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fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy · 3 years

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Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.

#tales of arcadia #rise of the titans #trollhunters #rott #rise of the titans spoilers #rott spoilers #toa #3 below #athena's own original post!#jim lake jr #claire nuñez #toby domzalski

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bazzybelle · 3 years

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Magical Equality Within The World of Mages

I’ve been thinking a lot since I finished reading Any Way The Wind Blows, and there are SO many things that I still need to process. I took my time with reading it, I’ve listened to the audiobook and I plan on re-reading it several times, once I move into my new house and have THAT stress done and over with. I cannot wait to re-read it on my back porch with some iced tea and a notebook to annotate and comment on pretty much everything that gave me feelings.

But for now, there is one massive issue that I want to address, and it plays into the plot for all three books.

Warning for those who have not read Any Way The Wind Blows, this post contains spoilers, so proceed with caution. I am tagging this appropriately, but adding an extra warning just in case.

Huge thanks to @carryonsimoncarryonbaz for reading this over and making sure I didn't sound like a rambling mess.

The World of Mages is an incredibly toxic place! This is especially true for anyone who isn’t a magical powerhouse, or stupid rich.

I’m going to not focus on the obvious socio-economic bullshit, because I’m not familiar enough with the British class system to properly comment on it. But if anyone wants to add onto this with a whole meta like that, please do so!

Instead, I’m going to focus on magic use and how detrimental it can be to grow up in this world if you aren’t one of the few who are blessed with the RIGHT kind of magic (I say right kind of magic for a reason, and I’m going to come back to that). I want to focus my attention on three characters (two of whom were drawn into Smith-Richard’s fake promises, and one who was just fed up with it all): Martin Bunce, Daphne Grimm, and Agatha Wellbelove.

1) Martin Bunce: We first hear about Martin Bunce in Carry On. He’s Penny’s dad, a renowned scholar and is leading a team researching the effects of the Insidious Humdrum. He’s a highly respected individual, in his own right. Penny adores him, she only speaks his praises, and I get the feeling she gets along better with Martin, then she does with Mitali. When Penny needs help with Shep’s curse, she trusts her dad to help her after her mother flat out refuses.

While Martin is respected in the community, he isn’t a magical powerhouse. In fact, he isn’t very powerful at all. Baz makes a cheeky little comment about how he must have come from mundanity with a name like “Bunce”, and he doesn’t teach any magical classes at Watford, he focuses mainly on Linguistics.

Professor Bunce is one of the people taken in by Smith-Richard’s message, and I’m kind of glad he is. It shows that Smith-Richard’s message can reach anyone, even someone as scholarly and learned as Martin. Martin Bunce is intelligent, loving, devoted, and the apple of his family’s eye. But, when push comes to shove, all that does not matter because in the end, he isn’t as magically powerful as his wife and kids. How many times has Martin been compared to his wife? How many times has he been compared to his kids? What was it like going to Watford and having to hear about how you barely scraped by in the magical classes? His whole family is obsessed with magic, his daughter's best friend is the Most Powerful Mage. Martin is constantly surrounded by people making comments about power and magic and being strong enough as a magician.

That stuff stays with you... So when you see someone performing magic that can pull you to your full potential, of COURSE you grab onto it and hope that it’s a real thing.

Something interesting to note here; Towards the end of AWTWB, Martin casts a drinking spell, and Baz makes a comment about anyone who could cast that spell in quick succession doesn’t need a power-up. Now, was Martin truly not powerful, or did he just not have the right type of magic? Could he have been a better magician if he was able to find the right situations where his magic responded better? If he was allowed to learn in a way where his magic could have reached its full potential, without the use of a horrible curse?

I have a teaching background, and I’ve worked with a lot of kids in Inclusive Education. I’ve had to differentiate practically all of my lesson plans so that all the kids in my classroom would understand the lesson and be able to reach the goals outlined for them. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve taught, but I look at stuff like this in the World of Mages and my teaching ear perks up.

2) Agatha Wellbelove: Another person who comes to mind, especially with not having the right kind of magic is Agatha Wellbelove. Agatha does not see herself as a very strong magician. She tells Simon that magic for her is like holding a muscle. Pair that up with a mother who is OBSESSED with magic and power and who’s got the most power, and which magical matches will bring about powerful children, and you get someone who becomes resentful of the whole effing thing! I’m not even going to touch the whole “dating the Chosen One” thing because that’s a whole other can of worms.

When we first meet Agatha, she’s already fed up with magic, and wants nothing to do with it, and I can’t say I blame her. She spends all of Wayward Son running away from magic, and meandering through life, being still so unsure of herself and of her place in the world. She calls herself a poor excuse for a magician, yet she manages to save both herself and Penny from the NowNext by summoning fire! That’s a huge flipping deal! Not everyone can do that, yet Agatha is able to summon the power inside herself to do so! Imagine the wonderful magic she could have done if she was taught in a way that spoke to her.

In AWTWB, she is the ONLY person who is able to get through to the Goats. Her magic seems to be connected to nature (if I had to guess). The Dryad, all the way back in Carry On, tells Simon that she and the others find Agatha “peaceful”. That’s her magic. Agatha was able to come full circle by finding peace with the magic she has. She was able to find a place for it. What’s sad is that she felt the need to run away and not want to have it in her life anymore. Her magic is beautiful, yet not enough.

3) Daphne Grimm: So, this is the character that stood out to me the most. Daphne is the reason I even wanted to write this commentary. Those of you who know me, know that I adore this character. Partly because, I’m obsessed with the idea that Baz has people looking out for him and who care about him.

Anyway, Ms. Daphne Grimm is the apple of my eye essentially. I love her, I adore her, and she is treated SO UNFAIRLY by the World of Mages.

What do we know about Daphne? She is Baz’s stepmum, and has four kids with Malcolm. From the first book, there are snarky little comments about Daphne’s lack or power and magic. Baz himself makes a shitty comment about how Daphne’s “blood is as thin as gruel”, even though Daphne goes out of her way to make sure he’s got food sent to his room. She’s extra careful in making sure Baz feels safe in his own home. She suggests to Malcolm that Baz should see a therapist for everything he’s been through, making her the ONLY parent who not only acknowledges her child’s trauma, but tries to do something about it!

She is a GOOD mom!

Ok, we know that Baz wears a ton of masks of indifference in Carry On, and he softens up tremendously in Wayward Son, calling her lovely while teaching him to drive a car.

We learn a lot about Daphne in Any Way The Wind Blows. Namely that Fiona has some pretty nasty opinions about her. (That comment about her kids not being legitimate, and that she’s as “thick headed as she is thin blooded”. Now, imagine you’re Daphne, and the widower of the Great Natasha Pitch asks to marry you. That’s already some MASSIVE shoes to fill. You accept, and you do the best you can, taking care of his son and being a positive presence in his life, meanwhile going to all these posh functions where EVERYONE talks about power and magic. Then to have the sister of your husband’s first wife make snarky comments about your level of power and magic.

That stuff sticks with you.

Daphne doesn’t want her kids going to Watford, the ONLY magical school in the UK (as far as we know). She wants her children to succeed and be known for everything they are capable of doing, instead of being ridiculed for all the ways they’ll come up short. According to Baz, the only reason Daphne graduated from Watford was because she was smart enough to pass every exam (yet, Fiona still makes snarky comments about her intelligence).

Daphne is well aware of how painful it can be to live in the World of Mages and not be a powerhouse magician. Like Martin, she takes matters into her own hands and seeks out a way to make herself more powerful.

It is heartbreaking to look at these three amazing, beloved characters, and think about the suffering they have had to endure by their peers. Both Daphne and Martin get frustrated when those around them question their choice to follow Smith-Richards, stating “you don’t know what it’s like”. Luckily for Daphne, Baz makes an effort to actually understand her, and doesn’t judge her. Even when Fiona mocks her, Baz defends his stepmum. When Daphne berates herself and compares herself to Natasha, Baz reflects on how Natasha would have killed him (something Daphne would NEVER do to any of her children).

We know that Watford did not allow magical creatures, or differently-abled magicians (I use this term for a reason) to study there until the Mage came around and allowed everyone into Watford. This was a great thing, because now, every magical child was given the opportunity to learn how to speak with magic.

However, it should not have stopped there. I spoke earlier on differentiation and on finding the right place for everyone’s magic. What if magicians like Martin, and Daphne, and Agatha are all powerful in their own right, and they just haven’t found their place where their magic fits? Instead of finding the right way to teach these magicians, they are left to struggle and ultimately resent their magic and the magic of the world around them.

Do I hear a social commentary on the state of standardized education? I can’t really comment on the British Educational System, nor the American one, as I am Canadian. What I can say, from my own experience in Canadian classrooms, is that for all the talk we do on making education inclusive, there is still a big push from higher ups for high grades and standardized testing. If any of my followers are British or American and care to share your two cents, feel free to do so. Let’s keep the conversation going!

I think this post might have gotten away from me. I think my point was to act as a defense for people like Daphne and Martin who found themselves fished into a scam all for the promise of feeling like they are enough in their world. I also wanted to defend people like Agatha, who did all she could to run away from all of it, only to find the place where she (and her magic) belonged.

I remember having this discussion on Discord, and one of the points that came up was that maybe The Greatest Threat to the World of Mages was this deeply ingrained prejudice over magicians with different sorts of magic. Magicians who need that extra bit of help to find their way.

We’ve seen in this series how these prejudices can threaten to split the World of Mages apart, and it looks like magicians like Penny, Baz, and Agatha are learning from these mistakes. Only time (and us fanfiction writers) will tell how they end up shaping their world for the future generations.

#any way the wind blows spoilers #awtwb spoilers #meta #is it though?#I mean I GUESS #the simon snow trilogy #the simon snow series #magical equality #the world of mages #this is really just a defense for Daphne

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vallkyr · 3 years

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June: What a view

Stray Kids take a little vacation and Minho has a plan for how he and Jisung can pass their time.

Prompt: surreal mountain landscape

Characters: Lee Minho, Han Jisung, Bang Chan is mentioned

Pairing: Minho x Jisung

Rating: Teen and up audience

Warnings: mild wearing, thunderstorms

Genres: Romance, Slice of Life

Tags: Fluff, Established Relationship, Cuddling & Snuggling, Minho and his obsession with butts (especially Jisung's), very vaguely set in the Alps because why not, Jisung can’t say no to Minho for the life of him

Word Count: 3.809

Writing Workshop Masterpost July: A morning at the pool

Hello, dear people. I've started doing a writing work shop with a few of my friends and will try to post my result here every month. I have no idea what the fics will be about since we take turns picking prompts. I hope you'll have as much fun as I do!

“Jisuung.” Oh god. He wants something. Minho always gets that specific tone when he’s about to ask for something he knows Jisung would otherwise turn down. Damnit, they just had breakfast with the others. Jisung was hoping for a quiet day in bed and a movie or two, but he highly doubts that’s what Minho has in mind. Minho wouldn’t use his please-I’ll-do-anything voice for being lazy in their hotel room. Jisung looks up from his phone, finding Minho kneeling on the bed right next to him and looking at him with a way too sweet smile. Mr. resting-bitch-face is up to something big. Fuck, this is going to be a tough one.

“I told you, I’m not holding your phone while you video call your cats. Get a tripod or something.”

As expected, the joke breaks Minho’s façade a little: he rolls his eyes “First of all: how dare you? My children will hear about this. Secondly, that is not what I was going to say.” Jisung raises his brow but decides to believe him. One horrible request is off the list, thank fuck. Feeling generous now that he knows he won’t be used as a stand, Jisung puts his phone aside. Whatever Minho has on his mind can’t be that bad, right? “I would like to go hiking with you.” Boy was he wrong.

“No.” And just like that Jisung is back on his phone. Fucking hiking. That’s what Minho is using his persuasion tactics for? This is supposed to be a little vacation for their group to get some rest after the tour. They came here to relax with their friends not to walk around without an aim for hours on end. How Minho ended up with hiking on his list of hobbies is beyond Jisung’s comprehension. Isn’t fishing already boring enough?

“Please?” With that Minho is back to his cute smile and honey dripping voice and Jisung can already feel his resolve crumble a little under the weight of Minho’s warm eyes.

Jisung groans. No, Minho is not going to wear him down on this. “Can’t you go with someone else?”

“I want to go with you,” Minho stresses and takes Jisung’s hand into his. “Isn’t it obvious? I want to see you move your sweet ass up the mountain.”

Does he really thing compliments are going to help him with this shit? “Chan-Hyung has a sweet ass too.”

Suddenly, Minho breaks into a laugh. Oh fuck, his laugh is way more effective at softening Jisung’s heart than all of Minho’s persuasions. “You want me to go hiking with Channie-Hyung and stare at his ass? Did you really think that one through?”

Okay, yes, well played. “I did not,” Jisung admits while starting to laugh himself.

“Does that mean you’ll come with me?”

For fucks sake, Minho. “No, it’s boring and I hate moving.”

“It’s relaxing!” Minho tries to argue. It’s cute when he tries to convince Jisung of doing physical activities with wildly inaccurate opinions like that.

“If you think very hard you might be able to come up with a relaxing activity that doesn’t require us to go out into the middle of fucking nowhere.” For emphases, Jisung lets the fingers of his free hand slide along Minho’s thigh. Minho hitting his arm cannot stop Jisung from grinning. Considering the amount of time Minho spends with his hands on Jisung’s ass, he should really be able to take a dirty joke.

“Okay, how about this: You go hiking with me and when we get home again, I’ll make you a chocolate cheesecake.”

“Now we’re talking.” Jisung puts his phone down – it’s not like he had been paying attention to it anyways – and leans into Minho’s space. “When you say chocolate cheesecake do you mean chocolate mixed into the creamy part or do you throw chocolate chips into a regular cheesecake?”

Minho blinks at him. The little smile on his face tells Jisung Minho knows exactly he’s about to win Jisung over. Honestly, a chocolate cheesecake might just do the job. A little trip with his boyfriend can’t be too bad anyways, right? “I was going to make a regular cheesecake but with chocolate crust and put chocolate glaze over it.”

Fuck, that sounds good. “You’re a genius.”

“I’m aware.” Minho grins and leans even closer. “So do we have a deal?”

Jisung ponders on it for a moment. He still thinks hiking is going to be boring as fuck. Besides, he’d definitely prefer staying in their room, having dinner with the others and watching a movie together afterwards plus maybe some relaxing activities. But Minho seems really insistent on this. Maybe hiking will be somewhat bearable together with him. Plus, the cheesecake sounds amazing. Why stop at one cheesecake though? Minho might even agree to two if Jisung plays his card right.

“I don’t know…” Jisung turns his head to the side, away from Minho.

“Please?” Minho places his hand on Jisung’s cheek, turns Jisung’s face towards his own and puts on that same sweet smile again, which makes Jisung feel weak in his knees even if he doesn’t want to admit it. “We could watch Spirited Away afterwards, you know? Please Jisung…” Yeah, okay. He can’t say no to Minho’s smile. Jisung tries to lean closer and kiss Minho but is stopped by a hand on his chest. “Answer first.” Of course Minho wouldn’t let his guard slip.

“Okay. I’ll go.” Minho beams at Jisung before going in for the kiss. Yup, this is a good deal. Cheesecake, Spirited Away and a content boyfriend, what else could Jisung possibly need?

🏔️🏔️🏔️

“I should have demanded way more than a fucking cheesecake,” Jisung grumbles while fanning himself with his – Minho’s – shirt. Obviously he put on Minho’s shirt for this. He’s not going to get his own clothes sweaty for Minho’s nature kink.

“Come on.” Minho pats Jisung on the butt before continuing on without mercy. “Get your act together, we’re almost at the summit.”

Asshole. Why did he want Jisung to come along so badly? He really should have known Jisung would only slow him down. “You say that like we won’t have to go back home after that.”

“Well, we can spend some time at the top and rest a bit. That’s kind of the point, you know? Relaxing, enjoying the view and all. It’ll be nice, I promise.”

Yeah, sure, nice for Minho. “Not if I die before we get there. You’re way too fast for me.”

Jisung doesn’t have to see Minho’s face to know he’s rolling his eyes. Pretentious country folk. “Crybaby.” And now he’s insulting Jisung too. Really, Jisung should just turn around and leave. But he doesn’t have the energy for that and would probably get lost on the way back, so he quickly ditches that thought.

“Can’t you give me a piggyback ride?”

Minho turns around and raises his eyebrow at Jisung as though he just said something crazy. It’s ridiculous for him to react that way. By now, Minho should be used to far more obscure ideas. They’re part of the all-inclusive deal of being in a relationship with Jisung. “You’re too heavy.”

“Oh come on! Why the fuck do I date a person who willingly spends time at the gym if they don’t even carry me?”

“Are you saying that you want me to stop going to the gym?”

“Don’t you fucking dare!”

Minho laughs at that and finally stops. He turns around and beckons Jisung over. As soon as Jisung is close enough, Minho grabs his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss. It’s surprisingly sweet after all the bickering. Usually Minho just slaps his ass or gives him a quick kiss on the cheek after an “argument” like that. Jisung enjoys the little treat though. He lifts his hands to Minho’s hips and pulls them closer together, which lurs a little giggle form Minho.

After a while Minho ends the kiss and leans their foreheads together instead. Jisung sighs contently when Minho suddenly caresses his cheek. “Just a little longer. Okay, baby? I promise the sight is worth it.”

A little grin tugs at Jisung’s lips. “Maybe I like the sight right here better.”

“That’s it. I’m going alone.” Without any bit of hesitation, Minho turns around and starts walking again. As though their kiss never even happened. What a dickhead. Just when Jisung thought this trip was getting nice.

🏔️🏔️🏔️

“What a sight.” Minho beams while looking out into the mountain range. Finally, after what felt like a small eternity to Jisung, they arrived at the mountain top. After all the hassle, Jisung feels obligated to follows Minho’s gaze. Despite his earlier reservations, he has to admit Minho was right about the nature. He lets his eyes wander over the jagged mountains, the deep green conifers filling the valley, the lush grass underneath them and the little flowers scattered across it like stars in the night sky. Jisung has never seen anything like it. And he had no idea air could be this fresh. He closes his eyes and fills his lungs. Soft gusts of wind caress over his skin like silk. Jisung takes another deep breath and feels his entire body relax. Maybe Minho was right about that part. When Jisung opens his eyes again, Minho still looking at the nature. His smile is so bright as he enjoys the sight in front of them. Honestly, seeing Minho this content is really making the strenuous way up here worth it.

“Usually you say that while looking at my butt.”

Giggling, Minho turns away from his beloved sight and looks at Jisung. “And I mean it.” Minho pulls Jisung closer and kisses his cheek – the one in his face – before tugging at his hand. “There should be a table up there. We can take a break and eat lunch.” Jisung lets Minho pull him along. Sure enough, they soon come to an old wooden table with benches on the sides. The whole thing looks a little shaky from years of being exposed to the elements, but Jisung figures it will survive a simple lunch. He sits down on the bench cross-legged and watches Minho unpack everything. At the very least, his boyfriend had the decency to carry all their food since he already talked Jisung into this exhausting trip. Jisung hadn’t realized just how hungry he was until he sees the food.

Jisung doesn’t know whether it’s the exhaustion or the breathtaking view, but the food tastes incredible. He leans his head onto Minho’s shoulder as they enjoy their lunch and the view. Sadly, they’re soon done eating and Jisung is already dreading hiking all the way down again. “Can I take a nap here?”

“No. I know your type of naps and I’d like to go back to the hotel before it gets dark.” Jisung would love to protest, but Minho does have a point with that. Which doesn’t mean Jisung is about to give up.

“You’re so damn cruel. You’re really going to make me go home without a nap?”

“Unless you feel like staying here all by yourself.” Damnit. It’s useless, Minho isn’t going to agree to a nap. Of course, they’re going to stay here for a while longer, but Jisung doubts the bit of rest will charge his batteries enough to survive the descent. How can Minho still be so unbothered? It’s like the hiking didn’t phase him in the least. No, Minho has energy for two. Jisung smiles when an idea hits him. He holds onto the table while moving to straddle Minho’s lap and sitting back on his thighs.

“What are you trying to pull?” Despite his obvious suspicion, Minho holds onto Jisung’s waist and gently caresses Jisung’s sides.

“I’ll earn myself a piggyback ride home,” he announces with a grin. Minho may be good at persuading Jisung, but the same is true the other way around.

“Not happening, Jisung.”

“You say that now…” He’s about to kiss Minho when he feels something wet on his back. For a moment he considers if Minho tried to purr water over him, but then more and more drops seem to land on his body. “Is it seriously starting to rain now?” Jisung glares up, finding a dark grey cloud right above them. “We should find somewhere to take shelter.”

“Knew it,” Minho mutters while squeezing Jisung’s butt. “Your ass is made from sugar.”

Jisung sighs. Shitty weather isn’t enough, of course Minho has a dumb comment to add. “That remains the worst pick up line you ever pulled and excuse me for not wanting to catch a cold.”

“Relax, I’m sure it will pass soon.” Of course, Minho stays completely unaffected. He pulls Jisung closer and nuzzles his face into the crook of Jisung’s neck. “Whatever happened to earning your piggyback ride?” Jisung tries to ignore the rain and go back to kissing Minho, which seems to work for barely a minute. The occasional rain drops become bigger and bigger and more frequent until a cloudburst breaks down on them and drenches them to the bone. They gather all their stuff accompanied with muttered curses of ‘What the hell.’ and ‘Fucking shit.’ As soon as everything is inside their backpacks again, they make a run for a group of trees, hoping that it will keep at least some of the rain away from them.

“That much on ‘It will pass soon.’ Fuck!” Jisung tries to shake off the water, which proves rather useless. They’re completely soaked. “What do we do now?!”

“Sit here and wait?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?! I knew we should have stayed in the hotel.” Jisung crossed his arms. Hiking sucks by itself and now they’re stuck up here in the rain? Shit. This is what he gets for not being able to tell his boyfriend no. Stupid handsome face and sweet smile.

“Maybe we should have checked the weather forecast…” That idiot really didn’t check the weather? Jisung can feel Minho’s gaze on him, but he refuses to turn around. Minho sighs behind him. Suddenly Minho’s strong arms wrap around Jisung’s body and Jisung finds himself trapped in a hug with Minho pressed against his back. “Baby, are you mad at me?” Yes, Jisung most definitely is.

“You’re going to need way more than Spirited Away and a chocolate cheesecake to make up for this bullshit.”

Minho hums in thought and snuggles even closer. “Ponyo and a chocolate cheesecake?”

“No, you idiot. Howl’s Moving Castle and a chocolate cheesecake.” Jisung can’t help but smile when he feels Minho tremble with laughter behind him. Fuck, he can’t be mad at his boyfriend when he’s adorable.

“This certainly explains why we saw so little people on the way up.”

Jisung groans. “How come we never realized that?” Now that Jisung thinks about it, it really should have struck them as weird that not a single soul was up here.

Minho leans over Jisung’s shoulder to kiss him on the cheek. “I’m sorry, baby. Next time I’ll definitely check the weather forecast. Now come on, if I remember correctly there’s a hut a bit further down the path.” They shoulder their backpacks and get going hand in hand. As though this shit wasn’t enough yet, lighting starts to flash in the distance. Just great. They go from walking to running, which makes Jisung’s hood bounce around his head. He laughs as he grabs it and tries to keep it in place while running behind Minho. More and more water splashes around his feet as they run, but at this point it really doesn’t make much of a difference.

Luckily it doesn’t take too long until a wooden hut comes into view. The final spurt towards it drains the little bit of energy Jisung still had. They almost crash into each other under the roofed over entrance. Jisung leans his head against Minho’s shoulder and tries to catch his breath again, which is difficult when both of them are laughing. With all the noise and his eyes closed, Jisung almost misses the rattling of the door.

“Closed,” Minho comments with a pained laugh.

“Of fucking course it is.”

“Stay here.” As if Jisung even considers moving. He leans against the closed door and watches Minho snoop around, lifting the doormat and pushing potted plants around until he triumphantly raises a key in the air. “Knew it!”

Jisung raises his arms and cheers as he watches his boyfriends unlock the door. They trudge inside and get rid of their backpacks. “By the way, are we even sure this is legal?”

“Would you prefer going back into the thunderstorm?”

Just in that moment, another lightning flashes outside. What a nice way to avoid decision making. “Fuck it. We’re staying.” Jisung throws the door shut.

Minho laughs before grabbing Jisung by his jacket and pulling him into a kiss. It feels a little like kissing in the shower with how wet they are. Except they’re usually far less dressed when they shower together. Minho pulls away with a smile. “I’ll see if we have towels or anything here.”

Though a little hesitant, Jisung lets Minho go and starts to get rid of his soaked clothes. There’s a small table pushed against one of the walls with three chairs around it. The perfect place to spread out their clothes. Hopefully they’ll dry until it’s time to leave.

When he hears footsteps, Jisung turns his head only to freeze right away. Minho is staring. He doesn’t bother with being subtle in the least. Well, Minho never does. Especially not if Jisung is almost naked. Minho fucking grins and wiggles his eyebrows at Jisung when their eyes meet. “There we have the sight again.”

“Shut up, give me a towel and get out of those clothes you’re going to catch a cold.”

“So demanding,” Minho complains. He gives Jisung one of the towels and slaps his ass as soon as his hand is free. Jisung wraps himself up in the towel and returns the favor of blatant staring while Minho sheds his clothes.

“Oh what a sight,” Jisung mimics his boyfriend, laughing when Minho starts to make a show out of it. Minho puts on an exaggerated sexy expression while stripping down piece by piece. In the end Minho even throws his shirt over to Jisung, who catches it and starts clapping. “We should get caught by rain more often.”

“I don’t need rain for this.” Minho grins before putting the towel around his shoulders. “We should probably let the others know we aren’t coming back any time soon. With how much it’s raining, we probably wouldn’t make it home before dark.”

“You’re planning to stay?”

“I could imagine worse than spending a night in the mountains with my boyfriend.” Minho places a kiss on Jisung’s cheek before getting his phone. They quickly call Chan to let him and the rest of their friends to tell them everything is fine and that they’ll return tomorrow before slipping into bed. There’s no wood to make a fire, so they snuggle up against each other underneath the blankets. Because he’s so tired, Jisung feels sleep clawing at him faster than usual. He fully wraps himself around Minho – almost like a koala – and closes his eyes.

“Good night, cheesecake-maker.”

Minho chuckles quietly. He sounds tired too. Very softly, he runs his hand through Jisung’s hair and kisses his forehead. “Good night, my favorite view.”

🏔️🏔️🏔️

Jisung groans and tries to turn away from the light that stings in his eyes. It’s way too early to wake up. At least, Jisung supposed that. He has no idea what time it is. What he does know is that he isn’t even close to being rested enough to get up and hike down this fucking mountain.

“Minho, can you close the curtain or something?”

Minho unlocks their legs and removes his arms from around Jisung’s waist. For a moment, Jisung thinks he’s actually going to stand up and close the curtain until he hears a low, rough voice from beside him. “You’re free. Go do it yourself.”

“Asshole.”

“Love you too.” Jisung pouts when Minho does a kissy face into his direction with closed eyes. Fuck, the asshole is cute and Jisung still can’t say no to him. Jisung immediately misses the warmth and comfort of the bed and Minho’s embrace when he gets up. Damnit. Just hurry and close the fucking curtain.

Jisung has already grasped both of the curtains and is about to pull them close when his gaze falls out the window. Is this really the same mountain range they saw yesterday? It looks like an entirely different world. The mountains emerge from thick layers of fog. The sun is just peaking out from underneath it, coloring everything in a beautiful pink-orange glow.

“Minho!”

“No.”

“You wanted to get a view so come here and look at it!”

Minho grumbles and rolls out of bed while keeping the blanket around himself. Of course, Minho would never willingly abandon the warmth of the bed. He waddles over to Jisung. He can barely keep his eyes open against the sunlight, but obviously he’s immediately able to locate Jisung’s ass and give it a firm slap before stepping up behind him.

“Woah…”

“Yeah.”

Minho brings his arms around Jisung from behind and wraps both of them up in the blanket. A little smile dances over Jisung’s lips while he snuggles back into Minho’s body. This is what heaven has to feel like. It’s so peaceful in this cabin. Everything is quiet and bathed in the golden sunlight of the morning sun.

“Maybe, but really just maybe, hiking wasn’t a bad idea after all.”

“Oh?” Minho places a soft kiss on Jisung’s neck. “Does that mean I don’t have to bake that chocolate cheesecake after all?”

“You don’t have to, you should want to. You still forced me to hike and caught me in the rain, you know?”

“I’m deeply sorry.” Minho sounds sly, amused, smug and anything but sorry, but Jisung can’t be bothered to get annoyed by that. There’s something soft and magical about the moment, about the scene stretching out in front of them like a door into a whole new world.

“Is this real?” Jisung whispers while letting the tips of his fingers dance over his forearm. “It doesn’t feel real.”

“Starting reality check.”

Jisung yelps when Minho suddenly pinches his ass cheek. “Ouch! Asshole!”

“No actually, that’s a bit more to the left.”

Jisung blushes. “Shut up. Please just shut up.” Of course Minho only grins stupidly when Jisung slides his hand into Minho’s neck and yanks him into a kiss. He’s a fucking idiot, but Jisung would give him or his weirdness or his stupid plans for anything in the world.

#kdiarynet #sk writersnet #Sandra's writing workshop #writing #Stray Kids #Lee Minho #Han Jisung #Minsung #Fluff #Established relationship #butt hunter Minho

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kimuramasaya · 3 years

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a (long) get to know me tag! tagged by @jaehyukkies

tagging: @alrightyaphroditie @blahblahblahcollapse @beomkai @polargyu @dongkwan

—what day is your birthday? may 6

—what's your favorite color? mauve and sage green

—what's your lucky number? 2 the only prime number that is even

—do you have any pets? a dog

—how tall are you? 5'5″ (165cm)

—how many pairs of shoes do you own? probably 20ish but I wear like 4 regularly

—favorite song? I’m terrible at choosing favorites but I listen to treasure’s come to me every day. I also love glass animals’ agnes and lord huron’s what do it mean

—favorite movie? again I’m bad at choosing faves, but my go to comfort movies are howl’s moving castle, clueless, and troll 2 (1990)

—what would be your ideal partner? dating is honestly not at all important to me, so this isn’t something I think about. the people I’ve dated in the past were pretty different from each other, but I think the main things they had in common are that they made me laugh and were more outgoing that I am.

—do you want children? no thank you! would much rather be the fun auntie.

—have you gotten in trouble with the law? nope

—bath or shower? shower

—what color socks are you wearing? I rarely wear socks. it’s just too hot where I live for most of the year (winter included)

—favourite type of music? pop, but especially alt, indie, and r&b influenced pop

—how many pillows do you sleep with? 3

—what position do you sleep in? all of them, but most often on my stomach. I usually try to sleep on my back though since it’s easier on my back and neck

—what you don’t like when you’re sleeping? I’m not too picky about sleeping conditions. as long as it’s not too hot then I’ll eventually be able to sleep. my anxiety makes it hard for me to fall asleep, but once I am asleep, it takes a hell of a lot to wake me up

—what do you have for breakfast? during the week, usually just oatmeal and coffee. on the weekends, I usually sleep until about 11, so I skip breakfast.

—have you ever tried archery? once at church camp

—favourite fruit? mangoes my beloved

—favourite swear word? fuck is so versatile so she’s usually my go to, though I curse a whole lot less now than I used to

—do you have any scars? a couple on my knees. I was a reckless outdoorsy child

—are you a good liar? not really. the guilt usually gets to me

—what’s your personality type? istj. phlegmatic. type 6.

—what’s your favourite type of girl? what does this mean???

—innie or outie? innie

—left- or right-handed? right

—favourite food? I can always eat chicken adobo and lumpia. these foods remind me of my grandma, who is just like my favorite person in my family.

—favourite foreign food? Japanese food!

—are you clean or messy? I’m pretty clean. I get a little obsessive about cleaning and tidying, which is kind of a family trait. I just feel better when everything is neat and easy to find.

—most used phrase? I say honestly and literally pretty regularly. if you’ve seen jo koy’s tagalog thursday about how filipinos say “what did you say,” I also make that sound a lot.

—how long does it take for you to get ready? on weekdays, I’m up and out the door in under 40 minutes.

—do you talk to yourself? all the time. it really helps me to slow down my train of thought

—do you sing to yourself? yes a lot.

—are you a good singer? decidedly average. my music training is in piano and percussion, so my sense of pitch is not super developed since I only ever had to tune timpani

—biggest fear? if we’re talking run of the mill fears, it’s sn*kes. I have about every version of it filtered on here because even still images of them give me panic attacks.

—are you a gossip? unfortunately I am nosy, so I love to know things, but I absolutely do not spread it.

—do you like long or short hair? the last time I cut my hair, it was a little above my shoulders, but I’m notorious for going a year or more between hair cuts, so I don’t really have a strong preference.

—favourite school subject? math, but specifically calculus.

—extrovert or introvert? very much an introvert, so it makes total sense that I chose a career that requires me to talk to a ton of strangers every day.

—what makes you nervous? most things, but I also have really bad car anxiety because I was in a roll over car accident.

—who was your first real crush? looking back now, it was my best friend from elementary through high school. she meant a whole lot to me, but I didn’t really understand it until we grew apart

—how many piercings do you have? technically, I have one in each ear, but I haven’t worn earrings since I was like 12. they just haven’t closed since my parents got them pierced when I was still a baby.

—how fast can you run? running is the absolute worst I refuse to run.

—what colour is your hair? dark dark brown, nearly black

—what colour are your eyes? brown

—what makes you angry? having to repeat myself multiple times after answering someone’s question. I can understand needing to hear something a few times, but at a certain point, it just makes me feel like people don’t care what I have to say.

—do you like your own name? I have the most common name for the year I was born, so no. I’ve been called “other Rachel” too many times.

—do you want a boy or a girl as a child? none for me please.

—what are your strengths? I’m extremely detailed oriented. once I decide to do something, I will do it thoroughly. I’m dependable, so if I agree to do something, I won’t back out of it. I also think I’m good at understanding other people’s actions or logic. I’m always trying to think of reasons why someone did what they did.

—what are your weaknesses? I have a bad habit of taking on more than my share of a project. I do it because I know I can handle the extra work and I want to make things easier for others, but I was once told that it comes off as me not trusting others (I’m getting better about this). I’m also not great at communicating my feelings and will keep everything bottled up as much as possible

—what’s the colour of your bedspread? gray

—colour(s) of your room? sage green walls, off white carpet, and like warm golden brown furniture. I also have an oversized green floral armchair

#as always feel free to ignore the tag #tagged in

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atimburtonfan · 4 years

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How Tim Burton influenced my life

I haven't posted very much on here in the past months so I tried to find the reason why and thus decided to write down how Tim Burton's films and art have influenced my life. I also like to divide his films into three distinct periods to explain how his works have changed over time and what might have been the catalyst behind this.

First period: 1982-1999/2000 These above mentioned years I like to classify as the first period of Tim Burton's films and fame. It started in 1982 with the production of his short animated film, Vincent. It was during this time that Tim Burton started to produce/direct films for a world wide audience and that he started to build up a name for himself.

The short films of Vincent, Frankenweenie and Hansel and Gretel are nowadays true Burton classics and show his distinctive style of art. The beginning of the 80's were basically the beginning of the imagery that nowadays people call Burtonesque. It's this period during which Tim Burton could truly be called an outcast in the film industry, making eclectic films that would captivate millions.

Each of the three periods is also defined by a woman and it was during the first period, 1992 to be exact, that Tim Burton and Lisa Marie met each other, they got engaged in the following year until the start of the second period which is defined by another female actress, the woman most people associate with the name Tim Burton.

In my opinion it was during this period that Tim Burton made his most personal and creative films, my all time favourite film was made during this period. It's clear that Tim Burton was able to express himself quite purely before he got influenced by the studio that once rejected him. Some of these personal and creative films include: Ed Wood, Mars Attacks, Beetle Juice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Pee-wee and his adaptations of the Batman films.

It was also during this period that I was born and introduced to his films at an early age. The first Tim Burton film that I have ever seen was Mars Attacks, an underrated comedy that I still love to watch these days. Even though I saw his films during the 1990's, I never really concerned myself with learning the names of directors or even be remotely interested in the background of them or recognize their distinctive art styles.

Second period: 2000-2012 These years are what I like to call the 'golden age' of Tim Burton's fame and influence. During the late 1990's and early 2000's, alternative music such as metalcore, nu-metal, gothic and industrial metal started to become incredibly popular in mainstream culture. Many teens became obsessed with this type of music and it was especially the explosion of the Emo-culture that introduced many teens, including myself, to Tim Burton's distinctive artstyle.

Shops like Hot-Topic became incredibly popular and many people began to dress themselves as if they were a character of a Burton film. Therefore it isn't very surprising that Burtonesque merchandise started to appear in the same shops where Emo, alternative, gothic and metal teens liked to shop, further fueling his fame as the lonesome different gothic filmdirector.

Why 2000 you might wonder? As I have said earlier, each period is defined by a woman in his life and it was during this year that Tim Burton met Helena Bonham Carter on the set of Planet of the Apes. They quickly fell in love with each other that eventually resulted in them having two children and living inside two homes that were connected to each other. Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton together formed one of the most eccentric couples that Hollywood has ever seen and they were much beloved by their fans.

It was during this period that films such as: Corpse Bride, Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Big Fish, Alice In Wonderland, Dark Shadows, Planet Of The Apes and Frankenweenie were made. They captured the hearts of millions of people throughout the world who felt like an outsider in this society and gave them a place they could call home. This was the era of the golden trio, Burton, Depp and Carter.

I myself became an awkward gothic teen at the age of 12 when I first entered high school. It was a time before youtube, the internet was still a relative new thing therefore it was incredibly hard to get your hands on anything remotely Burtonesque. I can remember reading magazines of alternative shops like Large and the McFiber and begging my mother to buy me some stuff.

As I grew more awkward and awkward, eventually getting an autism diagnosis, I got deeper involved into the alternative scene. All of my friends were exactly the same, different, alternative and thrown out by mainstream society. Many of us had serious mental problems which resulted in self harming and even episodes of attempted suicide.

It was then that I started to find comfort in his works. I could identify myself perfectly with the characters of his works and I adored the image and lives of the adorable couple, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter. I became truly obsessed with some of his films and started to finally learn English in order to write fanfictions about Sleepy Hollow. The alternative/emo scéne reached its highest moments during this period and it was almost fun to be that weird outsider who liked the art and films of Tim Burton.

Third period: 2013-present day This is what I like to call the decline of the alternative scéne and thus also the decline of Tim Burton's popularity. There are of course multiple reasons why Burton eventually became less popular but I think the most important reason is the fact that the alternative scéne is slowly dying. Most of us who were teens during the early 2000's have now grown up and most have shed off their unique gothic/ alternative/emo skins and entered adulthood life.

The internet has also changed. Platforms such as myspace, vampirefreaks and the countless of forums have died, these spaces were havens for alternative kids. Youtube was by then well introduced and started to commercialize quite badly, I honestly miss the times during which Youtube was just a free platform to share your videos without any intent to make money.

Like I said at the beginning, each period is defined by a woman in the life of Tim Burton and it was around the end of 2012 that the relationship between Burton and Carter started to wobble. It was also during this year that Eva Green made her debute in Dark Shadows. Rumours quickly rose that Eva and Tim were having an affair and in 2014, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter separated, which was absolutely stunning news to their fans as they were long viewed as the ideal 'gothic' couple.

In my honest opinion, the quality of Burton's works started to drop dramatically after the separation. The period of the classic Burton/Carter films was now officially over and this era is defined by films such as: Miss Peregrine, Big Eyes and Dumbo. None of these films really felt like a classic Burton film and I feel like he has sold his soul and creativity to Disney. Where he once was the outcast, the one who opposed Disney in order to produce his own unique works, he is now fully part of the Disney company and his distinctive style is now barely visible.

He also has made barely any works since 2012, the aforementioned films are basically the only ones he directed since the last decade. At this current moment, there is no work in production, although there are rumours he is making a sequel to Beetlejuice and his own adaptation of the Addams Family but this can't be verified. Most of his original fanbase have grown up and either shed the alternative scéne skin entirely or are still stuck loving his older works.

I can place myself in between. Truth be told, I also lost most of my interest after 2012. I became an adult and the emo scéne I once loved so much, was now officially dead. I didn't like the films he produced after Frankenweenie (2012), it somehow lacked that classic Burton magic. Not to mention that Tumblr itself has also been dying, and still is.

I still love his early works very dearly and rewatch them quite often until this day. I have however stopped obsessing about them, with the exception of one film, Sleepy Hollow. Tim Burton created a home for teens and young adults who didn't fit into modern society. I was one of those teens and his films have really helped me get through an extremely difficult period of my life. He made me feel that I belonged to something and the weekends I have spent holding Tim Burton marathons with my alternative friends were the best moments in my life.

I'm so sorry for this incredibly long post but I wanted to try to explain how Tim Burton influenced my life and how this eventually led to me barely posting anything on this tumblr account in 2021. What do you think of Tim Burton currently? Do you agree with the three periods that I have defined?

#Tim Burton #Personal #Influence

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fulokis · 4 years

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Fulokis WandaVision Rewrite- Chapter 1

Hey wanted to take my two cents at something that made more sense than what they actually did to quicksilver. Hope you like it!

Peter stood staring at the man in front of him. He hadn't spoken for what seemed like a few minutes, still processing what Peter had told him. Peter sighed, he hadn't meant to let it slip, he still wasn't sure how it had happened. One minute the two were arguing with each other and then the next the room was enveloped in an awkward silence.

"Why didn't you want to tell me?" Erik asked. He had assumed that Peter was his son since the Pentagon, but he didn't want to freak the kid out.

"Just forget it." Peter said quickly trying to bury his feelings in his chest.

"Pietro, why didn't you want to tell me?" Erik asked knowing he was pushing.

Peter looked down at the floor, "I haven't been called that since the Cuban Missile crisis. Not even in the house."

"Those damn soviets am I right?" Erik attempted to joke.

"No." Peter said, "It was so that me and Wanda could go to school without getting harassed. So we could live life. So that we could protect ourselves when we didn't have a father to protect us."

"Wanda?" Erik asked, "Peter if I had known..."

"But you didn't because you left. You left and Wanda died!" Peter said, surprised at his own reaction and his anger. "Not because of the Russians, not because of the Americans, because of you. Because you left us, Wanda died. You know what killed her Bullets. Bullets from guns. Both things made of Metal! You could have stopped them, you could have saved her. But you were too busy killing the president to care about your family."

"Peter..."

"No. It's too late for that." Peter said storming out of the mansion.

Peter ran. He always ran, it helped him think. But all he could think about was his twin sister, her body laying there on the pavement. Him helpless to do anything. That's why he'd developed speed, he was too late, and running became an obsession. When his mother had gone into labor with Lorna his powers developed. He didn't even realize that they had until he was sitting by his mothers side in the hospital watching his newborn sister asleep.

Peter stopped running, he was probably an hour's drive from the mansion by now. He looked around his surroundings, he was in New York City. The sounds of horns from angry drivers, and the buzz of the electricity made the night loud and bright. The buildings loomed over head, one caught Peters eyes in particular. It was shorter than the rest only about four stories tall, the most noteworthy feature of its appearance was the large circular window on the top floor. Something about it reminded him of his sister.

Peter walked up to the door, to his surprise it was unlocked. Walking inside he shouted "Hello?"

"Pietro?" He could hear a woman's voice call out.

"How do you know my name?" He asked walking in the direction he heard the voice.

"Because I am the Sorcerer Supreme." The woman replied walking down the right side of the twin staircase that circled the entry room. "I know all Pietro."

Peter looked up at the woman "Yeah, Yeah and every old person claims they know all. Tell me something I haven't heard."

"Wanda is alive, in another universe that is." The sorcerer said finishing descending the stairs, "I can bring you to her."

Peter thought for a second, "How do I know I can trust you? And were you stalking me?"

"I won't force you. But I Think you're curious." She said, "I think you want to know how your sister would have turned out. Who she is." She rose her hand in front of the door and Peter looked through.

A woman stood in front of a cradle singing a lullaby in a language he didn't recognize. She looked up from her children as if almost sensing that he was there. Peter gasped, she had mom's eyes. He chuckled how many times had he seen those eyes look at him with disappointment. But this time they weren't, they were looking towards him with adoration. A look he'd only seen a few times from his mother since Wanda's death. The woman's hair was even the same color he had been jealous he didn't inherit.

"How did you do that?" He asked, unable to take his eyes off of the door.

"With a spell of course." She replied.

"What's that language she's speaking?" Peter asked, watching as someone else appeared on the screen and talking to who he assumed was Wanda.

"It's from a country that does not exist here."

"This isn't possible. You're messing with my..."

"I'm a twin." Wanda said, "I had a brother, his name was Pietro."

"What?" Peter said looking at the Sorcerer Supreme.

"Keep watching Pietro." She said nodding towards the door.

"He was killed by Ultron, wasn't he?" The other woman said.

Peter turned around, "So you're saying that there's this universe where Wanda is alive and I'm dead?"

"Fascinating isn't it?" The woman said, "A universe where you're dead and one where your sister is. Pietro the Multiverse works in strange ways, if anything this is destiny."

"It's fake. It has to be." Peter replied, "There's no way that its real."

"Then how is it possible that your father can bend the electromagnetic fields of the earth to change its polarity? Or that your beloved professor can send a message to the minds of every person on the planet? You know its more than possible Pietro, you know more than anyone how probable it is."

Peter swallowed, "I should go back, they're probably worried about me."

He turned to walk away but the woman stepped in front of him, "We both know they're not. We both know they don't care where you are or what you're doing."

"I should go." Peter said getting choked up thinking about what the woman in front of him was saying. Wanda was there, in another universe, but she was there. There and she clearly loved him and missed him, more than his father had. It wasn't like any of them would miss him if he popped over for a few minutes if only to give her a hug.

"You don't want to go do you?" The woman turned her head inquisitively.

"No." Peter admitted, "Maybe its too late for her here, but there I doubt it is."

"You want to go?" She asked.

"Yeah, so do I just step through this door or like..." Peter asked.

"It's a little more complicated than that." The woman said motioning for him to follow her up the stairs. Peter followed resisting the urge to use his speed to explore the building. The woman led him to a library that reminded him of the one at the x-mansion. There were books on everything, from simple fake magic tricks to forbidden spells. Peter's eyes were drawn by a particular book. The title was almost impossible to read from the spine, so he picked it up and looked at the cover. The Strange Phenomena of the Witch Blessed Mutants the title read. Peter had seen the book before, strangely not at the mansion but in his own house outside of D.C. "What are you doing?" The woman asked popping right next to Peter.

"What are you doing?" Peter asked her.

"Do you want to see your sister or are you here to snoop?"

"You know more than you're letting on." Peter said, "What aren't you telling me?"

"Pietro, why would you think that?"

"This book, its in the wrong spot. It shouldn't be with the A's it should be with the H's if we're going by last name." Pietro said.

"Oops my bad." The woman said through gritted teeth.

"Either that or you wanted me to find this and its all some part of an elaborate plan to trap me in this other universe for some shady reasons." Peter watched as the woman's face dropped and he smiled, "I'm kidding, lighten up will ya?"

"That's a good one." She said awkwardly throwing up a fake smile, motioning for Peter to follow her. Peter followed her until they got to an open room. "Stand in the middle." She commanded.

"Okay." Peter gulped his anxiety resurfacing. He stepped into the middle of the room and a purple ring surrounded him.

"In order to travel through dimensions you need a protection spell. It keeps you from loosing your mind at the possibilities and the infinite outcomes between dimensions." The woman explained. She threw her hands up slightly and nothing happened.

"Was that supposed to do anything?" Peter asked looking around the room.

The woman ignored his comment and started chanting in Latin. The circle around Peter lit up with a purple glow. Peter attempted to touch it but yanked his hand back when he felt the heat the magic was producing. Peter watched intently and imagined Wanda doing something similar with her magic. The woman pulled out a necklace and made it float near the circle. The necklace began to syphon the energy off the circle, making the air around Peter unbelievably hot. Peter tried to stay conscious but the heat was unbearable and he hit the ground a few seconds later.

The woman kneeled over him and shook him gently. Peter startled looking up in confusion. "Uh..."

"Relax Pietro," The woman said "It's normal to feel overwhelmed by magic, especially when it's your first time."

"First time? Pfft I'm not that lame lady. Least you could do is take me out to dinner first." Peter said attempting to sit up.

"Take it slowly." The woman almost barked "Going to fast could potentially be fatal."

"Fatal? What is there like a list of side effects?"

"All the standard Magical ones." She said standing up, "Nausea, Heart attack, stroke, cancer..."

"I'd have said no if I knew it was going to kill me." Peter said easing onto an elbow.

"Possible side effects darling." She replied flipping through a worn out book.

"Darling? That's a little fast even for me."

She sighed and walked over to him, extending a hand down to help him up. "You should get going, after all your sister is waiting for you."

"Is it weird that I feel like I'm gonna barf?"

"No." She replied to him "Oh before I forget, you'll need to put this on before you go through."

Peter took the necklace and slipped it over his head "And you're sure this will work?"

"Of course it will. My magic never fails." She said and looked at him with a smile leading him down the stairs.

"By the way what's your name? You know if I want to come back home and what not."

The woman stopped dead in her tracks, "I'm... Agnes." She said.

"Coolio." Peter replied following her to the door.

Agnes motioned and the doorway led to a small field, "This is the closest that I can get you, you'll need to run a few miles to the west. There's a wall around the town your sister lives in, it's a security measure against humans harming the perfect little mutant community that lives there."

"So what your saying is my sister has a bunch of mutants that live with her?"

"Yes Pietro, she found her people." Agnes said pushing Peter through the portal and closing it behind him.

Peter fell landing in a mud pile. "Not cool!" He shouted "So not cool." He took a breath and stood up. The night was cool a slight wind blew through the trees. Peter looked around, he had landed in a corn field, the stocks were brown and fragile. He smiled to himself as he saw a scarecrow sitting in front of him.

"You stuck here too buddy?" He asked the limp sack of hay. Before smiling and starting to run. Peter ran and this time instead of thinking he enjoyed the air running across his face. The feeling of his feet hitting the ground, the sounds that each foot made when coming into contact with the mud. Peter kept running until he nearly collided with a military vehicle.

Seeing the vehicle he decided to take a look through the area. There was a drone on a table glowing red. A guy in a quarantine unit, being questioned by medical staff. Peter kept running, there seemed nothing related to mutants anywhere in the facility. He figured that they had no idea that there was a mutant community.

Peter kept running until he found the wall. Taking one look at it he decided to run through it. Running through he could hear and feel some of the most painful times of his life and he stopped as he could feel apocalypse trying to crush his skull. The pain was so real almost like living it again, almost like nearly dying again. Out of breath Peter collapsed on the ground, a new sensation spreading across his body. His body burned, it felt like his blood was causing his body to burn. He could feel the pain everywhere in his body, circular areas burned the most. Then he opened his eyes again and Peter couldn't explain what he saw. Metal corpses littered the ground even more were flying around shooting concentrated fire of some sort. Peter tried to call out to his father, he tried to call out for the professor or someone for help, but all he could feel was the burning hot pain from his injured nerves. Then it was quiet the dust and metal settled and everything was dark, but he could hear someone calling to him. Wanda he thought smiling before passing out.

"My goodness Ralph!" Agnes cried, "You're filthy and tracking mud into my kitchen!"

"Aw cut it out will ya?!" Ralph said back "At least I'm not running around the house getting in your way."

"You're not supposed to be running at all. If they find out you were using your powers..."

"Ha, if they do I'll be long gone."

"I swear it won't be my fault if you end up in prison for twenty." Agnes said.

"It'd be a blessing if I did." Ralph mumbled.

"What was that?" Agnes asked in a shrill tone.

"I said you look lovely tonight."

"Why yes I do don't I?"

"What's the reason?" Ralph asked.

"Of course you forgot! Why did I think you would remember?" Agnes sniped.

"Because you forgot your self?" Ralph offered up.

"Forgot? Ralph you know I don't forget." Agnes said, "Tonight is the night we're having a picnic in the yard. Go clean up."

"Why not just the gazebo in the town square?" Ralph asked after he had run upstairs and changed in a matter of seconds.

"We've been over this Ralph, it's best for you to not draw attention to yourself. Which means..." Agnes prompted.

Ralph sighed "No powers, No criminal activity and most of all no doing things that the people in town will think as of odd. But I'm pretty sure that having a yard picnic would be considered odd, gazebo not so much."

"Ralph people don't care what you do in your own yard, besides if you really are that worried you can tell them I asked you to."

"That's the reason I married you, because you asked me to. Though I do question that decision, what with the creepy basement and all."

"Oh Ralph you charmer." Agnes said leading him out of the house. She walked over to where their yard intersected with the next door neighbors yard. With a wave of her hand she placed down a picnic blanket and a bunch of food.

"'It won't be my fault if you end up in prison for twenty' yeah right, totally won't be your fault if you keep using your powers." Ralph said sarcastically under his breath.

"What was that?" Agnes asked from on the blanket.

"Nothing important." Ralph said.

"Come join me, please." Agnes said, "Look I know the move hasn't been easy on you. Especially since we've literally had to become different people. But Ralph I don't regret it, I can't regret it."

"Eh didn't much like it there anyway, here is nice it's quiet. No trouble for you to get into, no weird sorcerer fights I have to save your ass from."

"I'm still a witch Ralph."

Ralph chuckled and looked up at the stars, "No you're not, you can be anything you want, but not a witch not anymore."

"Do you miss teaching?" Agnes asked eyeing the house behind them.

"Teaching?" Ralph asked vaguely remembering something like it "Feels like a lifetime ago." He said slowly.

"Interesting." Agnes said.

"Huh?" Ralph asked.

"Nothing it's not important."

Ralph shrugged it off and continued looking at the stars in silence, "You ever think how massive the universe is, and how little you really know?"

"Yes I do." Agnes replied keeping focused on the neighbors house.

"I want to know how life got here. On earth I mean. Out the trillions of planets out there, why this tiny hunk?" Ralph said glancing over at Agnes. "What's something you want to know?"

"How she did all this." Agnes said a dark tone seeping into her voice. Agnes turned to face Ralph and started to cast a spell.

"You freak me out when you do that without a warning you know." Ralph said watching her guide the purple energy flowing out of her hands.

Agnes ignored Ralph and continued to chant until the spell was ready. Without warning she shot her magic at the necklace her companion wore, smiling as it hit the beads. Something seemed to stir inside the man and he stood up. Using his super speed he ran to the front door of the neighbors house and stood there.

Peter felt weird, he couldn't remember how long he had been running. Or even how long it had been since he left the mansion. The last thing he could remember before blacking out was his body on fire and hearing Wanda calling to him. He looked down, some how he had managed to change clothes. Instead of his typical jacket he wore a brown one, much like the one he had seen his father wearing every once in a while. His shirt was a purple flower print. He smiled, maybe it was weird to wake up in these random clothes, but at least they had his second favorite color.

Peter looked up at the door. This was it, after nearly 15 years he was about to look his twin sister in the eyes again. Only he knew it wasn't quite his twin sister. Peter swallowed nervous at the action he was about to perform. He rose his hand and considered using his speed to get the nerve wracking action over with. Deciding against it he firmly pressed against the plastic button of the doorbell.

The shouting from inside the house he had heard earlier had been replaced with hushed voices, that were seemingly surprised at a sudden visitor. The door swung open with a creak and a young woman stood in front of it. Peter stood there looking at her, waiting for some semblance of recognition.

"Wanda who is this?" A man from slightly further inside the house asked.

Peter waited for a second before extending his arms out and stepping forward slightly. "Long lost bro get to squeeze his stinkin sister to death or what?"

The woman stared for a second processing what was happening. "Pietro?" Her voice cracked.

Peter made a movement with his head to indicate that it was indeed him. Wanda sighed softly and took her brother in her arms. Peter closed his eyes at his sisters embrace, it felt good to have his second half here in the same room with him. Wanda broke contact and Peter glanced around the house. It was quaint reminded him of their moms house, simple yet useful. Peter locked eyes with the man who asked Wanda for his identity. "Who's the popsicle?"

Next >>

#quicksilver #dadneto #peter maximoff #pietro maximoff #wandavison rewrite #agatha harkness #agnes #ralph bohner #wanda maximoff #xmen #x-men #magneto #erik lehnsherr #vision #the vision #fanfic

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bansheeoftheforest · 3 years

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Tbh! Before I did the math I was like "ok this is 1860 something and tgs is 1885, so is Henry a child?" And that would have been a neat line to go with too because of all the children in this game (it wouldn't have made since with that the fact that Henry is in Scotland but shush. He could've been on vacation or something) and they like help little Henry and meet him later as an adult and he helps them! But no Henry just had to be a stinkin 18 year old, You cant do anything with that! That even before Morcant! As I'm p sure Henry was 19

So yeah just sorta fusing the times seems the best way to go XD

Currently I'm at the point where after I just got the Grappling hook! So siblings had an annoying little fight and now I'm Jacob on my way to beat people up <3 I also unlocked the outdoorsman outfit and it has a little hat <3

Also Ban dont you dare make me ship another crossover rarepair ship- Jeks already made me like Jekyll x Higgsbury from Dont Starve- I cant do this again- /lh

Ooohhhh yea that would have been a bit of fun! Especially if they somehow directly or indirectly encouraged Henry's science obsession and then they come back to London years later to find the kid they helped having set up an entire Society for those who like science, I feel like they would be v proud and also use that as leverage to get what they want from him-- I like the though of Evie and Jacob realizing they need a very rare poison/Type of drug/whatever shit they make Dr. Graham Bell do later on in the game, so Evie wants them to just kindly go up and ask Henry and Jacob wants to break in and threaten him. I also love the thought of Jacob instead kidnapping Henry, and Henry being so unbothered and just... Escapes while Evie is yelling at Jacob <3

Man, do you know how fun I had with imagining Rexford Kaylock (the first boss and the guy u get the hook from) as Jasper's distant uncle simply BC of the name?? That was a fun boss battle tbh XD

Hehe too late. I'm going to use this as an excuse to start shipping it harder myself just to drag you down with me. Jekyll x Jacob my beloved. Classic nerd X jock setup, Jekyll having a strong AF boyfriend who can protect him and his society (and beat those who oppose them to a pulp) and Jacob having a smart AF boyfriend who gives him the love he deserves and helps him secretly murder bad guys <3

#jacob 🤝 Evie: having a boyfriend named Henry #i feel like Jekyll and Greenie would be good friends. they have tea on Saturdays <3 #ask #Darling-Dolly-Darlene #banshees au #im notngoing to tag this as an actual au until more is set so </3

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superman86to99 · 4 years

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Superman #84 (December 1993)

Superman takes a short Paris vacation! Like, one day short. What's the worst that could happen?

Oh, man.

So, for the past few issues, we've been hearing about children being abducted in Metropolis. Now we see that they're being kept inside a giant toy house by some creepy bald man in Quasimodo clothes who seems to be obsessed with toys -- a "Man of Toys," if you will. Side note: no wonder the children haven't been found... all the articles about them are just gibberish! (See clip below.)

The kidnapper thinks that these kids' parents don't deserve them, and that they're much better off here, in an underground hideout with a man who threatens to starve them if they don't play with him. (And I do mean literally play, with action figures and stuff.) Meanwhile, as these children cry for help, Superman is having the time of his life. While helping move a stranded ship with some huge-ass chains, Superman spots a sunken galleon with a treasure chest inside and fantasizes about keeping the booty...

...before turning it over to the authorities anyway, the big boy scout. Then, he wakes up Lois at 6 AM and tells her they should go to Paris right now, which usually means your significant other is having a mental breakdown, but in this case they can actually do it. And so, after deciding that he deserves to use his powers for fun every once in a while, Superman and Lois drop everything and fly to France with super-speed for the rest of the day/issue.

Anyway: back to the child abduction! Cat Grant and her son Adam attend a Halloween party at Adam's school, but there's a disturbed weirdo in a hideous costume lurking among the crowd. Yes, I'm talking about Jimmy Olsen in his Turtle Boy suit.

Shortly after that, a guy in a dinosaur costume (see, all the creeps are dressed as reptiles) lures Adam out of the party with the promise of "superb video games." What child could resist that? Of course, that turns out to be the kidnapper and Adam ends up in his hideout along with the rest of the missing children and, worst of all, not a single "Lextendo" console.

The kidnapper gets angry at Adam when he refers to the toys at the hideout as "old-fashioned junk" (he was REALLY looking forward to those video games), and even angrier when Adam tries to free the other kids. Adam is brave and puts up a good fight, but...

And those were Adam Morgan's final words. "Uh-oh."

Next, we have a pretty harrowing scene of Detective Turpin letting Cat know Adam’s body was found, and Jimmy and Perry White taking her to the morgue to identify the body (most people probably wouldn't bring their former boss to something like that, but Perry sadly knows more than most about losing a kid). As for Lois and Clark, they were gone so long that the Daily Planet had time to print a headline about the murders. The issue ends when the lovebirds walk into the office smiling like two people who just spent the night fooling around in Paris... only to feel like jackasses when they find out what happened.

To be continued!

Character-Watch:

And that's it for little Adam Morgan who, unlike the also tragically diseased Jerry White, didn't even get any post-death appearances. Adam went from a little kid scared of Superman, to a huge brat, to a character who was approaching likeability as of last week. That's why I hate it when DC kills off young characters like Adam or Liam Harper: in long-form storytelling, children represent potential. Look at how much Wally West or Dick Grayson evolved over the years compared to their mentors! Sure, there's a huge probability that Adam would have ended up disappearing from comics for 25 years anyway, but who knows, maybe we'd now know him as Teen Gangbuster or something. GangbusTEEN.

This issue also represents a turning point for the kidnapper, who is never named or seen clearly in the story itself but I don't think I'm shocking anyone by spoiling the fact that he's Toyman (it's in the cover, for one thing). In his last two appearances before this storyline, Toyman helped Superman save some kids from Sleez and looked genuinely sad to learn about Superman's death, so this is a pretty dramatic change for the character. We'll find out why he went from big softy to child killer in Superman #85 (but don't get your hopes up).

Plotline-Watch:

The most disturbing part of the issue, all things considered, is still the part where Toyman climbs into a giant crib and hugs a huge stuffed bunny. Look at serial killer Tommy Pickles here:

Don Sparrow says: “Even with the upgrade, Toyman is still just a man in a suit, a common complaint about Superman’s rogues gallery.” Funny you should say that, because I JUST shared an old Wizard interview in our Twitter in which Dan Jurgens talks about how Doomsday came out of his frustration with the fact that most Superman villains are dudes in suits (plus other interesting tidbits from the era, like how it was actually Roger Stern’s idea to bring back Hank Henshaw, so check out that link!).

Don again: “The entire Superman storyline of this issue feels like filler. Diving for buried treasure and soaring off to Paris -- it all feels like wasted time next to the Adam storyline.” I have a theory that the entire ship sequence is there as an excuse to put Superman in those big chains and make that Spawn joke (which I didn’t get until now, since I’ve always read this issue in Spanish).

Superman says that pulling that big ship was "a little easier than expected" -- that's either another hint that there's something going on with Superman's powers since he came back, or a subtle dig at the state of American ship manufacturing.

Another adorable "window tap" scene for the books, and this is the sexiest one so far. Is it me or has Jurgens started copying more than just Teri Hatcher's hairdo from Lois & Clark? (For anyone who thinks Lois has gotten implants, I refer you to this clip.)

While in Paris, Lois asks Clark if he's ever wondered what would happen if his rocket had landed in other countries. Don: “Clark’s conversation with Lois sounds like a bunch of concepts for Elseworlds stories. We eventually would see a Russian Superman, and a British Superman, but not yet the French Superman. (Hire us, DC!)” Yep, got my French Superman pitch ready, Jim Lee. Or just let us do Russian Superman again, since Red Son wasn’t even the first time you published that idea.

Don once more: “Another thing that makes no sense about the ‘new’ Toyman is his resentment of technological toys—when in previous appearances he himself had deadly high-tech toys to vex Superman over the years.” I especially resent his hatred of video game consoles. Incidentally, I wonder what types of games are available for Adam’s beloved Lextendo. Star Lex 64? Mega Man Lex? Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles & Lex?

No one is more upset at Lois and Clark for going AWOL than Whit. NO ONE. He's so furious that his usually grey mustache turned black.

Patreon-Watch:

As always, shout out to our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Samuel Doran, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush and Raphael Fischer! Last month’s exclusive Patreon article was about the recently unearthed sequel to Superman 64 for the PlayStation, featuring Metallo, Parasite, and Lois looking even hotter than in this issue:

Hot damn. Find out more at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99!

And believe it or not, Don Sparrow has even more to say about this issue. Read his section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):

I should start off my section with a big caveat: I flat out hate this issue. There were several weird decisions made in the post-Death-and-Return era (most of them along the same lines of making the Superman titles more grim-and-gritty), and this story was one of the worst of them. My theory is that, despite the praise and record-breaking sales of the Death and Return storyline, the Superman creative team felt pressure to have more extreme storylines, perhaps in response to the wildly successful Image books coming out at the time. Between this story, and the upcoming “Spilled Blood” storyline, the Super books take a hard—but temporary--turn into more violent and upsetting storytelling—even though these stories are by the same writers as the previous few years. While death has always been a part of comics, and Superman comics was no exception, there is a jarring glibness and unfeeling toward the way violence is handled in these pages that is quite different from the stories that preceded it. It’s made all the more jarring by the fact that well-established personalities suddenly veer wildly out of character, Toyman chief among them.

We start with the cover, and while it is technically well-drawn (by the familiar team of Jurgens and Breeding) it’s also a very upsetting visual. I think they should have gone with the pieta type pose with Adam and Superman, OR the scary badass bowie-knife Toyman (who apparently has a Cheshire cat smile now) but not both. But the cover is a good hint at the tonal dissonance of the comic within.

We open with a splash of the now-extreme 90s looking Toyman, with his serial killer shaved head and spooky cloak, ignoring the pleas of hungry kids he has locked up in a tiny jail cell for days at a time (if that sentence doesn’t ring alarm bells for how wrong this is for a Superman story, I don’t know what will). For much of the issue Toyman’s eyes are obscured by glare on his lenses, further de-humanizing a character who was once one of Superman’s more empathetic bad guys.

We cut to Superman tugboating a huge tanker with giant chains and it’s a cool visual (one repeated in the Batman V Superman film). It feels especially out of place to focus on, given how upsetting this issue is otherwise, but throughout the whole comic, Lois is drawn smoking hot, especially on the two page spread on pages 9-10.

The scenes depicting the actual murder, while still wildly out of place in a Superman comic, are well done, and give a real sense of darkness and menace, which I suppose is the intent. Perhaps my least favourite visual is the Big Bird stuffie, silently bearing witness to what’s about to occur.

The edges of the panels on get more slashy and off-kilter (to me, looking very much like the layouts more typically seen in Image comics of the day) and I suppose I appreciate the restraint of how little Dan Jurgens shows of the death of a child, showing only a bloody slash on a black background. This is still a pretty baroque image for a Superman comic, but certainly less violent than it could be, given what is happening.

Cat Grant’s silent horror is well staged, and powerful in its way. Lastly, Clark Kent bending in sorrow and regret is a powerful image.

While this issue is handled marginally better, and more maturely than other comics on the shelf at this time, I still believe it is one of the biggest mistakes of the era. Giving a long-established character an unceremonious death for shock value is gross on its own, but making it a child definitely crosses a line for me. Making it worse is that, while the Toyman is a criminal and a killer, he has shown in past issues (a similar kidnapping storyline involving Sleez) that he genuinely cares for the well-being of children. So for a long-time reader, this also felt like a betrayal of a long-established, fully developed character. Adding to the ugliness of this is that Adam dies heroically, trying to free the children who have been caged, unfed, for days, but even in that regard, he fails. The headline at the end of the issue confirms all the children are dead. Adam’s death did not buy the other kids enough time to get away. It was all for nothing. Had Adam died, but the other children lived, maybe this issue wouldn’t leave quite as bad a taste. [Max: It’s weird because it’s all told in a way where it’s told in a way where it would make sense, narratively and within the story universe, that the other kids survived, but then it’s almost casually revealed that nope, they died too. A scene of one of the kids relaying Adam’s heroism to Cat in a future issue would have gone a long way.]

Superman doesn’t come off well in these pages, either. It’s honestly the type of story they should just stay away from, because the more you think about all the calamity that is going on around the clock, the less defensible the whole Clark Kent persona becomes. Superman carving out time to romance his fiancée directly led to the preventable deaths of innocent children—how do you come back from that?

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

I’m always looking for hints that perhaps Jimmy or Perry know Superman’s secret identity deep down, and Jimmy’s anger at Lois and Clark on their return to the Daily Planet offices would seem to give that theory some credence, as he’s as angry at them as if he knew Clark really were Superman. Either that, or he’s ticked that it fell to him, and none of them to escort Cat into the morgue. [Max: Has this issue finally converted you to the “Jimmy is terrible” side now, Don?]

I don’t think I’m the only one who disliked the new Toyman—SPOILERS BE HERE: years later, in Action Comics #865, Geoff Johns retconned this whole story, reverting Schott into the criminal who over-relates to kids, rather than the child-killer of this story. Apparently the infantile Schott, who speaks to “Mother” a la Norman Bates, is a robot so lifelike it fools even Superman, and the “Mother” he’s constantly replying to was the real Winslow Schott trying to recall the malfunctioning robot. [Max: That’s one Geoff Johns retcon I really didn’t mind, even if it felt kind of derivative of his similar “all the Brainiacs are robots made by the real Brainiac” reveal.]

#superman #dan jurgens #josef rubinstein #toyman #cat grant #adam morgan #dan turpin #whit #gangbusteen #super luthor fighter ii turbo championship edition

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weasleydream · 4 years

Text

The girl of the 12, Grimmauld Place

Hey guys! Here is a Fred imagine!

I have to say I’m quite proud of this one, it’s a bit longer than what I’m used to but I really like it. Plus I’ve discovered I’m a sucker for Wolfstar in the role of the protective fathers and it gave me another idea. I don’t know yet if it will be a series or just very long but I can ensure you our dear Sirius and Remus will be there! (and it will be angsty but you don’t need to know it right now)

I guess I can say there’s a light mention of sex but really nothing shocking.

Anyway as usual feel free to give me feedbacks, and I hope you’ll enjoy!

Masterlist

(gif not mine)

The night was cold for a June night. The skin of my arm was bare but the occasional goosebumps were nothing compared to my tremors of fear. I was holding firmly my wand, in fact, I held it as if my life depended on it. Which was truer than ever.

A few hours earlier, my life was totally normal. Well, as normal as it could be for the daughter of two members of the American part of the Order of the Phoenix obsessed with revenge. My parents were both locked in an office arranged especially for whatever concerned the former Death Eaters, probably mumbling incoherent things they were the only ones to understand, and I was in my room, staring into emptiness while daydreaming about futile things when everything had begun. I didn’t know when the Death Eaters had intruded our house, nor did I know how they had managed to do it, but I had understood something was wrong the moment my father had screamed. I had quickly grabbed my wand and made my way downstairs, having good sense enough to stay hidden despite my fear. The four men hadn’t had any difficulty to kill both my parents, and I had heard one of them shouting the others to come upstairs find me. My heartbeat had increased at an incredibly speed and I had done the first thing I had thought about: getting out by the window. With a wave of my wand, I had freed the tiny bird my parents kept in a little cage in case of emergency (“It will know where to go if something bad happens.” My father had assured me.)

And now, I was walking at a constant speed, always glancing above my shoulder to make sure I wasn’t followed and cursing because I was unable to apparate. I had been raised like a soldier, yet my parents had never thought it would be useful for me to be able to apparate. I groaned and turned in another empty street of the neighborhood without history of the suburbs around New-York. The neighbors would gossip for sure.

A cat ran between my legs and I jumped, ready to cast a spell. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know what the bird would do, and I didn’t know what the Death Eaters would do. It was a lot of unknown. Suddenly, I heard a pretty melody. Looking up, I saw the red bird I had freed half an hour earlier. It landed on my shoulder, repeating once more its song, and vanished as quickly as it had came. Roughly three seconds later, I heard a soft pop and Remus Lupin was standing in front of me.

Remus was the only British I knew. My parents had been close to him and his friends - the Marauders, if I remembered correctly - one of them being my mother’s half brother. It was her favourite tragic story to tell, how her beloved Peter along with James and Lily Potter had been betrayed by this awful Sirius Black. Remus was the only one who had bothered to come in America to see my parents and me, and I had seen him a few times in my life. He had always seemed quite sick and tired, but it was nothing compared to what he looked like tonight. I glanced at the sky - yes, almost the full moon. I knew about Remus’ secret, he had told me about it when I had asked him why he had scars when I was seven. I had never been afraid of him, he was the only one I could consider like a friend.

“Y/N, what happened?”

His voice was quiet, and he grabbed my arm.

“My parents are dead. Death Eaters. How is it possible?”

Remus groaned. In a few words, he managed to explain me what had happened in England the day before. It looked like the 24th of June would stay in the world’s memory as the day He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned.

A few hours passed - the time for Remus to summon a Portkey and contact Albus Dumbledore with a bird like the tiny red one. I was now in front of the safest place for me, in Remus’ words.

“Welcome to the Order Headquarters, Y/N.”

The 12, Grimmauld Place was quite a strange house. Its facade was completely run-down and the windows were dirty. I had imagined a lot of things for the Order of the Phoenix, but not this. Remus had told me about the Secret Keeper, that it was protected with strong spells, but after entering, I was pretty sure it was useless. Who would approach these giant cobwebs and this awful portrait screaming whereas I had just hit the umbrella stand?

I followed Remus in a long corridor and he gently pushed me into a big living-room. Three persons were here, but I only recognized one: Sirius Black. I groaned and narrowed my eyes. My mother had told me a lot about him, how he was the biggest git at school, how is family was the typical pure-blood-and-proud-to-be family, how is own brother had been a Death Eater. I had learnt to hate him just because my parents did. He had massacred Peter and was the very first one to breakout from Azkaban.

“Y/N, we have a lot to explain you.” murmured Remus. He was looking carefully at me, maybe he feared I would explode or worse - cry in front of them. “But I guess it can wait if you want.”

“No, I want to know everything.” My voice was secure, without an ounce of sadness. It obviously surprised him. “You know I had never been really close to them.”

Remus nodded.

“In a first time, let me introduce you to Alastor Moody,” a scary man with a magical eye nodded abruptly, “Nymphadora Tonks -”

“Just Tonks.” She had bright pink hair and smiled softly at me.

“And Sirius Black. No, he’s not a murderer.” Remus added quickly. “As I said, we have a lot to explain.”

Long story short, Peter was the git of the story. He had betrayed James and Lily Potter, condemning them to death, before fleeing. Sirius had tried to kill him, yes, but he had failed, and the coward had faked his own death. He was the one to help He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it was because of him he was back, and probably because of him my parents were dead. Quite ironical, wasn’t it? Then he had processed to explain what had happened during the Triwizard Tournament, and now, Remus had finished his story, and I felt four pairs of eyes on me.

“That doesn’t explain why they have killed my parents.” I said.

“I guess they haven’t been as discreet as they thought. Now that You-know-who is back, maybe his followers will feel free to attack everyone who’s against them.” suggested Remus.

“Anyway, you’re safe here, Y/N.” said Sirius. I nodded and yawned. “Let me show you your room.”

I followed him without a word. He gestured me to stay silent in the corridor, obviously not wanting to wake the portrait up. We climbed the stairs, ran into an ugly house elf and finally reached a room I could actually sleep in.

“I guess your parents have only told you what an abominable man I am.”

I nodded.

“You know, Y/N, back at Hogwarts, I really liked your parents.” Sirius’ voice was strangely emotional. “I remember when they had announced they would be parents. Yes, I’ve seen you when you were just a baby. In fact, I have seen you regularly during two years, until… Their death.” His eyes darkened. “I won’t tell you I’m sorry, I know what you’re feeling. I’ve never really liked my family, you know. I’m nothing like them. I just wanted you to know it.”

Sirius turned his heels. I decided I trusted him.

“Sirius?” He turned toward me, clearly surprised. “One day, do you think you and Remus could tell me some stories about your Hogwarts years? It seems pretty fun.”

He smiled, and for a brief moment, I saw a younger man. A man whose life hadn’t been destroyed unfairly.

Thinking my life in England would be more entertaining than it was in America was undoubtedly a big mistake. Indeed, the next morning, I was eating some eggs when Alastor Moody arrived while muttering. It seemed to be his only way to communicate, and I was almost surprised to hear a true sentence.

“Look at that.”

He threw a newspaper on the table in front of me. A photography occupied the front page. It showed a girl that looked vaguely like me, but her hair were longer than mine, her face was rounder and her teeth - God, it was horrible. Above the photo, a title in bold caught my eyes: Y/N Y/L/N, a dangerous murderer. Underneath that was written Reward for whoever give us her localisation. It was ridiculous. I quickly scanned the article. Killer. Muggles and children. Psychopath.

“What the hell is that?”

Remus was behind me, his eyes fixed on the photo.

“I think it’s the proof we were looking for.” answered Moody. In front of my interrogative look, he added: “We know for sure the Ministry is infiltrated.”

I had spent my first week here hidden in a room, only joining the others when I was hungry or when someone dragged my downstairs. I was in the same boat as Sirius now, wanted for something I had never done and forced to stay in this horrible house. I was pretty sure I would kill someone if I heard once more the portrait of Sirius’ mother screaming me insults.

I was currently in the same room as Buckbeak, a beautiful hippogriff, when my stomach started to rumble. I decided to sneak into the kitchen, hoping I wouldn’t run into Kreacher, the ugly house elf. I tried my best to be quiet and I was on the verge of entering the kitchen when I heard my name in a conversation.

“Sirius, have you seen Y/N today?” It was Remus. He had been really worried about me since my arrival, and he didn’t like me being alone all the time. I guessed he didn’t want to force me, maybe he thought I needed time. It wasn’t totally a lie.

“Who is Y/N?” I didn’t know the woman who had spoke.

“The Y/L/N’s daughter.” answered Sirius. “They are dead.”

The woman gasped.

“The poor girl! And you let her alone?”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t need anyone to worry about me, thanks. I showed myself, passing in front of a plump woman with ginger hair. I ignored everyone, grabbed some sandwiches on the table and left without a word. I thought I could join Buck’s room without seeing anyone, and I groaned loudly when I came face to face with three boys and a girl, all of them having the same ginger hair as the woman in the kitchen. Two of them were twins.

“Look who’s also in this fantastic house!” It was one of the twins. “Why is a cutie like you here?”

His face when I forced my way between him and his twin without answering was priceless. I quickly gained Buckbeak’s room and enjoyed the silence. Two hours later, the door opened and Sirius sat next to me.

“Our guests are quite offended,” he laughed. “Fred wants you to think he’s blubbering right now. If you want my opinion, he wants your attention.”

“How long are they gonna stay?”

“Until September.”

I groaned, and Sirius chuckled. He patted my shoulder, telling me diner would be ready soon, and left. I sighed, I knew I didn’t have the choice. I left the room and came downstairs. The kitchen was way more animated than usual. The woman I had seen earlier was there, preparing something that smelled really good, along with her children. Sirius was talking with Remus and Mad-Eye Moody while Nymphadora Tonks - who wanted to be called just Tonks - was listening to a man with ginger hair - again? I caught a glimpse of the twins standing in the corner of the kitchen. It looked like they didn’t want anyone to interrupt, so I walked straight toward them.

“I thought you were crying like a baby because of me.”

One of the twins smirked. He was slightly smaller than his brother, and I was pretty sure he was Fred.

“Why, love, were you worried?”

“No, darling, I just wanted to tell you that you look cute when you’re offended.”

He laughed frankly, and a sparkle appeared in his eyes. I had to admit he was quite cute when he laughed too.

“I’m Fred, and this is George.”

“I’m Y/N Y/L/N.”

Fred and George exchanged a surprised look.

“Don’t ask: yes, I’m a dangerous murderer and yes, if you bother me, I’ll kill you.”

I turned the heels and sat next to Remus without hearing Fred mumbling “I like her.”

The next day, the woman with ginger hair, Molly Weasley, came in my room and woke me up.

“Hello dear, how did you sleep?”

“Well, thank you Mrs Weasley.” She scoffed, not wanting me to call her that. I had understood that quite well after the fiftieth time she had told me so the previous day, but what do you want, old habits die hard.

“Sirius wanted me to tell you he needs to see you.”

I nodded in agreement and quickly put on a jumper, it was an unusually cold morning. I followed her downstairs and ran into Fred and George. They were arguing with their father.

“Why can’t we stay? We’re adults now!” protested George.

“Because your mother thinks you’re still too young. Don’t argue, George, you neither, Fred, and go to your room!”

They sighed a bit too loud for it to be natural and finally left the living-room where the meeting would take place. Fred winked at me and followed his brother. When I entered the room, I came face to face with a man I had never seen before. He was wearing a black robe and had oily black hair, but what I saw first was his big crooked nose. We looked at each other a few seconds and I looked away only when Sirius coughed. He put an arm around my shoulder and dragged me away, not without glaring at the man. I couldn’t help but notice two things: first, a true hatred had arisen from the man as soon as Sirius had arrived, second, Sirius had stood straighter and lifted his chin.

“It’s Severus Snape.” he murmured me. “A total creep.”

“Why aren’t you besties then?” I smirked.

“I’m afraid my hair will become like his if I stay next to him for too long.”

I rolled my eyes. However, my smile faded when I saw how worried Remus looked. He was frowning and his grin seemed a bit too forced when he saw me.

“Y/N, how are you?” His tone was too cheerful. Yep, something was wrong.

“I could ask you the same question.” I eyed him suspiciously. He promptly looked away.

I asked Sirius what was happening and he shrugged. Now that I thought about it, Molly had seemed worried too, but she was nowhere to be seen. A regular noise indicated me Mad-Eye was approaching.

“Y/L/N, can I talk to you for a minute?” I nodded. “Soon we will send you back to America for a mission. You don’t have to know the details for now. I will talk to you about it later.”

Even if a lump was forming in my throat, I nodded once more and hurriedly headed toward the door to leave the living-room. No one followed me; the meeting had probably begun and that meant I wasn’t needed anymore. I was on the verge of running upstairs when I stop dead in my tracks. You’re going crazy my dear Y/N. An ear was floating in the air. I saw it rising, my mouth wide open, when I heard muffled voices from upstairs. Sighing and rolling my eyes - it was another of my bad habits - I dragged myself to my room. I stopped when I heard Fred’s voice.

“Y/N has the right to stay for the meetings,” he mumbled. “I wonder why she can and not us.”

“Because her parents didn’t forbid her to.” I had never heard this voice. Maybe it was from the twins’ brother.

“Have you seen them? Her parents?” It was a girl voice, probably their sister.

“No, you’re right. You know what, maybe we can ask her to tell us what happens in the meetings?”

“Yes, Ron, obviously no one has told her not to tell anything.” It was George.

“I’m sure we can make her talk.” Fred’s voice was now cheerful. “I’m sure with a little Tickling Charm -”

I decided to open the door. Clearly surprised, the four siblings turned simultaneously their heads toward me. Their mouths were slightly opened, they looked like fishes. Stupid fishes, might I add.

“It wouldn’t work Fred, I hate tickles.”

“What a shame.” he replied. “Are you here to tell us everything you know?”

“No way.” I saw the boy who had to be Ron frowning. “I’m here to tell you to be more careful when you try to spy on the meetings. I’ve seen the ear.”

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea!” hissed the girl.

“Don’t worry, I’m the only one.” I add. I winked at Fred, quite happy to see him smile at me, and I left.

“Wait!”

I let the door of my room open and sat on my bed, looking curiously at Fred. He passed an hand in his hair, ruffling it a bit, and joined me.

“You seem upset.”

It wasn’t a question, and I didn’t deny. Of course I was upset. I didn’t want to go back to America. I hated this country and I hated the memories I had there.

“Why do you think I’m upset?”

“Your eyes seem darker, and your smile isn’t the same either.”

It was scary, how well he could understand me. It was the very first time someone saw through my armor, and I wasn’t sure how I had to react.

“You can trust me.” Fred added softly.

“They want me to go back to America for a mission but…”

“You don’t want to, right?”

I nodded. Fred slowly put an arm around my shoulder and, seeing I didn’t push him away, he pulled me against him. I enjoyed this embrace and after a few moments, I put my arms around him. None of us talked or moved, we were just melting in this hug.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.” He murmured in my ear. I sighed sadly.

“I don’t have the choice.”

“Or you murder everyone.” His tone was playful and when I raised an eyebrow at him, he pretended to be deadly serious. “No one could force to go anywhere.”

“That means I would have to murder you too, right?”

“You wouldn’t do that.” He seemed pretty confident.

“And why?”

“I bet you’re a little angel behind this facade of sarcasm.”

After this day, I grew closer to the Weasley siblings, but I had something way more special with Fred. He just seemed to know me perfectly even though we knew each other for barely two weeks. Molly was lovely with me, but I wasn’t sure it was because of my friendship with her children. She acted like a mother to me, and I had to admit it was new for me. My own mother had never been particularly tender or loving with me, neither had been my father. Our interaction consisted in homeschooling and training with plenty of spells, along with the history of the Order and of course, the life of Peter Pettigrew. That was it. I had never really left the house I had grown in, and the only person other than my parents I knew back there was Remus.

That’s why having a family as loud and joyous as the Weasley family was strange, but I couldn’t say it displeased me. The only thing bothering me in this new life was the Weasley siblings’ obsession with what happened during the meetings. I hadn’t had news about my mission yet, but I had to stay to describe the surroundings of my house and how was the American part of the Order.

However, I never assisted to the meetings until their ends, and when I had to leave the living-room, I usually joined Fred, George, Ginny and Ron in the twins’ room. Today was no exception: Molly had hurriedly gestured me toward the door - she didn’t like at all my implication in the meetings - and I quickly climbed the stairs. When I opened the door, I immediately felt Fred’s look on me.

“It was an important meeting today, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was, and no, you won’t know anything.”

He sighed and I mimicked him. He was cute and kind, and very funny, but he was also irritating as fuck when he wanted to.

“Why won’t you say anything?” It was George. “We need to know.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.” I replied. “And your mother would kill me if I even told you on which chair Moody sits.”

“We don’t care about Mum!” Ginny lost her temper. “This is too important, we need to know everything Y/N! Why can’t you understand this?”

“Why can’t you understand Molly wants to protect you?” I felt my blood boiling in my veins, not a good sign. “She loves you. You can’t blame her for loving you, you don’t have the right!” I had screamed the last words and the four ginger heads in front of me stared at me in shock. I didn’t know why, but I felt like the next article about me in the Daily Prophet would be perfectly justified. “Why do you want so badly to know?” My voice was quieter. “These people I see during the meetings, each member of the Order, everyone is threatened. You know what happened to my parents, right?” Their guilty looks gave me my answer. “As soon as the war will start, we will be on the front line, maybe all of us will die. Why would you want to be a part of this? Trust me, you should run away, not rush into the battle. At least I would know you’re normal.”

A silence followed my last words, and I caught myself hoping they were convinced. Note to self: never think Fred can be serious if the situation isn’t immediately life-threatening.

“We’re quite proud to say we’re not normal.” He had a big grin.

“Idiot.” I muttered.

He stood up and walked toward me. I knew I was supposed to be angry at him, but when he opened his arms in front of me, I couldn’t help but throw my arms around his neck. It felt too good to be here, it felt right.

“I promise we won’t bother you with that anymore.” His voice was muffled by my hair. I heard the floorboards creaking and the door softly closing. We were alone. “Can I ask you something, Y/N?” I nodded. “Were you close to your parents?”

“I think you know the answer.”

He sighed, and I reluctantly looked him in the eyes. I didn’t want to see the pity I always saw in Remus’ eyes, or in Molly’s. To my surprise, it wasn’t the case. Fred had the same look in his eyes as Sirius, which I saw like a it’s-sad-to-know-you-weren’t-close-to-them-but-I-swear-I-won’t-bother-you-to-death-with-that-and-I’ll-try-to-make-you-forget-that look.

Our faces were only inches apart, and not really knowing why I did that, I grabbed his face and kissed him. His lips were softer than I had imagined. My hands slowly made their way to his neck and to his hair. Our lips were moving in sync and muffled groans escaped our mouths. I felt my heartbeat increasing and way too soon, I ran out of breath. We reluctantly broke the kiss, keeping our foreheads pressed against each other, and I couldn’t help but smile brightly.

“You’re a good kisser, Fred.”

“You’re not too bad yourself, Y/N.”

I was quite happy Sirius hadn’t the same way to make me forget, it would have been awkward.

I was really comfortable with the new kind of relationship I had with Fred, but I didn’t know how to tell Remus. The guy had always acted like a father to me, even back in America where he would bring me chocolate each time he visited us. And I had a feeling he wouldn’t be overjoyed by what I had to tell him. Fred understood perfectly my state of mind, obviously not really wanting everyone to know either. We had never spoken a word about it, yet we had both kind of agreed we would hide our relationship, for a little while anyway. That resulted in us sneaking into every room of the house and snogging as long as we could, until one of us was needed and our name echoed in the corridors.

George had been the first one to become suspicious, and he figured it out approximately two hours after our first kiss. From this point - and after a pretty convincing threat from Fred and I - he had promised not to tell everyone and to help us keeping the secret. He usually lied well and was able to cover us long enough for us to appear reasonably presentable. Unfortunately, swollen lips were difficult to hide. I guess that’s why Ginny soon understood what was happening, and Ron couldn’t stay oblivious when his sister was constantly joking about a certain leech unable to let me alone. Molly had become quite suspicious too, but the incredible thing was that Remus hadn’t any clue of what was happening. Sirius had begun teasing me the day the Weasleys had arrived, it had never really changed.

Fred and I both wanted to keep this a secret, but that didn’t prevent us from touching each other. We were always sitting next to each other during the diner, and when we couldn’t hold hands, we just made our knees or our elbows enter in contact. Fred winked at me approximately a dozen of times per day, and each second we could spend alone was used very wisely. However, a sort of tension was building itself between us. It wasn’t the bad kind of tension, it was the intimate kind. When we were alone and kissing, our hands moved more and more, and our bodies were closer and closer. I discovered a new kind of need, the one that was felt deep inside me, I needed to feel him closer to me. And I could tell that Fred was thinking exactly the same.

I was sitting in front of my opened window. The fresh air of the night was slightly caressing my face as I was thinking about Fred. Again. God, what had he done to me? I was unable to get him out of my head. I groaned and sat on the floor, the back resting against the wall. I was simply unable to sleep, and unfortunately, the sparkle in Fred’s eyes and his soft hair weren’t the only thing preventing me from sleeping. Mad-Eye had told me, a few hours ago, that I would soon receive the details about my mission in America. I wouldn’t admit it, never - I had a reputation of murderer to preserve, after all - but I was terrified. I wanted nothing more than forget about this part of my life. It wasn’t perfect right now either, I was locked up all day in this house, but I had parental figures that loved me - Remus, Molly and even Sirius, I had friends and I had a wonderful boyfriend. It was closer to perfection that it had never been.

I knew I wouldn’t sleep, and I decided to be a bit selfish. Fred and I almost hadn’t seen each other this day and I missed him. I got out of my room, tiptoeing to avoid this creepy house elf and I made my way to the twins’ room. They weren’t sleeping, I could hear their muffled voices. I slowly opened the door and, after the second of shock, they both smiled at me and Fred extended an arm. I sat on his lap, snuggling up with him and vaguely listening to them.

Eventually, George yawned and announced us he would go to sleep.

“Don’t do anything nasty while I’m here.” He winked.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find another room for tonight.” Answered Fred.

I smiled and grabbed his hand, leading him out. We barely heard George’s comment (“Try not to wake everyone up!”) and I was going to join my room when Fred stopped me.

“No, love, follow me.”

We climbed the stairs and I noticed he had two pillows and blankets under his arm. We choose one of the room of the top floor and sneaked in. With a wave of his wand, Fred lighted a fire in the chimney and he put the blankets on the floor, one laid out and the others stashed next to the first one, in front of the now burning fire. Then he turned toward me and put his hands around my waist. He slowly leaned in and kissed me.

“Are you sure you want to do it?” His voice was a whisper.

I nodded, I didn’t want anything more than to feel him against me in the most intimate way possible. We shared another kiss, and another, and we slowly undressed each other. We laid on the blanket without breaking the kiss, both naked and discovering our bodies in a new way. This night was full of love and full of trust, Fred and I weren’t just two young adults hiding and snogging, we were now two lovers.

My head was resting against his torso, and his heartbeat slowly becoming normal again was the sweetest melody to me. We were still naked and laying on the blanket, Fred’s head resting on the pillows. His arms were around me and I was literally laying on him. A comfortable silence took place, only disturbed by the crackling sounds of the fire. A shiver ran down my spine. Fred grabbed a blanket and covered me.

“Better?” he whispered.

“Perfect.”

He chuckled, and the vibration in his chest seemed to echo in mine.

“Fred, can I ask you something?”

“Of course, love.”

“Promise you won’t laugh.”

Without seeing him, I could tell he was raising an eyebrow and a smirk was on his lips.

“I will try, but I can’t promise.”

I sighed, knowing my question would seem quite strange, but I was imagining a perfect life and I needed him to help me.

“What is it like to go to school?”

Much to my surprise, Fred didn’t laugh. He didn’t let out a sarcastic or incredulous comment, he just tightened his grip on me and kissed my hair.

“You’ve never been to school?”

I shook my head. He sighed sadly, probably imagining a little girl locked up in a cold house, her parents only teaching her the strict necessary, an unhappy girl only dreaming to have friends and be normal. He wasn’t really wrong.

“Whatever we say, going to school is incredible,” he started. “especially if you go to Hogwarts. That’s where I go. You live with your friends, you can do everything with them. Eating your breakfast, playing Quidditch, sneaking into the kitchen for the parties -”

“Is it even allowed?” I laughed.

“Well, you’re missing the point.” He chuckled. “And as cliche as it sounds, it’s the most magical way to learn. Sometimes, you miss your house and your parents, along with your siblings if they aren’t with you, but your friends in there, they are your second family. You would do anything for them, and they would do anything for you, even going to detention. And even detentions are fun if you’re with the good persons. And you can explore each corner of the school and live wonderful adventures.”

Fred stopped, obviously feeling my tears on his bare skin. He murmures apologies and stroke my hair.

“I’m sorry Y/N, I shouldn’t have -”

“No Fred, thank you. Now I can imagine my perfect life.” I murmured.

“Am I a part of it?”

“Of course you are.”

And I fell asleep.

The castle towers were illuminated by the sunset. The sky had taken a bright red tone, and a sweet breeze ruffled our hair. Fred was in front of me, running slow enough for me to follow and holding my hand. We were in a park, surrounded by huge trees. The air was fresher here, and the grass underneath my bare feet was soft. Some birds were still up there and singing for us. It was truly perfect.

Suddenly Fred stopped and turned toward me. His eyes were shining, he had this sparkle that showed every time he was happy.

“Ready for our adventure, my love?”

I opened my mouth, eager to tell him I would follow him everywhere, but it wasn’t clearly not my voice that echoed in the peaceful atmosphere of the forest.

“What the -”

A sudden airstream made me shiver and I snuggled closer to Fred. I didn’t want to open my eyes, my dream was too beautiful. Maybe if I could go back to sleep right now -

“Good job, Mum. You might want to close the door now, no?”

I heard the door closing and I sighed in contentment. I felt myself falling asleep again when two loud sounds made me jump. The door had been slammed open and a loud gasp echoed in the room. Instinctively, I tried to get up but Fred pulled me against him.

“Don’t think you want to get up right now.” he murmured with his husky voice in my ear.

I turned my head, ready to scold whoever had disturbed my peaceful dream when I saw him. Remus was on the threshold, his face as white as the hairs of Kreacher’s ears. I was sure mine was dark red by now, and I caught George’s look behind him, silently telling he was sorry. Finally, this little bastard pulled Remus backwards and closed the door, not without dodging the pillow I had thrown him for daring wiggling his eyebrows.

“I’m going to die…” I murmured.

“So am I.” answered Fred. “At least we’ll be together.”

“What a consolation.” I muttered.

“Oi! You didn’t think that a few hours earlier.” He winked at me and grabbed my arse.

“Not now, love, I promise in ten minutes you’ll wish you’re facing a banshee and not an angry Remus.”

Once dressed - and Fred’s giggle gone after he had seen the hickeys I had in the neck - we finally got downstairs. We entered the living-room, not really knowing what was going to follow. I wanted to tell Fred to let go of my hand, but it felt too right. I didn’t say anything.

Remus was pacing in the room, groaning at Sirius who was laughing. They were alone in there. When he heard us, Remus looked up and Fred shifted next to me.

“Where’s your courage, my dear Fred?” I whispered.

“Shut up.”

I wanted to chuckle but in front of an angry werewolf it wasn’t a good idea.

“Y/N, in the kitchen, please.”

I bolted, surprised by his tone. It wasn’t sweet but it wasn’t harsh either. I barely heard Fred groaning (“Courage my ass.”) before running face to face with Molly. She was probably as red as me, and I remembered George’s voice a bit earlier.

“I’m sorry Mrs -”

“Molly, dear. You don’t have nothing to be sorry about.”

She smiled and I let out a sigh of relief, one I didn’t even know I was holding. However, my smile turned into a grimace when I heard a scream in the living-room. Molly and I immediately ran behind the door and listened closely.

“I’m sorry, Professor… Mister… err…”

I chuckled, mentally promising myself I would tease Fred as soon as I could. Molly rolled her eyes.

“She’s fragile right now!” I snorted. “She doesn’t know how to feel and you just take advantage of her situation!”

I furiously shook my head to reassure Molly, whose eyes were wide open. I was ready to barge in and calm Remus’ ass down when Fred spoke up.

“I didn’t take advantage of her Remus! She’s an adult, she can make her own decisions whether you like it or not!”

“Maybe she wanted it but how can I know you -”

“Because fell for her! I love her!”

Fred’s voice was clear as crystal, and so was the love in it. I gasped, and realized I was feeling exactly the same. I loved him. I loved Fred Weasley. This time, I barged in the living-room, yes, but I ran toward Fred and kissed him. He gladly melted into the kiss, pulling me harder against him. We quickly interrupt, not wanting to shock poor Remus more than he already was.

“I love her, Remus, and I know what she went through. I would never, never, to that to her, I swear to you and everyone here.”

Fred’s voice was sweeter now that he didn’t feel threatened anymore. His arm was around my waist and he didn’t loosen his grip when Remus sent him a harsh look.

“I think the boy is sincere,” softly said Sirius. “Maybe you don’t have to murder him right now.”

Remus groaned, looked at me and left in the kitchen. Catching the message, I pecked Fred’s lips - doing it in front of everyone was so strange - and I followed Remus.

“How long has it been?”

“Three weeks.”

“And when did you… you know… for the first time?”

“Yesterday.”

My voice was quiet. Among everyone who was in this house, Remus was the only one I couldn’t bear to disappoint. He was like my father since I was seven, and I knew he wanted nothing more than to protect me. God, I couldn’t even look him in the eyes. What if I saw anger, and disappointment? A shaky sigh escaped my lips.

“Hey, Y/N, look at me.”

He lifted my chin and I saw a small smile on his lips.

“You don’t have to be sorry, I am the one owing you apologies. It’s just that… You know, I know you since you’re a baby, and I saw you growing up into a beautiful woman, and when you send this bird to me, I swore I would protect you. And I will protect you, from everything you need to be protected from, even if it’s a boy.”

“You don’t have to protect me from Fred, Remus…”

“I know that. But I hope he’s scared enough to know what will happen if he hurts you.”

“I bet his pants will remember for him.” I chuckled.

And Remus did something he had never done before, something no one had never done before: he hugged me, and I felt the love of a father enveloping me like a protective cocoon. I even felt a tear rolling down my cheek.

Later this day, I learnt that Mad-Eye was on his way to the 12, Grimmauld Place when Molly had been looking for me. Not finding me in my room, she had wanted to ask Fred if he had seen me, only to find out he was missing too. She had understood that we were together, and George, who had been roughly woken up by his mother, had panicked and had been unable to say anything.

Mad-Eye wanted to explain me my mission, which happened to be less difficult than I thought: I had to go back to my former house, find an highly important file and come back. Fred had refused to let me go alone and, an hour later, we had taken a Portkey. Finding the file hadn’t lasted more than half an hour during which Fred had never let go of my hand, and we came back with the same Portkey after I had cast a spell for it to bring us back to London.

Fred leaving for Hogwarts had kind of broken my heart, I wasn’t ready to spend moths without him, but he had promised me to send me a letter each day. He kept his promise, and while reading it, I had the impression I was with him.

I was still locked up in this awful house, but I was with Remus and Sirius. And I loved Fred, and he loved me, and I had friends.

My life was closer to perfection than it had never been.

#harry potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter imagines #fred weasley #fred x reader #fred weasley x reader #fred weasley x y/n #fred weasley x you #remus lupin

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dolphindiluna · 4 years

Photo

𝗜 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗺𝗲 The cell continued to ring. He should talk to Sam, let him know that he was alive. He laughed bitterly at the thought, was he really alive? He didn't feel that way. He was flesh, bones, tears and blood. But alive? No. Living had just taken on another dimension. The point is that he died so many times that he lost count, but for the first time he knew what it was to really die, this death that people talk about, death in life.

How many important people fell on the way?

His mind returned to the day of his mother's death. Even though he was not in his room that day, his father had counted on so many details, on a night of drunkenness, that he didn't even need to see with his eyes, his mind "saw" much more than he wanted.

Then the father. That father obsessed with killing the damn demon who took the life of his beloved wife. The father who raised his children to save people, hunting things, the family business. The father absent for loving too much.

And Ellen and Jo. Pamela, Bob, Kevin, Charlie. And so many others. Many…

And again the father and mother.

And Sam. Each time he lost his brother, a piece of him died together. Sam, who kept calling over and over.

- Sam, I'm fine.

- Dean! What happened? Why did it take so long to answer the phone?

- Sorry, Sammy. Are you ok?

He heard the sound of his brother swallowing the words, those few seconds hanging over them like a sharp sword. Dean knew, he always knew.

- Sammy?

- Dean, everybody's gone, everybody. Charlie, Bob and even Donna. It's just me and Jack.

The brother's voice was weak. Sam who was so dedicated to protecting everyone, even with the weight of Eileen's loss on his shoulders. He wanted to hug him. He wished he could go back in time when he carried Sam in his boyish arms and rocked him, promising to protect him from danger. "Take care of your brother, Dean" had been the main task his father had given him, and he, as a good soldier, never deviated from his mission. Taking care of Sam, protecting him, was what gave him the strength to get up every morning.

- Sammy, come home.

- Dean, is everything okay? What happened to Billie?

- Billie is dead. You and Jack, come home soon.

- Okay, Dean.

He hung up the phone and put his hands on his face again. He was not able to tell Sam the whole truth, because telling what happened was having to face reality, and he was not yet ready to say goodbye.

The silence in the dungeon choked him, but he didn't have the strength to leave. Maybe he didn't want to leave. Somewhere in his heart, a fragile flame continued to resist. He looked at the wall, hoping the black hole would regurgitate what The Empty had stolen from him.

"I annoyed an ancient cosmic being so much that he sent me back."

Dean remembered those words as if they were said yesterday. He clung to them in despair. But deep down, he knew, he knew that The Empty would not give up again.

Why didn't he tell the truth? Why?

Why did he push his feelings into some dark corner of himself, not even allowing himself to think?

Why didn't he give himself the right to believe that he could be loved, be happy?

All that fury that has weighed on his chest since childhood, that anger that he thought defined him.

"Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love."

Even now he couldn't see himself that way, because that meant he was always a coward for not having struggled to take on what he felt.

Coward. He had been a coward until the end. And now he paid the price for being afraid to say the same words he had received.

The chest pain increased. He needed to get out of there, he needed to breathe. Shivering, using the wall as a support, he stood up slowly. The first steps were unstable. He managed to reach the chair in the middle of the room, held it in search of something solid to keep him on his feet until he felt he could walk without fear of falling.

When he finally reached the door, he couldn't resist and looked back again. That flame in his chest had just gone out. The pain increased, crushing his heart.

"You changed me, Dean ... I love you."

He ran out of the room, his hand over his mouth to stifle his sob.

He didn't want to be that anymore. He no longer wanted to be the Dean who assumed all the responsibilities and suppressed any feeling that his enemies could use against him. He was tired of being strong, of trying to be invincible.

He heard Sam calling for him. He needed his brother, needed this time to reverse logic, needed Sam to take care of him, to protect him from pain.

- Sammy.

Your voice so weak, so different from your voice of thunder.

- Sammy, Sammy!

He arrived at the library without strength. His brother was near the big table in the lobby.

- Sammy, please.

Sam ran towards him, followed closely by Jack. His frightened eyes were filled with concern. There, in the center of the library, the two came face to face.

He couldn't take it anymore, everything around him spun. He saw Cass in every corner of that place. Cass hugging him when they met after Chuck and Amara left. Cass sitting next to him in one of the few moments of peace, celebrating Jack's life.

Cass, smiling through her tears, saying goodbye to never come back.

- He's gone, Sammy.

Finally, the heavy tears broke through the barrier and he fell to the floor. The weight of defeat weighed on his body. He punched his chest several times in penance.

Sam didn't know what had happened, but he suspected it had to do with Castiel's absence. He knelt in front of his brother, pulling him into his arms. He always feared that this day would come, the day when Dean would accept his own feelings, but that Cass would not be there to receive them.

- He's gone, Sammy, gone. And I didn't say. I didn't say, Sammy.

- Put it all out, Dean, don't keep it anymore.

The brother's words allowed him to be the Dean that Castiel once loved.

- CASS!

The aching cry tore at his chest.

Jack watched his parents' pain and felt powerless because there was nothing he could do. All he wanted to do was bring Cass back, but he had no more powers. He no longer had Castiel. His father had died.

The strength with which the angel's name was said in that place full of magic, had the power to transcend the walls and resonate beyond that plane. In heaven, the angels wept for the loss of yet another of them. Castiel had been a friend and also an enemy, in the end being just another puppet in the hands of God.

In hell, Rowena stopped in the middle of a lustful laugh. His eyes watered. After all, the angel also became his boy.

But it was Chuck who was pierced by that spear of pain. He, who in his arrogance despised his own creations, who played with their lives, now felt the agony with such violence that it surprised him. In her mind, Amara's voice, full of bitterness, prophesied:

- Brother, you can lie to yourself as much as you want. But the truth is that you lost your most loyal son, the one who loved you so much, the one you wickedly despised. And I know it hurts you. We feel Dean's pain. And as long as we exist, we will carry that pain as a reminder of how bad we can be.

Chuck turned his eyes to Dean and for a moment hesitated in his firm intention to destroy everything. The weight of loneliness as a reminder of your choices. Sitting on his mythical throne, he was the image of a defeated god.

In the library, Dean continues to cry hugging his brother, his face buried in Sam's chest. It was sad to see that they had switched places, Sammy was taking care of Dean as Dean had always done for him.

- Dean, you need to vent, you can't have all that feeling with you anymore.

The pain, like fire, rose in his throat and was finally released.

- Cass, you are the only one I want to have, my true happiness. Cass, I love you ...

Words can transform. Words heal.

In The Empty, where angels and demons rest, dreaming eternally of their past, Castiel, in his serene sleep, dreams of the words he wanted to hear so much. His lips curl in an affable smile, while a tear escapes his sleeping eyes.

- I always knew, Dean … ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I wrote this story a few days after the episode aired, listening to "I Will Never Be The Same" (which became the title of this story) by Melissa Etheridge, because this song, for me, is the synthesis of what happened to these two characters. These were, as they have been ever since, days of sadness and anxiety. The question the fandom keeps asking itself: is it really the end? Did the series make Destiel canon to kill Castiel soon after? As a fan, especially as a fan of Destiel, I am still waiting for the return of our beloved angel in the last episode, to finally find happiness with the man she loves. Because these two definitely deserve to be happy after everything they've been through. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- English is not my first language. Please forgive any mistakes I may have made. And I don't know whose illustration it is. If anyone knows, please let me know so I can give the artist proper credit.

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oneweekoneband · 4 years

Text

her Nebraska (1982)

In July I flew to Massachusetts with a plague on, and I felt that it was wrong, but my mother had begged and I’d been out of work for months. Mornings there I ran in long, uneven ovals on the same roads I’d memorized in high school. There’s no sidewalks, but the few feet of dirt between the craggy pavement and the open mouths of the fields serve all right for a single body in motion. When a truck comes up close from behind, the ground shakes, and I step away bouncingly from the street toward thigh-high yellow weeds and grass, and keep going. I was slowly picking my way back in that dirt, sweat-slick from only a plodding couple of miles in peak summer heat, and sucking the wet cotton of my mask in between my teeth on every inhale, when Taylor Swift announced she was releasing a surprise album produced by the guy from The National. Not the guy from The National, like, the voice, but the guy from The National whose photo was circulated on Twitter earlier this year as some kind of antifa super soldier, which isn’t the case, but would’ve been rad. First, I stopped dead to send some outraged, misspelled text messages, and then I ran home faster than I’d moved in years.

Tall, blonde, patrician pop star Taylor Swift is to me something like a cross-between a wife and a boogeyman. Bound we’ve been since we were really children. Time and its changes haven’t rid me of her, and what’s worse is I have never quite been able to wish they would, though I claim as much all the time. Countless hours of my one wild and precious life have been spent on endlessly analyzing the minutiae of Taylor Swift’s music, the mind that made it, the real world events which influenced it. And though all the while I have known she is only a person, and that people, while each strange and lovely in their own ways, are, in the end, mostly dull, needful in just the regular manner, the fantasy is better, the sick dream of a megalomaniac songstress, curious, thrilling, probably evil, and I choose that. I don’t know Taylor Alison Swift, born to this world in, I presume, the usual way. But my Taylor Swift? I’m a renowned expert. I’ve always eaten up stories—movies, music, celebrity news, the one my grandfather tells about falling off his bike once in Ireland as a boy and his face “cracking open like an egg”—like a starved dog. I’m obsessive about my interests, but not inclined to intense fandom, and certainly not fandom in the mode of the stan. For one, I’m too self-absorbed. But caring intensely for a famous person is falling in love with a ghost, and that’s all right—I mean, what the hell? We’re here together just dying... Let’s enjoy—but is an affair best undertaken with the knowledge that everyone alive has their own complex interiority, as unruly as your own, and that you, a stranger, are not in any real way connected to the lawless, blurry middle of that celebrity, and will never be. It’s freeing and fun to know this. I mean, these people are basically in your employ. Glamorous dollhouse dwellers. Acknowledging that uncrossable distance allows for a different, healthier closeness of pure imagination. My feelings, then, can comfortably be at once both fiercely intense and entirely silly. I am a foremost scholar in the art of the Taylor Swift who exists in my head. The real person raised in Pennsylvania I don’t know at all. I have some conjectures on the matter, and, as with all my conjectures, every hackneyed theory, each picky little opinion, I’m sure they’re perfect, brilliant, just absolutely right, but that’s still all they are. Taylor Swift, figure of the cultural imagination, is the Jodie Comer to my Sandra Oh in Killing Eve, annoying and pretty in frills, taunting me endlessly and holding us trapped together in a dance of most enchanting death. But the real Taylor Swift has favorite bed sheets and a social security number and a British boyfriend, none of which I have any desire to know about, and if I saw her at a restaurant I’d politely avert my eyes before, yes, dive-bombing the group text. There’s nobody on Earth I’d stand in line to speak to, but then I’ve been speaking to a certain figment of Taylor Swift for nearly half my life.

I went to a Taylor Swift concert the night before I moved into college in 2009. My father’s work friend, firefighter by day, near professional gambler by night, got comped tickets to the Fearless Tour stop taking place at the nearby casino, and he let me have them as a reward, mainly, for happening to be seventeen. Live in-person and performed acoustically, “Fifteen” made me cry. A few years after that, in the thick, sticky part of my first post-college summer, I wrote approximately twenty-three million words about her in these very pages. (”Pages”) At that point, Taylor’s most recent release was 2012’s Red, and the work I produced that long ago July about Taylor and her career, writing I was fairly pleased with at the time, feels now, besides just being extremely clearly written by a twenty-one year old, strange to me for the way it favors the sweet over the sour almost uniformly. There is a wholesome kind of ardor in that writing which maybe I’ve outgrown the ability to hold. Or maybe Taylor just proceeded to spend the next half a decade plus releasing one bad single after another, and it was taste—and trespasses against taste—and not some shift in my nature which altered the tenor of our bond. I have real love for my particular image, gleaned from public statements and published art, of smart, bizarre famous woman Taylor Swift, and I admire the bulk of her output very much. I’m just no longer so inclined to fawn. This is not to say I am here to offer a Taylor Swift hate screed. I couldn’t swing it, and, anyway, I’m not a pop feminist-for-hire circa 2010. But we’re older now. Things are different. At twenty-eight, twenty-nine this month—Taylor will, also this December, turn thirty-one—I regard Taylor Swift warily, like an ex with whom you have a tentative friendship, perpetually on the brink of falling one way or the other into hatred or delight, only to wobble back the opposite direction again at the slightest provocation, but still, despite best efforts, even, I regard her all the time.

folklore was released at midnight on July 24th 2020, but I was at a cabin in rural Vermont without Internet or cell service. I drank Bud Light seltzers with my mother while watching the eerie pandemic return of Major League Baseball, and when I got into a strange bed there I stewed, knowing there were people out in the world all over who were hearing Taylor Swift songs I never had, and that this was a fundamental wrong, a disruption in the balance of the universe. I listened to it the next morning in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot.

And folklore is great. That’s the terrible thing. Slightly less great, maybe, than some people have insisted, tricked, I think, by just the pronounced shift in sound. But it’s great. A little gift I asked for a thousand times and was still surprised to get, like a wife who didn’t expect her henpecked husband to ever follow through and buy the paraffin wax hand bath as-see-on-TV. For years, I’ve been halfheartedly insisting that Taylor had a great album in her. I’d say it even, perhaps especially, while she stubbornly fed me gruel. Or worse, gruel with the occasional whiff of something better. With a ripe, little raspberry dropped into the slop. The bright, villainous thrill of “Getaway Car” made me believe Taylor, my Taylor, was in there somewhere under the lacquer of sequins and synth, which, while not objectionable by default, seemed a costume, and an ill-fitting one. The lived-in world of “Cornelia Street” made those old scars sting. That gay “Delicate” video. When she did “Call It What You Want” on SNL and played guitar while wearing an ugly sweater. If the abominable “ME!”, lead single off Lover, was the stick, 1989’s “Clean” was the carrot. I was Charlie Brown, and Taylor my Lucy, yanking the football back again and again. Over drinks I still yelled that Taylor Swift’s next album would be, “her Nebraska”, referring to my favorite Bruce Springsteen record, and learned to live with that egg on my face for good. I suppose I even came to like it. There was something inherently funny in taking up, like, “blind faith in the as of yet untapped greater artistic potential of massively wealthy and popular singer Taylor Swift” as my totally inane personal cause du jour, and eventually it was a bit, a gag I performed to be obstinate and didactic, but way down somewhere awful near my kidneys I meant it the whole while. And then she did it. A pandemic befell the world and amid a sea of human suffering Taylor Swift remembered she can write. She wrote, and with a massive, crucial assist from Aaron Dessner, whose music on this record is sometimes so beautiful it actually angers me, as the last thing I needed in already perilous times was to be made to try and marry my uniquely perverse emotional responses to beloved divorced dad band The National and fucking Taylor Swift, she made an album which, if not her Nebraska, per se (I’ve come to realize that a major part of believing Taylor Swift will one day make an album I find as quietly devastating and gorgeous as Nebraska is knowing that no album will ever actually be Her Nebraska... That each will, rather, to me, be more and more evidence that it’s coming still, more proof that the limit is untouched, on and on ad infinitum, or at least until the seas take us into a place of salty peace.) is a shocking credit to all my hard-fought and deluded confidence. folklore is great. This fact has made me feel almost equally as disoriented from my understanding of the world as the time-melting COVID-19 lockdowns have, and it turned my Spotify year in review annual collective AI humiliation kink thing into a glaring indictment of my mental state, but still, I mean... It’s great.

In talking about folklore a bit this week, there are a number of specific topics I intend to cover—what a thrill it is to hear Taylor say “fuck”; Taylor’s terrifying birth chart; the astoundingly perfect bridge of “the last great american dynasty”; “because my ass is located at the back of my body”; the bit in last year’s “Lover” where deranged WASP Taylor Swift implies that to “leave the Christmas lights up til January” is some signifier of being a love-struck bohemian, when actually everyone who doesn’t employ domestic staff to take their lights down does this; how reputation is the best of the Taylor Swift records released in the latter half of the 2010s, actually, and the people who can’t see that are cowards—but intend mostly to let the muse move me where she will. Against the advice of my better angels, she—that tie-in marketing eldritch terror—always does.

#taylor swift #folklore

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atths--twice · 4 years

Text

Soulmates

Soulmate: a person to whom you feel an immediate connection. A connection so strong and powerful, you are drawn to them in a way you will never experience again. They are your perfect other, the missing half of you, and no love will ever compare. No matter the distance, soulmates will find their way back where they belong. ________________________________________

The long believed alien invasion of 2012 never occurred. Since that fated night, Mulder has searched for answers to questions, but has come up empty handed. Scully has been standing by watching brokenheartedly, as his obsession has begun to tear them apart.

A heart can only stretch so far before it shatters and the pieces left behind must be put back together. Sometimes a shattered heart (or two) needs extra care, love, time, and help.

Sometimes it needs guidance from someone who understands grief and pain. Someone who will not give up or back down. Someone who will see a broken heart and not declare it unfixable, but grab the tape, glue, or whatever it takes, to fix it and make it whole again.

________________________________________________________

Okay.... I have posted about this before, but as I’m a bit, just a small bit mind you, more savvy with Tumblr, I am going to post it again. Before I only posted the link to AO3 and not chapter by chapter, as I had no idea how to do that at all. I have figured it out and all I can say is... get ready...

I have recently had the pleasure of meeting two incredibly wonderful and supportive fellow Philes, @prichan7 and @scullybuck, and their encouragement and love for this story has filled me with such a sense of pride and happiness, I am so thankful to have met them. Ladies... your kindness means so much to me, you truly don’t know.

I am going to post the first three chapters today and then one, or sometimes a couple, the next day.. and so on.

This is my baby and the one I am the most proud of... I hope you like it.

Chapter One

The Origin of Maggie Scully

Maggie had been a romantic all her life. When she was younger, around 10, she began to read from the “grown up” section of the library, the young adults area. She was always an advanced reader and devoured books. She discovered Anne, the orphan girl adopted by a brother and sister. She learned new, big descriptive words reading about Anne.

Maggie fell in love with Gilbert, a sweet, romantic, caring boy who was “fathoms deep” in love with Anne upon first meeting. She yearned, despaired, and was elated when Anne and Gilbert were finally joined together in marriage. She read of Anne and Gilbert’s children. Of Rilla, their youngest who was in love with a family friend. He went off to war and her heart was broken. She cried and mourned along with all her beloved characters. When she finished the books, she began again. She became obsessed with the love the characters had for one another.

The words she read were poetry to her young soul. She needed more. The librarian observed how often Maggie was borrowing the same books. On one of her trips to the library, when she was 12, the librarian, a “kindred spirit,” showed Maggie to the literature section. She suggested a few new books she may find interesting and Maggie’s eyes lit up. She borrowed Emm a and Sense and Sensibility.

Oh … being lost in the stories of yearning love, hardships, misunderstandings, broken engagements, and true love realized, made her heart soar. She wished that she could live in her books, to know these characters, to attend balls and dance through the night.

She felt a thrill when she discovered the word ‘soulmate.’ A soulmate. It was a word she fell in love with immediately. She rolled it around and around in her mind. To think that there was someone out there destined for her, her other half, made her stomach do flip flops. She read when true soulmates had found each other, there was an unspoken understanding between them. They would feel unified to have finally found the one they had, wittingly or not, been searching for. They would be together in unity and no other happiness or joy could ever compare. Oh, how those words and thoughts had thrilled her, down to her very soul.

Reality came calling, however, no matter how a person may romanticize the world around her. Her father felt reading, especially books far beyond her age, was a waste of time. He found it “foolish for a girl to be doing, especially the books she was reading. Stories about love and romance filing her head full of frivolous unattainable things. A handsome man racing up on a horse to save her, or dying for one's true love.

Try as she might, there was no reasoning with her father. Her mother was a meek woman and she complied with her husband. Maggie’s trips to the library became obsolete. She was told to focus her attention on other things.

Her parents were devout Catholics and her time for confirmation was approaching. She was to attend the classes and study what her faith would prepare her for in her future- a life devoted to her faith, husband, and a family.

Although she obeyed, she felt that a part of her was gone without the chance to read her books and become lost in their stories. But after her confirmation, she began going to parties and meeting people. New girlfriends to gossip with, share lipsticks (of which none of them were allowed to even possess), even try out smoking, and laugh about which boys they would like to kiss.

She loved the thrill she felt being in a group of boys and girls, seeing if she might feel a spark with of them. She had not given up that she had a soulmate out there somewhere looking for her. There were boys she felt an attraction to, but it was not the same as that deep desire for a soulmate.

Then when Maggie was 20, her mother passed away. She was left with an empty hole in her life. Her father took her mother’s death extremely hard. He began to drink heavily. He was moody and depressed. But at times he was kind and emotional. During those times, he spoke of his love for his wife. How beautiful she had been, how she could light the room with her smile, how much he missed her, how lost he was without her, how he loved her from the moment he saw her, how he wished he told her more.

Maggie sat in shock. Of course she knew her parents loved each other, she was not stupid. But this ... especially from her father, left her speechless. He was tough, quiet, closed off. She had no idea he was capable of feeling that way. How naive she was, how childish in her thinking.

She was an adult, but she was still much like a child, believing love was something a person longs for, pines after, or has to suffer a huge loss to find. She saw and learned of true love, of actual soulmates that day. Not the silly little girl version she had imagined with music sounding and “happily ever after.” This was a love that ran deep and true and real.

She was emboldened by this revelation. She made a firm decision. She would not let her father drink the rest of his life away. Her mother’s memory did not deserve that disrespect. His love for her needed to be stronger than the ease at which he grabbed the bottle for comfort.

It was not an easy task, but she got him to quit. She learned things about herself during this time. Patience, understanding, and extreme empathy. Her grief was raw, but her father’s was devastating. Spending time with each other, expressing their grief, had brought them closer together. She always felt a disconnect from him, as though he did not care for her as her mother had. As they learned from each other, her heart warmed with the discovery that his love was simply quiet. He was proud of her, loved her, and wanted the very best for her. He did not say it with words too often, but his eyes and his smile told her every day.

When Maggie met Bill, she knew right away he was a good man. He was somewhat like her father-quiet, serious, stoic. Under his outward presentation, though, he was sweet, funny, romantic. He was rational and cool headed. He would be a good husband, provider, father.

She loved him, immensely, but it was not until she had Bill Jr. that she realized how much she needed and relied on him.

She was sick throughout her pregnancy, never truly gaining much weight. She could not get the baby to feed very well once they were home. She was not sleeping, had not showered, the house was a mess, and she could not stop crying. She felt like a failure as a wife and a mother.

One day, a knock sounded at the front door. Bill Jr. had just spit up all over her last clean shirt and also managed to soil his last clean diaper. Maggie felt like lying down and giving up. She did not care about the person at the door, she just wanted to sleep, cry, or scream. Maybe even all three.

The knock sounded again and a muffled voice called out, “Mrs. Scully? My name is Evelyn McCreary. Your husband works with my husband. He asked if I could look in on you. He wanted to be sure that you were okay and didn’t want you to be alone.”

Maggie began to cry. From exhaustion, embarrassment, but mostly from the caring her husband showed by asking for help for her. She would never have asked on her own. She was a navy wife now and needed to keep that stiff upper lip. As she cried, she caught a whiff of both herself and the baby. It was not a good combination.

Her pride worn down, she walked to the door. She did not look at her reflection in the mirror by the door. She knew she looked like death warmed over. If this woman was truly here to help, she was going to see how big her job would be.

Opening the door, she found not a young woman, but an older one. White hair set in a fetching style, clothes and makeup perfect. She even had a pair of gloves in one hand and her purse in the other. This woman? She was going to help?

Maggie almost closed the door in her face. Close the door before she ruined the clothes of this poor well meaning woman. She had probably thought that Maggie was simply bored and was looking for someone to gossip with and drink some tea, maybe something stronger. Well, Maggie thought, that sure ain’t the case. She stared at this immaculately dressed stranger with a look of defiance.

The eyes looking back at her were soft and understanding. She took in Maggie’s spit up covered shirt and could smell the baby’s soiled diaper. She smiled kindly at Maggie and put her gloves in her purse with a snap as it closed.

“Well,” she said with a square set to her shoulders. “It looks like we have our work cut out for us. How about you invite me in and we can get started?”

Maggie was completely floored. She expected this woman to be aghast and walk away. When she did neither, she could not do anything but allow her in the house. Evelyn set her purse down on the crowded dining room table and turned to Maggie.

“First things first,” she said with determination in her voice. “You need to get cleaned up and I will take care of this adorable baby.”

“No,” Maggie said with more force than she actually felt. “First things first. You tell me who you are and why exactly you are here.” Evelyn smiled at her, just as kindly as before, and clasped her hands together.

“My husband and your husband have become friends. They have recently worked together and have taken a liking to one another. Your husband mentioned that you had recently had a child. My husband, Philip, had asked how you were doing. Bill was honest with him and said it had been hard. My Philip told me, and I knew I had to come right over. You see, Mrs. Scully,” she said with a brief pause as she took a breath. “I know how hard it can be. How you can feel ... alone and no one understands. I have had six children and I was unprepared for each one of them.” Maggie balked at her. Six children? God. That sounded exhausting.

“My husband and I married young,” she continued. “My mother had passed when I was a girl and I never learned about ... well many aspects of marriage.” She laughed and her cheeks flushed. “When I discovered I was with child, I was terrified. I had no idea what I would do.” She smiled at Maggie kindly and reached out to touch the baby’s foot.

“My husband was wonderful to me the entire time. He was tickled that we would be having a baby. He boasted to everyone how happy he was to be a father. How he loved that I would be giving him that honor. But then the babies came ...” she became quiet for a second, lost in her memories. Maggie shifted uncomfortably, aware once again how terrible she smelled.

Evelyn gave a little shake of her head and then smiled at Maggie. “Mrs. Scully,” she said kindly. “I would love to tell you my story when you have had a chance to clean up a little. I can imagine you don’t feel so wonderful at this moment.”

Maggie’s eyes filled with tears at the kindness in her voice. “I can’t get cleaned up,” Maggie said with a sob. “There is so much laundry to be done, and I don’t have any more clean shirts.”

Evelyn reached for the baby, and this time Maggie let her take him. She brought her hands to her face as her tears began to fall faster. Evelyn tucked Bill Jr. into her side and drew Maggie to her with an arm around her shoulder.

“My dear,” Evelyn said softly. “Please lead me to the bedroom and we will get you sorted out.”

Maggie tearfully led Evelyn toward the bedroom. She set the baby down in the bassinet that sat in the room. Evelyn walked into the bathroom and started the shower. When it was a comfortable temperature, she turned to Maggie and told her to take her time and get cleaned up. Maggie sobbed and began to unbutton her shirt. Evelyn walked out and closed the door behind her.

Maggie left all her clothes in a disgusting heap on the floor and stepped into the warm steamy shower. She let the water wash over her and cleanse her body and soul. She was so bone tired and this shower was the best experience she had in days. She stayed under the spray and felt her muscles relax. She cried and cried. Let all her anxiety out in that shower. Felt it wash away down the drain.

She washed her hair and body twice, exhilarated by the feeling of being clean. Erasing the stench of milky baby vomit and soiled diapers. She stayed in the warm cocoon until the water began to cool. Finally she had to turn the water off and return to real life.

A towel had been placed out for her and her disgusting clothes were gone. She had not even noticed Evelyn return to the bathroom. She grabbed the towel and wrapped herself in the fluffiness. God, she felt like a new person. She dried her hair with an extra towel until it was just slightly damp.

Maggie walked into her bedroom and found that Evelyn had put some clothes on the bed for her. A button down shirt of Bill’s was laid out beside a pair of pajama pants. She slipped them on, no underwear available to be worn. She did not care and she doubted Evelyn would either.

Once she was dressed, she walked out to find Evelyn in the dining room. She had cleaned up the clutter on the table and changed the baby. He was laying in the bassinet that she had moved from the bedroom.

She looked up and smiled as Maggie came in the room. She walked toward her and put her arm around her shoulder, leading her to the table. Maggie sat and Evelyn disappeared into the kitchen. She came back with a two cups of tea and set them down.

“Do you take cream and sugar?” Evelyn asked kindly. Maggie shook her head. “I was able to find one last diaper for the baby, but he will be needing more. I placed a call to a friend of mine and she will be dropping off some items for you as soon as she can,” Evelyn said as she sat and drank her tea. “I have also started washing some clothes in your washing machine. Such a wonderful invention. Things took longer in my day. Once those clothes are done, I will hang them for you and start more clothes.”

Maggie was silently crying, looking down at her teacup. She was overwhelmed by everything, but especially by the kindness this woman was showing her. She did not know her, but she was here and she was helping. She had already done so much in the short amount of time she had been here.

She lifted her eyes to Evelyn. She could not talk around the lump in her throat. She shook her head, trying to fight back her tears. She took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak.

“Before you say anything,” Evelyn said softly, setting down her cup and taking Maggie’s hand. “Let me tell you my story. Drink your tea and just listen.”

Maggie took another deep shuddering breath and nodded. She did not know what she was going to say anyway. That she was fine? She clearly was not. She did not need any help? It was obvious that she did. She just needed to say something. Instead she took a sip of tea and waited for Evelyn to speak.

Evelyn placed her hands on the table and folded them together. She told Maggie of her hardships with her babies. How she had been wholly unprepared for caring for them. She did not know anything about children and she felt like a failure every day. She cried more in that time than any other time in her life. When the babies cried, when they spit up, when dinner was burnt, when her husband’s shirts were not ironed, or worse, when they too were burnt.

But through it all, her husband had been there for her. He was always encouraging, always positive. He ate the burnt dinner, smiling through every bite. He hid his scorched shirts beneath jackets, kissing her goodbye and thanking her for seeing that he looked respectable and loved. He was her champion, her cheering squad and she loved him immensely for it.

They moved to a new base when she was pregnant with their fourth child. Two of the children were in school during the day at that time, so she was home with only the youngest child. She was thankful for that because the fourth pregnancy had been her worst. She was sick almost throughout. She could barely eat, she was not sleeping and the housework began to suffer.

There were not scorched shirts anymore, there were simply none ready at all. Dinners were late as they had to wait for her husband to cook them and he worked late shifts. She would cry as she sat holding the youngest one and her husband served the older children soup and toast, grilled cheese, eggs. Whatever was on hand and easy to make. He would make them laugh with silly voices and songs he made up. Then they would help him clean up and head to bed.

He would come to her and wipe her tears. Tell her he loved her, she was the only person he would ever love in this lifetime and the next. He would take the little one and bathe her, put her to bed, and come find Evelyn still on the sofa, crying. He would take her to their room, help her get her night clothes on, and brush her hair. He would sing to her as he did, telling her how beautiful she was. How her hair was like spun gold and it shined brighter than the sun. He would hold her as she cried when they went to bed.

It had been two weeks and this had become their routine, until she heard a knock at the door. She opened it to find a dark skinned woman with the biggest smile she had ever seen. She told Evelyn that her husband had run into her, literally, and helped her pick up the items she spilled.

He struck up a conversation with her and found she was looking for work, but no one wanted to hire her. He said that was ridiculous and he hired her on the spot. Said he needed someone to help his wife because he loved her so much and seeing her breaking down the way she was, was breaking his heart. He cried for his wife, cried for her suffering, and asked, begged, for her help.

Her name was Tanzie and she was a godsend. She helped with anything and everything. She washed, cleaned, cooked, ironed, and cared for the children. But most important, she became the friend that Evelyn needed. She cared for her. Cooking bland foods that she could hold down, offered up advice her mama had for pregnancy, remedies that were a wonder for Evelyn.

Tanzie helped her get back to herself and her family. She was the best friend Evelyn ever had. They shared secrets, dreams, and their lives.

“Mrs. Scully, without the love of my husband, and the care of others, I would have crumbled. I would have given up. I am a lot older than Tanzie was when she showed up that day, but I would like to be here to help you as she did for me.” Evelyn said kindly, looking into Maggie’s eyes.

Maggie sat in rapt attention, tears running down her face, through the whole story. Listening to Evelyn’s story of love filled Maggie with hope, with happiness and such immense love. She read of soulmates, saw it through her father’s eyes, knew she found it in Bill, but Evelyn’s story ... it was pure love and devotion.

And now Evelyn sat there, in a dirty house, with clutter and laundry piling up, offering her help because Philip heard about her need from Bill. A loving heart reached out to another loving heart. As a result, without hesitation, Evelyn came to help Maggie. To offer what she could, however she could.

Through her tears, Maggie smiled and nodded. “Please, call me Maggie,” she said as she grasped Evelyn’s hand, reaching out for the lifeline that had been sent to her.

I had posted all of this story here, chapter by chapter, but now… I’m not sure how to find it. So, I am posting the link to it on AO3. Happy reading… with perhaps some tears along the way. 💕

#Soulmates #The X Files #XF Fanfic #From the breakup to their reunion #What happened in the interim?#Sadness #Angst #Separated #Love and Caring #Taking care of each other

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fymagnificentwomcn · 4 years

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What are your thoughts about Silhatar Mustafa?

Mhm pretty much indifferent to him, but as many, deserved so much better?

I mean later on he was horrible, but he wasn’t himself anymore following Gevherhan’s death and his disastrous marriage to Atike.

When we meet him we know he’s Murad’s best friend and has a reputation as ladies man, seems like a guy seriously devoted to his work, but having a messy private life lol.

The person he seems most attached to was Murad, we see he is very much concerned about his well-being and happiness, for example he is very glad seeing Murad being happy after a ride with Farya (later changes his attitude towards her after the pig incident). He also has a soft spot for Ayşe (in platonic sense), which mirrors Ibrahim’s fondness for Mahi due to being treated as part of their family (and this relationship stays strong until the end, even in her last episode, he pleads on her behalf with Murad).

It’s clear he and Kösem aren’t great friends, but they both have learned how to co-operate with each other for Murad’s sake, he also seems to have similar relations with the rest of family – there doesn’t seem to be exceptional closeness between him and the rest of the family other than Murad, but everybody manages to get along.

The show starts when Mu/rat loses his previous main male favourite (and I don’t intend here any romantic undertons either ahaha) aka Musa, and Silahtar is given his position. In later flashback scene we see what Mu/rat expects of him – absolute loyalty. Obviously Musa has left big shoes to fill in and Silahtar is undoubtedly aware of this.

Suddenly Silahtar’s professional life and his messy private life intersect because he gets caught between two sultanas – one which he begins to have feelings for and the other who begins chasing after him for a change.

He was well aware Gevherhan might be too far above him and perhaps got scared about having for the first time real feelings for a woman, so he entered into what he thought a casual relationship with Ester. However, he could have sensed that Ester wanted something more, she was pretty vocal about bearing her loneliness aka widowhood badly and wanting to have someone by her side long-term. Then he actually did decide to pursue Gev and like he said start a new chapter with his life, close the previous messy private life and start anew with the woman he truly loved. He also intended to immediately come clean to Mu/rat and ask for Gev’s hand, even at the risk of being executed.

Ironically, what proved to be an obstacle was not where he actually was at fault (Ester), but where he was innocent (Atike).

As I said, Ester serves here as foil to Atike – she has much better reasons to be bitter and want revenge, but ultimately she draws a line and leaves the matter. And LBR nobody would have cared so much about her as about a sultana… but this sultana is lying, even if she herself believes in her delusions.

The whole situation truly gives me Atonement vibes, and as in Atonement it has a bad ending, but here it gets a bit more complicated because of Silahtar’s love and loyalty being connected also with another person – Murad.

I said it multiple times – in the end the real love triangle is Silahtar-Gevherhan-Murad.

As I mentioned in the beginning, from beginning Silahtar is very protective of his friend and sultan and also wants to do as best as he can in his job. He is also a bit naïve about Murad – during the Kasim matter, he scolds Kemankeş for having helped Kösem hide the truth, but he himself has no bad intentions and does not want Kasim hurt – he believes Murad will not pursue the matter as far as he ultimately does.

Similarly, he makes digs at Kemankes to not switch sides for Kösem’s.

When he asks Murad for Gev’s hand, he is sure his friend will treat him at least justly. But boy he was disappointed. Murad doesn’t even ask him about the whole matter and trusts Atike blindly. Then puts him in that praying cell to make Silahtar understand that the most important thing in his life is his padişah and absolute loyalty to him.

To make matters worse, once Silahtar is released from prison, his “friend” decides to complete the “lesson” with “absolute loyalty test” – marry Atike.

Murad is well aware Silahtar does not love Atike and does not want to marry her. He actually uses his beloved (?) little sis and traps her in marriage that has no chances of being ever happy to test Silahtar’s loyalty.

And Silahtar, traumatised and brainwashed by everything – chooses loyalty to Murad. Of course if he had said no, he would have been executed (though Gev would have more strength to live seeing he didn’t abandon her), but he still chooses a sad life trapped in his private life with a woman he now despises… what is left is truly only Murad and his service to him.

In a way, it’s strange that following Gev’s demise Silahtar becomes obsessed with the person who caused him this misery – but at the same he lost everything, all he has left is Murad, he made his choice, chose Murad, so now all he can do is stick to his choice and save what he still has.

When Murad comes to Silahtar when the latter is mourning Gevherhan we see he has learned his lessons by now – Murad is distraught because his mother told him he was guilty of his sister’s suicide, so Murad (as always) makes his friend’s pain be about him and asks whether it’s true. Silahtar now knows what answer Murad expects and states that “all our lives and our paths, life and death, belong to you” and remarks that if Gev had accepted Murad’s will as we all should, she would have been alive. It’s deeply sad to state, but Silahtar knows Murad truly wants no other answer than this. However, before Murad’s appearance, Silahtar recalled telling Gev that only she made him feel alive and now he tells Murad he is practically dead and trapped in his life, and that he needs to live with his pain and regret forever. He actually says similar thing to Atike - yes, he chose loyalty to Murad over the woman he loved and now has to bear the consequences for the rest of his life. Atike, of course, does not get it and still belives they might have a happy ending.

It’s a very dark reality for him now, no wonder he pretty much loses his mind out of this grief, and it only gets worse because he realises Atike will never divorce him and will not even rest until he tries to be a husband to her.

When he comes to her and they “kiss” he taunts her to divorce him and sees that even when he mocks her she’s so obsessed with him, she won’t go let go no matter what. Kösem actually would be happy to see Atike divorcing Silahtar because we know she never liked him, the only obstacle is Atike’s obsession. So later he tries to play the husband part even though it’s clear he continues to despise her.

Ironically, he develops sort of his own obsession, but with Murad. Pretty much tries to remove everyone around Murad and most sadly tries to turn Murad against his mother and brothers. He suggests both changing the law and putting Murad’s brothers to kafes, which is an action very uncharacteristic of his old self. Still, it’s clearly not a vendetta against Murad because we see he still clearly cares about him, e.g. when he hides from him the fact that Farya (whom he strongly dislikes) had connection with Murad’s children death. He does confide it in Kösem though because he knows that while she will scold Farya, she will also keep quiet not to cause Murad any more pain. It again proves that while these two never liked each other much, they were able to set their differences aside for Murad’s sake.

This is not just restricted to his family, but also to Murad’s other men – Abaza, Kemankeş – because he shows Murad the letter from Kösem to Kemankes not only to strike at her, but to make Murad doubt Kemankeş too and he taunts Kemankeş with being Kösem’s spy (which is true because now Kemankeş is reporting Kösem Murad’s tyrannical behaviour, the opposite of what he was sent to Kösem, I love this irony sm ngl)

Kemankeş however is not interested in becoming Murad’s male favourite, but a new serious rival pops up – Yusuf. And a new triangle emerges 😊 Silahtar cannot hide his jealousy at all, even Atike notices it, though as always she mistakes it as him being jealous of her, same with Kemankeş who taunts Silahtar that Yusuf’s relationship with Murad curiously resembles his relationship with “someone else”.

I really despair we didn’t get more of Silahtar/Yusuf/Murad thing NGL, but I’m sure it would have gone this way if Caner had not left the show, I doubt Silahtar would have ever abandoned Murad at that stage, especially since historically he was his most loyal man until the end (“the person who was always loyal and genuinely attached to him since his youth” as Du Loir suggests) and was even in terrible despair upon Murad’s death, sooo.

In short again, he’s not among my fave characters, but he truly deserved so much better because he was living in actual hell and dark place later on, and ironically Murad was well aware of this as he remarked over his body that “for some people living is so painful, they feel trapped and in chains, death is actually relief for them, and only those who remain suffer” (aka exact repetition of what Sil told Murad about Gev following her death).

- Joanna

#Anonymous #answered #silahtar mustafa pasha #magnificent century: kosem #murad iv #gevherhan sultan #atike sultan #ester kira #muhteşem yüzyıl kösem #mck #mods opinions

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bakugou-tm · 5 years

Note

Karma with an artist s/o? Does he pester them to see their drawings? Does he list off all the different ways to kill someone with a pencil? Does he tease them for drawing him? Basically any head canons or scenario you have because I’m a desperate person.

OOoOooooOOOOooo this is a cute idea, but forewarning this is my first time writing for a character other than Bakugou so if it isn’t super on point d o n t @ me pls :’)

Rating: S for karma being a little S h e t

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Who knew being in a class filled with children training to be assassins and an unkillable octopus like teacher could be so morning.

If you had told anyone else that this was the environment you walked into everyday they would probably put you in an insane asylum, but sure enough it was your boring reality.

Sure things were exciting at first, everyone hoping they would be the one to end that stupid yellow octopus’ life; but as months went on it was clear you needed to learn from the master to kill him.

Most of the time you were honestly paying attention, subjects like math and science you tended to struggle in, but with your sensei blabbering on about some time in history, you decided to partake in your other skill to kill the time.

You started doodling in class about the second month in during school. Whether it's to calm you down, lighten your mood, or just to prevent you from smacking your head against the table and snoozing away; you grew a liking to doodling. This liking getting to the point where you bought your own journal just for doodling.

The drawings started out with simple things like nature, your classroom, your family... but soon you decided you wanted to draw everyone in your class.

Each person had their own unique features, especially Korosensei himself, but the person you loved to draw most of all was your infamous boyfriend: Karma Akabane.

Though you did draw him more often because he was your boyfriend of course, you also loved drawing his perfect features in many unique ways. It always reminded you how lucky you had been to call him your soulmate, making sure to drill each unique feature he had until you could picture his face with your eyes closed.

His simple vermillion locks, his calm yet mischievous smile, that jawline so soft yet sharp you swore he carved it at night, to your favorite feature of all: his golden eyes. In a way you almost saw them as bronze, the way they shimmered with delight whenever he had his way to even when they darkened when it was the opposite.

All he ever had to do was glance at you with those ravishing golden eyes and you felt like you would melt before him every time.

Most people in the class didn’t quite understand why Karma chose you. He was stereotyped as a heroic lunatic, meanwhile you always preferred to stay calm and rational.

Honestly most of the time you didn’t even know why he had chosen you, the only thing you did know is you would try your best to never lose him. Sure in person he didn’t seem like a fan favorite, but when you two were alone he treated you as if you were an angel from heaven.

The feeling of his love you hoped would never be replaced.

During the last five minutes of the class you had dozed off in your own thoughts, lightly shading your boyfriend’s light locks in your notebook. When five minutes passed and the bell rung for lunch, you hadn’t even noticed the loud sound or your classmates obnoxiously getting up to grab their lunch.

All you could focus on was your beloved boyfriend, continuing to admire everything about him. It was almost as if you could hear his voice beside you..

“If you get any closer to that notebook you’ll be making out with it (F/n).”

This comment made you realize that it wasn’t indeed your mind filling Karma’s voice in your head, but actually himself speaking right beside your desk.

Letting out a small gasp of surprise you decided to slam your book closed, disregarding the sharp pencil that was still inside before you felt a sharp stab to your finger.

Karma didn’t look over your mini panic attack or the way you flinched in pain from obviously stabbing yourself. Though he did want to ask about both things, he knew if he asked about the book he would never know. So to play along with it, he focused on your new wound.

“You seem a bit startled their doll, everything alright?”

It wasn’t long before your felt a rush of warmth flood to your cheeks, you only hoped it wasn’t as visible as it felt. Standing up quickly you shoved your notebook in your bag and covered your now bleeding hand with your other palm, “Yup! Everything’s just dandy! I just got a paper cut is all.”

The red haired boy raised an unimpressed eyebrow at you before letting out a chuckle. You hadn’t even noticed how quickly he snatched your right arm from your own grasp, holding your hand firmly so you couldn’t move away before inspecting your oozing finger.

“I’m sure lead poisoning is just dandy too right?’ Karma said with one of his many teasing grins.

Karma simply admired you in this state. Your soft lips pinched together and puffed out just in the slightest to match your rosy cheeks, giving you the perfect pout as you avoided his gaze. Small expressions like this he made sure to save to his memory every time, you didn’t even try to but you were so damn adorable.

“Relax pouty pants, let’s just get you to the nurse before this lead poisoning makes you even more klutzier.” Karma said smoothly, grabbing your bag from you grasp before leading you to the door, grinning as you shouted profanities and arguments the whole way out.

-----

Honestly, Karma didn’t think his plan was going to go so smoothly. From him grabbing your bag from you to you being in the nurses office (or at least Korosensei’s office) for a solid twenty minutes.

All of this gave him plenty of time to see just what those pretty fingers have been creating every class. It was obvious by the way you focused so intensely on your notebook every class that you were doodling something.

Karma never cared too much because he knew you had good grades, and if it kept you from falling asleep then kudos to you for finding a way not to pass out during that snooze fest.

But ever since you’ve been so secretive and protective of this damned book, he knew he had to figure out what you were hiding.

He never assumed he would be offended by what you drew, infact by the way your rosy cheeks grew even darker in shades each time he neared you while the book was open, he figured he would find some fantasy crap in here.

Though as he looked through every page of your notebook, he came to realize there was nothing embarrassing at all. Just pages and pages of his classmates, more specifically of him.

He was astonished at how well your artistic abilities truly were. With just a pencil and paper you were able to capture every feature of him so perfectly. Though he would never admit, it made his heart swell when he thought of the idea of you daydreaming about him.

Love was such a mystery to him during the few years of his life, never would he of imagined he could discover every detail of it just spending a few months with you. You always kept surprising him, day after day just giving him another reason to love you even more.

Though even with these strong feelings he held for you, he knew he would never reveal them until the time was right. So in the meantime, he would make it his life’s mission to see that pouty look on your face over and over again.

Just in time, the door slid open your form walking out still facing the door frame as you waved a goodbye and offered a warm smile to your sensei before closing the door behind you.

Whipping your head to the side another shriek ripped from your mouth to see Karma leaning against the door frame, smirk on his face as he raised his brows to you.

“My goodness Karma, how many times are you going to scare me like this?” You said with a nervous giggle as he wiggled his eyebrows down to you.

“Sorry I just can’t help it, being the best assassin in the class and all.”

At this you rolled your eyes, poking his cheek with your now wrapped finger before grabbing your bag from his hold. Karma watched as you began to walk down the hallway, expecting him to follow you.

“But now I know who the best artist is.”

Your footsteps suddenly froze. A wave of fear flowing through your body as you prayed those very words didn’t just escape his lips.

Spinning around you felt as if your entire body was on fire when you saw your boyfriend waving around your sketchbook, devious glint written all over his features.

“K..Karma how did you-”

The vermillion haired boy placed a finger against your lips staring down to your frame as he flipped through the pages, “Well after you had your seizure when I came to your desk today, I decided to distract my attention to your bleeding finger instead of your book. Obviously my plan worked as you handed your bag right to me with ease.”

Inhaling sharply you felt as if you could float away with the draft of the hallway. All of your doodles, all of your kind words written next to them. He saw all of it, and oh what does he think of you now? An obsessed crazed person? A psycho stalker?

“I..I..” You stuttered, not even finding words as you felt warm tears fill at the rim of your eyes, the only thing keeping them in were your long lashes and the sheer will to not cry in front of Karma of all people, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to draw you without your permission! I..I was just bored.. and I love looking at you and d..drawing you it just.. it just makes me calmer and-”

The more words that flooded out of your mouth the more you felt yourself fall apart, you thought you were done with for good until you felt his smooth fingers grip your chin and his lips smash against your own.

This kiss wasn’t like his usual intimate ones, though it still had his crazed passion he always carried. It seemed more like one to shut you up, and to send you the message he couldn’t always say aloud.

Once he pulled away he analyzed every feature of you. Your shimmering (e/c) eyes still glossed over with a layer of tears making them shine more than usual, your silky (h/c) locks sliding off your shoulder as your head was tilted up to reach his own, your smooth lips parted slightly as small breaths of air came in and out of them after such a sharp kiss.

He wished he could kiss you for hours, days, years. You were to damn perfect for him, but he would be damned if he let anyone else treat you less than the royalty you were.

You felt your breath hitch when you noticed his expression darken in the slightest. His thumb tightened on your chin as he remained close to your lips, eyes narrowed as they stared right through you.

“Listen now angel face, I don’t want you having any damn fear when it comes to me learning more about you. I don’t care if you had the strangest thing in the world in there, I will always love you for you and I will forever want to know everything about you do you understand?”

You let a small sliver of your lower lip slip in between your teeth, your eyes falling to the floor before you let out a small sigh, “Y..Yes, I’m sorry...”

Karma felt his face soften in the slightest as his arms snaked around your own, holding you tight against him as your arms found their place on his chest, “You having the fear to hide those drawings from me pisses me off..”

Looking up to him quickly you noticed the rising anger in his expression, but as your hand cupped his cheek you saw it disappear as fast as it came.

“I didn’t want you to be upset Karma, I just was scared you would be weirded out if you found out I was drawing you randomly.” You admitted, feeling a wave of relief as his eyes met yours once more.

“You kidding? Those drawings were amazing! I’m always down for an ego boost.”

A small grin broke across Karma’s face when he heard your angelic giggle fill his ears, running his fingers through your strands of hair he held your head to face his one last time with a serious expression.

“Promise me you’ll be honest next time, alright?”

Smiling softly you placed your lips on his with the sweetest kiss he’s ever had before pulling away, “I promise Karma-kun.”

Placing a quick kiss on your forehead, the red haired boy slid his fingers down your arm until they were locked in your palm, leading you to the rest of your classmates to eat lunch.

“You know babe since you’re so good with drawing with that pencil, I can show you how to be good with murdering with it.” Karma spoke in a husked voice, your head whipping up to his to see that trademark grin of his that made sure to show all his canines that only made him look more mischievous as he held your pencil up right in his hand.

Bursting out into giggles you snatched the pencil from his hold, enjoying how his eyebrows furrowed before leading him to the lunch room,

“Maybe later my little demon, but first let’s eat, I think all this lead poisoning has me starving to death.”

#karma akabane #karma #karma x reader #karma akabane x reader #assasination classroom #w o w this was fun to write #I hope I nailed his character right I feel like I didn't #feedback feedback FEEDBACK #and enjoy :')

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