are well-known to fans are challenged and a few more obscure bits are uncovered. The read itself is fun.

- Tony Sokol

Read Solid State: The Story of Abbey Road and the End of the Beatles

Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

Modern Irish literary greatness is alive and well, and anyone who reads Last Ones Left Alive can see why. Sarah Davis-Goff's spare post-apocalyptic tale follows Orpen on a largely solitary journey from her home on a remote island, away from the vicious, otherworldly creatures called the Skrake. The novel flashes back to Orpen's childhood alone on the island, with her Ma and Ma's wife, Maeve, as Orpen trained to survive against the unseen enemy while trying to decode what happened to the world, and fending off her own loneliness. In Orpen's present tense, she makes the difficult decision to search the mainland for help, accompanied by her dog, some chickens, and pulling a wheel barrow.

To say more would spoil it, and certainly part of the book's power is in the way it slowly reveals the truths of the Skrake, Orpen's upbringing, and what led her to go on the road. Beyond that, it's a story of self-reliance with feminism baked in, rather than discussed or layered on top. Orpen's instincts keep her safe and she is largely a solitary creature, so the novel has a desolate, almost animalistic quality to it that captures the Wild Atlantic Way and the feral nature of civilization gone to hell. Davis-Goff evokes the setting - both physical and emotional - so intensely that it feels like Orpen walks around with you even when you put the book down. It's a book that knows exactly what it set out to do, creates that world, and then cuts the reader off from it once the task at hand is finished, with the kind of efficiency Maeve taught Orpen to keep her alive.

- Delia Harrington

Read Last Ones Left Alive by Sarah Davis-Goff

Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Set in an alternate universe where the United States elected a female divorcee Democrat from Texas to the presidency in 2016, Red, White, and Royal Blue follows the secret, enemies-to-lovers romance between first son Alex Claremont-Diaz and Prince of England Henry. In the process, author Casey McQuiston invites us to spend time in a world that is, as described in her author's note, "still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic."

The result is an intensely cathartic reading experience that prioritizes comfort over grit, hope over pessimism, and empathy over bitterness, while also depicting tough subjects such as mental illness and civic exhaustation. In a year when to stay actively engaged in the news cycle often felt like a neverending battle, Red, White, and Royal Blue offered a brand of escapism that is all too rare in the mainstream: queer, filled with male characters who do their own emotional labor, and unapologetically millennial. The world needs more stories like this one, as well as the cultural space for more people to find guiltless pleasure in their enjoyment.

- Kayti Burt

Read Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

Confession #1: I picked up this book on NetGalley because it has a gorgeous cover. Confession #2: My NetGalley copy expired when I was 80 pages from the end. Confession #3: I went out and purchased the book the same day my NetGalley copy expired, because I had to finish it.

The Good Luck Girls is Davis' debut novel, and it packs an incredible punch. Set in an alternate world—possibly a future dystopia on a different planet, but there are fantasy elements that make it hard to place entirely—where people with shadows have more rights than those who don't, the book centers on five young women fleeing life in a brothel.

Dustblood, or shadowless, girls are frequently sold by poor families into "welcome houses," given the promise of a better life: regular meals, fancy clothes, luxury. The condition, of course, is that they have no rights over their own bodies, and they are never allowed to leave, branded with a magical tattoo that reveals their identities, and glows and burns if they try to cover it.

When Clementine accidentally kills a violent brag, she, her sister, and their friends make a daring escape, turning to a life of banditry in an effort to reach the legendary Lady Ghost, who can offer them a different future—if she's real. The result is a twisted Weird Western that feels like the Wild West, while twisting its tropes and delivering a story about victims taking back their own destinies and carving a new path toward a better future.

- Alana Joli-Abbott

Read The Good Luck Girls by Charlotte Nicole Davis

A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

There are two phrases from this year that my friends and I shout at one another whenever we’re in the same room. One flesh, one end (from Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon the Ninth) is a fun little rallying cry, but it is this piece of poetry from Martine’s debut novel that makes me tear up every time I utter it: "Released, I am a spear in the hands of the sun."

While I have always enjoyed space opera well enough, considering how many stories fit within the subgenre, this is the first book where I found myself delighting in all of the trappings. Martine dives deep into this byzantine far-future universe, clearly so excited about every detail that you cannot help but be equally enthusiastic… even when you rationally know that you should not be so captivated by colonialism.

But that’s the point. Teixcalaanli civilization, with its alien-yet-logical naming conventions and obsession with its own epic poetry, is so addictively interesting that readers are automatically as emotionally invested as diplomat Mahit Dzmare. After an upbringing on the empire’s fringes in independent Lsel Station, Mahit finally gets to visit Teixcalaan’s famed city-planet capital, only to be thrust into a political thriller full of mysterious deaths, sex-as-diplomacy, and an emperor with an unusual agenda. Not to mention, Mahit has her own cultural capital that she must keep from getting assimilated into the empire like everything else in the universe.

Read A Memory Called Empire knowing as little as possible, aside from the fact that you will meet a bevy of damn competent women and find yourself murmuring about spears released in no time. The fact that Teixcalaan is a culture obsessed with repeating the patterns of its epic stories in contemporary life is so endearingly geeky and very relatable to our present moment.

- Natalie Zutter

Read A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

You Look Like A Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works

Janelle Shane became internet-famous through her blog AI Weirdness and its social media offshoots. Her wacky computer-generated lists have been making me laugh for years, so I was quick to jump on her first paper book of artificial intelligence and humor. Half of the appeal are the lists of computer-generated things: the title comes from a list of comically nonsensical and occasionally sweet pickup lines. There are plenty of lists like these in the book, providing a break in the science for some high-quality random humor. The networks she trains don’t know what words they should be putting together, so they surprise in a way that a human could never quite do.

The other half of the appeal is the science. Shane outlines what in our daily lives counts as artificial intelligence and what doesn’t, why asking “what the program was thinking” is a nonsensical question, and how artificial intelligence (specifically, certain kinds of machine learning) actually works. Ideas are explained with precision, clarity, and ease. The science is also funny without being twee. This was both one of the most informative and most fun books I read all year. To be one would be nice; to be both is astonishing.

- Megan Crouse

Read You Look Like A Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

I had never read any of Winterson’s work, but her modern, queer retelling—not just of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but of the entire process around writing the first science fiction novel—makes clear just how lacking all other Frankenstein adaptations are in innovation and relatability. Most concern the doctor and his creature locked in a cat-and-mouse game of wits and horror, yet still so predictable that they all blur together whether period piece or futuristic cyborg story or police procedural. Yet Winterson’s take is so radically different from its forebears that you find yourself not guessing how the story will turn out, despite the fact that she lays out the narrative beats in the beginning and follows them—with the occasional detour to a sex robot convention or London’s waterlogged underground tunnels.

read more: 16 Best Fall Reads

Because Winterson knows that the heart of the story is in Mary’s life, pockmarked by so much loss, and in her frankly incredible writing process. Instead of the two Frankensteins, the interweaving duo in this book is writer Mary Shelley and Ry Shelley, a trans doctor who finds himself falling for the charismatic, otherworldly transhumanist Victor Stein. Winterson lays out the blueprints for the story by first visiting Mary, her husband Percy, the insufferable Lord Byron, her bimbo stepsister Claire, and the awkward Doctor Polidari at that life-changing rainy weekend writing retreat on Lake Geneva—which, honestly, has all the makings of a Mary Shelley biopic right there. Then, once you know enough about the characters, Winterson leaps ahead 200 years to the familiar strangers of Ry, Victor, and sex robot designer Ron Lord and his perky creation Claire.

Frankissstein is a creepy, sexy, soggy, surprisingly hilarious demonstration of how time is just a circle and history repeats itself. Except this time with cryogenically frozen millionaires and filthy-mouthed pleasure bots.

- Natalie Zutter

Read Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep

I may have raved a little bit last year about Jennifer Estep's series launcher Kill the Queen. Estep has written in a number of genres over her career, but Kill the Queen showed me that epic fantasy is her true home; it went delightfully above my expectations, creating Evie, a compelling protagonist who's both a reluctant hero and a natural one: she takes risks for others without thought and only truly fears her own destiny, because for years she's been convinced that she's not worth claiming a loftier mantle. There's also a gladiator troupe, shapeshifting magic that creates a whole new mold for what those powers can look like, and some excellent romantic tension and humor.

Estep's sequel, Protect the Prince, raises the stakes, thrusting Evie deeper into the intrigue between kingdoms as she hopes to forge a lasting peace, while also driving a wedge between her and her love interest, a bastard prince who—like Evie—has been told his whole life he'll never amount to much. Evie must manage the nobles of her own kingdom, prevent war with other nations, and fight against the constant sabotage of power-hungry Mortan king, whose spies have been plaguing Evie's life even longer than she realized, and who are continuing to try to kill her.

Even as Evie sets her own plans into action, playing the long game against her enemies, the story leaves room for romance and friendship, and for Evie to find a way to become the Winter Queen everyone expects her to be. The trilogy wraps in March, 2020, with Crush the King, and you can bet I've already got that on preorder.

- Alana Joli-Abbott

Read Protect the Prince by Jennifer Estep

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

The book lays it out for you right away: Evvie (her name rhymes with Chevy) was leaving her husband when she got the call that he had died. That emotional quagmire is where NPR's Linda Holmes, host of Pop Culture Happy Hour, plants her witty and warm romantic comedy of a novel. Evvie rents out a room in her house in Maine to Dean, a former Major League Baseball pitcher hiding out from the world after he left the game when he woke up one day with a bad case of the yips and simply couldn't throw anymore.

Grounded in the complicated reality of grief, the book has so much to say about platonic mixed-gender best friends, single parenting, re-learning how to relate to parents as an adult, and life in a small town. There's so much room in the world for smartly written adult romance, and Holmes knows how to bring the heat when she wants to. Yes, it's a romance, but there are no short cuts, easy answers, or guarantees of a perfect happy ending. Evvie and Dean test one another emotionally in ways that feel organic to their characters, rather than plot-driven, and their victories are earned on the page. Charming, hopeful, and with great emotional depth, reading Evvie Drake Starts Over means getting all the joy of a romcom without having to sacrifice on quality or consent.

- Delia Harrington

Read Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

Giraffes on Horseback Salad by Josh Frank & Tim Heidecker

The Marx Brothers were at the peak of their popularity when Salvador Dalí presented then with a screenplay called "The Surrealist Woman." It was only a few pages and they turned it down for not being funny enough, but it still carries mythical significance in both the art world and cinema history. Josh Frank's graphic novel Giraffes on Horseback Salad fleshes out the sparse notes to present the how the film would have looked on the screen.

Giraffes on Horseback Salad is a love story. But the world hangs in the loss of balance. The book includes a preface which tells the story of the artists relationships with each other and placing the film them in a historic context. It would have been made after A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, which were produced by Irving Thalberg, who died before this would have been up for consideration and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer declared it too expensive and too surreal. There are quite a few surprises.

The biggest is Harpo speaks. Not only does he speak but people hang on to his every word. Gone are the curly locks and tattered overcoat. Here Harpo’s Jimmy is an important man who wears impressive suits and has an A-list significant other who ultimately pales in significance to the lady of surrealism. The illustrations by Spanish surrealistic artist Manuela Pertega, capture what could have been possible to put on the screens. The surrealistic jokes added by comedian Tim Heidecker may explain why Groucho passed on the work, but you can see the magic such a film may have conjured. Even the name of the book's publisher, Quirk, feeds into the skewered reality.

- Tony Sokol

Read Giraffes on Horseback Salad by Josh Frank and Tim Heidecker

Read and download the Den of Geek Lost In Space Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Kayti Burt Alana Joli Abbott Delia Harrington Megan Crouse Tony Sokol Lacy Baugher Natalie Zutter

Dec 30, 2019

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astridxking · 5 years ago

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Triggers: Blood, murder, trauma, weaponry Past: 16 year old Astrid Subject: The first hunter attack on her pack Summary: How Astrid was forced to kill her father

Born into the Appalachian Mountains Pack, Astrid had a sturdy upbringing with parents, her younger sister, Aila, and a pack of werewolves who were devoted to one another. They were a tight-knit group, always having each other’s backs through thick and thin, no matter what, no exceptions. Being a teenager separated from the real world was pretty easy, when she knew nothing about what she was missing. Her pack was secluded but not completely out of sync with the real world, she just didn’t care much for the big city lights. Astrid was a free, mischievous soul, always finding something to laugh about, or pulling pranks on her pack with her best friend, Mason. There wasn’t a dark bone in her body, she knew nothing of cruelty, until the day hunters captured her, her family, and a few beloved members of the pack. That day changed everything; her parents along with half her pack had been slaughtered. Her father had fallen at her own forced hand which quickly became something she would never recover from or forgive herself for.

When she came around after being knocked unconscious, her eyes landed on her mother who had been killed whilst she was out. She screamed, yelled and fought, like any girl would at the sight of their mothers dead body, but it was no use. Against these hunters, she was powerless. A mere human and a pawn in their sadistic little game. She crawled towards Aila, weak and frightened, but she covered her younger sisters body with her own whilst she was still out of it. Astrid sobbed as she listened to the screams of their pack, as the hunters started to shoot them, she wrapped her arms around her sister, trying to shield her from any bullets that would come their way. Aila was in and out of consciousness, and whenever her eyes would open, Astrid only smiled down at her and told her everything was ok. What else would you say to a nine year old child? The hunters soon made her move away, knocking Aila fully out once Astrid was backed into a corner.

Only two pack members, her father, herself and her sister remained, and they were truly milking their dominance. They told her if she killed her father, they would leave. Of course she instantly refused, but her father was the alpha of their pack... His loyalty wasn’t only to his daughters, but to his entire pack family. He wanted Astrid to do it, though she continued to protest against it. She couldn’t believe that he would bow down to these monsters, never mind let her live her life with the knowledge that she would have murdered her own kin. They weren’t getting out of this situation and her father spoke to her as an alpha giving orders, and Astrid, at this point, was not one to disobey. With the hunter aiming a gun at her, and the other aiming one at Aila, she stood up, trying not to let her legs give way beneath her, until she fell to her knees in-front of her dad.

At this point, Astrid could barely see through her own tears, she had zero intention of going through with it, until a hunter picked up the unconscious body of her little sister and dropped it next to them. He said that if she didn’t do it, they would make Aila do it when she woke. That was enough to send Astrid into a blind rage, and she tried attacking the two hunters, only to fall down as a bullet pierced her thigh. Her father was pleading, but he was also courageous, no tears had fallen, he was sat up on his knees with dominance and pride as he told her to “man up”, collect herself, and evaluate the situation. Just like he had always done, he had taught them to think with head over heart... But she couldn’t help but cry hysterically as the hunter threw the blade down at her knees. Her pleas wouldn’t be heard, so at this point, her entire focus shifted onto her father.

She needed guidance. She was waiting for him to pull an ace card and save them, like he always did - but when she looked in his eyes, there was nothing there but pain. He told her firmly, that if she didn’t do it right now, the hunters would make Aila do it... And that was enough for her to realise that rebelling against them, was absolutely not worth her sister falling victim to something so disturbing. Picking up the blade, she placed one hand on her fathers shoulder, and pressed the pointed end against his heart as she stilled on the verge of a panic attack. He spoke to her, words of kindness, words of wisdom, words of forgiveness... But she couldn’t do it, not until she saw from the corner of her eye that Aila was stirring in her sleep. Astrid couldn’t let her see this, she couldn’t let her be forced to kill their father because of her hesitation, and so, with a loud cry, she pushed the blade into his heart, quickly and painlessly, only a small smile was given from him before the light left his eyes and his body collapsed onto the ground.

In that split second, her tears stopped - she was in shock, she was numb, but she had no time to grieve. Her eyes blazed a firey gold as she had triggered her gene, and the two hunters shot bullets into the remaining two pack members, killing them in cold blood and going back on their promise of freedom. If her sister wasn’t there, she knew she wouldn’t have tried to fight, but for Aila, she got up, she fought, and she tore the two hunters into shreds with no mercy. She only wished the other hunters who helped capture them all were there too, but they had vanished, and her entire focus shifted onto her half conscious baby sister. Picking up her limp body, she walked for miles until she found her way to the remaining pack members. At this point, Aila was awakening, but in the state Astrid was in, a couple pack members had dragged her away, and all she could do at this point was collapse into the snow and scream. She screamed so loud, her pain echoed through the mountains.

The pack looked after Aila for a couple days, whilst Astrid recuperated and came to terms with what had happened. It wasn’t easy, but she found the strength to carry on. For her sister, she stood back up on her own two feet and swore that never again would they be anybody's victim. Little did she realise, during the months and years after that attack, it had only made the two sisters grow apart. Aila knew that Astrid wasn’t telling her the truth about what happened, and Astrid, in a way, couldn’t look her little sister in the eyes without seeing the light go out in their fathers. She had sacrificed her own sanity for the sake of saving Aila’s, but boy, it was taking its toll. She didn’t mean to, but she, much like Aila, had begun to cut herself off and shut down her emotions. The siblings drifted further apart, despite the fact that all Astrid lived for, was to protect her little sister. It didn’t matter. Her devotion and love for Aila wasn’t enough to put a stop to the burning empty hole that had taken root deep in her heart.

#triggers at the top #self #astrid:past #background #dropping this here bc i edited it out of her bio

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thebrandings · 6 years ago

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Hello! Another scenario, if it's not too much! So, after MC disappeared in the last ask, months pass until the Brandings side is attacked by the baddies. What would the ROs do if, while fighting against their enemies, MC appeared in the middle and started fighting RO and said they are now in the evil side?

Trigger Warnings: Violence, Psychological Trauma

Hello! Sorry it took so long for me to answer this, I was mainly stuck on fighting scenes but oh well, they still suck. I also wrote it so that the ROs were in love with the MC before the MC disappeared just so it had that angst kick.

Thank you for the ask! I’m not sure if you wanted it to turn this dark but I hope you did : )

And for all the angst loving people, this is for you…

Olivia/Ollie/Oliver (She/They/Him) "MC?“ She asks, her heart frozen in fear and disbelief as she watches someone so familiar and yet so different suddenly appear in the fight aiding her enemy. “W-what?” She gasps, just barely dodging an extremely aggressive attack from the MC, themselves.

She backs away, pausing all her movement and hoping that this was all a terrible mistake. “I-it’s me, lovey.” She informs them, worried that they might have forgot about her. She yelps, landing harshly on her butt as they delivered a swift kick to her stomach. “W-wait.” She whispers, tears easing down her cheeks as she fists the dirt in front of her, her nails collecting the dirt. Instinctively, her forcefield surrounds her against all her subconscious enemies, including the MC.

She watches as they land another futile kick at her shield. It wavers though not because of the force. She clutches the clumps of dirt in her hand, utterly powerless against their heated stare. “Please don’t do this, lovey.” She begs, staying still on her knees although she reluctantly releases the dirt she had gathered up. She shook her head, refusing to believe the obvious facts in front of her. The MC must have been possessed. In fact, that’s probably why they had left in the first place. “I can help you, MC. I will help you.”

Lily parts the forcefield in front of the MC, only allowing for them to enter, which they do without the slightest bit of hesitation. “It’s okay, MC.” She coos, running towards them, engulfing them in a tight hug. She keeps hold of them, hoping that maybe the forcefield had cut the enemy’s’s power over them. She slings her arms around them, heavily breathing in their scent. It was just as she had remembered it. “You’re ho-” She coughs unable to finish her sentence as blood spurts from her mouth at the sudden force against her stomach. She leans over in pain as she’s then kicked to the ground.

"You always were an idiot.“ The harsh voice spits, sending another harsh kick towards her abdomen. Lily stays laying on the ground in defeat, completely motionless. This wasn’t the MC, she refused to believe that. So Lily clutches her stomach, in pain, trying to curl up into herself. She couldn’t bring herself to even entertain the thought of protecting herself, of hurting the MC.

"Lily!” Chris shouted, spotting the scene unfold out in front of him. He rushed over, banging on the shield. It doesn’t even waver. “Damn it, let me in!” He yells, watching helplessly as the MC continued to deliver blow by blow at the curled up ball.

"No.“ Lily whispers, lifting her head up to stare straight at Chris, determination swirled in her eyes. “It’s not them. Please, you have to help them.” She begs, her body crumbling as another punch landed against her head. The whole ground spun under her and Lily did her best to remain conscious. She had to, for them. She wasn’t an idiot, she knew if she let the MC out of the field then they’d be attacked by Chris, maybe even killed and she couldn’t allow that to happen. She would never allow that to happen; she had vowed to stick by the MC and she would, even if it ended with her demise.

"I’m going to kill you, MC.“ Chris declared, watching as Lily’s head hit the ground hard once again…though this time she didn’t bounce back up. Chris banged his fists against the wall, harder than ever. “I swear, I’m going to kill you for this.” He promised, just as the blue wall fell.

Victoria/Tor/Vick (She/They/Him) Vick lazily maneuvered around his opponents, only freezing in shock when his eyes had decided to play games on him. They, in all their strikingly beautiful flesh, stood right in front of him. It was almost like he had seen them for the first time. “MC?” He asked excitedly just before their fist swung right towards him, catching him off guard. Vick grunted in pain, swiping at his mouth as the blood that had just started to drip.

He felt the throb in his jaw and the pain that began to spread but he quickly cleared his head, taking a moment to completely analyze the situation while dodging the continuous attacks engaged by them, directed towards him.

“…I see.” He commented, the reality of the situation literally punching him in the gut. They were dressed in the exact same clothing of the soldiers around them, the soldiers that Vick had just been fighting. His enemy.

Vick captures the fist aimed at his face and with expertise, flipped them onto their back on the ground. As they immediately began to struggle to get up, Vick straddled them down, pining their wrists above their head and placing his weight on top of theirs. “Why?” He asks, tears glossing over his eyes. So much that his eyes begin to hurt at his resistance to allow them to flow. He didn’t want to believe it but the facts were all right in front of him and that was the only thing he really believed in. Facts.

They fruitlessly struggled underneath him but he barely even notices it, staring hopelessly towards them instead. “We…we gave you a home.” He sniffles, doing everything he could to keep the tears in. If he could accomplish that, then maybe it might not hurt as much. But it did hurt and somehow he was forced to bear with the pain.

"I-“ He choked, his voice raising higher than it ever had. "I gave you a home.” His grip slowly loosens as the tears began to flow. His diminishing will allowing them to take the advantage. And almost instantly they do so, forcing Vick onto his back instead of them. He falls back, unable to stop or even hurt them.

He barely registers his head harshly hitting the ground, punch after punch thrown at him. He began to feel numb inwardly from the shock that his body physically felt numb. “Vick, get your ass up and fight!” Chris shouts, unable to reach Vick and the traitor in time, due to the enemy’s overwhelming forces. They all had to begin to retreat but Chris wasn’t leaving without his long-time friend. Not ever.

Vick stares blankly at Chris, his emotional state extremely unstable. “I can’t, Chris.” Vick smiles painfully, turning quickly to the side to cough, blood spattering from his mouth. “I-I love them.” He admits, the merciless attacks hesitating for just a second but for Vick, it meant everything.

He turns to look at them, their beauty still taking his breath away. “I love you, MC.” He closes his eyes, suddenly feeling tired. Vick fought his tiredness needing to reassure them. “I still love you."

Christine/Chris/Chris (She/They/Him) Chris laughed hysterically as he soon became surrounded by his enemies. "Come and get me!” He shouted, his posture wide open with two long swords in both his hands. Sure, he could have used his powers but where was the fun in that. Happily, he wielded his weapons expertly. Blood splayed from left to right but it wasn’t his. They haven’t even scratched him, a fact Chris was proud to relish in. He couldn’t wait to tell everyone that they couldn’t even touch him. Well, at least they hadn’t until now.

Chris immediately whirls around, ready to strike down the opponent who had managed to cut him. But he froze still when he met their familiar figure. Everything was exactly the same as he had last saw them; their scent, hair, and striking body exactly the same. “MC?” He asked, slightly lowering his weapons from the shock, his enemies fading away from his mind as he focused all his attention on them.

"Sweetie.“ They drawled slowly, his previous endearment sounding mocking on their tongue. Chris flinched at the unexpected harshness in their tone, shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot as if he were awaiting a lecture.

But instead of the warm welcome that he had expected, Chris was met with a harsh betrayal as they had just as swiftly delivered a punch to his stomach. Immediately the realization hit him but he refused to believe it. They wouldn’t do this but how could he know; they had been gone for months, maybe they changed.

Part of him still grieved them and he made sure to quickly let go of that side, at least for now. "Wouldn’t it make more sense if you stabbed me in the back.” He growled, trying to pretend that their hit and the meaning behind it hadn’t affected him. It appeared he didn’t do a good job as his voice cracked on the last word.

"Oh, I plan to.“ They reply, causing his already failing facade to crumble. His eyes blurred with tears and his head began to feel faint. No, he thought, he wouldn’t go down like this.

"I can’t believe I found myself lusting after you.” Chris spat, wanting to hurt them as much as they had hurt him. They only laugh.

"Oh darling, don’t underestimate yourself. You wanted so much more. You probably still do.“ They sing and Chris sneers. Of course, they knew it. He wasn’t exactly subtle with his affections. He spat at the ground, angry at himself for believing that there could have been something more, angry at himself for knowing better but doing it anyway.

"That’s a lie.” Chris growls though they both knew the truth, he still did and he hated himself for it. How could he still love them after this betrayal? But the answer was simple. They had seen him at his worst and still loved him. Apparently though he had only seen them at their best. Chris growled inhumanly before charging at them with all his strength.

He couldn’t let them travel this dark path, even if it killed him.

Fable (She/They/Him) Fable’s eyes lazily roam around the battlefield, an almost annoyed expression on his face as his mind immediately spots their weak spots, one hit equaling one kill. A mere flick of the wrist and his sword would cut a straight line through the enemy, dragging their life along with it. It was easy as that for him, or at least, it appeared so.

Fable felt a breath against his back, immediately positioned his sword to pierce their skin only to stop at the last second. His breath got caught up in his throat and he choked on his shock. Why wouldn’t they just leave him alone? He hissed in his head, his body still paused in mid-motion. They smile, as if teasing him. Frustrated, he swung at them, prepared to watch his sword slash through the thin air.

Only it didn’t. It slashed perfectly straight across their neck, instantly killing them. Fable blinked hard, causing their face changed. “I see you haven’t changed at all.” He hears them, taunting. Fable squeezes his eyes shut. Great, now he could hear them in his head.

"Leave. Me. Alone!“ He shouts, swinging his sword again with double the force. Only it hit something hard, stopping the motion early. Fable freezes, a sinking feeling in his stomach as he slowly turns to look at them. No.

They smile smugly, a leer of a smile on their face. "Now, where would the fun be in that?” Fable’s heart constricts, this wasn’t the person that they knew, that they loved. They cling their weapon against Fable’s, easily tossing it to the side due to his shock.

"Though it seems like you lost your touch.“ They chuckle darkly, circling around him as if he were prey. It certainly felt like it. Fable stood still, heart heavily thumping against his chest. Why couldn’t he move?

"You’re not real.” He whispered, closing his eyes and counting to ten. But unlike his previous hallucinations, when he opened his eyes they were still there.

"I’m almost certain that I am. But do you want me to prove it?“ They smirk dangerously, brushing the tip of their blade across his throat, slightly pushing pressure on it. Fable winced, unsure of whether it’s due to the pain or the words thrown at him.

"Where were you?” He asks, questions popping through his head. ‘Why were they acting like this?’ was what he really wanted to ask but for some reason he couldn’t push the words through.

Their smirk widened. “I thought you were smarter than this, isn’t it obvious?” They ask, their hands wildly gesturing towards the battle around them. “I chose my own destiny, not the one forced on me. On us.”

Fable growls at them, his teeth baring. “Don’t group me with you.” They frowned but Fable knew better. They were playing him and he had to fight against his immediate instincts to comfort them. That wasn’t his job, not anymore.

“Oh you wound me.” They dramatically lay their hand on their heart, rolling their eyes. Fable bared his teeth, maneuvering his way away from them. Immediately his ability to breathe recovered itself and Fable glared at them.

“I’m sorry it has to be this way then.” He whispered as they both jumped towards each other, weapons raised.

Aila (She) Aila carefully executes a harsh blow to her enemy’s neck, although careful enough to make sure that it is not fatal. “I see nothing has changed.” She hears and immediately swings her head in their direction. It really was them.

She briefly checks them over, quickly hiding the obvious shock from her face. “Everything has changed.” She whispers her reply, quickly noticing the enemy’s symbol on their back. They laugh at her comment, nodding along with her.

“I suppose it has.” They tilt their head, careful to observe for her reaction. “For the better.” She smiles forced, trying to keep her practiced facade composed but it was becoming just too much.

Aila laughs painfully, thought her expression remained calm and polite. “If you say so.” She spits out bitterly, briefly turning her attention away from them, barely a second she thought, yet it was all they needed to push the final nail in their betrayal and attack her.

She clutches her stomach, immediately backing away from them. This wasn’t like her, why couldn’t she move? Attack? Anything at all? Instead, it felt like her body was being torn apart, her deepest darkest secrets thrown out into the open for the whole world to see. She coughed, the urge to throw up never feeling stronger. “Stop.” She pleaded silently, though it appeared as if they couldn’t hear her. “Stop.” She reiterated, a little more forceful and louder but it yielded the same result.

Tears welled up in her eyes as they continued to attack her, blow after blow while she couldn’t seem to do anything. She squeezes her eyes, she was usually so composed, so well-put together but now she was frozen, unable to do anything. “Stop!” She screamed at them, all her raw and hurt emotions voiced out in one word. They freeze briefly but continue their assault.

She sucks in her breath, hating what she was going to have to do next. Angling her body, she manages to cease their struggling, her arms capturing theirs as she stood behind them. She couldn’t let them continue to go on with this. Whoever this person was, it wasn’t the person she loved, loves. But she couldn’t-wouldn’t live with herself if they died, so she did the one thing she could think of in that moment. She thrust their sword right through their body and into hers.

They both suck in a soft breath from the pain, before falling over, the sword still stuck in both in them. “I’m sorry, d-darling.” Aila coughs, blood spurting from her mouth as she wrapped her arms around them. At least they would be together in the end.

Hayden (They) Hayden swung their sword expertly, injuring all those who surrounded them. They faced much worst, they thought. At least they did until they saw his face among their enemies; with their enemies. It was the swift punch in the gut that really confirmed their fears.

Hayden stared at him, their fists clenching in anger and hurt. How could he? How dare he? Hayden blocked their next punch, anger beginning to fuel their emotions and adrenaline pumped through their veins. But most of all, they were angry and upset at themself. How could they let this happen?

Were they that weak that even he would turn against them? Were they that terrible? They laughed bitterly, squeezing the sword handle in their hand tight. They were going to have to protect everyone from the person they loved. Would it be worth it? They didn’t know but they knew that the person they fell in love with wouldn’t be doing the things they were currently doing.

Hayden nodded, their resolve regained as they dodged another blow. Ducking under his arm, Hayden managed to deliver a counter blow, a punch in the stomach. The weird thing is at the moment their fist connected with their stomach, Hayden felt an intense pain in their stomach too. And they knew why.

Hayden cursed themself. They knew…they freaking knew that falling in love was a mistake. A weakness. But here they were. Hayden never felt so much hatred at themself for being right than at that moment. Their internal self-desrtuction was briefly interrupted as the MC took the advantage and stabbed them in the back. Oh the irony, Hayden thought, stumbling away from him.

Why couldn’t he seem to feel their pain like they had? What was different? Hayden thought about it before sad realization struck their heart. He didn’t feel anything towards them anymore. Anymore? Hayden laughed darkly. Was his love ever there?

They watched as his eyes widen at their bloddy sight and they laughed bitterly, crumpling onto the ground. Their will and energy leaving their body. He never loved them and that was enough to leave them feeling powerless. What’s worse is that they didn’t regret falling in love with him. In fact, those moments were the happiest moments of their life and if they could go back in time to change things, they would only go back to experience those moments again. They didn’t believe they could have even affected this cruel fate given the chance. No, he must not have loved them as they did him.

But nonetheless Hayden laughed at the thought, blood beginning to rise up in their throat. No, they didn’t regret a thing if it meant that they finally felt love, even if it was unrequited and short.

#Victoria/Tor/Vick #Christine/Chris/Chris #Fable #Aila #Hayden #angst #thebrandings #angst is life #Anon #Olivia/Ollie/Oliver #Lily/Ollie/Oliver

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deeptimesjournal · 4 years ago

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Surrender to Wild Entropy

Beloved Descendant, Mandala 2160 Surya Brahmana Arhaant III “flow like a forest of kelp through cycles of time with faith in your ancestor’s bones roar more; unleash your full force!” ﹣ Arunima I, of the Storm. Change is a force / kills false impressions / dances tandav on graves. Invites us folly to surrender to the wild indeterminacy of her powers. When you’ve received a colonialized education, you’re used to finding comfort in knowing enough. If our world were to flood, they would have us think that to survive means to be prepared enough, to possess enough, have enough / control over these ecosystems of death. Let us take flight from this. Let us ask instead, how will change possess us?

* * I. Journey: to grieve with courage. I was living by the waters of Pacific Island Aotearoa. Certainly secure that we were on solid ground. The security of material and economic privilege is so strange / you become a frog comfortable in increasingly warm water / Did you know that powerlessness is taught and learned? When womxn bodies sense a threat, we can freeze dead in our tracks: we are nervous systems. This is not a system failure: preventing the leaking of energy / this is how we persist. How have we arrived? You and I are millennia old. 202 years ago, the white man took on the burden of civilizing our families, our elders, our babies. Now, our survival has come to depend upon systems of learning created for earning, instead of learning to learn. We’ve been told that if we cannot / stop “producing,” we will perish. So we have become the best race at designing new technologies, efficiently utilizing our minds to labor for capital and accumulation. But Beloved, our liberation, foreign to these foreigners, lives beyond the patri-colonial designs of modernity. Our Poorvaj have learned by // travelling // wailing. When colonial certainties collapse, the ruins of this structure expose the rotting, necessary. Modern citizens put a lot of faith in the four walls of concrete buildings. Our territories will protect us from the danger of / that which is / stranger. This is a false and comforting impression. * * A few minutes after I say “they wouldn’t risk sending us home,” our leaders announce that we have four days to leave the island country. While Aotearoa is one of the safest places in the world right now (and to come, as we shall see) College authorities do not know how this crisis will unfold. Borders are rapidly closing now. We used to have “countries” back then and “going home” from abroad meant usually crossing borders. Everyone else in my group called “the United States” / the name colonists gave Turtle Island / home. Lesson I: Corona has little trouble flowing through bodies. Our group is atop a blue ice glacier when our program gets shut down. The rush of our departure from Aoraki Glacier slows me down: this inertia will soon haunt me, too. A few hours.. or days.. pass as if a strange dream. A few of the Americans in our group have prepared to leave as soon as we get word. Of course, they are nothing if not efficient. Whereas, swimming in ambivalence and strong attachments, I am currently unaware of how fierce high tides are. After a 10 hour bus-ride to the nearest airport, 6 hours on the airport floor, and 2 hours in a propeller plane journeying to the capital, we arrive in some hostel. Sharing bunk beds / I am once again in inanimacy and strangely unpleasurable intimacy with these strange white cyborgs and their deadening / claims to occupation of space. * * II. Entropy: What lies beyond conquest Where do we go from here? The Government of India has barred all passenger planes. Chaotic change is here and I have no safehouse to retreat to. Aotearoa is fast approaching national lockdown. I call the embassy and a disembodied voice indifferently says, “ask your university to arrange accommodation until further notice. We have no information from the government at this time.” They managed to say, “we couldn’t care enough to get you home.” without uttering one word. Keep working. Our International Scholars office buys me a 36-hour flight departing.. tomorrow. I look up the airline to confirm flight details. As of yesterday, the airline is bankrupt. This flight was to refuel in Australia; the country is not allowing any travellers to leave or transit through its gates. Maa and I decide to try an Air India ticket. I should’ve booked these quicker. There’s one flight going to Mumbai! And just as I try to click buy, she’s gone. Faster than I am.**Chaos is holding my hand now. Inviting me to cultivate a relationship with change and her ruthless grace. Aims for my belly button / rams her horns into gut / piercing pain / I’ll wait / I want to go home and home is family.. South Asia / A pool of my blood is collecting. Still, beside myself / managing this unfolding / I’ll prepare to wait it out until they allow flights to run? Yes.. what else could I..? / Oh god.. My insides are cracking open. It hurts to keep fighting for control.** We remain very ill equipped for the reality of change.Focus. try to / see clearly. This crisis is as much about a crisis as it is about continuing to dwell in colonial imaginations of crises. It is time to exorcise this all-consuming exercise for control.Beware. Be less certain that you will always have the walls of your home to protect and serve. Seas of people among us who had homes yesterday are turned into refugees today, held by strange lines / limits borne of men’s imaginaries / What shields from the indeterminacy of chaos? What you deem / hoarded / yours, may become a burden, you stand to lose when change comes.Security will mean bodies in / us / in / voluntary cages. To control is to possess security only until wild times rage. When walls built for protection turn to asphyxiate us, revolts will come. “the natural order is disorder.”﹣ Zaheer, Book Three: Change Episode 10. Long Live the Queen. The Legend of Korra.Change takes off. Her pauses do not allow time for the kind of painstakingly deliberated replies, which it is our colonial gift to provide, in the interest of stability / “in control” / pretenses of remaining unaffected, unchanged by her departure. How will we stay alive? The floodgates open.

III. Surrender: care flow tending

My entire being shakes. Finally. Let go. Relief arrives when you stop trying / struggling to float. I invite hands to hold me as grief flows. I am honest about the uncertainty of my situation with conspirators / a comforting outpouring of messages / con-spirare, to breathe together with. Multiple offers to stay in houses. A kindred settler spirit says, “do not worry, dear. If you choose to return to Turtle Island, you will be cared for.” We are all in the business of caring, tending to. So what if this body becomes the first terrain to call my home? There is security in their, too, in the sense that dimming, darkness, forces of death are supreme / they render bare all uncertainty. The Black officer at LAX’s Immigration, Border Patrol and Customs entrypoint has a beautiful smile. I tell him so. He blushes, and we are both pools. Soon after I arrive, I begin training. In the arts of undoing / preparing to receive death / the chaos that has only just begun. There is no planet-saving, no more civilizing conquests here. My queer water-body is an ancestral reverend / learning to harness the limitless imaginaries that our poorvaj’s prayers breathed into us. Learning melanin-richness, she holds / this infinite pluriverse / matters of love / dying matters / with grace and agility. As changes reap a late spring harvest of death, we dance wild with grief. We must. Care for those patriarchal, colonial, capital’s designs do not consider: all beings, more or less.we survive, through intimacy with force: chaos, we thrive in. with care: we prepare for chaos.Our bodies transform. We are sacred forms. our desires are ascetic; we exorcise domination and relinquish his narratives of control. We are sacred seeds.And we take root among the stars, Beloved. * * Arunima Singh Jamwal (Pronouns: A and all, fluidly, 21 yo) In Sanskrit, Arunima means first ray of sunlight and red glow of dawn. Arunima considers their creative path a gift from Creator and their Scythian ~ Suryavanshi ~ Sikh ancestors. As an animist and affective anthropologist, Arunima writes both to visibilize unseen presents and weave liberating visions for Life. Arunima’s purpose is to bring healing and balance to cultures and communities suffering from colonial-capitalism, intergenerational traumas, and cycles of social violence.Presently a settler-immigrant on the Cowlitz’s lands in Portland Oregon, Arunima loves to listen to plants and podcasts. A’s favorite spiral would have to be the Māori koru that represents our return to the point of origin and a state of calm harmony amidst chaos and change. Besides coordinating projects for Lewis & Clark’s Sustainability Council, she leads on-demand, intimate circles to center the ethic of healing justice in your lives, and creates community through their Instagram account, The Gurh Life.

@ Arunima Singh Jamwal (Pronouns: A and all, fluidly, 21 yo) In Sanskrit, Arunima means first ray of sunlight and red glow of dawn. Arunima considers their creative path a gift from Creator and their Scythian ~ Suryavanshi ~ Sikh ancestors. As an animist and affective anthropologist, Arunima writes both to visibilize unseen presents and weave liberating visions for Life. Arunima’s purpose is to bring healing and balance to cultures and communities suffering from colonial-capitalism, intergenerational traumas, and cycles of social violence.Presently a settler-immigrant on the Cowlitz’s lands in Portland Oregon, Arunima loves to listen to plants and podcasts. A’s favorite spiral would have to be the Māori koru that represents our return to the point of origin and a state of calm harmony amidst chaos and change. Besides coordinating projects for Lewis & Clark’s Sustainability Council, she leads on-demand, intimate circles to center the ethic of healing justice in your lives, and creates community through their Instagram account, The Gurh Life.

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dizexplainstheuniverse · 4 years ago

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On violence and love.

Last night I got caught in the crossfire of a vicious assault on the 149 bus in Seven Sisters.

Horrifically, this isn’t the first incident of assault on public transport in the past few weeks that has come to my attention. With such a heightened state of anxiety and fear among the general public due to Covid-19, the increase in activity through the Black Lives Matter movement and a great deal of public shaming and peer-policing of our fellow citizens being encouraged through the governments snide tactics to “regulate the situation”, we’re truly living in hauntingly terrifying times, not just here in the UK, but across the globe.

As the conversation between a clearly intoxicated white male aggressor and an elderly black man continued to escalate at the front of the top deck of the bus, my heart began to ache. I sat there, hand on my chest as the chaos spiralled – I sensed the conflict wasn’t going to end well. Even when the white male’s girlfriend tried to calm him down, he began directing threats towards the elderly black male. Disgustingly, his threats were cheered at and fist bumped in admiration by a bunch of young white males at the back of the bus.

I could not believe what I was witnessing.

Whilst I cannot claim outright that what happened next was the result of racist attitudes, but given the circumstances, it’s a crucial factor in this story that I refuse to ignore.

The elderly black male stood up and demanded the white male go downstairs and join his girlfriend. The white male did not appear to take kindly to this suggestion, grabbed him by the throat and threw the first punch. In a desperate scramble to calm the white male down, his girlfriend tried to pull him down the stairs. There were a few flailing elbows and some t-shirts grabbed and then in an explosive rage, the white male launched himself onto the elderly black gentlemen and began repeated pounding his fist into his face.

To my absolute horror, no one did anything. I was the only female on the top deck - clearly I’m not strong enough to break up the fight - but I panicked and in a knee-jerk reaction leapt towards to white male in a screaming rage, pulled him off the elderly black male by the back of his t-shirt and in the cross-fire, got hit in the face myself. In a state of shock, I fled quickly down the stairs and off the bus. My heart pounded with visions of the elderly black male defencelessly being beaten by the enraged the large, steaming drunk, white male.

I felt sick.

The brawl continued at the top of the bus and as the bus driver, a petite black female, called the police I considered standing in solidarity with her as the other passengers disembarked from the bus but honestly – I was a little too traumatised to function by this point.

Whilst I knew in my core that I was neither big enough nor strong enough to have any sort of impact on being able to diffuse the situation, I do not feel guilt, shame or fear the judgement of what others may think for my intervention in the situation. Yes, I could have come off a lot worse, but truthfully, I believe that taking a stand against violence and not just turning a blind eye sits far more comfortably in my heart.

This incredibly heinous confrontation is a potent reminder that we are living in an incredibly violent world. Not only is it deeply traumatic on a personal level for many of us, but our collective trauma is an enormous weight that sometimes makes daily life a truly painful experience.

This brings perhaps one of the most mighty dilemmas of existence into awareness:

What do you do when you can no longer carry the guilt of averting your gaze from the cruelty in the world, but equally, you cannot bare the pain to look?

It’s moments like this that really highlight for me the importance of the work that I’m currently doing and the duty of care and responsibility that we have as individuals to pay close attention to the part inside of us that respects ourself enough to do what’s necessary to free ourselves, and others, from suffering.

It’s not easy, and it’s certainly not always fun, but it’s the only thing that we can do.

Though I work hard at reminding myself, I am safe in this body, I am powerful, I am loving, I am free to express myself – the truth is, many of us aren’t always safe in our bodies. Most commonly, in female, trans, non-binary or BAME bodies, we are not always safe. We often suffer greatly by the inefficiency and bias of the systems in place that were built to ‘protect’ us.

It’s a cruel reality.

For me, this is where spirituality takes on an integral role. Whilst I have faith in our divinity and connection to the universe, this alone will not keep me safe. If I forget my humanity and live only in faith that we are one and that the universe does indeed have a plan for us all, that everything happens for a reason and therefore, who am I to intervene? Sure, I may live in blissful ignorance, but this would not be a loving way to exist. If I forget my divinity and live only in hyper-vigilance, always on the look out for the next attack, the next person who’s going to come along and take something from me, if I live in fear and resentment that I am always being ‘done to’ in the world, this neither is a very loving way to exist.

This really is a dilemma. If I show no trust, no compassion and no relation to those around me that I walk this earth with, my world is a very cold and empty place to be. But if I show complete trust, compassion and relation to all beings, do I risk pain at the hands of violence? If last night is anything to base my experience on, then yes, perhaps.

However, I believe in the power of transformation, I believe in the power of healing your own wounds, of deeply taking care of yourself, so that you can keep your heart open – even to those who hurt you – and relieve suffering. For if they hurt you when your heart is fully open to receive their pain. The depth of my heart will entirely absorb their suffering into my own. If all I have is love to give, nothing can be taken from me.

Today I realised something incredibly powerful about the depth of our human hearts. After spending time to process the trauma of yesterday’s events, and also processing the re-traumatisation from the triggering that occurred due to my past experience of violence at the hands of drunk men, all that I have in my heart right now is love.

Under the layers of pain and anger at the unfairness and violent state of the world lays grief and a deep sadness aching in my heart. As I penetrate the depths of my heart deeper still, I find a longing for acceptance, belonging and love. It is only love that I need, crave and desire. The same longing that exists in the hearts and souls of every single human being on this planet. Our social conditioning, our formative experiences, our earliest childhood memories, and maybe even continued traumatic experiences in adulthood encase our hearts in layers and layers of thick shame, guilt and judgement until we become nothing but callous and enraged.

I pray only for every single being on this earth to feel the love, acceptance, forgiveness and belonging that I feel. I have only love in my heart for the elderly black male who’s fate I do not yet know. I have only love in my heart for the hyenas at the back of the coaxing the perpetrator. I have only love in my heart for the enraged drunk white male attacker. Whatever their stories are that entangled them at that very moment, I grieve for.

From my soul to theirs, I send only love.

Namaste.

Instagram: @dizexplainstheuniverse | Facebook: /dizexplainstheuniverse

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carpethefanfics · 8 years ago

Text

Scarred.

Post-war Harry and Ginny has me captivated.

Everyone knows the scars Harry recieved in the war, but has Harry ever seen Ginny's? And so does @blvnk-art because their art is fucking wicked, and totally inspired this, seriously go check them out.

Warning: post-war trauma

Enjoy.

She knows it’s been months since the war ended

She’s been checking off the days just to make sure this isn’t some sort of dream

A dream she’d be content to live in but a dream nonetheless

She has to remind herself it’s real every morning

Has to stand in front of her desk

Let her curtains draw open and the sunshine flood her room

Has to look at the smiling waving faces of photographs that decorate her walls

Bill with tears in his endless gazing eyes at the serene face of a blonde haired bundle

Victory

Because having her, being able to live this life, that’s what it all is

Percy down on one knee, the shimmer of a diamond

We only have one life to live, why not live it now?

George laughing with his arm wrapped around the shoulder of his new business partner Angelina

A look of shock and utter joy in her face as George practically keels forward for the first time in months

She breathes easier again after that

And she knows at some point there will be years and years gone by

That some people will forget

That more will live in an era untouched by that kind of evil

And she hopes that in those days she finds peace

But today is not that day

And tonight is not that night

As her arm extends itself over and over and over again

Her wrist curving and swishing and flicking towards the black sky

The familiar ache in her shoulder from refusing to stop

Refusing to be out a practice for even a moment

Refusing to close her eyes and see her whole life ablaze all over again

Her brow is furrowed, lines now permanently etched on her face from the scowling and anger and utter terror that came from the last few years

And she knows they are much too old for someone still so young

But as she feels her muscles screaming out for rest she persists

Every curse she’s ever imagined, read about, sought after, running through her mind

Her lips refusing to move until she has it down

They never heard you coming then

And they never will

Her body is overheating from the strain

The hours upon hours unable to reach dreamless sleep

Unable to see black behind her eyelids without the accompanied red slits and green flashes and screams

She slides her jumper from her shoulders and begins again

Ignoring the pain that shoots up her back as she raises her arm

As she over extends her elbow

As the glint of moonlight of her scarred skin comes into view

It’s all she needs to see to know she has to persist

They took her sixth year

They took her family

They took her friends

They berated the innocent

And punished the moral

There is no just in justice, she thinks

She wishes she could forget the meaning behind every line that marks her freckled skin

Forget why her body will never feel wholly her own again

But when every time you touch your skin, when every time you see silver lines still so fresh and new, you’re reminded of a life it feels like everyone is moving away from

How do you forget?

‘Gin?’

Pulled from her thoughts by his voice she turns her head

Her arm still raised

Her mind still wired

‘What are you doing?’

She turns back

The shower of colours from her wand are blinding

The silence around her deafening

‘Practicing’

She hears his voice stop cold

‘Practi-’

But his footsteps continue towards her

‘You don’t need to do that’

His hand rests on her bicep

His hair is a mess

She knows he’s been running his hands through it

Probably for hours

Lying awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling heavy and useless and tired

And his glasses are askew on his face

The dark purple under his eyes mimics her own

‘And how do you know that?’

‘He’s dead.’

His answer is simple and Ginny can’t help but glower at him

Her wand arm lowered

Her lips pursed

‘His death doesn’t kill the hatred Harry. Doesn’t take away the fact that in this world people still live who would kill me for my traitorous blood, kill my family for what side we took.’

‘The Ministry and Azkaban have taken care of them. They’ll never step freely into this world again for their crimes.’

Harry kept his hand on her arm

Their eyes locked

Ginny’s face unwavering

‘Maybe one day I’ll believe that. But they did nothing during the war, it was us, all alone, trying to survive. Hogwarts was hell with those Death Eaters around every corner. Knowing my family was out there fighting a war and I was trapped in a school surrounded by people who wanted to spill my blood themselves.’

Ginny’s voice was painfully harsh

Nothing but anger bubbling up in every word

Nothing but hate

‘I know.’

‘You’re the Savior Harry, you know pain but you don’t know this.’

‘What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Of course I understand being afraid of dying, of seeing you all dying, of being chased and hated and-and-’

‘It wasn’t like being chased by them Harry’

Ginny let the air leave her lungs

‘It wasn’t fighting them every few weeks. They were there eating with us, walking with us, breathing our air. They were always watching. Always hovering. They let slurs and curses fall from their lips and I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t breathe without turning my head and finding them quietly tucked away with their wand at the ready, those fucking smirks-’

Ginny paused

Flexing her hands, trying so hard to reign herself back in

Trying to maintain the composure she had maintained for so long

‘They wanted us to react, wanted me to shout and kick and scream. They were always at the ready. Hoping to have a reason, any reason, to unleash what they’d been holding in for decades since his demise. I had to let them-let them hurt people because I had to come home, I couldn’t not come home. But defending myself and the others was all I had to keep me going. It was all I could do not to picture-’

Ginny caught herself

She could feel her chest swelling and her eyes blurring

All that rage she had kept under her skin was seeping out

All that fear that she buried all the time fighting and hiding and knowing she might not make it home

This might be the last time she signs a letter to her mum

Or heard her brothers on the radio, hear their laughter

The last time she hears Luna ramble on about Blibbering Humdingers

And Neville discuss the powerful defensive effects of a Wiggentree or the extent of hysteria brought on by Alihotsy

And she’d never see Harry again

‘No. I never want to be that vulnerable again.’

She tried to turn back, lift her arm again

But Harry was gripping it harder now

His eyes not reading anger, his jaw tightly locked

The soft sleepy look on his face long gone

‘I haven’t seen these’

His voice is quiet and soft

Ginny turns back to his eyes

His thumb moving across the silver lines that decorated her skin

Moving repeatedly over a jagged mark that ran under her arm and wrapped around her elbow

‘That was for Neville. He refused to perform the cruciatus and I refused to let them take him to detention.’

Harrys fingers continued over Ginny’s arm, up her shoulder

‘That was for Colin’s brother.’

And to her neck

‘That was for the sword.’

Harry could feel his throat closing at the images assaulting him

Vivid flashes of dark hooded figures engulfing her

Their wands moving swiftly threw the air

Ginny’s blood moving over her skin and dripping along the stone floors

Her unconscious form without medical attention for days

‘Hey,’

His eyes flicked back up to her face

‘I’m sorry, I’m so- so unbelievably sorry-‘

‘I made a choice Harry.’

‘You shouldn’t have had too’

‘But I did’

Ginny tucked her wand in the waist of her pajamas and let her hand find Harry’s

‘I should have let you come with us or kept you safe somehow, I never should have let you go back to that school, I shouldn't have let anyone-’

‘I’m glad I did’

Harry looked up

Ginny’s eyes were softer than before

A puzzled look plastered across his face

‘We chose to bear burdens beyond anything other people could Harry, that’s who we are. Like you, like my brothers, like your parents or Remus and Sirius and Tonks-’

Ginny paused to collect herself

Her lower lip caught between her teeth

A deep breath causing her heart to slow

She swallowed painfully at the names she hadn’t spoken aloud since the funerals

‘They led lives dedicated to other people- to protecting and bringing joy and teaching. I’m honoured to be among them for the choices I made because I know I hated every moment of those months but I would have hated it more if I hadn’t been there. People could have died, kids could have died-’

‘Kids did die’

His voice was still so low

And it was barely a whisper when it left his lips

But Ginny persisted

‘But Harry, without the DA and Potterwatch and that ridiculous hope that let us actually dare to laugh in a world that was just so fucking dark .. Without you- well without you there are so many people who would have more than scars and bad dreams. For all I know I could be with Fred-’

Harry gripped her hand tightly

‘Don’t say that-’

Ginny pulled him closer

Their hands interlocking much more tightly than before

‘Its the truth Harry! It’s why I can’t sleep and why I’m out here practicing in the dead of night for a war we already won- I’m not ready to leave this place, to leave my family-’

Ginny paused, her smile small and her face glowing

‘To leave you.’

She raised her eyes to stare into the deep forest green that she had missed all that time

That she had missed all the time they had spent trying to heal

That she had missed knowing he needed to be alone, to grieve, to peel the last remnants of a burden he never wished to bear off his shoulders

‘You would never have asked anyone to take your place, even if you had ever wished it, even for a second, you never would have let them.’

Ginny let her hand ghost over Harry’s arm before finding it’s familiar spot against his neck

Her thumb caressing the line of his jaw

‘Now we both have scars.’

Harry let out a breathy laugh as he played with the hem of Ginny’s pajama shirt

‘You know we’re not going anywhere right?’

He raised his other hand to brush her hair behind her shoulder

‘That I’m not going anywhere?’

Ginny felt herself smile, nothing forced or fake

A purely accidental smile

Something that came from uncontrollable joy settling inside her

‘I’m sorry I’ve been-’

‘Don’t.’

Ginny let her eyes drift closed

Her face leaning closer

Harry’s low breathing against her skin

‘You’re here now.’

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