#have you ever heard someone talk about how fundamentally different they are from their sibling

[curtis-brothers-hug]

Ponyboy is that sibling who constantly talks about how different he and Darry are, and then you actually meet Darry and see the two of them interact for the first time and you’re like……they are the same person.

[leo-interactive-fiction]

Something else I haven't seen before. What would the MC's parent from each background think of the ROs? Who would they approve of and who wouldn't they? I guess in the case of orphan MC, what would E's parents think? Since they kinda maybe vaguely adopted orphan MC?

Hmm, interesting! Since I did the opposite, I should have seen this one coming haha

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Storm's comments:

E: "Rose has had that expectation for some time. This is preferable to the alternative. I know you will be in good hands. Rose raised them well."

R: Your father doesn't mince his words, a clear disdain evident, "Valleford. See that you don't take after your father, or there will be less than pleasantries next time we meet."

L: "Scio. I assume your father...?" Storm's lips pull in a small frown as L gives a small nod of confirmation, "I understand if you cannot forgive me. Your father is a significant asset to the Hospian war effort. If I find him, I will kill him."

V: "You've seen enough at your age," Storm says quietly, looking into the hollow glint in V's eyes, "I'm sorry. Those were battles that should have ended with my generation, not yours."

P: Storm's brow furrows as he makes a cordial greeting, "I assume your father is well? He does not speak of his second child often, but you seem more spirited than the other. That will make the greater difference when it matters."

M: Storm's brow furrows as he makes a cordial greeting, though there's little sentimentality in his voice, "I assume your father is well? He expresses confidence in your upbringing, but I can't say I share the sentiment. You lack something fundamental. Something to drive you to achieve more than what's expected of you."

Ra: Storm's eyes lock onto Raven with a harsh intensity, "Your eyes are filled with blood and you conceal weapons. Tell me your intentions or I will kill you right now."

S: "I admit I am unfamiliar with Orden. The conflict never reached that country, but I understand there are many hardships there already," Storm says, looking the brightly grinning student up and down before his lips pull back in small contentment, "You come out better than most. You have impressive strength."

F: Storm holds a frown as he takes in the vivid green hair, "Many allowed Frenza to claim their distance due to their significant contribution to Triaina's independence, but it doesn't absolve you of everything," he says in warning, "Don't step over the boundaries you've been afforded, or the military will have no choice but to respond."

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Scurra's dialogue:

E: Scurra makes a grimace as he recognizes E, "Damnit, you've gone and done it now," he grumbles as he pulls out his wallet and hands a fold of bills to E, "Give that to your mom, will you? She's worse than a debt collector with bets..."

R: "Valleford! There's a name I haven't heard in a while. I knew they had a black sheep in the family, but I guess they couldn't take away the infamous good looks," Scurra chuckles, his eyes lightening reminiscently, "They've put me in a good bit of trouble on more than one occasion. I guess I should consider it a family curse now that MC is involved with you."

L: "Oh, I know those eyes," Scurra says wistfully, "Coming to find the world is a bigger place than you imagined, aren't you? It's even more expansive than that, too. I had that same look when I traveled overseas. I hope MC is being a good guide for you," he looks to you, and gives a knowing wink.

V: Scurra gives a meandering hum as he looks at V, "I've been all around, but I've only seen natural hair color like that a handful of times. They all had your same stare, too." He closes his eyes thoughtfully, "None as young as you though. I hope you're the last I have to see with those eyes. They're a bad omen."

P: "A fiery one, aren't you! Has no one ever told you not to say bad words in public?" Scurra laughs, "You should stop while you can. You're so transparent with your feelings that I almost mistook you for a window, so there's no point to pulling a tough act."

M: A small, genuine smile rises on Scurra's lips as he inspects M, "How interesting. You're so similar to your twin, but you're definitely the better actor. As I think about it, you remind me of MC's mother in many ways..."

Ra: "What are you doing here?" Scurra frowns, staring harshly at Raven. A silence passes and eventually he looks away, messaging his jaw, "Oops, guess I was mistaken. You looked a little like someone I know."

S: "You've got Orden written all over you, don't you?" Scurra says cheerily, "It's been a while since I've visited, but I have to say it gave me the most enjoyment. You all certainly know how to keep it lively."

F: "Your family has always been so hauty!" Scurra covers his mouth to suppress a chuckle, "But I think it would be a mistake to talk down to everyone you meet. I happen to be on great terms with your mother. If I took the opportunity, you two would have been siblings!"

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Xero's insight:

E: He smiles warmly to E, "It's good to see you again. I'm afraid there was little I could do for you: your mother has already found out about your relationship. I expect she'll make it as embarrassing for you as possible, if I know her well. I hope you're mentally prepared."

R: Xero studies R with a faint curiosity, "I'm afraid your father and I are on less than speaking terms due to some...past difficulties, but I understand you are more than simply your father's child. You may be villianized for your differing viewpoint, but aren't we all? I don't find it is so bad," Xero gives R a knowing small."

L: Xero's eyes widen upon seeing L, then falls into a soft smile, "To think history would repeat so aptly. To see you two now reminds me of my own school days," Xero closes his eyes and releases a light sigh, the smile still present, "I pray you'll also find the same happiness I did, and that it lasts longer."

V: Xero's grip tightens on an file in his hands as he sees V, his voice meticulous, "You are...Wolfe, correct? I'll admit the what I've heard and read of you is...less than appealing, but," he casts his gaze between you and the ex-Jagd member, a faint smile growing on his lips as V steps cautiously between you. "You seem to have a strong sense of duty. I hope you will be a good pillar for MC."

P: He looks disaprovingly, "In my field, words are paired with intention. To speak is to lay bare your thoughts. Why would you neglect your intent by forcing a negative connotation where it doesn't belong?"

M: He seems slightly more on edge than with P, "I don't believe I should offer my approval to someone unwilling to determine a focus. It's a testament to your negligence."

Ra: Xero crosses their arms, his face skeptical,"Marriage? Your lack of detailed forethought and hyperfixation gives me the impression of an unhealthy mind. As it stands now, I will refuse to give you my blessing."

S: "I'm afraid I'm ignorant to everything Orden related," Xero says sheepishly, "I am happy to learn all that I can, though. Perhaps you would like to bring your family at some point? I would be happy to host them here." Xero smiles warmly, clearly unknowing of the chaotic rabblerousing he's invited into his home.

F: "Ah, the royal line," Xero says in recognition of F, "Your own mother was a classmate of mine as well. To think one of her children would grow so closely with mine. Please give her my regards, would you? She has always kept herself closer than others, so I was happy when she took an interest in my friend. He's a lucky man."

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Mr. Razor's thoughts (if he was alive)

E: He bows his head gratefully, "Thank you for taking care of MC all this time. Your selflessness has saved me a lot of worry, and I doubt I'll have any more leaving them in your hands."

R: Razor's eyes bore a hole through R, "To defy your father was a considerable risk. And not knowing what the academy had planned for you, you still allowed yourself to be incarcerated for an indeterminate amount of time," Razor taps his fingers to his chin, a smile spreading over his lips, "I enjoy those that stick to their principles, but what say we work on your jailbreaking?"

L: "Your father's quite an important man. He's lucky I was never contracted to kill him," Razor says matter-of-factly. A chilling air of silence deafens the room until Razor holds up his palms, "Just kidding. I've never killed anyone. They all died mysteriously."

V: "How's Jagd doing?" Razor narrows his eyes keenly on V, "I'm surprised they were able to bounce back after what I did to them. I guess they filled the empty spaces with whoever was able...or moldable."

P: Razor smiles sadly, "It must be difficult to be given another person's expectations and do well with them. You're like a fish trying to climb a tree. But I enjoy how far up you've climbed despite that. Would you like a reward? I know, how about...your father's weakness?"

M: Razor seems disinterested, "You're not worth the words, Crater. You're nothing more than what your father made you to be: a simple shadow to live vicariously through."

Ra: Razor's eyes have an approving glint, "The one that slipped through the cracks. How very odd. MC's mother was quite odd too. It's an endearing quality, isn't it? Yes, I think you'll make a perfect companion for MC. You've already been looking over them all this time, haven't you?"

S: "Earnestness is one of the first qualities people tend to throw away when faced with hardship. It is impressive to see how you've progressed through your poverty and discrimination so aptly. Perhaps you have a hope that things will get better?" Razor's mouth spreads in a wicked smile, "I do enjoy seeing how people struggle for such a small glimmer of light. I think I'll offer my aid."

F: "Ah, it's always cute to see people play at royalty," Razor smiles at F's exasperated face, "Why do you seem so angry? Do you actually believe your position has meaning? I'll assure you it doesn't," Razor casts a darkening stare towards the royal, "To me, you're no harder to kill than a beggar on the street. The power you attempt to flaunt means nothing, because in the end it does nothing to elevate you beyond a simple street urchin."

----------------------

End

Thank ya for the ask!

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel and the Great Tree Part 1

We’re now finally at the mid-season finale of season two, and it’s easily the best episode of this season. That however doesn’t mean that it’s not flawed, so here we go... 

Summary: The group makes it to the Great Tree, only to be confronted by a new adversary: Hector, the brother of Adira, the most dangerous member of the Brotherhood; sworn to keep all from reaching the Dark Kingdom. Despite all that has happened, Rapunzel is determined to continue on toward the Dark Kingdom to uncover the truth behind her destiny. As they navigate through the Great Tree, Rapunzel discovers the Moonstone incantation which overwhelms the magical powers of the Sundrop in her blonde hair and causes injury and weakness to those around her. 

The Brotherhood Is Such a Wasted Concept 

We have a group of highly trained warriors, directly connected to the series main macguffin, who consider each other siblings, who all have conflicting goals, and they’re all severely underdeveloped to the point of ridiculousness. 

For starters, in a show all about pushing sibling rivalries as parallels to the two main characters, it utterly fails to show the only other siblings who are actually connected to the plot acting like actual siblings. 

Adira and Hector should be a parallel to Cass and Rapunzel in this very episode. One that actually ties into the narrative, yet outside of calling each other brother/sister/brethren they don’t act like family; even feuding family. Adira also fails to treat Quirin, Varian, Edmund, and Eugene as family. She shows no real concern for any of them despite saving her home (which would included her family) from the rocks being her main goal. She should be just as every bit as invested in saving Quirin as Varian. Which is yet another reason why Varian should have been S2 and another entry point for him in the show’s plot. 

As for the rest of the Brotherhood, they never even interact at all. I don’t think anyone tells either Edmund or Hector what has happened to Quirin or Varian. And Edmund clearly didn’t inform Hector of Eugene, even though he logically should have. And did any of them know if Edmund was alive, despite Edmund having the means to communicate with the outside world with the crows? 

What we’re left with is a bunch of holes in the story, because there’s now a bunch of holes in everyone’s motivations and their actions never quite line up. 

And before you say, ‘well they’re not that important’, or ‘they’re aren’t meant to be a real family’; then that is in of itself a flaw because they should be. Not making them found family undermines Raps and Cass being found family, as it undermines every other sibling parallel in the show, and those parallels are the only build up we have to the sister reveal in S3.  

It also undermines the moonstone plot and the whole reason why season two exists. Don't introduce things that connect back to your story and not make them important. In fact don't introduce unimportant elements in a plot driven show like this period. 

Another Indication of the Timeline

As stated before, Tangled is really bad at indicating the passage of time, despite the passage of time being a big plot point. We’re now a ‘few months’ past the island, which itself was 6 weeks, and before that it was several weeks to maybe even a few months before getting to the island... 

So when does this take place? Well we were told that season two takes place over the course of a year by the creator, and that this is the mid-season finale so 6 months since SotSD sounds the most plausible. We also see fall trees dotted around like we did during the first half of season one. Which is the only visual indicator we get of changing seasons in the show, but it’s too understated to be properly noticeable most of the time. 

However, the crew themselves can’t even seem to agree if Rapunzel’s Return is her birthday or not, so if you’ve heard conflicting sources, it’s because this shit wasn’t planned properly first. But all dialogue and visual cues point to the first half of season two being at least 4 to 6 months. With 6 being the most logical placement.  

Just a Reminder, that Hook Foot Is Still Useless 

If all you were going to have him do is whine like a child during the only plot important episode that he is in, then why not just replace him with an actual child? 

It takes more work to leave Varian out of season two and force Hook Foot in his place, than it does just to write Varian in. There were so many potential entry points for his character, that the one they would up going with was the least natural to the characters and the story they were trying to tell. And even then, the Saporian take over they went with could still have worked had they handled things properly and pre-planned that stuff out. 

But they didn’t. By all accounts S2 was a hasty re-write to get rid of Varian and Hook Foot was shoehorned in as his replacement at the last minute. And it’s the most utterly baffling creative decision I have ever witnessed in my life. There was zero logical reason for it. 

This Plot Point Wasn’t Built Up Enough and It Goes Nowhere

Look, had they actually pointed out that Cass is a bodyguard now, and that this line from Raps threatens her career goals, that would make sense; or they could have explored the idea that Cass’s identity revolves around her job, and so feeling like her job is pointless makes her feel pointless therefore making her feel insecure about her future. Either of those would have been interesting jumping off points for her character arc and later conflicts. 

But that’s not what they did. 

I think that’s what they were initially trying to go for here, but it got muddled in the mess that was last minute rewrites. 

Cass obtaining her goals in season one is ignored in favor of a bland and vague validation goal from this point onwards. Her issues with Rapunzel are then boiled down to be about; not identity, agency, class, or wanting a future, but into fighting over a dead mom and how one wasn’t ‘loved enough’ apparently. Which makes no sense given what we know of Cass from previous seasons. 

Cassandra isn’t deep or complex; she is convoluted. The writing team couldn’t agree on what her goals and motivations should be, and so she performs conflicting actions throughout the story that actively undermines what was previously established and what she supposedly wants. 

Most people who try to defend the writing for Cassandra do so with this idea that because they had to work hard to ‘connect the dots’ for all these seemingly disconnected plot ideas, means that of course the writing is ‘deep’ but that’s ignoring one of the basic fundamentals of writing.   

The audience shouldn’t have to do the writer’s job! 

Having to think about a story doesn’t mean that you need to go digging around for basic information like the character’s goals or what happened when. A writer’s job is to first and foremost clearly communicate ideas to their audience. Plot and character analysis is about finding extras like, metaphors, moral messages, and coming up with fun headcanons that don't impact the wider story. Because all of the bare bones information needed to understand the story should already be there for everyone to see. 

If you gotta go into ‘analysis’ just explain the damn plot and why things are unfolding the way they do, then the story is badly written. Full stop. 

Cinderella wanting to go to the ball is a simple goal, but it’s an understandable one that anyone watching can grasp. You could go into a deeper analysis about abuse and what the ball symbolises for Cinderella’s character or how the story is an analogy for wider social issues at large, but at the end of the day everyone needs to be in agreement that, yes, Cinderella wants to go to the ball and we know why she wants to go, so that her actions in trying to get there make sense.

No one knows what Cassandra wants. Cassandra herself doesn’t know what she wants. So the ‘why’ part for what she does is never answered. 

Hector Is Wasted

As already stated, all of the Brotherhood is wasted, but Hector more so than most. Season two desperately needed an ongoing threat, a main antagonist to push the story forward. Hector should have been that antagonist. Instead he shows up for this one episode, and then in a few non-speaking cameos in S3. 

Then Why Not Just Stay With Them Adira?

We’re never given an actual reason for why Adira keeps leaving the group, and indeed doing so conflicts with her stated goal of getting Rapunzel safely to the moonstone. It’s just shoehorned in here to create ‘mystery’, but mysteries have to be answered at some point. You can’t throw something in for drama’s sake and not explain why it’s there. 

Lance’s Crush on Adira Isn’t Handled Well 

Look, this isn’t a judgment upon those who ship the characters. When I talk about relationships in the show I’m only talking about how well they are written on screen. I couldn’t care less what the fans do with them. 

Even when I discuss my personal preferences for ships, that is all that is, my personal preference. I don't give a shit if you ship something that I may dislike, or if you hate something that I do enjoy. I’m a grown up with more important things to do than worry over what a bunch strangers may write on A03 about a bunch of fictional characters, and as someone who hates bullies above all else, I’ll defend your right to make whatever content to want to because censorship is just a form of bullying and nothing else. 

No matter how gross or reprehensible I may personally find it. Different stories resonate with different people and for different reasons. I may debate your reasons, if the subject comes up, or critique professional media for the messages it puts out to the wider public, but I’ll never say you can’t like it or that you can’t make it.    

So with that stated, I don’t like Lance’s dynamic with Adira in the show and here’s my reasons for that. 

She doesn’t ever return the feelings. 

At best she tolerates him, at worse she actively kicks his butt when he gets too close, and most of the time she ignores him. Which is for good reason; she’s old enough to be his mom. Why would she be attracted to him? 

Like I’m not saying that age gaps between adults are inherently wrong; I’m saying that if there is a significant age gap then you really have to work hard to build up a reason for why the two characters would go for each other when naturally they wouldn’t be in each other’s usual sphere of dating options. Which the series never does because once again Adira is clearly not interested in him. 

This leads to Lance basically being an annoying ‘nice guy’ who can’t take a hint. Like constantly badgering someone who doesn’t want you to isn’t charming or endearing, and Lance is old enough to know this by now. 

Basically the writers just took the Varian and Cassandra dynamic from Great Expotations and slapped it onto Lance and Adira despite the fact that it made zero sense for their characters. Lance isn’t a lonely teen who desperately wants to fit in and make a connection with someone. He’s not out to prove that he is mature, nor mistakenly believes himself to be an equal to the only other girl in the kingdom that has ever talked to him that isn’t already married/seriously dating and still living at home. Adira never comes around to considering Lance a trusted friend and confidante after shoving nearly everyone else away. She doesn’t seek out his help or approval, nor tries to build him up with compliments, ect, and so forth. 

Now, I dislike the Cass and Varian ship for many, many reasons, but as they are presented on screen in the Great Expo it makes sense for why Varian would at first have an unrequited crush on her. Now after that QfaD he logically shouldn’t ever want anything to do with her but we’ll get to that later. That’s not the case with Lance and Adira; they’re both too old for such a dynamic. 

To add on to the weird factor, they’re both related to Eugene. Adira is technically Eugene’s aunt, even if she never acts like it. Lance is also the closest thing to a brother Eugene has. They don’t recognize each other as such, so if you want to say their just friends or ship them or whatever, there’s wiggle room. But the end effect is like Maya in Girl Meets World crushing on her best friend’s, Riley’s, Uncle Josh. Only even with less basis, and it wasn’t that great there either. 

Why Do you Suddenly Not Trust Adira Cass?

Forest of No Return was all about establishing trust in Adira, including with Cass at the end, so why the sudden back track? Especially since Adira hasn’t done anything but been honest with them, and has saved their butts several times now. All this does is make Cassandra look like an ass, which you don't need to be doing if you want the audience to side with her later on in the story. 

Everyone Now Knows Quirin is a Part of the Brotherhood, So There’s No Excuse For Later

It’s an odd way to state that fact, but yeah, both Cass and Raps are told directly that Quirin is in the Brotherhood, and Lance, Eugene, and Hookfoot are also present and presumably listing to this exchange. So no one in S3 has an excuse to ignore this plot point until the finale. 

This Backstory Goes Nowhere

Adira launches into this story about Zhan Tiri, Demanitus, and the Great Tree and literally none of it actually matters. It’s never brought up again after this episode. We never get any insight into why they were fighting, how Zhan Tiri corrupted a tree, what significance the tree has outside of being really big and holding some scrolls, nor how the scrolls got there, why the tree is still connect to Zhan Tiri hundreds of years later, nor how Demanitus magic spear works or what it even does exactly. 

Don’t introduce lore and then don't have it mean anything. 

Why Do you Care, Cass? 

Cassandra isn’t a lady-in-waiting anymore. We’ve already established that back in Secret of the Sun Drop and in Beyond the Corona Walls. So why should she care if Adira calls her one? Adira isn’t from Corona. Adira isn’t in charge of anything. Cassandra doesn’t even like her, so Adira’s opinion shouldn’t matter. 

This whole season we’ve seen Cass treat Adira like shit, but apparently we’re supposed to feel sorry for her when she can’t take clap back for all the grief she’s given. Is she really so immature that she can’t just ignore a petty insult for what it is? Why does she have to behave so insecure that she will jeopardize the mission or someone’s life over it? This is the deuteragonist I’m suppose to root for and relate to? I mean she’s twenty three for goodness sake! Grow the hell up woman! 

Also while we on the subject, a royal guard and a lady-in-waiting are both servants. There’s no distinction between the two beyond what duties they perform, and that would be the case regardless of what job Cass had. Rapunzel’s a princess, everyone is her servant. That’s how the class system works, and by all means Cassandra enjoys more privilege than most people in Corona. She’s the Captain’s daughter, was granted next in line for that position in SotSD, and lady-in-waiting means to the princess means she’s above all the other maids except for Crowley and Friedberg. Cass may hate her job, but she hasn’t room to complain when Faith is right there and has things much worse. 

In short making Cass suddenly indignant over being treated as lower class when she didn’t give a crap about the likes of Attila, Caine, Varian, Eugene, Lance, ect... just makes her look like a hypocrite. 

The Other Reason to Dislike Lance’s Crush is That It Hinders His Development

Lance’s arc is that he’s suppose to learn to be more responsible. This episode in particular is suppose address his habit of lying... only it doesn’t. We get no real resolvement on this point. We also never see Lance progress enough to give up on Adira and stop pursuing her even when it’s directly pointed out to him that she doesn’t reciprocate his feelings. So in the end he still remains immature and irresponsible. 

Though this conversation just proves that Eugene and Lance still have the healthiest relationship in the show. They’re about to disagree or call each other’s bullshit without resorting to insults or getting violent, which is more than what any relationship involving Cass does. 

Questions With No Answers

We never learn why these scrolls are here, why they have the incantations on them and upon the wall, we don’t know who translated them, nor who came up with the incantations in the first place.

This is all important info that he series glosses over, because unlike the moonstone and sundrop, the incantations are things that someone had to have made at some point, and they could only have made them by studying what our plot macguffins are and how they work. Since the incantations are things that are also sought after by the big bad along with the magical objects, then we need to know how the big bad knows about them when no one else does. How they came about. 

Which is yet another reason why we needed a magic system in place. 

This Song is Catchy, But It Doesn’t Need To Exist

In a musical a song needs to either establish the plot, build the world, or further the characters. This song does none of those things, it’s not needed for Lance and Eugene’s relationship, it doesn’t actually resolve Lance’s plot as he is high when he apologizes for lying, and it wasn’t needed to established the man eating plant. I honestly think this song only exists so that the animators could just reuse assets they built to save on money. 

The Hurt Incantation Is the Coolest Thing In the Show! Shame It’s Not Utilized Well

People are suckered into this show by one of three things usually, ‘Let Me Make You Proud Reprise’, ‘Ready As I’ll Ever Be’, or this scene. 

It’s shocking, powerfull, and a really, really awesome concept. It’s one of the best scenes in the show, and an interesting idea that offers up a lot of story possibilities. 

Possibilities that’ll never actually be explored on screen. The hurt incantation isn’t useless, it does affect the plot, but it’s not used effectively. There was so much you could have done with this but it’s then never explored. Characters outright forget its existence even when they have no reason to, or it’s used to do things that should have been accomplished in other ways. It’s also never fully explained or expanded upon. They couldn’t even bother to give it more than one verse. 

All of the incantations are mishandled in this show, but the hurt incantation is the one that has the biggest let down. 

Conclusion 

So that ends part 1, join me tomorrow for part 2. 

[nostalgic-pancakes]

one day (i know that you will be there)

Summary: Here, have some fluffy transbur :D

Pairings: gen everyone, with a specific focus on crimeboys

Read on AO3

Word count: 2070

Warnings: None? I guess? Tell me if there are any, but I don’t see them

Other notes: Part of @noorahqar‘s BANGER discord server Pride Event!

Please DO NOT send this to the CC’s or even imply that this exists because No, Thank you

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Sometimes, it feels like it's okay. Nothing's wrong at all and in fact, Wilbur is happy.

Other times it feels like he's stuck in his own skin, a place he can't get out of.

Wilbur doesn't really know what's going on with his gender. He's always been cis, it's all he knows we it's his comfort zone. Even while his life was being wholly upended by YouTube, and Twitch and life in general, Wilbur's gender was always a constant- the one thing he never worried about or spent too much time on. It was his gender, and it was just kind of...there.

Sometimes when gender is part of the conversation, people display confusion when Wilbur talks about his gender like something separate from him that was tied on and is just there now, like a bit of hair that can never stay in place, but isn't necessarily a bother, either. But isn't gender like that for everyone?

Well, according to the one and only Tommyinnit, no.

"Well… for me, my gender is pretty malleable. It's more of a fucking... fucking abstract concept than a feeling? I'm a little detached from mine, but not as much as that, Wilbs."

"Then what is your gender like?" Wilbur asks. It's late on a Friday night, and Wilbur had ended up visiting Tommy's flat out of mostly impulse, living just under a kilometre away from his sibling these days. They're in the living room, splayed out on the floor talking about anything and everything in the dark, too quiet to wake Tubbo and Ranboo.

Wilbur’s not agender- he has a gender that he keeps around, even if it stays reasonably sectioned away from the rest of him.

Tommy hums, an older tune that Wilbur can't place as he fiddles around with some wool scraps ("Cabbages!" Tommy insists indignantly) leftover from the cardigan they had just finished when Wilbur walked in. It's a burgundy colour that's probably going to be matched with one of Tommy's longer cream skirts to University Monday morning.

"My gender is a… a kind of vibe? I guess? To me it feels like skirts doing that cool swoosh thing in the wind around you while you walk or eating Tubbo's chicken soup and that feeling I always got after a Dream SMP stream. It's weird, but that's my gender I guess." And that is weird. It's weird as fuck, but Tommy's gender sounds really fucking cool so Wilbur tries anyways. Tries to imagine what his gender, the amorphous entity that it is, feels like to him.

It's hard, at first, but then Wilbur starts humming. He's always done better with auditory concepts than visual or tactile ones, strumming tunes together that tie in with his latest hyperfixation.

So Wilbur hums. He starts with 'White Wine in a Wetherspoons' and then 'Cause for Concern' with a little bit of 'Your new Boyfriend' thrown in for posterity as it all starts to come together. Tommy starts tapping his finger on the plywood floor, creating a small beat.

His gender feels nice, actually, and not just the neutral burden that the universe has him carry around. It begins to feel like the warmth in Wilbur's chest when someone says "Hey, don't stop. Tell me more, this is interesting" to even the most niche fixations that Wilbur has ever had, like the different types of bricks or the historical fashion one he had at the same time as Tommy and they made dozens of Pinterest boards together (1830’s hairstyles his beloved). It feels like Phil calling him 'Son' in that chamomile accent, like everything will be fine. It feels like the tipsy laughs he and Niki share when getting drunk together and it sounds like the quick, comforting 'bzzt bzzt bzzt' of Tommy's sewing machine running on the other side of the flat while Wilbur makes them breakfast because they and his flatmates are fundamentally incapable of looking after themselves.

It's really a pretty nice gender, actually. So when Wilbur closes its metaphorical pouch and clips it back onto his metaphorical backpack, he feels lighter, warmer inside than before. Is this how Tommy feels sometimes?

The tapping stops and Wilbur realises that Tommy's fallen asleep, surrounded by scraps of cabbage on a fairly cold plywood floor. This will not do. Thankfully, Wilbur has gained enough arm strength to reasonably carry the nineteen-year-old to his bedroom, carefully avoiding sewing pins that Tommy will clean up frantically in the morning. Tubbo and Ranboo are asleep as before, in the same place, huddled together on the lowest bunk covered in blankets, with just enough room for another person.

Tommy fits in perfectly, head on Ranboo's shoulder and the rest of him swathed in blankets to protect from the cold. It's started to show fairly heavily outside so going home is not possible. Therefore, Wilbur stays.

The guest room still has some of his shit from the last time he stayed over, around a week ago. Piling a thick-ish duvet on top of himself, Wilbur sleeps, more at peace than he's ever been.

-

Monday morning, Wilbur tries out pronouns. He was spending the weekend in a bit of a haze of filming and social interaction and talking to Elodie, his editor, in order to have most of this week free.

He's back at home with pronoun dressing rooms loaded on Firefox, a Geoguessur stream finished and a free day with spoons to spare. It is time.

First- she/her.

This is Wilbur, the site reads, She's 27 years old with a penchant for making songs. She also really likes hanging out with her sibling, Tommy and her best friends on the Dream SMP. She still ships DNF.

Oh. Oh wow. She/Her works pretty well actually. Wilbur likes that for herself.

Next- they/them. This is not as nice, but it's also not bad, necessarily.

Fae/Faer- this one is pleasant enough.

Everything else is okay, Wilbur supposes. She figures that just knowing that he/him isn't the only answer is good enough for herself.

The first person she tells is Tommy, on a phone call during one of his frees.

“Okay, so he, she and fae, right?” they ask, rolling the pronouns around like the colorful hard candies sold in packets of two hundred each, muttering small sentences, barely audible to the phone mic amongst the dozens of student voices around him, pitter-pattering like sleet on cars heard from a cozy living room.

“Yeah. pronouns change by the day. Please don’t interchange them.” Wilbur confirms, short and soft.

“Oh that’s really fucking cool. What are they today? Does anyone else know? Do you have names you want to be called instead?” Tommy asks, orange-sweet in his kind concern and slowed down questions as to not deflate the souffle in Wilbur’s brain.

“Uh, she/her, and no, not yet on the knowing and the name thing. I’m going to tell Phil and Niki, then Dream, probably. Wish me luck.” Wilbur answers, the ‘wish me luck’ thrown in more as a formality than anything, but she’s still nervous, thoughts spinning in popcorn-crunch circles, pop pop pop about how it could go wrong and even if Tommy and Ranboo were accepted, perhaps that courtesy won’t be extended to her. Tommy, the absolute fucking legend as always seems to have figured that much out.

“Wil. Wilbur. Wilby. Big Dubs- It’s going to be fucking fine, you’re popcorn-popping again and while that’s one of your idiosyncrasies and I fucking love those, you are also freaking the fuck out. Everything will be fine, alright?”

“Idiosyncrasies? Where did you learn that? Is ‘The Tommyinnit’ learning new big words?” Wilbur teases, to mask her affection just a little bit, even as it seeps out of her voice like honey in a sopapilla, warm and sticky and sweet.

“Don’t fucking patronize me.” Tommy retorts, instinctive as it’s been for the past few years now, no bite behind their words. “I’ve got South Asian Lit now- call us in the evening?” he asks, because Tommy, Tubbo and Ranboo are a single unit in the evening. Do not attempt separation till after midnight. Wilbur laughs, a small thing only audible to her sibling over the phone.

“Course. You can tell them yourself, if you want.”

“Okay. Now I need to walk like, three buildings or some shit, so I’m hanging the fuck up. See you later?” Tommy’s voice is softer towards the end, cotton candy and Wilbur melts, just a little bit.

“Okay, bye Tommy.”

“Bye Wil. Good luck.” Tommy hangs up a few seconds later, the last thing on the line that Wilbur can hear being Ranboo’s steadily louder voice as end catches up to Tommy, and Wilbur keeps the phone to her ear for a few seconds more, before putting it on charge and loading up Discord, to find Phil and Dream on VC 3 together, Tubbo and Purpled occupying the beloved VC 2.

Wilbur joins the call, taking in a deep breath and letting it out, and taking a sip of lukewarm tea. Earl Grey, probably taken from the tea box Phil gifted her on Christmas and prepares herself.

“Ay, H’lo, son.”

“Hey, Wilbur!” Dream’s voice, chirpy and crisp as a freshly-picked apple registers first, just before Phil’s comforting chamomile and Wilbur is at ease very quickly, because it’s Dream and Phil. It is literally impossible for things to go wrong.

“Hi! I just came on here to tell you something.” Wilbur starts. After hearing noises of agreement, like popping candy, Wilbur starts.

“Um, so on Friday, Tommy and I did some soul-searching. Well, I did most of the searching. And uh, I figured out that I’m technically genderfluid, but my gender is a series of abstracts and I use he, she and fae pronouns.” It’s quiet for a second, before Phil responds.

“Hey, that’s pogchamp, mate. What pronouns are you using right now? Are they interchangeable?” Dream makes a noise in agreement, in questioning.

“Thanks, and uh, she/her, and no. not interchangeable. I use certain pronouns until I don’t.”

“Oh, that’s cool! Should I update your pronoun role in the Discord to ‘ask for pronouns’?” Dream finally says, and in typical Dream fashion, it’s by getting straight to business. It’s ridiculously endearing, even five years on, knowing everyone’s little quirks and idiosyncrasies (thanks Tommy for reminding her that the word exists) that it’s still possible to be endeared by them, and that they’re all still endeared to her.

“Yes please, Dream. Thank you. I’ll make a small announcement on the server myself, but thanks.”

“No problem, Wilbur! We’re glad you’re happy.”

“What the green-bitch said, mate.” Phil responds, and Dream turns on his camera for that only, just to show that he isn’t actually wearing green- he’s wearing a blue T-shirt, blonde hair mussed about enough to show that he did not comb it when he woke up. His face still has some sleep leftovers, but he’s awake enough to pay attention, and he’s smiling at Wilbur, mouse clicking very fast to change her discord role, and it shows up a few seconds later with a purple dot. ‘ask for my pronouns’. Wilbur is smiling like an idiot, and she turns on her camera, Phil following suit as she starts laughing a little wetly and all of this sinks in.

Wilbur is gender-fluid. She loves herself, her family and the little pouch still strapped to her backpack. Phil is whispering things into the mic soothingly and Dream is grinning at her, and it just feels so good. The bad feeling in Wilbur’s skin just isn’t here today, and it feels like it won’t be around for a while yet.

With slightly blurry eyes trying to see through her glasses, Wilbur makes an announcement with the @everyone turned on.

Bitchbur (she/her today): @everyone I’m here to announce that I’m genderfluid! You can either ask me my pronouns or I’ll just change my nick. The name’s still Wilbur. That’s about it.

Replies start coming in, nothing but messages of support and thumbs-up emoticons, and Wilber closes her eyes, leaning back in her chair, laughing a bit more. She’s so happy that she managed to accept herself, and find acceptance in everyone else on this server. She probably won’t come out to the internet for a while, or even to some of her real-life friends but that’s okay.

She’s got everything she needs right here.

[bigskydreaming]

Small response ask to that anon who brought up Chris Priest and your response of DC should focus less on Bruce being abusive to his kids. Not sure if you noticed the up and down of the Batman comics but it seems the arc that have him being a caring dad has less asshole dad and abusive dad in them and yet the arc that have Bruce hitting the boys or kicking them out of the house has Bruce not acknowledging the boys as his sons and even the writers say Dick is more of a brother of partner than son.

Oh for sure, its absolutely true that a huge part of the problem with the Batman comics is the sheer inconsistency in writer visions of the characters - which is why IMO its up to DC’s editorial staff to maintain internal consistency for how the characters officially relate to each other at the very least. 

Like I’ve said before, you can’t roll back the clock on them being his kids once you’ve established they’re his kids. People haven’t forgotten that Tim was adopted by Bruce in the old continuity just because they decided to have his parents alive in the New 52 - and ‘teenage kinda sorta ally’ is an inherently weaker emotional tether compared to ‘actual adopted son’ so when presented with two options, most people aren’t going to give a shit about their attempt to ‘unbond’ a character from their actual parent and will stick with viewing them as father and son, whether DC likes it or not.

So its just plain foolishness IMO for DC to attempt to apply any sort of ambiguity to Bruce and his kids. Along with his biological son Damian, Dick, Jason, Tim and Cass at least have all been officially adopted by Bruce (or in Cass’ case, they were stated to be starting adoption proceedings last we saw before the Reboot). Like....those are just hard facts, no matter how much people try and ‘undo’ that if they don’t personally like the idea of Bruce as a father of five....fans are not going to cooperate and its just sheer stubbornness to pretend otherwise. People before the current writers and editors made a creative choice to have Bruce adopt these kids. Readers liked it. Readers know what they like and once given the option of having Bruce the father of five, you can protest all you want as the ‘official’ overseers of Batman, but you can’t erase what was already written, and you can’t ask readers to forget they liked something better than how you’re currently trying to push it.

But that’s just me being like hey DC what if you weren’t a flock of fucking dumbasses, just to try something different for a change.

And related to your ask, there’s absolutely a direct correlation in my mind between the DC writers who intensely dislike the idea of Bruce as a father and writing him as being callous, insensitive, aloof and outright abusive with various of his kids. Because it all goes hand in hand with them - they dislike the idea of Bruce as a dad because they’re all about him being the brooding lone wolf whose entire life is just an endless pursuit of justice for the sake of others because he’s convinced himself that he can never be happy and shouldn’t try. YAWN. But this view of Bruce is outright threatened by the warm, caring father Bruce rendition, so they try and erode the latter as much as possible in pursuit of the former....

Only to later have writers revert to the latter and erode the former.

And around and around and around we go. And they all keep trying to reset things that fundamentally CAN NOT BE RESET because this is the problem when you staff a creative industry top to bottom with fanboys who can’t and won’t separate their personal desires from their professional shepherding of these IPs. And so each new crop of writers tries to write Batman and related characters the way they like them, most often the way they remembered reading them as kids through the lens filter of nostalgia, and thus Bruce’s kids’ status flip flops either officially or unofficially every five to ten years, Hal Jordan is replaced by Kyle Rayner is replaced by Hal Jordan and a wave of new diverse characters are created in the span of a couple years and ten years later no one’s heard of any of them except for Jaime Reyes.

And its the reason IMO that superhero comics have never grown beyond a niche industry despite the VAST appeal of superheroes that superhero movies have proven still exists....and its why superhero movies will end up in the exact same stagnated niche if they don’t learn from the former’s mistake and let their characters grow and age and be replaced by new ones rather than just rebooted versions of the old one, because there’s only so many times you can go round and round on the merry go round before people just flat out stop caring because you’re not doing or saying anything new.

Change is good, except for when people refuse to let it happen because they’ve settled for what they know as being the optimal plateau, never to truly be reached past because the unknown and untested is scary and might bite.

Anyway. All of that is to say yes, I agree, and as a PS I just have to froth at the mouth a little on a personal note because god do I hate the interpretation that Bruce and Dick are more like brothers than father and son, lololol, and can’t refrain from mentioning that any time its brought up even in passing. 

(This is totally not directed at you btw, just the concept itself, lololol, sorry). 

People can talk about the smaller age gap between them all they want, but the fact of the matter is, Dick isn’t Damian, and the relationship between Dick and Bruce has NEVER been nearly as ambiguous or as open to interpretation as the one between Dick and Damian.

Because the contrast between the two is Bruce had something that nobody who is just an older sibling has over a younger....absolute uncontested parental authority, total responsibility for his education, living arrangements, emotional development, etc....with no other comparable figure in the younger’s life occupying a same or even similar role. Dick occupied that role for Damian for about a year of his life, but Bruce has occupied that role for Dick every single year since his first parents died. It might have taken awhile for them to individually and together VIEW their dynamic as parent and child, but from the moment Dick stepped foot into Wayne Manor, Bruce started out day one as someone who stepped into the role of sole guardian and caretaker with no prior emotional attachment.....and that just is NOT a sibling. That’s a legal guardian or parent.

(And yes, Alfred was there of course, but despite being viewed as a father figure to Bruce himself, Alfred never ever ever once has been shown to occupy an equal position to Bruce in Dick’s life....he’s very firmly slotted into the grandfather role himself, and has never stepped forward to definitively intercede between the two of them or usurp or even truly challenge Bruce’s parental authority of Dick).

If people want to say that at times Dick and Bruce’s dynamic has been more relaxed and they’ve related to each other as more like siblings than parent and child due to the relatively small age gap between them (still well over a decade, like yeah Bruce would have had to have been fourteen or so to have Dick himself, but the point is he DIDN’T, and he was already completely done with education and globe-trotting and was firmly established in his life and life’s purpose by the time he became Dick’s guardian, so the small age gap is not quite as influential as I think some people try to make it out to be - the reality is the Bruce that Dick met as a child couldn’t be any more decisively in the ‘adult/equivalent of a parent’ category in Dick’s eyes if he were five years older....it wouldn’t have changed a single thing about their actual situation or the positioning of their dynamic.)

But anyway, my point just being that yeah, due to the relatively small age gap between them, I can see people making a case for them at times enjoying a more relaxed camaraderie more akin to brothers than father and son, but the part that’s a pet peeve is when people try and outright replace the idea of them having a father/son dynamic with one where they’re brothers and partners and equals because.....no. Bruce always had full authority and guardianship of Dick from the day he met him, and he’s never been anyone BUT the figure who occupies that role in Dick’s mind, no matter whether the name for that changed over time. And that’s not a sibling, because even siblings who end up raising their younger siblings after the death of their parents, say....except for extreme cases like Dick and Damian, they usually still already have prior connection and perceptions of each other....like the younger, if already Dick’s age when raised by someone Bruce’s age....like, if they were siblings and Bruce ended up raising Dick himself, Dick would still have an image in his mind of a time before their mutual parents died, before he shifted into that parent role....and thus there’d be some ambiguity. 

But like I said, Bruce always (and without exception or alternative) from day one existed as the one responsible for Dick’s care, the one responsible for raising him, the one who got the ultimate say in every aspect of his life from education to what he ate to whether he could go hang out with his friends...and call that whatever you want, but that’s a parent. Not an older brother.

And more importantly, that dynamic between parent and child, rather than between older and younger sibling, is never going to fully shift into true equals. There’s a degree to which our parents will always be our parents and exist on a different footing than us in our mutual perspectives. There’s no getting around that. And Dick will never ever be positioned to be Bruce’s brother-figure rather than his son. Never someone who can challenge Bruce on ACTUAL equal footing rather than always with the vestiges of ‘this is the man who raised me’ and ‘I raised this man’ hanging over them. 

Anyway, like I said, pet peeve, and I always get a little grrr about people suggesting they’re more brother and brother than father and son because its disingenuous in my mind....there’s never been any kind of reality to it. And more importantly, its one of those things that only really seems to serve one purpose - and that’s to lessen Bruce’s responsibility to Dick, because if they’re just brothers, then the times when Bruce has done less than stellar as his parent, let’s say - like, those aren’t as big a deal or big a failing or an injustice to Dick if Bruce is JUST his brother and not actually his father and thus not actually responsible for filling that role.

Its the exact flip side of why I argue that its shitty to heap the kind of expectations on Dick that fandom usually does....because he’s NOT Damian’s father or any of his siblings.....but the key point I always bring up there is that this is more than just a matter of labels, but rather due to the fact that someone with significantly more and undeniable parental authority than Dick exists for all of his siblings....Bruce himself.

And that’s why Dick will never truly be Bruce’s equal within the family rather than his son - he doesn’t carry equivalent power even if equivalent expectations or responsibilities are heaped on him. And that’s why Bruce will never truly be Dick’s equal rather than his parent - because from day one, he DID carry sole parental power and responsibility for Dick. And there’s no getting around that and no changing that.....unless you CLAIM that Bruce is ‘just’ Dick’s brother DESPITE all the evidence of him being the only parent Dick’s had since he was eight years old.

And the other thing that bugs about the Bruce is more Dick’s brother than parent thing....even if Alfred has never officially been designated Bruce’s father, there’s never been any doubt that they are far more a parent/child dynamic than an older brother/younger brother. And all of Dick’s siblings have unequivocally been interpreted as Bruce’s children.

So.....

According to the Bruce is more Dick’s brother than parent argument, Dick is the one and only member of the Batfamily who just....doesn’t get to have a parent figure after he loses his parents at age eight? He never needs or wants one after that point? Bruce is more kinda just his brother and partner and Dick wants it this way, because he loved his parents, and so the eight years he got with them was all the parental love and guidance he needed, he was all set, no need or desire for any more after that point, because that’s how it works, apparently, if you love your parents and they die while you’re still a kid, sorry but you can’t have new ones? You can have a guardian but not another parent, you already filled the ‘I had parents who loved me’ quota so whether you only got eight years with them or eighteen, that’s all folks, but its okay because its not like you’d even want parents again if you had even just eight years with ones already?

LOLOL.

Yeah. 

DISLIKE.

[les-mis-still-makes-me-cry]

Lily Evans Definitely Has a Boyfriend Chapter 2

Enjoy! Chapter 1 is here

Every hour that passed seemed longer than the last. Lily was certain that Remus lived fairly close by, so she was on tenterhooks all afternoon, thinking at any moment Scarlett would flap back through the window. How long could one trip take?

Petunia asked Lily at dinner if she and her “boyfriend” (Lily could hear the quotation marks in her sneering voice) wanted to come to the dinner on Saturday, to which Lily replied that she was sure he would just LOVE to come, she’d just have to write to him and ask.

“Oh, how wonderful,” Petunia replied, sarcasm lacing every syllable. Lily quickly ran upstairs to pretend to write the letter, avoiding any further questioning about her secret relationship.

The sun was just setting when Scarlett returned. Lily raced to the window to catch her, frantically untying the thread attaching the letter to her leg. She started to open it, when she was distracted by Scarlett mercilessly nipping her finger.

“Ow, that hurts you daft- oh, I promised you a treat, didn’t I,” Lily realised. Scarlett hooted in affirmation, ceasing her assault when Lily laid out some of her favourite treats.

Lily quickly opened the letter and started scanning Remus’ neat handwriting.

Dear Lily,

My holiday was pretty standard until I received your letter, which I found highly entertaining. It’s probably not what you want to hear right now but this is possibly the funniest mess I’ve ever heard of you getting into, and that’s including that time you thought Slughorn was flirting with you. I’m still confused at how you supposedly hate your sister, yet want to spend days planning a wedding with her and her friends. You two make me glad I don’t have siblings.

I would love nothing more than to get involved and help you become a bridesmaid, however unfortunately for your plans, I can’t help you this Saturday. There’s a certain monthly engagement that I can’t cancel, as much as I would like to, and I’m sure you want to ensure your sister and her fiancé remain bite-free for their big day.

I hope you can find another actor to play the part, maybe Slughorn isn’t doing anything this weekend (one day I’ll maybe stop bringing that up, but it’s unlikely). Please do keep me in the loop and let me know how it all turns out.

Your friend,

Remus

P.S. Can I still claim on the grovelling some time?  The boys have something planned for the first day back and we could really do with a blind eye being turned. Don’t ask me anything else, I’ve been sworn to secrecy (but it’s mostly harmless, I swear).

Lily sighed in frustration and flopped back onto her bed. Dammit. She hadn’t checked her lunar chart since the astronomy exam in June so she had no idea the full moon was so close. She felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t thought to check, knowing how much it hurt Remus being reminded of his condition, and knowing that she was one of the few people in the world he trusted to keep it secret.

She’d heard speculation about it for years from Snape, of course, but he was so obsessed with making those boys seem evil she had just put it down to overactive imagination at first. Over time though, she began to see how his theories might line up with reality, noticing the regularity of Remus’ visits home and his exhausted demeanour surrounding them. The fundamental difference between Lily and Snape, however, was that Lily simply didn’t see how it was any of her business. Remus was an alright bloke with terrible taste in friends, and that was all she needed to know.

Lily hadn’t even meant to let Remus know that she had guessed what he was. They were just finishing rounds together one Wednesday night, heading back to the common room after shepherding a sleepwalking Ravenclaw back to her tower. Remus stretched and yawned, already looking a little pale despite Lily’s calculations that the full moon wasn’t until next week.

“What- day are we- patrolling- next week?” he managed to say through his yawn.

“Tuesday, but I can get Marcella to cover you if you won’t be up to it,” she said without thinking, taking off her jumper now she was safe in the warm common room rather than the draughty corridor. When she got it over her face and saw Remus’ stricken expression, she realised what she had just said.

“I mean, not that you wouldn’t be up to it, can’t think of any reason you wouldn’t be okay next Tuesday-” she started babbling, before Remus cut her off.

“Did Snape tell you? He swore to Dumbledore that he wouldn’t say anything,” Remus’ whisper seemed tiny in the empty common room. His face had gone white despite the red glow of the dying fire.

“No, no, I haven’t spoken to him in months and even when I did he never said anything concrete, I just realised that his theory sort of made sense,” Lily quickly replied. Remus stared at her for a long second, biting his lip. He seemed to be trying to figure something out something very complex.

“But you’re still happy to patrol with me and stuff? I don’t want to make you do anything if you’re not comfortable being around… what I am… and I know it’s a lot to ask to not tell anyone, but Dumbledo-” He was cut off by Lily throwing her arms around him.

“Don’t be an idiot, Remus, I’ve known for months and it hasn’t stopped me being your friend. I would never tell anyone.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Remus’ arms closed around her and held on tightly.

***

Lily smiled at the memory, before the sinking feeling hit again, realising that she was still date-less for Saturday night. Remus would have been so perfect as well, she mused. Shame there would be no way of convincing Tuney to change the date, since Lily suspected that would simply result in her losing any chance of being a bridesmaid.

She reread Remus’ letter, hoping for guidance on what to do next.

I hope you can find another actor to play the part…

Who could she possibly get? Obviously, any muggle boys she knew from primary school were out, Petunia already knew them all better than Lily did. All the other Prefects apart from Remus were fairly good friends, but even Lily admitted they were a bit too… reserved for this kind of venture (she stopped herself from using the word dull). She didn’t know any of the Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff boys in her year well enough, and the one Slytherin she knew all too well was absolutely not an option. So that left her with just…

Lily put her head in her hands, finally reaching the conclusion she had been trying to avoid. She knew exactly who would love to pretend to be her boyfriend for an evening, hell, he’d be happy to do it for the rest of the summer. And Merlin knew he would love a chance to pull a prank on someone new, deprived of new targets being stuck with just his family all summer. And, Lily thought begrudgingly, he did have a sort of charm about him that tended to make people like him even when they were determined not to, which Petunia most definitely was. And he wasn’t as appallingly arrogant as he had been a year ago. And he wasn’t the worst-looking bloke in the world, although Lily would never have admitted that unless Veritaserum was involved.

“Fine,” she groaned, reaching for another piece of parchment. Her quill hovered over the page, wondering how to start this thing.

Potter,

She immediately vanished the word with her wand. She was asking a huge favour, now was not the time for surnames.

Dear James,

She vanished that too. She couldn’t have him getting the wrong idea before they’d even begun.

Why was this so difficult? She wondered. In person she seemed to have no issue talking to Potter, or indeed coming up with ever more creative ways to decline his proposals (although she was out of practise on that one). It must be the subject matter throwing her off, Lily convinced herself. After all, how often does one ask a boy who fancies you – or at least did for a while – to pretend to be your boyfriend?

Come on, Lily, it’s just Potter, she admonished herself. Get a grip. Dipping her quill back into the ink, she began to quickly write.

James,

It’s Lily. I know I’m probably the last person you expect an owl from in the holidays but I’ve got myself into a little bit of a pickle, and I think you’re probably the only person who can help me get through it.

I told my sister I had a boyfriend so that I could be a bridesmaid in her wedding. It’s a really long story, but that’s the gist of it. The issue is that I currently don’t have a boyfriend to go with to the dinner on Saturday night for the whole bridal party, and without going to that dinner I have no hope of being a bridesmaid, or ever having any sort of friendship with my sister again.

I am NOT (Lily underlined this twice) asking you to be my boyfriend, just to be clear. What I am asking, stupid as it sounds, is if you want to use your flair for drama for a good cause for once, and pretend to be my boyfriend for the evening. If your Saturday night is free and you fancy playing a Muggle at a nice restaurant, send an owl back as soon as you can.

If you say no I’ll just have to tell my sister you got dragon pox and died tragically this Wednesday out of the blue, and I’ll grieve you accordingly, but know that you’ll watched like a hawk for all of next year (Remus mentioned a certain first-day-back prank that you would very much like kept quiet. I’m not saying I would spoil it, but McGonagall may be pointed in the right direction. Yes this is blackmail, but desperate times, Potter.)

Anxiously awaiting your owl,

Lily Evans

That ought to do it, she thought. She folded up the letter, wrote James’ name on the front, and took it over to Scarlett, who twittered indignantly at being sent out again so soon.

“I know, I know Scar, but this really is urgent. I’ll give you as many treats as you can eat as soon as you’re back, I swear,” Lily pleaded. Scarlett stopped trying to flap Lily away, which she took to mean begrudging acceptance, and tied the letter to her. “It’s for James Potter, I’m sure you can find him.”

Scarlett immediately soared out the window, trying to get back as soon as possible for those treats. Lily marvelled for the thousandth time at how incredible it was that owls could find people so easily, despite Lily having no clue where Potter lived at all.

James, she mentally reprimanded herself. If he was going to be her fake boyfriend, she should probably start with civility. She wondered if this was a good idea after all. Would she even be able to convince Petunia that she was in a relationship with a boy she had been repulsed by the presence of just a year ago? Would he even want to do this with her?

Lily needed something to distract herself from her doubts. She decided to go downstairs and make herself a cup of tea before she tried (in vain, she suspected) to get some sleep. Making her way to the top of the stairs, she groaned inwardly seeing light still coming from the kitchen below. Lily prayed it was her mother, not Petunia.

Thankfully it was her mum, finishing up the last of the dishes from dinner. Lily breathed a sigh of relief and switched the kettle on, picking up a tea towel to help dry off the stack of wet dishes.

“Thanks, love,” her mum smiled, hugging her as best she could without getting her soapy hands on her daughter. “I thought something was maybe wrong earlier, you left dinner quite sharpish.”

“Yeah, I was just…” Lily struggled to think of what to say next.

“Too eager to invite that boyfriend to dinner?” Lily’s mum elbowed her, a knowing look in her eye. Lily welcomed her mother’s excuse.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how long the owl will take to reach him, I’ve not sent him anything before now,” she said.

“Ah, I did think it must be a recent thing. I couldn’t believe you hadn’t told me about him yet!” said her mum reproachfully.

“Ah well, with all the end of year madness to write about I guess I just didn’t think. Plus it wasn’t really such an official thing, it just kind of… happened,” Lily babbled, wondering how little she could say to satisfy her mother. Luckily, her mum was a romantic at heart, and anything Lily said was enough to make her mum sigh happily.

“That’s always the best way, isn’t it,” her mum said dreamily as she absentmindedly scrubbed at a saucepan. “Sometimes they just sneak up on you, and before you know it you’re in love.”

“I’m not in love with James!” Lily squeaked, shocked at the very idea. She cringed at her mum’s next words.

“Ah, maybe not yet, but it’s early days yet, dear,” Lily’s mum smiled. “And his name’s James, is it? That’s a nice name.”

“Yeah he’s… a nice boy,” Lily ventured, hoping her mum wouldn’t notice the twinge of sarcasm in her voice.

“Well I can’t wait to meet him. And I’m so glad you and Petunia are going to have the wedding to bond over, it’ll be a nice change from the bickering.” Her mum finished washing up and started putting away the dried dishes. Lily rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, like me and Tuney won’t find something new to fight about there,” she muttered.

“You two don’t know how lucky you are,” her mum said wistfully. “I always wanted a sister to dress up with, and talk about boys with, and-”

“Help each other sneak out of the house with,” Lily finished the speech for her. “Honestly mum, it just sounds like you think Tuney and I haven’t given you enough trouble over the years, I can sneak out and drink if you really want. I’m still underage in the Muggle world, you know.”

Her mum laughed loudly. “Absolutely not, you cheeky girl. I should probably be grateful that you two never put your minds together like that, I’d lose all authority.”

“What authority?” Lily quipped, and her mum swatted her with the tea towel.

“Shut it, you,” she joked. Her face grew serious again as she took the last of the plates from Lily. “Really though Lil, promise me that you’ll do your best to get along with Petunia until the wedding? You only get married once, and you know how much your sister loves Vernon, I don’t want anything to put a damper on her special day.”

Immediately Lily thought of several choice remarks about Vernon and Petunia, but seeing the look on her mother’s face she realised now really wasn’t the time to play comedian.

“Of course I’ll try mum, I don’t want to ruin Petunia’s wedding. I’ll be the best bridesmaid ever,” she said with as much sincerity as she could muster. Her mum gave her a tight squeeze.

“Thank you so much love, you were always the mature one. Don’t tell her I said that,” she whispered into Lily’s hair. Lily stepped back and mimed zipping her lips, smiling back at her mother.

“Now off to bed you, you may be an adult in your world but under this roof you’re still my daughter,” her mum ordered, swatting her once more with the tea towel.

Lily dodged out of the way quickly, grinning as she poured out her cup of tea. “Yes, ma’am,” she said. She headed back upstairs, her mum following closely behind after turning out the kitchen light.

Still smiling, Lily sat down her bed and took a sip of tea, feeling it warm her up. She regretted that she couldn’t have chats with her mum like that more often, given that she was away so much of the year. Letter writing was okay, but writing always felt so impersonal, so detached from real life. It could never compare to being home with her. She was thrilled to be a witch, but leaving behind her mum every year was as hard as it was at eleven.

But that wasn’t for another month, she reminded herself, clearing the sad thoughts from her brain with another sip of tea. She glanced over to Scarlett’s empty cage, wondering how long it would take for her to return. It was a strange reality of Hogwarts life, she mused, that you could live with people the majority of the year and yet have very little idea of where they actually came from.

Despite her earlier doubts, the tea did in fact tire her out, and within half an hour she was sound asleep.

***

As soon as she woke the next morning her eyes went straight to the window, but Scarlett wasn’t there tapping to get in. She sighed, resigning herself to another day of anxious anticipation. She started to get dressed for the day, trying to prepare what she was going to reply to Potter when Scarlett returned. Would he say yes, she wondered? It had been a year since the last time he asked her out, and Lily knew several girls had tried to go to Hogsmeade with him throughout 6th year. Not that she paid attention to gossip, of course. She wasn’t interested in who Potter was dating, unless it meant that she was without a partner on Saturday night.

She was just heading downstairs for some breakfast when she heard a hoot from the front door. Lily frowned. Why wouldn’t Scarlett just go to her window like always? She tried to continue on to the kitchen but there was another hoot, louder this time.

This was weird behaviour for any owl, and Lily’s was always the model of good behaviour. Maybe she was hurt? Lily rushed to the door, not wanting Scarlett to suffer. She unlocked the front door, and opened it.

Looking down for an injured owl, she saw nothing but a pair of feet in brand new trainers. Her eyes travelled up, and there he was, his hand already buried in his messy black hair. Lily’s jaw dropped.

“Potter?” she croaked.

James smiled in a way he clearly thought was charming.

“Now, is that any way to greet your fake boyfriend?”

***

Chap 3

Thanks for reading! Future chapters uploaded to AO3 here and FFN here :)

[rhaellatully]

Strings’n’Drums Chapter 9 (Fanfiction)

FF.net:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12814422/9/Strings-n-Drums

AO3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/13991202/chapters/53107363

Summary: AU. In 1969, Lucy runs from home and becomes a journalist for the magazin Strings'n'Drums, this will lead the young shy girl in the world of rock music, to meet the colorfull caracters that populates it. In between running from her father and living new experience Lucy will make friends, gorw into an adult and maybe have some romance. Will include Nalu and mentions of other parings

Chapter 1:https://rhaellatully.tumblr.com/post/170156396003/stringsndrums-fanficition

Chapter 8:https://rhaellatully.tumblr.com/post/189997948033/stringsndrums-chapter-8-fanfiction

AN: I'm back! And it took less than two weeks! I'm so proud of myself! I can't promise it will happen again though...

When Lucy got to the festival that morning, she was so excited she could barely stay in place. Today was going to be a great day. She was going to see Erza Scarlet live and after that she would finally see Guildarts, the bleus man who had been a source of inspiration for so many of her favourite artist. And best of all, she was going to spend the day with Levy. They hadn’t gotten a proper chance to talk yesterday, they hadn’t seen each other in so long, they had to have things to tell one another.

As she got to the meeting place they had agreed on, she heard rather loud voices, like a couple fighting. As she got closer she saw Levy speaking agitatedly to none other than Gajeel Redfox. Lucy couldn’t understand what any of this was about, since in their respective anger their sentences founded themselves being distorted. It didn’t take long before Levy shouted at him “Go! Just go away!”

He left and they were tears in her eyes. Lucy rushed to her friend and as she put a hand on her shoulder she asked her “Levy, are you alright?” Of course she knew she was not alright but this was the most polite way she knew to ask if she wanted to talk about it.

“Lucy” she said and you could see that as she spoke holding back tears became more and more difficult “it’s stupid, it’s so stupid.”

“Let’s go somewhere else” said Lucy before taking Levy to a more private place in between some trees.

Levy was whipping her tears away quickly and violently “He doesn’t get it” she said, “I try and I try and he just… doesn’t understand. It’s like he’s not even trying to! Or maybe I’m doing it wrong, I don’t even know how to do this.”

“Do what?” asked Lucy who had only found herself more confused by Levy’s rant.

Levy looked at Lucy than rapidly looked away, her lips were pressed and she wrapped her arms around her self. She breathed slowly and once she had seemingly calmed down she said, “Ask a guy out.”

Lucy froze, the first thing that crossed her mind was “Levy has dated guys before why wouldn’t she knows how to ask them out?” followed closely by “Levy wants to go out with Gajeel Redfox!”. Lucy was just as confused as surprised. Levy and Gajeel, Levy and the man who had her calling Lucy in tears. Why would she want him?

“Gajeel Redfox?” she asked hoping she had misunderstood.

Levy sighed and said, “Yes.”

“Why?”

She pressed her lips together, “I like him.” she said firmly.

Lucy stood there staring at her, she couldn’t think of reason why Levy would like that man. He was mean and rude. He didn’t seem to have respect for anyone and definitely wasn’t attractive. Why would Levy like him? She could tell that asking her why one more time would only anger her friend, so instead she tried to calm down.

As gently as she could she said, “So, how did it happened?”

Levy’s posture relaxed and she answered “ After a while of me following them, we started to sympathise, you know just talk about nothing and everything. I can’t say we were often on the same page but I like a good argument. And” a smiled appeared on her face “the way he treated me started to change, it’s not that he became nicer, but he started treating me as an equal. And I did the same. We do share a lot in common, on a more fundamental level. I’ve earned his respect and he seems to think highly of me. The way he talks about me, it’s “ she paused searching for the right word and then her smile grew bigger and she said “it makes me feel strong.”

Lucy was taken aback by what she was hearing, but she did her best to insure that it wouldn’t show. The way she described Gajeel Redfox was something she never though could have been associated with the man. But then again, Levy had spent much more time with him than Lucy ever had. Perhaps he was nicer once you got to know him. She really hoped that he was, she wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Levy.

“It makes me feel strong.” It was the sentence that stayed in Lucy’s mind. How did he do that? How can one make someone else feel strong? And how did it felt? Lucy had rarely felt strong, but she remembered the unnatural feeling that had came to her when she ran away from home. That was strength and excitement. If Gajeel Redfox made levy feel anything like what she felt that day, then she was truly jealous.

They’re was still a mystery in Lucy’s head, if Levy liked him and wanted to go out with him, then what was the matter?

“What’s wrong then?” she asked.

“What is wrong, is that he doesn’t notice me!” she answered angrily “He notice what I do, what I say. But it’s like it all goes over his head! I don’t now what to do. I mean I’ve never done this before.”

“I though you had dated men, you told me you did.”

“Yes but they always asked me out, I’ve never had to make a move on anyone. I never though I’d actually have to.”

“I… can’t help you with that.” Lucy admitted. Sad but true she had even less experience in that domain than Levy. As much as she though of herself as a feminist she had to admit she too had always thought that man would be asking her out. If she were in Levy’s position, she’d probably be even more lost.

“I know” she said nicely “I asked Cana, but the only advice she gave me, was to sneak in his bed without clothes on.”

“I think you should just be honest with him” as she said it Lucy realised that if she were in Levy’s place she would never be brave enough to do so. When she though about being in her place she found herself thinking of Natsu, that was odd, she barely knew him, she did found him attractive but that wasn’t enough to desire a relationship with someone right? Maybe for other people, but for Lucy this was unthinkable. As a matter of fact considering the issues with her father it was probably best to avoid dating for now. It would make things just too complicated.

“You have no idea how much I just want to do that, but the second I’m with him I don’t know what happens, I just want to be… I don’t know he thinks of me as someone strong and capable and I want to stay that way in front of him, I wouldn’t want him to see me as someone vulnerable.”

Lucy had no idea what to tell her, she knew what it was like to want to look strong in front of other, but what Levy was describing was different. Lucy didn’t know how deal with this, she barely knew how deal with her own issues how could she help other with theirs.

“Why don’t we go see The Front Doors, the Strauss are their background singer for the festival, that ought to make me feel better.”

Lucy followed her to the petite scene where the band was preforming. She knew of both The Front Doors and The Strauss. The first was a soul band from America, they were quiet wonderfull and had a quite amazing saxophonist. The second was a background band, made of siblings, they each got singular and powerful voice, they match together pretty well and lots of musicians liked having them around, especially when it came to recordings. They made everything sound great and everyone wanted a piece of them. They were basically the most prolific background band around. They had release they’re own albums which mostly featured covers, it didn’t sell very well but it was excellent sample to show other musician. The fact that Mira Jane Strauss had dated a bunch of famous musician also made for brilliant advertising. Nowadays, they could basically choose whom they would work with, and if they had chosen The Front Doors it went they were good.

The journalist in her was delighted to go to this concert and was impatient to get her impression of this band. But at the moment Lucy didn’t felt like a journalist, she felt like a friend and as such she was far more concerned with Levy’s mood. She said this would cheer her up, and Lucy hoped that she was right. She knew how powerful music could be and how it could take over your own emotions to make you fell something. She only hoped it would be enough for Levy.

There wasn’t that big of a crowd in front of the stage. Which turned out to be a positive thing since it allowed the audience to dance freely to the music. Levy was the first to join in. It was as if she was taking out her frustration in her steps and Lucy was happy for it. She couldn’t dare to join her though. Her anxiousness was still present and even if the music was slowly making it disappear, she wasn’t quite there yet.

When the music shifted to a slow song, Levy came by her side with a smile on her face. Lucy was glad to see that her friend was feeling better. She hoped she’d stay that way for long. Maybe she should just hope to not run into Gajeel Redfox.

“I’m sorry I worried you.”

“It’s fine.”

“The Strauss are great.”

Lucy agreed, this was one of the best performances she had seen since she got here and she didn’t need to be a professional musician to realise the background was responsible for most of it. The performance given by there voice made every song more powerful than the last.

“Lisanna is really doing great since the break up.”

“The break up?”

Levy paused and her eyes widen, it seemed she just realised she said something she shouldn’t have. She then leaned toward Lucy and whispered, “She and Natsu broke up about a year ago.”

This revelation gave Lucy a strange feeling she couldn’t quite place. It reminded her a bit of disappointment, she didn’t understand what she could be disappointed about though.  That Natsu and Lisanna Strauss used to be a couple? Why? She had only met Natsu a few times and she didn’t even know Lisanna, there was no reason for her to care.

She looked at the stage, toward the three platinum blond that were singing on the left. She had seen enough pictures to recognise which one was Lisanna. The small one with a very short haircut. She seemed so happy, radiant even. Lucy could easily understand why Natsu would want to date her. The weird feeling came back in her guts, she didn’t like it, she didn’t understand it.

As she though about it something crossed her mind, the fact that Natsu had been one of the few people to have ever been genially nice to her. When you put it that way it didn’t seemed like mush, but Lucy had always none they were some cruel part in the world and always expected the worst to happen. Natsu was one of those people, like Levy, who simply choose to show kindness to other. Of course it had impacted her, and the fact that he was handsome hadn’t help. He was pretty, kind and accessible. Someone you felt at ease with, it was normal for her to have this attraction toward him. But the reality was that she didn’t know him, and probably never would, he was a famous singer and her a beginner journalist. The cute affection she had toward him at the moment was nothing more than that and it would disappear just as fast as it had come.

During an upbeat song Levy grabbed her hand and tried her best to make her dance. Lucy danced little but she kept a bit of restrain, she was far too afraid of appearing ridiculous to dare let herself dance in front of people. The fact that her friend was making her do so made more nervous than anything, but she understood why Levy did it. She wanted to see Lucy have fun for once. But truth was she wasn’t ready for that kind of fun.

When they walked away from the stage, Lucy didn’t know what to say to Levy. She felt like she should do her best to avoid the subject of Gajeel Redfox, and at the same found herself incapable of thinking of anything else to talk to her about. The smile that had been on Levy’s face as she danced had disappeared and she now wore a though full look on her face. Lucy felt she should say something but came short. In the end, it seemed better to just ask her if she wanted to talk about something.

She was about to do so, but was interrupted by a voice shouting, “ There you are!”

Lucy turned and saw Natsu coming toward them. She expected him to go to Levy but instead he grabbed her hand and told her “Come on I need to show you Erza.”

“What?” asked Lucy.

“She’s over there waiting” Natsu explained.

Lucy was shocked, did he mean Erza Scarlet? Was she about to meet Erza Scarlet? The Erza Scarlet! She didn’t feel ready for this. She wasn’t prepared for this. What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to act? Was she dressed correctly? What if it went wrong? What if she said the wrong thing? What if she made a fool of herself?

She started breathing fast and looking around, she couldn’t tell if she was searching for Erza Scarlet or an escaped. Which ever it was she didn’t find it. But Natsu made a stop.

“What’s going on?” he asked visibly confused “Didn’t you want to meet her?”

“I do” chocked out Lucy “but… I’m scared.”

“I get it Erza is pretty scary, but don’t worry it’s fine as long as you don’t steal her cake”

Lucy laugh, hard. What was that? As long as you don’t steal her cake it’s fine. It sounded like he was talking about a child. More laugher escaped her. This was the last thing she had expected to hear at this moment. This was the last thing she had expected to hear about Erza Scarlet. She couldn't stop herself from laughing, this was so ridiculous. Now Natsu was laughing with her, or at her, she wasn’t sure which.

They laughed and laughed. A few eyes stopped on them but didn’t linger too long. They probably looked like they had taken some substances. Lucy didn’t know why she couldn't stop laughing, this hadn’t happened to her a lot in her life. She had been forbidden to laugh in public before, and had learnt to make herself as discreet as possible about it. But, for unknown reason, at this moment, all of this had disappeared and she was just having a good laugh.

When she stopped laughing and managed to catch her breath, she felt fine.

“Can we go now?” Natsu asked nicely and she nodded as a reply.

They reached a meagre group of tables; at one of them there was a woman with long red hair sitting. Natsu and Lucy sat around the table and he said, “This is Lucy.”

“Nice to meet you.” said Erza Scarlet while extending her hand. There was a small smile on her face, and Lucy could understand why she was considered to be one of the most beautiful women in the world. Lucy shook her hand, it was firm and strong, which she hadn’t expected.

Ever since she had liked music, and even more once she became a journalist, she had heard things about Erza Scarlet. She had heard rumours that were the nicest and most naïve girl in the world. She had also heard that she was a perfectionist monster that all should fear. She had been told she used more than thousand beauty products a day. Or that it was just her natural beauty. She had heard man claim that they had had sex with her. And women swear that she had complimented then on their dress, or make up.

Lucy had learned a long time ago not to trust rumours. Now that she was in front of her, of the Erza Scarlet, the singer who already had three golden disk, and two Grammy Award, the woman who had become a millionaire at the age of 22. One of the greatest artist of their time. The voice that anyone could recognise. The face that she had been able to recognise from far away. Someone she had seen on the telly and the covers of magazine but could never have hoped to see in real life.

She was lost for words there was so much she wanted to ask and had no idea where to start.

She did managed to tell her, “Nice to meet as well.”

“I really like your dress.” she said.

Lucy felt a bit shy, she wondered if she might have been saying that just to be kind. After all, the dress she wore today had nothing special. It was just an A-shaped dress with a flower patterned. She guessed the patterned was likable, but there wasn’t more to it than that.

“Thank you.” she said nonetheless.

“Did you buy it yourself?”

Lucy was a bit taken a back by the question; she had a hard time seeing how she could not have bought it herself. Was she asking if it was gift, or if something like that?

“Um… Yes” she stuttered, “I bought in a small shop not far from flat”

“You have quite an eye, I’m afraid that not my case, I’m awfully bad at following trend, my agent buys me cloth most of the time.”

Lucy was a bit surprised by this, but she supposed that when you were an international star you had to be careful how you appeared in public. She wondered just how deeply her agent was involved in her life. Did they also decided what she ate and she where she went?

“Well, we can’t all be David Bowie.” she said to ease things.

“Quite right.”

Natsu was looking back and forth between them; there was a tiny smile on his face and his chest out. Lucy didn’t perceive what he was hoping to get out of this meeting. It’s when considering his that she realised what she could gain out of this meeting. She hesitated; Natsu seemed to notice it and gave her a big smile.

She felt a little warm inside and said, “Could I get an interview?”

The smile left Natsu’s face “Does that mean I have to leave?”

Lucy suddenly felt very cold. This perhaps hadn’t been the right moment to ask.

“It’s fine,” said Erza Scarlet “you can come back when we’re done.”

Lucy was surprised, did this mean she had gotten the interview. She couldn’t believe how easy it had been. Usually when she wanted an interview she would ask it on the phone with a professional tone and lots of arguments. Here she had just blurted it out during a normal social moment and she had it. Maybe she had been worrying about nothing.

Natsu got up and left but he warned them that he would be back soon.

“So where would you like to start?”

She now remembered the other reason why she planed interview over the phone, it supplied her with plenty of time to prepare. She didn’t have time to search for question right now, she just had the time to take her notebook and a pen out, if she waited to long before asking anything she’d looked like an idiot. She remembered that she did have a question, the one she had been asking herself barely a minute ago.

“Let’s start with your agent, the fact that you told me they buy your cloth makes me wonder just how deeply they are involve in your life.”

“He is pretty involve, his an old friend, after all. He mostly helps me a lot. He helps me with the cloth thing but he also lots of places and people. The moment I need something all I have to do is ask and he gets it for me. I try not to abuse of it though.”

“How did you meet him?”

“We’re both from a small town named Magnolia.”

“So he’s a childhood friend?”

“More of teenage hood friend, but yes.”

“How did he end up becoming your agent?”

“Well that actually has to do with the creation of Great Tales Records. You see, the producers with whom I first work were not… they were a bad experience for me. But my foster father had been a musician so he knew the business and along side other friend who had had the same problem, we decided to ask him if, with his help we could create our own record company with people we trusted. During that time we were looking for people to come work with us, and Max, my agents, had experience in sales and that sort of things so he joined us.”

“You have a lot of friends in the company?”

“It feels like a big family.”

Lucy wondered if she was honest. The idea that a company that had signed some of the most popular artist of her generation was like a big family, didn’t seem quiet believable.

“How about we talk a bit more about music, tell me how are you enjoying the festival so far.”

Erza Scarlet provided her a long speech about all the artists she had seen, talking about their qualities what she though they could improve and of course which one she would like to work with in the future. Lucy wrote everything down as rapidly as she could, as she listened to her she realised that Erza Scarlet would have made a great music journalist. She mentioned something about the qualities of the lyrics of one band, which made Lucy look up and ask “Speaking of lyrics you don’t write any of your songs?”

Erza Scarlet glanced down at her feet and admitted, “Yes I’ve collaborate with lots of very talented writers and I have to admit I’m incapable of writing a good song. I’ve tried many times but I never seem to get it. I turning my thoughts and feelings into music is natural to me but I’m completely unable to do the same with words.”

“How does that usually works, are you given the lyrics, or do you work with the writers on what you want to express?”

“It depends, sometimes I get offered a full song and I then decides if I want to sing it or no, and sometimes I ask for a writer to put into words what I’m looking for.”

Lucy took notes, and she still had a question to ask on that subject, but she wasn’t sure if she should, this one came from deductions she had made and wasn’t fully sure of. Her curiosity won over her doubts and she asked, “Are all of your writers listed on your albums?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well it’s just that they are some of you songs that are written in a style very different from the other and it doesn’t match with the other works of the writer mention on the back of the records.”

Lucy listed the songs she had noticed, or at least the one she could remember. Erza Scarlet eyes had gotten as wide as saucers and she was staring at Lucy.

“You’re very impressive.” She marvelled “Yes these songs were written by someone else but we can’t put their name on the back because I don’t know who it is. I’ve received them through the post by an anonymous fan, I have no way of knowing who they are and they said they wanted to stay anonymous and didn’t want any credits.”

Lucy was astonished by what she was hearing. This wasn’t what she had expected for an answer and it only served to build a bigger mystery. She was extremely excited to write an article about it. And she was filed with the wonderful pride you could only feel from being right.

“Which do you prefer? Your anonymous writer or the one you usually work with?”

Erza Scarlet gave her a full and fascinating answer. She talked about the different writers she had work with and their manners of work. She ended by saying “Writers are cruelly underappreciated, they are praises for the singers and the musician but rarely for the writers, unless they are also the writers. Honestly I’m just a performer I don’t believe I should be given that much credits.”

“I wouldn’t call you just performer, finding the write words is very difficult but its just as hard to say or sing them right. The performances you give are always right and powerful. There’s a reason why you receive song from anonymous writers.”

At this Erza Scarlet looked away and thanked her. This was strange to Lucy; she hadn’t thought that someone like her could talk that way about herself. Self-loathing was familiar to Lucy and she had never imagined it could come out of a successful person. It was a strange reminder that Erza Scarlet, Natsu Dragneel and all the others were humans, like everyone else.

“I have another question to ask you, it comes from something Natsu Dragneel told me in an interview. He said that the industry didn’t appreciate you to the full. That you were one of the greatest musicians he’s ever met but that you are only allowed to be a singer. Is this true to you?”

Erza Scarlet smiled  “A lot of that is just Natsu exaggerating. I’m not a bad musician, but when I started I couldn’t give my best at singing and playing at the same time, so I had choose, and I decided to be a singer, now I can do both at once but I’m not sure how my public would reacted if showed up with a guitar on stage tomorrow.”

“You play the guitar?”

“Yes as well as the bass, the drums, the piano, the saxophone, and the harmonica.”

Lucy froze. Six instrument. Erza Scarlet played six instruments. Lucy had heard of multi instrumentalist who played two or three instrument, but six! That was insane! Lucy had to agree with Natsu, someone capable of playing six instruments not using any on stage that was unbelievable, laughable even.

“Why did you choose to be singer?”

Erza Scarlet’s face changed, it was very hard to read, it somehow close of the emotionlessness of Juvia Locser but it was not quite it. “I had bad experience trying to be female musician.”

“Would you mind elaborating?”

“Yes.”

Lucy didn’t know what to say, she would have wanted to press her but she could tell she would receive no answer, actually she was afraid she’d never get an interview with her again if she did.

“They are female musician who have made their way in the industry today.” Lucy said, it was her way of encouraging her to assert herself as a musician.

“You mean like Juvia Locser?”

“Yes.”

“I admire her in a way.” She stopped to observe her watch “As much as I would love to continue I’m afraid I must get going”

“Of course.”

Lucy watched her leave and wondered if she truly was in a hurry or if her questions had made her run away. I this was the case than this could be a remarkably bad news for her carrier. She looked at her own watch and realise that Erza Scarlet’s concert would start soon enough for her to have needed to leave. She trully hoped her questions hadn’t made her uncomfortable.

Natsu came back not long after that, he asked how it had went and she told him about her worrying. He assured her that if she had made Erza uncomfortable she would have known. He was so certain of this that she started believing him. He invited her to join him secure a nice spot for Erza Scarlet’s concert. When they got close to the stage she noticed that they were already quite a lot of people here. And not just anyone. There was indeed lots of random people but among them some of another calibre. Natsu, who was here with her was a good start but in the crowd she noticed many more. Cana Alberona was taking sip from a bottle in the middle of the crowd. Toward the back there was the Strauss talking happily among themselves. Toward the right she spotted Lee Richard. John Fool was on the left side of stage. At the other end you could find Juvia Locser, Gajeel Redfox and Levy. These were the one she had seen but she wouldn’t have been surprised if they were more.

She though of joining Levy to make sure she was okay, but on closer look her friend seemed perfectly content. She wondered if they had talked while she was with Erza Scarlet. She was a bit curious but didn’t want to bother them.

Erza Scarlet delivered probably the best performance of the entire festival. She had that passion that none could match. Has she listened to her Lucy was transported. She did hope to see her take out an instrument, but it never happened. This didn’t prevent the show from being perfect. If her interview had disturbed her it didn’t show.

After her show, she grabbed something to eat with Natsu. She was less tens than the first time. She talked to him quite easily. They talked mostly about Erza Scarlet’s performance. They had both enjoyed it and were talking with lots of excitement. Natsu was incredibly eloquent when describing her performance, to the point that Lucy asked if she could quote him. Music was amazing; Lucy knew that if they had not just been to a concert she wouldn’t be able to speak so freely.

“Are you going to see Guildarts afterward?”

“Yes, you as well?”

“Yeah we go together?”

“Sure.”

It was strange, seeing to concert in the company of a famous musician in a row. The stage were Guildarts was playing was much smaller than the one Erza Scarlet had been at. But he had quite a crowd as well. If Erza Scarlet’s crowd had fifteen per cent made of famous musician, Guildarts was forty per cent. Many of the same faces as the one who had been at Erza Scarlet’s were also here, along side a few more. There was religious silence among them. No one said a word. Not even when Guildarts got on the stage, just respect full claps, not even a whistle. Once he started playing the silence came back. There was none of the occasional shouts you would usually hear. All eyes were focus on the man on the stage. His strings rang sad and true. His voice was low and carried the sorrowful truth of the world. Songs about poverty, the passing of time, hookers and the fear of a new war succeeded themselves. Lucy didn’t know when she started crying; maybe it was around the part about the death of his first love, or perhaps the one about coming back to his hometown in ruin. Lucy had no idea how to describe this experience. She thought that this was how she should have been feeling in church. She understood why so many musicians were inspired by him. She felt inspired at that moment, inspired to do more, to show her best, no matter if she failed.

Never had she had had more enthusiasm to check her notes when she got to her hotel room. She went through them, underlying the important part, placing little numbers here and there to remember which part should come first. As she went through them something intrigued her. It was in her interview with Erza Scarlet. She listed every concert she had seen and told her thoughts on them, but there was no mentions of Fernandez, even though she was sure to have seen her there.

[expshared]

this season was kind of whack, but at least we had Eizouken

Heya Camp is just kind of a lazy reminder that Yuru Camp exists, and will continue to exist in the future. You remember these characters?? OK good, just making sure. That said, did I immediately feel the tension release in my entire body when I heard the OST? Duh. Did I sing “it’s coffee time” to the ending not knowing these were the incorrect lyrics? The entire time.

I don’t know what to do with Isekai Quartet because like, objectively, I should hate it. I do not enjoy like 2.5 of the shows involved, and the addition of Shield Hero was not a welcome one. Turns out it doesn’t matter anyway because it was just Isekai Quartet and also Naofumi is Sometimes Scowling in the Background and that’s about as much of him as I want to see anyway. And yet? I do enjoy this Disney Channel Original Crossover. There’s something inherently fun about watching these characters from disparate shows interact with each other, and no matter what the original stakes were in their respective series, they’re all just doing homework and getting part time jobs and that shit’s funny when a big skeleton man is doing it.

After its first episode, Asteroid in Love was kind of a slog. This is your typical seasonal CGDGT show, and apart from that, I really can’t think of anything to say about it. I didn’t learn anything about the Extremely Niche Topic these girls are doing, and it wasn’t even that gay. Disappointing. 

I was really looking forward to Toilet Bound Hanako-kun because I am a big fan of the source material, but I was pretty let down by this adaptation. It seems that they prioritized the art style and the color scheme above everything else, but that essentially just meant the entire project ended up being colored manga panels. I wanted to see them move around! There was not a single moment of animation that justified it being an anime. You might as well have been watching a PowerPoint. I can’t think of anything nice to say. Let’s move on. 

Bofuri is my power fantasy. I want to play a video game so cluelessly I break it into tiny pieces and bumble into being the most powerful player in the world’s nicest MMORPG. Maple turns powercreep into powersprint. What Bofuri lacks in character development or plot, it makes up for in outrageous Maple feats. She holds the entire world in the palm of her hand and she doesn’t even know it. She named her OP pet turtle Syrup and then turned into an alien abomination unknown to the world and went on a killing rampage. This anime was Maple Crossing Online. Love you, Maple. Wreck shit, Maple. 

If My Favorite Idol Got Into Budokan, I Would Die walks a thin line and what separates it from being a slobbering idol otaku engine preaching how Cool it is to Be an Otaku and an Idol Show Watamote is the fact that Eripiyo is a girl. That’s it. If you took her and replaced her with your average Joe Schmoe-san, this show would be insufferably creepy. Every time I was waiting for it to topple over, Jenga-like, it managed to right itself and straddle the tightrope. It’s not a particularly subtle piece of media, nor does it do what I was hoping it would do and engage in any sort of conversation about the obsessive nature of idol otakudom, but you know what it does a good job of doing? Portraying being an idol as a job. Just some adults putting on underground shows and selling the same CD of like two songs over and over again. I was also hoping it would address what happened to Eripiyo, maybe talk about why at the beginning she’s dressed like an office worker and apparently gives that all up to follow this kinda-shitty idol group, why this fanatic escapism is preferable, or even maybe address how gay it is? Not in the cards, though. Honestly Budokan was, despite itself, pretty enjoyable? There are some great background lesbians. Also can we talk about how consistently good the production values were on this show? Why did this have such great dance sequences? Why did this look better than Love “Has More Money Than God” Live? Actually no I take everything back this show was kind of just Idol Otaku Watamote

Hey, let’s talk about the other idol show airing this season: the completely unhinged 22/7. This show is Whack. This show operates on an entire different plane of reality. I know nothing about the actual band, so I came into this blind and oh my god. Hey guys, the plot of 22/7 is that a Wall tells some girls to form an idol unit.  A sentient Wall whose orders absolutely must be followed. Why? Dunno! What happens if you don’t follow its orders? Never elaborated on. (Actually, is this a reference to Pink Floyd? I have no fucking clue.) In any case these eight girls, summoned by a letter from the Wall, are all invited to become an idol group, and then they’re magically an idol group. It’s unclear how they become successful, how they book gigs, who’s keeping the lights on at the agency, how they’re getting paid, who HR is, how their gorilla man agent found this Wall and determined that all its directives Must Be Followed, but shit, man. What follows in 22/7 is a one-member-per-episode serial that quite frankly stumbles far more often than it succeeds. One girl’s grandma died and that’s why she came to Japan. One girl had a traumatizing experience where she got lost in the woods for a week and it broke her family apart and now things just suck forever. These things are equal. One poor girl’s entire episode was about how she didn’t want to put on a bathing suit for a photo shoot and how uncomfortable she felt about it, but in the end she was made to apologize for dragging her feet for so long and takes her photo for a pin up. Yuck. Gross. Bad. The only valid girl is Jun, end of discussion. None of this even holds a candle to the finale-- wherein the girls are directed by the Wall to disband, and, defying an order for the first time, the girls return to their agency and throw shit at the Wall until it breaks down. It’s revealed that the Wall isn’t supernatural-- behind it are tv monitors, photos of the girls as children, records of their activities. A person or people are behind this. Why??? Are they being groomed?? Is the Wall a metaphor for the Industry? I’m so concerned. The girls aren’t, though, because after a little side eyeing, they ascend a staircase and wow! A Stage! Our fans are all here for our reunion tour! And then they’re fine and I guess their idol group is back together or something? Did I mention the stage where they perform? It’s at a zoo. I can’t tell if this is the most scathing condemnation of idol culture I’ve ever watched or just completely oblivious. The characters don’t engage in any sort of thought about what they’re being put through, but they are performing their final song, the lyrics of which are about how life is just too hard to keep on living, at a zoo and I don’t think you can have that sort of thing happen unless you’re trying to make a point. Right??? RIGHT?!? Dance and sing, monkeys.

Smile Down the Runway was another show completely divorced from reality. So you got your main character, Chiyuki, whose thing is that she’s Too Short to Be a Model at her father’s very prestigious modeling agency. Which, like, is valid! Let’s see some variation in the modeling industry. Let’s shake it up. Let’s lead the charge for alternative models with bodies outside of the very narrow requirements of the fashion industry. What’s that, Chiyuki? You have no interest in that? You want to be a Hypermodel? I don’t know what that shit is, I think you made it up. Our other protagonist is Ikuto, the destitute, put upon, bobcut boy with a dying mother and 3 younger siblings who is trying to pursue his dream of becoming a fashion designer. Are you beginning to sense the problem here? There is a fundamental imbalance in the presentation of these characters’ goals and situations. Also? Emotions are at an eleven, always. Characters are always acting as if they’ve just seen someone get murdered in front of their eyes even when it’s like. There’s a messed up seam. They are constantly being mortified, crushed, and having their dreams ripped away. One time, two different assholes offered Ikuto magical mom-fixing blood money when he was struggling to come up with funds to pay off his medical debt at the cost of giving up his spot in the fashion show. Wildin’ 

Haikyuu didn’t exactly come in like a lion, but I’m sure it’ll be more organic upon rewatching. We were laying the groundwork for much of this season so I’m expecting it to payoff later, but the beginning definitely lagged. Every time Haikyuu hints at a women’s volleyball tournament, I want a volleyball anime with girls. Man, those ten minutes we got with Kiyoko? Those were great. 

I don’t have too much to say about Somali and Forest Spirit. Abe’s “Make Children” agenda feels at least a little more like a narrative choice in this anime, and I enjoyed Somali and the Golem’s relationship and their travels were in equal turns harrowing and heartwarming. And I did tear up at the end so you got me there, anime. 

In/Spectre has some balls being an anime. It’s existed as a light novel and a manga and those are both superior mediums for it because let’s put all our cards on the table here-- In/Spectre is a show about talking. Five whole entire episodes take place in a car. The finale is winning an argument in an anonymous 4chan chatroom. That said, I have such a fondness for In/Spectre. I think Kotoko rocks. I think a show willing to do nothing but talk at you for two hours is badass. Sitting through this anime is like watching a podcast. I think the show engages in some great dialogue about human nature and how we prefer stories that are theatrical, narratively-driven, and have a logical cause-and-effect, instead of the truth, which is more often than not grim, and disappointing, and illogical. I like that Kotoko’s only function, in-story and out of it, is to bullshit so hard she invents alternate realities. Anyway In/Spectre is good. 

There’s no praise I can lavish on Eizouken that hasn’t already been said. It’s powerful, it’s strange, it’s energetic, and it’s packaged with such love. It’s repurposed the CGDCT template into something deeply affecting. It’s an anime for people who love animation.  I hope everyone watches Eizouken.

[ezimin]

This Anime is like Marmite

A few weeks ago I dyed my hair, which I thought made me look a bit like an Anime character that was in an Anime I actually quite enjoyed the first time I saw it all the way through. However, this Anime is honestly not amazing and it took me two attempts to watch it right through. The first time I attempted to watch this Anime, I only got past the first episode and then gave up because I found it boring. If I didn’t have friends that I watched other Anime with, I wouldn’t still be watching Anime now. When I finally got around to watching this anime and its sequel a few years later, I really enjoyed it. I am glad I got around to watching it again because since then I have read a lot of comments online, from people who intensely dislike the Anime. So when I rewatched it a few weeks ago,  I was partly rewatching it to see if this Anime still held up as a good one (in my opinion at least).

Before I begin to explain the anime Sword Art Online and Sword Art Online 2, or SAO and SAO2 (as I will be calling them because this is easier to type), I should mention that there is another sequel to this anime, called Sword Art Online : Alicization. However, I will not be talking about that anime in this post as I haven’t yet seen it. As this post will possibly contain minor spoilers, because I am covering both series of Sword Art Online, I would recommend that you go and watch it before you continue reading this post, in case I spoil anything for you. Although I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum, as always.

SAO is an anime set in the near future, in which a virtual reality game has been introduced. in the anime, they call this software, ‘Soft Dive’ software, because when you are wearing the helmet, called the ‘Nervegear’, you are completely unresponsive to outside stimuli, such as sounds, temperatures etc.  the game, which has been introduced, is where the anime takes its name. SAO is an online fantasy MMO, in which people create their own characters and meet up with friends to defeat monsters together. The creator of the game has turned it into, what is referred to in the anime as a ‘Death Game’. A game in which the characters are unable to log out  until they complete the entire game and defeat the final ‘Boss’. The main character, called Kirito makes friends with a few different characters in the game and along with them, works to defeat all the bosses. SAO2 is a similar idea and involved Kirito entering a separate MMO in order to defeat someone who is killing physical players through the game.

I think I should explain what I mean by the title of this post. If you were to take an entire group of people who had watched SAO, they would mainly fall into one of two camps. People who loved it and people who hated it. In this way it’s just like Marmite. I am someone who differs from this normality. Having written these blogs for a few years now, I like to analyse anime and look deeper into the meanings, the storytelling and the characters and I can see that SAO is not the best written anime. However, I still cannot shake that sense of enjoyment I got when I first watched this anime right through to the end.

There are some criticisms though. The first of my criticisms about SAO is that there are some fundamental plot holes. For example, there is even a massive plot hole in the premise of the entire anime. Why any government in the world would legalise a piece of wearable technology that was capable of causing catastrophic damage to a person’s brain, is beyond me. No matter how much safety this capability was under, you do not have to be a genius to figure out that at some time or another, someone will find a way to hack into the system and remove any safety protocols that had been put in place, meaning that the system would be able to kill users with or without their knowledge. As you can see, this is a massive plot hole. I do not understand why this situation could ever be believed, even in a fictional world. Even as a surface plot it doesn’t hold together - this would never work in any reality. There are a couple of other plot holes like this throughout the anime, which can be slightly jarring, as they pull you completely out of the sense of disbelief that the anime is trying to establish. I am pretty sure that you will be able to find others, because it is not very difficult.

Reki Kawahara, who is the author of the SAO Manga on which the anime is based, said in a recent interview, that he intends to get better at writing. I have to congratulate him on wanting to do this, as changing your entire writing style can not be easy. Although by him doing this, it would get rid of some of the potential problems with future anime based on his works. One problem I think would be extremely good to get rid of, would be the issue with exposition (by which I mean plot set up). In any anime, exposition is always necessary and you cant get away from it. However, some ways to do this are better than others. For example, there are two main ways that I think exposition can be handled. The first involves simply a scene in which the characters talk to each other about specific plot elements. This is really boring to watch and you can feel every minute of the exposition ticking by. Often in anime, every few episodes are really heavy in exposition and can have multiple ‘Exposition Dumps’, because there is an awful lot of set up for a particular situation in a five or ten minute period. The second way of tackling exposition, and one I find slightly more clever, is by using subtle gestures, or actions, to explain what is going on. I find this a lot better, as exposition can be spread out over a number of episodes, avoiding exposition dumps and also there doesn’t even need to be any words spoken and so you don’t always know it is happening. For example, without a great explanation, if you see two characters holding hands, you can assume that they have a fairly close relationship such as being siblings or romantic partners.

Mr Kawahara unfortunately strongly favours the first technique, which I do think is a real shame, because in actual fact, this detracts from some of the scenes, eg the fight scenes in the anime, which are really enjoyable in their own right.

So, I’m not too sure what to think of SAO and so I’m not really sure if I can recommend it or not. On one hand, I did enjoy watching the show, but on the other, there were some pretty bad problems around the story. But, like with all my recommendations, this is up to you. If you think it’s worth a watch and you have heard about it from friends, then give it a go. If not, it’s maybe not one for you.

[lovemesomerafael]

Others Like Me                              Chapter 4:  Knives in the Dark

Chapter 1  Chapter 2  Chapter 3   Read it on AO3

Bucky and Eight decide to stop and have dinner at a brasserie.  Eight’s excited because she’s never been to a restaurant.  In fact, she says everything they’ve done today has been new to her.  It seems like a good idea, except that Bucky has a hard time deciding what language they should speak.  They could speak English and stumble over their orders, just two American tourists, but that’s dangerous because someone might find them interesting.  They could speak Schwyzerdütsch and be boring locals.  That’s dangerous, too, because some overly friendly soul might want to see who they know in common.  In the end, he decides they should speak High German and be standoffish tourists from too nearby to be interesting.  

“I’m no good at this stuff,” he grouses.  “I’m a soldier, not a damn spy.”

“We’ll be fine.  It’ll be fun.  Besides, if anything happens, we’ll just shoot the place up and run, and that’ll be fun, too.”  

Bucky’s smile is as much surprise as it is amusement. “If that happens, will you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Don’t tell Tony Stark.  He already thinks I’m hopeless at dating.”

“What’s ‘dating’?”

Bucky laughs and opens the door, guiding Eight in with an arm around her waist.  “I can only imagine what he’d say if he heard you ask that question when you’re actually on a date with me.”

“But what’s a ‘date’?”

“Nevermind,” Bucky whispers, not wanting anyone to overhear such an odd conversation and pay attention to them.  “I’ll tell you later.”

 It’s late when they get back to the safe house. Even though they’ve had to be vigilant and careful, it’s been a nice afternoon.  

They haven’t spent the whole time talking about their experiences with Hydra.  For one thing, they’ve been around people much of the time, so they couldn’t.  For another, Bucky needs to go slow.  There’s almost nothing about their experiences that isn’t ugly, or painful, or both.  They’re not reminiscing.  They’re debriefing after a tragedy.  It isn’t easy and it sure the hell isn’t fun, and Bucky finds that he can only take so much at a time.  Eight seems to feel the same; she’s asked to change the subject as often as he has.  Although neither one has been exactly shocked by the things the other has shared, they’ve each had some moments of stunned disgust at the things the other’s been made to do.

One thing’s for sure after this afternoon.  Either Eight’s telling the truth, or she’s the best liar Bucky’s ever seen.

Now it’s getting late, and Bucky has no idea how to approach the subject of sleeping arrangements.  He’s been thinking about it on and off all day, and he’s not coming up with any good solutions.  Well, he is, but not any good solutions that are actually going to happen.  

He’s wandering around the living room and kitchen of the little house, fiddling with things and generally just fidgeting, while Eight takes a shower.  

By the time Eight finishes drying her hair - which takes forever, there's a lot of it - Bucky's got himself completely twisted around.  He's distracted momentarily by seeing her for the first time with her hair down.  He must stare, because she stops halfway to the couch where he's perched on the edge. 

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he says. She gives him a skeptical frown, but she finishes crossing the room and sits down near him. 

He's kind of fascinated by her hair, and has no control over his hand, which reaches across her to pick up a lock of the blonde section.

"I like this," he says. 

"Thank you.  I've always had it, I think."

Her slightly dazed look as she reacts to his closeness makes him suddenly aware of what he's doing.  He decides it probably can't get more awkward, so he asks, "Did you talk to Natasha about, you know, sleeping arrangements?"

"You told me to, so I did.  I understand now.  I'm sorry for making you uncomfortable."

Masochistic fool that he is, Bucky asks the question.  "What did she say?"

"She said that sleeping together is considered very intimate.  People even say 'sleeping together' to mean sex.  She said mostly only romantic partners do it, so it would be strange for you, especially since you have a romantic partner.  I'm sorry I didn’t understand.  Where I'm from, sex and sleeping don't go together.”

“I get it.”

“I do think you're very pretty, and I like you.  I would like to have sex with you, but that wasn't what I was asking for.  I just don't know the rules here.  I don't know anything..." she sighs, embarrassed.

And now, in order not to embarrass her more, Bucky has to pretend he’s not embarrassed by what she just said. "There's nothing to be sorry for.  You were just... saying what you meant.  It's fine, and I actually don’t have a ‘romantic partner’.”

“Isn’t Captain Rogers your romantic partner?”  Bucky sees that Eight’s genuinely surprised.

“Steve and I haven't been together for a long time."

"Oh.”  She sounds disappointed.  “When I saw you together, I thought you were in love.  And Agent Romanoff said so."

"It's complicated."

Eight digests that for a minute. Her next words are quieter, almost tender.  "Is it because of what happened to you?"

Bucky nods sadly.  "He really doesn't understand what I am now."

Raising an eyebrow, but still in that soft voice, she asks, "What are you now?"

"You know what I mean.  The things I've done.  What they made me into.  Those things are...  He deserves someone good, like he is.  I'm polluted now.  Rotten."

"Sergeant?"

"Yeah?"

"If I understand what you taught me this morning, then now is when I say ‘bullshit’."

Bucky smiles sadly.  "You understand the word, but-"

"Am I polluted?  Am I rotten?"  She’s challenging him now.

"Of course not, but that's different.  You were a little girl."

"You’re a fool.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“You chose nothing.  You knew nothing.  I saw you, remember?  Your body, anyway.  But the person you are, he wasn’t there.  No one was there.  Reactions. Compliance.  Nothing more.  The one time I saw a flash of you, your…  self, or whatever you’d call it, the fact that you were in there was the whole reason you were about to get emptied.  Do you see?”

“That’s what they keep telling me, but-“

“Look at me.”  He continues looking at nothing, eyes toward the floor but not seeing.  “Sergeant. Look at me.”

Slowly, painfully, Bucky drags his eyes up to look into Eight’s face.  “I’m not like you were.  Yes, I was a child when they took me, but that just means I was easier to break than you were; I needed less erasing and conditioning.  I don’t mean that I didn’t fight.  I did try not to do what they want.  They did unspeakable things to me, and I was ready to die rather than comply.  But in the end, it didn’t matter.  It was still easy to make me do what they want.  All they have to do is hurt the people I love.  So I do what I’m told.  And although I try very hard to make them think I’m as hollow and broken as you were, I’m not.”  

She leans forward, turning her head so he has to look in her eyes again.  “Think about that, Sergeant.  When I'm doing those things, I know that they’re evil.  I choose to do them anyway.  So who is more polluted and rotten?”

“It’s not a choice, when they’ll torture or kill the people you love if you don’t.”

“Then how is it a choice when you don’t even know you’re doing it?”  

Bucky doesn’t have an answer to that.  He knows she’s wrong somehow, but he can’t figure out exactly why.  What he knows is that the evil he’s done has fundamentally tainted him in a way that can never be remedied.  He doesn’t feel the same way about Eight or the others.  Somehow, they’re different.  But he doesn’t know how.  He’ll have to think about that.

“I think you’ve had enough of this for a while,” Eight says, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah.”  Bucky collapses wearily against the back of the couch.

“I’m sorry this is so hard for you, Sergeant.   I don’t want you to feel responsible for what those evil – bastards?  Made you do.”

Bucky can’t help but grin at Eight’s newly-acquired English skills.  

She goes on.  “I don’t feel responsible.  I hate what I’ve done, but it’s what I had to do to survive.  To keep them from hurting or killing my siblings to punish me.  I know where the evil is, and it’s not inside me. It’s them.  I hope I can help you know that, too.”

“Thanks.   It is helping, talking to you.”

She smiles a little, looking down at her hands.  “I don’t know the rules about hugging.  I would like to hug you, if you want me to.  If that would make you feel better.”

“It would.”

They put their arms around each other and hold each other for long enough to take several deep breaths together before getting up from the couch.

"Unless you object, I'll sleep here tonight,” Eight says.  “You're too big for this couch.  You sleep in there."  She points to the bedroom.

"But you'll be cold and it'll be too quiet."

"Yes, but that's how normal people sleep.  So I'll have to get used to it."

Bucky squints.  "You sure?"

"I'm sure.  I put the blankets back on the bed.  I'll just use the one you used."

"No.  At least you should have the extra blankets.  I won't be cold."

He goes in and brings the extra blankets back, setting them carefully on the couch.  He stands, fussing with his hair for a moment.  Finally, he mutters, "For the record, I think you're pretty, too. And I like you back."

"What record?"

Bucky laughs maybe harder than is really warranted, but the question and her adorable perplexity are a nice break from the somber mood of their previous conversation.  "It's just an expression.  It means I just want you to know."

"Oh.  OK.”  She says.  “I had fun today.  I liked walking with you.  But tomorrow I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to do.”

That’s not exactly how he expected – or wanted – her to react to his minor declaration, but it’ll have to do.  “Good night,” Bucky says, and shuffles slowly toward the bedroom.

It takes him a long time to fall asleep, his mind full of questions and confusion.  Even when he does, he’s restless.  Bucky doesn’t think he’s slept more than an hour or two when he’s awakened by a sense of danger, his fist already closed around the handle of the ever-present knife under his pillow.

“Bucky!”  He hears a very low hiss in his ear, and realizes that what’s woken him is Eight, crouched next to the head of his bed.  Her finger is on his lips, telling him not to make a sound.  When his eyes open, she points with three fingers toward the window of the bedroom, then with two fingers toward the door.  He doesn’t see anyone there, but he hears them a split second before he sees a figure peek around the doorframe.  Bucky registers a sharp, silent movement next to him.  The guy’s wearing something on his left eye.

No, that’s not right, Bucky realizes, as he wakes fully.  In the darkness, he can just make out that it’s Eight’s knife that’s now sticking out of the guy’s eye, and he falls to the floor with a thud before he has a chance to cry out.  Eight hands Bucky her pistol, and motions for him to give her his knife.  He does.  

The second guy doesn’t seem to understand what’s happened to his partner, because makes the mistake of looking into the bedroom, too, and gets Bucky’s knife in his right eye.  

Bucky gets out of bed as silently as possible. He’s not wearing much, just boxers.  She’s wearing black leggings and a thick overshirt Steve brought for him, but now that the guys actually inside the house are down, they both scramble into clothes, boots, and their armored vests as quickly and quietly as they can.  Eight retrieves their knives, quickly wipes them off on the shirt she’d been wearing, and gives Bucky’s back to him.

There’s a wall panel in the bathroom that comes off and leads to a hole in the floor.  This is a safe house, after all, so there are options for getting out, and Tony’s email explained them all before Bucky and Eight arrived.  They choose to avoid the doors and windows, because Eight’s indicated there are at least three people outside.  Instead, they slip into the hole in the wall and drop down to the ground under the house before Bucky replaces the wall panel.  

There’s only about a foot and a half of clearance under the house, so they’re on their bellies in damp dirt, looking out through a series of small, grate-covered openings.  They look from outside like ventilation, which is what they are, but the grating is formed so that they can see out, but no one can see in.  It’s also designed on well-oiled hinges so that a person can push their way silently out through any of the grates.  But first they have to know where the bad guys are.

Without discussion, Eight and Bucky have slithered down to the dirt facing in opposite directions, so that they can see the ground on all four sides of the little house.  There aren’t three sets of feet.  There are six.  That makes Bucky feel a little better about this.  Sending five people seemed too easy.  Insulting, really.  A team of eight guys is still not enough, but that’s probably all of them; more would make too much noise.  

For long moments, they watch the movement of the feet outside for an opportunity to escape.  It comes when one of the guys apparently discovers the bodies inside the house and gives a shout, causing two of the others to go in to investigate.  That leaves only one on the north side of the house.

Bucky signals Eight, and they low-crawl on elbows and splayed legs to the closest grate.  With a last look to determine where the others are, Bucky lifts the grate and shoots the lone guy in the throat, hoping he won’t make noise. Unfortunately, he lets out a gurgly whine as he goes down.  They crawl out as fast as they can, and are sprinting for a greenbelt behind the house when someone comes to check out the noise, and the shooting starts.  

Bucky and Eight make it into the greenbelt, fairly confident there are no bad buys waiting in there based on the amount of lead the others are unloading in that direction. 

Bucky's looking for one of two things: cover or transportation.  He sees a rock wall that looks like it might be OK cover in a pinch (and they're in one), so he heads that way and throws himself over it, Eight landing right beside him.  He risks a look over the top between two rocks, while Eight looks in the other direction for options. 

She finds one.

"There's a motorcycle!  Stay here, I'll pick you up."

"You need keys!  Nobody leaves the keys in a motorcycle.  It’s not worth the risk of checking," Bucky advises breathlessly.

Eight pulls a flat, metallic rectangle from her armored vest.  "You need keys.  I have this."  She starts to get up and Bucky pulls her down again. 

"What is that thing?  Are you sure you can start that bike?"

Eight doesn't answer right away, because they both start firing at one of the men trying to kill them, who tries to make it across the open space between the greenbelt and the rock wall.  He jerks and collapses.

"Was that you or me?"  Bucky asks.

"You.  Nice shot."

"If we're stealing a bike, I'm driving," he tells her, taking the metallic rectangle, which is about half the size of a deck of cards, from her hand.  "How's this work?"

"Why do you get to drive?  You're a better shot.  You should cover us."

"It's the rules.  I'll explain later."

"Fine," Eight huffs, handing Bucky the object.  Just put it on the engine.  Use your right hand; it's magnetic.  The engine will start right away.  I'll cover you.  Go!"

Bucky crosses to the side of the house behind them, as low and fast as he can, while Eight keeps the bad guys hunkered down with steady fire.  He feels a little bad about using Eight's naivete against her, but there's no way he's going to be a passenger in this situation.  He mounts the bike and rocks it off the kickstand, then places the metal rectangle on the engine, beneath the gas tank.  The motor starts and he grins as he makes the tight circle to where Eight is. 

He's not wasting time when he's exposed like this.  He slows as he passes her and just grabs her with his left hand by the back of her vest and lifts her into his lap as he goes.  She puts her left arm around his neck and keeps firing as they take off down the narrow, winding street.

Half a mile later, they stop just long enough for Eight to change position so she's behind Bucky.  They slap fresh clips into their weapons, and they're off again.

"Where are we going?" She shouts into his ear over the noise of the engine and the road of the wind.

"Got any ideas?"

As he says that, a car squeals around the curve behind them and they hear gunshots again.

Eight turns around and fires a few shots, coming close, but not hitting the driver. 

"This is why I should be driving!" She cries.

"And this is why I should be driving," Bucky screams back at her.  "Hang on!"

She has just enough time to wrap both arms tightly around him and duck her head before they're airborne.

Bucky had seen a dropoff from the edge of the road they’re on, and gunned the engine as the bike left the pavement, so they land quite a ways from the road in a tree-filled lot that doesn’t have any buildings on it. It’s not really a park, but it’s not a vacant lot, either.  Whatever it is, it’s between the road they’ve been on and a busy thoroughfare, which is where Bucky’s headed.  The car behind them has no hope of following, not only because it gets bogged down on the dropoff, but because it can’t make it through the trees.  

When they reach the thoroughfare and are rocketing through the sparse traffic, Eight starts to laugh.  Bucky can feel it in her chest against his back, and he can hear it.

“I want to do that again!”  She shouts into his ear.  

“Which part?”  He yells back, realizing he’s laughing, too, mostly because she is.  

“The flying part, not the assholes with guns part!”

“Maybe later!”

As they enter a motorway, it occurs to Bucky to wonder whether there are helmet laws in Switzerland, because they’re not wearing any.   And they really should get off this motorcycle. They’re too visible.  They may have lost the assholes, but now they have to figure out where to go.  He takes a random exit, thinking to ditch the bike and steal a car, so they can get out of Lucerne and call the Compound for some help.  

This part’s easy – they have Eight’s device, which it turns out has no name, and they have their pick of cars once they find a residential neighborhood.  It’s so easy, in fact, there’s a bit of a discussion about a black BMW Bucky likes and a gold Mercedes Eight wants.  They compromise and take the BMW, but Eight gets to drive.  

They’re strapped in the BMW, easing down the residential street while Bucky tries to figure out the car’s GPS, when another car comes careening around a corner toward them.  There’s no shooting, but there’s no mistaking that the car is coming for them.

“How is that possible?”  Eight shrieks.

“There’s another one behind us,” Bucky growls, working feverishly at the GPS.  “Fuck!  I don’t know how to work this shit.  You’re the electronics whiz, you shoulda let me drive.”

“Really?  We’re still arguing about that?  Forget the GPS, just hold on!”

It’s a little bit impressive how Eight navigates the front yards of the neighborhood to get around the parked cars and pass the car headed toward them.  The street’s so narrow, the two cars are going to have to do some maneuvering to get out of each other’s way.  It doesn’t give Bucky and Eight much time, but it helps.  They slam back into the street with a shower of sparks and go screaming through the sleeping neighborhood toward a busier street they can see ahead. By the time they get there, the cars following them have begun to close the distance.  

Eight screeches around the corner onto the busier street, and although there’s little traffic this late at night, there’s enough that she’s having to weave around cars.  Red lights and cross-traffic don’t seem to concern her much, and they actually come close enough to collisions that Bucky can see the horror on the drivers’ faces in the oncoming cars a couple of times.  

Now there’s a helicopter overhead.  It’s small and black, with an enclosed tail rotor, and nothing about it looks friendly.  This is going to be a problem.  

The cars chasing them catch up – Bucky’s seen them cause two accidents, and one of them’s been sideswiped, but they’re still coming. At a complicated interchange, Eight decides to get off the surface street and onto the corkscrew of ramps feeding at least three motorways going different directions.  It’s smart, because there are plenty of places where the road above will conceal a quick change of route, but that’s not going to fool the helicopter for long.  Luckily, on the way into the interchange, Eight manages to fake the lead car out, and as she screams onto the onramp at the last possible second, the car is unable to turn quickly enough and rams headlong into the concrete abutment, exploding in a fireball.  

“Think you can do that again?”  Bucky asks.  “That chopper can’t land just anywhere.”

“I got a better idea.  Reach into my left breast pocket.”

Bucky does, and finds an adherent grenade.  

“Make sure you hit the right car,” Eight advises. “That’s gonna leave a mark.”

She slows just enough that the other car catches up and the driver slams their car broadside, but that gives Bucky time to flip the grenade out his window and watch it latch onto the hood of the car.

“Floor it!”  Bucky shouts, and Eight uses all the BMW’s power to pull away from the slower sedan. Still, they’re way too close when it explodes.  The shock sends another car, some unlucky guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, skidding into their lane and into the rear of the BMW at an angle.  They spin helplessly nearly a hundred eighty degrees, and end up slamming headfirst into the concrete barrier at the side of the motorway.

As soon as they shake the fuzziness out of their heads, Eight and Bucky try to get out of the car.  There’s no telling how long they have before more bad guys show up, especially with that helicopter hovering overhead.  Eight’s door is jammed.  Bucky’s, too, but he just uses his left hand to smash the half-open window out, so they both scramble out the window and, as if they’ve planned it, race to the barrier at the side of the ramp.

“Can you jump this?”  Bucky asks.

“They modeled us on you, remember?”  Eight actually smiles before vaulting the barrier and disappearing from sight.  

For a fraction of a second, between squinting at the heat coming from the car he’s just bombed and shooting a quick look up to see where the helicopter is, Bucky grins and shakes his head.  This girl. Then he jumps.

The lateness of the hour is the only reason either of them avoids being hit as they land squarely in the middle of the roadway on the level below.  Eight’s already got her sidearm aimed through the windshield at a terrified couple in an SUV who made the mistake of stopping to help her.  Bucky’s just running toward the driver’s door when the SUV’s rammed so hard from behind that Eight has to leap out of the way to avoid being run over as it hurtles forward.  

That’s when the carful of goons who hit it, and the two other carloads of assholes that come to a shrieking halt next to it, spill out all the doors and come running at them.  None of them have guns.  They don’t think they’ll need guns to capture Bucky and Eight, because there’s a crowd of bad guys and only two of them.  

Bucky and Eight go instinctively back to back, and they’re still armed, but their attackers come upon them so fast that they’re in hand to hand combat before they have a chance to take out more than two each. Some of these guys are just meat, and out of the fight quickly.  Bucky doesn’t bother to do more than punch their lights out and go on to the next one, and Eight crushes a couple of knees and one scrotum before getting to one who actually has some moves.  Problem is, this one has a knife, and he knows how to use it.  Eight has knives, too, but she’s down to three and she has to throw one into the throat of a guy who almost gets between her and Bucky.  

They keep coming.  Bucky’s doing OK; he’s got one hanging off his neck, but that guy’s no problem; Bucky just moves back as he’s trading kicks with another guy, and flips him over the barrier into thin air before taking the wind out of the other guy with a foot to the solar plexus.

He doesn’t see the one who’s been waiting his chance behind one of the stopped cars.  The guy stands with a smug slowness and aims a 9 mm at Bucky as he picks up a guy by the throat and uses his head to knock out another one behind him. But Eight sees him.  She doesn’t have time to aim, just throws the knife as hard as she can in the general direction of his chest as he squeezes the trigger.  She only manages to bury the knife in his stomach, but he’s so surprised and concerned that he forgets all about Bucky while he pulls at it and looks around for someone to help him.

Eight’s now got an attacker on each side, and she’s down to her last knife.  Bucky turns toward her just in time to see one of them rush her.  She grabs him by the arm and uses his momentum to pull him into a punishing knee to his nose, which implodes with a satisfying crunch and splash of blood. Meanwhile, the second one gets close enough to drive his knife between the plates in her armored vest.  She just has time to extend her arm and punch her own knife into his chest as she falls, crumpling, to the pavement.  

Bucky takes a couple of good punches as he tries to process what’s just happened, and he sees as he head-butts one guy and tosses him into another that there’s somebody rappelling down from the helicopter.

Fuck.  This is what he gets for trying to do a good deed.  He takes out two more with a flying cartwheel that lets him break one’s jaw on his way to planting his foot in the other’s face, and that gets him within a few feet of Eight, but there are still at least eight assholes trying to kill him.  The one who’s trying to lift Eight gets an elbow to the larynx, but doesn’t go down fast enough for Bucky, so he also gets Bucky’s left fist to his face and flies backwards far enough to break his neck on the open door of a car.  

That’s when Bucky sees another asshole go flying past him, clear across the road and out into the void beyond the barrier.  He doesn’t have time to wonder at that because somebody’s got him in a chokehold, and it takes him a second to get to the knife on the inside of his shin and deal with that guy.  But once that’s done, he whips around to see Steve – Captain fucking America, who is supposed to be on a plane on his way back to New York - wiping up what’s left of the bad guys like he’s bored.  

“No time,” Steve shouts over the sound of the chopper, “Strap in!”

He points to where there’s a second rope, with a harness attached, looped over the barrier and trailing about halfway to where they’re standing.

“Eight!”  Bucky yells.

“I got her!  Strap in!”

Bucky sees that Steve’s already picking her up, so he sprints to the harness and straps it on as fast as he can.  He looks up to see Sam Wilson working the hydraulic winch in the open door of the helicopter, already hauling Steve, with Eight in his arms, up into the air.  Moments later, his own harness secure, Bucky is lifted skyward himself.  He notes with annoyance that Natasha is flying the chopper. Had she agreed to help Eight the day before, they wouldn’t be in this mess now.

Bucky and Sam grasp each other’s wrists and Sam pulls him into the chopper and slams the door.  Natasha immediately turns the helicopter away from the snarl of crisscrossing motorways and heads it out into the darkness.  Bucky doesn’t care where they’re going, or why they’ve shown up now.  He cares about the fact that Steve’s pulling off Eight’s vest and there is a whole hell of a lot of blood.  

She’s conscious, though.  She’s lying across two seats, using some of the new words Bucky’s been teaching her and some others – in Norwegian, for some reason – that he knows are equally foul.  

“I hate getting stabbed!  And how embarrassing that it has to be in front of you, Captain.”

“Nah,” Steve says, “You were doin’ great.  The problem was you were trying to look out for Bucky.  You can’t do that.  You have to watch out for yourself first, otherwise this’ll happen every time.”

Apparently, Bucky thinks, they had time to bond on the way up to the chopper.  He shoves Steve roughly out of the way and finishes pulling the vest off of Eight, then pulls her black nylon turtleneck over her head.  Holy shit.  Natasha wishes she had abs like this woman’s.

“How bad?”  Bucky asks, looking for himself as Sam hands him a thick towel for the blood.

Eight grunts in pain and winces.  “Hurts.  Probably a collapsed lung again.  I’ll be all right.  I’m sorry, Sergeant.  I was useless back there.”

“We got different definitions of ‘useless’.” He turns toward the front of the helicopter.  “Natasha, where are we going?  She needs help.”

“She’ll get it,” Natasha answers blandly.  “Bruce is on the plane.  He’s got all his stuff.”

“I don’t need help, Sergeant.  Just time.  I’ll heal, you know that.”

“Well, I’ll let a doctor tell me that, if you don’t mind,” Bucky snaps as he continues to do what he can to stanch the bleeding. It’s already almost stopped, but he doesn’t like the way she’s fighting to breathe, or the trickle of blood on the side of her mouth.  

“Been meaning to ask you about something,” he says.

“Yeah?  What?”

“You called me Bucky.”

“What?”

“When you woke me up.  You called me Bucky.”

“Oh, that.  It was quieter.  Those guys in the house were close enough to hear the ‘S’ in ‘Sergeant’.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry to get your hopes up.”

Neither one of them notice the look on Steve’s face, or the tension in every muscle of his body.  They’re focused on each other.

[spidergwenistrans]

So TERFs like to say that trans women were socialised as men, an especially powerful attack against those of us who transition later in life. And the idea seems to hold water to a lot of folks who haven’t had to think critically about it, and it probably holds more water the later in life that the trans woman/women in question came out.

I’m not going to try and say that none of us have ever benefited from male privilege, there’s no denying it plays a role, especially if you look at this with an intersectional lens. I certainly have benefited from it for parts of my life, I lost it for a little bit when I had long hair in 2009 and passed more often as a girl than as a boy (and somehow still didn’t figure out I wasn’t a boy).

The thing is, and I realised this on a much more personal level since starting to figure stuff out about myself, if you’re living life presenting as, being read as, and generally existing as, a gender that you aren’t, you’re being traumatised a little every time gender is relevant, which is a lot, if not always.

Most of my friends ave always been girls/women, and I’ve only had a few close friends who were boys/men. Kindergarten on up, it’s always been the case, the thing is, most people seem to get kinda uncomfortable with boys and girls being close friends, so it gets discouraged, I don’t remember well enough to say why, or how or when, but I know or sure I really only ever had playdates with boys as a small child. It’s equally possible that this pressure was applied by my peers, if you hang out “too much” with girls, and everyone thinks you’re a boy, you’re gonna get shamed one way or another; for being too girly, for having a girlfriend, for being gay, whatever it is kids can come up with (you know, whatever their older siblings, parents, and media have taught them). Of course, I was a small child in the 90s, which was not a great time to be queer, so there’s that too.

Being forced/encouraged not to hang out with girls definitely played a role in my internal closeting and maintaining of the closet for years, even though by grade 7 I started to have friends who were girls again, friends whose houses I even went over to. But I was still being perceived as a boy, so I still ha certain gendered expectations placed on me, and I did far too good of a job internalising the ones I could tolerate. I tried so hard to embody the parts of masculinity that I could tolerate, and that seemed mostly positive to me, but they never really quite fit.

Even while so far in the closet I was almost in the next room, when I first started seeing my ex, my approach to flirting with her and wooing her honestly mostly resembled a stereotypical 1950s housewife taking care of her husband. I cooked her dinners, made sure to dress nice for her, all that jazz. In hindsight, that’s fucking hilarious, but at the time I did not really examine it and just went with it because it felt natural.

Besides all of the long-term build up of emotional trauma that comes from trying to live as an incorrect gender, there’s one piece to it that just fundamentally screws with your self perception. At whatever point you first try to express your gender identity, if someone shuts it down and tells you you’re wrong, or even if you don’t express it, but you know it and you’re told implicitly that you’re wrong, it can instill this sort of self-doubt. Now there are as many trans experiences as there are trans people, so this will be about me, and how I perceive things, in hindsight, because I could never have discussed this without learning the language I now have.

When I was 3 or 4, I remember playing, and telling my mum I was her daughter, she (so she thought) corrected me, believing it to be a misunderstanding of language (as an editor/translator, she’s going to see the world through that lens, also, it was 1997/1998). I also used to pretend to be the mother of all my stuffies, a game/fantasy that included mimicking any mothering behaviours I’d ever seen, including incubating them like eggs in a nest, and stuffing them under my shirt to be able to birth them. This did not happen without getting commented on, but I’d already picked up that I should probably keep quiet about the mothering bit.

Sidenote: this ^ is one of those forbidden memories that gets locked away, I forgot all of this until after I realised I’m trans, and only just now remembered the mothering bit, I only remembered the stuffing in the shirt bit when I started typing this today.

All of that about the stuffies and calling myself a daughter is to say, the things that a 3/4 year old me knew to be true, or wanted to be true, were treated as mistakes and misunderstandings by society, I’m pretty confident to say there were some consequences to that, likely in part impacts to my confidence about any other self knowledge.

In high school, I was made fun of for being gay, for being fat, for being girly (even before the long hair), and a cruel play on my deadname wrt penis size (joke will be on them as soon as I can get bottom surgery). Clearly I did not pass myself off effectively as a straight boy, and I think that’s a pretty common experience for a lot of trans femmes. For lack of a better word, apparently I’ve always had “Gay Vibes” and lots of people came out to me in high school, and lots of others assumed I was gay, there was some overlap there too. Of course, it turns out I am a huge queer, but just exactly not the way anyone expected? 

Most of this post is talking about younger life, because this is where things were closer to the surface for me, I buried my transness pretty effectively early on. For those that don’t, their trauma is going to be different, and from what I’ve heard, much more immediately painful. Being read as male today hurts, but all of the previous years of it? they don’t hurt me that much in any direct sort of way, only cumulatively in what they denied me.

If you’d like to read a story about a trans woman who did know from a young age, but didn’t transition until much later in life than I did, you should check out Love Lives Here by Amanda Jetté Knox. Amanda  writes about her daughter’s transition, then her wife’s and the story is incredibly beautiful, and made me cry most of the day I listened to it.

[parabcllums]

⧼    gemma chan, demiwoman, she & they   /   things we lost in the fire by bastille   +   the rain soaked, mossy ground that surrounds a sun bleached headstone. flaming red hair, piercing green eyes, willowy limbs - an intolerable tenderness carried in their features and offset against the undeniable steel beneath their skin. the heat of a bonfire on a sticky autumn night and the sparks that fly up, up, UP.    ⧽   ━━   let me tell you a thing or two about JEAN ELAINE GREY. the hero that goes by JEAN GREY / THE PHOENIX is a professor of PSYCHOLOGY at paragon academy in addition to being a PSYCHOLOGIST in town, and has sometimes been referred to as THE ATOM BOMB. they’ve always seemed very EMPATHETIC & ALTRUISTIC, though i’ve heard they can be pretty IDEALISTIC & HYPERSENSITIVE, too. do you think if i ask real nice, they’ll give me an autograph? redirect to her stats page HERE and her pinterest board HERE.

       they’re burning all the witches,                                      even if you AREN’T one.

marvel girl. trigger warnings for talk of death throughout.

july 15th, 1965. annandale-on-hudson, new york. professor john grey and his wife, elaine, welcomed their fifth child and youngest daughter into this world. they name her jean. in her tiny hands are held a fifth of the grey family’s hopes and dreams for their future - and neither can deny the thought that little jeannie, with her tuft of flaming red hair, might just be the be all, end all.

for a very long time, she is just a GIRL, a child allowed to be a child. her red hair marks her as something different to the rest, but she doesn’t feel as if she IS - rather, how overwhelmingly normal she is. she’s smart, but not too smart. PRETTY, but so are the rest. she’s kind, and perhaps this is the most notable of her early traits - an intolerable sort of SOFTNESS, a hugeness to her heart that sometimes does more harm than good.

the littlest of the five, she finds herself running to catch up more often than not, with only roger ever slowing down for her. she and liam end up in the same grade, not for her testing out, but for him getting kept back. sara & julia tease her mercilessly, but when she ( accidentally ) ruins sara’s favorite top, the latter takes the blame, and sometimes, just sometimes, the former allows her tag along to the arcade. her siblings are her CLOSEST friends for a time, the people she spends every hour of every day with, who HAVE to tolerate her, no matter what - and then she met annie.

little annie richardson was similar to jean in a lot of ways, not just in the fact that ‘little’ was often tacked on to the start of her name. cute as a button, sharp as a tack. on the fateful november day that they met, liam was sick and home from school, and jean, miserable in his absence. she was sitting eating lunch alone, she can recall even now - and though she didn’t have to, annie, an otherwise unremarkable head of brown hair that sat a few rows behind her, in class, took it upon herself to join. that day marked the beginning of a lifetime. annie and jean became INSEPARABLE, not just at school - it turned out that she lived only a few doors down, and after their homework was done and their dinners ate, they’d spend HOURS riding their bikes and playing make believe. annie was always the princess, and jean the dashing PRINCE who saved her from the tower. when they played dolls, annie was the patient, and jean the DOCTOR. so on, so forth.

it was such a pity, then, and contrary to all of the stories that they had woven, when LITTLE ANNIE RICHARDSON was struck by a car outside of her own home. jean was only a few feet away, safe on the sidewalk a handful of seconds before tragedy - and though she was an innocent ten years old and didn’t QUITE understand the gravity of what was happening, jean knew, even then, she couldn’t just leave her. she rushed to her side and she rocked her back and forth and somewhere between the sobbing and the hoping and the praying that she could somehow help her friend, evolution leaped forwards. her mutations manifested YOUNG - and at the cost of taking her friends dying emotions unto herself and feeling every second, jean eased annie’s mind.

jean withdrew from the world - the voices in her head that didn’t belong to her too much - and there wasn’t a SINGLE therapist who could help her, after that. not the normal kind, anyway. john grey had a winning combination of connections and money to spare, but try as he and his wife might, they found no one who was able to reach their daughter through the haze of emotion that had come over her. her first experience of her powers was through DEATH. nothing good could come after that.

and then came charles xavier. he had yet to become the credible well of mutant knowledge that he would, in later life - but back then, he seemed to be jean’s only HOPE. she was twelve, by now, and a shell of who she had once been - and over coming months, with the knowledge that she was not alone and never had been, jean flourished. charles succeeded, at first, in teaching her a level of control over the powers that up until now had seemingly taken over her life, and what was more, he managed to put something of a mental block on the firerod of a memory that annie’s death was, for jean - allowing her move past that trauma, some, and begin again. she advanced so much, so fast, that he and moira mactaggart decided they could utilize her in the creation of CEREBRO ; calibrating it for use, and together, conducting field tests in search of fellow mutants. it was during this process that jean first made contact with the boy she would come to love - scott summers.

though cerebro had been a marked success, and jean appeared to have taken CONTROL, charles overwhelmed her telepathic abilities on an excursion to a shopping mall - the conflicting thoughts all becoming too much and causing her to lash out without meaning. set back miles by the incident, the professor decided to place a mental block on jean’s mind to stunt her telepathic abilities and keep them DORMANT until such a time as she was ready to control them - and after sending her home, briefly, to live a somewhat NORMAL life, convinced her parents when the time was right to allow her join the newly opened xavier’s school for gifted youngsters. she was SIXTEEN when she joined the first x-men team comprised of scott summers, warren worthington, hank mccoy and bobby drake, and the first girl to do so.

under the alias of MARVEL GIRL, and the tutelage of charles xavier,  jean began to use her telekinetic powers for good along with the rest of the team. they trained for months in the danger room beneath the mansion, preparing themselves for the inevitable - when professor x decided that they were ready to go out into the world and unveil their powers to it, fighting magneto and a whole host of other villains for the safety of humans. despite her loyalty to the professor, jean had her reservations when it came to such antics ; disagreeing, fundamentally, with the idea of children fighting a war. though she came to LOVE her teammates, each of them coming to fulfill a unique role in jean’s life - hank as big brother and closest confidant, bobby as her little brother and endearing annoyance, warren as her BEST friend and one time crush and scott as, well... even then, a beloved team leader and love interest - she HATED what they were being sent to do. though being able to use her gifts in such a practical way was a huge help in the continued lesson of control, and though she was made HAPPY by being able to help innocent bystanders, jean couldn’t entirely reconcile her differences in ideals - and when she graduated from xavier’s with the necessary high school diploma, chose to take a break from the team in order to attend metro college.

she wanted to be NORMAL, in a way - had been so, once, and sought it out again, actively - but it wasn’t until she was apart from it that jean realized how much she had really enjoyed the purpose that the x-men had given her. they were all older, now, and maybe it was that they weren’t children anymore that really swayed her to the idea of it ( or MAYBE, just maybe, it was missing the friends she had made ), but jean came to miss being a hero full time, and rejoined the team when her responsibilities allowed her take a break. on such missions, it became apparent to every onlooker that jean and scott held feelings for one another close - though neither was able to put them into words. scott feared hurting her, and jean wished he would make a move. it left them stuck, and the fact that she was only around for fleeting moments at a time didn’t help. eventually, she graduated from metro college and rejoined the team ; and though it had taken YEARS of mutual pining, scott and jean found their way to one another. 

satisfied with her progress at this time, charles released the barriers upon jean’s mind - allowing her to begin learning how to control her telepathy, and in addition to such, allowing her knowledge of certain secrets kept for the safety of the rest of the team. when the team believed him DEAD, jean was the one who knew the truth - and it pained her to keep it from the others for as long as she had to, and it was this in addition to a handful of failed missions that led to jean deciding, once again, to LEAVE the team - though her relationship with scott continued.

phoenix. trigger warnings for talk of murder & death throughout.

she wasn’t a member of the x-men when she died. she was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time - a visit to the new team ( she adored them ALL, not JUST because of association ) going wrong, resulting in them being kidnapped. brought to space by steven lang, the x-men defeated the villain as they always did and were forced to try and return home aboard a space shuttle in the middle of a solar radiation storm. the only one among them capable of learning how to fly simply by reading someone’s MIND, jean volunteered to pilot the craft even though the cockpit wasn’t shielded from radiation - allowing the others take refuge in safety as she battled the storm to get them home.

she began to succumb to the radiation.

and somewhere, the PHOENIX FORCE found her. sensing her limitless potential, the cosmic entity came to her aid - informing her that she was going to die, but that TOGETHER, it could help her attain her hearts desire. at that time, it was saving her friends. she merged with the phoenix force in the same instant as she died - the entity forming a clone of her from her consciousness and putting the real jean grey to rest in a cocoon at the bottom of jamaica bay, allowing her exist in stasis and heal from her injuries while it took her form and continued her LIFE’S WORK.

the phoenix took her place, and continued her relationship. it was IMPOSSIBLE tell the difference between her and the entity - because, for a long time, there wasn’t one. to call it a clone is to put it LOOSELY. at the moment of their merge, the phoenix and jean became one, and the force had formed a perfect replica of her, mind, body & soul. a part of her consciousness formed with the replica, the two becoming indistinguishable. 

she continued to aid the x-men and live her life, even going so far as to reveal to her parents that she was a mutant. however, after healing the m’kraan crystal and saving the UNIVERSE, her powers only seemed to GROW. while her teammates saw jean leap and bound beyond previous limitations, they didn’t see the PHOENIX at her heart.

dark phoenix. trigger warnings for talk of death & murder & suicide throughout.

in the following months, the phoenix, jean became jason wyngarde’s victim. awed by her POWER, he sought to corrupt her and turn her against the x-men through dreams and manipulation. blind to what was happening, jean fell underneath his spell and became the black queen of the hellfire club - capturing her FRIENDS along with emma frost and the inner circle, and causing them harm before scott’s ( temporary ) death snapped her from her trance.

HOWEVER, it was too late. the dark phoenix was born from manipulation and pain, and the shade of jean grey that had been masquerading for MONTHS as the true her underwent a final transformation.

she soared through the universe, and when she came to the star d’bari, she devoured it - a TRUE display of the immense power she now wielded and the strength of the phoenix force, though the action killed an entire solar system. BILLIONS of alien creatures, dead. the star fueled her power and the dark phoenix returned to cleanse the world - burn it to ash and START AGAIN - before being thwarted, temporarily, by the combined efforts of the x-men and CHARLES XAVIER. their joy was short lived, as the shi’ar empire teleport ed them all to space, and put jean grey on TRIAL for her actions.

the x-men chose to do battle with the imperial guard for jean’s fate, but as testament to her LOYALTY and love, the shade of jean grey witnessed all that was happening and made a conscious choice. embittered by all that she had done and unwilling to watch her friends get hurt or die for her, she committed suicide in the middle of the battle - sacrificing herself ONCE AGAIN for the good of her friends.

white phoenix of the crown. talk of death throughout.

green the good, red the bad, and white to which she had yet to discover the meaning to. the portion of jean’s consciousness that had merged with the phoenix a lifetime before awoke in a space between worlds and time and space called THE WHITE HOT ROOM in a version of the iconic costume. for the first time since she had merged with the cosmic entity, the real jean grey was awake and able to THINK - though before she could come to any conclusion on what it all meant, death came to her.

it was presented with a painful paradox. though jean grey had NOT eaten a star and destroyed a galaxy, she also, in a sense, had. her PENANCE for a wrongdoing that couldn’t be entirely pinned to her was to build towers that would house the victims of the dark phoenix, and over time, this version of death informed jean that while her merging with the phoenix force had seemed RANDOM, they would not have been able to become one if they were not meant to. she was the one true host, and it belonged to her by right. 

jean completed her penance, and her version of death instructed her to return to life. to learn. dominos in effect meant that the FANTASTIC FOUR had discovered her body - and true essence - in a cocoon beneath jamaica bay, and as they studied it back at base, jean grey AWOKE and emerged.

the first thing that jean learned was that in the time that she had been dead, the world had changed. scott had moved on - marrying a woman named madelyne pryor who looked exactly LIKE her, and having a son. the x-men had moved on, and she was stunned to discover them working alongside magneto. over the next few months, she was forced to balance readjusting to life with battling a HOST of demons and situations that made it near impossible. scott abandoned his family. it turned out that madelyne was a clone designed to turn EVIL upon rejection, and jean was forced to absorb her in battle. her sister, sara, a PRO MUTANT speaker, was killed by anti mutant extremists. rachel, a mysterious new member of the team that had arrived while she was gone was revealed to be her and scott’s daughter from another timeline. scott’s SON, nathan, was kidnapped along with jean’s niece and nephew and upon being saved contracted techno virus, forcing jean and scott to send him to the FUTURE so he might be safe. then they all met CABLE, an older version of nathan from the future. 

as you can see, it was all a lot. it was a wonder that given all that was happening that jean and scott even managed to reconcile - but over time, they did, and on the lawns of xavier’s, the two reunited members of the x-men MARRIED. for their honeymoon, their consciousness’ were sent forward in time in order to raise the young nathan summers ( cable ), allowing them time as a FAMILY before they returned, ready to continue as a husband and wife duo. 

however. though they spent MONTHS fighting the good fight alongside one another, and though they did a great deal of good in that time - jean and scott’s marriage began to suffer almost immediately. though they loved each other, dearly, they had been through TOO much to be happy, now. a distance formed between them that spanned too wide for them to heal, and scott seeking help from emma frost, who in turn fell in love with him, proved to be the last straw. she had only just discovered the psychic affair when the x-men were attacked, once more, and xorn attacked her with an overwhelming electromagnetic blast. it STOPPED her heart - killing her - but it also worked as way of awakening the phoenix force, once more, and in spite of all the wrong it had done, jean agreed to aid it in finding all of it’s pieces, scattered across the omniverse.

though briefly an incomplete version of the phoenix force, in line with the DARK version of itself, returned and wrecked havok - jean grey prevailed, reminded by the collective x-men of how MUCH she was loved and reached enough that she was able to take back control, and consciously return to the white hot room. given a goodbye with scott - who reminded her that no matter what the cosmos said, she was jean grey, always - and more content than she had ever been with the knowledge of how much her family meant to her, jean vowed, in spite of the fact that as white phoenix of the crown she could CONSCIOUSLY resurrect herself, not to return until such a time as the phoenix was stable.

time displaced. 

five years ago, a younger version of the jean grey this world knew was brought forward in time alongside younger versions of each of the original team for their own safety. the mental blocks placed on this jean’s mind dissolved upon appearance in the future meaning that she accessed her power a year earlier than she should have - and was privy to knowledge of her future that no child should have had. this version of jean wanted nothing more than to avoid the tragedy of her older counterparts existence. she spent the sum of her time, here, training herself in her own powers, and trying to find a way to absolve herself of the future - avoid the phoenix, avoid the PAIN. she returned to the past, eventually ; returning with no MEMORY of all she’d done, here. it was the price that had to be paid.

jean grey.

and then, she returned. the ORIGINAL jean grey, resurrected by the phoenix force, without memory of herself, or her life. for weeks she was trapped in a small bubble of existence in new mexico, and though she continued to be subtly manipulated, subconsciously, jean knew that the world she was living in was a farce - sending psychic flares for help out into the real world in form of projections of tragedies of the past. saved by her friends in due time, jean RENOUNCED the phoenix’s ways - choosing life over it. 

she has returned now, herself, and for the first time in a LIFETIME, jean gets to be who she has always wanted to be. she gets to LIVE, and for her, this means becoming a teacher and psychologist at paragon, working to do good. she cannot erase her past, but she can form her future ; and this time, jean intends to. 

SECTION TWO OF THREE: HEADCANONS

jean remains the world’s most iconic redhead ; though in my version, her hair color comes from her MUTATION. it was the earliest indication that her parents had their youngest daughter was going to be something more, though neither could have predicted by just how much. 

in a way, she chose never to have children. though she briefly entertained the idea of having RACHEL in this timeline, jean shudders to think about her children going through what she did with the phoenix force due to the blood that runs in their veins and nothing more. she always preferred NOT putting them through that - though she would be lying if, in addition to that, a part of the choice has been taken from her since all she’s ever really done is... die. for NOW, she’s content. she thinks of nathan ( cable ) and nate as her sons, she thinks of rachel as a daughter ( though she struggles a bit here, sometimes ). now that she is somewhat free and has this second chance at life, jean DOES consider her future, and children.... but she’s happy to see where life takes her.

she was dead for TEN years - bar a few brief appearances back on earth, both in search of phoenix fragments and in order to keep the phoenix in check. finally... the jean/scott/emma timeline makes sense. the phoenix brought her back in late 2017, and it was midway through 2018 that she finally began sending out her own PSYCHIC FLARES.

per the grey family massacre, jean is now the last of them - it’s very sad, so pour one out.

SECTION THREE OF THREE: WANTED CONNECTIONS

patients !! ppl she’s talking to routinely to help them thru their traumas !!

but specifically : a little group of ppl who have all died and come back ( doesn’t matter for how long. years like jean ?? months ?? weeks ?? an hour ?? ) and want to try and work through the trauma associated w that. jean can lead them all in a sort of ... group therapy thing. she’s died MULTIPLE times and come back so rly ... she’s a good option

friends !! and not just, like... canon friends. ppl who she’s friends w now

peoPLE WHO KNEW TIME DISPLACED HER !!! that’s a fun connect. gimme ppl who were like... genuinely friends w little jean and are now like ?? the fuc

anything you’ll give me, frankly

[dangermousie]

This is epically long

One of the things I love about this drama is that everyone has shades of grey. Oldest brother is a monster of a sibling, but he is a loving husband and father. Honestly, a lot of the fault for his behavior lies with the awful father who, instead of ensuring the half-brothers got along and deal with the complexities of the half sibling relationship instead treated one as an angel and one as the devil and did nothing to stop those who kept pouring poison into the ears of the eldest about how Tingye and his mother were super evil (remember little eldest? He actually liked his stepmom.) Not to mention that the old Marquis himself shared the view that Tingye and his mom were satan so that probably entrenched eldest’ views. This show is magic - somehow I still felt sad when eldest died.

So the old monster had a deathbed repentance? That’s something at least, though still wholly inadequate. (But how unsurprising, the rest of the family stole it from Tingye.) But I think the old marquess always knew he was wrong and that probably made him even more angry and awful and only when he was dying was he able to admit it to himself. 

Oh God, Tingye. If this was modern times, I’d recommend so much therapy. And the fct that he always longed for his father’s love - so sad. 

Good Lord, that is the most shameless thing I have heard in a long time. 

And that is why he is different from the rest of his awful family. (Also, compare him with old marquess - the old man made Tingye’s life hell, because he hated his mom. But Tingye treats Ronghie as precious despite her horror of a mother.)

And that is why living back then sucks! In modern society, he could walk out and never see all the bloodsuckers and gaslighters and abusers ever again and never deal with them. But here he has to deal with them forever and be a part of them forever and to me that is horrible. 

Awwww and he so needed to hear that.

How does literally everyone else in the family, including the dim Third, understand Tingye better than the stepmother, who is cunning and raised him? I think she is just blinded by her loathing and her inability to imagine people can be different from her. 

oh my GOD!!!!!

I am not sure what I love more - her utter shock at getting a title or how he listens to the usual flowery praises of her awesomeness from the official and just swoons because he totally agrees with that for real.

Look at how adorably smug he is!

Ahahahahahahahaha I love you, Tingye. He is often straightforward, which is so refreshing in the world of hints and untruths. 

OMG can Third actually have brains despite his crazy mom?

That was the most adorable thing, him coaxing her to call him “darling Second” instead of the more formal wife. Whenever there are cracks in her propriety, I am almost as delighted as he is. And honestly, Minglan needs someone who would do it now and then. 

OK OMG MANNIANG IS BACK WTF!!!!

Hahahaha Minglan spiking evil stepmother and Manniang, using all the patriarchal structures and restrictions. And you can tell Tingye is so proud of his wifey. 

Oh Good God, Minglan! What sane woman, even back then, is all “it’s super easy for you to sleep with a woman you loathe” and mean it, even back then? Sure, she doesn’t realize he wants her to want him to be monogamous and not want him with other women. The society’s values are too ingrained in her. Despite him doing everything but waving a flag. But even back then, any woman who cares for her husband would normally be “I don’t love this and I don’t want you to do it, but I know you should for your kid.” But I can’t even blame Minglan because she is trying to be an ideal wife, precisely because he is so good to her and she cares for him, so she is trying to suppress her jealousy (you can tell she is filling it) because she thinks that is what he would want. Talk about crossed signals. 

Oh my God. I audibly gasped at this - not even as much at her murder attempt but at the relish she took in telling him his son is dead. My God. Can my favorite characters ever get a break? In modern world, they’d need to be in therap therapy forever.

This scene! This scene! Her freaking out he is hurt, his denial that his son is dead etc etc. My heart!

OK, this scene just gave me the creeps and shivers We have never seen Tingye losing it to this degree and Manniang is both terrifying and repulsive and pitiable. Also, her blaming him for their son’s death is very her - nobody made her take the kid, he wanted the boy left with him. She left and stole the child away and refused to be found. 

Awwwww. I love that her understated manner is such an ingrained part of her that even in insane situations she calms everything down by her mere presence. And that he is able to calm down and adore her even in the middle of all this insanity. It basically shows their relationship is the basic bedrock in their lives.

Oh, Tingye. The thing with his son hits him extra hard because of his own issues though frankly, his father was right there and so it was worse. 

One of the things I love the most about Tingye is how fundamentally decent he is, despite his upbringing. Because here he is with Manniang trying to kill him, taunting him, just a monster of a person who took his son away from him, and he still says not one bad word about her to their daughter. He grew up in a monstrous environment and instead of imitating it in his own life, it just made him more conscious of how damaging parents can be and how fragile a child is and look how well he has taken that lesson to heart - making up white lies about a woman who shortly before he was so insane with rage about he wanted to torture and murder on the spot. Because he has learned a lesson most characters on this drama have not - putting someone else above yourself. 

And what a contrast to her mother, who throws all that love and devotion in her face and is only fixated on herself and hurting people she hates and views her daughter as nothing in light of that. Only a tool. And then even less than that, as she tries to kill her.

Congratulations if you made it through this beast of a post!

[fireeaglespirit]

@beyond-far-horizons​ as promised, a short summary on my Orion, he takes a lot after the mythology of the constellation but not completely as you’ll see... I’ve done some homework ^^

I’m writing a larger post for one reply to Vivi concerning this all and it involves much more characters so I summed it up here for yah:

There’s probably some new things here so I’ll try to be slow.

Basically, Orion is a legendary guy who originated an entire dynasty under his name, the Orionis. In the story we have two main characters with this surname: Lyra and Procyon the sibling dragon-slayers and their dad, the King Sirius. There’s also another character with this surname in prequel timeline, called Adhara, so you can see he is quite important as ancestral figure for all these people...

Basically my Orion is the archetypal heroic figure and a legendary human warrior. He was the first king and one of the founders of the kingdom of Novencia. He’s quite the dude!! 

So, this is my dude Orion (made on Azalea dolls):

I meant for him to look a bit like an older rugged version of Procyon, he’s more buffed and I kinda imagine him like early 2000′s long haired Hugh Jackman with gray eyes, lmao. The creator is limited but just imagine that.

This is his tale, more or less: 

“The legend tells that Orion was a common man born in Vraen’dur, yet he managed to led humanity to their uprise against their dragon lords.

Orion grew up as a Zunak (some sort of dragon servant) and witnessed the heart of Balauria from inside and vowed to protect humanity from the dragon’s cruelty, even if at the cost of his life. It is said that the goddess Astraea heard his prayers and saw his bravery, and she wept… observing from the skies she judged him worth and sent one of her own stars to aid him in his quest…  from the fallen star’s material several weapons were forged, powerful like no other and said to even surpass the avian mythical swords according to the lore of Novencia.

Orion managed to fulfill his dream and free his kin, even so, with all that power, he paid a great price to his deed. The legendary warrior died a few days after taking down Antares and namely founding the new city of Lindefal upon the ruins left from their battle. The great dragon managed to rip the hunter’s abdomen with the tip of his enormous tail before going down, like the iconic scorpion of the greek legends… despite the dragon’s size, the wound was minor, but it somehow festered as if he was poisoned and not the best healers of the time could intervene. Fate seeming claimed the hunter, ending the cycle..”

From an old post to Vivi. 

Note that the story completely erases any interference from other historical figures on Antares’ downfall, so its certainly not reliable… but Orion is nowadays seen as a savior among Novencia and his descent is widely respected and loved, not without a reason… but its not the complete story.

And this is Antares, the big bad red dragon. His arch-enemy:

First of all, I choose Antares name because he is a huge red dragon. 

Just to place you what exactly Novencia means, it was the first human kingdom founded after an uproar against evil dragons (the old empire called Balauria whose ruler was Antares, the eldest, most powerful dragon and asshole in charge). This uproar was historically attributed to Orion as he was a central figure in the war and he died tragically little after that so everyone remembers him as the savior of mankind, but actually tons of people fought in this including some avians and early draconians, such as Galatea (Eltanin’s younger sister) and even dragons such as Antares’ own siblings Polaris and Ishanur were fundamental to the red dragon’s downfall... anyway.

Orion is the spirit of mankind and their pride, no less, this is why people are so proud of him and they love his descent. Antares is the heart of the Scorpio constellation, which was faced by the hunter, Orion, this isn't very different in my story, because my Orion kills Antares but he dies afterwards from a wound in his chest caused by the dragon’s tail striking him slightly as he fell to his death... kinda ironic and scorpion-like, I did as a homage to the ancient tale.. so they kinda destroy each other.

The Scorpio kinda represents the monster defeated by mankind, also which is very interesting, as Antares wasn't originally a monster.

Its impossible to talk about Orion without talking of his arch enemy. I don’t know how much you know about this all, so just for refreshment: my dragon Antares is the elder brother of both Ishanur and Polaris, the black and white dragons respectively. 

To sum it up, Antares was magnificent and the most powerful dragon that probably ever existed, he challenged his predecessors with the intent of freeing himself and his siblings, however he eventually got addicted to POWAR and control and he left it corrupt it badly, he was overly proud and unbearable. He basically became which he swore to destroy, a tyrant, and the ancient kingdom they founded became hellish, so someone needed to take him down.

Anyway, random facts about Orion: 

Orion was born and raised in Vraen’dur (the old dragon city), I don’t have details but I imagine he was born among the Zunak (dragon servant family) and his father was serving directly under Antares himself so Orion must have had a closer look at the injustice of this system and he certainly had personal beef with the dragon Antares. The zunak are early ‘dragon priests’ but they didn't commune with the dragons power as Antares would never share it so they had just political advantage..

Orion’s lineage is called the Faelany, they could trace back to Astraea herself (the human turned goddess). Eltanin and Galatea belong to this too, they’re likely his cousins. All Faelany have black hair and gray eyes and ability to withstand colder climate easily, they also have the dreamblood (innate ability to access magic and use astral weapons (’weapons forged from stars’)), however this is not very important for now.. just linking this together to the draconian ancestors so you get an idea of the timeline, nowadays this name is mostly forgotten and everyone calls them the ‘Orionis’;

Orion’s legendary astral weapon was named Rigel. It even has the blue color of the real life star but I haven’t decided if it is really an arrow-like weapon as the mythology suggests (you can help me on that);

The astral weapons are thus human weapons unlike the solar/lunar weapons who are always meant for avians and draconians.. I always name them with names of stars belonging to constellations I align with my human people, such as Orion itself;

Rigel and most of his weapons were lost forever and they’re holy grails to the dragon slayers as it was told they have been forged from the heart of a fallen star, and so they’re regarded as one of the few things in existence able to kill or seal a true dragon… even if temporarily (they can be revived but it corrupts them). Dragons are known as creatures of the stars and only similar power can harm them properly;

Orion had a friend called Regulus, the founder of house Leonis and he was king after him. The meritocratic ruling system and laws of Novencia were established by Regulus, actually. One way or another, Orion was a cool guy and he wanted to free humanity from the shackles of slavery, there’s was never an intention to rule or anything but he still ended up as the most famous king ever even if technically he barely ruled at all, Regulus honored his memory afterwards; 

He was the one to give the final, decisive blow to Antares. I choose this for several lore reasons but he wasn't alone in that feat;

The Orionis dynastic name was not created by him or Regulus either, it was Adhara, his young kin who crowned herself after his name as Adhara Orionis, giving birth to the tradition of human houses naming themselves after the founders... p.s.: she is something else as she caused a lot of problems for early Novencia which would make Orion cringe, but that’s for another story.

I think this is it! This is all I know about him right now.. I’m writing a complex post on early Novencia so this will cover some of Orion’s story and how he rebelled against Antares and his friendship with Regulus, etc.. I love that guy, he is great!

[nikanndros]

YOOOOOOO. SURPRISE! I’m not here about your fabulous new update (even though I could wax poetic on that in another ask) I’m here to inquire about that BOMB ASS INFIDELITY FIC YOU WROTE. look. I would write you ANYTHING In exchange for more of that fic/anymore infidelity. That shit is great to explore. Anyway. Marry me, have my babies and don’t cheat on me but I LOVE YOU YOUNG G

Hahahaha There is a special place in my heart for that fic tbh, so I’m glad you liked it. For further reading, I did post here a Laurent POV version of that AU that you can read HERE.

I actually started a sequel to that story a while ago, which I never got around to finishing because I didn’t really know where it was going, hahaha. But there’s no point in letting it gather dust in my google docs, so here is the first two thousand plus words of what would have been the adultery sequel.

-

“Do you want to come inside?” Laurent asks.

He wonders if his eyes are still red. If Damen will turn around and see that he’s been crying and - what? Recoil? - Laurent doesn’t know. He just knows that this moment feels penultimate. This could decide the course of the rest of his life, the rest of their relationship together. He’s never cared much for people’s opinion of him, but he is desperately afraid of Damen’s rejection.

Damen curls his hand in his pocket - the pocket he keeps his car keys in, Laurent has undressed him enough times to know - and Laurent wonders if he’s considering it. Just getting in the car and driving away. Maybe back to his home, where Jokaste will be. She’d forgive him eventually. Laurent knows because he thinks he could forgive Damen any slight just for the opportunity to hold and be held by him.

Slowly, Damen takes his hand - empty - out of his pocket and turns around. He looks lost. He looks beautiful, he always does. Damen rubs his fingertips against his forehead, warding off a headache, and sighs.

Laurent doesn’t know what to say. The moment is heavy with pressure. There’s a fork in the road, which path will they take?

Eventually, Damen nods. “Let’s go inside,” he says.

They’re barely in the front entryway when Damen puts a hand on his shoulder.

Ask me to stay with you, Laurent thinks. “Yes?” he says, heart in his throat.

Damen isn’t quite looking at him. “I have to talk to my parents,” he says. “They had that look about them.”

Concerned, was the look. Probably worried that their polyamory has set a bad example for their son. “Okay,” Laurent says.

“You should talk to Nicaise.”

Laurent frowns.

“Laurent,” Damen says. “He’s just a boy. It’s not fair for you to be upset with him. And you know how much your opinion means to him.”

It hurts right now, to be reminded of the way Damen is. He can be an oblivious idiot sometimes, but he also has a kindness in him. Laurent has never seen him hold a grudge in his entire lifetime of knowing him.

“I know,” Laurent says.

“Okay,” Damen replies, and then, finally, he looks directly at Laurent. “I’m sorry.”

Laurent closes his eyes. He doesn’t want to cry again, he doesn’t want to cry at all - but he knows he won’t be able to control himself if Damen dumps him here and now. Not that it counts as dumping, when they weren’t even in a real relationship. Just illicit sex and intimacy that has changed the fundamentals of who Laurent is as a person.

He cups Laurent’s chin and Laurent hates himself a little for leaning into it. Then Damen continues. “I’m sorry,” he says again. “I should have told you that Auguste knew. Well I should have done a lot of things differently. But I’m sorry it all came out like this. You don’t deserve it.”

I do, Laurent thinks. Because he’s the catalyst for all of it, the reason it happened in the first place. He had known he shouldn’t have kissed Damen. He shouldn’t have even let him through the door.

“I’m going to talk to my parents,” Damen says, like he’s making a mental checklist. “I’m going to stay here tonight. And tomorrow -” he hesitates, “- tomorrow, can we talk?”

What does that even mean? Laurent just nods, eyes still closed. He doesn’t know how to speak. But he feels-

He feels Damen press a gentle kiss to the centre of his forehead, and then the source of warmth disappears entirely. When Laurent opens his eyes again, he is standing in the hallway, alone.

-

Auguste parked at their parent’s house, and so the whole family has to ride back in the same car together.

It is a very silent trip.

Laurent sits between his brothers in the backseat and feels the crippling awkwardness that comes with knowing that not only does his entire family know he’s been fucking someone - but that he’s been fucking their family friend who was in a relationship. He knows his mother will try to understand, but his father is probably furious. Auguste, supportively, has one hand resting on his knee. Nicaise, to his other side, is squirming uncomfortably. He looks guilty, which Laurent wants to be happy about, but he remembers Damen’s words and ends up just feeling bad.

“Laurent,” his mother says, finally breaking the silence. Her voice is soft. “Will you stay at the house tonight please, baby?”

It’s actually a question. He knows he can refuse and avoid another terrible conversation tonight, and his mum will let him. “Okay,” Laurent says. He keeps saying that. He doesn’t know when he became so agreeable.

When they get out of the car, Auguste directs their father into his office with him, and Nicaise immediately runs up the stairs. His mother links arms with him and pulls him into the sitting room and onto a couch.

The couch is covered in colourful pillows, his mother is fond of over-decorating everything in the house. They sit together for a long moment and then she seems to deflate and she pulls Laurent into her arms like he’s a child. Laurent lets it happen.

He misses this kind of maternal comfort, but since moving on campus he’s felt too old to ask for it. His mother is always soft and she radiates love. “I’m sorry,” Laurent says, quietly. It seems to be a night for apologies.

“Oh my baby,” Hennike says. “My sweet boy. What a mess.”

“I love him,” Laurent tells her, because it’s been on the tip of his tongue for years and he’s never let himself vocalise it before.

“I know,” she says, soothingly. “I know you weren’t being malicious. You’re just in love. Life can be so complicated sometimes.”

He’s glad that he was right about his mother being sympathetic; he thinks that he needs this unwavering love and understanding that he can be certain in.

“I don’t know what to do,” Laurent admits.

“Do you remember how your father and I got together?”

“Yes,” Laurent says. He knows. Now doesn’t feel like the appropriate time to talk about his parent’s perfect love story.

“Tell me,” his mother prompts.

“You were friends in university,” Laurent says. “And then you realised you were in love with each other and eloped a week later. Happily ever after.”

“Yes,” his mother agrees. “I never told you this, but on the day that your father finally told me he loved me, I was seeing someone else.”

“What?” Laurent sits up. This isn’t part of the story.

“I was dating a boy from my highschool, who my parents loved and I felt okay about. But I was wildly in love with your father, and when he told me he felt the same I couldn’t refuse. We had to run away because my parents were so mad when they heard I’d broken up with my boyfriend. We got married so that they couldn’t try and pressure me to go back to him.”

“But you broke up with the guy,” Laurent says. “You didn’t have an -” affair. He shouldn’t feel squeamish about the word.

“No,” his mother says. “But what I want you to understand is that love is complicated. It’s a series of choices that you have to make, with no way of knowing which is the right decision… You boys shouldn’t have done that, not while Damen was still with Jokaste. But it’s happened now, and it’s time for you to make a choice of what you want to do next.”

“I don’t really think it’s up to me,” Laurent admits, quietly. “Damen told me he wants us to talk tomorrow. It sounded ominous.”

“Oh honey.” His mother pulls him back into her arms. “No matter what happens - one day it’s going to all be okay. I promise.”

-

Nicaise is sitting at the top of the stairs, when Laurent ascends them, his skinny legs sticking out between the balustrades.

“Do you hate me?” Nicaise asks in a small voice.

Laurent stops on the step that he’s on and looks up at his little brother. “No,” he says, finally. “Of course I love you. I’m just upset right now.”

“Do you want to sleep in my room?” Nic asks. “We can pulls out the air matress and then you won’t have to be upset by yourself.”

He has his odd moments of sweetness. Laurent opens his mouth to reply, but that’s when Auguste makes his presence known, stepping into view. Laurent briefly wonders whether he was waiting out of sight just in case he had to stop his siblings from fighting.

“Nope,” Auguste says. “We’re having a sleepover in my old room tonight. Go brush your teeth, Nic, and we’ll let you come too.”

Nicaise runs off.

“You’re staying too then?” Laurent asks. He tries to sound like he doesn’t care, but his acting skills aren’t up to scratch tonight apparently.

“Of course,” Auguste says. “I can’t risk missing any more drama.”

He holds a hand out and Laurent takes it.

-

“There are a lot of people who love you, Laurent,” Auguste whispers, later that night when Nicaise is asleep between them.  “I really hope that you and whatever you’re doing with Damen works out but-- either way, I want you to know that I love you very much, and I’m on your side for everything.”

“I know,” Laurent replies, just as quiet. At least he has Auguste.

-

Laurent ends up getting to the cafe he’s meeting Damen at twenty minutes early. He orders a pot of tea, finishes it, goes to the bathroom, and then orders another tea - take away this time, just in case - all before Damen arrives.

He’s in the middle of anxiously wondering whether he should get Damen his usual coffee order or if that’s going to look too desperately sad, when he finally walks in. All dark olive skin and wearing a faded tank top that looks like it belonged to him before his last growth spurt. It clings tightly to his chest. At least that means he hasn’t gone back to his apartment, where Jokaste will be, for a change of clothing.

“Hey,” Damen says, and he puts a hand on Laurent’s shoulder. “I need coffee.” He disappears off to the counter.

Laurent is pretty sure his heart is going way too fast just from that brief moment. He is suddenly passionately glad he opted for chamomile tea rather than coffee. No need to add excessive caffeine to this hot mess.

A moment later, Damen is pulling out a chair and sitting at the table, opposite him rather than adjacent. It is very hard not to read that as a rejection of sorts.

“How are you?” Damen says.

“We should just get to the point,” Laurent replies.

Damen sits back in his chair a little. “Oh,” he says.

Laurent purses his lips, and then he forces himself to relax a little - or just appear to be more relaxed anyway. “I’m okay,” he says. “I talked to Auguste and my mum last night, and I told Nicaise I didn’t blame him. I’m going to take him to the beach tomorrow, like I promised.”

“That’s good,” Damen says. He leans forward again. “My parents all teamed up on me. And then dad called Kastor and told him everything, and Kastor called me just to call me an idiot. Oh, and to tell me that Vanessa is pregnant again and I can only go to the shower if I promise not to bring any dramatic revelations.”

Laurent gives him a half-hearted smile. “Brotherly love,” he says. Kastor is so much older than them and further in his life that he’s always felt more like extended family than anything else.

“I know, he’s terribly sentimental,” Damen replies.

They take a moment to regard each other, before Damen speaks again, this time in an almost pleading voice. “Laurent, what are we doing?”

“I don’t know,” Laurent replies quietly. This is it, then.

“You’re going back to university in a couple of days,” Damen says. “And everything is a mess. I don’t know what we’re doing, or even what we should be doing.”

“Me either,” Laurent agrees. He isn’t willing to say much more than that. He wants to drag this out - this ambiguous stretch of time where things aren’t yet officially over between them - for as long as he can.

“I love you,” Damen says, in a rush. “I’m in love with you.”

Oh. Oh. That’s - not what he expected. “I…” Laurent has to force himself to talk. Even when Damen has already cut out his own heart and laid it on the table before them, Laurent feels resistance in letting himself be vulnerable. “I also feel like that. About you,” he manages, weakly.

“Okay,” Damen says. He looks flustered. “Okay, good.”

“Good,” Laurent repeats. His shoulders drop, and he runs his fingers through his hair. “I thought you were going to” - break up is the wrong term, they weren’t dating - “...tell me to leave you alone.” He winces at the awkward phrasing.

“No, I don’t want that,” Damen replies. “I know we’ve done everything wrong, but I really do want to try with you. It’s just that…”

Oh no. “What.”

“Everything is a mess right now,” Damen says. “I have to find a new apartment and you’re going back to uni, and I think we should get all of that sorted before we try to make what we have work.”

It’s so logical it makes Laurent want to scream. “So you are telling me to leave you alone?”

“No,” Damen says. “Just maybe we should give it a couple of weeks for things to settle and then talk about what we want.”

This is hardly the let’s elope immediately reaction that Laurent had maybe wanted.

[toomanygirlfriends-archive]

One Step Closer

A/N: So I’m depressed, it’s late at night, and I can hear my roommate making out with her boyfriend over the full blast of the tv and want to launch myself off a building. HaVE SOME HURT/COMFORT! tho no one will read it y eet.

Max didn't cry when anyone was looking.

She pretended that Hela's end hadn't shaken her in a way deeper than Surtur's sword had struck the place they had called home.

She didn't mourn the loss of Hela for the first few weeks, there was too much to do. Thor asked her to oversee a group of Asgardian's and help them find places to board, along with his other advisors. This provided lots of distraction. She ran herself ragged, working until she was far too tired to even keep her eyes open and was awake and working before she had time to even think about how lonely she was in the cold mornings on the ship.

But then she didn't have that distraction.

She tried to ignore the ache in her heart, she talked to the people. Played with the children, read with Loki, tried to pretend looking at him didn't remind her of the high cheekboned, dark haired goddess who used to look at her with such soft smiles, and gentle touches. She tried to pretend watching Thor deliver speeches and rule over his new kingdom, she didn't see her Hela with her prowess, and natural command. She tied to lie and say it didn't hurt. They had physically fought the very last time she saw her fallen lover. They had all but severed ties when Max left to help the Rebellion and Heimdall. She shouldn't feel like a limb had been torn from her and left by the wayside. Or that She had lost a fundamental part of herself she had only just recovered. She shouldn't mourn for the Villain of the story. No one cried when the Monster was slain.

So why did she spend night after night sobbing into her pillow until it felt like she could drown in it?

The answer was clear but unpopular, Hela wasn't a villain. She was angry, yes, and vengeful certainly, but she was a scared girl who had been banished for doing exactly as she was told. She was the woman Max loved underneath the anger and the hurt and scars that littered not only Hela's body but her soul as well.

She was a Victim.

A Victim in whatever twisted game Odin had been playing.

Max was the only one who had seen her cry.

Max was the only one who had held her through the nightmares. Max was the only person who Hela let see behind her strength and anger. Max had thought once, that she knew Hela even better than she knew herself.

She had said such terrible things. Her anger had dug into the collection of Hela's weak points Max didn't even know she had been filing, and used her words as skillfully as Hela used her swords. Cutting where she knew the Armor was weak.

A coward.

But in the end, on the Bifrost. Max knew Hela's heart wasn't into the fight any longer. Her pulled blows, and her clear attempts to keep Max out of the fight and harms way had revealed that.

Her throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper, she had dehydrated herself. With a sniff she sat up in her bed, rubbing her temples. The humming of the ships engines and the starscape out side had at one time been astonishing to her, but now it had seemed cold and lonely. She wanted Hela to be there, to point out different cosmos the Asier Princess had learned long ago. She wanted to look at Hela's face in the light of the nearby sun, the way her eyes would crinkle when it was genuine. She wanted to fall asleep wrapped in the arms of the woman she would love for the rest of her life, how ever long that would be. She still wasn't sure. She wanted to wake up with Hela's hand on her thigh and under her neck, surrounded by her aura of calm and protection.

But she would never feel those things again.

Holding back more tears she slid onto the metal floor, wincing at the cold and shivering slightly. She looked around the barren room out of habit, finding nothing as always. No Fenris the Wolf resting on his bed, no fire in the hearth. No Hearth at all. The rooms on the Ship were almost all devoid of personality or frivolity. A bed, and small vanity and mirror, a chair tucked beneath and a small bathroom and closet separated off the room with sliding metal doors.

She missed her own bed, and the warmth and books. She missed her home.

Max finally stood and began making her way towards the door that led out of her assigned room, snagging the lace shawl that was resting on the chair and wrapping it around her shoulders as she went. Sometimes she could even pretend it still smelled like her lost love.

Padding out of the door and towards the kitchens, Max made her silent trek through the Redemption. Her ears open for any sound that might indicate someone approaching her, she heard nothing all the way to her destination.

She wasn't familiar with how everything on the spaceship worked and was searching for a cup when she heard footsteps. She thought she felt a sort of familiarity in the stepping pattern, but shook it away when she turned to see an Asgardian woman. Her blonde hair was pulled up into an old popular style, and her garments closer in style to the old kind worn when Max first came to Asgard, than what most of the refugees wore, "Oh hello, I didn't know anyone else was up," the woman spoke. Her voice was vaguely similar to someone's that made her heart skip a beat, 'no. of course it could never be.'

Max shook that off as well, "Neither did I, I just needed some hydration...."

"You've been crying." The woman remarked, walking into the room and approaching Max, "A Lot by the looks of how swollen and red you are, darling." The woman came to stand very close to Max indeed, her expression one of genuine concern.

"Uh," Max sniffed and tried to hide from the woman's scrutiny with her hand, "Yeah, sorry, I," she took a deep breath to stop the new wave of tears from spilling over, "I lost someone...still getting used to not having them around...you would think it would be easier a second time around, huh?" She crossed her arms around herself, feeling to venerable under the steely blue-green gaze of the woman.

"Oh? A parent or sibling?" The Woman inquired, "Perhaps a lover, girl as pretty as you." She lifted a hand and placed it almost naturally on Max's cheek, brushing a tear away, "What was their name?"

Max shook her head, if she said Hela what would this kind, comforting woman think, "It's not important."

"It's important enough to give you those circles under your eyes. Those are not the eyes of something unimportant."

Max's eyes were transfixed by the Woman now across from her. She didn't like being touched, but she wanted to lean into this woman, like a blanket from her past. This woman had such a natural energy. Her heart felt like she knew this woman, though Max could guarantee she had never even seen this woman before, at least not as much as she remembered.

"I'm sure whoever they were, Dear, they loved you very, very much."

Max looked at her feet, shame creeping back into her stomach, "No, I don't think so.....she went away for a long time, and when she came back things were different, and....it didn't end badly. I don't even know if she knew I loved her in the end."

The woman lifted Max's gaze, "And do you?" she asked frankly.

Max was taken aback for a moment, the touch, the expression, even the way her cheek curved looked like she was gazing at a slightly altered image of her Paramour. All she could do was nod and swallow the lump in her throat to croak, "With all of my heart."

The woman smiled, her eyes crinkling slightly and in another second her hair was no longer blonde. It had lengthened and darkened, cascading down her back in a long black curtain, her brows darkening as well. The woman wasn't just any woman now. Max was looking directly into the face of, "....Hela?" The tears brimmed her eyes now as the warm wash of Sedir the pair shared swelled inside her. Another hand joined it's match, cupping Max's face as tears of Hela's own threatened to spill.

"Oh my darling, I'm so sorry," Hela's voice was unmistakable now, whatever glamour she had been using dropping. Max's entire being leapt into auto pilot as she threw herself into Hela, clinging to the apparently resurrected goddess as tightly as she could. Hela in turn wrapped Max tightly in her warm embrace.

"You came back to me," Max began sobbing in earnest, "I thought," She hiccupped, "I thought you were dead."

"I know, oh my sweet love, I am so sorry. I lost sight of who I was in my revenge. I lost sight of what was truly worth fighting for," She pulled away slightly, looking down at Max with such love and adoration, it made the smaller woman's heart ache, "I lost sight of you."

Max shook her head as if to contradict her but Hela continued, "I will never do so again. You are all that I need, and all I want in all of the realms. I see you, and I swear to Valhalla itself, I will never lose sight again, my love."

Max placed her hands on Hela's own cheek, mirroring her wife. She took in every bit of the woman's face, every line she had memorized. Every slope and curve and color, all of The Goddess' perfections Max knew so well. More importantly, she saw Her Hela in the deep, loving eyes, "You came home." Max smiled, before pulling Hela down into a deep and long lasting kiss.

They stayed there, relishing in the contact denied them until now, until Max was breathless and her eyes were blown wide, lips kiss swollen. Hela pushed a strand of blue hair from Max's face and sighed, "Your roots are coming in."

Max couldn't stop the laugh that came from her throat, "You just came back from the dead, and you're concerned about how my roots have come back in?" She rolled her eyes, "Poor timing is a family trait I suppose."

Hela laughed, a real laugh. It wasn't cruel, or condescending, it was how she had laughed all those years ago in their grotto. When they were younger, learning to coexist and to love each other. If Max's heart could swell more it would have. They would have to talk about what happened on Asgard, yes, but for now, all she wanted was to curl up in Hela's arms and actually sleep for the first time in months.

Hela, sensing Max's thoughts, swept the smaller up in her slender arms, strong for how they appeared, "We will talk, I promise you. But you haven't been sleeping, and you're more similar to my Draugr than a living thing, sweetheart."

Max's arms draped across Hela's shoulders as she cuddled her head into Hela's neck, taking in the natural smell of her. She was really here. Hela wasn't a dream. This was too real, and if Max was wrong, she never wanted to wake up.

The walk to her room wasn't nearly long enough, neither was the distance from her door to her bed, and before she knew it she was being laid on the cot. Without Hela's body heat and presence, Max let out a soft whine, sleep already taking her. Hela smiled softly, she had missed her wife so deeply. She couldn't resist.

Climbing into bed with the small woman who clung to her the moment she had found a comfortable spot, Hela wrapped her arms around her. Pulling her close, tucking the smaller head beneath her chin. Max for her part burrowed close, a small whimper falling from between her lips.

Hela let her hand trail though Max's long, slightly unkempt locks, and felt the small girl relax. After a few moments, Max's soft snores were drifting around the room, and even Hela's eyes felt heavy. She would talk to Max about leaving in the morning. She would apologize and beg for forgiveness for her actions on Asgard. She would make it right. Work every day she had stolen by surviving Ragnarok to prove that she was worth of the angel held in her arms. Both of them had faced death and moved beyond their expiration date. They were an anomaly, two miracles wrapped together by forces ages old and determined to let them stay together. Souls bound in a single knot. Destiny.

Hela let her eyes close and gently drifted off at peace and reunited at last. They didn't know they still had far to go.