#he says when the next thing he's writing is nothing BUT dialogue atm
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leslutdepointedulac · 8 months ago
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20 Questions for Fic Writers
Tagged by: @mothmage, @hekateinhell & @desertfangs Thank you my loves 💞
1. How many works do you have on A03? 19 atm but that's about to become a lot more from next month lmao.
2. What’s your total A03 word count? 46,413
3. What fandoms do you write for? The Vampire Chronicles and as of right now, nothing else.
4. What are your top five fics by kudos? Nothing's Fair in Love and War Drunken Matrimony Lupercalia Experimentations and The Long Road
5. Do you respond to comments? I do, always!! I love responding to comments, it's one of my favourite things about writing fics tbh.
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? The way I've had to think about this for too long because several of my fics could fit here. I think I'd say The Long Road because although there is hope (and the knowledge from canon) that things will get better for Louis, but he's still in the depths of his darkness and there's such a long way to go re: his recovery. That or Let Sleeping Lions Lie. (I would've said my siren au, but I think that's more my darkest ending to a fic, as opposed to the angstiest.)
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? I'd say it's either Second Chances or Drunken Matrimony. I think they're also very sweet endings.
8. Do you get hate on fics? No, no that I know of anyway. If anyone is hating on my fics, I don't know about it.
9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? I do but it's canon compliant, so no actual sex. There's two reasons for that: 1.) because I'm not quite there yet with wanting to write full on smut and 2.) because I genuinely just really enjoy writing canon complaint smut. As much as I really love reading smut, I feel like there should be more fics that embrace and explore the vampire's canon asexuality. It's a part of canon that I really enjoy and think is very important, so I like to bring some of that into my fics too!
Also, when it comes to Louis' character in particular, imo anyway, it's a good insight into him during IWTV. Because even though it's not actual sex, I find it interesting to explore how he might be reluctant to even just share blood in an intimate manner, because of his repression re: his queerness in that time.
10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? I haven't written any crossovers yet and I don't know that I ever will tbh. It's just not something I see myself writing.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? No, I hope not anyway. I'm not aware of it if that has happened.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? I haven't, but if anyone ever wanted to, that would be cool.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, but I'd totally be down to if someone wanted to co-write with me one day!
14. What’s your all time favorite ship? Loustat all day everyday!! (Though Loumand follows extremely close behind.)
15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Ngl, I always intend on finishing any WIPs I have. Even if it takes me a while, I will always try to complete one if I've already started it.
16. What are your writing strengths? I think just the fact that I'm able to wing it. I don't plan anything when I'm writing. I always have a basic idea as to what I want the fic to be about, but when it comes to actually writing it, I don't plan/draft anything. I just go for it and make it up as I go.
17. What are your writing weaknesses? I'm trying to improve on making my fics longer. I think I'm slowly getting better, but there's still progress to be made lmao.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? I quite like it. I have written some small bits in French but that's using Google translate. (ik, ik. Not overly accurate) I think if the character speaks another language that they would use relatively frequently, then I think it can be quite good to add it in.
19. First fandom you wrote for? I'd like to say TVC, which is technically right, but years ago when I was still in school, I had to do some creative writing for English, and I did write what was basically Crimson Peak fanfic. So depending on how you look at it, it's either Crimson Peak or TVC.
And actually, now I think about it, ever since primary school, I've always based my creative writing for school off things I was into. So on that basis, who knows what my first ever fic was about lmfao. For the sake of this, we'll say it's TVC.
20. Favourite fic you’ve written? Tbh, I don't know if I have a favourite. All my fics are my babies, and if I try to say just one of them, then I'll just be like "Oh wait actually, what about this one? Oh but I really love this one too!" And it would keep going until I've mentioned all of them, so I can't choose.
It's Hē Seirḗn
Tagging: @cinnamonclove @effyrosemary @deaddovehasbeeneaten @aunteat @butchybats @bubblegum-blackwood no pressure of course 💞
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hi! merlahad prompt: during the lancelot trials Eggsy and Roxy bet on whether Harry is in a relationship. Eggsy says he's single but Roxy is convinced he has a wife. so they try to find out which one of them is right, but since harry is a private person and merlin for some reason doesn't indulge their need for gossip they don't get an answer. until one day Eggsy comes to harry's for a spontaneous visit and finds harry&merlin being horribly domestic and welp now they both lost their bet.
Hi! Thanks for the prompt! This is mostly Eggsy failing to out-spy the spies, but hopefully there’s enough Merlahad feels at the end to compensate (:
Continue beneath the cut, or read on AO3.
“You what? Harry ain’t married!”
Roxy remained unfazed by Eggsy’s retort,spluttered as it was through a snort of laughter. “I’m sure he is,” sheinsisted. “There’s absolutely no way a man like him could possibly be single.”
“But he’s a spy! I’m pretty sure they haveregulations about that kinda thing.”
“They do, but there are always exceptions.And if ever there was a Kingsman unafraid to bend the rules, don’t you think it’sGalahad?”
Eggsy couldn’t argue with that, but neithercould he quite picture Harry with a wife. Maybe it was because he didn’t thinkHarry would be so unkind as to bugger off on missions with no idea if he’d everreturn home, the poor woman never knowing if she would see him again. Or maybeit was something more tangible.
“But he don’t wear a ring!” He grinned intriumph, certain he had hit upon incontrovertible proof.
Roxy rolled her eyes heavenward, unconvinced.“Of course not, he’s a spy.”
His own argument turned back on him, Eggsyscowled in the face of her logic. She was right; Harry would hardly riskproviding enemies with details of his private life, gifting them potentialtargets.
“And why else would he have been so eagerto hurry home tonight?” Roxy continued, stacking up her evidence with glee. “He’srarely on time for anything, so it must be important. Maybe today’s theiranniversary, or her birthday…”
“Or maybe he just wanted to catch the XFactor results,” Eggsy countered. Roxy’s withering look told him exactlywhat she thought of that suggestion. “Yeah, okay, but you still ain’t gonnaconvince me he’s married.”
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much do you want to bet you’reright?”
Eggsy wasn’t exactly flush, but hecouldn’t pass up on a wager with a mate, which Roxy was fast becoming. “Twentyquid says he’s single.”
“You’re on.” 
Roxy offered her hand and they shook,sealing the deal.
Proving he was right turned out to be moredifficult than Eggsy had assumed it would be. Thankfully, that meant neitherwas he being proven wrong, which was something at least, and his moneyremained safe. For now.
A naturally private man with years of trainingand successful service as a secret agent, Harry was an infuriatingly hard nutto crack.
“So, how do you spend your downtime then?”Eggsy enquired of him during one of the rare times the candidates were granteda breather.
“How do you mean?”
“I dunno. I mean, you must get the odd daywhen you ain’t off saving the world. Do you watch the footy? Play Xbox? Chillwith your mates?”
“Even if I knew what those things were, I’mquite certain the answer would still be no.”
Eggsy was sure Harry was beingdeliberately obtuse, but every attempt to switch tactics was met with furtherevasion.
After receiving a text from his mum—therewas news of a free sim deal and she’d let him know if she got a new number andhow was he getting on?—Eggsy took one final punt.
“Must be hard not being able to sharestuff with your loved ones.”
“Is that something you think you’ll have aproblem with?”
“Nah, bruv. You know I can keep me mouthshut. But it must suck not being able to talk about it when you’ve had a shitday.”
“We all find ways to deal with the shit,as well as celebrate our triumphs.”
“Yeah? What do you do then?”
Harry smiled a small, private smile. “Itusually involves a nice martini.”
The subtle approach was getting Eggsyprecisely nowhere. Harry was accustomed to withstanding more refinedinterrogation than Eggsy’s clumsy attempts at prying into his private life.Short of coming right out and just asking him, Eggsy was soon out of ideas.
Except one.
“You’ve known Harry a long time, right?”
“I have.”
“What’s he like when he’s not being AgentGalahad? Is he always that posh?” Merlin was just staring at him, faceunreadable, so Eggsy forged on, aiming for casual. “I’ll bet he’s properromantic. Does he have a girlfriend?”
“Why the sudden interest?” Merlin quirkedan eyebrow. “You don’t have designs on Galahad, do you, Eggsy?”
“What?! Fuck no! I mean, he’s pretty fitfor his age and that, I suppose, but I ain’t…” Eggsy trailed off when he sawminute smile twitching at the corner of Merlin’s mouth. “Bastard. I was justwondering.”
“Perhaps you should apply your mind to themore pertinent matter of taking down those targets.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Eggsy turned his attentionback to the range and fired his remaining shots. Thanks to his Marine training,this was something he was actually decent at, so it didn’t much matter that hismind continued to wander.
Merlin had been a crap choice of subjectfor information gathering. Their stoic quartermaster was clearly not so easilydrawn into gossip.
But before Eggsy could come up with PlanC, everything went tits up.
When Harry was lying unconscious in theinfirmary bed, he received notably few visitors. The other agents popped in,and Arthur, of course, but the only person who spent more time at his bedsidethan Eggsy was Merlin.
Roxy argued that they probably didn’tallow non-Kingsman personnel on site, but Eggsy was convinced they would makean exception for a spouse whose husband was in a critical condition.
When he woke up, at least Harry had Merlinthere to look after him.
“Guess where I’ve been?” 
Roxy glanced up at Eggsy and waited to beenlightened.
“Harry’s house.”
“Oh!” Now she looked properlyinterested. “And?”
“No sign of a wife, I’m afraid.” Eggsytried not to look too smug.
Roxy frowned, thinking over this newinformation. “That makes sense, if you think about it. We were only grantedtwenty-four hours, so she must have offered to go out and give you and Harrysome time alone.”
“Ah, but you didn’t see his house. It’s atotal bachelor pad, no sign of a woman’s touch anywhere.” Harry’s decor hadperhaps been a little eccentric, but there had been a notable lack of the kindof things Eggsy guessed women usually liked to have around the home. He wasonly basing this conclusion on his own mum, really, and he wasn’t so shallow asto think all women were the same, but he thought his general theory held.
“So you checked the bedroom? The bathroomcabinets?”
Eggsy deflated. Roxy had a point. MaybeHarry’s hypothetical wife shared his taste in the mildly bizarre, but she wouldcertainly have her own set of toiletries and stuff. A grin split Roxy’s face,proclaiming her small victory.
“We was a bit busy,” Eggsy said,defensive. Learning how to make the perfect martini had taken precedence oversnooping through Harry’s underwear drawer, although he was now cursing themissed opportunity.
He soon set about rectifying hisoversight.
Harry had said he was welcome to visit,but turning up unannounced on his doorstep might be a bit rude. Thankfully,Harry didn’t seem pissed to see him, and Eggsy was invited in. 
“We’ve already had dinner, I’m afraid, butyou’re welcome to join us for a drink.”
Eggsy perked up at the we, hisheart sinking a little at the confirmation that Roxy had been correct allalong. Nonetheless, his curiosity had been piqued, and he followed Harrythrough to the living room only to pause in the doorway, baffled.
“Merlin!”
Kingsman’s tech wizard looked up from thetablet perched on his knee, glanced at Harry over Eggsy’s shoulder, thenreturned his attention to Eggsy.
“Good evening, Eggsy.”
It was obvious he was confused by Eggsy’sunexpected appearance, but Harry took control, ushering Eggsy to an armchairand fetching another glass to prepare him a drink. He also took the opportunityto refresh his own and Merlin’s before taking a seat beside Merlin on the sofa.
Merlin tapped a few final times on thetablet, then set it aside on the small table beside him, giving his shrewdattention to their guest. With dawning realisation, Eggsy guessed he must haveinterrupted some kind of casual work meeting.
If that was the case, Harry didn’t seem tomind, smiling at Eggsy as he sipped his martini. “To what do we owe thepleasure?”
“I just wanted to say thanks.” Eggsy waswinging it, but went with his heart. “For believing in me, giving me thisopportunity. Not many people have ever done that for me, y’know.”
“I am very pleased my gut instinct provedcorrect, and I have every faith you’ll be equally successful in your next test.Don’t you think, Merlin?”
“He has performed admirably so far, aye,but I’m afraid I must remain impartial.”
“Of course.” But Harry gave Eggsy a lookthat said not to take any notice.
They continued to chat, Eggsy relaxing inthe company and happy not to have seen any sign of the elusive wife. About halfan hour later the conversation waned and Harry yawned with a hand to his mouthand a word of apology.
He was probably still recovering from thecoma, and Eggsy felt a bit of a dick for imposing on his rest. He was about tomake his excuses and leave when Harry leaned across Merlin to place his emptyglass on the end table. Rather than straightening up, he remained pressedagainst Merlin’s side, settling comfortably as if he fully intended to staythere. After a moment, his head dropped to Merlin’s shoulder, his eyes droopingshut.
Merlin froze, awkward, his gaze flickingfrom Eggsy to the man lounging against him. He gave Harry a gentle nudge.
“Perhaps it’s time you took yourself offto bed,” he suggested, tone carefully neutral.
Harry gave a sleepy smile and raised ahand, trailing his fingers lazily down Merlin’s chest, suggestive heat in hisvoice when he spoke. “Only if you’ll join me, darling.”
Merlin grasped Harry’s hand, halting itscaress. “Harry.” The mild warning in his tone was enough to rouse Harry, whoimmediately sat up, aware and contrite.
“Shit, I’m sorry. That was terriblyinappropriate of me.”
The silence that followed was filled for amoment with embarrassed uncertainty, until Eggsy grinned at the pair of them,everything finally slotting into place. It was incredible that neither he norRoxy had figured it out sooner, it just seemed so…obvious. So right.
His reaction must have been enough toreassure Merlin, for he hooked an arm around Harry’s shoulders and hauled himback in, the tension in his rigid posture visibly ebbing. “Come here, you daftbastard.” There was such fond affection in his voice, in the way he looked atthe man curled up against his side, that Eggsy wondered how he had ever thoughtMerlin so terrifying. No doubt he’d be reminded soon enough, but at that momenthe was granted the honour of sharing in their happiness.
It did, however, quickly become a bit toosappy, and Eggsy decided he had overstayed his welcome.
“I think it’s time I was getting back. I’llsee meself out.”
There was a mumble from the sofa as Harryand Merlin bade him good night, quite happy to remain where they were.
As he left, Eggsy took care of one finalpiece of business, snapping a quick photo with his phone and sending it to Roxywith an accompanying message.
Call it a draw?
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swanimagines · 4 years ago
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Hey! Can you do B98 + C38 with Diaval (Maleficent)? Thanks!
Fandom: Disney / Maleficent
A/N: These prompts were pushing an idea through which probably relates to my life situation atm but I couldn’t make up anything else in other ways than forcing myself to write something else, which I didn't wanna do (because forcing myself to write results in a bad fic). Diaval’s dialogue is inspired by what my friends/nurses/mom have said. But I hope you still can read this without it feeling too personal & like it!
Word count: 810
Prompts: B98. “Nobody is perfect. That’s what makes you special.” and C38. “It just feels like I can never let go… even if I try.”
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You had been sitting against the tree for hours already, your legs swinging over the ledge as an occasional tear rolled down your cheek. You had had nightmares about it for months. You should have just kept quiet, let her say whatever she wanted. You always told yourself that when you relived the situation in your dreams, but it always ended up in flashes of Nyrra smirking at you, as the Faery council was berating you for blowing up at her - suddenly she was the only victim, and you were the only person who had done wrong. That same situation had gone through over and over during your whole friendship - in front of others she was like another fairy, and you felt like another person with her. And no matter how hard you promised to be better next time, neither of you learned. The Faery Council had berated you about Nyrra for years, but this last time was the time when they told you they’re kicking you out, because you’re a toxic member in the community who only brings bad for them, that you were becoming a “Dark Fairy” and they had to protect themselves.
Maybe they were right.
You saw a shadow coming towards you, and recognized him by the footsteps - you remembered telling Nyrra how you had a crush on Diaval. You remembered how she laughed while gushing about how cute you would be together, her laugh illuminating the whole room, your heart feeling light, you were feeling loved - now you felt stupid, trusting her with matters like that, as she had mocked you to everyone for having that crush, and that way Diaval found out about it too. Nyrra was a lovely person, but she could be manipulative at times, and you always knew in your heart that it would be the doom of your friendship one day.
Your friends were by your side, fortunately. The Faery Council hadn’t kicked them out, but because of those events they weren’t active in there anymore. They had had enough. And you just hoped you’d never see Nyrra again, you hated her now. You swore to yourself and everyone around you that you’ll never forgive her, and everyone told you that it’s a good call.
But fairies weren’t created to hate. They were created to bring joy, safety, and to guard the magical lands. So the hatred in you burned you from inside, felt like darkness could consume you one day. So when Diaval sat beside you, you were immediately scared of blowing up again. What if you really were becoming a Dark Fairy? Diaval seemed to notice tears in your eyes, because he reached to touch your shoulder.
“Y/N?” he asked, and you took in a shaky breath. “Are you okay?”
His touch was everything you wanted when you were still friends with Nyrra, but now it felt like you’d destroy him too if you let him to come too close. Nyrra had been succesful in putting that thought your head - you’ll bring nothing but harm to people around you. She was winning.
“I… I’m just breaking everything.” you whispered and closed your eyes for a moment. “And I don’t know how to fix those things.”
You felt Diaval looking at you, before he sighed and pulled you to lie on his lap, stroking your wings and head, and you didn’t bother to pull away. You were scared of breaking Diaval’s trust and heart too, to drive him away, but for just this moment, you chose to relax to his touch.
“Nyrra once said that we’d be fitting for each other, you know?” you bit your lip. “She said she’d be the ringbearer if we ever got married. And I believed her.”
Diaval stopped stroking your wings for a moment. “Do you miss her?”
“Her as I knew, yes. Memories, yes. But not her. The real her. No.” you swallowed. “What she did… it feels like I can never let go... even if I try. I have so much hate in me, fairies shouldn’t hate anyone. What if I’m becoming bad?”
You took in a deep sigh as Diaval started to stroke your wings again, picking the bad feathers off and you just lied there in silence, watching the setting sun.
“Y/N, the Mistress had hate in her for a long time too. She almost killed Aurora because of it, but she got a redemption. Hate is normal. You’re not becoming a Dark Fairy because of it.” Diaval fell silent for a bit. “Nobody is perfect. That’s what makes you special. And you’re strong, you’ll get through those thoughts.”
You were silent for a bit, before you mustered up a smile and looked up to your favorite raven. He smiled back at you - and that moment of affection and talking was everything you needed on that moment.
Tags: @captainshazamerica​ @bravelittlesunflower
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catchmewiddershins · 3 years ago
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ahh ok ok, it's good !! i'm only halfway thru but mAN, i'm hooked HAHA, and abt the type, mmm i don't really have a preference tbh, i just take a look at the blurb and if it's interesting to me, then i send a message to my mom n she decided whether to buy it or not
as for recs, i've only gotten into reading recently, but i have a few that i've been wanting to read
- agatha christie seems to be pretty popular, and i think she writes on horror, so i'll look into that
- there's also this guy, anthony horowitz, and i'm very interested in reading a book of his, the word is murder (it's out of stock on our local bookstore, so i'm just waiting on it)
- one of us is lying and one of us is next is popular with my friends and classmates, so i'm interested in it as well
but do you have any book recs? i'd like to get more into it, but i haven't been able to find a lot of good ones ; i dont mind the genre, i just get at what seems interesting to me, so feel free to drop your favorites :D
HMMMM IMMA CHECK THAT ONE OUT :DD
ok so what you got sounds good I'll give you some basic recs because I want to explore the genre a bit more myself lol (my sister also really wants to read One of us is Lying lol)
Classics (not old but like... famous):
- an Inspector Calls - a play that's quite famous, it's a script so it's all dialogue and the story is revealed through an interrogation it's a classic for a reason :) - An inspector comes to the house of a rich family in the (oh dear) like mid 1800s? Anyway he claims that they are all guilty of driving a working class woman to suicide and the whole story is slowly revealed it's so GOOD
- Oedipus Rex - ok this is an old classic but :)))) what can I say - it's another play and it's good! Technically it's a tragedy but the plot of the tragedy is Oedipus trying to solve a mystery - chances are you know the ending but that's the point, knowing the ending creates tension as he tries to figure it out and you wonder when the ball is going to drop
- Sherlock Holmes - I... I haven't actually read these but one of my best friends has and she KEEPS bugging me to read them so it's on the list because it's a classic and also my bestie likes them
- Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Pretty short! And so so good! You probably recognise the story and it has it's fame for a reason... t's written from the POV of this Judge? I think? I can't remember his career, anyway he becomes involved in these murders and he decides to find out who's doing it and then track the perpetrator down and it's also sci-fi and psychological I believe anyway definite recommendation
Lower level (so like ages 11 - 15? I mean that's the age I was when I read them so):
- The Mysterious Benedict Society series - honestly? I want to reread these because a television adaption is coming out and I'm mad about some of the cuts they made - it's about a group of children recruited to stop someone from brainwashing the world
- the Lady Grace mysteries - definitely around the 11/12 age when I read these so they're quite an easy read but what can I say I still like them and easy reads are good and fun - it's set in the late 1500s and the main character is Grace, goddaughter to Queen Elizabeth the first, and she becomes a private detective for the Queen for various murders happening around court while outwitting the official (male) detective who thinks that her observations are worth pretty much nothing - she also has to keep it a secret from the other Maids of Honour (like ladies in waiting but... nobles)
- Orphan Monster Spy - ok I loved this when I read it at... 13/14/15? Anyway it's about a Jewish girl in WW2 who goes undercover at a school for nazi's children to gather information it is very good
- The murder most unladylike series - OK this I read at 10/11/12 as well but just because books are for younger audiences doesn't mean they aren't gripping and they're often more creative! My sister is reading this atm and she loves it ehe - it's two girls at a boarding school that start solving mysteries together
Higher Level (so like... 15/16/17? When I read or have been recommended and all that jazz):
- Oryx and Crake - This is written by Margaret Atwood which means it's good. The woman is a legend! Handmaid's Tale COULD be considered thriller or smth like it's sci-fi but like... cmon so that's another rec by her. My English teacher and my mum keep recommending me this but I haven't started it yet... general consensus is it's good though!
- Jane Harper - She's an author who's mysteries are apparently pretty good? I have one and they all seem to be popular sooooo a recommendation :)
- The Declaration + sequels - These are written by Gemma Malley and ALL I CAN REMEMBER ABOUT HOW GOOD THEY ARE is that when I was taking my GCSE mocks (I was 15 half of us were 16) we had to do revision in an exam hall and um anyway I read this book and the Resistance instead and did not do any revision I was hooked - not really a mystery or crime technically I don't think but definitely that vibe - Basically it's a future world where children just aren't a thing? The government has designed drugs for longevity and kids born outside of the law become 'surplus' and are all housed together but this girl meets a boy from outside (I cannot for the life of me remember if they get together or not) and they escape and go to investigate the government and where these drugs are coming from
I'll add more if I read them... IDEA! This list will have a tag (#wid's book recs! and #wid's mystery recs!) so I'll add recs to it when I get them so it'll be constantly evolving and I'll do the same for other genres at some point! I had a few more that I wanted to add but I forgot and the cat is being clingy
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angelatmidnight1 · 4 years ago
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hey there! so glad you're back, and happy new years btw!! idk if you're taking prompts atm so don't feel like you have to write this straight away (since you just posted a new fanfic anyway, and it was worth the wait as always), but i was thinking maybe you could write something with wattson and loba? because on this current season, loba is trying to be nicer to her, to kind of make up for the S5 accident, and i mean we love to see that character development lol. cheers!
A/N: Hi, happy (very late) New Years! I’ve actually picked up Loba as my secondary main, so I was really excited to write for both her and Wattson. This story is based on quest events from season 5 and onward, as well as the Legends’ dialogue mainly between Loba, Wattson, and Crypto (this video kind of shows the lines, but I couldn't find the one I originally watched). I was also inspired by a post from @thebliznet, which helped the story along a lot. Thank you for allowing me to mention your post and the blog! I hope this story is to your liking anon :). I had fun writing it.
Unleashing Your Inner Wolf- After Wattson’s accident, Loba has kept a watchful eye over her. This is especially true after Revenant has sworn to ruin the thief’s life. When the murderous simulacrum joined the Apex Games, Loba was hellbent on killing him herself. But, this wasn’t a job she had to do alone. Loba had all of the Legends wrapped around her fingers with the dirt she had on them, and she was pleased to have them at her disposal. The job was simple: find the artifacts she needed, locate Revenant’s source code, and end his miserable existence. So, when Wattson wandered into the building alone to retrieve an artifact, her plans literally went up in flames. Not only was she further away from what she wanted, someone nearly died, and it wasn’t the demonio. Loba secretly thanks the gods for Wattson’s recovery; the engineer has a harsher view of the world now, yes, but she’s alive. It was the first and last time that Loba would put someone in danger on her behalf. After having her as a teammate during a couple of games, Loba discovers some new, interesting information: Wattson spends a great deal of time speaking with Crypto. And, the thief finds their nervous, awkward interactions absolutely adorable. Loba decides to take the engineer under her wing to teach her the art of flirting. But first, she has to teach her the most important lesson out there: self love. Wattson finds her lessons a bit unorthodox, and is reluctant to open up. So, Loba’s first job is getting her to smile...and maybe laugh, too.
When Crypto fell on the battlefield, Loba was quick to toss her bracelet and teleport to his aid. She had a Guardian Angel backpack and there were fences set up within their hideout to deter an enemy push. She was just slipping her bracelet back on when someone else rounded the corner and ran over to the downed hacker. It was Wattson, who put her Interception Pylon in the center of the room to deny incoming projectiles. The engineer heard an angry “bloody hell” from the explosive expert outside, which made her grin inwardly. Natalie knelt down and rubbed her hands together to generate a charge. Unlike the rest of the Legends, the engineer revived her teammates by using her equipment like a defibrillator. 
“Got you Tae J---ohhh…” Instead of pulling him up, Wattson accidentally dropped him back onto the floor, covering her mouth with both hands. Crypto landed with a heavy thump and a groan. 
“Ugh, Natalie..” The hacker winced, prompting her to start the revive again, her mind still racing to finish her sentence. 
“J...Joules and Watts are tied for my favorite units of measurements. And yours?” Natalie giggled nervously after she successfully pulled the man back onto his feet. She looked over her shoulder to see Loba staring at them like they each had two heads. But then, the enemy Bangalore shot at her through the window, giving the engineer and hacker a welcome distraction. 
“...I’ll get better at this. I promise.” Wattson smiled and pushed a Phoenix Kit into Crypto’s hands. Crypto sighed and put the healing item to use, giving her a small smile of his own. 
“Thank you, Natalie.” Tae Joon huddled in the corner of the room to stay out of enemy sights. This prompted Natalie to put another fence at the doorway that would lead to them. No one was going to get in and hurt her friend; not if she had something to say about it! So, when she heard someone approaching, Wattson immediately pointed her Mastiff at the door, ready to take down whoever managed to slip in. She yelped and fired at the thief when she stuck her head in; fortunately, there was no friendly fire allowed in the Games. 
“Relax, it’s just me.” Loba frowned and walked further into the room. “The whole squad’s down and a wall of death is coming our way. We need to move.”
“Got it!” Wattson hopped to her feet and offered a hand to the hacker. Crypto reached up to take it but froze, looking over Natalie’s shoulder. For some reason, the thief was still looking at them. The engineer arched a brow and, since she didn’t see what he saw, she grabbed onto his hand anyway. “Let’s go, Crypto. Allons-y!”
Crypto stood without a word and followed the engineer out of the room. Wattson didn’t release his hand even when they were well inside the ring. The hacker cleared his throat and gave the woman’s hand a gentle, but urgent squeeze, and she promptly let go of him. But, since Loba was trailing behind them, she saw everything, and a knowing smirk graced her lips. 
Loba found the engineer in her room after the match was over. Her high heels sounding throughout the hallway announced her arrival way before she did. So, by the time the thief sauntered to her doorway, Wattson was already facing her. 
“Ah, there’s the little heart breaker in the making…” Loba grinned and leaned against the doorway with her arms crossed against her chest. The engineer furrowed her brows and pushed her organized clutter further back onto her desk.
“Huh? What’re you talking about?” Wattson appeared even more confused as she approached her. Loba glanced to the woman’s desk; besides the textbooks and random sticky notes everywhere, the thief didn’t see any obvious signs of a romantic rendezvous. No roses, no letters, and worse: no shiny trinkets. 
“I used to think hand holding was a dying art. No more lingering touches, or a bat of the eye. Nowadays it’s just sloppy grabbing, a couple minutes of heavy breathing, and then...nothing.” Loba let out a wistful sigh as stood behind the younger woman, putting her hands on her shoulders. “It’s all quite dull, if you ask me. But then, I saw you and Crypto holding hands…” 
The realization hit Wattson and her face turned pink. For a moment, she was at a loss for words, so the thief continued. “And it was so refreshing to see. It’s subtle. Innocent.  And yet...intimate. Especially with the right person.” 
Wattson hopped out of her chair and faced the thief, her pink face quickly turning red. “I...I didn’t...I wasn’t...he was injured!” She stammered, suddenly unable to meet Loba’s teasing gaze. “I only held his hand to make sure he was okay!”
“Oh, of course, beautiful. That’s kind of you..” Loba chuckled and stepped in front of her. She knelt down, “In fact, it was so kind that it must’ve stuck with him the whole time he watched you walk away~.”
Wattson looked up with a gasp and finally met her gaze. Her face grew even redder as she struggled to find her words again. “...Crypto and I...we--we’re just friends. That’s all. I’m sure he was just...um...w-watching my back. His drone is very useful on the battlefield.” She put a hand on the back of her neck; it was burning hot, just like her face. 
Loba didn’t want the engineer to pass out on her, so she took a step back to give her some breathing room. “I can’t argue with you there. But...what do you think of him?” She tilted her head to the side and smiled. “He’s  on the quieter side, I’ll have to admit. But he’s very handsome, no?”
“...Well..maybe...” Natalie toyed with the ends of her shirt as she looked to the corner of the room. There was a radio that Octane gave her a while back, and Loba caught her looking at it. This made the thief smirk again. 
“Where’d you get that? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a radio like that before.” Loba strutted over to the little device and picked it up. Natalie perked up and hurried over to gently take it from her. 
“Oh! Octavio gave this to me. He spray painted it using my favorite colors.” The engineer visibly relaxed and finally allowed herself to smile. Loba’s eyebrows rose and, grinning, she couldn’t help but to tease her again. 
“Oh, so there’s two people vying for your affection. You like to have options.” Loba giggled when the engineer’s face turned a deeper shade of red. “I like how you think. There’s so many beautiful people out there...why limit yourself to one?”
“No! It isn’t like that, really!” Natalie insisted and put her radio back down so she didn’t drop it. “I mean...Octavio and Ta---er, Crypto, are attractive, yes.  But I wouldn’t flirt with them! Because...well, I...don’t know how.”
Loba wanted to laugh, but this new bit of information surprised her. She arched a brow and crossed one leg over the other. “You don’t know how?”
“Well, I know how.” The engineer corrected herself and fiddled with her hair next. “But I don’t know what to say! Plus, I don’t want to make things awkward between us.”
Loba’s eyes softened; the engineer was too cute. “Aw, it’s alright, doll. A little harmless flirting every now and then doesn’t hurt anyone. Keeps things interesting, if you ask me.” She smirked, playfully nudging her side with her elbow. Natalie stiffened and pursed her lips.
“That’s easy for you to say. You flirt with everybody.” The engineer muttered, giving her a coy smile when Loba feigned offense. 
“Oh, come on,  I do not flirt with everyone. I’m very selective in who I choose. Not everyone is worth my time.” Loba fired back with a grin. It didn’t seem like she was winning the engineer over, so she decided to switch tactics. “I suppose you can say there’s a certain elegance to flirting. If you’d like, I’ll show you. Free of charge, of course.”
Wattson looked up at the woman skeptically. The engineer didn’t know her as well as some of her other friends, but she didn’t believe that she would steer her wrong. “Er..how do you propose to do that?” 
Loba beamed at her and gestured to her closet with a manicured hand. “Put on your favorite outfit, then stop by my room.” She grinned and sauntered back out into the hallway. She looked over her shoulder and saw the uncertainty lingering in her eyes. She sighed, “Trust me, beautiful. I won’t embarrass you. I know just what you need to have whomever you like flocking over to you.” 
“...Okay, Loba. I’ll be there in a moment.” Wattson smiled and waited for her to leave so that she could change clothes. 
Natalie opted for a simple outfit with her favorite Nessie shirt and jeans. She stepped out of her room and closed the door behind her. Then, she wandered down the hall until she got to the thief’s room. She could hear music playing as she approached the door, and found the thief idly swaying to the beat when she stepped into the room. 
Loba beckoned for the engineer to come closer, another smirk on her face. “Come on in. I don’t bite.” She snickered, her cocky smirk giving way to a small smile. “You look cute.” 
“Merci. Um...so what will we be doing, exactly?” The engineer peeked behind Loba to see a pole in the corner of the room. She blinked; what on Earth was this woman planning? 
“Well, before we work on making your special Legend fall for you, I think you could use a bit of a confidence boost.” Loba smiled and strode over to her pole, hooking an arm around it. “I’m going to teach you how to pole dance.”
Wattson’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates, and her face turned a bright shade of red. Loba immediately put up her hands.
“Hold on, it’s not what you think. I didn’t say you were stripping, nor does pole dancing have to involve it. This is about doing something fun, something that makes you feel sexy. Because when you feel good, you look good. And others notice it too…” Loba smiled at her hopefully and extended a hand. “Won’t you give it a try, love? If at any point you don’t like it, we stop. Simple as that.”
“Umm...a-alright…” Natalie blushed even more as she took the thief’s hand. Loba beamed excitedly and led her to the pole. 
“Wonderful. Now, let’s just set the mood.” Loba had the best wireless speakers that a thief could get their hands on, and she switched the current song to something slower.
“Mmm, there we go. So! The first thing you want to do is take your dominant hand, and reach high above your head.” Loba demonstrated what Natalie needed to do on the opposite side of the pole. “Then you want to...ah, hold on.” She let go of her side of the pole and walked behind the engineer. “Make sure your shoulders are down and back, like this…” 
Loba took her shoulders and gently maneuvered them in the correct position. Her nails gently brushed against them as she drew back, causing the younger woman to squeak and flinch. The thief looked down at her with an arched brow. “...What?”
“Pardon (Sorry), Loba! It’s just...your nails are long, and that tickled a bit.” Natalie smiled sheepishly and rolled her shoulders. Loba chuckled and stood behind her again. 
“Oh, not a problem.” The thief put her shoulders in the correct position one more time; then, smirking, she stood back in front of her to continue the lesson. “There we go, perfect. Next, you want to stand on your toes, and take three steps with the leg closest to the pole. So, like this…” 
Loba walked Wattson through the rest of the steps for a basic, fireman spin. The engineer caught on quickly but, although she was performing the moves correctly, her overall movement was pretty stiff. It didn’t help that Octane wandered down the hallway, drawn to the music, and curiously poked his head in the room. He wasn’t wearing his usual mask and was eating a candy bar; but, when he saw Natalie pole dancing, his jaw dropped...along with his snack. Thankfully, Natalie didn’t notice him because of the music and her focus; Loba, on the other hand, heard the sound and she glanced at the door. She narrowed her eyes at the daredevil, mouthing ‘get out, or you’re dead.’ She grabbed her staff and pointed it at him to show that she wasn’t messing around. Octane held up his hands and, nudging the candy bar back towards him with his leg, he picked it up and took off down the hall. After a few more spins, Wattson stood up straight and looked up at the thief. 
“Loba? Did I do it right?” Natalie panted a bit and rubbed the back of her neck. Loba turned back around; the engineer got the moves down to a T, but there was still something missing. She looked so shy, so unsure of herself...and, perking up, Loba knew exactly what she needed. 
“You did, and I’m impressed. I don’t see many people catch on to this sort of thing so quickly.” She complimented, slowly making her way back to her side. Wattson re-assumed the position by the pole, assuming that they were going to practice again. The thief chuckled. “There is just one, tiny thing I think you need to do…”
Wattson looked up at her and stepped away from the pole. She was flattered by the compliment...but, the mischievous glint in the she-wolf’s eyes made her falter.  “Okay...what is it?” 
“...Smile.” Loba grinned and latched her hand onto her hip, giving it a quick squeeze. Wattson yelped and lurched away from her hand, but Loba was quick to close the distance. When the engineer pushed her hand off of one hip, she just squeezed the other one instead. Loba already had her laughing before she even pinned her down onto the mattress behind her. 
“Nohohohohoh! Nohohohoh Lohohohohba, dohohohn’t!” Natale panicked and tried to roll away from the she-wolf. She arched her back when Loba’s manicured nails found her sides, giggling loudly. “DohohoHOHOHOHN’T!”
“Don’t what?” Loba grinned and gently poked at her belly, tracing five manicured nails up and down her torso. Wattson’s giggles picked up to laughter and she bucked her hips. 
“DOHOHOohohohohn’t tihihihckle mehehehehehe!” The engineer squeaked and struggled harder when the thief slipped her hand underneath her shirt, clawing at her bare stomach. “LOHOHOHOHBAHAHA!”
“Oh, that tickles? I had no idea.” Loba smirked and lifted her shirt up to give her better access to her stomach. She slowed her tickles to gentle, featherlight strokes along her tummy. This still made the engineer laugh, but not quite as hard. “Why didn’t you tell me you were ticklish before? That would’ve made things much easier.”
Natalie giggled uncontrollably and sucked in her belly to try and escape the tickles. Not only did it fail, but Loba kept up the slow, teasing pace, which sent ticklish shivers up her spine. “N-Nohohohohohoh ihhihiht wohohohohuhuhldn’t!” She tittered, another laugh escaping her as the thief gave her hips another squeeze. 
“Yes it would!” Loba snickered, kneading her thumbs into the woman’s hip bones. Wattson squealed and bucked her hips, but Loba didn’t let go of them. “A smile can bring even the hardest of men, and women, to their knees, falling for you...”
The color came rushing back to Wattson’s face as she squirmed in the she-wolf’s iron-hold, giggling. “Okahahahay! Okahahahay I’ll smhihihihle MOHOHOHOHRE!” Natalie shrieked and laughed when Loba’s fingers scribbled back into her stomach. “STAHAHAHAHAH!”
“Oho, yes. You certainly will be smiling more...” Loba teased and swiped her nails from one side of her tummy to the next. She laughed at the squeal it produced, which only encouraged her to tickle faster.  “You’re stuck with the big bad wolf, and she’s going to tickle you to pieces~.”
Wattson fell into a deeper fit of laughter and increased her efforts to escape. The thief’s fingers strayed away from her stomach and scritched to her lowermost ribs. Natalie’s eyes widened and her laughter went up a few pitches as she rocked side to side. “NOHOHOHOHOH! PLEHEHEHEAHAHSE DOHOHOHOHN’T!” She begged, pulling at her trapped arms repeatedly. Loba had her arms pinned underneath her thighs and despite all of her struggling, they didn’t move an inch. “LOHOHOHOBAHAHA NOHOHAHAHAHAHA!”
Loba raised a brow and grinned, suddenly swiping her nails up the entire length of her ribs. Natalie squeaked and arched her back, causing the thief to giggle. “I think this is a good spot..” She purred, resting her hands back onto her lowermost ribs. She kneaded in between the bones and moved up her ribcage. The engineer kicked her legs against the bed and laughed louder, which made the thief smirk. “Aw, does that tickle? That looks like it tickles so much..”
Wattson turned crimson at the teasing and she shook her head, filling up the room with her laughter. Her laughter was so infectious that Loba laughed along with her, poking her fingers into her uppermost ribs. “No?” She tilted her head to the side when Natalie shrieked and threw her head back, laughing. Then, grinning, the she-wolf leaned in and repeatedly tweaked those ribs. “Are you sure?”
Wattson shook her head even harder and whipped her body around, trying to avoid her long nails. When that didn’t work, she opted for attempting to buck Loba off of her...which also failed. So, the engineer continued to laugh herself silly and make futile attempts to escape. “NAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I-I MEHEHEHAHAHAN--AH!” The thief leaned over and blew a raspberry onto her bare stomach. “DOHOHOHOHN’T DOHOHOHOH THAHAHT HAHAHAAHA!”
“Do what?” Loba chuckled and blew another raspberry, snickering when the engineer bucked her hips again. She blew another raspberry on a different spot on her stomach, and then another one somewhere else. She resumed wriggling her nails on her uppermost ribs while she continued blowing on her stomach, sending the engineer on a one-way trip to hysterics. 
“THAHAHAHAHT!” Wattson screamed and shut her eyes tight, her laughter sounding squeakier each time Loba’s lips made contact with her stomach. “STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAP THAHAHAHAHT! PLEHEHEHEHEAHAHAHSE!”
Loba paused, pretending to think, only to resume tickling the younger woman’s ribs and stomach. “Hmm, what if I don’t want to stop?” She hummed, swiping her fingers back down the length of her ribcage. The engineer yelped and snorted, making Loba giggle again. “What if I find it enjoyable to make you laugh so much?”
The thief eased up on the tickling so that Natalie could speak. Wattson’s laughter died down to giggles as Loba squeezed her sides and hips. “Iheheheheheheheh ahahahahalready ahaahahahaham!” She tittered, snickering as Loba stroked her nails up her torso. Loba wriggled her nails in slow, circular motions just underneath Natalie’s ribcage, causing her to jolt and giggle harder. “I’m ahahahahalrehehehady laahahahaughihihihng!”
“So you are. But, I think I can make you laugh a little bit more, no?” Loba smirked and tickled further up her ribcage. This time, she pressed her fingertips into the bones and kneaded each rib individually. Wattson’s eyes bugged out and she squealed, dissolving back into laughter. 
“NOHOHOHOHOH! YOHOHOHU DOHOHOHN’T NEEHEHEHED TOHOHOHO!” The engineer yelled, kicking her legs out again as she laughed. She twisted her torso around, but Loba kept up with her struggling and focused on the most sensitive ribs. Her laughter and squirming grew more desperate by the second, and Loba took advantage of her adorable state to lower herself back towards her stomach. By the time Wattson noticed, it was too late; Loba took a deep breath and ducked her head down, blowing a raspberry right over her navel. Natalie shrieked and thrashed around violently, but this didn’t deter the she-wolf. “NAHAHAHAHA STAHAHAHAHP! STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHP IHIHIHIHIHIHT!”
Loba was still blowing the raspberry as the engineer cackled out her demands; she made sure to empty her lungs. Then, instead of complying, she brushed her fingers against her uppermost ribs again while she blew another lung-emptying raspberry over her navel. By then, Wattson was howling with laughter. After a few more raspberries, Loba reached up further and burrowed her nails into her armpits, prompting a sudden shriek of desperate laughter. 
“NONONOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHA! PAHAHAHAHAHS IHIHIHCI! PAHAHAHAHAHAS IHIHIHIHCI! (Not there! Not there!)” Natalie screamed and pulled at her arms as much as she could. Loba smirked widely and stopped tickling, but kept her nails pressed into the woman’s armpits. 
“Well, well, well...look what I’ve found…” The thief purred, applying just a little bit of pressure to make her shiver and giggle. “This spot must be terribly ticklish, huh?” She slowly raked her nails back and forth where her armpits began, looking down at the engineer with a smile. “Call it woman’s intuition.” 
Wattson sputtered and giggled heavily, teetering on the edge of laughter. She gave her arms another sharp pull, but it didn’t do anything to free them. When she didn’t respond with understandable words, the thief gave her armpits a quick scribble, making her shriek and laugh. “YEHEHEHEHS! Ihihihihiht tihihihckles! Sohohohohoh leheheheht mehehehe gohohohoh! Plehehehehease…” She pleaded, staring up at the thief with nervous, giggly anticipation. 
Loba playfully tutted at her and shook her head. “Aw, Natalie. When have you ever known me to walk away from a gold mine?” She simpered, sneaking her hands underneath her arms and scratching away at her hollows. 
Wattson screeched and burst out laughing, bucking against the mattress. The thief focused on the very center of each armpit, where the muscles split. Loba almost toppled over from how much Wattson was squirming; so, for a moment, she believed that the younger woman would somehow be able to free herself. So, keeping her fingers buried in her right armpit, the thief shifted her weight so that she could reach above her bed. 
“AHAHAHAHAHAHA LOHOHOHOHOHBAHAHA NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHN!” Natalie cried out, squirming as far to the left as she could to try and get away from the intense sensation. “DOHOHOHOHOHN’T TIHIHIHIHCKLE THEHEHER--HEHEHEHEHY!”
While Wattson was laughing, Loba lifted up her left arm and slipped her wrist through a restraint above the bed frame. It was soft, black, and made out of nylon, but sturdy enough to keep her arm in place. The she-wolf stopped tickling to do the same thing to her right arm. Now, she had easy access to her armpits and torso. Loba settled back down onto her waist, making a dramatic show of wiggling her fingers in the air. 
“There we go, much better.” The thief began, grinning as Natalie paled and tried to tug her wrists free from the newfound restraints. “Now there’s nothing in my way…” She whispered tauntingly, lowering her hands even closer to her exposed armpits. Wattson’s eyes were locked onto Loba’s wiggling nails and she squirmed, already giggling.
“Nohohohohoh wahahahait! WahahAHAHAHIT!” Natalie squeaked and jumped when Loba held her nails just inches from her armpits. The she-wolf cocked her head to the side and smirked at her. 
“...Yes?” Loba chuckled, wiggling her fingers in the air again. She wasn’t even touching Wattson yet, but the engineer squealed and giggled harder the closer her fingers got. 
“PLEHEHEHEAHASE STAHAHAHAHA!” Wattson yelled, her arms twitching from how much she was trying to pull them down. The phantom tickles caught up with her and she started laughing, making the thief laugh in turn. 
“What? I’m not even touching you!” Loba giggled, barely pressing her fingertips to her armpits. The engineer screamed and bucked her hips; now, Loba was laughing almost as hard as she was. “Seriously? I don’t even have to do anything, do I? You’re too ticklish for your own good.” She smiled, letting her words hang in the air. Just when Wattson thought she was going to attack her armpits, the she-wolf switched gears and started stroking her sides. 
Wattson shivered and wiggled, biting her lips to trap the giggles. Loba arched a brow at her and, grinning, she jabbed her fingers into her ribs. The engineer flinched and grinned widely, shaking with the laughter that she refused to let free. 
“That’s not going to work, love…” Loba sang, rubbing her fingertips between the bones. Wattson gasped and let a few giggles slip out, but she was determined to hold out. Loba leaned in again and slowly started scratching her way up her ribcage. “I know you want to laugh. And, it would seem that I’m exceptionally good at making you laugh…” She continued teasing, causing the engineer to giggle even more. The thief continued tickling her ribs and even her stomach before finally descending on her armpits. Loba dug five wiggling nails into each armpit, causing Natalie to scream and cackle loudly. 
“NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHON LOHOHOHOHBA! AHAHAHARRÊHEHEHETE ÇAAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHARRÊHEHEHETE ÇAAHAHAHAHA! (Stop it! Stop it!)” Wattson shrieked and threw her body around, laughing harder when Loba tickled faster. Loba chuckled and jabbed her fingers into her armpits instead, making the engineer let out another cry of laughter. 
“Sorry, beautiful. But I never did pick up on the language of love. You’ll have to translate for me..” Loba jeered, scribbling away along the poor woman’s armpits. Wattson tossed her head back again and shook with laughter. Any words that she tried to say were lost as she desperately tried to escape the woman’s devious nails. Loba kept up the tickling for a good five minutes before slowing the scribbling down to slow, gentle strokes. “You know what? There’s something I meant to ask you..” She remembered, slowing the tickling down even more so that the engineer could breathe and speak. 
“...Whahahahahahahat?” Natalie panted and snickered, grateful for the small break, but still twitching from the residue tickles. Loba, since she noticed how especially ticklish her right armpit seemed to be, traced a nail just around that particular armpit. 
“You know, all of this talk about flirting and charming others has got me wondering...who is it you have your eyes on?” The thief inquired, taking that same nail and poking it into her armpit at random intervals. Wattson snorted and pulled at her right arm, her cheeks reddening. 
“I-I dohohohn’t hahahahave mhyhy ehehehehyes ohohohn ahahahanyoohohohne…” Natalie giggled; when the engineer looked up at her, there was skepticism written all over her face. And that one, lone finger poking into her armpit noticeably picked up speed. “I’m sehehehehrious! Lohohohohbahahaha plehehehehase!” She tried again, rolling her body to the side and frantically giggling.
“Aw, sweetie. I’ve been doing this sort of thing a long time. I can always tell when someone has a crush…” Loba purred, starting to poke all five of her fingers into that same armpit. Wattson yelped and turned her face into her shoulder, loud laughter mixing in with her giggles. In fact, she was giggling so loud that the thief had to speak up so that she could be heard. “Would you like to know what else I’m good at?”
“NOHOHohohohohohohohoh!” Natalie rejected and resumed kicking at the mattress. She was dangerously close to laughing; so, the thief positioned her free hand by the woman’s left armpit while continuing to tickle the right one. 
“I’m also good at picking out lies…” Loba muttered with an evil grin, spidering her all ten of her nails against both of her armpits. Wattson started bucking her hips again, hysterical laughter filling up every last corner of the room. 
“I’M NAHAHAHAHT LYHYHYHYING! AHAHAHAHAH I’M NAHAHAHAHAT!” Natalie argued, her trapped arms twitching in place as she fell deeper into hysterics. It didn’t matter how much she pulled or bucked; her arms stayed above her head, and Loba was having a blast tickling her super sensitive armpits. The thief decided to drag her nails along her outer left armpit while she continued tickling every inch of the right one. “PLEHEHEHAHASE LOHOHOHOBAHAHAHA  I’M NAHAHT LHYHYHYINHG HAHAHAHA!”
“Yes you are! Just tell me who it is. I’ll keep it a secret.” Loba promised and, smiling, she flicked her nail against her left armpit. Wattson squirmed to the right and squeaked, so the thief did the same thing to the right armpit. She laughed when the engineer jumped to the opposite side, so she kept on alternating the pokes, amused by the little ‘dance’ she was doing. 
“IT’S NOHOHOH OHOHOHOHNE HAHAHAHAHA!” Natalie insisted and shut her eyes, her laughter completely taking over her. “I DOHOHOHOHN’T HAHAHAHAVE A CRUHUHSHAHAHAHAHA!”
A small part of Loba believed her, but another part of her wanted to keep tickling just a bit longer. She could tell the engineer was reaching her limit, though, so she wanted to give her one last good tickling before she stopped. So, with a small sigh, Loba grabbed onto her right arm with her left hand. Then, with her right hand, she pressed her fingertips into her uppermost rib. Wattson arched her back and kept on giggling but, when she tried to pull her arm down again, it didn’t move at all. The restraints were already keeping her limbs still anyway, but Loba’s grip made it virtually impossible for her arm to have the slightest movement. Natalie froze as the panic seeped in. 
“Last chance, beautiful. Tell me who you have the hots for, and I’ll stop.” Loba demanded, vibrating her fingers against the bone. Wattson shook her head and laughed, pleadingly looking into the she-wolf’s dark eyes. “If you don’t...well, let’s just say I’m sure you’ll come around…” She continued warning, smirking as she slowly inched toward her armpit. “So? Who’s that special Legend?”
Wattson breathed heavily, her body going rigid in anticipation of the incoming tickles. She kept her eyes on her just in case she decided to have mercy...but Loba wasn’t so easily swayed. The engineer scrambled to provide her a satisfactory answer, but she took too long, and the thief wasn’t a fan of waiting. Loba kept a firm grip on Natalie’s arm as she wriggled her nails into the right armpit, scribbling along the area where the muscles split. 
The engineer thrashed in Loba’s grip, convulsing with laughter. She repeatedly shook her head and tried to get even the smallest bit of leverage on her arm, but the thief wasn’t having any of it. So, Natalie didn’t have a choice but to take the tickles and laugh her head off...which is exactly what she did. 
“AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH NAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Wattson gave up on trying to speak and resumed laughing into her shoulder. “SAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
“No can do, love. I gave you plenty of chances to come clean. And you didn’t take them.” Loba donned her best pitying voice as she fluttered her fingertips into her left armpit, now tickling both armpits. Wattson squeaked and scrunched her nose up from how hard she was laughing.  “I told you what would happen…” She whispered, leaning over to resume blowing on the engineer’s stomach. 
Wattson yelled one more time before her laughter became silent. She was too tired to struggle, so she laid limp as the she-wolf tickled her. Loba stopped the tickling altogether when she didn’t hear anymore laughter, reaching above the bed frame to undo her restraints. The engineer’s arms felt heavy as she finally brought them down, trembling and giggling. 
“I’ll tehehehell yohohohu...I’ll tehehehell yohohohu..” Natalie gasped for air and sat up, pulling down her shirt and rubbing her arms together. Loba chuckled and shook her head, crawling off the bed to give her some space. 
“No need, beautiful. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. And I’m sure whoever it is will love hearing you laugh just as much as I did.” She winked, giggling when the woman’s cheeks reddened. Loba strode away from her just to turn off the music. Then, she returned to the engineer and sat beside her. The thief’s expression became more serious and she turned to face her. “Mind if I give you some advice on pursuing this mystery lover of yours?” She quipped and offered her a smile...but, something about the way she asked made Wattson look up. And, when she did, the smile also disappeared. 
“Yes? What is it, Loba?” Natalie put her hands in her lap and eyed her curiously. Loba sighed and stared at the wall for a moment before looking at the engineer. 
“I haven’t always been honest with you. With anyone, really. Because after I lost my parents...well, I didn’t think any of that mattered anymore.” Loba admitted quietly, frowning for the first time in the time she and Wattson spent together. “I learned that the world is a cold, unforgiving place. And as long as I got what I wanted, nothing else mattered. I had to claw my way out of the slums to get where I am now, so if I broke someone’s heart or stole some old guy’s jewelry, so what? At the end of the day, I took care of myself. Because I didn’t have anyone to do it for me.” She sighed, putting one hand over the other as she remembered her parents. Wattson blinked and opened her mouth to speak, but the thief held up her hand.
“I don’t want you to feel bad for me, Natalie. I’m fine. I’m just...what I’m saying is that once the demonio joined the Games, I realized that I didn’t have to do everything by myself anymore. I lied to you, to everyone, to get what I wanted. And..I almost got you killed. I just want to tell you that no matter who you fall for, always take care of yourself first. And do it by yourself. That way, no one else gets hurt if things go south…” Loba affirmed, looking directly into the engineer’s eyes. “And if they’re dishonest with you, make sure you walk away.”
Wattson’s gaze didn’t falter as she looked up at the thief. She took on a serious expression, too. “You did what you did to avenge your family. I don’t blame you for that..” She answered firmly, which surprised the thief. Loba expected anger, rage even….but she got quite the opposite. “If Revenant did that to my family, I’d…” The engineer trailed off, suddenly getting louder, her eyes momentarily engulfed with fury. But then, she calmed down and sighed. “I don’t even want to say it. But, I also think that people can change for the better, if they want to. I’ve seen it myself.” A smile sprung onto Natalie’s face as she put her hand over Loba’s. “So no matter what you choose to do, Loba, I forgive you. You’re a part of the Legend-ary family now, for better or worse!” Natalie giggled and beamed up at the woman. Loba chuckled and patted her hand; she wasn’t the emotional type, but the engineer’s words made her heart feel warm. 
“Thanks, Natalie. Now, it’s getting late. And I have some...things, I have to take care of. Why don’t you go break some more hearts and tell me about it tomorrow?” Loba quipped, pulling her hand free to poke Wattson’s sides. Wattson lurched away from her and laughed, hopping off of the bed. 
“Okahahy...I’ll see you around, Loba!” Natalie smiled and bid the thief farewell, hurrying out of her room and down the hallway. Loba noticed the slight strut to her walk as she left, which made her heart swell with pride. 
Aw, they grow up so fast… 
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krokonoko · 3 years ago
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Got tagged by the one and only @northernscruffycat 💕
I tag whoever feels like doing this~
How many works do you have on AO3?
29, apparently? the account is REALLY old and has a lot of ancient crap on it tho lmao
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What’s your total AO3 word count?
128149! which is a lot, considering that I write almost exclusively oneshots.
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How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
10! I’m usually not a very active fic writer lol
video games: Elder Scrolls, Amnesia, Hitman, Dragon Age and Metal Gear Solid
live action movies and TV shows: Better Call Saul, Collateral and Edge of Tomorrow
cartoon and anime: Gravity Falls and Boku no Hero Academia
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What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Bait (Lalo/Nacho, Better Call Saul, 2.7k words. “just” a pwp, but it’s my baby, my beloved)
Ten Years Passed That Night (Bill+Rita, Edge of Tomorrow, 3.4k words. insanely popular by my standards, but also rly old and I don’t remember what happens in it. All I know is that it’s set post canon, Bill experiences an uncomfortable situation, instinctively tries to reset the day through suicide and almost kills himself in the process.)
a Collar by any other Name (Lalo/Nacho, Better Call Saul, 2.7k words. shameless dressing kink. came into existence on a bit of a whim. I think I wrote it down in one go (just like Bait! it seems like those kinda
Something to Hold On To (Lalo/Nacho, Better Call Saul, 4k words. more pwp with an excuse for a thematic red string holding the whole thing together asdfg)
Strange Attractors (Lalo/Nacho, Better Call Saul, 14k words. Lacho, but make it Groundhog Day. holy shit, when did this one get so many kudos?? it’s a very rare multichapter from me and paused atm cause I’m a fickle sob who can’t focus on one and the same thing for more than two weeks :/)
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Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
yeah man, of course! honestly every time I get a comment I can’t really believe it? I never had an opportunity to get used to feedback, so every person telling me they liked my writing brightens my day 🥺
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What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
probably A Cornered Dog. it might seem like Max has risen to power, but in reality, Vincent has (involuntarily) succeeded in turning him from a sweet, emotionally intelligent man into a cold, manipulative person, aka someone who can endure what Vincent puts him through.
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Have you ever received hate on a fic?
yeah, not even a week ago I got this huuuuuuge, longwinded comment on my Kacchako fic Plus One explaining to me in great detail why Bakugo being trans and Ochaco being bi completely ruined the story lmao
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Do you write smut? If so what kind?
I do, but it's a fairly recent development! I mostly write m/m, but I have written m/f and I’m open to writing f/f smut too!
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Have you ever had a fic stolen?
not that I know of.
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Have you ever had a fic translated?
yeah, one of my Collateral fics got translated into Russian. I think it was We All Die Alone.
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Have you ever co-written a fic before?
stealing Pandirpus’ answer: I’ve written a very fun Amnesia AU fic with @pandirpus Tabula Rasa - and to this day, it’s the longest and most research-intensive fic I’ve ever written in English.
another fic I’ve co-written is the fantastically smutty Rising Tides which I worked on with the absolute master of E rated content: @seanfiction. Rising Tides itself, and stay with me here, is a story written by Marcius, a character from one of my books. but it’s not just any story, it’s porn he wrote of himself and a certain reptilian man he’s into, but in an alternate universe where they’re both pirates. it’s amazing and ridiculously self-indulgent and I love it.
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What’s your all time favorite ship?
that’s really hard to say cause I ship a LOT. recently I think Lacho has a special place in my heart.
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What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
oh, DEFINITELY Strange Attractors! but the inspiration will have to come with the next season of BCS.
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What are your writing strengths?
rambling, lol? people tell me I’m good at building atmosphere.
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What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
maybe it’s the linguist in me speaking, but imho, if you wanna use a foreign language, you gotta treat it with respect. too many people treat foreign languages as nothing but sexy glitter you dust over your writing for decoration.
if you can, ask a native speaker for help. I try to do the same as often as I can. never, under ANY circumstances, rely on nothing but google translate. there are so many practical translation tools online, folks.
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What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?
Pokemon lol. when I was around 12yo or so I wrote like, half a dozen fics that were just self-inserts going on Pokemon journey and nothing else.
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What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?
that’s probably Trip Wire. I feel like that one kinda got lost in the amount of Lacho fics I produced, never received any special attention, but I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written. it’s got exactly the kind of energy that I try to go for with p much all of my writing, but rarely give myself credit for achieving.
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lady-plantagenet · 4 years ago
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End of the year asks: 1, 4, 8, 5, 7, 9, 11, 17, 19 ❣️🎄🎅🏻
~Asked via ‘End of Year’ Ask Meme’: https://lady-plantagenet.tumblr.com/post/637933219260563456/end-of-the-year-asks~
1 ~ Song of the year?
I’ve pretty much gone emo over this song. It’s probably the most beautiful sound I’ve heard in my life, it’s so full of longing and sad beauty that despite how much I love it, I only play it in moments when I think I’m in the right mental state to appreciate it so it doesn’t become a background song haha. Yup, that’s the depth of my appreciation.
4 ~ Movie of the year?
I had already answered this one! :) press the ‘🍷❤️’ tag. But I’ll give another one for you that’s a bit different than the others: Midsommar. I was extremely impressed by the visuals I must say! It was true horror and scared me to bits (sidenote: I’m the type that doesn’t get spooked easily). I also found its exploration of cults quite fascinating. If you ever watch it make sure to then watch ‘How Midsommar Brainwashes You’ by ‘Accolytes of Horror’ on youtube to see what I mean! The analysis makes it even more terrifying.
5 ~ TV show of the year?
I don’t know if it counts since it’s a mini-series but definitely ‘The Shadows of the Tower’ which is this 70s show covering Henry VII’s early reign (you can find the first episodes on YouTube). It is quite possibly flawless (I obviously gritted my teeth a bit about the whole ‘Clarence had no brain’ remarks, but that’s really really minor). The acting is incredible and threater level, the dialogue a work of art not o ly in content but also in intonantion and the vibe about the whole show is so period and ominous 👀. Even if you’re not too big on Henry VII, you will fond great pleasure in the snapshot nature of the episodes eg one episode was about a lollard, the other about Sir John Kendall and the botched plot to assassinate Henry VII, another about a foreign navigator etc. If you like history you’ll love this!
7 ~ Favorite actor of the year?
yeah yeah call me basic, but if we’re talking about this year (as in contemporary actor) I must say Timothee Chalamet. The King has been criticised a lot but I feel like he really held his own there. Also loved him in Little Women, Beautiful Boy, Call Me By Your Name and Ladybird (among others). I’d love to see him become a permanent feature in movies!
8 ~ Game of the year?
Admittedly, I don’t really play any games. I occasionally go on lichess (and yes that’s way before The Queen’s Gambit came out) to play with friends, but otherwise, nothing really. I spend too much of my freetime on here already agshdj
9 ~ Best month for you this year?
You’d be surprised, but I must say: April. I don’t know why, I guess I just felt this vibe around me as I was surrounded by great historical fiction and randomly discovered sooo many new songs! Everyday was fairly peaceful as I didn’t have any assignments but just exams to study for, but as I knew the syllabus it was pretty relaxed. By that point I honestly needed a social break and lockdown gave me that without me having to invent any excuse. I also had my old flat with the lovely balcony I would go have my coffee on and it was just bliss ~
11 ~ Something you want to do again next year?
In my last answer for #11, I put continuing my WIP: A Bygone Era and staung on tumblr (which are stuff I only started this year - writing in Jan and Tumblr in February). To answer this again but with a different answer: I would like to continue with my hair care and corset experiments. I know this is very minor, but everything else from this year has already been done in other years. I’m currently still figuring out what homemade mask is best for me and it’s honestly been a trip haha (honey, olive oil + egg yolk is in the lead). With the corset training it’s satisfying to see the progress that is being made with my waist! I’ve neared down 3 inches already! (26’ -> 23’). And honestly whenever I have it on I just feel so dainty!
17 ~ Post a picture from the end of the year
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This is a part of my garden back home atm. Between the red sky - green leaves contrast, and the heaps of snow... what could possibly be more Christmas vibes ey? (An especially appropriate post for today methinks)
19 ~ What’re you excited about for next year?
Most people would say an end to lockdown, but I don’t have high hopes tbf. I mean, have you seen the lack of discipline with most people nowadays? Ugh. One thing I can control (sort of) is getting into my masters next year. I’m terrified (because I might not get in) but excited (a nice change of scenery from London, and an opportunity to meet new people is always good). Not to mention, a more dissertation-based course is what I yearn for and need cause I despise exams. I’m really really excited at the prospect oml =)
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someobscurereference · 5 years ago
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im very into the 3H hype now as well, but i have missed your FE14 talk more than i can say lmfao! any plot ideas/headcanons/other concepts that have been nagging you lately and that you want to share? (i know i just specified fe14, but 3H is also fine !) if not though thats okay, and i hope you have a nice day! :D
Aw, I missed it too, anon! That was the downside of closing my ask box. I was assured I wouldn’t see any spoilers before I wanted to, but I was sorry to put a hard pause on any cool questions anyone had to ask. I don’t normally have any HCs that I get on my own (since they’re usually tied into the plot of any given fic I’d wanna write and usually not a “this is how I Always with a capital A think about X”), but let’s see about upcoming plots! I’ve left you guys hanging for a little while now.
Mafia AU
Firstly, I’m probably going to be actively working on Mafia AU with @kimium again in the next few days. Holy cow, seriously, she has the patience of a saint with this AU. I could not ask for a more understanding person to be writing that with, because I have not been looking at the Mafia AU or really much writing at all in Forever. Granted, I was very busy with real life stuff and final projects/work as my study abroad was coming to a close, but I probably would have been understandably annoyed if I had to be partnered with myself for that too because I have been So Bad. Like, Very Bad about writing! So thank you, @kimium, for your kindness. You deserve a reward. Seriously.
(Did anyone notice that I wrote less fic when I was in Japan? I sure did! I felt bad about it, but while I loved being there and all my classes and friends, I really had no energy or time for anything that didn’t immediately pertain to university life in some way. My hobbies all got put on a big hold while I was over there. But I’m back now! And am working on making more time for myself for creative outlets!)
Spooky FE14 Fic
Also, I have another FE14 Spooky Horror Fic that’s on the way! With all the FE ships you know I love to write! Probably… somewhere between ½ to ¾ths done? Including blocking for future scenes, I’m at about 37K word count right now. That will go up as I take the blocking and turn it into actual dialogue and narration and stuff, lol. It’ll still be a while before I’m done though. I’ve had this thing sitting in my drafts for literal months and haven’t been able to work on it in a while. But I want to very badly!
I’m trying hard to make this spooky fic different from my previous fics. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I am actively trying to make sure I have a few different dynamics than who I paired up in Dark Things Grew (which you should check out if you like spooky stuff!) and also more getting together than established relationship. Also more, like, having real flaws in relationships and as people? But we’ll see how that works out, haha. It’s my first time writing a lot of things, so it’s a little new to me too. And spooky in the “oh no, what if people don’t it when characters are, like, realistically an asshole?” But I want to to be good! And I think you’ll like it! Or at least some will, haha.
FE3H
I sat down trying to write some FE14 stuff earlier, but I think the 3H bug really bit me because when I tried to write, something just wasn’t clicking right. And I just kept thinking about some of my 3H faves?? So I guess I’m halfway through a short-ish Caspar/Linhardt fic now, lol. (I also have a half-written Raphael/Ignatz in my drafts too, but I don’t know if I like it or not, so we’ll see if I ever come back to it. I’m thinking of that one as a warm-up.)
But it’s been literally a minimum of 2 years since I’ve written something that wasn’t for FE14, so getting to know new characters again is interesting. Normally I like to scan wikis and consume literally everything about a character before I write them so I write them as accurately as possible, but 3H is so new that a lot of that info is really scarce rn! So I’m nervous! But trying!
Also, because you asked about various things and I feel bad just naming upcoming, unfinished fics:
A Few Fic Ideas I Think About Often And Actually Have In A File On My Laptop Titled “FE Fics to Write” (much more on the real list)
Chef/Baker AU Owain! (I also talk to @kimium about this often. But also I know nothing about baking or cooking at all so like??? We’ll see if I ever get this one done, haha.)
AU where Owain (and maybe the others, but this is more Owain focus) is an Android but nobody knows it except him. (Slowburn Leo/Owain/Niles? And also maybe Nina and Forrest are there?? This one is also a little vague but it Haunts me)
I wanna write a fic like this one where Inigo made a deal and the price of Severa and Owain living was their memories except this time around it’s more of the aftermath and a little more magic is involved. Also, Owain/Inigo established relationship but Owain forgot. Also, Owain hates Inigo.
On that same line, I want to write a fic that takes place during the “Owain and Inigo Do Not Get Along” time period of their lives. I always write them as established friendship. But they legit were Not Friends in Awakening for a good part of their friendship. They would die for each other but also shove each other’s faces in the dirt if they could. I want to write that. Also maybe with hate romance.
Established Leo/Nlies Modern AU where Owain is their neighbor/someone they know who they sleep with on the regular. Owain thinks it’s all casual. Is it??? *Eye emoji*Insecure Owain? (maybe tied in with the above? maybe something else? mentioned in another fic I’m writing and I want to explore it more. He so easily has breakdowns in canon when Felicia and Severa call him weird.)
Can u tell I love Owain
Anyway, those are some of my top fic ideas and fic that I’m actively working on atm! I hope they seem appealing to you or anyone else reading this, lol. I’m trying to get back into the swing of things as I go! Definitely always feel free to hit me up with more FE questions anytime though! (Awakening, Fates, 3 Houses–it’s all on the table again!)
Thanks for asking!
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fandomhores · 6 years ago
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Healing Hands » Peter Parker
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Peter Parker x Reader 
Prompt: Reader has similar powers to that of the Scarlet Witch and Tony suggests that the reader go to school with Peter in order to “babysit” him, somehow it ends up equal babysitting on both parts. Peter has an adorable school girl crush on Reader.
Warnings: Fluff, fluff, and more fluff. Almost teeth-rottingly sweet, also first crush cringe. Not a lot of dialogue in this one, more descriptive for plot feels. 
Word Count: 1,599
By: Admin Nikki ☾
New York City was known for being the city that never sleeps, and that was most likely the reason why Peter was late. Fury would have preferred you to stay with him at S.H.I.E.L.D. so they could better monitor and study your powers, but then Tony Stark gave the idea of having you go to school with Spidey-Boy. They’d know where the both of you are, you could finish high school, and you could probably help each other out in the process.
You first met Peter at Tony’s office. Tony was letting you use Friday to research more about New York City since you would soon need to know your way around. Tony had told you he had someone he wanted you to meet, and brought in the Queens teen while you were watching a video of a street performer and unconsciously toying with your powers. 
Tony told Peter that he was introducing him to a witch, he kinda pictured an aging woman with a broom and a big black pointy hat. Maybe he shouldn’t have used the Wizard of Oz as a reference, cause he was not prepared for you. You were standing in front of the holo-screen, swaying to a live cover of Stand by Me. Violet-colored energy spiraled from your fingertips and swirled around your person like smoke. Small objects from the room floated around you as well, and you sensed Tony and another enter the room. You greeted both of them with  smile and sent Tony’s belongings back to their place. Peter gawked at you, all doe-eyed and starstruck, and Tony rolled his eyes at the sight. 
When Tony explained that you would be attending school with Peter, the boy started having a mental panic attack. Tony made it even worse when he said that you’d be staying in the empty apartment on Peter’s floor of the building he lived; he already called ahead to Aunt May to let her know that his “niece” was going to be probably stopping by from time to time.
The kid was a stuttering mess when you introduced yourself to him and gave him your hand to shake. He introduced himself as “Parter Peker” and his hand was slightly clammy, but you found his awkwardness endearing. Aunt May adored you the moment she met you, acting like the Italian mom aunt she is by offering to make you dinner as a welcome to NYC. While you were in the kitchen cutting ingredients for her, she teased Peter in the living room about how pretty you were and how he should ask you out. He responded by trying to make a coherent sentence about how you just got to New York and you’d never be interested in a guy like him.
Now Ned was a different story. Ned was speechless when you came right up to him with Peter, talking like you had know them for years. In private he tried to interrogate Peter on how such a pretty girl was even breathing near geeks like them, but Peter avoided answering his questions as much as he could. He thought it was most definitely a big no-no to divulge your Avenger status. 
Then there was the time Peter blocked a ball from hitting you, his spidey-senses taking over and he rushed in front of you, wrapping you in his arms and turning his back to the baseball. You felt Peter flinch at the impact and when you saw the aftermath, which was Ned making incoherent phrases while gawking at the two of you and the gym teacher rushing over, you fully registered what happened. You offered to take Peter to the Nurse’s office, and the teacher agreed while Peter tried to insist that he’s fine. You don’t remember Peter taking your hand, but you used it to your advantage, and Ned noticed the brief flicker of lilac come from your intertwined hands. That’s when Ned realized why you hung out with Peter, you were both super-humans. 
You used a bit of your powers to “persuade” Peter into letting you take him to the nurse’s office. When you finally got him there, the nurse asked you to stay by her desk while she took him behind the curtain to give him some privacy to check his back. You shuffled your feet restlessly, you could hear them moving and the nurse talking to him quietly from behind the curtain. It was opened abruptly soon after, right in the middle of Peter putting his shirt back on. You caught a glimpse of his abdomen and your face flushed red, you turned away hurriedly to cough when he looked over at you.
Since it was the end of the school day soon, the nurse instructed him to put a cold compress on the area when he got home, and that the spot was already bruising. Peter tried to stretch his back and flinched, a pang of guilt hitting you straight in the chest. It was later that night when Peter was out on patrol that you finally had enough a sulking around and feeling guilty that you asked him to come over to your apartment.
The boy began running scenarios about why you wanted him over and what would happen through his head. Some scenarios had him turn red in the face and immediately shake them from his head, but nonetheless he panic-talked to himself the whole way back home. He landed on the rooftop of the apartment building and was surprised to see you already up there. You were looking out at the view of the city with a blank gaze, but sensed someone behind you a moment later. You turned around to see who it was and relaxed to find Peter in his Spiderman getup. He slipped off his mask, his contagious smile on his lips. When you gave him the same, his worries just washed away. He could swear you were the loveliest thing he had ever set his eyes on and nothing would change his mind.
You beckoned him over with a wave of your hand, and he made his way over to you, trying to keep his cool and not trip on air. He stood next to you, looking down at you expectantly. You blink up at him, your mind suddenly blank of all the words you rehearsed in your head. Word vomit just exploded from you and you blatantly ask him to take off his shirt. The both of you turn into sputtering tomato faces right on the spot, you hurriedly tried to correct yourself and explain that you wanted to examine the spot where he got her earlier at school.
It takes a moment for Peter to register our words, but he eventually turns around, deflating the torso of his suit and turning his back towards you. The person who ball was, unfortunately for Peter, the pitcher for the baseball team at school. The spot was already black and purple and big, meaning it was already starting to heal. You ghosted your fingers over it, Peter winced more from the sudden contact than the tenderness of the spot, you mumbled apologies to him.
Peter then felt his skin start to tingle, goosebumps raising on his skin. He turned his head to glance back at you and what he saw amazed him. Your hands lightly touched the bruise and your eyes were closed, eyebrows knitted together in concentration. You violet aura pulsed from your palms and the moment ended not a beat later. Your eyes fluttered open and a bright grin lit up your features.
“W-What did you do?” Peter asked bewildered.
“I, um, felt bad about you taking that hit for me,” You explained, toying with your fingers nervously. “So I healed you.” Peter stretched his back, feeling no pain unlike earlier. He clumsily tried to reach behind himself to feel for the spot, but you pulled out your phone to take a picture of it for him so he could see it. His jaw dropped, there was no sign of the bruise ever existing, it was like the nothing ever happened. “Y-You know, if you ever get while you’re out there fighting badies and what not, you could always just call me and I’ll aid you. You can think of me as your own person medic I guess.” Peter just stared at you with literal heart-eyes.
“Why are you just so incredible?” Peter meant to say that in his head but it just came out. You turned into a blushing mess along with Peter. You pivoted away from each other, not being able to look the other in the eye. Peter put his suit back on while you checked the time on your phone.
“Welp. I’m gonna go finish my homework,” You proclaimed, ending the awkward silence.
“Y-Ye-Yeah. I should probably go make sure that there’s no guys in Avenger’s masks robbing ATMs again.”
“See you in the morning Peter,” You said as you started to walk back towards the roof door. Peter was going to slip his mask back on when he saw you stop in the corner of his eye. You flew over so quickly that he would have thought he imagined you kissing him, would have if your lips didn’t linger as long on his as they did. He stared at you wide-eyed when you pulled away, and retained the same shocked look as you hurried inside, the lilac light trailing behind you.
Peter registered what happened a couple of minutes later, and no one could wipe his dorky grin off his face.
Thanks for reading! Requests are open for both Kat and I. It can be someone we haven’t written about on the page if you like, one of us is bound to be able to write about them. ♡
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elizabethrobertajones · 7 years ago
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13x09 watching notes
This was my watching set up today:
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http://bocken.gavle.se/kamera/
Mittens, like 2 days ago: "so are you going to finish your wayward sisters rewatch by next episode?" Me: "hahaahahahaha no... I have all Christmas and into January before the Big Day, right?" me, internally: "right?????? Oh god please think this is intentional and I've got a timeline for it" Mittens: "yeah :)" Me: "cool :)"
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Expectations: Avengers Assemble!!
(Or at least the equivalent of the first half hour of it which puts them all together :P)
I want to love Kaia and in the 0.5 seconds I've seen of her smashing Jack in the face I absolutely do and I understand being protective of the nougat child but seriously look at it from her POV so how was that even wank I saw yesterday. But I also want a lot more Kaia so that I can love her for other reasons, because "punched the nougat child" is understandably unsustainable.
Don't particularly need her to be introduced with the exact same shot Alex AND Claire were introduced with especially as I watched 9x19 second to last and will watch 10x09 but I have a worry since Jack was busting her out of somewhere and it would make Cas to Claire parallels for Jack's sake to be Cas :P
This is Berens though and he loves him some Wayward Sisters, and there doesn't seem to be much reason to worry about anything. They'll give us a midseason cliffhanger but THOSE are cool, and they'll set it up for the girls to deal with so that's VERY VERY cool, so my one and only concern and not in a paranoid character stanning way but an "oh no" is worrying Jack will fuck up and take it even MORE badly and go from trying to help to full on unstable descent as he starts to think he can't be saved from being evil... but no biggie :P Because of the nature of the entire enterprise it's pretty hard to be concerned about what happens to Sam and Dean just because the story is briefly leaning away from being ABOUT them. And more like happening TO them, that they end up needing to be rescued. So I have like... no worst case scenario for them that would upset me.
So I hope, as a real consideration, as the 2 rando gruff old hunters the girls meet, they don't come across too poorly because wowza doing the WS watch has made me realise how often when a leading lady is the star of the episode, Sam and Dean are used for casual misogyny to empower their arcs, and OBVIOUSLY that's how it just IS for women and all but when you're rooting for these guys in all the OTHER episodes, being reminded that even when they're normally mostly chill guys as soon as you flip it around and write a woman in their world obviously they're gonna fuck up and it would be unrealistic for them NOT to considering how ingrained it is in the way men are raised in society and blah blah blah this rewatch is taking me Too Deep but they got to stop telling the woman to stay behind and they can handle it because they might think "because we're the professionals" but I got to tell them how it looks from another perspective sometimes, and I feel exhausted on Jody's behalf all of a sudden :P
Anyway based on Jack running around grabbing Kaia and trying to do something heroic for Sam and Dean he's very much playing the toxic masculinity tropes and they may be more passive and the object of HIS quest in a narrative level, on the back foot with Jack and the chaos he'll cause on the level of the action.
It's baby's first narrative villification :') They fly the nest so soon.
*downs the rest of my coffee* Let's do this!
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Recap: PATIENCE!!!
Also Jack
"You can use him as some sort of inter dimensional can opener and it ends bad" who ever woulda thought
More Patience! She's way more important.
And Jody's comment about it being her choice. I saw some criticism of Jody for being part of not respecting Patience here by telling her what to do like they all just offer her conflicting advice and she's undermining her father or veiled criticism of her for not going along with Dean or whatever, but it was supposed to be the same tone of her offering Alex help - which Berens wrote so he'd KNOW - that if the men deciding for her have decided wrong, and she NEEDS help or to use her powers to save people, Jody will be there, and it was NOT an order or a "if you change your mind, there's me" it was reaching out in case of the inevitable turmoil and I guess a suspicion it wouldn't leave Patience alone just because she wanted the powers to. That she had one foot in the life whether she likes it or not and if no one else will be there for her - and in respects to this Patience has been failed by her father AND Missouri - then Jody will help before someone else has to scrape up the pieces.
Anyway more montage of the car driving around, like, hey look these guys do this... reminding us what show we've come FROM.
Re-write history a little bit that the dialogue in 13x02 that Sam turned into being about Mary was not, when Dean was talking, about Mary 100%, since he's weighed like at least 70/30 to Cas over Mary, while Sam was just bringing up Mary first all the time... Interesting how these things get reshuffled for recapping - it's probably because on the nose Buckleming dialogue and Sam and Dean talking about Jack while he's in shot with them. It’s actually been SO much about Cas for Dean I wonder if they had to fish around for a neutral scene to turn into Mary angst.
Also moving Jack's dialogue about feeling bad in 13x04 that he didn't feel anything, to after 13x06 when he ran away - now you could argue soulless!Sam was motivated to keep doing broadly the right thing with hunting etc because he thought it was what was right even when he didn't have a soul to guide him, but Jack literally is being powered by an attack of conscience and fear that he's NOT good which has him all spun out and emotional and so on. So whatever he's struggling with I still see it as at WORST 50% lack of empathy because of being HALF human and half angel - and angels can care, they just aren't wired for it to be very sustainable or for them to be good at coping with it. Too much in the establishing Jack stuff has been about how he feels for him NOT to feel anything whether it's pertinent or not in this exact scenario.
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OH GOSH I thought that was Kaia making out with a lady in the immediate open of the episode just because this guy has the same length hair and we were still fading in
my hopes are high but I'm not sure they were THAT high :P
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"Speak of the devil" "Hello!"
Yeah see above narrative villification. There's SOME dramatic irony that Jack is still adorable and not badly intentioned like Lucifer, or that we wouldn't expect him to be right now, but it's still now comparing him in a dark way to Lucifer.
Also kinda low key reassuring that Lucifer is still on a narrative level a bad guy at least for now and especially in relation to Jack and in the contrast to Cas as a positive influence on him. For Jack, though, we've gone full circle from Jack saying "father" and us expecting it to be Lucifer but it's not, to this guy joking the devil is on the other side of the door and instead we get Jack... And unfortunately this has to be the ill-fated Derek mentioned in one of the later promo clips...
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"You're... young!"
"I am!"
I have to say, everything he says I read with a :3 smilie after it. His mouth is shaped like that kinda.
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So the first question of the episode is, where did Jack get money and PLEASE say it's the ole Doctor Who sonic screwdriver an ATM method.
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Well the first question would be: wait can he do like SERIOUS research by either flapping around investigating or can he just stone cold read this guy's ancestry because he's kinda scary but his powers ARE cosmically timey wimey.
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Derek is also wearing a white henley. Jack's earlier innocence being killed in him by use of Jack's powers? :(
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Oh noooo Derek don't go there!!!
It's kinda terrifying how he just kind of dabbles in the terrifying AU but I suppose if it doesn't hurt him to get more than glimpses...
JACK GET YOUR HANDS OFF THAT MAN'S TEMPLES AND GO TO YOUR ROOM
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If nothing else you're burning his feet
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Nope you apparently burned out his eyes too. Smooth, kid.
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He acted oblivious to the fact Derek was dead in the later clip and looked truly upset about it, so unless we see it again from Jack's POV or another flashback that he truly left him to it and he was burned out after by something else/something that happened to him because of this AFTER Jack left, it seems waaay more likely that if it was his powers he really did kill him on the spot - whether he instantly flapped away once he'd seen what he wanted without checking how Derek was, or bolted when the connection broke without realising that Derek was dead... 
It LOOKS really bad on camera to us now, and it's going to look worse that Jack has a different version of events to what we saw on screen - yes we don't see Derek die on camera with Jack there and we cut from Jack doing that to Derek dead on the floor with no Jack, but the way it was cut it makes the intervening space not particularly hard to imagine at this point if you think Jack fucked it up after pushing Derek into it 
In any case whether Jack meant to kill him or not and he DID and it's the sort of body count one accrues while trying to do a greater good to later feel terrible about in Winchester angst style. But in this case the greater good is to bring back Mary which means we already have one entire dead person to weigh against having her, a single other life, back. Not like one in the face of saving the planet 
Anyways showing Jack's lack of empathy or consideration - I don't want to say compassion because I think that is a learned response, but he also hasn't learned to be CAREFUL with other people, to see them as weaker and more breakable than he is when he steps up to Derek and starts, like, boiling his feet... Like Cas in 9x11 NOT using them up for some supposed better end. Cas describes that mercilessness as something the "old him" would have done and that only on the other side of having been human did he have the learned appreciation for not doing that to Sam, even though he considered him his friend long before that.
Of course, Jack hasn't even mastered asking people if he CAN use his powers on them 
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And going from close up of his eyes to the title card... IT DON’T LOOK GOOD.
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Why is Dean calling Patience aside from to remind us he knows her.
He's asking for help. I think with hindsight of feeling a wee bit better since Cas is back he knows he was pretty harsh to her at least about NEVER using her powers and just going for the easy life - that he spoke from the really dark place in his heart about it all. I suppose also a sign of their desperation - that he has exhausted all ends which might normally work, and Patience is a wild card resource for them to try.
As if that was breaking and going back on his previous stance, it cosmically unlocks Jody phoning in with a tip off about Jack's last known whereabouts and the horrifying news, because Dean has backtracked on dictating what Patience should do with her powers, and giving her a choice to come help them if she can... she can still reject it or apologise that she needs to get on with school and stuff if she wants because it's not truly her place to help, but Dean's no longer sick to the stomach at the idea of another kid getting dragged into the life, and I don't think JUST because of desperation but also because his mood has changed. It’s not AS black and white.
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I love how much they work with Jody :D This is the sort of feeling that since *season 8* I've been feeling was missing - just using her even off-screen in episodes she isn't in as an acknowledgement she's a part of their lives and resources. I mean yeah it's all to a point NOW and has noticeably spiked in how often she's mentioned since WS was on the table for realsies, but... I like it
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I love Patience's phone case.
Oh, he called SIX times, okay he's pretty needy. Perhaps this is a "while Dean's been driving up to where Jack attacked Derek every time they make a stop he calls again because NOW he's truly desperate" thing 
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Honestly though, if she's psychic why does she need to study? Can't you just... psychic up the answers on the day? :P
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She's honest about Dean calling her, which is good. She's actually good at communication and not keeping it a secret. And I suppose seeking answers from her father about if this is something she should do - and knowing he'll say no so she can tell him and he can assure her she doesn’t need to answer the call, and that's that decided.
But NOW she lies to James about not having any visions, and you can see it in her face that this is why she flunked the test, and that Dean's calls might be something she's flip flopping on SPECIFICALLY but they're representing a call back to the life to her and she's struggling to resist it or ignore the visions. She can be honest to a point but it's still eating her up inside and the lie about her visions, about having to pretend to be normal, is where it’s getting to her
*nudges her out the door*
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"He had quite the freaky imagination" "he hated that word" *sam immediately leaps on "freaky?"* because theeeemes while she meant "imagination"
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There's giants in an AU out there somewhere
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Dean just spotted the AU world he's been to, riiiight as she says he was a dream walker.
So they know he wasn't making any of it up.
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Oooh do you suppose he painted the Thunderbird on the wall of the building? That would be awesome. I wonder if that was just doing art or if he saw it ever...
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Anyway promo scene number 1. Dean makes the assumption that Jack is looking for Lucifer, right back to the start of the season for him, having to assume the worse and feeling really bad that Jack's not learned anything - that him going dark, hurting people HAS to be about Lucifer. 
See also: speak of the devil dramatic irony. We KNOW Lucifer isn't still in the AU. Jack may or may not have sensed him returning but he's unbothered by it and has his own motivations, to help THEM. It's the same as when Cas was back but they didn't know yet and continued to grieve him - Dean's wrong about this but once again the framing of what they don't know has happened in other parts of the story is being used really well. 
This is something I feel has been missing from past seasons and used WELL, which is to emphasise and play off what the other parts of the story are doing. Sam and Dean are considerably more oblivious than we are about the story and we're seeing them scramble by to make do. It's a good way to have them at a disadvantage where they can be as smart as their little noggins can possibly be and they're still working on bad intel but it's OUR advantage to know what it is and know more than them in this way, instead of feeling like they're being obtuse about stuff, it's on the epic level of who's dead or alive or off in an AU or our world that they have no clue about.
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Sam hacks Derek’s email to find out about Kaia as the next dreamwalker on the list aaaand heeere she is!
Unlike Claire in her intro she has absolutely crappy nail polish that's all scratched off, and she's DESTROYING a plastic cup. Just a first shot of her hands and great character stuff :D
Awww no she's in rehab :( I hate this counsellor guy because he's just chucking her story at her in front of ALL these people? Like this is not how group chats should work, she's just being called out here! :( She should be allowed privacy until she's ready to talk about it, especially if she's only just ended up here and is probably still detoxing if she's still so fidgety and ESPECIALLY if she was sent here as a correctional thing.
Like wow no wonder she's on the defensive.
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Blaaah I guess Trump did something between seasons to oust poor old fake president Rooney. I have no clue what's going on there and I don't want to ask but maybe Jack should look into what happened to his un-talked-about other father on the list :P
This does sort of confirm that there literally is a weird Buckleming AU though that we pass in and out of. They should really get Jack to help them with that too while they're at it.
I love Kaia's snark though, 10/10 who cares about plotholes. Give him a piece of your mind!
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It's come up before, a few times in the periphery but I've *always* been concerned about the psychics who don't get support they need and end up in the system either locked up for their experiences with BEING psychic or in this case trying to cope with it while not knowing what the heck is going on or how to control it. It seems like Kaia had a mentor in Derek (oh no) and he could have helped but not enough right away to help teach her NOT to go to "the bad place" so she's been spiralling and self-medicating and if there had been a way out through Derek in her future without interruption... Not any more, she doesn't even know she's at her lowest point yet, though it probably already feels like it :(
It puts her in a STARK contrast to Patience with a ~similar~ gift as in they're both psychic but Patience has a cushy middle class life and currently uses her father as a support system no matter how much they're on different pages. Kaia is probably about as disadvantaged as you can get in America >.> I can see immediately how she'd pair better with Claire who might have started lower middle class or whatever strata that was where you own a nice house and have all that bland Novak lifestyle she grew up with, but lost it all and spent her formative years in the foster system as someone with nothing, albeit at least being white >.> And Alex was raised in a sketchy vampire basement but fell into being a Sheriff's daughter, became preppy with social aspirations and is now on track to being a nurse, all of which has made her since 11x12 the social aspirant like Sam was with his law school in parallel to Claire continuing to Dean extremely loudly.
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Jack's evil smile from 13x01 is back. That thing where they cast someone who could look literally 1 days old adorable sniff the baby’s head cute in one moment and super scary spawn of satan in the next - he hasn't been framed like this since the last cut to ad break on someone stumbling across him in the wilderness with no clue how dangerous he might be of Sheriff Barker driving up to the naked guy harassing the people at the Salty Butt Place. Now we know unlike the hypothetical which was subverted to him being the nougat child in 13x01, that he poses a very very real threat to Kaia.
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Jack is the Worst At Lying, still - he just radiates that peace and purpose which is the most terrifying mood for people to have in this show because if they think they know what they're doing and they're doing it for good, then they're really really not. He is getting exponentially better at research and understanding context cues, regardless - he didn't know "what's your poison" but when Kaia asked him why he was here, he tried to pretend he was also admitted to the facility and he has some awareness of a class A drug and even if he's not even really trying to act anything, he knows this is something to say to fit in in a scenario where he doesn't fit. Like Cas, his mannerisms really betray him.
So he goes right back to the truth, telling Kaia he knows her name and he's here for her when she brushes him off as being uninterested in helping him - as of course she doesn't feel that she belongs. So he tells her the truth, to the degree that he probably stole all this from Derek's head while discovering there was another, more powerful dreamwalker and that this is what DEREK thought of her (ow ow ow).
Oh gosh I love this shot of the Impala pulling up from outside through the barred windows - in this case we're looking at them from the inside out - they're not imprisoned, they're in the sun and a light rain and free agents, and the next shot they pull up and the chicken wire is off to the side in the other third of the frame showing them OUTSIDE it. It's more dramatic irony - Kaia dithers, then chooses to go after Jack - the car pulls up behind the window but she has no idea what that means like we do, no idea that these are the people who would save her and warn her about what Jack did.
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ALSO THE TIMING ON PULLING OFF A CHARACTER INSIDE RUNNING OFF AND THEN CHANGING FOCUS TO CHARACTERS IN A CAR PULLING UP OUTSIDE
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Sam listing how Kaia's entire family is dead. Nice. >.>
They assume her OD was about the death of her entire family (ouch!?!?) and "no wonder" she ended up here, not that it's to do with her powers
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Jack does indeed do the thing where he knocks out someone to help Kaia get free.
And tells her they're just sleeping, just like Cas did with Claire
I would assume the parallels end there - Cas was genuinely motivated to help Claire yes to make himself feel better about not honouring his promise but also that promise was there and see also 9x11, learning compassion from the other side, beginning to understand his place in the world better, and finally making right what was a wrong he caused 6 years previously. Whereas Jack is doing this entirely self motivated without even a consideration of what Kaia would get from it - her freedom only benefits him and her powers only benefit his.
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He's also getting way more dark in his attitude - "You're not the only one with powers" and about the door being triple locked, "was it?" - he's growing in confidence about what he can do and how other people and things relate to him.
Aka he's starting to get a sense of where he is in the food chain >.>
These lines in particular make me even more wary of how he's changed, when Sam and Dean catch up to him in a few seconds for the next promo scene.
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Meanwhile Kaia takes him down a few pegs because he's visibly spiralling just because he's being rejected and he doesn't know how to handle that - very very raise an eyebrow symbolic about how Kaia appreciating the jail break but no thanks to being used is treated by Jack, now placed as our Grabby Young Man Who Doesn't Know What No Means.
"She hit me!" "Yeah, good." 
I love casual feminist Dean Winchester. It's not that he thinks Jack should be hit because he's evil, but because you have to learn to be nice to women when you're a grabby dude who overpowers them. Treatment of women is basically made synonymous to not being a dick about his powers, as he's been shown being over-confident. He's the over-privileged white boy. (perhaps a good reason NOT to have cast him as non-white if this is a longer theme)
I've been saying all season not to get too precious about Jack eventually being treated differently by the narrative but I can still predict a mile off people being upset after they got invested in him to the point of this now being idk ooc or that the writers are being mean to him >.>
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I already wrote in my tags about this promo scene how excited I was about the need/want stuff going on here - that Need is once more being framed as really really bad, that Want is being made clear to be different from need but when Jack is doing this for them, because he thinks it's what they wants, he is missing the nuance that want isn't the same as that you SHOULD do it or that it's the morally right thing to do.
Dean has been warned by Billie not to go poking at the AU after all, and that means any wants about Mary in it are now firmly placed on the other side of that cosmic line, that he can WANT her back but he can't HAVE her back.
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To his credit Jack really does look pretty horrified that Derek is dead as I remembered and thought that can’t be the whole story from the open.
But he swaps pretty quickly to talking about what he's been doing, after sparing only a moment for him - already compared to the guard, he can shrug it off, especially as he feels his actions are justifiable to a greater purpose and he didn’t mean to kill him. Being able to set aside collateral damage is *especially* a Sam trait, as Sam works in Greater Good utilitarian morality, which is not a bad thing in some ways - it's a good leader trait. But this mission of Jack's has been cosmically warned AGAINST.
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Jack carries on talking past the promo scene about how he's been nosing around to other worlds, which is pretty much making Billie shudder in her office >.>
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"I researched, like you taught me." Why does that sound like it should inspire a note of regret about teaching him 
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Oh we ARE getting flashbacks to Jack's perspective on meeting Derek. Good, I was hoping we would, at least if not that he didn’t kill him, to see Jack's rationale or that he truly had no idea...
"I could see what he saw" OH BOY IS THAAAT A BAD PHRASE
Maybe just because I was writing about the end of 9x19 like 2 days ago but Momma uses basically a light version of this re: transforming Alex, to what Crowley's big old speech in 9x23 to Dean was, where obviously there was that line. There was another "see what I see" somewhere in either season 8 or early season 9 that made me absolutely flip a table when I heard it, but I can't recall what episode right now, and busy watching too much to go look :P
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Maryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
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Okay so we see a glimpse, just a lil one, of Jack reassuring Derek - at this point I have to go with angels cleaning up after Jack but that may have been a big fake out but it's reminding us to be critical of his behaviour and that goes with his treatment of Kaia which very very much was something to be critiqued >.>
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Mary's alive! We don't get much time for Sam and Dean to react to that but it's Dean who makes the louder surprise noise, because he had to let go of Mary - unfortunately telling him she's alive is like the one thing that would make him most likely to break the universe if it means saving her from something awful. Which is probably why Billie sent him back without telling him, because telling himself Mary was dead was actually healthy in the circumstances he didn't know better about
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Boop
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(I love this effect)
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We're getting a lot of repetition, of what Jack sees this scene.
But this time with the "help me!!!" for Sam and Dean to respond to.
And Dean immediately says, "Mom!" because now she's ASKED for help.
(And just last episode we saw Dean strung up in hell yelling for help)
of course Cas saved him that time and it was a no personal consequences, just cosmic consequences resurrection - aka no personal cost on Sam or Dean for it, but it WAS how to get the apocalypse rolling. Awfully convenient that the second seal doesn't get broken until Dean's back alive, even though he broke in hell a month ago by their reckoning :P
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And while Jack continues to explain to Sam what happened with Derek - how he stopped because Derek wasn't strong enough (he shouldn't have been forcing him in the first place because he still hurt him even if he may not have been the one to kill him?) we get them blurred out, their voices blurred, as we get Dean and his sad music, as he realises how he spent MONTHS trying to get over Mary and tell himself she was dead but that he was wrong and she needed help and it all hits him at once :(
Oh no Dean.
You've got to be stronger than this. D:
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"Kaia, she's the key"
Cut to Kaia sticking out her hand, again - more close ups on her hands, and she's hitching a lift.
I'm no expert,  but this is an angel, isn't it
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DUDE you didn't have to knock her out - she WANTED a lift.
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Although maybe that close up on the knife was to say Kaia spots it, hesitates and gets knocked out because she's not being quick enough to get in the car and might rightfully wonder what that knife is about.
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They really cast Patience to be someone whose eyeballs we wouldn't mind seeing up close all the time.
What on earth is she seeing. That's not the main AU because it has trees and a scary animal skull, but it's Sam and Dean and Jody all together in the same place getting stabbed. Even with her vision filter, that blue-ness is like the blue other world we seem to see Claire and Kaia in together, at least, in the promo stuff for 13x10.
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Other worlds all seem to suck and be some variation of Purgatory. Let's have a fairy world already.
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Lo and behold it was an angel kill and they're hunting Jack, and he's unfortunately showed his hand by being interested in dreamwalkers, so now the angels are if lures him in >.>
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Nooooo Kaia has to find out Derek died this way.
She doesn't even know what a Winchester is!!! D:
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"You were right, this whole time, we should have been looking for her."
"I was just hoping. I didn't know."
Of course their stances are flipping - now with concrete proof Sam has to re-emphasise he was never doing this search because he knew all along that it was true, but Dean deals with objective truths so much - she's dead, she's not dead, and that his actions HAVE to have been one or the other. He's giving HIMSELF the "you should have looked for me in Purgatory" treatment, despite being on the same side as Sam in 7x23 while he thought Mary was dead and gone and there's no hope because what do THEY know about inter dimensional travel.
Sam's got what we could call a meta writer hunch - he had an idea based on that he could read Mary not being murdered in front of him and the idea she lived beyond the portal was the subtext. Sam doesn't want vindication he was right, he was just interpreting what he saw in a way that made the story he hoped for. Just because it pans out doesn't mean that he is any more knowledgeable or had a reason to INSIST things were one way or the other. Dean made his own interpretation from the same knowledge and came to a different reading, the more negative, miserable one, the one that didn't allow the story to continue after he could see it, but that it ended as soon as it was off-screen from his eyes.
Listening to Sam would have done NOTHING more for them in the time between 12x23 and now.
And in this season where dramatic irony about what happens where they can't see it is running the story... yeah, wrong direction.
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"We find her, no matter what it takes" "Yup."
Oh dear, dear Winchesters.
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I'd say "never change" but literally the entire point of everything since 8x01 has been "maybe pls change just a lil like not asking a lot maybe just don't... unleash untold havoc for the sake of saving family?"
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Dean checks in with Jack. "You okay?"
Jack's pretty upset about them just assuming he turned evil and killed Derek.
But while he didn't do that, the narrative HAS turned to questioning how he is behaving, at least to course correct. Does he know Dean said "good" about Kaia hitting him because he thought Jack was evil and should be punished, or because he needs to learn not to grab?
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In any case, it forces some honest communication about what they thought, so perhaps they'll be able to work from this later about nuances >.>
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Dean confirms that they're Jack's family, which is nice. They probably need to hear Jack confirming that Lucifer ISN'T anything to him, but like with 13x01 reminding us that Lucifer's called out to Jack before, the recap of this episode reminded us Lucifer's called out to Jack before. Whether he is or isn't, whether Jack remembers him doing it or not (actually, 13x07 had Asmodeus doing it too, reminding us Lucifer had done it outside of recaps), the fear is there in what WE know as well, so the story is using what we know possibly AGAINST us to feed worries about what Jack may or may not do.
(BTW idk how obvious it is but I love treating these watches with the full treatment of what casual eyes might see as well as what I do - like rolling with misdirections - especially since I watch with casual viewers, my mum and my friend Cat, and I need to, well, see what they see. And to understand why they're seeing it. Because I think fandom arguments go down some utterly ridiculous pits of self-wankery, and I like to keep my impression of what the show is doing right up with what it's been recently TELLING us it's doing which the casual eye spots better than the meta eye (and my mum and Cat have 2 different surface text interpretations on Jack). 
Whether this element ever comes into play I don't particularly care, like, I'm not making some huge spec that Lucifer's gonna manipulate Jack this way or something, but the reminders this happens, that the casual viewer may still be expecting Jack to be evil, that Sam and Dean CAN worry even at this stage that as soon as Jack disappears he's returning to Lucifer, seeing that alignment as NARRATIVELY compelling, even if Jack says it's not EMOTIONALLY compelling... If NOTHING else happens with this it's part of the emotional tone they're setting here... I'm preemptively defensive of the people defending Jack like this is all not a part of his story because he's inherently sweet)
And he considers Sam and Dean and Cas his family now, changing up from 13x01 where he was just asking for his father, and DEAN is the one who says, yes, we consider each other family. Weird as you are, so help me, I appear to have adopted you dammit.
I don't know if Jack can understand yet that Sam and Dean reacting like this might be also hurt on their side that Jack leaves, that if he starts hurting people, if he goes back to Lucifer, that's a loss and a defeat not just because they wanted to use Jack or to mould him to be good just to protect people from him, but a personal loss for them, that they couldn't save Jack, that he rejected their family.
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And Dean validates Jack that looking for Mary was a "good thing" even though it's been dubious and presumptuously good and well-motivated (e.g. personal good decided by what benefits the Winchesters and their wants not the world) at BEST and at worst is gonna knock down Billie's cosmic house of cards.
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I'm so proud of Patience immediately packing up and leaving when people are in danger. I mean her goodness was never ever in question but yeah :P
I like how her visions are like Sam's - their timing comes with enough room for her to do something about it :P
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Oooooooooooooh shit James still has all his issues, he literally reverse-John Winchesters Patience "you choose that life, you don't come back". Same phrasing he used on Sam when Sam wanted to go to college, when Patience is like bye bye gonna go save people for a day or two, back soon.
He wants to emotionally blackmail her to stay and be safe but he CAN'T see what she sees - which is that people are going to die and those images are going to haunt her. Better to risk exile and keep people alive than to stay and feel like she was a coward.
...
On the other hand if Kaia or Claire doesn't snark at her that Patience is upset Daddy cut off her credit card at some point or another what even is the point :P
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We're never gonna get to see that night with Sam and John now. But here's a reverse stand in to get us started on Wayward Sisters!
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"You picked the wrong bait, I'm not the sort of girl people come for."
I need Claire to rescue her like eighty times in a row in defiance of that pls. Not that I want Kaia to be a victim, I just want her to feel like she matters to someone <3
"I'm not white, rich, blond... No one's going to fight for me. I don't matter."
:<
*protectively adopts her in the meantime over Christmas if she doesn't get to meet Claire yet*
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I love how Jack is just like Fuck You to the angels because they keep killing people and kidnapping people - not a great incentive for him to help them but they're doing how they always do or are no better than demons any more.
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They also claim Jack should be "among his own kind" - he can pick which side he favours, but his half-angel side is certainly causing him more trouble than his half-human side >.> And he's been given NO incentive to identify as angel, although he accepts Cas as his real father it's an emotional bond, and while it neatly balances to give him an angel father and a human mother, Cas himself is an exile from Heaven for caring too much, and they wanted to use HIM as bait for Jack, until they lost him, and got this better lead on what Jack was looking for instead of Cas.
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Also Heaven isn't exactly doing much to save Cas now are they? :P
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n.b. unlike the Winchesters I suspect they know what's happened to Cas.
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Anyway the belonging theme for Jack.
But he can pick easier "I am home."
YEAH. Now Cas needs to do it, because Jack is his anchor if nothing else.
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Kaia like "WHAT THE FUCK"
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WOAH Dean came close to Billie sighing and filing that notebook.
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"Are you okay?" "NO WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?"
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Kaia having some issues with bad angels but you're the son of satan??? What???
"the whole world's insane, you get used to it."
Her FACE is amazing.
D:
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Contractually obliged as a shitposter to point out Sam talking about opening a door while waving his hand like that
I hate everything
Why the 6x15 parallels huh? :P
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But yeah now Sam and Dean are on the save Mary train they want to use Kaia too.
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Kaia like... "No." USE THAT NO. You don't have to break the world if you don't want to!!!
She points out rightfully that the angels only wanted her because if Jack did - if he backs off she's in no trouble and she can forget this ever happened. This whole thing is forcing her into it and if dudes being shitty about her boundaries kick off the whole mess for Wayward Sisters... lol
"We NEED you to dreamwalk for us" nope.
DEREK is the one who saw the AU. She ONLY goes to the Bad Place. If it's the blue AU, the one full of blood and death and *monsters* is she being literal, that WAS a monster skull, and the entire thing is that she's tapping a DIFFERENT AU, one full of much worse things, Purgatory-esque, and the reason for all this dark blue on everyone... That Kaia is linked to something different?
And they're just reading "the bad place" as she calls it as "well clearly that's our AU" without considering the horrors of what else might be out there in the cosmic multiverse?
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OH NO She's been clawed up by the monsters there!
GUYS PAY ATTENTION TO CONTEXT SHE IS BEING MAULED BY MONSTERS IN HER DREAMS. RANDO AU DEMONS WOULDN'T DO THAT TO HER. DID YOU NOT SEE THE SKULL - oh wait, Patience did.
Patience, come save your new future sister, kay? :P
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Woops, I thought Dean might crack with the blurry out bit earlier where it was all hitting him how he hadn't been saving Mary the entire time and he put the "you didn't look for me in Purgatory" weight on HIMSELF.
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This definitely makes Dean being a bit of a dick to Donna in 10x08 look light in comparison :P I was saying up the top that the dudes look bad in these episodes because it's about the girls and their shit! And now Dean's abruptly been shattered by Jack's revelation about Mary.
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Well Sam looks worried but he's not freaking arguing about this while Dean ABDUCTS A GIRL.
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FYI Mary might be yelling for help but she also does not approve.
And this is the example Dean is setting for Jack - he tells him off for grabbing Kaia earlier but then when it comes to her most important ability to say no this episode, Dean snaps and insists she does it anyway. That this is "good".
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I think Jack's visions are dangerous. Whether he manipulated Cas or not it's clear that with this parallel, what Cas saw was NOT GOOD for him, that when Jack shows you something it's stretching what you're SUPPOSED to know. He's dangerous on a cosmic scale not just because of his powers but the compulsion of what they can and can't do for you. Dean is the centre of the universe in other ways, the cosmic firewall, the balance. Billie was managing him as best she could, keeping him alive and on the job, and NOT telling him about Mary. Not giving him the motivation to do this. Jack casually shows them stuff they Can't Know, and it has literally driven Dean over the brink into threatening a girl with a gun and abducting her to use her powers, because this is cosmically UNBALANCED. It's WRONG. And now Dean is wrong, he's broken and hurt and Jack didn't MEAN to do this to him, but his vision still caused it.
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I am surviving this by staring at a stinking adorable piggie I made last night, every time I get too stressed. Do you want to see?
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Sam is trying to SUBTLY course-correct Dean but I think we're a bit far for that - it's literally counter knocking him out and talking him down when he's not right in front of the temptation.
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Oh yes I know Berens co-wrote 12x19 so I'm giving this all the credit it's due that Jack's visions are not to be fucked with, and they can derail you utterly by playing on the thing you need most. 
This is *literally* the stance I've been taking the entire time with what he did to Cas and I don't know if the debate got derailed in one direction by the fight for Cas's agency and in another by Jack having to be inherently good, but I'm literally seeing this as Jack is inherently a nougat child and that's been long established. But he did the thing again to Sam and Dean, and Dean had a light demonstration of how he would tell Jack to respect Kaia and all, but as soon as Jack boops him he's got a new dangerous element in his head of the Terrible Knowledge Jack has which should NEVER have been shared. 
It's BROKEN Dean. It played off his most vulnerable aspects - his need to save, MARY, the loss and pain and walling Mary up in his mind as lost at sea, and now here she is stranded on a desert island and Kaia's the one ship that can navigate to it? His actions are irrational, and dangerous, and he's not in his right mind because his right mind was overridden by Jack's vision. EVEN IF THESE ARE HIS CHOICES they are not choices he was supposed to be making to the point of Billie, the highest power who's even remotely helpful in this world now God isn't answering, SPECIFICALLY having the most intense conversation of the show since the first time he had a sit down chat with Death, to warn him NOT TO DO THIS. But it’s such terrible, irresistible knowledge it changes his entire personality.
"That sounds like us" he said in 13x05
Cas making off with Jack to protect him and stop talking to Dean sounds like Cas. >.> Remember in 8x22 when Dean was pissed that Cas disappeared from the Bunker and he'd just gone to buy toilet paper and pie, and got derailed onto Metatron preying on his misery about breaking Heaven and his need to redeem? Metatron took a lunch date and an ease-him-in mission to manipulate him into it. Anyway Jack doesn't need to do that because he can just show the one thing that will utterly, utterly break you down and lo and behold Dean's now doing this without question, UNABLE to question. Literally, like, 10x22 shoot the kid levels of dangerous.
Dean is now the strongest answer that Cas was utterly changed by his encounter with Jack in 12x19 and I don't CARE about if it was for a greater good or not or that in some ways Cas actually seemed happy and at peace in 12x23 or 13x06 talking to Jack, because the discussion wasn't about if it was good or not, if Cas and Jack can’t be good despite that, if they earn it, just if it happened on way or the other. At least for what I was interested in. Because I like Jack and I think he's good and always thought they'd play it either good or down the middle because it's just more interesting.
It's just... He's too powerful. He's dangerously powerful. Maybe we will or won't see what he showed Cas, but when he shows Dean something in a mirror moment, Dean is fundamentally harmed to the core to the point of plunging into the depths of the worst we've ever seen him. It's the sort of knowledge that could drive someone insane, if this was a slower story - a Gothic novel where Dean learns this truth and can't do anything to save his mother for 200 pages but now he KNOWS.
Better not to know - Billie sent him back before she could betray anything about it to him. But as I said back in 13x05 that was the accidental hope, the chink in his certainty that I think he wishes he had known sooner, when Jack was still in their control, that they could have acted even just a few weeks sooner. That he should have listened to Sam and been encouraging that horrifying tutoring of Jack to use his powers that was shown for Sam to be a bad path to connecting with Jack, and in 13x03 (hi Berens) Sam recognised was forcing Jack too hard to do what he wanted. To the point of giving Jack a meltdown about if his powers made him good or evil under that pressure.
... And if they break the world, Jack's not going to think much better of himself or the goodness of the Winchesters :S
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Jack apologising again.
"I'm sorry," he says, and it always sounds so weird coming out of his mouth. It always sounds like he knows he's supposed to say it, but he's curious about what it means, that he doens't quite understand it. It was a full on "I'm sorry?" the first time in 13x01, but even now it lifts at the end of the phrase, not sinking into apology.
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He's mansplaining to Kaia how she can help.
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DON'T SHOW KAIA THINGS. STOP SHOWING PEOPLE THINGS.
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Five seconds... Uhoh.
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He really likes doing that to people.
"Our powers can be good. We can do good things in this world."
STOP MAGICALLY MANSPLAINING AS WELL
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Sorry, sorry.
Look they're all on this bizarre righteous crusade and she should choose, sure, and she's choosing to feel ABDUCTED. BECAUSE SHE WAS ABDUCTED AT GUN POINT
Jack might make her feel a wee bit better about her powers being part of a wider picture - of what she might see if she starts to control them. And again, abducted at gun point, she agrees to let Jack show her but this is an awful, forced situation for her, and it might be a first step on her journey where they finally start to relate about powers and he can ease how bad it feels for her, but this whole thing is happening to save MARY and... argh. It's a mess. She might be mildly more cooperative because he did that but at the same time it reeks of him trying to make her see things his way because he's on this mission to get Mary back and do some real good, and doing this, showing her things, makes her compliant. Empathy or not. Purposefully manipulating or just trying to help. It happens.
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Wheeeee car chase
Wheeee stunts
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Oh yay creepy boats this never goes well.
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They've literally abducted Kaia to their own shady hideout congratulations you're being the villains again :P
Dean faces off against a bunch of angels and it looks really awesome. Run run run big crane shot throw all the money at this! 
wheeeeee action.
The number of angels out there seems worrying, like they're either gonna have to help deal with a problem bigger than this squabble, or they're all going to get obliterated, because once the Winchesters are outnumbered, there's Problems that can only get resolved with Bigger Problems.
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"Don't worry, we'll be fine." "We're screwed!"
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ANGELS DOING COOL THINGS
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That was awesome
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"We go out guns blazing"
Dean NO.
I hope this is about subverting the ending he thinks he deserves - 12x22 was Berens of course with the discussion of how he thought they'd always die and keeping on bringing it up... Yeah.
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He apologises for dragging her into the fight - again, not mind controlled, just mind-altered, but in this sort of drama he can still see what's going on, still feel bad for how he got her into being attacked by tons of angels, still come back to himself to see that much, even if he's now unable to let go that Mary is alive and calling for help.
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And then Kaia and Jack decide they might as well just go to an AU to escape, aka worse problems than all the angels but at least it's novel :P
"Can you take us to our mom?" "Can you do it?"
Sam is in on it too. The forbidden knowledge temptation >.> The spell that unleashed Amara involving the forbidden fruit. I mean. Argh.
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These angels are so cool. We never see them doing this badass stuff
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"Are you ready?" "no. Let's go."
Love her
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"Okay, I'm there, I'm in the bad place."
Oh no.
There's a monster.
WOAH COSMIC
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He found it! That was such a cool visual of The Comos and I wish I had time to deal with it!!!! 
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Kaia looping between the Bad Place and Mary AAAAAAH
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She's just a scared girl being tormented by monsters from another realm all her life!!!! STOP MAKING HER DOOO THIIIISSSSS
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Ooopppppssssss
I guess you're all in the Bad Place now. Or the angels were vaporised. But Sam n Dean seemed to be too so I'm gonna go with a whole bunch of angels AND Sam n Dean were sent there.
New rift in the creeepy boat. Wondered if this would be a set piece for WS because it's SO big. Having Bad Place Monsters wander into the world from it
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*pats my lil felt pig sadly*
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Jodyyyy. Calling Sam to check in with him, and knock knock here's Patience like MOM HELP
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ALL THE MELTED ANGEL BLADES. AAAAAAAAH
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Woops no there's a bunch of burned wing prints. So the angels are super dead. Are Sam and Dean super vaporised? I guess not.
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JACK FOUND MARY
Well at least someone accomplished some damn goals around here. THAT is a great shot of them seeing each other for the first time and she's like... strange boy???
and he's like MOM I AM HERE TO HELP.
Wait.
Grandma.
What the fuck.
What the fuck is wrong with this family tree. Mary is 29, 60, and whatever age Sam Smith is discreetly in between the two, Jack is 3 months old, and fucking 27. There's a 2 year age gap between Jack and Mary and she's his freaking Grandma what the fuck.
I'm just saying, life experience aside, Mary and Jack are both the most fucked up "millenials" in the cosmos.
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Sam n Dean get to deal with their own nonsense over here in the Bad Place.
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Sam never got to enjoy the whole stranded in Purgatory feel before! FUN FUN FUN.
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I honestly think after that interview about Kaia that the writers cared more about fleshing out The Bad Place than they do about the Michael AU, that one was introduced to make a point, and to act as a place to stuff Mary and Lucifer for a while. This one is being introduced to cause trouble for Wayward Sisters for at least the first season if they get it, and is Kaia's entire unspoken trauma.
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Dean's like "C'mon" because he knows what to do when you get stranded somewhere.
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HEEEEE it's a giant chicken universe. I LOVE IT.
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CLUCK CLUCK MOTHERFUCKERS
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melimelo-ao3 · 4 years ago
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Answers to the ask
So this is my answer to every ask of the “A Writer’s Ask Game” by agwitow that I reblogged just below.
Yes, I know, people are supposed to be the ones to send a number, and only then am I supposed to answer. But, since this blog has like, very, very limited interaction, and I had nothing to do, I answered them myself.
And I’m putting a time stamp on it: Wednesday 17/02/2021, because for some questions, in a week, it won’t be the same answer.
The Basics 1.     Do you listen to music when you write?
I do, yes. I have a couple of playlists with songs – I know some people enjoy listening to music while they write, but only without any kind of lyrics. I don’t care either way. Some days it’s pre-enregistered playlists, others random, and others just piano.
2.     Are you a pantser or plotter?
I’m mostly a plotter. I’ve tried to go pantser on a couple of stories (Pretty Boy is the last example that comes to my mind), but I end up knowing what I’ll put in the next chapters in advance. Even if it’s just the main plot point / scene.
3.     Computer or pen and paper?
Computer. Except when I have writer block.
4.     Have you ever been published, or do you want to be published?
I’ve never been published, and don’t plan on. I write my stories mostly for myself, and to me it’s a bit too over the top to, first, interest a publisher / editor, and then it would need lots of editing and… I don’t think I’m ready yet to see critics on my stories.
5.     How much writing do you get done on an average day?
I have no idea xD I suppose I’m happy if I get 1.000 word a day, especially if it’s a day I only concentrate on writing. Sometimes it can be more, but sometimes it can also be nothing at all. On days I have other things to do, I’m happy if I can write one sentence more during the day :)
6.     Single or multiple POV?
At the same time? Single. In a story? It depends. Some stories I’ve written in a single POV all along, others I switched between chapters, and others within chapters, with a distinction between the “parts”.
7.     Standalone or series?
Um, series as in several “books”? If so, there’s this story I finished last year. At first, it was supposed to be one single book, but things progressed as they did and so I chose to cut the overall, finished epic into three books. So it’s supposedly a series now.
Other than this, I usually cram everything up in one story.
8.     Oldest WIP
Oldest oldest? I started a story called L’année scolaire (= School Year) when I was like 10. It’s unfinished, so I suppose I can consider it as a WIP. Other than that, if I’m talking about posted fic, it’s a Harry Potter time-travel fanfic called Une nouvelle chance de vivre (= A New Chance At Living). Same, the fic has maybe ten years now (damn, time flies) and has been untouched for… about ten years I believe xD
9.     Current WIP
I have several! On my AO3 profile, there’s Sunkissed (an Achilles x Patroclus Omegaverse ff), The Bravest Belief of All (Amandi) (a Peter Pan x Wendy Darling canon divergence from OUAT) and I Desire You (or worse) (which is an original work with original character that I’ve just started posting) that I update regularly.
There are more on my computer, much more than I can type here…
10.  Do you set yourself deadlines?
Not at all. Because I wouldn’t respect them, and it would make me stress.
 The Specifics 11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most
Victor Hugo is the main one that comes to my mind atm. I love the way he writes and what he writes about. There’s Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames, too, which is amazing, one of the best books I know of. And, for the beauty of language and the sheer poetry literally pouring from every single word, Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand is. breathtaking. I don’t know if they influenced me, because it sounds a bit pretentious to say that one can find some of these authors in my stories if they look closely, but they definitely represent what I aspire to.
12.  Describe your perfect writing space
In a silent room, except there’s music (I know, it’s paradoxical). I have my computer and my head is resting (I mean, I don’t have anything urgent to do, it’s all done and behind me for the day) and I can concentrate on the scene I’ve been imagining for a couple of days / weeks / months / years (pick one).
13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished
Usually I have an idea, I play it in my head over and over again until I really like it and I have a couple of things found out (like, scenes or dialogues or narration – depends if the idea is about a story or just a single scene). Then, I write it. Admittedly, the polishing happens mostly when I play it over and over in my mind until it clicks or sticks.
14.  How do you deal with self-doubts?
I usually listen to them, because it means there’s something that’s nagging me about a scene, a moment. So I go reread it, I think back on it – what can I change? How can I formulate it in a different way? – and I change it until I’m satisfied with it.
I experience a (lot) of self-doubt at the moment, with the first three chapters of IDY. I chose to post them, but I’m not entirely sure I’d be ready if people began to hate them or find horrible flaws with them. that makes me doubt whether it was a good idea or not, but I know that I can always delete them if it really goes downhill.
15.  How do you deal with writer’s block?
I stop writing. For a couple of days, usually, to let my brain the time to relax and focus on something else. Then, I sit back before my computer and I open another word document – like a blank page. I copy paste the scene I’m stuck on, and I rewrite it under, while using a couple of sentences I feel are good. I repeat the process until the words flow back again.
(This sounds a lot like a cooking recipe xD)
For the real, unbreachable writer’s block (like, if the above didn’t work), I try to focus on other stories. If that doesn’t help kick the inspiration back (like for No, but I do – even though the writer’s block was cemented by GOT’s last season but that’s another matter entirely), I push the story to the back of my mind and I give it up.
16.  How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied with a project?
As many as necessary until I’m satisfied with myself. I can’t give a number.
17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?
I imagine the scene beforehand, I listen to music, I write on computer… I can’t think of any other writing habit I have atm.
18.  If you could collaborate with anyone, who would it be, and what would you write about?
I don’t think I could collaborate with anyone, sorry - -’ When I have an idea for a story, I’m excited with writing every single part of it, so I don’t think it’s for me.
19.  How do you keep yourself motivated?
With the scenes I want to write.
20.  How many WIPs and story ideas do you have?
At the moment (meaning the ones brewing in my mind): 11.
 The Favourites 21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write?
It depends with the story. I liked Weston in Pretty Boy (I like him too in I Desire You), and Wendy in Amandi.
22.  Who is/are your favourite pairing(s) to write?
Weston/Edmund. They’re my OTP for now.
23.  Favourite author
I don’t have a favourite author, I search for fics / stories mostly.
24.  Favourite genre to write and read
Romance.
25.  Favourite part of writing
I love writing dialogues, especially when the characters continue to talk on their own and I’m just transcribing everything and the conversation ends up very different from what I imagined.
26.  Favourite writing program
None, I just write on Word.
27.  Favourite line/scene
That’s impossible to choose! xD
On a writing’s perspective only, I’ll say the end part of chapter 3 in I Desire You (or worse). When I reread it and I could feel what the character is feeling / does (I’m being vague on purpose because I haven’t posted it yet), I knew I had to post it somewhere. I don’t know, I’m just really proud of it (and have the most self-doubt over people’s reaction, which is – as always – very logical of me).
28.  Favourite side character
In I Desire You, I like Lucy.
29.  Favourite villain
I don’t think I’ve ever written many villains. Ah, yes, Peter Pan in my OUAT fic. He’s a villain, it works.
30.  Favourite idea you haven’t started on yet
I’ve been beginning a lot of WIP at the moment, precisely so I could start putting down all the ideas I wanted, so I don’t really know what to answer to that…
 The Dark 31.  Least favourite part of writing
Writing description of settings. I don’t really like how I write those.
32.  Most difficult character to write
Edmund. No hesitation.
33.  Have you ever killed a main character?
No, and I never intend to. I want my characters to be happy and alive.
34.  What was the hardest scene you ever had to write?
Chapter 3 of I Desire You? Or maybe the chapter 2.
Or the beginning of Amandi, which depicts the Peter / Fiona relation.
35.  What scene/story are you least looking forward to writing?
Um, none at the moment :)
 The Fun 36.  Last sentence you wrote
I understand how he feels.
But I’ll probably change it. I’m not sure yet. It’s for IDY.
37.  First sentence of your current WIP
Well, I have three, so I’ll put the three.
A frustrated scream would have torn the eerie silence and thunderous sound of waves if Peter had any strength left in him to scream anymore. For Amandi
“Where’re y’all running to?” For IDY
Patroclus’ lip trembled when they pinned the crown to his hair. For Sunkissed.
38.  Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had
Oof, lots. I’ve often imagined confronting two versions of characters. Like, take characters, usually from period pieces or in mindsets that are very patriarchal, and make them see another version of themselves, usually in Omegaverse, in a sort of Harry Potter pensieve or television setting, like they just watch this alternate universe version of themselves as they go on their daily lives. And then I imagine all the ways this character would first be horrified / angered / dismissive of that version of themselves that they’d judge weaker because they’d be Omegas, and then, slowly, they see that they’re really badass and yk worthy of consideration, respect etc. Not just them, but all their mates etc. would too, as well. And then they would come out as this better person, who aren’t as prejudiced as they used to be.
39.  Weirdest character concept you’ve ever had
I don’t know, I think it kind of overlap with the precedent question? Anyway, my characters are (only) plain, normal humans. Or, well, there was one time I had an idea to write a story with elves à la Tolkien, but it’s not really a weird character concept (or at all really xD)
40.  Share some backstory for one of your characters
Well, all my characters’ important backstories end up being revealed, so I’m not gonna spoil anything here…
I’ll take Curly from Amandi. He grew up in an orphanage, a poor one, which didn’t have proper beds (hence why he calls them pockets, because they look like pockets). He has no memory of his parents because they separated before his birth and his mother died in birth. He comes from a magical land (since we’re talking about an OUAT AU).
 The Rest of It 41.  Any advice for new/beginning/young writers?
Write what you want to read.
42.  How do you feel about love triangles?
I’m mixed. I’m not a fan of them, but I wrote one once, although it was a bit special because it looked like that: Person A is in love with Person B, and vice versa, Person C loves Person A and Person C (and the entire world) is convinced Person A is in love with them.
43.  What do you do if/when characters don’t follow the outline?
I just go with it. They know better than me xD
44.  How much research do you do?
A lot, but it’s mostly on little details. Like, not wars or political situation of the country at the time period, but more like were oil lamps still used for that class of population in said year, and can you snuff them out by turning the button (like in a slide sort of way, I’m not sure how to translate it precisely in English, but in my head it’s crystal clear).
45.  How much world building do you do?
I do a lot. When I write a story, I like to know every little detail I can.
46.  Do you reread your own stories?
Yes. That’s the main reason why I write them, to be true.
47.  Best way to procrastinate
By searching for aesthetic pics on Pinterest. That thing can take hours and you never see them fly. It’s incredible. Worse than Youtube. It takes you from picture to picture to picture without you noticing. Amazing.
48.  What’s the most self-insert character/scene you’ve ever written?
I give a little bit of myself to every character I write about. Be it opinions, thoughts, childhood memory or taste. For example, Weston doesn’t like chocolate (he hates it with a passion) because I think chocolate has a disgusting taste (and because he never had the occasion of eating any as a kid).
49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?
Weston, because he’s friendly and extraverted, and I wish I could be more of both, and I imagine that being his friend would make me mimic him in certain ways.
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ghostportals · 7 years ago
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Rejet’s Star Revolution: Starting the game
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Uh yeah idk if there’s already a guide out but I haven’t seen one? so i figured i’d post a bit of one
keep in mind if you’re reading i can’t actually read japanese, a lot of this was done with google translate lol. but it can still be helpful to make things quicker till a proper guide comes out (if there. isn’t already one)
Menu stuff is at the very bottom of the post ! The stuff before the menu takes you through the tutorial and the basics that aren't covered in that.
edit before you click: warning that there’s currently irl blood on my desktop theme (won’t be soon tho)
Welcome to the Starevo tutorial! Lines with an * at the beginning aren’t in the tutorial, but are stuff I’m mentioning for the later gameplay.
1. Joining
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Enter your Player name. Last name, then first name, Japanese style.
2. Intro
The school’s stuco VP will talk to you for a while. I’d like to tell what he says, but I’m not quite confident enough in my jp listening skills to do so lol. He does call you “president-chan”, though. You’re given a dialogue option:
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It doesn’t matter what you say, but the top says “I’m not very confident” and the bottom basically says “I’ll try to do my best.” Both are not very confident sounding either way, which is understandable considering you’re suddenly being thrust into a position of power in a dang idol school, lol.
3. Lives - require LP
If you’re used to mobile rhythm games, the gameplay is pretty easy to get from just the images. There’s only one “button” and it doesn’t matter where you tap.
*Select a song, select a friend or guest as support, select a team, and click the pink button to begin (out of tutorial).
Small pink circle: Regular tap.
Blue circle with trail: Tap and hold.
Green circle with shine in the middle: Swipe.
Big pink gradient circle: Tap with two fingers (or double tap real fast, if you’re lazy.)
Star shaped: Tap A Lot Real Fast. You need to get a certain amount to get a perfect; continuing after the star fills gives you bonuses.
*After a live, you’ll see your results and get rewards. If your support was a guest, you’ll get a popup prompting you to send a friend request; you can send it (blue) or not (gray).
4. Lessons - require AP
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You can increase affection(?) degree in lessons. Select the lesson type by selecting one of the colored circles. Keep an eye on the characters condition-- how effective the lessons are is directly proportional to how in shape the character is! (Just like real life wow)
Tap twice on a lesson type (circle) to begin. You’ll need to tap through several lesson types to complete a whole session, and can give items to the characters to increase how much they gain in a certain attribute by tapping on the orange button with a coffee cup.
Sometimes characters will be too tired, or moody, to participate in a certain lesson. Keep an eye on their mood, especially if you’re thinking about using an item. Sometimes they’ll sleep, which means they don’t participate in that bit of the lessons. However, letting them get rest can up their FEVER gauge and their tone. When the FEVER gauge is filled, the effectiveness of the lessons increases greatly.
*You can give presents during the lesson to make something good happen. Try to give what the character likes! When a character participates in a lesson, their affection goes up! Let’s become good friends with everyone!
*Lessons are done by unit. Outside of the tutorial, when you click the lesson button, you’ll choose a unit to train.
5. Story
The tutorial will next take you to the story page. After the introduction (which you already read), the stories will no longer be fully voiced. *You need to spend star/story keys to read most chapters. The mechanics work like any mobile vn; if you don’t want to sit through it, you can expand the menu in the upper right and click the skip button to fast fwd through.
*If you’ve played Enstars, the stories are similar to that. They’re organized by unit.
6. Units
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Time to choose your boys! The screen shows you pura.net at first; switch between them by swiping, not by tapping the arrows. When a unit catches your fancy (or you find the one you’re already dedicated to), tap the pink button. It will then ask if you’re sure you want to start with this unit; click OK.
7. Gacha
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Time to scout. You’ll automatically be taken to the gacha page in the tutorial, where you’ll be given a card of one of the members of your chosen unit. This ends the tutorial.
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*Not in tutorial: the actual gacha function. If you’ve played other mobage, you know this. If not, it’s simple: The regular gacha (at the time of writing, only one, but there will probably be more) requires the little rainbow star stones. Spent 15 stars, get one card. Spend 150, get 10 cards. Getting 10 cards ups your chances of a better card! The point gacha (lower card rarities) requires 5000 points(?) for a 10 pull, and 500 for 1.
The tutorial ends after you get your card. The game will give you a couple messages and then prompt you to let it restart so it can complete more downloads (shouldn't take long). Upon starting the game again, you’ll receive login bonuses and be thrown into the fray.
8. Other stuff tutorial mentions
Cards can be strengthened using items. These are what you obtain from playing lives and completing lessons. You require a story key (blue star key) to read story chapters.
9. Cards
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The top button on the card menu is your team organization. There are 5 team slots. Clicking the rightmost button on the bar that shows the cards will show the active skills in the team.
You have two types of teams: live teams, and lesson teams. When you open it, you’re on live teams. Click the other button above the card images to switch. There’s a bunch more buttons on here, but at the time of writing this idk what they are, I’ll. fix this later.
Second button is to level up your cards. Select a card (I have to tap them twice? sometimes more lol) to level. I’d like to add more but I can’t do anything there yet so I’ll fix this later;
Third button is awakening. I assume this is like idolizing/changing/blooming/ect. It looks to require items rather than a second copy? Will update later as well.
The bottom button lets you view a card’s stats. Level, specific stats, and skills. Click the middle button under the card to see the character’s profile. The third button will bring you to the unit pages, where you can look at any character’s profile by tapping them.
10. Menu stuff!
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The main menu can be accessed from most pages by clicking the arrow in the bottom left. It’s shown across the bottom, and is showing by default on the home page. You can full screen your character/cg with the button in the left.
Left to right: Home, live, lesson, story, characters, gacha, friends, more menu menu.
10a. Friends
The rightmost button on the menu lets you view friends. It begins as a desolate and barren wasteland of loneliness. Right side buttons, top to bottom: Friends list, friend requests, pending approval from the other person, and search (find some friends!) The search page looks a bit glitchy atm but nothing gamebreaking. Click the button next to their name to view their profile, or the rightmost on their little bar to send them a request.
10b. More Menu Menu
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Left to right:
Profile, settings, storage/inventory (items) Shop, friends, Transfer data, help, contact us Opening movie, terms of service, back to title.
10c. Settings
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System options -> Live options -> Story options
System options top to bottom: music volume, sound effects volume, voice volume, lightweight mode (makes it run better).
Live options top to bottom: music volume, SE volume, voice volume, lightweight mode, timing calibration, movie (animations), cut-ins (the character popups when skills activate).
Story options is just text speed.
10d. Welcome menu
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...This should probably be first but whatever.
Tap the bottom left button to access. Left to right (to bottom): OP movie, takeover/transfer/”inheritance”, clear cache, contact us.
In all honesty I don’t understand the transfer stuff myself... It looks like you can put an account on for sure, but I don’t know how to assign an email and password to your current account.
And that’s all I’ve got! When I figure out how to assign transfer codes I’ll add that in.
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lesbianalicent · 8 years ago
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mass effect: andromeda review
abandon hope of not seeing spoilers, all ye who click the cut
overall: 3/5 main story: 3.5/5 dialogue: 5/5 fuck all of you it was hilarious combat: 5/5 worldbuilding: 2/5 squad: 4/5 overall gameplay: 2/5 side quests: 1/5
this is gonna be long, y’all, i have A Lot To Say
so, first thing’s first: ryder is a treasure and probably the best protagonist that bioware has come up with since hawke or shepard. inquisitor whom??? they’re absolutely hilarious and whenever they open their mouth i know something delightfully terrible is going to come out of it. i find it interesting that the older folks who play this game (late twenties and over) HATE the dialogue but the younger folks who are around ryder’s actual age don’t? it’s an interesting split that i could write essays on just bc of how ryder talks bc it’s so similar to how i talk.
god she’s such a little asshole i love her i would die for her.
THE PROS: -fantastic combat that is probably the best that bioware has ever done, not having a set class is wonderful and being able to switch to do whatever you want is [prayer hands emoji] i can finally be the biotic infiltrator combo of my dreams -I LOVE BEING ABLE TO PROJECT MY DADDY ISSUES ONTO RYDER THANK YOU FOR THAT BIOWARE -kissable!! turian!! gotta Kiss That Turian!! -the tempest crew feels like a tight knit family, they feel Real, hearing them banter on the ship itself is lovely and seeing how their relationship grows over the course of the game is delightful. the movie night single handedly saved me. the emails and the message board killed me dead. -nakmor kesh is my girlfriend -liara t’soni cameos -SAM, i love that ai i hope he knows that. he’s a very different character than edi and i really like that? i like the relationship he has with ryder it’s a lot different than shepard’s relationship with legion and with edi -the little easter eggs scattered around, like hunting dr. okeer’s research and finding zaeed’s son -the main story missions really felt like mass effect, and there’s some great choices you have to make that i hope will have actual effects later in the series -STUNNING scenery, holy shit -nomad banter -peebee/vetra, specifically. thank you sheryl chee for my life. -THE RYDER FAMILY WHAT THE HECK I LOVE THESE ASSHOLES -loyalty missions were a lot of fun, liam’s specifically is SO funny i love that boy -i would die for the tempest’s crew THE CONS: -too big. way, way, WAY too big. like take the hinterlands and make it into several PLANETS big. it’s exhausting and it was neat at first but by the end i just wanted it to be done, i had to resort to doing a speed run just so i wouldn’t burn myself out on the first try. if i wanted to play an open world game i’d play world of warcraft or skyrim, honestly. the open world aspect of it is dEFINITELY one of the game’s biggest weak spots, and i’m def gonna save my completionist run for when some mods and patches come out so i don’t burn myself out real quickly. i still haven’t recovered from my dai completionist run and that was a year ago. -the loyalty missions are fun and interesting, but except for cora’s they really didn’t seem to have much of a point other than unlocking romances. in me2 the point of the loyalty missions was that the crew would draw a line with shepard somewhere, things you said and did could lose their loyalty and if you lost their loyalty the characters could and often did die in the suicide mission. these seemed more like personal quests, they didn’t even unlock new outfits :/ -okay. listen. i understand that garrus is a fan favorite. and i love him too. but holy shit liara had a VOICE cameo and he still got the most references. that goddamn archangel paintjob? “reach and flexibility”? having his picture in the codex? his goddamn father being in a flashback? liam mentioning a scarred turian vigilante? meanwhile kaidan and ashley get nothing, lmao, Okay. like shit even shepard only got referenced ONCE like come on y’all. not even gonna mention the battle of the citadel? that was a big goddamn plot point, especially since ryder was RAISED ON THE CITADEL? you’d think that the sovereign attack would be traumatizing. -dragon age characters got references but ash and kaidan don’t.........lol.........i see you bioware.............. -what was even the point of editing shepard’s gender -if you’re gonna have references you should at least have a little reference for every major character like the game is so fucking big you could have done it without being in your face. ellen’s role with biotics? reference baat. general williams and shanxi. wrex when talking to drack’s clan urdnot friend. -i really wish they’d have at least had some major choices from me1 imported in, like “did the council survive, who was the virmire survivor, was everyone recruited, did wrex survive” etc.  -speaking off, there’s plot holes for days. i can’t get a confirmation on when in 2185 they left, but if they left before shepard woke up and they didn’t ever recruit garrus in me1 then WHY would garrus’s dad talk to alec about it. the fuck my dudes. -yeah. plot holes for days. i’m tired and a bitter OT fucker. -gil’s.......entire.............storyline............lol GOD bioware...... -having the two crime lords being the latino man and the black woman. i see you bioware. -sloane’s entire storyline god bioware........... -the remnant are literally just synthetic protheans and the kett are organic reapers -i’m tired of this trend in bioware games where they use the “SILLY MORTALS YOU CANNOT EVEN COMPREHEND OUR ACTIONS, THEY ARE BEYOND YOUR UNDERSTANDING” like with the reapers it was cool, corypheus was a disaster and quite frankly so was the kett but whatever. -activating the monoliths and having to do sudoku. why.  -not prioritizing quests properly. you could miss one of the biggest twists in the game bc you don’t finish that fetch quest to get all the memory triggers, and that twist was the main one that i actually wanted to see (shepard and the reapers and liara’s SOS) -PEEBEE’S SEX SCENE GOD. TOO MUCH. BIOWARE. -JAAL WITH HIS VAGINA HEAD GOING DOWN ON SARA RYDER. FUCK.
that’s all i can think of atm but my main issue with the game is that bioware doesn’t seem to know how to prioritize quests, it’s SO BIG, and they treat their mlm like garbage. also racist tropes ahoy.
i’m really excited to see where they take the franchise tho! definitely got some solid future plot points with whatever the fuck the remnant were, whatever the kett are after (ugh...), discovering what happened in the milky way, who killed jien garson, who is the benefactor (my money is illusive man and tann’s power hungry froggy ass had her killed and it was unrelated just coincidental), ellen ryder’s recovery, the quarian ark, etc.
i hope they keep the same squad for the next game! continue the romances as well as add in new ones, maybe add a couple of new squaddies. i like having the same characters overlap in different games, it makes you actually care about them. add in scott/sara as a squaddie! LESBIAN/GAY SQUADDIES. keep ryder as the protag or so help me god..........
it really, really makes me miss the original trilogy tho. and playing it knowing there’s a bunch of ppl who wont ever touch it but will play andromeda hurts me deeply.
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phogenson · 8 years ago
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A Hard Year: Emergency Room
I left the ATM with a bit of cash which I figured I could afford to spend at my favorite coffee shop for dinner. This was a bit of a treat in February 2016--I wasn't eating enough, a problem I will examine in another post. I walked two miles to the Hard Times Cafe as the temperature fell.
Writing in my Moleskine has been a good way to organize my thoughts since I started directing. So while I was waiting for my food I just wrote what I had on my mind. I don't write free associations, but this entry has that feel about it.
The page wanders from instances of anxiety producing triggers in my life; some interpersonal difficulties I was facing in my living situation; a small meditation on film. One of the things that can happen in the real throes of anxiety seems to be valuable insight into a topic. There is a high degree of mental activity which can seem like an excess of clarity--like an over exposed photograph.
For a moment on this page I considered how music might inherently detract from film. The reasoning here is still very clear to me, something to return to. Basically the thinking goes that cinema is an art all its own, the addition of music or even dialogue, while perhaps powerful, also dilutes the medium. It hybridizes it, something perhaps problematic. This is something that's connected to many other thoughts I have on film as a medium and I think belies my interest in minimalism e.g. sound and music should only be deployed as little as needed in film.
I would like to come back to the idea, no doubt. In some way I'm sure I will. But my handwritten paragraph, rather than drawing a conclusion ended with the words "so fuck him." It's not even tangential like this reflection is. It's jumbled. The paragraph, the entire page, points to all sorts of things that were on my mind. It draws no conclusions.
One aside catches my attention though.
Only recently have I looked at the idea that "no one sees" and it's a deep yearning I feel. It was not something I merely wanted at the time, it underscores existence. The next morning I would live out the preceding description in this paragraph. I'd be alone.
February 13, 2016 I woke up at a friend's house, I slept on the couch because home wasn't where I wanted to be. That morning I had a meeting scheduled and I didn't make it. The temperature in Minneapolis that morning was -8 Fahrenheit and this was a problem. Unprotected and over used, my phone battery died again and again in the cold as I tried to reserve a Car2Go. I was running late, it was a Saturday, nothing was open and nothing worked. The batteries in a Smart Car struggle to start the engine in Minneapolis on a day like this.
Being in that kind of situation, constant failures and mental rerouting has a distinct feel to it. Wikipedia describes a diagnosis of a panic attack which includes the word "un-reality" and that is a true description. The thought in my head was "how is this possible?" It didn't seem like what was happening was remotely possible. Everything that I took for granted failed. My phone, the car, the stoplights didn't work, the streets seemed unnavigable. It's not bad luck and it's not first world problems at some point. And more than being self critical, there seemed to be no explanation of the situation I was in despite very real experience of it.
Eventually I was driving on I-94 toward St. Paul doing 80 and as the words in my head to describe whatever I was feeling at the moment failed me too. So I screamed and mugged. Trying to dead recon my way to where I was going, I pulled off the highway, got lost, and stopped near a BP.
I went in and asked to charge my phone. The answer was "no," and the guy at the gas station had probably seen a million crazier things than me at that moment. That's a problem too, I was holding myself to a standard of normality that required tremendous concentration. Shaking, I broke what might have been my last dollar into quarters and used a payphone outside in Minnesota's version of February to call my Dad, an analyst and LCSW. He cut through the noise and oncoming tears and told me to get to a hospital.
On this call a guy, Dave, asked me if I was okay. This was an unbelievably fortunate meeting. Looking back it is absolutely the kind of strange collision that killed the dinosaurs or welcomed the grief stricken mourners at the empty tomb of Christ. Dave asked me directly if I needed a ride someplace. I told my Dad I was going to get to a hospital and I hung up.
I pulled myself together as much as I could--any resolve must have been transparent--and said "uh, can you take me to a hospital." Dave took me to Regions Hospital and maybe I owe him my life.
Regions took good care of me. I've heard that the best way to get seen at the ER is to say you're bleeding and you move to the front of triage right away, but maybe saying you think you're having a panic attack works well too. They took my vitals, verifying the hypertension from the night before and pretty quick observation must've made diagnosis pretty easy. The doctors tell you who they are, there's two of them, then they ask you these questions:
"What brings you in today?"
And I said "I think I had a panic attack."
"Do you have any thoughts of harming yourself or others?"
And because if you're in that seat, being asked these questions, you do want to die you say "yes."
Then they ask if you've ingested any alcohol or drugs recently, and when your repression about the last days makes you clam up they tell you "we just need to know what we're dealing with." And you tell them the God's honest truth for what feels like the first time in your life even if ten seconds earlier was the first time you'd verbalized suicidal thoughts, and twenty minutes earlier you couldn't speak. The doctor said "I tried weed and didn't like it at all."
This was all good. It happened fast. And then things get a little less great and a lot more harsh reality. The hospital has some ward for emergency psychiatric issues, but it's not great. They take all your stuff and put it in a locked room while you change into scrubs. Then you get a room and a little later the worst cafeteria food ever, and they get your order wrong. But I hadn't eaten really at all. So I ate the chicken and peas.
This ward was actually in disrepair. They were building a new one, so maintenance wasn't a priority. But I had my own room with no windows and very beige walls and some stock photo of a palm tree bolted to the wall. There absolutely is a camera in there. And they check on you.
I know I was not the worst case in the hospital. At one point I heard a nurse remind the guy in the room next to me that he'd pulled a knife on a guy outside a bar last night. He denied it. But I think I was very high on their priority list because they had identified me as a suicide risk. Although by this point I felt like I'd seen too much to even try it.
So a doctor met with me pretty quick.
"We can give you a 'chill pill' that'll knock you out for a while," he offered. We talked about a bunch of things, but I didn't want medication like that. It seemed like it'd just be another blow. Then they tell you what they want to do. They wanted to move me "upstairs" as soon as they could, but this meant waiting in the room overnight. They didn't have the space or the doctors to make that happen.
The doctor also outlined other options for observation. In that situation the options really sound like the end of your ability to have any control in your life. I really didn't want to give up what little control I had over my life at that point. It's seemed like a misconception that being in even a pretty laissez-faire institution would be desirable. I could have my thoughts, but maybe not have control over my food. In other situations maybe that seems like a huge boon, like you wouldn't have to worry about living, but some pretty basic functions were the limits of my control and I didn't want to give them up. I thought about it though.
At some point I made a few phone calls. I called my work, told them I was in the emergency room and that they'd have to find some way of making coffee without me. I don't know if they could've guessed what'd happened. I feel like they had some idea. I called my parents and told them I made it to the hospital.
Then I waited for hours to be seen by a social worker. Apparently she described my looks as "he looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin." Basically I just lay in the bed. My cousin came by, she would help me immensely over the coming weeks.
In the end though they can't keep you in the ER when you ask to leave. But they will write a prescription for lorazepam to keep you from coming back in. I'll talk more about lorazapam in another soon, but it stops a panic attack like a freight train. This is the only time they'll just hand you this pill and basically tell you to stay doped up on it for as long as the prescription runs.
The hospital pays for a taxi. And this taxi driver was exactly the kind of over masculine, I work out, hot girlfriend, meathead I could barely deal with. I sat there next to the patriarchy for a little while.
I got home and made a few more calls. At this point there was also an early warning sign of things to come between me and one of my roommates. We got pizza and, couched in concern for me, he said "you've gotta go home, dude." And that's really hard to hear when your life is in this city and except for the last 12 hours you feel self sufficient. When I could think about it more rationally, my entire system of support was in Minneapolis--family, a therapist, hospitals, my job--and I wasn't about to abandon it to be home. And I hated Minneapolis. So it was a dubious claim. In hindsight this conversation began to make me unsure of myself in how I handled day to day situations and planted seeds of personal attacks that eventually did push me out of the house.
Ultimately I did the best I could. Eventually I did what I had to. Somewhere in there were some fuck-ups too.
On February 14, 2016 I was pretty doped up--lorazepam. But looking at the scribbles from two nights earlier, the beginnings of the effect the lorazepam has are clear. My writing was straight, pragmatic, to the point, and fiercely linear albeit a little more open than I like.
I've excerpted the entire page.
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