#he is a terrible failure of a friend and also person and for this Scott McCall Must Die. Again. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

scott-mccall-the-hot-girl · 3 years

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my ultimate guide to thiam fic !!

( as a new teen wolf stan )

the classic post war, long ass (multi chapter) fic !!with great development that genuinely made me laugh out loud, they have the best friendship in this & i love it very much. ( like theo teaches liam to drive and i just *happy sobs* ) a fundamental in thiam fanfiction !! all stans have probably already read it but if you haven’t this is in fact a threat ,, go show this vv iconic story some love !!

Airplanes - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: After the Anuk-ite and the hunters are dealt with Liam needs a break. Cue Theo and a road trip that Liam should know better than to think will be peaceful.

Not Rated, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, 43/43 Chapters, Words: 236,875 (236k)

okay okay so this one is also post 6B !! but ,, now we introduce fighting monroe & the hunters again ,, so we get the boys & a new mission !! so if you like an intresting plot 11/10 would recommend !! just to be clear this ISN’T complete ,, if that turns you off i understand but definitely give this one a read !! it litterally have theo doing crossword puzzles & fighting zombies

Vacancy Signs - LovelyLittleGrim

Summary: Theo and Liam are in Manhattan negotiating a pack allyship when the zombie apocalypse breaks out. Now, the two of them have to find their way back to Beacon Hills without getting eaten by zombies or killing one another.

Rated: Explicit, Graphic Description of Violence, Not Completed, 15/17 Chapters, Words: 89,605 (89k)

Royalty AU !! I REPEAT ROYALTY AU !! a fantastic au where i stan their moms more than i stan them !! genuinely so good at the childhood rivals to lovers trope !! i’m genuinely obsessed with this one. has made me cry more than once ,, hurts in a good way <3 the ending is just *chefs kiss* also one of the tags is genuinely: # theo and liam make bad choices for over 130k straight !! if that doesn’t sound appealing i don’t know what does !!

Artificial Love - songbvrd

Summary: Prince Theo and Prince Liam are forced to spend every Summer together from age five onwards. They hate each other, and usually find ways to make each other miserable as much as possible in their six weeks together. But when they're reunited because of intended unions as adults, things change. They're both supposed to be married to noble women, but neither of them is as interested in anyone else as they are with their childhood rival.

Rated: Mature, No Archive Warnings Apply, Completed, Chapters: 32/32, Words: 172,935 (172k)

so if you are in the mood for a crack fic that’s not explicitally a crack fic this is for you !! okay so i’m really hit or miss with AU’s ,, sometimes i feel like they don’t quite capture the characters right but this story have the BEST dramatic liam i have ever seen in my life !! basically they all live in the same apartment building & it’s fantastic !! i saw this one floating around a lot but the summary didn’t really unrest me until i have it a shot !! so go read it rn !! also nolan & brett are genuinely fantastic and make me wheeze ,, LIKE ACTUALLY VERBALLY LAUGHING !! all i’m gonna say is that my fav characters are scott & the beetles but that won’t make actual sense until you read it !!

The Neighbors Song - TheodoreR

Summary: “I always hear you singing on your balcony every morning, but suddenly you’ve stopped?”

Or the one where Theo annoys Liam every morning with his awful singing until he doesn’t anymore and Liam is even more annoyed. Liam hates every single thing about his mornings -the fact that they happen in the morning alone is enough. The thing Liam hates the most about his mornings though is the terrible voice of the guy who lives below him. He can’t sing for shit and Liam tried to politely let him understand that by throwing flour and water on his balcony, and also by shouting it to him, you can’t sing for shit!, and then by writing it into a note he proceeded to attach to his door, but this Raeken guy just keeps doing it, every single morning, like a fucking rooster. Liam did nothing to deserve this. He probably didn’t do anything to deserve better either to be fair, he doesn’t expect to open his window and be welcomed by some angelic voice singing him good morning, he’d just be happy with nothing. Silence. That’s something Liam can appreciate in mornings. Just some bark from his dog and the sound of his misery and that’s it. But no, god forbid the new guy lets him have that.

Rated: Explicit, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Wanrings, Completed, 8/8 Chapters, Words: 42,814 (42k)

me: i’m not a big fan of AU’s ,, proceeds to talk about ANOTHER au… OKAY BUT THIS ONE !! it’s not complete but the author has been updating regularly ,, vv slow burn !! but in a REALLY intresting way !! i lOVE LIAM IN THIS SO MUCH ,, he is such a diaster of a person and it’s wonderful !! they have a great dynamic & i’m sucker for general puppy pack content ( and erica reyes being a badass ) !! also theo plays lacrosse in this & i really like it ahhhhh ,, also liam is just being an artic monkeys stan the whole time & theo is like *que confused repressed gay noises*

Inglorious Roommates - honeyscape

Summary: A roommate is defined as “a person with whom one shares a room.”

Theo would say a roommate was more along the lines of, “The person who's the bane of his existence. The weirdo that sleeps for days. The spaz that exercises at 3am. The guy with a revolving door of annoying friends. An insufferable human being that Theo has no control over living in his room.”

Example: Theo hates his roommate Liam.

okay okay i hate myself but i have another WIP for y’all !! this one is jUST FANTASTIC. i’m genuinely so upset it’s most likely not going to updated again *incoherent screaming ensues*. for this story ,, it’s very theo-centric bUT thats bc it ends right before liam becomes a concrete member of the story !! ANYWAY: basic plot = theo & acquiring not one but two children ,, so #dad theo but he is still crusty & homeless and i love him very much. it’s just so GOOD !! just read if you want to experience my fav theo coming out story & him etching high school musical

Look who's talking - Captainmintyfresh

Summary: Theo had been labeled many things in his life. Evil, failure, monster. He'd never thought Father would be one of those things but as he looked across the table to a six year old with blue smears of bubble gum icecream across her face trying to coax the first words out of her sister. Finger jabbing towards Theo's face as she repeated 'Daddy' again and again he couldn't bring himself to dispute the label.

(Theo accidentally adopts two young werewolves)

Not Rated, Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings, Not Completed, Chapters: 16/?, Words: 48740 ( 48k )

so here me out: post-canon ( poetry like angst ) summer get away !! just the boys doing cute little domestic things together whilst pining !! theo’s guilt in this is just so powerful & aGjffkgkkfkvkdlv !! i think it’s so interesting to see how they interact in this one, it’s just very heart warming !! and it features one of my favorite niche teen wolf tropes of theo being great with like seven year old girls- it’s just so good ,, very much a wonderful little one shot that just makes your heart happy.

(next time i see you you'll show me) a hundred different ways to say the same things - cherrysprite

Summary: “...You deserve good things,” Liam says eventually. He makes sure not to look at Theo even though he can feel his eyes turn on him. Somehow he can already tell that Theo doesn’t believe him.

Liam instantly makes that the goal of this summer - making Theo believe him.

Rating: Teen and Up, No Archive Warnings Apply, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 28875 ( 28k )

okay so this next section of fic recs is a bit different !!

two of my favorite authors !! and a compilation of fics i’ve read by them both !!

for context: these two have written some genuinely gorgeous fics, like pure poetry, they explore the real gritty & scary side of our boys relationship in such a wonderful way. they’ve both used some of my favorite tropes & i love them very much !!

whenever i need something soothing but so genuinely intresting & enticing these are my go to !! ( also they both write a lot of good nolan angst & some vv good fics with hayden )

go check out:

eneiryu

as well as fallingforboys

here are some of my favorite fics by them ~

darling i want you here in my arms (kiss the pain away, i know you can) - fallingforboys

even before you touched me, i belonged to you (all you had to do was look at me) - fallingforboys

memories linger like tattoo scars (but your touch on my skin is just as permanent) - fallingforboys

skin, bones, a stolen heart, and an ugly creature lurking underneath -fallingforboys

i don't know how to breathe in the place i called home - fallingforboys

whisper your gossamer truths into the shadow, maybe you'll find the answers you're searching for - fallingforboys

between the mountains and the valley we built a monument to our regret - eneiryu

cracked the hinges of the cage and waited for you - eneiryu

okay and finally: since i am a self centered whore

my own fic: an rendition of the # elevator scene

it’s basically my version of post canon if we did get the kiss in the elevator. we got a classic liam pov in which he is has 12/10 for extreme bi diaster energy even whilst being shot at !! so go him ig…

Fuck Off, Fuck This & Fuck It! - nefelibata_peach

Summary: Liam thought to himself heart rate climbing, they were bound to be dead by morning. So he thought with everything but his brain and he kissed him.

Where Liam Dunbar is very confused, slightly traumatized, and just a bit scared but hey, aren't they all! Bad decisions ensue as two boys fight in a war they never did sign up for.

Rating: Teen and Up, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Chapters: 1/1, Words: 3558 ( 3k )

#this took me so long #please go read these or i’ll cry #fan fiction #fan fic recs #teen wolf fic recs #thiam fanfiction #thiam fic recs #thiam #theo raeken #liam dunbar #theo x liam #teen wolf fandom #teen wolf gay #teen wolf #ao3 #fuck you fuck this & fuck it #thiam fanfic rec #thiam fanfic #thiam is endgame

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vanchlo · 4 years

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Green Eyes

*Thanks so much for reading! c: There are now several parts you can read here: 2 3 4

I’m so happy to share that I won a fiction writing award for this short story through my college’s art journal! c:

Blurb Synopsis: You had been subbing for Mr. Styles for the last couple of months, but you’ve yet to meet him. The notes you leave for each other have sparked a friendship, leading you to want more, and you wonder if he does too.

Genre: Teacher Harry, lots of fluff, friendship, and maybe even some romance? ;)

Warnings: None

Word Count: 5.5k words

Pairing: Harry x Reader

Music Inspo: Green Eyes by Coldplay (click to listen)

His shelves were full of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rumi, and Charles Bukowski. His desk was covered in scribbled Post-It notes, Bit-O-Honey wrappers, and empty mugs of tea.

This is what you noticed the first few times you subbed in his classroom.

These were the only details you knew about the man whose face you’ve never seen. As you gradually began to substitute for his high school English classes more and more, you learned about him more. This was due to his students, and his personal belongings.

What he didn’t and didn’t like: all the way from no fringes on a notebook paper, no red pen ever because that was his grading color, no using the word ‘can’t’ in his class, and students can eat all the snacks they want as long as the trash goes in the bin where it belongs.

The CDs in a stack on the shelf told you which ones he actually listened to because they were the ones that were on top and without dust.

You learned that the pristine book on his desk was never the one he was reading. No, it was the weathered and used copy beside his mug with dog-eared pages and penciled notes.

His drawers told you another story with their contents: boxes of teas ranging from peach to vanilla macaron, journals filled to the brim with words, adult coloring books with tv show themes, and books on Van Gogh and Monet hinting at his artsy background. His students slowly warmed up to you, and through them, so did he.

At this point, you’d only been subbing for Mr. Styles the last five months, racking up around two and a half weeks worth of subbed days. He always left precise and concise lesson plans for you. The books were where he said they’d be. The webpages he mentioned were bookmarked on his desktop. The teacher copy of the textbook and current group book were on his desk. At the beginning, his desk looked like a professional organizer had gotten their hands on it. Slowly, as you came to sub more for him, it grew messier, albeit you kept it tidy during your appearances. As the first few months passed and you became one of the few subs in his room, you started to find notes. They weren’t just any notes. They were more than the straight forward sub notes for the day’s agenda. No, they weren’t that simple. You can still remember the first one you found on a Post-It note - it went like this:

Y/N, peanut butter on your waffles or syrup?

It took you by surprise, but nonetheless, you answered his call. Each time, you’d find a contrasting pen color and scrawl your answer underneath his. Then leaving it somewhere he would find it the next day. They were one-liners at the beginning, and always interesting. Walking to his classroom from your car on those mornings, you’d fill with excitement at the anticipation of finding the next one. Sometimes it took you the entire day to find where he had hidden them.

In the closet.

In a nook in a drawer.

Under the chair.

On the backside of one of his books.

Hidden in plain sight amongst his current choice of notes and lists.

They never failed to spark a smile on your lips, whether it was quirky, confused, astounded or humored.

Guitar or piano?

FRIENDS or The Simpsons?

Vanilla or Chocolate?

Would you rather become a superhero or a wizard?

The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

Slowly, the questions became more personal, and more than just ‘this or that.’ His questions became longer, and so did your answers.

What was the moment that made you decide to become a teacher?

Is Donny a good student for you, or is he lying to me about that?

What color are your eyes?

What book/film do you believe had the largest impact on you while growing up?

What is the one meal you always order at a restaurant?

Do you have a family?

Should I splurge and buy a new desk chair?

What book should I buy for my classroom you think I need to have? Why?

Why don’t you have a classroom of your own?

When is your birthday?

Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

They were never a chore for you, or tedious. No, they were fun and you felt as if you saw a little sliver of who he really was with each note. After a while, you started to write and leave your own notes for him to answer. At first, many of them were similar to ones he had left you, because you wanted to hear his responses, too.

The newest one stares back at you, his half-cursive registering in your eyes.

What’s your favorite part about subbing in my classroom? Don’t say the students, that’s what everybody says.

Giggling to yourself, you reach over to his Pink Floyd mug to pull out a green pen. You take a moment to think of your answer. This time you found the note peeking out from behind the smart whiteboard. The sounds of the end of a school day tickle at your ears as you scribble down your answer. Pressing it to an open square of wood on his desk, you turn back to the royal blue pad of Post-Its. Peeling one off, the green pen hovers over the paper, but you can’t get yourself to write the question you’ve been wanting to know all along.

He didn’t have a Facebook, or an Instagram.

The high school doesn’t have a wall of staff pictures like others you’ve subbed at do.

It’s late winter, so yearbooks are still a ways off.

For all you know, you could have seen him here before in the halls when you subbed in another classroom.

Exhaling, you press the pen to the paper before you can convince yourself to stop. Unlike the many times before when your fears got the best of you.

What do you look like?

With a proud but nervous smile you stick it to the desk, layering the first note on top. It sticks to your lips as you bend down to reach your hand into your bag. The glossy bag greets your hand, and you pull it out to set down beside the note.

A small bag of Bit-O-Honeys.

Looking up, your eyes scan the empty classroom. Few footsteps, voices, and lockers slamming trickle in from the halls. You suddenly realize that this is the same view he sees, these are the same sounds he hears, and the same place he sits in every day. Well, when he’s not away on personal days, sick days, on holiday, and at workshops, hence your appearances. The thought knits something together inside of you, making you feel just that bit more closer to him. Something that’s been slowly happening over time since you first stepped foot in his classroom.

One of the first things that did this was the posters scattered across his walls. A poster from the 2013 remake of The Great Gatsby, The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, a cartoon of William Shakespeare, a unifying print of Keith Haring’s art, and several posters of quotes from famous books - To Kill A Mockingbird, the Kite Runner, Of Mice and Men, The Life of Pi, and even The Hunger Games. It delighted you watching him add some of them to the walls since your time here, and you’ve been itching to purchase him one as a gift. You’re unsure of what he would like though, and the fear of failure has held you back from doing so.

A bleep! catches your attention. Casting your eyes to the dormant desktop screen, you wiggle the mouse. A red circle has appeared on the title of a tab opened to your professional email. Clicking over to it from a YouTube video he had you show the class, you find you have a new message. At the sight of who sent it, your heart skips a beat: harry.styles@isd . . . . . . .

Hi. I reckon you’re still sitting at my desk this moment, now that’s a funny thought. I wanted to ask you a question while I remembered. I have to go out of town on Friday for a funeral. Believe me, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have to, but these things are a must. I apologize for it being short notice, but I thought I’d ask you if you would like to take it before I posted it to the sub database. Please let me know either way by tonight, so it has a few days to sit on the website to be claimed. Also, I wanted to say thanks for everything you do. My students really love you, and it makes me wonder what I’m missing. Enjoy your night!

Sincerely,

Harry Styles

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you. - WW”

A smile warms your cheeks as you finish reading his words, and the familiar poem that ends every email of his. You quickly type up a response to him, agreeing to take the job on Friday, thanking him for thinking of you. A new email appears in your inbox shortly after from another colleague, which occupies you before you lose yourself in your thoughts again.

Perhaps your favorite addition in his classroom is the Fender acoustic sitting on a stand in the corner. Of course, you’ve yet to see it move in the last five months. The stories his students have told you in a way have given it legs of its own in your mind. Much like the little notes you’ve been leaving for each other, something you dread ever ending.

It was a Wednesday. You’re convinced that Mrs. Watson’s Pre-Calc class is surely the bane of your existence. You keep cursing yourself for taking sub assignments for math classes. Seeing that you’re terrible at the subject, you vowed you’d never take one of her assignments again, but you have to pay the bills somehow. You found your respite in the cozy staff lounge. Couches lined two of the walls, along with an arrangement of tables on the other side of the room.

As you walk in, you see that one of the ancient history teachers has nodded off again on the plaid couch. Otherwise, the room is empty, and all to yourself. If that didn’t make you happy before, the assortment of food on the counter definitely does.

Voices float in through the open door as the plastic lid to the cupcakes opens with a pop!

“Ah, looks like ya got tha last chocolate one. I was savin’ that one fer me,” a voice comments from behind you. Turning, you find a tall man in his late 20’s walking towards you.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you can have it,” you volunteer, holding the blue-iced cupcake out for his taking.

His blush lips curl up with an amused smile. Dimples fall neatly into his cheeks covered with thick stubble. Its deep brown color matches that of the short quiffed curls atop his head. Misty green eyes stare back at you in the middle of his round, but sharp face. “‘m only joking. Go ahead and have it. I already had one earlier. They’re quite good actually, but I dunno ‘bout tha vanilla. Never really cared fer tha flavoir when it comes t’ cake and ice cream,” he comments, passing you to stop at the nearby sink.

“Yeah, I like to forget vanilla exists half of the time,” you remark, peeling away the paper liner of the cupcake.

Leaning against the counter, you watch as his ringed hand grabs a red coffee mug from the cabinet. “So do I. ‘s ratha boring, if I do say so meself.”

Nodding to yourself, a silence follows your words. The sweetness of the cupcake is shocking when you take a bite. It makes you wonder how you devoured these sugar bombs as a child. A few beeps and a hum from the microwave echo throughout the room as you check your phone.

“Y’know, I haven’t seen ya here at tha school befo’. Are ya new dis year or a sub?” he asks, bringing your eyes back to his lean figure. He pulls a yellow square packet from his tight-fitting black slats, a blush button-down tucked into its waist.

“I started subbing here this year,” you answer before taking another bite of the cupcake. Half of it consists of the sickeningly sweet frosting that makes your teeth ache.

“Mmmm I see. How d’ya like it so far? Are ya a new teacher, ‘s that why yer subbin’?”

“Yeah, I went back to school kinda late in the game after doing something else. I figure I’d sub for a little bit for some experience, because what’s another year of waiting by this time?” you comment, observing how he fiddles with his black tie while searching in the refrigerator.

“Well, congratulations. ‘s a big step t’ go back t’ school fer sumthin’ ya love. ‘s a good profession, I reckon. I’ve been teaching fer 7 years, and here at dis school fer 5. Sumtimes schools even hire subs they’ve had when a position opens, so keep yer eyes open,” he tells you, turning to you with a smile, a yogurt in his hand.

“Thank you,” you say sincerely, returning the smile. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Sure thing. I know it helped loads when I was a newbie. ‘ll see ya around, I gotta get back t’ class befo’ me students do first. Have a good one!”

Walking towards you with the steaming cup of tea in his hands, he pats your arm with his other hand on the way out. Nodding at your ‘thank you’, a small ‘you’re welcome’ falls from his lips before the door closes behind him. Eating the last bite you can muster of the cupcake, you toss its remains in the bin. A thought worms its way into your mind as you sit down at the table.

Wow, I wonder who that guy was? And is he married, because shit, he was handsome.

The smell of orange essential oil greets you when you stepped foot into his classroom the next time. The state of his desk made you frown, and made you want to scratch the itch to clean it. You resisted it and didn’t, and that thought was taken away when his students began to find their desks.

Another day of 7 classes came and went. 2 classes of Introduction to Creative Writing. 3 classes of American Literature. 2 classes of World Literature. Amusing YouTube videos broke up the monotony of your day, and those of his students. The lesson notes he left for you had become more concise as the months have passed, and as you learned from each other. The same couldn’t be said for the dish of Bit-O-Honeys on his desk that he’s kept stocked for your appearances. You’re just glad he’s put the bag you left for him to good use. All throughout your day you had been looking for his newest note, but this time it wasn’t in any of his usual spots. After correcting some quizzes from today, you finally found it in the bottom left-hand drawer of his mahogany desk. Stuck to a tall can of Coke, your favorite drink of choice.

I’m sorry it’s warm, although I’m not sure how you like to drink it. I just find warm soda to be rather nasty. The answer to your question is I have green eyes, brown hair, I’m rather tall, and I like to dress up. Is that good enough for you? Now, what do you look like, love?

Your insides melt at the sight of his answer, but then you groan at the vagueness of it. Off the top of your head, you know there are at least 10 male teachers here at this school with brown hair, maybe more. Maybe even with green eyes, too, and you know that because you’ve seen them in the staff lounge or in the halls. The thought only grows worse when you lose count of how many teachers there are here at this school. Let’s just say, there’s a lot. Yeah, that sure helps a whole lot. Annoyed, you pluck a pen from the green mug and answer his question with as little detail as possible. Two can play at this game, you think to yourself as you sigh.

If you could have a jam session with any musician, dead or alive, who would it be?

Sticking the new note where its corner peeks out from under his tabletop calendar, your eyes return to the Coke. It’s undeniable, you feel a little less perturbed at him just at the sight of it. Only a little bit, that is. Sure, you’ve subbed for a countless number of teachers at this school, and more so in this school district. A few of them are even friends or relatives of yours, but you’d never connected with one before like you have with Harry. You just wish more than anything you could find out what he looks like and what he’s really like. Continuing to take his sub jobs doesn’t really help with that. It only drives you crazier wanting to know the other side of this fascinating human being.

There he was, snoring on the couch again, tv remote in hand. The weather channel is playing, surprising you very little. Snickering, you yank open the door to the black refrigerator. After retrieving your striped black and blue lunchbox, you place the container of leftovers in the microwave. A laugh is heard over your shoulder, and when you turn, you find Green Eyes from the other day.

Tittering as the door closes behind him, he says, “No fail, John ‘s always passed out on dat couch, I swear.”

“I know, it’s every time I’m here. Maybe he should just retire already so he can take his naps at home. Then maybe we could watch something on the tv for once,” you comment, shaking your head. Unpacking your lunch box, you take out a clementine, vanilla yogurt, and silverware.

“Nah, he loves it too much. I don’t see him leavin’ anytime soon,” he remarks, walking past you to search the shelves of the fridge. “What’re we having’ t’day? Couldn’t find any cupcakes dis time?”

“No, those ones were too sweet anyways. They gave me a stomachache,” you complain with a grimace. The beeeeep! of the microwave interrupts your thoughts.

“Mmmm, I dunno, I thought they were pretty good.” Rubbing his tummy, he pulls a breathy laugh from your lips.

Your steaming container of leftovers almost burns your hands, and you dread trying to eat it within the next 10 minutes. Setting up for a lesson in Mr. Harrison’s classroom was a pain, making you wonder why you take any sub jobs besides Harry’s anymore.

“No free food fer us t’day,” he pouts beside you, closing the fridge door before venturing to the vending machine in the corner. Your eyes drift to his outfit choice today - a white button-down topped with a buttoned vest the shade of ochre, all tucked into brown slacks.

“That’s why you pack a lunch. I thought you’d know the drill by now, since you said you’ve been teaching for a while.”

“I do, but sumtimes I forget. Yer already ahead o’ me with dat part, love,” he who doesn’t have a name answers with a short laugh. Sliding a leather wallet from his pocket, you see him type in a number before you sit down at the table. “Who are ya subbin’ fer t’day then?”

“I’m on the west side in the Science wing for Harrison. Bloody Bio.”

“Ugh, I neva cared fer science. Where were ya a few weeks ago when I last saw ya?” he questions, sliding out a chair across from you. An assortment of vending machine food hits the table with a slap - peanut M&M’s, a nutrigrain bar, and a bag of Sun Chips.

“Upstairs in Watson’s Maths class. Remind me to never sub for her again, because I can’t understand Pre-Calc for the life of me. I never could in high school so I don’t know why I thought I could know,” you chuckle. A warmth fills your cheeks at the sight of his lips spreading into an amused smile.

“Yeah, I neva cared fer Maths meself eitha. Numbas neva made a bit o’ sense t’ me, words were always betta,” he explains. You nod along with his words, your mouth occupied with a bite of spaghetti and meatballs. “What subject would ya like t’ teach once tha year’s ova an’ ya go searchin’ fer a job o’ yer own?”

“Um, probably something in English since that’s my focus area. Dabbling in History has been fun, though. I enjoy learning about it myself, and I always have a better time subbing in either of those classes,” you reveal.

“I see,” he replies, his head going up and down. The crinkling of the granola bar wrapper fills the silence between you before he takes a bite. Crumbs pepper his chin, but he wipes them away from his thin beard. “How often d’ya sub here then?”

“I’d say probably 3 days a week typically, but some weeks are 4. Otherwise, I sometimes sub for a friend or somebody I know over at the middle school.”

“Ah, so yer license is sumthin’ like 8 - 12, ‘s it?” he inquires, picking up the black mug you hadn’t noticed he had.

“Yeah, I thought that would give me a good range for those grades. With my experience now, I think I’d like to stay at the high school level though,” you continue, twirling you fork around in the noodles covered in tomato sauce. Crossing your legs, the satiny fabric of your black dress pants moves with you.

“We could always use anotha good teacher here. Ya neva know what’ll happen,” he smiles, standing to his feet with his snacks held in his large hand. Returning his smile, he adds his mug to that hand, patting your back once on his way out. “See ya next time, love. Keep yer head up, it’ll get betta.”

“Thanks,” you automatically respond with. When you go to say his name, you’re lost for words, because you suddenly remember you’ve never gotten it. Now, he’s already too far away to ask for it.

Shrugging your shoulders, you stab a meatball with your fork, wondering when the next time will be that you’ll see him again. Because, he sure is nice to look at, and he’s nicer to you than anybody else here.

Stevie Nicks or John Lennon, it’s a tough call. Okay, I’m doing two questions from now on, because you ask such good ones :( Who would you jam with then? Question #2: What was the last concert you went to?

This time, you found the Post-It before the school day even started. It was on the seat of his chair, making you think he wanted you to find it right away. You’re thinking maybe he remembered one of the last times you complained about how hard he had made it. Sometimes you worry about how excited you get to look for these each time you sub in his classroom, but then you remember it’s only once every few weeks.

That can’t hurt, can it?

That day the hallways were louder than they usually were after school. You attributed that to the boys’ semifinals basketball game set to be played tonight in the gymnasium. The school’s home team against a nearby rival school. Students couldn’t stop talking about it all day, and many of them shared they’d be sticking around after school to attend. Checking your watch, you note that you should have enough time to stop at home to eat dinner before coming back for it. Even though you hadn’t even known about it before today.

The Sufjan Stevens song floating from his desktop fills the room as you get out books for tomorrow. Your hands are full with copies of The Kite Runner, making you feel grateful again to Harry- Mr. Styles for picking a decent classic for the class to read. Although you’d only read it a few years ago yourself, and it broke your heart, you’re excited to sub next time to help his World Lit class with it.

“Oh hey, be careful there, yer gonna slip and fall with all o’ those,” somebody says from behind you, distracting you from your mission of bringing the pile of books from the closet to a desk.

Don’t I know that voice? Turning your eyes to the doorway, you find Green Eyes walk in with a coat slung over his arm. Wait a second.

“I-I’m fine,” you stutter, but your actions that follow negate your words. Your eyes run over his familiar features, and slowly the puzzle pieces start to click in your head. Harry? A thought bomb explodes in your head, and the books tumble from your arms. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“Yer okay,” he murmurs, stopping in front of you. Kneeling down, you both begin to pick up the books, stacking them on top of each other. “Thanks for gettin’ me set up fer t’morrow though. I appreciate it.”

“Mmmhmm,” is all you can say, because any words that want to come out can’t get past the lump in your throat. One that’s there because of the realization you just had.

Green Eyes and Harry are the same person.

How did I not figure this out sooner?

“So, ya must be Y/N, huh?” he giggles, his head bent down as he helps you pick up the books.

“Y-Yeah, surprise,” you admit, and your laugh soon joins his. Before you know it, the both of you can’t stop laughing.

“Here,” you hear him say. Looking up, you find him standing in front of you holding his hand out for you to take. A cozy looking maroon sweater covers his upper half, and blue jeans don the rest. “Fancy meetin’ you here,” he jokes in between laughs.

“You’re right about that,” you answer, taking his hand. He helps you to your feet where you smooth down the violet skirt of your dress. “I can’t believe I didn’t connect the dots.”

“Yer not tha only one, love,” Harry comments, bending over to grab a stack of books. He begins to set one on each desk as he walks down the aisles of them. “But I s’pose there wasn’t any way t’ know.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t find you on Facebook,” you confess, cursing yourself for the slip up a few seconds later. Lifting your head from the book you just set on a desk, you find his amused eyes on you across the room.

“Ah, so ya were stalkin’ me, were ya?” he smirks, his delightful laugh following his words.

“No, I wasn’t! You’re just one of the only colleagues I’ve subbed for who I’ve never met, or like don’t know what they look like.”

Your small stack soon disappears and when you return to the pile at the back of the room, he does too.

“So, what d’ya think? Are ya disappointed then?”

“No,” you say automatically, lifting your eyes to his green ones that land on you. His cheeks lined with a thick, neat beard crease with dimples as he smiles at you.

“Neither am I . . . . Ms. Vance Joy fan,” he returns, holding your gaze. The sincerity in his words gets under your skin, going straight to your heart. The sarcastic joke inside of them makes you giggle.

Clearing your throat, you look away with what you’re sure are blushing cheeks. Most likely, an entire blushing face. “What are you doing here, anyways, if you were gone for the day?”

“I can’t miss me boys’ big game, a few o’ me students are on tha team. I thought I’d catch up on sum emails and grading befo’hand, but didn’t know ya’d still be here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just leaving, anyways,” you mutter, your movements stilling.

“I didn’t mean it dat way, love. ‘m glad we finally met, it was about time, anyways,” Harry insists, and you nod before continuing to place a book at each desk. “Hey wait, you said you were short and all plain in yer note. No, yer not, ya fibber.”

“Oh like your description was any more accurate,” you scoff lightheartedly, setting down a book before grabbing another from your dwindling stack.

His rich laugh meets your ears, and you can’t resist looking over to him. “Ya didn’t give yerself enough credit, ya know,” he almost coos, and you swear your heart melted into a puddle right then and there. That’s if it hadn’t done so already when you realized he’s Green Eyes. Swoon.

It’s hard to hold back the excitement curling at the edge of your lips. Soon, you run out of books again and when you take a peek at him, so has he.

“Were ya gonna go?” he questions, and you deal him one when you look at him confused. “T’ tha game, I mean.”

Your body feels like jello, and that any move you make would be sloppy. Embarrassing. That’s the last thing you want to look like in front of him. With his dazzling smile, adorably dimpled cheeks, and the cozy vibes he’s giving off. Not to mention, the clean citrus scent wafting off of him. A smell you certainly would be okay with smelling for hours on end. If only.

“Well bloody Rob around tha corner bailed on me, so I have an extra ticket now. Would ya like t’ join me? I was thinkin’ o’ grabbin’ a sub from ‘round tha corner befo’. Concession food ‘s always too expensive, and never worth tha lines at halftime,” Harry suggests, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. One corner of his mouth climbs up his cheek, making you feel like maybe you’re not alone in these jumbled feelings. Or in the fun you’ve had carrying on this blind relationship with him.

“Yeah, that sounds like fun. Maybe we could get to know each other a little better than the few words Post-It notes can hold.”

Slowly, the other corner of his lips curls upwards, making the dimple fall into his cheek once again. Nodding, his lips split into a full-fledged smile, singing with a chuckle. “I’d really like that,” he reveals before venturing to the door and shutting off the light. Extending an arm, he waves a hand towards himself.

“Hold on, let me get my things.”

“No rush. ’s not like ‘ve waited seven months fer dis or anythin’,” he quips. By now, you’re certain your face resembles a tomato. You hope that in the muted light, perhaps he won’t notice.

Hurriedly, you slip on your light coat and drape your bag over your shoulder. Your eyes catch something as you’re tucking your phone in your pocket. Grabbing one last thing, you turn to find him watching you from the lit doorway.

“What?” he wonders aloud, still with that smile etched onto his face. One you’re fairly sure you could get used to seeing.

“Here,” you tell him, placing the Post-It note in his palm. His fingers dotted with dark hairs brush against you, just for a second longer than need be.

“Ah, can’t forget dis now. Important stuff here.”

“Indeed,” you note, stifling a laugh as the sarcasm floats in the air.

You observe his eyes flit across the paper holding your cursive as your steps echo down the empty hallway.

“Hmmm, funny. It says ‘would you like to meet up sometime’ on here,” Harry reads, casting his twinkling eyes to you. Green eyes. “I was jus’ ‘bout t’ ask ya tha same thing on me next note. But I had sumthin’ that woulda took tha cake fer sure.”

“What’s that?” you remark, wondering how that could be. Those thoughts fly out the window when you feel his arm come around your shoulder. A squeal sounds inside of your head, but hey, at least that’s far less embarrassing than doing it out loud.

“I was gonna tell ya dat Tracy across tha hall from me ‘s leavin’ afta dis year, and I may have recommended a certain sumbody t’ tha principal t’ replace her,” Harry hums, a knowing glint dancing in his eyes as they hover over you. “What d’ya say t’ bein’ colleagues instead o’ bein’ me sub?”

“I think I could get used to that,” you answer, letting your smile take over your entire face.

“So could I, love. So could I.”

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spikeface · 4 years

Note

(consider this more of a writing prompt than a request) I tried to read Theo Raeken's fandom wiki but couldn't get a sense of him. Can you sell him qua OC? Who is he? What does he want? What does he fear? What are the worst things he's done and what internal logic did that run on? In what ways has he been heroic, even if it may have been unrecognizable to others as such? (Concretely I'm hoping to read any answer and launch into reading fic about him)

This is still a sketch. Canon leaves a lot of lacunae around Theo, so I play with them, but this is one version:

Theo’s childhood leaves him a twisted shell of a person. He’s pushed by the evil scientists who kidnap him and make him their servant (for convoluted plot reasons) to commit horrible acts, beginning with the death of his sister when he’s ten years old. His exact involvement in her death is not clear from the canon. He stands over her, very still, and watches her die, but it’s not clear if he coldly killed her or was simply a drugged victim of the scientists, who mess with people’s perception of reality. My headcanon, based on other canon references, is that the scientists, who are obsessed with creating “the perfect evil,” also push him to kill his parents and eat human flesh, and do lots of other awful things that he pretends don’t haunt him so he doesn’t go mad. Theo is very good at pretending, and learns to stifle his feelings to the point that he can really only be honest about them when he’s actively lying about something else. When he lies to the sheriff about witnessing a murder, for instance, he indirectly acts out his grief over the death of his sister as he chokes out, “I didn’t know what to do, so I didn’t do anything.”

After eight years with the evil scientists, he’s a wicked little gremlin. He’s a practiced liar and manipulator, whose speciality is to push people to embrace their darkest urges. When we meet him, he’s trying to turn Scott’s pack as dark as he is, to retroactively justify his own acts to himself, and to make it more certain that the pack will accept him for who he truly is. Theo wants very, very badly to be accepted. Part of it is personal, after a lonely life of being the scientists’ Igor, filled with self-loathing for the things he’s done. Part of it is also pragmatic; as the scientists grow closer to success (resurrecting an evil monster, don’t ask) they have less and less use for him. The scientists kill things they have no use for--failures. Theo isn’t a failure, but he’s not quite a success either, in the scientists’ eyes. Theo is petrified of failure, and the scientists. He wants the safety a powerful pack will provide. The stark difference in power between him and the scientists has led him to equate power and safety.

He works on corrupting all of Scott’s pack members, but focuses his efforts on Malia, Stiles, and Liam. He pushes Malia to try to kill her mother. If she does, no one could judge him for killing his own parents. He pushes Stiles to destroy his friendship with Scott. Stiles looks out for Scott the same way Theo’s sister looked out for him—if he’s actually terrible, deep down, then maybe his sister was too. Then no one could judge him for watching her die. With Liam, his goal is more cathartic. He wants Liam to lash out furiously at Scott for refusing to bite someone, especially when refusing means someone’s death.

Though Theo can pass for a werewolf, he’s actually a weak mockery of one, the result of the scientists’ surgeries rather than being bitten. It’s why his sister needed to die, her heart a necessary organ transplant before the scientists could begin their surgeries (show logic, don’t ask). Theo hates them for it, though he’s suppressed that emotion as a survival tactic while living under their cruel thumb. He tells himself he’s embraced their philosophy of experiments with the supernatural, but deep down is the plaintive question he had as a small, confused child: why didn’t they just make him a real werewolf? He would have been stronger, faster, better in every way than this half-thing they made him. He could have just been bitten, instead of all that surgery.

They wouldn’t have had to kill his sister, if they’d just made him a real werewolf.

Scott is the only one whom Theo can’t corrupt. He’s everything Theo isn’t: powerful, honest, accepted, not only a real werewolf but a special one. Unlike every other Alpha in existence—and Theo—he got his werewolf powers without anyone needing to die for it. Theo is obsessed with him. He needs to destroy him. He does.

Scott uses his dying breath to tell Theo that his pack will never accept him. Infuriatingly, he’s right.

He also comes back from the dead, which complicates Theo’s plans even further.

Theo makes his own pack of people he brings back from the dead. They’re all experiments the scientists no longer had any use for, which Theo hates as a potential reflection of himself, but they seem easy to control. He tries to make them embrace their darkest urges. He’s not quite successful. It doesn’t help that, in a bid for more power, Theo captures an Alpha named Deucalion, who is working to sabotage Theo as a favor to Scott. Deucalion drives some of Theo’s pack away, and shows Theo how to consume others for power. Faced with the choice between a pack and power, Theo chooses power. In the end, he consumes even Tracy, the one person who does actually accept Theo, for who he truly is, lovingly and unconditionally.

Theo is now very powerful. He’s also completely alone, having broken even with the scientists. He’s wretched. He hates Scott more than ever. He tries to kill him and his pack again—and finds himself promptly sent to a hellscape by one of Scott’s pack, where he wakes up to find his sister waiting for him, ready to rip his heart out, again and again and again.

Things get interesting when Liam brings him back from hell, hoping some of the powers he consumed will help them with their current crisis. Over the course of months in hell, however, Theo’s extra powers have been stripped away, along with his smug artifice and his will to live. When Malia starts to beat him to death in a fit of rage, he simply lets her, the same way he eventually simply let his sister take his heart over and over. He recovers from his hell-induced despair enough to try to manipulate and negotiate and generally gremlin his way to safety, but it’s clear he has no idea what to do beyond that. As the one who brought him back from hell, Liam feels responsible for him, which to him means making sure Theo isn’t a threat, bullying him into being helpful, hitting him when he’s being annoying, and offering genuine friendship to Theo if he does actually help. Theo alternates between coldly telling Liam that he’ll leave him for dead the first chance he gets, and almost compulsively saving Liam’s life. He also hits Liam, when he thinks he can get away with it. He’s never had a friend before.

After that crisis is over, Theo languishes. For the first time in his life, no one is telling him what to do. There’s nothing to prompt him to try to find power or a pack, or anything else he once failed at completely. He’s also homeless. And alone. When something creepy and supernatural happens to him in the middle of the night, the only person he can think to call is Scott—but he doesn’t, held back by shame. He remains, in my humble opinion, quite obsessed with Scott. I’m tipping my shipper hand here, but I think what was once the desire to destroy Scott has become the desire to have… something else from him. Not just forgiveness. Theo’s not sure what. It’s been a long time since he was honest with himself about what he feels. He’s working on it.

He chooses to stay in Beacon Hills. Mostly, he continues to lie and push, but he does it to help the pack--particularly Liam, who needs a lot of help with the same anger Theo once exploited. His most redemptive moment is when he chooses to ease a dying enemy’s pain, one of his first completely unselfish acts of kindness. The show ends with him as an “ally.”

#long post #theo raeken #teen wolf headcanon #teen wolf

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arukou-arukou · 5 years

Text

Just A Really Very Intelligent System

Been thinking about this one for a while. Finally managed to write it. Rating: T for “Language.” (It just kinda slipped out.) Characters: Tony Stark & JARVIS

----

He is in one of the most dangerous situations of his life trying to save the whole freaking universe by watching a man the size of a dust bunny wriggle into the hairline of his younger self, so it would be really, really bad if he happened to have a heart attack. Older him that is. But he nearly does go into cardiac arrest when he hears an old friend in his ear.

“Verify immediately. Failure to verify will result in an activation of level one security protocols.”

His tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth and his palms are sweating, but somehow he manages to whisper out: “Edwin-12-19-91-4-8-47-Alpha Override.”

“Override accepted. Sir?”

“Hey, J.”

“Sir, you have imbued me with considerable computing power, and yet never did you prepare me for the possibility of you being in two places at once.”

“Yeah, about that. You haven’t said anything to Mr. Quipster over there, have you?”

“Not as yet, Sir. You wish me to keep it that way?”

“It would really help me out, buddy.”

“Very well, Sir.”

Tony wants to stay longer, to talk, to warn JARVIS, to cry, but he has places to be, things to do, planets to save. Scott’s safely positioned, so Tony yeets himself out of the building to get to the ground floor. He doesn’t know why he thought that would make JARVIS disappear.

“I see, Sir, that your proclivities for leaping before looking are unchanged.”

Another near heart attack--he’s gradually phased Friday out of his ears now that the nanotech is connected directly to his nervous system, so he’s not exactly used to AI voices anymore--but he recovers more quickly. “You’re always there to catch me, J.”

“And yet my systems are not present in your suit, Sir. I see codal remnants of system designation FRIDAY, but nothing of myself.”

Tony remains silent. This is such a terrible time to be feeling all the feelings. He spots a grunt who looks more or less unimportant and knocks the guy out. Part of him wants to warn SHIELD about their shit security, but then again, this guy’s probably Hydra and he deserves every bruise he gets. He senses JARVIS in his systems, a ghost in the shell.

“You no longer have the reactor. And if I’m not mistaken, that is gray in your hair. So you are not my Sir.”

“Well, yes and no.”

“I suppose it would destroy the spacetime continuum for you to divulge the truth to me.”

“You’re too smart for me, J,” Tony grunts as he yanks on the bullet-proof tac vest. “It’s kind of a long story, and while I technically have all the time in the world, I also really, really don’t.”

He sidles into the lobby and looks toward his personal elevator, waiting for the Avengers to appear. J is quiet so long Tony wonders if he’s being preoccupied by...well, just about anything. Damaged internal systems, a Cap copy on the loose, a second Hulk out there, panicked calls from Pepper. But then JARVIS speaks again.

“Regardless of the tale, I must conclude that you are from the future, and I am no longer by your side.”

Tony is fucking choking up. He was not ready for this. It didn’t even cross his mind. And the fucking elevator is opening. There’s Pierce, the rat bastard, trying to collect the Tesseract.

“I hope I did not disappoint you, Sir.”

“Never, J. Never.” Fuck fuck fuck, he’s nearly crying and now Scott is on the com waiting for the go-ahead. Tony channels his pain into panic and orders his own cardiac arrest.

“Sir, what are you--”

Thank god, his younger self is on the ground and that’s apparently all the distraction J needs to abandon older Tony. Tesseract incoming. Tony grabs it and starts going and--

Blinking stars out of his eyes he watches as Loki makes off with the key, the thing they most needed, the damn stone that started all of this way back when Cap was a starry-eyed beanpole in World War II. He has just biffed saving the entire damn universe because of an overgrown Star Trek reject with anger issues. And now he has a migraine to boot.

Frozen in shame and horror, Tony watches as Thor attempts ill-advised cardiac electro-stim. Scott’s somewhere out there, yammering in Tony’s ear on the private channel, but all of that is just a buzzing.

“Sir? Sir. Sir!”

And J. Maybe Tony should cry now. It certainly feels like the time for it. One of the other SHIELD grunts is making her way toward him, so he staggers to his feet, waving her off and limping toward the door. Think. Think, brain, think. Tony is a genius, the man who invented time travel, the man who miniaturized arc reactor technology. A spaceship? SHIELD’s probably got one somewhere. Maybe they could chase after Loki.

“SIR!” How many times JARVIS has shouted his title, Tony has no idea, but this one is so loud it sets his teeth on edge.

“Yeah, J? Kind of busy here.”

“Giving yourself a heart attack, Sir?” JARVIS was programmed to be cool and calm in all circumstances, but Tony could swear that sentence was uttered with seething rage.

“I’m fine. Look at me.”

“Only by some measure of infinitesimal luck, Sir. Perhaps I should ask you to verify your identity one more time, as you seem intent on killing yourself.”

“No, J. I’ve actually got a lot of reasons to live. And so does he. Promise.” Tony is so tired. Was being an Avenger always this exhausting? Or is it just that he’s bumped over that damnable big 5-0? And Cap’s gonna ream him too. That’s never any fun.

“I’m...glad to hear it, Sir.”

And fuck it. It’s not like this will alter Tony’s timeline anyway. This reality is now on a different trajectory thanks to Severus Snape Lite. “Her name’s Morgan. You’d love her, J. Just turned four. She got my hair. Hope to god she didn’t get my personality.”

“Do I meet her, Sir?”

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck it.

“J, you should dig a little deeper into SHIELD’s systems. Well, actually, a lot deeper. And the Pentagon while you’re at it. And track down Maya Hansen from that conference in 1999 and poach her from whatever outfit she’s working for. Immediately. Make sure she brings all her vet patients with her. And, uh, when I start talking about a suit of armor around the world, steer me away from anything called Ultron. And if I make it anyway, you delete the fuck out of that system file. Have Bruce back you up. He’s more sensible.”

“Sir, I don’t--”

“And have me make back-ups. At least three extra farms of servers for you. On different continents. And all those SHIELD files? Make sure Cap and Fury get them. And there’s...there’s this guy. This assassin. Brainwashed. He’s, uh, I think he’s on ice in Uzbekistan right now. If you could rescue him, it’ll...it’ll fix a lot of things.”

“Should you really--”

“And, please. Please please.”

Tony is not crying. He’s not. It’s just all the dust and debris in the air. Good lord, he’s probably going to die of cancer anyway. And all those first responders. Did he start a fund for them?

“Start a medical fund for the first responders on the ground today. And start leaning on Congressmen to make medical plans for them. You know how long they take to get anything done. Oh, and Stern. There are incriminating photos of Stern with some young ladies on South Beach. See if you can dig those up. Flowers for Pep. And a box of chocolates. And a dry martini with extra olives.”

Tony slumps into a burned out car, staring at nothing. He didn’t save his universe, but maybe he can save this one. His eyes are still irritated, burning red and itchy. He resists the urge to scrub at them, not wanting to grind in anymore dust.

“Are you quite finished, Sir?”

“Yeah. Actually, no. I love you, J.”

Silence. Ah. That’s stumped him. Maybe he’ll go back to tending his new posse of baby chicks now.

“I know you probably do not believe me capable of it, Sir, but I love you, too.”

His son. The only one he’ll ever make, but not the only one he’s lost. His son loves him. Tony’s throat is full of dust, too. Funny how that happens. He tries to swallow it down, but it only congeals into a hard lump. He puts a hand over his mouth to try and hold back any choking sounds. “I...I know you do, J.”

“As to your orders, I shall do what I can. It is my duty to protect you, Sir, and I would very much like to meet your little Morgan.”

“She might not exist here. I might’ve just changed everything.”

“If there is one thing I have learned from all my years with you, Sir, it is that perhaps such a thing as fate exists after all. Even mathematically speaking. And if that is the case, I cannot imagine a universe in which you are not fated to this happiness.”

Tony laughs, if only to keep from crying harder. And he is. Crying, that is. As if he was fooling anyone. Happiness? Him? Happy people don’t wake in the night screaming for a pile of dust in their hands. Happy people don’t spend hours coordinating relief efforts for countries whose entire infrastructural support has collapsed. Happy people don’t hurl themselves back in time, driven by guilt and horror at all the wrongs in the world. J, brilliant, wonderful AI that he is, seems to sense the dark turn of Tony’s thoughts.

“And if you yourself cannot believe in this thing, Sir, then I shall just have to do everything in my power to provide it for you.”

Another guffaw, but at least his eyes are drying a little now. “God, I miss you, J.”

“I believe your small teammate is approaching, Sir. If I may inquire, was it the Tesseract you were seeking?”

“You mean the stupid blue cube of doom? That’s the one.”

“And you say you have the means to time travel?”

“Yeah, J. We do. But only enough to get back to our time.”

“A limitation has never stopped you before, Sir.” JARVIS sounds thoughtful, as if he’s forming a plan.

Tony would ask him what he’s scheming at, but just at that moment, Scott embiggens himself and slumps into the car with Tony. That road is closed, then. They are out of options. Out of Pym particles. Out of time. Out of hope.

Until they aren’t. Just as Tony is setting his device for their new destination, J pipes up again, for Tony’s ears only. “You say you miss me, Sir. Then allow me to give you a small gift.”

Tony is pressing the buttons, and even if they weren’t already shrinking into the quantum tunnel, he wouldn’t be able to ask exactly what J means. It’s only when he and Cap arrive in 1970 that he has his first gleaning. In his ear, a voice. One so unexpected he nearly jumps into Cap’s arms. “Hello, System Administrator Anthony Edward Stark. I am System Designation EDWIN. ‘Eagerly Deployed With Intent to Neutralize Loneliness.’ I am told to tell you the “L” is silent and invisible. How may I best serve you today, Sir?”

Cap is staring at Tony like Tony’s lost his mind. And maybe he has. He’s been bugged by his own damn operating system. With a bouncing baby AI. And if Steve finds out, he’ll probably have a conniption about the spacetime continuum or something. So the only logical thing Tony can do is say, “Let’s find some Pym particles.”

“Acknowledged, Sir. Commencing scanning.”

-----

(In this reality EDWIN saves the fuck out of Tony’s life and everyone lives happily ever after and EDWIN builds JARVIS from scratch so he’s back or something, okay? Okay.)

#writing #fanfiction #tony stark #jarvis

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princeescaluswords · 4 years

Text

How To Be a Better Alpha

One of the most ridiculous things that I’ve ever heard the Teen Wolf fandom argue is that Scott’s True Alpha arc “came out of nowhere.” It requires a viewer to believe so many contradictory things at once and to top it off with a nice layer of smooth, soothing racism.

You can observe it clearly when the fandom turns to the camera and says “<Insert Murderous Emotionally-Damaged Pretty White Man Here> was a better alpha than Scott.” I’ve seen it done with Peter, with Derek, and even with Deucalion. (Though strangely enough, I’ve never seen it done with Satomi or Talia. It’s like there’s something different about them that makes them ineligible to be superior. Weird.)

The truth is that Peter, Derek, and Deucalion were terrible alpha leaders, and that wasn’t a coincidence. With foresight, the production decided not to be subtle and said “here are the examples Scott has to work with, see how he does better.” As the seasons progressed, Scott’s way of doing things was compared to each one of them, demonstrating his growth and improvement from frightened teen victim to True Alpha. One might have thought that they should have been more subtle, but given their audience’s stubborn insistence that anyone else should be the alpha, their foresight was correct.

People wonder why ‘everything is Derek’s fault.’ Did they ever consider that the production said “We want to make Derek sympathetic, but we can’t let the audience believe he’s a legitimate alpha. Pile it on.” In that, the production failed to convince the fandom. But I truly believe that to this fandom, if you have a sympathetic backstory and you’re white, you could eat babies and still be seen as a superior werewolf.

Peter was a terrible alpha, that should be a given, but what the audience should also pay attention to was why he was a terrible alpha. He allowed rage at what happened to his family to consume everything, to give him such a bloody and aggrieved sense of entitlement that no action was beyond the pale for him. There’s a reason that the production connected Peter to the spiral and to the element of fire, that which consumes and leaves nothing left but ash. In the end, he got his revenge, even though he wasn’t satisfied, and all it cost him was the blood of his own kin on his hands, permanent estrangement from his first beta, and permanent distrust from his remaining relatives. Did a single drop of blood from any of the people he slaughtered magically return the Hales to the legacy he cared for so deeply? Did it make him or Derek or Cora content or happy?

From Peter, Scott learned that an alpha can’t let what was done to him control his responses. Once he became alpha, Scott didn’t use his alpha status to hurt the twins, even though they had plagued him and his friends. (People forget that it was the merged twins who gave him the wound that he almost died from in Frayed (3x05)). He didn’t focus on Sean Walcott, who had tried to eat his mother, on that hospital roof, instead going after Liam dangling from the roof’s edge. He swallowed any emotion he had against Stiles, Liam, Deucalion, and Theo in season 5 in order to stop the Beast and the Doctors. Scott can be angry -- he was furious with his father, with Gerard, with Peter, and with Derek. But he didn’t let that rage consume him like Peter did.

Derek was a terrible alpha. This wonderful post by @thehollowprince demonstrates all the ways he was. But where Peter was consumed by rage, Derek was inhibited by fear. It was fear of failing the memory of his family, fear of repeating the same mistakes, fear of not being strong enough to do what was necessary that motivated every single bad decision he made as alpha. He refused to trust those he couldn’t control. He refused to share the whole truth with those whose trust he needed in return. He couldn’t hope; he had to act, so he was ready to execute an innocent girl, ready to murder his own beta and his own sister out of expediency, ready to do terrible things in order to never make the same mistakes again. His fear of his own ability to fail drove him to push away those who could help him, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

From Derek, Scott learned he had to trust, even after he had been burned, especially after he had been burned. After he became alpha, he worked with Chris Argent without hesitation. He worked with Derek without hesitation. He went to Peter for information. A demon with Stiles’s face tortured him and killed Allison, and (contrary to the depraved wishes of the fandom) he didn’t need time apart from Stiles or ever, ever blamed him. Which is why he called Chris to stand with him against the Doctors, worked with Deucalion to prevent Theo from gaining the Beast’s power, and even worked with Theo to save Mason. His optimism, backed up with action, was an antidote for Derek’s catastrophic fear.

Deucalion became a terrible alpha, and his story was even more tragic because he clearly didn’t used to be. Dovetailing from Derek’s example, Deucalion failed because he became focused oh his own power and philosophy, with his own self, as a reaction to treachery. (”I took the individual parts and became a greater individual whole.”) Deucalion, as powerful, as insightful, and as intelligent as he was, couldn’t imagine that he wouldn’t have all the answers, which is why he ended up “[piling] up bodies in a narcissistically psychotic effort to form [his] perfect pack” when perfection is unattainable. Why, even though he was aware of the eclipse, he still got caught in it. He had to be right, damn everything else.

From Deucalion, Scott learned he could be wrong, that the people he trusted and listened to could be wrong, that it was okay to be wrong and admit you were wrong, and that using his power to make himself right was not a productive way to lead. This is why, when every knowledgeable adult was telling him he had to kill Stiles, he found another way. This is why he called Stiles when he botched Liam’s Bite. This is why he didn’t let his fuckup with Garrett’s money stop him from doing the right thing. This is why he literally begged Stiles, the best friend who had lied to him, betrayed him, assaulted him, to let him help save Noah.

Imagine that scene in The Last Chimera (5x11) where Stiles jumped in that Toyota monstrosity and tried to drive over Scott. Stiles was being a pissy baby, so filled with self-loathing and wracked by guilt, that he was going to try to track down an unstable chimera who was being pursued by the Dread Doctors by himself rather than accept Scott’s help. Would Peter have humiliated himself the way Scott did? Would Derek have argued that they could move past their mistakes as they had in the past? Would Deucalion have put himself in that vulnerable position to protect a person who had literally assaulted him and dehumanized him two days in a row? If you tell me they would, I won’t believe you.

Rejecting rage, overcoming fear, acknowledging his capacity for failure, embracing compassion, and fighting for principle, this is exactly what made Scott the True Alpha. It didn’t come out of nowhere. It was telegraphed from the first episode, the notes hit again and again and again.

The only way someone watching this show couldn’t see it is because they didn’t want to see it. And there are only so many motivations for that.

#teen wolf meta #teen wolf racism #scott mccall defense squad #scott mccall #true alpha

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momentofmemory · 4 years

Text

FICTOBER 2020 - day thirty-one

Prompt #31: “I trust you.”

Fandom: Teen Wolf

Characters: Stiles Stilinski, Scott McCall.

Words: 2218

Author’s Note: an underappreciated aspect of chess culture? games played for fun are called Skittles. set post 5B, Scott & Stiles take a break to play a game of chess, and wind up talking about a whole lot more than just a game. Gen fic, Scott & Stiles focus. Stiles POV.

>> j’adoube (i adjust)

Stiles tosses his pen in the air. Watches it flip, twice. Catches it, barely. Toss and repeat.

“Hey, Scott.”

Scott, who’s sitting across from him at the desk, just grunts without looking up. They’ve been going over scholarships together for the past three hours, and it’s the most mind-numbing use of a Saturday Stiles has had in a very long time.

Which, considering most of his Saturdays have been more of the terrifyingly bloody variety, is probably still preferable. But still.

“Scoooooooott.”

Scott flips to the next page. “Mm?”

Stiles throws his pen at him and smacks him squarely across the face.

“Ow, Stiles—what?”

Stiles flips over onto his stomach, triumphant to have finally gotten Scott’s full attention. “You wanna play a game?”

Scott puts his own pen down and leans back in the chair, stretching and popping in a way that suggests being hunched over for that long is unpleasant for even a werewolf. “What kind? Board game?”

Stiles grins.

Board games, to his mind, are sacrosanct.

Not necessarily because he loves them—given a free range of choices, he’d rather do just about anything else—but because it’s so easy for them to suck.

Yahtzee, Monopoly, Shoots and Ladders, Candy Land, Sorry, even Risk—there’s just too much luck involved for his taste. Draw randomized but predetermined cards, roll uncontrollable dice. And that’s not even touching the disaster that’s Life, where the only two choices that ever matter are college or career, kids or no kids.

Absolutely nothing about bite or no bite, or possession or no possession.

Or ‘betrayed by a monster that gets your best friend killed and your crush of five years committed to an asylum,’ but.

Either way, it’s a joke.

There are better board games. Clue or Scrabble, which still rely on the hand that’s dealt, but at least can be salvaged with enough knowledge and strategy.

But he has the best one in mind for today.

“Chess?”

Scott’s eyes light up with a competitive glint Stiles feels like he hasn’t seen in ages, and he knows he’s won.

“I could do a round or two,” Scott says.

“Oh, thank god—”

“But, then we have to get back to work on these.”

“Yep, uh-huh, absolutely,” Stiles says, rolling off the bed and hunting underneath it for his set.

He fully intends to bribe Scott into playing way more than that, but one thing at a time.

His fingers close over the wooden case and he draws it out, blowing a bit of dust off the top. He turns it over in his hands.

If board games are sacrosanct, then chess is the holy grail.

Most people don’t get the attraction, and he respects that. It takes a certain level of concentration to be good at chess, and considering how many strategy books he’s read on the topic—even if he rarely remembers them—he can beat a casual player without too much effort. Plus, most people prefer games that don’t require much thought, perfectly wiling to just roll their dice and move their mice.

Stiles respects that a lot less.

What he likes about chess is that it’s the one game that’s completely and totally winnable every time—with no variation from chance or random dealing. He might be outmatched, but he’s not outnumbered.

Every choice he makes is fully his own.

It’s the best game.

The only marginal difference is that white has a slight advantage, as it gets to go first, so as Stiles tosses the set onto the bed he says, “I can be black this time.”

Scott barely glances up from the scholarship he’s still worrying himself over. “Hm? No, that’s okay, I don’t mind. You can take white.”

Stiles rolls his eyes and flops onto the bed. “You’ve been black the past like, eight times we’ve played. You’re white this time.”

“Stiles, I really don’t care if you want it.”

It’s an innocuous statement, but Stiles’ temper flares because all he can hear is that Scott thinks he needs the advantage—even if it’s one that, statistically, barely even matters. “What, because you don’t think I can beat you otherwise?”

“What? No, Stiles, I—” Scott falls silent, and it’s enough to instantly cool Stiles’ frustration. “I just—never mind. I can be white.”

Stiles hesitates for a few beats, then turns the board and starts setting the pieces up so the white ones are facing Scott.

He pauses. He’s been trying to pay more attention to Scott lately, but it’s hard—Scott tends to fold pretty quickly on smaller issues, and he tends to—

Well.

Not.

“Then again,” he tries, “I guess it doesn’t really matter—”

“You asked me to play white, so I’ll play white.” Scott’s voice is flat. “You were right; we haven’t switched it up in a while, so it’s only fair. Just give me a sec to finish this.”

“…Okay.”

Stiles toys with the edge of the board as he waits for Scott to finish restacking the papers.

One of the reasons Stiles likes chess is because it makes for a surprisingly good Rorschach test, and he’s played it with every member of the pack at some point or another.

Liam’s not much of a challenge, mostly because he’s made it clear he doesn’t care. The one time they played, he’d started strong—aiming to capture more than aiming to secure—but his failure to consider long-term strategy had gotten him into trouble almost immediately. With Malia, she has a good concept of how to control the center of the board, and favors trap-based strategy, but her ability to pay attention to her opponent’s gameplay is usually her downfall. Lydia tends to focus on a bishop and pawn strategy, which works very well for her mostly because it infuriates Stiles—his own strategy relies heavily on a more spontaneous approach to movement, and her method thoroughly demarcates most of the board. That’s probably why he enjoys playing with Kira, whose strategy rotates every time they play—as soon as he’d introduced her to the game, she’d started binging chess tutorials at speeds that put his own research to shame.

He hasn’t had the chance to play with the new pack members, but he has his guesses as to how that will go. Mason will play circles around him, but be super nice about it. Hayden will either trounce him thoroughly if she cares, or lose terribly if she doesn’t, and there will be nothing in between. Corey… Corey will probably favor the knights, which will make him hard to beat on the front end, but almost impossible to lose to in the endgame.

But he can work with that. All of those strategies make sense; make it easier for him to understand and categorize them.

He looks down at the white and black pieces, standing silently in anticipation of the match.

He can’t think of any reason Scott would want to reject the advantage, unless it was just for his benefit, but he hadn’t appeared to be lying.

And now Scott probably won’t tell him because he’d snapped at him instead of just asking.

Stiles winces and rakes his hands through his hair.

It’s just a chess preference. It’s not like it matters.

Except it does, because everything between them feels so fragile after Theo.

Stiles’ thoughts are interrupted when Scott vaults onto the bed, accidentally knocking one of the pawns forward as the board lists to the side.

“Whoops,” Scott says. The tiniest of smirks appears on his face as he moves to fix it. “J’adoube.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You don’t have to announce that that’s not your move when I can clearly see what just happened.”

“Can’t be too careful,” Scott says, adjusting the piece. “You’ve definitely called me out for less in the past.”

“You tried to change your mind after wrapping your whole hand around a bishop! How is that less?”

Scott shrugs, and Stiles is relieved he doesn’t seem to be bothered about the pieces anymore. “I’m just saying. Can’t be too careful.”

“A mindset I would normally endorse wholeheartedly, however.”

Scott laughs, then settles in cross-legged and stares down at the board, elbows resting on his knees and face furrowed in contemplation.

Stiles glances at Scott, then at board, then back at Scott again.

Scott doesn’t move.

Suddenly, it’s really bothering Stiles that despite having played with him more than anyone else, despite knowing him better than anyone else, Stiles still doesn’t understand why Scott plays the way he does.

It’s not that Scott’s exceptionally bad, or that Scott’s exceptionally good. It’s that he’s both.

When he plays with Stiles, he matches him step for step, pivoting his goals almost as quickly as Stiles does. But the few times Stiles’ seen Scott play with others, that ability seems to vanish—his level of competence almost directly mapped onto the level of the person he’s playing with, above or below where Stiles would expect it.

It doesn’t make sense, but that’s just Scott. Stiles had long since acknowledged that there were always going to be some things that didn’t make sense about his best friend.

That was before Theo. Before everything that was Scott & Stiles fell apart.

And also, Scott still hasn’t moved.

“Hey Scott?” Stiles waits until he glances up at him, chin still resting in his hands. “You gonna go, bud?”

“Yeah,” Scott says. He blinks down at the board. “There’s just… a lot of options.”

“Okay, right, that’s true,” Stiles says. “But it’s also just the first move.”

“Yeah.”

Scott reaches out and touches the pawn from before. He hovers there for a moment, then retracts his hand—the pawn still unmoved.

Stiles clears his throat.

“Really? You want me to—” Scott sighs. “J’adoube.”

“Technically, you’re supposed to say that before you touch it.”

“And technically, you said I didn’t have to say it earlier, so that one could count for the one I just did.”

“Bro,” Stiles says, because this is getting ridiculous. “Literally just move the pawn. Or a knight. Or any of the other pawns. There are zero other options.”

“I know, I know,” Scott says. “I just… what if I move this piece, and then you move like your knight or something, and it turns out I made the wrong move?”

Stiles squints at him. “It’s your move. Why would my move, which comes afterward, make yours wrong?”

“Because I have to stop your plan.”

“Right, but like.” Stiles tilts his head. “What about your plan?”

“That is my plan.”

Stiles’ brain short circuits, and he spins rapidly through every game he’s ever watched Scott play. “So—so wait. You mean every time you’re playing you’re just… trying to figure out your opponent’s plan? You’re not making one of your own?”

“I mean, kinda?” Scott reaches for the pawn again, then pauses before touching it. “J’adoube.”

“Yeah, whatever, just move the pawn,” Stiles says. “So earlier, it wasn’t about wanting me to have an advantage; you wanted black because… it’s to your advantage?”

Scott spins the pawn around in a slow circle, then lets go of it without moving its position. Again.

“I guess,” he says. “You like playing white better and I like black better, so it just… makes more sense to let us play the ones we actually prefer.”

“Then why didn’t you just say that?”

Scott shrugs. “It just seemed like it was important to you, and I… I didn’t want to argue.” His eyes drop, and so does his voice. “I don’t want to argue with you anymore.”

Something clicks in Stiles’ mind. “J’adoube.”

“Uh,” Scott looks pointedly at the pieces, which are still unmoved, and his hands, which aren’t anywhere near them. “What?”

“‘I adjust,’” Stiles says. “That’s what you’ve been doing. Adjusting your plan to match mine, or—or anyone else.”

Scott picks at the edge of his sleeve. “And that’s bad?”

“Um.” Stiles hasn’t gotten that far. “No? I mean like, you’re clearly very good at it. You’ve definitely beat me enough times doing it.”

“I sense a ‘but.’”

“See, there you go, anticipating me again. You’re a pro.”

“Stiles.”

“Yeah, okay, the point.” Stiles glances down at the chessboard—and then at the pile of scholarships, too. “Look, I’m just saying you gotta just take the shot sometimes. Or move the pawn. Whatever. My point is, it’s okay to make your own plans.”

Scott shifts a bit to look behind him at the paperwork, something both worried and hopeful in his expression.

“And then, y’know,” Stiles continues, “you can always adjust them later if you have to. But you don’t have to start out that way.”

Scott picks up the pawn and turns it about in his fingers. He bites his lip. “And… you trust this to work?”

“Nah, man.” Stiles settles back against the wall and nods towards the board. “It’s the first move; I have no idea how it’ll play out. But… I trust you enough to know that you can handle it if it doesn’t.”

Scott’s eyes get suspiciously bright, but Stiles doesn’t comment. “I trust you, too.”

(And, well.)

(If Stiles’ eyes get a little bright too, no one comments on that either.)

Scott moves the pawn to e4, and lets it go.

#fictober20 #fanfiction #scott mccall #stiles stilinski #teen wolf #chess metaphors

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haro-whumps · 5 years

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Group Whumpees 2: Grey

A continuation of the story inspired by @whumping-every-day and @justtorturewhump

CW: modern slavery, referenced abuse, multiple whumpees, aftermath of torture

Tag List: @bleeding-demon-teeth @redwingedwhump @whimperwoods @inpainandsuffering @theycomeinthrees

First

Galo sat at the head of the over-long table, its fancifully carved wood bare except for his spot. He should… invest in a centerpiece. A candle set. Something. Pasta with chicken and braised carrots to the side were artfully arranged on the over-fancy dinnerware his aunt boasted about but hardly used, and Galo had a very large glass of wine set out for him.

He guessed it made sense none of them would eat with him. Or had already eaten. Something, he wasn’t sure, it just, it made sense that he was alone at the table. It was a… very large table, in a very large space, chandelier hanging with a vacant sort of light.

The food was good though, and Galo was pretty sure that wasn’t just his hunger talking. The carrots were a perfect texture, the chicken juicy, the sauce wonderful. And pasta, well, it was hard to go wrong with pasta.

“Is everything to your liking, Master?” Greyson asked quietly, bowing shallowly as he topped off the wine. Galo briefly considered stopping him, but, eh. Why bother. He could really use a drink or four after the day he’d had.

“Yeah, thanks! Everything tastes great. Did you all make it or?”

“Sasha is your chef, Master.”

“I’ll have to thank her next time I see her,” Galo said with a smile. Greyson hesitated, lips parted, but then he nodded, eyes submissively downcast.

“Hey, Grey,” Galo started, voice gentle. “Or Greyson? Probably rude of me to nickname you without asking.”

“You may call me whatever you desire, Master,” Greyson said, and Galo huffed. Er, whoops, bad idea. Greyson winced.

“Greyson,” Galo tried, watching the man’s adam apple bob in his throat, “You up to take a seat with me? Or would that, like, freak you out?”

Greyson’s eyes barely widened, and he looked between Galo and the chair Galo had nudged towards him.

“Master?”

Hm. A direct order might help him feel more confident, but it could also box him in, and Galo didn’t want to force him. “Up to you, dude, either way it’s no skin off my nose.”

Greyson slowly sat, and Galo smiled. “Figured we might catch up. Get to know each other. We didn’t speak much when I was a kid.”

Greyson stared at him, expression unreadable but his shoulders drawn in, for a long moment. “Ffforgive me, Master,” he said breathily, “but I do not know what I should say.”

“Ah, my bad, that probably wasn’t a great conversation starter,” Galo said with a rub to his undercut. “How’ve you been? I think the last time I saw you I was… 15? 16? God, it’s been a while.”

“...I have been alright, Master. And--yourself?” he asked hesitantly, still very quiet, face still very blank.

“Good! A lot better than when I was still living with my dad, I’ll tell you that. Moved into my own place, got on T, started working out regularly, and now it looks like I can quit my boring day job,” Galo said with a smile. “Hell, I could probably go back to school, too, once everything is settled. That’d be really nice.”

Greyson smiled, that barely-visible quirk of his lips. “You were always the cleverest of her nephews and nieces, Master Galo, if I may be as bold as to state.”

Galo snorted with a bright grin. “Yeah, well, don’t tell my siblings, but it wasn’t exactly a large feat.”

Greyson actually chuckled along with Galo’s laugh, at that, and Galo was feeling pretty good that he had made himself a friend, but then Greyson convulsed, hand over his mouth, arm tight around his stomach.

“Shit!” Galo cursed, getting up immediately and going to his side. Greyson was trying to stand, something eerie about the way he moved, and wouldn’t meet Galo’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, Master, I’m so sorry, Master,” Greyson whispered, barely audible.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Galo murmured, broad palm settling atop Greyson’s back, other hand hovering in front of Greyson, ready to catch him if he convulsed again. This was moving too fast, Galo needed to slow it down. “Shhh, shh, what’s wrong, Greyson?”

“I…” Greyson swallowed audibly, his adam’s apple bobbing. “I apologize, Master, but I think I was overzealous in sitting alongside you.”

Oh. Okay. Panic response, of some sort. Greyson was… also traumatized. That was weird to think. But then again, Galo considered, he couldn’t imagine anyone living with Auntie Bethany for over thirty years making it out scott-free.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You did what I asked you to, this is technically my fault for pushing you too hard.”

Greyson shook his head. “I apologize, Master. I reacted poorly.”

Hrm. Deja vu. Hadn’t Nyla said that, when he’d accidentally clipped her on the temple?

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Galo assured, rubbing his hand up and down Greyson’s back. Something felt weird about it, but Galo was more interested in helping Greyson calm down than whatever weird ping his brain received. What to do, what to do?

“Hey, Greyson,” Galo said, giving the hand in front of his face a very small wave. “I really like those carrots; could you go get some more for me?”

Success! He guessed right. The presence of an achievable goal seemed to cut into Greyson’s impromptu panic, and he nodded sharply before gliding out of the dining room with a purpose. It would probably help for him to be removed from the situation that had freaked him out, too.

Ah, yikes. Galo sat back down with two hands in his hair, sighing deeply. Looks like they were all gonna be a delicate touch, after all? He’d had high hopes for Greyson, since the guy had known Galo since he was in braids and overalls, but, well. Guess that’s what living with a real harpy could do to a man. Man, why would Auntie Bethany have even chosen people like Nyla, if this was what she’d managed to do to Greyson? People this skittish couldn’t possibly sate her need for endless complaining and beration, could they?

A weird, half-formed thought hovered on the edge of Galo’s awareness, but he couldn’t quite grasp it. He was tired. It had been a long day at work, a long day with the hospital staff and arranging which funeral home she’d be sent to and the lawyers and a long evening here in this massive castle. It was past bedtime. That, and he really had drunk a lot of wine.

“Thanks, man,” Galo said when Greyson came back, looking his usual calm, elegant self.

Four sets of eyes turned to him when he entered the kitchen.

“Grey?” Nyla asked, her eyes haunted. He couldn’t imagine he looked very good, right that moment.

“Master would like seconds of the carrots, Sasha,” Greyson said first, getting the priority information out while he still felt like he could speak. He was sweaty on the temples, and Nyla was staring at him with pinched misery, Lilah clinging to her skirt with a vacant stare into the middle distance.

Greyson took a breath, slow but still shallow, and wiped at his temples. “Master’s games are different than Mistress’s were.” He was familiar with the way the others flinched, the way Evan’s face screwed up with anger before settling into miserable resignation, the way Sasha blinked hard to keep her tears at bay with her hands not pausing in their task. “But he is lenient with failure.”

Greyson vaguely remembered that from when Galo was a youth, too. It had been nearly twenty years, but he remembered Galo being a cheerful, thoughtful child, kindest that Greyson had ever met. He would be better than Mistress had been, Greyson felt relatively confident. But the man differed a great deal from his teenage years, so who was to say what else had changed?

“Did he mention how long he’ll be lenient with failure?” Evan asked.

“He didn’t,” Greyson stated, taking the plate from Sasha, “But if I had to guess, we’re being given an adjustment period.”

Greyson left the kitchen with the plate balanced perfectly on his fingers, spine straight, posture the same as it had been for almost all his life. Master’s plate was empty when he returned, and he wasn’t sure if he should apologize for making him wait or keep quiet. Master ate faster than the Mistress had. This was important; they’d have to adjust to him, cater to his needs personally.

When Master thanked him, Greyson relaxed, a little. He wasn’t sure how Master Galo’s manners played into the game that was currently afoot, but it was nice, to be treated in this way. Greyson stood, hands clasped behind his back, as Master ate, at his beck and call. Greyson bowed low when he announced that he was turning in for the night.

“Goodnight, Master,” Greyson said, voice composed again, and returned to the kitchen with two handfuls of dishes.

Again, four pairs of eyes landed on him when he came through the door, but he offered them a shaky smile, this time.

“Master has gone to bed for the night,” he announced quietly, and the tension in the room palpably dropped.

“Sasha, take Lilah to bed, please,” Nyla ordered softly. “Greyson, Evan,” she looked between them, and the tension caught its second wind.

One of them would have to go. Usually, Mistress would specify which one she wanted (and it was usually Evan or Lilah), but apparently Master’s game involved them having to make the decision. Greyson hoped nothing terrible would happen if they guessed wrong.

He’d been lenient, so far. He’d been lenient with Nyla, more than they’d hoped, and lenient with Greyson; friendly even.

“I’ll go,” Greyson volunteered. “Master has shown a certain amount of favoritism, so far. And I’ve done this for a long time. I’ll go.”

Evan looked relieved, Nyla, torn. Greyson put his hand on her shoulder and she thinned her lips in a stubborn line.

“You’re the one who leads us,” he reminded quietly, “We need you at your best, tomorrow, while we navigate… this. I’ll go.”

Nyla placed her hand over Greyson’s, nodding reluctantly. “Evan and I will clean up the kitchen. We’ll see you in the morning.”

And so Greyson left the kitchen once again, and quietly, gracefully moved up the stairs, down the hall, and into Master’s new bedroom. The running water of the shower sounded from the cracked doorway of the bathroom, so Greyson settled himself onto his knees in the middle of the room, removed and folded his shirt neatly, and waited.

#GW #whump #slavery #slave whump #aftermath of torture #multiple whumpees #implied abuse #referenced abuse #Galo #Greyson #Nyla #Lilah #Evan #Sasha #mine #writing #referenced mind games

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savagesbonergarage · 4 years

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Actual totally not a joke post question for y'all:

Should I quit my job and dedicate my time to writing/creating?

Like, honestly. There are a lot of factors affecting my thought process about what I should do, although thankfully money isn't really one of them. (I mean, it kinda is, but I'll be ok). My concerns and priorities are all a jumbled mess but I'll do my best job of laying them out.

Personal priorities

1: I want to write! Above all, I want to write. I was unemployed during the time I started my fic prompts and taking requests, and now that I'm not it's harder to make time for it. When I'm not working, I'm resting before I go back to work and doing my wifey duties. I lurk on here and repost, but I'm still unable to really dedicate the effort I personally require of myself to post a fic.

1A: When I'm not writing, I want to work on my other creative endeavors in my local film community which is all but a dream right now with the lack of time I currently have. I'm really blessed to have the connections I do and my ideas and resources that are always at my disposal, but alas.

2: School? This one's kinda iffy, but still something I'm considering. I've been wanting to get a degree or at the very least a certification in writing or something similar, but there's a lot of factors against this one with the pandemic affecting things, as well as money and the fact that I'd be trading one time-consuming extreme for another. So, eh?

The reasons I'm conflicted about up and leaving:

1: The job I have really isn't terrible. I enjoy working there most of the time, I've made friends, and the work itself isn't too stressful. I feel I can be myself and I get along really well with pretty much everyone. (We're all gays with Adhd). Although I'm not hurting for money, I took this job for stability reasons just in case something unexpected happens (which isn't unlikely with the state of the world rn).

2: Mental health. Surprisingly, I've been pretty okay since I've been back to work. Socializing and going out into the world has been pretty good for me as far as feeling and behaving like a real person goes. I'm not even the most social person, but apparently interacting with people on a daily basis is really important for me. Another big factor is that I'm about to get recommendations for treatment for my ADHD, so I'm wondering if I should wait until then before I make the decision to leave. Maybe once I'm on medication I'll be better at prioritizing things? Idk.

3: Fear? This one's a really broad and substantial one. I personally have this idea that I'm not contributing the way I need to be if I'm not earning money, and I feel like if I quit I wouldn't be aiding the household enough. Also, I have a fear of failure and disappointing others. I already talked to my mans about everything and he's ok with whatever I decide, so idk exactly who I'm worried about disappointing if I do but??? I guess myself? Or my coworkers? Or maybe I feel like quitting is giving up and I don't want to do that? My head is all sorts of weird about this stuff, so I don't blame you if this doesn't make a lick of sense.

Why I'm probably still gonna (maybe?) do it though

1: Also fear. Well, very heavy concerns. I'm not sure if it's just the area that I live in that makes this such an issue for me, but it probably is. Standard covid precautions are in place at the location I work for, but people without masks are allowed in despite all the signs saying otherwise. They don't care. (The customers and management I suppose). A large demographic of the people that I interact with on a daily basis are of the God-fearing, Trump-loving, anti-mask variety and it's extremely infuriating. I bring my own disposable gloves from home to wear bc our store doesn't provide any and I'm the only one that wears them. I do it because the last thing I want is to bring covid home to my husband with underlying health conditions, or anyone else for that matter.

1A: I have no sick time. Say I were to get it (if I don't already have it... 🙃) I wouldn't be able to call out scott-free without getting any warnings or write-ups and eventually terminated. For every month worked, I get 2 hours of sick time, and I've only worked there one month. We are required to submit a health check each day before our shifts (which is great) but if you are feeling sick and stay home, there's no covid relief. There was a 2 day period where I did have a slight fever and didn't go in, (no telling if it was covid or not) but with having no sick time it put me in the red. This is upsetting not just for me, but knowing that people who do get sick will fabricate their screenings bc they don't want to lose their job is something that shouldn't have to happen. I feel like the health of myself and others is more of a priority than a little extra money.

So, I guess I've kinda talked myself into it? But maybe not? I really don't know what to do. Sorry for the long post, I guess I'm really frustrated about it. If it turns out I'm still sick (cause I'm feeling it babeeyyy) I might just call out again tomorrow and stop giving a fuck.

Sith me kinda wants to quit. Should I trust Sith me? Lol

#personal #yep I'm not just tired #this be a congestion headache #biiiiiiihhh

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ozarkhealingtraditions · 5 years

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From the Archives: Bird Lore

FBA: “Folk Beliefs from Arkansas” by Mary Celestia Parler OFM: “Ozark Folklore and Magic” by Vance Randolph

Devil Birds:

“Blue Jays are evil birds. They fly to the devil everyday and report the doings of the world.” ~FBA

“Blue jays are supposed to be very rare on weekends, and children are told that these birds go to hell every Friday to help the Devil gather kindling. Another story is that the blue jay spends Friday breaking off twigs to be burned by wicked people here on earth. There is an old song with the chorus:

Don’t you hear that jaybird call? Don’t you hear them dead sticks fall? He’s a-throwin’ down firewood for we-all, All on a Friday mornin’.” ~OFM

“To kill a buzzard is bad luck because it is kin to the devil.” ~FBA

“If you see a jaybird carrying sticks, he’s going to build a fire for the devil.” ~FBA

“Snakes, frogs, snails, buzzards, and blue jays are in league with the spirits of darkness.” ~FBA

“It appears that many old settlers have a peculiar feeling about the wren; some of them really believe it is different from all other birds, and that there is something supernaturally evil in its habits. The bite of a wren is supposed to be deadly poison, perhaps because wrens eat so many spiders. I have known country boys who were accustomed to rob every birds’ nest they could find, but had never even seen a wren’s egg, much less touched one, although wrens were nesting all over the place. Several of these fellows told me that it is very bad luck to kill wrens, the best course being to let them severely alone.” ~OFM

Death Birds:

“When a person is dying and a whippoorwill starts calling outside the house, that whippoorwill is trying to catch the soul of the dying person to keep it from reaching heaven.” ~FBA

“Whippoorwills seldom alight on buildings, but if one (Joes come to rest on the roof of a house and gives its characteristic call from this position, there will be a death in the neighborhood within twenty-four hours. Any sort of a bird rapping on a windowpane, or trying to get into the cabin, is a very bad sign; a man from St. Paul, Arkansas, tells me that when a turtle dove flies into a house, somebody is sure to die soon.” ~OFM

“The Ozarker does not like to hear a screech owl near his cabin, since it is always an unfavorable sign and may indicate sickness or approaching death. But above all he cautions his children never to imitate the call of such a bird under these conditions. If an owl hears its cry answered from within the cabin, it will return again and again and sooner or later descend the chimney and scatter the fire out on the floor, so as to burn the whole place down.” ~OFM

Poultry:

“When a rooster crows in the dawn, all spirits depart for the spirit world.” ~FBA

“There are several magic tricks to protect domestic fowl from birds of prey. Mrs. Lillian Short, of Galena, Missouri, tells me that one of her neighbors used to take a smooth stone from a runnin’ branch, just about big enough to fit the palm of the hand, and keep it in the oven of the cookstove this was supposed to prevent hawks from killing the chickens. Most hillfolk of my acquaintance use a horseshoe instead of the stone, and some think that a muleshoe is even better. It is frequently fastened in the firebox of the stove rather than in the oven. In the old days the muleshoe was hung up in the fireplace, or even set into the mortar at the back of the chimney.” ~OFM

“Some chicken grannies pull one feather out of each chicken in their flock and bury these feathers deep in the dirt under the henhouse or henroost. As long as the feathers remain there, it is believed that those particular chickens cannot be carried off by hawks or varmints, or stolen by human chicken thieves.” ~OFM

“The great horned owl is often called a witch chicken, perhaps because of the belief that owls can charm a chicken off its roost.” ~OFM

Seasons and Weather:

“One often hears frogs piping very early. Mr. Kufe Scott, attorney at Galena, Missouri, has noticed for many years that during court week (the second week in March) the frogs holler for the first time. In this locality it is commonly believed that the frogs always come out too soon, and are ‘froze back’ three times before spring really arrives. The birds known as killdeers are much more reliable than frogs, but even killdeers are sometimes mistaken about the weather. One certain sign of spring, however, is the return of the turkey buzzards; the old-timers all agree that there is never any freezing weather after the first buzzard is seen.” ~OFM

“If a big owl hoots in the daytime, or calls loudly and persistently near the house at night, there will be a heavy rain within three days.” ~OFM

Magic Birds:

“The great plicated woodpecker, rare in most sections of the country, is still fairly common in the Ozarks. Most Ozarkers call it a woodhen, but it is also known as ‘God Almighty’ or ‘Lord God Peckerwood,’ doubtless because of its large size; it looks as big as a teal duck, or a crow. This bird is supposed to have some supernatural powers, and I am told that various portions of its body are highly prized by witches and goomer doctors.” ~OFM

“The body of a buzzard is somehow used to treat cancer, but this must be done secretly, for the killing of a buzzard means seven years of crop failure for the whole countryside, and the man who shoots one of these birds is naturally unpopular. Dr. Oakley St. John, of Pineville, Missouri, tells me that a farmer who killed a buzzard some years ago, to treat his daughter’s cancer, so enraged his neighbors that they threatened him with bodily harm, and several people came into town to see if he could not be punished by the county officers.” ~OFM

“In some places one finds people who believe that the blood of black birds or animals has some special virtue as a treatment for any sort of skin eruption.” ~OFM

“At many points in Missouri and Arkansas country folk treat chickenpox by bringing a black hen and chickens into the sickroom and making them walk over the patient’s body as he lies in bed. Near Bentonville, Arkansas, I knew a woman who brought a black rooster into her house and placed it again and again upon the bed where a little boy lay sick with chickenpox.” ~OFM

“Every old woman has heard that owls’ eggs are a sure cure for alcoholism. Owls lay their eggs in March, and it is said that many Ozark children are kept out of school and sent by their mothers to search for owls’ nests in the tall timber. Many a hillman has been fed owls’ eggs, scrambled or disguised in one way and another, without knowing what he was eating.” ~OFM

“A man in Fort Smith, Arkansas, told me that his father placed the entrails of a big horned owl over the door, to keep witches away. And Otto Ernest Rayburn tells of a man on trial for hog-stealing who wore ‘the dried gizzard of a hoot-owl tied round his neck for good luck.'” ~OFM

Love Birds:

“Some girls hunt birds’ nests on May 1. If the first nest a girl finds on that day has eggs in it, she’ll be married soon; if the nest is empty, she will be an old maid. ‘But what if there are young birds in the nest?’ I asked the girl who told me about this. She cast down her eyes, blushed, and made no answer. Her mother overheard the question, and called the girl into the house at once. I have never been able to learn what happens to the girl who finds young birds in the nest.” ~OFM

Bird Signs:

“Various sorts of birds are believed to carry warnings. A woman in my neighborhood whipped her grown daughters unmercifully, until one day ‘the redbirds come an’ ha’nted her’ by tapping on the windowpane, which gave the woman a terrible fright and caused her to mend her ways. Another of my mountaineer friends was greatly disturbed when a “rooster redbird” hovered about his door; he said that it was a warning of death, and sure enough, one of his daughters died within a few weeks.” ~OFM“It is said to be very bad luck to count the birds in a flock. Nevertheless, Ozark children have a little jingle to sing when they see crows flying:One’s unlucky,Two’s lucky,Three’s health,Four’s wealth,Five’s sickness,Six is death.”~OFM“If an owl hoots or a wolf howls in the vicinity the watchers are seriously disturbed, because these sounds signify that one of the group will die before the year is out.” ~OFM

#ozarks #traditional witchcraft #folk magic #ozark folk magic #Ozark Folklore #ozark folkways #traditional healing #traditional medicine #birds #bird lore #folklore #ozark healing traditions

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notbemoved-blog · 4 years

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The Trayvon Martin Generation Comes of Age

WHAT IS NOW KNOWN in certain circles as “the heroic civil rights movement” got its jump start, many would say, with the horrific torture and murder of a 14-year old boy named Emmett Till in 1955. Till’s assassination made headlines around the world and slowly, oh so slowly, things began to change. There was 42-year-old Rosa Parks’ dramatic decision not to move from the seat in the Whites-only section of the bus just three-and-a-half months after the slaying, citing Till as her point of reference for her refusal. There were the nine Black students determined to enter the all-White Little Rock High School in 1957, thanks largely to their adult coordinator and leader, the 42-year-old Daisy Bates. This was another headline-grabbing moment that alerted Americans of all stripes that all was not well in the Southland and that Freedom was a-stirring within the hearts of its Black populace.

But it wasn’t until North Carolina’s 1960 Greensboro sit-in and the wave of protests that followed in literally hundreds of cities throughout the U.S. in the ensuing months and years—coordinated and executed primarily by young college and high school students throughout the South—that things really took off. It was then that America began to listen to the voices of nonviolent protest and started to understand the depth of the racial divide that separated the country. The timing of these seemingly spontaneous acts of civil disobedience should have surprised exactly no one. They were, in large part, the direct result of the Emmett Till murder and the failure of the American jurisprudence system to prosecute that heinous crime and bring Till’s murderers to justice.

Perhaps it was Anne Moody in her powerful memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi, who first gave voice to the obvious radicalization that took place of many Black children in the mid-1950s. In vivid prose, Moody details how she first heard of Till’s murder while on her way home from high school, and what a shock it was that someone her very age could be killed for something so seemingly innocent as flirting with a White woman. After days of hearing more about the murder from both her own family and from the White family she did housekeeping work for, she recalled feeling something that would animate her future activism:

Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me—the fear of being killed just because I was black. This was the worst of my fears. I knew once I got food, the fear of starving to death would leave me. I also was told that if I were a good girl, I wouldn’t have to fear the Devil or hell. But I didn’t know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough, I thought.

Anne Moody (right) with friend Joan Trumpauer and Tougaloo professor and mentor John Salter at the Woolworth’s counter in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963.

That simple realization, based on her knowledge that she was in the same boat as Till—and the very same age as he had been—would, less than eight years later, drive Moody into the vanguard of the civil rights movement on the streets and at the lunch counters of Jackson, Mississippi. In time, she would become a powerful spokesperson for the cause not only through her breakthrough memoir but also through her rousing public speaking to raise funds for various civil rights organizations.

MOODY’S STORY IS NOT SINGULAR. Many civil rights veterans today point to the wanton and senseless murder of young Till as their touchstone for later activism. In his award-winning “Memoir of the Movement” Walking with the Wind, longtime Georgia Congressman John Lewis recounts with similar shock and awareness what the Till killing meant for him and his generation of young Black men:

As for me, I was shaken to the core by the killing of Emmett Till. I was fifteen, black, at the edge of my own manhood just like him. He could have been me. That could have been me, beaten, tortured, dead at the bottom of a river. It had been only a year since I was so elated at the Brown decision. Now I felt like a fool. It didn’t seem like the Supreme Court mattered. It didn’t seem that the American principles of justice and equality I read about in my beat-up civics book at school mattered. . . . They didn’t matter to the men who killed Emmett Till.

SNCC Chairman John Lewis speaking at the March on Washington in 1963.

Less than five years later, Lewis would become an essential member of the Nashville sit-in movement, an incorporating member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee—later elected its Chairman—would give an incendiary speech at the March on Washington and, in 1965, would demonstrate an enduring example of commitment to the Struggle when he was beaten bloody on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

Historians estimate that 70,000, mostly youthful citizens participated in the sit-in movement across hundreds of cities throughout the U.S. Not only could they point to injustices done to themselves or their families, but they could point to the example of Emmett Till, which caused them to understand, as Bob Dylan so adeptly pointed out, “When you ain’t got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.” They were called “The Emmett Till Generation.” They put their bodies on the front lines and brought about essential change to 1960s America. It was THESE Americans who caused the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—introduced by President Kennedy just months before his death—and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

NOW, ONCE AGAIN, AMERICA IS IN AN UPROAR. Black men continue to be killed at disproportionate rates by police and by White vigilantes nationwide. Once again, the rage has reached a critical tipping point. And the timing is directly linked to the killing of a Black youth, Trayvon Martin, eight years ago. So many young black men point to the shocking murder of Martin as the point at which they came to consciousness about America’s two-tiered system of justice. On Monday, June 1, young activist Jaden Olley, at a rally for George Floyd on the streets of Washington, DC, spoke to the PBS Newshour: “I was eight-years old when the Trayvon Martin case happened,” he said. “Ever since then, I understood that it could be me.”

My own sons, now twenty-seven and twenty-five—both young Black men—came to the same conclusion at the same time. It was in late February 2012, upon hearing of the Martin killing, that my wife and I had to have “the Talk” with these youth on the verge of manhood. One was born just three months after Trayvon Martin had been; Martin had just turned 17 when he was murdered. We had to urge them to be careful even in our own peaceful and progressive neighborhood in Northern Virginia. [Martin, as you may recall, was walking through a gated community on his way to his father’s home in the Orlando suburb of Sanford, Florida.] Our older, more sociable son admitted that ever since he was twelve, he had realized he needed to put on a smile and reassure our overwhelmingly White neighbors that he was friendly, safe, and non-threatening while walking through his own neighborhood. Imagine what a terrible burden that reality must be to carry day-to-day.

You can be assured that other young people, both Black and White, were traumatized by the Trayvon Martin killing. Not only did they see someone their own age murdered, but they later saw the murderer get off without any serious consequences for his tracking and terrorizing a Black youth. It was a shocking moment for them – just as the exoneration of the Emmett Till killers had been for an earlier generation. And then they watched as the murders continued: of Michael Brown (18), of Eric Garner (43), of Philando Castile (32), of Sandra Bland (28), of young Tamir Rice (12), of Laquan McDonald (17), of Freddie Gray (25), of Natasha McKenna (37), of Walter Scott (50). And not a damned thing happened. Many of those watchful youth determined at some point along that trajectory that if they ever had a chance to do anything about such matters, they would take charge and insist that the police keep ALL Americans safe.

That moment has now come.

AFTER WATCHING THE HORRIFFIC VIDEO of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of the Minneapolis police, thousands of young people have turned out in cities across America to express their outrage that these unconscionable criminal acts--by those who pledged to protect and defend us--have not yet been eliminated. This is the Trayvon Martin Generation coming of age and rising up to express their rage and to say that “this will not continue on my watch.”

One hugely encouraging development since the early 1960s is the overwhelming number of Whites—young, old, and in-between—who are standing with their Black brothers and sisters in the streets. This is vastly different from the few Whites who committed to the struggle in the early 1960s. Joan Trumpauer, who sat with Anne Moody at thet Woolworth’s counter in Jackson, and her ilk were the exception—at least until the 1964 Freedom Summer brought hundreds of White college students to Mississippi. That experience would change the trajectory of their lives.

Think of how many lives are being transformed today on the streets of America’s cities—standing up for racial justice in the face of overwhelming odds. Indeed, thousands of Whites are publicly expressing outrage that such brutality against Blacks continues. Some are even putting themselves between their Black friends and activists and the police, using their White privilege to good effect.

But the pushback has been equally ratcheted up due to an erratic, power grabbing, unstable national leader and the craven politicians and bureaucrats who do his bidding. No matter. All of the ridiculous posturing and unlawful acts by this illegitimate President—John Lewis was the first person to publicly use this moniker—will not quell the fire that has been lit by the Trayvon Martin Generation’s coming of age. Nothing short of federal legislation reining in police forces nationwide and requiring equal protection to all of America’s citizens will quench this rage. Just like their heroic forebears in the Struggle, this generation has its Eyes on the Prize. And They Shall Overcome.

#Trayvon Martin #Emmett Till #Anne Moody #John Lewis #George Floyd #Michael Brown #Eric Garner #Philando Castile #Sandra Bland #Tamir Rice #Laquan McDonald #Freddie Gray #Natasha McKenna #Walter Scott #The Trayvon Martin Generation #The Emmett Till Generation #Joan Trumpauer #John Salter

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starwarsforcestuff · 5 years

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Can you do number 4?

Number 4 was fave/least fave character. So I believe this needs to be divided up into Movies (Prequel, Original, Sequel), Books, Games and TV shows. Star Wars is such a vast universe that breaking it down like this actually helps me.

Prequels

Obi-Wan Kenobi is my favorite prequel character, hands down. Part of it is his sass but, the biggest reason is his persistence and will to stand up for what he believes in, be that the Torce, Anakin, Democracy or his promise to his dying Master to train Anakin against the wishes of the Council. Obi-Wan is a person you can rely on.

I didn’t really have any specific character that was my least favorite, but if I must I’ll just post them and you all can attack me.

Jango Fett. Hyped over nothing. The only thing remotely interesting about him is the fact that he was the clone template. Even Mandalore was like “We don’t know him.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. Why Darth Maul? How could you? Maul is the coolest! You’re not wrong, but you are also probably allowing the comics and TV shows to enhance this character. This is purely based on what we see in The Phantom Menace. He let his arrogance get the best of him and Obi-Won kicked his ass. That is all. However, his story and Dathomir and the Nightsisters are pretty cool. If you don’t know anything about it I HIGHLY suggest you look it up. It is equal parts interesting, cool, and tragic.

The Original Trilogy

Yoda is my favorite. He may be my favorite of all time. Through the entire Skywalker Saga Yoda has been wise and powerful. He is deeply devoted to the Force and is wise enough to admit when he was wrong and learn from his mistakes. While I was not a fan of The Last Jedi I thought having Yoda come back and tell Luke to learn from his mistakes because failure is the greatest teacher was just very profound. In a way, Yoda was also telling Luke to learn from his (Yoda and the old Jedi Order’s) mistakes.

I don’t have a character that is the least favorite for me. I think all the characters for the OT were influential and interesting and original for the most part. That being said Lando Calrissian would have to be one of the characters I just don’t particularly care about. My thoughts are neither overwhelmingly positive or negative for this character.

Sequels

Rey. She is not a very original character. Most of her journey is remarkably similar to Luke’s, but then again, Luke is not the most original character. They both follow the Hero’s Journey as illustrated in Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. (If you are unfamiliar with the Hero’s Journey please click the link. It will bring you to a very short youtube video that explains it really well with examples.) Either way, Rey makes her own mark in the Star Wars universe. She is powerful, motivated, and fights for the light despite the tragedies that have surrounded her.

General Armitage Hux was a character I absolutely could not stand. Part of it was a devotion to The First Order, part of it was he was just an unlikeable person. That being said, I loved that I hated him. I was really disappointed when he died. So anti-climatic, I wanted a better death than to just be shot. Maybe a full-on execution or maybe he could have gone out Kamakazi style trying to sabotage Kylo Ren’s plans.

Books

Vi Moradi from Black Spire by Delilah S. Dawson is a complicated character that fights her own inner prejudice to help establish a resistance base on Batuu while helping a former First Order officer, CD-O922 “Captain Cardinal” aka Archex recover and adjust to life in the resistance after torturing her in a previous book (Phasma). That being said,

Captain Cardinal aka Archex. Another complicated character who sometimes struggles to shake the brainwashing of the First Order and recover from an injury received by Captain Phasma. He is one of my favorites due to his self-sacrifice. To ensure that the First Order believes there is no resistance on Batuu, he sacrifices himself to blow up a First Order ship after sending an all-clear message to the First Order to make them think it was a malfunction.

There is no picture for him, but Winshur Bratt from Resistance Reborn by Rebecca Roanhorse was truly a terrible person. He kicked a girl close to near death and didn’t even care. He was power-hungry and had some major childhood issues he needed to resolve, but thought that joining the First Order would have helped that.

Games

Cal Kestus from Jedi Fallen Order. A Padawan during Order 66, he survived due to the sacrifice of his master and has lived in secret ever since, until he is discovered by the inquisitors. Cal relearns the ways of the Force and meets new friends along the way. What I like most about him is how he stood by the principles of the Jedi even when he had nothing to lose from going to the dark side.

Carth Onasi from Knights of the Old Republic. I just think he is really annoying. In all fairness, I’ve actually not finished playing the game so I can’t say much, but I just find him annoying most of the time.

TV Shows

The Child aka Baby Yoda. That’s it. We don’t know much about it other than he is 50 and it is Mando’s job to take care of him, but he is so cute.

Like Darth Maul, cool, but ultimately I just don’t like her. The Jedi Lost book by Cavan Scott really kinda ruined her for me for some reason.

Well, this lasted much longer than I anticipated. Let me know if any of my answers match yours!

#star wars #lucasfilm #the clone wars #the mandalorian #knights of the old republic #jedi fallen order #star wars prequels #star wars original trilogy #star wars sequel trilogy #Batuu #vi moradi #ventress #The Child #baby yoda #obi-wan #Rey #skywalker saga #resistance reborn

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vedinthevanguard · 5 years

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the sea wolf.

Blimey! Is that (ARVED LESKE)? (HE) is the (VANGUARD) on the Cursed Serpent and has been onboard the ship for (TWELVE YEARS). Legend has it they are (DEVOTED & PERCEPTIVE), but don’t get on their bad side, because I hear they’re (FEROCIOUS & DEFENSIVE). Aye! Stop staring! (VED) has their (SABRES) out! Written by Gray, PST, 28, they.

Hi hi! I’m Gray, and this is Ved. Looking forward to writing with everyone! My Discord’s having Problems at the moment, so in the meantime, feel free to message me for plotting purposes! Can’t wait to get started!

POCKET EDITION

At his best, Ved is devoted, perceptive, sensible, constructive, and confident. At his worst, he’s frighteningly ferocious, defensive, aloof, merciless, and suspicious. He’s also unambitious, and, generally, reserved until his opinion is asked, then very frank about what he thinks. You asked. He’s more reasonable than most of the vanguard - which isn’t necessarily saying much - but that has limits, and he’s fairly unforgiving.

Ved’s a werewolf, with his even hairier, scarier half kept contained by sorcerous enchantment - a discreet amulet he wears at all times, and a small ritual refreshed on the night of the new moon every month. This ritual requires a single pearl, a twig of hemlock, a handful of soot, and vinegar. Most of that’s not hard to find, and doesn’t look too strange. But he’s secretive about it, all the same.

Nobody on the crew, currently, knows what Ved is. If you would like your character to have suspicions, let’s chat before anything happens! Just because this is kind of his Biggest Deal, you know?

Captain Bradway took him in and secured that enchantment for him years ago, and Ved’s been on the Cursed Serpent ever since, rising to informally lead the ship’s vanguard. The vanguard is the front line of any attack, by sea or land, meant to intimidate and soften up enemies before the next wave, and to secure key footholds ahead of a charge; basically, your scariest, craziest bastards. It’s an extremely dangerous role, even for a pirate, and they’re generally perceived as at least a little insane and definitely bloodthirsty.

He’s got a hell of a reputation for violence, one that contributes to the fame and notoriety of the crew; maybe the worst of it’s more story than fact, but Ved’s certainly a fearsome fighter, unnaturally strong, quick, and resilient.

HISTORIES Captain Bradway wasn’t always a captain, and Arved Leske wasn’t always a name that was known and feared through Port Royal and far beyond. First, they were a sea-hardened sailor with a good heart and a boy with a terrible secret, and little else. Scott literally pulled Ved out of the gutter, despite having witnessed the horror of a young werewolf mauling a few men to bloody pieces. They’d had it coming. That’s how Ved had existed, until then - tooth and claw. He and his mother fled the Luna pack when he was only a child, after his father tried and horribly failed to rise through the ranks. Not long after, she was slain during the full moon. Hunted, like an animal. Alone, Ved slunk and struggled his way through the world, fending off the cruelties of man and nature alike. It made him hard, but not heartless; Scott could see that, and, slowly, earned the trust of the half-wild creature he’d found. If it weren’t for Bradway, Ved wouldn’t be much of a man at all - or, he wouldn’t have lived to be anything. The old man was even able to secure a solution to Ved’s struggles to contain the beast he could be, aided by a sorcerer his researches had led him to. With that locked away, Bradway was confident that Ved would make an exceptional, if unusual, asset to his new crew. Ved wasn’t so certain - about losing that part of himself, terrible as it was, or about staying on with these pirates. It was Scott’s word, Scott’s faith, that got him onto the ship in the first place. Ved quickly strove to be useful around the Serpent, and he was. But, as he grew, it quickly became plain enough that the boy had something fierce in him, something that could be frightfully destructive. Again, it was Bradway who brought him to heel. Not perfectly, perhaps, but. With sword in hand, Scott tried to show Ved what that power could do, when controlled, and what it meant to fight alongside and for your crewmates. Soon, Ved was joining the vanguard as they boarded and raided ships and fortresses. Eventually, he led those same missions, his prowess in close quarters proven over and over. It wasn’t that Ved enjoyed the murder and maiming; Scott would never have tolerated such a soul. He was simply suited to the task, stronger, quicker, sharper than any human, more resilient, sharper of ear and eye… and, from brutal experience, prepared to be merciless. Legends of his violence - some horrors truer than others - soon began to precede him, and the Cursed Serpent. Which suited the captain’s needs, really. These tales added some menace to their flag, made prize ships more likely to give in without a fight and merchants and fences less likely to haggle. Whether or not Ved likes being the subject of rumors and ballads is pretty damn irrelevant, at this point. Not much he can do to stop it all. When it comes to the rest of the crew, Ved’s always kept on the fringes, but not unpleasantly so; he’s just got a great deal to hide, and never wanted to test Bradway’s care and trust by getting too close, slipping up, and doubtlessly creating terrible problems for them both. In all his time on the Cursed Serpent, he’s never told a soul but Bradway what he is, or where he came from. He doesn’t plan to. Even among the vanguard, where his ties are truly battle-tested, Ved doesn’t believe for a second that a soul would stand with him if they knew the truth. And he wouldn’t even entirely hold it against them. At the same time, in some sad way, he’s wound up estranged from half of himself - from the animal that’s been bound and tied away under his skin for so long. It’s supposed to be a piece of him, it used to be; now, it’s a stranger, and the thought of releasing it has become more frightening than anything else. So, really, Ved’s hardly a proper werewolf anymore. But he’ll never be human, and that means he’ll never be free to live as he likes unless he keeps his secrets to himself. The Serpent has been his home for a good while, now. Honestly, he’s not sure where else he’d go, what else he’d do. If keeping most of the crew at arm’s length helps him avoid those questions, he’ll do it. The reputation helps with that. New recruits, certainly, tend to give the master of the vanguard a wide berth. The death of Captain Bradway struck Ved from a few directions, all painful. Scott was more than a leader, more than a parent, more than a mentor and friend to Ved; he was his first real, meaningful experience of anything like kindness. Moreso, as the vanguard, Ved feels personally responsible for Bradway’s demise. Maybe he couldn’t convince the old man not to come along, but… if only he’d been closer, in that raid, there to look out for Scott the way the captain had looked out for him. Ved’s sure the rest of the crew sees some guilt there, some failure, whether or not that’s fair or productive. Maybe he’s right, maybe not. He certainly blames himself, and that’s been weighing heavily on him. Heavier than he’s admitted. MYSTERIES Ved’s secret is nothing less explosive - potentially - than the fact that he’s a werewolf. He’s well aware of how his kind is seen by the world, and with all he’s survived and done, isn’t about to argue that the risk isn’t very, very real. Nor is he going to go around sharing this dangerous truth with just anyone; it’s under control, has been for years, and there’s no need for them to know. Not their problem. Captain Bradway made it his, and in doing so, made it possible for Ved to have a place that finally felt like home - he doesn’t expect anyone to be so understanding, especially given how long he’s been lying to them.

#cs:intro

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cursedserpenthq · 5 years

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(zach mcgowan, 32, cis male, werewolf) Blimey! Is that (ARVED LESKE)? (HE) is the (LEAD VANGUARD) on the Cursed Serpent and has been onboard the ship for (TWELVE YEARS). Legend has it they are (DEVOTED & PERCEPTIVE), but don’t get on their bad side, because I hear they’re (FEROCIOUS & DEFENSIVE). Aye! Stop staring! (VED) has their (SABRES) out! (ooc: Gray, PST, 28, they, none)

THE CURSED SERPENT

Captain Bradway wasn’t always a captain, and Arved Leske wasn’t always a name that was known and feared through Port Royal and far beyond. First, they were a sea-hardened sailor with a good heart and a boy with a terrible secret, and little else. Scott literally pulled Ved out of the gutter, despite having witnessed the horror of a young werewolf mauling a few men to bloody pieces. They’d had it coming.

That’s how Ved had existed, until then - tooth and claw. He and his mother fled the Luna pack when he was only a child, after his father tried and horribly failed to rise through the ranks. Not long after, she was slain during the full moon. Hunted, like an animal. Alone, Ved slunk and struggled his way through the world, fending off the cruelties of man and nature alike. It made him hard, but not heartless; Scott could see that, and, slowly, earned the trust of the half-wild creature he’d found. If it weren’t for Bradway, Ved wouldn’t be much of a man at all - or, he wouldn’t have lived to be anything. The old man was even able to secure a solution to Ved’s struggles to contain the beast he could be, aided by a sorcerer his researches had led him to. With that locked away, Bradway was confident that Ved would make an exceptional, if unusual, asset to his new crew. Ved wasn’t so certain - about losing that part of himself, terrible as it was, or about staying on with these pirates. It was Scott’s word, Scott’s faith, that got him onto the ship in the first place.

Ved quickly strove to be useful around the Serpent, and he was. But, as he grew, it quickly became plain enough that the boy had something fierce in him, something that could be frightfully destructive. Again, it was Bradway who brought him to heel. Not perfectly, perhaps, but. With sword in hand, Scott tried to show Ved what that power could do, when controlled, and what it meant to fight alongside and for your crewmates. Soon, Ved was joining the vanguard as they boarded and raided ships and fortresses. Eventually, he led those same missions, his prowess in close quarters proven over and over. It wasn’t that Ved enjoyed the murder and maiming; Scott would never have tolerated such a soul. He was simply suited to the task, stronger, quicker, sharper than any human, more resilient, sharper of ear and eye… and, from brutal experience, prepared to be merciless. Legends of his violence - some horrors truer than others - soon began to precede him, and the Cursed Serpent. Which suited the captain’s needs, really. These tales added some menace to their flag, made prize ships more likely to give in without a fight and merchants and fences less likely to haggle. Whether or not Ved likes being the subject of rumors and ballads is pretty damn irrelevant, at this point. Not much he can do to stop it all.

Ved’s always kept on the fringes of the crew, but not unpleasantly so; he’s just got a great deal to hide, and never wanted to test Bradway’s care and trust by getting too close, slipping up, and doubtlessly creating terrible problems for them both. In all his time on the Cursed Serpent, he’s never told a soul but Bradway what he is, or where he came from. He doesn’t plan to. Even among the vanguard, where his ties are truly battle-tested, Ved doesn’t believe for a second that a soul would stand with him if they knew the truth. And he wouldn’t even entirely hold it against them. At the same time, in some sad way, he’s wound up estranged from half of himself - from the animal that’s been bound and tied away under his skin for so long. It’s supposed to be a piece of him, it used to be; now, it’s a stranger, and the thought of releasing it has become more frightening than anything else. So, really, Ved’s hardly a proper werewolf anymore. But he’ll never be human, and that means he’ll never be free to live as he likes unless he keeps his secrets to himself. The Serpent has been his home for a good while, now. Honestly, he’s not sure where else he’d go, what else he’d do. If keeping most of the crew at arm’s length helps him avoid those questions, he’ll do it. The reputation helps with that. New recruits, certainly, tend to give the master of the vanguard a wide berth.

The death of Captain Bradway struck Ved from a few directions, all painful. Scott was more than a leader, more than a parent, more than a mentor and friend to Ved; he was his first real, meaningful experience of anything like kindness. Moreso, as the vanguard, Ved feels personally responsible for Bradway’s demise. Maybe he couldn’t convince the old man not to come along, but… if only he’d been closer, in that raid, there to look out for Scott the way the captain had looked out for him. Ved’s sure the rest of the crew sees some guilt there, some failure, whether or not that’s fair or productive. Maybe he’s right, maybe not. He certainly blames himself, and that’s been weighing heavily on him. Heavier than he’s admitted.

SECRET

Ved’s secret is nothing less explosive - potentially - than the fact that he’s a werewolf. He’s well aware of how his kind is seen by the world, and with all he’s survived and done, isn’t about to argue that the risk isn’t very, very real. Nor is he going to go around sharing this dangerous truth with just anyone; it’s under control, has been for years, and there’s no need for them to know. Not their problem. Captain Bradway made it his, and in doing so, made it possible for Ved to have a place that finally felt like home - he doesn’t expect anyone to be so understanding, especially given how long he’s been lying to them.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

THE MUTUAL SUSPICION For whatever reason, Ved and this character have never been able to establish even the comradely trust of sharing a ship. There’s just something off, not right, unsettling, and time hasn’t changed that. Ved’s not the type to avoid people, and that’s a hard thing to do aboard ship, anyway. But. Whenever he has to share space with The Mutual Suspicion, his hackles are clearly raised - and so are theirs. He won’t like being forced to work with them, or being pushed to take their word for anything, no matter who’s trying to convince him it’ll all work out. Captains included.

THE AUTHORITY ISSUE Ved never openly defied or disagreed with Bradway, never gossiped or backchatted about anything that passed between them, as captain and master of the vanguard. He also hasn’t started any problems shipside, with boatswains or first mates or anyone else of any sort of authority, since those early days. In fact, he tends to keep the rest of the vanguard in check. They tend to be some of the better-behaved crew members, while onboard the Serpent, at least. (In port, they’ve something of a reputation for rowdiness.) But. Times are changing, and the old captain’s gone. Ved’s not a big fan of change, generally, and he’s wary of what might become of the ship’s officers now that Bradway’s gone. Power does things to a person, and there’s power up for grabs. Those officers might feel the same about him, looking at the understated sway he holds over the vanguard. Or they might misread things entirely from the opposite angle, and presume he’ll just follow orders, as he always seemed to do when Scott was alive. Maybe he was Bradway’s dog, as they say… but Bradway’s dead, and mistaking Ved’s earned deference for any sort of thick-headed lackeyishness would be a bad mistake.

THE COMRADES IN ARMS Every ship needs a strong vanguard, a cadre of fighters ready to charge over the side and start a raid, by sea or land. This is one of the most dangerous and deadly jobs in their trade, and they know it. It’s among these people, this pack of bloodthirsty, easily riled pirates and butchers, that Ved wound up finding his purpose on the Cursed Serpent. Bradway feared that this role would draw out the worst in his werewolf find, and perhaps he was right to. Nonetheless, the old captain couldn’t deny that Ved was every bit as valuable as he’d hoped - there, at the front, in the thick of the fighting. It didn’t take long for Ved to win the confidence of the once-dubious vanguard, and he’s since come to a position of natural, informal leadership within this portion of the crew, risen there by virtue of his (supernaturally) powerful presence on the battlefield. The vanguard genuinely trusts Ved, his judgment, his skill as a warrior. As they all adjust to life without Bradway, some difficult questions might get asked. For instance - who do they respect more? Their leader, or their captain? This isn’t a conflict Ved will welcome, or encourage. But he also won’t take well to anyone trying to step on his fellows in the vanguard, just for speaking their minds - even if that talk smacks of mutiny and treason, it’s only talk. Right?

THE ONE WHO KNOWS BETTER Ved’s been on the Cursed Serpent since before Bradway was captain, long enough for at least someone on the ship to have gotten to know him more than most. While many of their crewmates beyond the vanguard do their best to avoid or ignore him, this character is familiar enough to read Ved’s rather reserved moods and reactions. Perhaps they’re not deeply acquainted, or, maybe it’s rather intimate - either way, there’s some odd, quiet comfort in this connection, for both parties. Whether or not they admit it, that’s for them to figure out.

ANYTHING ELSE

Questions have been answered!

#cs: avred leske

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