#cannot wait for the gifsets that’ll come out of this

[luminoustico]

What was your vampire diaries otp?

*16-year-old me comes bursting into the clearing*

HOLD UP DUDES, BUCKLE UP BECAUSE I NEED TO INTRODUCE YOU TO THE OTP THAT STILL HOLDS A PORTION OF MY HEART, SIX YEARS ON FROM ME THROWING MY HANDS INTO THE AIR AND SAYING ‘FUCK THIS SHIT I AM O-U-T’.

Iiiiiiiit’s…

These fuckers!

Oh, I was happy and dandy, completely fine watching The Vampire Diaries as a sort of guilty pleasure. It wasn’t the best show around, I didn’t really follow the storylines, found Stefan a bit boring, Elena dull, Damon your average ‘vampire bad boy’, but I really stayed watching it for the minor characters, like Bonnie, Jeremy, Matt, Tyler and Caroline because I felt like they were really kind of the flesh of the show. Their dynamics were the meat of it, and that’s what kept me tuning in.

Then Caroline Forbes got turned into a vampire. This bright, peppy character suddenly had a power she never expected to have. A strength I never expected the stereotypical cheerleader in this sort of show to have. It changed everything.

The Vampire Diaries basically became the Caroline Forbes Show, for me. I wanted more of this sunshine with this unlimited life and power.

And then Klaus Mikaelson rolled up. Your standard vampire villain, with a tragic backstory of shitty dad being shitty, and a bloodthirsty need to take over the world via the conversion of numerous mortals into vampire/werewolf hybrids.

So, those are the two pieces on the chessboard. The white queen, Caroline Forbes, socialite vampire grappling with the organisation of prom and her own immortality. The black king, Klaus Mikaelson, British-accented vampire villain with a penchant for witty one-liners and slowly making his way up the list of favourite characters. Destined, pretty much, never to meet until the end of the game.

Then the show kicked things up a notch, some hybrid stuff happened in badly lit scenes, and Caroline ended up, on her birthday, slowly dying in her bed from a bite given to her by her boyfriend. Klaus shows up. Laying out the red carpet of faux concern: “oh my gosh Caroline got bit by Tyler, a hybrid??? Sired to me??? What an amazing coincidence!!! Now invite me in, there’s a good girl, toodle pip”. Obviously part of some bigger plan that’ll come into play. Sherriff lets him in.

So here’s the black king standing in the doorway of the white queen’s bedroom. There lies the white queen pale and sickly, dying, with ironic 'Happy Birthday!’ cards arranged artfully on a bedside table. The king is in a position of power; this is acknowledged as soon as he walks in the door, as it always tends to be when Klaus Mikaelson walks into a room but hey, let’s focus here. 

Some standard 'you’re the Big Bad, I’m the friend of the Holy Good why the fuck are you here’ dialogue is exchanged. Klaus Mikaelson, the sage old king, mentions that he likes birthdays; that Caroline, the newly appointed queen, as a vampire, is duty-bound to celebrate the now non-existent commitment she has to human conventions.

“You’re free,” the old king breathes.

“No…” replies the new queen. She flicks her eyes up and meets the old king with a stare as deep as his. “I’m dying.”

A-ha! The playing field is equal. The moves have shrunk. They shrink further still as the king admits he still holds the ace – her life. He could indeed, let her die. At this moment, I expected some corny claptrap about how her death wouldn’t affect the grand scheme of things, how she was never to be a part of his plan—

“I thought about it myself.” Hello? What’s going on here? “Once or twice.”

The old king leans closer to the new queen, young and green in her reign, and tells her that there is a whole world out there, and suddenly, immortality pales in comparison to the promises of music, and art, “genuine beauty”. Immortality ain’t beautiful. The world is.

She can have it all, “a thousand more birthdays”. If the new queen just asks. She can reign everywhere, anywhere she wishes for as long as she wants. Human conventions be damned.

Textually, it’s obviously a power play. Klaus is gaining an alliance from Sherriff Forbes, and a debt from Caroline Forbes, which he will no doubt call on. Caroline surrenders, admits that she doesn’t want to die after all.

But what’s she saying yes to? She’s saying yes to all those birthdays, the art, the music, the promise of genuine beauty.

So drink up, whispers the king. The queen drinks, she sleeps, and she wakes to find a bracelet of astonishing, genuine, beauty contained in a black velvet box with a neat white bow and a scrawled note. “From Klaus”.

Then, nine episodes later, at a 1920s themed dance, the old king makes his intentions very clear to the new queen. It’s clear she knows the debt that hangs over her head, the connection that haunts Tyler, so she acquiesces to his request for one dance. “I don’t bite,” he says silkily. There’s the old 'Big Bad/loyal to Holy Good friend’ dialogue exchange, as before. Then, a reiteration of his promise of the whole world, worded differently, but still there. The old king speaks of waiting for 100 years for her to accept his offer, his promises, as if to do so is easier than breathing. Oh, the new queen side-eyes him, but the pieces shift, the game changes and she’s looking at him in a whole new way. He looks at her with a depth not found in the eyes of a small town boy. She breaks it with a scoff, and there’s your standard 'Big Bad is pissed off’ dialogue from Klaus before he storms off. And, quite crucially, she looks back.

Anyone who has watched any period drama ever knows the importance of looking back.

And just one single episode later, Caroline Forbes is running down a corridor, your standard horror film shot. She is alone, scared, frightened. She is caught by Klaus Mikaelson, her saviour not ten episodes ago, who has twice offered her the world and all its beauty. Not its glories, not its triumphs. Its beauty. 

He promises to save her friend and brushes his fingers over her hair as if it’s already second nature to him to treat her this kindly, this intimately. (Do not get me started on how he cradles her when she drinks his blood, do not.) He tells her, fiercely, to get home and stay safe.

“Do you understand me?” barks he.

“Thank you,” she says. She looks at him like she still cannot work him out, and is afraid because of it. But the thanks is as easy as breathing.

For reasons that are known as ‘I cannot put up with this shit writing for a moment longer’, I give up on the show come season 3 finale. I watch clips of their scenes on YouTube, scrabble for any desperate hope that the potential I saw and shipped and loved is still there. It falls down, down the drain and I personally like to pretend anything past season 3 doesn’t exist.

So now, here I am. 22 years old with 16 years old me screeching the dying screech of a frustrated fangirl whenever she sees a gifset of Klaus Mikaelson and Caroline Forbes together on her Tumblr dashboard because you had a queen with power yet to be unlocked and a king willing to give her that power in exchange for being allowed to worship her as he always wanted to, and because of some shit to do with hybrids, it all went tits up.

But those fuckers called Klaus Mikaelson and Caroline Forbes? They have a portion of my heart (the right ventricle, to be specific) that continues to beat for the queen and king that almost ruled together. #foreverbitter

[nera-solani]

What I’m working on…

So, as the wonderful @winchester-reload​ tagged me to tell about my current WIP secrets, I am doing the thing now. My secret is, I have far too many. Seeing as I am a person who has a lot of ideas all at once, I am currently overflowing. Some of them are only one page yet, while others are almost a book of their own. Most of them are actually original works and only one of them is a fan fiction, which is posted on AO3. I will just give you a little excerpt of my many WIPs, but won’t post any excerpts of the ones that are in german. That’ll be easier.

Rules Do Dis: List all the things you’re currently working on in as much or little detail as you’d like, then tag some friends to see what they’re working on. This can be writing, art, vids, gifsets, whatever.

What I’m working on:

About humans, angels and everything in between: This is my only fan fiction I’m currently working on. You can find it on my AO3. It is Dean/Castiel and I am planning to write an explicit chapter at some point. Maybe I’ll exclude it from the main plot and post it in a series instead, but I don’t know yet. The current chapter turned into a nightmare for me, cause it got a lot longer than intended, but I think i’m finally reaching the end of it.

Current Unpublished Chapter (3): “I don’t like ghost stories”

“I think I found something.”, Sam suddenly stated. “What? On Amara? Or Cas?”, Dean asked. “On me?”, Tara added. “No, a case.”, Sam said, “So get this, in the Potwin place area of Topeka, Kansas, was a man found dead in a house inside a locked room, two days ago. But the best part is, his heart was completely frozen.” “So what could that be? A spirit?”, Tara asked curiously. “Possibly, but here’s the thing, this particular house is already known for being haunted. Or at least it was about 43 years ago.”, Sam explained, “The first events had occurred in 1972, when the owners, General J. E. Gardner and his wife Dorothy, were remodeling the house. They reported about hearing loud banging sounds coming from an unoccupied guest room for over a year, always precisely at 10:15 am. Next, they heard loud heavy breathing at night, as some invisible presence sat on the edge of their beds. One night something even tried to pull Dorothy’s legs off the bed and objects started moving by themselves, and also went missing and then randomly reappeared without explanation. Once, while hanging new wallpaper in the west bedroom, Dorothy heard a man’s voice say, “You’re doing a nice job.”, while nobody was around.”, he paused, “But it seems like the house somehow lost its haunting in 1973, because I couldn’t find any subsequent reports.” “So… the spirit just disappeared and is back now?”, Dean asked doubtingly. “Yeah, maybe… I don’t know. As far as I see, the spirit has never been violent before, so maybe it’s something else, but I think we should take a look at it.”, Sam offered. Dean sighed, “Alright, you said Topeka? That’s not so far from here. Get your stuff, we’re leaving in fifteen minutes.” The brothers stood up and walked out of the room. Tara was still sitting on the couch. Suddenly Dean walked back in, “I said, get your stuff, we won’t be waiting for you.” “What?”, she asked confused. “You’re comin’ with us.”, Dean declared. Tara’s expression lit up “Really?” “I think you’re ready. Now get your stuff or we’ll leave without you.”

Infinite Me – Timetravel and other impossibilities (unpublished): This is one of my original works. I initially started writing it in german, but as it only had one page yet, it took me less than an hour to translate it. It’s the story of a lonely time traveler, who tries to make her way through eternity, seeing as for (in the beginning) unknown reason, she cannot die.

Time is relative. But what does that even mean? The scientists of earth profess, one cannot travel back in time. Just forward. It’s linear, they say. Like a river. And one also can’t make a river flow backwards. That’s true. But what those scientists don’t know, is that time is much more similar to a river than they think. In fact, a river is the best example I can think of at all. Let me explain it… Just imagine, you’re sitting in a canoe, floating down a river. The river you’re on, is time. The canoe, your own timeline. As long as you don’t do anything and just drift, time progresses normally for you. But if you start to paddle, you move faster forward than your surroundings. You travel forward in time. That is possible for example, when one circles in a spaceship closely around a black hole. So far, so good. Scientists know about that. Now let’s assume, you want to a spot upstream. Paddling back isn’t possible, the current is far too strong. It wouldn’t even be possible with an engine attached to you canoe. Still clear.  But how are you gonna get back there then? Your scientists say, it’s not possible. I say, they don’t think far enough. Traveling back in time is possible. Back to our river. You can’t paddle back. But you can paddle to the bank, get out of the canoe and walk upstream. There, you set it back into the water, get inside and the journey can continue. It’s simple as that. Admittedly, the execution isn’t at all that easy, but in a few hundred thousand years you’ll understand it to a certain degree.

Casebook of a Psychopath (unpublished): This is a crime story, that follows and is told by a psychopath who struggles to be normal, while helping the police with their cases and a neuroscientist/psychiatrist who wants to study her, because she actually manages to live with her “defect”. There is not much of it existing yet, I’m still working on the first chapter.

Chapter I’m working on (1): “The Science of Introduction”

“I’m coming!”, I called out and walked to the apartment door. As I took a peek through the spyhole, I spottet two policemen waiting there. One of them I knew, the other one I was completely unfamiliar with. A young man, probably not long on duty yet. I could imagine why they were here. When I opened the door, the younger one already held out his badge and said, “NYPD, I’m Detective Louis, this is Detective Cruz. Sorry, for the disturbance, but are you Natalie Fox?” Cruz, who was standing behind the young man, smiled and winked at me. “That I am, how can I help you, Detective?”, I replied, knowing what was to come. “You have to come to the precinct, Miss.”, the new one said. Not again… I pulled myself together, to keep from rolling my eyes. “Of course, why is that?”, I asked, to keep up the appearance that I had no idea. “You’ll find out, as soon as we’re there.”, he said. Sure, what else… I walked with them into the vestibule, locked my apartment door, took my coat off the peg and followed them outside to their car. The trip took only a short time. The presidium wasn’t far. Actually, we could’ve walked, but whatever… When we arrived, the new one led me through the big office room with the many work desks of all the detectives and directly to an interrogation room. He seemed really proud to have “caught” me. As we walked past the Captain’s bureau, I could see, that he struggled to suppress a grin. I had to smile. That looked like him. After we had arrived at interrogation room 1, the new one told me to sit down, so I did. I put my hands on the table and linked my fingers together. “How long is this going to take? I have an appointment with a client”, I took a look at the clock, “in a bit more than half an hour.” “It’ll take as long as long as it’ll take.”, he answered. How cute, he wanted to look cool and impress his colleges.

Black winged Angel (unpublished): So, with 73 pages, this is by far my longest WIP. It is in german, so there will be no excerpt. It is basically about a young woman who is bored of her life, until she finds herself in danger, and gets rescued by a mysterious man who turns out to be an actual angel. Together they cross the country in an attempt to find the mysterious black winged angel, who is according to a prophecy supposed to defeat the devil once and for all.

About Gods and Ravens (unpublished): Okay, so this could possibly be described as a weird Avengers/X-Men mashup and is based loosely off a really strange dream I had some time ago. It is also in german, but I’m thinking about translating it at some point. I’m not sure how, but I managed to tell the complete life story of the main character from her birth to her thirties in 4 pages without giving too much away. If we look at it as an Avengers/X-Men mashup, the story would be set a few years after New York. A short summary:

The world has come to peace again and there is an organization for extraterrestrial matters that recruits mutants (some of them have helped fighting off the first invasion). Amalia is something special. She fits into three of the mutant-categories and is far more powerful than any of them. But she is also seemingly broken. Life never meant well with her and she doesn’t let anyone near herself. That is, until she meets another soul, who is probably even more broken than herself. Loki. Yes, Loki. The one who lead the first invasion on earth and is now suspected to stand behind the recent attacks. But he keeps claiming to be innocent. Amalia believes him. Together they have to race against the clock and through the galaxy to find out who really is responsible for those attacks. And then there is also Amalias new friend Athena…

With a writers imagination (working title, unpublished): This is a little meta, because it is told by a writer, who has written books before, and now found out that in another universe, her books are reality. One of her main characters shows up on her doorstep and tells her about that and asks her for help, cause apparently the villain she wrote, got out of control. This actually only consists of the idea, a beginning and an ending (yes I already have the ending). But I like the idea very much, so I’ll just give you what I already have of the beginning.

I’ve just arrived back home. I hung up my coat, sat down at the kitchen table and opened my laptop to start writing. My jeans are ripped, my shirt singed. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what day it is… I’m writing this book for my loyal readers – my longtime fans if you will – and for my old friends. So, in fact for everyone, who might worry about me. A few weeks ago, I disappeared completely out of the blue. I can imagine that my disappearance might have caused some turmoil, so I decided to write down the recent events. First of all, I want you to know that I’m alright. Admittedly, I’ve seen better days, but I am okay. Due to the recent events following in quick succession, I’m not sure where to start… I think it would be best to start by telling something about myself. My name is Tessa Grays, which many of my readers should already be familiar with.

A love to die kill for (unpublished): Well, this is not really a WIP, because I haven’t written anything down yet. My writing process works the way, that I only start working when I have the basic story already in my mind. I already know how this is supposed to end, but I have literally no idea how to start. So, for me, it is a WIP, cause my mind is still working on fleshing out the plot. It could in the end probably be read as a Destiel serial killer AU, I guess? Maybe? I don’t really know, but it is based off a prompt for such. So, everything I’ve got about this is in my brain. Except the cover I drew a few weeks ago. I’ll just leave that here for you…

Tagging: @tanjasteatime​ @anyrei​ @mishasfault​ and anyone else who wants to do the thing!